SPOILERS INTERmission Chapter 2 Spoiler Discussion

[KindOfBlue]

Honestly I didn’t really interpret Zack asking “Aerith?” as making a mystery out of her status in particular, just seemed like a reaction he’d have because he was expecting to find her in the church but didn’t…Zack himself being in Midgar was the mystery as far as I could gather, unless we’re also meant to believe there’s two Aeriths or something

Why did SE introduce the trio in the Remake in Barret's resolution scene (which is extremely missable, by the way) but never explained if/why they were given nicknames in the DLC?

Weren’t those just separate characters altogether?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

We, the viewer, already know he's not going to find her when he opens the doors. So what then is meant to be mysterious or unsettling to us about this scene if not "Aerith?" (with a concerned inflection)?

I vote on people we know who should be on top of the Plate aren't on top of the Plate anymore. Midgar is changing from what we remember in the OG... where it's a very static location as a whole.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Honestly I didn’t really interpret Zack asking “Aerith?” as making a mystery out of her status in particular, just seemed like a reaction he’d have because he was expecting to find her in the church but didn’t…Zack himself being in Midgar was the mystery as far as I could gather ...

Where else would we have thought he went, though? When he was last shown, he was heading directly towards Midgar.

The scene could not have been more nonchalant in its presentation with regard to Zack being in Midgar. We transition from Aerith to (obviously) Midgar, and just ... there he is. There's no confusion or tension about where he is. It's not meant to be a surprise or budding mystery the way what Zack finds (or doesn't find) inside the church is.

unless we’re also meant to believe there’s two Aeriths or something

If we're dealing with two timelines, why wouldn't we believe that?

 

[Lex]

Like a lot of discussion on Remake, this is giving me "there's a slight hint of compilation buster sword gold hilt hidden under the studs" vibes. Remember the cluster of people who were vehemently sure that was going to be a thing and that it was RIGHT THERE!!!!!? I do.

Then there was the time TLS created its own QAnon-level wildness in the chapter 18 thread talking about how the timeline changes at the end because of the seventh heaven sign texture and skybox being slightly different when it was just Square being lazy and/or inattentive and/or fans being cray. Sometimes it's just the most obvious answer.

The most obvious answer seems to me to be that Zack says Aerith's name because... she's not there. I don't think it's indicative of anything other than the fact that she's not actually there when he opens the doors. Maybe you could argue that he's concerned for her welfare because he sees a bunch of people who are in distress, so it's obvious that some big tragic thing has just happened. Anything beyond that is Stretch Armstrong from one end of your house to the other levels of stretch, a bit like the infamous gold hilt of the buster sword thread that I will never let any of you live down

Pointless to argue until we know more IMO, just like timelines vs. Zack is here(tm).

 

[waw]

Why did SE introduce the trio in the Remake in Barret's resolution scene (which is extremely missable, by the way) but never explained if/why they were given nicknames in the DLC?

I've seen a popular FF7 youtuber posit that Nayo, Billy Bob, and Polk are really Nellie, Al, and Finn. He lined them up nicely and even described why they all had nicknames/codenames, but I'm not sure I buy it. Nellie's trio was firmly a part of Barret's Avalanche. Zhije, Nayo, Billy Bob, and Polk seem to be a part of Avalanche HQ. I don't think they're the same characters. I'm open to being wrong.

 

[Odysseus]

Speculation is all well and good, and I like reading what people think, but in the end I'm trying to just assume that everyone will be wrong about everything, even if it sounds like it makes sense. I've seen what happens in fandom when they get too sure their fan theories are right, and are proven wrong in the end, and it's not pretty *cough*Sherlock*cough*SNK*wheeze*

 

[Lex]

Speculation is all well and good, and I like reading what people think

This is it for me yeah. I like reading theories and discussions about those theories. I've long since learned that arguing in favour of any single position is completely pointless because we just don't know what's going to happen, particularly with this game.

Like I can tell you all what I want, which is for "separate timelines" to not even be a thing. I want "Zack is here(tm)". That's just more interesting to me. But I can't argue for that to be the case because we just don't have enough information yet

 

[Roundhouse]

Well said, Lex! As your signature notes, a same timeline situation may bring fear...but let us embrace it, whatever it brings. Huzzah!

