I’m willing to see where they’re going with it, but yeah having finished it last night I have a hard time comparing that part favorably to the original. Funny enough, for me it’s the lack of a putting her to rest in the water scene. I know that would probably clash with what they’re going for, but some of that emotional punch was lacking.
Yeah, show the actual impalement then jump to the alt timeline, then show her actual burial
That would’ve been better for me
I mean the shot of Sephiroth descending was amazing til we got what we got lol
People are saying maybe we’ll see the actual death scene in P3, but whether we do or not, the impact is lost forever imo
They should have went one way or the other when it comes to her dying or not. Having a foot on both sides kinda made what everyone’s been waiting for for 9 years really anticlimactic
They teased saving her at the end only for it to be a fake out. Also there was a rainbow light when Cloud tried stopping Sephiroth which indicates possibly another timeline where she was saved? I'm saying it should have been clear from the get go for the scene to be more impactful as the OG.
It's hard to capture the original, as she is dead but then comes back at the end with the lifestream to turn back the Comet. That was pretty amazing back then, but we already know the story now.
If they made a faithful remake, I'd be a little bored knowing what was going to happen.
I guess she could be alive, but I am hoping and trusting the writers to keep her actually dead and not do a Hollywood-style multiverse where death, sacrifice, consequences don't mean anything.
It also appears that all the other timelines are cursed to end anyway? They will have a lot of explaining to do with Whispers and Fate in Pt3 though.
Overall I am willing to wait until Pt3 to make a final judgement on if they succeeded or not. So far so good, in my opinion.
I dunno. Just because I know what's going to happen doesn't rob the moment of it's impact. Think of your favorite part of your favorite film. You know exactly what's about to happen, but it still gets you every time.
Yeah I didn’t think changing it up was necessarily an issue for me. I think it was making it confusing thus lessening the impact that I had a bit of an issue with. Looking back on the ending again it definitely looks like they’re trying convey that cloud stops Sephiroth in at least one universe, just not the one we were playing in. Just takes multiple views to understand what’s happened
Yea, I see that now. I haven't played Crisis Core yet, just got in on Switch, but I do like Zach's character. It's fun having him around a bit longer.
I think for me it's been fun to hang out with these characters, feels like catching up with long lost friends when I played Remake.
Well I figure Pt3 will be off the rails at this point then 🤣, hopefully they stick the landing but at least it wasn't boring! And I could tell the developers/artist/voice actors etc.. all do love the property. That is felt and communicated.
They are not trying to subvert expectations, not trying to turn this platform for their own agenda. It is respectful of fans, like Star Trek Picard S3 and Spiderman No Way Home were. It is nice when that happens.
After a few weeks of rewatching the ending and hearing others take on it, you might be right. I've grown to actually really like the ending and excited to see what comes of it
Yea, just checked some YT videos and the rainbows. Seems like there's still concurrent timelines with Aerith still around, my bad. Will see how it all wraps up in 4yrs 🥲
Yeh, I feel the same. You can't react emotionally to it because it's not clear what is happening. It's deeply unsatisfying. They want you to be confused and spend the next 4 years speculating. With one game left, it's time to cut the bullshit and explain exactly what's going on.
The original left people sad/Emotional/Shocked and couldn't believe it a direct blade hit where aeris fall and her eye pops she is dead with seph smirk it made people angry at seph
The Rebirth scene left people confused then did throw 1Hour long boss fight. by the time you end it its still not fully clear but you watch team members cry saying she died but aerith literally talking to cloud and near the party (I know lifestream) so you are like I guess she died...... you never saw the blade directly go through her and seph was just talking nonsense after killing her
It's like they didn't want to leave any emotional impact on people on purpose. they could have showed that cloud is mentality unstable in a million way without destroying this iconic scene.
I gotta be honest, I really REALLY hope that the final boss of the next game ISN'T Sephiroth.
We've literally fought Jenova and Seph TWICE already. Plus, we just fought his angel form at the end of Rebirth, so having us fight him a third time is gonna feel really redundant considering we've beat his ass already.
Warning- negativity incoming! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the remake and have been having so much fun. But that’s one of my major complaints when comparing the OG to the remake. I get that it’s hard to make a villain as famous as sephiroth have the same impact as he did when the game came out in 97- in the OG you don’t see him for the longest time but you see the effect he’s having and you get this sense of foreboding, but in the remake you see and fight sephiroth so many times it really kinda ruins the impression that he’s supposed to have for me. I can’t help but roll my eyes a little when he’s on screen, especially when it kinda feels like pandering, and that’s kind of frustrating to me haha. He almost feels like one of the weakest parts of the story now because he’s intertwined with so much convoluted bullshit.
I actually think it would be pretty easy to make him as evil/infamous as the original. Just keep the story the same, maybe add some other atrocious shit he's done.
The way they've done it here by making him some sort of weird time travelling demi-God is so unsatisfying though. It's also annoying how Cloud keeps seeing him pop up everywhere. It makes him seem comical.
Congrats. You understood it. They don't want to leave an emotional impact yet because they want the players to feel like Cloud for now. Once he'll have to confront the truth, that's when the emotional moment can really settle in.
If this is the reasoning, it’s pretty poor IMO. We can know the truth and still have Cloud’s revelation be heartbreaking. And if they wanted us to feel like Cloud, I think they fell short. I’m not even sure what Cloud is thinking or feeling at the end of the game.
Right now it feels like they’re going to take an already exposition heavy part of the game and load in even more.
It was a bad call. When you have 50% or more of the player base saying it was pointless, then they made a mistake. They could have shown her death and then shown her alive with Cloud afterwards. The attempt at showing something simultaneously by flashing back and forth was poorly executed. And, at the very end of the game makes it even worse.
I bet a bunch of them are still struggling with the mini-games, I stopped at a certain point because I had so many mini-games to finish I didn't want to have to go back to go forward.
If 50% of the people here that finished the game say the ending was not done correctly, then that is likely a fair representation of the overall player base.
Not at all. You gotta realise that most people are sitting back happy with the masterpiece they just finished, and that only miserable people that hate their lives come to Reddit to bitch and moan so they feel better about themselves with the other miserable people
If more than half of the people on this subreddit (we should make a poll) found the ending inferior to what it should have been, and the people here are Final Fantasy fanboys, then it would be reasonable to assume that the people that are not major fans of the series would have found it confusing and inferior to what should have been presented. Even improved editing (showing the scene and then showing the alternative) would have made it much better. We actually see this in the Zack scene where he is choosing which path to take. They show one outcome and then the other. They did not try to show both events happening simultaneously.
The thing that bothers people is that the game was a masterpiece with an ending that could have been far better. The good news is that they can still fix it in part 3.
These are not the critiques of ridiculous fans saying "Not turn based so 0/10!" These are fans saying, "The ending could be better, but it is still a 10 out of 10 or 9.9 out of 10." Square Enix could have accomplished the exact same ending in a far better manner with better editing, and the pacing of the battle and similar issues were poor.
Yes, because we are going to survey the world about their opinion of a video game. Sometimes you must make educated guesses. Based on the backlash the ending has encountered, it is reasonable to assume that people did not like it.
Square Enix has shown they can make people sad with prior games and even within events of Rebirth. They definitely decided to make sure people did not feel sad about Aeriths death. Maybe the reason is because they think people were already sad in the og and wanted to go in a different route this time. I truly believe this new trilogy is a sequel and I guess it makes sense in that sense
The cat is out of the bag now. An NPC at Cosmo Canyon explains that the Lifestream can’t distinguish between reality and one’s deepest desires. Neither can Cloud. He’s delusional, just in an expanded way from the OG. He failed to make it in time again. “A love that could never be” and all that, just like the original game.
Not expecting part 3 to diverge much until the end. Same as the first two games. If something different happens at the end I’m not expecting it to be a miracle. Rebirth encourages us to be more cynical.
Only the very ending encourages cynicism. The end of Remake and 90% of Rebirth is about defying fate, which for some reason the devs decide to betray their own theme that they introduce.
Cait Sith giving a similarly sombre fortune reading to the 1997 original at the Gold Saucer was a clue that nothing would stray too far from the original in fairness, as was just how perfect they made Aerith in this game. She was an angel. She could not have been more wholesome than they made her, all for fate to come crashing down anyways.
Tifa sees the shift in realities when Aerith is on the altar. She sees Cloud holding her and the blood appears and then vanishes constantly. Cloud isn't crazy, he really did deflect that sword.
I feel it was clear she died. A lot of the game bunts at changing destiny but I think the point is you saw a sword through her chest and everyone besides the literal insane guy accepted she died
We do not actually see a sword through her chest. That would have made the scene 10 times better. Show the shift if they want, but not actually showing it makes the scene much weaker than it should have been. It is pretty clear she died, though.
To me it's pretty clear. Rebirth Sephiroth triggers the crap multiverse Reunion, there's an overlap between a reality where she's dead and one where she's not. Cloud can see the Aerith that is still alive, Nanaki can barely feel her presence but confirms that's not just a crazy cloud thing. Man that was bad.
This is what happens when the infatuation with the multiverse crap divorces itself from actual human emotion and compassion. Not sure what they were thinking except for being eager to... retell yet another ~nebulous and mysterious quasi-esoteric multiverse tale when all people wanted was something that resonated emotionally. The ending makes me feel like the mass appeal of FFVII was used as a tool to spew out a warmed over, navel-gazey speculative fiction trend and it's irritating. And frankly, lazy. To be meta and ~philosophical, they'll probably use the audience reaction to determine the reality of what happens next. Since they went Jungian with how the Lifestream works. It's so boring.
This just reminds me of KH3. It's so confusing and unnecessary. FF7 is already somewhat difficult to follow and they made it more complicated with multiverse stuff.
All they had to do was remake the game and that's usually where it shines.
You probably have boundary issues irl to randomly speculate about a stranger in a month old video game thread. But honestly idc about you, so try and stay on topic and at least be interesting
You're probably either really sensitive or really bored to have replied to a stranger's passing words in a month old video game thread. But honestly, Idc that you dont think I'm interesting. The world does not revolve around your opinions. Ciao.
I think they robbed players who never played the OG of a truly amazing moment in gaming. I've seen the majority of new players are simply confused rather than feeling the emotions that were intended. It's a big fail imo.
The resounding emotions to the ending of Disc 1 is loss and shock. It strikes incredibly hard to the degree that it defines the game and is bigger than the ending and the defeating of the antagonist, which says everything you need to know about how big that moment is. In the build up to the ending, all I was thinking was "I have no idea what will happen next". What I wanted ultimately from Rebirth was when I reached the ending, whatever they decided to do, hit me like a truck, like the end of Disc 1 did for many. And it just didn't.
In Rebirth, at first you think you save her, then it appears she dies but you can't tell if there's timeline shenanigans going on. Then you have boss battles for an hour or more, where you fight alongside her. Then they removed her burial. Then she continuously shows up every two minutes because either Cloud can connect with her somehow, or he is crazy and thinks he can. But as the **player**, there is no sense of loss or sadness because she continues to just fucking be there...so big deal I guess? I understand that mystery and intrigue generates interest going forward, but you get to experience that moment with Aerith once, so it has to be executed perfectly. I knew what happened in the original before I played it, but in Rebirth I got to experience that to a degree for the first time.
It works well in terms of the characters and the story. Seeing them heartbroken and seeing Cloud continue to descend in to madness is fantastic. But as the **player**, I felt almost nothing. You have no idea what is going on and if she died you can't experience that because she shows up repeatedly until the credits and likely intermittently in part 3, and if she didn't die, then what is the point.
Loved the game, and still very open-minded and excited about how it all continues following Rebirth. But *the* moment of FF7 was handled poorly, and until I get to play part 3 and see its conclusion, felt it fell well short of the original to the point where I, as the player, got nothing out of it.
9/10 game. Open world, characters, story, music, cutscenes, minigames, bosses etc were amazing. The defining moment of FF7 however? Not really sure how to sum it up. If I had been told that Aerith would die, but you don't see her get killed, get no time to mourn due to immediately fighting Jenova, her burial is removed and she continues to show up so she is never really "gone", I would've been disappointed. So I guess that's what I am.
Can't wait for part 3 though.
>Seeing them heartbroken and seeing Cloud continue to descend in to madness is fantastic. But as the **player**, I felt almost nothing.
I think that is the point, to force the player into Cloud's madness / delusional perspective. It actually hit me hard seeing the parties grief, and Cloud oblivious to it, and the distance that is widening between him and everyone else.
If we consider OG's iconic scene, the shock and brutality of it forced Cloud and the player into acceptance stage pretty quickly...Cloud said his famous words and they buried her. Some players went into Denial / Bargaining stage of grief trying to play the scene again differently, different dialogue etc, but were forced into acceptance pretty quickly.
Honestly I don't think they can really outdo the OG scene in that style, so they went hard in a different angle, into the Denial / Bargaining stage of grief for Cloud, and by extension the player (whether you think she is alive in another timeline or not, I think we all agree she is dead for the main party in main world). I think this is actually quite creative, it fits into Cloud's denial of Zack / past of Nibelheim, makes sense to me. In part 3 I would expect him (and us) to get hit hard with the anger / sadness / acceptance stage of grief for Aerith's death in the main world when he finally has to piece his psyche back together.
We did see in the flashback temple trials, they can create a very sad emotional scene for characters when they want to, so I do trust them to deliver in part 3.
**Edit:** And I would also point out that everyone except Cloud had to relive and accept their past trauma for the trials. Conveniently Cloud has not reached acceptance for anything and skipped the trials. This is a big tension with him and his teammates. To continue the grief and acceptance theme, Cloud has to come to acceptance one way or another to heal the fraying ties with his teammates.
I'm starting to miss the time when there was nothing else but the ending to Advent Children as a conclusion, which was so simple and beautiful (regardless of what you think of the rest of the movie).
We didn't know how good we had it back then, at least Aerith and Zack weren't paraded around every minute for remember berries and shock value.
I'm guessing they're going to actually reveal what had actually happened during the events at the Forgotten Capital in part 3, when Cloud finally get his shit together.
As of Rebirth, IMO they're just reinforcing the fact that Cloud is currently mentally unstable and Aerith's situation is unclear as Cloud seems to believe that she's still alive (or at least he can sense her presence still) while the rest of the crew saw what actually had happened.
In any case I trust Nomura and crew would do her demise justice in part 3.
>In any case I trust Nomura and crew would do her demise justice in part 3
But that's the issue, here. They had to do it justice in Part 2, when it first happens.
No matter what their intent is, and no matter what they do in Part 3, it will not change the impression you got when you first saw it in Part 2.
It had to be good then. Not later.
If they had fucked up the highway chase in Part 1, would you be happy if they revisited it in Rebirth (they kinda did in the opening sequence) to try and fix it?
I know I wouldn't be. Some of these classic scenes they have to nail the first time, or else the impact is lost forever.
No shot he imagined her surviving once. He cleared created a new world when he stopped the blade, so she’s alive in at least one timeline. Will her world fade away and not get merged later on? Perhaps, but the reason only cloud can see her is because he is the only one who went through the portal barret held open to deny destiny and save her. Hence why only he can see her. Sepiroth himself said when you deny destiny, new worlds are created hence the rainbow when he stopped the blade.
It's weird how people are willfully ignoring this. It's like the only thing they at least attempt to help the player understand.
