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#mako reactor 1
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When you can’t take the detail on the liquid mako seriously, and want to..
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devilrogue · 2 years
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villain / hero || @rainheal​ : “  you’re  wrong  about  them !  ”
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          “Am I? I’d love to hear it.”
     The immediate aftermath of battle wasn’t the best time to have this conversation, Dante knew that from experience. But the demon was still boiling in his blood, and his temper hadn’t had the time to settle just yet; not when every fight he’d stumbled his way into the past couple weeks was requiring more and more of his attention and effort. Dante flexed his fingers, dismissing his sword in a flicker of flame.
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          “Because I gotta say, I don’t believe in that kinda thing—’collateral damage’. That whole ‘no sacrifice too great’ thing, I can’t say I agree. Sounds to me like these people, whoever the hell they are, aren’t ready to affect the kind of change they’re looking for, if they can’t even get it right without innocent people getting in the way. It’s one thing to fail to prevent harm, another thing entirely to cause it and write it off ‘for the cause’.”
     The whole of the district seemed uneasy since the explosion, and maybe after so long, working without taking a break, and getting even less sleep to boot, it was putting him on edge too... Dante sighed, wiping Ebony against his pant leg before tucking it away beneath his coat.
          “Sorry. Don’t mean to sound like I’m lecturing ya. But I’ve been hearing whispers going around, and a lot of them aren’t great. Even if I agree with the aim, I can’t condone their methods.”
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hollowbastions · 1 year
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FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (2020) Chapter I: Destruction of Mako Reactor 1 • dev. Square Enix
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shuttershocky · 15 days
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Consider, Barret.
I'm always considering Barret!
He's my favorite FF7 character and his design in Remake is outstanding.
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Parts of Barret didn't age too well (his original character concept is "big and scary man" and he's the only major black character so uhhhhh) but I love that he's an unapologetic revolutionary and a genuinely charismatic leader that cares for the people under him as much as for his cause, whether or not they're even his responsibility.
One of the more endearing parts of the Remake is all the ways that Barret still cares for Cloud despite Cloud only being a hired merc instead of being a true believer in Avalanche; he gets worried when Cloud doesn't make it back immediately after they bomb Mako Reactor 1, and when they bomb Mako Reactor 5 and Barret thinks Cloud is about to fall to his death, Barret immediately says "Listen merc, I was wrong about you!" because he won't let anyone under his command die without him doing everything he could, even if all he can do is tell them they made him proud. He even offers to to stay behind and help Cloud battle Rufus Shinra, expecting Rufus to cheat (he does) and not wanting Cloud to sacrifice himself just to buy the party time to escape when that should be his responsibility as Avalanche leader.
He's even a loving father that spoils his daughter Marlene, but instead of making that detail something that contrasts his hardass personality, it's because he has a child that he's a hardcore eco-terrorist—his child's future is on the line.
I love that he's obviously the most well-read party member, quoting books about planetology and social justice in between all of his other lines being a Mr. T caricature. When the likes of Tifa grow uncomfortable with Avalanche's mission because of the ordinary people whose lives they disrupt too, he's always there to steady her and remind them all that their fight is literally for the planet's life; most Shinra employees are ordinary people just trying to do their best for their families, but Shinra itself is slowly destroying the planet and will kill them all, this fight must be done for everyone's sakes. A good man that serves an evil master must recognize his complicity before he can redeem himself.
One of the coolest things the Yuffie DLC does is expand more on Avalanche as a resistance group with different factions, with the main faction receiving support from Wutai. Barret's group is called "the splinter cell" because the other Avalanche factions don't want to associate with them since they think bombing the Mako reactors goes too far. The rest of Avalanche don't want to destroy Shinra entirely and ruin the lives of many people in the process, they want to force it into reforms.
Sonon and Yuffie end up chatting about this and Sonon says "The problem is, Avalanche is made of good people. They're soft. They want things like better work conditions, fair elections, equality for the undercity members. They can't do what needs to be done, and will eventually be against us. If you ask me, those guys in the splinter cell are who we should be supporting." Sonon is speaking as a Wutai agent out to destabilize Midgar in vengeance for Midgar burning Wutai to the ground back in the war, but it also really highlights how Barret is the only real force for change inside Avalanche, if all the other Avalanche factions are getting support from other countries and doing nothing while Barret is waging a full on war and earning victories against Shinra with only a gun, a girl that can punch good, and a twink with a big sword.
Also gameplay-wise Barret carries this fucking team on his back. Steelskin and his huge healthpool make Barret a tank (very important when many enemies can decide to give you the finger and wipe the entire team), and Lifesaver allows Barret to take damage meant for his teammates, which is critical for surviving many tough fights, but also makes gimmick/joke builds like Nailbat Cloud viable where you want to keep him on 25% health to have that crit chance and damage boost, but can't let him get slapped once or he dies.
That's on top of Barret's skills being your best ranged options in Remake that isn't spending MP (Aerith can do way more damage with spells but also dies to a sneeze without spending materia slots on HP Up), which is also highly important as half the enemies are flying around and Cloud can barely air attack until Rebirth reworked him. There's also bossfight gimmicks like The Arsenal's guns being interrupted by Focus Shot (you normally need Thundaga to stop it and Hard mode doesn't let you use items, making MP conservation really important) Maximum Fury being amazing at building stagger on bosses from the sheer hitcount and being very satisfying to use, and Barret's incredible Deadly Dodge allowing you to cheese the super annoying Brainpod fight because he swings his gun and hits all the Brainpods at once.
Finally, it's really funny how the Remake added in a big cosmic fate force called the Whispers that have the ability to raise the dead and cause or prevent disasters as fate demands it only for them to be destroyed by Barret and Red XIII shooting it repeatedly. Capital D Destiny, a fundamental force of the multiverse, was slain by the power of a guy with a gun and a weird dog.
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kyasarinkishinuma · 7 months
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Rumours
Summary: The new merc in town's been dropping by Reader's café lately, and she can't help but wonder if the food is all he comes back for.
Pairing: Cloud Strife x Reader
Themes: Fluff, café setting
AO3 link
“Today’s special, please.”
There he was again. That stoic merc everyone in town had been talking about lately. Rumour says he was a rather unsociable man, but… 
He came to your café once, and had been coming back since. Once a week, Thursdays, 2pm flat. Every single time.
And for a guy who had such an intimidating reputation… Well. He surprised you with his politeness every time he came in.
“Coming right up. Take a seat.” Bowing respectfully, you retreated within the confines of the kitchen to cook up Cloud Strife’s meal. Today? Spaghetti with garlic bread. Simple, but comforting. Your homemade food was what your regulars coming back weekly. Or at least that’s how it had been before.
“Thank you for waiting.” Within a few minutes you came back to your sole customer of the day. He had taken a seat by one of the three round tables sitting outside the abandoned wagon you had sought refuge in lately. Not as charming as those higher-class cafés and restaurants, that’s for sure. Business… had been rough lately. Yet the mercenary gratefully accepted the meal, mumbling a polite ‘thank you’ before he picked up his utensils, seeming to hesitate in your presence. You smiled warmly.
“Dig in.”
That’s all it took. The switch was immediate, from polite and poised to absolutely famished. It was funny. Endearing, even. Every time the blonde had come into your café, he ate like it was his first meal in days.
“More, please.” 
And with his manners? Almost boyish, the way he’d stare at you expectantly with his hand outstretched as he gave his emptied plate back for another serving.
“I got you covered.” 
Back into the kitchen you went, and back you came with another healthy heapful of spaghetti for the man. Cloud never had much to say, so you usually did most of the talking when he’d drop by. He didn’t seem to mind it. Never really gave any elaborate answers to your small talk, but you didn’t mind it either. Sometimes people just need a break and some good food.
“When’s the last time you ate?” You asked by the time Cloud was on his third plate, and finally starting to slow down a bit. It was almost fascinating, to watch him wolf it all down like it was nothing. And deep down, you didn’t really judge. He didn’t seem the type to have a loving family and warm food to come home to.
The man paused. “This morning,” he answered after a moment, before going back to eating. You raised both brows at that, a hint of amusement gracing your smile.
“And you’re this hungry?” 
Strife shrugged. “It’s part of the job.”
“Is it a SOLDIER thing?”
Cloud stopped eating then, and you found yourself regretting those words. Had they been a bit too bold? Of course most knew about the merc’s former association to Shinra. Whether the rumours were founded in truth or not didn’t matter when the glowing eyes gave it away. You had been about to apologize and to excuse yourself when the man turned his gaze to you, freezing you in place. Those mako eyes… Not annoyed. Calm. Thoughtful. They swept over your surroundings then, the dirt and grime of the Midgar slums.
“Your café hasn’t always been like this, has it?” The man spoke out of the blue, taking you by surprise. He seemed to take your stunned silence as an invitation to continue. “You’re a lot better at this than the other locals. You worked someplace big?”
You could only stare at the sudden bombardment of… Compliments? Were these compliments, coming from a man who fought monsters straight from your nightmares for a living? Finding him staring back expectantly… You could only assume he was being genuine about this. Or perhaps he simply wasn’t realizing the nature of what he had just said.
You nodded then, finally getting your voice back. “Yeah. I used to own a café in Sector 1 before the Mako Reactor blew. My home was destroyed, so I had to move.”
It was Cloud’s turn to be silent, blinking a bit as he processed the information. His emptied plate seemed to have long been forgotten now, the fork sitting idly next to it.
“Sorry about your home,” he spoke after a moment, turning his gaze back to the plate in front of him. You simply showed a smile, genuine and grateful.
“That means a lot.” A pause. “So… Are you still hungry?”
“What’s that damn merc up to anyway?! We told him the meeting was at 3 tops!”
Seventh Heaven was in chaos as always, with the members of AVALANCHE running around in disarray as Marlene chased after them, giggling excitedly. Tifa? Unfazed through it all, showing her impatient friend a smile from behind her counter as she prepared him a drink to calm his nerves. But… Barret was right. Where was Cloud?
“If he’s not here now, I don’t think he’s coming.” Tifa hesitated to speak the words, out of fear that Barret would just explode. Truth be told, though, they needed not be spoken at all. It was a blatant fact. Cloud… was a difficult guy to grasp. And he didn’t seem to care too much about this AVALANCHE stuff.
“Damn spikyheaded ass! I’ll show him!!” Barret’s outburst was almost comedic as he stomped around on his seat, waving his hands around. But even he seemed to come to terms with the situation as he calmed down, heaving a heavy sigh as he crossed his arms and slumped onto his seat. No point in getting so worked up over it. “Y’don’t suppose he’s at that café again?”
“Thanks for the meal.” Cloud always left so soon. He never really stayed for the small talk like most of your regulars had before the bombing of Mako Reactor 1. You never asked him to stay, though, simply showing him a smile as you got his cheque ready for him. But today… You did want to ask him one thing, before he left.
“Cloud.” He hummed, head snapping up at attention to meet your gaze as you spoke his name. “Why… do you come here? Why come here when there’s all those other big, nice cafés in the sector?”
The man furrowed his brows then, his gaze falling to the side as he shrugged. “I like your food.”
You frowned a bit then, watching him attentively. That couldn’t be all of it. You… felt it. There was something more. Was he hiding something?
“I’ve heard rumours…” You felt your heart race in your chest as you gathered the courage to address the question that had been burning in your mind since the first time he had returned for ‘today’s special’. “That… You don’t come here just for the food.”
“Why would he go there when he can have free food here?! It’s part of his damn pay! That guy don’t know how to show some damn gratitude!”
Tifa couldn’t hold back a chuckle as she watched Barret get riled up all over again, swinging his arms around. Even though Barret had a point, and it stung her heart that her childhood friend avoided spending any more time than necessary with AVALANCHE… Tifa was starting to think she may understand Cloud’s motives a bit better.
“I think… It just helps him to have someone who doesn’t expect anything from him.”
No favours, no battles. Just a warm meal and a ‘thanks’.
“...Maybe I don’t.”
Cloud’s answer came in the end. He stood then, your shocked eyes burning into his face as he slung his sword over his back and dropped a generous portion of Gil onto the table.
“Keep the change. I’ll see you next week?”
You found yourself unable to answer, cheeks burning in the slightest as you watched him stalk off back the way he came in that calm, unfazed way of his.
But when he had gotten up to leave…
You could’ve sworn you saw him smile.
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case-of-traxits · 6 months
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WRO Reeve + Heartbreak
One who wears the crown, bears the crown.
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For @here-be-ninjas | From a discussion on this post.
So I've been sitting on this for a few days now in my drafts. I kept trying to type it up as a reply on that fic, but the fact is... I just have too many feels and it kept getting way too long and I didn't want to slam out like, three half-thought out things. So here, I've done my best to outline some things that are going on for WRO that break my heart.
I have no idea if this is what you were expecting or wanting, but this is what you're getting.
Also, please excuse the gratuitous use of gifs, but like, I'm just delighting in the fact that when I search "Reeve Tuesti" in the gifs thing, I GET SOMETHING OMG.
(That wasn't true pre-Remake really. But thankfully, people are slowly realizing he's super handsome. So it's a win for me!)
Time to put my metal on Whose blood to spill? I don't know whose side I'm on. Two armies are coming at me. Their flags and weapons look the same. One tells the truth; the other's lying. And they're both calling my name.
-- "How Villains Are Made," by Madalen Duke
Canon Explanation
So at the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, we have three massive disasters occur in Midgar, all over the course of three days: Reactor 1 is bombed, Reactor 5 is bombed, and Sector Seven is dropped. It is certainly canon that all of these events deeply affected Reeve emotionally (if you want to see a video comparing Reeve's reaction to the Plate Drop plan, you can see that here).
Now, I don't think it's fanon to extrapolate that at the end of FF7, Reeve has lost basically everything.
Canonically, he's had to deal with the following:
The loss of Reactor 1.
The loss of Reactor 5.
The dropping of Sector Seven.
Tseng is nearly killed (how close Reeve is to Tseng is up for debate).
Cait Sith the First dies (as a sub-note on this one, not only does Cait Sith die, but the very thing that he dies for, to prevent Sephiroth from getting the Black Materia? Is immediately voided because Cloud hands it over to Sephiroth).
Aerith dies (how close Reeve is to Aerith is also up for debate).
Diamond WEAPON attacks Midgar, which is, of course, full of innocent civilians.
Reeve is dragged away to be imprisoned during this attack because he refuses to go along with Scarlet and Heidegger.
At some point, Reeve is freed (although, that's not important enough apparently to get a mention in the OG) and he organizes the evacuation of Midgar, which has to be evacuated through, canonically, a single train line and a single highway that wrap around the central pillar.
He shuts down all of the reactors in Midgar. I'll have to see if I can find a canon source for when, exactly, this happens; it happens sometime between when he is freed and when Edge is started, and I think there's mention somewhere that it's before the Lifestream surge that stops Meteor. However, per On the Way to a Smile, Episode: Barret, all mako reactors across the entire world have been shut down as of "several months after [Meteorfall]."
A few days after this evacuation process is started, his mother is killed when the Lifestream surges up to stop Meteor.
If he'd had any hope whatsoever of salvaging Midgar, or returning people to the city after the Meteor crisis, that's shot down after the Lifestream surge. So now he has a city full of people who refused to leave prior to Meteorfall, another city (Kalm) full of people who did evacuate, and no power for any of them. Again, you can see On the Way to a Smile, Episode: Barret if you want a little peek as to what some of the pre-Mako tech looked like. Spoiler? It isn't pretty. I'm talking coal-powered trucks kind of not pretty. This is a world without gasoline as tech. Mako literally powers everything, and they're now rationing what was left in the reactors. With that in mind, it's really no wonder that the WRO is militaristic.
