If a remake ever did get made, I feel sure it would address some of these points, but sadly, ignore many others, and change too much of the original game. My time here has mainly been spent trying to change FF7 for the better, while still maintaining the original feel of the game. In other words, you don't see me plastering Advent Children material or other spin off material into FF7. Any changes or additions that I do make are generally geared to providing a faithful update to the game.
This post is here to provide my own opinion on what I feel needs to change in Final Fantasy VII to make it a better game. Obviously, some of these changes are already in motion by myself and others. Still, it would be nice to see an OFFICIAL FF7 that incorporated some/all of these changes.
1. Retranslation/Relocalisation. Only when you go through this game after seeing how the dialogue was supposed to look/sound do you really realise how much better the translation of FF7 could have been. At first, I was a little disrespectful to the sole localiser Michael Baskett. I assumed he had just done an incompetent job. I did not realise that Japanese is fundamentally different to English. I naively thought that you could simply translate it like most latin-based languages. Unfortunately, Japanese is a lot more difficult than that. In many cases, there simply is no way to accurately translate unless you have the original writers tell you what they intended. It is clear Baskett did not have this. It appears very likely he was rushed to do a job with very little context available to him, and almost no involvement from the original staff. This is why we ended up with Zack, Aeris, Elena and not Zax, Aerith and Yrena. But it isn't just spellings that suffer, it is the dialogue too.
Japanese can have many interpretations of the same symbol or Kana, and context is king with that language in particular. Without the context, you are often completely fucked. One example of this is how Tifa states she will fill "the shop" with flowers, instead of "the bar". Baskett could not have known this without someone telling him, or without playing the game himself. If you add in time constraints, you get what FF7 ended up with. Actually, given all of the problems that must have faced him, Baskett did a decent job. He got most characters reasonably accurate, and got the "feel" correct. I am not kidding when I say FF7's translation could have been an absolute disaster.
But that aside, there is no denying that FF7 has a complicated story that needs a very competent translation. Most games could probably get away with some inaccuracies, but this game is not like most. The main story and background conversations only add to the game when they are better translated/localised. Instead of your brain constantly going "huh?", you settle down and accept the world and the characters all the more. There are too many instances of the dialogue either sounding completely unnatural, or else being plain wrong. The best example of this is the following dialogue:
{YUFFIE}
“Are you waiting for {CLOUD}?”{NEW}
“He's flying right now, so you can't get him.”{NEW}
“Were you going to force me
into the submarine right now?”{NEW}
“Quit it!
If you want to go, then just leave me behind.”{NEW}
“…ooooooh.
What're you talking about? I…”which should be more like this:
{YUFFIE}
“{CLOUD}…
Have you decided
where we're goin' yet?”{NEW}
“Come on!
I can't take much more of this!”{NEW}
“Hey! You're not thinkin' of shovin'
me in that crappy sub,are you!?”{NEW}
“I won't go! Never!
Leave me here,
leave me here!”{NEW}
“…Urrrrk.
What am I saying…?”So, number 1 on my list has always been the translation. One of FF7's key appeals is its story, and it is criminal that we were short changed the first time round (and with all the re-releases).
2. So if Story is one of the key appeals of FF7, the other must be its gameplay. Unlike most people (perhaps? Let's have a vote), I like turn based battles. The reason I like turn based battles is because they give humans the time to THINK, and to PLAN, and to EXECUTE. Strategy should be one of the main staples of a game like FF7. Unfortunately, with more modern games (not just FF games), we now have a situation where flashy visuals are seen as more important; you have numbers flashing on the screen faster than you can even tell what is going on, moves being executed in real time, running about hacking and slashing with no thought whatsoever being placed into most actions. FF7 is not like that, luckily- it is a game that affords you the courtesy of being able to engage your brain. But... it is not without its faults.
