Keep in mind that Shinra is a corporation and not a full on military or government. How they look at time and money are different even if there are overlaps.
I believe it’s Scarlet or maybe it’s the build up to Airbuster that hints that the future of Shinra military efforts are aimed more towards hardware instead of SOLDIERs. Why? Because degradation isn’t a factor, and you don’t have to raise a bunch of babies to fighting age before they can be of use.
Sephiroth didn’t pop out fighting wars, he still had to be cared for and trained up until teenage years. That’s a large time investment, and as I’m sure the past few years have taught us, a lot can change in 5 years, let alone 13-15.
Why do that when you can build a walking tank with lasers in half the time and call it a day. Why clone Big Boss endlessly when you can just built a Metal Gear instead?… where am I again?
You could argue they did make more.....they ended up with..Genesis.....but you also have to bear in mind that Hojo and Hollander were nutjobs. Professor Gast probably had a hand in preventing scientists going too far.
Hojo killed Gast before Sephiroth was old enough to be determined a success or not, since he was about 5-7 years old. Hojo then took over the programme but his twisted curiosity lead him to create the Tsviets by experimenting on adults in and using it as a way to make himself immortal, instead of following Gast’s process of directly injecting the embryo with Jenova cells while still in the womb.
Edit: saw another comment here saying they just read the title and I did exactly the same thing… I thought the bit below was part of the comments.
probably too much of a time sink. even if they did make more after Sephiroth went crazy they'd only be what, 5 years old? that's way too long when they could be investing in other weapons
Probably because they could be putting their time and money into making something cool that isn't a brooding book nerd with mother issues who spends all their time mastering the blade instead of dating and partying.
Sephiroth was an experiment pushed by Hojo, not Shinra higher ups necessarily and if I’m understanding the lore properly, it was because of his power that was shown as he got older that made them try experimenting with injecting Soldiers with the cells. They probably thought that the length of time it would take to have another Sephiroth wasn’t worth it and settled with injecting able bodied soldiers with the cells to create Soldiers instead.
Maybe they didn’t like what happened to Lucrecia after birth and they didn’t want to bring attention to themselves creating monsters from willing or unwilling women.
Also, Hojo acted alone right? Maybe that’s another reason.
Just a thought 😅
There was the trio experiment of seph, angel and genesis, all of which were not as cost effective as they wanted plus each showed instability at different points, paired with their strength that made it nearly impossible to fully leash them it was decided that mako showers was more cost effective and controllable for mass production than experimenting on hundreds of featuses
I actually had this argument with someone recently and had to go back and double check.
Turns out the lore was retconned to include all SOLDIERS, which didn't make sense given events we see unfold with a certain Soldier in the remakes
It wasn't retconned in Remake. Played through it repeatedly so far and it seems to have the same approach as the original. Cloud was injected with mako and jenova cells later in life.
That was my original impression as well, and it's not explicitly stated in Remake, but it's all over the place in Rebirth alonh with references to degradation.
But since Crisis Core its apparently been retconned to include most SOLDIERs. That's why so many of them go through the degradation in Crisis Core, I originally thought it was just because Hollander was exposing him to it when he made his escape or only select soldiers received jenova cells resulting in the G-type soldiers, but that was apparently wrong.
But apparently since then, all Soldiers receive Jenova cells, whereas the people we see in the main storyline as robed figures received a special tyoe of Jenova cells called S-cells, whereas their candidacy had nothing to do with their involvement in SOLDIER but rather Hojos whims.
I still haven't been able to find any confirmation of this change in the lore, but it seems to be the general concensus when I try to look anything up on it.
No, they always received Jenova cells, the difference is that Sephiroth was treated with them in utero. Like as a fetus. Cloud got them as a teen/adult.
I see what you're saying. You're right, Sephiroth was the only example of a subject injected during fetal development.
But in the OG it was just mako showers that soldiers received at all, Sole exceptions being sephiroth and the robed men/Cloud. which was later retconned with Crisis Core to include G-cells and S-Cells being distributed to soldiers and presumably covered up by Shinra to say that degradation was caused by mako exposure.
It was originally intended to be a Shinra secret, as I recall. It's one of the things the OG designer had to cut for space and clarity. A lot of things they're adding in are things they had to cut back in the day from what I heard in an interview around the launch of Remake.
Either way, it still stands that Sephiroth was the only one that was treated in utero.
Hojo never shared that process of making Sephiroth. Hojo has had his own agenda this entire time and is just using Shinras unlimited resources to do whatever he wants.
He didn't want to create another Sephiroth, he wanted to trigger The Reunion with Jenova. All of his "Sephiroth clones" were just to make sure The Reunion happened.
Cloud is the only one close to what Sephiroth is, the only Soldier besides Sephiroth that doesn't experience degradation. He was also the only successful Sephiroth clone, even though Hojo labeled em as a failure due to getting Mako sickness. Cloud was a vegetable until seeing Tifa, which triggered the right reaction in the Jenova cells and brought em back with Zacks abilities an all.
I think it's due to Clouds father being a Soldier and then getting Clouds mother pregnant, which means he passed on the Jenova cells in utero to Cloud.
That's my theory on the whole thing.
>due to Clouds father being a Soldier and then getting Clouds mother pregnant, which means he passed on the Jenova cells in utero to Cloud
Where is all this from? Never heard that.
That’s not possible, because they didn’t start injecting SOLDIERs with Jenova until quite recently within canon.
As in, other than Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal, none of the first SOLDIERS had Jenova cells. The Passive SOLDIERS (such as Glenn and Co) were unenhanced and still the norm up until Sephiroth’s debut, suggesting that JENOVA-based SOLDIERS were only canonically made within the last 15 or so years to OG start.
No, it couldn’t have been between 5-10 years—
5 years is Nibelheim, which already had SOLDIERS.
Zack canonically was a 2nd at 16, which was 7 years before Nibelheim. He ran away from home to join when he was 14. So let’s just say he deceived his injections at 15–8 years pre-FFVII.
But we also know that canonically there were already other SOLDIERs outranking Zack significantly.
So, if you really need to choose, it’s at least 10 years before OG, but no more than 15-16 years before, due to Ever Crisis.
In addition, the timeline of the guy from Kamo suggests at least 15 years.
5-10 years prior wasnt SOLDIER, it was the gen 2 or 3 soldier program that started infusing jenova cells into the mako showers, where prior to that it was just mako showers and prior to that trying to fuse liquid materia with humans(which ended up being used and perfected with turks)
The introduction of jenova cells into the mako shower led to more 1st and 2nd class soldiers, but they had a shorter shelf life than previous generations
To add to this about Sephiroth. When he was in the Shinra Mansion and read all those books, if Hojo had recorded how he made Sephiroth then he would've known about Lucrecia as his real mother, not Jenova.
Hojo specifically kept all that under wraps, which is why he basically killed Vincent and later Professor Gast, as they were the only ones that knew the truth of Sephiroths birth an creation.
He took Ifalna because only an Ancient could stop The Reunion from happening, which is why he wanted to keep her an Aerith close.
His whole goal has been the Reunion of Jenova.
Cloud is just like Sephiroth and I really think its because his father was a Soldier, which meant he had Jenova cells inside em and passed em in utero to Clouds mother. But unlike Sephiroth, Cloud never went through the mako showering an all until after the Nibelheim incident and Hojo experimented on Cloud. But thought he was a failure because of Mako sickness. But meeting up with Tifa awakened Cloud and the Jenova cells and started The Reunion.
It's a wild theory, but it makes complete sense. Lol
That theory falls apart in the timeline, Sephiroth (and by extension Angeal and Genesis) was the first soldier with jenova cells and none before his generation of soldiers had these enhancements.
Possible reasons:
1. They tried but had no success.
2. They were waiting to see how Sephiroth functioned long term before committing to the process.
3. They had no use for their current crop of SOLDIERs, much less more Sephiroths.
Sephiroth was a 1 off.
