/vr/ - Retro Games

>>612012
>"true"
Who cares.
Hojo is the only interesting one.

The meteor is the true villain here, OP.

>>612012
OP here. I meant "main antagonist" to clear things up.

Sephiroth wants to destroy the world. He is the true villain. Don't overcomplicate it.

The villain is a corporation, not a person.

>>612012

>my friend and I have been going at it for hours and still can't come

>>612012

It seemed pretty obvious to me that JENOVA was puppeting Sephiroth around..

The word you are looking for is antagonist, not villain

the antagonist is the guy trying to oppose or threaten the heroes
the motive really doesn't matter
its not a philosophy thing: its the definition of the fucking word
There are multiple antagonists in ff7 with varying degrees of threat. The random encounters with random forest animals are antagonists too.

Jenova ceased being a threat 2000 years ago. The Cetra locked it away. Shinra created Sephiroth from it, and Sephiroth woke up Jenova. Shinra and Team Jenova/Sephiroth proceeded to fuck up the planet independent of each other.

Overall Sephiroth was the greater evil. Shinra didn't know they were destroying the planet, while that's exactly what Sephiroth wanted. Shinra wanted money, Sephiroth wanted to be a God and enslave every soul on the planet.

As for who was the dominant one in the Sephiroth/Jenova thing, it was Sephiroth. Cloud stated that he was chasing them to face Sephiroth, not Jenova. This personal conflict between the two was a central point of the story and would be meaningless if Sephiroth never had control and was just a puppet. The final boss battles show that Sephiroth was stronger than Jenova. In fact, the way Jenova just sort of pops and fights Cloud & gang in a short anti-climatic battle makes me think Sephiroth was using it as a meat shield.

>>612065
He cleared that up in an earlier post.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

hojo, or maybe the ancients, cause the ancients started all of the shit

>>612082

The Ancients didn't do anything. Jenova wasn't an ancient.

>>612085
but they're after the ancients, which is the reason the commotion started

>>612037
This. The whole being controlled by/ is Jenova angle is bullshit.

>>612039
But corporations are people.

TIDUS IS THE TRUE VILLAIN HERE MY FRIENDS

The true villain is people who start 6 vs. 7 arguments on the internet

>>612089

But the Ancients didn't do shit. They made a bunch of flowers and saved the planet from Jenova. Then they died and some people wanted to turn their bodies into fuel or something.

It can only be Don Corneo

It's Aerith

Hojo is the catalyst/to blame, Sephiroth is the antagonist

I believe that Jenova is the puppetmaster behind everything and the closest thing to a primary antagonist in FF7. Sephiroth is a figurehead for the will and power of Jenova.

Sephiroth was made in the image in which Jenova remembered him - that is, a raving lunatic wanting to Be With His Mother, Jenova, In The Promised Land.

The real Sephiroth disintegrated in the Nibelheim reactor along with the head of Jenova. What the team confronts multiple times over the course of the game is a near-perfect Sephiroth clone engineered by Jenova and fostered by the batshit insane agendas of Hojo and Shinra.

Shinra embodies all the autonomous evils (except for Dyne and Don Corneo, lol) that weren't produced by a large concentration of Jenova cells forcibly injected into a living creature. Every action they took that involved Mako and Jenova's cells just furthered Jenova's plans for terraforming the dying planet.

>>612095
5 is better than both.

You're all wrong! The main villain is Kefka!

I always thought the villain is Jenova.

Hojo

>>612095
Kefka > Sephiroth

This is the best thread ever

>>612170
Agreed.

did anyone else ever wonder why they didnt expand on the "ancients/space aliens" aspect of the FFVII universe? instead of basing all of the expanded universe stuff around sephiroth, cloud, and zack they could have expanded on the fact that there were other planets out there and clearly intelligent alien life as well. I always thought Cid should have build another space ship that couldve actually traveled through space.

>>612170
Debatable. Everyone hates Sephiroth because of his pretty boy angsty animu appearance. When in fact, he's a very bizarre and surreal villain who isn't actually what he appears to be (just a manifestation of an eldritch abomination, Jenova).

>>612137
The only question is whether Jenova is actually intelligent or whether she is just an organism that creates, corrupts, and grows uncontrollably, in which case she would be not the master, but the weapon that Sephiroth and Hojo would use to further their own goals, like the Porky/Giygas relationship in Mother 2.

