The Story of Final Fantasy 7 .. So Far | A Comparative Exploration of the Original AND Remake

[Music] so what in the hell could possibly be said about final fantasy vii that hasn't been said already probably nothing to be honest i highly doubt that i have anything super new to say about this monumental revolutionary work that hasn't been discussed by someone somewhere before however i do have a unique relationship with this game and its remake that help my experience with the story to be pretty interesting as well as a way of looking at stories that i hope can be potentially valuable for one or two of you as a result offering a look at the story of the original and how it is complemented altered and supplemented by the remake is an exercise that i think will be pretty interesting and enjoyable for me and hopefully that'll be the case for others as well so that is one of the reasons for this video and i'll mention the others in a bit just a quick disclaimer however firstly i will not be talking about gameplay much at all here i think the gameplay of the original is phenomenal and i really enjoy the remakes as well for the most part but that's basically the extent of how much i'll touch on them this will be a video about my thoughts and ruminations on the stories of both games and i will be sticking to the narrative which obviously also means that i'll be spoiling everything for the entire final fantasy 7 franchise including various compilation works the second thing to note is that i love the original final fantasy vii the third is that i love final fantasy 7 remake i consider the two to be roughly as good as one another i think the story covered by the remake is executed slightly better overall than the respective material in the original but that game has much more story content and progression so it is the more complete experience there will be a lot of gushing for both games so just be aware of that yet at the same time if you do not want to hear negative or critical things about either the original or the remake this isn't the video for you while i do adore both games i also consider each to be quite flawed and i will express both of these feelings so if that's a middle ground that may be unpalatable for you i totally understand i state all of these things because if any of that turns you off from this video i'm giving you the chance to leave right now there will be a lot of praise a decent amount of criticism and a primary focus on the story additionally i will be describing my personal experience with final fantasy vii to provide context for my thoughts and to better help you understand the mindset i approach these games from as well as some very subjective feelings i have on certain things this video is gigantic so there will be a table of contents in the description and pinned comment in case you'd like to navigate through or skip certain parts at your convenience with all that said i'd just like to finally thank you in advance for joining me on a very personal journey through the legend that is final fantasy vii i first started playing jrpgs in my freshman year of university in 2012 urged on by my roommate at the time who happened to be a huge fan of them aside from pokemon and paper mario i hadn't really had much exposure to games similar to jrpgs at all so i figured that this was a good chance to try them out my first one was final fantasy vi and my second was chrono trigger so you can imagine that right from the off i was spoiled as hell and had basically conditioned myself to what i perceived to be masterpieces i played a few more and then eventually decided to give final fantasy 7 a try in 2013. i wasn't oblivious to this game's reputation so i had heard a great deal about it but at the same time i didn't really know what to expect and had somehow managed to stay mostly spoiler-free long story short i played it beat it relatively quickly and loved it particularly for how beautifully it presented its plot however while it became a favorite of mine i didn't really adore it in the way that i knew so many people did rather than it being a top five game for me as it is for so many it was instead treading water somewhere around the boundaries of my top 25 it is pretty silly but due to the problems i had with it which dragged it down quite a bit i felt like someone on the outside looking in when it came to this game never really loving it as much as i wished i did even if i did indeed love it i will talk about some of the problems later on but the point is that i was being a whiny little kid because i thought that the game that i had just completed was a 9 out of 10 instead of a 10. so you can imagine how excited i was when a couple of years later it was announced that the game would be getting a remake if done well this was a potential chance for me to fall harder in love with the world plot and characters of final fantasy vii in the way that so many had as long as it captured and enhanced the story adequately so i was banking on this new game to be awesome fast forward to 2020 and to once again make a long story short i'm totally smitten with the remake i would never claim that it isn't full of imperfections some of them being the level design low effort side quests pacing problems and texture issues to name a few before i go deeper but it hit all the spots i hoped it would and then some and succeeded with flying colors in all of the ways that i dreamed it would and as a result it helped me to fall in love with the story as much as i wanted to in the first place through this it indirectly helped me to connect with the original more and thanks to final fantasy vii remake i was no longer on the outside looking in i now truly love the holistic world of this story as much as i love some of my other strong personal favorites i'd even say that once all is said and done i wouldn't rule out the possibility of the completed remake becoming my favorite game ever that's how much i like it and that's how much it changed things for me this is another part of the reason that i'm making this video because now i'm overflowing with a passion for the story that i never used to have and i also have that awful emotional hole in my heart that we all get upon completing an amazing piece of work one that i hope to fill through talking about the story i say all of this because as a result i am more appreciative of the remake than i otherwise would be of a game with similar quality it's a sort of bias of mine that i've got to be honest about but despite this i am absolutely convinced of the sheer level of artistry put into it i'm not lying to myself about how good i believe it is and i will do my best to explain where i think it succeeded so well in the story department along with my thoughts on the original throughout this video i'll jump around a little but i will more or less go through the overall story in a chronological order talking about things in the writing or presentation of either or both games that i find to be noteworthy i will talk about things that i believe the original did better than the remake and vice versa as well as why i believe that to be the case thanks in part to some information and interpretations i've found from content on the series i will also be speculating and theory crafting about some of the mysteries in the remake so it's important to know that when i do so i could be wrong and i am not acting as if these interpretations are objectively correct i'm just laying it all out there because they're the ones i see most intrigue or value in however there are certain instances where the things i discuss will be fact due to being confirmed by the ultimania the game or some other resource and i will make it clear when this is the case also please note that when i discuss the remake i am talking about the english dubbed version when i refer to any instances of voice acting of course at the time of this video only part one of the remake has been released so after i cover its material i will primarily focus on the original game in a second video to accompany this one occasionally noting certain ways that i hope the remake will approach things in the future and lastly while i will be referring to some sources throughout the video i'd welcome you to check through the full list of references in the description because some of the theories and critiques i will describe are ones that i was introduced to through other people's opinions ones that i may not have come up with on my own [Music] there's no better place to start than to discuss one of the most prevailing and important elements of the franchise overall the music out of the 11 final fantasy games that i played i would consider six of the soundtracks to be among my favorites ever with the rest still being very good in their own right and the original score for seven from nobuo uematsu is without doubt one of the best if not the best i've rarely come across a score that so accurately captures the tone and atmosphere of the story beats and locations that it resides in while also being songs that sound terrific independent from the game that they accentuate from the grimy and moody wall market to the warm and soft homey feel of tifa's theme to the rollicking booming adrenaline of the bombing mission or genova battle to the deep darkness of tracks like off the edge of despair and much more melancholy desolation deep striking emotion tense buildups this soundtrack does it all and with such astounding consistent quality and as a result a very valid concern among fans leading up to the release of the remake was that the new songs just wouldn't match up however those fears were absolutely misplaced because the collaborative work done by uematsu masashi hamauzu mitsudo suzuki and a few others is possibly just as good it's incredibly clever in that it doesn't try to emulate the original as that would no doubt lead to lesser and more disappointing versions which is actually what i believe the design philosophy of the game as a whole may be but more on that later instead what this score does is vary things up and provide alternate takes on the classics while maintaining the same soul and spirit for instance the reimagining of the genova battle and one-winged angels songs are complex arrangements that slowly build until they reach these stunning and powerful crescendos that quite literally gave me chills while playing the quieter remixes of things like tifa's theme aerith's theme or on our way helped me feel a sense of emotional nostalgia that i never knew i had for the original and the new tracks such as jessie's theme collapsed expressway and hollow the game's brilliant new main theme all fit so seamlessly into the rest of the tracks that it feels like they were part of the original i am not at all trained in music and i'm a complete amateur so forgive my lack of education but if i were to describe it i'd say that the style of the remake soundtrack is more subtle orchestral and sweeping compared to the bolder less complex and more striking original tracks just a note of the stylistic differences here both are stellar and neither style is inherently superior to the other moving into the game proper we begin with what i now consider to be two of my three favorite openings to any video game i've ever played the other being the first few minutes of xenoblade chronicles for anyone wondering in both games the bombing mission openings work not only as pulsating introductions that draw the player in immediately but they're also full of little details that acclimatize the player to the thematic and setting factors that will be very important later on and it does this in a really integrative way we begin with aerith in both games though in the remake this sequence is a bit more elaborate and her appearance is preceded by about two minutes of awesome establishment for midgar sweeping shots of the surrounding barren wasteland the goings-on within the city itself children playing all punctuated by occasional notes of one-winged angel which if certain theories are to be believed may hint at the mysteries of the overall plot and sephiroth's role in it in terms of the original there's a pretty prevalent theory that's been around for a while that the entire story is a flash forward that aerith witnesses when looking into the livestream here which is a pretty cool idea to think about after she is disturbed and interrupted by something in the remake something that may be important that we'll talk about later we zoom out from aerith and see the full and grand scale of midgar the music booms the title drops and i get chills for both openings every single time from here we zoom to a train speeding towards reactor 1 a train carrying our protagonist group avalanche and our main hero cloud strife cloud is interesting for me particularly because for the longest time he's been someone i greatly respected as well written but one who never stuck out to me as a video game protagonist that i could really call a favorite he is absolutely essential to everything that the story is being the biggest puzzle piece for the plot revelations and a representation of the theme of identity which isn't the primary idea of the work but is an important one nonetheless but the original cloud has just never been a character i found particularly magnetic or really appealing and i think a big reason why is because of how he's presented at this point in the story cloud is spoiler warning an amalgamation of a bunch of different ideas personalities and genova cells forming the persona he masquerades as early on it's not like there isn't the real cloud in there though there is the essence of who he truly is which as we see later on was brought forth when tifa found him nearly zombified at the station but it's very heavily implied that the genova cells within him only triggered these scraps of memories due to her reinforcing them and not independently we'll discuss how this happens later on but the point is that through simply talking with him and jogging old memories tifa helped him click into place the pieces of his past and some other artificial scraps to form a semblance of an identity for cloud in fact it is likely thanks to tifa that cloud didn't end up like the other test subjects that we see throughout the story and that he centers himself with some basis of truth in his identity but at the same time he's also a mess thanks to the genova cells within him there is also a part of him that has confused and conflated his identity with his now deceased friend and mentor zach fair he's also integrated his ideas of the quote-unquote ideal soldier first class into his personality as well as that of a cool and collected mercenary and he often tries to act the part sometimes it comes off as cool and sometimes it doesn't though as i'll mention i personally think that this is part of his own personality too and he's consistently willed forward by a voice in his head that urges him to reunite with something in short cloud's personality in the game is incredibly multifaceted and complex thanks to these factors and to properly pull that off there has to be a hell of a lot of nuance in how he's presented cloud needs to be constantly conflicted confused insecure missing context and memories somewhat immature and unable to express himself and handle certain situations after all he's essentially a 17 year old in a 21 year old's body due to being submerged in mako unconscious for four years and while it did do a serviceable job in getting this across the original wasn't brilliant at it for me it is something that is very hard to present authentically simply through text and dialogue so i don't blame the original for that and the millions of people who love cloud are evidence enough that it did a good job in getting across an effectively conflicted personality to buy into but personally it wasn't quite enough to push him from very good to excellent a little more subtlety and presentation would have elevated him a bit and this sort of character is one who i think benefits a lot from modern perks such as facial animations body language and voice acting however in the remake we're dealing with a whole other story remake cloud is one of my favorite video game protagonists ever and this is primarily because the presentation here was not only able to capture the inner conflict but it managed to make him very endearing and likable something that doesn't tend to be brought up a ton is that cloud is often a dork he's very capable probably the strongest fighter in midgar but due to his young mental age and his fixation on being the badass ideal soldier he just comes across sometimes as a childish dork trying to be cool in addition he also has a soft side a caring and compassionate one that he occasionally and clumsily tries to express and these two aspects help to balance out cloud's cold edginess really well the original game did show this soft underbelly yet not quite often or effectively enough for me to contrast his occasional douchebaggery but the remake pulled it off beautifully through subtle little facial animations body cues nuanced dialogue and of course the awesome performance from cody christian cloud is realized extremely well here capturing the ideal mix of badass lonely internally conflicted and kinda adorably awkward no charm no wit big sword but no skills i've got skills be nice his cool guy facade drops really easily and you can tell that although he talks the talk of a seasoned veteran he's still a kid in many respects and all of these scattered layers are made semi-functional by a young man in essence who's just doing his best to hold it all together with his heart undoubtedly in the right place [Music] learn to talk to her did the flower say anything uh good work today guys that's the spirit i've seen some scorn here and there about cloud being unrealistically socially inept and strange in this portrayal but given that he was always a lonely sort of outcast even when he was a kid plus the patchwork state of his mentality thanks to the experimentation plus that four year time skip for him taking all that into consideration he's never once not felt very organic and believable to me and seeing how he was realized throughout the remake just had me overjoyed at how well the entire team just got it i guess we'll build another bar yeah we will you'll help too won't you [Music] or a price [Music] and though i do emphasize that cloud is presented well in the original overall this is probably the best place to segue into my biggest problem with the classic which i'm sure you can guess is the translation simply put it just isn't good at all for a variety of reasons a lot of them not necessarily having to do with the skill of the translator themselves this game is very poorly translated and not properly localized even in the official versions that have come out since with improvements i will provide a resource in the description that digs deeper into this topic in case you're interested but the point here is that while the script isn't an absolute incomprehensible travesty it is noticeably bad in places and this is an issue that consistently crops up throughout the game which unfortunately drags the experience down significantly for someone as invested in dialogue and presentation as i am with a game like the original final fantasy vii everything gets slightly diluted and weakened with a translation that isn't firing on all cylinders characters come across as less nuanced some moments are straight up immersion breaking due to how they're written and the story and world in general just feel slightly disconnected that was one of my biggest hopes for the remake that the dialogue would be skillfully translated and localized full of nuance and flavor to enhance the characters and story and i was delighted with the results because i think it was great and totally improved the experience through providing much more good character work and subtext through the script helped a lot by other elements as well of course it elevates everything and helps the emotions of the characters shine through which really does wonders for connecting the players deeply with the story in a more intimate way and cloud is a great example of how this sort of thing can really enhance a character for me anyway i'm not sure that this will be a popular opinion but hey this opening mission also introduces us to jesse biggs and wedge all of whom i'll touch on later and one of the most important characters in barrett wallace i won't talk too much about barrett in the remake here and will instead direct you to the video i made about him a little while back for my full thoughts but overall i think he's wonderfully realized flashed out and deepened quite a lot and he goes through a decent amount of subtle progression in part one alone that can easily go under the radar the entirety of chapter one is kind of an indirect and very natural way to characterize the type of layered person barrett is primarily through subtext and good voice acting from john eric bentley but what it also does as a result in both the remake and the original is introduce the primary conflict in the midgar portion of the game the mako issue in this setting the planet is fueled by a type of energy called mako this energy is derived from the lifestream that flows throughout the planet and is essentially the wellspring of all life from it life and nature is brought forth bountifully and when anything dies it returns to the planet to become a part of that integrative lifestream once more and to fuel life further and aside from the obvious environmentalist ideas here the nature of this setting portrays an everlastingly intimate and profound idea hironobu sakaguchi the producer of the original game and one of the primary creative heads behind the story has said that the thematic premise of final fantasy vii came from a very personal place however the specifics of this are widely misinterpreted many say that sakaguchi came up with some of the main ideas of the story due to his mother passing away during the development of seven but in an interview in 1997 he stated that she died while he was working on final fantasy 3 in 1988. yet regardless he also states that her death was still affecting him while he was working on seven and so as a way of grieving and healing from this loss he chose to craft a story that had the idea of the cycle of life and death at its core and the life stream is a fundamentally beautiful way to portray this through setting design the concepts of life and death the abundant flow of birth and rebirth the natural cycle of things how those who pass don't ever truly depart us and how their memories and energy remain to empower us even when they're gone all of this is portrayed through the life stream and it isn't just a form of life energy it also carries with it all of the knowledge and memories of those who have passed as well as the energy of all living things being profoundly