AC/CC >> Remake Buster Sword Changes

[Octo]

Dude like...metal is like...minerals and...like you have iron in your blood so liek..you could get a sword if you got all your iron molecules together. And the clothes are leather and leather is just skin.

Soblem prolved

I'll go home now...

 

[Tennyo]

I don't believe that the cover on the Buster Sword is made manifest of Jenova Cells

We had already figured out that CBS golden handguard must be made of Jenova cells that shrink in order to fit under RBS metalbox, so it's sort of relevant.

...Where did this happen? I'm reading back through the thread and can't find it?

There was never any indication -- OG or Compilation -- that the Buster Sword was anything other than just a metal sword, regardless of what Masamune is or isn't.

Seems like this would be more easily explained by presuming the gold hilt was there and got damaged and removed. The metalbox, then, would be a replacement and therefore wouldn't be too small.

I'm pretty sure hleV was being sarcastic.

 

[hleV]

Hmm I'm just no good at TLSing. I expected to have a bunch of likes for my funny post but I got 2 likes and a bunch of serious replies lol.

 

[Tennyo]

Usually I think a post like that would. I guess the Buster Sword is serious business.

 

[Loxetta]

gdi hleV






Sorry

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Usually I think a post like that would. I guess the Buster Sword is serious business.

It was also a reply to my actually serious, "so where is the REAL conversation going at this point" post — which I'd like to mention, still doesn't have an actual answer.






X

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Answer: Downhill. In a hurry.

 

[Shademp]

Answer: Downhill. In a hurry.

Spoiler: Allow me to visualize

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Answer: Downhill. In a hurry.

Spoiler: Allow me to visualize

Obligatory:






X

 

[hian]

It can, however, be explained quite easily and consistently from an in-universe perspective. This is why I spoke of a distinction between mistakes and accidents above.

Make sense?

It can be rationalized. It isn't explained in the original, hence the post-original "explanation" is not really an explanation at all - it's for the lack of a better word, a "ret-con" attempting to address it.

I don't consider that to be explaining, as explaining something requires there to have been a reason there to begin with. That's an integral linguistic and philosophical distinction, and one I am content keeping to.

If I asked you to explain to me why there are tides, you could tell me that the old gods make it happen, but that's not a real explanation now is it?

Can the rationalization, or post-hoc rewrites make sense? Yes, why of course. That's what rationalizations seek out to do.
However, what some here seem to fail to realize that non of the "reasons" provided, as far as I know, are actually stated (or implied) in the plot, and as such are conjecture at best.
Secondly, the conjecture is flimsy relying on contrived explanations that detract from the quality of the writing, which only further illustrates my point (which through all of this was simply that FFVII's plot has lots of issues).
And in terms of the remake, these explanations would also make less sense than if you just changed those scenes (such as having Sephiroth drop his sword and Shinra picking it up, and not leaving it in the back of President Shinra - after all, Palmer already saw it happen, why would the audience need that extra visual cue to begin with?)

Yes, before. This plothole has been a longstanding observation. I really can't imagine anyone disagreeing that being what it was at the time of the original's release. From an out-of-universe perspective, it's a plothole. It's a flaw in the writing. It isn't good story planning.

Then why are people harping on about this? I've been quite clear that me raising the example was for the purpose of illustrating the obvious fact that FFVII's plot is filled with issues, and people here were replying to this example as if it weren't an indicator of this, because lo and behold, scenes in AC gives people loop-holes to write it off.

This had everything to do with quality of writing.

I am not the one misunderstanding things here - I raised this point as a demonstration of issues with the writing of the game - the very act of rejecting that by trying to explain it away, is an objection to that very same point. If that isn't the intent, then the very act of objecting to begin with is irrelevant and completely off-point in regards to what I wrote to begin with.

I am perfectly aware that the idea of trying to explain this is to help fix the world from a consistency point of view - unfortunately, world-building isn't just about providing any reason what so ever for why something is the way it is - it's about providing good reasons that don't lend themselves to more mess down the road.
Non of the "reasons" provided thus far do a good job to my mind, because for every one provided I could write page upon page of new problems arising from the introductions of those new plot-elements.

The way to fix contrived plots isn't to try to paint around the problems you've caused through negligence when you first started writing - it's by revising the stuff that lead to those problems to begin with.

