FFVII's planet size

[The Witch]

The first trailer for the remake said that Junon is 133 miles away from what I'm assuming is Midgar.

http://i.imgur.com/gggMpF5.jpg

At first, I thought it meant it's 133 miles if you take this route:

It takes a person 7 hours to supposedly walk the distance of 26 miles at a moderate pace, and that's excluding hours that AVALANCHE spent fighting in battles and then resting. So that means it takes 14 hours to walk 51 miles at a moderate pace. And that did not look or seem right at all. Even to my mathematically challenged brain. So that inspired me to do my own calculations... or at least try.

Kalm's distance from Midgar seems much more realistic to me so I used it as a distance to measure the whole map with;

Anyway, here's a map of Gaia I made;

If you cut through the ocean it's 100+ miles between Junon and Midgar. So I think that's the pathway the trailer was going by when they said 133 miles. Which means that Kalm's distance is accurate to use for the whole map.

That means there's 600+ miles that Cloud and co. traveled just to get to Junon. That's 200 hours of moderate walking (google maps calculations, not mine) that they did, plus add on a few dozen hours due to battles and sleep and whatnot. So that's give or take 10 or so days of walking... right?

From Junon to Costa Del Sol that's 153 miles (246KM) in between, which at 50 knots (random speed chosen because ww2 destroyers went that speed) supposedly means they'd be there in 2-3 hours if they were on a ship ( that's what this site says at least).

Just glancing at the world map and using the Midgar continent as a basis for size, a rough estimate of it means the planet of FFVII is a little smaller than Pluto. Their world is so small in scale... our moon (which is 1,430 miles) is bigger than the Planet of FFVII. That is SO bizarre.

Can anyone help me out with the map and math here

 

[Dionysos]

I’m afraid I can’t help much with the mathematics on this, but those estimates seem reasonable enough for the world map as it appears in FFVII. It’s possible that in the remake they might change some things (such as possibly making the oceanic gap in-between Junon and Costa Del Sol wider). Let’s just assume for a while for these calculations that they’ll keep the proportions of the map intact, but just up the scale in the remake.

I think the road sign for Junon definitely means 133 miles if you take the shortest route, along the roads they’ve built. They may have roads heading through the mountains or along the coastline by that time. It’s possible that these roads existed in some form during the time of the original FFVII, but the player never visited them and there was no need to put them on the worldmap. The remake could slot the roads in. It’s just that the player had to take the long route round, through a swamp, a dangerous cave, and past a couple of forests. That was the only option available for the player’s party at the time. There was an unfinished (or collapsed and unrepaired) road at the edge of Midgar which prevented the party from taking the motorbike and van any further at that time. It might be that there were other options, but that Shinra would likely find them if they were following main roads, etc, so they took the ridiculous route.

The screencapture and trailer evidence of the road sign is tantalising in that it only manages to fit ‘-non’ onto the screen, but it does make the most sense for it to be Junon. It’s the only very important settlement that deserves to be signposted from 133 miles away!

I guess we need to separate the traversable world map of the game from the map of any geographical ‘reality’ of a full planet. We explore the world map of the game as a giant-sized Cloud who must actually be bigger than Godzilla, so maybe each step we take is approximately a mile! We can imagine that there would be much more to the world of FFVII which we didn’t see because the player only witnessed a scaled down version of the map to make it possible for the player to traverse.

We already know now that some other areas, which are now canonical, existed in the background during FFVII which players could not visit in the original game (because they hadn’t been created yet by the designers). Crisis Core introduced Banora (Genesis and Angeal’s hometown) somewhere on the Mideel continent. Modeoheim (a Shinra plant near Icicle Inn) and Fort Tamblin (a fortress somewhere on the Wutai islands) were also introduced in Crisis Core.

If you think about it, some of the locations that we do visit in FFVII are bit random and not important on a global or political level. They aren’t all bustling places like Midgar and Junon, and some of them aren't even quiet little tourist towns like Cosmo Canyon, Kalm, and Wutai either. I don’t think we should imagine that the small chocobo ranch that the player encounters is the only chocobo ranch on the entire planet. Where did all of rival chocobo riders from the races train their chocobos? No, the Chocobo Ranch only appears on our world map because it is the chocobo ranch which the player’s party happens to visit as part of their story, and they became friendly with the owners there. We can imagine that there were many, many chocobo ranches. Likewise, there were probably many, many small towns and villages.

