Square Enix
This article incorporates spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Midway via 1997’s Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife walks up a small staircase and finds his companion, Aerith, kneeling on a small platform. She’s locked in prayer as holy-looking mild streaks in via the home windows round her. That serene second offers option to a stunning tragedy. Aerith appears to be like at Cloud and calmly smiles earlier than the digicam pans above her head. A black shadow bursts out of the sunshine above her; it’s the villainous Sephiroth, huge sword in tow. Before Cloud can course of what’s occurring, Sephiroth plunges his sword via Aerith’s again, killing her.
Her physique goes limp as Sephiroth pulls his blade out. There’s no lengthy goodbye. There’s no closure. Aerith dies.
It’s a second that traumatized a complete era of players. No matter what number of instances you play Final Fantasy VII, the result by no means modifications. Both Cloud and the participant controlling him are left feeling like they’ve failed their most beneficial social gathering member, a healer who has spent the journey heroically defending everybody. It’s a merciless accident, one which leaves a grief-stricken Cloud questioning if might have executed something to avoid wasting her. Maybe if he’d proven up one second sooner, she’d nonetheless be alive.
Rather than dancing round that second, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth makes that dramatic irony the main target of its story. The remake sequel makes use of Aerith’s impending destiny as a gas for an emotional, character-driven story about heroes overcoming self-doubt to battle for a greater future. That method comes with a serious — and really polarizing — change to the unique ending. While it’s positive to infuriate some purists, the grand finale is the precise payoff that Rebirth’s subversive story referred to as for.
A future with out future
Right from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s first chapter, it’s clear that the sequel is totally constructed round Aerith’s well-known destiny. That’s made abundantly clear proper from the beginning. Its stunning first chapter sees Zack Fair, miraculously alive after escaping his Crisis Core loss of life, attempting to rescue Cloud and the gang from Shinra custody. The operation goes all incorrect when a helicopter crashes. Zack pulls Aerith out of the wreckage and holds her as her physique goes limp, simply because it did within the unique Final Fantasy VII. For a second, it seems that Aerith is, as soon as once more, useless.
And then, whiplash.
Suddenly, we’re again with Cloud and his buddies, together with a really a lot alive Aerith, as they proceed their journey to cease Sephiroth. Everyone is carrying on as if nothing’s occurred. It’s a maddening second, and one which Rebirth takes its candy time following up on. For an extended chunk of the story, gamers are left at the hours of darkness. Where’s Zack? Are we coping with alternate universes? Is Aerith useless? Those questions dangle over the peppy journey for an excruciatingly very long time, with solutions teased out via a handful of cryptic interstitial scenes.
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That second creates a stress that carries via the whole journey. Right from the leap, Aerith’s looming loss of life looks like a tangible risk. Even although the social gathering efficiently killed the idea of future in Final Fantasy VII Remake, that doesn’t imply Aerith is protected. Tragedy can nonetheless strike at any second. But by the identical token, it’s not too late to avoid wasting her both. Despite being probably the most identified spoiler in online game historical past, Rebirth efficiently turns Aerith’s destiny into a complete thriller.
That dynamic is vital to accepting how Rebirth ultimately subverts gaming’s most memorable sequence. Strip apart all of its wacky timeline shenanigans and also you’ll discover that Rebirth tells a grounded, human story about characters who actually consider their futures are unsalvageable. Despite definitively regaining their free will on the finish of Remake, every member of the crew has develop into their very own worst enemy. Cloud is satisfied that he’s sure to develop into like Sephiroth, with any heat succumbing to callous indifference all through the story. Barret is petrified that his overprotective maintain over his daughter, Marlene, will suffocate her. Everyone is coping with some type of grief or trauma, all of which have planted seeds of self-doubt of their heads.
In Remake, the crew needed to overcome the God-like manifestation of future to regain their free will. In Rebirth, they should defeat a lot fiercer foes: themselves. It’s not a low-stakes battle to tame private nervousness; Aerith’s again is on the road.
A name to motion
En path to the City of the Ancients, Rebirth waits to play its full thematic hand till a key sequence with Zack. Midway via the story, we lastly get a firmer thought of what’s happening in his asides. Zack finds himself in some form of alternate timeline aside from the world we all know. There, the residents of Midgar face an impending apocalypse — one whose arrival is signaled by a fractured sky. If it takes some time to completely piece that collectively, it’s as a result of that’s exhausting to glean from the folks round Zack. Everyone in Midgar barely acknowledges the scenario or appears notably considering saving themselves. They’re resigned to their destiny.
