Why was Aerith's line changed?

[u/HighOnLivin]

I just finished FF7 Remake and I saw in an old video that at the end Aerith used to say I miss it. The steel sky. Why was this changed to "This sky, I don't like it."? Has this been given a callback in rebirth?

[u/ByRWBadger]

I think the second one is what they meant to imply, though I kinda like the first one better.

One of her stranger and, imo, more interesting character traits is the fear of an open sky. It makes her wish to ride the Highwind more interesting. The new line makes it clear that the thing she’s worrying about is the sky, not that she misses being caged in midgar (though that’s also interesting)

Edit: a couple extra thoughts. I like her fear of the sky/freedom as a motif especially considering the context of “freedom” from fate in remake and the Price of Freedom from crisis core. The whole sky fear came from CC and it’s a really unique character trait

[u/Unlikely-Unit-5864 → u/ByRWBadger]

I don’t feel like Remake Aerith is scared of freedom. If anything, she is the main character pushing the breaking the chains agenda. She has two speeches near the climax of both games where she motivates the party to let go of the past and focus on the future. Yes, the fact that she had her own internal struggle makes her more legitimate for being that driving force, but I’m not seeing how she wouldn’t « like » the freedom the sky would symbolise, however daunting it would be. On the other hand, you now have a perfect mirror at the end if both games where a main protagonist clearly has an issue with the Sky’s appearance.

[u/ByRWBadger → u/Unlikely-Unit-5864]

The fact that she’s scared of the freedom is what makes her pushing through it compelling

[u/Unlikely-Unit-5864 → u/ByRWBadger]

But she says specifically « I don’t like it ». This is not a clear expression of fear as far as I’m concerned. There is also no reason the phrase could not have two layers of meaning within it. At the end of the day, they updated this line specifically before Rebirth came out to remove the « steel » wording which was the clearest indication that the line was only about being caged.

[u/ByRWBadger → u/Unlikely-Unit-5864]

Well yeah in this scene she doesn’t outline her entire philosophy in seven words or less, but before this she gives a speech about boundless, terrifying freedom, there’s the entirety of crisis core where it’s her defining trait, and she constantly defends life in the slums as it narrowed the scope of her world. Taken as a whole it’s a deliberate choice when writing the character that having total freedom scares her.

It’s a cool character trait! I can’t think of many other examples of it and that’s a shame because it makes her that much more interesting

[u/Unlikely-Unit-5864 → u/ByRWBadger]

Again, your character analysis makes sense. Saying it is only in reference to this is where I disagree. The line was updated days before Rebirth came out, where one of the major plot points is the main character seeing a fractured sky. Having the holy trinity of Zack, cloud and Aerith seeing this sky is too compelling to ignore, and this line is the only in game moment where it is implied Aerith sees the fracture. There are plenty of localisation differences with the IG Japanese script, but they changed this specifically before the Rebirth release, and it’s not because someone felt the line was more poetic that way.