A Good Reason Why Lucrecia In Dirge Of Cerberus Is Heavily Derided- Her Self-Pity

[jazzflower92]

I think the biggest reason why people find her obnoxious and annoying is the fact that despite always apologizing for her mistakes she never really does anything to rectify them and even seems to make things worse for Vincent, despite his legitimate concerns. In the OG, we just had her make the foolish decision of marrying Hojo then deciding to go along with experimenting on her own child in utereo. And we only saw her in one scene, where she grieves about not being able to hold her child and wonders where he is right.

However, in the game we are treated to more mistakes she made and never learning from them. Even though she says she's sorry, she goes into a self-pitying mode that makes her make bigger mishaps that affect her loved ones (minus Hojo because he's incapable of love). As pointed out in Bojack Horseman, it's not enough she has to apologize but also do better. Dirge Of Cerberus can be seen cleaning up her many mistakes as Vincent suffered for her foolishness. And in some sense, her own son did as well.

 

[Glaurung]

What I always found faulty with sequels and prequels is that they try very hard to explain some points that maybe they would have been better left alone.

What I always saw in DoC Lucrecia was how short-sighted she was, at least when she was experimenting with the protomateria. In turn, in DoC, Vincent was saved from a certain death after Hojo's experiments thanks to her, but whether or not it was a good idea, she gave him a chance to survival. Sure, it was a shitty existence, but from that point on he could choose how to live his life. Him shutting himself away out of guilt didn't help things (boy those two needed counseling).

tl;dr: Too many characters in FF are defined by one, and only one personal trait. I don't know if that has something to do with Japanese culture or just laziness on the script writers' part, but there's a lot of lost potential there.

 

[Odysseus]

It would have helped if we got more scenes with her and Vincent that didn't involve her systematically ruining his life more and more. DoC tries so hard to make us feel bad for her that it never really gives us the chance to get to know her beyond her comedy of errors. I think at least if we as an audience got to see what made Vincent like her so much, it would be easier to sympathize with her. I think the real issue though is that, much like Zack in Crisis Core, they're limited in what they can do with her because in the end they need to deliver her to the plot points set up in the original. What little we see of her originally isn't exactly the most likable person. She willingly sacrifices her own child to Hojo's experiments, she's distant towards Vincent, she hooks up with HOJO of all people. What I'm saying is that she was never the most sympathetic character to start with, and square in DoC had to stay true to those elements even if they could change the context around them.

At one time I saw someone here make a pretty compelling defense of her character in Dirge, I wish I could dig up that post because they actually made some solid points if I remember.

 

[youffie]

Lucrecia didn’t have to be likable to be a good character, though. I think that's where they went wrong, that their attempt to make her more sympathetic despite her very questionable choices led to her being a weaker character than she could have been. Instead, she acts on very frail plot points that never have a chance to resonate and we keep hearing she’s sorry, yet iirc the game never really delves into the worst deed that she did commit: experimenting on her own unborn son, with all the horrible consequences that came with it.

But I think they dropped the ball a bit with all the science team from the OG, really. They touched heavily on the Jenova project in both Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, and where the hell IS professor Gast, the man supervising it all? I don’t know if they just didn’t feel like going that deep with the moral ambiguity, or if they just wanted to sanitize the “good characters” and have them be completely separated from Hojo's evil schemes, but yeah, Lucrecia is probably the character that suffers the most because of it.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Final Fantasy VII suffers from not having a lot of likeable characters I feel. Even in the OG, most of the Main Characters have flaws that keep them from being paragons of virtue in a lot of ways. So I think most players are left grappling with the entire cast having flaws that aren't easy to overlook. And that gets even more pointed in the Compilation material. To the point that finding redeeming character values on side characters can get really difficult.

Cloud has all of his (many) issues, most pointedly his crippling self-doubt. Tifa doesn't want to rock the boat with the truth, even when the truth needs to be told. Cid and Shera have a troubled relationship (almost to the point that it's abusive). Barret is heading up a terrorist organization that is making other people's lives harder. Yuffie is too short-sighted in how she views her country's situation. Vincent hides from the world. Nanaki hates his dad over something he didn't understand.