As someone who has worked at an electric company (I want to add "canonically," but I mean IRL. XD), let me tell you, people without power? They are panicky. But okay, that's not addressed canonically, so let's disregard that side note.
Instead, let's just focus on everything else.
He's lost literally everything that he has clearly dedicated himself to: Midgar, his parents, one of his robot cats, and his entire livelihood. And suddenly, he's the only one with anything even resembling the experience necessary to run the world. The last standing member of the Shinra Board, and effectively, he's taken Rufus' place as the de-facto world leader.
And all of this starts on 12/9/07 and ends "the last third" of 01/08, according to the Crisis Core Ultimania Timeline.
So... all of that. In six-ish weeks.
And this is true before we even touch on the expanded canon and my headcanons regarding Reeve Tuesti.
You reach the battle lines Racing inside your mind A question for all time, is it you? So gravity defy And storm the darkest night Is it you? Is it you who will save us?
-- "Who Will Save Us," by Tommee Profitt
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Expanded Canon and Headcanon Time!
Expanded Canon: The Inspire Thing
So. Cait Sith. Beloved fuzzy son.
First, let's look at Reeve's profile from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania:
The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.
So this is interesting for a lot of reasons, but there's two very important things that this profile does for us:
One, it clearly states that Reeve has been "involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning," and he "watches over the town's development like that of a child." So... That's a great character note and a problem, but let's put a pin in that and we'll discuss the problem part of that in the next section. So the thing you need to actually note there is that Reeve loves Midgar. Like a child.
And two, it defines Reeve's surprisingly controversial "Inspire" ability. I say surprisingly because here's the general breakdown. Reeve has literally always had this ability, but people will sometimes discount it because it's not "mentioned" in any of the games. And that isn't... wrong, exactly. Reeve is never, at any point in any of the games, 'outed' as an Inspire. However, let's look at the Ultimanias over the years:
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Now, I wish I had links to all of these pages for you, but the simple fact is, I don't. I could probably get links to all of them, given enough time, but I'm still rebuilding my compiled FF7 References Google Drive folder. When I get everything in there, I'll post a link.
The point I want to make with this is that it isn't something new. This is not some detail they retconned in to make things work. They've literally always implied it in game. There's a few metas floating around periodically that talk about Reeve and Cait Sith, and maybe one day I'll sit down and write up my own, but I want to be able to link to certain things like the Before Crisis scripts and such, because there's evidence in there to prove that Cait Sith is not just a 'robot'. He's a plush cat, yes. He's an animatronic, yes. But he's also an individual.
Canonically, in the original game, he feels pain when he trips and falls in the Temple of the Ancients on his way to die. He begs Cloud and AVALANCHE not to forget him, even if another Cait Sith shows up. He reminds them all that there's only one him. (And then of course, they promptly forget him. T_T)
In Before Crisis, Reeve gives the player Turk a controller to use with Cait Sith, but Cait Sith has 'thought' dialogue in the game that cannot be attributed to Reeve.
In Dirge, you see Cait Sith and Reeve together at several points, and they always move fairly in sync, but there's no indication of a controller in Reeve's hand at any point. And okay, that could be because Dirge was really bad about character models. We never did, after all, get a pregnant Lucrecia model in that game. ... Or in any other game, for that matter. But that's a different problem.
The fact is, at no point is Reeve ever shown using a controller. How he controls Cait Sith is subtle enough that he can control Cait Sith actively during a board meeting that he lets AVALANCHE listen in on during the original game. That's the board meeting where Scarlet and Heidegger propose loading up the failed rocket in Rocket Town with materia and launching it into Meteor in an attempt to stop it. And none of the other directors (or Rufus, who is canonically aware of Cait Sith and Reeve's control of him) notice. So I don't think it's actually a stretch of canon to assume that Reeve doesn't have a visible means of controlling Cait Sith.
Which means... yes. It's magic. Some kind of mental connection to Cait Sith. And let's just... digest that for a second.
Imagine a mental connection to something you love like a child.
And you send it to be crushed to death in an attempt to stop Sephiroth from obtaining a materia that he will use to destroy the world.
And immediately after you've done this, you have to get the next version of that child to the same place, to the same group of people, who have already lost the materia you entrusted them with.
(And, as an aside, you were just using this second version of that child to rescue a dying coworker that, your own personal closeness aside, your good friend is very close to. Because Before Crisis makes it very clear that Reeve and Veld are close in some fashion. It's a little ambiguous about their exact relationship, but they're close enough that Reeve risks everything to help the Turks because he's sure they're helping Veld who is on the run from Shinra at that point.)
Now, all of this to say... Why am I rambling about Reeve's Inspire ability and Cait Sith? Well...
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Headcanon: The Inspire Thing
My personal headcanon is that Reeve, with long enough exposure to anything inorganic (i.e., his car or reactors) can inadvertently form a bond with it. Even grant it a sort of ... half-life. Now, admittedly, this is entirely fanon. I make no arguments that there is any sort of canonical support for the Inspire abilities working with this way.
But the fact is... it's odd, isn't it, that the reactors are under Urban Development? Why aren't they under Science?
(And yes, that is canon. It's in the original game that reactor control is under Urban Dev-- Reeve Tuesti-- not Science.)
So this is something I play with, that Reeve is some kind of brilliant engineer, constantly tweaking the reactors, adjusting them to maximize every drop of mako energy as efficiently as possible. And in my headcanon, he manages that in part by directly interfacing with the reactors.
Which uh... makes blowing them up emotionally problematic for him. How emotionally problematic? Well, @ladykf-writes wrote me some amazing ficlets that feature my headcanons about this after much rambling with her about them. So I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested in this idea.
So, basically, in addition to the list up there? You could add that my particular Reeve is also suffering from some serious emotional turmoil regarding the "deaths" of Reactors 1 and 5 as well as Cait Sith the First. Those aren't just moments of, "oh it's tragic these people died," or "oh shoot, I lost one of my robots," for him.
He literally lived through their deaths.
Now. Let's move on from my headcanons regarding this ability and let's talk about Reeve's problem.
Broken pieces of a barely breathing story Where there once was love Now there's only me and the lonely Dancing slowly in an empty room Can the lonely take the place of you? I sing myself a quiet lullaby Let you go and let the lonely in To take my heart again
-- "The Lonely," by Christina Perri. In particular with this song, the "you" that I imagine it being focused on is Midgar, not a person.
Reeve's Timeline Shenanigans
All right, back to Reeve's profile from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania:
Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child.
And from the Final Fantasy VII Complete Dismantled True Story (which while "official" is not necessary "canon" per the development team):
A capable engineer closely involved in the design and construction of the two-tiered city of Midgar and its eight mako reactors.
Now, unfortunately, Reeve's profile doesn't often get translated in other ultimanias-- or at least, not in places I've been able to find-- so we're kind of stuck with just these two interpretations of this side of him. Still, it's pretty clear, right? He was involved in the construction of Midgar from the beginning. Even in the Dismantled True Story version, he's closely involved in the design and construction.
It also mentions that he's 35 (like Barret) in the original game. Since the game takes place in 0007, we can say pretty confidently that he was born in '72; same year as Barret, for those who don't trust my math.
Now, let's look at Midgar's timeline, shall we?
From the 10th Anniversary Timeline:
[ μ ] – εуλ 9/23/1959 (48 years before FFVII) · Shin-Ra Works (later the Shin-Ra Company) discovers mako energy [ μ ] – εуλ 1/9/1968 · Construction begins in Nibelheim on the first in a series of power generation facilities, “mako reactors” for the purpose of extracting mako. [ μ ] – εуλ 6/24/1976 · Construction of the mako city, Midgar, begins. The Shin-Ra company relocates its headquarters to Midgar.
... Interesting. Okay. What about other timelines? Well, let's look at the Crisis Core Ultimania's Timeline:
[ μ ] – εуλ 9/23/1959 · Shin-Ra Works (later the Shin-Ra Company) discovers mako energy. [ μ ] – εуλ 6/24/1976 · Construction of the mako city, Midgar, begins. The Shin-Ra company relocates its headquarters to Midgar.
Now, this does change a bit in the Remake Ultimania's Timeline, from what I understand. They push Midgar's construction date back to 1969, per the FFVII Timeline, which for the record I like because they source all their dates wherever possible. However, I haven't really dug into the Remake stuff yet because it's my understanding that the Remake is the Compilation in a blender, so just because something is true in the Remake doesn't make it true in other aspects of canon (for example, they adjusted the ages of Rufus and the Turks, to make Rufus clearly older/same age as them, whereas he was always younger in the original canon).
Anyway, the issue with this timeline is this: Reeve's four when they start building Midgar. How involved is he in this construction project?
Now, over the years, I've seen a few interesting takes on how to handle this.
One, people just completely disregard it. Which, fair. It's an ultimania canon note, not something from in-game, but I always find it interesting when people say, disregard these dates but are happy to accept say, dates regarding the Nibelheim project as gospel from the same sources. But hey, I cherry pick canon too, so who am I to complain, right?
Two, people go with the architect of Midgar being another R. Tuesti (probably Reeve's father is the most common headcanon), and over the years, his work has been conflated with Reeve's own until people just forget that Reeve himself couldn't have been the one to do it.
Now, my personal headcanon-- which I am absolutely detailing because you asked me about why WRO Reeve breaks my heart, and I swear all of this is tied into that original question-- is that Reeve's father was the original engineer who developed the Nibelheim reactor. He was also slated to be the lead engineer on managing the complicated network of the eight (nine, technically, at least during construction, but who's counting?) reactors in Midgar. Except when Reeve was about five, he died in an accident. Probably in a reactor, let's be honest.
And when the Turks (and because it's my headcanon and I can, the Turks in question are Veld and Vincent) are sent to pick up Papa Tuesti's notes from his widow so that the other engineers can try to make sense of them, they discover that the five-year-old can decipher his father's unlabeled diagrams. So they take the boy with them to the Shinra Manor in Junon where the President pays to have him formally educated and put to work deciphering these diagrams and notes to ensure that the Midgar project goes as planned.
Of course, being brought up to be this engineer means that Reeve has access to basically the best level of education possible. So yes, he's deciphering his father's notes, but very quickly, he's improving them. And that, my friends, is why he ends up as Head of Urban Development. Because the simple fact is, he's been brought up for this, raised and trained to President Shinra's exact specifications of what he wants in a city.
Now, once again, all of that is just my personal headcanon, and I can't even cite some of my old sources because I just cannot find them anymore. So take this or leave it, it's where I sit on it.
That also means that he was brought up in the same house as (although almost certainly very separated from) Rufus. There's a ten year difference between them, of course, so it wasn't like they were close, but there's certainly room for some... understanding between them. If anyone understands how the President was (who canonically was extremely abusive towards Rufus per On the Way to a Smile: Case of Shinra).
Now, how does all of this tie into WRO Reeve breaking my heart?
Well, per my headcanon, Midgar is literally his life's work. It's his father's legacy and it is the city he has poured his entire life into, and it's gone. At the end of the original game, it's gone, and he has to look at her dead carcass on the horizon every time he is in Edge.
He was fashioned into the engineer who builds cities and lives and fantasies-- the floating city, remember?-- and he was desperately just trying to survive the President's reign of terror under the hope that Rufus would be better (I can't find a copy of the source quote in Before Crisis, but it's mentioned on his Ultimania profile). And suddenly...
It's all gone.
I am the son And the heir Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar I am the son and heir Of nothing in particular
-- "How Soon Is Now," by the Smiths, but the AG cover.
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So. If you've made it through all of this, I just. I have a lot of feels about Reeve Tuesti in general, and in particular, in what state he's probably in after Meteorfall. I guess this is what happens when you've been writing him for 20-some-odd years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The long and short of it is this: Reeve is an incredibly underrated character, and he's so often sadly overlooked by fandom, and he just... he's been through so much by the time he's head of the WRO. I can't help but think that he's got to be so worn down by it all. It's hard, saving the world, especially in a position like he's in.
He is, after all, the only man in the world who betrayed Shinra twice and lived.
But he's also the man who built the world's largest, most complicated city, and he's a man who has survived losing everything.
And what did he do the next morning?
He went to work.
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You wanna take a drink of that promise land You gotta wipe the dirt off of your hands Careful son, you got dreamer's plans But it gets hard to stand Soldier keep on marchin' on Head down 'til the work is done Waiting on that morning sun Soldier keep on marchin' on
-- "Soldier," by Tommee Profitt
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seventh-starlight · 6 months
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FFVII Ever Crisis Comparison - FFVII - Chapter 1, Main Section 3
The Destruction of Mako Reactor 5
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(Final Fantasy VII)
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(Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis)
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(Final Fantasy VII Remake - Chapter 7 - A Trap is Sprung)
Church Flower Bed
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(Final Fantasy VII)
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(Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis)
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(Final Fantasy VII Remake - Chapter 8 - Budding Bodyguard)
A Chat Among the Flowers
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(Final Fantasy VII)
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(Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis)
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(Final Fantasy VII Remake - Chapter 8 - Budding Bodyguard)
The Turks: Reno
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(Final Fantasy VII)
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(Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis)
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(Final Fantasy VII Remake - Chapter 8 - Budding Bodyguard)
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Trauma Milkshake Recipe of a Cloud Strife
*Spoilers beware*
Add:
-1 childhood of lonliness
-1 horrific incident with a cliff the cemented the weak=useless mentality and self-worth issues
-A couple years in the military
-Failed to achieve dream of being 1st class SOLDIER
-Childhood hero goes freaking insane and burns down town and kills almost everyone, including his mum.
-Crazy former childhood hero attacking best friend and love interest
-Gets stabbed and throws former childhood hero into reactor
-4 years of being experimented on with horrific lab experiments with the cells of an alien that f#cks with your head.
-Mako coma for 1 year as best friend carries you around the world
-Best friend dies in front of you and passes on his sword
The end result= A 21 one year old guy with severely repressed trauma and memories and has a new flimsy identity that replaces the best friend's existance to hold the last stands of his sanity together as the alien mentioned earlier/the former childhood hero continues to f#ck with his mind. A.k.a Cloud Strife.
And that's not even going into what happens in ff7 and the aftermath depression in Advent Children.
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glon-morski · 12 days
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FF7 Rebirth Ending Interpretation
Well. That game sure was a ride, huh? 
As stated above, I’ll be talking about my interpretations of the ending. Please note that I’m writing this about two weeks after the game came out (for future reference). Obviously, spoilers for the entire game ahead/under the cut.
The main question of the ending if, of course, rather obvious: did Aerith die or not?
Cloud sees her alive and well, but the rest of the party doesn’t and is grieving her death. With how Cloud was set up since Remake and especially throughout Rebirth to be the one with hallucinations and delusions, one would think the answer to the question of “what is truth, what is fiction?” should be obvious, right? But… what if it’s not as clear-cut as the most obvious answer? What if Cloud is the one who sees reality and not his teammates? What if we have (finally, for some) left the “original world” of the OG behind and are now 100% in a different world, similarly to how Remake dangled that option in our face more subtly?
Yes, you read that right. My personal belief is that Aerith didn’t actually die, at least not in the world we see in the ending scene. There is a world where she died, of course. The world of the OG. But this is not the world we get to see at the end of Rebirth, and possibly not the one we will play in Part 3.
Hear me out.
1) The framing of Aerith’s death.
In many other “ending explanation/interpretation/theory” videos I watched on YouTube these past few days, everyone always comments on how we’re “teased” with Aerith surviving before ultimately seeing her die. But in none of them did I see anyone comment or talk about the way this vision of a death is brought about. It’s not the the first thing we see. It’s not that we see her live and then get a fade-to-black or fade-to-white like in other parts of the game. No. Instead, the shift is done in a very telling, very specific manner: the static that indicates Jenova’s interference with what is being remembered or perceived. Whichever of the two is the truth, Jenova is making Cloud (and us) see the other option. It’s not a glimpse at what was or what could have been. It’s all Jenova.
