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

[Yoru]

Can someone jog my memory on which iconic CA moments were removed?

The fortune telling stuff and what else?

When we see the Highwind for the first time, she doesn't ask Cloud to promise to take her aboard one day.

Now it's only a scene between Cloud and Tifa.

 

[Rin]

I don't want to be petty but it's pretty telling.

To me it just shows that it was there artificially to impose the Aerith x Cloud relationship and further enhance the shock effect of her death.

It was not story telling but game designing.

Now that they don't need it anymore (more time to depict the character + most people know what's gonna happen to her) they just removed it.

Because she's not supposed to be a real romantic alternative...

It's very telling, yeah.
I was really surprised by it because a lot of those moments they had were very sweet and touching.
And there are some still very sweet and touching CA moments in Rebirth and Remake, so I'm not saying there's no CA content but a lot of the context around it has changed.

Can someone jog my memory on which iconic CA moments were removed?

The fortune telling stuff and what else?

Other scenes removed are...

• CA flirting while trapped in the Shinra cells (replaced w/ Aerith/Tifa talking in Aerith and Ifalna's old room in Shinra HQ)
• Cloud promising to take Aerith on the Highwind (replaced w/ CT talking about the Highwind instead)
• Cloud telling Aerith he's there for her at Cosmo Canyon (replaced w/ Cloud telling Barret the team is there for him)
• Marlene telling Cloud that Aerith likes him but she won't tell Tifa (replaced w/ Marlene telling Zack that Aerith likes Cloud)

I might be forgetting some, so if anyone else has any feel free to add!

 

[GamerSkull]

It's because you CTs scared the devs but part 3 is coming.

In a single month they removed all CA scenes and added a whole bunch of CT scenes,

I think I’ve seen a couple people say this. But like there wouldn’t have been enough time lol

 

[Stiggie]

The truth is if you ask any non fan about Final Fantasy VII what they know about FF7 chances are they'll maybe know some characters names but it's almost guaranteed they'll mention Aerith's death. Whether the devs intended Aerith's death to be as big as it has become or not this is basically the scene the game is known for to the casual audience. It's considered to be one of the most iconic scenes in video game history, whether the talk about it is how people cried or don't get it, or didn't cry or want her to leave, or think it's well done or not the conversation about FF7 always ALWAYS tends to mention this scene in some capacity because it's just so famous. It's very clear SE knows this. To the point I actually got annoyed because the marketting for Rebirth was basically about it too.

Honestly, it's stuff like this that slowly is making me dislike Aeriths character. I thought she was perfectly fine in the OG, and Crisis Core really made me like her. But more and more I find myself thinking that Aerith is a blight on the story that is holding it back.
Don't get me wrong, Aerith COULD be great, but the ramifications of her death have made it nearly impossible for her to be so.

The thing is, Aeriths death doesn't f-ing matter. Or at least, it didn't, and that's part of what made it so great. We have seen a bunch of quotes from developers and reviewers as well about the meanings behind Aeriths death, and it's been talked about ad nauseum, but what it comes down to is that when you step back Aeriths death really has a very minor impact on the events of FFVII. It has almost no impact on the scenes prior to it, as it's never alluded to or overly foreshadowed, and afterwards it's treated as one would expect for a death. With sadness, but also a need to continue the journey.

In the story itself Aerith essentially plays no role. Sure, there are a few thematic meanings to her character and her death. But if we reduce the core story of FFVII down to a few major conflicts from the position of our main character then we have Cloud vs Sephiroth which has its genesis in Nibelheim and revolves around Cloud and Tifa. And we have Avalanche vs Shinra, which revolves around Cloud, Tifa, and Barret which is why they're considered the original gang. We start with the external fight of Avalanche against Shinra, and that eventually morphs into the external fight of everyone vs Sephiroth. The internal components about that is about everything to do with Nibelheim and the revelations concerning Clouds psyche.

The rest of the characters tie into that in some way, Barret has links with Shinra through Corel, but he's an essential part of the story because he sets the external fight into motion. He is the boss of avalanche, he is with our team from day one. One part of the core three of Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. People like Yuffie, Cid, Vincent, RedXIII, and Reeve are then added to that roster through their history with Shinra. But you could easily remove each one and keep the core story intact. Cid is essentially a McGuffin surrounding flying, Cait Sith does essentially nothing, Red XIIIs story is mostly unrelated aside from how it gives him a hatred for Shinra, and Yuffie and Vincent are literally optional, although Vincent at least does tie into the history of Sephiroth and "how we got there".

The thing with Aerith is that she's essentially the same, she's a side character, a McGuffin, she didn't need to be there for the core story to function, she's essentially just a plot device needed to summon holy combined with some lore and worldbuilding. Without her you'd still have Shinra destroying the planet, you'd still have AVALANCHE deciding to go bomb reactors, you'd still have Sephiroth burning down Nibelheim, you'd still have Cloud creating a fake persona and all that Jazz. You'd need to find some other reason for AVALANCHE to be at shinra HQ the moment Sephiroth attacks (not that hard to think of one) but for the rest the story continues on pretty much as normal.

However, unlike the side characters Aerith is presented as a main character. While her personal story and identity as an ancient isn't inherently needed for the story of FFVII to function it is granted importance in universe, and it does a good job accentuating themes about nature, life, the planet, etc. Because the concept of "the ancients" is presented as important our quest is seen as being just as much about guiding and protecting Aerith as it is about going to stop Sephiroth, who is painted as being in opposition to everything Aerith symbolizes.

So why do I bring this up? Why go on a long rant detailing and noting in which way Aerith is important and in which way she's not?
Because I think understanding this helps in understanding what went wrong and why she's now a blight on the story. In the original Aeriths importance served to amplify the themes of the story, because her existence was in service to the story. Like I explained she wasn't essential for it, but her existence helped to really bring out the story to it's full potential. But now her story is in conflict with the story of FFVII because her inflated importance has caused her story to be a rival to the actual one.

