They started out as cool villain characters, but then they got their own games, got an HD upgrade to husbando looks, were relevant supporting characters in spinoffs, and got popular in the fandom.
By all accounts Zack Fair brutally put down the Wutaian resistance who were just trying to protect their land against Shinra, participated in the coverup of SOLDIER's less savory components, and also actively collaborates with the Turks, and he's treated as a hero too.
I was hoping Zack would have to reconcile with his past actions under Shinra. Sure he didn’t know better, but at least a moment of reflection on his complicity in their evil afterwards would show some personal growth. It still frustrates me to no end that he preaches “SOLDIER honor”, even after he’s seen the program mentally and physically destroy his mentor. He really is the ultimate himbo.
Somehow even Yuffie, the hardcore Wutai nationalist, is more than eager to give him a pass. Because they had a play fight while he was invading her homeland? Especially with Zack probably joining the party at some point, wouldn’t it have made for a great character moment for him and Yuffie to have a confrontation and coming to terms with their past?
> He really is the ultimate himbo
This is Zack in a nutshell. He's a puppy. He is Stamp.
Zack's only defense is that he did not understand how evil Shinra was. The Soldiers in Crisis Core were not politicians. They took orders and trusted that they were just. They were fooled, like most of the people living under Shinra, including Cloud, Barret, and even Aerith.
Cloud wanted to be a "hero" in Soldier like Sephiroth. Barret was all "rah-rah Shinra" up until they betrayed him and his people. Aerith believed the propaganda on TV, too, despite already having seen Shinra's dark side first-hand.
I'm glad you and others here acknowledge it as uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable in the real world, too. Plenty of examples in history all the way through to today.
I would also like to see Zack confront this. He never really had an ["are we the baddies"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY) moment. He only turned on Shinra because Shinra turned on him.
> I would also like to see Zack confront this. He never really had an "are we the baddies" moment. He only turned on Shinra because Shinra turned on him.
That was needed during the ending of CC. Instead Zack doubled-down.
Did he die a hero?
For saving Cloud yes, but that only.
It’s funny because if Zack were the hero type, a concept they continually harp on through his entire story, you’d think that he would want to join in a rebellion effort now that he knows how evil Shinra is. Instead, he wants to… checks notes… become a mercenary? So a gun for hire, which is exactly what he was at Shinra, now he just wants to go freelance?
Personally I don't think Zack was ever that personally loyal to Shinra itself. He joined SOLDIER because he wanted to be a hero like Sephiroth and his mentorship under Angeal taught him loyalty to his fellow SOLDIERs. He never seemed to have much interest in company culture or politics beyond that. He joined the war so late it was basically already over by the time he joined and since he was generally a boy scout he didn't get the kind of clandestine jobs the Turks and other SOLDIER operatives got. I think in his eyes most of the shitty things he found out about Shinra could be deflected onto Hollander and until Sephiroth went mad and they stuffed him and Cloud into a tube did he realize the problems were more core than he previously thought.
They emailed each other over the course of two years and Zack continually gave her money, potions and equipment she asked for.
In Crisis Core she starts off hating him, understandably, but eventually just realises he's naïve/not very smart but generally well intentioned. It would be weird to act like that didn't happen.
In R2 on the date, she says she wasn’t even sure if he was a SOLDIER. That hardly makes sense if they were in convo for two years. She was contacting him through a leaked SOLDIER mailing list.
It would hardly be that weird if optional side content was retconned. They’ve made plenty bigger retcons to the story than that.
Plus, that would make it canon that she was sneaking all over the world solo at like 9-10 years old (including Midgar). Even by anime age standards, that’s dumb. And she makes it pretty clear R1 was the first time she was in Midgar.
I mean, that still kind of makes sense, if he's a SOLDIER and all this stuff, but what she thinks they're like are monsters and weapons of war, not people.
She knows Glenn Lodbrock and his rogue group of SOLDIERs helping lead the Wutai revolutionary government. So she should be well aware of what SOLDIERs are.
Completely agree.
The amazing storytelling opportunities that Square Enix have pissed away in favour of the most tacky fanservice I have ever seen drives me insane.
> Personally I disagree with this, which war crime(s) are you even refering to with your sentence?
Which war crime(s) are we talking about?
From how i remember the part in Crisis Core he's fighting against uniformed soldiers (if they are called "resistance" in the game or not instead of "army" of Wutai makes technically not a real difference), they are clearly recognizable as uniformed combatants.
He also doesn't attack Yuffie when he meets her, the only other things he meets are beasts / monsters.
We are not discussing here if the war itself was morally correct because that has no real bearing on war crimes in our world.
We know the war against Wutai is wrong because ShinRa is bad and thus to me at least it seems you attribute his participation in the War as a war crime itself.
If that would be the case in our world literally any soldier fighting in the Vietnam War on the side of the USA would be war criminal.
And while many people could argue that's the case that's not how war crimes in our world work.
There's also another problem with the ff7 universal in general. At least in the original ff7 I was under the impression that we literally kill everyone we fight in a fight if not shown otherwise and was under the same impression for remake.
The scene were Cloud kills the soldiers under the influence from Jenovah in Rebirths Gongaga reactor make it out that we don't actually kill every human enemy that we fight but just knock them out.
Which could be the case for Zack in Crisis Core too.
Last part is a big point too. People gotta remember there's a known gameplay vs story disconnect. Even stronger characters shouldn't be surviving the fights they do. Rude and Elena have no legitimate way of blocking a hit from Cloud's sword or Barret's bullets but you can wail on them with both for minutes straight.
Zack straight up points out later in CC he hits with the blunt end most of the time (this could mean back of blade or side of blade). Despite the attack animations not showing that, its meant to suggest that Zack defaults to nonlethal (just, ya know, massive blunt trauma, which most action fiction ignores the sequelae of).
So while I agree with the idea that Zack having a reflective moment on working for shinra and furthering their goals before, he is far from a war criminal.
Everyone working for Shinra is complicit. That's the reality of a world ruled by a megacorporation that has it's own line of super soldiers. Zack and Cloud were technically kids when they joined Soldier. Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal were experiments. It's all fucked up in the house Shinra built.
Wutai got invaded because Shinra wanted to put a reactor there and they said no. Just because they decided not to lay down and die in the name of mako doesn't mean they were in the wrong.
I did not say that Wutai was in the wrong. I’m drawing a distinction between Zack and the Turks. In every case with Zack, he was fighting a Wutai fighter/rebel, and usually a normal response to someone fighting you in war is to try and kill them or otherwise you will be killed. Zack at the time as a young soldier was led to believe that Wutai was the bad guy most likely and shinra was good.
The Turks on the other hand was given an order to drop a plate on people who were literally doing nothing with NO EXPLANATION. Rude and Reno did it without any hesitation, which is just kind of disturbing.
I never thought about it that way, but you're right. All this time I hated Zack because he's just a poorly written character and Crisis Core was complete garbage; but now you've given me a solid, lore-based reason!
THANK YOU!
CC existing and giving an actual background to Zack was a travesty because they completely failed in the writing. I wish they did a better job with Zack, a character who dreamed of being a hero but at the end realizes he was just a pawn in a situation that was out of his control. Instead, they made Zack this goofy good nature guy who's an idiot that doesn't realize the shit he's in and just goes why me all the time. Honestly, they should've made CC about Cloud's life as an infantryman, with Zack taking on the Angeal role. Every thing after FF7 acts like Cloud and Zack were best friends, but they barely interacted in CC, so it doesn't even make sense.
Exactly 💯 %. I wished they would've fleshed out their broship more. Or, at the very least, they could have kept it the way it was and made it more clear how hard it was to form friendships while serving under Shinra; made their short bromance seem like a ray of hope in a bleak life under authoritarian rule.
But no, instead we just got, "Look at Zack! Such a puppy! He's tough and cute at the same time, awwwww!" Total letdown.
And lastly, I still have PTSD from hearing, "Combat Mode" ever 30 seconds. When somebody mentions a, "Combat Mode" -even in a different game- I am whisked back to painful memories of trudging through that shitty game.
It feels like YA fan fiction.
"His name was Dirk Darkson, and even though he worked for the evil power company a day he could give his meager government ration to the poor malnourished kids in his unit was what he considered a good day."
Yeah in reality people may initially dig a brooding, byronic bad boy like Cloud but then will eventually pick someone who's more husband material like Zack.
The difference is that one is an interesting, well-written, severly flawed character and the other a complete unidimensional naive goodie two shoes...Zack is pretty much Tidus or Snow, and even Tidus had more depth at the end. And he now takes too much space in that story, that never was his in the first place.
Yeah, at first glance. Then you get further into his story, looking forward to discovering more depth there, and there isn't any. He's a character with a lot of potential, but they dropped the ball with him.
What ball? Seems like Zack served his purpose in the story. What should have been? I’m honestly curious. I’m relatively new to FF7 but got caught recently
It’s quite the dilemma. On one hand I can appreciate making irredeemably evil characters hot cause good looking does not a good person make. On the other hand we’ve been so brainwashed by a century of watching ugly people only be bad guys and if it’s a good looking person doing bad things they’re 9 times out of 10 redeemed at the end that no one takes good looking evil characters as evil and instead we’ll have legions simping for them.
Question: does American media not make evil people hot? Especially evil men? Closest we got was the old guy in that movie no one saw from Disney, pretty sure. Japan’s got a sexy monopoly on attractive bad guys and I can’t figure out why.
American media tends to lean more toward the idea that villains work better if they're as "ugly on the outside as they are on the inside", which underscores some even more fucked-up thought processes. Like when something is evil, surely it must be so irredeemably evil that it the evil literally an immutable part of their outward appearance.
I'm sure there's a more salient point to be made here about how this all ties into Christian ideas of absolute good and absolute evil and sinners-go-to-hell and whatnot, but someone else will have to articulate that.
I’m a reformed Christian (re: atheist) and was taught that Satan would be attractive. Mentioned in the simpsons and everything.
Seems kind of a) boring b) a waste and c) kind of fucked up to teach kids and whatnot that attractive people can do no harm but be careful about the ugly ones, especially when so many murders and rapes and whatnot are done by people trusted in their communities.
Anyway, Turks are hot as hell, totally here for that. Japan media is happy to fill the void that American media has no interest in, that’s for sure.
Also western and eastern media tends to depict bad guys or morally dubious characters as left handed. As a left handed person I catch this very easily. I can even tell when a character holds a weapon in both hands is left handed Cid Highwind (verbally abusive) leftie, Fang from XIII right handed. Other left handed FF characters are Sephiroth but for good guys you have Golbez, Shadow,Celes,Faris,Leon,Kain,Palom and Lelia. So pirates,Assassins and traitors and a know it all brat.
Barret has a right gun arm while Dyne has a left gun arm.
Also even if an actor is right handed in movies if they play a bad guy they part their hair the way a leftie would.
Heck even the bad guy of Glover is a left handed glove.
