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guts and bolts posted:It'll be this. Overworlds in general are sort of an archaic throwback when they do show up in modern games, which typically favor open worlds instead or forego that concept entirely. Considering FFX and especially FFXIII got lots of poo poo for not having overworlds, this is an interesting point. I wonder what got the perception of overworlds changing in the most recent generations?
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Apr 16, 2020 14:58
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I'm personally hoping for sorta FFXII-style areas, but maybe larger areas that aren't broken up into small chunks like FFXII's are. Ultimately FFXII is structured a lot like FFX--there's no true overworld and you're ultimately just moving through zones on the way to your next destination--but the zones are designed to be more open and have more twists, turns, or side areas to explore, so it feels less linear. (FFXII also has more breaks for side-questing than FFX did, but I'm mostly focusing on zone/travel design.) Something FFVII Remake does really well is add stories and context to the zones you travel through, which I hope to see continue, just probably with more open outdoor zones instead of twisty, cramped slums.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:03
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HORSEPORN posted:I think a lot of people who are upset about the ending just don’t remember OG FF7 that clearly and also aren’t thinking with game design in mind. This echoes my feelings about the matter very closely. I think the ending to this game was very necessary for the reasons explained here.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:15
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Honestly I was pleasantly surprised that the main game was just 35-40 hours. After being burnt out by how long the AAA games (including FFXV) can easily scale 80-100 hours if you're even a semi-completionist, to be done in like a week was... weird, but kinda nice.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:25
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The Bee posted:Considering FFX and especially FFXIII got lots of poo poo for not having overworlds, this is an interesting point. I wonder what got the perception of overworlds changing in the most recent generations? It’d be fun to maybe have a combination of both “open world” and an overworld map. Perhaps something where you do see a tiny Cloud running along an overworld from Midgar to Kalm, but there’s no battling - it’s just to give context and distance between these two areas. And then mini-Cloud arrives in the “Kalm area”, which switches over to an extremely open map of terrain, with Kalm in the center. Just do that for every major locale in the game somehow.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:26
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What I didn't get about the ending is why Sephiroth turns around and gives Cloud the whole "we're not so different, you and I" speech after defying the flow of fate. It seems like Seph was really in favor of destiny since he'd been riding the force ghosts all game. Maybe he was able to see deeper into the future and didn't like what he saw? Anyway this game ruled and now I genuinely don't know what Square is going to do next. If I had to guess, I would say that the next Remake games are going to have the same basic structure as the original FFVII with most of the familiar settings and characters, but totally remixed with different plot beats and circumstances bringing them there. And I guess Aeris' death is no longer a certain thing anymore. Imagine if they killed Tifa instead lmao.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:39
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Seedge posted:Original Midgar is only three hours long if you skip dialogue, cheat through combat and play at 3x speed. I find it funny how as this thread goes along, every time someone mentions how long it takes to leave Midgar in the original game it's a little faster and now here we are at 4 hours lol. Even Kitase says in his interview that it's closer to 10. Maybe he's talking about someone's very first playthrough with no guides but that seems a little long. It's definitely not 5 hours or shorter unless it's a subsequent playthrough. Or maybe I'm just the weirdo because I never rush through games, especially on first playthroughs. I love to explore and find hidden items and hidden dialogue and that definitely extends playtime for all my games.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:43
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Midgar definitely takes at least 10 hours to get through on the first go if you're not rushing. Source: Me and Randy, ages 12 and 13, taking an entire weekend to get through the Midgar section and recruit Red XIII.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:45
