SPOILERS FFVII Remake Open Spoiler Discussion Thread

[Makoeyes987]

See, the Wutai "monsters" or Anti-SOLDIER personnel are very interesting to think about.

I dunno, if they're monsters, so much as transformed troops. Because remember, what made the Five Saints of Wutai so powerful in FFVII were their ability to transform themselves. Henshin no Jutsu. Godo Kisaragi turns himself into an Asura-like creature to fight Yuffie and rampages with numerous Blue Magic attacks. I think those monsters might be lesser warriors capable of transforming themselves. But, I'm just going by precedent.

However, Wutai spies are also masters of disguise, seemingly able to change their gender, size, even age appearance as necessary. Wutai's entire schtick is ninjitsu and one of the most memorable techniques of ninjas is disguise and being able to change into animals. I think that's precisely what those big monsters in Wutai Zack fought in CC are.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Why, though? If they can annex Wutai at will, they don't need support for their military programs. They already run everything.

That's kind of the point Rufus makes when we first meet him: that his father spends too much money unnecessarily on worrying about/maintaining public support. Papa Shinra invested in stuff like the rocket program that the public would be keen on because it was showy and cool and "dreamin' big" as Cid would probably say, but not particularly (i.e. at all) profitable.

 

[Ite]

Racist, heh, you really have it out for me this week.

Is it racist to say that a conquest happened?It’s a fact. Wutai was annihilated and turned into a theme park, so much so that the heir became a bandit in faraway lands just to find a way to exact her vengeance.

Technological progress isn’t linear, it’s cultural. The native cultures of Australia never developed the bow and arrow, they were developing their own cool unique shit. You want Wutai and Shinra to be on an even playing field in regards to warfare, that’s just not how it went down. Meanwhile, I don’t see any other culture in FF7’s world even attempt the monumental wonder of Da Chao, something that will outlast Midgar by centuries.

I’m of the opinion that reactor-borne materia allowed Shinra to trounce the Wutai infantry, just like they trounced everyone else, but the nation held their advantage for long enough to necessitate Sephiroth. Whether or not they did that without turning to arms dealers is just idle pondering.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Lots of food for fanfic thought here.

This creature here, Vajradhara Asura - its English genus name, Vajradhara, "is a term that refers to a very important and high-level tantric understanding of the Buddha" according to a fanfic friend of mine who is a Tibetan buddhist and works for a lama. Now of course I don't know how much thought the translators put into choosing this name, and whether it has any meaning within the context of the game beyond the fact that it sounds good....

Its name in Japanese is 金剛坊, bongou-bou, which can translate, as far as I can tell, into "adamant monk" (or "hard boy"). A name which, if nothing else, at least leaves it possible to infer that the creature is a "hardened boy", a transformed boy.

It's difficult to see how the Wutaians could have made the war last so long if they didn't have some kind of strength to fall back on, and "magical transformations" would do it. I wonder how they achieved those transformations? Something ritualistic involving mako, I'm sure.

Now I'm imagining Hojo growing up in this culture and being disgusted by it, by how they call the transformations "magic" or "divine interventions", and he devotes his entire life to figuring out the science of how it works. Also, it would be cool if the transformation were controlled by the person doing the transforming, and were only temporary, whereas Hojo has figured out how to induce a permanent transformation, and one where the locus of control lies with him, the transformer (the scientist, the magician) rather than with the transformed.

I also can't see why President Shinra would want the Wutai War to drag on any longer than it has to. It's a huge financial drain on the company and it distracts from the serious business of finding the promised land.

 

[Ite]

Awesome write-up! Thanks. That's from Crisis Core, yah? Hard Boy! I can defs see him wiping the floor with a sweeper.

I love that transform magic - Godo and the pagoda masters are peak ff7 fun imo. Omni-change! I always take it on as early as possible, and sometimes I get wrecked, even when I'm packed with materia. Without transformations of her own, Yuffie and the first few masters are (on a normal playthrough) equally matched, with Yuffie's adventuring giving her the combat experience, and (if you choose to equip it) materia giving her an edge.

