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Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #175 on: 2015-06-24 00:16:26 »
The person who decides is ultimately the director - and he should know the basics of game design.  Everything I get from the current crop at Square is that they don't, but they aren't held to account because of the brand.  It's not too hard to see what was wrong with the original:

1. Models are lego, graphics are pixellated because of low resolution. The pre-rendered setup is fine.
2. FMV have same problem
3. Difficulty is far too easy (probably needs a choice between hard / easy at game start)
4. Ties in with 3. The implementation of the materia system and battle system is poor.  The design is fine.
5. Localization into English is poor
6. Cait Sith (well, he's here to stay, sadly haha)
7. Some minigames (like Submarine) are unfinished
8. Game could have had more minigames at Gold Saucer

If those things were fixed and updated, the game would still retain everything that made it great and, at the same time, ADD to what was there originally.  But such a task would take a competent director and writing staff, a company that cared, and much more time and money than they are willing to spend.

If fixing these points were the way to your ideal vision of a remake, then things can't be looking too bad because the contributions of the modding community (including your own) are precisely doing that job! Item #1 would be fixed using Kaldarasha's models and yarLson's fields, Item #2 may need more video-editing work (if you go with an approach with upscaling and filtering each frame, it'd be tedious but still manageable), Item #3 and #4: there are difficulty patches (not to mention that if you push the config sliders to the maximum battle speed in "Active" mode, it'd make the game a little harder) which you must know better than I, Item#5 is actually your very own project, Item #6 is a long-term project you intended to carry out, only Item #7 and Item #8 would be a little more difficult to implement (not sure if anybody has been working much on the submarine game). So in the end we'll have Square's remake on the one hand, however it turns out, with certainly a different direction than what you propose, and on the other end we could also choose to play the original with the appropriate collection of mods which will make it faithful to your ideal vision. Is there a harm that they'll be different? If people recognize that your vision is superior (and that graphics do not matter that much), then they too will play the modded version of the original and be content with it, and they will leave Square's remake aside. I'm actually not sure there would be a point for Square to simply make the same modifications to the game as the modding community would (and certainly it wouldn't cost them that much money, if you cut down the budget for the graphic update).

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #176 on: 2015-06-24 00:24:57 »
You're right that some of those are being addressed and fixed, but a full remake of the engine is unlikely to happen, along with 720p graphic updates to all pre-rendered fields (that will never happen).  In short, our changes can only go so far - we do not have at our disposal near unlimited funds and talent.  A full remake could do what we have done and much more with the right people in charge.  So I'm afraid we just have to go back to my list and my previous posts.

Ultimately any changes we do make will only be seen by a fraction of people and will never be official.  If the majority of gamers knew of us and saw our version, I am confident it would hold up well.  But you cannot compete with a console and an entire company.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-24 00:28:49 by DLPB »

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #177 on: 2015-06-24 00:34:51 »
A full remake could do what we have done and much more with the right people in charge.
For curiosity's sake, who in your opinion would have been the right people for taking the lead of this project? Sakagushi?

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #178 on: 2015-06-24 01:16:55 »
For curiosity's sake, who in your opinion would have been the right people for taking the lead of this project? Sakagushi?

I have absolutely no idea.  Sakaguchi isn't without faults, but I'd feel much happier if he were at the helm.  I don't know enough about the FF team as individuals to say who is the best suited to doing the job right.  People who know them better, like Luksy, may be able to give you a better answer.

I wish I was the director.   :-D

gjoerulv

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #179 on: 2015-06-24 11:58:50 »
It almost feels like the best PR move Square could possibly pull off would be to "hire" Sakagushi so that his name would be on the directors list. I'm not sure there's so much "bad blood" between him and Square (after all, he still seems to be talking to Kitase regularly), but would he be interested in getting involved in this?

It wouldn't hurt at least...

When it comes to Sakaguchi, imo, he haven't done anything truly great since FF9. Lost Odyssey (best things about LO are the short stories and the music) and Last Story have their charm, but lacks the little extra that made his previous works with the FFs truly great. imo.

Even when it comes to the FF series -amazing as the man is- he tends to be over credited by fanboys. FF1 is kinda his child. 2 - 5 he had a lot of creative influence over. On 6 and 7 he was "only" a producer (if I'm not mistaken), which is very important to the final product, but not as much as being both director and writer. On 8, 10 and 11 he was "merely" an executive producer, whatever that means. In any case he wasn't very involved with those games. On 9 he is credited as producer and scenario. Basically 1 - 7 and 9 are the games he had influence over directly.

