{"id":1013477,"date":"2026-01-11T20:02:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T20:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=470427"},"modified":"2026-01-11T20:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T20:02:30","slug":"new-final-fantasy-7-speedrun-tactic-could-skip-the-games-most-famous-character-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/new-final-fantasy-7-speedrun-tactic-could-skip-the-games-most-famous-character-death\/","title":{"rendered":"New Final Fantasy 7 speedrun tactic could skip the game\u2019s most famous character death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

Speedrunners for the original Final Fantasy 7<\/em> from 1997 have made a weirdly important discovery for longtime FF7<\/em> fans, non-speedrunners included. It turns out, through a series of very difficult in-game maneuvers, Aerith can remain in the player\u2019s party even after her death scene. She can stick around and watch her own climactic, infamous murder at the hands of Sephiroth and then just hang around after that.<\/p>\n

As with all speedrunning discoveries, this one was a group effort, although the two names most often shouted out are speedrunners who go by AceZephyr and Kuma. This new skip builds upon knowledge from a previously discovered FF7 <\/em>speedrun tactic known as the Kalm skip, which (as the name implies) allows the player to skip over an in-game area called Kalm. That skip involves taking advantage of the way that the game reads different types of terrain on the world map, such that the player can walk in certain patterns in order to get to places they weren\u2019t supposed to be able to reach yet. This has opened up the opportunity for other similar skips to be discovered, such as this most recent skip, demonstrated in a proof-of-concept video by Kuma<\/a> and in a shorter demonstration video by AceZephyr<\/a>, in which Cloud walks across water (fun stuff). Ultimately, this new skip allows speedrunners to go from Midgar all the way to the City of the Ancients, which could end up shaving off as much as two hours off FF7 <\/em>speedrun records.<\/p>\n

Speedrunning tactics are always a bit esoteric to explain, but I found 4-8Productions\u2019 YouTube video on this topic to be pretty clear and easy to understand.<\/p>\n

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