I'm dubious as to Shinra as a whole knowing what 'Jenova' even was. I could totally see Hojo thinking he understood it, insofar as Jenova is a drug that makes SOLDIER, and the rest of them understanding that Hojo needs to make more money, and Jenova is a word he sometimes says.
Shinra's culpability is that they are burning human souls to make energy, they are also empowering a death monster from space, but that is because they've been hoodwinked.
Shinra's culpability is that they are burning human souls to make energy, they are also empowering a death monster from space, but that is because they've been hoodwinked.
Gotta disagree on that. Gast left the company over ethical concerns, from what we heard in Cosmo Canyon, and then Shinra put Hojo in charge instead of somebody else in response; they know he's doing evil things and they don't care because it brings them profit. They are even more culpable than Hojo is, because he only had the power to do anything dangerous after they give it to him, and they were already doing dangerous stuff before he was put in charge.
Never think that evil people being in power is not the fault of the power structure - if the power structure was not evil itself, it would do its best to keep evil people from getting into power in the first place, and then do its level best to limit the damage they could do and quickly act to remove them from power when inevitably somebody evil managed to climb into power anyway. Instead, this power structure enabled, encouraged and empowered an evil authority figure, because ultimately, both of them had close enough views of the world that no real conflict between their visions emerged; they're both equally evil.
Rufus doesn't know that he is spending his money to make the world blow up. He is dumb enough to not oversee Hojo properly, but not dumb enough to take out a gun and shoot himself in the face. Witness, his face remains unshot. If he sought death, he has the means to get it.
You can certainly say that, to the planet, there is no difference between the two, but, like, just between us omniscient observers, Shinra doesn't know. Rude and Elena don't crave oblivion, they pursue it because the contents of the box (Jenova does something that resembles eating and resembles mating but is somehow worse than either to your bodies and souls) don't match the label (a pension).
I don't remember any real changes beyond cleaning up the translation, but Icicle Inn is another town that features the party hanging around. Tifa is at the bar (and will have a conversation with Cloud if the player talks to her), Yuffie has collapsed next to a radiator and complains about the cold, Cait Sith is standing in the middle of town, Vincent is behind the counter of the weapon shop for some reason, and the others I can't remember.
If Aerith is alive, she will be in the Lore House, having found the console while poking around. IIRC, she looked at at least one entry but doesn't want to keep going, still shaken from death and resurrection, so she holds her ears while Cloud watches the logs.
I'm dubious as to Shinra as a whole knowing what 'Jenova' even was. I could totally see Hojo thinking he understood it, insofar as Jenova is a drug that makes SOLDIER, and the rest of them understanding that Hojo needs to make more money, and Jenova is a word he sometimes says.
Shinra's culpability is that they are burning human souls to make energy, they are also empowering a death monster from space, but that is because they've been hoodwinked.
Would it be more poignant and true to life if ShinRa were unintentionally doing the bidding of an alien monster they unearthed in their quest for domination and control, or if they intentionally went 'Well, chopping up this alien monster/burning the souls of the dead for fuel/allowing Hojo to exist is probably a terrible idea, but I got mine so fuck it'?
The line between maliciousness and ignorance can be really thin.
My gut is that the Old Prez was in the malicious 'Burn it all down, none of this means anything to the Promised Land' camp and New Prez is in the 'Wait, I still need to at least be king of the ashes' ignorance camp, at least on this issue. Rufus is a more human evil, I don't think he'd countenance all this 'evil from beyond the stars' stuff.
But I have no idea how well supported that idea is in the text. We're entering a biiig chunk of the game I barely remember, like that "Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!" meme.
There's perhaps an interesting note in 'heard the cries of the planet'. At least in Remake, Barrett talks about 'hearing the planet's cry' all the time. Now I don't think he actually does have this ability (the whole 'initially approving of the Mako reactor' shows this), but I think it demonstrates that it's in the cultural context of humanity.
Honestly the idea Barret can hear the cries of the planet, but doesn't have any more cultural context to understand it beyond what's percolated down this way is an intriguing one. Initially approving of the Mako reactor doesn't actually disqualify him; the planet is screaming, not yelling 'hey Mako is souls and using it for power is bad for me', it's easy for people to rationalize things that would improve their lives now even if there's a future cost, and also this is a point before he's ever seen it's impact.
It probably is more likely he's just widely read - he knows about Cosmo Canyon, and in the Remake he's familiar with Cetra writings, and he's drawing on this as a foundation for his activism (and that's absolutely something I hope gets explored more). It's also stealing a little from Aerith's narrative plate to add to his. But idk it's fun as an idea; might make a good AU.
Honestly the idea Barret can hear the cries of the planet, but doesn't have any more cultural context to understand it beyond what's percolated down this way is an intriguing one. Initially approving of the Mako reactor doesn't actually disqualify him; the planet is screaming, not yelling 'hey Mako is souls and using it for power is bad for me', it's easy for people to rationalize things that would improve their lives now even if there's a future cost, and also this is a point before he's ever seen it's impact.
It probably is more likely he's just widely read - he knows about Cosmo Canyon, and in the Remake he's familiar with Cetra writings, and he's drawing on this as a foundation for his activism (and that's absolutely something I hope gets explored more). It's also stealing a little from Aerith's narrative plate to add to his. But idk it's fun as an idea; might make a good AU.
Barrett: "!@#$, everyone can hear the Planet screaming. Right? Totally normal."
Aerith: "Yep."
Red, /nod.
Yuffie: "I can hear it too, who said I couldn't?!"
Cloud: "Why would you bother lying about that"
Yuffie: "Shut up, I can totally hear it!"
Really enjoyed reading this, honestly the first time I've ever gotten the chance.
If Omicron has the time I do recommend looking at it, the whole thing in my opinion enhances the comparisons to Sephiroth in a number of ways following the simulation theory.
Why yes, of course! Here, you can come observe it yourself, it's just a little further in, don't mind the broken light, just a little further, it's right next to the cask of Amontillado...
Why yes, of course! Here, you can come observe it yourself, it's just a little further in, don't mind the broken light, just a little further, it's right next to the cask of Amontillado...
Yeah, the entire 'come down to my cellar to see my cask of Amontillado' only works because a cellar is where you keep your wine casks, which Amontillado is. He doesn't trick the guy down there by inventing something or by Bond villain-ing 'come see my cask, it's deathly impressive, ohoho'. He invited him to see his expensive wine.
Why yes, of course! Here, you can come observe it yourself, it's just a little further in, don't mind the broken light, just a little further, it's right next to the cask of Amontillado...
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game that's looking very much like it's heading into the final dungeon except we know we're still at the start of Disc 2.
Last time… Well, last time we took a 6,500 words diversion into old VHS tapes. But last time before that, we reached the top of Gaea's Cliff and witnessed the point of impact where Jenova met the earth.
For reasons of convenience (ie not doing the whole Glacier and Cliff again), on this save our characters haven't seen Gast's tapes and don't know the information contained within, but I don't think it matters; FF7 is a pretty old game and while it uses flags to change dialogue depending on if we did something earlier sometimes, it's fairly uncommon outside of the Date Night point tracker and I don't think it will impact anything about the part of the plot that's about to unfold.
The characters do reiterate the basics for us from what we can see in case we did miss the Icicle Inn lore - something crashed here long ago, the Planet is gathering energy to heal the wound, and Sephiroth intends to use this gathered energy to summon Meteor. "Next time," Cloud says, "the wound won't be so small."
On our way, we meet one of the black robed Copies, lying in a critical state. It's the first of many; how on earth they got here, I have no idea, considering that the Copies haven't displayed any particular flight skills of their own while not possessed by Sephiroth.
As we advance, though, a voice calls out, "Wait for me!" and as the group turns around, Tifa arrives.
That's some sick background.
Tifa: "I've lost a lot because of Sephiroth too. So please take me along. Don't say no, OK?"
