FFVII Theory - The Armageddon Theory
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ต.ค. 2024
- R.I.P. Everybody who called off work for the first week of March.
Want more of us? Join our Patron Club and get exclusive videos, news and sneak peaks that won't be on TH-cam! Go to / 48productions to learn how to join!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit the following for news, updates, and more.
Main Website: www.4-8producti...
Live Show: / death_unites_us
Patreon: / 48productions
Store: streamlabs.com...
Twitter: / 4gettheh8rs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I always thought the "Children" laughing was actually the planet. Think about it; Cid said that when he was in space and got a good look at the planet, he said that it was "still a kid" and needed our help.
This, to me, lines up perfectly with the laughing children at the end, it's the game's way of telling us the planet is no longer suffering, as stated by Bugenhagen, and instead is free and healthy.
That's what I thought when I played it for the first time, too. I also thought that Aerith's flowers had overgrown Midgar, and didn't really see it as moss
Definitely agree considering the "crying planet" motif throughout the game.
The laughter could've also been the cubs with Red. It sort of told me that life will go on, in one way or another. Midgar was definitely done for, but human life could've maybe started over, smaller, more in touch with nature again, like cosmo.
Yeah that's interesting but a little far-fetched. One of the major plots to the story was Barretts fight to save the planet for Marlene. In his future scene midgar is abandoned and now it has an abundance of plant life. Something Aeris was trying to accomplish in her church. So for me it's a victory and the children will be here laughing are those that are enjoying this feature. Children always represent the future. So now life is growing in Midgar. The fact that red 13 is running excitedly with his Cubs two Midgar shows that it's a place of victory and that he's proud to show it to his offspring. And by the way I'm not trying to be insulting as far as your theory with the planet laughing like children. My opinion is I just don't believe that that's what that is.
Meteor didn't destroy the planet, holy eliminated all threats to the planet, including humans who put it into jeopardy.
Holy didn't remove the lifestream.
R.I.P. Everybody who called off work for the first week of March.
LUL moogleH
Isn't ff10 in the same universe as ff7??? So.... is it too wild to assume that redxiii is maybe an ancient race to the ronsos???
It's apparently good Friday, meaning it's already a 3 day weekend... Which is awesome.
Except I read that shops here in Australia (I only migrated here recently) do not open good Friday... Which ruins the whole damn thing!! Haha!
yep, that is me. not really planned for the release, but came quite in handy with the release and i was pumped and then boom nope, 10th april is the new release.
My birthday is April 10th. Seems like a good adjustment to me!
I literally always took that to assume just thematically the life stream was able to fix the polluted midgar into a beautiful natural place.
And people couldn't live there any more because it was so choked up with life
@@kahlzun But Midgar is drab and liveless because the reactors are taking away the lifestream.
Yeah me too. I agree. There is a strong environmental theme in FF7, so it would fit.
@@andrewfaraday8918 after everything that happened, i figured it was a forgeone conclusion that people would shut those life-sucking mako reactors down.
I always just interpreted the ending scene with Midgar in ruins to symbolize humanity's rejection Shinra, technology, exploiting the planets natural resources and living more in balance with nature.
My impression was that it was a symbolic "we have abandoned mako energy" and "life has started anew" (children laughing).
I had the same thoughts.
Exactly.
People like guy in the video overanalyze and take things too literally. I mean, since when accurate representation of logistics and population dynamics was a thing in Final Fantasy? lol
Same. I always took it as humans learned how important the life energy of the planet was and abandoned Midgar and the reactors
I agree with you to they started a life without mako
Yep this was always my take too. Humanity has allowed the planet to reclaim Midgar (remember how dead the land was around Midgar in the world map) by way of an apology and a pledge to never endanger the planet like that again.
I was always more interested in how the hell Red XIII had cubs...
Think hes more confused since hes supposed to be last of a species, aka no breeding.
Might be wrong on this but i believe i saw some extended universe material where they found a female version somewhere
@@albionflux yeah in the expanded stuff there is a female around his age.
My understanding is they acted like Red was the last to protect her from shinra, or that they thought she had died until sometime later.
I like the theory he is like a starfish.
@@EntropicSloth lmao
Your last theory variant falls through, as plants are the "Canary in the Coal Mine" where Life Stream is concerned. They die off before anything else. The fact that the Urban Jungle has been turned into an actual Jungle implies that the Life Stream is actually abundant in that area.
I just assumed that over those 500 years Midgar was abandoned
The game said that holy chooses what will stay and what will go. Buggen says, I wonder which we humans will be.
