World of Final Fantasy's Remake Compilation Hints

[Clement Rage]

I always found it weird that people were so bothered by Deepground. Yes, it's a stupid wasteful project, but stupid wasteful projects are practically Shinra's trademark, (giant cannon pointing nowhere, rebuilding Nibelheim, destroying sector 7 for six terrorists) The scale is a bit dumb, but that's the kind of thing anyone that plays video games has to learn to roll with. (How the hell was Arkham City approved? Where does Bill Williamson get his vast army of insanely loyal henchmen? Ditto for every Tomb Raider/Uncharted villain (except Natla) and every crime game.) I was honestly more bothered by Joel's kill count in The Last of Us.

Meanwhile, Omega and Chaos seemed a much more natural extension of the existing mythology than 'suddenly, Minerva/Zirconiade/remnants'

 

[Jason Tandro]

It's not that it's a stupid wasteful project. It's a stupid wasteful project that was implausible to be hidden without so much as a hint.

As far as Omega and Chaos: I love the idea of Omega. I agree it's a natural addition to the Lifestream lore and it makes good sense. The idea was there in theme as well. And, of course, so was Chaos as Vincent's Limit Break. Omega is one of the few ideas from DoC that I think is fantastic without koala-fication.

 

[Unit-01]

Going off of X-Soldier's analysis he made a long time ago... Minerva is the spirit of the planet in a human form. I find that to be okay, but the other stuff doesn't make much sense.

Jason ninja'd me a bit, but also said what I was going to say about Omega and Chaos.

 

[Shademp]

On the positive side, Deepground gave us Shelke. I enjoy her arc and her overall character. Then there's Rosso who is just fun. Her English rendition is the most fun thanks to that Eastern European accent.

 

[Lulcielid]

Spoilers for World of FF, obviously


World of FF has 4 FFVII Summons:
• Cloud
• Tifa
• Sephiroth
• Shelke



It's that last one that really threw me for a loop (click to see a bunch about her presence in the DoC Research Thread). I don't think that ANYONE was expecting SE to openly acknowledge the Dirge of Cerberus characters again – especially given that that game ended on an unresolved cliffhanger for the Compilation. I especially don't think that we'd expected to see any DoC Characters in a way that puts them alongside the main 3 like that in a way that openly grabs people's attention. It'd be one thing if her presence was a small background cameo appearance, but it's not. She's an integral character who's featured quite prominently.

What's especially interesting is that this isn't just happening in a vacuum – World of Final Fantasy was announced just before the Remake, which makes me think that it's a pretty clear indication of what scope that the remake is going to be encompassing based on the fact that they're openly reminding their core Final Fantasy fanbase about her and DoC at all.

I think, for all intents and purposes, this is an early clue that Deepground is VERY MUCH going to be a part of the Remake that's taken into consideration. Whether or not we see/visit it in any way (since it oughta still be all locked down at the time), or if it's just there for lore and background stuff isn't clear, but I don't think that we'd've seen Shelke if it wasn't meant to take some degree of active part in how some of the story is built and something we may eventually get a look at down the line.

All-in-all, I think that it's made one thing pretty clear – the content from The Compilation is very much alive and active, and is almost certainly being actively woven in to the Remake.




X

Shelke presence in the could be just a simple easter egg/nod to another project that Hiroki Chiba was involved (after all he was writer of Dierge of Cerberus).

EDIT: Should have read the second page before posting.

 

[ForceStealer]

Yeah, it's simply that Deepground is too big. That's really the only issue. But it's SO big that it's a fairly significant issue. I have no problems with the concept or anything else about it. If it was just the Tsviets, I would be all about it.

The issue was having enough mooks for Vincent to fight, but we've analyzed how this might have been done before on the forums.

 

[Lex]

My issue with Deepground (and by extension almost all of DoC's plot) is the same as everyone else's. It's not necessarily implausible, it just feels unnecessary. And while not strictly a retcon, it definitely feels like a huge glaring one. I don't like it one bit because of that.

It just all comes from not expanding on interesting things from VII that were already established. It could have been a story involving any number of things from VII or even AC, but no, they had to invent Deepground.

 

[hian]

Like I've said before - they've already been open and candid about compilation material making its way into the remake.

