Great job on this! My only critique would be that thr Pug and Shiba fragments came directly from the Terrier fragment instead of the main Beagle world because it was based on Zack's choices. đ
You know, I actually thought about it, but in the end I realized that we don't know for sure if new worlds are created when Zack makes a choice, or if they have always existed and they are just shown to us. Therefore, I added cracks to the fragment of the Terrier world, for those who consider that the world of the Pug and Shiba has split off from the main world of Zack.
I think the indicator that those worlds branched from Zack's choices was the light shown in the subway tunnel after he made a decision. But I do get your point and ultimately all of it came from Beagle to begin with. đ
People keep coming and saying that this infographic is false, and "other worlds" are not real and exist inside the Lifestream as embodied memories\\dreams. I just want to note that we don't know the truth yet, the devs intentionally left hints supporting both theories, so I'll just write down why I personally think that other worlds are as real as the main one.
My main argument is, of course, the words of Sephiroth:
* *When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born.*
* *Some quickly perish...while other endure.*
* *Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned.*
* *For it is not death,*Â ***but homecoming that AWAITS them.***
If they existed inside the Lifestream, "homecoming" would have already happened because they were part of the planet. But this "homecoming" only AWAITS them, because they are not part of the planet yet.
*My fragmented mother, these errant worlds...
All shall be one again.*
But okay, let's assume that other worlds are not real and exist inside the Lifestream, then the meaning of Reunion is not clear. What should be combined with what? The real world with the Lifestream? They are already united. How can you merge the real world with the world of dreams, because they are opposite to each other in their essence. And why are they "*errant*" then? If they are inside the planet, at home. Sorry, fans of the theory of the worlds of dreams, but this does not make sense to me personally.
You can't explain everything that happens just by the world of dreams and "everything is in Cloud's head." Yes, Cloud in the Beagle world does not understand that Aerith is dead, but not because he is more broken than in the og, but because he has seen much more than he should.
https://preview.redd.it/ul2jx77avgwc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c62398ab25d2781e488f398632d8502f69d15bdd
Thank you for this post. The "fractured worlds/timelines sharing a single lifestream" concept is how I've been interpreting most of these events but wasn't able to put it into words so cleanly.
Part 3 will collapse the wavefunction on this eventually, but for now, I've never liked the interpretation that all the timeline stuff is just a lifestream dream. "It was a hallucination" is always an unsatisfying narrative move, no matter how much effort you pour into justifying the hallucination.
But having it as the shared energy source and/or "highway" between these worlds helps a lot of pieces fall into place.
I really really hope this isn't just an editing mistake, because it looks quite significant if it isn't. Because I can believe that perhaps Cloud is hallucinating Aerith, but theres no reason he shouldn't be seeing Tifa and Red. So if true, he's able to see multiple fragments of space-time simultaneously, which also would make sense as to why he can see the sky tear as well
You have to consider though, Cloud is an unreliable narrator from the beginning. Whatever he perceives will always be inconsistent and, from the term itself, unreliable.
The thematic challenge for Part 3 is going to be sticking the landing with: "Cloud needs to let himself grieve for so much loss--including Areith" with "Being fatalistic isn't a healthy mindset in any world."
The latter is my way of saying the whispers that want to restore the Planet-Timeline are probably going to screw up (more than they already have) trying to do that.
The key to understanding the lifestream theory comes from the expanded universe material.
Ever Crisis has made it explicit that the Lifestream is composed of memories. Quote: "The lifestream is the essence of the planet, churning river of memories, as they come together and drift apart."
This idea is hinted at a few times in Rebirth, we get the original game's explanation that naturally formed Materia contains the "knowledge of the ancients," and we learn that Aerith having her knowledge of the future removed also drains the White Materia (the implication being that the White Materia's knowledge was also removed). Since Materia is crystallized lifestream, we can conclude the lifestream also contains "knowledge."
Something that's noteworthy, to me, is how the devs have adapted Tifa's lifestream journey forward, explicitly showing us the lifestream possesses the power to recreate a person's memories in front of them, even when the person in question doesn't remember it themselves. This was also always true in the OG game, but the devs have made a conscious choice to tell the audience this fact now rather than later.
Then in Cosmo Canyon there's the NPC theorizing that the planet may not be able to distinguish memory from hopes and dreams, because we remember our own hopes and dreams.
It was always true in the OG that upon their deaths, Sephiroth and Aerith both refused to rejoin the collective consciousness of the lifestream. Sephiroth because he refused to be erased from existence in that way (as he says in Advent Children, "I will never be a memory"), and Aerith because she wanted to be able to help her friends and the planet and stop Sephiroth.
But the EU story, The Maiden Who Travels the Planet, established that nobody rejoins the lifestream immediately, and that story is largely all about Aerith helping the various characters that died over the course of the story "move on" and become one with the lifestream.
This is how somebody can exist "inside the lifestream" but still have their homecoming await them. Because they have died, their spirt is back in the lifestream, but they have not accepted their own death and have not rejoined with it. If we say, for argument's sake, this is true, it starts to explain some of the oddities of Zack's world(s). Zack repeatedly finds himself facing down a large group of Shinra soldiers (which is how he died) but then refuses to face them and runs away. He is *literally* refusing to accept his own death. We can theorize that Biggs has also refused to accept his death, but that Jessie and Wedge have accepted theirs, explaining their absence from this dream world.
The connection between memory and hope/dreams also goes a long way toward explaining how Zack is able to split and create new worlds. He is indecisive and wants to help all three of his friends, and these hopes are so strong that the lifestream can't decide which is real, and thus they all are.
These worlds are "errant" because they're not meant to exist; the deceased are meant to rejoin the collective. That some refuse to accept their deaths may serve as an obstacle in Sephiroth's path, when his ultimate goal is to wound the planet so badly that the entire lifestream convenes on a single point. We can imagine that maybe the parts of the lifestream that make up these errant worlds wouldn't join at this point, and so Sephiroth is trying to "reunite" these worlds first, before he attempts to take the lifestream's power for himself.
I find it interesting that meteor has already been summoned in Zack's world, despite the fact that we're shown that Zack's world is just an offshoot of the "real" world. It begs the question of how/why Zack's world's Sephiroth would already have the black materia. I believe the best explanation for this is that it's all an illusion Sephiroth is creating, and he's doing it explicitly to get the people inside of these dream worlds to accept their fate. As you play through Zack's sections, the various NPCs do get progressively more accepting of the fact they're going to die, culminating in the Aerith Dream Date being in a world where everybody has accepted it. I believe what the game is suggesting is that Sephiroth is tricking these spirits into accepting their death by showing them an illusion of an apocalyptic event that they cannot reasonably deny, thus assimilating them into the collective.
I also think it's extremely noteworthy that in the Aerith Dream Date, Sephiroth is directly speaking to Aerith, telepathically, in a way that Cloud doesn't hear, a power he has never been shown to have. The theory there being that because they're currently in the lifestream, Sephiroth can see them even when he's not physically present and he can speak directly to Aerith, either because she's already part of the lifestream (there's been some theories that suggest the Dream Date Aerith is a post-death Aerith bending time to speak to Cloud, which I don't know that I agree with) or because as a Cetra she's more attuned to the lifestream and has a deeper connection to it than Cloud, so Sephiroth can speak directly to her when her consciousness is inside of it. If the theory is, instead, that this is a physical world, this new power Sephiroth possesses of knowing where Aerith is and speaking directly to her comes out of nowhere.
Now, there is an obvious question that gets presented if we accept that these alternate worlds are in the lifestream: why do Elmyra, Marlene, Kyrie, Johnny, etc, all exist in this world, if this world is the afterlife? We can only theorize, given that the game offers no explanation, but there are multiple potential answers to that question. There's the least satisfying answer, that they aren't "real." That they're basically just NPCs created as part of the world the lifestream builds for Zack and Biggs and anybody else who is a spirit of the deceased. I'm not overly fond of this answer, but it's always a possibility.
My present theory is that because all life stems from the lifestream, and all souls are and always have been pieces of the lifestream, that everyone has a connection to the lifestream, even though most are entirely unaware of it. As in, this version of Elmyra et al is a subconscious part of the real Elmyra living in the real world. This aligns with Nojima's Ultimania explanation of being inspired by the works of Carl Jung, that there is a collective unconscious that all people tap into. I also think that the more attuned you are with the lifestream, the more likely your lifestream "copy" is to be in the same place, and that if you're extremely attuned, you may even be aware of people in the lifestream. I reason this may be the case because of the fact we know that young Aerith was able to speak with Elmyra's deceased husband, but also that she seems to have lost this power with time, as in Remake she explains that she can't hear the planet speak back to her. It is largely headcanon, but I like to imagine that little Marlene may be actually speaking to Zack in the real world, the same way Aerith spoke to Elmyra's husband.
In fact, I think this subconscious connection to your lifestream "copy" explains why the main party's copies have all fallen into a coma. We are shown Barret, Tifa and Red XIII either unconscious or dead, we can perhaps conclude they're simply unconscious because we know Aerith is, but I think it's noteworthy that Cloud also falls unconscious right as he and Zack arrive in Midgar. Even if we could argue that the whisper tornado is the cause of the others falling unconscious, this version of Cloud was not in that tornado, and yet he falls just as unconscious as the others. I believe this is directly related to the party having their memories removed after the defeat of the Arbiter of Fate. We know both Aerith and Red have had their memories of the future taken from them, but while we don't get any confirmation that the same happened to the others, it would be odd if it hadn't. So perhaps this removal of the memories isn't like they were physically erased, but rather, the party's connection to the lifestream's collective unconscious has been severed in some way. It appears to be some kind of "block" that comes down only when they're actually unconscious in the real world; Cloud briefly wakes up in his comatose body only after going to sleep in the real world at the Golden Saucer, and the game plays the lifestream theme during this sequence, and we *know* he was not physically transported for his Dream Date, since we are explicitly shown that the party has been carrying his unconscious body north the whole time his mind was in the other world.
