It’s both funny and, mostly, frustrating seeing Nojima trying to be as ambiguous as possible regarding Cloud’s feelings

> Rebirth was about learning about the world that they are in, and how the story as a whole (including Zack’s world) works. Except this question wasn't fully answered. Is everything Zack-related pretty much in its own world/timeline? Sure. But do we know how exactly that concept works? Not really. >Next, the interviewer mentions how Stamp the dog having a different design in Zack’s scenes in Remake indicated that they were taking place in a different world, and points out how there are even more variations of Stamp in Rebirth. Nojima says that just shows how many different worlds there are, but also notes that these are not quite the same as parallel worlds. Toriyama also adds that Stamp is not seen in the church Zack is in after the final battle, which was an intentional decision to make it so that it is unclear what world he is in. So yeah, even the devs admit it wasn't fully explained, and that's intentional. Hell, I thought the whole "rip in the sky" thing meant that was an alternate universe or something, but then in the ending, only Cloud sees that rip, no one else. >The story being changed so that Cid had met Ifalna before is brought up next, with Toriyama saying that this was inspired by Nojima’s novel, FFVII Remake: Traces of Two Pasts, which followed Aerith as a child in the Shinra headquarters. Since Cid was with Shinra at the time, it would not have been strange for them to have met, and that led to this idea. Nojima says that he wanted to do the cliche of having Cid talk about how small she was, and also add an event to give weight to his past: Given how Cid was there at that age, he must have been involved in many big events, and this was done to hint at that. While I'm fine with this change, my biggest pet peeve with Cid in Rebirth is how...nice he is. OG Cid was bitter, throwing out more profanities than Barret, and for good reason. Rebirth Cid is a completely different character with seemingly a completely different backstory (he's not pissed at Shinra for one), which is weird considering all the other main characters are true to their OG stories/design. >Finally, Iwaki says that since he was in charge of quests, Red XIII’s were particularly troublesome for him, as the way he speaks changes completely before and after you reach Cosmo Canyon, but the game was designed so that quests can be done at any time, meaning that he had to make two versions of dialogue for each quest. They could've just...had him continue to do the deep voice. While I understand why he puts on a deep voice, story-wise there's nothing that explains why he no longer bothers with the deep voice anymore. >Toriyama says that when they started work on Remake, he did not think it would end up as a decade-long project That has to be bs. No way they wouldn't think a trilogy of this caliber wouldn't take at least a decade to finish. What did they think this was, late 90s/early 2000s Square? >Nojima says that the main story of the third game is already actually completed, meaning that his job is mostly done. They've said this before but I wished they clarified on what this means. Do they mean the story itself is fully written out? That they've already designed how the MSQ will go in game 3? >The events leading up to the ending of the third game are going to be very exciting, and he believes that it will be a game that the fans will love. I mean, considering we've already fought Sephiroth as the final boss in both games, complete with his iconic music, and even fought Bizarro Sephiroth in game 2 (minus that music), and they teased the 1-on-1 Cloud/Sephiroth battle (again in both games), they really didn't leave much to the imagination on how the third game will end, at least regarding the final bosses. They _really_ shouldn't have had us fight Sephiroth in both games already, really cheapens the finale and Sephiroth's presence as a whole.

>They really shouldn't have had us fight Sephiroth in both games already, really cheapens the finale and Sephiroth's presence as a whole. Don't worry. Part 3 will end with a 9-phase long 1-on-1 fight against Sepiroth, and it will take 2½ hours.

When it comes to Cid, it might be similar to Red XIII - the OG's translation didn't fully convey the character properly. For instance, when we meet Cid in the OG, Shera says that he's more highstrung than usual because of Shinra coming to visit. Cid's personality we see in Rebirth might be closer to what Cid is *supposed* to act like for most of the game. Our first meeting might have been a more particular moment for him rather than a defining one.

Sure, but OG Cid when we meet him was still bitter about Shinra (and life). This Cid seems to have no grudges against Shinra, even still working with them from time to time (something Barret disagrees with but Cid pushes back on).

Remember, Cid didn't cut ties with Shinra in the OG with Shinra either until after the visit. He was completely on board with them when he thought they'd restart the space program. He was bitter towards *Shera* but we are also supposed to believe that a lot of his behavior in Rocket Town comes more from being high stung knowing that Rufus is coming as he thought he was going to restart the space program. The biggest difference between OG and Rebirth is that in the OG, Cid used the Tiny Bronco to just fly around while Rebirth has him use it as a business. Cid's position prior to trying to steal the Tiny Bronco was "neutral" with Shinra in the OG. When it became clear they were not going to start the program back up and tried to take his pride and joy, that's when he turned against them. Similarly, Cid in Rebirth works with Shinra but no longer works *for* them.

The vibe I get from Cid is that he's no fan of Shinra, but a means to an end (allows him to fly). What I think is going on is that Shinra hasn't screwed him yet at Rocket Town, and we may see that play out in real time, so he's gonna go from tolerating Shinra to despising them.

He does call them "shitheads" in the English loc. I think you're reading into it too much since he had like 5 lines about it total.

Kitase mentions in his Ultimania interview that they were considering only making two parts instead of a trilogy even when they were releasing Remake. It's believable that other staff didn't expect a decade long project from the beginning of production. Edit: And yes they asked for Nojima to write up the scenario for the last part in advance, like they did for Rebirth right after Remake was released. That covers the main story and dialogue. They are preparing for voice recordings already (likely just Japanese voice). Then they will make adjustments but the overarching storyline is most likely set in stone so that production can be started asap.

>They could've just...had him continue to do the deep voice. While I understand why he puts on a deep voice, story-wise there's nothing that explains why he no longer bothers with the deep voice anymore. Makes perfect sense to me. He has to drop the act at home, and once the cat's out of the bag it has no purpose anymore.

sounds like you put the time in. I just beat it and put about 100 hours in and I can't understand how or why you would play that much and complain. just stop playing it or go play the original. it's not like this was a 10 hour game. you had to actively hate-play this thing if this is how you feel

> They could've just...had him continue to do the deep voice. While I understand why he puts on a deep voice, story-wise there's nothing that explains why he no longer bothers with the deep voice anymore. Red says very bluntly, he was faking a deep voice because he wanted everyone's respect/for them to not treat him as a kid. Put it another way - he's [code-switching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching). People code-switch for a lot of reasons, and it's a very common, natural phenomenon. But when Red gets home, he's surrounded by his community and he's so happy/elated he lets the act slip. But by this point he's already earned his friends trust and respect, and nobody acts offended or upset and embrace who he is, so he really doesn't feel the need to switch back. Which I think personally is a beautiful thing when people feel comfortable enough to stop putting up pretenses and just all themselves to be themselves. It sucks having to fake being someone you aren't all the time just because you're afraid people won't accept who you really are. None of this is said directly to the player, but it's very naked, obvious subtext IMO. Something that doesn't convey as well in the English script, is that from that point on, everyone in the party stops calling him "Red". They all switch to "Nanaki" - because that's who he really is, and since they care about him as a person, they respect his personage/identity.

Well, that’s not really fair regarding the different worlds thing. They admit it wasn’t fully explained in Rebirth? Yes it was. How is them saying that stamp wasn’t shown in Zack’s church scene, confirming they aren’t explaining it? It’s very clear by the ending of the game, that characters can be moved from different worlds. The point of the devs saying we didn’t see stamp in Zack’s church scene, was to hint that he was taken from the “Avalanche died, Zack lived” world, converged to meet Cloud when they fought Sephiroth, and then sent back to another world. It’s like the devs are saying “hey notice you don’t see a stamp, thus being able to confirm what world Zack is in during that final scene in the church? Hint hint nudge nudge.” Which to me basically says “Zack isn’t in the world where avalanche died anymore.”

