So, I think it's worth addressing WHY there were any Tornados in the first place, as it's a bit of an interesting limitation on the Whispers.
First & foremost, we know that the original
Final Fantasy VII has a number of tornados create destruction in Midgar during the Meteofall event. So, there is an established timeline where this destruction occurs in Midgar, and assumedly some number of people die as a result.
As far as we can tell, the Whispers can't directly cause anything to deviate from previously established events, hence saving Barret from being stabbed as well as preventing Cloud & Co. from the bridge collapse during the freeway chase sequence. They also demonstrate that, so long as it matches what occurred previously, they are capable of modifying something even if that occurs out of sequence. Wedge doesn't die falling during the attack on the Pillar like in
VII, but he DOES die falling out of the Shinra Building in
Remake. So it makes sense that they're bound by some sort of temporal rules in what sort of ways they can influence things around them, even while they're generally invisible like the wind.
In the Singularity at the end of
Remake, it seems like they're still bound by operating according to some range of those general rules. The Tornados that emerge are formed by Whispers in the sky and seem to touch down only in places where Meteor's Tornados will in the future that cause that same damage. This would mean that however events end up getting resolved by them in the Singularity, they would potentially be able to have those things inserted back into the timeline outside of the Singularity without causing a disruption to the flow of events that were meant to transpire.
So when they start tearing up chunks out of the ground, these Whisper Tornados
duplicate all of the objects that they pick up, and they only carry away the duplicate.
They don't actually leave any sign of physical damage behind whatsoever. However,
Cloud & Co are NOT duplicated, but are JUST picked up without leaving a copy behind. That being said, they did already all cross through the Singularity on their own in order to get to this point in the first place so maybe a version of themselves got left behind when that happened and they would have just woken up there if they'd failed to win against the Whisper Harbinger (and potentially this may be what shows up on the Shinra News broadcast if it's not Shinra making up an alternative narrative themselves).
So, at this point, it stands to reason that the Singularity is where there are overlapping convergences of possibility occur, but they still have to take the shape of things that have already occurred in an established series of events – like the Whispers utilizing the characteristics of the Sephiroth Remnants who have yet to exist but are a part of that sequence of future events.
That being said, AFTER the defeat the Whisper Harbinger Cloud & Co. end up somewhere else entirely which Aerith awkwardly doesn't elaborate on – which seems to point to what's happening not being the same as that temporal Singularity where everything was being appropriately contained by the Whispers. At this point, without the Whisper Harbinger present, there's the potential for something to not be totally contained.
Then suddenly, Meteor immediately emerges as a temporal anomaly, which is then rapidly contained by a torrent of Whispers and wrapped up back into – Sephiroth. The emergence of those Meteoric Tornadoes
do seem to cause more direct damage to the Midgar cityscape, as does Sephiroth telekinetically hurling chunks of debris and trains at the party. So, there's a possibility that this caused some of the previous damage created by the Whisper Tornados to actually occur out of sequence and means that the earlier Whisper Tornados may have caused real damage.
As Cloud lands, there's a wrecked Mako Reactor behind him, though you can't clearly see a number on it, and I don't believe it's visible in the battlefield. (Someone more well-versed in the technicalities of Midgar's architecture might be able to pin down whether or not this seems to overlap with the damage seen in the start of the
Rebirth trailer). The final phase of the battle with Sephiroth is Meteor emerging at which point, it's a countdown to Game Over. That may suggest that the damage from Meteor's brief incursion was ACTUALLY occurring, or you could interpret that as just a contained event in the Singularity that would definitely kill Cloud & Co.
With the end of
Remake going from Cloud at the Edge of Creation looking at the two divergent paths of events and then the next footage of Cloud & Co. being outside of Midgar, we don't really know too much about what a normal person living in Midgar would have been able to see of all of that confrontation taking place.
Even then, the first shot post-Edge-of-Creation is actually of Rufus looking out of the window, since he'd have had a different view of those events to anyone, and the News Broadcast in the
Rebirth trailer is fittingly Shinra's public perspective creating a unified narrative of what occurred.
Not only that, but when the very first vortex of Whispers forms, it's centered around Shinra HQ in Sector 0, and while Cloud & Co. can see it, Rufus is also one of the only other people who sees this convergence of Whispers, as Tseng doesn't notice them at all:
So, this sets up Rufus as the head of the new Shinra having a perspective of what occurred that is not just operationally but also LITERALLY different than the other current Shinra Executives – with the potential exception of Hojo. We've seen Hojo getting carried away by Whispers and it's unclear whether or not there was any contact with Aerith or the others would have caused that the way Cloud's encounter with Rufus seems to. The trailer does have Rufus mention Hojo talking about "Shadows of the Man" so it seems to imply he does go to Hojo looking for information on some of the odd goings ons.
