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51

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-26 04:51:31 »

EDIT, I went and did some fact-checking, so here's the original quote in Japanese and my translation -

Question
(リメイク版FF7について。リメイクしつつハイエンドにするのは相当ハードルが高いと思うが？)

In relation to/on the topic of the remake.
While/in remaking, I think it's safe to say the hurdle is pretty high to make everything high end, right?

北瀬「ビジュアルの方向性は見えてきている。

Kitase :
We can see the visual direction of it/the visual direction it's going to go in

一方でバトルシステムなどは試行錯誤しながら詰めている状態。

On the other hand, things like the battle system are in a state of being put together through trial and error.

当時のコマンドバトルは今は通用しない可能性もあるので、どういう方向に持っていくかに気を遣っている。

Because there is a possibility that the command battles of back then (in the original) won't be popular/won't resonate/carry through (with people) now, we're concerned about what direction to take it (the remake) in.
 
普通にリメイクすると、どこかで見たようなアクションRPGになってしまうので、
いかにFF7らしさを出しながら驚きのあるものにするか、を追い求めていく

If we [just remake it/remake it ordinarily/make a common remake] it'll just end up like [some typical action RPG/like an action RPG you've seen somewhere before],
so we're pursuing how to bring out the feeling of (the original) FF7 whilst also making it something that contains surprises.

開発度などは聞かないでください(笑)」

Please don't ask (anymore) about the direction of the development (laugh/smile)

So this is how I interpret this -

He is not saying they aren't doing a menu-based combat system, or that it won't work - He is saying that there is a possibility that a menu-based system won't be well-received anymore, and that this a concern they're thinking about at the moment.
He's qualifying this by saying that despite this, the primary concern for the development is to keep the feeling of the original, whilst adding something new and fresh that can surprise people.
He does not want it to become just another action RPG - He's specifically saying that if they were to simply "remake it", most likely meaning if they were to just follow conventional design trends etc. it would end up like just another typical action RPG, and the "natteshimau" verb-ending at the end of that statement denotes that that's not something he considers to be positive or desires.

So from this what we can gather is -
A.) they've decided the visual direction of the game, and the general design, but not on the specific game-play mechanics, such as how to do the battles, so they're slowly trying different variants at the moment to find one that satisfy their criteria for what a good FF7 battle system should be (which he then goes on to state)
B.) they want to change up the battle system to make it a new and surprising experience, but they don't want it to turn into your average action RPG
C.) they might opt out of the command system based on popular sentiments.

That's it.

Everything after this is now outdated. I am not going to edit it out, because that would be kinda dishonest, so here's me jumping to conclusion based on bad information. Enjoy. (really though, I should know better than to accept random translations on the internet by now. Even amongst journalists, most are just bad at translating Japanese. Not because they don't know the language, but because they're knowledge is mostly theoretical, and they don't enough enough experience with the natural use of the language.)

Yeah, because the old battle system is just impossible to program these days, isn't it *sarcasm*. "Might not work today" - what nonsense.  It would work very easily, but it wouldn't have the mass appeal your sell-out company now wants. 

It's a real shame that the ff7r didn't come about at same time as FFX for PS2...  it would have been the perfect time and would have maintained its roots.

I can't believe Kitase is saying BS like that when his company's previous numbered FF title (FF13) had a menu-based fighting system, and when one of their best-ranking and best-selling RPG franchises at the moment, the Bravely series, has menu-based combat.

I can't believe he is saying that as they relaunch the original FF7 on new platforms constantly, and it being the best-selling FF game in the entire franchise, which still sells today despite it being so "dated" its system "no longer works" apparently.

I can't believe he is saying this when Japanese companies are still producing several of RPGs for next-gen consoles, like the Persona series, the Atelier series with menu-based battle systems.

It's BS plain and simple. Kitase, I am sorry to say that despite being a long-time producer of video games, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. You're out of touch with the fan-base, judging by almost every single poll and comment I've seen on the topic of the remake, you're also out of touch with the industry and the very genre that the game you're now producing original came from. That's disgraceful to say the least.

Is... this translated correctly?? iirc all other FF remakes were made into action RPGs as well. Please, correct me if I'm wrong...

Every FF remake I've ever seen was a menu-based game (FF3-4 most notably among them), as has every other RPG remake I've ever seen (granted they are few and far between - the Wild Arms 1 remake though is a good example though).

Kitase is pulling things straight out of his ass. Maybe he's grown senile?


Seriously though - this is so hilariously bad it's giving me a headache. I am this far from sitting down and recording a lengthy rant in Japanese directed at Nomura and Kitase, and sending the link to the SE members twitter, or writing a letter and sending directly to the HQ.
Probably won't have an impact but at least when the remake turns into a turd completely butchering anything and everything that made the original a good game, I can send another letter/video and go "ファンたちの言う事無視して、FF7のオリジナルは何でいいゲームとして思われた理由がか分からんのにリメイクしたらこうなるって言っただろう！ざまあみろ！”

52

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-25 03:15:45 »

So what you're saying is...dubstep.

No, what I'm saying is that you'll have to restructure the compositions and the arrangements - not necessarily the entire style or the melodies.

However, that's a lot of work and if you're going to go down that route, chances are you'll feel tempted to do more changes - at least that's my experience working with audio production. If I have to rearrange an entire track from the ground up, and I'm going to start chopping it up, fading, cross-fading with other tracks etc. changing the dynamic of a tune to fit a scene - then it's no going to take long before I start thinking "well, maybe this track don't work as well as I though... Maybe I should add some more percussion, or remove a synth and replace it with a guitar" etc.
Suddenly the end product is something else entirely, even if the base melody line(s) is/are the same.

53

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-25 01:20:39 »

They should just use the instruments that were intended for the tracks to begin with. Yes, the original soundtrack was entirely based on the electric synths of the PSX sound-chip - however, each of the melody lines were composed completely with specific instruments and synths in mind that they didn't have the resources to use or make at the time.
Most of the songs, like the songs in FF8 and FF9, use a combination of orchestral instruments, el-guitars, modern percussion and synth.

Point in case - The boss battle theme obviously employs synths, el-guitars, bass and modern percussion. The battle theme on the other hand employs almost purely orchestral instruments.

If they want to make the soundtrack true to the original, they should just use the original midi tracks, and replace each respective instrument or synth with a high-end VST (or real audio recording) and more modern high-end synths.

That being said though - they're going to have to make some changes due to presentation differences between the new and the old game.
In movies you never have one track just running on repeat in the back-ground with no care for what's actually going on in the scene.
The structure and flow of each pieces is tailored to the structure and flow of each scene. You see this kind of audio-structure in the old FF FMVs already.
Problem with the new game is that essentially any scene is now going to flow much more closely to the PSX era FMVs than the events of the original game.

To illustrate - While in the original characters just stood around and talked to each other rather statically with the camera locked in one position, that's probably not going to be the case anymore. Scenes will be designed to be more cinematic, with angles changing, panning, etc.
and more movement from the characters etc. for dramatic effect.
In that kind of cinematography the old-school set-up and use of the score won't work very well. It will feel very unnatural.

For that reason they're probably going to have to create a lot of rearrangements of the original themes to fit with the new cinematography - meaning they'll probably redo the entire soundtrack.

Just saying.

54

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Has Sold Over 11 Million Units Worldwide

« on: 2015-08-21 15:13:26 »

For a Japanese RPG game it sold well which was only on pc and psx and ps3 (psx version)
While GTA V much more mainstream and on all consoles 360, one, ps3, ps4, pc

For a Japanese rpg in the era it was released in, it sold extremely well. It's still the best selling FF to date.