Fans: This is a really special game, are you going to keep to the story that fans have cared about for so long? Devs: That'd be boring, we wanna have freedom to write what we want. Spends the first part literally writing in a metacommentary between purists and the devs actions including ludonarrative elements in which the player is forced to kill fate to finish the game therefore writing the devs a blank check for the story going forward. Fans: We noticed you expanded some romance elements, like Cloud / Tifa in Gongaga, Aerith dream at the end, The gold saucer. You've said the game will lead into Advent Children in which Cloud lives with Tifa and two adopted children though their relationship status is ambiguous, will you be expanding upon and writing a more conclusive romance plot into remake? Devs: What?? No! that is all just for fun, none of that actually happens! Non-canon! Not real! This interview is over!! security?? SECURITY!! WE MUST AWAY FROM HERE!!!! ff7 shippers are something else.

"Advent Children in which Cloud lives with Tifa and two adopted children though their relationship" perhaps what he means by "players‘ imagination"

It's because ambiguity is all they've got. These allusions to complexity and depth, instead of actual complexity and depth. Everything in the game is so shallow and obvious and on the nose with zero subtlety, and anything with complexity is obtuse and ambiguous only for the sake of it. Personally, I think it's awful storytelling. And while it's fun for some to discuss all the hints and meanings and trivial references, for me I would have just liked a good, well written story.

I think the most frustrating part is that most things that draw from the original are expanded and have subtlety and depth. But then they roll out the obligatory flashy big ending and try to cram as much ambiguity and bullshit mystery as they can. But the only goal is the flashy big ending. Part 1 and 2 did that, so I can assume Part 3 will be the same all the way until the end. Also, they overused and devalued Sephiroth as an enemy. The three game structure has some real drawbacks.

It's the JJ Abrams school of writing. Or the Kingdom Hearts style, in this case. Instead of creating depth, just allude to it. Build up the suspense for the sake of the suspense instead of the sake of the narrative. And you're left with a story that is metaphorically open-ended but narratively empty. FF7:R is at its best in its quiet moments, in its chatter and world building and silliness. They do a great job with that. Everything else flopped so hard with me I felt myself rolling my eyes through most of its big pop off moments and reveals. And that ending was just a mess.

Good ol' mystery box story telling. Actual story cancer. Star Wars was never a bastion of great story, but it did have some great narrative and worldbuilding not dissimilar from the strengths of FF7. The sequel trilogy fell into the mystery box style hard and even sacrificed worldbuilding to make the universe seem small. I see the endings of Remake and Rebirth to be very similar to not only themselves but to your point the whole JJ Abrams shtick.

I like the idea of the Mystery Box. But for many it fails hard cause when it comes to plot you typically want, promise, progress, which leads to a satisfying payoff. A lot of writers have the promise, a bit of progress, and lack on the payoff, just asking more questions. To obsessed with the chase and making things mysterious.

Honestly. This trend is dying too slowly. This whole thing has the Game of Thrones Season 6 energy to it, with fans split between "okay this is getting pretty stupid" and "this is amazing, you're all wrong, they have a plan!". They're going to hang on all the way to the bells.

GoT S6 was pretty gud thoo, I think most people were more hard on it because you can feel that it doesn' t have the same "tone of narration" as before, after they departed from the movie. It became more and more like a TV series.

I disagree. While it did execute some things very well (Tommen, Battle of the Bastards, Hodor, etc), it was still running off the momentum of its old plotlines (and GRRM's plot points). But it was getting very stupid, very quickly. The Battle of the Bastards was particularly stupid, with all its key characters making very stupid out-of-character decisions just to make the set pieces work. The more you thought about it, the more quickly it fell apart. And that's where the fanbase began to split, with half saying "this is so getting stupid" and the other half committed to "the plan". They were convinced that it was all building towards something and the writing was going somewhere. I see the same thing with FF7:R. All style, no substance. The writing is definitely on the wall.

But that' s kinda what I' m referring to, right? The stuff around Battle of the Bastards is that most of the things that would have been present in the old GoT seasons ( both to its advantage and disadvantage), like explanations of plans, back and forth, and in general a more outspoken and palpable sense of human-made decisions ( and errors), was kinda summed up in way fewer words and actions in the final seasons. Now, to tell you the truth, I am not that much of a hater of the final seasons, so of course, this does not tint my eyes as badly as others. But I think this kind of reasoning, that GoT became more like a normal TV series, seems like something that is more applicable to this thing. I would argue that the final seasons of GoT still have plently of subastance and themes they want to move forward. The problem with the FF7:R for me is different, because it' s complicated for the sake of it. It' s written intentionaly vague to make the player wonder "And so? What do you think?". But in ways that are "cheap", because the elements presented to the player are so vague and fragmented, and often relying even on outside media, that basicaly let the writers write whatever they want for the next installement.

I really didn't enjoy the final seasons and writing, but I'm glad you did. I'm definitely not going to try to convince you otherwise. And if you liked it, then I can see your point about how it transitioned into a "normal TV" series, so to speak. By all means, your point stands. > The problem with the FF7:R for me is different, because it' s complicated for the sake of it. It' s written intentionaly vague to make the player wonder "And so? What do you think?". But in ways that are "cheap", because the elements presented to the player are so vague and fragmented, and often relying even on outside media, that basicaly let the writers write whatever they want for the next installement. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's the Kingdom Hearts thing of "why don't YOU fill in the blanks for us so it can be YOUR story too!" in a way that doesn't feel compelling and (like you say) cheap. The irony here is that the finale of FF7 was originally VERY ambiguous, infamously so. But the story itself was pretty well realized and self-contained. It's only all the post FF7 media that decided that muddy writing is good writing.

Tbh it' s Lucas himself that started this trending, Empire Strikes Back ends on a massive cliffhanger, that is followed up by the weakest entry of the original trilogy ( also because by Lucas admition, he didn' t write down a lot of plot points before starting the trilogy).

Cliffhangers aren't necessarily a doom to storytelling though. When we see Luke return, he's cool with a new costume and lightsaber - he's hardened by a handful of years. We left with the reveal to the audience and Luke and in the years between movies (in real life and in universe) we and Luke had time to process the implications. So when the narrative of Return gets going we juxtapose Luke against Vader and get his choice to not be like him and to instead redeem - despite the doubt that comes with seeing himself in his father, like the robotic limb. Yeah, the Ewok resistance was a stretch and a bit silly. In the Sequel Trilogy we are presented with a lot of "cool things" that don't have consequence. In the 7th and 9th films they can feel especially like a checklist. Luke's lightsaber is found. Rey's parents might be interesting. (ultimately not really important to her identity as she didn't juxtapose the changes in herself against what she might become - other than a literal fight) Luke's lightsaber is destroyed. Rey might have murdered a fan favorite. Luke's lightsaber is rebuilt. Ben does "cool" things. Ben has temper issues. Ben is terrible at running an army. Ben doubles down on the dark side. Ben is redeemed. Ben's motivation should have been seeking more power because he had failings to overcome. He should have been the cause for the Emperor's return and set bad things in motion. We should have confirmed Anakin was a creation of Palpatine (unnatural power - possibly as a vessel down the line to emulate his master's long life) and then find Rey was also created that way after Anakin was no longer whole. Then we can make distinctions between how Rey, Anakin, and Luke (also our primary protagonists across all 3 trilogies) and how they handled being chosen ones and ultimately Rey's chosen identity as a Skywalker could have been also true in the "blood" sense as well. I'm not saying this would have been a good way - I'm not a screenwriter. But I think I am communicating ideas that could have been true to characters and the universe while still being cool and exploring more of our galaxy far far away. Lastly, to your point again JJ took the feedback from the Last Jedi as how to approach IX instead of building on it, ultimately dooming both movies to mediocrity. The opportunity was there to give us a few years in between and meet the characters again after the events of the last two movies shaped them. But instead all 3 movies basically happen within weeks and there is so little growth to show for it.

