SPOILERS INTERmission Chapter 2 Spoiler Discussion

[a_apple 2.0]

Aerith arriving at Kalm and Zack arriving at the church doesn’t even happen at the same point in the day so there’s no way to confirm that they happen at the same time yet

It could easily be the same time tho. Not that it has to but the ending of the DLC makes it look like it's evening but that's because of the rain. You had the same affect at the ending of part one where it looked like the sun was already setting just for it 5 minutes later to be clear and sunny again.

 

[LNK]

The same problem has always applied to Cloud, although Cloud had lost his memories at that point. However my gut feelings tell me it's got to do with the singularity that may have mixed up time there.

It very well might be what's going on, but that doesn't mean we know for sure right now. It could very well just be kids of the slums mourning the deaths from the platefall. I still think Zack could be in the afterlife, and all those kids are there with him

 

[looneymoon]

maybe the wood cross is like the wood door

 

[LNK]

I also noticed a difference in when Zack first opens the church doors, and when Reno first opens them. (I don't remember if that comparison was already brought up) behind Zack, it is completely white, just like in ACC. Behind Reno, you can clearly see outside the church. This is part of why I still think Zack is actually dead

 

[Clement Rage]

No? The WRO has a response ready in minutes -- because they were already there. Reeve had told Vincent to meet him in Kalm. He wanted to discuss Deepground.

Remember that 1200 people had been taken from Junon recently, and the WRO was keeping a lid on that number to keep panic down a little. They were not just learning of Deepground's existence at the beginning of the game.

See the rest of my post. I acknowledge that they had some information, but they weren't expecting what they got. They have some Scarlet information, but the screams from Midgar are still just rumours, and the WRO Commander in Edge knows Rosso's name but not what she looks like.

They know something's up, they're on alert, but they're reacting, they're not properly mobilised until the lategame and not set up for war until later. They don't have an active presence in Kalm until well after the attack begins.

The team opening the door at the start of the game have no idea what they're getting into, they're not set up for battle and are taking reporters who ony know about 'rumours' of human experimentation. At the very least, Yuffie would know 'there's a very dangerous dude down there with freaky swirly black stuff, if you're going down there go prepared for war.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The team opening the door at the start of the game have no idea what they're getting into, they're not set up for battle and are taking reporters who ony know about 'rumours' of human experimentation.

It's been three weeks from the time that happened until the start of the game. Time in which they've been doing research, probably into Scarlet, and plausibly pointed in that direction by Yuffie.

Also, Reeve is on the record that the WRO has been lying to the media ...

Also also: is it established anywhere who the crew going down there were? Do we even know they were WRO? The reporter just says something about volunteers.

At the very least, Yuffie would know 'there's a very dangerous dude down there with freaky swirly black stuff, if you're going down there go prepared for war.

Maybe per her warning, the WRO said "Don't go down there at all"?

 

[Roundhouse]

Eerie, now you have seen the brilliance of Genesis, and why he absolutely needs to return in the remake!

 

[LNK]

Eerie, now you have seen the brilliance of Genesis, and why he absolutely needs to return in the remake!

And then, and then, the collector's edition can include a leather bound book of Loveless! Not kidding haha. I actually thought about binding my own version of it

 

[Odysseus]

Probably worth mentioning that Yuffie knew of exactly one (1) scary darkness man, a few offhand mentions of his brother, and a handful of grunts that just so happened to be in the weapons development basement, not that Shinra had an entire massive underground military complex complete with an army more well-equipped than their normal one. I think a bit too much onus is being put on her to know all of these details and properly warn Reeve or whoever when she never even had any context for what a "deepground" is beyond being the place where Nero and his brother (no details about who that brother is) liked to "play." Why would she even assume anyone was still alive after Midgar became a wrecked, irradiated junk pile after Meteor? I don't think those news reporters were WRO anyhow, just the normal media looking for some scandalous scoop on Shinra's dirty laundry, so Yuffie was probably not informed about what they were doing. I'm not even sure why anyone would ask her anyway, if she never brought up those weirdos she fought that one time. Tres' narrative of her informing Reeve about her encounter with Scarlet after incidents start occuring, leading to the WRO looking into Scarlet's files is probably the thing that makes the most sense in terms of tying this retcon together with Dirge's plot.

 

[ForceStealer]

I should have known this thread would have been 12 pages of talking about Zack before any of you had even fucking played the thing.

Anyway. Chapter 2 was also a great time, although more for gameplay reasons than Chapter 1. This definitely very quickly started to have Dirge-y vibes. I'm curious to what extent I would have picked up on that had I not watched the trailers. But as soon as we're in the basement floors of the Shinra building it looks like every hallway in Dirge.

Gameplay continued to be great, I enjoyed all the abilities at play. And the fact that Sonon was definitively only going to be a support character made his materia loadouts a different exercise than the main characters. The fact that he started with all Purple materia alluded to that, I suppose.

I liked those materia manufacturing labs. The pods themselves resembled the materia fusion stations in Crisis Core, but the amount of power involved to make like...16 materia implies cool things about them. Also all the lovingly-rendered bits to giant mechs and wall of Heli Gunners, good stuff.

