- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That we know of. Man was a pilot, he probably bombed any number of Wutaian settlements with white phosphorus.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, I suppose there has to be a reason 3/4s of the Wutai continent is a desolate wasteland. I don't think there's any indication Cid was involved, and Sephiroth being deployed there accounts for it pretty well.
Oh, incidentally, another thought on why Cid gets jammed into the leader slot here: His level on joining the party is set by the party's average level plus three; in other words, the game intentionally sets him up to be among the strongest of your characters. This is amplified by how Cloud tends to run ahead of everybody else by virtue of always been in the party for everything, which means the median party level is often well under the average.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
That makes sense.
In this party of ex-Turks, ninjas, martial artists and hardened terrorists, Cid is obviously the hardest motherfucker there
They had to train him up to that level just in case the moon turned out to be populated by aliens and he'd have to do battle to protect ShinRa interests
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- Location
- Texas
Something I've been pondering; in hindsight, would you have preferred going with Tifa from the start instead? Personally, I think I prefer the way things have turned out this far from a narrative standpoint.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My point is not that 'Cid should be the leader because he's the strongest', but that the choice to make Cid the leader and force you to use him then meant that the devs intentionally went back and set things up so that he'd mechanically be less painful to use.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
It is Cloud, but… He's not looking good. Seating in a wheelchair, he shows some level of response to stimuli, but he doesn't talk and doesn't seem to be fully cognizant of his surroundings or who is talking to him, and expresses himself only in incoherent moans.
Tifa, who had first had thought he was fine, is shocked, and asked what happened to him; the doctor's answer is… "Advanced Mako poisoning."
Hmm. We know overexposure to Mako can be a dangerous thing, from the Nibelheim Flashback and Hojo experiments, but this is usually paired with obvious physical mutations. Mental side-effects always come with it, typically in the form of the mind degenerating to a 'monstrous' state, but… I think this is the first time we see a case of overexposure to Mako leaving the body intact, but the mind too damaged to function at all.
Doctor: "It appears this young man's been exposed to high levels of Mako energy for an extended period of time. He probably has no idea who or where he is now… Poor fellow, he can't even speak. He's literally miles away from us. Some place far away where no one's ever been… All alone…"
Tifa: "Doctor!!"
Yuffie: "You lyin' or what!?"
Vincent: "..."
Yeah, I'm on Tifa's side here, it's kind of fucked up to talk about the patient in front of his friends like that. Although, it's such a strangely particular description. Miles away? Some place where no one's ever been? Almost as if he were saying that Cloud's mind remains intact somewhere, lost in some great distance, lost in some kind of darkness, but still the same in its isolation. I'm not sure how he could know that, and it's probably just a figure of speech, but… Probably related to where the plot is going with Cloud, at the same time.
Neato! Coincidentally I started replaying Remake recently, and it reminded me that the events of Chapter 4 are definitely setup for this very concept - the idea of Jessie's father suffering such a bad case of mako poisoning that the very link between body and soul has been compromised, with Jessie outright floating the possibility that his mind is stuck between the Lifestream and the material world.
I mean, I guess it falls upon Nanaki? But he's a teenager. Technically. In dog years. Though I guess by JRPG standards it's not that exceptional, right? I mean, the alternative would be…
Cid: [Waking up suddenly] "Wha? What's goin' on?"
Barret: "You've been chosen to be the new leader."
Cid: "Pain in the ass. Forget it."
Barret: "But for us to fight, we gotta have Highwind, and you. We need it to save the Planet. An' who's runnin' this ship? You!"
Barret: "That's why you're our new leader. Ain't no one else can do it."
Cid: "Hmm… this ship's gonna save the Planet, huh? Ain't that gonna be just a little tough?"
Cid: "Oh man, stab me in the heart. I'm a man, too! Okay, I'll do it! Everyone, follow me!"
Barret: "Alright, now here's the first job. The Operation Room's waiting for you!"
Cid: "Yeah!!"'
I'M SORRY?? CID???
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
THE GAME DANGLED PARTY LEADER TIFA IN FRONT OF ME FOR LIKE HALF AN UPDATE AND THEN THE MOMENT THE NEXT PLOT BEAT ABOUT A SHINRA THREAT HAPPENS IT KICKS HER OUT TO BE A STAY AT HOME NURSE AND REPLACES HER WITH CID? CID!?
ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH FINAL FANTASY VII FOR TODAY
THANKS FOR READING
You know I almost, almost respect it for the fact that they play it for nothing but comedy. [Cid Was Made Party Leader Without His Consent] would be a lot funnier if he'd actually been present in the story before then, and if we had any idea of his personality beyond 'le funny abuse man'. Like in all honestly if the Remake series were to follow this series of plot beats I have no doubt in my mind that they could execute (well actually they probably will since I believe it's confirmed Cid will be an NPC until Remake 3 so this would be a natural way to finally introduce him and Vincent with proper playable kits) where this game failed.
Imma keep it a buck, none of this matters because Omi has been quite vocal he hates the standard encounters and hates grinding, and if he's forced to grind in any way we're gonna hear about him on the news.