55

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Has Sold Over 11 Million Units Worldwide

« on: 2015-08-21 06:53:46 »

To be fair, GTA5 is not a bad game, so I wouldn't say that people who bought it have poor taste.

That being said though, since FF7 is a PS1 game, and the vast majority of those sales were racked up during that era, it's in many ways just as impressive as GTA5 in its own right though, even if the sales aren't that great by contemporary standards.

1. The gaming public is much larger now than back then, meaning that multi-million number sales means a whole lot more in that context.

2. Gaming prices haven't changed all that much since the PS1 era (at least where I am from), whilst game production costs and inflation has sky-rocketed, meaning that percentage-wise, FF7might be the more successful game from an income perspective.

FF7 came out at a time when game development was less costly (off course, devs had less money to spend as well), when fans weren't as numerous, and in a new market where they (Squaresoft) didn't have the same reputation or reach they have today (much less what Rockstar has today).
It truly is an impressive feat.

The success of GTA5, being the next big thing from Rockstar after a long line of other successful products in the same franchise, with its reach through the internet and social media, and the increase of participation in gaming and gaming culture etc. isn't all that surprising or impressive really - the same way the movie-version of The Hobbit's success after Lord of the Rings, isn't all that surprising or impressive.

56

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-21 03:22:27 »

Precisely. But the FF7 team don't see it our way, and so it will do its best to be as all-encompassing as it can.

We'll see. As I've said - A lot of the changes that make the game more friendly to the general populace will probably come
about due to financial concerns, more so than fan-concerns.

Even if the entire FF7 remake team though that a true remake is the way to go, as long as the department gauging public
opinions on games, and the financial backers think otherwise they're left with little real choice but to mainstream it.

Going by one Nomura interview, it seems to be the case that several of the people on the team are FF7 conservatives. Too bad that Nomura in the very same interview pretty much said that those opinions won't be the ones holding the most definitional power in the development of the remake.

57

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-21 01:43:06 »

Very dry

I think the game needs to grow up.

That means, real physics, real characters.

I know the game is essentially fantasy, but it still needs to be somewhat plausible, especially in today's more adult audience.

This is a horrible sentiment.

Nothing "needs" to do anything when it comes to art and media - Art and media is not made because of needs, it's made because of wants and desires, often the express visions of the artists, not the demands of the people who feel entitled to engage with the product.

Today's audience is no more "adult" than it was back when the original was released, and the ratio of adults vs young adults vs kids playing the remake is not necessarily going to be different from the original.

To say that fantasy needs to be plausible is ridiculous. Fantasy is essentially and necessarily implausible. The only factor important to writing fantasy is consistency.
FF7 is consistently implausible, which makes it consist with itself. The more "realism" you add to it, the more glaring the absurdities of the game becomes, because it's now being inconsistent with what is realistic and what isn't, and it's being so selectively and arbitrarily.

You always have to suspend disbelief or conventional ideas of realism for fantasy to work within a narrative. You want Cloud to stop using swords in combat against people with machine-guns because it's unrealistic? Then why stop there? Why not remove the Buster Sword entirely?
After all, wielding the Buster Sword is physically impossible given Cloud's size.
It doesn't actually matter if Cloud is super-strong etc. because the weight of the blade, and the momentum created by swinging the blade would literally launch Cloud up into the air and send him flying off into the horizon unless it hit a solid object capable of withstanding the blow mid-swing.
So, why does one aspect demand realism but another does not?

I'd also make the argument that the sentiment of wanting games to "grow up" is essentially a childish and immature sentiment.
An adult doesn't feel insecure to the point that they can't engage with or enjoy with whimsical and fantastical narratives.
Case in point, plenty of adults enjoy Pixar and Disney movies.

while Materia would be a genuine scientific product as hinted at in the original game with some sort of electro chemically focused energy.

Where exactly is this hinted at? Sephiroth clearly explains that materia is a natural phenomenon, and not a scientific product.

"Summons" are superfluous and unnecessary and detract from the overall game IMO.

Superfluous in comparison to what? Again, things like these aren't there because they have to be - they're there because someone wanted them to be. The same can be said for absolutely anything in the system. The limit breaks don't have to be there either. Do they objectively add something important to the game-play the summons don't? Not really.
They're just there, because it's fun and interesting.

Also, how do they actually detract from the game? Care to qualify or elaborate?

Likewise the "Weapons" should have been constructed by the Cetra, and not the planet.

Why?

Ultimately what  would like to see is  a story with more depth and credibility. More science, less ridiculousness and real-time combat done correctly. I.e swords are useless unless close up, so cloud should use a gun for the most part unless he employs some sort of shield, i.e mass effect

Then go play a science-fiction game like Mass Effect.

Cloud uses a sword because he's a person who's enhanced by Mako and Jenova cells, who also knows how to use magic using materia. What use is a gun to him, when he can outmaneuver any ordinary human that might try to shoot him with a gun, and spend most of his time fighting huge monsters?

A gun runs out of ammo, and a gun's damage capacity is limited to its core components and ammunition (I.E facing an enemy like Jenova, clearly Cloud's sword will do more damage than a hand-gun will, for instance).
Melee weapons in the FF universe are clearly the better option for most battle scenarios these people face. It's also pretty clear that the vast majority of characters who rely on firearms usually do so because A.) they don't know how to use materias, or B.) are too weak to use melee weapons.
(Barret clearly didn't know how to use materia prior to meeting Cloud, and Vincent carries a gun because he's a former Turk)

Of course, this is post-hoc rationalization on my part. The only reason FF7 features both guns and swords, is because it fantasy, and the creators thought that would be cool. You can justify it though, just as you can make arguments that it doesn't work.
My point here though, is that this is a matter of taste, not of objective quality.

If you don't like that aspect of FF7, then you don't really like FF7 for what it is - and that point my question would be, why should the remake be catering to people like you? You'd be better off just playing Mass Effect.

I don't think that Nomura will do that. It will be a more controllable version of the FF13 battle system.
I would love it it if they make it like Chrono Trigger.

I am hoping for something similar.
On map, no transition entry for a menu-based combat system.

Have the enemies on screen, and the encounters triggered by touch - like Chrono Trigger.
Then, I'd like the rest of it to be more or less like FFX-2, regular ATB, but livened up by having the characters move about a bit,
and perhaps added variations to the attack animations etc. to make the combat seem more fluid and alive.

This way the game would play a lot like the original, but look and feel more up-to-date and probably satisfy younger and new fans as well. It would also mean that you could keep the battle theme, and the victory theme in as well.
After all, if it ends up being like FF15, the soundtrack transitions wouldn't work very well.

Imagine the FF7 battle theme cross-fading in and out constantly as you move in and out of range of enemies on the map, and the victory theme being cut off abruptly if another enemy walks into range just as you defeated the last ones to be in range previously.
Wouldn't work, and they'd likely cut it out, or make new themes entirely, and that would be just another stylistic change to the game that nobody really wants.

58

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-18 01:07:23 »

I would guess they are even moreso. Keep in mind, Final Fantasy XIII was very well received in Japan, by critics and audiences alike. The country has, in general, a focus on more story-driven and less-gameplay driven games than the west, as far as I can tell.

Yes and no. The Japanese gaming industry is also what gave us Super Mario, Sonic, Mega-man and the Souls Series.
If anything, there is a strong divide in the industry and the gamers in regards to what games should play like depending on
preferences.

