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DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #100 on: 2015-06-19 00:18:13 »
I think Sakaguchi is the key part of the equation and always was.  I think he was the safety valve to all the crazy ideas and directions.  The rudder.  And without him it's all just a mess.  A bit like Star Wars when it was under the sole control of Lucas.  Saying that, I was really unimpressed with Last Story's game play.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 00:20:26 by DLPB »

knightsoftheround

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #101 on: 2015-06-19 00:29:16 »
If I personally gave anyone a bad impression, I do apologize. If it's not what I want I just won't buy it - I believe speaking with my wallet is far more effective than speaking with my words in situations like this.

I mean I AM anxious about it due to being a huge '97!VII fan but I more or less said my piece and won't be bashing it or anything - Like I said, there are people that are going to love it even if I don't like it and I don't want to make them feel bad by ragging on something they like. There are unpopular things I love and it gets pretty upsetting seeing it constantly ragged on by others sometimes.

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #102 on: 2015-06-19 00:40:01 »
I think Sakaguchi is the key part of the equation and always was.  I think he was the safety valve to all the crazy ideas and directions.  The rudder.  And without him it's all just a mess.  A bit like Star Wars when it was under the sole control of Lucas.  Saying that, I was really unimpressed with Last Story's game play.

Sakaguchi probably keep things in check, but I also think he was the primary charm-factor. Every game he makes has charm in abundance, and honestly, the biggest issue with the FF7 spin-offs is that they have non of it.

The Last Story was a hit-or-miss for most people. I generally enjoyed the game-play, but I was mostly enjoying it for the story and the characters. I did have the privilege of playing it in Japanese though, so I didn't have to suffer through the English voice-acting, and that's bound to effect my view on the game I guess.

Looking at the games he has directed or produced since quitting Square though, makes it pretty apparent where the original FF charm came from - so there is no wonder why every FF after that has been this "teenage drama"-fest reminiscent of something made by the writers of directors of Vampire Diaries.

luksy

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #103 on: 2015-06-19 02:25:33 »
Quote
Nomura though? Present day Nomura?
No thank you, SE. That was a bad move if I ever saw one.

Totally agree with this, I have zero faith in Nomura making something that will appeal to me at this point, I just hope I'm wrong. Square is at the forefront of the pretty boy edge-fest style, and Nomura's the bannerman.

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #104 on: 2015-06-19 03:35:37 »
Totally agree with this, I have zero faith in Nomura making something that will appeal to me at this point, I just hope I'm wrong. Square is at the forefront of the pretty boy edge-fest style, and Nomura's the bannerman.

My biggest issue with Nomura is that he is essentially a grown ass child when it comes to design. His designs as of late, really remind of something that would come from the same kind of person who picks usernames like XxSephirothdarkengelofdestructionxX when the sign up for forums or MMORPGS.
You know, kids who think that if you take enough "cool" things and slap them on top of each other, it becomes even cooler and more awesome, not recognizing that it just becomes really fvcking cringe-worthy and ridiculous instead.

FF7 was over the top in many ways, but it also knew how to pace itself to avoid devolving into what can only be compared to the later arches of DragonBall Z. AC and the other spin-offs threw all that out the window though, and I just can't see Nomura being able to stop himself from doing this with the remake as well.

Here's my nightmare scenario -
Cloud won't just do a one-handed flip off the train this time around, he'll probably do a tripple spinning back-flip up into the air, then use
his Buster Sword as a skate-board, and slide across the electrical train-cables, then he'll do another super-acrobatic jump and cut down five or so solider whilst still in mid-air before landing on the platform to do his famous victory pose, and looking all cool into the camera.
We'll be served with another one of these scenes probably every five minutes, and probably every single fight as well, until we grow so used to it, and so jaded, that it doesn't even phase us after about an hour of game-play, making each consecutive fight scene feel less and less rewarding to the point where we no longer even bother watching what is actual going on at the screen.

By the time Sephiroth is introduced we'll all be wondering why Sephiroth is even supposed to be such a big deal when pretty much every member of the cast can fight independently of gravity on par with Neo from the Matrix.

luksy

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #105 on: 2015-06-19 04:03:19 »
Here's my nightmare scenario -
Cloud won't just do a one-handed flip off the train this time around, he'll probably do a tripple spinning back-flip up into the air, then use
his Buster Sword as a skate-board, and slide across the electrical train-cables, then he'll do another super-acrobatic jump and cut down five or so solider whilst still in mid-air before landing on the platform to do his famous victory pose, and looking all cool into the camera.

