Translated Interviews from the Kaitai Shinsho (AKA Dismantled) Complete Guide

[Makoeyes987]

Oh I know it's the same dialogue, but I still think that's highly unlikely because again, that would mean she saw Cloud at Nibelheim and knew he was there all along. That simply undercuts what she says to Cloud at the Northern Crater in FFVII.

That he wasn't there.

Her recollection and knowledge of events were never in question given she remembers everything, moreso than anyone else. It'd be extremely weird and inconsistent that she'd completely forget speaking to Cloud after he revealed himself, the one piece of information most important to her, Cloud and solving the entire mystery. She didn't just forget. She never knew until their shared moment in the Lifestream.

However Nojima was personally involved in the creation of Last Order and it's mentioned in every official material, even the most recent ones. It's just my opinion but I think LO was never meant to "rewrite" parts of the story, but it's rather to be considered a self-contained standalone piece.

I mean, that's what I said.

It's not canon thanks to the fact it is its own unique adaption independent of everything before and after it. It can be "official" and still not canon. That's what Cloud in Kingdom Hearts is; that's an official design and appearance of Cloud in another S-E licensed work. It just ain't canon to FFVII whatsoever.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Her recollection and knowledge of events were never in question given she remembers everything, moreso than anyone else. It'd be extremely weird and inconsistent that she'd completely forget speaking to Cloud after he revealed himself, the one piece of information most important to her, Cloud and solving the entire mystery. She didn't just forget. She never knew until their shared moment in the Lifestream.

Saying Tifa remembers more than anyone else of Nibelheim doesn't mean she remembers *everything*. Her own memory of that night is really spotty, that's part of why she doesn't come out and contradict Cloud. She doesn't remember everything, and she knows it.

It actually would mix things up for Cloud even more if she *did* remember. Cloud is remembering this as him getting her when he's a SOLDIER. If Tifa remembered it (even partially), then she would be saying Cloud's memory of what happened is *right*. He *did* come save her. *Both* of them would have remembered it!

So either Tifa doesn't remember Cloud was there and that causes her to doubt his story being true... or she *does* remember he was there, and that means Cloud might be telling the truth. It works both ways... just the timing of when Cloud gets Tifa shifts a bit and what uniform Cloud is wearing is different.

And again... Tale of Two Pasts goes into a lot of detail about how Tifa was knocked out for a really long time due to blood loss and physical trauma from getting impaled by Masamune. Her odds of remembering it are *really* low in the first place.

 

[Odysseus]

Last Order was specifically cited as a "work outside of the compilation" at one point, so I'm not sure there's any reason to debate the canonicity of its details. I guess I'm with Mako in that such a detail would just not really jive, even if you can logic it away. You can do the same with a lot of the stuff from maiden, but nobody really counts that either.

 

[Theozilla]

Absolutely, I'd be honored! Imo there are just two things I'd like eyes on: the sentence about the Chocobo name/ability connection, and the bit about Tifa being ベタベタ, which I translated as "clingy" for lack of a more generous term. Don't want to ruffle any shipper feathers. Also, what is eveyone's best take on the sentence at the end of Nomura's first answer? Is it the past tense of the idiomatic ものがない ("there is no such thing"), or is he simply saying that wasn't the type of story they had in mind at first?

If you’re worried about “clingy” having too much negative implications perhaps something like tenacious/fixated/preoccupied could work as well?

 

[TurquoiseHammer]

If you’re worried about “clingy” having too much negative implications perhaps something like tenacious/fixated/preoccupied could work as well?

On the one hand I like how "fixated [on Cloud]" sounds, but on the other maybe I should keep it in to preserve the time capsule of the writers' approach to characters. As @frosty noted above, Nomura later says that "clingy" is exactly how he doesn't want Tifa to come off.

Also, @eleamaya , I'm all done with the interesting bits from the "Mind" sections. There just wasn't anything notable after they get the sub, and the guide doesn't go past the beginning of disc 3, annoyingly.

 

[KindOfBlue]

I dunno about y’all but I’m still hung up on the weird physics of the CC version of that scene

Up until the part where Sephiroth throws himself into the mako instead of Cloud throwing him, I thought the LO version of the scene was less silly

 

[ForceStealer]

^They (potentially over-)corrected all the way back to a straight recreation of the OG scene because of the (rightful) backlash to the LO version.
Of course, all they ACTUALLY have to do is use the LO version exactly and just have no wall behind Sephiroth. So, Cloud pulls himself back onto the platform, wrenches sideways, and Sephiroth stumbles backwards over the edge. Boom. Problem solved.

It's just that... most people playing the OG think the line about the promise is commentary Tifa says to Cloud in the "present" in Kalm rather than in the flashback.

