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Flopsy posted:To be fair my tastes are quite eclectic. I think Mr. X is hot for example. Roche just basically presses Pause on the game's momentum to stop you and introduce a character who feels Extremely Tetsuya Nomura, which is the absolute worst way to get me to engage. He was over-the-top in a way that isn't particularly interesting, his gimmick is that he's flamboyant but annoying, and his boss fight is trivially easy. I could have done without his existence. Andrea Rodea, Madam M, Chocobo Sam, and Leslie all ruled. I actually just loved Wall Market in general. Kyrie was whatever. But they felt like they were expansions of the game, fleshing out the world and making it breathe a bit more, and not an elevator pitch for a new character to eventually include in a flash banner for your mobile game, which is 100% what Roche felt like. ("WHOA LOOK AT HIM HE'S COOL AND KUHRAAAZY HAHA LOOK AT THOSE MOTORCYCLE MOVES" like ten minutes before we find out Jessie's dad is a vegetable. Hm.)
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Apr 16, 2020 01:37
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Cloud hooks up with Zack, Tifa hooks up with Aerith, and the story ends with a big dance number back at the Honeybee Inn.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:38
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HD DAD posted:Cloud hooks up with Zack, Tifa hooks up with Aerith, and the story ends with a big dance number back at the Honeybee Inn. Andrea and Cloud's dance number is one of the highlights of this game, so I'd be cool with that. I'm a hardcore Cloud and Tifa guy from childhood tho. I get the bad feeling that times are gonna be tough ahead. PS: "Nailed it, I know. Thank you. Moving on." is the single best line delivery in the game. Wall Market just as a whole is super great.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:40
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Nitrousoxide posted:100% Cloud is going to die instead of Aerith and Zach, who didn't die in this version, will pick up his sword up to take on the rest of the game. I too really like Final Fantasy 5 and will do a replay soon.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:41
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Flopsy posted:I was just thinking if Aerith lives maybe she helps turn Midgar INTO the promised land by teaching the humans how to use renewable energy and work with the planet thus actually restoring the cetra race. That'd be cool as poo poo and narratively succinct. drat man, a final shot of Red XIII plus cubs rolling up on a Midgar that has been transformed to be surrounded by greenery and solar panels, and hell it even looks like the Neo-Midgar concept art you see around Shinra HQ (showing that technology and progress aren't inherently evil), now that would be a pretty solid finish, hell you can bring back the bird circling overhead shot from the intro to this game too. And you add in Red XIII gathering them up to tell them the story about the heroes who saved the planet. Also maximize my fanservice, because why not, and give us glimpses of what each character gets up to after saving the world, either before we get to the Red XIII scene or as part of the story he tells his kids. Beat Sephiroth for good and started saving the environment so well you turned a desert into a grassland? Now that's an ending I can get behind. Flopsy posted:I personally would find it loving delicious Sephiroth thinks he's won by destroying the timeline in which Aerith dies and ultimately he loses, but instead finds the seven seconds he gave Cloud ended up loving him in the rear end harder than he could've possibly imagined. What if your puppet shakes off your manipulations way ahead of schedule and just loving shatters that materia you needed? Then whatcha gonna do momma's boy? I think Cloud having a big breakdown before the Temple of Ancients would make sense based on what's in the remake; the characters already ignored him spacing out or being weird a bit too much for my tastes, and I would have liked someone to not accept him just saying "It's nothing, I'm fine" and press him on it. I can't imagine it happening because it would take us so drat far out from the original plot (the meteor's in the game's logo for goodness' sake), but if that black materiawas straight up destroyed before Sephiroth could get his hands on it I'd definitely become very intrigued and start wondering what could possibly be coming up to replace that as a major threat to the planet. I also need to give the game even more props for how well it uses our knowledge of the original FF7 plot as an asset, especially as it pertains to Cloud. I loved that we don't hear Aerith say Zack's name, but we see her say it and Cloud immediately does his mental freakout thing, which was another thing that I thought was typically presented really well.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:41
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SyntheticPolygon posted:That's going to happen and there will also be a Zack vs Cloud boss fight.  
