If you ever prioritise puzzle box storytelling over a character driven one, then the answer and payoff to the mysteries you favoured by their very definition have to be satisfying and executed well, otherwise not only have you failed the characters you overlooked in favour of a mystery, you failed the story you tried to needlessly over complicate to stoke interest during a waiting period for the story to be concluded.
Spot on. Mysteries are compelling if they're mysteries for both the audience
and the characters, less so when it's only a mystery for the audience and
not the characters. The 'What really happened in Nibelheim Five Years Ago?' is a great example of the former. Needlessly obfuscating about Aerith's feelings for Cloud/Zack/does she know Zack is dead/what NPTK is really about and the entire
Rebirth ending are examples of the latter. Hiding information from the audience that our characters know to contrive tension is something that a lot of stories do, but that doesn't mean it's good writing!
Not to turn this thread into my media criticism TED talk, but I just keep thinking about that ridiculous Hamaguchi quote pre-release where he was talking about making sure they gave Tifa and Aerith equal screentime/quality content or whatever.
My takeaway from that is either:
a) This dev team is a total clown car that equates screentime with narrative importance. (Which is obviously not the case. See: Anthony Hopkins in
The Silence of the Lambs or Lily Gladstone in
Killers of the Flower Moon.)
or
b) They're lying through their teeth to not upset a certain fanbase.
If a) is true, then they realized that Ch. 13 + 14 were all about Aerith, and were like 'Oh shit, we better sprinkle in some Tifa in the rest of the chapters to balance it out.'
But that doesn't feel right, because none of the stuff we got for Tifa feels like it's just fanservice. Her conversations with Cloud make up the bulk of her screentime, which is directly related to the main story. The rest of it are her bonding with the rest of the party or talks with NPCs (like Dr. Sheiran) who reveal more about her past/character.
There's so much new stuff in Gongaga/Cosmo Canyon/Corel, etc. where the game goes out of the way to show (sometimes having other characters explicitly state) what a inherently good/strong person Tifa is. Maybe it's the devs being insecure about making a normie like Tifa the heroine (vs. a last of her kind type like Aerith), so they're overcompensating to justify
why someone like her should lead the game? If so, then woof, while I appreciate all the good stuff we got in
Rebirth, man do they not have their finger on the pulse.
My suspicion is that at the very least Nojima knows that they've made Tifa
the (singular) heroine of the ReTrilogy, and Hamaguchi, etc. either did not get the memo or they're lying to themselves and the fanbase, which explains all these dumb interviews and the hot mess of an ending.
BUT none of that explains how differently the two girls are treated in the one chapter where they pretty much have equal screentime, Costa Del Sol. If you get all the swimsuits and do both odd jobs, these are what the sidequests reveal about each character:
Aerith:
1) Run Wild - Um, this is about Red playing soccer, but I guess it's a nice bonding moment for them
2) Taking photos of the Cactaur - again, this is really not about her at all and all about the Shinra manager's conflict between working for the company and his family (though I guess you could read something into her being paired with a romantically unavailble man, but uh, yikes)
3) The swimsuit idea "date" with Cloud - the NPCs tell us that she's an assertive woman, and from the "date" we see that she's romantically interested in Cloud
Tifa:
1) Collecting the wheelies - Johnny's maybe girlfriend starts out jealous of Tifa/thinking she's not all that, but throughout the quest, ends up changing her mind and being won over by Tifa's inherent goodness/compassion.
2) Piano minigame - we learn she used to play piano as a child, and her performance saves the day and impresses two generally hard to impress recurring NPCs from
Remake.
3) Clearing fiends around Jules' gym - lots of nice banter with Cloud giving us insight into their childhood, food preferences, her skills as a chef AND we learn that her exploits in
Remake made female membership at Jules' gym soar, and it introduced a brand new NPC for the sole sake of idolizing Tifa.
Optional, yes, but we learn SO much about Tifa's backstory, her character, and how others perceive her, and almost all of it is entirely new. Meanwhile, we learn very little about Aerith in hers and almost all of it are things we already know??
Like what the hell is going on here? I know Hamaguchi is supposed to be an Aerith fan, but if you told me he was a secret hater, I'd believe it.