Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis has given Elena a bit of a makeover, letting her beat the allegations of being a 'Tifa clone' in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Back in June 2023, a new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth trailer introduced Elena for the first time, rounding out the group of Turks. The trouble is, viewers were very quick to compare her to Tifa's character model, and ultimately judged that she might just be Tifa in a blonde wig. The similarities in the face are admittedly striking.
Now, Final Fantasy 7's Ever Crisis mobile game has introduced Elena, and she doesn't look anything like a Tifa clone, as the fan below attests to. Elena's character model for the mobile game looks a far cry from Rebirth, stylized in a far different manner that lets her stand far apart from her heroic counterpart.
At least she doesn't really look like Tifa here lol pic.twitter.com/6AFuC0muL6January 12, 2024
Another tweet attests to Elena's new design in Ever Crisis. The Turk soldier is the latest character to join Square Enix's mobile game after Yuffie recently arrived in the compilation game, bringing her own adventures to bear in several new story chapters.
Elena no longer looks like a tifa clone thank god 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/iqRXbkYTuEJanuary 12, 2024
Of course, all this isn't to say that Elena in Rebirth has suddenly had a redesign. As far as we're aware, the character will still look the same next month in February at launch as she did last year in June, so she might yet draw even more comparisons to Tifa when the two inevitably come face to face at some point in the new game.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches on February 29 as a PS5 exclusive. You can read our complete Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth preview for what we made of the new action-RPG when we played it for ourselves.
You can also check out our guide to all the upcoming PS5 games to see how the Sony exclusives are going to shake out over the coming year.
