I mean, Texas has to be canon to Final Fantasy, right?
Ariana Grande is canon to the Final Fantasy multiverse, as is Adam Jensen. Both of these canon Final Fantasy characters plausibly have visited Texas in their lifetime, thus it has to be canon or else there would be a plot hole. I am glad that the intricate and interconnected lore of Final Fantasy explains even these small details if you pay attention to it.
Oh God, Brave Exvius, my first foray into gacha games and probably the biggest, most insane example of power creep over the years I can point to. Has its few good points in beautiful pixel art and cool CG limit break cutscenes, gives some good fanservice for both old and new characters.
Now, I don't know how trustworthy the source is (Reddit - Dive into anything) or if there are unannounced spoilers in it (so warning for Omi), but this graph seems interesting and relevant, now that FF6 is done.
Not gonna lie, having the right fork go "Final Fantasy Tactics" > "Final Fantasy IX" >> "Vagrant Story" does make me think that the quality development team all went on to work together on the same stuff and left everybody else to handle the rest. Those are three of the best PS1 games I can think of.
I started a VII game to follow the LP and... I'm exactly at the point this update stopped and just like the last two times I've tried, the game still only inspires in me a profound sense of exhaustion. I caught myself thinking "so this is what goes through my mother's mind when I suggest her to try X movie/show/book outside her tastes but which might vibe with her" and I hate it.
Worst of all, I can't even tell what's making me feel like this with the game. I just do. I'm not comfortable blaming it in me being a congenital taste contrarian because by all rights it seems to have all the things that would make me love the game. Quite the bummer.
My sweet tooth for crossover fics notwithstanding, there's something about corporations doing these kinds of things that stinks real bad to me. In those particular cases and taking them seriously (trying at least, because I seriously can't), one has to wonder how Squenix selling off Eidos' IPs affects Adam, and how much expecting to take the dollars off Grande's fans factored into the decision.
Now, I don't know how trustworthy the source is (Reddit - Dive into anything) or if there are unannounced spoilers in it (so warning for Omi), but this graph seems interesting and relevant, now that FF6 is done.
While I can kinda see the flow (7 and 8's style influencing the forks for 10, 13 and 15, and Tactics making itself feel through 12 and influencing 14...), I think one should also consider the movement of people between teams and how much of each team is actually there for the next project. I'm not sure those lineages are as set in stone as the graph is trying to show.
A Memory Called Empire is pretty great, I actually borrowed it from the local library and read it based almost entirely on Cheh and Tenfoldshields talking it up in the Exalted thread. Makes the slip up all the more embarassing. >.<
There are far worse ways to find new books than going down the Hugo list. I discovered A Memory Called Empire, the Left Hand of Darkness, and Three Body Problem from that!
While I can kinda see the flow (7 and 8's style influencing the forks for 10, 13 and 15, and Tactics making itself feel through 12 and influencing 14...), I think one should also consider the movement of people between teams and how much of each team is actually there for the next project. I'm not sure those lineages are as set in stone as the graph is trying to show.
Now, I don't know how trustworthy the source is (Reddit - Dive into anything) or if there are unannounced spoilers in it (so warning for Omi), but this graph seems interesting and relevant, now that FF6 is done.
A good chunk of the FFTactics team came from Tactics Ogre, for one. And I'm not sure of the Chrono Cross -> FFXI line, there's overlap but also a bunch of mixing around.
Also this image ignores the load smaller games that Squaresoft made at the time, and the team mixing for those games.
Like how the FF2 team went on to make the FF Legend trilogy, aka the start of the SaGa franchise.
Meanwhile, it also misses the number of Square personnel that went their own way over the years, making games like Shadowhearts, the Xeno franchise, et cetera.
A good chunk of the FFTactics team came from Tactics Ogre, for one. And I'm not sure of the Chrono Cross -> FFXI line, there's overlap but also a bunch of mixing around.
Also this image ignores the load smaller games that Squaresoft made at the time, and the team mixing for those games.
In the hypothetical universe where we lock Omicron in a purgatory of forever gaming, Tactics Ogre did just get an updated rerelease during the holidays last year...
In the hypothetical universe where we lock Omicron in a purgatory of forever gaming, Tactics Ogre did just get an updated rerelease during the holidays last year...
Has this not always been the intent? Are you saying I spent all this money planning to trap him in this Omnidimensional Spacetime Prison Tesseract gift him this cool pro gaming cube was for nothing?
It's okay. You are a Phoenix, you will raise from your ashes to play the next Final Fantasy.
In the meantime, we will bring wood full of our love to be sure you consume yourself in a beautiful way.
Aren't we a nice crowd ?
Oh, you have spoken about Dead Fantasy, it brings good memories to me. Sad thing it will never have an end (but in the same time, I am not sure it can have an end), but yeah, I have watched this show a ton of times. At that time, it was totally incredible to watch....
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game so dense I had to split my first two hours of play into three updates!
Cloud just fell from the top plate of Sector 5, falling hundreds of feet into the smog-choked slums of the underside. We fade to black, and words appear on the screen - ostensibly a voice Cloud is hearing.
Voice: "You all right? Can you hear me?" Cloud: "...Yeah…" Voice: "Back then… I only got scraped knees…" Cloud: "What do you mean by 'back then'?" Voice: "What about now? Can you get up?" Cloud: "...What do you mean by 'back then'? …What about now?" Voice: "Don't worry about me. Worry about yourself now." Cloud: "...I'll try."
Then another, separate voice interjects, using the game's dialogue boxes:
Other Voice: "Oh! It moved!" First Voice: "...How about that? Take it slow now. Little by little…" Cloud: "...I know." Other Voice: "Hello, Hello?" Cloud: "Hey… Who are you?" Other Voice: "Hello, Hello!"