Well, I'm nothing if not obliging to Best Girl (and also the game doesn't give us a choice), so we leave Vincent waiting here and go ahead with Cloud/Tifa/Yuffie.
We make our way through the crater, a barren rocky landscape filled with crags, and on our way we find…
…a second Bahamut Materia? Just… lying there???
If you put a gun to my head and demanded that I come up with a lore explanation for this, I would say something like, since Weapons were created to put down Jenova and then went unused and fell dormant waiting for the Planet to need them again, 'Neo Bahamut' is an entity existing at a kind of 'threshold' between Summons and Weapons, a particularly powerful planetary antibody that isn't permanently embodied in the way the Weapons are. With that said, 'Neo Bahamut' is… new. Bahamut has consistently been the strongest summon in terms of raw offensive power across all games so far, but we got him on Disc 1 of this game, so there had to be something stronger, and apparently that's… another, even stronger Bahamut? Peculiar. Let's see what it looks like!
This is the coolest shit I've ever seen.
Neo Bahamut raises the enemy on a floating chunk of rock, parts the cloud to stand before it in the sky, and then blasts the opponent with a beam so powerful it obliterates the platform they're standing on and sends them toppling down to earth.
Love it.
As we reach the next save point, Cloud pauses and looks at the sky, exclaiming "That's…!!!" and we move to…
…the deck of a massive airship, where Rufus, Scarlet and Heidegger are approaching the center of the crater and gloating villainously.
Rufus: "So, I finally found you." Scarlet: "Kyaa haa hah. Haa… hah. This is incredible…" Heidegger: "This is the Promised Land the President had been searching for!!" Rufus: "But, I'll be the one who gets it. Sorry, old man." Hojo: "Heh heh heh… That land is no one's. It's where the Reunion will take place… They will all gather here… I wonder if we'll see… Sephiroth?"
Ominous! We've heard multiple references to the Reunion in the past, and the Copies are clearly converging towards the site of the Planet's injury for the purpose of the Reunion they've been rambling about since Nibelheim, while Sephiroth… brought Jenova's body back with him for it, or something? And then everyone will fuse together and he summons Meteor? We'll see.
Honestly Shinra feel kind of outdated as antagonists at this point. Heidegger was never threatening, Rufus hasn't achieved anything in the time he's been here, we beat the Turks easily both times we encountered them, Palmer isekai'd, we're a dozen hours past the last giant robot they sent at us… Their last Hurrah was Cait Sith betraying us and that relied on everyone being stupid, and it ended with Tseng in a coma and their plans in ashes again. It's hard to take them seriously as a threat, rather than 'Team Rocket is showing up to the site of their next predictable dunking on while acting like they're hot shit."
Maybe the game is doing this on purpose, though! Perhaps building up to 'Shinra realize how ineffectual they've become and enter an uneasy alliance with the protagonists'? A man can dream.
Anyway, here comes one of the more annoying platforming concept in the game.
As we approach the bridge, two Copies try to cross the wall of Mako-infused wind, only to be violently tossed back and seemingly killed. The wind is sweeping this rocky bridge at varying degrees of intensity, and we need to pass while it's weak, as denoted by the wind's visual effect growing less intense.
What makes it annoying is that the unclear depth of field makes figuring out where Cloud actually is in relation to the wind pretty hard, resulting in multiple false starts and accidental pushbacks. But it'll get even more annoying later!
On this screen, a procession of a dozen Copies advances on the winding path, several of them falling down and not getting up; it seems like the journey has left them exhausted, or starving, or otherwise weakened to the point of many of them no longer being able to even walk. I wonder why - and, like, how they even got here in the first place.
Incidentally, I'd initially assumed that there were only twelve Copies - the highest numbered tattoo in Nibelheim is 12, and Nanaki makes a comment about himself being the 13th during the Gold Saucer stay, so it seemed a natural conclusion. It's pretty apparent at this stage that there are far more Copies than this, however.
Another 'pass through the wind barrier' sequence later, we finally, briefly catch up to Sephiroth.
I… have genuinely no idea why he did that. There's nothing about what the story has told us so far or what I've theorized that explains why Sephiroth would just cut down the Copies that manage to reach him. I guess maybe because he's not just cutting them down but also throwing them down into the chasm below the stone bridge? Maybe feeding them to the Lifestream? Or to the crater? I would say 'to Jenova' but Jenova not being here is kind of the point of the whole subplot about her body and head being taken places by people, isn't it?
Not that he's going to clarify it for us.
Cloud: "Sephiroth!!! This is the end!" Sephiroth: "You're right. This the end of this body's usefulness."
Then, the lights turn purple, and Sephiroth vanishes; a kind of purple flame blows over the screen. Cloud tells the others to watch out, Sephiroth might still be around, and a voice speaks - either it's a disembodied voice talking to everyone, or it's speaking inside Cloud's mind, it's not clear; either way, it's addressing Cloud.
Voice: "Our purpose is to deliver the Black Materia to our master." Cloud: "Our…" Yuffie: "I was just getting into it!" Voice: "Those who carry Jenova's cells…" Cloud: "Master…" Voice: "Of course… Sephiroth."
Caaaalled it. Cloud is carrying Jenova's cells and that's what Sephiroth is using to influence him.
Then, in an almost perfect imitation of the blow that killed Aerith, Sephiroth appears from above, falling down with sword in hand, and strikes - but this time, it only knocks down everyone, instead of killing them.
Sephiroth walks away from the group, dramatically opening his arms and laughing, in a classic anime villain display of 'I am so strong I can just turn my back on my enemies without checking that they're dead." Cloud struggles to get up, and as he does Sephiroth slashes the air and, without a word, engages battle - though it's not Sephiroth we'll be fighting.
You get no points for guessing that, after Jenova-BIRTH and Jenova-LIFE, this black-colored variant on the now well-trod boss is called Jenova-DEATH. With 25k HP, very high Magic Defense, and an extremely fast speed of attack, it uses Fire-type attacks exclusively.
I actually really like this shot, which captures the glint just before Meteorain. Also a great look at the Enhancer Sword, Cloud's current weapon, which has a neat 'knightly' vibe to it.
However, we enter the fight with Cloud having a nearly full Limit Gauge (and a Ribbon that makes him immune to Sadness), and my party has access to Big Guard, Regen All and Haste All, so it's fairly trivial.
Get fucked.
I have no idea when and where my characters got afflicted by Sadness, incidentally. I guess it just… happened. Our reward for this is a Reflect Ring, and…
…the Black Materia, hovering above the ground where we killed Jenova.
What an incredible turn of good fortune! We won! Now to just take that thing, turn around and never come back!
Cloud: "Jenova's cells… Hmm. So that's what this is all about. The Jenova Reunion…" Tifa: "Not Sephiroth!? You mean this whole time it wasn't Sephiroth we've been after?" Cloud: "I'll explain later. Right now, the only thing I'm thinking about is beating Sephiroth." Tifa: "But Sephiroth is…" Cloud: "He's here. The real Sephiroth is just beyond here." Cloud: "It's both incredibly wicked and cruel… But it's releasing a powerfully strong will from deep within the Planet's wound."
[Cloud picks up the Black Materia.] Cloud: "...The Black Materia is back in our hands. Now all we have to do is defeat Sephiroth and that'll be the end of it." Tifa: "We'd better not take the Black Materia any further. Why don't you give it to someone else to hold onto?"
It seems like everyone saw Sephiroth turn into a Jenova-entity, and concluded 'oh, Sephiroth was a fake, it was Jenova using Sephiroth's appearance', with Cloud knowing that there's more to it than that but deciding not to explain it right now.
It's a bit of a weird sequence to be honest, especially because this Sephiroth was actually, physically carrying the Black Materia. So I guess that we did actually beat the embodied Sephiroth that stole the Black Materia back at the Temple of the Ancients? Just one body of his, but it seems like this is the actual, physical vessel which took the Materia, left for the Forgotten City, killed Aerith, then traveled all the way to the North Pole, saw that we caught up with it and turned into a Jenova-entity to fight us, and we blasted it into smithereens. Granted, given that it's just a decoy body, that victory holds little meaning, but we should take our wins where we get them.
