SPOILERS LTD Remake — It's like New Coke except ... no, it's exactly like New Coke

[GamerSkull]

wow I never knew that man, that is fascinating. Does explain the mini resolution scenes that could just be stand ins. Damn

Take it with a grain of salt, it’s just what I’ve heard but I have no sources so I’m not sure if it’s 100% true.

 

[Yoru]

Regarding NPTK, ngl, I was pretty sure it was for Zack, then I was like, yeah, I guess it could be Aerith's song to express what she felt for Cloud, as it links up to the ending and the dream date, and the whole "like like", and the fact that they hold hands on their date, and hold hands at the end.
I think like the rest of you, I felt it was such odd framing for Cloud and Tifa to be holding hands and both looking so pleased at themselves during Aerith's big romantic power ballad to Cloud.

I did NOT expect Nojima to be all "I meant it to be written for ~ everybody ~ "

Perhaps now with the added context, the visual imagery of Cloud holding Tifa's hand at the Gold Saucer syncs up with the end of OG, where Tifa rests her head on Cloud's chest and they want to go and see Aerith - together. And it would make so much sense now that if he does repeat to Tifa in P3 to "Lets go meet her" line if the interpretation is that she knew she was dying, and wanted to one day reunite/ meet all of them again.

Also, I know everyone is happy, it gives Aerith more depth yadda, yadda, she loves her friends etc. etc. - it's all good - but in retrospect can we just talk about how...incredibly baity the marketing for Rebirth was starting from the TGA trailer? The fall-and-almost-kiss, the "love song" trailer that they edited interspersed with close-ups of Cloud's face gazing in awe at Aerith (with her suddenly impressive pipes), the scenes of them in the final chapter holding hands in the social media count down teasers.

I don't "ship" CA, but I think if I were invested in the relationship and it's progress from Remake, and I was holding on to the developer interviews that "both girls will be equal". I'd feel that they really pulled the rug out from under me. I can....sort of understand why people shipping Cloud/Aerith might be displeased with the devs.

If you watched the montage video for the Game awards segment yes. If you watched the full trailer, it was not CA focused that much to be honest.

Like I said at the time when CA was all smug and shit, the trailer was mostly just the Gold Saucer side of Aerith. And with OG we know Tifa can be dated, can be Rosa etc etc. So again, their fault if they felf baited. Someone who knows the game could easily understand it was just one side of the coin.

And yes dev said the girls would have the same screentime (basically) but they never said it would be used with the same atempt. Aerith is not a romance option. Now we know. As someone mentioned, Cloud VA did warn shippers before the release of the game. You can love someone. But this love doesn't have to be romantic. Game seems pretty clear. We can't accuse them to be baity anymore.

 

[liuliuliu]

and I was holding on to the developer interviews that "both girls will be equal"

i think this is literally reading too much into a line. Hamaguchi said they balanced the screen time for both girl, it is not they balanced their relationship developments with Cloud or their screen time with Cloud etc…
I don’t understand why people’s expectations were set so high to “yah, both girl will have the same amount of lovey dovey moments with cloud” from there..

 

[GamerSkull]

i think this is literally reading too much into a line. The developer side they balanced the screen time for both girl, it is not they balanced their relationship development with Cloud or their screen time with Cloud etc…
I don’t understand why people’s expectations were set to “yah, both girl will have the same amount of lovey dovey moments with cloud” from there..

Not saying it’s anyone in this thread, but I definitely think some fans only see Aerith/Tifa as love interests to Cloud and don’t see the other aspects of importance they have.

Some of those fans would then take that line to mean romantic screentime.

 

[CldS7]

Cody said it best tbh. And everything he said ended up being true in Rebirth

 

[Ryeleigh]

Not saying it’s anyone in this thread, but I definitely think some fans only see Aerith/Tifa as love interests to Cloud and don’t see the other aspects of importance they have.

Some of those fans would then take that line to mean romantic screentime.

