Was the Compilation a mistake?

If we're looking at miraculous survivals, I do have to say that Rufus surviving a fireball is less difficult to swallow than Dyne's first survival of a fall into a canyon, Cloud's fall from Sector 5, and Palmer being hit by a truck at such speed that he was launched through the air like a cannon ball.

Honestly, I was much more surprised by Tseng's survival.

DanielReturns said:

He isn't ducking for cover, he moves forwards very slowly and he stays still as the fire consumes him. He does not duck and he does not move off that spot. The FMV makes this 100% clear.

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He slouched down and covered his damn face. That's ducking for cover goddamn it.

Jesus.

I'm Batman said:

He slouched down and covered his damn face. That's ducking for cover goddamn it.

Jesus.

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Well I suppose that beats the eariler hypothesis that he hid behind desk to survive the fireball (that is what I would call ducking for cover tbh)

LMAO

DanielReturns said:

Well I suppose that beats the eariler hypothesis that he hid behind desk to survive the fireball (that is what I would call ducking for cover tbh)

LMAO

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Nope, cuz he still could have fallen down.

Lol: DR problem is it the AMV graphics are not as advanced as they are now, it is ambiguous to say that it is in pain as it is not clearly so.

However, on first, second, 1m look at it i always assumed it to be Rufus shielding himself from the oncoming flame. Besides the argument is moot as CoS says it to be so. Retcon or not, personally, I found it to be very well explained and plausible.

Personally, I can rationalise it in my head. ShinRa, let alone Midgar was in chaos Diamond WEAPON had attacked and Meteor was well on it's way, mob ruled. Power hungry executives, such as Heidegger and Scarlet were quick to assume his death so as to usurp power is a possibility....

I think it was really fucking stupid that Rufus survived. Then again, Nomura was too busy failing at directing to have time to make interesting new characters, so I guess we're lucky he came back.

Serah Farron said:

New Rufus is clearly a clone put forth by remaining Shinra scientists.

This will be addressed in the next Compilation title.

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Let's not give them ideas.

Yeah, look where Kojima went with that idea.

I'm Batman said:

This is entirely irrelevant. I don't ever recall SE blatantly stating that he was meant for one or the other, the point is, that it was a possibility.

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Squaresoft's 'statement' of Rufus' dead was:

Rufus being engulfed in a big explosion, caused by one of the most powerful creatures in the planet, and stated to be dead by other characters. All that happening during the story's closure of the conflict between AVALANCHE and ShinRa, where every important bad guy(Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, etc) were being killed, and ShinRa was falling apart.

Watch the cutscenes, read the dialogues, and see the context they are being presented. That's the way chosen by Squaresoft to show that Rufus was dead.

OWA-2 said:

Squaresoft's 'statement' of Rufus' dead was:

Rufus being engulfed in a big explosion, caused by one of the most powerful creatures in the planet, and stated to be dead by other characters. All that happening during the story's closure of the conflict between AVALANCHE and ShinRa, where every important bad guy(Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, etc) were being killed, and ShinRa was falling apart.

Watch the cutscenes, read the dialogues, and see the context they are being presented. That's the way chosen by Squaresoft to show that Rufus was dead.

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Precisely. Also, these "He could have hid under a table" arguments are off. I have seen the FMV again and he falls forward, there are no tables around him from which he can recover. In fact the AC Video shows him being bombarded by fire.

Unfortunately AC suffers from "Got to have great graffix innit, got to be dumbed down" Syndrome where we see Cloud shoved into a wall at 200 MPH and fly around the place. The original FF7 was far more realistic portrayal (and yes I KNOW it is fiction, but there ARE LIMITS).

I am with OWA, in that you do not need to see a corpse to know someone is dead, dialogue is king, and FF7 makes it clear that Rufus is as dead as the do-do. The game was never intended for a remake, and so Shin-Ra is effectively finished, Dyne is dead, Sephiroth is Dead, Aerith is Dead, Shin-Ra heirarchy are mostly dead and Jenova is dead.

The whole game ends with things being cleared up and done. Then comes along money and we get excuses for it all.

