Did Shinra burn Nibelheim?

[The Twilight Mexican]

You described more or less what the plot is already.

 

[ChipNoir]

You described more or less what the plot is already.

Yeah, but I'd like it to be a lot more visual and concrete. I want to see some shambling cloaked figure turning into Sephiroth, and see a Sephiroth clone in turn break down like The Thing and turn into a monster. I want to see the potential Cloud Clone.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Some of that could be cool, so long as it doesn't change what Hojo's experiment was actually doing. If Seph hijacking the body of one or two of them to make them look like himself or Cloud is an incidental development stemming from that, then okay.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

I don't know that Rufus was right, really. Naked fascism is cheaper than putting a nice face on corporate feudalism, but Shinra's greatest strength (especially with SOLDIER gutted) wasn't its power but the dependency it had created, and the people's complacency. People quoting Machiavelli about it being more reliable, and therefore better, to be feared than loved, tend to ignore the fact that in the same passage he pointed out that both is preferable if you can manage it, because being hated gets you into deep shit sooner or later no matter how scary you are.

I like the assumption that Hojo set up the Nibelheim mission in hopes that it would set Sephiroth off, based on how thrilled he is later about the Weapons activating and the imminent end of the world, and the fact that he turns up to start taking samples before Cloud has a chance to bleed to death. ^^;

In which case the geographic distribution of the clones is part of testing the Reunion theory--Hojo spread them out and then waited to see what they did. Which was, apparently, converge on Nibelheim. With diversions when possessed to do things like kill the President and chat with Dio.

Cloud had Zack and Tifa to help him hold together, but there was also some reason Hojo declared him a failure as part of the Reunion phase of the Jenova Project. Presumably he stalled out somewhere between Zack's prophylactic Jenova exposure and whatever threshold of Jenovization/brainwashing/whatever Hojo was actually trying to achieve. Even once Sephiroth manages to break his mind at the Crater, he's different from the others. You know?

I don't entirely buy Cloud's self-assessment that he's a 'weak person' and that's why he broke. He's not exactly objective, and generally speaking 'crazy feats of berserk rage strength in the face of death' aren't associated with a weak will.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Cloud isn't really a weak person objectively, he just wasn't strong enough (or 'too weak') to get into SOLDIER. Which really isn't a big deal, like, in the Navy, someone who tries out for the SEALS (or any other SO rate) and fails isn't at all thought of as a weak person. Sure, 'too weak' to be a Special Operator, but not weak overall; hell, they get accolades for even trying (seriously, you have to have a certain measure of fitness and mental grit to even make the attempt).

There's a certain simplicity that people frame Cloud's 'weakness' that doesn't do him justice. He was an insecure kid who didn't have what it takes to be a SOLDIER at the tender age of 14. Hell, Cloud is only 21 during the events of the game. Prodigies like Zack are prodigies for a reason, and very much the exception against the norm, not the standard that average people, or even soldiers (lower case, or even SOLDIER's really, Zack really was one of a kind) should be measured up against in a question of normalcy.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

In which case the geographic distribution of the clones is part of testing the Reunion theory--Hojo spread them out and then waited to see what they did. Which was, apparently, converge on Nibelheim.

They were just allowed to wander out of Nibelheim. He said he expected them to come to Midgar because that's where Jenova was being kept, but instead they went to the crater in the north because that's where Sephiroth was.

Cloud had Zack and Tifa to help him hold together, but there was also some reason Hojo declared him a failure as part of the Reunion phase of the Jenova Project.

This is where things get slightly confusing. In the original game, Cloud was a success and Zack was the failure. Cloud had the desired reaction to Jenova according to the documents in the Shinra Manor's basement.

Hojo just didn't immediately recognize this when speaking with him at the crater because Cloud didn't have a tattoo -- the reason he didn't have a tattoo, though, being that Zack had busted them out before he could receive one.

Crisis Core retconned this -- and the documents in the manor lab -- into them both being failures, but for different reasons: Zack because, as a SOLDIER, he already had a strong tolerance to Jenova's influence, and Cloud because his tolerance was so low that he appeared to have suffered irreparable neurological damage to the point of being useless for the experiment.

