[SPOILERS] FF7 remake discussion time!

[LeonhartGR]

The ultimate FFVII-R PS4 console unboxing (giveaway included) https://youtu.be/SEt0c3fY0vk.

[-Ric-]

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/05/interview_final_fantasy_vii_remake_producer_and_co-director_on_development_launch_and_being_grateful_for_the_fans

Kitase: I personally envisioned quite a dramatic change overall, but our director; Tetsuya Nomura and co-director; Naoki Hamaguchi, wanted to keep the beloved aspects in the original as much as possible. Eventually the development team decided to focus on respecting the original while adding in new elements, ensuring a delicate balance between the two.

Lol @ Nomura's haters. May your heads not explode.

I'm just kidding, don't get offended people.

By the way, the Platinum trophy felt "meh". While not as easy as the OG FF7 Platinum... it was lame. The lack of a any real superboss is a pity and something that I hope is added in part two.

[Izban]

I was trying to convey the sense that while the battle system is definitely an improvement, I'm getting the FEELING (and unlike on the narrative side, here I have no way to back it up, as it may completely turn out untrue, so the emphasis on the word FEELING) that they'll be cutting much of the more nuanced, complex and sometimes hidden stuff that made FF7 such a joy to explore and experiment with, with many hardcore or even entirely missable parts of the gameplay. Of course I do realize that this would mean that the work the devs did is not 100% pristine and perfect, a concept unacceptable to some.

Now you understand why is hard to take some of you seriously. Even if I say that the game is 95% awesome but there's a 5% I find distasteful, you come up with absurd notions such as this one to get across the point that the game should be 100% above of all criticism. Which is basically fanboy-ing.

I'm not here to be taken seriously, only to voice an opinion, and back my opinions with my logic, which is definitely distasteful to some, almost entirely filled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, mainly cause I can't spell and I'm on a phone.

Battle is where most of the gameplay takes place, which is almost entirely. Great experience, with the exception of the aerial combat and some materia combos being totally useless, overall though it's a damn site better then og7's complete base battle system(NT is still og7's battle system just actually done right from my understanding {haven't actually played have viewed}) remakes battle system has plenty of room to grow as subsequent parts come out.

There are definitely issues that I personally have with remake just like I have issues with og7 and the compilation, genisis, deep ground, geo-stigma. But the issues I have aren't bad enough to warrant the unbridled fury some people are attacking it with, dodgy camera, aerial combat, poorly optimised texture load sequencing, story adjustments. And sure there are some quality of life things that would be recommended like a gambit system, materia loadouts, additional endgame content, auto-sense. But overall from what I've played I've enjoyed far more then I do with most games, some of which is definitely nostalgia because I'm a big fan of og7's characters(some of there versions are craptacular), I feel there is far more character development/understanding across the board which was a nice touch.

I'm definitely a fanboy of og7 but I can say with almost 100% certainty that I'm not a fanboy of remake, I played remake in 1.5-3 stints for the better part of a month without it feeling stale or needing to play something else to wash a bad taste out of my brain, so I had plenty of time to digest the information I was getting, and I believe the remake is objectively better gameplay wise, narratively I subjectively can understand the direction they've taken and it doesn't offend me,the somewhat camp dialogue that is so offensive to some I found to be fairly to the original and I felt the voices were the best interpretation of the characters so far, and the music was damn amazing to listen to, overall I found remake better then og7, however without og7 I would appreciate it quite as much

[avensis18]

I agree with that, he's really not on point in the remake, I was disappointed.

192.168.100.1 192.168.1.1

[IlMomo86]

Lol @ Nomura's haters. May your heads not explode.

Aside from the fact that I don't hate Nomura (misconception number 1) and that I think many of the changed stuff was actually better (misconception number 2), this is still actually quite interesting. Because you know, there are multi-pages interviews in the ultimania when it's stated over and over again that the idea to create a Remake as the conclusion of the compilation and not as a Remake in the defining sense, was Nomura's. The ending is pretty much all of Nomura's ideas. The light VS dark symbolism, Nomura claims personally it's his contribution. So there, I have trouble putting those words in context since they contradict everything else the dev themselves stated. Probably it has to do with which "the beloved aspects" are in their opinion. In the Ultimania for instance Nomura singles out as an important aspect that he struggled to mantain "the spikyness of Cloud's hair" because as unrealistic as they are, Cloud wouldn't feel Cloud without them.