I always saw the ending as humans returning to a more natural environmental friendly lifestyle
Maybe holy just took out Midgar? Midgar getting dunked on happens repeatedly throughout the game so maybe it's a bit of a theme? Bugen does say that holy would take out anything bad for the planet
I always thought it was Aeris…she grew the flowers in the church, which look similar to this. Tifa said she wanted to fill the pub with flowers, Aeris just took that and ran aaaaaalll over Midgar with it. I don’t think humans have been wiped, I think they’ve just stopped interfering with nature and the world healed. That was kind of the point of the game imo. They saved the planet. The children laughing, I figured that was a nod to the 2 kiddos in the church after Aeris joins you. They did say they’d take care of the flowers until she got back.
I don’t think the planet ran out of life stream, I think the flowers evidenced the strength of the life stream remaining. Maybe meteor wasn’t pushed back into space, maybe meteor itself was destroyed and absorbed into the life stream, replenishing that which shinra took?
It’s one of the greatest ambiguous game endings out there. I want to start with noting that the overgrown Midgar shot was a great closing mirror of the opening cutscene. We see one person and zoom out to the city, and in the ending we see the reclaimed Midgar from afar. I really liked that when I was 13 and I do now too. There’s 2 possibilities; humanity survives and learns to live simpler lives more in Harmon with nature, or holy did judge humanity and found them lacking. I think something as intense as literal god life power erupting from the earth to save life, humanity included, would convince people to change their ways, so the humanity lives ending is plausible. Equally plausible is that humanity doesn’t survive Holy because they are found wanting, greedy, and corrupt. The ambiguity is perfect- both endings are excellent in the context of the game. Barrett never said he wanted to save humanity, he wanted to save the planet. Whatever happened doesn’t matter, Gaia was saved.
On a personal note I believe that humanity survived but faced serious hardships that led to a drastic drop in population. All of a sudden living without their energy source would be an initial shock that gradually became everyday life. I think by 500 years later the population is much smaller and living more “innocent” lives, hence the laughter of innocent children at the end. Just like Westerners viewed native Americans as children who needed to learn “modern” beliefs, humanity after meteor has to unlearn their corruption and greed to return to nature and their childlike naïveté. That’s just my 2 cents. Like I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what happened, we saved the planet.
I took the mossed-Midgar to mean that the society still lived there, but stopped using the Mako Reactors.
When you first meet Aeris, she tells you that the church was the only place that flowers grew, even though nothing grows in the slums (and we later understand that it's because of the life-energy being sucked out). With the Reactors not functioning, life was allowed to restore in Midgar's area (since moss is one of the first/early stages of wide-area plant life)
During the reveal of Holy in Disc 2 doesn't Bugenhagen say that Holy just erases any threat to the planet and directly state that Humans could be wiped out as they've done basically nothing but hurt the planet. This combined with the WEAPONS hounding human towns in their confusion of being unable to find Sephiroth and trying to meet their goal of protecting the planet had me believe that if humans would have been wiped out at the end of the game, it would have been from summoning Holy, not meteor hitting or a lack of lifestream. Holy (with Aeris' help) did it's job of protecting the planet and in that last flash it's left ambigious if Holy then went on to wipe out other threats, humans included. I also think because of Aeris's help and some implied sound direction that our heroes probably made it out ok and the human race was judged as not a threat but wanted to bring up the notion that Holy was the cause of an armageddon if there was one.
"I don't want to close my eyes
I don't want to fall asleep
Cause I'd miss you babe
and I don't want to miss a thing"
The real reason why Vincent gets the Sniper CR.
I heard this theory after I beat the game and always thought it was dumb. Midgar would be abandoned as cursed ruins. 500 years later, people would remember Midgar as the epicenter of so much death and the possible end of the world... they wouldn't go near it! Also, the fact that it is overgrown with plants proves that the lifestream is alive and well (Bugenhagen even says it's ALL life that goes into it with an image of a tree mixing with a person dying and going into it). *mic drop*
the only thing I can bring up is the interview/article (don't know where it is now) where one of the devs said something like "Because they all died" referring to the end scene. So I've believed since then that everyone is dead. The whole crew died (besides Nanaki) but they saved just the planet. And since Nanaki can talk, I just assumed the kids' laughter were the pups running with RedXIII. I hope something more clear is explained in the remake tho! I like your theory tho!
Loss of Mako as an energy source would naturally have a huge impact on almost everything, including agriculture production, in the Midgar region. There would not be much ability for Midgar to sustain it's population post-Mako, leading to mass emigration. I know the 'Advent Children' movie had people still living and working there but that always confused me greatly.
Also, I thought Red XIII's race was just super long lived. Isn't Red XIII like 50 in the game? And still a 'teenager?' So it would make sense he was still around and alive all those years later. Even if he was the equivalent of a 70 year old by that time, we still have humans that age that regularly run marathons, so I don't think it's unreasonable to assume Red XIII is that old and still active.
I just prefer to believe the simplest explanation. Midgar could only exist as it was due to Mako, and once it was gone, Midgar would turn into a crumbling ruin, resembling old coal mining, gold mining, and oil drilling towns once their natural resources dried up, albiet much more intense due to Midgar being a techno-dystopia.
