lol, yes, case in point. Publishing =/= developing. When I say "from" I mean it as "developed by".
Sorry, I am not a mind-reader - and seeing as SE has been primarily a publishing company for quite some time now, I took "from" to mean "from SE" not "developed in-house in SE" - and seeing as how there is no real distinction a lot of the time, since many teams are made up of contractors to begin with, it doesn't really make sense to draw a line in the sand like that.
There are already rumors going on that this game is primarily being developed by third-party contractors (which would make sense when SE already has so many titles on its plate).
It doesn't seem like we would use terms such as "spirit" or "true to the original" with the same ideas in mind. IMO, AC isn't "true to the original" because of its plot and character development, not because of its art style.
I do believe it's true to the original, personally. I don't think that Midgar is so "filled with neons and vibrant colors". Some elements are (Honey Bee Inn, Don Corneo's mansion), but many scenes are made with piles of rusted beams and worn corrugated sheets (I've been examining the Sector 5 scenes for a while).
Then re-examine them. Even the reactors you visit clearly use color palettes with deep blues and purples, yellows and greens etc.
Even the metal and rust in FF7 has stronger base-colors than pretty much the deepest color in the remake trailer.
The church, and Aerith's house, the glows that emit from the windows and doors of the houses, the market, the neon-signs, electric currents, and all filled with strong, colorful NPCs.
Compare that to the trailer with its subdued grays, and steel, glass and plastic look I can't even begin to fathom how you could compare the two.
I do believe that the original art style for the fields was aiming at a "realistic" rendition of the environments, with the technological limitations of the times (lighting techniques, shading techniques, limited color palette, etc.).
Are you for real? Are we splitting hairs here? Would you prefer it if we used the term "semi-realism"?
It's quite obvious that I was talking about by what degree the game was going for photo-realism - and it quite clearly isn't -
FF7 clearly aimed for style, which should be apparent just by looking at the choice of the character designs, and sketches for the environments.
Calm, Cosmo Canyon, the Church, For Condor - I can keep on going - there is absolutely nothing realistic about the color palettes, the architecture, or the scales used for these environments, and non of that has to do with technical limitations, since there is nothing about the times that would have stopped the creators from choosing more subdued colors, more realistic architecture and scales that actually make sense.
(consider that games like Resident Evil 1 predate FF7 and clearly pulled off realistic pre-rendered backgrounds that had non of the artistic liberties of FF7)
In my opinion, the chibis of the original game were jarring, and I always thought it needed to be addressed.
Thank god opinions are just that - opinions. Have you seen what happens when you put the battle models into the games using the mods on this site? Now that is jarring as hell. The environments were clearly not designed for that at all.
With that in mind, I don't think that a "realistic" art direction is detrimental, or vastly deviating from the spirit of the original.
With what in mind? You have yet to make a coherent point about what the spirit of FF7 is supposed to be, so how do you qualify that opinion?
The original, as I've already said and which you've completely ignored, is game sporting a 90's anime style - all the way from the art-direction to the actual plot and characterizations throughout.
There is a reason people are expressing doubts about how the remake will handle the cross-dressing scene, or the Honey Bee Inn, or Nanaki in a sailor costume, or Gold Saucer, or the Snowboard scene - because by all accounts, these things work well in granted the particular style of the original, and would look weird as hell in the style of AC or the style of the current trailer.
If you start cutting all these things out for the sake of a more sombre game, then again, how much sense does it make to claim that it's true to the spirit of the original?
I'm left to wonder what "being true to the original" even means to a person who'd make that argument.
The Last of Us being emblematic of what people don't like about AAA industry? Sorry, I can't agree with that.
You don't have to. Not taking into account that The Last of Us made it into pretty much every "overrate game" of its year, or of the seventh generation in total - it's literally a boxed collection of every PS3 action game convention ever. Linear design, way too much exposition, bland and repetitive game-play, lots of focus on flash and graphics, and a bunch of token game-play mechanics thrown together despite many of them not really serving much of a purpose except padding out the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCmmYF4rOwoIn that respect, what I'm rather hoping for is that the devs of the remake of FF7 won't be constrained by some kind of "20th anniversary deadline". I believe we would agree that they'd take their time to polish this one (it's not like waiting for 1 or 2 more years will matter, and for the anecdote, it is actually possible to polish a turd)..
Optimally, I think they should take their time on it, but I don't think they will. I also think that if Nomura and Co did take their time on it, it might very well end up in development hell like FFVersus13 did.
Otherwise, I believe that the comparison "Greedy publishing companies" vs "Friendly crowd-funding platforms" is a lot less "black & white" world than what you described.
Not really, because I didn't make a black and white statement. I simply said that crowd-funding is preferable to being pushed around by greedy corporations - which it is. Are there issues with crowd-funding platforms? Sure. That wasn't my point though, nor something I feel I had to qualify granted the fact that I qualified exactly what kind of thing I was comparing it too - which was a very specific problem inherent to most larger publishing companies.
Did you do anything to address that point? Nope.
Well, the FF7 community of "real fans" is so broad that it exhibits the signs of the unpleasable fanbase. If you prefer to be negative so that you won't get disappointed, I can appreciate that. But if people decide to dislike it, or be dissatisfied by a product "for the masses" in order to assert some kind of intellectual superiority, I don't find it very constructive.
Well, I am not, so there's that. I am simply voicing my opinion, which is a reflection of how I honestly feel about these products.
If you thought that, then maybe you should examine why you thought so?
Criticizing a art or media for its mass appeal is not a criticism of the people who enjoy it, unless you assume that the only reason they enjoy it is for its mass appeal - however, I am not making that argument.
I've enjoyed many things that have mass-appeal - I am simply saying that when a thing is made with mass-appeal as a starting point, then the thing is going to be bland - and while that might work for a person who's new to that kind of product, it's not going to work for someone who's been jaded by diminishing returns after having experienced multiple similar products.
If FF7R ends up being just another FF15, or the next The Last of Us in RPG form, to me, that's an issue - because I've already played way too many games like that, and they're not that much fun to play anymore.