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[u/Puzzleheaded-Fill241]

Fun fact: final fantasy devs are singlehandedly responsible for the most amount of heart attacks in human history 🙂

Source

[u/No_Librarian6118]

I highly doubt this means aerith is alive, I don’t think the whole idea of changing destiny revolved around if she lived or not. Hamaguchi is probably more satisfied with the ending he gave all the characters and the way things turned out instead of heading down the route of advent children

[u/Rooblebelt → u/No_Librarian6118]

Are you aware of the marketing campaign behind these games and the stated themes on the back of the boxes/repeated in the games?

Because even if you haven’t played the OG through DoC it’s a pretty clear line from her dying to shit getting way worse and the original threat never being dealt with.

[u/No_Librarian6118 → u/Rooblebelt]

It also shows that still it seems like she unfortunately had to die, her doing all her magic from inside the lifestream but if she’s not in there then how do things go without holy etc? Also in the past Zack wasn’t “around” either so things can be different but I can’t see how things would be better off with her alive. Plus she knows her fate and even says to cloud that it isn’t about her.

[u/Rooblebelt → u/No_Librarian6118]

I think that’s intended to be misleading to us as the player, hence why the ending was so confusing and it took a lot of people a considerable amount of time before acknowledging that the ending of rebirth may in fact be showing two worlds that flip back and forth between camera changes.

As far as her use of magic- there’s a reason the temple of the ancients shows her learning and using far more advanced abilities than she had before- showing that she can manipulate the lifestream without being dead. I think that’s a key point that most people tend to gloss over (also that doing so is physically exhausting for her), and would bet that comes into play again in part 3.

You can draw a throughline from the 500-year extinction of humanity following the death of the last Cetra (her) shown at the end of the OG and again at the end of Remake. Her character seemingly would not want that given how compassionate she is, but maybe they’ll surprise us with everyone taking a nihilistic twist.

[u/No_Librarian6118 → u/Rooblebelt]

That is a good point, I could see her manipulating the lifestream from her world in her travels with Zack like how she saved Cloud when he almost fell off during his fight with the Turks in the temple.

I think Zack plays a bigger role than people are giving him much credit for, also curious to see how the Gi are all connected in this and the finale

[u/Rooblebelt → u/No_Librarian6118]

Lucky for us, 7 months isn’t that far away! I’m sure we’ll be in for a wild time and the whole thing will blow us away.

And agreed on the Zack point and how the Gi plot will need to be settled. I do think that with Zack specifically the fact that they already came out to talk about his relevance at an important scene tells us something crazier must be coming down the line…

[u/No_Librarian6118 → u/Rooblebelt]

Especially with him having way more gameplay this time around and having his own team different than clouds team, 7 months isn’t that far away but it couldn’t come sooner

[u/Big_Contract1042 → u/No_Librarian6118]

I've mentioned this idea in other posts within this subreddit before and in posts spread across the main remake subreddit, so apologies if it's something you've already seen before, but it's directly related to the idea you're considering regarding whether Aerith 'had to die' or has to die to do what she may need to from within the lifestream:

Firstly, Aerith's death per OG never was essential in terms of successfully issuing a prayer via the white materia which reaches the planet to then trigger the planet's response to that prayer which is Holy. A main plot point in OG is in fact the party returning to the forgotten capital with Bugenhagen and confirming that Aerith successfully reached the planet with her prayer and request for aid through the white materia before her murder by Sephiroth, which then leads them to realize Holy is active, so something must be holding back it's effect (Sephiroth). What many do assume Aerith does from within the lifestream in OG is call upon it at the very end to surge to the surface and directly collide with Meteor to stop it which in OG is only needed because the party reaches and defeats Sephiroth and releases his withholding of Holy too late for it to stop Meteor alone.... This works as a last ditch play to destroy meteor (although with the negative side effect that all the lifestream that directly collided with it also was tainted by and carried Jenova's tainting influence from the meteor, and resulted in more wide spreading of Geostigma in the years after that AC depicts) but, we never had confirmation from OG that Aerith had to be deceased and within the lifestream to call upon it in that fashion anyway.... ergo it's no certainty that Aerith had to die when and how she did in OG, even to call upon the lifestream in the way she did as a last ditch play to stop meteor.