This gets even more compounded with the side characters. Gast flat out does human experimentation. And doesn't show any remorse for it until after the fact. Same goes for Lucrecia to be honest. The Turks are well, the Turks. Same with Rufus.

Really, the only character in the orriginal game that doesn't have any glaring flaws (emphasis on glaring) is Aerith. Sure, she's spunky and has a mischievous side, but you never get the idea that it's a major flaw like some of the other Main Characters have.

What I do think sets Lucrecia (and Gast) aside from the other scientists we know is that I get the idea that if she got a do-over, she would do everything differently. Same thing with Gast. Both of them ended up realizing what they did was wrong in the end. Lucrecia couldn't get to Sephiroth, but she could get to Vincent and she did manage to mitigate the worst of what Hojo did to him from the looks of it. Gast left Shin-Ra in the end.

I think one of the main themes of FFVII is that it's not merely what people do that "counts", but really how they respond to what they do that "counts". Cloud ends up getting over his self-doubt in the end. Tifa does tell the thruth. Cid apologizes to Shera for how he's been acting. Barret dedicates himself to coming up with a new energy source. Yuffie has newfound respect for why her dad did what he did with Wutai. Nanaki finds out what his father actually did.

And Lucrecia realizes she shouldn't have done what she did. And actually tries to fix what she can fix.

 

[Odysseus]

Lucrecia didn’t have to be likable to be a good character, though. I think that's where they went wrong, that their attempt to make her more sympathetic despite her very questionable choices led to her being a weaker character than she could have been.

I maybe didn't put it so well, but this is what I was trying to get at will my comparison to Zack in Crisis Core. Lucrecia was a side character originally so the original FF7 didn't go out of its way to endear that players to her. Her questionable actions were left for the player to make sense of. In Dirge she is thrust into a lead role, and Square Enix, afraid to commit to the horrible actions she partook in, had to make her a more virtuous character. You end up with this person who is trying to do the right thing and be playful and likable but still does thinks like experiment on her unborn child. It creates this weird sense of cognitive dissonance, and the game is so unwilling to confront its own themes that it just leaves the player scratching their head.

I think if they had shown her conflict of morality, between her commitment to her job and the feeling that what she's doing is wrong, they might have had something. It could have been that, once Gast was gone and Vincent was shot, she's the last good person involved, desperately trying to do the right thing all the while placating a mad man who won't even let her hold her own son. The stress eventually becoming too much and she just runs away from it all (and seals herself in a big rock somehow.) I guess a lot of that actually IS in the game, but its conveyed really poorly.

 

[jazzflower92]

As said before, the reason why we are sour on her because we don't see her do anything in the game but mess up. I mean she did have one moment where she tried to have a picnic, but that was it. As said before, in the original game she just rejected Vincent for whatever reason and chose Hojo. She then got involved in the experiment and used her own child for it. Then of course complications from the pregnancy caused problems, which Vincent began to voice issues with and got shot.

However, Dirge of Cerberus like the rest of the Compilation likes to add extra drama. The extra drama just tacks on everything this woman does against Vincent to the point you wonder what he ever saw in her. I really think Dirge dropped the ball in why she ultimately chose Hojo. In the Ultimanias, it was said that she chose him because she felt pity for him because he often compared himself to Gast. However, in Dirge, she believes she can't be happy with Vincent because of what she did to his father and so punishes herself by going with Hojo.

That's pathetically self-pitying, which is enraging. She really wasn't in love with Hojo, but believed she deserved to have a shitty relationship because she thinks she doesn't deserve someone like Vincent. Also it's her running away from her problems instead of talking it out with him like a mature adult. In the Ultimania version, even though she made a mistake of choosing Hojo it still is more sound and sadly some people do marry others because they feel they don't get a break.

Going further with Ultimania's explanation, she could have also chosen Hojo because of the fact that they were both professional scientist and had that drive to succeed. This could have made her overlook his horrid personality traits at first, until the experiment takes the turn for the worse and Hojo shows more of his true apathetic colors towards her. Hojo probably mostly saw her as an incubator and after the experiment their marriage is basically shown as a crumbling facade, because he refuses to allow her to see or raise their son. At that point, he basically just leaves her.

