SPOILERS Remake's Shinra Experiments, Whispers, & Compilation Thematic Analysis
- Thread starter X-SOLDIER
- Start date
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
On that note, there's something that I thought about while going over in my mind what Roche's role in the upcoming games is for, especially when looking at the Compilation. We already know that they've made alterations to things from the Compilation vis-a-vis Project G & Deepground. That much is apparent just from what we've seen of the new Failed Experiments all over Hojo's lab in Midgar, in The Drum, and in the secret facilities below the slums.
I initially mentioned that the Failed Experiments & Unknown Entities all glow red – which I noted is something that we only see with the Whisper Entities inner glow... but I didn't elaborate that this color also seems to establish their connection explicitly to Whisper Rubrum, rather than any of the others. Given that these failed experiments seem to be related to Genesis (given the location of the tentacle/wings), the similarities between the physical appearance of Whisper Rubrum being a cloaked, red entity wielding a giant red sword, with Genesis' wing shapes on its body, and a spike emerging from its left shoulder, and they're somehow linked to Project G, the parallels directly to Genesis seem... just... painfully obvious.
With the design connections of both Genesis and Kadaj, I'm wondering if in this new version of the science experiments in Remake are going to see something from Genesis' body used in some way to eventually create Kadaj from Whisper Rubrum. If we do, it will give that unresolved story from the Compilation a way to dig back into the things that were going on in Sector Zero during the Wutai War in a way that's connected to the core story of these games, rather than a half-related spinoff. Doing something like that would close the link to any unresolved Deepground stuff with Genesis at the same time that the final game would be reaching its conclusion.
If that's the case, and we get Rubrum & Genesis to form Kadaj, it might explain why using Roche to create Loz (or potentially Loz & Yazoo) would have the other two as Sephiroth Remnants who are still a core part of the Remnant trio – but ones that play less of a key role to the things directly connected to Sephiroth's revival than Kadaj does. Again, Roche is a good entry point for Cloud into those things without needing to linger too heavily on Genesis' stuff, but also making him feel significant given that Zack's story follows through the Project G threads, and we know that we're getting some kind of look into the events that Zack goes through.
Even just thinking about the way that Genesis & Kadaj look loosely similar to the same degree that Roche & Loz do feels like it's a possibility that wouldn't be too difficult for them to stitch together. Still not anything that's an exceptionally strong correlation at this point given how little we know about this new failed version of Project G within the Remake. Still, Rubrum's connection to the Remnants, but also the Failed Experiments seems like a thread that they'd definitely want to explore if they're going to rework some of the things from the Compilation's mad science into the new frameworks of what Remake is delivering, like it's seems that they've been doing so far.
Still, I feel that this is easily the most shaky correlation of anything, since it's WAY speculative based on things we know exist, but we haven't seen depicted yet, and we don't know exactly how much those things are going to change, only that things related to Project G have changed some, and that Project G still exists within the labs under Midgar.
X
I initially mentioned that the Failed Experiments & Unknown Entities all glow red – which I noted is something that we only see with the Whisper Entities inner glow... but I didn't elaborate that this color also seems to establish their connection explicitly to Whisper Rubrum, rather than any of the others. Given that these failed experiments seem to be related to Genesis (given the location of the tentacle/wings), the similarities between the physical appearance of Whisper Rubrum being a cloaked, red entity wielding a giant red sword, with Genesis' wing shapes on its body, and a spike emerging from its left shoulder, and they're somehow linked to Project G, the parallels directly to Genesis seem... just... painfully obvious.
With the design connections of both Genesis and Kadaj, I'm wondering if in this new version of the science experiments in Remake are going to see something from Genesis' body used in some way to eventually create Kadaj from Whisper Rubrum. If we do, it will give that unresolved story from the Compilation a way to dig back into the things that were going on in Sector Zero during the Wutai War in a way that's connected to the core story of these games, rather than a half-related spinoff. Doing something like that would close the link to any unresolved Deepground stuff with Genesis at the same time that the final game would be reaching its conclusion.
If that's the case, and we get Rubrum & Genesis to form Kadaj, it might explain why using Roche to create Loz (or potentially Loz & Yazoo) would have the other two as Sephiroth Remnants who are still a core part of the Remnant trio – but ones that play less of a key role to the things directly connected to Sephiroth's revival than Kadaj does. Again, Roche is a good entry point for Cloud into those things without needing to linger too heavily on Genesis' stuff, but also making him feel significant given that Zack's story follows through the Project G threads, and we know that we're getting some kind of look into the events that Zack goes through.
Even just thinking about the way that Genesis & Kadaj look loosely similar to the same degree that Roche & Loz do feels like it's a possibility that wouldn't be too difficult for them to stitch together. Still not anything that's an exceptionally strong correlation at this point given how little we know about this new failed version of Project G within the Remake. Still, Rubrum's connection to the Remnants, but also the Failed Experiments seems like a thread that they'd definitely want to explore if they're going to rework some of the things from the Compilation's mad science into the new frameworks of what Remake is delivering, like it's seems that they've been doing so far.
Still, I feel that this is easily the most shaky correlation of anything, since it's WAY speculative based on things we know exist, but we haven't seen depicted yet, and we don't know exactly how much those things are going to change, only that things related to Project G have changed some, and that Project G still exists within the labs under Midgar.
X
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
On that note, there's something that I thought about while going over in my mind what Roche's role in the upcoming games is for, especially when looking at the Compilation. We already know that they've made alterations to things from the Compilation vis-a-vis Project G & Deepground. That much is apparent just from what we've seen of the new Failed Experiments all over Hojo's lab in Midgar, in The Drum, and in the secret facilities below the slums.
I initially mentioned that the Failed Experiments & Unknown Entities all glow red – which I noted is something that we only see with the Whisper Entities inner glow... but I didn't elaborate that this color also seems to establish their connection explicitly to Whisper Rubrum, rather than any of the others. Given that these failed experiments seem to be related to Genesis (given the location of the tentacle/wings), the similarities between the physical appearance of Whisper Rubrum being a cloaked, red entity wielding a giant red sword, with Genesis' wing shapes on its body, and a spike emerging from its left shoulder, and they're somehow linked to Project G, the parallels directly to Genesis seem... just... painfully obvious.
With the design connections of both Genesis and Kadaj, I'm wondering if in this new version of the science experiments in Remake are going to see something from Genesis' body used in some way to eventually create Kadaj from Whisper Rubrum. If we do, it will give that unresolved story from the Compilation a way to dig back into the things that were going on in Sector Zero during the Wutai War in a way that's connected to the core story of these games, rather than a half-related spinoff. Doing something like that would close the link to any unresolved Deepground stuff with Genesis at the same time that the final game would be reaching its conclusion.
If that's the case, and we get Rubrum & Genesis to form Kadaj, it might explain why using Roche to create Loz (or potentially Loz & Yazoo) would have the other two as Sephiroth Remnants who are still a core part of the Remnant trio – but ones that play less of a key role to the things directly connected to Sephiroth's revival than Kadaj does. Again, Roche is a good entry point for Cloud into those things without needing to linger too heavily on Genesis' stuff, but also making him feel significant given that Zack's story follows through the Project G threads, and we know that we're getting some kind of look into the events that Zack goes through.
Even just thinking about the way that Genesis & Kadaj look loosely similar to the same degree that Roche & Loz do feels like it's a possibility that wouldn't be too difficult for them to stitch together. Still not anything that's an exceptionally strong correlation at this point given how little we know about this new failed version of Project G within the Remake. Still, Rubrum's connection to the Remnants, but also the Failed Experiments seems like a thread that they'd definitely want to explore if they're going to rework some of the things from the Compilation's mad science into the new frameworks of what Remake is delivering, like it's seems that they've been doing so far.
Still, I feel that this is easily the most shaky correlation of anything, since it's WAY speculative based on things we know exist, but we haven't seen depicted yet, and we don't know exactly how much those things are going to change, only that things related to Project G have changed some, and that Project G still exists within the labs under Midgar.
X
I don't think the remnant trio's creation origins are going to change though. Them being created from just corrupted Lifestream was a key plot-point in AC/C, that the remnants don't have any Jenova cells themselves, just her legacy, so being created from SOLDIERs who have Jenova cells I think would be too significant of a inconsistency change I think.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
First off, thanks to @The Twilight Mexican for the heads up on this likely confirmation about the Whispers/Remnants, since I haven't had a chance to catch up on on Max's most recent VoDs yet (since I've been too busy with all of these threads) 
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/596372693?t=1h38m5s[/MEDIA]
That's my point though: The new Failed Experiments all over the Sector 0 & Underground areas appear to be the new version of Project-G-turned-Deepground, and the Four Whisper Bosses' forms have a resemblance to both Project G as well as directly to Genesis. On top of that, when the Sephiroth Copies die, they don't return to the Lifestream – they dissipate into this Grey/Purple Whisper ectoplasm instead, which I think IS the thing that will eventually become Sephiroth's Corrupted Lifestream.
I think that they're connecting the mass SOLDIER experimentation involved with the Wutai War, the people from the Slums, and Project G into the eventual emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. I think that the SOLDIER cellular degradation leading to those individuals dying and not properly returning to the Planet is being laid out as the precursor to what eventually manifests as Geostigma. The visual parallels that have been established already are EXTREMELY apparent.
Sephiroth releases the Corrupted Lifestream in Advent Children:
– The clouds swirl into a vortex and cover up the red sunsetting sky, and the corrupted Lifestream descends over Midgar
Sephiroth manifests and absorbs the Whisper Harbinger in Remake:
– The dark spiritual energy of the Whisper Souls pull the red sky showing the Destined future of Meteor over Midgar into Sephiroth, and he absorbs all of the that energy along with the Whisper Harbinger into himself to leave the same black-and-white-eye-of-the-storm vortex of clouds overhead
This is also why in the Sefirot symbol breakdown I did, I was really surprised by the balance between Cloud on the physical SOLDIER & Jenova Cells side of the story, and Aerith on the metaphysical Lifestream & Will of the Planet side of the story. The duality of Sephiroth's existence usurping Jenova is transcending both of those points. It makes sense to expand the connections that Genesis had around attempting to become the Avatar of the Will of the Planet itself more directly into the Whispers, Destiny, and the emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. It also works pretty well to use Zack as the focal point for that part of the story, since he connects to both Aerith & Cloud, and he was explicitly introduced at the end of Remake in a way that makes it feel like we're bound to explore the details of his storyline, especially since Gongaga is on the list of likely locations to encounter.
Especially if that confirmation about the Sephiroth Remnants & Whisper Trio is concrete, that means that we already have some very clear connections between Project G & Whisper entities who seem to be the things that eventually form the Corrupted Lifestream. When I was talking about using Genesis & Roche to create Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – I meant that there would be some piece of them used for that process that's gonna be dictated by the as-of-yet-unknown mechanics that links Project G and the new Failed Experiments to the Whisper Entities. I think it's very likely that neither of them would survive that process, and that it might involve trapping their soul from returning to the Planet in a slightly different way.
If the cloaked entities are some form of deceased Sephiroth Copies that can't return to the Lifestream, it's pretty clear why they'd be the forms that the Will of the Planet is using to try to ensure that Cloud & Co. stay on Destiny's path to bring about the eventual destruction of Sephiroth and the purification of the Lifestream. The fact that we know that there are still literally hundreds of people in tanks below Midgar makes sense that the deceased are able to manifest and rise up to surround the entirety of the Shinra HQ in a massive soulnado. This is reinforced even more because right around the time when we meet Roche, we learn that Jessie's theory after studying Planetology is that her Mako Poisoned father's spirit is stuck between his body and the Heart of the Planet as a result of the Reactors.
We've actually seen the Center/Core/Heart of the Planet before in the original game. It's where Holy is trapped, and it looks just like the cores in the chests of the Whisper Entities.
This is our link to the information about the new Failed Experiments, because if you look at the bigger ones – they're literally dripping in this Grey/Purple mist that we see from the Whispers. If these victims are passing away like the Sephiroth Copies do, and then manifesting through the Will of the Planet as Cloaked Whispers – it makes sense that they're also all trapped in Midgar and unable to return to the Planet, and Cloud & Co's Destiny is of paramount importance to them. By destroying the Whisper Harbinger, that's given Sephiroth exactly what he needs to be able to take that energy and transform it into his Corrupted Lifestream – again not caring about the souls themselves as anything other than a means to his own ends.
While I was digging around at all this, I figured that I'd go make a video of the enemy types that I keep referring back to to make it easier to see what they look like in realtime, so that you can see things like the Lifestream-like effect going through Whisper Bahamut's wings.
While doing that, I noticed that H0512 has the Whisper & Genesis shapes on his knees – but they're facing upwards, the way that they do on the Genesis Copies wingtips. Additionally, H0512 has a strange Armored Pauldron over its left shoulder, and the skull that looks like Jenova's face over on the same side. Interestingly, all of the Whisper Entities have additional armor over this shoulder, and spikes that cover this side of their face. Like the Failed Experiment & Unknown Entities, H0512 also has the stretched out back muscles and exaggerated spinal spikes. It also has the massive umbilical structure that we see during the brief looks at Jenova's actual body while she's still in the tank.
On another note about our new Failed Experiments & Deepground – the singular eye-like structure that's growing in the front of their face. This is something that's also shared by all of the types of Shock Troopers. We know that they have the line, "Ever been flayed?!" when they attack, but that seems to take on a bit of an interesting twist when you see that not only is their entire body covered in a form-fitting suit, but the Unknown Entities' bodies appear to show some of their exposed muscle tissue and bone as if their original skin had been peeled off, rather than everything growing over the top of it.
Given that we first see the Enhanced/Armored Shock Troopers protecting Hojo's lab, I'd wager that whatever pharmaceuticals he managed to derive out of his experiments are what are being used on the Shock Troopers. The basic Shock Troopers can dodge most physical attacks, and the Elite Shock Troopers can climb on walls & ceilings, and the Armored/Enhanced Troopers are listed, "As they are some of the most elite troopers in the military, they are tasked with guarding Shinra HQ." which makes me as curious as I've ever been about exactly what kind of pharmaceuticals that Hojo's been developing there since he took over, and if we'll ever learn any more about these types of troops since they're the intersection of Research & Development, Public Security, & Advanced Weaponry – which means that Hojo, Heideggar, & Scarlet are all involved in enhancing them, which is super interesting especially since everything we know about the history of SOLDIER is that Shinra wanted to replace that program.
