A freshly-discovered glitch in the original Final Fantasy 7 has been discovered, allowing players to skip a huge section of the game and head straight to its biggest twist.
I’m being purposefully vague here for spoiler reasons, but if you’re at all familiar with the game you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Really, it’s surprising that after 26 years players are still finding new ways to skip through the game.
So you’ve guessed right now I’m talking about Aerith. And this new glitch lets you at last keep her alive.
Well, sort of. Essentially you force her to watch her own death and battle against the mother of her murderer.
As shared by Final Fantasy speedrunner Luzbel on X/Twitter, the skip was discovered by AceZephyr and Kuma.
The glitch does not use any form of cheats. Instead, players can utilise a complex mechanic where the game stores information on the terrain whenever mounting and dismounting a chocobo on the world map. With this, it’s possible to walk through the world from early in the game straight to the Forgotten Capital at the end of the first disc.
Of course, players will be pretty underleveled for this section of the game. But with Aerith in the party, it’s possible to have her witness her own death and then join the subsequent battle against Jenova.
However, Luzbel notes the game will softlock during a cutscene if Aerith is in the party when she shouldn’t be. Still, Aerith saviours can at last rejoice!
This year’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth tackled the same section of the game as part of the trilogy remake project. While I won’t spoil Aerith’s fate here, treatment of the moment proved controversial.
Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase stated last month the third part of the trilogy won’t “betray the fans of the original”.
“There are these things we feel we can only do now in the remake project that can bring a new happiness, a new sort of feeling of satisfaction to the players playing this game now 27 years later,” he said. “What this will entail exactly is something we hope players will experience soon.”