Shinra's not so bad....

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Re-playing Crisis Core, I realised something that hadn't registered with me before. After the encounter with Genesis in the apple factory and Tseng's miraculously near-instanteous recovery from being fried alive, he tells Zack that Shina is going to destroy the village to erase all the evidence - and then asks him to double check whether anybody is still alive in the village. Of course, Genesis has already killed everybody but Gillan Hewley. Zack somehow communicates to Tseng that Angeal's mum needs to be rescued. Tseng tells him to hurry up and do that. When Zack is delayed by incoming shells, Tseng calls the Shinra bombers and tells them to hold on until Gillian is rescued. Which they do.

Not the complete and utter disregard for human life that we've come to expect from Shinra. You'd think in particular that they'd love to bury Gillian under a few tons of rubble. But there we are: she's alive, and they try to save her.

 

[ChipNoir]

You say that, but we don't know what they would have done with the survivors. Considering they were bombing the evidence of a problematic location, I don't think they'd be any kinder. For all we know, they would have merely wanted to interrogate survivors, especially Genesis' mom, and there after either incarceration or private execution.

 

[Gary Caelum]

They almost needed to portray Shinra as reasonable in Crisis Core, or they wouldn't be able to explain why Zack worked for them.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yes, that's all possible. Tone arguments are weak by their nature, but all I can say is, it wasn't the tone of the conversation that people were to be saved for interrogation or torture. I think Gary hit the nail on the head. SE accidentally made their Shinra goons and muscle such charming fan favourites that Shinra itself can't be made too look too bad.

 

[fancy]

They almost needed to portray Shinra as reasonable in Crisis Core, or they wouldn't be able to explain why Zack worked for them.

Right! I was struggling to put it into words myself when I was thinking about it (big DERP) but right this is it exactly. Zack was too lovable a protagonist and Shinra behaving as they do in OG would've been incredibly jarring.

*Zack gives good guy smile, wink, and thumbs up*
*Shinra carelessly slaughters innocents*
*Zack continues giving good guy smile, wink, and thumbs up*

Ha ha, that could've made for an amusing black comedy if Square was a different sort of company lmao. Happy-Go-Stupid protagonist too blinded by rose-coloured specs to recognise the evil that he aligns himself with. Love it.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

True.

But also, I do think that if Shinra were in the real world, it really wouldn't seem so bad to an awful lot of people. For one thing, it's such a huge organisation that no little cog in the big machine will ever have much idea of what the masters are up to; hence all the cover-ups. Didn't google recently drop "don't be evil" from its company manifesto? The OG is full of Shinra apologists who basically say, "Well, yes, I guess they do blow up people from time and time, and they do do genetic experiments on humans... But look how much our living standards have improved! And they've made the trains run on time!"

I also think, but this is just my headcanon, that Shinra didn't start off evil, it really did start off as a force for progress but gradually became corrupted.

 

[ForceStealer]

Yeah I don't think they started with the intent to be an evil organization, that's silly and cartoonish. 'Force for progress' might be extreme, they were a weapons manufacturer after all. You could say the conversion to power company from military contractor would be a more altruistic one, even if it was chasing profits (and that they clearly never gave up the weapons). But the game does go a bit out of its way to show that Rufus is more...ruthless (lol) than his father was. His father was heartless, but the controlling the world with money vs with fear thing.

But yeah, Zack being willfully ignorant of Shinra being evil would have made him look like an idiot, as you say, he's just doing a job in a giant organization. It was better to show him only slowly becoming aware of their awfulness as he rose the ranks.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Yeah I don't think they started with the intent to be an evil organization, that's silly and cartoonish.

With maybe a few exceptions like extreme nihilists (e.g the Joker from Batman), who are incredibly rare in reality, almost no-one has the intent to be evil.

 

[Roger]

Geneais is the greater evil in Crisis Core for sure, it's attacking any place that houses a Shinra Reactor and does not discriminate between the military and civilians. It's in Shinra's best interest to fight against them and thus for Zack desertion from Shinra at any time means not being available t help.

This makes sense.

However, Cloud relates exactly the kind of murky stuff the Turks get up to for Shinra to Aerith and recognises Reno by face. We should've seen the missions that made him say that in either Before Crisis or Crisis Core.

 

[fancy]

With maybe a few exceptions like extreme nihilists (e.g the Joker from Batman), who are incredibly rare in reality, almost no-one has the intent to be evil.

Nor do those portrayed as antagonists, even "evil" ones, often see themselves as such I wager.

'Force for progress' might be extreme, they were a weapons manufacturer after all.

It's interesting you bring this up, cuz in the history of the world, those societies who have been the leaders of 'progress' and technological advances have simultaneously been the ones to develop deadlier and deadlier means of destroying other societies (ig, the bombing of Japan in WWII), which kinda strikes me as a bit of a tragic contradiction.

