FISCHER: Playing the waiting game

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,” one of my most anticipated games of the year, finally released last week.

Picking up where its predecessor left off, Rebirth is the second in a trilogy of games that are arguably remaking and re-imagining the classic 90s JRPG.

Its predecessor, “Final Fantasy VII Remake” was easily among my favorite games of 2020. I literally bought a PlayStation 4 more or less just to play it and “Marvel’s Spider-Man.”

But it’s 2024 now and “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” is exclusively available on the PlayStation 5, a console I don’t own.

While it wouldn’t be unprecedented of me to buy a brand new console pretty much exclusively to play a single game, that’s just not an expense I’m willing to do this time around. Between recently moving and buying a new car, my savings and budget have both taken too many big hits to justify spending $600 essentially on a single video game.

First-world problems indeed.

Since Blockbuster doesn’t exist anymore to rent out gaming consoles, I have to resign myself to the fact that I won’t be playing FF7 Rebirth until it inevitably gets released on PC.

Unfortunately, if history repeats itself, that’s going to be a long wait. Rebirth’s predecessor released on April 10, 2020, but didn’t hit PC until Dec. 16, 2021. And even then, the PC release was exclusive to the Epic Games Store for six months. The Steam release of the game didn’t happen until June 17, 2022, just over two years from the game’s initial launch.

It would not surprise me if Rebirth follows the same pattern, which means I likely won’t get the chance to start my own save file for the game until summer of 2026.

The question then becomes, what do I do until then?

I mean, obviously I must wait to play the game, but just because I’m not playing it doesn’t mean I’ll be able to avoid it. The mystery behind how the new trilogy does or doesn’t change the story of the original is one of the primary attractions. It is all anybody is going to be talking about for the next couple weeks, much less the next two years.

So, do I dedicate myself to two years of dodging spoilers, carefully staying on guard whenever I use the internet to avoid finding out any of the shocking story revelations in store for me before I am able to play the game for myself?

If we were talking a matter of weeks or even months, that might be doable, but two years is a long time.

Alternatively, I could abandon any notion of going into the game blind and fully immerse myself in YouTube videos and Twitch streams. Already my YouTube subscription page is filling up with spoiler filled plot breakdowns and theory videos. At least with this approach I am spoiling myself on my own terms and I won’t be two years behind the zeitgeist when it comes to community discussion.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but that really doesn’t seem like it’s going to be possible in this case.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and barely has the time to watch videos about a huge new video game, much less play one.