We recommend you finish Rebirth before reading further.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirthis a haunted game.
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Now Playing:Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Ending Explained…ish (Spoilers)
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On one hand, if everyone knows that moment is coming, will it still have the same impact?
On the other, isn’t Aerith’s death an essential and inextricable part of the FF7 story?
With the ending of Rebirth, Square Enix subverts expectations the only way it can.
Players expected Aerith to die.
Players expected Aerith to live.
To thread the needle, developers did both.
But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it.
But really, that’s true for all human life–the clock is always ticking.
Instead, she struggles with grief over the loss of her mother.
She articulates an experience of grief that confuses her emotions and adds to the trauma she already feels.
Biggs finds himself the last remaining member of Avalanche and grapples with the fact that he alone has survived.
Zack cares for and tries to help his friends, but there’s little he can actually do.
The Cosmo Canyon section of the game deals more with death than any other.
Flipping the coin, Cosmo Canyon also contains the lengthy story of the Gi.
And then, finally, there’s the ending.
Ultimately, though, the final thoughts Rebirth has about death are of its inevitability.
Rebirth is saying something deeper about how we experience death and what kinds of meaning it brings to life.
It’s a haunted, and haunting, experience, because it leaves no easy answers.
While there are happy or uplifting moments, there are painful and traumatic ones, too.
Aerith was, finally, always going to die.
It’s a part of life.
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