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So, having established that, why do I think Jenova is fabricating the vision of Aerith’s death, and not her survival? Well, let’s look a bit closer at both the framing and how Jenova’s interference is portrayed through most of the game.
A) The “mechanism” of Jenova’s memory and perception editing
We’ve seen Jenova (also referred to as Mimic for the particular ability to copy a person’s memories) interfere with Cloud’s memories and his perception of reality many times throughout both games. In Remake, this was mostly in cases when:
- Jenova had to edit memories in the background so Cloud’s fake persona was still believable, for example in the very first chapter where he went “I’ve never been to a reactor like this before” because “the layout depends on when a reactor was built”.
- Jenova interfered with Cloud’s immediate perception to block some things out, primarily any mention of Zack.
- Sephiroth appeared before Cloud.
In Rebirth, it goes a bit further than that. We see Jenova edit Cloud’s memories in real time in Nibelheim when he first remembers Zack. We see Jenova ensuring he doesn’t see Tifa’s scar when she shows it to him a second time in Gongaga, with the implication that his memory of seeing it in Kalm has also been altered, only for everything to be edited back once Tifa falls into the mako. And of course, there are again the appearances of Sephiroth, as well as the frantic editing going on in the ending itself (very reminiscent of Nibelheim, might I add).
Of note here is how it’s all portrayed, which is what I mean by “mechanism”. There might be some discrepancies between Remake and Rebirth as Cloud’s situation changes, but throughout Rebirth itself, there is one definite consistency to every time Jenova messes with Cloud’s mind, be it his memories or his immediate perception. Namely, that we as the player first get a look at reality (whether obvious, brief, or much earlier in the game in the case of Tifa’s scar) before the editing kicks in and we see Jenova interfering, if not outright seeing how it changes Cloud’s memories or perception. In a lot of cases, we also see reality againafter the interference is over, to further drive home that Cloud is seeing things the other characters are not.
Why is this important? Because assuming the ending doesn’t pull a (rather random) deviation from that set-up, the first thing we saw was Cloud managing to save Aerith before the camera zoomed in on the clean blade. Only then did Jenova’s interference start. Looking at it from how it worked for the rest of the game, Jenova was attempting to alter Cloud’s perception and see blood where there was none, rather than the opposite.
B) The general framing of the scene
Setting aside whether we see reality first and the lie second or the other way around purely from an “it’s been like this the rest of the game” assumption, there is another thing. Namely, Jenova’s interference was only ever present in regards to Cloud. He was the one whose memories were tampered with, he was the one who didn’t always see things as they actually were, he’s the one who can (and sometimes is) controlled by Jenova/Sephiroth. But in the ending, there’s one interesting detail that I think warrants consideration.
When the rest of the party is allowed to enter the City of the Ancients and come running, it is after the first bout of Jenova’s interference ends. After Aerith tells Cloud that “it’s okay” and he’s relieved because she actually looks fine after all.
The first shot we get of the two as the others arrive is this one.
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We can argue until we’re all blue in the face if the dark spot under Aerith in this shot is blood or just a shadow, though I do agree it looks a whole lot like blood. Still, we can tell that that spot aside, there is no blood anywhere else. There are no dark spots on Aerith herself (on her hand), or on Masamune. And then an interesting thing happens as the camera swoops in on Tifa as if to tell us “this is a PoV change, we see what she’s seeing now”. Which makes sense. Throughout Rebirth, Tifa has been set up as the main person who can notice when Cloud is being weird, or when his memories are weird, which was also pretty much the case in the OG. She’s the one we, the players, are supposed to trust when Cloud is acting off or remembering things she thinks are odd. Unlike Cloud, she’s not affected by Jenova. She sees the truth.
Except when she doesn’t. The thing is, we get the camera swooping in on her to indicate the PoV change to her… and then the following shots are full of Jenova’s interference all over again, shifting between seeing blood and not seeing any. However, Tifa’s (and Barrets) reactions make it clear what it is they actually see: Aerith, dying or already dead.
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Question: if Aerith dying is reality, why is there a Jenova static effect in what Tifa sees? Just to throw us off? To confuse us?
Maybe so, but honestly, it feels a little odd to throw it in if Jenova wasn’t actually manipulating someone’s perception. And those of us who played the OG know very well that Jenova’s ability to make people see something else than reality isn’t limited to those who have her biological material in them. Otherwise, she never could have fooled the Cetra.
And there is another thing: the last scene with Rufus and “Glenn”, who turns out to be nothing but a Shadow of Sephiroth.
Rufus has never been in contact with Jenova. He doesn’t have her biological material in him. But he has been made to see Glenn (and then briefly Sephiroth) in the place of a simple Shadow of Sephiroth (or Sephiroth Clone, as they were called in the OG localization). This feels like the game reminding us – or letting those who never played the OG know – that Jenova indeed isn’t limited to Cloud in fucking up in their perception.
But wait. There’s an issue here, isn’t there? After all, even after the fight and after Sephiroth is gone from the City of the Ancients, Cloud is still the only one who can see Aerith just fine. The others don’t see her at all and still think her dead. If it’s indeed their perception being messed with and not Cloud’s, why is it not lifting? Any other time Jenova tried fucking with Cloud, he saw the truth eventually. Well, let’s look a bit closer at what we, and the characters, know of Jenova’s abilities, shall we?
2) Jenova’s Abilities and Limitations
I’ll be pulling mostly from Rebirth here (since Sephiroth and the Cetra so kindly gave us so much Jenova lore), but also a little bit from the OG regarding details I believe to be important even if they have yet to come up properly in the Remake trilogy, as well as CC(R) as a source of additional proof where necessary.
Jenova’s abilities are, to be frank, a terrifying combo. To summarize, it can
- appear as someone else, usually taking the form of a deceased whom its current victim used to know
- edit someone’s immediate perception of the things around them in real time (which is probably how the implied shapeshifting actually works, but as far as I know there’s no hard confirmation on that; not that it really matters for this meta)
- copy someone’s memories (a form of mind reading, I guess)
- edit its own DNA and memories (or the memories of a host some of its biological material is stuck in)
- a form of telepathy where it can put images/thoughts in people’s heads (as evidenced by Sephiroth, Cloud, and also strongly implied through Angeal and possibly Genesis in CC(R))
- furthermore, these abilities aren’t restricted to Jenova as a “complex lifeform”, but can be used and called upon even when it it’s in scattered pieces as small singular cells.
So, in short, we’re talking about an intelligent life-form capable of mind-altering/affecting abilities with possibly full on shapeshifting to top it all off (not that Jenova needs it), and with every single piece of it capable of using those abilities on its own. Of note here is that the players know all this (and even then only those who played the OG; newcomers can certainly guess at some of those abilities because they’ve been shown in action, but they haven’t had them explained in detail). The characters, on the other hand? All they got is what Sephiroth told them of Jenova’s abilities on the ship to Costa del Sol.
“They say she’s a monster. That she can peer inside you - into the very depths of your soul. That she can become those you hate. Those you fear. Those you love. And they call her… Jenova.”
He tells them about the mind-reading. He tells them about the “shape-shifting” which we, the players, know could work in two ways. He certainly doesn’t mention the ability she has of putting thoughts in your head or visions in your mind, altering your perception of things, though. Which is why Cloud thinks these things happen to him because of Degradation instead. It’s the only explanation he (or anyone else in the party) have.
There are also some limitations to Jenova’s powers (thank God for that, right? LOL). For one thing, distance. Jenova doesn’t seem able to affect someone without being in their close vicinity or, alternatively, having someone with its biological material in the vicinity of the manipulated person. This, of course, doesn’t apply to someone who already has Jenova’s biological material inside them, because they’re as close to the source as they can get.
The second limitation is rather more interesting, but also requires a little more assumption and, like the shapeshifting, can go two ways.
Any time we see Sephiroth, it is quickly revealed that it’s actually a Shadow of Sephiroth instead whom Cloud and the party perceived as Sephiroth (or whom Rufus perceived as Glenn). This implies one of two things:
a) Jenova  can’t make people hallucinate something “from thin air”. By that I mean, Jenova can’t create a hallucination of a whole-ass person acting all normal if there is nothing but air in reality. It needs a base to build off of. That’s why, in Rebirth, whenever Cloud sees Sephiroth, it’s in actuality a Black Robe. Or
b) Jenova could create a hallucination from thin air, but chooses not to because of a different limitation: it can trick the eyes and ears, but not the sense of touch.
If it’s the first one, then the Aerith Cloud sees cannot be a fake created by Jenova because Jenova wouldn’t be able to make Cloud hallucinate her. In which case, if she’s not real, then Cloud is hallucinating her all by herself. Which, sure, is possible, but it definitely creates very big narrative problems in that it indicates a mental break the likes of which Cloud didn’t have in the OG, and for good reason. While he has more then enough reasons to be messed up and traumatized, most of Cloud’s serious mental issues in the OG were all created by Jenova. His hallucinations, his fake personality, his uncertainty of whether or not he was ever a real person… all because of Jenova messing with his memories and Sephiroth exploiting that and manipulating him. Which means the source wasn’t Cloud’s own mind, but an eldritch abomination from space. And as such, the problem could largely be fixed by just “doing something to set him straight”, which in the OG was what the Lifestream Sequence accomplished.
If Cloud is now hallucinating Aerith without Jenova’s input because he can’t face her death, then that’s an entirely different ball game and I cannot see it being satisfactorily resolved without Cloud having to be benched and someone else taking over and finishing things. Which, granted, happens for a time in the OG as well while Cloud is mako poisoned in Mideel, but it’s not nearly for a long enough time for Cloud to recover from a mental break such a this. That would take years. And unless he passes the “main character and hero of the story” baton to someone else, it ain’t happening.
I don’t know about you, but that wouldn’t just be a letdown for me, it would be downright insulting and dismissive of mental illnesses in a way in which FFVII never was.
Okay, so let’s say Cloud hasn’t completely broken down mentally and hasn’t started hallucinating Aerith all by himself. Let’s also say that Jenova isn’t making him hallucinate her from thin air. So, she’s real. That still leaves us with one glaring problem.
Why can’t the others see her?
Well… there is one last thing Jenova can do that I haven’t mentioned yet. Something Remake has exploited and very vaguely teased.
Jenova can warp one’s perception so they don’t see or hear someone who is actually there.
This ability comes the most prominently to the front in the OG when the party visits the Northern Cave and shortly before Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia again. During that scene, Tifa yells and yells at Cloud to not do it, but what she says is no longer in the typical speech bubble, but rather almost like a narrator voice over the screen. One of her questions at that point is “you can’t hear my voice?”
No. Cloud can’t. And in fact, none of the other characters in the scene act like they see or hear Tifa at all.
Rebirth hasn’t really touched on this ability yet. But Remake has alluded to it several times when Cloud saw Sephiroth (who was likely a Shadow of Sephiroth again), and then nothing and no one at all. In one scene, when Cloud, Barret and Tifa are on the way to Aerith’s house after the Platefall, we even get a direct comparison when Cloud sees Sephiroth, and then we get to see through Tifa that there is seemingly no one there.And then, there is the scene in the Drum, where Cloud is experiencing another Jenova episode and Tifa slowly approaches him. We see there is no one on the walkway up ahead. Then we get a close-up of Tifa and Cloud as she asks him if he’s okay before looking ahead again, and her eyes grow wide. Because suddenly, Sephiroth is there.
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It’s subtle, but it is a hint at that particular part of Jenova’s perception-manipulating abilities, I believe.
It doesn’t help that in Rebirth’s final scene, Aerith doesn’t even really try to talk to anyone but Cloud. She doeslay a hand on Nanaki’s shoulder and he does acknowledge it, but is it a case of him sensing her spirit, or him feeling her physical touch but still being unable to see her? Both are equally possible, but I think you don’t need me to tell you which one I believe is happening.
But wait. I said myself that one of Jenova’s limits regarding mind manipulation seems to be distance. If so, how can the rest of the party still not see Aerith after Sephiroth and Jenova are gone?
Well, we’ve already established that Jenova can manipulate someone – anyone – and that she doesn’t need to be whole to do that. A fragment of her is enough. That’s why it can constantly play with Cloud’s mind whenever. Because he does have her cells (or Sephiroth’s cells) inside him. And here’s the thing: by the end of Rebirth, he’s, in my opinion, more than close enough to a Shadow of Sephiroth to be the “conduit” for Jenova to manipulate the others. He was basically completely taken over for most of the Temple of the Ancients, for one thing, something that was made painfully obvious when you still controlled Aerith rather than him when the group reunited (something that didn’t happen at any other point of any other character), and then when you played him going after Aerith and the Black Materia after the Temple’s collapsed. If you try to not go after her and pull the joystick back, Cloud starts shifting and contorting very much like a Shadow of Sephiroth that is being pulled towards a given destination. The only real difference between Cloud and them would be that he’s not as Degraded – not in body and not in mind – and so he isn’t fully lost or at the “I can only slowly shuffle forward” stage.Alternatively, of course, there can also be a Shadow of Sephiroth somewhere close by without the party knowing, but that demands a little more suspension of disbelief and, at least to me, feels like reaching.
3) A Different World
All right, so I think I’ve established why it’s possible for Aerith to still be alive. That leaves one last part of my claim still to be discussed: that we’re in a different world at the end of Rebirth than at its beginning.
Let’s go back to the framing of the scene again. If you look at the exact moment when Cloud breaks free of the Whispers and parries Sephiroth’s blade, we see a brief flash of a “rainbow” before Sephiroth is pushed back. From that point onwards, up until Cloud catches Aerith in his arms as she falls, the entire altar is circled not just by Sephiroth’s Black Whispers (which quickly leave), but also this rainbow glow.This glow is the effect Rebirth uses to show a creation of a different world. A different possibility. A fork in the timeline. We’ve seen it multiple times with Zack, as obvious as in this scene and far more subtle, whenever he made a choice. The most blatant example that comes to mind is the scene where he was picking the left or the right tunnels to go to either Hojo or Biggs.
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There is one thing to note, though: whenever this effect made an appearance to indicate that “multiple possibilities have been created”, we didn’t immediately jump between them. We followed the first choice made and remained in the same world. When Zack chose to go to Hojo, we saw the possibility being created that he went to Biggs instead, but the next scene of him we got was still at the Shinra Building where he wanted to meet with Hojo. What’s more, we didn’t see multiple approaches of that (like Zack trying to go in through the front vs Zack trying to enter through the parking lot like the party did – and nobody can tell me there’s no way he didn’t at least think of the option). We see him facing a platoon at the main entrance. We see him confront them. And then we get a “fade-to-white” that… kinda seems to indicate the end of that particular story. Only then do we see the Pug-Stamp world where Zack went to Biggs, and only after that do we see the third option where he went to neither and visited the church to make up his mind instead.
What this means is that when Cloud saved Aerith, he created a fork in the road, a new world, and going by other obvious instances of this, there is little reason for us – or the story – to randomly jump off the road he just created to another alternative. So by pure logic, we should be in the world where Aerith survived.
4) The “problems” such a twist would create
Now, time to hit the most controversial issue. If Aerith actually survived like I believe, I can already imagine the havoc most of the fandom will raise. “But her death is iconic! It must happen! She can’t cast Holy without dying! She can’t save the Planet from the Lifestream if she’s not in it! She can’t stop Meteor!”
To those people I say: kindly shut up and listen for a spell.
Aerith’s death in the OG is indeed iconic… but most of the reason it hit so hard in the OG was because it was so unexpected. That’s a feeling that could never have been replicated in Rebirth, because everybody and their mother seems to know by now that Aerith died in the OG. Everyone was waiting for this moment to see how it would play out. Very few are the exceptions who don’t know. But as for everything else… I’m sorry to burst your nostalgic bubble, but it’s not true. Any of it.
