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

[Max Caulfield]

Does Shinra operate as the de facto government? Where did the actual government go?

Also, with how Shinra is destroying the planet you'd think that other countries would get involved to stop them because fucking up the planet is bad for everyone?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The exploitation of fossil fuels is slowly killing our planet, yet no country has ever fought a war to stop the use of fossil fuels.

Shinra is basically a multinational that has evolved to control the entire world through its monopoly on the sources of power. I doubt that this could happen in real life in only 25 years, but who knows? What's stranger is that there are no practically no historical monuments or vestiges of the nations that must have existed at one time; but then again I don't think Square was interested in that kind of world-building with this game.

 

[jazzflower92]

Yeah, that is a good question. I think Square should have done better worldbuilding with the setting.

 

[Pixel]

That's what the Wutai war was. Shinra taking over territories to access mako.

Shinra were in the pockets of the government, so controlled everything.

 

[Cthulhu]

I never did think the FFVII world had much inhabitants or actual countries tbf; just a handful of city-states with evil monsters in between. I mean you can fly around the whole world in a minute or so, .

 

[Roger]

Yeah, that is a good question. I think Square should have done better worldbuilding with the setting.

They should have pulled a XII and just have it take place on one part of the globe.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Yeah, that is a good question. I think Square should have done better worldbuilding with the setting.

They should have pulled a XII and just have it take place on one part of the globe.

To be fair, most of SE's Final Fantasy games up to FFVII took place globally. There's was no reason for them to really stop when FFVII came out. Also, The Law of Conservation of Detail is in full effect in FFVII. If it's not important to the plot/gameplay, then it's not going to be in the game.

What we see in Corel before Shin-Ra comes in is probably what most of the city governments are/were like, which isn't far off of how governments worked when communication between cities is rare/difficult. It looks like Barret and the other respected members of town discussed things that effected the town as a whole. It looks like this could apply to Nebelheim when Cloud was a kid too.

 

[Roger]

Yeah, that is a good question. I think Square should have done better worldbuilding with the setting.

They should have pulled a XII and just have it take place on one part of the globe.

To be fair, most of SE's Final Fantasy games up to FFVII took place globally. There's was no reason for them to really stop when FFVII came out. Also, The Law of Conservation of Detail is in full effect in FFVII. If it's not important to the plot/gameplay, then it's not going to be in the game.

Well, I already feel the Law of Conservation of Detail was in effect in all the other FF games, we just see the country's castle/capital and an occasional plot relevant village, doesn't mean it's the only thing in that country. But we do know that there are different countries with a couple of kings/emperors ruling them in most FFs. In FFVII, it goes to the point where the countries themselves are left out because they aren't relevant outside of Wutai and whatever Midgar used to be.

What we see in Corel before Shin-Ra comes in is probably what most of the city governments are/were like, which isn't far off of how governments worked when communication between cities is rare/difficult. It looks like Barret and the other respected members of town discussed things that effected the town as a whole. It looks like this could apply to Nebelheim when Cloud was a kid too.

Nibelheim, Gongaga and Mideel don't have their coalmining equivalent tho. Corel Continent the biggest landmass and is just a themepark and destroyed backwater villages, acknowledged as such before their respective catestrophies.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The question of the pre-Shinra history of their planet has long fascinated me, because we have so few clues. One big clue is that Shinra began life as an arms manufacturer. Now maybe they were just making shotguns for people to hunt jumpings with, the Purdys of their day - or maybe they were making and selling military hardware. But to make a profit out of military hardware you need a market, and normally that market would be rival states seeking either to defend themselves from aggressors or to be aggressors themselves. No traces are left of any state that would be powerful or rich enough to both need and afford Shinra's weaponry, except for Wutai.

The other thing is that in real life there is simply no way you can have a world with one city - one city - as large and technologically advanced as Midgar, yet nothing anywhere else (except for Junon, which is more of a fortress, though its strategic purpose is not readily apparent). No secondary cities, no smaller centres of industry and production? You just can't have 21st century New York in the middle of a rustic mediaeval world - except, of course, in fantasy.

