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Some friendly goon pointed out weeks ago that Cloud's two stances come from Zack and Sephiroth, so if we extrapolate from the gameplay then Cloud has, canonically, studied all ya moves Sonya ...I dont expect anyone to get that reference.
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May 21, 2020 20:25
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Schwartzcough posted:Yeah, I mean he can fake it to your average person because he's roided up on both Mako and Jenova cells, but he'd get his rear end kicked at the start of the game if a real SOLDIER showed up. I mean, one did the day after the story opens.
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May 21, 2020 20:30
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Well, I also maintain that regular SOLDIERs only get Mako infusion, while only certain test subjects got Jenova cells, so that gives Cloud a leg up to let him compete on a 3rd Class SOLDIER level, but not on a 1st Class SOLDIER level. Edit: which is one of the things I don't really agree with in the Remake- they make Cloud much more over-the-top powerful, including going toe-to-toe with Sephiroth in the first game while using various superpowers. Like.... he really shouldn't be that strong yet, without more fighting experience. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 20:32
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Caidin posted:So was Eligor, acting in this instance as a jailer and collector of the souls of unhappy children, also a lifestream parasite? Did the kids rejoin the lifestream in the end because they kinda disappeared into a sky portal thing? Is there Sky Mako? Does the presence of the other ghosts you fight here and there mean it's not actually that hard to get out the questionable lifestream afterlife? Remake seems to indicate that the Lifestream is the essence of memory and identity itself. It's not like, a cessation of existence thing, it's a "this is where your mind and soul naturally belong between lives," presumably preserving some degree of qualia. The inhabitants of Gaia are functionally just temporary emanations of its world-soul. And of course there's that one divine goddess being in Crisis Core as a bonus boss, along with (as of Remake) all the other summons who clearly still exist as distinct divine qualia within the Lifestream. I do recall that one of the side novella things supposedly said Jessie, Biggs and Wedge are somehow tainted by their deeds and unable to rejoin the Lifestream?
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May 21, 2020 20:32
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He does have fighting experience presumably, as a grunt in Shinra's army, and also via stabbing the spine of the world's greatest hero and then tossing him into the Lifestream with his own sword.
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May 21, 2020 20:38
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Jetrauben posted:I do recall that one of the side novella things supposedly said Jessie, Biggs and Wedge are somehow tainted by their deeds and unable to rejoin the Lifestream? That seems like an interesting stance to take, Like is the planet itself judging them unworthy or they holding themselves back due to guilt?
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May 21, 2020 20:41
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Caidin posted:That seems like an interesting stance to take, Like is the planet itself judging them unworthy or they holding themselves back due to guilt? I think it's probably guilt, since that squares with how ghosts traditionally don't pass on (guilt, trauma, stuff like that) and how fixating on it keeps them from going forward.
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May 21, 2020 20:43
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Schwartzcough posted:Well, I also maintain that regular SOLDIERs only get Mako infusion, while only certain test subjects got Jenova cells, so that gives Cloud a leg up to let him compete on a 3rd Class SOLDIER level, but not on a 1st Class SOLDIER level. Cloud, at least in Midgar, can not only reliably fight but reliably clown on Soldier 3rd Class in both the original and remake. (Yeah, yeah, you can take levels into account but in the original game you're not gaining that many levels before leaving Midgar.) He also does some bonkers things like survives the insane fall from the Mako Reactor to Aerith's church. (The remake at least uses the grappling hook to lessen this slightly.) He's obviously supposed to be fairly exceptional. It isn't just that Cloud is winning fights but that he's winning fights against incredibly overwhelming odds. Remember that some of the enemies in the very first dungeon are stated by Cloud to be something capable of taking out an entire battalion by themselves and Cloud can reliably kick their asses on his own. It's difficult to measure an RPG character's power level since a dude who decided to get a gun attached to his arm will fight basically on-par with a martial arts master and a genetic super-soldier, but FF7 tries pretty hard to emphasize that Cloud can at least fake being a pretty significant badass. If you take levels out of the equation he's still presented as one of the biggest badasses in Midgar. Jetrauben posted:Remake seems to indicate that the Lifestream is the essence of memory and identity itself. It's not like, a cessation of existence thing, it's a "this is where your mind and soul naturally belong between lives," presumably preserving some degree of qualia. The inhabitants of Gaia are functionally just temporary emanations of its world-soul. And of course there's that one divine goddess being in Crisis Core as a bonus boss, along with (as of Remake) all the other summons who clearly still exist as distinct divine qualia within the Lifestream. That is in the original game too. Materia is crystalized knowledge which is why you can use it to use magic.
