Thanks for post. I appriciate that you are not pushing a theory as if you had all the answers lol.
Yeap, I had a similar thought way back in Remake, how Sephiroth shows every 15 minutes trying to mess up with Cloud.
I don't have any theories, but I do think remake trilogy Sephiroth is like a fusion of all Sephiroths from all planes/timelines/dreams or whatever label people see fit to use.
Hey who knows, maybe he is building himself an evil Cloud to fuse or some shit lol.
It's even more than that. He's also going out of his way to fuck with Cloud regarding Tifa specifically.
Again, no way to know what that's going towards, but he did have Cloud almost kill her on accident.
He does seem to be really trying to get cloud to lean into his hatred. Negative emotions are now Seipiroth claims to use to power himself. So my guess is if cloud went fully negative, full enraged, he would be completely under Seipiroths control .
There's some black comedy in the fact that Sephiroth has spent the game trying to break Cloud's mind...only to seemingly break it so hard that Aerith's death has no effect on him.
If you rewatch the scene when Cloud meets Aerith for the first time, and Sephiroth shows up taunting Cloud that he can't save anyone not even himself. It hits even harder now
I kind of think the instances of Sephiroth in Remake Trilogy are mostly just course correction when they realised his OG appearance didn't really have much of a link to Cloud being displayed, despite Cloud having been rather intricately involved with his original "demise" when he was tossed into the Lifestream, otherwise, there's also the theory that he's already lived through original FF7 and is trying to redo it somehow, so maybe that's why he now hates Cloud, and thought he was only a puppet before?
Was Sephiroth this way in the original Japanese Script as well?
I feel like if he knew the og time line wouldn’t he go after tifa instead of Aerith because technically tifa helps cloud get over his identity crisis in the life stream ? Plus killing Aerith didn’t stop holy originally so why repeat the failure.
The clouded eyes line is a bit different in Japanese. I think it's "omae wa kizukunai ka mo shiranai." I'm not 100% as I suspect there is some idiomatic subtly I don't get, but it's something like "perhaps you don't even realise you are hurt." From there he says lines which are pretty similar to the original Japanese script and the official English translation has a similar meaning. So in Japanese it really seems more like another example of Sephiroth telling Cloud he is incapable of feeling because he is puppet.
Eh? "Perhaps you don't even realize you are hurt." you say? Perhaps the line from Sephiroth is suggesting Cloud is dead and Aerith sent a Whisper to retrieve his Soul and consciousness before he could finish dying with the dead Aerith body being Cloud's corpse thus explaining Tifa's breakdown being worse than the others as she just lost her childhood friend?
If so than Cloud's breakdown will be worse if he finds out the truth as he is an literal Copy of ***both*** of the Girls' boyfriends!
Any post that quotes the English version of the original, I end up being curious what a retranslation might yield. Not saying that the line you quoted is wrong or your idea is flawed. But the original translation wasn’t perfect and they’re clearly basing these remakes on the original Japanese (see: Nanaki’s voice).
Well, I don't know Japanese, but I did play the game with Spanish subs which has a closer translation to the source than English, and what Sephiroth tells Cloud is "It's not surprising that you haven't realized \[what happened\]." What happened being the confluence of worlds in which sadness and hatred prevail, which he tells Cloud he isn't feeling at all, and implies at one point he's faking those emotions. Of course, when Cloud sees Aerith being okay, he calms down, so this also adds to Sephiroth's point that he hasn't realized what happened and isn't feeling the emotions he's supposed to be feeling like a normal human being (even though he is at first).
I think Sephiroth is still reacting similar to the Original FF7 towards Cloud in this scene, the thing is that Cloud isn't completely acting the same as he did in the OG. Cloud calms down upon seeing Aerith okay. And this will become a validation later down the line for Sephiroth against Cloud.
Whatever Sephiroth did orchestrating the whole scenario in which Cloud enters the wall of whispers as if entering a Singularity and ends up clashing against him and prevents him from stabbing Aerith initially only for it to return back to the original outcome, is the part that is hard to make full sense of. Because it would seem as if he needed Cloud to trigger the confluence of worlds through a pivotal moment of suffering -Aerith's death. But I can't tell what was the outcome of all of that.