To take another example, which I've mentioned before: it is simply not possible to develop a technology as complicated as a railway and then only use it twice, once for urban transportation in one city (with only one railway line) and once for one coal mine. Just look at that complicated engineering that went into the switchback bridge outside Corel. There's no way that can be the only switchback bridge on the planet.

Do those three ships and that one seaplane we see in Costa del Sol represent the planet's entire fleet? Also, where are their shipyards? Their steel mills? Their radio towers?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this any more. Except to say that I hope the remake does some more world-building and leaves the plot alone.

 

[Flare]

^Im hoping the remake will add more to the world itself, I would absolutely love that.

As far as real world parallels, don't forget that the Planet from VII seems to be a lot smaller than ours, thus, one company taking over the world in due time isn't as far-fetched there. Maybe there was only a handful of different countries to begin with, and once Shinra rose up in power, they apparently made it to where they were able to take control of whatever countries had been before, even Wutai in due time. I mean, Shinra is the government by the time you're actually playing the game. President Shinra is the de facto ruler. They control everything from the companies around most of the world to the news.
Also, not to diminish the life of our own planet any, but as the Planet is smaller and they're literally sucking the life energy out of it to get power, it's much more plausible that their Planet wouldn't be able to last very long with such circumstances, and that people would notice (as Avalanche did) and rebel, seeing the danger. I mean, in the years Midgar has been around, they've reduced the entire area to a wasteland around them, so the evidence is very noticeable on such a small planet. I'd freak out too if I lived there.

Um anyway, more OT isn't there supposed to have been multiple cities where Midgar is now, before Midgar was built? They could've been cities belonging to the same country/government, but maybe Shinra started off there too, and thus it was the first place they were able to take over, for lack of better word.

 

[Flintlock]

Midgar still has a Mayor, remember, though he admits to having no real power. The fact his office is inside the Shinra Building is already proof enough of that. I imagine his position exists to maintain the pretence of separation between Shinra and (local) government, which is useful for propaganda purposes.

"And now for the news. Due to a terrorist attack by the group named AVALANCHE, parts of Midgar that were temporarily out of power will be restored momentarily. Following President Shinra's lead, Mayor Domino also spoke out public [sic] against AVALANCHE."

 

[Lex]

Well if there's one thing they've been consistent with since FFXII, it's the addition of a datalog with a shitload of extraneous detail. I for sure wouldn't mind that for VII. I'd actually read every damn word.

 

[Max Caulfield]

I never did think the FFVII world had much inhabitants or actual countries tbf; just a handful of city-states with evil monsters in between. I mean you can fly around the whole world in a minute or so, .

I always attributed the size of the planet to the creators not wanting us to have to spend 25 minutes getting from one location to another.

 

[Mayo Master]

As many people said before me, there was not much world building done in PS1 era FFs, and FF VII in particular. However, I think this notion should be put into context: very few games, even RPGs, were detailed in their world-building elements back in 1997. We are nowadays more accustomed to richer world backgrounds because games have also expanded in that way - I strongly disagree with the notion that video games have only developed in a "all flash, no substance" direction.
As the Engineer mentioned, the Law of Conservation of details was largely employed; as Licorice mentioned, most of the infrastructure of the world doesn't really make sense. Back when the game was released, these simplifying aspects were a lot more forgivable than they are today. Back then, being given a "one-line clunky explanation" about a specific aspect of the world was perceived in a very positive light, because most games were not bothering with explanations at all. Otherwise, some aspects of the world felt justified because it constrained/directed how the game was played (example, the limitations on the means of transportation do not actually make sense, but they served to direct the player to particular geographic locations).
Back to the topic of government: everybody already stated what was canon more or less (Shinra effectively managing government, while the mayor of Midgar has no power whatsoever, and Wutai yielded to Shinra only recently). Now, if I had to speculate...