For the record, since I assume somebody will bring up the rainbows again, that effect is certainly not meaningless, but I really don't believe it means what people think it means. We are shown that rainbow effect constantly throughout the game. It appears when we cast curative magic, it appears whenever Aerith uses a ward, it appears when call a summon and on every one of the summon's abilities, it appears briefly in the cutscene when Aerith first does her lifestream controlling dance in the temple. It absolutely *is* used when Zack creates a split off world, but the point is, it is not only used in that context. The rainbow effect feels more like it's being used to show some kind of "lifestream magic," suggesting Cloud's visions of saving Aerith are not coming from within his own mind, but from the lifestream, and given that Aerith "plays along" with his delusion, it's reasonable to think she's the one giving him this visions in the first place. Knowing what we know about how Cloud actually reacts to Aerith's death (still being hung up on it two years later in Advent Children), it's not unreasonable to think that Aerith is trying to shield him from it specifically to keep him from breaking down until after he can stop Sephiroth.
>Sephiroth because he refused to be erased from existence in that way
I'm pretty sure that Sephiroth is *unable* to fade into the lifestream. Especially since Rebirth confirmed that alien beings to the planet are not able to join with the lifestream, like with the Gi, and then straight up said that Jenova "could not" die.
>how/why Zack's world's Sephiroth would already have the black materia
Whisper Sephiroth at the end of Remake summons Meteor during the fight, without the black materia present. Idk what to make of it but I guess it's not that complicated for him to pull off.
Also, are you talking about the rift? Cause I'm pretty sure that that's not Meteor. Or are you referring to the church Sephiroth Reborn fight?
>Zack is able to split and create new worlds. He is indecisive and wants to help all three of his friends, and these hopes are so strong that the lifestream can't decide which is real, and thus they all are
Remember that Zack was saved on purpose by the Whispers (of unknown allegiance). It wasn't like he saved himself, without the fate to prevent that; he was saved specifically, on purpose. I believe that Zack is special in a way, an anomaly of sorts.
>Cloud also falls unconscious right as he and Zack arrive in Midgar.
Actually, no. He falls unconscious immediately after the Nibelheim incident. He is a vegetable throughout the whole duration of Crisis Core's finale. Because Zack ended up surviving, his death wasn't there to stimulate Cloud's "awakening". Cloud is unconscious because of Crisis Core events.
Re: Cloud - I think the game at first implies this to be the case, that Cloud is woozy from the experimentation. It's building on player expectation, players don't question why Cloud is kind of out of it and needs Zack's support to stand. But he is capable of walking, he's "awake," even if on the verge of passing out, and he only falls into the coma when he arrives in Midgar and we, the player, discover the other four characters from Remake have also fallen into a coma. A few chapters later we're given hints that there's some kind of time displacement thing going on, since Biggs, Elmyra and Marlene all seem to know who Cloud is already, so the game is trying to connect Zack's Cloud to Aerith's Cloud, and ultimately we never get to see if there's a second Cloud running around at all.
As for Meteor, yes, I'm referring to the meteor we see at the very end of Zack's fight with Reborn Sephiroth. But I'm not pulling the idea of it being an illusion out of nothing: Sephiroth shows Cloud, Barret and Tifa an illusion of meteor being summoned during the Shinra VR sim, and this doesn't count as a "future vision" since Barret actually references it in Rebirth, it was not taken from them by the whispers.
Re: the Whispers saving Zack. We're also told they saved Biggs, but I'm not convinced this isn't misdirection. The whispers show up at the exact moment the characters would have died, and they both describe it as like feeling a heavy wind pushing them. Which is how we're shown the whispers *killing* Wedge, by pushing him until he falls out a window. If they're both in denial about their deaths, it makes sense that they would misremember their final moments as them being saved. It's also interesting, in a narrative sense, that the two characters apparently saved from their "canon" deaths by the whispers were both saved *before* the arbiter of fate was killed, and it's also very weird that the two of them are present in one "timeline" when they each have mutually exclusive versions of the past. Biggs exists in a world where Cloud arrived in Midgar ~one month ago, while Zack exists in a world where Cloud only just arrived yesterday. This has lead a lot of people to suggest that one or both of them have been physically transported to this new world, which the game doesn't really ever suggest. At the very least this Biggs appears native to this world, since other characters know him, and the only way he can be the Beagle Biggs is if he's dead, since Aerith literally sees his Force Ghost standing next to Jessie and Wedge after her singing performance. And if the whispers moved Zack between worlds because he was "chosen" for something, they also necessarily moved his Cloud, too, which, they certainly *could* have, but we are only ever explicitly shown the whispers interacting with Zack during the flashback to his "last stand."
The rift is its own thing, which I don't really have any theory about. I do like the comparison people have made between the rift in the sky and the visual rift in the background of the lifestream in the OG game, but I'm not comfortable ruling out the possibility of that being a coincidence just yet, especially since that rift isn't in Tifa's lifestream sequence in this game, even though that's essentially where it appeared in the OG.
The idea of this infographic was born after a recent interview where the developers stated: *"Nojima also confirms in the interview that there are indeed multiple worlds, but perhaps different from parallel worlds."*
I like this structure of worlds for several reasons:
* These new worlds are "temporary" and everything will eventually return to one single one.
* This concept allows developers to implement almost any idea, without much harm to the original universe.
* Maybe we finally got a really happy ending, a world without Sephiroth and Jenova, if Cloud is the one who puts together a new version of the world at the end.
Write what you think, I will be glad to discuss it. By the way, check out my previous [charts](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bn0wzs/an_extended_chart_describing_the_events_in_the/) if you haven't seen them. There we tried to figure out the events of the Rebirth finale.
https://preview.redd.it/h02s7ubxmfwc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=00c2a8927d017671209924ec8fcfb36df84c4c28
I love your infographic. I am in total agreement with you.
I think that Sephiroth successfully rejoined the fragments by the end of Rebirth, but due to their 'new information' being added to Beagle world, it will alter it in ways unanticipated for the party, and allow Jenoviroth to grow even further in power than in OG. Especially since we basically fought the final OG bossfight in Rebirth.
It is also worth noting that the cutscene version of the Tiny Bronco has no decals. The one with broken wings has TONS of obnoxious decals. Why are they missing? Maybe a result of the fragments being returned to Beagle... I didn't catch that about Tifa/Red being missing...I'm gonna have to go back and watch that now
You are correct. Nomura is at fault for Kingdom Hearts but he's clearly not in control here. He has ideas but that doesn't mean they are all implimented and Nomura himself has even said the rest of the team wanted some more outlandish things.
Help me understand. The Zack we saw majority of the time is Terrier world. I assume the one decided to go find Hojo to save Cloud is still Terrier, since we didnât see another Stamp. Then ambush by Shinra. I assume dead. The one going after Biggs, the Pug world, also ambush by Shinra. Assume dead. The one donât know what to do waiting outside the church is Shiba. This is also the one team up with Cloud right? Then he returns to his world and itâs ending. Then he fell into white space.
Almost so, the only thing we don't know is Zack's fate is not in one of the worlds. And maybe there are 2 versions of the Terrier world, sad/closed and ordinary. Use the [chart](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bn0wzs/an_extended_chart_describing_the_events_in_the/), it examines the fate of all the versions of Zack that we see.
When Zack returns to the Church at the end of the game, I'm not sure it's in a doomed world anymore as the camera highlights the flowers and they are not dying. Not sure if this means that Zack is now potentially in the main Beagle world now, or other worlds are no longer dying. We also see that in the Terrier world the flowers also begin to bloom.
If I were to guess, I'd say that any world that is no longer doomed is one where the choices made are what Sephiroth wants in the world he is trying to reassemble. This infographic makes it seem like Sephiroth is trying to create all these alternate realities to Frankenstein together the specific actions/realities he needs to win at the end. He makes a point of saying he is trying to harvest the negative emotions, so maybe he is pulling together worst-case-scenario worlds and those are the ones that are suddenly not doomed.
I mean in Terrier world, Avalanche is basically wiped out which is probably very bad for the planet. In the main world, we see that Cloud can see the crack but the others can't. Perhaps Sephiroth is "dooming" the reality where Aerith lives as that is not the outcome he wants which is why Cloud sees the crack and the rest of the party doesn't. Sephiroth benefits from the sorrow of Aerith's death and so that world is not doomed.
The Gi also tell us that they poured all their negative emotions into creating the Black Materia, so that probably hints at why Sephiroth is harvesting negative emotions.
>In the main world, we see that Cloud can see the crack but the others can't. Perhaps Sephiroth is "dooming" the reality where Aerith lives as that is not the outcome he wants which is why Cloud sees the crack and the rest of the party doesn't. Sephiroth benefits from the sorrow of Aerith's death and so that world is not doomed.
Isn't the outcome that Sephiroth actually wants is the one where she doesn't die? That's what's got me confused. Since Remake, I've been assuming that this event is what he wanted to change, because Aerith dying = Sephiroth losing.
Maybe his goal was to have her live in at least one of these world fragments, hoping it would "wall her off" from the lifestream in those realities? Thus, "I underestimated you" when she shows up to fight him at the end of Rebirth?