all-encompassing in that way however during the time span of the story shinra corporation is monopolizing what is simultaneously a beautiful and natural phenomenon as well as the lifeblood of the planet for their own needs to fuel midgar this superpower of a city that is being sustained by sucking the life stream out of the areas around it if you'll notice the land surrounding midgar is arid and devoid of life in both games so it is also visually presented that in creating this city that promotes such reductive class differences and unfair hierarchies under the front of prosperity for all shinra is harming the planet bringing forth the ever-present and relevant idea of humans being much more of a detriment than a benefit to the place they inhabit so the goal of barret and avalanche is to frustrate their plans by destroying the eight reactors that power the city however the problem here is that the crew are naive and in way over their head not properly ready for the fight that they've started with an entity as powerful as shinra and in barrett's case fueled by a heartfelt rage and hate rather than reason and with societal dynamics firmly rooted in place for better or for worse shattering this foundation will cause much more collateral damage than any of these people would like this is demonstrated after the bombing succeeds touched upon pretty significantly in the original but absolutely powered home in the remake as we really see the widespread pain fear and destruction this causes as well as the grey tinges the people from shinra who are good and beneficial just trying their best to help and contribute to society again i'll direct you to my video on barrett if you want a more elaborate explanation on the elements that the remake uses to really emphasize this and as a side note when he's about to plant the bomb in the original cloud is visited by a strange voice telling him that this isn't a reactor which is a remnant from a scene that was ultimately cut from the finished game our protagonists begin to make their escape shortly after this and what is a relatively straightforward escape sequence in the original is made much more elaborate in the remake this is the section where we begin to see a contrast in storytelling style between the two games that we'll discuss more in just a minute and the remake from the very beginning of chapter 2 has some very interesting things added in such as cloud flashing back to nibelheim almost immediately or this line from aerith lovers used to give these when they were reunited it's a clear hint at both the artificial will and natural legacy of zack being carried on in cloud and meeting again with aerith as well as the theme of reunion as it pertains to the plot and perhaps the way it is used as a meta textual theme for the remake as a whole either way there are tons of these little tidbits right from the off that only really mean something to people who know the full story already in addition to this here cloud becomes plagued with visions of sephiroth in the remake which brings me to another comparison the contrast in how our main villain is handled between the two games a common opinion that i tend to see is that the remake shoves him in the player's face far too often that part of what made sephiroth special in the original is how understated and quiet he is and how that forms a presence around him he barely speaks at all in the earlier part of the game and is built up through word of mouth and an ominous aura that slowly builds giving him huge impact in the times where he does speak and show himself and making those moments have true significant weight a lot of those moments being flashbacks or him talking through genova on the other hand in the remake he appears right in the beginning to cloud immediately taunting him with cryptic words making him relive certain horrors of his past asking him to join him and help him to save the planet to run and live on so that the bond between them can remain all of this being interesting dialogue that may hint at his plan and intentions and this continues throughout the game as sephiroth pretty frequently appears to cloud in these visions but the thing is sephiroth is a fundamentally different character in the remake compared to who he is in the original actually if you go by many of the theories he is the same person who has experienced the events of the original game lost nearly died tried to be resurrected in the sequel movie advent children and now wants to change things to help explain this i will provide a link to a dropped frames podcast where the gentleman involved read some excerpts from a couple of side novels entitled livestream black and livestream white written by kazushige nojima who also wrote the original final fantasy vii in these chapters we learn about how sephiroth managed to survive as a wisp in the livestream after the story holding on to prevent himself from disappearing we learn how he was able to maintain himself by latching on to cloud creating some semblance of existence attached to him and we learned that aerith did something similar thanks to her cetra blood she had the ability to disseminate into the livestream if she desired but decided that it was too early because she needed to fixate on stopping sephiroth and meteor partly through holy and partly through her sentiment being carried on through those she cared for but if we circle back to the sephiroth revelations we learn exactly how he's responsible for the geostigma disease that was a major plot point of advent children and how he created three agents khadaj laws and yazoo to carry on his will in that story but the main thing to make note of is that his life has latched onto cloud and as long as cloud is aware of sephiroth he seems to be able to continue to exist this is what grounds him and allows him to maintain himself and this may be part of why he constantly pesters cloud in this game and if you factor in the insane knowledge that he seems to have of things that he never knew in the original it would seem that he has looped back here to alter destiny after his failures he has somehow found the means to reposition himself in this timeline in the forefront of the events that he's already experienced because he wants to defy the seemingly set fate that led to his eventual downfall this being the case may explain why he has all sorts of strange powers that seem more extreme than before and additionally sephiroth in advent children is characterized by black feathers which are associated with him in the remake but not the original so that could be a sign that this sephiroth is the same one who has experienced advent children also i mentioned the notes of one winged angel in the very beginning of the introduction which could very well be a musical hint to this new sephiroth presence as well in addition to this we can add some more concrete canon information to piece things together a bit more clearly because the remake ultimania reveals that there are four versions of sephiroth firstly the type that only cloud sees the illusion of sorts that taunts and goads cloud on to tackle both fate and the reunion for his own plans second there's a sephiroth seen through genova beings and the black cloaked men with tattoos hojo's experiments these are cases of sephiroth enacting his will through genova to manipulate these men and appear as sephiroth to others despite not being in his actual body and this version is visible to everyone except in the earlier part of the game where it seems like only cloud can see sephiroth through marco third there are past recollections of sephiroth simple flashbacks this is the least common version only appearing very subtly through little lines here and there that cloud remembers from his past and lastly there is the sephiroth that doesn't take form from the test subjects yet also appears to everyone not just cloud this sephiroth is described as completely unknown even for players with knowledge of the original game in my opinion versions 1 and 4 are the most important for the story although obviously all of them have functions on screen right now is a translated summary of all of the versions as provided by the ultimania and a link to a twitter thread that contains this information will be provided in the description you may want to pause the video here to acclimatize yourself to the four different sephiroths as described by the book anyways sephiroth 1 the version that only cloud sees that appears to him internally is immensely important for the sake of the new plot in the remake because it is the one that is representative of sephiroth's seemingly new goals and boulder characterization harassing cloud due to their connection and his need to continue to exist in his consciousness goading him on towards the reunion and his new plans this version is the most obtrusive but he's also very revealing and it's partly due to his nature that we can make the connection between what happens in livestream black to what he is doing in the remake sephiroth iv on the other hand is seen less but is roughly as important because of how he indirectly offers huge revelations for the secrets of the plot skipping ahead for a moment as confirmed by the ultimania sephiroth iv first appears when he tells the party to join him in destiny's crossroads to overturn fate and everything in the endgame from that point on is this same sephiroth who again is clearly able to be seen by both the party and cloud sephiroth 1 while still being very real is an illusion that is only meant for cloud whereas sephiroth 2 is only able to present himself through genova clones and sephiroth 3 only exists in the past so sephiroth 4 is the only one of the three that seems to be him himself in every state of being perhaps even in his own body however if you've played the original you know that this can't be the case and doesn't make sense because at this point in the story sephiroth's real body is on the other side of the world in the northern crater there is the possibility that they've simply decided to completely change that plot point around but i don't think this is the case because the reunion is very obviously still key due to the huge emphasis on the cloaked men and the other parts of the story that are untouched and consistent so it seems to be confirmed that this is a different sephiroth from the original and since there is a clearly stated distinction from the ultimania between sephiroth 4's place in the story and the others it also seems highly likely that there are two genuine sephiroth bodies in the game one that the party fights at the end of part one and one in the northern crater that we're familiar with from the original when playing the remake for the first time i never made this distinction between sephiroth's and just assumed that the sephiroth we fought in the climax was just a souped-up genova clone but it being pointed out that this isn't a genova body and that it is sephiroth himself is huge because it essentially indirectly confirms that this is a new sephiroth distinct from everything we know about the original and defined as unknown one who seems to be aware of everything that happens which substantiates the time traveling theory a decent amount although having said that i need to stress again that this time travel stuff may not be the case maybe sephiroth is aware of these extra things for other reasons that i haven't mentioned maybe sephiroth 4 originates from something completely out of left field and maybe this will prove to be totally wrong but this is just what i view to be the most plausible theory with the most evidence and the most interesting implications having said that with all of this talk about these numbered sephiroths i don't think that it's meant to be understood that all of these versions are completely independent from one another sephiroth iv is the most so but even though he's obsessed with destroying fate he's also concerned with the reunion as it is a huge part of his plan as well and through his illusions sephiroth 1 alludes to things about both the reunion and the meta aspect and though sephiroth 2 does act on the part of the sephiroth and the northern crater in the original here he seems to be aware of these new goals as such they are all clearly linked and feed cloud visions to their end and it's also possible that one and four may even be connected to the sephiroth in the northern crater somehow assuming that he's still there of course time will tell on that one but regardless i think all of these versions are interlinked in some way because ultimately they seem to desire the same thing and are driving events in that direction whether it be through the words of sephiroth 1 to cloud or the way that sephiroth 2 takes control of genova bodies to direct the party or the way that sephiroth 4 dictates the plan in the end so with all of this in mind not only does it make sense that his presence is invasive and approached in a nearly opposite way to the original but he would of course want to interfere as much as possible to alter how fate plays out so that he can win this time and for reasons that may be explained by those novel excerpts he is very concerned with his link and bond to cloud being maintained even apart from the reasons tied to the original plot's reunion so it makes sense that he wants to guide him this is a sephiroth that has grown and learned and become much more of a genuine individual here than he is in the original it's less of a slow build to emphasize his presence and much more of him displaying his sheer influence time and time again it's a totally different role and regardless of which role you think is executed better i lean towards the original for what it's worth my point here is that having sephiroth emulate the style in which he was presented originally would be totally missing the point of what this new story is trying to do and how it attempts to distinguish itself because if you'll allow me to digress i absolutely think that the remake is made primarily for people who have beat the original and ideally experienced the other compilation works whether it be due to time travel or something else it is a revisit to the same story from sephiroth to alter the events into something more beneficial for him as such it is a story whose plot points hinge on the player understanding certain differences between the original and the remake and so that impact is heightened when we see how the story is changed and foreshadowed in comparison to what we know obviously this isn't always the case but on a general level there are two potential experiences and reactions that people will have upon playing this game for the first time when seeing all of the changes that have been made one for a newcomer and one for a fan a newcomer will see cloud getting visions of future events such as aerith's death and red thirteen species prowling the planet in the future and wonder what the hell those visions are alluding to a fan will see this stuff and wonder why cloud is being shown these visions of the future when he wasn't shown them in the original what is sephiroth planning by showing him these painful things that are fated to happen a newcomer will see zach towards the end and wonder who the hell this guy is and maybe guess that he was the first man that aerith ever loved while also maybe guessing that his fate was changed in a big way without knowing exactly how a fan will freak out and realize the monumental significance of these changes that have occurred in whatever reality it was that zack survived a newcomer will see big surviving at the end and be happy because of it and an old fan will be both happy and shocked because this isn't how things happened in the original this latter perspective is the one more tied to the plot the newly introduced theme of the nuances of fate and reality and the intrigue that the story is laying down and the hints it provides are not ones that are meant for people who have no idea what these visions mean or who zack is or why it's so significant that big survives but for people who will understand the importance of this i'm not saying that a newcomer to the series can't enjoy the game because i've seen countless who play it and totally love it but there is a notable amount of things that can be lost in translation for someone who has no meta context and that can make the experience slightly less impactful and a little sub-optimal just my opinion to get back on topic that is my justification for why remake sephiroth is handled the way he is he has the same motivations and traumas as he does in the original but added to this is a sheer defiance for victory and existence an obsession with cloud and a knowledge of what causes his downfall leading to a determination to correct and change those things so of course he's loud and in your face he has to destroy fate and there's no way to do that passively but in contrast to the louder characterization he's written with the voice actor for sephiroth while not doing a terrible job put in a performance that is a little bland and flat not full of as much menace or weight as i'd prefer that which binds us together would be no more and i would be loathe to live in such a world which is why i must ask you this one favor don't worry it's a simple thing it's not a travesty of a performance but it is one of the only two in the remake that i was disappointed with which is too bad on a note somewhat related to our villain i'm relatively indifferent towards the controversial whispers in the remake confirmed by the ultimania to be representations of the events of the original they're just a pretty one-note plot device that attempt to keep fate on its rightful course whose actions are more or less instinctual and redirect the chain of events to their end what i will say is that they're very cleverly integrated in terms of the multitude of ways that they affect the plot it's really impressive to see how many instances the game hints at their function and what they might be changing in different situations that translated tweet thread i mentioned contains a chart listing all of the ways in which the whispers affect the story and it's pretty damn cool to see how many things the writers thought of having said that i definitely understand being annoyed by the way that the whispers impact the game while the logic behind their inclusions from scene to scene may be cool to think about they can be irritating at times and they're essentially shoved into the player's face however i do find them to be an interesting and poetic idea conceptually even if the execution is pretty blunt and clunky i mean what better than a ghost originating from the planet to bridge the gaps between the new themes of fate introduced in the remake and the older and already established ideas of mortality the whispers see things changing and they're restless not necessarily because they have unfinished business personally but because something threatens the prosperity they value and the safety of the planet they're not elegantly handled but they're kind of interesting to think about and they do the job in building intrigue and what interests me most about them is the amount of controls sephiroth has over them he is clearly at odds with them and needs them to disappear to control his destiny but at the same time he is able to wield them to a certain extent both in and outside of battle even after they're defeated and it's implied that he uses them to influence the party in certain ways my wild guess is that his connection to the planet gives him a modicum of power over them but not enough to rewrite their programming and prevent them from maintaining fate in this timeline and that is where the protagonists come in but i'm getting ahead of myself getting back to the flow of events in the story we have some skirmishes meet a flower girl and escape and the crew eventually takes the train back to their home in sector 7 concluding this introductory phase of the story and through comparing the approach taken to this introduction between the two games we can see one of the huge differences the disparity in terms of pacing what is a pretty snappy and quick opening mission in the original takes up the entirety of the first two chapters out of 18 in the remake and that isn't a slight on the remake in any sense in fact i think it's a great decision to fully flesh out this mission because of everything i mentioned that it deepens but this is an indication of the direction that the remake leans in on the whole one that really rings everything it can out of these midgar sequences in general the pacing of the original is awesome and sharp and full of focus and momentum and that is the case at times with the remake too but at points it loses that sharp focus as it tries to cover as much midgar as it can and sometimes that is definitely to its detriment not here though here it's all fantastic we finally arrive in sector 7 and make our way over to avalanche's home base of 7th heaven an interesting contrast between the two versions here is that in the original barrett busts in the bar and literally shoots his gun inside scaring customers away so the crew can be alone and then he scoops up marlene in the remake they omit the abrasive anger and go straight to the heart as he lovingly greets and embraces his daughter before entering an already empty bar it isn't whitewashing barrett because he remains a reckless hothead who is good at heart yet is called out for not being a good person in terms of methods and in both versions there's an air of immature naivete to him as he seems to so easily cast aside the fact that he's just caused widespread pain but it seems that there was a conscious decision to tone things back a little bit in the remake regardless here we can finally take a breather and soak in the atmosphere of the game in a much more quiet and comforting context and who better to offer this warmth than the absolutely amazing tifa lockhart in both the original and the remake tifa is without doubt one of the best characters in the story probably being my favorite overall in the original and the remake's visuals help emphasize this warmth too often showing her early on in these locales consisting of soft and comforting colors but there is much more to tifa than a pretty face and an inviting energy as revealed in flashbacks later on in the original and as mentioned before from the moment she first finds cloud in midgar tifa becomes burdened with the knowledge that something has gone seriously wrong with him even setting aside the dubious circumstances of his appearance he has gaps in his memory the things he says don't add up or are incorrect and being more familiar with him than anyone else she just knows that something is off with him and it scares her it's a painful and terrifying bit of knowledge to have that someone you care so much about just isn't right and she doesn't want to upset cloud or make things worse so she never