Rufus seems to immediately pick up on something being off with Tseng's total lack of acknowledgement of the Whispers everywhere in
Remake, and so there's an important dynamic to establish as his leadership and outlook perspective for Shinra are ALSO different from his father's. Thus, individuals like Heideggar are less comfortable in being able to act freely, and that sets up for some interesting dynamics when it comes whether or not his subordinates are just Yes Men, or if they'll potentially think that he's a bit crazy and have more incentive to try to scheme amongst themselves.
Moving into the
Rebirth trailer, this change also impacts how Shinra's narrative is going to be written, since Rufus is very much trying to pull the others in line especially in the public eye – and they're all going to have to contend with something that they may or may not be able to see themselves, but that Rufus CAN see. This also brings up the possibility that some people out in Midgar may have seen the Whisper-formed vortices that would be more clear, whereas others may have just seen debris getting tossed around in the air. Rufus seeing the Whispers means that Shinra might also be trying to identify individuals who saw what Rufus did.
It's hard to tell how much of the damage seen in the footage would have been from some sort of temporal mimicry of the Whispers copying damage that Meteor would eventually cause on Midgar, and how much was a the result of the battle with Sephiroth causing destruction. Even then it's still hard to state what the average person would have seen had they looked out their window at it all during that time, given the lack of detail about the Singularity and jumping past Cloud & Co. actually exiting Midgar, so I'm curious if
Rebirth will jump directly into the aftermath, or if we'll get any live footage of the destruction before the mysterious duplicates get shown.
For now, it's difficult to definitely differentiate destruction that has a perfectly plausible cause to take place in the same series of events as our main characters vs. something that may have only happened in an altered timeline that the surviving Zack will occupy that's not concurrent with the one that the party is in. However, there is one thing that stands out, which is TIME.
Speaking of which:
Here's a visual I made to show how I think the Rebirth trailer follows up on some of the mysteries introduced in Remake.
View attachment 13644
There is ONLY smoke during the scene when the Whispers are still present and
BEFORE anything at all changes with Zack's destiny. This smoke cloud immediately vanishes as soon as the Whispers do and the Midgar that Zack starts heading to is perfectly clear with no sign of any disaster whatsoever.
Even the lighting from the sky overhead when Zack is standing outside the church is brighter than the overcast rain that Cloud & Co. have outside Kalm, so it's highly unlikely that there is still a massive haze of billowing smoke from city-wide disaster up on the plate.
While that side-by-side seems compelling at a glance, it's more of cherry-picked examples that only LOOK potentially similar, as it doesn't really represent a matching narrative point to those two events if you follow the narrative sequence of things that occur as we're shown them. Even beyond that,
Zack's confrontation with the Shinra army occurs in the end of September [ ν ] – εуλ 0007, and the Bombing Mission at the No. 1 Mako Reactor doesn't even occur until at least after December 9th when the Turks confronted Zirconiade, with the events of the whole of FFVII spanning from December 0007 - January 0008.
That's a period of time that's two months that you have to account for in whatever Zack is doing in this altered sequence of events where he survived and succeeds in getting himself to Midgar. To put this in perspective, the amount of time that Zack has to do things before the Mako Reactor No. 1 gets bombed by AVALANCHE –
is LONGER than the time that passes during the ENTIRETY of FFVII from the No. 1 Reactor Bombing to Sephiroth's defeat at North Crater.
The ONLY thing that definitively changed is that Zack survived that encounter, and there's nothing that clearly suggests that there's any temporal distortion that would displace him and the defeated Shinra Army into a later point in time. While we see the sparkling dispersal happening in the post-Plate-collapse slums, the Whispers being defeated in a Singularity means that they're vanishing throughout space-time, and no longer keep events the way that they were in the current
Remake timeline OR in a timeline where Zack survives.
On top of that, from that same ending, we know that Cloud & Co. walk from Midgar to Kalm in a single rise-to-rest span of a day, so even with the added travel time of dragging comatose Cloud along on foot – Zack is likely going to be at Midgar in early October 0007
at the latest. While the intercuts of those events make it feel like they're just
BARELY missing each other, especially in the end of vanilla
Remake, Aerith & Cloud are actually just passing by memories of something that had happened two months earlier rather than crossing paths simultaneously with Zack carrying Cloud in a separate timeline. It's just another visual to communicate that those sequences of events don't occupy the same timeline.
When it comes to Aerith having been waiting for Zack to come back for YEARS, Zack having been alive at that exact spot just a couple of months before FEELS like she might as well have just missed him be mere moments, as that's the sort of struggle that you get with finality like death taking someone away from you. As much as the
FFVII Remake Project is poking at this alternate series of events, it's important to underscore that the emphasis is on communicating what that sense of loss is like.
That's why it's important to make sure that we take what we know about the established timeline when analyzing portrayal of the new events, so that we don't conflate things that are sequentially different with ones that FEEL the same, but don't line up correctly.
(Also, let me know whether or not the timestamps work with these, as it's sort of inconsistent when I'm testing them, and I'm more than happty to edit these into a link rather than embed if that makes them work correctly).
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