Rufus isn't really dead he:

a. Hid under a table
b. Had fire elemental materia equipped
c. Was super human
d. Was very lucky

or that FF7 is just a fiction and thus anything is plausible and that real world laws do not apply. They do. In every fiction you see, it is based on real world laws to an extent, if there were no emotion in characters there would be no story. If there were no gravity, characters would leave the ground, if characters were all incapable of being killed in 1 deadly stab (Aerith), there would be

No
Dramatic
Tension

There have to be these things and they have to be done relaitively well within the fictional world for it to be at all emotionally moving, dramatic and realistic. Otherwise no one gives a shit. We can bring back Dyne, bring back Weapons (shit they did that didn't they I prove my own point), bring back a whole host of dead characters.

It doesn't work. It ends in a mess.

or that FF7 is just a fiction and thus anything is plausible and that real world laws do not apply. They do. In every fiction you see, it is based on real world laws to an extent, if there were no emotion in characters there would be no story. If there were no gravity, characters would leave the ground, if characters were all incapable of being killed in 1 deadly stab (Aerith), there would be

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The only rule in fiction is that extensions and exceptions to real world law have to be consistent within the story itself. That's it. Real world laws ONLY apply to the extent that the author chooses to. Keep in mind we're talking about a story, no, the same GAME, where men fall down canyons after being shot survive, gun arms exist (in the real world this concept is utterly impossible, at least now), people drag 8 foot swords around, and fat men get hit by trucks.

or that FF7 is just a fiction and thus anything is plausible and that real world laws do not apply. They do. In every fiction you see, it is based on real world laws to an extent, if there were no emotion in characters there would be no story. If there were no gravity, characters would leave the ground, if characters were all incapable of being killed in 1 deadly stab (Aerith), there would be

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They don't. Get over it. FF7 and AC pick and choose what "real world laws" apply and when they don't. Getting hung up on an arbitrary concept that has been bent so often is asinine.

Also Mog is right.

And silver-haired people bring themselves back from the dead so they can use a magic rock they got from a shrinking temple to summon a big rock to hit the planet so he can merge with its energy and become god. Or some blond can fall several hundred yards before slamming into a building and just walk it off. Also said dude wields a sword nobody in real life would be able to use effectively. Thats not even getting into things like the giant WEAPONs the planet can use to beat up things that threaten it.

Compared to all that, why is it so damn hard to accept that maybe, jsut maybe, Rufus survived a fireball?

JIMMY BROOKS: CRIPPLED VIRGIN said:

The only rule in fiction is that extensions and exceptions to real world law have to be consistent within the story itself. That's it. Real world laws ONLY apply to the extent that the author chooses to. Keep in mind we're talking about a story, no, the same GAME, where men fall down canyons after being shot survive, gun arms exist (in the real world this concept is utterly impossible, at least now), people drag 8 foot swords around, and fat men get hit by trucks.

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The charcters in FF7 are human or animals. Most are normal flesh based lifeforms and thus the laws of earth apply to them, the same way they applied to Lord of The Rings. We will always have things that are totally fiction like gun arms, but when you see Aerith stabbed, she dies because she is human and because if she survived thr story woudl fall apart from unrealism.

This is the whole point I am making. There is a cross over into our own laws in any fiction and there has to be or we as humans cannot place ourselve sinto the story. Every single story out there has real world physics and FF7 makes it clear that when you are stabbed, you are seriously injured (Tifa, Zax, Aerith, Zeng) or shot (Zax), or blown away (Rufus) or fall from a great height (Tifa)

The charcters in FF7 are human or animals. Most are normal flesh based lifeforms and thus the laws of earth apply to them, the same way they applied to Lord of The Rings. We will always have things that are totally fiction like gun arms, but when you see Aerith stabbed, she dies because she is human and because if she survived thr story woudl fall apart from unrealism.

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The characters in FFVII are human, and yes, in general the normal laws of real world physics, biology, and anatomy apply. So yes, that's why flower girls die when being impaled by swords, and yes, that's why MPs drop to the ground after being run through by Cloud, and yes, that's why NPCs such as Rufus and the Turks are injured after major battles. But those rules can, and are bent as the author allows.

