All 3 of them might be dead in the Remake timeline and alive in a different AU. Time will tell.
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Final Fantasy VII Remake Spoilers Thread, Part 2: Stay Kalm & Mosey Along (UPDATE: Ultimania’s list of four key story changes)
- Thread starter Quinton
- Start date
All 3 of them might be dead in the Remake timeline and alive in a different AU. Time will tell.
OP
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Do remember — Wedge got tossed out a window near the end! We don't know if he's alive.
Ratings restrictions leading to toning down and scaling back the blood trail was disappointing. Didn't care for the Drum either, though explaining the weird monsters that originally showed up (minus the Vaghridpolis ones that were moved to the climb up in the remake) as Hojo experiments worked. Would've preferred having the group's confrontation with President Shinra come early after still having them captured and brought to him before getting locked up and the door being left open after they woke up, instead of him still being alive and everyone actually seeing Sephiroth kill him.
Liked the music from the Tifa segment, and thought it was pretty neat that one of Cloud's old Shinra buddies was glad to see him again.
I wonder who is going to be the one that knocks Cloud out. In the OG, it was just whatever party member you had with you.
Tifa would be my pick.
Aerith's waifu should be the one protecting her.
So shipping thing that I'll note now but I noticed that they gave some scenes that you would think they'd use to build romantic tension between Cloud and Aerith to Tifa and Aerith.
The cynical part of me thinks that in their heads, they felt that had given Cloud and Aerith enough shippy moments between Chapters 8 and 9 already so their go to after that is to give those moments to Tifa and Aerith.
(Tifa and Aerith look so good together. Jesus!)
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I finished Remake a few weeks ago. I never played the OG game, so I figured why not play the Midgar portion to see all the changes that were made. Thought it would be fun to go backwards in this way.
I finished Midgar early this morning. I almost stopped, but then decided, why not see what the next 20 minutes is about.
So there's a particular portion of Remake that confused the hell out of me. Tifa's flashback of her & her dad in cowboy outfits at a Mako reactor with Sephiroth's sword. They go out of their way to show us that, but it never gets followed up with any context. So of course, I'm now in Kalm in the OG game & Cloud is telling his story about what happened with him & Sephiroth (dope that he's in your party & OP as hell by the way). But now I see that Tifa & her father are tour guides (explains the outfits) & they're taking SOLDIER to the Mako reactor that's been spewing monsters in the area. Tifa, Cloud & Sephiroth even take a picture together.
I had to stop the game right at the moment that Sephiroth seems to lose his mind in the reactor, so I have to finish that particular part, but anyway, here's my point: in Remake, Tifa never acknowledges any of this. It explains why Cloud was the one who saw the vision when they're confronted by Sephiroth in Shinra HQ, but she acts as if her & Sephiroth didn't have any interaction in the past. Even in the OG game as Cloud is telling this story, Tifa isn't really doing much to indicate that she was part of it.
I think that it's cool that they left that stuff in there in Remake for the fans, but it really does a poor job of informing anyone who has never played before what the hell is going on.
I finished Midgar early this morning. I almost stopped, but then decided, why not see what the next 20 minutes is about.
So there's a particular portion of Remake that confused the hell out of me. Tifa's flashback of her & her dad in cowboy outfits at a Mako reactor with Sephiroth's sword. They go out of their way to show us that, but it never gets followed up with any context. So of course, I'm now in Kalm in the OG game & Cloud is telling his story about what happened with him & Sephiroth (dope that he's in your party & OP as hell by the way). But now I see that Tifa & her father are tour guides (explains the outfits) & they're taking SOLDIER to the Mako reactor that's been spewing monsters in the area. Tifa, Cloud & Sephiroth even take a picture together.
I had to stop the game right at the moment that Sephiroth seems to lose his mind in the reactor, so I have to finish that particular part, but anyway, here's my point: in Remake, Tifa never acknowledges any of this. It explains why Cloud was the one who saw the vision when they're confronted by Sephiroth in Shinra HQ, but she acts as if her & Sephiroth didn't have any interaction in the past. Even in the OG game as Cloud is telling this story, Tifa isn't really doing much to indicate that she was part of it.
I think that it's cool that they left that stuff in there in Remake for the fans, but it really does a poor job of informing anyone who has never played before what the hell is going on.
You'll know why later(way later actually, if I remember) as you keep playing. There's a reason Tifa is pretty much silent during Cloud' story, but telling you right now would spoil a major twist.
The part where Tifa doesn't acknowledge Sephiroth at all in this game is a fair criticism though. It makes me feel like they shoehorned Sephiroth into this remake, and only thought of him in terms of his relationship with Cloud, rather than having Tifa, you know, comment on Sephiroth destroying her hometown and killing her family as well as her prior encounter with him.
