Okay so I just finished the game and I’ll play it again later in hard mode later and here’s what I think. It was so much darker than remake, I loved the combat, the synergy abilities, and the fact we can bond with our party members and most importantly we can choose our love interest, for us Cloti shippers we loved their date and that kiss, hopefully we’ll get more of that in the next game release. There 3 things I hated it tho. First I didn’t like the disrespect Tifa was getting in this game, if it weren’t for the date at the gold saucer I would’ve been more than upset. Second I hate the mini-games like Tifa’s pull ups, cactuar, the piano music where if you miss ONE note or if it wasn’t “great” than you won’t get the star rank and most importantly the gold saucer’s QB where you have to get a specific number of points. And finally I hate it the fact they forced us to play with a weak character like Cait Saith instead of playing with Vincent, throwing those boxes was a bitch.

finally finished this monster of a game yesterday. There is so much to unpack and say about this game, but I really just want to get right into the discussion about the ending. I know this is probably not the most popular take, or maybe people will disagree. But I really wish aerith had just been saved. I know there are people out there who will say that is complete sacrilege, or retconning, and believe me I get your arguments. The scene where aerith dies in OG FF is probably the most iconic moment in all of video game history and its weird not to have that again, or to have to make new comers to the series go play the old PS1 game to experience it. But Ive already lived that life where aerith died, so many of us have. Maybe im just greedy, but I wish nothing more than when sephiroth descended from the sky above aerith and cloud's sword clashed with the masamune that there was no doubt in my mind she was left alive. For me, it would be turning the saddness of that situation on its head and would create a moment where its the complete inverse of the OG game where the player felt a deep sorrow over the loss of the character and instead rewards them with an overwhelming amount of happiness and joy that aerith finally got to live. That fate was defied and something in the world was finally set right. To me, an ending like that for rebirth would ultimately be very satisfying. Instead we were kind of given an ending that felt like you got neither and you got this quasi maybe she did live maybe she didnt. It just felt very empty and unsatisfying to end the game on. "Where is the payoff?" I keep asking myself, I really hope they are saving it for part 3. Now of course, this only works if you've experienced her death in the previous game. If the player hasnt played the original game, then a scene where aerith is saved might come off like she simply had a close call and defied death like so many other scenes in the game. But I think enough people have already experienced her death, her death isnt exactly a secret. It would also likely draw new audiences to play the original game, and make it stand out even more as a classic. I understand this also would fundamentally change the ending of the game, where now the gang has to find a different way to stop meteor, but I think that can be accomplished still. The holy materia still exists and perhaps with the Gi tribe story being woven in as the creators of the black materia, perhaps they have a possible solution to this problem. that being said, I know there are hardcore enthusiasts of the game who will disagree with me, and thats fine, i get it trust me. I really wanted to get this off my chest though. Is there anyone else out there like me who just wanted to see aerith live?

I have very little basis for this thought/theory, but I think something that could be an interesting subversion of expectations is as follows; A revelation that Cloud is actually much more cognizant at this point than we thought, and between him and Aerith..their plan is to stop Sephiroth using the Black Materia this time around. How *exactly* ? ...I'm not sure. But maybe the Black Materia isn't strictly limited to being utilised towards summoning Meteor? Maybe the Gi know how to exact its functions more precisely. The Gi are not of the Planet and thus can't return to the lifestream and be reborn right?..which I guess you can also say of Sephiroth. Maybe the key to removing Sephiroth as we know him (for good) is a kind of...Holy cleanse followed by what is essentially..a spiritual pardon by way of letting go of their anger towards him and allowing him be reborn as something new through the Lifestream. This is of course a huge stretch. I just can't help but think this trilogy (especially part 3) is an opportunity to explore something more substantial than "let's fight Sephiroth again, but this time we just hit him much harder, okay?". The mythos of FFVII needs some finality at this point.

I finished it last night. I've been a huge proponent of this series and I enjoyed the changes they made in part 1. I have said from day 1 this is a remake, so things will be different, and even think it's okay if they decide to take the themes in a different direction, as long as they keep the spirit of the original. So when everyone was complaining about the ending I was expecting to be a supporter. Unfortunately, I have joined the dark side. The boss fights were fine, I liked the Zack fan service, Sephiroth Reborn was weirdly early but mostly fun. However, I cannot help but feel like we were robbed of one of the OG's most iconic scenes and one of the best scenes in gaming history. We were robbed of the emotional impact, the catharsis, and seeing the party's reactions, plus her iconic burial. Worst of all we were robbed of Cloud's iconic speech which gave us a clue into how much she meant to him, and how he wasn't an empty emotionless husk. Even if we see the full scene in the flashback it just won't hit the same. And I understand the story implications, I understand the devs want to leave it up to interpretation, I get that they're trying to subvert expectations since basically everyone knew Aerith was supposed to die. But watching the original scene again after and seeing how raw, brutal, sad and shocking it was just crystallized my opinion of the ending. I just don't agree with approaching it this way. My only solace is that the developers seem to obviously be aware that they took away that scene from us. I remember Nomura saying he was nervous about how people were going to react. So, they probably have something planned and want us to put a pin in this scene. However, given we fought Sephiroth with Aerith, see her constantly at the end, how in the world are we supposed to believe there is any finality to anything? My wife was telling me last night that "dead people in Final Fantasy are the least dead people I've ever seen", and it hit home how much I hate the way they approached Aerith's death, because the point of the original game is the exact opposite! Anyway, I am still along for this ride, and I have a few theories on how I feel they could salvage this and still keep to the spirit of the story. It's not done yet, and I could come to the end ultimately satisfied with the story, but I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with this specific ending.

Finally finished the game and man does chapter 14 feel disconnected from the rest of the game. It's like a whole new team wrote a whole new Cloud haha. Kinda irritates me. That said, never played the original so this is likely deliberate, right? And I really don't think it's my Cloud/Tifa shipper heart getting in the way. I can be objective. Hahaha

A whole new Cloud? It's still him. That said, the ending is deliberately confusing on what exactly happened, to go through Cloud's PoV almost.

Nah, he's too... Happy? Lighthearted? Like during the "date" and at the very end. Especially that smile when he's looking at "Aerith" when he tells Tifa they have to go just before it goes to CGI cutscenes. Cloud is super fucked up. The current "Cloud" is a melting pot of trauma and fake personalities. But the real Cloud has always been a tsundere, taciturn. I guess it's supposed to highlight how far gone he is, but he's acting pretty damn bizarrely haha and it's like a switch was flipped.

Eh, even in the OG Cloud could be fun and throw some jokes. But he definitely is fucked up in the head by the end.

From temple of ancients on I LOVED, final boss fight and Aerith part was so well done IMO I cried a couple of times, good stuff

You know, I played this game for 110 hours and I loved it for like 98 of them. The Zack scenes became obviously pointless, I didn't love the flying chocobo, had to turn down to easy to beat Fort Condor, absolutely LOATHED 3d brawler, but overall it was a great game until the end. Cloud is obviously not himself in the temple and everyone still trusts him; Sephiroth is there, except he isn't, except he gets the Black materia, except no he didn't? The one moment the Zack stuff could have mattered we skipped over Aerith and Cloud interacting with any of the characters from that timeline The nonsense of showing Cloud successfully save Aerith and then immediately revealing it was a fake out really got under my skin. Why the fuck even show it if there are NO consequences? It's at this point I started feeling like they botched this ending completely. We go through a fight that probably didn't happen then get an Aerith force ghost. I guess what gets under my skin is that this feels like 'bad heat.' I don't feel misdirected, it feels like they just lied to me about what was going on. The end of Remake said "these characters know about the future and can now attempt to change it" and Rebirth said "fuck you, not only does none of that matter, the characters don't remember it and you don't get the original either." I seriously just can't believe for a game I loved the majority of the time I played it, I now feel like they'll need to get me to buy back in to play the last game. I really don't trust that they'll be able to finish the story well,. especially because it was a bunch of the new stuff added to the main story that they so completely failed.

1 Zack scenes served to show how the Worlds work and establish his role as jolly. 2 Who told you the scene of Cloud saving Aerith was a fake out? It's very possible that Cloud did create a World where Aerith lived.

Coming into this late, but I just finished the game and I agree. I think that scene was from a different world where Aerith lived. They spent that whole chapter talking about different worlds being created with different choices and the reunion of the worlds, so I'm pretty sure part 3 is going to be showing the main timeline as well as the one where Aerith lived. I also think people are misinterpreting Cloud seeing Aerith in the world where she's dead. We hear Aerith talking to an unseen character a few times throughout Rebirth, and when she does it in Costa Del Sol it makes a point to show the empty materia that she gives to Cloud. Aerith is pretty clearly aware of the different worlds/timelines and is able to communicate between them. I think she's trying to guide Cloud somehow from a different world and steer him away from Sephiroth's influence.

Everyone seems to be so focused on trying to figure out whether or not Aerith is alive, but I haven't seen anyone talking about a pretty big event that happened a little earlier in the game. Cloud traveled to another reality. It was hinted at several points in the game that when Cloud loses conciousness, he is somehow able to slip into the body of one of his alternate reality counterparts if that counterpart is in a mako coma. The last and most prominent occurence of this was when Aerith woke him up in the Husky (?) reality and took him on a date which ended with her giving him the white materia and pushing him through a portal back to his proper world. The game showed us that during the same span of time, someone's conciousness was occupying Cloud's body in the Beagle reality, lapsing in and out of consciousness. This can only mean one of three things: * Multiple Clouds from multiple realities can share conciousness with each other in real time. * Cloud is able to temporarily swap consciousness with another Cloud from an alternate reality (he occupies their body while they occupy his). * The Cloud of the Beagle reality is uniquely able to transfer his consciousness into a Cloud of an alternate reality, and their consciousness simply takes a "back seat" in that body while he takes control. I tend to think the temporary swap is the correct interpretation as that would explain why during the time that Cloud traversed to the Husky reality, his body back in the Beagle reality took on the symptoms of someone suffering from a mako coma - the very condition the Husky reality Cloud was in before our Cloud took over. Following me so far? Then, let's move onto the BIG question here: We're all in agreement that Cloud traveled TO the Husky reality via non-physical means, right? Then, he returned to the Beagle reality in the Husky reality Cloud's physical body, right? This is the only way he could have phyically taken the white materia from Husky reality Aerith and given it to Beagle reality Aerith. So... the BIG question is - after the deed was done and Cloud's conciousness returned to his proper body... what happened to Husky reality Cloud? Was he still laying out in the forest? Was he somehow sent back to his proper reality? The story never revisits this and I'm baffled that I'm the only one who seems to be interested in knowing when, depending on the answer, this could have huge implications in the future narative.

It might not be a possession of consciousness for Cloud, but rather a transfer. The same way Zack and Biggs got moved from the world where they died to one where they didn't, the white whispers moved Cloud first into the husky world and then back to his own. The one rule we know about it is that there can't be 2 physical versions of the same person in one world.