Yes, Aeriths death is always spoken off....this is a problem, because FFVII isn't about Aeriths death, it never really mattered that much. But now because the concept of Aerith the ancient was given importance in the OG we have overestimated the importance of her death as a plot point. We've conflated her importance in universe as the last of the ancients with her importance to the story. This means that her death suddenly became this elephant in the room where future FFVII projects all kinda had to address it, or somehow be about it, until we eventually got to the remake where the story is no longer about Shinra killing the planet, Sephiroth an Nibelheim, or any of the understandable human level conflicts that made the OG so amazing. No, it's the story about Aeriths eventual death. About defying fate and treasuring the time you have left and multiple time lines and all kinds of nonsense.

Rather than the death being something that just happens it's a specter that looms over the story from the very moment you first see Aerith in Remake. And at every moment it pushes aside the actual conflict rather than accentuating it. And then the developers conflate what Aerith means to the player with what she'd logically mean to the characters, leading to her being presented as some sort of Mary-jesusue. With her saving people in alternate timelines, talking cryptically about the future, singing sad foreshadowy songs in Opera halls, and having grand bombastic reality breaking final showdowns around her death where Cloud treats it as though his reason for being has been taken away and there can be no more happiness. When really, these people barely knew her. If you just play Rebirth, especially if you don't do Aeriths quests, then Aerith comes across as totally deluded in the ending, and the presentation of the sadness and importance of her death comes across as overly dramatic and presumptuous, trying to invoke a level of emotion that her contributions to the story haven't earned. Because the story treats her as a character we've spent 27 years with, rather than the 1 or 2 games (or 1 or 2 weeks in universe time) that the characters have actually spent with her.

It all just makes her character feel like she's some fan-fictiony self insert by a writer that's too full of their own character. And that is then heightened by stuff like the LTD, where she's being shown across from a love story that's been going on for 7+ years and where she is presented as potentially being a match for that in 2 weeks, a sense that's further pushed by all the magical flowery spiritual stuff that her character is bombarded with. It all makes her feel overly important, which unless it's deserved can easily become grating. All the team members love her, Zack is infatuated with her and trying to get back to her, and the main character has all these scenes with her that, while few in number, all work from the assumption that she's, or at the very least their bond, is massively important.

But when do we actually see them being a genuine group? Do we see shots like Aerith sitting in a bar with Tifa, Barret, and the rest of avalanche, drinking and having fun? No, Jesse, biggs, and wedge got those shots, and as a result their "human deaths" now hit me 10 times harder than anything concerning the theater production that is Aeriths death. They could have shown those scenes. They could have shown scenes that WEREN'T individuals in relation to Cloud. But the affection mechanics and the LTD prevented that. We could have had DEEP talks between Tifa and Aerith about Cloud and Zack and what they actually mean to them respectively and how they could help each other explicitly, but the dangling carrot of the LTD requires ambiguity. So instead of actual scenes which show the girls in situations other than LTD bait they instead hint at stuff by for instance having Tifa say things like "Ever see that Faz guy again?" only to have it cut short by them "talking about boys".

At each step rather than accentuating each others stories they became rival stories that muddy the waters, hurting the impact of both. And I am left here thinking that if they're not gonna use both these characters and stories to create one single stronger WHOLE, then I'd rather just have one story done properly without all this interference. And when I think that, then I think back at how unimportant Aerith actually is to the core narrative of FFVII, and get annoyed about its bloated ego and how it harms the whole by its presence. And honestly it's become even worse now that they're portrayed as friends since that makes the entire thing even more weird and potentially unpalpable. Like yes, lets all mourn this woman who spent half the story pining over her Ex and trying to buddy up to Tifa, only to have her then potentially ditch said ex who we see loyally trying to get back to her in favor of trying to see if she might be able to start something with the dude the girl she calls her friend is clearly in love with and growing closer with. This story has nothing to do with anything, so why is it here? Oh yeah, because everything has to revolve around the main character and the pink girl of course.

And I know that in universe it's a little more complicated, I get that the resolution is that "nope, this is different", but that doesn't change the fact that the developers still chose to include this story arc to the detriment of the story. They could have done it clearer, they could have done it differently and more effectively, but they didn't. They instead chose to make a story where this character is so important that timelines break at her death and the MC starts hallucinating and smiling at her animated corpse rather than having her death be the end of her as it should be. And all of it leads to the same general feeling. "Man I wish she'd just go away so we can focus on the actual story, rather than focusing on the story of how much people are still obsessed about Aeriths death". Because that's what I'm seeing here, not the story of FFVII, but the filler story of the FFVII fandoms journey to accepting the death of Aerith. And that might be very emotional if you're a fan of Aerith, but if like me you saw her as just another character, then it's just grating. I now VASTLY prefer Jesse, because her death actually made me tear up, because it was human, it was real, and it was about HER.

I felt that way first but this is not the real Nibelheim, not the real water tower, it happens during the day and the scene in itself is very CT. I consider it as a CT scene personally, but it’s also part of that nagging feeling in Nibelheim that everything is… kinda wrong. Like Tifa playing Aerith’s theme on her piano during her quest. There are a lot of things that feel wrong in Nibelheim.

I still hate it, ties back into what I said above, "oh now she's at the water tower talking more about how sad her childhood was, maybe I'd care if I didn't feel like you were a just a tool the developers use to bait my emotions". Maybe if the game had made it a point to reinforce the "Aerith is making friends with everyone" story throughout the game without the uncomfortable undertone of "who knows, this scene might actually be in service of building up a potential romance between her and the guy HER ONE REAL FRIEND LIKES" then I would have found it endearing, but the backstabbing insinuation kinda ruins the message for me.

