Vincent Valentine has become one of the most popular characters in Final Fantasy 7, despite the fact he was an optional character in the original game. It's entirely possible that fans who played the first game before Final Fantasy 7 Remake had never seen Vincent. He later became prominent in extended FF7 media like his spinoff game Dirge of Cerberus, and then appeared in the Advent Children movie. With Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 in development, it's a safe assumption that Vincent won't be a character who can be missed anymore, and that players will meet him in the next chapter.
FF7 Remake Part 2 will likely bring together the rest of the party from the original game. Vincent and Yuffie were both the optional characters that players could go through the entire game without recruiting. Yuffie has since been featured heavily by way of her DLC chapter in FF7 Remake Intergrade. Following that same point, it's likely Vincent will take a more prominent role in the next chapters of the remake project. With that, many players are likely curious about how his backstory could impact the overall narrative.
Vincent Valentine and His Ties to Final Fantasy 7's History
Vincent is an interesting member of the party in FF7. For one, he has ties to the backstory of the game's events overall. Few characters are tied to the major conflict between Shinra, its creations, and the world at large. Prequel content for FF7 has brought characters like Zack Fair into the spotlight, but few members of the core party were present for the creation of Sephiroth or so directly impacted by Shinra and its experiments.
Vincent was originally a member of the Turks, a Shinra-controlled group responsible for a lot of the dirty work that Shinra doesn't want done out in the light. As a member of the Turks, Vincent was trained into the competent gunfighter that's present later on. There's a lot about Vincent that still isn't directly stated in FF7, but he is tied to many events in the original game. Vincent had fallen in love with a scientist name Lucretia while he was a designated guard for her and Professor Gast, the man ultimately responsible for the creation of Sephiroth and the SOLDIER program. Lucretia discovered a connection to her past with Vincent, and ended up shunning him for Hojo.
Professor Hojo, the evil scientist of FF7, ended up impregnating Lucretia and used the unborn child for the Jenova Project. This child would eventually be Sephiroth, tying Vincent directly to the game's ultimate antagonist. Vincent confronted Hojo before the experiments, saying they were amoral. Hojo ends up shooting Vincent, and the scientist decided to use Vincent's near-dead corpse as another test subject. These experiments were explained in the original game as the reason Vincent became a vampire-like shapeshifter, but Intergrade has introduced other content that could have a big impact on Vincent's introduction later.
Now that FF7 Remake has introduced Deepground into the main narrative, the doors are open for Vincent's backstory revealed during Dirge of Cerberus. It was only revealed later that Vincent was saved by Lucretia when she planted the "Protomateria" into his body after imbuing him with the spirit of one of the Weapons created by the Planet: Chaos. This is what gives Vincent his superhuman abilities of speed and strength, and explains the Chaos limit form that Vincent takes. His final limit break is explained as a fraction of the possible power that Vincent could harness.
Now that FF7 Remake has changed so much of the main narrative, it will be interesting to see if these elements are brought in sooner rather than later. Regardless, Vincent likely has a much larger role to play in the future.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 is currently in development.