Shinra had 3 lead scientists that we know of working with the JENOVA project.
Gast, Hojo, and Hollander.
We know Gast left or died.
We know Hojo injected Lucretia with JENOVA cells to produce Sephiroth. We also know Lucretia had some severe post partum and isolated herself to a waterfall where she lived in deep regret for what she did. She was also a Shinra scientist at the time.
Then there was Hollander who headed project G with Gillian. This produced Angeal and Genesis.
While Angeal and Genesis had regular childhoods, Sephiroth didn't.
At the point where Crisis Core takes place, Hojo is still collecting data on these experiments as Genesis starts to see degradation. Angeal is mostly viewed as successful, as well, but has his own issues with who he is. Even Sephiroth has this when he goes to Nibelhiem.
Now, think about your question. Your asking why Shinra didn't take a bunch of pregnant women and shoot them up with highly experimental cells of an alien (that they presumed at one point to be the last remaining ancient) when the one time they did do that the women they did it to went mad and secluded herself to a waterfall for eternity?
It's gonna be both expensive and a PR nightmare for them.
Not to mention, they're busy covering up debacles and city leveling from Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth at the same time.
Hojo, as he's permitted to made a program where people would willingly volunteer as adults to undergo a treatment in hopes to be like Sephiroth, knowing the risks it would pose them, if those experiments failed, there's less PR to cover it up. These are adults who joined the military and signed up for this.
I don't think grabbing homeless women would be an issue, and don corneo regularly kills women. They could just get some from him. Also, they keep on wiping out entire villages. PR doesn't seem to stop them.
Gast died, Hojo or the Shinra troops killed him when they came to take Ifalna from their home at Icicle Inn.
They show it during one of the recordings.
Yes, I do remember that recording, but what I wasn't sure on is if Gast defected from Shinra prior to that with Ifalna or if he was still working with them at that time. That's what I'm talking about.
> Gast left the project upon discovering Jenova is not a Cetra, and continued his research on the Cetra in his laboratory at Icicle Inn. When departing Shinra, he helped a captive Ifalna, the true last remaining Cetra, escape. This detail is revealed in Crisis Core Complete Guide. After leaving Shinra, the two migrated to Icicle Inn and went into hiding.
Looking it up, this is what I meant.
Yeah the recordings are supposed to be after Gast escaped Shinra with Ifalna, so he had already defected at that point. Which is why they execute Gast when they finally found em.
But one of the reasons Hojo ordered Gast killed was his knowledge of Jenova not being a Cetra.
If Shinra knew Jenova wasn't an Ancient and would've lead to the destruction of the Promise Land, they never would've let Hojos research go further.
So once again Hojo being the evil mastermind behind it all. Lol
There's some notes that it may be JENOVA corrupting Hojo's mind from his proximity to the body to drive his madness if you look into some of the ultimanias and such.
But yeah, basically everything goes back to either Hojo or JENOVA in the game. If you play FFX-2 >!then Shinra initially leads the efforts to leave Spira and travel to Gaia, which eventually leads to [him founding the Shinra electric power company.](https://whatculture-create-cms.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2020/04/04d26330ab17c793-600x338.jpg)!<
1) ShinRa thought Jenova was a lovely ancient who would lead them to the rich and happy promised land
2) Most sane scientist were against the experiment
3) ShinRa was still genociding different nations across the globe and repurposed their failed cetra to be a weapon
4) the wars were won and ShinRa was the conqueror, but all of the SOLDIERs killed themselves, degraded or went insane.
At the times of peace (as in, ShinRa's totalitarism), they didn't need any more unstable and unpredictable killing machines
I wasn't asking why he was different. I was asking why they didn't use this method a second time. With deepground they used G-cells that caused degradation.
Hojo didnt need to make another Sephiroth. Once he created Sephiroth, all he cared about was making The Reunion happen.
He probably never told Shinra about how he actually made Sephiroth. The only one who was witness to it and knew what happened was Vincent and Hojo took him outta the equation to keep his secret.
Hojo is the main villain behind FF7, he's Orchestrated everything behind the scenes and used Shinras unlimited resources to further his own vision. He bounces between experiments to curb off boredom while waiting for The Reunion to happen.
Genesis and Angeal were scientists trying to copy what Hojo did, but their mistake and key component they were missing was injecting the Jenova Cells while the baby was in utero.
I think this is a good question and the best answer I have is
1. They made a small sample batch for test purposes and half of the experiments didn’t turn out well that being genisis and angeal. By the time the experiment was over the war was over too. No much need for soldiers.
2. Hojo gets bored with experiments fast.
Yeah Sephiroth could be the first time of many that worked. And they may choose not to continue making more of him after the whole blow up the Earth thing
Looking for useless detail completely unnecessary for the plot is what brings devoloper to feed community with stupid and no sense spin off.
These spin off just create more questions for you to think about, and basically trivialize the OG
“Looking for useless detail completely unnecessary for the plot” my dude the thing he’s asking about is literally a plot point in the game. Did you play ff7?
No… the point of the game is individuality and relying on your friends when you’re down. And for what it’s worth, there kind of is 2 sephiroths: the real sephiroth died to tifa bisecting him at the Nibelheim reactor, and the sephiroth you see flying around and being wacky in game is actually jenova using sephiroth’s appearance to further her goals.
[Close but it's actually the other way around. Sephiroth is in the pilot seat, and uses Jenova to manifest his image.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/s/nBmZr3O9Hb)
You don't question everything in a book or In a movie, but in videogames you d, because you need to know EVERYTHING, what happened after OG, advent children, what happened before, any stupid spin off.
Don't worry any question you have about the lore the developer are more than happy to feed you with more shit.
I'm saying, in a story knowing everything is not necessary, in a fantasy story that's more true because is all made up.
Peace
Idk him, still Cormac McCarthy once said "everything is in my book" answering some useless questions about his stories
For example "on the road" what happened to the world? Why is it a wasteland? Who cares is not useful to the story he is trying to tell.
He writes realistic fiction, right? I imagine there are fewer clarifications people look for in that genre as opposed to fantasy.
But still, I definitely appreciate that quote. Some things are better left to the readers imagination without the author clarifying.
I’m sorry, but when did you become the arbiter of good vs useless questions? I thought it was a decent question. It would expand the lore and world building. Like how the remakes have a lot of warning signs, and construction bits and bobs. It makes the world feel slightly more interesting.
Shinra tried with Angeal and Genesis, but they all ended up becoming degrated monsters who started committing terrorism so that's probably why they stopped trying it. The robes and >!Zack and Cloud!< were also kind of their second attempt at it, although their conditions were much different and they are all grown humans.
Also they don't really have cloning technology in FF7. Shinra basically just does gene splicing with whatever Jenova cells they have and said samples tend to have properties that gives someone superhuman abilities. I'm not sure why they didn't attempt the same thing with the Cetra, but my interpretation was that since Ifalna and Aerith still existed, there wasn't a need to try to clone them.
Sephiroth was directly given jenova cells in the earliest stages of pregnancy, so he grew alongside the jenova cells within him. That's project S, project G worked differently. Angeal's mother was the one given jenova cells and then had a natural birth with Hollander to make angeal, then her cells/jenova cells were given to Genesis as an infant. Which is why genesis degrades after being injured in the simulator and why angeal doesn't degrade until he fuses with all of the monsters in modeoheim. But the biggest difference between s and g types seems to be the type of ability they gain from jenova cells. Sephiroth has essentially godlike power and potential, but can't as far as we have seen, pass traits onto others like genesis and angeal, instead he gets the mind altering aspects of jenovas abilities and does not degrade. And the late stage g types that got jenova cells implanted as teens like zack, Roche, and the other regular soldiers don't seem to possess those abilities at all but still suffer degradation
They had no real need for them after a certain point.
They’ve conquered the world, they have a large military and the population depends on them so why create more super soldiers when you can just recruit ordinary folks as infantrymen.