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Apr 16, 2020 01:44
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NowonSA posted:drat man, a final shot of Red XIII plus cubs rolling up on a Midgar that has been transformed to be surrounded by greenery and solar panels, and hell it even looks like the Neo-Midgar concept art you see around Shinra HQ (showing that technology and progress aren't inherently evil), now that would be a pretty solid finish, hell you can bring back the bird circling overhead shot from the intro to this game too. And you add in Red XIII gathering them up to tell them the story about the heroes who saved the planet. Also maximize my fanservice, because why not, and give us glimpses of what each character gets up to after saving the world, either before we get to the Red XIII scene or as part of the story he tells his kids. I too really want to see them address his episodes instead of letting him just brush them off. Seriously after what they've experienced at this point one would think that's worth addressing before he goes full coo coo bananas. Also just had the ridiculous thought Sephiorth absorbs the materia shards and just turns into the meteor himself. It'd be so gloriously stupid it'd wrap around into being awesome. Flopsy fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 01:47
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SyntheticPolygon posted:That's going to happen and there will also be a Zack vs Cloud boss fight. Yes. But which of them will we be playing? I’d bet on Zack.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:50
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Lmao just unlocked the Bahamut Summon VR fight and got annihilated by mega flare.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:54
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NowonSA posted:I think Cloud having a big breakdown before the Temple of Ancients would make sense based on what's in the remake; the characters already ignored him spacing out or being weird a bit too much for my tastes, and I would have liked someone to not accept him just saying "It's nothing, I'm fine" and press him on it. One of the testaments to FF7's staying power is that despite being a garbled mess in terms of its localization, the themes still resonated through the clunky dialogue, and this is low-key one of the best parts of the game. There's subtext here about how psychological conditions get worse in sneaky ways, and that even good friends can be entirely unequipped to deal with them for reasons that may seem fair but ultimately still make things worse. Tifa largely does not want to press Cloud too hard because she's terrified that he'll just leave; her dialogue in FF7R is littered with questions about if he's going to stick around and/or how long he's going to be in Midgar, and the first thing she does when you get back to Sector 7 is inform you that she got you an apartment. The one time she does challenge him about the intervening years since they last saw each other, he shuts down, and she basically drops the subject. It makes 100% sense for Tifa to not want to jeopardize her fragile reunion with Cloud, and she sacrifices any attempt at intervention into his obviously weird behavior as a result. Aerith, at least in the Remake, is strongly hinted at having already known what Destiny is supposed to be and more or less seems to be aware of Cloud's deal. She gently prods him - once, really - about whether or not he had any war buddies in SOLDIER and why he left, and then essentially drops it as well, because I think she believes that owing to Destiny there's nothing she could really say or do to affect the outcome. Aerith's fatalistic attitude in the early parts of FF7R are some of my favorite bits of fresh characterization. She doesn't seem to steel her resolve to defy Destiny until post-Sector 7 plate drop, and seeing her be melancholy and quiet w/r/t the deaths she believes are certain to occur was interesting. Essentially Cloud has three people who could point out his weird behavior and address what's going on with him; one of those people is terrified of losing him and will actively placate him even when he is obviously not telling the truth, and the other two are either too unfamiliar with him to ask the right questions or resigned to the situation. Allowing Cloud to get worse and worse when they are all standing around right there is stark but pretty grounded in reality when it comes to dealing with psychological trauma and/or mental illness, at least in my experience.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:56
