A promise under the stars

Song: Staring by Tipling Rock

After the Temple of the Ancients, Aerith chooses to leave Cloud behind and go to the City of the Ancients to pray for Holy, putting the Planet's survival above her personal desires. That decision ultimately leads to Holy and the lifestream stopping Meteor, thus preventing the destruction of the world.

In Mideel, Tifa is faced with a different choice. She can join the others in gathering the Huge Materia or remain with the near-comatose Cloud. She chooses Cloud. That decision ultimately leads to the Lifestream Sequence, where she helps him reconstruct his true identity and return to the fight, enabling him to defeat Sephiroth.

Nobody else could cast Holy except Aerith; she's the last Cetra.

Nobody else could help Cloud piece himself back together except Tifa; only she knew the real Cloud well enough to navigate his memories.

Neither one is more important than the other. Their contributions are different, but both are indispensable.

One heroine protects the Planet. The other heroine restores the hero.

FF7 needs both.

So in addition to talking about my thoughts on the trailers, I'm also going to comment on stuff Hamaguchi said in the interviews but I'm not going to comment on everything he said because 1) that would make this post waaaaay too long, and 2) some of the stuff he talked about I don't really care to talk about here. So let’s hop into it!

Let me start off by talking about the thing that excited me the most about the trailers…

That’s right, Tifa!

I can’t believe how much screen time she got! She got even more screen time than Cloud and he’s the main character! Of course, nobody is saying Tifa is the main character of FF7. That role still belongs to Cloud, and Tifa is still one of the heroines along with Aerith, but it made me so happy to see how much she appeared. It seems SE finally learned their lesson from keeping Tifa locked up in the basement for 90% of the marketing for Rebirth and they set my girl free. I was hoping the trailer would do Tifa justice so I was over the moon seeing my wish became reality 😄

She looks amazing and her Black Mage outfit looks amazing (for more of my opinions on Tifa’s Black Mage outfit and the FITS system, click here), and was that her charging a Weapon??

And her synergy ability with Cid lets her wield his staff?? So she isn’t just a master of hand-to-hand combat but she’s also a weapon master?? She really is built different.

The trailers also basically confirmed that Tifa is going to be the party leader during Cloud’s absence just like in the OG, despite what the haters were saying. If you look closely at this shot, you can see Barret and Red running behind Tifa, meaning she’s the one leading the party. Party leader Tifa for the win 🥳

I absolutely cannot WAIT to play as Vincent and Cid. Their gameplay looks AMAZING. I can already tell I’m going to have trouble making my teams.

The Weapons look just as amazing as I hoped they would be. I would like to say I’m looking forward to fighting them but the Weapons (and the Knights of the Round) are supposedly super hard so I’ll probably sit this one out 😅

The Highwind also looks amazing. And can I also add how much I love the image of Cloud parachuting off the Highwind with his sword strapped to his butt? 😆

I also love Vincent parachuting off the Highwind in a straight vertical drop. That is such a Vincent thing to do.

Hamaguchi said players will get the Highwind 5-6 hours into the game and once obtained, players can fly freely and virtually explore the entire world. They can decide where they want to go first rather than being forced to follow a strictly linear path but the main story progression itself follows a predetermined order. Some locations may contain enemies that are too powerful to defeat early on, which makes sense. The same thing happened when I played in Assassin Creed: Valhalla. Certain areas were immediately available to you but the enemies would be too strong for you and you had to level up elsewhere and revisit the locations later. The developers apparently found it technically difficult to land the Highwind anywhere so they decided to have the characters drop in via parachute, which I am totally fine with.

Players can also upgrade and decorate the interior of the Highwind to their liking as they progress through the game, which is an idea I absolutely love. I can’t wait to see what decoration options we’re given. Also crew members can give you missions, which sounds very intriguing. Chadley’s base is inside the Highwind and apparently he’s doing research on Meteor. I was wondering what role he would would play in Revelation. I’ll never turn down the chance to see more of my son. Still not sure why so many players hate on him but oh well, not everyone can have good taste.

Wutai is going to have a politically-charged storyline, which makes sense considering what we saw in Rebirth. The landscape looks beautiful and I can’t wait to explore every nook and cranny with Yuffie.

