Zack Fair: Badass Hero or Tragic Waste of a Life?

This is a divisive issue with my friends, many of whom worship FFVII, but I honestly prefer the narrative of Zack's death in the original game over his badass super melodramatic demise in Crisis Core. Don't get me wrong, the way they handled the final moments in CC especially the final battle is probably some of the most clever design to come out of SE at that time but I always hated how it retconned his character.

For those wondering what the hell I'm talking about, in the original, Zack and Cloud are running from pursuers and Zack drops off Cloud before fighting some of them off, then returns only to be surprised and get gunned down, the three soldiers walk up to Zack and shoot him in the head and leaves Cloud for dead. Finally Cloud finally wakes up, picks up Zack's sword Yells into the sky and we see Midgard.



In Crisis Core, Zack and Cloud are ambushed by the ShinRa army and Zack pretty much fights them all off finally succumbing to his injury before two of the remaining soldiers put two in his head, at which point Cloud wakes up and Zack gives him this long speech about living for the both of them and then gives Cloud his sword telling him he is his legacy before the scene fades, birds fly in the sky and Zack gets a send off in a 90s power ballet by Gackt.



The thing is, I prefer the original, why there is enough offscreen possibilities for Zack to have been able to have a few badass moments, it still ends with the player proceeding to watch a figure die a senseless death despite being one of the most important figures to the plot. I love it because it shows how unfair the world can be cause Zack rescued Cloud and tried so hard to get them home but in the end he gets killed in the finish line. He dies, Cloud wakes up in time to find him dead, it rain and nothing, it is just a silent moment to reflect on the loss of a life and in the backdrop of Midgard it makes a pleasant analogy to the plight of the people of the slums, they die in the grandeur of Midgard but nobody cares except for the few who knew them. It is a true tragedy.

In Crisis Core, we get the Hollywood version where Zack didn't fight off maybe a small force, he fights off a huge army, almost single handily, he's not gunned down in the back by being caught off guard, no he was so smurfing badass that it took serious injury to finally weaken him enough for the small remains of the force to finally gun him down. He is conscious enough to give this long heart wrenching speech about legacy and being true to yourself and how much hope he is putting into Cloud who is the future (you would think Zack was an old man in his fifties but the two are only a few years apart in age.) before dying and being given a weird send off similar to both Tidus "death" and Spike Speigels' to some power ballad in the background. Its like 500.000x more awesome cause bro ya? Yet it isn't, it transforms Zack from a tragic figure to a martyr it elevates him beyond his role in the original proper and cheapens his legacy by transforming a quick and powerful moment into an over-dramatized pageant that checks off every element from the book of Hollywood nonsense to try to make a powerful moment better than it was before and completely break the message the original gave it. Its become gilded and feels cheap and I felt Zack deserved better. I know I am a minority on this one as most people feel CC did him justice but man I hate that game and everything it does to screw what was good about FFVII.

bad hair


That's my entire opinion on the matter

I agree entirely with your assessment, the compilation simply reeks of trying too hard to make everything seem awesome and bad-ass.

The problem is Zack is already epic just because of a less than 10 minute homage to him in the original masterpiece. It had all we needed to know:

He was the 1st Class SOLDIER Cloud took the persona of.
He died a tragic, heroic death saving his newly made friend Cloud.

That was pretty epic for me knowing just this. He protected basically dead weight (Cloud as a vegetable) and saved his life, slowing him down during a life-threatening escape.

What else do you need to know about him?

There's nothing contradictory about the two accounts. Crisis Core's ending is the best ending.

Except the whole closing dialogue and the fact Zack isn't gone long enough to fight off an army, the whole scene in VII is treated as a moment of senseless loss as opposed to CC which treats it like THE EPIC OF TOTALLY SUPER SPECIAL AWESOMENESS THAT MAKES ME FEEL ALL TINGLY IN MY NETHERREGIONS OH GOD I NEED TO WATCH IT AGAIN JUST TO GET OFF!!!!

The original is better, more intelligent, and leaves leeway for the player to fill the whole, CC removes all thinking and tells you that you should be sad about this. It's insulting.

Working on crisis core speicifcally, I was heartbroken when Zack died. I grew to love him and his relationship with Areith. Cloud was just there for most the game, but Zack wouldn't let him go even if he was an empty shell.

Best FF protagonist for me by far. Why couldn't FF7 be all about him?

I sort of appreciate both 'tellings' of the same ending, that ending scene is heartbreaking.

I prefer Crisis Core ending. It is really touching, and I prefer Zack over Cloud.

It's probably dangerous to apply logic to a Final Fantasy game, but how could he talk after being shot in the head?

Did he died a virgin? I always thought he's a player. :confused:

I loved the game of Crisis Core, but the ending left a sour taste in my mouth, the way they made it seem like being Soldier 1st Class makes you into an immortal god, and yet somehow during the escape from the ShinRa in Junon, Barret & Cait Sith are able to topple multiple Soldier: 2nd and when in Midgar they are able to easily kill 1sts, am I supposed believe a small group of terrorists can kill these legendary fighters, while THE WHOLE SHINRA ARMY fight a single 1st and yet take ages and ages to kill him? It just makes no sense.

Also another thing that irritated me was how despite having 1HP for the longest time during that fight, he was still able to kill loads more. They took what was a tragic death, and turned him into an all American Action Star. It turned an otherwise highly enjoyable game into a joke.

Personally I would have preferred ShinRa to send an Anti-Soldier weapon after him, have him and Zack duke it out in a fight, Zack would win, but be weakened enough that a couple of grunts could finish him off.

I much prefer the senseless death over ACTION HERO ending, yeah. That type of realistic approach to story telling has always been a favourite of mine and, as you said, we infer the story from what we're seeing, rather than just being told the story. Much more engaging, I find.

I have a lot of problems with Crisis Core, most of them have to do with Project G (you like One Winged Angels? Have three of them!), but I didn't hate Zack's death (I'm a sucker for Spike Spiegel levels of heroic deaths). Granted, I like the brutal realism the original scene had, but I've always ignored the compilation when I replay the original, so the original death is the death I prefer.

I did like how the Digital Mind Wave breaks down as the fight lingers on, as if Zack's thoughts are frantic and breaking down, finally ending on Aerith's portrait. I thought that was a nice touch.