A few questions about some FF7 things

[Trias_Pandora]

This thread will probably be updated with questions at random times if my fic requires that, so I figured to get that out of the way.

Does anyone know how old Rocket Town is when FF7 starts? Like, is it 28 years old? 42? 3?? Also, just how heavy is the Buster Sword? Would Tifa be able to lift it, and if so, how?

 

[Dionysos]

I'll try and answer to the best of my ability.

Rocket Town is fairly new. Whether there was an original settlement in the vicinity before the rocket program is unclear (if there was, its identity has clearly been lost as 'Rocket Town' leaves no room at all for speculation on the function of the town). The town that we see was built to house workers of the rocket program which Cid Highwind was involved with. By this logic it may be closer to five or so years old at the time which Final Fantasy VII starts.

That said, the rocket which failed to launch at Rocket Town is rocket number 26. There were other rocket launches (which also appear to have been unsuccessful) and I'm not actually sure where they launched from. One rocket ends up in Midgar in the church in the slums. A lot of people overlook it, but it has been there the whole time. Must have fallen through the ceiling after a botched launch.

I have no idea if that rocket launched from Rocket Town too (which could make the town older) but considering that it is a failed launch and landed in Midgar, it seems more probable that this launch happened in or near Midgar somewhere.

As for the Buster Sword. It is incredibly heavy. Stupidly heavy. If they've ever actually specified its actual weight and measurements then I'm not aware of that. It should be expected that only people who have undergone extensive training could be able to use it. Tifa is very strong and is extremely talented at martial arts, but I’m not sure how easily she’d be able to wield the Buster Sword. Lift it for a bit, possibly. She attempted to use Sephiroth's Masamune (a considerably lighter weapon, though also unwieldy) during the Nibelheim Incident but was unsuccessful with it.

It has been argued by some that Cloud himself shouldn't have been able to wield the Buster Sword so effectively since he never actually made it to the Soldier elites (instead only making it to infantryman) and that during the Nibelheim Incident he might have been running on adrenaline. That said, he still underwent intense military training with the intention of becoming a Soldier and with Hojo's experiments on him post-incident there was no doubt he would be strong enough to wield it as comfortably as he could.

 

[Trias_Pandora]

I had no flapping CLUE that the metal cylinder was a rocket! What else have I not noticed?! Holy Shark....

 

[poker king46]

Rocket Town would definitely be a few decades old. While I imagine that machines can be created quickly I would still imagine that building a rocket takes at least a couple of months and that is assuming that all of the science and math to ensure it doesn't blow up or fall out of the sky is perfect. I would make the argument that it would take a minimum of 1 year to design and build a rocket and that is also assuming that there's plenty of funding. We know from Cid's story that Shinra eventually funnels a lot of Gil into it but it also existed before that. So following my own logic train we start with a minimum of 26 years prior to the start of the game. this isn't taking into account how many years the No.26 sat and rusted in the center of town.

Now following my train further down the tracks I would say it is fair to assume that Shinra didn't start funneling money into the space program until at least half way through. That would leave 13 rockets (minimum as this doesn't assume any defective or failed designs that never finished production). from this I would further argue that it would take more than one year per rocket. We can assume that the first rocket would have taken 2-4 years and a minimum of 2 years for each rocket afterward as they would have to justify to Shinra executives why they should bother with spending more money on that. This would be a bureaucratic process that likely has a lot of red tape to get through taking months if not years depending on information technology at the time.

Through it all I would probably state that the town existed for at least 35-40 years prior to the events of the original game. Of course this is all speculation as the game doesn't really offer much information about it all.

 

[Dionysos]

I had no flapping CLUE that the metal cylinder was a rocket! What else have I not noticed?! Holy Shark....

Ha ha. Yeah, there are loads of background details in the field maps of these games. To give some examples off the top of my head... There is the jet fighter which has crashed into the fossils at Bone Village. There are abandoned Mad Max-style vehicles at Corel Prison suggesting all sorts of hell had been going on down there. There's a casual dinosaur relief in the Temple of the Ancients (I personally interpret this as a joke about the extinction of the dinosaurs due to a meteor, but that's just me and nothing is ever explained about its significance in the game).

I think the rocket might be one of my favourites though.

Rocket Town would definitely be a few decades old. While I imagine that machines can be created quickly I would still imagine that building a rocket takes at least a couple of months and that is assuming that all of the science and math to ensure it doesn't blow up or fall out of the sky is perfect. I would make the argument that it would take a minimum of 1 year to design and build a rocket and that is also assuming that there's plenty of funding. We know from Cid's story that Shinra eventually funnels a lot of Gil into it but it also existed before that. So following my own logic train we start with a minimum of 26 years prior to the start of the game. this isn't taking into account how many years the No.26 sat and rusted in the center of town.

