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dutchdread · 2 years

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I just finished watching your plot vs narrative and it helped me put what I already knew into words. Since I did only watch it for the first time today, I had to smile at your theory that they were probably going to double down on the love triangle since it actually seems they're going the opposite way, at least for part 1. Thoughts on that now that Remake is available? Cutting or changing a lot of CA moments with a renewed focus on Tifa in the early stages can't be anything but deliberate.

I don't think I said they were gonna double down, I think I said that there wasn't a love triangle in the plot of the original, but that there might be one in the remake. Me saying something "might" happen isn't a prediction that it will, it's just me not ruling it out. And I hold to that, you see, you can't really debunk a position without addressing it. In the past, SE refrained from even going into the possibility of there being a love story between Aerith and Cloud. On the one hand that's exactly the reason why the Clerith position was so weak, it literally doesn't exist in the source material, meaning the source material had very little to say about it. But on the other hand, that's what made it so difficult to debunk, because you're trying to debunk something that exists only in the head of the person you're talking to. But now, they do seem to acknowledge it to some degree, if only to actively debunk it by hammering in the idea that "it's not real". But it doesn't have to be real for it to count as a love triangle, it just needs to be a part of the plot. If SE is going to make hypothetical feelings between Aerith and Cloud an actual plotpoint, with the conclusion being "it's not real, real Cloud loves Tifa", then I'd still say that that would be making the "love triangle (square, actually)" a bigger part of the plot than it was in the original game, where it only existed in peoples interpretations of the scenes, but was never shown to have an actual impact on Clouds character and actions. I do think they're being more clear about where Cloud affections lie though, so hopefully they'll continue that, but who knows.

Cutting or changing a lot of CA moments with a renewed focus on Tifa in the early stages can't be anything but deliberate.

It definitely isn't, but what the intentions behind it are, isn't so easy to determine. You see, with remake we're in a peculiar position. What we expected, if this were a 1-on-1 remake, is that scenes like Aerith telling Cloud "it's not real" have a two-fold meaning. For first time players it would be telling a narrative, but for those of us who know what happens, this would be hinting at the plot, namely Clouds fake persona and how it is tied to Zack. But SE took a different approach by adding in the element of changing fate. Right now what we're seeing isn't Narrative vs Plot, it's Narrative vs Narrative. The designers want first time players to think one thing, and they want players of the original to think one thing, but they want both sides to be unsure of what the actual plot turns out to be. That doesn't mean everything is up for grabs, the knowledge we have concerning the plot of the original still gives us more insight to work with, we know the past hasn't changed, we are still able to recognize certain Chekovs guns being set-up, but while we can use that insight to speculate about what is likely and unlikely to happen next, we can't be 100% sure that we're seeing the full puzzle. Concerning the focus on Tifa, while I think they went above and beyond what they needed to do, a certain increase in focus was always neccesary. This is because the original is a single game where only a few hours is spent in Midgar, and where there wasn't even much time to get to know Aerith before the story takes her away. Designers know that, they know that they have limited time and resources, and they know that Aeriths death must hurt, therefore they have to frontload the game with Aerith material in order to make the player love her. There isn't that much need to develop Tifa early on because the player will get to know her soon enough. The same thing isn't true for remake, with how important Tifa is you can't have an entire game and not show that importance. Especially if that game then has a several year wait behind it. In the OG, when Tifa is unveiled as the love interrest, it's a cool "wow, I didn't see that coming" moment. If the remake did that after not showing anything between Tifa and Cloud for years, it would feel manipulative and dissapointing. In the original you could replay the game and see that the connection was always there, you just didn't see it because you made the wrong choices, or because you didn't imagine the scenes a certain way. Can't do that with voice acting and facial animation. I think the intent was to make new players definitely see that there is a bond between them, so that when the reveal comes, it feels fulfilling, to make the player root for them. So that when you play it again, even if you did prefer Aerith, that you understand it was always there. And yes, hopefully it's so that at the end of all of this, we can finally bury this absurd debate, let's hope.

Thanks for the question.

#Cloti #FFVII #ffvii remake

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