Re: Zack and the Church

It's definitely possible that the scene is framed as a way to point to Aerith being gone as a new mystery in a new timeline...but it's also possible that the scene was framed that way for a purely character based reason. We, the audience, know Aerith isn't there...but Zack doesn't, so we get to see him going over apologies out loud, opening the doors with a burst of happiness, then his descent into a sort of sad confusion. All of this tells us something about his state of mind before the surprise and after, and might set the stage for the future.

 

[Shademp]

I am still embarrassed by the fact the developers want us to focus so much on a potato chip bag

 

[Clement Rage]

Spoiler: Ending

That ended up being quite cheap feeling. Nero's darkness is just a tentacle monster now. He's pretty beatable. Sonon had his inevitable death, and was impaled rather than absorbed, Yuffie has way too much knowledge now, even if we assume Weiss VR fighting the gang is non canon.

Big timeline problems. I make jokes about the Whispers being the angry fanbase ghosts, but now that seems to actually be what they are, because they're allowing Yuffie to sequence break, when they should care about preserving the timeline, not just OG Canon.

Acting, character writing, and level design is brilliant. They're really good at padding, like the box buster game in the depths of Shinra HQ. Yuffie's voice actress is phenomenal, I actually looked her up because she sounded so much like the Compilation version, but it is a different person.

Zack's epilogue gives us no new info, he may or may not be in the same timeline.

Okay, now to read the threads.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Where else would we have thought he went, though? When he was last shown, he was heading directly towards Midgar.

The scene could not have been more nonchalant in its presentation with regard to Zack being in Midgar. We transition from Aerith to (obviously) Midgar, and just ... there he is. There's no confusion or tension about where he is. It's not meant to be a surprise or budding mystery the way what Zack finds (or doesn't find) inside the church is.


If we're dealing with two timelines, why wouldn't we believe that?

Because we don’t actually know if it’s two timelines or one or anything really, the fact that Zack is in Midgar is still in itself a mystery as we still don’t know what that means for the story and with him being completely oblivious to everything that happened around him, it’ll be just as much a mystery for him as it is for us figuring out just what the hell is going on…from the reactions I’ve seen from different streamers and on social media, just seeing Zack already raises heaps of questions even though we already saw him survive in the main game since we’ve still learned next to nothing about him since then

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I do remember a lot of people wondering if it was a fake-out and Zack would get shot before he got to Midgar. This is proof that that didn't happen!

 

[Tetsujin]

Like I can tell you all what I want, which is for "separate timelines" to not even be a thing. I want "Zack is here(tm)". That's just more interesting to me.

This is where I'm at. I mean, I don't want Zack to be alive but Pandora's Box has been opened and I have to deal with that.
But if parallel timelines becomes ~A Thing~ I feel like this would veer too much into making FFVII something completely different. Like, the focus would be on time travel and timeline shenanigans and I have no interest in that.
As of now I choose to believe that ultimately this is just a way to bring Zack back into the fold and him being from a parallel timeline is just the handwavey explanation as to how it doesn't completely break continuity.

My speculation is this is how the other Avalanche members are gonna be relevant. Zack is gonna stay in Midgar for now. He's in Sector 5 and...who else is there right now? Biggs.
With Biggs recuperating in Sector 5, Wedge and Jessie maybe potentially also still being alive, Sector 7 being rebuilt in the ending and now the new HQ characters from INTERmission, I've been wondering how all this might be relevant when our group already left Midgar.
Some were speculating that Biggs and others might catch up with the group or maybe we'll meet them again at Fort Condor.

But now I think maybe there's still going to be more Midgar plot. Rebuilding sector 7 and all. And Zack is gonna be our link to it. Zack is gonna be our point of view (maybe even playable?) character for Midgar segments while he figures out what the fuck is going on.
Eventually of course it's all gonna go towards an inevitable meetup. Cloud and Zack are gonna Omni-combo-slash the fuck out of Sephiroth at the end, whether Zack is in a parallel timeline or not. Whatever you believe, I think we can agree it's gonna build up to something like that because otherwise what is even the point?

