here is the story of the Aeris' Revival. I got this from a very reliable sorce. Every were there is an "I" that is the sorcce, a good friend Cybernatas. So thna you Cybernatas for this infromation. He is studying to be a videio game programer(or something)so he had to(or wanted to) translate FF 7.by the way, this came from a message board so it might not make sence because we have had long disscusions and many countless hours of debating.
Squaresoft, in an effort to get Final Fantasy VII out in Japan on the deadline of January 31st, released the game unfinished. The true ending, while on the games 3rd CD, has been locked out, and important story elements were left unresolved. Information on the details of this have been supplied by Lansing, a former employee of Squaresoft who worked on the game, which comes to us via Miranda's Cafe Final Fantasy VII...
Throughout the past few weeks, I, myself, have been wondering why people were having such a hard time reviving Aeris, because according to everything I saw through the scenario translation process, it could be done fairly easily. Here's the Aeris revival process, in full.
First off, throughout the game, you must make the logical choice of things to say to Aeris to indicate that you like her. You must never hurt her in any way by choice. What happens in scenarios, however, cannot be avoided (Aeris' beating by Cloud, for instance). Also, with the sick man. There is no medicine, but you could have Aeris tend to him and make him feel better, by learning about her heritage and returning to Midgar in the first CD. By doing this, the "GENERAL" as people call him, would trust you, and request you go buy his dying friend something from the store. A simple quest. After doing so, the GENERAL would tell you thanks, and that if there was anything else you need ever, to ask him for help. You then see a scene with his friend dying. A sad scene. :(
Now, continue through the game as normal, and after Aeris dies, go on to the second CD. Once here, return to Midgar with the key from CD1, and the GENERAL will ask you where the nice girl (Aeris) is. You explain that she has died, by Sephiroth, and that there is no hope in reviving her. There would be a chance, but only if you could go deep under the waters of the floating castle (where Aeris died). The GENERAL would tell you that he thinks he may be able to help, and to come back later. After this meeting, you were to go on to Aeris' church, where there would be a long scene with her spirit. If you had been nice to her, she would express a desire to return to help you. After doing this, return to the GENERAL, who would provide you with a Yellow materia that allowed the entire group to travel through water. With this, you could return to the floating palace, go up to Mr.Fish, and once you touched him, you would be transported under water, to a cavern, where, at the end, lay Aeris' orb/life essence. With this orb, Bugenhagen could complete the ress process, and you could move on to a happier life with a neater ending. Well, the FMVs were all completed on time, but a lot of coding was not. They then delayed the games release by a month (Dec -> Jan). However, it seemed that even by late December, the coding STILL wasn't finished, so Square told production to wrap it up quickly. In order to get the game out on time, SqJP sacrificed what could have been a miraculously better game than FF7... The main coding that was not finished dealt with manipulating the transparent polygon of Aeris' spirit in the church. Since they were forced to wrap production up to meet the many-delayed deadline, they had to stop with the Aeris process unfinished. So, to keep things from ever happening, they simply removed the one item that allowed any hint of the process to take place... The Key to Midgar, from the first CD. This completely stopped the ability to ressurect Aeris. HOWEVER, they left out the removal of one thing, and that was the split-second of seeing the ghost of Aeris once you return to the church. Unforunately, this, along with the insanely big size of the ending MOV, are the only hints to Aeris' existence that we have. Other than the original FF7 scriptline, from which all the above information came.
I ran across this info while talking to John H. (another temp like me) trying to get some US script from him for our channel's page. Also, Seph wanted it. I asked him if it would be alright for me to release the script info in an altered form, and to release info on gameplay, such as Aeris' death/ress. Then he told me the deadline story, and I almost had a heartattack. He said that the process can still be done to its completion, sans a couple of scenes, with the Game Shark, but until someone develops a MOV player that handles multiple sector files, the true ending will not be seen.
Oh, and about the ending... There were supposed to be scenes with the hidden characters, but things got cut short, so they weren't added, and the end of the ending was terrible, without even the typical "THE END" in the stars. This makes me wish I had left Square earlier than I did, realizing that deadlines and business are more important to them than the games. All they care about is money."
This is saddening. People have been waiting for months for this game, only to find it was released unfinished and not as it was intended to be. Many long time Square fans will surely be unhappy to know that Square released an unfinished game on them, and may lose faith in the company.
The Ending with Yuffie & Vincent
If you've seen the ending, you probably noticed that Yuffie and Vincent were not involved. Since Vincent and Yuffie are optional characters, they created 3 more ending. One with Vincent alone, one with just Yuffie, and one with both. Unfortunately, to save time and space, they got rid of these endings. That's just too bad.
