u/ZanthionHeralds

After starting Rebirth, I need to update my previous topic (https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1unqwhb/from_the_perspective_of_the_average_midgar/) to add that, according to the first two minutes of Rebirth (which I'm not considering a spoiler here, 'cause it's, well, literally within the first two minutes of Rebirth), the public also believe Avalanche was responsible for the tornado that destroyed Sectors 0, 1, and 2. And remember that Sector 0 is the Shinra Building itself. So, according to what Shinra wants the people to believe, Avalanche can control the weather and destroy reactors and drop plates at will. They have assassinated the president, wiped out more than half the city, and leveled the capital building. And they did all this in less than a week.

I don't see how the population can make any conclusion other than that Avalanche decisively won this war. Decisively**.** The people would be begging for Shinra to surrender to Wutai at this point. There's no way this PR campaign could ever possibly work. Shinra is hopelessly outmatched and has no chance at victory. At the rate they're going, Shinra will be utterly and totally destroyed within another week, at most.

After playing through the game a couple of times, I've come to the conclusion that the writers made a mistake in having Shinra ultimately be responsible for the destruction of the Mako Reactors.

From a real-world perspective, it seems to me like Shinra's plan to rally the people around them and against Wutai/Avalanche is so extreme that it would actually backfire. By the end of the game, 3 of the 8 (or 7? I'm not honestly sure if the Sector 6 reactor is functioning) functioning Mako Reactors have been destroyed, and roughly 1/4 of the city has been rendered basically uninhabitable. And according to Shinra's supposed master plan, this was all the work of hostile foreign actors who have apparently infiltrated every level of Midgar's society and Shinra's government.

I think the writers made Shinra's plan too extreme here--I actually think all the destruction would have the exact opposite effect. From the citizens' perspective, they would have absolutely no reason to be confident that Shinra can do anything to stop the destruction. After all, after the Mako Reactor 1 bombing, Avalanche put out a statement the very next day saying they were going to blow up another reactor--and they did. Shinra could not stop them. Then, from the average citizen's perspective, Avalance ups the ante a couple of days later and takes out an entire sector, and again, Shinra is unable to stop them. The people of Midgar would have zero reason to think that Shinra could do anything to stop the next attack. Avalanche has not only been completely successful at all of their missions so far, but they're increasing their level of destruction and havoc, seemingly at their whim.

Not only that, but by robbing the heroes of their own culpability in the loss of life that occurred after the explosion, the writers also remove a lot of the power from the fallout scenes in which the heroes have to confront what they've done. For example, we know that, ultimately, Jessie was not responsible for the catastrophic damage her bombs did, so her "confession" scene loses a lot of its power. We know that Tifa is wrong when she expresses doubt and remorse, and Barrett is right not to think about it. I'm not even sure how they're going to pay this off with the Cait Sith-Barrett scenes later, because Barrett is no longer responsible for any real damage done. It's true that the heroes think they did cause all that damage, but that's a cop-out, honestly. And it's obvious that at some point Barrett will find out that Jessie's homemade bombs actually didn't do all that damage (that may happen in Game 2 already--haven't played it, so I don't know--but I'm assuming it'll be part of the Cait Sith--Barrett scenes in Game 3).

Anyway, that's my rant. I think I'm in favor of just about everything else they did with the story in Game 1 (except maybe modifying some of the Shinra Building scenes, but I'm ultimately neutral on those), and I actually did like the "twist" of who really caused all the damage when I first saw it, but after thinking about it, I do think it was a mistake for the writers to do this, and it was pretty obviously done for the sake of making the "good guys," well, "good."

*EDIT: Also should mention that by the end of the game, President Shinra is dead, and again, it looks like Avalanche did it. I'm assuming there's some follow-up to that in Game 2.

Topic title. Is this the right place to go on reddit for discussion related specifically for OoT 2026? There are tons of Zelda sub forums here.

This guy is like seven feet tall, dressed from head to toe in military-style gear, wears sunglasses indoors and underground, and, oh yeah, has a bleepin' machine gun on his arm at all times (which he is not shy of pointing at people). He also openly expresses his disdain for Shinra and his support for Avalance to anyone in earshot, even people whom he knows to be mid-level Shinra employees.

How can this dude possibly come and go as he pleases anywhere in Midgar? He boards trains like it's no problem and walks right past Shinra security guards multiple times. Same goes for Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs, too--they're all dressed commando-style and they don't really make a secret that they're part of Avalanche.

I'm really enjoying Remake, but this is one area where the PS1 version's abstraction actually helped it. I guess they pretty much had to make it so that Shinra already knows about Barrett and is just keeping an eye on him or something.