World of Final Fantasy's Remake Compilation Hints

[X-SOLDIER]

My question to this approach is how you ignore ludicrously huge armies in dozens (hundreds?) of other games. What is it specifically about Dirge that makes people stop and say 'No, this is too big' over, say, RDR?

Are the armies in other games hidden though?

That's the whole issue for me. It just seems implausible even for a ridiculous company like Shinra to keep an entire army with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers plus helicopters, tanks and other machinery and an entire city beneath Midgar TOP SECRET.

That shit can't be self-sustaining and the entire logistics of that would be impossible to hide from anyone.
Literally only a handful of people at Shinra knew about this which did not even include Rufus apparently.

I think that the main problem of this really comes down to the fact that there isn't a really good sense of scale of population depicted in the FFVII Universe as it stands.

Midgar was always massive, and we knew there was a significant war with Wutai, but in the OG, all of the other towns are relatively miniscule in scale of visible population, so it's VERY hard to match that with a massive army of missing people.

When we start to see more of the everyday to-scale population in Midgar, Kalm, and elsewhere around the world, I think that the size of Deepground will become vastly more believable – especially if they do a little bit of tweaking to it. After all, this is the same Shin-Ra that covered up Nibelheim's destruction, I think that with all their experimentation, given an appropriate timeline, the construction of a secret army hidden amongst casualties and other things becomes vastly more plausible.




X

 

[Clement Rage]

If Remake is willing to put the work into recreate the FFVII worls as big as it thinks it should be then more power too it. DoC did not bother doing this. It just threw out statements like "1,200 vanished from Junon without a trace". Even if you choose to view DoC and the Remake as part of one whole, that'll be tough for Remake to live up too. Let alone the real world WWII era analogue that you envision. Personally I don't think Remake will go quite that far.

Of course not, but that's impossible. Even the most fully realised worlds like RDR or Metal Gear V aren't full scale. The closest we got was, ironically, FF13, which they did by not showing most of it (and everyone complained about not being able to explore. In any game you care to name, you're going to have to assume there's more than what you see in the world for it to function. In Mass Effect, the Citadel got smaller with every instalment, you just had to take the devs word that more existed.

As for Dirge and scale , Kalm is massively bigger, which could be either swolllen by refugees or just the wanted the town to be bigger. Edge is too big for 500 people, but that also makes sense if it's essentially a mostly abandoned refugee camp. We don't really visit any other towns. And Nibelheim was always a flyspeck.

We don't see what treatment Hollander and Lazard underwent, we don't see then endure and flippantly shrug off Mako showers. But yes, Crisis Core also devalued the process that makes a SOLDIER and thus massively undermined one of the central plot points of the main game. In this regard Before Crisis actually had a much stronger handle on the source material.

We don't see the DGs do that either. The material is pretty consistent that SOLDIER is the best you can do without nasty side effects of some kind. People mutate, lose their minds (the other copies mindlessly chanting "S... Cells", the Ravens (although that becomes inconsistent later on)) degrade, become dependant on Mako -if the suits need to be recharged, that is going to limit DG's range)

I wouldn't call the random machines and monsters that aimlessly roam the countryside part of Shin-Ra military. But in any case, storywise I felt what they brought to bear against Sapphire Weapon was intended to be their strongest showing. I feel Crisis Core agreed because Zack encountered a similiar force at the end of his game and that's what killed him. Not random machines across the gamemap or Genesis.

And the ones in Shinra installations? The CC side missions that explicitly identify them as stolen Shinra tech? The bossfights that are set on you by SHINRA officials, the ones guarding doors? Dangerous machines are quite often integrated into the plot.

In Sapphire Weapon's battle, my impression is that the cutscene is shorthand for a battle. We see fixed guns opening up first, and then a lot of unidentified fire that could be coming from anything, the soldiers with rockets. I don't think we saw everything that happened, any more than we saw the full battle of Lindblum in 9 in that snippet where that guard opened the gate. It's a general impression. As for Zack, he may be a SOLDIER first, but he's still one guy. And they do bring at least three combat helicopters to that one. I don't think we're ever meant to assume all the dangerous robots don't exist.