 

[ChipNoir]

Cloud isn't really a weak person objectively, he just wasn't strong enough (or 'too weak') to get into SOLDIER. Which really isn't a big deal, like, in the Navy, someone who tries out for the SEALS (or any other SO rate) and fails isn't at all thought of as a weak person. Sure, 'too weak' to be a Special Operator, but not weak overall; hell, they get accolades for even trying (seriously, you have to have a certain measure of fitness and mental grit to even make the attempt).

There's a certain simplicity that people frame Cloud's 'weakness' that doesn't do him justice. He was an insecure kid who didn't have what it takes to be a SOLDIER at the tender age of 14. Hell, Cloud is only 21 during the events of the game. Prodigies like Zack are prodigies for a reason, and very much the exception against the norm, not the standard that average people, or even soldiers (lower case, or even SOLDIER's really, Zack really was one of a kind) should be measured up against in a question of normalcy.

That and across the original game and the compilation by extension, Cloud has been showing these bursts of prodigal strength and skill. Cloud has a lot of natural strength, it just seems to only come out during times of extreme crisis, versus merely being something that is on 24/7 for Sephiroth and can thus be field tested at ShinRa's discretion. I mean even as a kid, he was able to survive a fall with relatively no injury, but that same fall put Tifa in a comba for weeks. There shouldn't be that large of a difference in strength between girls and boys at that age.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

Surviving a fall has very little to do with strength? I mean, it's a factor, especially if your strength is being measured in HP, but luck is kind of important. Presumably Tifa hit her head. But yeah Cloud's got a lot of toughness in him that's all his.

...there are documents in the basement in the original game? I mean, ones the player can read? O.o Okay yeah I never found those.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Surviving a fall has very little to do with strength? I mean, it's a factor, especially if your strength is being measured in HP, but luck is kind of important

I think in this context 'strength' is less what say, how much you can lift and how much damage you can do, and more just straight up physical constitution as a whole.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Surviving falls in Final Fantasy is definitely no indication of anything. It's pretty much a series cliché.

 

[Roger]

Tifa survived, Cloud got down with nothing but skinned knees.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

Right, and when it comes to hitting stone at terminal velocity being physically tough can help a little, and being really good at falling can help more, but absent superpowers if one person comes out with skinned knees and the other falls into a coma, somebody bruised their brains and somebody else got lucky. It has a lot more to do with luck than strength.

 

[Random Nobody]

that same fall put Tifa in a comba

 

[Roger]

Right, and when it comes to hitting stone at terminal velocity being physically tough can help a little, and being really good at falling can help more, but absent superpowers if one person comes out with skinned knees and the other falls into a coma, somebody bruised their brains and somebody else got lucky. It has a lot more to do with luck than strength.

...Why absent superpowers?

 

[Random Nobody]

It has a lot more to do with luck than strength.

No he's not lucky he's blesst (yes)

...Why absent superpowers?

I think they're saying that, unless the explanation in question is "this person has superhuman abilities," the only real factor in differences of severity re: injury is luck. Judging by what we're told, Tifa suffered a very serious TBI, which means she must have gotten bopped juan tyne on the head whereas Cloud did not. And even allowing that she went through some form of physical therapy we weren't shown, it's amazing she managed to recover at the rate she did with seemingly no permanent neuropsychiatric damage.

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

^-- Yes that.

 

[Roger]

But this is FFVII, where people like Yuffie, Cid and Tifa do have superhuman abilities without undergoing any special enhancement or, in Cid's case, even any special training.

 

[Random Nobody]

Yeah, but that's as grownass adults (or at the very least, older adolescents) with some modicum of combat experience, not as prepubescent children who don't even have their permanent teeth in yet.

 

[fancy]

What is this argument even?? XD Whether the fact that Cloud was able to walk from the same fall that put Tifa in a comma is on the basis of strength/hardiness or luck?

I think luck makes the most narrative sense.

Hardiness makes the most sense in terms of game mechanics. Like surviving the same fall at level 50 that once KO'd at level 10.

"You see, Mr. Lockhart, the reason why that blonde little bastard was able to walk away from the same fall that put your sweet baby in a deep slumber is because he can take 50 damage and she can only take 5 "

Except they're both small children when the incident happens. I would say they both roughly have the same constitution then, especially since Cloud was always a bit of a runt for his age (wasn't he?). So I don't thing hardiness accounts for much as they're not the fighters we see in the present OG timeline. Methinks luck probably makes the most sense, and it's an ironic twist of luck, cause it resulted in him being further ostracised in his little town.