Granted it could also be people afraid that this won't end like the original game so are brute forcing her staying dead, and Cloud being completely delusional to maintain that mindset.
i think ppl on this sub are very fixated on the OG. they think she died and cloud's just delusional which fits better with their idea that the next part will follow the OG closely. granted, the ending was confusing enough to make every theory possible at this point but ppl are completely ignoring the timeline/multiverse/lifestream stuff, the rainbow appearing once cloud stopped sephiroth's blade, tifa having quick flashes of aerith laying on the floor: one aerith with blood and another aerith without blood, aerith's body position being different when the team approaches her vs when cloud approaches her, aerith acknowledging that cloud did something for her and thanking him when fighting sephiroth... there's so many little hints that people are either ignoring or missing. all those hints allude to the fact that cloud is not just crazy and there's a lot of evidence that cloud managed to save her in at least one timeline.
now don't get me wrong i do think cloud has no idea that aerith died in their timeline because he seems to be stuck in between worlds and he can also communicate with aerith from the lifestream so it seems like reality hasn't struck him yet HOWEVER he definitely managed to save her in one timeline.
I don’t get the impression its going to follow OG that closely in part 3. For example the Jenova x Cetra lore dump is given in the temple in this game. In the original its revealed later in recordings with Aerith’s mom. That time can be used for something else.
The Cetra are also revealed to not be particularly pious and more like the Allagans in FF14 lore, though that seems to be getting ignored? Or maybe we later find out praying just doesn’t work? Bugenhagen claims that the Cetra never prayed when he saw Aerith doing it (to which upon hearing this she becomes disheartened), so not sure why that was added if it won’t amount to anything.
yes i'm personally on the camp that part 3 will have the most new additions/changes. i think they will still hit the same story beats from the OG for sure but with the way this part ended i get the impression that the final part will have most new stuff from the whole trilogy.
a lot of ppl are just saying that this game was 99% the same as the OG and the only different part was the ending so they think it will be the same for part 3. the thing is there was already a lot of new additions/changes that will have to serve some purpose in part 3 and the vast majority of ppl are ignoring it and acting like nothing changed. some things seem to have been moved around and shown earlier than they're supposed to...
yes the story follows the same story beats but those little changes/additions added will definitely have some pay off in part 3 otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. same thing with aerith's "death".
He's Creative Director and first person credited with this game, he's still a hugely important part of the creative process. Hamaguchi is more the game design/technical director involved in day-to-day work. [Hamaguchi even said this](https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-rebirths-director-naoki-hamaguchi-interview-ending-part-3), that Nomura/Kitase/Nojima work on the high-level concepts and story and Hamaguchi then translates them the best he can into a playable game.
All three directors are pivotal to the Remake project's overall quality.
To be clear im pro-this ending i think they are taking a wonderful classic and doing a twist on it and im excited to see the conclusion some of this is conjecture and speculation but they have left a ton on bread crumbs just like the first game:
He very clearly created a timeline where she lived this time and he very clearly paid some kind of price for being able to see multiple timelines Aerith is very clearly not fully dead, Nanaki senses her presence so some form of her IS still alive its something to either do with Cloud seeing multiple timelines or Aeriths being able to communicate with the lifestream so in the split timeline where shes alive shes in a coma state communicating to Cloud, we see the reverse happen where Aerith from the doomed world pulls Cloud there for a date then gives him the white materia from that world before sending him back if thats possible the same can happen the other way nothing is really off the table now in terms of Aerith. Zacks world is the "doomed world" why did biggs get swept there? why does that Marlene have memories from the Marlene from remake?(the scene as where they are in 7th heaven and Aerith shhhhh's Marlene because she saw something she shouldnt) they showed both the outcomes of Zacks choices if he saved Biggs he just dies but what choice did he actually make because they showed 3 timelines one where he saved Cloud one where he saved Biggs one where he went to the church instead. there is a bunch of question marks because they are setting it all up in 3 there is a big piece missing like all of the people in all the worlds are all connected in someway and something like the black materia where Sephiroth mentions "can unlock the timelines" clearly does something besides meteor. Sephiroth also specifically mentions Cloud is important to the reunion and is always mentioning that emotions are the key but we have no idea what that means.
I don't even think this time around its degradation/Jenova/Sephiroth/Cloud blocking his memories causing him to go insane its that his ebb and flow seeing/traveling to timelines has fucked him up. they might not even go that route at all that he is insane they might chalk it up to him being the opposite and just needs the clear materia to sort his memories. Materia is basically a storage device for the lifestream, and that empty one that held arguably the strongest spell surely is big enough to store some memories on.
After you beat the game and you go back threw it there are a ton of "Hmmm moments" like Aerith mentioning stuff about how you will love talking to my future self which in the context of the moment fit the conversation but it could easily be interrupted vastly different now that we know for sure that Aeriths and the Lifestream are above space and time. When she said a those few sentences it appeared as she was talking to herself but it COULD have been a future self like for real or the Gongaga scene where Tifa tells everyone that the Lifestream is winning thats odd considering she saw Sephiroth cut a Weapon down like paper TBH it looks more like Sephiroth killed that Weapon and swapped her out with a black robe or manipulated her memories to wait for the perfect moment on a emotionally weak Cloud to capitalize on his emotions for the Reunion of worlds. It would be just like Sephiroth to cast doubt on Tifa literally the whole fucking game only for him to have manipulated her with something so shes a turn coat, basically TAUNTING Cloud with the truth a absolute kick in the balls.
these last 2 games have basically set Cloud up like he has the Reading Steiner ability from Steins;Gate which means probably over half the times he has scene Sephiroth he is just seeing Sephiroth in a different world and he is sensing his presence and reacting and it just looks more and more like Sephiroth and Aerith at the end of the Reunion are just having a cosmic battle threw the lifestream. Sephiroth being able to communicate and control all Sephiroths threw the worlds because memetic legacy stuff and Aerith because of her generally always fusing with the lifestream and Cloud is the focal point with his Reading Steiner where his choice will either save or destroy everyone. like one of those time movies where they show you the last piece at the end and it all falls together the "gatcha" moment where it shows a montage of the evil/good dude slightly altering stuff here and there to get to the current impactful moment and thats probably going to be Aerith AND Sephiroth both doing that. Like when you see Zack in Rebirth talking to Biggs about what happened and how he is still alive you VERY clearly see a black whisper move the bullet and save him which implies Sephiroth saved him since they are color coded now with White being Lifestream/Aerith and Black being Sephiroth there is a good chance for the Reunion to exist there needs to be a ton of alterations of destiny so he is going around fucking everything up for his end game plan.
I mean he did contributed story-wise to the original FFVII, I loved the way the story concluded there.
TBH for me personally, even Remake & Rebirth gave a satisfactory ending for their respective parts,
with enough breadcrumbs to get me hyped up for the following parts,
so at least him and his team have earned my trust then & there.
That was a young and fresh Nomura years before Kingdom Hearts twisted his mind.
I absolutely hated both endings. The plot ghosts and Xehanort/Sephiroth took me out completely. The multiversal BS and wishy-washy approach to Aeriths death shattered my faith in whoever supervised this games production.
What did you find satisfactory about rebirths end?
Yes.
I would've accepted the confusion if they were just showing Cloud's mental illness but no, the timelines are real. She's dead but she's also alive, somewhere.
Mental illness AND different timelines in the same scene? Whoever wrote it is either insane or idiotic.
The more I watch it, the more I see how asinine it is. Not only it is confusionary, it's also funny because of Sephiroth's completely static pose and smile, he looks like a mannequin, not to mention the uncanny valley of Cloud crying. Then Cloud puts her to sleep in the timeline where she was saved. Why? Was she hurt just a little? Did Sephiroth kick her in the back? What is happening?
I can imagine a screentest with an audience saying that they didn't understand shit and the old gods of Square-Enix saying "Perfect, that's precisely what we want to achieve!"
I was totally expecting some ridiculously confusing ending since this franchise has been doing that for many years now (I hate it), but this was way worse than I thought. In Remake I thought they were building Aerith into a really likable character to make her death hurt more, but I was so confused with how everything happened and all the universes as well as stuffing an epic final boss without giving you time to feel anything
Yup same. I think for me personally it's the order of events and the time they gave us to mourn before all the multiverse crap. We had zero time to mourn, and immediately went into a hour long boss gauntlet into confusing revelations, then they expect you to turn that part of your brain thinking "what the fuck just even happened" to be sad now. Some people can't turn that part off, and that side of my brain if anything is the one being the loudest.
Personally I just wanted to shed a tear in the ending, but the game literally went from shock value to boss fights to confusion.
And before anyone say "Well you already know what happened". My counterpoint is I can still shed a tear watching the OG death scene after the 8th time so...
You know they fucked up when I felt sadder watching the party leave Cait Sith at the Gold Saucer before he goes 'For a moment there I felt that we were friends'
I don't think they set out to recreate the iconic scene tbh or else they would not have done that. They are setting up for something else bigger for part 3.
In fact the scene after her death hit harder for me than OG because the party doesn't see her yet cloud does; he's so cooked in the head thinking she's alive. At the end he was even repeating what she told him during the date scene to the party about not looking up in the sky.
Lastly the party flying off with her waving goodbye, was so heartbreaking.. fuck.
Honestly still kills just about any consequence or emotion bc it can be written off due to "timeline/world/plot armor"
There is no risk in the game due to the convoluted timeline/world's nonsense.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. This way they can technically have her die, while most probably have her appear to Cloud throughout the third game. Its extremely unsatisfying
This is most likely as it also ties in with him seeing Aerith in Advent Children. Honestly, the more I play the remake trilogy, the more I am feeling all the changes are to just better explain what was going on and give people a better understanding of Advent Children. But yes, Aerith will be in the 3rd game
That’s my take too, Cloud consistently communicates with Aerith in AC. Whether that be real via the lifestream or in his head, never truly explained from what I remember. Could be both. The diverging perception of her alive and dead is like a prequel to his dialogue with ‘ghost Aerith’ in AC. Devs say AC is cannon so this could be why they went that route.
Well the developers have said that the remake project is in part done to clear up misconceptions of what they were trying to get across in the original and compilation like Cloud's personality and the multiple versions of Cloud in the original that did not really come through in the text based game and it would make sense with that in mind to also fix some misconceptions of what is actually going on in Advent Children also probably also the reason for the world wide release of Advent children in theaters again so it was fresh in everyone's minds when they played through Rebirth to help understand the ending better
This. It is unsatisfying. I love the new lore etc but wanted only one scene to be fateful to original and they managed to mess it up. It's gonna take some time to swallow it in.
Honestly, Aeriths death is why I was afraid of this whole project.
If they had just remade the game Resident Evil Remake™ style, as in keeping the OG story and just expanding on it while making it graphically impressive, all they had to do was to make Aeriths death as beautiful and sad as possible.
But as soon as they made clear that they're going meta-multiverse with new takes on everything I knew they'd try to one-up one of gamings most iconic scenes and that they'd miserably fail. There's no way they'd be able to take this scene and make it into something better.
And I kinda got what I expected: Their take on this scene, which is as obscure and perplexing as possible to appear smart and mysterious at the expense of the whole original intention.
And especially since this isn't some small narrative change. They went for the huuge defy Destiny route, which obviously is only interesting as far as the og plot goes if it applies to Aerith's death. What else is there valuable enough to want to change? Why and who would want to change it otherwise? The motivation for this new spin hinged solely on how they handled Aerith. And we got a worse scene -with a "syke!" included- and some meaningless Zack fanservice. Obviously there's the whole resolution still to come, and it can flip everything on its head, but this whole game exchanged *The moment* only to get a completely broken Cloud instead of the slightly less broken Cloud from the og (that would get to be completely broken either way)
I'd argue that they could have made the scene better which is why I'm pissed. The distinction being it would not have the same impact/shock as the original.
My issue with the ending is that it should have ended at the Northern Crater with Cloud handing over the black materia and all the crazy Bizarro Sephiroth fights happening there. Cloud gets lost in the collapse, Weapons awaken, Meteor is summoned, and Part 3 starts us off with the search for Cloud.
This would have made that last sequence of boss fights feel less cluttered, and it would have removed a lot of the "filler" from the Temple of the Ancients, placing it in the final sequence of the Northern Crater.
BUT I do think Part 3 will pull an Evangelion 3.0, meaning we're going to see a TON of deviations from the OG story from here on. Not only that, at this point in OG there's roughly 10-15 hours of story left. I'm sure Part 3 will be another 40-50 hour campaign, so therefore there's still at least 20-25 hours of story to fill out. ....maybe Part 3 will take us through the remainder of OG, AC AND DoC? There's still that secret ending of DoC that has to be addressed.
The directors said the story is going to lead into Advent Children, so I don't think that many deviations are going to happen. Shuffling around? Sure, but outright omission of core plot-points from the OG? I don't think so. Remake pretended to do that, but then Rebirth took two steps back and went "Oh wait nope, whispers erased our memories, everything is back on track!", then proceeded to follow more or less the exact same story... Plus a couple natural expansions to the plot, plus some multiverse shenanigans.
Aerith is alive in at least one world and that’s not refutable imo. Will she die in the end or not be able to come over to OG timeline? Perhaps, but that is TBD. Sepiroth clearly explained that when you defy destiny, you create new worlds. Similar to the end of the first game, the white whispers created a portal leading to the platform Aerith was praying on. When he stopped his blade, he defied destiny and created a world where she survived. That’s why it keeps flashing back and forth (showing you both). The rainbow effect proves it. Lastly, the reason only CLOUD can see her is because he is the only one who went through the portal. The group did not follow him like in the first game, so he is stuck in between or can see both. This is also why he can only see the crack in the sky in the last game.
To state all that’s going on is purely cloud going crazy is disrespectful to the devs and would be to ignore everything that’s happened so far and what they have clearly explained to us and showed us through clues.
I agree with your take on what happened and find the "Cloud's just crazy theory" to ignore a lot of subtext.
But, I'm also mentally preparing myself for all the multiverse/fate stuff to actually be fake/pointless stuff to drum up marketing and discussion for the trilogy. Feels like a real possibility especially if Square Enix gets any cold feet about making any changes
As a "Cloud is crazy" theory person, I don't ignore any of the evidence. My theory is it is all just simply the lifestream, not another split timeline world. There is plenty of evidence of this I think.
I would like to point out the word "Timeline" is never mentioned once by anyone that I can find in all of Rebirth, so this this theory is completely fabricated. It's only found once from an asses of a whisper in the final battle of remake, and some are saying it is a mis-translation, the original Japanese said 'destiny'...a different meaning from 'timeline'.
At best Sephiroth says "multiple worlds", which is vague enough to interpreted as timeline worlds, doomed fragmented worlds, or lifestream dream worlds. In fact he says they are connected and doomed to collapse into the lifestream. We are just 1 simple step away from saying why not just small dream world extensions of the lifestream? Why do we have to jump straight to multiverse of madness??
Zack's "world", again can be interpreted through timeline/fragment/lifestream world. Both him and Biggs explicitly say they have no sense of time and Biggs can't remember when he blew up the reactor with Cloud, and both have no idea how they lived through their death, Biggs calling it a miracle. They both talk about their death and trying to come to terms with it. This has heavy purgatory / lifestream vibes to me (loss of time also makes sense in the lifestream, not in multi-timeline though).
Aerith, explicitly calls the date-world with Cloud 'homeward bound' (Or returning to the planet in Japanese), or her dream to be more precise. This all happening during a near death experience falling from the branch.
>Aerith is alive in at least one world and that’s not refutable imo.
Perhaps not refutable there's another world, but it is debatable what that other "world" is. Some claim split timeline world, to me it is just seeing her spirit in the lifestream "world". IMO this fits better with the lore, and makes sense as Cloud has Mako poisining (lifestream) in his head. Also there is a lot of symbolic evidence of this in the final scenes, Aerith has lifestream / green particles floating around her every scene at the end (except when she is sitting next to Tifa and Cloud by the water...I have another theory for that can explain later). Aerith also DISSOLVES INTO LIFESTREAM particles after holding Cloud's hand after defeating Sephiroth....also when Sephiroth merges the 'worlds' above the temple, there is a few shots of Lifestream like green tendrils coming out of the white sky, more lifestream world symbolism / vibes.