outright states that the things he's saying don't make sense at least not early on one can view tifa not telling cloud these things as pretty messed up but personally i don't agree given that one cloud is precariously teetering off the edge mentally for a great portion of the story and she fears that saying anything may push him off for good and 2 certain events happen throughout that cause her to question her own memory but while she doesn't directly mention anything when cloud does say something that's odd through either visuals or dialogue you can just see her fracture and feel that anxiety a little bit before she covers it up sometimes well sometimes badly either way her inner conflict and hesitancy is presented well in both games and brit barron does a pretty fantastic job in portraying this uneasiness through subtle little variations in intonation as tifa tries her best to work through these difficult things hey you think cloud's doing okay he's been acting really weird lately more than usual true but it's cloud i'm sure i'll be fine but what about you how are you holding up huh oh i'm fine you can see it in the character acting and the dialogue tifa brushes this sort of thing off and says that she's fine but it's clear that something worries her about cloud's situation and in a beautiful scene that we'll get to eventually we see how big this weight really is and how tough it feels to shoulder it but despite this she is absolutely cloud's rock in this game the one person who stayed by his side through everything and the one who helps him find the truth about himself later on without her support cloud would not have recovered and he wouldn't have made any breakthroughs but even aside from cloud tifa displays this supportive caring nature to everyone around her and she truly values her home and relationships while others may get sidetracked by other emotions psychological issues or different motives tifa almost always has connection and compassion at the forefront of her thoughts and i consider her to be the heart of final fantasy vii her personality is interesting in that in comparison to aerith she's a bit softer which one may not initially think judging by appearances she's an amazing fighter and she kicks total ass but she's just a bit more hesitant quiet and withdrawn than aerith in terms of personality and this is partly due to the fact that she's shouldering such a big burden of knowledge but it's also just who she is in the beginning it puts her in a bit of a standstill with her friends she wants to help save the planet but isn't happy to go along with avalanche's dangerous plans because she senses the possible repercussions and questions things yet even still it just isn't really something that she can stop i know we have to think big if we're going to make a difference but not like this i just i feel trapped [Music] she's just a really sensitive soul and it pains her beyond belief when her home and friends are lost she isn't an advocate of the fighting but essentially gets roped in anyways and finds that it's something that she just has to do which really helps in putting her in a sympathetic light for the player and i'll only say this once i promise but i have had to pick up my jaw off the ground numerous times during the remake because of how goddamn beautiful she is like holy hell is she gorgeous my god anyways even though part one of the remake doesn't really offer the part of the story that tifa shines the most in the game had a genuine understanding of the dynamics of who she is and how that manifests in her relationships particularly with cloud and the direction highlights this well for instance that hesitancy i mentioned is portrayed visually through her conversation with cloud in chapter four while the two characters have a great connection and awesome chemistry there is that aforementioned communication gap that distances them from one another and this scene shows that through the large amount of space between them here on a shallow level it could represent the secret that cloud is keeping from tifa at this point in time but i believe that it primarily portrays this deeper more painful gap that only tifa is really aware of other earlier scenes show this distance as well in the bar after doing some quests and at times we see tifa making efforts to close that distance visualizing her attempt to reach him through his struggle when questioned about his past cloud fumbles a little and characteristically teva respects that and doesn't pry but she can't just sit there and allow the man she cares about to just go on like this and that is a big part of her role in the story it's all an example of how well the remake flexes its directorial chops it does this throughout the game pretty damn consistently and this is among the best examples of how much it communicates this section of the game is where we're able to take a load off a little bit in both versions and get to know the living and breathing city of midgar which leads to a pretty important topic of comparison again all the way back from when i first played the original i've always found midgar and the rest of the setting to be brilliantly conceived but i felt a disconnect with the scale of the place for reasons that i couldn't quite place i hope you'll forgive me for waffling on about vague preference here but this isn't really a criticism from me and i don't think there's any real flaws with the ways that it's executed in the original game the background art is absolutely stunning the world is very fleshed out and the music ties it all together beautifully but i've never been as immersed in midgar in particular as i felt that i should have been the city just never felt as grand as the game was telling me it was and this isn't me just hating on the presentation of older games because three of my top five games ever are classic jrpgs but midgar just felt small maybe it was the actual size or maybe it was the top down perspective which for me didn't really help in making the city feel vast in fairness there are a decent amount of small cutscenes that do show this grandness and scale but the in-game travel aside from a couple of exceptions including the one on screen never really gave me that sprawling metropolis feel it's just that i was very aware that i was playing a well-designed video game when exploring midgar rather than forgetting about all that i was doing and engaging with it on a deep level this was a me problem and i was very much aware of that and didn't blame the game for it but it was still a shame so along with improved nuance in the script and character work my other big hope for final fantasy vii remake was for it to fully expand upon midgar in a way that filled this void and luckily midgar is realized beautifully in the remake while i do have some minor complaints about texture problems and a relative lack of unique interactivity npcs who repeat their lines or don't do or say much at all that sort of thing overall i think it's a dream of a setting for this first part there's a great amount of organic attention to detail to the layout of the place and how these locales came to be the settlements really have the feel of these places that people were forced to build around and find some sort of life within amidst the fallen debris and infertile land but that sort of thing is present in the original as well to an extent what really changes things for me is that it now has a vastness to it you are not forced to look down upon this dynamic city anymore you can now shift the camera up and see the sky or an overhead plate or reactor just the simple ability to look up and take in these monumental landmarks that are so characteristic of the place adds such a sense of grandness believability and cohesion to the world almost every time that i'd be able to swivel the camera and look at shinra headquarters or the beautiful midgar skyline from within those headquarters or even just the streets at night i got chills as great and stylized as this part of the setting is in the original for me an optimal and fully realized midgar needs this increased size and perspective to help it truly become the best it can be after a short rest the original game swiftly moves into the next reactor bombing job the crew leaves marlene a young child in charge of the bar all by herself which is pretty interesting judgment on their part and they then head to the train on route to sector 5's reactor in the remake however there is quite a bit more material before we get there after some errands tutorializing and fighting monsters we move into chapter 4 which continues the very strong start to the game through adding this completely new segment as the dust settles a bit after the sector 1 mission jessie asks cloud to help her with a favor back at her home the sector 7 employee housing district where her mother and father live the narrative purpose here is twofold firstly to flesh out the nuances of midgar a bit more through introducing a part of the setting that we've never seen before and secondly to deepen the characters of jesse biggs and wedge after the latter two joined the mission shortly after jesse's request following a chase sequence with roche who was initially supposed to have a bigger role in this game but who i didn't really end up caring much for we arrive at the upper plate thanks in part to the lovely jessie's theme playing here the place is soaked with a warm and inviting atmosphere and aside from seventh heaven and aerith's house i'd say it's probably the most pleasant place that we explore in midgar whereas the slums are very cramped and kind of strewn together in most places the employee housing district is very much upper class comparatively paved streets street lights cars and most importantly lots of space in between the residences and across the surface area space being an indicator of higher class and luxury while this place pretty much seems like a middle-class suburban neighborhood when compared to real world standards and while the absolute top dogs of the setting live much more lavishly than this these people are living like kings compared to those down below and the class divide that people like barrett resent is obvious here yet to once again demonstrate that there is complexity in midgar societal situation it isn't portrayed as a place where the people here act totally or privileged or snobby a lot of them are good folks like jesse's parents and the economic imbalance is just a sad fact of the city that they feel they have no choice but to perpetuate i mean with the possibility of change seeming so slim would you turn down a life of comfort especially given that someone else will take your spot were you to reject it these people have been taught that ideals are immaterial and powerless here and have resigned to just trying to live out the best life they can for them and their loved ones folks here must be living up three or four times what i do this all makes for a nice little breather sequence to ponder and reflect on these extra details but it also works as a nice way to learn about jesse's dad a worker at shinra who collapsed from mako poisoning and has been unresponsive since and this is as good a time as any to lead into the character work done for the avalanche trio which is one of my favorite elements of the remake i don't want to downplay the way that the original approached these three by saying that they were nothing characters because they do have bits of personality in it biggs gets preoccupied with sacrifice jessie expresses guilt about thinking that she set the bomb off too vigorously and is actually portrayed as more incompetent and wedge contains a kernel of the personality that he has in the remake that he's a self-proclaimed coward just trying his best to contribute but despite this they are miles better in the remake thanks to the increased focus on them and the improved presentation through the subject of her father we learned that jessie was on route to becoming a fairly successful actress but doubled back on that in order to join avalanche and save the planet according to wedge she believes that her father's spirit is caught in between his body and the planet and that if shinra continues to suck the planet dry he'll be lost forever so that's her primary reason for joining but she still harbors ambitions to save the planet for the planet's sake and to help stick it to the corporation that has screwed both friends and family this motivation speaks of jessie's sincere sense of heart something that guides her throughout the story i mean the entire point of this very quest is to secure a proper blasting agent to reduce the chances of causing excess damage during the next mission since jessie blames herself for the destruction caused earlier on that is the type of person she is but there's also another side to her since the game's release it's been widely acknowledged and celebrated in some circles that jessie is incredibly horny and that's undeniable she's flirty and rambunctious and definitely wants cloud bad she teases and wedge says that it's all a game to her but for me it's clear that regardless of her game she does legitimately have interest i like to look at the three main women of this game as a spectrum in terms of their relationship with cloud on one end we have tifa four very justifiable reasons that we discussed she doesn't push cloud much doesn't often tease him or take him out of his comfort zone and she is comfort itself she is safety and she is home jesse however is way on the other end she's almost intrusive she cuts in on cloud's personal space hugging him kissing him straddling him she not so subtly implies that she wants to have sex with him and that naturally makes him uncomfortable as that just doesn't jive with the type of withdrawn person he is but at the same time as much as that may sound like it's a bad thing she jokes around about it to lessen her overbearing nature and overall her and cloud have a good healthy dynamic that i really enjoyed this is just who she is she's a reckless loving spirit who knows what she wants and i found that really endearing she always directs the conversation and she may be abrasive but she is the very first thing in the game that forces cloud to open up a bit and smile a little and one thing that she's very concerned about is making him feel valued and included in avalanche just because she crosses the line of comfortability at times doesn't mean that she doesn't care and that's something i'm sure cloud appreciates he likes jessie for how she helps him respect him and makes him feel welcome and he wouldn't be willing to help her with her mission or want to hear about her past or be so torn up at her death if he didn't she's fiery passionate and a contributor to a ton of fun character interactions and dynamics she's idealistic and optimistic about making the world better and hurt personally enough by shinra to lie steal from and deceive her family for what she believes is their own good even though it pains her to do so her constant fixation on her potential mistake at the reactor while incorporating player knowledge that she isn't nearly as responsible as she thinks shows her good intent and heart while highlighting avalanches naivete and above all jessie's just always fun and full of spirit whenever she's on screen which people genuinely tend to undervalue sometimes in favor of analysis she doesn't have vast depth but she plays her role well and she's very human and i love the scene where the avalanche trio and cloud are escaping with the parachutes and she just joyfully screams out that they can take on the world it actually made me a bit emotional because of what i knew would happen later and because i was just really touched and glad for her that she had found this sort of solace and avalanche at this moment she felt as though her dreams were in reach and helping support her is the all-around dependable just generally really good guy biggs he's probably the one of the trio with the least focus but he's a nice personality and a solid compliment to the cast there isn't really anything unique about him but he's the sort of supportive glue that accentuates any story well someone of honesty and good spirit immediately after the reactor one bombing he's forthright about how shaken up he gets at the repercussions of what they do and he openly admits how green he is to cloud which is another indicator of how in over their heads avalanches but he buys into barrett's ideals and does these things anyway hoping that it will lead to a better world while never totally feeling secure as wedge says he's an overthinker and tends to worry too much and you can see that when you talk to him at his home after the big parachuting scene he's visibly nervous and concerned about the mission the next day doing anything he can in this case cleaning to keep himself busy and keep his mind off of his anxiety it's a very believable quirk of his and i can definitely relate to that as that's what i tend to do in times of stress in addition to this he's also stated to have a connection with the school kids in sector 5's leaf house which is just a little detail that drives home his connection to this community again none of this is super special or impressive but he's likable and believable and it's just nice that he has these extra dimensions added to him last of all we have wedge voiced by badger from breaking bad which is pretty cool matt l jones does a great job in playing the kinda sorta comic relief character and although i do think that the writers overplay the wedges fat and likes to eat joke a bit too much aside from that i really enjoyed his character through his interactions with cloud he's immediately portrayed as very earnest and deceivingly intuitive wanting to befriend him and instinctually seeing that there's a softer side to the rough exterior wedge isn't a complicated guy he's just interested in connecting with others and simply wants to contribute to make a positive change in the world he's under no illusions about his limits and flaws but he works within and around them to do his best to lend a helping hand and make some sort of difference for a cause that he very much believes in he just wanted to be useful which he was right until the end and he resonated as a result of that in addition to the character work for these three we also see a flashback here that is shown in the original when first meeting tifa where her and cloud stargaze as children in their hometown of nibelheim cloud tells tifa that he's going to be leaving home soon to become a great soldier like sephiroth and that she won't see him for a while tifa gets him to promise that when he becomes one he will save her when she needs help and cloud shyly agrees as awkward and innocent then as he is now this scene is important not just because of what it does for tifa and cloud's relationship but it's also key in establishing why cloud's perception of the ideal soldier was important enough to be ingratiated into his patchwork persona here because simply put that's what he dreamed of becoming it's a good scene that captures one of the most important moments for the game's sense of pathos and it lays the groundwork for tons of later story beats though the payoff won't really happen until future parts but aside from this and overall this chapter does the job of demonstrating how well fleshed out the avalanche trio are and broadening the scope of midgar and it's the exact sort of thing i was hoping for when i first heard about the remake after this we catch up with where the original left off and finally get to the reactor 5 bombing i'm not a big fan of how bloated this segment is in the remake it takes up the entirety of chapters 5 6 and 7 and while there is some good stuff in there most of the gameplay portions felt rather padded out to me whereas in the original everything was quite sharp and to the point punctuated by an interesting flashback moment for cloud one notable difference here is that in the original barrett tifa and cloud get ambushed by a bunch of shinra soldiers and president shinra himself i do find it odd and somewhat out of character that barrett doesn't just try to kill shinra right then and there given how driven by impulse he is at this point in the game how defenseless shinra seems and how large the magnitude of his hatred towards the man is if we just skip ahead in the remake for a second he does have a chance to kill shinra later on at shinra hq but there is a wealth of difference in context here since by that point in the remake he had reason to keep him alive to get him to clear avalanche's name rid them of blame and segregate them from their association with wutai there's a big contrast between the amount of growth barrett experienced in the remake by that point and how he acted in the original at the sector 5 mission he was a loose cannon with no concept of recompense that early on in the original whereas in the remake scene he had experienced his own ignorance and failures and that made him think a bit more but here the individual responsible for so much of the pain that you try to fight against is right in front of you you're essentially something of a rabid dog at this point especially in the original and you have a gun for an arm obviously it wouldn't have made sense for shinra to die this early but barrett not at least attempting to shoot here just doesn't seem right especially when he's so liberal with using his gun for minor things like trying to get all of those people out of the bar earlier i think it's an oversight but admittedly this is still just a very minor complaint that just feels a little strange the remake changes this sequence in a positive way through never having president shinra physically confront the group instead he shows up as a gigantic hologram to taunt the party and gives a bit of a reality check to barrett through hinting at some of the nuances of the societal status quo that he hasn't taken into account shinra is without doubt a terrible person but he is intelligent and savvy and one of his primary roles in the remake is to demonstrate why and how the situation here isn't nearly as simple as barrett would like to believe it is he also makes it clear that avalanche will be portrayed as destructive evil terrorists public enemies who will later be associated negatively with wutai which is an element that is basically brand new in the remake as i mentioned it does influence the way that barrett negotiates the difficulties of this war against shinra but overall it doesn't have much of an influence on the main story so i'm interested to see if anything crops up in future parts about that and since we're on the topic i thought shinra and all of his goons in heidegger scarlet and palmer were executed pretty well in terms of character design and characterization i'll talk more about the others later but shinra in particular has a great chilling aura about him a