I like that the characters are smart enough not to take the Black Materia with them to meet Sephiroth, though! Of course, this is an incredibly obvious telegraphing that whoever ends up with the item is going to end up somehow picked out by Sephiroth who will steal the Black Materia again, but at least in theory "leave the Black Materia with one character who is surrounded by the five other non-party members" is the safest thing we can do with it right now.
In practice, only two characters will actually accept the Black Materia: Barret or Nanaki, with everyone else refusing with varying degrees of bluntness. It makes some sense; out of the whole party, Barret and Nanaki are the oldest members other than Tifa and the late Aerith, and the ones with the most reliable personalities. I pick Barret, not that it will make a difference in the end; he complains about the pressure being on him now and Cloud emphasize to not give it to anyone, and he assures us he'll take care of it and, no matter what happens, he'll be right here. Then it's time to head in towards the core of the crater.
On the way we pick up the MP Turbo Materia, which increases the power of a spell or summon at the cost of increased MP Cost. I can probably break some stuff with it but so far there's no real need.
And then we have the third and most annoying of the 'wind wall' passages, which combines 'pass when the wind is weak' with 'pass between the repeated passages of a wind-blade,' and 'pass between lightning strokes.' And I don't know if it's something to do with the framerate of a 1998 PC port on a modern machine, but it seems annoyingly finnicky and hard to measure. Still, we pass through, heading towards the central feature of the crater - that mesa rising in the distance, lit by Mako like a green sun.
Only, as we move to the next screen, what we see is no mesa at all. Instead, everything turns to white.
Cloud: "Calm down, Tifa. Sephiroth is near. Anything could happen."
…the light parts, and we are in Nibelheim.
So, straight off the gate, it's obvious this isn't going anywhere good. 'Surprise vision from your past delivered by a manipulative supervillain who knows more about your own past than you do' is never good news.
Yuffie: "But why Nibelhem? This is freaky, REALLY freaky!" Cloud: "This is an illusion Sephiroth made up. He's trying to confuse us. It'll be all right. As long as we know it's an illusion, there's nothing to be afraid of. Come on, let's keep going." Tifa: "Yeah, you're right… Hey, look!"
[They turn around. Sephiroth approaches, playing out his introduction from the Nibelheim flashback, and is followed by Shinra soldiers. But when Cloud should enter the frame…]
…well.
Okay I'm sorry but the first thing that comes to my mind right now is that I have seen this character before (even without context it's not hard to infer that he's the same as this other black-haired Buster Sword-carrying SOLDIER that shows up in expanded material including Remake and Advent Children) but HOLY SHIT every character design since then toned down his fucking hair like what the hell Cloud is already a memetically spikey-haired protagonist to the point that other characters in-universe make fun of it and yet he has nothing compared to this Goku-ass looking motherfucker except no, EVEN GOKU DOESN'T HAVE HAIR THAT RIDICULOUS, what the hell. This is downright distracting.
Anyway, this guy is dressed exactly like Cloud and carrying the Buster Sword and is taking Cloud's role in this flashback. That's concerning!
What I find fascinating about what Cloud just said and how he's going to behave throughout this entire scene is that… Cloud has spent most of the time avoiding even thinking about anything that might be wrong about him, his past, his psychological issues, his connection to Sephiroth. Now, Sephiroth has forced his hand; Cloud can no longer pretend not to notice, he has to acknowledge that something is wrong with him and his mind. So how does he react?
By adopting a stance of total explicit denial about everything. "Don't worry about it, Tifa." "This is just an illusion." "Stay calm, Tifa." "None of this is real." Just confidently staring at his own past unraveling and going "this can't hurt me because it's not real."
It's about as maladaptive as his previous behavior already was, just in a slightly different way. What a guy.
Tifa: "Stop… Sephiroth." Cloud: "This is so stupid."
[The vision of Sephiroth and the others disappears.] Tifa: "Cloud… It's just an illusion. Don't worry about it."
Well, now it's Tifa talking suspiciously like she's trying to reassure Cloud!
It's been clear for a while that Tifa knew some stuff about Cloud that she's been keeping close to her chest, and her behavior throughout this scene strongly suggests that she senses that there is something really dangerous there and that she doesn't want Cloud to see it or know it and is protecting him from this knowledge even as he completely misreads her behavior as her being scared of the illusion and tries to reassure her without grasping what she's actually afraid of, building up increasingly to a foreseeable tragic ending as Cloud confidently walks into the psychologically trap laid out for him.
The world goes white again, and we advance to Nibelheim burning.
Yuffie: "Wow… I didn't know it was THIS bad…" Cloud: "...This is what actually happened five years ago. But… It's probably not me that will come out of the Shinra mansion. He's going to try and show us another stupid illusion."
Guys, I'm sorry, I know this is a really dramatic scene, but his hair
The scene we've seen once before, with Zangan asking if the Buster Sword-wearing man is "still sane," then asking him to help find survivors, plays out.
Tifa: "I don't want to… watch this. Cloud… Don't watch." Cloud: "What's wrong, Tifa? I told you before, right? As long as we know it's just an illusion, there's no need to be scared."
I like that Yuffie is getting actually, emotionally involved in the whole scene, even if she lacks a lot of context.
Yuffie: "He… hey, you! You alright!? Oh, a dream! But it felt so real…" Cloud: "Sephiroth! I know you're listening! I know what you want to say! That I wasn't in Nibelheim five years ago. That's it, isn't it?"
[Sephiroth appears.] Sephiroth: "I see you finally understand."
Cloud declares that Sephiroth is trying to confuse him, but that none of it will affect him, as he remembers the pain and sorrow of that day far too well. As in the Forgotten City, Sephiroth scoffs that Cloud knows no such thing: he's a puppet without heart, who cannot feel pain, whose memories are meaningless; they are the illusion, this is reality. Cloud brushes it off again, and asks Sephiroth why he's doing this.
And now it's time for Sephiroth to drop the major twist, the ultimate reveal meant to break Cloud.
Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha… I want to take you back to your old self. The one that gave me the Black Materia that day… Who would have ever thought a failed experiment would prove so useful? Hojo would die if he knew." Cloud: "Hojo!? What does he have to do with me!?" Sephiroth: "Five years ago you were… constructed by Hojo, piece by piece, right after Nibelheim was burnt. A puppet made of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of Mako." Sephiroth: "An incomplete Sephiroth-clone. Not even given a number. …That is your reality." Tifa: "Cloud… don't listen to him… Cover your ears! Close your eyes!" Cloud: "What's wrong, Tifa? I'm not affected by it. …I wasn't paying attention to him." Tifa: "All that talk of Hojo constructing you is a lie. Don't we have our memories together? Being kids together, starlit nights…" Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha… Tifa… Why are you so worried and scared by these words? Hmm… Shall I show everyone here what's in your heart?"
...
Okay let's leave the big piece alone for now. Right now, Tifa isn't doing a very good job of keeping Cloud from the truth, but I think she is partially trying to convince herself; she either sees that Cloud isn't nearly as confident in the face of 'illusions' as he is making himself out to be and trying to keep him from snapping, or she's trying to reassure herself that their shared memories are even real, and Sephiroth knows it - he knows she knows something she has been keeping hidden from Cloud this entire time.
Cloud tries, again, to reassure Tifa, tells her to not be scared, to not worry about him, that even if sometimes he doesn't even know who he is and his memories are muddled, he still knows he's Cloud of Nibelheim. And he knows it because he hangs onto Tifa's words when they met in Midgar - "Long time no see, Cloud."
This greeting gives him confidence that he truly is Tifa's childhood friend, and that therefore, everything else he remembers is true as well.
It's so… tiny.