You mean like this? :D

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

Jenova's Witness

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« Reply #106 on: 2015-06-19 04:06:30 »
.
« Last Edit: 2015-11-16 07:45:37 by Jenova's Witness »

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #107 on: 2015-06-19 04:53:00 »
You mean like this? :D

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

God damn it all to hell.... I'd manage to phase that completely out of my memories. Thank you so much for bringing it back.

Yeah, Nomura, please don't ever touch another FF game/movie/thing ever again.

Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #108 on: 2015-06-19 08:42:26 »
What I want from the ffvii remake.
1. not a remake but a sequel. Fuck having to play the same story.
2. I want to be able to play everyone. Zack, Angeal, Kadaj, Hojo, Sephiroth and anyone else already dead. Make it so that you can recruit anyone.
3. everyone's advent children outfit+ fusion sword
4. motorcycles maybe in battle as well. idk how but find a way
5. Maybe new outfits for everyone? if they suck we can always not use them.
6. I want to see Honey Bee Inn in its full ultimate glory. idc make it rated M prob will make the game better.
7. new game+  with normal, hard, and insane difficulty options.
8. turn based: honestly, I wouldn't mind if they used ffxv's battle system but leaning more towards turn based.
9. lastly I hope they dont fuck up Cloud overall appearance or anyone else's for that matter. He looks pretty derp in the new dissidia game. Just make him look exactly like in the ps3 demo or advent childern movie.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #109 on: 2015-06-19 10:54:58 »
God damn it all to hell.... I'd manage to phase that completely out of my memories. Thank you so much for bringing it back.

Yeah, Nomura, please don't ever touch another FF game/movie/thing ever again.

This is my num 1 issue, sadly.  What are the odds the remake won't have scenes like this one?  Slim to none?

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #110 on: 2015-06-19 11:10:05 »
This is my num 1 issue, sadly.  What are the odds the remake won't have scenes like this one?  Slim to none?

To be fair, I can endure it if it's just once in a while, in the FMVs etc. My fear is that, given the advantages in hardware, the Nomura can't resist the urge to put it everywhere, including in the battle-system a la FF13.
The worst part of it is that if he does that he essentially creates something that is incongruent with the plot. I mean, I can accept Sephiroth's gravity dismissing antics, because he is supposed to be a super-soldier roided on Jenova cells as well as the Mako treatments, but when everybody else start doing it, it cheapens the strength of Sephiroth and essentially makes the statements about Sephiroth's "god-like" status seem nonsensical.

One of my favorite emotions driven by the narrative of the original was the anxiety born from chasing "the man in the black" - knowing that you had to track him down and fight him, but being worried about what would happen to you once you did. This emotion disappears completely when you are an over-powered super-saiyan-esque guy who can fly about like a bird on PCP and cut dozens of people in half without effort.

That's essentially why I couldn't stand Angeal or Genesis, or CC in general either. I mean, there is nothing to suggest in the original narrative that you had a bunch of 1st Class soldiers that were essentially awesome in much the same way as Sephiroth.
Zack went from a small-time soldier that had about 150 HP and was mesmerized by Sephiroth's fighting (if we accept that the original flashback Cloud is actually Zack) and then shot to death by a couple of Shinra grunts, to being a guy that could, at least for a while, hold his own against the legend, and even fight hundreds of grunts whilst tired after just having busted out of the Shinra Manor lab.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #111 on: 2015-06-19 11:39:33 »
I'd say the same about all over the top scenes.  They cheapen the suspension of disbelief to breaking point and also bloat up the story with unnecessary garbage.  But you are right...  if all characters are jumping about like in AC, the whole story collapses.

Also, even Sephiroth had  a limit in the original game.  Take the Temple of the Ancients... after using his super powers to zoom off repeatedly, he then collapses in front of the model tired and takes time to get back up.  His powers strain him.  I'm not sure many people realized that or even realize what a nice touch that is for believability.  FF7 didn't take things too far and it was mindful of realism and its own internal logic.

In Advent Children he is a god with no limits... he flies cutting huge 10 ton rocks with his sword (physically impossible), while cloud also flies with him.  Both are knocked into walls at 200 mph without any consideration for the story.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 11:44:01 by DLPB »

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #112 on: 2015-06-19 12:59:50 »
Yeah, but I can manage my expectations if it only happens once in a while, and granted that the rest of the game is good. A couple of minus points won't make me dismiss it in its entirety - although I agree I'd rather they do away with that stuff entirely.

Also, to be fair, the original had its share of extreme action as well, some of it physically impossible - such the limit breaks (Meteor-rain and Omnislash stands out in particular, especially since Cloud actually levitates in the former).
The thing with this though, was that these aspects were well paced. Omnislash wasn't made available until relatively late in the game, meaning that it made sense with Cloud's progression and development as a character. You wouldn't expect him to be as strong as Sephiroth such a short time after awakening from the tank in the Shinra mansion.