The singe-eyed cyclopean appearance of the Shock Troopers, and their reliance on performance enhancing suits matches up with the general look & powers of the experiments done with the Deepground SOLDIERs. Additionally, the game's text shows that all three of Shinra's big divisions are involved with them – and we know all three of them were the ones with knowledge of Deepground as well. Given that restarting the war with Wutai seems to be a major plot thread in Remake, I think that investigating what happened in the war before, and how Shinra's building up a new army that doesn't involve SOLDIER will mean that we might have an opportunity to start to dig into the more "mundane" experiments with Shinra that connect to the labs in Deepground as Vincent comes into the picture, and we get a better historical connection to Zack, Project G & S, the Turks, Wutai, SOLDIER, and more of the history of what happened that lead us to the current events.
X
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/596372693?t=1h38m5s[/MEDIA]
That's my point though: The new Failed Experiments all over the Sector 0 & Underground areas appear to be the new version of Project-G-turned-Deepground, and the Four Whisper Bosses' forms have a resemblance to both Project G as well as directly to Genesis. On top of that, when the Sephiroth Copies die, they don't return to the Lifestream – they dissipate into this Grey/Purple Whisper ectoplasm instead, which I think IS the thing that will eventually become Sephiroth's Corrupted Lifestream.
I think that they're connecting the mass SOLDIER experimentation involved with the Wutai War, the people from the Slums, and Project G into the eventual emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. I think that the SOLDIER cellular degradation leading to those individuals dying and not properly returning to the Planet is being laid out as the precursor to what eventually manifests as Geostigma. The visual parallels that have been established already are EXTREMELY apparent.
Sephiroth releases the Corrupted Lifestream in Advent Children:
– The clouds swirl into a vortex and cover up the red sunsetting sky, and the corrupted Lifestream descends over Midgar
Sephiroth manifests and absorbs the Whisper Harbinger in Remake:
– The dark spiritual energy of the Whisper Souls pull the red sky showing the Destined future of Meteor over Midgar into Sephiroth, and he absorbs all of the that energy along with the Whisper Harbinger into himself to leave the same black-and-white-eye-of-the-storm vortex of clouds overhead
This is also why in the Sefirot symbol breakdown I did, I was really surprised by the balance between Cloud on the physical SOLDIER & Jenova Cells side of the story, and Aerith on the metaphysical Lifestream & Will of the Planet side of the story. The duality of Sephiroth's existence usurping Jenova is transcending both of those points. It makes sense to expand the connections that Genesis had around attempting to become the Avatar of the Will of the Planet itself more directly into the Whispers, Destiny, and the emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. It also works pretty well to use Zack as the focal point for that part of the story, since he connects to both Aerith & Cloud, and he was explicitly introduced at the end of Remake in a way that makes it feel like we're bound to explore the details of his storyline, especially since Gongaga is on the list of likely locations to encounter.
Especially if that confirmation about the Sephiroth Remnants & Whisper Trio is concrete, that means that we already have some very clear connections between Project G & Whisper entities who seem to be the things that eventually form the Corrupted Lifestream. When I was talking about using Genesis & Roche to create Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – I meant that there would be some piece of them used for that process that's gonna be dictated by the as-of-yet-unknown mechanics that links Project G and the new Failed Experiments to the Whisper Entities. I think it's very likely that neither of them would survive that process, and that it might involve trapping their soul from returning to the Planet in a slightly different way.
If the cloaked entities are some form of deceased Sephiroth Copies that can't return to the Lifestream, it's pretty clear why they'd be the forms that the Will of the Planet is using to try to ensure that Cloud & Co. stay on Destiny's path to bring about the eventual destruction of Sephiroth and the purification of the Lifestream. The fact that we know that there are still literally hundreds of people in tanks below Midgar makes sense that the deceased are able to manifest and rise up to surround the entirety of the Shinra HQ in a massive soulnado. This is reinforced even more because right around the time when we meet Roche, we learn that Jessie's theory after studying Planetology is that her Mako Poisoned father's spirit is stuck between his body and the Heart of the Planet as a result of the Reactors.
We've actually seen the Center/Core/Heart of the Planet before in the original game. It's where Holy is trapped, and it looks just like the cores in the chests of the Whisper Entities.
This is our link to the information about the new Failed Experiments, because if you look at the bigger ones – they're literally dripping in this Grey/Purple mist that we see from the Whispers. If these victims are passing away like the Sephiroth Copies do, and then manifesting through the Will of the Planet as Cloaked Whispers – it makes sense that they're also all trapped in Midgar and unable to return to the Planet, and Cloud & Co's Destiny is of paramount importance to them. By destroying the Whisper Harbinger, that's given Sephiroth exactly what he needs to be able to take that energy and transform it into his Corrupted Lifestream – again not caring about the souls themselves as anything other than a means to his own ends.
While I was digging around at all this, I figured that I'd go make a video of the enemy types that I keep referring back to to make it easier to see what they look like in realtime, so that you can see things like the Lifestream-like effect going through Whisper Bahamut's wings.
While doing that, I noticed that H0512 has the Whisper & Genesis shapes on his knees – but they're facing upwards, the way that they do on the Genesis Copies wingtips. Additionally, H0512 has a strange Armored Pauldron over its left shoulder, and the skull that looks like Jenova's face over on the same side. Interestingly, all of the Whisper Entities have additional armor over this shoulder, and spikes that cover this side of their face. Like the Failed Experiment & Unknown Entities, H0512 also has the stretched out back muscles and exaggerated spinal spikes. It also has the massive umbilical structure that we see during the brief looks at Jenova's actual body while she's still in the tank.
On another note about our new Failed Experiments & Deepground – the singular eye-like structure that's growing in the front of their face. This is something that's also shared by all of the types of Shock Troopers. We know that they have the line, "Ever been flayed?!" when they attack, but that seems to take on a bit of an interesting twist when you see that not only is their entire body covered in a form-fitting suit, but the Unknown Entities' bodies appear to show some of their exposed muscle tissue and bone as if their original skin had been peeled off, rather than everything growing over the top of it.
Given that we first see the Enhanced/Armored Shock Troopers protecting Hojo's lab, I'd wager that whatever pharmaceuticals he managed to derive out of his experiments are what are being used on the Shock Troopers. The basic Shock Troopers can dodge most physical attacks, and the Elite Shock Troopers can climb on walls & ceilings, and the Armored/Enhanced Troopers are listed, "As they are some of the most elite troopers in the military, they are tasked with guarding Shinra HQ." which makes me as curious as I've ever been about exactly what kind of pharmaceuticals that Hojo's been developing there since he took over, and if we'll ever learn any more about these types of troops since they're the intersection of Research & Development, Public Security, & Advanced Weaponry – which means that Hojo, Heideggar, & Scarlet are all involved in enhancing them, which is super interesting especially since everything we know about the history of SOLDIER is that Shinra wanted to replace that program.
The singe-eyed cyclopean appearance of the Shock Troopers, and their reliance on performance enhancing suits matches up with the general look & powers of the experiments done with the Deepground SOLDIERs. Additionally, the game's text shows that all three of Shinra's big divisions are involved with them – and we know all three of them were the ones with knowledge of Deepground as well. Given that restarting the war with Wutai seems to be a major plot thread in Remake, I think that investigating what happened in the war before, and how Shinra's building up a new army that doesn't involve SOLDIER will mean that we might have an opportunity to start to dig into the more "mundane" experiments with Shinra that connect to the labs in Deepground as Vincent comes into the picture, and we get a better historical connection to Zack, Project G & S, the Turks, Wutai, SOLDIER, and more of the history of what happened that lead us to the current events.
X
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
First off, thanks to @The Twilight Mexican for the heads up on this likely confirmation about the Whispers/Remnants, since I haven't had a chance to catch up on on Max's most recent VoDs yet (since I've been too busy with all of these threads)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/596372693?t=1h38m5s[/MEDIA]
That's my point though: The new Failed Experiments all over the Sector 0 & Underground areas appear to be the new version of Project-G-turned-Deepground, and the Four Whisper Bosses' forms have a resemblance to both Project G as well as directly to Genesis. On top of that, when the Sephiroth Copies die, they don't return to the Lifestream – they dissipate into this Grey/Purple Whisper ectoplasm instead, which I think IS the thing that will eventually become Sephiroth's Corrupted Lifestream.
I think that they're connecting the mass SOLDIER experimentation involved with the Wutai War, the people from the Slums, and Project G into the eventual emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. I think that the SOLDIER cellular degradation leading to those individuals dying and not properly returning to the Planet is being laid out as the precursor to what eventually manifests as Geostigma. The visual parallels that have been established already are EXTREMELY apparent.
Sephiroth releases the Corrupted Lifestream in Advent Children:
– The clouds swirl into a vortex and cover up the red sunsetting sky, and the corrupted Lifestream descends over Midgar
Sephiroth manifests and absorbs the Whisper Harbinger in Remake:
– The dark spiritual energy of the Whisper Souls pull the red sky showing the Destined future of Meteor over Midgar into Sephiroth, and he absorbs all of the that energy along with the Whisper Harbinger into himself to leave the same black-and-white-eye-of-the-storm vortex of clouds overhead
This is also why in the Sefirot symbol breakdown I did, I was really surprised by the balance between Cloud on the physical SOLDIER & Jenova Cells side of the story, and Aerith on the metaphysical Lifestream & Will of the Planet side of the story. The duality of Sephiroth's existence usurping Jenova is transcending both of those points. It makes sense to expand the connections that Genesis had around attempting to become the Avatar of the Will of the Planet itself more directly into the Whispers, Destiny, and the emergence of the Corrupted Lifestream. It also works pretty well to use Zack as the focal point for that part of the story, since he connects to both Aerith & Cloud, and he was explicitly introduced at the end of Remake in a way that makes it feel like we're bound to explore the details of his storyline, especially since Gongaga is on the list of likely locations to encounter.
Especially if that confirmation about the Sephiroth Remnants & Whisper Trio is concrete, that means that we already have some very clear connections between Project G & Whisper entities who seem to be the things that eventually form the Corrupted Lifestream. When I was talking about using Genesis & Roche to create Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – I meant that there would be some piece of them used for that process that's gonna be dictated by the as-of-yet-unknown mechanics that links Project G and the new Failed Experiments to the Whisper Entities. I think it's very likely that neither of them would survive that process, and that it might involve trapping their soul from returning to the Planet in a slightly different way.
If the cloaked entities are some form of deceased Sephiroth Copies that can't return to the Lifestream, it's pretty clear why they'd be the forms that the Will of the Planet is using to try to ensure that Cloud & Co. stay on Destiny's path to bring about the eventual destruction of Sephiroth and the purification of the Lifestream. The fact that we know that there are still literally hundreds of people in tanks below Midgar makes sense that the deceased are able to manifest and rise up to surround the entirety of the Shinra HQ in a massive soulnado. This is reinforced even more because right around the time when we meet Roche, we learn that Jessie's theory after studying Planetology is that her Mako Poisoned father's spirit is stuck between his body and the Heart of the Planet as a result of the Reactors.
We've actually seen the Center/Core/Heart of the Planet before in the original game. It's where Holy is trapped, and it looks just like the cores in the chests of the Whisper Entities.
This is our link to the information about the new Failed Experiments, because if you look at the bigger ones – they're literally dripping in this Grey/Purple mist that we see from the Whispers. If these victims are passing away like the Sephiroth Copies do, and then manifesting through the Will of the Planet as Cloaked Whispers – it makes sense that they're also all trapped in Midgar and unable to return to the Planet, and Cloud & Co's Destiny is of paramount importance to them. By destroying the Whisper Harbinger, that's given Sephiroth exactly what he needs to be able to take that energy and transform it into his Corrupted Lifestream – again not caring about the souls themselves as anything other than a means to his own ends.
While I was digging around at all this, I figured that I'd go make a video of the enemy types that I keep referring back to to make it easier to see what they look like in realtime, so that you can see things like the Lifestream-like effect going through Whisper Bahamut's wings.
While doing that, I noticed that H0512 has the Whisper & Genesis shapes on his knees – but they're facing upwards, the way that they do on the Genesis Copies wingtips. Additionally, H0512 has a strange Armored Pauldron over its left shoulder, and the skull that looks like Jenova's face over on the same side. Interestingly, all of the Whisper Entities have additional armor over this shoulder, and spikes that cover this side of their face. Like the Failed Experiment & Unknown Entities, H0512 also has the stretched out back muscles and exaggerated spinal spikes. It also has the massive umbilical structure that we see during the brief looks at Jenova's actual body while she's still in the tank.
On another note about our new Failed Experiments & Deepground – the singular eye-like structure that's growing in the front of their face. This is something that's also shared by all of the types of Shock Troopers. We know that they have the line, "Ever been flayed?!" when they attack, but that seems to take on a bit of an interesting twist when you see that not only is their entire body covered in a form-fitting suit, but the Unknown Entities' bodies appear to show some of their exposed muscle tissue and bone as if their original skin had been peeled off, rather than everything growing over the top of it.
Given that we first see the Enhanced/Armored Shock Troopers protecting Hojo's lab, I'd wager that whatever pharmaceuticals he managed to derive out of his experiments are what are being used on the Shock Troopers. The basic Shock Troopers can dodge most physical attacks, and the Elite Shock Troopers can climb on walls & ceilings, and the Armored/Enhanced Troopers are listed, "As they are some of the most elite troopers in the military, they are tasked with guarding Shinra HQ." which makes me as curious as I've ever been about exactly what kind of pharmaceuticals that Hojo's been developing there since he took over, and if we'll ever learn any more about these types of troops since they're the intersection of Research & Development, Public Security, & Advanced Weaponry – which means that Hojo, Heideggar, & Scarlet are all involved in enhancing them, which is super interesting especially since everything we know about the history of SOLDIER is that Shinra wanted to replace that program.
The singe-eyed cyclopean appearance of the Shock Troopers, and their reliance on performance enhancing suits matches up with the general look & powers of the experiments done with the Deepground SOLDIERs. Additionally, the game's text shows that all three of Shinra's big divisions are involved with them – and we know all three of them were the ones with knowledge of Deepground as well. Given that restarting the war with Wutai seems to be a major plot thread in Remake, I think that investigating what happened in the war before, and how Shinra's building up a new army that doesn't involve SOLDIER will mean that we might have an opportunity to start to dig into the more "mundane" experiments with Shinra that connect to the labs in Deepground as Vincent comes into the picture, and we get a better historical connection to Zack, Project G & S, the Turks, Wutai, SOLDIER, and more of the history of what happened that lead us to the current events.