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guts and bolts posted:One of the testaments to FF7's staying power is that despite being a garbled mess in terms of its localization, the themes still resonated through the clunky dialogue, and this is low-key one of the best parts of the game. There's subtext here about how psychological conditions get worse in sneaky ways, and that even good friends can be entirely unequipped to deal with them for reasons that may seem fair but ultimately still make things worse. Tifa largely does not want to press Cloud too hard because she's terrified that he'll just leave; her dialogue in FF7R is littered with questions about if he's going to stick around and/or how long he's going to be in Midgar, and the first thing she does when you get back to Sector 7 is inform you that she got you an apartment. The one time she does challenge him about the intervening years since they last saw each other, he shuts down, and she basically drops the subject. It makes 100% sense for Tifa to not want to jeopardize her fragile reunion with Cloud, and she sacrifices any attempt at intervention into his obviously weird behavior as a result. True but we're getting more and more people added to the party as we go on. I feel like at the very least Cid would be like "okay what the gently caress is your deal kid?" Not disagreeing with your assessment but maybe Aerith's character development this time around is putting her foot down and not letting herself be resigned to what's to occur. I think I remember reading in one of those add on novels that was written from her perspective she was devastated by the effect her death had on his mental state. The term she used was an egg cracking open before it's ready and leaking yolk everywhere. Flopsy fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 02:04
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The real Final Fantasy Versus is between the puritanical ghouls who want to see Aerith die vs the new revolutionaries who want her to live.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:07
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Flopsy posted:True but we're getting more and more people added to the party as we go on. I feel like at the very least Cid would be like "okay what the gently caress is your deal kid?" I think there's definitely room for people to directly challenge him, to be sure. But to use diegetic reasoning a little bit, here, Cloud is also telling everyone he's SOLDIER, and a First Class at that. He demonstrates abilities that are clearly superhuman even by FF7's fantasy standards, and SOLDIER is borderline mythological to your average citizen of the world. FF7R even adds a little bit of flavor to how SOLDIER members are perceived even by their own guys, where the Shinra grunts are actively either afraid of or awed by what those "boys who traded a normal life for power" can do, and Roche straight up teamkills several Shinra dudes to no apparent consequence (and, it can be assumed, has done this before, judging by the reaction of the last two bikers during the Jessie Job mini-game). Cid is intimately familiar with Shinra. It can be reasonably assumed that he might not care enough about Cloud to go after him w/r/t his freakout episodes, especially considering Cloud is very capable of probably just murdering the rest of the party if he were to so choose. Consider: you're Cid. What's the path of least resistance that helps you achieve your goals? Question to the superpowered SOLDIER when, hey, maybe they're all fuckin' weird like that, maybe it's a side-effect of the treatment that makes them super powerful; or, you just go along to get along unless it gets real bad? In future installments I'd like to see how they handle it, but at least within the context of FF7R nobody speaking up about Cloud's absolutely worsening mental state makes plenty of sense and serves, for me, as a statement on how psychological issues often go ignored, untreated, trivialized, and dismissed.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:13
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guts and bolts posted:One of the testaments to FF7's staying power is that despite being a garbled mess in terms of its localization, the themes still resonated through the clunky dialogue, and this is low-key one of the best parts of the game. There's subtext here about how psychological conditions get worse in sneaky ways, and that even good friends can be entirely unequipped to deal with them for reasons that may seem fair but ultimately still make things worse. Tifa largely does not want to press Cloud too hard because she's terrified that he'll just leave; her dialogue in FF7R is littered with questions about if he's going to stick around and/or how long he's going to be in Midgar, and the first thing she does when you get back to Sector 7 is inform you that she got you an apartment. The one time she does challenge him about the intervening years since they last saw each other, he shuts down, and she basically drops the subject. It makes 100% sense for Tifa to not want to jeopardize her fragile reunion with Cloud, and she sacrifices any attempt at intervention into his obviously weird behavior as a result. I think the fact that she just calmly walks with that kid out from the the area where the plate is about to drop while everyone else is running in terror, because she knows this isn't the place that she dies, really helps establish her feeling of being fated.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:13
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I predict that Cloud and Zack will fuse together to defeat Jenovaroth once and for all. They will form... CLACK!