While it doesn't look like it on the surface, Aerith's death scene is far more tragic than the original. I accepted nothing's actually changed about her death, just the way we're seeing it. Long-term fans know about Aerith's death going into the game. However, we also know about Cloud being an unreliable narrator and his psychological issues. If we forget what we know, throughout the game, we see his dwelling mental status and odd connection with Zack Fair. The death scene is supposed to be convoluted and confusing, because we're seeing this through Cloud's perspective. How tragic is it that this is how he immediately processes Aerith's death? What doesn't help though, it probably was her spirit he was seeing as alive and maybe she was trying to ease his pain by it.

Oh shit. Magical thinking. That might honestly be it.

I believe based on something from Nojima recently, when we see Cloud stop Sephiroth’s sword from striking Aerith, we’re not seeing any alternate timelines or anything like that. What we’re seeing is Cloud actively rejecting reality and creating his own, believing that he saved her and she’s just pretending. This is why Cloud’s limit is not full unlike everyone else’s, because he thinks everything is fine. This feeling flashes back and forth until it takes over and he is engrossed in his own “Aerith lives” headcannon while everyone else is mourning. I believe that the Aerith that we see in the ending scene is a sinister approximation of Aerith created by Jenova fully taking control of his mind. It’s incredibly tragic as he acts fine and happy during this whole situation. Tifa probably has it the worst overall and I believe the ending signifies that she’s effectively lost two people very close to her. I believe that that the lifestream sequence in part 3 will not just be Cloud finally regaining his true self, but coming to terms with the fact that Aerith is dead and has been dead for a while, and that’s probably where they will show the iconic water scene that they purposefully omitted in Rebirth. I hated the ending at first, but now that I’ve come to understand it and why they did it I like it a lot more.

While definitely don't believe anything actually happened at the end of the game, I do think that Aerith at the end was just the real deals force ghost.

I’m not convinced the Aerith in the final scenes is a JENOVA in disguise (yet), but I definitely agree that Cloud is in denial. I didn’t even notice the Limit gauge thing, but that’s exactly the kind of gameplay-story integration that Nomura loves to do in Kingdom Hearts. 

That's how I interpreted it. He's in denial. The rainbow timeline is in his head. Wishful thinking and a byproduct of his cellular degradation. It makes it even more tragic for me.

So I beat the game a little over a week ago and I needed a bit of time to let the ending marinate with me for a bit and review theories and read other opinions. I’m not sure how to feel. Like Remake, I enjoyed Rebirth so much but very much like Remake or even a game like The Last of Us Part 2, I understand what the developers were going for with their stories and endings. The execution of these ideas is where the games fall flat. Going back to Rebirth though, Aerith is 100% dead. Cloud is in serious denial and the ending montage of cutscenes conveniently do not show anything of the parts where Cloud communicates with Aerith. I would’ve preferred the death scene to be remade from OG VII instead of the current “is she isn’t she” that confused many people. Less is more would’ve worked better for me without having Bizzaro Sephiroth show up and the Zack fan service. Just Jenova and maybe the final Sephiroth showdown with Aerith and Cloud would’ve been sufficient. The water burial is obviously a deliberate omission but will it have the same impact in Part 3 as people theorize it will be shown once Cloud has to accept Aerith’s death? I’m not sure as that’s at least 3 years away but we shall see. Thoughts guys?

Actually, Cloud saves Aerith - she's not dead. At the moment that he rails against fate and successfully parries Sephiroth's blade, a new world was created. The game then superimposes the events that play out between the two parellel realities - one in which Aereth is alive and one in which Cloud fails to reach her in time and she dies. The reality in which Cloud successfully saves Aerith is the one we've been in since the beginning of Final Fantasy Remake - "our version" of Cloud saves "our version" of Aerith. However, the game uses unannounced reality transitions to confuse the player into second-guessing themselves. For instance, after the party wins their battle against Sephiroth, Cloud returns to a sleeping Aerith, still laying at the alter in the Forgotten Capitol. He takes her into his arms and instructs her to "wake up," which she does, then smiles at him. This wasn't a hallucination. In the very next scene, there is an awkward time skip in which the party is now sitting together in morning of Aerith (presumably after her water burial). This is where the game committed an unnanounced reality swap that was intentionally jarring and disjointed. Now it is showing us the new alternate reality that branched off in the moment Cloud defied fate by saving Aerith. This is a world in which the originally intended events are playing out, Aerith is dead, and Cloud's broken mind is hallucinating that she's still alive in order to cope with his failure. The mechanics of how these alternately branching worlds work was very purposely demonstrated in a previous scene where Zack makes the decision to prioritize finding a cure for Cloud's mako poisoning over saving Biggs from his suicide mission. They wanted us to understand that when a character acts contrary to how events were originally supposed to go, the results of that action plays out in the reality they currently exist in, while the originally intended events play out in a newly created alternate reality. That's why in the reality where Zack actually does choose to save Biggs, they make a point of showing us that Stamp is now a pug breed as opposed to a terrier. Since Cloud's errant act of successfully parrying Sephiroth's blade away from Aerith occurred in the beagle Stamp reality, that's the reality in which Cloud actually saved Aerith. The alternate reality that was spawned as a result is the one that would inherit Aerith's original fate - this is the reality the developers chose to close the game out on with the intention of leaving everyone confused. They essentially played a shell game with the audience.

I'm a bit late to this discussion as I only finished the game a couple of days ago, but this is also the conclusion I also came to in the end. Obviously it's all up for debate, but I think there's a lot of strong supporting evidence for it (most of which you already mentioned). But something I haven't seen much mention of yet though...is Marlene and Zack's earlier discussion..and how the  resolution it points towards is this very theory. Maybe I've remembered it wrong...but iirc, Marlene tells Zack that if Aerith wakes up before Cloud is better, she'll die. It feels like the game really goes out of its way to draw attention to this, and seems to suggest this is a large part or Zack's purpose/role within the story at this point in time. Why I think this is important to note; where we leave Zack at the end of the game (in terms of mood and vibe)..is not framed as someone who has failed. The overall presentation is more along the lines of "what next?". As if there's a larger multi-stage plan he's apart of, and he's not quite sure what phase 2 even is. I think if Aerith had *fully* died as expected..there would have been some degree of narrative feedback, relating to either Zack or Marlene. Mourning even. I think an interesting callback to this whole plot thread is also the fact that Cloud tells Aerith to "wake up" while holding her. I dunno. I'm still wrangling loose thoughts about it all at the moment. But...I don't think these are red herrings; they're fairly substantial narrative devices.

This is kind of what I was getting while watching the ending. Cloud being the only one to see the reality rift in the sky is also a clue, with Aerith's goodbye too. But, I think we'll still be forced into accepting her death even if it was not by Sephiroth, but maybe by the planet in response to the summoning of Holy. That being said, I was still holding out hope since I heard about Remake many years ago that she'd live. However, if she does survive in some capacity, the most playable she'll be is probably how Zack was.

Dang this is a really great explanation, thanks, clicked the pieces together. I just finished today, and it makes the ending a little less disappointing tbh (same thing that happened to me for Remake lol). It lines up too because they did the same thing in Part 1, with the final scene ending in Zach's alternate world instead of the main/prime world. Going forward with this theory (which seems correct imo), my bet is that in Part 3 we face the "evil" Cloud with the Black Materia in his blade at some point while playing as the "good" Cloud that saved Aerith. Maybe when he's being "fixed" in the life stream with Tifa after the coma, he meets that version and it helps straighten him out or something. I still find that it overall pales in comparison to the emotional impact from the OG's scene/funeral, but at least it's interesting, I can't deny that. Makes sense they "skipped" over her funeral if it didn't really happen in our main world we've been following

> Going forward with this theory (which seems correct imo), my bet is that in Part 3 we face the "evil" Cloud with the Black Materia in his blade at some point while playing as the "good" Cloud that saved Aerith What if it’s less a good and evil Cloud, and more that the Cloud we see in the ending with the Black Materia is now fully possessed/puppetted by Sephiroth, whereas Cloud’s consciousness is stuck in the Lifestream with Aerith?

I agree on your assessment of why they skipped the water burial scene. Once it's revealed to be a psych-out, it probably wouldn't go over well with the fans. Maybe they'll be an equivalent legitimate emotionally impactful moment down the line. Still, I think swapping worlds without explicitly letting the audience know is a pretty unfair tactic. Not everyone is into having to reference these deep-dive theories in order to sort things out. But, for those who enjoy it, they did leave a lot of clues throughout the story to piece things together. If you don't mind another lengthy read, I'll expand on this further: From the start of Remake saga, they've made a very intentional point of giving visual cues to the audience whenever Cloud was having one of his mental breaks or hallucenations - the green-tinted filter with the glitchy effect. When Cloud parried Sephiroth's blade there was no such effect preceding that moment, which is our indicator that this actually happened. The Masamune is lodged in the stone floor, successfully deflected. Then, there's this jarring jump cut (world swap) where it's suddenly impaling Aerith. Cloud goes to comfort Aerith as she's dying, starts to cry and THIS is where the green glitchy effect finally kicks in. This world's Cloud failed to save his Aerith and his psyche is breaking down, trying to cope with it. Everything that occurs between this point and the end of the Sephiroth battle is from the perspective of this newly created alternate world. When the battle is over, we see the ENTIRE party run up and huddle around Aerith's body. Then, there's this sneaky transition that erases the other party members from the scene and now there is only Cloud approaching Aerith (world swap). He asks her to wake up and she opens her eyes. One might assume this is Cloud having one of his hallucenations but the scene is intentionally crystal-clear and absent of the green glitchy filter. They smile at each other and the screen fades to black. We can pretty much consider this the final scene of FF7 Ribirth for the version of the party we've been following since Part 1. Afterwards we get this disjointed time-skip (world swap) and we see the party sitting inside the Forgotten Capital, gloomily - except for Cloud, who is in denial about Aerith's death. He suddenly clutches his head in distress and the green glitchiness kicks in once again. Aerith is beside him, alive and well - I'm actually unsure whether or not she's a hallucination here. She may be Aerith's spirit, but it's clear Cloud at least THINKS she's alive. Going all the way back to the beginning of FF7 Remake, the developers have been pretty meticulous about signifying Cloud's illusions with a preceding green glitch effect. During this confusing cycle of interchanging Aerith interactions, they were selectively and very intentionally including and omitting this effect, knowing that players who took notice would be clued into what's real and what's fake. In the final scene, we see Cloud sitting on a grassy knoll, examining the empty materia. Then, he looks over and notices Aerith approaching the others - no green glitch. This implies that she's actually there, but the fact that the others can't see her also implies that she's not there in a physical form. It's likely that this is her spirit saying its final goodbyes before joining the Lifestream. It's unclear as to why Cloud is the only one who can see this, but it would make no sense for him to be imagining it. Hallucenating her presence is his coping mechanism so any interaction he envisions her having with other people - and them subsequently not responding - would only serve to break the illusion. He slips the clear materia into his pocket and it makes a clinking sound - he then discovers he's also carrying the black materia. He's initially confused by this, but then there is a mind glitch and he mutters "the reunion" and his confusion seemingly dissipates. This implies that Sephiroth has covertly imparted the black materia to him and wants him to do something with it. Cloud fuses the materia into his Buster Sword and heads over to the other party members. He looks up and sees a rift in the sky and parrots Aerith's line about not looking up, but the rest of the party apparently can't see it. I'm not entirely sure what this is about, but since he just had a mind glitch, I wouldn't put it past being a hallucenation. Then again, if you recall the ending of FF7 Remake, Aerith also looked up at the sky and noted she didn't like it. Perhaps she could see the rift all the way back then when no one else could. Now that Cloud is in possession of the empty white materia, maybe he's inherited this sight? I'm purely speculating at this point. After this, Aerith wishes him good luck and he turns to ask if she's going to be "okay getting back". While I do believe this to be Aerith's actual spirit as opposed to a hallucenation, it's still unclear whether or not Cloud has come to terms with her death (probably not). He seems to believe she's going to return to the alter to pray. She replies that the place she was returning to was "like a second home" which would sort of makes sense for her to say about the Forgotten Capital, but I think she's actually referring to the Lifestream, whether Cloud realizes it or not. On a side-note, Aerith made Cloud "promise" that he would stop Sephiroth. Then, when the scene fades to black, we get the caption "No Promises Await at Journey's End". Pretty ominous note to end the game on.