man of pure selfishness willing to do whatever he can to reach his goal with no qualms about sacrificing whatever he needs to to get his way because he's just that evil yet he's also someone who does all this with an air of laid-back indolence that gets contrasted by his successor later on after the fight here cloud falls down and is separated from barrett and tifa he passes out and is given some extra encouragement from a version of himself to keep going it's what i view as a manifestation of sephiroth's will through genova encouraging cloud to join the reunion which is made more obvious in the remake through sephiroth's continuous influence this isn't purely deception though as this cloud says something interesting that back then they escaped with scraped knees at this point we don't know exactly when back then was or what situation is being referred to here but later events show that this is a kernel of genuine truth within cloud's mind which either means that genova was capable of extracting that truth or that this version of cloud isn't actually genova at all we'll revisit this line way later but it's a neat little scene of foreshadowing in both cases and after some taunts from sephiroth cloud wakes up in the church in the sector 5 slums face to face with a pretty girl i mentioned earlier that jesse and tifa are on opposite ends of the spectrum with regards to how they interact with cloud and aerith is somewhat in the middle for me in terms of that and how it manifests in her personality like tifa who aerith truly is is far removed from what one may assume given her delicate and very graceful flower girl appearance aerith is mischievous sneaky outgoing tough and not afraid to get dirty but she's fun and charming and feminine at the same time she strikes a fine balance between respectfully encroaching upon the social boundaries that cloud imposes that block him off from the world yet not doing it in a way that makes him really uncomfortable as jesse tends to at times in my eyes especially in the original game aerith is the main reason that cloud breaks out of his shell a bit even if things still aren't quite right with him and i may be influenced by some external factors but i never viewed their relationship as romantic personally i just see them as two people who complement and support each other very well cloud through helping her out in tangible ways and through gradually opening up and supporting her and aer through being the stimulus that breaks down his hard outer shell i think it's clear that aerith is still very much hung up on zack and hasn't really gotten over him and cloud reminds her of him for obvious reasons so there's naturally going to be some harmless flirting but i think the scene with the two at the playground makes it clear that while she undoubtedly loves spending time with cloud through him she's also reaching out for some connection to the man she loves and perhaps for some closure but that doesn't manifest in genuine romantic notes between the two for me she's just naturally magnetic and affectionate and she actively tries to make cloud a happier person and i think cloud realizes and appreciates that without outwardly saying so because he reciprocates that care in this lovely dynamic aerith displays this intuition and knack for understanding and that ability of hers doesn't only apply to her interactions with others the enhanced presentation in the remake captured this personality and quirk really well and the more soulful side to her character that cetracide the one so in tune with the planet really effectively gathers pace throughout the entirety of the first part as she slowly and subtly begins to change my guess is that as the game goes on she starts to sense more and more of the general feelings that the whispers are transmitting to her without knowing the specifics either way aerith goes through quite a progression in the way she speaks and acts getting more and more cryptic and connected to the planet over time and having the story revolve around her quite a bit as a result this is a big part of the reason that i finished the game feeling that she may have been the star of the show along with cloud and i'm all for that to be honest it's not as if the likes of barrett and tifa don't have huge roles themselves and they will get further material to help them shine later on especially tifa but while i do say that in the remake aerith begins to gradually become more in tune with the spiritual world i would be amiss if i didn't point out that she immediately explicitly seems to know things that she shouldn't and i'm not talking about how she's able to sense things about the life stream in both games in the new story she acts very suspiciously at times and knows some things that she wouldn't be able to know without having experienced these events before perhaps that may be jumping the gun a bit but at the very least she possesses a general knowledge of events that haven't happened yet and of some other important things that are likely related they gone yeah i think so what are they i think actually i don't know let's just go and who are you he's my bodyguard and a soldier pretty cool huh huh a soldier ex-soldier well what do you know you've got the eyes at least you don't mind do you bodyguard work's not too different from merc stuff right uh i guessed from the sword you good yeah bit woozy but i'll manage hey tifa how you doing uh okay oh right i'm meredith a friend of clouds we were worried and thought we'd come help you out [Music] aerith there's a bar in the center of town seventh heaven i need you to get marlene to safety right it's okay i'll find her huh what you want to go stop this child's a friend what is she hiding about the whispers how does she know that cloud's a murk why does she act so familiar with tifa as if she were an old friend how does she know marlene's name despite never being told of it before and how does she know that red 13 is a friend and ally despite him seeming outwardly hostile and aggressive in this situation none of these examples are present in the original game and there are other instances that i'll mention later on that give off a similar energy sometimes aerith gives excuses or reasons for her strange behavior and you can play off one or two of these but add it all up and i think it's clear that aerith has some unique knowledge at the start of the game and you don't have to take my word for it because this is confirmed in the ultimania as well she is stated within it to know more than she should and much more than she knew in the original she's been blessed with this additional information but what we don't know is how much information and how exactly she came to be this way although the podcast i referred to earlier on touches on ways in which aerith whilst in the live stream at the end of final fantasy vii could potentially travel across time so that may be some sort of factor in her knowing some of these things as discussed in that video it is noted that these whispers and harbingers of fate that we encounter in the game are tied to all of the threads of time and space that shape the planet's destiny so at the end of the original story perhaps aerith and sephiroth are spirits in essence tied to all of these causal threads which could possibly give them license to travel back in time to influence and re-experience things again it's hard to know for sure but what is clear is that this aerith as opposed to the original one has something different about her and that's obvious from the start of the game as well because i don't know what she's running and hiding from in the introductory sequence but i sincerely doubt that this was put there by accident and the one-winged angel notes that hint at sephiroth's presence trigger the moment she notices something so that specifically may hint that what she's concerned about here probably has to do with sephiroth maybe he's been chasing her across time looping back to the beginning and maybe that's why one of his cloaked men follows her and cloud through sector 5. perhaps this profound knowledge she has can also allude to why the whispers are interested in her and trying to persuade her in a certain direction because it's clear that aerith was aware of them before cloud is in fact he's only able to see them because she touches him in the first place it's all very subtle and i am just spitballing but all of this extra context helps make so many little scenes in the game like this introduction much more meaningful anyway that knowledge that she has only grows and grows as the story goes on and the whispers and planets speak to her though as i said i don't think that this growth in knowledge contains specifics just general feelings it's more of a vague spiritual growth that she doesn't seem to properly comprehend but the things that she is completely aware and in control of bring about a question what exactly is aerith doing through using some sort of power to calm characters down in two big instances in the first one when trying to calm marlene down to get her out of 7th heaven she shows her something through her touch and then puts her finger to her lips as if she just revealed a secret that marlene shouldn't tell anyone else it's some sort of knowledge or vision that aerith shares here that immediately calms marlene down and it makes her trust aerith wholeheartedly and later on to come read 13 down she does the same thing except he later reveals what was shown to him through this touch that being a great deal of information about the whispers i don't really know whether or not aerith has full control over what she's showing others when she does this because while it seems clear that what she showed marlene was very intentional i'm not sure what the logic behind showing red 13 information about the whispers is but what we do know is that she very deliberately does this to relax them that she knows about this power and that she didn't have this in the original however this makes sense and can be explained once again using the live stream side novels which mention a process that aerith used while floating through the live stream to come into contact with other souls and share her knowledge emotions and memories to get them to join her cause and almost automatically understand her it's described in a way very similar to what it seems like aerith does in this game to marlene and red13 which hints at the idea that like sephiroth maybe this aerith is or is at least touched by some essence of the aerith post-original final fantasy vii since she seems to have some abilities and knowledge that that aerith would have had i know this is all a bit of a wild theory built upon some pretty peripheral material but it is really interesting to ponder and at this point i think it's valid since these extra lines from her are now confirmed to be very intentional and this burden of knowledge that she has makes her an even more lonely figure than she is in the original which is powered home by the remake's increased emphasis on her isolation either way what remains a fact is that aerith is undoubtedly possessed by some extra knowledge and is even more pivotal to this story than we might have thought at first in fact nojima who was also a writer for the remake has straight up stated in the ultimania that aerith is the most important character in part one and that he wrote her with the intent of every line of hers being incredibly significant which i totally buy given her role in the story and i expect that she'll have a similar amount of importance in part two hopefully diving into the specifics of why she is the way she is which i'd be super excited for after a run-in with reno who we'll discuss later and another annoying encounter with the whispers in the remake we reach a gorgeous little story beat that absolutely captured my attention and imagination in both iterations as we make our escape from the church with aerith and work our way towards her home it's a very purposefully quiet sequence of the two hopping across broken down buildings in non-hostile territory so it allows for the focus to be put on calm character-building dialogue while the sequence in the original helps us understand aerith through her interest in soldier and through the bits of personality she shows the remake takes this further by extending it and making it much more atmospheric and revelatory about the type of person aerith is there's a very natural banter between the two as she teases cloud challenges him a bit as i mentioned as they cross these areas that have been untouched by people for who knows how long disturbing the birds that have settled nearby it's one of my favorite parts of the game a beautiful little stretch in its own peaceful world to give us some respite after the conflict to help us look at midgar in a more positive and ethereal way that we hadn't before and to have us understand the type of person this flower girl is and i literally cannot think of a better way to introduce her and some her personality up than this i'll go first it's pretty old be careful okay easy now you worry too much i'm not some princess who needs to be coddled but in spite of how grounded a person she is i think aerith is primarily responsible for what gives final fantasy vii its unique sense of soul in both games there's a distinct feel of otherworldly elegance to the story that i think is mostly thanks to her and her unique way of communicating with and viewing the world the planet as an entity undoubtedly has some sort of foresight and omniscience and since aerith is so connected with it she indirectly experiences the same sort of thing only through her role and influence do we really have the means of understanding just how profound the life stream is it makes the mundane and seemingly ugly the slums of midgar for instance much more endearing when put in this light everyone is part of the cycle and as we dream and reach out for what this world seems to not want to grant us this place becomes a special flowing cavalcade of ambition and purpose and there is beauty in that intent you know i thought about leaving once but in the end i couldn't too dangerous too much a whole world bursting with life maybe more than i can handle i think sometimes even now people hate the steel sky the slums but i don't how could i all that passion all those dreams flowing and blending together into something greater and this helps us see another side to midgar as we finally get to the sector five slums and eventually to arith's house and her mother elmira elmira is quite a minor character but i've always found the way that her and aerith found each other and filled the holes in one another's lives in a symbiotic way to be very sweet and her interactions with cloud and her insistence that he must leave and not come back hint at the family's past associations with soldier and shinra in terms of visual storytelling the little alcove that contains aerith's home is absolutely stunning with water and greenery and flowers finding a way to thrive amidst the debris it's a stark geographical transition and it bluntly alludes to the fact that earth just seems to be special with lifestream that evades the surrounding areas seeming to be concentrated all around her on a separate note the side quests and explorations around sector 5 slums are not really noteworthy for me but the use of the instrumental version of hollow throughout was just awesome with the beautiful theme providing a powerful and wistful tone that helps the errands around the area feel more meaningful than they would otherwise and i don't have anything really that insightful to say about it but the end of this segment of the game is capped off by a lovely little dream scene with cloud and his mother just talking about girls without a care in the world which did make me tear up a bit in the remake there's just something about it that speaks of everything that cloud is shouldering at this moment and how much of a kid he really still is at heart i feel like the one thing he needs at this point in the story is his mother to just have a shoulder to cry on but reality isn't that easy and those he surrounds himself with are exceedingly helpful in their own ways in supporting him the story progresses as aerith escorts us back and a brilliant little touch is the solitary tear that runs down cloud's face in the remake as he watches aerith ahead of him it is a scene visually reminiscent of her final words to him in the original which is obviously an event that hasn't happened yet one that leads to great tragedy which explains the tear so this tells us that on some level he recognizes the context of that flash forward since he has an emotional response to a visual that doesn't provide any information like that in and of itself likely through severot's will he is being fed emotions and visions that haven't happened yet subconsciously seeing the future as undesirable which is important for sephiroth's plan as well as the plot that will span across all of the parts however then again this may not be the case or at least not all of the case because the altimania describes this vision as something cloud may have experienced as a result of the effects of meeting aerith so perhaps aerith's presence is a part of some of these flash-forward visions and why cloud experiences them from time to time either way we then go through the environments that she notes are strewn with bits of broken plate from when the old one overhead broke down this all coincides in the remake with this mechanical hand bit that made me want to die but the reward of it is the adorable high five sequence where after three attempts the two finally share a moment of celebration it's endearing it's cute and it's a microcosm of how much earth's presence in cloud's life benefits him at this point the two share that quiet moment i already mentioned where she brings up zack and shortly after we see a lovely tifa on her way to don corneos who quickly explains that she's on a dangerous mission to extract confidential information by masquerading as a participant to become the dawn's new woman realizing that she's at great risk both cloud and aerith decide to make their way over to wall market to help her here there is again a big difference between the two games this time in the approaches taken with wall market each version has its own distinct mood and atmosphere and each portrays the town differently i personally think this is awesome as it helps deepen the place and show a unique dimension to it in each game but i do respect that some who appreciate the tone of it in the original may feel somewhat betrayed by the completely different feel in the remake in the original game wall market is seedy grungy and dirty we're supposed to feel the muck of the place accentuated by the music which aside from being one of my favorite town themes ever is very down to earth and sketchy in terms of mood the place has bright lights but the whole thing is bogged down by this sleazy tone so much that it feels like a toxicity it's extremely dense and well done and it gets across the underhanded and malevolent nature of the crooks who call this place home as well as all of the terrible things that go on here in the remake while they don't at all eliminate this sense of while market being a place to be wary of it's instead something of a fun celebration like a smaller less extravagant yet still extravagant las vegas the bright lights are not ironically toxic but instead indicative of an honest party the music has been totally changed to an enthusiastic almost celebratory theme reminiscent of a bouncing city that never sleeps rather than a town that puts you on edge the original just has this palpable film of decay over it everywhere you go and the remake lifts that and this doesn't make it inherently better or worse in approach just different the original is not quite as bustling and populated and it's stated within that the place is scary and unsafe for women although it is worth noting that aerith holds her own pretty well when handing out flowers in a certain section so there could be an element of misdirection to it but comparatively the remake is full of women and although it is no doubt not safe for them here either it is safer and it has a slightly more wholesome tinge to it it's a pleasure and party town essentially with all of the positives and negatives that come with that in terms of which i like more stylistically i don't have a preference as i mentioned but the remake just has more to it more to explore and see more variation more npc dialogue although that is balanced out by the fact that the pacing is once again somewhat bloated here it feels like it takes forever before we finally get to see aerith in her dress which kind of kills the urgency of why we're there in the first place to rescue tifa this didn't bother me nearly as much as the pacing in the later sections because i had so much fun in the remakes wall market but i can appreciate that it could be a problem for others and it definitely isn't done perfectly characteristically the original is on the other side of the spectrum and doesn't overstay its welcome it isn't as dense with stuff to do or things to see but it's sharp once again and although it does engage in the infamous humor along the way it never becomes lost in self-indulgence and stays very to the point whereas the remake milks the hell out of wall market and fleshes it out much more which can leave the story feeling a bit stagnant there are benefits negatives and limitations to each approach and i'm just glad that we can experience such different takes in both versions this is a section of the game that primarily through the cross-dressing stuff and some of the mini-games brings me to one of the biggest selling points and most under discussed elements of final fantasy vii how goofy and silly it is this game is quirky and hella weird it dips into some extremely extremely dark subject matter but in lovely contrast it isn't afraid to be out there and it definitely doesn't take itself too seriously and wall market is a great display of that for instance there are the totally bizarre things that we bear witness to in the honey bee in rooms that we can see through the keyholes the elderly couple obliviously using the love suite rented for them by their son as a pleasant getaway in the midst of the debauchery president shinra himself using his room as a way to privately channel his passion for fantasy live-action role-playing using his whining and hesitant employees to help him the part where cloud passes out in a room and gets restored by some massaging muscle man complete with incomprehensibly translated dialogue and everything lots of weird stuff and it's not just here either if you pay attention the game implements this sort of thing throughout the entire original story just wacky humor that is really often genuinely funny and offers a nice balance to the bleak material it's