Part 85: Digging the Past, Part II

Chapter 84 - Digging the Past, Part II





The next event happens when we go down the Shinra Mansion basement.



It's a flashback, and a very important one at that. Some people consider it to be the single most important flashback, and it's easily missable.





There's no way to convey this with screenshots so - Zack breaks free from his cell and knocks the guy out.



Next he opens Cloud's cell and helps him out.





Zack recovers his sword and practices a bit with it to warm up. He seems fine. During the whole time Cloud is drooling on the floor. Whatever happened was very distressing. Also, note their cells are infused with a green liquid.







There's an eerie vibe of solitude. The town's looking good. No one's around. Whatever's happening there is not supposed for anyone to see.







After the Nibelheim event Cloud and Zack were seemingly captured and experimented. Zack looks like a pretty resilient guy and ended up rescuing them both.







It's pretty .







He's referring to Aeris. Remember they used to have a relationship.



The first time I saw this scene I thought it to be very depressive.



We don't know what happens to Zack but we know he isn't around. Seeing him making plans for the future seemed very dramatic.



He's trying to stay positive. Not for himself, but for Cloud. The vulnerable guy he's rescuing from who knows what.





"Go out and look for what you really want."







Zack: "Of course!"

Zack: "I got a lot of brains and skill that other guys don't! That settles it!"





The old man's reaction is amusing. I thought the same.





Zack: "I'm gonna be rich!"



We get an insight into the person Zack was. He was upbeat, cheerful, hopeful.

3

Maybe a bit distracted. He's sillier than the average FF7 character.



But nevertheless, he's responsible and caring. He's the man Cloud aspired to. Sephiroth is gone.



They don't have much in the way of living. For what they know, they might be very dangerous to Shinra, because they know the truth. And Zack, for all his competence and good will, might not be the brightest monkey.






Zack is tired. They've been on the run for a while.



He hears some noises, gets his sword ready. Zack is only alive because of Cloud. The weak Shinra grunt was the unsung hero, left for dead. Zack wouldn't leave his friend like this.





And just like that, in a flash, he was taken down by the Shinra guns.



He's disoriented, but he's a SOLDIER, still alive. Unfortunately he's surrounded, and out of strength.



You gotta pay your dues while you're young .





And so Cloud, in such a pathetic state he's not even considered a threat, who's left for dead, survives. He'll become a mercenary someday.






































































And so we conclude what is one of the darkest sequences in the game. A closer look at how everything went to hell so quickly. There are multiple layers of deceit going on behind the Shinra secrets. It's a play on the typical stories of government mysteries, and Cloud was the guy who happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time.


Next time:

Moving on with the plot!



Chapter 84 - Bugs & Bytes

On Cloud

Cloud has had two rebirths, both occurring together with a deep mako exposition that drives him into - as the game would say - a state of diminishing conscience. The Mako exposition is merely a cover up here for the traumas he was inflicted - his entire story is a fight against a crippling depression and low self-esteem, moments of extreme vulnerability and loss of control.

The second time he falls into a coma it was the climax of his complete loss of self-control. Sephiroth was literally manipulating him as a voice in his head, and to everyone else he was a madman. It was only through Tifa that he was able to pull out of his deep conflicts. This isn't played obscurely in the game, as both times he got out of coma he recovered through a deep introspective experience - no medicine or method of recovery could help. In the first time this process was completely destroyed by an even more traumatic experience - the death of Zack, the completion of his failure as Cloud, who had finally utterly lost everything in his life.

I think, given everything that happened, Cloud's de-personalization is one of the most down-to-earth renditions of how fucked up someone would end up given the level of violence he witnessed.


On Zack

Zack's death has, since FF7, become one of the most symbolic moments in the franchise which thankfully isn't spoiled much because, you know, Aeris' death is a gigantic attention magnet.



Since then, Zack was featured as the main character of a prequel game (Crisis Core). Although the game features Gackt as a character (), it is still considered to be the best single piece of the otherwise maligned FF7 EU/Extended Universe.

If you're curious about it and can stomach modern JRPG practices, Crisis Core is fairly relevant to today's update. For the sake of not spoiling the game if you want to play it, I'll not link much about it here - feel free to buy it and check it out if you want.

Also apparently it explains the travel route they took to Midgar too so people no longer need to point out they traveled through the sea in a truck (they didn't).


Nice music you should listen:

Since we're talking about Crisis Core, CC has two very, very nice songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOJ91H4mraU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb6MF0IfsvQ

Also, if you missed it from my previous post, my friend Luiza from OCRemix released an album. Besides motivating me to do the LP, she started her career doing very good FF7 remixes (like Materia Junkie), and I got to do the cover for her album. If you like hard rock, feel free to check her album on:

http://luiza177.bandcamp.com/
or
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/luiza177

Thanks!