Why does President Shinra recognise Cloud at the reactor?

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You've played the original game with a poor localization.   But even the original mentions actors,I believe.
 
Yea I looked it up, I never even realized there was a letter to Tifa there in the past either.

I never really thought about it, its just how I figured it always was. What exactly does Brittenham think?

I'd say for myself I think the Jenova we see is actually a Jenova Host Ancient, whos holding back most of her powers, and the only time we see Jenova's true form is right before Safer Sephiroth.

I'd also agree about the comparisons between 7/9. 7 has a lot of different idea's that are ingenious but aren't well integrated. Where as 9 has a clear lead creativity direction, and almost every part is polished and made better with lessons from previous games. Idk, 9 just doesn't have something though, that I personally find in 7 even though its my 2nd fav FF. Part of it has to do with materia and making any character do anything. Though 9's 4 party members, and learning abilities through equipment is very polished and much more FF like.
 
It's also written after the fact. Only the original game and what the authors said at the time really counts tbh.
 
It does make a weird sort of sense. If Jenova contains her own lifestream(from her planet), and can use that to infiltrate the planets lifestream, then she could have even been leading them to dig her up. And the way Sephiroth uses the lifestream I'd believe it. Not only that, how else did she get them to inject her cells into people, being the exact thing she needed to get back to conquering the world.
 
That's just more total speculation on your part though. I can make up anything I want, too. How about Nanaki has the power to see into the future when he comes of age?  It doesn't make it right. You can't use external sources, other games, and things written after the fact to explain something in the original game. You certainly can't start making your own theories up. It stands or falls on what it explains or does not. There is no "Jenova's Lifestream". It doesn't factor in here at all - and none of this is on topic. :P
 
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I'm not using anything but my own playing experiences to speculate, and thankfully "certainly can't start making your own theories up" doesn't apply to me. Because A) Fern you yes I can B) its 20 years too late to "start."

If you said Seto did what he did because he knew one day he would meet Nanaki. Then I couldn't argue that, the game doesn't say anything in the negative about that.

I have not used any external sources. I've never played any of the other "ff7 games," and honestly I've never been a part of any FF7 community because the fans of the game can be pretty offputting. Just because that guy got to similar idea as doesn't mean I'm wrong, or that I just copied him.

Fact:Shinra dug up Jenova, was led to believe she was an ancient, and was led to believe by injecting cells of it into people they could create ancients. But by who or what?
Speculation: Either Ancient Jenova Hosts left clues, or Jenova did it directly through the lifestream.

Fact: Bugenhagen tells us all celestial bodies have lifestreams and all lifeforms share a part of it. Jenova has lifestream energy, and its not from the planet.
Speculation: Meteor is Jenova's planet.

Fact:Planets make weapons when they are dying in as a last resort.
Speculation: Jenova is Meteor's last WEAPON.

Fact: Materia is the crystallized form of Ancients knowledge and memories.
Speculation: Memories are made of mako themselves, being a part of consciousness, not the body.

Fact: Sephiroth can send his entire mind through the lifestream because of Jenova cells, using it to control puppets from the north cave(usually around a mako reactor).
Speculation: Jenova can do so on a very local level without lifestream access, which is how I think she can transfer memories. In fact I think her power is being able to interact with the lifestream/mako energy while still alive.

Very much on topic.
 
Fact:Shinra dug up Jenova, was led to believe she was an ancient, and was led to believe by injecting cells of it into people they could create ancients. But by who or what?
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That's not a fact, that's interpretation. Shin-Ra was not led by anyone except by their own greed for power. The game isn't that complex regarding the motivations behind the acting. As example Shin-Ra was a weapon manufacturer company but who has fought against whom? The game doesn't tell much about this war. We also don't know if Jenova came with a meteor or not. Think on Lavos from Chrono Trigger, which came by his own. The devs hadn't made many thoughts on that

Fact: Sephiroth can send his entire mind through the lifestream because of Jenova cells, using it to control puppets from the north cave(usually around a mako reactor).
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Even that isn't a fact. What we know is that he has the power to interact with his siblings. On the other hand it's also possible that Jenova is guiding the clones to Sephiroth, after all she is doing it with Cloud.