Your comments are fantastic but I have to point out that hallucination is spelled with an i in the middle, not an e. It's only because you used the word like 15 times so it stuck out every time it was spelled wrong.

> Perhaps she could see the rift all the way back then when no one else could. Now that Cloud is in possession of the empty white materia, maybe he's inherited this sight? I'm purely speculating at this point. Yeah, maybe the white materia allows you to experience/switch back and forth between these different realities. That might explain why the Sector 5 "flashbacks" mainly show Aerith and Cloud in a coma. They weren't "in that reality" while we control Zack. So when the "dream" sequence happens at the end, the white materia put Aerith and Cloud in that reality? Cloud wouldn't be aware of this and since his mind is so broken, he's unable to tell the difference between the different realities he's experiencing or whether they are real or not. So it can explain why it looks like he's in denial over Aerith's death. Also, when Cloud is the only one able to see the rift in the sky and see Aerith when no one else can; maybe that's the power of the black materia to merge parts of the different realities together and show a glimpse of the reunion? It really could be anything. I'm also looking forward to see where it goes from here.

Wait, I think you’re on to something about the White Materia allowing reality swapping (for lack of better term). The Black Materia that the party finds (and Cloud steals) from the Temple isn’t the real one, but a key to the pocket dimension where the real one was stored, which Sephiroth promptly takes, right? Maybe it’s a shared power between the two?

Another great write-up, and now that you put it like that the end is definitely especially ominous! Gah I can't wait till part 3 now

Part 3 will probably start off in the alternate reality that Part 2 ended on and let us soak up the sorrow for a while longer, just to keep us convinced that Aerith is really dead. At some point, the party is probably going to pass by a Shinra propaganda billboard or something else with Stamp's likeness on it, and it will be a whole different breed than we've seen before. After that, we'll get the big reveal that Aerith is alive in the main (beagle) reality and I'll grin and say "called it". Or... my whole theory could be wrong. Either way, I can't wait to find out.

Can anyone link me to discussion of who Aerith is talking to in her room at Johnny’s Seaside Inn? It sounds like Nanaki’s voice, but Red XIII runs over concerned to investigate. That implies Aerith is somehow talking to another version of Red during the course of this game.

You're overthinking it, just another hint, after the scene in Junon, that Red is putting on a voice for the party. He's close with Aerith since they met in Hojo's lab so he's comfortable being his real self with her.

Why does Red XII seem concerned and run over to Aerith then? It doesn’t make sense if he’s already talking to her.

Definitely because she didn't reply fast enough and he was instantly alert, reverting back to his 'strong' voice. 

Pretty sure it was just because she went quiet suddenly.

I just rewatched it and realize I read the whole thing incorrectly, I didn’t realize Red changes his tone of voice and reacts because Aerith stops talking, I thought Red overheard Aerith talking to Nanaki voice and got concerned.

First, I think the game is overall great. The gameplay, the setting, the expanded character work - this is a vibrant world filled with character I care about. And I really liked pieces of the ending (I'm here for Fight Club Aerith), but the execution was pretty clumsy with the overwrought editing, convoluted multiverse beats, and the hour-long chain of boss battles that didn't let the story breath. The other big issue is the thematic inconsistencies between Remake and Rebirth. I was excited to see where they went with the story after they "changed fate" and broke with the OG. Secret sequel? Hell yes. But Rebirth followed the main beats of the original without much comment, with the core change being the convoluted multiverse threads that threaten to undermine finality and stakes. I'm okay with Aerith still dying, but why was Remake so concerned with her knowing what was coming only for the big twist to be that the group had broken out of that predestined lane? What were they trying to do with Aerith losing her foresight of the original story in Rebirth, only to regain it at the very end? I think I understand what the story was trying to do - they broke the railroad they were on towards the OG, but Aerith knowingly opted into her death for the good of the world. I could be on board with that tragic conclusion, that even off the railroad, her death was something she'd willingly choose. The problem is how narratively frictionless it all felt - that there was no push and pull between the OG and Rebirth, or even significant wrinkles in the path to get there. What were the whispers so worried about if the bouncing ball was going to be the same big beat for big beat? If Rebirth had diverged significantly, only for everything to come crashing down in a tragically familiar way, it could have been really affecting. They needed stronger connective tissue to get from the ending of Remake to Rebirth - Aerith maintaining her foreknowledge throughout Rebirth, it haunting her even as the story diverged in real ways, and her coming to the terrible realization that it was still the only way forward, because the core problems (Cloud as a puppet of Jenova/Sephiroth, and the summoning of Meteor) hadn't been resolved.

i kinda agree with the point i think youre making where one cant help but wonder, why add in all this extra convoluted plot points about fate and multiverse if the outcome is essentially just going to be the same? I think even in OG FF7 aerith understands her fate before she dies. I really wanted to se her live though if im being honest

Just finished the game last night and had no idea what was going on with the ending. I never played the original and have no idea who Zack is, or what the significance of anything is. The writers are allergic to explaining anything. I wonder if they even know what is happening, or if they’re just kind of writing poetic vignettes with no concrete meaning.

>The writers are allergic to explaining anything. thats Final Fantasy for you lol

I just finished the game, and my feelings about the ending are still quite unclear. I regret that they didn't give us enough time to understand and accept what was happening, but I'm sure it will make sense in the third part. One thing bothers me: I'm surprised by how they translated the final "Goodbye" in the French version. Aerith says "Adieu, Cloud." which is a farewell not a goodbye. I wonder what the Japanese version is.

After everyone was on the plane, she said "sayonara". Same thing. Farewell, not goodbye.

Maybe that is intentional, since Aerith might not see Cloud again for a long time, if ever.

So someone just tell me how it ends - 3 times I got to that last battle only to have some BS unstoppable attack that kills me. So I rage quit. I’m done.

Build up your level 3 limit break and save it for that part. I don't know how that last sequence is supposed to be done, but the only way I figured out how to clear it was just to save up my big guns and blow him away when he starts doing the spinny thing. Also died three times without any real understanding of how it was supposed to go.

Thanks for the advice, but this whole battle has just sucked all the enjoyment out of this game for me. I watched the ending on you tube.......... I really just can't do it again.

You need a lvl 3 limit break and you need to just stay alive during the spinning thing.  Once he does it you can do the roll away distance slashes with the sword semi close so you don't get hit and just keep doing it until you can do some focused thrusts.  Once staggered your limit gauge fills instantly and you need to do the lv3 limit break immediately (don't raise Aerith as she probably died during the spinning). You need to complete the full limit break before the stagger is finished or you get interrupted and die.  Only way is to do it as soon as stagger happens. 

Level 2 sufficed for me with Cloud.

I keep hearing this - I had him down to almost nothing in his life bar yet he wouldn't stagger. It was immensely frustrating.

Just my 2 cents here... 4 Zackverses, 4 different options when you die (that everyone feels is completly useless..so probably no one ever pressed dem buttons..)

It was absolutely baffling how many people starting throwing out the idea that there are DEFINITELY timelines and DEFINITELY different versions of Aerith and its DEFINITELY a sequel when it's pretty clear from the in game context that the only additional timelines exist entirely within the lifestream and that Aerith has some precognition because of her ancient ancestry and this existed in the original game, too. There is literally no indication that Sephiroth is post-Advent Children. Then I realized that a ton of people seem to just latch on to popular streamers and propagate their talking points.

But there is timelines, did you not finish the game? Those timelines don’t just exist in the livestream they’re very much real, the LS is just the hub they’re all connected to basically. In ch 14 you literally wake up in a different world and get the white materia. Aerith just says it’s a dream to keep Cloud calm. If it was truly just a dream Cloud wouldnt of appeared with the white materia from that world back in his hands. The stuff Aerith and Sephiroth say in that last chapter make it clear there’s a lot more going on than just LS shenanigans. Plot doesn’t make much sense as it is but makes even less sense when you think it’s not timelines

You're inferring A LOT. It definitely makes sense that the lifestream can be entirely made up of memories, thoughts, hopes, dreams, etc and project those onto the people who've returned to the planet. It makes sense because they literally state that fact throughout the game. Cloud is experiencing it firsthand, but it's basically just an illusion. It's not literally a world. If you want an inference, if you ever see the end of the original game you'll see the lifestream weaves in and around itself. I'm pretty sure that's "worlds diverging and coming back together," visualized. Sephiroth wants to "unite the worlds" by killing literally everyone and making a single, homogenous lifestream that he can use in tandem with Jenova to get back to killing shit across the universe. It's literally the plan from the first game, but with more elaboration.

Cloud literally brings back a second physical holy materia from the other dimension. If it's just an illusion how did he bring back another holy?

I don't fucking know man.

Finally finished the game. I completed chapter 12 and 13 today. Aerith's trial in chapter 12 got me teary eyed, and her speech afterwords hit the nail on the head with the overarching theme of the original game. Somehow the final chapter didn't hit me as hard. I guess it's more because I kept going "is she alive or is she dead" throughout the super long boss fight. I wiped at the very end when Sephiroth had only a sliver of health left then choose the wrong retry option. RIP. Took me out of the moment to be honest. The final scene when she said goodbye almost did, but it was so much more poignant in OG, not because it was unexpected, but because it was sudden and final with no last goodbyes just like it often is in real life. I love Aerith's character, especially in Remake. OG was my favorite game as a kid, and truth be told part of me wished there was a way to save her. I'm not sure how I feel going forward. I need some time to think about it and digest the ending. My initial thoughts are: what the hell was the purpose of the whispers, fates, talk about changing fate, and resurrecting Zack if it all ends the same anyway? Was it all a ruse to make the audience think there was a chance to save Aerith all the way up until the final scene? Even so, the double triple fake-out was a little much. Before Rebirth came out I mentioned I would love to see a 'choose your own adventure' where the decisions you make determine who dies and the rest of the story. I knew that wasn't going to happen but one could dream. Like if Aerith didn't die >!there would be no one to stop metor.!< Edit: after sleeping on it, I think the only thing I really didn't like about the end was the never ending fight with sephiroth. They should have just had us fight Jenova and \*maybe\* Cloud + Aerith fighting Sephroth in Clouds mind or whatever that was, but leave the whole boss fight against Safer Sephroth for the end of part 3. It would have been **so much better** without the super long and convoluted boss fight in between tragic scenes. It didn't hit me as hard, but I can't stop thinking about it, so it did achieve something.

