Crisis Core....Am I supposed to hate Zack?

[Cat on Mars]

That's true, but how we're "meant" to see him isn't how we have to see him. The story presents him as a heroic figure, but when you really examine Zack's actions he doesn't act in a very heroic way all that often. His conflicts with Angeal and Genesis are more personal than anything, and he fails to save banora or Nibelhiem from Shinra, too. The most heroic thing he does is save Cloud, and even that inadvertently messed with Cloud's head because of some poorly phrased dying words.

He just can't do anything right, let alone for the right reasons, it's his curse.

 

[Rydeen]

That's true, but how we're "meant" to see him isn't how we have to see him. The story presents him as a heroic figure, but when you really examine Zack's actions he doesn't act in a very heroic way all that often. His conflicts with Angeal and Genesis are more personal than anything, and he fails to save banora or Nibelhiem from Shinra, too. The most heroic thing he does is save Cloud, and even that inadvertently messed with Cloud's head because of some poorly phrased dying words.

There's definitely a tragic dramatic irony in there that I can get behind. The heroic archetype saves no one except for the least heroic character, who goes on to be the actual hero. Not sure if that was their intention or not.

 

[Odysseus]

I think part of the issue is that, due to CC's limited ability to show Zack's life, we never see him doing stuff like saving people from monsters or stopping terrorists or whatever. That's all stuff you need to just assume he did off screen.

There's definitely a tragic dramatic irony in there that I can get behind. The heroic archetype saves no one except for the least heroic character, who goes on to be the actual hero. Not sure if that was their intention or not.

Like, if they had actually focused on that Crisis Core would be amazing. I don't think that was their intention though.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I thought it was their intention.

 

[Torrie]

The heroic archetype saves no one except for the least heroic character, who goes on to be the actual hero. Not sure if that was their intention or not.

This is actually what I love about Cloud as well as his duality with Zack (i.e. "Am I not able to save anyone?" as a recurring theme), but dwelling on this subject would probably be too off-topic here.

 

[Cat on Mars]

I thought it was their intention.

CC's script is so atrocious that the main theme goes largely unnoticed, their minds weren't really into that story.


I thought their intention was shoving Gackt into a game and lobotomizing Aerith.

 

[looneymoon]

I think it was their intention, but it's severely undercut by an amazing dose of sappiness

 

[Obsidian Fire]

when you really examine Zack's actions he doesn't act in a very heroic way all that often. His conflicts with Angeal and Genesis are more personal than anything, and he fails to save banora or Nibelhiem from Shinra, too. The most heroic thing he does is save Cloud, and even that inadvertently messed with Cloud's head because of some poorly phrased dying words.

Let's not pretend the "heroes" of the OG are more altruistic than Zack is. Everyone in the OG has personal reasons to go against Sephiroth (or Shinra). It has... a lot less to do with "saving the world" and more "getting back at Sephiroth". Cloud admits as much to everyone in the last Highwind scene. In fact, he tells everyone else to leave and find their own personal reason to save the world and if they can't... to not come back. The OG completely goes against the idea of "a greater good" as being Cloud and Co.'s motivation for... the world being saved. They all have personal reasons for doing what they do. Zack having personal reasons to try to save Angeal and Gensis is right in line with the OG's stance on why people fight.

I'd go so far to say that CC is... right in line with the OG's take on heroism here. It's not until Zack has a personal stake in the game that he can save anyone for real (Genesis and Cloud). While Angeal who has a more traditional altruism can't even save himself. Sephiroth is the same way where it's not until he finds something personal to fight for that he really can fight at his full potential. Genesis... heh... nothing has ever not been personal for him.

No one in FFVII is traditionally heroic or altruistic (except maybe Aerith)... and yet they end up saving the world any way for their own personal/selfish reasons. Cloud in the OG has one of the best "let's save the world for selfish reasons" speeches I've ever come across. And the game's take on this is that it's totally fine.

Cloud
What I meant was...
What are we all fighting for? I want us all to understand that.
Save the planet... for the future of the planet... Sure, that's all fine.
But really, is that really how it is?
For me, this is a personal feud.
I want to beat Sephiroth. And settle my past.
Saving the planet just happens to be part of that.
I've been thinking.
I think we all are fighting for ourselves.
For ourselves... and that someone... something... whatever it is, that's important to us.
That's what we're fighting for.
That's why we keep up this battle for the planet.