Okay, then I'll leave it alone. Thank you for giving me the heads up!
Yeah, in Remake Tifa isn't all that surprised by Sephiroth being alive. Which is weird. Either the writers simply have a poor job handling that, or Tifa has some kind of memory/traumatic problem newly introduced in Remake. In OG, Tifa shows proper reaction to Sephiroth's presence by reacting to his sword and all, so that's not the case. Regarding the flashback scene though, there's actually a reason for Tifa's reluctancy to chime in.
IMO, they could have easily move up the flashback scene to Aerith's room on Shinra HQ for better context for newcomers. Especially when this time around you actually meet and fight Sephiroth early, unlike in OG. But that's gonna reduce Kalm role in the story so they probably don't want to do that.
Okay so I...think? I'm almost done with the OG game?
I just got the 4th Huge Materia and now i'm supposed to go to Cosmo Canyon.
But I'm still kinda confused about Cloud's backstory...
(I'll put spoilers i guess bc there's another dude in here who is also new to the franchise)
So yeah I'd love if someone could clear this up for me <3
I just got the 4th Huge Materia and now i'm supposed to go to Cosmo Canyon.
But I'm still kinda confused about Cloud's backstory...
(I'll put spoilers i guess bc there's another dude in here who is also new to the franchise)
So first Sephiroth is like "Lol this boi isn't the real Cloud - his personality was created from Tifa's memories. Perhaps "Cloud" was someone who was a part of TIfa's childhood who died". And then he goes on to say that, like himself, Cloud was created in a lab 5 years ago "piece by piece" since I guess Jenova cells can do that or something.
So I was like "Holy shit, Cloud isn't really a 'person'? And the 'real Cloud' (the lil boy in her memories) died? And so this lab-grown clone Cloud clings on to Tifa and Zack's memories because that's the closest thing to an identity??" And I THOUGHT i more or less understood.
BUT THEN
THEN
Cloud falls into the lifestream or whatever and becomes a vegetable, and then Cloud and Tifa fall into the lifestream AGAIN and there they find Lil Boi Cloud (the REAL!Cloud?) who appears and little by little with him you piece together what really happened SIKE it actually is the REAL Cloud all along?
He was't actually pieced together as Sephiroth said but was a whole person who...died? (I mean he was impaled by Sephiroth...) while killing Sephiroth and then Hojo took him and Zack and did experiments that messed up his brain and that's what we end up with?
I read elsewhere that Cloud didn't actually die (besides being freaking IMPALED by a giant sword like Aerith), he was just gravely wounded. But then, why did Tifa find his "soul" in the lifestream? How could she speak with that other version of Lil Boi Cloud in a literal River of Souls/Styx?
So I was like "Holy shit, Cloud isn't really a 'person'? And the 'real Cloud' (the lil boy in her memories) died? And so this lab-grown clone Cloud clings on to Tifa and Zack's memories because that's the closest thing to an identity??" And I THOUGHT i more or less understood.
BUT THEN
THEN
Cloud falls into the lifestream or whatever and becomes a vegetable, and then Cloud and Tifa fall into the lifestream AGAIN and there they find Lil Boi Cloud (the REAL!Cloud?) who appears and little by little with him you piece together what really happened SIKE it actually is the REAL Cloud all along?
He was't actually pieced together as Sephiroth said but was a whole person who...died? (I mean he was impaled by Sephiroth...) while killing Sephiroth and then Hojo took him and Zack and did experiments that messed up his brain and that's what we end up with?
I read elsewhere that Cloud didn't actually die (besides being freaking IMPALED by a giant sword like Aerith), he was just gravely wounded. But then, why did Tifa find his "soul" in the lifestream? How could she speak with that other version of Lil Boi Cloud in a literal River of Souls/Styx?
So yeah I'd love if someone could clear this up for me <3
That's just Sephiroth fucking with Cloud's head. Cloud is real person. He's indeed gravely injured when stopping Sephiroth in Nibelheim, but Hojo saves his life by putting him in Jenova Reunion experimentation. But mako poisoning messed up his head. His real personality is buried inside somehow. For Mideel scene, my interpretation is all of that actually happen inside Cloud's head/heart/whatever. Tifa can access it somehow because they're connected thru lifestream shenaningan.
As someone who hasn't fully played the OG I'm gonna make a guess that Cloud, like Jessie's father is stuck somewhere between his body and the lifestream, so his body pieces together a persona based on memories of Cloud while his real self is stuck in the Lifestream. Maybe?
