Before Crisis is canon but shoddy.

[Obsidian Fire]

To be fair... Bugenhagen is really bad at telling Red XIII stuff he should know. To the point it almost feels like he's purposely sabotaging Red XIII in certain ways in the OG. So him... being really bad at it in BC is kinda par for the course.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yeah.

Seto, being a "traitor" for example?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

He was afraid of something in that chapter, though. He was anxious about Dineh/Dinne going into that ritual chamber, and thought he should do it instead of her. I guess I'll have to watch it again but if I remember, he feared for her safety.

He didn't want them to do the ritual because he wouldn't see Dinne for three years until she came out. He doesn't say anything about taking her role in her place, though (he couldn't have anyway: going into the shrine is the female's role).

Lol, I mean word choice aside, Bugenhagen is telling Dineh is out there waiting for him.

That's just it: he shouldn't need telling. He's known where she is, and he's been back in Cosmo Canyon for a while around other people who know where she is.

Added to all that, this is pretty obviously some kind of fertility ritual, so ... just ... agh.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It definitely needs better dialogue and scripting.

I wonder what in the world could cause such a weird and confusing type of writing.... It really makes me believe BC didn't use the same writers each episode and just had some loose creative oversight from the main scenario writers. These weird instances permeate BC and it's just odd and unnecessary.

 

[Odysseus]

I think it will be telling if Red still claims to be "the last of his kind" in the Remake or not. Remake already doesn't quite line up with how BC ends (the Turks were in Pres Shinra's office when he found out about the Mako reactor being infiltrated) so it seems like they're not being too beholden to what happens there.

 

[Torrie]

One intricate similarity to the Remake that I noticed (and Dashing David has made an entire video talking about it, so I'll just recycle my own comment) is that when you defeat Zirconade, it dilutes into numerous shiny particles, which Aerith mixes up with snow. So the Whispers exploding into flying golden particles could be either an homage to BC (especially keeping in mind that the battle takes place at the end of the highway too) or simply part of the lore where all huge monstrous entities are supposed to always disembody in such a way. With SE, we never know

 

[Clement Rage]

"Another female of your species exists" may be distinct from "you must mate" in some circumstances.

I don't think we really needed an explanation of where Red found his mate in the ending. It's 500 years later. If they made a sequel to FF7 twenty years down the line and Yuffie had unexplained children, we wouldn't be wondering 'but wait, how could that have happened? Plot hole!' In the intervening 500 years, he found at least one other member of his species somewhere on the planet. Rocket science it is not.

I don't really understand re Cloud. On one hand, he 'deserves' a cameo because he's a main character in a different game, but on the other hand, they don't have to stay true to that story?

Sephiroth, Aeris, and Zack make sense. The rest are varying degrees of implausible.

MPs guard Shinra executives. And Cloud was an MP. So that means he guards Shinra executives. Running into Cloud doing a job he would be doing on a regular basis makes sense.

This doesn't follow for me. There are presumably thousands of Shinra soldiers, not all of them get anywhere near the execs (In the OG it was plausible that Cloud had never been to HQ or met Hojo). The idea that of all the thousands of soldiers, the only one they ever happen to take note of enough to learn the name of happens to be the one with a grand destiny ahead of him stretches credibility a lot, especially since they apparently never tell anyone when he becomes a dangerous terrorist.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It's fiction. Fantasy. There's zero expectation for it to shed narrative integrity to somehow stick true to statistical probability and introduce Mr. Poor Whats-his-face and waste a chapter on someone we'll never see again and care even less to.

Yes, Cloud is the MP who would be assigned to protect the Shinra Scientist important to the plot because he himself is important to the plot and is the main character who's popular and people want to see a glimpse of in the past. That's the point of a cameo. What the hell would be the sense of having MPs work with the Turks and not using Cloud?

As for Red XIII finding a partner after stating emphatically he's the last of his species, I guess he's just stupid then. I guess we can just continually undermine any sense of credibility or knowledge he has by just having every declaration he makes proven wrong over and over.

 

[ForceStealer]

As for Red XIII finding a partner after stating emphatically he's the last of his species, I guess he's just stupid then.

Perhaps, but less stupid than he is if he says that after meeting another of his kind and knowing exactly where she went

 

[Clement Rage]

It's a planet, it's not too unlikely he found a lost colony somewhere he didn't know about.