But if he is now in our timeline, he needs to stay the hell away from Cloud long enough to not break the plot until the Lifestream scene if we are to believe they still wanna follow the overall chain of events like they claimed they would. And I think Midgar is how they'll keep him occupied with other stuff in the meantime.

 

[Clement Rage]

Hey guys, I'm back.

Ignoring all the Zack timeline stuff, except to acknowledge TTM's point that there are two Buster swords.

The entire premise of Dirge is that no one knows what to expect under Shinra HQ until they found garbled Scarlet files, to the point that the rescue team takes a camera crew. Yuffie is employed in WRO intelligence, she would say something.

This matters, because the Whispers are active, and they do act to preserve knowledge, going so far as to cut off a Hojo monologue to prevent him from revealing spoilers. Yuffie's knowledge here is not less important in universe, the only reason to do so is if the Whispers are metagaming and don't care about Dirge (as in, they are playing the PS2 in another dimension).

If you think this is too small to care about...have you seen the rest of this thread?

 

[LegendarySaiyan]

Finally, after 10hours of playing through I am here and can read this topic without worrying for spoilers.

22 PAGES??? Oh well, guess I got nothing better to do atm....

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The entire premise of Dirge is that no one knows what to expect under Shinra HQ until they found garbled Scarlet files, to the point that the rescue team takes a camera crew. Yuffie is employed in WRO intelligence, she would say something.

If you think this is too small to care about...have you seen the rest of this thread?

I am of the opinion that Intermission is the equivalent of Nero taking the bleeding corpse of the Compilation Timeline the Harbringer of Fate left behind it back behind the shed to make sure we know it is well and truly dead.

Because we apparently didn't get the memo the first time when Remake Ended with "The Unknown Journey Continues"...

I think that a sizable portion of the fanbase will keep hanging on for the plot of the Remake series to circle around back to the compilation no matter what happens until the series is well and truly done. And even after there will be people deep in denail about Remake "counting" for how FFVII is really supposed to end.

 

[Odysseus]

By all rights I should agree with you, but the fact that no whispers get involved with Yuffie's Deepground adventure tells me another story, that Square doesn't consider it contradictory. I guess it's worth noting that she only hears the name "Deepground" once, and brushes it off as Nero being creepy. She might not remember after three years lol.

 

[Clement Rage]

I'm not wedded to the original timeline at all, but the defining feature of the Whispers is that they work to preserve it as it was before. Why do they suddenly not care?

She knows what the uniforms look like, she knows there's a very dangerous guy down there that kills people with swirly black stuff, even if it's just a stock tentacle monster now.

 

[LNK]

I do remember a lot of people wondering if it was a fake-out and Zack would get shot before he got to Midgar. This is proof that that didn't happen!

I was definitely one of those people! It wasn't a baseless theory though. There was evidence that it could've played out that way. I was wrong though, that's fine

 

[Shademp]

The Whispers are flawed accountants with finite resources and in the end have to settle for general results instead of perfect replications. That's the only way they make sense to me, even though the game stupidly calls them "Arbiters of Fate" and "Destiny".

There's also still a lot we don't know about the Whispers and how they operate(d). Have they operated since the planet first formed, billions of years prior? Or did they only start veering "destiny" very recently? 2000 years prior? 50 years prior?

Are they only steering destiny towards a certain point and if so how far ahead until they get their lunch break? The end of Meteorfall? The end of Advent Children? The end of Dirge of Cerberus? 500 years into the future? The end of the planet's life?

Is there an original timeline, perhaps the original FF7, where the Whispers didn't exist and they were only created afterwards? Why is it so gosh darn important to preserve a very specific series of events and how would the planet suffer from these events not happening?

Sadly, I do not trust Square to elaborate on all these questions that SHOULD be answered about the Whispers. Square will probably continue with hand-wavey, vague statements about the Whispers and how they work because that seems to be their role so far: Plot ghosts that the authors can use in any way they please, rules and limitations be damned.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Anything beyond that is Stretch Armstrong from one end of your house to the other levels of stretch, a bit like the infamous gold hilt of the buster sword thread that I will never let any of you live down

Speaking for myself, there's nothing to live down. The Remake Buster Sword, as originally depicted, absolutely shared additional traits (no longer present) with the Compilation version -- and that's before getting into how we were outright told the FFVIIR x MobiusFF crossover (in which Cloud uses the Compilation Buster Sword) utilized the actual assets from VIIR's production for its FFVII content.