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May 21, 2020 20:45
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Gologle posted:He does have fighting experience presumably, as a grunt in Shinra's army, and also via stabbing the spine of the world's greatest hero and then tossing him into the Lifestream with his own sword. Eh, I don't think carrying around a machinegun as a Shinra grunt gives him much experience being a hugesword-wielding dueling superhero. And that Sephiroth incident wasn't really a "fight." Like, in the original, even when Cloud was picturing himself as a SOLDIER while recounting the Kalm story, he's like, "there's no way I should've been able to beat Sephiroth. He'd kick my rear end." So, like, Cloud knows he's not on the same level as Sephiroth, and really doesn't get there until both gaining an entire adventure's worth of experience and materia/equipment, and also gaining self-confidence, at the end of the original game story. ImpAtom posted:Cloud, at least in Midgar, can not only reliably fight but reliably clown on Soldier 3rd Class in both the original and remake. (Yeah, yeah, you can take levels into account but in the original game you're not gaining that many levels before leaving Midgar.) He also does some bonkers things like survives the insane fall from the Mako Reactor to Aerith's church. (The remake at least uses the grappling hook to lessen this slightly.) Oh no doubt, Cloud is super powerful compared to your average joe. The Mako and Jenova cells do make him a supersoldier badass. The only thing holding him back from being on the level of crazy 1st Class gods IS his lack of actual experience. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 20:48 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 20:45
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Schwartzcough posted:Eh, I don't think carrying around a machinegun as a Shinra grunt gives him much experience being a hugesword-wielding dueling superhero. And that Sephiroth incident wasn't really a "fight." It's worth noting though that Cloud is talking about himself many years prior. (And it's not clear what level of skill he's connecting to with Zack vs himself. Zack lost but at this point they seem pretty comfortable saying it was a fight and not just a one-hit drop.) More to the point Cloud isn't facing Sephiroth alone but with help, which wasn't true of the previous incident. That's a pretty significant thing because Cloud only beats Sephiroth one-on-one in his mind and in Advent Children. Every other time he's got help. Schwartzcough posted:Oh no doubt, Cloud is super powerful compared to your average joe. The Mako and Jenova cells do make him a supersoldier badass. The only thing holding him back from being on the level of crazy 1st Class gods IS his lack of actual experience. Well, even then, Cloud is presented as being pretty gifted. If he only really arrived at Midgar about two months before or so he's grown confident enough to be the linchpin of the Mako Reactor bombing, followed by an escape from Shinra soldiers without much trouble at all. It's worth noting that when Cloud takes on Sephiroth 1-on-1 in his mind (?) in this game he loses. He's not at that point yet but he does seem to be at the point of giving a pretty good fight as long as he has other incredibly talented people backing him up. Which makes sense since otherwise "We have to go after Sephiroth" is an absurdly awful plan if he doesn't genuinely think they stand a chance. The Midgar Zolom incident absolutely hints that they may be in over their head but it's also entirely possible to defeat Midgar Zolom your first time through and certainly not long after. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 20:49
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ImpAtom posted:That is in the original game too. Materia is crystalized knowledge which is why you can use it to use magic. This is also why I like, again, that the Remake reiterates that the Cetra had a magitechnological civilization. They used Mako, albeit presumably sustainably, and they used materia on a mass scale as part of their society. It's not the weird anarchoprimitivism of the original game which tended to portray all communities as fundamentally rotten - and didn't even make sense; why do the supposedly nomadic hunter-gatherer Cetra have a city and a temple? You could buy them building a temple - there's some evidence in real life of prehistoric non-urban, non-agrarian folks building massive monuments - but cities denote a certain level of technological ability and ecological impact.