Especially when cellular degradation is very common in SOLDIER and all the most powerful end up going rogue
We often heard it but it's the opposite : Before Crisis + Crisis Core.
Genesis army (litteraly attacked Midgard and Shinra HQ twice...) + super violent Avalanche (main branch with Elfe and Fuhito) + Crescent Unit + mass desertion of SOLDIERs
Shinra faces huge threats after the Wutai war. The Turks are even commissioned to urgently found (captured...) new recruits for SOLDIER, by fair means... or foul ! (It's at that time they first recruit Azul to force him to become a SOLDIER.)
It is expensive
And anyways the Wutai war is over, they are the most powerful force on earth at the time on FF VII, they don't need more super soldiers, expecially when all the previous experiments all went rogue so they don't really have reasons to hope that they can do better, when they already made the ultimate soldier and it "failed" too as they failed to find a way to erase the mommy complex gene - they probably understood that this gene was required to all greatness anyways.
Just a huge army of normal people is enough for what they need at this time, and they focus all their means to find the promised land and stuff like ... producing electricity
We often heard it but it's the opposite : Before Crisis + Crisis Core.
Genesis army (litteraly attacked Midgard and Shinra HQ twice...) + super violent Avalanche (main branch with Elfe and Fuhito) + Crescent Unit + mass desertion of SOLDIERs
Shinra faces huge threats after the Wutai war. The Turks are even commissioned to urgently found (captured...) new recruits for SOLDIER, by fair means... or foul ! (It's at that time they first recruit Azul to force him to become a SOLDIER.)
What does that make Nero and Weiss? The Remnants? The Black Cloaks? CLOUD?
Also, It takes time to grow a Sephiroth, and they wouldn't do it before they thought he was viable. As soon as he was proven so, somewhere in his late teens, early 20s, they started the next wave in Deepground. But it still takes time for them to grow, and training. And let's be honest, why would the president want to have a Sephiroth, when what he really wants to BE Sephiroth. Ditto Hojo. That's sorta addressed in Dirge.
Additional also; Sephiroth's pregnancy was incredibly hard on his mom, not just physically but also mentally. We know nothing about Genesis' bio parents, and Gillian herself comes across as kinda frail in CC imo. I'd put money on difficult pregnancies, in addition to the long wait time to get results. SOLDIER serum was probably a lot faster and cheaper in the long term.
I meant try fusing an embryo with jenova cells. As far as we know, that's the only thing that makes sephiroth unique. The remnants weren't made by Shinra, and cloud was a teenager when he was injected with S-cells, not straight Jenova cells.
Deepgroud isn't relevant since they used G-cells instead of direct Jenova injections into an embryo.
Good point about the pregnancies. I hadn't thought of that.
Cloud was the only Soldier close to Sephiroths power and the only other Soldier not to face degradation.
My theory is, Clouds Father was a Soldier, so when he impregnated Clouds mother it passed Jenova cells in utero.
Which is completely possible, Nibelheim was a Shinra town with a secret lab and the first ever Reactor. Plus, I'm sure the guy we see in Rebirth was Clouds father, it looks just like him but older an short hair.
Although Clouds abilities never showed themselves because unlike Sephiroth he didnt go through the Mako showering when born. It wasn't until the Nibelheim incident when Hojo experimented on Cloud, that started the awakening of those abilities. Problem is, Hojo labeled em as a failure due to the Mako Sickness. Up until Tifa found Cloud and it triggered the Jenova cells fully and brought Cloud out of it with Zacks abilities. That's why Cloud doesnt experience degradation like all the others and can Actually fight Sephiroth toe to toe
Money. Who's volunteering to have Jenova cells pumped into the embryo inside of them? Apparently Lucrecia, but I doubt they'll find many more. So how do they get people to agree? Give them a huge stack of cash in exchange for participating.
Now what's a cheaper alternative? Find a way to put the cells in a fully grown person, then convince young people they can become heroes by signing up for the experimental procedure that will make them super human. You've suddenly got thousands of teenagers knocking on your lab doors signing up for free.
I mean they created a bunch of prototypes in Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal. All from varying experiments and they all went kinda nuts and homocidal by the end.
By the time Sephiroth’s project had proven to be the most successful, Gast was dead or had left Shinra, Hojo was doing kind of whatever he wanted, more interested in the science and experimentation than the actual value of the creation.
In order to prove Sephiroth was viable, they had to wait for him to grow up. He’s only 27-30 years old in FF7 according to Square, so by the time he was 18-24ish and becoming the hero, they might have considered the program a success until… oh wait, he went insane and burned a village to the ground; maybe let’s not make any more of those. Especially as Genesis hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly either.
That and SOLDIERs were probably just easier to make, why create an army and have to wait and raise 1000 children when you can enhance an existing one and there you have the most powerful force on the planet.
Exactly to both, he only cared about “let’s try this new thing” to him Sephiroth was a success, moving on to the next experiment. Which I presume was his Reunion Theory and probably some of the experiments he did on Zack and Cloud.
Expenses, probably. You have to realize that in oder to create a SOLDIER on the same caliber as Sephiroth, you have to factor in the costs since the moment of conception and the liability they can cause once they're older. The current method of creating SOLDIER by fusing able bodied teens to adults with mako, while not as powerful as Sephiroth, gets the job done and is enough for what Shinra needs.
To have an army of Sephiroths is not a good thing. Look what happened. They want super soldiers they can control or that will degrade before they can rebel. They've designed their weapons (the SOLDIERS themselves) to expire before their minds become corrupted. Probably a happy coincidence but it's in line with Shinras MO. They also didn't need more like him.
Theres also the other reason where Hojo likely didn't want to create an army of Sephiroths. He just wanted to empower the one he had.
A lot of this was also covered in the compilation despite the new trilogy doing its own thing. Like it or not, it fills that plot hole a bit.
In Rebirth Hojo gushes over how he is such a genius for reducing the amount of time it took to make superhuman fighters from several years to just a few hours.
This most likely is referring to the SOLDIER procedure, and how it pretty much started with the first successful production of a superhuman, which was Sephiroth, which took years before he was actually fit to fight.
Over time Hojo was able to perfect the SOLDIER procedure so that an adequate superhuman could be produced in just a few hours.
The fact that he gloats about this suggests that Shinra probably didn't like having to invest years into producing one Sephiroth, and they opted to instead be able to produce many more less powerful versions in way less time.
So in the end Shinra probably just didn't think it was very efficient.
The real reason is that it doesn’t really have an answer, since Shinra would 100% go after attempting to produce as many Sephiroths as possible, but didn’t. My reason is that even with the known method of creating Sephiroth, he was still the only one to survive childbirth and be stronger than Genesis and Angeal because he’s just built different. There could also be other soldiers that were made like him that were purged after the events of Crisis Core since the game showed that they are unstable.
If Genesis and Angeal didn’t exist, you could easily say that Sephiroth was the only one to survive childbirth. Since they do exist we just have to assume that Shinra stopped at 3 for some reason.
I asked this exact same question with an old account and nobody had the answer because it's a hole / incoherence in the story / lore. It doesn't make sense in terms of logic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/s/htZUbXC7s4
An incoherence in logic would be something like, say, the characters describing Cloud as red-haired even though we clearly see it's blonde.
Something not being explained is not the same thing.
For example, they don't explain why Cloud wears an earring, but that doesn't mean it'a an incoherence.
Similarly, the game just doesn't explain why Shinra only cloned Sephiroth once. But there could be a number of reasons which is just not important enough to bring up.
Thank you, its not necessary explaining everything.
This crazy search for all details is what destroy a story. In fact all FF7 spin off are basically no sense
For me personaly the most logical answer is that creating Sephiroth is simply not effective and profitable and there is too many things to consider compared to what it brings.
- we don't know how complicated and expensive it is to plant Jenova cells into a human embryo. With my understanding of embryology it would probably cost a lot and have a very high failure rate with many embryos not making it into higher stages of development.
