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Those with a lot rarely give a crap about those with nothing.. and the vast majority of the time the ones that claim they do are just attention seeking hypocrites LARPing as "good people".
In truth they wouldn't give up nor sacrifice anything to help them.. but they sure as hell well try to guilt everyone else to make those sacrifices.
See my take is, anyone who is not a blatant psychopath is good, and anyone who shares and tries to help the people is also, relatively good but probably not perfect. You gotta understand man there's a lot of extremes in this world. There's people in some countries I won't name specifically who don't give a damn about looking good at all. And do the most heinous things imaginable and not just in a poverty sense.
As far as ff7 is concerned, I think this games great has an awesome battle system. But I'm seeing a lot of holes in the plotline more and more playing it now. The isolation between cities doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The overall illogical even in a neo berlin sense psychotics of shinra like burning a whole town alive just cause of probably their own faulty mako hardware... The odd, breeding segment with red13 (odd is an understatement), the awkwardness at certain points (I'd gladly let you experiment on me mr hojo), the whole bubbly segment (or whatever that dude was calling cloud in the hottub), its funny looking at it now and all the hate ff8 and other ones got from the fans. But damn 7 is making 8 look logical which is very hard to do.
2. In free trade societies and capitalist societies the legal obligation is taxation. So now we know the basics of a capitalist system we can move onto how Shinra might be operating within that economic system.
3. Assuming Shinra taxes the Gold Saucer, Shinra are the bad guys in the game so do you think they are going to do the "right thing"? The game is quite dystopian and people have noted these dualities in FF7 that recur. For example, the top and bottom plates of Midgar. The Gold Saucer is a repeat of that theme.
4. That town was ruined by a disaster, and I guess they haven't found the funding to fix it yet. Also as we saw Barrett's crazy old friend, if you reached that part. Those dudes seem to have developed a bad attitude which might be holding them back from regenerating. Maybe the devastation was too much to recover from so far.
5. Considering there was a disaster there, people probably have heard about it on the news and understand that they're going through a tough time. Also, that beat up town is still friendly, and they offer some trade too, so it's not that bad for passers through.
6. What's wrong with living in tents if they like it? Also it's a sweet spot if they're saving up to rebuild since it's right next to the Gold Saucer. Maybe THEY even go gamble there on Chocob(r)os. Maybe they're holding themselves back playing at the Gold Saucer.
7. It's extremely realistic to find extreme wealth surrounded by extreme poverty. Such attractions are built with profitability in mind. Ever heard of the 1%?
Shinra blamed the citizens and destroyed the entire town because there were people who opposed the reactor being built in the beginning. Maybe it's illogical because you made up "faulty hardware" reasoning out of thin air instead of following what the story told you?
Hojo is the type of eccentric scientist who's, as Dr. Malcolm said, preoccupied with whether he could but didn't stop to think if he should. What's illogical about it?
It's just a joke. What's illogical about it?
Uh, so you're just nitpicking random stuff calling them illogical because you're upset people preferring FF7 more than FF8?
The simple plot-related answer is that ShinRa rolled into Corel and basically annexed the land.
The much longer and more complicated answer to both this event as well as the relativity of ShinRa in the game as a whole, is actually tied to Japanese history proper.
If you've ever played other JRPG's you'll notice there's a recurring theme of God slaying.
Why is that?
This, is why:
https://youtu.be/IEUqLL8J4gI?si=Gxbp3E4j4eg9vFfH
The video is quite long but is very thorough and explains a lot about the entire genre.
Well I could give specifics.. but that wasn't really the point.. and frankly it's a global thing seen in many countries to varying degrees, even in the west.
I wasn't trying to single out any specific country or culture though.
My point was simply that there are plenty of real world examples of the same thing you're pointing out in the game that's all, and they very likely inspired the same thing in the game.
So it's not exactly weird or out of place.. if anything it's relatable for some people on some level.
Though I did admittedly take some digs at a certain group of people, namely those who would call themselves the "elites of society" but that was just some extra flavouring I used due to it's relation to what I was talking about.
