So.....taking the compilation as a whole....what are your opinions on Zack?
In the ones I've played and seen, I feel like he couldve had a stronger presence in those flashbacks.
So.....taking the compilation as a whole....what are your opinions on Zack?
In the ones I've played and seen, I feel like he couldve had a stronger presence in those flashbacks.
He's dead.
That's my opinion of him.
People who say he was a better hero/character than Cloud probably don't remember FFVII that well.
FFVII is a game that started characters as stereotypical RPG tropes, and then broke them as their characters evolved. Cloud started as the silent, strong, couldn't-care-less badass and ended as the dweeby guy who comes to term with his flaws and wants to mosey on down to the last boss. Zack is the stereotype that Cloud began as, basically... boring.
...
Greater hero? Cloud, cause he saved the world. Zack, mainly saved Clouds life making him the hero he dreamed to be.
My opinion on him when I first played VII was I wished there was a way to recruit Zack. I even tried to take Barret and Tifa down to fight an infinite amount of shinra troops in a subway in hopes Zack would show up. However he was dead. He was also defined in VII as the true Solder of the compilation.
During Crisis Core I found his character pretty intact. Sometimes he had a umbrella moment where the umbrella is actually stronger then the buster sword. Though he did do a lot of importance he still falls as the guy that died saving cloud.
I liked him.
Marcus
"No cloud, no squall shall hinder us!" - FF9
Games completed - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 10-2, 12, 13, 13-2, 13-3 Tactics, Tactics Advanced, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, KH, KH2, And played 11.
Whenever you see Zack you see he is a character that is made as symapthetic. He is made to be the hero guy and it is incredible how different he is from Cloud. Cloud's own original characteristics even during his confabulation still made him so different from Zack that the false memories still did not even change him enough to be even close to him as a character. And that is a good thing, I guess. It shows how similiar things can affect someone totally different if they are just different enough in the first place. Of course that can also happen to similiar people but that is not the case here.
And yes, I like Zack very much. At times I think his death scene is sadder than Aerith's.
I really like Zack Fair, a lot. I don't know why. His life was pretty unfair hehe.
Zack is one of my favorite FF characters. He's very nice, funny, strong and courageous. His death really breaks my heart everytime. And his relationship with Aerith is also very cute and tragic and the same time.
His death scene is only triggered in the game if you take Cloud back to Nibelheim later on. Some people at the time couldve been forgiven for not knowing he was dead. And yes, his death is sad. Aerith's is shocking, but his is just plain sad.
In FFVII itself Zack has no character really aside from being some guy Aeris apparently dated and the guy who saves Cloud. There's really nothing to him other than that. I could see feeling some sadness in that sense since he's a character who's most important role is having his life unintentionally usurped by someone else when he dies but honestly we never know him well enough for me to care beyond simply acknowledging that this guy has supremely bad luck in the game.
As for the rest of the compilation, well... he's not necessarily bad in Crisis Core, but there's nothing that really made him stand out to me. He's a bland character in a game filled with so many bad characters, poor writing, and questionable retcons that it's genuinely hard to give a trout for me. The entire Compilation is that way though.
He's a pretty fair character.
I like Kung-Fu.
Ah, ret-con man himself. Seriously, many god awful ret-cons happened thanks to this guy. Horribly written character.
"Hero, hero, hero! Honor! Dreams! SOLDIER pride! Now let's all do squats at random times because I'm a hyper active idiot!"
Dude is annoying as all hell. The only thing worse than him is his ret-conned death. Zack was killed by two random Shinra grunts with machine guns. He certainly did NOT die fighting a damn army. This isn't DBZ. It seems the horrible writers at Square can't seem to remember that though.
Last edited by Bright Shield; 04-24-2016 at 08:00 PM.
"Repent your sins through death!" - Ramirez - Skies of Arcadia
He couldve been weakened by all that experimentation done on him and Cloud for the last 5 years. But....if he is a member of SOLDIER doesn't he have Jenova within him anyway? That is after all how one becomes part of SOLDIER. So....why is it that Sephiroth and Lucrecia cling to life due to their Jenova cells but Zack can die without resistance? Plus there's other NPCs who say they were in SOLDIER and I don't really get how they aren't being manipulated like the clones.
Especially because of his SOLDIER operations he is already immune to such things. Furthermore the "SOLDIERs in general have JENOVA cells" was a bit ignored in the Compilation, especially for Dirge of Cerberus, making it possible for Weiss' body, the body of a former SOLDIER to function as a pure and not corrupt body of Omega, until Nero corrupted the body.
And the ex SOLDIER that we see in FFVII are already manipulated. We can see the seller in Junon talking about his recent feeling that he has to wear a black cape, et cetera. The Reunion call that Sephiroth starts echoes through.
I'm pretty cool with him. His personality is also one of those things that the compilation did right - instead of completely rewriting him to fit whatever goal they had in mind, they worked in the little bits of him that we saw in the original game and just expanded upon them so that his portrayal in FFVII is still relevant (which can't be said for things like Genesis, Angeal, that other doctor dude I can't remember the name of, the whole goddess thing and whatever the hell they did to LOVELESS).