Aerith did not need to die to cast Holy. Holy was already cast and Sephiroth could hold it back by sheer will alone. Aerith dying did not make Holy stronger or anything of the sort. It was not the price for casting Holy, either. If it was, Sephiroth wouldn’t have even needed to impale her.
Aerith also doesn’t need to die to command the Lifestream, something which we see far more reinforced in Rebirth than we did in the OG. She’s using the Lifestream just fine in the Temple to shape it as she needs it, after all. Sure, she first needs to learn how to do it, because she never had the chance to learn before, but she absolutely can do it without being dead. There is no reason to think she’ll need to die to use the Lifestream to stop meteor in this case. What she does need is to learn how to do it.
I hate to have to remind people of this, but in the OG, the whole “point” of Aerith’s death was that it was senseless. It had no narrative meaning. It was no noble sacrifice; it was not something that “needed to happen for the greater good”. It happened, yes, and the remaining characters grieved her, but had she survived, the story’s narrative would not have changed one iota. The emotional impact of her death would be gone because she wouldn’t be dead, sure, but outside of that emotional hit, her death did nothing to advance the story in terms of narrative. It gave the party an additional reason to want to stop Sephiroth, but it’s not like they needed another push, either. Most of the fandom seems to have convinced themselves that she needed to die, and I assume it was a form of coping with the unexpected loss given that she is a fictional character in a story that very typically would paint an MCD as something that was “necessary for the greater good”, but that is not the case here. And that was the whole point.
So, those worries people have about her casting Holy or stopping Meteor? Yup, still possible with her alive. Her survival does not actually doom the Planet.
5) The Narrative Purpose of Having Aerith Live
Finally, one last thing you might be wondering about: narratively speaking, what is the point of having Aerith survive, but have most of the party not be aware of it? Why would Jenova/Sephiroth want that? If Aerith’s death is one big mindfuck created by Jenova, how is Cloud of all people immune to it this time? And why does she stay alone at the City of the Ancients to "pray"?
Well, what Sephiroth wants is basically for Cloud to not trust his companions and vice versa. He wants him isolated and susceptible to his manipulations. He wants to have him as his puppet to use and torment. What can I say? The man is obsessed.
His first attempt at breaking Cloud was, as in the OG, by killing Aerith. When that failed, he tried to have him believe Aerith died anyway.
Except at the end of Rebirth, Cloud is very determined to not believe one word Sephiroth says. And this is important because as powerful as Jenova is, its power and influence can be overcome if one’s willpower, one’s sense of who they are, one’s heart (one’s kokoro, a word that’s often translated as “heart” from Japanese, but the concept of which encompasses all those other things as well) is strong enough. And Cloud does have the potential to be strong enough to overcome it. He does in the OG. It’s a big part of how he ultimately recovers his true self. The problem is, the way Rebirth portrays it at the end, Cloud is in this odd space where he’s on one hand supremely vulnerable to Sephiroth’s and Jenova’s manipulations, and on the other hand begins to tap into that true strength of his that allows him to overcome Jenova.
So what I think happened is that Jenova tried to make Cloud see Aerith as dead, but when she reached out and spoke to him, he broke free of that control and suppressed Jenova’s ability to twist his own perception of things, but not Jenova’s ability to affect others because he doesn’t even know about it. That’s why, for a short moment, we see things as they are again. We see Aerith being fine.
And then the others arrive and Jenova basically flips the coin and starts manipulating them. The end result of which will be the same… if not potentially worse, depending on how things go.
Think about it. Rebirth set Cloud up as the unreliable narrator even better and more poignantly than the OG did. Furthermore, after her first dip in the Lifestream and remembering the whole thing with climbing Mt Nibel as kids, but not experiencing a revisit of any other memories, Tifa has little reason to doubt her recollection of Nibelheim. Especially since Cloud’s recollection changed to partially fit hers once he remembered Zack. Tifa, and the rest of the party, are far more likely to believe their own eyes and Tifa’s version of the past should she speak up than Cloud’s at this point. None of them have any reason to believe they are suddenly the ones seeing things.
Cloud himself is also far more aware of how unreliable his memory is. So if confronted with something he and Tifa remember (or saw) differently, who is he more likely to believe?
This can all further play into Sephiroth’s attempt to convince him that he’s merely a puppet. That nothing he thinks or remembers or believes is real. And the thing is, Sephiroth (whom Cloud resists supremely now) doesn’t even have to do a single thing. The party will do it for him, because I can’t imagine them notaddressing the fact that they believe Aerith died, yet Cloud acts like nothing is wrong.
And who can ever correct them or anything? There’s only two things that could help: one, the Lifestream Sequence as per the OG so Cloud can piece himself together. Or, alternatively, the one person who can confirm that there is some truth to Cloud’s recollection of Nibelheim and that he was indeed there even if Tifa has no clue about it: Zack.
Of course, Zack is in a different world altogether, so him playing this kind of major role is up in the air and very dependent on the exact inner workings of the multiverse created here. I have plenty of thoughts on that, too, but that’s for another time.
Either way, this sets up Cloud to be isolated from the party all by his own and the party’s doing. And you know what this seems to fit? Cait Sith’s fortune from all the way back in chapter 8 of Rebirth.
Yes, yes that fortune.
The fortune that spoke of a “last minute twist” and how Cloud “would lose what he cherished most”.
Those who watched Advent Children know what it is that the real Cloud cherishes most: everything. “There is not a thing I don’t cherish!” And right now, even though Aerith survived, it does seem like he’s set up to lose it all unless something is done.
As for Aerith staying behind, consider this: unlike in the OG, we don't awaken in Gongaga a few days after everything at the Temple. Aerith hasn't been gone for at least a day. We don't have to waste time going after her by figuring out we have to go to Bone Village (factor in Tiny Bronco voyage time here), we don't have to lose time mining for a Lunar Harp. The party enters the Sleeping Forest at the same time as her, but then just "loses her in the fog". When Cloud wakes up, he sees the Whispers and guides them the right way.
Unlike in the OG, we don't get to the City of the Ancients at least one day after Aerith, if not more. We get there a couple hours after her at most, if even that. In fact, when Cloud approaches her, we hear her start praying. Unlike in the OG, there is every chance she didn't finish casting Holy - had barely even started - by the time Sephiroth interrupts and quite literally crashes the party.
Setting Holy aside (because Cloud could very well find some sort of excuse to stick around until she finished, especially given how the rest of the party were reluctant to leave because of grief and the fact that the Tiny Bronco needed fixing for flight), we could also assume she's staying behind to "pray" as in "to learn to control the Lifestream better" - something that's clearly established in the Temple of the Ancients that she needs guidance in, and gets it from the Lifestream itself. Finally, this Aerith has a working White Materia, which seems to have some connection with her future memories... if not downright with a "post-OG Aerith" who already exists in the Lifestream, just like we suspect there is a "post-OG/AC Sephiroth" who's pulling Cloud's strings.
Some explanations seem more farfetched than others, I'll give you that, but there can be reasons found for why she stays behind even if she isn't, in fact, dead.
And with that, I believe I said everything I had to say on this particular subject. I hope you enjoyed reading :)
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pine-needle-shuffle · 4 months
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Riptide AU Notes
Notes part 2
2000 years ago, when the Cetra summoned Meteor to stop Jenova, Meteor essentially melted the ice cap where Icicle would have been. This leads to mass flooding, so most remaining land would be where the mountains and other high ground would have been in game. Most towns still exist, their placements just aren't 1 to 1.
Closer to present day, there's the ShinRa Naval Forces, an extension of the power company, who have major control over inter-island travel and trade. They are still highly militaristic, and make a habit of stamping out "competitors" i.e. anyone who wants to do anything out on the sea independent from ShinRa. This pisses a lot of people off, compounded by the impacts of the mako reactors, which spurs into the creation of RIPTIDE, this AU's version of AVALANCHE.
With growing unrest with ShinRa's "management" of the sea, ShinRa looks to other possibilities to maintain it's choke hold on the world, in this case, the sky. Not stopping with airships, they start messing with genetic engineering, resulting in the creation of Harpies. Genesis, Angeal and Sephiroth are the first successful* outcomes to the experiments, so the project moves forward.
*there were some issues(poor Gen), this would later lead to mass desertion. Kinda what happens when you mess with monster DNA
After the desertion, ShinRa starts getting impatient, because raising these soldiers for 14ish years before setting them out to sea just to have them leave is kind of expensive. So the science department starts looking into turning already existing soldiers into harpies. This change in direction just so happened to coincide with some rather unfortunate(but different!) happenings on the islands of Nibel, giving them 2 subjects seemingly no one will miss.
:)
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dayasan · 8 months
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Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
📷 Mako Reactor 1, Sector 1 Plate
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holly-fixation · 1 year
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Three... Guards?
Summary: Tifa finds Cloud at the train station in Sector Seven. It’s the first time she’s seen him in seven years. But he’s not alone. Three silver haired boys protected him. Three silver haired boys that triggered memories of her hometown. Of steel through her chest. Of SOLDIER First Class.
Of Him.
Inspired by this prompt by @im-totally-not-an-alien .  
Please Enjoy!
Chapter 1: Punishment
This wasn’t part of the plan. This was one hundred thousand percent not part of the plan. They were supposed to use Mother’s cells and become Him. It was that simple. Basic. Elementary. And they almost had it. How did everything go wrong? Why was it so complicated? 
If that stupid president didn’t make that shot. If Mother's box stayed intact. If they took a different turn and avoided the decommissioned mako reactor. If they didn’t slip off the ledge. If that black sheep of a big brother didn't gain the upper hand. If he managed to save them from falling into the remaining Lifestream. If that brother was successful. 
If.
If.
If.
These scenarios wouldn’t help them now. They couldn’t waste time thinking about ‘possibilities’ when reality screamed in front of them. 
Big Brother needed help. After submersion in the Lifestream, the three of them found themselves spit out somewhere in the wasteland surrounding Midgar. The entire city stood proudly, Shinra Tower and the Sector Seven plate unified and composed and supported. Like the city itself was reborn along the horizon. Whatever it was, it would be a long walk back. And was it just them, or did everything seem… bigger? Even the few cliffs and rogue plants in the ruined land seemed larger than before. They turned to each other for explanation and…
…What?
What?! 
They looked like children, short and small! As old as the children they healed! What did the Lifestream do to them?! They understood some kind of retaliation was coming but why this. 
Great. The oldest was about to cry again, completely panicked and losing his very loose grip on his emotions. The middle was far too calm, but even that facade started to crack when he noticed none of them had any weapons. The youngest, in all honesty, was ready to strangle every living thing, but that would have to come later, when they eventually made their way into the city. Making it across this worthless plain would be a lot harder as pint sized packages with no vehicles, but they didn’t find any other options. Was the Planet trying to ‘walk’ them to death?
Well, no. They quickly stumbled across a body, skin a soft green and birds picking at the rotting flesh. It must’ve been dead for at least a day. The man had black hair, a SOLDIER uniform, dozens of dried bullet wounds that vultures took full advantage of, and a solid blade of the sword Big Brother fought with. The same one they found, and kicked to the ground, when pursuing him. The eldest grew curious. Approaching without hesitation, he broke the grip of the corpse and lifted the blade, though holding it to attention forced his body to shake in struggle. 
“Put it down,” The youngest spat. The older one dropped the sword immediately in surprise, the hunk of metal clattering and ringing as it fell. The birds scattered, flying nearby for the moment these children left. 
“Don’t scare me like that!” 
The youngest rolled his eyes and stayed silent, knowing that if he said a single word back, they'd all have to deal with his tears. They didn’t have time for that.
“Hey, Kadaj…?”
“What now?” The boy immediately turned to the other brother, annoyed and tired of all the weird stuff that kept happening today. A strong part increasingly frustrated at his failure to carry out Mother’s plan before suddenly appearing outside Midgar.
“Is that… Big Brother…?” 
Kadaj’s face soured with confusion and he moved to observe the being. But his breath hitched the moment blonde spikey hair came into view. At the silent response, the eldest followed, eyes wide and completely lost upon seeing the man.
It was. It was him, his body leaning against the rocks and his head low. Like them, he wasn’t the same either. He was younger and clearly weaker to start. His skin was dangerously dry, his lips peeling around rapid shallow breaths, his eyes sunken and darkened. The middle child moved his arm and lifted his head in analysis. 
“He seems dehydrated…” He stated simply, his voice naturally quiet and lulling as it had been before. “He might die out here…”
Kadaj stared at the unconscious body. All his questions about this punishment snapped into place, completing the puzzle with a single realization. Too much had already changed. They couldn’t risk any greater ‘butterfly effect’ without risking wherever Mother was. “Loz, pick him up. We’re taking him to Midgar.”
The eldest acted immediately. “I got it.”
“Do you think he knows where Mother is…?”
“No. But I think he’s our best chance at finding her. He always seems to be around- what are you doing?”
Loz managed to lift Big Brother’s arm over his shoulder, but the other half practically dragged through the dirt. 
Kadaj glanced at the middle sibling. “Yazoo.”
He nodded, already adjusting to help.
“No, I got it,” Loz grumbled, turning the body just out of reach.
“You do not got it. Everything’s a mess.” He countered with a snip in his voice, approaching the blade. “I’ll grab his sword. Let’s go.”
Yazoo aided as much as he could with his slightly shorter height than his brother, balancing the blonde between them. Kadaj picked up the hilt, dragging the tip on the ground, not wasting energy trying to lift it or prevent the horrid wear on the blade itself. They needed water, food, probably gil, and any weapons they could get their hands on, if they wanted a chance at saving Big Brother.
It was a long way to Midgar.
* * * 
The smell of garbage and rot under the plate always filled the air, smog skewing the natural light from the gaps within the structure. The dirt roads and barely functioning homes were just a part of life here. A roof was almost a luxury. Afterall, it wasn’t like they got any rain or snow here. Monsters within the dumps were usually problems, but communities set up watches and hunting sessions to protect the normal civilian life.Life was, to an extent, peaceful. 
Besides the resistance the black haired woman housed under her bar, a bar she currently needed to stock. 
Upper plate always had the best product anyway. This was routine by now. Every Monday and Thursday, she made her way to the train station, took it to Sector Zero, collected what she needed, and headed back. An ever mundane task compared to the actual looting of Shinra facilities her friends conducted at night, and housed spoils beneath her workplace. 
Today, this simple life flipped on its head. 
She dropped the empty box in her arms. There was no mistaking it. He changed. He grew, but he still kept his blonde hair spiky as a palm tree. He was taller, stronger by the shape of his muscles, clothed head to toe in SOLDIER fatigues, just as he promised all those years ago. His skin was pale, but he still had color in his face. His mako blue eyes were open but empty, lost, hollow. But it was still Cloud Strife in front of her, leaning against that platform.
But…who were the three boys with him? 
All of their hair shined with perfect mercury. They couldn’t be older than ten, shorter in stature, but stronger than they seemed at first glance. One had long hair, one only had it to his shoulders, but the last, and the bulkiest, had his cut short and pushed up. 
For a moment, she felt herself distracted from Cloud, when the smallest glared daggers directly into her eyes, mako blue inhuman needles staring straight into her soul.
He looked like Him. They all looked like Him.
They figured someone would come for Big Brother eventually, but he couldn’t be left alone. Nor would they let him be alone. Occasionally, he mumbled incomprehensibly, calling out to something or someone. They just ignored it. Yazoo acted caringly and offered bottled water directly to his chapped lips, but he always took too small a sip than he needed, if he drank any at all. Loz stayed close while surveying the people disembarking the trains, watching for someone to recognize their brother. Kadaj did the same with the crowd coming from the slums, which is how he alone found himself locked in a staring contest with one of their enemies. 
