The Final Fantasy Thread

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I vaguely remember the original game mentioning in a few places how Shinra controlled every major city either by taking over or just buying the governments out.
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
That was always the stupidest aspect of VII's story to me. A fucking power company overthrows every world government and takes over the world.
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They don't really explain it very well in-game (pretty typical for most FF games). I think the backstory is that Shinra started as a power company and were the first ones to start using mako as a power source. That shit was miles beyond anything else so they got rich fast. Then they started investing in weapons development, everyone wanted mako energy which they pretty much had a monopoly on, they started building their own private army and before you know it they control everything.

In fact Barret's backstory pretty much sums up how they operated. Shinra would set up reactors and their other businesses that would take over the local economies, and if anyone resisted they'd send in their army to wreck the place. Or maybe do both since they had a lot of psychopaths running the company.
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
You don't remember the Wutai War?

And yeah, one of the most often mocked aspects of VII's world is the fact that the main global power, and main villain, is the Final Fantasy equivalent of CenterPoint Energy.
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I would have to re-play that segment of the game, but I think the reason they offered was that unlike every other country, Wutai's people had materia or could use magic and nobody else did. This might have something to do with the fact that Yuffie steals materia. Either because Wutai essentially has no materia left or not enough materia to resist Shinra.

Is it a bit silly in the end but so what. How is it any sillier than say FF6 Vector essentially being a world domineering super power?
 
verissimus said:
Is it a bit silly in the end but so what.
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Its just so stupid. And illogical. Why would Shinra bother becoming a government? They could just act like every other fictional mega corp (and every real world megacorp) and pay off the government. Leave the governance to corrupt assholes in their pocket, while they focus on making money. Being the government means having to do everything the government does, like run police and fire services. Literally no reason to do that when you can payoff everyone important and focus solely on making money. And its just hilarious that the game is about fighting the guys you pay your power bill to.
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
Its just so stupid. And illogical. Why would Shinra bother becoming a government?
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For the power! Doesn't that kind of go hand in hand? Someone gets rich and popular, so they decide that everything should be run their way, and people should live and think they way they want them to.

It looks like making money is still their top priority. They want to find the promise land because it's supposed to have a ton of mako, thus they can make even more money. And when Avalanche blew the reactor up at the start of the game the President or someone was talking about how they'll raise prices, which will be easy since they control every government. And look what they did to Wutai, turned it into a tourist destination from which I'm sure most if not all of the profits go to them.

In fact now that I think about it looks like the game was addressing the whole "power" company thing near the beginning. The President was apparently pushing that image because he wanted to manipulate people into viewing Shinra as a good thing that was making their lives better by providing mako energy. You don't see them advertising their weapons division anywhere, it's always focused on them being a power company. When Rufus took over he didn't like this strategy and wanted to just put it all out in the open that they were an unstoppable military force that controlled everything. That plot point fell off, but I would imagine he would have changed the company name and logo to stop mentioning anything about being a power company and focus on the weapons and military operations.

And lets appreciate the stupid joke that a power company is seizing absolute power of the world.
 
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It just seems like an extension of real ideas companies had like EPCOT, company owned autocratic cities, extending it to countries is kind of a byproduct of game design where countries pretty much have just one or two towns anyway
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
Its just so stupid. And illogical. Why would Shinra bother becoming a government? They could just act like every other fictional mega corp (and every real world megacorp) and pay off the government. Leave the governance to corrupt assholes in their pocket, while they focus on making money. Being the government means having to do everything the government does, like run police and fire services. Literally no reason to do that when you can payoff everyone important and focus solely on making money. And its just hilarious that the game is about fighting the guys you pay your power bill to.
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Considering how empty the world is, what governments? 90% of the world is empty space with a few giant monsters running around even before the Weapons show up, with a few random villages unable to threaten Shinra and their control of the city-state of Midgar, leaving only Wutai as both an actual nation and serious threat. The overall geopolitics in FFVII are total shit and arguably the least explored part of the setting. Before you say there's no reason for Shinra to do that, ever hear of company towns? Divide up the rural areas and force dependency on the central industrial area while otherwise leaving them alone so long as they pay their bills for water, power, security etc.

As to how Shinra took power, well, from my understanding Wutai and Midgar went to war because reasons, and Shinra created giant death machines and SOLDIERS to counter Wutai monsters and martial arts and just so happened to "accidentally" take over all of Midgard in the process thanks to them wagging the dog.
 
Gotta say the marketing for Rebirth is getting to me. I want to play Remake but damn I can't even get past the first reactor. Maybe I should play it subbed?

I know people here hate on Dunkey, but his video perfectly explains my issues with modern JRPGs:

I guess I'm just going to give Rebirth a shot and pray I can follow the changes that Remake made to the story.
 
Dr. Geronimo said:
Gotta say the marketing for Rebirth is getting to me. I want to play Remake but damn I can't even get past the first reactor. Maybe I should play it subbed?