It's such a tiny thing to hang all of your identity onto. To ground your psychology and anchor your sense of self upon. One sentence. And today, Tifa can't even say to him that it's true. That he is the Cloud she grew up with. All she can do is dodge, try not to look him in the eyes, and say she needs 'more time' before she can say what she's trying to say to him.
But of course, Sephiroth has no intention to let either of them process this at their own rhythm.
Sephiroth: "Cloud… Don't blame Tifa. The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova. Inside of you, Jenova has merged with Tifa's memories, creating you." Sephiroth: "Out of Tifa's memory… A boy named Cloud might've just been a part of them." Tifa: "Cloud… Please… Don't think right now." Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha… Think, Cloud! …Cloud? Ha, ha, ha… Oh, excuse me. You never had a name…" Cloud: "Shut up… Sephiroth." Sephiroth: "You still don't understand? Then… Do you remember the picture that we took before we headed for Mt Nibel? …Tifa, you remember, right? But there is no way he would know. Now… What happened to that picture?"
[Sephiroth approaches the body of the dead photographer, and picks something up from it.] Sephiroth: "...Is this it? …Do you want to see it? It turned out pretty good." Tifa: "Cloud… Don't…" Cloud: "I… should be in the picture. Even if I'm not there, no worry. This is just an illusory world Sephiroth made up."
[He looks at the picture.]
I fucking called it.
At this point, Cloud has been pretty thoroughly disturbed. He tries to anchor himself by remembering his actions (name-checking specific player actions in the process) that he took in Nibelheim, to reassure himself that he was there, he did see his mom, play the piano, read Tifa's letter, inspected the reactor, and so on. It almost seems to be working, when he says that the Reactor was 'his first mission after becoming First Class in SOLDIER.'
And that's where he trips and falls.
When did he join SOLDIER? How did he join SOLDIER? This is a gap in his memory he can't explain. He has no memory of the time between that starry night with Tifa, and coming back to Nibelheim. No memory of ever joining SOLDIER.
This is, clearly, what breaks him - the screen flashes, Cloud holding his head in his hands, struggling to put words together. Then, seemingly calmer, he tells Tifa "Let's go, I'm all right," but it's clear some profound damage has been done. Something has broken inside him.
…
So.
This is a lot.
As a scene, the psychological drama of it all is really compelling. Cloud's avoidance and denial are almost painful to watch, given that it's obvious from pretty much the start that this isn't just (and let's put a pin in that 'just') Sephiroth fucking with his head with lies, but the point at which Cloud finds out some actual devastating truths about his nature and backstory that are the reasons he has developed these avoidance mechanisms in the first place; the very things he's been desperate to avoid confronting this whole time. As for Tifa - sweet, kind Tifa having a part of the actual secret that she's never revealed, whether because she was afraid of hurting Cloud or because she was trying to convince herself it wasn't true, thereby setting up Cloud for this gut punch at the most critical moment where his mental stability matters the most, is an incredible twist of the knife to give her characterization.
As for Sephiroth…
We can sort of draw a trajectory in Sephiroth's present-day, on-screen appearances that starts at 'Sephiroth is confused, slurring his words, and doesn't recognize Cloud' in the Cargo Ship, to 'Sephiroth has a better sense of himself and is making cryptic, but coherent pronouncements' at the Shinra Mansion, to 'Sephiroth is delivering expository speeches about his plans and gloating about his control over Cloud' at the Temple and City of the Ancients, all the way to here, where Sephiroth is just…
Well, he's Satan. He is fully in control of himself and all the knowledge that he possesses, he knows Cloud better than Cloud knows himself, and he is taking him through a tour of his memories to point out the inconsistencies one by one and force him to confront how little he knows of himself, before hitting him with that most terrible of blows, the truth(?), breaking him in the process, and he's having fun doing it, reveling in the theatrics and laughing the entire time.
In a way, it's picking up what Kefka put down, and doing it better and with more panache thanks to the game's emphasis on the psychological texture and character depth of characters like Cloud and Tifa, that makes Sephiroth hit hard because he has something to hit them with, but at the same time Sephiroth himself has at this stage fully transformed into a different character, one who himself doesn't really have all that much nuance beyond the question of how much he is himself and how much he is Jenova.
Damn if he doesn't look good doing it, though.
…
So.
Cloud as a Jenova clone grown in a vat from Tifa's memories five years ago after the Nibelheim Incident is…
It's a lot.
Let's just put a pin in that and come back to it at the end of the update?
The Shinra crew arrive at what I am pretty sure is meant to be the center of the crater, where a strange tree-like growth spans the opening of the space, with massive Materias growing within it. Rufus immediately declares that this is truly the Promised Land, which makes Hojo angry because there's 'no such thing' as the Promised Land, so Rufus laughs and calls him a 'second-rate scientist.' Oh, Rufus. Please don't make me like you. As they bicker, the ground shakes, and those shapes you can sort of discern within the ice start to stir, one eye blinking briefly open prompting Hojo to declare that these are the Weapons, 'monsters created by the Planet.'
Let me tell you this whole thing is a bit of a random swerve when you reach this place without first finding the Icicle Inn tapes and have never heard about 'Weapons,' although Hojo does clarify that the Weapons 'appear when the Planet is in danger and destroy everything,' which is honestly all we really need to know to grasp the stakes. And then we move back to the party members who stayed behind.
The moment the camera moves back to Barret and the others having a normal time it's instantly clear that everything is about to predictably go very, very wrong. And wouldn't you know it, just as Barret wonders aloud how one small Materia could threaten to destroy the Planet, suddenly a wave of ominous green light swallows the screen, and Barret is alone.
Barret wanders around in the light, calling out to his friends, and a voice calls out to him, only it's not any of the party members who were actually here with him: It's Tifa.
Barret tells her that something's wrong, everything went black and he can't find the others, and Tifa tells him that everyone's waiting up ahead and Cloud is in trouble; Barret agrees and rushes ahead, and Tifa laughs to herself before turning into Sephiroth and vanishing, revealing that everyone else was actually still there, just temporarily unconscious.
Sephiroth actually strikes Tifa's flirty pose before transforming, because he's a true queen.
…
I have to give this scene some points for at least not having Tifa just ask for the Black Materia and Barret handing it to her. They can meet that bar, at least! And I guess you could say that Barret doesn't feel confident that he can protect the Black Materia alone, so telling Tifa 'I shouldn't trust anyone' and staying put would be dangerous, and in practice would probably mean Sephiroth skips to stabbing him like he did Aerith, but… It kinda feels like I'm making excuses for the game just having Barret act like an idiot and falling prey to an easy deception.
I also don't know what to think of the fact that Jenova/Sephiroth seemingly turned into Aizen and unlocked Kyouka Suigetsu, having now the ability to perfectly deceive everyone with illusions that can arbitrarily disguise him as anyone, make people disappear from the scene, and make everyone pass out without the need to directly attack them? It seems like a lot.
Back at the Crater Core (the Crisis Core? Har har har), Scarlet is telling Rufus that she has a bad feeling about this place, and Rufus agrees that it might be a good idea to withdraw back to the ship until they're properly set up to perform a survey of the area - only to be interrupted by Cloud suddenly popping into existence among them.
Cloud's arms are hanging limply and his head is low, slumped over, clear signs that something is wrong with him. Weirdly enough, when Scarlet asks Cloud where he came from, his first answer is that he doesn't know, then he tells them this place is going to 'get rough' and they should 'leave things to him.'
That's not weird! It's totally not weirdly confident language for someone in the middle of a mental breakdown! When Rufus asks for an explanation, Cloud declares that this is "Where the Reunion is happening. Where everything begins and ends."
Then Tifa tries to call out to him, only her voice is rendered as voice-over text without dialogue box.
Silenced. Hidden, either from Cloud himself, or from everyone at once. Sephiroth manipulating the perception of reality into the shape he needs for the tragedy to unfold.
