My first instinct is that the Aerith we see in the Forgotten Capitol probably is Jenova manipulating Cloud, while the Aerith that is there when they’re prepping the Tiny Bronco for takeoff is a ghost. I’m also going to disagree about Jenova only appearing before everyone, the current Ever Crisis storyline seems to hint she has the ability to get into someone’s dreams and manipulate them that way, possibly making this Aerith a waking dream that only Cloud is having. With the music the first three notes are the opening notes for the game’s opening theme, “Bombing Run.” I had it set as my alarm clock music for a few years so I kinda recognize the tune. The underlying music though I don’t recognize and I think it is significant. It isn’t Jenova’s theme though, it sounds almost like music box music and kind of reminds me of Schala’s theme from Chrono Trigger although the melody is different and quite a bit creepier. My interpretation is the music is telling us there’s a lot more going on here and this Aerith probably isn’t our friend. But I also think it was kept intentionally ambiguous to keep players guessing so that the next time we see Aerith we don’t know if she’s Jenova’s manipulation or Omni Aerith.

I like submarine and tool maintenance!

Like in FF7 Original she is part of the Lifestream now and Cloud can see her cause he got powered by Lifestream/Mako and S Cell(Aka Jenova Cells) and like you see in the Remake and in Rebirth you fight Sephiroth many Times but its Sephiroth manifesting trough Jenovas Cells.

1:30:24 It doesn't make a lot of sense to have to blow up the reactor in a mission called "Outpost recovery". What's left of the outpost to recover? 😂😂 Also a little detail: you can steal & deconstruct the fire extinguishers. I don't know what they give, but you passed near one like a thousand times. Great episode!

Oh! It's the first time I've seen a rebel or a pirate radar beacon! I guess they belong to an update I haven't watched.

1:16:22 Aunt Mae (or aunt May) died because she went to fix a leak without a suit if I remember correctly. I haven't seen Barotrauma played with NPCs. It's interesting to see how they are programmed and what they are capable of on their own. Nice episode!

That Amber alert & advertising conversation was really dark & fun. I see you did another stream. I missed it by a little bit. Maybe next time! 👍🏼

What system are you playing this on? Thanks!😊

Gilgamesh alone confirms that all FF games are connected at least on a dimensional level. I really wish they would go all in and just confirm FFX is a prequel to FFVII already. Lifestream/Farplane Materia/Spheres Ghosts/Unsent Weapons/Sin Cetra/Summoners Shinra Their worlds just perfectly function the same.

I don't think it's Jenova anymore. Sephiroth is usung Cloud's trauma as a weapon. Aerith knows this and is trying to keep Cloud from falling apart. By making him think she is alive he won't spiral out of control and Sephiroth won't be able to use that trauma against him. However, when Cloud finally does break, it's going to be insane and I bet we'll actually get to see the proper Aerith burial scene.

I see one more detail. For a moment, before Aerith stops at 11:13 and turns to say "You promise?", you can see her sad expression. It's like she doesn't want Cloud to see her worried so he won't worry himself. To me this doesn't fit Jenova's theory at all

Hard agree with all of this

When you say play the OG before CC does that apply if you wait to play the remake trilogy when it's complete or after part 1 or rebirth?

So FF7 -> FF7: Remake -> FF7: Rebirth - FF7: Crisis Core?

There actually was a red glare in Aerith’s eyes in one of the scenes, but it’s just the reflection of the airship

This was a very good breakdown! And I think everything you said is absolutely correct

ff7 rebirth ending is garbage

It seems like a lot of other comments have also identified the three note melody (usually followed by another four) that plays in the post-funeral cutscene shows up a lot throughout Rebirth and FFVII in general, very nice job catching where it can be heard in the game btw! I'll always first remember hearing it in the very first cutscene of the original game, just before the title card is displayed over Midgar: from what I can tell, it's just called "Opening", and it leads straight into "Bombing Mission". I think the minor key the theme set against this time after Cloud gets a flash of Aerith falling over is to both communicate that what he's seeing is something to do with the planet/lifestream, but also to tell the audience that there's definitely something wrong with what Cloud is seeing. I currently conclude Omni-Aerith (and the planet) is making a risky decision to keep the man with a foot in two different realities believing in the offshoot reality he unconsciously wished to come true (saving her) in order to stabilise his delicate state of mind for just a little longer rather than falling apart before he even gets to the Northern Crater, deciding on the story that she has to stay behind at the Forgotten City in order to do her part in stopping Sephiroth: of course she's already doing so, just not from the specific location she's convincing Cloud she's staying.

