Release Additional DLC with the Voice Actors from the Compilation of FFVII for the FFVII-R
A lot of us grew up hearing the voices of Steve Burton and George Newbern as Cloud and Sephiroth.
Since Kingdom Hearts 1 released 20 years ago, Steve has been the only voice actor for Cloud Strife until 2019. He returned for games like Dissidia, World of Final Fantasy, and even Mobius. He was specifically chosen to voice Cloud because of his role in the 2001 movie, The Last Castle. He’s expressed his love for the character, the series, and the fans, and was clearly heart-broken to hear that he was not asked to reprise his role for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, despite voicing a trailer for the game in December 2015.
A lot of people seem to think that he was fine with passing the torch off to Cody Christian, but he has expressed a desire to return to voicing Cloud, even as recently as June 2022 in a Cameo to a fan where he stated, “Hey, maybe they’ll bring us back”, referring to the entire cast that was replaced. He has also liked tweets sharing this petition that I have linked. It’s pretty clear that if given the chance, he will voice Cloud again.
While not being the first voice actor for Sephiroth, George Newbern has voiced the character since 2006, the year Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts 2 released. Immediately he was a fan favorite, and continued to voice Sephiroth in many projects, large and small, until 2019. When the next trailers for Final Fantasy 7 Remake released in May and June of 2019, many fans were not happy with the new voice for Sephiroth. It was clearly a step down from how George portrayed the character, and George also went to Twitter to express disappointment in not being asked to reprise his role. Ever since he has made mention on numerous occasions that he would love to return to voicing the character, as Sephiroth is his favorite role, and has also liked this petition.
He and a number of the original cast from the compilation have said that if fans want them to return, that they have to let Square Enix know. This is what this petition and this campaign is aiming to do.
This petition kindly asks Square Enix to release a DLC for FF7Remake that would allow us to play the game with the cast from the compilation.
Many people don’t realize that every other region that FF7Remake released in kept the same voice actors that they used in the compilation, Kingdom Hearts, and other titles these characters appeared in. It was only the English version that replaced the cast. So when Kitase and SE say things like, “We wanted to go in another direction”, or “the characters are younger than they were in Advent Children”, just know that these are excuses that make no sense.
When SE released Star Ocean: First Departure R in Japan, they brought back the old cast to voice the game, as well as used a new cast. So they had the option to play with the old voice actors in Japanese for fans that played the first game, and the option to play the game with new voice actors in Japanese.
Silent Hill HD also had an option similar to this where you could choose between the old cast from the original and a new cast for the HD release.
So, having two different casts in the same language has been done before, even by SE. It could work for FF7R.
SE also released a Russian dub for FF15 completely for free. For this FF7Remake DLC, it wouldn’t be an entire re-dub of the game, because it wouldn’t be every character, just the characters that were previously voiced by the original cast. And a number of the characters don’t have as many lines as the main party. A DLC like this is very doable and would not cost as much as people may think.
Again, this petition and campaign is not asking for the replacement of the new voices actors, only an added option with the original cast, who have ALL said they would return if asked.
If there is enough demand, as we believe there is (the petition as of June 2022 has over 6,600 signatures), we can make this happen. Please follow Operation Reunion across social media, we are a group of fans who are very passionate about the world of Final Fantasy 7 and about fair treatment of voice actors. We are currently running 2 campaigns:
and #CrisisCorePSPVoices which asks SE to add the original Crisis Core audio to Crisis Core: Reunion.
You can check out both these campaigns at our website here
Operation Reunion social media accounts to follow:
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
germansingergirl
izzy806
