#If it does nothing but overcomplicate everything and ruin the narrative then it has to GO

[tifa-simp]

Time for more parallel!

The framing of these 2 scenes are quite similar, aren't they?

Remake

Rebirth

They both focus on the condition of Sephiroth, while Remake frames Aerith like she knows that he's still alive, Rebirth lets Tifa questions Sephiroth mysterious 5 years gap absence. Which leads to quite an interesting situation:

Cloud, who used to have his suspicion, is now even more sure of his knowledge about Sephiroth at the end of Rebirth. So he's likely to not gonna change his mind about Seph, as in he firmly believes that he knows the truth. Which, as we all know, is gonna bite him in the ass one way or another.

Aerith definitely knew about Sephiroth more than she lets on. But throughout 2 games, either intentional or not, she refuses to tell people the whole picture and seems to follow her own plan. Seeing the end of Rebirth, let's assume that her plan works. So Aerith had reason to not reveal her full knowledge to the gang and also has no way to tell us anymore with the way she is now.

Which leave us with Tifa with her titbits and intuition against the big mystery. So far she has 3 important questions:

What is messing with Cloud's mind?

What is Aerith's secrets about the future?

What is Sephiroth up to?

And for now, she knows that Cloud believes his unstable mind is due to SOLDIER's cells degrade, that Aerith has her memory taken away by the Whispers, that Sephiroth is fighting with the Planet and losing (at Gongaga at least). But as the story goes, she becomes more lost.

Both Cloud and Aerith are out of question now, so the only one can give Tifa the all answers is Sephiroth. But obviously she won't get anything directly from the man himself. Bold guess, but I think Tifa will involve in some way in Vincent's arc in part 3 since his story is so tightly tied to Sephiroth. No matter how Vincent arc turns out, there's no way Tifa won't get something out of it. Either she knows how he messes with Cloud or what's he been doing in those 5 years.

If Vincent arc doesn't give her all the clues then the Weapons are next in line. She's already had some ideas about the Lifestream works, next is how the multi worlds work. I believe Tifa is smart enough to figure that out by herself. I mean, she comes up with this on her own

Making Tifa our lead will be the right choice since she's in the dark about everything as much as we do while not so blindly determined like Cloud or so omniscient like Aerith. How cool it'd be if we can see Tifa playing detective in part 3 and slowly piecing everything together to clear up all the mysteries, not just with Cloud's memory problem but also Sephiroth's plan and the principle of multi worlds.

Tifa has always been the one staying behind to observe and analyze the situation in 2 games, it's time she steps up and makes her move in part 3.