It's not clear who's in charge or whether Jenova was advising Sephiroth, but it is clear that Jenova can speak through her creations, at least her limb-monsters. (Jenova-LIFE's final words were "Because you are a puppet" to Cloud, continuing Sephiroth's sentence.) Similarly, we don't know how to what extent Hojo influenced Shinra's agenda, though it seems he appeared very innocuous to the higher-ups for his entire career. Really, nothing is revealed about that fucker.

the only way to ever truly understand FF7 is to name everybody Sephiroth. Everybody.

>>612192

Sephiroth looked cool as fuck as a polygonal character in 1997. Now, not so much.

>>612201
I always thought that it wasn't Jenova LIFE talking, but the real form of Sephiroth bleeding through, showing that Sephiroth is indeed just speaking Jenova's words.

>>612205

Maybe they were partners? One would draw up a plan and the other would go "M'kay" and Sephiroth was speaking his own mind whenever he met you.

>>612237

Meant to respond to >>612230

>>612230
That could also be the case. Either way those are the only words credited to Jenova throughout the game

>Sephiroth outliving Jenova

We know who was in control.

>>612258
>soldier Hans outlived Hitler

Gast is the true villain as in, he's the one who touches every life of the entire cast of 7. Father of Aeris, husband of her mother, mentor to Hojo, made Vincent become a monster. He's responsible for everything, the whole plot of 7 comes down to one professor. Without him there's no Final Fantasy 7.
Some could argue he is not a villain, but he's definitely the one who's responsible for everything.

>>612314

Never Sephiroth nor Jenova killed themselves.

Checkmate.

>>612337
>checkmate
most autistic response

>>612443

>taking 22 minutes to respond
>didn't even think of anything else to say that actually refutes my point

Autistic as fuck.

>>612479
>autist overdrive
I'm not even the person you were arguing with in the first place.

>>612443
>implying that was me

>>612336
I like this one. Kinda makes you stop and think like how Light was the reason things ended up really going to shit in the MM universe post Classic, even though they have other villains painted up.

>>612183

Why? Because bishie bad boys make all the animu fanfic crazed mofos in the fanbase wet their pants, sci-fi stuff doesn't have the same easy pandering factor.

>>612091

>>612258
This. Jenova = angels. Sephiroth = Gendo.

>>612336
>Father of Aeris

I'm just curious, is that in the game and I just completely missed it, or is that something that's explained in the other works, like Crisis Core?

Assigning "main antagonist" to this game is too much reduction. There's lots of antagonists and each is tragic / evil / important in a different way. Hojo's a willing accomplice to evil, Shina is negligent, et c.

>>614953
Now I know you're lying. There's no way you didn't play the original game and didn't know Gast was Aeris's dad.

>>614981
I was serious. It's been years since I played through the game, and I honestly don't remember. Apparently it didn't make much of an impression on me.

Y'know, the whole first act of the game in Shinra where you're in a terrorist group fighting against an insanely corrupt corportation was a hell of a lot more interesting than the shit that happens afterwards.

Talk about wasting a good plot.

>>615019
>in Shinra

Sorry, I mean in Midgar.

It's Hojo. Now go to bed.

>>612170
I loved Sephiroth mostly because of all the raping he did to Shinra co.

his hate is understandable what with his androgynous appearance, extreme overplay, retconned past, and the fact he's not really the villain of the series, but I still like the guy

>>615019

It's funny, I've recently replayed the Midgar section after like a decade and I feel the same way, like the story just fell flat on its face after leaving Midgar. The AVALANCHE section felt really modern, taking a current issue and twisting it to give people a new perspective. I can't think of many games where your indiscriminate terrorism, though justified, kills innocent people. Bombing the ominous Mako plants was really exciting, and I felt that the small number of possible party members permitted much more intimate stories then were possible when everyone became interchangable

>>614981
>>614997

I'm in the same boat as this guy, I seriously have no idea who "Gast" is.

I remember Aeris' father wasn't around, and that Vincent was involved with the Hojo/Shinra/Sepiroth business when he became part monster, but I had no idea those two things were connected at all.

>>615203
there's a semi-hidden event in icicle inn iirc

>>612012

Hojo discovers and experiments on the Jenova being. He impregnates his friend's girlfriend and then injects Jenova cells into his unborn son. He also moves the Shinra company into position to kill the Lifestream, knowing what could happen.

Sephiroth is just an extension of Jenova, which is essentially just a monster with no clear goals beyond killing everything.

>>612336
...that's retarded, that's like saying Einstein nuked Japan. It's reductivist nonsense.

The way I looked at it, Sephiroth was the end result of every other villain. All of the corruption and goals of Shinra, Jenova and Hojo were embodied by his character, the product of everything before him.

