A Clinical Analysis Of Cloud's Psychology, Part I - Trauma, Dissociation, And Psychosis

Crisis Core Transcripts

The long awaited (??? by me) master post of links to the Crisis Core (2007) transcripts. This bs was typed up by hand by yours truly because SOMEONE made UMDs very difficult to rip (<3 u SONY).

Link to gdrive folders hosting transcript documents.

Link to my fancy dedicated tumblr page for this nonsense because I can't not go overboard?? (it is maybe a convenient place to bookmark)

Check below the fold for direct links to specific content.

Complete Transcript                 (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

00. Prologue

01. Embrace Your Dreams       (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

02. Betrayal                              (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

03. Monster                              (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

04. An Angel's Dream              (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

05. Where Are You?                 (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

06. Protect Your Honor           (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

07. Departure                           (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

08. See You Soon                    (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

09. Escape the Nightmare     (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

10. Heroes                               (  Abridged   /   Unabridged  )

Credits

DMW Scenes

Yuffie Missions

Other Missions

FFVII Remake Easter Eggs and compilation continuity - Part 4: DIRGE OF CERBERUS

[Includes: DoC Online Multiplayer - DoC - DoC Lost Episode]

SHINRA’S DARKEST SECRET

In Chapter 3, Weimar tells Cloud and Tifa of the rumors about undregroud secret labs. In Chapter 13, after the plate fall, Cloud, Barret and Tifa enter this mysterious underground facility full of monsters and Mako tanks.

7R: There’s a crazy story about a Shinra research lab hidden right beneath our feet - under the slums.

DoC: Deepground soldiers. (...) The shadow of the Shinra company, constructed by the former president and completely hidden from the rest of the world. (...) His goal was to create an army of superhuman warriors - not once letting morality interfere.

  INTERMISSION

During Intermission it is not only confirmed the existence of Deepground but Yuffie and Sonon fight against some soldiers in their DoC uniforms.

Nero: "Team"? Fool. There are no "teams" in Deepground.

Yuffie: Deep...ground?

Nero: The place where my brother and I like to play.

WEISS AND NERO

After getting to Deepground Yuffie and Sonon had to fight against one of the Deepground Tsviets, Nero. Meanwhile Weiss was added as a boss fight in the Shinra Combat Simulator. 

VITUAL REALITY

The overall concept of Shinra using VR simulators comes from DoC. In particoular, in DoC Multiplayer SOLDIERs and Tsviets used to train exclusively in VR arenas. 

MOOGLE YUFFIE

During the first half of Intermission Yuffie wears a tattered cloak with a moogle hood. This piece of clothing appeared for the first time in Dirge of Cerberus. 

Good ol’ Stargazer Heights ✨

I've been thinking about Sephiroth's having a tendency in Ever Crisis First Soldier to put his hand on his chest and that it seems to have made it into Rebirth as something he does.

The revelation that he used to wear a locket with his mothers picture there really does change the gesture meaning. I think he's reaching for for that. The idea he's still reaching for her roughly a decade after losing the locket really breaks my heart.

1/3 Compliments for your posts, I totally agree. If that, to some extent, is a common tendency of every fandom, it can be said that FFVII one is overly crazy. Zack is another good example of how people try to force the most desperate excuses to deprive a character of its importance because they don't like the consequences of his role.

2/3 "He's just an NPC with insignificant screetime! His scenes are even optional!" So why SE decided to make him the protagonist of a standalone game of the compilation? How can it even be labelled as fan service if he is so irrelevant in the first place? It doesn't take much to realize that without Zack FFVII can't even start in the first place, but before Remake a consistent part of fans even denied CC canonicity. And some are still not convinced.

3/3 It's funny because I've never seen anyone complaining about Cid's behaviour toward Shera but tons of scenes and quotes taken out of context to prove that Zack, Tifa or Aerith are mean characters and should be cut out of the picture. That's pretty self-explanatory of how much people tend to insert themselves in one of the two romantic sub-plots and take it personally, ignoring that neither is the core of the story but they both play a role in the plot. SE really has a tough nut to crack!

They most certainly do, and I would like to believe they aren't taking into consideration all this ridiculous discourse, and just concentrate on their writing. Maybe it helps that, at least from my observation, the JPN side of the fandom doesn't go on about the same stuff we do—at least from these extreme angles.

