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cometoheavenfindmetherei think i've made two things incredibly clear in my last two posts...
1.) i don't think tifa lockheart is a very well-written character within the context of ffvii, and i hope that changes for the better in the remake, as i DO care about her
2.) i think aerith is an extremely well-written character with depth and intrigue and i love her more than any character basically ever
so... i think you can probably see where this is going.
today we're (or i'm, i guess lol) gonna talk about cloud strife. his life. his love. his mental illness. you get it...
so let's examine both sides of the love triangle within the bigger narrative (i'll bring up whenever you have an option to get love points but here's the way the love point/affection system/date mechanics start out (though if you are constantly talking about the ltd you probably already know lol) aerith: 50, tifa: 30 (??? you've known her longer and she clearly loves you so why does she start LOWER than a girl you just met), yuffie: 10, and barret: 0) ok let's move on to the actual story:
cloud strife was born in nibelheim and wasn't very well-liked by the other kids his age. he lost his father pretty early on in his life, as it seems, growing up in his small house with just his mother, claudia. he grew up in a really small village, too, so that doesn't really bode well for his childhood... there were probably less than 10 children even around his age there at all. tifa lockheart is his next-door-neighbor. she seems to be a bit more well-off financially than cloud at least, maybe everyone else in the village. her dad seems like an important personal within nibelheim and she clearly has money to pay for martial arts lessons form zangan (OR zangan and brian (her dad) are just friends... i don't know. idk if it tells us the reason anywhere either but if it does lmk i'd love to figure it out!!) she has a lot of friends and is the village sweetheart, as it were. everyone loves her and everyone tries to pretend cloud doesn't exist.
living such a lonely childhood warps your brain a lot tbh ( i would know :|) and i'm sure his attention was constantly brought towards tifa, who never made any attempt to include him in her friend group. cloud develops a complex about this and, as a result of his infatuation and need to be SEEN by tifa AND his admiration of sephiroth, he resolves to leave nibelheim for midgar and join SOLDIER.
when they're young, tifa's mother dies. she and her friends go to mt. nibel to search for tifa's mother and, gradually, her friends abandon her in fear. cloud follows them up the mountain to try and keep tifa safe and eventually both of them fall off a cliff and while cloud gets away with just "a few scrapped knees", tifa falls into a coma for seven days. her father forbids cloud from ever coming around their house or near tifa again, supposedly. this only serves to deepen cloud's loneliness and disdain.
he gets in fights with other kids and thinks tifa and her friends are "stupid for laughing at every little thing". the only person he really has in his life who cares for him until he leaves the village is his mother who, while kind and loving, seems to be a little overbearing.
when he's 14 and tifa is 13, cloud finally makes up his mind to leave the village. he asks tifa to meet him on the water tower in the middle of the village and, to his GREAT surprise, she actually shows up. he tries to impress her by telling her his plan to leave the village and become a great SOLDIER like sephiroth. tifa, upset that one of the last people she knows in the village is leaving, "strongarms" cloud into a promise that, should he get into soldier and become as great as he says he will, he'll come back to save her if she's ever in a pinch. cloud, seemingly reluctantly agrees, saying: "fine, i promise." pleased, tifa and cloud leave that meeting and go on their separate paths.
cloud leaves for midgar at age 14 and fails to get into SOLDIER like he planned, but joins shinra as an infantryman instead, hoping one day to become a part of soldier like he planned. during this time, tifa spends a lot of time thinking about her "hero" cloud, wondering how he's doing and if he got into SOLDIER like he'd planned. she frequently reads the news, hoping to hear any information about him. she never hears a thing.
when cloud is 16, he meets zack and sephiroth (and most of the main shinra people tbh) and he becomes close friends with zack during this time, easily drawn in by his friendliness and bright personality. eventually the three of them go on a mission to cloud home town, nibelheim. cloud is beyond embarrassed by the fact that he bragged about becoming a SOLDIER as great as sephiroth before he left and decides to use his infantryman helmet to hide his face during their stay in nibelheim.
when they get there, tifa is supposed to be their guide. she's disappointed that cloud isn't the one who showed up, but does her job as a guide very well. she takes a picture with zack and sephiroth in front of the shinra mansion, the piece of proof that is later needed to prove that cloud was "not in nibelheim" 5 years ago when the incident occured.
during their visit to nibelheim, cloud goes to see his mother. she wonders about his life in midgar and observes that he's grown into a handsome young man. she, embarrassingly for cloud, asks if women are "hounding him day and night" and tells him that he'd better get an older girlfriend who'll take care of him. cloud says he's fine and (i think???) spends the night either in his home or the motel in the village.
(i'm a bit hazy on the details of the "incident" but ik all the tifa/cloud parts so don't worry ... also if i'm wrong about anything lmk)
the next day, the three of them visit the nibelheim reactor in mt. nibel, escorted there by tifa. she isn't allowed inside, and cloud is stationed outside to make sure she doesn't try to go inside after zack and sephiroth. something happens inside the reactor that causes sephiroth to go missing. everyone is looking for him but can't find him so they stay in nibelheim even longer. zack eventually finds him in the basement of the shinra mansion, reading about experiments that shinra has done on humans over the years, including himself. he has gone fully insane and goes to steal his "mother", jenova's, body from the nibelheim reactor.
on the way, sephiroth burns down nibelheim and kills claudia, cloud's mother, and brian, tifa's dad. tifa finds zangan helping an injured man and asks him where her father is. zangan worries as tifa runs off towards the reactor after sephiroth. he asks zack to go after her. tifa finds her father, dying, and after he dies in her arms, she exclaims her hatred for mako, shinra, sephiroth, soldiers, and everything. she takes masamune with the intention of killing sephiroth but her slashes her away and she falls down the stairs of the reactor, injured. zack finds her and tries to help but she tells him that she hates him. zack goes after sephiroth himself and gets injured. all of a sudden, cloud (disguised as an infantryman still) runs in and, after taking the buster sword from zack, stabs sephiroth through the back as he's talking to jenova.
he then leaves the room, assuming sephiroth is dead, to make sure that tifa is okay. she's unconscious and doesn't know that cloud saved her or was even there, but she's alright. sephiroth tries to leave, injured, cradling jenova's head in his arms. sephiroth stabs cloud as he tries to intervene yet again, but cloud uses his own sword to throw him and jenova's head into the lifestream. zack and cloud, both pretty badly injured, attempt to leave nibelheim but are caught by hojo's team that are scouting for survivors. they're taken in and used as experiments... injected with jenova/sephiroth's cells and made to take large amounts of mako into their bodies. zack eventually wakes from his mako induced coma (? lol) and breaks cloud out of there, who is still unconscious. they make their way out of the shinra mansion and towards nibelheim, constantly being pursued by shinra.
eventually, zack is gunned down just outside of midgar and, when cloud wakes up, he gives cloud his buster sword as a display of friendship and tells him to "live for the both of them". stricken by grief and fresh out of a mako/jenova induced coma, cloud takes those words to heart and crafts a "new" identity for himself, based on zack's accomplishments and things that he's seen during his employ in shinra. he gets to midgar and collapses at the sector 7 train station, where tifa finds him. it's been five years since the nibelheim incident.
tifa has a bit of a selfish desire to keep him around, in her sight. she's overjoyed to see him again and both of them misremember what happened 5 years ago, cloud more than tifa. tifa gets him a job with avalanche, a small eco-terrorist organization, that operates in a secret room in her bar, seventh heaven. barret, the leader of this cell of avalanche, has a daughter named marlene that tifa takes care of when her father goes out on missions. the two of them are very close and tifa acts very motherly and protective towards her.
cloud joins the members of avalanche on a mission to blow up the mako reactor in sector 1 of midgar. this mission is the opening event of the game. at this point, everything i've written down before this, is yet to be learned. barret constantly berates cloud during the mission, and cloud doesn't act very friendly towards the members of avalanche in retaliation. this is another example of his inferiority complex fed into by his rejection from the people around him. he is cold and a bit of a hardass but is never explicitly mean to anyone because, at his core, he is still just a shy and kind-hearted country boy.
**his mask during this part of the game reminds me of the mask he put on when he and tifa were children, the one that always got him into fights. he's used to not owning up to his feelings and acting like someone cooler and better as a defense mechanism. it's not because he thinks he's zack, so let's get THAT conversation out of the way right fucking now LMAO... all the times he was able to show his real awkward, kind-hearted, goofy self have been times when he's felt accepted for who he is. with zack, during the promise he made with tifa, in the friendships he makes during the duration of the game, and in front of a special girl i won't mention until later... moving on!**
after the mission, you run through the streets of sector 1 where everyone is panicking and afraid because of the mako reactor explosion. here, on his way to the train back to sector 7, he meets a young woman selling flowers. you have the OPTION of buying a flower for 1 gil and later giving it to tifa or marlene, or telling her it's dangerous and that she should leave. the latter choice gives you no flower to give to tifa or marlene for affection points.
commonly, in every piece of the compilation after the og came out, it refers to cloud buying a flower from aerith. this is the "canon choice", as it were. it has no bearing on your relationship with aerith so people commonly just accept this one as being canon without much thought. whether or not you choose to give the flower to tifa or marlene, the flower is displayed in seventh heaven and both girls refer to it as "our flower".
moving on, you meet back up with avalanche in the train and ride on to sector 7 of midgar where you go to seventh heaven and YOU (not cloud, obviously) meet tifa for the first time. after making a choice of whether or not to give her a flower or let her make you a drink (she likes it when you do choose to drink, probably so she can show off her drink making skills hehehe) and the day ends after that pretty much.
the next day, cloud is slated to go with avalanche to bomb the sector 5 reactor. in the morning, you get the OPTION to compliment tifa or make a joke about barret, raising your relationship with either of them. tifa is coming along on this mission, for whatever reason. she reminds cloud of the promise he made to her, no matter what you've chosen. marlene is left in charge of the bar (and her animations behind the bar are SO cute shut up) and cloud, tifa, and barret all head to the train station to get to sector 5.
things go wrong at this point and then you have to get to the last train to jump out as fast as you can (which raises your affection points with both barret AND tifa, if done successfully... har har) and you run along the train tracks until you get into sector 5. you bomb the sector 5 reactor successfully, but the president of shinra, ... president shinra, is there and then goes all Big Bad Guy and makes you fight a giant robot.
when the robot explodes, it cuts the platform that our three protagonists are standing on, leaving barret and tifa on one side and cloud hanging from the other. here you have another OPTION to act strong (more points for barret) or admit that you're struggling (more points for tifa... also a surprise considering that she doesn't like when he struggles but ok.) and tifa yells that cloud can't die yet because she has something to tell him and then he falls. you enter a transitionary cutscene as barret carries tifa off to safety as the entire reactor explodes around them and cloud falls into the sector 5 slums. then you have an in-game cutscene where cloud talks to someone about his past with "a few scrapped knees" ... y'know... from earlier... it's him, is what i'm trying to say. not zack like SOME people think 🙄
you, or i should say, cloud, awakens to a familiar girl hovering over his unconscious body in a bed of flowers in an abandoned church. obviously, any idiot can recognize that this is the girl you bought the flower from (or told to run away if you decided NOT to buy a flower???) and depending on whether or not you actually bought the flower, after you tell her you recognize her as the flower peddler, she'll thank you for buying one of her flowers and then introduce herself as aerith (or aeris but... i'm used to writing aerith so).
suddenly a red-headed man in a suit enters the church... aerith asks cloud to stick around and when reno (of the turks) finally introduces himself, she asks cloud to be her bodyguard (for the price of a date which cloud accepts, non-optionally lol) and escort her home. after cloud kicks reno's ass, you go through the back of the church and have to do this stupid barrel dropping mini game that will get you more affection points with aerith if you do it correctly. you leave the church and make your way into the sector 5 slums via the rooftops of abandoned houses. cloud and aerith bond during this moment, and have great chemistry i should say :) ... she makes him laugh and he makes her laugh in return. this is the only time cloud is animated laughing (Genuinely, while not possessed by jenova/sephiroth) in the entire game.
eventually, you reach aerith's house and meet her mother, elmyra. she introduces cloud as her bodyguard and elmyra thanks cloud for escorting aerith home. cloud says he needs to get back to the sector 7 slums, to tifa's bar. this makes aerith inquire about tifa asking whether or not tifa is cloud's girlfriend. cloud has the OPTION of saying "no way!" or "yeah, that's right." and... obviously... it's not right. i mean c'mon, there's a logical and right way to answer this question, the way cloud would. (he'd say no... because she isn't... y'know?) anyways if you say "no way!", aerith will make fun of cloud for getting so upset about it and then admit to being a bit happy about his answer, anyways.
