AncientGrimoire
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- Grim
I find the which date is "canon" debate so silly (second only to song lyrics discourse, lol) because if the devs wanted a specific date to be canon, they obviously wouldn't have made said scene optional/variable, as they have for like 99% of the game? Like if your ship can't co-exist with certain "optional" scenes existing, maybe ya need to rethink it?
I think it's interesting that both Tifa and Aerith's dates have the flashback with them talking about Zack. That is probably the most plotty/lore-relevant part of the dates in general, and the devs probably expect most people to go for either Tifa or Aerith the first time around, so this way they make sure most players will have seen that by the end of their first play through. Whereas in the OG, Aerith's is really the only one with any story/lore-related content.
That being said, I still find it a baffling choice to lock a major turning point in Aerith's character arc behind optional scenes. Though I guess you can argue that NPTK is basically just the song version of what Aerith tries to tell Cloud on the gondola, but I think that is the devs having way too much faith in this particular fandom being able to put the puzzle pieces together lol
At the end of the day the Ultimania’s wouldn’t need to exist if the majority of the audience in the fandom were able to put everything together themselves