I like how the illusion of choice transitioned from FF7 to FF7R. In OG, choice only mattered for how you got the GS date and HW scene, but the endgame's the same no matter what. In FF7R, your choices don't mean sh*t. 20 or 30 min? Place still explodes. Don't want the flower? Too bad. Visit Jessie or not? Answer still points to no. Tried to avoid trainroll? Narrative said otherwise. Tried getting 1 resolution? Guess what, all of them are canon and happened on the same night. We have no say anymor
That's what I keep saying and people still seem to think they have a choice because option boxes appear.
Imma go through them all just to prove the point. The branching dialogues and even side quests for Cloud's dress all result in the same conclusion. They rejoin the main narrative. They do not splinter off into their own mini narrative that results in slight dialogue changes through the rest of the game. Why? Because it would be ridiculously expensive to film, animate and code that. Not to mention all of the translation teams would have to be on the same page, and they clearly weren't for part one, so that would result in even greater diversity in the continuity of the overall story. That's why no matter what you choose there is only one main narrative.
The reactor timer isn't a choice, although I have run it out and, yeah, you die.
1. The flower. You will take it, no matter what option you choose. In the walk through midgar book there's a conversation snippet of chain link references from key words and the canon narrative from the key word flower in this case is to refuse, then accept, so Cloud hears the girlfriend line. The conversation doesn't go to the next line about how much gil he'll offer for it.
There is no option for gifting the flower. It goes to Tifa.
2. The drink. You will have two drinks. Refuse and Tifa will make one. Accept and Tifa will make one. Either way, Cloud calls her beautiful after the second.
3. Jessie's proposition. No matter which option you choose, Cloud refuses and Jessie says "Psych" and sticks her tongue out.
4. Alone at last. Achieved through completing all of the sidequests in sector 7, there's several narrative threads during the conversation that link it to the main story. You also get to choose Tifa's alternate dress for wall market. If you don't do the quests, the game still acts like you did by putting Tifa in her canon outfit. This means the conversation and date offer, with acceptance took place.
5. The train roll. Even if you run out the timer to avoid seeing the cut scene between Cloud and Tifa the ultimania main digest says the canon narrative is it happened. No matter what you do, you still end up in the train tunnel with Tifa and Barret.
6. Chapter 8 sidequests. The amount you do affects the dress Aerith wears later. By completing them all you also get the language of flowers discovery. But if you do none, there is no default dress for Aerith. She isn't automatically in the red dress, so to get that does rely on the player completing quests that Cloud wouldn't (whack a box?). But even if you do none, Aerith will still appear in a wall market dress, so your choice results in the same conclusion, with a few minor optional scenes to draw the branching narrative back to the main storyline.
7. Cloud's dresses. No matter which set of sidequests you do, or even if you do none, Cloud will end up dancing at the honeybee inn and wear a dress. The options you make to get the sidequests for the dress all branch and then merge to this final result.
8. The sewers. Even if you don't choose the canon narrative, which is Tifa, as shown in the ultimania, there's references to her resolution later in the story and ultimania main digest that show it happened.
9. Chapter 14 sidequests. Even if you don't do any, you still scale the wall and Barret and Tifa talk to Cloud beforehand. The only slight difference is the level of trust and comradeship they display.
10. Stairs or elevator. Even if you take the stairs, Domino's dialogue only fits if you took the elevator.
So, that's all the choices and even when things branch more than once, you still end up with the exact same result. What you choose doesn't matter to the story. It only affects some changes to the characters dialogues. Because it'd be too expensive to produce that many dialogue options that result in changes to the story. They'd have to reshoot the same scenes over and over. And that also why we're gonna have mandatory party members. It's not 97. SE can't produce those options on the scale that 7R is at. We'd be in development hell longer than FF15 was. Gotta sacrifice something, and dialogue trees that muddy the storyline, and optional party members that result in some characters never being used are the easier and healthiest changes to make.
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