Is there a canon reason why Aeris permanently dies in the game?
If not, is there a popular fan reason?
I always figured it has something to do with the white materia that Aeris loses when she dies. If you don’t have a Phoenix Down on you when you die you can’t be revived.
IIRC, the official stance was: dead is dead, but being reduced to 0 hp is just being KO’d, which can be recovered from.
Inconsistent terminology and translations didn’t help, though.
The plot said so. It wasn’t the first time. Galuf died in Final Fantasy V.
I haven’t played in ages, but doesn’t the cut scene show them throwing Phoenix Downs to no effect?
funny thing is if you played any jrpgs in the years before youd of noticed something was up as she was using high lvl attacks abilities no one else would even get to until late in the game
which means the character is going to do one of 3 things 1 get captured or frozen ect 2 turn on you once a certain goal is reached or 3 get killed
which means you either get revenge for 2 and 3 and find the magical healing for no 1 while still getting revenge Now as to why game wise just another reason to go after the evil corp and seiprioth and make cloud a moody revenge driven bastard and introduce eye candy tifa
design wise rumor had it that she was a tutorial character to get non rpg people used to the style of play and they just wanted to be dramatic so instead of making her a character that said something occasionally in a shop they killed her
if you want to see square have fun with the trope in kingdom hearts 2 they have tifa and aeris miss seeing each other by seconds a few times in the middle part of the game ……
This and “death is only real in cutscenes”.
Cutscenes show events; battle scenes are, to varying extents, abstractions of combat, with “health” being a measure of multiple factors that contribute to being in combat-capable condition, rather than just how close to death you are. This is also why bullets (which generally do minor damage in combat in this kind of game) can be one-shot kills in cutscenes: someone is actually getting full-on shot in the face, and not just grazed, narrowly avoiding it, being forced out of position or into diving for cover, or whatever other event that damage abstraction represents.
Similarly (and earlier in the series), you have Palom and Porom. They transformed themselves in a cutscene, and could not be cured. The transformation really happened, and they fully transformed because they did it willingly, and thus were not fighting it. In-combat petrification effects incapacitate the victim, but they are implied (by contrast with Palom and Porom) to be fighting the effect, holding it off until a cure can be applied. The insta-stone effect in combat is an abstraction showing that the affliction is preventing them from engaging further.
[Moderating]
Moved from CS to the Game Room, since even though it deals with a story, it’s a story in a game.
[Not moderating]
One minor detail I liked in Starcraft 2 is that, in the cutscenes, Zeratul is shown one-shotting hydralisks, but Raynor or pre-infestation Kerrigan each take three shots to kill one. Which is consistent with the actual damage and HP values in the game.
I like the KO theory. You only die if all of you are KO’d. They didn’t want to have the D&D death saves mechanic. But everyone can crit in cutscenes.
The mythology in Final Fantasy X doesn’t work well if you assume your characters actually die in battle, either. The dead can come back to life, but it’s a special thing based on their souls not being sent to the underworld, and they (usually) become corrupted. But revive them in battle, and they’re fine.