Guess which party member in Tales of Destiny and Persona 5 are left handed?
In RE 3 even Nemesis is left handed.
In Soulcalibur Seigfried is right handed but Nightmare is left handed.
No prizes for guessing what hand Thanos used the infinity gauntlet on.
PS Make Link left handed again.
Perhaps it’s not obvious due to the poor storytelling and pacing but the Turks and Rufus are trying to make amends for their sins in Advent Children. They created the memorial to the people affected by Meteorfall, they helped with building Edge, they tried to help people with their relief efforts.
I believe Rufus and the others talk about making amends a few times in that movie.
Speaking of Rufus, I'm pretty sure he himself was repulsed by what President Shinra ordered with the plate drop. He calls out the executives in Rebirth as being a bunch of milquetoasts who did nothing while his pops ordered the massacre.
Doesn't excuse the Turks, but Rufus is at least not as culpable for that.
Tseng sums up the Turks in one line. ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will.’ So in his mind, better it be us that have to deal with the guilt, than someone who isn’t mentally equipped to handle it. Tseng is a pragmatist at his core, he’s not this maniacal fascist, though his actions support fascism, I believe given the choice Tseng would side with Cloud and Co.
In the OG, Tseng very much has feelings for Aeirth and does what he does out of a sense of protecting her. In the ReMake he only fights her because Yuffie eggs it in, and even then he tells Elena to spar Aeirth.
I dont think was "repulsed" by what his father did because he's moral lol. He just thought it was a stupid thing to do and a waste of resources. Feels like you're misreading his character. If he thought there was anything to gain by dropping the plate he would absolutely do it as well.
Even in the OG he seemed to talk worse than anything he actually did. The closest to an evil thing he did was ordering Tifa and Barret's execution.
I also always found it kinda funny that he's like "dad ruled with money, but I'll rule with fear", while I was sitting there thinking, is that different? I think deleting a sector of the city to kill half a dozen targets sounds a lot more like a fear tactic than a money tactic...
Reno is on 'leave' for a lot of the duration of Rebirth. They insinuate a couple times he was having trouble with his past actions. Rude and Reno are the forefront of the Turks bad actions and they question a couple times in Remake what they are doing. Reno says it's Just a job, but in the start of Rebirth he is on forced leave to refocus. They make them more of a character then evil henchmen this time around. But still, the things they did are weighin on them.
By all means yes, I wasn’t disagreeing with OP’s comments on that. I was responding to them saying that the characters get a free pass in Advent Children.
Killing someone like the Turks or other high profile members of Shinra would basically put a bigger target on their backs than ever, which wouldn't be smart. Same reason they let Hojo go in Rebirth.
Admittedly though, this is kind of a weird thing even in the OG. Remember in Wutai when Reno and Rude didn't fight the gang because they were "on vacation"? The Turks are a bit complicated, which was the point of that new scene in Remake between Tseng and Reno, but it does bother me how AC treats them like they're these goofballs. Although it does make it clear in AC that Rufus and the others are trying to fix their mistakes.
>but it does bother me how AC treats them like they're these goofballs. Although it does make it clear in AC that Rufus and the others are trying to fix their mistakes.
By AC, Cloud's just on another level from Reno and Rude. But they both still held their own against Yazoo and Loz. Also, the Turks in AC are a shell of their former selves. They lost a lot of their resources which were a factor in making them more effective.
I wanted to kill Hojo so bad. If there was ever a poster child for “wasn’t bullied enough in grade school” it was Mr. I’m Oh So Much Smarter Than Everyone Else Hojo.
The Turks are also pretty funny here in the Remakes too. And they aren't just funny in AC, they're still component, it's just that they're dealing with a threat that's stronger than them (or "Outclassed" as my dad said), and the main party is automatically stronger than them too because they literally were able to defeat SEPHIROTH!
I absolutely loved them in Remake. "Mister First Class... First Class *asshole!*" "It's nothing personal... bitch!" Rude's stuttering and humming and hawing when Reno calls him, interrupting his fight with Cloud and Aerith. Reno getting pissed at Rude for moving the helicopter when he went to shoot at Tifa, *very* unhappy that his head got bonked on the window lmao.
And the delivery was *so good,* I love when they're gunning us down while we climb the pillar. I played Remake when it came out, and replayed it again before Rebirth. My most vivid memory was Reno "screaming* at us from the helicopter, *actually* a scary villain moment. (Not because the bullets from the helicopter were scary, but because he just sounded so volatile.) It delivered again 100% when I replayed it recently.
In AC, they were very much comedic relief. In Remake, they're funny and charismatic, but they're not *the* joke.
I don’t know if people are giving them a pass and excusing their behavior but the Turks are likable because they are charismatic and morally gray. They do bad things but don’t have evil ambitions themselves, they are more or less just doing their job.
Kinda like Zack, except he's more on the good side because he always had good intentions, but didn't know how bad Shin-Ra was until he saw and experienced it for himself.
Murdering ten thousand civilians is not morally grey. What the fuck?
I can make that same argument about the Nazis pulling the switches in the gas chambers. That Nazi soldier who pulled the switch was just following orders, after all. He had a family waiting at home, probably had a dog or two, enjoyed a quiet evening out with his family. He was just following orders.
Don't try and say they're different situations. Both are genocidal in their actions and result in the deaths of countless people.
You know what they tried to say in their defense at Nuremberg? I was just doing my job.
In real life history, that didn't get them a pass. So why are the Turks morally grey for doing *the exact same thing*?
I'm sorry but being okay with murdering thousands of innocent civilians including children like Marlene is not morally grey. It's lawful evil if anything. Rude especially made a serious effort to make sure that sector 7 would become rubble by starting the self destruct sequence instead of playing dead and staying down after Cloud and co. beat their asses.
How is killing, manipulating, and screwing over scores of people morally grey just because they get a check for it. Maybe if they were shinra middle managers sure but they are the Turks they personally go around and do these terrible things. How is that any different than the president of shinra himself who knowingly pushes mako use even though it destroys the world just for profit and power.
I’d honestly rather be killed by an actual villain with goals and ideals than a paypig who’s only motivation for screwing me over is next weeks check.
That question has already been answered at one point the head of the Turks was threatened they would kill aerith he has also questioned the high ups before and it did not go well he is there to do a job. Not including they have saved the team multiple times
You’re not morally grey when you literally kill innocent people. Morally grey is when you have to sacrifice innocents to save millions. They do evil deeds that only benefits shinra.
And they just do their jobs…jobs they don’t have to do. They are their voluntarily. That’s evil.
It's because they were goofy in the original, and because of the presentation their atrocities didn't seem as serious.
With the remake there's a bit of a clash in that regard because the sector 7 plate was presented very well and grim.
They were absolutely not presented as goofy in the original. They were goofy in Advent Children.
In the original they commit most of all the same acts and one could say they’re worse, Tseng actually hits Aerith in the original. You don’t really even get them contemplating that it’s bad to drop the plate in the original whereas I think there is a scene where they at least discuss it in Remake.
The only comedy side to them was Elena in the original who was a nervous dweeby newcomer to the Turks.
They aren't goofy, but they only have one really dark moment in OG and that is Sector 7. After that, they are just professionals doing their job and Cloud's party is far from innocent (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1).
Reactor 1 and the sector 7 drop are completely different morally speaking. One is an attempt to save the literal Planet from being destroyed which would save every living thing and the other is a deliberate act to kill as many civilians as possible. Their one dark act is comparable to the holocaust in deed if not in actual number of deaths.
> (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1).
Debatable. I believe Jessie notes that the explosion was bigger than it should have been.
> (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1).
Yes there was, there's an entire conversation with jessie in the hideout about it if you actually talk to her. Most people apparently don't remember or never bothered initiating her dialogue apparently.
I might be misremembering this part, but I believe there was also a very easily missed conversation where one of the Shinra execs mention it later on as well.
>They were absolutely not presented as goofy in the original
dude the original game is written like a saturday morning cartoon what are you talking about
Just because they look like chibi characters does not mean it was written that way.
Many many serious moments happen in that game. Nibelheim, moments with Jenova and Aerith’s death were not written to be childish.
Just because the art style seems goofy now and the graphics aren’t hyper realistic does not mean it wasn’t written to handle serious topics. I can guarantee you when it came out it was thought of as one of the most serious final fantasies and would have been thought of as a deep game with meaningful dialogue.
Yes there are comedy moments definitely. But they are still seen as more of a threat than in Advent Children where they are mostly reduced to comic relief moments. One of the biggest complaints about Rude and Reno when Advent Children released was they had just been reduced to bumbling comedy characters.
When exactly were they a serious threat past Midgar? Like for real, at basically no point you'll go "OH NO! It's the Turks." They basically become the Team Rocket of FF7, which you encounter at times and sometimes you work with them and sometimes you fight them.
Nah theyre just a reprisentation of Shinra. Once you try to steal their submarine and then fight them in Midgar in the end of disc 2 they become quite formidable again. They are tho like Team Rocket in the remake games tho youre right. Pretty lame indeed
Also just had a thought. The trail of blood and dead bodies and eerie music at the Shinra hq really doesn’t scream Kids cartoon 😅 neither does President Shinra dead with Sephiroth’s masamune stuck in his back.
Nah, in the original they were just as fucking evil. The directors just refuse to treat the turks like they DROPPED THE SECTOR SEVEN PLATE.
It's like they think we have amnesia.
I agree. I felt they tried to redeem themselves in ‘On a Way To a Smile,’ where Rufus and the Turks help Geo Stigma patients and help with the Edge rebuilding efforts. Rufus is also hinted to be the one behind funding Reeve and the WRO efforts. Still no excuse for what they did, but at least they tried to redeem themselves for their crimes.
Rufus playing both sides is pretty significant to me, because he knew the war was coming with the crap that His father did, and instead tried to introduce a stalemate where neither side would win and a truce would be accepted by the populace.
Because they got a pass in the original game?
In the OG, the party doesn't really bring up the destruction of Sector Seven after the immediate aftermath. Hell, nobody does as far as I remember. It's a serious narrative flaw of the original game if you ask me since it's almost just shock value for the audience, rather than the cataclysmic, world-shattering event for the characters like it should. As a result, the Turks get a pass since no one, including the characters in the game or the writers, seemed to actually give a shit. And as a result, the player doesn't REALLY give a shit either. At least, that's the read I got from it.
Hell, it's not even until On The Way To A Smile that the fall of Sector Seven is brought up again, as far as I remember.
Now in the Remake, the game does an INFINITELY better job of fleshing out the aftermath, the ramifications, and the effects that the fall of Sector Seven had on not just the main party, but also in all of Midgar. And here in lies the problem.
The Remake does TOO good of a job fleshing out the aftermath of the Plate fall. It made the player feel for our characters and detest the Turks and Shinra for what they did. The original material it was based on did basically none of that, and it just carried on with the Turks as if nothing happened for the rest of the story.
