Here Is The Full Translation Of Nomura’s Interview From The FF7R Famitsu Feature! He Talks About Jessie’s

A couple of interesting references

Toward the end of Chapter 8 of the Remake - like in the OG - Cloud sneaks away from Aerith's house headed to Sector 7, but Aerith is already waiting for him at the border to Sector 6.

This scene is very important since it's the one where Aerith willingly decides to follow Cloud, the moment that sets into motion her adventure and that will lead her to her destiny.

Fans immediately noticed that the way Aerith appears from behind the debris and the way she walks away recall what happened in the dream that Cloud had in the OG, where Aerith told him she was going to stop Sephiroth alone.

When she starts walking Cloud has one of his headaches, the camera focuses on his right hand (the one he stretched trying to stop her in the dream) and he sheds a tear.

This seems to be another omen of her death - probably it is -, like he previously had at the church, but this short sequence hides also another compilation reference that probably most of western players didn't notice, since it went lost in the English localization:

When Aerith approaches Cloud saying "Because I'm not sick of you yet!", in Japanese she uses a sentence that she already used in Crisis Core with Zack: "I'd like to spend more time with you"(the comparison between the two Japanese lines will sound clearer here). Also her pose, with her hands behind her back, is the same of Crisis Core, and I can't say to what extent it is relevant in this scene, since the Zack-Cloud relation is often matter of debate, but Zack took the note with his right hand too.

I don't think this is casual. At first I thought it was just another Zack-Aerith references like many others during Chapters 8 and 9, but I think this one has a deeper meaning:

Aerith gave Zack the note before he left for Nibelheim, and she apperared in Cloud's dream when she left to go to the Forgotten City:

in both cases it was the last time the characters "spent" time together

in both scenes they promised to go back after they accomplished their missions (very Loveless)

and in both cases...they never came back again.

Aerith's decision to go alone to summon Holy led her to her death, and Zack's decision to go back to Midgar after reading the note - the most dangerous place for him - led him to his death too.

I can't say if this correlation will be relevant in the future parts of the Remake but I thought it was noteworthy, especially because it links up so well with the leitmotiv of Reunion.

Parallel #1

Zack and Aerith from Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis

23 tiny wishes by wlop

“I have 23 tiny wishes. But im sure you wont remember them all. So i wrote them all into one. I want to spend more time with you.” For Zack and Aerith

4k wallpaper, original file, brush set and painting process video will be provided to supporters on my Patreon:www.patreon.com/wlop

THE PROMISE

Happy 25th anniversary Final Fantasy VII ❤️

Graphics enhancement, 23 years later!

Great post!

I guess the problem and the cause of all these (convenient) misinterpretations is indeed her persistent presence in the compilation. Or better, all the characters are present in more or less all the entries but she is the only character who is always shown indissolubly linked to Cloud. Which is what bothers part of the fandom.

If her physical presence can't be ignored, the only other way to make her "unharmful" is to try to diminish her relevance in the story.

But is there a greater proof of her importance than the fact itself that fans need to spend so much energy in twisting her role to make her seem an ininfluent or even a villainous character?

So the Lifestream sequence becomes unimportant, she's irrelevant, she's bully, she's insensitive, she's just fancervice, she gets rejected, she's a rebound, she lacks a character arc...let alone Case of Tifa and Advent Children... She is just there watching the other characters playing their roles.

The question is: does it ever work?

Because whenever the fandom spent too much effort spreading misinterpretations SE took advantage of the following entries to debunk them. Remake is no exception.

And it's just part 1.

Tifa is important to the FF7 story (OG and Remake) straight up due to her abundant, consistent involvement in the story—you know, the actual events of what is being written. She has more than this, but that’s the most basic level that a character can be important to a story….by simply being a prime force within it. Get out of here with anything even less than this as this understanding shouldn’t be skipped over.

“Being Important” in storytelling is something I think people perceive very weirdly in fandom for characters. Importance can be judged on different levels, but the level of that for characters should be looked at on the level of story involvement first and foremost.

