From what I remember, what you see of Wutai in the game isn't really a war, it's just Zack on one of this Very First Soldier Missions sneaking in and out of the palace getting to play ninja and occasionally beating up a Wutai patrol. ...And making friends with Yuffie. It wasn't shown as a war, more like - well, a training exercise, and from what you see I think a lot of the Soldier training is done in very realistic VR rooms - possibly to enable that sense of this-isn't-quite-real.

That and Zack does seem to have been shown as this rather dumbed-down and naive kid who wants to play at Soldiers. *facepalm* He was absolutely heartbroken at Angeal 'disappearing', since that's apparently how it's shown, but I don't think you really find out a lot about how Angeal and Genesis ended up the way they did. A lot of it was made very personal, in that Dr Hollander was made the focal point of the problem at first, and by the time you get to 'Shinra was behind the whole damn thing!' Zack's best friend and mentor has gone completely batshit insane and is flapping around calling himself a monster, asking Zack to kill him.

...I'm not sure what happens between then and Nibelheim, but Genesis is running around cloning himself and raving about Loveless and taking over the world, not to mention sparking off Seph's own happy fun slide into Jenova-induced crazy.

(Basically? Yes, Zack was shown as very naive and not thinking about the bigger picture, but Crisis Core was fanservice that got shoehorned into the original canon to try and wring more profits out of the 'Zaaaaack!'-reaction, so it's probably best to take the entire thing with a very, very large pinch of salt. -_-)

*cuddles moogle?*

Springkink never seems to mind if fics for them are late, my moogle, and there's always the drabble option. *snuggles up tight and fans and Muses for* Just keep calm, make sure you get plenty of sleep and go at things at your own pace, and you'll be fine. *loves* ...And good luck with GirlGamer.com!