[Music] so I finished Final Fantasy 7 rebirth a couple of days ago and to be completely honest my head is still completely reeling from it and while I'm swirling on theories and opinions about this game and its ending something I cannot stop thinking about is the way that this game uses Zack fair I won't lie I'm one of the fans who really enjoys his extended development that he's gotten since the OG with Crisis Core and I'm just a really big fan of his character but I was also very cautious about his placement in the remake Trilogy because in the original Final Fantasy 7 story he really does work best as a narrative tool so seeing him have a crucial and extended role in the trilogy had me both worried and excited but after finishing rebirth the way the writers and directors of this game handled his character was way better than anything I could have possibly expected somehow the devs at Square Enix were able to expand upon the character they built in Crisis Core while simultaneously keeping that air of mystery that Zach has in the original but doing it in a brand new way this game really is a love letter to Final Fantasy 7 and its compilation titles because Zach gets to be what he always has been just on a grander scale because Zach is and always has been a Beacon of Hope to the characters of Final Fantasy 7 Zack fair is actually a lot different than any other of the main cast members of this game one of the main reasons that Final Fantasy 7 really resonated with people almost 30 years ago was because the characters of the game felt extremely real they had faults and they made mistakes but then that eventually leads to Great character development and so far the Remake Trilogy has done a pretty good job of expanding upon that all except for Zach see even in the original Zach was never supposed to be like that he's supposed to be the perfect character even among all of the trials and tribulations he goes through he still comes out on top unwavering that's why Cloud looked up to him so much he wanted to be perfect like Zach and then in Crisis Core that part of his character is expanded upon he goes through his hero's journey and he does have to go through a lot of issues but he comes out on top without faltering really at all this kind of character doesn't really belong with the main cast to Final Fantasy 7 but the devs at Square Enix were able to do something very smart and take that opportunity to do something with his character that they can't really do with anyone else in the main party they effectively turn Zach into a Superman character let me explain what I mean by that Superman is the superhero he is the template that every single superhero that has ever been made has been built on because Superman represents ideals he represents the best of humanity that's why the best Superman stories are not the stories where Superman develops as a character character but how the world develops and is made better because he is there Superman is a Shining Light Of Hope not just to Metropolis but to the world and I firmly believe Zach represents the same thing to the people of Final Fantasy 7 in the insanely crazy opening of the game Zach is theoretically at his worst after 5 years of being on the run from Shinra he's finally home but when he gets there he has to save aith from Shinra and when he does save her she's in a coma the prologue ends with him crying into her motionless body but when we finally get to see him he sprung to action we see that he is trying his best to take care of both aith and Cloud putting their needs before his and the environmental storytelling here is actually really cool when we first see Zach in this cut scene he is in a cradle position on an empty mattress we learned it's because he's using the two proper beds in the shed to take care of both aith and cloud and we see them being covered on the bed by two different blankets the implication here being that Zach found two blankets and decided to use the two blankets on the people who needed them most except that's not the case there is a third blanket in this scene arth's head is being propped up by a third blanket something Cloud distinctly does not have which means that there were three blankets for them to use Zach just used the third one and instead of giving it to himself he gave it to aith because he felt like she needed it bit more and that's just who Zach is always putting the needs of others before himself mind you a few hours ago this man was inches away from Death he's got to be tired out of his mind yet the people he loves comes first but eventually he does get into an argument with alra and decides that yes it is best that aith and clouds stay at ith's house and being outside in Sector 5 Zach gets to see firsthand just how depraved this world is oats is so sad to see aith in this kind of State and Elmyra straight up says to Zach that people think the world is going to end and the cut scene ends with Zach coming to terms with the fact that he is in a world that has lost all hope and then we get to see what he's up to again right before the first gold saucer date and it's in this cut scene that we get to see a glimpse of what his purpose is in this story as he gets to talk to a character that he never gets to talk to in the original and that's marleene and there's a really interesting just deposition here between how Marlene meets cloud and how Marlene meets Zach in remake just the sight of cloud scares Marlene enough to make her run behind her dad which is funny enough considering she watched him walk in with her dad and knows that cloud is a friend of tifas meanwhile when marleene first meets Zach she has no problems with getting up in his face she says not only is it proper to say thank you but he needs to say it now Zach isn't a scary looking person and he's supposed to be pretty approachable which we get to see here and when he does eventually say thank you he says it with a smile something Cloud isn't really