aerith promises to escort cloud to sector 7 in the morning. elmyra asks cloud to leave before the morning, not wanting her daughter to be involved with a SOLDIER. cloud agrees, under the assumption that he'd just be putting aerith in danger by dragging her along anyways. cloud and aerith head upstairs after eating dinner with elmyra (we assume, since we don't see this although it'd be hilarious) and cloud has a dream of his mother, claudia, about the conversation they had when he visited nibelheim 5 years ago before her death. the implication of the conversation being remembered in aerith's house is either because elmyra reminded him of his own doting mother, or because aerith reminds cloud of the type of girl his mother was talking about during their conversation. or both!
cloud sneaks out (in a minigame) of aerith's house late into the night while aerith sits awake, doing nothing in the room next door. somehow she gets ahead of him as he walks on to sector 6. he admits that he didn't want to ask her to come along because he knew it'd be dangerous and aerith, frustated with that attitude from him (even though she asked him to be her bodyguard LMFAO she's so funny <3), says "are you done?" then they move along through sector 6 and find themselves in a small playground, usually referred to as midori park.
aerith convinces cloud to take a break and sit with her atop a large cat structure. they talk about aerith's job and aerith insinuates that cloud reminds her of her first love, who was also in SOLDIER. the gates to sector 7 open then, a chocobo cart assing through them with a girl in the back wearing a fancy dress. cloud immediately recognizes it as tifa and aerith runs off after the cart, not even KNOWING tifa (i love her <33333333) into wall market. cloud tells her not to run off and go home but resigns himself to her stubborn attitude and shakes his head and follows her into wall market.
they have a fun romp in wall market and eventually find out that tifa is trying to become don corneo's "bride" for some reason. they decide to infiltrate don corneo's mansion as two other bridal candidates, aerith convincing cloud to crossdress so neither of them have to go in alone. then you go through the long process of trying to get cloud the perfect diguise lmfao...
depending on how good cloud's disguise is, one of the three (cloud, tifa, or aerith) will be chosen to enter don corneo's bedroom. if cloud is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with barret or complying with don corneo. if aerith is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with tifa. if tifa is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with aerith... however if tifa is chosen, before cloud enters the don's bedroom, he hears aerith scream and goes to save her instead. (... okay... we get it buddy... you're in love...) also interestingly enough, if either tifa or aerith gets chosen, the "right answer" to get either of their affection points up is to prioritize aerith's safety.
yes, even tifa's.
either way, though, the outcome is the same. the other two who don't get chosen run into the don's bedroom after defeating all his goons and they're all dropped into the sewers. you get another OPTION on who to talk to first, getting points with the girl you choose. aerith lands closest to cloud so the logical choice is to go up to her first, but this could really go either way. i guess. you fight don corneo's monster, abzu, and then trek through the sewer till the three of them reach the train graveyard in sector 7.
meanwhile, through all of this, tifa is having a dilemma about the information they got from don corneo. he told them that shinra plans on dropping the plate above the sector 7 slums, effectively killing everyone both on the plate and under it, in order to destroy avalanche. tifa, rightfully so, is worried the whole time they're on the way back. after making it through the train graveyard, the three of them get to the pillar holding up the sector 7 plate. avalanche are fighting off the shinra infantryman and turks and in the process; jessie, biggs, and wedge die. cloud and tifa are both very upset by this, but we're more "shocked" to see cloud upset, as he said he didn't care about them at all. obviously that was a fuckin' lie but it's the biggest indication you get that cloud is bullshitting his way through life right now, pretending to not be phased by anything.
tifa and cloud run to the top of the pillar while tifa tasks aerith with saving marlene from seventh heaven. we don't get to see this scene in the original game, though. when tifa and cloud reach the top of the pillar, they find barret fighting off the rest of the infantrymen and help him. reno and rude, another turk, show up to drop the plate once and for all. you fight them off but they still get to the mechanism to drop the plate before our protagonists do and there's no way to stop the plate from dropping.
during this, tseng, the leader (?) of the turks, flies by in a helicopter with aerith. he slaps her and informs the three heroes that he's taking the "ancient" back into the custody of shinra, "where she belongs". cloud resolves IMMEDIATELY to go and save her, even though their minds should be on the plate dropping right now. aerith remains cloud's top priority until they get her back later... but anyways!
the plate is dropped, and our three heroes zipline out of the sector 7 slums and into midori park, which is now partially destroyed. they wake up in front of the, now unusable, gate to sector 7 which has debris piled up inside of it. tifa and barret cry out for their lost friends, and marlene, and attempt to console each other. cloud says that marlene is probably alive since aerith was alright. barret is obviously skeptical, having no reason to trust a girl he's never met with the safety of his daughter. cloud leaves the screen and we walk away from tifa and barret into the collapsed part of sector 6.
they catch up almost immediately and resolve to go save aerith altogether. they visit aerith's house, where aerith left marlene with her mother elmyra. barret is overjoyed to hear that his daughter is safe and runs upstairs to see her. cloud and tifa join him, tifa waiting outside as you get another OPTION when marlene walks up to cloud and says that aerith was asking lots of things about him and says that she definitely likes cloud. cloud can say either "i don't know..." which will make marlene say "stupid!", but you'll get points with tifa. (it's also fair to say that 'i don't know' doesn't mean that he doesn't like aerith, just that he doesn't know if SHE likes HIM) OR you can have him say "let's hope so." to which marlene will happily reply "i won't tell tifa!" and you'll get points for aerith. funnily enough it's been confirmed in other compilation materials by square enix that the latter option is the "canon option" as it enriches marlene's character and makes her seem clever and "attuned to the female mind". kinda weird but... alright!
afterwards, elmyra tells the three of them that she isn't aerith's birth mother. she tells the story of how her husband never came back from leave, although she went to the train station everyday to wait, just in case he showed up. one day, she saw a woman and a young girl sitting by the train platform. the woman didn't look healthy and as elmyra apporached, the woman grabbed her arm and said "take aerith somewhere safe." and died. elmyra was lonely on her own so she gladly took aerith to her home and raised her as her own daughter.
one day, aerith came up to elmyra and told her not to be sad because "a man you really love just died. he came a long way to say goodbye but he had to return to the planet." elmyra didn't believe her but a few days later she got a letter in the mail from shinra saying that her husband was killed in action in the war with wutai. later, as aerith and elmyra were becoming a happy family, tseng visited their house looking to take her back to shinra. he called aerith an "ancient" and suggested that she can hear the voice of the planet and lead shinra to "the promised land". almyra didn't know what any of that meant and aerith denied the very possibility of it being true, but they all knew that there was more to her than meets the eye.
elmyra admits that she knew that aerith would be taken back someday and that it was only a matter of time. cloud tells elmyra that he wants to save aerith and that since shinra took her forcibly this time, there's no guarantee that she'll stay safe. she lets the three of them go save aerith and from the point on, the party's dynamic changes. cloud becomes the de facto leader as he leades tifa and barret to the shinra building through some... really exhausting means. he never once gives up his resolve until the three of you find aerith in hojo's lab.
hojo is planning on making aerith and a canine-like being known as "red xiii" (who i'll be referring to as nanaki for the rest of this post bc my x key doesn't work and bc that's his REAL NAME) mate as they're both the last of their respective races. you defeat some of hojo's creations and get to the lab where he's holding aerith. (i can't remember if this is before or after your first run-in with jenova so there's.... that... i guess...) barret shoots the lab door and lets out nanaki and aerith but cloud runs in to "save her" anyways lmfao...
nanaki apologizes to aerith, after hojo escapes, for startling her and everybody else. he introduces himself and the 5 of you split up in various ways as you travel up the floors of the shinra building. eventually you're caught and put in handcuffs before president shinra who locks you up in three different cells on the same floor as hojo's lab. (OH YEAH THAT'S WHEN YOU SEE JENOVA nvm i rmbr now sorry) tifa is sharing a cell with cloud, aerith is in a cell on her own, to the left, and barret and nanaki are in a cell together to the right. you have the OPTION of saying either "leave it to me." or "kinda hard." to tifa when she asks whether or not you can break out. (cloud would probably say the first one lbr, but this part isn't even in the remake so... oh well. also it's stupid but you can spam this choice to get more points with her (or less if hat's how you wanna play) which is like... cheating but ok.)
either way, you can now choose who cloud is thinking about first, second, and third. choosing nanaki first gives you absolutely no points so it's kind of pointless unless you want tifa's date. aerith's name pops up first so it's most logical to choose her first, but no matter when you choose her, cloud and aerith flirt about their "promised date" and it makes tifa jealous when she hears about it because she's "seeing the world they're creating without her" or some shit lol. if you choose barret i... don't remember what happens but i think he talks about avalanche or marlene. i don't rmbr what nanaki says either :| sigh.
anyways, after that you all go to sleep and when you wake up all the guards are dead. your cell door is unlocked so you open everyone elses and look around. you go on ahead with barret and nanaki while aerith and tifa stay behind and talk to each other. on the way through hojo's lab you see purple blood on the floor coming from a big containment cell labeled "JENOVA" and you see a headless body in there which prompts cloud to have another freakout.
you all eventually head up the president shinra's office and he's dead, with a sword sticking out of his back. you then proceed to escape the shinra building (it's really drawn out and i don't remember a lot of it tbh) cloud fights rufus as the others go on ahead, though tifa demands on waiting for cloud as the other three go on ahead. you meet back up with tifa on your way down and then you switch over to aerith, barret, and nanaki as they fight a giant robot in an elevator. when you get to the bottom floor of the shinra building, tifa and cloud descend the stairs in STYLE in a motorcycle and like... a blue... motor truck? that i honestly wish i could buy bc it kinda fucks. and then you play this motorcycle mini game that's admittedly kinda fun when you get used to it. you also fight another fatass robot and then you escape midgar!!!
afterwards, outside of the gate to the sector 7 slums, everyone waits for cloud to talk to them lol... aerith says she's a bit afraid to leave midgar but she has her bodyguard with her, so it's okay. i don't remember what anyone else says because i'm stupid and unobservant :| anyways barret tells everyone to split up and head to kalm which is to the northeast of midgar. when you get to kalm, everyone meets up in the second floor of the inn as cloud recounts "everything he knows" about sephiroth, the man who stole jenova's head and killed president shinra, and how it affecte him personally.
you see this all through "his eyes" in a playable flashback where he takes the spot of zack (though you wouldn't know that yet unless you ... knew. but i digress.) and you relive the events of the nibelheim incident WRONGLY. tifa hesitates a bit after hearing cloud recount those memories, thinking that something seems off about his version of events and hers... but she decides not to mention it. when leaving the kalm inn, you have the OPTION of getting more points with barret (and a few more options in kalm, irt mako energy and how bad/good it is) and then you move on.
you go through the mountains and find a chocobo farm where 'chocobo bill' says that you need to catch a chocobo in order to get across the marsh safely so you don't get attacked by a midgar zolom (a giant snake that would literally kill your entire party this early in the game lmfao) so you do all that and then you move on to the mythril mines, where you meet up with the turks again and (MAYBE?) fight them? you also meet elena here, the newest turk who is a bit inept at her job but still really lovable <3...
afterwards, you have the opportunity to get yuffie into your party if you hang around the forests long enough. you have to beat her in battle and then answer all her questions correctly or else she'll steal money from you and run away, leaving you to have to fight her again. for every correct answer you get affection points with her but keep in mind that yuffie is just another OPTION in the original game... though i'm excited for her to just BE THERE in the remake :")
next, you're near fort condor, where you do a tower defense mini game that's easier to lose for the prize than to win so... that's fuckin' stupid. fort condor is all an OPTION, too, at least this early in the game... but it you help them you get points with EVERYONE so you might as well!!!
after that, you head to junon, where you get a summon materia, rescue a little girl from drowning, and have to disguise cloud as a shinra infantryman (and the rest of the party, with the exception of barret, who dresses like a sailor)... you have to do more mini games to impress the new president, rufus, and heidegger. then you get on the cargo ship with everybody in disguise and you have the OPTIONS of giving yuffie tranquilizers to calm her seasickness, telling aerith that you'll take her on an airship someday, and talking to tifa about a war or some shit.
afterwards, you fight jenova (for the first time) when sephiroth appears. he doesn't recognize cloud, though... leading you to reconsider cloud's story from kalm. everyone on the ship except heidegger, rufus, and our 6 heroes are dead/ko'd and the cargo ship docks in costa del sol. here, your party splits up and, depending on who is in your party at the time, you can see them out and about interacting with the people and the environment. tifa and aerith will be suntanning together on the beach, barret can be found modeling the sailor uniform, nanaki is "playing" with kids in the middle of town, and yuffie is taking over for the materia vendor.
after resting up and leaving costa del sol, the part heads towards mt. corel. you go up the mountain path after talking to a man who said he saw a man in a "black cape" pass through, and head towards the corel reactor. then you walk on some train tracks for a while until you get to the next screen where, if either tifa OR aerith aren't in your party, on of them will cheer cloud on from below... i find that so cute omg. anyways you have the OPTION to kill a bunch of baby birds' mom for some treasure you don't even really need (which i don't think cloud would do but HEY... it's an OPTION so he must do it lmfao....) then, after some manuevering through the area, you pass through a large suspension bridge into north corel and this is where barret's backstory is told.
before you board the tram that takes you to the gold saucer (for the first time), barret tells everyone why the people of corel hate him so much. then you go to the gold saucer where you can choose who to accompany you through the park as barret goes through his shit... aerith teases him a bit before he runs off, trying to get him into a better mood, which tifa goes along with too (seriously i don't know why people think they don't like each other OR how this moment puts aerith in a "bad, mean-spirited light" when tifa literally goes along with it LMFAO????
so you go through the park and eventually end up in wonder square where you meet the fortune telling puppet, cait sith. regardless of who you have in your party, the outcome will be the same. he will give cloud three fortunes:
1.) ordinary luck. it will be an active fortune. give into the good will of others and something big will happen after summer.
