@Tai_MT Final Fantasy VII: What is still confusing you?

I can answer why they blew up the reactors. Mako isn't really a dangerous type of chemical, it is the life essence of the planet and if the compressed Mako that the reactors sucked up is released it returns to the planet, so destroying a reactor won't necessary harm the planet. Shinra Corp is a huge organization and just making a reactor inoperable they can easily fix that problem, but destroying a reactor completely will cost them millions to repair.

Who are Shinra? They are just an electrical company that uses Mako (Planets life source) as a source of electricity, President Shinra had only two determinations: 1. Get rid of AVALANCHE and 2. Gain profit. Shinra Corp is so powerful they govern most of the world they even have their own military police force, own secret agents (Turks) and their own research institution at their disposal.

After awhile President Shinra got assassinated by "Sephiroth" and now his son the Vice-President Rufus Shinra took over his fathers place, but he had other plans that did not suit his fathers plans, he wanted power and to gain that power he needed a large hotspot source of Mako and that was the Promised Land, he found it but his plans interrupted by Sephiroth being revived from the Black Materia.

Is he a Good Guy or a Bad Guy

In my personal opinion he is both, when the Weapons have risen and the Meteor is heading towards the planet, Rufus was determined to try and take out Sephiroth by using the power of Mako but every actions Rufus takes, it causes friction to Cloud and the teams plans and that is why they are always constantly fighting one another. Personally I think the reason why Rufus makes horrible decisions in protecting the planet is because the Corporate suits that always gives him advice always get away and use him Scarlett and Hiedegger followed his orders for awhile but later they started taking things onto their own hands and when they thought Rufus died from Diamond Weapon they immediately took control of Shinra and everything was falling apart so Shinra Corp aren't really bad guys they were just following orders by people that are the true bad guys and Rufus was doing good but for the wrong reasons.

Advent Children

Years later Shinra Corp is now in ruins so Rufus has lost everything from the decisions he made so now he is trying to atone for the things he did, the Turks are still loyal to him even though Shinra Corp is gone and they follow his orders to help Cloud and the group to stop another Sephiroth catastrophe, even though Rufus lost everything he is still trying to rebuild Shinra Corp, Reno mentioned with this quote: "Come on Cloud, with you we can rebuild Shinra again." Corporate suits will always be Corporate suits in the end but they only want to try and make lives better for everyone

PS

I am super tired haven't slept in 2 days so excuse me if I got something wrong or I was missing something XD

It seems to me that one of the biggest failings in FFVII is the lack of exposition. Nothing is explained clearly until later games, and even then it definitely feels like the kind of hasty explanations soap operas wouldn't even touch.

And then there's the question of how lil cloud can tote that giant sword around. His arms are the size of my wrists.

Mako. He can wield the buster sword since he's been exposed to Mako for 3 years making him a SOLDIER. They explained it in Nibleheim scene if you revisit and among many other things.

Also I forgot who said it but, the anime Last Order is not part of the FF7 Lore. So don't add that one in.

Cloud was a badass before his captivity and Mako exposure.  As a simple Shinra rent-a-grunt, Cloud was able to take a sword that was stabbed into him, grab the blade with his bare hands and use it to lever Sepheroth off his feet and over the edge of the walkway (which wasn't OSHA compliant.  Good job, Shinra.).

Has Mai-Tai responded, yet?

I responded a while ago, ha ha.  I just still don't really understand the plot...  How do they know the life force isn't going to just disspate?  How do they know that an explosion that reaches to the core of the planet wouldn't damage the planet or the life force in general?  How do the terrorists even know the explosions won't hurt the life force?

It really is quite confusing...

Do you mean when AVALANCHE blew up the reactors? Because if that's the case they most likely didn't know what was going to happen. They just know that the Life Stream is good for the planet and Shinra is using it to make electricity.

Also, to point out, the game even points out that Barret is kind of terrible at leading Avalanche and their methods sucked.

Mai-Tai brings up a lot of points.  When you really think about it, a cosmology as unique as that of FFVII invites a lot of questions about its internal consistency.

Which is why I avoid writing such...strange...cosmologies when I world-build.

Well, we get these terrorist guys who run into these facilities and kill everyone willy-nilly, blow stuff up, cause a lot of people their jobs...  And they're not even sure it's the right thing to do?  I mean, in FF7, from the opening scene, it looks like we're playing the villains, except we're not meant to think too hard about how immoral our heroes are...

EDIT:  It also does not help that Cloud, the guy we are supposed to be playing as, is basically a walking robot without emotions or cares beyond "make a quick buck and kill some people".  He's a Blood Knight for hire and does not make himself very likable at all through the game (despite the forced romance subplot with Aeris to try to give the guy SOME kind of personality).  It's just really confusing to me.

The whole thing just seems like a 15 year old wrote a fanfic about Final Fantasy and it somehow got published into a game, and then somehow a bajillion people ended up loving it more than any other game in the world.  I just don't get it.

Yeah that always bugged me about Barret's plan. What exactly was he going to accomplish by blowing up energy plants? I understand you want to make the planet a better place and all that, but knocking out power to an entire city and destroying innocent lives isn't going to help the cause. Makes you wonder how he was able to get four able body people to join his cause.

