SPOILERS Predictions for Part 2? (*Open Spoilers for Part 1*)

[Roundhouse]

RE: Loveless and remake significance.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1361292000838868997

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Crisis Core reveals that the play version of Loveless isn't even the entire play. It is specifically Acts II and III which is where the romance arc is. It does not include the Prologue, Act I or Act IV... which are... arguably where all the interesting bits are and are the parts Genesis repeats the most. All someone would have to do to get a "new ending" is make use of the Acts that aren't used.

Then there's also the fact that the orriginal Act V of Loveless has been lost to time. People know that there *was* an Act V written... just not what it is. Genesis ended up writing part of Act V... and the Lifestream itself adds what he wrote after Act IV... so it's probably legit as it can get. If anyone somehow managed to find that... well, them ending the musical with that works too.

I have no idea if Remake will ever bring the Crisis Core fan clubs up... but there was an entire section of Genesis' fans that broke away from his main fan club to make another fan club *specifically* about how Genesis interpreted Loveless. They ended up doing pretty well for themselves even after he disappeared... by essentially publishing all of Genesis' commentary on Loveless in book form and it becoming a bestseller. So I could *really* easily see someone making a new version of Loveless based on *that* version of Loveless. Heck, I could even see members of the fan club being involved with the production of the musical version...

Another fun mentions of Loveless is in an email from Kunsel...

Subject: Went to see LOVELESS
From: Kunsel

Genesis, K.I.A?
Yeah, right. Who do they think they’re trying to fool?
Just got back from seeing the stage production of
LOVELESS in Midgar. Genesis was a big fan, wasn’t he?
I usually don’t care for classic drama, but it was pretty
damned good. The guy is the hero in the original, but
the play was more from the viewpoint of the girl who
helps the guy. When I heard that last line:
“Of course… I’ll come back to you. Even if you don’t
promise to wait. I’ll return knowing that you’ll be here.”
Aw, man, that’s when I lost it and just started bawling.

What he calls the "last line" is obviously not the last lines of Act IV. They are instead a reference to the OG where *Cid* mentions going to see Loveless and the last lines of the play being...

Cid
You ever see the play 'LOVELESS'?

Cloud
Yes

Cid
Yeah? Really? Well, that's fine.
They've been doin' that play every summer since I was a kid.
An' I remember seein' it just once...
That was when I was in Midgar interviewing to be a pilot.
I had some free time and thought I'd catch the play.
Now, I'm no big fan of the theater or anything.
But this thing put me to sleep, just like I thought it would.
Finally during the last scene, the guy next to me woke me up tellin' me my snorin' was too loud.
So about all I really remember of that play is the end...
The sister of the lead asks her lover,
"Do you really have to leave?"
And the guy says,
"I promised. The people I love, are waiting."
"......I don't understand. Not at all. But...... please take care of yourself."
"Of course... I'll come back to you. Even if you don't promise to wait. I'll return knowing that you'll be here."
I remember thinking when I heard those lines,
*&%! What the hell's he talkin' about? But, you know... now I'm not so sure...
I think I understand......

Which is kinda cool.

 

[ultima786]

Crisis Core reveals that the play version of Loveless isn't even the entire play. It is specifically Acts II and III which is where the romance arc is. It does not include the Prologue, Act I or Act IV... which are... arguably where all the interesting bits are and are the parts Genesis repeats the most. All someone would have to do to get a "new ending" is make use of the Acts that aren't used.

Then there's also the fact that the orriginal Act V of Loveless has been lost to time. People know that there *was* an Act V written... just not what it is. Genesis ended up writing part of Act V... and the Lifestream itself adds what he wrote after Act IV... so it's probably legit as it can get. If anyone somehow managed to find that... well, them ending the musical with that works too.

I have no idea if Remake will ever bring the Crisis Core fan clubs up... but there was an entire section of Genesis' fans that broke away from his main fan club to make another fan club *specifically* about how Genesis interpreted Loveless. They ended up doing pretty well for themselves even after he disappeared... by essentially publishing all of Genesis' commentary on Loveless in book form and it becoming a bestseller. So I could *really* easily see someone making a new version of Loveless based on *that* version of Loveless. Heck, I could even see members of the fan club being involved with the production of the musical version...

Another fun mentions of Loveless is in an email from Kunsel...
What he calls the "last line" is obviously not the last lines of Act IV. They are instead a reference to the OG where *Cid* mentions going to see Loveless and the last lines of the play being...
Which is kinda cool.

Where was this? can you remind me?

