Final Fantasy VII Final Fallout Thread

[RubberJohnny]

16 minutes ago, Bojangle said:

On a personal level I've just got very little desire or energy to explain why I liked something only for you, Grindmouse or Talk Show Host to come over yelling DEBATE ME.

 

I'm not sure why I'm in there, beyond you two being my negstalkers.

 

If you go back and read the FF7 Remake thread I'm in there suggesting it shouldn't be a straight remake but a sequel or reimagining or something, since you can't go home again and recreate the first time you experienced something and offering something new is the only way to surprise people like the first time and you're literally the first reply trying to do some gotcha and getting really mad at me for my opinions.

 

Five years later, same people still mad.

[Bojangle]

I wish I cared enough to go trawling through posts from five years ago lol.

 

I'm guessing your post was "I don't get why are people so excited for this game?! URGH Nostalgia is a cancer" to which I replied something like "is it really hard to understand why people are excited for a remake of one of the most beloved games of all time?" So mad.

[RubberJohnny]

In both cases (this initial post you replied to, and the old one), I'm the guy being positive and upbeat and you're the one having a moan, so how'd you figure that?

[Bojangle]

2 minutes ago, grindmouse said:

 

But aren't you now arguing it wasn't exciting or beloved enough to warrant a real remake, which is why you're glad Square did something different with it?

 

 

Have I said that?

[Qazimod]

5 hours ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

I don't know, I feel like this first one already blew it's load by recreating most of the key scenes throughout the rest of the game - we see Aeris' death, Reunion, the destruction of Meteor, a battle reminiscent of the finale, and even the original ending cutscene, all in lavish CGI.

 

That feels like an odd thing to do if you're going to go through the series faithfully, are they just going to show the same CGI again? What does it leave the other games with for their big key moments, except memey scenes like the Dolphin jump? To my mind they've already done the crib-notes version, and they'll be going in a very different direction with Part 2:

 

  Hide contents

That the Zach stuff at the end hints at multiple dimensions or timelines, well, that wouldn't be in there if it wasn't relevant.

 

 

Some people have suggested that this has been done to create more drama or mystery in an "opening chapter" that was sorely lacking some of that drama in 1997, because it was just one part of a full 50-100 hour experience. I don't have the remake but I did replay the portion of FFVII that I heard would be covered in the remake's first instalment, and the bigger plot beats aren't really introduced apart from maybe a bit of Shinra scheming in the background. To someone who's never played the original, they might otherwise finish the remake with a "that's it?" feeling.  

 

Even so, I don't necessarily agree with the extent to which they've used flash-forwards (I don't have the remake but I've seen a lot of gameplay); there's definitely a risk that key scenes could be robbed of their impact when they actually come around. Unless of course it's all a work and the events are going to be completely different from the early teases  

[BadgerFarmer]

1 hour ago, RubberJohnny said:

If all these people really loved the direction, then you expect they'd be excited for the next games and speculating like mad about where those plot thread and hints at the end are going, instead they're avoiding that topic like the plague and reiterating how well it does the safe nostalgic bits, almost like they're reassuring themselves.

I've explained this a few times already. Maybe playing it would help clarify what it's doing.

 

The ending is there to set out that the future is unknown. That's really the biggest thing it does. It's hard to draw much from the plot devices it uses to get there in terms of how important they'll be. The excitement right now is in the not knowing. How you've translated that into people reassuring themselves that it's not going to change much, I've no idea. I literally just said I was torn between it sticking close to the original and taking a new direction - I find both possibilities appealing, but there's not enough there yet to speculate on what that new direction might be. Because, again, that's not the point of it.

 

Surely the safe nostalgic view is the one that doesn't like the new ending because they want a faithful retelling.

[Kiwi Cake]

I finished this yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised, following all the scaremongering, to find it to be a relatively faithful retelling of the original story. Unlike the Advent Children era of FF7, this feels very much like an additive experience to the original game, expanding on key plot points, characters and themes to offer a slightly more detailed take on what came before. I've been particularly impressed with the handling of some of the characters, almost all of whom come off better in this than their 1997 counterparts. Above all this feels very FF7, which is something few of the things they've done with the property over the years have managed.

 

Obviously it's not without its issues, notably in terms of some of the writing and some of the gameplay additions made to pad out sections of the game, and the finale contains some absolutely top level Advent Children nonsense, but overall I really enjoyed it as something that will exist alongside the original game. It ends in a good place and I'm genuinely excited to see what they do next with it.