This same theme is seen repeatedly in FF7, from the start of the game to the end of it, and in it's sequel content as well so it is an important element of this game world that keeps coming up.
There are people at the top who do not care about anything besides their own wealth and power, and those at the bottom who have to make the most out of what little they have.
Remember Avalanche is an eco terrorist organisation technically, and our actions in the early part of the game lead to some serious atrocities and collateral loss of life.
That's one reason I love FF7 so much, actions having consequences and our party isn't depicted as being right or wrong on the world stage, that's left up to the player to decide.
Yes we do ultimately help in saving the world but at what cost.
In Advent Children it's pretty evident that Midgar is basically left in ruins, many people died and orphaned children are everywhere and there's no law and order basically at all thanks to the collapse of what it once had serving in the role of a government.
Cloud and the group do bear some responsibility for that, despite their intentions in the game being noble.
Well it's not so much isolation tbh.. there are connections for the most part.
The Shinra government does have influence in other parts of the world, as seen with their reactors in various places.
As for Shinra itself.. well it basically is a fascist entity.. both a corporate/government body that rules as a dictatorship over many parts of the world and serving only it's own interests.
This is why it seemingly can go where it wants and do what it wants.. it's the only ruling authority by the time of FF7 that most towns etc wouldn't dare oppose, less they face the same fate as Wutai.
Better to make a deal with Shinra than have them come back en force and get what they want anyway.. though sometimes they may just do that anyway as seen with Corel.
Most people bend the knee to Shinra despite personally despising it.
The whole breeding thing.. yeah that is weird, though Hojo is in every way a mad scientist.. so not exactly out of character for someone so twisted and morally bankrupt as he is.
I think the hottub thing was mostly played as a joke.. but yeah i've always found that just weird lol
That whole Honeybee inn tbh is a weird and gross place.. but it certainly adds to the kind of place the slums are, and doesn't really seem out of place when you think about how much general degeneracy and crime likely occurs there.
Keeping in mind that FF7 is a pretty old game now and was a teen rated game, not adult so they likely had to limit how much they could really depict back in the PS1 era.
Suffice to say everything you'd expect to realistically happen in the slums probably does.. the game just doesn't show it.. nor really need to for obvious reasons.
But it's very important to separate fiction from reality.
What Avalanche are doing shocked me on playing it the second time as surprisingly extreme, especially considering world events that followed since it was released. But they have strong and mysterious justification as the story goes on, although there is that sense that is explicitly discussed by the characters of an ethical "Utilitarianism" for want of a better term, and the sense of guilt.
In FF7 Shinra are exposed as evil on so many levels, and with the threat of Sephiroth, I think it's pretty clear whether Cloud and co are good guys or bad guys, albeit despite the brutal and borderline shocking sacrifices they make at the start of the game.
The game carries humor, grit, heroism and magic. It is a brilliant epic.
Good example being the reactor bombings which despite intentions to strike at the bad guys also caused a lot of collateral damage and harm to innocent people as well.
Civilians were killed in those explosions as well as other factors like economical damages.
It was also due to the actions of Avalanche that Shinra ordered the destruction of an entire sector by dropping the a plate on it..
Yes, that was ultimately Shinra's decision and action.. and oh man are they scumbags for it, but to say Avalanche had utterly no blame in it would be unfair as well.
Avalanche picked the fight, bombed reactors, killed Shinra Soldiers and ultimately made themselves enough of a problem for Shinra that they decided it was worth sacrificing all those people just to exterminate them..
So they do have to accept some fault that it came to that.. even if they never thought Shinra would go that far.
And this theme does repeat somewhat in the game, another example being the black materia which was used to revive Sephiroth and cause the Meteor crisis.
That again was another situation that came around because our party choose to act, failing to understand that we were being manipulated all along.
If Cloud and co hadn't retrieved the Black Materia, Sephiroth would likely have not been revived and Meteor possibly wouldn't have been summoned.. in which case Midgar also would not have been destroyed, nor would anyone have been senselessly slain during the weapon rampages.
