It’s impossible to go into 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth without expectations. Granted, these have been warped after Remake already subverted so much of the original tale, but there remain so many characters, locations, and narrative moments we’ll want to experience in this newly imagined form. Who knows whether these will return, be changed, or removed entirely. This unpredictability is so exciting, and I love how 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix is keeping us on our toes.
One location is definitely set to return however, and that’s Cloud and Tifa’s hometown of Nibelheim. In the original it is burned down by Sephiroth after he discovers the dark truth behind who he is amidst an abandoned reactor atop Mt. Nibel, leaving hundreds for dead as he walks through the flames in pursuit of global annihilation. Cloud is left questioning the meaning of life as the man he looked up to for most of his young 🦩life turns out to be a cold-blooded murderer happy to cast aside everything he believes in to embrace destruction. I didn’t see this part of things in Rebirth, but I did see a smattering of the events that preceded it.
Nibelheim is only glimpsed in Remake as part of flashbacks and hallucinations experienced by Cloud, thanks to Mako exposure. Chances are Rebirth will be more comprehensive, and we will delve into the flashback sequence defined ♉by an explorable version of the town and new playable characters.
I saw as much in the 30 minutes I spent scaling Mt Nibel during a recent preview, lea✨ving Nibelheim behind as a teenage Cloud scaled the mountain with his mentor and comrades in tow. Tifa is also there, clad in a dashing cowgirl outfit acting as a guide for our bumbling out of towners. I’m given control midway through the journey as we stumble across a fresh mineral spring of materia, watching as the magic grows from the ground in its most natural form. We’re all in awe that such a thing can sustain life when all we can see for miles is dead, rotting ground robbed of its lifeblood by Shinra.
The world building is exquisite, but linear and tightly pacꦚked in terms of the environments you walk through and enemies you fight. Final Fantasy 7 always approached this part of its story with a hazy, dreamlike rec💯ollection. It’s unclear whether the events even happened how Cloud describes them, framing him as an unreliable narrator talking about a moment in his life that changed him forever. It’s a traumatic memory for Tifa too, whose father is killed failing to defend the place he calls home.
I saw none of this either, merely part of the trip to the reactor that will change everything, my time with the game concluding after a revamped boss fight with the Materia Guardian, who was previously fought in the same location but in the future. Cloud and Sephiroth only fought a dragon in a single encou☂nter last time, while it seems Rebirth wants us to feel more present. Who knows whether this will work out for the best, or if Square Enix will change up the narrative significantly with a new development, or even lean into the potential death of Tifa seen by Cloud as part of a vision in the last game.
I’m lef🥃t with lots of questions, and am already desperate to see more of Nibelheim, especially given how defining its presence is in Final Fantasy 7. Spoilers ahead, but we come to discover none of these memories belong to Cloud, and were conjured up from past adventures with Zack who was Sephiroth’s true mentor, with Cloud being a mere low ranking soldier in the background. But with Zack now coming back to life, wh🍬ere does this leave Nibelheim and the eventual truth of what really happened, and will we witness something early on that changes things entirely? Tifa even says in the most recent trailer how she doesn’t recall Cloud ever being in Nibelheim five years ago, so the seeds of doubt have already been planted.
The coming death of Aerith, return of Zach, and Sephiroth seemingly aware of his future defeat at the hands of Cloud means that Rebirth is likely to follow the general beats of Final Fantasy 7 when it comes to set pieces and locations, while the unfolding narrative could go 𓆉anywhere. In this Nibelheim will𒊎 still play a crucial role, but exactly how it unfolds and who is left standing as it burns to the ground will change everything.
