SPOILERS INTERmission Chapter 2 Spoiler Discussion

[ForceStealer]

- Why the fuck didn't the Shinra Elite Guards just shoot Zhijie as he was running around? What's in those big guns of theirs? Nerf balls? Or maybe every bullet they use comes out of their own paycheck?

It seemed to be presented that they wanted to interrogate him. But I couldn't figure out what "intel" they were referring to that he supposedly knew.

- I don't mind her being called Yoofie, but why do they have to spell it Yuffy? Yufie is how her name should be spelled.

As you know I've advocated for Yufi. Looks a lot more Japanese, even though they don't really use "F"s.

- Why can't she keep her shorts buttoned? There's something about that which makes me feel a little queasy.

Evidently that was a trend among Japanese teenagers in the 90s which is why that was always part of her design.
As long as they stay up I don't particularly care, it's not like you can see anything. (I assume, I guess I didn't try, but it didn't really grab my attention)

I agree that I doubt Yuffie's mission is actually sanctioned. It's not like her self-assigned mission in the OG was an official one either.

 

[MelodicEnigma]

Okay, so let me know if I'm understanding correctly.

This is what I think is happenening:

Spoiler

View attachment 10382

And this is what the you guys think is happening:

Spoiler

View attachment 10383

Is that correct?

Lmao, not even kidding, everything about this conversation leading up to this diagram is just....well done team. That'll do.

 

[Odysseus]

- Yuffie is lying about working for the Wutai government. That's a bullshit story she (and Sonon?) made up to get Avalanche's help. She and Sonon are two independent ninjas doing their own thing. How they joined up together, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he initiated it, and that his real (secret) personal mission is to protect her, the daughter of his beloved Master.

It'd be pretty messed up if Yuffie inadvertently got Sonon killed in her effort to fulfill a self-righteous mission that accomplished nothing in the end. I'd have to wonder how she got that info about Shinra's materia experiments, though.

 

[FFShinra]

Y'know guys, it seems pretty plain to me that the Compilation in the Remakeverse isn't going to be word for word how the original compilation went. Same as with OG FF7. And I don't just mean due to lack of plot ghosts either. The remake completely changed how Wall Market happened to no effect on the plot. Why not Deepground?

 

[Eerie]

Yeah, it is to note that Shinra themselves didn't know why they were here sooooooooo.... I think that.. maybe Yuffie *thinks* her mission is real, but it isn't? Maybe the new "Wutai government" gave her that position and mission because she was causing too much ruckus, or they didn't trust her because she's Godo's daughter? She mentions that no one takes her seriously, so I can see them doing that, thinking she'd never make it to Midgar anyway, or if she did, she'd never end up in Shinra tower? I can't help but feel that she's veryyyyyyyyy hyped about it, so I don't think she's lying, but it wouldn't be surprising if someone behind was manipulating her into thinking she's got an awesome mission that Wutai depended on?

That said, the unbuttoned shorts also bothered me, because no one ever wear them like this. And Sonon definitely called her "boss" because he sees that she's a kid and needs kids' treatment. He definitely handled her well right from the beginning. And whatever it is, he knows about her character and possibly fake mission right from the start.

 

[ForceStealer]

It'd be pretty messed up if Yuffie inadvertently got Sonon killed in her effort to fulfill a self-righteous mission that accomplished nothing in the end. I'd have to wonder how she got that info about Shinra's materia experiments, though.

Seems like a fairly reasonable guess to make.

Or it's a "Here, Prince Zuko, go do this task that I'm assuming is impossible so I don't have to deal with you anymore." kind of thing.

 

[Odysseus]

Seems like a fairly reasonable guess to make.

Or it's a "Here, Prince Zuko, go do this task that I'm assuming is impossible so I don't have to deal with you anymore." kind of thing.

Was that reply meant for me?

 

[ForceStealer]

Yes?

 

[Odysseus]

Sorry lol, the Zuko part seemed more related to Eerie's post.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

FFVII is messed up.


I don't know if they're referring to "the ultimate materia" in the same way that one might refer to "the ultimate weapon" or "the ultimate in leather shoes," i.e. the most powerful materia ever created. It does seem reasonable to infer that Shinra would be trying to make that. Yufie wants to take all of Shinra's materia, so of course she wants their most powerful stuff more than anything else.

However, if she's referring to "Ultima" materia then I don't know. Isn't that naturally ocurring? In the OG, you get it from a kid in Corel, not the Shinra building.

