FFVII Confusion

Aztec Triogal

Aztec Triogal

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People never seem to be able to fully grasp this game. I'm not entirely sure why... but I have some theories.
  1. The story is very rich and incredibly deep... but it is told in small segmented pieces that make it difficult for players to digest and retain the information they learn throughout the game.
  2. The characters, especially Cloud and Sephiroth, are constantly changing their opinions throughout the course of the game. For most of the characters this is because they are discovering the truth in fragmented pieces, as you are. Therefore they develop and express theories that are untrue because they do not yet know the whole truth, same as the player.
  3. Hojo is a bastard. He has performed an innumerable amount of experients on a variety of people for a variety of reasons. Forget the ethical conflict... the problem this causes is that of these hundreds of experiments, any number of which can be successful, incomplete, failures, or suspected failures. It makes it very difficult for players to keep SOLDIER mako experimentations and Jenova Reunion experimentations seperate, especially if both are discovered together... as they are in Nibelheim.
 
Well,, it's also a dark and graphic story (if not necessary shown in the graphics) here's why in which I came to that conclusion:

The story is not generic and NOT aimed at a younger audience... is why I got hooked on it.

I mean, think about it:

Global Dictatorship
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Shin-ra's Domination
Terrorist acts
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Avalanche destroying some Mako Reactors
Mass Murder
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Sector 7 Plate Destroyed by Shin-ra then blaming it on Avalanche
Assassinations
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President Shin-ra / Aerith
Faults In Medical Ethics And Flat Out Violations Of The Hippocratic Oath
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Human Experiments
Government Cover Ups
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Covering up the 'Sephiroth Incident' by rebuilding Nibelheim as if nothing happened
Deadly Pollution
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Mako Extraction / Life stream
Extreme Mental Trauma To The Point Of Insanity
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Hidden Memories, Split Personality / somewhat
Acts of War
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Shin-ra's war against Wutai / Deepground's attacks on the world and killing thousands - maybe even tens of thousands
Mysterious, Even Fatal Epidemic
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Geostigma
Mass Kidnappings
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The infected children of Geostigma by Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz
Then The Fight To Correct The Wrong Doings
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Going after Sephiroth / Going after Shin-ra / Going after Kadaj and co.
Acts Of Redemption
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Cloud for letting Aerith die , and not able to help Zack / Vincent For not able to save Lucrecia Crescent / Lucrecia for betraying Vincent / Shin-ra for damn near destroying the world

... Need I go on?

I'm a sucker for Sci-fi/Steam Punk environments. And it hit what I enjoyed in a story.

I'm not for a 'Save the princess in a fantasy environment' i.e. Dragons, Elves. It's just not really my thing. I'm not knocking it, it's just something that I don't really enjoy - I rarely make exceptions on this though.
 
I once met this guy on a forum who said that he found FFVII wasn't unclear at all; people just lack the ability to follow a storyline and read the dialogue properly. I don't know whether he thinks people are stupid, but then he claims that most people get what's going on--but if that were true, why do lots of people still admit that FFVII has an ambiguous storyline?

But if you're right, then that means you can't really take what Hojo says at face value about his theory that Sephiroth was gathering all the clones and bits of Jenova towards him; in other words, some people may believe him to be wrong and think it was Jenova. Of course other additional sources outside the game say that Sephiroth was in control the entire time, but can we really know this with any certainty inside of the game itself without looking at external sources, or do we only believe in interpretations and no one can say what it must be without the author actually spelling it out for us?
 
I loved FF7, when i first played it i had some clue wat was going on but there was alot of explanations needing to be answered. Crisis Core has solved alot of those explanations for me. But i still loved the original. Alot of people i knew wer confused on how cloud had Zacks memories or w/e. everybody was like, "who the hell is this Black hair dude?!!" i would anwser by saying, "uh, clouds friend." and those weird clone guys in capes and the reason why sephiroth went mad. alot of my friends found those points confusing.
 
I think the confusion from FF7 stems from all three of those reasons. Also, you have to keep in mind that when creating FF7, alot of the development was rushed in order to make certain deadlines.

But to adress your points...

1. The story is definitley multifaceted, but the players only witness firsthand the aspects concerning the story that directly relate to the main characters. In regards to FF7, alot of these details don't affect the main plot so much.

2. Cloud is the classic example of an unreliable narrator. The player sees what Cloud sees. The story seems somewhat clear up until the end of disk one/begining of disk two where Sephiroth starts fucking with Cloud's head, which in turn fucks up what the players think they knew in terms of the story.

