Disagree OG purist, Zack is an amazing character. I don't know why yall complain, you only play as Zack for around an hour. He was only really active till the end.

A missable cutscene is all you needed to know about a character who influenced Cloud? That’s incredibly stupid

@@amuroray9115 Disagree. I think it actually hurts Cloud's character to flesh out Zack. He should have just been left an enigma. Cloud's shadow.

@@_Brennus If this was all we got of Zack, I can accept it. I’m used to that kind of storytelling. But fleshing out any character has never hurt. Why can’t Zack be his own character with his own goals? How does that hurt Cloud? Fleshing out Zack and Cloud’s friendship seems to do the opposite of hurt Cloud.

@@amuroray9115 Because Zack's personality/backstory are not necessary to resolve Cloud's character arc. The more we know about Zack, the more we have to question which aspects of Cloud are Cloud and which are actually Zack. The plot of FF7 is already confusing enough as is. Cloud is the hero of FF7. Zack was a plot device to secure Cloud's identity for us and give us the catharsis of knowing that Cloud is pretty much the guy we hoped he is. This is why the writers just killed Zack off unceremoniously. He wasn't needed anymore.

Its optional

@@ErenDenizMert oh so its like a sidequest kind of thing xd

this is so true. no hero's ending. no fighting 100 soldiers. just an act of kindness (saving cloud) punished in a cruel way.

Well death can be pretty brutal even when you know it's coming. Even more so when you don't see it coming.

It was before they cared to give detail to Marines.

I always assumed that he fights the army when he runs off screen. Each to their own but this always bugged me in OG. Why kill just Zack and not Cloud too? I mean his just laying there. I get Cloud isn't a big threat to them but his still a target. They just wanted to save a few bullets I guess. I personally like CC's ending because Zack hides Cloud so his not in the open.

@BoozeMan But would have come to that conclusion without crisis core? The original has a less over the top feel to it. Crisis cores satisfying in a way but feels more like a glorious send off than the quick brutality of the original With cloud it may have been a bit of pity. A it's one thing to kill a soldire it's another to off a guys that's mentally deranged laying face down.. not that leaving him is much better or maybe the guy figured he was dying already given how he acted

@@leonevelake I always thought he fought some soldiers off screen before I played CC. I get what you're saying about the glorious send off though. But I don't know if at the end of CC Zack gets sniped and Cloud takes his sword without a word, would be a great ending to a game. Say what you want about CC but that ending is the best part of the game.

@@boozeman4749 "But I don't know if at the end of CC Zack gets sniped and Cloud takes his sword without a word, would be a great ending to a game." But that a big problem with crisis core they wanted to go into sort of final fantasy story beats (with a lot of modern shonen tropes ) instead of doing a straight prequel. So we end up with a pretty goofy zack that talks a lot about wanting to be a hero, we get all kinds of retcons and new characters

@@leonevelake I'm not sure what you mean by Shonen tropes but to me Zack has always been a goofy character. This is a guy who asked a complete stranger what he thinks he'd be good at. While doing squats in a moving truck.😂 Yeah there's some new characters but let's not forget that CC was the "last" of the compilation. So the only new character that I can think of is Angeal. Maybe? Yeah they retconned Genius into Nibelheim. Which I'm not a fan of. The other retcons I don't really mind. Like the colour of SOLDIERS uniforms and the way that Zack dies. But that's just me.

Cc sucked, this is the real Zack. Not that.

@@tangiblemammal5273 then I'll take the fake one ☝️

U kill many soldiers in the game like they're trash never to think about them again.

So uh, Zack traveled around with Cloud in that state for a whole year. Did he um have to "wipe" him too? 😨

YES EXACTLY. I believe his death is so much more compelling in the OG

In CC it was unexpected to me too tho

I really believe they’ve lost the original message of death being sudden and brutal. The additions to Aerith’s death scene in Rebirth and Zack’s last stand in Crisis Core have been so overdramatised (almost Hollywood-esque, something the original team wanted to avoid) that it distracts from this initial message and theme.

To be honest they kinda have a point, Cloud’s flashback about Zack was a last-minute addition to FF7 international version, It never happened in the initial Japanese version.

I never saw this scene in the original FFVII when I played it years ago for whatever reason, though I do remember Zack shows up very briefly in some of the other flashbacks. If I only had that experience with the character, I'd have probably never expected them to make a game about him.

@@Thamauturge If my memory isn't wrong, this scene is actually optional. Which means you are able to miss it.

@@Thamauturge Also, just like what the one replied to me earlier said, he wasn't really introduced in the Initial Japanese Version.

Because you find Joel's death heroic? Are we talking about the same game here ? Because I can think of Japanese (hi Crisis Core FF7) or Western games where heroes die with long speech phases and heroic scenes but certainly not TLoU Part II

@@DarkLilty501 Not heroic either. But they are trying too hard to make Joel's death "cold". In return, it just make it stupid and laughable

@@keevanalrasyidumar5450 How is it laughable? We just see a guy being tortured and then his skull being chopped into pieces. I don't see what's silly or laughable about it. Where we can discuss Zack's death in Crisis Core where Zack is facing an army of soldiers and helicopters equipped with firearms while he only has his magic and his sword to defend himself.

@@DarkLilty501 people just equate hating tlou2 as a personality

@@DarkLilty501 Zack is a first-class. He is just as qualified as Angeal, Genesis, and Sephiroth who can level a small city to the ground. He fought Angeal, and he won. He fought Genesis, and he won. Shinra sent a hundred of SOLDIER and only three remains. That army is absolutely necessary. Meanwhile Joel in TLOU2 is an old man who just trying to help, and he got stabbed in the back. They even beat him up and forced Ellie to watch for the fun of it. Is it very necessary? Zack's scene expressed how his contrasting ideal as a hero, how his effort to protect his friends, doesn't always align with the rest of the world, and he will face the consequence. Yet he will not falter and keep doing what he think is right. And that theme mostly consistent throughout the game with the First Classes broken after they are "betrayed" by Shinra Joel's scene expressed how his sins from the past will eventually come back to him and he will be punished even if he's a much better person now. Yet the game force you that you must forgive your father killers who forced you to watch him gets unnecessarily beaten to death slowly and painfully. At least keep this away from the innocents, don't you think?

Sacks death is not retconned, just expanded. In Zack leaves cloud to fight the soldiers and returns to cloud. When he does return he gets shot

@@Hudramshinzoffy Zack coming back to cloud was in original. In Crisis core Zack hid cloud around the Rocks which is a smart move, He never returned check up on him cause he was too busy battling Shinra Troops, Cloud crawled on his own towards him after the whole fight was over.

yup. he was the best person to be around. i even find it hard to imagine doing what he did for someone i barely knew, even if they were a friend. not sure if i could live with the mental and physical burden of taking care and dragging your friend across the country with no food, water, or shelter for 9 months. just adds to the list of why his death was so sad lol