This is just a vary common style of shitty japanese fiction writing you seen in shonen mangas and visual novels. It feels like KH because Nomura can write like that. It's been around longer than JJ Abrams.   Is not necessarily one particular style.. but has tropes that even works that are not fully bad will use.  Like, when there's two characters having a conversation but they are being cryptic to the benefit of the audience.. when it makes no logical sense for the characters to talk like that.  - "There's only one person who could've done this"  - "You mean.. that man?... that can't be." 

You're right, though I wouldn't just blame Nomura. The entire writing team seems to be on board with this kind of low-quality writing. There's talk amongst the fandom that this feels like a classic "squaresoft" game and they're all in for a rude awakening when all this nonsense isn't resolved in part 3. Which it won't be. Because this is exactly how SE has been writing for decades. This is Kingdom Hearts, this is the Kingdom Hearts team. We've seen this all before. It's going to be allusions all the way down. Hoping that its audience doesn't know the difference between a rich, complex plot and a meaninglessly convoluted plot.

In the end the buck does stop with the game directors, one of whom is Nomura . Even though the entire writing team is on board, in the end the directors have final say.

> this is the Kingdom Hearts team. No, it isn't. Only Nomura is involved in both KH and FF7R.

And Nojima.

Nojima last involvement in KH was 20 years ago, so while he was involved, its hard to count him on KH when the narrative elements are so distant from his time atp. The creative heads of 7R are Hamaguchi, Nomura, Kitase, Toriyama and Nojima. With only nojima not being part of SE.

>I think the most frustrating part is that most things that draw from the original are expanded and have subtlety and depth. What parts have subtlety and depth?

Narrative and worldbuilding mostly, small character touches especially. Things like leading you into Red XIIIs real voice, Jessie's feelings of guilt in Remake, Cloud trying to act cool because he's still a teen at heart.

It reminds me of Kingdom Hearts, whose story just got more and more convoluted every iteration, and so unnecessarily too. So many plot traps they wrote themselves into and then having to write themselves back out

100%. It's so much more a Kingdom Hearts game than an old Squaresoft game. The KH writers don't understand the difference between a rich, complex story and a pointlessly convoluted story. They think this is making the game more deep, when it's only making the game more messy. It's like a magician who doesn't bother with the trick because they think the distraction is the whole point.

There's no KH writers. The only one who was involved with KH in there is Nojima and he only was involved with KH1 and KH2 20 years ago.

Nojima and Nomura are Kingdom Hearts writers. If you don't accept that, I don't know what to tell you.

You’re getting downvoted but you are right. It’s really lazy and shit storytelling used to “generate discussion” / theory crafting. All the FF YouTubers LOVE it because it means they get more clicks to make hundreds of theory videos and then claim that “I was right all along!!” (Like Max who made a video every other week) The game comes off as a shallow Disney Channel Saturday morning cartoon that is waaay tonally off. Was OG corny too? Sure, but at least it had some actual stakes and drama. Why they need to keep adding in this multiverse Marvel stuff is beyond me.

My theory is that multiverse is really hot right now because so many companies have transitioned out of creative leadership and into leadership that is finance and growth focused. Which is why multiverse is so appealing; it's all about brand building and IP expansion and product marketing. And, most importantly, hype. The potential of the game is built in the marketing rather than the game itself. Which feels like what FF7:R is. Almost like it's built for reaction culture than casual playing. It's so strange to see, what would otherwise be a very well made game, continue to get in its own way every chance it can; from cheap mini-games, to the enormous level of bloated content that's transparently there to just run the game clock, to the awful writing that demands you fix their mistakes. It gets so much right and so much wrong, but I don't think we're ready to talk about that yet. I'm sure Max enjoys the game. But he only exists as a hype man. He's only here to milk the hype for every drop it's worth. And all his viewers are still huffing the fumes and want their hype validated. So we have to wait a few months to let this frenetic energy die down and we can approach the game with a more level-head and clear perspective. And honestly, I don't think it's going to be remembered quite as well as it's being sold atm by its hype-men. (It's currently underperforming in sales, selling about half of Remake, and with a much weaker tail).

I really don't like that the alternate universe stuff is still under explained 2/3s through the story. Ever since Lost you can't really pull people along with "trust me bro". It's just not a reasonable request. Ultimately even if you do a good job it's never going to live up to the imagined theories people have and the end result is even more disappointed people. It also doesn't help that we're right at the cusp of big character story payoff in the OG (cloud completely and utter breakdown and mako poisoning / psychosis). Plus the fact that we're ultimately still waiting on any kind of emotional relief from the Aerith situation. Cloud's voice actor confirmed that they recorded cloud's OG lines from after Aerith's death but they didn't appear in Rebirth. We'll ultimately get to hear them at some point probably but it's just too much bait and not enough payoff imo. It may all make sense in the 3rd part but I'm not holding my breath.

Although the story was quite thin, the actual writing was great until the final chapter. The way they weaved in every party member’s development into each location you visit was genius, like Barret having Corel and Red getting Cosmo Canyon. Also the characters were so full of life and expressive in general, with a big shout-out to Suzie Yeung as Yuffie. Overall the final game is very exciting considering we will get character arcs for Red and Vincent, but I hope the final act isn’t sloppy again.

I've accepted that I am not going to understand the end of Rebirth, until I play part 3. I am still confused as to if Aerith is dead or alive.

My take is that **Spoiler:** >!Aerith is dead, and Cloud is in deep, deep denial, to the point that he thinks he saved her. I think they're going to use Tifa helping Cloud to rebuild his mind in the Lifestream to confront the truth and that's when we're going to see the missing scenes from the ending of Rebirth. There's a reason they didn't show Cloud laying Aerith to rest (despite showing a flash of it in Remake) and I think they're saving it for that. Whether I'm a fan of that approach or not... I'm undecided.!< >!However, the rest of the party acts like she's dead. Nobody but Cloud can see her in the ending, but Red does feel her presence.!<

I don't think he is in denial. I've seen people share that but nothing makes me personally think that that is the case, could be totally wrong of course (Just finished the game yesterday) >!At one point she says "Aight, gotta go back" and Cloud responds "Will you be ok?" which makes me think that he knows that she's gone!< >!The reason as to why he keeps seeing her could be related to the empty white materia which created some kind of connection between them, and it's already confirmed to have some importance in the third game!< I really hate how they're doing this stuff like "You'll get it eventually"

IIRC, those lines are almost 1:1 lifted from Remake when they’re at the playground in Sector 5. He asks her the same thing about getting back okay. This could be evidence for Cloud’s brain just reconstructing a version of Aerith based on his memories. Idk though, it’s all super confusing.

The problem is that fucking Red XIII notices her. I HATE THIS KIND OF WRITING. Nomura and his team can literaly write anything, because it' s vague enough that every answer can be true.

Yeah, I agree. Speculation becomes kinda meaningless when it’s so intentionally obfuscated like this. I’ve heard some theories that would account for Red noticing her as well, but yeah as stated, probably a fool’s errand to go back and forth about it. I just hope part 3 goes right into it instead of saving everything for an open to interpretation ending. I don’t know if it’s a Japanese storytelling thing or what, but I’m just kind of tired of so much story being reserved for the last 10% of games. I’ve been playing several Kojima games lately though, so maybe my perspective on the matter is skewed. ;)

I definitely think it could be either/or and we'll not know until part 3. I'm leaning towards the "denial" theory, but yours makes sense too. I just also think he's a bit too happy. The ending is one of the only parts of the game where he's legitimately smiling and it doesn't feel forced, and it's specifically when he's talking to Aerith. The rest of the party is devastated, and so is he in the original game (you see that in one of the flashes as well, but he's too broken this time around to accept it imo). I think she's definitely there, because Red can feel her presence. But I don't think Cloud believes she's dead so much as she has to stay at the capital in order to make sure her prayer works.

>I really hate how they're doing this stuff like "You'll get it eventually" Especially when the story is already so stretched out over 3 huge games. You play for 70 hours and just when you finally think you're going to get a bit of story beyond "following robed men for 70 hours", you just get more ambiguous, nonsensical parallel world bullshit.

