Honestly if going by the main story Aerith should have written the song to Tifa and taken her on a Dream Date before saying goodbye.
lmao, yes. So many of the issues I have with Aerith's character in this game could have been solved if they were brave enough to lean into the Aerti!
The narrative choices made for Aerith's death definitely give me some anxiety about the LS sequence to come. Just in the sense that they're both emotional linchpins in the story, both highly anticipated scenes with sky-high expectations. I guess I just have to cling like a madwoman to the mini-LS sequence we already got in Gongaga. It was moving and beautiful and did everything it needed to. I hope they stick to that formula.
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I'm less worried about the Lifestream sequence, because 1) it doesn't come at the end of the game like Aerith's death where they tend to throw all their wonky shit at the wall. 2) They've generally handled everything related to Tifa's character much better.
The cynic in me would argue that's because Tifa's character is so directly tied to Cloud's. I remember groaning when I saw the illustration from the 25th anniversary were portraits of Cloud, Zack and Sephiroth -- it's like women, who?? But I think it was instructive. Not only does Tifa's arc share many of the same beats as Cloud's, but to understand
Cloud's arc, you have to understand
why he's so in love with/so desperate to impress Tifa, and also why he thought she was so unattainable that he had to join SOLDIER to do so.
Remake/Rebirth goes out of its way to show why Tifa is the kind of "dream girl" you'd go to war for -- practically every man is in love with her, and every woman idolizes her, even if they're suspect/jealous from the start. But Tifa also doesn't just exist for Cloud, she has meaningful relationships with other characters, so we can understand why
Cloud would believe -- oh, she only likes me the way she likes everyone else. (Which definitely was not the case in the OG).
Though to their credit, they've also given her enough flaws to make her feel like a believable person
and they've shown us how much
she cares for Cloud/what
he means to
her/and why she would be willing to drop everything to stay by his side. I guess I really shouldn't be complaining, because having the masses love her is so much better than me trying to defend her from accusations of being Cloud's childhood bully, lmao.
But yeah, I do think the mini-LS sequence in Gongaga is how they're going to approach the real deal in part 3. Even if we have some other characters/forces at play like the Whispers/Weapon/Sephiroth bringing her to her core memories, the emotional revelations in the scene itself are going to be all about Cloud/Tifa.
I'm thinking that resolving the Cloud being deluded about Aerith being alive thing is going to come
after the Lifestream sequence. Once he accepts the emotional truth of
why he remembers the Nibelheim Incident the way he did,
why he was hiding under that grunt mask, it seems he's able break through the influence of the Jenova cells. After they leave the Lifestream, he remembers/recounts what Hojo did to him on his own when he's explaining everything to the party on the Highwind, and he's able to remember Zack on his own in the Shinra Mansion basement. These moments aren't in the Lifestream sequence itself because they don't really have anything to do with Tifa.
I might be in the minority, but I actually don't think they'll kiss after the Lifestream (not that I'll complain if they do, lol). Because while it is extremely romantic, imo, it's beyond mere romance, like this is some real soulmate shit. It almost feels like something romantically-coded like a kiss would diminish the intense, almost uncategorizable connection they have (the fate of the world literally rests on it!) by putting too fine a point on it?
Also, if they kiss after the Lifestream, what is the game building up to for Under the Highwind? Unless they're going to play the "Will they or won't they?" game with "Are they going to fuck?" LOL. Which, honestly would be incredible, but may end up feeling a bit anticlimactic if part 3 is going to stick with a T-rating.