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Final Fantasy 7 Remake Chapter 18 Walkthrough: Destiny’s Crossroads (Spoiler-Free)

This is it: the final chapter of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is also the toughest, pitting you and your team against some of their greatest challenges. Below is everything you need to know to make your way through Destiny’s Crossroads, survive the battles, and finish FF7 Remake.

Check out the rest of our Final Fantasy 7 Remake guides so you don’t miss a single secret or collectible. You can also read our FF7 Remake review.

Chapter 18 Walkthrough: Destiny’s Crossroads

You’ve got another motorcycle mini-game to contend with, this time with more enemies and more variety. The battles themselves are relatively straightforward, though: be sure to utilize Cloud’s guard ability to minimize incoming damage, and break to avoid bombs from helicopters. You’ll eventually take on a M.O.T.H. Unit, which will fling blades at you before getting electrically charged and coming in for closer fights, and some 3-C SOLDIERS, who have swords of their own. Just be sure to guard against their attacks to make it through.

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Kaguya-sama: Love is War – Season 2 Premiere Review

This review contains spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, now streaming on Funimation in the US. Episode 1 premiered on April 11, with new episodes rolling out weekly.

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What might be anime’s best romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War (now stylised with a question mark at the end of the title) at last makes its more-than-welcome return. Directed by Shinichi Omata and written by Yasuhiro Nakanishi, the show is adapted from the immensely popular weekly seinen manga from Aka Akasaka (with the translated title: “Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to: The Geniuses’ War of Hearts and Minds”). The show is focused on a battle of wits between the wealthy heiress Kaguya Shinomiya and the workaholic star student and council president Miyuki Shirogane, both trying to make the other confess their love for each other, as they’re both too proud to admit it. In the hands of anyone else it’d be a boring and routine “battle of the sexes,” but Love is War has continually shown itself to be above such clichés.

With its James Bond-esque opening titles (scored with an infectiously catchy number from “Japan’s King Of Love Songs” Masayuki Suzuki) and penchant for ludicrous escalation, the first season made hysterical overreaction its whole modus operandi. The ridiculously elaborate schemes by Shinomiya and Shirogane to make the other confess their love constantly defy predictability, as any one might find itself undone by their meddlesome friends, pure coincidence, or one of the two panicking at the prospect of intimacy with the other. The show is kept at a ridiculous and intentionally infuriating stalemate, as the stubborn leads refuse to be honest with each other or themselves.

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What keeps this back-and-forth interesting is how the comedy stays informed by character; Shirogane’s obsessive work ethic stems from his family’s financial insecurity, while Shinomiya’s emotional insecurity stems from her lavish and extremely sheltered upbringing. The incredible voice performances from Makoto Furukawa as Shirogane and Aoi Koga as Shinomiya both keep the intentionally frustrating dynamic fresh and funny even without interruptions from fan favourite agent of chaos Chika Fujiwara (Konomi Kohara, excelling in conveying a bubbly hyperactivity) and the human punchline Yū Ishigami (Ryōta Suzuki, keeping a precise monotone).

The first season was more from the perspective of Shinomiya, examining the lifelong insecurities that drive her obsessive psychological battle with Shirogane, and her inability to be emotionally honest. That surprisingly genuine sincerity of the first season’s latter half revealed Love Is War’s surprising depth and capability for a lot more than simple laughs at the character’s expense. The second season looks to expand this sympathy to the supporting characters, first and foremost Ai Hayasaka, Shinomiya’s long-suffering but nonetheless loyal attendant. As with the previous season each episode is split into three or four vignettes, with the first of this new episode opening on a characteristically ridiculous scenario with Hayasaka at the center, detailing the absurd lengths she goes to meet Shinomiya’s impossible demands, and preserve the happiness of her mistress.

It also appears that animation studio A-1 Pictures has a little more weight to throw around – scenery and characters are drawn and animated with loving exactness – with a particular adoration of absurd facial expressions in almost every cut to a close-up. Even the most mundane scenarios of the episode make use of wild, exuberant movements and great detail. It’s almost reminiscent of shows like Nichijou, as Love is War makes use of anachronistic homages to other genres such as action thrillers even in the most mundane of stories. Case-in-point, the episode’s first part has Hayasaka fully decked out in tactical spy gear as she infiltrates the Student Council room to swap out Shirogane’s coffee for decaf (he almost immediately passes out upon drinking it, reacting as though it were poison – a relatable action).