Zack is another interesting one, and at that point I'd have to have someone define what they exactly mean by "fan-service". The way people view this too, can be strange. Saying Zack was a plot device in the first OG is pretty accurate role-wise, despite being an important one, and I always considered CC to be for the purpose of making up for his characterization by digging into who he was and what his story did for the series. Pretty standard prequel, in this way, with the creative freedom to add more layers not previously known. This is...pretty typical for many franchises. I always felt like, CC is what would've been reminiscent in the OG if the issues of his late development (as a character) and focus in the story had more time. No matter if someone likes it or not, the objective understanding still comes from recognizing its place in continuity and the impact it has on the wider narrative of FFVII—Zack's character literally is written to do this. It's just storytelling. Something that does this is no more fan-service than anything else that's created for an audience and actually has an importance to the story. If CC is fan-service, so is OG, AC (or the separate Complete version), or the Remake. Even if you find it "unnecessary", Zack's character and his story don't abide by this connotation.

Which like, that starts a conversation on the whole "need" ideal that fans have about supplemental materials or extended storytelling, which sort of connects to this based on the "This character or story isn't needed for THIS story!". The issue being that, I think a person's "point of refence" of necessity is off—what they're basing the need for and to. Zack, and all the previously mentioned posts for Tifa, Kairi, Kristoff, etc.—it's like I said, someone an just have a perspective that can write off characters, but that's literally just changing the story, and coming from a point of reference that is just off.

We shouldn't always base an entries "need" in totality only from a reference point of a previous work. This just doesn't always equate to the value of said entry. Any sequel that isn't following a cliffhanger of its predecessor can be deemed "unnecessary" then, by this logic, but obviously it would be beyond trivial to mark any story that continues to extend the storytelling of a world and its characters as this for....what, exactly? To just put it down? The funny thing about CC, is that it IS necessary if your intention is to understand more about that missing slate of the story and to understand Zack's character in more depth.

responsible adults

A question about Kingdom Hearts, but can be for other stuff too. Do you think some important context or subtext is lost in the translation process from Japanese to a second language, even if it's translated to the best of a translator's ability, and if so, do you prefer a more literal translation over an official dub?

Hello! Thanks for the ask.

To answer the first question, there's different points to be made given the case by case nature of the topic. Important or simply interesting (these are not the same thing) information absolutely can be lost in the process of translation, but there's a lot of things fans need to understand:

Per discussion, is it actually lost, whether in the specific line or that of the overall context elsewhere?

Is the meaning actually *important* or imperative for understanding context [subtext]?

If lost, is it something that could've been localized creatively within the limitations of its presentation (voice acting/lip-sync, text space, etc.)?

Was it something that couldn't even be translated literally within the corresponding localized language? And/or did it not naturally flow into the writing of the actual scene itself for the given language?

Keep in mind that some interesting nuances built within a language system is really tailored for THAT language, and doesn't have to (or can't be) be transferred to another language smoothly in the production process of localization—if it's actually important, they might have to find a way, and chances are a literal translation may not even be enough to accomplish this. So to the second question—it isn't really “literal” vs localization for me, because whether one or both of these things can get the job done is circumstantial. Ultimately, what I care about most is whether what is written makes sense and can still be seen to retain what matters contextually (and sometimes, this means you can even get MORE or something more direct from a localization as opposed to “literal”). I’m using “ “ because really, you don’t want literal, for the majority of the text, it just doesn’t work that way as smoothly as people think. But I understand sometimes literal is actually “close to definition as possible” for people. (sometimes, indeed)

Anyway, if there is an issue with what's written, I know a "literal" translation doesn't always solve the inherent factors dependent upon the specific nature of the JPN language. The "literal" definition doesn't always fully capture how the Kanji is contextually used in the writing for another language. If I ever felt something was completely missed within a localization, my instinct is to first check the nature of the JPN and how it's written contextually to see how it fairs.

Of course, if it's information that isn't really based on the nature of the Kanji and how it's used, that it's something just being misunderstood in translation, then that isn't even a matter of whether it was literal or not—it was just wrong, and could've been right in any form if the text was understood (meaning, I'd take it literal or localized as long as the information is correct). In comparison to the amount of important storytelling text actually localized in video game projects, this doesn't nearly happen that often, though.

