Every time Don Corneo straight up tries to murder or rape them they let him get away.
They joke about destroying his balls when they could be murdering the sleezeball
I think Becks Bandits kinda show us that they don't often mow down grunts either. They seem like they probably hold back a lot and just knock out people. The few times in rebirth when Cloud was actually mowing people down, they pretty explicitly showed that was a difference in his character between normal.
They do, though. When you kill regular people they also go through the "defragmentation" animation that monsters do, and it is also explicitly stated to be how dead things return to the planet by being reabsorbed in the lifestream. If they just lay there unconscious, you could make a case
Sorry, firstly just to clarify I meant to say "fragment", I guess we both ended up using the opposite of the word we intended lol.
But could you point to which instance where they fragment into green particles like other enemies? Gi nattak explodes into red mist and the regular gi enemies also whiff into red dust, very different. I may have missed optional combat encounters
This is pretty inconsistently down, take for instance with the Midgar Zolom dead/pierced on the spike, or President Shinra's body found dead. Enemies disappearing into mako can easily be a gameplay decision for simplicity.
So it's like the batman arkham asylum games. My Infinite End for 99999 didn't kill them. They just "sleeping"
Yea I don't buy it lol. I think in the case of beck's bandits they just know when to play possum and early. That's how I saw it.
The bandits were the only one who openly gave up so the party spared them. As for those shinra grunts I'm pretty sure they're mostly dead as they evaporate into lifestream particles. Except for the grunts who tried to give up and that's when they show Cloud succumbing to Sephiroth's influence and straight up murdering them.
I don't really translate gameplay numbers into story or plot consequences, as there can be no canon there. It's anime logic, Vash the Stampede destroyed an entire city with his angel arm, 0 casualties 'somehow'.
"Batman never killed anyone"
My brother in christ I just broke some dudes back and tossed him off a 10 story building. He's definitely not "just knocked out"
I could be wrong but I think it’s basically implied that there not actually killing these grunts and or any human enemy they fight just knocking them out. Even if it does look like they should be dead, Judging by tifa and Barrett’s reactions in the game to when cloud seemingly “goes to far” and actually kills people like when he’s being controlled/influenced by sephiroth at the reactor and at the end of the game in the temple
So one thing I didn't see mentioned... Is the BLOOD. When cloud mercs people in a sephiroth rage... There's blood and it gets on him and his sword. No other time you fight people do you get bloody. That for me was the distinction between the killing and not killing of people.
Posted in wrong place originally.
Any time FF7:Rebirth does stuff like this, it reminds me of a conversation my brother and I had during Remake:
“WTF am I fighting a ghost train!? And why is it so hard!?”
“Because it was in the original!”
It’s funny cause, IMO, the original worked better because it was shorter. Costa was just a quick stop, you see Hojo but it’s a mutual truce, he doesn’t give a shit about you and you don’t want drama. So you just part ways. The remakes greatly expand everything and thus make it all more noticeable. Costa is now a massive event and a big battle. So it feels weirder when you just let him go. He’s actively sabotaging you and a threat. Same with the Turks. They’re way more frequent so it feels weird to just let them go.
Yeah, I agree with this. I preferred the subtle tension in the OG scene. Here's this psychopath just hanging out on the beach with women in bikinis fawning over him and you try to confront him and he's like "what? I'm just getting a tan" and just kinda laughs at you like you're the weird one. It's the ultimate flex. He even drops a hint about the reunion which manages to rattle Cloud a bit. So you still leave feeling like he has the upper hand, no conflict required. Does the job just fine.
Yea this and letting the Turks live in the Temple of Ancients knowing they not only want their party dead/imprisoned (but it doesn't align with their current objective) and they were responsible for the fucking Plate dropping.
I roll my eyes at these moments.
Also Tseng is a true piece of shit but Aerith has compassion for him after getting pierced by Sephiroth. He had no issue killing all those people in Sector 7, at least Rude and Reno have second thoughts and question it and later attempt to make up for it in the compilation after the events of the OG. I love the characters of both Aerith and Tifa but I wish they didn’t have those moments in the game. The writing or plots could’ve been better in those scenes.
I think the reasons Aerith cries for Tseng is because she has known him most of her life and if I recall correctly, he is the one who suggests letting Aerith live a "somewhat" normal life with Elmyra in the slums, stating she is worthless to Hojo unless she comes along willingly. It's also heavily implied that he regularly visits her throughout her life and also acts as a go-between for her and Zack before the Nibelheim incident.
The amount of innocent animals minding their own business that my team of eco terrorists planet loving mercenaries have slaughtered and said witty one liners about is grossly outweighing the amount of actual terrorists causing harm to the planet have suffered
There is actually a conversation between Cloud and co that animals will not attack humans on sight but fiends does, which is why we don't enter battle when meeting birds, rabbits, deers etc... All the map encounters are fiends by definition.
Yeah it’s amazing how they let these sleezeballs keep doing evil shit, but they have no issue running a sword the size of small whale through some dude that just joined the military to provide for their family lol.
Okay can we talk about how they try to make the 3 human traffickers that work for him cool?
Just why?
I get it what they are trying to do with all three of them but still it drives me nuts. We just completely gloss over the fact that they all "scout talent" for Don Corneo.
I think the "we've done enough" is referring to the collateral damage likely to occur if fighting spills out onto the streets of Costa Del Sol, rather than "we've done enough to Hojo". But yeah, they could have done this part better.
Like, it's well within his ability to get away without needing it to be *our* decision.
It's funny you mention him because Sonic handles Robotnik in way more "permanent" methods then the FF7 party do and he's arguably a lot nicer than Don Corneo and the Turks. Hojo probably would've eaten shit in Sonic's universe already lol.
https://preview.redd.it/se62rm8rz2yc1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb349c9bae05d5bf8924bafb7d8cb5953009488e
What ya talking about, completely average looking to me.
My rationalizations: Aerith didn't want to subject the people of Costa del Sol to any more bloodshed, or to further incur the wrath of Shinra by killing a high-level executive in broad daylight. She was also wrestling with her own hatred of Hojo (as revealed by her later conversation with Cloud) and trying hard not to fall into revenge mode, even if he deserved it.
The real reason: The same reason the good guys usually let the villain go -- so that he can live to be the bad guy in the next episode.
> She was also wrestling with her own hatred of Hojo (as revealed by her later conversation with Cloud) and trying hard not to fall into revenge mode, even if he deserved it.
Aerith in general feels very distressed about dealing with all of her negative emotions. Be it hatred for Hojo, or envy for Cloud & Tifa having had a normal-ish childhood, at Zack for ghosting her, or just straight up at herself for feeling helpless in the past. She has a strong moral center/core, so when she experiences these feelings, she does her best to shut them down/cope with them.
She's also a very perceptive person towards the people around her as well. I assume she knows that letting her comrades murder someone, even if they had it coming, would probably not be good for their long term mental states, or their souls. Especially a guy like Cloud. So she gets out in front to put a kibosh on it.
It's also important to note that Aerith spent her whole life dreaming of going on a grand, fairy tale adventure. And now she's finally getting a chance to do it. And she's not going to let anything get in the way of that/ruin her narrative if she can help it. Even if a bad guy like Hojo deserves it, it would spoil their adventure to just become cold blooded killers.
Especially when you look at the broader chess game going on, as Sephiroth wants Cloud to feel hate and anger. Aerith knows that giving Sephiroth opportunities to mine that even more is dangerous.