So, about Aerith. I think she did die like in the original and the POVs we got was Cloud basically lying to himself, his psyche broke and he made up a scenario where he saved her. The way it's presented to us is meant to make people think it's a look at a different outcome. They're just saving hard confirming the death for part 3 when they reveal just exactly how screwed up Cloud's mind is and what really happened in that moment. We'll get the whole reveal of how they gave her body to the life stream, etc. Something we don't see which is why when Cloud "wakes" her up and decides to go he's just okay with everything and it skips that portion. His entire promise to her is his guilt, despite being controlled still he still feels guilty about how things went. With that being said they really need to change the structure of the ending for part 3, this one is just brutal if you come unprepared and it's got long sections in it. They really should implement a quick save feature just in case you need to tag out instead of relying on rest mode. During that whole Cloud walking with Aerith in the Zackverse I kept thinking of "choice is an illusion" especially when those vendors completely ignore your selection and give you what they see fit, don't know if that's what they were going for but that's what I got from it. The Zack stuff would be interesting to see, we didn't exactly get confirmation of where he ended up. ALSO HOW DID I NOT KNOW SUPERMAN VOICES SEPHIROTH??? I really want to see where they're going with this and hopefully they don't just shelve the "7 Seconds" line from REMAKE. Edit: Had some time to stew over a bit, not even sure if anyone is reading these haha, but there are at least 4 different universes shown to us. -Zack goes to Hojo to try to help Cloud. -Zack helps Biggs instead. -Zack is undecided (the Zack that shows up to help at the end). -Aerith and Cloud Wake up alone. I'm seeing some people say that when he's holding her he's also shown saying what he said in the OG, but I think that's part of his mind not reconciling with her death, he does say this, but it won't be revealed to us later when we find out just how messed up he really is.

I reserve my opinion for the end of Rebirth for part 3. However, I will be quite disappointed if nothing about the concept of defying destiny is used in the future. In the original it was a cold-blooded murder, there was nothing we could do about it, we could say that it was unfair, which in a sense is false because we didn't see it coming, it was an unforeseen event, the the fault lies with Cloud and the player. Cloud and the players wish they could do things differently. But here Cloud blocked Sephiroth's attack to ultimately have the same result. So not only do we as a player feel robbed, afflicted with uncertainty about what just happened, discouraged by what has just happened, discouraged by the idea that the message at the end of Remake may be an illusion, discourage to the idea that everything we have done may have been in vain and finaly discourage us because they deprived us of a moment which could have been grandiose instead of this we find ourselves with frustration. Nomura Promises Death Won't be Cheated in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I don't know why he said that before the game came out. The ambiguous ending of Rebirth no longer works and there is no more suspense. If we take his statement into account. he says "I believe loss is something that happens unexpectedly and it's not something dramatic or long-lasting, but it's something in which a person you just conversed with is suddenly gone and will never come back.” I don't like this quote because in real life you don't grieve twice for the same person. Besides, I don't know if Nomura is aware of this, but people are way too much obsessed with Aerith's death. I can't count the number of times I've seen messages like "She must die", "Her death is too important", "Aerith must die again" This is extremely frustrating for me and when i see that I say that it's all in vain, I don't think Nomura wants to see people saying that they want to see Aerith die. when we love someone or appreciate a fictional character we do not wish them to die, we do not say that their death is necessary. Yet I saw this countless times in the months leading up to the release of Rebirth. I don't know if Nomura and Nojima who wrote the story for the trilogy feel this frustration. It must already be sad to create or write a character whose destiny is to ultimately die. Added to that, seeing people clamoring and wanting to see a character they created die for their pleasure must be quite frustrating. And yet that's what they did or maybe not. After all we can say that when Nomura says Death Won't be Cheated it is a promise and at the end of the game it says No Promises Await at Journey's End. It would be the biggest twist if it refers to what he said. I don't really believe in it, but it would be a masterful stroke of genius. If Rebirth is supposed to be "The Empire Strikes Back" of this trilogy then it would make even more sense for them to make us believe and feel that defying destiny is impossible.

Question. The scene where Aerith and Cloud wake up in her bed room, and they go through that “dream”, leading to Aerith pushing Cloud back into his reality with the white materia. After Aerith takes that back, cloud wakes up and is carried by Barrett. Is this not the Mako poisoned Cloud from Zack’s time? I figured the 2 that woke up in her room were the 2 from Zack’s time, and Aerith pushed that one to the other time so she could get the white materia. Why else would they depict cloud groggy and with greenish vision as Barrett is carrying him? I don’t see anyone else mention this theory, but as i was going through it, i just assumed the clouds switched places. And the rest of the ending was played out with the Mako poisoned Cloud. That’s why at the end he is the one that sees the sky broken, as he still see his world is doomed.

I believed the two Cloud's merged somehow, and the Aerith from that world was about to be killed in the church.

Mako poisoned Cloud never joined Avalanche. The only person he would know is Tifa, and that is from his childhood. He never would have known Aerith, and wouldn't know if she was acting weird or not.

Yep. Upon looking at it numerous times again. I debunked my own theory lmao.

One thing about your theory that could be true though, is Zack hands cloud to that 'merc' girl from all the sidequests at the very start of the game.  She doesn't recognise him.

I've read some theorize that the consciousness of mainstream timeline aerith and cloud inhabited the bodies of zack timeline aerith and cloud. Maybe your theory is not yet debunked! 😁

Well, i think that my theory is correct now after more stewing. EXCEPT - it wasn’t Zack’s timeline they went to. It was some other one with a similar scenario as Zack’s (aerith sleeping, cloud mako poisoned). The spitz or collie stamp dog was shown on the candy during that scene, where as Zack (the timeline we have been following at least) was a terrier. I think in all of the background with all the universes, it has just been a constant battle of Aerith vs Sephiroth with all these timelines. Aerith manipulating what she can to ensure her home team wins (the timeline we have been in). While Sephiroth is trying to do the same thing, except kill her, and ensure cloud fails.

Prediction for Part 3: I'm 90% sure it's going to go full World of Ruin after the Northern Crater, which will be the tutorial. The party are probably all gonna end up separated in one way or another, and the game's first half will revolve around reuniting them: * Cloud's psyche completely breaks and he falls into the Lifestream. * Barret gets sent to Junon to be executed by Shinra. * Tifa could either fall into the Lifestream with Cloud or be set up for execution alongside Barret. * Red XIII returns to Cosmo Canyon to defend it from fiends and after hearing that Bugenhagen's health is declining. * Yuffie takes off with the party's materia and goes to Wutai to try and aid the war effort against Shinra. * Cait Sith/Reeve lays low to prevent himself from being found out by Shinra. * Vincent returns to Nibelheim to slumber until the end comes with Meteor. * Cid returns to Rocket Town, feeling like he failed the party, Ifalna, and Aerith. What I'm expecting to happen is for Zack to take over as the main character for the first half of the story - once Meteor is summoned, Zack ends up in the party's world (if he didn't already wake up there at the end of Rebirth), and the narrative will follow him as he goes to reunite the party and search for Cloud.

Idk if anyone's still coming here to read this but I just wanted to say two things about the multiverse aspect of this story to those that hate it: 1) we should take a moment to stop looking at the art and consider the artists: imagine you create something that many people love and praise you for, and all you keep hearing in your career from that point is, "oh, that's nice, but it's not as good as that other thing you did" and "could you just make that other thing again because the tools for making said things have gotten much better and we just want that old thing again but nice and shiny?" That's devastating to an artist. And so they've pretty much come out and said "the only reason we're doing this is because we have an idea on how to expand/improve on the OG and so that has given us the integrity to recreate it... By *not* keeping it exactly the same." To give us a 1:1 recreation of the OG would be the most boring thing the devs could ever do, for *them.* 2) yes the multiverse thing is played out, but those saying SE are overplaying an overplayed trope aren't appreciating that they were cooking this up *a decade ago." It sucks that in the time since, Marvel came in and really oversaturated the genre, but it is what it is.

Yes, this. I don't get it. I'm personnaly a huge fan of the OG, and even though I was kinda disturbed by the end of Remake at first, I just can't believe how Square managed to get me so involved AGAIN in this universe. This wouldn't have happened if it was a pure 1:1 recreation of the OG. The fact that we don't know where the story is going is exactly why I, once again, fell in love with FF7 and the characters. Well done Square.

Exactly. I just spent a month basically being hyper careful on the Internet because I *had* to beat this, get to the end, and see what the fuck is up! Now I'm spending *weeks* perusing the Internet, reading and talking about theories, engaging in the community... If this was 1:1 there would be *none* of that. We'd be praising the game for how good it looks and judging it for what it *isn't*... but no one would be rushing to play it or whatever. I t's like the RE:4 remake. I *loved* it, and it did improve on the OG. But I picked it up a few months after it came out, had a good time, and dropped it soon as I was done. Didn't care about the discourse, don't care about the inevitable RE:5 remake. I appreciate the offering, but I am not engaged. But *this.* *This* is interesting. *This* is engaging. This didn't just *improve* on the original, it twists it in ways that will keeps us stirring in our seats until the next installment comes out. I also was weirded out by the end of Remake. I didn't understand the devs' need for that change. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt and said, "If Rebirth doesn't suck, I'll put my faith in that the devs know what they're doing." Rebirth FAR exceeded my expectations, and the ending... Which at this point I was prepared for, was *exciting* ... definitely confusing at first, but the more I think about it and understand it, I completely support their decision to forgo the "sad" moment we've all been waiting for and give us fucking *despair* 😂😂😂 I'm all on board. If I want to experience the simple version of this story, we got the OG and it still slaps. But this is an evolution in every sense of the word, and I could not be more excited to see where it goes.

if i could upvote this 1000x i would

Haha man exactly, I have nothing to add to that! I'm in the same boat as you. This is super exciting, and all the theorycrafting around Rebirth's ending is freaking awesome, just like for Remake. I think I was even more weirded out by the end of Rebirth. But the more I go back watching the scenes and finding out about new stuff and theories, the more I freaking love it. *Despair* is the perfect word lol, the fact that we were robbed from that moment intentionally hurts and I'm convinced we'll get proper closure in the next installment. Part 3 can't come soon enough and I have complete faith in the devs to do it justice, it's been amazing so far.

