Since the release of the original Final Fantasy 7, fans have been eagerly awaiting the game’s biggest and most notable tragic moment: Aerith’s death. Could she be saved? Was it possible? For years, rumors circulated about secret ways to save her and keep her on the team. And now speedrunners have found a way to keep her around, which could also mean a huge time saver.
Discovered by speedrunners AceZephyr and Kuma and voiced by Luzbel, the fresh jump allows players to jump from Midgar all the way to the Forgotten Capital with Aerith still in the party. Since he skips the part of the game where Aerith leaves the team, he sticks around and eventually witnesses his own death at the hands of Sephiroth, only to join the battle against Jenova Life moments later.
Biggest skip found in FF7. pic.twitter.com/HXVfrbOJd4
— Luzbel / Luzbel (@Luzbel789) October 23, 2024
The actual jump is quite elaborate and the kinks are still being worked out. It involves using a Chocobo on the world map to trick the game into letting you walk on the ocean, and then Cloud simply walks on the water to the Forgotten Capital without doing any of the other actions required to get there. The cutscene plays normally, but the team composition remains the same as before. Kumy I have a tutorial on YouTube here for anyone interested in trying it out for themselves.
Unfortunately, this omission includes many asterisks that actually work. First, unless you’re on a version of the game that allows you to turn off encounters, skipping is impossible because entering an encounter while walking on water will cause the game to lock out software. And since Aerith isn’t supposed to be on the party at this point, the game also crashes when there’s a scene involving a party she shouldn’t be involved in.
The community is currently working to find ways to work around this issue, including one painful five-hour effort by AceZephyr using pause buffering to avoid encounters while walking on water. Let’s hope they find one, because if it ever becomes feasible, it will supposedly save runners about two hours, allowing them to hit their first disc faster than ever.
If this has reignited your interest in Final Fantasy 7, you don’t need to launch the original to enjoy it. Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are also pretty amazing, and together they present a slightly different version of the overall story that speedrunners leave out on the senior record. We gave Final Fantasy 7 Remake an 8/10 and Rebirth got a 9/10. Our reviewer wrote: “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth builds impressively on what Remake started, both as a best-in-class action RPG full of exciting challenge and depth, and as an awe-inspiring recreation of a world that meant so much. for so many for so long.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Her posts can be found on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