My points through this have only been three things -
1.) FFVII's plot is filled with issues,
2.) If they're going to do re-writes, then they should work from the ground up, and nip those issues in the bud, not keep it as is, and add more contrived stuff to cover it up, and
3.) tying in to the current situation, the best way, if they plan on retaining the CBS guard underneath the old one, is to explain it away as something Cloud does consciously entering Avalanche - not by mixing in Jenova Cells, and Mako-poisoning etc.

I fail to see how this is controversial, and why people think conjecture-based post-hoc explanations make the Masamune point any less relevant to the question of quality of writing.
If they don't think otherwise, as you seem to suggest in your post, it begs the question why they (and you) replied to begin with.
That being said, ForceStealer seems to be one who disagrees with the basic premise - he does not see this as a plot-hole apparently, and does not agree that FFVII's plot has lots and lots of issues.

WE'RE rationalizing, but you're insisting that Sephiroth's clothing are biological cells made to look like clothing. What are you basing that on, exactly? Nothing, really.

I'm not insisting that at all. I wasn't even the one who raised that point. Somebody else did by saying that Sephiroth isn't naked when you chase him, and that by whatever magic he wears clothes, it could just as well apply to his sword.

I'm simply pointing out that this isn't necessarily the case, and not a sound argument.

I am not making the argument that clothes are Jenova cells and the sword isn't - in fact I'd make the argument that the clothes and the sword are BOTH examples of bad writing, since it just goes to show that Jenova changing shapes wasn't a concept well thought through - but with that being said, my objection here is that just because we have to accept that the clothes are somehow part of Jenova, we don't have to accept that the sword is, when the clothes and the sword are not remotely similar (since the clothes are directly attached to the body, the sword is not at several points throughout the game)

Why would it be relevant to mention that a collection of cells was left in President Shinra? Jenova leaves behind pieces of itself the entire freaking game..

Conflation. Jenova cells, in the original, when left behind are always alive and doing something when left behind. The sword does not conform to this pattern.

That's a pretty big difference. You'd think that if the sword was anything like the other Jenova cells "Sephiroth" leaves behind, that would result in some pretty interesting events in the Shinra building.

Sephiroth is entirely confident that it will all gather for the Reunion, so what does he care. You kill a piece of Jenova on the cargo ship, so what exactly are you suggesting is the sephiroth we're chasing after that?

Never did I say that Sephiroth would care. I was implying that it would be significant, not in what sense - like to Shinra, Hojo, or the fact that if the lump of cells is still alive, it too would seek out Reunion, and probably create quite the ruckus while doing so, since it's in the friggin' Shinra HQ.

Obviously it's another piece of Jenova. Your suggestion that two different chunks of jenova can't maintain their shape is laughably absurd and ignorant of the game you're declaring has objectively bad writing.

Except, I didn't suggest that two different chunks of Jenova can't maintain their shapes - what I said is that we never see a part of Jenova maintain its shape after parting ways with the main body, and we don't.

If you disagree how about you provide me an example a single non-major piece of Jenova maintaining shifted when separated from the main body, which would be the one you're chasing in the original game?

Every time the main body sheds a piece, it reverts to its original form. After all, what possible reason could it have to retain its shape after that?

We're the ones being unreasonable? You're being difficult. But you're accusing us of bending over backwards to justify the game when we're giving better reasons than you are for it being irrational.

You have demonstrated in this post that, not only did you apparently not read my post (and if you did, certainly not in good faith), you also conflate and mis-characterize at every corner while replying.
So maybe it's time for you to do some introspection?

EDIT :

Also, I'm not one arguing here that the game needs to be perfectly logically consistent etc.
I don't really care about this point, because, as I've said over and over again, I did not go into FFVII and end up liking it for its "realism".
I'm perfectly content just going "Well, it's magic derp derp, who cares?". However, I am also capable of compartmentalizing that and seeing the difference between writing that I like for visceral reasons, and writing being of quality.

I watch more campy, and shit TV shows than should be legal for any one man - including trite stuff like The Vampire Diaries and Arrow - both shows with extremely sketchy writing. It doesn't matter though.

