Fucking hell!
I go to work and you fuckers add 7 pages to the goddamn thread! I had to sit there and watch the train wreck pile up on my cell phone, unable to make a tl;dr post until now.
Deus said:
But before AC I assume?
And before X-2 or The After Years?
Cloud and Seph definitely came from before AC/ACC, and Cecil's definitely from before The After, but I think it's unclear whether Tidus is from before X-2 or after X-2. It's really kind of irrelevant either way.
Mako Eyes said:
That seems like a semantics quibble, man.
Not at all. It's like Ryu said:
Ryushikaze said:
Mako says he's serious because he was going all out to defeat and then kill Cloud, SoS seems to be saying he wasn't 'serious' because he was playing with a defeated opponent before going in for the kill, that he was getting his jollies in first. I don't think these two things contradict with each other. It takes more effort to do what Sephiroth was doing than to go strictly for the kill, after all.
As long as we're talking semantics, though, "going all out" or "taking it seriously" to me means being desperate to win and giving it everything at your disposal. Cloud was desperate to win, was going all out, and laying down everything he had.
Seph was most certainly not. He didn't use any telekinesis on Cloud, instead using it for a thetrical display on a building. He didn't even fire off a single spell, for that matter, or, say, surround him with Negative Lifestream so that he couldn't see -- and that's assuming he couldn't outright use the stuff to physically or mentally harm someone.
Given that Shadow Creepers were made from Negative Lifestream, though, it's safe to say Sephiroth could have used it for offensive purposes if he wanted. It should feature all the same properties as regular Lifestream, really.
Anyway, look at Cloud's battle with Kadaj. For most of it, he's calm and confident. He knows he has the upper hand over this shinentai of Sephiroth and he even shows him mercy.
When Kadaj was watching his sword fall into the distance, he wasn't even paying attention to Cloud. It would have been simple to land on the ledge and bring the sword down on Kadaj, ending it then and there. But Cloud was willing to give him a chance.
However, the second Cloud realizes that Kadaj is bonding with JENOVA's cells and that Sephiroth is about to be revived, what does he do? He leaps in and goes straight for a killing blow.
Mako Eyes said:
That seems like a semantics quibble, man. The guy stabbed Cloud twice in the chest, through the knee, and hurled him down to the ground.
Exactly. No instant kill moves.
A fatal/mortal wound is not the same as a kill shot.
Mako Eyes said:
And he would've stabbed Cloud in the face had Cloud not grabbed the blade and diverted it.
Actually, the blade had already completely passed Cloud's head before he grabbed it:
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/5118/luckycloud.png
Either he lucked out or Seph wasn't ready to kill him yet. In either case, Cloud grabbed the blade on instinct, but it didn't help him at all.
Deus said:
It's not just the fact he deliberately didn't strike a fatal blow. it's also him purposefully limiting himself to just fighting Cloud with swordsmanship when he has several other powers to choose from.
There is no denying Sephiroth was not giving it his all in that fight. So you could very easily say he was playing around.
This I agree with 100%.
OWA-2 said:
Come on guys, you all know Sephiroth could have just phased through Cloud's sword-strikes(like he phased through the Shinra Cargo Ship's floor), used TK to freeze Cloud in place and crush all the bones of his body(like he did to every member of Avalanche simultaneously), and then kill him.
Cloud's sword and swordsmanship in ACC was only a threat to Sephiroth, because he 'allowed' it to be.
This too.
It's like in the original game -- Seph could have
easily killed all of AVALANCHE at
any time. He could have phased through the floors of their rooms in an inn, walked up to them while looking like a random pedestrian, or
not left them laying on the ground very much alive after knocking half of them out at the Northern Crater.
Hell, he could have suddenly dropped down from the sky and impaled one through the back while they were none the wiser -- oh,
right.
The one time he was playing for keeps, he killed somebody. And even then, because he was trying to torture Cloud and prove himself to be
so cash, he ended up acting too slowly and allowed Aerith to cast Holy -- and so he
then had to spend the rest of the game holding it back.
In short: Because he's a dumbass and had to prove to everyone else that he really was as big of a badass as he thought himself to be, he ended up losing.
Or, in more short:
Deus said:
He'll keep losing because he's stupid more like.
Mako Eyes said:
That whole "phasing through" crap was done by Jenova's body, and really, it could have just been an illusion to make it appear as such.
The figure that quite physically stabs Tseng also phased through solid objects.
Mako Eyes said:
If Jenova can just phase through shit, why would it bother breaking through the enclosure of its tank? Why would Sephiroth bother using doors or breaking through solid objects?
Because it's Sephiroth.
Sephiroth is an even bigger theatrical buffoon than Kuja.
Mako Eyes said:
As for his telekinesis, it didn't really work last time since Cloud and the others broke through it and didn't get their bones crushed.
They didn't break through it instantly. Seph just floated there while they struggled against it in vain for a
long moment.
ForceStealer said:
Cloud also chose not to get any materia before heading out. AVALANCHE also chose not to intervene, both of those are "powers" available to Cloud that he also forgoes.
In the case of the materia, I believe Nomura said that they stopped using it because it drained the planet's energy. So, really, using materia in that fight would have either made Sephiroth's control over the green Lifestream easier to achieve, or it would -- at the very least -- have further weakened the already weak planet they were trying to save.
You don't cut off your nose to spite your face, after all.