They only have one airship but they could have a hundred combat helicopters to escort. Since they were making them and not ever using them for anything?

Range limit, maybe? The Highwind is meant to be special, after all. Or maybe they were there and weren't relevant. There's no reason Rufus would go to Rocket town with one guard either.

And you are free to hold those stupid story elements against said stories. That you have seen other games or whathaveyou destroy their setting too doesn't mean Dirge of Cerberus should be free of criticism.

Yeah, but my question is more why this gets criticism here and not in, say, an Uncharted game? Why does this jar so much with fans, but not, say, that Metal Gears wouldn't actually work the way they do in the games? Matthias' infinite army of shipwrecked sailor cultists in Tomb Raider? If you play video games, you are used to thin excuses to have large numbers of enemies, what about this one causes so much difficulty?

Reeve's Ultimania profile tells us he was involved in the construction of Midgar from the beginning. But as you've said, Deepground back then was only a medical facility for SOLDIER, you know, that outfit that only required a single floor of Shinra HQ. It would have become a city sometime long after that. Which would have required cityplanners, architects, construction workers, railway builders, maintainance workers ect. There was basically a whole department of Urban Development running about that Reeve didn't know about.

Going by this, DG was well underway by 1987, when Reeve would have been 15. Rosso was already born, and the complex was already being built. And it says in the comments under the article that 'SOLDIER' medical facility was actually meant to be 'soldiers', which I never knew.

But no, the only time they ever did use Deepground it was the two that otherwise needed to be constantly chained up.

No argument here, that was massively stupid from CC.

The rest of them can't stand up to the Restrictors and can be deployed at any time.
Hell, the Restrictors themselves are each far more powerful then Rosso. Just letting one help out with all their problems above ground could have prevented a lot of tragedy (from Shinra's perspective). Certainly would have been preferable to just rely on the Turks for everything even when they believed Cloud was a SOLDIER First Class.

They'd have to explain where they came from, and that control is pretty limited. They can cause soldiers to freeze on command, but don't seem to be able to compel them. My assumption was that the entire project was a screwup from beginning to end, that was too big to easily destroy.

When we start to see more of the everyday to-scale population in Midgar, Kalm, and elsewhere around the world, I think that the size of Deepground will become vastly more believable – especially if they do a little bit of tweaking to it. After all, this is the same Shin-Ra that covered up Nibelheim's destruction, I think that with all their experimentation, given an appropriate timeline, the construction of a secret army hidden amongst casualties and other things becomes vastly more plausible.

Part of it I think is that people take Reeve's line about the three execs that knew 100pc literally, where only those three knew aboveground, when he's only guessing anyway.

Sadly, we do actually have real world precedent of thousands of people being disappeared during a war, somewhat secretly. The general population knew something was happening, but knew no details and largely didn't want to know. (/generalising)

 

[ForceStealer]

The Planet may well be smaller than Earth, but to suggest the population is literally what it is in FF7 is a bit ridiculous. We don't even know that Red's number was a number in the same project (I would wager he isn't, given the lack of any similarity to the Sephiroth Copy Project). There were way more than 12 people living in Nibelheim. Remember that long conga-line of clones marching to Sephiroth at the Northern Crater? I know some of them were former SOLDIER that lost their wills, but still.
I think Dirge's scales of the cities we actually see (Edge, Kalm) are actually very well done, ironically. FF7's single screen of Kalm makes perfect sense as a representation for a city like we see in Dirge. It's a small town because it's next to the hulking metropolis of Midgar, but still a big place relative to other towns. 1,200 people also struck me as a reasonable number for Junon. Enough people that the number may well cause a panic if it was reported on the news, but not enough of a proportion of the population for the public to work out the discrepancy of the math themselves.