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May 21, 2020 20:51
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I like how that implies that the Shinra scientists possibly got the Cetra wrong because to me, the concept of the Promised Land is much more of a cultural thing than something you're biologically able to do with special Ancients blood. Like, if they confused Jenova for an Ancient, then that implies that the Cetra didn't actually go from planet to planet as nomads and that was what Jenova was doing, right? edit: For the original game, I mean, not the VR presentation. Although, you have to wonder how true that presentation actually is, considering that Shinra made it. BaDandy fucked around with this message at 21:07 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 21:00
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BaDandy posted:I like how that implies that the Shinra scientists possibly got the Cetra wrong because to me, the concept of the Promised Land is much more of a cultural thing than something you're biologically able to do with special Ancients blood. Yeah, a major factor with Shinra is that they absolutely got everything about the Ancients wrong. They mistook Jenova for an Ancient and in doing that colored their thoughts wrong. That is why the "Promised Land" is something they think they can just go to and plant a Mako Reactor at. Hojo may be the only one who genuinely knows the truth and even then it's hard to tell because he is so amoral that he actively doesn't care if Jenova destroys the plant as long as it proves his hypothesis. Gast realized just how wrong he was when he met the real last surviving Ancient but by that point the genie was out of the bottle and Shinra/Hojo had him murdered. That said the "Cetra go from planet to planet" thing was a mistranslation. It's more "They went from land to land." They were basically shepherds whose goal was to tend the planet. In this case though it's a mistranslation that works out because Jenova was a monster who went from planet to planet and Shinra making that mistake is entirely valid.
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May 21, 2020 21:08
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I mean Shinra's archaeological efforts are mostly being directed so that they can find a shitload of mako for more money and control. I'd say anyone who comes up with something that suggests they aren't going to find a shitload of mako or that Jenova isn't an ancient or what not is liable to be fired or have their findings altered until Daddy Shinra hears something he likes.
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May 21, 2020 21:08
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Important life lessons for scientific research: 1) Qualitative research is just as important as quantitative in order to give you context. 2) More money put into research doesn't automatically mean better research.
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May 21, 2020 21:13
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One thing I think is interesting is how Cetra is spelled in Japanese. As one might expect, it's SETORA (セトラ), which would be the standard way of transliterating the sounds of Cetra. This is also the same way "settler" would transliterated. I wonder if that's a coincidence, or if it was meant to imply something that got lost in translation. (Even more of a coincidence, there's an Japanese FFXIV Free Company called SETTLER with the tag Aeris, which I thought was kind of funny.)
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May 21, 2020 21:19
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BaDandy posted:I like how that implies that the Shinra scientists possibly got the Cetra wrong because to me, the concept of the Promised Land is much more of a cultural thing than something you're biologically able to do with special Ancients blood. I mean, I feel like there needs to be some grain of truth to the VR presentation, if only because it feels more actually interesting that Shinra is corrupting local eschatology and history.
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May 21, 2020 21:19
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I imagine a lot of that presentation is based on information provided by Ifalna. She seemed more than willing to share that information with Gast at least.
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May 21, 2020 21:23
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ImpAtom posted:That said the "Cetra go from planet to planet" thing was a mistranslation. they say something along the lines of "The Cetra were an itinerant race, they would settle The Planet and then move on". The confusion comes from the fact that they seem to be using "the Planet" in the same way that someone in real life would say "traveling the earth", as in, they would settle a part of the planet, stay there for a while, and then pick up and move on. But because of the way they worded it, you could also take it to mean that they were actual aliens who came from space and were planning to go back there, and since this is a fantasy/sci-fi setting that idea isn't inherently ridiculous. of course there's also the fact that even though the Ancients were described as nomadic they still had a big capital city and a big containment temple that both consisted of enormous permanent structures, the only explanations for which are that they weren't actually all that nomadic or they had a karakorum situation going on and the entire forgotten capitol is really just a particularly uppity cluster of yurts
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May 21, 2020 21:25
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Jetrauben posted:I mean, I feel like there needs to be some grain of truth to the VR presentation, if only because it feels more actually interesting that Shinra is corrupting local eschatology and history. Sure, you can even tell that the City of the Ancients in the OG is still Mako powered. I just kind of wonder if the Ancients did go out of their way to produce materia or if they used naturally forming materia from fountains, and how much Shinra is exaggerating what their level of usage was. I don't think we can take the VR presentation at face value, since they're using it to essentially be like "See? We're just like the Ancients and definitely know what this specific cultural term ACTUALLY means!" edit: ah, duh, I repeated what you just said. That's what I was getting at, not that they were completely making things up out of thin air. BaDandy fucked around with this message at 21:34 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 21:26
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Just Andi Now posted:One thing I think is interesting is how Cetra is spelled in Japanese. As one might expect, it's SETORA (セトラ), which would be the standard way of transliterating the sounds of Cetra. This is also the same way "settler" would transliterated. I wonder if that's a coincidence, or if it was meant to imply something that got lost in translation. Considering Aerith's name is supposed to be a transliteration of "Earth" that sounds pretty entirely likely to me.