However, as I've always said - it's not reasonable to expect it to be included as if the remake is supposed to fit in with the compilation as it is.
The remake is already doing rewrites to the original story. The glimpses we've seen of the game already rewrites canon from the compilation.

This game is rewriting everything. Will compilation material be used in the rewrite? Certainly. Will that material be consistent with the material from the compilation? No. It's already proven that it isn't.

I don't like pretty much any of the rewrites and retcons that they did with the compilation, but that doesn't mean that the concepts, characters, and story outlines from the compilation cannot be rewritten to make better sense in the remake - yes, even stuff like deepground - so I'm still gonna keep an open mind about this.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

The remake is already doing rewrites to the original story. The glimpses we've seen of the game already rewrites canon from the compilation.

This game is rewriting everything. Will compilation material be used in the rewrite? Certainly. Will that material be consistent with the material from the compilation? No. It's already proven that it isn't.

I don't like pretty much any of the rewrites and retcons that they did with the compilation, but that doesn't mean that the concepts, characters, and story outlines from the compilation cannot be rewritten to make better sense in the remake - yes, even stuff like deepground - so I'm still gonna keep an open mind about this.

Question: which parts of what we've seen in the Remake involve rewriting Compilation content? I don't recall anything proving that the Compilation wasn't consistent with the Remake off the top of my head.




X

 

[hian]

Question: which parts of what we've seen in the Remake involve rewriting Compilation content? I don't recall anything proving that the Compilation wasn't consistent with the Remake off the top of my head.
X

Cloud's Buster Sword. That already confirms a change in the direction of the compilation - and the original for that matter - seeing as how it has the gold hilt covered by the original guard. This is inconsistent with both the original, and the compilation, and hints very strongly towards an entirely new direction that combines elements of both.

In the compilation Cloud brought the sword as is to the bombing mission. In the original, he didn't have the gold guard. It might seem as a small thing - but that added to the interview with Nomura saying explicitly that he doesn't consider anything too sacred to make changes to, and added to the fact that there is literally no reason to suppose they're fine changing material from the original (which they are) but somehow be religiously opposed to changing elements from the compilation material, defies reason.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Question: which parts of what we've seen in the Remake involve rewriting Compilation content? I don't recall anything proving that the Compilation wasn't consistent with the Remake off the top of my head.
X

Cloud's Buster Sword. That already confirms a change in the direction of the compilation - and the original for that matter.

Ah. I will let that sleeping dog lie right where it is.




X

 

[Clement Rage]

Yeah, it's simply that Deepground is too big. That's really the only issue. But it's SO big that it's a fairly significant issue. I have no problems with the concept or anything else about it. If it was just the Tsviets, I would be all about it.

The issue was having enough mooks for Vincent to fight, but we've analyzed how this might have been done before on the forums.

My question to this approach is how you ignore ludicrously huge armies in dozens (hundreds?) of other games. What is it specifically about Dirge that makes people stop and say 'No, this is too big' over, say, RDR?

My issue with Deepground (and by extension almost all of DoC's plot) is the same as everyone else's. It's not necessarily implausible, it just feels unnecessary. And while not strictly a retcon, it definitely feels like a huge glaring one. I don't like it one bit because of that.

It just all comes from not expanding on interesting things from VII that were already established. It could have been a story involving any number of things from VII or even AC, but no, they had to invent Deepground.

This, on the other hand, I kind of understand, because I kinda feel similarly about FF13-2. But 'not the story I wanted' is different from 'this is wrong'.

 

[Tetsujin]

My question to this approach is how you ignore ludicrously huge armies in dozens (hundreds?) of other games. What is it specifically about Dirge that makes people stop and say 'No, this is too big' over, say, RDR?

Are the armies in other games hidden though?

That's the whole issue for me. It just seems implausible even for a ridiculous company like Shinra to keep an entire army with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers plus helicopters, tanks and other machinery and an entire city beneath Midgar TOP SECRET.

That shit can't be self-sustaining and the entire logistics of that would be impossible to hide from anyone.
Literally only a handful of people at Shinra knew about this which did not even include Rufus apparently.

 

[Tashasaurous]

That's the whole issue for me. It just seems implausible even for a ridiculous company like Shinra to keep an entire army with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers plus helicopters, tanks and other machinery and an entire city beneath Midgar TOP SECRET.