If I felt that the game effectively conveyed that Aerith in that moment was genuinely trying to help out her friend by interrogating Cloud, then I'd like the scene, even love. But when the scene gives you points that build towards a scene where Aerith goes "you know what Cloud, I wanna be with you now" even if she lying to herself, then having those points be earned on THE F-ING WATERTOWER really sickens me. It just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me hate that this is what they're doing with Aeriths character.

I still don't think I hate her, I definitely don't hate the Cloti interpretation of her. But I do hate the way the developers present her because it leaves too much ambiguity about how to actually properly interpret her, and that ability to misinterpret her in itself means the character was poorly done and harming the product.

 

[Yoru]

It's very telling, yeah.
I was really surprised by it because a lot of those moments they had were very sweet and touching.
And there are some still very sweet and touching CA moments in Rebirth and Remake, so I'm not saying there's no CA content but a lot of the context around it has changed.

To add a little more. When you take off the LTD glasses for a few seconds, it's quite impressive to see the difference in treatment between the two girls.

Aerith uses a lot of her private time with Cloud to talk about either Tifa or Zack...

Dialogue options for Aerith can be very cold, even violent (shouting at her in Comso Canyon...), whereas even when we're in the negative for Tifa, it's "no... I'm sorry", while for the others it's "nope", "not interested" etc.

I really think it's deliberate and that even when you want to do everything to get Aerith to the Gold Saucer... there are really very few truly romantic interactions. Personally the only one I've really felt like was the quest for the photos at Cosmo Canyon.

I don't think her character's existence is there to present a tragic love. I think it's there to teach people to enjoy life to the full before it's too late. To have no regrets. That's why Cloud can be a bit of a jerk to her. Because the moment she's gone, you think "damn... I should have treated her better when she was still here".

 

[Hellenic]

To be honest, I didn't feel much about Aerith's death either even though I didn't even know it was going to happen. I think my thoughts went something like this:

1. She died?
2. Oh well, that's depressing. /still thinking that CA was canon
3. Five seconds later as I remember that Cloud's still alive at the end of the game: Wait a damn second.
4. Finding the LTD threads here, lol.

I wish i could still remember how i initially reacted to Aerith dying in OG but i just can't anymore. It's a real shame honestly.

 

[pxl_pushr]

Honestly, it's stuff like this that slowly is making me dislike Aeriths character. I thought she was perfectly fine in the OG, and Crisis Core really made me like her. But more and more I find myself thinking that Aerith is a blight on the story that is holding it back.
Don't get me wrong, Aerith COULD be great, but the ramifications of her death have made it nearly impossible for her to be so.

The thing is, Aeriths death doesn't f-ing matter. Or at least, it didn't, and that's part of what made it so great. We have seen a bunch of quotes from developers and reviewers as well about the meanings behind Aeriths death, and it's been talked about ad nauseum, but what it comes down to is that when you step back Aeriths death really has a very minor impact on the events of FFVII. It has almost no impact on the scenes prior to it, as it's never alluded to or overly foreshadowed, and afterwards it's treated as one would expect for a death. With sadness, but also a need to continue the journey.

In the story itself Aerith essentially plays no role. Sure, there are a few thematic meanings to her character and her death. But if we reduce the core story of FFVII down to a few major conflicts from the position of our main character then we have Cloud vs Sephiroth which has its genesis in Nibelheim and revolves around Cloud and Tifa. And we have Avalanche vs Shinra, which revolves around Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. We start with the external fight of Avalanche against Shinra, and that eventually morphs into the external fight of everyone vs Sephiroth. The internal components about that is about everything to do with Nibelheim and the revelations concerning Clouds psyche.

The rest of the characters tie into that in some way, Barret has links with Shinra through Corel, but he's an essential part of the story because he sets the external fight into motion. He is the boss of avalanche, he is with our team from day one. One part of the core three of Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. People like Yuffie, Cid, Vincent, and Reeve are then added to that roster through their history with Shinra. But you could easily remove each one and keep the core story intact. Cid is essentially a McGuffin surrounding flying, Cait Sith does essentially nothing, and Yuffie and Vincent are literally optional, although Vincent at least does tie into the history of "how we got there".

The thing with Aerith is that she's essentially the same, she's a side character, a McGuffin, she didn't need to be there for the core story to function, she's essentially just a McGuffin to summon holy combined with some lore and worldbuilding. Without her you'd still have Shinra destroying the planet, you'd still have AVALANCHE deciding to go bomb reactors, you'd still have Sephiroth burning down Nibelheim, you'd still have Cloud creating a fake persona and all that Jazz. You'd need to find some other reason for AVALANCHE to be at shinra HQ the moment Sephiroth attacks (not that hard to think of one) but for the rest the story continues on pretty much as normal.

However, unlike the side characters Aerith is presented as a main character. While her personal story and identity as an ancient isn't inherently needed for the story of FFVII to function it is granted importance in universe, and is does a good job accentuating themes about nature, life, the planet, etc. Because the concept of "the ancients" is presented as important our quests is seen as as much about guiding and protecting Aerith as it is about going to stop Sephiroth, who is painted as being in opposition to everything Aerith symbolizes.

So why do I bring this up? Why go on a long rant detailing and noting in which way Aerith is important and in which way she's not?
Because I think understanding this helps understanding what went wrong and why she's now a blight on the story. In the original Aerith importance served to amplify the themes of the story, because her existence was in service to the story. Like I explained she wasn't essential for it, but her existence helped to really bring out the story to it's full potential. But now her story is in conflict with the story of FFVII because her inflated importance has caused her story to be a rival to the actual one.

