Perhaps the greatest cutscene of all time: Genesis v Sephiroth

[Carl the Llama]

Where to begin... Well first off, I would say that switching a small piece of metal for a a concentrated piece of energy that would melt a human face off is kind of a bad choice of alternative fire power.

Bad choice or not, yes or no, do you ever see any of the Shin-Ra troops or Barret or Dyne or any of the other multiple gun users reload at any point during the game? no, you do not, so logic (if it can be applied in a game with Fantasy in its title) dictates that an alternative must be made, how other then what I suggested before, do you suppose that that can keep on firing non stop all the time?

Next, I would point out that in VII itself, the party is very quick to avoid avoid confrontation with Shin-Ra troops and are more than a few times chased off by gunfire that even Cloud wished to avoid.

I believe that they wished to avoid the fight with Shin-Ra (I assume your talking about when Cloud Barret and Tifa storm Shin-Ra HQ) so I say to that the following:

Tifa: (to Cloud) ……What's wrong?

Cloud: I didn't want to start a ruckus till we saved Aerith. I should have
known that was impossible though…

Additionally, I doubt Cloud wants to kill every single soldier, these were once his comrades, would you want to be responsible for that many death's wanting to avoid all those battles is obviously the better choice, and besides, if Cloud were not able to take on the hundreds and thousands of soldiers that the Shin-Ra used to fight weapon, you saw how inneffective they were, the Mako cannon had to finish off Sapphire Weapon, yet some how, Cloud and 2 other fighters can manage to take down Emerald, Ruby and Ultima Weapons, this is to me, the power that standard weapons (swords, fists, spears ect) have.

If guns were ineffective, they wouldn't be the standard issue weapon of Shin-Ra troops, also the guns of typical soldiers within VII, were strong enough to do enough serious damage to cause Barret and Dyne to have to replace their hands and part of their forearms which is completely realistic.

If guns were ineffective they wouldn't be standard issue? no, guns were issued because (imo) they are easy to use and don't require large physical strength like say... a sword or a spear would? ok

With regards to them doing "serious" damage to Barret's and Dyne's arms, how would you suppose that the game fit Barret's and Dyne's back story about how they hate the Shin-Ra, about how Barret isn't exactly suited to use any other weapon other then a gun.

Zack himself is killed by several shots in the head. This is all within the realms of belief and is fairly close to the real world, no one uses a magic gun within the actual storyline that is ever dictated to ever be more or less of what an average person would say is a gun. So I would argue the original game firmly establishes that guns are as serious of a real weapon as any real gun would be, in the actual story itself.

Yes, Zack is killed by a huge amount of gunfire (not several shots) as evidenced in CC and of course it was in the game script that he should die. the fact is, when Cloud first jumps off of the train he is attacked by two Shin-Ra grunts... how much damage did these "guns that are as serious a weapons as of those in real life" the answer is 4hp... 4, if they were as serious as guns in real life then Cloud would jump off the train and the Shin-Ra grunts would kill the entire Avalanche crew in a matter of minutes. Don't forget the flashback is what Cloud recalls after being dosed up on Jenova cells.

You also cannot use a battle in a game, which is dictated by the rules of the genre itself, as evidence of story; cause if the guns were portrayed realistically, whoever attacked first would have won which makes for a rather boring and anti-climatic fight. It would be like trying to make Soul Calibur use realistic sword fighting, duels would end based on who landed a blow first and it doesn't make for a game. We can use suspension of disbelief cause we're dealing with the part of the package that is the actual interactive game part.

Something we agree upon xD so I'm confused, you say guns are as real and serious a weapon as in real life then you argue that they are not.

And once again, I would point out that their is no in-game reference of them being capable of this in VII itself. Sephiroth is powerful enough to slay Dragons on his own and he is physically strong enough to lift a grown man with one hand and bare its weight effortlessly, but he never showed any power to slice through structures like the Mako Cannon and Shin-Ra main office like it was tin foil. I might be able to give Sephy the benefit of the doubt since he doesn't physically show his power to the player in the game but watching him pull crap like that is less awe and more like compensation on the creative teams part.

Cloud, I am not doubting is strong, but you never watch him "rend the scenery" in the main game. Cloud will often run from fights he feels are losing battles, in the game, he even needs help from a dolphin to get him up to the raffling so he can slowly climb his way up to Junon, whereas in AC, he can magically jump 20ft. in the air, hang there as if it was ground, and defy other laws of physics. Despite the original game showing that Cloud's abilties are limited, certainly greater than a normal human being but seeing how SOLDIER 1st Class are normal enemies you can fight wave after wave of, I would say the Compilation went overboard trying to pander to fans into making them the most elite, most powerful super soldiers in the world who can beat Son Goku and Kenshiro with one arm tied behind their back, and that's just the 3rd class SOLDIERS.

