dreamcastaway
@dreamcastaway

As I circle back through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on a hard mode playthrough, there's a lot of reward. I traverse old paths, I'm given time to think about the story as a whole. I'm not ready to write about the ending quite yet but there's a splinter in my mind that I want to pluck. While Rebirth's side content often expands the world in playful fashion, the main story's flourishes range from inspired to contrived. This is a game with a fantastic grasp on its characters. Cloud and the crew sound deeply in line with their 1997 selves. but I am sometimes unsure of Rebirth's grasp on the setting.

Rebirth fulls the world of FF7 with Goddamn History. The rise and fall of nations, the worship of summoned gods. The ancient plights of nearly forgotten peoples. Some of this fits into the established "map" from 1997. Some of this is harmlessly superfluous. And some of it...

causes problems. and I want to talk about it.


(This post contains specific spoilers for Chapter Ten: The Watcher of the Vale but will also contain some general stuff for chapter 11. No ending spoilers though.)

The line between enriching a world and bogging it down can be thin. What heightens the setting's history sometimes is overtaken a weave of terminology and motivations that exist mostly to satisfy fan curiosity. In the worst cases, authors misinterpret the world in a way that robs the mystique. Lore is often a dirty word and earns that derision when deployed frivolously. But lore is little more than the manifestation of material history. Writers have a sense of the world and in the best cases they have a grasp on the most important edict: understand how it got the way it is. The hints and pieces in our writing that signal that understanding turn our worlds into something solid. Lore turns into something tedious when it fails to serve that purpose. When it constricts the possibility space and encroaches on the story itself. When it becomes theory fodder for YouTubers.

What is the Black Materia? in the original Final Fantasy VII it's a vague Macguffin that Sephiroth needs to summon a planet killing meteor. It is the power of destruction shaped into a crystal form. We're told that materia is simply the crystalized form of mako, the planet's life energy, and understand that there's naturally formed mako and human manufactured materia. The Black Materia's origins aren't really explained but there's enough context in the text to make a simple assumption: it's probably a naturally formed materia arising as part of a cycle of death and rebirth. It's just a stone representing death which was given to the Cetra by the planet in ancient times. It has a counterpart: the White materia. Which is a stone of life and communion with the natural world. The Cetra embrace the white materia and seal away the black materia. The holy stone, the evil stone.

The precise nature of the materia is secondary to what they can do. Black Materia's ability to summon Meteor plays into Sephiroth's plan: to wound the planet and consume the Lifestream energy that gathers at the point of that wound. The White Materia can summon Holy, a protective spell that can stave off Meteor and acts as a manifestation of the planet's will. In the end, following many a shenanigan, Holy is summoned to stop Meteor and among the interpretations of the ending is that the planet's defensive spell didn't just destroy Meteor but wiped out humanity for the threat it represented. We don't need to grant that turn of a events owing to all the Compilation media that shows life after Final Fantasy 7 but when the game came out, that was the extent of it. The bad rock summoned the big threat, the good rock summoned a holy light to protect the world. As manifestations of natural phenomenon (life and death, violence and creation) they act as the catalyst for our heroes' final battle and the magical remedy to the grand existential threat. What they do is the thing that matters, what they enable for the narrative is the most important consideration.

Rebirth adds some Goddamn History to the Black Materia. In terms of the narrative, it's still an evil rock that Sephiroth wants to further his plans. Those plans have changed in the remake trilogy to something more esoteric than the 1997 but the role of the materia as a plot object remains fairly similar. What's changed is our understanding of what the Black Materia is. It's not a manifestation of planetary magicks. It's a materia created by the Gi Tribe. The Gi, who were a mostly fallen threat who responsible for the death (technically petrification) of Red XIII's father in the original game, are a much more present entity in Rebirth. They have a leader, they have an essence and presence beyond random enemy encounters. And... I'm not sure this was a good idea.

It turns out that the Gi are an alien species that took refuge on the planet following a cosmic collision that destroyed their homeworld. That's not entirely out of line with the setting. Jenova's an alien fallen from space after all. However, the Gi have another strangeness about them: they can't return to the Lifestream when they die. They are not native to the planet and thus they are not allowed to return to it. After untold ages as revenant beings, they craft the Black Materia in hopes to breaking this status quo. Presumably this is meant to be done by summoning Meteor to completely annihilate them.