so prevalent in final fantasy vii that this silliness is a part of its identity for me and i was so glad to see that the remake kept that quirk and in fact dialed it up to its great benefit even the wackiness it adds through less substantial somewhat bothersome characters like johnny or roche is something i didn't mind because it added this element and showed that they knew that this was a selling point and there's also the interesting massage parlor stuff fighting the house in the coliseum etc but the main way in which the remake fully implements this spirit is through its honeybee in sequence cloud is invited as a special guest by the inn's very own star andrea rodea after catching his interest during his bouts to allow cloud to infiltrate don corneo's mansion and save tifa andrea is willing to help him pose as a woman but to do this cloud and i quote must first prove that he knows how to move i really love everything they did with this sequence the inn is lavish flamboyant and extraordinary really getting that party atmosphere across and nailing the way in which this iteration of well market distinguishes itself from the hosts and hostesses trying to goad cloud into the event to the onlookers having a great time to aerith loving every single millisecond they really threw everything into this and spared no expense in the lead-up to the release of the game prior to any trailer's post announcement many thought that they would cut out the entire cross-dressing plot point due to fear of backlash in the unfortunate political and societal climate but thankfully that wasn't the case at all and instead they did the complete opposite and held nothing back andrea is great and for being in such a foreign situation cloud is a surprisingly good sport open to dancing and being twirled around and though clearly uncomfortable he's 100 percent willing to do all of this stuff if it means rescuing tifa there's just a general sense of openness and acceptance to all of this that really makes it wholesome as well as being tons of cheesy fun also it leads to some hilarious and adorable interactions between cloud and aerith with this probably being my favorite few seconds of anything ever [Music] and through all of this the honeybee inn thankfully ensures that the silly spirit i mentioned is faithfully maintained and enhanced in the remake subsequently clout absolutely owns his new persona amidst haulers from onlookers and the two gain access to the mansion after a reunion with tifa we finally see don corneo himself and he is disgustingly effective in both versions from the insane haircut to the bizarre tattoos to the jiggle physics for his belly and finally through the gross way he ogles and talks about the women he's no holds barred just a pathetic indolent man feasting upon the decadence that he's been granted and although he is portrayed rather comedically this is someone who regularly cycles through women that quote unquote win his auditions to essentially become his sex slave and who allows his workers to have the leftovers now of course a lot of these women do volunteer for this and i'm sure a rare few are even willing to entertain him and his men but i'm also sure that many were forced into it and even those who weren't likely volunteered due to the sad economic imbalance established in midgar as something of a last resort and one of the only shots to obtain a degree of comfort in this city because i can't imagine that many would be lining up to gratify this guy without some sort of forced ulterior motive and not to mention why does he have these regular auditions how does he cycle through women so quickly what does he do with the ones he gets bored with and does the hidden trap door leading to his hungry monstrous pet have anything to do with it additionally he has ready-made gassing rooms in the remake and a sort of torture dungeon in the original even from the most forgiving perspective corneo is scum and i think the game acknowledges that in both cases through how it ironically and half-heartedly hand waves his humanity and turns him into something of a prop not worth exploring not worth getting to know in depth just a means to an end and a method of learning but after aerith and tifa kick major ass corneo tells the crew the truth that shinra plans to drop the plate over sector 7 and bring the whole place down to cause mass destruction to squash what is in the grand scheme of things a minor to moderate threat this is indeed said by a man who is far from trustworthy and it's so mind-bogglingly disproportionate and excessive that tifa and the others initially have trouble believing corneo but it plants a seed of intense anxiety in them so they can't leave that lead ignored so after cornea drops them into the sewers they begin working their way through to head back to sector 7 and see what's going on for themselves all in all this post wall market section is a little padded and not super noteworthy in the remake the entirety of chapter 10 takes up the party's journey through these sewers and while there is some nice character bonding stuff between tifa and aerith given the richness and density of some of the other chapters in the game this one feels a bit thin in terms of substance one thing that is extremely noteworthy however is a sequence of lines that we see right after defeating abzu as tifa thinks about whether or not corneo is lying she begins to lean into the idea that he was just full of it but in response to that aerith seems hesitant to agree with her and says that they should assume that he wasn't lying just to be safe in isolation you can just brush this off as her simply thinking of the worst case scenario but her demeanor here really makes it seem as though she knows something and in combination with the wealth of other things aerith seems to know it makes it look like she's hiding the full truth and knows that the plate will probably fall and tifa agrees because after reflecting on the same thing she seems to sense that aerith isn't being totally honest about the whole situation and asks her directly if she isn't telling her something they get interrupted and aerith is unable to answer but tifa is a deeply intuitive and intelligent person so i'm gonna trust her on this one in contrast to the remake version this sequence in the original is once again efficient in transitioning from the atmosphere of cornea's mansion into genuine tension and it does this swiftly through a small diversion that never overstays its welcome setting aside remake aerith's hinting the characters in the original take cornea's words a little more seriously here and the sewer itself is just two screens which makes the escape from them very fast i do like that the remake fleshes this location out a bit more as it is believable that these sewers are more labyrinthine and sprawling than portrayed originally and i also like the focus on avalanche's little symbols that help the party out but it all just overstays its welcome a little bit overall however this is not a huge deal or an indictment on the remakes part it's the next chapter where things get pretty messy chapter 11 of the remake the train graveyard stretch is pretty infamous already in terms of the critical reception it's gotten and while i don't totally hate it i understand the grief it gets and i agree with plenty of the criticism there are a few things that it gets wrong but what i think it boils down to is a complete ignorance of the context of that story section and how it should manifest in the pacing and tone here because the first two thirds or so of this chapter specifically fall victim to an out of character lack of urgency the party emerged from the sewers and into this haunted graveyard of deserted trains and get thrust into a slower paced section largely focused on creepiness rich atmosphere and a slowly building tension as we gradually discover some secrets about the place and ultimately try to help put these lingering spirits to rest to be clear this isn't a bad concept and i really like the intent here to flesh out the train graveyard while the background art for it is great as always it was just a small puzzle section in the original with some potentially interesting lore behind it that never gets explored due to it being so tiny and due to the pacing of the story it's one of the locations that was an ideal target for the remake to add some substance to it and midgar as a whole and the remake accomplished that because it's a pretty neat chapter but only in a vacuum in the context of the structure of the story it just becomes totally tone-deaf with the way it's approached the minute the party enters the tempo that should have been building as they rush to get to the plate completely fizzles out and is replaced by this thick spooky atmosphere that encourages contemplation deep immersion and exploration complemented by some good ambient music but given that the possibility of sector 7 being destroyed had been established this wasn't at all the time for the player or the characters to get swept up in a semi-horror mystery if you want to be generous and ignore aerith's foresight then you can excuse the slightly ponderous pace in chapter 10 as the three not quite believing what corneo says but at the beginning of chapter 11 right after they exit the sewers the group witnessed the turks making their way towards the plate and while cloud comforts tifa by saying that they're just on patrol aerith makes it clear that they'll be sure to hurry so they can get back quickly in case the worst happens it's overall established at this point that cornea's words are something to be taken seriously that although the man is a bona fide liar even the slight possibility that he may have been truthful merits that they get back as fast as they can to help with any potential threat so the name of the game as the crew reaches the train graveyard is or should have been urgency this area is large so obviously the characters can't just teleport through it and i understand that they have to traverse it properly and that's fine while i don't think that it is necessarily a good pacing idea to put an environment like this in a section where urgency is key something like this can be pulled off properly the main problems are the tone and how the characters act there's just such a big focus on rumors surrounding the place on the voices of kids that they hear and in particular antifa's fear of ghosts this isn't dwelled upon a whole lot but what we get alone is enough to make this a disappointing story choice well what do you think hmm i'm game huh but it'll be fine we've got a bodyguard don't forget mine right ghosts aren't my thing you're just being modest after you mind letting me go then i think i just heard a little kid did you guys hear it too why would there be kids out here this late what then guys what was that i don't think that it's out of character for tifa to be scared of ghosts and it's totally plausible after all she is more sensitive and soft than aerith she isn't equipped with eric's abilities and regardless even the toughest people can believably be scared of things but i do think that it's out of character for so much of her drive to save her home to be sucked out of her at this point i know it isn't actually sucked out of her but the prioritization here is all wrong in my eyes in actuality tifa in this situation would be desperate and rushing she would conquer her fear of ghosts or not let it affect her in this moment because her desire to save her friends would far overpower how scared she is but instead she cutely gets afraid and clings to cloud she jumps at little sounds she hides behind aerith again that in itself isn't out of character but in this context it is very much so which is an unfortunate and rare blip in characterization here in a game that otherwise excels at that and it stems from the remake's occasional lack of focus and momentum the chapter has some nice interactions and it fleshes out aerith quite a bit through displaying how her sixth sense extends to all sorts of supernatural beings as well as giving us a flashback of how lonely her childhood was at times which to my knowledge is a new bit of characterization that fits but placing a sequence here with this sort of ponderous atmospheric style to it just totally kills the pacing of the story and breaks immersion we've been told that sector 7 could be in great danger and the characters don't brush this off as pure nonsense and do show concern but they don't portray that concern at all here especially tifa and if aerith is aware that the plate is going to fall as the game seems to hint at it makes her attitude nearly as baffling after they get through the bulk of the graveyard they do try to proceed quickly but just prior to that was a stark contrast and even after they get literal confirmation through the radio that the turks will be trying to drop the plate they still do things like bizarrely stand in awe and gape at the departing spirits instead of hurrying to save everyone i think the game wanted to have its cake and eat it too here i like the concept of this spooky slow-paced atmospheric haunted area and i do really like all of the character work but you can't just plop this sort of thing in this place in the story and not have some dissonance between that approach and what the characters should instead be doing you can't hope to maintain the momentum that had been established while also having this sort of mysterious section i think having this sort of chapter elsewhere in the story or maybe as a side mission would have worked much better because it eliminates the tone deafness and as a straight comparison sadly enough i honestly just prefer the couple of screens of the train graveyard that we get in the original because it maintains that great sense of forward focus and the urgency of the moment again i have to state that i do like certain aspects of this chapter but a story section of this style just didn't belong here and i really don't buy that the characters would be as immersed in these ghost stories as they were in this situation given everything that was happening at sector 7. one of the biggest strengths of the original is its very effective sense of pacing and context and unfortunately this is the remake's biggest failing for me but soon enough we make it out of the train graveyard and see that the rumor is true avalanche and sector 7 very much seem to be under attack and in genuine danger here and the plan cornell mentioned is unfolding before their eyes in the remake we fight the whispers who cannot let the party reach the plate so soon and potentially stop it there end up being far too many to defeat but they eventually just leave on their own which i think is a clever little touch that indicates that all they had to do was delay the party a bit to allow fate to run its course and that also makes it more tragic because if they had been a bit quicker they could have possibly stopped it so yeah maybe they shouldn't have been taking their time and reenacting their favorite scooby-doo episode in the train graveyard i'm just saying that's a joke by the way if they were quicker the whispers would have just delayed them longer after this wedge gets hurt and aerith takes care of him while cloud and eventually tifa make their way up to the top the remake flushes this out more by really extending the length of this sequence and allowing us to control aerith for a spell as we see the panic and carnage of the rest of sector seven which is a design choice that really drives home the terror wedge helps evacuate and gets a nice character moment that provides him with some much needed independent agency and at the end of it all aerith uses her supernatural intuition to save marlene overall this section is a bit drawn out as aerith saves a kid in the wreckage and kind of takes her time a little bit to get marlene out of the bar which can arguably be viewed as being in conflict with the gravity of the circumstances but it doesn't really bother me she's able to calm marlene down through enacting that strange effect on her and is subsequently taken by sung and the turks this feels like a good time to finally talk about the turks and how they're approached in both games and my opinion on them at least in one regard is pretty similar to that of lore runner who was kind enough to let me use his footage for this video in the original the turks are very strangely handled and quite uneven in how they're portrayed they seem to flip-flop between more or less how the rest of the compilation works present them and being bizarrely mean-spirited and cruel specifically in this early midgar section and i bring it up here because in particular reno and especially sung show the extremes of this during the plate dropping reno without roode is tasked with the big job and once he presses the button to initiate it he bizarrely says that's all folks mission accomplished and no one messes with reno and the turks before fighting the party and escaping the pillar once he's delayed them long enough there's gusto to his words here and he shows pride in having just carried out an order that will kill many which is pretty out of place if you know the type of character he is and perhaps he could have been saying this in a conflicted and ironic way but there is no voice acting or subtlety to the translation to portray that here then we have sung who swoops in on his helicopter laughs at the party's helplessness to save all of these people and literally hits aerith across the face he strikes the person he's been watching over for years and years the one he has a soft spot for due to his time helping zach in crisis core and even if you don't consider any other works apart from the core original game even if you consider certain plausible explanations such as him being stressed out and acting irrationally or wanting to make sure that aerith doesn't say anything out of turn or wanting to seem more evil to cloud in the others none of that really fills in the gap for me in my opinion it's such a vast difference in characterization that can't be logically explained away without the game giving us more than it did he and reno are totally out of character and malicious here and it's bizarre this isn't who these people are at all and as far as i know there are no hints of any reasoning for why they'd be faking or putting on a mask here no explanations or even subtle implications as to why there's no nuance to the dialogue or behavior here or anywhere else in this early section of the story nothing to indicate that the turks are anything more than shallow hired muscle tasked with carrying out evil deeds and proud of those very deeds and that isn't an awful thing in and of itself but it gets worse when you see that this is the only time they're ever portrayed like this even in this very game after this they lighten up considerably and become a lot more human acting pretty conflicted and uncommitted to the cause and on occasion seeming to look at our party with something resembling a warm regard their change can be explained as them being disturbed by the lengths that shinra was willing to go and deciding that they didn't want to be part of such an evil operation but the problem with that is that it is never explicitly stated or even implied and that if that's the case the evil villain pride that sung and reno had upon carrying out the order is totally out of character on the other hand the turks in the remake are much more consistent and nuanced from the jump conflicted people hesitant but resigned to doing terrible things reno is pretty immature and out to get cloud for being humiliated by him but he's constantly shown to be unhappy and hesitant with the work he's doing clearly out of place and rude is measured calm composed and willing to help out cloud and tifa by yanking the helicopter away while reno is shooting at them i also just have to mention the endearing and silly scene in the fight with cloud earlier where he replaces his damaged sunglasses with brand new ones he's portrayed as a generally decent guy despite being antagonistic prior to this point although despite this he is the one that initiates the plate dropping sequence regardless of whether or not there's an air about him that this just had to be done for whatever reason as he says he may not be a bad guy but he sometimes does bad things this was a very bad thing and the severity of it may call into question for some whether or not he really is a terrible person but regardless the point is that he's very consistent in his characterization as is sung who is cold and does have a bit of a mean streak being the least conflicted out of the three in this part but he never goes full-on inconsistently cartoonish as he does in the original all three are more organic and resemble the versions of themselves presented in crisis core for example they carry out the same order but their personality behaviors and attitudes surrounding that order are totally different which really changes the complexion of their characters for the better it's all just really strange in the original and overall the turks have to be one of my biggest bones to pick with that story i hope that the remake maintains the approach it took here and progresses and deepens the turks to give them a bit more substance in the post midgar section and make their turn around or any new progression that they may have a bit more believable but obviously there is more to this critical juncture than the turks the death scenes for biggs and jesse leading up to this are appropriately very sad and hard hitting the fact that biggs lives and that jessie could possibly still be alive which i'll touch on later may take away from the impact of these moments and make them feel cheaper but i'll reserve judgment on that for now until we see part 2. what we do know is that if jessie is gone for sure she dies without ever learning that shinra sabotaged their operations and were responsible for the majority of the deaths that she believed were her mistakes it'd be quite a tragic end for her believing that she caused far more pain than she actually did even if avalanche were guilty of some things to a certain extent from here if we fast forward past the skirmish with the turks we reach one of the most iconic and memorable set pieces of the game the actual scene of the plate crashing down upon sector 7 and killing countless the two games approach this moment very differently and i have my thoughts on each but here i'll play both scenes and allow you to draw your own conclusions before telling you what i think [Music] [Music] foreign so foreign so obviously there is a clear difference in approach here and i think that it's to the remakes detriment for me the newer version was a bit too hollywood i think it prioritized the wrong things and didn't capture what makes this devastation so iconic and horrifying this is due in large part to the loud car chase-like music