Any character that is one of the protagonists, a part of your party, and literally is involved and thus affects and interacts with all story beats—something so basic needs to be understood as important. Tifa is one of the heroes, she’s on the journey from the beginning and continues throughout…you can’t get any more straight forward than this for the story. Describing it as “just being there” or “occupying space” is just stupid, I won’t sugarcoat that honestly. And the interaction she has in the story obviously goes beyond that of just “Cloud’s love interest”. She’s not just standing around, T-posing in the background while being that, and it’s a gross view of how that information is even expressed in the story itself. Any good writer that has a character interacting so much with the story [actual events] is bound to have them interacting with plot [the “what”/overall story event chain that sets the “what”] , if not the overall narrative [”how and why”/purpose of plot and structure], eventually. That’s not always the case, at least directly anyway, but even in those cases it can be examined on a micro level. But even if it doesn’t track to the line of narrative, this won’t stop them from having an involvement with story and plot if they’re included all the way through these things.

Now granted, especially in an extended series, there can be a difference between being an “important character” and being “important to a story”. Both Tifa and Cloud aren’t the primary characters in Dirge of Cerberus or Before Crisis, but obviously they still remain to be important to FF7 (OG and Remake), AC, or even Crisis Core as their roles there interact directly with key plot points for FF7. So like, still, “Tifa isn’t an important character” doesn’t stand to be a thought from a knowledgeable mind of the series.

FFVII Remake Easter Eggs and compilation continuity - Part 4: DIRGE OF CERBERUS

[Includes: DoC Online Multiplayer - DoC - DoC Lost Episode]

SHINRA’S DARKEST SECRET

In Chapter 3, Weimar tells Cloud and Tifa of the rumors about undregroud secret labs. In Chapter 13, after the plate fall, Cloud, Barret and Tifa enter this mysterious underground facility full of monsters and Mako tanks.

7R: There’s a crazy story about a Shinra research lab hidden right beneath our feet - under the slums.

DoC: Deepground soldiers. (...) The shadow of the Shinra company, constructed by the former president and completely hidden from the rest of the world. (...) His goal was to create an army of superhuman warriors - not once letting morality interfere.

  INTERMISSION

During Intermission it is not only confirmed the existence of Deepground but Yuffie and Sonon fight against some soldiers in their DoC uniforms.

Nero: "Team"? Fool. There are no "teams" in Deepground.

Yuffie: Deep...ground?

Nero: The place where my brother and I like to play.

WEISS AND NERO

After getting to Deepground Yuffie and Sonon had to fight against one of the Deepground Tsviets, Nero. Meanwhile Weiss was added as a boss fight in the Shinra Combat Simulator. 

VITUAL REALITY

The overall concept of Shinra using VR simulators comes from DoC. In particoular, in DoC Multiplayer SOLDIERs and Tsviets used to train exclusively in VR arenas. 

MOOGLE YUFFIE

During the first half of Intermission Yuffie wears a tattered cloak with a moogle hood. This piece of clothing appeared for the first time in Dirge of Cerberus. 

Is Sonon really dead?

Yuffie’s mission in Midgar ended unsuccessfully. Shinra destroyed the base of her allies in Sector 7, she couldn’t get hold of the Ultimate Materia and, most importantly, Sonon died in order to save her.

His death gives a sense of closure to this newly introduced character. Although being quite short, the DLC is full of clever parallels between Yuffie and Melphie, Sonon's younger sister who got killed in front of his eyes during the Wutai war. He failed to save Melphie back then, but he can save Yuffie now.

But the big question is: is Sonon really dead?

The OST playing during the death scene is Seeing Melphie again. After getting stabbed, he has a vision of his little sister (a very touching moment tied to FFVII theme of reunion in the afterlife) accompanied by a bitterweet piano melody, that gets always softer until his last breath. But just when Nero seems to finish Sonon off, instead of mercilessly swallowing him into the darkness, he gently picks him up while the music digresses in an ominious and mysterious tone, hinting that his role may be not over yet.

But what could Nero want from Sonon?

I think the answer may be deduced diggin a bit into Dirge of Cerberus lore.

There's a not very well known entry related to the main DoC game (especially by the western audience since it had been released only in Japan and for a very short period of time): Dirge of Cerberus Multiplayer on-line. While some of the missions were later included in the international release of DoC, the plot of this game got lost despite its importance for the full understanding of the Deepground dynamics.

Here is a link for an excellent article from thelifestream.net that tries to keep a record of this expired entry, and here's a playlist of cutscenes from the game with English subtitles that helps understanding the main plot (btw, a great YT channel where you can also find localized playthroughs of rarities like DoC Lost Episode and Before Crisis).

A quick summary about Deepground and the Multiplayer game.

