Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Why Did Aerith Tell Cloud Not To Fall In Love With Her?

Quick Links

• Possibly Missing Cloud's Scene With Aerith

• Aerith's Memories Of Zack

• Aerith's Potential Omniscience

While just about every Final Fantasy game has some extended media to speak of, nothing quite reaches the hilarious levels of Final Fantasy 7. Spawning novels, films, spinoffs, and now a remake trilogy, there's a lot to see. The hardest part of all this is that the FF7 Remake, at times, requires knowledge of a little bit of all this extra media.

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Look at the scene near the end of the game in which Aerith tells Cloud not to fall in love with her. This can seem a bit out of the blue or some deeper character motivation that is currently beyond your understanding. While that is entirely possible, looking at the past entries in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 can give us more of an idea of what she was really telling Cloud in that scene.

Though it may be obvious with the context of the article, fairly major spoilers for the entirety of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and the original game will be discussed below.

Possibly Missing Cloud's Scene With Aerith

One of the most important things to realise about this scene is the fact that it is entirely missable, and how it is missable based on choices you may not even be aware you are making.

There are actually three permutations of this scene, all happening outside Aerith's house at the end of Chapter 14 – One each featuring Aerith, Tifa, and Barret.

To see Aerith's scene is actually quite simple; you just may not be aware you're working towards it. All you have to do is complete all her side quests, be friendly with her throughout the game, and choose to interact with her first at the beginning of Chapter 10.

At this point, the scene you will see at the beginning of Chapter 14 is locked in and will favour Aerith if you did so yourself throughout the game.

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The scene itself depicts Cloud walking outside of Aerith's house at night and seeing her standing among the flowers, despite her being imprisoned in Shinra HQ.

She talks with Cloud about her time with Shinra as a child, before eventually shifting to telling Cloud not to fall in love with her, and that even if he thinks he is, "it's not real".

The sudden tonal difference in the conversation is jarring even to Cloud, who reaches out to grab Aerith's hand in response, only to phase right through it.

With that context out of the way, what exactly did Aerith mean by telling Cloud not to fall in love with her?

Aerith's Memories Of Zack

Although Aerith herself alludes to it in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and more explicitly in the ending of Remake, the Soldier she talks about having met before Cloud is Zack Fair.

Zack is a very major figure in FF7 and as you will learn by the end of the original game, Cloud inadvertently assumes his identity after the Nibelheim Incident.

In Crisis Core, Aerith and Zack get quite close until Zack is forcibly pulled away from her, and after Nibelheim she never meets again.

With this in mind, Aerith sees a very literal version of Zack through Cloud, who is already emulating much of his personality and mannerisms but without any of the memories of Aerith.

If we're to take the scene at face value in this regard, she is simply telling Cloud not to fall in love with her because it's too hard to love another person so similar to Zack when she doesn't even know his ultimate fate.

On another side, you could argue that it's much simpler, and she knows that having fallen in love with a Soldier before only led to heartbreak, and doing so again would result in the same.

As such, she tells Cloud not to fall in love with her because it makes it easier for both of them to not get hurt in the long run.

Aerith's Potential Omniscience

If you want to get a few degrees more meta, on the other hand, you can find a much deeper, if also less emotionally devastating, rendition of events.

Many of the events in Final Fantasy 7 Remake make allusions to the greater lore established in later games in the FF7 Compilation. However, it also brands events in such a way that characters seem aware of the events of the original FF7 despite this being a remake.

Aerith sees visions of her praying for Holy before her death at the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth has gained a renewed interest in Cloud with the awareness that he ultimately defeats him. The Whispers of Fate intervene to try to keep the timeline in check, yet it is ultimately broken. Events no longer flow as they did in the original Final Fantasy 7.

Acknowledging this brings us to a new conclusion as to why Aerith tells Cloud not to fall in love with her — she already knows where this journey is supposed to end.

She knows that, at least in another time, she was killed before she got the chance to reciprocate any love she felt for the people around her. For Cloud, or for Zack.

You could also argue that she tells Cloud not to fall in love with her because, with fate no longer set in stone, she is aware that her first true love, Zack Fair, is alive in some other world, and she wishes to be reunited with him.

Ultimately, there is no knowing Aerith's thinking or what exactly she knows about who Cloud is or the history of other universes and how she lived in them. All we can really know is that she makes this request with sincerity.

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