I doubt devs were keeping this sort of thing in mind when they wrote Final Fantasy VII lmao, but it's fun to think of Shinra in a similar way haha.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I totally think they had it in mind. I think it's a major theme of the game.
And the beautiful irony is we're currently look at situation on our own planet not a million miles away from their own. Obviously Sephiroth was the acute crisis, posing the most immediate threat to the welfare of the Planet, but he was in one sense nothing more than a manifestation of the more chronic threat to the planet posed by Shinra's complete disregard for nature: their rampant exploitation of non-renewable resources, and their inability to distinguish an indigenous species from an invasive species. Of course the lovely thing about the game is that it has such a light touch with its theme and messages. The narrative, the characterisation and the gameplay always come first. You can completely ignore the message if you want to. It's just humming along there in the background.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Oh god there are gonna be 100 thinkpieces about how FF7 is about global warming aren't there?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Ok I can't be bothered to look up the references but I was under the impression the writing team or at least the guys in charge had been explicitly influenced by James Lovelock's "Gaia hypothesis" (I mean just look at the clues in the names Loveless and Lockheart, lol). Maybe it's not about climate change per se but its environmental themes are pretty clear. Also, just because it wasn't intended to be about global warming doesn't mean it can't be seen as a cautionary tale about GW. People are always re-interpreting Shakespeare to make it meaningful for their own times. One of the things that make this such a great game is that it lends itself to these reinterpretations.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Oh yeah it obviously has a kind of environmentalism message, although I doubt it was based on a specific real world issue, and certainly not based on science.

Another likely inspiration was the series of anti-industrialism revolts that happened in Japan throughout the Meiji Restoration. There were a series of Samurai groups who opposed Japan's industrial revolution simply because they knew it would destroy their traditional way of life (which it did).
The whole Wutai/Shinra clash in FF7 is almost identical to the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsuma_Rebellion

 

[Clement Rage]

From a practical perspective(even an evil one), Shinra had no need to bomb the village at all. They're actually innocent this time, what they should be doing is searching the place for clues to what Genesis is planning next and looting all that expensive lab equipment. Destroying it just makes them look suspicious, because they can't easily blame that airstrike on Genesis, who probably doesn't have bombers (when he tried to bomb it first, he used missiles Zack could block)

Of course they'd want Gillian, she was heavily involved in project G and would have very valuable intelligence on what Gen is up to (he loves talking, he totally laid it all out in a giant monologue with diagrams and powerpoints).

However, Cloud relates exactly the kind of murky stuff the Turks get up to for Shinra to Aerith and recognises Reno by face. We should've seen the missions that made him say that in either Before Crisis or Crisis Core.

He doesn't recognise his face, he recognises the uniform. Maybe Cloud knows more about the murky side of things than Zack does, the Turks generally don't treat the infantry well.

I'm very cautious of ascribing messages to works like this. The differences are as important as the simularities, otherwise you get Fanon Wutai being seen as beat for beat Japan, which it is not.

 

[ChipNoir]

I dunno about all this...I mean look at the U.S government It's simultaneously fighting itself, often within it's own branches. A governing body gets big enough and the left hand may not know what the right hand is doing.

SOLDIER is like the idealistic military branch, the turks handle covert-ops and keeping the president's security. All the mass killing seems to fall to the military arm under Heidegger supplemented by Scarlette's bio-tech weapons.

It may be very possible that Zack just wasn't aware of what was going on at the time.

 

[ChipNoir]

From a practical perspective(even an evil one), Shinra had no need to bomb the village at all. They're actually innocent this time, what they should be doing is searching the place for clues to what Genesis is planning next and looting all that expensive lab equipment. Destroying it just makes them look suspicious, because they can't easily blame that airstrike on Genesis, who probably doesn't have bombers (when he tried to bomb it first, he used missiles Zack could block)

Of course they'd want Gillian, she was heavily involved in project G and would have very valuable intelligence on what Gen is up to (he loves talking, he totally laid it all out in a giant monologue with diagrams and powerpoints).



He doesn't recognise his face, he recognises the uniform. Maybe Cloud knows more about the murky side of things than Zack does, the Turks generally don't treat the infantry well.

I'm very cautious of ascribing messages to works like this. The differences are as important as the simularities, otherwise you get Fanon Wutai being seen as beat for beat Japan, which it is not.

Part of it is that JENOVA is literally drawing in fake memories, even of things that Cloud 100% could never have seen or known about. I get the impression that JENOVA didn't just draw memories out of Tifa, but also out of Zack as well, and blended them all together inside Cloud's mind as soon as Tifa touched him.