Events naturally didn't play out that way though so speculation and hindsight naturally but still, the amount of collateral damage and loss of life due to the actions of Avalanche is pretty massive.. despite their intentions to do good and save the world.
Another good example of that is Holy which despite trying to stop Meteor ended up causing even more harm to Midgar in the process.
About the plate dropping, if I caught the story right they had already done such a thing in the past, so Shinra were guilty of it before. Of course Shinra are antagonized by many of the slum sectors because the people down there, although many obedient, many are disloyal to Shinra and resent them. On the other hand, Shinra have some justifications in their actions. They provide the world with much of the technologies, albeit seemingly blind to the damage they're doing to the planet. In the novel Avalanche follow "Planetology". Is this belief justified? The game seems to give that impression, especially based on Cosmo Canyon.
I want to clear up what you said about the black materia. You failed to mention Cait Sith's intervention with the Keystone and the kidnapping that forced them to the Temple of the Ancients. If he never did this, I assume the team would have held the only key to enter it. Then under the assumption that Sephiroth is already inside, they go in when Tseng gives them the keystone and urges them to "see for yourself" whether Sephiroth is inside. They want to beat him to the materia. In fact, the flashback shows that Sephiroth WAS inside as well as the Turks. Is it Cloud's hallucination that he was there? No, because Aerith states: "He disappeared" in the hall with the murals.
Cloud then makes a judgement call where he says they cannot leave it:
"Because Sephiroth has lots of different flunkies. It's nothing to him to throw their lives away to get the Black Materia."
It's true. He has many of those bewildered followers that he seems to be killing to leech their energy. The game implies that Sephiroth would have taken the black materia regardless. So this potentially exempts the squad from guilt here. Although I guess in the end Cloud ends up as the "flunky" who retrieves it for Sephiroth.
Cloud also observes the other viable risk:
"And we can't let the Shinra get theirs on it either."
Indeed, despite best efforts the crew failed to avert disaster, but is that really their fault? We can't prove that. But subsequently Aerith makes the ultimate sacrifice. However, it makes me wonder that if they were now back in possession of the keystone, couldn't they just leave and lock the temple? I wonder if that is a plot hole or if it can be explained somehow.
PS: the Temple of the Ancients hides a ribbon.
That said, Cloud as a clone carrying the alien cells of Jenova is a consequence of Shinra experimentation. So his "mistakes" are a consequence of Shinra. However, he starts the game with little interest in morality, only as a mercenary, developing a clearer intention for morality over time.
Overall, I get the sense that the main characters are portrayed as good but variably antagonized souls. Also, at least one of the reactor explosions wasn't supposed to be so big. Does that exempt them? Do we believe that the planet was dying and Mako was being drained to apocalyptic effect? Are we planetologists too?
I don't know. It's a complicated story, but that's probably what makes it so cool.
Definitely the beginning of the game is morally on the fence, but later I don't see much alternative for them.
Holy, the gift from Ifalna to Aerith (according to the novel), was ultimately necessary and unavoidable to avoid the complete apocalypse due to meteor and cannot be pinned on the lead characters. It is Sephiroth's insanity that summoned it.
Phew...
I don't recall another plate dropping in the past, that definitely wasn't something the original game showed at least, but could be something in the pre game lore that I don't remember.
Shinra's motivations are always money though, providing technologies to the world is your typical go to public image thing, while also having something to hold over their heads to control them.
They don't really care about the people, only what they can generate from them.
This is even more evident by the human experiments they perform as well.
If people get in the way, they're either eliminated or disappeared.
As I recall the teams goal was to obtain the Black Materia before Sephiroth to keep it from him, it's just that none of them knew what the Materia was before reaching the Temple.
The Temple itself was the Black Materia.
The Turks also had this idea as well, get it before Sephiroth but their intentions were likely to exploit it for their own goals too, so keeping it out of their hands as well was also the party's objective.
It was the Turks that unlocked the temple originally though, allowing Sephiroth to enter but none of them were able to obtain the Materia without having to sacrifice someone.
