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The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

You have Midgar, Junon, (both Shinra run) a loose collection of little hick towns, a former superpower (Wutai), and uh...

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the game, but I can't help but feel Square didn't really put a lot of thought into how nations, politics, etc actually work. I know Shinra was a worldwide power, I get it, but still...?

Don't get me wrong, I know that there are most certainly other towns/villages and all that (golden rule of RPG,s etc), but I don't mean that. I mean how there just seems to be no sign of any other national/international entities besides Shinra and Wutai (even though Wutai doesn't really matter anymore). Okay, Shinra is this big world controlling power, but...what was there before Shinra? The company itself isn't that old where nobody would remember. It just seems that it was Shinra...and Shinra.

Like, even taking into account the possibility/probability that Shinra just BOUGHT any old nations/kingdoms/whatever, there don't seem to be any remnant of those, either. No old capital cities, no castles, no former evidence of any major power, no real big cities, no anything, really. Besides for Midgar and Junon, it just seems like Shinra rules a whole lot of nothing. Hell, even in FF6, the Empire took over what USED to be nations. Tzen, Miranda, and Albrook used to be their own nations, and hell, even a lady in Tzen says "Yeah the Empire killed our entire royal family". By comparison it just seems like Shinra just bought miles and miles of just podunk farm towns.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I'm guessing that's one of the many things that the original developers / storywriters just didn't really care about at the time. However, the games before FFVII all did have a pretty good country / continent division, mainly kingdoms and empires and whatnot (pretty much every FF game before VII was set in the 'medieval fantasy' setting), so compared to that, VII's a bit off. I'm not that knowledgeable in the VII development team really, was the team much different from the people that did the first six (or so)? I know Nomura did the designs that eventually made it into the game (as opposed by Amano, who did do the initial character designs as far as I remember), but what about the story and background and whatnot?

Would be a neat site feature to get an overview of the game / world's geographical and political distributions, if you ask me.
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Kazushige Nojima had worked on Bahamut Lagoon before FFVII (I don't know what that's like, though), and Yoshinori Kitase wrote FFV and VI. There were others who wrote certain scenes/characters (like Jun Akiyama [Red XIII and Yuffie stuff], Masato Katou [Cloud and Tifa scene under Highwind, etc.]), but they were the main two.

I always thought FFVII's world just seemed like a random assortment of little villages. It's no wonder Shinra was the only superpower when no one else seemed to have anything of value beyond a couple of small houses scattered around.

If/when they make the sequel, I'd be nice to see if they come up with a more detailed post-Shinra worldview. Assuming they don't just make it "WRO controls everything now" or something.
 

Dumb Apple

Soul Wrought of Terra Corrupt
AKA
Geostigma, Omega Gist
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Going off of that, I'd always thought of it as a much Feudal [ or Manorialism, to be more exact] system then anything. The villages are so isolated that to each his own; probably. Each little village/town had a mayor, or headmen, or elder, and they ran it that way.

<<" Then when Shinra came along and set up their Mako reactors, they created a monopoly with technology and resources. I'm assuming that post Shinra, the WRO would have to control everything, at least for a while. There has to be some sort of transitional phase. Flawed or not, Shinra was a system, with military and an economy.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I think I remember you bringing up this topic on AC.net before it went to hell XD

Yeah, there really isn't much government or anything because I think each individual town is essentially its own isolated little city-state. I think one of the main reasons towns don't get very large is due to the sparse population of the planet and the imminent risk of monster attack. Monsters roam the country side and the only cities that are equipped to deal with them seem to be the larger, ShinRa controlled cities that have an advanced, mobilized military.

Now, post Meteor-crisis, I think cities and towns have the potential to grow, since the WRO is now going to help, but all we can do is wait and see.
 

SOLDIERis1337

Pro Adventurer
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I always assumed that each town operated as it's own independent city-state, with Wutai being the most powerful of these. Once ShinRa went from a manufacturing company to having a monopoly on the world's energy, it began to take control of the world simply by controlling its power supply. When Wutai rebelled ShinRa crushed them with military force, setting in stone their status as the superpower of the time.

Before ShinRa there probably wasn't any real need for large territorial governments, given the self reliance and isolation of each of the little towns.
 