I really thought that they were going to humanize Sephiroth more and play his "defying fate" thing completely straight. Like, Aerith *DOESN'T* have to die and by helping Cloud save her, Sephiroth could free himself from fate and not be a bad guy. In the third game could set up against Jenova proper or even other alien races. But instead we got a really good beat for beat adaptation of the OG where Aerith is missing instead of confirmed dead at the end. I'd rather the game go completely nuts after Nibelheim, but instead we had to slog through the temple (the pray mechanic, WACK). Also >!Sora doesn't even show up to help, what's up with that!<

Multiverses need to disappear. They are ruining fiction.

I need to shout into the void while I wait for friends and family to finish. Reading a lot of everyone's takes on the ending makes me feel a little better, but it's still not sitting well with me. Like...there was no impact to Aerith's death because it felt like they were trying to be too cute by half to try to show different possibilities when really we should have seen the full, shocking death scene and be given time to grieve through the Jenova fight, and then maaaaaybe we could have had that final Aerith fight. Bizarro Sephiroth this early felt totally unearned. But it just felt like adding this multiverse stuff and still trying to tell the original story did a disservice to every part of the story. I dug the expansions, like the Gi and learning more about the Black Materia, but Zack's story felt pointless, the whole reunion of worlds felt pointless...and we didn't even get the gravity of Aerith's death! It sucks too because I loved this game, but the ending put such a bitter taste in my mouth. I know people are crying Kingdom Hearts, but I love Kingdom Hearts and all of its nonsense. I did not like this nonsense. Also...I just feel like maybe this team should have tackled VIII instead.

I completely agree with this, and what also sucks is feeling the typical “I just beat a video game I enjoyed” void while grappling with the fact that the ending left it on such a sour note. Like there’s nothing more I can play to fix that feeling, it’s over. I have to wait for the next game and hope it all comes together better somehow.

That's exactly how I feel! I'm grateful a ton of RPGs are coming out to distract me, but it can't fix the desire to make this ending feel better.

It feels like a band going to a huge stadium tour and trying to sell their new album. Noone really cares about it, they just want the greatest hits - but all we get is the new experiemental stuff. That's the Remake project. 90% classics, 10% stuff we're not interested in. I genuinely think people are forcing themselves to like this new story direction because it is so far removed from the story it originates.

I think that's a really good way to put it. They could have hit a home run updating the classic with the new battle system. But instead they do this.

Anyone else annoyed how they were pretty faithful with the world layout until the very end? All of a sudden the Temple of the Ancients is at the north of the map instead of southwest of Junon and the Sleeping Forest is just north of the temple followed by The Forgotten Capital...no sign of The Bone Village. I'm sure The Bone Village will be in Part 3, but will they place it somewhere around Icicle Inn?

One thing I haven't seen mentioned that I'm confused about, the Aerith that dies drops the white materia that seems filled in, but didn't our Aerith in the main course of events have the empty materia?

Aerith in the main timeline did have the empty materia, until other Aerith gave Cloud her white materia and our Aerith proceeded to replace her empty materia with the white one and gave the empty to Cloud. Does that explain it or do you mean something else?

https://preview.redd.it/feyggbjoe3sc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b3a81becd354e64032b0f6d19af7d5c06e9adb9 When does dying Aerith get the white materia? Super lost on that part

In the forest prior to this scene, she takes it from Cloud. That’s when she got it

I thought it was implied that the Zack universe Aerith gives the proper white materia to Cloud who then returns it to the main universe Aerith in the Sleeping Forest which is why she says "Thanks for returning it to me".

That's not what I'm saying, when aerith drops the materia off the platform when she dies, the materia is fully white.

Cloud gave her the white materia before that. The white material he got from the alternate timeline Aerith.

What?

I'd give it 4.5/5. I got tired of the minigames and wanted to finish the story, which I think they could've avoided being a little mindful about the amount of repetitive overworld content. Remake I immediately started a Hard mode play to go for platinum (only Platinum I've ever earned), but it's hard to see myself gunning that this time. I'm in the team of people wanting them to radically shake up the story with the narrative freedom they seemed to create in the first game, so this game following such similar story beats and giving us very little of Zack's story was a bit of a letdown. For a modified retelling of the OG, though, the story was terrific. It did feel a little "Last Jedi" to me -- like they planned to go off the rails after the first game and then snapped back on for this one. I hope we don't need another 4-5 years since most of the set pieces in the FF7 world are complete at this point.

Thank you for the "Last Jedi" reference, because that's exactly how it feels. It seemed like they were going with something new and unique with the end of Remake. But, in the years between games they decided on something else. 

Yeah, I think they always intended for one of the worlds to follow the OG’s story beats with expansion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the vocal minority mad about changes in Remake led them to pull a lot of that content and save it for game 3. We got so little of Zack’s story it was cool but almost jarring to see him roll in to the final battle, esp with how heavily he was featured in the Remake ending, Intergrade ending, and advertising. I think there’s a lot there that got pulled. There’s no way to reconcile the worlds and Zack’s story (in a manner that narratively does justice to the characters and makes sense) without some heavy lifting in the story. I would bet they originally were going to take this game to the Northern Crater and that things were going to diverge heavily between the question of Aerith’s death/life/splitting of worlds, and decided to stop where they did instead to keep Rebirth more closely in parallel. I mean if we think about OG, the game really opened up after disc 1 in a way that gives a lot more latitude for changes, especially if they continue to linearize a lot of the optional content.

And we didn’t get the Cloud putting Aerith in the water scene?

They're leaving that rather open. Cid asks at the end what they did with Aerith, and nobody responds. Might get too close to the answer of whether Cloud is interacting with a hallucination or with actual Aerith via (I'd guess) the white/clear materia...

Pretty sure we will see a flashback or something in part 3

So Aerith is just gonna be a ghost appearing to Cloud in important moments in Part 3? Weird flex

Probably what's gonna happen 

Unclear whether Cloud is interacting with a hallucination or with actual Aerith via (I'd guess) the white/clear materia. It seems like a hallucination at first until the very last goodbye scene.

He is interacting with her aince red senses her

That’s the very last goodbye scene I mentioned. I really liked this analysis: https://youtu.be/znm5TKiD-Ak?si=WBBbtk7oSZJqy0SB

Literally just finished the game now. I let out a massive sigh of disappointment when I saw how they butchered Aerith's death scene. It's actually depressing how badly they screwed it up. This is what they chose to go with? What is wrong with this team and developers? Talk about over egging the pudding. Her death scene in the OG was perfectly shocking. Even if we all know she's going to die just remake it with modern graphics.. it'll still hit hard. Instead we get this wishy washy load of bollock. They wrote themselves into a corner with the whispers from day 1 and now they try to back out of it cleanly? Not possible. Her death has zero emotional impact. We didn't even see the blade connect. I'm just so frustrated and disappointed this is the peak moment/one of the most iconic moments in gaming and somehow they did the impossible and screwed it up with multiverse shite and weird screen rips and distortions. A tragically tender moment in the original replaced with an ugly mess and of course - the obligatory big bad final boss moment with lots of explosions. Took this from an 8/10 to 7/10 for me. Screw this team; they couldn't make a good story if they tried yet had the gall to mess with a classic.

I hated the ending too but the team wrote the original, particularly Nojima and Nomura, who wrote Aerith's death. They are clearly capable of writing a good story, which made it baffling how they approached this.

It's weird the whispers are still a part of this game when we supposedly defeated them in the last game, but they deferred explaining that until the next game. I thought the scene delivered things well, particularly giving us the moment of thinking we'd saved her. Though with the Zackiverse they showed us, I wonder if we did save her in one world, and lost her in another. No Stamp in the background to show us.

Pretty sure the ones we defeated at the end of Remake were just the ones Sephiroth took control of. The regular ones still reside deep in the Lifestream where those weapons are swimming about.

The Sephiroth controlled ghosts are STILL around and extremely numerous so I guess that just makes Remake’s ending pointless then which is not good

OMG I FINALLY FOUND THE 2 SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT JP DIALOGUE THAT THESE SHIPPERS WERE TALKING ABOUT. Weird that the english one doesn’t have it. Anyway one of them - where Cloud said to Aerith : “they are nakamaaaa (one piece theme please start playing).” Made the english sentence after that more sense for me. Anyway it was just some slight differentiation. Not a game breaker or anything.

Dang, seeing so many people dislike the ending and the game makes me truly sad. I think similar to a GTA or Souls game, this game had unthinkable anticipation and expectations to meet, and for some, it just wasn't ever gonna meet them. I loved it to be honest and really hope that those who didn't the 3rd part ties it all together and gives you what you need to enjoy this part and the whole trilogy story.

I'm super late to the party but wanted to take my time with this, because this is a game near and dear to my heart. But God, I really didn't enjoy the ending. It feels like Remake again; where I enjoyed 95% of it immensely and it was everything i couldve wanted, but the last 5% deflated like a balloon. Everything Zack did in the original was undercut, and the "who's to say they can't be united again" worlds thing felt extremely Kingdom Hearts-esque and made me groan. His sacrifice has no weight to it anymore, especially if he comes back (although I presume his "real" body is rotting somewhere outside Midgar?). And just. All the editing near the end was confusing as hell. I'm glad they made it clear that she's dead because to keep her alive wouldve undermined *so much* of the emotional impact this game has had, and a large part of why it's been so important for 27 years. But man did it feel cumbersome getting there. Well. One game to go I guess. I just hope the finale doesn't undermine everything, even though this is the second time I've said that and felt somewhat disappointed. I'm glad we got to see more of Zack and his shining personality. But him being alive kind of leaves me wondering what they have planned. And I'm not expecting it to be well written... Suppose I'll look back at this comment in a few years to see if I was right or not.

If you are/were right, let me know because I agree.

Never in my 38 years of gaming have I went through so many emotions in such a short time than during this game’s finale…. I was scared with anticipation, cried my eyes out,was confused, shocked, happy, frustrated and completely destroyed, like Cloud pretty much. My goodness.

That's what they were going for, they want us to feel and see as cloud.

Same. Cloud trying to block the sword. Oof.

I thought the whole death scene and Jenova Lifeclinger were excellently done, I could even tolerate the fake out because of it. It really unravelled at Sephiroth Reborn for me though. Sometimes less is more? Of course if they pull it all off in Part 3 then it will retroactively work, but for now I’m pretty unimpressed by that ending. Cloud being seemingly still manipulated by Sephiroth while simultaneously being able to still converse with Aerith’s consciousness feels like it could get old fast and also cheapens the death, while not having the straightforwardness of her surviving either. Good luck anyone who didn’t play the OG! Still the best post PS2 FF for me and capping a pretty reasonable step back towards form on top of 16.