So you concede that Sephiroth may very well be able to rend the scenery but Cloud who we are with the entire game cannot, the same Cloud that beat Sephiroth twice, once during the game and once during the film. Yes I concede the point that the fight scene if not the entire film was made to make the fans of ffvii happy, and seeing the fight between Sephiroth and Cloud imo was awesome, so it had the desired effect, it wasn't about basing the film in realism (like how some cells can make Kadaj into Sephiroth) but making the fans happy, to which I say that if the fight was based on the game principles it would not have been as good in my opinion, no they had to liven it up by making it into a fight of titanic proportions instead of Sephiroth: attack, Cloud attack too, rinse and repeat.

The point is that the original game established how things work in the game and the Compilation has ignored it so they can juice up the series, and make VII like any other over the top shonen anime series.

Jenova doesn't have wings? what are those things behind her back?

You know, its a funny thing about shape shifters, cause we know JENOVA isn't human but only took the Cetra's form, she's even got an eye growing out of one of those "wings"

Considering not a single other form:

Jenova_BIRTHFFVII.png 20070520075814!FF7.Jenova-LIFE.png Jenova_SYNTHESIS.jpg

None of them have wings, especially the feathery kind Sephy gained, though her last form looks slightly a pineapple so maybe she's actually a plant...

Your exact words were "(despite Jenova never showing she had wings or traits of wings) " all I was pointing out was that you were mistaken, that she did indeed have wings, or if you like "the traits of wings" for all we know the first form of her body had wings, now she is where she is after being a "Calamity from the Sky" she no longer needs her wings, or perhaps the first form we see of her (for all intents and purposes, that was he first form) and she evolved into a more powerful form that ha no use for wings.

At the end of the day, trying to put real life logic into a game that has Fantasy right there in the title if you'll excuse me, is just plain silly.

No, it just means I don't settle for ty writing. Any moron can write a "fantasy" story that allows anything, a good writer establishes boundaries and uses logic to not only keep their audience within the realm of belief but also logical parallels allow the audience to accept things and create an idea of what to expect while the author surprises him. If a conjurer casts a fire spell and uses gunpowder, ashes, and a lit candle as part of the ingredient for his incantation, you're not going to be expecting him to grow grass or make a bird just because it happens to be "magic and fantasy and thus anything can go!" no, you expect a fire spell or an explanation as to why we got a different result.

Of course it had ty writing, its basically a massive fan service, but then I never expected The Shawshank Redemption or Romeo and Juliet, I expected great graphics, awesome battles and death defying stunts, so I got what I paid for, if you don't like the film then that is of course your right, but in my opinion the film was exactly how I wanted it to be.

If Hollywood made a Lord of the Rings sequel and had Aragorn leaping over buildings and cutting mountain tops in half with Frodo flying in outer space hurling meteors at the surface of Middle Earth with his bare hands, and the writers just tried to play it off like they could always do that; you wouldn't just sit there are accept it cause "its fantasy". Sure magic exists in Middle Earth and maybe they gained some lost power, but you would notice this sudden upgrade in power is a bit different from what the original films/books established and would probably like an explanation that is more than just "they could always do that".

Every film has its differences, like I said I got exactly the film I expected to get, arguing that "they couldn't do that before" I feel doesn't apply here as one is a game with game based experiences the other is a film, tell me, if you were the director of FFVII:AC then what would you have done with the film? make all the battles based on the ground with no jumping or flying through the air.

Even then, this isn't about criticizing logic in fantasy/sci-fi writing, this has more to do with the fact that the original games story established several principles in the world (guns work in this world on other things like they would in the real world, Cloud is knows when not to bring a sword to a gun fight, he can't scale city walls by running really fast, and he has never shown the ability to hack a building in half) and that its knockoff compilations have changed the rules for no goddamn good reason besides "it looks kewl".

Like many of my other reasoning's I feel this point has already been covered, yes "it looks "kewl"" yes they have never done this in the game, and despite many people complaining about the changes that they made, Squeenix did change the, so what we have now is Cannon so saying "I don't like the changes etc" is your own personal choice, regardless what we now have is what Squeenix deems cannon so saying anything other then that is pointless, Cloud can chop through buildings and Sephiroth can fly through the air.

All this was done so Squeenix can make money, this is also true about FFVII so calling it a knock off is pointless, they did what they did to maximize profits, after all thats why they make games ect. to make money.


Off topic, curse you for making me type all that, its like the posts I used to make back when I had the time and inclination to do so lol, please if you do reply to every point I make then that is of course your right, but if I don't reply its most likely to be lack of effort not acquiescence to your views about my views lol.