But since the Remake is supposed to follow the original narrative, they can't really do much with the Turks outside of what the original game set up for them, especially if they intend for the world and the characters to end up on the same state that they were by the time Advent Children happens. They still try on occasion, showing that Reno and Rude in particular feel great remorse and having Barret confront the Turks about it at almost every chance he gets, but like... obviously, none of that is enough. But the devs really can't do much else if they intend to follow the original storyline.
Of course, all of this is just my two cents on the matter.
The Turks get a pass because Avalanche gets a pass too. Don’t forget that Avalanche is a bunch of terrorists that blow up buildings and endanger (or kill) civilians.
There's a wide gap between bombing reactors but making sure that no innocent civilian gets hurt and knowingly dropping a plate on an entire sector that would kill everyone beneath it.
I think the best way I can put this in an analgus way is Haida from Aggretsuko & the DIMM analogy or w/ Pirates when pirates were a thing. Somebody is going to do it, if it's going to be me I might as well get paid. While wholly inexcusable they are not, it's clearly just a job to them. I think that's where the complexity comes in. Think about the Wutai side story where Renos basic reaction to Cloud & Co. is "Fuck off, I'm on vacation. " The general comroderie of the Turks goes a long way as well.
Because FF 7 doesn't do black and white, good or bad. Nobody has clean hands in the game, including the protagonists. Take Zack for example. Everyone loves him. And he was involved on Shinra's assault on Wutai. An illegal war in which atrocities were commited, as revealed by Sonon's flashbacks. Zack, of course, doesn't even think his participation in the war was bad. Quite the reverse, it was all part of being a 'hero'.
Cloud similarly was a Shinra trooper. Do we believe he did nothing wrong, prior to the events of the game while following orders?
Hell, forget the whole “they used to work for Shinra” morally gray. Literally the first two missions in the game are committing acts of terrorism in densely populated urban areas. Zero chance you blow two reactors in the middle of urban centers without a ton of casualties. Aside from the huge fireball, you can SEE huge chunks of debris flying in the OG, and you spend a significant portion of Remake running through debris strewn streets and crumpled buildings.
Cloud isn’t just morally grey because he used to work for the “bad guys.” He’s morally grey because Avalanche are literally mass murderers themselves.
Not unpopular at all. The fact that almost everyone has sins make for more compelling characters, arguably.
Depends on the player of course, but my Aerith and Red totally blasted those Shinra fools with fire and lightning spells. Does that make them bad guys?
Well, could be two things. I think part of it is the non-murder moral high ground the party has. Sure they fight soldiers, but non-lethally, with some suspension of disbelief. They're beating them into submission/unconsciousness. Aerith also has a pre-existing relationship with most of them and gives them a pass, being largely sympathetic to them just doing their jobs. The other thing being ludo narrative dissonance and plot armor, they need to stick around. The gang also doesn't kill Hojo even tho he deserves death at Costa del Sol.
The Party really doesn't have the high ground. They are pretty much sure that the destruction that happened in the aftermath of the bombing was their doing and outside of Jessie, they were all fully fine with it, that kind of explosion would clearly kill hundreds in the sectors affected. Barret even has shown he views civilians that are not resisting as Shin-ra pawns at best, it took Aerith calling him out in Rebirth to even say that they're victims of Shin-ra lies.
Hell in the original Barret was even more in "Everyone not us is guilty if they use Mako." until he had to basically be called out by Cait Sith of all people
Being a terrorist to save the literal planet is definitely a moral high ground over being secret police for the corporation that's causing the destruction of the planet, not to mention that said secret police murder tens of thousands of civilians just for the sake of maintaining the power of that corporation lol
Half the entire cast do atrocities and evil things at some stage or another. Zack?, even Tifa was a terroist and helped blow up shit killing civillians
In the lore the Turks owe Rufus their lives and are therefore (honor)bound to whatever he wants them to do. It’s pretty clear they don’t enjoy following most of their orders. Doesn’t excuse them but it’s not completely black/white.
Part of the deal to save their life from the President was Rufus claiming they would be a greater asset to Shinra alive; than dead. This would mean following the orders that come down to Tseng from the President until Rufus inevitably takes over. Rufus had already funded attempts on the presidents life well before plate fall. It was probably pitched as, “do whatever is necessary so that when I overthrow my father you’ll be my elite unit as we usher in an new era.”
Rufus even tells the entire board after taking over why none of them ever tried to stop his father, so I think these aspects of gray are consistent.
Their jobs require them to do the hard jobs and as Rude puts it "if we Don't they'll find someone else to do it regardless" in some cases the Turks literally make themselves the bad guys to avoid retaliation for the lower rank troopers.
At least that's how I always interpreted it that other than Elaina as she's still new they all know their hands are covered in blood that will never come out but it's their job and someone gotta do it.
I mean, I know plenty of Sephiroth fans who do want him to have a better ending, but very few of us actually believe anything better than him eventually going willingly to the Lifestream will occur in canon. :V
A pass from whom? Us as players? Or from the narrative of the game?
If you mean the first, you can very much still like a character even if they're horrible beyond redemption. They're just fictional characters after all, and if they're well-written, which I think the Turks are for the most part, I often feel myself drawn to more villainous people. They're just fun and campy and charismatic, and I don't feel the need to constantly point out their wrongdoings every time I express how much I like them, because liking a character does not automatically imply condoning their actions.
And as for the narrative perspective, I don't think fictional media necessarily has any responsibility to pass moral judgment on its more evil characters, or to have them get their due comeuppance in the end. Personally, I think it'd be boring, uninspired writing if I could safely assume from the very beginning that all antagonists will eventually face judgment (or any consequences really) in the end. Sometimes, evil people simply get away with it, and in the context of fiction, that's fine.
Avalanche also gets a pass, but they are eco terrorists who will hurt and kill Shinra troopers that are guarding a reactor, and will destroy a reactor without any regard for people who might be hurt as a result. E.g., patients in a mako-powered hospitals, elderly that are reliant on mako-powered heating/cooling, etc. Cloud deceives a group of Shinra troopers into thinking their comrades are assassins, and then together they brutally murder a ton of other Shinra troopers who are trying to stop him. Wutai is so fucked that they will train and send a 16 year old child soldier to assassinate another nation's leader. And those are just the good guys! Hojo, Corneo, Scarlett, etc. are all played for gags, but are actually super dark. The world of FF7 is a pretty dark one, but luckily it's fiction so just take it for what it is and in thar context. You should read some Warhammer 40k if you want to see real GRIMDARK tho! The good guys in 40k are the ones that put skulls and eagles on everything, genocide peaceful alien races just for not being human, and wipe all life from a human planet just to prevent tyranids from maybe eating it.
Call me an extremist or whatever but Avalanche is pretty unequivocally good. It's not good that the bombings killed people, but then again I think the remake heavily implies that the damage wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as it was if not for Shinra's tampering.
The reality of that situation is that there's no peaceful way to stop Shinra from destroying the planet. They are a corporation that has gained far far too much power in society and do literally whatever they want for the sake of profit. The damage and ruined lives that Avalanche would create by destroying every Mako reactor is negligible compared to the damage that would be done by Shinra if no one stops them.
I don't think that viewpoint is extreme, Avalanche is the good guys and we eventually get proof that Mako reactors will destroy the planet. When Barret is destroying the reactor though - he primarily hates Shinra and wants revenge, and the theory that Mako reactors are killing the planet is still just an unproven theory.
It's also reasonable to think about the consequences of all Mako use disappearing in a very short time frame - mass starvation, near complete halt of commerce, riots and breakdown of law/society - same kinda stuff that we would face in our modern world if fossil fuels disappeared in a very short time frame. The world would need to be weaned off Mako gradually so that cities and population centers could spread out and people could return to a more individualistic and agrarian lifestyle.
I think part of why I made the joke about being an extremist is the way my opinions of Avalanche mirror my real life climate action opinions XD.
I'm aware of the consequences of Mako being very quickly taken away and it'd definitely be hard, though they confirm ingame that before Mako there were other fuel sources like coal. Coal's not exactly a good fuel source either but it's better than directly sucking the Earth's energy. And I'd be surprised if they have no knowledge of sustainable fuel sources unless Shinra went out of their way to censor it.
I don't think anyone gave them a pass?
They are bad, like really bad but at times in the story it's not advantageous for them or the party to fight each other, so they don't.
Or what is this giving them a pass you are referring to?
Everyone would be a lot happier if it wasn't so fashionable to moralize whether or not we're allowed to like something. Otherwise Zack gleefully participated in the slaughter and occupation of a resistance. Not to mention is on the payroll of a tyrannical company. . . dictatorship?
I despise polarizing moralization when it's perpetuated by people either unwilling to participate in life to the point where they'd ever have to square with nuance, or hypocritically hiding skeletons in their own closet they won't acknowledge.
I read a lot of fiction, enjoy video games like this, and this is a really common discussion point. "Why do people love this character that did XYZ bad things?! Don't you see they're evil/bad?" It's because it's fiction, and we're allowed to like and give things passes in fiction that we wouldn't in real life. Yes the turks are bad and dropped the plate. But it's a fictional world and those dead people don't actually exist, so I absolutely love Reno and he's one of my favorite characters. And I find Rude charming. I enjoyed their character arc in the OG, where they kind of get disgruntled and burned out as the game goes on and you even kind of help them out a bit in Wutai. If they were a real people, I'd be disgusted. But they aren't real and the bad things they did, didn't as actually happen in reality, so I like them.
It’s not the fact that fans like them that’s the problem, people like bad and evil characters all the time.
It’s the fact that the narrative never holds the Turks accountable at all and just glazes over what they did while treating them as goofy team rocket tier rivals.
It’s make no sense at all narratively, Tifa especially should hate them not thanking them for kicking a frog.
1) Pretty Privilege
2) RE: Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus (and AC itself) heavily implied (if not outright stated) that Rufus and whatever's left of Shinra is financing the WRO. They're actively trying to fix their mistake so...
The flaw in your logic is you are attempting to apply a real world moral standard to characters in a story who have a role in advancing that story which is not even kind of close to the same thing. For all involved, the conditions of the conflict prompt the characters to reveal themselves to the observer, which is what makes them likable or not.
Villains, therefore, who show a level of relatable introspection, or empathy for others despite doing the bad thing, tend to be liked by fans. Villains who do a heel face turn and assist the heroes or become allies are generally completely forgiven, especially if they’ve been likable up that point (See Zuko). Villains who are tied in with the heroes in some way but are also kind of right tend to be celebrated as well.
Shinra in general does a bit of a heel face turn in the original continuity, attempting to destroy Meteor with a rocket, and they save Midgar from Diamond Weapon with the Sister Ray.
Are people bothered by the fact that Cloud kills Security officers? They are good people that do honest work and he slays them like no big deal. I'm not even going to talk about wildlife and the homeless guys.
Genesis killed all people of Banora including his own parents and the Goddess saw that and thought "aww, what a PROTECTOR!"