Hmm. Okay, so the voice that was speaking to Cloud definitely wasn't the voice of Flower Girl - she only just found Cloud, and it was giving him direct advice while he was ostensibly passed out. So Cloud has voices in his head. Good to know! Ties in well with the mysterious flashbacks, for sure.
Flower Girl asks Cloud if he's okay; and tells him that he's in a church in Sector 5 and fell from above, his fall likely cushioned by the roof and flower bed.
…he fell hundreds of feet into a wooden roof and then a bunch of flowers and not only lived, but is completely fine and able to stand up and hold a conversation. My guy's pretty much explicitly superhuman.
More importantly, it's interesting that Flower Girl specifically calls that place a church, and that it is following all the aesthetic tropes of a Christian church, complete with pews, altars and stained glass windows. We haven't seen any hint of what religion looks like in Midgar, if it exists at all; Barret personifies the planet when he talks about its life blood and it dying, but it doesn't seem to be a really religious angle. This, hmm…
Looking at the state of this Church, it's pretty clearly been abandoned. And given how no one outside of it talks about religion, I think it can be fairly deduced that religiosity has faded in modern Midgar, that the expansion of the city and its technology have made old ways of life less attractive and people have abandoned their faith.
I'm… for personal reasons the whole trope of modernity causing a move away from religion as a bad thing is one that I've never related to. I'm an atheist, and I was born to an atheist household in a violently secular country. But if it's what the game is going for, it's fairly understated so far.
Notably the Final Fantasy games have never really been good with religion. Not in the sense that their treatment of it is problematic, more that it just… doesn't exist. The closest we see to places of faith are crystal shrines, and those are rarely ever portrayed as drawing religious feelings. There's no clergy outside of FF1's "priests who resurrect KO'd party members in churches," but those have zero associated worldbuilding. VI does bring in the gods of magic, but they're largely unknown to humanity, and we see no real evidence of religion in the population. If this was deliberate worldbuilding it would be interesting to explore, but it mostly feels like the writers just… Never thought about it.
So Cloud falls down and lands on the one flower bed in the one church in all of Midgar. This is probably divine intervention. Displaying an unusual sense of manners, Cloud asks if the flowers are the girl's and apologizes for smooshing them, but she tells him not to worry.
Flower Girl: "They say grass and flowers won't grow in Midgar. But for some reason, they have no trouble blooming here. I love it here."
The 'flowers don't grow anymore' thing is picked up from the previous game, although here it's more insidious; in FFVI it was a clear sign that the world was dying, here most people don't seem to even realize that it is. Midgar is an advanced metropolis and we haven't seen a single trace of vegetation the entire time. Like, if I go walking down Paris's streets, I'll find trees planted in the sidewalk everywhere, but Midgar is nothing but steel and concrete. It's a clear sign that something is wrong with the land.
Flower Girl asks us if we remember her, to which we are given the option of saying we never saw her before, of correctly identifying her as the girl selling flowers, or of mistaking her for 'the slum drunk'. That's so mean it wraps around to being funny. If we do remember her, she exclaims she's happy, although she reproaches us for not buying any flowers from her. Then she shows us her Materia.
Cloud: "Nowadays you can find Materia anywhere." Aerith: "But mine is special. It does absolutely nothing."
Cloud tells her she just doesn't know how to use it, but she insists that she does, it's just that this materia doesn't do anything - but she keeps it as a memento of her mother which makes her feel safer.
Well, I'm sure this strange nonsequitur exposition about some mysterious Materia inherited from a dead mom which has no obvious apparent function will not be plot-relevant later!
She asks if Cloud (who did just survive a fall no man could survive) feels up to talking, and when we do, finally introduces herself. At last! I won't have to call her 'Flower Girl' anymore! I can finally acknowledge the name of one of the most famous female characters in video game history!
What the fuck.
Well we're not having any of that in this Christian thread.
There, I fixed it.
Aerith's name in Japanese doesn't use either -s or -th, obviously; it uses a phoneme that could be transliterated as either. Old translations made the reasonable decision to make it Aeris, but later official material in Japanese make it 'Aerith,' so that became standard across all material referencing that character. As I am familiar mostly with such later translations, 'Aeris' has a kind of uncanny valley feel to it, so I'm going to use the opportunity given by the game to change it to Aerith.
She then properly introduces herself as 'Aerith, the flower girl.' Cloud, in answers, says he 'does a little bit of everything,' doing 'whatever's needed,' which amuses Aerith greatly for some reason.
While this is happening, though, someone else enters the scene, slowly making his way from the back of the church and pausing some distance away, watching the two talk. They don't seem to notice him.
Aerith then asks Cloud (who is presumably still lugging around his giant-sized sword) if, as a jack of all trade, he'd be willing to act as her bodyguard and take her home. That… seems more like a veiled flirting attempt more than a real request; I can't imagine the way between that church and Aerith's home is so dangerous that she can't make the trip safely on her own? Either that, or she recognizes that the dude looming in the background is Bad News. Cloud says it'll cost her, and she says she'll pay him by going on a date with him.
Cloud, you ladykiller you.
I think there's something about his cool, indifferent demeanor that makes him inherently funny to tease with flirtatious comments; the Remake uses that to great effect, but it's already there to some extent.
Then the group turns around and the camera shifts as they come face to face with the weirdo in the background. Cloud tells him, in a warning tone, "I don't know who you are, but…"
A flash of that disembodied voice corrects him - he does know him, or at least, he recognizes his uniform - this guy is working for Shinra.
As if on cue, the soldiers come pouring in.
"Sis" is a weird choice of word there, which makes me wonder if this guy already knows Aerith personally, which doesn't seem to be the case from what happens later. I do appreciate the "IS THIS GUY BOTHERING YOU QUEEN" energy though.
The Shinra security guys address the newcomer as "Reno" and ask him if he wants them to take Cloud out, and he says he hasn't decided yet, to which Aerith shouts at them to not fight there or they'll ruin the flowers, and they proceed to run away to the back of the church.