It's a… really, really strong power to give to an antagonist. The kind that immediately raises questions as to how the heroes are supposed to actually win. I mean, you know me; I made my name on this website with a million-word Bleach Quest, I have thought a lot about the ridiculous nature of freeform illusion powers with no clear limits but, well. We'll see.
Barret arrives on the scene, eager to help. Cloud is… The game is employing a deliberate contrast between Cloud's body language, in which he slumps over, holds his head in his hands, struggles to advance, and his verbal language, in which his speech is halting and slow but calm, and to the point. Just like with Aerith, we have to enter the actual input for him to move forward each step, though unlike with Aerith there's a lot less dramatic resistance so it's not quite as impactful.
Cloud: "Thanks… Barret. Where's the Black Materia?"
(Tifa: "Cloud!!") Barret: "It's safe. I have it." Cloud: "I'll take it from here. Give me the… Black Materia." Barret: "You alright?"
(Tifa: "You can't hear my voice?")
[Cloud, who was slumped over zombie-like, looks up at Barret.] Barret: "Okay then, here. Had a lot of pressure holding this thing."
(Tifa: "No, don't!! Please! Stop Cloud!") Cloud: "Thanks. Leave the rest to me."
Cut for image count.
Final Fantasy VII, Part 25: The Confrontation at the Crater, Part B
Red, centered text over a white screen - a way of conveying the intensity of Jenova's strongest command yet. Cloud is utterly helpless. As Tifa implores some force, Cloud or Sephiroth or fate itself, to please wait just a little longer, Cloud turns to everyone, and apologizes.
Cloud: "Everyone, thanks for everything. And… I'm sorry."
[He turns to Yuffie.] Cloud: "...Sorry."
[He turns to Barret.] Cloud: "...Sorry."
[He turns to Tifa.] Cloud: "Especially you, Tifa. I'm really sorry. You've been so good to me… I don't know what to say…" Cloud: "I never lived up to being 'Cloud.' Tifa… Maybe one day you'll meet the real 'Cloud'."
[Tifa weeps, and falls to her knees.] Hojo: "Ha, ha, ha… This is perfect!! It means that my experiment was a complete success." Hojo: "What number were you? Huh? Where is your tattoo?" Cloud: "Professor Hojo… I don't have a number. You didn't give me one because you said I was a failed experiment." Hojo: "What the..? You mean only a failure made it here?" Cloud: "Professor… please give me a number. Please, professor…" Hojo: "Shut up, miserable failure…"
Cloud slumps forward again, and he begins to rise into the air, pulled up by some unseen force, and the Black Materia with him.
I think this is meant to be deliberately evocative of alien abduction movies.
…
I am very conflicted about this scene.
On the one hand, the horror angle is perfect. The way Cloud has just… surrendered is haunting. Previously, Sephiroth was able to send him into a dissociative state or control his physical actions, but now there's no need for that. The hammer of the reveals surrounding his past has broken his psyche. He's not just going along with Jenova/Sephiroth's commands, he's actually speaking aloud - apologizing to others, acknowledging his own unreality, begging Hojo for the closest thing he can imagine to a name, a serial number, all while taking the Black Materia to give to Sephiroth without putting up a shred of resistance. Utterly defeated, hollowed out.
On the other hand I am watching Barret look at Cloud, who is a known potential target of mind control, having a full on breakdown in front of him, clutching his heads and having body spasms and inching slowly towards him while going "Barret gimme the Black Materia, gimme the Black Materia Barret buddy please, please bro just a crumb of Black Materia, I am normal and can be trusted with the weapon to summon Meteor" and Barret just shrugging and going "Okay : D" and I'm thinking, like, with friends like these who needs enemies?
Like I genuinely think this scene might have benefited from substituting actual physical violence for the kind of deceit that makes people look like idiots, like maybe Barret goes 'uh buddy you don't look so good I think I'm going to keep this Black Materia until you've had a cold shower and some time to think' and Sephiroth makes Cloud cut him down like he didn't Aerith because he's broken in a way he wasn't in the Forgotten City (only Cloud manages just enough control over himself that the blow isn't fatal and Barret will recover), or something.
Anyway.
White light engulfs the screen. On a monochrome background, we see Hojo speak, essentially confirming Sephiroth's account (we'll put another pin in that for the end of the update).
Rufus: "Who… was that?" (Rufus my dude, it's the guy who nearly stabbed you to death. The Retranslation instead has him ask 'What… is he?' which makes a lot more sense.) Hojo: "...He's a Sephiroth-clone I created after the real Sephiroth died five years ago. Jenova cells and Mako, with my knowledge and skills, have been combined with science and nature to bring him life." Hojo: "...I'm not wild about the failure part, but the Jenova Reunion Theory has now been proven. You see, even if Jenova's body is dismembered, it will eventually become one again. That's what is meant by Jenova's Reunion." Hojo: "I have been waiting for the Reunion to start. Five years have passed, and now the clones have begun to return. I thought the clones would begin to gather at Midgar where Jenova is stored. But my predictions were not entirely correct. Jenova itself began to move away from the Shinra Building." Hojo: "But being the genius that I am, I soon figured it out. You see it was all Sephiroth's doing. Sephiroth is not just content to diffuse his will into the Lifestream. He wants to manipulate the Clones himself."
…
The incredible thing is realizing I gave Hojo too much credit.
He didn't accidentally wake up Jenova while using her body as a source of mutations and enhancements and monsters for his super-soldier program, he was actively trying to wake her up! He was literally triggering the Reunion on purpose because he thought he could benefit from it somehow???
Okay, well, it's nice to have a confirmation that at least part of my initial theory was correct - Sephiroth did physically die, his soul subsisted within the Lifestream, he began to exert control over the Copies that Hojo had initially created to track down Jenova. I hadn't anticipated that the goal was specifically for all the Clones to fuse with Jenova, I thought they were only meant to serve as tracking devices to recover the missing Jenova head and disposed of once they found it, because triggering Jenova's awakening on purpose is insane, but, again, I gave Hojo too much credit.
Also I don't know what's up with Hojo dismissing Cloud as a 'failure.' Like… he did it. He made it all the way to the North Pole, came fully under Jenova's influence, and retrieved the Black Materia for her. What criterion is even being used here to describe him as a 'failure'?
As Hojo speaks, we see flashes of the scene, a vertical view from above, which eventually comes into full resolution.
Cloud is hanging upside down, gravity having no hold on him, in a Dutch Angle plunging shot that's a real work of art at evoking the sheer alienation and isolation he feels in this moment, the total estrangement that comes from still being able to think while thoroughly and utterly under Jenova's control.
Cloud: I wasn't pursuing Sephiroth. Cloud: I was being summoned by Sephiroth. Cloud: All the hunger and hatred I bore him, made it impossible for me to ever forget him. That and what he gave me. (ND: The Retranslation instead says "That was his gift to me," which sounds a lot more correct.) Cloud: Sephiroth? Sephiroth? I'm here. And I brought you the Black Materia. Show yourself to me. Where are you?
Here, we briefly take control of Cloud again, though all we can do is walk a very short length of the root upside-down until we reach the point where Cloud looks at the large Materia sticking out of the center of the roots, visible top left in the screenshot above, and thinks, Sephiroth… So we finally meet again.
Cue FMV. The characters below start running as the root system shakes, dust rains down onto the space below, and from out of the roots descends the largest Materia we've ever seen, and within it…
…so this is clearly meant to be Sephiroth's 'real' body. The thing he's lacked this whole time, as his spirit kept joyriding puppets, using Jenova's ability to change shapes and manifest memories to turn them into himself or into monsters. What that body is, I'm not sure; his physical body of five years ago, put in stasis to heal it over time? Or Jenova's own body, having undergone some kind of permanent transformation into a new Sephiroth body? Or all the Copies who made it this far only to be cut down by Sephiroth, absorbed into the root system and distilled into this new vessel? Or, somehow, all of the above?
