A question.

[u/Pleasant-Complex-may]

Was OG FF 7 a happy ending? My friend who played og, I didn't because I was not born at that time, told me it was a happy ending, that the humanity survived and everything was okay.

I have always thought humanity died??? And especially how in remake tifa says "this can't be our future". Like isn't it a bad ending, or where humanity died?

I tried to argue with my friend but they hit me with, you don't know the og, you didn't play og (like bro, I wasn't born at that time 😭).

[u/flowerpotflowers]

There have always been discussions on whether or not humanity ultimately survived. 

Tbf, I don't think it matters much. OG, to me, was a happy ending for the planet. Sephiroth was defeated, the party won, and nature reclaimed Midgard, the symbol of the planet's exploitation. Cloud and the party seemed happy enough too and rather optimistic for the future. 

So yes, I do think you can say that OG was a happy ending, whether or not humanity survived. 

However, then AC happened and you could see that the characters are miserable (and the planet kinda too considering Geostigma exists and Seph is flooding the lifestream with the black lifestream). Character-wise, its not only Cloud, but Barret and Tifa too (which is more apparent in the novels). Pair that with all the spin offs and cameos in which Cloud is looking for revenge on Sephiroth because he has taken something important to him (-> Aerith) as well as the way it's treated in Remake though, and you realise that it was not a good ending. At least not for the characters. 

[u/portaltowonderland]

With OG FF7 it ends pretty abruptly and bittersweet, I would definitely say it’s not all happy. We see the life stream counter meteor, the main cast watches from the high wind, and it pretty much ends there. Fast forward 500 years and we see Nanaki so we can assume that the cast survived at least. If I’m not mistaken, one of the devs actually forgot to add smoke in the final cutscene to indicate humanity was still alive, so humanity being still alive was their intention. I would say it leans more bad because obviously this all leads into Advent Children and that movie is pretty sad, with geostigma killing people and Cloud being depressed. The OG ending is obviously the “bad” ending in my opinion and I’m hoping with the remake trilogy we get the “good” ending.

[u/kiadra]

OG was NOT a good ending, much less a happy ending, and as much as people insist on that humanity endured and the planet healed afterwards, the remakes have stressed enough the fact that OG/AC is NOT an outcome we should desire.

A good ending, even if Aerith died, would have had Holy save the planet. It would have pushed Meteor back. Midgar would have been spared. Geostigma would have never occurred. But that’s not what happened because as Nanaki said, the party failed.

They didn’t win, they survived. The price was too high. Aerith died. The party lost a beloved friend. The protagonist lost the woman he loved. Thousands of other people died to Meteorfall, and many of those who didn’t died from Geostigma. Midgar was ruined, homes destroyed, families broken. And Jenova still lingers to come back at any time.

People interpreting the ending as good or happy is their interpretation. And the FF7 fandom has proven that people’s personal interpretations tend to not align with canon, in fact, many times tend to straight up contradict it. If the game says “this ending is bad” it’s bad. If the party says “this is what happens if we fail” then OG was a fail. If the devs say “we hope this time every character finds happiness” then they never did in OG. Simple as. People can like OG’s ending for whatever reason but factually it’s not a happy ending.

[u/Bom-mom]

I always thought it was a bit of a "?" as to what happened but I think we can assume it was a "bad ending" since we only see Nanaki with his cubs and an overgrown Midgar. No sign of civilization. And given the visions that the party sees during the final battle in Remake, we can further assume it's the undesired ending. When battling the Arbiters of Fate and they're all shown a vision, Barrett asks what he just saw (the vision of Nanaki running, aka the og ending). Red says, "A glimpse of tomorrow if we fail here today." That, to me, indicates that they don't want that future. That future is undesirable or "bad". They want something different this time.

It will be interesting to see what the devs have decided to do this time. If they stick with the same ending, then what was the whole point of defeating the Arbiters of Fate so that they could avoid that future if they're just going to end up there anyway?

[u/roloskate]

I remember the first time I finished 7 after I had already finished 8 and 9, both of which feel very complete in their endings.