and the quick pacing with pretty swift cuts it emphasizes the intensity of how close the crew were to being caught in the destruction or at least intensity in general more than the genuine tragedy of the event it's rapidly cuts across the people who are seemingly about to die with great pace too caught up in making this heart-pounding to let the terror of the moment breathe and take shape and please note that i'm only talking about the scene itself here not anything that occurs after it because while one could argue that the weight of the event is hugely emphasized in the aftermath so there's no need to prioritize it in the scene as well i just think a quiet contrast a subtle and understated approach is far more effective as i'll discuss in a second but the remake foregoes this and is just too concerned with showing the destruction and escape itself rather than really emphasizing the gravity of this situation whereas in the original there is absolutely no music as it all comes tumbling down just pure still and devastating silence we see a reporter on television glance upwards for just a split second before the feed cuts off and the camera lingers to show the catastrophe out the window we hear a solitary scream the party escapes but there is no intense track in the background nothing to hear except the carnage and the camera pans up to shinra's office as the man himself watches satisfied while listening to his opera music it is lyrically done this is what this moment is about the evil will of a monolithic body of power who don't care a lick about the common man who will sacrifice one eighth of their entire city to crush a tiny resistance group and the somber nature of the entire scene really drives that home the remake doesn't portray it terribly for instance the facial animations for shinra are chilling the effects look realistic and great and it is pretty cool to see kate sith mourning the devastation but it fumbles in terms of execution and just doesn't tap into the horrifying artistry of the moment from the original it's hard to say whether this is due to a misunderstanding of what in my opinion made the original scene tick or if it was just an intentional difference of priority but either way it missed the mark for me and that's too bad as i mentioned however the aftermath is brilliant in both games as the scale of the destruction and the part that avalanche played in it all sinks in i actually much prefer the remake here as the voice work and facial animations on tifa cloud and especially barrett make this a moment of sheer grief loss unrelenting rage and a deceiving self-hatred leading to denial it was us we did this no you can't think like that whatever came before it was shinra that pulled the trigger today am i right [Music] using the small ray of hope that marlene could possibly have avoided the wreckage and is staying with almira the group makes their way back to aerith's house the remake in particular makes this journey back really effective if you stop to engage with npcs a little bit we see the fun and colorful characters that we came to know and enjoy from wall market genuinely disturbed and sobered by the events as we travel through town the effectiveness of the remake enhancing the positive aspects of wall market is definitely felt as the swing from that mood to this one is so palpable and drastic hammering the weight of the occasion home as if it was needed additionally we begin to learn about the ancients here as a precursor to the idea of the promised land that shinra are trying so hard to get to cloud's problems get more and more blatant to those around him as well as hearing about the ancients triggers a psychological encounter with sephiroth 1 in which he tells cloud that he has failed again it brings an instinctual response from cloud meaning that on some level there is a familiarity there but again it's unclear if this is referring to his past failures in life maybe not becoming a true soldier maybe not saving zach or if it's referring to him being unable to stop the plate dropping again since all of this has happened already for this sephiroth personally i think it's kept vague on purpose and that we're supposed to interpret both ideas as valid and just as important as that line is what he says afterwards that through suffering cloud will grow stronger and get closer towards his goals barrett's rushing to see marlene when they arrive at aerith's house is cute and really portrays him as the gentle giant and wonderful father that he is at heart even if his actions sometimes don't portray this too well and the game then takes a moment here to show us a flashback of how aerith and elmira came to be together how elmyra lost her husband in the war and how arith's mother begged her to take her daughter and care for her it's a lovely scene in both versions and in particular the part where a young aerith tells her new mother that her husband has now passed on and become a part of the planet always gets to me it's a display of how empathetic and compassionate aerith is how her supernatural knowledge and connection with the planet helped to add to her already caring nature and this in itself is the essence of final fantasy vii loved ones dying passing on in spirit becoming a part of the planet and fueling us through their will and memories as we do our best to move on in a world that is both ruthless and beautiful and do our best to protect that very beauty though one small complaint i have for the remake here is obvious during the section where almira starts describing shinra's interest in aerith according to the ultimania seung is 30 years old during the events of the game seems reasonable until you realize that this flashback is from 15 years ago that is not a 15 year old that is a grown ass man after this the party leaves and with no known method to get to the upper plate barrett suggests wall market and lo and behold they're able to find a way up from there in the remake this section is expanded upon a ton the party decides against saving aerith because almira asks them not to make things worse after all shinra never physically mistreats aerith and she doesn't want to upset them this initially seems kind of dumb as it is clear to us that perpetuating this type of experimentation on aerith especially now that shinra seem to be ramping things up can only lead to a bad situation but from the perspective of a mother who has lost everything except her only daughter and is desperate to have at least that in her life it is understandable that she wouldn't want them to rock the boat and risk harming aerith and it's an awkward situation for the party to be in i'm sure that they all disagree despite seeing the logic but it would have been very cold to go against elmira's wishes especially given that she just saved marlene so i think all of these factors make it a believable decision to forgo rescuing aerith for the time being and instead they go back to their home to see if they can help in any way this leads to them discovering an underground shinra research facility below sector 7 which is a completely new addition to the remake it's kind of mind-boggling to see that all of this was happening right below everyone's noses but it doesn't strain believability too too much as this is shinra we're talking about after finding wedge we come across a really cool bit as the whispers appear when the parties see some of the pods holding deceased test subjects the reasoning behind their inclusion is to distract cloud here and prevent him from remembering his past in this specific moment as it would curtail fate's original events he begins to remember tiny flashes of his true past but the planet senses this and stops him from fully recollecting it isn't a huge or grand set piece but i found this instance to be clever both as something for fans of the original to note and perhaps add to their theories for the whispers and for new players to get a glimpse of cloud's backstory the party then escapes and the fuel provided by seeing that wedge has survived leads to an awesome turnaround in motivation for barrett as he musters the conviction to push on ahead in service of those who have fallen they return wedge to elmira's house and try to convince her to let them rescue aerith she says that she needs some time to think and tells them to get some rest which they do and this leads into one of my favorite parts of the remake a scene in the middle of the night between cloud and one of barrett aerith or tifa depending on who cloud has gotten closest to through the player's decisions in the game while it is still good my least favorite of the three scenes is the one with barrett he emphasizes the burden on his shoulders and displays how caring of a person he is through recalling the different members of avalanche in their hopes and dreams and little quirks and then the scene pivots as he tells cloud that he'll introduce him to them signifying that despite the brittle fronts that everyone could see through anyway he sees cloud as a true friend and a comrade it's a good scene well directed illustrating barrett's newfound resolve well and summarizing the way that the two have developed a genuine trust between them effectively next up is the scene with aerith and the obvious first thing that most will notice is that it shouldn't be possible to meet her here since she's currently being held at shinra headquarters but aerith isn't an ordinary person her power and connection seem to have steadily been growing and she has been shown in the original game to be capable of talking to cloud like this by transmitting her will via the live stream so regardless of whether or not this is a dream aerith is fully capable of pushing herself to talk to cloud across the great distance and the aurora borealis-esque streams of lifestream that we see across the horizon are a hint to that in this moment she's quite a bit more serious than we've seen thus far understandably so given how the stakes exponentially ramp up through the final third of the game as a result we're given a big glimpse into that side of her that seems to be more aware more mature and more knowledgeable about the mysteries of this story as she begins to prod cloud like she usually does only to hold back get serious again and apologize in a departure from her usual playfulness your mom's really worried too too so you're worried about me of course i am [Music] i'm sorry about that really she gets quite philosophical about fate and life and death here she says some things about making every moment matter that hint at the idea that maybe she knows her time is short and most significantly she tells cloud to not fall in love with her that if he does it's a trick obviously alluding to his vision being clouded by zack's influence and to her connection to the deceased it seems clear to me that at this point aerith has either gained some significant insight or the dire circumstances have forced her to confront her feelings about knowledge she already had in any case she wouldn't know this much without information about events that will soon pass and although she seems to be able to sense her death in the original as well this scene happens much earlier chronologically which is important it's a very emotional moment in the sense that aerith is clearly shouldering a very difficult burden of truth similar to what tifa experiences but it's also a scene full of hints that gives us clues about the true nature of the remake story and aerith's role in it last but certainly not least we have my favorite the scene between cloud and tifa which is absolutely stunning through the emotional beats it hits and the incredibly presented character work that we see between the lines though this one and the aerith one come to think of it can only be fully appreciated by those who have also experienced the original in reflecting on all that she's lost on everything that's bothering her about cloud's memories and on the darkness that is surely ahead tifa just can't bring herself to put on a strong front anymore and significantly she herself makes the effort to reach out and unapologetically close the distance between her and cloud the distance that is representative of that lack of communication that we saw so many times in the beginning [Music] they took everything from us again [Music] again is the word that sticks out the most here back in nibelheim and again in sector seven and the agony in her voice is so visceral as she struggles to come to grips with the unfairness and evil of shinra she cried and grieved during the plague crashing but this is a complete and utter breakdown as she lets it all go and unleashes everything on cloud tifa is arguably the most caring character in the story and the more you care the more pain you feel when things are lost she's been so strong in holding back and bearing it all but she needs this moment of weakness and cloud for obvious reasons can't understand all of the specifics of her pain but what he does know is the severity of it and that he hates seeing her like this you can see it written all over his face as awkward and oblivious as he is he just doesn't know what to do to comfort a distraught tifa but he cares more than anything so the poor guy reaches out and hugs her wishing that he could somehow will her pain away and i absolutely love that he hugs her so tightly that it starts hurting her his care for her is so strong and his anger at shinra so powerful that she can't help himself from gripping very tightly again cloud is mentally a 17 year old kid thrust into such a dark complex and devastating situation with tons of emotional and psychological baggage he just isn't equipped to be the perfect emotional support that he feels he needs to be but he tries his best and despite being hurt for a second tifa realizes all of this and appreciates it he's never been good at communicating with words but his actions here say everything and although the two still have plenty of barriers to overcome this scene is a big step for cloud to properly confront his feelings and understand tifa overall it's just a beautiful heart-rending moment that tells us without words not only the type of people cloud and tifa are but how important they are and will continue to be for each other scenes like this are examples in and of themselves of how terrific an understanding of the spirit of the story the remake has and how amazingly it's capable of presenting that in the morning elmira finally gives her blessing to allow the trio to go after aerith and they're delighted to do so but due to the widespread shutdown in the city after the destruction transport to the upper plates has been halted so they have to find another way up as a result they decide that once again cornell is a lead worth pursuing in this regard this stretched during chapter 14 is a little bit pedestrian being sandwiched in a bit of an awkward spot between the plate drop and the wonderful and rich climax of the story it prioritizes the littler things providing the player with an opportunity to complete side quests and taking the time to flesh out leslie a bit more i don't really have a problem with this and i think leslie is a solid enough character he isn't super interesting but his love for his lost wife is pretty sympathetic and while not being totally overt about it it's clear almost from the beginning that he hates the dawn so some focus here while comparatively not as interesting as some of the other stuff that the player may be itching to get to was not a bad move for me and i'd be willing to bet that we'll see leslie again in the future after he gives the party grappling guns that will allow them to scale the wall to get topside we finally catch back up with where we left off in the original i think it's really impressive how the original was able to make such interesting background art out of the remnants of these destroyed areas derailments debris bits of wire and metal it's all really well done on the other hand the remake has a characteristically longer trick and ends with this gorgeous shot before reaching shinra hq the aesthetic here is to die for the visual of the upper class section of midgar and all of its bright lights and skyscrapers is an everlastingly iconic one contrasted against the night sky we sneak in in a pretty overly silly fashion in the remake and make our way towards the main lobby of the building i spoke earlier about how open spaces are a visual demonstrator of decadence and high class and in that same vein the amount of space here speaks volumes even considering that the place is undoubtedly bustling during peak hours we are given the choice between climbing the stairs or taking the more straightforward route the elevator in the remake or fighting through in the original the stairs option is just a great bit of silliness and comedy in both versions but the remake's elevator sequence is where we're given one of my favorite lines in the story simultaneously an ironic encapsulation of barrett's still present naivete and hypocrisy and a statement about the society in midgar as a whole whole lot of normal people with families and friends work for shinra people just trying to support their loved ones as best they can i know it's not exactly a revelation but it's easy to forget a good man who serves a great evil is not without sin he must recognize and accept his complicity he must open his eyes to the truth that his corporate masters are profiting from the planet's pain only then can he redeem himself i go into depth as to why this line is so important in my barrett video so again i'd recommend taking a look at that if you're interested nevertheless the party makes their way to the upper levels and begins searching for a way to get to aerith this involves navigating through some stealth bits and puzzles in the original as well as simply being able to walk around the floors and talk to everyday employees which again helps to emphasize that shinra may be led by evil people but the majority of those working there are simply doing their day-to-day jobs without any malice it's a nuanced situation this is exaggerated in the remake and in general with this essentially being the start of the main climax of that game they really went all out with fleshing out this place in spectacular fashion in terms of design the building is lavish and stunning though again we are obviously never able to forget the pain from which this beauty came to be damn fools ones who come here at night to take in the view so pretty and marvelous and beautiful but every little light burning bright runs off her blood and bit by bit they bleed her never stopping to think how it'll end for them yeah terrible but beautiful all the same in the remake the building doubles as a tourist spot where exhibits are conducted to explain to the public what shinra is all about and in order to reach the upper floors the party must take part this tour is obviously highly propagandized and postured but it's very cool to see exactly how shinra portrays themselves to the public and what their narrative is president shinra is a really interesting villain to me indicative of his ego and pride he portrays himself as a saint to the citizens of midgar barrett says that the man thinks highly of himself and he absolutely does but i don't think he's under any illusions that he actually is the great man he shows to the public he's very forthright in all of the conversations the party has with him about his goals and it's not as if he doesn't know that he's doing something wrong he does know and he just doesn't care because he also knows that deeply entrenched as he is there is no way to shift him from power in a way that doesn't split the foundations of society he's an honest pragmatist that rests on his laurels because he's confident that he situated himself comfortably and as despicable as he is i found that side of him to be interesting the rest of the exhibit covers more of shinra's infrastructure including the divisions that scarlett palmer and heidegger lead conveniently omitting the mass amount of pain and corruption associated with their work it's a really compelling section of the story as we immerse ourselves in truly understanding the extent of this propaganda and what midgar citizens are being fed and it's just got a bit of a cool factor to it for anyone who played the original and wanted to know about shinra's operations in more detail but aside from those three stooges there are more truthful less posturing higher-ups working here in reeve who honestly wants to do what is right for the future of midgar and hojo who clearly states in his exhibit that he considers all of this to be a waste of time these two are both introduced at this late part of the story and they make an immediate impact in differing ways on one hand reeve clearly stands out as the only decent person among these executives he has very naturally kind eyes and a constant exasperation at the methods of his uppers whom he disagrees with he would have a lot of trouble finding a group of people he fits in with less and through how obvious this is in cutscenes this helps endear him to the player hojo on the other hand goes in the opposite direction and despite how little screen time he has in part one he's one of the characters that i was most pleased with in the remake hojo is a slimy underhanded obnoxious sadistic selfish piece of filth interested in torture and experimentation for compliance and pure interest he is unhinged with no moral compass and no boundaries and if you combine that with the pretty long leash he's given under shinra and the endless resources he has at his disposal he's able to do whatever sick things he wants as long as it is under the guise of helping shinra reach the promised land this is the reason aerith is so important as the last remaining ancient she is supposed to have the potential to guide others to the promised land from which a new midgar can sprout but hojo is just in it for his own gratification he is a sickening man doing these experiments for pleasure and entertainment and he's presented amazingly the voice the looks and facial animations the way aerith has to almost physically restrain herself from panicking in his presence due to his insanity he makes it quite clear that he intends to try to breed aerith with beasts to see what happens which tells you all that you need to know about him really and when you realize that a lot of the strange monsters loose out across the planet are actually just hojo's botched experiments of what used to be innocent people and animals it really makes you appreciate how evil this guy is he's a terrible person in all the right ways one of the key villains of this story and he's wonderfully executed here oh yes time for yet another meeting sit tight i won't be long next stop on the tour happens to be a virtual reality simulator that summarizes the role of the ancients in shinra's plan nicely as well as their ambitions