I didn't think she was saying it in the present, but I did think she was just murmuring in an unconscious state about the promise, wishing Cloud were there. Not actually recognizing and speaking to him. Sure maybe she sort of saw him and assumed after the fact that she was only dreaming, but I agree that her definitely knowing Cloud was there and just having forgotten undercuts a lot of the drama for the reveal.

 

[KindOfBlue]

So, Cloud pulls himself back onto the platform, wrenches sideways, and Sephiroth stumbles backwards over the edge. Boom. Problem solved.

My thoughts exactly, it’s such a serious moment but I immediately laughed the first time I saw that in CC lol

 

[Theozilla]

Yeah, and the music/score when Cloud pulls himself back onto the platform was pretty cool as well.
Having Cloud seesaw Sephiroth up into the air and letting him dangle in the air for a second or two does take one out of moment/push the suspension of disbelief more when it’s high fidelity visuals (Sephiroth not letting go of the sword becomes a much more apparent “the eagles” TLotR moment).

The quick intense cutting of the Last Order sequence was actually quite effective in translating the scene (aside from the Sephiroth jumping in part) to a more “realistic” style.

Hope the Remake will draw on that aspect of Last Order in its depiction of the Nibelheim flashback.

Also the Tifa and Cloud conversation in Last Order, I always wonder if it was the result of someone misunderstanding the context of the lines present day Cloud and Tifa were saying when they were reflecting on Cloud’s revelation during the Lifestream sequence and mistaking it for in-flashback dialogue (since the scene does transition to the characters actually speaking within the context of the real flashback immediately after), or if they actually did understand that and were consciously changing and paying homage to the reflection dialogue.

 

[jeangl123]

The big trouble with Dismantled and it's take on characters (especially in Maiden Who Travels the Planet) is that lots of details about character backgrounds are flat out *wrong* compared to the game (stuff like Cloud *really* being a SOLDIER in the past) .

Wait he really wrote that part about Cloud being a real SOLDIER?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Yep, more than once even. So it's very... hard... to mesh Maiden's take on Cloud's background with even *just* the OG. Let alone all the other info in the *very* Ultimania it was published with (Ultimania Omega)...

Some excerpts...
----------------------------------------------------------
In the Northern Crater, he [Cloud] found out that his memories were false. He was just a doll who the mad scientist Hojo had transplanted Jenova cells into. A being made to merge with Sephiroth for his resurrection. But as a failure, he was an inferior clone that wasn’t even given a number.

He was thrown out like trash in Midgar. Then he met Tifa. He met his “real” childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart. That time, with Jenova’s power to duplicate memories, the memories that Tifa had of Cloud was instantly transferred to him. The missing parts were then filled with his own memories of being in SOLDIER to complete it all. That was how the patched up personality of Cloud Strife, based on the young man that existed in Tifa’s conscious, was born. While that “Cloud” held many contradictions about himself, he built up a fictitious character so that he wouldn’t be doubtful of himself. That character was himself.
----------------------------------------------------------
Aerith cried as she thought about the shattered Cloud that even her prayers wouldn’t reach. His wrecked character could no longer be fixed. If he wasn’t Cloud in the first place then, who was he? Knowing him only as a former member of SOLDIER, there was no way she could guess. She embraced the feeling of helplessness that she couldn’t put into words.
----------------------------------------------------------
Collating her [Tifa's] own memories with that of Cloud’s, she looked for the things that only the real Cloud could know. Proving it all, the closed door was opened. Not leaving SOLDIER allowed Jenova’s power that was implanted in Cloud to copy the Soldier traits of his close friend, Zacks.
----------------------------------------------------------

Reading Maiden is... frankly a bit of a bazaar experience because of stuff like this. There's just... so many little details about things we know from FFVII that don't feel right about it. Not just in terms of worldbuiding, but also tone. It just... fells like whoever wrote it was working off an... older... copy of what the game was going to have in it...

 

[jeangl123]

Yep, more than once even. So it's very... hard... to mesh Maiden's take on Cloud's background with even *just* the OG. Let alone all the other info in the *very* Ultimania it was published with (Ultimania Omega)...

Some excerpts...
----------------------------------------------------------
In the Northern Crater, he [Cloud] found out that his memories were false. He was just a doll who the mad scientist Hojo had transplanted Jenova cells into. A being made to merge with Sephiroth for his resurrection. But as a failure, he was an inferior clone that wasn’t even given a number.