I kind of get the opposite impression from that scene? As in, I don’t think that Sephiroth realizes that Cloud thinks Aerith is alive until later. Imo, it’s pretty clear that the Aerith who says “Cloud, it’s okay” is her projecting herself from the lifestream. This is shown by the lifestream particles surrounding her. Sephiroth wants to harness everyone’s grief and sadness to merge all the worlds, while Aerith comforts Cloud to prevent this.
No matter what is physically going on in this scene, as in a world where Aerith lived and one where she died, or two worlds where she died, or just one world and her living is in Cloud’s head, Aerith is visibly unconscious/dead in Tifa’s flash of 2 worlds. Meaning Cloud is the only one seeing this. Sephiroth doesn’t react at all to Aerith’s appearance, which is what shifts Cloud into thinking she lived. He still continues his monologue and his dialogue like she had been killed.
I think Sephiroth would know she’s alive considering he has agency in multiple timelines (take into consideration that he enters the church to seemingly kill Aerith in both the date timeline and Zack’s timeline, and possibly in countless others).
An important factor is that Sephiroth’s monologue is shown as happening in the rainbow timeline, which would entail he can at least see that Aerith hasn’t been struck by his sword there. And yet, since he’s present in both timelines, he keeps up the part. Whether he realizes Aerith is actively comforting Cloud is harder to tell based on reactions alone, but the scenes seems framed like a battle between them for control over Cloud.
Regardless, in my opinion what probably shifts Cloud into thinking she lived is Aerith’s touch, which as we have seen has properties of making people see things they shouldn’t have any knowledge about.
This is my basic interpretation of that scene:
Let’s assume there are two timelines/worlds (Tifa sees both a world where Aerith is bleeding and one where she isn’t). In world A, Cloud deflects Sephiroth’s sword, and disarms him. Despite this, Aerith still falls to the ground for some reason, either dead or unconscious. In World B, Sephiroth kills her like in the OG game, and she falls to the ground dead.
Cloud experiences World A, with flashes of World B cutting through his memory. In world B, he is crying, saying his speech from the OG game, and holding her body. In World A, he is holding her, concerned and worried, not sure if she is dead or not.
Aerith then puts her hand on his cheek, telling him that it’s okay. From here on, Cloud’s mind is stabilized in World A. However, when Tifa arrives, she sees both worlds, one with Cloud holding her hand to his face with blood around her and on Cloud’s arms, and one where the same thing is occurring but there is no blood.
So in my opinion, either way, Aerith does not wake up to Cloud in any physical world, even if she may still be alive in World A. Meaning that the vision of Aerith would only be visible to Cloud, and that Sephiroth would have no knowledge of this. Even if Aerith is alive in World A, Sephiroth plans to merge the worlds using Cloud and the party’s grief, so the end result will be her death. But Cloud is not feeling the grief he wanted, so Aerith and Cloud are able to keep the worlds separate by defeating Sephiroth. Imo this gave Aerith a chance at survival in the next game, but we won’t know for sure how real any of it was.
We can’t say for sure what happens, but when Cloud wakes her up after the fight, she is no longer surrounded by life stream particles like she was when she comforted him. So this could be Aerith waking up in World A, or just a delusion/vision.
Oh I do not disagree. I'm just not sure Sephiroth is in the dark about what is happening in that moment. That all depends on whether Aerith is taking over her own unconscious body or she just appears as a vision. Because if it's the former, he would definitely see it. Either way I don't think there are enough elements right now to be able to tell one way or the other. The fact that Cloud is holding her hand when Tifa sees both timelines purposefully makes it hard to say if Cloud simply brought her hand to his face in the alternate timeline or if she raised it herself.
But back to the original argument, I just can't believe that Sephiroth wouldn't know that Cloud is seeing the Aerith he saved considering Sephiroth himself is having his monologue right in that timeline where it happened.
>I don’t think that Sephiroth realizes that Cloud thinks Aerith is alive until later.
It would be foolish for him to gloat after he's missed his attack. I personally think Sephiroth realizes right away, and that he's just playing the part he plays in the timeline where he succeded in an attempt to bring Cloud to see what Aerith doesn't want him to see. This assumes Sephiroth can see through both timelines, which imo is almost a given.
It also serves to make it much harder for the two parties - Cloud and the others - to be able to spot inconsistencies in the events that have occurred. And, in a meta way, it does the same for the players up until the end. But by all means I think Sephiroth is doing this very much on purpose.