Barret
You're right...
It sounds cool sayin' it's to save the planet.
But I was the one who blew up that Mako reactor......
Lookin' back on it now, I can see that wasn't the right way to do things.
I made a lot of friends and innocent bystanders suffer...
...At first, it was revenge against Shinra. For attackin' my town.
But now......
Yeah. I'm fightin' for Marlene.
For Marlene... For Marlene's future...
Yeah... I guess I want to save the planet for Marlene's sake...

Cloud
Go and see her. Make sure you're right, and come back.
All of you. Get off the ship and find out your reasons for yourselves.
I want you to make sure. Then I want you to come back.

Cid
Maybe ain't none of us'll come back.
Meteor's gonna kill us all anyway. Let's just forget any useless struggling!

Cloud
I know why I'm fighting.
I'm fighting to save the planet, and that's that.
But besides that, there's something personal too...
A very personal memory that I have.
What about you all?
I want all of you to find that something within yourselves.
If you don't find it, then that's okay too.
You can't fight without a reason, right?
So, I won't hold it against you if you don't come back.

I think part of the issue is that, due to CC's limited ability to show Zack's life, we never see him doing stuff like saving people from monsters or stopping terrorists or whatever. That's all stuff you need to just assume he did off screen.

He actually doesn't do this off screen, at least, not completely. There's 300 missions in the game that are essentially "what Zack does when he's not doing the MSQ". The problem is that CC was made for the PSP, so they are all essentially reskins of each other in similar areas for all of one type of mission. So there's tons of repetition with just monster variations in them. They also aren't relevant to the plot. But they do exist, so we do have some idea of what Zack was doing when he wasn't chasing down Angeal and Sephiroth. They probably are a pretty good thing to look at for what else SOLDIER might have been up to though.

Spoiler: Mission Types

Shinra Electric Company

mainly having Shinra's weapons/troops go against Zack to see how good they are​

Monster Research Project

Midgar has a monster problem (yes, it was caused by Hojo's experiments escaping)... and Shinra needs to keep a lid on it somehow...​

also keeping the monster population down in areas all over the world​

Genesis's Forces

that army of Genesis Copies needs to be dealt with somehow​

To End the War with Wutai

Wutai might have surrendered... but that didn't mean their army didn't stop being an issue​

Hojo's Laboratory

Hojo needs to get combat data for his experiments somehow...​

early ones include Summons (looks at how Summons are gotten in Remake)​

a lot of these are implied to be happening while Hojo had Zack and Cloud after Nibelheim​

Seeking Precious Items

people pay Zack to go Indian Jones around the world​

people who employ him include... Midgar City Development Department, City Planning Dept. (don't ask me why there's two departments that sound so similar)
a lot of these are various Shinra departments sending Zack out to steal items from other compteteors the departments somehow have... including Don Corneo!​

Seeking Priceless Items

more confirmation that stealing items from Shinra makes good money and that Shinra would really like their stolen items back!
Shinra has a lot of weird ways of finding items... including experiments in ESP and looking for rare item creators and recruiting them​

Zack, the Materia Hunter

starts out as Shinra sending Zack out to find materia since they can somehow scan for it remotely​

by the middile it turns out Yuffie has somehow getting Zack's (and Shinra's) emails and is getting them to send Zack to retrieve materia for her​

by the end, Yuffie is going out to dangerous locations and Zack is being sent out after her just in case she gets into trouble... and because her item info is always good​

Great Cavern of Wonders

Shinra is exploring the caves up in the Northern Crater... too bad they're in a race against the Genesis army and Wutai to find whatever is hidden there and Shinra's mecha keep malfunctioning the further in they go... and Hojo released some monsters down there...​

is the location of the optional super-boss, Minerva... yes, the boss form of the thing Genesis sees....​

Mysteries of the World

Shinra would really like to give Zack a proper vacation, but it keeps getting interrupted by all the monsters that keep attacking Costa del Sol​

From the looks of it, a lot of it is training other members of Shinra, killing really hard to kill monsters and hunting down weird resources (often stolen from Shinra in the first place) for Shinra. Nothing too crazy on the surface of it that makes Shinra out to be a den of monsters.​

 

[X-SOLDIER]

...but if don't find peace with this, it will keep bothering me forever. It's the entire "You're my living legacy" thing. Do I misunderstand something culture- or language-wise?