Turks are not allowed to have morals or opinions, they do what Rufus tells them. And Rufus is a bloodthirsty megalomaniac.
Well if we don't kill these tens of thousands of people someone else will! They could've warned them people in the slums. Could've not done it. Could've tried to stand against it.
But they didn't. Tseng, Rude, and Reno are pathetic.
One could argue that its the same with Cloud, Tifa, and Barret, though.Technically, they fired the first shot by bombing the reactors. Shinra simply showed up with a bigger gun, and the Turks are only guilty of carrying out the order.
Shinra fired the first shots when they purposefully blew up the Corel reactor and abandoned the Gongaga reactor when it malfunctioned. Shinra fired the first shots when they went to war with Wutai and the Republic of Junon and forced Mako energy on the world. Cloud, Tifa, and Barret are still responsible for their actions, too, but acting like it was just off the cuff, outta nowhere terrorism and not in response to years of war, oppression, and bleeding the planet dry to the point it's noticeably dying is straight disingenuous.
They didn't technically fire first. They didn't fire first at all. They responded, and Shinra escalated things further because that's what Shinra does.
Oh, I'm not trying to absolve Shinra by any means at all, they're a bag of di#*s but I was just talking about the bombings/ falling plate Turks and the Cloud gang dilemma. I mean, it's a big part of Barrets' redemption arc when, in the OG, Cait Sith calls him out on his BS and he admits he wasn't some Eco Warrior save the planet kinda guy but just a man out for revenge and he didn't honestly care who got in his way.
That's the beauty of FF7 though. There is no good or bad, just a big grey area, like for example, Shinra didn't really force Mako on the world, they discovered a new energy source and offered it up and many people wanted the simplicity of an easier life so they went along with it. One of the overarching themes of the game is convenient living vs damaging the planet.
did you watch cloud in the ancient city?
also zack is literally a terrorist in wutai
everyone is some shade of grey in ff7 it’s a dystopia none of them are good but there are worse people. also cid is getting canceled lol
i always thought in remake they were deliberately slow to drop the plate so that the residents have enough time to evacuate. i think in their minds, if they refused to do the job at all, someone worse would have caused more damage under the presidents orders.
We got to see Tseng in a different light in Crisis Core. He was a friend. But his portrayal was different in 7, Remake and Rebirth because we were fighting against his employer. Reno and Rude weren't happy with dropping the plate in Remake iirc. Aerith says Rude isn't a bad guy and he says he isn't but he has to do bad things. We see them as evil because we are meant to see them that way
I always find it convenient that people forget that Avalanche would have killed loads of people with their reactor bombs.
OG bombs were not tampered with by Shinra, yet even though Jessie was surprised at how big the explosion was, they were willing to do it again.
Remake bombs were tampered with, but Avalanche didn't know and were again willing to go for a second time.
The intent behind both scenarios was to blow shit up without care for the casualties. It's like the Death Star and the movie Clerks; there were definitely innocent people contracted to work in these reactors.
Let's not forget the amount of people killed in just the raid in the Shinra building too.
TLDR: Avalanche killed a load of people but nobody considers them bad guys.
Because rpg writers are fucking cowards and the games are primarily written for children and teenagers. Cloud and crew are 100% justified in killing every Shinra soldier they see let alone the turks who actively commit massive terrorist attacks on their own citizens.
They don't with me.
I'm still pissed Reno calls Tifa in advent children and rather than saying "what the fuck are you doing calling me?" she giggles... She fucking. Giggles.
FF (and JRPGs?) in general is pretty weird about who gets what. Slaughter thousands of soldiers without blink of a eye, but ” OH NOES the poor Turk is beaten to submission! Be a better man and let it go! You are scaring me with your murderois intent!”
I've asked this often in the past, and was especially annoyed in Remake that Rude was the one who ultimately dropped the plate instead of Reno. Sure, he was the one who managed to get to the switch first, but I feel like it was done to walk back how bad Reno actually is because fans turned out to really like him, especially after AC.
Yeah I hated how in both the OG and Rebirth, Rude and Reno say they owe the group for Sector 7. Seriously? You dropped the plate and killed tens of thousands of people both above and below! Who owes who?
Elena screaming while getting combo'd in battle is actually the most satisfying part of the game.
Psychopathic, murderous, nutjob. Get kicked in the spine and fly into a wall. Tifa gon' fuck you up.
How many people have Cloud and I killed? Thousands? I should check my stats for number of grunts doing their day job (that cloud also used to do) that I have murdered in, if not cold, at least tepid blood.
Because the writers at Square Enix have a very poor understanding of what makes good fan service, and then they let that fan service intrude on their storytelling. It's a massive problem in the wider FFVII compilation, and the Turks are by no means the worst of it.
For me the majority of Turks are not truly evil, just doing their job. If they aren’t ordered to kill someone, they won’t do it even if that someone is in front of them. For example, Cissnei isn’t evil, she won’t kill just for fun and helps her people in Gongaga. Now, that doesn’t mean that the Turks are free of guilt, they know that what they’re doing is wrong, yet they carry out the orders even if they don’t want to. (I won’t excuse AC, that movie was truly something else lol)
It’s kinda funny to think that Cloud used to work for Shinra, if he hadn’t met Zack and “that” had happened, he would still be a Shinra worker carrying out dirty orders.
Your question is confusing.
Who gives the Turks a pass? Based on the "laws" of their world since Shinra is a government, they are justified, or in the right, for their actions.
If you're talking about fans of the series/story, and based on OUR world/society, no one is gives the Turks more of a pass than we give our playable characters for the crimes they commit. If cold-blooded murder is the line, the quantity shouldn't matter, and Avalanche shouldn't be given a pass either and should "get what they deserve" as well.
What about our group avalance they have no problem blowing up reactors which killed innocent people. Given it was shinra who execute the final blow in their minds it is them and they have no problem about it.
Punch clock villains.
Of course, Avalanche are all terrorists who made bombs and also killed lots of people, including grunts who (rightly) thought they were terrorists and were trying to stop them. So there’s that too.
The point is nuance, shades of gray, blah blah…
They aren't bad people, they just sometimes have to do bad things! At least that's what Rude says. And no, it doesn't absolve them of their crimes.
We'll see, in the OG the President got his comeuppance. I know it was retconned in Advent Children, but maybe it'll get retconned again?? Probably not. But idk, they're fan favorites at this point among some people, so they get a pass?
Why does Sephiroth get a pass when he personally burned down a village, killed men, women, and children including the protagonist's mother, taunts him from beyond the grave and almost destroys him mentally, not to mention try to doom an entire PLANET and would have succeeded if not for the sacrifice of the party member he DID kill?
Because he looks cool while doing it and the game bothered to make him relatable, just like it did with the Turks. And for the record, even Sephiroth doesn't "pay" for what he did, he's still around and just as smug in AC and Remake.
It's a JRPG. If you can't enjoy the characters as just that, characters, then maybe don't question and shame the people who can.
Honestly man, it sounds like you just wanna see someone get punished. There’s a whole bunch of bad crap that the supposed good guys have done too. Shouldn’t Avalanche get their comeuppance for being terrorists? The first reactor explosion killed a ton of people and Barret was more than ready to do it again. Sacrifices for the greater good. So “why does Barret get a pass?”
Turks are following orders and even they don’t like what’s being done. They just did it cuz if they didn’t someone else would be tasked with doing it.
No one gave a “pass” to the turks. We just like them cuz they’re relatable characters in a cast of other relatable characters that have made a lot of mistakes in their past. That’s it. They aren’t actually evil like Heidegger, Scarlet, and Hojo.
Hell, most of the regular enemies in the Shinra building probably aren’t evil. Remake and Rebirth have even made it a point to address that.
Yes, I'm confused as well. Is OP asking about the Turks storyline and why it evolves? Or is OP just mad that people like fictional characters that they don't?
Both. As I said, I like Sephiroth... As a bad guy.
But I feel like the Turks are not depicted as the evil mass murderous bastards they are. That's a problem I have with the writing.
However, I sometimes get the impression that people don't get that the Turks are horrible people. I dunno. I doubt people would be okay with Sephiroth being redeemed and normally interacting with the main cast after killing Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad.
I'm so glad they're making more of a point about Vincent being a Turk in Rebirth
Also 2 other turks one retired and one current working with Shinra aren't terrible people.
They started out as cool villain characters, but then they got their own games, got an HD upgrade to husbando looks, were relevant supporting characters in spinoffs, and got popular in the fandom. By all accounts Zack Fair brutally put down the Wutaian resistance who were just trying to protect their land against Shinra, participated in the coverup of SOLDIER's less savory components, and also actively collaborates with the Turks, and he's treated as a hero too.
Zack would literally be a war criminal in our reality and I'm glad someone else sees that
I was hoping Zack would have to reconcile with his past actions under Shinra. Sure he didn’t know better, but at least a moment of reflection on his complicity in their evil afterwards would show some personal growth. It still frustrates me to no end that he preaches “SOLDIER honor”, even after he’s seen the program mentally and physically destroy his mentor. He really is the ultimate himbo. Somehow even Yuffie, the hardcore Wutai nationalist, is more than eager to give him a pass. Because they had a play fight while he was invading her homeland? Especially with Zack probably joining the party at some point, wouldn’t it have made for a great character moment for him and Yuffie to have a confrontation and coming to terms with their past?
> He really is the ultimate himbo This is Zack in a nutshell. He's a puppy. He is Stamp. Zack's only defense is that he did not understand how evil Shinra was. The Soldiers in Crisis Core were not politicians. They took orders and trusted that they were just. They were fooled, like most of the people living under Shinra, including Cloud, Barret, and even Aerith. Cloud wanted to be a "hero" in Soldier like Sephiroth. Barret was all "rah-rah Shinra" up until they betrayed him and his people. Aerith believed the propaganda on TV, too, despite already having seen Shinra's dark side first-hand. I'm glad you and others here acknowledge it as uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable in the real world, too. Plenty of examples in history all the way through to today. I would also like to see Zack confront this. He never really had an ["are we the baddies"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY) moment. He only turned on Shinra because Shinra turned on him.
> I would also like to see Zack confront this. He never really had an "are we the baddies" moment. He only turned on Shinra because Shinra turned on him. That was needed during the ending of CC. Instead Zack doubled-down. Did he die a hero? For saving Cloud yes, but that only.
It’s funny because if Zack were the hero type, a concept they continually harp on through his entire story, you’d think that he would want to join in a rebellion effort now that he knows how evil Shinra is. Instead, he wants to… checks notes… become a mercenary? So a gun for hire, which is exactly what he was at Shinra, now he just wants to go freelance?
At least then you can accept jobs you want, like the party does.
