jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
Retcon it.
FF7-FFX Connection...Who founded ShinRa Company?
- Thread starter Celes777
- Start date
Retcon it.
I'd bet money that they won't.
jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
Hopefully.
Celes777
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- ...
It doesn't look like this would make the story better or give them any more profit so hopefully
- AKA
- TresDias
Though I absolutely don't understand the hostile resistance to the idea, I do agree that it's unlikely to be brought up in the remake.
jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
Just imagine Sephiroth being the descendant of Yuna on his mother's side.
Because the idea falls apart the moment you really think about it. The guy that has the tech to convert spirit energy into a resource flies to space, and then somehow despite keeping the family name (based on his first name) for 1,000 years, somehow manages to lose that technology then find it again? That is ten levels of bad thinking.
Don't get me wrong. There's space stories where colonies end up regressing, such as Dragon Rider's of Pern. But those don't jump from nomadic culture to contemporary technology in a mere 2,000 years. You don't lose and regain technology like that. Makes no sense.
- AKA
- TresDias
Well, I've been hearing that for almost 15 years, but in that timeframe -- whilst a fighter jet-looking thing lays there bizarrely ignored in Bone Village -- I've never once heard anyone take issue with this same notion where Ivalice is concerned in other FF games. Or Academia and the New World of the Lightning Saga. Or technology on Spira itself, for that matter.
We are, after all, talking about yet another setting with a known cataclysm -- or calamity, more to the point -- in its past.
Stepping outside FF, I don't recall once hearing this complaint about "Halo." Or "Assassin's Creed." Or "Trigun." Or "Stargate SG-1." Or "Battlestar Galactica." Or "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic." Or so, so, so many other works of fiction.
Seriously: Ancient Technology That's More Advanced Than What We Have Now But Was Lost Following A History-Defining Event Like A Catastrophe is one of the most well-tread and re-re-re-re-tread tropes of sci-fi. I call shenanigans on this being a world-breaking plot element in a science fiction work.
We are, after all, talking about yet another setting with a known cataclysm -- or calamity, more to the point -- in its past.
Stepping outside FF, I don't recall once hearing this complaint about "Halo." Or "Assassin's Creed." Or "Trigun." Or "Stargate SG-1." Or "Battlestar Galactica." Or "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic." Or so, so, so many other works of fiction.
Seriously: Ancient Technology That's More Advanced Than What We Have Now But Was Lost Following A History-Defining Event Like A Catastrophe is one of the most well-tread and re-re-re-re-tread tropes of sci-fi. I call shenanigans on this being a world-breaking plot element in a science fiction work.
You need an actual catastrophe in place that would have destroyed that knowledge. Which means Nojima and Kitase would have to further retcon the 2,000 year gap with something that probably sucks. The Cetra and JENOVA are off limits, since the cetra were primative or at least druid-inspired nomads by all accounts. There's maybe some 'slight' hints that they had some weird stuff based on some clues in Ancient Capital, but it seems more like just really primative materia rather than tech.
- AKA
- TresDias
You just filled that "gap": Jenova.
So the name survives, but the memories don't? o.O; Don't buy it.
- AKA
- TresDias
And I don't buy there being a problem. How many times in such plots do legends or even outright knowledge remain of lost tech, yet no one knows how to do it or it at least takes time to rediscover?
I know jet planes exist. I can't go build one.
I know jet planes exist. I can't go build one.
Human beings have forgotten all kinds of things. We only recently rediscovered how the Romans made a cement that became stronger when in contact with seawater: "Ancient Romans built concrete sea walls that have withstood pounding ocean waves for more than 2,000 years. Now, an international team has discovered a clue to the concrete’s longevity: a rare mineral forms during chemical reactions between the concrete and seawater that strengthen the material."
Technology can't exist in a vacuum; it has to be supported by an education system which produces people who have a knowledge capable of understanding how that technology works, and it has to be underpinned by all kinds of other theoretical and practical technology. E.g., it's no use knowing how to make batteries in a society that hasn't discovered metal working. Presumably the original Shinra lived long enough to father a child on The Planet, but we don't need to assume that any other crew members survived, or that he survived the impact with all his memories and faculties intact, or that he lived long enough to instruct his child or children in advanced mako-powered airship mechanics, or that the society into which he'd fallen was capable of producing the raw materials and parts he'd need if he was going to build a reactor.
