Honestly, I think FF does a very well job overall of hitting on some deeper tones. FF7 and FFXV in particular, as a kid it went right over my head and was all just magical but as an adult that’s been around the block and uh...done my share of...experimenting lol...the deeper stuff in the game(s) hit me on another level.

Trying not to get too philosophical, I feel time itself is cyclical in the sense we as species (all animals from the beginning of time, really) have lived and gone through apocalyptic events that have all but wiped out almost every living being before. Mankind itself, I believe, has climbed up and up the evolutionary ladder before only for something to come along and wipe it out. If you look at the remnants of ancient societies, Egyptians, Mayans, they were way fuckin ahead of their time and arguably even more advanced than we are in this current day. How did they get there? How could they have possibly known and understood things thousands of years ago we seem to barely even have a grasp on today? Yet, one way or another their societies ended and all we’re left is the remains and trying to piece the puzzle together...never really fully understanding it, but still are left in awe of the life they lived thousands of years ago. It’s one thing to study it, but it becomes even more real if you ever travel and take a tour of some of their remains...it just hits on another level on how fascinating and advanced it all really is.

So IMO, that’s what Sephiroth is hinting to when he says “this has happened before and will happen again”. Look at the Cetra’s or “Ancients” described in FF7, the first society of the planet that learned how to tap into and use “Mako” in holistic ways. Way ahead of their time, they were since wiped out with Aerith being the last of that Ancient bloodline and meanwhile in current days, you’ve got Shinra that’s mechanically tapped into Mako to use it as an advantage of mankind but unlike the Cetra’s, they’re doing so in a malicious way that actually harms the planet. A lot of parallels can be drawn to societies of present day, and likely how things were being done by our own version of Ancients.

We will face our own “reset” someday, not really a matter of if but more so a when IMO as again, in Sephiroth’s own words, it’s happened before and will happen again. Thousands of years from now, people may very well be looking at the remnants of our civilization wondering how we we so advanced in our current day, that’s “Ancient” to them.