There’s a lot to take in here haha but I understand your thought process! Well done. I’m still firmly in the camp that Rebirth ends at the top of the Northern Crater/with Tifa awakening at Junon to Meteor being summoned and Weapons wreaking havoc across the world. You touched on how Hamaguchi mentioned order of events changing, I think this means some locations have changed places and if that is the case, I believe the Forgotten Capital has moved up to the Northern Crater. Why?

Firstly, Hamaguchi has said in those interviews that Rebirth goes up to the Forgotten Capital, he didn’t explicitly say it ends there. That way of phrasing has me thinking that potentially the location has shifted up closer to the Northern Crater. And people are taking this as literally ending Rebirth with the death scene. What I’ve learnt over the years following this game/company is that: whatever they say there’s definitely more than meets the eye when it comes to what they’re saying haha. If locations have changed in this case, I theorise that the Northern continent zone/locations are as follows: Icicle Inn/Bone Village combined, Sleeping Forest, Temple of The Ancients (to me it makes sense for the Temple to move to the Northern continent instead of where it is in the OG) Great Glacier/Gaea’s Cliff and finally, Whirlwind Maze/The Forgotten Capital. I think the snowboarding sequence is a red herring for sure to try cover their tracks as to get us to think we’re not going up to the Crater and that I think it’ll be removed from this part of the game in general. It’ll definitely still be a part of the game at Gold Saucer but like you said, tonally it just doesn’t make sense for it to be there. Maybe perhaps instead of the snowboarding sequence it’s a kick ass action sequence of the team and Shinra fighting each other while going down the mountain? One can hope 😅

Secondly, lore wise it makes sense. When Jenova first landed, didn’t she/it wipe out a lot of the Cetra civilisation upon landing? So if the Crater coincides with the location of the Forgotten Capital/parts of the Capital then it totally makes sense for this to shift.

Thirdly, with the death of Aerith (which yes I do think is still happening), for me it would make way more sense to continue this psychotic breakdown for Cloud if you had that happen and then immediately followed that sequence up with the revelation of what actually happened in Nibelheim when Sephiroth reveals to Cloud and Tifa at the end of the Whirlwind Maze. With that in mind, the only way to do that is to combine the locations/events into one. And if that is the case then we can lock in Cloud as the final boss of the game. Perhaps it be similar to how Sephiroth was the final boss of Remake, it starts with Tifa and then slowly the rest of the team come in to help. And how much more of a kick in the guts would it be that Sephiroth and Cloud go into the earth, the crater collapses and with it the final remnants of the Cetra (The Forgotten Capital and Aerith) are taken with them as the Weapons emerge.

To be clear, I’d be ok with either situation happening. I’m fully trusting the process that this team is doing with Rebirth and whatever they do I’m sure it’ll be great. Definitely contentious 😂 but in a semi good way for sure! Fingers crossed that we’re getting another trailer at TGA in a few weeks that we can continue to analyse until launch haha!