3. Yes, Hojo is a bastard. He's constantly not recognizing his own experiments. Not to mention, characters mistaking Cloud for Zack gets rather jumbled. Especially with Hojo, when he refers to Cloud as the failure when it was Cloud who was the successful experiment.


Also, considering alot of the themes in the game are rather abstract (lifestream, life of the planet, promised land etc.) it's understandable how many can get lost. Especially since there is no real explicit explanation fort any of it at the end, as the story's climax is probably the most ambiguous things about the game. Until AC was announced, no one knew for sure if human race was wiped out, or if humans survived in order to change their lifestyle habits. AC kinda killed the ambiguity though.
 
mmhmm thats true when i finished the game i realized that there was still life on the planet and i guess that was there goal. and wat really messed it up was that it said 500 years later or w/e but then advent children came and it was different.
 
I think if you picked up this game, never played it before, you would be able to grasp the storyline no problem. I did find it somewhat confusing the first time round, but thats going back 10 years when i was 9-10 and at that age the storyline was just a bit too much for me too take in. My confusion always involved what happened to cloud in terms of soldier and sephiroth, that boggled my brain a little. Now tho I have no problem taking it all in, the storyline isnt that complicated really, as long as you read carefully its all good.
 
Talk about confusing.
Why does Tifa only has one earing. Is she trying to be a boy or is is just in fashion.

About the storyline.. Its really confusing yes, that's why I'm glad I never played the game when I was little. I don't think it would've made me fall in love with the series if I had VII as my first.
 
wow you guys are actually making some damn good points, although i have fully understood the game for a couple of years now, at first i was confused as hell lol.
alot of the games take a few play throughs to fully grasp the story line..dont ya thnk?
 
I agree that it gets confusing because Cloud gets very, very confused. I really liked the way we have to actually THINK to understand the story. Sure, it's a linear tale, but we have to make our own connections.

It's a gripping story, and for me, the complex nature of it merely added to it's grasp!
 
im not such a big fan of cloud, and it is very confusing.
ff7 was a love hate story for me, some points i was like WOW what next, then other points i was like...huh snooze fest lol.
 
oOTidusOo said:
im not such a big fan of cloud, and it is very confusing.
ff7 was a love hate story for me, some points i was like WOW what next, then other points i was like...huh snooze fest lol.
Click to expand...
I know what you mean, some sections can seem fairly drawn out...but I think part of me feeling like that was just wanting to know what would happen next :P
 
._.

Tessbot said:
I once met this guy on a forum who said that he found FFVII wasn't unclear at all; people just lack the ability to follow a storyline and read the dialogue properly. I don't know whether he thinks people are stupid, but then he claims that most people get what's going on--but if that were true, why do lots of people still admit that FFVII has an ambiguous storyline?
Click to expand...

I honoestly didn't find the story-line that ambiguous, of course there were parts that i couldn't wrap my mind around, such as the whole Cloud impersonating Zack thing, but that was pretty much cleared up after playing Crisis Core.

I believe the story confuses some people because the story and themes presented in FF7 are pretty immense and can be alot to take in if you're not into RPGS of an epic scale, Final Fantasy 7 was much bigger than any other final fantasy games and it could be pretty intimidating if you've never played anything like that before
 
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There are several sections of the game that are fairly similar. In fact, one of the major problems is that so many events occur in Niblehiem. People tend to think that the monsters in the mako reactor are the Sephiroth clones... or they don't understand where Zack, Tifa, and Cloud grew up. There's so much that happens there and it's not well explained.

If you can group the different confusing sections together in your mind, it really does become much clearer... but there are so many people confused by the plot that I fear it loses something in their translation of it.
 
i never really found it to be THAT confuseing. i mean it all really gets explained...eventually. but it never really gets competely cleared up untill you get cloud back from his coma and he explains everything in the highwind.
 
I've never found it the plot overly confusing after my first couple play throughs. In 1997 I was only ten years old, and so I had a lot more difficulty picking up on subtle plot devices that are obvious to me now. It just requires paying attention..

for instance, there are people who still, to this day, do not realize they aren't fighting the real Sephiroth for most of the game.
 
lol Yes, there are many people who claim to have a firm grasp on the game and yet still do not understand entire sections of the plot. I'm not exactly sure how they've convinced themselves how that's possible... but whatever. I guess a lot of FFVII's plot is not really entirely relevant... but still seems odd that people can make such claims without any foundation.
 
i remember the first time i played it it made no sense to me i just liked the graphics and the music...but the second time though i paid attention to the story line and i remember it all coming together in the dream sequence(at least that is what i think it was) with Tifa and Cloud going around Nibelhiem clearing up clouds past
 
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