9 Questions I Have About That Weird Box Breaking Game In Final Fantasy 7 Remake

I recently finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake and yet something still lingers in my mind. It’s not the ending or the weird meta-references that went over my head. No, I’m still thinking about that weird mini-game where Cloud breaks a bunch of boxes set up by small children.

This doesn’t seem to be a thing people are talking about, but for whatever reason my brain couldn’t stop asking questions as I attacked large, multi-coloured boxes in a short amount of time trying to get the highest score possible. Here are some questions I have.

1) Where did the kids find all these boxes?

Each time Cloud starts this mini-game, a large area is filled with at least a hundred or more boxes of various colours and sizes. Where did these boxes come from? Did the kids make these boxes? How? Who in this world is selling boxes like this and for how much?

2) What are these boxes made out of?

Cloud can kill armoured enemies and robots in a few hits with any of his large swords. But these boxes can take many, many more hits to break. Bigger boxes take nearly a dozen or more strikes, depending on how you attack and what sword you are currently using. How is that possible? And wouldn’t these boxes be really heavy? Like, too heavy for kids to move easily.

3) How long does it take to set all this up?

Even if these boxes aren’t that heavy and all the kids work together, it must take hours and hours to set all these up. Some of these stacks are really big and elaborate. Is Cloud waiting for a whole day between tries?

4) Who else is playing this game?

It is implied the kids you encounter are playing this game, breaking boxes when you aren’t around, but I call bullshit on that. If a high-level, powerful Cloud can’t easily break these boxes, how the hell are random kids with wooden swords breaking them? Unless they all work together, but still it must take hours to break even half of the boxes.

5) Who is timing Cloud and keeping score?

There doesn’t seem to be an easy place to observe what is happening and yet the moment I hit a box that gives me more time, the timer is extended a few seconds. Are the boxes hooked up to some sort of electronic system that keeps track of all this? How does that work? Or does this whole thing work on the honour system?

6) Who came up with this?

I grant you that kids are creative and tend to have a lot of free time on their hands, but which of them decided one day to make this. Some kid looked at a large collection of boxes and thought “We should stack all of them up, break them and keep track of the score. And then keep doing that.”

7) Do any of the other adults know about this game?

I understand that Cloud and his group are some of the only adults allowed in that area of town. But like, they are just kids. Adults can and probably should be checking on them from time to time considering how many monsters are just hanging around this world. So do other adults know about this game? Are they ok with kids spending hours of the day setting these boxes up in an area that was once infested with monsters?

8) Why doesn’t anybody think this is odd?

Cloud and whoever you bring to the box breaking area won’t question what is happening. They should though. They really should.

9) Why is it so much damn fun?

While I have a lot of questions about this box game and how it works, I can’t deny how much fun it is to run around and just bash the shit out of hundreds of boxes. I ended up getting the high score reward for both difficulties. I can’t explain it, but watching boxes pop and break is very satisfying in FF7R.

I fully admit that I’m overthinking this, you don’t need to tell me that. I’m not here to say FF7R is bad or anything because it has a weird box breaking mini-game. I just wanted to share my questions with the world. Maybe the world has some answers? Or at least some funny comments. I’d take either.