2.) be careful of forgetfulness. your lucky color is blue.
3.) what you purse will be yours, but you will lose something DEAR.
all three of them are foreshadowing, obviously. the 2nd one foreshadows the twist near the end about cloud's "true identity", and the third foreshadows aerith's death. (not really sure about the first one but uh.... yknow)
anyways! cait sith joins your party no matter what and then you head on to battle square where they say that some man with a gun for an arm is going on a rampage, obviously meant to imply that it's barret. cloud & co. get in trouble for being accomplices and are thrown into corel prison, below the gold saucer.
we get the peak of barret's backstory here, as we find him and he explains what happened to the town of corel. he explains that he had a friend name dyne and that shinra convinced everyone in town, besides dyne, to be alright with the placement of a mako reactor in their town. one day dyne and barret leave town only to come back to it in flames. they are intercepted by scarlet and some infantrymen and shot at, causing barret to lose his arm and dyne to fall to his supposed death.
you meet dyne at the edge of a cliff. he fights barret and then admits to him that he hates everything and that he wants to kill everyone for taking away his loved ones. barret assures him that marlene is alive and then dyne gives him his wife's necklace, to give to mr. coates, and then jumps to his death. later, you meet mr. coates who tells you the only way to get out of corel prison is to win a chocobo race. so... you do that. afterwards, you get the buggy which makes it easier to get around the world map.
next the party has the OPTION of going to gongaga, zack's home town. you fight reno and rude there after they have a conversation about who likes who (rude like tifa, elena like tseng, tseng likes "the ancient", apparently... also... would reno refer to her as aerith since they've known each other so long? kinda weird but okay.) after the fight, you can head to the ruined reactor and see a cutscene of scarlet and tseng discussing things before taking off in a helicopter. then you can actually go INTO gongaga (sorry i'm referencing a guide and i'm getting lost in all the info even though i beat the game already LMAO)
in gongaga, if you have aerith or tifa (or both) in your party, go can go into zack's parent's house where they'll talk about zack. aerith or tifa (or both...lol) will walk out once they hear about zack and you can leave his parent's house and ask them what's wrong. aerith will explain that the first ove she had been talking about in midori park was zack and that she always assumed he just moved on with someone else because he was a "ladies' man"... you have the option of making cloud say "poor guy..." or "(jealous... envious...)", both of which raise your points with her (also... funnily enough, if you say "(jealous...envious...)" you get +2 points, even though both responses to tifa only give you one point either way... also aerith has a secret dialogue that was written into the game when you say it but it's impossible to get bc you have to have an unattainable amount of affection points with her, even though her number is the highest at the beginning ... but you can't cheat her points up like you can with tifa so :/ anyways, it's something to the effect of her saying that she's glad that cloud is jealous lol...)
with tifa, you have the OPTION of ignoring her or talking to her, regardless of what you say, will also give you a point with her... the convo is about zack as well.
then you move on to cosmo canyon, nanaki's hometown and the first place he actually refers to himself as 'nanaki'. he lets the gatekeeper (i guess that's what he is lol?) know that you're his friends and then you're free to roam around. irt the love triangle, you can see tifa and aerith drinking together in the pub, indicating that they enjoy spending time with one another even when cloud isn't around (because... they're friends and they love each other... shut up!!!!)
later, during the time when everyone sits around the fire and has something to say, if you talk to everyone (there are NO OPTIONS during this scene, everything is just... how it is!) then you should see tifa remarking how bonfires are funny because they make you remember "all sorts of things" and then she says "cloud, about 5 years ago... no. forget it. i'm afraid to ask." to which cloud asks "what is it?" and tifa answers "it feels like... it feels like you're going far away... you really, really are...... you... right?" which lets you in a bit more on cloud's story/lie/real identity whatever you wanna call it and indicates how she feels about him.
when you talk to aerith, however, she talks about herself. "i learned a lot. the elders taught me many things. about the cetra... about the promised land... i'm...... alone... i'm all alone now..." to which cloud slips up and says "but i'm... we're here for you, right?" to which aerith shakes her head and says "i know. i know, but... i am the only...... cetra." and cloud sees saddened by this, asking "does that mean we can't help?" to which aerith turns away from him, clearly upset by something. this is to foreshadow how deeply cloud cares about her, along with the fact that she's hiding her true feelings and pain behind her smile and bright attitude.
after that, bugenhagen takes cloud, nanaki, and a party member of your choice into the cave of gi and you finish nanaki's storyline/backstory.
from there, you move on to nibelheim, cloud and tifa's hometown, which has been mysteriously restored to the way it was exactly before the incident 5 years ago, which again calls cloud's memories into question. you go around town and no one recognizes him and cloud doesn't recognize anybody, either. he enters his old home he shared with his mother to find a woman living there who tells him that HE never lived there. it's a very confusing scene to see, the first time around at least lmfao...
anyways, you go into the shinra mansion and get vincent, if you so desire, at this point and then head up to mt. nibel. after fighting the materia keeper you head on to rocket town where you meet cid and complete your party! you go through part of cid's story and then get the tiny bronco to drive around on the shallow parts of the water. after this, you can go to wutai and do all the sidequests, OPTIONALLY, if you're trying to get yuffie's date or more items, that is.
next you head back to the gold saucer and after you go to the ghost hotel and cloud re-explains the whole story, now with new context and party members, everyone heads off to sleep and you get to go on the date that you worked so hard for. there are no other options throughout the rest of the game (at least ones that impact anything, besides the 'under the highwind' scene with tifa which should also be locked in depending on how high your affection rating with her is. you can even get the date with aerith AND the high affection highwind scene with tifa if you favor both girls (and don't cheat to raise tifa's points), as aerith always remains in the lead that way.) and here's where everything from the first disc crescendos.
the first part of the date is always the same, at least with all three girls. you visit the part of the gold saucer where the play is taking place and cloud and your preferred girl get to act in the play, which can end in cloud kissing their hand (this can happen with all three of them... so... there u go...) or getting slapped bc you asked for the "princesses' measurements" (which he literally would never do bc he's not a pervert so... sorry bout it). cloud and barret are turned away for not "being a couple" (ok homophobe), though.
afterwards, you and your girl (OR BARRET) take a ride on the gondola and get to see the sights of the gold saucer while talking about your relationship.
barret complains about being here with cloud and tells him he should've asked one of the girls to come with him instead, even though barret is the one that asked him to take a walk with him LMAO... then he brings up marlene in a very weird turn of coversation so we're gonna skip that! basically barret just wants to see his daughter and dunks on cloud lmfao...
yuffie gets kinda shy and then stands up and gives cloud a kiss on the cheek and then sits back down, visibly embarrassed and says "i just felt like doing that..." cloud says nothing. yuffie starts to get angry at his lack of response and tells him to "just say something!" to which cloud only says "...something." which, again, earns him a slap.
both of these dates are obviously just jokes, since neither barret nor yuffie are part of the "official love triangle" (also yuffie is 16 and cloud is 21 so :| but barret/cloud is still fair game if ur into that tbh)
so where it REALLY gets interesting and character development-y and you actually get INSIGHT into cloud and the girls' characters with, obviously, with tifa and aerith.
on your date with tifa, when she enters cloud's hotel room to pick him up it goes like this:
t: "cloud..."
c: "what's wrong?"
t: "......"
t: "i thought about what i was going to say, but, it's kinda embarrassing."
[she scratches her head awkwardly]
t: "hey, cloud! why don't the two of us sneak out of here and spend some time together?"
[she runs behind him and pushes him out of the room]
t: "come on, let's go!"
c: "hey."
when they get on the gondola, after seeing the sights, she laments that she wants to "just come out and say it." but isn't able to talk about/tell cloud something important (which implies that she either has feelings for him or she wants to tell him about their differing memories of the events of 5 years ago... or both... probably both tbh) and states that "aerith would probably be able to just come out and say it.", indicating that, even though she gets along very well with aerith and cares deeply about her, she still feels jealous of her AND her relationship with cloud. then we shift into the 'important' part of the conversation, w/ their dialogue overlayed on the picture of the gold saucer... tifa says "cloud...? sometimes being old friends is hard. i mean, timing is everything." to which he says "yeah..." and she says "cloud...? i..........." and trails off as their ride on the gondola ends. they get off the ride and tifa says "cloud, i really had fun tonight." and he asks her "by the way, what did you want to say a minute ago?" to which she gets flustered and exclaims "n-nothing! nothing..." which clearly confuses cloud as he goes "?" (god you're so clueless, cloud...) and she finally says "oh, look at the time. we should be getting back." to which cloud nods and walks off as tifa awkwardly scratches the back of her head and follows after him, ending their date and propelling them into the cait sith chase scene.
on your date with aerith, when she picks him up from his hotel room... here's how THAT goes:
a: "hee, hee!" (god, she's so cute LMAO)
c: "what's wrong?"
a: "let's go on a date!"
c: "what?"
a: "a d-a-t-e! or haven't you ever gone on one?"
(you actually do get another choice here... interesting how you didn't get a choice in tifa's date, though...)
c: "don't take me for a fool." / "well, not a real one..."
a: "hey... a little touchy, aren't we?" / "no, just a mixed-up kid..."
a: "oh well. come one, let's go."
c: "hey."
on the gondola, after seeing the sights, aerith starts to think out loud. ".........first off, it bothered me how you looked exactly alike. two completely different people, but look exactly the same. the way you walk, gesture...i think i must have seen him again, in you...but you're different. things are different..." (also i think her animations deserve to be noted during the conversation... she's very expressive and talks while looking right at him until the last line "things are different" when she lowers her head.) then we pull away to THAT part of the conversation where aerith says "cloud...i'm searching for you..." to which he replies with a confused string of ellipses "............?" (god he's useless <3 i love him) and aerith says "i want to meet you." to which he says "but i'm right here." and aerith's next words kinda mirror her ones when she got all pensive during their conversation in cosmo canyon. she says... "(i know, i know... what i mean is...) "i want to meet..... you." (i'm gonna cry brb...) and then their ride on the gondola ends. after they get off, aerith is back to her usual "cheery" self. "i had fun tonight. let's go together again. don't you like being with me?" (and you get ANOTHER OPTION???? this is crazy how did i not notice this before omg)
to which you can make cloud reply "no i don't." or "that's not it." and she'll reply with either "oh, don't tease me like that!" or "i'm glad. next time we come, let's take our time and go on more rides." and then she says the same as tifa, "oh, look at the time. we'd better get going." and the date ends and leads into the cait sith chase scene.
it's... very interesting how you still get choices during aerith's date but not during tifa's? cloud also talks more (tho not much more, i realize that lmao) on his date with aerith than with anybody else, an indication of how comfortable he feels around her.
after this, no matter which date you go on, cait sith betrays everyone and hands the keystone over to tseng, revealing he works for shinra. he also reveals that, if cloud and the others intend to leave him behind, he has kidnapped marlene and elymra and is hiding them somewhere, so he HAS to be brought along. cait sith reveals that shinra is going to the temple of the ancients and aerith has to be in your party during the temple of the ancients.
soooo... you go there and do all the puzzles and aerith reveals that she can hear the wisdom of the cetra more than ever before. sephiroth gravely hurt tseng which makes aerith cry because, even though they were only a constant presence in her life because they were trying to capture her for shinra, she still cares for the turks and then admits that "there are probably only a handful of people out there who really know me."