 

[Sephiroth Crescent]

I like how those lines and those in FF8's intro FMV somehow seem to complement each other.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

@ultima786 You won't find it any playthrough on youtube since most players never bother talking to NPCs (unfortunately). The person to talk to is the Genesis Fangirl (I think that's the name) on Loveless Avenue in Chapters 2, 3, 5 or 7 and you *do* have to join the Study Group Club and talk to her a few times over. Eventually you'll eventually get the following dialogues.

Genesis Fangirl
LOVELESS has five acts, but the final act has
been lost and nobody knows its contents.
Acts 2 and 3, though, have practically become
classics. They’ve made it onto the stage, after all.

Genesis Fangirl
LOVELESS is an old epic poem whose
final act has been scattered and lost.
So experts always get into heated debates
about their interpretations of the final act.

Hilariously, the *other* source of information about Loveless is from Hojo. And this one you can find in playthroughs because it's part of the main story. It's at the end of Chapter 4 where Genesis, Angeal, Hojo and Zack are all in Hojo's lab.

Hojo
Ah, what do we have here?

Genesis
My friend, the fates are cruel
There are no dreams, no honor remains
The arrow has left the bow of the goddess

Hojo
The entire cast of Hollander’s freak show!

Zack
Shut up, you!

Hojo
"LOVELESS" Act IV.
Where the two friends challenge each other to a duel.
An ancient epic.
I read it thinking it might aid my research, but...pure drivel.

Angeal
How does the duel end?

Hojo
Unknown.
The last act is missing, and yet to be discovered.

Genesis
There are various theories.
The mysterious gift of the goddess...
What is the meaning behind it? For us, at least.

There's one more place with information on Loveless and that is down in the Banora Underground. There's a synopsis of the first three acts of Loveless that Zack can find. A synopsis of the Prologue, and Act IV are missing. I've yet to see a playthrough ever actually *read* these as well.

LOVELESS - Act I
The infinite mystery
The gift of the goddess is what the three men seek
But their fates are scattered by war

One becomes a hero, one wanders the land
And the last is taken prisoner

But the three are still bound by a solemn oath
To seek the answer together, once again

LOVELESS - Act II
Though the prisoner escapes, he is gravely wounded
His life is saved, however
By a woman of the opposing nation

He begins a life of seclusion with her
Which seems to hold the promise of eternal bliss

But as happiness grows, so does guilt
Of not fulfilling the oath to his friends

LOVELESS - Act III
As the war sends the world hurtling towards destruction
The prisoner departs with his newfound love
And embarks on a new journey

He is guided by hope that the gift will bring bliss
And the oath that he swore to his friends

Though no oath is shared between the lovers
In their hearts they know they will meet again

The last thing is Kunsel's email about Loveless. Which reveals that the play version swaps up who the main character is. This email ties into Cid's lines about Loveless right before Cloud and Co. go to deal with Sephrioth one last time.

The other place to look for info is in the Crisis Core Keyword Collection which is just... full of useful information in general.

Final Chapter of LOVELESS
The final chapter of LOVELESS is lost, with only a single line remaining: Even if the morrow is barren of promises. Nothing shall forestall my return. The biggest mystery is what happened to the world after receiving the Gift of the Goddess, and differing opinions are rife among researchers of LOVELESS.

In Scene 10-10 Genesis’ feather adds to the final chapter the line, To become the dew that quenches the land. To spare the sands, the seas, the skies. I offer thee this silent sacrifice.

However, this is a line that Genesis thought up himself and is not official. The final chapter he wrote revealed that he decided, after being defeated by Zack and regain his pride as a SOLDIER, to protect the planet himself because, with Sephiroth and Angeal now deceased, he seems to have concluded that it was up to him to protect

Interpretation of LOVELESS
Both in the world of the story and in the real world, people can interpret the contents of LOVELESS in various ways. The following is some of the answers we received from the development staff regarding some interpretations of LOVELESS.

“Genesis likened himself to ‘the hero’ from LOVELESS, and by fighting Zack attempted to ‘reenact LOVELESS’. In doing so, he hoped to receive the ‘Gift of the Goddess’.

By fighting Zack, Genesis regained his pride as a SOLDIER, and is freed from the fear of death or degradation. This is because, as he has the wish to fulfil his duty as a SOLDIER, he reached a state where he no longer worried about degradation or death. In other words, through his fight with Zack, Genesis realised that his role wasn’t that of ‘the hero’ from LOVELESS, but by accepting the role of ‘the prisoner’ he received the ‘Gift of the Goddess’.

