Ever Crisis is finishing its Dirge of Cerberus storyline this week

Square Enix is wrapping up the Dirge of Cerberus storyline in Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis with a final chapter coming this Wednesday, May 27. The update, titled Chaos Collides, brings the conflict between Vincent Valentine and Weiss the Immaculate to its conclusion.

The finale centers on the clash between the two super-soldiers in their ultimate forms. Weiss has merged with the planetary weapon Omega. In the game's lore, Omega is a cosmic failsafe designed to absorb the Lifestream and abandon the planet if it faces total destruction. Vincent taps into his red-winged Chaos form to stop him. Chaos acts as the counterpart to Omega. It was created specifically to gather all life on the planet before Omega departs.

A shooter without the shooting

Dirge of Cerberus originally launched in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. It was a bizarre departure for the franchise. The developers attempted to turn the RPG series into a gritty third-person shooter. Square Enix wanted to expand the Final Fantasy VII universe through a multimedia project called the Compilation, and Vincent Valentine was chosen to headline his own game. The project introduced Deepground, a secret underground Shinra military facility filled with colorful villains known as the Tsviets.

Stripping out the clunky gunplay and just reading the story in a mobile game works, which is the nicest thing I can say about it. The Ever Crisis retelling breaks the original game into episodic chunks. It replaces the PS2 shooting mechanics with standard menu-based RPG combat. You no longer have to worry about aiming a sniper rifle with a DualShock 2 controller. Instead, you just watch the cutscenes and tap command buttons when the ATB gauge fills up.

This final update brings a massive, glowing green and blue energy manifestation of Omega rising from the depths.

Weiss appears shirtless and dual-wielding his signature gunblades.

This leads straight into a high-intensity clash with Vincent's Chaos form.

The mobile compilation

Ever Crisis launched in September 2023 for iOS and Android, followed by a Steam release in December. Co-developed by Square Enix and Applibot, the free-to-play gacha game is slowly rebuilding the entire Final Fantasy VII timeline. Players roll for weapons and outfits in a gacha system, then use those characters in battles based on the classic Active Time Battle system. Players can link their data between the mobile and PC versions to carry progress across platforms.

The game's current library covers the original 1997 game, the PSP prequel Crisis Core, and the defunct battle royale The First Soldier. The First Soldier actually received brand new story chapters detailing the origins of a young Sephiroth. This gave players a reason to check in beyond simple nostalgia, as it provided canon lore that was never playable before the battle royale servers shut down.

With the Dirge of Cerberus arc wrapping up, the development team has one less spin-off to adapt. They still have plenty of ground to cover in the main Final Fantasy VII storyline. They might even decide to adapt the Advent Children movie next, though they have not announced their exact plans for the next major story update.