Yes, Aeriths death is always spoken off....this is a problem, because FFVII isn't about Aeriths death, it never really mattered that much. But now because the concept of Aerith the ancient was given importance in the OG, we have overestimated the importance of her death as a plot point. We've conflated her importance in universe as the last of the ancients with her importance to the story. This means that her death suddenly became this elephant in the room where future FFVII projects all kinda had to address it, or somehow be about it. Until we eventually got to the remake where the story is no longer about Shinra killing the planet, Sephiroth an Nibelheim, or any of the understandable human level conflicts that made the OG so amazing. No, it's the story about Aeriths eventual death. About defying fate and treasuring the time you have left and multiple time lines and all kinds of nonsense.

Rather than the death being something that happens it's a specter that looms over the story from the very moment you first see her in Remake. And at every moment it pushes aside the actual conflict rather than accentuating it. And then the developers conflate what Aerith means to the player with what she'd logically mean to the characters, leading to her being presented as some sort of Mary-jesusue. With her saving people in alternate timelines, talking cryptically about the future, singing songs in Opera halls, and having grand bombastic final showdowns around her death where Cloud treats it as though his reason for being has been taken away and there can be no more happiness. When really, these people barely knew her. If you just play Rebirth, especially if you don't do Aeriths quests, then Aerith comes across as totally deluded in the ending, and the presentation of the sadness and importance of her death comes across as overly dramatic and presumptuous, trying to invoke a level of emotion that her contributions to the story haven't earned. Because the story treats her as a character we've spent 27 years with, rather than the game or 2 (or 1/2 weeks in universe time) that the characters have actually spent with her.

It all just makes her character feel like she's some fan-fictiony self insert by a writer that's too full of their own character. And that is then heightened by stuff like the LTD, where she's being shown across a love story that's been going on for 7+ years and is presented as potentially being a match for that in 2 weeks, a sense that's further pushed by all the magical flowery spiritual stuff that her character is bombarded with. It all makes her feel overly important, which unless it's deserved can easily become grating. All the team members love her, Zack is infatuated with her and trying to get back to her, and the main character has all these scenes with her that, while few in number, all work from the assumption that she's, or at the very least their bond, is massively important.

But when do we actually see them being a genuine group? Do we see shots like Aerith sitting in a bar with Tifa, Barret, and the rest of avalanche, drinking and having fun? No, Jesse, biggs, and wedge got those shots, and as a result their "human deaths" now hit me 10 times harder than anything concerning the theater production that is Aeriths death. They could have shown those scenes. They could have shown scenes that WEREN'T individuals in relation to Cloud. But the affection mechanics and the LTD prevented that. We could have had DEEP talks between Tifa and Aerith about Cloud and Zack and what they actually mean to them respectively and how they could help each other explicitly, but the dangling carrot of the LTD requires ambiguity. So instead of actual scenes which show the girls in situations other than LTD bait they instead hint at stuff by for instance having Tifa say things like "Ever see that Faz guy again?" only to have it cut short by them "talking about boys".

At each step rather than accentuating each others stories they became rival stories that muddy the waters, hurting the impact of both. And I am left here thinking that if they're not gonna use both these characters and stories to create one single stronger WHOLE, then I'd rather just have one story done properly without all this interference. And when I think that, then I think back at how unimportant Aerith actually is to the core narrative of FFVII, and get annoyed about its bloated ego and how it harms the whole by its presence. And honestly it's become even worse now that they're portrayed as friends since that makes the entire thing even more weird and potentially unpalpable. Like yes, lets all mourn this woman who spent half the story pining over her Ex and trying to buddy up to Tifa, only to have her then potentially ditch said ex who we see loyally trying to get back to her in favor of trying to see if she might be able to start something with the dude the girl she calls her friend is clearly in love with and growing closer with. This story has nothing to do with anything, so why is it here? Oh yeah, because everything has to revolve around the main character and the pink girl of course.

And I know that in universe it's a little more complicated, I get that the resolution is that "nope, this is different", but that doesn't change the fact that the developers still chose to include this story arc to the detriment of the story. They could have done it clearer, they could have done it differently and more effectively, but they didn't. They instead chose to make a story where this character is so important that timelines break at her death and the MC starts hallucinating and smiling at her animated corpse rather than having her death be the end of her as it should be. And all of it leads to the same general feeling. "Man I wish she'd just go away so we can focus on the actual story, rather than focusing on the story of how much people are still obsessed about Aeriths death". Because that's what I'm seeing here, not the story of FFVII, but the filler story of the FFVII fandoms journey to accepting the death of Aerith. And that might be very emotional if you're a fan of Aerith, but if like me you saw her as just another character, then it's just grating. I now VASTLY prefer Jesse, because her death actually made me tear up, because it was human, it was real, and it was about HER.



I still hate it, ties back into what I said above, "oh now she's at the water tower talking more about how sad her childhood was, maybe I'd care if I didn't feel like you were a just a tool the developers use to bait my emotions". Maybe if the game had made it a point to reinforce the "Aerith is making friends with everyone" story throughout the game without the uncomfortable undertone of "who knows, this scene might actually be in service of building up a potential romance between her and the guy HER ONE REAL FRIEND LIKES", kinda ruins the message for me.

If I felt that the game effectively conveyed that Aerith in that moment was genuinely trying to help out her friend by interrogating Cloud, then I'd like the scene. But when the scene gives you points that build towards a scene where Aerith goes "you know what Cloud, I wanna be with you now", then having those points be earned on THE F-ING WATERTOWER really sickens me. It just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me hate that this is what they're doing with Aeriths character.

I still don't think I hate her, I definitely don't hate the Cloti interpretation of her. But I do hate the way the developers present her because it leaves too much ambiguity about how to actually properly interpret her, and that ability to misinterpret her in itself means the character was poorly done and harming the product.

It’s almost like they treated her death the same as all the other deaths that came before it… this one just gets a cinematic which I think is what really sells it.

This is where that fandom pillar can end up harming your story if you’re not careful/disciplined in acknowledging its importance to fans. Still not sure how SE handled it without the full picture. If I have to see it twice more vs the one, I’ll have strong opinions lol

 

[Stiggie]

Also, if you're trying to romance Aerith the best answer is to have him agree that he used to go up there to be noticed by Tifa, soooo...