Therefore, it would be his ‘pride as a SOLDIER’, the impetus for his shift of values, which was the ‘Gift of the Goddess’ to Genesis. ‘Pride as SOLDIER’ is a concept which symbolizes Angeal’s will, so concluded that Zack, who had inherited Angeal’s will, was the ‘Gift of the Goddess’ for Genesis.

To digress a bit, but a line from LOVELESS (‘one took flight’, ‘one became a prisoner’, ‘one became a hero’), based on the interpretation of Angeal being the one who took flight and Genesis as the prisoner, it links to the line Zack murmurs at the end: ‘Do you think that I became a hero?'”

All this comes together to give some idea of what the story of Loveless is about... It feels very much like the FFVII world's version of the Iliad or the Oddessy, only with the ending missing. And what happened being something that potentially happened in the past.

The "stage play" version of Loveless is probably the easiest to piece together. It *seems* like it's a classic "two enemies meet and fall in love and then one of them has to leave to go do something and promises to return to their love" story. Just with the main character not being the lovers, but the person who was helping them out. It also seems to end on an uncertainty, which at least sets the "stage play" up for a potentially good ending.

The "epic poem" version of Loveless seems to focus more on the bonds between the three friends and how they all get split up while searching for the Gift of the Goddess and then are brought back together again. And at some point two of them duel each other and the keyword sections seem to indicate the Gift of the Goddess *was* given to the world at some point in Act IV. But no one knows what it actually did to the world... The "epic poem" *sounds* like it's a lot darker and that a lot more could go wrong in the missing act.

The Keywords also make it... more than a bit obvious... that *someone* is getting a kick out of sticking "how to interpret FFVII's symbolism/themes" into Loveless *in-game*. Given how Loveless was used in the OG (Cid all but compares what happens in it to what *he* is doing wiht Cloud and Co.)... I'm not sure if doing this with Loveless was actually a new development in Crisis Core. But rather someone finally getting to use a very sparingly used idea from the OG a lot. Goodness knows this isn't the first or last time they've done this with the Compilation.

 

[Odysseus]

Loveless is an odd bit of world building if you really think about it. The Cetra are the only ancient civilization ever mentioned at all in the FF7 universe, and there's basically no indication or hint at anything that happened between their near extinction and the present day, yet we're supposed to believe that somewhere in the time between there existed some civilization where a Homer-esque person lived that produced this epic poem, and that this was long enough ago for a piece of this poem has been lost forever, and that no other trace of this civilization exists. The very presence of this work seems at odds with everything else the game does to establish what little past the setting has; in a world without nations (besides Wutai) and no semblance of governing body before Shinra, there was apparently a Greek style ancient past that was unrelated to the actual Ancients (maybe?)

What I'm saying is that FF7's setting seems poorly thought out lol.

 

[Shademp]

Considering how many libraries have burned down within the last two thousand years in real life, and how often media is lost even to this day in the information age, I have no trouble imagining that the Loveless poem was written at some point (maybe shortly) after the Jenova calamity and that the last act was lost. But I do find Loveless frustrating because of how overrepresented it is in the FF7 world. Remake has done a little bit to amend this by mentioning more literary works and including more movie posters, but we still lack any other in-universe fictional piece with as many revealed quotes as what we have for Loveless.

I was tired of Loveless posters in 2006 and I'm tired of them still.

And yes, the lore void of 1900 years between the calamity and the rise of Shinra also remains a frustrating one.

 

[looneymoon]

somewhere in Dublin, Kevin Shields is screaming on the phone to a faceless Sony exec about that one thing he did 30 years ago.

 

[Odysseus]

You know, I never have actually listened to the album.

 

[looneymoon]

It's good if you like a lot of reverb

 

[Roundhouse]

'Legend shall speak
Of sacrifice at world's end
The wind sails over the water's surface
Quietly, but surely'

World's end...The Edge/Apex of Creation?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

'Legend shall speak
Of sacrifice at world's end
The wind sails over the water's surface
Quietly, but surely'

World's end...The Edge/Apex of Creation?

The JP uses the exact same kanji for "world" as "Creation". Edge/Apex and "End" are a smidge different. One is more literal, the other is more figurative. But they're *very* similar in concept. So yes... they're either the same concept or a very similar one.

This gets even more fun when the End/Edge of the World/Creation is mentioned in the Prologue of Loveless...

When the war of the beasts brings about the world’s end
The goddess descends from the sky
Wings of light and dark spread afar
She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting.
Prologue

Any takers on the idea that the fight between Sephiroth and Cloud lead to the Edge of Creation being a thing?

 

[Clement Rage]

I feel like the giant calamity that almost wiped out the planet may have something to do with the lack of history.

