I've already said my thoughts on Aerith's CC characterization (that she is sufficiently assertive and strong-willed), so I won't bother repeating what I've stated before. (and as for her "sensing" Zack's death in CC but not knowing in the OG, her being in denial about it is an easily fitting retroactive explanation/interpretation IMO)
I agree with this take. I was only working off of what the other poster was saying. To be honest I had no recollection of that specific "factlet".
My point was merely that any inconsistency easily spotted between OG FFVII and CC is a lot more likely to simply be a plot-hole resulting from what happens when you revisit old material with a new team and a new direction than to be some elaborate master scheme of story-telling and that Nojima has the notes somewhere that explains it. That's just not the reality of the creative process and the work that these kinda people engage in.
It's like the Masamune teleportation deal we've explored before - Sure, you can posit explantions like Sephiroth/Jenova can summon the sword, or make it out of nothing (as is apparently now canon as per the ultimania), or it could be possibly explained as being a cluster of shape-shifted Jenova cells.
However, the far likelier explanation is that no thought was given to the logistics of the sword moving about because it simply isn't very relevant to the story. The scene was crafted for dramatic effect over being some sort of Tom Clancy-esque simulation affair, and the author is a fallible human being who'll sometimes forget small facets established early on in a story are they progress their work over months and months, sometimes years and years.
The fact of the matter is that if anything we could conceivably explain going by what authors haven't said, rather than what they did say, moving in the murky waters of speculation based extrapolation from peripherally relevant moments in a story (like "oh it makes sense that Sephiroth can summon his sword because, look, summons in combat"), then hardly anything - ever - would qualify as a plot hole.
In this instance, I buy that theory, but for Zack? No.
However, in regards to Zack, I don't think his "happy go-lucky, heroic Zack" was a fabrication made specifically for Crisis Core when that characterization for Zack had been present in Before Crisis and Last Order.
Was Zack portrayed as happy go lucky and heroic in those titles though, and not just a guy with "spunk"?
Doesn't change much for my argument in either case - Let me rephrase :
it was made specifically for the compilation, and I do not at all think that it was a clear conception at the time the original script and scenario was formulated. Furthermore, I don't think a characterization like that would have made it into the OG even if Zack had gotten more screen-time based on what they were going for with Shinra.
Also personally, I don't find the Zack's OG characterization (explicit or implied) particularly jaded/jerkish. I think Zack's OG characterization was limited enough to not be super defined and was easily open to additional exploration/elaboration. Furthermore, the truck conversation easily fits with Zack being a "happy go-lucky, heroic" person, they way he describes working as mercenary is framed in a rather flighty manner, more a jack-of-all-trades job than someone intending to take morally grey jobs. Also the simple fact that Zack took care of a comatose Cloud for nearly a year (while also traveling around half the globe) is not a type of person I would describe as callous or a jaded jerk.
I didn't say his persona was jaded or jerkish - that's what I said
I wish it would have been in CC as an extrapolation on what little we get from him in OG.
This is what I said :
In OG, Zack was, in what little characterization we got, pretty consistent with what you'd expect given the characterization of any other Shinra employee in his position - he stuck through with the company long enough to reach first class in a clandestine strike team that undoubtedly would have been used as Shinra's fist in various nefarious ways. His first thought escaping said company was becoming a mercenary (another morally grey/black business), and implied he had multiple girls in Midgar (as per the Japanese script), etc.
There's obviously going to be a matter of interpretation here, but my primary argument is that Zack's monogamy with Aerith, his heroism, especially the dynamic with Angeal and all the silly honor shpiels, directly conflict with what we know of Shinra from the OG.
If Cloud as seen in the pre memory fix Nibelheim flashback is essentially Zack, then Zack is obviously a rookie, and obviously fairly young and skittish - but that does not imply heroism or the mild-mannered empathy a la Naruto that you find in Zack in the compilation. That simply implies being green, which he was.
Unlike early OG Cloud, the flashback Cloud in the truck is undeniably just Zack, since we know Cloud is sitting in the corner being car sick looking directly at Zack and Sephiroth as they talk, and the ensuing battle with the dragon.