Hojo laughs about how incredible it all is, his theories were right, the Reunion works yada yada, while Tifa tries to impart upon him that Cloud is about to hand him the Black Materia and everyone will die; Rufus chooses his moment to take action, for what little he can do; realizing the momentous weight of Shinra's mistakes, he says that "Whatever I say now is too little, too late," but that at least he can evacuate everyone using the airship.
Barret and Tifa turn to Cloud, desperately calling on him to resist as a last call before all his lost, but in vain.
Cloud's hand penetrates the surface of Sephiroth's Materia coffin, and the Black Materia (weirdly enough completely spherical in this scene despite clearly having the appropriate appearance of the Temple shrunken down in non-FMV cutscenes) floats away, and starts emitting lightning and dark energy.
Incidentally, this close-up shot of Sephiroth makes it very clear that his body is not complete. It terminates at the torso, where it… Okay, at first I thought it was dissolving into strands, but from a closer look, no, that's literally just his hair continuing down past the point where his torso end; rather his torso just gets blurry and disappears.
It's… possible that this is because Sephiroth has fused himself to the Materia in the same way that Exdeath appeared as a suit of armor emerging from a giant tree, but I think it's more likely that this physical body simply isn't finished. Whatever he needs to be fully mobile and operational, he doesn't have it yet, and he'll need more time before he can leave this crystal coffin and walk about in his true physical body at full power.
…is MCU Ultron just Robot Sephiroth? Oh my god, he is.
The giant Materia containing Sephiroth falls down from the center of the root complex, and with it the entire cave starts coming down; the rest of the characters run out of the room just fast enough to escape being buried alive, and we transition to an outside view, where the Shinra airship is flying away as fast as it can from the crumbling crater moments before a gigantic pillar of Mako energy surges from it.
The point of gathering here, at the North Pole, was for Sephiroth to use the enormous amount of spiritual energy gathered here to heal the Planet's wound in order to summon Meteor. And it looks like that's exactly what he's doing with this immense surge of energy. Which means, in turn, this energy is no longer serving to heal the Planet, but to destroy it.
And that, in turns, means the Planet's last resort means of self-defense are activating for the first time after two thousand years.
The Weapons, it turns out, are giant biomechanical kaiju-mechas. Absolutely outstanding. Somehow, I have a suspicion they'll be completely useless when it comes to actually save the Planet, and instead we're going to have to destroy them to save humanity from their rampage. Whatever their immediate goals, though, it seems they don't think it can be accomplished by staying in the blast radius of the emerging Mako blast, and all three of them fly away to different corners of the world.
This particular Weapon, let's call it the Dragon Weapon until we have official names, towers over the airship's deck, casting everything in its shadow; and while it does not make any outright hostile gesture towards it, does not in fact even seem to notice its presence, it gathers a kind of force field around it and then streaks across the sky - with the airship caught in its wake and sent for a rough tumble, tossing everyone into the air and nearly knocking Tifa off the ship, bouncing her over the railing, and Barret rushes to shield her with his body.
Some… interesting work being done with the posing in these shots. Fantastic use of light and shadow in the second one, though.
As the gigantic pillar of energy that accompanied Sephiroth's use of the Black Materia subsides, four entities soar through the skies, leaving trails of energies behind them, and the characters on the deck of the airship give one last look of amazement or horror as they fly away. Cut to black.
Look how small he is in this picture.
Tifa: "Cloud…" Tifa: "I didn't know what to do. I was always like that…"
Another vision from the past: The Sector 7 railway station, like we've seen it so many times before - welcoming us after the Mako Reactor #1 attack, disgorging travelers returned from the Wutai war as Elmyra waits in vain for her husband, having just deposited Aerith and Ifalna with the latter on the verge of death, waiting to maybe, perhaps take some last-second refugees away before the Plate collapses.
The Sector 7 train has always, in a strange way, been associated with death.
[Cloud moans incoherently; Tifa approaches him.] Tifa: "Are you all right?" Cloud: "oo… uh… agh"
[There are white flashes with the loud static noise that typically accompanies Cloud's episodes.] Cloud: "Uh… uh… Tifa?"
[Another static flash; Cloud stands up.] Cloud: "Tifa!" Tifa: "...?"
[She examines him more closely.] Tifa: "Oh, Cloud!" Cloud: "That's right. I'm Cloud." Tifa: "Is it really you, Cloud? I never thought I'd find you here!"
[Cloud does a little 'cool guy' pose.] Cloud: "Yeah, it's been a while." Tifa: "What happened to you? You don't look well." Cloud: "Yeah? It's nothing. I'm okay."
[Tifa briefly turns around and the screen flashes, more loud static, Cloud is clutching his head in his hands in an expression of agony; Tifa turns around again and he looks normal.] Tifa: "How long has it been?"
[More flashes. More static, more intense this time. Cloud clutches his head again before his expression returns to normal.] Cloud: "Five years." Tifa: "..." Cloud: "What is it?" Tifa: "...It's been a really long time." Tifa's voice-over: Actually, it's been seven years. You joined SOLDIER but quit after the Sephiroth incident, and now you're a mercenary… You told me a lot about what happened after you left Nibelheim… But… Something was wrong. I felt there was something strange about the things you talked about. All the things you didn't know that you should, and other things you shouldn't know about that you did. I wanted to make sure… But then I heard… You were going far away… And I didn't want that…
Tifa's voice-over: …I didn't know what to do. So, I thought I needed more time. And that's why I told you about the AVALANCHE job. I wanted to be with you and watch you.
Fade to white.
…
Man, Tifa's perspective of this story is so fascinating. Like… Years after you last saw him, you run into one of your childhood friends, and he's just… Off. He doesn't know things that he should, and he knows things that he shouldn't. One day you talk to him about a memory of your time together and he stares at you blankly, having no idea what you're talking about. Another day he brings up something you are absolutely certain he was not there for. Talking from the perspective of the person who actually was there, perhaps?
In the original translation, the line 'I heard you were going far away' alludes to Cloud having some plans to leave Midgar and strike out on his own, and Tifa using the Avalanche job to tie him down. It ties well into the plot as established before, with Cloud wanting to just make some quick money and leave Midgar and only staying out of a sense of obligation to Tifa, but… The Retranslated mod has a completely different version of that line; instead Tifa is saying that the more she asked about the inconsistencies in Cloud's memories, the more she was 'pushing him away,' so she decided to stop, and she told him about the Avalanche job so she could watch over him, not watch him. This also ties into established characterization well, specifically meaning Tifa was the first to notice Cloud's psychological issues and memory holes, but instead of pushing the topic and trying to figure him out, Tifa decided to keep quiet and stay close to him to watch over him.
The Retranslated Tifa, which I assume to be closer to the original Japanese script, is protective of Cloud, preoccupied first and foremost with not hurting him. The original translation's Tifa, meanwhile, comes across as a lot more wary and uncertain, coming up with a plot to keep Cloud in Midgar so she can watch him and figure him out. It's an… interesting difference, taken at face value, though JP!Tifa ties in better with the rest of the story given that her behavior is consistently non-confrontational.
Man. She was tailoring her story to avoid rubbing against Cloud's this entire time. Like in the Nibelheim Flashback sequence at the Kalm inn, where she does a lot of '...,' keeps Barret from asking probing questions, and doesn't raise any inconsistencies with Cloud the whole time. Her characterization is… fascinating. At the same time coming from a place of care, and yet so afraid of confrontation, of hurting Cloud or pushing him away, that she, the one best positioned in the entire cast to raise the problem with Cloud with others and perhaps figure out ahead of time that something's seriously wrong with him and what it might be, ends up allowing the whole thing to play out as it did.
If you were really, really uncharitable, you could perhaps even blame her for Aerith's death and the loss of the Black Materia. I mean, I wouldn't, because she had no reason until recently to suspect the immense depths of fuckedupness behind Cloud's psychological issues, but you could.
…
Okay.
So.
Cloud.
I have been putting this off since basically the moment I wrapped up play the last time I touched FF7 because it's just… It's a lot. And I am not even sure how to tackle it.