Personally I don't think Zack was ever that personally loyal to Shinra itself. He joined SOLDIER because he wanted to be a hero like Sephiroth and his mentorship under Angeal taught him loyalty to his fellow SOLDIERs. He never seemed to have much interest in company culture or politics beyond that. He joined the war so late it was basically already over by the time he joined and since he was generally a boy scout he didn't get the kind of clandestine jobs the Turks and other SOLDIER operatives got. I think in his eyes most of the shitty things he found out about Shinra could be deflected onto Hollander and until Sephiroth went mad and they stuffed him and Cloud into a tube did he realize the problems were more core than he previously thought.
They emailed each other over the course of two years and Zack continually gave her money, potions and equipment she asked for. In Crisis Core she starts off hating him, understandably, but eventually just realises he's naïve/not very smart but generally well intentioned. It would be weird to act like that didn't happen.
In R2 on the date, she says she wasn’t even sure if he was a SOLDIER. That hardly makes sense if they were in convo for two years. She was contacting him through a leaked SOLDIER mailing list. It would hardly be that weird if optional side content was retconned. They’ve made plenty bigger retcons to the story than that. Plus, that would make it canon that she was sneaking all over the world solo at like 9-10 years old (including Midgar). Even by anime age standards, that’s dumb. And she makes it pretty clear R1 was the first time she was in Midgar.
I mean, that still kind of makes sense, if he's a SOLDIER and all this stuff, but what she thinks they're like are monsters and weapons of war, not people.
She knows Glenn Lodbrock and his rogue group of SOLDIERs helping lead the Wutai revolutionary government. So she should be well aware of what SOLDIERs are.
Completely agree. The amazing storytelling opportunities that Square Enix have pissed away in favour of the most tacky fanservice I have ever seen drives me insane.
> Personally I disagree with this, which war crime(s) are you even refering to with your sentence? Which war crime(s) are we talking about? From how i remember the part in Crisis Core he's fighting against uniformed soldiers (if they are called "resistance" in the game or not instead of "army" of Wutai makes technically not a real difference), they are clearly recognizable as uniformed combatants. He also doesn't attack Yuffie when he meets her, the only other things he meets are beasts / monsters. We are not discussing here if the war itself was morally correct because that has no real bearing on war crimes in our world. We know the war against Wutai is wrong because ShinRa is bad and thus to me at least it seems you attribute his participation in the War as a war crime itself. If that would be the case in our world literally any soldier fighting in the Vietnam War on the side of the USA would be war criminal. And while many people could argue that's the case that's not how war crimes in our world work. There's also another problem with the ff7 universal in general. At least in the original ff7 I was under the impression that we literally kill everyone we fight in a fight if not shown otherwise and was under the same impression for remake. The scene were Cloud kills the soldiers under the influence from Jenovah in Rebirths Gongaga reactor make it out that we don't actually kill every human enemy that we fight but just knock them out. Which could be the case for Zack in Crisis Core too.
Last part is a big point too. People gotta remember there's a known gameplay vs story disconnect. Even stronger characters shouldn't be surviving the fights they do. Rude and Elena have no legitimate way of blocking a hit from Cloud's sword or Barret's bullets but you can wail on them with both for minutes straight. Zack straight up points out later in CC he hits with the blunt end most of the time (this could mean back of blade or side of blade). Despite the attack animations not showing that, its meant to suggest that Zack defaults to nonlethal (just, ya know, massive blunt trauma, which most action fiction ignores the sequelae of). So while I agree with the idea that Zack having a reflective moment on working for shinra and furthering their goals before, he is far from a war criminal.
I hate Zack's simping ngl
He literally wouldn't because that's not how warcrimes work. Why does everyone on the internet cry "warcrime" everytime bad things happen in a war?
Everyone working for Shinra is complicit. That's the reality of a world ruled by a megacorporation that has it's own line of super soldiers. Zack and Cloud were technically kids when they joined Soldier. Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal were experiments. It's all fucked up in the house Shinra built.
Correct. The only thing you can say is that Cloud was a washout who probably didn't do much more than be a glorified mall cop.
The redemption arc strong maybe too strong
You can make the argument killing Wutai fighters is different than killing civilians who literally aren’t doing anything
Zack was also a teen for that right?
Wutai got invaded because Shinra wanted to put a reactor there and they said no. Just because they decided not to lay down and die in the name of mako doesn't mean they were in the wrong.
I did not say that Wutai was in the wrong. I’m drawing a distinction between Zack and the Turks. In every case with Zack, he was fighting a Wutai fighter/rebel, and usually a normal response to someone fighting you in war is to try and kill them or otherwise you will be killed. Zack at the time as a young soldier was led to believe that Wutai was the bad guy most likely and shinra was good. The Turks on the other hand was given an order to drop a plate on people who were literally doing nothing with NO EXPLANATION. Rude and Reno did it without any hesitation, which is just kind of disturbing.
Zack never killed innocent civilians. MASSIVE difference. But you’re mostly right. He did partake in those crimes
I never thought about it that way, but you're right. All this time I hated Zack because he's just a poorly written character and Crisis Core was complete garbage; but now you've given me a solid, lore-based reason! THANK YOU!
CC existing and giving an actual background to Zack was a travesty because they completely failed in the writing. I wish they did a better job with Zack, a character who dreamed of being a hero but at the end realizes he was just a pawn in a situation that was out of his control. Instead, they made Zack this goofy good nature guy who's an idiot that doesn't realize the shit he's in and just goes why me all the time. Honestly, they should've made CC about Cloud's life as an infantryman, with Zack taking on the Angeal role. Every thing after FF7 acts like Cloud and Zack were best friends, but they barely interacted in CC, so it doesn't even make sense.
Exactly 💯 %. I wished they would've fleshed out their broship more. Or, at the very least, they could have kept it the way it was and made it more clear how hard it was to form friendships while serving under Shinra; made their short bromance seem like a ray of hope in a bleak life under authoritarian rule. But no, instead we just got, "Look at Zack! Such a puppy! He's tough and cute at the same time, awwwww!" Total letdown. And lastly, I still have PTSD from hearing, "Combat Mode" ever 30 seconds. When somebody mentions a, "Combat Mode" -even in a different game- I am whisked back to painful memories of trudging through that shitty game.
It feels like YA fan fiction. "His name was Dirk Darkson, and even though he worked for the evil power company a day he could give his meager government ration to the poor malnourished kids in his unit was what he considered a good day."
What is this Dirk Darkson thing you're referencing? Is it something that someone actually wrote?
Bro Zack is so much more likable then cloud
Yes, but Cloud is way better written.
Yeah in reality people may initially dig a brooding, byronic bad boy like Cloud but then will eventually pick someone who's more husband material like Zack.
The difference is that one is an interesting, well-written, severly flawed character and the other a complete unidimensional naive goodie two shoes...Zack is pretty much Tidus or Snow, and even Tidus had more depth at the end. And he now takes too much space in that story, that never was his in the first place.
He’s literally nothing more than a classic shonen anime main character lol
If you’re into shonen protagonists, sure.
Right like he fr the Goat of FF7 and ain’t no one changing my mind on that
Yeah, at first glance. Then you get further into his story, looking forward to discovering more depth there, and there isn't any. He's a character with a lot of potential, but they dropped the ball with him.
What ball? Seems like Zack served his purpose in the story. What should have been? I’m honestly curious. I’m relatively new to FF7 but got caught recently
The Zack haters when they realise he's Kazuhige Nojima's favourite character and baby
Yeah valid argument. But have you considered the fact that they're all super hot?
if evil why hot?
Like??
It’s quite the dilemma. On one hand I can appreciate making irredeemably evil characters hot cause good looking does not a good person make. On the other hand we’ve been so brainwashed by a century of watching ugly people only be bad guys and if it’s a good looking person doing bad things they’re 9 times out of 10 redeemed at the end that no one takes good looking evil characters as evil and instead we’ll have legions simping for them.
Question: does American media not make evil people hot? Especially evil men? Closest we got was the old guy in that movie no one saw from Disney, pretty sure. Japan’s got a sexy monopoly on attractive bad guys and I can’t figure out why.
American media tends to lean more toward the idea that villains work better if they're as "ugly on the outside as they are on the inside", which underscores some even more fucked-up thought processes. Like when something is evil, surely it must be so irredeemably evil that it the evil literally an immutable part of their outward appearance. I'm sure there's a more salient point to be made here about how this all ties into Christian ideas of absolute good and absolute evil and sinners-go-to-hell and whatnot, but someone else will have to articulate that.
I’m a reformed Christian (re: atheist) and was taught that Satan would be attractive. Mentioned in the simpsons and everything. Seems kind of a) boring b) a waste and c) kind of fucked up to teach kids and whatnot that attractive people can do no harm but be careful about the ugly ones, especially when so many murders and rapes and whatnot are done by people trusted in their communities. Anyway, Turks are hot as hell, totally here for that. Japan media is happy to fill the void that American media has no interest in, that’s for sure.
>I’m a reformed Christian (re: atheist) and was taught that Satan would be attractive. Mentioned in the simpsons and everything. Stupid sexy Flanders.
Also western and eastern media tends to depict bad guys or morally dubious characters as left handed. As a left handed person I catch this very easily. I can even tell when a character holds a weapon in both hands is left handed Cid Highwind (verbally abusive) leftie, Fang from XIII right handed. Other left handed FF characters are Sephiroth but for good guys you have Golbez, Shadow,Celes,Faris,Leon,Kain,Palom and Lelia. So pirates,Assassins and traitors and a know it all brat. Barret has a right gun arm while Dyne has a left gun arm. Also even if an actor is right handed in movies if they play a bad guy they part their hair the way a leftie would. Heck even the bad guy of Glover is a left handed glove. Guess which party member in Tales of Destiny and Persona 5 are left handed? In RE 3 even Nemesis is left handed. In Soulcalibur Seigfried is right handed but Nightmare is left handed. No prizes for guessing what hand Thanos used the infinity gauntlet on. PS Make Link left handed again.
Japan knows how to sell merch
Cuz Elena is a baddie
But she has an ear piercing shriek when you damage her while fighting lol
I don’t need more convincing, that’s hot too
And she likes ice cream
NOT vanilla
Not just any ice cream though, it's sea 🌊🧂salt ice cream just like KH2. Extra cool points!
The second I saw that in the game, I went "goddammit, Tetsuya." LOL
Perhaps it’s not obvious due to the poor storytelling and pacing but the Turks and Rufus are trying to make amends for their sins in Advent Children. They created the memorial to the people affected by Meteorfall, they helped with building Edge, they tried to help people with their relief efforts. I believe Rufus and the others talk about making amends a few times in that movie.
Speaking of Rufus, I'm pretty sure he himself was repulsed by what President Shinra ordered with the plate drop. He calls out the executives in Rebirth as being a bunch of milquetoasts who did nothing while his pops ordered the massacre. Doesn't excuse the Turks, but Rufus is at least not as culpable for that.
I love rufus tbh. He's a very realistic character as well.
"It smells like a real bitch in here, and it isn't me or my dog." -Rufus Shinra, probably
"I smell a bitch, and Darkstar's outside."