Maybe the Japanese version is clearer.

@ Force and Eerie: I like the idea of the "new government" sending Godo's daughter off on a task which is obviously (to everyone but Yufie) a suicide mission. But I also like the idea of Yufie as a consummate liar.

 

[ForceStealer]

I assumed they were talking about Huge Materia. At least, that Scarlet was, I dunno that Yuffie ever knew what she was talking about.

 

[Makoeyes987]

The implication of the "New Wutai Government" is that its a newly installed governmental body dedicated to resisting and continuing the war that the previous government, led by Godo Kisaragi, negotiated a ceasefire for.

No, I find it very unlikely that it's simply a fake mission or a lie Yuffie is telling. For one, the alliance between Wutai and AVALANCHE has been alluded to even before Episode Intermission. In Chapter 4, when AVALANCHE HQ assists Cloud, Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, Biggs explains that AVALANCHE HQ recently negotiated an alliance with the New Wutai Government in exchange for any materia plundered from Shinra going straight to them.

Yuffie traveling to Midgar to meet with AVALANCHE HQ is a natural progression of that alliance. And Yuffie alone wouldn't be able to provide AVALANCHE HQ with money, military gear and support. She's got genuine Wutai backing, because like her, they feel Wutai needs to keep fighting. And the "Ultimate Materia" is clearly an allusion to the Huge Materia. Yuffie and Sonon sincerely hoped to at least pilfer that materia from Shinra in hopes of sabotaging their efforts and crushing Shinra's morale. They simply underestimated how dangerous Shinra's HQ would be.

The fact is, in the Remake, Wutai's not done fighting just yet. They want to bring Shinra down. And apparently Godo suffered a penalty in surrendering because there are others who feel that its in Wutai's best interest to continue fighting. So now he's in jail or house arrest for not being willing to fight.

So no, this is not something that's just going nowhere. Wutai's fighting days aren't over. Yuffie's not the only one who believes Wutai should fight until the end.

 

[Tetsujin]

Will be really interesting to see what they do with Wutai in Remake. To think it and Yuffie used to be entirely optional...

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Biggs does not explain that Avalanche HQ and the new Wutai government have an alliance. He says he's heard it might be so, and asks whether Cloud thinks it's true:

Biggs: Word is they've cut a deal with Wutai... Promised 'em all the materia in Midgar, apparently. Think there's any truth to that?
Cloud: You tell me.
Biggs: Sometimes I think we're the only ones who've realized the war is over.

Barret emphatically thinks it cannot possibly be true. He's outraged by the suggestion that Avalanche are in league with Wutai. Now, of course, he's been exiled from HQ and doesn't know what they're up to.

There's a strong implication that Shinra is deliberately linking two things that aren't actually linked - Avalanche and Wutai - so as to tar Wutai with Avalanche's terrorisms and thus gain popular support for a renewal of the war. That's why Barret calls Heidegger the Chief Warmonger.

I'm not convinced that the ultimate materia is the same thing as huge materia.

Also, when the troopers with the Nerf guns were interrogating Zhijie? He gave them two lies and a truth.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Clearly it is true, because why else would the narrative even posit the idea in the first place? Why would Biggs have even heard that relevant piece of info if it was merely a red herring? It'd be a strange coincidence for that info to be fake yet Yuffie somehow happened to make it to Midgar anyways along with having a companion who also was there as a liaison to AVALANCHE on behalf of Wutai, waiting to unite with her on said mission.

We know that Yuffie was there on behalf of the Wutai government to unite with AVALANCHE and take Shinra down. And we know there is actually a new Wutai Government because said government has imprisoned Godo Kisaragi, the one who negotiated the ceasefire with Shinra.

Sonon and Yuffie discuss amongst themselves how they will never forget or forgive Shinra for what they did during the war. Even though AVALANCHE and Wutai may not see eye to eye regarding the scope of their conflict, they've unified in their opposition to Shinra.

Yeah, Shinra is trying to propagandize the possibility of Wutai and AVALANCHE being connected but... It's true. They are connected.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

We did find the scene about Godo in Intermission... and it turns out to be the case that the New Wutai Government placed Godo under house arrest. Because he "stopped fighting for what he believed in". Yuffie even thinks Godo *deserved* to be locked up!

Yuffie
Just look at this place.
Weapons here, weapons there, weapons everywhere!
They're ready for some serious action.
It sounds like you are, too.