Zack isn’t having any of that. In a brief speech, he expresses his frustrations with the truth that everybody has given up so simply. That second reveals his position as an ideal foil to Cloud. Where our blonde hero is brooding and hopeless, Zack is bright-eyed and decided. He has good motive to be too; he defied his personal loss of life in opposition to all odds. Maybe his model of Gaia is past saving. Maybe Midgar’s residents are proper to assume they’re too small to stop an apocalypse. But that doesn’t imply that everybody ought to simply roll over and let it occur.
Even when confronted with the inconceivable, it’s all the time price preventing for a greater future.
Square Enix
Zack’s name to motion lays the groundwork for Rebirth’s finale. In its penultimate chapter, Aerith’s destiny begins to really feel extra inevitable because the world fairly actually narrows. Where a lot of the recreation takes place in wide-open biomes the place gamers can stretch their legs and discover freely, Chapter 13 takes the gang to the Temple of the Ancients. It’s an extended and linear dungeon that calls again to the restrictive degree design of Remake, again when characters had been fated to maneuver in a single predetermined path. Rebirth subtly evokes that claustrophobic feeling once more as Aerith’s dance with future approaches. The stress reaches its boiling level.
The arduous chapter pays off — not with a flashy boss battle, however with key moments of development for our heroes. At the center of the temple, every social gathering member undergoes a trial the place they’re pressured to face their insecurities. They see their pasts: the folks they’ve misplaced, their failures, all the emotional baggage. It’s a therapeutic second, one the place everyone seems to be pressured to tug up the anchors holding them again. By the tip of it, there’s a way that the crew has prevented turning into just like the hopeless residents of Zack’s timeline.
With self-defeat forged apart, they’re lastly prepared for his or her biggest problem … even when it means dealing with one other tragedy.
Schrodinger’s Aerith
No matter how intimately you recognize the unique Final Fantasy VII, nothing can put together you for Rebirth’s ultimate chapter. Rather than merely heading to the City of the Ancients and watching Aerith die, Cloud finds himself in a surreal sequence that just about performs like an RPG model of An American in Paris. It’s a surreal, balletic sequence whose arrival is telegraphed two chapters earlier by a efficiency of Loveless, an epic play throughout the Final Fantasy VII universe. It’s not only a fan service for many who’ve all the time needed to see a totally realized model of the play; it’s making ready gamers for the theatrical finale.
Much of the grander plot is revealed within the finale stretch, too. We be taught that when one thing deviates from destiny, like Zack surviving a firing squad, it creates a brand new timeline. Sephiroth’s final plan is to reunite these fractured timelines, chopping out any variables in his final quest. The more durable you learn into it on a pure plot degree, the extra holes you’ll discover.
But Rebirth’s ending isn’t meant to be taken so actually; it offers in some good old style symbolism. Before the large ending, Cloud and Aerith discover themselves wandering via Zack’s world on one thing of a date. One sequence sees Cloud going to totally different avenue distributors and given a selection of presents to purchase for Aerith. No matter what he chooses, the service provider as a substitute affords him one thing totally totally different. It’s a ultimate manifestation of his final nervousness: that he received’t have a selection in Aerith’s destiny.
Square Enix
It’s the final second of self-reflection Cloud will get earlier than he’s pressured to lastly face his biggest worry. In a tense sequence following the dreamlike sequence, he enters the City of the Ancients and finds Aerith in a well-recognized pose. She’s as soon as once more praying, surrounded by holy mild. Everything begins to play out proper on cue. Black feathers fall from the sky because the digicam whips up. A black blur on the ceiling shortly beneficial properties its type. Sephiroth dives down, sword in hand. History is about to repeat itself … after which, a conflict of metal.
Sephiroth’s sword doesn’t pierce Aerith; it’s intercepted by Cloud’s Buster Sword. Decades of catharsis burst out. Aerith is saved.