Ironically, while this may sound out like an incredibly immature and shallow example by him, I actually agree with Nomura there. It is worth mentioning that Nomura is an amazing character designer and that some of the choices he made where fundamental for the greatness of the series. I just remark that his sense of "mantaining" the story could differ from common sense.

I just think he is not as good at writing stories as he is at designing characters. Whoever had the misfortune of reading Cloud's dialogue in both AC and KH seems to agree that while he can definitely make Cloud look cool he doesn't have the slightest sense of how Cloud acts and speaks.

That said, all the FFs have been collective works, so giving Nomura all the blame is generally unreasonable.

There are definitely issues that I personally have with remake just like I have issues with og7 and the compilation, genisis, deep ground, geo-stigma. But the issues I have aren't bad enough to warrant the unbridled fury some people are attacking it with,

LOL the unbridled fury. You meen the consistently 9+ scores on reviews? The huge numbers of copies sold (two of them bought by me?). The universal praise to art direction, sound direction, character design, dialogue writing, combat system, respect for nostalgia, worldbuilding? The whole new wave of fandom the characters are getting?

This game is getting no unbridled fury at all. This far is could very well be the best game of 2020, even if a few big shots are coming next (eg TLOU2), but it's hard to think that personally I could appreciate them more than I did FF7R.

Try defending FF12 and poor YazMat back when that came out and that will give you a sense of what unbridled (and unjustified) hate toward a game is.

The fact is simple, even among those who were overwhelmingly positive about the game (meaning, the majority, me included), even about the narrative changes, the final chapter felt like a huge misstep -one famous italian youtuber even said he agreed with the "remaking history" idea but that the way it was executed, presented and written was still utterly craptacular- and the combat system seems like an early draft of what it could become.

About the combat system it's also worth mentioning that this is again not my own opinion but the devs, who explicitly said that the game was their chance to lay the basics of the battle gameplay, again in the Ultimania.

Those with fury are, in my eyes, those who are blindly defending every last inch of it (just to avoid misunderstanding I don't mean people in this discussion, who everything aside are fundamentally civil) and claiming that this hugely successful game is being "discriminated".

[Izban]

@Iimomo86 you are fun, while I still maintain chapters 17-18 become less egregious on subsequent playthroughs I'm curious as to how you would adjust them while maintaining the plot elements to make them passable

[IlMomo86]

@Iimomo86 you are fun, while I still maintain chapters 17-18 become less egregious on subsequent playthroughs I'm curious as to how you would adjust them while maintaining the plot elements to make them passable

You misunderstand, I am not the one saying the problem lies in execution. I still mantain my opinion that the core plot points of FF7 are in contradiction with the additions in FF7R. And that while the following titles may execute the narrative well and obtain a decent story the path to do so is narrow, and still leads to a somewhat worse final product than the original narrative.

I still have to hear from just about anyone how could you put together:
1. a delusional and unreliable hero AND a chosen by destiny
2. a sense of irreparable loss in death AND multiple timelines or alt-universes
3. the theme of acceptance (of your shortcomings, of death, of defeat) AND rewriting your fate
4. an extreme ecologist message in the ending (Holy) AND the fight to avert/rewrite that "bad" ending
5. a freudian-lovecraftian haunting presence antagonist motivated by his alien-ess AND a "worthy rivals" dynamic with an ever present and talkative antagonist

I still haven't found anyone with a satisfactory reply to any of this. So yeah, I think it was a lame execution, but I wasn't that fixated on the execution myself as much as the concepts.

Still, if you are interested in the reasoning of people like that famous italian youtuber I mentioned -and I assume you are since my points I made plenty clear already- I can make you a short summary of his crucial objections to the execution of the finale.

Premises:

Spoiler: show

First off, to follow this reasoning you must accept the premises best summarized by Maximilian Dood, which are essentially:
1) Sephiroth's interest in breaking the course of fate is related to his future defeat
2) the group's interest in breaking the course of fate is related to the damage Holy will cause to humanity
3) Sephiroth and Aerith didn't "travel" through time, they communicated with the Lifestream which exists outside of time, and that's why they have their awareness
4) Zack is alive in a parallel course (and will be something like the Laguna Loire of FF7R) that needs to collapse at some point to make things right
5) the fact that people like Biggs or Jessie survived will seem positive at first but will start a negative chain of events
6) Aerith's sacrifice will be inevitable in the end

All this stuff is to point out that basically all the changes are made to make the original story (which is well known and spoiler-ed for all of us) live a renewed life; they will give us the illusion that we can avert the difficult choices and "make it right" in order to make the inevitable losses more impactful. Basically the changes in chap18 serve the same purpose of the changes in, say, WallMarket: you change stuff in order to make it fitting and impactful in 2020 as it was in 1997.