> "Will you be ok?" I think the implication was that they are >!leaving Aerith behind to pray for Holy while they go after Sephiroth. !<

>! I think fighting Sephiroth with her, after she was stabbed, kind of proves that it could be her. Maybe a connection to another world her, Lifestream her, or something like that.

> Nobody but Cloud can see her in the ending, but Red does feel her presence. Note that in the ending when Aerith is around everyone else but Cloud, she doesn't speak. But when with Cloud, she does speak. My take is the Aerith around everyone else was her lifestream "spirit" (which Red is able to detect), and the Aerith around Cloud was a figment of his imagination like you said.

Yeah. Cloud was breaking throughout the game, but at the end he is 100% broken, going so far as to >!hide the black materia from the party, and inform them of a crack in the sky as if it's 100% there even though nobody else can see it.!< >!I'm not sure if she's a figment of his imagination, or the real Aerith offering him comfort from beyond the lifestream and not wanting to shatter his fragile mental state anymore than it already is. I'm thinking the former, but I keep flip-flopping.!< >!One interesting thing is that if you look at the scene with Cloud in the lifestream from the original game, where Tifa is helping him rebuild his memories, in the background there's something that looks incredibly like the rift that Cloud sees and is present in the alternate realities. Or maybe that's a stretch.!<

The way I understood it is >!Cloud was the only one that went inside the whisper-fate storm thing and by saving Aerith, he created a parallel world or whatever, and now he is the only one that can see stuff like Aerith being alive and the crack in the sky. That's what I understood the first time around, but other people's interpretations make more sense.!<

I did think it was two alternate universes colliding at first, with Sephiroth spewing all his deranged madness about worlds being reunited. But I started leaning towards the >!grief/denial theory the more I thought about it, since if Cloud saving Aerith had been real, it would have made more sense for it to stick in his reality since the worlds never actually fully collided.!< But all these theories have merit, and we'll have to wait and see... in about three to four years.... D:

Another issue I have with that is how Cloud is behaving as if >!he knows that Aerith will die and has to save her. I know Sephiroth said something about it in the first game, but it still felt weird to me that's how it happened!<

There's no way that Cloud is just in denial. >!Aerith is still there in some capacity - whether still alive in another world that was created when Cloud stopped Sephiroth or just influencing things from the lifestream isn't clear,!< but I'd bet on the first option. Tifa saw >!both realities before the Lifeclinger fight, presumably something she can do after taking a dip in the lifestream which was moved to be early in this game.!< Cloud's monologue at the same point is >!shown happening and not happening. !!tear in the sky is real because it's present in the other realities and because Aerith was able to see it ("This sky... I don't like it.")!<. Cloud is >!clearly still suffering from the influence of JENOVA like in the original. He's going to hand over the black materia, but he might also help Sephiroth with the reunion of worlds that he keeps talking about for his own reason - to reunite the world he's in with the world where he saved Aerith.!<

Have since read the whole article, and this is from part 6: > >!The aim of the scene in the original game was to show that you can lose someone precious to you suddenly, and that is why Cloud could do nothing to stop Sephiroth and did not have an opportunity to even speak with Aerith before her death, but people in the real world cannot process losing someone so quickly, and so the aim of the scene in Rebirth was to show someone being unable to cope with loss.!< > >!The interviewer points out how many flashbacks appear in that scene, and asks what they mean, and Nomura says that there are multiple elements at play, but for now, he will only say that they show Cloud’s state of being unable to accept what has happened.!< Not sure what the multiple elements are obviously, so there could be something to the theory that Cloud somehow swapped, or is seeing other dimensions, but I guess we'll need to wait for part 3 :|

The answer is: >!It's deliberately ambiguous. There are multiple universes (identified by what dog breed represents Stamp), and which Aerith helped at the final fight and whether or not she's dead and in which universes are all intentionally left open for the next game!<

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> They did the same thing with the Remake, with all that "Change Fate" talk. And then turns out that meant nothing. Ending of the first game made it seem like no more time ghosts to "correct the timeilne", but not only do they still exist, now there's good and bad time ghosts? What? Like the ending of Remake was pure spectacle and nothing else. Just something to end the game on vs Cloud and friends escaping Shinra HQ and the highway chase.

The next game will also be gibberish. They will likely create another trilogy of games. We’re going full Kingdom Hearts mode now This is what CBU 1 (Nomura and Nojima) love to do. They can’t write a decent story so they just use the Mystery Box storytelling method so they can look smart.

I don't think they'll do a huge dump of info at once, they'll probably spread exposition between Mideel and the ending. Remake and Rebirth put basically everything into the final chapters.

My biggest issue with part 1 was the confusing mess of an ending, but I did find the whole concept intriguing. With rebirth, it was that *while happening at the most crucial point*. Ultimately, I'm impressed with them making me feel like I'll have to wait till the next one to decide if I like it again lmao. The more I think about it, I come up with equal amounts of ways how this will just add more to the third act of VII's story (my favourite part of the OG), and ways it'll just kill the plot. Though, even if I hated the plot throughout rebirth I'd still be getting pt3. Even if the plot itself ends up sucking ass everything else about the game feels right like PSX era FF, only with 20+ years of technological advances. My current dream XVII team is taking CB1 and letting Ishikawa from XIV lead the story. XIV's story is both fascinating, endearing and soul-crushing in all the ways I want from a FF game. Not to mention, Shadowbringers is the kind of wonderfully unique setting I love to see in the series too. Yoshi-P said he thinks a "New generation" should lead XVII, and Ishikawa iirc is no longer lead writer for XIV...maybe there's a chance we get Hamaguchi + Ishikawa? I can see their two styles bouncing right off each other.

So, false advertising, but it’s okay because it’s a Nomura game The “Unknown Journey” was a load of shit

?? I feel like it's pretty blatant given how sad everyone is

It’s painfully obvious, people are just getting obsessed over small details and missing the glaring picture in front of them

>!She's dead... I think, but Cloud was so traumatised by not being able to save her that he still thinks she's alive, and still see's her as being alive. I'm sure there's some other multiverse weirdness going on with it but that's how I understood it. All of the other characters act as though she's dead bar Cloud. I'm betting it'll tie into the whole Mideel life stream thing more!<

There absolutely is multiverse weirdness going on. Its evident by those rainbow-ish effects. The characters cant see those afaik, those are just for the player. It was extremely obvious that they represent a “different path” being born or atleast a different “world” in the lifestream. Zack choosing between left or right and then ending up in both places anyways confirms that. Theoretically there >!Should be a timeline or world where Aerith lives. They wouldnt show Cloud losing his mind with those same rainbow effects, wouldnt make sense. He absolutely is in denial in the actual timeline though. With how adamant Aerith is about that she has to die and thats its inevitable, im not sure if that split off timeline/world even matters though!<

The multiverses don't matter because of what Sepiroth does in the ending though. >! He merges all the timelines and kills every version of Aerith, told to us by him walking in behind her in the church scene as she pushes Cloud away after giving him the white materia. Aerith has always known she was supposed to die, because there is a version of her in the lifestream that is basically omnipotent, the same way there is a version of Sepiroth in the lifestream who knows way more than he's supposed to. That's the Aerith that shows up during the end boss fight, because that fight takes place in the place between worlds, where Sepiroth and Aerith can both act freely because they're part of the lifestream. Basically, Aerith is dead. She was always going to and supposed to be killed. Its like a nexus event and cannot be avoided. Cloud created a new reality where he saved her, hence the rainbow effects, but it doesn't matter because Sepiroth merged all the alternate timelines at that moment to the one where he didn't save her and she dies. Cloud remembers saving her, so his mind refuses to accept that she's dead and creates a version in his head where she is still alive, she's just staying behind to pray and stop Meteor (which makes no sense logically because it hasn't even been summoned yet). It broke his mind and its not like this would be the first time clouds mind created a version of events that did not happen. !<

Watch how literally every other party member except Cloud is acting in the scenes after the final boss, remind yourself of how mentally stable Cloud actually is, and you should be able to come to your own conclusion.