That aid is short-lived. In a chaotic sequence paying homage to Michael Haneke’s devious Funny Games, we all of a sudden flash right into a extra acquainted timeline. Aerith lies bloodied, the sick results of Sephiroth’s timeline reunion. A world-bending conflict ensues, the place Cloud fights the One Winged Angel alongside each Aerith and, ultimately, Zack They overcome Sephiroth, but it surely’s one other timeline pretend out. Sephiroth in the end leaves Rebirth victorious. Zack is shipped again to his world, Aerith lies useless, and a grief-stricken Cloud is seemingly left torn between worlds, in a position to see the dying sky of Zack’s timeline and Aerith’s ghost.
It’s lots to unpack.
What does all of it imply?
LikeRemake’s polarizing ending, the sequence is certain to antagonize Final Fantasy VII purists. A justifiably important learn might depart one miffed with a “multiverse” curveball that softens gaming’s biggest tragedy. Square Enix doesn’t wimp out on killing Aerith, but it surely does give gamers the lacking closure of her 1997 loss of life. Rebirth has its cake and eats it too by making a Schrodinger’s Aerith: She’s each saved and killed, alive and useless. There’s even a glimmer of hope that she might be completely rescued partly three by undoing Sephiroth’s reunion.
Though it might be an emotionally sophisticated ending for followers, Rebirth couldn’t have ended another manner.
Aerith’s pseudo-death creates a multilayered conclusion for the social gathering’s collective arc, one which’s wealthy with nuance. Yes, Rebirth is a story of heroes overcoming self-doubt and studying that they’re masters of their very own destiny, but it surely’s lifelike in its optimism too. Even if in case you have the ability to alter one thing, that doesn’t imply you all the time can. Aerith’s deadly journey to the City of the Ancients is one thing of a suicide mission. It’s a long-standing fan concept that’s made extra specific in Rebirth when the Aerith in Zack’s timeline tells Cloud that she’s going to die. Like Zack’s Crisis Core loss of life, she is aware of she could also be sacrificing herself to cease Sephiroth in the long run. That’s her option to make, not Cloud’s.
Square Enix
We don’t all the time get the possibility to avoid wasting the folks we love. We can attempt our greatest to be careful for them, simply as Barret worries that he’s obsessively doing so for Marlene, however there’s no option to totally defend somebody on this unknown journey of life. That could be irritating. When I feel again to mates I’ve misplaced, I nonetheless have moments the place I beat myself up. Since shedding one pal to a freak automobile accident a number of years in the past, I’ve usually questioned if I might have prevented it by inviting them to hang around that day. Maybe that might have pulled them away from the intersection the place he was struck by a automobile. It’s a complete fantasy, but it surely nonetheless haunts me once in a while. I’ve needed to work via that grief over the previous few years, and never let the at-times random inevitability of loss of life cease me from preventing for my family members.
Cloud undergoes an identical arc in Rebirth’s finale, although it’s one which performs out on a extra supernatural scale. The second the place he quickly saves Aerith isn’t a bodily victory, however a psychological one. In that second, Cloud has totally overcome his self-defeating view of destiny. For a quick second, he sees that he’s not incapable of being a hero. He has the ability and willpower inside himself to avoid wasting Aerith. That’s not in the end what occurs, but it surely’s not his fault, neither is it future. Life shakes out one other manner.
The empathetic great thing about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s subversive ending comes in how it allows Cloud to accept that Aerith’s loss of life isn’t a private failure. He did all the things he might to avoid wasting her, overcoming his personal nihilism to guard somebody he loves. That’s a heroic act that deserves to be celebrated, even when it doesn’t forestall her homicide. Life goes on within the wake of tragedy; you possibly can’t simply cease preventing.
At the tip of the journey, there’s a rekindled willpower within the grief-stricken Cloud. He is reborn. He’s extra motivated than ever to defeat Sephiroth, even when he’s left haunted by Aerith. He received’t develop into just like the unhappy saps of Midgar, ready for the inevitable apocalypse to wipe all of them away. Cloud goes to battle for a greater future and the folks he loves proper right down to his final breath, even when the percentages appear inconceivable. He is aware of he’s able to it; he’s seen his blade change historical past simply lengthy sufficient to simply accept he has the ability.
Life isn’t outlined by our previous struggles. It’s the way you rise to satisfy the subsequent problem that issues.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is out now on PlayStation 5.
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