ShinRa hid a lot of things from the world that only those who work for the company knows-Jenova and Hojo's evil deeds for example.

That shit can't be self-sustaining and the entire logistics of that would be impossible to hide from anyone.

This is the FFVII world's insights here, not our reality's. People take the original game far too seriously and not even give the Compilation a chance or even think what people in that world are capable of doing that we can't do(Like Materia for example).

Literally only a handful of people at Shinra knew about this which did not even include Rufus apparently.

Reeve wasn't included either.

 

[Roger]

That's the whole issue for me. It just seems implausible even for a ridiculous company like Shinra to keep an entire army with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers plus helicopters, tanks and other machinery and an entire city beneath Midgar TOP SECRET.

ShinRa hid a lot of things from the world that only those who work for the company knows-Jenova and Hojo's evil deeds for example.

Jenova, as important as she is, is just one body. logistically speaking it's not that great an endeavor to keep her hidden. Most of Hojo's experiments are. Deepground is a city of many, many thousands of soldiers, built underneath a city, without anyone involved in Midgar's construction knowing about it. It has a reactor that no one knows about. mountains of food is brought there that no one knows about. Deepground also is entirely composed of SOLDIERs, even though only a small amount of the population is capable of becoming this. Literally no one living in Nibelheim was capable of enduring a SOLDIERs treatment, Cloud was the only one that could come even remotely close. Every one of those thousands in Deepground is individually a stronger person then Cloud, let alone anyone else in Nibelheim. It's not like they were able to create this army by disappearing entire towns at a time, they were each carefully handpicked.

Also Deepground is better equipped then the entire rest of Shinra combined. They got more robots, tons and tons of combathelicopters, better combat gear, better computers, the works.

And yet when the entire planet was being threatened Heidegger and Scarlet were not at all interested in using any of this to save themselves. It's not like they didn't believe in the threat either. They saw it all, Sephiroth, the WEAPONs, Meteor with their own eyes. They had a good week before Tifa even woke up, another week or so till the day of Meteorfall.

 

[Clement Rage]

I'm not sure people are understanding the sheer scale of a multi year intercontinental war between superpowers. Using WW2 as a rough equivalent, even smaller campaigns are going to have five figure casualty lists for each side. The bigger ones will be more like six or seven. Multiply that by at least nine years of war, and DG's official hat as a medical facility, and it's not quite as hard as you might think for a few thousand people to disappear, especially if you have a good propaganda machine. Call them back for treatment, then say 'sorry, we did everything we could, but they were too far gone/the wound got infected/we had an outbreak of X disease', and you only have to do that if someone actually asks for an explanation.

Deepground also is entirely composed of SOLDIERs, even though only a small amount of the population is capable of becoming this. Literally no one living in Nibelheim was capable of enduring a SOLDIERs treatment, Cloud was the only one that could come even remotely close. Every one of those thousands in Deepground is individually a stronger person then Cloud, let alone anyone else in Nibelheim. It's not like they were able to create this army by disappearing entire towns at a time, they were each carefully handpicked.

Source for all this? The SOLDIER in Deepground were the ones with the swords that aren't in heavy armour. SOLDIER have to be carefully handpicked if you are worried about side effects to their health or sanity, if you're not, you can bruteforce it. And the rankers on the ground are nowhere close to Cloud, we see unenhanced like Reeve and Shalua are able to kill them easily enough. And they all suffer the side effect of needing Mako to live.

Also Deepground is better equipped then the entire rest of Shinra combined. They got more robots, tons and tons of combathelicopters, better combat gear, better computers, the works.

Not close to true. DG has one model of helicopter (the Dragonfly) and one model of armour (the Black Widow), which they tweak a bit, but are stuck with. They have small numbers of red saucers (which are super easy to destroy), a handful of sweepers, and not much else. The hover bike/jet pack units are present in such small numbers they only show up for one boss encounter each.

They have no special ammunition, no grenades, no materia (except the commanders). They have no Guard Scorpions, no Carry Armour, no Hundred Gunner or Motor Ball. No tanks, no autonomous gun turrets. The officers in the ordinary Shinra army (red soldiers) wear something like full plate armour and carry laser guns. In addition, Hojo has stuff like H2so4 and Behemoths available to him. There's also stuff like 1st Rays, those weird rose looking things that cast magic, Moth Slashers, and a lot more. Mighty Grunts in heavy armour, Aero Combatants...

