The Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s Hairstyles Are Terrible

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake looks to be a gorgeous re-imagining of the 1997 original, with a beautiful, PS4-era upgrade – but that does nothing to fix the bad hair. It turns out translating chunky PlayStation polygons into actual, realistic hairstyles without looking silly is a big ask, and the Final Fantasy 7 Remake hairstyles only do so to varying degrees of success.

Granted, Square Enix’s modern Final Fantasy games have been full of bad hair. Putting anime hair on realistic characters worked back in the days of Final Fantasy 10, when console graphics were weak enough that even the realistic designs looked somewhat cartoonish. But each subsequent release has brought Final Fantasy characters’ hair into increasingly uncanny territory. Final Fantasy 15′s party members – especially Noctis and Prompto – were particularly bad, with odd, feathery ‘dos that seemed coiffed in an impossible number of directions. All things considered, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s hair is actually a step up from previous games. It’s got several years of technical advancement over Final Fantasy 15, after all, so the hair textures are less feathery and nearing a life-like appearance. But that’s exactly what makes the styles so off-putting.

Take Cloud, for example: The remake’s interpretation of the original Final Fantasy 7 Cloud’s hair is far tamer and less spiky, resembling his look in the Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children CGI movie. His new hair comes closer to fitting the remake’s more realistic visuals and, unlike in Advent Children, looks like it’s made of actual hair, but the shape is still so outlandish. With characters like Aerith having toned down their hairstyles to something more practical, Cloud would seem out-of-place, in-universe, unless he was preparing for some kind of cosplay convention as an earlier depiction of himself.

Reno’s hair is even worse. Tetsuya Nomura’s original art gave him a sort of “greasy business pervert” look, with messy hair flopping about over his forehead-goggles. Advent Children toned down the grease and made Reno cute, changing his hairstyle to a floofy, tousled, and boyish one. This wasn’t the best look, but it at least gave him a little more life. The remake took that idea and ran too far with it, giving Reno’s hair so much spiky liveliness it looks like a big, red sea urchin.

Not all of the characters’ re-imagined appearances are “worse for hair,” however: The Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s Tifa and Barret designs have perfectly normal hairstyles that suit them well, and Aerith’s braid and bangs look great – a smart subduing of the original model’s gigantic, McDonald’s-arch hairdo. In fact, not a single character looks worse, overall, than their original in-game depiction: Cloud and Reno themselves are downright hot now. But their outlandish hairstyles just look silly next to the game’s more grounded characters.

Still, Square Enix did the best it could with Cloud’s design. He’s one of the most iconic characters in video games, and he wouldn’t be Cloud without his blonde spikes. Reno, on the other hand, probably could have adopted a more “everyday” style like Aerith’s, retaining the bright red color to avoid losing his personality. The flamboyance of the Final Fantasy series’ beautiful anime boys continues to be a refreshing sight among most realistically styled games’ grizzled tough guys, but maybe it’s time for the Final Fantasy universe’s hairstylists to think a little less vertically. Perhaps Square Enix will elect to change things before the next Final Fantasy 7 Remake episode.

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake will release on April 10, 2020, for PS4.

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Camden Jones
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Camden Jones is one of Screen Rant’s gaming features editors. He loves video games, but he’s even more interested in the people who make and play them.

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