"I just prefer to believe the simplest explanation."
But that ia not the simplest explanation. Midgar had infrastructure still that could be reporposed to intake other energy sources. This is a much simpler explanation than all people emmigrated to other cities and building new housing for all of them.
@@RanEncounter it had the infrastructure for production of material goods yes but food and water would be very scarce as the reactors sucked the area dry. With the main and pretty much only major corporation with the man power to facilitate importing all of the food needed basically destroyed people would move else where to survive. The midgar seen in advent children may be something akin to a mining town. Booming economy while the main production source is working, probably salvaging shinra tech and machines, but once that dried up everyone moved on and it became a ghost town.
People are forgetting that the humans we see in Advent Children are living in slums. They weren't living on the top of the plates with all of the rich dudes. The rich people left.
@@Lorkanthal So how did they eat before that? You really are not thinking here.
@@RanEncounter shinra had the manpower and the money to pay for importing the food. No more shinra, no more money, no more food.
Hey! Just wanted to say I really like your approach to these theory videos. It's so fun to ponder the "what ifs" without any focus on who's right. It's so fun to think about this beloved game in ways that I never did twenty years ago. So thanks!
Thanks!
I always thought of this as a representation of Midgar as if it where the Forgotten Capital to a new group of hero's passing through on a similar quest.
I've always thought the Armageddon theory was true.
The way I see it is this:
After Holy is summoned "Everything that is good for the planet will remain, everything that is bad will disappear". I think those words are spoken somewhere in the game. "It's up to the planet/livestream to decide"
Thehuman race is bad for the planet, therefore they disappear.
Red XIII isn't human, therefore he stays.
And btw Barret did save the planet in the end. The keyword here is "planet". Not "humans". The price to pay to save the planet was the destruction of the human race.
I used to think the exact same thing back in the day. But further analysis seems to indicate that humanity did survive, just without the use of Mako. However, since the creators made the ending ambiguous, and thus up to interpretation, both scenarios are true....if you dont count anything in the extended universe.
I think it's kind of a slap in the face to go through all the events of FFVII with Cloud and the gang only for them to be told they're bad people and they'll disappear.
@@Flarezap they did take out a couple of weapons that the planet created to protect itself so I can see where the planet would think they are bad people
Doesn't take in to account the efforts of good people to save the planet, so it's not a safe assumption, especially since aerith included the prayer for people in her meditations and she was ultimately the reason that the lifestream answered alongside Holy magic to defend against meteor
Are we saying Advent Children isn't canon? Because I always thought humanity was wiped out by the disease thing from that movie.
Here's my theory: Just because HUMANITY was expunged, doesn't mean that ALL LIFE was ended. Red XIII isn't a human, so if humanity got whisked away in a flash of light, Red would have been spared (though how he would have survived the Highwind Crashing is beyond me!). I always thought the Children laughing was Red's cubs; to attempt to quote a line from a fanfic I read once long ago...
Red 13: "And that's how I helped save the Planet!"
Cub: "haha, you're so full of shit, grandpa!"
But, then AC came along and it was just like "oh".
Also, you don't need Lifestream to keep living. What you DO need it for is reproduction. And clearly, there's more than enough lifestream to go around in that 500 years later clip, given all the birds and trees and such.
Kids don't say shit.
@@presidentraiden9203your kids don't say shit some of us realize it's just a word
It’s not the Armageddon theory that the humans out, it’s probably the Promise Land, which refering to the state of being in after life or should we say returning to the planet, at the bottom of the cave, Cloud said something “I think, I’m beginning to understand, let’s go meet her”, Cloud is referring to Aerith, so yeah when the planet used to much Lifestream, the planet needed to have something in return and that is everyone’s life, I’m buying more into that theory of everyone getting wiped out after that meteor than Advent Children happening.
Yeah, i saw on another video someone who worked on the game said that holy eliminated all threats to the planet.
Wait, so are you saying the people got destroyed by Meteor?? No, the theory is that When Sephiroth was killed holy was released and then made meteor and everything else that was bad for the planet, humans included, simply disappear Thanos style. Red XIII survived because his species lives in harmony with the planet.
There is a foreshadowing to this in the game when Bugenhagen (or one of the other characters, I'm not %100 sure which character it was) ponders whether Holy will allow humans to stay.
I like too think that the people of Midgar chose to leave at some point. It seems right that Red returns with his grandchildren and lets them see a view of the past. They won’t see it like he did, it’s old now. Torn down and weathered. Nature and the lifestream have rightfully reclaimed what was lost. Red remembers the past, his descendants see a piece of Reds story. It’s like a pilgrimage of sorts, Red travels from Cosmo Canyon to a place that once had a dark life of its own. An experience he will never forget. Red is a truly great character with depth and his story arc is ultimately bittersweet. he had too fight his whole life. His descendants don’t know that, they see the corroding skeleton of a once great city. But he takes them so that they have a story, a history attached too the once powerful Midgar. A dark and sickly city now reclaimed by nature. Healed but scarred. It’s a hopeful message too me and it ties with Aeriths sacrifice.