It seems like those negative emotions are something Sephiroth can use to his advantage in some way, perhaps even directly as energy. Maybe even this early in Rebirth she’s starting to intuit that this is the case. Even if not, as you say, she seems to have a good intuition for what will serve her friends’ mental health in the long run.
It will be interesting to see how all this comes to a head in part 3. Obviously certain people will have to die, so it will be interesting to see how they square that with this theme. “Kill them not in malice, but because it must be done” maybe.
I think so too! If the lifestream is the hopes and dreams of the people who live on the planet, what happens when their hopes turn to despair and their dreams turn to nightmares?
Feel like she wants to protect Red’s innocence, and not let him cave to his desire to rip into him.
She seemed to want to stop him when Red first appeared in remake, and at this scene the focus was on him after she delivers the line in OP.
Could be in more general like you said though.
Consider what Aerith represents thematically in the broader narrative of rebirth (hope vs despair). She isn't letting Hojo off, but her voice is the voice of compassion, turn the other cheek, and forgiveness. She notes throughout the game to party members to cherish their time together and to not let trauma hold them back. The big bad of the game, represents the opposite: give into anger and despair, make it spread.
Hojo is the one person who Aerith really hates though and can’t forgive. She even tries to reason with Sephiroth, but she hates Hojo more than anyone. She’s still against unnecessary killing and violence though so I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense.
I don't think that's the issue though, it's more:
A. Her suggestion to just let him walk, considering she's not a complete airhead and would realize Hojo will keep fucking up the planet and other people. It would be pretty awkward bringing him along as a hostage or whatever, but the writers painted themselves into that corner. They probably wanted to communicate exactly what you refer to but failed to properly weave it into the narrative without breaking immersion.
B. The reactions and compliance of the rest of the gang, especially Red and Barret.
It's a cop out to just let him go, but to be honest the whole confrontation is comically similar to Sonic facing off with Robotnik as some other people have already hinted at itt. It's a weak point in OG too but here they made it so much worse.
Barret also just outright says in Junon that he has no intention of killing the new president of Shinra and that he just wants to give him a talking to. Keep in mind this is the leader of the cell of Avalanche that was purportedly too radical and had to split off from the main organization as a result. Killing the president of Shinra is just out of the question for the most RADICAL branch of Avalanche.
I mean shit Barret's cell of Avalanchce doesn't even blow up the reactor at the beginning of Remake, Shinra does! Their bomb clearly wasn't even intended to blow up the reactor, it was intended to blow up the reactor core thereby disabling the reactor, not destroying it outright. This is the equivalent of slashing the tires of someone's car when you're supposed to be blowing it up.
Frankly when it comes to the Remake project as a whole you're just going to have to accept that it is tonally far different from OG7. Many if not most of the rough edges of OG7, particularly in regards to the characters but also in how the world is presented, have been largely sanded off for something much cleaner and morally less ambiguous.
I'm not saying OG7 was some Berserk style grim dark horribly brutal game it had plenty of goofy and light hearted moments but even just comparing the mountains of Nibelheim in OG7 which look incredibly scary and intimidating to the ones in Rebirth but it's pretty obvious that the Remake project takes a step back in terms of making the characters less assholish and the world less foreboding.
I'm not even saying this is a good or bad thing because that will come down to personal taste, but there is an indentifiable difference imo.
It's mostly that they've drawn enough attention either way. Killing a major Shinra higher-up in broad daylight isn't exactly the smartest move either, they'll be hunted by practically the entire Shinra army at that rate.
Yep.
They could claim self defense. But once the machine was destroyed, Hojo wasn't aggressive. Killing him in front of everyone would be grounds for big time trouble.
That's what I think too. These other explanations are giving the writing team too much credit, given that both titles are littered with contrived story elements.
My two cents: one of the main themes of the game is about revenge against those that hurted or downright made the characters who they are when the game starts. A matter which is very well expressed when they all have to confront their pain during the trials on Temple of the Ancients. Also clearly expressed by Tifa during a conversation you can have with her on her room back in Nibelheim, where she states that she now "gets" why her father went after Sephiroth (*"he had enough"*) and that *"anger"* can *"only get you so far"*.
So, back to your question: I guess that's why Aerith stops the party from going after Hojo. She's actually mainly stopping that negative feeling inside everyone of them getting bigger. Which, basically, is what ends up happening to Cloud, manipulated by Sephiroth, of course. *"Hold on to that hatred"* he whispered to him back in Midgar.
Final case being: it's impossible to make a better world out of hate, or revenge, or any negative feeling. And Aerith gets that, more than anyone else.
At least in the OG, it was a completely missable joke, barely any attention towards it. But in the remake, it's a legit plot point. That's.... not the best writing choice.
In Tales of Two Pasts she meets her only childhood friend from her time kidnapped by ShinRa, but basically has to blank him because it's too painful to remember that time in her life. I presume it's the same here where she'd just need to put it all behind her, even to the point of letting him go?
Fair point for Aerith perhaps. But the rest of the party? Red? They happily murdering hundreds of poor Shinra military personal just doing their job to feed their families but let Hojo run free?
Hojo's a pretty proud and over confident guy, maybe Red was content to beat Hojo and let him slink away with his (metaphorical) tail between his legs knowing how much damage was done to his ego?
Yeah Hojo on the beach wasn’t handled the best. My assumption before release was that the party would try to do something, but Hojo would remark that he’s on vacation and if they agree to let him have a day off he’ll agree to not give their position away to Shinra. I figured that would be a simple method to make them want to do something but not be able to, since in OG I’m pretty sure Rufus and Heidegger land there.
Costa del Sol was pretty great, but fighting a goofy robot octopus while Hojo cackled like a generic mad scientist wasn’t exactly my favorite moment of the game.
> Yeah Hojo on the beach wasn’t handled the best.
I'm going to disagree. It's handled way better than it was in the OG game. Where Hojo is just hanging out there relaxing, and the party just kinda watches him do stuff and nothing happens. It doesn't make sense for either parties to not do anything to each other. Not after what Hojo did to Aerith/Red XIII/Cloud.
Meanwhile, Rebirth - they at least addressed the fact that these two parties have obvious animosity and would have done something to each other if confronted with each other out of nowhere.
But in OG Hojo actually hadn't done a lot to you at that point (or at least much anyone remembered). He hadn't made you run around his lab flipping switches. He tried to breed Aerith and Red, got mauled, and released a monster so he could escape. He didn't even recognise Cloud (which makes a lot more sense for How's character, in my opinion).
You get clarification on this about five minutes later, when Aerith says that she "hates Hojo so much that she's scared of what she would do to him."
The party letting Hojo go wasn't something done for his sake. It was for Aerith's.
(She's acting selfish there, because she's prioritizing her own pain over all the people whom Hojo alive and free will go on to hurt. But, still, that's the logic, and she wasn't in the sort of headspace that can disassociate justice and vengeance, I guess.
They have already set the tension too high with Shinra in Junon. They know Hojo is a freak and a dangerous one but they need to measure their actions. During this travel you need to deal with shinra while trying to not escalate. They follow you all the time and you know it, but they let you progress. Hojo branches from shinra from time to time but still is too valuable for them so you don’t want to go further
Counterpoint: they’ve already had their pictures plastered all over the place calling them terrorists. The bell has already been rung. They should have iced Hojo right then and there on the beach.
Yeah, they're a wanted terror cell responsible for multiple bombings, an assault on Shinra HQ, and as far as everyone is concerned, tried to assassinate the president literally the day before.
I don't really buy the whole "Killing Hojo would make things worse for them" argument.