It is interesting that the CA watertower moment is really more of a CT moment, similar to when they climb the clocktower in Kalm or have that talk in Junon about the flower. I'm not entirely sure why the devs framed their interactions like that in Rebirth. I mean, I do know why, but at the same time I think it's kinda sad that there's so few moments that are just about Cloud and Aerith.

The scene before they fight the Turks in Corel is nice but I don't really consider it a CA moment since Nanaki was also apart of it, but at least it wasn't a conversation about Tifa. I'm still sad that there's no promise to take Aerith on the Highwind and that the whole convo about it was given to CT. Which, like, again, I understand why (foreshadowing) but it's just like ... Damn lmao. A lot of the iconic CA moments were taken away.

They got the picture taking quest in Cosmo Canyon though. If I had to pick I'd say that was probably more romantic than the stuff that was taken away.

 

[Yoru]

Honestly, it's stuff like this that slowly is making me dislike Aeriths character. I thought she was perfectly fine in the OG, and Crisis Core really made me like her. But more and more I find myself thinking that Aerith is a blight on the story that is holding it back.
Don't get me wrong, Aerith COULD be great, but the ramifications of her death have made it nearly impossible for her to be so.

The thing is, Aeriths death doesn't f-ing matter. Or at least, it didn't, and that's part of what made it so great. We have seen a bunch of quotes from developers and reviewers as well about the meanings behind Aeriths death, and it's been talked about ad nauseum, but what it comes down to is that when you step back Aeriths death really has a very minor impact on the events of FFVII. It has almost no impact on the scenes prior to it, as it's never alluded to or overly foreshadowed, and afterwards it's treated as one would expect for a death. With sadness, but also a need to continue the journey.

In the story itself Aerith essentially plays no role. Sure, there are a few thematic meanings to her character and her death. But if we reduce the core story of FFVII down to a few major conflicts from the position of our main character then we have Cloud vs Sephiroth which has its genesis in Nibelheim and revolves around Cloud and Tifa. And we have Avalanche vs Shinra, which revolves around Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. We start with the external fight of Avalanche against Shinra, and that eventually morphs into the external fight of everyone vs Sephiroth. The internal components about that is about everything to do with Nibelheim and the revelations concerning Clouds psyche.

The rest of the characters tie into that in some way, Barret has links with Shinra through Corel, but he's an essential part of the story because he sets the external fight into motion. He is the boss of avalanche, he is with our team from day one. One part of the core three of Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. People like Yuffie, Cid, Vincent, and Reeve are then added to that roster through their history with Shinra. But you could easily remove each one and keep the core story intact. Cid is essentially a McGuffin surrounding flying, Cait Sith does essentially nothing, and Yuffie and Vincent are literally optional, although Vincent at least does tie into the history of "how we got there".

The thing with Aerith is that she's essentially the same, she's a side character, a McGuffin, she didn't need to be there for the core story to function, she's essentially just a McGuffin to summon holy combined with some lore and worldbuilding. Without her you'd still have Shinra destroying the planet, you'd still have AVALANCHE deciding to go bomb reactors, you'd still have Sephiroth burning down Nibelheim, you'd still have Cloud creating a fake persona and all that Jazz. You'd need to find some other reason for AVALANCHE to be at shinra HQ the moment Sephiroth attacks (not that hard to think of one) but for the rest the story continues on pretty much as normal.

However, unlike the side characters Aerith is presented as a main character. While her personal story and identity as an ancient isn't inherently needed for the story of FFVII to function it is granted importance in universe, and is does a good job accentuating themes about nature, life, the planet, etc. Because the concept of "the ancients" is presented as important our quests is seen as as much about guiding and protecting Aerith as it is about going to stop Sephiroth, who is painted as being in opposition to everything Aerith symbolizes.

So why do I bring this up? Why go on a long rant detailing and noting in which way Aerith is important and in which way she's not?
Because I think understanding this helps understanding what went wrong and why she's now a blight on the story. In the original Aerith importance served to amplify the themes of the story, because her existence was in service to the story. Like I explained she wasn't essential for it, but her existence helped to really bring out the story to it's full potential. But now her story is in conflict with the story of FFVII because her inflated importance has caused her story to be a rival to the actual one.

Yes, Aeriths death is always spoken off....this is a problem, because FFVII isn't about Aeriths death, it never really mattered that much. But now because the concept of Aerith the ancient was given importance in the OG, we have overestimated the importance of her death as a plot point. We've conflated her importance in universe as the last of the ancients with her importance to the story. This means that her death suddenly became this elephant in the room where future FFVII projects all kinda had to address it, or somehow be about it. Until we eventually got to the remake where the story is no longer about Shinra killing the planet, Sephiroth an Nibelheim, or any of the understandable human level conflicts that made the OG so amazing. No, it's the story about Aeriths eventual death. About defying fate and treasuring the time you have left and multiple time lines and all kinds of nonsense.

Rather than the death being something that happens it's a specter that looms over the story from the very moment you first see her in Remake. And at every moment it pushes aside the actual conflict rather than accentuating it. And then the developers conflate what Aerith means to the player with what she'd logically mean to the characters, leading to her being presented as some sort of Mary-jesusue. With her saving people in alternate timelines, talking cryptically about the future, singing songs in Opera halls, and having grand bombastic final showdowns around her death where Cloud treats it as though his reason for being has been taken away and there can be no more happiness. When really, these people barely knew her. If you just play Rebirth, especially if you don't do Aeriths quests, then Aerith comes across as totally deluded in the ending, and the presentation of the sadness and importance of her death comes across as overly dramatic and presumptuous, trying to invoke a level of emotion that her contributions to the story haven't earned. Because the story treats her as a character we've spent 27 years with, rather than the game or 2 (or 1/2 weeks in universe time) that the characters have actually spent with her.