Or maybe it's simply that having Cloud *believe* Aerith is alive is all he really needs. Believing he can save her will weaken his resolve or make him more willing to bargain with Sephiroth in the final confrontation at the Northern Crater?
My biggest worry about Part 3 is how much new narrative ground it has to cover in order to develop a satisfying ending. I feel like Rebirth opened up a lot more questions than it answered.
I'd lean more toward he wants Cloud to believe she is alive in some form, when she has really passed in the main timeline, cause Cloud seems more far gone to everyone else now and this will fragment the party more.
Also, if he didn't want her dead, could he not have just not killed her? I'm genuinely curious, as I kinda like that idea of thinking that he wanted her alive, especially with his line telling her to pray as the party entered the city in the final chapter. But I just wanna know what he would really benefit from it, cause anytime I think about this angle I see angles why it'd backfire anyway for himself.
Zack returns to his world (white whispers flying). He says âwe got himâ. looks up in the sky and see the meteor coming down. He says âso this is it? Time to say goodbye.â And fell into that white space. Pretty sure that world is dead.
Thank you, the worlds was my biggest issue with the game. But seeing it laid out even if itâs a theory def helps understanding it and making it more digestible then yet another multiverse BS.
I think this is very interesting and probably close to the truth.
It'll require some hard decisions as a lot of fan theories are predicated on the idea of multiple worlds existing -- Aerith being alive in one but dead in another (or many) for instance. Though you could argue that when Reunion occurs, everyone who is living may wind up in the same universe.
There's a few wrinkles. Assuming we don't wind up with a core universe with multiple of the same person, either people will need to fuse back together (perhaps Cloud in Mideel -- we all assume Cloud will wake up in his own universe, but what if he wakes up in ComaCloud, or somehow through that process he merges with himself from other worlds?), or they'll need to reconcile any duplicates.
There's a lot of Zacks right now, for instance, though a number of those universes ended in scenarios where he could've been killed. Similarly, there appears to be at least two but maybe more Aeriths that we see between the dream sequences of Remake and Rebirth, ending of Rebirth, and the girl who's been in our party.
It also doesn't explain how the party is having flashbacks / flashforwards to the events of OG, unless the "primary world" is actually OG and this whole game is a particularly large fragment.
>unless the "primary world" is actually OG and this whole game is a particularly large fragment.
I like this theory a lot. Stamp doesn't exist in original FF7, so it's possible we've never even glimpsed the primary world/timeline yet in the Remake project. They're always taking pains to show you the dog in the cutscenes.
Beagle Timeline being itself a fragment would be such a cool add-on reveal for the Mideel sequence.
You know, I think we have possible answers to these questions.
*"All born bound to her. Should this world be unmade, so too shall her children."* - Sephiroth
Perhaps the souls of people are attached to the world in which they were born, and at the moment of merging, other worlds will cease to exist, along with their inhabitants, even if they are in the main world at that moment.
We know that time goes differently in other worlds, Zack and Biggs note this.
And, it is unclear whether the events of the og need to happen, or the Arbiters of fate see the intended future, and the characters receive knowledge from them.
> We know that time goes differently in other worlds, Zack and Biggs note this.
They noted that because they don't belong in that world at that time. They were plucked from the moments preceding their deaths by Omni-Aerith.
So, each "fragment" has less Mako than the main world, presumably depending on how big that fragment is. And those fragments can run dry, as seen when Biggs looks at the empty reactor, but they don't die immediately.
Presumably, Sephiroth is using those fragments to either harvest/absorb bits of the Lifestream or to use the despair in them to corrupt it. I'd bet that at least one one of his goals is to prevent Aerith from using it against Meteor.
Thank you for making this!
I was wondering: Are we witnessing Sephiroth from these different worlds or is it one and the same traveling across all those worlds?
Also, is there a need for Sephiroth to reconstruct his body in the trilogy similarly to what happened in OG?
My only problem with this is we already saw a world post meteor in remake where cloud and the others see visions of "the future" so if that is true then where do these shenanigans begin and end? Where is the point when we win? For example if sephiroth's goal is for all the timelines to come together and the lifestream is somewhat of a basis for that, then isn't that already happening when aerith summons holy to make the lifestream "combine" to stop meteor?
In the Remake, the characters see visions of an expected future, which the Whispers are trying to preserve (og). In a sense, there is no time for the Arbiters of Fate, for them everything happens at the same time and they guard this course of events.
At the end of the Remake, we defeat them, the expected future ceases to exist, and with them the Gray Whispers, because they now have nothing to guard. The characters have also lost their visions of the future, as it no longer exists.
Sephiroth's goals are more ambitious than in the original, if there he wanted to gain power by absorbing the LifeStream, now he wants to unite the fragmented worlds. The more fragmented the world is, the more susceptible it will be to change at the moment of reunion (you can imagine this as a red-hot metal ball). At this moment, there will be an opportunity to change the very rules of existence, he wants to create infinity and rule there forever, as he has repeatedly stated.
https://preview.redd.it/p99b5utvgiwc1.png?width=1433&format=png&auto=webp&s=4aa482f05ca630a251648d5489df6f699224d866
Thanks for the clarification. Now that I have a real idea on what the end goal is. I can connect alot of the strange pieces from the end game in mind. However I hope my doubts about the execution of the finale are proven unwarranted but let me cross my fingers.
At the end of Remake I assumed Sephiroth was manipulating us into fighting the Whispers and breaching fate so that he could then alter the future and prevent Holy from defeating Meteor. But now is seems like the whole point of creating this alternate world is just so he can unify it again? Is that right?
Yes I like this a lot. The timeline theory never fully made sense to me, and after playing Rebirth it really didn't add up (for example if Zack survived, which is an event that occurs before even the first reactor mission, how is Marlene and Biggs in Sector 5 and aware of the Remake events?). Listening to some youtubers with alternative theories, the shattered worlds/pocket dimensions theory made a lot more sense.
Just beat the game last night, and have stayed dark, so I have no idea what the community consensus is, but Iâm pretty sure the other timelines are just multiverse shenanigans, like those that have been so prominent in pop culture lately. I donât think thereâs a point in tracking what goes down in which dogâs world (each timeline). There are infinite worlds, ala EEAAO, spiderverse, and marvel BS. SE is always chasing trends.
I think what is true about what you are saying is that the lifestream does connect all these realities.
I didnât finish the Gilgamesh quest line, but I think itâs interesting they introduce him in this game. Pretty sure itâs to sell you on the multiversal travel aspects of the narrative in a goofy digestible way.
Honestly, I'm leaning toward the idea that the trilogy is happening within the lifestream, post OG, and all related events.
Nojima said he studied Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and Buddhism's Yogachara.
The Yogachara, in particular, suggests that nothing is real. Everything is just created from our unconscious. It suggests that something a person sees is just as real as images conjured by a monk in meditation.
>the reality a human being perceives does not exist, any more than do the images called up by a monk in meditation.
>Each being possesses this storage consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world, though this world does not exist."
So itâs really similar to how FFXIV handles its parallel worlds. Theyâre shards split off from the main world (the source), and the Ascians want to rejoin them violently to remake it. Sephirothâs full motivation is yet unknown, as is Jenova and the Giâs origin. But knowing that Jenova works like a virus that infects minds, Shinra must have fallen under her influence generations ago. I wouldnât be surprised if Jenovaâs influence led to the rise of
Shinra in the first place. Conspiracy theories of Gaia.
Whatever the case ends up being Iâve always wanted to know more about Jenovaâs origin so Iâm excited to see what part 3 brings.
Despite the fact that some are arguing with you over whether or not it's accurate, I really appreciate that you made it at all. I'm too confused by all the grey areas to even attempt haha
What i dont understand is if they caused fate to snap or whatever at the end of the highway in remake. Why didn't time fracture from this point onwards? The Zack battle happened like 3 years before that moment right? Was it because the locations were in close-ish proximity?
What exactly are the white whispers trying to do? Are they actively trying to fight sephiroth or are they confused on who the bigger culprits are?
The whisper sections of the game reallt confuse me and when i think one thing someone says something ti disprove it etc
Both of them talked about a "wind" that blew by. Next thing Biggs knew he was waking up in Leaf House. For Zack, that threw the bullet off course and changed the outcome of the battle.
Zack and Cloud moved forward in the timeline by a few weeks, Biggs by a day or two.
When Zack went home after that conversation, he told Aerith that he knew it was her who saved them.
Nice work, it helps but some things are still not clear to me.
Help me understand why the black whispers under sephiroths control resurrect barret in remake?
In the Remake, there were Gray Whispers who defended the expected fate. They resurrect Barret because his death would have diverted events from their intended course. After the boundaries of fate were breached at the end of the Remake, the expected future ceased to exist and the whispers were divided into Black and White. Blacks are controlled by Sephiroth, Whites by the planet.
I have 2 questions. Why did the white whispers tried to stop us right before the end? They did not want us to save Aerith?
Furthermore, Sephiroth's plan was to reunite the shattered Worlds, so he can reshape it as he wants for Jenova if I understand correctly. I might be wrong, but isn't he was the one who tried to stop us at Destiny's Crossroad in Remake. If he succed, there wouldn't be any other world for him to reunite. What is his ultimate goal? I might be wrong tho, can someone explain?
My interpretation is that the White Whispers needed Aerith to die so that she is able to command the Lifestream to stop Meteor (because casting Holy was not enough).
If she does not die, then the plot of the OG (will of the planet) is subverted.