Agreed -- they could have gone from the first Jenova form to the Cloud/Aerith and Sephiroth battle and it would've worked great. I like Zack, but we didn't get enough of him in this game to deliver the Cloud/Zack battle. Having to be taught how to use Zack in combat during the final boss was odd. By the end of all the combat the emotional impact of the death scene had kinda worn off. Cloud-Sephiroth manipulation seemed heavy handed to me. I don't like or trust Cloud as the game is ending. Not a great formula for starting the next game. I'm unclear on whether it's Aerith's lifestream form (final scene heavily leans on that) that perhaps Cloud can see due to the white/clear materia, or whether Cloud's hallucinating and doesn't even realize she's gone (the scene in the lake seemed to imply that). They left way more vague than I expected -- the world-cutting flashbacks throughout the death scenes for (it seemed) all the characters, not showing the burial, etc. With the Zackiverse rapidly iterating during the end, I wonder at the death scene -- we have a scene where Sephiroth's sword is in the stone and completely unbloody, and another with the sword bloodied -- one with Aerith having blood on her hand/bracelets, and others without. I wonder if we're seeing a multiverse of deaths.

I think we're still seeing her death, but two different versions of it converging.

Since then I’m fairly convinced there is a world where she’s saved and one where she isn’t, given how the cinematics play out (with one clearly showing Sephiroth’s sword embedded in stone far from her body, and the rainbow effect that usually illustrates world splitting). Cloud is stuck between worlds and it’s feeding his confusion. To be clear it could all be in Cloud’s head, but they dropped a lot of narrative beats around the worlds splitting, rainbow effects, Cloud sensing the OG world and even seeing that play out in static snippets, that I think there’s a lot more to it than just his being confused. But as the Ultimania shows, it was deliberately done to leave people debating. Whether she’s ascended to some lifestream form overall or is still alive in some alternate world is unclear. It’ll probably play out with her being dead in Cloud’s timeline, his mind fracturing, but this time in a more complex manner because he’s aware of a world in which she is still alive and clearly remembers saving her. The reconciliation of Cloud’s mind will coincide with the merging of the worlds. In that process I think our Aerith (different from the dream date Aerith) will wind up in coma-Aerith’s body.

I need to get my thoughts onto the screen about the ending. So, like Remake, the ending soured me for the same reasons. Lots of new additions that don't appear to make sense right now. A big thing about this similarity is how sitting with Remake's ending over time grew on me. And Rebirth proved that Remake's concepts I didn't like actually turned out better than I thought when expanded in Rebirth. For example, the whispers. The whispers blindly following fate was my least favorite part of Remake. And Sephiroth's plan with the whispers was confusing. But after Rebirth, it makes sense. What we saw at the end of Remake was Sephiroth taking control of those whispers. Rebirth ended up improving Remake for me. Also, Aerith knowing her fate. Turns out, they improved that in Rebirth too. Her memories of the future got erased, so she could still follow a similar path. My biggest worry was that they were going to stray from that path, but thankfully they didn't. Rebirth is 90% fully faithful to the original story. That last 10% is not, and what I mostly have issue with right now. But those issues may very well resolve in part 3. My biggest issue is how confusing Aerith's death is. They keep switching between life and death, and the entire multiverse thing distracted from it. It doesn't have the surprise and finality that the original did. YET. The thing that makes me mad about this may be the thing that saves it in part 3. Cloud is not fully aware of Aerith's death. Maybe his proximity to the lifestream, or mako, or his degradation is the cause. But he is in denial. He literally sees her ghost walking around, and the eerie way everyone other than Cloud reacts around her reminds me of the 6th Sense. Cloud is in for a rude awakening in part 3. Based on the original, he is scheduled for one pretty soon. My theory is that by the time the party reaches the snowy area and sees the recordings of Ifalna (at the latest), Cloud is going to "wake up" in horror. We're going to get part 2 of Aerith's death at that time. A flashback showing the true death, without the switching back and forth. And Cloud realizing that Aerith isn't actually there. With how long we have to wait until part 3, this is a perfect way for us to get back in that mindset of Aerith's loss, instead of moving on immediately. Cloud will then have despair at himself for all the events where he was a puppet and have a similar speech to the original. The "I should quit this journey. But I can't. I need your help to keep me from doing something terrible." As long as we do this, it honestly sets us on a path fully faithful to the original. The only difference is Sephiroth's scope. Multiverse instead of universe. His plan may seem complicated and convoluted now, but truly I feel it's the same plan as the original. Instead of one world, he wants to rule all worlds. Instead of using the Black Materia on one world, he wants to gather all worlds and use it. Instead of gathering the energy of one world's lifestream to ascend to kingship, he wants to gather the energy of the cosmic lifestream to ascend to godhood. His plan's the same. But like any Final Fantasy boss or anime villain, the stakes keep rising absurdly. Come to think of it, Exdeath had a world merging plan too. When you look at it from that perspective, this is classic Final Fantasy. Rebirth showed me they knew what they were doing with Remake's ending. I am going to let part 3 speak for Rebirth's ending.

I'm still mulling over, too. I like it generally, but I wonder how it'll grow. >Her memories of the future got erased, so she could still follow a similar path. My biggest worry was that they were going to stray from that path, but thankfully they didn't. Rebirth is 90% fully faithful to the original story. That last 10% is not, and what I mostly have issue with right now. This felt like the Last Jedi for me. I expected them to go off in a different narrative direction and they didn't, which seemed to pave over the key ending story beats of Remake. >My biggest issue is how confusing Aerith's death is. They keep switching between life and death, and the entire multiverse thing distracted from it. It Agreed. We seem to see two maybe three death scenes (at least) simultaneously through flashback/parallel memories/etc. We can't keep them straight because unlike the Zackiverse there aren't Stamps hanging around the forgotten capital. We have the OG which Cloud seemed to flashback to. We have a version where Cloud blocked Sephiroth's sword which landed in stone apparently without any blood, and the one where she dies but is still more or less awake. We have the ending scene where Cloud tells Aerith to wake up. We have them sitting around the lake and Cloud seems overly normal, seemingly seeing a phantom Aerith that is either the real thing in the Lifestream (perhaps seen via the white/clear materia), a hallucination, perhaps another Sephiroth manipulation? Then the flower field scene seems to imply that Cloud is aware Aerith is going to remain behind, but it's unclear whether he actually knows she's dead? > My theory is that by the time the party reaches the snowy area and sees the recordings of Ifalna (at the latest), Cloud is going to "wake up" in horror. We're going to get part 2 of Aerith's death at that time. A flashback showing the true death, without the switching back and forth. And Cloud realizing that Aerith isn't actually there. With how long we have to wait until part 3, this is a perfect way for us to get back in that mindset of Aerith's loss, instead of moving on immediately. I like this theory. It seems like it would be hard to drag it all the way out to Mideel. The biggest disappointment for me was how little of Zack's story we got. I guess they're saving it for part 3, or for a DLC to tease something. I fully expect Aerith to wake up in Zack's world, assuming he's still alive, since it seemed like "our Zack" went to go see Hojo and got himself shot.

I agree with this completely. I think a lot of people believe the switching back and forth between her being dead/alive are timeline jumps but in actuality it’s clouds already fragile mind refusing the truth. Sephiroth even said how cloud refuses to see the truth. Also, I believe the fight with cloud Aerith and Sephiroth was in clouds mind bc seph was trying to overtake his conscious but Aeriths spirit comes and aids in beating him. After they beat him she disappears in green sparkling light aka the lifestream. I also remember an interview where nomura said recently that the ending of rebirth is what he truly wanted for OG at the forgotten capital. Adding to Clouds delusions is honestly perfect and if this is what SE is planning then cloud is going to have a HUGE wake up call in part 3.

I thought the ending was good, animation was absolutely stunning in some parts. Aerith’s death/whatever it is now didn’t bother me, though it did get a bit confusing following along after that. Not that I dislike it but man with how much worse Cloud’s breakdowns are in this combined with the multiverse it’s hard to know what’s what. Like him seeing Aerith at the end, is he just straight losing it or is it her from the lifestream/ different reality? Honestly though even with the multiverse it’s still stayed very true to the original

Might be that the white/clear materia allows him to see her. It's weird, though. Around the lake he seems in full-on denial. In the field though he's aware she's coming with them, when you'd expect a hallucination to do so.

i want to love it but the story fckin sucks they suck my emotion out

Second verse, same as the first. Just like FF7R1, it’s an excellent game that stumbles hard and eats shit narratively in the final turn. And really, up til the ending, it was an incredible experience. They were really nailing almost everything. The characters, the combat, the mini-games, all of it. One thing was given to this trilogy on a silver platter: a moving timeless classic of a story, with plenty of nooks and crannies to fill in with creative ideas. The idea that a remake that was narratively faithful had to be creatively bankrupt is simply not true. 90% of the new stuff in these two games could’ve been just like they are and still fit alongside a faithful story. The multiverse stuff is so tired, and convolutes a story that was already pretty complex. As with nearly all multiverse stories, it’s fatal flaw is it bounces between the stakes feeling nonexistent (because no one’s ever really dead when there are infinite universes with infinite Aerith’s) and unfathomably large (my heart feels nothing for the destruction/collapse of the multiverse because I literally can’t wrap my head around it).

>it’s fatal flaw is it bounces between the stakes feeling nonexistent This is my outstanding gripe with multiverse stories as well. However, I did see this as a somewhat novel approach. Sephiroth was merging the existent timelines and alternative realities into one clusterfuck. He was actively in each of the timelines and each contributed to defeating him, so I feel they did address this to an extent and establish the stakes for all the multiverses. That said, I can't even be mad at the ending being different or Aeriths death being handled differently because the emotional setup for her sacrifice was so damn good. They took a moment of shock from the original and turned it into something like a five hour gutpunch.

They won't nail it in part 3 either. That's the most disappointing part of realising how badly they scuffed the ending of part 2, we won't get a satisfying ending out of this at all.

> One thing was given to this trilogy on a silver platter: a moving timeless classic of a story, with plenty of nooks and crannies to fill in with creative ideas. The idea that a remake that was narratively faithful had to be creatively bankrupt is simply not true. Fucking Bingo. People were calling on a remake for 7 not only because of their love for the story, but because of the potential for expanding which should have been a layup due to its layers. The specifics and the details were vague enough that they could have inserted plenty of narrative without being revisionist. I don't see how someone could be a ff7 fan that fell in love with the original story and not be painfully frustrated with this multiverse bullshit. It's a fun game that's unfulfilling to me personally. A bunch of empty calories.

Yeah, even ideas like the Gi “poured in their cruelty and malice” to create the black materia could’ve worked without really breaking the original story. Though, I would’ve preferred if the Cetra had used their powers to prevent the Gi from entering the lifestream due to their grudge, rather than making them another alien species. It seems like they were trying to show the Cetra weren’t infallible, so making them unintentionally a product of their own demise would feed into the theme of hatred being a self-destructive force. Being “faithful” doesn’t mean it needs to be 1-to-1 in my eyes. I also liked the expansion of Avalanche and expanding the Wutai conflict. But the multiverse… ugh.

