content from the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, as well as fresh content that befits the new timeline, such as Jessie's backstory about wanting to become an actress in FF7. The summon monsters were brought forward and made accessible in FF7 Remake a lot sooner than when the party had access to them in FF7, due to the developers seemingly not wanting to leave them out of the game. It turns out that one of the summons has a new piece of lore hiding in the loading screen tips, and players who missed out on the original PS4 version of FF7 Remake may have missed it.
The Final Fantasy series introduced summons in FF3, where they were powerful and flashy job abilities. There are some entries in the series that made the summons an important part of the story, such as the city flattening Eidolons in FF9, while others kept them as incredibly powerful spells. FF7 fell into the former category, as the summons weren't an important part of the story, and they mostly existed to look cool, deal a ton of damage, and have cinematic 3D cutscenes that were mind-blowing on the hardware of the day. The summons returned in FF7 Remake, though they now enter the battlefield as an AI-controlled fourth party member, though the player can spend ATB bars to make them use special attacks.
FF7 Remake included Ifrit, Shiva, Fat Chocobo, Leviathan, and Bahamut as summons, while Intergrade added Ramuh in the Yuffie DLC chapters. The player can unlock Shiva fairly early in the game, by defeating her in one of Chadley's VR simulators, and doing so will unlock a loading screen tip for her. This loading screen tip offers a piece of information about Shiva that wasn't present in FF7. In the original FF7, Shiva had no backstory, yet FF7 Remake has now tied her to the Cetra and Jenova.
Shiva Was Involved In The Battle With Jenova In FF7
Shiva's loading screen tip in FF7 Remake says "An ice-elemental entity and ruler over the world of ice. It is said that she once saved the planet from certain destruction by staunching a great wound with a glacier." The glacier is almost certainly a reference to the Great Glacier and the Northern Crater, both of which are found in the Northern Continent in FF7's world. The Northern Continent is where Jenova crash-landed thousands of years before the events of FF7, which is near the Forgotten City, the last known settlement of the Cetra. The lore of FF7 claims Jenova nearly wiped out the Cetra, but she was defeated in battle, and her body was kept within the Northern Crater. The Cetra eventually dwindled, with Aerith being the one Cetra hybrid who still manifests the abilities of the ancients, while Jenova's body was found by the Shinra Corporation, who believed her to be a Cetra, and started experimenting with her remains, leading to the creation of Sephiroth.
Almost nothing is known about the final confrontation between the Cetra and Jenova, as it happened centuries before the events of FF7. The fans are still unclear what Jenova actually looked like when she arrived on the planet, as only her broken and desiccated corpse remains in the modern era. The Shiva loading screen tip in FF7 Remake hints that she was involved with the battle against Jenova and was used to seal her away after the battle, by freezing part of the Northern Continent, in order to ensure that she could not contaminate, and keeping her in suspended animation.
FF7 Rebirth Could Reveal More About Jenova & The Summons
This raises the question of whether Shiva was a member of the Cetra and was transformed into a summon monster over time, or whether she was already a summon, and was called on to create the glacier? It's strange that this piece of knowledge would be added to FF7 Remake, especially as the loading screen tips for the other summon monsters are not as illuminating. It's possible that FF7 Rebirth will finally shed some light on the final climactic battle with Jenova, possibly showing her original appearance. This would also be the perfect time to finally confirm the theory about the FF7 Knights of the Round materia summon being the Cetra who defeated Jenova in the past. One of the creators of FF7 has debunked that theory, but only in regards to FF7, and not the FF7 Remake series.
It's possible that Aerith and her friends will learn more about the history of the Cetra in the FF7 Remake series. The most likely places she would learn more would be the Temple of the Ancients or the Forgotten City, as they have been untouched by humanity in the centuries since the decline of the Cetra. It's possible that there will be a flashback or vision showing the epic final confrontation between Jenova and the Cetra. This could explain the origins of the summon monsters, with of the Cetra resembling Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Titan, Odin, and the Knights of the Round fighting Jenova. FF7 never explained what the summon monsters were, outside of some cut dialogue by Sephiroth in the Temple of the Ancients that isn't considered canon, so FF7 Rebirth could finally confirm their true nature, which is something hinted at by the Shiva lore in the loading screen tip.
The Shiva Lore Is Easy To Miss on PC & PS5
FF7 Remake was originally released on the PS4 and it pushed the base version of the system to its limits, as it was one of the best-looking games of its generation. Square Enix has since released an updated version of the game, called FF7 Remake Intergrade, which is available on PS5 and PC. The Intergrade version of FF7 Remake drastically improves the load times, especially on PS5, resulting in loading screens only hanging around for a few seconds. This means that the lore regarding Shiva's past is now really easy to miss, as the loading screens aren't on the screen for long enough to fully read them. The people who played Final Fantasy VII Remake at launch had the time to see this information, but people who played Intergrade might not even be aware that it exists.