 

[jazzflower92]

Part of it is that JENOVA is literally drawing in fake memories, even of things that Cloud 100% could never have seen or known about. I get the impression that JENOVA didn't just draw memories out of Tifa, but also out of Zack as well, and blended them all together inside Cloud's mind as soon as Tifa touched him.

I keep telling you Jenova is an underrated player, even though her son is controlling her.

 

[Clement Rage]

That's the problem with things Cloud should/ shouldn't know, it's hard to tell what's a real memory, a borrowed one, and what's a fabrication.

As far as Cloud is concerned, the public face of SOLDIER is 'recruitment' for SOLDIER, with rumours of much more dark shady stuff on the side. It's very unlikely that he just means handing out brochures, so where did he get that memory from? It might be from his experiences, Zack's or even Tifa's, if she looked into SOLDIER recruitment from an AVALANCHE perspective.Or some random NPC that walked by?

The Mass Killing of Sector 7 fell to the Turks, and they handle most of the super secret stuff. Burning down Corel was the army (and Scarlet?)

Hojo is some huge secret that nobody has actually seen in FF7, then in CC he's casually going down to the SOLDIER floor for tests. In BC, the monsters in his lab are too secret for SOLDIER to know about, in CC there are a bunch of sidemissions slaughtering lab escapees.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Shinra's entire ethos is disregard for human life.

Yes, they were going to hold off bombing the entire village in order try to take Gillian alive...

....Because she was a prized research scientist who's data on the Jenova Project is a closely held trade secret. Zack didn't know that, Tseng presumably did as a Turk, but maybe he was ignorant of that fact too, but that's the real reason.

In the end, there was nothing benevolent or good in that action. It was purely motivated by self interest. Nothing close to altruistic. As explained in Crisis Core, people don't truly retire from Shinra. They're watched for all their life, to ensure no secrets are leaked from them. They prefer to keep those useful to them alive and only resort to outright execution when absolutely necessary.

You want to see Shinra's real thoughts about human life, not connected to their interests? Well. One need only look at Kalm and Nibelheim.

Did Shinra start out evil? Probably not.

...I'm sure the Al Bhed fuckers who started it in hopes of space colonization for a better Spira thought they were doing good!

Ahem.

But in all seriousness, no. They may not have started evil but they sure as hell got there with both feet firmly behind the finish line.

 

[jazzflower92]

Shinra's entire ethos is disregard for human life.

Yes, they were going to hold off bombing the entire village in order try to take Gillian alive...

....Because she was a prized research scientist who's data on the Jenova Project is a closely held trade secret. Zack didn't know that, Tseng presumably did as a Turk, but maybe he was ignorant of that fact too, but that's the real reason.

In the end, there was nothing benevolent or good in that action. It was purely motivated by self interest. Nothing close to altruistic. As explained in Crisis Core, people don't truly retire from Shinra. They're watched for all their life, to ensure no secrets are leaked from them. They prefer to keep those useful to them alive and only resort to outright execution when absolutely necessary.

You want to see Shinra's real thoughts about human life, not connected to their interests? Well. One need only look at Kalm and Nibelheim.

Did Shinra start out evil? Probably not.

...I'm sure the Al Bhed fuckers who started it in hopes of space colonization for a better Spira thought they were doing good!

Ahem.

But in all seriousness, no. They may not have started evil but they sure as hell got there with both feet firmly behind the finish line.

They are kind of like the world government from One Piece, which is all about appearances and trying to keep the public on their side. When in actuality they really care little for human life and will do anything to hold on to their regime.

https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/World_Government

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Mako, if I hadn't just replayed CC, I would agree with your interpretation, but that isn't the way it comes across in the scene. When I read SilentTweak's Crisis Core script, it's possible the original could be read as Tseng being interested in capturing Gillian specifically, but the English version in CC conveys more of an interest in saving people generally.

Yes, Shinra clearly underwent a downward trajectory. The President's big mistake, as Rufus realised, was being worried about PR and feeling his company needed to project a unsullied image of themselves as a force for good, with which nothing bad could be associated. Hence all the brutal coverups. I mean they didn't need to give the survivors to Hojo, that was just cruel; they could have simply killed them. Rufus realises Shinra is so powerful that, like Facebook, it really doesn't need to give a fuck what anybody thinks. And he's not wrong.

 

[jazzflower92]

I think it's more of Tseng wanted to save people, but for Shinra it was more of an afterthought.

 

[Roger]

Tseng and Zack were Shinra in this instance. They were the ones conducting the operation in Banora. The bombing would start when they get picked up by helicopter.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Actually, from the cut scenes sequences it seems as if they were picked up after the bombing was finished. The helicopter swoops down with Tseng in it to pick him up while he's on the ground gazing in shock at the burning apple orchards.