Wutai, FF7 and Religion

It looks like in the Remake version of ff7 Wutai is being depicted very differently, it is clearly being depicted as a serious military force, with which currently Shinra has a temporary ceasefire agreement. When the gang reach the Shinra HQ the explanation for as to why the place is so well defended is, again, put down to the threat from Wutai.

It looks like Wutai is being taken seriously.

So expect as the game continues more about Wutai, more development of its lore and a re-consideration of how it has been presented up to now.

For certain it will have to be treated as a genuine challenge to Shinra, we have got to be dealing with a huge city, capable not only of defensive viet-cong style resistance, but also of feesably crossing continents and mounting an assault on Midgar.

The original FF7 and Crisis Core Wutai certainly was not up to this, it was barely more threatening than Rocket Town, it had a very small number of residents and consisted of two screens worth of populated land.

That all has to change, we have got to be considering something more like Junon now.

What will be different with Wutai will presumably be that they are not using Mako to power their military industrial complex, I expect they are using good old oil, but possibly given the way things are nowadays I imagine Wutai will be depicted as powering everything from Wind farms.

This will probably be useful to the game as it essentially gives an answer to the frequent and obvious refrain made by those who wish to defend Shinra- it is either this or living without electricity, central heating, etc etc etc.

One thing I would love to see emphasises though, is a presentation of Wutai's religion. My recollection is that the people of Wutai worship the dragon god Leviathan. Clearly they are not planet worshippers and I would love to see that presented. I know FF7 is all about Gaia theory etc. etc. but it would be really interesting to see a civilisation which did not accept that, but rather, worshipped gods of their own and had views of the after-life tied up in their own gods, rather than the return to the Mako which is the main viewpoint.

Maybe we don't return to the Mako, maybe the planet's Mako is really just a subterranean liquid fossil fuel.

It was interesting reading on the planned history of Wutai:

"Wutai was much different from how it appeared in the final product: Wutai was to be a town built around the Temple for the "Wutaia faith", a religion dominated by female hierarchy that worshipped a female deity. The current hierarch was to be the young Sasame-no-Himemiko, the 89th in line. Due to Sasame being only 15 years old, the real leader would be the high priestess, Izayoi. Godo would not have been the leader, but rather the head of the Kisaragi family, the servants to the Wutaia leader."

I'd love to see a greater exploration of this rival religious system, that would mean that Wutai is no friend of Avalanche, nor of Shinra for that matter.

But, let us not forget, there is clearly a third religious system in FF7 world.... perhaps it has been long forgotten or abandoned, but at least at some point there was a 'Church'. Aeris, as we all know, seems to hang around there.

Maybe, just maybe, that Church is the true religion. Obviously Leviathan isn't the one true God as he is a summon, but how to explain away the Mako religion that has taken so much of Midgar by storm?

I'm not sure and I don't think the FF7 writers are interested in any way of exploring that possibility.

Just some thoughts.