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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
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FFVII is still the only game in the series, among those that featured or emphasized a romantic relationship as part of their protagonists' stories, that involved more than one woman in that dynamic. The developers may or may not have acknowledged the inspiration, but considering when the game was made, it's clearly pulling a lot from the dating sims of the era and weaving that harem-esque framing as part of the otherwise static narrative in what transpires through allowing the player to signal their affections this or that way, even if the trajectory and resolution is always the same. The story turning up how it does is to me immaterial to what they sought to evoke with how those relationships are portrayed: that both of the leading women are Cloud's and by extension the player's prospective girlfriends and love interests, at varying degrees of prominence through the course the narrative takes. If people argue over preference, that's only by design, since they're both so consistently framed as objects of desire.
This is objectively true, but nerds will argue over who the biggest victim is, they'll argue about anything.
Meanwhile, I think this game did a lot to put in hard work to make the characters more likable than they've ever been, and not just as objects of desire. Tifa and Aerith in particular have much more fully fleshed out backstories, and they both demonstrate a richness in personality and inner-life that just doesn't exist in the same depth in the original game.
I really didn't like Tifa as a character in the original game, and I don't even like her as a romantic pairing for Cloud (girl you deserve better) but she's just a very likable, earnest, strong, kickass character this time around.
On a semi-related note, I've been reading some of the side-novel stuff lately that spun off of this game and Advent Children. Kazushige Nojima (who was an event planner and writer for FF7, scenario writer for Crisis Core/Advent Children, and the main writer for Remake/Rebirth so far does a pretty decent job. Remake/Rebirth in particular pull a lot from these books, be it Tifa's whole backstory running away from home, to her cat, to Aerith's life in Sector 5, Leslie's whole thing in Wall Market; Kyrie and her grandma; etc. It's all pulled from the guy's books and not just from the other games in the Compliation of FF7
There's nothing I want excised more from these games than Leslie and everything to do with him. Don Corneo is and always has been played up as a sex criminal, but he's also the habitual ball-crushed comic relief and the more they try to gesture toward the ostensible reality of his human trafficking operation the less it holds together because these games in how they are written are completely incapable of treating the premise with the gravity it demands; see for instance the framing of his collaborators in sex trafficking and entrapment Chocobo Sam, Madam M and Andrea as quirky, lovable recurring side cameos you're supposed to delight in seeing again as an audience instead of accessories to and enablers of rape. Leslie's fiancée is gone, and whether his story resolves by rescuing her from whatever has befallen her or not, all you're left with is three games of a guy on a quest to save an offscreen woman who only exists to spur him into action.
Tifa is complex for me because the way she exists in the narrative is as a satellite to Cloud, completely beholden to his arc and never existing outside of it, and the embellishments these remakes engage in don't do anything to alter that because it's fundamental to her narrative role. Despite that frustrating reality of the character as she's always been, that she is a degree of more forthcoming and communicative in these remakes with Cloud and others is great for those that want to see more shades of her... but I've also always thought that her inability to let anyone in and her willing withholding of herself and her thoughts from others was the part of her characterization that rang the truest in the context of what the narrative allows her to do; if I connect track titles like "Anxious Heart" or "Holding My Thoughts in My Heart" to a character in the story, it's her. The closing of distance from the character as an audience through the immense amounts of elaboration that these games engage in doesn't necessarily work in concert with what I valued in her characterization.
Tifa is complex for me because the way she exists in the narrative is as a satellite to Cloud, completely beholden to his arc and never existing outside of it, and the embellishments these remakes engage in don't do anything to alter that because it's fundamental to her narrative role. Despite that frustrating reality of the character as she's always been, that she is a degree of more forthcoming and communicative in these remakes with Cloud and others is great for those that want to see more shades of her... but I've also always thought that her inability to let anyone in and her willing withholding of herself and her thoughts from others was the part of her characterization that rang the truest in the context of what the narrative allows her to do; if I connect track titles like "Anxious Heart" or "Holding My Thoughts in My Heart" to a character in the story, it's her. The closing of distance from the character as an audience through the immense amounts of elaboration that these games engage in doesn't necessarily work in concert with what I valued in her characterization.