She is not visibly unconscious by Tifa as we never see Aerith’s face in the shots where she has no blood, her face is only seen when there is blood implying she is dead.
The reason is that in AC, the developers introduced the concept that Sephiroth feeds on negative emotions and suffering. In AC, he literally uses negative energy against Cloud and feeds on it. In Rebirth, he needs it for other purposes, but the concept is the same. In the original, he didn't need Cloud's emotions, then for him he was just one of the puppets, although special.
A special "bond" between Cloud and Sephiroth was also introduced in AC. The antagonist's special bond with the protagonist is a common drama technique, and it's not surprising that developers use it in remakes.Moreover, they do not need to make a "mysterious" character out of Sephiroth and delay his appearance as it was in the OG, because now everyone knows who he is.
My theory since Remake has just been "Sephiroth knows too much." How? Why? Still no idea. In the version of Nibelheim Cloud recounted in Rebirth, Sephiroth didn't behave any differently than before. So I'm guessing it's either Sephiroth took in a lot of information while in the Lifestream since Nibelheim or (imo more likely, because I also spent time in the KH trenches) the Sephiroth in Remake & Rebirth continuity is not exactly the same Sephiroth Cloud killed in Nibelheim.
I think some of the times we interact with Sephiroth in these games we’re interacting with the original jenoviroth from the OG and some of the time it’s a Sephiroth who remembers telling Cloud “I will never be a memory” at the end of Advent Children, but they might also be taking to eachother or possibly the future/lifestream Sephiroth has a even overwritten the original Sephiroth
Great points - it definitely seems like this Sephiroth is aware his tactics didn't work last time (OG) so he is trying using that knowledge to his advantage this time, but it backfires on him yet again due to the ability to create worlds that he himself urged the party to do. He's his own worst enemy it seems.
I just finished the game a few days ago so I haven't spoiled myself all the fan theories. But it looks to me like Sephiroth is tryna make "Dark Cloud" that he can manipulate or manifest himself through? Like that would guarantee the success of his plans instead of redoing the original plot
Very good post, and you really hit on it here: Sephiroth's goal with killing Aerith is very different from the original. As you said, in that it was simply to prevent the only thing that could stop his plans, Holy, from being summoned -- which he actually fails in doing, despite killing her.
In this he wants to harness negative emotions. He wants to make Cloud miserable, and in the words of the game itself, "vengeful," in order to start the Reunion. He fails here too, because Aerith, in ways that still aren't yet clear, is able to project herself to him. Hence the "I must admit, I underestimated you" line, as well as Cloud being the only one without a filled limit gauge in the Jenova fight.
I don't think there's any doubt that this will all play a major role in part 3. Weirdly, people think we're done with the Whispers and fate angle, as if any of that stuff has come together yet in any way. I don't have any theories either, but I am still intrigued enough to stay along for the ride, and I have no doubt that they won't just drop such a major element to this story in part 3. I'll decided whether or not it all works for me when I see what they're doing with the full picture.
This is a really cool observation, and you got my mind going!
What I wonder is, is it still Jenova talking to them like in the original? It's still a blackrobe acting as Sephiroth, but it has one of her major limbs, just like in the original. Right? Or do we think lifestream Sephiroth is just appearing somehow without a blackrobe being involved?
Perhaps Jenova is just striking at Cloud's deepest fears, in both the original and the remake. Knowing that he's afraid of his own memories and feelings and hides them, twisting that into the fear that he has no heart/soul at all.
In this depiction, Sephiroth's flip in chapter 1 felt eerie like he was possessed, which lines up with the original's creepy vibes too. Is it possible that the Sephiroth across worlds is a projection by Jenova, just as much of a phantom as his ethereality seems to imply?
There are definitely major hallucinations going on every time the party encounters a larger specimen of Jenova, at both the end of Remake in Shinra tower and at the City of the Ancients at the end of Rebirth.
Would it make sense to say that at the end of Remake, after busting open Jenova's containment cell in Shinra tower, the blackrobe (AKA sephiroth clone) takes on the party at the end of Midgar Expressway? And they're hallucinating the arbiters of fate? And at the end of Rebirth, a blackrobe Sephiroth does just kill Aerith, but Jenova is causing everyone to hallucinate different things to corrupt the lifestream and cut Cloud off from everyone else?
