"I lost the last time as well."

[Username]

well from a game's creator point of view i think the deepest this quote will ever reach is to the "Lucrecia's" arguement. I can't honeslty believe a simple sentance from hojo would reflect anything deeper and more complicated than that.

I know FF7 was genious, but if every other sentance in the game reffered to another story within the games characters pasts, then i applaud the makers, unfortunatly, games don't get made with such thought (nowadays), this game is more than 10 years old though...hehe.

 

[Ravynne Nevyrmore]

Wow, I totally missed a lot of gems in this thread. EK even came and probably left again. D:

Arianna, you simply wish to inject compassion and a recognizeable soul into Hojo's personality where there apparently isn't one. You can put forth your thoughts and opinions all day long but they're usually based on things you made up or decided yourself to be so.

My original question is moot and I'm not sure why anyone bothered to contemplate it further. There's no use in debating now what the line referred to when we just established that the line was mistranslated in the first place. There was no "losing the last time," no brief moment of regret in Hojo's denouement, nor any recognition of his life's decisions leading him to lose something greater. I absolutely think he would have been a better character if there had been, if the line was real and meant something, but it was an accident and a mistake. It doesn't exist.

It would be far wiser if any further discussion on this topic were about the translation itself and not attempts to place meaning in what was never meant to be spoken. Or possibly if it were closed altogether, but I would hate for anyone with anything further to contribute regarding the translation to be locked out of doing so.

 

[Andalegogo]

....hmm...

I gotta say I simply took the line as a reference to his creation of Sephiroth. Prior to that Hojo was a normal Shinra scientist, but he threw his morals out the window the second the opportunity for recognition arose.

He started out as an ambitious young scientist, developing a distaste for "humanity" as it had a tendency to interfere with his research. In the end his scientific ambition defeated his sense of moral duty to care for his child, driving him to jeopardize the child's life with his experimentation.

When he confronted Cloud, it looked as though Hojo's human ambition was finally done away with. Hojo no longer cared for his own well-being or survival, pretty much the only human components of his personality that remained intact over the years. Just as he was more than willing to endanger the life of his son, so too did he endanger his own by succumbing to the prospect of attaining Jenova powers.

That's what I've always figured that line meant. Hojo was a slave to science and lost all of his humanity to it.

His final lines really sound like he's just mocking himself for the things he's done. He sounds more humored than remorseful, which is what I'd expect from a hard cynic like him.