I always assumed that life did go on. Clearly, there's still enough lifestream energy for RedXIII to have kids of his own, but it's interesting to ask the question of whether or not humans survived. I assume so, and that Midgar was left as a standing monument to Meteor fall, even without the events of Advent Children. Maybe holy was supposed to wipe out mankind as penance. They say something about it being too late and making Meteor stronger before the Lifestream comes out to "help". In any case great video. Please keep the theory series going.
I think at the time with FF7 it was supposed to be open ended but heavily implied humans were erased when the Lifestream got rid of threats during meteorfall. That's why Advent Children starts off from the Nanaki ending only to go back 400 years to confirm that the Lifestream decided not to wipe humans out.
Y’all, I forget if it’s bugen (probably bugen) who says it, but when first discussing Holy, the characters are told that Holy has the power to make anything harmful to the planet disappear.
I think it’s Tifa who asks if that includes humans, to which Bugen responds “it’s up to the planet to decide.”
I always took jungle midgar to mean that in the end the Planet believed humans to be bad for it, but deemed nature-oriented beings like Red XIII’s race not harmful.
I always saw the overgrown Midgar as a symbol that life had returned and the planet had cleansed itself. Balanced restored. Feels like people are missing the artistic perspective when they start losing themselves into details.
I’ve always believed that the humans were supposed to be wiped out. A couple of times in the game it mentions how the planet will decide what life forms are good and bad and cleanse the planet of toxic life. I’ve always believed Red XIII to be part of a species that was almost pure and humans to be toxic. The laughter I always believed to be the ancients and you could hear them due to the high concentrations of mako left over from and the reactors being present as well as the Sister Ray. After all, they are overlooking midgar.
Aeris: "Midgar covered in flowers"
Midgar: covered in plants.
4-8 and others: Armageddon yo
Glad you did this, I mentioned it a while back and on your discord that I'm a armageddon believer. There was the confirmation from kitase at the time that stated humans all died too, but purely from the games evidence that was the ending that always made sense. I wonder if they will clear that up in the remake?
I prefer to think that the planet was pissed off enough with humans to wipe them out via unexplained means. Between the undisclosed amount of years shinra sucked mako outta the planet, the meteor, the geostigma/star scar syndrome from jenova being infused into the livestream and the events of dirge of cerebus, thats enough for me to think the planet had enough. That bit of laughter from children not involving humans but rather nanako's offspring as the new inheritors/defenders of the planet. Like red xiii would tell his cubs tales of the events he was privy too starting with his capture/imprisonment by dr hojo.
I kind of thought the human race was wiped out at first but after beating the game numerous times i think it is clear that the combination of holy, the life stream and the will of the planet that all life had endured and survived. The laugh of children/bugenhaggen theory also supported this for me. Plus the event shut down the mako reactors in midgar it would seam further allowing the planet to heal
I never put more thought into the ending than "And everyone lived happily ever...just not in Midgard." This is an eye opener to a whole discussion I never knew existed, also because the only other person that I knew played FFVII in my tiny village came to the same conclusion as I did.
To me I just saw the abundance of life in Midgar as a result of the coalescence of the life stream at that one concentrated spot. The land around Midgar during the time of FF7 was drained of life due to the reactors and this is the reason that during the final cinematic the streams of the life stream had to come in from further away.
Now with that huge gathering of energy the grass, flowers and trees took hold and grew to such an extent that the city of Midgar - once the vision of Shinra's future - became reclaimed by the planet forcing the people to move away.
Honestly, i had thought that midgar was abandoned and left to nature... as. I would suspect that w/o shinra & their secrets & security settings, that the entire place would collapse on its own.
I had taken it that the singular place the world was doomed from has fallen into a peaceful state & the ways it holds are lost & forgotten..... for atleast how anyone who knew it before would be concerned.
Before the books, I believed that the human race died out and Nanaki just lives a long time. After them I still feel the same way and learned Vincent is still alive too because he lives forever. Also I only read small parts online a long while ago when I was looking into the story.
I always thought Holy summoned life in an extreme level, like making a huge life tree to catch Meteor :D
Midgar was just the center point of it all, so it got all the supercharged life growing everything there XD
I bet most people died there, but if you look at the part with Red Xii, there is now a huge lake on the other side of Midgar, and rivers going through it.
Burst out laughing at “Missed failed successfully...?”
I just thought that after Midgar shot the beam with the cannon it just caused some sort of toxic waste that are very dangerous to humans.
They abandoned using mako energy so there were no needs for the reactors and infrastructure of Midgar, hence why they deserted it.