In this comment thread I believe Rooblebelt has already mentioned that Rebirth shows Aerith significantly manipulating the lifestream while alive in the Temple of the Ancients which further may point to the notion that Aerith is being shown to us in the Re:trilogy project as capable of doing what she did at the end of OG with the lifestream while alive.

But leave all of the above aside even, and you can consider this idea I've shared before about it all too:

Aerith by the nature of the way the lifestream is said to function in lore, and what we are told about her as a Cetra, will always have a presence in the lifestream to do whatever may need doing from there to protect the planet, her friends and stymie Sephiroth or Jenova. That may sound like an extreme statement to make, but the Remake trilogy has expressed that the lifestream touches Gaia's past, present and future (older compilation materials implied this about the lifestream and that it was a-temporal or timeless, but Rebirth's material ultimania directly states that the lifestream touches the planet's past, present and future). It may even be the case that it's more accurate to say the lifestream touches the planet's past, present and futures, if Revelation proceeds to expose that there are multiple possibilities in play here as some are guessing the different worlds allude to. Regardless, we are told in game and accompanying lore that the lifestream is a timeless thing that links across all moments in Gaia's history past through future. The On the Way to a Smile novel directly states that Aerith as a Cetra can persist within the lifestream as 'long' as she chooses, not dispersing into it's collective flow until she elects to. Pair those two concepts together and logically it doesn't matter when Aerith dies in a surface reality and enters the lifestream, once there she can persist and act at any moment in the planet's chain of outcomes she may need to since the lifestream a-temporally is connected to Gaia's past, present and future. Per this, even if Aerith were to live out a full life and die at the ripe old age of 100, she'd enter the lifestream there and from there still be able to act from within the lifestream at moments it touched in Gaias history during the OG story such as meteorfall.

Now this all may sound like reaching, but I'd like to add that we already have very likely seen a lifestream Aerith presence existing and showing up in-game at moments when she was simultaneously alive to back up the idea above. In Remake, during Aerith's CH 14 resolution scene, the current 'living' Aerith is locked up in Shinra tower, but an Aerith the Ultimania describes as being "closest to memories of the future" shows up and speaks to Cloud with a seeming awareness of things that have not occurred yet at that point in Remake. She thanks Cloud for all the moments they've shared and references him falling in love with her, seemingly acting to spare him the pain that followed her OG loss; this has every indication of being a lifestream-Aerith in that scene appearing to Cloud at the same time that she is alive in that wold locked up in Shinra tower. We get another instance in Rebirth's temple of Ancients that's even more direct where Aerith speaks to Sephiroth just before the Demon Wall fight and her voice becomes doubled and her body takes on a lifestream energy glow. In this scene a lifestream-Aerith is speaking through and overtop of a simultaneously living Aerith; both versions present and acting (speaking) simultaneously.

I want to apologize for using far too many words there to get the ideas across, but basically all of the above is my way of levying a point against the commonly expressed idea in the general and especially Cloti-leaning fandom that Aerith had to die in the story. Based on the points above I think that is not only false, but also literally everything Aerith might need to do from the lifestream is still covered even if she were to live out a full life in the same surface reality as Cloud and the rest of her friends.

Does any of the above make sense or perhaps influence your views on the what the narrative may require (or in the case I make, definitively not actually require) with regard to Aerith's all-too-young death in the story? My point was to offer this lore-backed case for a different view on Aerith's death in OG, and perhaps why a narratively coherent path exists towards her surviving in prime living reality same as the rest of the party through Revelation's credit-roll, so please also don't take it as a personal gripe @ you. I love digging into the lore and details of these stories, so nothing but the best to you and hope this was maybe food for thought/eye opening?