Unless I missed him, Leslie isn't in FF7 Rebirth at all.
I didn't mind this part all that much, but I totally get where you're coming from. To me, the Leslie parts of the story are there to give that gravity, and show how thorough Corneo's grip on Wall Market is, and show some of the more serious consequences of his operation.
I have a lot of the same reservations about the character as you do. And while there's still some stuff I think is not the best, I think Remake and Rebirth did a lot of work to try and at least partially assuage those issues with the character. In the og game, she is entirely an accessory to Cloud and his journey. In this, they expand upon her own POV have her actively address the discrepancies between her story and his, as well as have her argue with him. Her past outside of Cloud is expanded upon, she has tons of relationships that matter to her outside of just her and Cloud, and her personal journey was pretty decently established in both the game and one of the side novels about how she started out as a person without a lot of personal agency, and how she grew through hardships, trials, and force of will to claim back her agency as a person. I really look forward to where her story will go in Part 3. Because in the OG game she steps up a bit to fill the void once things go sideways with Cloud. But it's still framed in a way that she is there to help him on his journey. I look forward to the trend continuing of her own journey and agency continuing to be reframed.
There's a side mission that's probably easy to miss at Corel Prison, where you run into Leslie trying to track down his GF. Spoilers for the eventual outcome of that entire plot thread: In the book "Final Fantasy VII The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story" -- Post FF7, Leslie has already reunited with his GF, and they're expecting a baby. He burns Don Corneos mansion down and he helps Kyrie open her detective agency.
Huh, I thought I did every side mission in Corel.
Maybe not, actually. Thought I'd at least activated all the endgame side quests, but I guess not this one.
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I am also 90% certain it is one of the regional side quests that only becomes available during the final (open world) chapter.
It becomes available in Ch 12, but only after you completed "Trouble in Paradise" - the Kyrie mission for the Corel Region.
Ahhh, that's the "bait the monster" one, right? OK, I didn't finish that.
Tomm Guycot
(he/him)
Just finished this game last night. It's really good. Spoilers below because YT has made the internet dumb and I want to scream these on social media.
And a little speculation
Of course they didn't show the moment. They're going to show it when Tifa fixes Cloud's brain. It will be dramatic and incredible.
This is not a huge deviation. They have used the new theme of convergent worlds to deepen the delusion that Cloud already had/has. This is good storytelling.
And a little speculation
I think Aerith is doing this on purpose (she put a blue swirly in the materia) to counteract Sephiroth's hold on Cloud. But if accurate that is a pretty screwed up thing to do to a friend.
I thought that for a moment too, but I really don't think that's the case. Aerith is fundamentally not a character even capable of such things. She's the kind of person who feels intense guilt and self-loathing for even the most basic, human, self-indulgences/flaws. She tried to reason with Sephiroth right after he murdered her. And she's the kind of person who gave up her life without a second thought for her friends. Sephiroth is the selfish manipulator. Aerith is his antithesis.
Tomm Guycot
(he/him)
You could be right. I'm sure they'll at least explain it better than I suggested, but it'll be a while before we find out.
I have seen such WILD theories that seem to miss the point.
I saw one that read the ending as simply as "Aerith is alive now" and claimed Tifa was CRUSHED the entire ending because she knew Cloud was with Aerith now. Just.. wild, insane things.