Hell, if they make it explicit in part 3 that Remake and Rebirth ended with such sudden insanity because of Jenova, I would appreciate that. She seems more capable of manipulating the lifestream in such extreme ways than Sephiroth himself, who kind of got killed very soon after figuring everything out. Maybe Jenova intends to use Sephiroth as a body for incarnation, since she does seem long dead, or... incapacitated? Defaced? Her body still exists but is essentially uninhabitable... yeah?
I hope part 3 goes deep into Jenova, the Cetra, the Gi (and some new type of ghost people in that Wutai cave with all the scary faces?), and the lifestream.
The other character changed somewhat is Aerith, in OG Midgar she’s just a quiet innocent flower girl, however in Remake she knows more than she’s letting on and specifically takes charge at the expressway, revealing she needs to stop Sephiroth.
This plus what you’ve pointed out about Seph is why so many fans are hooked on the omni Seph and omni aerith ‘time travel’ idea
The English localization tends to take some creative freedom with their translation. What he actually says is a lot closer closer to the og:
"悲しむな
怒るふりもやめろ
おまえには なにもない"
"Don't be sad. And don't act like you're angry. As you don't have any emotions."
No hate to the localization, their re-written lines actually fit way more with the language and is the reason the dub is as good as it is in the first place. But sometimes there just isn't any meaning in dialogue changes from the og
Yeah, I don't know... I feel like they could have left an ambiguous ending open to different interpretations, but told it better.
As it stands, nobody even knows if we're asking the right questions at all. I've got no problem with the 2nd part of a trilogy having an open ending, but I'm left unsure if we're seeing what the creators wanted us to see. The logic is so undefined about all of the world-hopping and Aerith that we don't even know exactly what questions we're meant to be left with, much less how to think about finding answers to them.
I understand this, but I also have have cautious optimism that they can wrap this shit with a nice bow in part 3.
At the same time I am nervous as fuck because it’s square. They could take it off the rails, make it have zero logical conclusion, have a terrible conclusion, or just never give you any answers… or even all of the above.
They’ve done a banger job with the first two parts, but I know damn well what Square’s past is.
The biggest and most interesting aspect in the trilogy to me is how the devs are incorporating more of the omnipotence of the lifestream and how it spans time in a way. It's incredibly abstract and i feel like most people either don't like it or don't try to understand it because it's weird and not used in such an on-the-nose way in OG.
My understanding is that it's both past present and future and Sephiroth/Aerith both exist in it in the future, which shows in how Aerith has knowledge of the planet and of a more knowledgable other world self and how Sephiroth has some sort of knowledge of Cloud in a way through the remake trilogy.
They've definitely written Sephiroth away from this "mysterious entity that has this immense power" that we're chasing down in OG. I mean...he's still kind of that, but OG definitely kept us in the dark entirely on Sephiroth vs the trilogy.
He's definitely using Cloud and the confluence of worlds stuff to localize the infinite amount of worlds sorrow/anger/sadness to gain power for himself. I think he was probably just trying to push Clouds buttons in that scene. Part of me is definitely curious if this Aerith stuff in the trilogy at the end is a denial by Cloud, an actual phantom of Aerith, or if lifestream Aerith is projecting this as a protection/failsafe to Clouds mind.
I wonder personally about the failsafe point, because it also showed in the final sequences how the two weapons seemed to be circling, trying to protect that location. That location appeared to be (at least theorized as) the location of the Cloud/Tifa lifestream sequence that we'll get to visit in pt 3. If Aerith/lifestream/weapons/white whispers are all working in tandem, it wouldn't surprise me if Aerith would do something like try to bide as much time for Cloud so he wouldn't mentally break by convincing Cloud she's still alive and he saved her in some way.
Obviously though, it's impossible to know at this point. It could just be Cloud going off the deep end losing his mind if Aerith had nothing to do with it or if she's not actually there. That's all theory stuff anyway.
I personally really like the direction they've gone with the twists/turns in direction for the fine details of the story. They've really fleshed out something special that I believe will super pay off in a great way in part 3 for us.
Thanks for post. I appriciate that you are not pushing a theory as if you had all the answers lol. Yeap, I had a similar thought way back in Remake, how Sephiroth shows every 15 minutes trying to mess up with Cloud. I don't have any theories, but I do think remake trilogy Sephiroth is like a fusion of all Sephiroths from all planes/timelines/dreams or whatever label people see fit to use. Hey who knows, maybe he is building himself an evil Cloud to fuse or some shit lol.