Love that the first thing Yuffie does in the main lab is the sit in Scarlet's chair. Relatable
Less relatable: if I'm to believe you're both as furious at Shinra as you say, how the hell does Scarlet get out unscathed from being completely at your mercy? I felt like beginning of Jurassic Park. "Shoot her!" Obviously the Time Ghosts would have prevented you from killing her, but still.

Stealing the core being a way to weaken those mech enemies was awesome. (also, the item you take is called "Armor Core?" Amazing.)

Still completely wild seeing Deepground in the remake. Never would have imagined.... Frankly, I don't mind. As dumb as Dirge is, even it avoided including time paradoxes. It also helps that the Nero fight frickin ruled. They made him way more imposing than before. Seeing Shinra try to re-restrain him when things started going awry was appreciated. It's good to know that at least they had SOME kind of plan. Although I have to wonder how they got him under control after all this. In my fight, things were starting to go tits up at the end, but both of my team had limits, so I used Sonon's, it went off, and Nero promptly killed him, and then Yuffie's limit finished him. If the story had acted as though that was how Sonon died, it would have been a lot more impactful. "Why this super drawn-out death? I don't even know who this guy is."

That shot of the topside view of the plate collapsing, though? That was chilling. Crazy how that alternate perspective just made me feel it differently on it's own.

And that ending, oh God that ending. That was everything I could have ever wanted for the actual ending to part 1 As with everything else, when the Remake plays something straight it does so in a way that is SO MUCH MORE THAN I COULD HAVE EVER HOPED. The camaraderie and chemistry, this is why I freakin love FF7 so much. It was perfection.
Then more timeline bullshit reared it's head but I'm going to continue to ignore that until the game refuses to allow me to ignore it further and just bask in the beauty of that main story addition. Kalm in the distance! Tifa teaching Aerith how to hitchhike ! Cloud smiling at the group! Barret angrily humming the chocobo theme. So, so, so good.

 

[looneymoon]

it took many MANY tries but I finally beat that fucking asshole @_@

No 2 minute strats here. Maybe if I knew how to play Aerith better. She's too fragile to withstand glittery katana man without me manically switching to Tifa every few seconds.

Anyways, for anyone who attempts this - heres what my strat was:

Spoiler

Ths is the war of the waifus. Cloud is there to more or less tank the fight and cast buffs (haste is a must). For phase 1, you're basically dodging a lot as Tifa. Keep dodging and you'll eventually stagger him (it's probably gonna take a while to learn his moves to do this). Save Cloud/Aerith's ATB for when he's staggered, or for healing if needed. I gave Cloud the gotterdamerung (you're gonna need it for this fight) to limit him when staggered. Have Aerith use arcane ward + level 3 magic while staggered. Keep control of Tifa and spam the stagger % up abilities.

Phase 2 is the part I suck at. At this part he is immune to physical attacks. You basically wanna blast him with Aerith's magic. Cloud tank through this part, so I was basically switching back and forth between him and Aerith casting magic. You wanna try to keep Weiss targeting Cloud (easier said than done). If things look bleak, switch to Tifa and spam block + dodge, as he has a really difficult time keeping up with her.

Eventually he'll go to phase 3. You REALLY want to avoid dying up until this point, because he WILL instakill you. The only way to avoid instant death is using reprieve (weapon ability) or Revival earrings. Reprieve only works if you haven't died yet (this is the method I used). Quickly heal after this, and he'll go back to the phase where you can only use magic. Now it's possible to finish him off at this point with Aerith if you're good with her, but because his insta-kill ability gave both Coud and Tifa their limits again, I wanted to wait for when he wasn't immune to physical attacks. So I just switched to Tifa and spammed dodge until he went into dual-katana mode. As soon as he did, I hit him with 2 limit breaks to finish him off.

Time was 5:57 BTW

 

[Makoeyes987]

I gave Cloud the gotterdamerung (you're gonna need it for this fight) to limit him when staggered. Have Aerith use arcane ward + level 3 magic while staggered. Keep control of Tifa and spam the stagger % up abilities.

Ahh, so you figured this out.

While Weiss's fight prevents Gotterdamerung giving you a full limit break at the start of battle, it still works in accelerating the filling of the limit bar. Dunno if this is a glitch but yeah.

Congratulations! You thankfully didn't see him enter Rosso's Phase Shift. That one is the most bullshit because he drains HP and heals himself.

 

[Shademp]

On the topic of whether Yuffie "knows too much" about Deepground (DG) at this point in order for Dirge to logically happen:
As I myself have done on multiple occasions, you can definitely make arguments and imagine scenarios where Yuffie's knowledge is too incomplete to retroactively grant our protagonists any additional advantage in DoC (or to prevent those events from occurring altogether).

