Where's the government in FFVII? Is Shinra the government?

[Pixel]

I think in the Turks novel, it says Shin-Ra only had 4 helicopters

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I think in the Turks novel, it says Shin-Ra only had 4 helicopters

after meteor fall, they only had four left.

 

[hian]

Every made up world breaks down if you analyse it that much. Yep, even that one you're thinking of. Red Dead Redemption has a huge world, but it still too small and compact to be plausible..

This is a cop out. Clearly there is a huge spectrum of varying degrees of failure that can happen during world-building.
Some worlds are infinitely better designed than others.

FF7's so far down that spectrum that it would hugely benefit from a face-lift in the context of this remake if they're going to be presenting the game in a tone consistent with the teaser trailer.

The original FF7 was whimsical to absurd degrees at times. That allowed people to suspend their disbelief to a much larger degree, than say, when people read a book by Tom Clancy or watch a period drama.

The remake though, is obviously going for something much more serious - gone are the disproportionate characters, neon-colors and anime designs. Maintaining the whimsical world-structure despite this change will be extremely jarring to most people not already willing to forgive it because of their love for the source material.

There's no reason to assume we see everything there is. There are other transport routes, presumably they're just monitored. The gang is trying to stay under the radar.

There's no reason to assume the opposite either, and granted how consistent the lack of infrastructure is in the entirety of the game despite it being a relatively easy thing to amend when most of the game happens on pre-rendered backgrounds, I don't see a reason to spend too much time rationalizing the absence of more comprehensive world-building elements.

The gang might be trying to stay under the radar - however, the narrative never even implicitly alludes to the this being the case, despite the fact that it would have been done with a single line of throw-away dialogue at pretty much any point prior to crossing the swamp. That should be telling you something - either about the lack of care in terms of world-building when the game was first designed, or about the quality of the game's writing.

Doesn't make sense either, just makes new problems, because now it's too big for Cid to maintain himself and too expensive to run out of his backyard. Maybe Rufus arrived in that big truck that hits Palmer?

It only makes new problems if you rewrite it shoddily without taking these things into account.
How is it that Cid can maintain a rocket with a couple of guys but cannot have and maintain a cargo plane? How about if they just re-design his residence to him living on a work-shop on a landing-strip next to the rocket launch center? How about they explain that Rufus wants the air-plane because his transport has broken down, and the closest Shinra out-post with spare vehicles is too far away?
Or how about you just drop the entire plane thing altogether and do something else that isn't absurd?

The assumption that changing things introduce more problems assumes that the original narrative is consistent and without tons of problems already. Since that's false, this assumption cannot be justified.

Carrying on though -
If Rufus arrived in a truck, where did he arrive from? There are no roads going through Mt.Nibel, and there's no way of explaining Rufus coming from the opposite direction.

Point I'm trying to make here isn't "Write it this way" - I simply provided an example. My point is, the world is so poorly developed that most of the plot suffers overall no matter what you try to do, so either build a world that makes sense with the plot you have, or rewrite the plot to make sense with the old world.
As it is though - it will need changing to not look completely out of place with the new art-direction.

Sure they have a bunch of attack choppers, but maybe those are short range? They definitely only have one airship, and if they had fighter planes (why? No one else has an airforce?) they'd have used them on the Highwind at some point.

You're not really doing much except building into my point here. If Shinra only has short-range helicopters, then how is Rufus getting around the place so quickly (same goes for the Turks, or Shinra's military forces).

As for not using their air-force on Highwind - this is another problem whether you introduce change or not. After all, there is an entire fleet of high-tech army helicopters parked in Junon. Why don't they attack Highwind?

As for nobody else having an air-force - who're you referring to here? Nobody else has much of anything in FF7's world apart from Shinra, much less a proper military force.
If Shinra is the military monopoly of the world, and the only real seat of technological advancement in the world, then Shinra being the only ones capable of maintaining an air-force isn't strange at all.

Maybe Rufus is just being a dick and stealing from Cid while he happens to be in the neighbourhood?.