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Apr 16, 2020 02:14
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Nitrousoxide posted:I think the fact that she just calmly walks with that kid out from the the area where the plate is about to drop while everyone else is running in terror, because she knows this isn't the place that she dies, really helps establish her feeling of being fated. There's an insanely good degree of subtle stuff going on with the VAs of Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa particularly in FF7R, and every one of them deserves incredibly high praise for their performances, but Aerith is perhaps the best. Listen to her tone and the inflection she uses when you're traveling through the sewers after Corneo's mansion but before the pillar, and then listen to her delivery during the pillar battle, and watch for her overall attitude up until that point of the game, and it becomes (to me) pretty obvious that Aerith pretty much knows what is gonna happen and is pretty goddamn depressed by it. Cloud is gonna be weird. Sector 7's plate is gonna fall. AVALANCHE and civilians are going to die. She won't, but that is small comfort. She basically forces a smile when Tifa at first tries bargaining and denial when thinking about the plate actually dropping ("Corneo was lying!", then "They totally wouldn't drop the plate that doesn't make good business sense, haha, no way would SHINRA do that, right?") and it's kinda heartbreaking. "Yeah we'll totally stop them, for sure, no all your friends aren't going to die" is a hard sell, though, and I think that event is what actually inspires her to stop just going along with stuff because it "must" happen. guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 02:21
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Lmao just unlocked the Bahamut Summon VR fight and got annihilated by mega flare. gem is hard. ApeHawk posted:CLACK! 
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Apr 16, 2020 02:27
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Lmao just unlocked the Bahamut Summon VR fight and got annihilated by mega flare. If you stagger him at any point during the countdown I think he just stops doing it or starts over or something. I've only done the fight once and I just went hyper aggro on him and murdered him with Cloud/Tifa/Aerith. If you jack up stagger damage percentages on bosses you usually basically just kill them, and that fight for me was no exception. Get gauges ready for when he staggers, then pop Ray of Judgment on Aerith, Tifa does R&F->Omni->True Strike->Uppercut->True Strike, then swap to Cloud and I think I'd go with Braver or Triple Slash spam instead of Blade Burst or Infinity's End. Just burn him down really fast is the only real advice I have.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:31
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guts and bolts posted:In future installments I'd like to see how they handle it, but at least within the context of FF7R nobody speaking up about Cloud's absolutely worsening mental state makes plenty of sense and serves, for me, as a statement on how psychological issues often go ignored, untreated, trivialized, and dismissed. There's also kind of a lot going on, apart from Cloud's mental health. It's not like real life, where his issues are being ignored or dismissed because everybody is just too wrapped up in their own poo poo and has been busy at the office. They're physically fighting for their lives on a daily basis, trying to prevent a corporation from imminently killing tens of thousands in horrific acts of false flag terrorism, and then eventually trying to prevent Sephiroth from literally destroying the entire world. There's a whole lot at stake. Plenty of people would have a mental breakdown under those circumstances, and there isn't exactly time for talk therapy and self-care.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:34
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Have Nomura and Co. ever said how many games they expect this to be/how frequently they want releases? It took 5 years from announcement to release. It shouldn’t take that long for the next episode since the core systems are in place but I can’t see them doing another release in less than 2-4 years. Which, with the pace this game is going, feels insane. They will either need to put these out faster or seriously abridge the rest of the story or we’ll be playing FF7R Pt 7 in 2041.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:36
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:There's also kind of a lot going on, apart from Cloud's mental health. It's not like real life, where his issues are being ignored or dismissed because everybody is just too wrapped up in their own poo poo and has been busy at the office. They're physically fighting for their lives on a daily basis, trying to prevent a corporation from imminently killing tens of thousands in horrific acts of false flag terrorism, and then eventually trying to prevent Sephiroth from literally destroying the entire world. Oh for sure. Final Fantasy 7 does a pretty solid job of juggling a sweeping epic story (THE FATE OF THE WORLD) with more intimate character beats, which is a hallmark of some of the best things the franchise has to offer. Directly tackling psychological illness is beyond the scope of the game's plot, since it still wants to engage you on the lizard brain level, so a lot of the "mental illness sneaks up on people, often doesn't have these exterior indicators