The next part contains Gold Saucer, which to me is the crux of all the romantic choices we got to make in the OG. I see it as being too nostalgic and important for the developers to abandon this entirely. But the fact that there might be choices will again fuel shipper fire, no matter how innocuous. I'm just interested to see how it will play out and how Cloud's "choices" will lead to his "date".
The next part definitely won't have the GS date. At best we'll get Nibelheim to Nibelheim (crossing fingers), but I do hope that people realise the work needed to expand on the OG to get just to Nibelheim. They also implied we won't get Wutai next part, so I am expecting Wutai and the GS date to be the 3rd installment. This is why I am currently betting for a breather at Costa del Sol (equivalent of chapter 9). The first time we get to the Gold Saucer we actually don't get the date, we get Barret's backstory. This is also why I say that next part is going to be unpredicatable, LT-wise, because normally in the OG... there is next to nothing there. So they are going to have to add a lot of things.
Setting that aside, I have reread
CoT lately, an coupled with
the Reunion Files and the Ultimania where Tifa is stated to have complicated feelings towards Aerith before smiling and be grateful at her, I have come to a better understanding of Tifa in ACC (we often focus on Cloud, but rarely on Tifa, and I think in my previous CoT reading(s), I did focus more on Cloud than Tifa, which is an error since CoT is Tifa's POV).
In the Reunion Files, the quote that interested me was:
Like Aerith, she also has a maternal side to her, but in a different sense. Not only was she looking after Marlene and Denzel, but she also fel a certain maternal bond to Cloud, who is a "big kid" himself in some respects.
because that's a quote that's often used by some people to pretend that Tifa doesn't love Cloud romantically. But, I'll come back to it later.
First, I want to take note that our THREE protagonists, Aerith, Cloud and Tifa have the same bad habit of not wanting to confront reality. It is the crux of Cloud's problem in both FFVII and ACC, but Aerith too deals with it as if everything was alright (remember her reaction to Barret in the OG and how she told Tifa to act as if nothing happened). Tifa too, has that same habit:
One fated day. The day when Meteor came flying down from outer space and the Lifestream flowed out from the planet, gathering together and destroying it. Tifa had watched the scene from the sky, together with her companions. I thought it’d be fine if everything just washed away. Wash away my past. She could feel the obscure terror that came with the relief that the battle was over.
She does get scolded later on by Barret and Cloud for these thoughts, which I think is great because it does put her back on tracks. Tifa also has that same problem in FFVII, but unlike Aerith and Cloud she does get to confront reality. I am talking only about the intimate parts of the plot here, we know Aerith acts upon the external plot, and I think it's interesting because it's a show off of their roles. Ultimately, unless it is tied to Sephiroth, the Cetras or the Lifestream, Aerith does not really act, she pretends everything is fine - that's her coping mechanism given by Ifalna. Tifa on the contrary has learned to face reality by Zangan, and while she does pretend that everything is fine up to a point, she also is able to face her own fears and face reality.
I think it is a stark difference between clerith and cloti, to me - it is that it's Tifa who is designed to give Cloud the push he needs to confront his own fears, to act and be a real hero: in the OG Tifa does so during the Lifestream scene. In Remake, she does so at the top of the Shinra tower. In ACC she does so when she calls him out in the kids' room. In all these instances, she pushes Cloud to better himself, to be not *her* hero, but *the* hero. To me this is part of why cloti works better than clerith in universe.
Tifa burst out in laughter. Cloud went on about how he got paid a little for delivering items. He explained to her how he felt guilty spending it all on the modifications for the bike. Tifa thought he was just like a kid. It may have been a little sad that Cloud had found another world that I didn’t know about but, the fact that his world was expanding was a welcoming thought. Yes, it was similar to the feelings a mother would have. Tifa walked Cloud outside, enjoying the new feeling that was welling up inside her.
And we are back to that motherly feeling; it amuses me to no end because what is this scene about? It's about Tifa's motherly feelings for Cloud. But what is it about? CONVERSATION ABOUT SHARED FINANCES. Something only couples have. So it's a way of saying "look, Cloud is still a big kid who is discovering the world, and Tifa feels like a mother when that happens, but they are a couple". I don't even know why it's a topic at all, except for some who'd like Tifa to not be in love with Cloud (there was a recent hiccup about that in Twitter following a bad interpretation of the latest novella).
BTW, speaking of the latest novella, Cloud's behaviour somehow reminds me of his father's, who wanted to discover the world. At the end of the day, I do wonder if something happened to him (Shinra, hello?), and I feel that he was always meant to come back to Claudia, that people assumed that he was leaving her but just like Cloud he wanted to go outside and come back. I do feel that Nojima may point at parallels and similarities between their two personalities, and it may leave an open door for Remake to expand upon (after all, Hojo wasn't that far away at that point).
Tifa put the slip away with the others as if nothing happened, but she was trembling severely. Transporting mail around the world meant he was traveling around his past too. She knew that Cloud was in great pain because he couldn’t protect Aerith. Cloud was trying to overcome that and live on. But, going back to the place where he parted from Aerith might mean that his sorrow and regret was going to tear his heart again.
So yeah. We often forget about it, but Tifa is the woman who understands Cloud the most. She hit right int he nail about what was troubling Cloud there - and it has nothing to do with love. It made me think about her line in the movie, about losing to a memory. She's not saying Cloud loves Aerith more there, she is saying he is losing to his guilt and sorrow, and abandoning his family for this. So, I think I understand more her complicated feelings towards Aerith; she feels like she is asking Cloud to let go of her memory, that this memory is poisoning her family, and at t he same time, she does cherish Aerith. But Aerith, in the end, wants the same thing from Cloud, she doesn't want him to dwell on her death forever. And Tifa understands that, she also get that it's not really "letting go" of Aerith's memory, but that guilt that is associated to it and drives him into despair. Looking back at it... I don't really sense jealousy. It's really complex, but since she truly understands Cloud's psyche here, being jealous would really make no sense to me.
What I think is really interesting in the end is that CoT is really family-oriented. We see their family, the problems they run into - we understand what Nojima has done there; a young couple already at such a serious stage of their life that they could be married, which are also drove by Tifa's insecurities, Cloud's mental troubles, etc. We see that with the kids around, Tifa feels more confident that they are a family - she understands that both she and Cloud have the same family dynamic as any normal family. "Maybe the kids can help" has said Nojima, and I totally see his reasoning here.
By the end of ACC, in The Turks are Alright, we see both Cloud and Tifa being confident about their family, their roles in it, their roles in each other's lives. We see the deep trust they have in each other being reinforced, leading to the affirmation that now they are a solid couple that can live through life. ACC is really the movie that resolves the problem posed in CoT, where Cloud, pushed by Tifa, finally gets to face his problem - which is resolved by Aerith's total absolution.
PS: I would have posted this in the cloti FC, but since it also touches Aerith, I posted it here instead, sorry.
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