Also, the party never turned back Weapons with small arms, they were summoning enormous eldritch beasts and using ludicrously mastered Materia, and still only managed to actually kill one (Ultimate).

And you're not wrong, Clement, that plenty of games show an opposing force that is entirely too big to make sense. Your example of Uncharted is a perfect one, you end up killing like 500 people yourself by the end of the game, where are the bad guys getting so many FIERCELY loyal mercs?

That said, I still agree that Deepground was too big and too well-equipped. The physical location is certainly too huge, how does Midgar not collapse? And, like Minato says, why hold onto all this equipment when the world was literally ending three years before? But I could see how the remake could make a few tweaks to at least improve the sense of it. Or, hell, just retcon it down just the Tsviets who manage to take in remnants of the Shinra army that the WRO wasn't able to absorb.

I'm not sure I dig the thought of Lucrecia being the antagonist of Dirge...

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It's not a 'basement' nor a singular facility It's a sprawling city burrowed out underneath the city that Reeve personally designed.

Reeve's Ultimania profile tells us he was involved in the construction of Midgar from the beginning.

Deepground isn't Midgar, though. Deepground had to be there before Midgar.

In either case, though, the timeline doesn't add up if Reeve was supposed to be involved from the beginning -- he couldn't be born in 1972 and helping with the design of Midgar in 1976 or Deepground before that.

I just don't see how this is so different from various other stupidly huge armies in other games. At worst, it's the kind of plot hole you learn to live with, like how zombie stories always start three weeks in because no writer can figure out how the undead apocalypse wouldn't be crushed before the numbers get so skewed.

Yeah, but my question is more why this gets criticism here and not in, say, an Uncharted game? Why does this jar so much with fans, but not, say, that Metal Gears wouldn't actually work the way they do in the games? Matthias' infinite army of shipwrecked sailor cultists in Tomb Raider? If you play video games, you are used to thin excuses to have large numbers of enemies, what about this one causes so much difficulty?

The issue is less a matter of suspension of disbelief (as your line of inquiry seems to suggest) and more a matter of incongruity with what appeared to have been previously established about the setting.

Every floor of the Shinra tower had to accommodate that cavernous elevator where you fight Neo Azul running down the middle of it. There was never a point it could have been imagined to just be an empty cavern.

That elevator didn't start at the top of the Shin-Ra building, though, just around the same level as the lobby. So, the elevator just went down through the center of the central pillar.

Going by this, DG was well underway by 1987, when Reeve would have been 15. Rosso was already born, and the complex was already being built. And it says in the comments under the article that 'SOLDIER' medical facility was actually meant to be 'soldiers', which I never knew.

It was specifically for SOLDIERs (capital letters):

I had Shademp get us a screenshot of the Japanese text from the game for my "Was Sephiroth the first SOLDIER?" article. The DC Complete Guide and FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimanias also specify SOLDIER (ソルジャ&#12540 rather than soldiers (兵士 or 兵&#38538.

 

[Roger]

Of course not, but that's impossible. Even the most fully realised worlds like RDR or Metal Gear V aren't full scale. The closest we got was, ironically, FF13, which they did by not showing most of it (and everyone complained about not being able to explore. In any game you care to name, you're going to have to assume there's more than what you see in the world for it to function. In Mass Effect, the Citadel got smaller with every instalment, you just had to take the devs word that more existed.

Damn right we are gonna complain. When I buy a videogame I'd rather it let me explore a small town then show me a painting of a big one. If you can't ever show the gameworld you envision don't tie yourself down to it.

As for Dirge and scale , Kalm is massively bigger, which could be either swolllen by refugees or just the wanted the town to be bigger. Edge is too big for 500 people, but that also makes sense if it's essentially a mostly abandoned refugee camp. We don't really visit any other towns. And Nibelheim was always a flyspeck.

But you can't make everything a flyspeck. And Kalm and Edge still weren't nearly big enough for Deepground to be drawn from the 1% of the population that qualifies for SOLDIER, keeping in mind that even then Deepground is still only a subset of SOLDIER.