The big problem with FF7 is... it is too damn easy. People keep making the mistake of believing that FF7's battle system is too easy because it is a basic turn-based battle system. This is not the case. On the contrary, FF7's battle system and its game system (Materia etc) are really well designed. The problem is, they (especially the battle system) are badly IMPLEMENTED. The implementation is poor for 3 reasons:
a. They have been implemented in a way that makes FF7 easy for most gamers. From a designers point of view, this is obviously beneficial in terms of making the game appeal to more people. If a game is too hard, a lot of people may stop playing, and thus the products appeal, longevity, and ultimately financial success will suffer.
b. Laziness. A lot more could have been done to make FF7 maintain its easy playthrough, while making the gamer use his brain more. Too often in FF7, a player can just press attack over and over. While you still get the choice to mix it up (and that is very important), it still doesn't change the fact that you can often forgo using any kind of tactical approach. They could have added a difficulty option.
c. Time constraints. Obviously they were on a deadline. They didn't have an endless amount of time like we seem to here at Qhimm forum. I have no doubt that had FF7 been given 6 months more in production, it would have been an even better game. The Submarine minigame in the Gold Saucer is totally unfinished, for example. There was also supposed to be additional side quests in the game, like the Kalm letter quest.
So what can make FF7 better in the gameplay department? Here are my changes:
- The first thing that all FF games need is a difficulty option. Normal and Hard would suffice.
- Stop endless hack and slash tactics. For example, force the player to recognise that a mechanical enemy will not be "hurt" by a normal weapon, and is better defeated by lightning. Making weapons very weak against mechanical enemies is one example (of many) of simple changes that make a big difference.
- Make enemy AI more difficult. FF7 AI is rather basic, let's face it. The enemies fast become obvious, and players usually have no trouble out manoeuvering them. The only challenge for most players is when the enemy does a strong/fast attack that they don't have the HP to deal with. This is not clever gameplay, it is just cheap.
- Make acquisition of items harder. Make the currency matter. In FF7, it becomes too easy to acquire and sell goods. The result is that a player goes to a shop, buys what he wants, and progresses, with absolutely no thought of whether they should have waited, or whether the transaction was smart. There's simply no brain power going into decisions; it is too simplistic. The problem is far worse near the end of the game, where gil is more abundant than Sephiroth's megalomania.
- Make weapons/armours/accessories matter more. I've already touched upon the fact that enemies need to exploit gaps in a player's tactics, and this is somewhat related. Again, in FF7, I feel confident that a lot of the time, I can just do without goods. It should be the case that a player constantly feels pressure to do something, or make better decisions. Not just "Ah, it will do". FF7 has a brilliant system that is not being exploited to its fullest. Small changes in what a player has equipped could have very different effect on a character's stats, for example.
- Weapons and armours should have a health rating, and depending on use, should degrade. Their stats should degrade until eventually they are worthless. You would need to buy new armour/weapons.
- Make levelling up and increasing character stats easier near end of the game. I am sick to death of games that deliberately make the end-game a nasty, annoying grind (to artificially add game time and thus make the game appear like it is longer). Before I went into programming FF7, there was an illusion I can't describe properly... I would kind of feel like I was accomplishing something with these endless grinds. Today, I see things in terms of bytes. I change 1 byte and Cloud becomes an unstoppable demon. So today, I see grinding as an unnecessary part of FF7... for the most part. Sure, I still think there should be some challenge in acquiring the highest stats, but definitely not the time waste that FF games bask in. It is too easy for a programmer to make a stat-increase hard to come by, or have an enemy with an annoying drop rate. The balance needs correcting.
- Tweak stats for player/enemy/items etc until the game flows properly.
- Add more puzzles (like Breath of Fire III) into the game and/or story. Cloister of Trials in FF10 was a breath of f...resh air.
Obviously, with all of these changes, a balance has to be reached. It is no good making the game TOO involving so that the game feels like a micromanaged chore, but certainly, the balance in FF7 as it stands originally is lop-sided to the easy side of things.
