NIbelheim: WTF?

[Ozmoid]

As you may have noticed, Cloud DID see nibel heim get destroyed, and it WAS destoryed. Bearing this in mind, why don't the inhabitants of nibel heim rember it?

[Cybele]

As you may have noticed, Cloud DID see nibel heim get destroyed, and it WAS destoryed. Bearing this in mind, why don't the inhabitants of nibel heim rember it?

Nibelheim was rebuilt as a home for the clones. The people there are actors hired by Hojo. If you read the note on Tifa's desk, it pretty much explains it.

[Aralith]

To add to Olette's post, the Black Caped men that you see all around the town are the original inhabitants. All survivors of the Nibelheim Incident were taken by Hojo and put in the Sephiroth Clone program. The ones who can say nothing more than Sephiroth and Reunion are (believe it or not) the successful ones. Cloud was the only failed Sephiroth Clone, thus why he is the only one that still has a memory of the event (and the fact that he assimilated Zack's memories into his own).

[Ryushikaze]

Actually, he's the only SUCCESFUL copy, since success meant reaching Sephiroth, and Cloud was the only one capable of such.

Course, even then, it's questionable what Reunion instinct had to do with it.

Of course, I would not be surprised if Hojo shifted the goalposts to protect his hypothesis.

[Aralith]

Of course, I would not be surprised if Hojo shifted the goalposts to protect his hypothesis.
Actually, I think he did do that several times throughout the game. If memory serves, in the scene at the top of Midgar at the Sister Ray just before you fight Hojo, he calls Cloud a failure, switches it to him being a success, and then switches back to him being a failure. And he calls Cloud success and failure alternating back and forth throughtout most of the game. He'll do anything to make himself seem right, after all, he still believes that Jenova is an Ancient when you finally kill him.

[Big D]

Cloud 'succeeded' to the extent that he had a consciousness and personality of his own, rather than becoming a shambing, zombie-like heap.

Anyway, as for Nibelheim... Shinra needed to keep the massacre secret, so it rebuilt the town and re-populated it with hired actors. This meant that there were virtually no people at large in the world who knew the truth (only Zangan and Tifa, since Cloud and the other survivors were in Hojo's custody), and Shinra were spared the embarassment and condemnation that they'd face if the public found out that their 'greatest warrior' had turned into a murderous madman.

[Vyk]

And almost ten years later, the story is still unfolding. Ah, the more I learn about this game, the more I'm compelled to like it. And I adored it to begin with. And understood nothing.