Your points are well taken, gogglebob. I'm still sort of rolling things around in my head, but I guess where Part 3 goes will determine how I ultimately feel about this.
A question I've been wondering about that I'm not sure anyone can answer:
A question I've been wondering about that I'm not sure anyone can answer:
What exactly happens when Cloud "saves" Aerith, but then she dies anyway? With all of Sephiroth's talk about worlds merging and splitting, my initial read was that Cloud did in fact save her, but then that reality got overwritten with a timeline where he didn't. But given the rest of the events of the ending, it seems more thematically on point that his unreliable narrator ass only ever hallucinated saving her, and was just too late to begin with.
Also, unrelated to that question, @4-So brought up an amazing point of gameplay/story integration last night: going into the Jenova Lifeclinger battle, the entire party's Limit gauges are maxed out... except for Cloud's, because in his delusion that he saved Aerith, he doesn't share their fury at her death. I think that's just genius.
Also, unrelated to that question, @4-So brought up an amazing point of gameplay/story integration last night: going into the Jenova Lifeclinger battle, the entire party's Limit gauges are maxed out... except for Cloud's, because in his delusion that he saved Aerith, he doesn't share their fury at her death. I think that's just genius.