But, you're right in regards to Sephiroth. I find it funny that Sephiroth could repeatedly strike the tanks in the Nibelheim reactor without slashing them to ribbons, yet can easily cut huge falling slabs of concrete in AC...
The showdown between Cloud, Zack and Sephiroth in the reactor also shows the down to earth power-levels of characters in the game. Even mighty Sephiroth was weak to surprise attacks, and the scene where Cloud throws Sephiroth into the Mako pool through sheer tenaciousness and power of will is such a strong scene which actually works within that narrative given the fact that these characters are essentially human.
Can you really see Cloud running up and backstabbing Sephiroth granted the powerlevels of AC? Would Cloud picking him up be the sword and throwing him into a wall, thus dropping him into the Make pool even make sense?

The introduction of the Dragonball Z levels of power is probably why that scene has been retconned in later editions - which is another thing that really pissed me off.

Seriously, these scenes are some of the best in the entire game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-cbe2gDzCk

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #113 on: 2015-06-19 13:11:48 »
Yeah, but things like Omnislash are game elements.  He doesn't do Omnislash in a cutscene, it's always battle.  The unrealistic stuff is there because it has to be for a game to be fun (if you place realistic physics into battle mechanics, the game would not work as a game).  But the story was separate to that.  In Advent Children they placed the limit breaks into the story, which looked ridiculous.  Most unrealistic things in the cutscenes are short and done for dramatic effect.... but they're always mindful of the greater good in storytelling. And reasons are general given for them.  When Cloud survives the church fall, he is knocked out.  He he is hurt.  And the roof and flower bed broke his fall, along with being lucky (and later we find out he is an enhanced human).  It makes things believable.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 13:15:55 by DLPB »

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #114 on: 2015-06-19 13:37:50 »
Yeah, but things like Omnislash are game elements.  He doesn't do Omnislash in a cutscene, it's always battle.  The unrealistic stuff is there because it has to be for a game to be fun (if you place realistic physics into battle mechanics, the game would not work as a game).  But the story was separate to that.  In Advent Children they placed the limit breaks into the story, which looked ridiculous.  Most unrealistic things in the cutscenes are short and done for dramatic effect.... but they're always mindful of the greater good in storytelling. And reasons are general given for them.  When Cloud survives the church fall, he is knocked out.  He he is hurt.  And the roof and flower bed broke his fall, along with being lucky (and later we find out he is an enhanced human).  It makes things believable.

I can accept that a lot of the battle system functions like an abstraction for what is actually supposed to be happening, but I don't think that rule is consistently always true in FF7.
The final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth in the life-stream is obviously supposed to be a story-element more-so than a battle functioning primarily as an abstraction, which leaves me to think that the Omnislash and many of the battle-elements are supposed to, at least in part, reflect what is actually going on as well.

I can imagine that if, when they made FF7, they had the know-how and experience to create 3D scenes on par with the battle-scenes in the game, that we would have gotten a lot of the action we see in the battles, outside the battles as well - so Cloud doing flurries of strikes with neon-lights going off left and right isn't really beyond imagining at that point.

The thing though, is that the over-the-top action of the FF7 battles is still stylistically speaking congruent with the general art-direction of the game - However, Cloud swinging his sword to create electrical pulse-waves is still a far cry from flying about like Superman or Son-Goku,
or Sephiroth destroying half of Midgard just by his mere presence, so the same cannot be said for Advent Children.

That's why, personally, I'd hope for some sort of reasonable mid-way solution. Generally down to earth action, with a couple of nifty moves for dramatic flair at the right moment. That's what good battle choreography is all about. Films like Kitano's Zatoichi pretty much does it perfectly, where every strike is simple, yet decisive and then you have a couple of impressive technical feats thrown in at the last moment to either
turn the tables once everything seems lost, or to finish off one of the more prominent bad guys.
This is also what FF7 did so well. The limit breaks, summons, magic etc. start out really simple and all steadily grow more dramatic.

Compare the first fire spell in FF7 with the first fire spell in any later FF game, and see the difference. Naturally, there is a graphical difference as well, but the first fire spell in FF7 is literally just this little "floff" of a flame that passes in a second. Fire 3 with the all materia on the other hand, consumes the entire screen.
That's good progression if I ever saw it.
However, if you start the game out with Cloud dying olympic level acrobatics, and lightning-speed multi-hit combo cuts, then it grows stale pretty fast, and the diminishing returns kick in very fast.
That's why the AC route is not good for game-design or lengthy stories either for that matter.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #115 on: 2015-06-19 13:46:12 »
I'd have to disagree on the Omnislash thing.  In cutscenes, it is well established that one slash is fatal.  One stab kills Aerith, one slash almost kills Tifa.  After the battle with Sephiroth, all that's wrong with him in the FMV is consistent with a general fight and not being slashed repeatedly at the head.  In other words, the fight scene is just dramatic effect and a game element.