In regards to the fan remake vs SE remake: It a good thing SE makes a new FF7. It won't interrupt the potential fan "remakes" of the original. A "true fan remake", in other words, will never be in vain.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #180 on: 2015-06-24 17:14:41 »
For curiosity's sake, who in your opinion would have been the right people for taking the lead of this project? Sakagushi?

I have given your question some more thought. I think the answer is - NONE of the staff are the right person for the job in terms of story.  In order for a game like FF7 to have optimal game play and story it needs both game designers AND a professional writer.  Someone who understands storytelling far better than your average game designer does.  It stands to reason.  I'd be happy with someone who even knew the basics, but Advent Children / Dirge / Crisis Core / Before Crisis prove the current crop are NOT it.  I am not lying when I say I could do a better job with the story than they did with those and that's unacceptable.

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #181 on: 2015-06-24 17:41:43 »
I think the answer is - NONE of the staff are the right person for the job in terms of story.
Given they're actually the same people as the original writers, I'm left to wonder: would you consider the writing and narration of the original game to have been the result of a very fortunate accident?

dkma841

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #182 on: 2015-06-24 18:34:26 »
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« Last Edit: 2021-10-28 16:20:12 by dkma841 »

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #183 on: 2015-06-24 18:56:31 »
It looks like it already has gone back down, it seems hard to judge on a day to day basis. I know extremely little about finances, but I find it interesting that their shares has considerably increased during the past year, and quite progressively at that. It rather looks like it would correlate information/media release for FF XV.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #184 on: 2015-06-24 19:35:38 »
Given they're actually the same people as the original writers, I'm left to wonder: would you consider the writing and narration of the original game to have been the result of a very fortunate accident?

I think that it was a combination of them spending a lot more time on it, having more passion for it, and being limited by the system itself. Art from adversity.  Perhaps they are good enough but they just don'[t care anymore.  But for whatever reason, their endeavours after FFX have been poor to say the least.  I guess it couldn't have been a fluke given that I really think FF8-10 had some real effort placed in and were certainly not mediocre (well, FF8's plot went out of the window near the end, and FF9's wasn't really THAT good).  But everything after has been.

Perhaps what I have been saying for a long time is true - that the new systems allowing so much data and power have ended up taking away time and effort that used to be channeled into the story and game play.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-24 22:15:20 by DLPB »

Gatchaman

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #185 on: 2015-06-25 08:47:36 »
Yeah, with all the different opinions I've read regarding the remake across the internet, I am starting to think that the smart thing for Squarenix to do sould be to come out with "Final Fantasy VII Remake Maker". So you can get it just right for what you want out of it! :P

gjoerulv

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #186 on: 2015-06-25 09:11:17 »
Given they're actually the same people as the original writers, I'm left to wonder: would you consider the writing and narration of the original game to have been the result of a very fortunate accident?

In the case of FF it's hardly the 1st time a creative "band" have lost their creative flair. Think of a The Sixth Sense remake. Or a Master of Puppets Remake. Or a Star Wars remake. By the same people respectively. Would I trust that they would pull it off? Not impossible, but given their latest work, being sceptical is not irrational here. It may very well be the most rational position to have in all these cases.

@Gatchaman
Notepad?

sithlord48

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #187 on: 2015-06-25 14:35:14 »
is happening... reaction video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ubxpEMr3o

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #188 on: 2015-06-25 16:09:11 »
In the case of FF it's hardly the 1st time a creative "band" have lost their creative flair. Think of a The Sixth Sense remake. Or a Master of Puppets Remake. Or a Star Wars remake. By the same people respectively. Would I trust that they would pull it off? Not impossible, but given their latest work, being sceptical is not irrational here. It may very well be the most rational position to have in all these cases.
You've made a very good point. I guess we would agree that George Lucas' stuff in particular symbolizes that (and I'd understand very well the skepticism in the other two cases). Still, stuff can turn out being different and good (the re-arrangements with the orchestra in S&M were pretty damn good IMO). And for good or ill, nobody is more legitimate than the original authors for remaking it.

