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It's been about ...8~9years since I played FF7 and Aeris's death still bothers me.

I mean...it's well, perfect. In a game where you develop a relationship (well, in a

GAME. NOT one of those types that take games to the next level...like crazy level)

with a character and you see them die and it feels pretty damn bad.

But I still have to say

..........

Phoenix down is only 250GP is it not?????

Its just the way the game is. And pheonix downs only heal KO(which is Knockout, Fainting) not Death.

I'm really agreeing with yomama. Phoenix downs just heal temporary KO's, not full-fledged death. A common mistake made by fans.

That set aside, when you're playing the game, you just have to accept the canon that comes along. You can't really change that. (Other people ended up dying too...I'm sure Shinra would have enough money to heal many of its employees.)

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I say what I wanna say, I play how I wanna play.

It still sucks tho, I mean... the Phoenix - aside from being a summon creature in the FF series - has it's own mythology based around death and rebirth. The death typical to the phoenix, however, is from old age, not from murder. Either way, Square took a big step with killing off a main character like that.

In a similar fashion, General Leo was killed in FFVI, and as a fanservice, they made it possible to sacrifice your phoenix esper to revive him. Why were they able to get away with this? Because Leo's death has no bearing on the way the rest of the plot plays out. He is not a spirit that helps the earth heal its wounds.

Lets say that Aeris was able to be revived. That doesn't stop what Sephiroth did, he would continue to do exactly as he did, with the minor exception that he may persue you a few extra times trying to get rid of the ancient. As it stands, there would be more revelations about Zack, and the final showdown would be quite similar to how it was. The exception, is that the lifestream would not have the aid of Aeris and her knowledge to help keep the planet alive and together, and the plantet would fall apart much like the model in Bundenhagen's observatory. Game Over.

Doesn't really make for a much more fun game.

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If internal struggles were as enjoyable and glamorous as the self conflicted wars within video game characters, we would all be statues, reveling in perpetual self war. -Me

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Quote (leilong @ 8th June 2008 19:20)

In a similar fashion, General Leo was killed in FFVI, and as a fanservice, they made it possible to sacrifice your phoenix esper to revive him. Why were they able to get away with this? Because Leo's death has no bearing on the way the rest of the plot plays out. He is not a spirit that helps the earth heal its wounds.

Wait...what? Did you play a normal version of FFVI? Cause y'know...

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Once Leo's dead, he stays that way.

Other than that, I agree with everything else you said.

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I say what I wanna say, I play how I wanna play.

I'm still going through the game for the first time

when she died, it seriously made me cry
for about 10 mins
Aeris was deffo one of my faves and if i playe it again i would make more use of her and have her in my party constantly. Her death made me angry, i think if anything, i'd prefer it if another character died. Aeris is just too amazing.

I thought that about Pheonix downs and then my sister expained xP

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Nasty Tonberry! Kill It quick!

WTF?!

You could cry over worse.

It doesn't bother me until I see it again.

I really had no emotion to Aeris at that point... The whole lack of personality didn't really help, I felt much more emotion during Celes' Cid scene

I haven't played through the game for about 10 yrs., so playing it again now has brought back a lot of memories. Aeris's death always sucks even when you know it's coming. I remember there were mass hoaxes at the time detailing ways to revive Aeris that were just ridiculous and time consuming.

I don't know if any information has come to light recently, but back then I remember reading somewhere that Squaresoft had originally planned to have a way to revive Aeris. The problem was time. FF7 had already been pushed back from it's release date several times and they basically had to rush it into production, so they decided to leave it out.

Probably one of the biggest reasons to suspect that Aeris was meant to be revived originally is the appearance of her "Ghost" in the church after her death. Whether it's meant to be her ghost, or just a glitch, something there wasn't completely removed. I had looked for her ghost in the past several times and never saw it, but recently I found a screenshot so I knew where to look. It happens so fast it's hard to catch if you don't know where to look. If anyone's interested here's the pics with some more implied evidence from the debug room http://www.ff7citadel.com/secrets/sa_church.shtml.

Square has tried a few times to recreate that "loss" but always seems to fail. The thing with Aeris is you've had her with you for most of the game as a party member and there is no indication that they plan to kill her (right down to a final limit break) making it far less expected (well, at the time... now, knowing Aeris will die is like knowing King Kong will). With characters that are NPC or only used for a small amount of time (Leo) you just don't get the same level of connection.

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The Arcana are the means by which ALL is revealed.

Speaking in Dungeons & Dragons terms, she surpassed -10 Hit Points. According to the D&D rules, you cannot be revived by any means( feel free to make edits). Personally, thats how I see it.

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You Can't Escape...
Nowhere to run...
Nowhere to hide...

Cloud was too poor to buy pheonix down....
isn't that why he's mercenary? >_>

i didn't have any emotions either when I saw sephiroth kill aeris cause i thought she'd come back (at least after the meteor :x)
but then... i guess i'm too used with stories with happy ending..

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I will be there...

Another interesting thing I read is that if you use a GameShark you can use Aeris on disc 2 and 3 and that at certain points (I'm assuming when party talks to NPC's) Aeris has dialog. To me that says the developers originally planned her to have more longevity in the game. I would imagine they would lay everything out in some sort of storyboard fashion. So in my opinion they either laid things out then decided to kill her off earlier (maybe because of rushed production) or they intended to bring her back to life later in the storyline, but once again had to finish production quickly.