Also, we should be careful about generalizing based on this article though, because the sample selection of the poll is very unlikely to say anything of substance about the fans in general - I've seen plenty of comments on articles about the remake at famitsu that mirrors the general opinion of people like DLPB as well. But, I was guilty of that with my comment in either case, but I was tired when I wrote it, so there's that.

In any case, if it's so that the Japanese fans of FF at this point care more about Aerith revival than anything else, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Japanese fans care more about narrative structure than game-play concerning the remake as a whole - it might simply mean that the range of FF7 fans at this moment, as I said, are actually percentage-wise mostly compilation fans rather than fans of the original game, and because the compilation is dominated by a movie, a novel(s), and a few action games it makes sense that they wouldn't much of an attachment to the set-up or design of the original game.

The "problem" with FF (and arguably what made it so popular across countries and cultures to begin with) is that it's always been standing in the middle of that divide delivering strong character and story driven experiences with a lot of game-play to boot.
Lately though, it's been shifting more and more towards the "cinematic" game approach - which is, unfortunately, I believe largely due to the fact that the Japanese market is moving more and more away from games that demand a lot of engagement and time from the players (because the average Japanese person above elementary school simply don't have all that much time to game, except on the go), and because the technology (and I would argue humans - because even if the game supported AC style combat, how would you control that stuff and keep up with the enemy A.I?) still doesn't allow games to play like what Advent Children look like, which is essentially the type of action a lot of FF fans have come to expect from the franchise after the release of that movie.

FF as a franchise has shot itself in the foot in many ways.
It's lost to the times, social pressures and economical pressures, and what we're left with is products that are to JRPGs what Call of Duty is to the FPS genre.
They're not horrible games by any account. Plenty of people buy and enjoy them - but they're not groundbreaking or top of the line either, which is problematic for most old-school fans of the series who've fallen pray to the inevitable rule of diminishing returns.

Sure, if I hadn't played every single FF title ever released, and pretty much every JRPG ever made for SNES, PS1 and PS2 era (not an overstatement - I mean really.), then FF13 might have been a really good experience.
As it is, keep subtracting the things the made the older games great, whilst not adding enough new to compensate - making them bland and uninteresting experiences of rehashed material in a shiny wrapping with one or two original game-play elements that aren't particularly good, or even needed, to begin with.

I think voice acting is a big no-no because everyone had their own idea about what each character sounded like and you could imagine things that weren't shown due to the limitations of the console.  But to show full HD characters, with voice, takes away some of what made the original game great - your own imagination.

I would agree with this if the rest of the compilation hadn't been using voice acting since the release of Advent Children way back when.
For most people, Cloud and Co already had their voices defined at that point - and as the saying goes "what has been seen (or in this case, heard) cannot be unseen."
Thankfully, my first viewing of AC was in Japanese, and those voice actors fit pretty decently with my conception of the character voices (with the exception of Barret of course, because his voice was always definitely African-American sounding in my head).

Another point I think that people don't realize, from a scientific point of view, is that the mind doesn't actually (as is physically incapable of) conceptualizing voices in your head that aren't ambiguous. You don't actually hear voices in your head when you read - you conceptualize and abstraction based on experiences and memories, that manifest much the same way as a memory of a long-since passed event etc. I.E it's fundamentally ambiguous and abstract.

Whatever you or others think Cloud sounds like in your head does not actually translate into actual sound. It's just like a foggy/false memory and it cannot actually be accurately replicated. There is a whole range of Cloud voices that probably fits your conception of Cloud's voice, but you won't be able to actually peg that down until it's right there in front of you, although you might think to yourself right now that you can.

That being said, a voice can still end up being outside of that range, and as such, end up being a disappointment. But, the fact of the matter is that voices are largely products of physical traits that are, to a certain degree, fairly predictable - and it's the experiences you've had with speech that determines your expectations to what a person will sound like when they speak, which furthermore is pretty uniform among humans in general.
So, the range of voices that fit Barrets, for instance, is pretty given and not very hard to realize in a way that will fit with most people's conceptions of what a large, muscular black person raised in a ghetto would sound like.

I would actually say it takes a special kind of person to get Barret's voice wrong, or to imagine Barret's voice in such a way that it conflicts with what most other people would conceive of it as.
 

It didn't bother me with FFX because we got introduced to it that way, but with FF7 I am not so sure it's a wise move.  And that's before we get on to what Hian mentioned with the cutbacks in other departments to compensate.  Disc storage shouldn't be an issue if they compress the audio properly.  They absolutely did not do that with Metal Gear Solid 4.  off course, they could allow you to turn the VA off... but will they?

Compression can only do so much if you want to keep the quality of your audio intact though, and it's going to go into the disk with all the graphical resources etc. Looking at the whole of it - will they have space to squander on NPC voices?

There is another point to be made though, from a stylistic perspective - How would non voice-acted scenes look with the current graphical quality? I'd imagine it would look kind of absurd to see a bunch of semi-photo-realistic people standing in a circle, moving their lips (or worse - not moving them and just staring at each other silently) with no sound, and the dialogue appearing in text-boxes.

Just a few thoughts.

Still agree that cutting content, dialogue/exposition perhaps most of all, would be damaging to the experience.
You don't walk into a remake expecting less than the original - you walk into it expecting more.

59

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-17 14:42:32 »

Personally I don't mind voice-acting in and of itself.
As a developer and a writer though, I am concerned how it will impact a game that was written much the same way as a book.

If all the central dialogue is voice acted events will feel dragged out and sluggish in my opinion. There is just so much dialogue to cover, and so from a disk-space, money and production perspective it's also pretty tough, which introduces and increases the likelihood of major changes to story sequences. Cut-backs on dialogue is pretty certain to happen I think, and that's pretty sad if it's the case.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the remake should aspire to have more content, not less, if it wants to compete with the original.

60

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-17 14:25:03 »

Such weird questions to be asking - I mean, you'd think game-play changes etc. would be more interesting to ask about rather than whether or not to add more story content for Yuffie.

The fact that the largest portion answered that they wanted an Aerith lives route to the plot tells me all I need to know - the japanese fans are just as ridiculously out of touch with the original game as the western fan bases.
I feel old - As I have this very strong feeling that the average FF7 fan these days isn't actually FF7 fans at all - they're compilation fans who only begrudingly played the original after having been exposed to titles like AC.

61

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-17 12:08:28 »

Thanks for the modding. I'll take this as an opportunity to remind myself to be more civil in the future too.

On topic though - I was just reading an opinion piece about multiplayer in FF games, remembered the option in FF9 to assign characters to specific controllers and thought to myself - shame on SE for not carrying on that tradition when it literally almost costs nothing to implement in turn based RPGs.
Although it would be more work - imagine how much more interesting FF15 could be if you could have the rest of the party be controlled by friends over the internet?

And with that said - that could actually also be a worthwhile mechanic to have in the remake depending on the gameplay. I would love to connect with old friends over rounds of FF7. Not gonna happen in a 100 years I guess - but it would be pretty nice.

62

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-17 06:25:24 »

Nope, don't do that again. ~EQ2Alyza

Seriously?
I don't think this post requires much commentary on my part.

63

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-17 01:47:13 »

lol so offended.

Assume much?

Maybe he just thought your opinion was inane. I think you'll find that most people here agree. If you were trolling that makes you an idiot and I hope to the gods someone bans your ass for purposefully walking into a thread to mess things up.

Seriously though - let's have a look -

What I'm wishing for in the remake.

1. not a remake but a sequel. fern having to play the same story.

Your wish for the remake is for it not to be a remake? That doesn't even make sense. It's incoherent.

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. 

