Do you see Cloud as a terrorist?

DarkClaymore

DarkClaymore

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I sure do.
I don't care that he suffered a lot in the past and that he is fighting the "bad guys".

He was part a terrorists team. He helped to blow up things.
Conclusion: he is a terrorist!

No sympahty for terrorist!!! :yay:
 
i lol!

Well, technically, he is a terrorist, so yea. However, that is just a matter of perception (stupid school and its shitty syllabus >.<) Othrs would call him freedom fighters, which seems to be the case in FF7
 
well when he blew up the reactor he was a mercenary paid by a terrorist after that he didn't do much terrorist stuff what with trying to save the world and all ,now barret on the other hand was a full bore terrorist
 
This should be moved to FF-Fun, as I can't see this being a real post.

However, if this is in fact serious, then the TP is continuously exposing a failure to grasp FFVII's plot or characters as a whole.

Cloud was a mercenary, a fact that was clearly established in the game. He did whatever the job was for a reasonable price of money. Barret and his gang were Eco-terrorists, another fact clearly established in the game. If it's one of those "associative" things, then okay, he was a temporary accomplice to terrorist activities, and? He went on to protect the planet.

Additionally, the only real government that could convict him for his "crimes" was the very one that he and AVALANCHE were rising against. A government that was clearly corrupt. In fact, if not for Cloud and the gang, that very government would have went on to kill the planet. Upon Cloud and the gang's actions, and a gain of understanding throughout the course of FF7, the company's remaining members (including Shinra himself) insisted on protecting the planet.

Ultimately, all that's been made here is an innacurate statement regarding Cloud's "profession". Any other point to this thread that I could be missing?
 
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first of all i fuckin loved this game but terrorism is terrorism and barret is a terrorist now its debatable if cloud was or if shinra was evil but whats not up for debate is the fact that the people in the reactor were innocent and the murder of innocents is inexcusable so in my book barret deserved the death sentence shinra passed on him plus the best parts of the game was the parts with shinra in it
 
Freedom fighter is a nice word for terrorist. Cait Sith raises the point in Disc 2 of how many people Barret and AVALANCHE killed by blowing up the reactors in the beginning. Tifa is the one who acknowledges this, as she said to Barret "I'm not sure about me...my feelings" after Barret expresses his desire to fight Shinra to the death after the destruction of Sector 7 in Disc 1. Yes, AVALANCHE can easily be labelled as terrorists, whether they are fighting a corrupt government or not. They still knowingly killed many people by doing what they did. I highly doubt the massive explosions benefitted the environment either. Even when Jessie saw how big her bomb was, she nonchalantly shrugged it off as a miscalculation, not too worried by the fact that her error claimed even more lives. FF7, and especially Midgar, is a world of people with numbed feelings due to the harsh and dark world they are forced to live in due to Shinra. Yes, to destroy Shinra there will be losses. Shinra willingly destroyed an entire town without blinking an eyelid, just to stamp out the resistance. AVALANCHE claim lives to blow up a Reactor. The difference is their intention. FF7 deals with what we could call 'terrorism' or 'freedom fighting' from a subjective point of view, but ultimately it wasn't by destroying reactors that the planet was saved, hence the game's message that although their intentions were good, their deeds were still bad. Yet the characters do acknowledge it, and admit their mistakes. That is where the difference lies.
You can call them terrorists, freedom fighters, whatever blows your hair back, but at the end of the day they did not succeed in saving the planet through their initial activities.
 
They went over the whole "innocent lives lost" things several times in the game. In fact, late Disc 2, Cait Sith and Barret have huge character interaction by debating Avalanche's actions.

Barret attempts to justify that a few lives were a small cost to his cause. That was when Cait Sith responded with his ever famous line, "What may be a few to you was everything to those who died..." Upon reflection, Barret knew he was right. And in fact, throughout most of the latter half of the game, he was debating whether Shinra was actually right in their doing. It comes into question several times.

That's why Shinra's not considered an "evil" government just because Cloud and the gang are the protagonists. It's a lot more complex to that. They have the same objectives, different intentions (until later), and different methods of going about these things. Thus, they are consistently at odds with one another. And ultimately, Shinra (sans Hojo) aimed to take out threats against the planet as well (Sephiroth, Weapons, etc...)