He tensed his hand, ready to whip out the pocket knife he found in the rubble and garbage. “What do you want?” 
The other two looked over immediately. 
His voice cut her like a knife, the anger, almost malice behind her catching her off guard. Dark. Cruel. Burning. “I- I…” Her heart suddenly pounded in her chest, reacting to her memories and leaking panic slowly into her mind. For now it was just anxiety, but she felt it growing. She needed to protect Cloud. She needed him before she let this show. “Is- Is that Cloud?”
They nodded, still skeptical, still defending. Loz approached as well, blocking part of her view but observing carefully. 
“H- How did you find him? Is he okay?”
“We found him unconscious in the planes beyond Midgar…” Yazoo explained, earning a soft glare from Kadaj. “It didn’t seem like he would make it, and well… we chose to bring him here…”
“I can help him,” She explained quickly as she took a step forward, but the two in front of her blocked her path. “I live nearby. I can take him from here and make him better.”
“You are not taking Big Brother!” Loz demanded, clenching his fists and standing at the ready. 
Big Brother? Bewilderment claimed her expression. Cloud didn’t have any siblings. That didn’t make any sense. “What are you talking about?”
“Ti…fa…?”
Her breath hitched, and all of them snapped their eyes to the stirring blonde. 
“T-Tifa…?” Cloud pushed himself to his feet too quickly, stumbling forward from the unbalanced blood rush. Yazoo grabbed his arm to stabilize him. Once on his feet, he didn't react to the boy at all. His blue eyes instantly glued to the black haired woman. 
The two guarding boys parted and let Tifa run to Cloud. 
“Cloud, it’s really you!” She was so happy she almost jumped into his arms, but he was a bit wobbly on his feet, his mind still partially dull with weak vertigo from his time in the wasteland. 
His body nearly collapsed on her, and she found her arms wrapped around him in support rather than a hug. “S-Sorry…” His eyes blurred as he tried to lift himself back to his feet. 
Did he really just apologize for fainting?
“I’m glad you’re okay…”
Tifa squeezed him softly before adjusting him over her shoulder. “Don’t be sorry. Come on. We’re going to my place, okay? I’ll patch you up there…”
He gave a reluctant, embarrassed nod. But he lost consciousness immediately after, the moment Tifa took her first step away from the track.
Now, all three boys blocked her path in a single impenetrable wall. A shaky and unnerved sigh that left her breath. She didn’t like them. She didn’t like the feeling in her gut or the memories they brought. But, they did save Cloud, and they clearly protected him from anything they could. Maybe that ‘big brother’ statement was just a story they fabricated to stay with him, especially since they look nothing like him. Maybe, since they brought him all the way to Midgar, they wanted to confirm that he was okay. She hoped they’d leave after that. She prayed.
“You guys too. Come on.”
All three remnants surrounded her and Cloud, the smaller two in front and the largest behind. They still acted like guards. But at least the long haired one picked up the box she completely forgot about as they headed for the bar in the Sector Seven slums.
.
.
.
.
Thanks for reading!
Author's note: It's my first time writing the remnants! I've been wanting to for a while but I never knew how to apply their personalities to most situations. I also have a very nostalgic attachment to Advent Children (music, fight scenes, some of the voice acting) so I wanted to do this right, not just a joke and not where I need to fill in most of the world, at least to start. Thus: another adapted time travel AU. 
This won't be too many chapters (I think) but I hope it's a good time. Thanks for reading!
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rocketbirdie · 21 days
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MASSIVE dump of thoughts about Rebirth. Obvious major spoiler warning for pretty much every story beat aside from side quests. That goes for the compilation as a whole.
Think of this as a collection of what would otherwise be literally hundreds of separate obnoxious text posts. Half-review, half liveblogging. Genuine praises and criticisms interspersed with unhinged nonsense. This post is so long it's making my computer lag, so make of that what you will.
To keep it organized and make it easier to find specific moments, this is split up chapter by chapter. I cover the Zack/Biggs stuff in a separate section just before the final chapter, and then follow up with some miscellaneous thoughts.
I'm not of hardcore OG FFVII faith. I love the original, and I view it as separate from Remake/Rebirth, so I embrace most of the major changes. This is generally a very positive review, aside from a few nuisances *cough cough WHISPERS cough* and only one genuinely upsetting letdown. Rebirth is more than I could ever have asked for, and I can't wait to spend the next 4+ years obsessively gushing about it. And now, without further ado...!
Chapter 1: Fall of a Hero (The Nibelheim Incident)
NAILED it.
Love seeing Cloud's teenage squishiness scrambled together with the Zack mannerisms. Restless as a little puppy! Body language, facial expressions, etc. I wonder if they animated a lot of it with Zack's model first, and then replaced it with Cloud? Modders are gonna have a field day with this when the PC version drops.
Sephiroth really was just Some Guy, huh? It's very refreshing to see him acting fully human for once. Helps sell the catastrophic mental shitshow that ensues.
Horfin' down those sandwiches Strife style
"You went into my room?" "I did..." LMAOOO THE SHAME IN HIS VOICE. Cody Christian doing god's work voicing this sopping wet pathetic mess of a man
Zangan manhandling Cloud like that was NOT on my Rebirth bingo card.
The bridge collapse scene is beautifully expanded upon. Such a delicious moment if you know the real story. RIP Ramirez. o7
There is NO fucking way Sephiroth just... stood there unfazed by waist high rushing water. Y'all have any idea how dangerous just ankle-deep water is at those speeds? At least the generous use of artistic license in physics is established very early on.
Tifa demonstrating incredible self restraint by choosing not to strangle Zack to death at the mako spring. I would have walloped his cocky ass lol
"Such a puppy." We're establishing the homoerotic tension right away as well, thank god.
oooOOOouhh the way you can pinpoint the precise moment that Sephiroth starts to lose control at the reactor. The way he walks up those stairs.......
Mwahaha-ing over the visual parallels. Raising his hand to the candle flame... Jenova's face flickering over his own... wow. Every shot, every angle is carefully chosen. Cinematography at it's finest.
OG painted a picture of "no survivors," so it surprised me how many people seemed to have escaped from Nibelheim. Although, it's not certain what their ultimate fate was. I imagine they did it this way to show that the incident impacted far more people than just Cloud and Tifa. Makes sense, considering "sheer scale of suffering" is a recurring theme throughout the Re-trilogy so far.
Sephiroth's mass slaughter is bone chilling. The music, the tension, the iconic shot of the flames framing his figure. Goddamn. And then there's the poor trooper, reaching out for his mom.........
"Why didn't they just shoot him?? They had him surrounded!!" 1, Fear doesn't give a damn about rationality. 2, It's SEPHIROTH. They were almost certainly correct in assuming that their dinky little hunting rifles weren't gonna do jack shit.
Catch me giggling over the most mundane shit. LOVE the detail of the sword tip clanking on the metal floor as Tifa drags it. I'm obsessed with lovingly crafted, nearly unnoticeable sound design like that.
"Mother, they have come again." THANK FUCK they kept this line. I don't even know why, it just stuck with me so hard from OG.
Not sure why people are cranky that the flashback cuts off. It ends at the exact same point as in OG. That's the point, it's supposed to be frustrating.
Seeing an unfathomable number of dumbass comments going "huh??? why did cloud tell the story all wrong??? that's not what happened!!" Dear Lord Please Give Me The Strength
AERTI!!!!!!! hell yeah
Tifa being proactive instead of stewing in confusion!! Love that for her. But damn it didn't go down well, huh. "I was so happy to see you again, but maybe I shouldn't have been." BIG OOOOOF
OUCH. Cloud. At least take off the pauldron if you're gonna sleep on that side LOL
Chapter 2: A New Journey Begins (Kalm and The Grasslands)
Very interesting news broadcast ya got goin' on there, Shinra...
Kalm is so so so so pretty. Feels like an actual full sized city now! Wish we could have seen more of it at night, like in the OG.
Broden!! I like him. I want the best for him. I know he's fucked. But really, it's cool to see more SOLDIER characters. We get to see Cloud's uh-oh brain static moments from the outside perspective, and boy howdy, it ain't pretty.
Broden says he's "...on your side. Got a contact at HQ." Meanwhile, my delusional ass: CONTACT? KUNSEL? IS IT KUNSEL? DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE NAMED KUNSEL?
Mentioned it in a different post— I suspected they changed the arrangement of Midgar's sectors. Sure enough, it's confirmed by looking at Rebirth's world map. Is this a meta fate-has-been-altered thing, or is it just a curious retcon? Maybe a bit of both?
HOLLOW REMIX HOLLOW REMIX HOLLOW REMIX HOLLOW REMIX HOLLOW REMIX AAAAAAAAAAAAA
Oh my god, her name is CHLOE????????? "Chole" was a typo this whole fucking time???? I can't handle this
NOT CHOCOBO BILL BLINDSIDING US WITH THE CLOUD GETTING DOUBLE PENETRATED IN A NASTY SWAMP SHACK IMPLICATIONS???? HELLO?????????
My sweet son Chadley has returned from the time void.
Ok serious talk. Wtf is up with the audio mixing. Someone gave the thumbs up for this production?! The default music volume is WAY too loud and overpowers voice lines. Doesn't help that Remake's npc dialogue deluge in crowded areas hasn't been addressed at all. C'mon people, you had years to fix this shit. It's a shame too, because I would love to hear all of the beautiful music and talented voice acting, just... separately, please.
The Soggy Strife Agenda is off to a great start!
I know Midgar Zolom was a blind idiot translation, but I dunno man. Midgardsormr just doesn't do it for me. Zolom sweetie come home :(
FUCKING. FUCK. WHERE'S THE LINE. FUCK!!! Apparently Sephiroth Did Not Do This. Goddammit. Fucking blasphemy. Genuinely gutted that they didn't include that line. Imagine if they had pulled that shit with Me Gongaga. Unacceptable.
Chapter 3: Deeper into Darkness (Mythril Mines)
"Enough for her Standard Course twice, right?" keep it up Aerith you're doing amazing :)
Ah, the opening area of the mines has been converted into a museum. No wonder people are allowed to just waltz right on in.
ELENA!! Oooooh I love her voice!! She's got that young overconfident sass. Fits her perfectly. She's got me sweating bullets seeing her kick a grenade around like a soccer ball though YIKES
Those Boulders Are Not Made Of Solid Rock
Not much else to say about the mines. Love when the original version of the music kicked in. Barret and Red's dynamic is so good!
Chapter 4: Dawn of a New Era (Junon)
We just, uh, waiting for the bus there, folks? OH SHIT sorry about the bird of prey thing man, that sucks. Hope you feel better soon
Contrary to maybe popular opinion, but I actually love it when you know exactly what a character is going to say or do next. It means the writers have done a great job at getting that character across. Predictable does not always equal bad; tropes exist for a reason after all.
Under Junon. mwah <3
Priscilla!! Omg she's so cute and annoying. Just how I remember.
Soggy Strife Episode 2. This time featuring an off-putting amount of romantic tension between Cloud And That Dolphin
Lowkey disappointed that they cut the uncomfortably long CPR minigame. Gamers nowadays have no idea how good they have it. Back in my day, we had to give mouth-to-mouth for 5 minutes straight in deafening silence.
YUFFIE!!!!!! Oh my god the leakers weren't exaggerating about the naruto run
Yeah ok just. gonna do some good night crunches. Very. Uh. Normal of you, Cloud Strife. God I love this weirdo
ROCHEEEEE My Boyfriend Has Returned
Aerith and Priscilla doing the arm bump thing............ yeah...........
Yeah you work those tanker controls gay boy. I was really expecting a jumpscare as the tanker lifted up. Would have actually shrieked if Sephiroth was just like "sup lol"
WOW the sister ray!!! Honestly the first moment that made me go "DAMN this is Final Fantasy alright!" What a view.
Glad they kept Junon's silly amount of elevators.
Oh hi Glenn
So Aerith wants to know if there are any good restaurants in Junon. Well, maybe if this guy hadn't been busy barfing in an alleyway....
Gee Tifa and Aerith, it's a good thing you guys practiced your highly choreographed military drill, just in case you ever had to pretend to be a trooper during an inaugural parade. Gotta be prepared for even the most unlikely scenarios! (As a writer, I know how it is with suspension of disbelief. But it's still kinda doofy lol)
That being said, I'd let the commander have her way with me
THE MUSIC
Tee hee omg it's so cute to see Cloud in his element! Look at that boy go. He's so into it. I like hearing all of the Seventh Infantry's interactions, too. Really hammers it in that they're all just normal people with their own worries and hopes.
Oopsie daisy. I am not immune to Shinra Propaganda. Huh. Well done, writers.
THE GLABRESCENT!! EXCLUSIVE CLUB FOR BALD PEOPLE
Awww look at all the 1/35 soldiers! Man. This whole chapter is just one huge love letter to the OG. So much nostalgia, plus so much new exciting stuff. God I could go on and on
This Just In, Entire Junon Nursing Home Full Of Elderly People Dies Of A Heart Attack After Rufus Shinra Decides To Fire The Fucking Cannon
Roche please sign my forehead
Uh oh. Yuffie
Yeah Ok don't mind me, just a SOLDIER 1st Class, protecting these little infantrymen with my life. No parallels to be found here, folks
GENUINELY HONEST TO GOD I AM SO SORRY FOR SLICING YOUR BABY ANGEL IN HALF LIKE THAT ROCHE PLEASE FORGIVE ME. Cloud say you're sorry Right Fucking Now.
Oh good no hard feelings. Well. Actually. Uh
Chapter 5: Blood in the Water (Shinra-8/Ship to Costa)
Oh to be a girl hiding away in a cargo hold with another girl.......
Little bit of Traces of Two Pasts! So Aerith told Tifa about Faz, the weird guy that was a little bit too nice to Ifalna. Apparently Aerith is still shaken up by that. Don't blame her.
Ok. I've been avoiding the topic of Queen's Blood, because frankly, my opinion on it is completely unfounded and irrational. I fucking hate card games in video games that are not supposed to be solely about card games. I can't help it. I'm here for the pretty people rpg and the gut-wrenching t4t heartbreak, not for the Magic the Gathering subplot. Any time this game so much as breathes the name Queen's Blood in my direction, I feel something visceral welling up inside of me. So as you can imagine, The Chapter Where You Play Queen's Blood is not my personal favorite.
But I get it! It's not like there was much to do here in the OG. I like that they went out of their way to flesh the ship out and give it more to remember. And for people who like Queen's Blood, I'm happy for them!!
Silly boy humming the victory fanfare I love himmmm
*wiggles*
Gotta get me one of them bigass cardboard cutout palm trees to put on display inside of my grungy metal hallway. Wow what a vibe
DAMN RIGHT YOU SHOULD DEMAND THE MANAGER, RED
THE MOONWALK SJHSYAFDFKKFFJF oh mny fuckijngh god the terrified kid crying his eyes out LMAOOOOO
Dang It! I wanted to see what Cloud looks like swaddled up in that hammock. Why do you deny me that which I desire. Screw your fade to black.
Good to know Hojo is just as disgusting and disturbing as he should be! Yayyyyy :(
"Holy shit..." YUFFIE SAME????? TITOV BOUTTA BLOW SOME TITS OFF????
YEEEHAAWWWW time for another absolute fucking banger of a Jenova remix!!!! I cannot praise the soundtrack enough.
Chapter 6: Fool's Paradise (Costa del Sol)
Obligatory beach episode
Johnny!!!!! My favorite dramatic idiot with a heart of gold! It's ok babygirl I love your seasmell hotel. I'll stay there anytime.
