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Harrow posted:If we're asking, canonically, did humanity die on the day of Meteorfall in the original Final Fantasy VII? It's ambiguous in the original text. Supplementary texts like Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus state that no, humanity was saved by the Lifestream that day. Genesis successfully wipes out all of humanity sometime after Dirge of Cerberus and Sephiroth somehow travels back in time in order to prevent this and create a new history(preferably one where he wins this time). The final game ends with Cloud and Sephiroth teaming up to defeat Gackt once and for all. (I'm joking, please don't bring back Genesis you guys)
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:18 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:09 |
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Elephant Ambush posted:Just ask Sapphire Weapon I think the Sapphire Weapon was surprised as gently caress that happened. Like it figured it was totally epic boss material like Emerald and Ruby and I don't think it expected that cannon to do anything that's why it got the load to the face. pasaluki fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 27, 2020 |
# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:24 |
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Here's my point. JK Rowling is garbage but she's not wrong. She owns and controls the canon, good or bad. She can say Dumbledore is gay or whatever. It doesn't matter if she's an idiot or a TERF or just getting attention. It's her universe. What she says goes. It might be monumentally loving stupid but it's canon. And like, it's cool to say that's what it is. Dumb, stupid, self-aggrandizing, badly retconned, whatever. All of that is perfectly valid criticism. Make fun of her broken TERF millionaire brain all you want. I love doing that too. But you can't say it's WRONG. Like if you want to write some fanfic about how humanity is not extinct when Nanaki and his family are hanging out near Midgar 500 years in the future that's fine and cool. I support fanfiction and shipping and whatever. But you, as some random nobody on the internet, do not get to declare, objectively, that Kitase is WRONG for saying that humanity is extinct during that post credits scene. He knows better than you do because he is one of the creators. I understand Death of the Author but this isn't one of those easily misinterpreted things. Like, they don't have Aerith staring directly into the camera saying "In this scene, humanity is extinct. Thank you for playing." but it's not a stretch to figure it out. Midgar is overgrown. Do you really think it's the only city that's overgrown? Really? If Kitase makes a clarifying statement about the ending, you don't get to be some random shmo going "lol nah that's not what happens wtf do you know?". Dude is one of the creators. What he says goes. You don't have to like it and I support criticism of it, but it isn't WRONG.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:24 |
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No amount of tweets will change the words on the page of Harry Potter. They change the text of "Harry Potter plus subsequent tweets". If that's the work you want to engage with, great! Its not the only Harry Potter work you can engage with though, and you aren't obligated to hold it up on high as more correct (whatever that means for art)
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:27 |
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poo poo that is not in the text is not text. Plain and simple, end of loving argument. The ending of FF7 does not imply that everyone died. I liked to think that at one point because it was edgy, but it honestly makes no sense. The game ends with unwitting Christ-figure Aeris interceding on mankind's behalf to stop Meteor and Holy from killing them all. The last scene is supposed to say "mankind learned from their wicked ways and abandoned industrial capitalism to live more peacefully with the planet." If Kitase says otherwise then he doesn't understand narrative language. The game is not subtle and it is positively screaming this at you. And if that's the future we're trying to avoid in the remake, one where nothing mattered and everyone died... hoo boy that is some awful poo poo.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:27 |
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The ending of FF7 absolutely is vague and supports an everybody dies reading. It doesn't force it, but it supports it. Subsequent Kitase interviews and Advent Children have no bearing on this
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:28 |
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What happens when two Creators who can never be wrong say different things about the work they created
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:29 |
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Elephant Ambush posted:Here's my point. JK Rowling is garbage but she's not wrong. She owns and controls the canon, good or bad. She can say Dumbledore is gay or whatever. It doesn't matter if she's an idiot or a TERF or just getting attention. It's her universe. What she says goes. It might be monumentally loving stupid but it's canon. Please take a literature class holy poo poo.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:30 |
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:What happens when two Creators who can never be wrong say different things about the work they created Or when a sole creator says one thing once and the opposite later
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:30 |
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So did George Lucas actually have all of Star Wars planned out liked he claimed years later, even though everyone else can tell you that's bullshit? Is Deckard a Replicant? Because Ridley Scott says one thing and the screenwriter says the other.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:33 |
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You can just look at any David Cage interview to realize that creators can be full of poo poo and not understand their own work at all
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:33 |
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FAUXTON posted:so the sephiroth fight was kind of a pushover if you realized early on you could counter his ground melee attack and dodge through his jumping one, and also that heartless angel was an AOE so all you had to do was tag over to your healer occasionally and keep them backed up during that phase. Everything else you can just roll away from often enough that you can heal through the damage of the stuff you don't. Heartless Angel just sets everyone to 1 HP, doesn't it? And he stops attacking for a short while afterward. It doesn't even matter if you've got Magnify-Heal. It's like his least dangerous attack?
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:33 |
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:What happens when two Creators who can never be wrong say different things about the work they created
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:34 |
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You're making an argument based on the existence of a single, objective interpretation, and yet also opening the door for that immutable truth to change on a whim if a privileged person sees fit to alter the text outside of the actual diegesis. Do you see how unstable of a position this is?
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:35 |
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:What is My Immortal besides an Evanescence song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Immortal_(fan_fiction)
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:38 |
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Clarste posted:Heartless Angel just sets everyone to 1 HP, doesn't it? And he stops attacking for a short while afterward. It doesn't even matter if you've got Magnify-Heal. It's like his least dangerous attack? That's the one thing that's really frustrating with the ATB, it's a LOT of segments you need to gen from usually 0 to get 2 party members on their feet and healthy. If you ever end up on your backfoot it's hard to get back.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:39 |
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Elephant Ambush posted:I understand Death of the Author but this isn't one of those easily misinterpreted things. Like, they don't have Aerith staring directly into the camera saying "In this scene, humanity is extinct. Thank you for playing." but it's not a stretch to figure it out. Midgar is overgrown. Do you really think it's the only city that's overgrown? Really? There are ruined 500-year-old cities in real life and humanity is still around. I mean, poo poo, Chernobyl is becoming overgrown and that was only 34 years ago. And humanity's still here. So yeah, it's entirely possible Midgar's the only one that's overgrown like that. That's extremely realistic. Back when I was a kid, what I figured happened was that Meteor had largely destroyed Midgar, but that humanity survived the event (which I figured because the very last shot is Aeris's smiling face--and if she's controlling the lifestream, as the ending implies, why would she allow the people she loved to come to harm?). The survivors abandoned what was left of Midgar and left it for nature to retake. Nanaki comes back 500 years later with some cubs to show them a monument to what once was, the age when people drained the planet's very lifeblood to power cities like that. Thing is, the ending is ambiguous. It's very possible to read it as everyone being dead. It's also very possible to read it a different way. Death of the author doesn't apply only to "easily misinterpreted" things. It applies to everything that isn't directly and clearly stated in the text. Subtext, meaning, implications beyond the ending of the story or before the start of it--everything. Elephant Ambush posted:If Kitase makes a clarifying statement about the ending, you don't get to be some random shmo going "lol nah that's not what happens wtf do you know?". Dude is one of the creators. What he says goes. You don't have to like it and I support criticism of it, but it isn't WRONG. Let me propose a hypothetical: Let's say Nojima comes out and says he disagrees with Kitase about the ending. They were co-writers of the original, after all. Surely Nojima's reading is as much "canon" as Kitase's. If they disagree, what's canon? I bring this up because it's well-documented that all three of the people credited with creating the outline and events of the original story--Nojima, Kitase, and Nomura--disagreed several times, and the final story has some of each of their ideas in it. We know Kitase's idea for what the ending means. We don't have clear statements of what Nojima and Nomura think. We might get one at some point as part of the remake, but we don't have it yet. Even if we're supposed to automatically appeal to the creator's later-stated intent on a reading of a text (something that many, many academics would sharply disagree with you on), we only have one of their voices. Do the others agree? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't know.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:44 |
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Beefstew posted:I liked to think that at one point because it was edgy
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:44 |
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Clarste posted:Heartless Angel just sets everyone to 1 HP, doesn't it? And he stops attacking for a short while afterward. It doesn't even matter if you've got Magnify-Heal. It's like his least dangerous attack? He followed Heartless Angel up with some relatively strong projectiles in my experience.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:46 |
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Rhonne posted:My current theory is that Rufus saw a vision of the future when the Whispers were defeated(he was explicitly shown as one of the few people who could see them) and decided "you know what? This is a pretty acceptable future"
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:47 |
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cock hero flux posted:it's a future where his entire empire collapses and he gets shot in the face with a cannon Yeah but he also lives through getting shot in the face with a cannon and apparently makes a full recovery Advent Children is weird, is what I'm saying.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:51 |
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I didn't even realise Sephiroth had a final phase after his elemental infusions, I staggered towards the end with Leviathan out, got him with a really big Gyre Spume & Tidal Wave end managed to end the fight without ever seeing Heartless Angel or a Supernova countdown, kinda feel I robbed myself out of a good setpiece now ...
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 22:57 |
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cock hero flux posted:it's a future where his entire empire collapses and he gets shot in the face with a cannon I mentioned that he'd try to avoid that part! Just keep all the parts that lead to Sephiroth's defeat the same!
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:00 |
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Are there any Megalixers in the game? Just realized I never saw one.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:00 |
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Here's another take on the "is Kitase's interview statement unarguable canon" thing: It's entirely possible Kitase's original intention in the ending was that all of humanity was wiped out by Meteor and Holy, but the planet (and Red XIII's species) survived. It's entirely possible to read every part of the ending that way, after all. But then Nojima and Nomura made Advent Children (and another team made Dirge of Cerberus but we don't talk about that one) and made that reading impossible. Humanity was very much alive and hell, Midgar wasn't even totally destroyed. So Kitase shrugs and says, "Well, I still think they're dead in the post-credits scene." Here's the full quote from the interview: quote:EGM: At the very end of FFVII, we see the epilogue to the whole story that takes place 500 years later, so really, you still have another 497 years’ worth of games and movies to fill in.... That's all we have to go on. Does he mean that he thinks humanity is wiped out at some point after Advent Children? Maybe. Does he mean that he thinks humanity died in the ending, regardless of what Advent Children shows? Maybe. We don't really know and he hasn't elaborated since, nor have Nojima and Nomura chimed in on what they think happened. At best it's one piece of evidence to use in your reading, which I should point out is an entirely valid interpretation. Actually, here's a follow-up question for "what Kitase says is canon is canon": what about Advent Children? He didn't write that. Is it canon?
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:03 |
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Necrothatcher posted:Are there any Megalixers in the game? Just realized I never saw one. Not that I'm aware of. This also reminds me that I was vaguely annoyed that Mega-Potions didn't heal the whole team. That's what Mega-Potions are supposed to do! They're the heal-everyone item! They should've called them X-Potions in this and I will die on that hill.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:05 |
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JK Rowling can say whatever she wants but Voldemort. Does. Not. gently caress. I also don't really see what's so edgy or bleak about the interpretation where humanity is gone. Humans can and absolutely will gently caress poo poo up, but life goes on. The planet heals and nature forgets. That's just part of life. Like if you showed me a video of some wolves running through an abandoned overgrown London in 500 years I wouldn't say "humanity must be somewhere else, otherwise this is too depressing". I'd say "yep." e: I think both readings are perfectly valid. My interpretation is that humanity faded away centuries after FFVII. stev fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Apr 27, 2020 |
# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:16 |
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Harrow posted:Not that I'm aware of. Considering the relative scarcity of Elixirs, I'm guessing Megalixirs are for a later point in the story, like FFVIIR:2 (or not at all). Especially since Hard Mode disables items entirely . . . . not sure how I feel about that. Definitely a different way to play the game, but seems like it'll require some farming to get some Materia levelled that I didn't need for Normal because I could fill that gap with items.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:16 |
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stev posted:I also don't really see what's so edgy or bleak about the interpretation where humanity is gone. Humans can and absolutely will gently caress poo poo up, but life goes on. The planet heals and nature forgets. That's just part of life. I'm not really saying it's too depressing, just that it isn't the only reading supported by the original text. Midgar being abandoned and overgrown makes sense whether humanity is there or not. Maybe it got hosed up real bad by Meteor and people abandoned it, and without using mako power it just wasn't worth it to rebuild, y'know? Even if we ignore Advent Children's existence, it's pretty reasonable to think that humanity survived the ending of Final Fantasy VII if only because the last thing we see is Aeris's face. It's strongly implied that she's the one who called up the lifestream to save everyone, and yeah, of course she's gonna save people, too, and not just the planet. But it's also reasonable to think that we're seeing her face because she's welcoming her friends into the lifestream with her after everyone died. "Humanity lived" and "humanity died" readings are both very possible and thematically coherent, too. (Again, if we ignore Advent Children.)
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:20 |
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I've been playing Asura's Wrath and I now I wish Cyberconnect2 had made FFVIIR after all.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:29 |
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I wonder if that's like the inverse of the feeling I had after finishing FF7R that man, I wish Nomura had managed to finish his version of FFXV/Versus XIII.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:30 |
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Harrow posted:I wonder if that's like the inverse of the feeling I had after finishing FF7R that man, I wish Nomura had managed to finish his version of FFXV/Versus XIII. Good news for Kingdom Hearts 4
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:31 |
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playing through hard is rewarding because I'm noticing stuff like how Aerith knows Cloud is a SOLDIER right off the bat (someone else mentioned it but I didn't recall the details). I wish they had done more of Cloud's inner monologue like I seem to remember in the OG FF7 before revealing that it's Sephiroth, but they skip to that right away. Seems like if Sephiroth is controlling the canon ghosts to some extent he's the one firing visions of the future into Cloud's brain to manipulate him. Also Cloud saying "Maybe you don't know how to use it" after seeing future visions of Aerith praying and Holy. good poo poo.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:33 |
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stev posted:JK Rowling can say whatever she wants but Voldemort. Does. Not. gently caress. Fanfiction thoroughly disagrees with this. Also I always assumed the point of the end of FFVII was a Schrödinger's humanity situation. How it ended was how you interpreted it and Kitase was clearly taking the piss in that interview. He could be serious but the context makes it look like he's just loving around.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:43 |
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This canon chat reminded me that the Icelandic translator for Dracula literally added new characters and plotlines and deleted the ones he didn't like and that nobody noticed for like 150 years, during which time the old-timey version of some goth kid's vampire fanfic was, as far as anyone in Iceland was concerned, the canonical version of Dracula. Some people actually prefer his version and now it's been published as its own separate work with Bram Stoker listed as co-author. Kind of seems apropos to the whole FF7R situation, and even earlier stuff like that guy who set out to faithfully re-translate all of FF7 but also removed Cait Sith and added his own self-insert character instead.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:50 |
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Based off one side chatter line from Biggs that "the people up here must make three or four times what I do" thinking about writing an effort/shippost about how the people above the plate are middle-to lower middle class at best, and part of what keeps them in line besides just the need/comfort of mako energy is the simple fact that are are better than the people they are (physically) above. Really they are both part of the proletariat, and there must be a true bourgeoisie that we don't see in either the original or the remake really pulling the reigns. Sure we have President and then Rufus Shinra, and we know the mayor is a puppet, but everyone else we see in Shinra-HQ is either part of the military-industrial complex or closely related. We know this is a hypercapitalist society where corporation=government. But that means money is still the driving force, so there must be other businesses and other wealthy people besides just the Shinra family. President Shinra has no real world parallel yet(he's a good businessman, remember), but I just want to know who the Jeffrey Epstein of this world must be. Ending is fine, could have been more subtle but so could a lot of this game and maybe that is just part of the charm. I'm assuming what most rational people are and that this is just them sorta saying hey we can go anywhere from here, which includes where we've been before, we're just leaving the door open for changes. I'm fine with the Zack stuff and maybe even playing those flashbacks or or side timelines as they may be from his POV but I hope those are just chapters in future games and/or DLC, I don't carry how wacky they get with the story as long as it is a story that moves forward. Spoilers I guess but even the parts of HBO's watchmen that were good got way, way, way too bogged down in flashbacks. I think by the end of the series it was more flashback than not, and that just ruins any kind of momentum worse than a timeline arbiter ever could.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:53 |
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lukevictorious posted:President Shinra has no real world parallel yet(he's a good businessman, remember), but I just want to know who the Jeffrey Epstein of this world must be. hojo
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:56 |
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There's no way SquareEnix is going to spend the money and develop the characters the way they are to just be like no everybody is dead at the end. I think it is a valid interpretation of the original, but I think there is more than one and I do not see Remake going there.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 23:58 |
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pasaluki posted:There's no way SquareEnix is going to spend the money and develop the characters the way they are to just be like no everybody is dead at the end. I think it is a valid interpretation of the original, but I think there is more than one and I do not see Remake going there. Realistically I think it's going to be this because killing off your cast would be the equivalent of gutting the golden goose and they are not going do that in any sane universe.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 00:01 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:09 |
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Elephant Ambush posted:Really? Yes. the entire game is constantly going on and on and on and on that midgar specifically is the apotheosis of humanity's cruelty to nature and the core icon of its sins and sloth. It being over grown by nature isn't meant to go "Oh humanity is wiped out and nothing's left" it's meant to signify humanity has moved on from its evil ways. If humanity is wiped out then the entire message of the game's themes and arc is entirely pointless. The final act of gameplay is an idealized version of Cloud fighting an idealized version of human sephiroth, it's entirely about Cloud's triumph over his personal demons and the corruption that has been hounding him since the start of the game and coming out stronger than ever on the other side of it, which is what the whole deal with midgar being taken over by nature is supposed to mirror. Also just....Red surviving and even having kids kind of requires having humanity survive holy given he's on an airship flying at tops speeds piloted by humans as holy goes off. Basically the same poo poo I said last time this came up in the mega thread is still true ZenMasterBullshit posted:There's nothing ambiguous about the ending at all. It's the ruins of midgar, the thing the game has been hammering home "This is a big symbol of everything bad humanity has done" to contrast with the good aspects of humanity, overrun with nature while Red XIII's descendants run around. He was kind of the last of the tigermen or whatever his loving deal was so him having descendants is a big "Hey life found a way". Midgar being in ruins isn't "AND ALL OF HUMANITY DIED" its "Humanity moved beyond the ideology that was poisoning the world and themselves". ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Apr 28, 2020 |
# ? Apr 28, 2020 00:01 |