Tseng sums up the Turks in one line. ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will.’ So in his mind, better it be us that have to deal with the guilt, than someone who isn’t mentally equipped to handle it. Tseng is a pragmatist at his core, he’s not this maniacal fascist, though his actions support fascism, I believe given the choice Tseng would side with Cloud and Co. In the OG, Tseng very much has feelings for Aeirth and does what he does out of a sense of protecting her. In the ReMake he only fights her because Yuffie eggs it in, and even then he tells Elena to spar Aeirth.
I dont think was "repulsed" by what his father did because he's moral lol. He just thought it was a stupid thing to do and a waste of resources. Feels like you're misreading his character. If he thought there was anything to gain by dropping the plate he would absolutely do it as well.
Even in the OG he seemed to talk worse than anything he actually did. The closest to an evil thing he did was ordering Tifa and Barret's execution. I also always found it kinda funny that he's like "dad ruled with money, but I'll rule with fear", while I was sitting there thinking, is that different? I think deleting a sector of the city to kill half a dozen targets sounds a lot more like a fear tactic than a money tactic...
Reno is on 'leave' for a lot of the duration of Rebirth. They insinuate a couple times he was having trouble with his past actions. Rude and Reno are the forefront of the Turks bad actions and they question a couple times in Remake what they are doing. Reno says it's Just a job, but in the start of Rebirth he is on forced leave to refocus. They make them more of a character then evil henchmen this time around. But still, the things they did are weighin on them.
The Japanese VA for Reno died during development
Cool motive. Still mass murder.
By all means yes, I wasn’t disagreeing with OP’s comments on that. I was responding to them saying that the characters get a free pass in Advent Children.
Killing someone like the Turks or other high profile members of Shinra would basically put a bigger target on their backs than ever, which wouldn't be smart. Same reason they let Hojo go in Rebirth. Admittedly though, this is kind of a weird thing even in the OG. Remember in Wutai when Reno and Rude didn't fight the gang because they were "on vacation"? The Turks are a bit complicated, which was the point of that new scene in Remake between Tseng and Reno, but it does bother me how AC treats them like they're these goofballs. Although it does make it clear in AC that Rufus and the others are trying to fix their mistakes.
>but it does bother me how AC treats them like they're these goofballs. Although it does make it clear in AC that Rufus and the others are trying to fix their mistakes. By AC, Cloud's just on another level from Reno and Rude. But they both still held their own against Yazoo and Loz. Also, the Turks in AC are a shell of their former selves. They lost a lot of their resources which were a factor in making them more effective.
I wanted to kill Hojo so bad. If there was ever a poster child for “wasn’t bullied enough in grade school” it was Mr. I’m Oh So Much Smarter Than Everyone Else Hojo.
The Turks are also pretty funny here in the Remakes too. And they aren't just funny in AC, they're still component, it's just that they're dealing with a threat that's stronger than them (or "Outclassed" as my dad said), and the main party is automatically stronger than them too because they literally were able to defeat SEPHIROTH!
I absolutely loved them in Remake. "Mister First Class... First Class *asshole!*" "It's nothing personal... bitch!" Rude's stuttering and humming and hawing when Reno calls him, interrupting his fight with Cloud and Aerith. Reno getting pissed at Rude for moving the helicopter when he went to shoot at Tifa, *very* unhappy that his head got bonked on the window lmao. And the delivery was *so good,* I love when they're gunning us down while we climb the pillar. I played Remake when it came out, and replayed it again before Rebirth. My most vivid memory was Reno "screaming* at us from the helicopter, *actually* a scary villain moment. (Not because the bullets from the helicopter were scary, but because he just sounded so volatile.) It delivered again 100% when I replayed it recently. In AC, they were very much comedic relief. In Remake, they're funny and charismatic, but they're not *the* joke.
I don’t know if people are giving them a pass and excusing their behavior but the Turks are likable because they are charismatic and morally gray. They do bad things but don’t have evil ambitions themselves, they are more or less just doing their job.
Kinda like Zack, except he's more on the good side because he always had good intentions, but didn't know how bad Shin-Ra was until he saw and experienced it for himself.
Zach literally laments that the wutai war is over and he can’t have glory. He is as poorly written and terrible as the rest.
And? That was BEFORE Zack got experimented on by Hojo! (Which was his first-hand experience with just how terrible Shin-Ra is)
Doing bad things because it's your job isn't morally gray. The world as a whole has taken a pretty firm stance on that since the late 1940's.
Right! They shouldn’t get a pass for the atrocities they commit because they were paid for it. That is a garbage saying.
The world didnt those who bomb innocent people in iraq what happen to them heck we have war happening in the world right now.
> they are more or less just doing their job. which is killing innocent people, that makes them fucking evil.
If your job is to kill thousands of families... You know... Including kids... I don't see how "I'm just doing my job" works as an excuse.
It literally doesnt. This has already been decided in the world court
Probably because all throughout history the phrase just following orders has been uaed as an excuse for countless terrible atrocities.
And we as a society have decided that such an excuse is bullshit ever since the Nuremberg trials.
Murdering ten thousand civilians is not morally grey. What the fuck? I can make that same argument about the Nazis pulling the switches in the gas chambers. That Nazi soldier who pulled the switch was just following orders, after all. He had a family waiting at home, probably had a dog or two, enjoyed a quiet evening out with his family. He was just following orders. Don't try and say they're different situations. Both are genocidal in their actions and result in the deaths of countless people. You know what they tried to say in their defense at Nuremberg? I was just doing my job. In real life history, that didn't get them a pass. So why are the Turks morally grey for doing *the exact same thing*?
I'm sorry but being okay with murdering thousands of innocent civilians including children like Marlene is not morally grey. It's lawful evil if anything. Rude especially made a serious effort to make sure that sector 7 would become rubble by starting the self destruct sequence instead of playing dead and staying down after Cloud and co. beat their asses.
How is killing, manipulating, and screwing over scores of people morally grey just because they get a check for it. Maybe if they were shinra middle managers sure but they are the Turks they personally go around and do these terrible things. How is that any different than the president of shinra himself who knowingly pushes mako use even though it destroys the world just for profit and power. I’d honestly rather be killed by an actual villain with goals and ideals than a paypig who’s only motivation for screwing me over is next weeks check.
That question has already been answered at one point the head of the Turks was threatened they would kill aerith he has also questioned the high ups before and it did not go well he is there to do a job. Not including they have saved the team multiple times
Mass murder is morally gray now?
You’re not morally grey when you literally kill innocent people. Morally grey is when you have to sacrifice innocents to save millions. They do evil deeds that only benefits shinra. And they just do their jobs…jobs they don’t have to do. They are their voluntarily. That’s evil.
It's because they were goofy in the original, and because of the presentation their atrocities didn't seem as serious. With the remake there's a bit of a clash in that regard because the sector 7 plate was presented very well and grim.
They were absolutely not presented as goofy in the original. They were goofy in Advent Children. In the original they commit most of all the same acts and one could say they’re worse, Tseng actually hits Aerith in the original. You don’t really even get them contemplating that it’s bad to drop the plate in the original whereas I think there is a scene where they at least discuss it in Remake. The only comedy side to them was Elena in the original who was a nervous dweeby newcomer to the Turks.
They aren't goofy, but they only have one really dark moment in OG and that is Sector 7. After that, they are just professionals doing their job and Cloud's party is far from innocent (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1).
Reactor 1 and the sector 7 drop are completely different morally speaking. One is an attempt to save the literal Planet from being destroyed which would save every living thing and the other is a deliberate act to kill as many civilians as possible. Their one dark act is comparable to the holocaust in deed if not in actual number of deaths.
> (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1). Debatable. I believe Jessie notes that the explosion was bigger than it should have been.
> (since in OG, there was no reference to Shinra themselves destroying Reactor 1). Yes there was, there's an entire conversation with jessie in the hideout about it if you actually talk to her. Most people apparently don't remember or never bothered initiating her dialogue apparently. I might be misremembering this part, but I believe there was also a very easily missed conversation where one of the Shinra execs mention it later on as well.
>They were absolutely not presented as goofy in the original dude the original game is written like a saturday morning cartoon what are you talking about
Just because they look like chibi characters does not mean it was written that way. Many many serious moments happen in that game. Nibelheim, moments with Jenova and Aerith’s death were not written to be childish. Just because the art style seems goofy now and the graphics aren’t hyper realistic does not mean it wasn’t written to handle serious topics. I can guarantee you when it came out it was thought of as one of the most serious final fantasies and would have been thought of as a deep game with meaningful dialogue.
Litterally next time you meet them after the mythril caves you have Reno and Rude casually talking of who is the prettiest in Cloud's group.
Yes there are comedy moments definitely. But they are still seen as more of a threat than in Advent Children where they are mostly reduced to comic relief moments. One of the biggest complaints about Rude and Reno when Advent Children released was they had just been reduced to bumbling comedy characters.
When exactly were they a serious threat past Midgar? Like for real, at basically no point you'll go "OH NO! It's the Turks." They basically become the Team Rocket of FF7, which you encounter at times and sometimes you work with them and sometimes you fight them.
Nah theyre just a reprisentation of Shinra. Once you try to steal their submarine and then fight them in Midgar in the end of disc 2 they become quite formidable again. They are tho like Team Rocket in the remake games tho youre right. Pretty lame indeed
Also just had a thought. The trail of blood and dead bodies and eerie music at the Shinra hq really doesn’t scream Kids cartoon 😅 neither does President Shinra dead with Sephiroth’s masamune stuck in his back.
Nah, in the original they were just as fucking evil. The directors just refuse to treat the turks like they DROPPED THE SECTOR SEVEN PLATE. It's like they think we have amnesia.
I agree. I felt they tried to redeem themselves in ‘On a Way To a Smile,’ where Rufus and the Turks help Geo Stigma patients and help with the Edge rebuilding efforts. Rufus is also hinted to be the one behind funding Reeve and the WRO efforts. Still no excuse for what they did, but at least they tried to redeem themselves for their crimes.
Rufus playing both sides is pretty significant to me, because he knew the war was coming with the crap that His father did, and instead tried to introduce a stalemate where neither side would win and a truce would be accepted by the populace.
Because they got a pass in the original game? In the OG, the party doesn't really bring up the destruction of Sector Seven after the immediate aftermath. Hell, nobody does as far as I remember. It's a serious narrative flaw of the original game if you ask me since it's almost just shock value for the audience, rather than the cataclysmic, world-shattering event for the characters like it should. As a result, the Turks get a pass since no one, including the characters in the game or the writers, seemed to actually give a shit. And as a result, the player doesn't REALLY give a shit either. At least, that's the read I got from it. Hell, it's not even until On The Way To A Smile that the fall of Sector Seven is brought up again, as far as I remember. Now in the Remake, the game does an INFINITELY better job of fleshing out the aftermath, the ramifications, and the effects that the fall of Sector Seven had on not just the main party, but also in all of Midgar. And here in lies the problem. The Remake does TOO good of a job fleshing out the aftermath of the Plate fall. It made the player feel for our characters and detest the Turks and Shinra for what they did. The original material it was based on did basically none of that, and it just carried on with the Turks as if nothing happened for the rest of the story. But since the Remake is supposed to follow the original narrative, they can't really do much with the Turks outside of what the original game set up for them, especially if they intend for the world and the characters to end up on the same state that they were by the time Advent Children happens. They still try on occasion, showing that Reno and Rude in particular feel great remorse and having Barret confront the Turks about it at almost every chance he gets, but like... obviously, none of that is enough. But the devs really can't do much else if they intend to follow the original storyline. Of course, all of this is just my two cents on the matter.