for the promised land it looks totally beautiful and while it is propaganda as well there is enough truth in this story to act as a nice refresher for anyone who may have forgotten this or anyone who doesn't know about the ancients or rather the cetra as they're called in the first place there are a bunch of world building details baked in here but for our purpose the point here is that the cetera were a people so in tune with the planet that they were capable of bringing forth life and prosperity just from their supernatural abilities this is naturally something shinra would want due to their ambition to create a new and extremely powerful neo-midgar so that's why they're so invested in aerith after a meteor hit the planet 2000 years ago which is a very important detail that i'd ask you to keep in the back of your mind she's now the last remaining cetra and although she isn't a full one she's their only hope towards reaching this promised land this whole thing indirectly and ironically explains the motivations of shinra and it's all very clever and as a side note i'm convinced that this sequence was inspired by a similar scene from final fantasy 10 but i digress this show takes a turn though an apocalyptic one the three are then transported into a vision of the future again an undesirable one of meteor raining down upon the planet and laying waste to all i don't claim to know the exact details and motivations for this being shown here but what is clear is that this helps situate the current future as terrible in cloud's mind which is part of sephiroth's plan but this time it's not only him that sees it tifa and barrett do too which makes me believe that this was a vision set by sephiroth to lead them all on since it obviously isn't something shinra would show the public if i had to guess i'd say that this vision is being presented to the party in a method similar to how he shows them nibelheim in the climax at the northern crater later on in the original with regards to sephiroth specifically the ultimania confirms that it is version 1 that is presented here because barrett and tifa never actually make note of sephiroth and only cloud seems to see him the other two experience the meteor fall but not the version of it that cloud sees from sephiroth which includes both of them dying however this also hints at a version of sephiroth 2 through showing him emerge from the body of a cloaked man either way it's an awesome scene that shows the devastation that meteor could cause and builds questions and intrigue while establishing one of the most iconic shots of the remake in both games after chatting with the mayor listening in on the meeting and learning how to get to aerith the party follow hojo to find his lab and demand that he free her after a skirmish they're able to find and save aerith and they come into contact with a new character red13 although he isn't super relevant i enjoy red in the original game and like some things about his journey which we'll talk about once we move outside of midgar however his role in the remake is understandably limited as he only joins us with a few hours left in the game he's mainly used here for spouting exposition to explain the nature of the whispers and for taking part in some not too deep character interactions but i love his design and i like the new voice which is performed by the ever adaptable max middleman who also plays ryuuji from persona 5. for real as mentioned aerith calms red13 down and imbues him with some knowledge using that same power she used on marlene and cloud passes out after experiencing another strange sephiroth vision maybe brought forth due to the close proximity of genova and sephiroth's will we then cut to a short scene with the turks which helps a little to explain why they went through with the plate dropping according to sung if they refused then someone else would have carried it out anyway but despite that it doesn't sit well with rude and reno and this being so clear humanizes them a bit with their snappy banter helping as well they get a call from the vp who we're not yet familiar with and we return to the main party who have taken cloud to aerith's old room at shinra from when she was a child i really like this addition as it gives the story a nice breather to catch up and an opportunity to understand aerith a bit better the atmosphere is a nostalgic yet sad one which makes sense since this was the one place of respite and temporary peace for aerith and her mother in a life that was otherwise horrifying it's a sobering thing to think about that really contextualizes the sad story her life has been up until now and it makes it even more admirable that she's able to be a positive person that finds such joy in the world we already know this and have been discussing it but here is where red 13 finally confirms exactly what the whispers are arbiters of fate from the planet that do whatever they can to keep destiny flowing in the intended direction even if that direction is a bleak future for humanity aerith also lays some things out here that she's etc that although shinra want her to be their ace in the hole she doesn't know how to get to the promised land and that despite how evil shinra is there is a much greater threat looming ahead again knowledge obtained from the planet about future events events that happened in the timeline of the original tifa asks aerith to help them understand what she isn't telling them and aerith describes in dialogue that is completely exclusive to the remake that she feels lost in a maze like every time she gains insight from the whispers she loses a bit of herself i'm lost in a maze and every step is taking me further from the path every time the whispers touch me i lose something a part of myself [Music] all of them the yellow flowers [Music] this advice from the planet to follow the yellow flowers is interesting as there implied to be a way for aerith to find her way out of this maze it's stated multiple times throughout the story that they symbolize reunion on multiple levels so this may be the whispers telling her to follow her intended original path for clarity all the way to her death and beyond perhaps symbolized by the falling petals no matter what the purpose of this line is it's incredibly overwhelming and it's all a bit too much for the poor girl i find there to be parallels with the way she acts here and the way she acts in the temple of the ancients later on in the original where she is constantly fed knowledge that is difficult to comprehend leading her to become more and more mysterious and withdrawn it happens earlier here due to the different story but she has been changing and this is the strange spiritual growth i described earlier she isn't trying to be vague but she is being given information that is hard to perceive and it eats away at her as she learns more and more of a truth that is difficult to conceptualize and put into words it makes me feel very sad for her and it must be a very lonely thing to go through but tifa breaks her out of this funk and tells her that they're all in this together a sentiment which builds in power as mayor domino and wedge are able to communicate some escape plans to them they then make their way through hojo's research facility in what is again a bloated and unnecessarily tedious chapter 17 by my reckoning a chapter that somewhat halts the heightening momentum of the story after what was a great moment of respite in aerith's room at least until the climax the goal is to make it to the roof via the president's office where the party intend to catch an escape helicopter from some other avalanche members before they reach the office however they see that some sort of experiment which we know to be a genova sample has broken free and has left behind a trail of purple goo leading towards where they want to go and i'm just going to pause here because this trail sequence is a constant between both versions that works well as a reference and comparison point in the original things are once again very to the point and efficient after joining with red 13 the crew are found by the turks taken to president shinra and locked up after being given a speech that exposes information about the ancients that the remake covered through the exhibit from here we reach one of the very best stretches of story in the original where the breather in pacing is provided not by aerith's room but by the contemplation of the entire party while imprisoned the player is able to converse with aerith about the cetra and promised land and get some nice little slice of life bits from tifa barrett and red 13 before cloud falls asleep but when he wakes up he realizes that something is terribly wrong the door to his cell is open allowing him outside the guard is unresponsive cloud gathers the party to get them out of there and see what's happened and they slowly make their way through the building dead bodies everywhere a sample of genova broken out using the blessing of retrospect we know that this bundle of genova cells was willed by sephiroth remotely to turn into a clone and help break cloud out to allow him as another genova being to escape and join the reunion but none of that is obvious to the player the first time round and all we see is that a monster is missing it's haunting and to add to it there are gigantic gashes along the walls and stark deep red blood everywhere leading the party forwards this trail of blood scene is among the most iconic jrpg sequences ever and with great reason it's horrifying with fear and anxiety slowly building as we follow the trail the music just ominously humming in the background there is brutality and gore everywhere without explicitly showing anything which allows the mind to fill in the gaps with terrifying implications and at the end of it all we see our enemy the seemingly unbreakable president shinra with a sword through his back dead and the party immediately know who did it it's all a masterclass in playing with expectations building a strong atmosphere and further accentuating that powerful aura around sephiroth in comparison the remakes iteration is lacking not only is it missing the ominous jailbreak but a significant amount of impact is lost when there are no mysterious corpses to see no violent gashes through the walls and when all of that blood is replaced with a radioactive looking purple liquid the remake in general does have a notable lack of blood throughout almost certainly done to ensure that the esrb kept the game at a teen rating and as unfortunately understandable as that is the lack of blood does buffer the impact of some scenes and it's most obvious in comparing how this scene was handled to the original add that to the fact that you don't find shinra impaled by the sword and instead find him hanging off the side of the building and it's all just a way more watered-down scene to be clear i am well aware that the function of this section in the remake is quite different and i actually really like shinra's role here prior to dying but there's something shakingly profound about seeing the dead body of a man that seemed so powerful up until that point and that aspect is lost here it's not bad per se but when measuring up to the legendary execution of the original it's just weaker i'm fine with the remake trying to do its own thing and i've championed that intent and will continue to do so but it's quite clear through the trail that they tried to emulate that scene at least to some extent and for so many reasons it just doesn't work nearly as well with the many little details in the original that helped prop the scene up almost all absent here but as i did say this sequence has a different aim and a big reason that shinra is not yet dead is so that we can flesh out barrett a bit as he spares the man for all of the reasons i mentioned earlier but shinra then turns the tables on barrett and gives him something of a reality check a similar speech is given from the president prior to locking them up in the original but here the nuance is different playing out as much more of an unraveling of barrett's naive ideals and hypocrisies which i think is very effective for both characters but order is restored as shinra does indeed fall to sephiroth's sword he also stabs barret which is a simultaneous bit of shock value and a reminder that despite seeming to be antagonistic these whispers are not inherently bad and can be helpful when restoring a divergent fate that may be unfortunate which also indirectly means that destroying them may not necessarily be as great an option as it seems the group fights a genova monster in a totally awesome battle that contains my second favorite song in the remake the whispers restore barrett the sephiroth clone escapes and the gang go outside to find that rufus shinra has arrived conveniently just in time to inherit his father's throne as head of the company rufus is just as imposing of an antagonist as his father perhaps even more so but he is approached with a completely different writing style rufus is ambitious full of conviction and agency and had been planning to overthrow and usurp his father for a while he has very similar goals to president shinra but is focused much more on a ruthless result-oriented cruelty and control through fear rather than his father's laid-back and conceited pragmatism he doesn't sit back he demands the respect that he feels he deserves and when he takes over shinra he contrasts his father in that he is very proactive the people working for him are now tools at his disposal and they won't be able to rest on their laurels like they could with the former president it makes for a hell of a fun antagonist and i think the remake showed a great deal of promise through how they presented him specifically they really nailed him and summed him up beautifully through his interactions with seung and heidegger mr vice president [Music] mr president that's right no response for the man who calls him by his former title of vice president but an acknowledgement for the person who calls him by his new one it's an imposing move establishing himself as someone who is now king and will not abide by anything less than his standards it's a promising moment not just because it builds rufus up impressively but because it gives a nod to a bit of a rivalry between sung and heidegger that is hinted at subtextually in the original but never explored much with one of them being the superior of the turks entitle and the other being the leader in practice the two have a bit of a political back and forth when it comes to leading the direction that the turks go in and that's always really interested me so seeing the remake tackle it like this tells me that they'll at least touch on that later on and in addition to that this all indicates at a potential change in how things will be run the time where heidegger and the rest could half-heartedly go through the motions is no more and rufus's time is now but i'm getting ahead of myself because before that we end up fighting him in both games clout separates and beats up on rufus and later joins up with the party again and after we witness a strange scene in the remake that leaves wedge's fate up in the air they all escaped the headquarters thanks to a couple of conveniently placed automobiles now at the end of the bike chase sequence is where we reach the final and most significant divergence between the two games and the main reason that the remake is such a controversial take on the story in the original we defeat the boss and shake off all pursuers the party comes to the end of the highway and look across the mysterious horizon past and outside of midgar they contemplate what to do now and decide that they need to stop sephiroth that he is the most significant threat to everything they hold dear and that they will search for him throughout the grand expanse of the rest of the planet so they leave and the entire world opens up to the player having just played through one of the most interesting and well-developed introductory story portions of any game ever the remake is totally different after the chase against the backdrop of a shinra hq swarmed by whispers we encounter sephiroth once more more emotive and human here than in the original as he has been all this time the group readies for a fight but aerith advises against it and says something very interesting don't and you you're wrong [Music] those who look with clouded eyes see nothing but shadows everything about you is wrong the delivery and wording of this line makes me think that there is more to it than sephiroth just being the same destructive malevolent force that he is in the original everything about him is wrong almost as if his very existence and motives are at odds with the world as if he doesn't belong here like he's from somewhere else another time another place it's another hint that lends credence to the idea that sephiroth has experienced this timeline before and is situating himself within it despite not belonging to try and change it to avoid his fate and aerith having grown wiser and closer to the cosmic truths of the planet and perhaps already knowing what he's done can naturally understand that there is something off about this man even apart from the terrible things he's done as the whispers congregate sephiroth tells the party that destiny comes triggering the first truly shocking element of this climax the scene of zack from months in the past that we've seen from crisis corps and the original possibly in another timeline about to enter a final battle for his life against a horde of troops a battle that we know he loses but his significance comes later on in the story so why is he being shown here and why is his appearance accompanied with sephiroth saying that destiny comes initially it seemed clear to me that the game was intertwining zack's original fate with the destiny that sephiroth describes the one that we know he's trying to overwrite and that makes perfect sense given that these two events happen in sequence originally with zack's death being part of the chain of causality that leads to sephiroth's eventual downfall however given that this scene seems to occur in a different timeline that may not be the case and perhaps it's just an instance of the whispers being preoccupied and destroyed that leads to what happens here on another note i'm not too hot on the new voice actor used for zack although to be fair it's an extremely high standard to measure up to since rick gomez did such a great job with the role prior to the remake the new voice actor caleb pierce doesn't act out the lines too badly but his voice just doesn't seem to carry the same sort of presence power and charisma to me and this portrayal is easily my least favorite in the remake boy oh boy the price of freedom is steep embrace your dreams and whatever happens protect your honor as soldier come and get it boy oh boy [Music] the price of freedom is steep [Music] embrace your dreams and whatever happens protect your honor as a soldier [Music] come and get it however admittedly this is a small sample size and he only has a few lines so i'll reserve full judgment for now after zak's scene we rejoin the party where sephiroth cuts open some sort of mysterious portal and enters it beckoning cloud to follow before making a decision aerith informs everyone that she's able to sense that this is the entrance to destiny's crossroads the point of no return she is uneasy about entering it partly due to the unknown variables at play and partly because sephiroth clearly wants them to enter on the other side is freedom and that can be a scary thing due to the possibilities both positive and very negative if they step forward they will be changing fate altering themselves and rewriting the future tossing aside what the whispers we're trying to preserve and obviously leaving the confines of the events that happen in the original game their pleas have been ignored by sephiroth and now the whispers beg the party to not go through with it and this makes sense breaking free of fate here leads to the possibility of sephiroth succeeding with his plan a plan that will ultimately destroy the planet right now with fate intact we know that he cannot succeed but in a world where destiny is not set he may succeed and the planet ever concerned with self-preservation is terrified of that again i need to be clear in saying that i don't think aerith is all-knowing here she is very vague and very little of what she says in this climax is explicit when asked questions she shakes her head on multiple occasions and simply doesn't know i'm not too sure about the extent of what aerith does know in the story or if the reason she knows these things is explained by the live stream novels but again it is almost without a doubt a mix of being aware of those specifics we mentioned from the start and the strange bits of emotional wisdom she obtains from the whispers that give her impressions of what things are what is clear to me is that while she knows more than the party and more than her original self she doesn't know everything and there are things that she doesn't understand for sure and this situation is one of those cases in my opinion she knows that this is the crossroad of destiny and she knows that they're reaching a critical turning point but that's about all that she can put into words however if we go back to the situation at hand with so many questions this leaves the party at a contradictory situation they need to defeat sephiroth to stop him but following him and attempting to do so could very well run the risk of changing fate for the worse and handing him victory the party aside from aerith potentially don't know that he is defeated in the current timeline throughout the game cloud was purposely fed exclusively negative visions to screw with his perception and this is a tactic that sephiroth will use with the rest of the crew after they enter as well and he does this to get them to help him overcome fate as a big step towards his success they are making the decision here to literally fight and defeat fate so it's a huge risk that the party takes one that will ultimately change them and the future but they decide to go through knowing that this is the chance to finish sephiroth and perhaps aerith deems this all to be worth it to end this loop and find a future where humanity thrives but i'll save that discussion for when we talk about the ending of the original game on the other side they are met with a storm of whispers that completely leveled the place and they encounter the center and crux of the will of the whispers the whisper harbinger whose defeat would lift the restrictions of fate and open up possibilities for the future but the harbinger sends out three supreme soldiers of fate to fight the party ones that go by the names of whisper ruprum whisper viridi and whisper crocio the significance of these three has been speculated upon and