Cloud’s unreliable narration only makes Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s ending more confusing

30.03.2024 - 18:53 / polygon.com / Zack Fair

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the original Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.]

The original Final Fantasy 7 pulls a brilliant, almost nasty, narrative trick. Just as the game sells players on the idea that its protagonist, Cloud Strife, is the hero and overall cool guy of the game, we then learn that in actuality, the whole idea of him that the game has shown us is based on a lie. Instead, Cloud mixed himself up with his comrade Zack Fair, and he cultivated an entire false version of himself predicated on someone else’s memories. Because of this, Cloud Strife is perhaps one of the least reliable narrators in literally all of video games. And now, the ending ofFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth just adds a whole new layer onto that.

The ending of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthconfused me. Sure, I think I understand what happened in its broadest strokes, but nothing seems to be all that conclusive. It’s so bad that I honestly can’t even really say for sure if Aerith died or not in a permanent way, simply because there’s some funky multiple-worlds logic at play by the end.

I’ll try to say what happens anyway.

From the looks of it, there are two worlds in Rebirth. First, we have the main world where we predominantly play as Cloud over the course of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth. This world follows the story of the original Final Fantasy 7, more or less, which means it follows a storyline where Zack Fair dies prior to the events of the game. Except Remake and Rebirth also show us an alternate world where Zack survives the events of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, while Aerith and Cloud only live on in a comatose state. At the ending of Rebirth, Aerith seemingly dies in the “main world,” although we don’t see it — but the game does show her friends, like Tifa and Yuffie, grieving her loss.

That’s all confusing enough as it is, but then determining the basic events of what happened in Rebirth becomes even more topsy-turvy when we add another possible layer of complication: Cloud has never been a reliable narrator.

In the original Final Fantasy 7 and now in Rebirth, we see Cloud’s memory fail. In both games, Cloud tells an erroneous version of the Nibelheim story where he mixes up Zack Fair with himself. That entire opening chapter of Rebirth? It’s a lie. Yes, Cloud was at Nibelheim at the time, but he supported the mission as a low-level shock trooper, not as a member of SOLDIER like Zack. Rebirth hints at this discrepancy when Tifa privately confronts Cloud over his retelling of the Nibelheim incident, but we have yet to see Cloud unearth his fully original memory.

When assessing the already confusing ending of the game — which seemingly weaves together multiverses and dreams — and factor in