SPOILERS FFVII Remake Open Spoiler Discussion Thread

[looneymoon]

idk how coherent it really is. my s-o flat out had no idea what was going on in that final chapter. when i was explaining about how it was about changing destiny and time travelling ghosts, his response was "that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard" and would not have it when I tried to convince him that it was true

it wasn't until his favourite youtubers echoed the same things I was saying that he believed

(I'm still salty about that, this is just an excuse to complain)

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Does the Remake have any coherent themes, over and above the ones that came from the OG?

I think it's a word that starts with "D" and ends in "iny"

I think it's really just extending the premise of the OG's examination of the emotional & existential struggles with life & death, and digging in deeper into the surrounding questions of what actually matters to us and why we experience what we do when someone dies. That hits at the core of self-identity, what we value, and what drives out inner purpose, which is... basically the whole story.



X

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I quite like the Whispers as metaphors for OG players who don't want the story of the Remake to deviate in any way from the original. Unfortunately, the Whispers didn't act consistently enough for that.

I get it that some people find this "can we go back to our pasts and un-write our stories, can we become or do something different?" very interesting. I just don't, because in real life the answer is No. What I loved about FFVII, what made it so profound to me, was that it had important, interesting things to say about real life issues: death, hope, despair, capitalism, consumerism, environmentalism. Yes, it wasn't "realistic", but its foundational themes were.

That said, I can see why the writers of the Remake would want to take this route. Can they go back to this story and do something different with it? Will they be allowed to? That's more interesting than "destiny".

@ X-Soldier - but when death is essentially meaningless, or at best whimsical, it can't have anything meaningful to say about those themes

 

[Ite]

lol, you always take the pessimism just a step further than I.

I'm happy to be the extreme that keeps you from simping too hard to center, even if I look like a wangrod

Re: Destiny as a thematic topic. Looney said it, but you need to put the thematic topic in a sentence in order for it to be a theme. We use the two terms interchangeably, but when actually trying to discuss what the theme is, we need to actually have a theme.

Possible theme of FF7R: "Those with the power to change destiny will do so, even to their detriment."

 

[Makoeyes987]

I think we had this discussion before. Can we change our fate? No, we can't. Whatever happens to you, that's your fate. Maybe in video games and movies where time loops exist, people can go back and make things happen differently, but that's just trite wish fulfillment. In real life, there are no time loops and no do-overs.

The nature of "Fate" is beyond a simple yes or no question. Does fate actually exist? And if we have free will, then that means by it's very nature it's not firmly rooted in predestination because of the existence of choice. Unless Fate is a conscious actor working to undermine our choice and thwart us every step of the way. Which then leaves it as a question of how much force is necessary to exert one's will to enact change within our world.

So no, it's not really quite that simple of a question Add in the wrinkle of time travel and then it really goes nuts.

And we're not in real life. So....

idk how coherent it really is. my s-o flat out had no idea what was going on in that final chapter. when i was explaining about how it was about changing destiny and time travelling ghosts, his response was "that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard" and would not have it when I tried to convince him that it was true

it wasn't until his favourite youtubers echoed the same things I was saying that he believed

(I'm still salty about that, this is just an excuse to complain)

Some people just have a natural affinity for these kinds of plots. They simply make sense on their face while for others they stray so far beyond the bounds of reality that they just come off as weird ephemeral nonsense. It's like how for some the premise of card games on motorcycles sounds completely insane and unsafe while for others... They feel hyped!

 

[ForceStealer]

I quite like the Whispers as metaphors for OG players who don't want the story of the Remake to deviate in any way from the original. Unfortunately, the Whispers didn't act consistently enough for that.

Totally agreed.

 

[Tetsujin]

I think it's a word that starts with "D" and ends in "iny"

Dicliny? I mean, Aerith is a flower girl but it wasn't that heavy on botany themes.

 

[ForceStealer]

How much searching did that take?

 

[Tetsujin]

About 3 minutes, google is a very powerful tool

 

[Makoeyes987]

Dicliny

Exactly.

We need more discourse on how the Remake reflects the aspects of Dicliny in Botany and how it's so important for reproductive fitness in plant life.