We don't see the DGs do that either. The material is pretty consistent that SOLDIER is the best you can do without nasty side effects of some kind. People mutate, lose their minds (the other copies mindlessly chanting "S... Cells", the Ravens (although that becomes inconsistent later on)) degrade, become dependant on Mako -if the suits need to be recharged, that is going to limit DG's range)

We see DG do that the whole time. That's what the blue lines on their clothing is suppose to be, Mako. They are constantly being exposed to Mako without visible discomfort. Their situation isn't perfect but it's still a complete and wholly unneccesary reimaginging of the concept. As you say, they shoot guns, they don't need superstrength or anything. They have it anyway just cause the designer had a hardone for blue neonlines at the time.

And the ones in Shinra installations? The CC side missions that explicitly identify them as stolen Shinra tech? The bossfights that are set on you by SHINRA officials, the ones guarding doors? Dangerous machines are quite often integrated into the plot.

I don't see CC side missions as canon, much less part of the plot. Keep in mind that the opening cinematic of Crisis Core starts with massive view of Midgar, all of it, the soldiers, the monsters, Sephiroth just being VR simulation. most of CC side missions are just that, probably.

In Sapphire Weapon's battle, my impression is that the cutscene is shorthand for a battle. We see fixed guns opening up first, and then a lot of unidentified fire that could be coming from anything, the soldiers with rockets. I don't think we saw everything that happened, any more than we saw the full battle of Lindblum in 9 in that snippet where that guard opened the gate. It's a general impression. As for Zack, he may be a SOLDIER first, but he's still one guy. And they do bring at least three combat helicopters to that one. I don't think we're ever meant to assume all the dangerous robots don't exist.

But in both situations their combat helicopters don't blurt out the sky as they should if their numbers are such to make Deepground irrelevant.

Range limit, maybe? The Highwind is meant to be special, after all. Or maybe they were there and weren't relevant. There's no reason Rufus would go to Rocket town with one guard either.

And yet he did. It sure seemed like an exaggeration of what their predictament should have been, but was still meant to show that Shinra resources weren't infinite and can't be endlessly poured into every project for no reason.

Yeah, but my question is more why this gets criticism here and not in, say, an Uncharted game? Why does this jar so much with fans, but not, say, that Metal Gears wouldn't actually work the way they do in the games? Matthias' infinite army of shipwrecked sailor cultists in Tomb Raider? If you play video games, you are used to thin excuses to have large numbers of enemies, what about this one causes so much difficulty?

The only thing we know about Encharted and Tomb Raider world is that it has pockets of magic stuff around the world and biog mercenaries companies but otherwise are analogues of our world. It doesn't mess up anything internally.

With FFVII, Yuffie's backstory utterly depends on Wutai being reduced to tourist resort. If Sephiroth, Zack & Co enacted a massive racial cleansing to make it so that ruins things on a character level.

Shinra controls the world, it does so through the promise of Mako energy. Sure, we don't see every part of the world but if the Corel Mako Reactor supplies a population of millions instead of just a town made up of people that know Barret personally then his motivation, and Dyne's goes flying out the door. He was just one coal miner.

And keeping Barret's character intact is a bit more important then the paperthin merc leaders of the Uncharted games.

There were way more than 12 people living in Nibelheim.

I get that, but the rest died in fire. I don't want the iconic Sephiroth firewalk to extend in the Remake to Sephiroth twirling around again, killing a few hundred villagers and then going to the reactor just to pay dividens to the bigger world Dirge of Cerberus concieves.

Deepground isn't Midgar, though. Deepground had to be there before Midgar.

Deepground couldn't have been the city it was right away.

They'd have to explain where they came from, and that control is pretty limited. They can cause soldiers to freeze on command, but don't seem to be able to compel them. My assumption was that the entire project was a screwup from beginning to end, that was too big to easily destroy.