Cloud acting like that lei is strangling him. Sameeee dude same but no really. This place sucks. Too many people trying to force this poor guy to have fun against his will.
If I have to hear "hang loose" one more time, there will be bloodshed.
I do not trust that man to ride safely and sanely on that wheelie. He can't even walk on his own two feet without endangering every physics object in the vicinity.
Empty materia moment actually made me gasp out loud
AERTI DATE AERTI DATE AERTI DATE AERTI DATE
OUTFIT REVIEW TIME
Cloud's Tits Out: An unusual sight. I feel like he should be smooth under there like Link BOTW. He looks a little too robust for someone who's got Big Oil And Brain Worms In There and hasn't slept in weeks. I appreciate the commitment to making him pale as paper and flat as a board. No top surgery scars lose points big time. I'm neutral about the toes. 4/10
Cloud's Business Casual: Immaculate. Tastefully hideous. That blue is NOT your color, girl. Chocobo imagery is always a plus. Absolutely mystified by the untied capris + 3/4 sleeve scoop neck combo. Pretty sure he's not wearing any socks with those tennis shoes. Sneakers in the sand is a helluva sensory experience for an autistic guy like him, I deeply respect it. 9/10.
Tifa's Frilly Miniskirt: Cute and confident. Split between it being utterly out of character for her, or 1000% perfect for her. The white and purple is a great color combo. Slightly concerned about the structural integrity of the neck strap. Uncooperative hairstyle is understandable but kills the vibe a bit. Jealous of the sandals. 8/10
Tifa's Tie Front: DAMN. Stripes with the collar, black jean shorts, hell yeah. The giant belt buckle is just asking for a nasty burn mark, though. Whatever. She's rockin' it. I dunno man, I'm at a loss for words, you just gotta see it to believe it. 10/10.
Aerith's Keepin' It Simple: Tried and true. Pink always works in her favor. Love the little matching flowers in her hair. The wrap around wallet chain is a welcome sprinkle of weirdness. Otherwise masterfully boring; it suits her city-slickin' down-to-earth attitude. 9/10
Aerith's Floral Cover Up: Classy. Got that Final Fantasy princess look with the ruffled sleeves and the push-up cut. The long skirt is nothing short of perfection. Lovestruck by the splash of lime green with the leaf pattern. Can't imagine how annoying those shin-high sandal straps might be though, that's gonna leave a mark. 9/10
Barret's Bear Wearing A Marshmallow: Pillsbury Dough Man at his finest. Faithful to the original, exquisite in 4K HD. Hoist hook arm adds that extra sailor flair, sealing the look. He's having fun with it, and that's what matters most. 10/10!
Ok back to reality
uh oh.
Yup, somehow they managed to make Hojo even more nauseating than ever before. Good. The more we hate him, the worse it'll sting when he keeps dodging his comeuppance. Hohohohoho.... That's Good Writing, Babie! Twist that knife. Keep us ravenously thirsty for revenge!!
Seen a lot of complaints about the women that accompany Hojo to the beach and shower him with compliments and oohs and aahs. Not sure why. Pretty sure it's heavily implied that they're being paid SHIT LOADS of gil to act that way. It's stated outright that they're working for Mayor Kapono, and it's well established by that point that the mayor is wrapped tight around Shinra's pinky finger.
The moment that beach fight started, I knew right away... GRAB THAT UMBRELLA, DO YOUR LEGACY PROUD
Aerith showing her vengeful side, just a tiny bit. So much pent up hatred and grief. Love how it mirrors Cloud's character. She's so forgiving, she doesn't know how to turn anger into action. He's so caught up in his anger, that he forgets what forgiveness could do for him. Man. :'(
Yuffie joins the team!!! Cloud's just like. >:/ lol
Chapter 7: Those Left Behind (Corel)
Fun time is over folks
Huh. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but that's not even close to being a Weapon. Major retcon, or legendary fakeout?
Sighh... Aerith looking up at the sky like that... The longing sure is long isn't it
WELL! Ain't that the dolly zoom of a lifetime! It's absolutely wild to watch Cloud's mental state worsen gradually in real time. Seeing him almost walk off a cliff was freaky. Good stuff
I WILL LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR CLOUD JUNIOR
Poor Barret...... damn dude. The people of Corel were nasty to him in the OG, but they cranked that up to eleven in Rebirth. Wow.
"She your new wife? Well good for you..." istg i'll reach through that screen and choke you out with my bare hands bitchass
"NO." Well that settles that! Gee I wonder why Cloud's not interested in helping out the doctor with his test...... hmm......
Yuffie honey... read the room.........
Chapter 8: All That Glitters (Gold Saucer First Visit)
And now for a jarring tonal shift! Yeahh... this game suffers from awkward pacing. A lot. Though I do suppose that's the point— hellish suffering juxtaposed with distasteful extravagance, just how Shinra prefers it.
Dio should snap him in half like a twig. I think it would be good enrichment for Cloud.
Ok. I'm pretty sure this is like. the fourth time Cloud's pupils have gotten all blown out upon seeing Sephiroth. There may be a clinical explanation for this, but there sure as hell ain't a straight one. The submissive little gasps are NOT helping.
I'm fucking pissed on behalf of anyone who has to stay the night at this dumbass hotel. Oh my god. How could anyone fall asleep in this obnoxious hellscape.
At least the receptionist looks good tied up and struggling ;)
Cait Sith meowing his own theme song is doing something unfathomable to the part of me that almost became a furry back in middle school. Oh god no he's so adorable. I'm screwed
I'm going to dismantle that tonberry robot bolt by bolt.
Aerith and Cloud commentating the races omg kicking my feet like a little schoolgirl i love them so muchhhh
The bike minigame is just not the same without Roche's "encouragement"
Jessie 😭
Ok I'm glad that it's made clear from the get-go that Barret isn't responsible for the shooting, and he also doesn't try to take the fall for Dyne. That left a bad taste in my mouth in the OG, so this is a welcome change.
Cait Sith is a little bit too enthused about the muggin' maimin' and murderin' lmao
OH MY GOD CLOUD. Baseball bat to the back of the head was genuinely shocking. As if he didn't have enough brain damage to begin with D:
Oh yuck. Gus is insufferable and nasty. I've known this guy for all of five seconds, and I already hate his guts. Fantastic characterization right outta the gate. The music is hilarious.
Billy???? How the hell did you end up here????? Kid you GOTTA get tf out of this place
LMAOOO Elena is my favorite turk confirmed. "NO VANILLA."
Oh man. Dyne time. This entire part is so damn good. Barret wants so badly for Dyne to be the beloved friend he used to be, but he's just way too far gone. So much resentment and grief.
Second half of the Dyne battle is a little bit weird, but I can tentatively accept it.
Was definitely wondering how they would handle Dyne's suicide given the teen rating. They circumvented the issue by having Shinra troopers gun him down in a crazed last stand. Different from the OG, but still believable and well written, considering their limitations.
Now that I think about it, this game is REALLY pushin' it with the teen rating. I'm willing to bet the rating boards were like, "yeah uh we can make an exception. it's FFVII we're talkin' about." Still... wonder why they couldn't go as far with Remake.
"You carry that guilt... That weight..." Wow. That line.
Annnnd jarring tonal shift! Robot frog fight versus the comedy relief villain. To be fair, I can't think of any other decent place to put this boss, either. On the bright side, Anuran Suppressor is awesome. Favorite fight in the game so far!
I need this soundtrack in my possession right fucking now.
Oh hi Glenn
Chapter 9: The Planet Stirs (Gongaga)
dune buggy :)
Oh Yuffie... just keep a barf bucket on hand or somethin will ya?
"I just... I feel like I've been here before." Well wouldja look at that... no jenova static...
Going over the hill and seeing the reactor... damn.
CISSNEI!!!! Ouuugh girl you know EXACTLY who tf he is, don't lie.
Noooo give Cait his little mushroom back you meanie :(
Ah. The deranged picnic music.
Gongaga has a much different vibe than it did in the OG. The intense feeling of mourning and hardship is missing. No hazy purple hues or Anxiety playing. Seems like they went in more of a CC direction, with the bright blue sky and uplifting soundtrack. Can't lie, I'm a tiny bit disappointed; I was really hoping for something more heavy and melancholic.
The existence of ordinary chickens in the FFVII universe has some frightening implications for the true nature of chocobos. If you have ever kept backyard chickens, you'll know what I mean.
Ohhhhhhh.... Zack's home............. :((((((
No. No. Don't play Sky Blue Eyes. Don't fucking do this to me. I'm gonna fucking cry. Oh my god no.
"They do say no news is good news, right?" I'm gonna do it.
You know shit's bad when even Cloud "I'm Fine" Strife admits he needs to have a lie down. Yikes.
Man, I really wish we knew more about Tifa and Aerith's chats. Dramatic irony's a bitch.
They sure went all out with the mushroom thing, huh. I know they were trying to differentiate Gongaga in terms of gameplay and worldbuilding, but I feel like they went a little overboard. Gongaga was its own unique thing in OG, not sure why they felt the need to quote unquote improve upon it. Just kinda weird.
Now the reactor is a different story. They did an incredible job here. The scale of the reactor, the unprecedented destruction—
Oh God Damn It The Whispers Are Back
Seriously trying so hard to justify in my own mind why the whispers are here. I don't despise them as a concept, but their implementation is awkward and overdone. In the Gongaga reactor, they fulfill the same narrative purpose as the black robes would: to facilitate the Reunion by mentally dragging Cloud along. Sigh... I get it's because they want to familiarize the player with the whispers in anticipation of future scenes, but it still pisses me off.
That being said, the whispers' theme goes HARD and I'm elated to hear it again. It also fits super well in the Gongaga reactor. So I guess I'm not that pissed.
Touch Me renamed to Amphidex. Can't have shit in Gongaga :/
ooOOOOO!!! The mako fumes getting to Cloud's head! Poor guy's about to pass out. Nice touch.
Sephiroth/Jenova taking advantage of Cloud's mako poisoning... Oh man... the instant change in demeanor is nuts. So fucking good. Here we get to see the first time that Sephiroth has total control over Cloud, and it does not disappoint. Ruthless.
Tifa honey how and why tf are you keeping it together right now. Girl, you do NOT have to fix him. You do not have to show him your boobs a second time. You do not have to take a single thing he says seriously. You can just get up and leave I promise he's doomed by the narrative until further notice 😭😭😭
Telluric Orca Vore Moment was also not on my rebirth bingo card but Okay
Teasing the lifestream. Sure, I can get down with it. Just... y'all got a bit of a whisper problem down here. Want me to call pest control?
"No! Don't take him too!" Damn...
I would not feel safe alone in a room with a man who just tried to kill me, let alone even remotely consider intimacy, but maybe that's just me. It is refreshing to see Tifa and Cloud actually talk things out for a change.
Cloud knows there's something wrong with him and he's so scared... man :'(
What does Aerith say to her???????????? ARRRGHHH
So we're all just perfectly fine with Cloud continuing to be in charge? Nobody's got any objections to that? Alrighty Then
SURPRISE Cid Highwind!! Leaks were right, he's cleaned up. No cigs, less swears, very friendly guy. Not as off-putting as I worried it might be. I'm convinced it's just because he's got a business to run— we'll see good ol' cranky Cid in part 3.
ROCHE NOOOOOOOOOO DON'T!!!!!!!! :(
Chapter 10: Watcher of the Vale (Cosmo Canyon)
Red's real voice reveal! Red's real name reveal!! Though I really would have preferred to see his name change to Nanaki in the menu and subtitles...
Cosmo Canyon is coming off as a hippie stoner tourist trap. Yeah all of these people are correct about the planet and the lifestream, but dang if it doesn't feel like someone's about to heckle me into buying healing crystals and dreamcatchers.
The nostalgia is A++. Beautiful remaster of the music, too.
BUGENHAGEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!!!! SO jealous of him zoomin around on that sick af crystal ball. Screw the Costa wheelies, I want one of these bad boys.
...A legendary fakeout in the making, I think!
The observatory is stunning. Can't even put it into words. The planetarium brought me to tears, it's such a flood of nostalgia and a deeply emotional scene. I love the nice detail of the planet being different from Earth— mako tinted oceans instead of deep blue. Watching the model planet rot and crumble broke my heart.
Sobbing the whole way through Aerith's speech. My god. Poor girl. Knowing what her fate is in the OG makes it hurt even worse.
Gi Nattak. Would
Expanding upon the Gi. Unexpected but super cool. Their story reminds me of FFIX, with the parasitic planet Terra lurking deep within Gaia. The Gi and the Cetra seem to have something similar going on. Who was here first? It almost sounds like the Cetra and their lifestream are invaders.
I could easily relate to the Gi's opinion, that the endless cycle of the lifestream and the persistence of the spirit is tantamount to torture. Never being able to truly rest in peace sucks. Don't worry friends, I'll bring you the black materia! :) (THIS USER CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH THE BLACK MATERIA)
Aerith sticking her hand into the mako..............
Chapter 11: The Long Shadow of Shinra (Nibelheim)
The intense gaslighting about Nibelheim was one of my favorite things about the OG. It also helped seed even more doubt into Cloud's existence as a real person, setting up his descent into madness over the black materia and vulnerability as Sephiroth's puppet. So the changes they've made to Nibelheim in Rebirth are... unnecessary, to put it lightly.
The villagers do not argue with Tifa or Cloud about their memories of the town. They greet them and tell them all about the town's development into a mako poisoning treatment center. Sigh... Part of what made OG's Nibel revisit so dreadful was the unshakeable feeling that you are not welcome there, and that you're being watched like a hawk. I feel a little bit too comfy here in Rebirth Nibelheim, with how friendly and open everyone's being.
Love the chat with Tifa in her old room. We get so much insight into her thoughts and feelings about Nibelheim, Avalanche, and about Cloud and herself.
"Every time we made eye contact, you'd look away. And when I tried to talk to you, you'd ignore me." ouch, don't gotta poke him in the autism like that
Ohoho. The hotel's digging up some memories. I've said my piece.
dillydally
LORD have mercy. This boy's noodle is scrambled like you wouldn't believe. Good news, he remembers Zack, sort of. Bad news, he thinks he fucking drowned?!???? It's intimidating to see the lengths Jenova/Sephiroth will go to to obscure the truth from Cloud. Damn.
Ok Yuffie is actually starting to get a bit obnoxious. Please stop interrupting emotionally charged moments. We get it, you're excited about materia. Cut it out.
If I were Tifa I would be shitting my pants terrified right about now. Girl I do NOT know how you're holding it together.
And now for the most distasteful tonal shift and momentum killer of all time. It's silly kitty cat hijinks time!! ...What the actual fuck. I like Cait Sith, but this is unacceptable. The basement is supposed to be a sickening place of fear and tragedy. Turning it into a cutesy little box chucking playground is downright disrespectful to the original FFVII. I can't even believe I'm writing this, it's so absurd as a concept. This is the only major change that I'm legitimately seriously upset about.
And by god does it drag on. Every time you think, surely this is the final section!... nope. It just keeps on fucking going. Fuck my life, my blood is boiling. Unreal. Remake's slow ass hand-crane highway thing is nothing compared to this. I'll take a Queen's Blood tournament and a hurricane of whispers any day over this unrivaled masterclass in unnecessary bullshit. Fuck.
At least to some people, the reward for getting through the Cait Sith Crate Slog is worthwhile— a few cutscenes starring Vincent Valentine, and a battle against Galian Beast. But if you're like me, and you're not utterly obsessed with Vincent Valentine or Matt Mercer, then by this point, you're just feeling drained and disappointed.
Overall... least favorite chapter. Mellow start, juicy build up with great potential, completely shafted by baffling nonsense.