This is retarded. Angeal and Kadaj don't even appear in the original game. Sephiroth and Hojo are villains, and Zack almost irrelevant. Making them playable would be a waste of time, space and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

3. everyone's advent children outfit+ fusion sword

I can see this as an DLC. Don't really care either way.

4. motorcycles maybe in battle as well. idk how but find a way

What does this add to the game what so ever? Again, a waste of time, space and resources better spent elsewhere.

5. Maybe new outfits for everyone? if they suck we can always not use them.

Agreed. New outfits, or visual equipment change is something that can add to the experience without detracting anything from it.

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. Give every American release a Japanese voice with English subtitles options.

All okay by my standards. I don't see how the game would benefit from a new game pluss option, but a difficulty option
raising the base stats of enemies and perhaps their A.I could be a good way to allow people to tweak the experience
to their own preferences without screwing over the game-play.

10. lastly I hope they dont fern 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.

He looks derp in the PS3 demo and in AC as well. Non of the FF7 characters were designed to look realistic to begin with, and their
semi-/quasi-realistic counterparts in the spin-offs look out of place like no tomorrow.

The best Cloud redesign by far, if you look away from the ridiculous costume, was the Kingdom Hearts version. At least he retained most
of the style from the original.

Anyways - nobody here is offended by your opinion. The act of calling out someone for reaction to your opinion in a negative manner "offended" is a childish, dismissive and BS control-tactic. It's an asinine thing to do.

64

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-14 01:58:24 »

Well, I can tolerate Cait in the original game (although I am one of the biggest opponents of Cait, since I believe the character to be the worst thing about FF7's story), but in realistic graphics, it only becomes more absurd.  But Cait shouldn't have even been in the original game, let alone anything else.  Cait is also the one thing I couldn't suspend disbelief to in the original game because he is not just a battle element - he's part of the story and forced on you in some big moments of the story.  When it comes to Cait, I just try to pretend he doesn't exist.  The character was very poorly written too, which makes it all the worse inside a game that got so much right.

If you look at AC, any writer with a brain wouldn't have included him (and the story didn't necessitate it either given that he is supposed to be a controlled robot that was no longer needed), but they did.  And... well, we all know what that looked like.

I actually really liked Cait Sith in the original - because getting him was such a wtf moment, and he was literally the most bizarre character I had ever seen in media at that point. When the wtf-moment passed though, he pretty quickly fell into disuse as a character.

My main party was always Cloud, Vincent and Cid for the most part (with me swapping Vincent our for Barret in the end-game because Vincent's Limit Break is pretty much useless at the LV4. tier point).
Most of the other characters just didn't matter to me.

Still - he adds spice to the party. One of the things that make FF7 so memorable - is the cast. Look at the diversity of it compared to pretty much any other game. The body-types, the clothing, the weapons, and colors - it's literally one of the most vibrant casts in gaming history - like or hate them.
To me, from an artistic point of view, adding to that alone justifies Cait Sith being there.

But in AC? Yeah, didn't get that either. Why is Reeves screwing around with the Robot post FF7?
I thought he had better things to do. Or wait? I just the mog a robot, and the cat sentient? Wait... Whatever.

65

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-14 01:16:03 »

You're exactly right, it would need to be a substantially large number of people. But if such a large number of people did participate, why would SE not listen? What if we had more pledges than Amazon had pre-orders?

Also I think you might be underestimating the size of the original fan base. And the people most likely to have strong opinions will be the fans that played the original.

Also there is a third option. If option 1 is SE makes it for the new generation, and option 2 is SE makes it for the original fan generation, and if option 2 seems hopeless, then option 3 is that SE designs it such that you can do either/both, e.g. active vs. turn based.

If nothing else, at least it's an extra data point for SE's R&D, and the fans can at least say they tried.

But you're right, it would need to basically be huge to make a difference. It would be not just collecting a few pledges, but more like trying to represent the majority of the original fan base.

I am not saying it couldn't be done. I am simply saying that FF7R will be aiming for multi-million numbers of sales - the original fanbase - that is to say everyone who played the original when it was first released, not as a result of being brought on the band-wagon by spin-offs like Advent Children etc. (most of which enjoy those spin-offs more so than the original), are most likely not many enough to create the kind of social capital that could pressure SE to make design changes to the game.

As for the 3rd option - I don't see that as feasible. You might be able to create a dualistic battle system (like Dissidia), but it entirely depends on the basics of the battle system (party control with free-movement etc. probably would not work well for a dualistic system).
There's more to the game than the battle system though. There's also the story - the cinematography etc. Having two options for everything like that simply isn't realistic.

Someone in the fan-base are going to have to bite the sour apple here. That's just a fact at this point, I am afraid. I'm hoping it won't be me, but I'm pretty sure it will.

To add on top of that, I would say that no matter how SE made the remake, even if it was EXACTLY how YOU (anyone here reading this) wanted it, it would still not have the same impact as the original. You can't repeat a "first time experience". There's no element of surprise.

This implies that what I enjoyed the most about FF7 was the first-time experience. In my case, that's simply incorrect. I've replayed the game once every 1/2 years since it's release. In my mind, it's still the game I enjoy the most out of every game I've played since it's release and it's the only game in my collection I consistently go back to play. If anything, my best memories of the game was from my second or third play-through, going back to it after completing FF8 - not the first one.

The remake doesn't need to have the same impact as the original, nor is that what I want or ask for. It simply needs to provide a new and fresh way for me to enjoy the narrative and style of the original.

That's why I'm actually in favor of a complete remake. I can play the original any time I want. I can use mods to improve the graphics and such. Given the choice between two nearly identical FF7's, vs having the original AND a remake, I say go with the latter. At least we'll have the opportunity to experience something new and fresh. And it will be really cool to see how they design the game mechanics and such.

I can get behind a completely remake, if it's good in its own right. But, as I've said before - remakes are not made for new fans, or drastic changes. People who think that are fooling themselves. After all - People with no emotional connection to the original material won't have any expectations at all - these people don't know what FF7 is suppose to be to begin with - they might as well be playing FF15, and be non the wiser.
If you're going to remake anything, it's to capture the hearts of those who enjoyed the thing you're remaking. More often than not, this means catering to those people.

If anything, the Resident Evil 1 remake is both the best example of, and proof of, what a remake is supposed to be, and what makes a remake successful. If anyone for a moment thinks that the RE1 remake would be even half as popular if it had been pushed out designed with modern survival horror conventions, akin to The Evil Within etc. they're fooling themselves as well.

One last thought. Should the oldest, most hard core fans always get their way? If you take this idea to the extreme, we shouldn't play any console games at all. We should go back to text based adventure games like Zork. (Which I loved, by the way!)

That's just absurd. If the oldest fans were asking for regression, then they wouldn't be asking for remakes to begin with.
Everybody is obviously fine with graphical improvements, game-play re-balancing, expanded side-quests, or minor design-choices to improve upon dysfunctional or buggy elements (mini-games and button-prompt events etc. could do a lot of work) - they're simply averse to changing the entire style of the original, and literally revamping the game-play entirely, turning it into some hack-n-slash cut-scene ridden action-fest.

Hian has summed up the biggest issue with using photorealistic graphics with the original story.  It works with the old style absolutely, but a lot of FF7 will not work with realistic graphics.  I would disagree with him that FF7 was not well written, it certainly was (unrealistic scenarios, like cross dressing, in a game are sometimes the price you pay for having a fun game).  It had the right balance between gameplay and story, and it made a lot of effort to portray scenes so that you could suspend disbelief to them.  Something only a good fiction would do - and something AC and the spin-offs failed miserably at.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying FF7 isn't well written. It's well-written for its time, its format, and its style. It's an amazing piece of story-telling and media.