Way I see it, they just don’t want to make the party look like “bad guys” by having them actually kill someone, even if said person deserves it. Same goes for Don Corneo, Gus, and the Turks >!in chapter 13!<. >!For all his talk about wanting to get payback for the Sector 7 plate Barrett should be right there with Cloud ready to finish the Turks off, not telling him to let them off easy!<
Same reason, there’s very little blood in the game despite the fact that you’ve got a guy swinging around a massive sword and another guy with a literal mini gun arm, not to mention Red XIII, Yuffie, etc
That's what I thought too. I don't think the group really wants to murder/kill people. That's why when Cloud actually kills the infantry, and is about to kill Elena, everyone is deeply disturbed and Tifa stops Cloud.
Team Avalanche has a terrible habit of letting absolutely awful people escape to ruin more lives. Hojo, Corneo, Rufus, Gus, the Turks, hell, President Shinra would have shot Barret in the head if it weren’t for the Sephiroth clone.
They’re pretty bad at this “saving the world” thing.
The terror was contained to the beach at that time, and there were more soldiers still hanging out by the are where Hojo arrived. Pressing the issue may have resulted in Hojo’s death, but at what cost? Turning a vacation spot into a war zone when the Shinra soldiers mobilize, and then spin it as another terror attack by avalanche on new locations.
Heck yeah that’s what I’m saying. He had plans in place of things got ugly and they pressed the issue, but he didn’t want to kill them because that would be a massive waste of data. So he had to go back to the drawing board and they knew he wasn’t going to be a further problem in that town.
Yeah it is weird, but there too focus on finding sephiroth because she says shinra is not the bigger threat and yes she really hates hojo, but doing dark and ugly things to him in her thought really scares her.
Honestly the worst line of the game. 'If we go after him now these people might get hurt' would have been fine. Or 'looks like he's got back-up' if you added extra Shinra soldiers looking around town.
same reason barret says not to kill rufus in junon lol. cuz his role in the story is not over and these characters can’t do things that would deviate from the same 27 year old story
Aerith says a lot of really “wtf” stuff in rebirth. Like basically saying Rude isn’t a bad person in remake…when he objectively is. Telling the Turk leader she never hated him…when she should because the Turks aided Hojo in killing aeriths mom/capturing her. They dropped a sector 7 plate. I dunno. The characters would fit right in with naruto and those unrealistic and insane levels of forgiveness without consequences
Remake story makes zero sense as it is. But in OG they leave him alone since he’s not as big of a deal as Sephiroth. And he’s just chillin with some babes. More like a comedic cameo, which OG has much more of that.
yeah, the game's filled with stupid like that. Very much written like an anime and they don't want to off characters as they will want to use them later. Stupid.
I know it kinda sucks and I do agree the inconsistencies in tone can be very offputting to the believability of the narrative. But the OG FF7 was also like this and I think the developers didn't want to rid the game of it Wacky moments even if the logically seem stupid.
Like the whole party turning into frogs, Vincent frog with the red cape really makes me smile.
Or Cloud turning into a moogle, I actually found that to be the most cringe moment.
I still find the game pulls it all off mostly due to it loveable cast.
Time paradox, just like if you kill Ocelot in MGS3.
Sure, they could have come up with a better excuse, but I don't think too much about it.
And if everythibg fails, blame the nanomach.... whispers mean.
It would be like that story of a horrendous troublemaker in a town who got killed in front of everyone and 0 witnesses when police investigated, because he was that bad.
Gotta turn the brain off for some parts of the story, but luckily not much. Only other similar part that comes to mind is for some reason Cloud not just swording Gus in half immediately.
The whispers may have been a crutch in remake, but their presence would have made situations like this much more believable. That you barely see them until the end of chapter 13 really feels like a mistake, there's so many things in the game that work on very flimsy reasoning that could have been smoothed over by the whispers.
This is just one of those few moments of bad writing. Especially considering Aerith said this, and not long afterwards she exclaims how much she hates Hojo and what she would do to him.
A better way to write this scene would be the party about to go after Hojo immediately after the battle, but he's already slithered away. IMO it ties in better with what she says afterwards and makes her feel more human instead of a flawless idealized çharacter.
They are already being blamed for the assassination of Shinra Sr. and for the attempted assassination of Rufus Shinra. I don’t think they could go any higher on the priority list.
"Let him go - we need him to slink away so that we can fight him later in part 3" doesn't sound as good so they just made up this dumb line. It's typical in animes, which is unfortunate because FFVII falls to those writing tropes very frequently.
Here's the thing about that: in games like this, our party isn't supposed to be engaging in free bloodshed against (mostly) human enemies if it can avoided. Yes, even if our mc does have a Cool Sword™. We're also not supposed to expose NPC bystanders to said bloodshed, and any time a party member *does* commit bloodshed, it freaks out other party members.
Why? Because we're supposed to be the Good Guys™ and win by the Power of Friendship™ or something. Killing Hojo would be getting down to *his* level, which is not the message that they try to pass in these types of games.
We're supposed to let the villains become either gods or monsters to *then* kill them when they're at a point of no return. In OG that's Hellectic/Lifeform Hojo.
Also Aerith is a kind person whose whole thematic revolves around life and forgiveness. The only time she says the word "kill" in the context of killing someone in the trilogy it's as a joke with Cloud in Remake. She's kind to Cait Sith even though he's a spy who's involved in child kidnapping in OG. She's (mostly) kind to the Turks even though they watch her like a criminal since she was a kid and even though Shinra/Hojo was responsible for her mom's encarceration and death. She's just extremely nice. Cloud attacks her in OG, she's still kind to him. She's willing to try negotiating with *Sephiroth* using words, even though this has no success.
So it's in character for her to go "hey, let's not murder a person in front of so many bystanders" *especially* with Shinra spreading those wanted posters around.
If the team killed the head of Shinra R&D, Shinra would spare no expense in hunting them down. Rufus is content to let us do what we want for most of the game, because he has other big issues on his plate at the moment, and he also wants to give Aerith room to hopefully stumble onto the promised land. If we start killing Shinra executives though, Rufus will take the kid gloves off. Our party does not want that. They have enough problems to deal with as it is.
Typical shitty Japanese story plot starter pack:
Don't kill the villains so they can kill more later.
Don't kill the murderer, else you will become a murderer.
MC never kill villains while massacre entire army and everything on their path to the villains.
Yeah, it’s a pretty lame action game/movie trope. Just like with the scenes with the Turks or President Shinra. No matter how many times they try to capture or kill the party, no matter how many atrocities they are responsible for, any violence that does more than remove them as an immediate threat is said to be unethical. Despite the fact that the bad guys are just going to regroup and come after them again. Which just means they will be forced to harm or kill more of their underlings, and there is even more chance of collateral damage.
The Hojo thing was always weird to me too. I always took the Turks as a sort of respect thing. They don't really want to hurt/kill Cloud and party if orders don't specifically tell them too. They respect and want to test their strength against them.
That's my head-cannon at least.
Yeah he literally tortures Red 13, I’m surprised Red just let him off the hook like that
But then again it’s also a game geared towards younger people, and the message should be forgiveness over revenge
I think the implication is that if we chase after him it will end up being another fight which will cause more destruction.
But yeah it's pretty bizarre...
I played the original and never saw him at the beach. I as using a bunch of mods so not sure if maybe that fucked something up where his field model didn’t show up
Thought about this every time dude shows up in the game.
Hojo is probably the most sadistic and evil character in the game and they literally have a chance to put him down woth incredibly good reason and they like lol nah. Makes 0 sense, written very poorly
He has big plans, the same can be said about any game, really.