The only reason this has been brought up, or can even remotely be considered an issue is because of the dramatic change in tone and visual style in the FFVII universe over the years, and Nomura going "We're going for realism" in half of his interviews, in which case, these kind of debates are bound to pop up because people hold different kinds of media to different kinds of standards based on what a particular piece is trying to do.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Then why are people harping on about this? I've been quite clear that me raising the example was for the purpose of illustrating the obvious fact that FFVII's plot is filled with issues, and people here were replying to this example as if it weren't an indicator of this, because lo and behold, scenes in AC gives people loop-holes to write it off.

This had everything to do with quality of writing.

Again, I (at the very least) was not disagreeing about this matter from an out-of-universe perspective.

As I said in my previous post, if you meant to approach the subject from that perspective, that wasn't what you did with your wording: "If you mean the why's and how's from a perspective of in-world consistency, or plausible story-telling - no, certainly not. 
There is no reasonable way of explaining why Jenova has Masamune in Shinra HQ after Sephiroth clearly took it with him when he fell into the Mako pool."

You spoke of in-world consistency, so you made the matter an in-universe discussion rather than an out-of-universe (i.e. writing quality) discussion. You also said there was no way to explain the matter -- again, dealing with it from an in-universe perspective since that's the framing you had established for the discussion.

As that was decidedly inaccurate, that's what I responded to.

Your points about the writing are fine. If that's what you're concerned with, we can simply agree and that be that.

If, however, you're going to continue to insist that "none of the 'reasons' provided, as far as I know, are actually stated (or implied) in the plot, and as such are conjecture at best," then I will have to continue pointing out such facts as the blatant depictions of spirit energy coalescing into clothing and weaponry (e.g. Kadaj and Sephiroth); clothing and weaponry dispersing into spirit energy (e.g. Lazard and Kadaj again); spirit energy increasing an already existing sword to an enormous size (Genesis Avatar; an observation even made in the CC Complete Guide's entry for the sword); spirit energy coalescing into an enormous monster bigger than Midgar, which then turns to stone (Omega); that the enormous monsters who are said to be kindred to that other enormous monster emerged from a place filled with spirit energy -- and that one of those monsters was entirely made of metal, which typically isn't organic (the Weapons); and so on and so forth. =P

Acknowledging what has repeatedly been openly depicted isn't conjecture.

 

[hian]

Again, I (at the very least) was not disagreeing about this matter from an out-of-universe perspective..

I don't agree that there is a clear distinction in regards to the two.

Because fictional universes are fictional, anything goes - this literally means that any explanation is "an explanation" - the author says it's so, so that's the way it is.

You can't separate the two.

My point here is that, you can't reasonably explain the plot-hole without in-game lore (from the original alone), and reasonably here pertains to out-world logic, because there is no other standard for the term.

As I said in my previous post, if you meant to approach the subject from that perspective, that wasn't what you did with your wording: "If you mean the why's and how's from a perspective of in-world consistency, or plausible story-telling - no, certainly not.
There is no reasonable way of explaining why Jenova has Masamune in Shinra HQ after Sephiroth clearly took it with him when he fell into the Mako pool.".

How, in approaching this subject and clearly using the word "plausible story-telling", you come to the conclusion that it would make more sense to judge the argument as a purely in-world argument is beyond me.
I'm clearly making two discrete statement there - one about the in-game lore's consistency, and another about how that lore makes sense in the larger context of writing as an art.

As for in-world consistency - what part of FFVII, the original, lends itself to explaining the teleporting Masamune - plausibly - in terms of lore, or just writing in general?
As far as I know, the only argument that's been provided is "well, Jenova can transform into stuff" and a reference to AC. I've already stated why I reject this, and I'll do so again, when you bring it up in a later paragraph.

The point here is that the lore you refer to is not in the original, so the original does not explain it - that's the part about this being an internal inconsistency - and the Jenova shape-shifting explanation, which is founded on lore added later, is the part I criticize as bad writing when proposed, because it is inferior to simply removing the sword from the Shinra scene, and having Sephiroth drop it upon his fall in the reactor core.

This is superior because it then allows us to not use the "Jenova can shape-shift into anything" magic lamp logic, which inevitably will lead to more questions down the line in the plot, where you could then reasonably ask, "why didn't just Jenova shape-shift into X,Y,Z in that part or this part, or over here?"

Do you see how they tie together?