 

[Odysseus]

Maybe that's why the flowers are so low res

 

[Ite]

Some people just have a natural affinity for these kinds of plots. They simply make sense on their face while for others they stray so far beyond the bounds of reality that they just come off as weird ephemeral nonsense. It's like how for some the premise of card games on motorcycles sounds completely insane and unsafe while for others... They feel hyped!

Totally disagree. I love tt, I obsess about tt. I love thinking about the nature of time, and having a story go beyond what is possible in real life to explore that question is extra super duper compelling to me. And, while there are areas in life to which I am quite dunceful, following along with the barest of fantasy explanations and picking up story clues comes naturally to me, and I'm obviously a fan of nerding out about tiny stuff, or else I wouldn't be here. To me, tt plots only come off as "weird ephemeral nonsense" when they are weird ephemeral nonsense, when the writers just do stuff without thinking it through. And as I said a few pages ago when I started ranting, you can have a half-baked tt plot that's still awesome -- the times in which 12 Monkeys contradicts its own established pseudoscience are meant to evoke the feeling of madness and uncertainty that the main character feels, and since all the incongruities are happening inside of his dreams, it remains a damn solid tt flick. Looper goes out of it's way to say "Don't worry about it" and all the people in charge of BttF are clowns, so their nonsensical nature produces intended laughter and a shift in focus away from the details.

FF7 is a hard fantasy setting, and the softest, gooiest, most half-baked time travel plot possible isn't exactly like chocolate to peanut butter. It's not that I don't have an affinity for this kind of thing. It's that the thing sucks. It wants to be seen as deep but it isn't. The closer you look at it, the less it makes sense.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I wasn't just referring to the time travel plot, I was referring to the entirety of the Remake's premise.

And I definitely wouldn't say FFVII's fantasy setting is so hard that it can't fit time travel. That's simply not true at all. If FFIX, which basically transplants the entirety of FFVII's fantastical world building, can fit time travel into it's universe, then why would VII be incapable of it? They work on the same fundamental world building rules of spirit energy and memories, which can warp space and open up paths to the future and past. That's not really a hard and fast barrier that can't be crossed within their world. There are no rules being broken and it certainly doesn't contradict itself. It's just new.

 

[Ite]

I wasn't just referring to the time travel plot, I was referring to the entirety of the Remake's premise.

And I definitely wouldn't say FFVII's fantasy setting is so hard that it can't fit time travel. That's simply not true at all. If FFIX, which basically transplants the entirety of FFVII's fantastical world building, can fit time travel into it's universe, then why would VII be incapable of it? They work on the same fundamental world building rules of spirit energy and memories, which can warp space and open up paths to the future and past. That's not really a hard and fast barrier that can't be crossed within their world. There are no rules being broken and it certainly doesn't contradict itself. It's just new.

Unlike FFI or FFVIII (remind me of the tt in IX?) tt is not endemic to FFVII's story, and it is resultantly incohesive. Exploring those themes and ideas comes at the expense of other themes and ideas that are endemic to FFVII's story, and are the things I think a remake should focus on. Moreover, while the fact that there is magic could justify any number of magical plot elements, I wouldn't say that it's best for the story to throw them in. FFVII already has aliens and an evil Empire and lifestream and magical ancient people and talking beastfolk and killer robots and a doomsday meteor. The OG (and the non-fuckery parts of the Remake) miraculously struck this balance where nothing seemed out of place. Throwing in tt is one juggling ball too many. 7R ends up as less than the sum of its parts.

 

[Odysseus]

We still don't actually know if time travel is involved anyway.

 

[Makoeyes987]

The memories of Gaia and Terra that make up Memoria created a path to the very past, leading to the genesis of everything in the Crystal World where the original Crystal of existence resides. Tracing those memories further and further back, which were spawned through the Iifa Tree expelling all that mist thanks to Kuja nuking Terra, allowed Memoria to be created and Kuja to essentially read his way all the way back in time. Because memories are all interconnected and if you follow them all back... You can get to the source of everything.

