A year later, how do you feel about the ending to Rebirth?

[Golden Ear]

I mean, if they go to the trouble of having Cloud attack Tifa and then have no one notice or react to it, why do it in the first place? This is the thing, the characters are caught between stories because they have to follow the old script, even when they should react differently.

Aeris' response to Cloud attacking her in the OG was to leave the group. It's weird to have a scene like that that should have a major impact on everything and then not have it make an impact because 'luckily, no one noticed, otherwise we would have to address this somehow'

Keep in mind there is still a Part 3, directly continuing the story. Anything that was setup in Rebirth will most likely follow through.

Tifa saw a vision of Cloud following Sephiroth while in the lifestream, this gives her hints and intuitions that will progress throughout not just Rebirth (him becoming progressively more unhinged at the TOA etc) but most likely Part 3 as to what's going on with Cloud, why he's being violent, what's going on with his memories, his trauma and my guess is to tie it together into Cloud and Tifa's shared history growing up in Nibelheim and the events that took place there.

This can very well influence the conflict that happens between them at the Whirlwind Maze section where Sephiroth creates an illusion of the past to mess with them both, giving Tifa some insight that may counter Sephiroth's gaslighting and manipulation. Also, potentially even new approaches to this interaction that we haven't preconceived yet.

 

[Theozilla]

I mean, if they go to the trouble of having Cloud attack Tifa and then have no one notice or react to it, why do it in the first place? This is the thing, the characters are caught between stories because they have to follow the old script, even when they should react differently.

Aeris' response to Cloud attacking her in the OG was to leave the group. It's weird to have a scene like that that should have a major impact on everything and then not have it make an impact because 'luckily, no one noticed, otherwise we would have to address this somehow'

To have Cloud have a mini-breakdown and then have the scene with Tifa and larval Weapons, and then for Cloud and Tifa's heart-to-heart to happen later in Cissnei's house. If that's not enough of a narrative reaction and consequence for you, then I guess it is simply not satisying enough for you. But it cannot be denied that there are zero narrative consequences from it.

But all of that kind of thing was already happening in Remake and didn't prompt the Whispers to interfere. There already were lots of new quests, scenes that happen differently and expanded stuff in Remake, and the Whispers never protected any of that. They only interfered when the main plot got derailed, and were very protective of that and only that. And none of it was driven by our leads making new decisions, something would happen like an extra attack they had to react to.

(premature post, sorry)

That's why I am describing it as a meta-justification for the changes, by making it seem like bigger changes could happen that allows for the smaller and medium sized divergences to be more readily accepted and justified to the audience.

But...none of them thought they had absolute power to avoid all loss in the first place? They didn't blame the whispers for Sephiroths actions.

I mean they didn't so either in the OG, the thematic counter-argument is about the themes the narrative is conveying to the audience, not necessarily what the characters are diegetically thinking.

As opposed to all the people the others let go? It's especially funny because the battle system is built on 'great, the enemy is staggered, dogpile them when they're defenceless'.

Yes, the other party members almost certainly use lethal force on their enemies (though not always as we can see with characters like Butch and his gain), but none of them deliberately killed enemies they have already soundly defeated and are begging for mercy. And the stagger mechanic is meaningfully different from what Cloud was doing, I think anyone can see that.

In the OG they were willing to knock him out if necessary, Aeris even left the group after he attacked her, but they just... don't react.

Well in Rebirth's correlating scene Cloud's aggression towards Aerith wasn't nearly as brutal as it was in the OG, and Cloud ends up putting himself into a state of unconsciousness himself so there wasn't a need for the party to knock him out in chapter 13.

The terminals are not uncommon, there was one in Cosmo Canyon but Bugenhagen had dismantled it. They didn't know they needed a special one until they got to Nibelheim.

So, why was the Sephiroth copy muttering Nibelheim? Sephiroth didn't need them to go there, and unlike in the OG he wasn't in the manor.

Cait Sith knew they would need a special one, he just didn't know if the first one he tried in the government building at Nibelheim would be a special one, but he already knew a special one existed in Shinra Manor, that was preexisting knowledge he already had.

And the Sephiroth copy was muttering Nibelheim because they had likely wandered off from Nibelheim.

 

[Golden Ear]

@Clement Rage

I do understand where you're coming from with some of your points. The Remake Trilogy is definitely adding in new expanded material while also re-creating all of the main beats from the OG. Back in the day the OG story was considered relatively complex as it was, if your only adding on top of that foundation then things will only get more complicated. So of course the writing team will have to find ways to get around how they are able to accomplish mixing all of these elements, I understand the result can feel like backtracking on introduced ideas/themes or contriving areas of the story to accommodate them.

For example, you'd see people bringing up that they thought they backtracked Aerith knowing the future because in Rebirth she exclaims the whispers took her memories away. I think that they planned that from the start but I do see that as a bit of a necessary contrivance so that they could re-create the journey from Kalm onward because if Aerith knew everything then that would risk creating potentially a completely different story. I'm more then aware of the flaw in the story telling but it doesn't bother me that much as long as they still have a point and reason for Aerith knowing what she did and it follows through with meaning with the whole of the trilogy.

Everyone is going to want different things out of the 7R games, we'll never fully agree. I'm lucky in that I'm getting want I want which is basically the vast majority of the OG being re-created while only adding new points of interest on top. Since I have an establishment and great familiarity with the original game I have room to allow additional layers of complexity.