Reno remarks on Cloud's Mako-touched eyes, then there's this exchange I love:
I love that everyone in that scene agrees that you shouldn't step on Aerith's flower and they're all yelling at him that now Aerith is going to be super-mad. It's that little bit of slightly absurd humanity that really elevates scenes with random villains. It's also going to make an upcoming scene a little weird, though.
…is that a missile?
Is that a fucking unexploded ICBM crashed through the rooftop of that church???
There are letters on it. As far as I can tell, they spell "A," maybe "T," and "O." ATO. Is that… is that meant to read "NATO"? Or maybe "ATOM"?
I don't know what to do with this information.
One thing that's very clear is that it suggests Midgar was at war… not 'recently,' that hull is rusted to hell, but within the past few decades, a modern, technological war with ballistic missiles being slung around. And that church is in such disuse that no one has bothered to move it - although, they might have stopped using the church because it had a giant missile crashed through the rooftop.
Assuming that's what it is, anyway. Most likely it's just, like, a water tower. A weirdly shaped water tower. Like, it has a very clear ballistic point.
Honestly between the TEXAS saloon and the NATO missile I'm starting to wonder if, at some point during development, FFVII wasn't meant to be our earth, in the wake of some great post-apocalyptic war, with assets made accordingly with hints of the world left behind. It's been said in the thread that very early in dev the game was supposed to be a detective story set in New York, and those backgrounds might be leftover from some transitional stage.
Below, Reno and his goons see Cloud and Aerith about to reach a ladder to the church's roof, and Reno… orders his men to attack with a very specific wording.
…okay. I thought they were there for Cloud, following up on his crash-landing from Sector 5, but that was already hinted in their dialogue, the way Reno didn't seem to care about Cloud - he's not there for him, he's here for Aerith. Who is an 'Ancient,' whatever that terms means in this game - usually in FF games they're not just a very advanced civilization from the past, but more than that, they have some unique traits or features that set them apart from modern humans. This is most likely related to Aerith's useless materia.
And then Reno orders his men to attack and they immediately shoot Aerith, which is where that scene lost me. Like, Reno really doesn't seem like he's here to murder someone? He clearly considers Cloud to be disposable, since he was on the fence on whether his soldiers should kill him earlier, but this seems like some kind of abduction mission, but he has his guys just fire automatic rifles at Aerith, who trips and falls down the side the of missile/water tower/thing, and then asks aloud "Think we killed them? They never should have fought us!" Which… they… didn't, they were trying to escape, there wasn't even a single battle initiated.
Well, against the guards, anyway. The church rafters are full of monsters. In any case, it's a weird swerve from the comedy beat prior.
What follows is another minigame. A number of Shinra soldiers are coming for Aerith, and Aerith is backing away towards the stairs. There's a number of inexplicable barrels in the rafters. If we time it correctly, we can shove a barrel down onto or in front of a guard, blocking its advance. If we don't, Aerith has to fight them. I proceed to instantly fail the minigame.
But hey, on the upside, we get to take her for a combat test run! Unfortunately due to the way the game works, Aerith without materias equipped can only Attack. Her weapon of choice is the staff, which deals little damage, but we're only fighting one dude at a time, so it's fine.
Eventually I do manage to roll one barrel down the stairs to knock out the last guy, and Cloud and Aerith escape.
Loooook at this plunging view. Look at it!
We're fighting a bunch of red hedgehog things? I don't know what those are because at this point in the timeline I don't know about the Select button yet. Ultimately they're not much trouble. And, once we reach that big bright light of freedom corresponding to a giant hole in the roof, we're out!
I gotta say it's pretty funny how that church literally changes sizes when we go inside and out. All the Final Fantasy games have this to some extent, but in Midgar's very rich, very real-feeling environment it's a lot more noticeable that this turned from a spacious area to a confession booth. Also are those marble columns next to it? I can't really parse all that's going on in the screen here.
Aerith: "Ha, ha… They're looking for me again." Cloud: "You mean it's not the first time they've been after you?" Aerith: "...no." Cloud: "They're the Turks." Aerith: "Hmmm…" Cloud: "The Turks are a Shinra organization. They scout for possible candidates for SOLDIER." Aerith: "This violently? I thought they were kidnapping someone." Cloud: "They're also involved in a lot of other dirty stuff on the side. Spying, murder… You know." Aerith: "They look like it." Cloud: "But, why were they after you? There must be a reason, right?" Aerith: "No, not really. I think they believe I have what it takes to be in SOLDIER!" Cloud: "Maybe you do. Want to join?" Aerith: "I don't know… But I don't wanna get caught by THOSE people!" Cloud: "Then, let's go!"
The Turks. Why did they call them that, of all things? It's literally a nationality! Like, why would you call your quirky miniboss squad in a fantasy setting "the French"??? If they were robots I might think it's an allusion to the Mechanical Turk. Or maybe it's a weirdly oblique to the Janissaries? Or to the Young Turks (the historical ones, not the podcast people)? I have no idea.
It makes sense, though, that the Shinra team tasked with going around scouting out potential SOLDIER recruit is also their black ops/wetwork team; 'scouting out recruits' gives them a cover for anywhere they might need to go to perform their other, perhaps more important job. And they've been after Aerith for a while, likely looking to capture one of the mysterious Ancients.
Hmmm.
The Remake is another place where that scene is similar in the broad strokes but changed in some pretty deep ways, all of it to do with Reno's characterization and the fact that Cloud actually fights him as a boss. Reno and Aerith sound like they already know each other; at one point Reno refers to himself as also being Aerith's bodyguard, and when she asks "Since when?" he responds "It was a classified op;" while he's fine sending waves after waves of soldiers against Cloud, the moment one of them fires in Aerith's direction he gets mad and orders them to stop.
Most notably, after Cloud wins the fight and Reno is at his mercy, he goes for the kill, which surprises and distresses both Aerith and Reno, who only has time to mutter "You've got it all wrong, man, I just wanted to-" before the Metatextual Ghosts appear and drive Cloud back away from him.
