Part 3 Structure for Story and Locations

[Clement Rage]

I personally expect the Wutai-Shinra subplot to go absolutely nowhere tbh. Or rather, that it's practically over since Sephiroth revealed that he was Glenn all along.
It's basically a filler plot that serves as a distraction even within the story. And now that Rufus caught on to the fact that Sephiroth wanted to distract him with igniting a war, it makes sense for him to shift priorities back to Sephiroth because if he wants Shinra shaken off his tail so badly he almost staged a large-scale conflict then maybe that's a tail that you should get back on immediately.
And then Meteor happens and then people have bigger things to worry about than war. Which is precisely why it will happen after the crater, because in my opinion Meteor needs to take the wind out of the sails of this subplot because I believe they never had any intention in adding this massive new conflict to the story of FFVII and they're just gonna resolve this with a wet fart ending.

This is a strong possibility, but it's a hell of a lot of setup to just throw away. They have at least setup conflict with Wutai over the Magnus materia, and the huge materia plotline is a part that actually does need some punching up, so my bet is still 'short intro before they go north, and then later get back into it in place of the Huge materia plot.' All this setup has created something very very difficult to write,

On one hand: Wall Market was also very very difficult to write in Remake, and this writing team nailed it.

On the other: The Whispers were massively built up and then mostly dropped.

No one ever said anything about them being in the center of a war... literally the whole reason that the Turks are there is because the powder keg HASN'T kicked off yet, and the reason for their vacation there is that it's looking likely like it'll be the last time they'd get to unwind there BEFORE everything goes to shit if things keep escalating along their current trajectory back towards open conflict.

My comments have all been that the current "peace" that's really more of a cold war between Wutai & Shinra that's been escalating back towards a state of open war ever since Shinra blamed them for the Reactor 01 explosion is reaching a breaking point. It's even been acknowledged that the peace itself is basically not a true reflection of the reality of what's happening between both sides during the aftermath of the Nibelheim Reactor mission. That breaking point and Wutai being massively out-gunned is the whole reason why Yuffie needs to get Materia to her people, and why the Magnus Materia as a weapon to counter Shinra is what she's been after. Wutai is essentially in a position where they're being forced to use the weapons of the enemy in order to defeat them, otherwise they're going to be helplessly outgunned, and all of the honor in the world won't save you against those odds.

So why is there a cold war if Wutai is so very outgunned? Cold wars happen when the consequences of a hot one are too high, but Shinra is by no means afraid of going to war with Wutai, the leadership is actively trying to bring war about, and it's not made clear why they haven't already given that they very much want it and are not afraid of Wutai. Even public opinion seems on board with the war, so what was holding them back from it?

Glenn's broadcast was the declaration of war, literally. It's already begun.

The comedic nature of something doesn't mean that it's inherently lacking any logic, and that all storytelling integrity just gets thrown out the window. The writers know the pieces that they're playing with, and it works to create the sense that Corneo isn't a huge priority for the Turks, but they're still close by what he's doing, as well as that he's got a significant lack of stability or other reliable assets to build from.

So what's your theory on how Corneo escaped a crowded, enclosed arena riding a giant monster that without squashing half the audience or opening any doors?

...that's not "whitewashy" it's LITERALLY the history of real-world post-war Japan.

Rufus puppeting the New Wutai Government as "Viceroy Sarruf" while leaving them under a powerless Godo with Wutai being turned into a tourist trap, while Don Corneo kidnaps women to use as disposable sex slaves is because – during the American Occupation of Japan, the Supreme Commander General McArthur was largely viewed as being a re-establishment of Imperial Shogun rule with the Emperor reduced to nothing more than a figurehead, the country was forced to be open globally and became dependent on tourism to support its modern economy, and sexual exploitation of the local women was EXTREMELY rampant. The occupation was openly compared to outright colonialism, especially since America had even tried to eliminate the Japanese alphabet entirely during that time – which is why everything in modern Japan still has so much English text mixed in with everything.