They don't NEED to freeze every drone, they aren't all as uppity as Rosso, hence why Rosso is the one that was decided can never leave DG. And if the experiment was a failure why did they keep recruiting, supplying them, creating new technologies and starting new experiments for them. Shelke and Azul were fairly new, mind you. And the player characters that took down the Restrictors were brandnew.

Part of it I think is that people take Reeve's line about the three execs that knew 100pc literally, where only those three knew aboveground, when he's only guessing anyway.

Sadly, we do actually have real world precedent of thousands of people being disappeared during a war, somewhat secretly. The general population knew something was happening, but knew no details and largely didn't want to know. (/generalising)

My problem is Reeve himself not knowing, on which point he is not just guessing. He IS their Director of Urban Development, trusted to be complicit in the destruction of Sector Seven.

 

[ForceStealer]

With FFVII, Yuffie's backstory utterly depends on Wutai being reduced to tourist resort. If Sephiroth, Zack & Co enacted a massive racial cleansing to make it so that ruins things on a character level.

So is your position that Wutai is literally just that town? With about 9 buildings in it? Or am I misunderstanding you?

 

[Roger]

So is your position that Wutai is literally just that town? With about 9 buildings in it? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I disagree with Clement Rage's projection of 5 to 7 figure casualties lists for the Wutai War.

http://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?p=723587#post723587

 

[Clement Rage]

It was specifically for SOLDIERs (capital letters):



I had Shademp get us a screenshot of the Japanese text from the game for my "Was Sephiroth the first SOLDIER?" article. The DC Complete Guide and FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimanias also specify SOLDIER (ソルジャ&#12540 rather than soldiers (兵士 or 兵&#38538.

Fair enough. I always thought that, but I just saw the comments under our Shinra's dark secret article.

That said, I still agree that Deepground was too big and too well-equipped. The physical location is certainly too huge, how does Midgar not collapse? And, like Minato says, why hold onto all this equipment when the world was literally ending three years before? But I could see how the remake could make a few tweaks to at least improve the sense of it. Or, hell, just retcon it down just the Tsviets who manage to take in remnants of the Shinra army that the WRO wasn't able to absorb.

How does the Midgar plate not collapse anyway? They used to be a weapons manufacturing company, weapons is still one of the most important departments, why shouldn't they have a lot of weapons? They have a lot of the same weapons, which for me implies that they had a few blueprints down in DG and kept mindlessly churning out the same models with a few tweaks in the last three years.

But you can't make everything a flyspeck. And Kalm and Edge still weren't nearly big enough for Deepground to be drawn from the 1% of the population that qualifies for SOLDIER, keeping in mind that even then Deepground is still only a subset of SOLDIER.

Kalm and Edge aren't the whole world, they're just the nearest towns. 1pc qualifies for soldier safely, DG doesn't care about safety. It's not like we get conversations with DG rankers that tell us about their mental state, they all seem to be pretty on board with the 'Destroy the World because Weiss said so' plan.

I don't see CC side missions as canon, much less part of the plot. Keep in mind that the opening cinematic of Crisis Core starts with massive view of Midgar, all of it, the soldiers, the monsters, Sephiroth just being VR simulation. most of CC side missions are just that, probably.

Even if I give you that, there are plenty of Shinra machines as part of the main plot.

But in both situations their combat helicopters don't blurt out the sky as they should if their numbers are such to make Deepground irrelevant.

Zack is very dangerous, but he's still one guy. A hundred soldiers and three choppers is probably considered enough. And helicopters would have been no addition against Sapphire if the fixed guns don't work.

And yet he did. It sure seemed like an exaggeration of what their predictament should have been, but was still meant to show that Shinra resources weren't infinite and can't be endlessly poured into every project for no reason.

Or they just showed one guard because it did what they needed and it would be a waste of animators time for more.

The only thing we know about Encharted and Tomb Raider world is that it has pockets of magic stuff around the world and biog mercenaries companies but otherwise are analogues of our world. It doesn't mess up anything internally.