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I finished the game last night. I'll skip talking about the changes to the story at the end, looks like you guys have already talked a ton about that. Just put me in the camp of people who didn't like the ending. Overall, this remake is probably my favorite game of all time. I was a huge fan of the original FF7, I liked Crisis Core a lot. I didn't like the movie, and didn't like Dirge of Cerberus. I've also absolutely hated the Kingdom Hearts series. The Hell House was probably my favorite moment in the game. The goofy enemy designs are something I loved in the original FF7, I'm glad they found a way to bring enemies like Hell House and Brain Pod into this remake. The coliseum section was just so much fun. The side content really felt out of place, especially because the story doesn't give you an opportunity to revisit much, so I ended up doing it all as soon as it became available. For the most part the side content wasn't that interesting, aside from the angel of the slums stuff having some good moments in it. Unlocking free chocobo rides really felt weird and unnecessary. Because of how spread out they were, I grabbed each chocobo as I did quests in that area, and by the time I finished the quest line, I think I had use for like two free rounds of chocobo rides. I found most of the large areas of new content weren't that great. The underground lab after the plate falls felt like it added nothing besides padding the game out, and the Hojo section in the Shinra building really felt like it dragged on and killed the pacing of the game at that moment. Those were especially sour because I liked the raid on the supply depot with Jessie/Biggs/Wedge so much, which set my expectations high for the rest of it. There were quite a few boss fights that rewarded and encouraged you to make use of their particular mechanics, and were a ton of fun, The Arsenal was probably my favorite boss fight. After getting such a strong boss fight near the end, the final two against the Harbingers and then Sephiroth really felt like let downs, especially Sephiroth. He just felt like a giant HP sponge without much in the way of interesting mechanics that I could find. I'll probably take a break for a few days, and try out the Hard Mode content next week. I'm cautiously looking forward to the sequels. If they deliver on the clear love of the original games that most of this remake showed, I'll really enjoy them. If they use the ending of this one as an excuse to go full on Kingdom Hearts, I don't think I'll finish any of them.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:47
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exquisite tea posted:Midgar definitely takes at least 10 hours to get through on the first go if you're not rushing. Source: Me and Randy, ages 12 and 13, taking an entire weekend to get through the Midgar section and recruit Red XIII. You can breeze through the game once you know poo poo. My current FF7 playthrough is at 39 hours and I already have a gold chocobo / KOTR, some of the final weapons I think, my characters at around lvl 80, and made my way to Sephiroth/Point of no return before making my way back so I could keep clearing poo poo. The only thing I haven't done is the weapons and maybe a few other things. I was in the sunken sub doing the turn monsters to items to max out stats when I stopped playing it.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:52
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Elephant Ambush posted:I find it funny how as this thread goes along, every time someone mentions how long it takes to leave Midgar in the original game it's a little faster and now here we are at 4 hours lol. Even Kitase says in his interview that it's closer to 10. Maybe he's talking about someone's very first playthrough with no guides but that seems a little long. It's definitely not 5 hours or shorter unless it's a subsequent playthrough. I used to rent a ps1 from blockbuster with ff7 when I was 9 or 10, with no memory card, and I was able to get up to Motor Ball before game overing by the end of a school night. It’s perfectly doable.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:53
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Also people who violently dislike the ending are just allergic to Kingdom Hearts, as far as I can tell, because that’s all they talk about.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:55
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So regarding the Kalm flashback - I can very easily see it being done in two parts. For one, it can actually serve as the tutorial section (for anyone who skipped the first game, not that I think there would be many people who decide to jump in at game 2 first) and have that handle the broad points of the Neibelheim incident. I would expect it goes into far more detail once the group gets to Neibelheim - I expect that it's going to take up far more room in the plot compared to the OG (where nobody really mentions the whole "Why is this city that was slaughtered to a person 5 years ago still populated and acting like nothing is happening" aspect, and you can pretty much just wordlessly pass through it) especially with Vincent and the Shinra Mansion being almost certainly manditory.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:22
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Honestly I got bigger Advent Children vibes from the ending than Kingdom Hearts ones. The thing that makes people go "oh it's Kingdom Hearts" is Nomura + big shadowy enemy + the music for the Whisper Harbinger fight. But a lot of it feels super Advent Children, just, y'know, a lot less bad and dumb than Advent Children. And that makes a lot of sense, because Nojima wrote Advent Children and Nomura directed it. I still hope that multiverse/timeline stuff doesn't take center stage for the rest of the story, though. Like I've said before, I love Chrono Cross, but that's not really what I'm coming to an FFVII Remake for.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:24
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I thought in Crisis Core Zack and Aerith were sending letters to each other and even calling each other, where are people getting the idea that they only met once? Also some parts of the showdown with Sephiroth were straight from Advent Children, right down to the camera angles.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:26