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May 21, 2020 21:31
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Just Andi Now posted:One thing I think is interesting is how Cetra is spelled in Japanese. As one might expect, it's SETORA (セトラ), which would be the standard way of transliterating the sounds of Cetra. This is also the same way "settler" would transliterated. I wonder if that's a coincidence, or if it was meant to imply something that got lost in translation. Transliterations of English words ending in -er or -ar are typically written with the vowel elongation mark (アー). And it's a 50/50 on whether they would use the consonant duplicating ッ like セットラー. But meh. There have been weirder mutations for crazy loan words. As for the bolded part, we're going to find out in part 2 that in Zack's timeline, she's called "Aeris" and fanboys will weep in a mixture of joy and confusion.
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May 21, 2020 21:40
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ImpAtom posted:Considering Aerith's name is supposed to be a transliteration of "Earth" that sounds pretty entirely likely to me. I don't actually think that's the case. The transliteration of earth is AASU (アース) whereas Aerith is spelled EARISU (エアリス). The EA (エア) is the transliteration of "air". The AA (アー) construction is used for sounds that end with a schwa + r or "ar" construction like BUSTER (アスター) or ARC (アーク). My favorite supposed origin of Aerith's name is actually the same as the supposed origin of Tifa's. They come from splitting up the Sefirot, Tiferet (also spelled Tifaret and Tifareth). This wouldn't be the first time Square created two lead female character names by splitting up a word *cough* celestina *cough*. Just Andi Now fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 21:43
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Just Andi Now posted:I don't actually think that's the case. The transliteration of earth is AASU (アース) whereas Aerith is spelled EARISU (エアリス). The EA (エア) is the transliteration of "air". The AA (アー) construction is used for sounds that end with a schwa + r or "ar" construction like BUSTER (アスター) or ARC (アーク). 
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May 21, 2020 21:46
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Well that's egg on my face. I still maintain that the Japanese transliteration of Aerith sounds nothing like Earth, so it must just be based on the English spelling.
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May 21, 2020 21:49
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Just Andi Now posted:Well that's egg on my face. I still maintain that the Japanese transliteration of Aerith sounds nothing like Earth, so it must just be based on the English spelling. It's probably a weird attempt to convert that into a name, which is why it's so odd. It's also very possible, because Japan loves pun names, that it's more than one thing at the same time because lord knows nested name puns are a big favorite. (It's also part of S-E's weird trend around the timeframe of themed weather/geography names. Cloud/"Earth" , Squall/Laguna/Raine, Tidus/Yuna, Snow/Lightning (The first two announced for FFXIII), and of course the protagonists of Kingdom Hearts being named Sora, Riku and Kairi and then Ventus, Terra and Aqua. ) Not to mention that FF7 basically mushes like five different mythologies together which is how you can have 7th Heaven and Sephiroth in the same game as Midgar and Nibelheim ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 21:57 on May 21, 2020 |
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May 21, 2020 21:54
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Do we know where that shot is from, by the way? The wiki only lists Famitsu 1997 as the source for the Aerith = Earth connection, and I don't know how "official" that would be coming from Famitsu. I guess I'm just really hung up on my Tifereth theory because it fits too well with a villain named Sephiroth.