X
Okay, so when you're theorizing that Roche might be used to create the Remnants, you not saying in the sense that Roche physically transforms into them, but more that his "soul energy" and that of the other experiments are used to become part of the corrupted Lifestream Sephiroth makes the Remnants out of in OWTAS.
I can't imagine Genesis being used (aside indirectly through his genes and cells) to make corrupted Lifestream, as I don't see the Remake changing so much that its continuity can't align largely with the Compilation and DoC (especially after Kitase's March interview comments), so I imagine Genesis having to survive/still be alive by the end of the Remake (if he even directly shows up in it, which I am not sure he even will).
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
Yes precisely.
With everything we've been told about Mako poisoning and the souls being trapped and unable to return to the planet, this could even essentially be the mako infusion in SOLDIERs allowing Sephiroth to pull their souls out of them – causing their bodies to drop into a coma, and then him binding that energy into the Whispers in order to form his three Remnants.
That would mean that when the souls are allowed to finally return to the Planet, there's every possibility that this would allow Genesis to reawaken in Deepground – since unlike the other SOLDIERs, his body is no longer suffering from any forms of degradation since he became Genesis Avatar.
There isn't nearly enough information yet on all of the prolific & newly introduced Shinra failed science experiments & Whispers that appear to be linked to Project G to make any clear speculation on the mechanics. The design and thematic connections between them are already present, and enough to poke some rudimentary theories around based on things that we already know. I think that there's a chance that there are still some more elements and details that we could learn about in Chapter 17 in the future, but even just having these the basic design elements and the visual & thematic parallels to the things we know from the Compilation are what's most concrete to theorize from for now.
Personally, the thematic Sefirot chart is the thing that I still think is the most interesting in looking at what the current thematic story purpose of those bits of science look like.
X
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X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
So, I've been talking about how Aerth & Cloud have a parallel story here: Cloud's being physical and Aerith's being spiritual.
Let's talk about Aerith, the Cetra, & Jenova. Then let's pull that in to science around the Lifestream, Project-G, and The Whispers.
So in the OG, we know that Jenova tricked the Cetra by taking the appearances of their loved ones – but this might not just be limited to the physical shape-shifting transformation. What we see in the game could be giving us information that Jenova was actually stealing and masking its alien presence with REAL lifestream energy of the deceased, and altering its physical appearance to match. This means that SOLDIER having Jenova cells can naturally gain strength through being infused with Mako energy – because the Jenova Cells are pulling that processed form of Lifestream into their cells to just give raw power, rather than knowledge. This would also explain why, over time, those individuals' bodies start to degrade, and they start having mental stability issues, like we see in Roche. Not only are they being bathed in Shinra's LITERAL power source, we also know that this destroys the spiritual parts of the Lifestream, and trades the knowledge for energy because they don't return to the Planet.
In Cloud's case, he couldn't deal with that and his body didn't hold up – so he got Mako poisoning. That's also why he's not the one in charge of his revival. I think that there's a strong possibility that Zack's death happening outside Midgar – where spirits have a difficult time returning to the planet happening RIGHT as Cloud snaps back to reality is actually connected to Cloud's Jenova-Cell-filled-and-mako-poisoned body absorbing and mimicking part of Zack's spiritual Lifestream knowledge and energy, and then filling in the gaps in who Cloud presents himself as (which gives even more reasons to revisit Zack's fate shown in the end of the game). This also means that there are parts of the real Cloud still trapped in the flow of the Lifestream but not returned to the core of the Planet.
Cloud as we meet him is now a bit of a spiritual patchwork where he's not really just Cloud, but he's also not able to be actively aware of what the Jenova cells are doing to mask that with Zack's Lifestream-based knowledge/energy – hence why his consciousness glitches out when Aerith mention's Zack's name on the playground, or that first MP recognizes him and tries to say something to Cloud in Chapter 2.
When this comes to Aerith's story in particular, it's clear that she's already aware of Zack's death at the beginning of the game. The ending makes it pretty apparent that the moment in Crisis Core with him dying in the rain is exactly what's happening when they pass that hilltop and that's still used in the ending for Remake. Not only that, but given Jessie's Planetology-studied explanation that Biggs & Wedge tell Cloud about Mako poisoning with Jessie's father gives the context for where the "rest" of Cloud is mentally. That's why it's best to think of Cloud's psyche as fragments of Cloud's spirit being trapped outside of himself within the Lifestream flow of the Planet itself (but not yet returned in the core). This also means that they're stuck in a place that Aerith talks to all the time. Similar to how she knows about Zack's death, she's probably been aware of the "rest" of Cloud even before they meet up in Chapter 2.
This is why Aerith sounds to familiar when talking to Cloud when he first meets her. Not only does she recognize the bits of him that are Zack, but she also knows the bits of him that aren't there, so she's seeing Cloud both as CLOUD while also getting to feel the echo of the person she loved at the same time. She already knows that Cloud's having that struggle when she meets him, and it's why she takes a liking to him aside from just the familiarity of a random SOLDIER with the Buster Sword who shows up to help her. It's why she uses the line about lovers being reunited, and gives him the flower for free.
This is also why we get that fuzzy Lifestream green filter whenever Cloud is glitching out (like when Aerith mentions Zack's name), AND that this exact same filter is used when Aerith uses her Cetra abilities to speak into the spirits of other beings like Marlene & Red XIII. This is showing something happening not just on a mental level, but that the mental presence of anything in FFVII is also their life energy & spiritual identity. It's also why we get Red XIII learning things about the Whispers & understanding them (with the help of growing up with his gradfather being Bugenhagen), and also Marlene having that pseudo-psychic sense about Barret in the end, the way she does with Aerith's spirit in Advent Children. Aerith's seemingly passing the ability to catch glimpses of things through the Planet's knowledge to those two – sort of like how we see the ancient Cetra used to form Materia directly from the Lifestream. In Aerith's case, she's using that talent with the active lifestream energy & knowledge of living people by communicating to their spirits rather than doing something like how we typically think of mental telepathy or psychic empathy in fiction.
This is why when she communicates with Cloud in Chapter 14 during the "Dream" sequence, she's actually communicating with him in a similar way. It's why we can see the souls of people returning to the Lifestream in that sequence – which don't actually appear in the real world like we see with Barret & Tifa's scenes. Aerith tells Cloud that he can't fall in love with her, because in that moment she's ACTUALLY communicating just directly to the connected fragments of the spirit of Cloud, not just talking to his spiritual patchwork physical form with echoes of Zack.
This connection to the Planet and the Lifestream give an explanation for a LOT of things about how Aerith acts in and around people – but especially with regard to Cloud. She's got a sense of empathy towards others, but we know that she also can hear the Planet talking, she can communicate with the flowers, and the Whispers are hiding things from her that might make her change her course of action. This is why she instantly knows that Sephiroth is wrong, and she understands that Jenova is the real threat and not just Shinra & the mako reactors – she communicates with the Planet. This also all mirrors in her manifesting healing and physically protecting with her Limit Breaks, because she's doing that through using the actual energy of the Planet itself.
This means that rather than directly knowing the future in the game, I think that all of this is what it's like from Aerith just talking to the Planet in the Lifestream, and learning things from the minds of others in how she reaches out to them. However, we also have the Whispers being just as powerful in clouding those things from her full awareness in order to keep Desiny going as intended. This is why she's so terrified of them, because unlike the other spirits, they're hiding things from her. That makes them scary, but also something about them is weirdly comforting, because they're giving her a purpose that she knows matters even if because they're hiding it from her, she's afraid of what it means.
This is also why when she grabs Cloud, he's given the ability to see these entities suddenly. The second that happens, Sephiroth starts using Cloud's ability to see them to jump into his mind and turn him against them. Then from Cloud, that ability starts passing along to the other important people he directly comes in contact with: Tifa, Avalanche, Rufus, etc. Sephiroth keeps hinting and prodding Cloud down a path against them. Just like Red XIII learned something from them, I think that Sephiroth is learning from them as well, trying to ensure that Cloud lives in order to control a way to escape his own destiny.
This is why as we're defeating the Whispers, we see fragments of Lifestream energy spilling out from Whisper Harbinger's core and into everyone's minds – showing the fragments of the future popping up in everyone's heads, because those bits of knowledge aren't able to be actively hidden from them any more. It's also why Sephiroth absorbs all of that energy to erase that from being a certainty. This also means that Aerith can't learn about her fate, because it's no longer certain. This is why she's connected to the side of the story involving the spiritual side of Sephiroth & the Whispers.
I think that this is also a factor in her connection to Project Genesis. We know that the G-Copies suffered from cellular degradation, and the "Unknown Entities" seem like that name is actually an intentional choice. They're Jenova experiments that are bathed in mako, and they're forming as broken entities. Recognizing something about that spiritual appearance as it were is why Aerith calls them "children" when referring to all of the "Unknown Entity" test subjects in Hojo's broken lab at the start of Chapter 17, which is the same thing that she does when she sees Red XIII even before touching him.
I think that Aerith's Cetra connection and the link to her growing up in the Shinra HQ is gonna connect to Hojo's "Failed Experiments" we see everywhere being connected to Ilfana – especially since he explicitly mentions that they dissected her body. Given that we don't just see them in The Drum in Sector 0, but that we also see them en-masse underneath the Sector 7 slums, I think it's reasonable to assume that these creatures are an extension of the work that was happening in Deepground, and that it's going to be linked to Project-G now.
That also gives us our insight into why there's a design connection between the Whispers & the Project G stuff. We always know that Hojo was trying to mess with the Cetra, and that he's trying to find the Promised Land as well. This seems like they're potentially following that thread a bit deeper, especially by putting Aerith where she grew up in the lab in Shinra HQ where we find all of those things. This and her connection to Zack gives a way of exploring the things with the project connected to Genesis that are relevant to her directly and aren't just story tangents & exposition for exposition's sake.
That also gives a better reason for Aerith to end up being the "Mother" that the Sephiroth Remnants are looking for, since the "children" she's encountered here are all Failed Experiments related to Unknown Entities who are seemingly related to Project-G in the same way the forms that the Whisper Harbinger avatars take before they become the Remnants do. It's the spiritual side of the corrupted Lifestream & Reunion, so that when it comes to purifying the Lifestream she's the one that they're seeking out, matching what we see in Advent Children.
This all further reinforces the mechanics by which I think that Aerith seemingly gives a sense that she knows the future but I don't think she does at all, and that that knowledge is specifically clouded from her, but that she knows a lot from speaking with the Planet. That's connected to why I also don't think that the game is ACTUALLY messing with alternate time travel stuff at all, which I talked about in post in the Chapter 18 thread that's relevant to that vis-a-vis the end of the game. I think that the ancient history of Jenova vs. the Cetra – but also Jenova being physically present, but mentally gone (like the mako-poisoned folk) is why Aerith's story is pretty much perfect for exploring all of this in Remake.
X
Let's talk about Aerith, the Cetra, & Jenova. Then let's pull that in to science around the Lifestream, Project-G, and The Whispers.
So in the OG, we know that Jenova tricked the Cetra by taking the appearances of their loved ones – but this might not just be limited to the physical shape-shifting transformation. What we see in the game could be giving us information that Jenova was actually stealing and masking its alien presence with REAL lifestream energy of the deceased, and altering its physical appearance to match. This means that SOLDIER having Jenova cells can naturally gain strength through being infused with Mako energy – because the Jenova Cells are pulling that processed form of Lifestream into their cells to just give raw power, rather than knowledge. This would also explain why, over time, those individuals' bodies start to degrade, and they start having mental stability issues, like we see in Roche. Not only are they being bathed in Shinra's LITERAL power source, we also know that this destroys the spiritual parts of the Lifestream, and trades the knowledge for energy because they don't return to the Planet.
In Cloud's case, he couldn't deal with that and his body didn't hold up – so he got Mako poisoning. That's also why he's not the one in charge of his revival. I think that there's a strong possibility that Zack's death happening outside Midgar – where spirits have a difficult time returning to the planet happening RIGHT as Cloud snaps back to reality is actually connected to Cloud's Jenova-Cell-filled-and-mako-poisoned body absorbing and mimicking part of Zack's spiritual Lifestream knowledge and energy, and then filling in the gaps in who Cloud presents himself as (which gives even more reasons to revisit Zack's fate shown in the end of the game). This also means that there are parts of the real Cloud still trapped in the flow of the Lifestream but not returned to the core of the Planet.
Cloud as we meet him is now a bit of a spiritual patchwork where he's not really just Cloud, but he's also not able to be actively aware of what the Jenova cells are doing to mask that with Zack's Lifestream-based knowledge/energy – hence why his consciousness glitches out when Aerith mention's Zack's name on the playground, or that first MP recognizes him and tries to say something to Cloud in Chapter 2.
When this comes to Aerith's story in particular, it's clear that she's already aware of Zack's death at the beginning of the game. The ending makes it pretty apparent that the moment in Crisis Core with him dying in the rain is exactly what's happening when they pass that hilltop and that's still used in the ending for Remake. Not only that, but given Jessie's Planetology-studied explanation that Biggs & Wedge tell Cloud about Mako poisoning with Jessie's father gives the context for where the "rest" of Cloud is mentally. That's why it's best to think of Cloud's psyche as fragments of Cloud's spirit being trapped outside of himself within the Lifestream flow of the Planet itself (but not yet returned in the core). This also means that they're stuck in a place that Aerith talks to all the time. Similar to how she knows about Zack's death, she's probably been aware of the "rest" of Cloud even before they meet up in Chapter 2.
This is why Aerith sounds to familiar when talking to Cloud when he first meets her. Not only does she recognize the bits of him that are Zack, but she also knows the bits of him that aren't there, so she's seeing Cloud both as CLOUD while also getting to feel the echo of the person she loved at the same time. She already knows that Cloud's having that struggle when she meets him, and it's why she takes a liking to him aside from just the familiarity of a random SOLDIER with the Buster Sword who shows up to help her. It's why she uses the line about lovers being reunited, and gives him the flower for free.