Spoiler

As Licorice mentioned, Shinra started as a weapon manufacturer/developer, and as Flare mentioned, Midgar used to be a cluster of neighboring settlements before Shinra took over. It seems that initially, every settlement was sort of managed as an independent "city state". My guess would be that, along with manufacturing arms, Shinra must have begun to built a private army, which could have very well started as a "police substitute" in the settlements which would later become Midgar. It could have been a "peace keeping" faction, which was shared among the settlements, and later became their unifying element. In most places without strong democratic principle, the power goes to whom is aligned with the military - not necessarily because of threats posed by the military to the citizens, but because the military would be the only able body to defend them against inside threats (crime) and outside threats (foreign invasion). Both Junon and Kalm seem to be aligned with the Shinra, Junon probably welcomed Shinra armies in some distant and forgotten war, which lead to the ultra-militarization of this port. Instead, Kalm seemed to have accepted Shinra because of trades and infrastructure benefits, because the Shinra was providing a more comfortable lifestyle. Then Shinra expanded through various means (mostly "sign with us and you'll get wealth and comfort, if you don't you'll get war"), with the primary purpose of expanding their resources. Wutai was the last place to resists, and by the end of the Wutai war Shinra controlled everything.

Anyway, personally I would very much appreciate if some effort is spent on world-building coherence for the remake, even if some aspects have to be retconed.

 

[Lex]

As usual, I'm more interested in learning more about the Cetra. I know that in terms of the story we know all we need to, but I'd like more information.

For example, we know that they were migrants and that the regular humans of FFVII are descendants who lost their power to commune with the planet because they stopped this migration/ stopped communing with the planet in some sense (thus the birth of settlements), but we know almost nothing about the people themselves.

In addition, the Forgotten Capital doesn't seem to fit with the migration idea because it certainly appears to be a permanent settlement, and it also certainly appears to have large ceremonial areas. The altar and the room with the large crystal - they must have been used for something. Maybe there was an elected high shaman or something similar.

Moar Cetra plz

 

[Mayo Master]

^ I agree, moar Cetra would be nice. Besides, the FF VII timeline is very much like "2000 years ago, disaster struck, calamity from the Skies, etc. and now Shinra directs the world", with next to nothing in between.
Personally, I've always been a bit confused about the nature of the Cetra, and of the characteristics that make them different from humans. On the one hand, humans are said to be different because they settled down and stopped communing with the planet; on the other hand the Cetra seemed almost considered as a distinct "species". I'm also wondering how the original civilizations of FFVII were built, given the supposed ties with the world of FFX.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Well... I like to think that humans are just Cetra who lost their ability to communicate with the Planet. Their ancestors chose the easy life of settled farming rather than the hardships of the nomadic life. And then, as in the real world, the nomads started to die out....

 

[Pixel]

I've always thought the forgotten city was built, or organically grown in part, above a lifestream vein, same with temple of the ancients. Then when Jenova's meteor hit, the lifestream veins reconfigured to focus on healing the wound, and the forgotten capital withered away.

There would probably have been Cetra who chose an easier life even before the calamity. The cetra up north were just all that was left.

The human settlements were built around where Midgar would be because there was a strong lifestream vein there. Then when Midgar was built, it just enveloped all of those towns.

Other humans settled around Wutai where there was another strong vein.

The focus of the lifestream on healing the wound could have made it difficult to live anywhere other than over the lifestream veins until relatively recently, so those are the most populated areas of the world.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I like those ideas, Pixel.

 

[Starling]

Perhaps the cetra had various places like the forgotten capital all over the world, where they would convene for important matters such as if they ever had to cast holy or do stuff that needed a larger number of cetra. It'd make sense for them to have specific destinations in mind when migrating from one region to another.

 

[Pixel]

Shademp brought up a cool theory in the LP about the forgotten city being like a water temple / Atlantis. And there being other temples around the world if they ever did a sequel.

 

[Clement Rage]

Even if they did build a big complicated world, it still wouldn't be justifiable if you dug deep enough. (Only one farm in the world, that raises racing birds instead of food?)

