We’ve reached the end! The last chapter of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Since we’re past that point of no return, Chapter 14: End of the World is a pretty straightforward chapter. There’s no side content to distract you, the cut scenes are aplenty, and the fights are epic.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’ll be honest, because much of this is a deviation from the original, I did not catch or pick up on the subtle hints leading up to these points on what was actually going on in the flash sideways scenes. So when we open up with jumping back and forth between Aerith taking Cloud on a date in Midgar in a sky-is-falling world, and jumping to Zack making one decision, and appearing in a decision he didn’t make, I was confused.
It’s like one of those movies or shows where you watch it, and then you have to go to the internet to find out what you’ve missed. I’ll get to that more in a couple of paragraphs.
And this includes the part where (click for spoiler)…
Sephiroth supposedly kills Aerith. In the original, he slices her right up. In Rebirth, Cloud maybe blocks it from happening? Or Cloud believes he saved her? The rest of the party certainly believes she’s dead, but she comes back and fights with Cloud in a 2v1 vs Sephiroth. Hell, Zach does, too! Cloud also continues to see Aerith through the end of the game, so who knows.
The Jenova fights are ridiculous and epic, as expected. The Sephiroth fights are brilliant and look fantastic. When you go up against Sephiroth Reborn (you’ll know it by the giant wings that are immune to everything and change colors, and the core that barely takes any damage), you’ll NEED to use magic, so remember these tips:
- Use ICE on red wings
- Use LIGHTNING on green wings
- Use WIND on blue wings
- Use FIRE on white wings
If you do that, this phase will be a breeze. If you don’t do that, you’re gonna have a bad time.
The soundtrack is INCREDIBLE. I’m almost sad that we got One Winged Angel so quickly, but whatever. That song is Sephiroth, and he busted out the wing on us, so it is what it is.
In other news, Rufus finding out Glenn is just a Sephiroth puppet was an interesting twist. I don’t know what that means for the Wutai/Shinra war that’s brewing, or why we found this out in Rebirth, but it’ll just have to be something we see unfold in game three.
I think a lot of this is to say – they made a lot of interesting choices in this final chapter.
I’m going to drop some final thoughts behind the spoiler tag again, so if you want to dive deep, feel free to click here again.
Sephiroth claims there are multiple worlds (“when the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born”) that he’s looking to unite (Reunion) to rule over all of them. So basically, Final Fantasy VII has gone “multiverse.” So I think the idea is that Sephiroth wants to use Meteor to destroy this reality, and all other realities that the lifestream has created.
So all of the “flash sideways” scenes we’ve been seeing throughout the game have been those other worlds, where things happened differently. You can tell the difference between the worlds by looking at which dog is Shinra’s mascot. There are five different Shinra dogs shown throughout the game. The best explanation I’ve found to help you follow the events through the multiverse was in a chart (view) posted to the FFVIIRemake Subreddit.
So there’s a lot going on here. The third game is going to need to do a ton of explaining to untangle the vast differences in storyline that they’ve made from the original (there weren’t any multiverses in the original). While it’s not how I would have done it, I’m still very excited to see how it plays out.
I finished the game after 98.5 hours of game time, so while a bit odd to watch, you’re welcome for editing these videos down by speeding up exploration and battles. I thought of it as listening to an audiobook or podcast at 1.5x speed, but slowing it down for the important parts.
My overall opinion is that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth should be an easy Game of the Year, and is at the top of my list of greatest games of all time. I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough.
My full playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Chapter 14: End of the World can be viewed here:
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