I am simply saying that it does not compete in the same arena as a lot of other media to begin with, and that compared to what we considered "well-written" in the larger context of art history - it's a pretty simple narrative.
The same way you don't rate fairy-tales against auto-biographies, or documentaries against sci-fi movies, FF7's story is not comparable to the stories in most classic novels.

It did not aspire to be realistic, nor even necessarily all that logical or reasonable.
It did not require players to suspend their disbelief, because any notion of disbelief should have been left at the door the moment you popped the game in the disk-tray after having glanced at the screenshots on the back of the cover.
Semi-realism requires suspension of disbelief - and the more incongruent fantastical elements are with the realism, the more of a struggle the act of suspension becomes.

The same is not true of FF7 because it comes with a guy with gravity defying hair wielding a sword that is literally physically impossible to wield without having the momentum of each swing launching the wielder into orbit - It literally tells us from the get go - This game does not aspire to tell you things that makes sense in your world, so let it go already, and just enjoy the ride.

However, present the narrative of FF7 in semi photo-realism and that suddenly does not work as well anymore. The presentation shouts "this is serious business people", but the physics and the rules of the universe make no real sense, nor the motivations, actions and thoughts of many of the characters.

Seriously - Cait Sith? In "slap-stick, campy, anime FF7" I can accept that without batting an eye, the same way I can accept giant chickens in neo colors being run on race tracks, or Cloud dressing up as a women to sneak into a place he could literally just level with the earth if he wanted to granted his strength.

In moody-broody, photo-realistic FF7R? Hell no. It will look stupid and out of place. Remove it though, and what are we left with? An FF7 without a soul - another re-telling of the Nibelheim flash-back, some choice scenes from Midgard, the back-stories and relevant story-segments of characters like Barret, Vincent, Nanaki, and Cid, the death of Aerith, and the show-down in North Crator.
That's pretty much it - because the rest of the original game, and it's narrative is a roller-coaster of "teh weird", sprinkled with  "teh wtf did I just smoke" that falls apart if you apply the same scrutiny to it, that you would to a Tom Clancy story, or something similar.

Nobody did though, playing the original, and neither were we supposed to. That much should be readily apparent after playing the game for less than five minutes.
This does not mean that it's badly written. It simply means that its really well-written fantasy, but really badly written realism.

66

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-13 02:30:05 »

Wishful thinking:
Maybe the daylight shots are from the ending, after meteor, in a new, re-built Midgard.

I don't like to speculate like this, but I kinda agree with you. Post-meteor Midgar makes most sense.

Yeah. It's just kinda sad that a rebuilt post-Midgard makes little to no sense with the original narrative - not only due to practical concerns,
and the Nanaki scene at the end of the original game, but because even if it were to happen it would not happen while the cast
was still young, or perhaps even alive. Rebuilding the wreck of Midgard without proper power, after the impact of the meteor would take decades at least.

A reboot/reimagining of FF7 is what I hope for. Not a continuation of the trainwreck FF7 expanded universe. I saw a video on youtube just some hours ago ("top 5 I want to see in FF7R" or something like that) where the guy talking wanted the CC characters in the remake... The horror... I have also seen this in other channels/forums/etc. "I hope they bring X character in", "I hope they continue into the AC story"... Now, I don't mind new characters/storyline as long as it's done good (whatever that is lol). Most of the expanded universe characters though have a certain fecapalm-otaku appeal value to them that I'm sick of. Does that make sense?

I think you makee perfect sense. The extended universe products were all made without the same team as the original game, and they were
made much the same way as fan-fiction - not with regards for what would make sense with the original narrative, but with the intent of satisfying delirious fan expectations and desires. It's essentially glorified fan-fiction rendered into canon by having the label attached to it.

Non of the spin-off products make sense in and of themselves. They butchered the art-style of the original, and the added multiple new and needless layers of contrived BS and plot-holes.

The correct way to address that in a remake is obviously not to go way out of your way to force these products to make sense together,
which will invariably necessitate more contrived and ridiculous plot-bending, but to ditch them all together and treat the remake as an entirely new and stand-alone product. Tie-ins make even less sense from a marketing perspective, since a lot of the new potential players of the remake won't have played the spin-offs and therefore won't understand and get confused by the tie-ins unless they are self-contained and self-explanatory - which they probably won't be given time and resource limitations.

Some things to fix from the top of my head:
Cait Sith. Dat effin bastard. I wouldn't mind it that much if IT actually died in the temple of the Ancients, and did not return. Ever. Reeve could get other means to communicate with Cloud & co.

Many cut-scenes after Midgard could use some more meat. At certain points in the game the cutscene vs gameplay ratio is a bit off imo.

Yuffie's side story feels like fanservice. The turks and the don is too conveniently there. Not terrible by any means, but could also be done a lot better.

If only I had control over the remake 

There's a lot of stuff you could "fix" in FF7, but non of it necessary in a sense - and all of it a potential disaster.

Enter anti-SE rant-mode -

People seem to forget that FF7 was essentially a silly 90's anime game.
Half of the plot was absurd - such as the entire Shinra HQ infiltration, which is hilariously weird. Or Cloud and Co sneaking across the ocean in the Shinra Boat, where the crew ended up being massacred by Jenova, yet walking off the boat all casual-like with no consequences what so ever.
Or Rufus going out of his way to commandeer the Tiny Bronco, a tiny, personal air-craft that serves no purpose to Rufus what so ever that can't be covered by the fleet of cargo helicopters stationed at Junon, or an Airship.

Point is that, most of the time, nobody cared about these scenes, or even noticed how absurd they were - because guess what? The entire game is pretty far out there, and you're invited to relish in the camp and the sheer joy of the experience rather than waste time nit-picking details pertaining to universe-logic etc. which essentially bear no real impact on the important notes of the plot to begin with (which would be Cloud's existential journey, and the themes dealing with loss and human's relationship with the planet).

It's an ephemeral and visceral experience, more so than a realistic, and logical one.
It's a story portrayed in glorious "I'm high on LSD"-like graphics with unnatural and impossible architecture, super-saturated color-palette, with weird and nonsensical characters fighting weird and nonsensical enemies (like a house morphing into a killer robot, or a giant revolver firing rockets). FF7 did not give to fvcks about anything or anyone. It was a trip, and it was a trippy one at that.

The compilation, and the remake (judging by the art-style) is fundamentally incongruent with the original, and that's why they all end up feeling really, really weird and bad. The style and narrative of FF7 was never intended to make sense in the way that we demand realistic/semi-realistically styled media to be.
It essentially flew under the radar in the same way that children's cartoons, and fairy-tales do. Remove that, and then suddenly all the absurdities became readily apparent and jarring as hell.
The more you try to make sense of it, the more contrived and corny it becomes, which is why all the spin-offs (and most likely the remake) end up feeling stupid, contrived and melodramatic.

FF7 is not, and never will be realistic, nor a logically coherent game. Trying to make it into such, instead of simply embracing the fact that it isn't and running with it, invites more and more issues down the road in production.

This is another reason I am so apprehensive of the remake - I don't think Nomura, Nojima and Kitase get this anymore. In fact, I think this ephemeral, fairy-tale quality to FF games was solely the result of the creative out-put of Sakagachi, because you still see it present in his post-Squaresoft games, yet non of it in SE FF games.
Nomura, Kitase, Nojima and the rest of the major FF creators in SE, have their heads too far up their own narcissistic asses to see that the stuff they design just reeks of bad fan-fiction.
The stuff they now design, is the game-development and artistic equivalence of the user-names that early teens pick for their characters in their first MMOs because they think it's "kewl" (XxOneWingedUchihaSasukexX etc. and similar manure).