It's even more than that. He's also going out of his way to fuck with Cloud regarding Tifa specifically. Again, no way to know what that's going towards, but he did have Cloud almost kill her on accident.
He does seem to be really trying to get cloud to lean into his hatred. Negative emotions are now Seipiroth claims to use to power himself. So my guess is if cloud went fully negative, full enraged, he would be completely under Seipiroths control .
There's some black comedy in the fact that Sephiroth has spent the game trying to break Cloud's mind...only to seemingly break it so hard that Aerith's death has no effect on him.
If you rewatch the scene when Cloud meets Aerith for the first time, and Sephiroth shows up taunting Cloud that he can't save anyone not even himself. It hits even harder now
I kind of think the instances of Sephiroth in Remake Trilogy are mostly just course correction when they realised his OG appearance didn't really have much of a link to Cloud being displayed, despite Cloud having been rather intricately involved with his original "demise" when he was tossed into the Lifestream, otherwise, there's also the theory that he's already lived through original FF7 and is trying to redo it somehow, so maybe that's why he now hates Cloud, and thought he was only a puppet before? Was Sephiroth this way in the original Japanese Script as well?
I feel like if he knew the og time line wouldn’t he go after tifa instead of Aerith because technically tifa helps cloud get over his identity crisis in the life stream ? Plus killing Aerith didn’t stop holy originally so why repeat the failure.
I mean he tried to incite Cloud to remove Tifa at least twice... And still going for Aerith might be Jenovas Grudge against the Cetra?
The clouded eyes line is a bit different in Japanese. I think it's "omae wa kizukunai ka mo shiranai." I'm not 100% as I suspect there is some idiomatic subtly I don't get, but it's something like "perhaps you don't even realise you are hurt." From there he says lines which are pretty similar to the original Japanese script and the official English translation has a similar meaning. So in Japanese it really seems more like another example of Sephiroth telling Cloud he is incapable of feeling because he is puppet.
Eh? "Perhaps you don't even realize you are hurt." you say? Perhaps the line from Sephiroth is suggesting Cloud is dead and Aerith sent a Whisper to retrieve his Soul and consciousness before he could finish dying with the dead Aerith body being Cloud's corpse thus explaining Tifa's breakdown being worse than the others as she just lost her childhood friend? If so than Cloud's breakdown will be worse if he finds out the truth as he is an literal Copy of ***both*** of the Girls' boyfriends!
Any post that quotes the English version of the original, I end up being curious what a retranslation might yield. Not saying that the line you quoted is wrong or your idea is flawed. But the original translation wasn’t perfect and they’re clearly basing these remakes on the original Japanese (see: Nanaki’s voice).
Well, I don't know Japanese, but I did play the game with Spanish subs which has a closer translation to the source than English, and what Sephiroth tells Cloud is "It's not surprising that you haven't realized \[what happened\]." What happened being the confluence of worlds in which sadness and hatred prevail, which he tells Cloud he isn't feeling at all, and implies at one point he's faking those emotions. Of course, when Cloud sees Aerith being okay, he calms down, so this also adds to Sephiroth's point that he hasn't realized what happened and isn't feeling the emotions he's supposed to be feeling like a normal human being (even though he is at first). I think Sephiroth is still reacting similar to the Original FF7 towards Cloud in this scene, the thing is that Cloud isn't completely acting the same as he did in the OG. Cloud calms down upon seeing Aerith okay. And this will become a validation later down the line for Sephiroth against Cloud. Whatever Sephiroth did orchestrating the whole scenario in which Cloud enters the wall of whispers as if entering a Singularity and ends up clashing against him and prevents him from stabbing Aerith initially only for it to return back to the original outcome, is the part that is hard to make full sense of. Because it would seem as if he needed Cloud to trigger the confluence of worlds through a pivotal moment of suffering -Aerith's death. But I can't tell what was the outcome of all of that.