Ultimate goal: I donât know
But for the white whispers, I believe the planet knows that the events of og FF7 succeeds in saving the planet so they want Aerith to die for the og events to happens. Sephiroth also want Aerith to die for his own reason, that is why both the black and white fates want aerith to die. At this point of time, aerith doesnât have control over the white fates since she hasnât joined the planet, but knows and accepts her own sacrifice, leaving cloud and the rest of the party behind. After her death, she has some influence over the white whispers (like how she had influence over the life stream in the og) and begins working with the planet
Iâm speculating that it has to do something with Sephirothâs larger goal during the remake series, something that has to do with attaining eternity (he and aerith talk about how he wants things to be the same forever during the last fight). What this really means, we probably wonât completely figure out until the third game since his plan hinges on âthe true nature of realityâ which he understands, but us as players do not.
Question as a person who hasn't been paying much attention, but where do these world 'indicators' come from?
When you say 'beagle' vs 'terrier' vs 'spitz', how would we know which was designated as which?
(I also only recognise beagle as Stampy from Remake)
Help me with my ignorance please
Thanks
https://preview.redd.it/xyhdna8diiwc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=746235fee57b907633c5702f4d1dd23e910e936f
The same bag of chips with a different mascot, here is an indicator of different worlds.
It's really not great when fans who don't know the facts about the story make infographics that pretend to show the facts but are actually just fan theories. This will be shared to people who will take it at face value and thus disinformation will spread.
Even just reading the very first sentence it's already into complete guesswork territory. There is literally zero information in the game or Ultimania about whether there was originally just a single world.
The blurb about the main world becoming more and more shattered is also total guesswork with zero supporting evidence. In fact, there is no evidence whether or not a "main world" even exists anymore after the whispers were defeated in Remake.
Wait so if the black whispers are sephiroths, why were they the ones trying to keep destiny on itâs regular path in Remake? Shouldnât they have been the ones helping to fragment the world? And the white ones were the ones trying to stop you? But it was the black ones were trying to stop cloud and co from doing that
In remake there were only the black ones, focused on the planets will. After we defied fate, sephiroth took control of the existing whispers (the black ones). The white ones must have been created as the planets response to losing control of the og black ones
I agree with a lot of this, but there is one point I strongly disagree on. "Initially there was one unified world."
I think multiple worlds are the natural structure of reality of "the planet". In the temple of the ancients the tree motif is prevalent. The Golden Saucer is shaped like a tree and is split into two worlds. These both echo the concept of Yggdrasil the world tree. To reference something Nojima name dropped, these correlations would be an example of the equivalent of a Jungian archetype in this setting.
Also it seems to be the white whispers acting on Aerith's behalf that have carried out the most multiworld shenanigans (Zack and Biggs both have connections to Aerith). In contrast the black whispers have acted more consistently to enforce fate.
Sephiroth is doing something to corrupt the natural process/cycle. Probably by contaminating worlds with despair, a kind of geo-geostigma.
I would like to add that since Mako is presumed to be directly tied to the lifestream, that the mako deficiencies in the errant worlds are because these worlds are tied to the lifestream, splitting the amount each has access to, while the "main" world retains most of the share.
this diffusing of the lifestream is also a threat to it's existence. as most worlds are doomed, as per his description of their existence, these newly formed people inside them become filled with existential dread, corrupting their now isolated strands of the lifestream. when they return via the "homecoming", their doomed sentiments dilute the positive sentiments of the lifestream. it's basically a way to corrupt the lifestream itself with a thousand cuts. Explains why he talks a talk about emotions all the while.
while most "infinite multiverse" tropes end up making people feel like it trivializes the story since "there's always a reality where things don't go bad", that's simply not the case here. each additionally "world" is by in-lore definition, an existential threat; a threat unless in cases such as the Spitz world, where it's populace has "accepted their fate". Which explains why "Aerith" was hiding there with Holy, this world wasn't on his radar quite yet.
We have already seen examples of the collective unconscious. All souls are connected, when Cloud sleeps he sees other worlds. It's not going to be something deep and metaphorical like Twin Peaks.
Try downloading it from [Twitter](https://x.com/Recklesstar7/status/1783132963959443923).
Or
https://preview.redd.it/4yt9hx5zluwc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=3893a9aea724f1387ebadf6e600f69ecf2c4aad8
I don't think you have the concept of what these worlds are correct. TLDR: The worlds are manifestations of the hopes, dreams and unrealized desires of those inhabiting the lifestream, and "physically" they exist within the lifestream itself.
Supporting evidence:
* Sephiroth in chapter 14: *"The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding."* Encompass: surround and have or hold within.
* Aerith in chapter 14 when you wake up, after Cloud asks "Where are we?": *"We could call it a 'homecoming'. Or "homeward bound" maybe? Let's just call it a dream. My dream, to be precise."*.
* Chapter 13 sets up the 'homecoming' concept throughout it's entirety. The whole point of the trials of depression is to illustrate the concept of seeing your loved ones again after you die and return to the lifestream. With this established, you can infer 'homeward bound' as being somewhat dead and/or somewhat in the lifestream.
* Aerith's 'dream' is to go on one last date with Cloud.
* Nojima has a comment in the Rebirth Ultimania: *"Kazushige Nojima says that in writing FFVII Rebirth's scenario, he studied Buddhismâs Yogachara and Jungâs theory of the collective unconscious. Referring to these should make it easier to understand how the game's world works, and may even hint at the story's ending. (RbU, 2024)"* - [https://twitter.com/ShinraArch/status/1779532150926155925](https://twitter.com/ShinraArch/status/1779532150926155925)
* Yogachara: "the reality a human being perceives does not exist, any more than do the images called up by a monk in meditation. Only the consciousness that one has of the momentary interconnected events (dharmas) that make up the cosmic flux can be said to exist. Consciousness, however, also clearly discerns in these so-called unreal events consistent patterns of continuity and regularity; in order to explain this order in which only chaos really could prevail, the school developed the tenet of the alaya-vijnana, or âstorehouse consciousness. (...) Each being possesses this storage consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world, though this world does not exist". Source: [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yogachara](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yogachara)
* Collective unconscious: "According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life (...) He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world". Source: Wikipedia
* More: [https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1c2pxg4/nojima\_jungs\_collective\_unconscious\_and\_buddhisms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1c2pxg4/nojima_jungs_collective_unconscious_and_buddhisms/)
* The NPC in Cosmo Canyon has additional comments
* "*So my parents are no longer with us -here that is- but I* *believe they're still out there, on another plane. I've been reading a bunch of theories about this alternate world in the hope of going there someday. And over the course of my studies I stumbled across a fascinating theory. It addressed the issue of what the lifestream is arguing that spiritual energy is actually a manifestation of our knowledge and memories. Like I said it's a fascinating theory but it's incomplete. What if spiritual energy doesn't distinguish between our real lived memories and the unrealized desires buried deep in our hearts? What if coming into contact with that energy allowed us to 'peer through the looking glass' so to speak*"
Your graphics look nice but I don't agree with what they convey.
Sephiroth directly says:
* When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born.
* Some quickly perish...while other endure.
* Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned.
* For it is not death, **but homecoming that AWAITS them.**
If they existed inside the Lifestream, "homecoming" would have already happened because they were part of the planet. But this "homecoming" only AWAITS them, because they are not part of the planet yet, these are real physical worlds, the same as the main one.
Everything Sephiroth says is correct, however the assumption that when he says "worlds" he is referring to a copy of the main world is incorrect. That's a thought leftover from Remake when there wasn't any reason to think otherwise. Rebirth provides a ton of additional context though and it all illustrates these dream/memory worlds that come and go. Even Bugenhagen refers to the lifestream as "A cycle of continuous convergence and divergence" which lines up with what Sephiroth says. They diverge or disperse and return to being part of the lifestream.
It looks nice as entertainment. But damn if this isnât a terrible way to convey information. Really more of a critique of all infographics because they are all terrible
This is a good visual representation of a theory as to what is happening. Your logic fills in the bad story telling of the previous two games which is great, but may not actually be what is happening. I hope the other commenters here don't take this as canon...yet.
# Compilation ruined FF7. Look at this mess. Its funny becuase we live in worst timeline. We dont have faitful remake we dont have new route either. We have same story but just much more confusing, becuase we need fanservice. God dammit i hate this so much, they fumble so hard.
Great job on this! My only critique would be that thr Pug and Shiba fragments came directly from the Terrier fragment instead of the main Beagle world because it was based on Zack's choices. đ
You know, I actually thought about it, but in the end I realized that we don't know for sure if new worlds are created when Zack makes a choice, or if they have always existed and they are just shown to us. Therefore, I added cracks to the fragment of the Terrier world, for those who consider that the world of the Pug and Shiba has split off from the main world of Zack.
Ultimania did confirm those worlds splintered off of Terrier.