Ah, I feel vindicated. I knew sales for Rebirth would be good. There's just a lot of misinformation out there and a certain narrative that people ran with due to Square's unrealistic expectations.

😂😂 The end of the episode was truly hilarious!

I see that last Barotrauma stream was a month ago so I don't know if you're still going or not. So it's feedback from 1 year old video. What I want to say is that I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of mining, fabricating, and so on. I mean the upkeep part. I also say it because it would benefit you as a crew. Ok. I'll keep watching the episode.

2:16:17 10 minutes looking for a leak, turns out the water pump wasn't on. Such a typical Barotrauma moment...

It's almost like the creators wanted to remind ff7 fans that other ff games exist...

Someone said the Developer said in an interview there are 5 "timelines" they revealed, including the OG game. Sephiroth told Omni Aerith "So this is where you have been hiding". That means there is a version of Aerith that can just travel between timelines, and Sephiroth was looking for her and successfully killed her for good this round. I think is Cloud's hallucination, because He saw no Blood on Aerith, but Tifa and the gang saw the blood. I feel like the Dev simply not answer this question or bring Aerith back for the 3rd game, leaving the fans come up with their own theory. But they skipped the Water Burial scene from the OG game, so what happened to Aerith's body? This is going to suck for me because she has been my Healer and she can dish out TONS of DPS. Playing this game without Aerith is going to be much harder.

I agree with both...the summons were cheapened INCREDIBLY by giving them to chadley. I loved finding summon materia in FF7, they even largely placed them in appropriate places...with mako...those mako caves im the endgame in particular were cool (not just summons i know). Chadley's dialogue alone made me almost hate doing summons and i no longer cared about how cool they were in rebirth...i got so tired of listening to him prattle on over and over. Give us the option to talk to him about them after we get them but let us get them without his involvement, yeesh. His endless chadchat with the relics was more than enough. Enemy skills were not only boring to get, but also almost entirely useless for players not pursuing challenges or postgame difficult content, too, making them completely forgettable. I literally forgot they were in rebirth til this video mentioned them. Hopefully... [Spoiler] Hopefully, hojo will do something to reduce his interaction time with us by 80% or so from rebirth. The only two negatives that stuck with me months after playing the game were the trash Disney Jungle Adventure music in gongaga and how much i dreaded having to interact with chadley even more to unlock so much otherwise-mostly-fun stuff in the game. If he is less integral to powerful things like summons, i will literally completely avoid him in re3, at least for my 1st playthrough.

16 isnt really a FF game, not much in common, but hey i mean it still may generate sales toward real ones that arent DMC: GoT edition at least. Good to hear things have been misinterpreted, im hoping 17 is a real FF again and i need 7re3 in my life with no monetary hindrance hahaha

9:37 The exact lines being a callback to Remake are : Cloud : You gonna be okay getting back ? (he says "home" in Remake) Aerith : aaand.. if I said I wasn't ? (Cloud in Remake : I'll go with you) It's a nod to Aerith accompanying Cloud to Sector 7 before seeing Tifa dressed up in the Corneo cart. Now it doesn't necessarily mean anything, it's just cute.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but when you talk to aerith after the beach fight, she tells cloud that she's talking to future aerith and that she doesn't know when he will, but he'll meet her. So I agree with @FailroadExpress that this person from the moment present Aerith died, future/lifestream/omni Aerith comes into play.

Wow! It’s 2:22 AM and there are 111 Comments before my comment was made! Trippy! As a newbie in the Final Fantasy Lore and universe of FF7, this video is so informative! Keep up the amazing work! ☺️

She is a random janitor whose job is to wipe Sephichan ass to the floor

Lol! KZbin decided to put a list of actors in the description of this one. Dennis Quaid, Harrison Ford, etc.

Great episode! Each episode is getting better than the last one.

