About Banora and what it might look like in the very remote possibility that we will be able to go there in Remake Part 3 as well as just as a general worldbuilding thing I'm doing just for funsies …
Feel free to steal anything from here, I don't need credit or anything I just like sharing ideas. I'd love to hear what other people think about this!
For Remake part 3: Something that would be really interesting is if, like Nibelheim, it's been rebuilt and the people there act as though they've lived there their whole lives. No one in the party would know the truth, except Cloud if he gets that memory flash (or, and even more remote possibility, Zack is somehow in this timeline he would be incredibly disturbed)
We didn't entirely get that in Nibelheim in Rebirth, because of the whole thing of the ‘Mako poisoning hospital’ cover up was a very different sort of messed up.
In all honesty, it's more likely that the party will pass through the ruins in order to get to the cave system, but for fanfic's sake let's get into the nitty gritty of what a fully realized Banora might look like when it was populated!
Banora looks miniscule in Crisis Core but that is definitely not the reality of it, so much as the limitations of the original medium. The size of the area you can access in CC is skewed by the fact it was a PSP game, the same as how Nibelheim, Kalm, Corel, Costa, and Upper/Lower Junon were tiny in OG on the PS1. The hardware just couldn't do what the PS5 can. All of those places are now packed full of people, with bars and restaurants and shops, as well as housing for all those people wandering around.
To go on a slight tangent about my love for what they did in Rebirth:
Kalm has a huge thriving marketplace for example, and tons of housing and apartment buildings you can see but not get to. Upper Junon we only see what is clearly mostly a mall, as well as parts of the military base. All the people shopping and then watching the parade certainly live up there, we just can't see the residential area. There's a lot of shanty houses we can see built up in Lower Junon, and it's very likely that that whole side is filled with narrow alleys and tenement buildings we can't get to.
Nibelheim also seems to have more homes and buildings in the woods around the main square, because the number of people, especially the number of children, means they can't all live in the houses directly around the square because some of those are shops on the bottom and houses on top, but the way it's laid out it doesn't feel as crowded as it does where the market and apartments are in Kalm. It's pretty realistic for a rural town that some of the people are further out in the woods, and that does bring up a possibility of survivors of Sephiroth’s rampage popping up somewhere.
Costa Del Sol is the biggest example of this, there's tons of places you can sort of see beyond the area we can get to, in the opposite direction of the map from Costa to Corel. Of course the main area is the tourist section, but all the people working there need somewhere to live, and places to shop for normal things and groceries that aren't insanely overpriced for the tourists.
Corel, for all that it's in ruins, is massive compared to the handful of people that squatted there in OG.
Okay okay, back to Banora and what I think it would look like before Genesis took over the town and Shinra firebombed the whole thing!
I did some research (for literally one single scene in Raised By Wolves lol) and a juice factory and orchard would need at the very least 150+ workers in the factory - possibly more if there are 3 shifts which is pretty likely.
You need people to sort and process the apples, run the equipment for mashing and juicing them, 'Rhapsodization', canning/bottling, labeling, packing, shipping. There's also a high probability that they are doing stuff with the byproducts of the remains, like making applesauce or apple butter to be making money with every part of the fruit as well as the less ideal apples that would be picked over for juicing as not good enough.
You could assume that human resources and advertising/graphic design could be outsourced somewhere in Midgar unless Genesis’ parents did some of that themselves. We don't know what they did before the factory, other than that they were already wealthy beforehand.
You also need dozens of people picking the apples which is an all year around job rather than a seasonal one because dumbapples are harvested all year round. The fact that the product is shipped all over Gaia and became especially popular when Genesis was a SOLDIER means the orchards had to be absolutely sprawling and massive for that much output.
I figure most people lived in a middling area, the people that work in the factory doing the labor, then the foremen and managerial positions lived up near the Rhapsodos', and the lowest people like janitors and apple pickers lived around where Angeal did and that's probably what his father did for work. I feel like it would be a never ending, backbreaking job…
Picking apples and carting them to the factory would be a constant slog because it's possible that the fruit is always in some stage of ready to harvest, so there wouldn't be a lot of holidays and gaps to rest up. At least picking normal crops is season by season and there are breaks in the winter when things aren't growing in the fields.
If Angeal’s father's health was already poor, he'd constantly be working and maybe for not a lot of money. We don't really know how long his parents were married, because Hollander was actually his sperm donor, so probably his dad came from the mainland at some point and met his mom…
As a random aside, I think Shinra had her trapped there, unable to leave and blacklisted from being hired anywhere in town. That would explain the fact that she has a doctorate but they were poor enough when Angeal was little that he was hungry and had to steal. Probably she had sporadic work under the table as it were, maybe midwifery and that kind of thing for the people living around her.
Speaking of the town, there would have to be at least a market square of some kind to serve all those workers. You need a grocery store and general goods store at the very least, probably a diner, maybe a thrift store or something as well.
For video game/fanfic purposes, there would be an Item Shop that could also sell Materia, a Maghnata Books, and certainly a Weapons Shop and a forge since Angeal’s father had to get the Buster somewhere.
Because it's Shinra, and they would have complete control over the island including who comes and goes and what's ferried in and out, it's possible that most things in that town ran on ‘company scrip’ for the workers, with a promise of pay in cash bonuses but most everything would go right back in Shinra’s pocket through rent and the company stores and restaurants.
Whether or not the island has been rebuilt and a new orchard and factory is in place (I believe there was something you could overhear or read in Rebirth that Banora White juice tastes different now so it'd be different apples) it would take up at LEAST as much room as Kalm, including the town and the whole map around it.
Added to that, there's also the Materia Cave as a dungeon, which would be a very cool option for a Remake map, what with the WEAPON and all of that! Coming across the remains of Genesis’ Loveless obsession would be fantastic, as well as Minerva's statue.
What do you think is mostly likely to happen if we get access to Banora on the world map in Remake Part 3? Anything you think I missed or would be cooler??