This is also why we get that fuzzy Lifestream green filter whenever Cloud is glitching out (like when Aerith mentions Zack's name), AND that this exact same filter is used when Aerith uses her Cetra abilities to speak into the spirits of other beings like Marlene & Red XIII. This is showing something happening not just on a mental level, but that the mental presence of anything in FFVII is also their life energy & spiritual identity. It's also why we get Red XIII learning things about the Whispers & understanding them (with the help of growing up with his gradfather being Bugenhagen), and also Marlene having that pseudo-psychic sense about Barret in the end, the way she does with Aerith's spirit in Advent Children. Aerith's seemingly passing the ability to catch glimpses of things through the Planet's knowledge to those two – sort of like how we see the ancient Cetra used to form Materia directly from the Lifestream. In Aerith's case, she's using that talent with the active lifestream energy & knowledge of living people by communicating to their spirits rather than doing something like how we typically think of mental telepathy or psychic empathy in fiction.
This is why when she communicates with Cloud in Chapter 14 during the "Dream" sequence, she's actually communicating with him in a similar way. It's why we can see the souls of people returning to the Lifestream in that sequence – which don't actually appear in the real world like we see with Barret & Tifa's scenes. Aerith tells Cloud that he can't fall in love with her, because in that moment she's ACTUALLY communicating just directly to the connected fragments of the spirit of Cloud, not just talking to his spiritual patchwork physical form with echoes of Zack.
This connection to the Planet and the Lifestream give an explanation for a LOT of things about how Aerith acts in and around people – but especially with regard to Cloud. She's got a sense of empathy towards others, but we know that she also can hear the Planet talking, she can communicate with the flowers, and the Whispers are hiding things from her that might make her change her course of action. This is why she instantly knows that Sephiroth is wrong, and she understands that Jenova is the real threat and not just Shinra & the mako reactors – she communicates with the Planet. This also all mirrors in her manifesting healing and physically protecting with her Limit Breaks, because she's doing that through using the actual energy of the Planet itself.
This means that rather than directly knowing the future in the game, I think that all of this is what it's like from Aerith just talking to the Planet in the Lifestream, and learning things from the minds of others in how she reaches out to them. However, we also have the Whispers being just as powerful in clouding those things from her full awareness in order to keep Desiny going as intended. This is why she's so terrified of them, because unlike the other spirits, they're hiding things from her. That makes them scary, but also something about them is weirdly comforting, because they're giving her a purpose that she knows matters even if because they're hiding it from her, she's afraid of what it means.
This is also why when she grabs Cloud, he's given the ability to see these entities suddenly. The second that happens, Sephiroth starts using Cloud's ability to see them to jump into his mind and turn him against them. Then from Cloud, that ability starts passing along to the other important people he directly comes in contact with: Tifa, Avalanche, Rufus, etc. Sephiroth keeps hinting and prodding Cloud down a path against them. Just like Red XIII learned something from them, I think that Sephiroth is learning from them as well, trying to ensure that Cloud lives in order to control a way to escape his own destiny.
This is why as we're defeating the Whispers, we see fragments of Lifestream energy spilling out from Whisper Harbinger's core and into everyone's minds – showing the fragments of the future popping up in everyone's heads, because those bits of knowledge aren't able to be actively hidden from them any more. It's also why Sephiroth absorbs all of that energy to erase that from being a certainty. This also means that Aerith can't learn about her fate, because it's no longer certain. This is why she's connected to the side of the story involving the spiritual side of Sephiroth & the Whispers.
I think that this is also a factor in her connection to Project Genesis. We know that the G-Copies suffered from cellular degradation, and the "Unknown Entities" seem like that name is actually an intentional choice. They're Jenova experiments that are bathed in mako, and they're forming as broken entities. Recognizing something about that spiritual appearance as it were is why Aerith calls them "children" when referring to all of the "Unknown Entity" test subjects in Hojo's broken lab at the start of Chapter 17, which is the same thing that she does when she sees Red XIII even before touching him.
I think that Aerith's Cetra connection and the link to her growing up in the Shinra HQ is gonna connect to Hojo's "Failed Experiments" we see everywhere being connected to Ilfana – especially since he explicitly mentions that they dissected her body. Given that we don't just see them in The Drum in Sector 0, but that we also see them en-masse underneath the Sector 7 slums, I think it's reasonable to assume that these creatures are an extension of the work that was happening in Deepground, and that it's going to be linked to Project-G now.
That also gives us our insight into why there's a design connection between the Whispers & the Project G stuff. We always know that Hojo was trying to mess with the Cetra, and that he's trying to find the Promised Land as well. This seems like they're potentially following that thread a bit deeper, especially by putting Aerith where she grew up in the lab in Shinra HQ where we find all of those things. This and her connection to Zack gives a way of exploring the things with the project connected to Genesis that are relevant to her directly and aren't just story tangents & exposition for exposition's sake.
That also gives a better reason for Aerith to end up being the "Mother" that the Sephiroth Remnants are looking for, since the "children" she's encountered here are all Failed Experiments related to Unknown Entities who are seemingly related to Project-G in the same way the forms that the Whisper Harbinger avatars take before they become the Remnants do. It's the spiritual side of the corrupted Lifestream & Reunion, so that when it comes to purifying the Lifestream she's the one that they're seeking out, matching what we see in Advent Children.
This all further reinforces the mechanics by which I think that Aerith seemingly gives a sense that she knows the future but I don't think she does at all, and that that knowledge is specifically clouded from her, but that she knows a lot from speaking with the Planet. That's connected to why I also don't think that the game is ACTUALLY messing with alternate time travel stuff at all, which I talked about in post in the Chapter 18 thread that's relevant to that vis-a-vis the end of the game. I think that the ancient history of Jenova vs. the Cetra – but also Jenova being physically present, but mentally gone (like the mako-poisoned folk) is why Aerith's story is pretty much perfect for exploring all of this in Remake.
X
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
Aw, thanks!I think that's the most compelling and interesting theory I've read up until now, and I've read a lot! It really ties everything nicely, kudos X
That quite makes my day~X
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
Great and compelling theory. I definitely agree people are mistaking Aerith's greater Planetary knowledge in the Remake for "knowing the future". Though I would also add that while I agree Aerith in the Remake likely "knows" of Zack's death like the ending of Crisis Core implies, I also think she will be somewhat consciously in denial about it in the Remake too.So, I've been talking about how Aerth & Cloud have a parallel story here: Cloud's being physical and Aerith's being spiritual.
Let's talk about Aerith, the Cetra, & Jenova. Then let's pull that in to science around the Lifestream, Project-G, and The Whispers.
So in the OG, we know that Jenova tricked the Cetra by taking the appearances of their loved ones – but this might not just be limited to the physical shape-shifting transformation. What we see in the game could be giving us information that Jenova was actually stealing and masking its alien presence with REAL lifestream energy of the deceased, and altering its physical appearance to match. This means that SOLDIER having Jenova cells can naturally gain strength through being infused with Mako energy – because the Jenova Cells are pulling that processed form of Lifestream into their cells to just give raw power, rather than knowledge. This would also explain why, over time, those individuals' bodies start to degrade, and they start having mental stability issues, like we see in Roche. Not only are they being bathed in Shinra's LITERAL power source, we also know that this destroys the spiritual parts of the Lifestream, and trades the knowledge for energy because they don't return to the Planet.
In Cloud's case, he couldn't deal with that and his body didn't hold up – so he got Mako poisoning. That's also why he's not the one in charge of his revival. I think that there's a strong possibility that Zack's death happening outside Midgar – where spirits have a difficult time returning to the planet happening RIGHT as Cloud snaps back to reality is actually connected to Cloud's Jenova-Cell-filled-and-mako-poisoned body absorbing and mimicking part of Zack's spiritual Lifestream knowledge and energy, and then filling in the gaps in who Cloud presents himself as (which gives even more reasons to revisit Zack's fate shown in the end of the game). This also means that there are parts of the real Cloud still trapped in the flow of the Lifestream but not returned to the core of the Planet.
Cloud as we meet him is now a bit of a spiritual patchwork where he's not really just Cloud, but he's also not able to be actively aware of what the Jenova cells are doing to mask that with Zack's Lifestream-based knowledge/energy – hence why his consciousness glitches out when Aerith mention's Zack's name on the playground, or that first MP recognizes him and tries to say something to Cloud in Chapter 2.
When this comes to Aerith's story in particular, it's clear that she's already aware of Zack's death at the beginning of the game. The ending makes it pretty apparent that the moment in Crisis Core with him dying in the rain is exactly what's happening when they pass that hilltop and that's still used in the ending for Remake. Not only that, but given Jessie's Planetology-studied explanation that Biggs & Wedge tell Cloud about Mako poisoning with Jessie's father gives the context for where the "rest" of Cloud is mentally. That's why it's best to think of Cloud's psyche as fragments of Cloud's spirit being trapped outside of himself within the Lifestream flow of the Planet itself (but not yet returned in the core). This also means that they're stuck in a place that Aerith talks to all the time. Similar to how she knows about Zack's death, she's probably been aware of the "rest" of Cloud even before they meet up in Chapter 2.
This is why Aerith sounds to familiar when talking to Cloud when he first meets her. Not only does she recognize the bits of him that are Zack, but she also knows the bits of him that aren't there, so she's seeing Cloud both as CLOUD while also getting to feel the echo of the person she loved at the same time. She already knows that Cloud's having that struggle when she meets him, and it's why she takes a liking to him aside from just the familiarity of a random SOLDIER with the Buster Sword who shows up to help her. It's why she uses the line about lovers being reunited, and gives him the flower for free.
This is also why we get that fuzzy Lifestream green filter whenever Cloud is glitching out (like when Aerith mentions Zack's name), AND that this exact same filter is used when Aerith uses her Cetra abilities to speak into the spirits of other beings like Marlene & Red XIII. This is showing something happening not just on a mental level, but that the mental presence of anything in FFVII is also their life energy & spiritual identity. It's also why we get Red XIII learning things about the Whispers & understanding them (with the help of growing up with his gradfather being Bugenhagen), and also Marlene having that pseudo-psychic sense about Barret in the end, the way she does with Aerith's spirit in Advent Children. Aerith's seemingly passing the ability to catch glimpses of things through the Planet's knowledge to those two – sort of like how we see the ancient Cetra used to form Materia directly from the Lifestream. In Aerith's case, she's using that talent with the active lifestream energy & knowledge of living people by communicating to their spirits rather than doing something like how we typically think of mental telepathy or psychic empathy in fiction.
This is why when she communicates with Cloud in Chapter 14 during the "Dream" sequence, she's actually communicating with him in a similar way. It's why we can see the souls of people returning to the Lifestream in that sequence – which don't actually appear in the real world like we see with Barret & Tifa's scenes. Aerith tells Cloud that he can't fall in love with her, because in that moment she's ACTUALLY communicating just directly to the connected fragments of the spirit of Cloud, not just talking to his spiritual patchwork physical form with echoes of Zack.
This connection to the Planet and the Lifestream give an explanation for a LOT of things about how Aerith acts in and around people – but especially with regard to Cloud. She's got a sense of empathy towards others, but we know that she also can hear the Planet talking, she can communicate with the flowers, and the Whispers are hiding things from her that might make her change her course of action. This is why she instantly knows that Sephiroth is wrong, and she understands that Jenova is the real threat and not just Shinra & the mako reactors – she communicates with the Planet. This also all mirrors in her manifesting healing and physically protecting with her Limit Breaks, because she's doing that through using the actual energy of the Planet itself.
This means that rather than directly knowing the future in the game, I think that all of this is what it's like from Aerith just talking to the Planet in the Lifestream, and learning things from the minds of others in how she reaches out to them. However, we also have the Whispers being just as powerful in clouding those things from her full awareness in order to keep Desiny going as intended. This is why she's so terrified of them, because unlike the other spirits, they're hiding things from her. That makes them scary, but also something about them is weirdly comforting, because they're giving her a purpose that she knows matters even if because they're hiding it from her, she's afraid of what it means.
This is also why when she grabs Cloud, he's given the ability to see these entities suddenly. The second that happens, Sephiroth starts using Cloud's ability to see them to jump into his mind and turn him against them. Then from Cloud, that ability starts passing along to the other important people he directly comes in contact with: Tifa, Avalanche, Rufus, etc. Sephiroth keeps hinting and prodding Cloud down a path against them. Just like Red XIII learned something from them, I think that Sephiroth is learning from them as well, trying to ensure that Cloud lives in order to control a way to escape his own destiny.
This is why as we're defeating the Whispers, we see fragments of Lifestream energy spilling out from Whisper Harbinger's core and into everyone's minds – showing the fragments of the future popping up in everyone's heads, because those bits of knowledge aren't able to be actively hidden from them any more. It's also why Sephiroth absorbs all of that energy to erase that from being a certainty. This also means that Aerith can't learn about her fate, because it's no longer certain. This is why she's connected to the side of the story involving the spiritual side of Sephiroth & the Whispers.
I think that this is also a factor in her connection to Project Genesis. We know that the G-Copies suffered from cellular degradation, and the "Unknown Entities" seem like that name is actually an intentional choice. They're Jenova experiments that are bathed in mako, and they're forming as broken entities. Recognizing something about that spiritual appearance as it were is why Aerith calls them "children" when referring to all of the "Unknown Entity" test subjects in Hojo's broken lab at the start of Chapter 17, which is the same thing that she does when she sees Red XIII even before touching him.
I think that Aerith's Cetra connection and the link to her growing up in the Shinra HQ is gonna connect to Hojo's "Failed Experiments" we see everywhere being connected to Ilfana – especially since he explicitly mentions that they dissected her body. Given that we don't just see them in The Drum in Sector 0, but that we also see them en-masse underneath the Sector 7 slums, I think it's reasonable to assume that these creatures are an extension of the work that was happening in Deepground, and that it's going to be linked to Project-G now.
That also gives us our insight into why there's a design connection between the Whispers & the Project G stuff. We always know that Hojo was trying to mess with the Cetra, and that he's trying to find the Promised Land as well. This seems like they're potentially following that thread a bit deeper, especially by putting Aerith where she grew up in the lab in Shinra HQ where we find all of those things. This and her connection to Zack gives a way of exploring the things with the project connected to Genesis that are relevant to her directly and aren't just story tangents & exposition for exposition's sake.
That also gives a better reason for Aerith to end up being the "Mother" that the Sephiroth Remnants are looking for, since the "children" she's encountered here are all Failed Experiments related to Unknown Entities who are seemingly related to Project-G in the same way the forms that the Whisper Harbinger avatars take before they become the Remnants do. It's the spiritual side of the corrupted Lifestream & Reunion, so that when it comes to purifying the Lifestream she's the one that they're seeking out, matching what we see in Advent Children.