 

[youffie]

I love this forum because everyone always makes great points and I don't know where to start

I think if they had shown her conflict of morality, between her commitment to her job and the feeling that what she's doing is wrong, they might have had something. It could have been that, once Gast was gone and Vincent was shot, she's the last good person involved, desperately trying to do the right thing all the while placating a mad man who won't even let her hold her own son. The stress eventually becoming too much and she just runs away from it all (and seals herself in a big rock somehow.) I guess a lot of that actually IS in the game, but its conveyed really poorly.

I would have loved that And I mean like you said, they really just needed to be brave enough to commit to what they had already written, to the direction they had given to the characters – as I said in another thread, I wasn't particularly enthused with what they did with Zack either, but at least CC!Zack is actually likable and his arc makes sense. This is definitely the worst missed chance from the Compilation in my book, because the Jenova project and how the people involved in it acted or didn't act is arguably the single most important backstory moment from the original game, and there was plenty of room to explore it in all its complexity.

And yeah, creating Vincent's father just to give Lucrecia a pathetic excuse to reject Vincent and then never use him again nor have him interact with his son in any way is so dumb. It was not only an unnecessary addition, but it also made the whole thing feel flatter than it did in the original, where the whole flashback covered what, two minutes?

I think one of the main themes of FFVII is that it's not merely what people do that "counts", but really how they respond to what they do that "counts". […]

And Lucrecia realizes she shouldn't have done what she did. And actually tries to fix what she can fix.

I absolutely agree, and I really wish they had worked that angle more with Lucrecia. I'd say that Vincent is the only character who deliberately escapes that logic until he joins Cloud and the others. He's one of the few people involved in the Jenova project who might be able to do something with what he knows, and he punishes himself by doing the one thing he's atoning for: choosing to do nothing at all.

 

[jazzflower92]

You know I imagine this is how Hojo would talk down Dirge! Lucrecia, when she's having a self-pity party. I think he would be even crueler than Rick and rub it in how she's more of a predator than she lets on. Then jeer how her beloved will always forgive her, because she has him wrapped around her finger. I really feel like Hojo is someone who would lord her mistakes over her and repeat the idea that both she and him are not different from one another. While she might say she's sorry, he would point out that she still made one horrible mistake after another to the point that it comes across as her trying to erase her guilt rather than leaning from her mishaps.

And again they should have had Gast in there, instead of Grimoire. I mean again why are they sidelining Gast. It would have been great to see how Gast and Lurecia's relationship was like. Since the Ultimanias said that Lucrecia felt sorry for Hojo since he always measured himself up to Gast, one could say the guy is one of the biggest reasons why Lucrecia chose Hojo. And as you said, it could make Gast into a more complex character. Someone who was a good man at heart, but sidelined his ethics in the pursuit of knowledge like Lucrecia.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Lucrecia sure raises questions and unexplored plot points infinitely more interesting than Lucrecia herself.

 

[Odysseus]

Man, I'm someone who actually defends Dirge of Cerberus (in a "it's so bad its good" sort of way) but now you're all making me remember how much I just genuinely dislike how they handled Lucrecia and vincent's past. Here's hoping the remake addresses this I guess.

 

[jazzflower92]

Lucrecia sure raises questions and unexplored plot points infinitely more interesting than Lucrecia herself.

Again cut out the Grimoire backstory and replace it with her relationship with Gast, then it would actually give Lucrecia an interesting character. A flawed character, but at least someone who you can at at least feel a bit sorry for making such a grave mistake. Also it's interesting that Dirge Of Cerebrus retconned out the fact that Vincent tried to propose to Lurecia in the flashback scene in the original game. And she probably rejected it because she felt that Hojo needed her more than Vincent did. Again that's what a misguided adult would do, instead of the overgrown adolescence that was written in Dirge.

 

[jazzflower92]

Man, I'm someone who actually defends Dirge of Cerberus (in a "it's so bad its good" sort of way) but now you're all making me remember how much I just genuinely dislike how they handled Lucrecia and vincent's past. Here's hoping the remake addresses this I guess.

I agree so as well. Because the overdramatic focus on the romantic part of it really killed the characters.

 

[Clement Rage]

Hold up, don't we get her frantically working to save Vincent after what Hojo does to him?

