Summary

• FF7 Rebirth's inconsistent approach to sunsets compromises realism for the sake of heightening emotions.
• Gaia's map in the original game didn't map any sense, looping in a fundamentally impossible way.
• Realism isn't always important, and FF7's storytelling has always been compelling for a reason.

Not everything about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's world of Gaia adds up, but as illogical as the setting can be, there's nothing new about its inability to make complete sense. Although there's obviously going to be some creative license taken with any fantasy world, it's entirely possible to create a setting where everything checks out with basic internal logic and coherent rules of reality. FF7 Rebirth is exceptionally believable in some regards, it just makes a few concessions in others in order to achieve some particular goals.

Although the Final Fantasy series features some recurring elements from game to game, it shakes things up significantly with each numbered entry, and FF7 was definitely no exception. The world of Gaia where the game takes place pushed things forward into the most sci-fi flavor that the franchise had yet seen, moving beyond the steampunk aspects of FF6 to a world rife with modern technology. It's largely a grounded take on the concept, counterbalancing soaring skyscrapers and huge military facilities with dingy slums and plenty of scrap metal.

FF7 Rebirth Doesn't Know Where The Sun Is

One Key Scene Has The Sun Set In The East

The beachfront town of Costa del Sol plays a big role in FF7 Rebirth, taking on a larger presence than it had in the original thanks to a new story segment and a huge influx of minigames. After a big fight on the beach, FF7 Rebirth also adds a scene of the characters reflecting and considering the road ahead at sunset. As observed by Reddit michaelfarrie, the sun can clearly be seen falling beneath the watery horizon, but there's one problem with the set-up — Costa del Sol faces east, not west, so the sunset absolutely shouldn't be visible.

Since Gaia is a fantasy world, the obvious conclusion would be that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. In Junon, however, it was already shown to set in the West like normal, completely scuttering any solution that simple. There's no complex binary sun situation going on in the game, so it doesn't seem to be justified by any feasible astronomical mechanic. It's ultimately just a choice made to fit the scene, albeit one at the expense of Gaia's believability as a logical world.

Gaia Already Didn't Make Sense In The Original FF7

The World Never Worked Like It Should Have

Although the original FF7 didn't showcase this particular sunset problem, it did have a big issue of its own with the basic function of Gaia. The world map in the game meets itself on all sides, but it doesn't function as an actual globe. Instead, it's an essentially flat looping plane that just doesn't obey any fundamental laws of physics, although the characters never seem too concerned about the strangeness of their surroundings when running across the land or flying around in the Highwind.

In this case, it seems more like an abstraction of representation than anything, as the world can be inferred to be a sphere that's just being presented in a weird way. As a traditional RPG overworld, the map also isn't shown in any kind of reasonable scale, with locations rendered in disproportionate sizes and characters blown up to an even bigger scale. Even taking abstraction into , however, it still doesn't quite add up, and FF7 Rebirth's presentation of the world map shows what would ultimately be one half of a sphere rather than a fully encoming world.

The decision to make Gaia so weird in the original FF7 is definitely deliberate, and when it comes to FF7 Rebirth's strange sunset situation, it's easy to assume that it was a choice made with the same level of intention. There's no way that the team would have made the Costa del Sol scene without ever thinking about the logic of it, especially in a game that pays so much attention to minute details.

Breaking The Rules Can Sometimes Make FF7 Better

Realism Isn't Always The Most Important Thing

Having the sun set over the ocean horizon is a stylistic effect for the scene that fits the mood and helps key into the primary emotions of the moment, which is arguably more valuable than realism would be. FF7 has always been a character-focused story that heavily invests in significant emotional scenes, and sacrificing some secondary concerns in favor of that primary goal just makes sense. It's not a new tactic for the franchise, and Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children in particular demands serious suspension of disbelief for some of its biggest emotional swings.

That's not to say that FF7 Rebirth doesn't ever choose to prioritize realism, and there are other parts of the game where it jumps through hoops to explain weird aspects of the original story that never quite lined up. Some of these are small tweaks, like showcasing a primary entrance to the Gold Saucer to justify the disrepair of the tram station, while others, like fleshing out Red XIII's backstory, take on bigger tasks. The success of various efforts tends to vary, but it's clear that the team does care about generally maintaining the audience's belief in the world.

Some oddities in the English version of the original FF7 are simply due to its questionable translation, although that can also have its charms.

The fact that FF7 never did make complete sense is a testament to how strong its core really is, as compelling characters and exciting reveals were always more than enough to maintain the investment of fans worldwide. Not every detail always needs to be explained to avoid being a plot hole, and even actual plot holes can sometimes serve the work in a way that ultimately elevates the whole affair.

Every choice to break the basic continuity of a world can have consequences, and there's no doubt that the inconsistent sunsets in FF7 Rebirth did end up pulling some players out of the Costa del Sol scene. There's also no doubt that it added an extra layer to the experience for many others, however, and taking those kinds of risks can occasionally make games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth even better than they would have been otherwise.

Source: michaelfarrie/Reddit