If Cloud could hit Sephiroth in the face with a sword in  a cutscene (even once) and he did not die, but Aerith / Tifa are seriously wounded by the same, this issue would be far more obvious and annoying - and that's precisely what will end up happening in the remake.  They'll break the wall that exists between the gameplay and the story, as they did in AC.  The original FF7 team (or someone there) absolutely understood this.

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #116 on: 2015-06-19 15:24:25 »
I'd have to disagree on the Omnislash thing.  In cutscenes, it is well established that one slash is fatal.  One stab kills Aerith, one slash almost kills Tifa.  After the battle with Sephiroth, all that's wrong with him in the FMV is consistent with a general fight and not being slashed repeatedly at the head.  In other words, the fight scene is just dramatic effect and a game element.

If Cloud could hit Sephiroth in the face with a sword in a cutscene (even once) and he did not die, but Aerith / Tifa are seriously wounded by the same, this issue would be far more obvious and annoying - and that's precisely what will end up happening in the remake.  They'll break the wall that exists between the gameplay and the story, as they did in AC.  The original FF7 team (or someone there) absolutely understood this.

It's well established that ordinary humans die of one slash - since Sephiroth isn't an ordinary human, certainly not within the life-stream, I don't think that argument makes sense.

I think the more reasonable assumption to make is that the developers simply didn't think that far, nor were really all that worried about it.
You can't really compare Sephiroth to Tifa and Aerith given that Sephiroth is enhanced by Jenova cells and can regenerate pretty quickly (corroborated Lucrecia) and the fact that Sephiroth literally regains his composure mere moments after Cloud stabbed him from behind with the Buster Sword.

I think that if we were to draw a completely line between the fights and the narrative, not a blurred one (which I think would be the case in FF7), then there are a lot of things that become contrived or difficult to justify as well.

It raises questions like how soldiers armed with swords are somehow able to fight and kill people armed with automatic weapons, robots
and monsters (and if you answered magic to that question, it still wouldn't make sense, since a gun and magic would still be better than a sword and magic).
It begs the question why Cloud can survive a fall from several hundred meters up in the air, but Sephiroth cannot survive consecutive hits from a blade, or how Cloud and Co (who're mostly equipped with melee weapons) fought Ultima Weapon or Diamond Weapon, or how Barrett can hit a guy so hard he literally hits the ceiling.

I think the fact of the matter is that FF7 isn't entirely clear about what's actually going on when we're fighting, and as I said, I don't really think Squaresoft even though that far ahead either. I think it's entirely possible that without the technical limitations, that we would have seen different kinds of actions scenes both in field screens and in FMVs, and that while certain scenes were certainly made the way the were made on purpose, other grew organically out of the limitations they worked within, which is why there are discrepancies throughout the game.

No story is perfect, because no writer is perfect - and games are even more vulnerable to logical breaks than media and art like books, because they're made by large teams of people who're not always working in perfect tandem with each-other.

I think the more relevant and apt complaint about the AC style of action is that it falls prey to what we in anime-circles call "the dragonball loop", which is that the more power you endow a character with, the bigger hurdles you have to make in order to make the narrative exciting - and the longer your narrative stretches on, the more powerful you have to keep making the character, until inevitably people start breaking planets with their power.
This is bad writing because it comes a point where your character is so powerful that all conventional story-telling devices etc. cease to work properly as a result.
How does it make sense, for instance, for Cloud and Co to be trapped in an elevator and locked up by the Turks if Cloud is established to be on par with Neo from the Matrix in the first cut-scene of the remake?
This is also why the AC plot-line is so contrived - after all, Cloud already beat Sephiroth once, so he shouldn't really have any trouble doing it again - so the entire Cloud's depression thing, and geo-stigma are probably literally plot-devices made for the sole purpose of making that fight have any kind of arch of suspense.

These are real concerns that relate to the production of the remake.
However, whether Cloud can actually do an Omninslash at the end of the story when facing Sephiroth is not.
That's why some levels of flash and acrobatics can work, whilst a lot of it can't - not because flashes and acrobatics are inherently somehow incongruent with the plot (because they obviously aren't).
They can't be if Cloud is supposed to fight enormous monsters, and people wielding guns with his sword. It has to be reasonable to expect Cloud to fight at a level that is, at least to a certain degree, significantly above that of ordinary humans wielding machine-guns.
The flip side of the coin is of course, that you can't have too much of it either, because, as I've already demonstrated, that breaks the plot as well.