You spoke of in-world consistency, so you made the matter an in-universe discussion rather than an out-of-universe (i.e. writing quality) discussion. You also said there was no way to explain the matter -- again, dealing with it from an in-universe perspective since that's the framing you had established for the discussion..

And there still isn't in terms of the original's narrative. I've specified again and again, that this complaint is local to the original game, and that I don't consider adding lore years later to qualify as "explaining", which is why I don't accept that appeal.

In world consistency is a staple of quality writing - the original game has in-world inconsistencies.
Going, AC reconciled it (or rather attempted to) is not an argument that changes anything.
The original game's writing does not get a pass for problems addressed later.

This should not be confusing when the original post that sparked this debate was me essentially going "the original FFVII's story is filled with holes". Nobody has addressed that, and the AC appeal does not address that.

If, however, you're going to continue to insist that "none of the 'reasons' provided, as far as I know, are actually stated (or implied) in the plot, and as such are conjecture at best," then I will have to continue pointing out such facts as the blatant depictions of spirit energy coalescing into clothing and weaponry (e.g. Kadaj and Sephiroth); clothing and weaponry dispersing into spirit energy (e.g. Lazard and Kadaj again); spirit energy increasing an already existing sword to an enormous size (Genesis Avatar; an observation even made in the CC Complete Guide's entry for the sword);

Non of which is in the original game, and non of which has anything to do with Jenova's shape-shifting.
The argument is whether Jenova shape-shifts herself into weapons - not whether or not Masamune can be magically summoned into existence.

That's a different argument altogether. Now, does the original game support the idea that things can be summoned out of nothingness with magic? Yeah, probably (I'm not sure exactly where I stand on the entire summon magic thing, but hey there's room for this at least).

My problem with this though is that again - nothing suggest that Jenova, an alien life-form, is capable of doing this - or even if capable of it, would need or want to do it, when Jenova is perfectly capable of killing stuff with her bare hands (as she did, in her Sephiroth form, when she impaled the Midgar Zolom on a tree rather than cutting it to ribbons)

Does the explanation resolve the immediate plot-hole? It can - does it make for a plausible explanation that doesn't lead to a bunch of more unanswered questions down the line?
No, and that brings me back full circle to my point about quality writing, which is why I brought up this to begin with.

spirit energy coalescing into an enormous monster bigger than Midgar, which then turns to stone (Omega); that the enormous monsters who are said to be kindred to that other enormous monster emerged from a place filled with spirit energy -- and that one of those monsters was entirely made of metal, which typically isn't organic (the Weapons); and so on and so forth. =P

Non of which is the work of Jenova. And again, I would find it very odd if you were to suggest, given the original game's themes, that Jenova, an alien life-form and enemy of the planet, is using spirit energy the same as the planet (essentially life-stream) to fashion a Masamune in the same way the planet fashioned the weapons.

It's also showing that you're mixing the two arguments here - I never said metal couldn't be magicked into existence - I made an objection about Jenova's shape-shifting into organic versus non-organic material.

That has nothing to do with the planet and spirit energy what so ever, unless, again, you mean to propose that Jenova's shape-shifting is the same process as that of the planet, which I think would be a very hard argument to justify.

 

[Starling]

Shapeshifter baggage is a pretty common whenever shapeshifting is involved. No one wants to have to constantly explain why someone isn't naked when some form of shapeshifting occurs so most people can suspend their disbelief about it. It's not so much bad writing as an acceptable break from reality the writers took advantage of, especially since there's no way they would've let Sephiroth run around naked and taking the time to give an actual explanation for where he got the clothes wouldn't be practical when most of that's happening offscreen with a character who wouldn't bother telling them about it. This leaves players to assume he got them when he made Jenova's body shapeshift into his form. Since we don't see Sephiroth until the ship to Costa del Sol, even in a more realistic take on the FF7 we're not likely to actually get more of an explanation than that.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

And there still isn't in terms of the original's narrative. I've specified again and again, that this complaint is local to the original game, and that I don't consider adding lore years later to qualify as "explaining", which is why I don't accept that appeal.

In world consistency is a staple of quality writing - the original game has in-world inconsistencies.
Going, AC reconciled it (or rather attempted to) is not an argument that changes anything.
The original game's writing does not get a pass for problems addressed later.

This should not be confusing when the original post that sparked this debate was me essentially going "the original FFVII's story is filled with holes". Nobody has addressed that, and the AC appeal does not address that.