you move on and see sephiroth in glimpses, getting to see precisely what happened to tseng before your party got there. he reveals his plan and then cloud goes crazy once they're in the room with the black materia but aerith snaps him out of it, worrying for him greatly as she's never seen him act like this. (no one has though and even though she's worried and scared for his wellbeing, she's still there for him and tries to be encouraging, not wanting him to worry <3 that's love baby!) afterwards, you discuss the best way to tak the black materia with aerith and your other party member and cait sith calls cloud's PHS to say that he'll do it as he owes them that much and because he's the only one who won't die if he attempts to take the black materia. he says he'll read their fortunes one more time and aerith asks him how compatible she is with cloud. he says their starts are perfect for one another and "seems to forsee their eventual wedding" and even says "poor tifa!" ... like i get wanting tifa to win after everyone constantly brings attention to the fact that she's fighting a losing battle but... she's not even trying :/ so why would she deserve to "win".
anyways.
after cait sith is sucked into the black materia, the temple disappears and aerith and cloud are left deep in the earth, in the pit left behind by it. sephiroth is floating around and "convinces" cloud to hand over the black materia, though he really just takes control over the part of his mind weakened by jenova's cells. aerith tries to call him while cloud is having a mental breakdown of his powerlessness in front of sephiroth and sephiroth takes over him again, scaring aerith and starting the beat the shit out of her as the other part member tries to get down to them so he doesn't kill her. cait sith comes back with a new body and it's... a really uncomfortable scene and it's sooooo fucking sad it hurts A LOT bro...
cloud passes out after this and is carried back to gongaga by his friends. he has a shared dream with aerith and this is the last time they ever get to talk before her death. she worries over cloud's wellbeing, telling him not to worry about what happened and to take care of his mental health and let HER take care of sephiroth, since she's the only one who can deal with his plan. she assures cloud that she'll "come back when it's all over." cloud tries to chase after her but is frozen in place. sephiroth descends from the sky, insinuating that he's going after aerith to stop her from stopping his plan. then cloud awakens to tifa and barret standing over him, worried about him, and telling him that aerith is no where to be found.
cloud isn't surprised, knowing that she left and that sephiroth is right on her heels. tifa and barret ask him what's keeping him from going after her immediately, then. cloud admits, in a moment of sincere sensitivity, that he's afraid of sephiroth taking over his mind and making him hurt aerith (or anybody else) again. barret and tifa, who are supposed to be his friends, treat him like he's being stupid. tifa is, at the very least, worried about him, but both of them treat him like he's being selfish and a psycho. i really hope they fix that in the remake bc it's a bit fucked up to see as a mentally ill person lmfao...
they leave and let cloud decide on his own what to do, hoping that he'll join then to help aerith because tbh... none of them really have a reason to go after her at this point and they're all very disjointed people ... less of a team when cloud isn't around. cloud eventually, obviously, joins them and they race to bone village to find a lunar harp to get through the forest where aerith met cloud in their "shared dream". they find themselves in the city of the ancients and, after sleeping in one of the abandoned houses, cloud admits that he can feel aerith and sephiroth IN HIS SOUL. as they get closer to where aerith is, cloud, once again, states that he knows where aerith is because he can "hear" her and feel her presence.
we all know what's about to happen................................ so let's get on with it.
they eventually get to the alter where aerith is sitting, focused, in a ray of sunlight, in prayer. cloud gestures to the other party members to stay put and hops up and over to her. when he reaches her sephiroth/jenova attempts to overtake his mind again, making him approach her with his sword out and, no matter what you try to do with the controller to move him away, you're stuck until you press the action button as cloud attempts to kill her himself (on behalf of jenova) ... he shakes himself out of it right before the last second as his friends yell out to him and asks "ugh... what are you making me do?" (though the english translation is... really bad there but whatever lmao)
the cutscene starts after that. aerith opens her eyes to see cloud standing there, staring at her. she gives him a big, bright smile and then sephiroth descends from the sky, stabbing her from behind through the stomach. she dies almost instantly, her ribbon and the white materia (glowing green) falls from her hair. cloud takes her body into his arms and sobs over it, yelling at sephiroth as he tries to explain why "this girl" had to die for his plan. cloud's heart is completely broken as he holds her body in his arms, as jenova/sephiroth berates him for pretending to be sad and angry because he's "only a puppet."
you're thrust into a boss battle with jenova, again, and after defeating her, you get to see everyone's reactions to aerith's death. tifa strokes her departed friend's face and hair and runs away sobbing. cloud never takes his eyes off of aerith no matter what the other characters are doing. i think that's the most heartbreaking thing of all. after that, he takes his body into her arms and carefully carries her all the way to the pool of water outside the house above the alter to lay her to rest.
the game is very... eeriely quiet after this. it feels cold.
cloud says that, although his immediate reaction to aerith's death was to be angry and withdraw from the journey and from life, he resolves that they need to save that planet... or else aerith's death will have been for absolutely nothing and he doesn't want that.
they travel to icicle inn immediately after this, aerith's REAL hometown where her birth mother, ifalna, and her father, gast faremis, met and fell in love. it's easy to miss this if you don't look for it but that makes her death even sadder that you get to know more about her right after she was taken away from you.
sure, disc 2 has you riding a snowboard down a mountain almost immediately after your friend dies and then fainting repeatedly in an ice wasteland and then going to the whirlwind maze where cloud has his penultimate breakdown and the planet decides to try to kill everything on it by releasing the weapons.
everything cracks after aerith dies and it takes a long time for it to be put back together... cloud falls into a mako coma after giving the black materia back to sephiroth (the REAL sephiroth who's been in the crater the whole time) and after that, the whole party is taken into custody by shinra.
it should be said that, preceding cloud's last breakdown before his mind completely submits to jenova, tifa is unwilling to admit to him that he "wasn't in nibelheim 5 years ago" but i've already gone into how bad this makes her look. i KNOW she's worried about him and only wants the best for him but what could've been worse than what happened? she was only delaying the inevitable by waiting so long to tell him when she seemed to always know and always be just on the verge of telling him... it's. a lot. :|
anyways, you take control of tifa after this, and are supposed to get executed by shinra for treason for causing meteor to happen. you eventually get out of it, after some pretty stupid pussyfooting around (wtf was that slapfight LMFAO)
you take the highwind and travel around, trying to figure out where cloud could possibly be. he's in mideel and you figure that out through some light investigating. tifa hears two men discussing a young man who's been there for a week and she runs over and asks them where he is. you enter the hospital to see cloud, blank-faced in a wheelchair. he's like... fully gone. tifa sobs in his lap after everyone else leaves the room and says "i made it this far believing in the memories we shared." ultimately, this scene is genuinely heartbreaking. it made me like tifa more (for a bit at least, and keep in mind that i don't hate her but she's not a very good character at a lot of points in the og lmfao :///) until she says that she's going to stay in mideel and watch over cloud till he's better because she "doesn't care about anything but cloud." like.................... huh.............. girl, you just spent weeks getting to know these people and trying your hardest to save the world and NOW you wanna bow out? because... why? because you think it's your fault he's like that? cloud thought it was HIS fault that aerith died and he still pressed on, even if he didn't want to, for her... i don't get how she can be so selfish after that lmfao?! like you have barret and marlene to look out for, too!!! you have your friends from avalanche who died that you could be fighting for?!!!!! why bow out of the whole fucking journey and claim you only care about cloud when YOU'RE THE REASON HE ENDED UP LIKE THAT..........
but.
i digress.
the rest of your party leave mideel and then have to steal the large materia back from shinra during a few sidequests in corel and fort condor. you get it lmfao...
after all that, you head back to mideel and talk to tifa and cloud, who still isn't better yet. the ground starts to shake and you have to go outside and fight ultimate weapon. the other part members escape mideel before it collapses into the lifestream but tifa and cloud fall into it.
in the lifestream, you learn all about the things i said at the beginning... about cloud's past, his childhood feelings for tifa and his inferiority complex, tifa's feelings for cloud after he left nibelheim, cloud's true whereabouts from 5 years ago... the works.
the rest of the party drag cloud and tifa out of the lifestream and tifa says that she didn't put cloud back together but that he did it himself.
you eventually get back to the highwind, now playing as cloud, who tells the entire party about his memory problems and what actually happened 5 years ago. he says my favorite line of dialogue in the game how he's the "master of his own imaginary world" (it's relatable bc that's how i feel as a schizo person <3) and then tifa says my LEAST FAVORITE line of dialogue in the game... which may only by in the english version now that i think about it like... i sure hope it wasn't in the jp version but she says "wow! you sure are messed up, cloud!" like.... bitch. shut up!
anywho. you go to the underwater reactor, get the submarine, wreck the submarine with the other huge materia in it, get the huge red materia, get the key of the ancients, travel to rocket town to finish cid's story, travel to cosmo canyon and talk to bugenhagen... cloud brings up aerith again. he laments that he "remembers" her a lot and then goes on to say that, no, it's not that he 'remembers' her, because he never forgot her... it's just that she was so close to them, they couldn't see through to how she really felt or what her death and, ultimately, sacrifice really meant because he was blinded by grief over her death.
you take bugenhagen to the forgotten city and get to see that aerith was praying for holy to stop sephiroth from summoning meteor and that her prayer was answered right before her death, meaning holy will be able to stop meteor if it's summoned soon enough.
you dive into midgar after this to kill hojo, scarlet, and heidegger. you also fight the turks again but they're cool so they just give up after awhile.
after all that it's time to fight sephiroth. cloud tells everyone, while they're all on the highwind, that they need to leave and find out what they're all truly fighting for, because cloud figured out that he's fighting for a selfish reason (because he wants revenge for aerith, his mother, and nibelheim) and supposes that everyone else is, too. he wants all of them to find the strength to finish this and tells them that if they find they don't want to come back, so be it. this is a really good character growth moment for cloud tbh... he's being selfless and letting everyone choose what they want to do instead of letting himself tell them what's best for them. obviously, no one leaves because... they all want to fight for aerith and everyone else they love.
tifa doesn't leave (i mean no one does but... she literally says she isn't gonna leave because she has nowhere else to go/no one to go home to... which... isn't true bc she has marlene, whom she really cares about but O.K. girl i'm done with your regressive character arc at this point like... bye.
anyways it's time for the highwind scene that every cloti loves to say completely dispoves cloud's love for aerith lol!!!
there are two versions of the scene, high affection (where the only difference is that tifa says "words aren't the only way to show your feelings" and how embarrassed she gets in the morning) and the low affection. there's no standard/canon version which is funny because cloud and aerith date has been confirmed as canon many times :) huh :) funny, that :)
anyways... they, cloud and tifa, "confirm their feelings with eachother" about what happened in the lifestream which really just means that tifa says some bullshit and cloud agrees with her because he doesn't know what else to say and then she falls asleep on his shoulder and that's... that.
after that you head down into the northern crater to fight sephiroth and when you get to him, cloud talks about aerith's prayer "shining... holy is shining!" and then you fight sephiroth in three phases to, not even arguably, the best song ever, one-winged angel.
after his second form, safer sephiroth, is defeated... cloud is surrounded by the lifestream in a black void and a hand reaches out to him as aerith's theme plays and he reaches out for her but isn't able to reach her, then he sees sephiroth and falls towards him. you only have one attack, omnislash, and it's obvious that this is the moment that cloud gets to have his revenge for everything sephiroth stole from him.
sephiroth dies and tifa pulls cloud out there, while danging off a cliff and looking over at their friends he says "i think i understand now. an answer from the planet. the promised land. i think ... i can meet her there." and tifa looks sadly down and closes her eyes, clinging to him and agrees that they should go and meet her.
the last cutscene shows a LOT of information lmfao... marlene is seen recognizing/hearing aerith from the lifestream floating through the air to help holy stop metero from destroying midgar. everyone on the highwind watches as the liffestream, commanded by aerith, saves the planet. they all know it's her, too. and the last shot of the game before the credits start to roll is aerith's smiling face, surrounded by the lifestream. it's a direct parallel to her face surrounded by the green light of mako energy being the first image we see of the game. it's full circle and aerith is the most important character in the whole game!
in many ways, it's aerith's story just as well as it is cloud's. i know tifa is important too, just as everyone else is because we all have a role to play in a story such as the one present in ffvii, but cloud and aerith are the obvious hero and heroine. and that's why the love triangle feels so skewed and top-heavy. aerith was ALWAYS meant to be cloud's love interest, even in death. tifa was an after thought, conceived after careful consideration because "aerith died". i do love her and i wish she was handled better in the original game and supporting compliation materials... hopefully they'll do her character justice in the remake's future installments, like i said.
ffvii is all about love after death. about not abandoning your friends and the people around you. about "giving into the good will of others" and finding reasons to keep on fighting after it seems like all hope is lost.