Legacy: (Noun) Something left or handed down by a predecessor

The phrase Zack says in Japanese is: 受け継がれる想い

Uketsugareru – [to be] inherited
Omoi – thoughts/emotions/hopes/wishes/dreams/desires

Zack is leaving the things that he strived to accomplish but hadn't been able to see through in Cloud's hands. This is so that all of the efforts that he's made won't die with him, because they're more important than just him. This is simultaneously in line with the series core themes around when the people you love die, they live on only in your memories, and you take up the parts of them with you that were important to your relationship with them. You inherit what they leave behind. Zack was Cloud's predecessor even in terms of the inheritance of the Buster Sword – which represented the hopes, dreams, and honor that were meant to represent SOLDIER. Cloud is a living legacy of everything that Zack was striving to fight and stand up for.

Tons of old mythology cover inheritance of legacy through obtaining a fallen knight/king's legendary sword, with the Sword in the Stone probably being one of the most well known. Cloud is essentially being gifted the title of an Ex-SOLDIER by being given the Buster Sword, and is taking up Zack's quest the same way that you'd get in any story about a mortally wounded medieval knight.




X

 

[Odysseus]

There's 300 missions in the game that are essentially "what Zack does when he's not doing the MSQ".

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. I know Zack's missions are supposed to be his day job more or less, but accepting them as story-relevant creates a whole load of issues, and at the end of the day you're just exploring empty wastelands with flimsy little excuses to give them some context. I need actual scenes of Zack helping civilians and his comrades, which crisis core has fleetingly few of. Dirge actually does this a lot better, since you have stage missions revolving around Vincent saving people from deepground.

No one in FFVII is traditionally heroic or altruistic (except maybe Aerith)... and yet they end up saving the world any way for their own personal/selfish reasons.

The difference is that none of them have lines like "would you say I became a hero?" The party even had arcs revolving around peeling back the facades they created and showing their true motives, like with Barret at the gold saucer.

 

[Cat on Mars]

No one in FFVII is traditionally heroic or altruistic (except maybe Aerith)

She does things "because Cetra" just like Zack does things "because hero".

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The theme of Crisis Core (for better or worse) is "What makes a Hero a Hero?" Shinra has been marketing Sephiroth out as a hero for... the entirety of the Wutai War. To the point they are saying he did things other people did.

Zack, Cloud and Genesis all wanted to join SOLDIER because they wanted to be a hero like Sephiroth is touted as being a Hero. Angeal just went along with it because that's what his best friend wanted to do. The rest of the game is exploring what a hero is and isn't.

 

[Cat on Mars]

"What makes a Hero a Hero?"

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. I know Zack's missions are supposed to be his day job more or less, but accepting them as story-relevant creates a whole load of issues, and at the end of the day you're just exploring empty wastelands with flimsy little excuses to give them some context. I need actual scenes of Zack helping civilians and his comrades, which crisis core has fleetingly few of. Dirge actually does this a lot better, since you have stage missions revolving around Vincent saving people from deepground.


The difference is that none of them have lines like "would you say I became a hero?" The party even had arcs revolving around peeling back the facades they created and showing their true motives, like with Barret at the gold saucer.

Zack had several scenes in the main quest where he's helping civilians in Midgar. Chasing Genesis Copies away, putting down berserk robots, or just going out of his way to be nice to people. He definitely does a far higher number of civilian rescue as a SOLDIER than Vincent simply preventing civilians in Kalm being put in a storage locker. He also goes out of his way to not kill enemies unless absolutely necessary. There are entire mission scenes and side quests where Zack helps a SOLDIER 3-C by doing his missions for him so he doesn't get fired, and Zack helping Urban Development apparently... Clean out and explore dangerous cluttered areas of Midgar. Like, how much more heroic does he need to be?