3. Add more minigames, tweak existing minigames, and add more prizes. The Gold Saucer is one of the most awesome places to be. I remember the first time I got there in January 1998. The Gold Saucer allows a player to take a break from the ordinary game, and instead play a game within a game. The ability to play snowboarding, submarine and bike minigames within the main game, is an excellent design choice. It promotes longevity, makes a game have more than 1 dimension to it, and allows the player to take a break from the both the story and ordinary game play. The minigames of FF7 are still fun to this day. The best thing to do is to add even more 2D games to the gold saucer. That would definitely be a good move. The kind of 2D minigames that need adding is up for debate. The Gold Saucer also needs an auction event (Cloudiar came up with this idea, and it works a charm).
The existing minigames need a tweak. The Coaster game has a bug where the boat rotor gives you a load of points, and the submarine game was left unfinished. When I went into the submarine game I noticed that the 5 levels have no real difference in difficulty. The programming did exist once to give each level its own time limit and attributes, but none of this has been used or implemented. I have had to reprogram the game myself, and even though I am limited in what I can do working with assembly, I have still made it much more fun/challenging. The submarine game is by far the worst programmed thing I have seen in FF7; the code is all over the place, and there is no real structure to the difficulty or AI or anything. Best guess... bad programming and there was no time left to complete the game. The 3D-Battler has no real strategy; winning or losing is based entirely on luck and is literally a rock, paper, scissors. I can accept it for this game. The problem is the original programmer made a critical error in the understanding of how probability works, and so the odds of winning this game are 3709-1, instead of the 300-1 he was likely aiming for. Because these odds were so high, evidently no tester was able to confirm the game worked and so a bug also exists when you have beaten the last opponent. I and Luksy have corrected this problem already. It is another example of how FF7 was likely on a deadline that expired. [Quick note... I finally defeated the 3rd opponent the other day for the first time in my whole life. And that isn't even the final opponent]
Lastly, the prizes given out for the minigames are rather basic and uninvolved. For example, there aren't many prizes for different scores in the G-Bike game. More prizes need to be given out for each of the minigames; the submarine game could also give out prizes for high scores (and submarine high scores saved also).
In other words, the minigames needed more time to be perfected. And with a little more time, and better design, they would be even more fun to play. The minigames could also do with a small graphical update. I personally don't mind if the 2D games stay the same graphically, simply because it gives them a classical feel.
5. Get Rid of Cait Sith. Yup, I have been talking about it a while, but haven't got round to doing it yet. An option would be nice since that would stop so many fanboys from writing death threats to Nomura. Cait Sith, imho, is the one big chink in FF7's story. He has been shoehorned into the story, probably late in development. The whole concept of a talking robot toy mounted on top of a stuffed white toy, controlled by Reeve is nonsense. It really is nonsense. I can't suspend my disbelief to it, and any scene Cait is in detaches me from the story. I try to avoid him whenever I can. A viable story could easily be made where a human spy joined your party, perhaps in a much more plausible way than "I'm coming with you no matter WHAT you say". Cait is badly written and needs to go.
6. Graphics Update. I don't consider graphics that high up the list of how to improve FF7 in terms of "being a game", but it is clearly something that needs to be addressed. In 1997, FF7 was revolutionary and new, but even as early as FF8 the blocky character models had become dated. When people think of "graphical update" they start to fantasize about 1080p, realtime hack-slash, and 3D field environments. I don't. I think a good trade off would be to update FF7 based on the original game. In other words, the FMV would be updated, the field graphics would still be pre-rendered from a 3D source, and the battle graphics and world map would be updated. There would be no changing of the actual structure of how the original game worked. It would be literally a graphics update to the original game and not an overhaul of the entire design. 720p would more than suffice. This approach would also mean less money and time would be needed in development.
7. Add more side-quests. One of my early ideas was to add a "1:35 Soldier" quest, where you found 50 (or maybe 99) of the items around the game, much like the parcels in GTA. I can now start adding this quest, since I understand Makou Reactor and scripting a whole lot more. This is one idea of many that simply add more to do without interrupting the gameplay/story balance that the original game got right.
8. Add optional orchestra music (for as many as possible).
That's it off the top of my head. I may return to this at intervals to add more.
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