I don’t wanna go back to the AC cast
idk man, I still miss Zack
Where are you getting that she has future memories that hint at Cloud and Tifa being destined for each other?
Not a specific scene, just the overall nature of her knowing the future and constantly saying vaguely meaningful lines to Tifa, like telling her that Aerith will look after Marlene and Tifa should follow her heart, which make Tifa go "wtf?".
If Aerith has any knowledge about the future, sephiroth, and "it not being real", then clearly she has some awareness about her dying, the feelings between Cloud and Tifa, and the events post her death. Which include Tifa and Clouds lifestream revelations, the highwind, and the two years prior to AC.
And that future is literally called "destiny", so yeah, she pretty clearly knows Tifa and Cloud were destined to end up together.
eah but Aerith didn't know that. She broke it off in the letters BEFORE that, and she didn't get a proper explanation. What I meant before is they need time to work through that, they aren't just going to start off where they left off I don't think.
I see this a lot, you are conflating the video game with real life. Irl it is of course completely understandable that you'd start dating someone else after 4 years of not hearing about an other person, doesn't make you immoral or anything. But this is a story, one that chooses to show us certain things to get us in certain mindsets, hint at future developments, etc.
Playing a game about Zack trying to get back to Aerith, and then continuing that story in FFVII remake, and then ending that not by paying of that set-up by having a tearful reunion, but by instead having Aerith reject/replace Zack with Cloud, aka, the guy that slowed Zack down in getting back, and even sacrifices his life for in some timelines, is not exactly a satisfying resolution.
Sure, might be completely understandable irl, but from a storytelling perspective that's not exactly the most rewarding story, it's not fun to watch, it feels pointless, and it doesn't ingratiate the character, realistic as it may be. In stories we might want certain characters to be "better" than realistic. Add to that that Cloud was in some way pretending to be Zack and it becomes weird AF as well.
Here is the thing, if you WANTED to tell that story, you could. But you know what you then don't do? Place any focus on Zack. As long as Zack is the invisible EX it doesn't matter, the audience is willing to blissfully ignore the elephant in the corner as long as they never see it. But the story did put focus on Zack, and it puts a spotlight on Zacks importance and the awkward implications that come with it. When Aerith starts off her interactions with Cloud by trying to recreate her time with Zack, when she asks questions about him and has to take deep breaths before speaking his name, then you as a storyteller are infusing the story with the idea that Zack matters. That what is happening here is about Aerith and Zack, maybe even more so than it's about Cloud and Aerith. What you, as a storyteller are now saying is "here is the story about how Aerith managed to come to terms with Zacks death" rather than saying "here is the story of how Aerith and Cloud fell in love". And that primes the audience, it essentially sets up a goal for the story that we can get invested in achieving. And that doesn't just go away, when that storybeat has been introduced into the story it needs pay-off, this is classic checkovs gun.
If you then end the remake with Aerith talking about hating the sky that took Zack away, echoing Zacks last words about how the sky frightened Aerith, while also having a triumphant shot of Zack surviving and trying to get back to her, you are HEAPING more importance on Zack and reinforcing the idea that Aeriths inner struggles here are about Zack.
When you then have a date (in the OG) where Aerith talks about how she'd been seeing Zack in Cloud you AGAIN reinforce, or hell, even explicitly state, that this journey you've been on hasn't been about falling in love with Cloud, dude hasn't even been himself yet, but about getting to grips with the past. Something which mirrors Clouds internal arc, who needs to come to terms with his failures concerning Tifa.
Now there are two things to consider here, the same event can be seen from two perspectives or framings that determine what story is really being told. 1 is getting over Zack, 2 is falling in love with Cloud, these are potentially the same events, but are vastly different when they come to thematic and narratological implications.
The question is which one of the two is the point? Where is the focus? Like I said before, you totally COULD tell a story with this general premise, about two people coming together and coming to terms with their pasts by falling in love with each other. But the problem with all of this is that this is not a rom-com where you have two people who can just be themselves with each other and having the focus of the events be how much being with each other makes them forget about the other person. Tifa is RIGHT THERE, and the entire point is that Cloud can't be himself, Tifa and Cloud is not something that can be "gotten over", she's a main character, the nibelheim incident is a major focus of the story, the focus will always be "coming to terms with the past" because nibleheim and clouds fake identity is too big to sweep under the rug and too connected with Tifa. And as I laid out above, Zack has also become a much too big of a factor to ignore.
And you have to remember that it's not us that is saying it's weird for Aerith to replace Zack with Cloud so quickly. It's the developers that are saying this. THEY are the ones that decided to have Aerith write letters for FOUR YEARS despite not getting them answered. It's the developers that chose to focus on how much Aerith is still not over Zack. Who inject Aerith talking about the sky into remake, who make audio expositions about Aerith talking about how she sometimes sees someone with Zacks eyes and wants to ask about him, that talk about how her feelings are unchanging and that no matter what she does she can't stop thinking about him.
They're the ones who keep making decision like making it so that Aerith was trying to relive her first date with Zack through Cloud, strengthening the idea that these scenes are about Zack, not Cloud. Hell, they're the ones that make entire games about Zack and Aeriths relationship.
It's because THE DEVELOPERS made these choices we're at a point where, from a storytelling perspective, Aerith getting together with Cloud is extremely uncomfortable and weird, and no amount of "but in real life that could totally happen" can change that.
The party is going to be working together to save Tifa and Red XIII I assume. People have speculated that takes place at Gongaga anyway. 