Hey death, I came up with a cool new theory after seeing the FF7 remake demo. It has to do with how Jenova escapes the Shinra building and Hojo's lab. I think it was all because of Cloud. Jenova has been in that lab for several years, but right after the party raids the building it escapes. Maybe when Cloud looks into its cell, the Jenova cells within Cloud interact with the main body sending some kind of signal that starts everything. On a side note, I'm pretty sure Hojo noticed Jenova, his most precious specimen, escaping and let it go, just to see what would happen.
First of all, only at 1:40 but you're already pissing me off.
"What wiped everyone else out?"
HOLY!
It was discussed in the game that holy would remove all threats to the planet, and when it was pointed out that humans were the greatest threat the characters wondered if holy would wipe out humanity. They decided that it was only right to allow the planet to decide. The party decided that the planet was more important than humanity. They were fighting to save the planet, and accepted that their own fate didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Hence the INTENTIONALLY AMBIGUOUS ending.
in the game it says that without the lifestream around nothing grows and when the lifestream is concentrated it grows mako. it appears that Midgar is flourishing with foliage due to all of the mako that still resides in Midgar like a shrine to preserve life. the lifestream then could not of just disappeared unless all life died before the lifestream was used to counter meteor if the counter uses up ALL of the lifestream. it seems like the children laughing sound at the end of ff7 is a direct reference to the end of Advent Children, hence the name having Children in the name Advent Children. it reminds me a lot of when in ff6 the children that survived after Kefka caused an apocalypse that killed all the adults. In Advent Children the children are the first to be saved by the illness in Aerith's church that was caused by sephiroth being in the lifestream. what i am intrigued by is that if sephiroth can be summoned, surely Aeris or Aerith should be able to be summoned unless only Jenova cells can be summoned from the lifestream since Jenova is not from Earth. the scene of Midgar being in ruins 500 years in the future seems to have been the plan all along since in Advent Children, Shinra still exist. in a ff7 sequel you will see sephiroth resummoned again and Shinra will either cease to exist by choice or by force. The end of Shinra leads to the end of Midgar as large form of magitech and into a holy temple. unless sephiroth manages to kill all the humans in a ff7 sequel, human life will continue.
Good theory. I always thought maybe if things got so bad that the planet had to heal itself and protect itself, then it gets rid of the threat so it doesn't have to do it again, in this case humans. Theoretically the only things alive should be non humans (red and his species) and vincent (since he is immortal) but because hes an optional character he is not shown in the end cutscene. At least that's what I got from the final ending, which is why I always thought SE was very adamant about making a sequel since they were implying there shouldn't be one. The fans outcry did finally get to them though and the movie was made.
I always thought that at the end of FF7 all the humans were gone in the sense that they had evolved back into the Cetra. As for Nanaki, he’s fine at the end because his race has a connection to the Cetra since his race doesn’t need or use technology to survive. They’re both the last of their race, that’s why Hojo was trying to breed Nanaki with Aeris in the Shinra headquarters. I think this because of the state that Midgar is in in that final scene. Think about it, If people of that world wanted to rid the world of harmful mako reactors and other abnormal technologies where would be the most logical place to start
I always thought that Holy killed all the humans because it is said that Holy would destroy every thing that harms the planet.
Humans (FFVII) left the plant and wildlife in Gaia thinking that the planet would crumble up and die after what had happened and went to Spira (FFX) and inhabited their planet.
Ever since my very first playthrough way back in 1997 I thought the children laughing at the end of the game were Red 13s kids laughing and having fun with their daddy during an outing to Midgar. I've always assumed that humanity ended as a consequence for healing the planet
I’m so jealous. You have a Bugenhagen figit spinner.
Its pronounced 'fudgit spunner'
You're welcome
The lifestream is alive and well. Remember, flowers and other plant life struggled to grow around midgar due to the damage caused to the livestream by mako reactors.
Hundreds of years after the fact, the midgar area is teeming with wildlife and plantlife, the damage having been repaired.
What good is midgar without mako?
that cartoon network tshirt is giving me all kinds of childhood flashbacks
I think the events of FF7 took place, then Advent Children, then the ending clip of FF7 with the 500 years caption and Midgar with vegetation. The humans that were there then at that time have died, because of the human age limit and Nanakis clan is known to live long periods of time.
I think that there are still some people living there. Kind of hard to imagine after seeing Advent Children. I think it's mossed over because of lack of maintenance. Shin-ra is finished and I'm guessing that Cloud and co. told everyone the truth about mako energy. As a result, all the reactors are eventually shut down and other energy sources are developed and utilized. That would still result in a lack of energy compared to using mako energy. I think it would be difficult to utilize the current infrastructure for something vastly different.
Honestly I like some of the ideas AC put forwards - that the lifestream was called forth and banished evils from the world, and humanity was judged to be one of those evils.
