The Final Fantasy 7 remake is coming to PS4. Everybody in the world knows this already, and almost everyone—except for one of our editors—is insanely excited. How could you not be? It’s Final Fantasy 7, the most iconic RPG ever made (NOTE: I didn’t say the best!). Time for the million-dollar question: Will the Final Fantasy 7 remake allow you to bring Aeris back?

Aeris And The Final Fantasy 7 Remake

We don’t know much about the Final Fantasy 7 remake yet, besides that it will initially launch on PS4 and hit Xbox One and PC later on, but I can tell you three things:

1. Everyone’s going to be talking about Aeris and whether you’ll be able to bring her back this time.
2. Square Enix won’t say a damn thing about whether you can revive Aeris.
3. In the end, there’s no way in hell you’ll be able to revive her.

Trust me, everyone will ask. It has barely started, but it will come. Aeris’s death is one of the most iconic scenes in gaming—maybe the most, maybe a step behind “Princess is in another castle.” And it came at a critical time—when the first generation of gamers who actually grew up playing video games at home was in their adolescence—early adolescence, for most. Final Fantasy VII is my generation’s Star Wars. No, it’s not the best game ever; it’s not even the best Final Fantasy. But it was a tremendous hit, with more than ten million copies sold. It’s an iconic game, and Aeris’s death is its touchstone scene.

Remember all the rumors that flew for years that you could reverse Aeris’s death, find a way to bring her back? In those days, the GameFAQs era, when the Internet was young, such rumors could fly ungrounded for ages. And people clung to the rumors. At the time, the death of a character like that, in such a dramatic way, was practically unprecedented in mainstream games. Young adolescents playing the game were shocked, and thought there must be another way. Alas, there wasn’t.

Square Enix won’t include a way to revive Aeris, for the same reason they didn’t do so last time. Her death is integral to the story. It’s the turning point in the game. The whole narrative rests on her murder, and what comes after. Including a side quest to bring her back to throw off a few level four limit breaks totally undermines that. And the game is being helmed by Tetsuya Nomura, who designed the characters in Final Fantasy 7, as well as much of the plot. He isn’t going to walk back from that with a cheap way to bring her back.

Did George Lucas spare Obi-Wan Kenobi in the re-release of Star Wars? Did Ned Stark escape the Lannisters in Game of Thrones? Did Dumbledore retire in peace in the Harry Potter movies? Of course not. And Aeris won’t come back in the Final Fantasy 7 remake.