I guess one could also argue about the "will power" of either of them, since it was will power that drove Cloud on during the Burning of Nibelheim when Sephiroth stabbed him, eh? Tifa was probably low on it/deflated in light of her beloved mum's death (which sort of contradicts the fact that she seemed determined to find her in the mountains) whilst Cloud had the willpower to try and save Tifa...????

 

[Roger]

I think luck is a perfectly logical answer on it's own but I disagree that it makes narrative sense. Cloud could have survived the fall on luck, the burning of his house with similiar luck, got the draw on Sephiroth with more luck and then lifted him up after being stabbed through a surge of adrenaline and nevertheless be an utterly unremarkable person prior to Hojo's experimentation. Or you can look at all these incidents together and see a narrative of Cloud being physically extraordinary all along.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

This is a game where an alien visitor has a eye on her boob and you get attacked by demon houses when you walk through the less salubrious parts of town. Stop trying to make it make sense!

 

[fancy]

 

[Kieron_ODuibhir]

@LicoriceAllsorts Lmao good point but imma gonna walk this into the ground a little more.

Cloud is certainly extraordinary, it just doesn't necessarily need to have been physically. (Uh, was he in his mom's house when it burned? I thought he was on the ground outside?)

Cloud has incredible willpower, when he can back it up with conviction. Low self-esteem for a lot of his life often means he can summon conviction only in moments of crisis, and not necessarily then if the enemy pulls a good headgame. (And then he internalizes this 'weakness' and has another thing to get past in the future when summoning his Heroic Resolve. Yay.)

Tifa is physically extraordinary, since without enhancements she's almost as badass an adult as Cloud with his definite superpowers. So it seems unlikely to me that Cloud was way more robust than her when they were both eight. At that age boys don't even have a notable strength advantage over girls, and anyway as we addressed a strength advantage isn't much use when falling off a cliff.

XD I guess he could have been higher level than her if he was already in the habit of getting into fights at that age? But the difference seems a little extreme for that.

 

[Roger]

Cloud is certainly extraordinary, it just doesn't necessarily need to have been physically. (Uh, was he in his mom's house when it burned? I thought he was on the ground outside?)

Yes, you can also chalk it up to him not being in his house in the middle of the night when Sephiroth started setting fighting and just happened to get incapacitated right in front of it.

I dunno why everything about needs to be explained through luck, coincidence and anything other then Cloud's own capacity.

 

[fancy]

I don't think folks are trying to argue that 'everything' Cloud succeeds in is merely due to luck, though? I actually like his 'bursts' of strength when shit goes down because methinks it shows that Cloud can pull through when he needs to. It would turn out that he's always been capable, even in those low moments where he doesn't think too much of himself.

That said, I don't think walking away from The Fall with skinned knees constitutes as a 'burst' of that strength. XD

I think the argument is, when you consider that it's clearly evident that Tifa is also a tough lil' badass in her own right given that she doesn't need any weapons or body enhancers to jump into the air whilst spinning enemies on one hand or beating the literal dolphin out of them, it seems silly to conclude that the only reason why she didn't walk away unscathed from The Fall is because she has a "weaker" constitution than Cloud. They're likely on the same level at that point. Like, yeah, Cloud survived getting ran through with Sephiroth's sword n' shit, which shows extraordinary strength, but Tifa has also survived getting cut down by Sephiroth (after carrying the Masamune!), falling down some stairs, and enduring the long ass trip it must have taken to get a bleeding girl from the middle continent over to Midgar's doctors in the east continent.

I RECKON THEY RAISE'EM MIGHTY STRONG IN NIBELHEIM.

ALSO WOW EVEN WRITING OUT THIS POST HAD ME IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE, LIKE, IS THIS WHAT WE'RE DEBATING? IS THIS WHAT THIS THREAD HAS COME TO? XD

I feel like I've graduated on some level of FFVII-nerdiness for arguing about something so inconsequential in the larger picture, lmao. I guess this is what this site is all about. xD Ty for this experience, guys, I feel strangely closer to all of you now.