Hell, the Buster Sword in the final product of VIIR still has a red haft under the leather wrapping.

We had every reason before to believe the Compilation Buster Sword's crossguard being hidden was a legit possible story direction, and I will continue to stand by my reasoning from that time.

Because we don’t actually know if it’s two timelines or one or anything really, the fact that Zack is in Midgar is still in itself a mystery as we still don’t know what that means for the story and with him being completely oblivious to everything that happened around him, it’ll be just as much a mystery for him as it is for us figuring out just what the hell is going on…from the reactions I’ve seen from different streamers and on social media, just seeing Zack already raises heaps of questions even though we already saw him survive in the main game since we’ve still learned next to nothing about him since then

None of this speaks to my question about your postulation. What was surprising or mysterious about seeing Zack in Midgar when the last time we saw him, he was about to walk into Midgar?

 

[waw]

The entire premise of Dirge is that no one knows what to expect under Shinra HQ until they found garbled Scarlet files, to the point that the rescue team takes a camera crew. Yuffie is employed in WRO intelligence, she would say something.

I disagree. What would she know? She has no idea that these folks are even called Deepground. For all she knows, they're just another Shinra monster that she faces, and the party faces a ton of them. Yuffie never really reached Mako Reactor 0 or the depths under Shinra RQ, just the a weapons development basement. This has changed nothing except for when Yuffie WOULD see Nero, thinking, oh yeah... I guess I saw this before and they killed someone I knew for ~24 hours?

She has nothing to add and knows nothing. This changes nothing.

 

[Eerie]

I don't know. I think the way it's framed, with "Aerith..." just on the black screen, is meant to make us feel that something is wrong with her. The way the church scene is done is absolutely meant to give you a sense of dread - whether it's true or not doesn't really matter, we have 2 years left at least of wondering about that, hopefully less if they talk about it in the next Ultimania. They have given us a clue about what's going on there:

- the church is full of people??? (it wasn't in chapter 14)

- the reunion flowers are wilted (!!! can't meet with Zack anymore)

- look at the kids crying and the adults comforting them

- one kid seems kind of hurt

- Aerith's not there, and Zack worries about her//black screen

Then you do realise that you have never seen so many people there, not even after the plate fall... and you start to wonder what's really going on. It should have been joyous, Zack should have been given an earring, but there was a reunion expected - only it did not happen and something really weird is going on. We are two days after the plate fall, so the first shock is over - kids should not be crying. In the Remake, Aerith's already been kidnapped by Tseng two days ago, so why are the kids crying?

Nah, this scene is meant to give you dread about Aerith's fate, especially if you believe that Zack is in another timeline.

 

[Tetsujin]

By all rights I should agree with you, but the fact that no whispers get involved with Yuffie's Deepground adventure tells me another story, that Square doesn't consider it contradictory. I guess it's worth noting that she only hears the name "Deepground" once, and brushes it off as Nero being creepy. She might not remember after three years lol.

I don't think they care that it's contradictory. I think it's a mistake to assume that everything without Whisper involvement should fall 100% in line with OG continuity. I don't think they were meant to be as literal as that.
The symbolism of us punching out the old continuity is more important than its literal timeline placement. In the end, things are gonna be different just on account of being a new take on FFVII, the Arbiter of Fate fight is just an unnecessarily heavy-handed symbol of that (and a plot device to bring back Zack, apparently )

So the "unknown journey" is gonna apply to all of Remake, including INTERmission. If it doesn't match up with the OG continuity it's because it was never meant to, Whispers or no.

 

[JBedford]

I think they want us to think that Yuffie knowing about Deepground and Nero wouldn't change Dirge that much. They wanted to make a DLC, used Yuffie because her wherabouts at this point in time weren't written about, and messing with Deepground allows for good bosses and fan service in a place that no one knows about anyway so won't interfere with the original story.

I think they care about being contradictory here as much as they cared about contradicting FFVII when they inserted Genesis into Nibelheim.