Sonon
Sounds like you are too.

Yuffie
Duh. Unlike my old man, I'm not some lazy drunk.
I fight or what I believe in, something he'd never understand.

Sonon
Wonder how he's holding up...

Yuffie
Behind bars, you mean?
Not well, if the government's got anything to say about it.
Good on 'em. Jail's where he belongs.

Sonon
That's my master you're talking about.
Mind laying off him a little?

Yuffie
You know what? Let's drop it.
Not exactly my favorite topic.

If you know Godo from the OG, the irony of this is... really good. It fits into Godo not wanting to fight Shinra anymore in the OG for more philosophical reasons, while others in Wutai keep fighting Shinra after the "cease fire" in Crisis Core and Remake. And Yuffie is on the side of the New Wutai Government.

If the New Wutai Government *did* initiate some kind of coup against Godo... then they might need a reason to stay in power over Godo's faction. And heating up the war against Shinra would do that for them. Allying with Avalanche... would also fit with that. Wutai at this stage would *need* something to keep them together.

As it is, all of this feels like the set-up for some major irony way down the line when we finally get to Wutai.

The thing with Shinra is that it usually doesn't make up lies whole-sale, especially when the truth serves them much better in the first place. It's more a question of the "scale" of the lie that they fudge on. And how much retribution they dole out for it.

 

[looneymoon]

Little thing I wish Remake did was have Yuffie button her shorts.

Having a 14 year old's crotch on the brink of being exposed made me wince a bit.

Tres I'm gonna stop you here before the quote response.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yuffie's 16, not 14!

This isn't Crisis Core

 

[cold_spirit]

Sorry to backtrack discussion. I had to sleep.

For me personally, I think the differences from the OG would need to be more substantial for me to believe beagle world is it's own seperate thing.

In my mind, three timelines allows Square Enix to "have it all":

• The original game timeline preserves those events and our memories of them (especially of Aerith's death)
• The Beagle timeline is both a remake and continuation, expanding old events and concluding the Compilation
• The Terrier timeline incorporates Zack, a fan favorite, earlier into the story. I don't see this timeline as just fan service though. I think it’ll influence Beagle in a future part

This also positions Sephiroth as the singular "big bad" throughout the series. His mind will have traveled from the original game to the last Remake part.

And this is what the you guys think is happening:

First off, wow I love that diagram. Though I don't see Sephiroth as "going back in time". With asynchronous timelines, December in Beagle is October in Terrier. This would be how the party fought Whisper Harbinger in Beagle at the same time as Zack's last stand in Terrier. Likewise, the original game might've happened before Remake's events.

In my mind, it’s not that Sephiroth is traveling to another timeline and to the past. He’s just sidestepping to another timeline where the Jenova War hasn’t happened yet.

Just requiring a whole extra timeline to accommodate a potential plot hole with the Yuffie DLC is kinda silly imo.

This hasn't come about because of Intermission. I made a thread introducing my "three timelines" theory back in October, and believe me, I didn’t get many “likes” haha. So I’m pretty happy to see Intermission fit nicely into what I already proposed.

 

[Odysseus]

• The original game timeline preserves those events and our memories of them (especially of Aerith's death)

• The Beagle timeline is both a remake and continuation, expanding old events and concluding the Compilation

• The Terrier timeline incorporates Zack, a fan favorite, earlier into the story. I don't see this timeline as just fan service though. I think it’ll influence Beagle in a future part

Even in the "how I think it is" diagram, the remake is still meant to be an offshoot, not overwriting the original version of events, just so you know.

In my mind, it’s not that Sephiroth is traveling to another timeline and to the past. He’s just sidestepping to another timeline where the Jenova War hasn’t happened yet.

In my mind it might as well be the same thing.

Yeah, we don't need to keep this conversation going any longer though.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Throughout that conversation between Sonon and Yufie, it's unclear whether they are speaking of themselves and their feelings, or for Wutai generally and its government's goals. For me, the question mark over who they are working for - themselves? some Wutaian NGO like the Crescent Unit in CC? A 'new government'? - remains.

Anyway it's quite interesting that the new Wutai government wants to renew the war with Shinra and is sending its agents into Midgar to carry out missions that could legitimately be used by Shinra as causus belli, while at the same time Shinra has to exploit the actions of Barret's cell to generate propaganda for its own war machine. If Wutai wants to fight Shinra and Shinra wants to fight Wutai, what's stopping them? Why all the maneuvering and PR shenanigans?