BUT this is also a FICTIONAL WORLD. Normal expections of what we would normally consider real are bent as the fiction demands. Like I said, have you forgotten Dyne falling down a canyon, a middle aged fat man gets hit by a truck and reports to work just weeks later, and an adult human male gets sliced by a giant katana on the middle of an island in a temple and doesn't bleed to death? In a fictional world with fictional expectations of what is real and what is, sometimes people die from grevious wounds, and sometimes they don't if they're lucky or have some other exenuating circumstance like being superhuman or whatever.

There is a whole difference between being stabbed through the chest and impaled, bombed out of your office to falling down a canyon of unspecified depth. It is possible to survive the latter (breaking fall with trees, people have survived thousands of feet drops without parachute) and it is something I can pretend is ok, you cannot survive the other 2, and certainly not when the dialogue makes it clear what has happened.

There is a limit on how often you can get away with it and what you can get away with. I don't think you can get away with a normal human being being bombed and surviving with all limbs intact.

DanielReturns said:

There is a whole difference between being stabbed through the chest and impaled, bombed out of your office to falling down a canyon of unspecified depth. It is possible to survive the latter (breaking fall with trees, people have survived thousands of feet drops without parachute) and it is something I can pretend is ok, you cannot survive the other 2, and certainly not when the dialogue makes it clear what has happened.

There is a limit on how often you can get away with it and what you can get away with. I don't think you can get away with a normal human being being bombed and surviving with all limbs intact.

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So you're the expert on what grievous injuries can and cannot be survived?

1. A HUNDRED DROP FOOT FROM THE TOP OF A CLIFF (AFTER BEING SHOT, NO DANGER OF DYING FROM BLOOD LOSS AND SHOCK, NO SIR)? PROGNOSIS: HE'LL BE OKAY GUYS

2. AN EXPLOSION ON TOP OF AN OFFICE BUILDING? PROGNOSIS: ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE DEAD ON ARRIVAL NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL

How about when Cloud fell off the plate and slammed into Aerith's church before deciding to walk it off? Or Cloud surviving being stabbed in Nibelheim?

Never underestimate the power of plot.

1. A HUNDRED DROP FOOT FROM THE TOP OF A CLIFF (AFTER BEING SHOT, NO DANGER OF DYING FROM BLOOD LOSS AND SHOCK, NO SIR)? PROGNOSIS: HE'LL BE OKAY GUYS

2. AN EXPLOSION ON TOP OF AN OFFICE BUILDING? PROGNOSIS: ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE DEAD ON ARRIVAL NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL

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Did I miss something? Dyne didn't survive, did he?

Dyne survived. Oh, if you mean the fight after Barret? No, he's dead as a motherfucker. But he fell from a cliff even before that; remember in that story; Barret had his hand during the escape from Corel, and both their arms got shot up. Dyne fell down the cliff, and Barret assumed he was dead.

Quexinos said:

Did I miss something? Dyne didn't survive, did he?

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How do you think he was alive to fight Barret in the game?

Oh whoops, I thought we were talking about the second time he fell

But hey he survived it once, you never know.

JIMMY BROOKS: CRIPPLED VIRGIN said:

So you're the expert on what grievous injuries can and cannot be survived?

1. A HUNDRED DROP FOOT FROM THE TOP OF A CLIFF (AFTER BEING SHOT, NO DANGER OF DYING FROM BLOOD LOSS AND SHOCK, NO SIR)? PROGNOSIS: HE'LL BE OKAY GUYS

2. AN EXPLOSION ON TOP OF AN OFFICE BUILDING? PROGNOSIS: ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE DEAD ON ARRIVAL NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL

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It is possible to survive a great fall, and he was not shot in a vital organ. It is very unlikely to survive but nethertheless it is possible and in fiction it can be excused.

being impaled through the chest with a large sword, and being blown away in an office by a huge missile like weapon are in no way the same thing. I hope you agree on that? Also Rufus is a much bigger character than Dyne.

But this is a moot point anyway, we already know that they retconned Hojo and so what is good for the goose

You're just picking and choosing what you deem plausible based on what suits you.

FF7 is full of ridiculous shit and near miss deaths and implausible survivals.

being impaled through the chest with a large sword, and being blown away in an office by a huge missile like weapon are in no way the same thing.

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This is horse shit. People have survived buildings falling on them after being bombed.