Aerith’s Fate in ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Is Causing a Rift Among Fans

There’s no extra necessary demise in video video games than that of Final Fantasy VII’s flower lady, Aerith. In the 1997 recreation, Aerith meets her finish by the hands of Sephiroth, who brutally stabs her in entrance of the sport’s hero, Cloud Strife, and by extension the gamers.

It was a permadeath that stayed with followers. “I felt it was imperative for us to show the gravity and rawness of loss,” Tetsuya Nomura, the sport director who has labored on a number of Final Fantasy titles, together with this yr’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, just lately informed The New York Times. It was a formative second for a lot of gamers, who keep in mind the scene beat for beat, together with the second its iconic musical theme kicks in. When Square Enix introduced it was remaking Final Fantasy VII in a trilogy of video games, followers braced themselves to look at Aerith die yet again, rendered in additional trendy, extra actual graphics—till the sport supplied up a twist: in-game phantoms referred to as whispers and the power to presumably stand towards destiny.

In different phrases, when Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hit consoles late final month, gamers had been confronted with the likelihood that Aerith may very well be saved—or that Square Enix could be about to tug off the largest troll in historical past.

(Spoiler alert: Major spoilers for Aerith’s destiny in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to observe. No, actually, the entire scene, spoiled.)

Rebirth’s recreation of the sequence’ most notorious scene begins out acquainted. Cloud approaches a kneeling Aerith within the Forgotten Capital, the place she’s run off to wish for a strategy to defeat Sephiroth. Cloud, overtaken by Sephiroth’s affect, practically kills her himself. When that fails, Sephiroth seems from the sky, comically massive sword in hand, to shish-kebab everybody’s favourite flower lady.

For a second, Aerith’s destiny appears locked into the identical one avid gamers knew so properly in 1997—till Cloud breaks free and deflects the blade on the final minute. It falls harmlessly to the facet, and Aerith lives.

Or so it appears, till the scene begins to glitch between moments of Aerith unhurt, after which bloodied in demise. What?

From there it solely will get extra complicated, as Rebirth evokes a multiverse it has been enjoying with all through all the recreation. When the forged finds Cloud and Aerith, it’s clear they’re seeing their buddy slaughtered. Cloud, lengthy established as an unreliable narrator, nonetheless treats her as if she’s alive—and she or he performs the half properly, presumably as some kind of specter.

Reaction to this scene in on-line fan communities has been certainly one of nice bewilderment. “Why make it so complicated?” wrote one Redditor in a put up asking for a proof to the ending. “What was even the point?” wrote one other within the thread.

Square Enix’s twist on Aerith’s demise additionally signifies that the scenes following her homicide play out a lot in another way. In the unique Final Fantasy VII, the sport’s forged individually mourns Aerith—Red XIII howls in sorrow, Tifa gently pats her hair, and so forth—earlier than Cloud carries her out to the lake and lets her sink into the water. It’s these scenes that drive her demise dwelling: There is not any magic treatment, no plot twist that may assist her. She’s simply gone.