all-in-all... i love aerith gainsborough, i love tifa lockheart, and i love cloud strife. (i love the others, too obviously omg...) whatever ends up being canon or not canon or who even gives a fuck... who cares. i just wanted to observe what i thought was the intended storyline, is all!! that's it :)
1.) i don't think tifa lockheart is a very well-written character within the context of ffvii, and i hope that changes for the better in the remake, as i DO care about her
2.) i think aerith is an extremely well-written character with depth and intrigue and i love her more than any character basically ever
so... i think you can probably see where this is going.
today we're (or i'm, i guess lol) gonna talk about cloud strife. his life. his love. his mental illness. you get it...
so let's examine both sides of the love triangle within the bigger narrative (i'll bring up whenever you have an option to get love points but here's the way the love point/affection system/date mechanics start out (though if you are constantly talking about the ltd you probably already know lol) aerith: 50, tifa: 30 (??? you've known her longer and she clearly loves you so why does she start LOWER than a girl you just met), yuffie: 10, and barret: 0) ok let's move on to the actual story:
cloud strife was born in nibelheim and wasn't very well-liked by the other kids his age. he lost his father pretty early on in his life, as it seems, growing up in his small house with just his mother, claudia. he grew up in a really small village, too, so that doesn't really bode well for his childhood... there were probably less than 10 children even around his age there at all. tifa lockheart is his next-door-neighbor. she seems to be a bit more well-off financially than cloud at least, maybe everyone else in the village. her dad seems like an important personal within nibelheim and she clearly has money to pay for martial arts lessons form zangan (OR zangan and brian (her dad) are just friends... i don't know. idk if it tells us the reason anywhere either but if it does lmk i'd love to figure it out!!) she has a lot of friends and is the village sweetheart, as it were. everyone loves her and everyone tries to pretend cloud doesn't exist.
living such a lonely childhood warps your brain a lot tbh ( i would know :|) and i'm sure his attention was constantly brought towards tifa, who never made any attempt to include him in her friend group. cloud develops a complex about this and, as a result of his infatuation and need to be SEEN by tifa AND his admiration of sephiroth, he resolves to leave nibelheim for midgar and join SOLDIER.
when they're young, tifa's mother dies. she and her friends go to mt. nibel to search for tifa's mother and, gradually, her friends abandon her in fear. cloud follows them up the mountain to try and keep tifa safe and eventually both of them fall off a cliff and while cloud gets away with just "a few scrapped knees", tifa falls into a coma for seven days. her father forbids cloud from ever coming around their house or near tifa again, supposedly. this only serves to deepen cloud's loneliness and disdain.
he gets in fights with other kids and thinks tifa and her friends are "stupid for laughing at every little thing". the only person he really has in his life who cares for him until he leaves the village is his mother who, while kind and loving, seems to be a little overbearing.
when he's 14 and tifa is 13, cloud finally makes up his mind to leave the village. he asks tifa to meet him on the water tower in the middle of the village and, to his GREAT surprise, she actually shows up. he tries to impress her by telling her his plan to leave the village and become a great SOLDIER like sephiroth. tifa, upset that one of the last people she knows in the village is leaving, "strongarms" cloud into a promise that, should he get into soldier and become as great as he says he will, he'll come back to save her if she's ever in a pinch. cloud, seemingly reluctantly agrees, saying: "fine, i promise." pleased, tifa and cloud leave that meeting and go on their separate paths.
cloud leaves for midgar at age 14 and fails to get into SOLDIER like he planned, but joins shinra as an infantryman instead, hoping one day to become a part of soldier like he planned. during this time, tifa spends a lot of time thinking about her "hero" cloud, wondering how he's doing and if he got into SOLDIER like he'd planned. she frequently reads the news, hoping to hear any information about him. she never hears a thing.
when cloud is 16, he meets zack and sephiroth (and most of the main shinra people tbh) and he becomes close friends with zack during this time, easily drawn in by his friendliness and bright personality. eventually the three of them go on a mission to cloud home town, nibelheim. cloud is beyond embarrassed by the fact that he bragged about becoming a SOLDIER as great as sephiroth before he left and decides to use his infantryman helmet to hide his face during their stay in nibelheim.
when they get there, tifa is supposed to be their guide. she's disappointed that cloud isn't the one who showed up, but does her job as a guide very well. she takes a picture with zack and sephiroth in front of the shinra mansion, the piece of proof that is later needed to prove that cloud was "not in nibelheim" 5 years ago when the incident occured.
during their visit to nibelheim, cloud goes to see his mother. she wonders about his life in midgar and observes that he's grown into a handsome young man. she, embarrassingly for cloud, asks if women are "hounding him day and night" and tells him that he'd better get an older girlfriend who'll take care of him. cloud says he's fine and (i think???) spends the night either in his home or the motel in the village.
(i'm a bit hazy on the details of the "incident" but ik all the tifa/cloud parts so don't worry ... also if i'm wrong about anything lmk)
the next day, the three of them visit the nibelheim reactor in mt. nibel, escorted there by tifa. she isn't allowed inside, and cloud is stationed outside to make sure she doesn't try to go inside after zack and sephiroth. something happens inside the reactor that causes sephiroth to go missing. everyone is looking for him but can't find him so they stay in nibelheim even longer. zack eventually finds him in the basement of the shinra mansion, reading about experiments that shinra has done on humans over the years, including himself. he has gone fully insane and goes to steal his "mother", jenova's, body from the nibelheim reactor.
on the way, sephiroth burns down nibelheim and kills claudia, cloud's mother, and brian, tifa's dad. tifa finds zangan helping an injured man and asks him where her father is. zangan worries as tifa runs off towards the reactor after sephiroth. he asks zack to go after her. tifa finds her father, dying, and after he dies in her arms, she exclaims her hatred for mako, shinra, sephiroth, soldiers, and everything. she takes masamune with the intention of killing sephiroth but her slashes her away and she falls down the stairs of the reactor, injured. zack finds her and tries to help but she tells him that she hates him. zack goes after sephiroth himself and gets injured. all of a sudden, cloud (disguised as an infantryman still) runs in and, after taking the buster sword from zack, stabs sephiroth through the back as he's talking to jenova.
he then leaves the room, assuming sephiroth is dead, to make sure that tifa is okay. she's unconscious and doesn't know that cloud saved her or was even there, but she's alright. sephiroth tries to leave, injured, cradling jenova's head in his arms. sephiroth stabs cloud as he tries to intervene yet again, but cloud uses his own sword to throw him and jenova's head into the lifestream. zack and cloud, both pretty badly injured, attempt to leave nibelheim but are caught by hojo's team that are scouting for survivors. they're taken in and used as experiments... injected with jenova/sephiroth's cells and made to take large amounts of mako into their bodies. zack eventually wakes from his mako induced coma (? lol) and breaks cloud out of there, who is still unconscious. they make their way out of the shinra mansion and towards nibelheim, constantly being pursued by shinra.
eventually, zack is gunned down just outside of midgar and, when cloud wakes up, he gives cloud his buster sword as a display of friendship and tells him to "live for the both of them". stricken by grief and fresh out of a mako/jenova induced coma, cloud takes those words to heart and crafts a "new" identity for himself, based on zack's accomplishments and things that he's seen during his employ in shinra. he gets to midgar and collapses at the sector 7 train station, where tifa finds him. it's been five years since the nibelheim incident.
tifa has a bit of a selfish desire to keep him around, in her sight. she's overjoyed to see him again and both of them misremember what happened 5 years ago, cloud more than tifa. tifa gets him a job with avalanche, a small eco-terrorist organization, that operates in a secret room in her bar, seventh heaven. barret, the leader of this cell of avalanche, has a daughter named marlene that tifa takes care of when her father goes out on missions. the two of them are very close and tifa acts very motherly and protective towards her.
cloud joins the members of avalanche on a mission to blow up the mako reactor in sector 1 of midgar. this mission is the opening event of the game. at this point, everything i've written down before this, is yet to be learned. barret constantly berates cloud during the mission, and cloud doesn't act very friendly towards the members of avalanche in retaliation. this is another example of his inferiority complex fed into by his rejection from the people around him. he is cold and a bit of a hardass but is never explicitly mean to anyone because, at his core, he is still just a shy and kind-hearted country boy.
**his mask during this part of the game reminds me of the mask he put on when he and tifa were children, the one that always got him into fights. he's used to not owning up to his feelings and acting like someone cooler and better as a defense mechanism. it's not because he thinks he's zack, so let's get THAT conversation out of the way right fucking now LMAO... all the times he was able to show his real awkward, kind-hearted, goofy self have been times when he's felt accepted for who he is. with zack, during the promise he made with tifa, in the friendships he makes during the duration of the game, and in front of a special girl i won't mention until later... moving on!**
after the mission, you run through the streets of sector 1 where everyone is panicking and afraid because of the mako reactor explosion. here, on his way to the train back to sector 7, he meets a young woman selling flowers. you have the OPTION of buying a flower for 1 gil and later giving it to tifa or marlene, or telling her it's dangerous and that she should leave. the latter choice gives you no flower to give to tifa or marlene for affection points.
commonly, in every piece of the compilation after the og came out, it refers to cloud buying a flower from aerith. this is the "canon choice", as it were. it has no bearing on your relationship with aerith so people commonly just accept this one as being canon without much thought. whether or not you choose to give the flower to tifa or marlene, the flower is displayed in seventh heaven and both girls refer to it as "our flower".
moving on, you meet back up with avalanche in the train and ride on to sector 7 of midgar where you go to seventh heaven and YOU (not cloud, obviously) meet tifa for the first time. after making a choice of whether or not to give her a flower or let her make you a drink (she likes it when you do choose to drink, probably so she can show off her drink making skills hehehe) and the day ends after that pretty much.
the next day, cloud is slated to go with avalanche to bomb the sector 5 reactor. in the morning, you get the OPTION to compliment tifa or make a joke about barret, raising your relationship with either of them. tifa is coming along on this mission, for whatever reason. she reminds cloud of the promise he made to her, no matter what you've chosen. marlene is left in charge of the bar (and her animations behind the bar are SO cute shut up) and cloud, tifa, and barret all head to the train station to get to sector 5.
things go wrong at this point and then you have to get to the last train to jump out as fast as you can (which raises your affection points with both barret AND tifa, if done successfully... har har) and you run along the train tracks until you get into sector 5. you bomb the sector 5 reactor successfully, but the president of shinra, ... president shinra, is there and then goes all Big Bad Guy and makes you fight a giant robot.
when the robot explodes, it cuts the platform that our three protagonists are standing on, leaving barret and tifa on one side and cloud hanging from the other. here you have another OPTION to act strong (more points for barret) or admit that you're struggling (more points for tifa... also a surprise considering that she doesn't like when he struggles but ok.) and tifa yells that cloud can't die yet because she has something to tell him and then he falls. you enter a transitionary cutscene as barret carries tifa off to safety as the entire reactor explodes around them and cloud falls into the sector 5 slums. then you have an in-game cutscene where cloud talks to someone about his past with "a few scrapped knees" ... y'know... from earlier... it's him, is what i'm trying to say. not zack like SOME people think 🙄
you, or i should say, cloud, awakens to a familiar girl hovering over his unconscious body in a bed of flowers in an abandoned church. obviously, any idiot can recognize that this is the girl you bought the flower from (or told to run away if you decided NOT to buy a flower???) and depending on whether or not you actually bought the flower, after you tell her you recognize her as the flower peddler, she'll thank you for buying one of her flowers and then introduce herself as aerith (or aeris but... i'm used to writing aerith so).
suddenly a red-headed man in a suit enters the church... aerith asks cloud to stick around and when reno (of the turks) finally introduces himself, she asks cloud to be her bodyguard (for the price of a date which cloud accepts, non-optionally lol) and escort her home. after cloud kicks reno's ass, you go through the back of the church and have to do this stupid barrel dropping mini game that will get you more affection points with aerith if you do it correctly. you leave the church and make your way into the sector 5 slums via the rooftops of abandoned houses. cloud and aerith bond during this moment, and have great chemistry i should say :) ... she makes him laugh and he makes her laugh in return. this is the only time cloud is animated laughing (Genuinely, while not possessed by jenova/sephiroth) in the entire game.
eventually, you reach aerith's house and meet her mother, elmyra. she introduces cloud as her bodyguard and elmyra thanks cloud for escorting aerith home. cloud says he needs to get back to the sector 7 slums, to tifa's bar. this makes aerith inquire about tifa asking whether or not tifa is cloud's girlfriend. cloud has the OPTION of saying "no way!" or "yeah, that's right." and... obviously... it's not right. i mean c'mon, there's a logical and right way to answer this question, the way cloud would. (he'd say no... because she isn't... y'know?) anyways if you say "no way!", aerith will make fun of cloud for getting so upset about it and then admit to being a bit happy about his answer, anyways.
