SPOILERS FFVII Remake Open Spoiler Discussion Thread

LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

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Cloud and Co aren't trying to shape the things that will happen in the future, but alter things that happened in the past, although thanks to the Moebius strip which is the form time takes in their world, that past happens right now to lie ahead of them in time.

If destiny is nothing more than a set of probabilities, then I guess free will and fate are not incompatible, but in that case, why would Cloud and Co need to fight the embodiments of fate in order to gain a freedom of action that they already have?
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Think about the whispers and what their role is. They aren't literally the embodiment of the concept of fate, they're agents of the planet that ensure the planet's own desired outcome is reached (that being, the events of the original game.) They guided the character towards that outcome, but ultimately the characters defeated them because of the outside intervention of Sephiroth. It's not a predetermined outcome, it's one achieved through specific manipulation. It's not "destiny" in general, it's the destiny the planet chose for itself.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

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A fight?
We're back to Ite's version, which I infinitely prefer.
We really shouldn't be using the same word both for the future which we create through our own choices and actions, and for the pre-determined future which is outside our control.
 
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Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Well, if Sephiroth was originally doomed to failure, it'd only make sense he would want to change that. Then, the Sephiroth of the final battle seemed to have his own mystery agenda.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

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So how, by defeating the Whispers, have Cloud and Co increased Sephiroth's chances of winning this time around? They weren't around last time when Cloud and his party defeated Sephiroth. Cloud and Co don't need them in order to win.

I mean, it can only be because this time around someone will somehow sense or remember that bad thing Y will happen if they do X, so they don't do X, they do Z instead - and Z is what Sephiroth needs them to do, or at least he needs them not to do X.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
LicoriceAllsorts said:
So how, by defeating the Whispers, have Cloud and Co increased Sephiroth's chances of winning this time around? They weren't around last time when Cloud and his party defeated Sephiroth. Cloud and Co don't need them in order to win.

I mean, it can only be because this time around someone will somehow sense or remember that bad thing Y will happen if they do X, so they don't do X, they do Z instead - and Z is what Sephiroth needs them to do, or at least he needs them not to do X.
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I dunno if you saw my first post, but while the whispers aren't involved in the original plot, that's the "destiny" they were trying to keep intact. Now that they're gone the original series of events might not happen, which drastically improves Sephiroth's odds. Obviously he's gonna lose, because that's how this works, but things might get much worse than they did before. We'll have to wait and see to really know where that's going though.
 
C

Clement Rage

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Doraemon has the best time travel stories, change my mind.
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Legacy of Kain. I will not be moved on this.

We're all talking very definitively, but we really still have to wait for reveals on part 2. What I think of the Whispers/Zack will depend on what happens next. In terms of themes, we don't have the whole story yet, imagine trying to work out what was up with Cloud before the revelations on Disc 2.

For the record, I think Barret's death did have a storytelling purpose, in raising the stakes. It establishes that Sephiroth can and will kill party members if he feels like it, so not to get complacent...and next time, you won't have Whispers to save you.
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
LicoriceAllsorts said:
We really shouldn't be using the same word both for the future which we create through our own choices and actions, and for the pre-determined future which is outside our control.
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You added this later so I didn't see it.
I was trying to answer your issue about how characters can "defy destiny" since that doesn't really make sense under the common English understanding of the word "destiny." In the remake, destiny is predetermined by the planet, but that's different from destiny being predetermined in general. Think of the Planet as an individual with its own goals. Like, let's say you want to drive to the store to buy some eggs. You can already picture more or less the entire process before it even happens, so in a sense the process is predetermined. What if you get hit by a truck on the way to the store though? Then the sequence is broken, because you're either dead or have a lot more to worry about than eggs now. So, the entire course of history is the Planet's trip for eggs, and Sephiroth is the truck. Now that he's manipulated the party into killing the whispers, anything can happen. The Planet's plans are fucked, destiny has been defied.

How Sephiroth himself is able to act outside this plan is another can of worms to dig into, and we don't really have all the necessary information for that one, but at the very least he's always been depicted as being outside the natural order of things. Whether that be his alien heritage, his ability to not be absorbed by the planet, his black lifestream... it's all a consistent part of his character.
 
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The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

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TresDias
LicoriceAllsorts said:
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.
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When fate is anthropomorphized, we're supposed to understand that destiny as a concept was only ever a conscious orchestration or tweaking on someone's part to begin with. And usually only in terms of the broad strokes rather than the most minute details.

Of course, it's also entirely doable to think of fate in the sense described above as a colloquialism for such manipulations, with there being a true, immutable concept of fate laying beyond whatever finite (even if divine) orchestrator is involved closer to the ground level.

Stiggie said:
Also, what is it with this "good enough" mentality? It's ridiculous, why do we arbitrarily have this "one and done" mentality when it comes to games? When I draw or make anything, I don't just do it once and however it comes out, that'll be fine for all eternity.
I try to perfect my craft, improve myself, I erase and redraw and eventually try to make the best version of something possible. Out of the thousands of games mankind has created and thrown against the wall, a few masterpieces have emerged. And I want those masterpieces shined and polished to the point where the effect it had on us is felt 100 times over by our descendants.

There is a saying, about reinventing the wheel, but people didn't just invent the wheel and be done with it, it was tweaked and improved time and time again. Why should a story be any different?
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Obviously authors can do whatever they want, but the way it generally turns out when they keep going back to tweak things (e.g. Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George Lucas, etc.) is they do it in a way that doesn't blend well or that fans at the very least are dissatisfied with.

I mean, this very discussion is a great example of how well such things tend to be received. XD And ironically, you're decrying what the original storytellers did upon revisiting this work while arguing from the position that storytellers should revisit their past work more. =P

Stiggie said:
If Remake undoes the original, the original is DEAD to me.
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It explicitly doesn't, though. Nomura said so before VIIR was released, that it's a separate universe anyway.

Stiggie said:
I've already lost the ability to cry at crisis core since I simply know the ending doesn't happen ...
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It does, though, in those universes/timelines where the Whispers' destruction didn't affect that event. This would include both the timeline of the original game and possibly the one we spend most of VIIR in. The space where Zack survives appears to be a third timeline/universe, with an alternate Stamp and an alive Zack.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
It's just really hard to care about an event when you know there are infinite versions of it with infinite different outcomes, and none of them is the definitive one. The grief at Zack's death and the joy at his survival cancel each other out. For me, at least. It really feels as if the game creators themselves are saying "Aw, don't be sad - look, he's still alive over here." So it feels as if nothing's at stake.
 
The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
LicoriceAllsorts said:
It's just really hard to care about an event when you know there are infinite versions of it with infinite different outcomes ...
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Well, in this particular case, it seems we only witnessed a different outcome because "fate" was overcome with weapons and magic. :monster: Otherwise, presumably there wouldn't be infinite outcomes.


LicoriceAllsorts said:
The grief at Zack's death and the joy at his survival cancel each other out. For me, at least.
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I'm sorry that's how it went for you. =( I legitimately had an audible jawdrop when I realized what I was seeing. :wacky:
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
If it turns out that somehow defeating the Whispers kept Zack alive or brought him back, and that eventually the party will realise Zack must die if Sephiroth is to be defeated.... I guess that would be quite poignant.
 
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