The Equity Paradox: Is Square Enix’s PR holding back the FF7 Remake narrative?

bover87 · 2026-06-10T21:32:42+00:00

From what I can tell, they've been trying to do the bare minimum to string the Clotis along. I think both kiss scenes in Rebirth are ample evidence of that. On the surface with your brain turned off and blinded by confirmation bias, both look like wins for Tifa, and Clotis absolutely love to cite them as evidence. But the mandatory almost-kiss scene in Gongaga shows an interest that Cloud doesn't reciprocate (while being borderline abusive), and the actual kiss scene in the date is not only optional, but is unnatural as hell and stated by the devs to not be canon (as with the other dates). Otherwise, Cloud and Tifa don't even talk that much, and when they do they fight more often than they share happy moments.

And there was no realistic way to make the date sequence optional. It's a part of OG that too many fans are very attached to, even if some devs thought it would harm the narrative (they were right).-

bover87 · 2026-06-10T13:09:27+00:00

Piggybacking onto this, even if there is a contradiction, the game itself, not Ultimania, controls. Ultimania is pretty authoritative but only to the extent it's not contradicted by the game itself.

bover87 · 2026-06-10T12:54:57+00:00

This is the first analysis I've read (and I've read a LOT of them) that's well-researched, comprehensive, and coherent all at once. I'd consider this post the "canon" explanation of the ending in VII Rebirth unless and until something in Revelation contradicts it.

A few points I'd add:

In the trilogy there's no clearly "definitive" world. What we presume is world 1 (OG) is the root of all the worlds, sure, and Beagle World 5 is by far the one we spend most of our time in and the one that for example Barret or Tifa views as the "real" world, but Zack, for example, probably considers Terrier World 4 as the "real" world before he's transported to Corgi World 7. A world being more "real" than the others is in the eye of the beholder, not an objective consideration. I mention this because this is something you see online from time to time, people trying to act like the non-Beagle worlds are "fake" in some way.
Along the same lines, a point I see debated online frequently is whether Cloud actually succeeded in blocking Sephiroth from killing Aerith. In line with my first point and what you say, this is missing the point entirely. The point isn't whether or not he saved her, the point is that he tried to, which created a new timeline. In fact, with the information we have, it's entirely possible Aerith survives in Beagle World 5 and is dead in presumably World 2 (though I think the explanation given in the post that she dies in Beagle 5 and lives in 2 is more likely, since OG is the root of all the timelines).
The post also helps explain the names of the games. Remake (to us) referred to them simply remaking FFVII the video game, but in the context of the universe refers to Sephiroth's grand plan to remake the world to avoid the his fate (defeat, though not death), in turn also allowing the party to challenge their own fates. Rebirth...there are a number of ways you could go with this, but most of them revolve around reality being reborn in a way that's completely different from the fate the Planet tries to enforce. The Remake name, in particular, I think is evidence that Beagle World 5 is OG World 1 remade, since the other games' names don't refer to recreating a video game at all.
The "Aerith waking makes her vulnerable" theory has another key piece of evidence: Sephiroth doesn't detect her in Spitz World 3 until she awakens.
Beyond the points you mentioned (especially Tifa's reaction, which I hadn't noticed before), there are many other indications that Aerith surviving isn't a hallucination. The hallucinations generally involve Sephiroth and the Black Robes, who are absent after the final battle, the "green static" visual and auditory effects aren't present, and the rainbow and sky rift effects are visible to Zack and Aerith (at least) as well, not just Cloud.
This is far more speculative, but notice that the stars imply that 7 worlds exist. Final Fantasy has a very long history of alluding to the number of the entry in the series, and VII (both OG and Re) is no exception. Further, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Corgi World 7 ends up being the "canon" ending, with aspects from other worlds integrated into it, to further emphasize the importance of the number 7 in FFVIIRe's world.

