This is a companion to my initial thoughts on Rebirth, and if you're like me and just kind of mindlessly click on things that are spoiler tagged, consider this your warning that I will be talking about the game's ending and many other elements unique to Rebirth's narrative. But first, I'm gonna start off by going over some stuff I missed in that first review: side quests are overall higher quality and hold a lot more intrinsic value (i.e. they're actually kinda rewarding on their own merit and not just for the rewards themselves; i love the one with the puppy and the one with the cats don't remember da rest tbh), however there's way more of them so numerically speaking there's a lot more stinkers and personally I'm just not a huuuge fan of gameifying progression within relationships -- the bright side of that is the relationship system isn't really that strict, and I think you get more relationship boosts for just playing the main scenario and using synergy abilities than you'd expect. Didn't really annoy me as much as other AAA games, but I'd say I prefer just having relationships form naturally through the narrative (or have the progression be invisible like the original, at least until new game plus, which they did partially do).

On that note, I really loved the chapter 12 visit to the Gold Saucer; Final Fantasy VII finally has its 90s love ballad and I think compared to its PSX Final Fantasy theme song brethren it's my new favorite (still fucking love Eyes on Me and Melodies of Life tho). Highly recommend aiming for the Tifa date, it's really awkward how non-present she is in the Loveless sequence compared to other characters when you go for Aerith being the princess in the Loveless play, and her little words of encouragement to Aerith before she sings is so cute (me when I see a girl being nice to another girl in a piece of media: she's literally me). I'm happy it's pretty easy to go back and see different variations of the date in new game plus though. Also Cloud and Tifa in the ferris wheel was pretty cute, and he wasn't a butthole for once, which like god damn he fucking SUCKS in this game it kinda rules.

I think my one major gripe is that they added a new sequence to the Gongaga Reactor portion where Cloud essentially puts Tifa in mortal peril, but nobody feels as upset about it as they should? Like maybe I'm just reading the scenes wrong, and it does fit into Tifa's character at this point in the narrative that she would forgive him given some time, but kinda felt like there needed to be a little more exploration on the emotional and physical implications of Cloud's mental degradation and the potential danger the people he cares about face because of that. It's a very cool sequence regardless, which tbh I think is me being biased cuz 50% of it has Tifa as the temporary party leader.

There's other things that I think people are gonna bitch about that I kinda see the value in adding, like Yuffie's presidential assassination attempt is pretty fucking cool imo, very based of her. Roche's little side plot is extremely Final Fantasy and I'm here for it, mostly for the homoeroticism. I love how often Tifa and Aerith have to bitch at Cloud for being a creep/weirdo/insecure prick, it rules. I love how much the characters suck in this game while still feeling like they're just trying their best to do the right thing. Really wish they were more okay with wanton murder of Shinra employees and the other unamibiguously evil wastes of breath that exist in this game's world, but I guess this ain't that kinda story so I'll take what I can get.

So uh, the multiverse, huh? Yeah, it's a tough thing to unpack considering it's not actually all that present within the core narrative, mostly showing up between major events and culminating in the finale. I wanna say first off, I fucking hate multiverse shit; most of the time it's utilized when a story has nowhere else to go or to cheaply introduce fan service. And I won't say that Rebirth's utilization of multiverse theory isn't at least partly the latter, but it's definitely more complicated than that, because like the wisps in Remake, the utilization of alternate "timelines" (I believe they're referred to as worlds in the game itself) due to Sephiroth and Aerith's meddling with the built-in defense mechanisms of the planet that maintained a specific planetary determinism had actual consequences. It's, extremely heady to say the least, but that's Final Fantasy, baby!

I honestly expected that the Zack sections of the game would take up like 30% of the game or something, but I'd estimate it's somewhere closer to between 1% and 5%. And like, another preface here to show how meaningful it is that these sequences mostly worked for me: I do not like Crisis Core. I think it's stinky, it's bad, and I don't really hate Zack as much as I found his story to be really pointless and centered around needless fan service; like if they made a whole game about FF6 Locke's ex-gf or something and the intro involved the magitek armors going to Narshe while Terra's theme played for some reason. But it's whatever I'm over its whole existence, and I kinda like Zack he's a fun little guy, hard to hate him really, and outside of the context of Crisis Core I learned to appreciate him. And while my initial reaction to the ending was, "well, what was the fucking point of the multiverse shit then", it eventually sunk in for me what they were going for by adapting it in this way.

It's a bit of a mystery box, but unlike most mystery boxes (like Lost if it it was only a little bit stupid and not completely stupid), people were able to kind of predict this one correctly! Aerith doesn't die! And I mean, she does die, but I'm kind of cautiously really fucking down with what they're doing by placing Cloud's consciousness between two different worlds essentially, one where he saved Aerith and his actual reality where Aerith dies, and how that specifically adds to both his visible mental degradation and an even deeper inability to cope with the loss of Aerith. At least that's my interpretation since they go out of their way to show that Aerith's "spirit" was noticed by Nanaki in the final scene and that it wasn't an outright hallucination on Cloud's part, which I would've preferred, but I can see what they're cooking here.

I mean, really, I would've preferred none of this extra shit, and the way the leads devs talk about the "shock value" of it all is definitely off-putting, but I think... I think it kinda works? I'm pretty sure Aerith died in the original for pretty similar developmental reasons, and while I def need even more time to really figure out why it ended up working, it definitely left me in kind of malaise that not many other games since like, the ending of Drakengard 3 or something have made me feel for days on end.