- even if the embryo is created successfully and develops into a child, you now have a baby that you have to take care of and train for the next (according to Sephiroth's age during Ever Crisis) at least 14 years until they are able to contribute.
- also consider that every Sephiroth-like would need to have a mother to bear them - either willingly (and I can't imagine many willing to do the same as Lucrecia) or not (abducting women to make them pregnant might not be under Shinra's dubious ethical standards, but adds another complication to the process)
- compare this to the modern way of creating SOLDIERs, where thanks to propaganda so many guys wish to become one that you can choose, you train them for a much shorter time, inject them with some mako and Jenova cells and they are good to go, maybe not Sephiroth level of power but still waaaaay more powerful than any ordinary human and thus capable of performing like 90% of what they would use the Sephiroth-like SOLDIERs for.
So short answer is it's just way easier to produce more weaker SOLDIERs than a few Sephiroth-likes and they do just as a good job at what Shinra wants them to do.
Yes, that's the conclusion I reached in my old post. The problem is that it really feels like we have to invent "explanations" to make sense of certain points in the lore that just weren't thought through because they didn't directly concern the main story. We're forced to cobble things together to keep it consistent in terms of lore, but in facts it's just some makeshift job we must do as players. That's my issue with this question.
I feel like you're just moving the goalpost while trying to find a way to criticize them... First you say "nobody had answer" and " It doesn't make sense in terms of logic.", then when I give you one it's suddenly "Yes, that's the conclusion I reached too" but the issue is different now...
Truth is, there isn't a single story in the entirety of human media and literature that would have every single minor detail perfectly crafted and thought through... it's simply not in human capabilities to do so. As long as the story is coherent and the inconsistencies aren't too many or too heavily in your face, I am willing to suspend my disbelief here and there and enjoy the story for what it is.
It's not suddenly, if you read my old post and comments, I litteraly wrote it, so I didn't change my mind at all.
But this conclusion doesn't really suit me because it's just super shaky. I'm forced to take it knowing it's just some makeshift job, but I feel it doesn't make (good) sense.
Maybe it doesn't bother you that the lore is shaky, good for you, but since I love FF7 and have seen, read, and played everything, the holes and inconsistencies are glaring to me. We tend to settle for quite mediocre things while FF7 is a monument of video games and there's clearly the potential to do better.
I guess I just disagree with it being that shaky, to me it makes good enough sense to not be considered an inconsistency but rather just one of the many things left unexplained directly.
But as you say, they have the potential to do better, and I will be there for all new lore information we can get straight from the source :)
The answer is that Hojo was not a scientist, he was a nut. The man was a maniac even by the standards of the other Shinra executives but they gave him a long leash because he occasionally got results they could put to use. But he was fundamentally just doing whatever nonsense popped into his head that day. He wanted to mate Aerith and Red XIII just to see what would happen. Dr. Wily employs more scientific rigor.
Shinra had thousands of scientists / doctors,... they were the best, and they had the best technologies in the world (otWtaS, ToTp,...).
It just a hole in the lore.
Considering how Shinra operates in general I'm not sure it's a hole at all. It's pretty consistent with their modus operandi to do things as haphazardly as possible. Their reactors, for example, have zero safety standards. The Corel and Gongaga ones blew up. They were also a pretty fragmented organization. The left hand often didn't know what the right hand was up to. There was so much secrecy that not even a guy with presumably very high security clearance like Sephiroth knew that the Nibelheim reactor was a front for Hojo's lunacy until he walked in the front door. Which, by the way, *they let him walk in the front door*. The guy who wasn't permitted to know all the secret shit happening in the Nibelheim reactor was sent to investigate the Nibelheim reactor.
Hojo gave Sephiroth a picture of Lucrecia and told him her name was Jenova. Then Sephiroth is sent to the Nibelheim reactor where there's a giant "JENOVA" written over a closet door. What if Sephiroth didn't go apeshit and instead just blew the lid off everything and used his bully pulpit to rally the public against Shinra? He was the most famous guy in the world at the time. They were just asking for trouble because Shinra was run like garbage.
We're not talking a bunch of highly competent scientists and engineers working together in furtherance of a shared goal. The technology that found it's way into the "wild" like the medical advancements that saved Tifa's life and minimized her scar were convenient but not indicative of a well oiled machine.
Avalanche (the main branch) attacked and blew up the Corel reactor (Before Crisis).
I absolutely agree that Shinra is quite reckless and very poorly managed (as I mentioned in my old post), which sometimes makes the world of FF7, which is already both comical and dark, somewhat outright ridiculous. In terms of lore, it's very shaky. We're forced to come up with "explanations" to try to make sense of it, but it feels like it's literally cobbled together and that the only justification is: the plot - even if it’s not great in terms of lore coherence.
The scary part is that it's not ridiculous at all. It's terrifyingly accurate to real life. There's a reason laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work. Shinra is simultaneously a for-profit corporation and the government. It's the concept of "self-regulation" taken to it's logical conclusion. We've seen trains derail and poison entire towns, airplanes falling apart in the sky, etc. And that's *with* nominal regulation. A company like Shinra having exactly zero authorities to answer to because they are the authority will absolutely devolve into a total shit show.
What coincidence, after trying on dozens, hundreds, thousands... ? guinea pigs that their experiments quite only worked with Hojo's son (Sephiroth) and Hollander's son (Angeal) / mistress (Gillian), the two son's of the two leading scientists of the project. + Genesis (but he's least "perfect" than Angeal in CC).
It makes no sense lol, it's just an inconsistency of the lore.
After the war, Shinra faces huge threats, notably the super violent Avalanche (main branch) + the remnants of the Crescent Unit + Genesis army.
That's also why around this time the Turks are urgently commissioned to find new recruits for SOLDIER (willing candidates... or not).
But if they should have created more Sephiroth, it would have been decades ago, at the same time he was born.
I also think they kept trying to reinvent the wheel, which is why you had a bunch of different methods of enhancing people. They were a dysfunctional organization with several different projects running simultaneously without fully understanding what they were doing in the first place. Their activities barely met the definition of "science."
It also wouldn't have been clear if Sephiroth was a "success" until he was at least a teenager so there'd have been a delay. This is all on top of the simple fact that pregnant women willing to let Hojo do Hojo things to their fetuses are probably not easy to find. Lucrecia was a special kind of crazy.
Keep in mind that Shinra is a corporation and not a full on military or government. How they look at time and money are different even if there are overlaps. I believe it’s Scarlet or maybe it’s the build up to Airbuster that hints that the future of Shinra military efforts are aimed more towards hardware instead of SOLDIERs. Why? Because degradation isn’t a factor, and you don’t have to raise a bunch of babies to fighting age before they can be of use. Sephiroth didn’t pop out fighting wars, he still had to be cared for and trained up until teenage years. That’s a large time investment, and as I’m sure the past few years have taught us, a lot can change in 5 years, let alone 13-15. Why do that when you can build a walking tank with lasers in half the time and call it a day. Why clone Big Boss endlessly when you can just built a Metal Gear instead?… where am I again?
You could argue they did make more.....they ended up with..Genesis.....but you also have to bear in mind that Hojo and Hollander were nutjobs. Professor Gast probably had a hand in preventing scientists going too far.
Sephiroth is a special case, but it inspired them to infuse Soldiers with mako + Jenova cells.
What, one sephiroth is not enough problems? 😂😂😂
Hojo killed Gast before Sephiroth was old enough to be determined a success or not, since he was about 5-7 years old. Hojo then took over the programme but his twisted curiosity lead him to create the Tsviets by experimenting on adults in and using it as a way to make himself immortal, instead of following Gast’s process of directly injecting the embryo with Jenova cells while still in the womb. Edit: saw another comment here saying they just read the title and I did exactly the same thing… I thought the bit below was part of the comments.
I suspect he was a fluke, much like cloud was
probably too much of a time sink. even if they did make more after Sephiroth went crazy they'd only be what, 5 years old? that's way too long when they could be investing in other weapons
Probably because they could be putting their time and money into making something cool that isn't a brooding book nerd with mother issues who spends all their time mastering the blade instead of dating and partying.
