Why Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Ending is Actually Good (Mostly)

there's no world where Final Fantasy 7 rebirth wasn't going to be polarizing on the heels of Final Fantasy 7 remake not actually being a remake Square Enix found themselves in an impossible situation of their own making one in which they were obligated to use the creative freedom they' opened up but also one in which they needed to appease fans who believed the original death of aith was an iconic piece of video game history and to say the ending is just polarizing is maybe a bit of an understatement there was quite a bit of negative reaction from fans with even major public ations like IGN posting immediate videos on how it handled that moment in this video I want to present the other side of the argument this ending absolutely emotionally destroyed me in a way I can't remember a game doing since the original release of Mass Effect 3 albeit that one was for completely opposite reasons and in trying to figure out why it hit me so hard I've come to the belief that the ending is exactly what it should have been that things are correct in concept even if there's a few mistakes in execution so here's a video explaining why before I get started I want to say that anyone who strongly dislikes the ending isn't wrong for doing so disliking the direction a story takes is totally understandable and I fully admit that part of my take stems from the fact that I don't have as much reverence for the original game as some people do my goal here isn't to take a Hardline stance that detractors don't get it or some stupid stories are inherently subjective and I want to examine the methods of Storytelling used in the ending more so than whether or not this was a good direction to take the games Final Fantasy 7's twist death of aith was undeniably a huge part of gaming history this sort of thing was pretty much unheard of in the genre at the time especially considering it happened in the middle of the game and not the end and what's important to note about it is how definitive it was over the span of a few cut scenes aith is killed cloud has an emotional reaction you fight a boss with her iconic theme playing in the background and Cloud lays her to rest the total cutscene time is only around 5 minutes long and the Simplicity of it is part of why it has remained iconic I think part of the reason people were hyperfocused on how it would be handled in rebirth is that there were obvious paths to Improvement while keeping the moment the same visual storytelling has evolved a lot since then and even just the fact that the characters were Now voice acted could really Hammer home the emotion this did not happen and to figure out why it's probably worth going over the events of remake for the first 90% or so remake follows the events of the first game rather Faithfully with a few exceptions the first being filler chapters added to better Define midgar and had out the runtime and the second being the addition of weird ghost things called Whispers that are essentially just a meta way for the writers to Veer away from what happened in the original game this comes to a head in the Final Chapter where the characters break through the influence of The Whispers in a sequence that can only be described as going full inura the end result is aith acknowledging that whatever events were supposed to happen are no longer guaranteed with the post-credit scene revealing an immediate new variable in the form of Zack an important character who was dead before the events of the original game now surviving his final stand this position the new titles is definitively not a remake and in fact probably a sequel most specifically to advent children with the devs having stated that this link will be explored in the final part of the trilogy in Advent Children both seph and aith manipulate events via their place in the Life stream despite both having a chronic case of being dead in remake it's implied that both sephra and aith have some knowledge of the events of the main title and in rebirth it's outright stated in a conversation between her and red that aith lost this knowledge after the events of remake and I think pretty fairly a lot of people rolled their eyes when this happened not only because Advent Children kind of sucked but also because Final Fantasy 7 has needed a true remake or more reasonably a remaster for decades at this point and this diversion was unnecessary I understand this point of view although my belief is that giving developers more creative freedom could result in an interesting new experience rather than a polished up old one still I think a big part of the problem here is that square has never done a simple remaster touching up the Lego graphics and making things more visually appealing while potentially adding voice acting it's also a slap in the face that a lot of cuts scenes did finally get remastered in a similar but more visually pleasing style and then locked behind a Pay to Win mobile game seriously what the in the end though that original Final Fantasy 7 experience is still there it's available on basically every platform known to man and adds such I'm fine with breaking new ground and exploring the world and characters differently mileage varies wildly here and no one one is wrong for thinking what they think with all that out of the way let's talk about the ending of rebirth I'm going to summarize since I'm going to be referencing the events but if you don't need the summary feel free to skip to this point in the video after Cloud suffers from yet another acute case of searo itis that the rest of the party continually refuses to acknowledge he and aith fall off a cliff they awaken in an odd place throughout the game you play small sections as Zack in another timeline the one where he survived at the end of remake and one in which cloud and aith are both it's these versions you seem to wake up as and after a short sequence where you learn the world is about to end in this timeline you're shown Zach who elsewhere is seen making a crucial decision twice picking a different option each time after the first a giant pillar of light envelops the screen Zach has an encounter with sepo at ith's church before getting blasted into a big ass void where