A balance has to be struck for the plot to work - Nomura probably isn't capable of this though, so it doesn't really matter in either case.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 15:27:44 by hian »

Scrat

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #117 on: 2015-06-19 18:45:05 »
I did not play crisis core, I also did not know about this trailer.

I was bored 1.30 in and cringing 30secs in. If this happens... fern.

On the story mode/battle scene realism thing, I think the telltale scene was the kalm flashback. The only unrealistic part of the flashback, sephiroths power, was done in a controllable battle scene. Coincidence?

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #118 on: 2015-06-19 19:10:42 »
I'd say they certainly do think that far (original ff7 team, certainly not the modern!), or you'd see out of control scenes in the FMV and outside of battle (or, at the least, no explanation for the more unrealistic cut-scenes).  Battle mechanics work completely different to FMV/cutscenes in FF7 and a lot of games.  And that goes for a lot of RPGs.

In AC, Cloud is shot in the face and survives.  It gets cited a lot in reviews as a typical absurd moment, and in FF7 that kind of thing only happens in battle.  But never ever in a cutscene.  In a cutscene the following happens:

Tifa almost dead from 1 slash
Tifa coma 7 days from a fall
Cloud knocked out from fall
Dyne dead from fall
Rufus dead from explosion (retcons don't count)
Pres Shinra dead from stab
Corneo dead from fall (lots of falling)
Zeng seriously injured by slash
Zax dead by firing squad
Heidegger and Scarlet killed in machine explosion (note that this is shown in a cutscene)


And in battle you see:  Cloud shot repeatedly by Rufus, bitten by dogs, dolphins from Tifa's feet,
houses that come alive... and so on.  Hell, Rufus "survives"  your repeated sword slashes in battle and then rides off on a chopper.  Clearly, the writers mean for you to interpret that as you fought him but didn't literally hit him in the face with a sword.  But that's how games work.  You can't plant that logic into a story.

There is most definitely a distinction.  I'd say it was good writing and awareness, but it could equally have been a limit of the tech, as Covarr thinks.  I am not convinced of that.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 21:27:25 by DLPB »

Shard

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #119 on: 2015-06-19 23:14:33 »
Sadly, I'm inclined to agree with most of the other people here. A remake would have been nice, if all they were doing was upgrades. Better graphics. Remastered (redone) music and sounds, expanded battle/materia system. However, when SE says "we're changing the story" my brain saw "we're changing the only reason people liked the game in the first place." SE's storytelling in the past decade has been pretty terrible.

I just hope they don't incorporate any of the retconned BS from the spinoffs into the remake, but they probably will.

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #120 on: 2015-06-19 23:33:35 »
I'd say they certainly do think that far (original ff7 team, certainly not the modern!), or you'd see out of control scenes in the FMV and outside of battle (or, at the least, no explanation for the more unrealistic cut-scenes).  Battle mechanics work completely different to FMV/cutscenes in FF7 and a lot of games.  And that goes for a lot of RPGs.

No you wouldn't, because as you should be perfectly aware of, animating that kind of stuff back in the early days of the PSX era, was extremely challenging - if not outright impossible.
Even the FMVs of fighting games like Tekken at the time used actual person on person action in their FMVs very sparingly for the same reason.

In fact, as a person who knows how this works - I'd argue that it would take more time, resources, and skill to make convincing animations in the FMVs than in the battle sequences - which should be apparant to laypeople as well simply by looking at the difference of quality in the animation of movement between FF7's fight scenes and the FMVs (hint - the latter is much less fluid, staccato and just bad)

Also, I am not denying that the mechanics work differently - Naturally Cloud and Co are not actually standing in place waiting for ATB gauges to fill up, only to attack once, and then go back into line. It's an abstraction - however, to think that it's only just an abstraction, and that there is no overlap between what happens in battles the rest of the story is IMO patently absurd.

I think the player is supposed to be able to extrapolate from the battles what is actually going on once you remove the floating numbers, the ATBs etc. And as I already said, which you didn't address in your apply, there are just as many discrepancies waiting to happen if you decide to make this 100% dedication to the field fight scenes, and nothing else. Since you didn't actually address those points I see little point in addressing your list - but I will make an exception this time -

Tifa almost dead from 1 slash

Tifa was slashed by Sephiroth wielding Masamune, which should have killed her outright, if not split her in half - especially granted that the blade travels directly through her body. However, again, there is probably a level of abstraction and technical limitation underlying this scene as well.
However, taken for what it is, and nothing more, his scene makes no sense period - again going to show that action sequences and the scenomatography of FF7 is shoddy at times.