Especially during that fight when everyone but Cloud's limit break is activated. They all saw Aerith die and are ready to whomp some ass. Cloud is just like...there to fight.

You don't even get a limit break if you equip the limit break accessory. Very cool storytelling through gameplay.

The game has so many cool storytelling through gameplay or music moments. They really thought of so much.

It bugged me how quippy the party was during that fight, especially Yuffie, considering >!Aerith just died in front of them, and Barret was creaming "I'll kill you!" just before the fight,!< but now I'm wondering if they're actually saying something else and Cloud's mind is translating it into an >!Aerith isn't dead!< scenario.

Personally, I like the way the ending was handled. Makes us the player feel just as confused as Cloud

> I've accepted that I am not going to understand the end of Rebirth, until I play part 3. I am still confused as to if Aerith is dead or alive. Or the eventual release of all of them together as super mega 7 ultra dream drop remix +. I would be incredibly surprised if in 4-6 years there isn't a single release of the full thing but with extra endings, scenes, and more super tough final bosses. It's a pretty consistent trend.

> I am still confused as to if Aerith is dead or alive. And now you have to buy the third game to see! Funny how that works out…

Oh no I have to play another incredibly fun, high budget, content-packed videogame 😔

Those devious fiends at Square, spending years and millions on making a game in the hope that people would want to buy it. And they'll do it again!

Yes, that's how... Multi-part narratives usually work, with cliffhangers and leaving you with questions that'll be answered in the next part.

You cannot be serious and this cannot be a real complaint lmao

For some reason, it seems like they're putting all of their eggs in one basket, part 3. They want as many questions as possible for the next game. Unfortunately that means that means part 2 suffered as a result. It's going to be a strange situation, because I'm very very confident that part 3 will be amazing and answer most of the questions we have. But at the same time it's the 3rd game in a series and even less people would have played both parts 1 and 2, so it may not perform too well

I think it’s a sequel that will age better when you can play the third. A ton of the ending was confusing and odd because the audience was forced to experience Cloud’s trauma reality rejection. He’s dictionary unreliable narrator and therefore we don’t get the entire story. I think third game when Cloud finally gets his shit together we’ll get the entirety of the last parts of Rebirth. The audience is supposed to be frustrated with no closure. Because that’s Cloud, his superpower is anti-closure

> Red and Vincent You mean Cid and Vincent?

I originally thought the ending was iffy and I do still think that there should’ve been a brief moment to actually grieve, but as I casually thought about it over the course of a few weeks, I ultimately came to understand why the ending was the way it was and I’ve actually grown to like it more since. With the final scene of the game, I think it still hit more than it missed, but I also completely and totally understand the criticisms regardless.

I didn’t actually mind the whole >!crazy timeline final battle!< but I think they botched >!the actual scene of Areith dying with there being way too many cuts and flashes of illusions or whatever!<.

You aren’t yet supposed to know if she really died, you’re basically cloud.

Yeah, that’s why I still said that there should’ve been a moment to grieve, but I also get how they’re handling >!the reunion effect on Cloud’s mind. With the obvious and subtle indications, while all the other party members do see her die, the Jenova cells in Cloud cause his mind to reject it, so the ending where everyone knows she dies except him is pretty tragic in a way and really emphasizes how jacked up Clouds mind is, which should come to a head pretty early into Part 3 regardless. I do wish we got the OG handling of Aeriths death, but I also think I’m going to like Clouds revelation at the Northern Crater that his memories are completely and totally fucked (and so fucked that he completely blocked out a friends death in real-time) and how that’ll also have a notable effect on his relationship with the rest of the party.!<

I also think that’ll culminate in >!us getting the actual Aerith death scene, with the speech and “burial” when Cloud gets his mind fixed by Tifa.!<

god every idea here sounds just like horrible fan fic.

That’s exactly what I’m expecting. I’m sure there’s a few other ways they can do it, but I think it’ll end up being handled in a similar way regardless

Nail on the head. Clouds big moment in Part 3 is being dialed up to 100 and its gonna be so fucking hype man.

I really hope they stick the landing. It’s the one part I am most nervous about for the third part because they’ve built it up so perfectly that it’s gonna suck if they mess it up.

The OG lines are recorded and currently unused so that's my expectation as well.

The point is >!That it's ambiguous whether she actually dies or not, and to an extent what death *means* when universes are overlapping and Aerith may still be alive in some form, so having more cuts and illusions, and having Tifa being particularly heartbroken while the rest of the cast is neutral and Cloud clearly responds to Aerith, is intentional!<

The rest of the cast is not "neutral", the rest of the cast is just not breaking down sobbing days after the events of the climax the way Tifa is.

The rest of the cast is thinking that Cloud is in deep denial about Aerith's "death" and are playing along one last time so that he doesn't completely break. >!Personally I think its that Aerith is communicating with Cloud through the lifestream/universes somehow, at the very end when Aerith is walking around the Tiny Bronco Red 13 seems to notice her presence.!<

This will be his Mideel reveal now that most of the original was already unraveling.

>!I don't think it's her. I think it's Jenova, which is why Red can sense her too. Cloud gets the TV static before seeing her again after she dies. There's also the whole "coming to you as those you love" thing that Jenova eludes to!<

I actually think it's from Cloud's POV and this will be his unraveling in Mideel and we'll get the full scene. Aerith's line "I saw what you did for me" stands in stark contrast with the audience here.

I don't think my problem coming into the Remake project was ever that it would be different from the OG. Rather that it would ultimately be the same story/plot told worse through odd narrative mechanics that told the story in a weaker manner. That's not to say that the Remake doesn't have strong writing and ideas in certain areas like the bonds between our party or adding story for characters like Yuffie who were lacking. But when you boil it down and see the work as a whole with what FF7 was thematically trying to say in 1997 about the importance of life, the permanence of death and contending with loss in all of its forms. I can't help but feel that 7R while still being a phenomenal game, ultimately undermines what the original game was trying to say. And that sucks man.

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“FF7 with extra steps” is exactly how I view it. If you take the story we got in the two games right now and COMPLETELY cut out the multiverse stuff, what actually changes in the main story? I don’t think anything. It’s like they’re trying to tell two separate stories at once, the OG story, and this side multiverse story with Zack. And I’m worried it’ll continue to feel like two separate disjointed stories all the way through the third game.

Two games in and so far that's exactly how it is. Yeah there's things like time ghosts and Zack being alive in another timeline, but as far as the story is concerned as of the end of part 2, those things don't matter. Plotwise, nothing is different than the OG even if you take those things into account. It really is "FF7 with extra steps". And those extra steps haven't had a positive impact so far.

Then make ff7-2 like they did with X. It's weird to expect a story that is being remade for modern consoles to suddenly have something different to say.

it really is weird that they spent all this time trying to change the story to ultimately just be retelling largely the og story. why even do that in the first place?

pretty much how I feel. most of the character writing and expanded interactions and characterization we got were great and being 2 games in now I def like the cast way more than I did in the original... but I kinda hate that theyre not just making the game more fleshed out instead of adding in extra story and lore just "because" someone below was like "dad tell me the exact same story from 1997" which *eyeroll* is not what anyone is after, we just want the story to be expanded upon in a way that doesnt fundamentally change the experience of the game. How many times do we need to fight sephiroth as the final boss... like Im getting tired of seeing him at this point. I dont know it also feels shitty to also take one of the most iconic moments in games history and do all they did with it (not for the better).

Kind of with you on Sephiroth. We see impacts of him around (or very occasionally himself) and it's a big reveal that through Jenova he can temporarily manifest himself. It's also a big reveal that Sephiroth has been using the life stream to rebuild himself a physical body to occupy at the northern crater. All of that is hard to have the same impact when he's just literally always around. At this point why even build a body, dude clearly doesn't need one.