like Cloud's splitting migraines, but it's very real and very bad" has to be told in quasi-allegory. It doesn't always work - Cloud's outward, botched attempt to kill Aerith should've probably DQ'd him from participating in anything with the party ever again, logically - but it hits more than it misses. Plus it came out when we were all kids and the PlayStation was new and the graphics kicked rear end. But I think the reason FF7 persists despite being a prime target for hype backlash or oversaturation is more than just nostalgia - it's because FF7 was, for a lot of people (myself included), the first time a game engaged and depicted serious issues in a way that a young pre-teen could grasp. FF7 is ostensibly a story in which a spiky haired boy with a fuckoff sword murders Sesshomaru to stop an extinction meteor, but it's actually about how to cope with unimaginable loss, how to contend with lasting trauma, and how to self-actualize instead of relying on external influence to determine who you are or who you want to be. The dialogue and rocky localization do a disservice to the actual narrative, in which every single main character has to grapple with the irreversible loss of their dream, the thing they cared most about, and then has to find a way to provide closure for that trauma and become the best version of themselves. Cloud didn't pass the test to become a hero and live up to his own expectations for himself, then failed to prevent Sephiroth from destroying his hometown and murdering Aerith; Tifa lost her hometown and sense of place in the world, and possibly her girlhood love interest; Barret lost his best friend and hometown owing to events he entirely blames on himself; etc. What's interesting is the way in which each character deals with that loss, because it runs the gamut from deep-seated self-loathing (Cloud, Vincent, arguably Tifa) to unfair resentment of others (Nanaki/Red XIII, Cid, Yuffie) to a zealous commitment to a larger cause (Barret, Reeve/Cait Sith) to, now, a fatalistic general melancholy (Aerith). guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 02:48
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guts and bolts posted:If you stagger him at any point during the countdown I think he just stops doing it or starts over or something. I've only done the fight once and I just went hyper aggro on him and murdered him with Cloud/Tifa/Aerith. If you jack up stagger damage percentages on bosses you usually basically just kill them, and that fight for me was no exception. Get gauges ready for when he staggers, then pop Ray of Judgment on Aerith, Tifa does R&F->Omni->True Strike->Uppercut->True Strike, then swap to Cloud and I think I'd go with Braver or Triple Slash spam instead of Blade Burst or Infinity's End. Just burn him down really fast is the only real advice I have. I’ll give this a go. I admit I wasn’t fully prepared for the fight and was more curious as to how the fight looked and getting the assess data.
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Apr 16, 2020 02:51
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I’ll give this a go. I admit I wasn’t fully prepared for the fight and was more curious as to how the fight looked and getting the assess data. A really good set up for contending with content that gives you problems is honestly a boring one. Assuming you don't have weapon level 6 yet, Cloud's best weapon is (imo) a leveled Buster Sword. Even post-weapon level 6 I think I prefer the Buster Sword to the Twin Stinger, but your mileage may vary. Stick him with a solidly leveled up HP Up or two, Steadfast Block, Elemental->[insert weakness of enemy here], mastered First Strike, and then fill him out with healing/raise/barrier materia or stuff like Parry or Enemy Skill to increase his overall damage output. Much like the original game, Cloud seems to be on his face basically the best character in the game by default, and keeping him alive and swinging the sword around is priority one. Aerith and Tifa should be given healing materia (edit: like Healing and Raise specifically I mean) and HP Up/MP Up/Magic Up as necessary, and then I'd give Tifa Elemental->weakness and a First Strike as well, though Aerith can get mileage out of First Strike too. Magnify should be on Aerith and should be linked with either Barrier or Healing depending; I usually run it on Healing for all-Regen/all-Cura, but in some fights you can save a huge amount of MP by having her all-Manawall and cutting damage by a huge amount for problem attacks. Use limits liberally instead of saving them for post-stagger, especially if you're running Ascension and Dolphin Flurry, which themselves build a large amount of stagger. Planet's Protection seems to be weird in terms of how it defines "invincible," because I've absolutely been killed by stuff while it is active, but I think it's still generally better than Healing Wind. Cloud and Aerith are, to my mind, essentially non-negotiable for Hard mode runs on optional content. Tifa helps you be more aggressive/deal more damage with her ability to spike up stagger damage percentages, while Barret usually helps you stay alive longer with Steadfast Block/Provoke and a suite of healing materia (and for the love of God keep him with a ranged weapon). guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 03:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mE7fhkzao&t=11509s What's up with Aerith during this interaction? Does she know Seph is alive and is she working with him on a way to get him what he wants without her dying?