He was thrown out like trash in Midgar. Then he met Tifa. He met his “real” childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart. That time, with Jenova’s power to duplicate memories, the memories that Tifa had of Cloud was instantly transferred to him. The missing parts were then filled with his own memories of being in SOLDIER to complete it all. That was how the patched up personality of Cloud Strife, based on the young man that existed in Tifa’s conscious, was born. While that “Cloud” held many contradictions about himself, he built up a fictitious character so that he wouldn’t be doubtful of himself. That character was himself.
----------------------------------------------------------
Aerith cried as she thought about the shattered Cloud that even her prayers wouldn’t reach. His wrecked character could no longer be fixed. If he wasn’t Cloud in the first place then, who was he? Knowing him only as a former member of SOLDIER, there was no way she could guess. She embraced the feeling of helplessness that she couldn’t put into words.
----------------------------------------------------------
Collating her [Tifa's] own memories with that of Cloud’s, she looked for the things that only the real Cloud could know. Proving it all, the closed door was opened. Not leaving SOLDIER allowed Jenova’s power that was implanted in Cloud to copy the Soldier traits of his close friend, Zacks.
----------------------------------------------------------

Reading Maiden is... frankly a bit of a bazaar experience because of stuff like this. There's just... so many little details about things we know from FFVII that don't feel right about it. Not just in terms of worldbuiding, but also tone. It just... fells like whoever wrote it was working off an... older... copy of what the game was going to have in it...

Well this was technically before the lifestream sequence and it's from Aerith's perspective right? So Cloud's true past wasn't revealed yet. I'd say Maiden's non-canocity is shown more through it's contradictions to the compilation rather than the OG because it shows that the devs never bothered to abide by the novel.

 

[JBedford]

@Obsidian Fire

That first excerpt explains what they're made to believe about Cloud at North Crater.

The second excerpt is saying all that Aerith knows about Cloud (even though it turns out to be not true).

The third excerpt is a mistranslation (the paragraph also isn't in the correct place for some reason). It's saying he was a soldier who could not become a SOLDIER.

ソルジャーにはなれず植えつけられたジェノバの能力で親友ザックスのくせを複製した一兵士クラウドを、強固な殼に守られた記憶の奥底から引き揚げる。
(the translator read it as "ni hanarezu" rather than "ni wa narezu")

 

[cold_spirit]

Even with the mistranslation, I'm not getting the bizarre experience that @Obsidian Fire is describing. Reading those excerpts and poking around Maiden myself, I feel Matsuyama had a good grasp on the story and characters in their OG incarnations.

 

[TurquoiseHammer]

I've learned an awful lot from everyone in this thread about Dismantled, Maiden, Benny Matsuyama, and BentStuff in general. Would it be fair to say that the contents of Dismantled (including the blurbs on the character pages that aren't direct staff quotes) can be considered reliable or "canon" in the same way unattributed text from the Ultimanias is, with the exception of the "Mind" entries?

Also, more on topic, here are some more personal takeaways from the Dismantled interviews, as well as things readers pointed out to me elsewhere:
-The ideas of turning an enemy into a tradable card (Card ability, Triple Triad) and expanding memory card functionality (Chocobo World and PocketStation) were indeed explored further in VIII.
-Likewise, Odin and Gilgamesh became the "automatic" summons Golem was intended to be.
-The concept of "Flame Swords" and "Lightning Swords" was further implemented in IX with Steiner and Vivi's Sword Magic.
-Nomura's sly deference to Nojima's interpretation of what the Promised Land is sounds about how I imagined their creative relationship to be.
-While VIII did revert back to a "desperation attack" style of Limit Breaks, it threw in the notable mechanic of Aura, so the techniques are still common and useful.
-The larger variety of enemies in Remake's bike minigame may include some of the ones Yoshinari originally wanted to put in.
-We tend to forget about the cutscene loads, which are usually buffered behind gameplay, because we're always replaying VII on modern emulators, but they were clearly prohibitive enough to make chaining FMVs together infeasible.
-Midgar is beloved by many of the staff members not just because it's a cool, original environment, but because it was one of the first challenges everyone tackled as a team after the momentous shift to 3D development. I imagine many long-lasting relationships were formed during this period, and that nostalgia gets tied up with the city of mako.
-While none of the subsequent mainline titles ever ended up "reverting" to earlier graphical styles, plenty of spinoff games went back to explore them equipped with better technology.
-Perhaps the scrapped "Grapple" command served as some of the basis for Ehrgeiz, or rather, for the idea of FFVII being included in a Tobal fighter?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Even with the mistranslation, I'm not getting the bizarre experience that @Obsidian Fire is describing. Reading those excerpts and poking around Maiden myself, I feel Matsuyama had a good grasp on the story and characters in their OG incarnations.

Agreed. The narrator's voice isn't necessarily omniscient; sometimes it's speaking from that distant omniscient-like perspective even while its knowledge is limited to the POV of a single character.