The fact of the matter though, is that in the OG, pretty much every single employee of Shinra we ever meet is either morally corrupt or at the very least morally grey.
Zack in CC is pretty much Mr.Pristine, who's only "greyness" is afforded to him through his mere participation in Shinra ops of questionable moral character as enabled by him being ignorant of what he's really a part of up until later stages of the game, which just seems ludicrous given his station, when even Shinra MPs and their red-suited officers seem to be in on the game.
In the Japanaese script though, Zack has a fairly brusque sociolect. He proposes to Cloud that they open a "nandemoya", which is synonym for "benriya-san", a negatively loaded Japanese term that details what you'd in English call a "Fixer". I.E what Zack proposes they do is become "Ray Donovans" in Midgar.
He expressly first expresses concern about money. He then goes on to propose this profession, expressly mentioning they'll also do dangerous stuff, saying he'll do anything depending on the pay, which is Cloud then takes to heart and emulates after reaching Midgar (first thing he does is join a terror ops, which is afterwards condemned by the plot and themes of the game).
I'm glad you mentioned the Zack taking care of Cloud though, because I was anticipating that.
I don't think you can extrapolate much of anything from that. Jaded jerks also have friends, and can also feel indepted to people.
I'd say most military men who've seen combat and killed people are jaded. They still have family and friends, and a sense of kinship to people they've worked with, or as is the case of Cloud, people who's saved their lives. I'm jaded. I still have a son and a wife.
I don't think it speaks much to Zack's character at all, above being a fairly common and human action expressed by most people, jaded or not, in those circumstances and with that background.
It's also worth mentioning that FFVII plays extremely losely with its logistics. I know I keep banging this drum, but FFVII was never meant to be some lore-heavy Tom Clancy-esque piece of fiction. Like most FF games in the SNES/PSX era it approached its story-telling like theatre, focusing more on the set-pieces and the emotional pay-off of the moment to moment scene direction, and logistics being shaped around that for convenience.
As an example, If Midgar was a real place, the entire city would starve in a month. It's too far removed fertile land, with neither rivers nor ocean nearby, and no proper infrastructure for transport and commerce leading in and out of the area. They didn't make that stuff because it didn't matter to the story.
Zack took Cloud to Migdar from Nibelheim, but in the same vein, I don't think the writers and designers considered even for a moment what that would entail, and I certainly don't buy for a moment that this is therefore something that should reflect on Zack's character.
They needed Zack and Cloud to be in Midgar, so they moved them there. That's it.
As for Cloud copying Zack's memories, the memories he was copying were largely the Nibelheim specific ones (and even in the OG selectively arbitrary for plot convenience), various extra-canonical materials have stated that Cloud's false persona was a combination of Zack's memories and skills, along with Tifa's memories of him, plus his own ideal image of himself as a SOLDIER. The all-of-the-above explanation is sufficient reasoning IMO for why Cloud's false persona isn't identical to Zack's personality, because its not supposed to be identical (just partially influenced/one of many elements).
For sure, and indeed that is the view I subscribe to as well.
However which piece of the puzzle fits where is relevant I think, and I don't think a reasonable view of this is that pre-fix Cloud is like this mix of strawberry and chocolate where the end result is a blend that tastes nothing like either.
More likely, to my way of thinking, and to the text of the game, Cloud is like a salad where different aspects of the different identity pieces express themselves at different times as they become relevant.
This is why Cloud's mother appears in the flashback even though he's supposed to inhabit the shoes of Zack at that point.
This is why Cloud remembers his childhood when talking to Tifa, and why he ultimately ditches the hard-a** act after his first conversation with her only 20 minutes or so into the game.
Here's the thing, Cloud clearly states in the operations room speech that a large part of his charade was buildt on the story that Zack told him, and what he'd seen and heard. Zack and Cloud knew eachother to some degree. Cloud goes to Midgar, and acts like an arrogant and selfish a**.