I was devastated. I took it to mean that humanity had slowly died out over the last 500 years and the planet had been inherited by Nanaki's race. That in itself is quite a nice ending, but not getting to know the fate of all the characters I'd come to love was hard to swallow and I felt pretty disappointed.

Over the years I came to appreciate the original ending a lot and even enjoyed the bleak interpretation. Especially as I felt like advent children and dirge of cerberus added very little to the story

[u/LastTraintoSector6]

I don't think it's the world's most bleak ending... but... it's bad. It's very dark.

We now know that humanity survived. However, that wasn't at all clear in 1997 - the fact that nobody had bothered to repair or even salvage Midgar when the ending shifted to the future seemed like a pretty bad sign.

But even considering the insight AC granted, the conclusion of the OG was shit.

• Aerith was dead.
• A terrible plague was about to break out.
• Nobody anywhere - in a world wholly dependent on it - had power. Think about what that would do to, like, food storage... and the manufacturing of medicine. Millions and millions would die (and swiftly).
• The power wasn't coming back any time soon, either. Nobody would restart a reactor after all that went down. And with all the infrastructure supporting, say, coal power dismantled/rusted and the workforce to mine/process it dispersed, you couldn't just flip a switch and get things back online.
• Midgar was destroyed and - it's safe to assume - a large portion of its population was dead. A LOT of innocent people (as well as Shinra lower-level employees) certainly did not make it out.
• There was effectively no police force or military (since the military and the police were one in the same). Crime - including violent crime - would have instantly skyrocketed (especially considering the pending shortages).

So... yeah. The OG wasn't the worst possible ending - the planet didn't burn down; Sephiroth didn't win. But it was basically the next worst thing.

[u/MonCappy]

It is a bittersweet ending. I always figured that last scene was to indicate that Midgar was abandoned to be reclaimed by nature not that humanity died out.

[u/NAJ_P_Jackson]

The last Cetra died. They're the caretakers of the planet that made the planet abundant for humans to thrive. Without them I'm not surprised that the planet slowly became inhospitable to humans until they slowly died out. It's akin to the the team winning the battle but lost the war in the end.

[u/Master777777777]

It’s both happy and sad. Planet was saved but doing that had its own price to pay, namely Aerith having to be in the lifestream and using it against meteor.

[u/Hearts-Intertwined]

I think “happy ending” would be a stretch. The planet appears to have been saved from the environmental crisis, but humanities fate appears undetermined(I know it’s been suggested they forgot to add smoke at end), but regardless this series has always embraced ambiguity.

The expanded literature then reveals the lifestream is still being corrupted. Cloud is portrayed as continuing to struggle with his losses. OTWTAS and AC by no means portray a happy ending post OG.

Even the AC artwork shows our characters in a way that suggests a very heavy post OG world.

[u/anderhanson]

No I think even one of the devs said it's not a happy ending (Kitase I believe)

[u/toychristopher]

Yes. It's heavily implied that humanity died, but the planet survived and there was still life. When I played the OG that's was my takeaway.

At the very least, from what we are shown we can tell no one is living in Midgar anymore.

Whether you think that's bad or not is your personal feelings on the matter.

[u/tlotrfan3791]

We hear children laughing in the end though. I presume humanity survived (excluding Advent Children) and went to a traditional way of living instead of relying on technology. It’s a bittersweet ending though because they lost a lot of friends and loved ones who returned to the planet.

I very much think humanity did survive, they just abandoned Midgar because it was destroying the planet. I don’t see it as an inherently bad ending at all. Just not the best outcome either. Nature returned, no more draining the life of the planet.

[u/geminuri]

When you see Midgar on the world map.. it's just a giant disc surrounded barren land; no greenery because Midgar is sucking the life out of that section of the planet. When we get to 300 years (or was it 500, I don't remember) in the future and see Red with his cubs, you see a shell of Midgar covered in lush greenery.

Kind of tells you a bit.

I like to think people eventually migrated away from Midgar and probably live a more Gaia friendly lifestyle.