Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: A Deep Dive on the Ending

Given all the events that occurred in chapter 14, the third part of Final Fantasy VII Remake should follow, for the most part, the same line as the original game, but with a change in focus and scope around some more pertinent details and holes left by Rebirth.

The Wutai War

Shinra is at war again with a resistance led by Wutai. As indicated in some moments of FFVII Rebirth, this conflict is being orchestrated by Rufus and Glenn Lobrok to awaken the Weapons to take their Magnus Materia.

As indicated by his absence, Viceroy Sarruf probably doesn't exist and his name is an anagram for Rufus (スフール reads as “Sufuuru”). It is possible that Avalanche's attack on Shinra was planned for Rufus to take over the corporation's presidency and start the war with Wutai.

Sephiroth also appears to have his own interests in this war and the human emotion surrounding it for his plan to reunite the worlds, even to the point of taking Glenn's form to manipulate Rufus. Perhaps this is just a distraction to prevent Rufus and Shinra from reaching the Promised Land before the Reunion.

Cloud is split into multiple realities, or has gone into denial

Cloud's mental state has been a concern for the other characters since the events occurred in Gongaga. There are several dialogues and moments where the hero appears to incorporate Sephiroth's attitudes and personality, as if he were controlled by the villain.

At the end of Rebirth, Cloud is even worse: to his companions, he is talking to himself and acting as if Aerith is still with the group. Tifa shows clear signs of how worried she is about his sanity, and Barret tries to remind him of the position he is in and how he needs to hold his own and carry the burden of Aerith's death - a fact he disregards. After all, in his perception, she is alive.

The means and motives, however, are not clear. Would Cloud, by deflecting Sephiroth's attack, have created a new reality where Aerith survives and has his consciousness been trapped in while his body is in the Beagle universe? Or would Cloud have become a key player in the worlds' reunion plan, as indicated by Aerith and Sephiroth's ability to move him and Zack to other universes?

Another possibility, much more acceptable if we don't take too much of the multiverse into the equation, is that Aerith is manifesting herself to Cloud through the Lifestream, or that Cloud's memories are manifesting her in his mind through grief, or the guilt surrounding it - A theme which would connect the events of FFVII Rebirth to Advent Children.

The fact is that the hero ends the game with a fractured consciousness, trapped in a parallel reality where Aerith never died, either because she is alive in another timeline, or because he is in denial of his own grief.

The Reunion and its Aftermath

It is evident that the next destination for Cloud and his friends is the Icicle region, where the Northern Crater is located. The Black Materia plays a fundamental role in this part, and a crucial difference compared to the original game is that it is with Cloud instead of Sephiroth.

We can assume the third game will begin with the group arriving at the snow-covered plains and facing the Turks, and the events behind the Reunion will occur according to Final Fantasy VII, but its consequences could differ greatly from the original work and create new plot twists and reimagine the majority of events.

The most considerable change may occur around Weapons now that they have Shinra's attention for their Magnus Materia. The creatures we see in Rebirth are not half the size they have in the original game, and may be smaller versions created by the Planet depending on the scale of the threat against its life, so it is possible that the colossal Weapons have a more active participation in the plot during the Wutai War, or in the events which will take the heroes to Rocket Town and Mideel.

Sephiroth, Aerith, the Planet and Destiny

While the reasons are still unclear, the Remake maintains the essence of the original work of having three powerful manifestations in the Lifestream: Sephiroth, Aerith and the Planet.

Sephiroth and Aerith appear to manipulate the game's events to alter and/or preserve destiny in favor of their goals. He plans to unify the multiverse and create a reality where he becomes one with the Planet, while she intends to stop him and the Meteor. This is still, despite the extra layers of complexity, the same story told in Final Fantasy VII.

The Planet, however, is also a living entity in the game's universe and has its own plans already in motion: the Weapons exist to protect it from what it sees as a threat to its preservation, and it is possible that their appearance early in the Junon and Gongaga reactors is a natural consequence of the impact the Mako Reactors have on the Lifestream, or the imminent threat the creation of timelines has established.

Weapons are also seen fighting the Whispers and Sephiroth when Tifa is swallowed by one of them in Gongaga, and in the last minutes of Chapter 14, we can see their Materia emit a clear light and repel the black Whispers. This scene may be linked to the White Materia being activated, since it is up to the Planet to decide how it will be used, so Weapons may be transporting it to the center of the Lifestream.

In the original game, Bugenhagen mentions how Holy can eliminate humanity if the Planet decides to do so, and there has always been speculation surrounding Aerith's intervention at the last moment to prevent humanity's extinction, and this aspect still seems preserved for the third episode, only more convoluted due to the Multiverse and how the end of the world seems like an inevitable reality for most of them.

It might be up to Aerith and Sephiroth to guide Cloud around a specific destination in furtherance of their plans for the Planet, which tried to use the Whispers in the Remake to maintain the integrity of this universe, but now that the boundaries of fate have been broken, reality is fragmented into several timelines - and as indicated by Cloud himself at the start of Chapter 14, the Planet is screaming, it may be suffering from these machinations.

Multiverses and timelines are complex subjects. Few works of fiction and audiovisual manage to portray this theme comprehensively without becoming unfocused and/or tripping over its inherent flaws, and it requires extra care not to sound forced, especially in a Remake.

Square has already worked with timelines and parallel worlds in several works before Final Fantasy VII Remake, and the way in which the trilogy seems to approach this theme is close to one of the company's controversial games during the PlayStation One era - Chrono Cross.