The game has plot holes as hell and that's why we get thousands of wild theories, because people tend to fill the holes with their own logic and wishes, me too. As much more it is important to look, what are the hard facts of the games.
 
When Jenova was dug up, they thought she was an ancient. When they injected her cells into a human, they thought they were making an ancient. When Sephiroth reads through the materials in the Shinra mansion and goes insane, he also believes they're ancients.

But thats just not true. Its very obvious that Shinra went from a arms dealer to a mercenary group during the Wutai fight, and its also what made them rich enough to do the things they did.

We do know what Jenova came with, why do you think shes nicknamed "The calamity from the skies," what do you think the northern crater is?

There is no doubt Sephiroth is a puppet of Jenova's to me. The difference is, he's a willing host, unlike the Ancient Host we see in Mt Nibel who's holding it in statis. Sephiroth uses it to survive being tossed into the lifestream/losing half his body and then figures out how to use it to travel to the northern crater. All while Jenova is slowly eating at his brain, replacing cell by cell with hers, driving him different levels of crazy as time goes on.

The way I look at it is, Jenova is braindamaged after spending so long in statis, only the most basic instinctual functions work, until she get rebuilt in Sephiroth and he becomes the new main "Jenova."

On the point of the Reunion. Its not their physical bodies that are reuniting. Its the Jenova lifestream energy that they've "grown" with experiences being returned in their deaths. It's also not them picking her up on an antenna and zoning in on it, but them all doing the same thing because they're Jenova infected.
 
I think it very unlikely that Sephiroth is a puppet of Jenova. Exhibit 1, the largest of Jenova cell-cultures is in Shinra building, yet Jenova breaks out, takes on Sephiroth's form and travels to where he is, in North Crater, which strongly suggests Sephiroth is exerting his will on Jenova, not the other way around.
Jenova has no reason what so ever to favor Sephiroth, or go to special lengths to facilitate what is ultimately in his best interest, not hers.
This is brought to crystal clear light with exhibit 2 - the fact that you kill Jenova prior to killing Sephiroth, whom is essentially acting as a shield trying to stop Cloud and Co from reaching Sephiroth, and when she dies nothing changes what so ever as far as Sephiroth is concerned. If fact, he doesn't even seem to notice or care.

Finally, although this is part speculation.
Fact : Jenova was based off of Carpenter's "The Thing", and the FFVII's concept stage of productions tied together with Parasite Eve, which features organisms that fit the theme of "The Thing" and are similar to Jenova.
Speculation : Jenova is not sentient. In fact, Jenova is kinda like a virus, the form of which we see in the game is probably just the last human/ancient host of it.
Jenova cells exert some kind of influence on an instinctual level through biological alteration, but Sephiroth having been born with it, and then falling through the life-stream absorbing the knowledge and power of the Ancients puts the virus in check, and uses it to further his own agenda, an agenda that is party influenced by the change in his nature as a result of having been born with Jenova cells to begin with.

Jenova being in control of Sephiroth just doesn't compute with what the game tells us explicitly though, just saying it makes even less sense thematically with what is arguably being implicitly stated too.
 
I think the authors on record even back then as saying that is how it is.  It's also what the game shows.  Sephiroth is using Jenova. Almost everything points to that.

@stormstrife  You are making stuff up.
 
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The vagueness, and seemingly self-contradicting aspects of Jenova -I think- is deliberate by the writers. If you know exactly how an alien entity works within a story, there is a high probability of it losing its... um exotic flavor, and mystique for lack of better words (by "alien" I don't mean extraterrestrial, but "the unknown"). Which in turn can render the story rather mundane and lackluster. That being said, I like the idea of Jenova not actually being (subjective) sentient, rather some sort of parasite/hive mind/virus (pretty much what hian said). But that may as well be fan-fic from my side.
 