Cloud isn't himself. Cloud isn't a SOLDIER. Cloud isn't Tifa's childhood friend. Cloud isn't Cloud. Cloud is a clone, created five years ago by Hojo using Jenova cells and Mako and 'Tifa's memories.' How would that last part work? One might imagine that, when the blank Sephiroth-Copy was approached by Tifa at the train station, it modeled itself on some memory it subconsciously read on her, that it thought of itself as 'Cloud' because she called him 'Cloud,' and so on. A puppet that slowly started to develop a consciousness, that started aloof, blank, only progressively developing feelings and emotions and relationships. There was a Cloud, once, some kid from Nibelheim who wanted to join SOLDIER, probably dead now, and Cloud is merely an imitation of that kid's appearance and some of the memories he shared with Tifa. Cloud's character arc was a literal 'growth of a character', and the big mistake Sephiroth is making is in believing that it's fake, that it's just pretense, as opposed to the blank slate having actually grown into a person over time. One can see the story unfold from there - Cloud having to come to grips with the fact that his not being 'real' doesn't mean anything, that he can be his own person, and so on, but for now, the truth has left him broken, as he grasps with the fact that he was never even… Human. And in the end he couldn't resist Jenova's power, or Sephiroth's. He is just a defective copy, who followed Sephiroth's summoning while thinking it was his own will.
…
It's bullshit.
Okay. Let me put my thoughts in order.
Often, when a villain who has been holding a secret to his chest for the whole story dramatically reveals it two thirds into the story, it's true. And it's meant to be taken as true; the audience isn't meant to question it. It's the villain delivering a monologue to break the hero psychologically, but it's also the author stepping in and saying 'by the way, this is the truth I've been hiding from the audience this whole time.' The follow-up is in how people come to terms with the truth, not in finding the little details that show it was fake.
Sometimes though, it's a lie. The villain delivers a twist with just enough truth to be believable as the major reveal that shatters our hero, but you are supposed to look for the inconsistencies and spot ahead of time that the picture is incomplete and this wasn't actually meant to be the author coming down to hand you the truth. And it's hard to tell one from the other sometimes.
The fact that Sephiroth's explanation of Cloud's origin is immediately followed by Hojo independently saying "Everything Sephiroth just said is correct" seems like it goes in the sense of the story telling 'btw, this is the truth,' but also it's Hojo. It's like, the two least reliable characters in the whole story are Hojo and Sephiroth, and even if they are both independently saying 'this is Cloud's true origin btw,' I am doubting them both. Especially because it asks us to treat Hojo as a serious, competent man who knows what he's talking about.
And like… Remember the little Sephiroth-Copies inside the attic of the house where the Nibelheim children lived, the ones that seem to indicate that the Copies were made from pre-existing people rather than grown out of vats as pure clones? Wouldn't it be in-character for Hojo to claim that his Copies were decanted from a test tube rather than the fruit of horrible medical abuse of living people?
No, I don't think they are telling the truth.
Sephiroth's story accounts for a lot of things. Why does Cloud remember that starry night vow with Tifa? Because Tifa remembers it, and he pulled it from her memories. Why does he not remember joining SOLDIER? Because Tifa has no idea what SOLDIER training looks like. Why does Cloud remember reading Tifa's letter? Because Tifa prompted him during the flashback by asking if he read the letter, and she remembered its content, so he remembered what she remembered. Why does Cloud remember talking to Sephiroth in the Shinra Mansion, where Tifa wasn't present? Because he's made out of Jenova cells, and so some of Sephiroth's own memories probably made it into the mix, and Sephiroth remembers his encounter with Black Hair Guy. Same reason he remembers confronting Sephiroth in the Jenova chamber.
There's just two things:
Why does Cloud remember visiting his mom? Tifa wasn't involved. Neither was Sephiroth.
Why does Cloud remember helping Zangan save people while the village was burning? Tifa wasn't there and Sephiroth only caught the end of that.
I'll admit, that's not much. The Zangan scene I could even handwave as 'well Sephiroth' did see it, but… Not Cloud's mom. Where did that come from?
And to be frank - maybe it's because I played the Remake, but I don't buy the idea that Cloud started as a blank slate who grew human emotions over time. At the very least, he didn't do it in the timeframe of the game. He started out as a socially awkward dork who unconsciously emulates the people he once thought were the coolest in the world, and then he opened up. But the feelings were always there. But maybe those just grew over the five off-screen years since his creation!
But also.
Here's something.
Who the fuck is this guy?
Like - don't get me wrong, I'm not really asking who he is. I am pointing out that the reason I'm pretty sure the vision Sephiroth conjured of Nibelheim is real is because this guy is in it, despite fitting no part of his story. Cloud is too distracted by, at first, denying any of it is real, and then by having an ongoing mental breakdown to draw any attention to it, and Tifa is too busy trying to keep Cloud from said breakdown, which pointing out this guy exists would probably only make worse, yet Sephiroth, who is trying to psychologically break Cloud, doesn't bring him up.
There is a guy wearing Cloud's outfit, carrying the Buster Sword, who takes Cloud's place in two flashback spots, and Sephiroth conspicuously doesn't use him as another knife to twist in Cloud's wound, and in fact doesn't mention him at all. He's content with just saying 'you were never there, it was this guy,' without bothering to even say who 'this guy' is (well, actually, he never says 'you were never there;' he lets Cloud say it, while Sephiroth himself only says stuff like 'this is the reality' and 'finally you understand' and 'look at this picture'). Why? Probably because Sephiroth drew forth an accurate vision of the past and that meant this guy had to be in it but this guy is inconvenient to Sephiroth's narrative so he just keeps quiet and hopes nobody will notice, and nobody does.
This part is extremely frustrating for me, because I do come at this part of the story with some external knowledge that changes the way I see it. But the thing is, all the elements are there! It's all already in the game at this stage, and I would like to think that I could put it together if I didn't already know, but I can't be sure.
Like. Let's think about economy of writing here. Who wears clothes like Cloud's and carries oversized swords? SOLDIERs. Which SOLDIERs do we know of in the game? Well, there are the nameless 3rd Class random encounters in the Shinra Building, Cloud… And Aerith's ex-boyfriend Zack. He is literally the only SOLDIER ever referred to by name other than Cloud (if we don't count Sephiroth), and his similarities to Cloud are brought up multiple times.
Oh, and who conveniently died just before she could have had a chance to be in the party while Sephiroth threw up his little theatre play who could have potentially gone 'actually I know that guy', or indeed not recognize him and thereby implicitly confirm that it wasn't him? Aerith, Zack's ex-girlfriend.
So yeah, even if I didn't already know from spin-off material that the guy with spiky black hair carrying the Buster Sword was Zack, I'd like to think that I would have figured it out.
And then of course there is the very last piece of forbidden out-of-game knowledge I possess, the last spoiler I've heard that we have yet to come across, which is that Cloud somehow inherited Zack's memories, which is why he remembers doing the stuff in Nibelheim that Zack is doing here. And with that bit of knowledge secured away in this spoiler box, we can just not think about it until it's relevant again and focus once again on the problem at hand, because I'm not done, and this is where we jump from 'things I am confident in putting forward' into 'wild speculation hour.' But fuck it, I have just spent an entire week of my life on these last three updates (which are taking up five full posts in total), so you're going to sit through my deranged rambling.
…
Why would Clone!Cloud, born entirely out of Jenova, Mako and Tifa's memories, remember visiting his mother?
I want to go back in past a little. I want to go back to my update 'Return to Nibelheim.' There, we found documents in the Shinra Mansion's basement library that, at the time, I paraphrased, which in hindsight I should have just quoted piecemeal. They say this:
Article:
Escapee Report N°1
X Month X Day
Two escapees were located near Midgar.
Article:
Escapee Report N°2
Description at the time of capture.
A: Former member of SOLDIER/Number ( )
No effect could be detected from either Mako Radiation Therapy or Jenova on him.