There's some immediate issues at play with the Gi. The most pressing of which is the visual language surrounding them which paints them both with the signifiers of native peoples while also presenting their leader (Gi Nattak) as a potentially devilish figure leading our heroes into temptation with the story of his people. I'm not the best person to decode that but it's undeniably present. Gi Nattak's story is one we sympathize with but while this blog is a critique of Rebirth's writing, it's also a game where certain subtleties and ambiguities do exist. How much of his story is true? He paints the Cetra's seizure of the Black Materia as a selfish and power-hungry transgression but the fact remains that it also is an incredibly powerful destructive force. It's understood that the plight of the Gi is tragic but our heroes are rightly wary of the way in which Gi Nattak is using them to fulfill his own desires.

later on, this story will be challenged by a cetra account. no, we are told, the Gi struck first

That interplay is fine but all this history around the materia is very odd to me. The role of the Black Materia hasn't materially changed; it's a propulsive force guiding the party into the endgame. It's a dangerous key to Sephiroth's plan. But in removing that destructive power from the context of the planet, by turning it into a weapon of an alien people, the Black Materia stops being the manifestation of a natural impulse. It's not simply the Planet's death drive, which exists contra-posed to healing instincts manifest in the White Materia.

Something is lost here. Final Fantasy 7 is a story about the natural world. The Black Materia is no longer natural. It's not simply a force which arises from the blood of the planet. It's a warped manifestation of one people's relationship with their mortality. The Gi's story gives the planet an odd amount of agency. It rejects people. Rebirth's makes it clear that the planet does interfere in events through the manifestation of white Whispers that counter the black Whispers controlled by Sephiroth. In Remake, these ghosts were more neutral cosmic entities obsessed with keeping the story on track. In Rebirth, they are competing armies. But even then, the planet's ghosts manifest more like white blood cells than anything malicious. They (and the WEAPONs from the first game which are slightly reimagined here) respond to the threat the Sephiroth represents. they manifest in times of crisis.

There's something stranger, something darker, happening in their rejection of the Gi. The planet moves away from the role of Mother Earth. There's a malice implicit in the way it shuns the Gi. We might want to paint this all as a mechanical matter. It's just a fact of the universe that the Gi can't enter the Lifestream. But that's no better than if the planet actively rejected them. It turns nature into something less-encompassing. The embrace of the earth has limits and in creating those boundaries, Rebirth adds a strange harshness to the cycle of life. And for what? Well, mostly it feels like a way to explain why the Gi were ghosts.

That's the catch. This new lore might answer some facts about the world: who were the Gi really? What did they want? Why is the Black Materia so destructive? but the answers constrict the world's possibility space. we get answers to questions that didn't matter. What the Black Materia does remains the same. what the Gi did to Red's father remains. these are the things that are important. What is gained with this talk of aliens and rejected spirits? why add this layer of complication if it doesn't particular affect how the narrative proceeds? why bother with this if it starts to undermine themes? why add these rough edges to the planet's mechanics?

I don't have particular great answers to these questions save to say that I don't think we gain much at all. Whereas learning about Junon's history as a pseudo-pirate republic provides contrast to Shinra's corpocratic rule, providing another material example of the violences of their expansion wreck on people and thus showing how groups like AVALANCE and the Shinra Resistance Committee come to be... this intermingling of the Gi into planetary affairs doesn't particularly enhance matters. it fills out codex entries.

Rebirth has a startling tendency to derail is most poignant and pertinent moments with deviations into lore. Red is hardly allowed time to mourn his father before Gi Nattak arrives and beckons the party into his lair to offer his lore bomb. a key moment is constricted. this previously happened to Barrett after Dyne's death in Corel Prison. his grieving is interrupted by a boss fight against Palmer, one of the most in your face comic characters. these are important moments for Barrett and Red. they help inform their behavior for the rest of the story. but while FF7 (and the Remake project by extension) is a story partly about grief, there is little time for the character to GRIEVE. and this undercutting doesn't end with matters of grief. it also affect material matters and issues of politics.