"You were the reason I survived."

I feel like there's a lot of hindsight in judging Lu. We know how catastrophically it turns out, so we go 'what were you thinking, hooking up with someone that does that', when at the time she knew him first, Hojo hadn't done any of that yet.

Grimoire is needed, because they have the protomateria to set up. Gast can't know about that, because if he does her thesis has concrete proof, and she doesn't get ostracised for it.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I think part of the problem is that from a meta perspective, Hojo is the poster child for stereotypical mad scientist of the '90s. It is really, really, really hard to see him in a context where people have yet to realize he is bonkers crazy about how he goes about science and has no morals to speak of. That time period is way back in FFVII's backstory of how Shin-Ra got to be Shin-Ra in the first place and we have... pretty much zero information on that time.

And what information we do have paints a very bad picture. Gast has a better sense of how to go about stuff scientificly then Hojo does, but even he doesn't have problems with human experimentation. Why he left Shin-Ra is very murky, but we do know it has something to do with human experimentation since it was before he found out what Jenova actually was. Which begs the question why Gast was okay with that in the first place and only left after the human experimentation was going on for a while. Lucrecia would have been with Hojo about the same time as far as I can see. So I think it's hard to justify anyone being a part of Shin-Ra's science department at the time and having a moral leg to stand on at all.

Like... anyone who thinks big human experimentation was just flat out wrong because it was human experimentation probably left Shin-Ra a long time ago. Both Gast and Lucrecia have shades of them only realizing something wrong is happening when the situation doesn't turn out like they wanted it too. Gast... well, we don't actually know what went wrong that caused Gast to leave (which I find very annoying). That said... Sephiroth remembers him... so... Gast would have left Shin-Ra some years after Sephrioth was born.

Lucrecia... from the sound of it, Sephiroth was at a bare minimum something she was interested in and not just for scientific reasons either. The way she talks about Sephrioth makes it sound like sometime in her pregancy, she started seeing Sephrioth less as just a science experiment and more as her kid. And then got it shoved in her face that the only thing Sephrioth was to Hojo was a science experiment. With the result being that she stuck around to at least make whatever Hojo did to the other human turned science experiment in her life not as bad as it could be. I get the feeling that if she was able to get to Sephrioth, she probably would have done something similar with him.

I actually find the contrast (and lack of contrast) between Gast and Lucrecia really interesting as well as how they're generally viewed by the fandom. It's hard to say either of them are better than the other is, but with the way the timing works out (even without taking the Compilation into account) Lucrecia would have realized the truth of who Hojo was before Gast did. Lucrecia starts being disillusioned with Hojo once she has Sephrioth, while Gast doesn't get disillusioned until after Sephiroth has been at Shin-Ra for an indeterminate length of time. I honestly have a hard time seeing their reactions to Hojo being all that different though, at least until Hojo began showing his true colors more.

 

[jazzflower92]

Hold up, don't we get her frantically working to save Vincent after what Hojo does to him?

"You were the reason I survived."

I feel like there's a lot of hindsight in judging Lu. We know how catastrophically it turns out, so we go 'what were you thinking, hooking up with someone that does that', when at the time she knew him first, Hojo hadn't done any of that yet.

Grimoire is needed, because they have the protomateria to set up. Gast can't know about that, because if he does her thesis has concrete proof, and she doesn't get ostracised for it.

While she didn't know how depraved Hojo was, Dirge's depiction of him just shows him to be openly unpleasant to her and bossing her around. Even if you don't know the actions he would do later, the fact that he acts like an ass from the front would give anyone the red flag. Again Dirge's take on why she chose Hojo is self-pitying punishment, because she doesn't want to own up to her past mistakes concerning Grimoire.

Nah, I don't think so. I think it could be shown that Lucrecia is testing her theory with Gast and she ends up not getting the results she wanted. This causes her to doubt herself, while Gast consoles her about it. This could later play into her reason for choosing Hojo, which is she sees herself in him when he's comparing himself with Gast. She feels she sees the same kinds of insecurities in him and she starts a relationship with him. And Hojo manipulatively plays on those feelings, so that he can use her for his benefit.