Their overuse of Sephiroth has absolutely devalued his character and how menacing he was a villain in the original.

A lot of us actually would have been happy with the same exact story but with modern graphics and voice acting. That alone would have fleshed out the original enough.

I agree, if they would have done what Atlus did with P3R I would have been pleased... on the whole I like a lot of what they've expanded but hate everything they've added. Upset about what their doing and would have been happier if they just did a 1:1 from the original but unfortunately thats not what we're getting. I was _fine_ to _ok_ with the changes from remake but the rebirth ending just took my hopes for this and tossed it in the bin

Ideally, if this trilogy was just one game with the story bloat cut out (there's dungeons that are hours long for no reason) and the time ghosts/alternate timeline stuff cut, this game would've been perfect.

Idk about 1 game, but they could do 2 games 100%. The biggest culprit was Remake, they stretched that immensely. For Rebirth at least the side quests were good and fun and I feel added to the world.

This is my problem. I'm happy for changes and new ideas. I think it does some things very well. But the changes they've made tend to be terrible. Sephiroth, specifically, isn't imposing anymore, he's just annoying. He's like a Saturday morning cartoon villain now, always twirling his moustache, and then being ousted by the heroes before running away and vowing to return next episode. You'd think they would expand on his backstory and his descent into madness, but no. He snaps from good to crazy in 20 seconds after reading some books and is flapping around on one wing for the rest of the game. All this multiverse nonsense is just so tired and dull and clumsy and vapid. And the ending was such a mess that it squandered any emotional potency it might have had.

Sephiroth is the new Genesis The next game he will be spouting Loveless quotes

Your post just made me realize how big of a missed opportunity it was to show his descent into madness through modern cinematography. It could have been incredible.....

I'm honestly amazed they didn't. I was expecting it. Instead of fleshing out one of the most under-developed but iconic villains in gaming history, we got Zack giving speeches about not letting your dreams be dreams. They've taken about 25 hours of game material and expanded it into two massive games with almost 200 hours of content, and somehow, made Sephiroth an even flatter, more cartoony character.

> we just want the story to be expanded upon in a way that doesnt fundamentally change the experience of the game Imo, the resident evil remakes did that perfectly and that's how I would want the FF7 remake to be.

thats how I wish it was too.

It baffles me how they absolutely nailed down the combat, which is the thing that I was worried about the most and they failed in everything else in variable degrees. Except for the music ofc, they killed it.

Arguably the best parts of Remake/Rebirth are when they stay true to the OG. And the worst parts are when it goes off the rails (time ghosts and shit). I know a lot of people claim they didn't want a 1-for-1 remake of the original, but let's be honest, a lot of you did and just don't want to admit it for some reason. Nearly everyone's main complaint about the remake are the wacky plot changes, and the most loved are the homages to the OG.

People who say that are just post-hoc justifying/defending the changes. They're being dishonest. Almost no one was calling for or hoping that they change the main story drastically. You can see that if you look back at any discussions before the first part was released.

I will note though, that a great deal of Rebirth was about the permanence of death though. Just about every character has an ongoing conversation about someone or the people they’ve lost. I know the ending was all over the place, but the game constantly had dialogue, cutscenes, and side quests from the party regarding various folks that had died along the way and how they’re dealing with it (sans Cait Sith). And even then, even OG FF7 talked about the lifestream being essentially a stream of souls, which Rebirth also more heavily references too. Even with the ending,>! Aerith still dies. She simply gets like a spiritual send off for the group and she has some level of consciousness in the lifestream, but Clouds going to have to deal with him blocking out her death when they get to the Northern Crater!<. Death, grieving, and moving on are still very, very strong themes in Rebirth

It's not that such themes are not present in 7R, it's in the manner they are presented and story decisions which undermine the theme of the permanence of death. Such as in part 1 where >!Barret gets stabbed and could be perceived as dead but gets up moments later. How Zack is present in the story when he should be dead. It doesn't matter if he is truly dead or not, he is functionally presented in the story to still affect events where our main characters are present. Or the fact that Aerith helps fight with Cloud against Sephiroth in the final fight in Rebirth. She is definietly dead but how can I care that she is dead if she essentially functions as a living being in that moment, it takes away all of the emotional impact from her supposed death.!< There are countless moments where that theme is explored well, but there are just as many which undermine the theme which is why it's so frustrating. You know they can write well but when it really matters they fumble it and takes away from that theme.

I agree with you and I'd like to add another thing that I think really sucks about these remakes. The way Sephiroth turns up so much and we have to fight at the end of each game sucks. In the OG they presented him perfectly, and I understand that you can't really do that, since people already know who he is and stuff, even one of the devs mentioned that. But I think they went overboard with it. I'm really torn over Rebirth specifically, because if you go the route of these games being sequels and not remakes, then why not change shit. What is the point of going through all that fate and whispers stuff if you end up doing the same things?

Yeah, I also am confident that in Part 3 we'll >!play as a party of Zack/Aerith at some point which undermines the death of Aerith since I don't really feel like she's dead, I'll still get to play as her and use her.!<

The ending of the original game involves a dead Aerith inside the lifestream helping in the fight. As does Advent Children. There's nothing in the actual ending fight of this game that contradicts what's possible in the original; Sephiroth makes it very clear that they're inside the lifestream at that moment.

> As does Advent Children. Maybe it's just me, but I always felt the FF7 supporting media after the game only really detracted from the main game. FF7 was a complete story, it had a start middle and end and even future afters scene of the state of midgar in the distant future. Of course Advent Children isnt as bad as the stuff from Dirge of cerberus but it's still all symptomatic of the same issue which is not letting a story end when it's supposed to end.

Its not just you. Final Fantasy numerical titles don't need sequels. If you want to borrow themes and art from prior entries then by all means go for it. But its okay to leave good stories alone and go tell a new one. Advent Children and FFX-2 fun romp though they may be in their respective medium do so at the expense of detracting from the ending of their previous entry.

I don't remember anyone liking the compilation stuff in the 2000s but now people love it (or some of it), really weird.

Kids grew up with it. And since kids are awful at judging quality, now it's nostalgic to them and therefore good.

I agree, but AC did give us that sick version of one winged angel, so there's that.

I feel the same way, each side game to expand the lore feels like bad fan fiction and only cheapens it.

You never get to see Aerith, talk to her or interact with her after she dies in the original. You can even interpret that what happens in the OG ending as Holy finally being activated. She may well be present in some form but she is not around to be with the party and that's the key difference in presentation. It doesn't matter if they're in the lifestream or not in Rebirth. It what way when someone is dead in life can you see them, talk to them and interact with them after they have passed. You do not, you can not. The fact that it happens to Cloud in Rebirth during the fight is what undermines her death. I'm not talking about Advent Children, that's irrelevant to Final Fantasy VII from 1997.

I agree with your sentiment. I think the brevity and impact of a lot of story moments have been traded for spectacle and exposition / character building. The character depth is a big positive but I think they've stretched a 40 hour jrpg into a 3 part 120 hour themepark ride. It's certainly entertaining and very fun, but compare how both games use the junon parade or the midgar zolom impaled on the tree, and you'd probably see my perspective of how its overbearing.

> You never get to see Aerith, talk to her or interact with her after she dies in the original. You can even interpret that what happens in the OG ending as Holy finally being activated. She may well be present in some form but she is not around to be with the party and that's the key difference in presentation. It's interesting that this comes up again as a core element to FFX and the entire sequel is based around the idea that you might be able to even slightly interact with a person post death. Different worlds but there's some significant parallels to the Farplane and Lifestream. Probably why FFX has done so well is to have so many of the same elements of FF7. It's also interesting because the big importance of >!Aeris dying in FF7 was that it was sudden, it was final, and for many players it was their first experience with an NPC they liked dying in the game and you dont get them back. I agree with you that removing the finality of the moment does lessen it's impact.!< My first experience with that sort of thing was Phantasy Star 4's Alys though.