Ooh, this reminded me of something from Remake: I notice that there was emphasis on materia being left behind by the Cetra. That was total news to me! What do y'all think? (well, aside from two specific materia...)

 

[Odysseus]

Ooh, this reminded me of something from Remake: I notice that there was emphasis on materia being left behind by the Cetra. That was total news to me! What do y'all think? (well, aside from two specific materia...)

The materia is the crystalized knowledge of the Cetra, so in that sense it was always left behind from them. The VR implies they specifically created materia to leave behind though, I think that's new. It's Shinra saying it though, so who knows if it's true.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Here's what I think.

We cannot take a single thing Shinra says about the Cetra at face value.

We know for a fact, from Aerith, that the "Promised Land" as President Sinra envisages it doesn't exist and never did.

Shinra have mythologised and essentially re-invented the Ancients as propaganda tools for their own purposes. This propaganda aims to instill the belief that Shinra are the natural heirs to the Ancients; that they are carrying on a millenia-old, hallowed tradition; that their goal is to cultivate and protect the planet in order to create peace and prosperity for all; that the Promised Land is a gift the Ancients wanted to leave behind for their posterity, but were cruelly wiped out too soon, and so Shinra is just doing its duty by seeking that land. Etc... Everybody who buys into this schtick can tell themselves they are engaged in humanity's age-old, sacred task: seeking to recreate the legendary Golden Age... that never was.

What we don't know is how much of this is a deliberate lie. President Shinra really does seem convinced the Promised Land exists. "It's just too attractive not to pursue."

No wonder Rufus is disgusted by it all. He is uniquely positioned to see behind the veil. He knows it's bullshit. And like most young people, he thinks the older generation is doing it (world domination, in this case) all wrong.

 

[ultima786]

This it most certainly does, and in exceeding amounts of detail as well.



X

What did you think of Cosmo Canyon Observatory’s latest video?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

What did you think of Cosmo Canyon Observatory’s latest video?

Sorry, I have no idea who that is. Also, I haven't been looking much at what anyone else has been speculating about for the last month or so. I've been entirely consumed in near-constant research and writing.



X

 

[Clement Rage]

Yes, Ite, my dastardly scheme is revealed. I have been plotting against you all along. I have cunningly established this cover identity for the purposes of bugging you on the internet, on this week when the stars align. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Conquests do happen, but they tend to be more complicated than that. I'm sure there is a healthy black market in Shinra tech, but Wutai not being able to supply its own armies except through Shinra is such a basic failure that it requires them to have no idea what they're doing and Yuffie to be certifiably insane.

Rufus isn't any better, he funds a giant army of terrorists for the purposes of assassinating his father and seems convinced that the North Cave is the promised Land.

OG Prez doesn't seem to really believe in it, he just thinks 'eh, why not?'

Y'know, oddly, the OG Shinra motivations seem more plausible to me than the remake, despite the much shorter and hastily translated script. It's weird.

 

[Ite]

I feel like this particular bout has mostly run its course, but I wasn’t talking martial prowess, leadership, tactics, I was talking machine guns and M.O.T.H. units and mass produced fire and restore materia.

 

[Clement Rage]

It's not the idea that Shinra has a tech advantage that's the problem, it's that they're so ineffectual that they have to buy gear from Shinra and the Prez could have crushed them whenever they like that is so awful. Sourcing your own gear is ridiculously basic and if they can't do that without Shinra stores, pretty much everything everyone does is rendered pointless. In particular if they're buying Shinra gear in bulk without smelling a rat, Wutai's leadership are embarrassingly ineffective.

 

[Makoeyes987]

That's the most bizarre and arbitrary judgment I have ever heard.

It ignores the entire context and truth of the FFVII world existing under a complete economic corporate monopoly that has numerous subsidiaries and nigh infinite resources to cover their tracks. Wutai creating their own gear or not wouldn't have changed anything, because it wouldn't have been enough within any situation. Not to mention one country against such an asymmetrical and omnipresent foe with technology several times superior to their own, was never going to be effective in the first place. Nothing would have stopped Shinra if the President chose to let loose Sephiroth on Wutai to massacre everyone in sight with no restraint, but he didn't. That was intentional.