To look at Kingdom Hearts:

There have been many, many examples, especially between #1 and #2 discussed within fandom over the last 20 years. lol The majority is very miniscule and inconsequential (if even non-existent of a difference with proper understanding)—in KH3 I tend to think of some scenes between Sora and Kairi that has been discussed. @phoenix-downer has some excellent JPN/ENG comparisons of Sora and Kairi's Paopu Fruit and Light in the Darkness scenes (plus more) that serve some examples—Phoenix might be more readily able to remember some things over the years than I. There’s also this line from Xemnas about finding the Ancient Keybladers in KH3—this one can reasonably create a misunderstanding, but at the same time we don’t exactly have all the information at this point in time anyway.

One thing I do tend to think of is the scene between Aqua/Terra/Ven and the Disney Passes—where the term hogosha 保護者 (guardian, protector, patron, parent) is used in JPN, while in ENG it was written as "grown ups". There's a subtext here that has been missed by some ENG speakers. Similar to #4 (about literal translations), this is one of those cases where contextually speaking, the ENG went with what made sense for the scene and all factors corresponding to it, while still retaining something similar to the concept context-wise. As you can see based on the definition, the term hogosha is very flexible in use due to its span of multiple different words, but in its usage, it always has the connotation of something "parental". But, translating it as straight up "parent(s)" doesn't always work because of the nuances of the word. e.g. From FFXIII, Lightning is a hogosha to Serah, but this isn't to say that Lightning is literally her parent/mom—the contextual nature of hogosha tells more than this but with the same connotation. Sometimes it can be directly "parents/legal guardians", like how it's used to refer to what is essentially PTA school meetings (hogoshakai 保護者会). There's a reason why hogosha is distinct from just more direct words for parent (like oya 親 or ryoushin 両親).

This flexible nuance isn't readily and neatly packaged in a single word in ENG, however, and while, say, “guardian” [parental] can fit in some situations on its own, the connotation of parental isn’t so readily available like it is for hogosha alone. (A good example is this post I made) So, contextually there are other ways to capture it, and that may have to be with a non-literal translation. But, its meaning was missed by some ENG speaking fans, so when they hear "Aqua and Terra are like parents to Ven", they have no idea where that's coming from. Of course, some people were able to understand how this is carried contextually by the word "grown ups" and the situation of the Disney Passes—otherwise, some people completely missed that parental nuance, which would be significant of representing the relationship between Aqua/Terra to Ven.

Sometimes it isn't a localization issue, but a perception one.

With that being said, if in the case of other fandoms/series? It's all over the place. I've seen it all, between something being lost (important or just interesting [unimportant]), something being a mistranslation, or something being retained and people are honestly just trippin' because of misunderstanding things. Straight up. #4 (literal translation/context issues) happens a lot, in that case.

For example, recently I made this post and a follow up post about functionalities of JPN pronouns for (I, me) and the differences that lay there—there's also an extra layer I think I didn't include, which is that between using a specific pronoun in the form of hiragana/kanji/katakana, sometimes it's a stylistic choice as well. (Don't worry about this if you're confused lol). Point is, in this situation I also talked about how this was something that only applies for the JPN language and not necessarily others (especially ENG).

But again, a lot of this is case by case and we'd have to consider the #1-4 above, and for me, I know that to get the job done, it doesn't even have to be literal in order for this to happen.

As an extra note, fans REALLY need to understand localization, if even for SE specifically, to really talk about it efficiently. A lot don’t, and don’t care to. There is a sea of information to gather to form a perspective, and if they had this information, it’d change what they think about the “changes” a localization will make. One of the most blunt translators I can think of (Tom Slattery) gave this thought towards this very topic, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. So I’ll leave it with this:

Vocal fans on the internet often complain about translators "changing" things in the English versions of games. This always amuses me, as we're very often working alongside the team to help name those things in the first place. For example, on Final Fantasy XIII, we were asked to help with the naming of the roles--Medic, Synergist, Ravager, and so on. We were intending to use different names in Japan and the US/EU from the start, and we (the English translators) brainstormed and proposed both sets. For the Japanese version, they needed English words that (A) sounded cool when rendered into Japanese, and (B) would be understood by non-English-speaking Japanese players, so we worked with the writers to come up with a set of consistent-sounding terms that met those criteria. For the localized version, our focus was on creating names that would have a more sci-fi feel to a native speaker's ear, and also abbreviate to three letters in a way that looked natural and made the short forms quickly and easily distinguishable from one another. We didn't "change" anything; we just generated two different sets of names for two different audiences.