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Apr 16, 2020 03:38
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I saw a post on reddit theorizing that the OG FF7 was actually the bad ending of the game and that what we're getting now is an opportunity to get happy ending out of it. I'm not sure I'd say that specifically but it's an interesting interpretation given how bleak the original tended to get.
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Apr 16, 2020 03:52
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Flopsy posted:I saw a post on reddit theorizing that the OG FF7 was actually the bad ending of the game and that what we're getting now is an opportunity to get happy ending out of it. I'm not sure I'd say that specifically but it's an interesting interpretation given how bleak the original tended to get. The original, ultimately, was a world where the inevitable rot of death was coming for everyone on the planet, Bugenhagn even brings up that there's really little point in fighting for the planet because everyone's going to die anyway. Cait Sith, on the Airship, will also bring up that Bugenhagn is a customer of Shinra's a big one. Not that they're in cahoots, but that he buys a lot from the company. Even the ending, 500 years later, humanity has gone extinct (according to Kitase anyway) so yeah, in a way, it's a bad ending for humans. KidDynamite posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mE7fhkzao&t=11509s No, I doubt either Sephiroth or Aerith have perfect knowledge of the events of FF7. Even if she knows sephiroth is alive, what's she gonna say "Yeah, Sephiroth is alive and he's plannning to etc. etc. etc."? She also mentions later that each time the whispers touch her, she "Lost part of myself" which could indicate that she simply didn't know stuff about Sephiroth from those events. I think it's clear Seph and Aerith are opposed.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:03
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Onmi posted:The original, ultimately, was a world where the inevitable rot of death was coming for everyone on the planet, Bugenhagn even brings up that there's really little point in fighting for the planet because everyone's going to die anyway. Cait Sith, on the Airship, will also bring up that Bugenhagn is a customer of Shinra's a big one. Not that they're in cahoots, but that he buys a lot from the company. I haven't really been into the Final Fantasy series since XII but aside from that is there any other game in the series that went quite as dark as VII? I know VI is pretty rough since the world gets destroyed and you have essentially struggle thorough the ashes of it to defeat Kefka but it does end on an otherwise uplifting note.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:17
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FF2 got kind of dark, for an NES game anyways. Several party members die, the town you start out in is outright destroyed etc.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:24
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Flopsy posted:I haven't really been into the Final Fantasy series since XII but aside from that is there any other game in the series that went quite as dark as VII? I know VI is pretty rough since the world gets destroyed and you have essentially struggle thorough the ashes of it to defeat Kefka but it does end on an otherwise uplifting note. I mean by the conclusion of the XIII series, the entire world has ended and God's dead and now Lightning's a fashion model in France? I dunno if XIV counts because it's an MMO but Shadowbringers fuckin' GOES places both in showing the end of a world, the apocalypse of another, and has a lot of both VII and VIII elements within it. Namely The thing described as leading to the destruction of Amaurot was a deep scream from within the planet, leading to everything going to hell. which is basically a direct reference to what happened when Jenova hit the planet in FF7 Oh yeah and FF2, holy poo poo by the end of FF2 like... a smattering of the population of the planet is alive, almost everyone is dead, the heroes are forever broken and changed by it. I think there's like... 2-3 towns that survive the mass slaughter.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:24
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My interpretation is that OG FF7 wasn't a good or bad ending per se, it was the fated ending. Sephiroth and Aerith die, Cloud and Co. buy a little more time for a dying planet, and that's that. In the new iteration, Sephiroth is still convinced he's the good guy of this story, but has now become really attached to Cloud, seeing him as potentially a valuable ally and at least certainly very strong instead of as just some puppet. (Among a lot of excellent plot stuff FF7R does, it re-canonizes that Cloud "killed" Sephiroth, Sephiroth didn't inexplicably jump into the Lifestream of his own accord.) He almost doesn't seem to understand why Cloud would oppose him, and his offers to have Cloud join him come off as dissociative at worst and tone-deaf at best. His new goal is specifically to avert the original path Destiny took, though to what specific end is obviously left unclear. The VA work and dialogue do a surprising job of almost making him sound sympathetic or perhaps like he's changed, but it becomes pretty obvious he hasn't. Aerith I'll get to in a second, but Cloud is also important to fate fuckery