aerith promises to escort cloud to sector 7 in the morning. elmyra asks cloud to leave before the morning, not wanting her daughter to be involved with a SOLDIER. cloud agrees, under the assumption that he'd just be putting aerith in danger by dragging her along anyways. cloud and aerith head upstairs after eating dinner with elmyra (we assume, since we don't see this although it'd be hilarious) and cloud has a dream of his mother, claudia, about the conversation they had when he visited nibelheim 5 years ago before her death. the implication of the conversation being remembered in aerith's house is either because elmyra reminded him of his own doting mother, or because aerith reminds cloud of the type of girl his mother was talking about during their conversation. or both!
cloud sneaks out (in a minigame) of aerith's house late into the night while aerith sits awake, doing nothing in the room next door. somehow she gets ahead of him as he walks on to sector 6. he admits that he didn't want to ask her to come along because he knew it'd be dangerous and aerith, frustated with that attitude from him (even though she asked him to be her bodyguard LMFAO she's so funny <3), says "are you done?" then they move along through sector 6 and find themselves in a small playground, usually referred to as midori park.
aerith convinces cloud to take a break and sit with her atop a large cat structure. they talk about aerith's job and aerith insinuates that cloud reminds her of her first love, who was also in SOLDIER. the gates to sector 7 open then, a chocobo cart assing through them with a girl in the back wearing a fancy dress. cloud immediately recognizes it as tifa and aerith runs off after the cart, not even KNOWING tifa (i love her <33333333) into wall market. cloud tells her not to run off and go home but resigns himself to her stubborn attitude and shakes his head and follows her into wall market.
they have a fun romp in wall market and eventually find out that tifa is trying to become don corneo's "bride" for some reason. they decide to infiltrate don corneo's mansion as two other bridal candidates, aerith convincing cloud to crossdress so neither of them have to go in alone. then you go through the long process of trying to get cloud the perfect diguise lmfao...
depending on how good cloud's disguise is, one of the three (cloud, tifa, or aerith) will be chosen to enter don corneo's bedroom. if cloud is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with barret or complying with don corneo. if aerith is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with tifa. if tifa is chosen, you have the OPTION of raising your relationship with aerith... however if tifa is chosen, before cloud enters the don's bedroom, he hears aerith scream and goes to save her instead. (... okay... we get it buddy... you're in love...) also interestingly enough, if either tifa or aerith gets chosen, the "right answer" to get either of their affection points up is to prioritize aerith's safety.
yes, even tifa's.
either way, though, the outcome is the same. the other two who don't get chosen run into the don's bedroom after defeating all his goons and they're all dropped into the sewers. you get another OPTION on who to talk to first, getting points with the girl you choose. aerith lands closest to cloud so the logical choice is to go up to her first, but this could really go either way. i guess. you fight don corneo's monster, abzu, and then trek through the sewer till the three of them reach the train graveyard in sector 7.
meanwhile, through all of this, tifa is having a dilemma about the information they got from don corneo. he told them that shinra plans on dropping the plate above the sector 7 slums, effectively killing everyone both on the plate and under it, in order to destroy avalanche. tifa, rightfully so, is worried the whole time they're on the way back. after making it through the train graveyard, the three of them get to the pillar holding up the sector 7 plate. avalanche are fighting off the shinra infantryman and turks and in the process; jessie, biggs, and wedge die. cloud and tifa are both very upset by this, but we're more "shocked" to see cloud upset, as he said he didn't care about them at all. obviously that was a fuckin' lie but it's the biggest indication you get that cloud is bullshitting his way through life right now, pretending to not be phased by anything.
tifa and cloud run to the top of the pillar while tifa tasks aerith with saving marlene from seventh heaven. we don't get to see this scene in the original game, though. when tifa and cloud reach the top of the pillar, they find barret fighting off the rest of the infantrymen and help him. reno and rude, another turk, show up to drop the plate once and for all. you fight them off but they still get to the mechanism to drop the plate before our protagonists do and there's no way to stop the plate from dropping.
during this, tseng, the leader (?) of the turks, flies by in a helicopter with aerith. he slaps her and informs the three heroes that he's taking the "ancient" back into the custody of shinra, "where she belongs". cloud resolves IMMEDIATELY to go and save her, even though their minds should be on the plate dropping right now. aerith remains cloud's top priority until they get her back later... but anyways!
the plate is dropped, and our three heroes zipline out of the sector 7 slums and into midori park, which is now partially destroyed. they wake up in front of the, now unusable, gate to sector 7 which has debris piled up inside of it. tifa and barret cry out for their lost friends, and marlene, and attempt to console each other. cloud says that marlene is probably alive since aerith was alright. barret is obviously skeptical, having no reason to trust a girl he's never met with the safety of his daughter. cloud leaves the screen and we walk away from tifa and barret into the collapsed part of sector 6.
they catch up almost immediately and resolve to go save aerith altogether. they visit aerith's house, where aerith left marlene with her mother elmyra. barret is overjoyed to hear that his daughter is safe and runs upstairs to see her. cloud and tifa join him, tifa waiting outside as you get another OPTION when marlene walks up to cloud and says that aerith was asking lots of things about him and says that she definitely likes cloud. cloud can say either "i don't know..." which will make marlene say "stupid!", but you'll get points with tifa. (it's also fair to say that 'i don't know' doesn't mean that he doesn't like aerith, just that he doesn't know if SHE likes HIM) OR you can have him say "let's hope so." to which marlene will happily reply "i won't tell tifa!" and you'll get points for aerith. funnily enough it's been confirmed in other compilation materials by square enix that the latter option is the "canon option" as it enriches marlene's character and makes her seem clever and "attuned to the female mind". kinda weird but... alright!
afterwards, elmyra tells the three of them that she isn't aerith's birth mother. she tells the story of how her husband never came back from leave, although she went to the train station everyday to wait, just in case he showed up. one day, she saw a woman and a young girl sitting by the train platform. the woman didn't look healthy and as elmyra apporached, the woman grabbed her arm and said "take aerith somewhere safe." and died. elmyra was lonely on her own so she gladly took aerith to her home and raised her as her own daughter.
one day, aerith came up to elmyra and told her not to be sad because "a man you really love just died. he came a long way to say goodbye but he had to return to the planet." elmyra didn't believe her but a few days later she got a letter in the mail from shinra saying that her husband was killed in action in the war with wutai. later, as aerith and elmyra were becoming a happy family, tseng visited their house looking to take her back to shinra. he called aerith an "ancient" and suggested that she can hear the voice of the planet and lead shinra to "the promised land". almyra didn't know what any of that meant and aerith denied the very possibility of it being true, but they all knew that there was more to her than meets the eye.
elmyra admits that she knew that aerith would be taken back someday and that it was only a matter of time. cloud tells elmyra that he wants to save aerith and that since shinra took her forcibly this time, there's no guarantee that she'll stay safe. she lets the three of them go save aerith and from the point on, the party's dynamic changes. cloud becomes the de facto leader as he leades tifa and barret to the shinra building through some... really exhausting means. he never once gives up his resolve until the three of you find aerith in hojo's lab.
hojo is planning on making aerith and a canine-like being known as "red xiii" (who i'll be referring to as nanaki for the rest of this post bc my x key doesn't work and bc that's his REAL NAME) mate as they're both the last of their respective races. you defeat some of hojo's creations and get to the lab where he's holding aerith. (i can't remember if this is before or after your first run-in with jenova so there's.... that... i guess...) barret shoots the lab door and lets out nanaki and aerith but cloud runs in to "save her" anyways lmfao...
nanaki apologizes to aerith, after hojo escapes, for startling her and everybody else. he introduces himself and the 5 of you split up in various ways as you travel up the floors of the shinra building. eventually you're caught and put in handcuffs before president shinra who locks you up in three different cells on the same floor as hojo's lab. (OH YEAH THAT'S WHEN YOU SEE JENOVA nvm i rmbr now sorry) tifa is sharing a cell with cloud, aerith is in a cell on her own, to the left, and barret and nanaki are in a cell together to the right. you have the OPTION of saying either "leave it to me." or "kinda hard." to tifa when she asks whether or not you can break out. (cloud would probably say the first one lbr, but this part isn't even in the remake so... oh well. also it's stupid but you can spam this choice to get more points with her (or less if hat's how you wanna play) which is like... cheating but ok.)
either way, you can now choose who cloud is thinking about first, second, and third. choosing nanaki first gives you absolutely no points so it's kind of pointless unless you want tifa's date. aerith's name pops up first so it's most logical to choose her first, but no matter when you choose her, cloud and aerith flirt about their "promised date" and it makes tifa jealous when she hears about it because she's "seeing the world they're creating without her" or some shit lol. if you choose barret i... don't remember what happens but i think he talks about avalanche or marlene. i don't rmbr what nanaki says either :| sigh.
anyways, after that you all go to sleep and when you wake up all the guards are dead. your cell door is unlocked so you open everyone elses and look around. you go on ahead with barret and nanaki while aerith and tifa stay behind and talk to each other. on the way through hojo's lab you see purple blood on the floor coming from a big containment cell labeled "JENOVA" and you see a headless body in there which prompts cloud to have another freakout.
you all eventually head up the president shinra's office and he's dead, with a sword sticking out of his back. you then proceed to escape the shinra building (it's really drawn out and i don't remember a lot of it tbh) cloud fights rufus as the others go on ahead, though tifa demands on waiting for cloud as the other three go on ahead. you meet back up with tifa on your way down and then you switch over to aerith, barret, and nanaki as they fight a giant robot in an elevator. when you get to the bottom floor of the shinra building, tifa and cloud descend the stairs in STYLE in a motorcycle and like... a blue... motor truck? that i honestly wish i could buy bc it kinda fucks. and then you play this motorcycle mini game that's admittedly kinda fun when you get used to it. you also fight another fatass robot and then you escape midgar!!!
afterwards, outside of the gate to the sector 7 slums, everyone waits for cloud to talk to them lol... aerith says she's a bit afraid to leave midgar but she has her bodyguard with her, so it's okay. i don't remember what anyone else says because i'm stupid and unobservant :| anyways barret tells everyone to split up and head to kalm which is to the northeast of midgar. when you get to kalm, everyone meets up in the second floor of the inn as cloud recounts "everything he knows" about sephiroth, the man who stole jenova's head and killed president shinra, and how it affecte him personally.
you see this all through "his eyes" in a playable flashback where he takes the spot of zack (though you wouldn't know that yet unless you ... knew. but i digress.) and you relive the events of the nibelheim incident WRONGLY. tifa hesitates a bit after hearing cloud recount those memories, thinking that something seems off about his version of events and hers... but she decides not to mention it. when leaving the kalm inn, you have the OPTION of getting more points with barret (and a few more options in kalm, irt mako energy and how bad/good it is) and then you move on.
you go through the mountains and find a chocobo farm where 'chocobo bill' says that you need to catch a chocobo in order to get across the marsh safely so you don't get attacked by a midgar zolom (a giant snake that would literally kill your entire party this early in the game lmfao) so you do all that and then you move on to the mythril mines, where you meet up with the turks again and (MAYBE?) fight them? you also meet elena here, the newest turk who is a bit inept at her job but still really lovable <3...
afterwards, you have the opportunity to get yuffie into your party if you hang around the forests long enough. you have to beat her in battle and then answer all her questions correctly or else she'll steal money from you and run away, leaving you to have to fight her again. for every correct answer you get affection points with her but keep in mind that yuffie is just another OPTION in the original game... though i'm excited for her to just BE THERE in the remake :")
next, you're near fort condor, where you do a tower defense mini game that's easier to lose for the prize than to win so... that's fuckin' stupid. fort condor is all an OPTION, too, at least this early in the game... but it you help them you get points with EVERYONE so you might as well!!!
after that, you head to junon, where you get a summon materia, rescue a little girl from drowning, and have to disguise cloud as a shinra infantryman (and the rest of the party, with the exception of barret, who dresses like a sailor)... you have to do more mini games to impress the new president, rufus, and heidegger. then you get on the cargo ship with everybody in disguise and you have the OPTIONS of giving yuffie tranquilizers to calm her seasickness, telling aerith that you'll take her on an airship someday, and talking to tifa about a war or some shit.
afterwards, you fight jenova (for the first time) when sephiroth appears. he doesn't recognize cloud, though... leading you to reconsider cloud's story from kalm. everyone on the ship except heidegger, rufus, and our 6 heroes are dead/ko'd and the cargo ship docks in costa del sol. here, your party splits up and, depending on who is in your party at the time, you can see them out and about interacting with the people and the environment. tifa and aerith will be suntanning together on the beach, barret can be found modeling the sailor uniform, nanaki is "playing" with kids in the middle of town, and yuffie is taking over for the materia vendor.
after resting up and leaving costa del sol, the part heads towards mt. corel. you go up the mountain path after talking to a man who said he saw a man in a "black cape" pass through, and head towards the corel reactor. then you walk on some train tracks for a while until you get to the next screen where, if either tifa OR aerith aren't in your party, on of them will cheer cloud on from below... i find that so cute omg. anyways you have the OPTION to kill a bunch of baby birds' mom for some treasure you don't even really need (which i don't think cloud would do but HEY... it's an OPTION so he must do it lmfao....) then, after some manuevering through the area, you pass through a large suspension bridge into north corel and this is where barret's backstory is told.
before you board the tram that takes you to the gold saucer (for the first time), barret tells everyone why the people of corel hate him so much. then you go to the gold saucer where you can choose who to accompany you through the park as barret goes through his shit... aerith teases him a bit before he runs off, trying to get him into a better mood, which tifa goes along with too (seriously i don't know why people think they don't like each other OR how this moment puts aerith in a "bad, mean-spirited light" when tifa literally goes along with it LMFAO????
so you go through the park and eventually end up in wonder square where you meet the fortune telling puppet, cait sith. regardless of who you have in your party, the outcome will be the same. he will give cloud three fortunes:
1.) ordinary luck. it will be an active fortune. give into the good will of others and something big will happen after summer.
