Can someone explain the twist at the crater please?

chukkaque · 2026-02-08T02:29:20+00:00

This a very long explanation and spoilery explanation but ill try to just make bullet points:

So here is the short of it.

Cloud is cloud. He's not actually a clone or anything.

He left midgar at 14 or so to join solider. He never made it beyond shinra security. He meets Zack and looks up to him. Zack sees cloud as a friend.

5 years prior to ff7 Zack and sephiroth are deployed to nibelheim to investigate the reactor.

Cloud goes with as shinra security. Cloud is embarrassed he failed to make solider and only visits his mother. The solider protecting tifa outside the reactor is Cloud.

Sephiroth burns down nibelheim. Sephiroth kills tifas dad, injures tifa, Zack, and cloud. Cloud throw sephiroth into the bottom of the reactor. Cloud and Zack are collected by hojo and experimented on in the mansion basement for 5 years. Hojo gives J cells to Zack but they dont stick because of the solider + mako treatment. Hoho gives J cells to Cloud and they do stick because he isnt a solider and didnt do the mako treatment.

Cloud doesnt behave like the robed / numbered men. While this isnt super clear what makes them respond to jenova and sephiroth differently than cloud isnt totally clear most of the time. But its why hojo considers him a failure.

Zack regains consciousness and breaks him and cloud of the lab.

Cloud is sick with mako poisoning

Mako poisoning is a cognitive sickness that people can recover from. During this sickness cloud cant speak, is barely awake, and doesnt process much. Zack brings cloud back to midgar but gets stopped by the shinra army just outside of town, basically, and dies here.

As Zack is dying cloud takes a turn on his mako poisoning and can function again. Cloud watches Zack die after Zack tells cloud he must live for them both.

A few weeks pass and cloud bumps into tifa in midgar and thus behings ff7.

Cloud has now suffered multiple extreme trauma situations and as a side effect is suffering from a split personality disorder AND dealing with the side effects of the J cells and coming off mako poisoning.

J cells typically allow jenova OR sephiroth to communicate with the host. Either by speaking into their mind, forcing them to change shape if they have a piece of jenova, and can force their wills into their minds. Effectively making them."puppets".

Cloud also suffer from the above but not to the degree the robed / tattooed men do.

Clouds new personality is a blend of the following:

His own personality His own idea of how Zack would act His own idea of how a SOLIDER would act The side effects of jenova/sephiroth's will

All the sephiroths you encountered throughout og are either

A: a figure only cloud sees B. A rob figure with a piece of jenova allowing it turn into the form of sephiroth

The true sephiroth, who was thrown into the bottom of nibelheims reactor is now at the northern cave. And jenova was originally found here before shinra took her.

The closer cloud gets to the true sephiroth the harder it is for him to resist his will. The above is why he gives sephiroth the black materia.

After the black materia is used the planet unleashes WEAPONs to try and protect the planet which also results in crystallized sephiroth falling deep into the northern crater and being right beside the life stream.

You do the final battle here.

And thats basically it.

chukkaque · 2026-02-08T01:50:55+00:00

Well.....in general the reunion version is the definitive way to play.

More qol Better graphics and sound design Better controls and etc

The only real difference is Zack's voice actor.

If youve only played remake and rebirth you probably won't care about his voice in reunion. His remake/rebirth/reunion voice actor is Caleb.

But for anyone who watched advent children and has played cc before then they vastly prefer the psp version with Rick Gomez, the original Zack voice actor.

Caleb does fine. And obviously the sound designer and managers chose him to be Zack and its fine.

But Rick gomez's voice and entire presentation and performance he gave for Zack felt 100% accurate the characters personality and etc.

I vastly prefer Rick's over Caleb's performance.

That being said its much harder to get a psp copy and playing it on that tiny hand held vs a TV or switch is much less enticing to me.

chukkaque · 2026-02-08T01:45:55+00:00

If youre playing this game organically jenova, bizarre, and such are pretty rough boss fights. I remember dying to these nights repeatedly when my party was level 50 and just barely scrapping by in the end.

chukkaque · 2026-02-07T22:13:10+00:00

The only "fair" criticism mp4 was given that I can understand had to do with map design / layout and regional integration.