known to do in conversations and Marlene getting on Zach's case is a really funny detail concerning the fact that all of the kids that you interact with in Crisis Core also give to Zach kids give him a rough time but all in all it's out of a good place but eventually in the cut scene we do get to hear Marlene talking about how she doesn't even know if she's going to see Tifa or Barrett ever again again bigs doesn't even take the time out of the day to say hello so Zach who already has enough on his plate as it is decides that he's going to go out of his way to get bigs for marleene because he knows it' make her feel better and despite aith and Cloud being his priorities he can't just let this slip by and in the grand scheme of things it's not really a big deal but it means the world to marleene in effect we constantly see Zach have in crisis courp whether it's with angil cloud aith or even yui for the grand mystery of the game we're not actually getting a lot of information here but as you'll see these cutcenes with Zach always do two things introduce to us a new sorrow in this version of midgar and then how Zach directly responds to that sorrow inducing some sort of Hope again and I really thought the mystery of this game would be somewhat answered in an extended section about Zach which I thought was going to happen in gungaga because it makes sense but instead we get what I believe is far better we we get firsthand accounts of people who knew Zach and how much he impacted their life by just being in it in the original Final Fantasy 7 gungaga is an extremely short section it's a single conversation with Zach's parents that's very sad and the point of the section is to just tell you that Zach is a person that exists but this is something that rebirth changes for the better upon entering gungaga Village the first person you meet is sisn which means that she kept her promise to Zach at the end of Crisis Corp to stay in gungaga and look after his parents as far as we know CIS left Shinra and the Turks because of the guilt that she felt that she took a part of his life and then in the village there's a side quest by someone who claims to be Zach's childhood best friend and the whole point of the side quest is that he's trying to be a hero just like Zach was and not Soldier Zach just who Zach was even as a kid and then you do eventually get to talk to Zach's parents who while they are sad just like the original they're optimistic they say that hey they say no news is good news a saying that sounds like it would come from Zach himself and maybe it's just a fair thing and to accentuate the point that Zach's presence still lingers within this Village the music is very particular in this part of the game I found it very interesting that in the four cut scenes that we've gotten of Zach so far none of them have played any Crisis Core Music remake used a lot of music from the compilation series specifically from Advent Children so I thought that since Zach is having an extended part in this game and they literally re-released Crisis Core a year ago they were 100% going to use Crisis Core Music in this game but it never happens until you get to gungaga and you meet sis and that's when The Crisis Core theme plays and it hit me that that makes way more sense Crisis Core itself represents the prequel to final f Fantasy 7 it's a game that represents Nostalgia and that's all gungaga is it's Nostalgia for Zach that's why we don't switch to him in this part of the game because this area is about remembering him not seeing what he's doing now and it's important that what's playing here is The Crisis Core theme not the price of freedom because the price of Freedom means something entirely different and is used in a different way in this game but before we get to that we actually haven't seen Zach in a while two whole main Dungeons and theoretically two whole areas go by before we even see him again and it's on our way to the Village of the ghee that we get our biggest Zach cut scene yet in this cut scene we finally get to see Zach meet bigs and it's here that we learned some pretty important plot information we learned that this is in fact The Bigs that we knew in remake and that both he and Zach went through the same thing they were on the brink of death when out of nowhere a burst of wind blew and suddenly they were alive but but most importantly we learned that both Zach and bigs feels like that was not supposed to happen that was supposed to be the moment of their death but Zach and bigs have two different attitudes about it bigs can't really wrap his head around why specifically him he feels like a background character so why would he be saved what purpose does he serve in fact Zach actually sings a completely different tune than bigs does the entire section and in between the conversations of the two piecing the timeline of things together we get really good character moments between Zach and bigs this whole scene is actually one of my favorites in the entire game because narratively it tells us a whole story within 15 minutes it has a beginning a climax and an end and the big question of the cut scene isn't what is happening in this timeline it's what is our purpose here bigs quite literally asks Zach that question do you ever think about your purpose in this life and Zach says yeah I do actually all the time and then he laments about his entire journey in crisis Corp he mentions that things really changed for him after he joined Shinra and Soldier and we know that his whole journey had to change and he had to find his ideals and beliefs outside of the company where he thought he got his ideals and beliefs from so he believes that he was saved on purpose that there is someone out there who needs him and there is someone who equally needs bigs but bigs doesn't agree he can't fathom a world where he's needed in the grand scheme of things just like the rest of this midgar he's lost hope and then the scene builds