B: Regular/Number ( )
Reaction to Jenova detected.
Article:
Escapee Report N°3
Status.
A: Shot for resisting.
B: Escaped during A's resistance.
Article:
Escapee Report N°4
Other
B's whereabouts is currently unknown.
But pursuit is unnecessary due to his diminishing consciousness.
Awaiting further instructions.
OH WOW.
WHAT'S THIS.
Two fugitives located near Midgar, one of them an unnamed SOLDIER, the other a grunt, who were captured and subsequently subjected to Hojo's bad pseudo-scientific experiments? The SOLDIER showed no response beyond his existing augmentation, but the grunt was treated with Jenova cells and showed a high response to it, then escaped, but even after Shinra lost track of him pursuit was deemed unnecessary due to 'diminishing consciousness'? Or, if we use the Retranslated mod's turn of phrase, cognitive impairment? An individual infected with Jenova, heading for Midgar, suffering pyschological issues causing him… Perhaps… Memory loss? Or maybe… Fugue episodes? Who might have… Perhaps… Landed in a train station in the slum, so out of it he could barely talk?
Cloud isn't a clone decanted out of a pod five years ago as a blank slate who imprinted Tifa's memories of a different person as his identity. He's Tifa's actual childhood friend Cloud, the one who left wanting to join SOLDIER, only for whatever reason he never made it and was stuck as a normal grunt (maybe because he was only 16?) and he never wrote home or anything and he was ashamed, and then the Nibelheim Incident happened, he went on the run, was captured, was forcibly implanted with Jenova cells, and the whole process was so traumatic that his psyche was severely damaged and he couldn't remember entire chunks of his past.
…
Or maybe they just use the real Cloud's body as an ingredient in creating him and that's why he remembers his mom, or maybe he pulled the memories of Cloud's mom out of the Lifestream, or maybe he hallucinated a mom that never even existed. Maybe this was a wild goose chase and I was meant to take Sephiroth and Hojo's narrative at face value, and I'll finish the game and be surprised that there never was a cutscene which confirmed that Cloud is a five-year old construct because the game didn't think I would go on a wild tangent theory. Maybe!
Maybe it's just cope.
But, frankly, if the alternative is trusting Sephiroth and Hojo's word on anything, I'll take my theory.
AND THAT'S IT. WE'VE FINALLY DONE THE ENTIRE SNOW FIELDS TO NORTHERN CRATER SEQUENCE. AND IT ONLY TOOK ME 25,000 WORDS, INCLUDING 10,000 WORDS FOR THIS UPDATE ALONE.
CLOUD IS PSYCHOLOGICALLY BROKEN. SEPHIROTH HAS SUMMONED METEOR. THE WEAPONS ARE LOOSE UPON THE WORLD. EVERYONE JUST CLIMBED ABOARD A SHINRA AIRSHIP WHICH CAN'T POSSIBLY BACKFIRE. AERITH IS STILL DEAD. THE WORLD IS ENDING. WOOOOOOOO!
Incidentally, I'd initially assumed that there were only twelve Copies - the highest numbered tattoo in Nibelheim is 12, and Nanaki makes a comment about himself being the 13th during the Gold Saucer stay, so it seemed a natural conclusion. It's pretty apparent at this stage that there are far more Copies than this, however.
Yeah, the other difference is that the Sephiroth Copies are using Arabic numerals, not Roman ones like Nanaki, though I'm not sure if the former is explicitly elucidated in the original (it's definitely apparent in Remake). So I guess Hojo just... gave Nanaki the 'XIII' tatto to fuck with him? And Nanaki was like "joke's on you this shit whips".
Sephiroth: "Cloud… Don't blame Tifa. The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova. Inside of you, Jenova has merged with Tifa's memories, creating you." Sephiroth: "Out of Tifa's memory… A boy named Cloud might've just been a part of them." Tifa: "Cloud… Please… Don't think right now." Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha… Think, Cloud! …Cloud? Ha, ha, ha… Oh, excuse me. You never had a name…" Cloud: "Shut up… Sephiroth." Sephiroth: "You still don't understand? Then… Do you remember the picture that we took before we headed for Mt Nibel? …Tifa, you remember, right? But there is no way he would know. Now… What happened to that picture?"
[Sephiroth approaches the body of the dead photographer, and picks something up from it.] Sephiroth: "...Is this it? …Do you want to see it? It turned out pretty good." Tifa: "Cloud… Don't…" Cloud: "I… should be in the picture. Even if I'm not there, no worry. This is just an illusory world Sephiroth made up."
[He looks at the picture.]
Sephiroth is so iconic in this scene. This is where he truly becomes the Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss of the franchise. The way he teleports around the scene, giggling like a schoolgirl just bursting to share a piece of soul-destroying gossip, stringing Cloud along all like "oh~ what happened to the picture~, is this it~? wanna see it~? it turned out pretty good~", mwah.
This is also one reason why I don't subscribe to "oh in the original it's just Jenova using Sephiroth's appearance it was a retcon when they said it was actually Sephiroth" - well this and that part where Hojo directly stated Sephiroth prevented himself from losing his ego to the Lifestream one scene later but forget about Hojo for now. This shit feels personal. Sephiroth in this scene isn't only stating the facts about Cloud having more holes in his brain than a 20-pack of swiss cheese slices, he's really amping up the cruelty and anticipation of it all. He's the torturer showing off his tools and explaining what they'll do before he does anything because the suffering is the point. This absolutely tracks with his later portrayal as manifesting at the foot of Cloud's bed at 3am eating dry cereal by the handful while Those Chosen By The Planet plays, the man who will introduce himself to Cloud titties-first 30 minutes into Remake just to mingle Burning Nibelheim into Exploded Sector 7 and call his dick small.
Tifa: "How long has it been?"
[More flashes. More static, more intense this time. Cloud clutches his head again before his expression returns to normal.] Cloud: "Five years." Tifa: "..." Cloud: "What is it?" Tifa: "...It's been a really long time." Tifa's voice-over: Actually, it's been seven years. You joined SOLDIER but quit after the Sephiroth incident, and now you're a mercenary… You told me a lot about what happened after you left Nibelheim… But… Something was wrong. I felt there was something strange about the things you talked about. All the things you didn't know that you should, and other things you shouldn't know about that you did. I wanted to make sure… But then I heard… You were going far away… And I didn't want that…
Tifa's voice-over: …I didn't know what to do. So, I thought I needed more time. And that's why I told you about the AVALANCHE job. I wanted to be with you and watch you.
Fun fact, it's a blink and you'll miss it moment but there's a very subtle allusion to this in Remake I enjoy - sometime I think in Chapter 3 where Tifa and Cloud are chilling in the Sector 7 Slums, a third party happens to bring up their time apart in some fashion and Cloud casually rattles off that it's been 5 years since they saw each other last, to which Tifa goes "what?" and then the conversation just flows on naturally because without context there's a hundred reasons she could've said that.
If you're already in the know then a lot of Cloud and Tifa's conversations during that chapter carry the tenor of Tifa very gingerly probing at the edges of Cloud's ricotta skull, completely at a loss as to how she can unpack all this.
And like… Remember the little Sephiroth-Copies inside the attic of the house where the Nibelheim children lived, the ones that seem to indicate that the Copies were made from pre-existing people rather than grown out of vats as pure clones? Wouldn't it be in-character for Hojo to claim that his Copies were decanted from a test tube rather than the fruit of horrible medical abuse of living people?
Considering the Copies are literally referred to as 'Sephiroth Copy' in katakana as I mentioned, not even using the catch-all term 'jinzoningen' ('artificial humans' which can apply to clones, cyborgs, androids, what-have-you) which tripped up DBZ localisers and caused them to erroneously refer to cyborgs as androids around the same era, and sometimes Hojo Just Be Saying Shit, the whole affair seems like a bit of a dog's breakfast at this point. Though I'm sure things will become clearer once we're further in.