It's subtle, but there's a lot of difference in how Reno is portrayed overall, where the Remake makes him feel cool and kinda sympathetic, whereas here he's just a callous hitman.
As a more gameplay-related change, in the Remake Aerith's basic combat style involves casting magic darts from her staff at people; she is seemingly able to perform magic unaided without a materia, whereas the original has her, consistent with what's been established about this world, just hitting people in the face with said staff.
Fantastic shot of the central pillar holding up the plate.
Afterwards, Cloud and Aerith escape through rooftops, with Aerith lagging behind and him making fun of her - didn't she think she could be in SOLDIER? They both laugh - it's a pretty cute moment. Honestly, the fact that Cloud is laughing is the most open and relaxed we've seen him with anyone so far.
Aerith then asks him if he was ever in SOLDIER, and upon being asked how she'd guess, she says Cloud's eyes have a strange glow. He explains, as implied before, that it's the sign of those who have been infused with Mako. He then asks again how she knew about that, and she deflects the question very poorly and very obviously.
Okay, at this point it's kind of fascinating how every character so far has some obvious hidden backstory/mysterious stuff going on… Except Barret. He's just a family man, I guess.
More than that, hmmm…
FFVII is in a number of ways picking up the pieces VI left on the playground. Midgar is Vector writ large, with the same techno-magical bent, industrial aesthetic, and harmfulness to the world, but it goes one step beyond that. With Materia, we have a more robustly established take on the concept that Vector's citizens were increasingly 'infused with magic' and that a child could cast Cure - here, magic is literally an item you can buy and use. Vector had unearthed the forgotten magic of old and was turning it into an imperial weapon, but befitting its industrial-capitalist feel as a corporate-run state, Midgar has done more and commodified magic as an item available for sale. In turn, SOLDIER and the 'Mako eyes' are an evolution of how Celes and Kefka were 'infused with magic' to turn them into Magitek Knights, only know instead of the ambiguous process through which we was done we know it's done with direct exposure to the life blood of the planet. It's expanding and refining on the previous game.
Eventually the two find a way down to earth, and Aerith tells Cloud to follow her to her house.
Seriously, what's up with the Roman columns?
On the way, we can take a brief detour to check out…
Well, to get our first look at what the world outside Midgar looks like. It's only one screen, the gate to the outside is locked, so we only get a glimpse.
But it's grim.
Midgar is a sealed environment, its people like fish in a bowl, a barrier surrounding the entire city, and beyond it is just… wastes. Nothing but barren, cracked earth. We obviously can't see beyond the camera, see the horizon, but as a glimpse of Shinra's world, it's bleak. There are no fields, no trees, no grass. Just sun-caked rock, all around the greatest and mightiest city in the world, shining with the light of Mako.
Yeah. No wonder Barret says the planet is dying. All you have to do to see it is look outside your window. But you wouldn't, would you? We only caught sight of this because we strayed to the very edge of the slums, a no man's land of rubble and refuse from whatever was destroyed to make way for this new world. Even on the plate, it's so massive, so immense, that you wouldn't be seeing the ground around Midgar, you would only be seeing beyond that, to a horizon with half the world occluded by the colossal construct you're sitting on.
Man, no wonder Aerith's flowers are such a rare and wondrous thing.
…
Wait a minute.
That's just Zalem and the Scrapyard from Battle Angel Alita, is what this whole thing is!
I'm onto you, Japanese gamedevs.
Incidentally if we return to the church, the Shinra goons have been replaced by children who are taking care of the flowers while Aerith is gone. That's sweet!
And then we reach the Sector 5 Slums.
The aesthetic is similar to Sector 7, but with its own unique take on things. There's a weapon store built out of an abandoned van; a giant TV screen mounted where the whole town can see it, which is the perfect kind of 'communal' touch that makes it feel like a place with connected people, while at the same time probably meaning it's blasting Shinra propaganda day and night. To the left there's a home built in what I'm pretty sure is a jet engine?
You can see, too, how faced with the problem how "how do we clearly indicate exits on a static map that can't be rotated and is visually much busier than our older 2D maps, the devs settled on using light. Every place you can exit the screen from has a diegetic glow, whether that's sunlight streaming in, or lights coming from inside of a house. It's a neat trick.
One of the locals asks us if we've ever heard of 'Wall Market', a market in the slums of Sector 6 that has 'everything you could ever want.' A major central market in one of the sector slums feeding the smaller, individual trade within each sector's slum is a nice, coherent touch of worldbuilding.
I appreciate that the slum citizens take pride in their resourcefulness in the face of hardship.
Look at the way this shop is using a giant pipe running through the slum that couldn't easily be moved to create the store's counter. It's exactly the kind of creative makeshift solution actual people would use.
I love the Weapons Shop Van. Look at that katana on the backseat! Can't I have that?? Well, at least we get to buy Aerith a new weapon.
This guy sums up what's probably the broader Slum Ethos - everything Shinra says is a lie, but you can't trust ideologues like Avalanche to have your interests at heart; the only one who'll look out for you is yourself.
Looking at the news on TV, the Reactor 5 attack took out power in parts of Midgar, but Shinra is promised it will be restored momentarily. They also say that "Following President Shinra's address, Mayor Domino also spoke out today against Avalanche." So Midgar does nominally have a civilian government - but the fact that the mayor spoke after the head of Shinra and only to parrot their words, and that he's given second billing compared to the President in the news, makes it very clear where the hierarchy of power is sitting. That man is a puppet at best.
We can also, huh, spy on a sleeping child.
Cloud, what are you doing.
He's muttering in his sleep about how he hid something between two drawers. If we investigate his cupboard, we can use these instructions to find that he used a hidden drawer to conceal… 5 gil.
I'm not stealing 5 gil from a child. We're leaving it there.
…
But actually, though.