until it finally reaches its climax on the lot off pedal Lane bigs puts his last ounce of hope that someone out there would be willing to join Avalanche amongst all the chaos but no one does even Kira who showed up leaves she gets cold feet and that's it for Bigs he walks off thinking that hey that was his last try he's going to give up but Zach sees him walk off with the same defeated look that oats and marleene has and he thinks that's it I have to do something he stops bigs and he tells him that someone does need him that there is always something worth fighting for so long as they have hopes and dreams and that's Zach's whole thing embracing your hopes and dreams and while Crisis Core does have a very hammered in way of talking about these ideals what's so great about the writing in this scene is that it is the same conversations that Zach has in Crisis Core it's putting his ideals versus someone else's but this time it's not just some comically evil theater kid it's bigs it's someone we understand it's someone we empathize with so it's a harder conversation to grasp on because in this situation this is a character we like and a lot of people would argue that they agree with bigs but then eventually when Zach does come out on top it's not some grandiose moment where a goddess literally comes out of the sky he just changes the worldview on someone that not just Zach likes but we like too so in that way we relate to this scene way more than we ever would with a scene with Genesis and at the end of the cutscene bigs doesn't even make a 100% turnaround he says maybe but what he does know for a fact that there is a reason that Zach is here and the world is very lucky to have him and as bigs walks away with his head a little bit higher Zach mentions that he should probably go home too catching himself on saying the word home because in a conversation where he talked to someone else about how they need to find hopes and dreams he finally realizes that he made his dreams come true he's home and sure aith might be in a coma but he made it home to her and she's not dead and as long as there is a chance that she will wake up there is everything worth fighting for and then when Zach gets back to elmyra's house he's literally greeted with a welcome home and he's so excited to tell Marlene that he talked to bigs and while he did forget to ask about Tifa and Barrett Marlene doesn't really get mad at him for it she's more playfully annoyed than anything Zach has removed the despair that she was feeling prior to that section little by little he is siphoning out the despair of this world and even though it's one person at a time he is quite literally changing how people feel about the end of the world and as we'll come to learn the despair that comes from these worlds is very important to sephos plan but before we get to sephos plan we do get a couple of Zach cut scenes outside of the switches that we have to Zach notably the ones that happen in neheim and while it is a very cute scene where Zach does talk about aith this is more of a character moment for cloud he is misremembering his relationship with Zach which doesn't happen in the original but amongst all of that Haze the one thing that he knows for sure is that Zach was his friend and just the thought of forgetting about Zach makes him ache out of all of the characters that Zach makes an impact on of course the most important one is our main character and it's easy to forget this because 100% cloud is at his worst during the events of the original Final Fantasy 7 but Cloud isn't doing exactly great either before the events of Final Fantasy 7 even before the neheim accident he's not doing great either he never made soldiers he never got to do the thing that he dreamed of the thing he literally moved out of neheim and into midgar for and he doesn't really know exactly what to do but the thing that keeps him going is the things that Zach says to him and again that's the Zach effect and the best part about Zach's sections and rebirth is that it gives us the opportunity to see this effect on people that he never gets to meet we see it happen with marleene we see it happen with bigs and finally we see it happen with almyra before we get to the Zach cut scene before the second gold saucer date in the scene that happens on the way to the Village of the ghee the last thing Elmyra says is that marleene will be with Barrett and Tifa soon fully implying that she is still on board with the end of the world and that she fully expects all of them to die but in this new scene where Zach learns some very distressing information an information that makes him slightly jealous he stands stands in the dead Garden pondering what takes precedent here but then almyra comes up to him and she points out that there is a single flower that has started to bloom and she asks Zach that do you think this means aith will wake up soon and Zach literally says one can only hope finally Elmyra has something worth fighting for Elmyra fully believes that aith can wake up now she has something to go forward with now and she even says this she says that it's harder enough taken care of cloud and aith with Zach's help she doesn't know if she can do it without him and that she would be a wreck without Zach a very different tune than the one that she was saying in that first switch to Zach and there it is even though it's three people all of the people that Zach came into contact with in this version of midgar had gained hope once again and that's why Zach is in this story it's not just to have someone else who is making their way trying to find Sethro and stop him it's to have someone who Sethro doesn't even realize is thwarting his plans and this is where we get into the branching worlds now this isn't an explanation of the branching worlds there's a lot of good videos about that but this is specifically about how Zach's part in these branching worlds is very crucial see now after emotionally