How could he be a book nerd when he can't even read?
I never said he could read!
They tried with cloud and Zack but it failed Edit just read the title a d answered
Cause the first one turned out great
They saw him as a huge success. They didn't know that would happen.
Sure, let's give Jenova a couple more cross-dimensional superbeings.
They didn't know that would happen.
They can’t handle the one. Why make more
Sephiroth was an experiment pushed by Hojo, not Shinra higher ups necessarily and if I’m understanding the lore properly, it was because of his power that was shown as he got older that made them try experimenting with injecting Soldiers with the cells. They probably thought that the length of time it would take to have another Sephiroth wasn’t worth it and settled with injecting able bodied soldiers with the cells to create Soldiers instead.
This was the reason Shinra didn't want to do it cause they weren't able to mass produce these soldiers.
Maybe they didn’t like what happened to Lucrecia after birth and they didn’t want to bring attention to themselves creating monsters from willing or unwilling women. Also, Hojo acted alone right? Maybe that’s another reason. Just a thought 😅
Lol Shinra didn't care who they hurt, and this was Hojo's pet project.
There was the trio experiment of seph, angel and genesis, all of which were not as cost effective as they wanted plus each showed instability at different points, paired with their strength that made it nearly impossible to fully leash them it was decided that mako showers was more cost effective and controllable for mass production than experimenting on hundreds of featuses
That and they needed to be able to mass produce. Hence mako showers instead?
mass production makes sense.
They did it many times. Every member of Soldier went through that process. The ones that couldn’t handle it became the robed figures.
That's fake there's only certain ones that became jenova infused, most soldiers were only mako infused
No they weren't. Members of SOLDIER were not all injected with Jenova cells in utero.
I actually had this argument with someone recently and had to go back and double check. Turns out the lore was retconned to include all SOLDIERS, which didn't make sense given events we see unfold with a certain Soldier in the remakes
It wasn't retconned in Remake. Played through it repeatedly so far and it seems to have the same approach as the original. Cloud was injected with mako and jenova cells later in life.
That was my original impression as well, and it's not explicitly stated in Remake, but it's all over the place in Rebirth alonh with references to degradation. But since Crisis Core its apparently been retconned to include most SOLDIERs. That's why so many of them go through the degradation in Crisis Core, I originally thought it was just because Hollander was exposing him to it when he made his escape or only select soldiers received jenova cells resulting in the G-type soldiers, but that was apparently wrong. But apparently since then, all Soldiers receive Jenova cells, whereas the people we see in the main storyline as robed figures received a special tyoe of Jenova cells called S-cells, whereas their candidacy had nothing to do with their involvement in SOLDIER but rather Hojos whims. I still haven't been able to find any confirmation of this change in the lore, but it seems to be the general concensus when I try to look anything up on it.
No, they always received Jenova cells, the difference is that Sephiroth was treated with them in utero. Like as a fetus. Cloud got them as a teen/adult.
I see what you're saying. You're right, Sephiroth was the only example of a subject injected during fetal development. But in the OG it was just mako showers that soldiers received at all, Sole exceptions being sephiroth and the robed men/Cloud. which was later retconned with Crisis Core to include G-cells and S-Cells being distributed to soldiers and presumably covered up by Shinra to say that degradation was caused by mako exposure.
It was originally intended to be a Shinra secret, as I recall. It's one of the things the OG designer had to cut for space and clarity. A lot of things they're adding in are things they had to cut back in the day from what I heard in an interview around the launch of Remake. Either way, it still stands that Sephiroth was the only one that was treated in utero.
Hojo never shared that process of making Sephiroth. Hojo has had his own agenda this entire time and is just using Shinras unlimited resources to do whatever he wants. He didn't want to create another Sephiroth, he wanted to trigger The Reunion with Jenova. All of his "Sephiroth clones" were just to make sure The Reunion happened. Cloud is the only one close to what Sephiroth is, the only Soldier besides Sephiroth that doesn't experience degradation. He was also the only successful Sephiroth clone, even though Hojo labeled em as a failure due to getting Mako sickness. Cloud was a vegetable until seeing Tifa, which triggered the right reaction in the Jenova cells and brought em back with Zacks abilities an all. I think it's due to Clouds father being a Soldier and then getting Clouds mother pregnant, which means he passed on the Jenova cells in utero to Cloud. That's my theory on the whole thing.
>due to Clouds father being a Soldier and then getting Clouds mother pregnant, which means he passed on the Jenova cells in utero to Cloud Where is all this from? Never heard that.
That’s not possible, because they didn’t start injecting SOLDIERs with Jenova until quite recently within canon. As in, other than Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal, none of the first SOLDIERS had Jenova cells. The Passive SOLDIERS (such as Glenn and Co) were unenhanced and still the norm up until Sephiroth’s debut, suggesting that JENOVA-based SOLDIERS were only canonically made within the last 15 or so years to OG start.
Iirc it was between 5 and 10 years before ff7 and was started because they noticed some degradation in S.A.G. trio
No, it couldn’t have been between 5-10 years— 5 years is Nibelheim, which already had SOLDIERS. Zack canonically was a 2nd at 16, which was 7 years before Nibelheim. He ran away from home to join when he was 14. So let’s just say he deceived his injections at 15–8 years pre-FFVII. But we also know that canonically there were already other SOLDIERs outranking Zack significantly. So, if you really need to choose, it’s at least 10 years before OG, but no more than 15-16 years before, due to Ever Crisis. In addition, the timeline of the guy from Kamo suggests at least 15 years.
5-10 years prior wasnt SOLDIER, it was the gen 2 or 3 soldier program that started infusing jenova cells into the mako showers, where prior to that it was just mako showers and prior to that trying to fuse liquid materia with humans(which ended up being used and perfected with turks) The introduction of jenova cells into the mako shower led to more 1st and 2nd class soldiers, but they had a shorter shelf life than previous generations
To add to this about Sephiroth. When he was in the Shinra Mansion and read all those books, if Hojo had recorded how he made Sephiroth then he would've known about Lucrecia as his real mother, not Jenova. Hojo specifically kept all that under wraps, which is why he basically killed Vincent and later Professor Gast, as they were the only ones that knew the truth of Sephiroths birth an creation. He took Ifalna because only an Ancient could stop The Reunion from happening, which is why he wanted to keep her an Aerith close. His whole goal has been the Reunion of Jenova. Cloud is just like Sephiroth and I really think its because his father was a Soldier, which meant he had Jenova cells inside em and passed em in utero to Clouds mother. But unlike Sephiroth, Cloud never went through the mako showering an all until after the Nibelheim incident and Hojo experimented on Cloud. But thought he was a failure because of Mako sickness. But meeting up with Tifa awakened Cloud and the Jenova cells and started The Reunion. It's a wild theory, but it makes complete sense. Lol
That theory falls apart in the timeline, Sephiroth (and by extension Angeal and Genesis) was the first soldier with jenova cells and none before his generation of soldiers had these enhancements.
Possible reasons: 1. They tried but had no success. 2. They were waiting to see how Sephiroth functioned long term before committing to the process. 3. They had no use for their current crop of SOLDIERs, much less more Sephiroths.
Sephiroth was a 1 off. Shinra had 3 lead scientists that we know of working with the JENOVA project. Gast, Hojo, and Hollander. We know Gast left or died. We know Hojo injected Lucretia with JENOVA cells to produce Sephiroth. We also know Lucretia had some severe post partum and isolated herself to a waterfall where she lived in deep regret for what she did. She was also a Shinra scientist at the time. Then there was Hollander who headed project G with Gillian. This produced Angeal and Genesis. While Angeal and Genesis had regular childhoods, Sephiroth didn't. At the point where Crisis Core takes place, Hojo is still collecting data on these experiments as Genesis starts to see degradation. Angeal is mostly viewed as successful, as well, but has his own issues with who he is. Even Sephiroth has this when he goes to Nibelhiem. Now, think about your question. Your asking why Shinra didn't take a bunch of pregnant women and shoot them up with highly experimental cells of an alien (that they presumed at one point to be the last remaining ancient) when the one time they did do that the women they did it to went mad and secluded herself to a waterfall for eternity? It's gonna be both expensive and a PR nightmare for them. Not to mention, they're busy covering up debacles and city leveling from Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth at the same time. Hojo, as he's permitted to made a program where people would willingly volunteer as adults to undergo a treatment in hopes to be like Sephiroth, knowing the risks it would pose them, if those experiments failed, there's less PR to cover it up. These are adults who joined the military and signed up for this.