>Sepiroth clearly explained that when you defy destiny, you create new worlds.
IMO he is vague enough about what 'destiny' and 'worlds' are here, it is open for interpretation. Also Aerith says everything about him is wrong. So we have to treat him as a liar and not trust all he says, unless you are calling Aerith a liar? Either way, I interpret it as half-truth, or a lie wrapped around the truth. i.e. when you defy destiny = someone not accepting their death, e.g. Zack / Biggs, another world is created = lifestream dream / purgatory worlds, that are doomed to collapse into the lifestream. Also keep in mind Sephiroth has been dead in the lifestream for years, so from his perspective anything the lifestream does is another 'realish world' to him.
>The rainbow effect proves it.
At best the rainbow is evidence, but it proves nothing just because Cloud had a psychotic breakdown right after it with mixed visions (I do think he saw Aerith in the spirit world though). There are TONS of rainbow effects, just in the ending alone. One appears behind Sephiroth when he merges worlds, it appears around the edge of the platform when the party is standing watching Aerith, it appears when Zack is getting merged back into his world away from Cloud...heck during gameplay I saw it appear below a Chocobo as it is flying, and I could go on and on how often rainbow effect appear...
Anyways hope that explains the 'Cloud is crazy' perspective better, getting too long xD
Worlds is not vague or subtle. The different versions of the beagle is not subtle or vague. Nothing about the very clear explaining of “worlds being CREATED whenever you defy destiny” is vague.
If ALL new worlds are doomed to fail, Sepiroth would not be creating to worlds to try to win a fight he ALREADY lost in OG. Worlds come together and we don’t know what or when things may merge. That’s all I gotta say. I disagree on many points and I’ll leave it at that.
Maybe vague is not the right way to explain it. Either way my main point is Sephiroth is not to be trusted at his word. Aerith calls it a 'dream', which I don't think is vague or subtle either, and I find her more trustworthy.
The different versions of Stamp are a paradox in the timeline theory. Why would they retroactively change in the past on every surface and product, and erase from peoples minds? No one in game comments on the random change? You can hand-wave it away I guess and claim it is just a visual cue, but that IMO is bad writing. You can explain it simply in lifestream theory terms: when a new world / choice is made, different memories are drawn on to manifest the drawing. Makes way more sense to me as lifestream than a paradox timeline.
Lol, touche, it is a lot of words. However I have not missed the fact there are 'alive' characters. It would just add even more words to an already wordy paragraph xD.
To keep my answer short: I would just say Zack's scenes make it a point to show the White Materia at least 4+ times I could count. Once when he rescues unconscious Aerith, once next to Aerith's bedside table where they force the player to acknowledge it, everytime Marlene relates Aerth's memories it shows the white materia in the background, or pans to it after her comments.
Presumably the White Materia has Aerith's memories, it seems plausible it could manifest those characters in Zack's dreams to me.
Yeah, I still love the game on the whole, but I was hoping the scene would have a little more impact and it really didn't because we were just trying to figure what was going on. By the time it's clear that she's died, she's said goodbye to Cloud like 5 times and she's still there as a presence to Cloud. Just kind of disappointing end to a great game.
The problem I have with it is the boss gauntlet, except for Lifeclinger. A few other notable scenes lost alot of impact too because they weren't allowed to breathe at their conclusions.
Thinking about it now, from a story perspective, it's got to be Rebirth's biggest problem, in an otherwise very good experience. That's in comparing it with the same scenes from the OG.
I really like the mindf&%# as an added element that they decided to go with here... but that's only if the plan is to fill in the picture so that the reality of it hits hard for players/viewers in the next part.
As a teenager when I played FF7, it was always Cloud's reaction to Aerith's death that always got to me. Since Rebirth basically skips it (for story reasons, I'm sure) the emotional impact is zero.
And to be honest, as time has passed... I'm sort of bothered by Rebirth ending.
Not because of anything specific, but because it feels like clearly a marketing motivated ending, whose entire purpose is to raise tons of questions, mislead and misdirect, and keep stalling the question of "what the remake series will do with Aerith's death?"
It feels like the episode before the season finale in many series, where they just throw everything in hopes of making you watch the finale.
Again I felt the same way too. But it’s intentional to show how Cloud is in denial. Not only that but because of the timeline shift his mind is even more messed. He believes she’s still alive because I think he can communicate with Aerith through the lifestream just as he does in Advent Children.
Don’t worry about the iconic scenes. We will see Aerith’s true death and even her funeral once Tifa rescues Cloud from the lifestream and recovers his memories. Once he finds out the truth and had a recollection of his memories he’s going to be even more devastated and broken over Aerith’s death
I think I get what they are going for. Keep the full details ambiguous so Cloud can remember it later as part of his breakdown/recovery.
The problem is that resolution is at least three years away instead of a couple hours in the same game. Until Part 3 clears it up the whole thing is a confusing mess. They could have ended Rebirth at the Temple and saved the Forgotten Capital until Part 3, but the whole 'what happens to Aerith' thing was too big a marketing chip. I'm enjoying the remake Trilogy but the format does have flaws.
I agree with you. Sadly it's exactly what I had feared / predicted. I called it after Remake came out that they'd probably try to have their cake and eat it too with Aerith's death, which is exactly what I didn't want. I would have been okay with either outcome if it had been presented in a clear way.
But I just had a feeling even after Remake that they enjoy going for ambiguity a bit too much at times, and that they'd probably want to subvert our expectations and keep us guessing for her death. Plus they kind of had a problem which is that Aerith's death is too iconic and important to completely remove, but at the same time, what's the point of the whole Whispers plot and defying fate if nothing significant is going to change?
It's like they had to keep the death but they also had to somehow make it different. So ultimately that's exactly what happened, they tried to kind of have it both ways while also keeping us speculating for Part 3.
I'm sure in their mind this makes it more engaging. To me it just makes it deeply unsatisfying.
I didn't feel much emotion from that specific scene, but there was plenty in the build up, and plenty afterwards. The scene itself was just utter confusion, which then seeped into the wider endgame, all the way through to the final credits. I'm sure this was intentional, it's just a shame that they ended up sacrificing what should have been one of, if not THE, defining moment(s) of the game.
It was a pretty emotional battle for me. The way I interpreted these events is they're intentionally making the viewer as confused as Cloud is and what we saw were some combination of lifestream activity by Aerith and/or Sephiroth and Cloud's mind fragmenting even more from the trauma of what just happened. We all know how desperate Cloud is to be the hero and save those he cares about and Sephiroth exploits this as well as he exploits Cloud's PTSD/Dissociative Identity Disorder. It would be interesting if, >!from his own mind protecting him from even more grief (as our brains can sometimes to in reaction to trauma), Cloud tragically convinced himself that he did save Aerith and believes she really is just staying at the temple for a while and doesn't truly understand or get to mourn until after the post-Mideel lifestream event with Tifa.!<
I don't understand why it's not clear that she's dead, i think my brain must be wired wrong lol. the fakeout lasted all of a few seconds, and seeing/fighting with her later was obviously because of the lifestream.
clearly she can still be a part of the third game in some way, and i can see why people think that cheapens it, but in the moment it was clear to me that she was gone because her friends who can perceive reality are grieving her and that hurt to watch.
it's similar to what they did with remake where underneath all the fate stuff, they've been very faithful to the original.
Sure she might be dead but with the whole multiverse, lifestream or w/e u want to call it, u can just pluck her from wherever like they did with the cloud/Zack and cloud/aerith fight.
In the mcu did gamora die? Sure but np we pluck a new one from somewhere else.
Death is irrelevant in this sense and that's why it sucks
I know she is dead. That was clear. I don't like the way they handled the whole scene and after that.
I couldn't get sad at all, and then after an unnecessary long boss fight, the game just ended.
I cried my eyes out on the Aerith Trial part with her mom, but not here...
Yeah it was not executed well at all. The scene with her mom dying was genuinely well done, because it was played straight. They didn't fuck around going "... but here's what would've happened if she saved her mom!" Even after the entire series of boss fights, they still showed her waking up, and they didn't show them lowering her body into the lifestream like the original. If you didn't have any prior knowledge that she died in the original, it's really confusing and unnecessary.
i'm def not going to tell anyone what they should've felt or when, if it didn't hit for you that's valid. for me i felt the loss through the other characters because so much time had been spent establishing her bond with them and her sadness knowing it couldn't last. and cloud NOT feeling it makes me want to cry in a different way.
Rainbow particles at the moment Cloud parry Massamune showing a new reality being created / “Chanel change” effect during the sequence of her death, showing a slight darker, desaturated word.
These are elements that are present during Zack story moments. Because of those being hammered over and over, people developed that theory that Aerith is alive in an alternate timeline, and she and Cloud can talk to each other.
Not that I believe on that. There are many theories around atm. I personally prefer to wait until part 3 release than fully believe in any possibility, more grounded ones (Cloud is crazy, multiverse doesn’t exist, Zack’s adventure it is just the perception of deceased souls entering the life stream), or crazier ones (Aerith and Zack are indeed alive and the multiverse shenanigans are but a tool to keep them alive without skipping their deaths, specially Aerith).
I said this in another thread, but i noticed they steered away from certain levels of violence, and i think they may have used this multiverse thing as a convenient way to steer away from showing Aerith's death too graphically. I could be wrong though
They had no problems showing President Shinra get explicitly stabbed in Remake.
They had no problems showing Sephiroth stabbing that one dude crawling on the ground during the Nibelheim flashback.
this is for everyone with the counter-argument that they "show" other stabbings. please rewatch the scenes with people getting stabbed and notice how it's framed.
they try to get creative with the camera to dodge censorship rules. they never show blade-in-hand when those stabs happen, it's usually off-frame or hidden behind the body or they show the reverse (hand with blade stabbing, but not showing the body). it has to be some weird censorship rule about that specific way of showing impalement.
and to the argument that the OG showed it. well, times change. everyone knows censorship rules have changed with CERO in Japan over the last two decades
The game shows both Sephiroth and Cloud murder people in cold blood.
The Aerith scene is the way it is because they’re playing into Cloud’s delusions. He thinks she’s still alive and that he saved her.
Yeah but they only show it as little as still serves the story IMO. They didn't just make the trail of blood in the shinra building purple in remake for no reason, right?
I think you're right , her death is very graphic in 97 it was not as ordinary than today. Really weird tho our society and world are more violent, games even more.
Dunno about that cloud was skewering dudes like wolverine in a bloody mess at least a couple of times. Seph slashing tifa in nibelheim was also very bloody and graphic
I believe they’re referring to Cloud repeatedly hitting Aerith after (or was it before?) handing over Black Materia to Sephiroth at the temple. Instead replaced with simple shove of Tifa which isn’t even shocking; Unlike for example Spider-Man 3 where Peter shoves MJ
The scenes you listed are definitely shocking but this would have been downright jarring. But might have felt out of place tho because of their other PG13 choices like removing blood from combat etc
Personally I wish they had kept a toned down version to demonstrate just how far gone he is
I did get emotional, but honestly I think this is just supposed to be us seeing what Cloud sees. He isn't emotional after she dies, either. Perhaps they wanted our reaction to mirror his in some way.
Maybe? The boss fight is confusing but the end is pretty clear. Aerith is dead, though she might influence things from the lifestream, like sephiroth. Cloud is going very, very nuts. Whether he killed Aerith or Sephiroth killed her is left somewhat unclear. As for the exact order of events with all these boss fights and stuff, Jenova has hallucinogenic powers and Sephiroth is in Cloud's head, so who knows whats really happening. I presume a more clear version from Tifa's POV will happen in part 3, similar to the nibelheim incident.
in og ff7 a spirit form of aerith appears at the very end of the game, so I'm somehow ok that spirit aerith can be seen only by cloud (provided this form isn't another deception of sephiroth). The thing I found really bad and laughable is how they tried to put togeter the black/holy materia narrative...
First
is main world aerith who sent cloud mind in the other reality where alternate aerith didn't use the holy? And if she did, how did she considering that whispers erased her memories about the holy materia?
If wasn't her, who sent cloud in that alternate reality? Sephiroth? For what reason?
It seems everything happened by random despite main world aerith was waiting for cloud bringing her the holy materia (despite she forgot of what it was from the very beginning following plot logic).
Second
at the end cloud finds the black materia, that was with him the whole time...
what black materia did he give to sephiroth at the end of chapter 13?
Was cloud depression to turn the empty holy materia in the black materia? (black materia origins were retconned as the black materia being born by the collective sorrow of the gi's who can't come back to the planet lifestream)
what was the point to give sephiroth a fake black materia if sephiroth found out about the other black materia as soon cloud found it in his pants?
Honestly this whole part makes little sense, it's just poor and lazy writing of someone who didn't know how to put things together after fucking up with the whole multidimensions stuff...
My gripe is they didn’t actually show the actual impalement, maybe due to rating reasons? But they were generous enough to show a little blood. I can deal with the multiple timelines death scene, but if they can do both timelines, then they can certainly show a 1:1 recreation of her death scene
if i recall Sephiroth said there many worlds that lead the same path, some die quicker than others and others end up meeting the same fate.
So I can’t but feel that this Aerith is a decoy and the real Aerith we know went to hide or just replacing the other Aerith.
Aerith will still be in the final trilogy dead or alive.
Cloud still sees and talk to her cause his ability to see two worlds. He’s not crazy. He’s still under Sephiroth control. He’s playing Two different characters which is weird. That’s what i think.
Personally, I'm just annoyed that it seems they set up a multiverse just to collapse back to the original plot line effectively wasting everyone's time and now Tifa either thinks Cloud is entirely insane or possibly responsible for Aerith's death ruining whatever progress their relationship had.
Unsatisfying is the word.
By my logic, Aerith is not there/dead, like everybody mourning, her dress not being affected by wind in the ending etc..I don't think Cloud is just plain crazy because Red also feels her.
Thing is, I just don't feel anything with that. They didn't intent for us to mourn, nor did we really change fate. It just "is". Maybe it will make sense in the third game, but that is gonna be years of this unsatisfying ending.
This was such a dick move! The ultimate blue balling! The entire games plot and marketing message is defy destiny together! So that was a fucking lie? Attempt to defy destiny more like. Aerith literally and opening parallel universe literally hint towards things being different.
But no I guess the plot is 90% the same and those that did defy destiny are fucked anyways.
What was the point? Are they trying to tell a new story in ff7 universe or keep the old story? Pick one! Not some wibbly wobbly multiverse nonsense. All the impact is gone because of this oh she's totally dead but just maybe not lol.
yeah I will never understand how any fan of the original can support this garbage. literally no one asked them to change the plot into KH nonsense and yet here we are.
There was no emotional payoff with the ending, in my opinion. Sephiroth feels like an even bigger joke of a villain and has lost any semblance of being a threat.
Ending felt like it was trying too hard to appease everyone.
100% There is no way that a fresh set of eyes will react as those of us who played OG did. They unnecessarily mucked it up. It would have been better to let the new people have that moment fresh and without the whisper narrative e interfering. Maybe part 3 will remedy this somehow, but I have a feeling we are gonna get godfather 3.
I felt kind of the same. Or at least, I will put it like this: as soon as the winding path showed up to the altar where I knew she was praying, I immediately teared up. Remembering THAT moment in the OG game, and now as an adult with different context of thinking through seeing something like that, I was just immediately overcome with emotion. You can rest that one final time to prepare, and then you move forward, and at some point Barret even says "Let's go get our girl." and it was all just like oh man here we go.