"president shinra i assure you i've run the numbers and the results have been very promising, all we have to do is place the order for 300 purebred chocobos and crossbreed them with s-type and g-type SOLDIERs to create the finest in all-terrain warrior-"
- Location
- Albion
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You know, if I were recruiting a pilot for a space mission and I happened to have a whole bunch of Super Soldiers knocking around, I'd definitely consider one of them for the job. And Cid does fight with a spear, rather than something sensible like a gun or a fortune-telling mooglebot controlled by a megaphone-wielding possibly-robotic cat.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Spears are sensible for space travel! Spear users fight with jumping-based techniques, making him perfect for low-gravity enviroments since he's already used to jumping-based locomotion (and can probably jump high enough to reach lunar orbit from the lunar surface on his own so no need for rockets on the landing module)
- Location
- Phoenix
More like Shinra are a pile of idiots and they are only still around because none of our MC's have actually taken the shot to kill their executives when they had the chance. Plus, shattering the meteor would actually be the best solution in a situation where you can't knock it off course. When a meteor hits the earth, first it has to go through the atmosphere, and at the speeds that meteors travel at, that's like slamming face first into a brick wall, the atmosphere causes part of the meteor to burn up, which means that a much larger portion of the meteors mass would be taken out of the equation before it hits the ground.
Except in FFV, but that game is just built different.
Sadly Cid's the only person left with leadership abilities
No one wants the teenagers in charge, Barret had his last team die and Vincent put all his skill points in brooding
No one wants the teenagers in charge, Barret had his last team die and Vincent put all his skill points in brooding
I'm not seeing this.
I think it might come down to the raw amount of text/dialogue that's hitting you different? Because of the stuff that was in the World of Ruin you had shit like the utterly bleak little vignette of the woman and that little girl staring at the plant they have failed to get to grow, which I think is implied to be just the latest in a string of failures? Narshe being almost completely abandoned, Terra's situation with the orphans and losing her motivation to fight, ancient monsters released to plague the world, the bloodsport colliseum, and the rich in Jidoor insulated by their wealth being the only real places even close to thriving. All of that is present, and it all points to the world being in a genuine crapsack state, and even after beating Kefka if it weren't for that one little shot in the end credit of that plant starting to bloom, you'd have saved the world only to starve to death anyway because, like, agriculture can't happen. All that and the first World of Ruin overworld music was a lot more oppressive than this FFVII piece as well.
I'm leaving the Solitary Island bits mostly unremarked on because the thread's issues was with it dropping off after a strong start.
All of that exists, but it's like one NPC in each settlement that delivers each piece of the overall puzzle to how fucked the world is, because all the other NPCs have to do shit to point you around the sandbox phase of the plot, with sidequests and party members to recruit and so on. For this plot beat of FFVII on the other hand, the ratio is almost inverted. Only one NPC in each settlement needs to point you in the right direction, and so the writers are free to use every other NPC to remark on the state of the world and their reactions to it. Saying nothing of the fact that the writers just literally have a lot more room for this kind of thing on PS1 disks than on SNES cartridges.
To be glib, the state of the World of Ruin is objectively far worse than FFVII at this point, FFVII is just talking about it a lot more.
In that hypothetical FFVI Remake discussed earlier in the thread, it probably would be a good idea for the game to be a bit more confident in itself to let the pre-Falcon resurrection funk sit a bit longer. Have some campfire scenes as the group travels, that kind of thing. Have a few more random catastrophe scenes like Sabin holding up the mansion for them to react to gloomily around the campfire later. Searching for Friends is up to the task of paying off all that tension.
Wouldn't be the first time.
Salt, what's that?
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Oh hey, Palmer survived his traffic accident in Rocket Town. And is ambulatory enough to attend a Shinra board meeting.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
It was kind of amusing back in 1998 when Armageddon and Deep Impact were both releasing in the same time period.
Using nuclear weapons to prevent Near Earth Object impacts was something that got researched on and off ever since nuclear weapons were feasible, but as mentioned, the Chicxulub crater really brought it to the public consciousness in terms of "we could be wiped out by an impact event at any moment" and requiring no end of popular science presentations to reassure the public that this is not as imminent as they fear.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novel (well, a short story that he later turned into a novel) named The Hammer Of God, published in 1993, which was my first exposure to the concept. There, as well as in Deep Impact (and other stories that pretend to some level of scientific accuracy), the use of nuclear devices against the impact object is intended to deflect the object, rather than destroy or fragment it. Nuclear devices were just the most powerful means of applying kinetic force known at the time; current ideas propose some smaller but steady force applied over longer periods of time.
Also, since most Near Earth Objects are actually clusters of small fragments anyway, the idea is to use enough force (via nuclear devices) to disperse those fragments early enough and far enough that most of them miss Earth. Key word being "early"; if you can see it in the skies (like Meteor here) unassisted, it's far too late.