Deepground is a top secret facility created by President Shinra and located beneath the slums (remember that underground lab where Cloud, Barret and Tifa went to save Wedge? That's Deepground) where troopers and SOLDIERs - but also unaware civilians - endure severe experimentations that push their bodies and minds to the limit, aiming to create ruthless SOLDIERs with no moral boundaries. The elite DG SOLDIERs are known as Tsviets, like Weiss, Nero, Argento, Shelke, Rosso and Azul. To avoid any rebellion each candidate and Tsviet has a restriction chip implanted in their brain controlled by four Restrictors loyal to President Shinra. This mechanism is particoularly useful to control those Tsviets who don't make a distinction between allies and enemies.

Because of this the Tsviets started to secretly plot against Shinra until they finally understood how to cheat the system. Shelke and Argento found a way to implant a non-working chip in a candidate, so that they could kill the Restrictors. The protagonist of DoC Multiplayer is indeed this candidate (gender and name chosen by the player). Thanks to her special abilities Shelke tricked the candidate into seeing a supporting partner, Usher, who helped them into ranking as a Tsviet, and most importantly she instilled the hatred towards the Restrictors giving to the candidate false memories of a little sister brutally killed by one of them. In the end the candidate managed to kill one of the Restrictors but got stabbed as well. This is the final dialogue of the game:

Weiss: Can this one still be of any use?

Shelke: Negative. The prolonged SND [Synaptic Net Dive] has rendered most of the brain inaccessible. It's only a matter of time before it breaks down completely.

Rosso: Really? After all that hard work. What a shame.

Weiss: Then hurry up and find a suitable replacement. After all no one knows what the Restrictors really look like.

Azul: So we have to find another one? This is becoming frustrating.

Weiss: It can't be helped. Only one out of hundreds can make it this far.

Rosso: Ordinary humans simply aren't as strong as we are.

Weiss: Precisely.

Shelke: Well, it's actually quite simple. With the help of the HJ Virus I am able to hack into Patricia [computer system] and bypass security. Then all that's needed is to pick a suitable subject before it's implanted with the chip.

Weiss: Shelke, find a new one quickly.

The devs had never provided any time reference for the Multiplayer story but now, with Intergrade, we know for sure that the Tsviets are still under Shinra's control when Yuffie and Sonon met Nero on December 12, and, while the President will be killed the next night, it seems clear that Scarlet is the one who will take full control of Deepground until her defeat the next month.

Conclusion

My theory is that Sonon could be the perfect person to replace the Tsviet-candidate and the dead Restrictor, so that Weiss and the gang can pursure their plan of rebellion gainst Shinra:

Unlike many soldiers Sonon has proved to be an extremely strong and capable fighter standing up to Nero.

He has the right motivation as he seeks revenge against Shinra - especially Scarlet - for the death of his younger sister, which Shelke could further manipulate.

Unlike any other Deepground candidate, he has no working restriction chip implanted.

Sure, one could argue that Nero severely wounded him, but the game clearly reminded us before the battle that Nero can easily disintegrate the bodies of his victims, while he reserves a different treatment to this particoular character. And, by the way, this wouldn't even be the first time a Tsviet pretends to kill someone as Shelke did the same with the Tsviet-candidate. As far as I know the main DoC game never explained how the Tsviets overpowered the remaining Restrictors, who replaced the Tsviet-candidate or what happened to Argento - who isn't part of the DoC cast. Sonon might be the missing piece of this sub-plot that may lead to new secondary arcs that could tie a bit more Deepground to the main FFVII story.

Totally agree!

The English localization is the audible reference language for almost all the non-Japanese speaker players (and the only one besides Japanese with specific lip-sync), it's absurd even to think that a professional company could make arbitrary changes without consulting the game developers and get away with it.

What are your thoughts on final fantasy 7 remake's localization

I enjoyed it! Both the Remake and Intermission—Yuffie's VA soared and I really like how they captured her characterization.

There's a pool of people in the fandom who have contention with it (some of which comes with A LOT of misunderstandings about localization, in general, but that's a lot of other branched conversations), but if I'm just speaking on the "what" [the content]—overall how the developers handled the ENG localization was pretty good and enjoyable. Most of what comes to mind makes sense contextually, and even after comparing it to the JPN (which I enjoy too, the VAs are as great as usual since they didn't really change), you can find the differences and common ground between them. In some scenes you have your typical levels of "different branches from the same tree" or "different part of the same branch" in direction, but overall the script still captures the same tonality and excitement of the JPN version. There are some VAs I know people didn't like at first (like Zack), but he's grown on me now. Otherwise, everyone is excellent to my ears.

It was a long wait, but I'm glad we're finally in the era of the remake of this game.