Yes, Wutai was sparred, out of the choice of Shinra, because it could have been wiped off the map if he had chosen to do it.

 

[Fade]

At one point I sort of decided that Wutai's methods of war are probably a kind of "old magic", likely using the many magic items found throughout VII's world (monster parts, generally) perhaps combined with some way to use them to maximum effectiveness. I think I might have taken some inspiration from the idea that traditional FF ninja attacks (including the "veil" items found in VII) are ninja scrolls, and the fact that Yuffie uses these as an NPC enemy. And maybe they had samurai swords somehow "folded" with spirit energy in a process taking decades, in keeping with an FF samurai's "draw out" skills. Whatever the methods, I sort of like the idea that Wutai did, in theory, have power to match Shinra, but Shinra's were the modern short-cut to the same ends. In other words, it took decades to produce a skilled and equipped ninja/samurai etc. while Shinra was dipping fourteen-year-olds in goo and injecting them with space alien to produce supersoldiers in days. Just some heavy headcanon, for ya.

 

[Clement Rage]

That's the thing about dealing with nations in videogames, we don't really get a clear picture, because they can't actually show everything one to one.

(Hence things like 'only one farm focused on high end racing birds' and such) Shortcuts are necessary.

My impression was always that you can't actually mass produce SOLDIER, hence Cloud not making the cut. If you don't carefully choose your candidate, they turn into a monster or lose their minds, hence they're a relatively small group that fit on one floor of Shinra HQ.

When you try to mass produce them, you get mindless Ravens, Degrading Genesis copies, or Mako dependent Deepground.

Shinra can produce materia, but Zack has to go find his own to get anything good and it's mostly SOLDIER that uses it.

You could argue things both ways. OG has Shinra not projecting much power outside their bases of power, Midgar and Junon. Big operations involve a few troopers or the Turks. A lot of that may be 'we can't afford to animate all that'' but you could say the same for Wutai. It's a giant continent, I see very little reason to take their whole civilisation to be that one town, because you'd need more than that to build all those big structures and statues, like you need more than one farm to feed Midgar.

If you have, say, a 2,000 mile long front, one SOLDIER can't make that much difference even if that SOLDIER is Sephiroth.

The 'selling to both sides' thing isn't actually historically very common, would be less profitable than just invading anyway, and would be very difficult to conceal, because where else do these mystery traders get these giant caches of Shinra brand weapons?

We see Wutai forces at the end of the war using distinctive mass produced gear that is visibly different from Shinra's.

It could go either way, but I feel like if they really go with the idea that Shinra could destroy Wutai effortlessly but chose not to for no reason, that would be improbably simplistic and lazy worldbuilding that at a minimum breaks Yuffie's motivation as a character.

 

[Alex Strife]

Sorry, I have no idea who that is. Also, I haven't been looking much at what anyone else has been speculating about for the last month or so. I've been entirely consumed in near-constant research and writing.



X

Just want to briefly point out that Cosmo Canyon Observatory is @Vyzzuvazzadth!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Don't know where to put this... but this is a bit of a Easter Egg... I think... or rather I hope it is... If it's like Shinra in FFX having a connection to Shira in FFVII that... would be a problem...

So... in the Cetra Hologram... there's one spot where we get to see what a Cetran Airship looks like...

So their were Airships back in the Cetra Era... except... I know that airship. And it's not from FF7... it's from FF14...

Specifically, it's Cid Garlond's personal airship. As for who Cid Garlond is... he's the head of the Ironworks, a tech company that is... basically the opposite of what Shinra is. They make the most high-tech stuff in the world when they aren't making Dues ex Machina for FFXIV's hero. And by "making Dues ex Machina", I mean they managed to synthesize the technology of at least three difference civilizations into a machine that could dimension/time travel to force a time-line split so history would turn out better than it had the first time (which worked). The guy who built that airship is the guy who figured out they could actually put that dimension/time travel plot off.