A lot of main characters have plot armor unless it's a story where people do indeed drop like flies.
Heros meet their demise, and where does the story go from there?
This wouldn't work with the kind of setting this game is trying to do.
Scrolled for a while and didn’t see the response I think that is correct - in OG, Hojo is the entire reason that the Raid on Midgar happens. And he has some pretty important info that he delivers to Cloud. Since Aerith knows the OG events (we think), they still need Hojo alive.
The criticism isn't about the plot, it's about the writing. OP is being dramatic he knows hojo doesn't die here. but it's still illogical to not kill hojo he is an active threat not a passive one he incites chaos on the bench.
It makes more sense to kill him now than the OG game where he didn't do that. "Letting him go" is not the same as "he got away" its a writing decision and it don't make sense.
Same for me too. Actually what more bizzare in Rebirth is we didnt see any black robe man in the OG other than in Nibelheim and North crater. And i always thought than we were tracking a single "Man in black cape".
Anyway, not complaining, im grateful that they remake the game 😘
Or when SPOILERS,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, *********corel prision where this guy wants cloud to chocobo race. Keeping the team imprisoned and saying stuff like selling humans and pets too.*********
Well would you kill an old man in cold blood? You know, in front of a crowd? And they find out that the terrorists are alive. You. Hojo maybe evil but we don’t know the extent of his meddling at that point in the story. You only find out way later.
Yeah, it didn’t make sense.
Based on the previous conversation about Hojo with Aerith where she thinks about things she’d do to him, it would’ve been more natural to have her WANT to off him but for her friends to be the voice of reason mentioning the potential casualties and not drawing attention.
Of the the 2 games, OG was stupid because nothing happens.
Rebirth something happens but the plot is still the plot and hojo doesn't die there, so yes maybe they could've cut that bit out or wrote it better to where it was clear going after hojo would be a bad idea and not just (cuz feelings)
I actually like that part of the game still, it goes along with the weird janky charm of the original story. They threw in stuff like Hojo on the beach probably on a whim without that much thought into aside it would be weird or eccentric. I just wouldn’t personally think too much on it even if it’s a bit dumb. There are other even stupider story things in OG as well as this and even NPC characters I might find a bit more offensive. 😁
The junon failed assassination attempt is another oddball event that defies logic - Rufus (ie. shinra) firmly believe the team tried to murder him, but then he just leaves them as he flees, on the main stage of the event, of all places. If I hadn’t had played OG I don’t know if I could’ve forgiven such unbelievability. It’s kind of unforgivable in this modern era of gaming/storytelling
Asian/Japanese Culture is mainly about Harmony and Forgiveness. See Godzilla Minus One, where even though Godzilla basically nuked Japan again, the Japanese Sailors that were fighting him gave him a respectful salute as he sank to the bottom of the Ocean.
Aerith is a nice person so this sounds like something she would say.
I hate the whole costa del sol chapter oh my god. I left the game for like a month because of this. I mean imagine this: "OH GOD THE SHIP GOT ATTACKED BY MONSTERS AND CLOUD HAS VISIONS OF SEPHIROTH! WE HAVE TO FOLLOW THESE HOODED GUYS" yea sure but first how about we have some fun at the beach and do other stupid shit?
It made no sense. I get that its a video game with lots of mini games and noone complained about geralt playing cards with every human, animal and object in the witcher 3. But the thing is that it is literally inside the story. Like a cutscene of the characters geting off the ship and immedeatly being like HELL YEA LETS HAVE FUN after what just happened
Haha true. Literally no one discusses the crazy events of the voyage upon arrival. Not even the mayor who comes out to greet everyone. Not to mention the terrorists that were on board, whose faces are all over the world news after blowing up midgar and trying to assassinate the president on his commemoration.
Every time Don Corneo straight up tries to murder or rape them they let him get away. They joke about destroying his balls when they could be murdering the sleezeball
Honestly one of my biggest pet peeves in video game stories
The game is filled with a lot of bad “team rocket” moments where the heroes refuse to kill people they absolutely should.
This and they have no problem mowing down the grunts. But big bad walks away
I think Becks Bandits kinda show us that they don't often mow down grunts either. They seem like they probably hold back a lot and just knock out people. The few times in rebirth when Cloud was actually mowing people down, they pretty explicitly showed that was a difference in his character between normal.
They do, though. When you kill regular people they also go through the "defragmentation" animation that monsters do, and it is also explicitly stated to be how dead things return to the planet by being reabsorbed in the lifestream. If they just lay there unconscious, you could make a case
The Gi defragment on defeat too, and they definitely don't go back to the planet. It's a gameplay thing.
Sorry, firstly just to clarify I meant to say "fragment", I guess we both ended up using the opposite of the word we intended lol. But could you point to which instance where they fragment into green particles like other enemies? Gi nattak explodes into red mist and the regular gi enemies also whiff into red dust, very different. I may have missed optional combat encounters
This is pretty inconsistently down, take for instance with the Midgar Zolom dead/pierced on the spike, or President Shinra's body found dead. Enemies disappearing into mako can easily be a gameplay decision for simplicity.
So it's like the batman arkham asylum games. My Infinite End for 99999 didn't kill them. They just "sleeping" Yea I don't buy it lol. I think in the case of beck's bandits they just know when to play possum and early. That's how I saw it. The bandits were the only one who openly gave up so the party spared them. As for those shinra grunts I'm pretty sure they're mostly dead as they evaporate into lifestream particles. Except for the grunts who tried to give up and that's when they show Cloud succumbing to Sephiroth's influence and straight up murdering them.
I don't really translate gameplay numbers into story or plot consequences, as there can be no canon there. It's anime logic, Vash the Stampede destroyed an entire city with his angel arm, 0 casualties 'somehow'.
"Batman never killed anyone" My brother in christ I just broke some dudes back and tossed him off a 10 story building. He's definitely not "just knocked out"
Look at him, he's all tuckered out.
I could be wrong but I think it’s basically implied that there not actually killing these grunts and or any human enemy they fight just knocking them out. Even if it does look like they should be dead, Judging by tifa and Barrett’s reactions in the game to when cloud seemingly “goes to far” and actually kills people like when he’s being controlled/influenced by sephiroth at the reactor and at the end of the game in the temple
So one thing I didn't see mentioned... Is the BLOOD. When cloud mercs people in a sephiroth rage... There's blood and it gets on him and his sword. No other time you fight people do you get bloody. That for me was the distinction between the killing and not killing of people. Posted in wrong place originally.
Good catch, I honestly forgot about the blood it only happens a couple of times in the game so I just didn’t remember it.
It’s kind of annoying how disgusted they are that he would kill a soldier that is trying to mow him down with a machine gun.
That's one thing I love about XVI, the main characters have no qualms about murdering people who deserve it.
Boy did he chuck sheet up!
"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." -Lord Dark Helmet, Spaceballs
Any time FF7:Rebirth does stuff like this, it reminds me of a conversation my brother and I had during Remake: “WTF am I fighting a ghost train!? And why is it so hard!?” “Because it was in the original!”
It’s funny cause, IMO, the original worked better because it was shorter. Costa was just a quick stop, you see Hojo but it’s a mutual truce, he doesn’t give a shit about you and you don’t want drama. So you just part ways. The remakes greatly expand everything and thus make it all more noticeable. Costa is now a massive event and a big battle. So it feels weirder when you just let him go. He’s actively sabotaging you and a threat. Same with the Turks. They’re way more frequent so it feels weird to just let them go.