Okay, I see what you're saying now. Sorry.

When I saw you ask to consider in-world consistency, I didn't pick up on that you were trying to isolate what's "real" down to just the sense of what's offered by the original game alone. On those terms, sure, there wasn't anything strongly shown or indicated to explain the matter.

I'd still argue that Sephiroth's clothes were, but I can see why one would hesitate to accept that Jenova just left a part of itself behind as a sword in the President's back, what with the Reunion being a plot point.

Of course, with the Reunion being a thing, it's always been odd to me that parts of Jenova were sacrificed along the way. You wouldn't think Jenova stood to regain more cells from the Sephiroth copies than were lost playing games with Cloud and co.

This is something else you probably are thinking of when you refer to weaknesses in FFVII's writing, huh?

How, in approaching this subject and clearly using the word "plausible story-telling", you come to the conclusion that it would make more sense to judge the argument as a purely in-world argument is beyond me.

Well, speaking in my defense, I think that wording was a bit clunky for what I now understand to have been in reference to the clarity with which details of the setting, plot, etc. were presented.

Coming right after "in-world consistency," at the time, it came across to me as you were applying the question of plausibility within the setting from a perspective within the setting. I may have caught your meaning if you had said "coherent storytelling" or something like that.

"Plausible" is what threw me off, I think -- after all, any story could plausibly be told and any storytelling technique could plausibly be used. They may not create for plausibility within the setting, though.

The only reason this has been brought up, or can even remotely be considered an issue is because of the dramatic change in tone and visual style in the FFVII universe over the years, and Nomura going "We're going for realism" in half of his interviews, in which case, these kind of debates are bound to pop up because people hold different kinds of media to different kinds of standards based on what a particular piece is trying to do.

I can't take Nomura saying that seriously. He's also said that as long as things look cool, we don't need it to be realistic.

My problem with this though is that again - nothing suggest that Jenova, an alien life-form, is capable of doing this - or even if capable of it, would need or want to do it, when Jenova is perfectly capable of killing stuff with her bare hands (as she did, in her Sephiroth form, when she impaled the Midgar Zolom on a tree rather than cutting it to ribbons)

What if the tree was made of Jenova cells too?

 

[ForceStealer]

What if the tree was made of Jenova cells too?

FFV/FFVII connection confirmed

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I forgot to respond to this like a week ago:

The only point I'll respond to as of now is the objection to the Jenova point I brought up about reading the minds of people she already killed and took the form of, and the Masamune being forged out of spirit energy -
Ifalna says Jenova used the shape of dead loved ones to approach Ancients - she does not say she did not say when she did it or to what extent, so that objection is based on an assumption.

For all we know, when the meteor first landed, one or several ancients would have approached the crater to investigate, get killed and "absorbed" (for the lack of a better word) by the Jenova organism, laying the foundation for her first shape shifts into deadloved ones.

There is nothing about Jenova taking the shape of dead loved ones that requires her to be able to read the minds of still living foreign bodies - all she would need is to kill and take the memories of one person with a shared relative - and Ifalna's sentence does nothing at all to rule this out, nor is it specific enough to prove the opposite either, as it makes no mention of telepathy, extent, scope or nature of what Jenova is doing.

Ifalna being able to listen to the voices of the planet does not make her omnipotent, and based on what we do know (like for instance, that the amount of information in the life-stream is so vast that being over-exposed to it is dangerous) clearly indicates that whatever you do get out of the planet is sporadic and disjointed - so to assume that Ifalna is speaking from some sort of authority on Jenova, rather than bits and pieces of sporadic information is not warranted.

Jenova is never shown in the original game to be reading minds outside of her direct physical influence, nor is it necessary to explain the plot, hence why I think it's a unnecessary addition that only further deepens the extent of convolution in the story - as is apparent when talking about Cloud shaping his persona based on Tifa's memories rather than Zack's.

Ifalna says more than just the dead mothers and dead brothers line:

"When the Cetra... were preparing to part with the land they loved...
That's when it appeared!
It looked like... our... our dead mothers... and our dead brothers. Showing us spectres of their past."