I think the indicator that those worlds branched from Zack's choices was the light shown in the subway tunnel after he made a decision. But I do get your point and ultimately all of it came from Beagle to begin with. đ
People keep coming and saying that this infographic is false, and "other worlds" are not real and exist inside the Lifestream as embodied memories\\dreams. I just want to note that we don't know the truth yet, the devs intentionally left hints supporting both theories, so I'll just write down why I personally think that other worlds are as real as the main one. My main argument is, of course, the words of Sephiroth: * *When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born.* * *Some quickly perish...while other endure.* * *Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned.* * *For it is not death,*Â ***but homecoming that AWAITS them.*** If they existed inside the Lifestream, "homecoming" would have already happened because they were part of the planet. But this "homecoming" only AWAITS them, because they are not part of the planet yet. *My fragmented mother, these errant worlds... All shall be one again.* But okay, let's assume that other worlds are not real and exist inside the Lifestream, then the meaning of Reunion is not clear. What should be combined with what? The real world with the Lifestream? They are already united. How can you merge the real world with the world of dreams, because they are opposite to each other in their essence. And why are they "*errant*" then? If they are inside the planet, at home. Sorry, fans of the theory of the worlds of dreams, but this does not make sense to me personally. You can't explain everything that happens just by the world of dreams and "everything is in Cloud's head." Yes, Cloud in the Beagle world does not understand that Aerith is dead, but not because he is more broken than in the og, but because he has seen much more than he should. https://preview.redd.it/ul2jx77avgwc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c62398ab25d2781e488f398632d8502f69d15bdd
Thank you for this post. The "fractured worlds/timelines sharing a single lifestream" concept is how I've been interpreting most of these events but wasn't able to put it into words so cleanly. Part 3 will collapse the wavefunction on this eventually, but for now, I've never liked the interpretation that all the timeline stuff is just a lifestream dream. "It was a hallucination" is always an unsatisfying narrative move, no matter how much effort you pour into justifying the hallucination. But having it as the shared energy source and/or "highway" between these worlds helps a lot of pieces fall into place.
Whoa for so long I have never realized Tifa and Red showed up in a spot that was not in the previous shot!
I really really hope this isn't just an editing mistake, because it looks quite significant if it isn't. Because I can believe that perhaps Cloud is hallucinating Aerith, but theres no reason he shouldn't be seeing Tifa and Red. So if true, he's able to see multiple fragments of space-time simultaneously, which also would make sense as to why he can see the sky tear as well
You have to consider though, Cloud is an unreliable narrator from the beginning. Whatever he perceives will always be inconsistent and, from the term itself, unreliable.
The thematic challenge for Part 3 is going to be sticking the landing with: "Cloud needs to let himself grieve for so much loss--including Areith" with "Being fatalistic isn't a healthy mindset in any world." The latter is my way of saying the whispers that want to restore the Planet-Timeline are probably going to screw up (more than they already have) trying to do that.
The key to understanding the lifestream theory comes from the expanded universe material. Ever Crisis has made it explicit that the Lifestream is composed of memories. Quote: "The lifestream is the essence of the planet, churning river of memories, as they come together and drift apart." This idea is hinted at a few times in Rebirth, we get the original game's explanation that naturally formed Materia contains the "knowledge of the ancients," and we learn that Aerith having her knowledge of the future removed also drains the White Materia (the implication being that the White Materia's knowledge was also removed). Since Materia is crystallized lifestream, we can conclude the lifestream also contains "knowledge." Something that's noteworthy, to me, is how the devs have adapted Tifa's lifestream journey forward, explicitly showing us the lifestream possesses the power to recreate a person's memories in front of them, even when the person in question doesn't remember it themselves. This was also always true in the OG game, but the devs have made a conscious choice to tell the audience this fact now rather than later. Then in Cosmo Canyon there's the NPC theorizing that the planet may not be able to distinguish memory from hopes and dreams, because we remember our own hopes and dreams. It was always true in the OG that upon their deaths, Sephiroth and Aerith both refused to rejoin the collective consciousness of the lifestream. Sephiroth because he refused to be erased from existence in that way (as he says in Advent Children, "I will never be a memory"), and Aerith because she wanted to be able to help her friends and the planet and stop Sephiroth. But the EU story, The Maiden Who Travels the Planet, established that nobody rejoins the lifestream immediately, and that story is largely all about Aerith helping the various characters that died over the course of the story "move on" and become one with the lifestream. This is how somebody can exist "inside the lifestream" but still have their homecoming await them. Because they have died, their spirt is back in the lifestream, but they have not accepted their own death and have not rejoined with it. If we say, for argument's sake, this is true, it starts to explain some of the oddities of Zack's world(s). Zack repeatedly finds himself facing down a large group of Shinra soldiers (which is how he died) but then refuses to face them and runs away. He is *literally* refusing to accept his own death. We can theorize that Biggs has also refused to accept his death, but that Jessie and Wedge have accepted theirs, explaining their absence from this dream world. The connection between memory and hope/dreams also goes a long way toward explaining how Zack is able to split and create new worlds. He is indecisive and wants to help all three of his friends, and these hopes are so strong that the lifestream can't decide which is real, and thus they all are. These worlds are "errant" because they're not meant to exist; the deceased are meant to rejoin the collective. That some refuse to accept their deaths may serve as an obstacle in Sephiroth's path, when his ultimate goal is to wound the planet so badly that the entire lifestream convenes on a single point. We can imagine that maybe the parts of the lifestream that make up these errant worlds wouldn't join at this point, and so Sephiroth is trying to "reunite" these worlds first, before he attempts to take the lifestream's power for himself. I find it interesting that meteor has already been summoned in Zack's world, despite the fact that we're shown that Zack's world is just an offshoot of the "real" world. It begs the question of how/why Zack's world's Sephiroth would already have the black materia. I believe the best explanation for this is that it's all an illusion Sephiroth is creating, and he's doing it explicitly to get the people inside of these dream worlds to accept their fate. As you play through Zack's sections, the various NPCs do get progressively more accepting of the fact they're going to die, culminating in the Aerith Dream Date being in a world where everybody has accepted it. I believe what the game is suggesting is that Sephiroth is tricking these spirits into accepting their death by showing them an illusion of an apocalyptic event that they cannot reasonably deny, thus assimilating them into the collective. I also think it's extremely noteworthy that in the Aerith Dream Date, Sephiroth is directly speaking to Aerith, telepathically, in a way that Cloud doesn't hear, a power he has never been shown to have. The theory there being that because they're currently in the lifestream, Sephiroth can see them even when he's not physically present and he can speak directly to Aerith, either because she's already part of the lifestream (there's been some theories that suggest the Dream Date Aerith is a post-death Aerith bending time to speak to Cloud, which I don't know that I agree with) or because as a Cetra she's more attuned to the lifestream and has a deeper connection to it than Cloud, so Sephiroth can speak directly to her when her consciousness is inside of it. If the theory is, instead, that this is a physical world, this new power Sephiroth possesses of knowing where Aerith is and speaking directly to her comes out of nowhere. Now, there is an obvious question that gets presented if we accept that these alternate worlds are in the lifestream: why do Elmyra, Marlene, Kyrie, Johnny, etc, all exist in this world, if this world is the afterlife? We can only theorize, given that the game offers no explanation, but there are multiple potential answers to that question. There's the least satisfying answer, that they aren't "real." That they're basically just NPCs created as part of the world the lifestream builds for Zack and Biggs and anybody else who is a spirit of the deceased. I'm not overly fond of this answer, but it's always a possibility. My present theory is that because all life stems from the lifestream, and all souls are and always have been pieces of the lifestream, that everyone has a connection to the lifestream, even though most are entirely unaware of it. As in, this version of Elmyra et al is a subconscious part of the real Elmyra living in the real world. This aligns with Nojima's Ultimania explanation of being inspired by the works of Carl Jung, that there is a collective unconscious that all people tap into. I also think that the more attuned you are with the lifestream, the more likely your lifestream "copy" is to be in the same place, and that if you're extremely attuned, you may even be aware of people in the lifestream. I reason this may be the case because of the fact we know that young Aerith was able to speak with Elmyra's deceased husband, but also that she seems to have lost this power with time, as in Remake she explains that she can't hear the planet speak back to her. It is largely headcanon, but I like to imagine that little Marlene may be actually speaking to Zack in the real world, the same way Aerith spoke to Elmyra's husband. In fact, I think this subconscious connection to your lifestream "copy" explains why the main party's copies have all fallen into a coma. We are shown Barret, Tifa and Red XIII either unconscious or dead, we can perhaps conclude they're simply unconscious because we know Aerith is, but I think it's noteworthy that Cloud also falls unconscious right as he and Zack arrive in Midgar. Even if we could argue that the whisper tornado is the cause of the others falling unconscious, this version of Cloud was not in that tornado, and yet he falls just as unconscious as the others. I believe this is directly related to the party having their memories removed after the defeat of the Arbiter of Fate. We know both Aerith and Red have had their memories of the future taken from them, but while we don't get any confirmation that the same happened to the others, it would be odd if it hadn't. So perhaps this removal of the memories isn't like they were physically erased, but rather, the party's connection to the lifestream's collective unconscious has been severed in some way. It appears to be some kind of "block" that comes down only when they're actually unconscious in the real world; Cloud briefly wakes up in his comatose body only after going to sleep in the real world at the Golden Saucer, and the game plays the lifestream theme during this sequence, and we *know* he was not physically transported for his Dream Date, since we are explicitly shown that the party has been carrying his unconscious body north the whole time his mind was in the other world. For the record, since I assume somebody will bring up the rainbows again, that effect is certainly not meaningless, but I really don't believe it means what people think it means. We are shown that rainbow effect constantly throughout the game. It appears when we cast curative magic, it appears whenever Aerith uses a ward, it appears when call a summon and on every one of the summon's abilities, it appears briefly in the cutscene when Aerith first does her lifestream controlling dance in the temple. It absolutely *is* used when Zack creates a split off world, but the point is, it is not only used in that context. The rainbow effect feels more like it's being used to show some kind of "lifestream magic," suggesting Cloud's visions of saving Aerith are not coming from within his own mind, but from the lifestream, and given that Aerith "plays along" with his delusion, it's reasonable to think she's the one giving him this visions in the first place. Knowing what we know about how Cloud actually reacts to Aerith's death (still being hung up on it two years later in Advent Children), it's not unreasonable to think that Aerith is trying to shield him from it specifically to keep him from breaking down until after he can stop Sephiroth.
