Quote Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover View Post

And I have to disagree about Shinra fitting in better than Archadia. By the second disk, Shinra was just wasting my time as far as I was concerned. There was a big cosmic superbeing getting ready to destroy the world with his rock...and I'm supposed to care about these tiny peons in suits?

It doesn't help that the game give syou conflicting signals about whether or not Shinra is superfluous or actually useful. We get one of the best moments in the game with Sapphire Weapon's attack on Junon where we watch as Shinra is pretty much helpless.
Then, out of nowhere, they kill it.

Then later, they go through all the effort of sending up the rocket into Meteor. It's totally ineffective.

Then they go and manage to take down a Weapon and Sephiroth's barrier.

It's like the game couldn't decide whether Shinra were just a bunch of powerless losers or actually a force to be reckoned with.
How on Earth do you figure that? The basic story of Shinra is that they are the strongest power on the world at the time, their power stretching across all continents. When something threatens that power (the Weapons and Sephiroth) they try to do something about it. I really don't know what you mean about an indecision about them being useless or usefull. They're not going to solve every problem faced with them, or fail at every one.

I thought the story was handled excellently in that manner. A quote made by Rufus when Sapphire is attacking is something like "Can we handle all these attacks?" It's a realistic approch to how a Superpower might handle an unknown enemy, with varying victories and defeats. It eventually leads to Shinra's defeat, but was done so gradually, tying in with the rest of the story, even moving it along at some points (Removing Sephiroth's barrier).

I'd honestly be curious to know how you would have handled Shinra in the 2nd+ disk.