Covarr

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #189 on: 2015-06-25 16:18:23 »
I guess we would agree that George Lucas' stuff in particular symbolizes that
Y'know, I actually wouldn't agree with this. The first film in the original trilogy was a fill-in-the-blanks of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, and the other two were mostly not Lucas' work. He had a whole bunch of people serving to keep him in check, whereas on the prequel trilogy he had a whole bunch of yes-men who wouldn't dare disagree with the Great George Lucas, praise be unto him.

It's not so much that Lucas has lost his creative flair, it's that he never had it, but the more power he has the more obvious it becomes. That said, I wonder if this might be at least in part the case with FF7 compilation. The original game was directed by Yoshinori Kitase, while everything else in the compilation has been directed by Tetsuya Nomura, relegating Kitase to far more hands-off producer roles. This, among all else, I would say is the chief cause for the drastic shift in tone between FF7 and Advent Children, a shift that ended up sticking to the rest of the compilation.

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #190 on: 2015-06-25 18:17:14 »
Y'know, I actually wouldn't agree with this. The first film in the original trilogy was a fill-in-the-blanks of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, and the other two were mostly not Lucas' work. He had a whole bunch of people serving to keep him in check, whereas on the prequel trilogy he had a whole bunch of yes-men who wouldn't dare disagree with the Great George Lucas, praise be unto him.
It's not so much that Lucas has lost his creative flair, it's that he never had it, but the more power he has the more obvious it becomes.

Honestly, I wouldn't know. I would still tend to believe he had a major role in the successes of the earlier movies. The Indiana Jones franchise followed the same fate (all of them had the story by Lucas and the direction by Spielberg), I'm not sure he had a smaller part in his successes than he had in his failures.

That said, I wonder if this might be at least in part the case with FF7 compilation. The original game was directed by Yoshinori Kitase, while everything else in the compilation has been directed by Tetsuya Nomura, relegating Kitase to far more hands-off producer roles. This, among all else, I would say is the chief cause for the drastic shift in tone between FF7 and Advent Children, a shift that ended up sticking to the rest of the compilation.

I am not sure that Nomura is that much to be blamed for. Fair enough, he was at the lead of Advent Children, but for the rest of the compilation (BC, CC, DoC) his role was to lay out concepts and design characters. I don't believe he had a significant part in the direction/production. In my opinion, if the story and script are to be considered, then it may rather be Nojima's responsibility.

EQ2Alyza

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #191 on: 2015-06-25 20:12:03 »
is happening... reaction video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ubxpEMr3o

I'm actually watching this all the way through lol

White Wind

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #192 on: 2015-06-25 23:33:39 »
is happening... reaction video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ubxpEMr3o

That is so funny x)

I hadn't even watched the trailer !

Az

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #193 on: 2015-06-26 14:27:16 »
Modders of the original FF7, does this affect your motivation to continue working on it?

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #194 on: 2015-06-26 14:47:10 »
Modders of the original FF7, does this affect your motivation to continue working on it?

It reinforces it.  Because I already know this remake is going to crap all over the original and that when the nostalgia and hype have died off, the original is going to be replayed an awful lot more.

Shard

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #195 on: 2015-06-26 14:56:12 »
It reinforces it.  Because I already know this remake is going to crap all over the original and that when the nostalgia and hype have died off, the original is going to be replayed an awful lot more.
My feelings exactly.

Mayo Master

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #196 on: 2015-06-26 15:14:21 »
Modders of the original FF7, does this affect your motivation to continue working on it?
On my end, I feel there's not much point in continuing. My time and energy would be better spent elsewhere.

EQ2Alyza

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #197 on: 2015-06-26 15:34:30 »
I am treating them as separate games from different eras of gaming. I am absolutely in love with the original, so I don't plan to stop being a part of the modding community for it. The only thing that could stop me is if Meteor itself comes crashing down on these forums and we lose everything (aka cease and desist).

White Wind

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #198 on: 2015-06-27 00:30:31 »
The only thing that could stop me is if Meteor itself comes crashing down on these forums and we lose everything (aka cease and desist).

That's the matter I was about to post on.

I'm wondering if a remake being out could give Square a reason to summon Meteor.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #199 on: 2015-06-27 00:31:43 »
There is one thing I'm really happy about.  No more endless remake speculation.  No more having to read "when it is happening" or "Rumour confirmed!" "Are they remaking it?"  Every single week.  After this there will be no more remake talk.