Hian, have we not already gone over the whole Zack's death isn't karma thing in a different thread?
Yes, and if you think that I conceded that discussion based on the reply I got there, you're wrong.
I think the problem here isn't so much your dislike of the compilation and how it could negatively affect the remake so much as the sheer bitterness and cynicism in how you're expressing it.
Care to provide an example of that cynicism and bitterness?
Despite having some problems with the compilation, I simply can't get behind what you're saying when it's said like that. Try and be more constructive and less abbrassive about your arguments, as well as more open to what others are responding with.
Care to give an example of me being abrasive to anyone here?
You get mad about how over the top the fight scenes in the compilation are but the OG, like many RPGs, had you fight all manner of things that would require superhuman abilities to manage. How else does someone go about defeating Weapons, a giant mecha, the Midgar Zolom and Sephiroth?
And in FFVII people have many ways of fighting these things that do not require Cloud and Co to continuously defy gravity and cut concrete into pieces, like the Materia and the magic they provide.
Also, I'm not mad about it - please stop projecting emotions unto me simply because I voice a dislike for something.
What do you think fights like that would look like outside of turn-based combat?
I can think of many that would not demand Cloud and Co jumping around like in the compilation titles, but do you really want me to write several pages of fight choreography to make that point? =P
Going over the rest of what you brought up, the technology level issue is a common problem among prequels. As long as they leave out the lifestream internet and keep things consistent overall, they can give the remake more modern technology than the OG without much issue.
Of course they can - that's not a counter to my argument here though.
I was specifically replying to the person who tried to write off the over-the-top Junon fight scene by saying it happened in VR - by pointing out that not only is that irrelevant since those fight scenes are mirrored in non VR scenes other places in the compilation (AC in particular), but also that if we're on the topic of how the compilation breaks stylistically with the original, the technology gap would be another example of that on top of the over-the-top fighting as well, so it was actually not a point in his favor worth raising.
Whether that's common in post-original prequel works in fiction is irrelevant.
For Cloud's level in the Nibelheim flashback, I don't think that was meant to be an accurate representation of his or Zack's combat ability at the time so much as the worf effect showing you how way out of your league Sephiroth is. As a SOLDIER first class, Zack would have to be way more capable a fighter than that. In fact, Cloud as an MP was probably better than that too.
No he wouldn't, and neither would Cloud.
As I said originally - this can only ever be said tentatively because we have no idea how representative the abstraction that is the combat system is supposed to be for the lore of the game, but flash-back young Cloud/Zack would still be considerably stronger than the Shinra MPs you fight at the beginning of the game.
In the OG, there were fighting sounds suggesting Zack fought some MPs off screen before getting shot by the three you see..
You hear him make exactly three slashes with his sword in that scene, and he returns to Cloud after only a few seconds.
Now, for all we know he could already have fought others prior to that as well.
The point is that what little evidence we do have for Zack's character and strength suggests a relatively ordinary and mundane level. Everything from Cloud's perspective of Zack fighting be Sephiroth's side against the dragon, to Zack getting one-shot by Sephiroth, and then getting taken down by a small squad of MPs.
Because of this, having Zack fight other MPs isn't the problem. What I take issue with is the tone change and death scene itself not feeling as impactful as the OG one, where he gets shot, dies and that's it, no dying speech or ascending to the lifestream even though it's in the other direction. That's not a change they made due to some power hierarchy but rather because they thought it would be a more emotionally fulfilling conclusion to a game you spent playing as him.
And I call BS on this because what constitutes an emotionally fulfilling conclusion to a game is completely dependent on how you built up the story of that game to begin with, and there is nothing to say that they would have to build the game up to necessitate that kind of ending.
The last stand of Zack only necessitates him fighting a small horde of MPs because they've built Zack into a characters that needs to fight such a large number for his death to have impact.
If Zack was generally portrayed to be much weaker than that, then him struggling in the exact same way against, say 6 MPs, with say everything else being exactly the same, then I would argue that it would have the exact same factor of emotional fulfillment.
Flashback Cloud probably still reflects the level of 16 year old MP Cloud, who could have been the one facing the Green Dragon instead of guarding the truck instead of Zack. No issues there.
I think that beggars belief to be honest.
Cloud literally replaces himself with Zack in the flashback, down to holding his sword and wearing his clothes, but his still imagining himself to be the same strength as he otherwise would have?
I think I'd go for Occam's Razor here.
I never thought it was super over-the-top in a bad way, because I think Shinra is taking a necessary precaution in killing the man that was almost at equal strength to Sephiroth. Who in the OG is ridiculously powerful anyways (impaling the Midgar Zolom on a tree should tell you something).
That's the thing though - nothing in the original suggests Zack is even remotely close to Sephiroth in terms of strength.
(Also, Sephiroth didn't imnpale the Midgar Zolom, Jenova did =P)
Now, I'm fine accepting Zack's strength within the context of CC as a stand-alone story.
But that has never been my criticism, nor the reason for my dislike of the compilation.
My dislike for the compilation (which I'm generally a fan of when viewed or played in a vacuum - CC is a great action RPG after all) comes from the ways it strays from the original, which to me, should (generally speaking) be the reference point a creator should strive to keep following products consistent with when making follow ups and building a franchise.
I don't care that much for the choreography or writing of the compilation in the context of the original, because of how much I like the original - but I can appreciate it for what it is on its own, and I don't have an issue with people preferring that style.
Some people like oranges, some people like apples. I don't hate on people who like one over the other.
I do however retain the right to criticize or voice my own personal distaste with certain things.
As for the notion that Zack (a seasoned SOLDIER would managed to reach 1st class, which is pretty elitist) should weaker during the Nibelheim flashback than Cloud at the beginning of the OG (with a history of being a Shinra grunt, and then a long coma), IMO that would not make sense.
Actually, I think that would make perfect sense considering that Cloud's latent strength even as an MP was at least partly implied to be greater than Zacks (given the scene where Cloud over-powers Sephiroth while impaled on his sword) already, combined with the fact that Cloud then receives a long-lasting and generous treatment of Mako and Jenova cells.
As for Zack dying because of karma... I think that the concept of karmic-death is very irrelevant in FF VII considering the fates of many characters (Aerith, Biggs/Wedge/Jessie, Reeve, the Turks...)
And I didn't really meant that to be taken literally in that sense though, and as such my wording was inappropriate - I was using the term in a loose sense.
Zack dying the way he did is 1.) completely consistent with most deaths in the original FFVII and 2.) One could argue that him dying in that way, is a logical extension of his role in the plot of the original, where giving him the "Aerith treatment" would be extremely weird given what he did for living up until that point.
It works partly in CC because the entire game sets him up as a good guy - however, as far as the original game goes we don't even know how true this is for him (although we do know he apparently though making a living as a mercenary was completely fine), especially given how morally ambiguous everyone else is in the game.
I think they should have kept it that way - not take a character that was a morally ambiguous, relatively mediocre SOLDIER (which is pretty good grounds for a really interesting story) and turn it into your standard cliche tale about super-strong goodie-two-shoes parallel to Bardock from DBZ.
Now, I'm not convinced that the VR scenes are representative of the whole mood of the game, while you seem to have the opposite impression.
That's because it's perfectly consistent with what we see of the fighting in AC.
That's it from me on this topic. These exchanges eat too much time, so I've set a quota for myself for how many times I can reply in the same thread regarding the same debate, and so I'll have to draw the line here (I'm still reading replies though so you can still change my mind).