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The new episode is crammed with jokes from beginning to end, full of subtle but extremely funny callbacks to the previous season alongside its farcical set-pieces, sharp one-liners and clever visual humour. There will no doubt be some jokes lost in translation (the opening credits jokingly crosses out the extremely long subtitle of the original Japanese), with various plays on words and blink-and-miss-it accompaniments to graphics, but the script moves at such a pace that it doesn’t really matter – it only makes it more rewatchable. The timing of each scene is impeccable, and perfectly balanced with the ongoing commentary of an omniscient narrator that recalls the pithy reality checks of Ron Howard in Arrested Development, only with a more intense delivery in this case.

The following chapter, “The Student Council Has Not Achieved Nirvana”, revisits the continuing story of a student couple given (mostly bad) romantic advice by Shirogane and Shinomiya, the boy having returned from summer holiday to gloat about his happiness. The newfound confidence leads Shirogane and Ishigami to suspect that the couple have “experienced nirvana”, and Love is War continues to walk the line between a refreshing frankness about sex while having the characters act hilariously coy when talking about it (in this scene, the act is only ever referred to as “nirvana” or “the divine dance”). It continues into a breakdown of the student council’s lacking understanding of the dynamics of romance, getting plenty of mileage at their bewilderment at each other’s expectations (“holding hands on the first date?!” Shinomiya gasps).

All-in-all, it’s an excellent and well-rounded reintroduction to the show, showcasing and perfecting its most common kinds of scenarios. Take “Kaguya-sama Wants To Get Married,” a fairly typical set-up for a number of the last season that once again has Fujiwara create a game that Shinomiya and Shirogane take far too seriously, and only suffer for doing so. In this instance it’s a bastardized version of The Game of Life, which inevitably leads to overreactions about fictional marriage and the road it leads down. For Shinomiya, it becomes a darkly comic reflection on the life that could await her, should she follow the pre-ordained path that her closed-off father has decided for her. She ends Fujiwara’s game as an immensely wealthy but miserable business magnate (for Shirogane, it’s mostly just debilitating debt).

“Kaguya Wants to Celebrate” ends the episode on a light note, with a tense back-and-forth between Shirogane and Shinomiya as the latter tries to persuade the former to celebrate his birthday, attempting to coax the date (which she already knows) out of him by having him join in on a horoscope reading with Fujiwara and Ishigami. Shirogane refuses, claiming it’s foolish but secretly being an obsessive fan of horoscopes (“Yes! Virgos is in first place!”), and being quietly devastated at having read in a previous one that he and Shinomiya are incompatible. Scored with overly-dramatic music, the stubborn back-and-forth leads to some wonderful facial expressions (like Kaguya’s rage leading her head to expand like a balloon) and quick one-liners. It’s a fairly familiar conclusion to an episode firing on all cylinders, but if the first season of Love is War proved anything, it’s just how much this show is truly capable of.

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Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman Died in the Original Ghostbusters 3 and More Details From the Unfilmed Script

Here at IGN we occasionally like to showcase something from geekdom’s rich history — a pop-culture Time Capsule, if you will, that gives us a peek in to the past, perhaps providing a new appreciation for previous projects. If you’d like, please check out the past few Time Capsules:

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If one thing still holds true after 30 years, if one universal constant still remains, it’s that bustin’ makes us feel good.

Once upon a time, a quartet of unlikely heroes stopped – nay! – busted a battalion of ghouls and ghosts, preventing them from turning New York City into, well, to be honest, a much nicer and friendlier place.

Their first challenge was to defeat a shapeshifting, apocalyptic entity named Gozer. They got covered in goo. Then, a few years later, they vanquished a seemingly-immortal 16th century tyrant using a river of pink slime that had formed in the sewers. They got covered in goo again. Then… these champions vanished. When the gooing got tough, the tough got gooing.

But did you know that phantom menacers Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore were close to having one last ride about 20 years ago? Yes, Ghostbusters creator and star Dan Aykroyd wrote a full Ghostbusters III script, subtitled Hellbent, back in 1999. And the story put the Ghostbusters in the crosshairs of… Satan himself!

Usually, with these Time Capsules, there’s a fun little video component. Nothing like that exists for this particular slice of retrovertigo, but here’s a look at the screenplay in all its “dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria” glory…

GhostbustersIIIHellbentFirstDraftPhotoSo then what was Hellbent all about? IGN actually made grabby hands at the screenplay back in 2002 with an exclusive script review. At the time, we didn’t give out too many spoilers, since the movie was only in the sixth concentric circle of Development Hell, but now, with Ghostbusters: Afterlife serving as a direct franchise sequel, we can dig into the Hellbent plot a bit more.