he vows to find a way whatever that means aith and Cloud also make their way to the church where she gives him the white materia then pushes him into a void as sephar off enters the church he is surrounded by Whispers as SEO monologues about how and when fate branches these are the big decisions we've seen so far like the end of remake and Zach's earlier crucial decision he returns back to his own timeline now possessing the white materia despite the earlier scene in the church very much seeming like a goodbye he immediately sees aith again who takes the white materia and then pieces out while white Whispers suround Cloud note The Whispers in this game are either white or black and appear to be controlled by aith and sephar respectively again probably tying back to Advent Children Cloud whites out and sees that same scene play out again but with the rest of the team there before the player takes control and chases after aith they find her with separo who talks about the timelines merging and other I don't know he does a lot of monologuing here a wall of black Whispers prevents the group from getting to aith but they managed to make a path for cloud who goes on alone he approaches aith as both sets of Whispers slow his approach and the iconic scene is redone Cloud once again suffering from sephar Roth itis fights the urge to kill aith before searo drops from above this time he manages to block the blow as both of them are enveloped in the same light we saw earlier at Zach's branching choice aith is unharmed but then static fills the screen and the iconic scene plays out again as it did in the original the screen continues to get hit with static as we see many different versions of cloud going through the same moment some crying some not some in which aith is bleeding some not searo monologues again about how the worlds are merging and much like the end of remake everything goes full nura the team gets split and appears to be fighting different versions of goova and searo across different timelines and it's overall kind of a mess Zach still hanging out in a giant white void finds his way out and somehow finds himself with Cloud after they fight off sephar Roi sends Zach back into the void saying the worlds are parting again presumably only letting them merge here as a prank Zach tells Cloud to save aith before he leaves again Zack cloud and the rest of the party fight searo separately before one final fight with cloud and aith who is back again and then after the fight she once again vanishes Zach who was left in a world that appeared to be seconds from ending gets saved by white Whispers and sent back to the church Cloud returns to aith at the altar and tells her to wake up which surprisingly Works cut to the next scene and we see the rest of the party in morning Cloud appearing callous to the rest of the team sees aith while the rest of them believe her to be dead in a final scene Cloud sees aith once again while the rest of the party doesn't he tells the party not to look up as he sees a tear in the sky that was present in Zach's timeline while the rest of the party doesn't cloud and aith Say Goodbye as she watches everyone fly off okay so yeah that's kind of all over the place I'll reiterate that if you don't like this concept of multiple timelines and intentional overc complexity I get it this is an ending that doesn't really care if you don't keep up for reasons I'll go into shortly and it turns 5 minutes worth of cutscenes into a Trippy 2hour sequence that leaves you with more questions than answers I want to talk about the two biggest complaints I've seen with the ending why I believe they weren't included and what replaced them these are a lack of emotional weight and a lack of closure emotional weight is pretty self-explanatory the nature of the shorter sequence is everything hits you all at once you go from seeing arth to laying her to rest rapid fire the brief moments with your party as well as the outstanding music Hammer the scene home the death hits you makes you feel like and then the game proceeds with a character moving on and processing grief closure is a bit more specific because because obviously there wasn't full closure in the original release and there was never going to be full closure here there's plenty of game left in both instances but there is closure for ai's active role in the story her body is laid to rest and she is definitively gone she goes from alive to dead to buried over the course of a few shortcut scenes there isn't a lot of confusion here even if her Legacy still has a role to play in the plot in rebirth the emotional weight has been replaced with emotional Whiplash and the closure has been replaced with information overload and while that might not sound good I'm going to explain why I think it worked emotional whiplashes that games attempted payoff for the uncertainty that ff7 remake set up the shock value of air dying was never going to be a thing here it's one of the most well-known twists in gaming history while I'm sure there were some people who managed to stay unspoiled for 27 years I can't imagine it was a particularly huge number a shot for shot remake was never going to have the same impact so in order to achieve a new sort of emotional impact the game has you questioned whether or not there's a chance she could live ath and Cloud have what could be considered a goodbye scene something like six times and even the fact that she's still present for the very end of the game and the last person you see before the credits role is intentionally frustrating to sum up my feelings on this arth's death doesn't have the same emotional weight because it plays a much different role in this telling of the story it was never going to have the same impact as it did in the initial release and so rather than follow the same bullet points they doubled down on their decision and remake to dress drastically changed the story replacing the quick visceral emotion of the original death with a series of emotional rug poles this ties into the next point where there's a lack of closure to once again sum up my feelings on it rebirth doesn't provide closure for aith because ith's role in the story isn't over in place of the closure you're provided with information overload seeing timeline after