It all just makes her character feel like she's some fan-fictiony self insert by a writer that's too full of their own character. And that is then heightened by stuff like the LTD, where she's being shown across a love story that's been going on for 7+ years and is presented as potentially being a match for that in 2 weeks, a sense that's further pushed by all the magical flowery spiritual stuff that her character is bombarded with. It all makes her feel overly important, which unless it's deserved can easily become grating. All the team members love her, Zack is infatuated with her and trying to get back to her, and the main character has all these scenes with her that, while few in number, all work from the assumption that she's, or at the very least their bond, is massively important.

But when do we actually see them being a genuine group? Do we see shots like Aerith sitting in a bar with Tifa, Barret, and the rest of avalanche, drinking and having fun? No, Jesse, biggs, and wedge got those shots, and as a result their "human deaths" now hit me 10 times harder than anything concerning the theater production that is Aeriths death. They could have shown those scenes. They could have shown scenes that WEREN'T individuals in relation to Cloud. But the affection mechanics and the LTD prevented that. We could have had DEEP talks between Tifa and Aerith about Cloud and Zack and what they actually mean to them respectively and how they could help each other explicitly, but the dangling carrot of the LTD requires ambiguity. So instead of actual scenes which show the girls in situations other than LTD bait they instead hint at stuff by for instance having Tifa say things like "Ever see that Faz guy again?" only to have it cut short by them "talking about boys".

At each step rather than accentuating each others stories they became rival stories that muddy the waters, hurting the impact of both. And I am left here thinking that if they're not gonna use both these characters and stories to create one single stronger WHOLE, then I'd rather just have one story done properly without all this interference. And when I think that, then I think back at how unimportant Aerith actually is to the core narrative of FFVII, and get annoyed about its bloated ego and how it harms the whole by its presence. And honestly it's become even worse now that they're portrayed as friends since that makes the entire thing even more weird and potentially unpalpable. Like yes, lets all mourn this woman who spent half the story pining over her Ex and trying to buddy up to Tifa, only to have her then potentially ditch said ex who we see loyally trying to get back to her in favor of trying to see if she might be able to start something with the dude the girl she calls her friend is clearly in love with and growing closer with. This story has nothing to do with anything, so why is it here? Oh yeah, because everything has to revolve around the main character and the pink girl of course.

And I know that in universe it's a little more complicated, I get that the resolution is that "nope, this is different", but that doesn't change the fact that the developers still chose to include this story arc to the detriment of the story. They could have done it clearer, they could have done it differently and more effectively, but they didn't. They instead chose to make a story where this character is so important that timelines break at her death and the MC starts hallucinating and smiling at her animated corpse rather than having her death be the end of her as it should be. And all of it leads to the same general feeling. "Man I wish she'd just go away so we can focus on the actual story, rather than focusing on the story of how much people are still obsessed about Aeriths death". Because that's what I'm seeing here, not the story of FFVII, but the filler story of the FFVII fandoms journey to accepting the death of Aerith. And that might be very emotional if you're a fan of Aerith, but if like me you saw her as just another character, then it's just grating. I now VASTLY prefer Jesse, because her death actually made me tear up, because it was human, it was real, and it was about HER.



I still hate it, ties back into what I said above, "oh now she's at the water tower talking more about how sad her childhood was, maybe I'd care if I didn't feel like you were a just a tool the developers use to bait my emotions". Maybe if the game had made it a point to reinforce the "Aerith is making friends with everyone" story throughout the game without the uncomfortable undertone of "who knows, this scene might actually be in service of building up a potential romance between her and the guy HER ONE REAL FRIEND LIKES", kinda ruins the message for me.

If I felt that the game effectively conveyed that Aerith in that moment was genuinely trying to help out her friend by interrogating Cloud, then I'd like the scene. But when the scene gives you points that build towards a scene where Aerith goes "you know what Cloud, I wanna be with you now", then having those points be earned on THE F-ING WATERTOWER really sickens me. It just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and it makes me hate that this is what they're doing with Aeriths character.

I still don't think I hate her, I definitely don't hate the Cloti interpretation of her. But I do hate the way the developers present her because it leaves too much ambiguity about how to actually properly interpret her, and that ability to misinterpret her in itself means the character was poorly done and harming the product.

A perfectly argued response that I agree with to a large extent, and which confirms my idea of what the last game should be. She has to go. She really does.

 

[Hellenic]

Also, if you're trying to romance Aerith the best answer is to have him agree that he used to go up there to be noticed by Tifa, soooo...

It is interesting that the CA watertower moment is really more of a CT moment, similar to when they climb the clocktower in Kalm or have that talk in Junon about the flower. I'm not entirely sure why the devs framed their interactions like that in Rebirth. I mean, I do know why, but at the same time I think it's kinda sad that there's so few moments that are just about Cloud and Aerith.

The scene before they fight the Turks in Corel is nice but I don't really consider it a CA moment since Nanaki was also apart of it, but at least it wasn't a conversation about Tifa. I'm still sad that there's no promise to take Aerith on the Highwind and that the whole convo about it was given to CT. Which, like, again, I understand why (foreshadowing) but it's just like ... Damn lmao. A lot of the iconic CA moments were taken away.

Yeah this is why i can't take people who say they pushed Clerith hard in this game seriously. They go out of their way to remove a lot of scenes that did exist for them and instead allure to Tifa in a lot of the moments, old and new now.

 

[GamerSkull]

Yeah this is why i can't take people who say they pushed Clerith hard in this game seriously. They go out of their way to remove a lot of scenes that did exist for them and instead allure to Tifa in a lot of the moments, old and new now.

I definitely think that’s more because they WANT to see the CA in these scenes, so the shipping goggles present the scene as different than it actually is.