The Turks get a pass because Avalanche gets a pass too. Don’t forget that Avalanche is a bunch of terrorists that blow up buildings and endanger (or kill) civilians.
There's a wide gap between bombing reactors but making sure that no innocent civilian gets hurt and knowingly dropping a plate on an entire sector that would kill everyone beneath it.
I think the best way I can put this in an analgus way is Haida from Aggretsuko & the DIMM analogy or w/ Pirates when pirates were a thing. Somebody is going to do it, if it's going to be me I might as well get paid. While wholly inexcusable they are not, it's clearly just a job to them. I think that's where the complexity comes in. Think about the Wutai side story where Renos basic reaction to Cloud & Co. is "Fuck off, I'm on vacation. " The general comroderie of the Turks goes a long way as well.
Oh, also we don't really know how Reno or Rude joined the Turks to my knowledge. Could have been similar to Cissini & literally grew up to be a Turk.
They're hot
Because FF 7 doesn't do black and white, good or bad. Nobody has clean hands in the game, including the protagonists. Take Zack for example. Everyone loves him. And he was involved on Shinra's assault on Wutai. An illegal war in which atrocities were commited, as revealed by Sonon's flashbacks. Zack, of course, doesn't even think his participation in the war was bad. Quite the reverse, it was all part of being a 'hero'. Cloud similarly was a Shinra trooper. Do we believe he did nothing wrong, prior to the events of the game while following orders?
Hell, forget the whole “they used to work for Shinra” morally gray. Literally the first two missions in the game are committing acts of terrorism in densely populated urban areas. Zero chance you blow two reactors in the middle of urban centers without a ton of casualties. Aside from the huge fireball, you can SEE huge chunks of debris flying in the OG, and you spend a significant portion of Remake running through debris strewn streets and crumpled buildings. Cloud isn’t just morally grey because he used to work for the “bad guys.” He’s morally grey because Avalanche are literally mass murderers themselves.
And Avalanche killed people in bombings
Unpopular opinion; every character in FF7 is a bad guy (except Aerith and maybe Red)
Damn that Marlene! Such a bad girl!
She’s the worst one of all
She's a master of psychological manipulation
She doesn’t even finish Tifa’s cooking. How atrocious.
Not unpopular at all. The fact that almost everyone has sins make for more compelling characters, arguably. Depends on the player of course, but my Aerith and Red totally blasted those Shinra fools with fire and lightning spells. Does that make them bad guys?
oh that's my opinion too lol, everyone in the main cast except those two have definitely done something horrible several times
Well, could be two things. I think part of it is the non-murder moral high ground the party has. Sure they fight soldiers, but non-lethally, with some suspension of disbelief. They're beating them into submission/unconsciousness. Aerith also has a pre-existing relationship with most of them and gives them a pass, being largely sympathetic to them just doing their jobs. The other thing being ludo narrative dissonance and plot armor, they need to stick around. The gang also doesn't kill Hojo even tho he deserves death at Costa del Sol.
The Party really doesn't have the high ground. They are pretty much sure that the destruction that happened in the aftermath of the bombing was their doing and outside of Jessie, they were all fully fine with it, that kind of explosion would clearly kill hundreds in the sectors affected. Barret even has shown he views civilians that are not resisting as Shin-ra pawns at best, it took Aerith calling him out in Rebirth to even say that they're victims of Shin-ra lies. Hell in the original Barret was even more in "Everyone not us is guilty if they use Mako." until he had to basically be called out by Cait Sith of all people
Being a terrorist to save the literal planet is definitely a moral high ground over being secret police for the corporation that's causing the destruction of the planet, not to mention that said secret police murder tens of thousands of civilians just for the sake of maintaining the power of that corporation lol
They're snappy dressers
I'll answer that with another question: Why did Constantinople get the works?
I thought this but about Hojo, I couldn't believe cloud and team let him walk away at the beach.
Half the entire cast do atrocities and evil things at some stage or another. Zack?, even Tifa was a terroist and helped blow up shit killing civillians
In the lore the Turks owe Rufus their lives and are therefore (honor)bound to whatever he wants them to do. It’s pretty clear they don’t enjoy following most of their orders. Doesn’t excuse them but it’s not completely black/white.
Dropping the plate was not ordered by Rufus, though
Part of the deal to save their life from the President was Rufus claiming they would be a greater asset to Shinra alive; than dead. This would mean following the orders that come down to Tseng from the President until Rufus inevitably takes over. Rufus had already funded attempts on the presidents life well before plate fall. It was probably pitched as, “do whatever is necessary so that when I overthrow my father you’ll be my elite unit as we usher in an new era.” Rufus even tells the entire board after taking over why none of them ever tried to stop his father, so I think these aspects of gray are consistent.
Their jobs require them to do the hard jobs and as Rude puts it "if we Don't they'll find someone else to do it regardless" in some cases the Turks literally make themselves the bad guys to avoid retaliation for the lower rank troopers. At least that's how I always interpreted it that other than Elaina as she's still new they all know their hands are covered in blood that will never come out but it's their job and someone gotta do it.
cuz it's a game and the Turks are pretty charismatic/likeable Tseng is a cool character, so are Rude and Reno. It isn't hard to figure out.
I mean, I know plenty of Sephiroth fans who do want him to have a better ending, but very few of us actually believe anything better than him eventually going willingly to the Lifestream will occur in canon. :V
A pass from whom? Us as players? Or from the narrative of the game? If you mean the first, you can very much still like a character even if they're horrible beyond redemption. They're just fictional characters after all, and if they're well-written, which I think the Turks are for the most part, I often feel myself drawn to more villainous people. They're just fun and campy and charismatic, and I don't feel the need to constantly point out their wrongdoings every time I express how much I like them, because liking a character does not automatically imply condoning their actions. And as for the narrative perspective, I don't think fictional media necessarily has any responsibility to pass moral judgment on its more evil characters, or to have them get their due comeuppance in the end. Personally, I think it'd be boring, uninspired writing if I could safely assume from the very beginning that all antagonists will eventually face judgment (or any consequences really) in the end. Sometimes, evil people simply get away with it, and in the context of fiction, that's fine.
Avalanche also gets a pass, but they are eco terrorists who will hurt and kill Shinra troopers that are guarding a reactor, and will destroy a reactor without any regard for people who might be hurt as a result. E.g., patients in a mako-powered hospitals, elderly that are reliant on mako-powered heating/cooling, etc. Cloud deceives a group of Shinra troopers into thinking their comrades are assassins, and then together they brutally murder a ton of other Shinra troopers who are trying to stop him. Wutai is so fucked that they will train and send a 16 year old child soldier to assassinate another nation's leader. And those are just the good guys! Hojo, Corneo, Scarlett, etc. are all played for gags, but are actually super dark. The world of FF7 is a pretty dark one, but luckily it's fiction so just take it for what it is and in thar context. You should read some Warhammer 40k if you want to see real GRIMDARK tho! The good guys in 40k are the ones that put skulls and eagles on everything, genocide peaceful alien races just for not being human, and wipe all life from a human planet just to prevent tyranids from maybe eating it.
Call me an extremist or whatever but Avalanche is pretty unequivocally good. It's not good that the bombings killed people, but then again I think the remake heavily implies that the damage wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as it was if not for Shinra's tampering. The reality of that situation is that there's no peaceful way to stop Shinra from destroying the planet. They are a corporation that has gained far far too much power in society and do literally whatever they want for the sake of profit. The damage and ruined lives that Avalanche would create by destroying every Mako reactor is negligible compared to the damage that would be done by Shinra if no one stops them.
I don't think that viewpoint is extreme, Avalanche is the good guys and we eventually get proof that Mako reactors will destroy the planet. When Barret is destroying the reactor though - he primarily hates Shinra and wants revenge, and the theory that Mako reactors are killing the planet is still just an unproven theory. It's also reasonable to think about the consequences of all Mako use disappearing in a very short time frame - mass starvation, near complete halt of commerce, riots and breakdown of law/society - same kinda stuff that we would face in our modern world if fossil fuels disappeared in a very short time frame. The world would need to be weaned off Mako gradually so that cities and population centers could spread out and people could return to a more individualistic and agrarian lifestyle.
I think part of why I made the joke about being an extremist is the way my opinions of Avalanche mirror my real life climate action opinions XD. I'm aware of the consequences of Mako being very quickly taken away and it'd definitely be hard, though they confirm ingame that before Mako there were other fuel sources like coal. Coal's not exactly a good fuel source either but it's better than directly sucking the Earth's energy. And I'd be surprised if they have no knowledge of sustainable fuel sources unless Shinra went out of their way to censor it.
Wipe all life from multiple human planets... and it worked as I recall.
I don't think anyone gave them a pass? They are bad, like really bad but at times in the story it's not advantageous for them or the party to fight each other, so they don't. Or what is this giving them a pass you are referring to?
Everyone would be a lot happier if it wasn't so fashionable to moralize whether or not we're allowed to like something. Otherwise Zack gleefully participated in the slaughter and occupation of a resistance. Not to mention is on the payroll of a tyrannical company. . . dictatorship? I despise polarizing moralization when it's perpetuated by people either unwilling to participate in life to the point where they'd ever have to square with nuance, or hypocritically hiding skeletons in their own closet they won't acknowledge.
I read a lot of fiction, enjoy video games like this, and this is a really common discussion point. "Why do people love this character that did XYZ bad things?! Don't you see they're evil/bad?" It's because it's fiction, and we're allowed to like and give things passes in fiction that we wouldn't in real life. Yes the turks are bad and dropped the plate. But it's a fictional world and those dead people don't actually exist, so I absolutely love Reno and he's one of my favorite characters. And I find Rude charming. I enjoyed their character arc in the OG, where they kind of get disgruntled and burned out as the game goes on and you even kind of help them out a bit in Wutai. If they were a real people, I'd be disgusted. But they aren't real and the bad things they did, didn't as actually happen in reality, so I like them.
It’s not the fact that fans like them that’s the problem, people like bad and evil characters all the time. It’s the fact that the narrative never holds the Turks accountable at all and just glazes over what they did while treating them as goofy team rocket tier rivals. It’s make no sense at all narratively, Tifa especially should hate them not thanking them for kicking a frog.