English translation being weak as it is in some places, let's look at the original Japanese:

セトラ達が…長年親しんだ土地から旅立ちの準備をしていたとき……その時、そのものは現れたのです！
その姿は……亡き母の…亡き兄のものでした。それぞれに過去の幻影を見せるのです

The last line in particular is the one we're concerned with:
"It showed each of them illusions/visions/phantoms/spectres of the/their past."

We both know, I'm sure, that you wouldn't use 過去 ("past") in reference to "that loved one who was alive 20 minutes ago, until the alien invader ate them." It goes back more than that.

So, yeah, Jenova always had telepathy.

 

[hleV]

Regarding Masamune and Jenova Reunion, there's a reason Hojo injected J cells into actual alive people in order to test his theory. While the original statement is that J cells try to re-unite, I thought it was obvious that first they need to have the means to, which Masamune doesn't.

It is shown in AC that the main mind (Sephiroth) cannot directly control small amounts of separated cells (Jenova's "head" in AC) until in direct contact with it (its remnant...), Bigger chunks of J body like its limbs have no problem being controlled/shapeshifted/etc. as seen in OG.

Many things are not explained in OG, that's why we're here discussing it aren't we. Going all "it's a world with magic so who cares" would make it pretty boring. I'd argue FF7 is one of the few FFs that really have much in-world logic. I mean, even in-game characters distinguish science from supposed magic and argue about it.

I'm the kind of a guy who does care about logic a lot (might be why I don't like most other FFs very much), so if something is not explained but can still work, I'll go ahead and try to explain it, or have an official guidebook explain it to me.

 

[hian]

Ifalna says more than just the dead mothers and dead brothers line:

"When the Cetra... were preparing to part with the land they loved...
That's when it appeared!
It looked like... our... our dead mothers... and our dead brothers. Showing us spectres of their past."

English translation being weak as it is in some places, let's look at the original Japanese:

セトラ達が…長年親しんだ土地から旅立ちの準備をしていたとき……その時、そのものは現れたのです！
その姿は……亡き母の…亡き兄のものでした。それぞれに過去の幻影を見せるのです

The last line in particular is the one we're concerned with:
"It showed each of them illusions/visions/phantoms/spectres of the/their past."

We both know, I'm sure, that you wouldn't use 過去 ("past") in reference to "that loved one who was alive 20 minutes ago, until the alien invader ate them." It goes back more than that.

So, yeah, Jenova always had telepathy.

I don't necessarily see telepathy as being the natural extension. I know I'm shifting the goal-post here, but Jenova clearly can use magic if nothing else. I don't know that Jenova would have to be able to use telepathy, as in invading the mind of another and reading their memories, as opposed to for instance using some sort of magic or technique that simply draws a specific image out relying on projection on part of the victim.

It's something you see often in fantasy media, where you'll have places or spells that make a person see "their greatest fear", or "their lost loved ones" etc. where the spell or place in general isn't actually reading minds, but simply reflecting what is in the mind of the person who's exposed to the actual spell.

The term "gen-ei"/幻影 can clearly be taken that way. In fact, now I'm suddenly unsure about the entire Jenova shape-shifting into loved ones - this sentence implies no such thing - it implies that Jenova showed these people images/illusions of their loved ones, not that she inhabited the actual forms of them.

This raises the question if she even shape-shifted into Sephiroth at all, or is simply projecting a visual illusion of him unto the characters to hide her true form.

If anything, things just get muddier with the vague Japanese (Japanese is a wishy-washy language by any standard =P ) on top of the English localization.
If anything, I'm completely lost as to what the authors really intended with the entire Jenova/Sephiroth lore at this point, and that certainly doesn't improve my overall opinion of the writing.

It really just seems as if they threw this all together because "hey, it's cool and confusing and a nice set-up to our giant plot-twist!" with little to no concern for whether or not the lore would make any semblance of sense.

 

[Starling]

Considering one of the Sephiroth clones turned into a two-headed dragon/snake thing and that one of the Jenova fights is with one of its shapeshifted severed arms, Jenova definitely has shapeshifting abilities. The shapeshifting and virus properties are probably related, actually.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

That, and it goes along with Sephiroth's statement that "The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova." For that matter, Ifalna does say Jenova itself looked like the dead relatives -- not just that it projected illusions of them via some spell.