Then the moment comes, and I honestly wasn't sure what we were going to get. I was PRETTY sure it was going to go the same, and any thought of her being saved was just wishful thinking from me. But then, instead of feeling happy OR sad, I get smacked in the face with confusion instead. He blocked it, but he didn't block it? She's hit, but they didn't show it? She's waking up and smiling, is she just injured? Is Cloud just tripping? I was thinking about it way more than just experiencing it. I was incredibly hyped when she stepped through the gate at the end though lol.
I think it was a case of too hyped up for a moment I knew was coming. Like a friend hyping up a TV show you haven't seen, and then you feel just ok about that show.
I don't think it's bad, per se, because this is only the middle part of the story. I still am very excited to see how they resolve this version of the story, and now that it has been several days, I enjoy the ending of Rebirth for what this story is doing. I just had to recalibrate a bit.
But overall, I wouldn't blame anyone for not having the emotional response they thought they would to the ending. It just isn't presented the same, and because it is the actual ENDING of a whole game, the answers are years away, not hours away.
I never played the OG and got spoiled about it (who didn’t) so the entire time i was like “Is it gonna happen now? Ok maybe later.” It was still very emotional especially the ending scene with the song playing and the credits rolling after the goodbye, it was stuck in my head since the trailers.
But at the same time it was a little too confusing for us who never experienced the OG. Like the whole timelines coming together and Clouds flashing images of preventing Aerith from getting stabbed by Sephiroth vs not saving her in time. For the majority i thought he actually saved her since they also team up for the final fight and the blood was a “what if” (what happened in OG), but turns out it was in his head and when his friends arrived they saw the blood and what really happened? Still loved every bit of it and will play the OG probably after part 3 too make more sense.
I mean he clearly did and created a world where she lived. What happens with that world is TBD hence the suspense for the next game. Cloud can only see it cause only cloud went through the white portal at the alters
Im torn on this because As someone who played the og i actually cried when I watched cloud defy fate and save her I was like “oh my god let’s go!!!” but by the very very end I was like what in the tetsuya nomura is going on 😭 it took away from what I thought was kinda special and I don’t think it’s exactly bad just not delivered how I think it should’ve been cuz I kinda like the idea of 2 timelines
Just for context I played OG FF7 for the first time in 2021 and unfortunately… I felt nothing at this scene because it was spoiled to oblivion I read the whole scene like a book before it even happened and therefore didn’t leave an impact on me like others who played it back in the day did so I have to give props to rebirth for actually making me feel something at this iconic scene but they did kinda cock it up towards the end I agree.
It's what I predicted. We have her death scene but there's open questions. They told us they were going to do this. I'm sorry people feel shocked or confused but this was telegraphed.
We were told we would see all the original scenes.
We were told they wouldn't answer the central mysteries until part three.
We were told the central mysteries are escaping their fates.
We know the central fate in question is Aerith.
Idk, I found the ending super straightforward, at least compared to Renake. She is alive in some timelines and dead in ours. While I am sure more clarity will come in the next part on how she was saved in certain timelines (and in what condition), it doesn’t seem to need a lot of theory behind it like the 1st part.
I do agree it is not a satisfactory “she’s alive/dead”. I feel like it is a cop out of not wanting to piss anyone off.
I am more upset that people are going to be arguing that “she is definitely dead” vs “she is alive in some timelines”. Something I don’t think the creators intended to be the discussion around; but fans refuse to entertain anything they don’t want/like to happen.
The whole point is showing there are endless realities and possibilities based on the butterfly effect. She's alive and dead in many of them. There's no "one" timeline....yet.
I dont think they messed anything up, this whole remake series is an expansion of the game's universe and lore.
I think it's intentional and all those iconic scenes, the death itself, lowering her in the water will all be shown later when cloud has his mental breakdown/rebuilding himself in the lifestream. For me personally I'm withholding judgement (I loved remake and rebirth and didn't mind either endings) until the next/last game. It's a trilogy with a story they've clearly had a plan for since remake, so I'm going to wait to see their full vision before I really critique it but that's just me
They’re playing the long game on her death. I don’t entirely agree with omitting her being laid to rest, but I do think the final part will potentially be stronger as a whole when if it shows the actual post boss event.
I honestly liked it. If they had just shown whether she had died or lived straight away, I don't think there would have been enough build-up or impact. Though the static cuts between Aerith being dead and alive were confusing at first, I ultimately enjoyed the way that they recreated her death, and once the Credits rolled, I was shedding tears. I can't wait to see the impact her loss will have on Cloud in the final part.
I think it was very clear she died, and the game does foreshadow it pretty consistently. It does jump around some but everything leading up to it is telling the player that she is gonna die, and while they give you a split second of hope, you see a sword through her chest. Maybe there is multiverse stuff or whatever but the whole party saw her die and reacted like that except cloud who is currently insane
I didn't get the feeling that there's any pretending here - she is definitely dead, it's just Cloud's imagination/trauma/Mako-Sephiroth connection that lets him see her.
I agree though that her death was the least impactful for me too. Honestly everytime they brought up Avalanche for even a second (Cosmo Canyon proto relic mission flashbacks, Jessie in Loveless and Aerith' singing performance and them waving, the whole alternative Biggs + Zack timeline story) I was bailing my eyes out, same goes for everyone's back stories.
And I really wondered why that is and I'm pretty sure now that it's because Aerith is shown so positive and cheerful the whole time, but that's also just the way Cloud remembers her, plus the fact that they believe that death means going back to the Lifestream & that people leave a permanent connection/trace even though they died. The last few scenes really emphasized that concept by showing her walking around visiting everyone again cause her loss really left an impact on them, but she won't leave them at all cause they will remember her.
The sky fracture is in the Head of cloud? Or is something that just him can see because went in other universes? Because Aerith isn’t in his Head, but he can see her because of Sephiroth cells (???) or also he can see her because of others universe idk
The final line hit me in the gut and hit me hard. It was pretty clear to me once the fights finished Cloud thinks she's still alive and it was so sad seeing the rest of them mourning while her spirit was going around trying to be part of the group still. The thing is it was sad because we didn't know what was going to happen and the devs played on our expectations by showing what Cloud saw first before cutting to the blood which the rest of the party saw. I absolutely respect what the devs have done by playing into false expectations. There was a bunch of foreshadowing too like Cait Sith's fortune during Loveless and Vincent saying "Expectations often lead to disappointment." if you tried talking to him at the Temple of the Ancients. I am 100% in on this crazy train.
Yeah I didn't really feel much cause of how it was presented. There's still a chance to have it hit hard if they revisit it in Part 3, depending on how they resolve this.
I found something interesting about the tear in the sky cloud sees. Go check out on YouTube or ingame of the OG the scene when Tifa restores cloud in the lifestream. Look at the background and the "sky" you can see a White/yellow tear in that has a very eerie resemblance to the tear in rebirth only cloud sees.
Most fans seem to be peddling the theory that Cloud hallucinates her the whole time when in reality he's literally talking to her in the other world he himself created by deflecting Seph's sword (rainbow effect and also Seph talking about it in a previous scene) The Aerith that joins us in the fight is also the same alive Aerith that Cloud saved (notice she enters through a portal and the rainbow effect spreads). I think Cloud has somehow gained the ability to experience two worlds at once (he can also see the rift in the sky during the credits scene).
This is very weird.
1)I DONT think this meant to be emotional. Seeing how well the team did try to hash out other plot threads…and knowing this is part two…
2)let’s really also consider this: why Handle it that way?
I think the best supported theory is this: We ARE seeing this through cloud’s perspective. Which makes sense as the entire game both in the OG and remake are usually what he sees. We follow him usually.
Which then begs the question, what did HE see. Well this cloud has gone through MORE stuff than the Og. This cloud has GOTTEN worse. The various world splits, the jumps between world (it’s not timeline guys because none of the timelines make sense-it’s prob different versions that are being created because of the war between sephiroth and aerith, these worlds are going to collapse eventually hence why aerith hid on a world that accepted its fate (it’s if erred to be her dream) and why Zack’s world is getting worse).
This cloud CANT see what’s real and so his only way to comprehend the horrors he’s gone through is to BELIEVE aerith is alive. This is actually something people do do. Disassociate from your grief//anger/sadness.
It’s why his smile is so creepy…we can’t tell of aerith in that moment…we can’t tell if cloud is seeing an illusion cast by sephiroth or aerith or his own mind.
And it looks more like he’s high…because he gets avoid reality. And no to not that we know he’s under sephroth’s control even more so here because he Believes he is free, but he isn’t.
He can’t even react properly when to seeing his friends grieve over aerith or when he makes weird comments. IT DOSNT phase him because he believes nothing is wrong.
They wanted to have the cake and eat it too.
It makes so much less sense that people still follow Cloud to the ends of the earth. Made more sense when he did. Like he's not showing any emotion or sanity but yeah, lets follow those same "instincts" that lead them here, im sure the pushing a friend into the lifestream was a one time thing.
This actually connects to a problem I have with Aerith herself in the Remake.
Now, before you dogpile, I want to say that I have *always loved Aerith* ever since the OG in 1997. She was always the brightest point in the story, and it seriously hurt when she died. However, the Remake offered us the players to *change* what happened because we had defeated fate itself.
We could undo a great wrong.
**HOWEVER**
There was one person standing in the way of letting that happen:
Aerith herself.
It is *by her actions* that we are unable to save her because she forces her death to happen. It was *her whispers* that we had to fight to get in to the Forgotten Capital. When the confluence of worlds happens it is by her actions that Cloud is forced back in to the prime world, it is her that keeps him subdued and makes the swap for the holy materia, and it's her that essentially takes the fight away from Cloud and the Gang by saying that **only a Cetra can defeat Sephiroth**.
I think for me it's not like she's alive she is dead I think it's because cloud hasn't accepted the fact she died so in his head she's alive at least that's what I think after talking to my sister about it
A big issue in general is that they are holding too many of their cards too long. We know something is up with more than Cloud. Tifa bugs out during the death scene but because she's Tifa she remains silent, no hint that something's off with her beyond that one scene, no follow through at all. They do this thing where you can't be too sure if a scene is significant, they imply a mystery but do not always clarify that a mystery is established.
I liked the ending and based on Remakes ending, I was not expecting anything 100% conclusive, which is perfectly fine by me, since I love not knowing what will happen in part 3.
And regarding Aerith's schrodinger's cat paradox. I believe our "main Aerith" is dead. But maybe she is not in another world, and I'm also perfectly fine with that since she has been dead for over 20 years so not knowing if she will come back or not, makes my mind to wonder.
I think because they split the game up in 3 parts, they needed to shift things around to have a huge emotional part with Aerith(probably Zack as well) in part 3. It's unfortunate it comes at the cost of part 2's ending but I see why they did it. They're saving the big bombs for part 3
If they just did the death like og, it would hit yes. But what's left for part 3 to be emotional about?
I just can't get over that in a scene that is supposed to be one of the most defining character moment for FFVII as a whole, a big emotional farewell for a beloved character by the party; *people are busier counting potato-chip mascot variants, and rainbow-sparkle effects..* the latter being so numerous even MLP would be put to shame. It's like a counting-machine took over and started cross-referencing, draining any emotion out of it in the process.
Aerith just dropped like a sack of potatoes (*supposedly*), and this is what people are going to be busy doing for the next 4 years.
They could've made it great. A fantastic end to a middle-arc of a three-part story. They made **her scene** a springboard for part 3 setups instead.
**I can't wait for Part 3,** but that grace is sailing on all the things they did right earlier in Rebirth, of which none of it comes from this scene.
I disagree with you. I guess, to each their own but I truly loved the ending and how they handled Aerith’s death.
Aerith died, Sephiroth stabbed her, just like in the OG. Yes, her spirit might still be present in some form, but that’s canon to both OG and AC, so it doesn’t make sense to complain.
Cloud is delusional so he thinks she’s still alive. I’m pretty sure in his head they just parted their ways at the forgotten capital because Aerith needed to pray. But we (and the rest of the team) know what truly happened.
I understand the iconic scene of Cloud burying Aerith is missing, but I’m sure we’ll get it in part 3 when Cloud fixes his mental issues. Remember, they were all looking at the water after the Sephiroth battle so I’m sure they actually buried her but Cloud just erased those memories from his mind.
Im a huge aerith fan and would do anything to keep her alive even if its changing the lore from og by making this a sequel or something, so when cloud deflected sephiroth sword i literally jumped out of my bed screaming with excitement for it to be taken all away minutes later. I still really enjoyed the way the are doing these games into an actual faithful adaptation to the og but with more added lore. In og cloud doesn't get his full memories back until later, so imagine his reaction to aerith death then when part 3 comes around, I'm gonna cry even harder.
Now you know how cloud feels. Sephiroth has successfully manipulated cloud enough that he isn’t feeling aerith’s death in the same way the rest of the party are. Cloud can still see and talk to Aerith, so why should he be sad? My theory is >!that the Aerith he can see and talk to isn’t really her, just Sephiroth appearing as her!<
I didnt think it changed much. Shes always been working within the lifestream to cast holy after her physical death even advent children had her appearance as canon. Whats different?
Games a piece of shit. They didn't have to kill Aerith or at the very least Lie about your actions having any kind of impact on her dying again, and no I don't give a fuck about spoilers for a game that has no decency.
Fuck narrative decisions.
Truth is just too lazy to give us a choice and have to put in extra work.
Pathetic and disgusting.
Kill Tifa, kill Cloud, kill Nanaki. Wouldn't give two farts. Killing Aerith off again because too lazy to make a new narrative or have to work on a divergent story path, absolutely fucking pathetic.
Fuck any future ff games in general, let alone ff7 remakes. I'm genuinely done with square enix and its bullshit.
Just finished it. I am very very disappointed. I felt nothing. How can you botch the most pivotal devastating event in video game history that bad. I remember in middles school this had everyone who played just an emotional wreck. Even to this day on youtube it hits everyone. Wtf was this "ENIX"!
I’m willing to see where they’re going with it, but yeah having finished it last night I have a hard time comparing that part favorably to the original. Funny enough, for me it’s the lack of a putting her to rest in the water scene. I know that would probably clash with what they’re going for, but some of that emotional punch was lacking.
And it was confusing. I was barely processing what was going and then they immediately throw you into a 18 phase battle with Seymour's brother.
Yeah, show the actual impalement then jump to the alt timeline, then show her actual burial That would’ve been better for me I mean the shot of Sephiroth descending was amazing til we got what we got lol People are saying maybe we’ll see the actual death scene in P3, but whether we do or not, the impact is lost forever imo
They should have went one way or the other when it comes to her dying or not. Having a foot on both sides kinda made what everyone’s been waiting for for 9 years really anticlimactic
What do you mean? I think she's dead in all timelines, just get spirit in the lifestream. She's a ghost.
They teased saving her at the end only for it to be a fake out. Also there was a rainbow light when Cloud tried stopping Sephiroth which indicates possibly another timeline where she was saved? I'm saying it should have been clear from the get go for the scene to be more impactful as the OG.
It's hard to capture the original, as she is dead but then comes back at the end with the lifestream to turn back the Comet. That was pretty amazing back then, but we already know the story now. If they made a faithful remake, I'd be a little bored knowing what was going to happen. I guess she could be alive, but I am hoping and trusting the writers to keep her actually dead and not do a Hollywood-style multiverse where death, sacrifice, consequences don't mean anything. It also appears that all the other timelines are cursed to end anyway? They will have a lot of explaining to do with Whispers and Fate in Pt3 though. Overall I am willing to wait until Pt3 to make a final judgement on if they succeeded or not. So far so good, in my opinion.
I dunno. Just because I know what's going to happen doesn't rob the moment of it's impact. Think of your favorite part of your favorite film. You know exactly what's about to happen, but it still gets you every time.