>>615282
That's actually a pretty good interpretation. Cloud's insecurities, Shinra's greed, Hojo's nihilistic disregard for human dignity, Jenova's... jenovaness. Sephiroth is the summation of everything bad in the world.

>>615270

Or like that copypasta that says the Dr. Light is the worst villain in Megaman history because he created X, whose design was used to build Reploids, who started the Reploid Wars and all the subsequent wars afterward up until the destruction and assimilation of humanity. It's just too farfetched

>>615019
>>615180
This. This is probably the main reason why I don't care for FF7 so much. President Shinra, Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, Palmer, Reeve, Rufus, the Turks. Shinra as a whole was a really interesting set of villians and the fight against them was really interesting. Then Jenova and Sephiroth hyjack it.

I'm not saying that FF7 is an absolutely terrible game, but Shinra was way more interesting than Sephiroth and Jenova were. I much would have much prefer if Sephiroth wasn't the main focus.

Jenova was basically The Thing.

Sephiroth thought he was acting in his own interests, but really he was just fulfilling the desires of his Jenova cells, which want him to take over the planet and send more Jenova cells to more planets.

Cloud is MacReady.

I was always under the impression that Rufus was the main antagonist.

Sephiroth is in the forefront but even while the entire game is going on, Shinra is draining the Lifestream from the planet. Regardless of whether Sephiroth wants to destroy the world or not, Rufus has been doing it for a while. And after you save the planet Shinra doesn't like, go bankrupt. It's still there, doing it's thing.

>>615550
Rufus died
Hojo died
Heidegger and Scarlet probably died too

And the ending of the game was really ambiguous too

Jenova was basically calling the shots, and the game made that......unclear but in it's favor over Seph.

Then those retarded ass Ultimania things came out and said Sephiroth was the one calling the shots.

>>615569
>Rufus dies
Someone wants to forget something exists...

This thread shows perfectly why the FF7 "franchise" is just pretentious shit. When the game was new, nobody got into any philosophical discussions, they played the game, beat the boss (Sephiroth), and that was it. It was a good game. Now with all the movies and merch and extended stories it's turned into a mockery, and made it difficult to enjoy the original game outside of that context.

>>615431

Same could be said about FF6. It was about Empire/Gestahl/Vector/Magitek with the same oddly conflicted members in Celes, Leo, Cid and such until it got hijacked by Kefka.

>>615623

Except Kefka was (for the most part) working or the Empire, and was the most prominent antagonistic figure in the whole game.

I agree Gestahl is a wasted character, though.

>>615662

*working for

THE REAL VILLAIN WAS HUMAN NATURE ALL ALONG; BLINDED BY OUR LIVES OF MATERIAL CONVENIENCE, WE LET SHINRA DRAIN THE PLANET OF IT'S VITAL FORCE AND IGNORED THE SUFFERING OF THE POOR IN THE SLUMS.

TRULY, WE ARE THE MONSTERS.

It was Jenova, It was always Jenova.

Jenova's original plan was to fuck up the planet and fuse with it. It was stopped by the Cetra. Along comes Gast who digs up Jenova thinking it's a dead ancient.

Jenova is basically resurrected through Sephiroth. There are many others that have received injections of Jenova's cells, but Sephiroth was implanted with Jenova's cells so early in his development until he was technically more Jenova than human.

Jenova's will lies dormant in him until the Nibelheim incident, where Sephiroth basically has a mental breakdown. He goes on to get tossed into the lifestream.

Do you know what happens to your consciousness when you're exposed to the lifestream? It's overwhelmed by all the thoughts and emotions surging through the lifestream and you lose all sense of self. Your personality basically loses all structure and you stop being you. You would normally become a vegetable like Cloud did, but when Sephiroth's personality ceased to exist, something remained that kept him going and gave him purpose.

That is the will of Jenova.

Sephiroth, who was batshit crazy last time you saw him, suddenly reappears. He knows he's not a fucking Cetra. Who told him that? He knows exactly what he wants to do. He's not lost and confused like he was when he got tossed into the lifestream. Why is that?

Because Sephiroth is gone. All that's left after the Nibelheim incident is Jenova's will. It basically just picks up precisely where it left off when it was "killed" by the Cetra.

The series has completely gone to shit since then so none of this may be relevant anymore. However back when FF7 was a stand alone game, this is the explanation that made the most sense and tied up all the loose ends.

Sephiroth is the second coming of Jenova.