This all further reinforces the mechanics by which I think that Aerith seemingly gives a sense that she knows the future but I don't think she does at all, and that that knowledge is specifically clouded from her, but that she knows a lot from speaking with the Planet. That's connected to why I also don't think that the game is ACTUALLY messing with alternate time travel stuff at all, which I talked about in post in the Chapter 18 thread that's relevant to that vis-a-vis the end of the game. I think that the ancient history of Jenova vs. the Cetra – but also Jenova being physically present, but mentally gone (like the mako-poisoned folk) is why Aerith's story is pretty much perfect for exploring all of this in Remake.
X
Also they way you describe the Planet and Jenova reminds me a lot of the Mushi from MushiShi (in a good way).
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The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
There's a lot in this most recent post where I think you're onto something, X, and a lot more I plainly disagree with, but the main thing I want to respond to is this:
Do remember that the original breed of SOLDIER just got mako infusion a la the Deepground SOLDIERs. And also that the DG SOLDIERs became dependent on receiving a steady current of mako to stay alive.
Perhaps similarly, Grimoire Valentine's body discorporated after being infected with stagnant mako.
That being said, you may be onto something here if Jenova-type SOLDIERs integrated mako more efficiently than DG SOLDIERs -- which does seem to be the case. The average DG SOLDIER is certainly an augmented human, but they still seem to rely on firearms far more than the truly superhuman Jenova-type SOLDIERs. Even 3rd Class Jenova-types seem to be more enhanced than the average DG SOLDIER.
Also, we know the Tsviets had their genes manipulated to mimic Genesis's, which we've long suspected explains the perfect synthesis their bodies achieved with their respective experimental reagents (e.g. clean mako with Weiss, stagnant mako with Nero, etc.).
Do remember that the original breed of SOLDIER just got mako infusion a la the Deepground SOLDIERs. And also that the DG SOLDIERs became dependent on receiving a steady current of mako to stay alive.
Perhaps similarly, Grimoire Valentine's body discorporated after being infected with stagnant mako.
That being said, you may be onto something here if Jenova-type SOLDIERs integrated mako more efficiently than DG SOLDIERs -- which does seem to be the case. The average DG SOLDIER is certainly an augmented human, but they still seem to rely on firearms far more than the truly superhuman Jenova-type SOLDIERs. Even 3rd Class Jenova-types seem to be more enhanced than the average DG SOLDIER.
Also, we know the Tsviets had their genes manipulated to mimic Genesis's, which we've long suspected explains the perfect synthesis their bodies achieved with their respective experimental reagents (e.g. clean mako with Weiss, stagnant mako with Nero, etc.).
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
So, there's something that I needed to mention about the flower subtext as it connects to the Whisper entities. The base forms of the Whispers already show up where there's a protected Enigmatic Whisper who becomes vulnerable after you defeat the other Whispers (mirroring what happens later with Whisper Harbinger), but there's more to it than that vis-a-vis the Aerith & Cloud storyline connection.
Even back in the very first trailer for Remake, we had the symbolism of these flowers in the gutter of Midgar, laying alongside a puddle of water, with Sephiroth's feather slowly descending to land in the water them. If it look at this water being used in the way that Advent Children does, as a transmission medium for both Kadaj's corruption of the physical lifestream in people, but also as the vector for the the purification of the Lifestream and healing, this metaphor about the metaphysical symbolism of Aerith vs. Sephiroth is laid out in the very earliest stages of a trailer that's talking about being reunited with familiar characters, and using the term "reunion" to mean a multitude of things at once.
Then when it comes to the initial opening sequence of the game itself, we get the brand new hints of Sephiroth's influence in the opening musically. We move to a new cut of the wilting flower on the Plate playground, transitioning into the Classic opening with Aerith listening to the Planet from a crack in the alleyway pipes, while holding a basket of these flowers. This time is is interrupted by more of Sephiroth's haunting theme, causing her to run out of the alleyway and one of her flowers to fall out of her reach and gets damaged, but she still picks it up and cradles it, looking up as the opening transitions to Cloud on the train. This all being a pretty solid metaphor for the metaphyiscal circumstances under which she encounters Cloud, and everything else going on to link the two of their destinies together.
Then we see where the three Whispers first show up in the game, which connects her & Cloud and draws them together.
Aerith mentions the flower being about lost lovers being reunited & gives it to him for free. The Zack recognition parallels and things are here, but it's more than just that. I like the idea that Aerith is actually aware of Cloud's consciousness floating around in the Lifestream as something that she learned from Zack when he died. That also being why when she's listening to the Planet now, Sephiroth is starting to find her, and he follows up to haunt Cloud after their encounter. Then when we follow the flower, when Tifa sees it, Cloud gives it to her.
At the start of Chapter 8, you have Cloud's little mental conversation with his disconnected self, but it's started out by him surrounded by three Whisper entities (the same number we see with Aerith, and also the same number who Whisper Harbinger manifests in Destiny's Crossroads). In this scene Cloud is floating along, and there are two of him. We know that there's the amalgamate Cloud in the real world, and the Mako Poisoning theory I've mentioned earlier would be the other fragments of Cloud's memory still trapped in the Lifestream, just flowing through the planet itself.
What's notable here is that the darkness he's in with the Whispers turns to light and flower petals – while he's in the Church, sitting in a bed of the reunion flowers – where eventually in Advent Children, we also get the wellspring source lifestream-purifying water (Aerith mentions that there's a sort of power there) & Cloud's emotional resolution. This is why the scraped knees reference would make sense coming from Lifestream Cloud, since this is something that's actually his own consciousness in the Lifestream remembers & is talking to his current unconscious physical self. However, it goes dark before he can figure out who's talking to him and Sephiroth takes over whispering to him before he wakes up – again interrupting the real Cloud with the Cloud that Sephiroth is manipulating as he fades back to consciousness.
After Aerith & Cloud meet up with this guy who are sick (#2) and Reunion is mentioned by Sephiroth, you can go back to her house, and then her & Cloud have the scene where she's talking to these flowers in particular, and teaches Cloud about talking to flowers. "It won't be much longer now. The flowers, they... they have something important to tell us. Something they... need to share with us. At least, that's the feeling I get. But... before they can... there's a final step that has to be taken. Otherwise... we won't hear them." "Maybe I should just give up. Honestly, it's what I do best." And then when she mentions that today's special & Cloud asks why, she just looks at him, laughs and goes to back to the house, where Cloud tries talking to her about the flowers.
After that, when Aerith rescues Marlene, she mentions that Aerith smells like their flower, and Aerith says that she hopes Marlene remembers it.
Then if you get Tifa's resolution in Chapter 14, she mentions that she knows that the flower came from Aerith, and that it symbolizes reunion (note that in Japanese this is 再会 "reunion" not the Jenova type リユニオン "Reunion"), but the thematic parallels are important to remember since they're intertwining being reunited, reunion, and Reunion.
Then, in Chapter 17 when they're in Aerith's old room in Hojo's lab, when Barret goes about trying to change plans, the Whispers show up, we learn about what they are from Red XIII. We also find out from Aerith and we learn that every time they touch her, she's losing some part of herself. Then he says, " 'Follow them. The yellow flowers.' " which is presented as being a QUOTE from someone else, but we don't know who. and then we cut to the image of her holding a flower, the petals dropping, and then them rising back up as Whispers.
It's worth noting that she gave Cloud the flower free of charge. This seems to be from her recognizing the semi-return of pieces of Zack's personality, but also potentially the fragments of Lifestream-trapped Cloud – both of who she has a possibility of knowing about while communing with the Planet. The other part of note is that it's TIfa who pulls her out and helps her. If we look back, it's Cloud's presence who drew Tifa into this shared destiny – which is also a big part of looking back at how Tifa is the only other character explicitly directly linked into the path with Cloud, Aerith, & Sephiroth's destinies in the Sefirot symbolism – and they've definitely made an extra effort to ensure that we get a lot of time for all three of them to develop their relationships individually, and together.
The subtext that's created all around these flowers is all about symbolism of reunion, the Whispers, Sephiroth Clones, Reunion, the creation of the corrupted Lifestream, and the eventual source of the Lifestream purification wellspring are all established throughout Remake with a lot of extra emphases and juxtaposition of light & dark mixing themes of the physical with the intersection of the spiritual. On top of Aerith as the last living Cetra also being the games thematic representation around renewing the life of the Planet itself (helping things grow where the mako reactors suck the life out of everything), she's connected to the paths of Shinra's science experiments as well, but a bit more indirectly than even Red XIII. There are a lot more pieces to it than just the Shinra science stuff that's been symbolically established through how the game attributes meaning to particular elements, and I think that we're gonna keep seeing more of that.
Additionally, I'm not sure if the "Follow the yellow flowers." is something where the updates to Chapter 17 & 18 that I'm expecting might clarify that, or if it's going to be used as a connection for how the trajectory of the next game will be about following and finding the other Sephiroth Clones, and build up more explicit relationships around Reunion than the little bits and pieces that we have so far, while also leaning into the Shinra science aspects of it as we meet up with Vincent & explore Nibelheim.
I also want to note that the the Whisper Harbinger's purple energy that's around Sephiroth when he absorbs it does seem to parallel the look of Chaos as is was used it in Dirge of Cerberus. While I don't expect all of that stuff to be laid out exactly the same, I do think that this is a likely vector for exploring Shinra science's connection to the Planet in a way where the spiritual and physical barrier that the Lifestream floats between is likely to get some clarification. If it's anything like we got with the Ghosts in the train graveyard, I think that leaning in to Vincent's sort of vampiric qualities and his ability to absorb energy in his limit breaks and transform his own body. I assume that this is where we'll start to learn more about the transformative aspects of how Jenova's cells worked that I was talking about previously, and potentially link it to something else as well.
As a last thing on that note – Vincent's first Limit Break is Galian Beast, which has him taking a mutant bipedal form of one of the Final Fantasy Behemoths. The only place we've seen a Behemoth is Type-0 one in the underground Labratory, connected to all of the new Project-G-related things. It's definitely not a correlation at this point, but it's likely worth trying to think forward to what we could be seeing when Vincent's introduced and how they're gonna link him up with the little alterations that they've made in Remake. Especially if you want to end the main game story with correcting Cloud's emotional journey with the Advent Children events, and then treat cleaning up everything related to DoC as a part of an EX Dungeon and Secret Ending to the final game to wrap up all of the lingering Shinra & Project-G stuff that's already connected to Vincent – this is a really good way to go about all of that.
Either way, I wanted to establish the symbolism around some of the other themes that link back to the Aerith & Cloud aspects of the physical and metaphysical sides of the threat that Sephiroth represents to the Planet as well as how concepts linking both of them to following after the call around Reunion gets set up here, and poke a little bit at where we might see it anchoring more connections to look for in the future.
X
Even back in the very first trailer for Remake, we had the symbolism of these flowers in the gutter of Midgar, laying alongside a puddle of water, with Sephiroth's feather slowly descending to land in the water them. If it look at this water being used in the way that Advent Children does, as a transmission medium for both Kadaj's corruption of the physical lifestream in people, but also as the vector for the the purification of the Lifestream and healing, this metaphor about the metaphysical symbolism of Aerith vs. Sephiroth is laid out in the very earliest stages of a trailer that's talking about being reunited with familiar characters, and using the term "reunion" to mean a multitude of things at once.
Then when it comes to the initial opening sequence of the game itself, we get the brand new hints of Sephiroth's influence in the opening musically. We move to a new cut of the wilting flower on the Plate playground, transitioning into the Classic opening with Aerith listening to the Planet from a crack in the alleyway pipes, while holding a basket of these flowers. This time is is interrupted by more of Sephiroth's haunting theme, causing her to run out of the alleyway and one of her flowers to fall out of her reach and gets damaged, but she still picks it up and cradles it, looking up as the opening transitions to Cloud on the train. This all being a pretty solid metaphor for the metaphyiscal circumstances under which she encounters Cloud, and everything else going on to link the two of their destinies together.
Then we see where the three Whispers first show up in the game, which connects her & Cloud and draws them together.
Aerith mentions the flower being about lost lovers being reunited & gives it to him for free. The Zack recognition parallels and things are here, but it's more than just that. I like the idea that Aerith is actually aware of Cloud's consciousness floating around in the Lifestream as something that she learned from Zack when he died. That also being why when she's listening to the Planet now, Sephiroth is starting to find her, and he follows up to haunt Cloud after their encounter. Then when we follow the flower, when Tifa sees it, Cloud gives it to her.
At the start of Chapter 8, you have Cloud's little mental conversation with his disconnected self, but it's started out by him surrounded by three Whisper entities (the same number we see with Aerith, and also the same number who Whisper Harbinger manifests in Destiny's Crossroads). In this scene Cloud is floating along, and there are two of him. We know that there's the amalgamate Cloud in the real world, and the Mako Poisoning theory I've mentioned earlier would be the other fragments of Cloud's memory still trapped in the Lifestream, just flowing through the planet itself.
What's notable here is that the darkness he's in with the Whispers turns to light and flower petals – while he's in the Church, sitting in a bed of the reunion flowers – where eventually in Advent Children, we also get the wellspring source lifestream-purifying water (Aerith mentions that there's a sort of power there) & Cloud's emotional resolution. This is why the scraped knees reference would make sense coming from Lifestream Cloud, since this is something that's actually his own consciousness in the Lifestream remembers & is talking to his current unconscious physical self. However, it goes dark before he can figure out who's talking to him and Sephiroth takes over whispering to him before he wakes up – again interrupting the real Cloud with the Cloud that Sephiroth is manipulating as he fades back to consciousness.
After Aerith & Cloud meet up with this guy who are sick (#2) and Reunion is mentioned by Sephiroth, you can go back to her house, and then her & Cloud have the scene where she's talking to these flowers in particular, and teaches Cloud about talking to flowers. "It won't be much longer now. The flowers, they... they have something important to tell us. Something they... need to share with us. At least, that's the feeling I get. But... before they can... there's a final step that has to be taken. Otherwise... we won't hear them." "Maybe I should just give up. Honestly, it's what I do best." And then when she mentions that today's special & Cloud asks why, she just looks at him, laughs and goes to back to the house, where Cloud tries talking to her about the flowers.
After that, when Aerith rescues Marlene, she mentions that Aerith smells like their flower, and Aerith says that she hopes Marlene remembers it.