2.) be careful of forgetfulness. your lucky color is blue.
3.) what you purse will be yours, but you will lose something DEAR.
all three of them are foreshadowing, obviously. the 2nd one foreshadows the twist near the end about cloud's "true identity", and the third foreshadows aerith's death. (not really sure about the first one but uh.... yknow)
anyways! cait sith joins your party no matter what and then you head on to battle square where they say that some man with a gun for an arm is going on a rampage, obviously meant to imply that it's barret. cloud & co. get in trouble for being accomplices and are thrown into corel prison, below the gold saucer.
we get the peak of barret's backstory here, as we find him and he explains what happened to the town of corel. he explains that he had a friend name dyne and that shinra convinced everyone in town, besides dyne, to be alright with the placement of a mako reactor in their town. one day dyne and barret leave town only to come back to it in flames. they are intercepted by scarlet and some infantrymen and shot at, causing barret to lose his arm and dyne to fall to his supposed death.
you meet dyne at the edge of a cliff. he fights barret and then admits to him that he hates everything and that he wants to kill everyone for taking away his loved ones. barret assures him that marlene is alive and then dyne gives him his wife's necklace, to give to mr. coates, and then jumps to his death. later, you meet mr. coates who tells you the only way to get out of corel prison is to win a chocobo race. so... you do that. afterwards, you get the buggy which makes it easier to get around the world map.
next the party has the OPTION of going to gongaga, zack's home town. you fight reno and rude there after they have a conversation about who likes who (rude like tifa, elena like tseng, tseng likes "the ancient", apparently... also... would reno refer to her as aerith since they've known each other so long? kinda weird but okay.) after the fight, you can head to the ruined reactor and see a cutscene of scarlet and tseng discussing things before taking off in a helicopter. then you can actually go INTO gongaga (sorry i'm referencing a guide and i'm getting lost in all the info even though i beat the game already LMAO)
in gongaga, if you have aerith or tifa (or both) in your party, go can go into zack's parent's house where they'll talk about zack. aerith or tifa (or both...lol) will walk out once they hear about zack and you can leave his parent's house and ask them what's wrong. aerith will explain that the first ove she had been talking about in midori park was zack and that she always assumed he just moved on with someone else because he was a "ladies' man"... you have the option of making cloud say "poor guy..." or "(jealous... envious...)", both of which raise your points with her (also... funnily enough, if you say "(jealous...envious...)" you get +2 points, even though both responses to tifa only give you one point either way... also aerith has a secret dialogue that was written into the game when you say it but it's impossible to get bc you have to have an unattainable amount of affection points with her, even though her number is the highest at the beginning ... but you can't cheat her points up like you can with tifa so :/ anyways, it's something to the effect of her saying that she's glad that cloud is jealous lol...)
with tifa, you have the OPTION of ignoring her or talking to her, regardless of what you say, will also give you a point with her... the convo is about zack as well.
then you move on to cosmo canyon, nanaki's hometown and the first place he actually refers to himself as 'nanaki'. he lets the gatekeeper (i guess that's what he is lol?) know that you're his friends and then you're free to roam around. irt the love triangle, you can see tifa and aerith drinking together in the pub, indicating that they enjoy spending time with one another even when cloud isn't around (because... they're friends and they love each other... shut up!!!!)
later, during the time when everyone sits around the fire and has something to say, if you talk to everyone (there are NO OPTIONS during this scene, everything is just... how it is!) then you should see tifa remarking how bonfires are funny because they make you remember "all sorts of things" and then she says "cloud, about 5 years ago... no. forget it. i'm afraid to ask." to which cloud asks "what is it?" and tifa answers "it feels like... it feels like you're going far away... you really, really are...... you... right?" which lets you in a bit more on cloud's story/lie/real identity whatever you wanna call it and indicates how she feels about him.
when you talk to aerith, however, she talks about herself. "i learned a lot. the elders taught me many things. about the cetra... about the promised land... i'm...... alone... i'm all alone now..." to which cloud slips up and says "but i'm... we're here for you, right?" to which aerith shakes her head and says "i know. i know, but... i am the only...... cetra." and cloud sees saddened by this, asking "does that mean we can't help?" to which aerith turns away from him, clearly upset by something. this is to foreshadow how deeply cloud cares about her, along with the fact that she's hiding her true feelings and pain behind her smile and bright attitude.
after that, bugenhagen takes cloud, nanaki, and a party member of your choice into the cave of gi and you finish nanaki's storyline/backstory.
from there, you move on to nibelheim, cloud and tifa's hometown, which has been mysteriously restored to the way it was exactly before the incident 5 years ago, which again calls cloud's memories into question. you go around town and no one recognizes him and cloud doesn't recognize anybody, either. he enters his old home he shared with his mother to find a woman living there who tells him that HE never lived there. it's a very confusing scene to see, the first time around at least lmfao...
anyways, you go into the shinra mansion and get vincent, if you so desire, at this point and then head up to mt. nibel. after fighting the materia keeper you head on to rocket town where you meet cid and complete your party! you go through part of cid's story and then get the tiny bronco to drive around on the shallow parts of the water. after this, you can go to wutai and do all the sidequests, OPTIONALLY, if you're trying to get yuffie's date or more items, that is.
next you head back to the gold saucer and after you go to the ghost hotel and cloud re-explains the whole story, now with new context and party members, everyone heads off to sleep and you get to go on the date that you worked so hard for. there are no other options throughout the rest of the game (at least ones that impact anything, besides the 'under the highwind' scene with tifa which should also be locked in depending on how high your affection rating with her is. you can even get the date with aerith AND the high affection highwind scene with tifa if you favor both girls (and don't cheat to raise tifa's points), as aerith always remains in the lead that way.) and here's where everything from the first disc crescendos.
the first part of the date is always the same, at least with all three girls. you visit the part of the gold saucer where the play is taking place and cloud and your preferred girl get to act in the play, which can end in cloud kissing their hand (this can happen with all three of them... so... there u go...) or getting slapped bc you asked for the "princesses' measurements" (which he literally would never do bc he's not a pervert so... sorry bout it). cloud and barret are turned away for not "being a couple" (ok homophobe), though.
afterwards, you and your girl (OR BARRET) take a ride on the gondola and get to see the sights of the gold saucer while talking about your relationship.
barret complains about being here with cloud and tells him he should've asked one of the girls to come with him instead, even though barret is the one that asked him to take a walk with him LMAO... then he brings up marlene in a very weird turn of coversation so we're gonna skip that! basically barret just wants to see his daughter and dunks on cloud lmfao...
yuffie gets kinda shy and then stands up and gives cloud a kiss on the cheek and then sits back down, visibly embarrassed and says "i just felt like doing that..." cloud says nothing. yuffie starts to get angry at his lack of response and tells him to "just say something!" to which cloud only says "...something." which, again, earns him a slap.
both of these dates are obviously just jokes, since neither barret nor yuffie are part of the "official love triangle" (also yuffie is 16 and cloud is 21 so :| but barret/cloud is still fair game if ur into that tbh)
so where it REALLY gets interesting and character development-y and you actually get INSIGHT into cloud and the girls' characters with, obviously, with tifa and aerith.
on your date with tifa, when she enters cloud's hotel room to pick him up it goes like this:
t: "cloud..."
c: "what's wrong?"
t: "......"
t: "i thought about what i was going to say, but, it's kinda embarrassing."
[she scratches her head awkwardly]
t: "hey, cloud! why don't the two of us sneak out of here and spend some time together?"
[she runs behind him and pushes him out of the room]
t: "come on, let's go!"
c: "hey."
when they get on the gondola, after seeing the sights, she laments that she wants to "just come out and say it." but isn't able to talk about/tell cloud something important (which implies that she either has feelings for him or she wants to tell him about their differing memories of the events of 5 years ago... or both... probably both tbh) and states that "aerith would probably be able to just come out and say it.", indicating that, even though she gets along very well with aerith and cares deeply about her, she still feels jealous of her AND her relationship with cloud. then we shift into the 'important' part of the conversation, w/ their dialogue overlayed on the picture of the gold saucer... tifa says "cloud...? sometimes being old friends is hard. i mean, timing is everything." to which he says "yeah..." and she says "cloud...? i..........." and trails off as their ride on the gondola ends. they get off the ride and tifa says "cloud, i really had fun tonight." and he asks her "by the way, what did you want to say a minute ago?" to which she gets flustered and exclaims "n-nothing! nothing..." which clearly confuses cloud as he goes "?" (god you're so clueless, cloud...) and she finally says "oh, look at the time. we should be getting back." to which cloud nods and walks off as tifa awkwardly scratches the back of her head and follows after him, ending their date and propelling them into the cait sith chase scene.
on your date with aerith, when she picks him up from his hotel room... here's how THAT goes:
a: "hee, hee!" (god, she's so cute LMAO)
c: "what's wrong?"
a: "let's go on a date!"
c: "what?"
a: "a d-a-t-e! or haven't you ever gone on one?"
(you actually do get another choice here... interesting how you didn't get a choice in tifa's date, though...)
c: "don't take me for a fool." / "well, not a real one..."
a: "hey... a little touchy, aren't we?" / "no, just a mixed-up kid..."
a: "oh well. come one, let's go."
c: "hey."
on the gondola, after seeing the sights, aerith starts to think out loud. ".........first off, it bothered me how you looked exactly alike. two completely different people, but look exactly the same. the way you walk, gesture...i think i must have seen him again, in you...but you're different. things are different..." (also i think her animations deserve to be noted during the conversation... she's very expressive and talks while looking right at him until the last line "things are different" when she lowers her head.) then we pull away to THAT part of the conversation where aerith says "cloud...i'm searching for you..." to which he replies with a confused string of ellipses "............?" (god he's useless <3 i love him) and aerith says "i want to meet you." to which he says "but i'm right here." and aerith's next words kinda mirror her ones when she got all pensive during their conversation in cosmo canyon. she says... "(i know, i know... what i mean is...) "i want to meet..... you." (i'm gonna cry brb...) and then their ride on the gondola ends. after they get off, aerith is back to her usual "cheery" self. "i had fun tonight. let's go together again. don't you like being with me?" (and you get ANOTHER OPTION???? this is crazy how did i not notice this before omg)
to which you can make cloud reply "no i don't." or "that's not it." and she'll reply with either "oh, don't tease me like that!" or "i'm glad. next time we come, let's take our time and go on more rides." and then she says the same as tifa, "oh, look at the time. we'd better get going." and the date ends and leads into the cait sith chase scene.
it's... very interesting how you still get choices during aerith's date but not during tifa's? cloud also talks more (tho not much more, i realize that lmao) on his date with aerith than with anybody else, an indication of how comfortable he feels around her.
after this, no matter which date you go on, cait sith betrays everyone and hands the keystone over to tseng, revealing he works for shinra. he also reveals that, if cloud and the others intend to leave him behind, he has kidnapped marlene and elymra and is hiding them somewhere, so he HAS to be brought along. cait sith reveals that shinra is going to the temple of the ancients and aerith has to be in your party during the temple of the ancients.
soooo... you go there and do all the puzzles and aerith reveals that she can hear the wisdom of the cetra more than ever before. sephiroth gravely hurt tseng which makes aerith cry because, even though they were only a constant presence in her life because they were trying to capture her for shinra, she still cares for the turks and then admits that "there are probably only a handful of people out there who really know me."