>>615920
WHAT IS A MAN? A MISERABLE PILE OF SECRETS

>>615585
Let's be honest
The scene with him throwing Jenova out the fucking window was probably the best in the film.

Jenova disguised as Sephiroth actually and blatantly called Sephiroth her master and that she and the clones only exist to do his bidding.

It happens in the north crater just before you fight Jenova Death.

So there, Seph was in charge the whole time.

You could argue that it was Hojo who caused all this shit but Sephiroth was the villain definitely.

>>612070
Jenova's corruption is inherent in Sephiroth and that corruption guides his every motivation.

This is a case when the Thrall becomes more powerful than the master. Jenova in certainly weaker than Sephiroth by the end but then again Sephiroth would never had considered doing the things he does if it weren't for Jenova planting those seeds in him.

>>612012
Jenova puppeting Sephiroth is the main villain.

Of course, you kill Jenova a little before you actually kill Seph, but by that point he's so far off the deep end and so deeply conditioned that fuck all y'all this is stupid.

>>612183
X and X-2 happen on a different planet in the same continuity

> In Final Fantasy X-2, Square Enix dropped hints of a connection between Gaia and Spira, as Shinra and Rin discuss the potential of the Farplane as an energy source, though Shinra states the technology to safely and successfully refine energy from the Farplane would not be developed for generations. This connection is confirmed in the Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania guide, where Kazushige Nojima states that Rin would fund Shinra's efforts to refine energy from the Farplane using the Vegnagun's remains, but failed. His descendants, a thousand years later when space travel was developed, would travel to Gaia and found the Shinra Electric Power Company.[2]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while it was implied that Hojo raped Lucrecia, wasn't it also kind of implied that she was already pregnant wth Vincents child when she was raped?

I think that makes sense, because it would take more than some jenova cells to turn the seed of an ugly decrepit hunchback scientist into a tall, handsome and badass fangirls wet dream.

>>616049
I loved that scene so fucking much.

>>617124
I think he's her master in the same way the king is the master to the evil corrupt advisor figure.

>>617261
> Shinra is aliens!
This is the most fucktarded... what the fuck? THE FUCK? WHY. WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS.

>>617404
>X/X-2 Continuity
I'm not as bothered by that "retcon" as I am the entirety of Advent Children, its still ridiculous.

Anyways
>WHO IS THE VILLAIN OF FFVII
Humanity. Pre Advent-Children, Sakuguchi referenced the ambigious ending, tied with Red XIII's extra-post credits as the planet making the decision that humanity wasn't good for the planet, and decided to wipe us out.
But Square realized 50% of the Final Fantasy fanbase was pants on hat mentally retarded autists and decided the only way to continue was to use it to print money
>INTRODUCING THE FFVII COMPILATION, WATCH US DEFECATE ON OUR FLAGSHIP TITLE IN THE WORST WAYS WE CAN DREAM OF!
>ADVENT CHILDREN
>3,000% MORE GACKT
>WE'RE GONNA PUT FFVII IN KINGDOM HEARTS
>WE'RE GONNA PUT KINGDOM HEARTS IN FFVII
>RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON RETCON
>MOBILE GAMES
>DISSIDIA!
>DISSIDIA 2!
A thousand suns could not contain the rage I feel at Square and what they've done to FFVII. Thank god for personal head-canon.

>>616003
Everybody wanted to be Griffith but Griffith in the 90s.

>>617124
>>617145
In that scene it clarifies "those who carry Jenova Cells", are the ones who are referring to Sephiroth as Master. They're just experiments reciting the hypnotism that is used to guide them.

IMO, Jenova is the influence behind everything regarding Sephiroth and Hojo, and the physical carrot on a stick to Cloud and co.'s journey from Midgar to the North Crater.
Regardless of Sephiroth outlasting the original/resynthesised forms of Jenova, the mutations present in the various phases of his boss fight illustrates his Jenova cells are still prevalent, and I believe if the Meteor plan had succeeded, only those Jenova cells would have remained.

while i believe sephiroth was in control, his personality and motivations were shaped by the jenova inside him once he had his mental breakdown. he and jenova both wanted the same thing, but that wouldn't have happened if there weren't jenova cells inside him to take advantage of his moment of weakness. (same thing happens to cloud in the northern crater, disc 2 - instead of being directly manipulated, his personality molds to accept the impulses of jenova inside him)

>>617438
valid interpretation, but
>dat human laughter at the end of the epilogue

>>617438
Oh and I hate all of the spinoff shit as much as you do, believe me.