The evolution of 'barging into people's homes' in the Final Fantasy series is kind of fascinating. It FFI, it essentially doesn't exist; the only house you enter uninvited are plot relevant like Matoya or Sarda's homes, and they're old sages probably welcoming seekers from afar. In FFII, the main home you can barge into is Paul's, and he's the party's friend. The addition of more houses you can enter that just have people living in them is slow; even by FFVI, most of the houses you can enter serve a specific purpose. The richest man in South Figaro, for instance, has no reason to allow you to enter his home, but doing so serves as foreshadowing to the Empire's invasion of the town. Owzer's mansion is plot relevant not once, but twice. That weird old man near the Veldt just seems like a random kook until you visit him again with Gau. The idea that 'you can enter people's homes to check them for plot stuff or worldbuilding' has crept in progressively, but slowly - for the most part, if you just want to talk to incidental townsfolk to get random details about the world, you find them either in the street, or in the pub that's in every town and usually full of townsfolk.
FFVII really feels like it ramped that up to the extent where it really feels kinda strange. Cloud really can just go around, wander into people's homes, talk to them, search through their drawers, and no one bats an eye. And I think part of it is that each house is now unique? I've been screenshotting almost every interior building to that end, to show they all have their own individual pre-rendered background, they're each a lived-in place with its little touches of personality, and that makes it weirder that we can just walk into any given one like we own the place. And then steal the kid's pocket change.
There's also this mysterious sick guy:
Like all these gold trophies on that shelf, inside a home built out of the fuselage of a jet engine! That's great!
All he can do is helplessly moan. Aerith notes that the man has a tattoo with the number 2 on it, whose significance is lost on us; she asks if Cloud can help him, but Cloud can only shrug and say he's no doctor. Maybe some other time.
And now it's finally time to deliver Aerith home.
…okay, wow.
Yeah, okay, the contrast with all of Midgar is striking. So far, the only nature we've seen is a tiny patch of flowers inside a broken down church, immediately contrasted with the wastes beyond the city. This place, in contrast, is just… Flower beds taller than Cloud is, a cascade of pure water, light streaming in from above - it's an oasis of life in the lifeless, polluted technological landscape of Midgar, and very consciously framed as such.
There's also a Cover Materia in the flower beds, which is our first 'skill' Materia filling the role of the Relics and Job Commands of old, allowing Cloud to take hits for someone else.
It's not so exceptional that the characters bring it up in dialogue, though, so it's unlikely to be unique - rather it's unique within the context of the narrative; one can imagine there are other such places across Midgar, but they are few and far between, and as far as the story is concerned, this is the one we get to see. It's a pretty effective reveal, I think.
Anyway, time to say hi to Mom.
Yes, indeed; to everyone's shock and surprise, Aerith has a mom and she's even alive. Nothing had prepared me for this (except playing the Remake where she's also featured). Her name is Elmyra, and her reaction to learning her daughter hired ("hired") a bodyguard is "You were followed again!?" We already know the Turks have been bothering Aerith already but this drives the point home - this girl is being tailed constantly.
Hmmm. If Aerith is an Ancient, then it would stand to reason her mom is one as well - unless she's adopted, knowing it or not. Given that Aerith is being harassed by Turks over her status that she doesn't seem aware of but her mom isn't, I would be inclined to say she's most likely a Secret Adopted Baby… Unless Elmyra being an Ancient is what explains the space around her house being such a haven of life and nature. It's either her presence or Aerith's, I'm pretty sure.
Elmyra makes sure Aerith is unharmed, then thanks Cloud and leaves. Aerith asks what his plans are now, and he asks for directions to Sector 7, as he wants to go to "Tifa's bar"; the phrasing is awkward and basically just forced in order to bring up Tifa's name so Aerith can ask if Tifa is a girl, and if so, if she's a girl… friend? To which we can respond in the affirmative or the negative, which, you know, if you're going to call Tifa your girlfriend, maybe you should ask her first, Cloud.
Anyway, Aerith is obviously teasingly flirting with Cloud and amused when she gets a reaction out of him, then offers to show him the way to Sector 7. He immediately asks why she wants to put herself in danger again after he just guided her back home, but Aerith just says she's used to it.
Cloud: "Well, I don't know… Getting help from a girl…" Aerith: "A girl!! What do you mean by that!?" Aerith: "You expect me to just sit by quietly after hearing you say something like that!?" Aerith: "Mom! I'm taking Cloud to Sector 7. I'll be back in a while." Elmyra: "But dear… I give up. You never listen once you've made up your mind." Elmyra: "But if you must go, why don't you go tomorrow? It's getting late now." Aerith: "Yeah, you're right, mom." Elmyra: "Aerith, please go make the bed."
If that last line seems like a transparent excuse to get her daughter out of the room while she talks to Cloud one on one, that's because it's exactly what it is. The moment Aerith is gone, Elmyra proves her savvy by asking Cloud if he's SOLDIER - she recognized the Mako glow in his eyes. Cloud admits that he used to be one, and Elmyra asks him point blank to please leave the house that night, without warning Aerith. "The last thing Aerith needs," she says, "is to get hurt again."
She provides no further explanation, but Cloud doesn't ask for any. It's pretty obvious why a mother would feel that way regarding any weird rogue experimental super-soldier, and Cloud knows enough to know her feelings are even more justified than she's aware. He's a mercenary working for an ecoterrorist group that's being hunted by Shinra. As far as he knows, Aerith is literally Some Girl who is of some kind of interest to Shinra for whatever reason but has made it through so far. There's no way she would be safer around him than not. So, even though he doesn't say anything, he tacitly agrees to Elmyra's request.
That night, Cloud hears more of what I'm going to call the Backseater - that voice that appears when he's sleeping, unconscious, or seeing someone he should be remembering. That voice sounded like flashbacks to some extent, but here there's pretty clearly a degree of back-and-forth; even though Cloud doesn't seem fully aware that he's doing it, he's responding to that voice and it's responding back in turn.