Tifa coma 7 days from a fall
Corneo dead from fall (lots of falling)
Dyne dead from fall
Cloud knocked out from fall

You put all these falls in the same list and didn't pick up on the problems it causes for the setting of the game in how inconsistent they show the rules of the game to be?

Tifa fell as a child, and from a height so large a coma is warranted, if it should have killed her outright compared to what apparently kills other characters in the game.
Cloud survives as an adult who's been tinkered with extensively and has his fall broken by a magical flower bed (yet his inner voice said he would have gotten off with a pair of skinned knees back then, which makes even less sense) - what's Tifa's excuse?

As for Dyne, nobody knows how deep that pit went, but granted the logic behind how certain characters (even children) in the FF7 world can survive falls from mountain-tops, maybe we shouldn't even assume Dyne to be dead, just to be consistent? No, of course we shouldn't - but this would make another good example of FF7's selective physics at work.

Rufus dead from explosion (retcons don't count)
Pres Shinra dead from stab
Corneo dead from fall (lots of falling)
Zeng seriously injured by slash
Zax dead by firing squad
Heidegger and Scarlet killed in machine explosion (note that this is shown in a cutscene)

The rest becomes pretty inconsequential at this point -

Falling deaths VS survival falls in FF7 are completely inconsistent, as are melee weapon damage.
If anything, the most consistently dangerous attacks in cut-scenes seem to be gunfire, which makes it even harder to imagine how people like Cloud are supposedly fighting people with machine-guns without a certain level of over-the-top swordsmanship.

And in battle you see:  Cloud shot repeatedly by Rufus, bitten by dogs, dolphins from Tifa's feet,
houses that come alive... and so on.  Hell, Rufus "survives"  your repeated sword slashes in battle and then rides off on a chopper.  Clearly, the writers mean for you to interpret that as you fought him but didn't literally hit him in the face with a sword.  But that's how games work.  You can't plant that logic into a story.

And as I clearly said - there is a blurred line - I did not sat that everything that happens in battles should be taken literally, which would be a very uncharitable reading of my post, if not an outright straw-man, making that point moot.

The point here is that both the plot, and the battles, are inconsistent in their own ways and with each other - but they also tie together when it's convenient for the story-telling, such as in the Nibelheim flash-back and the final encounter between Cloud and Sephiroth in life-stream, which I take to mean that the split between the two is not entirely clear nor even consistent.

How do you think, for instance, the Highwind fight against Ultima Weapon played out? You really think that the limited amount of action outside of the battle-system and the very specific and selective use of battle scenes for dramatic effect throughout the plot is all done as the optimal choice on part of the devs, and not because it was a pain to animated anything, much less battle sequences, with the field models (so much so in fact, that the game keeps on recycling the same mannerism to the characters over and over again)?

There is most definitely a distinction.  I'd say it was good writing and awareness, but it could equally have been a limit of the tech, as Covarr thinks.  I am not convinced of that.

It doesn't have to be just the one or just the other. What I am trying to point out here, is that there can be cases of both.
They quite obviously chose certain scenes - after all, the reactor showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth, or Zack and Sephiroth could just as easily have been rendered in the battle engine for dramatic effect like the final showdown, so they obviously went with the field models for a reason.
I am simply saying that the large stylistic difference between the battles and the field scenes, combined with selective use of
very carefully picked battle scenes at other times, technical limitations, the nature of the Gaia world with its mix of real and fantasy, and the scope of the battles the story throws at Cloud and Co, seems to suggest that we ought to extrapolate from at least some of what is going on in the battles and imagine it as, at least, partly reflective of what the devs intended to have going on in general if they could have rendered the entire thing exactly the way they envisioned it.

I certainly don't think the writers or devs intended people like Cloud and Sephiroth to be limited to human feats of speed and strength, especially when you consider the blades they are wielding, and the way in which they wield them is already physically impossible.
In fact, with the size and length of Buster Sword, wielding it would be physically impossible even for a super-strong human being, since a swing of it would generate so much momentum it would literally launch the wielder off into the air after it, unless  he was nailed to the ground, or weighed a ton or so.

Some things clearly weren't all that well-thought out period. I don't think we should credit the authors, nor the devs of FF7 too much for their work - for while it's stellar in many departments, it also has issues, like all other narratives and works of fiction ever made.

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #121 on: 2015-06-19 23:40:34 »
I'd say that the person is supposed to use common sense and also fill in the blanks for the narrative to make sense in a game, but it's helped when the writers try (which, with FF7, they do).  It isn't helped when they don't (like in AC where being shot in the face is like being flicked).  I don't believe the writers were oblivious to this.   The game genre is always going to have unrealistic elements and absurd elements (mainly localized to actual battles, if the writers are clever), but a movie should always try to have an internal logic that is true to its fictional setting. Advent Children absolutely doesn't do this, which is one of the reasons why it is universally panned by non-gaming movie goers.