Even though FFVII’s planet (by your calculations) may be smaller than Pluto and our moon, it is still a fairly large area. In the original FFVII it would have been impossible to generate a planet sized planet. There will still be restrictions now, but it seems that they’ll be putting more work in the remake in making it seem like the FFVII world is bigger and planet-sized.

In short, the planet of FFVII can be imagined as being much bigger than we see it in FFVII. We only see the locations that the player’s party need to visit (with a couple of optional caves and huts for sidequests and optional materia and items). In ‘reality’ the FFVII planet is a planet-sized planet (though possibly a small planet by Earth standards) and there may be hundreds of small villages and towns which the player never gets to learn of or explore.

It’ll be interesting to see if the FFVII remake allows the player to visit places such as Banora village, Modeoheim, and Fort Tamblin. It would be nice to see where exactly they are placed on an official world map, and if they decide to add any other new locations.

 

[iSmiff]

Interesting thread

It’ll be interesting to see if the FFVII remake allows the player to visit places such as Banora village, Modeoheim, and Fort Tamblin. It would be nice to see where exactly they are placed on an official world map, and if they decide to add any other new locations.

Yeah, I agree. I think they will have to add those places in unless they were destroyed between the events of the two but we have no knowledge of that. Some potential sidequests / easter eggs?

 

[Con Dornelo]

The first trailer for the remake said that Junon is 133 miles away from what I'm assuming is Midgar.

https://imgur.com/gggMpF5

At first, I thought it meant it's 133 miles if you take this route:

It takes a person 7 hours to supposedly walk the distance of 26 miles at a moderate pace, and that's excluding hours that AVALANCHE spent fighting in battles and then resting. So that means it takes 14 hours to walk 51 miles at a moderate pace. And that did not look or seem right at all. Even to my mathematically challenged brain. So that inspired me to do my own calculations... or at least try.

Kalm's distance from Midgar seems much more realistic to me so I used it as a distance to measure the whole map with;

Anyway, here's a map of Gaia I made;

If you cut through the ocean it's 100+ miles between Junon and Midgar. So I think that's the pathway the trailer was going by when they said 133 miles. Which means that Kalm's distance is accurate to use for the whole map.

That means there's 600+ miles that Cloud and co. traveled just to get to Junon. That's 200 hours of moderate walking (google maps calculations, not mine) that they did, plus add on a few dozen hours due to battles and sleep and whatnot. So that's give or take 10 or so days of walking... right?

From Junon to Costa Del Sol that's 153 miles (246KM) in between, which at 50 knots (random speed chosen because ww2 destroyers went that speed) supposedly means they'd be there in 2-3 hours if they were on a ship ( that's what this site says at least).

Just glancing at the world map and using the Midgar continent as a basis for size, a rough estimate of it means the planet of FFVII is a little smaller than Pluto. Their world is so small in scale... our moon (which is 1,430 miles) is bigger than the Planet of FFVII. That is SO bizarre.

Can anyone help me out with the map and math here

Not all of the planet is shown on this map.
There is another factor to take in, my friend. the climate zones! It's cold in the north and hot in the south. A planet is cold in the north AND south and hot at the equator. Thus the FF7 map is actually a big chunk of the north hemisphere with some South hemisphere shown in the upper left corner and the bottom with only ocean (planet 80+% ocean?). interestingly climatewise Costa del Sol should be like northern France like Normandy while Junon is like USA oregon. Wutai is in the tropics just as Meedel.

the white line is the polar circle the teal the tropics the red the equator. And I marked the magnetic pole with an "N", it's in the great glacier in the area you have to plant poles to not lose your way in the blizzard.

 

[Dionysos]

Not all of the planet is shown on this map.
There is another factor to take in, my friend. the climate zones! It's cold in the north and hot in the south. A planet is cold in the north AND south and hot at the equator. Thus the FF7 map is actually a big chunk of the north hemisphere with some South hemisphere shown in the upper left corner and the bottom with only ocean (planet 80+% ocean?). interestingly climatewise Costa del Sol should be like northern France like Normandy while Junon is like USA oregon. Wutai is in the tropics just as Meedel.