Well, I think that's actually where the story somewhat shines...  He's only got that many people behind his cause.  As in, he couldn't find very many loony sociopaths/psychopaths to help him out.  I was just amazing at the beginning of the game he had enough money to even hire Cloud to begin with.  Even funnier is that he tries to convince Cloud that their cause is just, 'cause he likely just wants him to keep working for them... except for free.  That part was brilliant.

The rest of it?  God, it made my brain hurt.

We discussed Cloud's issues a few pages back why he was acting the way he did and why he has a thing for Aerith. If you get a chance, you should watch the Completionist's Youtube videos about FF7. He makes some compiling points on why it's an interesting series.

He didn't, Barret gave him a price but ended up giving him less back at 7th Heaven (Tifa's Bar) and Cloud complained about it and demanded 3x more for the next job. (But that was forgotten, I was looking forward to the extra cash (T^T))

I do agree that Barret makes stupid decisions like blowing up the reactors but like Uzuki mentioned: He is a bad leader. When the group left Midgar they all appointed Cloud as leader which was a smart thing to do, although what they were doing was right even if they knew it or not, all the Mako was being kept compressed in the machines which giving them nowhere to return to the planet and when those reactors blew up it destroyed the machines setting the Mako free and returning to the planet.

Wait. No, they did know that the Mako reactors were bad for the environment. And destroying them did help in that case. Barret founded Avalanche (second incarnation) at Cosmo Canyon, where he learned about what Mako was and what continuing to use it as an energy source would eventually do to the planet. (the part about him having learned these things at Cosmo Canyon is in the game, where he talked about bringing Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge there).


They even explain why they are doing what they are doing at the beginning of the game. And Shinra is shown to be really horrible.


Now, the reason why Barret is a bad leader doesn't have to do with exactly what he did (destroying the mako plants DOES slow down the destruction of the planet) it was the repercussions of what he did (though the bomb that took out that plant didn't do a lot of damage outside the plant itself), and the fact that he personally was more interested in hurting Shinra than anything else.

Arguably, it isn't the right thing to do.  By definition, AVALANCHE are eco-terrorists.  But the heavy handed (as per JRPG tradition) message of "denying future generations resources by abusing them now being a bad thing" and protagonist-centered morality made the player side with AVALANCHE.

On the same coin, Shinra IS powering our homes, but they are powering our homes at the cost of the afterlife.  Imagine if BP began tapping into Heaven (and, you know...Heaven was real, which is a matter of debate) as a source of alternate energy.  You could be rest assured that eco-terrorists, especially philosophical and religious zealots, would come out of the woodwork.  Eco-terrorists attack oil tankers and drilling rigs right now.  Sure, they don't blow them up, but the principle is the same.

I'm not questioning if what Barret did was wrong, it's how he went about it is wrong. Yes the reactors are bad and doing immense damage to the planet, but at the same time just destroying one isn't enough. For one you would have to think about how this will effect the people's lives. Hospitals won't be able to support people with medicine and life support, stores won't be able to keep food cold and it'll go bad, the lack of electricity will take people out of their daily routines and this will cause chaos within the city. To make matters worse Shinra isn't going to just chalk this up to a lost and call it a day, thus instead of taking the time to search for AVALANCHE they decided to crush an entire city and blame it on them. This is going to push people FURTHER AWAY from the cause and pretty much make it impossible to stop Shinra through the power of the people.

If they're tapping into the afterlife for power...  Then wouldn't the power be infinite as long as the population was sufficiently high enough?  A constant rate of death would probably produce a lot of energy for the living.  So now I have the question of "how is draining the afterlife a bad thing?  It's infinite fuel!"

Not really. The game imply's that it takes a bunch of energy from the Lifestream just to make a small chunk of materia. Imagine how much it must take to power a small country on a daily bases. The Lifestream is the life of the planet. It's literally the blood of the planet. Unless there are hundreds of thousands of people dying every day, it's taking more power to power Midgar then the Lifestream can replenish. Plus would you like to know that great grandmother's soul has been crushed into oblivion just to power a blow dryer?

Honestly, that wouldn't affect me much.  What else is she good for after she dies?  She's dead and floating in eternity in the afterlife accomplishing nothing and existing in a never-changing state.  Honestly, I'd rather my grandmother power my home PC, but hey, hair dryers are nice too.

Plus, Shinra could probably institute some kind of breeding program on a massive scale (we have future tech all over the place, yet we've got worse issues feeding and breeding in FF7 than any third world country in reality?).  You wouldn't even have to murder anyone, after about 80 years or so, with enough people... endless power.  Heck, you could probably even breed animals like rabbits if their life force gets added to the planet when they die...  Might even be more efficient to just breed a bajillion rabbits and use their souls to power all the techno-gear in the world.

The lifestream is more like the lifeforce of the planet. The idea is that it is circular. As things die the energy returns to the planet, and when things are born, they gain energy from the planet. This energy is shared by all life, plants, insects, humans, other animals, etc.


Bottling off a bunch of it and using it for fuel is screwing that up.


This is literally explained by Bugenhagen in the game.