The place? New York City. The people? Still WALKIN HERE!

Hell, which is a darkened mirror version of NYC called “ManHELLton,” has become overstuffed and congested. So much so that, like actual heartless Big Apple landlords, it’s evicting people. Those cursed souls then make their way back into the world of the living. The Ghostbusters, now a few years removed from their museum showdown with Vigo the Carpathian, slip-slide into Hell and confront the Devil – who is presented as a smarmy business mogul named Mr. Sifler. Luke Sifler. Lu-cifer. I think you get it. Don’t get it? It’s Lucifer. Got it now? Good.

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Ghostbusters III isn’t wholly about the main squad however. The original characters only have supporting roles as the story, smartly, set out to set up a new generation of wrath wranglers. In the script we read, Ray and Egon cope with Venkman retiring from the team and leaving with Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barrett. In the film’s big twist, Venkman then appears as a ghost in the final scenes, having died off-screen (somehow), now existing in a form he once so eagerly busted. The reason Venkman was more marginalized in the Hellbent script was because Bill Murray repeatedly refused to participate in the project and the thought was he might come back if he only had to shoot for a day or two.

The new characters, according to our report, weren’t that impressive. The lead, Franky, is described as “a body-pierced, tough New Jersey punker.” In fact, given the era, the rest of the squad seems suited for background work in Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” video.

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Alas, this movie never came to pass. Instead, Ghostbusters was rebooted in 2016 by Paul Feig and now, though delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, from Jason Reitman, will serve as a decades-later follow-up to Ghostbusters II. The original surviving cast, except for Rick Moranis, will all appear in some capacity as the new cast — Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Paul Rudd — discover a crucial connection to the ’80s Ghostbusters team in a small Midwest town.

And if you’re clamoring for moving images and synced sound, here’s a trip back to 2009 for IGN’s review of the Ghostbusters video game. Why this project? Well, at the time — with Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson all onboard — this was Ghostbusters III. It’s a direct sequel to the two movies. And while the story isn’t Hellbent, some of the alternate dimension ideas that are featured in the game were based on concepts from that script…

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

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FX’s Devs Series Finale Explained

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for all eight episodes of FX’s Devs!

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FX just wrapped up its limited series Devs, ending with a mind-bending finale episode that could only have come from creator Alex Garland. If you need a recap of what exactly happens, what it all means and whether there’ll be a second season to explore the fallout, we’re here to help. Read on for a full breakdown of the Devs finale.

If you haven’t watched the series yet. You should definitely stop reading now and instead check out our Devs series premiere review for more on why this is one show you should absolutely binge.

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Why Couldn’t Devs Predict the Future?

Devs doesn’t waste a lot of time before revealing its key plot twist to viewers. Devs (or Deus, rather) is a quantum computer so advanced it can recreate reality down to individual particles. Using the rigid laws of determinism and the best algorithms tech guru money can buy, It can peer into the past with seemingly perfect accuracy and even show the future before it unfolds. The problem, however, is that Deus is unable to render the future beyond a specific point in time. The moment when a distraught Lily shoots Forest and sends their elevator pod crashing down, the future simulation crashes. Neither Forest nor Katie can figure out why this is; they only know that Lily is somehow the one x-factor Deus can’t quite account for.

As we see in the finale, that’s because Lily is the first person who makes a genuine choice and behaves in a way that contradicts Deus’ predictive algorithm. To draw a comparison to another famous sci-fi AI system, Deus is sort of like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal is programmed to assist the astronauts aboard the Discovery in their mission to Jupiter, but its NASA handlers also instruct it to complete the mission at all costs, even if it means sacrificing the astronauts. That creates a contradiction in its programming which slowly drives HAL insane. In the case of Deus, the system knows Lily should behave one way based on all the rules of determinism. But once Lily is shown how she’s going to act in the future, she chooses to act differently. Deus renders one future even as its complex intelligence comprehends that Lily seeing her future is going to change that future in ways it can’t predict. It doesn’t know how to proceed, therefore the simulation can’t progress beyond that point. Deus doesn’t know how to handle the paradox it has created.