I know people here hate on Dunkey, but his video perfectly explains my issues with modern JRPGs:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8Qlf3b9wa4s
I guess I'm just going to give Rebirth a shot and pray I can follow the changes that Remake made to the story.
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Dunkey’s review is basically accurate to the game’s shortcomings

It honestly feels rushed
 
Berrakh said:
Dunkey’s review is basically accurate to the game’s shortcomings

It honestly feels rushed
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My biggest issue with what I've seen is the translation. I cannot stand anime grunts and all the dialogue feels jank, like everyone got directed in a different way.
 
I'm a fan of the original game, and overall the remake isn't that bad. It's definitely miles ahead of the crap they made for the compilation back in the day. Hell, it made Barret my new favorite character. I think the only parts I really hate are the ghost things near the end that are a not very subtle middle finger to the fanbase, putting long hallways between the sections of Midgar to pad the game out, and they shoved in a boss fight with Sephiroth for the sake of it.
 
Snekposter said:
Considering how empty the world is, what governments? 90% of the world is empty space with a few giant monsters running around even before the Weapons show up, with a few random villages unable to threaten Shinra and their control of the city-state of Midgar, leaving only Wutai as both an actual nation and serious threat. The overall geopolitics in FFVII are total shit and arguably the least explored part of the setting.
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This is a consistent problem of Final Fantasy worlds. From I-IX, it was mostly due to technical limitations of the hardware, and an inability to create large realistic worlds. Afterward, it was just laziness. XII felt like the most complete lived in world, to the point where the main map wasn't even a complete map the world, so the planet didn't feel like it was 1/5th the size of Earth.

Snekposter said:
Before you say there's no reason for Shinra to do that, ever hear of company towns? Divide up the rural areas and force dependency on the central industrial area while otherwise leaving them alone so long as they pay their bills for water, power, security etc.
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Running a company town isn't the same as trying to run the planet, or a country for that matter.
 
Dr. Geronimo said:
My biggest issue with what I've seen is the translation. I cannot stand anime grunts and all the dialogue feels jank, like everyone got directed in a different way.
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I can't listen to a second of that guy, but I can see your point. As far as the changes made, it's mostly the same besides every hour or two there's these spirit guys flying around getting in the way doing something about protecting fate or something, around the same frequency cloud has visions of sephiroth walking around and then the last hour of the game goes entirely off the rails and is kingdom hearts garbage that nobody wants or actually likes. but basically, besides that it's the same they drive a bike and a truck out of midgar and that's all you need to know. maybe watch a video of the last bit before the final boss fight and that if you end up lost in the beginning of the next one. I'd probably try it subbed though because what it does add that's not stupid is some nice character interactions and moments. if you only care about plot I'd skip it but if you wanna feel a bit more for our old pals in the ff7 gang its worth powering through.
 
Did anybody here play the FFXIII trilogy? Does Lightning ever stop acting like a dude in later games, punching men out, calling the shots, being a stoic girlboss like in the first half of FFXIII?
 
SSj_Ness said:
Did anybody here play the FFXIII trilogy? Does Lightning ever stop acting like a dude in later games, punching men out, calling the shots, being a stoic girlboss like in the first half of FFXIII?
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I played as they came out and don't remember too much about them story wise but my mild recollection is slightly but not really. It's more of as they games go on she goes through enough shit eventually it's more believable she'd act like that but it might be just I had wasted who knows how many hours spread over a few years on them so I just got used to it.
 
Snekposter said:
Considering how empty the world is, what governments?
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I like how they are setting up that the world is so empty because Shinra just wholesale wiped out entire nations to get what they want. Like the guys in the moblie game Sephiroth fights dont exist in the present.

Dr. Geronimo said:
My biggest issue with what I've seen is the translation. I cannot stand anime grunts and all the dialogue feels jank, like everyone got directed in a different way.
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I found I liked the direction better when I took the subtitles off and followed the mocap.

Hembruh said:
kingdom hearts garbage that nobody wants or actually likes.
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(Ahem) Learn to love it because it's not going away.


The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
Only played the first game, and that was already too much for me. Don't know how anyone could stomach too more games of Nomura's waifu.
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Why does everyone do this? That was Motomu Toriyama not Nomura. Nomura just did the design.


SSj_Ness said:
Did anybody here play the FFXIII trilogy? Does Lightning ever stop acting like a dude in later games, punching men out, calling the shots, being a stoic girlboss like in the first half of FFXIII?
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She really only comes into her own as a character in 13-3. In the first one she's beating everybody's ass for the first half until they all become a team proper but otherwise shares the spotlight, in 2 she might as well be a cameo appearance aside from the DLC. 3 actually takes the time to flesh out her character and makes her likeable. (not that I hated her in the beginning, but she was more of a setpiece then a character.)
 
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