A stunningly well-executed plot up until this point (alluded to up above) is the burgeoning war between Shinra and Wutai and the ways in which resistance manifests in the face of intense societal violence. different voices rise and converse on how to resist, barret being the most radical and clear-headed among them. Yuffie's plot is enriched by the way in which she, a teenage soldier, is caught up in this plot. throughout the game, we see Rufus hounded by the presence of Glenn Lodbrock. Glenn's a character from Ever Crisis' story mode take of 'The First Solider' initially involved in missions to subdue native resistance in an island nation called Rhadore. In Rebirth, at least initially, he's a dog biting back at Shinra's hand. a SOLDIER defected to Wutai offering expertise in their war. he's one of the consequences of Shinra's overreach and violence spinning around to shoot the company in the foot. and yet....

its revealed that this is simply Sephiroth hijacking that conflict as a means to distract Shinra from his cosmic goals. suddenly the entire plot point unravels. Shinra's not suffering the consequences of their violence military expansion. the SRC is not a joint collective of people with material concerns banding together to fight corporate power. it's all Sephiroth. much like the Gi's manufacture of the Black Materia undermined themes of the natural world, Sephiroth's interjection here starts undercut notions of political resistance. it's another layer to the onion, sure... but the layer wasn't needed. this resistance, like the manifestation of the WEAPONs, is simply the natural behavior of oppressed people. it didn't need to be explained beyond that. the reader understands how it happens and none of it requires a scheming black-winged angel. resistance is natural

I'm sympathetic to the desire to add more detail to the "map" of a world. I've been slowly (too slowly) writing a novelization of Skies of Arcadia for the last few years and a key challenge of that task has been determining when there's been room in the margins to build out the history of the world. to "lore-build" with details of old pirate captains, war battles, and ancient civilizations. I recently wrote a chapter where the heroes enter the hidden city of Rixis on the continent beneath the Green Moon. In the game, it's little more than ruins in the mist. in my writing, I added vegetation and odd metal to the structures. I added wandering shade of the ancient peoples. I turned a mural on the wall into a hologram.

this wasn't strictly "necessary" and to purists it probably seems indulgent. but the world of Arcadia, while rich even back on the Dreamcast, invites speculation. it dares us to add more detail. I put those ghosts there to explain how an ancient Gigas was slain through sacrificing a population but also because Aika is afraid of spirits. i wanted ghosts to wander in the streets as a way to play with that phobia and because as someone less interested in monster battles I wanted to see her fight something else. i wrote her having a panic attack to create a different kind of enemy for the dungeon. I turned that mural into a hologram to better explain how the native Ixa'takans could believe that Fina, whose appearance is identical to the ancient figure, could be confused for a goddess. i also did it to add further questions about her nature; it's not just an etching that slightly resembles her. it's a near perfect mirror. a exact match whose exact_ness_ is meant to be unsettling.

I did this in the hopes of adding richness and it will be up to the readers to decide if it worked. these changes were made trying to be very careful to avoid altering the main plot. I want the ancient people under the Green Moon to be tragic and I want to connect their plight to their ancestors. but I can't drastically change their fate. they are dead. their wordless ghosts wander but imperfectly as the aftermath of grand magicks. they don't rise up to speak to our heroes and add new lore to the nature of the Green Moon Crystal they seek. it, like the black materia, holds dangerous power. it arises from a war and while we understand the costs of that war, i've been wary of changing much of the context even while explaining some of the underlying cause.