It's really ironic how "both girls" and extreme CAs keep saying that Tifa is more than a love interest to Cloud and yet they absolutely refuse to accept that Aerith had the role of being more than a love interest*. I don't even get why people keep saying love interest derogatorily? They're all fictional characters, they all have specific roles. Who cares if it's well-written.

*It's even more annoying when they're like, "Tifa is more than a love interest (derogatory)" and then follow that with "Well, she's kind of pointless to the story. Cloud, Aerith and Sephiroth are the real main characters."

 

[GamerSkull]

It's really ironic how "both girls" and extreme CAs keep saying that Tifa is more than a love interest to Cloud and yet they absolutely refuse to accept that Aerith had the role of being more than a love interest*. I don't even get why people keep saying love interest derogatorily? They're all fictional characters, they all have specific roles. Who cares if it's well-written.

*It's even more annoying when they're like, "Tifa is more than a love interest (derogatory)" and then follow that with "Well, she's kind of pointless to the story. Cloud, Aerith and Sephiroth are the real main characters."

Yes, I often have seen some of them claim that Tifa is more than a love interest to Cloud (which I agree that she is) but I’ve always gotten the impression that it’s said to devalue her importance as far as the romantic subplot goes.

 

[CldS7]

It's really ironic how "both girls" and extreme CAs keep saying that Tifa is more than a love interest to Cloud and yet they absolutely refuse to accept that Aerith had the role of being more than a love interest*. I don't even get why people keep saying love interest derogatorily? They're all fictional characters, they all have specific roles. Who cares if it's well-written.

*It's even more annoying when they're like, "Tifa is more than a love interest (derogatory)" and then follow that with "Well, she's kind of pointless to the story. Cloud, Aerith and Sephiroth are the real main characters."

Dude I hate that. It’s just hilarious to me everything they’ve said about Tifa and how she’s so close to Cloud and how that’s bad is the exact thing they’re wining about Aerith not getting

That’s why I’ve always said it’s a war on narrative rather then ships.

If Aerith and Tifas roles were swapped in the OG. I would be doing the same thing for Aerith because that would be the actual narrative of the game

They cannot seen to seperate the idea that the whole of FF7 literally only happens because Cloud was in love with Tifa and tried to become something he wasn’t to get her attention, and the whole game is essentially him coming to terms with who he actually is

 

[insanehobbit]

The only piece of marketing I found egregiously baity was the TGA trailer. Everything from the January 'TIIIIFAA!!' trailer and on was a pretty fair representation of what Rebirth actually turned out to be. They showed the CT date in the State of Play and other prominent promo pre-release, and there was some pretty shippy CT stuff in Cloud and Tifa's character countdowns iirc. The CA ending handhold literally plays out the same way it does in the game, so I wouldn't consider it bait on the level of the TGA trailer.

If I was being generous, I would say they edited the TGA trailer the way they did because they were still trying to play the 'Is Aerith going to live this time?' game. With the baity CA scenes, more people may take the song at face value and interpret it as a straightforward romantic ballad rather than the 'goodbye' that it was meant to be. Likewise, if they had edited it to be more ZA, again (timeline bros aside), I think most people would realize her fate would stay the same.

(IMO, it was extremely obvious bait/misdirection since all the baity scenes came from the GS date. The trailer was released with a bunch of press explicitly saying the GS dates were optional. So the fact that all the shippy scenes came from optional moments should have been a huge red flag. Still think it was pretty rude of SE to do them like that, but if you fell for the bait, you have no one to blame but yourself. All the signs were there if you cared to look.)

The cynical part of me would say there's a difference between SE, the storytellers, and SE, the financial entity. I would like to pretend I'm a better person than this, but if I knew there was a small, but vocal part of my fanbase who could subsist on a few out-of-context scenes, mistranslations, ambiguous song lyrics and occasional marketing bait for 27 years despite having one half of their ship kiss a different woman and end up living with and raising two kids with said woman after the game...I would absolutely still take their money. Especially since I could apparently do so without undermining the integrity of the story I wanted to tell.