If we can disregard probability completely because a story is fantasy, why hold it to any other standard of narrative integrity? Why complain about continuity errors or characterisation? After all, it's just fantasy.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Excusing continuity errors are not the functional equivalent to fixating on some rigid adherence to probability at the expense of the story. If you somehow think ignoring Cloud as the likely and most natural cameo in the story about Shinra fighting AVALANCHE is the proper course and we should have gotten some nobody stand in... That's terrible writing. You're wasting nararative potential to stay true to numbers, but hey, good job on earning reality points?

No amount of adherence to reality based probability is going to excuse or elevate a wasted chapter on a hypothetical character that we know is going to functionally mean jackshit. Staying true to "probability" doesn't make something good. Fiction requires coordinated plot writing to work, a straight line of consistent and satisfying reveals, not just statistically guided chance elements that mirror reality and offer unsatisfying dead ends.

Relying on Red XIII to just be wrong about something he should at least functionally have some awareness of, because hey, they gotta be there somewhere, leaves him to be seen as melodramatic and grossly misinformed. At least BC has him believe his other species member to be deposed for some reason, albeit one that's poorly explained. Red's species is localized to Cosmo Canyon so unless they're hiding under rocks... He clearly would just be wrong.

 

[Roger]

"Another female of your species exists" may be distinct from "you must mate" in some circumstances.

I don't think we really needed an explanation of where Red found his mate in the ending. It's 500 years later. If they made a sequel to FF7 twenty years down the line and Yuffie had unexplained children, we wouldn't be wondering 'but wait, how could that have happened? Plot hole!' In the intervening 500 years, he found at least one other member of his species somewhere on the planet. Rocket science it is not.

I don't really understand re Cloud. On one hand, he 'deserves' a cameo because he's a main character in a different game, but on the other hand, they don't have to stay true to that story?

Sephiroth, Aeris, and Zack make sense. The rest are varying degrees of implausible.

By that logic Zack doesn't make sense either. Zack was just one SOLDIER amongst many at the time, nothing neccesitated that he appeared in Before Crisis before beyond him becoming significant to the OG story for reasons unrelated to his appearance here. Sephiroth and Aerith hold unique roles in the FFVII world, Zack didn't until he arrived in Nibelheim.

This doesn't follow for me. There are presumably thousands of Shinra soldiers, not all of them get anywhere near the execs (In the OG it was plausible that Cloud had never been to HQ or met Hojo). The idea that of all the thousands of soldiers, the only one they ever happen to take note of enough to learn the name of happens to be the one with a grand destiny ahead of him stretches credibility a lot, especially since they apparently never tell anyone when he becomes a dangerous terrorist.

Cloud did meet people over the course of two years. He worked with and for people in the Shinra organisation. These people were never meant to be presumed dead already when he became a terrorist. The Before Crisis Turks live in complete hiding in the OG and have no reason to volunteer information to their enemies, plenty of people Cloud worked with do not. And nothing is saying Cloud is the only MP whose name ever became known to the Turks during their time working with Shinra. This is just the one that the audience of this story would most be interested in. There is a element of conservation of detail in ANY work of fiction that has ever been written, you know.

 

[Clement Rage]

It's a sliding scale, you try to find the balance between the two pitfalls at either end of the path. It's not automatically bad writing to have important one off characters any more than it's automatically bad writing to have main characters doing important things. Either can be bad writing taken to extremes. Too many unlikely coincidences in one story can lead to people calling it 'contrived'. Too strict an adherence to lead characters doing everything can hurt worldbuilding, as your audience is left wondering 'does anyone but these eight people do anything in this world?'

Your justification for not including Cloud being terrible writing is based on the idea that the audience would want a cameo. By itself, that's not enough. Audiences don't always want what's best for the story. That's why 'fan service' sometimes has a bad name.

By that logic Zack doesn't make sense either.

True. Okay, add Zack to the 'improbable' list. But the more often you include improbable things, the more you risk veering into contrivance.

There is a element of conservation of detail in ANY work of fiction that has ever been written, you know.

Of course. Like any other feature of writing, you can lean too heavily or too lightly on it, case by case.

 

[Makoeyes987]

A story about Shinra that follows their conflict against AVALANCHE involving MPs and SOLDIER naturally lends itself to cameos of Cloud and Zack, to the point not having them mentioned seems suspect. Why would you not expand the story and history of the central characters connected to Shinra and make the most of it?