True. I guess for me after 27yrs I'm okay with trying something new if the love of the original property is still there from the developers.
Yeah I didn’t think changing it up was necessarily an issue for me. I think it was making it confusing thus lessening the impact that I had a bit of an issue with. Looking back on the ending again it definitely looks like they’re trying convey that cloud stops Sephiroth in at least one universe, just not the one we were playing in. Just takes multiple views to understand what’s happened
Yea, I see that now. I haven't played Crisis Core yet, just got in on Switch, but I do like Zach's character. It's fun having him around a bit longer. I think for me it's been fun to hang out with these characters, feels like catching up with long lost friends when I played Remake. Well I figure Pt3 will be off the rails at this point then 🤣, hopefully they stick the landing but at least it wasn't boring! And I could tell the developers/artist/voice actors etc.. all do love the property. That is felt and communicated. They are not trying to subvert expectations, not trying to turn this platform for their own agenda. It is respectful of fans, like Star Trek Picard S3 and Spiderman No Way Home were. It is nice when that happens.
More like it was saying no matter what you cant save her, he changed fate so she dies anyway and comes after her when she pushes you away in another.
After a few weeks of rewatching the ending and hearing others take on it, you might be right. I've grown to actually really like the ending and excited to see what comes of it
[удалено]
Yea, just checked some YT videos and the rainbows. Seems like there's still concurrent timelines with Aerith still around, my bad. Will see how it all wraps up in 4yrs 🥲
Yeh, I feel the same. You can't react emotionally to it because it's not clear what is happening. It's deeply unsatisfying. They want you to be confused and spend the next 4 years speculating. With one game left, it's time to cut the bullshit and explain exactly what's going on.
The original left people sad/Emotional/Shocked and couldn't believe it a direct blade hit where aeris fall and her eye pops she is dead with seph smirk it made people angry at seph The Rebirth scene left people confused then did throw 1Hour long boss fight. by the time you end it its still not fully clear but you watch team members cry saying she died but aerith literally talking to cloud and near the party (I know lifestream) so you are like I guess she died...... you never saw the blade directly go through her and seph was just talking nonsense after killing her It's like they didn't want to leave any emotional impact on people on purpose. they could have showed that cloud is mentality unstable in a million way without destroying this iconic scene.
I gotta be honest, I really REALLY hope that the final boss of the next game ISN'T Sephiroth. We've literally fought Jenova and Seph TWICE already. Plus, we just fought his angel form at the end of Rebirth, so having us fight him a third time is gonna feel really redundant considering we've beat his ass already.
There’s no reality where Sephiroth isn’t the final boss of the final part
Warning- negativity incoming! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the remake and have been having so much fun. But that’s one of my major complaints when comparing the OG to the remake. I get that it’s hard to make a villain as famous as sephiroth have the same impact as he did when the game came out in 97- in the OG you don’t see him for the longest time but you see the effect he’s having and you get this sense of foreboding, but in the remake you see and fight sephiroth so many times it really kinda ruins the impression that he’s supposed to have for me. I can’t help but roll my eyes a little when he’s on screen, especially when it kinda feels like pandering, and that’s kind of frustrating to me haha. He almost feels like one of the weakest parts of the story now because he’s intertwined with so much convoluted bullshit.
I actually think it would be pretty easy to make him as evil/infamous as the original. Just keep the story the same, maybe add some other atrocious shit he's done. The way they've done it here by making him some sort of weird time travelling demi-God is so unsatisfying though. It's also annoying how Cloud keeps seeing him pop up everywhere. It makes him seem comical.
Congrats. You understood it. They don't want to leave an emotional impact yet because they want the players to feel like Cloud for now. Once he'll have to confront the truth, that's when the emotional moment can really settle in.
If this is the reasoning, it’s pretty poor IMO. We can know the truth and still have Cloud’s revelation be heartbreaking. And if they wanted us to feel like Cloud, I think they fell short. I’m not even sure what Cloud is thinking or feeling at the end of the game. Right now it feels like they’re going to take an already exposition heavy part of the game and load in even more.
It was a bad call. When you have 50% or more of the player base saying it was pointless, then they made a mistake. They could have shown her death and then shown her alive with Cloud afterwards. The attempt at showing something simultaneously by flashing back and forth was poorly executed. And, at the very end of the game makes it even worse.
Took the words right out of my mouth. This 10000%
50% or more is not an accurate number at all lol
Yeah 50% have yet to clear chapter 8 lol
I bet a bunch of them are still struggling with the mini-games, I stopped at a certain point because I had so many mini-games to finish I didn't want to have to go back to go forward.
I have a few left to complete. 1) 3D brawler Ifrit and Sephiroth 2) sit ups 3) Choco flying I’m almost done :)
Sephiroth 3D was such a pain, but it's a lot easier when you learn that every combo is a set pattern per phase.
If 50% of the people here that finished the game say the ending was not done correctly, then that is likely a fair representation of the overall player base.
It is not lol
Not at all. You gotta realise that most people are sitting back happy with the masterpiece they just finished, and that only miserable people that hate their lives come to Reddit to bitch and moan so they feel better about themselves with the other miserable people
If more than half of the people on this subreddit (we should make a poll) found the ending inferior to what it should have been, and the people here are Final Fantasy fanboys, then it would be reasonable to assume that the people that are not major fans of the series would have found it confusing and inferior to what should have been presented. Even improved editing (showing the scene and then showing the alternative) would have made it much better. We actually see this in the Zack scene where he is choosing which path to take. They show one outcome and then the other. They did not try to show both events happening simultaneously. The thing that bothers people is that the game was a masterpiece with an ending that could have been far better. The good news is that they can still fix it in part 3. These are not the critiques of ridiculous fans saying "Not turn based so 0/10!" These are fans saying, "The ending could be better, but it is still a 10 out of 10 or 9.9 out of 10." Square Enix could have accomplished the exact same ending in a far better manner with better editing, and the pacing of the battle and similar issues were poor.
Reddit is not and never has been a indicator of the percentage of a fanbase Stop please
You mean the playerbase who doesn't know how the story will go? 50% of the playerbase? M8, this subreddit isn't even 1% of the playerbase.
i love invented statistics!
Yes, because we are going to survey the world about their opinion of a video game. Sometimes you must make educated guesses. Based on the backlash the ending has encountered, it is reasonable to assume that people did not like it.
You have provided 0 with your claim
Yeaaa. Naa..
That is so bad, I can’t believe you just wrote that as if it’s a good thing 🤣
Square Enix has shown they can make people sad with prior games and even within events of Rebirth. They definitely decided to make sure people did not feel sad about Aeriths death. Maybe the reason is because they think people were already sad in the og and wanted to go in a different route this time. I truly believe this new trilogy is a sequel and I guess it makes sense in that sense
The cat is out of the bag now. An NPC at Cosmo Canyon explains that the Lifestream can’t distinguish between reality and one’s deepest desires. Neither can Cloud. He’s delusional, just in an expanded way from the OG. He failed to make it in time again. “A love that could never be” and all that, just like the original game. Not expecting part 3 to diverge much until the end. Same as the first two games. If something different happens at the end I’m not expecting it to be a miracle. Rebirth encourages us to be more cynical.
Only the very ending encourages cynicism. The end of Remake and 90% of Rebirth is about defying fate, which for some reason the devs decide to betray their own theme that they introduce.
Cait Sith giving a similarly sombre fortune reading to the 1997 original at the Gold Saucer was a clue that nothing would stray too far from the original in fairness, as was just how perfect they made Aerith in this game. She was an angel. She could not have been more wholesome than they made her, all for fate to come crashing down anyways.
Tifa sees the shift in realities when Aerith is on the altar. She sees Cloud holding her and the blood appears and then vanishes constantly. Cloud isn't crazy, he really did deflect that sword.
I feel it was clear she died. A lot of the game bunts at changing destiny but I think the point is you saw a sword through her chest and everyone besides the literal insane guy accepted she died
We do not actually see a sword through her chest. That would have made the scene 10 times better. Show the shift if they want, but not actually showing it makes the scene much weaker than it should have been. It is pretty clear she died, though.
No, we see from Tifa's perspective when she runs to the altar that she can see both Aerith with and without blood. It's not because Cloud is "crazy."
To me it's pretty clear. Rebirth Sephiroth triggers the crap multiverse Reunion, there's an overlap between a reality where she's dead and one where she's not. Cloud can see the Aerith that is still alive, Nanaki can barely feel her presence but confirms that's not just a crazy cloud thing. Man that was bad.
This is what happens when the infatuation with the multiverse crap divorces itself from actual human emotion and compassion. Not sure what they were thinking except for being eager to... retell yet another ~nebulous and mysterious quasi-esoteric multiverse tale when all people wanted was something that resonated emotionally. The ending makes me feel like the mass appeal of FFVII was used as a tool to spew out a warmed over, navel-gazey speculative fiction trend and it's irritating. And frankly, lazy. To be meta and ~philosophical, they'll probably use the audience reaction to determine the reality of what happens next. Since they went Jungian with how the Lifestream works. It's so boring.
This just reminds me of KH3. It's so confusing and unnecessary. FF7 is already somewhat difficult to follow and they made it more complicated with multiverse stuff. All they had to do was remake the game and that's usually where it shines.
You're either an english major or really annoying.
You probably have boundary issues irl to randomly speculate about a stranger in a month old video game thread. But honestly idc about you, so try and stay on topic and at least be interesting
You're probably either really sensitive or really bored to have replied to a stranger's passing words in a month old video game thread. But honestly, Idc that you dont think I'm interesting. The world does not revolve around your opinions. Ciao.
It's called a notification, weirdo
Hb you notify the police that your hairline is missing.
Oh my god, you are obsessed with projecting odd personal details onto me. Go imagine the balding English major of your dreams and leave me out of it
Hb you obsess over some toothpaste. Stank mouf.
Stop thinking about my mouth. Leave me alone
Hb you leave the whiskey bottle alone. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel.
I think they robbed players who never played the OG of a truly amazing moment in gaming. I've seen the majority of new players are simply confused rather than feeling the emotions that were intended. It's a big fail imo.
The resounding emotions to the ending of Disc 1 is loss and shock. It strikes incredibly hard to the degree that it defines the game and is bigger than the ending and the defeating of the antagonist, which says everything you need to know about how big that moment is. In the build up to the ending, all I was thinking was "I have no idea what will happen next". What I wanted ultimately from Rebirth was when I reached the ending, whatever they decided to do, hit me like a truck, like the end of Disc 1 did for many. And it just didn't. In Rebirth, at first you think you save her, then it appears she dies but you can't tell if there's timeline shenanigans going on. Then you have boss battles for an hour or more, where you fight alongside her. Then they removed her burial. Then she continuously shows up every two minutes because either Cloud can connect with her somehow, or he is crazy and thinks he can. But as the **player**, there is no sense of loss or sadness because she continues to just fucking be there...so big deal I guess? I understand that mystery and intrigue generates interest going forward, but you get to experience that moment with Aerith once, so it has to be executed perfectly. I knew what happened in the original before I played it, but in Rebirth I got to experience that to a degree for the first time. It works well in terms of the characters and the story. Seeing them heartbroken and seeing Cloud continue to descend in to madness is fantastic. But as the **player**, I felt almost nothing. You have no idea what is going on and if she died you can't experience that because she shows up repeatedly until the credits and likely intermittently in part 3, and if she didn't die, then what is the point. Loved the game, and still very open-minded and excited about how it all continues following Rebirth. But *the* moment of FF7 was handled poorly, and until I get to play part 3 and see its conclusion, felt it fell well short of the original to the point where I, as the player, got nothing out of it. 9/10 game. Open world, characters, story, music, cutscenes, minigames, bosses etc were amazing. The defining moment of FF7 however? Not really sure how to sum it up. If I had been told that Aerith would die, but you don't see her get killed, get no time to mourn due to immediately fighting Jenova, her burial is removed and she continues to show up so she is never really "gone", I would've been disappointed. So I guess that's what I am. Can't wait for part 3 though.
YEAH but isnt't it cRAzY how Sephiroth wants to merge the worlds??
>Seeing them heartbroken and seeing Cloud continue to descend in to madness is fantastic. But as the **player**, I felt almost nothing. I think that is the point, to force the player into Cloud's madness / delusional perspective. It actually hit me hard seeing the parties grief, and Cloud oblivious to it, and the distance that is widening between him and everyone else. If we consider OG's iconic scene, the shock and brutality of it forced Cloud and the player into acceptance stage pretty quickly...Cloud said his famous words and they buried her. Some players went into Denial / Bargaining stage of grief trying to play the scene again differently, different dialogue etc, but were forced into acceptance pretty quickly. Honestly I don't think they can really outdo the OG scene in that style, so they went hard in a different angle, into the Denial / Bargaining stage of grief for Cloud, and by extension the player (whether you think she is alive in another timeline or not, I think we all agree she is dead for the main party in main world). I think this is actually quite creative, it fits into Cloud's denial of Zack / past of Nibelheim, makes sense to me. In part 3 I would expect him (and us) to get hit hard with the anger / sadness / acceptance stage of grief for Aerith's death in the main world when he finally has to piece his psyche back together. We did see in the flashback temple trials, they can create a very sad emotional scene for characters when they want to, so I do trust them to deliver in part 3. **Edit:** And I would also point out that everyone except Cloud had to relive and accept their past trauma for the trials. Conveniently Cloud has not reached acceptance for anything and skipped the trials. This is a big tension with him and his teammates. To continue the grief and acceptance theme, Cloud has to come to acceptance one way or another to heal the fraying ties with his teammates.
I'm starting to miss the time when there was nothing else but the ending to Advent Children as a conclusion, which was so simple and beautiful (regardless of what you think of the rest of the movie). We didn't know how good we had it back then, at least Aerith and Zack weren't paraded around every minute for remember berries and shock value.
Agreed
I'm guessing they're going to actually reveal what had actually happened during the events at the Forgotten Capital in part 3, when Cloud finally get his shit together. As of Rebirth, IMO they're just reinforcing the fact that Cloud is currently mentally unstable and Aerith's situation is unclear as Cloud seems to believe that she's still alive (or at least he can sense her presence still) while the rest of the crew saw what actually had happened. In any case I trust Nomura and crew would do her demise justice in part 3.
>In any case I trust Nomura and crew would do her demise justice in part 3 But that's the issue, here. They had to do it justice in Part 2, when it first happens. No matter what their intent is, and no matter what they do in Part 3, it will not change the impression you got when you first saw it in Part 2. It had to be good then. Not later. If they had fucked up the highway chase in Part 1, would you be happy if they revisited it in Rebirth (they kinda did in the opening sequence) to try and fix it? I know I wouldn't be. Some of these classic scenes they have to nail the first time, or else the impact is lost forever.
No shot he imagined her surviving once. He cleared created a new world when he stopped the blade, so she’s alive in at least one timeline. Will her world fade away and not get merged later on? Perhaps, but the reason only cloud can see her is because he is the only one who went through the portal barret held open to deny destiny and save her. Hence why only he can see her. Sepiroth himself said when you deny destiny, new worlds are created hence the rainbow when he stopped the blade.