But what's especially interesting is that my initial reaction to Aerith's death scene was outright confusion and frustration as it was extremely difficult to parse if she was actually alive or not until I beat the final boss -- but I believe that's kind of the point. Both Cloud and the player are in denial, how much of what happens in the final sequence is real and how much of it is a "fever dream", as Sephiroth puts it, is up to player interpretation. There's some physically established reality to the multiverse shit ofc, but thematically speaking, making the two characters that show up for Cloud in these dream-like sequences be Zack and Aerith fits so fucking well into Cloud's inability to process loss that I feel that was more the intention than simply fan service. Also Biggs and Zack being buddies is kinda cute, but from a utilitarian perspective these sequences help to prove that the dying worlds are indeed really happening, and not necessarily just "Aerith's dreams" or purely in Cloud's mind, even if functionally that's kind of what they end up being since I think (?) they're connected through the lifestream, which up to this point only really Sephiroth and Aerith have been able to navigate.

Again, not really the direction I would've personally chosen, and there are some aspects lost in terms of impact in Aerith's death scene, particularly Cloud's speech (which is more implied by voiceless cutaways within the "Aerith dies" universe) and the individual reactions each character once had are no longer there, which makes sense when you consider there like 7 other dudes there now when last time you just had two other characters in your party during that scene. But it'd be remiss if I didn't mention that a lot has been gained: both Barret and Tifa's reactions are so visceral that it's difficult to outright dismiss this iteration, at least until you're thrown into a 10 phase boss battle, which if that loses you after that point, I guess I can't blame you. I don't think the reality of it all is fully lost in the end though, the game takes ample time to linger on the loss of the party's beloved flower girl, in such a way that I can't really stop thinking about it, even days after completing the game for the first time. The original scene makes me cry every time without fail, but there's something to be said for how much feels truly lost this time, how much more Aerith means to the party and to the player this time around is much more "real" in a way that the original game was only able to suggest in key moments.

Basically, the multiverse is there for fan service to a certain degree, but a) it's not some annoying MCU bullshit like people are gonna inevitably strawman it as, and b) it's more there to create a physical representation of Cloud's grief, and while I think it significantly detracts from the force of nature that Sephiroth could feel like in the original, there's something going on here that feels unabashedly Final Fantasy VII, and not even in the shitty ass Compilation way, just the way it chose to expand on the emotional core of the original without necessarily stepping too far out of the game's already somewhat flimsy physical rules. Like seriously, the reason we love Final Fantasy VII in the first place is because there is no place the game was afraid to go. Not perfect, but it feels special all the same. Also Tifa's reaction to Aerith's death is so fucking raw, and Cloud just smiling away because he has a ghost gf now is just, absolutely fucking gutwrenching, I love it man. I'm glad at least Nanaki is comforting Tifa in the final scene or else I think I'd be emotionally ruined probably. Can't wait for Cloud to be absolutely unbearable for the first 30 hours of part 3!!!

And on that note, Part 3 is probably gonna be the weakest of the trilogy, both in terms of narrative and gameplay, so I'm not too gutted about having to wait 4 years for the finale, but I'm excited nonetheless. I'm not really sure what they're gonna do for the areas you're expected to return to though? Either way, I hope the open world shit is toned a bit overall, more condensed regions similar to Nibelheim and Junon would be nice. There's lots of hints of extra shit that didn't exist in the original's disc 2 and 3, and that kinda makes sense when you stop and consider just how empty disc 2 kinda feels towards the end, particularly compared to disc 1. Really excited for part 3 to have a Sonic Adventure 2-esque opening where Cloud snowboards away from his troubles...

Idk man, maybe I'm being too lenient, but it's just Final Fantasy in the end; if people can love the endings to games like FF8 and FF10, then FF7 Rebirth is like easy mode compared to those two games' fucking insane stories. 10 years from now it'll maybe still hold some level of controversy within broader gaming culture, mostly by people who were told to be mad about it by the internet, but I feel like the consensus will turn out to be mostly positive. I think back to the first time I played the original Final Fantasy VII, there are so many aspects of that game that I found to be really fucking stupid back then, that now I deeply cherish -- I wouldn't have them any other way, in their own right, of course.

At the same time though, I get it if it didn't work for you, cuz it almost didn't work for me, and I might have just gaslit myself into loving it as a coping mechanism (kinda meta when you think about it...). Also why does Chadley talk like he's presenting a Nintendo Direct and why is he a horrible misogynist to his vtuber pokedex daughter, she didn't do anything wrong besides infodump about her special interests...... :(

edit: after reading details from the Rebirth Ultimania that just released and also after rewatching the final scenes several times after the past month, i think the vagueness is intentional from a thematic sense since so much is unclear to cloud himself, the player surrogate

i feel like soooo much "theorycrafting" misses the like
thematic point of a lot of these things. whether the aerith we're seeing at various points in the finale are lifestream aerith or sephiroth hallucination aerith doesn't ultimately matter because it serves two points:

a) to demonstrate's clouds mental and emotional degradation, he is at his lowest point yet. he can't even see what's right in front of him -- aerith has died and tifa desperately needs his support. he is failing himself and the people around him. the only productive thing he ultimately does is pointing out where to go next (but we all know what happens when he gets to northern crater with the black materia in-hand)

b) i think they really did want to give aerith a more meaningful goodbye, even if the rest of the party can't see it. she's made the ultimate sacrifice, and it allows the player to really understand the weight of what she's lost in allowing herself to perish to save the world

also it's not multiverses :) it's just other worlds existing in the lifestream shit, which is cool, and was mostly already clear in retrospect, i think gamer discourse jargon is destroying meaningful art discussion at times. once again, it's final fantasy baby!!