 

[abzy1200]

The scene before they fight the Turks in Corel is nice but I don't really consider it a CA moment since Nanaki was also apart of it, but at least it wasn't a conversation about Tifa

I swear this was a Zerith moment, no?

 

[Rin]

To add a little more. When you take off the LTD glasses for a few seconds, it's quite impressive to see the difference in treatment between the two girls.

Aerith uses a lot of her private time with Cloud to talk about either Tifa or Zack...

Dialogue options for Aerith can be very cold, even violent (shouting at her in Comso Canyon...), whereas even when we're in the negative for Tifa, it's "no... I'm sorry", while for the others it's "nope", "not interested" etc.

I really think it's deliberate and that even when you want to do everything to get Aerith to the Gold Saucer... there are really very few truly romantic interactions. Personally the only one I've really felt like was the quest for the photos at Cosmo Canyon.

I don't think her character's existence is there to present a tragic love. I think it's there to teach people to enjoy life to the full before it's too late. To have no regrets. That's why Cloud can be a bit of a jerk to her. Because the moment she's gone, you think "damn... I should have treated her better when she was still here".

Yeah, I agree.
This game was meticulously crafted, so every interaction was written for a specific reason. If they wanted to make all these scenes romantic, they could have,

They got the picture taking quest in Cosmo Canyon though. If I had to pick I'd say that was probably more romantic than the stuff that was taken away.

That's my fave Aerith quest, but I don't know if it's more romantic than everything that was taken away. The scene in Cosmo Canyon around the fire pit was the most romantic CA moment to me and would've been extremely romantic in Rebirth had they chosen to include it just from the lighting, atmosphere, and topic at hand. It was really intimate in the OG and they replaced it w/ a weird players choice interaction where you're given the choice to yell at her of all things.... Hate that lol

The photo taking quest is very cute and I love it, but it would've been even more romantic had they not taken all the other scenes away. Also, it's a quest and not a main storyline beat which means the player can miss it which I don't love. Still, I am glad they got to take photos together and I hope to see that selfie they took in Cloud's office or somewhere in Seventh Heaven at the end of the Retrilogy.

Yeah this is why i can't take people who say they pushed Clerith hard in this game seriously. They go out of their way to remove a lot of scenes that did exist for them and instead allure to Tifa in a lot of the moments, old and new now.

Yeah, I get confused when people say the game pushes Clerith hard because to me it does the exact opposite. It kinda forces you to recontextualize every moment CA has together instead of just enjoying it as a romance lol.

I swear this was a Zerith moment, no?

No, the one i'm thinking of is when they're climbing up the Corel mountain and Elena sends a mech for them to fight. Aerith asks which way Midgar is, Nanaki shows her, and then Aerith wonders how her mom is doing and worries that Elmyra hates her for leaving w/o a word. Cloud says she just needs to talk to Elmyra once they go back to Midgar and Aerith is like, "Yeah.... Really looking forward to that conversation." And that's pretty much the end of the interaction but I'm just happy the convo was actually Aerith-centric.

 

[GamerSkull]

Yeah, I agree.
This game was meticulously crafted, so every interaction was written for a specific reason. If they wanted to make all these scenes romantic, they could have,


That's my fave Aerith quest, but I don't know if it's more romantic than everything that was taken away. The scene in Cosmo Canyon around the fire pit was the most romantic CA moment to me and would've been extremely romantic in Rebirth had they chosen to include it just from the lighting, atmosphere, and topic at hand. It was really intimate in the OG and they replaced it w/ a weird players choice interaction where you're given the choice to yell at her of all things.... Hate that lol

The photo taking quest is very cute and I love it, but it would've been even more romantic had they not taken all the other scenes away. Also, it's a quest and not a main storyline beat which means the player can miss it which I don't love. Still, I am glad they got to take photos together and I hope to see that selfie they took in Cloud's office or somewhere in Seventh Heaven at the end of the Retrilogy.



Yeah, I get confused when people say the game pushes Clerith hard because to me it does the exact opposite. It kinda forces you to recontextualize every moment CA has together instead of just enjoying it as a romance lol.


No, the one i'm thinking of is when they're climbing up the Corel mountain and Elena sends a mech for them to fight. Aerith asks which way Midgar is, Nanaki shows her, and then Aerith wonders how her mom is doing and worries that Elmyra hates her for leaving w/o a word. Cloud says she just needs to talk to Elmyra once they go back to Midgar and Aerith is like, "Yeah.... Really looking forward to that conversation." And that's pretty much the end of the interaction but I'm just happy the convo was actually Aerith-centric.

Not to mention, they added Aerith feeling Zack’s hand in Cosmo Canyon.

 

[Ryeleigh]

The thing with Aerith is that she's essentially the same, she's a side character, a McGuffin, she didn't need to be there for the core story to function, she's essentially just a McGuffin to summon holy combined with some lore and worldbuilding. Without her you'd still have Shinra destroying the planet, you'd still have AVALANCHE deciding to go bomb reactors, you'd still have Sephiroth burning down Nibelheim, you'd still have Cloud creating a fake persona and all that Jazz. You'd need to find some other reason for AVALANCHE to be at shinra HQ the moment Sephiroth attacks (not that hard to think of one) but for the rest the story continues on pretty much as normal.

Which is ironic when certain people say that Tifa is completely unimportant side character to FF7 who doesn't do anything in the story. Oh yeah, she's just Cloud's entire raison d'être, totally unimportant.

Aerith asks which way Midgar is, Nanaki shows her, and then Aerith wonders how her mom is doing and worries that Elmyra hates her for leaving w/o a word. Cloud says she just needs to talk to Elmyra once they go back to Midgar and Aerith is like, "Yeah.... Really looking forward to that conversation." And that's pretty much the end of the interaction but I'm just happy the convo was actually Aerith-centric.