I always thought that they left midgar as giant graveyard to remind humans how close they came to destruction and redxiii brings his offspring there to tell the story. A passage to adulthood almost. And that humans EVENTUALLY left midgar, as it was a symbol of the rich over the poor and the siphoning life from the planet.
Technically the lifestream would be regenerated slowly as people and plants died.
I always assumed that they abandoned midgar for more aggriculturally rich land.
Something had to replace that missing lifestream after Meteor and I guess it had to be humans. So those children laughing to me just meant humans did live on..in the lifestream.
This video finally convinced me to to get Black Chocobo, because you pointed the way to your site and I checked it out, out of curiosity, and followed the links. Great! Now I can test some stuff I wanted to see without 100s of hours or work to get there. So thanks to you and to the mod community in general for making so many nice mods/ tools.
Initially, the reason I never tried this before is because I didn't think it would work with my version, I thought it was steam only or something. But, nope. It just works.
If there isn't enough Lifestream energy, wouldn't the death of the human race be enough to restore it? Still, seems kind of unfair to kill the human race after a group of humans worked so hard to save it. I wonder if perhaps the children laughing would be representative of the human race "coming back", like re-evolving, assuming the theory of them being wiped out is true.
I remember being sad that everyone died. I just kept hoping they were okay, haha.
But now I kinda like the idea of the planet choosing to get rid of humanity. I like both ways, honestly.
Yeah I think there's room for both continuities to exist: one in which humanity is wiped out and one in which the extended universe happened.
Can’t wait for you to be on hold only to have to change your appointment again.
Don't play me like this
I always interpreted it as humans finding back the way to nature. I also always thought Reds children are laughing
I have always taken the ending of FF7 to mean to mean that the Lifestream and/or Holy ultimately decided that humanity had run its course, or even that humans were created by the Lifestream simply to defeat Jenova so that the planet could return to its natural state. The laughing children signify life beginning anew on the planet.
For me when I 1st saw it the ending, I just thought oh cool migar ruins, people stop using mako energy, and red 13 was all like hey kids wanna see some cool s%#!.
yeah, I cancelled my vacation.
I thought that it implied people had to learn to live without exploiting mako energy, as mako is a fixed, non-renewable resource if burned in a mako reactor. Midgar would not be _nearly_ so hospitable without electricity for lighting, transportation, climate control, water treatment, waste management, and other energy-intensive infrastructural systems. Even IF humanity successfully moved on to energy sources less destructive than mako, Midgar would remain a symbol of humanity's hubris. A monument to shame. The whole region would be best cordoned off as an ecosystem remediation zone, sort of like Pripyat in the wake of Chernobyl. That was my headcanon for years onward.
Aeris was never fighting to save mankind. She was fighting for the planet.
Had a friend who thought the ending meant humanity was wiped out when we were kids but even then I was heavily against that interpretation. I always took the overgrown Midgar to represent how humanity had learned to live in peace with the planet--no longer in huge metropolises like Midgar--and that it was representative of the Planet's triumph over this man-made threat to it.
I also just found your channel recently and I'm amazed by how genuine you are with content creation. It's hard to consistently put out new videos and not develop some sort of ironic or cynical persona, so it's refreshing to see someone who just really loves video games and puts out quality content on the regular. Cool stuff, man. Mad respect.
Sorry if I get a little long winded here, but I was one of the chief proponents for this theory back in the late 90's early 00's on the GameFAQs forums, and there's a lot that was a bit off in this video. I figured I'd type this up for people who wanted a bit of a look into what the debate looked like from someone who supported the other side 20 years ago.
First off you completely left out Bugenhagen's dialogue in the City of the Ancients, just before Diamond attacks Midgar, where he mentions that when Holy is summoned it will remove everything that is bad for the planet. This leads to the party pausing for a moment to wonder if this includes humanity. This dialogue, coupled with Midgar's apparent destruction in the 500 years later scene, were the chief pieces of evidence for the pro Armageddon argument. This is also why Red XIII survived; he wasn't human. (Opponents of the armageddon theory would then ask how he managed to land the Highwind)
Second, you repeated multiple times that Aerith sacrificed herself for mankind. She sacrificed herself to stop Meteor, which she surely hoped would have the knock-on effect of saving the people she loved, but the end goal was simply stopping Meteor with the only thing that was powerful enough to do it.
Proponents of the armageddon theory typically pointed to Red XIII's offspring as the source of the children laughter. (I was always in the camp of just ignoring this as a bit of filler that didn't really matter)
There's another moment in the ending that is pointed to in support of the Armageddon theory, which is that the last shot before the credits is Aerith appearing bathed in green light. This was considered her welcoming Cloud into the Lifestream now that Holy has returned all humans to the planet in order to replenish the Lifestream that's been depleted by the machines created by humans.