Dumb Apple

Soul Wrought of Terra Corrupt
AKA
Geostigma, Omega Gist
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

o.O Regardless, it is strange that there was a [presumably] regulated economy and language system. Remnants of some prior government, [Cetra lifestyle even]?

And considering how developed X was, if VII is indeed that game set hundreds [thousands?] of years later, you're looking at a bit of a Dark Age before ShinRa.
 

SOLDIERis1337

Pro Adventurer
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

FF X takes place thousands of years before FF VII, but its on a different planet entirely. Spira is not Gaia, so its not like society crumbled into the primitive lifestyle of the Cetra then slowly began to rebuild as we see it in FF VII.
 

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Well, considering that Wutai maintained a country and a very powerful standing army for quite some time, it's not like national entities are unheard of in the FF7 world.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

It's an interesting concept, and one we usually ignore more or less. It's odd because Square's other multi-entry world, Ivalice, has so much politics and so many countries it can be overwhelming. In VII there's...one.

What's strange about the city-state notion is that they have cars and modern forms of travel, this of course came from Shinra, but there were always Chocobo. The monster idea makes sense, but Shinra's reactor's created MORE of those. Before Shinra monsters were only created at natural mako fountains, right? Jenova also turned Cetra into monsters, but they never said how many, how long-lived they were, or if they reproduced.

So the Cetra were probably...tribal I would imagine, it's hard to say though. Nanaki's species were most certainly tribal and who knows how much land they controlled in their heyday. And then Wutai of course was a successful nation. They never totally explained Fort Condor, whether it was there before the reactor or not I don't think.

Who knows how far out (chronologically) the compilation will go (I doubt that much further), but it should be interesting to see what happens. Shinra's technology (both vehicles and modern construction as seen in Edge) are now present in the broken world. Not to mention the team of seven demigods that could pretty much kill anything. I guess the WRO stands the greatest chance of taking over.

Much of the world will likely side with whoever AVALANCHE sides with, whether they like that or not. Of course, there could very likely be those that hate AVALANCHE for the chaos they've thrown the world into.

There are a lot of ways Squeenix could go with this, here's hoping it's good.
 

Dumb Apple

Soul Wrought of Terra Corrupt
AKA
Geostigma, Omega Gist
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

It's not just Ivalice and it's over politicalness. A lot of them prior to VII [II, IV, VI] had a political system. It IS strange that VII just seems to lack one.

We know that Shinra existed as a power company for at least 37 years, because that's as far back as the timeline dates. That's when Gast was made in charge of the Science Department. So even if not as a military/government, it's feasible that they were making technology and inventions for longer. If not, hell, look how far the cellphone as come in it's 20 odd years of existance.

If not them, it's possible that somebody else at least started research into things like power, medicine, etc. and Shinra simply took over them, or whereever they left off. Ford may have been the first to make a car, but they sure as hell aren't the only ones doing it these days.
 

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

It's not just Ivalice and it's over politicalness. A lot of them prior to VII [II, IV, VI] had a political system. It IS strange that VII just seems to lack one.

Yeah, I just wish that they put more thought into it. FF7's world doesn't seem very complete. Sure, the plot is there, but in an RPG, the worldbuilding is just as important.
 

Tennyo

Higher Further Faster
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I kind of have the impression that FFVII's world was rather steampunk-ish before mako energy came along. A lot of places seemed to thrive off of mining coal (ie Corel) and they drove around in steam powered trucks like the one that appears in Case of Barret. They were in the process of refining oil and converting everything over the gasoline when the whole thing was scrapped for mako.

It had only been, what, 2000 years since people in general settled down for the first time? That is what was explained in the game, that everyone used to be a Cetra, but then many of the people began to settle, and in essence turned their backs on the planet and lost their powers and ability to communicate with it and what not. These people were no longer considered to be Cetra. They settled in small isolated villages and probably remained unchanged for a long time. In the process Wutai got it right and became a larger more structured nation with it's own military.

And who is to say that there aren't other remnants of old nations/cities? In the story of FFVII they weren't important so we didn't learn about them, but it doesn't mean that they aren't there. You have to think about the constraints that they no doubt had to deal with back then. This was the first 3D FF. I doubt there was room on the discs to expand any further from what they had. Perhaps maybe if VII had been 2D like it's predecessors there would have been room to make it even grander, but that wasn't the case.

I dunno, I just don't have a problem with using my imagination on topics like this.
 