Mideel also looks beautiful (sorry for the blurry image!) That's the location I’m looking forward to exploring the most in Revelation, and it was one of the locations I hoped would be showcased at SGF. I’m not ready for the part of the game when Tifa finds Cloud suffering from mako poisoning. I might need a box of tissues on hand due to Britt Baron’s terrific voice acting 😢

Midgar will return as a fully explorable area and players may encounter characters connected to Deepground. Hamaguchi specifically referenced the possibility of players encountering Weiss and Nero, which sounds very intriguing. I wonder how that will play out now that Vincent is in the party…

Rocket Town will appear later in the game. I’m assuming that we won’t go there until it’s time to do the Huge Materia mission. Apparently, the devs considered putting Rocket Town in Rebirth but ultimately decided it would fit better in Part 3. I’m sorry, but I have to disagree here. I feel like it would have been better if Rocket Town was included in Rebirth. I wasn’t a big fan of Cid as a flying taxi driver (and his connection to Aerith through her mother felt forced). Are we still going to get the Palmer boss fight? Because if we don’t get Palmer getting hit by a truck, then it was all for naught.

Bone Village won’t appear in Revelation, but I already figured it wouldn’t anyway. If it was going to appear, it would have appeared in Rebirth before the City of the Ancients since that’s when it’s visited in the OG.

Players will have a single Chocobo companion named Pico that levels up which means…no more Chocobo catching minigames!

You have no idea how much I hated those minigames. Why the devs decided to make catching Chocobos so difficult I’ll never know. And speaking of minigames, Hamaguchi said despite fan feedback about Rebirth he decided not to reduce the amount of minigames for Revelation. But fortunately, there’s an easy and normal mode for minigames, and some you can skip outright. Hamaguchi also said that the snowboarding minigame from the OG will be a “pleasant surprise for players.” What this means I have no idea, but as long as I get to soar down the slopes like I’m Shaun White, you won’t get a complaint out of me.

Player choices will have a much greater impact than in Rebirth. Decisions can affect progression, unlock different story content, and influence how parts of the narrative unfold. However, the player choices affect side content NOT the main storyline. Hamaguchi said there’s going to be only one ending for the game, NO MULTIPLE ENDINGS.

The Turks will receive more focus than they did in the OG. Since the underwater segment is going to appear in Revelation, I assume this part is going to be fleshed out some more.

Temporary guest characters will join the party for certain parts of the game. I wonder which characters these will be. Cissnei? Are we ever going to see Kunsel? He was mentioned in Remake, I can't help but wonder if we'll see him in something besides Crisis Core.

While Rebirth focused primarily on Cloud's relationships with other characters, Revelation will place greater emphasis on developing the cast as a whole. It would have been nice if this was done when Aerith was still alive, but better late than never, I guess…

Players will have more opportunities to learn more about certain characters. I REALLY hope Zangan makes an appearance in Revelation in some shape or fashion. Ever since I played the OG, I couldn't help but wonder why Zangan was never seen again after the Nibelheim Incident. Following my reading of ToTP, I wondered even more why Zangan never visited Tifa while she was in Midgar. He carries a critically-injured Tifa to Corel for treatment, then to Midgar for further treatment, and then he never checks on her again? It felt very weird to me. I hope this gets rectified in Revelation. It would be nice if Tifa got some side content with her martial arts master.

Overall, I’m pretty psyched for Revelation. I do have a couple concerns though…

Hamaguchi said there’s more content in Revelation than Rebirth and it will be impossible to complete everything in one playthrough. My concern is that he might have put TOO much content into the game and players will experience burnout. ReTrilogy already added in additional content that wasn’t present in the OG and we only got to the end of Disc 1 at the end of Rebirth. There’s still a lot of stuff to get through. And apparently Zack will have a much larger role in Revelation than he did in Rebirth which means more screen time for him. And I think it's safe to assume that Aerith is going to play a prominent role in Revelation despite her not appearing in the trailers for Revelation (not even a voice-over, shocking!). I just hope the devs don't cram in too much stuff and the game has a satisfying ending. I want the ReTrilogy to end with a bang, not a whimper.

My other concern is how CloTi is handled. The affinity system from Rebirth is being replaced due to the different structure and focus of Revelation's story. I can only assume this is leading to CloTi being endgame considering the progression of their relationship over the course of the previous two games. I sincerely hope the devs don’t chicken out and leave things ambiguous in an attempt to placate both sides in the shipping war. I was expecting CloTi stuff in the trailers for SGF which I didn’t get (I guess hoping Tifa would say “Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking” would have been too much for a first trailer) but I hope we get CloTi stuff in future trailers as we learn more about the story. The devs probably won’t show any Zerith in future trailers but I hope we get plenty of Zerith content in Revelation. Cloud was obviously talking to them during that scene in which he was standing over the flowers but that was about it. Cloti is my OTP but I love Zerith as well and my Zerith heart needs to be fed!

Hamaguchi said SE will show more stuff from Revelation at the Tokyo Game Show which is in September, so now we just have to wait.