>>617438
>The Compilation of FFVII, particularly Advent Children
The reason I dread the announcement of a FFVII remake.
So much shit pissed me off in that, but the thing that really twisted my nips, was the Turks

Ignoring Tseng's resurrection, which fucks me off as much as all the Aerith shit, why they felt the need to take Reno and Rude, 2 of the most baddass, bro-est, characters in the game, and turn them into fucking clowns, is beyond me.

>>615256

>implying Sephiroth is Hojo's child

>>617541
>implying Vinchenzo's the father

punkass gets a crush on a woman, and straight up proposes to her.
She rightly puts him in his place, shacks up with the scientist she actually respects, and leaves him with spaghetti falling out his dapper Turk suit.

>>617535
>>617508
As I said, I just develop head canon. FFVII is a stand alone title, and can be viewed as such. Hell, its getting to the point I tend to disregard anything with "square" on the title post 2005.

If Jenova was behind everything the game would be over after you kill Jenova off for good in her SYNTHESIS form.

But the game ends because it was Sephiroth who drove everyone.

>>618242
>If Hitler was behind everything every Nazi would be gone the second he shot himself

>>617541
Sephiroth is Hojo's child. This was confirmed by the game's scenarist at Advent Children's premiere in France.

It's canon, deal with it.

>>612012

>Who do you believe is the true villain of FFVII?

The Turks.

>>612070
the jenova corruption is the only viable backing as to why sephiroth does a 180 in his personality

intriguing stuff. moar plx

It's Shinra that put everyone in the positions that they were in. Jenova didn't have a choice but Sephiroth, Zack, and to a lesser extent Cloud all did so Sephiroth is a villain too but not as thoroughly evil as Shinra.

No. Sephiroth is the villain. He's a madman, a complete and utter monster. The only reason anyone thinks otherwise is the massive yaoi / fangirl fandom.

>>619801
> Any argument that Jenova might have had an influence, as well as any attempts to figure out what caused Sephiroth to fly off the wagon into full on crazy town, are clearly the result of fangirls.

Are you fucking retarded? This isn't even the board for that.

Go back to /y/.

>>612137
the problem with this theory is the hate sephiroth harbors for cloud, his "killer". he really get out of his way to psychologically torture and spite cloud. seph's acts are a very personal vendetta that I don't think jenova would really give two fucks about, were she/it the real puppetmaster.

the real will behind the mother/son duo is sephiroth, I believe. maybe corrupted and led to total insanity by jenova's influence , but still the dominant personality

>>615471
Next time I play VII I'm going to read Barret's lines with Keith David's voice in my head.

Seriously you people who say Jenova is the villain are crazy. She WAS the villain of the ancient history but she'd been dormant for thousands of years. It was Shinra that dug her up, Shinra that fucked up everyones heads and turned Sephiroth into what he was. I mean, I can see how Sephiroth is the villain. The credits run after your fight with him after all. To me, though, the villain and the final boss are not always the same. It's very common in games for the final boss to be the creation of the villain, not the villain themselves.

>>620460
From the Shinra Building onward, after Jenova has broken out, you do see Sephiroth spite Cloud a lot. Pursuing him is the primary impetus for the trek across continents, leading to the Crater.
But what you're ultimately doing is bringing the Black Materia to the crater for the Jenova/Sephiroth dyad. When you've completed this task, Sephiroth leaves you alone, stops harassing you completely, and doesn't talk to you again.
Why's that?
It's because it wasn't Sephiroth. You've been harassed by Jenova in the form of Sephiroth, because that's what russles Cloud and the party's jimmies. It's solely for the purpose of goading you across the world, obtaining the Black Materia, and maybe also to add Cloud's cells to the reunion.

>>621329
But Jenova/Sephiroth kills President Shinra before you even leave Midgar, and the party sets off on their journey only after establishing that Shinra isn't the main threat.

>>612012
Of the actual story of the game? Sephiroth. He's the one you see all the time, he's the one who does the most damage, he's the one with a motive, and he's the one the story pretty much revolves around.

In the world? Shinra/Hojo.

>>612192
I used to, but now I don't hate him,
He's just not as interesting as Kefka.
Now if you want to talk about someone who really gets underrated because of how he dresses, we gotta talk about Kuja.

>>615471

>FF7 remake
>keith david voices barret
>kurt russel voices cloud (cloud gets a beard)
>wilford brimley voices sephiroth

i'd actually play FF7 if that was the case

>>622021
But Shinra is who's responsible. We see more and more of how truly fucked up the shit they did was constantly through flashbacks.