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Did people really see the ending scene with Zack as an alternate timeline thing? I saw it as a "the threads of fate have been changed forever" thing and since it's from Aeris' perspective that she's the one able to see how the past and future have been altered.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:30
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exquisite tea posted:Did people really see the ending scene with Zack as an alternate timeline thing? I saw it as a "the threads of fate have been changed forever" thing and since it's from Aeris' perspective that she's the one able to see how the past and future have been altered. I think the "it's another timeline" theory comes from the very prominent shot of the Stamp-branded chip bag in the scene where Zack is revealed to have survived. It shows Stamp as an entirely different breed of dog than he is throughout the rest of the remake (and you see him a lot so the game really wants to make sure you know what Stamp looks like). That seems to suggest that either it's a different timeline or that defeating the Whispers has had some really weird effects forward and backward through time. Either way, what that scene means is either: - There's another timeline in which Zack survived and managed to bring Cloud safely to Midgar, or - This game's timeline's past has changed significantly and in a lot of ways both large and small. Stamp's a different breed of dog now, and Zack managed to bring Cloud to Midgar and survived, meaning Cloud got his sword another way and Zack is now still alive out there somewhere. Harrow fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 16:34
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I mean brands change their logo constantly the different Stamp could just be an indication of the time period as in this change of fate affected the past as well. Barret has a conversation during the follow-the-stamp-graffiti portion where he complaints how Shinra took the symbol and turned it into propaganda. Maybe Stamp didn’t start as a wholly Shinra product?
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Apr 16, 2020 16:41
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I specifically remember Zack and Aeris having several dates and there was this odd little sequence were you collected a bunch of different parts to make a flower cart for her and you could decide how it looked and I remember her looking at the one I made and just kind of going "Hmmm" in an uninterested way. And that's why Zack hooked up with Cloud. Happy Noodle Boy posted:I mean brands change their logo constantly the different Stamp could just be an indication of the time period as in this change of fate affected the past as well. I mean correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Cloud had only been in town for maybe a few weeks before he found Tifa and she hooked him up with Barrets cell to try and keep him around? Caidin fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 16:41
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I mean brands change their logo constantly the different Stamp could just be an indication of the time period as in this change of fate affected the past as well. Barret has a conversation during the follow-the-stamp-graffiti portion where he complaints how Shinra took the symbol and turned it into propaganda. Maybe Stamp didn’t start as a wholly Shinra product? Sure but that Zack scene is like a week before the game begins, not years. Unless that's a really, really old chip bag, it doesn't seem like Shinra coopting and rebranding Stamp happened, like, this week. Though that's sort of covered in the second possible reading, I guess, which is that the change in fate echoes backwards through time far enough (and in subtle enough ways) that Stamp looks different now. Or it's a marker that we're looking at a different timeline. Either way, that bag is shown really prominently, so they definitely wanted us to notice.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:43
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Hello I too finished the game last night. I'm now ready to angry-post about it. I honestly loved 95% of it but the 5% that was bad was horse poo poo, I want a refund, I wish they had never made the game. Sorry for not reading 47 pages but here we go: Square lied to their customers when they called it "Remake". This is not a remake. This is the first game in decades I've been hype about and it's not even the game I was told it would be. What the gently caress? If you want to take all the FF7 characters and do something substantively different then I think it's a mistake because people want a more or less straight remake, fine go ahead and do it. But why did they lie to everyone about it? Two colossal errors on top of each other. Why do it with the Whisper meta-metaphor at all? Why not just change the game and tell people "Hey it's going to be substantively different" with their marketing messaging? The Whispers are lazy writing and commentary of strictly high-school depth. Why the hell did we fight Sephiroth? What was the point? They had no reason to fight. It's like there was a board room meeting in Square four years ago where someone said "We can't make an FF7 game where Cloud and Sephiroth don't fight" and everyone was like "yea good point" and nobody actually thought about the implications. Sephiroth isn't special anymore, he's just