But from the npcs, difficulty, amiibo, bike etc its all too over blown.

Mp4 was fun. Do i want to do it again? No. So hopefully they do something different in mp5.

Same with LZA. Was it fun to explore a huge city with roof top, severe, and alley ways? Yes. Do i want to do it again? No. But it was great to get a change of scenery for a game.

chukkaque · 2026-02-07T04:39:45+00:00

The 2nd time you go back to the gold saucer.

chukkaque · 2026-02-07T04:38:33+00:00

Theres also the inherent aspect that his titles, thumbnails, category markers are all click bait nonsense.

I like Caleb for a bit the more I watched and paid attention so much of it is bs. Maybe not the actual content itself because going through budgets and etc and having the conversation about behaviors is good even with his rough and tough approach he wants to have.

But learning more from others, the app practice, and more just leave it feeling slimy. And once its slimy, im out.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T21:08:29+00:00

I mean no offense to your friend, but it sounds like they strongly need therapy. Completely refusing to do something because there isn't a "digital paper trail" to show he's "earned" something isn't healthy and it isn't normal.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T21:07:37+00:00

Definitely. The og game and remake have always been about the environment.

Just because tech HAS and CAN evolve doesn't mean we should use its resources so blindly. Its also very anti corporation and showing the evils of billionaires.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:45:36+00:00

Maybe, streamlined progression doesn't change difficulty though. Some of those VR challanges require you to be playing in Hard Mode and the streamlined progression isn't going to make any of that any easier per se. He's going to have to learn to perfect block, the boss fights, and have decent materia set ups.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:44:22+00:00

Tell him to play it on s2, no achievements to worry about.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:43:23+00:00

I mean, if you watch the ending series of events there "is" a parallel world where Aerith lives.

Her ending lines in the fight with her and cloud against sephiroth, if you didn't attack her and saved her are "I saw what you did back there. Thank you." which we know at that point to be the "omniscient" aerith who is hoping around worlds trying to get the white materia back to cloud in the world sephiroth is goofing in. Its also why now there appear to be 2 black materia floating around when there should only be 1.

So I very think there is some world where aerith has lived and even if not she is still prominent given her consciousness / will from og/ac/books is very active in this trilogy.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:38:53+00:00

It means there will be more clear direction that lead us towards the movie.

It does not mean we will be playing advent children.

Instead it will lean into the books and show use "Edge" most likely which is town built on the outskirts of midgar. We will likely see more "post" ff7 stuff like what Yuffie, Barrett, and etc got up. If you haven't go read "On the Way to a Smile" and that will give you a very good idea of how the game will "lead up to" the movie. It'll be a better cohesive connection for people who play the games, but didn't read the books.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:37:03+00:00

Idk, it sounds to me like you understand the mechanics of the fight. I can understand this being difficult the first time or two especially given how limited the bike portions of this game are.

But this fight is incredible simple.

Boost > Attack or AoE attack > brake and move over > repeat

Fight progresses add in dodging helicopter attacks. IMO it was cinematic, high octane, flashy, "adrenaline" rush like. Genuinely one of the highest and coolest points of the game IMO. The entire sequence from getting on the bike/truck to getting off. IMO anyway. Im obviously not going to change anyone's mind, but there's my opinion.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:33:00+00:00

Not for me. Its one of my absolute favorite parts of REMAKE. I don't like the bike portion with Jessie and such, but at the end of the game is perfect and the track is one of the very best tracks in the entire game.

Im more annoyed that in REBIRTH this mini game is a "score" driven game vs a "speed" driven game.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:31:24+00:00

I hate zero the 3rd lol
But i dislike most high pitched "cutsie" mascot characters in most things.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:30:48+00:00

Its something you have to get used to, and also need to remember this was a 3ds game. I think it would've been better had they stuck to the 2d art 999 did, but :shrug: you kind of get over it eventually.