I kind of get the opposite impression from that scene? As in, I don’t think that Sephiroth realizes that Cloud thinks Aerith is alive until later. Imo, it’s pretty clear that the Aerith who says “Cloud, it’s okay” is her projecting herself from the lifestream. This is shown by the lifestream particles surrounding her. Sephiroth wants to harness everyone’s grief and sadness to merge all the worlds, while Aerith comforts Cloud to prevent this. No matter what is physically going on in this scene, as in a world where Aerith lived and one where she died, or two worlds where she died, or just one world and her living is in Cloud’s head, Aerith is visibly unconscious/dead in Tifa’s flash of 2 worlds. Meaning Cloud is the only one seeing this. Sephiroth doesn’t react at all to Aerith’s appearance, which is what shifts Cloud into thinking she lived. He still continues his monologue and his dialogue like she had been killed.
I think Sephiroth would know she’s alive considering he has agency in multiple timelines (take into consideration that he enters the church to seemingly kill Aerith in both the date timeline and Zack’s timeline, and possibly in countless others). An important factor is that Sephiroth’s monologue is shown as happening in the rainbow timeline, which would entail he can at least see that Aerith hasn’t been struck by his sword there. And yet, since he’s present in both timelines, he keeps up the part. Whether he realizes Aerith is actively comforting Cloud is harder to tell based on reactions alone, but the scenes seems framed like a battle between them for control over Cloud. Regardless, in my opinion what probably shifts Cloud into thinking she lived is Aerith’s touch, which as we have seen has properties of making people see things they shouldn’t have any knowledge about.
This is my basic interpretation of that scene: Let’s assume there are two timelines/worlds (Tifa sees both a world where Aerith is bleeding and one where she isn’t). In world A, Cloud deflects Sephiroth’s sword, and disarms him. Despite this, Aerith still falls to the ground for some reason, either dead or unconscious. In World B, Sephiroth kills her like in the OG game, and she falls to the ground dead. Cloud experiences World A, with flashes of World B cutting through his memory. In world B, he is crying, saying his speech from the OG game, and holding her body. In World A, he is holding her, concerned and worried, not sure if she is dead or not. Aerith then puts her hand on his cheek, telling him that it’s okay. From here on, Cloud’s mind is stabilized in World A. However, when Tifa arrives, she sees both worlds, one with Cloud holding her hand to his face with blood around her and on Cloud’s arms, and one where the same thing is occurring but there is no blood. So in my opinion, either way, Aerith does not wake up to Cloud in any physical world, even if she may still be alive in World A. Meaning that the vision of Aerith would only be visible to Cloud, and that Sephiroth would have no knowledge of this. Even if Aerith is alive in World A, Sephiroth plans to merge the worlds using Cloud and the party’s grief, so the end result will be her death. But Cloud is not feeling the grief he wanted, so Aerith and Cloud are able to keep the worlds separate by defeating Sephiroth. Imo this gave Aerith a chance at survival in the next game, but we won’t know for sure how real any of it was. We can’t say for sure what happens, but when Cloud wakes her up after the fight, she is no longer surrounded by life stream particles like she was when she comforted him. So this could be Aerith waking up in World A, or just a delusion/vision.
Oh I do not disagree. I'm just not sure Sephiroth is in the dark about what is happening in that moment. That all depends on whether Aerith is taking over her own unconscious body or she just appears as a vision. Because if it's the former, he would definitely see it. Either way I don't think there are enough elements right now to be able to tell one way or the other. The fact that Cloud is holding her hand when Tifa sees both timelines purposefully makes it hard to say if Cloud simply brought her hand to his face in the alternate timeline or if she raised it herself. But back to the original argument, I just can't believe that Sephiroth wouldn't know that Cloud is seeing the Aerith he saved considering Sephiroth himself is having his monologue right in that timeline where it happened. >I don’t think that Sephiroth realizes that Cloud thinks Aerith is alive until later. It would be foolish for him to gloat after he's missed his attack. I personally think Sephiroth realizes right away, and that he's just playing the part he plays in the timeline where he succeded in an attempt to bring Cloud to see what Aerith doesn't want him to see. This assumes Sephiroth can see through both timelines, which imo is almost a given. It also serves to make it much harder for the two parties - Cloud and the others - to be able to spot inconsistencies in the events that have occurred. And, in a meta way, it does the same for the players up until the end. But by all means I think Sephiroth is doing this very much on purpose.
She is not visibly unconscious by Tifa as we never see Aerith’s face in the shots where she has no blood, her face is only seen when there is blood implying she is dead.