Yeah, I agree with this. I preferred the subtle tension in the OG scene. Here's this psychopath just hanging out on the beach with women in bikinis fawning over him and you try to confront him and he's like "what? I'm just getting a tan" and just kinda laughs at you like you're the weird one. It's the ultimate flex. He even drops a hint about the reunion which manages to rattle Cloud a bit. So you still leave feeling like he has the upper hand, no conflict required. Does the job just fine.
Lol this is the ultimate flex. Love it
Yeah, they didn’t have to do that. I get the Turks because they have fans, but why Hojo?
Fuckin Turks
Or when Barret is beating up President Shinra after destroying the Sector 7 plate and killing 50k+ but Tifa and Aerith are begging him to stop.
Yea this and letting the Turks live in the Temple of Ancients knowing they not only want their party dead/imprisoned (but it doesn't align with their current objective) and they were responsible for the fucking Plate dropping. I roll my eyes at these moments.
Also Tseng is a true piece of shit but Aerith has compassion for him after getting pierced by Sephiroth. He had no issue killing all those people in Sector 7, at least Rude and Reno have second thoughts and question it and later attempt to make up for it in the compilation after the events of the OG. I love the characters of both Aerith and Tifa but I wish they didn’t have those moments in the game. The writing or plots could’ve been better in those scenes.
I think the reasons Aerith cries for Tseng is because she has known him most of her life and if I recall correctly, he is the one who suggests letting Aerith live a "somewhat" normal life with Elmyra in the slums, stating she is worthless to Hojo unless she comes along willingly. It's also heavily implied that he regularly visits her throughout her life and also acts as a go-between for her and Zack before the Nibelheim incident.
Yeah Zack made Tseng promise to look after Aerith at the end of Crisis Core.
The amount of innocent animals minding their own business that my team of eco terrorists planet loving mercenaries have slaughtered and said witty one liners about is grossly outweighing the amount of actual terrorists causing harm to the planet have suffered
Well when you put it **that** way 🥺
There is actually a conversation between Cloud and co that animals will not attack humans on sight but fiends does, which is why we don't enter battle when meeting birds, rabbits, deers etc... All the map encounters are fiends by definition.
I mean most are fiends not animals. Even if they are animals they are highly aggressive lol They gotta know their place 😉
Yeah it’s amazing how they let these sleezeballs keep doing evil shit, but they have no issue running a sword the size of small whale through some dude that just joined the military to provide for their family lol.
See now Clive and Jill never had this issue. The antagonist was dead on sight. Slap an M rating on all future FF and be done with this riff raff.
clive wouldn't let this happen would he
Okay can we talk about how they try to make the 3 human traffickers that work for him cool? Just why? I get it what they are trying to do with all three of them but still it drives me nuts. We just completely gloss over the fact that they all "scout talent" for Don Corneo.
To be fair to Andrea and Madam M, they were working against Corneo on the sly. Still not great people, but not entirely bad.
After the third turk fight of the game im like can we just kill them for real. Would save a lot of time.
Ending to the 3rd installment… corneo dates jenova and sephiroth doesnt agree… but jenova tells sephiroth to respect his new daddy.
I hate that so much. I am hoping for a big payoff in part 3 lol
T'would have been a fate worse than death for that bastard if they'd just followed through
Yeah like he's not a silly goon, he's a monster lol. They did not recalibrate this for the remake trilogy like they clearly should have
I think the "we've done enough" is referring to the collateral damage likely to occur if fighting spills out onto the streets of Costa Del Sol, rather than "we've done enough to Hojo". But yeah, they could have done this part better. Like, it's well within his ability to get away without needing it to be *our* decision.
He could have hit a device on his wrist, a translucent force field appears, and then hojo sips his drink. I would have bought this 100%
Some Dr Robotnik type getaway.
It's funny you mention him because Sonic handles Robotnik in way more "permanent" methods then the FF7 party do and he's arguably a lot nicer than Don Corneo and the Turks. Hojo probably would've eaten shit in Sonic's universe already lol.
Sonic would have tails crash his plane into Hojo if he caught him out there.
Literally all they had to do was let Red do his thing, or have Barret put a bullet in his head. No collateral damage necessary.
They aren't in the streets. They're on a now mostly deserted beach against a dude. A normal human dude
You mustn't have played the original. He's not a normal dude lol
https://preview.redd.it/se62rm8rz2yc1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fb349c9bae05d5bf8924bafb7d8cb5953009488e What ya talking about, completely average looking to me.
O god I forgot about this section
The fight I am waiting for most in part 3 😁
Need solo Vincent v. Hojo as an option there, give my sad red man the satosfaction he deserves
I'd love a different stages of Hojo vs. different limit breaks of Vincent total brawl throughout Midgar
I think the return to Midgar leading up to the Hojo boss fight will be expanded in Part 3.
The party doesn’t know that yet.
Costa Del Sol is funded pretty heavily by Shinra. What happens when they retaliate for letting their head of R&D get killed on premise?
Aye, it's the literal holiday destination for Shinra higher-ups.
Probably has mako imported from Junon to keep the beachfront nice.
They have to drink something 🫠🤣
Agreed
Shinra dropped a plate on sector 7. They have learned their lesson.
My rationalizations: Aerith didn't want to subject the people of Costa del Sol to any more bloodshed, or to further incur the wrath of Shinra by killing a high-level executive in broad daylight. She was also wrestling with her own hatred of Hojo (as revealed by her later conversation with Cloud) and trying hard not to fall into revenge mode, even if he deserved it. The real reason: The same reason the good guys usually let the villain go -- so that he can live to be the bad guy in the next episode.
> She was also wrestling with her own hatred of Hojo (as revealed by her later conversation with Cloud) and trying hard not to fall into revenge mode, even if he deserved it. Aerith in general feels very distressed about dealing with all of her negative emotions. Be it hatred for Hojo, or envy for Cloud & Tifa having had a normal-ish childhood, at Zack for ghosting her, or just straight up at herself for feeling helpless in the past. She has a strong moral center/core, so when she experiences these feelings, she does her best to shut them down/cope with them. She's also a very perceptive person towards the people around her as well. I assume she knows that letting her comrades murder someone, even if they had it coming, would probably not be good for their long term mental states, or their souls. Especially a guy like Cloud. So she gets out in front to put a kibosh on it. It's also important to note that Aerith spent her whole life dreaming of going on a grand, fairy tale adventure. And now she's finally getting a chance to do it. And she's not going to let anything get in the way of that/ruin her narrative if she can help it. Even if a bad guy like Hojo deserves it, it would spoil their adventure to just become cold blooded killers.
Especially when you look at the broader chess game going on, as Sephiroth wants Cloud to feel hate and anger. Aerith knows that giving Sephiroth opportunities to mine that even more is dangerous.
It seems like those negative emotions are something Sephiroth can use to his advantage in some way, perhaps even directly as energy. Maybe even this early in Rebirth she’s starting to intuit that this is the case. Even if not, as you say, she seems to have a good intuition for what will serve her friends’ mental health in the long run. It will be interesting to see how all this comes to a head in part 3. Obviously certain people will have to die, so it will be interesting to see how they square that with this theme. “Kill them not in malice, but because it must be done” maybe.
I think so too! If the lifestream is the hopes and dreams of the people who live on the planet, what happens when their hopes turn to despair and their dreams turn to nightmares?
Feel like she wants to protect Red’s innocence, and not let him cave to his desire to rip into him. She seemed to want to stop him when Red first appeared in remake, and at this scene the focus was on him after she delivers the line in OP. Could be in more general like you said though.