Having the airship of that kind of guy show up in the Cetra Era is... both funny (Cetra with Ironworks-level tech is a great mental image) and also worrying given how other FF crossover Easter Eggs in FF7 have turned out (problematic for lore and history).

Or it could just be the cut-scene team needing some concept art for an airship and copying something that looks right off a seven-year-old piece o concept art for another FF game instead of making new concept art... But I kinda don't think it's that given that it's been established since Case of Cid that Cid Highwind dug up the engine of a Cetran airship to use as the Shera's power source...

 

[Wol]

The movie propaganda was just Shinra's vision of the Cetras and don't necessarily represent reality. I mean, you can see how they conveniently designed their city structures to look the same as Midgar's basic layout (8 big rocks with a big castle on the middle).

Now why Shinra would have a similar airship design in their databanks is another story.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well Shinra got the looks of the Cetra right, at least. Those clothes were apparently accurate. As for everything else? Well, that's ambiguous. It could very well be fictionalized propaganda...

 

[ForceStealer]

The movie propaganda was just Shinra's vision of the Cetras and don't necessarily represent reality. I mean, you can see how they conveniently designed their city structures to look the same as Midgar's basic layout (8 big rocks with a big castle on the middle).

Now why Shinra would have a similar airship design in their databanks is another story.

And of course the most blatant - showing Midgar being built on what was already a wasteland, instead of having created it

 

[Theozilla]

If it’s anything more than just reusing a preexisting airship design/model for efficiency sake, I imagine it’s at most an homage to the Cetra resembling “classic Final Fantasy” magitek aesthetics, which FFXIV is the most recent example of.

 

[Fiz]

If it’s anything more than just reusing a preexisting airship design/model for efficiency sake, I imagine it’s at most an homage to the Cetra resembling “classic Final Fantasy” magitek aesthetics, which FFXIV is the most recent example of.

I agree, I suspect it's just an easter egg. If it was something compilation or maiden who travels the planet related then I'd pay more attention to it because they're part of the wider lore and story of FFVII, or even FFX related because they share the same universe. But outside of that, I'd consider it nothing more than an easter egg for fans to notice.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Like I said, I hope it's just an easter egg. But we all know what was said by Nojima and Co. about Shinra being an "easter egg" in FFX... and then cheekily referenced in Remake...

 

[Littlewing]

I haven't played through the entire game yet, but I am left with a feeling that it's not seemingly as romantic as past final fantasies, which surprises me quite a bit since it's a remake as well.
There are some moments that I really loved like particularly at Jesse's house, but it was unstated and just in general it's this overall sense and feeling that are not quite as invoked in this remake, I wonder why that is? They made it a lot more grounded and realistic but I enjoyed how the last games had kind of a soft quality.
like even FF15 with the start of the game pushing the car and things like that.

The music and start of the remake were very beautiful, I was really impressed, but even then there was kind of this sharp expansive and piercing quality.

But then, that's what's different about it, because some moments felt more tense and uncertain other moments seemed to linger more in the moment and scenery but still it is like the overall sensibilities or tone has shifted and it's changed from being kind of soft and dreamy to something else that's similar but harder to describe. I want to say it's more "mature" in some ways, but it's hard to say. It's less romantic in some ways and way more richer feeling (but not indulgent) type of experience.

I guess that's the thing about it, it's just not dreamy at all. I kind of like it in some ways, but it's kind of startling. Like going from the streets of midgar after the reactor explosion, then the bar and then the slums with Aerith, they all just felt like very deeply felt and rich experiences.

But I guess it's just a difficult time for dreamers. I guess some of the games always felt more idyllic and laid back, this one has way different quality.

A sad time for dreamers and romantics you could say in correction.

 

[Eerie]

FFVII, especially the Midgar portion, was never romantic - that's what makes it stand out from the rest of the Final Fantasy. It's got a different feeling altogether.