Part 65: Fade to Black

Chapter 64 - Fade to Black




After the apocalyptic events and a little fade-to-black, we get a little tea time with our favorite screw-ups.



Well Tifa - don't worry - no one's gonna be too hard on you. But you did fuck up on a global scale and probably ruined the life of everyone alive in the Planet, possibly in the universe.



Nevertheless...



This is a most interesting flashback - we finally get to see what happened.



Tifa found a demented Cloud sitting by the train station, after many years.



As soon as he sees Tifa, he gets invigorated.



It's worth mentioning...



This entire sequence is extremely weird.



Cloud starts out drooling like a brain-damaged kid, as if he's in blank state. When he sees Tifa he suddenly gets up.



As he starts "recovering" his memories there are white flashes and weird glitchy sounds, as if his memories are being recovered/made-up on the fly.



Of course, Cloud looks like a bum thrown away. We don't know what happened before that yet.



Smells like PTSD to me!



As soon as she looks away, he starts freaking out.



It's a very creepy scene.



This entire exchange has this weird feeling about it. It's not supposed to feel right.



Nothing is right.



But by now we know that.



This is a great example of FF7's unreliable narrators. Tifa was hiding all this time, so omitting the facts. During the original flashback, she lied.



In the meanwhile, Cloud has been delusional.



Nothing is set in stone, and this is why the plot in this game gets really weird. Everything is suspicious.



Even this sequence right now.



This is why multiple replays can be interesting if you know where to look for the things that are "off", but...



It's also the reason why you can play this game multiple times and STILL don't understand the plot if you're not paying attention.



The information handed out at the beginning of the game will screw everything you learned later on, and so on.



In Tifa's defense, all she knew was that her friend was fucked up. She didn't know the extent of it.



But then again, she got involved with a group that was bombing reactors.



And decided to include her brain-damaged childhood friend in that.



Nevermind, it was a really stupid idea either way.



We're out of darkness, into the light again. Until next time!


NEXT TIME:

Confusion! Paranoia! Media manipulation! Mass Control!