Tseng then sealed the Temple again after escaping severely wounded, which is why we need to retrieve the key to enter.
Considering Sephiroth.. who is actually the reanimated corpse of Jenova wasn't able to break another piece of itself off to solve the puzzle and retrieve the Materia on it's own it's suspected that that simply wasn't possible for it to do for some reason.
Sephiroth needed someone else to retrieve it first before it's Jenova puppet could steal it, which is exactly what happens after the party obtains the Materia.
Ideally it wanted Cloud for that since he is infected with Jenova Cells and Sephiroth can use that to control him, easily taking the Materia from him.
This is the other possibility, though none of those flunkies were anywhere nearby to my knowledge.
There could have been some in the temple though.. I can't remember exactly.
There is however the question of their capability though, all of these flunkies seem to be mentally unstable.
They can barely speak in some cases, walk around confused and lost..
It's quite possible Sephiroth never really utilised these people for anything important since they're quite possibly unable to complete such tasks.
The only thing Sephiroth ever used his flunkies for was as a sacrifice to infect the lifestream.
Cloud it seems is the only capable puppet he really had in play.. and was probably the only capable one he really had, with exception to Jenova.
That said, how much of Cloud's free will is questionable through the early part of the game..
Up until the Creator where the real Sephiroth first appears, Cloud it seems has been manipulated the whole time.. doing exactly what Sephiroth wanted him to do, so much so that Cloud starts to question his own identity and free will.. almost accepting that he's nothing more than a puppet before he falls into the lifestream and gets trapped inside his own broken mind.
Possibly.. though they likely couldn't guarantee that Sephiroth and his minions wouldn't find another way to get inside.
Also, after Sith's betrayal it was also a possibility that they could loose the Keystone again at some point, and hiding it somewhere was also risky so either way they'd be in the same situation.. probably better to have the Materia itself, at least then they'd know it was safe in their possession since there is only one Black Materia.
The word clone is used a lot but he's not really a clone.. just a lost soldier who got experimented on.
Pre the events of FF7 Cloud had no identity and was basically a Zombie just like the other Sephiroth followers... he's kind of a mess right from the start of the game.
His real reason for being with Avalanche wasn't entirely because he was a mercenary, it was because Tifa found him zonked out at the train station.
She was basically keeping an eye on him after that, and roped him into Avalanche as a means of helping him earn a living while keeping him close enough she could help him.
She also could be seen as exploiting him as well for her own agenda.. people don't really talk about that much.
He's a capable fighter with little to no memory.. confused and easily manipulated.. also something we should think about.
Though after all we know of Tifa's character i'm more inclined to think that even if she did use him to some degree she had other noble intentions and does genuinely care about Cloud.
Almost everything about Cloud for a great deal of the game is a lie, his personality is pieced together with fragments of his and other peoples memories and experiences.
Mainly his real self, Tifa and most of all Zack.
Yeah, this is where all that hindsight comes into play :)
Early on in the game we don't even know about all the planet stuff, the ancients and the way the world works.
We're just told Shinra bad.. killing planet and go along with it, though in Clouds defence at least.. it's just a job.
Some of that stuff does get confirmed later on once we get to Cosmo Canyon and have spent some time with Aerith.
Even if the group is right about all that though, we still start off committing acts of terrorism that do ultimately kill innocent people.
The game doesn't explore other ways, least FF7 doesn't though in the back story there could very well have been things like protests etc and I hope there were as the world building for stuff like that could be very good, specially with things like Shinra executing dissenters etc.. good themes to use to showcase how evil they are.
The best way I can describe our 7 protagonists though is good people doing bad things for good reasons.
Which makes them questionably grey in my eyes.
But that's not a bad thing, if anything that just makes them and this story far more interesting to me, especially since Final Fantasy has regularly gone down the "Warriors of Light vs Embodiment of Darkness" road quite often with this franchise.
Actually it was Aerith that summoned it, Sephiroth was holding it back and preventing it from being fully cast, this is also why Sephiroth killed Aerith in the first place to stop Holy, the only thing capable of stopping Meteor.