Now following my train further down the tracks I would say it is fair to assume that Shinra didn't start funneling money into the space program until at least half way through. That would leave 13 rockets (minimum as this doesn't assume any defective or failed designs that never finished production). from this I would further argue that it would take more than one year per rocket. We can assume that the first rocket would have taken 2-4 years and a minimum of 2 years for each rocket afterward as they would have to justify to Shinra executives why they should bother with spending more money on that. This would be a bureaucratic process that likely has a lot of red tape to get through taking months if not years depending on information technology at the time.

Through it all I would probably state that the town existed for at least 35-40 years prior to the events of the original game. Of course this is all speculation as the game doesn't really offer much information about it all.

It could possibly be older and the buildings do look quite quaint in style, but it isn't clear.
According to the timelines provided in the 10th Anniversary Ultimania, the number 26 aborted launch was about 4 years before Final Fantasy VII. It just looks like it has been around for longer because of the degree of decay.

As far as I can ascertain we only know for certain that Rocket Town was built before rocket number 26's launch, maybe built for that launch in particular. Despite being the 26th rocket it was the first one which Cid and Shinra seemed confident in for getting them to space. It took a while to get there.

While we only know for certain that the town was built for rocket 26 at the very latest, what we aren’t told we can speculate on, so it is possible it was built for earlier rockets too. That said, as the rocket in Midgar suggests it may be that not all rockets were launched from Rocket Town. The creation of that settlement might have been a much later development in the rocket program as an attempt to try and avoid accidents like the rocket accident in Midgar. Cid actually mentions the Midgar rocket in the game during a throwaway remark, so it is something which happened within Cid's lifetime. Considering that he is supposed to be 32 years old during FFVII (despite looking much, much older in my opinion) that doesn't give us much time to work with beforehand as during the failed launch of rocket 26 he would have been about 28. All of these earlier tests would have been during his twenties (if he was involved with all of them) and Rocket Town could therefore not be that old even if it had served as the launch site for a good number of them.

 

[Paddy McGee]

These discussions always get me thinking about the depth in each game's own universe and world's! And whether less is more in certain cases (some of the compilation of VII is fun - I watched Advent Children Complete last night. It's dumb but fun - but I found other aspects a bit...bleh)

Anyways - buster SWORD: https://www.destructoid.com/cloud-s-buster-sword-weighs-80-pounds-in-real-life-254138.phtml

The real life buster sword is about 80 pounds, apparently - so I'd assume it's probably not far off it, in game. Ultimately the issue with the sword isn't the heft, per say, but the size in general. I can't imagine it would realistically have a great edge - seems more like a clubbing weapon to me!

I'm sure all the melee or large characters in FFVII can lift it... But none outside of Cloud and other SOLDIER-level people can use it well.

Just my thoughts though!

 

[Ilyena]

Anyways - buster SWORD: https://www.destructoid.com/cloud-s-buster-sword-weighs-80-pounds-in-real-life-254138.phtml

The real life buster sword is about 80 pounds, apparently - so I'd assume it's probably not far off it, in game. Ultimately the issue with the sword isn't the heft, per say, but the size in general. I can't imagine it would realistically have a great edge - seems more like a clubbing weapon to me!

I'm sure all the melee or large characters in FFVII can lift it... But none outside of Cloud and other SOLDIER-level people can use it well.

It looks like in the video, someone else had to help him lift it to smash it down so I can't imagine it being very useful in real life (the edge would be an issue too). Cloud really shouldn't be able to lift the weapon above his head the way he does much less spin it with one hand.

 

[Trias_Pandora]

Guess that's where the Mako Enhancements come in. Along with Hojo spiking the shots with Jenova Cells. Which makes me want to know now if the Turks got the same shots, or did they get them without the Cells. I remember one of the new Remake trailers had Reno teleporting and someone here (?) saying they made the Turks enhanced now?

Which makes me wonder how the Turks didn't have Geostigma in Advent and yet Rufus did.

Another Turk related question: After FF7, do the other Turks ever come back to Tseng's command or did they all flick their collective tail off and never come back?

 

[Dionysos]

Anyways - buster SWORD: https://www.destructoid.com/cloud-s-buster-sword-weighs-80-pounds-in-real-life-254138.phtml

That's awesome, but it also proves that we have to suspend our disbelief about the Buster Sword when imagining it as an actual weapon. The fact that they had to rest it on a chair so that they could make it look like they were holding it, and it took two guys to actually slice down with the thing shows that it is incredibly unwieldy.