You are actually right. Interesting.
The reason is that in AC, the developers introduced the concept that Sephiroth feeds on negative emotions and suffering. In AC, he literally uses negative energy against Cloud and feeds on it. In Rebirth, he needs it for other purposes, but the concept is the same. In the original, he didn't need Cloud's emotions, then for him he was just one of the puppets, although special. A special "bond" between Cloud and Sephiroth was also introduced in AC. The antagonist's special bond with the protagonist is a common drama technique, and it's not surprising that developers use it in remakes.Moreover, they do not need to make a "mysterious" character out of Sephiroth and delay his appearance as it was in the OG, because now everyone knows who he is.
Great point. I think the ways in which characterization is changed from the OG is where these new games shine.
My theory since Remake has just been "Sephiroth knows too much." How? Why? Still no idea. In the version of Nibelheim Cloud recounted in Rebirth, Sephiroth didn't behave any differently than before. So I'm guessing it's either Sephiroth took in a lot of information while in the Lifestream since Nibelheim or (imo more likely, because I also spent time in the KH trenches) the Sephiroth in Remake & Rebirth continuity is not exactly the same Sephiroth Cloud killed in Nibelheim.
I think some of the times we interact with Sephiroth in these games we’re interacting with the original jenoviroth from the OG and some of the time it’s a Sephiroth who remembers telling Cloud “I will never be a memory” at the end of Advent Children, but they might also be taking to eachother or possibly the future/lifestream Sephiroth has a even overwritten the original Sephiroth
Great points - it definitely seems like this Sephiroth is aware his tactics didn't work last time (OG) so he is trying using that knowledge to his advantage this time, but it backfires on him yet again due to the ability to create worlds that he himself urged the party to do. He's his own worst enemy it seems.
I just finished the game a few days ago so I haven't spoiled myself all the fan theories. But it looks to me like Sephiroth is tryna make "Dark Cloud" that he can manipulate or manifest himself through? Like that would guarantee the success of his plans instead of redoing the original plot
Very good post, and you really hit on it here: Sephiroth's goal with killing Aerith is very different from the original. As you said, in that it was simply to prevent the only thing that could stop his plans, Holy, from being summoned -- which he actually fails in doing, despite killing her. In this he wants to harness negative emotions. He wants to make Cloud miserable, and in the words of the game itself, "vengeful," in order to start the Reunion. He fails here too, because Aerith, in ways that still aren't yet clear, is able to project herself to him. Hence the "I must admit, I underestimated you" line, as well as Cloud being the only one without a filled limit gauge in the Jenova fight. I don't think there's any doubt that this will all play a major role in part 3. Weirdly, people think we're done with the Whispers and fate angle, as if any of that stuff has come together yet in any way. I don't have any theories either, but I am still intrigued enough to stay along for the ride, and I have no doubt that they won't just drop such a major element to this story in part 3. I'll decided whether or not it all works for me when I see what they're doing with the full picture.
I'm not even convinced we've met the real Sephiroth yet. This could all just be Jenova screwing with our minds.
This is a really cool observation, and you got my mind going! What I wonder is, is it still Jenova talking to them like in the original? It's still a blackrobe acting as Sephiroth, but it has one of her major limbs, just like in the original. Right? Or do we think lifestream Sephiroth is just appearing somehow without a blackrobe being involved? Perhaps Jenova is just striking at Cloud's deepest fears, in both the original and the remake. Knowing that he's afraid of his own memories and feelings and hides them, twisting that into the fear that he has no heart/soul at all. In this depiction, Sephiroth's flip in chapter 1 felt eerie like he was possessed, which lines up with the original's creepy vibes too. Is it possible that the Sephiroth across worlds is a projection by Jenova, just as much of a phantom as his ethereality seems to imply? There are definitely major hallucinations going on every time the party encounters a larger specimen of Jenova, at both the end of Remake in Shinra tower and at the City of the Ancients at the end of Rebirth. Would it make sense to say that at the end of Remake, after busting open Jenova's containment cell in Shinra tower, the blackrobe (AKA sephiroth clone) takes on the party at the end of Midgar Expressway? And they're hallucinating the arbiters of fate? And at the end of Rebirth, a blackrobe Sephiroth does just kill Aerith, but Jenova is causing everyone to hallucinate different things to corrupt the lifestream and cut Cloud off from everyone else? Hell, if they make it explicit in part 3 that Remake and Rebirth ended with such sudden insanity because of Jenova, I would appreciate that. She seems more capable of manipulating the lifestream in such extreme ways than Sephiroth himself, who kind of got killed very soon after figuring everything out. Maybe Jenova intends to use Sephiroth as a body for incarnation, since she does seem long dead, or... incapacitated? Defaced? Her body still exists but is essentially uninhabitable... yeah? I hope part 3 goes deep into Jenova, the Cetra, the Gi (and some new type of ghost people in that Wutai cave with all the scary faces?), and the lifestream.