Cloud: "...!?" Backseater: "I haven't slept in a bed like this… for a long time." Cloud: "Oh, yeah." Backseater: "Ever since then."
Oh, wow, Cloud also has a mom, and she's also not dead?! We're breaking every record on the book here, people. Also you know it's Cloud's mom because she has the same hair - sure she has it in a ponytail but the front is still doing Goku Spikes.
This exchange seems to have occurred… It's hard to place, actually. Cloud is using his adult model, so after he joined SOLDIER; but would it be during his service, or after he left? Hard to tell from that scene alone. Cloud's mom muses that the girl must never leave him alone, and Cloud brushes it off. She continues that she's worried about him, because of the 'temptations' in the city, and that she'd feel better if he just settled down with a nice girlfriend. An older girlfriend; who can take care of him. That would be best for him. Cloud replies he's not interested, and the flashback ends.
…I do not know what to do with the knowledge that Cloud's mom has specific opinions on the kind of girls he should be dating and that it's older girls because he can't take care of himself. We're just going to leave that there.
Actually though, okay, so here's the thing - Final Fantasy has dabbled in romance before to various extent, right? It fluctuates wildly, though, it's not at all a consistent feature of their story. In III it serves as a final topping to the story, a 'kiss the princess at the end of the story book' ending, in IV Cecil and Rosa have a full romantic arc, in V there is no explicit romance beyond 'X has a crush on Y but it's never addressed,' in VI Locke and Celes have a romantic arc…
I'm not going to speculate on VII's romantic arcs at this stage, that's not what I'm leading to here. What I'm leading to is: Cloud is attractive. Cloud is meant to be seen, in-universe and to an extent out of it, as hot. Basically every female character so far have made some kind of flirtatious comment towards him - but importantly it's not in a 'all the ladies are swooning over him' way, it's more that they're aware he's attractive and teasing him about it because he is socially awkward and reacts amusingly. And I mean, he's a twenty-something dude with boyish features but who is also fit as hell and has literally glowing eyes from Mako. It makes perfect sense people find him good-looking. But it's notable to me, because male attractiveness is not necessarily… Well handled? In media? In general?
Often what's missed is that, to some extent, being attractive is a vulnerability. It means people take an interest in you, and look at you in a certain way, even if you're not necessarily intending to attract such looks. And setting aside all the darker places this can go, sometimes when people sense that you're not expecting other people to take an interest in you, they can tease you about it. Cloud is reserved, somewhat socially awkward, and that means flirting with him is to a degree 'safe' because he's the one who's on the backfoot every time despite being a man as well as a superhuman living weapon, and entertaining because it elicits funny/awkward reactions from him. Which is not a dynamic that's necessarily portrayed often, even around male characters who are intended to be attractive?
I don't know, I think it's neat.
I really like what the game is doing here, using the top-down perspective to let us see into both rooms and so letting the player see what neither character can see. Aerith is in her room, awake, but doesn't see Cloud preparing to leave. Cloud is in his room, preparing to leave, but not aware that Aerith is still awake. From the way she's sitting on her bed it seems clear that she's preoccupied, or waiting for something.
I think she knows Cloud is going to leave in the night, whether or not she knows it's because her mom asked him to. She's waiting to hear him so she can pounce on him, and get him to go back to bed, and hopefully by morning he'll still be there 'by default' and they can head to Sector 7 without having to address the awkward elephant in the room of 'I was trying to sneak out on you' vs 'I knew you were going to ditch me.' And indeed, if we try to run out to the stairs, Aerith comes out of her room, says 'I thought the Turks came back! Get some rest!' and we're sent back to the start.
Still, that sequence is much easier than in the Remake where it's some kind of unholy 'dodge the creaky planks' minigame, as I recall, and we're soon out of the house and heading out to…
How did she get here faster than we did is my question.
I love how the exchange that follows is Cloud saying "I couldn't ask you to go, it's too dangerous," and Aerith replying "Are you done? So we have to go through-" She literally just tramples over his justifications like they're not even worth addressing and proceeds to give us our directions.
In order to reach Sector 7, we have to cross that stretch of broken road and abandoned construction equipment. I wonder what happened there. Is that a stretch of unfinished road left to languish? Or was it a previously functional road, back before the Plates, that was buried with the construction of the new Midgar? There are walls on each side of that area - I think that's it, yeah. I think this was once the road connecting the two towns that would become Sector 5 and Sector 7, which was sealed up entirely for Shinra to build a structure on top of it, and then they left the construction equipment there because it was faster and cheaper to leave that buried underpass and all its gear sitting useless than retrieving any of it.
Also there are monsters which -
This is a house.
This is an evil house.
I am fighting a wandering evil house.
Does anyone have any explanation for this? Anyone? Bueller?
OH IT'S POSSESSED BY A GIANT SKELETON, FUCK ME
I have no explanation for the giant evil house beyond 'after Shinra buried that entire region of Midgar's underplate, the abandoned homes got real angry.'
…The Hell House actually features in the Remake, in a pretty funny way. The outlandish nature of this opponent clearly must have been a meme at the time, because instead of a random encounter, in Remake it shows up as a boss in a specific place and has everyone go 'What the fuck is this."
In the process, we find out that Aerith's Limit Break is 'Healing Wind,' which is… basically a slightly stronger Cure All. I assume it'll scale with her level or something? Or we'll just unlock more useful Limit Breaks if it becomes obsolete. So far though, it's pretty alright, and it does give us our first hint of Aerith being some kind of Magic User.
Once we've passed that screen, we're home free… or so it seems. Cloud thanks Aerith for her help, then tells her he guesses this is goodbye and asks if she'll be fine going home.