That was also a reflection of just how unbelievably fucked up that Imperial Japan was to China during the preceding Second Sino-Japanese War which in China is known as the "War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" as those are BOTH reflected in what Shinra is. It is as much the colonial occupying American Empire in Japan as much as Imperial Japan was to China. This is why Wutai emphasizes racism & prejudice that exists in both ways, because as much as it is Japan looking at an "other" it's also looking at a reflection of itself (which gets even more emphasized with everything in Deepground's emphasis on troops often gleefully committing emotionless murder of countless innocents, akin to things like the Nanjing Massacre).

Hang on, those two things are not the same.

Um, okay, how to tread carefully here.

Macarthur did preserve elements of the militarist right because he thought they would be useful against the Soviets, but the entire nationalist movement did not have to be created and controlled by him. He was not preserving them so he could kill the US President and take his place.

There are considerable differences between the scenarios (no China or Soviet analogue, for a start) making this kind of direct parallel unwise, especially given how sensitive this history is. There was no second war between Japan and the US where Japan's government was being secretly run by the US President in disguise. If the US President tried to do that by stealth via a handful of Secret Service agents and soldiers, it would not work.

Historical parallels are tricky, but the bits that don't match are as important as the bits that do. OG Version, we have Yuffie representing the militant wing of Wutai (a nice subversion of expectations, because the audience expects the teenage girl rebel to be the peace loving person rebelling against tradition, but no, she's the hardcore traditionalist who wants to make Wutai great again by rearming). It's one of the most brilliant pieces of characterisation in the game.

Changing her position to be due to foreign influence/control via the SRC leadership, undermines that arc, because she's now been tricked by foreign forces into holding that position. The issue I have with that is the potential to undermine the agency of Wutai by having the bad position be due to foreign influence, undermining the idea that Wutaians can think for themselves and have bad ideas outside of foreign influence.

Japan had (and has) plenty of militarist people who are not puppeted by foreigners. If the game for some insane reason really tries to glaze the Japanese nationalists by attributing the things they did to foreign influence, well, the end result will be to upset a lot of people. That would be why making the militarist Wutai faction firmly controlled by foreigners is potentially problematic if we do draw the realworld parallel.

Cultural context is important, but it's not so determinative that writers from one place can't write outside of that, so I would be very cautious of assuming, this story is from this culture, therefore they must be doing exactly this parallel. I don't think that level of confidence is justified, because people can and do write from outside their own perspective if they are any good. Godo's pagoda isn't some grand commentary on culture, it's just ripped off from Game of Death.

A realistic setup would be too complex to put in the game, of course, but the shortened mulched together version does a disservice to the complexity of the real situation, and even if it was tried would be very very difficult to do sensitively and would be best avoided in this kind of game because of the potential for causing genuine hurt to real people.

 

[Suzaku]

Not sure that there's a better thread for this, and didn't want to create a new one, but a couple interesting things from the new Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY card set.





New Nomura artwork of Sephiroth in his One-Winged Angel state, which also includes nods to his younger appearance from Ever Crisis and Reborn form from Rebirth. Nomura explicitly said there's a reason the design is different from the original game that he can't reveal yet.



But in addition to that, there's a FINAL FANTASY Through the Ages bonus sheet which includes a reprint of Atraxa, Grand Unifier, reskinned as...



Just as Rebirth Sephiroth was relocalized from Bizarro Sephiroth to Sephiroth Reborn, it seems a reasonable assumption that Safer Sephiroth will be changed to Sephiroth, the Savior (or simply Savior Sephiroth) in Remake Part Three.

 

[Clement Rage]

What did the previous set of cards look like?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I personally expect the Wutai-Shinra subplot to go absolutely nowhere tbh. Or rather, that it's practically over since Sephiroth revealed that he was Glenn all along.
It's basically a filler plot that serves as a distraction even within the story. And now that Rufus caught on to the fact that Sephiroth wanted to distract him with igniting a war, it makes sense for him to shift priorities back to Sephiroth because if he wants Shinra shaken off his tail so badly he almost staged a large-scale conflict then maybe that's a tail that you should get back on immediately.
And then Meteor happens and then people have bigger things to worry about than war. Which is precisely why it will happen after the crater, because in my opinion Meteor needs to take the wind out of the sails of this subplot because I believe they never had any intention in adding this massive new conflict to the story of FFVII and they're just gonna resolve this with a wet fart ending.