and mentally saving bigs Marlene and almyra Zach now has to physically save three people but he has to make a decision which one does he go for first first and that's when we get the first branching world the world that we've been in the one where Zach tries to save Cloud by going to Hojo and mind you this is a Zach who was just told by marleene that aith has feelings for cloud and while he does have a twinge of Jealousy on his face nothing matters more in the world to him than making sure that aith survives so as a remembrance of why he's doing this he ties AIS ribbon to his hand and he sets off to find Hojo and for the very first first time in the entire game you get to finally hear the price of Freedom cuz the price of Freedom originally used in Crisis Core plays when Zach has to go against all of Shinra it's his Canon event and it's in the name and it kind of takes on a double meaning in Crisis Core it means that his freedom from Shinra quite literally is at the cost of his own life but also the freedom of cloud and the freedom Cloud gets to have by being alive is also at the cost of Zach's life and now in this cut scene he just learned that the woman that he loves has feelings for his best friend and that the only way she survives is if he saves that very person and that very sacrifice is this world's price of Freedom the price of ai's freedom and the freedom that she gets to live comes at that and then as we cut in between cloud and Eris date in the Dying World we get to see Zach again this time in a world where he went for Bigs and he has this big moment where he talks to bigs and has another moment that is a shot forsh shot remake from a CGI cut scene that happens in Crisis Core fate comes back and bigs gets shot just like he does on top of the pillar and then again just like originally a squadron of Shinra soldiers comes to shoot him down so maybe it is fate maybe it is his fate to die and Zach says this he says that fate has one twisted sense of humor and he feels like he is always the punchline but of course this is Zach and he's not going to give up to even fate itself and notably a much more hopeful version of the price of Freedom plays during this section and then in the third and final Corgi World Zach stands outside of arth's church where he's face to face with sephra and seph thinks that the worlds are ending Zach is bound to die in every single version of this world so why would he spare even an ounce of effort on Zach so just like Zach is a play thing to be thrown aside he splits open the ground and sends Zach to his Doom but someone else has a plan for him he is saved and he sees the yellow pedals and just like aith says in remake he follows the flowers this isn't even a Zach who is faded to die at shinra's hands this is a Zach who was dying by sephos but even then he defies that fate once again and this is where SEO is crucially screwing up as we know this is a Sethro who knows what happen this is a sephra who knows that he is supposed to lose by Cloud's hands and in the original the reason why he loses by Cloud's hands is because he drastically underestimates Cloud but he's not underestimating Cloud here that's why he's specifically messing with him and all of his relationships he is stopping the person that defeats him at his core but the thing about cloud is that cloud isn't just Cloud he is a culmination of all of the people that is in his life including the ones who are dead notably AI and Zach and Sethro says it himself when aith comes to help Cloud at the last Sethro fight he very much underestimates aith and that's the thing about seph's plan he divulges to us right before the Temple of the agents that the reunion is no longer the reunion of goova C it's the reunion of Worlds where he is trying to take all of the despair from all of the worlds and weaponize it and turn it against the life stream but how is he supposed to do this if there is someone behind the scenes siphoning the world of Despair and returning hope to them seph doesn't even know it but there is someone in all of these worlds who is stealing the despair that he is trying to weaponize and turning it into hope while we were all clamoring to know more about the timelines and what was going on in these worlds and who in these worlds knows events what was really happening in these cut scenes were the emotions that Zach was directly changing because that's what's actually important sure the big question of the game is how is Zach alive what is going on in these different timelines are they even timelines or is it a Multiverse or is it the live stream what's actually important here is that Zach is helping the main party defeat sepo by returning hope to the world so that there is no despair for seph to take and that's what makes him work in this game even though he fully shouldn't while our maincast has their layers and their wants and their faults and their needs and their mistakes Zach is once again now a narrative tool just like he was in the original but now the narrative tool that he is here is built upon the way that his ideals were crafted in crisis Corp the way Zach is written in this game is the best of both worlds which I didn't think was possible Crisis Core is a very contained story it's not about how Zach saves the world it's about how Zach saves himself and the people that he loves and at the very end of the game he asks the question did I become a hero because he didn't quite save the world he didn't really become the hero that Sethro was known as but he did become a hero because the actions that he performs in Crisis Core eventually does lead to the fact that cloud Saves the World and without that happening Cloud would have never save the world but now in this new Trilogy the hope that he is returning to the world and his efforts for not only himself to but for other people to defy fate now directly Saves the World and he will know without a doubt that he became a [Music] hero [Music] w