>>612170

To me they both have problems. While Sepiroth is total cliche emo faggotry Kefka is total cliche psycho faggotry.

Without shinra there would be no sephiroth

>>616003

>>615984
Who told him that?
Wasn't there a part in the game where he basically locked himself in a basement and read books on the Jenova experiments conducted on himself?

>>612090
>But corporations are people.

Tell that to an angry hippie.

>>623023
when sepiroth, cloud and zack were sent to nibelheim on a mission...he found that library and read n went ham...he believed himself to be a cetra and started despising humans for everything they've done to "mother" ...

>>618516
got a sauce?

>>623008
You can't unsee it.

>>623257
I was there to hear it. Otherwise, let's quote this:

>>Due to her guilt over causing Vincent's father's death, Lucrecia rejected him and entered into a relationship with Hojo. Lucrecia became pregnant, and she and Hojo offered up their unborn child to the Jenova Project.
>>Hojo simply injected Jenova cells into Lucrecia's unborn child. The child Lucrecia had was Sephiroth.
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Professor_Hojo

There is no question to me that Sephiroth was calling the shot over Jenova. Consider that..
>Jenova was in an incredibly weaken state, so weak that Shinra (made up of normal humans) could keep her control
>Why mindfuck Cloud so thoroughly unless you had a personal connection to him?
>Jenova could have used mostly anyone as a pawn to collect the black materia. Why pick Cloud? Because it's personal.
>The Jenova pieces assume the form of Sephiroth. Clearly he uses them as avatars and wants people to know its him. Jenova could make herslef look like anyone else but picks Sephiroth. Surely she would pick other forms to aid in her infiltration?
>Sephiroth's whole body can be seen in the northern cave. Not the true body of Jenova. Sephiroth.

>>615623
>Same could be said about FF6. It was about Empire/Gestahl/Vector/Magitek with the same oddly conflicted members in Celes, Leo, Cid and such until it got hijacked by Kefka.

Kekfa was there the whole time, and you knew he was going to be the ultimate evil too, you just could never get your hands around his scrawny little neck and throttle the life out of him to stop his faggotry. That's why he's such a good villain.

>>623257
dirge of cerberus flat out stats it and it's hinted in ff7.

Jenova was a parasitic planet destroyer (very similar to Lavos from Chrono Trigger). Jenova came to the planet 1000 years ago and wiped out the Ancients. But there's not really any evidence that Jenvoa is actually sentient. Jenova never speaks, or communicates with anyone in any way, except possibly Sephiroth, but we never see or hear it happening. It could all be in his head. Every action that we saw Jenova take in the game, Sephiroth (the real one, encased in Materia at the Northern Crater) was controlling her/him/it. Jenova was the origin of Sephiroth's power, but once Sephiroth had that power, Jenova seemed to be nothing more than a tool for him to use.

Shinra is your typical amoral corporation. Drain the planet's life force to make electricity and profit off it. Kill anyone who stands in the way, build para-military forces to maintain power. Hojo was a pretty generic mad scientist given free reign to do what he wanted by the amoral corporation. Shinra's hubris and Hojo's madness create Sephiroth, who in turn destroys Shinra and threatens the world. Just like Ghestal in FF6 unleashed Kefka. It's a typical Japanese trope that shows up in a lot of video games and anime. Evil Empire unleashes uncontrollable force that destroys the empire and threatens the world. It's World War II from the Japanese perspective.

Sephiroth is the one who threatened the entire world. You can blame Shinra and Hojo for creating him, and making him evil. You could even argue Jenova's DNA is responsible for him being insane. But that basically comes down to a "blame the parents" argument. Ultimately Sephiroth was in control. He was able to move around Jenova's corpse like a puppet, he could even affect the minds of anyone else who had Jenova DNA in them. Sephiroth on his own decided to seek the Black Materia, summon the Meteor, and tried to destroy the world in an attempt to absorb the energy released and become a god. He's the villain, he's the final boss.

>>612170
I can respect Sephiroth, he had a goal and proceeded to work his way towards said goal.
Kefka just got lucky, he didn't plan anything.

>>614953
Go explore Iciccle Inn and you'll find out.

>>617535
Tseng didn't die, it was a translation error

>>612170

>>628961
No Kefka was insane but smart enough to know how to survive.

>>620460

Sephiroth didn't physically do any of that, though. He was at Northern Crater all along. All those encounters were JENOVA-Project failures; Those guys in black you saw everywhere.