Just remembering the fight after, what are the chances that the boss Arsenal's lift just went by and Wedge actually just dropped on top of the lift lol
That's honestly one of my favorite little bits from the game, if only for the dialogue. "Holy shit dude, we heard you got smoked!" is such a hilariously realistic thing for the grunt to say in that situation.
Hmmm, I see.
Okay see this is also something - what is his "real personality"? Like I know he's obviously an awkward try-hard who comes off as kind of a dick pre-awakening, but then after it seems like he's just more chill and has a less fragile ego.
Ah, i didnt make that connection, but now that you mention it i'm sure it'll come back in that way! However, if that's the case - then why is Jessie's dad essentially a vegetable while Cloud is...more or less functional, just as a really "off" dude?
I find the way that the OG frames his backstory super awkward. Sephiroth's info is literally all we have to go on at that point, and it's not made clear that he's bending the truth. Curious how they'll explain it in Part 2. I wonder if they might even tweak it?
Did go to the basement of the Shinra mansion in Nibleheim after Cloud rejoined the party? If not, I suggest you should take a detour to its laboratory-library...
It's simpler than that, Cloud is a mess due to Mako poisoning, Jenova cells and the trauma of seeing Zack dying (which is a hidden optional scene in the OG).
Oh god that's what happened isn't it? I actually don't understand how Biggs is even alive. The implication is because we changed fate right? But Wedge dies quite a bit before we kill the arbiter or whatever. Biggs does like fucking days before that too. AND the plate fell. Did his corpse just suddenly regenerate and then someone found him days later? Did someone grab his dead body during the incident, evacuated with it and just keep it for a while? The dude literally died unless Cloud didn't check. Someone must have kept a corpse with them for days.
IIRC, correctly there's also some information that can be learned by playing Tifa's piano in her childhood house, if a certain tune is played while she is in your party. Here's some instructions. There is also a letter that can be read, which is on a desk also located in her bedroom.
EDIT: You also get some interesting tidbits in the laboratory-library I mentioned above by reading the various book cases here and the test chambers here.
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It's fade-to-black "You didn't see it" death. So it means if they want him to come back in Part 2 they can do it and excuse it easily.
On top of the suspicious fade-to-black, there's also some notable ambiguity in that scene. The Whispers are seen pushing him toward the elevator, which has glass doors and a glass tube. It's not at all clear (because of the fade out) if the glass we hear breaking is the elevator doors or the back of the tube.
Dangggg okay, looks like I'm going back to Nibelheim lol.
I read the first letter (about clones? i think?) ...it didn't make a lot of sense to me, or I didn't understand the context. But I'll do the piano thing again!
Indeed. Telling Cloud to wait while he went to get Kunsel from Crisis Core was also interesting.
Other than the sound of a window breaking when it happened, pretty sure his words for Cloud of being sorry that he couldn't be of more help mirrored his last words in OG FFVII before the plate fell.
Sure, everything can happen, especially after the Whisper fuckery, but they're gonna have to explain me how he did survive falling from the probably tallest building in Midgar...
... or explain me how useless the Whispers were that they couldn't even kill Wedge lol
Maybe the whispers brought him out of the Shinra HQ to safety instead, just going by the fastest route (through the glass) lol
Haha yeah idk how Biggs and Jessie could've survived the whole thing falling on them. I still want Jessie to survive and have her date with Cloud tho :(
But the Whispers are the ones that want him dead, because he souldn't be alive by that point of the story. Basically the reverse Barret case.
haha yeah I was just silly thinking, but for how he might survive that fall, I gave my theory some posts above haha
Again, it's ambiguous whether they pushed him out of the building or just into the elevator tube. If they pushed him into the tube, then the farthest he fell is 5 stories. He's on the 64th floor, and the elevators stop on the 59th floor for the Arsenal boss fight. Although I think the tube he's in front of is the one Arsenal is using and it's possible it hasn't passed the 64th floor by that time, I suppose.
I could see it going either way, really. The whole thing could be real or it could be one massive fake out. The end of the game also creates the possibility that he might not be dead because it suggests that killing the Whispers in the present affects their activities in the past. So even if they did kill him in the Shinra building, he could be alive the same way that Zack, Biggs, and maybe Jessie are too. Maybe in another timeline, but still. It's a possibility that SE could use if they want to.
I could see it going either way, really. The whole thing could be real or it could be one massive fake out. The end of the game also creates the possibility that he might not be dead because it suggests that killing the Whispers in the present affects their activities in the past. So even if they did kill him in the Shinra building, he could be alive the same way that Zack, Biggs, and maybe Jessie are too. Maybe in another timeline, but still. It's a possibility that SE could use if they want to.
