Final Fantasy 7 writer "regretted" parts of the original JRPG and saw Rebirth and Remake as a chance to "properly portray Aerith and Tifa’s friendship"

Final Fantasy 7 writer Kazushige Nojima says he "regretted" how Aerith and Tifa's relationship was handled in the original JRPG, and therefore saw Remake and now Rebirth as opportunities to make good on the friendship he envisioned all those years ago.

In a Square Enix blog post collecting developer sentiments on the heels of Rebirth's release (our Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth review has all the details), Nojma shares an anecdote from the original game's development. 

"Around the time that we finished making the original Final Fantasy 7, a senior programmer turned to me and said, 'It sure seems like Aerith and Tifa don’t like each other, don’t you think?'

"I was shocked to hear this, as they had obviously been on an amazing journey together and formed a close friendship because of it. But once I asked myself if I had really conveyed that part of their relationship, I found that I wasn't too confident. Not only were there not enough specific scenes to convey this, but there also wasn’t enough dialogue that hinted at their friendship. I regretted this for a long time."

When the Remake project kicked off, Nojima says he set a goal "to properly portray Aerith and Tifa’s friendship." This ultimately bled into the relationships between other characters, with "connectedness" becoming a unifying theme for his approach and the story as a whole. "It’s because of this connectedness that the characters and the planet on which they live were born," Nojima says. 

"Thank you to that programmer from all those years ago," he concludes. I suppose we can also thank this programmer for, in part, indirectly inspiring the endearing relationships that truly blossom in Rebirth, with Tifa and Aerith quickly becoming fan favorites all over again. 

Nojima's had an interesting history with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth. Last November, he asked fans to stop sending him messages demanding he kill off or cut out their least-favorite characters. A month later, as Nojima shared his frustrations