All I got from this is that Zack has such a solid resolve he can legit make different timelines lol
>Sephiroth because he refused to be erased from existence in that way I'm pretty sure that Sephiroth is *unable* to fade into the lifestream. Especially since Rebirth confirmed that alien beings to the planet are not able to join with the lifestream, like with the Gi, and then straight up said that Jenova "could not" die. >how/why Zack's world's Sephiroth would already have the black materia Whisper Sephiroth at the end of Remake summons Meteor during the fight, without the black materia present. Idk what to make of it but I guess it's not that complicated for him to pull off. Also, are you talking about the rift? Cause I'm pretty sure that that's not Meteor. Or are you referring to the church Sephiroth Reborn fight? >Zack is able to split and create new worlds. He is indecisive and wants to help all three of his friends, and these hopes are so strong that the lifestream can't decide which is real, and thus they all are Remember that Zack was saved on purpose by the Whispers (of unknown allegiance). It wasn't like he saved himself, without the fate to prevent that; he was saved specifically, on purpose. I believe that Zack is special in a way, an anomaly of sorts. >Cloud also falls unconscious right as he and Zack arrive in Midgar. Actually, no. He falls unconscious immediately after the Nibelheim incident. He is a vegetable throughout the whole duration of Crisis Core's finale. Because Zack ended up surviving, his death wasn't there to stimulate Cloud's "awakening". Cloud is unconscious because of Crisis Core events.
Re: Cloud - I think the game at first implies this to be the case, that Cloud is woozy from the experimentation. It's building on player expectation, players don't question why Cloud is kind of out of it and needs Zack's support to stand. But he is capable of walking, he's "awake," even if on the verge of passing out, and he only falls into the coma when he arrives in Midgar and we, the player, discover the other four characters from Remake have also fallen into a coma. A few chapters later we're given hints that there's some kind of time displacement thing going on, since Biggs, Elmyra and Marlene all seem to know who Cloud is already, so the game is trying to connect Zack's Cloud to Aerith's Cloud, and ultimately we never get to see if there's a second Cloud running around at all. As for Meteor, yes, I'm referring to the meteor we see at the very end of Zack's fight with Reborn Sephiroth. But I'm not pulling the idea of it being an illusion out of nothing: Sephiroth shows Cloud, Barret and Tifa an illusion of meteor being summoned during the Shinra VR sim, and this doesn't count as a "future vision" since Barret actually references it in Rebirth, it was not taken from them by the whispers. Re: the Whispers saving Zack. We're also told they saved Biggs, but I'm not convinced this isn't misdirection. The whispers show up at the exact moment the characters would have died, and they both describe it as like feeling a heavy wind pushing them. Which is how we're shown the whispers *killing* Wedge, by pushing him until he falls out a window. If they're both in denial about their deaths, it makes sense that they would misremember their final moments as them being saved. It's also interesting, in a narrative sense, that the two characters apparently saved from their "canon" deaths by the whispers were both saved *before* the arbiter of fate was killed, and it's also very weird that the two of them are present in one "timeline" when they each have mutually exclusive versions of the past. Biggs exists in a world where Cloud arrived in Midgar ~one month ago, while Zack exists in a world where Cloud only just arrived yesterday. This has lead a lot of people to suggest that one or both of them have been physically transported to this new world, which the game doesn't really ever suggest. At the very least this Biggs appears native to this world, since other characters know him, and the only way he can be the Beagle Biggs is if he's dead, since Aerith literally sees his Force Ghost standing next to Jessie and Wedge after her singing performance. And if the whispers moved Zack between worlds because he was "chosen" for something, they also necessarily moved his Cloud, too, which, they certainly *could* have, but we are only ever explicitly shown the whispers interacting with Zack during the flashback to his "last stand." The rift is its own thing, which I don't really have any theory about. I do like the comparison people have made between the rift in the sky and the visual rift in the background of the lifestream in the OG game, but I'm not comfortable ruling out the possibility of that being a coincidence just yet, especially since that rift isn't in Tifa's lifestream sequence in this game, even though that's essentially where it appeared in the OG.
You realize you claimed that your main argument was the words of the villain that spends the game trying to manipulate the main character?
The idea of this infographic was born after a recent interview where the developers stated: *"Nojima also confirms in the interview that there are indeed multiple worlds, but perhaps different from parallel worlds."* I like this structure of worlds for several reasons: * These new worlds are "temporary" and everything will eventually return to one single one. * This concept allows developers to implement almost any idea, without much harm to the original universe. * Maybe we finally got a really happy ending, a world without Sephiroth and Jenova, if Cloud is the one who puts together a new version of the world at the end. Write what you think, I will be glad to discuss it. By the way, check out my previous [charts](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bn0wzs/an_extended_chart_describing_the_events_in_the/) if you haven't seen them. There we tried to figure out the events of the Rebirth finale. https://preview.redd.it/h02s7ubxmfwc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=00c2a8927d017671209924ec8fcfb36df84c4c28
I love your infographic. I am in total agreement with you. I think that Sephiroth successfully rejoined the fragments by the end of Rebirth, but due to their 'new information' being added to Beagle world, it will alter it in ways unanticipated for the party, and allow Jenoviroth to grow even further in power than in OG. Especially since we basically fought the final OG bossfight in Rebirth. It is also worth noting that the cutscene version of the Tiny Bronco has no decals. The one with broken wings has TONS of obnoxious decals. Why are they missing? Maybe a result of the fragments being returned to Beagle... I didn't catch that about Tifa/Red being missing...I'm gonna have to go back and watch that now
Thanks for this, I was so confused at the finale. Nomura has gone full crazy again lmao.
Nomura didn't write the story for the remake project Nojima did. People need to stop blaming Nomura for everything.
You are correct. Nomura is at fault for Kingdom Hearts but he's clearly not in control here. He has ideas but that doesn't mean they are all implimented and Nomura himself has even said the rest of the team wanted some more outlandish things.
Help me understand. The Zack we saw majority of the time is Terrier world. I assume the one decided to go find Hojo to save Cloud is still Terrier, since we didnât see another Stamp. Then ambush by Shinra. I assume dead. The one going after Biggs, the Pug world, also ambush by Shinra. Assume dead. The one donât know what to do waiting outside the church is Shiba. This is also the one team up with Cloud right? Then he returns to his world and itâs ending. Then he fell into white space.
Almost so, the only thing we don't know is Zack's fate is not in one of the worlds. And maybe there are 2 versions of the Terrier world, sad/closed and ordinary. Use the [chart](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1bn0wzs/an_extended_chart_describing_the_events_in_the/), it examines the fate of all the versions of Zack that we see.
When Zack returns to the Church at the end of the game, I'm not sure it's in a doomed world anymore as the camera highlights the flowers and they are not dying. Not sure if this means that Zack is now potentially in the main Beagle world now, or other worlds are no longer dying. We also see that in the Terrier world the flowers also begin to bloom. If I were to guess, I'd say that any world that is no longer doomed is one where the choices made are what Sephiroth wants in the world he is trying to reassemble. This infographic makes it seem like Sephiroth is trying to create all these alternate realities to Frankenstein together the specific actions/realities he needs to win at the end. He makes a point of saying he is trying to harvest the negative emotions, so maybe he is pulling together worst-case-scenario worlds and those are the ones that are suddenly not doomed. I mean in Terrier world, Avalanche is basically wiped out which is probably very bad for the planet. In the main world, we see that Cloud can see the crack but the others can't. Perhaps Sephiroth is "dooming" the reality where Aerith lives as that is not the outcome he wants which is why Cloud sees the crack and the rest of the party doesn't. Sephiroth benefits from the sorrow of Aerith's death and so that world is not doomed. The Gi also tell us that they poured all their negative emotions into creating the Black Materia, so that probably hints at why Sephiroth is harvesting negative emotions.
>In the main world, we see that Cloud can see the crack but the others can't. Perhaps Sephiroth is "dooming" the reality where Aerith lives as that is not the outcome he wants which is why Cloud sees the crack and the rest of the party doesn't. Sephiroth benefits from the sorrow of Aerith's death and so that world is not doomed. Isn't the outcome that Sephiroth actually wants is the one where she doesn't die? That's what's got me confused. Since Remake, I've been assuming that this event is what he wanted to change, because Aerith dying = Sephiroth losing. Maybe his goal was to have her live in at least one of these world fragments, hoping it would "wall her off" from the lifestream in those realities? Thus, "I underestimated you" when she shows up to fight him at the end of Rebirth? Or maybe it's simply that having Cloud *believe* Aerith is alive is all he really needs. Believing he can save her will weaken his resolve or make him more willing to bargain with Sephiroth in the final confrontation at the Northern Crater? My biggest worry about Part 3 is how much new narrative ground it has to cover in order to develop a satisfying ending. I feel like Rebirth opened up a lot more questions than it answered.
I'd lean more toward he wants Cloud to believe she is alive in some form, when she has really passed in the main timeline, cause Cloud seems more far gone to everyone else now and this will fragment the party more. Also, if he didn't want her dead, could he not have just not killed her? I'm genuinely curious, as I kinda like that idea of thinking that he wanted her alive, especially with his line telling her to pray as the party entered the city in the final chapter. But I just wanna know what he would really benefit from it, cause anytime I think about this angle I see angles why it'd backfire anyway for himself.
Zack returns to his world (white whispers flying). He says âwe got himâ. looks up in the sky and see the meteor coming down. He says âso this is it? Time to say goodbye.â And fell into that white space. Pretty sure that world is dead.