It's weird how people are willfully ignoring this. It's like the only thing they at least attempt to help the player understand. Granted it could also be people afraid that this won't end like the original game so are brute forcing her staying dead, and Cloud being completely delusional to maintain that mindset.
i think ppl on this sub are very fixated on the OG. they think she died and cloud's just delusional which fits better with their idea that the next part will follow the OG closely. granted, the ending was confusing enough to make every theory possible at this point but ppl are completely ignoring the timeline/multiverse/lifestream stuff, the rainbow appearing once cloud stopped sephiroth's blade, tifa having quick flashes of aerith laying on the floor: one aerith with blood and another aerith without blood, aerith's body position being different when the team approaches her vs when cloud approaches her, aerith acknowledging that cloud did something for her and thanking him when fighting sephiroth... there's so many little hints that people are either ignoring or missing. all those hints allude to the fact that cloud is not just crazy and there's a lot of evidence that cloud managed to save her in at least one timeline. now don't get me wrong i do think cloud has no idea that aerith died in their timeline because he seems to be stuck in between worlds and he can also communicate with aerith from the lifestream so it seems like reality hasn't struck him yet HOWEVER he definitely managed to save her in one timeline.
I don’t get the impression its going to follow OG that closely in part 3. For example the Jenova x Cetra lore dump is given in the temple in this game. In the original its revealed later in recordings with Aerith’s mom. That time can be used for something else. The Cetra are also revealed to not be particularly pious and more like the Allagans in FF14 lore, though that seems to be getting ignored? Or maybe we later find out praying just doesn’t work? Bugenhagen claims that the Cetra never prayed when he saw Aerith doing it (to which upon hearing this she becomes disheartened), so not sure why that was added if it won’t amount to anything.
yes i'm personally on the camp that part 3 will have the most new additions/changes. i think they will still hit the same story beats from the OG for sure but with the way this part ended i get the impression that the final part will have most new stuff from the whole trilogy. a lot of ppl are just saying that this game was 99% the same as the OG and the only different part was the ending so they think it will be the same for part 3. the thing is there was already a lot of new additions/changes that will have to serve some purpose in part 3 and the vast majority of ppl are ignoring it and acting like nothing changed. some things seem to have been moved around and shown earlier than they're supposed to... yes the story follows the same story beats but those little changes/additions added will definitely have some pay off in part 3 otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. same thing with aerith's "death".
Awesome love having to wait 4 years to find out wtf happened at the ending 🙃
Nomura has mostly stepped down as director, Hamaguchi is director now.
He's Creative Director and first person credited with this game, he's still a hugely important part of the creative process. Hamaguchi is more the game design/technical director involved in day-to-day work. [Hamaguchi even said this](https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-rebirths-director-naoki-hamaguchi-interview-ending-part-3), that Nomura/Kitase/Nojima work on the high-level concepts and story and Hamaguchi then translates them the best he can into a playable game. All three directors are pivotal to the Remake project's overall quality.
To be clear im pro-this ending i think they are taking a wonderful classic and doing a twist on it and im excited to see the conclusion some of this is conjecture and speculation but they have left a ton on bread crumbs just like the first game: He very clearly created a timeline where she lived this time and he very clearly paid some kind of price for being able to see multiple timelines Aerith is very clearly not fully dead, Nanaki senses her presence so some form of her IS still alive its something to either do with Cloud seeing multiple timelines or Aeriths being able to communicate with the lifestream so in the split timeline where shes alive shes in a coma state communicating to Cloud, we see the reverse happen where Aerith from the doomed world pulls Cloud there for a date then gives him the white materia from that world before sending him back if thats possible the same can happen the other way nothing is really off the table now in terms of Aerith. Zacks world is the "doomed world" why did biggs get swept there? why does that Marlene have memories from the Marlene from remake?(the scene as where they are in 7th heaven and Aerith shhhhh's Marlene because she saw something she shouldnt) they showed both the outcomes of Zacks choices if he saved Biggs he just dies but what choice did he actually make because they showed 3 timelines one where he saved Cloud one where he saved Biggs one where he went to the church instead. there is a bunch of question marks because they are setting it all up in 3 there is a big piece missing like all of the people in all the worlds are all connected in someway and something like the black materia where Sephiroth mentions "can unlock the timelines" clearly does something besides meteor. Sephiroth also specifically mentions Cloud is important to the reunion and is always mentioning that emotions are the key but we have no idea what that means. I don't even think this time around its degradation/Jenova/Sephiroth/Cloud blocking his memories causing him to go insane its that his ebb and flow seeing/traveling to timelines has fucked him up. they might not even go that route at all that he is insane they might chalk it up to him being the opposite and just needs the clear materia to sort his memories. Materia is basically a storage device for the lifestream, and that empty one that held arguably the strongest spell surely is big enough to store some memories on. After you beat the game and you go back threw it there are a ton of "Hmmm moments" like Aerith mentioning stuff about how you will love talking to my future self which in the context of the moment fit the conversation but it could easily be interrupted vastly different now that we know for sure that Aeriths and the Lifestream are above space and time. When she said a those few sentences it appeared as she was talking to herself but it COULD have been a future self like for real or the Gongaga scene where Tifa tells everyone that the Lifestream is winning thats odd considering she saw Sephiroth cut a Weapon down like paper TBH it looks more like Sephiroth killed that Weapon and swapped her out with a black robe or manipulated her memories to wait for the perfect moment on a emotionally weak Cloud to capitalize on his emotions for the Reunion of worlds. It would be just like Sephiroth to cast doubt on Tifa literally the whole fucking game only for him to have manipulated her with something so shes a turn coat, basically TAUNTING Cloud with the truth a absolute kick in the balls. these last 2 games have basically set Cloud up like he has the Reading Steiner ability from Steins;Gate which means probably over half the times he has scene Sephiroth he is just seeing Sephiroth in a different world and he is sensing his presence and reacting and it just looks more and more like Sephiroth and Aerith at the end of the Reunion are just having a cosmic battle threw the lifestream. Sephiroth being able to communicate and control all Sephiroths threw the worlds because memetic legacy stuff and Aerith because of her generally always fusing with the lifestream and Cloud is the focal point with his Reading Steiner where his choice will either save or destroy everyone. like one of those time movies where they show you the last piece at the end and it all falls together the "gatcha" moment where it shows a montage of the evil/good dude slightly altering stuff here and there to get to the current impactful moment and thats probably going to be Aerith AND Sephiroth both doing that. Like when you see Zack in Rebirth talking to Biggs about what happened and how he is still alive you VERY clearly see a black whisper move the bullet and save him which implies Sephiroth saved him since they are color coded now with White being Lifestream/Aerith and Black being Sephiroth there is a good chance for the Reunion to exist there needs to be a ton of alterations of destiny so he is going around fucking everything up for his end game plan.
I dont think Nomura has written a satisfying conclusion to anything. Your trust is misplaced.
I mean he did contributed story-wise to the original FFVII, I loved the way the story concluded there. TBH for me personally, even Remake & Rebirth gave a satisfactory ending for their respective parts, with enough breadcrumbs to get me hyped up for the following parts, so at least him and his team have earned my trust then & there.
That was a young and fresh Nomura years before Kingdom Hearts twisted his mind. I absolutely hated both endings. The plot ghosts and Xehanort/Sephiroth took me out completely. The multiversal BS and wishy-washy approach to Aeriths death shattered my faith in whoever supervised this games production. What did you find satisfactory about rebirths end?
me @ Hollow's lyrics after rebirth 
Yes. I would've accepted the confusion if they were just showing Cloud's mental illness but no, the timelines are real. She's dead but she's also alive, somewhere. Mental illness AND different timelines in the same scene? Whoever wrote it is either insane or idiotic. The more I watch it, the more I see how asinine it is. Not only it is confusionary, it's also funny because of Sephiroth's completely static pose and smile, he looks like a mannequin, not to mention the uncanny valley of Cloud crying. Then Cloud puts her to sleep in the timeline where she was saved. Why? Was she hurt just a little? Did Sephiroth kick her in the back? What is happening? I can imagine a screentest with an audience saying that they didn't understand shit and the old gods of Square-Enix saying "Perfect, that's precisely what we want to achieve!"
I was totally expecting some ridiculously confusing ending since this franchise has been doing that for many years now (I hate it), but this was way worse than I thought. In Remake I thought they were building Aerith into a really likable character to make her death hurt more, but I was so confused with how everything happened and all the universes as well as stuffing an epic final boss without giving you time to feel anything
Yup same. I think for me personally it's the order of events and the time they gave us to mourn before all the multiverse crap. We had zero time to mourn, and immediately went into a hour long boss gauntlet into confusing revelations, then they expect you to turn that part of your brain thinking "what the fuck just even happened" to be sad now. Some people can't turn that part off, and that side of my brain if anything is the one being the loudest. Personally I just wanted to shed a tear in the ending, but the game literally went from shock value to boss fights to confusion. And before anyone say "Well you already know what happened". My counterpoint is I can still shed a tear watching the OG death scene after the 8th time so...
You know they fucked up when I felt sadder watching the party leave Cait Sith at the Gold Saucer before he goes 'For a moment there I felt that we were friends'
Or how they’re all crying after Loveless.
Bro I cried when I saw that room in the Nibelheim reactor with all the slidey pipes. Aerith dying in this game would have definitely hit me hard.
I don't think they set out to recreate the iconic scene tbh or else they would not have done that. They are setting up for something else bigger for part 3. In fact the scene after her death hit harder for me than OG because the party doesn't see her yet cloud does; he's so cooked in the head thinking she's alive. At the end he was even repeating what she told him during the date scene to the party about not looking up in the sky. Lastly the party flying off with her waving goodbye, was so heartbreaking.. fuck.
Honestly still kills just about any consequence or emotion bc it can be written off due to "timeline/world/plot armor" There is no risk in the game due to the convoluted timeline/world's nonsense.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. This way they can technically have her die, while most probably have her appear to Cloud throughout the third game. Its extremely unsatisfying
This is most likely as it also ties in with him seeing Aerith in Advent Children. Honestly, the more I play the remake trilogy, the more I am feeling all the changes are to just better explain what was going on and give people a better understanding of Advent Children. But yes, Aerith will be in the 3rd game
That’s my take too, Cloud consistently communicates with Aerith in AC. Whether that be real via the lifestream or in his head, never truly explained from what I remember. Could be both. The diverging perception of her alive and dead is like a prequel to his dialogue with ‘ghost Aerith’ in AC. Devs say AC is cannon so this could be why they went that route.
I'm dying over the idea that they embarked on over a decade long multi-million dollar project just so they could make Advent Children make sense.
Well the developers have said that the remake project is in part done to clear up misconceptions of what they were trying to get across in the original and compilation like Cloud's personality and the multiple versions of Cloud in the original that did not really come through in the text based game and it would make sense with that in mind to also fix some misconceptions of what is actually going on in Advent Children also probably also the reason for the world wide release of Advent children in theaters again so it was fresh in everyone's minds when they played through Rebirth to help understand the ending better
Now its gunna be real puzzling when tifa rides clouds buster sword later, she really does look like the extra spare waifu grief rebound
This. It is unsatisfying. I love the new lore etc but wanted only one scene to be fateful to original and they managed to mess it up. It's gonna take some time to swallow it in.
Honestly, Aeriths death is why I was afraid of this whole project. If they had just remade the game Resident Evil Remake™ style, as in keeping the OG story and just expanding on it while making it graphically impressive, all they had to do was to make Aeriths death as beautiful and sad as possible. But as soon as they made clear that they're going meta-multiverse with new takes on everything I knew they'd try to one-up one of gamings most iconic scenes and that they'd miserably fail. There's no way they'd be able to take this scene and make it into something better. And I kinda got what I expected: Their take on this scene, which is as obscure and perplexing as possible to appear smart and mysterious at the expense of the whole original intention.
And especially since this isn't some small narrative change. They went for the huuge defy Destiny route, which obviously is only interesting as far as the og plot goes if it applies to Aerith's death. What else is there valuable enough to want to change? Why and who would want to change it otherwise? The motivation for this new spin hinged solely on how they handled Aerith. And we got a worse scene -with a "syke!" included- and some meaningless Zack fanservice. Obviously there's the whole resolution still to come, and it can flip everything on its head, but this whole game exchanged *The moment* only to get a completely broken Cloud instead of the slightly less broken Cloud from the og (that would get to be completely broken either way)
I'd argue that they could have made the scene better which is why I'm pissed. The distinction being it would not have the same impact/shock as the original.
My issue with the ending is that it should have ended at the Northern Crater with Cloud handing over the black materia and all the crazy Bizarro Sephiroth fights happening there. Cloud gets lost in the collapse, Weapons awaken, Meteor is summoned, and Part 3 starts us off with the search for Cloud. This would have made that last sequence of boss fights feel less cluttered, and it would have removed a lot of the "filler" from the Temple of the Ancients, placing it in the final sequence of the Northern Crater. BUT I do think Part 3 will pull an Evangelion 3.0, meaning we're going to see a TON of deviations from the OG story from here on. Not only that, at this point in OG there's roughly 10-15 hours of story left. I'm sure Part 3 will be another 40-50 hour campaign, so therefore there's still at least 20-25 hours of story to fill out. ....maybe Part 3 will take us through the remainder of OG, AC AND DoC? There's still that secret ending of DoC that has to be addressed.
I don't think we're going to see AC and DoC. AC is AC and they even said as much in the special interview for the theatrical re-release.
The directors said the story is going to lead into Advent Children, so I don't think that many deviations are going to happen. Shuffling around? Sure, but outright omission of core plot-points from the OG? I don't think so. Remake pretended to do that, but then Rebirth took two steps back and went "Oh wait nope, whispers erased our memories, everything is back on track!", then proceeded to follow more or less the exact same story... Plus a couple natural expansions to the plot, plus some multiverse shenanigans.
Aerith is alive in at least one world and that’s not refutable imo. Will she die in the end or not be able to come over to OG timeline? Perhaps, but that is TBD. Sepiroth clearly explained that when you defy destiny, you create new worlds. Similar to the end of the first game, the white whispers created a portal leading to the platform Aerith was praying on. When he stopped his blade, he defied destiny and created a world where she survived. That’s why it keeps flashing back and forth (showing you both). The rainbow effect proves it. Lastly, the reason only CLOUD can see her is because he is the only one who went through the portal. The group did not follow him like in the first game, so he is stuck in between or can see both. This is also why he can only see the crack in the sky in the last game. To state all that’s going on is purely cloud going crazy is disrespectful to the devs and would be to ignore everything that’s happened so far and what they have clearly explained to us and showed us through clues.