So I am a bit surprised they've straight up shut down differing interpretations of NPTK this time around. Though maybe they also got sick of seeing 4 years of Hollow discourse, lmao.

 

[Ryeleigh]

Dude I hate that. It’s just hilarious to me everything they’ve said about Tifa and how she’s so close to Cloud and how that’s bad is the exact thing they’re wining about Aerith not getting

That’s why I’ve always said it’s a war on narrative rather then ships.

If Aerith and Tifas roles were swapped in the OG. I would be doing the same thing for Aerith because that would be the actual narrative of the game

They cannot seen to seperate the idea that the whole of FF7 literally only happens because Cloud was in love with Tifa and tried to become something he wasn’t to get her attention, and the whole game is essentially him coming to terms with who he actually is

Well, they still go on and on about the choices in OG as if those choices affected anything storywise. Listening to them talk, they make FF7 sound like some amalgamation of CW teen soap opera and choose your own adventure waifu a la BioWare.

 

[GamerSkull]

The only piece of marketing I found egregiously baity was the TGA trailer. Everything from the January 'TIIIIFAA!!' trailer and on was a pretty fair representation of what Rebirth actually turned out to be. They showed the CT date in the State of Play and other prominent promo pre-release, and there was some pretty shippy CT stuff in Cloud and Tifa's character countdowns iirc. The CA ending handhold literally plays out the same way it does in the game, so I wouldn't consider it bait on the level of the TGA trailer.

If I was being generous, I would say they edited the TGA trailer the way they did because they were still trying to play the 'Is Aerith going to live this time?' game. With the baity CA scenes, more people may take the song at face value and interpret it as a straightforward romantic ballad rather than the 'goodbye' that it was meant to be. Likewise, if they had edited it to be more ZA, again (timeline bros aside), I think most people would realize her fate would stay the same.

(IMO, it was extremely obvious bait/misdirection since all the baity scenes came from the GS date. The trailer was released with a bunch of press explicitly saying the GS dates were optional. So the fact that all the shippy scenes came from optional moments should have been a huge red flag. Still think it was pretty rude of SE to do them like that, but if you fell for the bait, you have no one to blame but yourself. All the signs were there if you cared to look.)

The cynical part of me would say there's a difference between SE, the storytellers, and SE, the financial entity. I would like to pretend I'm a better person than this, but if I knew there was a small, but vocal part of my fanbase who could subsist on a few out-of-context scenes, mistranslations, ambiguous song lyrics and occasional marketing bait for 27 years despite having one half of their ship kiss a different woman and end up living with and raising two kids with said woman after the game...I would absolutely still take their money. Especially since I could apparently do so without undermining the integrity of the story I wanted to tell.

So I am a bit surprised they've straight up shut down differing interpretations of NPTK this time around. Though maybe they also got sick of seeing 4 years of Hollow discourse, lmao.

Yeah… it is strange that that they seem to be more or less “debunking” CA stuff. One would think they’d wait until Part 3 releases in order to ensure the CA fanbase still buys it.

But a saying that sticks out to me is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…shame on me.”

I wonder if the same deal won’t cycle back when Part 3 is on the cusp of release.

 

[CldS7]

Well, they still go on and on about the choices in OG as if those choices affected anything storywise. Listening to them talk, they make FF7 sound like some amalgamation of CW teen soap opera and choose your own adventure waifu a la BioWare.

What kills me about that is the choices literally stop once Real Cloud is back

That’s the whole point. It’s all a mirage. The point is Cloud seeing his faults and that he could never become something he was not (Soldier), but it never mattered to Tifa and he always enough for her. By saving him like this he was able to beat Sephiroth and then save the world. To contrast Sephiroth who couldn't acknowledge this

They always seem to want to switch the game into something completely different because of it.

 

[GamerSkull]

What kills me about that is the choices literally stop once Real Cloud is back

That’s the whole point. It’s all a mirage. The point is Cloud seeing his faults and that he could never become something he was not (Soldier), but it never mattered to Tifa and he always enough for her. By saving him like this he was able to beat Sephiroth and then save the world. To contrast Sephiroth who couldn't acknowledge this

They always seem to want to switch the game into something completely different because of it.