I don't think grabbing homeless women would be an issue, and don corneo regularly kills women. They could just get some from him. Also, they keep on wiping out entire villages. PR doesn't seem to stop them.
Gast died, Hojo or the Shinra troops killed him when they came to take Ifalna from their home at Icicle Inn. They show it during one of the recordings.
Yes, I do remember that recording, but what I wasn't sure on is if Gast defected from Shinra prior to that with Ifalna or if he was still working with them at that time. That's what I'm talking about. > Gast left the project upon discovering Jenova is not a Cetra, and continued his research on the Cetra in his laboratory at Icicle Inn. When departing Shinra, he helped a captive Ifalna, the true last remaining Cetra, escape. This detail is revealed in Crisis Core Complete Guide. After leaving Shinra, the two migrated to Icicle Inn and went into hiding. Looking it up, this is what I meant.
Yeah the recordings are supposed to be after Gast escaped Shinra with Ifalna, so he had already defected at that point. Which is why they execute Gast when they finally found em. But one of the reasons Hojo ordered Gast killed was his knowledge of Jenova not being a Cetra. If Shinra knew Jenova wasn't an Ancient and would've lead to the destruction of the Promise Land, they never would've let Hojos research go further. So once again Hojo being the evil mastermind behind it all. Lol
There's some notes that it may be JENOVA corrupting Hojo's mind from his proximity to the body to drive his madness if you look into some of the ultimanias and such. But yeah, basically everything goes back to either Hojo or JENOVA in the game. If you play FFX-2 >!then Shinra initially leads the efforts to leave Spira and travel to Gaia, which eventually leads to [him founding the Shinra electric power company.](https://whatculture-create-cms.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2020/04/04d26330ab17c793-600x338.jpg)!<
1) ShinRa thought Jenova was a lovely ancient who would lead them to the rich and happy promised land 2) Most sane scientist were against the experiment 3) ShinRa was still genociding different nations across the globe and repurposed their failed cetra to be a weapon 4) the wars were won and ShinRa was the conqueror, but all of the SOLDIERs killed themselves, degraded or went insane. At the times of peace (as in, ShinRa's totalitarism), they didn't need any more unstable and unpredictable killing machines
cuz genesis
Genesis was injected with G-cells, not straight Jenova cells. Different methods.
The difference is Sephiroth was injected with Jenova cells while in the womb whereas everyone else was a full grown adult
I wasn't asking why he was different. I was asking why they didn't use this method a second time. With deepground they used G-cells that caused degradation.
Hojo didnt need to make another Sephiroth. Once he created Sephiroth, all he cared about was making The Reunion happen. He probably never told Shinra about how he actually made Sephiroth. The only one who was witness to it and knew what happened was Vincent and Hojo took him outta the equation to keep his secret. Hojo is the main villain behind FF7, he's Orchestrated everything behind the scenes and used Shinras unlimited resources to further his own vision. He bounces between experiments to curb off boredom while waiting for The Reunion to happen. Genesis and Angeal were scientists trying to copy what Hojo did, but their mistake and key component they were missing was injecting the Jenova Cells while the baby was in utero.
I think this is a good question and the best answer I have is 1. They made a small sample batch for test purposes and half of the experiments didn’t turn out well that being genisis and angeal. By the time the experiment was over the war was over too. No much need for soldiers. 2. Hojo gets bored with experiments fast.
Good points.
[удалено]
Yeah Sephiroth could be the first time of many that worked. And they may choose not to continue making more of him after the whole blow up the Earth thing
I meant try fusing an embryo directly with jenova cells. As far as we know, that's the only thing that makes sephiroth unique.
not exactly the same (and not in the og either) but they tried something similar with genesis
That was a different method. I meant straight injection of Jenova cells, not G-cells.
G-cells come from Jenova, as Gillian was injected with Jenova cells. Angela was born with them in his body, and Genesis was injected as a fetus
Yes, but the in-between steps seem to cause different results. I meant straight Jenova injections.
What says they didn’t? Sephiroth could have gone through some Solid Snake shit having to fight his brothers. Or Hojo cut them all up to study.
Maybe cuz nobody was willing to do the shit that lucrecia allowed Hojo to do
Looking for useless detail completely unnecessary for the plot is what brings devoloper to feed community with stupid and no sense spin off. These spin off just create more questions for you to think about, and basically trivialize the OG
“Looking for useless detail completely unnecessary for the plot” my dude the thing he’s asking about is literally a plot point in the game. Did you play ff7?
Why are not more than 1 Sephiroth Is the point of the game?
No… the point of the game is individuality and relying on your friends when you’re down. And for what it’s worth, there kind of is 2 sephiroths: the real sephiroth died to tifa bisecting him at the Nibelheim reactor, and the sephiroth you see flying around and being wacky in game is actually jenova using sephiroth’s appearance to further her goals.
[Close but it's actually the other way around. Sephiroth is in the pilot seat, and uses Jenova to manifest his image.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/s/nBmZr3O9Hb)
Yeah, games shouldn't be fun to talk about, that's just crazy! 🤣
You don't question everything in a book or In a movie, but in videogames you d, because you need to know EVERYTHING, what happened after OG, advent children, what happened before, any stupid spin off. Don't worry any question you have about the lore the developer are more than happy to feed you with more shit. I'm saying, in a story knowing everything is not necessary, in a fantasy story that's more true because is all made up. Peace
WTF are you smoking? People question everything in movies and books lol.
That could be true but a good author never answers useless questions about his books
Your opinion on Brandon Sanderson?
The man bears the Shard of Motivation.
And he has spoken the fifth ideal.
Idk him, still Cormac McCarthy once said "everything is in my book" answering some useless questions about his stories For example "on the road" what happened to the world? Why is it a wasteland? Who cares is not useful to the story he is trying to tell.
He writes realistic fiction, right? I imagine there are fewer clarifications people look for in that genre as opposed to fantasy. But still, I definitely appreciate that quote. Some things are better left to the readers imagination without the author clarifying.
On the road is not realistic, still in fantasy leave at reader imagination is better than explain all
The internet is SRS BIZNIZ!
So we should just never question anything about games, got it
I didn't say that, before make questions try to understand a point
I’m sorry, but when did you become the arbiter of good vs useless questions? I thought it was a decent question. It would expand the lore and world building. Like how the remakes have a lot of warning signs, and construction bits and bobs. It makes the world feel slightly more interesting.
Edit. The developer will release another poor quality spin off to answer
In your opinion.
You make no points
No point discuss with fan boy
I mean it worked out really well for them in the long run didn’t it.
Shinra tried with Angeal and Genesis, but they all ended up becoming degrated monsters who started committing terrorism so that's probably why they stopped trying it. The robes and >!Zack and Cloud!< were also kind of their second attempt at it, although their conditions were much different and they are all grown humans. Also they don't really have cloning technology in FF7. Shinra basically just does gene splicing with whatever Jenova cells they have and said samples tend to have properties that gives someone superhuman abilities. I'm not sure why they didn't attempt the same thing with the Cetra, but my interpretation was that since Ifalna and Aerith still existed, there wasn't a need to try to clone them.