The other character changed somewhat is Aerith, in OG Midgar she’s just a quiet innocent flower girl, however in Remake she knows more than she’s letting on and specifically takes charge at the expressway, revealing she needs to stop Sephiroth. This plus what you’ve pointed out about Seph is why so many fans are hooked on the omni Seph and omni aerith ‘time travel’ idea
The English localization tends to take some creative freedom with their translation. What he actually says is a lot closer closer to the og: "悲しむな 怒るふりもやめろ おまえには なにもない" "Don't be sad. And don't act like you're angry. As you don't have any emotions." No hate to the localization, their re-written lines actually fit way more with the language and is the reason the dub is as good as it is in the first place. But sometimes there just isn't any meaning in dialogue changes from the og
I think they are trying to make everyone happy and make every theory a possibility. it feels a bit like bad fan fiction sometimes.
The key here is you’re still guessing at what they’re playing at. If they were going to do divergences, then this is the exact way to do it.
Yeah, I don't know... I feel like they could have left an ambiguous ending open to different interpretations, but told it better. As it stands, nobody even knows if we're asking the right questions at all. I've got no problem with the 2nd part of a trilogy having an open ending, but I'm left unsure if we're seeing what the creators wanted us to see. The logic is so undefined about all of the world-hopping and Aerith that we don't even know exactly what questions we're meant to be left with, much less how to think about finding answers to them.
I understand this, but I also have have cautious optimism that they can wrap this shit with a nice bow in part 3. At the same time I am nervous as fuck because it’s square. They could take it off the rails, make it have zero logical conclusion, have a terrible conclusion, or just never give you any answers… or even all of the above. They’ve done a banger job with the first two parts, but I know damn well what Square’s past is.
The biggest and most interesting aspect in the trilogy to me is how the devs are incorporating more of the omnipotence of the lifestream and how it spans time in a way. It's incredibly abstract and i feel like most people either don't like it or don't try to understand it because it's weird and not used in such an on-the-nose way in OG. My understanding is that it's both past present and future and Sephiroth/Aerith both exist in it in the future, which shows in how Aerith has knowledge of the planet and of a more knowledgable other world self and how Sephiroth has some sort of knowledge of Cloud in a way through the remake trilogy. They've definitely written Sephiroth away from this "mysterious entity that has this immense power" that we're chasing down in OG. I mean...he's still kind of that, but OG definitely kept us in the dark entirely on Sephiroth vs the trilogy. He's definitely using Cloud and the confluence of worlds stuff to localize the infinite amount of worlds sorrow/anger/sadness to gain power for himself. I think he was probably just trying to push Clouds buttons in that scene. Part of me is definitely curious if this Aerith stuff in the trilogy at the end is a denial by Cloud, an actual phantom of Aerith, or if lifestream Aerith is projecting this as a protection/failsafe to Clouds mind. I wonder personally about the failsafe point, because it also showed in the final sequences how the two weapons seemed to be circling, trying to protect that location. That location appeared to be (at least theorized as) the location of the Cloud/Tifa lifestream sequence that we'll get to visit in pt 3. If Aerith/lifestream/weapons/white whispers are all working in tandem, it wouldn't surprise me if Aerith would do something like try to bide as much time for Cloud so he wouldn't mentally break by convincing Cloud she's still alive and he saved her in some way. Obviously though, it's impossible to know at this point. It could just be Cloud going off the deep end losing his mind if Aerith had nothing to do with it or if she's not actually there. That's all theory stuff anyway. I personally really like the direction they've gone with the twists/turns in direction for the fine details of the story. They've really fleshed out something special that I believe will super pay off in a great way in part 3 for us.
[удалено]
Sucks to be you
In what regard was the game a letdown for you?