When Advent Children released the only solace people on my side of the argument had was that maybe Geostigma was the planet's way of trying to rid itself of humanity. Its release definitely put an end to the debate though. I might still be a smidge salty. lol
The ending was intentionally ambiguous for the reasons you stated. However, the geostigma was explained as Sephiroth's continuing influence within the lifestream.
@@khatharrmalkavian3306 Sorry, I wasn't super clear when I typed that. The moment the movie was announced anti-Armageddon supporters hit us hard with their newfound ultimate settling of the debate, and Geostigma was known about before the movie released. I just have specific memories of discussions early on after the movie's announcement where some of us were clinging to what we thought might be the only thing we had. That's why I used maybe in my description. Eventually it turns out as you mentioned.
I'm 33. About to start another save file and actually 100% this shit!!! Wish me luck!
Good luck pal, I'm 35 yrs old and I'm doing the same lol. 18 hours into my new file
I believe Vincent is still alive 500 years later also.
I assumed that Red XIII has a long ass lifespan like Bugenhagen. I thought all those lion kitties live a long life.
Fun theory about the planet losing too much Lifestream.
I always assumed that Midgar was damaged structurally after Meteor, and people weren't willing to live on/under the plates; risking another sector 7 tragedy.
I mean yeah, Kalm isn't going to hold everyone, but the people of Midgar had 500 years to build some new towns. I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt there. So Midgar became a ruin, a monument, a reminder, and a warning.
I would have loved to see a game made in that time, where you get to explore what was left of the city, see the various craters the weapons made, and talk with Red about his old friends.
I remember in that cut scene it saying 50p years later. It did not signify the world ended it just showed Nanaki as the the last of Avalanche looking on what they done to save the world and how it has grown since
Losing mako technology probably just cast them back into the stone age, or it was a Chernobyl reference
I assumed life continued to live on. It just made sense in my head, from the very start of final fantasy vii we’re introduced to evil corporation Shinra, in Midgar, and at the end of VII, Shinra is no more. It ends where it started in the, in Midgar. Hence why we are shown Midgar at the end, with the Shinra logo brand being very clear to the players eye. That was done on purpose. It’s a full cycle, signifying the end of Shinra’s corruption and end as a whole
They actually point out the question, what if the earth recognizes humans as well as something it must defend against. Don't remember the exact quote, but I think that's what happened, and as we know Nanaki communicates talk with a human voice, so I think the laughter is from his children laughing, playing in a wonderful, lush, full of life, empty of humans, world.
Always figured the final cutscene with Nanaki was symbolizing that the planet has indeed healed itself after Meteor, because of the Vegetation. This means that Aerith managed to save the planet after all, thus saving Mankind. Also I'm lead to believe that Nanaki is indeed a Descendant of the Cetra, Hojo knew this as he was trying to mate Aerith with "Red XIII" in Shinra HQ. That is very likely why he can live nearly forever, with it being a few hundred years into the future of Gaia's "Rebirth".
Interesting. I played it when the game came out. My main impression was that the Planet was able to heal after the events of the game. I imagined that everyone went back to a more bucolic lifestyle, opening little chocobo farms and growing flower patches. Midgar was ruined, but the rocky ground around it was fertile. I never thought of humans being extinct, or that Meteor hit. I definitely thought that Aeris saved the planet by casting Holy.
I think it ties in with the theory that FFX happened in the past of FFVII. The more a society depends on technology the more the lifestream is affected(why Sin came in FFX). Maybe they finally learned the lesson of Yuna' s people and abandoned the ways of the Al-Bed. Without using Mako Energy, they stopped living in the giant city of Midgar and let nature reclaim it.
There is a line of dialogue which bugenhagen states that holy will directly address whatever is threatening the planet, **and then explicitly suggests Holy may consider humans a threat too.** it is highly likely that life goes on, but without humans in the picture
The red 13 scene at the end of ff7 is the same opening scene in Advent Children. After the red 13 scene at the beginning of Advent Children the screen goes black and the words that appear on the screen says "498 years earlier.". Advent Children took place 2 years after the events of ff7 which means the red 13 scene at the end of ff7 is actually 500 years after the events of ff7.
I see it from the writer's point of view:
Firstly, think of how a big city like that was powered - mako energy. This was obtained by mining the planet for materia, thus destroying the planet from within. So, if the point of the story was to put an end to the manufacturing of the planet's resources to save it, they would either have to find a new energy source to power that city (who knows how likely that would be for them?), or abandon the city, at least in terms of what it used to provide. In other words, all those buildings would be just that, only buildings. Pure shelter.
Secondly, since we can assume that Aeris' and Cloud's plans were a success and the planet was healthy, and Midgar was just a complex of near useless buildings, then inevitably the growth of vegetation would consume the city.