Yeah my read of the Jenova situation is that Sephiroth is in command of Jenova, but that it's hard to tell because Sephiroth adopted Jenova's goals and motives for his own, with some adjustment.  Like, Jenova apparently had no interest in Meteor - it's Sephiroth who realized how Meteor could be used to accelerate Jenova's consumption of the life of the planet and thus allow him to do the same thing.  Sephiroth pre-Nibelheim and post-Nibelheim are practically different entities entirely.
 
The only reason I dont think Sephiroth is is control is because when he first goes insane, he thinks he's an ancient and his mission becomes to destroy the traitors to the Cetra, humans. When Jenova completely takes control, he learns she killed all the Cetra, and he isn't one, and keeps on forwarding the plan without a second thought.

Sephiroth has no idea who he's fighting. First its Shinra, then its humans as a prehuman, then its humans as an alien, then he's trying to become god etc. He's just being used.
 
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Who actually said that Jenova is an alien? I believed it until recently, but I also believed that the Cetra were space travelers for a long time.

As it looks now, a person has created the Black materia and cast meteor. He/she probably created also a way to absorb the lifestream to get more power (the virus) and became Jenova. This theory is plausible since the conflict between nature and science is very present in the game. Still, it's a theory.
 
The game makes it pretty clear that she is an extraterrestrial.  She fell from the sky.  It's a fact given the writers have also weighed in on this a lot. As said before, Jenova is based on The Thing.
 
Yeah, her title as 'Calamity From the Sky' makes it clear Jenova is some form of extraterrestrial.  Whether the Cetra are explicitly stated to travel from planet to planet I can't remember - but it seems to be the case, based on the description of their cultural life-cycle of exploring and 'unlocking' the planet.  Their role, mythologically, is clearly to seed the planet with life and help cultivate the lifestream, but I don't recall if they're supposed to be planetary nomads or just nomads across Gaea.  Obviously either way their journey ended after their run-in with Jenova.

EDIT:  Just went over the lines again.  While Sephiroth talks about them 'settling the planet and moving on', Aerith clarifies that the Cetra were in fact born from the Planet.  So yeah, they're purely terrestrial nomads.
 
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Yeah, the Cetra were nomads.  Due to bad localization and confusing Japanese it was stated that they travel planets instead of the land. You should ditch the original localization entirely when discussing plot, because a lot of it is just plain wrong.

Fun fact... I have a cousin named Petra - and I decided on my first playthrough (I had never played RPG before) to name Aerith after her.  So... you can imagine the "fun" I had. More confusing than ever. Petra was a Cetra.  :o
 
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As it looks now, a person has created the Black materia and cast meteor.
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The Black Materia is Jenova's spaceship. It's also materia from Meteor. It's also what caused the northern crater. I can't remember where but Bugenhagen says that the northern crater will be nothing compared to what happens when Meteor comes.

I think Meteor's name as the "Ultimate destructive magic" is very telling. As Bugenhagen explains, when a planet loses all of its lifestream, it dies and falls apart and loses its orbit. I think Meteor injures the planet with the Black Materia, and then comes in and takes all the mako at the wound for itself. Especially because in the end video, it isn't just crashing into the planet, its slowly coming down.

He/she probably created also a way to absorb the lifestream to get more power (the virus) and became Jenova.
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I agree in a way, except that the original Jenova did this on another planet, and became an organism that could manipulate its own lifestream, and is the only surviving member of the planet Meteor, where they store vast amounts of energy. Celestial bodies need a lifestream, and when you hit it with the rocket, those peices still stay "attached" to it.

If its a virus though, is it the virus or the person is a weird question. Does Jenova even have its own personality to begin with? Would that explain why you never interact with her? Do they all eventually go insane for not participating in the lifestream cycle and she needs fresh ones?
 
idiocy that proves that I, stormstrife, am literally mentally retarded
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You are one of the stupidest motherferners to ever be birthed.  Here's hoping you make it through the day without forgetting to breathe.

Nope. Not having it. ~Covarr
 
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