Camp and childish fairy-tale elements was the saving grace of FF, and it always has been - because it's still a fact that most people who write and do creative design for games are immature and amateurish in the grander scheme of writing, musical composition, and visual design.
Accept that fact and embracing it leads to quality camp which is good in its own right. Not accepting and embracing that leads to pretentious post-Matrix BS.

No Nojima, you are no Shakespear, and no Nomura, you are no Leonardo Da Vinci and no everyone, FF7 is not the video-game equivalence of Citizen Kane.
If anything, FF7 is the video-game equivalence of the original Star Wars, and the reason the spin-offs suck are the same the reasons the Star Wars prequels suck in comparison to the original trilogy.

Rant over.

Seriously though - If I had creative control over this game, the first thing I'd do is have the entire game stylized using a cell-shaded graphical solution keeping 100% true to the style of the original, finished cast drawings. Then I'd throw all the compilation stuff in the garbage.
By doing that, I'd literally solve pretty much every stylistic and plot-related problem that could ever possibly manifest itself from the very get-go.

Seriously though - fvck you SE for going with that quasi photo-realistic style which will inevitably lead to you butchering most of the memorable moments and scenes of the game in favor of post mid-2000's melodramatic and cringe-worthy cinematography and writing.
GG.

I actually had an idea around how to influence Square Enix to make the remake in the way the fans would want them to.

The basic idea is a "pledge" website where fans pool their money to voice their opinions and pledge their money to SE if they design the remake according to their desires. For most practical purposes, the fan's money is not just a donation to SE, it's basically used to buy the game. The website is owned by an organization that acts as mediator between the fans and SE. If SE makes the game according to how the fans want it, they get the money (and the fans get the FF7R game), otherwise the fans get their money back, and possibly pledge not to buy the game or give SE any money.

Actually it's more complex than this; fans can divide their money according to different features, instead of all-or-nothing; SE might have an agreement with the mediating company to give fans a discount on the game; there needs to be specific criteria to determine if the fans got what they wanted; and lots of other logistical challenges. But, this could radically change the way remakes are done, in general, for all art forms (games, movies, etc.).

A couple of other problems I see with this are: (1) the remaker has more incentive to satisfy as many fans as possible to get the most money, which might actually not be a good thing, but then again they can always choose to design for a smaller crowd and be more special that way; (2) people with more money will have more influence, which isn't necessarily fair, although the fans will tend to be older and make more money, so this tends to be biased towards older fans, which is a good thing, for the older fans. (3) the fan's pledges and opinions need to be collected very early during development, early enough to actually be able to influence how SE makes the game. (4) Lots of other logistical challenges like this...

Anyway... Anyone wanna help me build this company and website? there's lots of other cool ideas related to this, like a system that's smart and continually learns about which different aspects of the game fans are interested in, etc.

That's probably not going to work. Firstly, you'd have to convince SE to play on board with this, and that's just not going to happen for more reasons than I care to elaborate on here.

Secondly, the majority of the people who'll end up buying this game, won't be original fans - certainly not purist fans of the original title.
SE will not change game-play- or story-design choices based on a small, albeit paying group of people when they have a marketing and research department telling them what design-choices the ought to go with to appeal to a wider audience to begin with.

Your idea assumes that the group of people who happen to stumble across your site, and make pledges on it will be a significant and representative enough group for it to be a group worth listening to - and that assumption is very difficult to justify, especially
in relation to a game like a complete HD remake of FF7.
The production costs of such a game is going to demand Call of Duty/GTA/Witcher level sales in order to justify its production at all.
How ever do you plan to make it so that the people drawn to your site will represent the advocates for changes that will steer the game in the direction of attaining such sales?
What makes you think SE will trust the opinions of these people on your site, more so than their own research department?

67

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-12 15:18:58 »

Sounds like it could be true. I did scratch my head when I saw those skyscrapers, thinking where it could possibly be. I haven't done any theory crafting on it, just assumed a stylistic change. But, then again, those skyscrapers, as I see it, have to be in proximity to Shinra HQ (if not a new city?). They're clearly not there in the night time shots. What else to believe than post-meteor Midgard?

To be fair, there are at least two common criticisms of this theory, both found in the trailer analysis article on thelifestream.net
I don't find either of them particularly convincing though.

The first one tries to make the argument that because the daytime shots clearly show Mako pipelines it can't be set in the future, because
the reactors were no longer active after the events of the original.
This is nonsensical though, since even after the fall of the meteor, it would still require less job and be more sensible to work around the original
architecture, rather than dismantle everything that no longer worked after that event. The pipelines are huge, as are the reactors, so it would take a very long time before all traces of the original infrastructure would be entirely gone. And this doesn't even go into the possibility of the pipe-lines being used for other types of energy, like gass, oil, or as a protective structure covering electrical cables.

The second criticism is about the train and the reference to Edge. It rightfully points out that the first train-station of the original game was named "North Edge Station", but the sign with the name wasn't readable due to low resolutions in the original PSX version.
I still think this is a stretch because
A.) it conflicts with the narrative, and where the art and the narrative conflicts, I think the narrative takes precedence - besides it's perfectly
possible that this detail was a remnant of a design choice that was made before the plot of the game was entirely finalized, but simply
not edited or removed because nobody could make it out in the original anyway.
B.) Since the trailer is entirely pre-rendered, everything about it is carefully planned. No scene in this trailer is there by accident.
While a discrepancy like the station name in the original and it's conflict with Jessie's (or was it Barret's?) statement about the towns
no longer having names (and all the other stations being referred to simply by reference to their specific place and sector) in the game is
understandable because games are made by large teams in often very organic ways, a completely pre-rendered cinematic trailer for a grand
reveal at a conference is not.
If the trailer dwells purposefully on the name "South Edge", that is to give the viewer a specific hint - not just some inconsequential piece of
random information referring to some random Reactor train-station.

The train criticism makes even less sense when you consider that in the original, the train that went to "North Edge"(and therefore also presumably "South Edge") was the train you see later in the trailer passing the park, not the modern one you see in the beginning of the trailer.

Regarding post-meteor Midgard: Given the FF7 ending, I always assumed humanity did not survive (returned to the planet if you will). Now AC clearly debunked that. Still, I kinda think that was one of the possible interpretations the original authors wanted.

I always took the ending to mean, not necessarily that humanity didn't survive, but that they abandoned Midgard - which would make perfect sense.
Midgard was a huge metropolis built and designed specifically to function through the use of the Mako reactors. The entire infrastructure of
the city is founded on, and dependent on the Mako Reactors.
Once Mako stops flowing the entire city breaks down, and when you consider the infrastructure and the building density of Midgard, there simply is no feasible way to power the city anymore (unless you could replace each Mako Reactor with a Nuclear Reactor or something to that effect).
This literally means that after the fall of the meteor, Midgard would be a huge, immobile, powerless and lifeless piece of metal.
The logical thing to do for everyone at that point, would be to migrate back to the country-side, to towns such as Calm or Nibelheim etc. not waste time trying to live in a place where nothing grows at the moment, in houses in a city covered by pollution that has no electricity, and by extension, probably no running water.

AC/DoC shat all over the logic of the ending of FF7. That's one of the big reason I hated the movie and that game. No, people did not stick around in Midgard. It doesn't make sense, and it completely ruins the sense of the scene with Nanaki and his kids.
I mean, how many hundred years in the future would that have to be, if the events of AC/DoC are to be canon?