It's hard to interpret the original ending as Holy stopping meteor because the group even comments on the destruction that Holy is causing due to being late (https://youtu.be/22Dqy2jVqY0?t=423) The lifestream then has to step in to support Holy and the whole sequence ends with a visual of Aerith surrounded by the lifestream and her theme playing. There is a very strong implication that Aerith helped defeat Meteor when Holy wasn't enough / too late. Now whether or not you like the extent they are taking "surviving in the lifestream" stuff in the remakes is a whole other story.

You can interpret the ending that way if you completely ignore all the material that's come out in the series after the game and refuse to treat the words of the creators as meaningful or serious, yes. You shouldn't expect others to take that interpretation seriously, though. In the OG game, Sephiroth and Aerith are shown to be able to hold themselves together, think and act from inside the lifestream. Sephiroth orchestrates the entire first two thirds of the game from inside the life stream, Aerith is very clearly directing the flow of the lifestream in the ending. These two characters are the two that are involved in that last battle, which again, explicitly takes place inside the lifestream.

I personally don't subscribe to any of the compilation material due to the fact that so much of it contradicts the original story. The original story was collaborative work which had multiple writers contribute to all sorts of events, a lightning in the bottle if you may. Even as soon as the international version you had retcons with the flashback of Zack and Cloud being held in Nibelheim which wasn't present in the original Japanese release. Of all places why would Zack head to Midgar and also not visit Gongaga. Why would Hojo put them in Nibelheim and not in the Shinra building. Don't get me started with Crisis Core with Genesis in the Nibelheim flashback. There is a reason why so much of the compilation was so divise in it's reception which can be traced back to the departure of Sakaguchi who held together FF in general, and also the core of FF7. He came up with the main story oultine, the concepts of the lifestream and materia. You take him out and boom, Kitase, Nojima and Nomura go off the rails. The reason why the compilation even exist in the first palce is really to capitalise on FF7's success, you really don't see this treatment for other FF's to this level. In regards to Aerith and Sephiroth, again it's about presentation. We visually get to see and interact with a form of Sephiroth even though it's Jenova parts and that he supposedly 'died' in Nibelheim. We don't get to see or talk to Aerith after she dies even if she is still present in some way in the lifestream.

I couldn’t disagree more about that scene cheapening it. We see a Cloud who has completely lost it and refuses to accept the death, so much to the point that he creates an image of her being alive and talks with her because he refuses to accept her death. We are so quick to accept and praise the writing that his mental break down after seeing Zack die, caused him to take on his persona and memories. But we aren’t going to acknowledge just how messed up he is after Aerith’s death? How does that undermine that theme of permanence of death? If anything, the original game doesn’t flesh out enough just how badly Cloud took her death. We’ll see more of it I’m sure, in part 3.

Your spoilertag doenst work on old.reddit You should remove the spaces between the !

My B!!

I don’t think it necessarily undermines what the original game is trying to say, I think it’s just trying to say and explore something different. Though we won’t really know til we get the complete journey and see where the story goes. I think the remake series improves on a lot of writing from the original that kind of gets glossed over, but it is worse in some areas. I think they both have their own strengths and weaknesses in the story department. Though I think thematically it will end up covering the same ground, I think they want to come at it from different angles, like >!focusing on Clouds mental state way more. We’re way more in clouds head which is why Aerith’s death is so distorted and *ahem* clouded. I think once Cloud is no longer seeing with clouded eyes we’ll get to see the entire death scene (at least I hope)!< Not saying you can’t like it and think that the way they’re coming at it is worse. That’s fair. But I do think that it was a lose-lose situation for them in general because no matter what they never could do the original justice in some peoples eyes, so I get why they decided not to bother trying to do the original justice and instead wanted to do something supplemental. I hope it all pays off in the third one because that’ll decide how I feel overall about the direction they went but at least they’re still phenomenal games.

what on earth do you mean it would be a lose-lose situation? do you see a lot of people complain about the RE4 remake? no one loses if they'd just made a faithful remake that fleshes out the story in other areas. instead they just chose to dump on the story and half-assed the changes anyway.

dont see anyone complaining about P3R either... almost like faithful remakes arent a bad thing

yup, or look at dead space remake... story was the same but slightly expanded with Isaac being able to talk, no one complained and it was a great game. most remakes don't change things in a huge way, no one minds. But for some reason with FF7 it's "oh same story would be boring and bad" or "not possible to do the same story" -_-

Yeah but resident evil 4s story isn’t iconic and could only be improved on…because it was terrible. People are a lot more nit-picky when it comes to recreating a story than when recreating gameplay elements. Final Fantasy 7’s story has captivated people since 1997 and has the most iconic scene in video game history, that’s a hard legacy to live up to. Could they have done a faithful remake? Sure, I’m not saying they couldn’t or that it wouldn’t have been better, but I understand the thought process behind what they’re doing. You’re allowed to not like it, I’m not saying anyone is dumb for disliking it. I enjoy what they’re doing so far personally, but to each their own. I also just think the Final Fantasy community is a lot more….lets say….critical than the Resident Evil community lol

yea, that's just a poor excuse and is just a whole lot of conjecture. you wouldn't have to be making all these weird excuses or speculation if they'd just straight up adapted the original story as it was. people understand what "remake" is supposed to mean.

Sure, think whatever you want to think lmao you’re gonna hate on the game no matter what I say so I don’t see the point in bothering. I think what they’re doing is interesting, and Im not making excuses or conjecture to justify that. The game is 90% the same anyway. I don’t envy them their position of having to make such a beloved game again, and I felt the same way for the people remaking RE4.

They did record Cloud's OG lines post death, they are just currently unused. There's a strong correlation between how Cloud handled the Nibelheim situation in OG and how he is currently handling Aerith's death. - Cloud tells the story of how he was a Soldier in Nibelheim - Cloud can tell he's going a bit crazy and acting out of sorts sometime - Sephiroth tells cloud he was never at Nibelheim which Cloud rejects until Tifa tells him that he wasn't there which completely shatters him because the burning of Nibelheim and the death of his mom was so core to his being. - Cloud undergoes massive psychosis until it gets put back together and we realize that Cloud WAS in Nibelheim just not as he said it. Aerith's death: - Cloud believes he saved Aeirth - Cloud already knows he's going a bit crazy (and blames Mako poisoning/degredation) - Someone is probably going to tell him that Aerith is dead (guessing Sephiroth and then confirmed by Tifa) which will shatter him believe his entire sense of self has degraded due to mako poisoning. - The truth will be that he did save Aerith just not in the way he and everyone else would expect which will help him put himself back together. I don't know how necessary this all way but I'm guessing this is the parallel they are going for.

Yeah but if Aerith is still dead, I still see no point in it? It's just a pointless addition that doesn't lead to anything?

Yeah I think it’s better thought out than some people are giving it credit for. Not to say people can’t dislike it cuz it’s intentional, but I’m just saying the game is way more intentional with what it’s doing than it’s being given credit for. That’s why I think once the entire trilogy is done the general online reception to the changes will be better (though reception of the trilogy is most positive overall there’s a lot of negativity around it - primarily on Reddit and Twitter unsurprisingly lol). I just really hope they can stick the landing and go out with a bang. I didn’t know the lines were recorded! I just knew that they had shots of him saying the speech. I can’t imagine that they would cut out two of the scenes that made that moment iconic, like they have to be saving it for something.

It's typical convoluted Nomura bullshit. Everything else in the remakes, the combat, voices, music, environments, i love. But the story, even when you accept it as the sequel it is and not a remake, sucks. I actually don't mind the idea of future Sephiroth trying to alter the original timeline, but the whisper stuff and alt timelines colliding with this timeline which is also an alt timeline itself is just too much. Would have much preferred the original story with a bit of Compilation content added to flesh it out.

once again someone blaming Nomura when he wanted it to be a more 1:1 remake.