 

[youffie]

Grimoire is needed, because they have the protomateria to set up. Gast can't know about that, because if he does her thesis has concrete proof, and she doesn't get ostracised for it.

Genuine question because I don’t remember all the lore details, was he really needed? Like, couldn’t she just research it all by herself, and have everyone else be all “Lucrecia, would you be a darling and put that inconclusive nonsense on hold to focus on this beautiful Ancient specimen that we just found?”

My problem with Grimoire is that he’s Vincent’s father, and the only reason he’s Vincent’s father is that they wanted to give her a clear reason to reject Vincent that had nothing to do with Vincent himself, God forbid anyone thought that maybe she just wasn’t that much into him or that she preferred Hojo for her own reasons.

But why go through the trouble of creating the father of one of the most mysterious characters from the original game, and then making him so important for said character’s love interest, if you’re not even going to give me one scene of them interacting at all? What was their relationship like? What did Vincent think of his father? What did his father think of him? He died when Vincent was an adult, so he must have had an impact on his formative years. If he didn’t, why not? What about Vincent's mother? They worked at the same company (I assume)! Did his father get him the job?

That’s a lot of questions that I would have never felt the need to raise before Dirge of Cerberus. A lot of questions that the game doesn’t bother to address even remotely because then again, Grimoire is not really a character, is he? He’s just there to provide a plot point for DoC and make the relationship between Lucrecia and Vincent melodramatically impossible.

Also, I don’t fault Lucrecia for marrying Hojo, especially over Vincent (I don’t find Vincent such a better candidate to be honest ). I kind of pity her for that actually. Bad marriages with bad people happen in real life too, though it would have been great to see what she really thought of Hojo and if that changed over the years.

But I do fault her for willingly experimenting on her body and her unborn child in the name of science; that was on her too, and it was on Gast too, it wasn’t all Hojo. And I fault DoC for not showing us all the different characters’ opinions and feelings on the most important thing that happened in Nibelheim during those years, the Jenova project. For not showing us how the idea developed, how they all reacted to it. Maybe Lucrecia wanted to do it because she felt she might have been more listened to as a scientist, or maybe she did it because she truly believed in the project, or maybe she did it because Hojo manipulated her. Who knows?

You might argue that it was not DoC’s responsibility, since it had to focus on its own plot, but I don’t quite agree. The main character in the game is Vincent, and the Jenova project is the reason why he confronted Hojo and needed Chaos to survive, the reason why he slept in a coffin for decades to atone, the reason why Lucrecia tried to commit suicide and then decided to confine herself in a crystal prison forever. That project defined them. And since the original game left it all in the air, DoC was the perfect chance to really go there.

 

[ForceStealer]

Gast has a better sense of how to go about stuff scientificly then Hojo does, but even he doesn't have problems with human experimentation. Why he left Shin-Ra is very murky, but we do know it has something to do with human experimentation since it was before he found out what Jenova actually was. Which begs the question why Gast was okay with that in the first place and only left after the human experimentation was going on for a while. Lucrecia would have been with Hojo about the same time as far as I can see. So I think it's hard to justify anyone being a part of Shin-Ra's science department at the time and having a moral leg to stand on at all.

I think the difference is supposed to be that Gast and Lucrecia were operating from a "for the greater good" position. If they can bring back the Cetra and reveal the Promised Land, it would be a huge benefit to humanity at large.
This does not make them good and moral, but it is the difference between them and Hojo, who basically does wacky awful science shit just to see what happens.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I think part of the problem is that from a meta perspective, Hojo is the poster child for stereotypical mad scientist of the '90s. It is really, really, really hard to see him in a context where people have yet to realize he is bonkers crazy about how he goes about science and has no morals to speak of. That time period is way back in FFVII's backstory of how Shin-Ra got to be Shin-Ra in the first place and we have... pretty much zero information on that time.

And what information we do have paints a very bad picture. Gast has a better sense of how to go about stuff scientificly then Hojo does, but even he doesn't have problems with human experimentation. Why he left Shin-Ra is very murky, but we do know it has something to do with human experimentation since it was before he found out what Jenova actually was. Which begs the question why Gast was okay with that in the first place and only left after the human experimentation was going on for a while. Lucrecia would have been with Hojo about the same time as far as I can see. So I think it's hard to justify anyone being a part of Shin-Ra's science department at the time and having a moral leg to stand on at all.