Of course, Aerith is not so easily dismissed. It's weirdly phrased, but what she's saying here is more or less, 'And what would you do if I said I can't make it home on my own?' and Cloud can answer either that he'll take her back home, or that they'll go together to Sector 7. The answer doesn't change what they do next; Aerith asks for a break, and they cross the gate onto a children's playground.
Those are weirdly cute.
Aerith climbs on top of the weird slide, and asks Cloud to sit with her so they can chat. It's a sweet scene, where Aerith opens up about herself for the first time since they've been together. She asks Cloud what class he was in as a SOLDIER, and when he says 'First Class,' she says:
Cloud asks who she means, and she reveals she's talking about her first boyfriend. Cloud asks if they were 'serious,' and she says 'No, but I liked him for a while,' which I think is a lovely phrasing? Teenage love is like that a lot. You like someone for a while, and when you look back at it it wasn't ever really serious even if it might have felt that way in the moment. You're just going through some of your life together.
The fact that between the dialogue boxes where Aerith asks him what class Cloud was and his answer, the screen goes black for one frame with the sound of white noise, is not ominous at all and should not be interrogated.
(Notably in the Remake, Cloud introduces himself as 'Soldier First Class' basically all the time, to everyone; in fact, when Reno hears this, he immediately dismisses Cloud being SOLDIER at all as bluff, telling him to at least make his lies believable, and Roche, who is shown as a peer to Cloud, is Third Class, which I'm pretty sure are meant to hint at something funky.)
Speaking of the Remake, though…
This is another place where what takes twenty minutes in the original game expands to two to three hours in the Remake. Beyond the differences in Reno's characterization, once Aerith reaches her home and Cloud agrees to stay the night, she says there's plenty of daylight left, and we are given the opportunity to more fully explore the Sector 5 Slums and engage in side quests. Sector 5 is notably greener than 7 beyond just Aerith's house, engaging in active effort to grow plants around its orphanage, which is itself a major focus of the sidequest; Cloud can meet with the children, engage in minigames for them, help the supervisor gather strays, and so on. There's a journalist, a retired master thief… It's a place full of life in its own right.
But what's probably the more significant change is that a character whom I assume will be introduced later in the original comes in during that part of the Remake - another Turk member named Rude. I won't go into details about him since he hasn't shown up in the original yet, but I find his characterization and some details that surround him really intriguing.
After Aerith talks about her SOLDIER boyfriend, Cloud does the natural thing and asks for his name - after all, he probably knew him, since they were both First Class and must have been around the same age. Aerith waves off the question, which again, is weird! It doesn't feel like something you'd do unless there was some heavy baggage tied to that boyfriend!
However, before anything more can be said about this matter, the gates to Sector 7 open and out comes…
…A chocobo carriage.
Not, like, a car. A literal carriage. An old-timey fucking carosse. Only instead of being pulled by horses, it is pulled by this game's first-seen chocobo. And driven by a dude in a fancy hat. This is such a goofy image even Cloud and Tifa are briefly struck speechless - until Cloud notices who is riding at the back of the carriage.
NOT THAT YOU WOULD KNOW IF THEY DIDN'T TELL YOU, SINCE THESE ARE STILL THOSE LOW-POLY MODELS YOU CAN'T TELL SHIT ABOUT
It's Tifa. It's Tifa in a fancy dress, standing at the back of the carriage and failing to spot Cloud and Aerith on the top of the slide. Aerith comments 'That was Tifa? She looked kind of odd…" and gets down from the slide, and then heads straight after the carriage. Cloud fruitlessly calls out to her to wait and go back home and he'll go on alone, but she doesn't listen and we have to follow right after her to the next screen, where…
This is what we call 'entrapment.'
Anyway, with Aerith having successfully thwarted yet another attempt at ditching her and put Cloud in a situation where he has no choice but to continue acting as her bodyguard, we are left to explore Wall Market for Tifa.
I love Aerith. She's witty, she's funny, she's charming and she's very clever. She obviously has baggage of her own, like every character in this story, but she's good at spinning people around and getting her way. She's cute, but the cuteness hides a very sharp person. She's a great addition to this cast.
And that will be our stop for today. We'll look for Tifa next update, as there is a convenient saving point right off to the side!
I will… probably have either loaded up some mods or switched to an alternate version of the game by the time I post the next update. While the game is perfectly playable, it's old in ways that are really felt over time. It's the little inconveniences - the way the saving system means I can't take breaks whenever I feel like, the fact that dialogue loads up so I have to wait a second for every box to fully appear, the brief charging time between every screen including opening menus, the time that even the most basic animations take in combat, the lack of autobattle meaning I have to be 100% there even when dispatching trash mobs… It all adds up over time in a feeling of slight but increasing burdensomeness.
I'm sure I could finish the game just fine as it is, but given that more convenient options exist, and that people in this thread have laid out a smorgasbord of them to me, I'll be picking some, I think.
Aerith is Second Best Girl, and when your competition is Tifa, that's not bad at all.
I actually really love the Hell House, but I am generally pretty fond of "one big enemy" encounters, as opposed to "2-6 random mooks". They're like mini-bosses!
The Roman columns make me think Midgar was an old, old city (or cluster of cities) with a rich multi-layered history that could be seen in its many ruins and relics, and then Shinra just bulldozed it all to build the sky death pizza.
Since you mentioned auto-battle as a modern convenience, I'm reminded that auto-battle was occasionally an option back in earlier jRPGs of this era, Lunar (yep, those games again) being a notable example
Like all these gold trophies on that shelf, inside a home built out of the fuselage of a jet engine! That's great!
All he can do is helplessly moan. Aerith notes that the man has a tattoo with the number 2 on it, whose significance is lost on us; she asks if Cloud can help him, but Cloud can only shrug and say he's no doctor. Maybe some other time.
Since you mentioned auto-battle as a modern convenience, I'm reminded that auto-battle was occasionally an option back in earlier jRPGs of this era, Lunar (yep, those games again) being a notable example
PSIV had the macro system which let you one-click an entire party turn, for another example.