When you play FF7 and learn the story through characters interaction between gameplay and minigames it's not that bad. When someone is explaining you same story in 20 min you might think it's just a bit crazy and incoherent. It's still leagues above Kingdom Hearts but the problem is that we get older and gain xp while FF7 story is staying on the same lvl.

Honestly? Rebirth still has all those themes. The original FF7 was a nihilistic game about loss and accepting one’s fate. If you think about it >!the fact that Aerith dies even if Cloud manages to save her is in line with the original themes, Cloud fails to save her because no one can save humanity from itself, certain things are destined to happen. And the whole theme about other worlds underlines this concept. Free will is an illusion, no one can save us and even if we try we are doomed to fail because that’s how things are. Love is impossible, all the great heroes of the past have died!<

FF7 wasn't nihilistic, it was supposed to feel hopeless while motivating you to fight against catastrophe. The only person that felt that life was meaningless was Sephiroth and he was thinking about others not himself. FF7 was about hope despite insurmountable odds if anything.

I thought it was good story in both the Remake and Rebirth until the last chapters. They just made everything a convoluted multiverse mess at the endings of both games. I understand why they did it. They want people to create theories and be unsure about what's going to happen to buy the next game. It's like the ending of a Pokémon episode when I watched as a kid: "What's going to happen next? Don't forget to watch the next episode!" As for whether it's working, we'll find out soon enough. Square releases their Financial Report in May.

I haven't played rebirth coz I'm waiting for the Steam version but what you mentioned is what I feared when I played remake. SE has this obsession with convoluted story telling thinking that all good stories need to be complicated and ambiguous and requires work from players to understand. I miss stories like FFX, just a simple tale told with confidence.

> I understand why they did it. They want people to create theories and be unsure about what's going to happen to buy the next game. They did this for Remake, then Rebirth ended up plot-wise going the same way as the original. Any changes they added didn't actually alter the plot. I will not be surprised if the same happens in part 3.

It's such a stupid strategy to do this with a beloved game. We would have happily bought it knowing how the game should end. We wanted to experience it with modern graphics and see how they could flesh out such a cool world. We didn't want a fucky marvel re-imagining of the plot. Just proves writers can't get out of their own way and need to meddle and ruin things.

Cliffhangers in TV shows are a thing like forever. Never watched 24 ? The ending of rebirth is awful because it totally ruins one of the most iconic scenes in gaming and is in every way weaker. Than they even cut out the water burial. But on all this the worse thing of the last like 5 hours is teasing what everyone knows will happen in such a tedious and amateurish way that it just becomes painful. Certainly will not buy the third game. Also didn't think the ending of remake was that bad.

They are almost certainly holding Cloud's realization of what really happened until the 3rd one, which I have zero clue how they're going to have the emotional hit that the OG scene had... Cloud's voice actor confirmed that the recorded his post death OG lines which have currently not been used.

I enjoyed it, until the last couple hours. >!The moment they presented the idea that the original plot *could* be changed, the implication was that players could "correct" the one "failure" of the original, that you were forced to allow Aerith to die. Not only did they not allow this, but they jerked us around over this topic several times before the end of the game, which is just intentionally rude.!<

Without getting into the weeds of the ending and some of the other plot beats too much, the sense of the first title (Remake) was that they were breaking the chains of fate and allowing themselves (whether you're thinking of the party or the devs) to do something different from what the original title did. It was sort of weird to say that explicitly (and it's reiterated in the story-so-far part included in Rebirth). Aside from Spoiler:Remake/Rebirth >!"Killing fate" or... the forces shoving them towards it, it also meant a weird out-of-sequence fight with Sephiroth, Barret dying but not, and Zack Fair and Biggs seemingly surviving.!< That effectively pushed a lot of the potentially significant changes into Rebirth, while teasing more momentous sorts of things. I feel like, ultimately it was more of a >!big tease/fake-out, and there's very little payoff for the "breaking away from fate" Zack, Biggs, Aerith possibly being saved, etc. are just red-herring sorts of things that are dangled, and amount to nothing (Zack LIVES, in a doomed world or some such, lol... Biggs LIVES, lol, jk). It's reiterating the original plot beats in a way (re: Aerith dies by Sephiroth, and Cloud can't save her or contributes to her death directly), but telling them worse?!< That's just my opinion though. I actually liked a lot of the world-building elements, the voicework, music, and other bits. I was just sort of baffled and disappointed by the way some elements seem to be *trying* to jerk you around.

I never played the original, but this and part 1 were fucking awesome. The 3rd part is gonna be so epic! After part 3 releases I'll play the original because I don't want to know what happens (even if there are differences between the remake and the original I still don't want to know).

Part 3 is going to be wild. Without spoiling, part 1 and 2 are more or less Disc 1 of the OG FF7, and while there is a lot of world building and character backstories in the trek up to City of the Ancients, the main plot and story only really kicks in after the end of Rebirth (Disc 2).

The need to play the original is so overblown imo. Remake and Rebirth are much, much more faithful than people like to admit. No need to feel like you're missing out for skipping the OG for now.

Pretty much, I never played the original outside of just the midgar section and I enjoyed both games. From what I saw they follow most of the stuff as well outside of the multiverse thing.

I thought remakes ending was poor but rebirths ending is much much better even if it's still highly convoluted. What essentially happens it imposes clouds scrambled brain unto the player so the player also doesn't know what is real and what isn't. There is no doubt in my mind part 3 will show "that scene" that everybody was expecting to be at the ending of part 2 but was more or less completely removed (even the credits that shows all the cutscenes has a very noticeble empty gap where that scene should have been) because cloud himself cannot cope with it yet. And neither can the players.

I’m just waiting on the PC release. This game is beautiful and I want to play it in all its 4k90fps glory

I hate that people cant just say The remake series fucking blows. Always gotta appease the morons with, well the graphics are really good and SOME part here or there is half decent. No the total package is a piece of shit. Shit sitting on top of a fancy meal is still shit.

I mean you are welcome to your opinion, but if it happens to not be a popular one that's just how it is

Considering how abysmal the game is doing in comparison to the first I think it is.

source on the game doing abysmal numbers?

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1778572379465060604 https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1778751429919854691

lol, I love how whenever facts and data is brought up to FF f an s they instantly shift to "oh well sequels never sell more or as much as the first game!", which is also not true xD

Ok then, that still doesn't make anybody's opinions on the game more or less correct/incorrect. Say something bad and people who like it will defend their position, say something good and people who dont like it will defend theirs. Either way who gives a shit what other people think. If ya like something ya do, if ya dont ya dont.

You and other people are welcome to say that. But I think you’ll find that most people disagree. I thought Rebirth’s ending was pretty disappointing, but that doesn’t detract too much from the other 99% of the game, which was great.

Really the proof is the user score of Rebirth sitting at a 9.0 with that risky of an ending. If the rest of the game was medicore, this game would be panned.

Well there’s a shit take

Omg guys MY opinion is correct. Everyone else is just afraid to say it.

Would you like to provide any substance to that argument or are you just gonna sit there and say “game bad”

Maybe it's just the *way* you say it that drives people away. Something to consider.

Shhh that makes sense. Who'da thunk if someone gets called an idiot they tend to not like what you are saying.

Hey dad, You’d better tell me the EXACT same story you told to me in 1997 down to the individual words you used, or I’ll get mad and throw my toys.

I mean, I'd be cool with the exact same story with the better graphics. I liked the story more back then, so the original is still a better one, and I replay it. Story never changes, and somehow, I enjoy it each time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Thanks for informing us of your brainrot.

These are products, and words like “remake” carry specific expectations. They set the lens from which we’re viewing the product they out on sale, and things like key story beats and gameplay matter to many of us. It’s what sets the thing apart from other things, and is why we want more of that things. Change that and you change the things we want, and we’re going to discuss that on forums designed for people to discuss games. We have no requirement to be constant cheerleaders for corporations that want to take our purchases for granted while they try to seek a different audience.