The only reason they have better computers is because they need it to contain DG.

Shinra was a weapons manufacturer, they are going to have tons of weapons lying around, especially after the war when the army gets scaled down after the war. But they don't let DG near their best gear.

And yet when the entire planet was being threatened Heidegger and Scarlet were not at all interested in using any of this to save themselves. It's not like they didn't believe in the threat either. They saw it all, Sephiroth, the WEAPONs, Meteor with their own eyes. They had a good week before Tifa even woke up, another week or so till the day of Meteorfall.

There's no situation where DG would be useful in FF7 until Sister Ray knocks the barrier, and Heidegger, Scarlet, and Hojo are dead very shortly thereafter.

built underneath a city, without anyone involved in Midgar's construction knowing about it. It has a reactor that no one knows about. mountains of food is brought there that no one knows about.

Was it? Is the reactor itself a secret? Nobody seems surprised to hear about the reactor itself. Built, then forgotten about seems more likely, because the prez thought it would be cool to have a secret basement. It started as an ordinary medical facility, which people likely knew about, and then were told was shut down after the war. Tell them the Shinra building needs its own dedicated reactor, which for obvious reasons needs to be heavily protected, and you justify a lot of the traffic headed down there.

Here's the script:

Reeve: The whole organization was kept a secret. That is why there is so
little information on them. However, it's nothing like I expected.
Vincent: Not even a person in your position was informed?
Reeve: No. Other than the president himself, the only people who knew of
Deepground's existence were most likely Heidegger, Scarlet, and
the head of biochemical research, Hojo.
Reeve: After the president's death, the transfer of power to his son was
carried out so quickly, I doubt Rufus was ever briefed on the project.
Reeve: As for me, I was told the information was on a need to know basis. And
as an official in charge of urban development, I guess I wasn't on their
list.

This is Reeve guessing, because he wasn't involved. The implication I'm getting is that he knew something was going on all the time, but was never told the details. Given Vincent's preceding question, he could be talking about only the executives that knew, and he's only guessing anyway.

 

[Roger]

I'm not sure people are understanding the sheer scale of a multi year intercontinental war between superpowers. Using WW2 as a rough equivalent, even smaller campaigns are going to have five figure casualty lists for each side. The bigger ones will be more like six or seven. Multiply that by at least nine years of war, and DG's official hat as a medical facility, and it's not quite as hard as you might think for a few thousand people to disappear, especially if you have a good propaganda machine. Call them back for treatment, then say 'sorry, we did everything we could, but they were too far gone/the wound got infected/we had an outbreak of X disease', and you only have to do that if someone actually asks for an explanation.

The Planet is not a world of the same scale as Earth.

Source for all this? The SOLDIER in Deepground were the ones with the swords that aren't in heavy armour. SOLDIER have to be carefully handpicked if you are worried about side effects to their health or sanity, if you're not, you can bruteforce it. And the rankers on the ground are nowhere close to Cloud, we see unenhanced like Reeve and Shalua are able to kill them easily enough. And they all suffer the side effect of needing Mako to live.

Their physical strength is not the issue. They all have Mako tanks installed in their bodies. They do not suffer from Mako poisoning like Cloud did. They all have that strong sense of self needed to overcome the effects.

Not close to true. DG has one model of helicopter (the Dragonfly) and one model of armour (the Black Widow), which they tweak a bit, but are stuck with. They have small numbers of red saucers (which are super easy to destroy), a handful of sweepers, and not much else. The hover bike/jet pack units are present in such small numbers they only show up for one boss encounter each.

They have no special ammunition, no grenades, no materia (except the commanders). They have no Guard Scorpions, no Carry Armour, no Hundred Gunner or Motor Ball. No tanks, no autonomous gun turrets. The officers in the ordinary Shinra army (red soldiers) wear something like full plate armour and carry laser guns. In addition, Hojo has stuff like H2so4 and Behemoths available to him. There's also stuff like 1st Rays, those weird rose looking things that cast magic, Moth Slashers, and a lot more. Mighty Grunts in heavy armour, Aero Combatants...

The only reason they have better computers is because they need it to contain DG.