The proper argument would be why wouldn't they be included in the story, if they are present and known participants. You haven't given any explanation why it would be bad other than a specious statistical argument which fiction obviously doesn't adhere to. So you gotta do better than that. Cloud is central to most of FFVII, so why would the segment of the prequel story that involves him not include a cameo? What is the "contrivance?"

 

[Roger]

It's a sliding scale, you try to find the balance between the two pitfalls at either end of the path. It's not automatically bad writing to have important one off characters any more than it's automatically bad writing to have main characters doing important things. Either can be bad writing taken to extremes. Too many unlikely coincidences in one story can lead to people calling it 'contrived'. Too strict an adherence to lead characters doing everything can hurt worldbuilding, as your audience is left wondering 'does anyone but these eight people do anything in this world?'

Your justification for not including Cloud being terrible writing is based on the idea that the audience would want a cameo. By itself, that's not enough. Audiences don't always want what's best for the story. That's why 'fan service' sometimes has a bad name.



True. Okay, add Zack to the 'improbable' list. But the more often you include improbable things, the more you risk veering into contrivance.



Of course. Like any other feature of writing, you can lean too heavily or too lightly on it, case by case.

Before Crisis gets mileage out of the Cloud, Zack and Sephiroth appearances. Nibelheim and the chase for Zack and Cloud are part of the story of Before Crisis that bridge the years it encompasses and are a far better frame of reference for the player then timestamping chapters with "one year later" or "five years later". Not everyone that plays Before Crisis was meant to have read an Ultimania or a FFVII fan timeline first you know. They weren't one and done cameos. If that's bad then maybe telling a story in the FFVII world in general is bad because you aren't giving it a lot of rope to mess around with here.

Creating Lazard and Veldt as members of the Executive Board whose positions stop existing by the time we reach previously established canon so we can have story about Shinra employees that had a more reasonable boss then Heidegger is a contrivance. Telling a story about former colleagues of Cloud which we always knew he must have had really isn't much of one.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Relying on Red XIII to just be wrong about something he should at least functionally have some awareness of, because hey, they gotta be there somewhere, leaves him to be seen as melodramatic and grossly misinformed.

Melodramatic and grossly misinformative is how he ends up coming off.

Better to have just left him as the original game presented and left him for almost a decade: simply incorrect because "it's a wide world" (as Bugenhagen said), filled with life and renewed hope -- and so there was a mate for him out there (as even Bugenhagen said there may yet be).

 

[Clement Rage]

Creating Lazard and Veldt as members of the Executive Board whose positions stop existing by the time we reach previously established canon so we can have story about Shinra employees that had a more reasonable boss then Heidegger is a contrivance. Telling a story about former colleagues of Cloud which we always knew he must have had really isn't much of one.

What's the contrivance? They have different jobs, Heidegger is the secretary of Defence/Homeland Security, Lazard is the head of SOCOM, and Veld runs the Secret Service (very loosely). They're all under Heidegger, but head specific units with their own influence. I don't think we see either at the Exec meetings unless their specific responsibilities are relevant.

All these things have benefits and disadvantages, it's not some kind of binary choice.

The benefit of the cameo is fan service, the downside is making the worldbuilding less convincing.

Ultimanias are take or leave for me, if they're necessary to understand the core game, then you've messed up.

The narrative weight that comes out of the Nibelheim incident all comes after Sephiroth's fall. Have the Turks show up after the fact with Nibelheim burning is enough for this story, the other parts just cause problems.

What former colleagues of Cloud do you mean?

A story about Shinra that follows their conflict against AVALANCHE involving MPs and SOLDIER naturally lends itself to cameos of Cloud and Zack, to the point not having them mentioned seems suspect. Why would you not expand the story and history of the central characters connected to Shinra and make the most of it?

The proper argument would be why wouldn't they be included in the story, if they are present and known participants. You haven't given any explanation why it would be bad other than a specious statistical argument which fiction obviously doesn't adhere to. So you gotta do better than that. Cloud is central to most of FFVII, so why would the segment of the prequel story that involves him not include a cameo? What is the "contrivance?"

I mean, these are all writing choices, they don't have to do any of these things. I'm not seeing why your way is better. You seem to be arguing two conflicting things, in that Cloud is so important that a cameo is necessary, but that they don't have to stay true to his story as previously set up. I think his story honestly works better for all these characters if his name never comes up in story (showing concern for a nameless, faceless infantryman that Zack cares about is a step up from being concerned about only people they personally know.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I see your point, Clem. I agree with you that giving Lazard and Veld new posts in Shinra management was not a contrivance, just world-building (personally I've always wondered why we don't see the CFO, the Director of Human Resources, and the Directors of Marketing and Communications, at the Board meeting, but the fact is, we only see the Directors who are relevant to the story.)