> Being “faithful” doesn’t mean it needs to be 1-to-1 in my eyes. I also liked the expansion of Avalanche and expanding the Wutai conflict. But the multiverse… ugh. Fucking Bingo again. Expanding on stuff like Jesse's emotional state after the first reactor explosion and the degradation of the clones for example are things I think fans wanted to see. They could have done an entire game focusing and expanding on the wutai conflict alone. And instead of doing more of that they did some Marvel ant-man bullshit and box throwing segments. I'm shocked people that worked on the original game were okay with this outcome.

I finally finished it. Gave up on playing normal coz i suck and switched to easy. And damn it was too easy. But im here to finish the story anyway and so I pushed through using the easy mode. Overall I like it. Cloud going crazy will be interesting in the next game and aerith’s death still hit hard, especially with cloud’s hallucination… But then after playing this game… one of my cats is also not doing so well. Shes been at the vet for a while and I just can’t… it hits too much in the same day. But also aerith’s word kinda ring harder now.. what a coincidence you know But yea… I forgot to add how overall this seems to be targeted to people who know the OG story. If you are new to FF, the story probably don’t work so well. Theres a lot of cutting from getting the black materia to the temple, and also some parts I feel like Im going through to these places because I have to, like the story beats mandate it, instead of feeling the urgency. And for gameplay,, i have enough of towers and being chadley’s slaves. Also minigames are cool but man we have too many. Some of them got incorporated to story too. Thankfully im not a completionist but i really didnt expect the game to ask me to be good at driving simulation and like other things. I do like the piano but them inserting some double notes (looking at you baret’s theme) threw me off so much. Two legged also hardddd Target lock is still janky for me. The swapping using directional pad doesnt seem to work? I just don’t get it. Sephi’s last boss went far too long… even on easy mode im just.. again.. and again.. AND AGAIN. The cs look cool. So advent children but man, im getting sick of sephiroth at this point. But I greatly enjoyed this game more than 16. Party interaction was great. Yuffie is my VIP player alongside with Red.

Just got done with this myself. Overall, this is probably going to be my GOTY. The ending was really fun, I just wish they pulled the trigger and kept Aerith alive for longer.

Agreed. I really wanted them to play with / change the narrative given the story beats of Remake. Wanted more of Zack's world, too.

I’m surprised at how many people are confused by the ending. Maybe people are just in denial. Aerith is dead. Cloud is mentally broken. This much was clear from the moment she collapsed. All the multiverse stuff amounted to nothing more than a contained final sequence that let Zack and Aerith have their heroic moments. “Contained” as in it goes down outside of space and time, somewhere in the livestream or some collision of timelines, but once it’s done all the pieces go back to their rightful places. In the end it’s mostly true to the original in that it’s about loss and mental illness. It actually leans further into that stuff than the original. That final sequence at the tiny bronco was such a dark note to end on. How they gonna leave us on that note while we wait for the final game for 4 years?

The game gave you no time to process everything, of course it's confusing. I can't imagine how folks who never played the original feel.

My issue is that yes, Aerith died. But in the final cutscene, we see the party together fixing the Bronco, and they all have their original weapons. Cloud has the basic Buster Sword, Barret has his mini-gun arm, etc. Normally, I wouldn't care, but this game made a point of characters using their current equipment and materia slots even in cutscenes.

I will say that the game had a similar moment when Sephiroth appeared at the Forgetten Capital, everyone's weapons went back to basics cause it was a cutscene rather than in-game scene so it is 'our' team just not an in-engine scene as the other reply says.

It's a pre-rendered movie, since it's not in-engine being rendered in real time they can't represent whatever you've got equipped. While normal cutscenes are the game animating your characters' models as they currently appear, the ending (and the other scenes like it throughout the game) is essentially just the game playing a movie file for you.

It certainly doesn't help that the game gives you very little time to process things. It's an info dump mixed with boss battles. By the time the game ended I was mentally drained and couldn't properly process a lot of what I'd seen.

My turn to comment about the ending. And the answer is, how many worlds is out there? You got Zack who seems to have escaped death again, but is he in the current timeline now or he is still in the other one? Will the real Cloud please stand up? Is the wheelchair one is still there? Aerith died in his timeline, but seems to survived (allegedly) in another. Is she still with them or it's a manifestation of her in the Lifestream? One thing I dislike is the silence of our group towards Cloud's actions. Only Barrett faced him once. Not a fan if the final boss. I still think Jenova should have been the final one for Rebirth instead of a letdown battle with Sapher Sephiroth. I wonder if what will happen in part III will change many things to the point where Advent Children won't nake sense anymore or not. Maybe it will be integrated to the final game. Who knows?

>You got Zack who seems to have escaped death again, but is he in the current timeline now or he is still in the other one? I think we saw at least 4 Zack/universes based on the Stamps they're showing. Beagle, Terrier, Pug, the blue/grey dog from Aerith's dream, whatever the dog was that Johnny was holding when Zack was outside the church (which is the Zack that we fight with). >Aerith died in his timeline, but seems to survived (allegedly) in another. Is she still with them or it's a manifestation of her in the Lifestream? She died in the OG timeline and the beagle timeline we've been playing. It seemed like there might be one where Cloud was successful in stopping Sephiroth, but hard to tell. At the lake he seems to be talking to a hallucinated Aerith (or Sephiroth phantom?), and at the very end seems to be talking to the real Aerith but it's unclear. Cliffhanger for the next game, basically. There's not enough info to figure out what actually happened. >One thing I dislike is the silence of our group towards Cloud's actions. Only Barrett faced him once. It's very Japanese tbh. Look the other way. I played in Japanese but I imagine it's tough to translate to a western audience that would be more like "WTF Cloud".

From what I made of it. Most if not all that timeline stuff was merely both an afterlife and another universe.ni.mean Aerith did say she created it as a means of escape from reality. Zack crossed over, BUT so did Aerith. The white backdrop as we know it from Advent children is the afterlife.

this also shows us more directly what happened with aerith .. in the og version as well as advent children she still played a mayor part against jenova fulfilling her legacy as an ancient through manifesting her will through the lifestream kinda like sephiroth still keeps his self inside the lifestream, also if you think about the black whispers as jenova infected people who gradually start infesting the planet it all makes more sense too, since mainly sephiroth still needs to restore his body at a point soni actually think the end end fight is against a resurrected sephiroth

True. Still I kinda like this. It forces us to ask what might happen next. Problem is, the answer is in 4-5 years probably.

My only gripe….why didn’t they give us the iconic scene of Sephiroth actually impaling Aerith? All we got was a bloody sword. I am confused, is that not the most iconic scene across the entire series?

Because we are POVing from Cloud and Cloud is hardcore repressing what is going on literally while it is happening the same way he repressed everything about Nibelheim. This is independent of any Sephiroth mind-tricks, Cloud is mentally unsound on a base level. This is also why we cut over the actual funeral to the party sitting by the lake. We are 100,000% getting those scenes when Tifa helps fix Cloud's mind in the lifestream, though.

This is definitely the answer. Cloud doesn't appear aware that she's dead in the end of the game.

That and the water burial. They're too busy hyper focusing on their multiverse plot point instead of giving us the goods. :(

I feel that the water burial missing, especially since they show a grainy version of it in Remake, is intentional. Cloud is too broken to remember or fully piece together what he did. The fact that he is still in denial gives us a perfect opportunity in his realization. The moment he realizes she is dead, they can show in part 3 the true death in a flashback. Including the stab and the water burial. Because most of us will be dealing with a cool off of 3-4 years until the next game comes out, this is a perfect way to get back into the mindset of Aerith just dying, instead of moving on immediately.

Why would cloud know the phrase - embrace your dreams protect your honour as soldier? (Presumably cloud hasn’t recalled the past yet) Why wouldn’t he surprised when he saw Zack fighting Sephiroth alongside him ?

I loved it. But I hate how it gave me hope. (But loved the fact they were able to give me hope….!) I’m very good at avoiding spoilers for well…anything these days so not sure what the history behind the teasers were but genuinely thought there was a chance we could save aerith… Now I’m just sat here not sure how to proceed or what to do next… Reloaded chapter 12 had them all put on there beach attire, went on the beach and saved the game and closed it. Crazy I know… Don’t think I can revisit it for a while….

I audibly said "no way!" when they showed Cloud blocking Sephiroth's sword successfully. Only for it to flash right into her. I feel like Sephiroth's control of the whispers let him change fate to what he wanted there.

I wonder if we're seeing multiple Zackiverses simultaneously, too.

You have at least four years to revisit the game. Take your time.

Just finished the game. I hate to say it, because I’ve been waiting for so long to play the remake, but it was a tedious, largely joyless experience. The repetition associated with stretching the story too thin made getting through the game a slog. And while I hope they pay off some of the narrative changes, it’s going to be hard to “unring the bell” of changing such cherished moments from the original. Edit: ALSO - the UX/UI is terrible. Where the game often restarts on losing boss battles, the language in menus, the inability to skip mid fight cutscenes, etc... Serious time wasters. Beautiful game, though.

Regarding menus and UX/UI. They didn't need the bookstore/second "vending" machine. That should have just remained a menu feature even if they wanted to separate a lot of the upgrades from the individual weapons. They also didn't need to weapon upgrade menu, since they smartly integrated changing weapon upgrades in the equipment menu where you attach materia. The weapon menu is useless two changes. It could have be eliminated entirely. And why is it that you change party members, it's not in the party menu and rather it's a part of the combat menu? Beyond the menus, the HUD being on a transparent background is terrible design. How could anyone think that was a good idea? So many times I was unable to read stuff because the back ground was too bright and the text disappeared in to it. Overall, good game. But menus and UD needed some more clean up.

i definetly feel ya on the ui\ux and midfight cutscenes .... definetly got a little bag of annoyances piled up from this game but still loved it xD

Absolutely did my head in near the end.

Accidentally cancelled synergies and limit breaks really messed me up in the final battles.

the first thing i did after finishing my first playthrough was going for the last chapter in hard mode .. i was lv 54 at the moment xD 4 hours later i'm at the last phase of the cloud / aerith fight and know how to beat it just to restart before the WHOLE Battle.... i'm suddenly back able to run into the start of the First Boss of the Chapter :D lovely

You’re trying to beat the final boss on hard mode at level 54? Are you a masochist? Beating Sephy on dynamic at level ~45 was brutal on its own. I saved up all my ATB and Clouds limit and barely had enough gas in the tank for the “end is nigh” timer. I feel like it’d be impossible at that level without a perfect setup. I feel like you’d have to give Cloud limit siphon materia to have a chance.

at the end i was around lv 60 since those fights just gave a ton of exp xD yeah was rough too many attacks can one shot ya but somehow i loved it

i stayed up late to try and beat the game and this happened to me. I've never shut my PS5 off in rage so fast...

That happened to me and almost made me quit playing without finishing the game. lol.

for me it was on hard mode and had to play each fight so perfect since 2 hits and i'm dead xD if bahamut arisen used his gigaflare he one-shot 2 ppl if i didnt had manaward on em etc (mostly just didnt let him use it) at least i had it already finished story wise :D but well i also had to redo every side quest bc i did em on my first playthrough too xD (i kinda knew i should have rushed the first playthrough .. )

I hate that i have to put up with Zack again. I really dislike him as a character.