Shinra was a weapons manufacturer, they are going to have tons of weapons lying around, especially after the war when the army gets scaled down after the war. But they don't let DG near their best gear.

We see the kind of armament the Shinra army can call upon to bring down on their enemies in the cutsceyes against Diamond Weapon and Zack. Deepground assault on the WRO HQ or their defense of Midgar or really most of their engagements with Vincent by themselves dwarf them by comparison.

There's no situation where DG would be useful in FF7 until Sister Ray knocks the barrier, and Heidegger, Scarlet, and Hojo are dead very shortly thereafter.

The Weapons were the ones laying waste to the Planet. AVALANCHE had to fight with withave small arms and won. The Sunken Gelnika carried string weapons because as Barret says Rufus and ShinRa had been picking with them the whole time. A high-tek super army of infinite resources would have been very helpful.

,
Was it? Is the reactor itself a secret? Nobody seems surprised to hear about the reactor itself. Built, then forgotten about seems more likely, because the prez thought it would be cool to have a secret basement. It started as an ordinary medical facility, which people likely knew about, and then were told was shut down after the war. Tell them the Shinra building needs its own dedicated reactor, which for obvious reasons needs to be heavily protected, and you justify a lot of the traffic headed down there.

The Shinra building already has a dedicated Mako Reactor. Nor do I think it would justify the traffic even if it hadn't. Cause if the maintaince of the Reactor is the excuse the Reactors must need maintaining and 0 more then any given that Deepground needs light every hour of the day. And Deepground populace needs to be even greater to accommodate those people.

This is Reeve guessing, because he wasn't involved. The implication I'm getting is that he knew something was going on all the time, but was never told the details. Given Vincent's preceding question, he could be talking about only the executives that knew, and he's only guessing anyway.

It's not a 'basement' nor a singular facility It's a sprawling city burrowed out underneath the city that Reeve personally designed.

 

[Roger]

Also Reeve just been 'an official' in Urban Development that wouldn't need to be brought in on Shinra's greatest urban development project yet is in itself a retcon the rest of the Compilation does not really support.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

As far as DoC goes, I tend to agree with Lex. I'm a big FFVII nerd but I just don't have any interest in DoC because it just isn't an interesting concept. Someone more thoughtful could have come up with a more interesting storyline, rather than ressurrecting Shinra as an enemy thanks to their hidden secret army.

The thing about Deepground is that it was a solution for a problem that didn't exist. After Wutai was defeated Shinra didn't have any enemies. Why keep it a secret? They didn't keep the SOLDIER program secret. The only reason this secret army suddenly sprang into existence was so that Vincent could have an antagonist. But Lucretia would have made a more interesting antagonist.

 

[Tennyo]

Lucretia being the antagonist could actually be kind of cool. I'm just not sure what kind of conflict could put her in that position.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

@ Tasha - sorry I'm late to this conversation re BC. I just wanted to say that I love the Turks and I probably know BC as well as anyone, I have spent many years of my life turning it into a novel - and even I, biased as I am, acknowledge that it is a poor game. Its plot has so many holes you could put it in the dairy section and call it a Swiss cheese. The final boss is just stupid. The logistics of the Turks and Avalanche I and their day to day operations are improbable, to say the least. There are some really fun bits in it and some good stories-within-the-story, like case of Tseng, case of Legend, and case of Reno, and I'd go so far as to say that ALL the original characters are at least somewhat interesting and plausible. But since I never assumed that Tseng, Rude, Reno and Elena comprised te entire staff of the Turks in the OG, I didn't see any need to explain why we donn't meet all these other Turks in the OG (we don't meet them because they're not essential to the plot), and that's why I thought the ending was silly.

 

[Clement Rage]

The Planet is not a world of the same scale as Earth.

How do you know? I don't think we ever get a definitive scale. Travel times seem to be just what the writers need without worrying about it.

Their physical strength is not the issue. They all have Mako tanks installed in their bodies. They do not suffer from Mako poisoning like Cloud did. They all have that strong sense of self needed to overcome the effects.

Do they? Going by Genesis and Cloud taking on Zack's traits, there seems to be a kind of loophole if you identify strongly with someone else, at least enough to function as cannon fodder. And the "Hail Weiss!" cult of personality is pretty strong.