Headcanon:

The Calamity from the skies would have been kinda a big deal, one assumes whatever civilisation existed took a serious hit and there was a long period of scraping together enough to survive. All the sources we have about the Cetra have reason to be biased, I'd expect their story is more complicated than we've been told so far.

Traveling is very difficult in the gameworld, as their wildlife is much more dangerous than ours, and every flyspeck has a weapons store. Maintaining long narrow networks of railways outside their core area seems like it would be very difficult. Wutai is defensible (all those Canyons) so fared a little better.

It's canon that Shinra doesn't have much of an airforce, or else the Tiny Bronco wouldn't be so big of a deal.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

But you need a complex advanced economy to produce the kind of technology that Shinra has.

 

[hian]

It's canon that Shinra doesn't have much of an airforce, or else the Tiny Bronco wouldn't be so big of a deal.

Shinra apparently has a bunch of attack helicopters though - both the ones you see regularly in game, and the weirdly high-tech ones you never see in use that are parked in Junon.

I think the Tiny Bronco thing really just was bad writing. It was just a rushed rational cooked up to justify putting Rufus and Shinra in rocket town, put Cid into the party, and give the party a new means of traveling to propel the story onwards.
From a narrative and logical perspective though, it makes absolutely no sense what so ever, so if they're gonna change anything in the remake, I hope they rewrite that entire section, or turn Tiny Bronco into a cargo air-plane, because seriously - it really is completely daft as it is.

EDIT :
I also hope they add roads, and a railroad system, check-points, other signs of civilization along the way throughout the world.
It just isn't believable at all that Junon and Midgar are completely cut off from each-other by mountains with no official method of traveling between them except capturing a chocobo, braving a swamp past the Midgar Zolom/Midgardsormen, crawling through a cave, and then walking across grasslands and forests with no proper places to stop and rest on the way.

How is Midgar even sustainable? Were are they getting their food? No proper farms nearby, no fishing villages etc. and no infrastructure for transport of food and other resources to the city from the outside at all.
How are they doing it? By an armada of Shinra choppers?

DOUBLE EDIT :
In fact, isn't the above point true for pretty much every town and major place of human residency throughout the world of FF7.
I mean Gold Saucer? How is that thing operational? You mean to tell me the poverty stricken people living in that town by that one cable cart are delivering groceries etc. once every week or so?
Where are these people getting that from?

What about the people of Calm, Nibelheim, Rocket Town, and Corel etc.? These places are all pretty much cut off from other parts of civilization yet they don't seem to have the stuff necessary to be self-sufficient. Are people living in FF7 all hunters and gatherers? If so, shouldn't there be warriors walking about everywhere? I mean, the FF7 country-side isn't really all that hospitable after all, with all the dinosaurs, weird hybrid monsters and killer robots on the loose and whatnot.
I mean, rocket town doesn't even have a wall to keep that stuff out.

This even impacts the plot. I mean, Cloud, Sephiroth and Zack arrived in Nibelheim in a truck - in a truck - but hey, guess what? There are no roads leading to Nibelheim. It's also past several mountain ranges and rivers that apparently, can only be crossed on foot, and with a sand-buggy, chocobo or boat.
How did Rufus and Co. get to Rocket Town if not via helicopter, and if the helicopter can fly that far, why do they need the Tiny Bronco?
How did they move Sister Ray all the way to Midgar without proper infrastructure for travel? The armada of choppers again?
How did Shinra move an army to Wutai? They all rode across the swamp on chocobos, crawled through the cave, walked to Junon and caught a boat, then walked again? Or did they just fly there directly? Why does Rufus need the Tiny Bronco again?
WTF GOD DAMN IT, FF7 IS RUINED FOR ME NOW!!1!!!!111!

j/k

Seriously though. Remake. Fix the god damn infrastructure of the world.

 

[Clement Rage]

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.

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.

I hope they rewrite that entire section, or turn Tiny Bronco into a cargo air-plane, because seriously - it really is completely daft as it is.

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?

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.

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

But you need a complex advanced economy to produce the kind of technology that Shinra has.

Hence Mako being such a big deal.