"Not shown" isn't the same as "not existent in universe." Bugenhagen knows a lot about the planet's lore, but he's not recommending 1500 page history books to random passers by.

Lucrecia's 400 page thesis is not limited to the files you get in Dirge, and the 'soul wrought from terra corrupt' part is in universe a quote from a cetra text. Literature exists, we just don't see it because it's irrelevant.

Obviously CC LOVELESS was never intended to be the whole thing, can you imagine going to a theatrical production of a fifteen line poem?

We know a lot about LOVELESS because Genesis liked to talk about it, which means his fanclub liked to talk about it. I don't think the devs were trying to tell us that it was the only poem that ever existed on the planet.

 

[Roundhouse]

Remake Part 2: You Can(not) Have the Original Back

Cloud grows gradually more and more jealous and embittered with Zack's return. Cloud has been exposed as a fraud, while Zack, the real SOLDIER First Class, has arrived. Zack's charisma and strength and confidence leave Cloud feeling incompetent, and his Jenova infected mind makes it even worse. Then he sees the Zack/Aerith and it drives his jealousy into a dark rage that Sephiroth inflames and stirs. Cloud and Zack come to blows, and Cloud is defeated before he storms off, much like Ron Weasley. Zack is the new main character and hero, while Cloud becomes a Sephiroth puppet, his mind distorted by Jenova.

It ends on this cliffhanger, as Cloud gives Sephiroth the black materia and the weapons are unleashed, setting the stage for part 3....

 

[Makoeyes987]

Someone has a Zack boner, apparently.

 

[Roundhouse]

Zack is the real hero!

 

[Makoeyes987]

Of Crisis Core, yes. I agree.

 

[Roundhouse]

Came across another person on Twitter connecting Genesis and/or Loveless to remake as being significant, and I think these people are on to something, so my new prediction with their concepts:

FF7 Remake Part 2: The Desolation of Cloud

Genesis is writing/remaking the events of the original story, just like the final part of Loveless! Sephiroth is his 'muse', which is why he's locked away in a place specifically known as the 'apex of creation'. He needs Cloud's help to escape. Meanwhile Genesis now is very fond of Zack because Zack basically saved him and his soul in CC, so Genesis 'rewrites' his fate, for him to survive instead of die. Sephiroth, however, is finding ways to fight back using the whispers. Aerith has been sent in as a kind of secret weapon for Genesis, to encourage changes and to stop Roth.

This whole remake is a fight for the soul/direction/story of FF7 itself. It's a narrative war!

 

[Odysseus]

On some fleeting occasions I wish the forum had a dislike button

 

[null]

I'd settle for a button to throw popcorn at posts. (Who am I kidding, I'd pay for that.)

 

[Roundhouse]

Ody why do you dislike Genesis...

 

[Odysseus]

The bible is overrated

 

[looneymoon]

Came across another person on Twitter connecting Genesis and/or Loveless to remake as being significant, and I think these people are on to something, so my new prediction with their concepts:

FF7 Remake Part 2: The Desolation of Cloud

Genesis is writing/remaking the events of the original story, just like the final part of Loveless! Sephiroth is his 'muse', which is why he's locked away in a place specifically known as the 'apex of creation'. He needs Cloud's help to escape. Meanwhile Genesis now is very fond of Zack because Zack basically saved him and his soul in CC, so Genesis 'rewrites' his fate, for him to survive instead of die. Sephiroth, however, is finding ways to fight back using the whispers. Aerith has been sent in as a kind of secret weapon for Genesis, to encourage changes and to stop Roth.

This whole remake is a fight for the soul/direction/story of FF7 itself. It's a narrative war!

I like it

 

[Makoeyes987]

Some players aren't looking for anything logical, like narrative or continuity focus. They can't be moved, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some players just want to watch the world burn.

 

[ultima786]

Came across another person on Twitter connecting Genesis and/or Loveless to remake as being significant, and I think these people are on to something, so my new prediction with their concepts:

FF7 Remake Part 2: The Desolation of Cloud

Genesis is writing/remaking the events of the original story, just like the final part of Loveless! Sephiroth is his 'muse', which is why he's locked away in a place specifically known as the 'apex of creation'. He needs Cloud's help to escape. Meanwhile Genesis now is very fond of Zack because Zack basically saved him and his soul in CC, so Genesis 'rewrites' his fate, for him to survive instead of die. Sephiroth, however, is finding ways to fight back using the whispers. Aerith has been sent in as a kind of secret weapon for Genesis, to encourage changes and to stop Roth.

This whole remake is a fight for the soul/direction/story of FF7 itself. It's a narrative war!

ok, but on what basis does the person think this is happening?