But I disagree with you about Cloud. It was a marketing decision. Of course the Turks over the course of the years must have partnered up with many different soldiers and SOLDIERs. They could have shown us any of those incidents; after all, they invented Essai and Sebastian for the set of episodes in the Northern Continent with Zack, so it's not as if they can't invent new characters when they feel the need. Essai and Sebastian were invented as character revelation for Zack. But the vast majority of people who bought this game wanted to see and play with Cloud, not some no-name random NPC whom they neither know nor care about. For every one player who thinks Kunsel is a valuble addition to the Compilation universe, there are 10,000 who couldn't care less about him. FFVII fans would have felt cheated if Cloud hadn't had a cameo. They would have wanted to know, "Where's Cloud? What's he doing while this story is going on?" So the game showed us a little scene from his life as an infantryman.

In Cloud's chapter he never goes into the Shinra Building. It plays out entirely on a train.

 

[Clement Rage]

The trailers for BC are on Youtube. Cloud's not in them, it's all badass Turks with flippy phones. He would only be noticeably absent if they included everyone else. Which they didn't have to do either.

CC managed to not include, Red, Cid, Reeve, Barret and so on without any fandom revolt. They don't even have appearances from Heidegger, Scarlet, President Shinra, Rufus, Veld, etc, which might have made sense. There wasn't any fandom revolt for only including actually relevant characters, (although Yuffie was pushing it.) Aeris (pre-existing link to Zack), Cloud, and Tifa (already part of Nibelheim incident) were necessary, but they didn't need to have Vincent randomly show up for fear of cheating the fanbase. And that was the correct call.

Fan service is not a bad word by itself, but the balance has to be found between 'this would be cool' and 'this would make sense'. If your only reason for including someone is fan-service, and it otherwise causes problems for your story, maybe it's worth thinking again?

From Cloud's perspective, this is a horribly traumatic day where he is the sole survivor of his guard detail. Guy just can't catch a break.

 

[Roger]

What's the contrivance? They have different jobs, Heidegger is the secretary of Defence/Homeland Security, Lazard is the head of SOCOM, and Veld runs the Secret Service (very loosely). They're all under Heidegger, but head specific units with their own influence. I don't think we see either at the Exec meetings unless their specific responsibilities are relevant.

The only Exec meetings we see that took place when they were brought into canon and working for Shinra included them. After they were gone Heidegger took over. In your comparison Zack got an email telling us Heidegger became head of SOCOM as well as secretary of Defense. Both the Turks and SOLDIER had Heidegger to answer to directly instead of their own after these character fulfilled the narrative purpose they, along with their positions in Shinra were invented for.

All these things have benefits and disadvantages, it's not some kind of binary choice.

The benefit of the cameo is fan service, the downside is making the worldbuilding less convincing.

Ultimanias are take or leave for me, if they're necessary to understand the core game, then you've messed up.

Exactly. In absence of Ultimania or timelines or any appearance by any familiar character beyond Tseng the immortal fans don't have a lot to hold unto to place things. And the benefit of the whole game is fan service. If you don't want to feature stuff from Final Fantasy VII, don't you out of your way to make a game set in the world of Final Fantasy VII. Once you do, fans that purchase the game expect some things from Final Fantasy VII to occasionally show up in the game.

The narrative weight that comes out of the Nibelheim incident all comes after Sephiroth's fall. Have the Turks show up after the fact with Nibelheim burning is enough for this story, the other parts just cause problems.

There's no narrative weight if the Turk character doesn't know these characters or what happened.

What former colleagues of Cloud do you mean?

ANY former colleagues, you really thought that because Sephiroth and Zack are the only colleagues we are introduced to in the OG means that Zack and Sephiroth are the only people in the Shinra organisation that Cloud was ever introduced to when working there?

 

[Clement Rage]

Sorry for delay, I was distracted.

There are no onscreen executive meetings in CC at all. I don't remember every detail of the BC ones, but were there any Veld was at that didn't directly concern his duties?