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

If you were to apply it to real life, you could possibly think of the Cetra as the original hunter-gatherer societies. Then around 2000 years ago came the development of agriculture+sedentary life from which the first large civilizations came to be (in reality I believe it took more than 2 thousand years for our world to make this transition). Shinra, being so much more technically advanced than the others took complete control. I'd guess the other emerging powers would have been Junon, Corel and Wutai. Of course, they couldn't properly emerge into large urban areas because of ShinRa being power hungry and taking control.

I doesn't apply perfectly, but it was just a thought after having finally finished my archaeology exam :monster:
 

Tennyo

Higher Further Faster
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Ah, archaeology! That must be an awesome subject. :monster:
 

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

If the ":monster:" indicates sarcasm, then your statement is correct :monster:
 

Suzaku

Pro Adventurer
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Originally, there were the Cetra, which were probably a nomadic, tribal society of hunter-gatherer types, as stated.

When they began to settle, they probably laid the groundwork for the population centers found in-game.

Technology developed relatively quickly, and in time, the world had a spattering of steam-punk villages. How organized the Midgar and Junon regions were is hard to say, since they're firmly controlled by Shinra at the time of the Compilation, but they were probably on par with Wutai.

At any rate, Shinra was able to use it's technology to intigrate most of the villages and quickly set itself up as a global superpower, with the only real opposition coming from Wutai.

Gaia is also incredibly small compared to Earth. Even disregarding scale on the world map, if you go purely by travel time, it's possible to go from one continent to the other within the space of a day or so, and you can travel across many continents, back and forth, by foot, chocobo, airship, etc., in the space of just a couple months (the events of FFVII cover only about two months).
 

Tennyo

Higher Further Faster
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Very well explained, Suzaku. Couldn't have done better myself.

[quote author=looneymoon link=topic=2.msg2055#msg2055 date=1229303208]
If the " :monster: " indicates sarcasm, then your statement is correct :monster:
[/quote]

Actually I was srs. :-[
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

[quote author=Suzaku link=topic=2.msg2058#msg2058 date=1229306054]Gaia is also incredibly small compared to Earth. Even disregarding scale on the world map, if you go purely by travel time, it's possible to go from one continent to the other within the space of a day or so, and you can travel across many continents, back and forth, by foot, chocobo, airship, etc., in the space of just a couple months (the events of FFVII cover only about two months).[/quote]

Which even explains the 'flying', they just have significantly weaker gravity! =D
 

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Tennyo said:
Actually I was srs.

:( srry. I found the class very boring but hey, at least I learned something :monster:

[quote author=Suzaku link=topic=2.msg2058#msg2058 date=1229306054]
Gaia is also incredibly small compared to Earth. Even disregarding scale on the world map, if you go purely by travel time, it's possible to go from one continent to the other within the space of a day or so, and you can travel across many continents, back and forth, by foot, chocobo, airship, etc., in the space of just a couple months (the events of FFVII cover only about two months).
[/quote]

I wanted to point out the size of the planet too. It did always seem ridiculously small.

Also, out of curiosity, does anyone know how long the FF10 journey took? Since FFX/FF7 supposedly take place in the same world (?), some stuff from FFX may shed light on the FF& world.
 

Max Payne

Banned
AKA
Leon S. Kennedy,Terry Bogard, The Dark Knight, Dacon, John Marston, Teal'c
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I always figured it was rule of the iron fist.

He who holds the most power calls the shots.

Which is pretty much what the case was.
 

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Also, out of curiosity, does anyone know how long the FF10 journey took? Since FFX/FF7 supposedly take place in the same world (?), some stuff from FFX may shed light on the FF& world.

Same universe, different world. I think one of the Ultimanias do say how long the journey took, a few weeks or something like that?
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

Haha, really? I can never get over how short the journeys end up being. When you work it out it makes sense, but it always FEELS like its longer.
 

Masamune

Fiat Lux
AKA
Masa
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I guess since mankind is descended from the Cetra - the nomadic, tree-hugging folk - it makes sense that villages would be sparse and rural without any institutions.

That's probably already been said, but TL;DR. ;)
 

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
Re: The political landscape of FF7 doesn't really...make any sense.

I guess since mankind is descended from the Cetra - the nomadic, tree-hugging folk

You wanna know something CRAZY? Real life mankind is descended from very similar people!
 
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