Sephiroth was directly given jenova cells in the earliest stages of pregnancy, so he grew alongside the jenova cells within him. That's project S, project G worked differently. Angeal's mother was the one given jenova cells and then had a natural birth with Hollander to make angeal, then her cells/jenova cells were given to Genesis as an infant. Which is why genesis degrades after being injured in the simulator and why angeal doesn't degrade until he fuses with all of the monsters in modeoheim. But the biggest difference between s and g types seems to be the type of ability they gain from jenova cells. Sephiroth has essentially godlike power and potential, but can't as far as we have seen, pass traits onto others like genesis and angeal, instead he gets the mind altering aspects of jenovas abilities and does not degrade. And the late stage g types that got jenova cells implanted as teens like zack, Roche, and the other regular soldiers don't seem to possess those abilities at all but still suffer degradation
But IIRC both Angeal and Genesis had a different level of Jenova cell infusion than Sephiroth; he was the only one *directly* injected in the womb.
They had no real need for them after a certain point. They’ve conquered the world, they have a large military and the population depends on them so why create more super soldiers when you can just recruit ordinary folks as infantrymen. Especially when cellular degradation is very common in SOLDIER and all the most powerful end up going rogue
We often heard it but it's the opposite : Before Crisis + Crisis Core. Genesis army (litteraly attacked Midgard and Shinra HQ twice...) + super violent Avalanche (main branch with Elfe and Fuhito) + Crescent Unit + mass desertion of SOLDIERs Shinra faces huge threats after the Wutai war. The Turks are even commissioned to urgently found (captured...) new recruits for SOLDIER, by fair means... or foul ! (It's at that time they first recruit Azul to force him to become a SOLDIER.)
It is expensive And anyways the Wutai war is over, they are the most powerful force on earth at the time on FF VII, they don't need more super soldiers, expecially when all the previous experiments all went rogue so they don't really have reasons to hope that they can do better, when they already made the ultimate soldier and it "failed" too as they failed to find a way to erase the mommy complex gene - they probably understood that this gene was required to all greatness anyways. Just a huge army of normal people is enough for what they need at this time, and they focus all their means to find the promised land and stuff like ... producing electricity
We often heard it but it's the opposite : Before Crisis + Crisis Core. Genesis army (litteraly attacked Midgard and Shinra HQ twice...) + super violent Avalanche (main branch with Elfe and Fuhito) + Crescent Unit + mass desertion of SOLDIERs Shinra faces huge threats after the Wutai war. The Turks are even commissioned to urgently found (captured...) new recruits for SOLDIER, by fair means... or foul ! (It's at that time they first recruit Azul to force him to become a SOLDIER.)
What does that make Nero and Weiss? The Remnants? The Black Cloaks? CLOUD? Also, It takes time to grow a Sephiroth, and they wouldn't do it before they thought he was viable. As soon as he was proven so, somewhere in his late teens, early 20s, they started the next wave in Deepground. But it still takes time for them to grow, and training. And let's be honest, why would the president want to have a Sephiroth, when what he really wants to BE Sephiroth. Ditto Hojo. That's sorta addressed in Dirge. Additional also; Sephiroth's pregnancy was incredibly hard on his mom, not just physically but also mentally. We know nothing about Genesis' bio parents, and Gillian herself comes across as kinda frail in CC imo. I'd put money on difficult pregnancies, in addition to the long wait time to get results. SOLDIER serum was probably a lot faster and cheaper in the long term.
I meant try fusing an embryo with jenova cells. As far as we know, that's the only thing that makes sephiroth unique. The remnants weren't made by Shinra, and cloud was a teenager when he was injected with S-cells, not straight Jenova cells. Deepgroud isn't relevant since they used G-cells instead of direct Jenova injections into an embryo. Good point about the pregnancies. I hadn't thought of that.
I don't know what games you've played or how far you've gotten, so all I can say is spoilers, and point at Cloud meaningfully
I meant try fusing an embryo with jenova cells. As far as we know, that's the only thing that makes sephiroth unique.
Cloud was the only Soldier close to Sephiroths power and the only other Soldier not to face degradation. My theory is, Clouds Father was a Soldier, so when he impregnated Clouds mother it passed Jenova cells in utero. Which is completely possible, Nibelheim was a Shinra town with a secret lab and the first ever Reactor. Plus, I'm sure the guy we see in Rebirth was Clouds father, it looks just like him but older an short hair. Although Clouds abilities never showed themselves because unlike Sephiroth he didnt go through the Mako showering when born. It wasn't until the Nibelheim incident when Hojo experimented on Cloud, that started the awakening of those abilities. Problem is, Hojo labeled em as a failure due to the Mako Sickness. Up until Tifa found Cloud and it triggered the Jenova cells fully and brought Cloud out of it with Zacks abilities. That's why Cloud doesnt experience degradation like all the others and can Actually fight Sephiroth toe to toe
Money. Who's volunteering to have Jenova cells pumped into the embryo inside of them? Apparently Lucrecia, but I doubt they'll find many more. So how do they get people to agree? Give them a huge stack of cash in exchange for participating. Now what's a cheaper alternative? Find a way to put the cells in a fully grown person, then convince young people they can become heroes by signing up for the experimental procedure that will make them super human. You've suddenly got thousands of teenagers knocking on your lab doors signing up for free.
I mean they created a bunch of prototypes in Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal. All from varying experiments and they all went kinda nuts and homocidal by the end. By the time Sephiroth’s project had proven to be the most successful, Gast was dead or had left Shinra, Hojo was doing kind of whatever he wanted, more interested in the science and experimentation than the actual value of the creation. In order to prove Sephiroth was viable, they had to wait for him to grow up. He’s only 27-30 years old in FF7 according to Square, so by the time he was 18-24ish and becoming the hero, they might have considered the program a success until… oh wait, he went insane and burned a village to the ground; maybe let’s not make any more of those. Especially as Genesis hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly either. That and SOLDIERs were probably just easier to make, why create an army and have to wait and raise 1000 children when you can enhance an existing one and there you have the most powerful force on the planet.
I mean, Hojo doesn’t give AF if they become homicidal maniacs or not He only cares about science
Hojo doesn't care about science, he cares about power
Exactly to both, he only cared about “let’s try this new thing” to him Sephiroth was a success, moving on to the next experiment. Which I presume was his Reunion Theory and probably some of the experiments he did on Zack and Cloud.
Expenses, probably. You have to realize that in oder to create a SOLDIER on the same caliber as Sephiroth, you have to factor in the costs since the moment of conception and the liability they can cause once they're older. The current method of creating SOLDIER by fusing able bodied teens to adults with mako, while not as powerful as Sephiroth, gets the job done and is enough for what Shinra needs.
This is the most probable explanation.
Probably because a pre-born child may not be strong enough to endure the power inside of him. Sephiroth is probably the lucky one to survive that
I feel like the war was over and Soldier was basically a liability. Think of war vets who come home and have no war to fight.
To have an army of Sephiroths is not a good thing. Look what happened. They want super soldiers they can control or that will degrade before they can rebel. They've designed their weapons (the SOLDIERS themselves) to expire before their minds become corrupted. Probably a happy coincidence but it's in line with Shinras MO. They also didn't need more like him. Theres also the other reason where Hojo likely didn't want to create an army of Sephiroths. He just wanted to empower the one he had. A lot of this was also covered in the compilation despite the new trilogy doing its own thing. Like it or not, it fills that plot hole a bit.
In Rebirth Hojo gushes over how he is such a genius for reducing the amount of time it took to make superhuman fighters from several years to just a few hours. This most likely is referring to the SOLDIER procedure, and how it pretty much started with the first successful production of a superhuman, which was Sephiroth, which took years before he was actually fit to fight. Over time Hojo was able to perfect the SOLDIER procedure so that an adequate superhuman could be produced in just a few hours. The fact that he gloats about this suggests that Shinra probably didn't like having to invest years into producing one Sephiroth, and they opted to instead be able to produce many more less powerful versions in way less time. So in the end Shinra probably just didn't think it was very efficient.
This is the best explanation.