this is not to suggest I'm a better writer/storyteller than Yoshinori Kitase and or Kazushige Nojima. that's not true and the body of their work (and the work of original FF& collaborators like Masato Kato) show a talent for storytelling that I can only hope to have. for all my time analyzing stories and pouring my empathy into my writing, some people simply have it baby. they do. I don't. not in that way. this is Nojima's story in many ways, even with the guiding hands of collaborators. he's within rights to expand and explore it

but I do understand the temptation of lore and the push to fill out every empty space. perhaps I've fallen into the same traps as Rebirth has with the Gi as I change what happens in Rixis. I am, like Rebirth, mostly rewriting the contents of a dungeon. it's a difficult balancing act. maybe I've failed. so it goes. but failure is not the sole providence of the hobbyist or amateur. even skilled writers can fail

so I will be bold and say this: I think Rebirth failed in these specific examples. What does the nature of the Gi matter when Sephiroth still gets the Black Materia? What do we gain from turning the motivations of oppressed people into something manipulated by our villain? we fill out spaces on the map. but some things need to be shadowed

something's simply are

There's much to be said for Rebirth's obsession with the mechanics of its world. the nature of the lifestream is explicated on with a fanatical fervor. these cosmic revelations change what we've understood about the planet's blood before this point and are key to Rebirth's astounding (albeit somewhat frustrating) conclusion. I'll outline that at a different time but suffice it to say that those alterations feel like they are serving grander themes even if Rebirth shies away from allowing the most radical and interesting possibilities.

and I think we see that movement away from the radical, away from the wonderful, in the plot revelations about the Gi. we certainly lose an important spirit of resistance once we learn that Glenn isn't really Glenn. yes, the plot gains more layers. the world gets a few more details. but what about the story? more can be less, and nothing's felt "less" than explaining the what of the Black Materia when the why was also what mattered.


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in reply to @dreamcastaway's post:

excellent writing and wholly agreed

tho i think there’s an interesting potential for a different solution to your qualm of the Gi-Lifestream incompatibility as it being a collision of more than one Nature; i feel that the cycle of life is at least a little bit inherently harsh, and the idea of our Nature not being the true one boundless nature - illustrated through its factual exclusion of a different Nature - is kinda cool. but even as I like it, it would be much tastier in any number of games different to this one, lol

—— warning: i am not editing the below meandering about Destiny lore to be any more readable than it is. just had to get it out. ignore it at one’s leisure ——

it’s interesting also how this parallels what Destiny’s lore has done in the past two years, to probably better but still a bit mixed results; for the first 8 years the Darkness was an unquantifiable force that seemed to be of the universe’s natural order, and which talked to us in Seth Dickinson lore books candidly, while also being the attribution for most all the setting’s villains’ motivations in a vaguely propagandic kind of way. As some books would come to elucidate, Darkness/decay/physicality/stasis is a natural part of the balance of the universe, but “balance is not equity” and so our place in the story makes sense: we are a force somewhat natural like gravity, tasked with leveling out the scales of a chaotic universe. But then also it turns out all the manifestations of the Darkness we’ve been associating with this universal natural force are constructs built by an alien race which was blessed by the Light then turned on it. so it seems the imbalance of the Traveler’s acts has been the impetus for the wavering of the scales which currently is heavily, HEAVILY swung towards Darkness. which is interesting in its own right, especially as it demystifies the Traveler from a celestial nature-being into just being a Thing that made some less than stellar judgment calls; … but man, if I could flip a switch, of course i’m flipping it back to a story about guardians performing a symbiotic adversarial relationship with the universe-as-a-being itself. that’s just more magical.

Great piece! Echoes my thoughts on a lot of moments in Rebirth, with Gi Nattak's whole exposition dump landing with a bland thud while I could only think "this... wasn't really necessary".

Some things in the world of FF7 should just be allowed to exist and be without being necessarily tied to the larger A plot.

I enjoy the Gi stuff but partly because it ties into another thing, which is Sephiroth's suspension and survival in the Lifestream - it alludes to the reality that the Sephiroth we experience in the now is only partly Sephiroth and is, in large part, the alien threat Jenova represents. He's not a freak of nature - he's a modern day revenant, an inheritor of the same flaw that created the Gi.

That said I totally agree that making Glenn an extension of Sephiroth and the Reunion stuff both weakens that side of the plot AND feels rather odd lore-wise when the whole point of the P0 gang is that they were never exposed to the SOLDIER process, predating that system of making supersoldiers. It does raise some interesting questions since we know the other two characters from that plot are in AVALANCHE HQ? I assume that'll be followed up on in the third part.