When a game is changed to a movie, some things cannot be "ported".  The Weapon battles you mention cannot be ported 100%.  What you can do is show magic being used or the Highwind firing at them, and change the story to accommodate them in  away that is consistent with physics and the FF7 world.  What you can't do is what AC did... show characters using limit breaks, jumping up 100 feet into the air, and attacking these monsters in the most unrealistic way there is.

You can do that in a game battle.   You cannot do that in a movie.  They are two completely different genres.

This isn't limited to games.  If you watch the Red Letter Media review on "Baby's Day Out" you'll see the same criticism.  The problem there was that cartoon slapstick was placed into the REAL world we live in concerning a baby wandering around busy streets and dangerous situations - to the point that the story absolutely collapsed.  Because cartoons and a real world based fiction are two different genres.  It CAN work if the comedy is designed around slapstick (Laurel and Hardy), but not to the extent that Baby's Day Out is asking you to suspend disbelief.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-20 01:13:03 by DLPB »

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #122 on: 2015-06-20 00:24:19 »
I'd say that the person is supposed to use common sense and also fill in the blanks for the narrative to make sense in a game, but it's helped when the writers try (which, with FF7, they do).  It isn't helped when they don't (like in AC where being shot in the face is like being flicked).  I don't believe the writers were oblivious to this.   The game genre is always going to have unrealistic elements and absurd elements (mainly localized to actual battles, if the writers are clever), but a movie should always try to have an internal logic that is true to its fictional setting. Advent Children absolutely doesn't do this, which is one of the reasons why it is universally panned by non-gaming movie goers.

Last time I checked, non-gaming movie goers panned it for its incoherent plot, and its reliance on the viewer already being familiar with the setting and the cast - not the battle-scenes, which as far as I remember, are the very thing being praised by non-gaming audiences as well as the most of the gaming audience as well.

The people who panned that aspect of the movie, were generally FF7 purists like you and me for plot-related reasons, and people who don't like over-the-top battle visuals all that much in either case.

When a game is changed to a movie, some things cannot be "ported".  The Weapon battles you mention cannot be ported 100%.  What you can do is show magic being used or the Highwind firing at them, and change the story to accommodate them in  away that is consistent with physics and the FF7 world.  What you can't do is what AC did... show characters using limit breaks, jumping up 100 feet into the air, and attacking these monsters in the most unrealistic way there is.

This is rationalizing - you're not making a coherent point anymore. As much as I agree that certain things cannot be well ported, those things would be that which is inherently tied to the game-play. Being able to fight the weapons relying on personal skill, or generally unrealistic combat is not one of them. Unrealistic combat can be coherent with itself - your complaint here, as is apparent with the example you keep raising, can be summed up as a complaint about inconsistency - it's not really central to whether the fighting is over the top or not, but whether the battle scenarios in FF7 make sense as a part of the plot.

I would argue that they have to be, when you consider the enemies FF7 constantly pits against Cloud and Co, which they supposedly defeat.
If Cloud and Co can defeat the Air-Buster, the Bottom Swell, or the Materia keeper, then they're already fighting at a level far beyond the staccato and slow strikes of the events in the field scenes, and the Weapon fights are merely an extension of that.
I think it's obvious that we're supposed to extrapolate the party's ability to find enormous monsters, and there is no reason to think this cannot be done neither in game nor in movie (in fact it's done often in both) without particular appeals to Highwind firing cannons etc.
I'll grant you magic though, and the Weapon fights could easily be realized by pitting them against summons etc.


You can do that in a game battle.   You cannot do that in a movie.  They are two completely different genres..

However, this entire line of reasoning is a case of moving the goal-post and largely irrelevant, because we were discussing the change of art-direction in the remake, which is a game, not a movie, and we were discussing the inconsistency in the combat choreography within the original game depending on the scene, which again, is a game not a movie.

Or are you making the argument that the field scenes in FF7 should be treated like a movie, while the battle scenes should be treated as a game?

In either case, it's patently obvious that many movies, series, anime's etc use over the top combat where people smash buildings etc. so that's not a real concern. The real concern is whether or not the building smashing makes sense in the narrative, and in FF7 it mostly doesn't. However, it also wouldn't make sense for Cloud not to be able to over-power machine-gun wielding grunts using his sword, and the combat reflects this, and thus I won't be bothered if the remake cut-scenes reflect this as well (as long as it is done with respect to the power-gap between him and other characters throughout the game).

