Embrace Your Dreams

“Embrace Your Dreams.” – Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class

                              SOLDIER First Class Angeal Hewley once told his protégé Zack Fair, “To be a hero, you need to have dreams. And honor.” My definition of a hero is Zack and all that he embodies.

              

                Zack Fair is the protagonist of the PlayStation Portable game Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII developed by Square Enix. He started out as a Second Class and took to heart Angeal’s advice. Throughout the course of the game, Zack has verbally expressed his desire to become a hero time and time again. 

               Fortunately, Zack is not just a man of words, but of action too. There’s so much more to Zack than his actions and words. Behind the sky blue eyes, spiky black hair and mako (condensed lifestream energy) -enhanced body is a determined yet innocent fictional character who has left a lasting impression on people around the globe, including me.

                              During the first few episodes of the game, I was given a taste of Zack’s naturally playful and confident side – his human side. His dedication to being a SOLDIER impressed me. Oftentimes, he’d defend Shin-Ra Electric Power Co., the company he works for, from the activists who question the legality of what Shin-Ra was rumored to be doing behind closed doors. Zack was polite to children, women and even the men who criticized him for working with Shin-Ra. I liked him immensely for that. He had the power to cut those men in half but he didn’t because he joined SOLDIER to protect people. Once, Zack helped a lost boy find his way back to his mother. There was even a time when he let a young thief who stole his wallet off the hook and even gave the kid some money to spend for his sick mother’s medicine. His actions make me think he’s humanitarian.

               But, alas, the peace didn’t last long. With time, the situation changed, along with one Zack Fair.

               One of his later missions went horribly awry and he ended up having to kill the monster his mentor Angeal had turned into with his own hands. Angeal went AWOL with his childhood friend Genesis Rhapsodos and Zack set out for the mission believing that he could convince Angeal to come back to Shin-Ra.  But he couldn’t. Zack was at his lowest during this part of the game and I found myself joining him in his tears. It hurt me to see him without his usual bright-as-the-sun smile. It was like seeing a part of Zack die along with Angeal. Zack had become so much more serious, like he’d been stripped of his innocence. He matured emotionally without regretting anything and, once again, I was impressed with his ways. After he mourned, he moved on. No use getting caught up in the past, right? I really admire Zack. If it were me in his shoes, I probably would’ve gotten myself killed trying to convince my mentor to come back.

              Another mission leads him to Nibelheim with Shin-Ra’s greatest SOLDIER, the hero Sephiroth and an infantryman, fellow mountain boy Cloud Strife. Here, fate dictates that my hero be put to another test. After checking out the town’s mako reactor and finding about the disturbing things Shin-Ra had indeed been doing, Sephiroth locks himself in an old library containing notes on the experiments Shin-Ra conducted. Zack’s suspicions on Shin-Ra are spiked and he tells Cloud that “SOLDIER is a den of monsters.”

               In a bout of insanity, Sephiroth sets the whole town aflame after a week. Zack goes after him and wounds him but it is Cloud who defeats Sephiroth. The two fall prey to Shin-Ra scientist Hojo who performs experiments on them. Zack breaks him and Cloud out of the manor where they are confined but the latter has become comatose. For almost a year, Zack carries Cloud around while fighting off the Shin-Ra forces pursuing them. They didn’t have any food, water, clothes or anything but even through all this, my hero managed to keep smiling and sane. He doesn’t mind that Cloud doesn’t hear him, he continues to talk. He doesn’t mind that Cloud can’t see him, he continues to smile. He knew of the danger they were in, so he didn’t ask for any help although they desperately needed it. Zack didn’t abandon his friend, Cloud, even when they were surrounded by enemies and there was no way out.

               But his acts of heroism don’t stop there because, unfortunately, it seems that one of the unwritten rules to becoming a hero is to die a tragic death.

               My hero and his companion were cornered in a desert so with one last smile for Cloud, Zack sets off to face the horde of Shin-Ra infantrymen, along with a few helicopters, all by himself, unknowing of the hand of Cloud’s that reaches for him. I think it was stupid thing to do. Stupid. Stupid yet unbelievably heroic. The battle was easily about a hundred troops to one man yet Zack didn’t cower or back down. He stood his ground against the bullets and missiles with his sword. He could have just hidden until the troops went away. What happened to the instinct of self-preservation? He should have just hidden! Then he would’ve spared me – and a lot of other gamers – some grief. But not once did Zack complain about his situation or blamed anyone for anything. For crying out loud, he wasn’t even mad at Shin-Ra for turning its treacherous butt back on them just because they discovered the company’s dirty little secret! I was in awe of his generous forgiveness and inability to hold a grudge.

               Zack manages to take down the helicopter and all but three infantrymen and in a blaze of bullets, he perishes. He passes the Buster Sword he received from Angeal on to Cloud and tells the other to “protect his SOLDIER honor.” If it were me, I swear I’d have used my last breath to tell Cloud to avenge me. As he reaches for the ‘liberating’ sky with a smile on his face, he disappears. I was just one of the fans who shed many tears for Zack.

                              SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair’s dying words were, “Hey, would you say I… became a hero?” And with all the certainty in the world, I can say that Zack did become a hero. In fact, to us gamers, he became so much more than that.

As a sidenote, I think it was one of the game’s goals to make the player cry at least once for the characters.