Although I'm pretty much out of hope for the remake now, I just wished they'd sink the compilation material to the bottom of the sea, ignore it
and remake the game by sticking as close to the original story as possible. I just don't see that happening anymore.

68

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-11 16:54:12 »

Are there more trailers? I tried a lazy google attempt but didn't find any. The trailer we got is too vague to be conclusive on this matter, but if it is true then it adds a +1 in my "why I dread a remake" subconsciousness.

No, it's just the one trailer, but I think the trailer is pretty clear if you know what to look for - of course, this assumes that the trailer is representative of what the game will look like, and is not simply a custom made promo trailer that's completely tailored for the announcement and nothing else - which may or may not be the case given SE's propensity for trolling its fans.

But, let me break it down anyways -

1. The video clearly contains two very different conceptions of Midgard.
Several of the first shots of Midgard in daytime shows no signs of the plate.
The buildings are architecturally speaking vastly different from the original Midgard, but also vastly different from the later shots of Midgard in the same trailer. The skyscrapers seen in the day-time shot, are shown to reach all the way down to ground level in the evening shot over the playground.
The day-time Midgard literally makes no sense with the architecture and design of the original Migard - yet, the later night-time shots shows a Midgard that is almost shot-by-shot true to the original, although most people didn't notice it seems.

Let's take a closer look though -
The night-time shots begin, and you then have a scene that clearly shows the slum under the plate, near the foot of the support-structure holding it up.


The place I outline is clearly one of the support beams of the plate, maybe even the very place where Cloud and Co fights Reno for the first time.

The shot at about 0.50 seconds in, clearly shows the old Midgard in a panorama view - it's the Shinra HQ - Just compare these two shots for reference.



In the night-time shots, there are no signs of the modern skyscrapers reaching down to the ground level, not among the buildings in the sectors,
nor surrounding the Shinra building. The night-time Midgard is clearly the original Midgard - the daytime shots are clearly not.

For reference





If these scenes were supposed to be in the same Midgard as the one being shows in the night-time scenes, then these building, or ones similar to them, should be visible in the shot of the Shinra Building, since the Shinra building is atop the plate, as these would have to be too, seeing as we can see the Sky above them.
Yet in the shot of the Shinra building, at 0.50, the building atop the plate, are decidedly in tune with the architecture of the building atop the plate from the original game, with no signs of modern glass and steel Skyscrapers or anything even remotely similar.

These two Midgards are not the same. That much, I would say, is patently obvious. I might be wrong, but it seems more likely I am right.

2. The trailer shows two different trains - The first one, a modern train similar to the ones you find circling Tokyo, with an information map referencing (South) Edge, a town that didn't exist in the original game, nor makes sense with the lore considering that the places in the original Midgard no longer had names, and were referred to only as "sectors".
The second one, you see in the background of the playground, is the original train from the intro of FF7 (yeah).
This latter train, as you all probably remember, ran from the bottom of the plate to the top of it, running by the reactors. There is literally no reason why you'd have both at the same time.

Add this two points together, and then add in the point about production time, costs, and the convenient way in which it will allow Nomura to tell pretty much the entire story, and even include the compilation with relative ease, I think it's a pretty decent theory.

EDIT: Basically this would be more like an Advent Children 2 then.

Yep...

69

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-08-11 02:32:40 »

SE not using the Luminous engine is pretty good news in my opinion, not only for the obvious practical reasons, but for the fact that this probably means the game will truly be its own experience, not just FF15 with a pretty FF7 dress slapped on top of it, which was one of my original worries.

With the costs invested in Luminous, and the costs of producing next gen graphics for large games like FF7, cutting corners will be a constant element of game-development, and one of the easiest ways for them to save money and resources would be to simply use most of the tech and resources they've already developed for 15 with minor edits, instead of designing everything over from scratch.
If they're going for another engine, that probably means they'll have no other choice than to take the harder route, and we're looking at a much broader possibility for the game being drastically different from the other FF games they have produced the last 5 years.
That's a good thing IMO.

One worry that I still have though, in light of the trailer, and in light of development costs, time frame, etc. is that this isn't going to be a conventional remake at all.
The trailer clearly shows a time-skip with two widely different conceptions of Midgard. Add that together with the monologue, and I'm starting to think the game might actually be set post-FF7with the events of FF7 being retold as flash-backs much like the way the Nibelheim incident was told in Calm in the original.
If they opt for such a format, they can save tons of resources and time, because they'll have a really good excuse not to make the world-map (or an 1:1 scale open world equivalent), add the mini-games, or locations not needed to tell the essentials of the original plot.

They could literally have the entire game based in a future Midgard hub-city, have the cast meet up in Tifa's bar or something, and then present just the choice moments of the original story in a chapter-by-chapter based fashion, and eliminate any "dead weight" along the way, such as exploration, chocobo breeding/racing, Kondor and the RTS stuff there, most of the natural "dungeons"(caves, mountain roads etc.), running through the snow and climbing North Crater etc.

I'm not saying I would like them to do this (I definitely wouldn't), but it actually seems really likely at this point granted the trailer, granted the likely release dates (an official Sony advert in Edge Magazine has the game listed as "TBA 2016"), granted production costs and the scope of the original game, and granted that they're apparently doing it from scratch on something other than Luminous.

It's also a great design choice if they wish to also incorporate the scenes and stories from the compilation, or even worse, add them
as DLC. When the narrator(s) is/are done telling us about FF7, he/she/they could, by a prompt, then proceed to tell us about the events of Advent Children, or Crisis Core, or whatever else.
I hope for god's sake they don't go this route, but I have a really bad feeling that this is what we'll end up seeing.

More pwixels and edited colouring I wouldn't call that modding :p but yeah games like this at current gen need no modding at all, I know I wouldn't bother

*Looks at the FF13 PC port, every single current gen Ubisoft PC title, The Witcher series and a bunch of other titles*

No, modern games need modding just as much as ever, if not more than a decade or two ago - because developers keep pushing out bad and unfinished products to meet unrealistic dead-lines at more and more alarming frequencies.
Modding is not just limited to the kind of up-grades you see here at Qhimm, dealing with attempts to increase visual and audio fidelity, but also bug-fixing, re-balancing and other system-related edits.

70

General Discussion / Re: FF7r - Reviving the old rumors

« on: 2015-07-13 14:02:29 »

The question is, what was the 1:35 Soldier going to be used for?  It must have had some purpose that was removed.  I'm using it for a hidden collectables minigame.  Perhaps the remake will add its original use back in, but I doubt it will even appear.

Probably some kind of trigger item for an event - like something you'd hand to a kid infatuated with Shinra Soldiers, in exchange for a materia or something to that effect.

I know that in my current project, my database is already littered with junk items for events and quest-lines that won't make the final cut, or even regular items and equipment that I made for the sake of test-runs that aren't balanced for regular play-throughs, and therefore needs to be cut before we wrap things up.
Now, the team plans to edit all that stuff out as we go along, but with time-constraints, work-load and communication issues we're probably
bound to miss a few even once we think we've finished the product. I can imagine Squaresoft faced the exact same issues with FF7.

71

General Discussion / Re: FF7r - Reviving the old rumors

« on: 2015-07-13 09:17:34 »

The original god damn translation...