People also seem to get very caught up in "timeline swapping" and I really don't think that is the point. They claimed the same thing after the Zack tease in Remake and that isn't at all what Rebirth was about. I think people are missing the forest for the trees.
tl;dr - Kingdom Hearts really hurt you people
People also seem to get very caught up in "timeline swapping" and I really don't think that is the point. They claimed the same thing after the Zack tease in Remake and that isn't at all what Rebirth was about. I think people are missing the forest for the trees.
tl;dr - Kingdom Hearts really hurt you people
Sure. There is intentional vagueness and plausible deniability baked into the story so that 1) nobody can know for sure what is going on, and 2) so that they can pivot and change things going into part 3 if they want. I remember being convinced that Zack was already in the main timeline at the end of Part 1, and that was very not the case. Also, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but after the fact the dev teams removed a cutscene from Intergrade where Zack shows up at the church looking for Aerith - completely retconning it out of existence with the beginning of Rebirth that contradicts that scene. So who knows what’s gonna happen.
That said, I feel pretty confident on my reads of these characters at least. The core essence of them doesn’t change, even if the details of the plot events does. And the more I replay the games, and read ancillary stuff like the Ultimanias or spin-off novels, the more firmly I feel like I understand the intent of the creative people involved and how they see these characters.
I've written about my interpretation of those events earlier in the thread. But suffice to say, I think she's alive too - in one of these split-off timelines. But it's complete nonsense that Tifa would be CRUSHED to see her best friends hooking up - which is categorically not what she even observes either. She'd be sad yes, but she loves Aerith just as much - if not more - than she loves Cloud. She watched her best friends die in the last game, and now she just watched her new BFF die too. That's what's crushing her.
Which is something that seems like it should be obvious after playing through Remake/Rebirth -- but it's noteworthy how it isn't necessarily obvious if all you know is the OG game. I remember reading in the Ultimania in Remake how one of the key leads was floored/taken aback when their staff all thought that Tifa and Aerith didn't like each other/were rivals. Because to them, they were best friends, but that didn't necessarily get fully conveyed in the original game. So that was a point of emphasis this time around - to really accentuate their kinship.
Tomm Guycot
(he/him)
I knew it!!!
When Interograde came out I watched all the cutscenes, but did not play it until just before Rebirth. And I swore there was a scene missing!!
They changed one of Aerith's lines too, apparently to suggest she's seeing the broken sky now that the steel sky is gone, though no one else does. I don't really like that change, but I suppose I get it as of the end of Rebirth.
Not a big fan of changing the story/events of an earlier chapter to align it with a new one in general.
Not a big fan of changing the story/events of an earlier chapter to align it with a new one in general.
I get your reticence about post-release changes in general. (I thought all of the story-content added to FF15 in the Day One patch and beyond was an atrocity.) But I don't mind either of these changes. The scrapped cutscene in Intergrade was removed for narrative cohesion, since it wouldn't have made sense combined with the opening of Rebirth - and Rebirth's opening was awesome and way better than Zack just showing up at the church being all like "huh?"
The thing you quoted Sarcasmorator - was less of a 'change' and more of a 'change back' - correcting a previous error. The error there was entirely one born of overly zealous English localizers who took the original Japanese script - which was intentionally vague for a reason - and tried to un-vague it by explaining why Aerith had a bad feeling looking up at the sky. And they ended up swinging and missing. And that's just going to be a thing when you approach localizing the way the English side of things did. Something hardly any of the other localizations had problems with from what I've read, since they took a more literal approach, so this is only really effecting the ENG side of things for this global-product. Also IIRC they didn't change the spoken English dialog, just the subtitles in the patch? I'll need to replay that to confirm, but that's what I remember reading.
Not sure either way on the spoken line vs. subtitle. But I liked the originally translated line better, whatever it was in the Japanese. It had poignancy for Aerith that the other lacks.
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I would rather retain the original vagueness because it was one of those cases where 1) it was intentionally vague in order to imply multiple things, so 2) picking one interpretation out of the multiples leaves you with an incomplete experience and also 3) terminates thought on the part of the player since they're just being told the one interpretation without having to expend any effort to try and understand for themselves what is going on.
Our opinions simply differ on this score!