I don’t believe there’s been a single FF game where you could choose your own adventure. Otherwise, I would have gone for Quistis instead of Rinoa.

 

[CldS7]

I don’t believe there’s been a single FF game where you could choose your own adventure. Otherwise, I would have gone for Quistis instead of Rinoa.

Yeh that’s fact

But I like the fact the first part of OG FF7 you can choose to mirror Cloud his confusion and unknowingness

I love how the original FF7 is so critical on its themes of self worth, mental health and trauma

For a game to have such focus on such critical topics which were not even main stream to have discussions on back then… it’s such a timeless game and story

one of the best ever tbh

 

[Yoru]

Yeah… it is strange that that they seem to be more or less “debunking” CA stuff. One would think they’d wait until Part 3 releases in order to ensure the CA fanbase still buys it.

But a saying that sticks out to me is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…shame on me.”

I wonder if the same deal won’t cycle back when Part 3 is on the cusp of release.

Maybe because they don't weight that much ? They're pretty noisy on the internet, but isn't Tifa thrusting every TOP and such ?

And if they really are cutting themself off from a part of the public. Even better. It means they have a vision and they're pursuing it no matter what. The idea this remake project is their "final" attempt to convey their message and feelings makes me feel really happy and proud.

 

[GamerSkull]

Yeh that’s fact

But I like the fact the first part of OG FF7 you can choose to mirror Cloud his confusion and unknowingness

I love how the original FF7 is so critical on its themes of self worth, mental health and trauma

For a game to have such focus on such critical topics which were not even main stream to have discussions on back then… it’s such a timeless game and story

one of the best ever tbh

FFX is still my favorite but it’s pretty neck and neck with FF7. Then it’s IX and VI. In that order.

 

[CldS7]

I love VI, VII & X and but also am a unabashed 16 lover to my heart as well

 

[GamerSkull]

I love VI, VII & X and but also am a unabashed 16 lover to my heart as well

I like 16 too.

 

[Empyrea]

Wait, why is Romeo/Juliet a terrible love story?

It was said later down the chain, but from what I remember of the story (it's been so looooong) Romeo/Juliet is more about the feud between the Romeo and Juliet's families. Because of that, the two barely got to know one another before deciding to elope. As I said then, it's more tragic mixed with cautionary tale for me.

Edit: Jeezus I'm so late to that party. Everyone else explained way better than I can haha.

 

[Yoru]

From III to XVI I loved all FF. Worst one is a 15/20 for me.

Favorite ones are 7 and 10. Can't really decide wich is first. FF8 will always have a special place in my heart.

16 is a great game. But the more time passes, the less mark it leaves on me.

 

[Sacky]

The only piece of marketing I found egregiously baity was the TGA trailer. Everything from the January 'TIIIIFAA!!' trailer and on was a pretty fair representation of what Rebirth actually turned out to be. They showed the CT date in the State of Play and other prominent promo pre-release, and there was some pretty shippy CT stuff in Cloud and Tifa's character countdowns iirc. The CA ending handhold literally plays out the same way it does in the game, so I wouldn't consider it bait on the level of the TGA trailer.

If I was being generous, I would say they edited the TGA trailer the way they did because they were still trying to play the 'Is Aerith going to live this time?' game. With the baity CA scenes, more people may take the song at face value and interpret it as a straightforward romantic ballad rather than the 'goodbye' that it was meant to be. Likewise, if they had edited it to be more ZA, again (timeline bros aside), I think most people would realize her fate would stay the same.

(IMO, it was extremely obvious bait/misdirection since all the baity scenes came from the GS date. The trailer was released with a bunch of press explicitly saying the GS dates were optional. So the fact that all the shippy scenes came from optional moments should have been a huge red flag. Still think it was pretty rude of SE to do them like that, but if you fell for the bait, you have no one to blame but yourself. All the signs were there if you cared to look.)