View attachment 11942
the white line is the polar circle the teal the tropics the red the equator. And I marked the magnetic pole with an "N", it's in the great glacier in the area you have to plant poles to not lose your way in the blizzard.
View attachment 11943

This is a fascinating insight and you definitely bring a great deal to the table here.

In terms of the canon FFVII lore, there is something which might not suit the idea of climate zones in the way which you describe (and therefore not suiting the way that they work in our world). Within the game it is said that the Knowlespole region (the northernmost continent where the North Crater and Forgotten Capital, etc, are located) was supposed to have been more temperate until the Calamity (aka Jenova).

When Jenova's descent 'wounded' the planet, energy was redirected to the site of the damage in order to heal the planet's wound. This is used to explain why it became so cold and barren because all of the energy was focused on healing instead of growing and being bountiful. But that is a lore detail and could even be explained away as a local legend reported by Cetran survivors to explain the natural phenomena of the climate and maybe we just take it as fact in the game (although Sephiroth based his master plan on this very principle as he hoped to absorb all of the planet's energy as it pooled to heal the planet from meteor, so he was banking on it being true!).

But if it was a Cetran myth then it would be similar to some ancient Greeks (and Romans) believing that seasonal changes could be explained by the emotional state of Demeter when her daughter Persephone was required to stay in the Underworld with Hades. Or, more in-keeping with this particular subject, there is Phaethon, son of Helios (or sometimes Apollo), who borrowed his father's sun-chariot and made a hash job at it by losing control of the steeds, driving the sun too close to the earth and scorching the land, forming deserts.

The frosty origins of the Knowlespole could simply be a myth of that sort that we are led by certain Planetologists, Cetran descendants and maniacs to believe. Although we know that the Lifestream as a force does exist and that the Planet does appear to be alive, so I think we're meant to believe them.

But that's just a question of origins and does not need to suggest that climate zones do not exist.

I love your idea.

Although FFVII's world seems to be a chaotic assortment of places influenced by our world, there are some efforts to link some areas that belong in some sense within the same vicinity. The best example would be how the Grand Canyon-style Cosmo Canyon shares a border with the Wild West-themed North Corel/Gold Saucer, and Rocket Town is also nearby and also suits the loosely American theme (particularly Cid himself). Nibelheim (being primarily Norse in influence) is also not devoid of the American 'West' theming, for Tifa dons a cowgirl costume when she acts as a mountaineering guide. Costa Del Sol is a bit of an outlier, being themed on a location in southern Spain, but it serves its purpose as a holiday resort.

It isn't all so neat. Some of it is more complicated, and also interesting.

Midgar is both the American New York (the 'rotting pizza' rather than the 'big apple') and also Midgard (Norse realm of man). Regardless of which side of the ocean it sits, it suits the climate zone you have set out for it on your map when compared to its inspirations from our world. Likewise, the Temple of the Ancients is both Mesoamerican in its exterior aesthetics and Egyptian in its interior (and that the Temple of the Ancients falls in the tropics in your map roughly suits on both fronts here, as it happens).

On the whole, Wutai (Asian-themed area) is placed in the west (although the precise arrangement of the map in that way would obviously have no impact on the globe itself), and the mixed American-European/'western' themed areas (with some Japanese elements always mixed in) form the two core continents roughly corresponding with our Europe and America.

It certainly looks like an inexact and liberal rehash of Europe, America and Asia in some way. We have no obvious counterpart for Africa or Australasia or, notably, Antarctica (some of the features of Antarctica have instead been combined with FFVII's Planet's north pole).

And that seems to be common ground for many if not most Final Fantasy maps. They follow a similar formula. Similar number of continents. Snow at the poles are optional and, when present, are only seen in the north.

I think there is room for Square Enix to claim that there are other continents further south in FFVII's world map, if they should choose to do so. As you point out, the climate zones (if treated the same as our planet and following the same natural laws) are quite imbalanced. In the original game, when the player flies 'south' they end up in the north, so these world maps as experienced by the player follow Pac-Man video game logic, and do not treat the planet as a globe. Therefore, we've likely never really experienced the true south of FFVII's planet.