We gotta be clear on the difference between narrative and continuity here. The remake and OG share the same narrative, but not the exact same continuity. We can presume much of the backstory to be the same, but Zack didn’t survive in the OG, the Whispers didn’t exist, Cloud didn’t go to Jessie’s house, the Honeybee Inn wasn’t a club where Cloud danced his heart out, Wedge didn’t survive the platefall only to then be thrown from Shinra HQ, Sephiroth didn’t stab Barret, and Cloud and the gang didn’t fight Sephiroth after killing fate on the Midgar Expressway. We can only chalk up so many differences to just being “expansions” of the OG here.
That's enough differentiation for the Remake and OG right there. But like they've said over and over, the Remake and OG are meant to share the same continuity and canon. Those variances in adaption don't warrant the Remake to somehow get a brand new Compilation future exclusive to it.
But how would it be decanonized in a continuity where it never happened in the first place? The OG would still remain untouched, it’s not like AC and DoC would retroactively disappear just because they don’t follow the remake
Bro, that's semantics, lol
If you erase something as if it never happened, that's
still deletion. It's a soft reboot. That's
rebooting,
redoing the
future for a new FFVII Compilation. That's what everyone would say.
They don’t have to do it again, they’re already going to tell new stories with Compilation elements, are they not? It’s the same idea, only with more room to resolve without being so strictly tied to specific directions
Those "new stories" are going to fit in the same FFVII Series space that already exists. Just like
Two Pasts does. That's a new story. But it still fits within the confines of the established FFVII Compilation. They're not redoing anything, they're working with what they got.
For one, I’m pretty sure even if they still led to AC and DoC, they’d give us some insight into what Cloud’s life was like post-crisis. But if they don’t lead to those titles, they can still use all of the same elements that were already established, Cloud and Tifa adopt Denzel, Cloud becomes a deliveryman etc.
More to my point though, they really don’t have to do much. They could write a short story, or have an epilogue sequence in-game, or even just say in an interview “yeah, Cloud and Tifa had many babies and died of old age” or something and leave it at that, it’s really up to them lol.
They could do all of that yes, but it's going to still lead to, "To be Continued in FFVII Advent Children."
Like, I'm telling you lol, they're gonna be
done. They're going to add new context from the Remake, to mesh with what we see in Advent Children to do a closed loop of everything here.
Here's an example! Think about it, why does Sephiroth suddenly want to
leave the planet in AC? Why does Sephiroth suddenly want to
sail the darkness of the cosmos with that planet as his vessel? Why is he so mad at Cloud and filled with a burning desire for revenge?
Maybe, through the Remake and it's conclusion, Sephiroth's been deprived of his perfect perpetual Promised Land and now he has to go in search of a new one. Like, it's not hard to see or for the writers to close this loop once and for all within their established work. Eventually they're going to
end it.
There will be no Geostigma because Sephiroth and Jenova will have met an ultimate end this time around.
But why? This is the question I go back to every time when this possibility is put forth. What purpose, other than a perpetuation of FFVII, exists for them to retread these stories in a new "Remake timeline?" Why would they undo the appearance of Geostigma and Sephiroth's Advent? It's iconic. It's immortalized. It's exceedingly popular. It's a work they're proud of. Creatively and business wise it's a winner that best exists as a classic. So why do it over for the Remake which exists within the Compilation? Unless they're forced to by S-E executive meddling.
They don't
have to make a new future, they can just loop it back to their previous works and have FFVII function as the
beginning and end of the Compilation.
Like Toriyama's quote doesn't read as ambiguous to me at all. They're not this deceptive. If they said that, they mean it. The fact they're bringing together Compilation elements in the Remake solidifies their existence. It's a Reunion before these writers go on to Remake FFX and
that universe.