This list of assumptions is pivotal in evaluating chap18 as CONCEPTUALLY valid. I think many of these assumptions are really more the fruit of intelligent speculation by Maximilian Dood's and the likes of him, which is why I don't share the optimism.

Though I give credit to the basic consideration (by both Maximilian, Mike and many others) that the rest of the game is so well-written that the Devs deserve the benefit of the doubt and more.

Adjustments according to "Mike of the Desert" or "Sabaku No Maiku" (not my opinions, keep in mind):

Spoiler: show

1) the whispers' names

The whispers are traslated differently from one language to another (in italian, for instances, they are called with the latin-orum term "NUMEN") but the original wording in japanese was something similar to "receptors" or "intermediaries". People point out that mantaining a traslation similar to the original would've been crucial. Because while the concept of breaking fate by beating the sh** out of it doesn't make any sense,  the concept of interrupting the communication between the Planet's Will/Fate and reality by destroying its receptors is a lot more credibly sized, just like cutting some Kraken tentacles with a sword is more credible than splitting the whole Kraken in a half with it.

2) the escalation problem

Consequence of the previous point. If I literally have to fight and take down Destiny incarnate in the end of part1, what should be topping this at the end of part2 or for that matters, at the beginning of part3? Same problem with fighting Sephiroth so early in the story, the absolutely over-the-top action with power levels to Advent Children and beyond, and the unnecessary One Winged Angel playing, not mentioning the final scenes reminscent of the final Seph VS Cloud fight. Basically they overdid it. Rather than all that DragonBall-level of destruction, make the portal open to some desolate dimension and have the last fight there without going all-out with spectacolarization. What you are fighting (the Harbinger) indeed does exist outside of time and space so you could definitely do that.

3) the Fate Weapon

Since the FF7 worldbuilding already has designed a canonical "defense system" that hypotethically corrects or eliminates threats in the form of Weapons, rather than cramming in the narrative an out-of-place Darksider ripoff, it would be more coherent and elegant to just theorize the existence of yet another different Weapon (Opal Weapon? Amethyst Weapon?) that is specifically designed to intervene when something threatens a specific part of the Planet (its Will, or so called Destiny). Since the group destroys the Fate Weapon receptors, the Fate Weapon still exists, but it cannot interact directly with reality. The concept of a Weapon would be alien to new players, but not any more confusing than the story that actually got portrayed on screen and, unlike the Harbinger, coherent with the enstabilished FF7 universe. The existence of two exceptional individuals (Aerith and Sephiroth) justifies the chance that the "Great River" of Destiny can be altered and therefore the Fate Weapon's necessity to intervene. It makes logical sense since normally people can't even see the Whispers/receptors in the first place, only the Cetra could (and the Cetra would never challenge the Planet's Will) which explains why no one other ever attempted to defy fate. Basically the "Fate Weapon" would be a Weapon that normally operates stealthly and that the characters just happen to unmask due to Sephiroth's plan.

*notice that you don't need to explain all of this with exposition, just restyling the final enemies and naming the Harbinger a "Opal Weapon" or such would carry in and of itself all the meaning

**notice that his adjustment can be possible only if one of Maximilian Dood's theories is incorrect, the one in which he says that the name (Harbinger) is a hint (through Vincent's words in AC) that Jenova seized the control of the Whispers.

***notice that a minor plot hole is still there, as in why Seph doesn't just destroy the Whispers himself.

4) the Portal

Another point in which the youtuber criticizes the Kingdom Hearts symbolism, as Aerith seems to "purify" the Portal with "light". Since the closest thing to "light" in FF7 is Sancta, that scene needlessly muddles the symbolism and creates more problems with the worldbuilding than it solves. Especially since, narratively speaking, after Aerith's "purification" of the portal nothing specific seems to happen, as the party still follows Sephiroth through the Singularity as intended.

*notice that this adjustment assumes that Aerith is using Sancta just for show, and that the general speculation of where the story is heading is correct.