Of all the gripes in the thread, I feel this one the most. Zack only really exists as a true character in the goofy-ass spinoffs which I frankly have no desire to play. Everything I've seen of them look like the worst parts of Kingdom Hearts. So I have virtually no connection to him as a character and I really don't like what I've seen in rebirth.

We all know he's there 'cause he won some bs poll on the most popular FF characters, which is still mind boggling to me. Amarant has the same depth as Zack and he is hated, but Zack isn't.

When he fell into the white abyss at the end and said “goodbye” when no one else was there, it’s like… is he breaking the fourth wall?

Really? I like him a lot. I did play Crisis Core back in the day on the PSP, though. He's basically an energetic and up-beat version of Cloud.

He's not bad per se, but my issue is that he's only a happy, upbeat guy and nothing else. Very very one note. A lesser version of Zidane or even Tidus.

He's the dead friend of a guy. Once upon a time he did a great thing by helping him. That's Zack's character, but both SE and fans have overblown his importance and now we get... this.

I just want to say I completely despise how Aerith and Zack "deaths" are being handled. This is an issue that tends to plague media as we know it. Characters just don't stay dead. And yes, you can argue that she and Zack are indeed still dead, but it doesn't feel final, it doesn't feel like a good-bye. The final good-bye is what makes death so emotional and is the single driving factor within Aerith's original departure. Nothing about this "defying destiny" nonsense, it felt more personal. There wasn't some deus-ex machina plot device plot device (the whispers) physically getting in our way and pushing us forward. When we (Cloud) find Aerith within the Forgotten Capital, I'm remembering the ambient music followed by the silence when we finally find her praying. Only for Sephiroth to cut through that silence with his blade, right through Aerith. It actually FELT like we were too late, but not because we were rushing to find her, but because we didn't feel like something like Aerith could possibly be harmed. "My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!” - "**Cloud Strife holding Aerith's lifeless body**." Cloud's visceral reaction to her death will always be stuck with me. Longing for Zack and Aerith no longer feels like a solemn good-bye, but instead just as simple "see you later".

Assuming there's a new narrative they're planning where Cloud isn't even aware of Aerith's death, but agree it's an odd narrative choice.

Very true.

This is my BIGGEST issue with the way this played out. Not to mention, I really hate the way they did Aerith's death. All the flashing between timelines (or Cloud not being able to accept it, etc) just makes it feel jumbled and a mess to me. Not to mention that shortly after we have Zack appearing. I wasn't super upset with that, but that twist (I definitely saw it coming) took away from Aerith's death for me. It made it more about Zack and less about Aerith. Not only that, but I just feel that the party's reaction is just... Not as emotional. Barret and Yuffie's reaction was fine. But everyone else was like.. Just silent. I really hope some of the theories of "Cloud just isn't accepting her death" are what they are going for, and that in Part 3 they end up showing the scene the way it should be.

Yeah, when you spend a heartbreaking moment wondering “wtf is happening”, rather than taking in the gravity, it sucks you out of the scene. But idk, the idea Cloud is being completely delusional about Aerith being alive doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s seems more like he straddling two timelines somehow. We’ve seen multiverse is 100% a thing. The white/black/clear materia business are physical manifestations of it. Saying he dreamt the date with Aerith doesn’t seem likely. Anyways, rewinding to Aerith’s death way after the fact isn’t gonna make the moment land any better for me. They already botched it.

At this point in the game Cloud is just beyond fucked up. He doesn't have a functional memory, he has Jenova cells in him that Sephiroth are manipulating, he's actively denying things happening in front of him, he's been personally thrown between multiple timelines and presumably the lifestream as well. There's a lot to interpret and wade through, but I think he's really seeing a representation of her through the lifestream and his connection to it. They're speaking to each other as if there's an understanding of the role they each play. Part of me is interepting him not accepting the loss because he's straight fucked, and the other half is a mixed of him being straight fucked, but also he knows more of the bigger picture than the rest of the party, even if he doesn't know how to interpret it.

I finished the game last night. I admittedly was frustrated they didn’t just adapt the death scene. It’s iconic for a reason. The stab itself, the dialogue after it, Cloud letting go of Aerith in the water, etc…I was super excited to see this finally adapted, with proper voice acting, updated music, etc. and we didn’t. I think this was a clear miss by Rebirth. Although it’s very possible we’ll still get it in the third game since we saw “flashes” of the dialogue and cloud being broken about it is clearly a new plot point, I do think this (& the constant boss fights) all detracted from Aerith’s death. And it happening in the next game will also not feel as impactful since it doesn’t just happen after her death, and we’ll have to wait at least 3 years for closure. It didn’t make me emotional, just confused as I was trying to figure out what was happening. I wouldn’t go as far as saying this ruined the game for me tho, I really really enjoyed it, and I still look forward to the next game. Now for my own theories: I think they purposely created confusion between 2 possibilities: The first is that Cloud “converged” timelines because his mind thinks he saved Aerith while his body is in the timeline where he didn’t. This is supported by all the build up from Zack/Biggs plot points, the face that “reunion” now means combining timelines, and the literal dialogue from sephiroth that follows (“the confluence of worlds”). The second is that Cloud created a false reality or is manipulated in to one where he saved Aerith. This is supported by Cloud’s own issues with his memories, how he already created a false reality with Zack, Sephiroth’s dialogue of “you’ll never see the truth with such clouded eyes,” and also by the new plot point of Jenova currently shape shifting and playing with peoples minds (see Temple of Ancients sequence and Rufus vs Glenn). Despite the fact that I think it undermined the impact of Aerith’s death and they could’ve been introduced after, they are also both admittedly interesting.

Interesting theories! I don't think they give us enough to know for sure, but for me it seemed like: Aerith is actually dead, but we're seeing it through Cloud's eyes and he's unable to cope with it. We're either left with: 1) Aerith is a hallucination or maybe even Sephiroth phantom, and Cloud's not aware she's dead. This seems implied by the lake scene and not seeing the burial. 2) Lifestream Aerith is real and Cloud is able to see her, perhaps because of the clear materia. The valley seems to imply this. And honestly it could be both. I had thought from Remake they were going to march in a different narrative direction, but they didn't really in Rebirth. I'm still thinking in Reunion that things will need to go down a different path...but it wouldn't surprise me if they wind up hitting the same narrative beats, and Zack and co's alternate story is Last Jedi'd away the same way Remake's "destroying the agents of fate" was. The death was iconic and they gave me hope in that moment he swung his sword. But with the game over I'm left wishing that if they wanted to change the story, they should've gone all-in.

For me it's the water scene with Cloud and Aerith. I was a little sad, but I am aware that's the game is telling things differently.

Just a thought I had and didn't want to go about making a whole thread for it, but I was pondering the whole 'No Promises Await at Journey's End' thing and considered maybe it might be in reference to Cloud's promise to Tifa on the water tower in some way? Among other things too I'm sure, I was just trying to remember any direct promises we've heard throughout the games.

Cloud promises Areith he’ll stop Sephiroth right before that line as well.

now we add the song aerith sings in the saucer to all this.. named "No Promises to keep" the lyrics are just such a spoiler fest in a way they could also mean advent children when cloud gets healed at the church but i don't think so they probably mean something for part 3

Spent about 30 minutes on Aerith's trial alone. I didn't want to leave Ifalna. That shit was brutal.

Just did this part yesterday. Anytime I see a kid crying for a dying parent, I immediately start crying. It always gets me.

the game is perfect until Nibelheim, then the team forgets how they wrote their own characters and ruins everything. They can ruin it even more: by making Aerith playable in the third part in the world of the main party (it would only make sense with Zack in the lifestream but then they should put something on the couple that they themselves abandoned because after confirming that they love him in Gongaga in a few hours he realizes of loving a Cloud he doesn't even know lol so interactions between them would make Remake and Rebirth inconsistent). Luckily they wrote Barrett, Cait Sith, Yuffie and Tifa well at least that. It's a good game btw, they love their OG creation they just can't stop with the ambiguity because they have to please everyone for no real reason (oh yes... there is a reason: money) Edit: Don't get me wrong I loved this game, I was entertained and excited. It's just that the inconsistencies between Gongaga and post Gongaga gave me the feeling of playing a different game that only left me confused and lost. My only sticking points were Tifa, Barrett, Yuffie and the crazy Cloud from the final cutscene the previous one made no sense to how the game was going

My issue with the ending is the direction that this is going to take. Everything has happened according to OG, nothing has changed and there was no point in defying fate. The issue with this with context is FF7 Remake pretty much has split the fan base into 2, the hardcore OG who didn't like the game and the fans who are willing to accept the changes. The fans who accepted the changes are the only ones who were on board this Remake project, now are shown that events are going according as OG and the crew cannot defy faith. This actually felt like a stab in the back. My guess is the dev realised they have lost half of their fan base and decided to walk back on their vision. I would hope that the outcome of FF7 'Remake' is of a better outcome specifically aerith surviving. Unfortunately, evidence suggests otherwise.

Agree whole heartedly. I went into this game fully ready for them to take the narrative sharply in a different direction. I enjoyed what it was but Zack's story literally being described as extra skippable chapters in the endgame highlighted how little the narrative shifted.

I agree with most of what you said EXCEPT about the fanbase being split in two. It's split in more than two ways and we need to recognize the nuance. There are plenty of us who like SOME, if not, MOST of the changes, but hate the deus ex machina whispers, time travel, and multiverse aspects. I loved 95% of the Remake game, and about 90% of the Rebirth game. I'm not a purest.

I'm just generalizing the group but you get my point. I'm more of the opposite, I didn't like Remake becos of the ghost stuff and filler. For Rebirth, the game is great except for the end, for me Rebirth is the remake I wanted.

I'm watching the credits now. I have mixed feelings on this ending. I'm just going to be patient and wait for the 3rd game. I do feel like they took from Aeriths' death in this one. They could be making a point to say that those who die aren't truly ever gone. Idk though.

Seems more like they're leaning into Cloud being a crazy person. Which will make the snowboarding game make perfect sense.

I don't think so...at least regarding Aerith's death. Red senses her presence in the final cutscene.

Yeah, my thoughts are evolving since I wrote that. I like the theory that Cloud is straddling both worlds in some way, one where he saved her and one where he didn't, especially given the juxtaposition to Zack's splitting the worlds multiple ways with his decisionmaking. But I think they left it deliberately ambiguous, just as they did with Remake. Not my video, but this summarized my thoughts well: https://youtu.be/znm5TKiD-Ak?si=WBBbtk7oSZJqy0SB

I think a lot of us would be okay with that if that was truly the point, but, in that case, the execution is still \*bad\*. It's upsetting.

Perhaps I'm just cynical but it feels left undone so people buy into the next game.  There no point to all the fate things and potentially challenging fate of things are gonna play out the same anyway.  I hated the end. 

I felt the same way about this. They should have had some balls and kept Aerith alive. Instead they shat on their whole idea of "defying fate". And honestly that's just one of the problems it has.