That would be extremely bad writing though. Rufus, the president of a company that essentially runs and owns the world, deciding on a whim to be a dick and steal a private plane that only seats 2-3 people at the most for no good reason except to bother Cid, a person he has no real relationship with.
Totally makes sense.

It's like somebody else said in this thread - FF7's world was designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, to be a backdrop to the story.
Everything not directly related to what's happening right now is not going to be on screen whether it would make sense to have or it or not from a larger world-building perspective.
That works in the original because the entire presentation of the game is like a mad dream of a person tripping on mushrooms.
You can accept absurdity if the rules of the world, established from pretty much five minutes in, is that the world is largely absurd - and make no mistake, the original FF7's world is largely absurd.

That does not seem to be what they're going for now, and so people will take notice if the world doesn't mature to fit the new style and feel.

 

[Clement Rage]

It only makes new problems if you rewrite it shoddily without taking these things into account.
How is it that Cid can maintain a rocket with a couple of guys but cannot have and maintain a cargo plane? How about if they just re-design his residence to him living on a work-shop on a landing-strip next to the rocket launch center? How about they explain that Rufus wants the air-plane because his transport has broken down, and the closest Shinra out-post with spare vehicles is too far away?
Or how about you just drop the entire plane thing altogether and do something else that isn't absurd?

He can't maintain it, it's just been abandoned and sitting there. If he does have a functioning airstrip and staff to run it, then Rocket Town isn't just some abandoned backwater any more.

Less absurd like what?

If Shinra only has short-range helicopters, then how is Rufus getting around the place so quickly (same goes for the Turks, or Shinra's military forces).

Is he getting around quickly? Cloud's gang are mostly on foot, but they can more or less keep up.

I'm not against roads being in the game, but the idea that the lack of them is some massive failure is something I'm not sure about. It's like that argument people make about Kadaj getting to the forgotten city by bike. How come? Because it would be a waste of screentime to show him in a ferry operator's waiting room. That would be weeks of work for the animators, thousand of (currency of your choice), for something that adds nothing to the movie itself.

Narratives always take shortcuts. All that stuff would take time to animate, work out how much the characters interact with it, etc, and in the end it would amount to background. Nice, yes, but necessary? I dunno.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Less absurd like what is a good question. I was going to suggest that Rufus question Cid as to the whereabout the party, and taking the plane out of spite when Cid refuses to cooperate - and maybe because his journey by land to Rocket Town was a bit rougher than he intended. Although - what happened to the chopper he got into at Costa del Sol? Why can't he use that? Anyway, Rufus doesn't want the party to be apprehended, especially now that he has a spy in their midst; he wants them to track down Sephiroth for him. But once they have an airship it won't be so easy to keep tabs on them - they can move as fast as his people do. So maybe he plans to confiscate the Tiny Bronco just so that Cloud & Co can't take it, and Palmer spills this to Cid by gloating over it, maybe when he goes inside for his tea and lard?

 

[hian]

He can't maintain it, it's just been abandoned and sitting there. If he does have a functioning airstrip and staff to run it, then Rocket Town isn't just some abandoned backwater any more..

If it was just sitting there without any maintenance, the idea that they could use it against the meteor in short order is ridiculous. Do you have any idea how much work it is to launch a rocket?
I'm also pretty sure that Cloud and Co. first finds Cid inside his rocket, presumably maintaining it...

Also, have you any idea of how much mental gymnastics you're doing right now?
You're literally saying that a backwater town with a god damn rocket launch site would make less sense if it had a landing strip and a workshop for maintaining an air-plane or two.
What? As opposed to a backwater town with just a rocket launch site?
Okay...

Also, there is nothing to say that rocket town has to be a backwater town - is that really a necessary part of the plot?
It also depends on what you mean by backwater.

My father grew up in the country-side. No convenience stores back then, and 1 hour drive to the closest city infrastructure. It had a landing strip for air-planes though.

Less absurd like what?

Plenty of things that are less absurd. Instead of me providing you a list of things that are less absurd, which you will reject by default in either case because of your apparent need to rationalize the plot as it is -
Do you honestly want me to believe you think that the event in question is the least absurd way of moving the plot ahead?
How about you see if you can think of something?
That will probably be a more productive exercise, and chances are you probably can.