Even in those stories, there is acknowledgement that the fragments will still cause massive damage, on the scale of "millions dead and the world changed forever" at a minimum. The 2001 PS2 game Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies has one such event as its backstory, with the asteroid in question fragmenting on its own and causing widespread devastation, with bits of the asteroid remaining in orbit to occasionally cause further impacts at dramatic moments. Also since it's an arcade flight game, the backstory has various countries realize that anti-asteroid measures work quite well as anti-air weapons.
This looks like one of those cases where the translator apparently just gave up and translated straight from the lines.
The first "Huge Materia" is in katakana, implying that the term is a specific one. Red XIII then clarifies it as "you mean the really big materia". The next sentences are Red XIII trying to recall what he'd heard about, so "um..." should have been put in there somewhere.
So in context, this is supposed to be clarifying exposition on the previously obscure term "Huge Materia", but since the English term is kind of self-explanatory, it ends up sounding silly. Maybe if the term was instead "Materia Grande" or something.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
We may not want to admit it, but this is clearly a man in peak physical condition who can survive a fight with our crew and then walk off being hit by an 18-wheeler.
Either that or when you hit him, he bounces.
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
This could very well explain Cloud's hair.
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NexysDhyArchen
Throne Breaker
Something they could easily have had Nanaki point out for not letting Shinra just Nuke Meteor with GIGAHUGECOMPRESSEDMAKOENERGY: Meteor isn't just a large rock hurtling at the Planet, it's an ongoing spell. Shoving God only knows amounts of magical energy into it could have far more calamitous effects than it just exploding. Hell, introducing that much materia wildly could make Meteor larger, impact faster, turn into bio flavored rock, multiply into several impacts... There's a whole grab-bag of worse case scenarios involved with imagining how Meteor could turn out if you cast it with an Added Effect Materia attached.
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Okay, so, of the seven non-comatose party members, Tifa clearly should have been the party leader, but she quit to be a nurse, leaving us with six. Two of the remainder are optional, so that leaves four. Nanaki is a teenager and Cait Sith a spy, so they're disqualified, leaving Barret and Cid.
It should be Barret... except that the early game had numerous occasions where Barret tried to assert his right to be the leader and got immediately shut down by the party preferring the biggest dork on the Planet. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the lesson Barret took from that was "I am in no way qualified for leadership".
That leaves Cid, and while he's not qualified in the slightest he doesn't have any strikes against him; admittedly this is because he's kind of a nonentity, but still.
It should be Barret... except that the early game had numerous occasions where Barret tried to assert his right to be the leader and got immediately shut down by the party preferring the biggest dork on the Planet. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the lesson Barret took from that was "I am in no way qualified for leadership".
That leaves Cid, and while he's not qualified in the slightest he doesn't have any strikes against him; admittedly this is because he's kind of a nonentity, but still.
Yeah, I can think of a number of stories, speculation and articles from the period that brought up that scenario. It was just one of the common ideas floating around at the time; "we might get hit by an asteroid? Maybe we can blow it up."
Thinking about it, Cid actually has quite a bit of leadership experience. He's at least heavily implied to have once been the head of the Highwind's crew, and he was the lead on the failed rocket launch. It makes a fair bit of sense to have him as a leader in that regard, although his disconnect from the main plot makes it a strange choice regardless.
I think the writers just really wanted to show how much the party were reliant on Cloud and his drive to chase Sephiroth. Without Cloud or Tifa's personal connection to Sephiroth, the rest of the party's motivations are really just limited to "Screw Shinra", "Save the planet but don't know how", and "get materia" (maybe nabbing the Huge Materia was really Yuffie's idea?).
I agree. That's why the choice of Cid made logical sense to me in the abstract; the issue is that he's just not that developed a character so it feels more out-of-the-blue than it actually is in-universe.
Kind of the opposite of Cloud who in the abstract doesn't come across as leadership material, but since you literally start with him, have him as mandatory party member for the entire game until recently, and he gets so much character development it's easy to ignore that.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
So wait, doesn't this mean that whoever is controlling Cait Sith is in, or at least has access to Shinra's boardroom? And conservation of narrative detail means it has to be a character in this shot. So the spy is either Rufus(unlikely, but I wouldn't put it past this game) Scarlett, Higdigger (ha), Palmer (Ha!), or Reeve?Cait Sith: [Approaching.] "Yeah… I already told you I was." [He turns to the group.] Both Gya ha ha and Kya ha ha are up to something. Wanna eavesdrop?"
…and there the game is finally making me like Cait Sith.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Not necessarily; the first time we see the Shinra boardroom, it was via air duct, accessible from the nearby toilet. We (as in Cloud and the party, during the mission to rescue Aerith) managed to eavesdrop quite clearly then too.
Also the Shinra boardroom would be one of the obvious places to plant a listening device (assuming such things exist in the setting) for corporate espionage purposes.
kairuf
(Verified Kaiger) (Not the Siberian)
- Location
- The land of Potatoes
I think it makes more sense when you pair this line
With Cid's past
We've had a Barret focused arc (Corel Prison), a Red XIII focused arc (Cosmo canyon), a Yuffie focused arc (Wutai), about time that Cid's shows up.