5) The Boss Fight

The Whispers boss fight is indeed lame from a gameplay perspective, especially after the outstanding Rufus and Motorball boss fights earlier. Make it shorter, although the general meaning of it stays the same - you cannot directly defeat the Harbinger/Fate Weapon, but you can disconnect him from its receptors by destroying them. Make the Whispers stronger, less repetitive and more interesting to fight.

*notice, again, that this can be coherent with the game's given definition of the Whispers (as a defense system of the Planet's Will) but only if you don't agree that Jenova has infected the Whispers. The fact that the three final Whispers are inspired by Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo (again confirmed by Ultimania) lends credence to the theory that Jenova infected the Whispers, but not entirely as the Whispers may simply be using memories to shape the REMINISCE SEPHIROTH and the other three. Then again, such a theory would create more problems that it can solve, again: if Jenova and Sephiroth are in control of the Whispers they don't need anyone to defeat the Whispers at all, and are in fact omnipotent. It would solve the problem of why Seph doesn't beat the Whispers himself though, but at the cost of creating other contradictions.

6) The Four Sephiroths

As Ultimania states, there are four Seph in FF7R: ILLUSION, BLACK CAPE, REMINISCENCE and . ILLUSION is the one that exists only in Cloud's mind and that acts as a tormentor, as darkness in his heart (basically, Nomura's Sephiroth). The other is the Seph avatar that takes the bodies of the Black Capes N02 and N49 to interact with the word, in other words BLACK CAPE is the FF7og Sephiroth. The third is a "REMINESCENCE" of the past (supposedly, the Seph that you actually fight, which appears to be crafted by the Whispers) and the final one is the one that invites Cloud to defy destiny and speaks with him at "The Edge of Creation", supposedly all-knowing and coming from the future. Rather than all this confusion, avoid the over-use of Sephiroth in the first part and cut ILLUSION SEPH entirely, cut the boss fight with REMINESCENCE SEPH, and make the BLACK CAPE and Sephiroths to be the same Sephiroth. This to avoid the over-use of the character and the quite exaggerated and distasteful final confrontation.

*notice that this would be possible only if the premises are true and therefore not Aerith nor Sephiroth actually travel in time, they just have a four-dimensional understanding of time thanks to the Lifestream, otherwise the presence of multiple Sephiroths is inevitable; and this once again creates problems as it would imply multiple Clouds, multiple Aeriths, and so on.

There you have it. This is the most optimistic outlook out there on the "Grand Finale" of FF7R, where is it going and how it could have been put on screen in a more smooth way, according to some experts. If you find all of this to be needlessly contrived and uselessly circling around the story themes of FF7 with efforts that should be better directed elsewhere and numerous plot holes along the line, then you can finally perhaps see when I am coming from.

[Dark Phoenix]

I just think he is not as good at writing stories as he is at designing characters. Whoever had the misfortune of reading Cloud's dialogue in both AC and KH seems to agree that while he can definitely make Cloud look cool he doesn't have the slightest sense of how Cloud acts and speaks.

Hence the "Emo Cloud" meme, because Nomura always writes Cloud as an emo edgelord, whereas you don't see much of that in original FF7.  As I said before, I never really liked FF7, but even I could see that Cloud's personality in later works wasn't close to his personality in FF7.

[Izban]

@iimomo86 that's fairly well thought out, however I disagree with having to make the whispers weapons, mainly because it's already shown in og7 that Gaia has multiple defense's holy, meteor, summons(cetra)and the weapons, the whispers make sense if you treat them as corrupted cetra souls, which would make cleansing Sephiroths portal a way to cleanse the corruption of the fallen cetra, now if you tied that to jenova being the source of the corruption you can form a coherent story using that as a catalyst, while maintaining possible alternative timelines, seeing as jenova is at minimum the cetra extinction event in age, which would allow a possible end point where you actually kill jenova(Lavos) in pre-cetra extinction history as a final boss.

All of this assumes that at some point time travel becomes a legitimate part of remakes canon at which, isn't exactly a stretch due to time dilation materia, but it does open up the opportunity to address the Cloud being an unreliable hero in a far more meaningful way.

Near as I can tell the escalation problem you suggest, becomes a non-issue if the whispers are infact corrupted souls because your just fighting effectively mid-low range summons as they don't have a defined form, and Sephiroth is for all intents and purposes is only a fraction of his actual potential power.it's already established lore wise that soldier are capable of superhuman feats, making the building cutting plausible,  I would also argue that Gaia as a whole has a lower gravitational mass then earth based on average feats by "normal" humans in og7, numerous survivors of definitely fatal falls under earth gravity.