It's very arrogant of us to assume that we could understand and use a piece of alien technology if we found one.
Technology can't exist in a vacuum; it has to be supported by an education system which produces people who have a knowledge capable of understanding how that technology works, and it has to be underpinned by all kinds of other theoretical and practical technology. E.g., it's no use knowing how to make batteries in a society that hasn't discovered metal working. Presumably the original Shinra lived long enough to father a child on The Planet, but we don't need to assume that any other crew members survived, or that he survived the impact with all his memories and faculties intact, or that he lived long enough to instruct his child or children in advanced mako-powered airship mechanics, or that the society into which he'd fallen was capable of producing the raw materials and parts he'd need if he was going to build a reactor.
It's very arrogant of us to assume that we could understand and use a piece of alien technology if we found one.
jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
You got a point there.
- AKA
- TresDias
Thank you. Precisely. There's still debate on the recipe of Greek Fire, for Athena's sake.
Hell, a descendant of Shinra's knowing that their ancestor had once tried developing a means of repurposing energy siphoned out of planets is no more useful knowledge than when Shinra initially speculated in X-2 that "With a little work, we could probably extract the energy in a usable form" or when Rin said "We are researching ways to extract the vast energy that sleeps in Spira."
It was an idea with no known practical means of implementing it. How long was mankind working on "flying machines"? We didn't go straight from da Vinci's designs to Orville and Wilbur Wright in a single generation, and theorists had been trying to work it out for centuries prior to da Vinci as well.
Vegnagun could be used to extract mako energy. A system of repurposing it was still required, though.
To revisit Licorice's battery example, it does one little good to suggest using one object to power another without knowledge of processes that will generate energy, and it still does only so much good to understand that there's an electrochemical reaction between zinc and magnonese dioxide if you haven't developed an architecture in which this reaction can be produced, contained and sustained, with its resultant energies then conducted.
We didn't go straight from "I need something better than this oil lantern" to Duracell-powered flashlights. Thankfully, we also didn't suffer any civilization-resetting calamities between the development of alkaline batteries and Maglite. FFVII's world, on the other hand, did suffer such a calamity.
By any measure of canonicity, the civilizations of Cetra and non-Cetra alike -- magical technology and the more traditional sort -- came under attack and the present-day descendants of the survivors demonstrate little knowledge of their species' history.
Hell, apparently no one even remembers the names of the towns that became Midgar over the few decades prior to the game. Why would we think they had done any better than that with retaining the entire history of civilization?
Can I, nevertheless, say that I personally don't like this "Shinra Connection"? It's partly because I'm not a huge fan of X, but also because I feel as if the world of FFVII doesn't need it to explain either mako reactors or Cid's genius as an engineer. And I guess, also, because for me a key element of FFVII is the knowledge that their own planet is all there is, it's all they have - they can't jump in a spaceship and flee a Planet whose spirit energy has been sucked dry. They live with it, or they die with it. Even if there's life in space, it's not the answer to their problems. Their self-created problems: Jenova might have come from Somewhere Else, but mako extraction, and their deliberate blindness to the fragile ecological balance of their Planet, is all their own fault.
- AKA
- TresDias
I can respect that sentiment, Lic, despite feeling quite differently about the connection.
jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
You are right about them not hopping a ship and running away from their problems.
Clement Rage
Pro Adventurer
It's just a joke about series mythology, the airship is nearly always long lost supertech.
Was the airship in FFIX long lost supertech? I can't remember.
Airships natural to Gaia are steam and mist powered. The more advanced ones are alien technology from Terra.
- AKA
- TresDias
Even were that the case (despite the explanation appearing both in-game and out), it wouldn't be inserted willy nilly without consideration of how it fits in. Literally every other airship in the series -- including any and all ancient ones -- had a basis in either the lore of the setting or belonging to someone in/close to the party.
In other words, even "just a joke" still needs to fit with the setting if it's an important part of the story.
FFIX has more series references than most FFs, many of them jokes, and those involved in the plot are still based in the setting or characters. The airship Invincible isn't just a random alien airship in a story that lacks aliens so it can be a cute reference to FFIV's Lunar Whale without consideration of how context appropriate it is/isn't.