RIP Roche. Heartbreaking. It's been a good run. Side note, Roche's conversion into a black robe was... quite bizarre. That's just, uh, how that works, I suppose? Okie dokie then
Oh hi Glenn
Chapter 12: A Golden Key (Gold Saucer Revisit)
Always felt weird about the Gold Saucer revisit in the OG. Unusual pacing. Well, at least Rebirth's being consistent in that regard.
What's the point of the theater if you're just going to do a VR performance instead? I know it's a silly little nitpick, but I wanna hear some soles squeaking on a hardwood stage!
Ah, that's the point of the VR. So Shinra can use a dead woman's likeness to keep selling tickets to their overhyped shows. Surprised none of the characters say anything about that, given Avalanche's well-established anticapitalist message.
This is what Genesis Rhapsodos decided to hyperfixate on? No wonder the guy's hair started turning grey and falling out in chunks. [SARCASM]
Barret sobbing uncontrollably, right next to Nanaki looking like a rejected Crash Bandicoot reboot clapping his paws together. Sums up this entire game so far.
The "audience participation" in the play is altered significantly from the OG. It's, uh, very neat and tidy. I strongly prefer OG's hysterical secondhand embarrassment and awkward ad-lib.
I NEED to know what happens if you fail all of the QTEs. Please tell me it goes off the rails and Cloud gets booed off stage PLEASE.
Pretty song. But my god if that is Not What She Would Sound Like.
The gondola rides!! Overall fantastic. So difficult to pick a favorite. Tifa's is obviously phenomenal, but I think I still have a soft spot for Aerith's. I like that Barret's is taken more seriously; it's such a heartfelt moment. Yuffie reminiscing about Zack was adorable, as well as Cloud relating to her being bad with feelings. The Cait Sith/Cid/Vincent one had me laughing out loud, it was so stiff and awkward lmaoo
THE SCOTCH AND KOTCH DISS TRACK IS SENDING ME???????? SKSJKHAGAAAFDSDSDHHBFD I'm so happy to see these freaks doing their thing again.
RUFUS SHINRA?????
Yeah, no Cait Sith, you ain't garnering any pity from me. Not happening after the crate incident.
Chapter 13: Where Angels Fear to Tread (Temple of the Ancients)
So the temple is to the north now. Understandable, since that's where the Forgotten Capital is, too. Still took me by surprise. Also means we won't be going back to Gongaga... aww :(
HOLY FUCK the way the temple assembles itself... now THIS is what I'm talkin' about!
Teasing us with that fractal square symbol since all the way back in Remake...!
Roche....... "my... friend..." :(((((((
These troopers are NOT getting paid enough for this shit lmao
Oh howdy there Rathalos from Monster Hunter, you look a bit different than I remember
Thank goodness the Cetra had the foresight to incorporate some aesthetically appropriate rest benches into their temple's design!
Aerith's seance + the camera angle of the whole team watching... beautiful nod to FFX...? <3
That better not have been Kunsel.
Reno jumpscare
Elena's pretty pink pistol with the charms and stickers is so goofy. I love her. Hopefully Cloud won't try to chop her head off within the next sixty seconds or anything like tha— uh, nevermind.
oooOOURGHH Cloud is SO fucking terrifying throughout the whole temple. Cody hitting it out of the ballpark BIG TIME with the voice acting. DAMN.
Everybody but Cloud has memories to retread... broke my heart. Sad and scary. By the way Hey uhh Temple? Why the fuck would you do this to us? :(
ugly sobbing
Followed up by the Gayest Thing I Think I've Ever Seen In Video Game History
YOU! WITH THE WING!! GET DOWN HERE!!! YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!
Oh god no you're going to make me fight Demon Gate aren't you
THERE'S TWO OF THEM??!?!?!??!?!!! AAHGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HORRIFYING BUT RELATABLE, CLOUD
Wait. Cloud. Hey. Can we talk about it for a sec. Come back please
"There's no point fighting over a fake." WHOA I actually straight up forgot about that twist! Hell yeah! What a wham line!
"I wish I hadnae skipped leg day." pFFFFT LMAOOOOO
"Yeah... I'm good." The Fuck You Ain't
PHHWAAHH HE JUST GETS CRUSHED AWWW!! RIP LMAO WHAT A WAY TO GO
The temple's transformation is breathtaking. And that music score, too, holy fuck.
Honestly I'm not even mad about the whispers being there, they're just a setpiece at this point. Adds to the frantic atmosphere. I'm choosing to ignore their narrative relevance until absolutely necessary.
ROCHE? YOU GOOD THERE BUDDY?
THAT BOY on his hands and knees SCRAMBLING for that black materia. Gayass
CLOUD AARHGRFGGFFFFF OHHGGHH SEPHIROTH HAS COMPLETE CONTROL OVER HIM HHHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
OUUGRRHHHH OAWWWWGGHH
LISTEN. Listen I cannot formulate coherent thoughts about this. Go see it for yourself. Just go.
tee hee hee he's so proud of himself handing it over :3
It Begins.
Interlude. The Zack Moments so far:
Yeahhhh not a huge fan of Zack just dropping Cloud off at the nearest recognizable npc. Not after he almost gave his goddamn life to protect him.
MAN! Finally get to see what it's like to enter/exit Midgar. No fade to black, just on your feet and out the gate. Feels good; kinda surreal honestly. Never realized how bad I wanted this.
Regardless of what you think about the Zack thing, you gotta admit, the atmosphere during his sections is ethereal. So beautiful and calming in such a tragic way.
Love how he fights different than Cloud. Throwing punches, brutal kicks, shoulder checks, much like in Crisis Core.
HOLY FUCK don't mind me just gonna uhhh rip this five hundred pound metal post out of the ground and chuck it like a toy hammer. Suddenly the Buster Sword doesn't seem all that unwieldy.
......RIP Barret, Nanaki, and Tifa. Oof. What a way to go out.
DON'T MAKE MY SWEET BOY CRY LIKE THAT FUCK YOU!!! :(((((
Damn bitch you live like this??? To be fair, that's probably the most luxurious resting spot he's had in literal YEARS. Like wow there's a mattress!! And a roof!!!!!
Good to know that Cloud's goofy ass flinging himself out of bed straight into a combat stance thing from Remake is actually a Zack mannerism lol
Ohhh... my heart... seeing things from Cloud's perspective... I like the how this expands upon what the OG established, about "dreams" of this type. Sort of like the sleeping forest scene. Also makes Aerith's resolution scene in Remake all the more curious.
Aww... walking out onto the balcony and seeing the whole garden dead...
Obsessed with the music that plays during Zack's sections. Wow.
Awwww Marlene and Zack are such a silly duo :')
Biggs wtf did you do????????
Ziggs crashing hard onto my list of OTPs. Oops.
Divine intervention preventing a headshot? I'm sure some CS:GO players can relate.
Biggs' and Zack's conflicting memories of Cloud, plus the "broken internal clocks" is intriguing.
"Zack-of-all-trades" tickles me :D
All of their dialogue together is so self-aware... two characters who have had their narrative purposes torn out from under them, desperate to find a new one. The fact that there is no reason for them to be here is the whole point.
"We're all headed for the same place. You'll see your daddy and Tifa again." Oh ok yeah sure go ahead and rip my heart right out of my chest Elmyra
"Hello in there..." 🥺
So Remake Aerith bestowed memories of her future death upon Marlene. Is childhood innocence a prerequisite for this ability to work? Seeing as she did something similar with Nanaki. Otherwise, you'd think she would try to entrust her own fate with someone more influential, like Tifa or Barret.
I cannot fucking believe that Zaclerith endgame is real. Am I dreaming
Aww Zack has Aerith's ribbon tied around his hand...
Chapter 14: End of the World (Forgotten Capital/Final Chapter)
Ok Tsengru shippers. I finally see it. You are 100% correct about them.
Now we're getting WILD with it. The timeline shenanigans are in full swing. Speculation aplenty ahead.
"...or 'homeward bound' maybe?" Still trying to make sense of what exactly these sky-rift worlds are. Aerith's line here seems to imply that this is some kind of purgatory...? Where timelines go to wallow in their death throes? That's my understanding, so far. Especially with all of the mournful npc dialogue.
Aww... Aerith's date with Cloud mirroring the one she had with Zack in Crisis Core :')
I tell you what, the Stamp figurine made me GASP. So that's three timelines now. Beagle, Terrier, Spitz.
So Terrier Zack goes to Hojo in hopes of finding a cure for Cloud. Not his finest idea... but oh well. Jealous of his motorcycle. ;)
Sephiroth is combing timelines for one version of Aerith in particular...? Am I on the right track here? Is this the same Aerith from her resolution scene in Remake?
THE PUG made me spit my fucking drink out. Hot damn, there's four! We saw this timeline's conception in the form of the bright flash of light when Terrier Zack chose to go to Hojo.
So Pug Zack instead goes to Biggs at reactor 6. I really, really love this scene. The pump is dry, the planet's life is flashing before its eyes. A heartfelt moment shared between two characters who have had their narrative purposes torn out from under them. Zack gets a delicious bit of character progression, wanting to take back control of his life. Price of Freedom playing in the background has got me wailing like an air horn.
"I'm sick of taking its shit!" WHOA Zack swearing caught me way off guard. He flees from battle for once, instead of facing Shinra head on in this timeline. Wonder how that'll change things.
"You don't look like you're on a date... More like 'at a funeral.'" Mhm. duly noted
Give it up for timeline number five! Corgi Zack is sitting on the stairs at the church.
"Cloud, Biggs, or Aerith... How the hell am I supposed to choose?" You don't have to, darling. It's called a polycule.
Sephiroth slashes a hole in reality, and the black whispers drag Corgi Zack through it. Starting to think I shoulda done my Lifestream Black/Lifestream White homework.
So far, Aerith+Cloud's date "dream" has taken place entirely in the Spitz timeline. It's not clear if this is also true of the scene inside of the church, especially since Sephiroth comes waltzing in after we just saw him outside in the Corgi timeline. I'm getting the impression that time and space are a very hand-wavey thing in this layer of reality.
HEART EXPLODING GHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And now for one of the most exhilirating things I think I've ever seen in MY LIFE.
"Behold... The true nature of reality. When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born. The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding. [...] In the planet's embrace, all life is as one." Sephiroth's entire dialogue here... I got goosebumps. That's all.
"Very poor form." LMAO
I notice now on my second watch through, that as early as the sleeping forest scenes, we're cutting back and forth between two different timelines, I believe. Whenever the black or white whispers rush past, we shift perspective from one timeline to another. Pay close attention. Two worlds, simultaneous, but different.
Cloud delivers the white materia from one Aerith to another. Is this the same white materia we see from the beginning of Rebirth? I don't think she swaps the materia out, just transfers its power into her own empty materia, then hands Cloud the newly empty one.
Interesting! Looks like the timeline had already split, all the way back when Cloud handed over the black materia. Previously we saw Cloud and Aerith fall, but now— the white whispers rush past— and we see him rescue her and pull themselves up before they fall. Interesting!
Some youtube theorycrafter will piece together the symbolic significance of literally every tiny detail in this prerendered cutscene and make perfect sense of it. Looking forward to it too, because this is WAY above my paygrade.
Hello, whiper pest control services? Hi, yes, I would like to know why the white whispers are suddenly getting in the way? I thought they were my friends :(
Aerith's prayer :(((((((((
OHHGH MY GOD fucking legendary use of the haptic/adaptive triggers. Holy shit.
👁️ 👁️
Meanwhile, Zack Fair
me, banging my fists on the table: KISS! KISS!!! KISS! KISS!!!! JUST KISS ALREADY!!!!!! KISS!!!
Lmao Zack is so indifferent to this interdimensional insanity. After being the protagonist of Crisis Core, he's just like "lol whatever this is fine"
"Look at you takin' charge! I like it!" 😏
Zack+Cloud synergy attack!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!
"What in the hell is going on!?" SAME ZACK, SAME
AERITH!!!!!!!!!
OH FUCK IT'S THE SONG
the hand hold 💔
i'm incoherent. i'll figure out my thoughts about this some other time
Oh hi Glenn— OH SHIT??!?
THE SWORD CAN DO THAT?????? what
Man... the in-game skybox does NOT do that rift in the sky justice. Absolutely staggering in the final prerendered cutscene.
Next time I have a migraine aura, I'll be at ease knowing that it's just the timelines rippling and merging. No big deal
Two separate worlds, one where she lives, one where she dies. Realities overlapping and intertwined. Cloud's fragile mind fluctuating between both… wow. Can't wait to see where this leads in part 3.
Misc. thoughts, not chapter specific:
Love the accentuated mako in SOLDIER eyes. It irked me that the iconic mako color was so muted in Remake, so seeing it so vibrant in Rebirth is sexy as hell.
Um. No comment on Glenn, really. I'm not heavily invested in his story; maybe I'd be more interested if SE had actually done anything substantial with First Soldier and Ever Crisis. I don't mind that he's here, and the Jenova/Sephiroth twist was pleasantly surprising. Matt and Lucia name drop was also a nice touch. It's pretty obvious that the only reason Glenn is here is to help set up a confict against Wutai for part 3. Fair enough.
So no Kunsel? *SMASHES PHONE ON THE GROUND* *CRUSHES SKATEBOARD*
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shatteredsilverwing · 9 months
Text
ShatteredSilverWing Thoughts #1
One of Sephiroth's prominent characteristics throughout the entire FF7 series (and also throughout other FF games like Dissidia), is his yearning for his Mother Jenova or yearning for motherly love and affection in general. A characteristic feature, which is in dire need of more exploration, since there are still things about Sephiroth that are, let's say, vague at best. Thanks to that, it leaves a lot of room for discussions and interpretations on this subject.
Please note that my thoughts are build upon headcanons of mine, so nothing of the following is set in stone canon wise. It is simply my own point of view.
Sephiorth has Mommy Issues, but such things do not develop by chance and by a caprice of nature.
The sole reason why he was even born at all was because Hojo couldn't keep his disgusting curiousity at bay. He injected Jenova cells into Sephiroth when he was still a fetus, growing inside Lucrecia's womb.
After giving birth to him, he got violently seperated from his biological mother, only for him to be misused as an experiment shortly thereafter. He never had the chance to experience the loving touch of a mother. Never had the chance to feel the warmth of a mother.
So isn't it only natural for him, that he still craves for motherly love and affection up until his most recent adulthood?
Projecting these cravings into Jenova is a coping mechanism for Sephiroth; trying desperately to hold the last piece of sanity he has left together during the Nibelheim Incident. Said incident was more than just a traumatizing event for him, since everything collapsed around him in a short period of time.
He was looking for answers his whole life, maybe also fantasizing on how his parents were, especially his mother. But he wasn't expecting the truth he actually found: He's an experiment. Shortly after, Genesis started to stigmatize him as a monster and hearing such a thing from one of your former friends is hurtful beyond compare. Another huge betrayal he had to bear was when Zack also turned against him after he locked himself into the Shinra Manor library. Sephiroth and Zack both didn't have had the time for their friendship to flourish, only a few times here and there where they always briefly met each other (Junon for example; which is my favourite cutscene between them by the way but psssst!). That means, Sephiroth started to view and accept Zack as a friend and maybe even clung onto hope, that he's not alone. Yet, the moment Zack stabbed him in the back in the Mako Reactor in Nibelheim, not only his body was injured, but also the last friendship shattered to pieces. As did his hope.
All that he had left was Jenova. The only person he could trust in that moment. The only person who he could turn to without being judged on what he was...
That said, I'm always open for further discussions, insights and thoughts about Sephiroth's complexities in his persona, so if you have any of them, do not hesitate to send them to me! I'd be happy to share them with you!