Then if you get Tifa's resolution in Chapter 14, she mentions that she knows that the flower came from Aerith, and that it symbolizes reunion (note that in Japanese this is 再会 "reunion" not the Jenova type リユニオン "Reunion"), but the thematic parallels are important to remember since they're intertwining being reunited, reunion, and Reunion.
Then, in Chapter 17 when they're in Aerith's old room in Hojo's lab, when Barret goes about trying to change plans, the Whispers show up, we learn about what they are from Red XIII. We also find out from Aerith and we learn that every time they touch her, she's losing some part of herself. Then he says, " 'Follow them. The yellow flowers.' " which is presented as being a QUOTE from someone else, but we don't know who. and then we cut to the image of her holding a flower, the petals dropping, and then them rising back up as Whispers.
It's worth noting that she gave Cloud the flower free of charge. This seems to be from her recognizing the semi-return of pieces of Zack's personality, but also potentially the fragments of Lifestream-trapped Cloud – both of who she has a possibility of knowing about while communing with the Planet. The other part of note is that it's TIfa who pulls her out and helps her. If we look back, it's Cloud's presence who drew Tifa into this shared destiny – which is also a big part of looking back at how Tifa is the only other character explicitly directly linked into the path with Cloud, Aerith, & Sephiroth's destinies in the Sefirot symbolism – and they've definitely made an extra effort to ensure that we get a lot of time for all three of them to develop their relationships individually, and together.
The subtext that's created all around these flowers is all about symbolism of reunion, the Whispers, Sephiroth Clones, Reunion, the creation of the corrupted Lifestream, and the eventual source of the Lifestream purification wellspring are all established throughout Remake with a lot of extra emphases and juxtaposition of light & dark mixing themes of the physical with the intersection of the spiritual. On top of Aerith as the last living Cetra also being the games thematic representation around renewing the life of the Planet itself (helping things grow where the mako reactors suck the life out of everything), she's connected to the paths of Shinra's science experiments as well, but a bit more indirectly than even Red XIII. There are a lot more pieces to it than just the Shinra science stuff that's been symbolically established through how the game attributes meaning to particular elements, and I think that we're gonna keep seeing more of that.
Additionally, I'm not sure if the "Follow the yellow flowers." is something where the updates to Chapter 17 & 18 that I'm expecting might clarify that, or if it's going to be used as a connection for how the trajectory of the next game will be about following and finding the other Sephiroth Clones, and build up more explicit relationships around Reunion than the little bits and pieces that we have so far, while also leaning into the Shinra science aspects of it as we meet up with Vincent & explore Nibelheim.
I also want to note that the the Whisper Harbinger's purple energy that's around Sephiroth when he absorbs it does seem to parallel the look of Chaos as is was used it in Dirge of Cerberus. While I don't expect all of that stuff to be laid out exactly the same, I do think that this is a likely vector for exploring Shinra science's connection to the Planet in a way where the spiritual and physical barrier that the Lifestream floats between is likely to get some clarification. If it's anything like we got with the Ghosts in the train graveyard, I think that leaning in to Vincent's sort of vampiric qualities and his ability to absorb energy in his limit breaks and transform his own body. I assume that this is where we'll start to learn more about the transformative aspects of how Jenova's cells worked that I was talking about previously, and potentially link it to something else as well.
As a last thing on that note – Vincent's first Limit Break is Galian Beast, which has him taking a mutant bipedal form of one of the Final Fantasy Behemoths. The only place we've seen a Behemoth is Type-0 one in the underground Labratory, connected to all of the new Project-G-related things. It's definitely not a correlation at this point, but it's likely worth trying to think forward to what we could be seeing when Vincent's introduced and how they're gonna link him up with the little alterations that they've made in Remake. Especially if you want to end the main game story with correcting Cloud's emotional journey with the Advent Children events, and then treat cleaning up everything related to DoC as a part of an EX Dungeon and Secret Ending to the final game to wrap up all of the lingering Shinra & Project-G stuff that's already connected to Vincent – this is a really good way to go about all of that.
Either way, I wanted to establish the symbolism around some of the other themes that link back to the Aerith & Cloud aspects of the physical and metaphysical sides of the threat that Sephiroth represents to the Planet as well as how concepts linking both of them to following after the call around Reunion gets set up here, and poke a little bit at where we might see it anchoring more connections to look for in the future.
X
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
So, I wanted to poke around at some mechanics of things in the game with the Whispers & Remnants, as well as Aerith & Sephiroth being in Cloud's mind, since I started thinking about it while talking about not feeling that Aerith is actually precognitive at all in another thread.
The existing theory to jump off is Mako-Poisoned Cloud means that parts of his spirit have been pulled out of his physical body, and are trapped in the flow of the Lifestream within the Planet. We know that this leaves patients in a coma, and we know that it's possible, but not typical for them to come out of this, since it would involve their spirit finding its way back to the physical body (which in Cloud's case we also know eventually happens after he falls into the Lifestream and Tifa can help walk through his head and sort out the bits of real Cloud, so that tracks). The other thing here is that his Jenova Cells fill in the gaps to mask his personality when Zack dies, since Jenova was known for taking and copying the form of the deceased, which is likely a physical transformation and metaphysical copy and assimilation of knowledge from the Lifestream.
So, this VERY SPECIFIC situation means that when Cloud's got a fully functional body, and a partially displaced spirit, both of which are "Cloud" like we see when he lands in the Church. The Jenova connection itself gives Sephiroth that biological Reunion connection – but we also know that Sephiroth's body is just sitting there up in the Northern Crater with the Lifestream pouring into him. If pieces of Cloud's spirit are in that flow, but also still linked to his body, this provides Sephiroth a very clear mechanism to be able to reach into Cloud's mind in a sort of active hallucination. This also matches basically what Aerith is doing when she's appearing in Cloud's mind in Chapter 14. It also explains why Aerith talking to people like Marlene & Red XIII has this same sort of Lifestream-green glitch, but she also needs physical contact to initiate it – in order to link their spirits to just talk outside of their physical selves and just mind-to-mind.
This is how Cloud is able to sense Aerith calling out to him for help (which he states regardless of which Chapter 14 character's cutscene you get), even though she is incredibly far away from him. Since the Cetra's ability to speak with departed physical spirits is and has always been their core power, she can still do this with Cloud's displaced spirit as a way to link herself up with the living Cloud. That also explains why she is so very specific about him not falling in love with her. If she knows anything about the history of the research, she knows about Jenova and the history of the Cetra with her, and she has enough information to be able to figure out what's happening with Cloud being literally this exact same thing, but in this case, everyone is also half human: Sephiroth is half-Jenova, Aerith is half-Cetra, and Cloud is half-her-resurrected-lover. That's why she tells Cloud not to fall in love with her and that it's not real. She knows about Jenova, she knows the history of how it manipulated the Cetra, and she's got all of the context clues to make sense of exactly what Cloud is and what's going on with him.
Then we get to the Whispers: Aerith is afraid of them but is hesitant to destroy them, Sephiroth is intrigued by them and wants to use them to his own benefit, Cloud is the one stuck in the middle where Sephiroth is able to start slipping little glimpses of things into his brain, when he'd normally be glitching into a memory (like he does with recalling Tifa in the first reactor). In being up in the Lifestream, now Sephiroth is glitching glimpses of Destiny into Cloud's head since if he can feed little pieces and confrontation around that, he can potentially sidestep of of the fate that he's aware of.
We know that the Sephiroth-Copies are capable of physical transformation (#49 appearing as Jenova Dreamweaver & #2 appearing as Sephiroth), but I think that once they die, their forms are ALSO still being copied – hence why the Whispers look like the original Cloaked Figures. This is also what I'm assuming is able to make the Corrupted Lifestream – the Jenova Cells in them having their spirits copy that form.
As a goal, this means that Sephiroth taking out the Whisper Harbinger accomplishes several things. First, it's literally destroying the arbiters who act under the Will of the Planet, thus weakening the ability for the Planet to defend and control itself. Second, with that out of the way, he doesn't have to just give in to his own Destiny. Additionally, with Corrupted Lifestream & Jenova's ability to copy the spiritual energy of the deceased, that means that he's able to create copies based off of the spiritual entities of Rubrum, Viridi, & Croceo. Even more than the standard Whispers, those three are pseudo physical entities that are copied from Harbinger. This means that after it's absorbed, Sephiroth Harbinger's three copies will be Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – but assumedly they'd still be confined to manifesting within the Singularity. Because they're entities from a future timeline, that exist in a space outside of time, they live within a realm where past & future and all space and time is pre-established.
One might say, that everything that's ever happened and ever will is all just – a memory.
So, if Sephiroth's still stuck in the Singularity, his last echo fading away at the Edge of Creation – where Cloud destroyed his spiritual/metaphyiscal form in the original game, this means that he's trying to find one last way to reach out, and survive his own Destined defeat. If he had access to the Corrupted Lifestream spirit of an entity he could link to in the real world (almost certainly Roche), he could try to manifest himself through that link. This is essentially the same mechanism that was able to manifest a mirror of Zack's spirit in Cloud, so it would make sense for him to try to start the same way with another SOLDIER who we know is suffering mental and cellular degradation.
As a SOLDIER like Roche would lack cellular fortitude and physical transformation properties he needs, those beings couldn't provide an adequate form for him to take. However, he could potentially use their Corrupted Lifestream to fabricate a copy of them along with the Remnants of himself within the Physical World. This would work since Rubrum, Viridi, & Croceo never had cellular physical bodies, but their ethereal forms did have an extreme natural durability. This is also why is the Remnants have to hunt down Jenova's head and Kadaj merges it into himself. Also, it's worth noting that the purifying Lifestream rain is going to easily discorporate them – but the game currently suggests that that would potentially have a feedback effect to injuring Sephiroth's Harbinger form in the Singularity, but I don't think that the intended boss mechanics actually deal damage directly to Harbinger, but just allow for an opening to attack his existing form.
So, the tl;dr of all of this is: Sephiroth had absorbed the Whisper Harbinger's ability to make a triplicate clone entity of himself, but they were likely limited to being trapped in the Singularity. Sephiroth then could use Jenova's abilities with his Corrupted Lifestream energy from Roche (and possible other SOLDIER) to make a clone of that triplicate Whisper entity that existed in the real world; as Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – once his corruption was strong enough. Then when Kadaj absorbed Jenova's head, Sephiroth could use Jenova's original cells to physically transform the Corrupted Lifestream Whisper Copy of himself, and then transform it into a 1:1 copy of his original body & projected spirit. So long as its was able to hold together, Sephiroth could reach out and not be relegated to existing within the Singularity as only a memory of events that have already passed, who can no longer exit the Physical realm. Once he's defeated, Jenova's cells are lost, and then once the Corrupted Lifestream is purified, he's lost the core mechanism to be able to control or make echoes of anything outside of the Singularity.
Also, I am curious if the initial accretion of Whispers aggregated into the Whisper Harbinger as a result of Genesis Avatar attempting to use the Planet as his guardian, which would explain that resemblance that they seem to have to him. I figure the next time I go diving into all this stuff, it's probably worth looking more closely at the whole "Three Friends and the Goddess" stuff, since that seems to be some variant of what might be used to mythologically justify the three individual forms of the Whisper Harbinger – plus the Goddess Statue has the six Seraph wings around its base that we see with Sephiroth's original final form, and I assume that that connection's gonna be kept. It's been ages since I've gone digging back through Crisis Core Loveless lore and Banora whatnot, though.
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The existing theory to jump off is Mako-Poisoned Cloud means that parts of his spirit have been pulled out of his physical body, and are trapped in the flow of the Lifestream within the Planet. We know that this leaves patients in a coma, and we know that it's possible, but not typical for them to come out of this, since it would involve their spirit finding its way back to the physical body (which in Cloud's case we also know eventually happens after he falls into the Lifestream and Tifa can help walk through his head and sort out the bits of real Cloud, so that tracks). The other thing here is that his Jenova Cells fill in the gaps to mask his personality when Zack dies, since Jenova was known for taking and copying the form of the deceased, which is likely a physical transformation and metaphysical copy and assimilation of knowledge from the Lifestream.
So, this VERY SPECIFIC situation means that when Cloud's got a fully functional body, and a partially displaced spirit, both of which are "Cloud" like we see when he lands in the Church. The Jenova connection itself gives Sephiroth that biological Reunion connection – but we also know that Sephiroth's body is just sitting there up in the Northern Crater with the Lifestream pouring into him. If pieces of Cloud's spirit are in that flow, but also still linked to his body, this provides Sephiroth a very clear mechanism to be able to reach into Cloud's mind in a sort of active hallucination. This also matches basically what Aerith is doing when she's appearing in Cloud's mind in Chapter 14. It also explains why Aerith talking to people like Marlene & Red XIII has this same sort of Lifestream-green glitch, but she also needs physical contact to initiate it – in order to link their spirits to just talk outside of their physical selves and just mind-to-mind.
This is how Cloud is able to sense Aerith calling out to him for help (which he states regardless of which Chapter 14 character's cutscene you get), even though she is incredibly far away from him. Since the Cetra's ability to speak with departed physical spirits is and has always been their core power, she can still do this with Cloud's displaced spirit as a way to link herself up with the living Cloud. That also explains why she is so very specific about him not falling in love with her. If she knows anything about the history of the research, she knows about Jenova and the history of the Cetra with her, and she has enough information to be able to figure out what's happening with Cloud being literally this exact same thing, but in this case, everyone is also half human: Sephiroth is half-Jenova, Aerith is half-Cetra, and Cloud is half-her-resurrected-lover. That's why she tells Cloud not to fall in love with her and that it's not real. She knows about Jenova, she knows the history of how it manipulated the Cetra, and she's got all of the context clues to make sense of exactly what Cloud is and what's going on with him.
Then we get to the Whispers: Aerith is afraid of them but is hesitant to destroy them, Sephiroth is intrigued by them and wants to use them to his own benefit, Cloud is the one stuck in the middle where Sephiroth is able to start slipping little glimpses of things into his brain, when he'd normally be glitching into a memory (like he does with recalling Tifa in the first reactor). In being up in the Lifestream, now Sephiroth is glitching glimpses of Destiny into Cloud's head since if he can feed little pieces and confrontation around that, he can potentially sidestep of of the fate that he's aware of.
We know that the Sephiroth-Copies are capable of physical transformation (#49 appearing as Jenova Dreamweaver & #2 appearing as Sephiroth), but I think that once they die, their forms are ALSO still being copied – hence why the Whispers look like the original Cloaked Figures. This is also what I'm assuming is able to make the Corrupted Lifestream – the Jenova Cells in them having their spirits copy that form.