HOWEVER. Yuffie's encounter with any aspect of Deepground still has the consequence of watering down the original concept and premise of Dirge of Cerberus: The absolute logistical nightmare of Deepground being so impossibly secret that not even six degrees of separation could lead you to a person who knew anything substantial about this underground army (not counting Hojo, Scarlet, Heidegger and Shinra senior). Players *might* have interpreted the secrecy level of DG to be a bit higher than the authors intended, but the overall premise remains the same: Every aspect of DG was ridiculously well-hidden despite its large scale.

So I don't think Clement is erroneous to be fundamentally bothered by Yuffie's encounter with DG. No matter how creative- and smart we get with mental gymnastics explaining that "logical necessity is not dictating plot contradictions" here, the Yuffie DLC has still encroached on the basic premise of DoC regardless of how many plotholes have- or have not arisen.

Assuming that the FF7R Yuffie DLC happens retroactively in the DoC timeline/world is doable (mileage, as always, will vary) but the encroachment on DoC's premise still adds a touch of inelegance. A truth that can be said of many aspects in any franchise lore: "It works but it's not elegant".

I say this as a person who absolutely loves Deepground's inclusion in Intermission and how their presence was handled.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It's not even that Yuffie's knowledge is incomplete. She doesn't even have knowledge of them. Yuffie only encountered their armed SOLDIERs and escaped one of their Tsviets.

And ironically, she didn't actually even get to go the Deepground as we speculated before release. Their forces went to her within the Shinra Building. For Yuffie, they're the equivalent of the Deepground Unknown Lifeforms and Failed Experiment Cloud, Tifa and Barret encountered in the actual Deepground facility they fell into. They don't realize what they even faced.

 

[Odysseus]

If you'd like to add another layer of confusion to this, we could start debating if the Weiss VR battle is canon and the implications that would have.

 

[Makoeyes987]

If you'd like to add another layer of confusion to this, we could start debating if the Weiss VR battle is canon and the implications that would have.

Why wouldn't it be? It's part of the whole subplot of Chadley and his work.

It features it's own cutscene within the main chapter. Given it's conclusion, we're meant to conclude that Hojo, having witnessed our performance and Weiss's, now has gotten the idea to utilize neural digitization for his own personal needs. An important beginning seed for his scheme in Dirge.

 

[Odysseus]

I'm gonna assume the party can't see the sepia tone parts, so I guess there's not much issue. The stuff with Hojo is obviously a set up for his interest in digital consciousness, which is another reason I think this is deliberate foreshadowing for dirge rather than proof it's not gonna happen in this timeline, but I guess we'll see. Of course this means that any combination of Cloud, Barret, Tifa, and Aerith have all also heard the term "deepground" spoken by Weiss lol. They have even less context than Yuffie though so it's not like it matters.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I'm gonna assume the party can't see the sepia tone parts, so I guess there's not much issue. The stuff with Hojo is obviously a set up for his interest in digital consciousness, which is another reason I think this is deliberate foreshadowing for dirge rather than proof it's not gonna happen in this timeline, but I guess we'll see. Of course this means that any combination of Cloud, Barret, Tifa, and Aerith have all also heard the term "deepground" spoken by Weiss lol. They have even less context than Yuffie though so it's not like it matters.

I definitely don't think they can as well. I think those are images from the neural data or memories that compose the data simulation of Weiss.

During the beginning of the fight, as Weiss is saying his opening speech during his digital composition, we see flashes of Deepground SOLDIERs fighting to the death as well. Which I'm pretty sure are references to the training missions DG SOLDIERs go through routinely. So we're seeing a glimpse into what makes of Weiss's data and those words... They're like a promise of what he intends to do to you in that battle

 

[Fiz]

I knew some parts because of you guys, because I've seen some gifs and clips, but never the full story. It was on PSP lol do you really think I had a PSP? Nope. I had little care for the Compilation, I only had watched AC/C (and hated the former version of it).

And I didn't play nor watched BC or DoC either! Which is why I'm plenty lost about the DoC discussions and let the people who know about it discuss it XD DoC is maybe more interesting to me (Vincent!) but I'm not keen on FPS either (boo), sooooo yeah lol. Not super keen on watching BC because it's not written by Nojima and the characterisation of Zack - whom I loved in CC - will probably bug me. I'm extreme like that

You’re not the only one. I played DoC for an hour or two back when it was released. Didn’t like it, put it down. Later watched a let’s play to just get the story and found myself zoning out.

AC and AC/C I’ve watched, just found them fanservicey as hell and didn’t like what they did to Tifa, or Aerith/Zack/Septhiroth. Just felt like fan service to me really.

CC is the only one I find tolerable.

 

[Eerie]

For anyone wanting to read a blind person's opinions on Remake and the DLC, someone posted their thoughts in Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/o53cas

 

[Tetsujin]

"I don't think he will be a party member since he's just a dude"

 

[Eerie]

They're reallyyyyyyyyy spot on though, it's quite impressive what one who pays attention to characters can guess.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

IRK, that one was funny.

It's really interesting to see this and how much people *do* pick up on things even if they've never played the OG and other Compilation stuff.

 

[Tetsujin]

They didn't mention Cait though, I need their take on that

 

[ForceStealer]

That bit only seems to bother people in the know. Others it just seems to wash past them and doesn't leave an impression, lol.