It breaks the story a little, because the stories are written for smaller crews of enemies than exist. it would be actually counterproductive to bring that many mercs on a treasurehunt, because, some government or other is going to start wondering where they are all going. Not to mention having to pay and feed them all, which is especially weird if you are not actually expecting any resistance at your destination.

With FFVII, Yuffie's backstory utterly depends on Wutai being reduced to tourist resort. If Sephiroth, Zack & Co enacted a massive racial cleansing to make it so that ruins things on a character level.

Or she's speaking relatively. "We used to have (more) power, now we're a shadow of what we used to be" while still being bigger than we see.

Shinra controls the world, it does so through the promise of Mako energy. Sure, we don't see every part of the world but if the Corel Mako Reactor supplies a population of millions instead of just a town made up of people that know Barret personally then his motivation, and Dyne's goes flying out the door. He was just one coal miner.

If the Corel reactor is supplying only Corel, why is it still running after the town is burned down? Who's paying Mako rates in a tent city, and would it justify that giant industrial project?

They don't NEED to freeze every drone, they aren't all as uppity as Rosso, hence why Rosso is the one that was decided can never leave DG. And if the experiment was a failure why did they keep recruiting, supplying them, creating new technologies and starting new experiments for them. Shelke and Azul were fairly new, mind you. And the player characters that took down the Restrictors were brandnew.

Given "Hail Weiss" it's fairly clear who the larger DG loyalty is to. Why did it keep going? Because 5,000 people aren't going to stand still and die because you tell them to.

My problem is Reeve himself not knowing, on which point he is not just guessing. He IS their Director of Urban Development, trusted to be complicit in the destruction of Sector Seven.

Because it happened at about ten years before he was appointed?

 

[ForceStealer]

Or she's speaking relatively. "We used to have (more) power, now we're a shadow of what we used to be" while still being bigger than we see.

Definitely how I always took it. I have no idea how to estimate war casualties. But if Wutai was the last holdout against a Shinra that already had control of the rest of the world and required the use of SOLDIER, it definitely seems far more logical that Wutai was a whole country full of people, rather than a little village.

Again, I agree with the attitude that Deepground is too damn big, I just don't think I'm with Minato on the rather literal interpretation of the game's scale.

 

[Clement Rage]

I was just using ww2 as ballpark figures. I'm not saying that they're rigidly the same, but I also don't think people fully understand just how many people can disappear during big wars.

 

[Roger]

How does the Midgar plate not collapse anyway? They used to be a weapons manufacturing company, weapons is still one of the most important departments, why shouldn't they have a lot of weapons? They have a lot of the same weapons, which for me implies that they had a few blueprints down in DG and kept mindlessly churning out the same models with a few tweaks in the last three years.

Because they weren't the one and only world power from day one. They grew into that.

Kalm and Edge aren't the whole world, they're just the nearest towns. 1pc qualifies for soldier safely, DG doesn't care about safety. It's not like we get conversations with DG rankers that tell us about their mental state, they all seem to be pretty on board with the 'Destroy the World because Weiss said so' plan.

Three years of being trapped underground later. And strictly speaking, President Shinra didn't have to decide to chain Weiss to a throne build into DG's source of power either. They were practically begging DG to start seeing as their tortured messiah.

Even if I give you that, there are plenty of Shinra machines as part of the main plot.

Not hundreds.

Zack is very dangerous, but he's still one guy. A hundred soldiers and three choppers is probably considered enough. And helicopters would have been no addition against Sapphire if the fixed guns don't work.

If Sapphire opened up on Junon like Diamond did against Midgar their non-fixed weapons would be all they had. Also their only means of escape given that the entire executive brass was at Junon. Really can't see the war against the Weapons as a time to skimp out on resources in favor of continuing to grow the supposedly long doomed Deepground project.

Or they just showed one guard because it did what they needed and it would be a waste of animators time for more.

Except Rufus was there to request a machine from Cid in the first place.