As a goal, this means that Sephiroth taking out the Whisper Harbinger accomplishes several things. First, it's literally destroying the arbiters who act under the Will of the Planet, thus weakening the ability for the Planet to defend and control itself. Second, with that out of the way, he doesn't have to just give in to his own Destiny. Additionally, with Corrupted Lifestream & Jenova's ability to copy the spiritual energy of the deceased, that means that he's able to create copies based off of the spiritual entities of Rubrum, Viridi, & Croceo. Even more than the standard Whispers, those three are pseudo physical entities that are copied from Harbinger. This means that after it's absorbed, Sephiroth Harbinger's three copies will be Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – but assumedly they'd still be confined to manifesting within the Singularity. Because they're entities from a future timeline, that exist in a space outside of time, they live within a realm where past & future and all space and time is pre-established.
One might say, that everything that's ever happened and ever will is all just – a memory.
So, if Sephiroth's still stuck in the Singularity, his last echo fading away at the Edge of Creation – where Cloud destroyed his spiritual/metaphyiscal form in the original game, this means that he's trying to find one last way to reach out, and survive his own Destined defeat. If he had access to the Corrupted Lifestream spirit of an entity he could link to in the real world (almost certainly Roche), he could try to manifest himself through that link. This is essentially the same mechanism that was able to manifest a mirror of Zack's spirit in Cloud, so it would make sense for him to try to start the same way with another SOLDIER who we know is suffering mental and cellular degradation.
As a SOLDIER like Roche would lack cellular fortitude and physical transformation properties he needs, those beings couldn't provide an adequate form for him to take. However, he could potentially use their Corrupted Lifestream to fabricate a copy of them along with the Remnants of himself within the Physical World. This would work since Rubrum, Viridi, & Croceo never had cellular physical bodies, but their ethereal forms did have an extreme natural durability. This is also why is the Remnants have to hunt down Jenova's head and Kadaj merges it into himself. Also, it's worth noting that the purifying Lifestream rain is going to easily discorporate them – but the game currently suggests that that would potentially have a feedback effect to injuring Sephiroth's Harbinger form in the Singularity, but I don't think that the intended boss mechanics actually deal damage directly to Harbinger, but just allow for an opening to attack his existing form.
So, the tl;dr of all of this is: Sephiroth had absorbed the Whisper Harbinger's ability to make a triplicate clone entity of himself, but they were likely limited to being trapped in the Singularity. Sephiroth then could use Jenova's abilities with his Corrupted Lifestream energy from Roche (and possible other SOLDIER) to make a clone of that triplicate Whisper entity that existed in the real world; as Kadaj, Yazoo, & Loz – once his corruption was strong enough. Then when Kadaj absorbed Jenova's head, Sephiroth could use Jenova's original cells to physically transform the Corrupted Lifestream Whisper Copy of himself, and then transform it into a 1:1 copy of his original body & projected spirit. So long as its was able to hold together, Sephiroth could reach out and not be relegated to existing within the Singularity as only a memory of events that have already passed, who can no longer exit the Physical realm. Once he's defeated, Jenova's cells are lost, and then once the Corrupted Lifestream is purified, he's lost the core mechanism to be able to control or make echoes of anything outside of the Singularity.
Also, I am curious if the initial accretion of Whispers aggregated into the Whisper Harbinger as a result of Genesis Avatar attempting to use the Planet as his guardian, which would explain that resemblance that they seem to have to him. I figure the next time I go diving into all this stuff, it's probably worth looking more closely at the whole "Three Friends and the Goddess" stuff, since that seems to be some variant of what might be used to mythologically justify the three individual forms of the Whisper Harbinger – plus the Goddess Statue has the six Seraph wings around its base that we see with Sephiroth's original final form, and I assume that that connection's gonna be kept. It's been ages since I've gone digging back through Crisis Core Loveless lore and Banora whatnot, though.
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The Twilight Mexican
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@X-SOLDIER
I think you're giving too much weight to Jessie's unsubstantiated theory about mako poisoning. It's really no more accurate than Rikku's theory about the Farplane in FFX.
Official descriptions of mako poisoning are that it's simply a coma-like state caused by the mind being overloaded with the knowledge (i.e. memories) in mako.
I think you're giving too much weight to Jessie's unsubstantiated theory about mako poisoning. It's really no more accurate than Rikku's theory about the Farplane in FFX.
Official descriptions of mako poisoning are that it's simply a coma-like state caused by the mind being overloaded with the knowledge (i.e. memories) in mako.
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Harbinger O Great Justice
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It's hard to say where it lands for sure. The reason that I give more weight to it right now is that it's one of the earliest points where we talk about anything that's directly related to Planetology in the game, and it's connected to Cloud breaking his typical "doesn't care" character attitude in order to inquire about something, directly followed by him expressing that he actually understands how they feel – when talking about Mako poisoning, which Cloud's actually dealt with.
The Planetology stuff all coming back in pretty significant scope later on with the things that Aerith, Barret, & Sephiroth are quoting around Chapters 17 & 18 in addition to Cloud's experience-based commentary on it coming during a moment where he's acting a little less like an Ex-SOLDIER facade makes me feel like the narrative reason to add that in makes more sense as a meaningful story point, rather than as something to contradict later on, especially because it helps to narratively justify the stakes for shutting down the reactors and removing that retroactively removes some of the weight around the necessity of their attacks in the opening of the game.
Just given the way that it's established in the game, thematically, emotionally, and narratively, it feels like a really odd thing to put that much weight on if you know you're gonna undo it later – especially given that Jessie dies directly as a result of the importance that she personally placed on that theory.
It absolutely could be just a bunch of Cosmo-Canyon-Hippie-Pseudo-Spiritual-Bullshit, but structure of the presentation within the narrative and the emotional connection that we have to those motivations as a central tragedy in the early part of the story is what makes me think otherwise.
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The Planetology stuff all coming back in pretty significant scope later on with the things that Aerith, Barret, & Sephiroth are quoting around Chapters 17 & 18 in addition to Cloud's experience-based commentary on it coming during a moment where he's acting a little less like an Ex-SOLDIER facade makes me feel like the narrative reason to add that in makes more sense as a meaningful story point, rather than as something to contradict later on, especially because it helps to narratively justify the stakes for shutting down the reactors and removing that retroactively removes some of the weight around the necessity of their attacks in the opening of the game.
Just given the way that it's established in the game, thematically, emotionally, and narratively, it feels like a really odd thing to put that much weight on if you know you're gonna undo it later – especially given that Jessie dies directly as a result of the importance that she personally placed on that theory.
It absolutely could be just a bunch of Cosmo-Canyon-Hippie-Pseudo-Spiritual-Bullshit, but structure of the presentation within the narrative and the emotional connection that we have to those motivations as a central tragedy in the early part of the story is what makes me think otherwise.
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Harbinger O Great Justice
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So, I figured that the next article I write ought to be about something other than game development & technology. I don't want to dive too far into any specific game stuff yet (since I still have a lot of the Ultimania translations to get through since I've been writing more than reading lately).
I was thinking about looking at the thematic parallels of what we know from the original game & the Compilation, and what that might mean about the design for our new "Reunion Sefirot" given the thematic parallels and adaptation of the religious elements from what we know of the story at a very elevated level rather than a granular one. I'm enjoying taking a more pulled-back look at things, and I think that focusing on specific things with lots of room for interpretation works well for articles. (Also, does it seem like calling that symbol the "Reunion Sefirot" is a good idea?)
I do eventually want to get into continuing and/or revisiting some of my previous, "The Potential Of" series at some point. Especially given this thread, I do want to dive into a follow-up on my original Shinra's non-SOLDIER experiments with Remake's Shock Troopers & stuff – but I think that given the lingering potential of getting some late chapter updates in the future – I want to maybe let those rest a little bit longer for now still.
Either way, just a heads up that I'll probably be bashing around a little bit in this thread to help iron out details that feel worth including and ones that don't, while maybe doing some more overly-detailed speculation, so that I feel better about covering the high-level details of stuff.
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To add in a little bit of extra goodness from this thread that's related to what I've been talking about before: the Remake Ultimania actually has individual data entries for the various OPT forms – despite the fact that the in-game "Enemy Intel" doesn't. This is another pretty decent sign that development work and whatnot right around that point in Chapter 16 gets wonky.
But yeah! Gonna be back in this thread for a bit, so if there're any bits and things that you think I should put eyes on, or things to consider, lemme know!
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I was thinking about looking at the thematic parallels of what we know from the original game & the Compilation, and what that might mean about the design for our new "Reunion Sefirot" given the thematic parallels and adaptation of the religious elements from what we know of the story at a very elevated level rather than a granular one. I'm enjoying taking a more pulled-back look at things, and I think that focusing on specific things with lots of room for interpretation works well for articles. (Also, does it seem like calling that symbol the "Reunion Sefirot" is a good idea?)
I do eventually want to get into continuing and/or revisiting some of my previous, "The Potential Of" series at some point. Especially given this thread, I do want to dive into a follow-up on my original Shinra's non-SOLDIER experiments with Remake's Shock Troopers & stuff – but I think that given the lingering potential of getting some late chapter updates in the future – I want to maybe let those rest a little bit longer for now still.
Either way, just a heads up that I'll probably be bashing around a little bit in this thread to help iron out details that feel worth including and ones that don't, while maybe doing some more overly-detailed speculation, so that I feel better about covering the high-level details of stuff.
AND
To add in a little bit of extra goodness from this thread that's related to what I've been talking about before: the Remake Ultimania actually has individual data entries for the various OPT forms – despite the fact that the in-game "Enemy Intel" doesn't. This is another pretty decent sign that development work and whatnot right around that point in Chapter 16 gets wonky.
But yeah! Gonna be back in this thread for a bit, so if there're any bits and things that you think I should put eyes on, or things to consider, lemme know!
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Harbinger O Great Justice
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Just sharing because the Kindle release means that we've got a significantly better look at this, and maybe I can get to seeing if there's any worthwhile information on these little dudes.
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Harbinger O Great Justice
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Taking a new approach to looking at this, so quote posting my previous breakdown of the individual Sefirot so that it's easier for me to reference visually. This time, I had a friend help me look over the symbol itself in more detail. I wanted to see if there might be another way to approach the lines, and since we know that this appears to have actually been painted onto their backs, it makes sense that the asset itself was actually done with a calligraphy brush to achieve that effect. Since it's more likely that it's going to follow the rules of Japanese Kanji stroke order, it would make sense to at least use that to follow the lines to try and get a better sense of how they're actually being drawn if they were just being painted over the top of a Sefirot.
I super-imposed the Sefirot over an image of the symbol as best I could and broke down all the lines as they flow. Stroke order also gives me a pretty easy way of addressing the connections without preemptively ascribing meaning to them, and then looking at the points they connect through in better detail. Not sure it it'll change my thinking on them, but gonna go through them now and then see where it ends up.
Also, it's worth mentioning that the Tetragrammaton for God in Hebrew YHWH being "Yaweh" but being mistranslated as "Jehovah" parallels Jenova being initially believed to be a Cetra who would act as their saviour and bring them to the Promised Land before learning that they didn't quite analyze the information properly & she was a horrifying Lovecraftian alien, thus matching elements to the story in The Thing.
Other parallels likely worth mentioning as a part of the religious introduction:
- Sefirot & Sephiroth
- Tif'eret & Tifa
- The Promised Land being used to represent a real place like with Zionism, but also as a metaphor of achieving salvation & liberation.
- Binah, Gevurah, Hod, (Malkhut)
- Binah, Da’at
- Da’at, Hokhmah
- (Keter), Da’at, Hokhmah*
- *Hokmah, Hesed, (?Netzah?) Yesod
- Binah, Tif’eret
- Da’at, Tif’eret, Yesod, Malkhut
- Understanding, Severity, Splendor, (Kingship)
- Understanding, Knowledge
- Knowledge, Wisdom
- (The Crown), Knowledge, Wisdom*
- *Wisdom, Kindness, (?Eternity?), Foundation
- Understanding, Beauty
- Knowledge, Beauty, Foundation, Kingship
- Definition of an idea & how to bring it into being/female; strength, discipline, & judgement; withdrawl, surrender, sincerity; (Exaltedness/Humility)
- Definition of an idea & how to bring it into being/female; Knowledge of unity of the Sefirot
- Knowledge of unity of the Sefirot; An idea before it has any limitations, a revelation or creation from nothingness/male
- Same as above, but seemingly also hinting at the removal/usurping/involvement of Keter the Crown as Jenova/God
- A revelation or creation from nothingness/male; Inspiring vision and grace; (?Perpetuity, victory, or endurance?), The task to accomplish, wholly remembering, coherent knowledge.
- Definition of an idea & how to bring it into being/female; (Tifa) Symmetry & balance between grace (Aerith) & discipline (Cloud)
- Knowledge of unity of the Sefirot; (Tifa) Symmetry & balance between grace (Aerith) & discipline (Cloud); The task to accomplish, wholly remembering, coherent knowledge; Exaltedness/Humility, the final revelation of the Divine
- This still matches enough to be the general basics of Project G into Zack's story
- This would likely be the creation of Sephiroth
- This is possibly related Hojo taking over and moving focus from Project G to Project S
- This is the decapitation of Jenova the Nibelheim incident (connects directly to the next one)
- This is Sephiroth at the Northern Crater soaking in the Lifestream & where he's at during Remake
- This is events of Project G and Zack's past connecting to Tifa being the one to connect Cloud's present to the past events with Zack's story and his & Tifa's connections
- This is the end-to-end story that we play through in FFVII
As a Reunion symbol Sephiroth having a symbol mapping out the story of FFVII seems to lend itself towards the idea that he's aware of that sort of "cosmic pattern" of what's come to pass, and is trying to find way to manipulate these events in particular – which all link up to elements in Zack's past.
It should also be noted that the one Sefirot that none of the paths actually seem to meet, and the one that Sephiroth in the Lifestream just barely misses is Netzach (Eternity) Perpetuity, victory, or endurance. That lines up given that he is seemingly defeated in the original game, and despite his obsessions, he never fully achieves this. That very much matches his primary interests & obsessions and interests insofar as we can interpret them in Remake. It also parallels the aspect that represents Zack's defeat on the opposite column.