My only point was that it easily fits and is possible. That's not to say that everything that's possible should be done, but I wouldn't say that it's somehow breaking FFVII's rules of fantasy, because it doesn't. How it manages to juggle it all remains to be seen.

We still don't actually know if time travel is involved anyway.

The ghosts of Silver-Haired Boy Bands of Future's Past try to beat the shit out of Cloud and the others. There's some time travel shenanigans goin' on here.

 

[ForceStealer]

But it's the explanation that makes the earlier nonsense scenes make the most sense/enjoyable. (i.e. the stuff in Sector 8 is future!Sephiroth trying to delay Cloud so he doesn't meet Aerith, and the Whispers are pestering her to keep her there to make sure that still happens)

 

[Ite]

We still don't actually know if time travel is involved anyway.

The first and most obvious side quest gives you the Assess materia and tasks you with scanning monsters. Ergo the monster descriptions are part of the intended text (I use text in the academic sense). The monster descriptions explicitly say that the whispers came back from the future, and the cutscene shows your victory reverberates into the past — if it doesn’t end up saving Zack, it at the very least provided a background explosion.

 

[Odysseus]

Oh right, forgot about that. Carry onnnn.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I'll never forget them. I was one of the few that stated those three tri-colored ghosts had more in line with the silver-haired men, than future ghosts of Cloud, Barret and Tifa.

And I was vindicated

The left-handed swordsmanship, one-handed sword, and wild frenzied attack movements reminded me of Kadaj, along with Mr. Pilebunker Fist reminding me of Loz. If there's one thing I know, it's AC, after years and years of watching it. xD

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

You can't have both fate and free will, they are mutually exclusive. Unless you define fate as merely a range of possibilities, any of which can be chosen, and which in turn create a further branching tree of options. But as far as I'm concerned, that's not fate.

According to the Oxford Learner's dictionary (because the OED is behind a paywall)
Destiny: "what happens to someone or what will happen to them in the future, especially things that they cannot change or avoid"
If you can change or avoid it, de facto it's not your destiny

If Cloud and Co are able to fight fate and achieve free will, then the mere fact that they can choose the option to fight fate means that they always had free will and there is no fate.

 

[Odysseus]

I'll never forget them. I was one of the few that stated those three tri-colored ghosts had more in line with the silver-haired men, than future ghosts of Cloud, Barret and Tifa.

And I was vindicated

The left-handed swordsmanship, one-handed sword, and wild frenzied attack movements reminded me of Kadaj, along with Mr. Pilebunker Fist reminding me of Loz. If there's one thing I know, it's AC, after years and years of watching it. xD

You were a prophet, and they did not believe you.

The fact we literally kill advent children does kinda imply the plot is going in a different direction doesn't it?

 

[Makoeyes987]

You were a prophet, and they did not believe you.

The fact we literally kill advent children does kinda imply the plot is going in a different direction doesn't it?

Did we though?

What if beating the shit out of those three Whispers in FFVII weakened them so badly, that it led to them all being targeted and corrupted by Sephiroth 3 years later so that he could stamp his will onto them, all leading them to becoming his remnants?

....

That's the joy of non-linear causality. What seems like the future to us, could really be the past to them.

 

[Cat on Mars]

@LicoriceAllsorts
Let's compare dictionaries!

Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary:
destiny
noun
UK /ˈdes.tɪ.ni/ US /ˈdes.tɪ.ni/

C1 [ C ]
the things that will happen in the future:

• The destiny of our nation depends on this vote!
• She felt that her destiny had been shaped by her gender.
• People want to control/determine/take charge of their own destinies.

C1 [ U ]
the force that some people think controls what happens in the future, and is outside human control:

• You can't fight destiny.
• He is a tragic victim of destiny.

It seems like destiny can mean that something will happen... or maybe not.
Back to square lol one with this.

 

[Odysseus]

Did we though?

What if beating the shit out of those three Whispers in FFVII weakened them so badly, that it led to them all being targeted and corrupted by Sephiroth 3 years later so that he could stamp his will onto them, all leading them to becoming his remnants?

....

That's the joy of non-linear causality. What seems like the future to us, could really be the past to them.

...

that he could stamp his will onto them

.......

stamp

GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT