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The only thing that really bugs me to all of this is Hojo He is *comically* evil from wanting dog loving to turning people into mushroom zombies and keeping horrors unspeakable. Every scene with him is the party disgusted at him, or the Shinra heads going 'god gently caress you Hojo you're so creepy" Why is he even employed??? Dude's literally cackling in the helicopter about the end times and Rufus is just like 'yeah I guess I'll keep bankrolling this crazy person'
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Mar 22, 2024 19:26
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| # ? May 23, 2024 11:21 |
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Hojo keeps the President, either of them, on the hook as supposedly the leading Cetra expert that can get them the promised land. That and the Soldier project was a big win for him. I think. Every 1st class we know typically violently deserted and declared varying levels of war of on the company so... Actually Hojo did make a lady completely immortal once more or less as an accident, maybe he convinced Prez Shinra he could do it for him after working out some bugs, who knows. Rufus has [i]some[/] standards and has only been company head for a couple weeks, he might not have time yet to do a big shuffle of his departments. Caidin fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 19:35
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Caidin posted:How do you account for Kyrie and the rest of sector 5 slums NPC's that have no particular reason to be dead at the moment, or the temporarily life of prologue Red? It's not that everyone in the alternate timelines are dead, it's that the people who only exist/are alive in the doomed timelines like Biggs are, well, doomed. Kyrie and Marlene and those like them still exist and are alive in the main timeline in addition to also existing in the doomed timelines. Basically, alternate timeline plots are dumb.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:41
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:The only thing that really bugs me to all of this is Hojo Hojo is employed because he gets results. His results are all absolutely loving horrific but he gets them and gives them super soldiers and poo poo. Rufus has a generically engineered superdog who appears to be his closest friend and you can thank Hojo for that.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:42
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ImpAtom posted:That would mean Elmyra and Marlene are dead too, wouldn't it? Not necessarily, they'd just not be the "real" versions. They're dream versions, or memory versions, etc. Marlene's an interesting case--it could either be her general "specialness" or just that because she had that connection with Aerith in the prime universe, it happened in these "dream" universes, too. Pollyanna posted:Lifestream purgatory VR is a cleaner explanation than any multiverse/timeline poo poo Square-Enix could possibly justify at this point. Nothing else works given the backpedaling from Remake. FWIW I'm still not entirely convinced there's been backpedaling from Remake, I just think we don't have the whole picture yet.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:52
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I replayed chapter 12 a bunch to see all the dates so maybe it's just a coincidence that I have this line stuck in my head (excuse my possibly piecemeal recollection but I'm not replaying it again); "What is the future, if not the product of choices past? Each, a fork in the road. None can divine the conclusion of every path... and yet, each story that begins with a chance encounter shares the same end; a tearful farewell." I don't know. I think it's like the law or something that all diegetic plays must be prophetic, so I guess, like. Even in a world where we punched out Fate, there's still inevitability, and I guess if we're going to read into the play we might as well also think that true love will save the universe? Maybe Cloud can try to kiss Sephiroth and it'll make the final boss battle harder. Whatever. Wherever this is going I'm sure we'll be able to look back at the play and say it should have told us the end we get in Part 3 was inevitable. Until we find out for sure I do like the idea of transient parallel universe bubbles taking shape within the Lifestream based on divergences and sometimes themselves diverging and that people can fall into and get stuck in and are somehow a lynchpin of Sephiroth's master plan, but which themselves are still subject to a progression of events which are, from a certain perspective, inevitable.
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Mar 22, 2024 19:52
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I definitely think Sephiroth's master plan has to do with emotion, and that Zack's boundless hope will end up being a key element to stopping him. We know that strong negative emotions jammed into a clear materia resulted in the creation of the black materia, so those emotions and wishes have power. Sephiroth definitely seems obsessed with creating despair, too. Meanwhile, Zack is absolutely surrounded by despair in all of the timelines we see him in and pushes back against it. In almost every one of his interludes, he says the word "hope." He always has a smile and he's always looking to do something about problems. And after he spends a few days at Aerith's house, helping Elmyra care for her and Cloud and cheering up Marlene, a flower starts blooming in Aerith's dying garden. It's like he's inspiring hope and returning life to the world around him, even just a little bit.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:00
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There are like three people on the Board that Rufus really needs to kill because they're completely deranged, and he hasn't figured out how to pull off the clean sweep yet. Honestly, even his father probably recognized that Heidegger and Hojo would outlive their usefulness.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:03
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I still think it's the lifestream and all this will hopefully lead to a proper AC game that fixes up the garbage plot and dialogue
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Mar 22, 2024 20:03
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I'm really not sure they need to explain much of it in detail and can figure out a hand wave of "it's just what Zack is seeing and it's powered by the life stream". I'm firmly in the "wait and see, anything can happen still" camp, I'm just kind of in awe of how much they might have to cram into this game and how deep they went with Rebirth.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:05
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I feel like the battle at the end of Remake took "Fate" or whatever out of the hands of its original master and gave the reins to Sephiroth, somehow. And because he wants humanity to suffer, that's what he's doing. Cloud did parry his sword, but Sephiroth has enough control of fate to change the outcome. Maybe Zack will become the new Arbiter of Fate in ReThree. Or Cloud. Or Aerith.
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Mar 22, 2024 20:06
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:The only thing that really bugs me to all of this is Hojo
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Mar 22, 2024 20:12
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Hojo having his job despite being comically evil is one of the most realistic things in the entire game. You have no idea how many awful, unethical scientists I've had to work with over the years who nevertheless keep their jobs because they're good at doing impactful research (and bringing in $$$).
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Mar 22, 2024 20:24
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:The only thing that really bugs me to all of this is Hojo there were only 2 people who knew about any of this poo poo and would work with shinra. hojo is one, and he shot the other one. He also never writes anything down. Shinra is decades deep into the sunk cost fallacy at this point and sees no real alternative to keeping him around
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Mar 22, 2024 20:28
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triple sulk posted:I still think it's the lifestream I already thought this but rewatched the ending recently and it seemed even more clearly the case to me. Like Cloud gets carried away by green whisps when Aerith pushes him out of the dream, that's lifestream poo poo. Zack and Biggs' whole spiels about how they were pushed to this world "by the wind" and heavy green wind is also how the lifestream is portrayed. And I also feel like in general the end of the game is telegraphing so heavily "Aerith is in the lifestream helping us out and from there she can match Sephiroth and stop Meteor!!" which i'm not a fan of but explains how she's jumping around all these dream worlds and able to pop out to fight that dastardly Sephiroth if that's also the lifestream.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:31
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My problem with the lifestream theories is that they ignore the different versions of Stamp. Every time there's a major deviation in events, a different Stamp breed appears (including the one in which Aerith and Cloud speak). Ignoring the fact that different Stamp breeds don't make sense in divergences that occur after Stamp was designed, there's no explanation for why the developers use them to indicate different continuities if all the continuities are just lifestream dreams.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:43
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Just Andi Now posted:My problem with the lifestream theories is that they ignore the different versions of Stamp. Every time there's a major deviation in events, a different Stamp breed appears (including the one in which Aerith and Cloud speak). Ignoring the fact that different Stamp breeds don't make sense in divergences that occur after Stamp was designed, there's no explanation for why the developers use them to indicate different continuities if all the continuities are just lifestream dreams. I mean the whole Stamp theory runs into the issue that one of the 'alternate' stamps appears in the main world, which kind of removes the idea that there is only one Stamp design per timeline. The different dogs could entirely be excused with "Stamp is a Paw Patrol style show with multiple dogs."
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Mar 22, 2024 21:45
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Just Andi Now posted:My problem with the lifestream theories is that they ignore the different versions of Stamp. Every time there's a major deviation in events, a different Stamp breed appears (including the one in which Aerith and Cloud speak). Ignoring the fact that different Stamp breeds don't make sense in divergences that occur after Stamp was designed, there's no explanation for why the developers use them to indicate different continuities if all the continuities are just lifestream dreams. New stamp shows new lifestream dream continuity. Dreams be changing their history and changing their Stamps as well.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:47
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ImpAtom posted:I mean the whole Stamp theory runs into the issue that one of the 'alternate' stamps appears in the main world, which kind of removes the idea that there is only one Stamp design per timeline. The different dogs could entirely be excused with "Stamp is a Paw Patrol style show with multiple dogs." True, but that one alternate Stamp could just be a level designer error. All the other times they show up they linger on screen just long enough for you to register "huh that's weird". (Where is the alternate Stamp anyway? I never went to look for it.) Like. I don't know why they would deliberately frame different Stamp breeds (including at the very end of Remake) if it was just "actually there's a whole group of them" when they never show a group of them together.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:49
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Just Andi Now posted:True, but that one alternate Stamp could just be a level designer error. All the other times they show up they linger on screen just long enough for you to register "huh that's weird". (Where is the alternate Stamp anyway? I never went to look for it.) It's painted on one of the walls near... Junon, I think? And yeah, it could be that too. Like to FF7R's credit it has enough weird single-use assets that "We invested a whole series of dogs for a Paw Patrol show" could be entirely something they do, whereas in another game I'd go "There's no way they created that many unique assets for no reason." (It could also be both and the developers intentionally plant red herrings to troll because they obviously like doing that.)
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Mar 22, 2024 21:50
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I feel like Stamp is very obviously a marker for the audience to go "heh, I can see we've swapped worlds. You can't fool me video game" but I don't see how that is evidence against lifestream dreams.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:54
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:The only thing that really bugs me to all of this is Hojo he’s employed by cartoonishly evil people
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Mar 22, 2024 21:54
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I don't think there's a problem with the Stamps simply being signifiers for reader benefit without a grand in-universe significance. Although I do think it would be funny if there turned out to be such a significance. I always like it when stories have these elements disguised as contrivances or plot holes that turn out to have been foreshadowing. But it would also be fine if it wasn't that and just a little thing there to keep us from losing our minds speculating what timelines are joined.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:57
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SyntheticPolygon posted:I feel like Stamp is very obviously a marker for the audience to go "heh, I can see we've swapped worlds. You can't fool me video game" but I don't see how that is evidence against lifestream dreams. True, but two of the times they framed a "world swap" are specifically when Zack makes different decisions. He chooses to go help Cloud in the tunnel, then we get a swap to the version where he tries to save Biggs. And then we get another swap to the version where he couldn't decide between Aerith, Cloud, or Biggs. Those could still be lifestream dreams, but the framing is that they're different timelines caused by different choices Zack made. Of course as we all know, the devs love framing things one way and then turning everything upside-down anyway! But I still more heavily lean toward timeline shenanigans so that FFVII can finally join the big list of Final Fantasy games with weird time stuff alongside FF1 and FF8.
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Mar 22, 2024 22:01
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I guess I just don't see why dreams can't be changed from Zack making different decisions? We know he's something of a unique factor in these worlds because by his theory at least he was picked up and put here by Aerith. The whole deal Zack (and Biggs I guess?) got in being put in this world that clearly isn't there own seems to be not how these places are 'supposed' to work. So makes enough sense to me that his decisions in the final chapter are able to warp the dream. E: But I guess in general my theory is "lifestream dreams just work exactly like multiple timeline poo poo would" anyway. It just contextualises it in a way that fits more into other stuff going on in the game, at least to me.
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Mar 22, 2024 22:10
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I liked this interpretation (or this attempt at an interpretation): https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/15561-explaining-analysing-what-happens-in-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-ending Note I do not think about this stuff that closely, but I was convinced that this could work and might make me happy. I think something significant needs to reflect the theme of defying/being stuck to one's fate, other than Sephiroth getting a second crack at his evil scheme.
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Mar 22, 2024 22:14
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Just Andi Now posted:FFVII can finally join the big list of Final Fantasy games with weird time stuff alongside FF1 and FF8. And XI, XIII-2, XIII: Lightning Returns, and XIV off the top of my head.
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Mar 22, 2024 22:23
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I can't believe the company that is sucking the literal soul out of the planet to fund it's own private army and uses the souls of the dead to sell people Electricity would employ an evil wacko to be their lead scientist
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Mar 22, 2024 22:27
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SyntheticPolygon posted:Of the remaining party members Cid feels like he'd benefit from dlc presence the most because he had lot less to do that Vincent (or Zack if you want to consider him a future party member) but i'm not sure he has the charisma to pull off headlining a dlc. Which one is gonna be renamed Zell
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Mar 22, 2024 23:06
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Incidental detail from the replay: the message in the temple of the ancients at the black materia altar refers to "those who seek our star's demise" so I'm somewhat inclined to believe that for reasons unknown it has been decided that both the cetra and the gi use "star" to refer to "planet".
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Mar 23, 2024 01:20
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The game very directly clearly says to your face "these are other worlds". I don't think any of the evidence people have presented to run counter to that is more compelling than the text of the game. For instance:SyntheticPolygon posted:I already thought this but rewatched the ending recently and it seemed even more clearly the case to me. Like Cloud gets carried away by green whisps when Aerith pushes him out of the dream, that's lifestream poo poo. Zack and Biggs' whole spiels about how they were pushed to this world "by the wind" and heavy green wind is also how the lifestream is portrayed. None of that stuff is green. It's like a prismatic rainbow-y effect that's used all over the place with the multiverse stuff. The only time any green color is being used is what looks like Cloud going through a Doctor Who tunnel back to the main reality, and all that means is that the lifestream crosses between worlds, which we already know because Sephiroth clearly points it out.
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Mar 23, 2024 01:28
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Fedule posted:Incidental detail from the replay: the message in the temple of the ancients at the black materia altar refers to "those who seek our star's demise" so I'm somewhat inclined to believe that for reasons unknown it has been decided that both the cetra and the gi use "star" to refer to "planet". It's just a thing S-E. Star is used in FFXIV and FFXV too. Probably FFXVI even if I can't remember a specific example.
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Mar 23, 2024 01:33
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ImpAtom posted:It's just a thing S-E. Star is used in FFXIV and FFXV too. Probably FFXVI even if I can't remember a specific example. I can! several times in Ultima's explanation of their origin
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Mar 23, 2024 01:35
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Fedule posted:Incidental detail from the replay: the message in the temple of the ancients at the black materia altar refers to "those who seek our star's demise" so I'm somewhat inclined to believe that for reasons unknown it has been decided that both the cetra and the gi use "star" to refer to "planet". There's something with Japanese and "Star" also translating to "Planet," but I'm not versed in the language well enough to explain it
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Mar 23, 2024 01:42
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Sockser posted:There's something with Japanese and "Star" also translating to "Planet," but I'm not versed in the language well enough to explain it 星 ("hoshi") can mean either star or planet
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Mar 23, 2024 01:46
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goethe.cx posted:星 ("hoshi") can mean either star or planet It can also be read as "sei" meaning basically the same thing, and in Japanese all the planets have names like Mercury as Sui-sei ("water planet") However, more relevant to FFXIV/FFXVI/the Gi speech, the modern word planet comes from the greek term asters planetai, which literally meant "wandering stars". It's likely supposed to evoke a more archaic form of speech than the modern use of planet because pre-telescopes that let people actually see other planets, everything was just some kind of star.
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Mar 23, 2024 01:51
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"From another star" just sounds cooler than "from another planet"
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Mar 23, 2024 02:44
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I think it's funny when Zack see's a giant balling meteor his reaction is just 'what the gently caress' and when he's sucked into the floor he's just 'haha seeya' I'm not even sure if he jumped to his death in the Biggs timeline really. He's just a wacky dude. Also I wonder if the sub will be kept. I mean the track record is pretty good but it wasn't in the gold saucer, only the coming soon snowboarding game was
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Mar 23, 2024 03:44
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I feel like there's a better than even chance that space and underwater will be a full chapter each. Also yeah, I didn't really care for the multiple worlds stuff in a big picture sense but every scene with Zack is great.
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Mar 23, 2024 03:58
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I think there is roughly a 100% chance of the submarine being kept, but poo poo, maybe they'll make it a legitimate think you can use to explore with its own stuff rather than just a weird thing you use for 2 things.
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Mar 23, 2024 04:11
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