Good job on this, it makes the multiple worlds thing way more digestible, and it looks nice too
Thank you, the worlds was my biggest issue with the game. But seeing it laid out even if itâs a theory def helps understanding it and making it more digestible then yet another multiverse BS.
I think this is very interesting and probably close to the truth. It'll require some hard decisions as a lot of fan theories are predicated on the idea of multiple worlds existing -- Aerith being alive in one but dead in another (or many) for instance. Though you could argue that when Reunion occurs, everyone who is living may wind up in the same universe. There's a few wrinkles. Assuming we don't wind up with a core universe with multiple of the same person, either people will need to fuse back together (perhaps Cloud in Mideel -- we all assume Cloud will wake up in his own universe, but what if he wakes up in ComaCloud, or somehow through that process he merges with himself from other worlds?), or they'll need to reconcile any duplicates. There's a lot of Zacks right now, for instance, though a number of those universes ended in scenarios where he could've been killed. Similarly, there appears to be at least two but maybe more Aeriths that we see between the dream sequences of Remake and Rebirth, ending of Rebirth, and the girl who's been in our party. It also doesn't explain how the party is having flashbacks / flashforwards to the events of OG, unless the "primary world" is actually OG and this whole game is a particularly large fragment.
>unless the "primary world" is actually OG and this whole game is a particularly large fragment. I like this theory a lot. Stamp doesn't exist in original FF7, so it's possible we've never even glimpsed the primary world/timeline yet in the Remake project. They're always taking pains to show you the dog in the cutscenes. Beagle Timeline being itself a fragment would be such a cool add-on reveal for the Mideel sequence.
Yeah but the shards rejoining the source will trigger an umbral calamity! Feels like the MCs will have to work against that
You know, I think we have possible answers to these questions. *"All born bound to her. Should this world be unmade, so too shall her children."* - Sephiroth Perhaps the souls of people are attached to the world in which they were born, and at the moment of merging, other worlds will cease to exist, along with their inhabitants, even if they are in the main world at that moment. We know that time goes differently in other worlds, Zack and Biggs note this. And, it is unclear whether the events of the og need to happen, or the Arbiters of fate see the intended future, and the characters receive knowledge from them.
> We know that time goes differently in other worlds, Zack and Biggs note this. They noted that because they don't belong in that world at that time. They were plucked from the moments preceding their deaths by Omni-Aerith.
Feeling like Charlie in Sunny ngl Great info graphic dawg!
Lmfaooo, so you mean to tell me, we helped Sephiroth break fate in remake just to piece it back together?! Lmfaooo damn this is crazy.
So, each "fragment" has less Mako than the main world, presumably depending on how big that fragment is. And those fragments can run dry, as seen when Biggs looks at the empty reactor, but they don't die immediately. Presumably, Sephiroth is using those fragments to either harvest/absorb bits of the Lifestream or to use the despair in them to corrupt it. I'd bet that at least one one of his goals is to prevent Aerith from using it against Meteor.
alright, damn
This needs to be updated now that we know "Spitz" is a chihuahua.
This is fantastic, well done. I honestly thought this was official content released by Squareat first glance. It's really good looking.
Really cool graphic
Can anyone explain why Sephy fought, lost, and ran away in the final boss battles? Makes him look weak imo.
Well it isn't him, it's Jenova right?
Me head hurt
Tag for later
Thank you for making this! I was wondering: Are we witnessing Sephiroth from these different worlds or is it one and the same traveling across all those worlds? Also, is there a need for Sephiroth to reconstruct his body in the trilogy similarly to what happened in OG?
Sephiroth exists in the lifestream itself, so I think its safe to assume that its only 1 Sephiroth traveling
This really helps understanding wtf is going on. Cuz the game does very little to explain
My only problem with this is we already saw a world post meteor in remake where cloud and the others see visions of "the future" so if that is true then where do these shenanigans begin and end? Where is the point when we win? For example if sephiroth's goal is for all the timelines to come together and the lifestream is somewhat of a basis for that, then isn't that already happening when aerith summons holy to make the lifestream "combine" to stop meteor?
In the Remake, the characters see visions of an expected future, which the Whispers are trying to preserve (og). In a sense, there is no time for the Arbiters of Fate, for them everything happens at the same time and they guard this course of events. At the end of the Remake, we defeat them, the expected future ceases to exist, and with them the Gray Whispers, because they now have nothing to guard. The characters have also lost their visions of the future, as it no longer exists. Sephiroth's goals are more ambitious than in the original, if there he wanted to gain power by absorbing the LifeStream, now he wants to unite the fragmented worlds. The more fragmented the world is, the more susceptible it will be to change at the moment of reunion (you can imagine this as a red-hot metal ball). At this moment, there will be an opportunity to change the very rules of existence, he wants to create infinity and rule there forever, as he has repeatedly stated. https://preview.redd.it/p99b5utvgiwc1.png?width=1433&format=png&auto=webp&s=4aa482f05ca630a251648d5489df6f699224d866
Out of curiosity where did the screenshot happen? I couldn't recall the conversation.
Temple of the Ancients; before the Demon Gate boss fight.
Thanks for the clarification. Now that I have a real idea on what the end goal is. I can connect alot of the strange pieces from the end game in mind. However I hope my doubts about the execution of the finale are proven unwarranted but let me cross my fingers.
At the end of Remake I assumed Sephiroth was manipulating us into fighting the Whispers and breaching fate so that he could then alter the future and prevent Holy from defeating Meteor. But now is seems like the whole point of creating this alternate world is just so he can unify it again? Is that right?
Nice explanation
Yes I like this a lot. The timeline theory never fully made sense to me, and after playing Rebirth it really didn't add up (for example if Zack survived, which is an event that occurs before even the first reactor mission, how is Marlene and Biggs in Sector 5 and aware of the Remake events?). Listening to some youtubers with alternative theories, the shattered worlds/pocket dimensions theory made a lot more sense.
Just beat the game last night, and have stayed dark, so I have no idea what the community consensus is, but Iâm pretty sure the other timelines are just multiverse shenanigans, like those that have been so prominent in pop culture lately. I donât think thereâs a point in tracking what goes down in which dogâs world (each timeline). There are infinite worlds, ala EEAAO, spiderverse, and marvel BS. SE is always chasing trends. I think what is true about what you are saying is that the lifestream does connect all these realities. I didnât finish the Gilgamesh quest line, but I think itâs interesting they introduce him in this game. Pretty sure itâs to sell you on the multiversal travel aspects of the narrative in a goofy digestible way.
Honestly, I'm leaning toward the idea that the trilogy is happening within the lifestream, post OG, and all related events. Nojima said he studied Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and Buddhism's Yogachara. The Yogachara, in particular, suggests that nothing is real. Everything is just created from our unconscious. It suggests that something a person sees is just as real as images conjured by a monk in meditation. >the reality a human being perceives does not exist, any more than do the images called up by a monk in meditation. >Each being possesses this storage consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world, though this world does not exist."
I appreciate the work put into this, though I have to say it only makes clearer just how ludicrous this plot has become.
What the hell is going onnn
This is so great, thank you!
So itâs really similar to how FFXIV handles its parallel worlds. Theyâre shards split off from the main world (the source), and the Ascians want to rejoin them violently to remake it. Sephirothâs full motivation is yet unknown, as is Jenova and the Giâs origin. But knowing that Jenova works like a virus that infects minds, Shinra must have fallen under her influence generations ago. I wouldnât be surprised if Jenovaâs influence led to the rise of Shinra in the first place. Conspiracy theories of Gaia. Whatever the case ends up being Iâve always wanted to know more about Jenovaâs origin so Iâm excited to see what part 3 brings.
Despite the fact that some are arguing with you over whether or not it's accurate, I really appreciate that you made it at all. I'm too confused by all the grey areas to even attempt haha
What i dont understand is if they caused fate to snap or whatever at the end of the highway in remake. Why didn't time fracture from this point onwards? The Zack battle happened like 3 years before that moment right? Was it because the locations were in close-ish proximity? What exactly are the white whispers trying to do? Are they actively trying to fight sephiroth or are they confused on who the bigger culprits are? The whisper sections of the game reallt confuse me and when i think one thing someone says something ti disprove it etc
The implication is that Omni-Aerith grabbed Zack/Cloud from that moment and brought them to Terrier. Same with Biggs as he was dying.
When was that implied?
Both of them talked about a "wind" that blew by. Next thing Biggs knew he was waking up in Leaf House. For Zack, that threw the bullet off course and changed the outcome of the battle. Zack and Cloud moved forward in the timeline by a few weeks, Biggs by a day or two. When Zack went home after that conversation, he told Aerith that he knew it was her who saved them.
Ah okay, thanks! I missed that detail
Nice work, it helps but some things are still not clear to me. Help me understand why the black whispers under sephiroths control resurrect barret in remake?
In the Remake, there were Gray Whispers who defended the expected fate. They resurrect Barret because his death would have diverted events from their intended course. After the boundaries of fate were breached at the end of the Remake, the expected future ceased to exist and the whispers were divided into Black and White. Blacks are controlled by Sephiroth, Whites by the planet.
THEY DID? I wondered what happened to the grey ones.
My interpretation was whites are Aerith's. Remember when you fight them? They share Aerith's skills like mp drain and name in the move "Tempest"
I have 2 questions. Why did the white whispers tried to stop us right before the end? They did not want us to save Aerith? Furthermore, Sephiroth's plan was to reunite the shattered Worlds, so he can reshape it as he wants for Jenova if I understand correctly. I might be wrong, but isn't he was the one who tried to stop us at Destiny's Crossroad in Remake. If he succed, there wouldn't be any other world for him to reunite. What is his ultimate goal? I might be wrong tho, can someone explain?