because there are specific points in the story in which his PTSD-fueled episodes feature him seeing the loving future. Perhaps his relationships to Sephiroth and Aerith have bestowed some mildly useless clairvoyance on him, or perhaps he is having "memories" of a fate or timeline that now may no longer occur, but it's definitely present. The other characters have no such episodes, so I'm confident in saying that among the cast it's just Sephiroth, Aerith, and Cloud. Aerith very obviously has foreknowledge of events that will occur in FF7R, but to what extent is also left unclear. I doubt it's so specific as to be direct visions or explicit understanding, and more just intuitive comprehension of how things are "supposed" to go indicated chiefly by a feeling of wrongness if events do not proceed in that fashion (which is why she can still be surprised by things, or even express shock that the Whispers elected to save her when she should otherwise "know" she isn't going to die by falling from the second story of the church in Sector 5). She is loosely aware of Sephiroth and what he's about - that he is Wrong, personified - but I don't think she's actually familiar with him in any real sense. Because of this loose understanding of Destiny, she probably also possesses an innate understanding that the timeline we're "supposed" to get still features a dead Sephiroth and happiness for the people, even if fleeting, after all the hardship. This is best exemplified in her dialogue about preferring the steel sky of Midgar and being afraid of the rest of the world, because it represents a fundamental not knowing that she is unfamiliar with. You can read her character's resignation in the first half of the game as being "well I know what is going to happen and Sephiroth does die, so there's that at least," and her reticence to defy Destiny as doing so being a mind-bogglingly risky maneuver. By rejecting fate she is leaving open the possibility that the party will fail, that people will die, or that Sephiroth will win, where before she KNEW he wouldn't. She's gambling, essentially, that the party can do a better run of the game, while risking that they could also do emphatically worse. Her character arc in FF7R is essentially about learning to shoot the shot instead of settling for a comfortable ending where at least we kill the bad guy. My personal theory is that Aerith, Sephiroth, and Cloud are experiencing memories of stuff that hasn't/didn't/couldn't happen but is ordained to happen, a la Stephen King's The Dark Tower series of books early on. Because Aerith eventually comes to basically personify the Lifestream/Planet, and Sephiroth comes to personify the opposite of that, they are both real people and archetypal paragons, almost concepts, and this gives them knowledge of Destiny in the general sense but not enough explicit knowledge to change specific future events. As a result, Sephiroth cannot defy Destiny himself - he needs Cloud and company to do it - and Aerith doesn't believe she can defy Destiny and thus doesn't try until the latter half of the game, and even then requires the aid of Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Red XIII to accomplish anything. Cloud, owing to his singularly important nature in the original and remake and his relationships to these archetypal symbol-people, gains a fractional amount of future-sight that he struggles to interpret or understand, acting as a sort of allegorical prophet to both sides of the proverbial battle. The final encounter with the Whisper Harbinger and its heralds isn't, in my mind, a specific future version of Cloud/Barret/Tifa fighting the party to preserve their ending/timeline, but a manifestation of what Destiny had planned for them. You are destroying what you are supposed to become, and those manifestations of Destiny are fighting to make sure you will eventually become what you're "supposed" to. By destroying them you are destroying what FF7 normally "is" in the hopes that you can make something better, while the Whispers (explicit a product of the Planet's will) are firmly in the "settle for Sephiroth being dead" camp. e: you could make the argument that this is supremely meta, in that Square is gambling that they can create an FF7 that is better than the OG FF7 while risking the fact that maybe it will end up much worse, which is in my view exactly what Aerith's gambit at the end is. "We're going to change poo poo, and try to make it better" while knowing it could go way worse and that the original was, you know, pretty good. guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 04:29
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I'm totally ok with Aerith surviving. While borderline fanservice-y, it could lead to interesting narratives where we end up making things much much worse. Up yours nerds, you wanted to revive Aerith for 20 years, well now Sephiroth has summoned TWO METEORS I don't want Zack to turn out to be alive. There's nothing he can add to the narrative that is not pure fanservice.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:32
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lezard_valeth posted:I'm totally ok with Aerith surviving. While borderline fanservice-y, it could lead to interesting narratives where we end up making things much much worse. Up yours nerds, you wanted to revive Aerith for 20 years, well now Sephiroth has summoned TWO METEORS My gut feeling is that one of two things will happen.
