Cloud Strife: Mako Draining Skeptic

[Forsaken Lover]

Barret: The planet's dyin', Cloud!

Cloud: Big deal.

So maybe the limited nature of fossil fuels isn't readily apparent to people in real life but come on. Barret literally says Mako is the lifeblood of the planet and everyday these reactors suck more and more of it out.

There's a difference between Global Warming will eventually kill us all and the planet obviously being destroyed right frickin' now. How can you tell? if you, I dunno, look out a window at the surroundings of Midgar?

This little exchange always bugged me. Does Cloud just not believe Barret? It is the only rationale I can think of for responding to "everyone will die!" with "it's not my problem." Everyone includes you, Cloud.

[crashNUMBERS]

He clearly hints that he just doesn't care. He probably doesn't think he can do anything about it or care to. It's a disinterest based in selfishness. Evidence of this attitude is given all the times he remarks on his pay. Now duh he can't make use the money if the planet's gone but let's pause and use our noggins a little. Does he know just what moment the planet will cease to sustain? Doubt it. Also, just try to put yourself in the shoe and imagine why someone would feel that way. Someone disinterested in the greater picture of things and rather choosing to worry about themselves with the little time they might have left? Not very hard to fathom

[Mirage]

I figured he thought barret was just exaggerating, and that it wouldn't really kill the planet even if it caused damage in the immediate area around the reactors.

That, and apathy.

[Elly]

indeed, that is one of the exchanges that sets up Clouds fractured personality, so the player can get a feel for this character... it also sets up this isn't another bright and cheerful world suddenly cast into darkness and evil... no, it's a darkness, a despair that has been permeating Gaia and its people for a very long time, some want to do something about it while others have lost hope for a future and just live day to day hoping to see the next... Cloud is one of the hopeless, when the game starts he's more concerned with surviving another day in a corrupt world that squeezes its citizens for everything they've got while the elite live in splendor... later we learn Cloud's been broken, poisoned, mindfracked, and betrayed by his government which ads more depth as to why he reacts the way he does through most of the story, add that to his troubled, lonely childhood and his "selfish attitude" starts to make sense... those opening conversations are supposed to set the tone for the world and it's people as well as our main cast, they do a very good job of it, i think, and later conversations help to expand upon the exchanges from the beginning...

[Fynn]

I don;t think it's common knowledge what Mako actually is. It's only in Bugenhagen's lab that you really learn about the Lifestream and such, so I'd imagine that to most people it's just another energy source that they don't question. Even Barrett doesn't really have any concrete evidence to back up his claim - that he's right is really more coincidence than anything (although I haven't played Before Crisis and that game apparently expands on the origins of AVALANCHE)

[Skyblade]

I don;t think it's common knowledge what Mako actually is. It's only in Bugenhagen's lab that you really learn about the Lifestream and such, so I'd imagine that to most people it's just another energy source that they don't question. Even Barrett doesn't really have any concrete evidence to back up his claim - that he's right is really more coincidence than anything (although I haven't played Before Crisis and that game apparently expands on the origins of AVALANCHE)

This was always the impression I got.

Had everyone known how Mako worked, do you ever think it would have gotten as big as it did in the first place? Or that Shinra would have had no competitors?

Remember, the inside of a reactor was considered a company secret, Tifa wasn't even allowed inside. The nature of the Lifestream is relatively obscure knowledge, and how it relates to Mako would be almost completely unknown.

Cloud was saying he was just there for the money. He didn't care about the philosophy or crazy conspiracy theories.

[Wolf Kanno]

I see it simply as Cloud just not really caring about the planet. Much of Barret's dialogue with Cloud concerning the issue later on points that it isn't about Cloud not believing him, as much as it is Cloud just being totally apathetic to the cause.

I feel people know where Mako is coming and much like our own ancestors from the industrial eras, simply believe its an unlimited/renewable resource so they don't really bother worrying about it. It doesn't help that VII's world in the original game at least, seems to be modeled after the early 20th century, where new technology took the masses by storm but there is a very distinct divide on people who have the pleasure of taking advantage of this new fangled tech and those who only know of it from stories. I mean Tifa mentions the broken down truck at the entrace of Nibelheim is the only car in the town. and it's shown clearly that the Eastern continent is far more technologically advanced than the west. In fact the farther you move from Midgard, the more you notice how the towns are more just quaint villages that are starting (and suffering) from the advancement of technology. The few exceptions either have ex-Shin-Ra employees working there or they are entertainment districts that likely panders to Shin-Ra.

The Gaia Theory element is mostly restricted to Cosmo Canyon and Cetra Studies. What I find amusing is that AC mentions that the reduction in Mako brought back coal and oil as the main sources of energy, which makes all of this a bit of a broken aesop.

[Fynn]

I think they just wanted to be deep or something. "Look, Mako is that bad that even fossil fuels are better."

But yeah, it does kind of trout all over the game's Green Aesop.

[maybee]

Remember at this part of the game, Cloudy, thanks to a Jenova infection, PTSD and trauma and acting like what he believes a typical, big-time Solider would act- cold, heartless, cocky, over confident and careless. Think the rest of the game proves that Cloud, true Cloud- does care.

[Loony BoB]

I'm with Fynn. It was my understanding that people simply weren't very aware that mako was essentially the lifestream. Or that the lifestream was a real thing. My perspective of the lifestream is that it was viewed in a similar way in which people view God on Earth. As for what's outside of Midgar - how many people do you think went outside Midgar? And when they did, who's to say that they really cared? There are places all over planet Earth in which lakes are disappearing, life is being wiped out, rainforests are being cut down... and we just carry on. Do we really care that much? I dunno. I mean, I donate to a jaguar charity (which is effectively a rainforest charity) but I don't feel that I'm making a massive difference. And yet here I continue to be that way. I think it's very easy to turn a blind eye in this world, and that would probably apply to Gaia, too.