There are plenty of aspects of FF7's world in BC. Concepts and characters that actually make sense to show up, like Mako reactors, Sister Ray, Most of the Executives and so on. They don't need to bump into every member of future AVALANCHE as well.

BC is a small game that doesn't have the time or inclination to juggle all these things, so they're best left out. Including them all led to a bunch of problems that could have been easily avoided.

There's no narrative weight if the Turk character doesn't know these characters or what happened.

There can be, if you write it properly. The idea of them having to choose whether to hand live subjects over to Hojo is still there. Could be an interesting contrast to the Costa del Sol chapter when they actually find out what happens to the people they've been handing over.

I mean, of course Cloud had former colleagues, but we don't get their stories, do we? He very weirdly has no reaction to the rest of the guard detail being slaughtered. That story might have been interesting, but they don't do that, because they want to do a cameo with no inconvenient worldbuilding attached.

 

[Roger]

Sorry for delay, I was distracted.

There are no onscreen executive meetings in CC at all. I don't remember every detail of the BC ones, but were there any Veld was at that didn't directly concern his duties?

The only exec meetings we see is the one that concerns stuff that happens in the Turks game and thus concerns Veldt yes. That's not a reason to believe he and Lazard alone of all the Directors would be excluded from meeting that do not concern their department.

There are plenty of aspects of FF7's world in BC. Concepts and characters that actually make sense to show up, like Mako reactors, Sister Ray, Most of the Executives and so on. They don't need to bump into every member of future AVALANCHE as well.

I agree they do not need bump into every member of AVALANCHE, there's no reason for to feel they need to never interact with even one of them however. The Turks 3 or 4 rungs down the echelons of command don't need to interact with Sephiroth or Zack, or Rufus, or any of the Executives any more or less then Cloud.

BC is a small game that doesn't have the time or inclination to juggle all these things, so they're best left out. Including them all led to a bunch of problems that could have been easily avoided.

There can be, if you write it properly. The idea of them having to choose whether to hand live subjects over to Hojo is still there. Could be an interesting contrast to the Costa del Sol chapter when they actually find out what happens to the people they've been handing over.

BC being a small episodic cellphone game makes it much easier to do small and quick encounter with a character we are already familiar with then a dialogue heavy morality play.

I mean, of course Cloud had former colleagues, but we don't get their stories, do we? He very weirdly has no reaction to the rest of the guard detail being slaughtered. That story might have been interesting, but they don't do that, because they want to do a cameo with no inconvenient worldbuilding attached.

Sephiroth reacts to it rather then Cloud or Zack, that doesn't mean Cloud or Zack never react or display awareness of their collegues or vice versa during their time in Shinra at all. Absence of detail in a certain area in the original game does not mean no detail can ever exist there at all. If you have objection to cameos with inconvenient worldbuilding attached you got bigger fish to fry then Cloud knowing a Turk who stopped working for Shinra by the time he started working against it.

 

[Clement Rage]

The only exec meetings we see is the one that concerns stuff that happens in the Turks game and thus concerns Veldt yes. That's not a reason to believe he and Lazard alone of all the Directors would be excluded from meeting that do not concern their department.

My understanding was that they weren't directors, but headed sub-units of Heidegger's dept. We never see Lazard at any meeting of the directors, the idea that he had a seat at that table is just speculation.

I agree they do not need bump into every member of AVALANCHE, there's no reason for to feel they need to never interact with even one of them however. The Turks 3 or 4 rungs down the echelons of command don't need to interact with Sephiroth or Zack, or Rufus, or any of the Executives any more or less then Cloud.

I'm not on some kind of crusade against cameos. But if they cause problems for the story, they might be worth excluding. There's no inherent problem with Aeris, or Azul, or Rufus, or the President (bodyguarding VIPs is the kind of duty they would get.) Rufus is necessary for the story they're telling, and Sephiroth has a narrative purpose (somebody who could take Elfe when Player Turk cannot.)

Once introducing Sephiroth, they probably have to acknowledge him leaving the story, but they did that with Zack by having it in pre-chapter text. (The Turks tried to save him, but were too late.)

It's noticeable how many of the small cameos manage to cause problems for the story going forward.

Cloud as unknown faceless infantryman might have worked. Cloud as a super infantry that Player Turk has specifically taken note of and uniquely learned the name and history of causes problems for the story going forward.

ephiroth reacts to it rather then Cloud or Zack, that doesn't mean Cloud or Zack never react or display awareness of their collegues or vice versa during their time in Shinra at all.