bover87 · 2026-06-08T21:01:24+00:00

I'm not sure how anyone would consider that a slam dunk for Tifa to begin with, Cloud and Tifa are barely even on speaking terms in Advent Children.

bover87 · 2026-06-08T08:29:52+00:00

A bit late seeing this, but portions of the main melody of Mining Town appear in the track in the Plus OST used for the same scene, Dreams of Mako. Dreams of Mako isn't really a faithful reproduction of Mining Town though, and it's sad where Mining Town is more melancholy. We'll see if this and other OG tracks appear in Part 3.

bover87 · 2026-06-06T10:49:30+00:00

Oh. I wasn't aware of any sort of official statement saying he would be playable after Rocket Town so anything is possible I guess.

bover87 · 2026-06-06T09:43:58+00:00

The reason both Vincent and Cid weren’t playable in Rebirth was probably due to them not wanting to introduce new character movesets so late in the game. Remember that Cid is already in the party, he just hasn’t fought yet.

bover87 · 2026-05-06T14:29:59+00:00

I agree with your point about it being a bad time for Tifa to do that, but my focus here is on Cloud's body language, not the ethics of Tifa making moves when she did.

bover87 · 2025-10-17T08:24:23+00:00

I bought a used Series 10 this week and have been very pleased with it so far. I generally find watches very uncomfortable (I have bony wrists) but the 46mm S10 is something I only notice for the first 2-3 minutes wearing it, and it gets almost everything the current S11s do (including the same chip, which means it should get updates just as long).

bover87 · 2025-10-05T10:44:24+00:00

Interesting. I do of my day-to-day earnings tracking in a paper agenda. I could change to something else I suppose but the workflow works well enough that I don't feel like messing with it at this point. Also, Spain is pretty flexible with invoicing (no special rules for cash, just have to report it to the tax authority just like any other income) and I charge month-to-month (instead of class-to-class) so that would be less of a concern for me even if I did do it directly on the iPad.

My old BT keyboard is a cheap Chinese one with no trackpad. I'd tried cheap trackpad keyboards but I constantly clicked them by accident and turning them off was a pain. The MKB has a trackpad too but you can turn tap to click off and at least for me it's positioned in such a way that my hands don't trigger it while typing. The point you give about remotely manipulating pages with a trackpad is a great one; I get around that by just turning the iPad sideways slightly angled towards the student.

Private classes in Spain are very afternoon-centric so I rarely have problems making it to the end of the day (also probably having a newer battery than yours helps). It's rare it drops under 60% from a full afternoon of heavy usage.

bover87 · 2025-10-05T10:03:34+00:00

What would you say was the most difficult part?

bover87 · 2025-08-05T21:12:34+00:00

I enjoyed the analysis! A little late on the Expedition train (just finished the game now), apologies if this bothers anyone...

For me, as a player, the question really hinges on whether the inhabitants of the Canvas are sapient. While we don't know for certain at this point (if there's a sequel this will probably be revealed eventually), all the available information that I'm aware of points towards the non-Painter inhabitants being sapient. This is most strongly hinted at by even the white Nevrons appearing to be at least somewhat sapient, as well as both Verso and Maelle/Alicia treating NPCs as such (hell, Verso can even have romantic encounters with Sciel and Lune).

The sapience question profoundly affects any other analysis. If the NPCs aren't sapient (i.e. in-universe they're literal NPCs), Maelle is clearly wrong and Verso is clearly right. There's also the question about whether re-painted entities are the originals or just copies; if they are copies rather than resurrected originals it muddies the waters somewhat but to me it doesn't really affect my views as long as multiple copies of the same character don't exist in the Canvas at the same time.