Is he getting around quickly? Cloud's gang are mostly on foot, but they can more or less keep up.

My point is that Rufus/Turks etc. often ends up in the same place as Cloud and Co. despite obviously not having traveled by the same road, yet use approximately the same amount of/less time. This means that they must have other ways of getting place that don't involve scaling mountain ranges on foot.

I'm not against roads being in the game, but the idea that the lack of them is some massive failure is something I'm not sure about. It's like that argument people make about Kadaj getting to the forgotten city by bike. How come? Because it would be a waste of screentime to show him in a ferry operator's waiting room. That would be weeks of work for the animators, thousand of (currency of your choice), for something that adds nothing to the movie itself.

You're confusing the argument here though.

Here's the thing, Kadaj getting to the forgotten city on bike (did he arrive there on bike? I can't remember the scene) would be physically impossible granted the structure of the world originally.
You don't have to show Kadaj in a ferry operator's room to make this work though - all you have to do, is remove the god damn bike from the picture, and have him arrive on foot.

You're the one needlessly complicating things to rationalize ultimately unworkable plot-holes in the narrative that happened because the original writers didn't notice, or care enough to spend proper time making sure the world worked according to a determined set of rules and conventions.

The lack of roads don't ruin the game, or the story - as I said, the original game was absurd, so I didn't expect realism from it - even consistency.
Looking at the teaser trailer though, I'll probably expect more, and most other people will too.
The addition of a more developed and comprehensive infrastructure will add a lot to the game - not just for making more sense of plot and the games story, but it can also be an excellent platform from which to add new content - whether we're talking side-quests, or the addition of new places to explore with new items and equipment in the bushes.

Narratives always take shortcuts. All that stuff would take time to animate, work out how much the characters interact with it, etc, and in the end it would amount to background. Nice, yes, but necessary? I dunno.

All narratives take short-cuts, yes. However, the narrative and the world-building are not presented on the same plane in a video-game.
Stop pretending as if the complaint here is that the narrative doesn't take out time to show us Rufus's entire traveling route - that's not what this is about.
It's about designing a world that allows for, and is consistent with Rufus's traveling habits within the narrative.

Think of it this way - If I present you a picture book, where one story is written (Red Riding Hood) but the pictures are all stills taken from "The Shining", that would be a problem.

FF7 suffers from a similar problem. It shows us one thing, and tells us something different.
This happens quite a lot in the original game.

One good example is Sephiroth's sword teleporting magically all over the world - from his hands when he falls into the Mako of the Nibel Reactor, to Jenova/Sephiroth in Shinra Building left in the back of president Shinra, and then back to Jenova/Septhiroth as he/she/it kills Aerith.

No, as much as I love FF7's story in the big strokes, it's like a Swiss Cheese. It's filled with holes, inconsistencies and absurdities. It's a delicious Swiss Cheese, but it's still a Swiss Cheese.
I really don't get people who can't admit to this, or want that to remain in the case in remake.

 

[robotwarui]

the things that left an impression on me and made me question and form my views of the level of tech and the world were

--that Nibelheim was a one-truck town

--that Rufus NEEDED Cid's Tiny Bronco - really?

how many and how many types of aircraft exist on the planet, and who owns them?

I wanted to think that it didn't expand much beyond what the OG revealed, and imagined a history of development around that

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Even within the context of the game's canon, Rufus doesn't need Cid's plane, and Cid knows it. So he's obviously just rubbing Cid's face in the fact that he can take whatever he wants. Nasty boy.

 

[hian]

Even within the context of the game's canon, Rufus doesn't need Cid's plane, and Cid knows it. So he's obviously just rubbing Cid's face in the fact that he can take whatever he wants. Nasty boy.

It still doesn't really make sense though. I mean, why would he take it even if he can? Is he going to pilot it? Rufus and one soldier or so so, fly off into the sunset?

It's like this - Rufus, the president of Shinra, is doing a pit-stop in a backwater town and decides to commandeer a plane just because he can, because he's a douche, although it would require him to leave most of his guards behind, or divert his guards to the task of taking the plane off to wherever.
I mean, sure he's a douche, but it's impractical and useless to take it, so it doesn't really make sense.
It really does seem like the entire scene is a contrived and utilitarian way of facilitating the event that leads to Cid joining the party, and the party getting a new ride.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I'm not disagreeing with you.