Sending a couple of teenage ninjas and the four members of the high school enviro-club to fight Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com was a totally predictable failure. What kind of government would do that? An incompetent one.

Rumours are flying thick and fast. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Shinra, Avalanche and Wutai are all riven by factions. Lines of allegiance are unclear, and allies don't trust each other. Double-dealing is the order of the day.

PS At the end of the DLC, Yuffie says "I can't do this alone", and basically sends up a prayer to the heavens to bring her new companions. If she's a bona fide agent under the command of the Wutai government and Sonon was her assigned partner, surely she would know that she didn't have to be alone; after she reported Sonon's death, they would either recall her or provide her with a new partner.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Sorry I’ve fallen behind on the discussion

Edit: @KindOfBlue, if we dismiss the filmmaking and how Nomura did his job, we might as well dismiss everything that is told because anyone can interpret how they want. The point of filmmaking is to use tropes and smoke to tell you how to feel when you see a scene. Why some scenes hit more than others? Because of how they're told.

It’s not a dismissal, it’s an acknowledgement that things aren’t always what they seen, surely you of all people would understand this from the way Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is built up only for it to go in a different direction than what it seemed, there’s a reason people still argue about it to this day

I personally think this is a leap too far, because I think the remake is meant to close out the compilation rather than existing separately from it.

Wanted to touch on this because whether we’re talking about Zack or Yuffie, I think it’s worth pointing out that we can still close the compilation AND be separate from the OG continuity…as far as I’m concerned, none of the changes in the remake retroactively change the events of the OG continuity, but at least we can still get some kind of resolution to compilation elements even if they play out differently this time

 

[Eerie]

It’s not a dismissal, it’s an acknowledgement that things aren’t always what they seen, surely you of all people would understand this from the way Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is built up only for it to go in a different direction than what it seemed, there’s a reason people still argue about it to this day

Well yeah. But I would say that Remake is very straightforward and explicit most of the times, and that when it's not, slowing it down make you understand the difference between what's happening on screen and what the devs want you to feel. In that way, it's very neat. However here, there are no difference between what is told and what the devs want you to feel. Unease. Something's happening. And the feeling matches what you see on screen. They aren't always pulling you in a way and making you feel another way. They want you to notice that something is wrong when they do that - look at the way they've changed the way Cloud's memories happen, they have added a sound, you see it's different from how the promise scene happens. In a general way, I think that SE gives us all the keys to understand what truly is going on in a scene. The only mysteries are the ones they pointed out *themselves* in the Ultimania, and the only ones truly obscured and that deserve truly a lot of thoughts.

 

[MelodicEnigma]

It’s not a dismissal, it’s an acknowledgement that things aren’t always what they seen, surely you of all people would understand this from the way Cloud and Aerith’s relationship is built up only for it to go in a different direction than what it seemed, there’s a reason people still argue about it to this day.

I've been a bit lost on what the specific contention here is, though. Do you mean things may not be as they seem in specifics to the tone of the scene? Or just what it might mean for Aerith later on?

 

[KindOfBlue]

Well yeah. But I would say that Remake is very straightforward and explicit most of the times, and that when it's not, slowing it down make you understand the difference between what's happening on screen and what the devs want you to feel. In that way, it's very neat. However here, there are no difference between what is told and what the devs want you to feel. Unease. Something's happening. And the feeling matches what you see on screen. They aren't always pulling you in a way and making you feel another way. They want you to notice that something is wrong when they do that - look at the way they've changed the way Cloud's memories happen, they have added a sound, you see it's different from how the promise scene happens. In a general way, I think that SE gives us all the keys to understand what truly is going on in a scene. The only mysteries are the ones they pointed out *themselves* in the Ultimania, and the only ones truly obscured and that deserve truly a lot of thoughts.

That’s kind of my whole point though, I think we can all agree that something is wrong here it’s just a matter of what that something is

I've been a bit lost on what the specific contention here is, though. Do you mean things may not be as they seem in specifics to the tone of the scene? Or just what it might mean for Aerith later on?

Specifically Aerith’s status at the point in time when Zack reaches the church, generally I think people might be reading too much into the fade-to-black on Zack’s “Aerith…?” because even if the scene didn’t end that way, Zack should not be in Midgar in the first place so regardless, something is wrong here (though like I said, I’ll concede if the ultimania tells me to)