In the last chapter of FFVII Remake and FFVII Rebirth, we follow the emergence of new timelines and universes at crucial moments in history: they are created and come to an end as Zack and Cloud make important decisions.

Multiverses operate similarly in Chrono Cross: a small intervention at a key point in History alters reality to the point of dividing it into two worlds, one where Serge is alive and another where he died.

These and other events are orchestrated to free a certain character from Lavos's control and permanently eliminate it from the timelines, or occur by chance during studies about timelines occurred in the game's past or present, and even Serge's actions can define the existing universe - The Chrono Cross itself, used to defeat Lavos, aims to unite the worlds to create a new reality.

The game also presents a huge sense of consequence for its predecessor, Chrono Trigger, with shocking revelations about the future of its heroes and how their actions affected reality because the future they avoided ceased to exist - The world was saved, but at what cost?

As mentioned by Sephiroth, worlds are also being born and dying in FFVII in what he calls the “true nature of reality,” and both he and Aerith can freely navigate these worlds and intervene in future events.

The two key points in the Remake timelines involve the moment when the group freed themselves from the bonds of destiny and created the Terrier universe, where Zack survived, and the moment in which Cloud interferes in Aerith's death, whose we will only know the result in the third game - And the problem is that the complexity around a Multiverse is equally proportional to the number of universes created in its unfolding.

So far, Remake's writing has turned this concept into a coherent but complicated proposition in the retelling of Final Fantasy VII's story. However, the setbacks are already noticeable and have affected Rebirth on its most awaited moment.

A Grief Rewritten

In my review, I mentioned that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the best and most ambitious love letter Final Fantasy VII's legacy could receive. I keep these words since the general scope of the work and everything it offers in gameplay and narrative throughout almost the entire game... But its development made a huge stumble in the last chapter.

Aerith's death is one of the most devastating moments in gaming history. Its cultural impact on video games is felt almost 30 years after its execution, and one of the great expectations of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is how the reimagining of this scene would happen - And it was far too convoluted.

The dramatic impact was replaced by discomfort: seeing Aerith transition between being dead or alive creates a knot in the head of any fan of the series, and the execution from the moment of her death to the epilogue brings so many doubts that it hinders being moved, after all, we didn't even know if she was really dead until the last second, and we won't know what really happened to her until the next game, going against what her death means for the series.

The focus of the Forgotten Capital sequence was executed with so much emphasis on the Multiverse and the possibilities created with Cloud's intervention that it ended up neglecting FFVII's most important legacy for fiction. The mere change of having Aerith interact with Cloud removed all the emotional impact surrounding her death, right after preparing the interlocutor for that moment at the start of the chapter, when she hugs him and says her goodbyes asking him to not blame himself - All in favor of generating more suspense and raise more doubts around the Multiverse and Cloud's consciousness and personality conflicts, and the trade-off didn't felt like it was worth it.

There was no need for Aerith to interact with Cloud when he held her body, or to create doubt whether she was dead before the final battle. The last phase against Sephiroth would have worked as her last act in terms of gameplay, the fact Cloud sees her after her burial would still create doubts whether he is in denial, going crazy, or if she is manifesting through the Lifestream or from another timeline - The last conversation between them in the epilogue would have been perfect to go through denial in grief and its eventual acceptance, and Aerith's farewell to the players.

All the changes surrounding the last chapter do a good job of maintaining the mystery around Aerith and the timelines, but it exposes the main problem with embracing the concept of the Multiverse.

Multiverse and Sense of Consequences

One of the most difficult challenges in creating a Multiverse is to make it important to the narrative process without turning it into a facilitator - a kind of Deus Ex-Machina for any too complex situations in the plot.

There are many examples in fiction where the existence of multiverses nullifies the sense of consequences of a history, since there is always a timeline or universe where certain events never happened. The world could end and all the characters could turn into cosmic dust because, in the end, there will always be this loophole for that to not exist or not have real consequences for the narrative.

Aerith's case is emblematic of this case: since Cloud sees her as alive and there are signs of him being trapped between timelines symbolizes the possibility of there being a world where Aerith is still alive, just as there is one or more universes where Zack is alive.

While their permanence brings new consequences for the universes where they are, it also gives developers the possibility of creating narrative flexes to justify a certain plot element rather than ensuring that they are not too exaggerated to the point of forcing a Deus Ex-Machina across the Multiverse.

As much as I dislike defending tradition as opposed to innovation, we need to recognize that rewriting stories requires care not to remove the sense of importance from their narrative, and I hope Sephiroth succeeds in his plan to unite the universes in the third part to the point it's not reversible.

Thus, all events that occur in the Remake's retelling will be permanent, without requiring exaggerations to understand how the story ends and avoiding random excuses about timelines and multiverse for situations as complex as the representation of grief in Final Fantasy VII and its implications, both in the Remake and in the original work.

The last part of the Remake has a big challenge: keeping Final Fantasy VII coherent without tripping over the common flaws of a narrative about multiverses and timelines. The series has already addressed this topic in other games, but none of them with such ambition, nor directly linked to one of the most loved titles by fans of the series.

The entire narrative surrounding retelling the game's story was outstanding in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and except for its convoluted last chapter, its plot brought more beauty than confusion even when it deviated too much from the path taken by the original game - A fascinating work whose ending leaves a bittersweet taste.

It will be a few years before we understand what to expect from the third episode and what direction its story could take. Until then, both the most ardent fans of the original work and the biggest Remake enthusiasts can appreciate the new games for their successes and raise pertinent doubts and questions about their mistakes.

Therefore, we would like to know from our readers: what are your opinions on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and its ending, and what are your expectations for the third part?

Thanks for reading!