Unfortunately for Lily, her decision to defy fate and make a choice doesn’t actually mean much in the end. Thanks to Stewart deactivating the pod, she and Forest still wind up crashing to the bottom of the Deus habitat and suffocating to death in the vacuum. Lily may have made a choice, but the future still ends up proceeding basically as Deus predicted. A lot of time travel fiction deals with the notion that the timeline is self-sustaining and will course-correct whenever something attempts to alter its flow. Time is like a river. A fallen tree may block off part of the river, but the water will simply move around the log and continue flowing in the same direction. Stewart may simply be time’s way of ensuring that the normal flow is maintained.

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Life in Simulation: What Happened to Lily and Forest?

Once the series revealed to us that the Devs team had designed a reality-simulating quantum computer, it became increasingly obvious that Forest was harnessing this technology to somehow bring his dead wife and daughter back to life. At first, it wasn’t 100% clear whether Forest was somehow attempting a literal resurrection or merely preserving his family in digital form. But in the finale, his full plan is revealed.

Deus’ ability to revisit the past and predict the future turns out to be a means to a larger end. Forest needed to prove (mostly to himself) that his system is so accurate that the simulations it creates are indistinguishable from reality. That’s why he reacted so angrily to Lyndon’s “Many Worlds Theory” algorithm earlier in the season. At that point, Deus’ simulations were still fuzzy and indistinct, and only grew more so the farther back in time they went. Reality simply has too many tiny variables for the system to take into account. Lyndon’s algorithm attempted to sidestep those variables, drawing on the theory that an infinite number of parallel universes exist alongside our own, each slightly different from the next. Forest was insistent that any deviation at all from our reality means the Amaya he sees inside Deus isn’t really his daughter.

But by the end of the series, Forest no longer seems to care about this possibility. He says as much to Katie when he’s first recreated inside Deus after his death. Having just seen his death play out as planned despite Lily’s act of free will, Forest has decided that these small deviations don’t matter in the end. If the overall flow of time remains unchanged in any reality, his daughter will always be his daughter.

To be clear, the original versions of Forest and Katie are well and truly dead. The versions that now exist inside Deus are simulations based on the real people just before they died. But as far as Forest is concerned, that’s a meaningless distinction. Deus has recreated both of them down to the smallest particles. Within their new world, they’re physically and mentally indistinguishable from their real selves. Forrest didn’t resurrect his family, but instead built himself an entire, self-contained universe where they never died in the first place. Maybe this universe isn’t “real” from the perspective of the outside world, but it might as well be to anyone who exists inside the simulation.

Here the series draws on the concept of simulation theory, another popular sci-fi trope. Philosopher Nick Bostrom once argued our own universe is probably a digital simulation. The idea being that if we accept it’s possible for an advanced civilization to create a simulation so lifelike its own inhabitants believe it to be real, then those simulated people will eventually be able to create their own perfect digital simulations, and on and on. If that’s the case, then statistically the odds of our reality being the “real” one are extremely low. Who’s to say our reality isn’t like the one Forest built inside Deus? If it is, are we better off not knowing the truth?

Interestingly, Westworld: Season 3 is currently exploring many of these same ideas. Not only is Westworld also a show about the intersection of humanity and AI and the question of free will, Season 3 has introduced its own all-powerful, behavior-predicting AI named Rehoboam.

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Will There Be a Devs Season 2?

Most likely there won’t be a second season of Devs. Devs was originally announced as a limited series with a self-contained run of eight episodes. Creator/writer/director Alex Garland told Collider he hopes to reunite some of the show’s cast for a new TV project, and he’s already worked with star Sonoya Mizuno on several past projects like Annihilation and Ex Machina. But whatever that reunion project ends up being, it probably won’t be Devs: Season 2.

That’s not to say this story couldn’t theoretically be continued. The finale is a fairly open-ended one, especially where Lily is concerned. We’re left wonder exactly how she’ll come to terms with her new existence. Will she try to expose Forest? If so, how would she go about proving her reality is a simulation? Will she wind up building her own version of Devs? Some people argue the best way to test simulation theory is to build enough simulations within simulations within simulations that the entire structure becomes so enormous and memory-intensive our simulated reality finally crashes. Maybe Katie could turn Forest’s own tech against him.

There’s also the question of how the outside world might react to the existence of Deus and its simulated reality. Katie is shown striking a bargain with Senator Laine to ensure the system is allowed to keep running undisturbed. But can she really guarantee Forest’s personal utopia won’t get switched off? What if the US government or a rival tech firm decides there are better uses for the most advanced computer system in human history?

In short, there’s plenty of potential for a Devs sequel of some sort. We may not see that sequel come to pass, but surely there’s a universe where it does exist.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.