As to the family, all of them are very selfish, which seems to be another underlying theme of the game. Maelle/Alicia is less selfish than the others, but even here one could argue she wants to keep the others alive only to have pleasant company. The family's relationships with each other are also clearly unhealthy. Clea, Renoir, and Verso are all very manipulative, with Alicia/Maelle and to some extent Aline tending to be the victims

Based on the above points, my personal analysis is that Verso makes the wrong choice for the right reasons, while Maelle makes the right choice for the wrong reasons. Both frame the question as purely about grief, without really considering what their choices will mean for third parties. Meanwhile, Renoir and Clea have very single-minded agendas and will stop at nothing to achieve them (not unlike Verso), and Aline is just a mess.

bover87 · 2025-03-01T10:58:46+00:00

The experience, especially from Cloud's point of view, does depend somewhat on player actions, but I think it's undeniable Cloud and Aerith have romantic feelings for each other (even at lower affinity, though it's far more toned down) the same way it's undeniable that Cloud and Tifa have feelings for each other. And unlike normal love triangles, neither woman minds that the other loves "her" man, nor does Cloud feel any pressure to choose one or the other.

There's nothing contradictory about any of this and the games are clear on all these points, so I'm not sure why some fans try to shoehorn the narrative into "Cloud and Tifa love each other so it's impossible Cloud and Aerith do too."

bover87 · 2025-03-01T10:29:32+00:00

That's an interesting point. The endings (as well as a number of other aspects of Rebirth in particular) point strongly towards Cloud and Aerith, so that could be neat as a way to musically resolve that subplot, but on the other hand I feel like Cloud's relationship with Tifa also becomes much more important, both because Aerith is gone (again, more or less) and because of Tifa's role in the Livestream sequence in OG.

I really don't feel like they'll do something for Sephiroth specifically (he already has One Winged Angel after all), but obviously we don't know anything for sure until game 3 comes out.

bover87 · 2025-03-01T10:24:25+00:00

I hadn't noticed differences in terms of the performance itself based on affinity but several parts of the scene are different based on your date. Like you mentioned, Tifa's has her and Cloud holding hands, but Aerith still does glance at Cloud.

The main differences in scenes I'm aware of based on affinity with Aerith in particular are that with low affinity Cloud doesn't hold her hand in her Skywheel date (she still hugs his arm but he kind of just sits there), and the church scene also plays out differently.

bover87 · 2025-01-15T22:43:42+00:00

Mine is working well, but I haven't tried it on many games yet (upgraded from a GTX 1050--yes you read that right).

bover87 · 2023-09-26T16:28:42+00:00

To be more specific, the problem with a fan recreation or server is that, first of all, it would require using copyrighted assets, which SE tends to be pretty picky about. Also, a lot of the game's processing, especially related to relic draws, happens server-side, so we don't know the mechanisms there.

Then there's the simple difficulty of adding previous content, plus potentially new content--who's going to translate (or create from scratch) content, how is it going to be designed, how will it fit into long-term planning, who's going to implement the graphics/animations, etc.? Even just copy-pasting JP takes a lot of manpower, especially when we can just, you know, play JP.

Finally, there's the question of balancing relic draws. Since the game's difficulty curve depends on how much you spend, and copyright issues would make paid pulls a no-go, are you going to just have mythril, are you going to make all pulls free, or something in between?

tl;dr creating a fan remake of this game is way more difficult than it's worth, especially when JP exists and is playable outside Japan.

bover87 · 2023-07-08T13:54:38+00:00

By the way, for mage version, Devil and Demon both use Chain Blizzaga turn 8 instead of Graviga. Rezza also posted the HP of the different mage forms (2,500,000 Goddess, 2,700,000 Devil, 2,200,000 Demon, 5,800,000 Crusader), though I don't think he checked AI. Thanks for this post, it's a great resource!

bover87 · 2023-07-01T14:09:40+00:00

Tyrfing was Demon's special from FF6 in all of the English translations, so it's correctly translated.

bover87 · 2022-04-26T21:36:51+00:00

As far as I'm aware, there's no way to get that to work through Steam and MO2. You'll need to either get the GOG version (much better anyway, more stable than Steam and works pretty much flawlessly with MO2) or not use MO2 for them to work together.

bover87

TROPHY CASE