I Want to Become a Hero - A Commentary on Crisis Core FInal Fantasy VII Reunion

Zack’s dream is to become a hero. I can’t even tell you how many times he says that during the roughly twenty hours of gameplay I spent with the high-energized 1st Class SOLDIER. It is a beautiful dream. A respectful one. One I knew he wouldn’t fulfill completely from the beginning. Any person who has played Final Fantasy VII or maybe has lost themselves in the many lore wiki pages on Final Fantasy 7 lore knows that. So hasn't our experience been spoiled already? What does Crisis Core want to tell us that is worth making a game everybody knows the end of? However, for a game committed to telling a story I knew a great bit about, it has given me more than I expected.

In Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – which is not a remake, only a remaster - I followed a high-definition Zack Fair.  His journey from a squat-aficionado 2nd Class SOLDIER to occupying the same rank as Sephiroth has turns I could not see coming. Some choices were made in terms of concepts that I did not enjoy and I still don’t think they are interesting at all. While the whole Angeal-Genesis arc is important to understand Zack’s character, I couldn’t care less about Genesis’s and Angeal’s condition as failed experiments because they are only there to serve the narrative and prepare the terrain for Sephiroth’s discovery.

On the other hand, the story of Crisis Core took me through heartwarming moments. If in Final Fantasy VII players start the game already in a world in collapse at the edge of destruction, Crisis Core gives us the opportunity to see how things were before, when people were dreaming of a wealthy future and the downside of this dream was not explicit yet. I met little Yuffie fighting for her country and read Tifa’s messages looking for a blond guy among the SOLDIER ranks. 

However, this is not a great game only because it gave me more context about things I already knew or made Zack’s death more personal to me. There is more to it than meets the eye. Crisis Core elegantly carries a powerful argument by killing maybe one of the nicest people Midgard had seen. By doing so, the game seems to understand that kindness and a romanticized perspective toward life are great but remarkably difficult to sustain. Just like the flowers Aerith takes care of, they can easily die in the outside world. To act in good will might not be enough, since the evilness in the world might engulf you in the middle of your journey.  

This may be a good moment for me to tell you that the next section contains an in-depth description of Zack’s last moments which for some can be considered a spoiler of some sort. You’ve been warned.

To better comprehend Crisis Core’s argument, you must understand that Zack Fair is a good person. 

Handsome, friendly, and very energetic, Zack wins anyone right off the bat. He is a kind man, always more concerned with others than with himself. His whole journey to help Angeal and even Genesis shows that, but no example is stronger than his commitment to saving Cloud. By choosing to carry the almost-dead soldier with him, Zack ends up in a very delicate situation which he seems to believe is completely possible to deal with with a smile and enough confidence. 

And even though Zack works as a super strong genetic-modified bodyguard for Shinra, he tries to follow his own moral compass. While avoiding thinking about his own role in Yuffie’s situation, Zack does have compassion towards the kid as well as the surviving soldiers from Wutai. He doesn’t want to harm them nor does he take pleasure in destroying their home. So Zack strives to make everyone happy at the same time he fulfills his duty as a SOLDIER. 

Being a SOLDIER and helping Shinra take Mako energy to everyone is a means to positively affect the world for Zack. So he takes his job really seriously, becoming so committed to turning his and Shinra’s dream into reality that he’s capable of looking away from the company’s misdeeds. He’s the type of person who would say, when questioned about the war crimes committed by Shinra, something like “All's well that ends well” or any other expression that would focus on the bright side – if there is any – of things. 

Now, of course, Zack couldn’t be different. Narratively he has a role to fulfill which is to die and pass on to Cloud the buster sword and with it his dream. Without his lack of will or wit to see SHINRA shouldn’t be trusted, there wouldn’t be the original Final Fantasy VII. So we get it. However, wasn’t Zack the perfect hero for the journey the other characters would face ahead? Why replace him with Cloud who, after Squall, is maybe one of the less charismatic protagonists in the main line of Final Fantasy games? 

Incapable of critically assessing the situation – because of intellectual incapacity, his kind heart, simply detachment from the world, or a mix of all of this –, Zack just goes with the flow working as SHINRA’s obedient dog. The responsibility is not only on him though. SHINRA discourse made a considerable number of folks in Midgar believe that they are the solution and that each employee should be grateful – and honored! — to work for SHINRA. By establishing this kind of relationship with the workers, SHINRA created a narrative in which they are a symbol of admiration. Take one of the Missions you can do in Crisis Core where you fight members of SHINRA’s army because they want to prove they are more important and useful than SOLDIERs. They are fooled into believing that if any of them loses their jobs or are treated with less priority inside the company it is the other’s fault. 

By the end of the game, Zack learns that all his loyalty was for nothing and that he was now being hunted by the same company he once fought for. And what an end! Before playing Crisis Core Reunion, I read a tweet from someone saying that this game has one of the best last 30 minutes a game could have. They were right. Sure, I knew already he was going to die, but, you see, because of how I was educated by the media I consumed during most of my life, I was certain Zack’s death would be part of the final fight. I didn’t want to see it happen like this, but that’s games right? Crisis Core chooses a different path, which is not necessarily new or revolutionary, but it is an elegant choice. 

Instead of an explosive and flashy spectacle, Zack’s death is bleak. It’s still sad, but impersonal. The powerful 1st class SOLDIER Zack Fair finds himself surrounded by an army that shoots him to death. Although the number of soldiers and helicopters aiming at him is proportional to how strong Zack is, they don’t represent any sort of respect from SHINRA toward Zack or a kind of personal attachment to the situation. He is just another useless tool that other tools were commanded to get rid of.

I won’t lie: seeing him die hurts for many reasons. It is unfair. And it is cruel in its unfairness. Just like in one of my favorite books in Brazilian literature, “O Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma” (The Decline and Fall of Policarpo Quaresma), the main character realizes he had spent his life defending his country to end up dying as a traitor of the nation. At the same time, the situation whether we like it or not makes us remember that someone’s death is painfully small to the world and easily forgotten. The ephemeral nature of life.

Zack wanted to be a hero but he was not fit for the role. Not in this world at least. He is too kind to handle the world of Final Fantasy VII. His willingness to believe in and trust people is one of his strengths and also his weakness. On the other hand, Cloud creates a distance from the world from the first moment we get to know him. He’s not there to listen to everyone’s dream and put his skin in the game because of other people. As cruel as it might seem, Cloud’s behavior toward the world helps him to stay alive.  

Even with the risk of everything we know about Final Fantasy VII changing with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – the second part of the remake –, Crisis Core is a great story that complements astonishingly well the original FFVII. It is, at the same time, a sad tale about a man who was willingly ready to open his heart to a world that didn’t deserve it.