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Repeating Chapter 9 over and over is even worse when you remember Chapter 18's high flying Advent Children antics with Cloud jumping 50 feet in the air and chopping buildings in half. Why the hell didn't they split some of these chapters up some more? Why the hell couldn't Cloud just fucking jump in the air like he did everywhere else in the game??? Which one of you sick freaks at Square decided we should do these groan-inducing crane games over and over???
Wait - really? I don't remember that at all! I thought the last we saw of him was with the mayor, and he was prevented from leaving by the whispers? I vaguely also recall him ominously wincing at an injury.
I mean SE's ultimania literally says Whispers reacted in that scene to keep the flow of destiny and for that they need to kill Wedge. His words are also the same as the OG where he dies or close to it. He's dead to me 100% in that scene but unclear if he's alive in the ending like Biggs. That scene is possibly not the current timeline.
Agreed. It's obviously meant to feel like a death, but they already made it look like Wedge was dead when the plate collapsed and he wasn't, and then they follow his Shinra HQ death up (loosely, obviously) with the scenes of Biggs and Zack not-being-dead.
I see no reason why I should believe that this time Wedge has actually died. He could be dead, but he could easily also not be dead if they decided they wanted to use him.
Okay, I'll go over everything here to clear these things up for you. I'll use the official quotes too.
But to actually answer your question, I have to go through one thing first.
Jenova is an organism that the creators based on the Thing. Every piece of it is alive and independent. Hojo has a theory that's later proven correct that Jenova Cells will seek to reunite with the main body and influence the minds of those that they're inside.
So Sephiroth wasn't lying about what Jenova could do. It, like the Thing, can mimic others and read through their minds to copy their knowledge and imitate although those with only Jenova Cells have a weaker form of this.
Onto Cloud.
The events before FFVII had completely broken Cloud's and shattered his personality. The 5 years of experimentation, Mako Poisoning and if you go to Nibelheim Manor in OG FFVII soon, you'll see another memory of his. The last straw that broke the camel's back:
OG spoiler:
Zack's death in front of Cloud is what finally broke Cloud and shattered his personality.
So no, Cloud never died. He just broke as a person. The real Cloud never went away fully though. He's just inside the current Cloud. He pokes out every once in a while though.
Sometimes, Cloud hears a pretty friendly voice in his head. That's the real Cloud talking to Cloud:
You see the real Cloud in Remake in this scene talking to Cloud:
Anyways, to go back a bit. The minute that Cloud's personality shattered. the Jenova Cells in his body reacted. Jenova created a separate personality for Cloud using bits from Zack, Tifa and his own ideal self.
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This is probably why Cloud comes off as more of muppet at first in the Remake. That Jenova-created personality is still new.
Anyways, Tifa doesn't find the real Cloud in the Lifestream or anything. She enters Cloud's subconscious and repairs Cloud's mind from the inside bringing back the real Cloud for good. The real Cloud isn't some edgy badass spewing one liners. That's just Cloud's idea of cool.
They're gonna revive Biggs and not Wedge? It's a fakeout death alright.
Unless... that's the twist. You expect Biggs to die, he lives. You expect Wedge to survive, yet he dies.
IMO, it's gonna be lame if all of them are alive somehow. Someone has to die.
For all we know they might be cancelling all their implications of changing up the story. I sometimes think the whole Whisper plot was something caused because they wanted a big end-boss and felt, for some reason, obligated to make a story justification for it.
Or they just used it as a theme about "What the fans want" and didn't intend to commit to it so much as to start discussions and use it to decide what to do in Part 2.
Hell, Biggs might not even be revived if he's in the AU timeline like Zack.
Yep, the only checkpoint on that chapter is before Sephiroth battle. If you die on any segment of Whispers battle, you start from the very beginning again.
It depends, though. I know people are saying he's in an alternate timeline, BUT...
1. Biggs is awakening from passing out/being put into a coma due to the assault at the pillar.
2. Jessie's artifacts were on the nearby desk, retrieved from the aftermath of the assault.
3. Would Avalanche be the same and doing the same things without Cloud present? This one is something we should dive deeper into:
- Say Zack takes Cloud's place and becomes a merc. Avalanche approaches him and he does the bombing mission. He would automatically know more than Cloud regarding the situation (be more familiar with the reactors, types of security and what to expect) and would have knowledge Avalanche might benefit from (various other points connected to Shinra that they could attack to cripple them strategically, which I think Zack would be well aware of given his military background and rank).
- Had Zack been there, everything might not have gone down the way it did in FFVII and the events that lead to the dropping of the plate might not have even occurred.