Retroactive integration of the English translation into the Japanese version happens on projects quite often as well. For example, we were asked to come up with a translation for the names of the transporters in the Nautilus theme park. The Japanese name at the time was not something that really worked for us, so we went with "Nautilift." A few weeks later, that started popping up in the Japanese script. That kind of thing is always a huge compliment. It's a collaborative process. No one is going out stomping all over each other's work just for the heck of it.

Zack and Cloud parallels

Crisis Core vs. Final Fantasy VII Remake

I could cry😭🎉🎊

Grazie grazie grazieeeeeeee 💖💖💖☄️☄️☄️

FFVII Remake Easter eggs and compilation continuity - Part 1: BEFORE CRISIS

     AVALANCHE!

In Chapter 4, a group of Avalanche members helps Cloud, Wedge and Biggs to fight against some Shinra troops. The design of their uniforms is the same of the BC Avalanche group. 

     ATTEMPT ON THE PRESIDENT

During Chapter 1, while Heidegger and President Shinra observe the attack to Reactor 1, Heidegger mentions an assassination attempt on the President. He might be referring to the episode that took place on 30th February (yes, 30) 0001 in Junon. 

“These sewer rats appear to call themselves Avalanche, sir. We are currently investigating whether they belong to the same group that made the attempt on your life.”

     LEAVING MIDGAR

In Chapter 8 Aerith tells Cloud she once tried to leave Midgar. This happened in BC, on 9th August 0002, but Avalanche tried to kidnap her before she could leave the slums.

“You know, I thought about leaving once... But...in the end, I couldn't.”

     TIFA’S CAT

One of the side quests in Sector 7 includes the research of three cats. They’re white with a pink collar, like the cat Tifa had when she lived in Nibelheim.

     HIDEOUT IN WUTAI

After blaming Avalanche for the tragedy in Sector 7, Shinra divulged rumors about their allegiance with Wutai. It was showed in BC that Avalanche established there their HQ since it was the only remaining anti-Shinra country of the world.

“The sky is falling and Avalanche is to blame! But wait! Did you know Wutai is the one funding their activities!? For all their claims about fighting for the slums...they're nothing more than pawns of Wutai”

This alliance is confirmed in Intermission with Yuffie and Sonon cooperating with Avalanche to infiltrate Shinra.

Sonon: Gotta admit, I'm surprised you agreed to work with us.

Nayo: We're just doing what we think is necessary...to build a brighter future. That's all there is to it.

     RUFUS

It was established in Before Crisis that Rufus conspired against his father providing intel and financial support to Avalanche. In Itermission, when Zhijie was questioned by the Shinra guards, he made fun of them but actually said the truth when he confessed the informant was Rufus. 

Officer: Now spill it! Who gave you that information!?

Zhijie: Oh, his name was something like...Heidegger? (...) Alright, alright, I'll tell you. It was Rufus. (...)...Or was it Hojo?

Moreover Scarlet started suspecting of the presence of a mole in Shinra, since Wutai knew about their secret military projects.

Yuffie: That's enough, Sonon. I got this. Alright, lady, out with it. Tell us where you're hiding the new materia. Don't play dumb now. We know you've been cooking up something super-powerful.

Scarlet: Well, well... Wutai must have some highly skilled intelligence operatives. That...or we have a mole in our midst.

ALLIANCE

It is shown since Chapter 16 that there’s a particoular link between Rufus and the Turks. Indeed in BC Tseng, Reno and Rude were sentenced to death by President but Rufus saved them in exchange for their loyalty.

“The VP needs us.”

FINAL BOSS

The Whisper Harbinger appearing in Chapter 18 bears similarities with Zirconiade:

- They both have to be faced at the end of the highway after entering a flashing portal

- The shape of the body of the Harbinger (just like Whispers Rubrum, Viridis and Croceo) shares some similarities with Zirconiade

- Both battles take place in an alternate dimension with shattered environment

- After their defeat they emit energy blasts and explode with a shockwave

- After the explosion, sparkling particles fall slowly from the sky, like snow

-

For the other parts refer to the masterpost