So really, all of this was addressed in the game, and perspectives from a lot of characters are explored as a result of this. And FF7, thank goodness, isn't one of those games that comes down to "black and white" views, which appears to be at the root of this topic. Avalanche's actions may have been faulty, but so were the reactors draining the planet of its energy. Hence why there's a theme of moral ambiguity revolving around Avalanche's actions (yes, it was intended). We can't say one group was "wrong", while ignoring the other's faults.

And again, drawing this back to Cloud - there's a reason why his character doesn't reflect on this as much as Barret or even Tifa. He was a mercenary, doing his job, regardless of what it was. Not that different from SOLDIER, actually.

In any case, none of this means that we shouldn't sympathize for the characters or come to support them. That's just slop coming from a user who seems intent on finding reasons not to like the game.
 
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Well if you wanna think about it.... i guess he would be a terrorist, but then again not (referring to Avalanche) cause they blew up the shite to try and save the planet. Bah! Oxymoron.
 
Obviously, the motivation that Barret communicates strongest at the game's beginning is his sentiment that Shinra Corp. is sucking the life out of the Planet. However, we of course find out later in the game that Shinra was responsible for the deaths of his wife and his best friend, and thus one wonders whether "saving the Planet" is just a rationalization for vengeance. More subtle, but an equally strong motivation I think, is the fact that Corel's economic success was totally assured until Shinra discovered Mako power; the player is explicitly shown in the game that the main reason why the Corel authorities allowed Shinra to build the reactor there was because the sun was setting on coal. And you can see when you arrive at North Corel that what's on the people's mind isn't just the death of their loved ones in the incident 4 years ago; it's also the fact that their entire livelihood has been taken from them. Barret is a "techno-freak" who displaced the only thing that ever put Old Corel on the map. I think that's another layer behind Barret: destroying Shinra doesn't just mean saving the Planet, it also means saving Corel and King Coal.

Does that prevent us from calling him a terrorist? Since he's waging a war on civilian targets without being officially in Corel's employ, no it doesn't. I mean, even if Old Corel had preempted Shinra and waged a "war on Mako power" by sending in operatives to blow up their reactors, then it would be reprehensible, but it wouldn't be terrorism.

So the point I'm getting at is that it really doesn't matter what the characters' motivations were; this is a very fascinating issue in the story, but it isn't what defines a terrorist. What defines a terrorist is whether the person in question has attacked civilian targets without official government sanction. Is Cloud is a terrorist with Barret? Well, he clearly starts out as a mercenary interested in himself only, and the only reason he pursues Sephiroth is to settle their personal feud -- not to save the Planet. And clearly that motivation changes in Cloud only after AVALANCHE has been attacking non-civilian targets for a while. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the game he still participated in Barret's actions without any governmental sanction, and I think that makes him a terrorist.
 
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Cloud only did what he was paid to do; his job wasn't to create terror, it was to follow orders so, in my view, he's not a terrorist. AVALANCHE themselves, however, are, but for deeper reasons than the Shin-Ra news stations made them out to be. As far as I've ever been aware, AVALANCHE never hurt an innocent person in their attempts to purge the world of Shin-Ra. Although their methods were somewhat extreme, their intentions were good.
 
Hmm.... I don't know. It could go either way. They didn't blow up a building for a religion, or simplt to kill. Freedom fighter? No... I think the took the path of a lesser evil. In their world, they had used the planets energy for power. So the planet was dying right? Then doing nothing about the problem was pretty much terrorism in itself, I think. There couldn't be a right way in their situation.
 
Lara Croft said:
As far as I've ever been aware, AVALANCHE never hurt an innocent person in their attempts to purge the world of Shin-Ra.
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No? Not when you see all that wreckage after you come out of the Reactor 1 attack? That was on the upper plate; how many people do you think died down in the slums, where most of the debris probably landed? Barret himself admits in the conversation on Disc 2 that, "Lookin' back on it now, I can see that [blowing up the Mako reactor] wasn't the right way to do things. I made a lot of friends and innocent bystanders suffer..." We have no reason to think that the Reactor 5 bombing caused any less damage and loss of life.
 