you move on and see sephiroth in glimpses, getting to see precisely what happened to tseng before your party got there. he reveals his plan and then cloud goes crazy once they're in the room with the black materia but aerith snaps him out of it, worrying for him greatly as she's never seen him act like this. (no one has though and even though she's worried and scared for his wellbeing, she's still there for him and tries to be encouraging, not wanting him to worry <3 that's love baby!) afterwards, you discuss the best way to tak the black materia with aerith and your other party member and cait sith calls cloud's PHS to say that he'll do it as he owes them that much and because he's the only one who won't die if he attempts to take the black materia. he says he'll read their fortunes one more time and aerith asks him how compatible she is with cloud. he says their starts are perfect for one another and "seems to forsee their eventual wedding" and even says "poor tifa!" ... like i get wanting tifa to win after everyone constantly brings attention to the fact that she's fighting a losing battle but... she's not even trying :/ so why would she deserve to "win".
anyways.
after cait sith is sucked into the black materia, the temple disappears and aerith and cloud are left deep in the earth, in the pit left behind by it. sephiroth is floating around and "convinces" cloud to hand over the black materia, though he really just takes control over the part of his mind weakened by jenova's cells. aerith tries to call him while cloud is having a mental breakdown of his powerlessness in front of sephiroth and sephiroth takes over him again, scaring aerith and starting the beat the shit out of her as the other part member tries to get down to them so he doesn't kill her. cait sith comes back with a new body and it's... a really uncomfortable scene and it's sooooo fucking sad it hurts A LOT bro...
cloud passes out after this and is carried back to gongaga by his friends. he has a shared dream with aerith and this is the last time they ever get to talk before her death. she worries over cloud's wellbeing, telling him not to worry about what happened and to take care of his mental health and let HER take care of sephiroth, since she's the only one who can deal with his plan. she assures cloud that she'll "come back when it's all over." cloud tries to chase after her but is frozen in place. sephiroth descends from the sky, insinuating that he's going after aerith to stop her from stopping his plan. then cloud awakens to tifa and barret standing over him, worried about him, and telling him that aerith is no where to be found.
cloud isn't surprised, knowing that she left and that sephiroth is right on her heels. tifa and barret ask him what's keeping him from going after her immediately, then. cloud admits, in a moment of sincere sensitivity, that he's afraid of sephiroth taking over his mind and making him hurt aerith (or anybody else) again. barret and tifa, who are supposed to be his friends, treat him like he's being stupid. tifa is, at the very least, worried about him, but both of them treat him like he's being selfish and a psycho. i really hope they fix that in the remake bc it's a bit fucked up to see as a mentally ill person lmfao...
they leave and let cloud decide on his own what to do, hoping that he'll join then to help aerith because tbh... none of them really have a reason to go after her at this point and they're all very disjointed people ... less of a team when cloud isn't around. cloud eventually, obviously, joins them and they race to bone village to find a lunar harp to get through the forest where aerith met cloud in their "shared dream". they find themselves in the city of the ancients and, after sleeping in one of the abandoned houses, cloud admits that he can feel aerith and sephiroth IN HIS SOUL. as they get closer to where aerith is, cloud, once again, states that he knows where aerith is because he can "hear" her and feel her presence.
we all know what's about to happen................................ so let's get on with it.
they eventually get to the alter where aerith is sitting, focused, in a ray of sunlight, in prayer. cloud gestures to the other party members to stay put and hops up and over to her. when he reaches her sephiroth/jenova attempts to overtake his mind again, making him approach her with his sword out and, no matter what you try to do with the controller to move him away, you're stuck until you press the action button as cloud attempts to kill her himself (on behalf of jenova) ... he shakes himself out of it right before the last second as his friends yell out to him and asks "ugh... what are you making me do?" (though the english translation is... really bad there but whatever lmao)
the cutscene starts after that. aerith opens her eyes to see cloud standing there, staring at her. she gives him a big, bright smile and then sephiroth descends from the sky, stabbing her from behind through the stomach. she dies almost instantly, her ribbon and the white materia (glowing green) falls from her hair. cloud takes her body into his arms and sobs over it, yelling at sephiroth as he tries to explain why "this girl" had to die for his plan. cloud's heart is completely broken as he holds her body in his arms, as jenova/sephiroth berates him for pretending to be sad and angry because he's "only a puppet."
you're thrust into a boss battle with jenova, again, and after defeating her, you get to see everyone's reactions to aerith's death. tifa strokes her departed friend's face and hair and runs away sobbing. cloud never takes his eyes off of aerith no matter what the other characters are doing. i think that's the most heartbreaking thing of all. after that, he takes his body into her arms and carefully carries her all the way to the pool of water outside the house above the alter to lay her to rest.
the game is very... eeriely quiet after this. it feels cold.
cloud says that, although his immediate reaction to aerith's death was to be angry and withdraw from the journey and from life, he resolves that they need to save that planet... or else aerith's death will have been for absolutely nothing and he doesn't want that.
they travel to icicle inn immediately after this, aerith's REAL hometown where her birth mother, ifalna, and her father, gast faremis, met and fell in love. it's easy to miss this if you don't look for it but that makes her death even sadder that you get to know more about her right after she was taken away from you.
sure, disc 2 has you riding a snowboard down a mountain almost immediately after your friend dies and then fainting repeatedly in an ice wasteland and then going to the whirlwind maze where cloud has his penultimate breakdown and the planet decides to try to kill everything on it by releasing the weapons.
everything cracks after aerith dies and it takes a long time for it to be put back together... cloud falls into a mako coma after giving the black materia back to sephiroth (the REAL sephiroth who's been in the crater the whole time) and after that, the whole party is taken into custody by shinra.
it should be said that, preceding cloud's last breakdown before his mind completely submits to jenova, tifa is unwilling to admit to him that he "wasn't in nibelheim 5 years ago" but i've already gone into how bad this makes her look. i KNOW she's worried about him and only wants the best for him but what could've been worse than what happened? she was only delaying the inevitable by waiting so long to tell him when she seemed to always know and always be just on the verge of telling him... it's. a lot. :|
anyways, you take control of tifa after this, and are supposed to get executed by shinra for treason for causing meteor to happen. you eventually get out of it, after some pretty stupid pussyfooting around (wtf was that slapfight LMFAO)
you take the highwind and travel around, trying to figure out where cloud could possibly be. he's in mideel and you figure that out through some light investigating. tifa hears two men discussing a young man who's been there for a week and she runs over and asks them where he is. you enter the hospital to see cloud, blank-faced in a wheelchair. he's like... fully gone. tifa sobs in his lap after everyone else leaves the room and says "i made it this far believing in the memories we shared." ultimately, this scene is genuinely heartbreaking. it made me like tifa more (for a bit at least, and keep in mind that i don't hate her but she's not a very good character at a lot of points in the og lmfao :///) until she says that she's going to stay in mideel and watch over cloud till he's better because she "doesn't care about anything but cloud." like.................... huh.............. girl, you just spent weeks getting to know these people and trying your hardest to save the world and NOW you wanna bow out? because... why? because you think it's your fault he's like that? cloud thought it was HIS fault that aerith died and he still pressed on, even if he didn't want to, for her... i don't get how she can be so selfish after that lmfao?! like you have barret and marlene to look out for, too!!! you have your friends from avalanche who died that you could be fighting for?!!!!! why bow out of the whole fucking journey and claim you only care about cloud when YOU'RE THE REASON HE ENDED UP LIKE THAT..........
but.
i digress.
the rest of your party leave mideel and then have to steal the large materia back from shinra during a few sidequests in corel and fort condor. you get it lmfao...
after all that, you head back to mideel and talk to tifa and cloud, who still isn't better yet. the ground starts to shake and you have to go outside and fight ultimate weapon. the other part members escape mideel before it collapses into the lifestream but tifa and cloud fall into it.
in the lifestream, you learn all about the things i said at the beginning... about cloud's past, his childhood feelings for tifa and his inferiority complex, tifa's feelings for cloud after he left nibelheim, cloud's true whereabouts from 5 years ago... the works.
the rest of the party drag cloud and tifa out of the lifestream and tifa says that she didn't put cloud back together but that he did it himself.
you eventually get back to the highwind, now playing as cloud, who tells the entire party about his memory problems and what actually happened 5 years ago. he says my favorite line of dialogue in the game how he's the "master of his own imaginary world" (it's relatable bc that's how i feel as a schizo person <3) and then tifa says my LEAST FAVORITE line of dialogue in the game... which may only by in the english version now that i think about it like... i sure hope it wasn't in the jp version but she says "wow! you sure are messed up, cloud!" like.... bitch. shut up!
anywho. you go to the underwater reactor, get the submarine, wreck the submarine with the other huge materia in it, get the huge red materia, get the key of the ancients, travel to rocket town to finish cid's story, travel to cosmo canyon and talk to bugenhagen... cloud brings up aerith again. he laments that he "remembers" her a lot and then goes on to say that, no, it's not that he 'remembers' her, because he never forgot her... it's just that she was so close to them, they couldn't see through to how she really felt or what her death and, ultimately, sacrifice really meant because he was blinded by grief over her death.
you take bugenhagen to the forgotten city and get to see that aerith was praying for holy to stop sephiroth from summoning meteor and that her prayer was answered right before her death, meaning holy will be able to stop meteor if it's summoned soon enough.
you dive into midgar after this to kill hojo, scarlet, and heidegger. you also fight the turks again but they're cool so they just give up after awhile.
after all that it's time to fight sephiroth. cloud tells everyone, while they're all on the highwind, that they need to leave and find out what they're all truly fighting for, because cloud figured out that he's fighting for a selfish reason (because he wants revenge for aerith, his mother, and nibelheim) and supposes that everyone else is, too. he wants all of them to find the strength to finish this and tells them that if they find they don't want to come back, so be it. this is a really good character growth moment for cloud tbh... he's being selfless and letting everyone choose what they want to do instead of letting himself tell them what's best for them. obviously, no one leaves because... they all want to fight for aerith and everyone else they love.
tifa doesn't leave (i mean no one does but... she literally says she isn't gonna leave because she has nowhere else to go/no one to go home to... which... isn't true bc she has marlene, whom she really cares about but O.K. girl i'm done with your regressive character arc at this point like... bye.
anyways it's time for the highwind scene that every cloti loves to say completely dispoves cloud's love for aerith lol!!!
there are two versions of the scene, high affection (where the only difference is that tifa says "words aren't the only way to show your feelings" and how embarrassed she gets in the morning) and the low affection. there's no standard/canon version which is funny because cloud and aerith date has been confirmed as canon many times :) huh :) funny, that :)
anyways... they, cloud and tifa, "confirm their feelings with eachother" about what happened in the lifestream which really just means that tifa says some bullshit and cloud agrees with her because he doesn't know what else to say and then she falls asleep on his shoulder and that's... that.
after that you head down into the northern crater to fight sephiroth and when you get to him, cloud talks about aerith's prayer "shining... holy is shining!" and then you fight sephiroth in three phases to, not even arguably, the best song ever, one-winged angel.
after his second form, safer sephiroth, is defeated... cloud is surrounded by the lifestream in a black void and a hand reaches out to him as aerith's theme plays and he reaches out for her but isn't able to reach her, then he sees sephiroth and falls towards him. you only have one attack, omnislash, and it's obvious that this is the moment that cloud gets to have his revenge for everything sephiroth stole from him.
sephiroth dies and tifa pulls cloud out there, while danging off a cliff and looking over at their friends he says "i think i understand now. an answer from the planet. the promised land. i think ... i can meet her there." and tifa looks sadly down and closes her eyes, clinging to him and agrees that they should go and meet her.
the last cutscene shows a LOT of information lmfao... marlene is seen recognizing/hearing aerith from the lifestream floating through the air to help holy stop metero from destroying midgar. everyone on the highwind watches as the liffestream, commanded by aerith, saves the planet. they all know it's her, too. and the last shot of the game before the credits start to roll is aerith's smiling face, surrounded by the lifestream. it's a direct parallel to her face surrounded by the green light of mako energy being the first image we see of the game. it's full circle and aerith is the most important character in the whole game!
in many ways, it's aerith's story just as well as it is cloud's. i know tifa is important too, just as everyone else is because we all have a role to play in a story such as the one present in ffvii, but cloud and aerith are the obvious hero and heroine. and that's why the love triangle feels so skewed and top-heavy. aerith was ALWAYS meant to be cloud's love interest, even in death. tifa was an after thought, conceived after careful consideration because "aerith died". i do love her and i wish she was handled better in the original game and supporting compliation materials... hopefully they'll do her character justice in the remake's future installments, like i said.
ffvii is all about love after death. about not abandoning your friends and the people around you. about "giving into the good will of others" and finding reasons to keep on fighting after it seems like all hope is lost.
all-in-all... i love aerith gainsborough, i love tifa lockheart, and i love cloud strife. (i love the others, too obviously omg...) whatever ends up being canon or not canon or who even gives a fuck... who cares. i just wanted to observe what i thought was the intended storyline, is all!! that's it :)