 

[Clement Rage]

Matter of taste, I guess.

My point isn't that what happens makes perfect sense, it's that no way of presenting it would make sense. Maintaining a rocket realistically would take a huge amount of staff and resources, which would need to be guarded, which would mean that the party would need a better reason to need it than 'oh, cool, a plane. Let's take it.'. It'd also mean Cid would have responsibilities he couldn't walk away from as easily, he wouldn't be as forgotten and irrelevant to the new Shinra, the plane would be kept more securely, which would slow things down narratively...and so on. There's just a new set of problems in place of the old ones.

Not sure why I'm still arguing, roads and infrastructure wouldn't bother me that much.

Anyway, Rufus doesn't want the party to be apprehended, especially now that he has a spy in their midst; he wants them to track down Sephiroth for him.

Rufus already knows where Sephiroth is, the party gets that information from him. I'm not sure he actually wants them loose.

 

[Lex]

OK how's this - Cait's in the party and Reeve is feeding Shinra their location. Rufus, knowing they're headed to Rocket Town, heads there himself to take the Tiny Bronco on the off-chance that Cloud and Co. are planning to take it themselves to stop them from interfering with Shinra's plans. It sounds farfetched but I don't really think it's so out of the realm of possibility.

You could go one step further and claim that their plan to take the Tiny Bronco takes a little longer than depicted in the game and Reeve feeds Shinra the info after Cloud and co. find out about the Tiny Bronco.

EDIT: Lic said this first and I didn't read the poasts lol

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Rufus know Sephiroth is looking for the promised land. So he's letting Cloud & Co. do the dangerous job of actually tracking him down (so dangerous, they didn't even send in a human Shinra spy) but he's keeping close behind them so as not to miss out on what they find.

Exactly why he decided it was a good idea for Rude and Reno to fight the party so soon after Reeve joined, I don't know. My guess is they were there to secretly observe the party, not fight them, but they allowed themselves to be distracted by gossip and so the party stumbled across them.

 

[Clement Rage]

Seems like a kind of unimportant errand for President Shinra to take on himself personally, and a unnecessary risk.

I don't like an interpretation that gives Shinra that much control over events, it undermines the party and raises more questions -why do they allow AVALANCHE within shooting distance of Scarlet? Why does Rufus go to rocket town personally, rather than sending, say, Tseng?

Maybe it's a negotiating tactic and what he actually wants is Ace pilot Cid helping with the hunt, except talks got cut off before they got that far? Otherwise, there wasn't much need to tell Cid where he was going with it.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

It would be kind of a shame if they re-wrote the plot so that it made sense.

 

[Clement Rage]

I feel like there's an appropriate emoticon for this situation, but I always either get lost in the possibility of choice or it fails to load.

 

[Flare]

It would be kind of a shame if they re-wrote the plot so that it made sense.

This scene with Rufus is so very sensible though. I want to see him grab the bottom rung of a helicopter and soar away into the night.....

 

[hian]

Personally, I enjoy the whimsical and nonsensical plot of FF7 - I wasn't really trying to argue that it's a bad thing.
FF7 is consistent with itself in terms of its presentation - that is to say, it's consistently nonsensical.

My problem is rather with the rose-tinted glasses of those who think FF7's plot is consistent and makes perfect sense.
Secondly, that if they're going to remake it to a more serious/realistic tone, whilst doing tie-ins, then it would be smart of them to do a lot of rewrites to make sure that the story follows the new presentation.

It's very easy, I'd argue to go into a game like FF7 or FF9 and not get thrown off by quirky and whimsical elements because of the cohesive nature of those game's style and presentation.
And, I'd make the argument that it's easier to get thrown off the more you stretch a game's presentation in the direction of realism/semi-realism.

We'll see though - but I am getting a distinct feel that this remake will be a straight up rewrite. They'll probably keep the iconic scenes as close to the original as they can, but the rest will probably see, as they said, "drastic changes".