Toma said:
he blew up the reactor he was a mercenary paid by a terrorist
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I don't think that he is, no. He was paid and hired by AVALANCHE to help 'em with this, it's not like he went around blowing up houses and people for his own hobby/work. If I remember correctly, he said, that after the job would be over he'd be outta there. Therefor not really showing he's eager to blow up more stuff, in my opinion.

Either way, my answer would be no, I don't see him as a terrorist.
 
Not really, as we normally use the word terrorist to describe someone that is 'bad'.
The people that were killed in the destruction of the reactors were collateral damage, they weren't the intended targets. Whether or not that is terrorism is subjective. But to call Coud a terrorist would give Shinra an implied legitimacy that they don't deserve.
 
I think the perspective on this issue is largely dependant on how someone defines 'Terrorism'. The definition of 'Terrorism' is debatable, but the way I see it; a Terrorist group is a (non-government) group which uses terror to obtain a political or ideological goal.

I think labelling AVALANCHE as a terrorist group is accurate. At face value I think the term 'Freedom fighters' is just a euphemism. AVALANCHE used means of terror in an attempt to destroy Shinra ergo they are terrorists.

As for Cloud, I don't think he could be labelled as a terrorist at the beginning of the game. He had no political or ideological goals he was just a mercenary. So I think it is safer to call Cloud a money-grubbing fuckwit as opposed to a terrorist.
 
At the start of the game he helps blow up a mako reactor that is slowly but surely destroying the world. I don't consider that terrorism. I consider that a heroic act that strides against the laws of a corrupt company 'Shinra'.

If someone in reality would in secret go to North Korea and destroy the nuclear power plants would you hate them and call them terrorists or would you have a safer feeling inside of yourself knowing that North Korea won't be able to bomb innocent individuals now?

Maybe a bit over the edge example, but it proves my point. His actions were in the end for the greater good.
 
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VII Master said:
If someone in reality would in secret go to North Korea and destroy the nuclear power plants would you hate them and call them terrorists or would you have a safer feeling inside of yourself knowing that North Korea won't be able to bomb innocent individuals now?
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No, but that person would be considered a terrorist to North Korea. So I think Shinra, and some of the slum members (primarily due to Shinra), are the only ones in the FFVII Universe who'd really consider AVALANCHE terrorists. But even then, some members in Shinra seemed to realize how corrupt the company was.

In any case, I agree with the points above. Yours, as well as LockhartAvenue, Jimmy Savile, and SaShman. Excellent points made, and pretty much how I feel myself.

Terrorism is really only considered terrorism to those who are feeling the effects of it. In this case, the group feeling the effect are criminals themselves (though, it's the slum victims that make AVALANCHE's acts kind of faulty).

And in Cloud's case, he was a mercenary. This fact was clearly established in the game. Read my sig =]. He couldn't have cared less about the actual "activism" that Barret and the others pleaded. In his mind, he was doing the job he was hired to do. No different from from SOLDIER or an actual soldier, really. Even when Rufus Shinra asked, he clarified that he was a mercenary.
 
Cloud=mercenary. He gets paid by Barret to help AVALANCHE blow up the reactor, but he expressed at the start that he was only helping them for the money.
 
To be honest, I kind of thought that was the point of the beginning of this game... to put the player behind this eco-terrorist group instead of clearly defined, horse-riding heroes. Like HighwindPilot said, it's not completely black and white, so it makes the player think.

Eco-terrorism is usually damage done to property or machines instead of humans. (I'm not saying they never hurt people, but it's usually not the goal.) Someone's going to have to refresh my memory, because it's been a while - how empty was the Mako reactor when they destroyed it? When they set the bomb, did people evacuate? I know there were people there to begin with because of the random battles. Anyway, not taking any measures to evacuate the reactor would put them on the pretty extreme end of eco-terrorism, I'd have to say.

That brings me back to Cloud. I like him as much as the next player, but it's not as if he didn't know what was going on. He's a smart guy. He may not have condoned it or cared at all, but he knew there would be extreme property damage and more than a few deaths, accidental or not. Because he's not fighting on behalf of his own beliefs, I won't call him a terrorist. I will say this - if this happened in real life right now, and Cloud joined any terrorist group just because they'd pay him well, he would be called a terrorist by most people.
 
Well he didn't like Shinra so he could very well had been a terrorist but he is Mercenary for hire (like what he and zack set out to do once they reached Midgar) nothing more nothing less
 
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