On the PSX version in the church after her death the image you see is so short (and it's upside down) that I feel it's just a loading glitch rather than her actual "ghost". I'll have to see where Aeris is standing in the church on a subsequent playthrough. It may just be a reflection of some spot she was standing in earlier in the game.

I wish I knew more about the PC version. The link I provided clearly shows her full image on screen and Cloud standing right next to her. I'm not sure if that pic is from the actual normal PC playthrough, or if that's a shot of the scene from the Debug Room. If it's from just normal play mode, Cloud had time to zone in run up to the flower bed and park next to her. On the PSX version the image is long gone before you have a chance to take one step. If someone on PC could share that would be great.

In my opinion it boils down to 3 different scenarios:

1. Aeris was originally intended to survive the course of the game.
2. Aeris was meant to die and be revived at some later point.
3. Aeris was meant to die and Squaresoft didn't clean up after their original storyboard completely.

Quote (Glowworm @ 26th June 2008 12:59)

Another interesting thing I read is that if you use a GameShark you can use Aeris on disc 2 and 3 and that at certain points (I'm assuming when party talks to NPC's) Aeris has dialog.

Pretty sure that you have to replace another character with Aeris to make that code work, not simply restore her actual character. With that being the case, the dialogue you would see would belong to the original character, not Aeris.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

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I do feel the same way k933224h did so...

I did use Jenova (character edit) hack to bring back Aeris for PC version. I have no idea if it's the same as using gameshark on playstation to bring back Aeris, but it shouldn't make too much of a difference.

From my experiences Playing the game with Aeris in party causes glitches and game will stall at certain points. (right now i can remember that happening at cosmo canyon and fight with diamond weapon...but then half of the time I had only Cloud and Aeris in the party so maybe having 2 party members could have caused stall? O.o)
Anyways what's for sure is that you can't play the whole game with Aeris in party.

As for her dialogue, she does say something short like "Yeah" "Ok" and once in a while a whole sentences, but half of the time she doesn't say anything and stand there (and that may cause stall on some parts...). Aeris doesn't say anything major


But playing with Aeris...is so cheap ya know? xD using her limit against Ruby/Emerald is as useful as Kotr combos







For every detail, some guy made a Aeris using guide for disk 2 and 3 at gamefaqs. Most (or maybe all?) of her dialogue and when you can use Aeris and when you can't.

This post has been edited by Bismark87 on 26th June 2008 21:35

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I will be there...

aeris' limit breaks where really unique, they didnt follow the same pattern of damage enemies with many different special effects like all the others (minus the odd exception and also vincent, who is a secret character though), they were quite good when you needed them, so that was spoiled when she died, but i dont really get emotionally attached to games, but i still enjoy them lots. me friend said that somebody else (maybe on the internet) said that you could make tifa die instead of aeris, by treating aeris better than tifa and then having tifa in the party when aeris dies (which i think is compulsory anyway, not sure). i havent tried this but im sure it wont work, you never know though

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the voices talk to me... and i listen WELL...hehehe...

Quote (Rangers51 @ 26th June 2008 12:10)

Pretty sure that you have to replace another character with Aeris to make that code work, not simply restore her actual character. With that being the case, the dialogue you would see would belong to the original character, not Aeris.

You sir are correct.. a friend of mine used that code years ago on one of the old GS chips that plug into the back of the old Playstations. It just replaced a character in battle. I actually don't remember Aeris being in the dialogue but I remember it freezing up his game and all kinds of weird junk.. not worth it to me personally.

I think Aeris death was a good part of the story. It's what made the game what it is today. Over the past ten years I can't tell you how many times I've seen this same conversation on all parts of the web.. All I can say to it is.. it was sad but needed. Would the story really have been so epic had she lived? I think not.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

Aeris' death really didn't bother me. They hint to it through the whole game and it was all a part of her plan to let herself be killed. She knew Sephiroth would come kill her and enable her to enter the lifestream to cast Holy.

I liked it because it really gave an interesting angle to her character and Sephiroth's too (he's a huge powerful force that still has flaws and makes oversights).

In the end, for Holy to be cast, Sephiroth too must die. For Meteor to be stopped, both Sephiroth - Black, and Aeris - White, have to die.

In no way would I ever want her to be revived. It would totally ruin all these aspects I find so interesting about the game.

Aeris after dying

What We Shouldn't Have Seen II

What We Shouldn't Have Seen III

What We Shouldn't Have Seen IV

(One isn't really important, just confirms Aeris' script in the Great Glacier)

Interesting read. I wrote a fan-fic once (or rather, started one) where she died in the Northern Cave rather than the Forgotten City. It was crap.

That was random...

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I'm a little Wombat, short and stout
Here is my tail and here is my snout
But if you get me angry and I start to snarl
WATCH OUT OR I'LL BITE YOU'RE HEAD OFF!!!

What about when Cait Sith dies to retrieve the black materia? I cried. Cait Sith #2 just isn't the same. :'[

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I never met a traitor I didn't like.

Quote (Manupod @ 24th July 2008 12:03)

What about when Cait Sith dies to retrieve the black materia? I cried. Cait Sith #2 just isn't the same. :'[

Well, considering he is really just a robot body and Reeve is not dead himself I don't really think it matters much.. assuming that you are not being sarcastic of course.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

I was kidding of course, but I wasn't really affected by Aeris' death. She was a boring character, and I really got to feel for her personality. She is like Yuna. Shes a great playable character, but a boring character I really don't care about. I think I would more upset if Reeve did die.

This post has been edited by Manupod on 24th July 2008 18:57

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I never met a traitor I didn't like.