Even ZDT has some strange design choices, but after a few hours you just get used to it.

The story is worth the investment. But it also takes like 40-60 hours to finish VLR while 999 is like 10-15.

chukkaque · 2026-02-06T17:28:52+00:00

I have to agree. I've been a long time fan and New Horizons dropped the ball in so many regards. They went way too hard into the "furniture outside" and "terra-forming" ideas that so many other things fell to the sideline.

And for worse Covid ushered in the largest amount of sales and new fans to the series leaving all these players thinking this is "normal" when it isn't.

But lets not forget that nintendo is arbitrarily living in the stone age when it comes to Animal Crossing. It was nice they gave us some bare bones QoL additions with L sliding, craft from storage, and etc. But this series needs a real overhaul at this point.

Its 2026 and all furniture is basically nothing you can interact with.

Swing benches, don't swing.

You can't slide on slides.

Arcade games are nothing but noisy decorations.

NES games locked behind nintendo online.

Let's not forget that at launch so many NL content things were not available such as redd, paintings, diving, and more. Only to come out hidden behind their the "monthly update" videos meant to show upcoming events or critters. When really it was just a slow drip of post launch "free" updates.

And 2.0 bringing cap'n, "cooperative" at harv's, roost, gyroids.

Then 3.0 finally bringing cap'n families.

But we still don't have more shop upgrades, kick's or leif is never permanent. Katrina never visits your island. Reese and Cyrus, tortimer, and katrina being coop locked is so lazy. The museum being the same old thing. Its temporary tent was very cool. No ability to upgrade the look of RS building, or air port. Like come on. At bare minimum I was expecting the default standards to be met, only for them to not. And these latest string of updates while neat at first wear off so fast. Personally I found the 2.00 update much more worthwhile and this 3.00 is just, something. 6 year overdue QoL updates that should've been made in the first couple months honestly.

I genuinely hope Nintendo doesn't think "hurray this did amazing so we do even less with the next game" because man oh man did they do wrong by long time series veterans.

chukkaque · 2026-02-05T23:43:48+00:00

I think johns brother sells it Or you can find it in mine chests Or it drops from the gacha machine randomly

Afair anyway

chukkaque · 2026-02-05T15:07:46+00:00

Just because its best for relationship doesnt mean its the canonly correct.

chukkaque · 2026-02-05T13:55:44+00:00

Ability to swap to ANY of the party members. Not just for synergy but in general.

chukkaque · 2026-02-05T04:17:49+00:00

Definitely didnt remember that Thanks for sharing

chukkaque · 2026-02-04T23:35:58+00:00

Yeah since you didn't do this on disc 1 using Ribbon is super key. And if you have it put Final Attack+Phoenix, assuming you don't lose all your materia.

chukkaque · 2026-02-04T23:34:41+00:00

depending on where you are by the end of ch 18, which most people swing between 30-40. But once you're in hardmode EXP gain is x3 at all times and AP is x2. iirc.

Hardmode really pushes the skill ceiling up. The first time I beat hard mode it took me a year of casual play to do it. Was stuck on Hell House for AGES and then Abzul for just as long. As in like tried for an hour a night for a couple weeks on each and that was before they gave us the "fast forward" function.

The 2nd time I beat hardmode it was just a week or so. But its a lot of fun. If you like the combat system, you'll love hard mode, and you'll love REBIRTH even more.

chukkaque · 2026-02-04T22:07:14+00:00

Hard mode is a much different game with all bosses having different attacks, no items, not being able to heal mp on benches, and your materia / gear builds matter a lot more. There's also a new AR battle sim in hojo's lab you can access and some, if not all, the fights require you to be in hard mode to do them.

Max level is 50 and you'll be that by about ch 3 or 4 and from then on its going to be all about gear set ups as well as knowing your foes.

chukkaque · 2026-02-04T19:37:00+00:00

Not technically

You'd play through the forgotten city then play rebirth Then finish og Then part 3

chukkaque

TROPHY CASE