Sephiroth wasn't in the Rayleigh chapter?

 

[Roger]

My understanding was that they weren't directors, but headed sub-units of Heidegger's dept. We never see Lazard at any meeting of the directors, the idea that he had a seat at that table is just speculation.

We don't see any executive meetings in Crisis Core at all, Before Crisis only shows the portrait for the person talking. To say he is absent of executive meeting during the period he was Director (which is his title, no questuion about that) is blind speculation, just like Palmer or Scarlet.

What we do know is that there's a reorganisation after Lazard left:

NPCS on the SOLDIER floor dialogue:

SOLDIER 2nd Class: Did you hear Director Lazard's gone missing? I don't know if
anyone saw that coming! SOLDIER's chain of command is just a mess without him.
So, there are actual discussions taking place about merging SOLDIER with the
Security Department...

[Talk with him again.]

SOLDIER 2nd Class: Do you know who becomes our boss, then? Director Heidegger!
Think about it! That dust-sneezing fogey's hardly a replacement for Lazard! Why
oh why couldn't it be Director Scarlet?

SOLDIER 3rd Class: Director Lazard is the best boss we can have, considering the
bosses in other departments. Heidegger, Scarlet, Palmer, Reeve... If any of them
were my boss, I'd have been long gone.

The status quo in FFVII OG is that SOLDIER operates under Heidegger, there's never a suggestion that it was ever otherwise, but a different preexisting situation was created purely to have Lazard instead of Heidegger, it's the same with Veldt.

I'm not on some kind of crusade against cameos. But if they cause problems for the story, they might be worth excluding. There's no inherent problem with Aeris, or Azul, or Rufus, or the President (bodyguarding VIPs is the kind of duty they would get.) Rufus is necessary for the story they're telling, and Sephiroth has a narrative purpose (somebody who could take Elfe when Player Turk cannot.)

Nero, Rosso, the Restrictors, Genesis, or Weiss could have fulfilled that role as well. They aren't as popular or wellknown as Sephiroth, but in universe they couid have fulfilled this role just fine. Picking him for this job because he's popular and wellknown is fine, just like Zack, or Cloud.

Cloud as unknown faceless infantryman might have worked. Cloud as a super infantry that Player Turk has specifically taken note of and uniquely learned the name and history of causes problems for the story going forward.

He's not uniquely superpowered. Do you think Cid or Yuffie or Tifa are uniquely superpowered because they take on WEAPONs, a much bigger threat then AVALANCHES Ravens? They aren't. There are over a hundred of other apprentices of Zangan in the FFVII world, we just don't need to know about them. The Turks themselves who Cloud helps and are taking down the AVALANCHE Ravens a lot better aren't superpowered either. The idea that because Cloud is superpowered later on, he can't be anything prior whereas people that never get superpowers never need reasons to be impressive is completely illogical. Nor are you suppose to think Cloud is the only MP whose name Zack or the player turk or Sephiroth ever learns, we just don't need to know about other MPs they work with.

Sephiroth wasn't in the Rayleigh chapter?[/QUOTE]

I thought you meant the bridge drop incident.

 

[Clement Rage]

Now I think we're just misunderstanding each other.

You appear to be right re Lazard, unnecessary as that explanation is. We never see the Director of SOLDIER in the OG, they could have just said 'there is a director of the unit, we never saw the SOLDIER floor in the OG because it wasn't relevant.

Nero, Rosso, the Restrictors, Genesis, or Weiss could have fulfilled that role as well. They aren't as popular or wellknown as Sephiroth, but in universe they couid have fulfilled this role just fine. Picking him for this job because he's popular and wellknown is fine, just like Zack, or Cloud.

All of Deepground and the Restrictors are out because they can't show their faces at this point in the timeline without betraying Deepground's existence to people that can't know about it. Genesis, maybe but what the scene is going for is 'holy crap, AVALANCHE's best fighter can fight Shinra's best on equal terms', so they need Shinra's bestest superhero to establish how good Elfe is.

I didn't mean that Cloud was uniquely superpowered in universe, but narratively, every other trooper that works with the Turks in BC is slaughtered. It's a plot point that they don't typically know troopers's names, because Cloud takes offence specifically because of Player Turk's dismissive attitude. It's a wink at the audience that hurts the story by making Cloud stand out from other troopers when the crux of his OG story is that he was nobody noticeable before Nibelheim happened.