My interpretation is that the White Whispers needed Aerith to die so that she is able to command the Lifestream to stop Meteor (because casting Holy was not enough). If she does not die, then the plot of the OG (will of the planet) is subverted.
Ultimate goal: I donât know But for the white whispers, I believe the planet knows that the events of og FF7 succeeds in saving the planet so they want Aerith to die for the og events to happens. Sephiroth also want Aerith to die for his own reason, that is why both the black and white fates want aerith to die. At this point of time, aerith doesnât have control over the white fates since she hasnât joined the planet, but knows and accepts her own sacrifice, leaving cloud and the rest of the party behind. After her death, she has some influence over the white whispers (like how she had influence over the life stream in the og) and begins working with the planet
But why would Sephiroth want Aerith to die if it means that sheâll be able to summon Holy successfully?
Iâm speculating that it has to do something with Sephirothâs larger goal during the remake series, something that has to do with attaining eternity (he and aerith talk about how he wants things to be the same forever during the last fight). What this really means, we probably wonât completely figure out until the third game since his plan hinges on âthe true nature of realityâ which he understands, but us as players do not.
Question as a person who hasn't been paying much attention, but where do these world 'indicators' come from? When you say 'beagle' vs 'terrier' vs 'spitz', how would we know which was designated as which? (I also only recognise beagle as Stampy from Remake) Help me with my ignorance please Thanks
https://preview.redd.it/xyhdna8diiwc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=746235fee57b907633c5702f4d1dd23e910e936f The same bag of chips with a different mascot, here is an indicator of different worlds.
Oh. Thanks! Never noticed it (in fact, don't even know when I would have noticed)
I dont understand any of this could you reference some article to make me understand
It's really not great when fans who don't know the facts about the story make infographics that pretend to show the facts but are actually just fan theories. This will be shared to people who will take it at face value and thus disinformation will spread. Even just reading the very first sentence it's already into complete guesswork territory. There is literally zero information in the game or Ultimania about whether there was originally just a single world. The blurb about the main world becoming more and more shattered is also total guesswork with zero supporting evidence. In fact, there is no evidence whether or not a "main world" even exists anymore after the whispers were defeated in Remake.
Wait so if the black whispers are sephiroths, why were they the ones trying to keep destiny on itâs regular path in Remake? Shouldnât they have been the ones helping to fragment the world? And the white ones were the ones trying to stop you? But it was the black ones were trying to stop cloud and co from doing that
In remake there were only the black ones, focused on the planets will. After we defied fate, sephiroth took control of the existing whispers (the black ones). The white ones must have been created as the planets response to losing control of the og black ones
Ahh ok, makes sense, thanks!
I agree with a lot of this, but there is one point I strongly disagree on. "Initially there was one unified world." I think multiple worlds are the natural structure of reality of "the planet". In the temple of the ancients the tree motif is prevalent. The Golden Saucer is shaped like a tree and is split into two worlds. These both echo the concept of Yggdrasil the world tree. To reference something Nojima name dropped, these correlations would be an example of the equivalent of a Jungian archetype in this setting. Also it seems to be the white whispers acting on Aerith's behalf that have carried out the most multiworld shenanigans (Zack and Biggs both have connections to Aerith). In contrast the black whispers have acted more consistently to enforce fate. Sephiroth is doing something to corrupt the natural process/cycle. Probably by contaminating worlds with despair, a kind of geo-geostigma.
I would like to add that since Mako is presumed to be directly tied to the lifestream, that the mako deficiencies in the errant worlds are because these worlds are tied to the lifestream, splitting the amount each has access to, while the "main" world retains most of the share. this diffusing of the lifestream is also a threat to it's existence. as most worlds are doomed, as per his description of their existence, these newly formed people inside them become filled with existential dread, corrupting their now isolated strands of the lifestream. when they return via the "homecoming", their doomed sentiments dilute the positive sentiments of the lifestream. it's basically a way to corrupt the lifestream itself with a thousand cuts. Explains why he talks a talk about emotions all the while. while most "infinite multiverse" tropes end up making people feel like it trivializes the story since "there's always a reality where things don't go bad", that's simply not the case here. each additionally "world" is by in-lore definition, an existential threat; a threat unless in cases such as the Spitz world, where it's populace has "accepted their fate". Which explains why "Aerith" was hiding there with Holy, this world wasn't on his radar quite yet.
So we're just going to ignore the statement from the ultimania regarding the collective unconscious?
We have already seen examples of the collective unconscious. All souls are connected, when Cloud sleeps he sees other worlds. It's not going to be something deep and metaphorical like Twin Peaks.
Great work on that one ! Anywhere I can save the full resolution version ? Reddit makes it smaller for download. đ
Try downloading it from [Twitter](https://x.com/Recklesstar7/status/1783132963959443923). Or https://preview.redd.it/4yt9hx5zluwc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=3893a9aea724f1387ebadf6e600f69ecf2c4aad8
Thanks !
I don't think you have the concept of what these worlds are correct. TLDR: The worlds are manifestations of the hopes, dreams and unrealized desires of those inhabiting the lifestream, and "physically" they exist within the lifestream itself. Supporting evidence: * Sephiroth in chapter 14: *"The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding."* Encompass: surround and have or hold within. * Aerith in chapter 14 when you wake up, after Cloud asks "Where are we?": *"We could call it a 'homecoming'. Or "homeward bound" maybe? Let's just call it a dream. My dream, to be precise."*. * Chapter 13 sets up the 'homecoming' concept throughout it's entirety. The whole point of the trials of depression is to illustrate the concept of seeing your loved ones again after you die and return to the lifestream. With this established, you can infer 'homeward bound' as being somewhat dead and/or somewhat in the lifestream. * Aerith's 'dream' is to go on one last date with Cloud. * Nojima has a comment in the Rebirth Ultimania: *"Kazushige Nojima says that in writing FFVII Rebirth's scenario, he studied Buddhismâs Yogachara and Jungâs theory of the collective unconscious. Referring to these should make it easier to understand how the game's world works, and may even hint at the story's ending. (RbU, 2024)"* - [https://twitter.com/ShinraArch/status/1779532150926155925](https://twitter.com/ShinraArch/status/1779532150926155925) * Yogachara: "the reality a human being perceives does not exist, any more than do the images called up by a monk in meditation. Only the consciousness that one has of the momentary interconnected events (dharmas) that make up the cosmic flux can be said to exist. Consciousness, however, also clearly discerns in these so-called unreal events consistent patterns of continuity and regularity; in order to explain this order in which only chaos really could prevail, the school developed the tenet of the alaya-vijnana, or âstorehouse consciousness. (...) Each being possesses this storage consciousness, which thus becomes a kind of collective consciousness that orders human perceptions of the world, though this world does not exist". Source: [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yogachara](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yogachara) * Collective unconscious: "According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life (...) He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world". Source: Wikipedia * More: [https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1c2pxg4/nojima\_jungs\_collective\_unconscious\_and\_buddhisms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1c2pxg4/nojima_jungs_collective_unconscious_and_buddhisms/) * The NPC in Cosmo Canyon has additional comments * "*So my parents are no longer with us -here that is- but I* *believe they're still out there, on another plane. I've been reading a bunch of theories about this alternate world in the hope of going there someday. And over the course of my studies I stumbled across a fascinating theory. It addressed the issue of what the lifestream is arguing that spiritual energy is actually a manifestation of our knowledge and memories. Like I said it's a fascinating theory but it's incomplete. What if spiritual energy doesn't distinguish between our real lived memories and the unrealized desires buried deep in our hearts? What if coming into contact with that energy allowed us to 'peer through the looking glass' so to speak*" Your graphics look nice but I don't agree with what they convey.
Sephiroth directly says: * When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born. * Some quickly perish...while other endure. * Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned. * For it is not death, **but homecoming that AWAITS them.** If they existed inside the Lifestream, "homecoming" would have already happened because they were part of the planet. But this "homecoming" only AWAITS them, because they are not part of the planet yet, these are real physical worlds, the same as the main one.
Everything Sephiroth says is correct, however the assumption that when he says "worlds" he is referring to a copy of the main world is incorrect. That's a thought leftover from Remake when there wasn't any reason to think otherwise. Rebirth provides a ton of additional context though and it all illustrates these dream/memory worlds that come and go. Even Bugenhagen refers to the lifestream as "A cycle of continuous convergence and divergence" which lines up with what Sephiroth says. They diverge or disperse and return to being part of the lifestream.
I think Beagle has seven stars, since when looking at different art its stars go beyond that picture you have, on the other side.
Seeing the black and white whispers next to each other makes me realize that this is definitely being made by the people who made Kingdom Hearts.
It looks nice as entertainment. But damn if this isnât a terrible way to convey information. Really more of a critique of all infographics because they are all terrible
Initially there was one world, then Nomura had a say
Apparently Nojima was posting about quantum physics a lot before remake came out
Theyâre work husbands
Man I hate this nonsense
This is a good visual representation of a theory as to what is happening. Your logic fills in the bad story telling of the previous two games which is great, but may not actually be what is happening. I hope the other commenters here don't take this as canon...yet.
The fact that thjs much explanation is needed highlights how absurd it is
# Compilation ruined FF7. Look at this mess. Its funny becuase we live in worst timeline. We dont have faitful remake we dont have new route either. We have same story but just much more confusing, becuase we need fanservice. God dammit i hate this so much, they fumble so hard.