This year’s Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the musical and military performance taking place in Scotland, featured Final Fantasy 7’s anti-military opening mission theme.
As reported by Eurogamer, the performance featured the ironic rendition of composer Nobuo Uematsu’s Opening – Bombing Mission, which is played in the original Final Fantasy 7 as the game’s protagonists arrive to blow up an energy reactor.
The song is obviously anti-military, given the game is about fighting against the evil megacorporation Shinra and its military group Soldier. The clip was shared on Reddit by Roshi20, and while many in the comments expressed their excitement at hearing the iconic tune, the irony wasn’t lost either.
“Military marching band playing a song called Bombing Run from a game where terrorists bomb a military installation. Ironic,” said one user. “Still, that’s cool.” Another added: “Thematically this makes no sense, and yet who cares. Epic.”
Final Fantasy 7’s protagonist Cloud actually takes part in a military parade later in the game, a section that should appear in the next part of the Remake trilogy.
Part two, officially called Rebirth, is due to release in early 2024 and fans are already noticing references to the original game in its marketing. A lengthy trailer from Summer Game Fest gave fans their first proper look at the game in a year and came at the end of a week’s worth of sometimes insightful but more often bizarre Q&A posts from Square Enix.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.