Regarding the conversation with Glenn & Rufus, to quote Don Corneo,
"As everyone knows, villains only divulge their plans in a certain situation. But what is that situation?"
– When they think they've already won.

The whole situation is end-to-end Rufus being hoisted by his own petard, and knowing that he can't actually do a damn thing about it. It's not over so much as it's hit the critical point of no return at the end of Rebirth, where his knowing what's actually happening doesn't make any difference in the same way that President Shinra broadcasting his hologram in the Sector 5 Reactor didn't give AVALANCHE any way to stop Shinra from commanding the narrative and turning everyone against them. It's intentional echoes of how those tactics of manipulation get used by whoever has the most power – and despite his position of authority – that's not Rufus.


At the start of Glenn & Rufus' interaction in Junon he cuts to the chase with, "The viceroy and your late father had big plans. I assume you intend to carry them out?" "Correct." "That's good to hear–some people just don't have the stomach for war. And this battle for the Magnus Materia demands commitment from both Wutai & Shinra."

That's laying it out about as plainly as possible for what the setup is, and all of the additional content with the new Weapons in the reactors at Corel & Gongaga are interconnected to the plans that Scarlet has which were set up in INTERmission, and which we know has elements which feed into all of the original storyline with the events connected to the Huge Materia – which is still at play after Meteor appears, but where the stakes are different, because Sephiroth will have been openly revealed to everyone and not just Rufus.

In both cases, Sephiroth essentially revealing himself is being done at a point where things have already been sufficiently catalyzed by the events in Remake & Rebirth that it doesn't matter whether or not Rufus or really even anyone else knows what Sephiroth's doing or why, because the pieces are all already in motion such that that conflict is going to continue to create friction in that regardless, and Sephiroth is explicitly using the war as pretense for unification – by fostering hatred.

Glenn's words to Rufus are overtly Sephiroth's own direct motivations, "You Shinras... you take and you take, and you never give back. Left to you, this world would end up and empty husk. But war can put things right–beget anger, desolation, hatred–and in its wake, new unity. A people rejuvenated... and a planet once more made whole." "You started this, remember? No more playing the idle heir. You have obligations to fulfil."

He's talking to Rufus to show him that he's just a puppet. That's a deeply relevant to the core of what Part 3 will be covering with Cloud during his confrontation with Sephiroth at the North Crater, and is why I think that re-establishing all of those stakes as early as possible BEFORE everything actually kicks off in Part 3 is important, especially since there needs to be a revisit of what war actually means to people who've been staring down the barrel of that gun the whole time – as that was at the core of what Sonon & Yuffie talk about during INTERmission and why the AVALANCHE cells in Midgar aren't like them.

When commenting about Viceroy Sarruf not showing up Glenn even says, "Still got results, though, even without him. Resistance elements are more fired up than ever." and then upon Rufus calling out that it's a distraction, "How very astute. Regardless, the plan is already in motion. Our 'promised land' will become reality. A father's dream... accomplished by his son."

A key part of that is that during Glenn's broadcast to the public from the SRC one of the details was, "What's more... we recently learned that he had sanctioned the development of living weapons–grown within the mako reactors that provide power to your homes. Alarmed, we decided to seek answers. And in accordance with the cease-fire treaty, our government sent officials to investigate. Shinra promised their full cooperation, But when our inspectors arrived, they were mercilessly slaughtered."

This is the pretext to why Rufus is stuck attempting to have the public execution of the head of AVALANCHE post-Northern Crater even as gigantic living Weapons are rampaging and attacking people all over the globe, because Rufus is still in a position where he's functionally stuck attempting to recontextualize a false narrative that he helped to write, and which he's now entrapped by.

Shinra has been puppeting around Wutai as their scapegoat to facilitate the justification of anything that they're doing as they exploit whatever they need to amass the power to themselves – and Sephiroth is using Shinra in exactly the same way. So long as Wutai & AVALANCHE keep getting portrayed as dangerous terrorists, those resistance groups can't effectively unify people against Shinra, and so long as Shinra's the bad guy, it's fundamentally more difficult to effectively unify efforts against Sephiroth.