On the boat to Costa Del Sol - "Sephiroth" is on the boat, you fight a mutant Jenova. After Aeris' curtain call, you fight another Jenova mutation. Before the Bizarro and Safer Sephiroths, you fight the last Jenova mutation - leftovers from Hojo's experimentations.

>>615984
This guy got it.

Jenova isnt really a villain. Shes a force of nature. Sephiroth was a lab rat whose mind was snapped when he learn't of what he was, the Shinra company started off with noble intentions but was corrupted by greed and power. Hojo is the only character without remorse of compassion and alsmot every problem that the other cast faces is down to him

>>612034

"Main antagonist" and "True villian" dont mean the same thing

Sephiroth is the antagonist, Hoji is the villain

>>619539

You mean other than learning his entire life is a lie?

>>612336
I thought it was Hojo who monsterized Vincent. That's what I recall from both VII and Dirge of Cerberus.

>>627170

>Hinted

No it is outright stated in the game. I swear nobody remembers this game properly

>>612336

You're an idiot. The worst thing is you actually think youre being clever with that shit

>>629085

Yes. Hojo shoots him and turns him intoa monster when nobody else is around

Even though I've probably put more hours into Final Fantasy 6 than any other console game I have to say I really didn't think Kefka was much of a villain.

>>629070
Hojo also admits to injecting himself with Jenova cells before his boss fight.
It could have been just then at the height of his madness, but who knows how far back it could have been.
The Sephiroth experiments, going along Gast's original misinformation about Jenova being an Ancient so Shinra will be more inclined to continue to fund his research, weakening the seal on the Jenova sample in the Shinra building so it can break loose maybe.
So many more events could also be down to the influence of Jenova.

>>612063
The FFVII Ultimania dispels this. Sephiroth was acting on his own

Jenova = Lavos
Sephiroth = Queen Zeal?

If Jenova was in total control then why was Sephiroth's original boy preserved in the northen crater? The image of sephiroth was useful to manipulate cloud but if Jenova was capable of producing that image whenever needed, why keep the original around? Why was the original real sephiroth at the literal core of all of Jenova's plans, being the recipient of the black materia, sitting right where the mako would be concentrated?


Control? No I don't think so. By the end of 7 Jenova and Sephiroth were facets of the same thing too closely entangled to be properly distinguished from one another. Sephiroth as the Ego and Jenova as the ID.

>>623684
>Jenova could have used mostly anyone as a pawn to collect the black materia. Why pick Cloud? Because it's personal.

Not that I disagree with you but this point is circumstantial. There were other sephiroth clones at the temple before you and a jenova fragment in sephiroth form (that attacked tseng) too, the location was known and others had tried to get the materia. If cloud hadn't gotten it some other clone would have.

>The Jenova pieces assume the form of Sephiroth. Clearly he uses them as avatars and wants people to know its him. Jenova could make herslef look like anyone else but picks Sephiroth. Surely she would pick other forms to aid in her infiltration?

We only follow the path of cloud as a kind of sephiroth clone who had personal experience with Sephiroth, there were a lot of other clones that we never learn much about. It's possible to assume that every clone followed something different.

>>630540
It's too bad about this because FF7's story is a thousand times more cohesive and overall better if Jenova is the controller in the story.

>>612012
Its the terrorists. How do we know that the psychotic visions of Cloud weren't "clouding" the entire narrative?

Cloud is a terrorist and a spawn of Satan. We were playing the villain the whole time.

>>627273

This. There's really no reason to think that Jenova is sentient. It's just an extremely powerful planet eating beast. Obviously Sephiroth is driven mad by the influence of Jenova's cells, but it's his own personal _human_ psychoses that make him so evil.

One thing I've never understood from the game: what the hell happened to Niebelheim? Obviously it couldn't have burned down since it looks exactly the same when you go there. I get the whole Cloud-imagining-he-was-Zach thing, but did he just make that entire part up?

>>631209
Shinra rebuilt it. This is explained in-game.

>>631223

Rebuilt it so that every single building looks exactly the same, and everyone there is a Shinra employee who denies the fire happened? That's dumb as hell.

>>612012
clod was the real villian
jenova was attempting to purify the world from the horror the plagued it.

>>631209
if you go back during the final disc, the people there mention it was rebuilt and that they're actors paid by Shinra to hide the fact it was burnt down.

>>631276
Who the fuck were they even hiding this fact from? Just Avalanche? What's the point? It's like paying someone to be your friend.