Og7's canon actually has allowances for a great many things that lets face it were never really explored, as you said the weapons are made by the planet and are effectively sentient materia,  jenova has the power to corrupt the Lifestream, the temple of the ancients is the black materia and it details at least 1 previous use, there is localised time manipulation, and sentience past actual death, memories are transferrable, mako is the Lifestream meaning materia is also crystalised Lifestream

[Jedimark]

Hello hello, old-timer here, I probably joined these forums 20 years ago! Just finished playing through the remake and thought 'Hey, I wonder what my old friends on qhimm.com thought of the remake'. This thread has been an interesting read

On a personal note I absolutely loved it - mainly for the nostalgia I guess. The music was great, the gameplay was okay, the story was... well I actually like that it's not going to be a direct remake. I hope they don't get too lost in the whole idea of multiple timelines and the inevitable paradoxes that will emerge. Time will tell I guess. "Seven seconds 'till the end" - I guess we're going to try and save Aerith, but I suspect her fate is sealed oneway or another.

On a separate note, I've just been browsing through some of the projects this community has been working on over these past 10 years or so. Amazing work everyone!

Any other old-timers still about?

[Izban]

Yes

[ocac]

Yet to try Hard Mode on Remake (I want to try it in Japanese - the VA alone reveals significant translation differences with the English script), but like some others:

• I appreciated the utter deviation from the original plot, in scope and specific beats. I can understand that that makes the word "Remake" misleading, as it is neither "complete" nor the same as the original, but I think "word is out" about that.
• I appreciated the shift to an FFXII-esque quasi-real time combat system, as I felt (a) occassional challenge and (b) occassional tactics. Maybe New Threat and things like that are better entertainment value (please recommend if so!), but the J-RPG trope of cheesing enemies through grind-based-overpowering stimulates me little now.
• The slice of life pacing, particularly in slum areas, added a socio-economic level of detail (which I appreciated) that is kind of implied but never fully explored by the original. YMMV.
• At a meta-level, I am somewhat amused that the endgame plot deals with a bizarre forking of reality, where events can be remade. I just pray, whether it's Nomura or another at its core, that someone keeps the Kingdom Hearts-isms in check. I was happy to just laugh at the Arbiters (and wonder if the translators were Discworld fans), and the fan-fic level of deviation. If they can make that resolve remotely satisfyingly I will be stunned and impressed.
• I did appreciate that it was a Remake that drew on knowledge of the original to appreciate the deviation. Shockingly post-modern use of inter-textuality...
• I played through the game with m'Spouse for company, so there was a rich level of in-jokes. YMMV. I actually think this helped make the more absurd elements more positive.
• The OST alone is a massive success.
• The memes it has spawned (Chaireth, etc.) are positively gold.

I definitely felt I enjoyed myself for what I paid, but it would be a strange game to try and recommend. I would find it easier to recommend a fan of the original listen to the game rather than play it, which is bizarre. That said, it is the most attractive addition to the "Compilation" for me - I tolerated DoC, was bemused by AC, and was warned off CC/BC. Reading up on the latter two, I think the warning was fair, but they seem to somehow have their fans.

*(In FFXII I was a big fan of chasing the biggest "game" available as early as possible - it made you OP for the main plot - but put you in conflict with the next bit-too-much Side Quest or Secret Boss, improvising to compensate the advantages plot progression would later give you, which added a strategic layer. Yet to try the Zodiac Age version and very curious for impressions on that.)

[obesebear]

I would disagree about cc being bad.  I think it's the only decent thing to come out of the compilation. 

I'm currently working on a before crisis game, hoping to improve the script and make it a worthwhile addition to FF7

[jbi]

Awful awful awful. After waiting an eternity for this remake, what a huge disappointment.

I've sold my copy and will never be revisiting this abomination again.

Square Enix need to take a good hard look at themselves.

[rajputaman04]

I cannot comment on the combat system since I haven't played a demo yet. Some say it's definitely better than that of FF15, and that there is at least some depth to it, so we'll see.

[LeonhartGR]

Waiting for Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2

[harmanzop]

I shouldn't have read that. If it's true though, sounds dope as hell. I'm sure crybabies will still moan about it not being a 1:1 copy of the original though.

[jameswookyz]

i think i have been convinced to at least wait for a price drop on this one
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