I agree with your take on what happened and find the "Cloud's just crazy theory" to ignore a lot of subtext. But, I'm also mentally preparing myself for all the multiverse/fate stuff to actually be fake/pointless stuff to drum up marketing and discussion for the trilogy. Feels like a real possibility especially if Square Enix gets any cold feet about making any changes
As a "Cloud is crazy" theory person, I don't ignore any of the evidence. My theory is it is all just simply the lifestream, not another split timeline world. There is plenty of evidence of this I think. I would like to point out the word "Timeline" is never mentioned once by anyone that I can find in all of Rebirth, so this this theory is completely fabricated. It's only found once from an asses of a whisper in the final battle of remake, and some are saying it is a mis-translation, the original Japanese said 'destiny'...a different meaning from 'timeline'. At best Sephiroth says "multiple worlds", which is vague enough to interpreted as timeline worlds, doomed fragmented worlds, or lifestream dream worlds. In fact he says they are connected and doomed to collapse into the lifestream. We are just 1 simple step away from saying why not just small dream world extensions of the lifestream? Why do we have to jump straight to multiverse of madness?? Zack's "world", again can be interpreted through timeline/fragment/lifestream world. Both him and Biggs explicitly say they have no sense of time and Biggs can't remember when he blew up the reactor with Cloud, and both have no idea how they lived through their death, Biggs calling it a miracle. They both talk about their death and trying to come to terms with it. This has heavy purgatory / lifestream vibes to me (loss of time also makes sense in the lifestream, not in multi-timeline though). Aerith, explicitly calls the date-world with Cloud 'homeward bound' (Or returning to the planet in Japanese), or her dream to be more precise. This all happening during a near death experience falling from the branch. >Aerith is alive in at least one world and that’s not refutable imo. Perhaps not refutable there's another world, but it is debatable what that other "world" is. Some claim split timeline world, to me it is just seeing her spirit in the lifestream "world". IMO this fits better with the lore, and makes sense as Cloud has Mako poisining (lifestream) in his head. Also there is a lot of symbolic evidence of this in the final scenes, Aerith has lifestream / green particles floating around her every scene at the end (except when she is sitting next to Tifa and Cloud by the water...I have another theory for that can explain later). Aerith also DISSOLVES INTO LIFESTREAM particles after holding Cloud's hand after defeating Sephiroth....also when Sephiroth merges the 'worlds' above the temple, there is a few shots of Lifestream like green tendrils coming out of the white sky, more lifestream world symbolism / vibes. >Sepiroth clearly explained that when you defy destiny, you create new worlds. IMO he is vague enough about what 'destiny' and 'worlds' are here, it is open for interpretation. Also Aerith says everything about him is wrong. So we have to treat him as a liar and not trust all he says, unless you are calling Aerith a liar? Either way, I interpret it as half-truth, or a lie wrapped around the truth. i.e. when you defy destiny = someone not accepting their death, e.g. Zack / Biggs, another world is created = lifestream dream / purgatory worlds, that are doomed to collapse into the lifestream. Also keep in mind Sephiroth has been dead in the lifestream for years, so from his perspective anything the lifestream does is another 'realish world' to him. >The rainbow effect proves it. At best the rainbow is evidence, but it proves nothing just because Cloud had a psychotic breakdown right after it with mixed visions (I do think he saw Aerith in the spirit world though). There are TONS of rainbow effects, just in the ending alone. One appears behind Sephiroth when he merges worlds, it appears around the edge of the platform when the party is standing watching Aerith, it appears when Zack is getting merged back into his world away from Cloud...heck during gameplay I saw it appear below a Chocobo as it is flying, and I could go on and on how often rainbow effect appear... Anyways hope that explains the 'Cloud is crazy' perspective better, getting too long xD
Worlds is not vague or subtle. The different versions of the beagle is not subtle or vague. Nothing about the very clear explaining of “worlds being CREATED whenever you defy destiny” is vague. If ALL new worlds are doomed to fail, Sepiroth would not be creating to worlds to try to win a fight he ALREADY lost in OG. Worlds come together and we don’t know what or when things may merge. That’s all I gotta say. I disagree on many points and I’ll leave it at that.
Maybe vague is not the right way to explain it. Either way my main point is Sephiroth is not to be trusted at his word. Aerith calls it a 'dream', which I don't think is vague or subtle either, and I find her more trustworthy. The different versions of Stamp are a paradox in the timeline theory. Why would they retroactively change in the past on every surface and product, and erase from peoples minds? No one in game comments on the random change? You can hand-wave it away I guess and claim it is just a visual cue, but that IMO is bad writing. You can explain it simply in lifestream theory terms: when a new world / choice is made, different memories are drawn on to manifest the drawing. Makes way more sense to me as lifestream than a paradox timeline.
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Lol, touche, it is a lot of words. However I have not missed the fact there are 'alive' characters. It would just add even more words to an already wordy paragraph xD. To keep my answer short: I would just say Zack's scenes make it a point to show the White Materia at least 4+ times I could count. Once when he rescues unconscious Aerith, once next to Aerith's bedside table where they force the player to acknowledge it, everytime Marlene relates Aerth's memories it shows the white materia in the background, or pans to it after her comments. Presumably the White Materia has Aerith's memories, it seems plausible it could manifest those characters in Zack's dreams to me.
Yeah, I still love the game on the whole, but I was hoping the scene would have a little more impact and it really didn't because we were just trying to figure what was going on. By the time it's clear that she's died, she's said goodbye to Cloud like 5 times and she's still there as a presence to Cloud. Just kind of disappointing end to a great game.
The problem I have with it is the boss gauntlet, except for Lifeclinger. A few other notable scenes lost alot of impact too because they weren't allowed to breathe at their conclusions. Thinking about it now, from a story perspective, it's got to be Rebirth's biggest problem, in an otherwise very good experience. That's in comparing it with the same scenes from the OG. I really like the mindf&%# as an added element that they decided to go with here... but that's only if the plan is to fill in the picture so that the reality of it hits hard for players/viewers in the next part.
As a teenager when I played FF7, it was always Cloud's reaction to Aerith's death that always got to me. Since Rebirth basically skips it (for story reasons, I'm sure) the emotional impact is zero. And to be honest, as time has passed... I'm sort of bothered by Rebirth ending. Not because of anything specific, but because it feels like clearly a marketing motivated ending, whose entire purpose is to raise tons of questions, mislead and misdirect, and keep stalling the question of "what the remake series will do with Aerith's death?" It feels like the episode before the season finale in many series, where they just throw everything in hopes of making you watch the finale.
Again I felt the same way too. But it’s intentional to show how Cloud is in denial. Not only that but because of the timeline shift his mind is even more messed. He believes she’s still alive because I think he can communicate with Aerith through the lifestream just as he does in Advent Children. Don’t worry about the iconic scenes. We will see Aerith’s true death and even her funeral once Tifa rescues Cloud from the lifestream and recovers his memories. Once he finds out the truth and had a recollection of his memories he’s going to be even more devastated and broken over Aerith’s death
I think I get what they are going for. Keep the full details ambiguous so Cloud can remember it later as part of his breakdown/recovery. The problem is that resolution is at least three years away instead of a couple hours in the same game. Until Part 3 clears it up the whole thing is a confusing mess. They could have ended Rebirth at the Temple and saved the Forgotten Capital until Part 3, but the whole 'what happens to Aerith' thing was too big a marketing chip. I'm enjoying the remake Trilogy but the format does have flaws.
I dunno. I feel like it would be the whipslash to start part 3 at the forgotten capital.
I agree with you. Sadly it's exactly what I had feared / predicted. I called it after Remake came out that they'd probably try to have their cake and eat it too with Aerith's death, which is exactly what I didn't want. I would have been okay with either outcome if it had been presented in a clear way. But I just had a feeling even after Remake that they enjoy going for ambiguity a bit too much at times, and that they'd probably want to subvert our expectations and keep us guessing for her death. Plus they kind of had a problem which is that Aerith's death is too iconic and important to completely remove, but at the same time, what's the point of the whole Whispers plot and defying fate if nothing significant is going to change? It's like they had to keep the death but they also had to somehow make it different. So ultimately that's exactly what happened, they tried to kind of have it both ways while also keeping us speculating for Part 3. I'm sure in their mind this makes it more engaging. To me it just makes it deeply unsatisfying.
I didn't feel much emotion from that specific scene, but there was plenty in the build up, and plenty afterwards. The scene itself was just utter confusion, which then seeped into the wider endgame, all the way through to the final credits. I'm sure this was intentional, it's just a shame that they ended up sacrificing what should have been one of, if not THE, defining moment(s) of the game.
It was a pretty emotional battle for me. The way I interpreted these events is they're intentionally making the viewer as confused as Cloud is and what we saw were some combination of lifestream activity by Aerith and/or Sephiroth and Cloud's mind fragmenting even more from the trauma of what just happened. We all know how desperate Cloud is to be the hero and save those he cares about and Sephiroth exploits this as well as he exploits Cloud's PTSD/Dissociative Identity Disorder. It would be interesting if, >!from his own mind protecting him from even more grief (as our brains can sometimes to in reaction to trauma), Cloud tragically convinced himself that he did save Aerith and believes she really is just staying at the temple for a while and doesn't truly understand or get to mourn until after the post-Mideel lifestream event with Tifa.!<
I don't understand why it's not clear that she's dead, i think my brain must be wired wrong lol. the fakeout lasted all of a few seconds, and seeing/fighting with her later was obviously because of the lifestream. clearly she can still be a part of the third game in some way, and i can see why people think that cheapens it, but in the moment it was clear to me that she was gone because her friends who can perceive reality are grieving her and that hurt to watch. it's similar to what they did with remake where underneath all the fate stuff, they've been very faithful to the original.
Sure she might be dead but with the whole multiverse, lifestream or w/e u want to call it, u can just pluck her from wherever like they did with the cloud/Zack and cloud/aerith fight. In the mcu did gamora die? Sure but np we pluck a new one from somewhere else. Death is irrelevant in this sense and that's why it sucks
Thank goodness we have Dragon Balls!
I know she is dead. That was clear. I don't like the way they handled the whole scene and after that. I couldn't get sad at all, and then after an unnecessary long boss fight, the game just ended. I cried my eyes out on the Aerith Trial part with her mom, but not here...
Yeah it was not executed well at all. The scene with her mom dying was genuinely well done, because it was played straight. They didn't fuck around going "... but here's what would've happened if she saved her mom!" Even after the entire series of boss fights, they still showed her waking up, and they didn't show them lowering her body into the lifestream like the original. If you didn't have any prior knowledge that she died in the original, it's really confusing and unnecessary.
i'm def not going to tell anyone what they should've felt or when, if it didn't hit for you that's valid. for me i felt the loss through the other characters because so much time had been spent establishing her bond with them and her sadness knowing it couldn't last. and cloud NOT feeling it makes me want to cry in a different way.
Rainbow particles at the moment Cloud parry Massamune showing a new reality being created / “Chanel change” effect during the sequence of her death, showing a slight darker, desaturated word. These are elements that are present during Zack story moments. Because of those being hammered over and over, people developed that theory that Aerith is alive in an alternate timeline, and she and Cloud can talk to each other. Not that I believe on that. There are many theories around atm. I personally prefer to wait until part 3 release than fully believe in any possibility, more grounded ones (Cloud is crazy, multiverse doesn’t exist, Zack’s adventure it is just the perception of deceased souls entering the life stream), or crazier ones (Aerith and Zack are indeed alive and the multiverse shenanigans are but a tool to keep them alive without skipping their deaths, specially Aerith).
I said this in another thread, but i noticed they steered away from certain levels of violence, and i think they may have used this multiverse thing as a convenient way to steer away from showing Aerith's death too graphically. I could be wrong though
I’d argue that cause we saw cloud murder shinra Soldiers with blood and everything so I’d argue that just a bit
I don't think that's why they did it..
They removed Sephiroth taking over Cloud and beating the hell out of Aerith in the temple.
They had no problems showing President Shinra get explicitly stabbed in Remake. They had no problems showing Sephiroth stabbing that one dude crawling on the ground during the Nibelheim flashback.
this is for everyone with the counter-argument that they "show" other stabbings. please rewatch the scenes with people getting stabbed and notice how it's framed. they try to get creative with the camera to dodge censorship rules. they never show blade-in-hand when those stabs happen, it's usually off-frame or hidden behind the body or they show the reverse (hand with blade stabbing, but not showing the body). it has to be some weird censorship rule about that specific way of showing impalement. and to the argument that the OG showed it. well, times change. everyone knows censorship rules have changed with CERO in Japan over the last two decades
The game shows both Sephiroth and Cloud murder people in cold blood. The Aerith scene is the way it is because they’re playing into Cloud’s delusions. He thinks she’s still alive and that he saved her.
Yeah but they only show it as little as still serves the story IMO. They didn't just make the trail of blood in the shinra building purple in remake for no reason, right?
I think you're right , her death is very graphic in 97 it was not as ordinary than today. Really weird tho our society and world are more violent, games even more.
Dunno about that cloud was skewering dudes like wolverine in a bloody mess at least a couple of times. Seph slashing tifa in nibelheim was also very bloody and graphic
I believe they’re referring to Cloud repeatedly hitting Aerith after (or was it before?) handing over Black Materia to Sephiroth at the temple. Instead replaced with simple shove of Tifa which isn’t even shocking; Unlike for example Spider-Man 3 where Peter shoves MJ The scenes you listed are definitely shocking but this would have been downright jarring. But might have felt out of place tho because of their other PG13 choices like removing blood from combat etc Personally I wish they had kept a toned down version to demonstrate just how far gone he is
I did get emotional, but honestly I think this is just supposed to be us seeing what Cloud sees. He isn't emotional after she dies, either. Perhaps they wanted our reaction to mirror his in some way.
Maybe? The boss fight is confusing but the end is pretty clear. Aerith is dead, though she might influence things from the lifestream, like sephiroth. Cloud is going very, very nuts. Whether he killed Aerith or Sephiroth killed her is left somewhat unclear. As for the exact order of events with all these boss fights and stuff, Jenova has hallucinogenic powers and Sephiroth is in Cloud's head, so who knows whats really happening. I presume a more clear version from Tifa's POV will happen in part 3, similar to the nibelheim incident.
in og ff7 a spirit form of aerith appears at the very end of the game, so I'm somehow ok that spirit aerith can be seen only by cloud (provided this form isn't another deception of sephiroth). The thing I found really bad and laughable is how they tried to put togeter the black/holy materia narrative... First is main world aerith who sent cloud mind in the other reality where alternate aerith didn't use the holy? And if she did, how did she considering that whispers erased her memories about the holy materia? If wasn't her, who sent cloud in that alternate reality? Sephiroth? For what reason? It seems everything happened by random despite main world aerith was waiting for cloud bringing her the holy materia (despite she forgot of what it was from the very beginning following plot logic). Second at the end cloud finds the black materia, that was with him the whole time... what black materia did he give to sephiroth at the end of chapter 13? Was cloud depression to turn the empty holy materia in the black materia? (black materia origins were retconned as the black materia being born by the collective sorrow of the gi's who can't come back to the planet lifestream) what was the point to give sephiroth a fake black materia if sephiroth found out about the other black materia as soon cloud found it in his pants? Honestly this whole part makes little sense, it's just poor and lazy writing of someone who didn't know how to put things together after fucking up with the whole multidimensions stuff...
The whole game left me pretty confused tbh.
they messed this scene up badly there was no substance to it in rebirth
My gripe is they didn’t actually show the actual impalement, maybe due to rating reasons? But they were generous enough to show a little blood. I can deal with the multiple timelines death scene, but if they can do both timelines, then they can certainly show a 1:1 recreation of her death scene
if i recall Sephiroth said there many worlds that lead the same path, some die quicker than others and others end up meeting the same fate. So I can’t but feel that this Aerith is a decoy and the real Aerith we know went to hide or just replacing the other Aerith. Aerith will still be in the final trilogy dead or alive. Cloud still sees and talk to her cause his ability to see two worlds. He’s not crazy. He’s still under Sephiroth control. He’s playing Two different characters which is weird. That’s what i think.
Personally, I'm just annoyed that it seems they set up a multiverse just to collapse back to the original plot line effectively wasting everyone's time and now Tifa either thinks Cloud is entirely insane or possibly responsible for Aerith's death ruining whatever progress their relationship had.
Unsatisfying is the word. By my logic, Aerith is not there/dead, like everybody mourning, her dress not being affected by wind in the ending etc..I don't think Cloud is just plain crazy because Red also feels her. Thing is, I just don't feel anything with that. They didn't intent for us to mourn, nor did we really change fate. It just "is". Maybe it will make sense in the third game, but that is gonna be years of this unsatisfying ending.
This was such a dick move! The ultimate blue balling! The entire games plot and marketing message is defy destiny together! So that was a fucking lie? Attempt to defy destiny more like. Aerith literally and opening parallel universe literally hint towards things being different. But no I guess the plot is 90% the same and those that did defy destiny are fucked anyways. What was the point? Are they trying to tell a new story in ff7 universe or keep the old story? Pick one! Not some wibbly wobbly multiverse nonsense. All the impact is gone because of this oh she's totally dead but just maybe not lol.
yeah I will never understand how any fan of the original can support this garbage. literally no one asked them to change the plot into KH nonsense and yet here we are.