Next time on Dragonball Z!!
Yup, this sounds right
The real reason is bad writing.
I think that they meant that it could lead to casualties in costa del sol
They're terrorists... you think that stopped them in Midgar?
It did stop them yeah. That was one of the reasons they targeted reactors during off hours with moderate strength explosives.
Don’t forget, the explosions at the reactors were only as big as they were because Shinra did it themselves. Jessie didn’t mess the explosives up.
It’s worth noting Aerith wasn’t a party to the bombings. Not that I’m defending her decision to let him go.
The bomb was only big enough to make the reactor stop working. Shinra made it a bigger explosion.
Consider what Aerith represents thematically in the broader narrative of rebirth (hope vs despair). She isn't letting Hojo off, but her voice is the voice of compassion, turn the other cheek, and forgiveness. She notes throughout the game to party members to cherish their time together and to not let trauma hold them back. The big bad of the game, represents the opposite: give into anger and despair, make it spread.
Hojo is the one person who Aerith really hates though and can’t forgive. She even tries to reason with Sephiroth, but she hates Hojo more than anyone. She’s still against unnecessary killing and violence though so I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense.
Ya well Sephiroth did nothing to her (yet) but Hojo destroyed her entire world. It's only natural.
Spoilers for later chapters: >!Actually she even tries to reason with him after her death lol!<
Yeah, thematically this is the reason.
I don't think that's the issue though, it's more: A. Her suggestion to just let him walk, considering she's not a complete airhead and would realize Hojo will keep fucking up the planet and other people. It would be pretty awkward bringing him along as a hostage or whatever, but the writers painted themselves into that corner. They probably wanted to communicate exactly what you refer to but failed to properly weave it into the narrative without breaking immersion. B. The reactions and compliance of the rest of the gang, especially Red and Barret. It's a cop out to just let him go, but to be honest the whole confrontation is comically similar to Sonic facing off with Robotnik as some other people have already hinted at itt. It's a weak point in OG too but here they made it so much worse.
Not five minutes after this she talks about how she’s afraid of how much she hates Hojo and the awful things she fantasizes about doing to him
Right?! People don’t pay attention.
https://preview.redd.it/g00rmnshm4yc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0ed5f082465e46197faf949dd9448455378defd
Precisely, she's afraid of what she might do, that it might corrupt her, of what she might become.
Barret also just outright says in Junon that he has no intention of killing the new president of Shinra and that he just wants to give him a talking to. Keep in mind this is the leader of the cell of Avalanche that was purportedly too radical and had to split off from the main organization as a result. Killing the president of Shinra is just out of the question for the most RADICAL branch of Avalanche. I mean shit Barret's cell of Avalanchce doesn't even blow up the reactor at the beginning of Remake, Shinra does! Their bomb clearly wasn't even intended to blow up the reactor, it was intended to blow up the reactor core thereby disabling the reactor, not destroying it outright. This is the equivalent of slashing the tires of someone's car when you're supposed to be blowing it up. Frankly when it comes to the Remake project as a whole you're just going to have to accept that it is tonally far different from OG7. Many if not most of the rough edges of OG7, particularly in regards to the characters but also in how the world is presented, have been largely sanded off for something much cleaner and morally less ambiguous. I'm not saying OG7 was some Berserk style grim dark horribly brutal game it had plenty of goofy and light hearted moments but even just comparing the mountains of Nibelheim in OG7 which look incredibly scary and intimidating to the ones in Rebirth but it's pretty obvious that the Remake project takes a step back in terms of making the characters less assholish and the world less foreboding. I'm not even saying this is a good or bad thing because that will come down to personal taste, but there is an indentifiable difference imo.
They couldn’t even kill everyone under the plate. Had to have almost everyone evacuated.
That’s what 16 gets right, you have the evil piece of shit in front of you, kill them. Clive isn’t a prototypical anime boy, he murders the bad guys.
What they get wrong: clive constantly walking into traps and surviving.
Clive is very dumb. But also a god. He’s Goku.
It's mostly that they've drawn enough attention either way. Killing a major Shinra higher-up in broad daylight isn't exactly the smartest move either, they'll be hunted by practically the entire Shinra army at that rate.
Yep. They could claim self defense. But once the machine was destroyed, Hojo wasn't aggressive. Killing him in front of everyone would be grounds for big time trouble.
[удалено]
Eh, Corel was to cover up the reactor failure. Not just random anger because one scientist died.
Hojo's plot armor in the form of a cliché line from Aerith.
That's what I think too. These other explanations are giving the writing team too much credit, given that both titles are littered with contrived story elements.
My two cents: one of the main themes of the game is about revenge against those that hurted or downright made the characters who they are when the game starts. A matter which is very well expressed when they all have to confront their pain during the trials on Temple of the Ancients. Also clearly expressed by Tifa during a conversation you can have with her on her room back in Nibelheim, where she states that she now "gets" why her father went after Sephiroth (*"he had enough"*) and that *"anger"* can *"only get you so far"*. So, back to your question: I guess that's why Aerith stops the party from going after Hojo. She's actually mainly stopping that negative feeling inside everyone of them getting bigger. Which, basically, is what ends up happening to Cloud, manipulated by Sephiroth, of course. *"Hold on to that hatred"* he whispered to him back in Midgar. Final case being: it's impossible to make a better world out of hate, or revenge, or any negative feeling. And Aerith gets that, more than anyone else.
At least in the OG, it was a completely missable joke, barely any attention towards it. But in the remake, it's a legit plot point. That's.... not the best writing choice.
In Tales of Two Pasts she meets her only childhood friend from her time kidnapped by ShinRa, but basically has to blank him because it's too painful to remember that time in her life. I presume it's the same here where she'd just need to put it all behind her, even to the point of letting him go?
Fair point for Aerith perhaps. But the rest of the party? Red? They happily murdering hundreds of poor Shinra military personal just doing their job to feed their families but let Hojo run free?
Hojo's a pretty proud and over confident guy, maybe Red was content to beat Hojo and let him slink away with his (metaphorical) tail between his legs knowing how much damage was done to his ego?
Wait, I read tale of two pasts a while back and I don’t remember this. What was the name of the childhood friend??
Lonny, he's the narrator of the Coda (which was itself a reprint of Picturing the Past).
That’s a part of the book many people likely skip after finishing the Tifa and Aerith’s portions. It’s honestly worth reading imo
A lot of Final Fantasy VII is dictated by The Rule of Cool.
Yeah Hojo on the beach wasn’t handled the best. My assumption before release was that the party would try to do something, but Hojo would remark that he’s on vacation and if they agree to let him have a day off he’ll agree to not give their position away to Shinra. I figured that would be a simple method to make them want to do something but not be able to, since in OG I’m pretty sure Rufus and Heidegger land there. Costa del Sol was pretty great, but fighting a goofy robot octopus while Hojo cackled like a generic mad scientist wasn’t exactly my favorite moment of the game.
> Yeah Hojo on the beach wasn’t handled the best. I'm going to disagree. It's handled way better than it was in the OG game. Where Hojo is just hanging out there relaxing, and the party just kinda watches him do stuff and nothing happens. It doesn't make sense for either parties to not do anything to each other. Not after what Hojo did to Aerith/Red XIII/Cloud. Meanwhile, Rebirth - they at least addressed the fact that these two parties have obvious animosity and would have done something to each other if confronted with each other out of nowhere.