Mayhap that's too literal a reading of "その姿," but at this point, yes, the goal post has been shifted anyway, so I don't mind shifting it a different way. Besides, if we're discounting everything Ifalna says along with everything Sephiroth says no matter how perfectly it all lines up with later material, well, I don't know why we don't just say that nothing can be confidently established about anything, whether it be the Lifestream, Holy, Cloud's identity or Jenova. You could argue that anything we learn about any of it doesn't originate from a 100% reliable source.

 

[hian]

That, and it goes along with Sephiroth's statement that "The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova." For that matter, Ifalna does say Jenova itself looked like the dead relatives -- not just that it projected illusions of them via some spell.

Mayhap that's too literal a reading of "その姿," but at this point, yes, the goal post has been shifted anyway, so I don't mind shifting it a different way. Besides, if we're discounting everything Ifalna says along with everything Sephiroth says no matter how perfectly it all lines up with later material, well, I don't know why we don't just say that nothing can be confidently established about anything, whether it be the Lifestream, Holy, Cloud's identity or Jenova. You could argue that anything we learn about any of it doesn't originate from a 100% reliable source.

That wasn't the point I was making - not that we should discount what Ifalna said entirely and I certainly don't see that as extending to Sephiroth or other characters.
What I was questioning is to what extent Ifalna would know Jenova in specific, and now looking at the writing of the original in Japanese, how extremely ambiguous Jenova's abilities and nature really is - which again is not something it would make a lot of sense to have Ifalna relate.

I still think my point about the sword stands though. With everything being said, the plot most definitely does not lends itself to explaining why the Masamune is retaining its shape after having been left in the corpse of the president through appeals to Jenova.
If we appeal to summoning by magic, and imagine that summoned objects stick around indefinitely we can.

I'll grant that.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

So, this is especially interesting.

In the video that IGN just put out with the collection of all the CG cutscenes in part 1 of the Final Fantasy 7 event in Mobius, & it states that all of the assets used for the event are ripped from the Final Fantasy 7 Remake currently in development. But as we saw in the initial trailers, this Cloud is using the Compilation Buster Sword, and not the one we've currently seen in other Remake gameplay.

Either that means that the initial Remake design was scrapped (which seems incredibly unlikely given that both the Mobius & Remake trailers were released on Dec 5th, 2015), or both versions of the Buster Sword are currently existing assets in the Remake (which makes the most sense).

Also, IGN's video offers us a ton of other points of view to potentially compare both designs in more detail since they're allegedly utilizing the same models, we should be able to make accurate comparisons between them since we know they ought to be the same assets and there won't (or at least shouldn't be) any scaling differences between them.

I'll likely get around to matching poses and shots between the two when I can, but it's gonna be a really busy couple weeks for me, so I might not have time to get to it in the more efficient way that I normally would.





X

 

[Tashasaurous]

So, this is especially interesting.

In the video that IGN just put out with the collection of all the CG cutscenes in part 1 of the Final Fantasy 7 event in Mobius, & it states that all of the assets used for the event are ripped from the Final Fantasy 7 Remake currently in development. But as we saw in the initial trailers, this Cloud is using the Compilation Buster Sword, and not the one we've currently seen in other Remake gameplay.

Either that means that the initial Remake design was scrapped (which seems incredibly unlikely given that both the Mobius & Remake trailers were released on Dec 5th, 2015), or both versions of the Buster Sword are currently existing assets in the Remake (which makes the most sense).

Also, IGN's video offers us a ton of other points of view to potentially compare both designs in more detail since they're allegedly utilizing the same models, we should be able to make accurate comparisons between them since we know they ought to be the same assets and there won't (or at least shouldn't be) any scaling differences between them.

I'll likely get around to matching poses and shots between the two when I can, but it's gonna be a really busy couple weeks for me, so I might not have time to get to it in the more efficient way that I normally would.X

As much as I'd like to agree with both theories, I think this was more of an accidental error or for Mobius uses. Or maybe they are gonna connect the Remake with the Compilation. Unlikely, but you never know.

Square's and Nomura are very unpredictable.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

@X:
Beat you to it.


@Tashasaurous:
How are you still saying "you never know"?

 

[Tashasaurous]

@Tashasaurous: How are you still saying "you never know"?

Because the future is always unpredictable and Square doesn't tell us everything every single day. Plus, assuming or just coming to a conclusion at something like this doesn't always mean it's right.