It breaks the story a little, because the stories are written for smaller crews of enemies than exist. it would be actually counterproductive to bring that many mercs on a treasurehunt, because, some government or other is going to start wondering where they are all going. Not to mention having to pay and feed them all, which is especially weird if you are not actually expecting any resistance at your destination.

Here's another reason. We are on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, not general gaming. Dirge of Cerberus is not being singled out from hundreds of games.

Or she's speaking relatively. "We used to have (more) power, now we're a shadow of what we used to be" while still being bigger than we see.

Lord Goto is attributed with turning Wutai into "this" three times, once by himself. He also says straight up that there is no one named Yuffie in Wutai, cause he'd know. It doesn't need to be utter wasteland other then those houses we see in game, but nor should there be tons of cities of millions on that continent.

If the Corel reactor is supplying only Corel, why is it still running after the town is burned down? Who's paying Mako rates in a tent city, and would it justify that giant industrial project?

Golden Saucer exists. I don't think that has a population of a hundred thousand either.

Given "Hail Weiss" it's fairly clear who the larger DG loyalty is to. Why did it keep going? Because 5,000 people aren't going to stand still and die because you tell them to.

That doesn't at all explain them going out of their way to create Azul or Shelke for them. And 5000 people didn't all arrive there and swore loyalty to Weiss in one day. Very much blaming the victim here.

Because it happened at about ten years before he was appointed?

How did we go from "it started as a medical facility" to Deepground already standing as a finished product as it was in Dirge of Cerberus for Reeve's entire adult life?

 

[Clement Rage]

Because they weren't the one and only world power from day one. They grew into that.

That would entail more weapons, not less.

Three years of being trapped underground later. And strictly speaking, President Shinra didn't have to decide to chain Weiss to a throne build into DG's source of power either. They were practically begging DG to start seeing as their tortured messiah.

Assuming it was him that made the call, yes, that was a bad move.

Not hundreds.

Debateable. How many encounters with Shinra machines and monsters over the course of the games had Zack, AVALANCHE, and the Turks. And that's with large sections of their forces already edited out.

If Sapphire opened up on Junon like Diamond did against Midgar their non-fixed weapons would be all they had. Also their only means of escape given that the entire executive brass was at Junon. Really can't see the war against the Weapons as a time to skimp out on resources in favor of continuing to grow the supposedly long doomed Deepground project.

If that happened, they'd all be dead. And the helicopters they already have would be fine for an escape. It is clearly established in story that the only thing that works against WEAPON is Sister Ray. Everything else is just 'in the meantime'. Using them involves explaining the massive campaign of human experiments, which would be hard for the public to swallow at a time Shinra is courting public support.

Except Rufus was there to request a machine from Cid in the first place.

A unique machine, yes.

Here's another reason. We are on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, not general gaming. Dirge of Cerberus is not being singled out from hundreds of games.

So why is no one asking about the feasibility of the underwater reactor?

Lord Goto is attributed with turning Wutai into "this" three times, once by himself. He also says straight up that there is no one named Yuffie in Wutai, cause he'd know. It doesn't need to be utter wasteland other then those houses we see in game, but nor should there be tons of cities of millions on that continent.

That's a joke, an oddly specific denial.

Golden Saucer exists. I don't think that has a population of a hundred thousand either.

I was replying to this:

Sure, we don't see every part of the world but if the Corel Mako Reactor supplies a population of millions instead of just a town made up of people that know Barret personally then his motivation, and Dyne's goes flying out the door

That doesn't at all explain them going out of their way to create Azul or Shelke for them. And 5000 people didn't all arrive there and swore loyalty to Weiss in one day. Very much blaming the victim here.

Yes? It was badly planned.

How did we go from "it started as a medical facility" to Deepground already standing as a finished product as it was in Dirge of Cerberus for Reeve's entire adult life?

It did start as a medical facility, which we were both assuming Reeve was involved in creating, but then I checked my facts, and found out Reeve was born in 1972. Which means that by the time DG changed focus and expanded (Rosso, born in 1985, he was 13 and not involved.