We’ve finally arrived in a world in which the classic Final Fantasy 7 PlayStation 1 game features vocal acting! This is separate from Final Fantasy 7 Remake–which isn’t nearly as great. Thanks to the devoted effort of Tsunamods modding group, you can now not just view, but also hear the incredibly lengthy script with the Echo-S 7 mod.

A global team of volunteers from the Tsunamods community provided the voices for every major, minor, and NPC character in the game. For anyone who has not-so-good memories of community voice acting projects from the past, Tsunamods can guarantee that the main and minor characters are played by experienced actors with good technical and vocal quality.

The makers of the trailer say they unintentionally used too much language that some people may find offensive. They weren’t anticipating that their work would reach a wider audience and some of the sections they wanted to highlight were more full of profanity than others, so they might have made themselves appear worse than they actually are.

This mod does not employ FF7’s initial English script, being a new translation of the game’s Japanese language version that does away with some of the strange or downright poor translations of the first English release. However, the format of spoken dialogue has been edited to sound more natural, as text boxes do not always convey speech accurately.

I must say I’m impressed. I’m not able to evaluate the complete scope of the work, but the scenes in the trailer sound impressive for a collaborative effort. Additionally, since I remember playing Deus Ex’s Nameless Mod and most of the non-player characters were talking through a wall of tin foil, it’s fantastic that in this era, everyone appears to have a high-quality mic which allows for excellent voice acting.

You can get Echo-S 7 from the Tsundamods website (opens in another window).