Like... anyone who thinks big human experimentation was just flat out wrong because it was human experimentation probably left Shin-Ra a long time ago. Both Gast and Lucrecia have shades of them only realizing something wrong is happening when the situation doesn't turn out like they wanted it too. Gast... well, we don't actually know what went wrong that caused Gast to leave (which I find very annoying). That said... Sephiroth remembers him... so... Gast would have left Shin-Ra some years after Sephrioth was born.

Lucrecia... from the sound of it, Sephiroth was at a bare minimum something she was interested in and not just for scientific reasons either. The way she talks about Sephrioth makes it sound like sometime in her pregancy, she started seeing Sephrioth less as just a science experiment and more as her kid. And then got it shoved in her face that the only thing Sephrioth was to Hojo was a science experiment. With the result being that she stuck around to at least make whatever Hojo did to the other human turned science experiment in her life not as bad as it could be. I get the feeling that if she was able to get to Sephrioth, she probably would have done something similar with him.

I actually find the contrast (and lack of contrast) between Gast and Lucrecia really interesting as well as how they're generally viewed by the fandom. It's hard to say either of them are better than the other is, but with the way the timing works out (even without taking the Compilation into account) Lucrecia would have realized the truth of who Hojo was before Gast did. Lucrecia starts being disillusioned with Hojo once she has Sephrioth, while Gast doesn't get disillusioned until after Sephiroth has been at Shin-Ra for an indeterminate length of time. I honestly have a hard time seeing their reactions to Hojo being all that different though, at least until Hojo began showing his true colors more.

Don't know if these calculations will help with anything, but we learned from the CC Complete Guide that Gast left Shin-Ra in 1980. Multiple resources also tell us that Seph was born 25-30 years before FFVII, placing the timing of Gast's departure when Seph was at most no more than 3 years old -- and possibly before he was born, but probably not since Seph seems to remember Gast, and fondly so.

Of course, since Seph also remembers the view from the window of the room he was born in (thanks to Jenova cells, most likely), he could have been two months old. Or even two weeks.

You might argue that it was not DoC’s responsibility, since it had to focus on its own plot, but I don’t quite agree. The main character in the game is Vincent, and the Jenova project is the reason why he confronted Hojo and needed Chaos to survive, the reason why he slept in a coffin for decades to atone, the reason why Lucrecia tried to commit suicide and then decided to confine herself in a crystal prison forever. That project defined them. And since the original game left it all in the air, DoC was the perfect chance to really go there.

I would also add that since the game felt the need to constantly go into flashbacks, it should have made more of them worthwhile.

 

[youffie]

Don't know if these calculations will help with anything, but we learned from the CC Complete Guide that Gast left Shin-Ra in 1980. Multiple resources also tell us that Seph was born 25-30 years before FFVII, placing the timing of Gast's departure when Seph was at most no more than 3 years old -- and possibly before he was born, but probably not since Seph seems to remember Gast, and fondly so.

Of course, since Seph also remembers the view from the window of the room he was born in (thanks to Jenova cells, most likely), he could have been two months old. Or even two weeks.

Wh- for real? Hm. Well, he had to be very young since even in the original game Gast needed to get away, meet Ifalna and have Aeris, who's 22 in the game. I guess what strikes me as odd is that he doesn't just speak fondly of Gast as a person, it's implied he thinks he was a great scientist, too, which, like… how was he be able to determine that as a baby?

Though I suppose the whole "Gast was so good and the best scientist that ever lived, UNLIKE HOJO who very much sucks" is repeated to the point of almost becoming a running gag in the game Maybe Sephiroth just read a lot of papers.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It's also possible that the SE folks didn't think about it too hard since the backstory surrounding Gast is such a clusterfuck.

In-game dialogue from the original game has it that Gast made his way through Cosmo Canyon, where he mentioned to Elder Bugah -- in the midst of a mental breakdown, from the sound of it -- that Jenova wasn't an Ancient and he'd made some terrible mistake. Bugah also adds that he heard Gast never went back to Shin-Ra.