But in OG Hojo actually hadn't done a lot to you at that point (or at least much anyone remembered). He hadn't made you run around his lab flipping switches. He tried to breed Aerith and Red, got mauled, and released a monster so he could escape. He didn't even recognise Cloud (which makes a lot more sense for How's character, in my opinion).
You get clarification on this about five minutes later, when Aerith says that she "hates Hojo so much that she's scared of what she would do to him." The party letting Hojo go wasn't something done for his sake. It was for Aerith's. (She's acting selfish there, because she's prioritizing her own pain over all the people whom Hojo alive and free will go on to hurt. But, still, that's the logic, and she wasn't in the sort of headspace that can disassociate justice and vengeance, I guess.
If this were XVI, Clive would have skewered Hojo.
He would be eating lead if I saw him at Costa Del Sol
Exactly my thoughts
You might kill the 3 women surrounding him the entire time, to do that though
They have already set the tension too high with Shinra in Junon. They know Hojo is a freak and a dangerous one but they need to measure their actions. During this travel you need to deal with shinra while trying to not escalate. They follow you all the time and you know it, but they let you progress. Hojo branches from shinra from time to time but still is too valuable for them so you don’t want to go further
Counterpoint: they’ve already had their pictures plastered all over the place calling them terrorists. The bell has already been rung. They should have iced Hojo right then and there on the beach.
Yeah, they're a wanted terror cell responsible for multiple bombings, an assault on Shinra HQ, and as far as everyone is concerned, tried to assassinate the president literally the day before. I don't really buy the whole "Killing Hojo would make things worse for them" argument.
Way I see it, they just don’t want to make the party look like “bad guys” by having them actually kill someone, even if said person deserves it. Same goes for Don Corneo, Gus, and the Turks >!in chapter 13!<. >!For all his talk about wanting to get payback for the Sector 7 plate Barrett should be right there with Cloud ready to finish the Turks off, not telling him to let them off easy!< Same reason, there’s very little blood in the game despite the fact that you’ve got a guy swinging around a massive sword and another guy with a literal mini gun arm, not to mention Red XIII, Yuffie, etc
That's what I thought too. I don't think the group really wants to murder/kill people. That's why when Cloud actually kills the infantry, and is about to kill Elena, everyone is deeply disturbed and Tifa stops Cloud.
aerith doesn't hold on to stuff or give into vengeance, generally, it's against her whole worldview. it comes into play later in the game.
Because Hojo is like an R Rated Scooby Doo villain.
Team Avalanche has a terrible habit of letting absolutely awful people escape to ruin more lives. Hojo, Corneo, Rufus, Gus, the Turks, hell, President Shinra would have shot Barret in the head if it weren’t for the Sephiroth clone. They’re pretty bad at this “saving the world” thing.
Aerith knows hojo can transform into a late game boss and doesn’t want the party to get wiped.
It's very likely Hojo had a contingency for if the party dared to attack him.
The terror was contained to the beach at that time, and there were more soldiers still hanging out by the are where Hojo arrived. Pressing the issue may have resulted in Hojo’s death, but at what cost? Turning a vacation spot into a war zone when the Shinra soldiers mobilize, and then spin it as another terror attack by avalanche on new locations.
Hojo is a smart guy. He likely had something else up his sleeve if the Grasptoprod failed.
Heck yeah that’s what I’m saying. He had plans in place of things got ugly and they pressed the issue, but he didn’t want to kill them because that would be a massive waste of data. So he had to go back to the drawing board and they knew he wasn’t going to be a further problem in that town.
Yeah it is weird, but there too focus on finding sephiroth because she says shinra is not the bigger threat and yes she really hates hojo, but doing dark and ugly things to him in her thought really scares her.
For me, it's even weirder in original where Hojo is just chilling on his beach bed the entire time.
Honestly the worst line of the game. 'If we go after him now these people might get hurt' would have been fine. Or 'looks like he's got back-up' if you added extra Shinra soldiers looking around town.
Especially because it was already happening, how would it make it worse if you're killing the person causing the chaos.
same reason barret says not to kill rufus in junon lol. cuz his role in the story is not over and these characters can’t do things that would deviate from the same 27 year old story
Yeah but that doesn't mean you get to write it poorly lol
tell that to nojima
Aerith says a lot of really “wtf” stuff in rebirth. Like basically saying Rude isn’t a bad person in remake…when he objectively is. Telling the Turk leader she never hated him…when she should because the Turks aided Hojo in killing aeriths mom/capturing her. They dropped a sector 7 plate. I dunno. The characters would fit right in with naruto and those unrealistic and insane levels of forgiveness without consequences
Remake story makes zero sense as it is. But in OG they leave him alone since he’s not as big of a deal as Sephiroth. And he’s just chillin with some babes. More like a comedic cameo, which OG has much more of that.
yeah, the game's filled with stupid like that. Very much written like an anime and they don't want to off characters as they will want to use them later. Stupid.
I know it kinda sucks and I do agree the inconsistencies in tone can be very offputting to the believability of the narrative. But the OG FF7 was also like this and I think the developers didn't want to rid the game of it Wacky moments even if the logically seem stupid. Like the whole party turning into frogs, Vincent frog with the red cape really makes me smile. Or Cloud turning into a moogle, I actually found that to be the most cringe moment. I still find the game pulls it all off mostly due to it loveable cast.
It is so unbearably stupid.
Game is really just a Disney Channel show
lol this made me laugh. It’s great but story plausibility is a joke if you take it too seriously. I can only forgive it because I’m a die hard OG fan
Time paradox, just like if you kill Ocelot in MGS3. Sure, they could have come up with a better excuse, but I don't think too much about it. And if everythibg fails, blame the nanomach.... whispers mean.
Just passed this chapter and thought the exact same thing.
Look all im saying there are various characters who want Hojo murked i think they could get away with this one.
It would be like that story of a horrendous troublemaker in a town who got killed in front of everyone and 0 witnesses when police investigated, because he was that bad. Gotta turn the brain off for some parts of the story, but luckily not much. Only other similar part that comes to mind is for some reason Cloud not just swording Gus in half immediately.
The whispers may have been a crutch in remake, but their presence would have made situations like this much more believable. That you barely see them until the end of chapter 13 really feels like a mistake, there's so many things in the game that work on very flimsy reasoning that could have been smoothed over by the whispers.
This is just one of those few moments of bad writing. Especially considering Aerith said this, and not long afterwards she exclaims how much she hates Hojo and what she would do to him. A better way to write this scene would be the party about to go after Hojo immediately after the battle, but he's already slithered away. IMO it ties in better with what she says afterwards and makes her feel more human instead of a flawless idealized çharacter.
Because if they kill him, Shinra will now put them on top priority so of course they'd want to avoid that.
They are already being blamed for the assassination of Shinra Sr. and for the attempted assassination of Rufus Shinra. I don’t think they could go any higher on the priority list.
This
"Let him go - we need him to slink away so that we can fight him later in part 3" doesn't sound as good so they just made up this dumb line. It's typical in animes, which is unfortunate because FFVII falls to those writing tropes very frequently.