@Omicron you can actually access the menu in the church and give Aerith all the materia you had on Tifa/Barret (don't ask how), which makes the church fight hilariously simple
Here is a bit of trivia that you would know if you had the manual for the original release:
Tifa is twenty, Cloud is twenty one, and Aerith is twenty two. Not a super important bit of info, but even as a kid that stood out to me as intentional.
The hell house was definitely a meme, but mostly in the sense of people bringing it up specifically in context of the then-anticipated remake as an example of the weirder sort of JRPG random encounter they were hoping to see/expecting to get dropped, I think.
I forgot how Aerith behaved in the years since I played FF7. She's quite the sneaky girl, manipulating Cloud into being her bodyguard multiple times, heh.
... There's a giant robot hand on the ground in the tunnel, and it doesn't look to match the rest of the construction equipment around it. However, it does sort of resemble the Hell House's limbs.
Is the Hell House some sort of old Shinra warbot using a house as a hermit-crab shell? Why? What kind of robot needs to disguise as a house?
*frowns*
Of course I actually have something to say about that hell house despite never playing the game…
Long story short-
Take the idea that items can achieve sentience if they're old enough, mix in the malice of bulldozing someone's home while they're still inside it…
And the fustrating thing is some of the real-world examples that spring to my mind and and the easy parallel to Shinra and just…
It's a bit of history I despite that it still has a hold on us long after it should have been buried and forgotten.
…he fell hundreds of feet into a wooden roof and then a bunch of flowers and not only lived, but is completely fine and able to stand up and hold a conversation. My guy's pretty much explicitly superhuman.
It's hard to speak for some of the other party members in terms of story/gameplay segregation... but yeah, as a Mako-infused forker SOLDIER? Cloud at least is absolutely superhuman.
This, I suspect, was actually a throwback to Dragon Quest (much like how a lot of early Final Fantasy was trying to be "The Cooler Dragon Quest"). Ever since DQ got a party system of some kind in the second game, they've all had churches for reviving your dead party members.
Cloud tells her she just doesn't know how to use it, but she insists that she does, it's just that this materia doesn't do anything - but she keeps it as a memento of her mother which makes her feel safer.
Well, I'm sure this strange nonsequitur exposition about some mysterious Materia inherited from a dead mom which has no obvious apparent function will not be plot-relevant later!
Hah, funny enough since my first (and main) experience with FF7 materials in the PS1 game, I'm the other way around. Aerith just feels weird to me in comparison to Aeris.
What follows is another minigame. A number of Shinra soldiers are coming for Aerith, and Aerith is backing away towards the stairs. There's a number of inexplicable barrels in the rafters. If we time it correctly, we can shove a barrel down onto or in front of a guard, blocking its advance. If we don't, Aerith has to fight them. I proceed to instantly fail the minigame.
It's actually a position-based minigame, rather than timing - at each point where Aeris stops for you to drop a barrel, you want to kick over the one that will, assuming you read the terrain right, manage to run into the chasing soldier.
Of course this is kind of spoiled because you get barely a second to look at said terrain before being stuck looking at the barrels instead.
It's subtle, but there's a lot of difference in how Reno is portrayed overall, where the Remake makes him feel cool and kinda sympathetic, whereas here he's just a callous hitman.
Yeahn the Turks in general are one of those things with... weirdly different portrayals in media outside of the original FF7. But we'll get to more on that eventually.
Look at the way this shop is using a giant pipe running through the slum that couldn't easily be moved to create the store's counter. It's exactly the kind of creative makeshift solution actual people would use.
In the process, we find out that Aerith's Limit Break is 'Healing Wind,' which is… basically a slightly stronger Cure All. I assume it'll scale with her level or something? Or we'll just unlock more useful Limit Breaks if it becomes obsolete. So far though, it's pretty alright, and it does give us our first hint of Aerith being some kind of Magic User.
Healing Wind actually scales surprisingly well for a Level 1 Limit Break, because it always heals one half of max HP. Meanwhile, most damaging limits get bigger and better multipliers making switching over to them a better idea.
I love Aerith. She's witty, she's funny, she's charming and she's very clever. She obviously has baggage of her own, like every character in this story, but she's good at spinning people around and getting her way. She's cute, but the cuteness hides a very sharp person. She's a great addition to this cast.
Aerith is a fun character to watch people experience for the first time, because if you haven't played FF7 she clearly comes off as the like... friendly, next door neighbor girl, especially with a staff for a weapon and limit breaks like healing wind. Instead, she's remarkably street smart, teasing, and quite capable of getting what she wants.
Tifa is twenty, Cloud is twenty one, and Aerith is twenty two. Not a super important bit of info, but even as a kid that stood out to me as intentional.
Healing Wind actually scales surprisingly well for a Level 1 Limit Break, because it always heals one half of max HP. Meanwhile, most damaging limits get bigger and better multipliers making switching over to them a better idea.
Re: Healing Wind, here's a short spiel another Let's Play of FF7 had on it during Aerith's introduction sequence:
Aeris starts in the back row. I take her off of it for a simple reason:
Aeris' Limits
Healing Wind is Aeris' first limit. As its name implies, it heals. Everyone in your party.
Healing Wind is an odd duck. First, it takes 2/3 of Aeris' health to activate, which is considerably higher than the limits of any other characters we have available at the moment (Tifa is closer to 1/3) but not that big of a deal since her health pool is low.
However, Healing Wind heals 50% of the maximum HP of everyone. So you can see how good that is. The problem is that there's an item called 'Hyper' that inflicts Fury status. While under Fury, limit bars fill twice as fast.
That means the limit will cost 1/3 of Aeris' health but heal 1/2. This makes any party with her pretty much immortal if you're paying attention.
New players usually don't realize this because you eventually get the later limits with her, and until her two final limits none of them really heal.
Her later Limits are even more ridiculous though, once you get to them. Don't worry, we will. But not now.