We also see, in the original game, Gast learning more about Jenova and the true Ancients from Ifalna at Icicle Inn -- all of which seems to imply that Gast realized Jenova wasn't an Ancient through his own research, abandoned his position at Shin-Ra, wandered through Cosmo Canyon in a stupor, and eventually made his way to Icicle Inn, where he met Ifalna and learned more about Jenova actually is.

The FFVII Ultimania Omega introduced the first wrinkle in this by telling us that Gast resigned from Shin-Ra out of guilt over using humans for experiments, that he met Ifalna at Icicle Inn and then learned from her that Jenova wasn't an Ancient. Though of course not impossible for him to have gone from Icicle Inn to Cosmo Canyon in distress, then returned to Icicle Inn to learn more from Ifalna (leading to them falling in love, having Aerith, etc.), it wasn't the most obvious progression of events.

The CC Complete Guide, though, claims that Gast left Shin-Ra and took Ifalna with him ...

 

[jazzflower92]

Wh- for real? Hm. Well, he had to be very young since even in the original game Gast needed to get away, meet Ifalna and have Aeris, who's 22 in the game. I guess what strikes me as odd is that he doesn't just speak fondly of Gast as a person, it's implied he thinks he was a great scientist, too, which, like… how was he be able to determine that as a baby?

Though I suppose the whole "Gast was so good and the best scientist that ever lived, UNLIKE HOJO who very much sucks" is repeated to the point of almost becoming a running gag in the game Maybe Sephiroth just read a lot of papers.

I could see him looking at research papers of Gast as he's growing up. I think the reason why also Sephiroth has an idealized idolization of Gast because he probably was one of the few people in his life at that point that probably treated him as a child, instead of a tool to use.

Also as youffie pointed out Grimoire is just a plot device, instead of an actual character that was needed. It would be interesting if he was the reason why Vincent got into the Turks, but again he's only mentioned in this game and is never in any other Compilation piece. So, again it makes him very pointless in the long run and was just created to produce melodrama.

One thing I am very interesting is what would have Lucrecia thought of Iflana if she met her. I actually like to think she would have been fangirling out that she met an actual full blooded Ancient. I do think unlike Hojo she would treat her as a person and ask her questions. And again it could make her question her morals about experimenting on her child and body, since what they were really tampering with was a lovecraftian abomination that wiped out the Cetra in the first place. Again I for some reason think Lucrecia and Gast had a lot of similarities together and could have been great co-workers and maybe he was one of the few scientists who respected her.

 

[youffie]

It's also possible that the SE folks didn't think about it too hard since the backstory surrounding Gast is such a clusterfuck.

Yup, that seems to be the case I remembered most of that but never put together how wobbly the timeline really is concerning Gast.

I wonder if they decided to create Gast not only as a contrast to Hojo, but also to add more interesting parallels between Aeris and Sephiroth, and then forgot or didn’t care about connecting all the dots. It wouldn’t be a first, since the OG definitely has scenes or character points that are really powerful but require a few logic leaps to work; Nanaki’s long-harbored misconception about his father comes to mind.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

One of the things that still... concerns me... is that Shin-Ra seems to jump to doing human experiments with Jenova rather quickly after she is discovered. I can't help but wonder if this isn't the first time they've been doing human experimentation. Just that it's the first time they've had non-human stuff added in. Shin-Ra seems to have known about mako before they knew about Jenova and given what Hojo is like... I have a hard time seeing him not figuring out what happens when you expose humans to lots of mako. And then comes along Jenova's experiments that use an aweful lot of mako in them...

So I have to admit, half of me thinks Hojo was experimenting on people long before Lucrecia was (she was off discovering the Chaos mako source). As for Gast... we have no idea what other projects he was working on. Except the Jenova one. Which involved combining Jenova cells with living beings. Kinda wonder what he was working on before then that made him a natural choice for head of the Jenova project...

It will be very interesting to see what the Remake decides to do with the early days of Shin-Ra time-period. As long as it makes more sense then the OG (rather than less), I'll be happy with it.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

@Obsidian Fire
They had, indeed, been using mako to enhance humans prior to Jenova's implementation. It's confirmed Compilation canon that SOLDIER existed prior -- though who knows what they may do with the remake.