discussed ad nauseum almost immediately since release but through the remakes ultimania we now have it confirmed that the three base their fighting styles off of kadaj laws and yazoo from advent children whether this is just an inconsequential reference or a clue that is deeply significant is something that i'm just not sure about but it has been stated by those behind the remake that this game will be a celebration and convergence of all of the compilation works for the universe of final fantasy vii so i wouldn't at all rule out this connection being important the specifics though aside from guessing that sephiroth has maybe been able to grasp control of his advent children disciples and converge them with the will of the planet somehow i have no clue the battle here as the player makes their way further and further reuniting with the party members dueling with the whisper soldiers again and again defeating the harbinger and finally ending with a fight against sephiroth himself it's all marvelous spectacle as they complete sephiroth's plan and beat the monster after constantly being presented with visions of terrible future events to push them on the sense of occasion here is grand and epic perhaps even too epic as this immense scale makes one wonder if they set the bar too high for future parts i mean how will they progress from this to top the punch of this climax and how on earth will we go back to the groundedness of fighting regular enemies throughout the majority of the second part without it feeling like we really shouldn't be having any trouble with them after the scale of what we already overcame there's definitely something to be said for how the game could very potentially be immersion breaking for how it scales these fights and tries to have its cake and eat it too which is something that needs to be called out but either way and having said that it's all great and so engaging here for instance this scene of the party working together and battling sephiroth just amazing inject this right into my veins call me cliche but i live for jrpg sequences just like this a lot of this is admittedly cool factor and flair where the developers clearly used this singularity bubble as an excuse to put together these action and visual sequences that were really out there but it is not at all without substance and great directing and it's not as if this stuff doesn't make sense even if quite a lot of it requires some thinking paying attention and probably future parts to understand the entirety of but what is made obvious enough through his behavior is that sephiroth doesn't want to kill cloud and it's very clear that he's not fighting with everything he has he has clouded his mercy multiple times yet doesn't ever strike a finishing blow and usually you could brush this off as a typical jrpg or anime cliche but when you factor in his actions the rest of the plot and the mysterious new story elements of the remake it would seem that there's more to this he is very reserved amused and avoidant he's toying with them here when he loses it isn't because he's lost his energy and the party defeated him it's because they broke down the shallow front of his act while they were up to the task of the harbinger they are well below his level and this is shown clearly through his lighthearted and playful demeanor but he doesn't want to end cloud's life not yet and of course he doesn't he needs him for the reunion and potentially for the link to him that is so important for his existence as explained by lifestream black he values him a little bit extra and this indicates some significance to their connection aside from the plot of the original he's achieved his goal here of defeating fate thanks in part to the party and now he looks beyond and after one final strike cloud is transported to the edge of creation by sephiroth in what very well may be the most striking and powerful scene in the game in terms of sheer imagery and weight with the brilliant foreshadowing edition of echoes of the most impacting notes from listen to the cries of the planets remixed into the song playing in this scene it is here where i think we see the truest essence of this version of sephiroth even if he does speak in vague riddles in this moment he is not malicious to cloud he invites him here to show him something and though he isn't explicit he wants cloud to know about this singularity about their place in the grand scheme of things and how they both can alter events it seems as though cloud begins to have a vision very possibly of the events to come though this time it is not sent by sephiroth who grabs his hand and prevents him from seeing this now unpredictable future if this is the case he doesn't want cloud to know at least not yet and perhaps the planet is reaching out with the last gasp trying to tell cloud something important to no avail sephiroth then speaks of the events to come how their world will catch up with those events but how the difference is he will not end and he will not allow cloud to end either clearly needing him to persist he invites cloud to join him to defied destiny in this new world to carve out a more desired future now that this is possible he shows investment in cloud and he's much less ill-spirited than one would expect but whether this is just to lead him onto the reunion and fulfill his other goals or whether this is for some alternate reason is unclear whatever the reason may be cloud naturally rejects him and there is a split second of visible frustration on sephiroth's face which isn't something that we've come to expect from him the two then face off in a scene reminiscent of the finale of the original though with sephiroth once again lazily toying with cloud so far beyond the latter's current capacity he disarms cloud and once again when given a chance to kill him he instead whispers those now infamous cryptic words seven seconds till the end time enough for you perhaps [Music] but what will you do with it let's see as fun as it is to speculate about what exactly these seven seconds could refer to i just don't think there's enough information given right now to provide us with any clear answer some believe it refers to the amount of time that it takes sephiroth to appear on screen and stab aerith in the original and if that's the case he's taunting cloud through saying that he will have the agency to change things in that moment which would make it all the more painful for both him and the audience if he isn't able to do anything to stop it there is also a potential musical hint here since listen to the cries of the planet which this scene draws reference to is the theme of the city of the ancients as we know aerith's death in the original game occurs there so this could be another indication of the 7 seconds referring to that event this game is absolutely chock-full of awesome sound direction and music placement some of which we've already discussed so i do think it's important to keep the characteristics of that track entitled 7 seconds till the end in the back of our minds for reasons aside from it being epic and setting the tone however having said all of that as i did say at the moment i'm just not sure and kind of hesitant with so many variables at play it's just difficult to say anything with a degree of certainty it'll probably hit like a truck in replays in the future when the other parts are out but i'm in the dark on this one and don't really buy into any theories one way or another but what i do know is that it's a fantastic way to lay down questions and build intrigue i've been on pins and needles for months just waiting to understand what sephiroth means and i will be for a while to come unfortunately but stuff like this is how you hook a player and make them anticipate future story revelations and i ate it all up totally exhilarated as i was confronted with that final potent shot of cloud facing the edge of creation a black feather swaying ominously behind and the buster sword in the foreground the few minutes of wrapping up after this is all completely terrific we see that scene with rufus sung and heidegger as the former takes his seat as the new ruler of shinra interestingly leaving us with a question to chew on since he can seemingly see the whispers while it looks like none of his other subordinates can gazing at the remnants of the genova samples cage we see hojo laughing maniacally with glee foreshadowing how his role in the story will increase in significance as he begins to ramp up his investment in the reunion and following that is the biggest twist in the remake the fact that now as a result of us occupying and fighting the whispers in some other timeline or alternate world or something zack has survived the assault from shinra and lives to be able to carry a weakened cloud to midgar this is confirmed by the ultimania as well it is not just the first part of the scene of his death or something and it isn't a tease to give us false hope it is canon fact that zack survives this encounter in this story though to be clear i'm quite sure that this can't be a glimpse of the past from the same timeline that the rest of them are in otherwise the events and memories that occurred throughout the entire game would be overwritten with ones of a world where zack never dies now the ramifications of this are huge and would completely alter everything about this new parallel timeline this other cloud would not be psychologically damaged at least not to the extent that he is in the original without zack due to not having to incorporate his legacy into his mind and simply not having to deal with the increased trauma and stress that comes with his friend dying zach is now alive and can potentially see his long-lost love again in this world but it is worth noting that he is now susceptible to the reunion plan as well as he is a being of genova himself there are many other additional potential changes but the point is this alternate world that we see will be totally different from the main one we've become accustomed to i don't know how often we'll glimpse it again in future parts but either way it'll be a hell of an eye-opener the whispers which have until now been surrounding midgar consistently across all timelines irrespective of context and time and existing in a singularity vacuum of sorts finally completely disappear to signify this open-ended future and midgar now back in our timeline is rebuilding after the disaster also we see another piece of evidence showing that this story is in uncharted territory that biggs is actually alive and survived the plate dropping by some miracle and it could be possible that jessie is as well because we can see her gloves and headband on the table by the window this could be a red herring and perhaps biggs just keeps them as a memento of his dear friend but there could also be a chance that she's still using them and with wedges fate up in the air it is conceivable that possibly two maybe all three of the avalanche trio are still alive but time will tell on that one sephiroth's parting words rufus's new seed of power hojo's madness zach's survival the rebuilding of midgar all of these scenes are terrific and memorable in and of themselves but together that is heightened tenfold as they coalesce beautifully to give us a great hook for the rest of the story yet my favorite of the bunch and the one that strikes me so incredibly deeply is the final one fueled by a determination to put a stop to the one that threatens the existence of everything they value the party resolves to set out and explore the expanses of the world outside of midgar and with wild questions about things like sephiroth the parallel world lines and the nature of fate bubbling underneath hidden yet palpable the prevailing image here is of a wounded but breathing zack carrying cloud to midgar a zak that aerith seems to almost be able to sense as he unknowingly across time and space crosses paths with the two who love him the ultimania states what is already pretty clear that the zak and cloud struggling to midgar and the aeryth and cloud leaving midgar don't coexist at the same time but while some don't think that aerith ever really noticed this the romantic in me likes to think that they have a connection so strong that this crossing of paths can be sensed through this gigantic chasm altogether helped by her supernatural nature of course i don't know i just like to believe that she senses him here despite being confused with the story and everything that was happening at this point during my first playthrough just seeing this scene made me tear up immediately and having seen so many reactions to this since i know that i'm far from alone in that because while we may not understand the specifics with genuine confidence we have all the context we need for the emotion and weight of the moment to reach through as well as the totally beautiful presentation to help us feel with the immediately iconic hollow theme accentuating the moment it's a melancholic and quiet ending that leaves an impact through its contrast after all of the insane revelations all of the crazy action taking on the government and sephiroth and fate itself final fantasy vii remake ends with a hush with the gentle patter of raindrops confirming that they are indeed leaving the confines of midgar and setting off on this unknown journey and the spirit of a living zack reminding us that while no one quite knows where this will all go we will be grounded by a cast that we all know and love every step of the adventure and i wouldn't have it any other way because above all what makes this remake shine the most is what it does with its characters and it knows this as it strips everything down and puts this element at the forefront of the final scene in the end we have a group of people with their own personal burdens and hesitations and drawbacks but they will put all that aside and fight with everything they have to protect in particular this final scene highlights the soul of the emotions associated with these characters both in this moment and in the story as a whole and specifically i adore the final line from aerith uttered just after sensing the faint presence of the loved one she lost [Music] i miss it the stale sky [Music] the rain is doubly painful through being extremely reminiscent of zack as the last time we saw aerith in reign was when she felt his life energy returning to the planet in crisis core but in terms of thematic significance it's a poetic little line encapsulating the idea of the ending that concept of uncertainty and fear of the unknown ahead of us obviously in a meta way for the future parts of the remake but also for the characters for aerith the steel sky of midgar was always an ironic sense of comfort a safe sky something that grounded her and gave her a sense of place as she immersed herself in the beauty of the dreams that flooded the city people hate the steel sky the slums but i don't how could i all that passion all those dreams flowing and blending together into something greater the steel sky was home and it's also representative of our own expectations of the game's story but the feeling of the rain and the view of the open sky above confirms that we have departed from this it's a scary thing and it's totally understandable to miss that predictability because it's comforting but that's just how it is now it's gone and with fate overturned no one knows what lies ahead and i can understand why some people don't like that and may have felt mislead now that the game clearly won't be following the original to a t but personally i find it super exciting of course there's always the possibility that things could be a mess but my thoughts tend to align with maximilian dude on this one i don't think we're going to see a completely different story in part 2. i think the approach is going to be similar to part one with a comparable amount of alterations such as the unique plot and some glimpses of these alternate worlds this is a game with a sincere respect for the big moments characters and story beats that make final fantasy 7 special so i don't at all think that they're going to stomp all over the original work the developers have constantly made it clear that they want to do the story justice and nail the spirit and despite a couple of hiccups they did just that with part one so i don't see that changing in the future and in an interview for the remake ultimania producer yoshinori kitase said the following i've talked about this extensively with nomura but i'm sure fans of the original are expecting to revisit familiar locations and scenes so we have strong feelings to not stray away from that from here on out we're not drastically changing the story and making it into something completely different than the original even though it's a remake please assume that final fantasy vii will still be final fantasy vii as usual given this i think they'll keep all of the events characters and locations that people look forward to and use this concept of fate being erased to reinforce and strengthen these constants and make them more powerful i could very well be wrong but for me the evidence we've got so far just doesn't add up to the next part being a complete departure that disrespects and foregoes the story entirely if we note the wording used by the announcement trailer from the game as well as how it talked about how this reunion will be scary we can surmise that this was never going to be a strict color by numbers remake that emulated the original that just never seemed to be on the cards the philosophy here was to approach this narrative in a way that kept the magic of what made the original special the same while complementing it through changing just enough variables to give it its own sense of identity with the goal of elevating both works and making them both better due to the remake's existence there is also an additional significant note to make in this regard stemming from one more entry in the ultimania according to nomura he was the one who firmly decided to include the word remake in the title of the game this was done to quell any potential doubts about this project being a genuine remake of the original to dismiss any notions of it being a shallow remaster or a movie or something but nomura also admits in this interview that there's an additional second meaning to including the word in the title and he says that he can't explain that at the moment but to ask him in a couple of years so clearly there are subtle nuances to the word that will make more sense once future parts come out and if you ask me this dual meaning to remake could very well refer to the interpretation i've constantly referred to of severoth trying to remake the story to suit his needs the core of his ultimate motivation but even if that isn't the case all signs seem to point to this game all future entries included being a bold and new direction for the story while absolutely acknowledging and adhering to the soul of its predecessor and only time will tell but i for one am confident that the next parts will absolutely respect the original of course everything is on the table so maybe defeating fate will have us overturning the visions of monumental events from the original that the party saw since anything goes but the approach taken so far and those words from kitase really make me think that that won't happen and that we can rest easy in that regard all things considered this ending is strange and a little uncomfortable due to how much of a left field departure it is and immediately after experiencing this all i was left in awe but not sure of how i felt overall was i happy and satisfied with this was it good was it just nonsense and was i swept away by badassery and spectacle but after a replay some reflection listening to opinions online and more i decided that this is all a terrific spellbinding emotional end to the game that says goodbye to midgar while setting the foundation for so much and opening the future to whatever may come final fantasy 7 remake was a hell of a spiritual successor that while notably flawed elevated the characters deepened the setting and explored the mythos in a way that i never thought possible while setting the stage for tons of amazing potential i'm sorry and i completely understand if you didn't enjoy the game but on the whole i have such wholehearted love for it and i have literally been waiting for part 2 from the second the credits rolled while surrendering oneself to pure investment in a series like this does offer the potential of getting burned this was without doubt one of the most emotional intriguing and captivating gaming experiences i've had in a long time and i'm fully on board with whatever direction this remake is heading in hopefully you are too if you're still here thank you so much and i really hope you enjoyed this has been a project that i've had so much fun with but at the same time it's been pretty exhausting for quite a few reasons please feel free to share what you think of both games and my theories or critiques in the comments below after stewing in my own thoughts for what seems like forever i'd love to hear some other perspectives whether they be in agreement with me or otherwise as i mentioned earlier i will be adding a second part to this video down the line where i'll talk about the post midgar material with a primary focus on the original game and some interspersed segments discussing the remake and how it may approach things in future parts i'll probably be making the second part no matter what and i have already started working on it but if that is something you'd like to see please show your support by liking or commenting on the video or even taking a look at my patreon if you'd like to support me a bit more directly these projects are very arduous and tiring and they definitely tend to be worth it in the end but words and gestures of support and encouragement during production really do go a long way in helping them get completed so i'll take what i can get anyways i've talked for far too long i really hope you've gotten some enjoyment or value from listening to me talk about these wonderful games and now more than ever many thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Aleczandxr

Views: 74,118

Rating: 4.9377871 out of 5

Keywords: analysis, reaction, playthrough, gameplay, story, lets play, review, critique, comparison, original, remake, vii, final fantasy, final fantasy vii, final fantasy vii remake, ffvii, ff7, ff7r, final fantasy 7, final fantasy 7 remake, barret, cloud, aerith, aeris, tifa, red xiii, sephiroth, fight, boss, music, soundtrack, kingdom hearts, fate, jenova, shinra, rufus, hojo, midgar, part 1, part 2, biggs, jessie, wedge, death, chapter, theory, yuffie, vincent, cait sith, zack, scene, whispers, combat, intergrade, trailer, ps5, ps4

Id: Ak0CliamogQ

Length: 199min 39sec (11979 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021