That's the core of why Rufus remains sympathetic towards Cloud & Co. around the time of Advent Children, but especially in the things that he talks about in his dialogue that was expanded in ACC and the OtWtaS stories, as well as why he's doing similar things by indirectly and anonymously funding the WRO in DoC – because he knows that he has to operate through a proxy because everyone would be right not to trust his motives given the way that he's operated in the past to undermine everyone rather than elevate them.

It's easy to forget, but the SRC's declaration that they're ready to march on Midgar and put it to the torch has already been made in Rebirth, and so that catalyst is already going full force at the point when Shinra decide that they're prioritizing chasing down Cloud & Co. at the Temple of the Ancients. It's very much worth revisiting all of the various Glenn elements here (especially because the current storyline in chapter 2 of The First SOLDIER in Ever Crisis is using a cloaked Glenn in a very similar way to manipulate young Sephiroth as a way to set up a lot of those thematic elements, so that they can use MORE of them in Part 3).

All of the things with that conflict playing into what Shinra's actually using the Reactors for then feeds back into the human experimentation in Chapter 13 of Remake, as well as things like Mako Reactor 0 being the foundation of Deepground, and other elements that link not only into INTERmission but are also connected into how they're likely going to use Vincent's connections with that as well as the Turks as a means to navigate diving deeper into the darker science stuff that Shinra's been continuing within Midgar, as well as pulling into the connection with Reeve who's been trapped under similar circumstances but has also been attempting to disrupt things and prevent disasters including the Sector 7 Plate Collapse.

If anything, I expect this to be one of the most front-and-center parts of the "story so far" recap that kicks off Part 3, and why I think that the foundation of setting those things up in the new game going from Rocket Town (Cid as a former Shinra employee), & Wutai (Yuffie as a current SRC operative) are both critical foundations to set that up before the big world-altering shift in the status quo hits amidst that chaos when they manage to make it up to the Whirlwind Maze.


(Also, I know there're other replies, but it's quite late and I won't be around for a few days, but wanted to at least get this one in, and I'll get the others when I get back online).




X

 

[Clement Rage]

You know, the setup for Wutai has really become quite weird. There's been a huge amount of time setting it up, but it also directly called out as a pointless distraction.

It's a political conflict between Rufus and Sephiroth over Wutai, which neither of them actually cares about or is in any danger from. Wutai is just the chessboard for them, neither of them cares if it burns to the bedrock. Sephiroth can kill Rufus if he chooses to, but Sephiroth's skillset is not really political scheming, so we've ended up with remarkably low stakes for this much setup.

Of our PC party, only Yuffie actually cares much about Wutai (at least, no more than any other place in danger). None of the PCs have any political clout or skills that make it easy for them to get involved in political stuff, and game design makes it unlikely they'll get involved directly in battles, at least in a central role. This huge chunk of the story is a conflict between Rufus and Sephiroth, and secondarily Yuffie, who brilliant as the performance is, is not one of the most important characters.

At Stake for Sephiroth: Scheme fails, not a huge deal, move on to next plan.

At Stake for Rufus: Rufus ties to AVALANCHE/Wutai being outed. It's a risk, but only if he's outplayed by Seph, and this kind of scheming is his bread and butter.

At stake for PCs: Damage to Wutai in this futile war?

Wutai has suffered the abject humiliation of Rufus casually being able to take over their government in his spare time, while he's also running AVALANCHE and Shinra. He's not even half assing it, it's like, one third of his ass max, and yet nobody on the entire continent was able to stop him taking over. Yuffie is headed for a Cloud-at-North-Cave level breakdown when she realises she deposed her own father fighting for Shinra all along. Sonon died for nothing, because he was unknowingly fighting for Shinra.

That will be a good scene, because Yuffie's acting and writing has been consistently brilliant, unironically one of the best things about the remake project. But it's also a hell of a lot of time spent in a game where they have a lot of other stuff to do.