I like the notion that he's basically pulling a Palpatine
Same. I think it suits this version of Sephiroth really well.
Somewhat related, I think that the fidelity of seeing the characters in this level of realism does something REALLY interesting that got brought up on Twitter, and I wanted to hear what people here thought:
Do people who are familiar with the entire compilation enjoy the ending more than those who have only played the OG 7?
If crisis core was ported somewhere I would have probably played it by now, but I haven't. I don't remember AC very well and it didn't leave enough impression for me to watch again and I watched dood play DoC for a few hours before I completely checked out. So the OG is really all I have to go by.
So, I played all of the Compilation that I could get my hands on, binged through it all, and I really love it all for what it is. It's got its flaws to be certain, but I really like it a ton.
That all being said – I
initially really didn't like the ending of
Remake at all for several reasons.
If you're just going off of the OG, I think that what you'll feel most right off the bat is the change into some weird Kindom-Hearts-timeline-bullshit totally derailing everything about the game right at the finale with a cheap recreation of the original ending, and losing the game's story in favor of a meta narrative commentary about the game's story.
However, after spending more time to let it settle, and especially taking time to really look at the game in context to the ways that it draws parallels to
Advent Children or
Crisis Core for things that it's establishing for the future helped me get a perspective on everything here that totally shifted my feelings about the ending, but I think that it's really all down to looking at the
WHY of these inclusions – and they're completely different than they seem at face value.
That's because the changes aren't nearly as crazy as they feel, and I don't actually think that we're truly going to be changing the story. Beyond the sorts of things that they're already doing to adjust the presentation to fit more in line with the sort of content they can deliver, it's still going to be FFVII, with parts of the Compilation added in, and some new things and changes to make it all work.
This "capital 'D' Destiny" mechanic with the Whispers is in place, so that they can give the player a way to feel the ramifications of the actions and wider reaching consequences if they were to just follow the story, vs. pushing against the existing narrative to attain one of their own choosing. The deus ex machina system keeps the story in place – because this is a
remake of something that has to follow an existing path. However, at the end of this first game – that no longer exists. This is so that the player
has to feel as though the ultimate fates of the characters in your party and what happens to the world across these games is directly a result of
their own choices, not because that's the way it's written.
This means that things like changing Zach's & Aerith's fates that feel like they
could be changed because a remake of something could technically let you do whatever they want are on the table...
–but they're only on the table, because as the player you're going to have to give that up to achieve something that's more important.
The core thematic purpose of
FFVII's narrative is about defeating Sephiroth & stopping his goal of assuming command over all creation and becoming a god where everything flows through him.
This is achieved through an act of selflessness & altruism, where the balance of peace between humanity and the Planet is restored, and by so doing the flow of power removes that power from Sephiroth. The end result is that the world is saved – but Cloud is still left with survivor's guilt & trauma from those events and has to carry the pain of those choices with him.
This is why knowing that
Advent Children exists as the resolution of Cloud's pain & acceptance of what they did in the original game is so important. It's why the Whispers are in the form of the
Advent Children Sephiroth Remnants – they're going to eventually be transformed into the mechanics of the story that Sephiroth is manipulating to make Cloud (and now the player) feel guilt & pain over those things. In the end, this gives a route to directly overcoming "Fate" that you can't change, because that's what the past truly is: overcoming your own memories that you can't go back and change to be what the current pain in you is longing for. The end of that results in Cloud (and the player) being at peace with those choices that were made and the events that have transpired – which finally represents the conclusion of Cloud's personal emotional narrative.
That's what
literally all of the new stuff is.
It's why I have to emphasize that it's about as far from random timetravel & alternate timelines Chrono-Kingdom-Hearts-level nonsense as it could possibly be, even though it doesn't seem like that's the case.
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