game candy now that Square hands out to its fans every so often. Why did we fight Jenova for that matter? Players at that point in the game have no idea what Jenova was. Could said it once. The clones maybe said it once? I feel sorry for new players who see the trail of blood and think, "Why is there a trail of blood? Who put it there? What was in that cell? Why did it end in the executive suite? Who is this game for? Die-hard fans will want the same game but better, but you lied to them so good luck getting them to buy the sequel. New players have no idea what's going on because nothing gets explained after the fight with Hojo and the Kalm/Sephiroth sequence hasn't happened. Who the gently caress is the Cloud with black hair? What's Jenova? What does Reunion mean? So good luck getting new players to play it either. I'm sure some people will like it but I don't understand why Square is willing to take such big chances with their audience on something they spent so much money on. Seems phenominally stupid, why not just make the original over again and rake in the cash? I know this is all maybe a bit hyperbolic but I promise I'll return any replies in good faith. =========== Anyway fighting words over enough about the terrible ending here are my legitimate questions about game mechanics: Is it just me or does R2 in the motorcycle sequences do basically nothing? Am I missing something obvious? I spent a lot of time using my ranged attack because I couldn't get close enough and it felt terrible. I play a lot of League and God of War and even Horizon Zero Dawn, and those games train me to look for enemy animations and telegraphs and press dodge and block at the right times. This is Good Design (tm) for Fun Games (tm). FF7 on the other hand seems to be in the school of "It doesn't matter that you pressed dodge, the enemy is going to hit you anyway." Dodge is basically a useless button most of the time. The way to play the battle sequences seems to be if your character is about to get hit, you press the directional arrows and go to a different character. Once I settled into that rhythm I started having a lot of fun bouncing a lot between characters. Go to Barret, triangle, L1 + O, go to Tifa, triangle, L1 + X, go to Cloud, triangle, L1 + X, etc etc. But I can't help think there's something obvious about dodge that I missed.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:46
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exquisite tea posted:Did people really see the ending scene with Zack as an alternate timeline thing? I saw it as a "the threads of fate have been changed forever" thing and since it's from Aeris' perspective that she's the one able to see how the past and future have been altered. It has to be another timeline because if Zack survives the Cloud doesn't take the Buster Sword and the events of FF7/Remake don't happen. But that doesn't matter, the reason that scene was in the remake was some executive at Square said "Our fans love Zach, find a way to bring him back into the Remake series" and the writers are Square are lazy so they pooped this out.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:49
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Vino posted:I play a lot of League and God of War and even Horizon Zero Dawn, and those games train me to look for enemy animations and telegraphs and press dodge and block at the right times. This is Good Design (tm) for Fun Games (tm). FF7 on the other hand seems to be in the school of "It doesn't matter that you pressed dodge, the enemy is going to hit you anyway." Dodge is basically a useless button most of the time. The way to play the battle sequences seems to be if your character is about to get hit, you press the directional arrows and go to a different character. Once I settled into that rhythm I started having a lot of fun bouncing a lot between characters. Go to Barret, triangle, L1 + O, go to Tifa, triangle, L1 + X, go to Cloud, triangle, L1 + X, etc etc. But I can't help think there's something obvious about dodge that I missed. I don't know how you missed the telegraph of 'the names of the ability the enemy is using literally pops up on screen before they use it'. Some moves can be dodged, some can't. Some moves can be blocked, some can't. Some moves can be countered, some can't. And so on and so forth. The game rewards you for recognising which moves are coming and taking the correct action to either avoid or mitigate them. I found it to be extremely engaging.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:51
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Does dodge even has iframes? After a certain points boss attacks track better than your ability to dodge out of the way.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:52
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 Don’t be such a baby about it, it’s not that big a deal.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:52
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Does dodge even has iframes? After a certain points boss attacks track better than your ability to dodge out of the way. No, but some moves are slow enough that you can use dodge to get out of their way.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:53
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Does dodge even has iframes? After a certain points boss attacks track better than your ability to dodge out of the way. The dodge does not have i-frames, no. There are definitely abilities you can dodge out of the way of but you kinda have to learn through trial and error which ones those are. For the most part blocking is a lot safer.