Applying reality to that sword probably isn't going to work. We may just have to roll with special cases like Cloud being able to use weapons like that simply because it looks cool in a game and physics be damned.

Which makes me want to know now if the Turks got the same shots, or did they get them without the Cells. I remember one of the new Remake trailers had Reno teleporting and someone here (?) saying they made the Turks enhanced now?

By teleportation, do you mean this?

I hadn’t interpreted that as teleportation when I saw it, but I can understand that interpretation. I took it to be a bit of an anime trope and a way to make Reno look like he’s travelling very fast (something we see a lot of in the Compilation but not much in the original game). Alternatively, Reno is a character associated with sparky lightning (his electric rod being prominent in his battles in the original game) so maybe they've expanded on that and given him Flash-esque moves in a restrained way. Or maybe he can charge and release energy to move extremely fast for a short period of time.

I am not aware of any extensive Mako experiments on the Turks in the original game, but it is possible that I've missed something there. They were mostly just the secret police / secret service / spies of Shinra. They primarily watched people from the shadows or carried out secret missions rather than being relied upon for open military uses.

You don't need to be infused with Mako to use magic though. You just need access to materia.

Which makes me wonder how the Turks didn't have Geostigma in Advent and yet Rufus did.

A degree of luck (like any disease, not all people catch it), but also circumstances. Geostigma appeared to infect people more easily when they were distressed to the point of losing hope or believing that they were about to die. In On the Way to a Smile you witness Rufus' stressful moments. Also, whilst the Planet's inhabitants feared it was contagious and isolated patients (or left them to die alone in some cases) in reality it seems the disease was not contagious, so the Turks wouldn't have contracted it from Rufus by proximity.

Another Turk related question: After FF7, do the other Turks ever come back to Tseng's command or did they all flick their collective tail off and never come back?

Most Turks had already dispersed following the events in Crisis Core and Before Crisis. What we see in the original game is an already thinned version of the Turks. I guess that's why they desperately needed new blood in the form of the inexperienced (at first) Elena.

After the original game, the core Turks (Tseng, Elena, Reno and Rude) did stick around but they didn't really have a company to work for. They were Turks in name and they still dressed like Turks, but officially the Turks had no role because Shinra as a company no longer existed. The Turks helped with the evacuations of Midgar during the fall of Meteor and helped to restore Midgar (or, rather, build a new town called Edge on its outskirts). Some of the former Turks (from Crisis Core and Before Crisis) briefly helped out with evacuating Midgar too, but I don't believe they had anything else to do with them after that since they had technically defected from Shinra anyway.

The core group of Turks which we are familiar with from the original game became bodyguards of sorts for Rufus Shinra when they discovered he had survived the attack by Diamond Weapon and they all tried to fix some of the problems the company had caused. The Turks after the original game were very much a humbled group. That said, they were already heading that way towards the end of the original game once things with Sephiroth got particularly serious.

 

[Trias_Pandora]

That is still a heavy sword and Tifa would look alittle weird trying to carry it then. Got it. Thank you for that.

So Reno can Flash-Step then? Flash-Step a good term?

As for Turks getting Mako Enhancements, I'm the same as you. I never found or heard of anything like that with the Turks until the Remake came out and I honestly can't remember where I heard that the Remake had the Turks enhanced. *Shrugs* Maybe Reno's abilities in the trailer are hints of new Command Materia or something.

Also, I would like to thank you guys for the info about Rocket Town and the sword! :3

 

[Dionysos]

So Reno can Flash-Step then? Flash-Step a good term?

Flash-Step seems like a good name to me! I think Reno would approve of that as it almost sounds like a dance move, fitting his playful personality.
I suspect that we might get an official name for it when the Remake launches (that is if it is an actual move he uses in battle as opposed to something he only does in that cut-scene).

As for Turks getting Mako Enhancements, I'm the same as you. I never found or heard of anything like that with the Turks until the Remake came out and I honestly can't remember where I heard that the Remake had the Turks enhanced. *Shrugs* Maybe Reno's abilities in the trailer are hints of new Command Materia or something.

I would love to find that source about Turks getting Mako enhancements in the Remake too. I have avoided some things to avoid spoilers for the Remake, so it is very possible that I have missed something there. But if it isn't that then at a guess I would agree that it could be a command materia of some form, or connected to his weapon. For the latter possibility I'm referring to the electrical energy being very similar to that which his rod emits in the original game and it might be that he somehow uses his rod to help him move quickly (a bit like Noctis in FFXV, perhaps). That's another idea, but hopefully we'll find out when the full game releases.