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excelsior9173 · 2 months
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‘free reign to explain as much as you want/info dump in my inbox’
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Oh Exie. There is so much to ffvii, it’s one of those old jrpgs (it came out the year I was born/1997) that can take up to 100 hours to beat (sometimes longer really there’s so much you can do in the game that just has nothing to do with the plot haha). It’s so…. Crazy?? It’s also one of those stories that was meant to be experienced and not explained (like kingdom hearts).
The main plot is that the planet the game takes place on is dying, and corporate greed is the cause (cough cough). Starts off with the MC (his official name is Cloud Strife, but in the og you could name him whatever you wanted to), going on a mission with a group of eco terrorists, to bomb a reactor. (The reactors pump mako, which is like oil, but it’s literally the planets blood, on a spiritual level, and it’s also Magic). He joined the group cause his childhood friend is with them.
Cloud is ex-military, which the Company is now the government (Shinra Electric Power Company), and their military is called Soldier, they are humans who have had Mako injected into them, making them super human, with massive amounts of strength.
And then the game is divided into different segments in my opinion. There’s so much to it, aliens and science experiments, and monsters. It would take me so freaking long to try and explain it all.
And I didn’t even mention the main villain!! Shinra is a big threat, but there’s an even bigger one, his name is Sephiroth (he’s my little meow meow. Hes such a dick, but also like. In my opinion none of it is his fault UwU. Also, people think he’s way older than he is for some reason haha, he’s only like 25, and his story is so tragic oof.)
I don’t even know what else to talk about haha. There is so much more to this game (obviously, it’s 100 hours for a reason😅), and I didn’t even mention 1/4th the characters and yeah. I think I’ll end it here tho, cause this is already So Long. Sorry??😂😂
hahahaha what have i brought upon myself? just kidding but that actually sounds super interesting!
funnily enough i’ve heard the name sephiroth? i swear my sibling has to have played it because that’s the only way i think i would know it lol
but that story sounds super super cool! i’m personally not much of a gamer (I completed lego batman 2 with my sibling and liked kicking their ass in halo. but now i just occasionally play minecraft lol) but if i was i would definitely check out these games!
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sicl5 · 8 hours
Text
Capítulo 5
(La historia es una adaptación de la obra FINAL FANTASY VII por lo tanto incluye SPOILERS de esta.) -
Llevábamos relativamente poco subidos al tren. El ambiente no estaba demasiado correcto, todo se sentía tenso. Aunque el porqué de la misión tenía un sentido para Tifa parecía que esto no era lo que ella quería hacer y Cloud simplemente estaba como Cloud. Barret tenía cara de decidido y concentrado y por mi parte me gustaba analizar el ambiente y la situación. Un mensaje de megafonía hizo que despertaramos los cuatro nuestros oidos.
Este es un anuncio de la Compañía de Electricidad y Energía Shinra. La organización terrorista Avalancha ha anunciado que atentará contra otro reactor. Por este motivo, estamos en alerta roja. En consecuencia, se han producido retrasos en todas las líneas de tren. Les informamos de que llegaremos al sector 4 más tarde de la hora programada.
— El objetivo es el reactor de mako n.º 5.- Dijo Barret con una voz más baja de lo usual.- Al salir de la estación, iremos por los callejones. Y cuando lleguemos al interior del reactor, será como la otra vez. ¿Lo viste esa vez, verdad Sil?
— Sí, me acuerdo bastante bien.- Me apoyé en la pared cruzando mis brazos.- Creo que sé como hacerlo.
— Entonces, directos al depósito de mako.- Dijo Cloud mirándonos a los cuatro.
— ¡Y hacemos volar todo por los aires!- A Barret se le escapó una sonrisa al decir esas palabras.- Lo haremos por Jessie y Wedge. Se lo merecen
— Eso.- Exclamó Tifa a lo que yo la miré fijamente.- No pensé que fuera a correrse la voz tan rápido. Hay poca gente en el tren… y no parecen muy alegres, que se diga.
— Llamaremos la atención si vamos juntos. Tifa, vente conmigo al siguiente vagón.
En ese momento ella empezó a andar por el tren y Barret le siguió cambiando rápidamente al otro vagón. Me quedé con Cloud y me senté en los asientos vacíos del tren mientras él seguía de pie.
El tren cruzará en breve un punto de control de identificación.
— A ver si pasamos esta.- Expresé haciendo que Cloud me mirara.- ¿Crees que está Tifa bien? Leyendo el ambiente, no se la veía muy cómoda.
— Bueno, esta Barret con ella. No te preocupes.
Mientras ejercíamos tal conversación unos láseres rojos atravesaron el tren como la última vez indicando el control de identificación. Parecía que todo había ido correctamente.
— Puedo preguntar…- Me dijo Cloud mirándome fijamente.- ¿Por qué te has metido en todo este fregado?
— Cuando salí del reactor de mako n.º 1 con vosotros ya salí con esta etiqueta, no tengo nada más que perder. Además, ganamos las dos partes.- Expresé.
— ¿Qué hacías ese día en el reactor? Pero esta vez, se sincera.
— Me has pillado, ¿eh?
En ese momento hubo un alerta de seguridad en el tren y volvió a sonar la megafonía de esta.
Detectadas ID no autorizadas. Alerta máxima. Inicio de protocolos de inspección y eliminación a partir del último vagón.
Barret entró rápidamente en el vagón donde Cloud y yo nos encontrábamos haciéndonos una señal.
— ¡Vamos, por aquí!
En ese momento las ventanas del vagón se rompieron y entraron los robots voladores vigilantes. Venían a por nosotros. Se interpusieron entre Cloud y yo y rápidamente me encargué de eliminar usando una materia de electro y usando mi espada. Pasamos rápidamente al siguiente vagón dónde estaba Tifa moviendo a los civiles para protegerlos. Los cambió de vagón y empezó a eliminar a los robots.
— ¡Tifa!
Fui rápidamente hacia ella y me cargué a uno que le venía por la espalda, atentando contra su vida.
— ¡Gracias, Sil!
Le sonreí y nos pusimos en posición de ataque los cuatro, mirando fijamente como cada vez entraban más robots.
— No dejan de aparecer.- Mencionó Cloud
Cuatro usuarios con ID no autorizadas aislados. Procediendo a su eliminación.
— Tenías razón, Soldadito.- Le dijo Barret a Cloud.- A la mierda.
— La estación estará hasta arriba de seguridad.- Dijo Cloud.
— Habrá que saltar, ¿no?- Dije convencida de mi misma.
— ¿Qué?- Preguntó Barret mirandome.
— Sí, relenticemos el tren entonces.
Cloud se apresuró y le dió al botón de parada de emergencia del tren y Barret rompió la puerta de este, haciéndonos paso para poder saltar. El tren empezó a frenar de golpe y como no me lo esperaba me caí para atrás chocando de lleno con Cloud.
— ¿Estás bien?- Me preguntó ayudándome a incorporarme bien.
— Si, perdon.
— Atentos todos, mirad cómo se hace.- Dijo Barret agarrándose a la puerta.- Voy a saltar, ¡vamos que sí! ¡Así se hace!
Barret saltó y Tifa no tardó en saltar con él. El tren seguía avanzando pero frenando lentamente. Fui rápidamente hacia la puerta y miré fijamente las vías del tren, en ese momento me dió algo de miedo, aunque no era la primera vez que saltaba de un tren o encima de uno.
— Sil, no hay tiempo que perder.
Cloud me miró, me dedicó una sonrisa cómplice y me cogió de la cintura saltando juntos del tren. En el aire me abrazó fuerte para protegerme de la caída. Caímos al suelo y dimos varias vueltas por este aunque solo toco el suelo un poco de mi espalda, él me tenía bien agarrada. Paramos a los segundos de rodar y terminé encima de Cloud. Levanté la mirada y nos quedamos tan cerca que compartiamos literalmente el mismo aire.
— ¿Te has hecho daño?- Me preguntó sin apartarme.
— E-Estoy bien…
Noté como mis mejillas se volvían rojas y al segundo me levanté de encima de él y me giré para que no pudiera verme. El momento fue ideal ya que en esa dirección venían varios robots voladores hacia nosotros. Fui corriendo hacia ellos, adelantandome a Cloud y los reventé a espadazos. 
-
Paralelamente en otro lado de Midgar:
— Bien hecho. ¡Bien hecho! Parecía que los íbamos a atrapar… Hablando de ratas, ¿y los otros dos?
— Acorralados, señor.
— Dejadlos ir.
— Sí señor, ahora mismo.
-
Nos reunimos con Tifa y con Barret minutos después de andar por las vías del tren llegando a un pequeño andén de seguridad dentro del túnel espiral. 
— Bueno, vamos a confirmar dónde estamos y a seguir con la misión.- Expresó Barret acercándonos a un mapa de nuestra localización actual.- ¡El reactor nos espera!
— Estamos entre el sector 4 y el pilar principal.- Dije mirando el mapa fijamente.- Hemos ido a parar a una vía paralela que debería de llevar al reactor n.º 5.
— Entonces tendremos que seguir el plan E.- Dijo Barret.- El plan A era si todo salía a pedir de boca. De la estación habríamos llegado derechos al reactor. Al final se ha ido a la mierda pero bueno, tenemos un par de alternativas. 
— Aunque de cinco planes, tenemos que realizar el ultimo.- Exclamé mirando mi espada fijamente.
— Vaya suerte…- Expresó Cloud cruzándose de brazos haciendo que Barret soltara una carcajada.
— ¡Ya te digo!
— Entonces…- Tifa volvió a mirar el mapa fijamente.- Deberíamos seguir las vías del tren.
— Pero no demasiado. Tenemos que hacer cambio de ruta antes de llegar a la estación.- Dijo Barret mirándonos.- Me apuesto lo que sea a que va a estar hasta arriba de seguridad y estarán bien pendientes.
— Venga, vamos.- Tifa nos miró fijamente antes de volver a las vías. Después los tres la empezamos a seguir.
— Nuestros aliados del sector 5 nos han dejado marcada la ruta, así que no tiene pérdida.- Mencionó Barret.- ¡Nos han trazado el camino a la gloria! ¡Solo hay que seguirlo hasta el final!
-
Paralelamente en otro lado de Midgar:
— No tiene de qué preocuparse, presidente. Los preparativos para el gran espectáculo continúan sin imprevistos. Estoy convencido de que su plan funcionará hasta el más mínimo detalle. Sí, por supuesto. No le fallaré señor.
— Disculpe, señor. Los de análisis informan de que los resultados están en un rango aceptable. Sin embargo, el índice de bajas es más alto del que predijimos…
— ¿Me recuerdas cuál es tu tarea? ¿Poner en tela de juicio la sabiduría de tus superiores y lamentarte de tus adversidades?
— ¿Señor?
— ¿Índice de bajas? ¿Te crees que acaso me importa lo más mínimo? Son míseros peones en una partida importante. Si nos quedamos cortos de centinelas, ve a conseguir más al sector 3 o donde sea. Usa tu materia gris y proporcióname soluciones en vez de problemas, ¿entendido?
— ¡Señor!
— Cada vez es más complicado encontrar empleados competentes. Espero que el presidente sea consciente de la suerte que tiene. ¿Qué haría sin mí? 
Más tarde.
— Hemos finalizado un informe exhaustivo de la capacidad de combate de AVALANCHA y hemos determinado que…
— ¡Un informe, dice! ¿De qué crees que sirve un estúpido informe, eh?
— Pues…
— ¿Acaso has olvidado la guerra contra Wutai? Deja con vida a un enemigo y recompensará tu amabilidad con sangre. Hemos de aplastarlos por completo, sin vacilación ni compasión. Shinra no se conformará con menos. ¿Entendido?
— Pero, señor…
— Si no, supongo que tus hombres y tú no querréis continuar en vuestros cargos, ¿me equivoco?
— Preparad la plataforma experimental de armamento pesado del sector E para su uso inmediato. ¡Y ya mismo!
— Otro día, otro éxito. ¿Cómo soy tan brillante?
-
Seguimos avanzando por la vía hasta llegar a un punto bastante lejano desde donde habíamos empezado a andar. Varios contenedores adornaban el sitio y había una puerta gigante protegida con una gran máquina, desactivada. Mientras miraba fijamente detrás de los contenedores escuché como la máquina se activaba.
— ¡Atrás!- Gritó Cloud a Tifa quien se había acercado demasiado.
— ¿Pero que…?
Tifa retrocedió y la máquina empezó a disparar balas hacia delante. Barret rápidamente se escondió detrás de uno de los contenedores.
— ¿¡Eso es todo!?- Exclamó Barret mirando de reojo a la gran máquina.
La máquina se empezó a mover y fui corriendo rápidamente hacia ella.
— ¡Ahora!- Le dí con mi materia ELECTRO++ haciendo que se escacharrase por unos momentos. 
Los cuatro fuimos a atacar directamente las patas del robot para que no pudiera moverse. Eso solo cabreó más a la máquina y empezó a realizar ataques aún más fuertes. En ese momento Cloud usó la materia de invocación de Ifrit que le regalé el cual una vez más volvió a ser clave para derrotar a la gran máquina.
Salimos corriendo rápido de allí una vez derrotada. La máquina estaba toda electrocutaba e iba a explotar en cualquier momento.
-
Paralelamente en otro lado de Midgar:
— Esto no me agrada.
— Señor, el departamento de análisis nos informa de que han perdido la conexión tras detectar una anomalía en combate.
— ¿Una anomalía? ¿O una excusa para tapar vuestra ineptitud a la hora de preparar el robot?
— ¡N-No, señor! Todos los módulos estaban operativos. Dadas las circunstancias, lo más probable es que los sensores sufrieran sobrecarga.
—  ¿En serio…?
— Todos los sensores del sector E han sido deshabilitados… 
— El presidente, señor.
— Sí… Sí. Todo está bajo control, presidente. Mejor, incluso. Ha ocurrido algo… Sí… Entiendo, presidente. Hasta luego… …Sabemos adónde se dirigen. Si el robot está intacto, más te vale que determines el origen de esa anomalía cuanto antes. De lo contrario… tendrás que lidiar tú con los intrusos. En persona. 
— ¡Sí, se-señor!
— No temas. Trato a mis súbditos con generosidad, si no me fallan.
-
— El pasadizo está detrás de estos contenedores.- Dijo Barret.- Vamos por el hueco.
Entre contenedores había unos huecos bastante estrechos por los que se podía pasar. Nos teníamos que poner de lado para poder seguir nuestro camino entre estos.
— Me voy a quedar plano…- Exclamó Barret.
— ¿Estás bien?- Le preguntó Tifa.
— Sí…
— ¿También había robots gigantes como ese en el reactor n.º 1?- Tifa parecia intrigada.
— Sí, pero el que había allí parecía un escorpión.- Exclamó Barret.- Por cierto… ¿a qué te recordaba este último?
— ¿Eh? Pues…
— Un robot destrozado.- Respondió Cloud.
— No, claro…- Le dije riendo un poco.- Allí al fondo está el ascensor. Vamos.
Rápidamente nos subimos los cuatro al ascensor y accionamos el botón. Nos llevaba poco a poco hacia la parte subterránea. 
— Que sepáis que esto se va a poner más jodido…- Dijo Barret.
— ¿Estás preocupado?- Le pregunté.
— No, pero tenemos que estar mentalmente preparados.
— Bueno, tampoco esperaba menos.- Cloud me miró fijamente y luego miró hacia adelante mientras el ascensor cada vez más se adentraba hasta verdaderamente el corazón de la misión.
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Esto es una adaptación de la obra original FINAL FANTASY VII (SQUARE ENIX©) sin fines de lucro. Solo tiene fines lúdicos y de comunidad. Prohibida la copia de la adaptación igual que la extracción de personajes propios sin autorización.
CAPÍTULO ANTERIOR
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