 

[MelodicEnigma]

I've learned an awful lot from everyone in this thread about Dismantled, Maiden, Benny Matsuyama, and BentStuff in general. Would it be fair to say that the contents of Dismantled (including the blurbs on the character pages that aren't direct staff quotes) can be considered reliable or "canon" in the same way unattributed text from the Ultimanias is, with the exception of the "Mind" entries?

I've often seen people saying ANYTHING in Dismantled should be considered noncanonical, especially in comparison to the FFVII Ultimania Omega. I really don't see why, though, ultimately. There is that level of the BentStuff staff writing things, such as captions or certain profile information, as their observations and understandings from the game (their "Kaitai" of the game heh), but if I looked at it as "pure information" [what is meant to be objective] that is either reasonably authenticated by the game, then I'd say it should still be seen as reliable as we do for their other series, unless it's just either straight up subjective, fun blurbs (like Red XIII being cute) or proven incorrect information. There are contentions in fandom, I suppose though, as I've seen now people are circulating that even the Ultimania series in general is noncanonical? I don't know what's happening anymore. lol

 

[Eerie]

I think it's probably because it's hard to tell what is indeed from the development team - real info, and sometimes outdated info too since development moved so fast with the OG - and what is sort of headcanon. Like the Mind stuff is extremely questionable, all in all. So rather than accept some parts and reject others, it's easier to reject it all.

 

[Shademp]

Q: Were there any Materia that ended up being cut from the game?

A: At one point there was going to be a swimming-based dungeon, and if you didn't have the Underwater Materia equipped, you'd drown and be unable to access it; but the plan was discarded during development. There was also going to be a Hazardous Terrain [lit. Damage Floor] Materia [that would prevent damage when equipped], but on a CG map [with no tiles], taking damage every step would have been impractical, so it was scrapped.

__________

Q:　ボツになったマテリアはありますか？

A:「“泳いでいくダンジョン”で『すいちゅうこきゅう』のマテリアをつけていないとおぼれてしまい、中に入れないという企画を考えていましたが、開発途中でなくなってしまいました。ほかにも『ダメージゆか』のマテリアなどがありましたが、あの描きこまれたマップ上で、歩くたびにダメージを受けるというのもヘンですからボツになりました」

I absolutely love the context this provides for the unused Underwater Respiration materia found in the original Japanese release! I would never have assumed that it was intended for a swimming-based dungeon, so used that I am to its final purpose in battle.



Its materia ID is 17 and in the International release it was renamed せんすい (Underwater/Diving).



All this makes me want to see swimming segments in FF7R, à la FF10.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Here's a really tough question for all of you who are steeped in FFVII lore: what word, if any, does Square Enix use to refer to the dot on Tseng's forehead? I don't know the answer, but I feel that someone here either knows the answer or knows where to look for it. Thanks!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I know that in real life, it's Indian term and called a "bindi". And that is what SE calls it too, just in katakana: アクセサリ の ビンディ. Literally: "Bindi Accessory". Nothing else is said about it. Not where he got it, not why he wears it. Nothing.

The one place that has that info, the CC Complete Guide even lampshades that Tseng's personal history, family and age are all unknowns... Which makes him an even bigger mystery than Sephiroth is at this point... Tseng has a black hole of a backstory.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

That's great, Obsidian. And it's in the Crisis Core Complete Guide?
I wonder if, as an "accessory", it was at some point intended to carry special powers?

 

[Shademp]

And it's in the Crisis Core Complete Guide?

Indeed. Page 26 to be precise. See left half of the page.

外見と内面の特徴​

​

クールで知的な印象を与える青年。タークスの制​

服である黒のスーツを常に着用しており、額にはアク​

セサリのビンディをつけ、髪はひっつめている。ター​

クスとしての任務に誇りを持っており、たとえ汚い仕​

事であってもプロとして行動しようと志しているが、​

義理堅く生真面目な性格と、一個人としては情が深い​

ことなどから、時に悩むこともある。だが、他人にそ​

れを見せることはほとんどない。​

Auto-translate (both Google Translate and DeepL) is having difficulties translating the section about Tseng's compassionate nature so I'll leave that part to the professionals.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Thank you so much Shademp, that's great! I knew I could count on you guys.

 

[frosty]

A bindi is traditionally used in Indian cultures though, in my country. A red one means you're married, a black one is for unmarried women.

In Buddhism however, forehead markings are the Urna. And it can be a dot, or a spiral...a general mark for luck, wisdom and representation of the spiritual third eye. I'd guess if Tseng is "Chinese", then this would make sense...unless, uh, some other Ultimania tells us he's an unwed Indian woman.