It's bizarre how much damage its done to the conception of the FF7 plot - the most obvious one being the confusion surrounding who's really the evil mastermind, Jenova or Sephiroth (although I thought that was made really really clear the first time you get to North Crater, many people just don't seem to have picked up on that), or the idea that Cloud is "just a copy of Zack" (although pre-memory-fix Cloud and Zack has very little in common personality-wise, and the dialogue, even in the translation, heavily implies that Cloud and Zack might not even have met, or known each-other prior to the Nibelheim mission).

72

General Discussion / Re: FF7r - Reviving the old rumors

« on: 2015-07-13 09:11:44 »

No, that's not sarcasm. He's trying to trick the people of this forum, who are for a good proportion hackers or hardcore fans of the game and know its deep-rooted mechanism like the back of their hand.
And he's doing it in a thread about old non-sense rumors we had fun with.

That *wink* Is *wink* Definitely *wink* Not *wink* Sarcasm *wink* *wink*

Who knows? With the remake, you're bound to get more people coming across this forum due to google who're not the typical crowd.
In my defense, after I wrote that post, I just came from a remake article, where some "fan" of the original was spouting similar nonsense based on the faulty assumption/misinformed position that the 1/35 Soldier item, actually means 1 out of 35, and was arguing that its use should be expanded upon in the remake.

That ghost isn't a glitch   I checked it out, it's definitely deliberate.  It is scheduled to appear after her death as a deliberate reminder to the player.  I was going to remove it when I realized it was there on purpose. It even has a var set up to make sure you only see it once.

That's what I always thought. Some people actually thought it was a glitch? I always assumed it was made on purpose as a means to flesh out the player's relationship with Aerith, since going back to the church after her death and seeing her ghost can be a pretty smart emotional device.

73

General Discussion / Re: FF7r - Reviving the old rumors

« on: 2015-07-12 15:11:03 »

Now in vanilla FF VII  what you can actually do when you gather all 35 1/35 soldiers is to ask the blacksmith to forge them all into one big soldier statue. Now just before the Reunion, bring that statue to the sick man in the pipe and when he sees it  he remembers he is himself an ex-Soldier and decides to join the party to know more about his troubled past. Now head to the gym hall in District 6 with him in the party and challenge Bro himself for the Black Spiky Wig. If your character has a high agility stat  then you may have a chance, but beware... Bro is some kind of super Yoda.
Got the Black Spiky Wig? Congrats. Just select it in your rare items menu and use it on the newcomer. He will learn his 4th limit break right away ( Multislash ) and you will notice he now has long black spiky hair. He's now fully playable but can only equip the Buster Sword and the Shin-Ra Alpha body armour.
( by the way, his default name is " Z." )

I hope this is sarcasm - because if it isn't, I'll have you know that this is utter BS.
Firstly, 1/35 Soldier does not actually mean that there is 35 soldier figurines, but what it actually means is this -
1 : 35 Soldier I.E a soldier figurine that is 35 of 1 scale to a real soldier - meaning it's a mini-figurine, not that it's 1 out of 35 pieces
that you can collect. The game does not actually have 35 Soldier figurine items to begin with.

74

General Discussion / Re: FF7r - Reviving the old rumors

« on: 2015-07-08 09:04:08 »

Genesis is very unlikely to make an appearance in FF7R, unless they redesign him entirely. Why? Because the use of his character is tied to a licensing agreement with the Japanese Pop-star Gackt, whom Genesis was modeled after. That agreement has expired, which is the reason why CC is not being digitally distributed for PSP and PSVita, and we aren't going to be seeing any HD version of it anywhere else either.

Reviving Aerith is pointless though. As everybody has said ad nauseum, Aerith's death is tied to the story, and even if it would be "fun" to have her reviewed, outside of as an oddity, or as a cheat, giving her a proper revival would and actually tying it into the story would just really cheapen the story overall IMO.

As for things they should add? I can't think of any myths or rumors I'd want them to add. Most of them were pretty dumb to my mind - after all, they were the machinations of silly kids for the most parts, who were just trying to impress or fool each-other.
What I would like to add though -
Lots and lots of side-quests to flesh out character-relationships, or just make the adventure last longer, without messing with the original story.

75

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!

« on: 2015-07-05 03:33:26 »

Any significant change in the story would be fairly uncalled for but as far as the mechanics and game-play; we have had almost 20 years of progress since the original so to simply mimic it on such a powerful system as the PlayStation 4 would be kind of a waste in my opinion.  Now does that mean that they will automatically get it right?  off course not, and I am not half expecting them to do so either.  I simply know enough now to know that anything could happen at this point.

We've had almost 20 years of change - some of it has been progressive, some of it has been regressive.
We could have a lot of discussion on whether or not the original FF7's game-play mechanics are outdated or not - but the FF13 battle system, which is fairly traditional by most standards, or the general game-play of games like Bravely Default, clearly demonstrate that the conventions of FF7 aren't out of date in the sense of use, nor have they been left behind by progression within the medium.

Personally, which is where I think I differ from DLPB, I am not making the argument that I want the remake to be exactly the same as the original in terms of basic game-play.
There are many game-play variations I can conceive of as being good in their own right, or true to the spirit of the game - my problem lies in the idea that the game-play needs to be drastically different (such as a complete transition to an ARPG system), or that it should be changed because the original mechanics are somehow bad or flawed.
By most accounts, and I say this as a developer myself, the original systems are brilliant -
their primary sin is how poorly balanced, and sometimes poorly realized they are, not the systems in and of themselves.

- The Materia system is great because it allows for completely free customization of all characters, meaning that the player is free to
pick their party largely only being concerned about which characters they want to experience the narrative with, and not being forced (in general) to play with characters they don't like on a personal level (like Cait Sith ;P ).
The fault lies in sub-par balancing of the materia effects in battle, which is relatively easy to fix with more play-testing.

- The transition system for battles/random encounters are clever because it allows a game to play out epic, big-scale battles with
little to no concern with the environments of the game, clipping/edge detection issues, movement A.I, and many other aspects of the game.
The fault lies in the lack of ability to adjust/turn off encounter-rates at the player's leisure, which is easy to fix by adding a simple
menu command.

- The turn-based/ATB system is great because it allows for party micro-management and 1-man "team-play" taking full use of the potential of several members of the cast at once.
The fault lies in the static and "unrealistic" nature of it, which is easy to fix through stylistic changes such as having the characters
move automatically around on the battle-screen in-between turns to make the battle look more dynamic, adding alternative battle-animations for attacks, etc.

- The mini-games are inspired works of creativity, that serves to break up otherwise very repetitive and standard RPG game-play convention of -town/resource exchange, dungeon/battle/resource gathering, story-segment-, into a more diverse experience
with action-, racing-, sports- and fighting-game conventions.
The fault lies in poor execution due to limited time and hardware, with clunky controls and bad responsiveness, which are all easy to
address given the experience the company now has on other titles, and the new hardware resources now available to them. 

My point with these examples, is that there are plenty of changes that SE can make to the original system to make it more "exciting" or "accessible" to people without changing it entirely, and that non of these systems that require up-dating are silly, outdated PSX-era conventions that no-body use or like anymore, as a lot of people seem to suggest these days.

FF7 requires polish to be up to today's standards - and more polish than just to the script, the graphics, and the sound, but also to the game-play, such as balance, controls, and style. It does not however require a total overhaul, which is what it seems to be getting.
In many ways, keeping the original game-play and simply adding polish might actually teach the new generation the merit of those kinds of games, and lead to a renaissance for the JRPG genre. I see no reason why this can't happen a second time around.
It's not like the original FF7 wasn't also competing with good games from different genres.
[I remember the big debate between gamers back in elementary/junior high school was "which is better FF7 or Ocarina of Time?"(despite almost a two year release gap, between the two).]