The cynical part of me would say there's a difference between SE, the storytellers, and SE, the financial entity. I would like to pretend I'm a better person than this, but if I knew there was a small, but vocal part of my fanbase who could subsist on a few out-of-context scenes, mistranslations, ambiguous song lyrics and occasional marketing bait for 27 years despite having one half of their ship kiss a different woman and end up living with and raising two kids with said woman after the game...I would absolutely still take their money. Especially since I could apparently do so without undermining the integrity of the story I wanted to tell.

So I am a bit surprised they've straight up shut down differing interpretations of NPTK this time around. Though maybe they also got sick of seeing 4 years of Hollow discourse, lmao.

What I find Insane is the people who say they played OG claim to be big fans and still say it's a choice who Cloud loves and romance isn't even a part of the story. How have so called fans not understood Clouds character, the entire lifestream sequence, and the ending of the game?. I feel like I'm crazy or wrong after hearing so much about the ending relationship was up to interpretation. then I rewatch the ending and I'm like no I'm right Cloud and Tifa's relationship is a major part of this story the end part of northern crater is them holding onto each other while Tifa's theme plays.have people even played past Aeriths death? People who ship Cloud and Tifa are just trying to correct people on the canon story, and especially correct the strangely popular take that Clouds character is all based on player choice due to HA and LA

 

[CldS7]

What I find Insane is the people who say they played OG claim to be big fans and still say it's a choice who Cloud loves and romance isn't even a part of the story. How have so called fans not understood Clouds character, the entire lifestream sequence, and the ending of the game?. I feel like I'm crazy or wrong after hearing so much about the ending relationship was up to interpretation. then I rewatch the ending and I'm like no I'm right Cloud and Tifa's relationship is a major part of this story the end part of northern crater is them holding onto each other while Tifa's theme plays.have people even played past Aeriths death? People who ship Cloud and Tifa are just trying to correct people on the canon story, and especially correct the strangely popular take that Clouds character is all based on player choice due to HA and LA

That’s the hilarious irony of the whole thing

Love is the central part to the most important part of the FF7 and its reveal

They literally don’t read the dialogue in the livestream sequence. It’s crazy

Aerith is literally a fakeout death in the OG. We are supposed to think she’s the most important. That’s the issue with the LTD dynamic

It’s always been built on a lie

 

[overheat28]

Hello, first post here after lurking for a while.

This has been gnawing at me on Zack/Aerith.

They had Aerith helping Cissnei cook for the Fairs in that mushroom sidequest. Might be a reach, but this to me is a shadow of the old cooking for the in-laws trope. In-laws who just happen to sort of resemble Zack and Aerith.

Meanwhile, in a mirror situation, Zack has been ingratiating himself with Elmyra and proving he's good with kids with Marlene.

Devs aren't being subtle, imo. Really leaning into the corny with these two (hands touching across the lifestream, for godsake). This is devestatingly tragic stuff but utterly blatant as well.

I frankly don't know how anyone reads CA as the pairing in this game.

 

[GamerSkull]

Hello, first post here after lurking for a while.

This has been gnawing at me on Zack/Aerith.

They had Aerith helping Cissnei cook for the Fairs in that mushroom sidequest. Might be a reach, but this to me is a shadow of the old cooking for the in-laws trope. In-laws who just happen to sort of resemble Zack and Aerith.

Meanwhile, in a mirror situation, Zack has been ingratiating himself with Elmyra and proving he's good with kids with Marlene.

Devs aren't being subtle, imo. Really leaning into the corny with these two (hands touching across the lifestream, for godsake). This is devestatingly tragic stuff but utterly blatant as well.

I frankly don't know how anyone reads CA as the pairing in this game.

Welcome! And I actually haven’t done that side quest. I gotta go back and complete a bunch of them.

 

[liuliuliu]

Well this loud group of minority might have never played any games in the FF7project including OG, Re and all the spin offs.