timeline seeing aith leave and come back again is meant to reinforce that her role in the story is going to be drastically different than in the original game while her original death scene happened in this game it's only one of many the reason she's constantly shown as alive and dead and alive again is because when the game ends she's both she's very much dead to the rest of the group but she's still going to be a huge part of the third game and there's also essentially confirmed existence of a timeline where Cloud blocked the attack Cloud seeing her at the end is also not simply part of his delusional State as red feels her presence as well now none of this means she's literally alive this could just be a more direct representation of her being part of the live stream but even if that's the case she'll still have that direct representation in the third part there's one thing I think that really caused this whole back and forth sequence to really hit home for me which is the short section where arth and Cloud explore the Sector 5 slums before everything goes nuts in remake and parts of rebirth aith seems acutely aware of the fact that she'll need to sacrifice herself to save everyone and I think it's easy for this trait to overwhelm a character's portrayal and make make them seem detached or unrealistic but this short section reinforces something incredibly tragic that makes you desperately want her to survive she's not an unfilling robot whose only purpose is to save the planet and get stabbed she's a person who doesn't want to die who wants to enjoy life while she can before it gets taken from her and this section is what I keep coming back to is the reason why I actually cared whether or not she ended up Surviving the lack of a definitive answer on this worked for me because it so aggressively inspired these emotions because not knowing makes sense in building the intentional confusion both the player and Cloud feel moving forward as well as serving as an emotional rug pole after getting the player invested on whether or not she would die and while ai's death originally was one part of a full game this was just the ending of part two the intentional over complexity exists so it can be made simple in part three it exists so the player can be fed pieces of information whose relevance will slowly be understood over the course of a full separate game it ex exists because it ties into Cloud's position as a borderline lunatic who struggles to separate fact from fiction and just because part two didn't provide emotional weight and closure to ai's part in the story doesn't mean part three won't if she stays dead I guarantee there will be the same emotional sent off people were hoping could potentially be added here I have no doubt there will be additional closure to her role in the story it's just that this version isn't done with her so any appearance of closure would be undermined when she inevitably shows up in part three again I'm not arguing whether she's alive or dead I'm sure you can find countless breakdowns or theories on YouTube and I don't really want to get into that stuff but regardless of whether she's alive or dead she'll be a part of the next game and that kind of ties into my final thoughts everything positive I have to say about the ending could be undone if they screw up that final part complexity needs to be made simple multiple timeline Shenanigans need to be condensed and the ending of the story needs to focus on the characters and their struggle more so than a narrative that over loads you to the point where you struggle to figure out what's going on I'm fine and even a lot of ways excited that the ending of part two left me with more questions than answers but if that holds true for part three they will have undeniably up but the rest of part two makes me optimistic they'll get it right the cast of the game has been expanded and developed significantly more than in the original and even something as basic as yui not being optional has major implications for how much they can involve her in the story and how she can actually form meaningful relationships with the rest of the group a cast I was generally ambivalent towards in the original became intensely likable to me in rebirth even though the game reveled in near devil make cry levels of camp it still found time to make the characters feel genuine and interesting the reason I believe the ending worked is that I believe it set things up well for those characters to take Center Stage the pile of intrigue and confusion will introduce new content in part three rather than hitting the same noes with more things left unresolved than in the original there's more room for members of the cast who would otherwise be sidelined to help resolve them and in the end it leaves room for a potentially stronger emotional conclusion than a traditional remake would have had if you don't have faith in Square Enix to pay this off I fully understand on the surface I think a lot of what they've done can come off as Chang for the sake of change as messing with something that didn't need messing with and their track record with stories is just about as Hit or Miss as they come but I have trust that the feelings of confusion and Whiplash were intentional that the unanswered questions are meant to be a launching point for characters to grow and change as they shft through them that so much of this will seem far less complex when we have the ending to play through rather than a frustrating and indefinite amount of time to wait I don't think it's fair to expect moments to have the same impact in a story where they're clearly not meant to have the same role and for that reason I think the ending to Final Fantasy rebirth did exactly what it needed [Music] to thanks for watching if you enjoyed this consider liking or leaving a comment it helps in these videos do take an annoyingly long time to make I'm sure people have pretty strong opinions on this so I'm happy to hear what other people have to say have a great rest of your day

Channel: ianbits

Views: 31,947

Keywords: final, fantasy, seven, VII, rebirth, remake, intergrade, intermission, death, aerith, cloud, sephiroth, ending, timelines, alive, dead

Id: Cb2qFJFX93E

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024