To me, it seems more reasonable that the Cloud we see in the first 20 minutes of FFVII is Cloud's view of Zack based on his interaction with the guy because it's consistent with what Zack told him in the van, and the general bravado he expressed, and it's consistent with his characterization of his persona in the control room, and it's consistent with the overall characterization of Shinra employees in general, whether we're speaking of the Turks, Rufus, or almost anyone else you bump into from that organization throughout the OG.
As for the tone of Crisis Core, I don't think it being more dreary would have made for a better game (or story), as personally I don't find the OG to be that dreary either (it's a miss-mash of various tones and styles). Also disillusionment with Shinra is still an present element of the CC narrative, regardless of one's personal opinion on the quality and execution of said narrative, to claim that "descent into disillusionment" isn't an integral part of the game's storyline is just inaccurate.
Nothing about what I said implies I would want to reduce to CC into a single-note game, and that note being dreary, and of course making something dreary in and of itself doesn't make something good.
Remember, I'm the guy constantly banging on about the multifaceted and often whimsical note of FFVII and how I think both the compilation and FF has lost much of that charm.
The point I was trying to make is that for all its commedic elements, Shinra is a terrible org within the context of the OG, as is Midgar.
A lot of the richness of the tapestry of the OG, I find lost in CC. The overall theme and the juxtaposition of Shinra's values versus that of those who fight for the planet is an integral theme to FFVII which CC is a spin-off and prequel to, which to my mind necessitates a narrative that properly integrates with that material.
I don't think CC's narrative does this, specifically because of the nonsense ramblings about SOLDIER's honor, and Zack's persona as it relates to that, and how he expresses himself through the game.
Also, I didn't claim the game didn't have a descent into disillusionment, I said the game should have had "a long and slow descent into disillusionment while being involved in various questionable tasks and errands. "
I don't think CC has this.
The descend is delivered in extremely choppy and rushed fashion, the missions Zack engaging on largely aborted from any moral sense (since you're primarily just fighting Genesis clones most of the time, or monsters), or only peripherally so in the sense that it applies specifically to Zack's personal problems involving his friends.
I think it would be far more inaccurate to claim that CC's has a story that truly explores Shinra's underbelly (given that in the OG we already saw Shinra MPs burn down villages and slaughter civiliians with machinegunes. Where's that stuff in the CC? If anything the Wutai war was an excellent chance to display those kinda horrors, but was instead completely sanitized and used primarily as a means to build on Zack and Angeal's relationship), or its impact on Zack as a character.
Primarily, CC is a character story, not
a character study - and it's primarily centered around Zack's relationship to other FF characters, how he become 1st class, and finally how he died.
The story, while certainly giving Zack a disillusionment in regards to Shinra, still died reaffiriming the heroism theme of the game, and "passing on the torch to Cloud".
Til the very end, Zack never expressed any meaningful sense of disillusionemnt in regards to what he himself had been doing with Shinra when they weren't messing with his friends, and that to me, is the greater issue here.
Remind me again why the wutai war started?
Zack ran around there killing tons of people without a care in the world. Is he ever disillusioned by the rightness of his actions there?
No, he isn't.
Zack's disillusionment extends to "omg, shinra does bad experiments on people and they destroyed my friends".
That's not what I mean by "descent into disillusionment" in the context of being consistent with the theme's of the OG, and my point about dreariness.
What I would want from a CC story - while, of course, retaining the quirks and whimsicalness of FFVII - is a story that would harken back to scenes like the Corel massacre, the seen where Elmyra waits for her husband at the train station, conversations of the Shinra MPs you run into around Midgar in the OG, or when the Turks drops the plate on tons of innocent people to get rid of Avalanche.
I would want a CC that captures that iteration of Shinra, and that frames the story of Zack in context of working within that company engaging in those kind of tasks and the effects that would undoubtedly have had on him, and what kind of person he would have had to have been in order to even make that work in the first place.
CC is not that game - not even by a long-shot - and I find Zack's characterization in light of that to be a shounen-manga caricature of a man that simply does not fit into the lineage of FFVII's storytelling at all.
But that's just my view on it.