Zack being alive seems like something that doesn't make sense immediately, and I don't really want to try unpacking it as a result. He's alive but Cloud has the Buster Sword? Was he dead until extremely recently and destroying the Whisper retroactively made him be alive? Is he in an alternate timeline/universe? Is he gonna be pissed at Cloud for balling his girl? Like there's no satisfying way to even provide conjecture about any of these questions so it feels pretty pointless.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:35
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Flopsy posted:I haven't really been into the Final Fantasy series since XII but aside from that is there any other game in the series that went quite as dark as VII? I know VI is pretty rough since the world gets destroyed and you have essentially struggle thorough the ashes of it to defeat Kefka but it does end on an otherwise uplifting note. Type-0's intro cutscene is pretty brutal but I couldn't get very far in that one because the camera made me physically ill, something no game has ever accomplished before.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:38
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I can finally join the spoiler thread! How the gently caress are they gonna top that ending? I had goosebumps for like an hour
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Apr 16, 2020 04:41
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Oh yeah, also: time travel and poo poo has literally been in Final Fantasy since the first game, so it's not so strange for it to come up.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:42
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guts and bolts posted:My interpretation is that OG FF7 wasn't a good or bad ending per se, it was the fated ending. Sephiroth and Aerith die, Cloud and Co. buy a little more time for a dying planet, and that's that. I agree with this assessment that the producers are essentially telling us this could turn out much better or worse than the original depending on how the cards are played. There's also some hints over what certain characters are going to do in the future but for now they're not a 100% established. For example members of original avalanche survived and how is that going to effect the game going forward? Are they going to raise a local insurrection while our heroes are traveling the planet? Who knows. I also feel like Shinra's heading towards a civil war with some of it's employees. Namely Reeve, Reno and Rude. Flopsy fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 04:43
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MoaM posted:cloud should come out to Tifa and Tifa be accepting https://twitter.com/melodiusshark/status/1249134865422995457?s=19
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Apr 16, 2020 04:46
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I'm still not joking about it; Cloud being not-straight would actually be nice. Squall can be the angsty hetero dude, Cloud is just in the closet and needs friends.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:49
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MoaM posted:I'm still not joking about it; Cloud being not-straight would actually be nice. Squall can be the angsty hetero dude, Cloud is just in the closet and needs friends. I cannot overstate how unlikely this is to happen, especially considering how iconic Cloud's relationships are with both of the female leads, but I do think it was nice that Cloud's a pretty decent guy w/r/t the Honeybee Inn crew and Wall Market's more fluid inhabitants by not really batting an eye or acting like they're creepy/weird/degenerate. Considering the original's Wall Market was almost an hours-long gay joke, this feels like progress.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:53
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MoaM posted:I'm still not joking about it; Cloud being not-straight would actually be nice. Squall can be the angsty hetero dude, Cloud is just in the closet and needs friends. I'm here for him being bi as fuuuck. But I'll be honest almost all my fav parings in this game are gay. Also not with Sephiroth because he's gently caress awful. guts and bolts posted:I cannot overstate how unlikely this is to happen, especially considering how iconic Cloud's relationships are with both of the female leads, but I do think it was nice that Cloud's a pretty decent guy w/r/t the Honeybee Inn crew and Wall Market's more fluid inhabitants by not really batting an eye or acting like they're creepy/weird/degenerate. Considering the original's Wall Market was almost an hours-long gay joke, this feels like progress. I expect literally nothing. But I'd be thrilled if some side characters hooked up.
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Apr 16, 2020 04:53
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