[carlospie]

I read a theory that this whole remake is what cloud saw when travelling through the liifestream in the original to go fight final sephiroth. That would be pretty cool. 

[Thor]

My Bro finished this today. He's a die-hard FFVII fan, knows the systems inside out. My brother had only two major gripes: He thought the ghostly beings were a bit naff, and he wished there was more. Otherwise, he loved it, his exact words were, "it exceeded my expectations." 

 

He had no problem with the ending shenanigans at all, and can't wait for the next installment.

[sprite]

45 minutes ago, Thor said:

My Bro finished this today. He's a die-hard FFVII fan, knows the systems inside out. My brother had only two major gripes: He thought the ghostly beings were a bit naff, and he wished there was more. Otherwise, he loved it, his exact words were, "it exceeded my expectations." 

 

He had no problem with the ending shenanigans at all, and can't wait for the next installment.

 

But did you ask him if he wanted a remake, or a re-imagining, or a re-telling, or a carbon copy of FFVII with better graphics?  Why is he not bothered?!?!?!?111

[sprite]

5 hours ago, Kiwi Cake said:

I finished this yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised, following all the scaremongering, to find it to be a relatively faithful retelling of the original story. Unlike the Advent Children era of FF7, this feels very much like an additive experience to the original game, expanding on key plot points, characters and themes to offer a slightly more detailed take on what came before. I've been particularly impressed with the handling of some of the characters, almost all of whom come off better in this than their 1997 counterparts. Above all this feels very FF7, which is something few of the things they've done with the property over the years have managed.

 

Obviously it's not without its issues, notably in terms of some of the writing and some of the gameplay additions made to pad out sections of the game, and the finale contains some absolutely top level Advent Children nonsense, but overall I really enjoyed it as something that will exist alongside the original game. It ends in a good place and I'm genuinely excited to see what they do next with it.

 

It's really interesting you talk about AC in this way, I think I only watched it once or twice but I completely agree with you regarding how it relates to FF7 or not as the case may be.

 

For me, this game felt tonally much closer to Crisis Core (which was a perfect way to approach a spin-off IMO, take note Lightning Returns and all your weirdness) and no point hammered that home more than when at the end the

 

song "Hollow" kicked in.... it really reminded me of this somehow...

 

 

... and Aerith has a moment when the rain starts to fall, which was when she knew in CC that Zack had died....

 

 

And it really caught me by surprise, going into this almost fresh, to find so much CC going on was a real treat.  Even the Shinra building/battle sim area (and associated guards' comments) made me think of it, but it's been so long since I played CC I'm not sure if memory is playing tricks.

 

 

[Talk Show Host]

9 hours ago, sprite said:

 

But did you ask him if he wanted a remake, or a re-imagining, or a re-telling, or a carbon copy of FFVII with better graphics?  Why is he not bothered?!?!?!?111

Because he is clearly normal and the rest of us with a negative opinion are obsessive idiots.

[BadgerFarmer]

Don't know if this should go here or the main thread, but I've actually written a proper piece now, about revisiting the radical politics of the Midgar section, and what it means when it's a remake:

https://bulletpointsmonthly.com/2020/05/07/fighting-for-lost-causes-ffvii-remake

 

[mikeyl]

That’s a great read, put it on the main thread! The themes are laid on thick in the game, and sometimes dropped or not explored in the depth you want them to, but it’s testament to the enduring appeal of the original, and how the remake expands on it.

 

I’m going to get your book, should I Amazon though?

[Marlew]

24 minutes ago, BadgerFarmer said:

Don't know if this should go here or the main thread, but I've actually written a proper piece now, about revisiting the radical politics of the Midgar section, and what it means when it's a remake:

https://bulletpointsmonthly.com/2020/05/07/fighting-for-lost-causes-ffvii-remake

 

 

No more reacks but great read. Fantastic stuff. 

[BadgerFarmer]

13 hours ago, mikeyl said:

I’m going to get your book, should I Amazon though?

Great, thanks.

 

If you want to get it from the publisher it's here: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/ideology-virtual-city

But TBH Amazon is probably cheaper.

[mikeyl]

51 minutes ago, BadgerFarmer said:

Great, thanks.

 

If you want to get it from the publisher it's here: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/ideology-virtual-city

But TBH Amazon is probably cheaper.