As for the rest of AVALANCHE, they were probably cut off from the battle because of the storm anyway. Otherwise, I think they would have tried to help once Sephiroth himself came back. Barret certainly gave Cloud his ten minutes and then some otherwise -- and I can't see him
not saying "Fuck that spikey-headed dumbass' self-confidence! Marlene's down there below all those damn tentacles! We'll buy him a hooker later if he needs a shot of confidence."
We saw them agree not to interfere during the fight with Kadaj, but we don't even see the Shiera airship during the fight against Seph.
Mako Eyes said:
Preference and choice doesn't go hand in hand with one's seriousness. Sephiroth was going all out with his swordsmanship instead of his magic. Same goes for Cloud, really.
And that's why I say Seph wasn't going all out.
His swordsmanship is inferior to his other abilities because it requires landing a physical blow -- which can be dodged more easily than telekinesis or clouds of Negative Lifestream.
For that matter, even if it couldn't be -- and even if Seph couldn't use the Negative Lifestream as a direct weapon -- obviously he would be giving himself an advantage by hurling all of these at Cloud at once: a telekinetic hold, clouds of Negative Lifestream to blind him, and diving in to slice his head in two.
Now, all that said, I don't doubt that Seph wasn't "giving it his all"
while restricting himself to just using his swordsmanship. But, then, that's not "giving it his all" the way I define it.
It's like when Thanos [spoiler="Infinity Gauntlet" saga spoilers here]cut himself off from using the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet while an army of heroes barreled down on him. He was no longer omnipotent for that battle, and, thus, no longer privy to his opponent's next moves -- and, because of that, the Silver Surfer nearly snatched the gauntlet right off Thanos' hand.
Had the Surfer succeeded, it would be because Thanos wasn't utilizing his full resources -- in other words, because he wasn't giving it his all.[/spoiler]
Cloud, on the other hand, was utilizing everything he had available to him for that fight -- even desperately hacking away at Seph with two swords as though he were trying to chop down a tree that kept bending out of the way.
Can we at least agree that by my use of the definition for "going all out" Seph wasn't going all out? You can't deny that using telekinesis and Negative Lifestream clouds
in addition to fighting at his best with his swordsmanship skills would have given him an advantage.
Seph absolutely wasn't fighting that battle with the same desperation that Cloud had when he leaped after Kadaj.
I can agree that Seph was giving the fight all he had while limiting himself, and that he was going in for the kill when Zack appeared. Hell, I even agree that Cloud legitimately beat him in that final moment -- Seph couldn't keep up with him.
All of that's obvious from just watching. Seph obviously was going in for the kill after he said "Give me the pleasure of taking it away," and he also obviously didn't deliberately allow Cloud to slash the shit out of him.
Mako Eyes said:
You really can't say Sephiroth wasn't taking the fight seriously, when Sephiroth's spirit energy goes at its peak and he even dons his one wing to fully bring on the pain. He went Reunion on Cloud's ass when he got ready to kill.
I'm not really convinced that the wing coming out is indicative of Seph going into a full-on Limit Break. It certainly wasn't with Genesis or Angeal (even if it involuntarily accompanies accessing more power, they weren't constantly at their spiritual peak, for obvious reasons).
Hell, for that matter, the wing comes out while Seph has Cloud dangling on his damn sword like a piñata. The battle was basically sewn up at that point from his perspective -- Sephiroth shouldn't have felt
more power was necessary.
Added to that, in the original version of that fight, the wing came out when Seph had just
lost and could no longer fight back. So the sprouting of wings has not always accompanied an increase in power, right?
Mako Eyes said:
If Sephiroth's main goal is to make Cloud suffer and to kill him, he doesn't need to blow up half of Midgar and leave a crater.
That indicates, then, that Seph had an objective other than simply killing Cloud and winning the fight -- which is what someone desperate to win and going all out would be doing.
Thus, he was dicking around.
Mako Eyes said:
Especially when he can just stab him in the chest, torso, and face, and be done with it?
The fact that he didn't do this is the reason we're having this discussion. XD
Mako Eyes said:
And again, by your logic...Cloud held back too. Cloud did not use every single limit break against Sephiroth did he? So he held back. They both did.
He used damn near all of them. Certainly his
best ones, which is what you'd look to when talking about someone "going all out."
ForceStealer said:
Your argument is essentially that if Sephiroth didn't rain down all hell from every single damn spell he knows about he was holding back. Holding back implies, to me, that you're doing less than is necessary. He did exactly what was necessary.
The fact that Cloud won is irrelevent, you can't use hindsight for your argument here. Sephiroth used appropriate force for an appropriate task.
Considering that Cloud is a guy who had already killed Sephiroth twice, doing anything less than raining down all hell from every spell he knew was ego-stroking and not going all out.
ForceStealer said:
Because Sephiroth had seen it before, making it a poor choice on Cloud's part. Now, given that Cloud overpowered Sephiroth's telekinesis in the past, why would Sephiroth try it again?
One is a technique that can be countered by stepping out of the way. The other is apparently overcome only through an unidentified quantity of exerted willpower.
Mako Eyes said:
Sephiroth's will/desire for Holy not to move from its spot doesn't require much concentration. His very presence and will for it not to move is enough to keep it from going. Do you need to constantly think about and focus on something you want?
Unless he's God (capital "G"), then holding back a powerful spell like Holy -- its opposite number having required Sephiroth to absorb and utilize a lot of energy from the Lifestream -- should require quantifiable
effort the same way that not being absorbed into the Lifestream and then manifesting as a spirit required quantifiable effort.
Seph had to sacrifice what he considered his inconsequential memories while focusing -- not just willing -- on his chosen core, Cloud, in order to avoid the former. The latter he was unable to do initially, despite willing it so.