We see the kind of armament the Shinra army can call upon to bring down on their enemies in the cutsceyes against Diamond Weapon and Zack. Deepground assault on the WRO HQ or their defense of Midgar or really most of their engagements with Vincent by themselves dwarf them by comparison.

But to draw that conclusion you have to ignore everything else about all the relevant games, so I'm not sure that's a solid conclusion.

The Weapons were the ones laying waste to the Planet. AVALANCHE had to fight with withave small arms and won. The Sunken Gelnika carried string weapons because as Barret says Rufus and ShinRa had been picking with them the whole time. A high-tek super army of infinite resources would have been very helpful.

AVALANCHE never beat them with small arms in story, it was more a case of managing to avoid dying until the WEAPON got bored/distracted and left. There is optional combat with the WEAPONS later if you are insanely overlevelled for any other challenge in the game, and by then you're not likely to be using small arms so much as spamming the hell out of a completely one of a kind materia you got through weeks of Chocobo breeding. The general rule for WEAPONs is 'Sister Ray or GTFO'

The Shinra building already has a dedicated Mako Reactor.

It does? Where?

It's not a 'basement' nor a singular facility It's a sprawling city burrowed out underneath the city that Reeve personally designed.

How do you know he personally designed it? Even if he did, he would have built it while it was still a medical facility? Building cities on cities is kind of Shinra's thing, he could have built it without knowing what it was going to be used for, or even as a proof of concept. You might say that is a waste of time, but this is the Shinra that destroys an eighth of their capital city because six terrorists might be living there, restraint isn't exactly their thing.

People generally seem to have known something was down there, otherwise you wouldn't have a TV crew investigating it in the first place. It's possible he knew there was a vast cavern down there but didn't know what it was used for. There are other options.

The thing about Deepground is that it was a solution for a problem that didn't exist. After Wutai was defeated Shinra didn't have any enemies. Why keep it a secret? They didn't keep the SOLDIER program secret. The only reason this secret army suddenly sprang into existence was so that Vincent could have an antagonist. But Lucretia would have made a more interesting antagonist.

Wasn't that kind of the point? It was a big, stupid project that turned out to be useless but was too big to destroy and hard to control.

I just don't see how this is so different from various other stupidly huge armies in other games. At worst, it's the kind of plot hole you learn to live with, like how zombie stories always start three weeks in because no writer can figure out how the undead apocalypse wouldn't be crushed before the numbers get so skewed.

 

[Roger]

How do you know? I don't think we ever get a definitive scale. Travel times seem to be just what the writers need without worrying about it.

Nibelheim burned down. Other then the main characters this left all of 12 survivors, Nanaki going on to become Hojo's thirteenth project after he returns to Midgar.
Barret nor Dyne for that matter was not the mayor, the owner of the mining company or anything like that. He was just one of the miners who happened to be one of the loudest voices in the room when they were mulling the conversion to Mako energy over and so, when it goes south he gets blamed and he has to leave Corel cause it's a town where everyone knows everyone.
The Space Program lost funding and a bunch of scientists lost their jobs, they settled around the Rocket and that became Rocket Town.
What we see of Wutai is one town, and that town became mostly aimed at entertaining tourists, Lord Godo made this happen. Yuffie's whole character is about this is all that remains of Wutai and she needs money so they don't have to sell out.

You can't just give these continents population numbers in the billions like the real world and expect everything to still make sense. Rufus says his dad controlled the world with money, but using this scaling up his bodycount becomes comparable to Mao or Stalin to reduce Wutai from a 1st world power to something that needs saving by Yuffie's materia hunt. Sephiroth being party to it all and remaining a hero in Zack and Cloud's eyes after they join in the army. Deepground ain't worth all that.

Do they? Going by Genesis and Cloud taking on Zack's traits, there seems to be a kind of loophole if you identify strongly with someone else, at least enough to function as cannon fodder. And the "Hail Weiss!" cult of personality is pretty strong.

Genesis' men were SOLDIERs beforehand. And Cloud was useless at the hands of Mako Poisoning for five years and after that it was the Jenova cells inside him that created the false persona.

But to draw that conclusion you have to ignore everything else about all the relevant games, so I'm not sure that's a solid conclusion.