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May 21, 2020 21:57
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Just Andi Now posted:Do we know where that shot is from, by the way? The wiki only lists Famitsu 1997 as the source for the Aerith = Earth connection, and I don't know how "official" that would be coming from Famitsu. I guess I'm just really hung up on my Tifereth theory because it fits too well with a villain named Sephiroth. It's one of the guidebooks. I'll see if I can track down the exact one. It's worth noting there are other sources as well. For example one of Nomura's earliest pieces of art for her has the name "Earith" which I think we should all be very thankful they didn't decide on. 
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May 21, 2020 22:01
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ImpAtom posted:It's one of the guidebooks. I'll see if I can track down the exact one. I mean it would've better prepared me for Aerith than Aeris did. Switching two vowels is easy. Going full on lisp is not.
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May 21, 2020 22:08
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It sounds like something Zero from Mega Man X would scream out as he clutches her dead body.
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May 21, 2020 22:10
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ImpAtom posted:It's probably a weird attempt to convert that into a name, which is why it's so odd. It's also very possible, because Japan loves pun names, that it's more than one thing at the same time because lord knows nested name puns are a big favorite. You lost me on the weather connection once you hit Yuna, Sofa, Riku and Kairi.
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May 21, 2020 22:23
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RareAcumen posted:You lost me on the weather connection once you hit Yuna, Sofa, Riku and Kairi. Yuna and Tiida (Tidus) are apparently the Okinawan words for Moon and Sun respectively. Sora, Riku, and Kairi are Sky, Land, and Sea (which coincide with Ventus, Terra, and Aqua). Also KH3's Yozora is Night Sky, so Noctis. And also Dark Sora.
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May 21, 2020 22:26
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Ah yes, the villain of the piece without a lisp, Sephiros. I don't think the Cetra used Mako, Mako is refined lifestream. I think they used the upswells of lifestream that naturally occurred, probably without using it up as if the case with the reactors. Otherwise it'd be weird for them to considered in touch with the planets.
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May 21, 2020 22:26
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Cavelcade posted:Ah yes, the villain of the piece without a lisp, Sephiros. This right here. They could have found a place similar to Mideel and settled there for a little bit before moving on again. The City of the Ancients is probably on top of a huge lifestream groundswell as well, or at least is enough of a "sacred place" that Aerith would go to pray to.
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May 21, 2020 22:32
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ImpAtom posted:It's one of the guidebooks. I'll see if I can track down the exact one. They could've gone with the DBZ Abridged "Ee-arth" joke by pronouncing it "Ee-arith". 
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May 21, 2020 23:44
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Gologle posted:Some friendly goon pointed out weeks ago that Cloud's two stances come from Zack and Sephiroth, so if we extrapolate from the gameplay then Cloud has, canonically, studied all ya moves Sonya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjRJgHyx7g&t=211s I got it  Also Cloud is shown to be a pretty handy fighter in Before Crisis, when he was merely a 15 year old Shinra grunt. Dell_Zincht fucked around with this message at 08:48 on May 22, 2020 |
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May 22, 2020 08:16
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After how wacky Roche was, I wonder how crazy the female SOLDIER they make up for Part 2 is going to be.
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May 22, 2020 08:40
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RareAcumen posted:After how wacky Roche was, I wonder how crazy the female SOLDIER they make up for Part 2 is going to be. It'll actually be Roche in one of Cloud's dresses.
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May 22, 2020 09:54
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I just came to the realization that the reason why Zack was allowed to have a relationship with Aeris to begin with is probably because Shinra was hoping to leverage Zack into convincing Aeris to help them reach the Promised Land. It wouldn't have worked, obviously, because Shinra is intrinsically mistaken about the Ancients, but that's probably the actual reason Zack could still hang out with Aeris.
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May 22, 2020 16:04
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anakha posted:It'll actually be Roche in one of Cloud's dresses.  Gologle posted:I just came to the realization that the reason why Zack was allowed to have a relationship with Aeris to begin with is probably because Shinra was hoping to leverage Zack into convincing Aeris to help them reach the Promised Land. It wouldn't have worked, obviously, because Shinra is intrinsically mistaken about the Ancients, but that's probably the actual reason Zack could still hang out with Aeris. Shinra's stupid obsession with this thing sadly is pretty accurate to some of the "pie in the sky" bullshit real corporations will invest in. Like for Christ sakes they're going off a myth that's vague as hell and assuming it means there's mako in them thar hills!
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May 22, 2020 16:27
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