>>631298
If anyone discovers a fire broke out there and that Shinra was behind it, it would eventually lead to the discovery of the mansion and the Mako Reactor.

If that happened, the entire companies agenda would become public knowledge.

>>631268
It's called a "Cover-Up". Shinra didn't want word to spread about what went down there.

>>631309
Who would discover this? The dead townspeople? The hippies at Cosmo Canyon? It's some isolated town in the mountains. If anything, they should have spent their resources trying to hunt down and murder Tifa and her teacher, since those were the only other survivors anyway.

>>630959
I never understood the whole "I think the main character looks like a fag, so lets show what would happen if the main character acted the way I think someone who looks like that should act." What exactly does it accomplish other than just being a really convoluted way of saying "Cloud's a fag."

There's trolling, and then there's spending way too much time and energy trolling.

>>631334
I didn't personally think about the impact of the joke. I more just posted it because of the art and because it was for the game at hand. On the merits of making some sort of statement about the game, I don't think the creator was too intent on conveying what you say.

>>631321

Actually I think it's called "creating a cool mystery where the main character questions his sanity, but then writing yourself into a corner"

>>631367
Considering the Shinra Mansion is where they seemed to hide all their most secret research and they were using the mountain reactor to generate fucking Monsters, I'm more apt to believe they covered it up to protect their dark secrets and prevent mass hysteria due to their Most Elite SOLDIER going AWOL and killing an entire town.

Or, you know, you can just assume that that makes no sense for whatever reason.

>>631393

Wouldn't it make more sense to, you know, put a fucking fence up around the place?

>>631401
Consider also that they torched Corel for no reason, didn't cover that up even though that one was actually their fault, and no one even passed around a petition.

>>631407
And by not covering up what happened in Corel, they ended up with a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying the company. Maybe they learned from their mistakes.

>>631430
It's like watching a Brady Bunch episode where one of the kids keeps telling more and more outrageous lies and making a mountain out of a molehill.

>>620460
>Sephiroth hates Cloud
No he doesn't, he just perceives him as a threat, as a lower creature, perhaps as an embarrassing memory, and probably as a rival once he realizes he's being followed.

Sephiroth is sadistic and deals a lot of collateral damage with everything he does, but it's not like anything points to a specific hatred of Cloud. You could make a case for Dyne and Barrett having an extrovertedly destructive relationship but I don't think any really significant characters have such a relationship.

>>631442
As far as Shinra Inc. is concerned, I think that's a good analogy.

>>631407
>>631430
Also worth mentioning that the Corel incident, while pretty heinous, didn't involve the production of monsters through the use of Mako, no did it involve the worlds most powerful soldier going bat-shit and turning to genocide.

Corel was Shinra doing typical evil corporate shit, The Nibelheim Incident was on a whole 'nother level of fucked up.

>>631401
Fair enough, but I think it's the idea of hiding in plain sight. If the town was deserted and a fence erected, that would seem a lot more suspicious than if, for example, nothing ever happened at all.

>>612079
top lel

>>631465
It still begs the question, why would anyone connect them creating monsters with the town suddenly burning down out of nowhere?

>>631486
>Mako reactor
>Shitloads of monsters
>Mansions documenting the Jenova and Mako experiments
>Town is a burnt down shithole

It's be weird NOT to link them to the incident.

>>631442
First of all, that was my first contribution to this conversation, second, where exactly did I lie? It sounds more like you just ran out of counter-arguements. If you're gonna be a tripfag you should make more of an effort not to make an ass of yourself.

>>631486
I see what you're getting at, what with the lack of survivors and such, but re-read what you wrote really quick...

>Reactor used to create Monsters
>Nearby town suddenly burns down out of nowhere.

I mean, it doesn't require a huge jump in logic to make some assumptions, even if they wouldn't be 100% accurate, there's still evidence of sinister shit going down in that area due to Shinra's involvement.

>>631519
>Reading Comprehension

He was describing the Shinra Corp, not your post

>>631509
But... OK, think about this from an outsider's perspective. You didn't go up with Sephiroth, Cloud, Zack, Tifa, and one other guard who died to investigate a problem at a reactor. Sephiroth didn't exactly write about all of it in a manifesto either. All you would really know if Shinra didn't cover it up is that some crazy SOLDIER burned down the town. Furthermore, it was only after the town burned down that he went to retreive Jenova, and he didn't even make it out of the reactor with its head. Zack was killed, and they thought they killed Cloud at the same time. Sephiroth and Tifa disappeared. Who were they trying to fool? Every witness to events seen in the flashback was taken care of.