What is this "everything" you refer too. Shinra didn't deploy an armada of combat helicopters to protect their President. Just a mech. For bringing down the Section 7 pillar a handful of soldiers and a Turk. Retaliating for a direct attack on HQ: three big robots and guys on motorcycles. Escorting the whole executive brass to the Northern Crater? Just two Turks. Ensuring the rocket is launched successfully, thus saving the world, a Turk and some soldiers. They are scrouching it with their lives and the world at stake while Deepground is ready, willing and able at any time.

It does? Where?

Actually now that I'm looking at it again, Shinra HQ just sits on bed of green light rather then next to the light of a singular particular reactor, apologies.

How do you know he personally designed it? Even if he did, he would have built it while it was still a medical facility? Building cities on cities is kind of Shinra's thing, he could have built it without knowing what it was going to be used for, or even as a proof of concept. You might say that is a waste of time, but this is the Shinra that destroys an eighth of their capital city because six terrorists might be living there, restraint isn't exactly their thing.

I'll never understand how it is imagined that building two cities on pillars is the exact same as burrowing out room for a city where helicopters can easily swarm around the sky underneath a city.

People generally seem to have known something was down there, otherwise you wouldn't have a TV crew investigating it in the first place. It's possible he knew there was a vast cavern down there but didn't know what it was used for. There are other options.

Every floor of the Shinra tower had to accommodate that cavernous elevator where you fight Neo Azul running down the middle of it. There was never a point it could have been imagined to just be an empty cavern.

Wasn't that kind of the point? It was a big, stupid project that turned out to be useless but was too big to destroy and hard to control.

It was incredibly useful. Everything they could have asked for when it comes to taking down rogue SOLDIER 1st Classes really. And solidly controlled by people entirely loyal to the President too.

I just don't see how this is so different from various other stupidly huge armies in other games.

What other games that are given an utterly free pass on this forum are you thinking of?

 

[Clement Rage]

There is no scale that makes sense, though. As small as we see wouldn't support the level of industrialisation they have, as well as problems like no farms whatsoever except for racing birds. In general, we get why we need for the plot, and everything after that is secondary. I'm willing to bet that the remake will scale everything up, because they now have the technology to do it.

Genesis' men were SOLDIERs beforehand. And Cloud was useless at the hands of Mako Poisoning for five years and after that it was the Jenova cells inside him that created the false persona.

Not exclusively, as Hollander and Lazard prove. They're just not as effective as the others.

What is this "everything" you refer too. Shinra didn't deploy an armada of combat helicopters to protect their President. Just a mech. For bringing down the Section 7 pillar a handful of soldiers and a Turk. Retaliating for a direct attack on HQ: three big robots and guys on motorcycles. Escorting the whole executive brass to the Northern Crater? Just two Turks. Ensuring the rocket is launched successfully, thus saving the world, a Turk and some soldiers. They are scrouching it with their lives and the world at stake while Deepground is ready, willing and able at any time.

The many, many encounters across the OG with Shinra machines and monsters that dwarf DG's arsenal. If you ignore all that, that's like saying that specific units of one country's military is weaker than another's army, navy, air force, etc, and that this proves Country A is weaker.

Sector 7 was meant to be a covert mission, it defeats the purpose of pinning it on AVALANCHE to have a strong Shinra presence. On the chase, the real reason is gameplay, but they also still want Aeris alive, right?

They only have one airship, who knows what else is on it? On the rocket, I got nothing but gameplay.

I'll never understand how it is imagined that building two cities on pillars is the exact same as burrowing out room for a city where helicopters can easily swarm around the sky underneath a city.

It's not the same, but Midgar's foundations would have required a lot of excavagating. It's the kind of stupid project you see all the time in this kind of story.

Every floor of the Shinra tower had to accommodate that cavernous elevator where you fight Neo Azul running down the middle of it. There was never a point it could have been imagined to just be an empty cavern.

So it had an elevator. What's so suspicious about that?

The only support for literally no one knowing about it is that statement from Reeve where he admits to theorising, and possibly he was only referring to the executives that knew anyway. When it was built, it would have been built before it became Deepground. According to the TLS timeline, Reeve is born in 1972. The Construction of Midgar begins in 1976. It was well up and running before he was in his teens, Reeve couldn't have had anything to do with the construction of Deepground.

It was incredibly useful. Everything they could have asked for when it comes to taking down rogue SOLDIER 1st Classes really. And solidly controlled by people entirely loyal to the President too.