This isn't limited to games.  If you watch the Red Letter Media review on "Baby's Day Out" you'll see the same criticism.  The problem there was that cartoon slapstick was placed into the REAL world we live in concerning a baby wandering around busy streets and dangerous situations - to the point that the story absolutely collapsed.  Because cartoons and a real world based fiction are two different genres.  It CAN work if the comedy is designed around slapstick (Laurel and Hardy), but not to the extend that Baby's Day Out is asking you to suspend disbelief.

But how does this relate to what we're talking about here? We're talking about a game, which is pretty absurd by any standard, being remade, once again, as a game - not transitioning to a live-action movie.

To illustrate -
Omnislash as a technique is no more grating or jarring to the FF7 narrative than characters selectively surviving huge falls, or Cloud and Co fighting and besting large monsters and robotos, or Sephiroth summoning a meteor to make himself a god, or countless of other strange scenes.
The reason AC is jarring is because the action doesn't make sense, not because it is over-the-top.
The reason it would be jarring in the remake, is because you know, just as well as I, that Cloud will be doing Omnislash-like stuff from the very
first 10 minutes of the game, and that's what's going to create a "dragonball loop" and start begging questions down the line when the devs and writers have to create contrived plot-devices to explain sudden shifts in strength, or weaknesses.

The original FF7 didn't have that issue, even if we accept the more extreme of the battle scenarios, or skills/limit breaks - because the progression of these elements is reasonably well-paced, and they increase in tune with the general flow of the narrative.
Cloud isn't fighting Weapons from day 1, he slowly reaches that point together with his team-mates after having gradually fought
more and more drastic enemies and gained more and more materia. And even with all that being said, there is nothing
to suggest that Cloud would have to levitate to the degree of AC, or break buildings to make the weapon fights work -
as I said, they have materia and perhaps other means.
The Monster Hunter Series has pulled off humans versus giant monsters quite well from a choreographic perspective for
quite some time, without appealing to super-saiyan modes.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-20 00:27:14 by hian »

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #123 on: 2015-06-20 01:43:24 »
It's pretty clear we're going to disagree on this particular point (mostly - parts of your post are agreeing), but I'll sum my position up as this:  I, and many other people, cannot suspend disbelief if the fiction breaks its own internal logic.  FF7 original didn't go too far, too often, and allowed me to suspend my disbelief or have the freedom to interpret the story in a way that made sense (for the most part).  Advent Children did not, and the remake very likely won't either, for the reasons I stated.  The original script could have had Cloud totally unharmed from his fall through that church roof with no explanation given or surprise at surviving the fall given.  If that had been the case, the fiction would have been lazy and poorer for it, but the writers DID give a reason and they weren't lazy.  A good fiction does not have to make perfect sense or have ultra realism, but it does need to be believable up to a point in order for most people to accept it - even when that fiction is game-based.

A writer can make anything happen if he/she wants to, but not if they want a story that people can respect - and it's this part where AC fails entirely, and where, I believe, the remake will disintegrate as well.

This is a separate issue to the art design problem, but since the new art style is largely a result of them wanting to add eye candy for the sake of it (well, we all know it's also because of how much people rate graphics in importance these days), it will inevitably lead to the issue above... whacky out of control CGI scenes that break the fiction.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-20 02:05:28 by DLPB »

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #124 on: 2015-06-20 06:42:40 »
Yeah, I think that's pretty clear - but it's been an interesting conversation in either case.

And, I agree with your general sentiment - I just think you're making a special exception for FF7 due to your attachment to it (and I am not saying this is unreasonable - it's my favorite FF game for a reason).
Personally, I found the scene were Cloud falls to be very jarring. Unlike you, I don't think the creators provided a good reason for why Cloud survives unscathed (blacking out for a couple of seconds or whatever, hardly counts as being damaged, especially considering his total recovery after waking up), except by asking us to accept it because he "was in soldier", until the narrative makes a habit out of having people survive huge falls with the flashback in Calm, and you start getting the vibe that physics and physiology are much more loose in Gaia than on Earth.

I would make the argument that what makes good fiction is consistency, and that's it. It doesn't matter how unrealistic it is - it matters that the rules of the world are consistent with themselves - that is to say that there is a system to the aspects that are unrealistic by our standards.
I never really though of the in-game battle system mechanics as being inconsistent with the field scenes because the field scenes truly break with conventional realism quite often, whether we're talking about people falling, or the physical feats that the cast regularly must perform whether on screen or off.

As for the art-style of the remake - I really don't understand why they couldn't have opted for some sort of cell-shade, or toonish style instead. It's perfectly possible to have great graphics that don't go in the direction of realism, and that would argue be the best way to keep the game true to the source material.
Although I am not a fan of the changes made to the original plot, Last Order is probably the best FF7 spin-off in terms of the art-direction. If they'd made a game look like that, which is perfectly possible, I'd be more inclined to be positive about the remake.