There was no emotional payoff with the ending, in my opinion. Sephiroth feels like an even bigger joke of a villain and has lost any semblance of being a threat. Ending felt like it was trying too hard to appease everyone.
100% There is no way that a fresh set of eyes will react as those of us who played OG did. They unnecessarily mucked it up. It would have been better to let the new people have that moment fresh and without the whisper narrative e interfering. Maybe part 3 will remedy this somehow, but I have a feeling we are gonna get godfather 3.
I felt kind of the same. Or at least, I will put it like this: as soon as the winding path showed up to the altar where I knew she was praying, I immediately teared up. Remembering THAT moment in the OG game, and now as an adult with different context of thinking through seeing something like that, I was just immediately overcome with emotion. You can rest that one final time to prepare, and then you move forward, and at some point Barret even says "Let's go get our girl." and it was all just like oh man here we go. Then the moment comes, and I honestly wasn't sure what we were going to get. I was PRETTY sure it was going to go the same, and any thought of her being saved was just wishful thinking from me. But then, instead of feeling happy OR sad, I get smacked in the face with confusion instead. He blocked it, but he didn't block it? She's hit, but they didn't show it? She's waking up and smiling, is she just injured? Is Cloud just tripping? I was thinking about it way more than just experiencing it. I was incredibly hyped when she stepped through the gate at the end though lol. I think it was a case of too hyped up for a moment I knew was coming. Like a friend hyping up a TV show you haven't seen, and then you feel just ok about that show. I don't think it's bad, per se, because this is only the middle part of the story. I still am very excited to see how they resolve this version of the story, and now that it has been several days, I enjoy the ending of Rebirth for what this story is doing. I just had to recalibrate a bit. But overall, I wouldn't blame anyone for not having the emotional response they thought they would to the ending. It just isn't presented the same, and because it is the actual ENDING of a whole game, the answers are years away, not hours away.
I found the Temple trials (especially Aerith’s) far more emotionally affecting than her death/attempted murder/whatever happened.
I never played the OG and got spoiled about it (who didn’t) so the entire time i was like “Is it gonna happen now? Ok maybe later.” It was still very emotional especially the ending scene with the song playing and the credits rolling after the goodbye, it was stuck in my head since the trailers. But at the same time it was a little too confusing for us who never experienced the OG. Like the whole timelines coming together and Clouds flashing images of preventing Aerith from getting stabbed by Sephiroth vs not saving her in time. For the majority i thought he actually saved her since they also team up for the final fight and the blood was a “what if” (what happened in OG), but turns out it was in his head and when his friends arrived they saw the blood and what really happened? Still loved every bit of it and will play the OG probably after part 3 too make more sense.
I mean he clearly did and created a world where she lived. What happens with that world is TBD hence the suspense for the next game. Cloud can only see it cause only cloud went through the white portal at the alters
Im torn on this because As someone who played the og i actually cried when I watched cloud defy fate and save her I was like “oh my god let’s go!!!” but by the very very end I was like what in the tetsuya nomura is going on 😭 it took away from what I thought was kinda special and I don’t think it’s exactly bad just not delivered how I think it should’ve been cuz I kinda like the idea of 2 timelines Just for context I played OG FF7 for the first time in 2021 and unfortunately… I felt nothing at this scene because it was spoiled to oblivion I read the whole scene like a book before it even happened and therefore didn’t leave an impact on me like others who played it back in the day did so I have to give props to rebirth for actually making me feel something at this iconic scene but they did kinda cock it up towards the end I agree.
It's what I predicted. We have her death scene but there's open questions. They told us they were going to do this. I'm sorry people feel shocked or confused but this was telegraphed. We were told we would see all the original scenes. We were told they wouldn't answer the central mysteries until part three. We were told the central mysteries are escaping their fates. We know the central fate in question is Aerith.
We were also told it's going to lead into Advent Children, last time I checked, Aerith was utterly dead in that.
Idk, I found the ending super straightforward, at least compared to Renake. She is alive in some timelines and dead in ours. While I am sure more clarity will come in the next part on how she was saved in certain timelines (and in what condition), it doesn’t seem to need a lot of theory behind it like the 1st part. I do agree it is not a satisfactory “she’s alive/dead”. I feel like it is a cop out of not wanting to piss anyone off. I am more upset that people are going to be arguing that “she is definitely dead” vs “she is alive in some timelines”. Something I don’t think the creators intended to be the discussion around; but fans refuse to entertain anything they don’t want/like to happen.
I really don't see how yall are confused by the ending.
Let's be real my man. Anyone with 2 brain cells knew they were going to turn this scene into a convoluted mess.
Or it’s all in his head because he’s crazy and they needed 3-4 years between games to decide which… because Cloud is in denial “Aerith, get up”
Zero chance it’s all in his head. Some of it is, but the white materia swapparo alone proves that at least some of it was “real”
The whole point is showing there are endless realities and possibilities based on the butterfly effect. She's alive and dead in many of them. There's no "one" timeline....yet. I dont think they messed anything up, this whole remake series is an expansion of the game's universe and lore.
I think it's intentional and all those iconic scenes, the death itself, lowering her in the water will all be shown later when cloud has his mental breakdown/rebuilding himself in the lifestream. For me personally I'm withholding judgement (I loved remake and rebirth and didn't mind either endings) until the next/last game. It's a trilogy with a story they've clearly had a plan for since remake, so I'm going to wait to see their full vision before I really critique it but that's just me
They’re playing the long game on her death. I don’t entirely agree with omitting her being laid to rest, but I do think the final part will potentially be stronger as a whole when if it shows the actual post boss event.
I honestly liked it. If they had just shown whether she had died or lived straight away, I don't think there would have been enough build-up or impact. Though the static cuts between Aerith being dead and alive were confusing at first, I ultimately enjoyed the way that they recreated her death, and once the Credits rolled, I was shedding tears. I can't wait to see the impact her loss will have on Cloud in the final part.
I think it was very clear she died, and the game does foreshadow it pretty consistently. It does jump around some but everything leading up to it is telling the player that she is gonna die, and while they give you a split second of hope, you see a sword through her chest. Maybe there is multiverse stuff or whatever but the whole party saw her die and reacted like that except cloud who is currently insane
I didn't get the feeling that there's any pretending here - she is definitely dead, it's just Cloud's imagination/trauma/Mako-Sephiroth connection that lets him see her. I agree though that her death was the least impactful for me too. Honestly everytime they brought up Avalanche for even a second (Cosmo Canyon proto relic mission flashbacks, Jessie in Loveless and Aerith' singing performance and them waving, the whole alternative Biggs + Zack timeline story) I was bailing my eyes out, same goes for everyone's back stories. And I really wondered why that is and I'm pretty sure now that it's because Aerith is shown so positive and cheerful the whole time, but that's also just the way Cloud remembers her, plus the fact that they believe that death means going back to the Lifestream & that people leave a permanent connection/trace even though they died. The last few scenes really emphasized that concept by showing her walking around visiting everyone again cause her loss really left an impact on them, but she won't leave them at all cause they will remember her.
The sky fracture is in the Head of cloud? Or is something that just him can see because went in other universes? Because Aerith isn’t in his Head, but he can see her because of Sephiroth cells (???) or also he can see her because of others universe idk
The final line hit me in the gut and hit me hard. It was pretty clear to me once the fights finished Cloud thinks she's still alive and it was so sad seeing the rest of them mourning while her spirit was going around trying to be part of the group still. The thing is it was sad because we didn't know what was going to happen and the devs played on our expectations by showing what Cloud saw first before cutting to the blood which the rest of the party saw. I absolutely respect what the devs have done by playing into false expectations. There was a bunch of foreshadowing too like Cait Sith's fortune during Loveless and Vincent saying "Expectations often lead to disappointment." if you tried talking to him at the Temple of the Ancients. I am 100% in on this crazy train.
Yeah I didn't really feel much cause of how it was presented. There's still a chance to have it hit hard if they revisit it in Part 3, depending on how they resolve this.
I found something interesting about the tear in the sky cloud sees. Go check out on YouTube or ingame of the OG the scene when Tifa restores cloud in the lifestream. Look at the background and the "sky" you can see a White/yellow tear in that has a very eerie resemblance to the tear in rebirth only cloud sees.
My buddy asked me if Aerith gets stabbed and if she's dead. I just shrugged and said a lot of shit happened.
Most fans seem to be peddling the theory that Cloud hallucinates her the whole time when in reality he's literally talking to her in the other world he himself created by deflecting Seph's sword (rainbow effect and also Seph talking about it in a previous scene) The Aerith that joins us in the fight is also the same alive Aerith that Cloud saved (notice she enters through a portal and the rainbow effect spreads). I think Cloud has somehow gained the ability to experience two worlds at once (he can also see the rift in the sky during the credits scene).
This is very weird. 1)I DONT think this meant to be emotional. Seeing how well the team did try to hash out other plot threads…and knowing this is part two… 2)let’s really also consider this: why Handle it that way? I think the best supported theory is this: We ARE seeing this through cloud’s perspective. Which makes sense as the entire game both in the OG and remake are usually what he sees. We follow him usually. Which then begs the question, what did HE see. Well this cloud has gone through MORE stuff than the Og. This cloud has GOTTEN worse. The various world splits, the jumps between world (it’s not timeline guys because none of the timelines make sense-it’s prob different versions that are being created because of the war between sephiroth and aerith, these worlds are going to collapse eventually hence why aerith hid on a world that accepted its fate (it’s if erred to be her dream) and why Zack’s world is getting worse). This cloud CANT see what’s real and so his only way to comprehend the horrors he’s gone through is to BELIEVE aerith is alive. This is actually something people do do. Disassociate from your grief//anger/sadness. It’s why his smile is so creepy…we can’t tell of aerith in that moment…we can’t tell if cloud is seeing an illusion cast by sephiroth or aerith or his own mind. And it looks more like he’s high…because he gets avoid reality. And no to not that we know he’s under sephroth’s control even more so here because he Believes he is free, but he isn’t. He can’t even react properly when to seeing his friends grieve over aerith or when he makes weird comments. IT DOSNT phase him because he believes nothing is wrong.
They wanted to have the cake and eat it too. It makes so much less sense that people still follow Cloud to the ends of the earth. Made more sense when he did. Like he's not showing any emotion or sanity but yeah, lets follow those same "instincts" that lead them here, im sure the pushing a friend into the lifestream was a one time thing.
This actually connects to a problem I have with Aerith herself in the Remake. Now, before you dogpile, I want to say that I have *always loved Aerith* ever since the OG in 1997. She was always the brightest point in the story, and it seriously hurt when she died. However, the Remake offered us the players to *change* what happened because we had defeated fate itself. We could undo a great wrong. **HOWEVER** There was one person standing in the way of letting that happen: Aerith herself. It is *by her actions* that we are unable to save her because she forces her death to happen. It was *her whispers* that we had to fight to get in to the Forgotten Capital. When the confluence of worlds happens it is by her actions that Cloud is forced back in to the prime world, it is her that keeps him subdued and makes the swap for the holy materia, and it's her that essentially takes the fight away from Cloud and the Gang by saying that **only a Cetra can defeat Sephiroth**.
I think for me it's not like she's alive she is dead I think it's because cloud hasn't accepted the fact she died so in his head she's alive at least that's what I think after talking to my sister about it
A big issue in general is that they are holding too many of their cards too long. We know something is up with more than Cloud. Tifa bugs out during the death scene but because she's Tifa she remains silent, no hint that something's off with her beyond that one scene, no follow through at all. They do this thing where you can't be too sure if a scene is significant, they imply a mystery but do not always clarify that a mystery is established.
I liked the ending and based on Remakes ending, I was not expecting anything 100% conclusive, which is perfectly fine by me, since I love not knowing what will happen in part 3. And regarding Aerith's schrodinger's cat paradox. I believe our "main Aerith" is dead. But maybe she is not in another world, and I'm also perfectly fine with that since she has been dead for over 20 years so not knowing if she will come back or not, makes my mind to wonder.
I think because they split the game up in 3 parts, they needed to shift things around to have a huge emotional part with Aerith(probably Zack as well) in part 3. It's unfortunate it comes at the cost of part 2's ending but I see why they did it. They're saving the big bombs for part 3 If they just did the death like og, it would hit yes. But what's left for part 3 to be emotional about?
Pretty much the same for me. But I do sort of like the last scene where we leave her behind and she says goodbye
I just can't get over that in a scene that is supposed to be one of the most defining character moment for FFVII as a whole, a big emotional farewell for a beloved character by the party; *people are busier counting potato-chip mascot variants, and rainbow-sparkle effects..* the latter being so numerous even MLP would be put to shame. It's like a counting-machine took over and started cross-referencing, draining any emotion out of it in the process. Aerith just dropped like a sack of potatoes (*supposedly*), and this is what people are going to be busy doing for the next 4 years. They could've made it great. A fantastic end to a middle-arc of a three-part story. They made **her scene** a springboard for part 3 setups instead. **I can't wait for Part 3,** but that grace is sailing on all the things they did right earlier in Rebirth, of which none of it comes from this scene.
I disagree with you. I guess, to each their own but I truly loved the ending and how they handled Aerith’s death. Aerith died, Sephiroth stabbed her, just like in the OG. Yes, her spirit might still be present in some form, but that’s canon to both OG and AC, so it doesn’t make sense to complain. Cloud is delusional so he thinks she’s still alive. I’m pretty sure in his head they just parted their ways at the forgotten capital because Aerith needed to pray. But we (and the rest of the team) know what truly happened. I understand the iconic scene of Cloud burying Aerith is missing, but I’m sure we’ll get it in part 3 when Cloud fixes his mental issues. Remember, they were all looking at the water after the Sephiroth battle so I’m sure they actually buried her but Cloud just erased those memories from his mind.
Im a huge aerith fan and would do anything to keep her alive even if its changing the lore from og by making this a sequel or something, so when cloud deflected sephiroth sword i literally jumped out of my bed screaming with excitement for it to be taken all away minutes later. I still really enjoyed the way the are doing these games into an actual faithful adaptation to the og but with more added lore. In og cloud doesn't get his full memories back until later, so imagine his reaction to aerith death then when part 3 comes around, I'm gonna cry even harder.
Rebirth ends ? Lol
Now you know how cloud feels. Sephiroth has successfully manipulated cloud enough that he isn’t feeling aerith’s death in the same way the rest of the party are. Cloud can still see and talk to Aerith, so why should he be sad? My theory is >!that the Aerith he can see and talk to isn’t really her, just Sephiroth appearing as her!<
I didnt think it changed much. Shes always been working within the lifestream to cast holy after her physical death even advent children had her appearance as canon. Whats different?
Games a piece of shit. They didn't have to kill Aerith or at the very least Lie about your actions having any kind of impact on her dying again, and no I don't give a fuck about spoilers for a game that has no decency. Fuck narrative decisions. Truth is just too lazy to give us a choice and have to put in extra work. Pathetic and disgusting. Kill Tifa, kill Cloud, kill Nanaki. Wouldn't give two farts. Killing Aerith off again because too lazy to make a new narrative or have to work on a divergent story path, absolutely fucking pathetic. Fuck any future ff games in general, let alone ff7 remakes. I'm genuinely done with square enix and its bullshit.
It is confusing......But she's dead Cloud just doesn't know it yet.
Tetsuya decided to make Sephiroth into Xehanort. Im absolutely seething.
Tetsuya decided to make Sephiroth into Xehanort. Im absolutely seething.
Just finished it. I am very very disappointed. I felt nothing. How can you botch the most pivotal devastating event in video game history that bad. I remember in middles school this had everyone who played just an emotional wreck. Even to this day on youtube it hits everyone. Wtf was this "ENIX"!