All of the online mode is devoted to how frail their control is. Weiss and Nero have to be kept tied up, Rosso kills anything that moves, the control has to be directly imposed by a Restrictor's will, the plot of the game involves forcing a Restrictor to multitask so it can't concentrate on forcing them to stay still.

 

[Roger]

There is no scale that makes sense, though. As small as we see wouldn't support the level of industrialisation they have, as well as problems like no farms whatsoever except for racing birds. In general, we get why we need for the plot, and everything after that is secondary. I'm willing to bet that the remake will scale everything up, because they now have the technology to do it.

If Remake is willing to put the work into recreate the FFVII worls as big as it thinks it should be then more power too it. DoC did not bother doing this. It just threw out statements like "1,200 vanished from Junon without a trace". Even if you choose to view DoC and the Remake as part of one whole, that'll be tough for Remake to live up too. Let alone the real world WWII era analogue that you envision. Personally I don't think Remake will go quite that far.

Not exclusively, as Hollander and Lazard prove. They're just not as effective as the others.

We don't see what treatment Hollander and Lazard underwent, we don't see then endure and flippantly shrug off Mako showers. But yes, Crisis Core also devalued the process that makes a SOLDIER and thus massively undermined one of the central plot points of the main game. In this regard Before Crisis actually had a much stronger handle on the source material.

The many, many encounters across the OG with Shinra machines and monsters that dwarf DG's arsenal. If you ignore all that, that's like saying that specific units of one country's military is weaker than another's army, navy, air force, etc, and that this proves Country A is weaker.

I wouldn't call the random machines and monsters that aimlessly roam the countryside part of Shin-Ra military. But in any case, storywise I felt what they brought to bear against Sapphire Weapon was intended to be their strongest showing. I feel Crisis Core agreed because Zack encountered a similiar force at the end of his game and that's what killed him. Not random machines across the gamemap or Genesis.

Sector 7 was meant to be a covert mission, it defeats the purpose of pinning it on AVALANCHE to have a strong Shinra presence. On the chase, the real reason is gameplay, but they also still want Aeris alive, right?

They only have one airship, who knows what else is on it? On the rocket, I got nothing but gameplay.

They only have one airship but they could have a hundred combat helicopters to escort. Since they were making them and not ever using them for anything?

It's not the same, but Midgar's foundations would have required a lot of excavagating. It's the kind of stupid project you see all the time in this kind of story.

And you are free to hold those stupid story elements against said stories. That you have seen other games or whathaveyou destroy their setting too doesn't mean Dirge of Cerberus should be free of criticism.

The only support for literally no one knowing about it is that statement from Reeve where he admits to theorising, and possibly he was only referring to the executives that knew anyway. When it was built, it would have been built before it became Deepground. According to the TLS timeline, Reeve is born in 1972. The Construction of Midgar begins in 1976. It was well up and running before he was in his teens, Reeve couldn't have had anything to do with the construction of Deepground.

Reeve's Ultimania profile tells us he was involved in the construction of Midgar from the beginning. But as you've said, Deepground back then was only a medical facility for SOLDIER, you know, that outfit that only required a single floor of Shinra HQ. It would have become a city sometime long after that. Which would have required cityplanners, architects, construction workers, railway builders, maintainance workers ect. There was basically a whole department of Urban Development running about that Reeve didn't know about.

All of the online mode is devoted to how frail their control is. Weiss and Nero have to be kept tied up, Rosso kills anything that moves, the control has to be directly imposed by a Restrictor's will, the plot of the game involves forcing a Restrictor to multitask so it can't concentrate on forcing them to stay still.

Weiss, Nero and Rosso have nothing to do with it. They were born and it was decided they were unusable, decades ago. That doesn't mean Deepground as a whole needs to be decommisioned, yet still for some reason maintained, supplied, and allowed to keep growing and recruiting without end. The rest of them can't stand up to the Restrictors and can be deployed at any time.
Hell, the Restrictors themselves are each far more powerful then Rosso. Just letting one help out with all their problems above ground could have prevented a lot of tragedy (from Shinra's perspective). Certainly would have been preferable to just rely on the Turks for everything even when they believed Cloud was a SOLDIER First Class.

But no, the only time they ever did use Deepground it was the two that otherwise needed to be constantly chained up.