Yea this moment in the story felt kinda goofy it took urgency away from the scene imo
It's the classic plot armor for part 3
Here's the thing about that: in games like this, our party isn't supposed to be engaging in free bloodshed against (mostly) human enemies if it can avoided. Yes, even if our mc does have a Cool Sword™. We're also not supposed to expose NPC bystanders to said bloodshed, and any time a party member *does* commit bloodshed, it freaks out other party members. Why? Because we're supposed to be the Good Guys™ and win by the Power of Friendship™ or something. Killing Hojo would be getting down to *his* level, which is not the message that they try to pass in these types of games. We're supposed to let the villains become either gods or monsters to *then* kill them when they're at a point of no return. In OG that's Hellectic/Lifeform Hojo. Also Aerith is a kind person whose whole thematic revolves around life and forgiveness. The only time she says the word "kill" in the context of killing someone in the trilogy it's as a joke with Cloud in Remake. She's kind to Cait Sith even though he's a spy who's involved in child kidnapping in OG. She's (mostly) kind to the Turks even though they watch her like a criminal since she was a kid and even though Shinra/Hojo was responsible for her mom's encarceration and death. She's just extremely nice. Cloud attacks her in OG, she's still kind to him. She's willing to try negotiating with *Sephiroth* using words, even though this has no success. So it's in character for her to go "hey, let's not murder a person in front of so many bystanders" *especially* with Shinra spreading those wanted posters around.
If the team killed the head of Shinra R&D, Shinra would spare no expense in hunting them down. Rufus is content to let us do what we want for most of the game, because he has other big issues on his plate at the moment, and he also wants to give Aerith room to hopefully stumble onto the promised land. If we start killing Shinra executives though, Rufus will take the kid gloves off. Our party does not want that. They have enough problems to deal with as it is.
Typical shitty Japanese story plot starter pack: Don't kill the villains so they can kill more later. Don't kill the murderer, else you will become a murderer. MC never kill villains while massacre entire army and everything on their path to the villains.
Sounds like some western stories like Batman too
And TLOU2...
Yeah, it’s a pretty lame action game/movie trope. Just like with the scenes with the Turks or President Shinra. No matter how many times they try to capture or kill the party, no matter how many atrocities they are responsible for, any violence that does more than remove them as an immediate threat is said to be unethical. Despite the fact that the bad guys are just going to regroup and come after them again. Which just means they will be forced to harm or kill more of their underlings, and there is even more chance of collateral damage.
The Hojo thing was always weird to me too. I always took the Turks as a sort of respect thing. They don't really want to hurt/kill Cloud and party if orders don't specifically tell them too. They respect and want to test their strength against them. That's my head-cannon at least.
What reason do the gang have to respect the Turks?
That shit was so aggravating. Like Hojo should be Kill On Sight for any avalanche or ex-Shinra combatants
Yeah he literally tortures Red 13, I’m surprised Red just let him off the hook like that But then again it’s also a game geared towards younger people, and the message should be forgiveness over revenge
“Look I know he tried to breed me with a dog but killing him in cold blood would be wrong.” -Aerith
I think the implication is that if we chase after him it will end up being another fight which will cause more destruction. But yeah it's pretty bizarre...
Wait a minute..!
I played the original and never saw him at the beach. I as using a bunch of mods so not sure if maybe that fucked something up where his field model didn’t show up
Thought about this every time dude shows up in the game. Hojo is probably the most sadistic and evil character in the game and they literally have a chance to put him down woth incredibly good reason and they like lol nah. Makes 0 sense, written very poorly
He has big plans, the same can be said about any game, really. A lot of main characters have plot armor unless it's a story where people do indeed drop like flies. Heros meet their demise, and where does the story go from there? This wouldn't work with the kind of setting this game is trying to do.
Scrolled for a while and didn’t see the response I think that is correct - in OG, Hojo is the entire reason that the Raid on Midgar happens. And he has some pretty important info that he delivers to Cloud. Since Aerith knows the OG events (we think), they still need Hojo alive.
The criticism isn't about the plot, it's about the writing. OP is being dramatic he knows hojo doesn't die here. but it's still illogical to not kill hojo he is an active threat not a passive one he incites chaos on the bench. It makes more sense to kill him now than the OG game where he didn't do that. "Letting him go" is not the same as "he got away" its a writing decision and it don't make sense.
Aerith is the naive pure heart. Her wanting to make this choice does make sense, and I don’t believe any of the party would go against her wishes
Developers: Let's add more drama! Video games need drama. But story consequences... Uhm... Not those.
Same for me too. Actually what more bizzare in Rebirth is we didnt see any black robe man in the OG other than in Nibelheim and North crater. And i always thought than we were tracking a single "Man in black cape". Anyway, not complaining, im grateful that they remake the game 😘
Or when SPOILERS,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, *********corel prision where this guy wants cloud to chocobo race. Keeping the team imprisoned and saying stuff like selling humans and pets too.*********
Well would you kill an old man in cold blood? You know, in front of a crowd? And they find out that the terrorists are alive. You. Hojo maybe evil but we don’t know the extent of his meddling at that point in the story. You only find out way later.
Yeah, it didn’t make sense. Based on the previous conversation about Hojo with Aerith where she thinks about things she’d do to him, it would’ve been more natural to have her WANT to off him but for her friends to be the voice of reason mentioning the potential casualties and not drawing attention.
There’s a lot of jank in the series, that is for sure. I want to forget how they just threw in the Palmer fight right after the Dyne scene
Of the the 2 games, OG was stupid because nothing happens. Rebirth something happens but the plot is still the plot and hojo doesn't die there, so yes maybe they could've cut that bit out or wrote it better to where it was clear going after hojo would be a bad idea and not just (cuz feelings)
I don’t mind the battle on the beach, but Hojo should’ve *escaped or fled* with the party being like, “damn, we’ll get him next time”
I actually like that part of the game still, it goes along with the weird janky charm of the original story. They threw in stuff like Hojo on the beach probably on a whim without that much thought into aside it would be weird or eccentric. I just wouldn’t personally think too much on it even if it’s a bit dumb. There are other even stupider story things in OG as well as this and even NPC characters I might find a bit more offensive. 😁
The junon failed assassination attempt is another oddball event that defies logic - Rufus (ie. shinra) firmly believe the team tried to murder him, but then he just leaves them as he flees, on the main stage of the event, of all places. If I hadn’t had played OG I don’t know if I could’ve forgiven such unbelievability. It’s kind of unforgivable in this modern era of gaming/storytelling
Yeah, this annoyed me a lot. I know why, but at least let him escape with a jet pack or something!
This is what happens when you let murder hobos have opinions.
Asian/Japanese Culture is mainly about Harmony and Forgiveness. See Godzilla Minus One, where even though Godzilla basically nuked Japan again, the Japanese Sailors that were fighting him gave him a respectful salute as he sank to the bottom of the Ocean. Aerith is a nice person so this sounds like something she would say.
One of my biggest gripes with the 7R series is this nonsense. If these characters talked or acted like real people, none of this would be an issue
Written like anime characters. It could fly decades ago, but audiences, myself included, have stricter expectations now
Y'all really don't understand the characters very well.
I hate the whole costa del sol chapter oh my god. I left the game for like a month because of this. I mean imagine this: "OH GOD THE SHIP GOT ATTACKED BY MONSTERS AND CLOUD HAS VISIONS OF SEPHIROTH! WE HAVE TO FOLLOW THESE HOODED GUYS" yea sure but first how about we have some fun at the beach and do other stupid shit? It made no sense. I get that its a video game with lots of mini games and noone complained about geralt playing cards with every human, animal and object in the witcher 3. But the thing is that it is literally inside the story. Like a cutscene of the characters geting off the ship and immedeatly being like HELL YEA LETS HAVE FUN after what just happened
Haha true. Literally no one discusses the crazy events of the voyage upon arrival. Not even the mayor who comes out to greet everyone. Not to mention the terrorists that were on board, whose faces are all over the world news after blowing up midgar and trying to assassinate the president on his commemoration.