And no one has lines like that over heroism because no one actively wants to become a hero. Zack's the only poor, dumb rube who actually was foolish and naive enough to care about that. His child-like innocence and gullibility are a part of his character and it ironically leads him to death. He dies a hero because he lived to be one and that naivety ran up against the reality of FFVII's world and got him killed.

 

[Clement Rage]

Hang on, is it just me that remembers extended sequences of Zack saving random citizenry on the streets of Junon and Midgar? Or those worms that attacked the park? . Ask those people if Zack 'really' saved them or not. Whenever trouble strikes, he goes instantly into 'saving people' mode. Without calculation, without self interest, without asking himself if he can actually win the fight or not.

He chose his dying words poorly, and that may ultimately have not been good for Cloud, but there's only so much eloquence you can expect from someone that has been shot 5000 times.

He's constantly willing to fight and die to protect strangers. The first thing he does on seeing Nibelheim is run into the nearest burning house, and then he goes after Sephiroth knowing it's a losing fight instead of running away.

 

[Odysseus]

I was thinking more along the lines of what Zack does in sector 5, like getting materials to build the 7th Heaven, helping that thief kid, and don corneo's niece over by the playground.

 

[Odysseus]

Also the conversation seems to have shifted from "I wish crisis core showed Zack doing this more" to "Zack never does this stuff he's not a hero." I know Zack helps people, I just think it would have helped Crisis Core's story to show that off more often, but it couldn't because the game was limited by the PSP. I did forget about Junon, that's my bad.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Zack definitely did more of that and then some. He was Jack-of-all-trades helping people in Nibelhiem too, not to mention indulging the kleptomaniacal whims of a young girl searching for materia. At his own expense, even.

 

[Odysseus]

Okay, you know what, yeah. I'll take the L on this one. Zack did help the people.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Zack's kindness and naivety are ironically his greatest weaknesses which is sorta what Lazard alludes to when he says, "Unobtainable dreams are the best kind..."

He's the poor rube who signs up for war actually believing in the myth of the heroic ideals before realizing the horrifying truth of what it actually means. And then dies for it

 

[Odysseus]

Yep, I still just wish the game dug into that more though.

Also you're making me realize how similar CC's side quest structure is to the remake's. There's just designated "side quest time."

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well they're far more expanded in terms of their scope and the people actually move like people

Also, Zack never gets cussed out and called an asshole after doing a quest, or called a bootlicker because he says some quip that is obviously a bad idea. That's a skill only Cloud can claim as his own.

 

[Clement Rage]

About the original leads, by the way, while they do have personal motivations, they are still the kind of people who will throw themselves in front of a monster to save Priscilla, or stand between Weapon and Midgar. Let's not take shades of grey too far.

 

[Odysseus]

Well yeah, I'd say most of the party are fundamentally good people, though none are without their faults. The only one that's a little suspect is Yuffie, and that's mostly just because she's young and immature. I guess Vincent is liable to not give a fuck either, it did take watching Reeve fake-die before his eyes to help the WRO.

 

[Torrie]

The phrase Zack says in Japanese is: 受け継がれる想い

Uketsugareru – [to be] inherited
Omoi – thoughts/emotions/hopes/wishes/dreams/desires

Zack is leaving the things that he strived to accomplish but hadn't been able to see through in Cloud's hands. This is so that all of the efforts that he's made won't die with him, because they're more important than just him. This is simultaneously in line with the series core themes around when the people you love die, they live on only in your memories, and you take up the parts of them with you that were important to your relationship with them. You inherit what they leave behind. Zack was Cloud's predecessor even in terms of the inheritance of the Buster Sword – which represented the hopes, dreams, and honor that were meant to represent SOLDIER. Cloud is a living legacy of everything that Zack was striving to fight and stand up for.

Tons of old mythology cover inheritance of legacy through obtaining a fallen knight/king's legendary sword, with the Sword in the Stone probably being one of the most well known. Cloud is essentially being gifted the title of an Ex-SOLDIER by being given the Buster Sword, and is taking up Zack's quest the same way that you'd get in any story about a mortally wounded medieval knight.

Thank you so much! Especially for quoting the original phrase. I admit, the idea of inheritance, which goes along with medieval legends, definitely explains the situation better and makes it crystal clear.