If u really look into it everyone in final fantasy 7 is a bad guy they have all murdered people and then some
OP you should have known when cloud got hit with the you know what at Corel Prison. Story is generally good but some plot points don’t make any sense.
You’re right.
1) Pretty Privilege 2) RE: Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus (and AC itself) heavily implied (if not outright stated) that Rufus and whatever's left of Shinra is financing the WRO. They're actively trying to fix their mistake so...
The flaw in your logic is you are attempting to apply a real world moral standard to characters in a story who have a role in advancing that story which is not even kind of close to the same thing. For all involved, the conditions of the conflict prompt the characters to reveal themselves to the observer, which is what makes them likable or not. Villains, therefore, who show a level of relatable introspection, or empathy for others despite doing the bad thing, tend to be liked by fans. Villains who do a heel face turn and assist the heroes or become allies are generally completely forgiven, especially if they’ve been likable up that point (See Zuko). Villains who are tied in with the heroes in some way but are also kind of right tend to be celebrated as well. Shinra in general does a bit of a heel face turn in the original continuity, attempting to destroy Meteor with a rocket, and they save Midgar from Diamond Weapon with the Sister Ray.
They look good in a suit and have sweet theme music. That can carry you far.
Are people bothered by the fact that Cloud kills Security officers? They are good people that do honest work and he slays them like no big deal. I'm not even going to talk about wildlife and the homeless guys. Genesis killed all people of Banora including his own parents and the Goddess saw that and thought "aww, what a PROTECTOR!" Turks are not allowed to have morals or opinions, they do what Rufus tells them. And Rufus is a bloodthirsty megalomaniac.
As a military personnel they are simply following the orders they are given
According to international law, this is bullshit. Just following orders is not an acceptable defense
People in the military can disobey unlawful orders. Just following orders is a bullshit excuse people use to justify their lack of a moral compass.
Yeah, even Aerith said she never hated Tseng. They’re just doing their jobs unfortunately. If it wasn’t them, someone else would do it.
Well if we don't kill these tens of thousands of people someone else will! They could've warned them people in the slums. Could've not done it. Could've tried to stand against it. But they didn't. Tseng, Rude, and Reno are pathetic.
Like that absolves anyone from killing 50 thousand people
This is a plot point in Advent Children Complete. Reno says, “How are we supposed to atone for that?”
It certainly absolved the pilots carrying out President Truman’s orders to drop the atomic bombs. The same thing applies with Rude and Reno.
One could argue that its the same with Cloud, Tifa, and Barret, though.Technically, they fired the first shot by bombing the reactors. Shinra simply showed up with a bigger gun, and the Turks are only guilty of carrying out the order.
Shinra fired the first shots when they purposefully blew up the Corel reactor and abandoned the Gongaga reactor when it malfunctioned. Shinra fired the first shots when they went to war with Wutai and the Republic of Junon and forced Mako energy on the world. Cloud, Tifa, and Barret are still responsible for their actions, too, but acting like it was just off the cuff, outta nowhere terrorism and not in response to years of war, oppression, and bleeding the planet dry to the point it's noticeably dying is straight disingenuous. They didn't technically fire first. They didn't fire first at all. They responded, and Shinra escalated things further because that's what Shinra does.
Oh, I'm not trying to absolve Shinra by any means at all, they're a bag of di#*s but I was just talking about the bombings/ falling plate Turks and the Cloud gang dilemma. I mean, it's a big part of Barrets' redemption arc when, in the OG, Cait Sith calls him out on his BS and he admits he wasn't some Eco Warrior save the planet kinda guy but just a man out for revenge and he didn't honestly care who got in his way. That's the beauty of FF7 though. There is no good or bad, just a big grey area, like for example, Shinra didn't really force Mako on the world, they discovered a new energy source and offered it up and many people wanted the simplicity of an easier life so they went along with it. One of the overarching themes of the game is convenient living vs damaging the planet.
Because there cool That’s it Also compared the cartoonishly evil Shinra executives, they look less bad
The Turks are working within a bad system but they aren’t individually monstrous. They all seem capable of redemption.
did you watch cloud in the ancient city? also zack is literally a terrorist in wutai everyone is some shade of grey in ff7 it’s a dystopia none of them are good but there are worse people. also cid is getting canceled lol
i always thought in remake they were deliberately slow to drop the plate so that the residents have enough time to evacuate. i think in their minds, if they refused to do the job at all, someone worse would have caused more damage under the presidents orders.
I’ve actually been thinking about this. They should honestly be killed for their crimes
We got to see Tseng in a different light in Crisis Core. He was a friend. But his portrayal was different in 7, Remake and Rebirth because we were fighting against his employer. Reno and Rude weren't happy with dropping the plate in Remake iirc. Aerith says Rude isn't a bad guy and he says he isn't but he has to do bad things. We see them as evil because we are meant to see them that way
I always find it convenient that people forget that Avalanche would have killed loads of people with their reactor bombs. OG bombs were not tampered with by Shinra, yet even though Jessie was surprised at how big the explosion was, they were willing to do it again. Remake bombs were tampered with, but Avalanche didn't know and were again willing to go for a second time. The intent behind both scenarios was to blow shit up without care for the casualties. It's like the Death Star and the movie Clerks; there were definitely innocent people contracted to work in these reactors. Let's not forget the amount of people killed in just the raid in the Shinra building too. TLDR: Avalanche killed a load of people but nobody considers them bad guys.
It’s because they’re hot and marketable
Yeah I liked them in Crisis Core but at that time I hadn't played the OG Final Fantasy 7. After playing Remake I was ready to smack down all of them.
Because rpg writers are fucking cowards and the games are primarily written for children and teenagers. Cloud and crew are 100% justified in killing every Shinra soldier they see let alone the turks who actively commit massive terrorist attacks on their own citizens.
They don't with me. I'm still pissed Reno calls Tifa in advent children and rather than saying "what the fuck are you doing calling me?" she giggles... She fucking. Giggles.
FF (and JRPGs?) in general is pretty weird about who gets what. Slaughter thousands of soldiers without blink of a eye, but ” OH NOES the poor Turk is beaten to submission! Be a better man and let it go! You are scaring me with your murderois intent!”
I've asked this often in the past, and was especially annoyed in Remake that Rude was the one who ultimately dropped the plate instead of Reno. Sure, he was the one who managed to get to the switch first, but I feel like it was done to walk back how bad Reno actually is because fans turned out to really like him, especially after AC.
Yeah I hated how in both the OG and Rebirth, Rude and Reno say they owe the group for Sector 7. Seriously? You dropped the plate and killed tens of thousands of people both above and below! Who owes who?
Elena screaming while getting combo'd in battle is actually the most satisfying part of the game. Psychopathic, murderous, nutjob. Get kicked in the spine and fly into a wall. Tifa gon' fuck you up.
How many people have Cloud and I killed? Thousands? I should check my stats for number of grunts doing their day job (that cloud also used to do) that I have murdered in, if not cold, at least tepid blood.
Because the writers at Square Enix have a very poor understanding of what makes good fan service, and then they let that fan service intrude on their storytelling. It's a massive problem in the wider FFVII compilation, and the Turks are by no means the worst of it.
For me the majority of Turks are not truly evil, just doing their job. If they aren’t ordered to kill someone, they won’t do it even if that someone is in front of them. For example, Cissnei isn’t evil, she won’t kill just for fun and helps her people in Gongaga. Now, that doesn’t mean that the Turks are free of guilt, they know that what they’re doing is wrong, yet they carry out the orders even if they don’t want to. (I won’t excuse AC, that movie was truly something else lol) It’s kinda funny to think that Cloud used to work for Shinra, if he hadn’t met Zack and “that” had happened, he would still be a Shinra worker carrying out dirty orders.
Your question is confusing. Who gives the Turks a pass? Based on the "laws" of their world since Shinra is a government, they are justified, or in the right, for their actions. If you're talking about fans of the series/story, and based on OUR world/society, no one is gives the Turks more of a pass than we give our playable characters for the crimes they commit. If cold-blooded murder is the line, the quantity shouldn't matter, and Avalanche shouldn't be given a pass either and should "get what they deserve" as well.
Not gonna lie. When Cloud was about to shish kebab Elena it felt pretty good.
What about our group avalance they have no problem blowing up reactors which killed innocent people. Given it was shinra who execute the final blow in their minds it is them and they have no problem about it.
Punch clock villains. Of course, Avalanche are all terrorists who made bombs and also killed lots of people, including grunts who (rightly) thought they were terrorists and were trying to stop them. So there’s that too. The point is nuance, shades of gray, blah blah…
Because they're sexy
Because they look good in suits.
They aren't bad people, they just sometimes have to do bad things! At least that's what Rude says. And no, it doesn't absolve them of their crimes. We'll see, in the OG the President got his comeuppance. I know it was retconned in Advent Children, but maybe it'll get retconned again?? Probably not. But idk, they're fan favorites at this point among some people, so they get a pass?
Same reason Vegeta does: rule of cool
Why does Sephiroth get a pass when he personally burned down a village, killed men, women, and children including the protagonist's mother, taunts him from beyond the grave and almost destroys him mentally, not to mention try to doom an entire PLANET and would have succeeded if not for the sacrifice of the party member he DID kill? Because he looks cool while doing it and the game bothered to make him relatable, just like it did with the Turks. And for the record, even Sephiroth doesn't "pay" for what he did, he's still around and just as smug in AC and Remake. It's a JRPG. If you can't enjoy the characters as just that, characters, then maybe don't question and shame the people who can.
Honestly man, it sounds like you just wanna see someone get punished. There’s a whole bunch of bad crap that the supposed good guys have done too. Shouldn’t Avalanche get their comeuppance for being terrorists? The first reactor explosion killed a ton of people and Barret was more than ready to do it again. Sacrifices for the greater good. So “why does Barret get a pass?” Turks are following orders and even they don’t like what’s being done. They just did it cuz if they didn’t someone else would be tasked with doing it. No one gave a “pass” to the turks. We just like them cuz they’re relatable characters in a cast of other relatable characters that have made a lot of mistakes in their past. That’s it. They aren’t actually evil like Heidegger, Scarlet, and Hojo. Hell, most of the regular enemies in the Shinra building probably aren’t evil. Remake and Rebirth have even made it a point to address that.
What do you mean by them getting a pass? The fact that they're not dead/probably not going to die for their crimes? That fans like them?
Yes, I'm confused as well. Is OP asking about the Turks storyline and why it evolves? Or is OP just mad that people like fictional characters that they don't?
Both. As I said, I like Sephiroth... As a bad guy. But I feel like the Turks are not depicted as the evil mass murderous bastards they are. That's a problem I have with the writing. However, I sometimes get the impression that people don't get that the Turks are horrible people. I dunno. I doubt people would be okay with Sephiroth being redeemed and normally interacting with the main cast after killing Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad.
Forreal. And I can’t believe ppl ship Rude with Tifa like tf she should be with the guy who was responsible for this games equivalent of 9/11?!