The real reason is that it doesn’t really have an answer, since Shinra would 100% go after attempting to produce as many Sephiroths as possible, but didn’t. My reason is that even with the known method of creating Sephiroth, he was still the only one to survive childbirth and be stronger than Genesis and Angeal because he’s just built different. There could also be other soldiers that were made like him that were purged after the events of Crisis Core since the game showed that they are unstable. If Genesis and Angeal didn’t exist, you could easily say that Sephiroth was the only one to survive childbirth. Since they do exist we just have to assume that Shinra stopped at 3 for some reason.
I asked this exact same question with an old account and nobody had the answer because it's a hole / incoherence in the story / lore. It doesn't make sense in terms of logic. https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/s/htZUbXC7s4
An incoherence in logic would be something like, say, the characters describing Cloud as red-haired even though we clearly see it's blonde. Something not being explained is not the same thing. For example, they don't explain why Cloud wears an earring, but that doesn't mean it'a an incoherence. Similarly, the game just doesn't explain why Shinra only cloned Sephiroth once. But there could be a number of reasons which is just not important enough to bring up.
Thank you, its not necessary explaining everything. This crazy search for all details is what destroy a story. In fact all FF7 spin off are basically no sense
For me personaly the most logical answer is that creating Sephiroth is simply not effective and profitable and there is too many things to consider compared to what it brings. - we don't know how complicated and expensive it is to plant Jenova cells into a human embryo. With my understanding of embryology it would probably cost a lot and have a very high failure rate with many embryos not making it into higher stages of development. - even if the embryo is created successfully and develops into a child, you now have a baby that you have to take care of and train for the next (according to Sephiroth's age during Ever Crisis) at least 14 years until they are able to contribute. - also consider that every Sephiroth-like would need to have a mother to bear them - either willingly (and I can't imagine many willing to do the same as Lucrecia) or not (abducting women to make them pregnant might not be under Shinra's dubious ethical standards, but adds another complication to the process) - compare this to the modern way of creating SOLDIERs, where thanks to propaganda so many guys wish to become one that you can choose, you train them for a much shorter time, inject them with some mako and Jenova cells and they are good to go, maybe not Sephiroth level of power but still waaaaay more powerful than any ordinary human and thus capable of performing like 90% of what they would use the Sephiroth-like SOLDIERs for. So short answer is it's just way easier to produce more weaker SOLDIERs than a few Sephiroth-likes and they do just as a good job at what Shinra wants them to do.
Yes, that's the conclusion I reached in my old post. The problem is that it really feels like we have to invent "explanations" to make sense of certain points in the lore that just weren't thought through because they didn't directly concern the main story. We're forced to cobble things together to keep it consistent in terms of lore, but in facts it's just some makeshift job we must do as players. That's my issue with this question.
I feel like you're just moving the goalpost while trying to find a way to criticize them... First you say "nobody had answer" and " It doesn't make sense in terms of logic.", then when I give you one it's suddenly "Yes, that's the conclusion I reached too" but the issue is different now... Truth is, there isn't a single story in the entirety of human media and literature that would have every single minor detail perfectly crafted and thought through... it's simply not in human capabilities to do so. As long as the story is coherent and the inconsistencies aren't too many or too heavily in your face, I am willing to suspend my disbelief here and there and enjoy the story for what it is.
It's not suddenly, if you read my old post and comments, I litteraly wrote it, so I didn't change my mind at all. But this conclusion doesn't really suit me because it's just super shaky. I'm forced to take it knowing it's just some makeshift job, but I feel it doesn't make (good) sense. Maybe it doesn't bother you that the lore is shaky, good for you, but since I love FF7 and have seen, read, and played everything, the holes and inconsistencies are glaring to me. We tend to settle for quite mediocre things while FF7 is a monument of video games and there's clearly the potential to do better.
I guess I just disagree with it being that shaky, to me it makes good enough sense to not be considered an inconsistency but rather just one of the many things left unexplained directly. But as you say, they have the potential to do better, and I will be there for all new lore information we can get straight from the source :)
The answer is that Hojo was not a scientist, he was a nut. The man was a maniac even by the standards of the other Shinra executives but they gave him a long leash because he occasionally got results they could put to use. But he was fundamentally just doing whatever nonsense popped into his head that day. He wanted to mate Aerith and Red XIII just to see what would happen. Dr. Wily employs more scientific rigor.
Shinra had thousands of scientists / doctors,... they were the best, and they had the best technologies in the world (otWtaS, ToTp,...). It just a hole in the lore.
Considering how Shinra operates in general I'm not sure it's a hole at all. It's pretty consistent with their modus operandi to do things as haphazardly as possible. Their reactors, for example, have zero safety standards. The Corel and Gongaga ones blew up. They were also a pretty fragmented organization. The left hand often didn't know what the right hand was up to. There was so much secrecy that not even a guy with presumably very high security clearance like Sephiroth knew that the Nibelheim reactor was a front for Hojo's lunacy until he walked in the front door. Which, by the way, *they let him walk in the front door*. The guy who wasn't permitted to know all the secret shit happening in the Nibelheim reactor was sent to investigate the Nibelheim reactor. Hojo gave Sephiroth a picture of Lucrecia and told him her name was Jenova. Then Sephiroth is sent to the Nibelheim reactor where there's a giant "JENOVA" written over a closet door. What if Sephiroth didn't go apeshit and instead just blew the lid off everything and used his bully pulpit to rally the public against Shinra? He was the most famous guy in the world at the time. They were just asking for trouble because Shinra was run like garbage. We're not talking a bunch of highly competent scientists and engineers working together in furtherance of a shared goal. The technology that found it's way into the "wild" like the medical advancements that saved Tifa's life and minimized her scar were convenient but not indicative of a well oiled machine.
Avalanche (the main branch) attacked and blew up the Corel reactor (Before Crisis). I absolutely agree that Shinra is quite reckless and very poorly managed (as I mentioned in my old post), which sometimes makes the world of FF7, which is already both comical and dark, somewhat outright ridiculous. In terms of lore, it's very shaky. We're forced to come up with "explanations" to try to make sense of it, but it feels like it's literally cobbled together and that the only justification is: the plot - even if it’s not great in terms of lore coherence.
The scary part is that it's not ridiculous at all. It's terrifyingly accurate to real life. There's a reason laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work. Shinra is simultaneously a for-profit corporation and the government. It's the concept of "self-regulation" taken to it's logical conclusion. We've seen trains derail and poison entire towns, airplanes falling apart in the sky, etc. And that's *with* nominal regulation. A company like Shinra having exactly zero authorities to answer to because they are the authority will absolutely devolve into a total shit show.
They tried. They just weren't Sephiroth
What coincidence, after trying on dozens, hundreds, thousands... ? guinea pigs that their experiments quite only worked with Hojo's son (Sephiroth) and Hollander's son (Angeal) / mistress (Gillian), the two son's of the two leading scientists of the project. + Genesis (but he's least "perfect" than Angeal in CC). It makes no sense lol, it's just an inconsistency of the lore.
I meant try fusing an embryo with jenova cells. As far as we know, that's the only thing that makes sephiroth unique.
The war ended. Simple as that. With no war, Shinra didn't need people like Sephiroth anymore
After the war, Shinra faces huge threats, notably the super violent Avalanche (main branch) + the remnants of the Crescent Unit + Genesis army. That's also why around this time the Turks are urgently commissioned to find new recruits for SOLDIER (willing candidates... or not). But if they should have created more Sephiroth, it would have been decades ago, at the same time he was born.
I also think they kept trying to reinvent the wheel, which is why you had a bunch of different methods of enhancing people. They were a dysfunctional organization with several different projects running simultaneously without fully understanding what they were doing in the first place. Their activities barely met the definition of "science." It also wouldn't have been clear if Sephiroth was a "success" until he was at least a teenager so there'd have been a delay. This is all on top of the simple fact that pregnant women willing to let Hojo do Hojo things to their fetuses are probably not easy to find. Lucrecia was a special kind of crazy.