Holy was only able to take action after Sephiroth's defeat but by that time it was too late, Meteor was too close to the planet and the combined gravity of both Meteor and the Planet destabalized Holy's energy causing even more damage and destruction to Midgar.
That's how Meteor was able to push through Holy and would have succeeded in it's task had the Lifestream not taken action, pushing Meteor back long enough for Holy to focus it's power and destroy it.
This also had unintended consequences though as the Lifestream had been infected by Jenova thanks to the reunion, lots of people with Jenova Cells as well as Jenova herself fall into the lifestream, tainting it.
This is how the Geostigma epidemic started several years later in Midgar with many people being infected with Jenova cells after having come in contact with the Lifestream during the Meteor event.
Thanks for helping clear some aspects of the story up. I have thousands of screenshots I hope to read through carefully one day to fully understand the story.
Yeah I like to think the keystone is not a plot-hole, but that the team, with all good intention, decide to take the Black Materia hastily before Sephiroth or Shinra can get their hands on it.
The protest idea could be possible, but I always felt that Avalanche were this extremely secretive group that had inside knowledge or belief. There's something mysterious and secretive about that idea that they knew more than the rest of the population. That they knew Shinra were killing the planet while everyone went about their lives. Barrett always losing his mind that people don't understand it, because of course he lives with the trauma of Shinra's actions. That's what is good about the complexity and depth of FF7 and the fact it didn't spell everything out perfectly, that there is room for interpretation and mystery.
I think they mention a previous plate dropping perhaps in the Remake. I just feel like I heard that somewhere. It was briefly mentioned.
I love the whole alien cell theme, and I never thought about it corrupting the lifestream, so that's interesting.
Yes it seems Cloud was the ultimate flunky LOL. A not so failed "Clone".
One of the biggest enigmas in FF7 is the whole Cloud Tifa thing. I'm not sure I fully agree with your interpretation. They have known each other since childhood and that is confirmed when it turns out that Cloud was not Sephiroth's protégé in the big flashback sequence with her, rather it was Zack. In fact Cloud was never a SOLDIER, he was only a measly Shinra trooper that day dressed in the full blue outfit. So like you said, he was experimented on, not a clone. Based on that impression, it seems that Cloud left Nibelheim to become famous like Sephiroth but failed to reach SOLDIER. But somewhere along the line was experimented on alongside Zack in the basement of the Nibelheim Shinra mansion. This leads him to doubt his past, but it seems confirmed that he is pretty much the same person that he was when he knew Tifa when they were young. According to the book and also the game, Tifa seems to have always had a slight crush on him. She doesn't seem like the exploitative type. The gap between Cloud meeting Avalanche I don't think is well explained anywhere. But it seems that Zack, before he gets shot (apparently) to death, drops Cloud off at Midgar, and somehow he tries his luck in the big city.
When I said he summons it, I meant Meteor. It seems like Aerith pre-emptively sacrificed herself (perhaps by accident) while praying for Holy, the materia handed down to her by her ancestral Cetra (according to the book). It seems she felt the immediate danger of having Sephiroth in possession of the Black Materia and launched Holy as a countermeasure. She might have even done it by accident when she dropped it. That scene is so weird though how Cloud is about to kill her but Sephiroth does it :O
IIRC when you do the miniature midgar puzzle in shinra HQ there are two broken plates on the model. i don't recall if Aerith mentions the other fallen plate in the original game.
The simple answer is that it’s literally the lower class being used by the upper class.
You know, back when FF7 was heavily about environmentalism, and the damaging effects of capitalism on the planet.
Before all the multiverse/timelines nonsense, the Loveless Genesis attempts at exposition, and mystery box theory bait endings
Fitting that Square would make everyone forget one of the biggest messages in the original game, considering they almost immediately started to make dozens of spinoffs and even a Mobile gambling game.
Can you blame us for trying to explain even though it ended up becoming more complicated? Water is wet. OP said it's weird that water is wet. So people explained its molecular structure. How else are you supposed to explain the obvious to someone who's unable see it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