Interestingly the point where things veer off in Stroke 5 on the right column is at the concept around KINDNESS just before Eternity. This matches Sephiroth in Remake in a really creepy and manipulative way in how he's trying to ensure that Cloud survives and cooperate with him to some degree. Also from Hesed, there is NO PATH that leads directly to Yesod. It has to go through Tif'eret or Netzah. I think that this is where Sephiroth's currently stuck in achieving Victory, because he's actually missing one of the 10 Sefirot that he needs to win – the long-suffering, strength, & endurance aligned with patience.
That matches up really well with what his motivations seem to be in Remake. It's possibly why deviating from the structure is the thing he can tell will break the story as it's currently outlined & end in his victory.
Additionally, the Left Column is Restriction whereas the Right Column is expansion – which makes things neat to consider from a past that's meant to be static and a future that's meant to be growing and changing standpoint.
Dunno. It's been a hell of a couple weeks in just about every way imaginable, and I'm properly exhausted. I wanted to pour out some ramblings and initial thoughts out here, so that I can let it sit for a bit, and then wander back to re-assess things, and pull them apart again from another direction when I have a bit more energy. I definitely want to write up a bit on this, but there's a lot more of poking and prodding at it until it's distilled down to the key concepts that I feel good enough about to want to focus on.
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Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
That's a fascinating analysis. I really am interested and amused at Nomura and Ferrari using a makeshift Sephirot symbol to label the robes of the Sephiroth Copies.
On another note, the FFVII Ultimania confirmed something very interesting. I haven't seen this listed or discussed anywhere.
The creatures in the Drum are not just experiments... They're experiments utilizing Jenova cells.
So let's think about it. The Unknown Entities, creatures stated to once be human until they received cellular transplants that made them into monsters.... I'm now almost certain those are fully degraded G-Type SOLDIERs.
Zenenes are stated to be created by Shinra's R&D via the synthesis of parts from other life-forms.. We now know what one of those parts are.
Then there's the Brain Pods, Varghidpolis, maybe even Sample H0512. They're probably specimens involving Jenova too.
I know some people theorized the creatures that were released upon Jenova's escape could have been connected to her. It turns out that wasn't so off base after all.
On another note, the FFVII Ultimania confirmed something very interesting. I haven't seen this listed or discussed anywhere.
The creatures in the Drum are not just experiments... They're experiments utilizing Jenova cells.
So let's think about it. The Unknown Entities, creatures stated to once be human until they received cellular transplants that made them into monsters.... I'm now almost certain those are fully degraded G-Type SOLDIERs.
Zenenes are stated to be created by Shinra's R&D via the synthesis of parts from other life-forms.. We now know what one of those parts are.
Then there's the Brain Pods, Varghidpolis, maybe even Sample H0512. They're probably specimens involving Jenova too.
I know some people theorized the creatures that were released upon Jenova's escape could have been connected to her. It turns out that wasn't so off base after all.
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Harbinger O Great Justice
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Oh man, Thanks for helping to keep these things coming even while my current focus is on other stuff! Given that the Drum is also the only location where we encounter the non-armored Shock Troopers with the skates, so that pretty much seals the idea that the Shock Troopers being a type of Jenova-based experiment as well holds up, and those are G-Types in the containers.
I really hope that we see the classic Makonoid S-Types in Nibelheim's containers later on. Definitely gonna do a follow-up on The Potential Of at some point once I wrap up this latest bit of analysis now – although I am really hoping for some expansion to The Drum to come in the future.
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I really hope that we see the classic Makonoid S-Types in Nibelheim's containers later on. Definitely gonna do a follow-up on The Potential Of at some point once I wrap up this latest bit of analysis now – although I am really hoping for some expansion to The Drum to come in the future.
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X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
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Terminology & Adaptation Concepts to think about covering during the course of it:
The NEW Sefirot
SEVEN brushstrokes (The Soundtrack uses Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Red, Light Green, & Black in that order. Might be worth poking around at to see if there are color associations that I can see from those)
STROKE I – Pillar of Severity (Left Column) – The element of Water.
Zack with the rain falling is very indicative water here. The concepts represent a lot of his and Angeal's legacy with Project G. This stroke's trajectory approaches trying to unite with Holy in reaching Aerith in Malkuth, but doesn't have a clear path to meet it. This is why the story passes on to Cloud & Aerith's journey, but we see it attempting to stretch to the end here anyway likely as Zack's reaching out in death as well (hence some funky times with the Arbiters of Fate to be covered later).
STROKE II – (Connection to Keter depicted as the connection to Da'at)
Connects Zack's story to Cloud's & Aerith's journey via Sephiroth/Jenova. You could consider this the "Living Legacy" passing of the torch from Zack to Cloud (and by extension to Aerith).
STROKE III – (Connection to Keter depicted as the connection to Da'at)
Connects Sephiroth to Cloud's & Aerith's journey directly as a result of all of the Shinra Science & whatnot. You could also see this as Cloud actively throwing Sephiroth onto a different path during the Nibelheim incident.
STROKE IV – Keter & Da'at Duality
This is all about Jenova & Sephiroth's duality of conscious & unconscious being the relationship of Keter & Da'at, with the crown missing representing the headless Jenova for making the symbolism of this Sefirot image match a headless, winged body, like Jenova's is shown in Remake.
STROKE V – Pillar of Mildness (Right Column) – The element of Fire.
Sephiroth in burning Nibelheim is all about fire. These are also interesting in how the stroke seems to curve an miss Netzah (Eternity) or persistence that will lead to victory. Additionally, it's where we cover Hesed & Sephiroth's really eerie focus on Kindness.
STROKE VI – Tifa
This is is re-connecting Zack's story into Cloud's & Aerith's again via Tifa at a later point in the narrative. It's also something that can be looked at potentially as where Cloud starts getting his head sorted out to do what has to be done, but also in how Tifa plays an integral role in being there for both Cloud & Aerith on the journey, since she knows about both Cloud's real history and also who Zack is.
STROKE VII – Pillar of Mercy (Center Column) – The element of Air.
Cloud & Aerith with the flower petals in the wind is an image we see a lot, especially with those petals being the invisible-wind-like Whispers in Remake. This path is basically the lead through to the end of the story in the original game.
In the end, the pattens only has 9 Sefirot used. with 9 paths (one shortcutting & 1 missed Sefirot)
Although Malkuth is seen as the "lowest" Sephiroth on the tree of life, it also contains within it the potential to reach the highest. This is exemplified in the Hermetic maxim 'As above so below', and "Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether" – This is essentially the battle for who wins the day with Holy – Sephiroth or Cloud & Co.
As a note with Sephiroth's kindness, it might be worth mentioning some inspirations for the game that likely impacted the character.
We know that My Bloody Valentine was an inspirations, and that David Bowie was another artist who's referenced in the game in the Northern Crater. In his song Station to Station there's a line specifically about the Sefirot in a spiritual sense, "Here are we one magical moment from Keter to Malkuth" His performance characters Ziggy Stardust & The White Duke, but especially his original alien character from The Man Who Fell to Earth contain some thematic references to Sephiroth that likely gave inspiration for various elements of the game at the time. It'd also be good to cover how they might shape the existing re-analysis of Sephiroth for who he is in this game.
Jenova's title as the "calamity that fell from the skies" and masquerading amongst the Cetra very closely mirrors a lot of things.
Then covering some stuff with the Alternate Timeline & what missing the Netzah element means insofar as his approach to things in Remake, and the concept that this is symbol sort of a map of how things went before.
Also, just gonna tease with the image that I made for the opening to talk about how these designs have been used in the past:
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- The Promised Land
- Jenova & Jehova (taking the place for Keter the Crown)
- Sephiroth & Sefirot (worth mentioning that Sephiroth is not a manifestation of the evil & inverse Qlifot, but rather a perversion of the holy Sefirot. Da'at represents all of the 10 Sefirot being united)
- Tifa & Tif'eret
- Lifestream – The sefirot are described as channels of Divine creative "life force or consciousness" (the Lifestream) through which "the unknowable Divine essence" (Holy) is revealed to mankind.
- The Divine Light is revealed or concealed through Da'at (how Sephiroth is blocking Holy at the end of the original game), but Holy can also occur in Malkhut (hence Aerith being the one to gift it and Cloud being the one to receive it)
The NEW Sefirot
SEVEN brushstrokes (The Soundtrack uses Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Red, Light Green, & Black in that order. Might be worth poking around at to see if there are color associations that I can see from those)
STROKE I – Pillar of Severity (Left Column) – The element of Water.
Zack with the rain falling is very indicative water here. The concepts represent a lot of his and Angeal's legacy with Project G. This stroke's trajectory approaches trying to unite with Holy in reaching Aerith in Malkuth, but doesn't have a clear path to meet it. This is why the story passes on to Cloud & Aerith's journey, but we see it attempting to stretch to the end here anyway likely as Zack's reaching out in death as well (hence some funky times with the Arbiters of Fate to be covered later).
STROKE II – (Connection to Keter depicted as the connection to Da'at)
Connects Zack's story to Cloud's & Aerith's journey via Sephiroth/Jenova. You could consider this the "Living Legacy" passing of the torch from Zack to Cloud (and by extension to Aerith).
STROKE III – (Connection to Keter depicted as the connection to Da'at)
Connects Sephiroth to Cloud's & Aerith's journey directly as a result of all of the Shinra Science & whatnot. You could also see this as Cloud actively throwing Sephiroth onto a different path during the Nibelheim incident.
STROKE IV – Keter & Da'at Duality
This is all about Jenova & Sephiroth's duality of conscious & unconscious being the relationship of Keter & Da'at, with the crown missing representing the headless Jenova for making the symbolism of this Sefirot image match a headless, winged body, like Jenova's is shown in Remake.
STROKE V – Pillar of Mildness (Right Column) – The element of Fire.
Sephiroth in burning Nibelheim is all about fire. These are also interesting in how the stroke seems to curve an miss Netzah (Eternity) or persistence that will lead to victory. Additionally, it's where we cover Hesed & Sephiroth's really eerie focus on Kindness.
STROKE VI – Tifa
This is is re-connecting Zack's story into Cloud's & Aerith's again via Tifa at a later point in the narrative. It's also something that can be looked at potentially as where Cloud starts getting his head sorted out to do what has to be done, but also in how Tifa plays an integral role in being there for both Cloud & Aerith on the journey, since she knows about both Cloud's real history and also who Zack is.
STROKE VII – Pillar of Mercy (Center Column) – The element of Air.
Cloud & Aerith with the flower petals in the wind is an image we see a lot, especially with those petals being the invisible-wind-like Whispers in Remake. This path is basically the lead through to the end of the story in the original game.
In the end, the pattens only has 9 Sefirot used. with 9 paths (one shortcutting & 1 missed Sefirot)
Although Malkuth is seen as the "lowest" Sephiroth on the tree of life, it also contains within it the potential to reach the highest. This is exemplified in the Hermetic maxim 'As above so below', and "Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether" – This is essentially the battle for who wins the day with Holy – Sephiroth or Cloud & Co.
As a note with Sephiroth's kindness, it might be worth mentioning some inspirations for the game that likely impacted the character.
We know that My Bloody Valentine was an inspirations, and that David Bowie was another artist who's referenced in the game in the Northern Crater. In his song Station to Station there's a line specifically about the Sefirot in a spiritual sense, "Here are we one magical moment from Keter to Malkuth" His performance characters Ziggy Stardust & The White Duke, but especially his original alien character from The Man Who Fell to Earth contain some thematic references to Sephiroth that likely gave inspiration for various elements of the game at the time. It'd also be good to cover how they might shape the existing re-analysis of Sephiroth for who he is in this game.
Jenova's title as the "calamity that fell from the skies" and masquerading amongst the Cetra very closely mirrors a lot of things.
- Bowie's The White Duke's commentary on fascism clearly connected to the game's portrayal.
- Mr. Newton appears as a pale, hooded figure in a black cloak & clothes.
- Haneyville small town with that Western Nibelheim feel
- Being connected to the development of a highly technologically advanced corporation that owns almost everything.
- World Enterprises Corporation springing up super quickly.
- "Musee des Beaux Arts"
- Owning a copyright on the Bible
- Talking all about pollution in the water.
- Concepts of yearning for god in space.
- A world slowly dying and turning to a desert.
- Chats about life and trains.
- Lots of Japanese style things in his house
- Hallucination / projecting in a dream
- Transference of Energy
- Fuel Conservation
- Slitted Pupils & an alien Masquerading as human
- The idea of a world completely drained of a life-giving natural resource & coming to a world that contains it
- Taking over by another company
- Forced experimentation on him
- Professor Canutti seems a bit like Pres. Shinra
- Leaves him all violent & unhinged
Then covering some stuff with the Alternate Timeline & what missing the Netzah element means insofar as his approach to things in Remake, and the concept that this is symbol sort of a map of how things went before.
Also, just gonna tease with the image that I made for the opening to talk about how these designs have been used in the past:
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The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
Could that symbol on the back of the cloaks also be a new take on the stylized "7" mark from the original game (the one in our site's logo)?
What is this in reference to?
What is this in reference to?
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
That similarity is what initially got me poking around at it, and down the current sense of analysis. Where was the confirmation on the origins of that one being the stylized 7, btw? I've seen speculation mentioned, but couldn't remember where it'd been officially mentioned.
The soundtrack that I just got today, the CD's titles (from 1-7) use those differing colors, and I wanted to note those to poke around at tomorrow.
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The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
It hasn't been as far as I know.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
Well, I managed to use that image to REALLY help picking apart some of the Sefirot elements in the original game. That made it easy to transition over to other religious terminology that the game adopts. Once I wrap on that, I'll be able to just dive in on the symbol itself, and focus on how it's expanding those pre-existing themes from the original.
No idea how long it'll be, but it definitely is starting to feel like another stack of details. I am back to at least low-key photoshopping stuff again, which is a nice feeling. It's definitely been the kind of transitional project that'll really help move back towards all of the crazy Shinra science stuff for the next thing that I write.
Shademp & I did have a chat about potential focus an interpretations for how Vincent's presented, amongst other things that's still lingering in my mind for one after the next one or so.
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No idea how long it'll be, but it definitely is starting to feel like another stack of details. I am back to at least low-key photoshopping stuff again, which is a nice feeling. It's definitely been the kind of transitional project that'll really help move back towards all of the crazy Shinra science stuff for the next thing that I write.
Shademp & I did have a chat about potential focus an interpretations for how Vincent's presented, amongst other things that's still lingering in my mind for one after the next one or so.
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