Final fucking fantasy 22 3/4

[Friday]

Aerith spoilers below:

So, I have been thinking about this particular plot element for a long time now. Maybe 8 years? Since Remake was announced. When was that? How fucking old am I? I'm not going to look.

Anyway, it's... very interesting to me. I don't want to overstate it, but this is something of a unique situation. You have what is perhaps the most well known "twist the knife in your feelings" video game spoiler of all time, in fact it's so well known that I don't even have to use spoiler tags here to discuss it.

And the remake explicitly says "we're changing things/this is a timeloop redo."

This gives the devs some REALLY interesting options. I will rank them in order of my own personal preference, from least prefered to most prefered:

1. (least) Kill Cloud. The obvious twist on the twist. Meh, it's fine I guess.
2. Kill no one. This is fine and sort of uplifting but sort of lacks that big hit.
3. Kill Aerith again. Fuck you, fate cannot be changed.
4. Reintroduce Zack as a playable party member and kill him.
5. Kill Tifa. The ultimate middle finger to the playerbase.

So I have been discussing these options (and some more esoteric ones) with my friends for like almost a decade now. I wanted to know what they did. So I went and spoiled myself on youtube.

Welp.

Absolutely agreed with you, Niku. Ultimate fucking cop out of all cop outs. I had the same reaction when Cloud blocked the Masamune, I actually started yelling, despite my ranking of second to least preferred, in the moment it felt great. And then HAHA NO YOU DIDN'T SAVE HER ... OR DID YOU? bullshit. I am so fucking mad and have been for like a week since I looked it up. God damn this might actually be my all time least favorite dev choice ever of all time. I would have accepted "Aerith dies again" and been sad, but this, whatever this nonsense is, is fucking stupid. No lay to rest in the water scene? Just ambiguity, no emotional resolution or catharsis? Get fucked I hate everything.

[Niku]

So here's a funny thing that they do in the very first two chapters; it's the Nibelheim flashback, where Cloud and Sephiroth are guided by Tifa to the reactor, and Sephiroth goes crazy and attacks Tifa at the end. It introduces ambiguity right then and there that Tifa actually was killed in this or some other version of the events, and Cloud no longer trusts that she is the "real" Tifa. It's an interesting use of subverted expectations and the knowledge that things COULD be "wrong" in this telling of the story, and the fact that the game returns to it now and again throughout the plot and dances around that possibility space leads to some very nice little character moments and plot beats! #5 actually IS on the table for a lot of the game! Zack plays a small but significant role throughout the game: #4 IS a possibility!

Kitase et al know the weight of fan expectations going into this and they are honestly pretty good about playing around with them for much of the runtime in between the sidequests about helping a good pupper deliver generational wealth to an ingrateful son. About the only one of those options that it never feels like they could do is #1, because without Cloud's unreliable narrator role you lose their main storytelling gimmick across the entire trilogy.