There has been so much discourse around meta mysteries and theoretical unknowns that have ~seemingly~ been introduced into the remake of Final Fantasy VII, that we’ve completely lost sight of what this story is about. And that, I think, is completely intentional.
Final Fantasy VII, and in particular, the Remake of it, has become a tangle of cosmic spectacle that has everyone questioning their own eyes and what comes next. But as a fan of the original game, the compilation, and the 30-year-old themes and messages of this story, I hasten to say that that isn’t where the real question lives.
The trailers, the interviews, the swirl of “what ifs” and alternate worlds are all clever sleight-of-hand, drawing our focus up and out so we forget to look in. The real question and the real truth of FFVII have always lain inward, layered into the mind and heart of the protagonist.
Granted, most fans already know and acknowledge that FFVII has both an internal and external conflict. But many have also minimized – or worse, hijacked – the importance of the internal conflict in favor of satisfying their ideals about the external: the spectacle, the theories, or their personal preferences for other characters or subplots.
As annoying as that can be, that kind of misdirection is, in my opinion, exactly what Square Enix wants and exactly what they’ve accomplished. Because the truth of FFVII is Cloud’s identity crisis and the resolution of it. And at the center of that truth – the core and the catalyst – is Tifa Lockhart.
Square Enix’s narrative for FFVII Remake and Rebirth is, at its core, a masterclass in subversion misdirection. Everything is engineered to draw your attention outward. They want you to chase timelines, lose yourself in blurred lines between life and death, and debate fate and reality.
All of it is deliberate. In fact, it’s structural. Cloud is lost, confused, and doubting his own reality, and so are you – because the creators want you to be. They want you to experience Cloud’s disorientation firsthand. But underneath all this spectacle and artifice, the emotional structure of the story remains exactly as it was in 1997.
At its heart, Final Fantasy VII is not just a tale of fantasy science fiction – it is a character study. Everything in its mythos, from Sephiroth’s manipulations to Shinra’s pursuit of power to the Planet’s persistence for existence, sits as scaffolding for Cloud’s internal struggle. The real brickwork of this narrative is psychological.
The thing that splinters is not the timeline – it’s Cloud. And the only way to restore balance? It’s not in chasing cosmic secrets; it’s in turning toward the one constant who’s been there for him from the very start, the one holding the key to both his truth and his self-lies: Tifa.
From the beginning, Cloud’s love for Tifa has been the quiet axis of his entire story. Long before the experiments, the trauma, or the illusions, there was the boy who admired the girl next door – the one who shone brighter than the rest of their small town, who made him want to be seen and to be worthy. That early, unspoken affection is what drives everything he does.
His decision to join SOLDIER, his desire to become stronger, even his later illusions of grandeur – all of it stems from a single wish: to become someone Tifa could depend on. It’s a pure and innocent kind of love, but it becomes entwined with his identity. When that love meets failure, it becomes the source of his deepest wound.
Strip away all the noise, and Cloud’s entire journey centers on a single wound – the mountain incident. The event from his childhood is not a throwaway detail; it is the point of origin for his entire sense of self. That day, he determined he failed Tifa – the person whose opinion mattered most. That single moment, that single conviction, that he couldn’t protect her, that he wasn’t good enough, became the foundation of all his later strife.
Every loss or failure afterward – Nibelheim and the Reactor, his mother, Zack, Aerith, AVALANCHE, on and on – becomes a compounded, larger echo of that original wound. It always comes back to Tifa. She is the mirror: the cause and the cure, the beginning and the end, the light that breaks him and the light that saves him. She is his greatest weakness and his greatest strength.
And the genius of FFVIIs early acts, including Remake/Rebirth, is that it buries this truth. It trains us to look in the wrong places for answers, just like Cloud does. We’re primed to search for cosmic revelations: Who lives, who dies? Which timeline is real? What is Fate planning? All the while, the real story is unfolding inside of Cloud. That is why the third part of the trilogy will be explosive. Because the reveal won’t be about the fate of the multiverse of any individual characters, but about Cloud’s ability to accept himself.
Cloud’s journey is not, and has never truly been, about saving the world from Meteor. It’s about saving himself from the belief that he isn’t good enough to protect the ones he loves. The path to that salvation begins and ends with Tifa. She is his memory uncorrupted, the stable point in his chaos, and the keeper of his real identity. She is the proof that he was never the failure he saw in himself. The moment Cloud accepts this truth – that he never truly failed Tifa, that he was enough – the false persona collapses, and so does the inadequacy that has plagued him all along.
This is what Square Enix is protecting so fiercely with their tricks and distractions. Because if you realized too early that the “real” climax was not cosmic, but intimate, the story would lose its impact. We are taught to look outside Cloud, so that the final, internal reveal can strike with full force.
This is why the confusion and spectacle are so fascinating but also so misleading. They are, intentionally, smoke and mirrors. The central story is, and always has been, about a boy becoming a man by facing himself. Give in to the spectacle, and you miss the heart and the human truth.
We don’t know how the trilogy will end. But one thing the developers have said consistently: the story is not changing. The story isn’t about alternate universes or altered realities. It’s about grief and forgiveness, acceptance and love. It’s about honoring legacy, while moving on to live and fight another day and for a better and brighter future. It’s about identity and accepting who you are, while still believing you are worthy.
Cloud will learn that he never failed Tifa, and thus never failed Zack, Aerith, his mother, or any of his friends or loved ones, and that there is not a thing that he doesn’t cherish, which means he will always fight, even if he doesn’t always win.
In the end, the player will watch the noise fade into silence. What will remain is the truth Final Fantasy VII has always protected: the power of remembering who you are, cherishing those you love, and fighting for what you believe in. You were always enough.