Couldn’t see direct from publisher so went Hive who slipped a few bucks to Housmans.com. So that’s my ethical shopping done for the day and back to Prime to get a £2.50 kettle descaler delivered in 2 hours

[Qazimod]

Having finished it this week, I feel like what I would want from this kind of outcome (which isn't the same as "what I think it will end up being") is a scenario where familiar events happen but they fuck with your expectations along the way. We already get a tease of that in the first game because I was totally caught out by

 

Spoiler

Barrett's "death"

 

and so future games have the opportunity to keep players guessing. What matters for me is the successful impact of these changes in comparison to what was already there. I'd like to say that I can remain open-minded and welcome new things, but not if the new thing fails to keep me invested... I mean, I love the combat gameplay, the presentation and other systems such as how they handle materia and abilities now... but the narrative drive brings people back as much as anything else (otherwise you might as well spend your time in the combat simulator forever  )

 

The open nature of the ending asks players how much faith they have in the FFVII Remake project to deliver something new that's equally compelling. And that kind of thing is... exciting? Risky? You could argue that the next game could introduce a replacement plot device that serves the same purpose as Whispers... but then why build up to a confrontation with the Whispers in this game? (And besides, the replacement-Whispers would still have to exist in the alternate dimension portal world, so does that mean that their corrective efforts would be meaningless?  )

 

In any case, I ate up most of the promotional material for this initial game so I don't mind clicking on a trailer for the next game to find out how much of the old game's story has been thrown out. I know that gameplay should be the most important aspect of games, but with RPGs you kind of need the motivations offered by the story to keep you coming back. Which is why I wouldn't mind a similar series of events with subversive moments within them, or a brand new thing that is compelling.

[tnman]

END GAME SPOILERS

 

I personally think the meta-narrative boss fight was a stroke of absolute genius. How else could you boldly take FF7 forward whilst acknowledging you still have almost the entirety of a JRPG epic to mine for inspiration and updates?

 

The sequels could diverge hugely, which contradictorily I still do think would be a mistake, but just like Barrett's death/resurrection we do have an enormous amount of space now in which to be surprised whereas otherwise any sequels would have just been "ah and now it's this bit" with updated mechanics, which of course is what Nomura never wanted in the first place. So much so, we now see, he made an entire game about it.

[Qazimod]

I''m still listening to bits of the soundtrack at the moment. I did a lot of spooging over music in the other thread, but the sequence of remixes you get during a particular boss in Chapter 17 was so good (warning: name of prominent FFVIIR boss below)

 

Spoiler

Jenova, man. Holy crap.

 

Phase 1: "oh that's a nice callback to the Jenova theme, if a bit overproduced maybe"

Phase 2: "oh, okay now that's a bit more like it. You did your job, and I'd be happy if you just left it at-"

Phase 3: OMFGWTFBBQ. They did it. The madmen just dumped the theme on us there and then.

 

The encounter itself was a bit fiddly in places, but man did it reach the feels.

 

Also, I hope that during the final game in this collection (if we're alive by then) they do another (tangentially related) theme justice...

 

Spoiler

I'm looking forward to the Jenova Absolute theme even more now, as it's kind of a lowkey favourite of mine.  

 

[Unofficial Who]

I've now seen the ending twice and I'm loving it. My partner has declared it one of her favourite games of all time (she's playing it right now on a harder difficulty after finishing the game literally minutes ago.)

 

I can totally understand the pushback because if you take the whispers as being

hardcore fans trying to keep the story as cannon then some are going to feel like they've paid to be slapped across the face.

 

Of course there's an alternate take on the whispers which I quite like

the whispers being the original creators who created the cannon and the players wresting control away from them with the force of almost 25 years of fan created art behind them.

 

It looks like this might be the only game apart from Animal Crossing that we'll be playing over winter.

 

There's little to complain about here. It looks amazing, the soundtrack is stunning. The new battle system once you get to grips with it is one of their best.

 

I'd have no hesitation recommending it to fans or new players.

 

 

[Marlew]

I think we can all agree that the original game can now be delisted. 

[BadgerFarmer]

Yeah, I feel like its mere existence is ruining my enjoyment of the Remake.

[PaB]

I’m just annoyed that they made all those changes in ffvii , there’s no whispers in it , the voice acting is terrible and don’t get me started on the graphics . No respect for remake fans at all .