I also think it’s pretty obvious that if anyone were Jenova it would be Tifa. All of the tension for something like that is between Cloud and Tifa this go around. I mean for goodness sake you can only get Cloud and Tifa to kiss !! Not Cloud and Aerith. Which I think is intentionally leading to something

WOAH wasn’t expecting the Japanese 😂 I’m pretty sure everything the creators have done throughout the 2 games makes it pretty clear that was Omni Aerith

I enjoy hearing your points against the theory but I just can’t get over how much they emphasize that Jenova will take the form of those who have died, only to never use it. That point especially is why Nanaki can sense “her”. I could argue against each of these points but in the end we’ll just have to see because like you’ve said, nobody can truly be 100% right.

Nice! I always like when crews go mining and fabricating!

Yeah but the music has a dissonant note in it and not in any of your examples. Could just be there because wtf? He's losing it again

I feel like the whole thing of Rebirth is that maybe they’ll jump timelines in the last part to somehow get aerith and Zack back to being alive, and Cloud being connected to the life stream, maybe his consciousness is fractured to both timelines. The timeline they all fail, and Zack still being alive. Rebirth exploring that oddity in a sense, I feel like it was for that reason, like the life stream being protected by cloud and crew, Zack & Aerith get their lives back as a gift from the life stream. Would be cool, but they probably wouldn’t do that.

Loving all the comments. There's so many that I can't read them all but please keep them coming and I'll reply to as many as possible. From your comments, I've learned that the underlying tune that is heard at the water chamber is called an arpeggio (heard the word before but didn't know what it meant) and that I should check out a guy named Alex Moukala who analyses that music. I look forward to learning the truth in a couple years with the rest of you. What ever it may be, I have the felling that none of us are 100% correct but I do believe at least some of what I said is.

By the way...her skirt doesnt blow to the engine smoke but it does blow when the bronco flies away. Point cant be used unfortunately, due to inconsistency :(

i think your theory is right on but at the say time only scratched the surface of the story re-series is telling. first food for thought is during the dream date scene you was countlessly given 3 choices to pick from. second food for thought is over the re-series we have been given 4 forms of sephiroth (mind, whisper, clone, edge of C)

It's crazy that people think Square would give her such a nice ending only for that to he a jenova trick. I dont think Square would disrespect the character in such a way. Plus Red13 sensing her should have been a clue to the player but people want to explain that away for whatever reason.

I think the tune is meant to slightly throw us off, because it is the Lifestream motif, but it is a minor motif, so it is unsettling a bit. Also while Jenova’s theme is usually a descending line, this tune is ascending in a similar way. It could perhaps suggest she is influencing things and is successfully doing so, and musically, this is foreshadowing.

IMO, anything other than Cloud's imaginating Aerith because he can't deal with the grief is going to be bad. This would push his personality as a fracted person and the impact would be awesome, but if it's just Aerith from that multiverse, it's just plain fanservice IMO :/

We will see her again in the final battle just like she came back to help us in the end of rebirth! There's no way she would leave us to fight alone. She will help in some kind of way! I'm excited to see her again. She's my favorite character! I knew she was going to pass away but it was still sad to see her go! It was so sad having to watch her friends fly off with out her.

It's Jenova. Remember in the OG that someone said to Cloud that "he was a puppet..." 😁.

Its jenova. She is mimicking the words and sentences from clouds memory of the real Aerith. Everything shes says can be traced back to remake and rebirth, with the SAME inflections. No one can convince me that this isnt jenova. The real Aerith just got done telling cloud to focus on himself, to not worry about sephiroth because only she can stop him, but then makes him promise at the end to stop sephiroth?? Nope. Thats not Aerith. Its jenova. 💯💯

Oh! A crossover between Barotrauma & my favourite game: Spreadsheets! If I could give 2 likes to the video, I would do it. 👍🏼

Great episode! You're getting better! The only things I'd say is that you waste a lot of ammo when beasts are already dead and you loot very few dead corpses after attacks. But hey, it's a 2 year old series. Any advice comes too late.

The lifestream theme is in the key of G major, but the theme that plays when we see Aerith's "ghost" at the temple is in the relative key of E minor. So it's the same theme, but it's been corrupted. That to me says Jenova. But it could be a misdirect. There is absolutely no way for us to know because the developers have been very clear that they want us to be confused. It could be Aerith, it could be Jenova, it could be both.