In my opinion, I think there was no Armageddon, the plan was a success, and only Nanaki survived to the end of the game because of his well-known longevity. Bam.
I think Midgar was abandoned as Mako production was terminated completely and the people left and lived elsewhere. Also remembered as a place of oppression due to Shinra. It became a ghost town and eventually nature started eating it away with all the trees and plants growing
I think that between the meteor and the 500 years later, Midgar and the use mako reactors was slowly abandoned leaving the area to be taken back by the planet, where plantlife was rare, to flourish again. Midgar being a site visited by RedXIII that 500 years later as a memorial to his friends that have long since returned to the planet.
When I was a kid, I don't know why, but I interpreted the sound of children laughing at the end to mean that everything we played was a story made up and shared in a group of kids.
I mean, given the additions...
The massive expenditures of Mako/Lifestream caused the Geostigma epidemic. Even after that was resolved, there was just less to go around. Most likely, birth rates dropped severely after Meteor. Combined with the destruction from the events of Holy repelling Meteor, truth about the Reactors coming out and then shutting down, and most likely Holy obliterating a ton of corrupt executives as threats, this would quite naturally end up with Midgar being mostly abandoned.
Humanity probably still exists in the Epilogue, just in reduced form. Places like Kalm, Cosmo Canyon, Junon, Nibelheim, and Wutai probably took in a bunch of refugees.
Shinra are no longer around to exhaust the planet's resources. And thus, after 500 years, Gaia is allowed to heal and flourish with new life. That's also the likely reason that Midgar was abandoned. It essentially ran on Mako, which was being mined from the planet by Shinra. With no Shinra to mine Mako, there's no means of powering the city. And thus, Midgar and likely Mako itself were abandoned by humanity within 500 years after the fall of Meteor. The reason Red-XIII is still around after 500 years can likely be explained by the lifespan of his species. Which itself also explains why Cloud and the crew aren't around. They all died after living natural lives.
I always took it as they moved away from midgar and stopped using mako energy.
I dont like the question "where would all of the people of midgar go?". There is an entire planet they could settle.
So thats my take on it. Humans abandoned midgar and the use of mako energy and settled in other areas around the world, and midgar is growing vegetation because the planet is healing and begining to recover.
Red 13 brings his children there not because humanity is dead but as a lesson. "Look, this was the location where the world almost ended, but me and my friends helped stop it".
My thinking is the lifestream passed through midgar right? So what if the area was so oversaturated with mako energy that plants started growing at a much faster rate there and over the years got so bad they couldn't stop it and were forced to leave meaning midgar becomes overtaken by plant life but humanity survives explaining everything.
Just an idea though
I see it as if Meteor wiped out a good chunk of Midgar's population alongside Shinra, and thus a few families managed to escape the city and build a new life for themselves. In the end, the only city hit directly by Meteor vs Holy is Midgar.
I never knew it was really up for debate. Mankind abandons their dependency for Mako and thus abandons Midgar. Remember, Midgar was barren and dead due to the reactors, so staying there immediately after the end of the game wouldn't have been very prudent. The survivors simply dispersed and adopted a more "Gaialy" lifestyle.
Even at 13 years old when it came out, I understood it to be a social commentary on our own dependency on fossil fuels and other "life of the earth" energy sources like coal, oil, and gas
Midgar being abandoned made sense because- for God sakes there were FIRE TORNADOES ripping it to pieces. Also electricity from either magic or the friction, you even see a reactor explode and look at the damage that caused to the surrounding area. You can even see the plate shaking violently doing who knows how much damage to it or what it might have shaken off the bottom of it. Who knows what happened with the actual meteor impact through holy and it's destruction. Midgar is BORKED.
Without Shinra to repair those, it's not getting repaired.
Also, the other damage happened from weapon firing on Shinra HQ, likely raining down molten chunks of Rufus and his office on the city below likely didn't help. AC is real cute trying to say he lived through a direct hit when it was clear he died and that was their intention then and there. The less said about the expanded universe, the better.
It was already confirmed that humans were wiped out... so...
I think the midgar scene only wants to show that. Midgar.
Really early in the game, Aerith states that the church is the only place in the whole city where flowers naturally grow, so by showing Midgar fully green with nature and flowers is the pay off to this moment showing Midgar moving out of the pollution and toxicity of Mako energy. A greener Midgar.
We have to take into account one thing.
Midgar itself is made mostly of mako dependent tech, so maybe people just abandoned it cuz they couldnt power it up anymore without any coal mine (or any energy source) nearby, which makes it impossible to maintain.
That makes a good oportunity to reopen the Corel Mines and make a settlement there.
Technically we know shi*t about what happened after ff7 even including AC.
But for me, what i had written above, makes most sense.
EDIT: We might think, why ppl still lived in Midgar in AC, well, probably cuz maybe they had enough power saved in case mako reactors stop working? Makes sense if you think and manage resources wisely.