 

[Clement Rage]

Obviously there is a part 3 coming, but that doesn't mean it was necessary to deliver no progress on it in part two. The big hook of remake was the defeat of the whispers made things fundamentally different now, and that wasn't delivered on.

If it only functions on a meta level and was never intended to mean anything in universe, I kinda get it as a defence mechanism against the super purist fans, but that's staving off backlash in the short term only to get it with a vengeance when the story is done.

So the intended takeway from the Whispers bossfight was 'look, this only works on a meta level and doesn't really make sense outside the meta, just go with it for the sake of the story', ok. It's a bit weird, because it means the player wasn't actually supposed to engage with the story that was given to them and take it at face value, because the real function was the meta justification.

The effect, though, is 'ok you didn't deliver anything on that hook, so I have low expectations from the next hooks you give me'. The next big hook is Wutai, which has been setup at length but is weirdly low stakes, because it's a conflict between Rufus and Sephiroth that neither of them is actually invested in or in much danger from. It could be handled well, there are ways to do it, but we'll see.

 

[Theozilla]

The big hook of remake was the defeat of the whispers made things fundamentally different now, and that wasn't delivered on.

Here's the thing though, I just don't think that was the case (mysteries and differences sure, but not things being fundamentally different), or at the very least that isn't what the devs the intended for the majority of part 1's audience to come away with as the big hook of part 1's ending. If it was, there would be no reason why the devs were literally saying basically the opposite as soon as part 1 came out (and these interview statements were recorded about a month before part 1 got released, so it's not like these statements were made in response to player reactions).


Also even if some, like yourself, didn't feel like there was enough follow-up on the Whispers in Rebirth, there still was undeniably some.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I picked the "Very good" option. Sure there was stuff I didn't like, but Cloud at the end sold it for me. The guy is unhinged.

This popped up on my YouTube a few days ago and I really liked it.

I love that she highlighted the sequence of the "world that has accepted its fate" how that everywhere you go, it doesn't matter what choice you WANT to happen at any of the shops - you get presented with something else that you just have to accept, but that also continues all the way up to Aerith pushing Cloud away and back into the real world as Sephiroth comes to kill her there and he's forced to survive.

Cloud's denial state of, "this can't be real" as a reflection of Dyne grappling with reality in a similar way is a big part of what Part 3 is going to start off with to give a REALLY increasing sense that there's something "off" about the SOLDIER persona of Cloud's in a way where he doesn't really recognize there's something wrong, but everyone else does. That's one of the things that's the most difficult about someone who's mentally unstable in that way is that (like before) Cloud expects that he'll know he's not ok, but that detachment can also end up pushing him away because he feels like he doesn't belong, or even that maybe... he's not even the REAL Cloud.

This denial & insecurity is critical to being paired with Sephiroth's promised power of, "This doesn't HAVE to be real" which is critical to Cloud's full mental break when everything goes down at the Northern continent and he hands over the Black Materia & gets tossed into the Lifestream, and totally loses himself again – at which point he has to actually start to accept reality when Tifa puts his head back together with a mutually shared objective reality.

That's the sort of stuff that I really look forward to BECAUSE of everything about how Rebirth played things differently, and also how things are gonna end up playing out a bit differently in Part 3 (like the delay of Rocket Town and other things that I've mentioned in another thread). It's also why I think that setting up things so that there's INTENTIONAL denial for fans at the end of Rebirth is and always was 100% exactly the point.




X

 

[Clement Rage]

Huh. So what we were supposed to take away from Remake's ending was nothing, then, because all the talk about fate and freedom was just a misdirect?

 

[Theozilla]

Huh. So what we were supposed to take away from Remake's ending was nothing, then, because all the talk about fate and freedom was just a misdirect?

No? The devs likely not expecting/intending for the majority of players to interpret the fate and freedom stuff as meaning the future remake project story would be fundamentally different from the overall OG story, doesn’t mean the ending takeaway was “nothing”.

 

[Clement Rage]

So what was it supposed to be, then? The only other answer people have come back with so far is the meta justification for the changes, which doesn't work because the changes were already happening long before the Whispers were dealt with. So if that was the intended takeaway, it's not supported by the story.

 

[Theozilla]

So what was it supposed to be, then? The only other answer people have come back with so far is the meta justification for the changes, which doesn't work because the changes were already happening long before the Whispers were dealt with. So if that was the intended takeaway, it's not supported by the story.

That there would be differences and mysteries, just ones that aren’t fundamentally changing the broad overall OG story structure. And the fact that minor changes were already happening even before the Whispers were defeated doesn’t negate the meta aspect to the justification, it’s just an additional layer to it and further differences.

 

[Clement Rage]

I don't think that's consistent, given that the whispers only acted to prevent major structural changes and ignored all the minor changes that they were supposed to represent. If they were supposed to represent preventing minor changes, then they should have been written to be more active in preventing minor changes, but I think that's as far as we're going to get.

 

[Theozilla]

I don't think that's consistent, given that the whispers only acted to prevent major structural changes and ignored all the minor changes that they were supposed to represent. If they were supposed to represent preventing minor changes, then they should have been written to be more active in preventing minor changes, but I think that's as far as we're going to get.

I mean you’re certainly not obligated to think that the game and devs did a good job in conveying said take-away with how the Whispers were used, but as I already stated before it’s not like every major plot point in part 1 had Whispers getting involved, so even with their defeat, it is not like the overall OG plot was always entirely dependent on the Whispers being around (which connects back to the counter-thesis point I brought up earlier, about the theme of how certain things are unavoidable regardless of fate).