#closure for the ff7 parents

 

[Rin]

#closure for the ff7 parents

I literally sat there thinking about that convo after Nojima said TPTK is also about Aerith's mothers.... and I was like "Omg she never gets to apologize for leaving without saying goodbye..... NOOOOOO!" This game is so depressing wtf lmao

 

[pxl_pushr]

Which is ironic when certain people say that Tifa is completely unimportant side character to FF7 who doesn't do anything in the story. Oh yeah, she's just Cloud's entire raison d'être, totally unimportant.


#closure for the ff7 parents

RIP Claudia. Thanks to you, Cloud was hot enough in a dress to get into Don Corneo’s penthouse. You the GOAT for that, Queen.

 

[Rin]

Not to mention, they added Aerith feeling Zack’s hand in Cosmo Canyon.

Oh true! So yeah lol replaced w/ an intimate Zerith scene and original dialogue given to Barret instead

 

[Hellenic]

Dialogue options for Aerith can be very cold, even violent (shouting at her in Comso Canyon...), whereas even when we're in the negative for Tifa, it's "no... I'm sorry", while for the others it's "nope", "not interested" etc.

That dialogue choice is so evil. Aerith doing a hearfelt speech and you can choose Cloud to just yell for her to stop? Like what the fuck were they thinking there.

 

[Suteki]

I wish i could still remember how i initially reacted to Aerith dying in OG but i just can't anymore. It's a real shame honestly.

Still caching up, but as a previously rabid cloti, I still remember. I despised Aerith in my first playthrough because for some reason I thought that Cloud and Tifa were already a thing when I was a kid. I was following a guide for the game so I knew Aerith was going to die, and when she finally did, I bawled my eyes out. The injustice, the fact that someone that was just trying to do good went like that destroyed me.
Then almost ten years later I got some rabid cleriths bothering me in my little cloti bubble and I started to hate Aerith again because of what the LTD does to her character.
It wasn't until I saw some reasonable takes here and a Zerith friend explained some of her motivations that my hatred went away and now I actually like her.

 

[GamerSkull]

I don’t remember my reaction. I first played the game in 2010/2011 on a PSP. (I did play it before in 2007/2008 by borrowing a friend’s PS1 copy but never got past Shinra building). It’s funny how I can remember that but not the reaction to the death.

Although, I think I vaguely recall knowing about it beforehand. My introduction to Final Fantasy was through Kingdom Hearts. I bought the first one when KH2 was being marketed. I bought it mostly for the Disney at the time because I was young, and I remember being really interested in the FF characters. Ultimately, I looked them up and I think that’s when I found out about Aerith’s death. But it’s been so long that I just can’t seem to remember.

For reference. I was born in 1995 so I was only two when the game came out. So I think I was 10 when I first was introduced to it.

Funnily enough, this is probably why I don’t have an attachment to the name “Aeris” like some people do. As she was introduced to me as Aerith in Kingdom Hearts.

 

[nars305]

Although, I think I vaguely recall knowing about it beforehand. My introduction to Final Fantasy was through Kingdom Hearts. I bought the first one when KH2 was being marketed. I bought it mostly for the Disney at the time because I was young, and I remember being really interested in the FF characters. Ultimately, I looked them up and I think that’s when I found out about Aerith’s death. But it’s been so long that I just can’t seem to remember.

For reference. I was born in 1995 so I was only two when the game came out. So I think I was 10 when I first was introduced to it.

That’s so funny cause my intro to FF was KH too because I was a Disney kid. It was the only game I knew of to get when I first got my PS2.

That’s when I really started getting into video games. Played them when I was younger (born in 91), but it was mostly fighting games with my brothers.

 

[GamerSkull]

That’s so funny cause my intro to FF was KH too because I was a Disney kid. It was the only game I knew of to get when I first got my PS2.

That’s when I really started getting into video games. Played them when I was younger (born in 91), but it was mostly fighting games with my brothers.

My first video game was Spyro the Dragon on the PS1. First game and console I ever owned (slim version). Mostly played on demos in supermarket electronic sections before then.

 

[Hellenic]

Still caching up, but as a previously rabid cloti, I still remember. I despised Aerith in my first playthrough because for some reason I thought that Cloud and Tifa were already a thing when I was a kid. I was following a guide for the game so I knew Aerith was going to die, and when she finally did, I bawled my eyes out. The injustice, the fact that someone that was just trying to do good went like that destroyed me.
Then almost ten years later I got some rabid cleriths bothering me in my little cloti bubble and I started to hate Aerith again because of what the LTD does to her character.
It wasn't until I saw some reasonable takes here and a Zerith friend explained some of her motivations that my hatred went away and now I actually like her.

I wasn't a huge fan of Aerith ever really, though Remake did make me appreciate her a lot more. They ofc backpedaled with her again with Rebirth so rip that i guess. I wouldn't go as far as say i despised her ever, but i was always more into Tifa out of the two and liked the idea of Cloud and Tifa more from the get go.

I have reacted to other people playing through her death in OG years later and i did get teary in those moments at the very least, so i know i wasn't fully deadpan about her death when i experienced it myself. Though this could also just be me in general becoming a more emotional person over the years. Fairly small things get me going nowadays like just thinking about the Mideel section in OG gets me tearing up, and ofc it happens as i write this too.

I don't personally let peoples toxicity affect my enjoyment of the game or characters couse i can kind of detach them from each other. That said i wish they did just detach Aerith from the whole love triangle entirely, couse like others have said here, i think it kinda takes away from her character now, especially when the game goes out of it's way to lessen those kinda moments in general. It just feels like a waste to have her being LTD bait still instead of focusing on other things with her character but alas.

 

[Hellenic]

Oh true! So yeah lol replaced w/ an intimate Zerith scene and original dialogue given to Barret instead

that Cloud and Barret moment was so good. I really love it when Cloud is there for the guys.