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Apr 16, 2020 16:53
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Pollyanna posted:
That post's really hyperbolic but I can relate to feeling sorta suckered in and betrayed by this remake. Like I've said before, think about the trajectory here for a diehard fan: everything since E3 2019 has been building up and showing you that yes, this is real, and yes, it might actually be good. And then the game itself comes out and whips rear end, and expands on the original--even alters the original--in all the right ways (even if it's going a little heavy on the Sephiroth but whatever, that's forgivable). Then all of a sudden, once you've let your guard down and you think, my god, they've done it, they really gave us everything we hoped for, the plot derails entirely and the game seems to say directly to your face, "gently caress you, idiot! You thought this was real? You thought you'd get a full, faithful retelling of this story you love? Nope! It will never, ever happen." I should point out that isn't how I feel about it personally, but I can relate to that being a bit of a sucker-punch. Whether what comes next or not is good is sort of immaterial in that moment--you've been lulled into believing this is the remake you dreamed of, to the point that you've even played 30+ hours of the game of your fuckin dreams, only for the very end to pull the rug out from under you. I imagine for some people it feels outright spiteful, even if I really don't think that's the creators' intent at all. I'm sure a lot of the fanboys crying about the ending are the sort of idiots who also cried about the FF8 Remaster being "censored" or who will never forgive Rian Johnson for The Last Jedi or whatever, but I'm also sure there are plenty of reasonable people who, in good faith, are just really bummed out about it all. For my part, like I've posted before, my feelings are mixed. If what we get going forward is a new look at this world and these characters that casts the themes of FFVII in a new light and gives us exciting twists on things we thought we knew, I'm on board. If what we get is instead a story about timelines and multiple universes wearing FFVII's clothing, ehhh, I'm gonna be left pretty cold I think. Harrow fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 16:58
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Forgive me if this was asked before, but if Midgar is a pizza and the Mayor is named Domino, does that make Midgar Domino's Pizza?
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Apr 16, 2020 17:01
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Vino posted:It has to be another timeline because if Zack survives the Cloud doesn't take the Buster Sword and the events of FF7/Remake don't happen. I mean not really, Cloud just needs to have the Buster Sword and for Zack to be absent so his broken mental state can start cribbing off Zacks character sheet. It could be as complicated as alternate or merging timelines or as simple as Zack getting mugged by dementors and spending the first part stuck in a final destination film until the crew deals with the Destiny situation.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:06
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Caidin posted:Zack getting mugged by dementors and spending the first part stuck in a final destination film until the crew deals with the Destiny situation. If this ends up being what happened we better get a loving montage of this because it would own
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Apr 16, 2020 17:08
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Vino posted:It has to be another timeline because if Zack survives the Cloud doesn't take the Buster Sword and the events of FF7/Remake don't happen. I don't think this is necessarily true, the ending was left open enough that Cloud could have gotten the Buster Sword through other means, or rewriting the threads of fate alters the past conditions but leaves the present intact, or whatever. They can basically go in any direction from here.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:09
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Since I've gone over the negative side of my reaction, here's the positive side: If this game has shown us anything, it's that the team gets these characters and this world and really cares about making sure they're true to who they are. Even with an ending that goes completely off the rails, and with the acknowledgment that the rest of the remake will have a different story, there's reason to to be optimistic that, if nothing else, the characters will continue to be fantastic, and the explorations of the world of FFVII will continue to be really cool. And if the story going forward stays as faithful to the characters and world as this part of the remake was (including the new scenes, chapters, dialog, and even new characters), it's probably going to be pretty drat great. I guess it's probably up to an individual player whether this part of the remake is enough to have faith in the team's ability to keep writing these characters so well, but I'm on board for that, at least.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:14
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The thing re: stamp is that yes brands irl change their looks often enough but this isn’t real life, this is fiction, and it wasn’t changed to reflect the actual practices of marketing refreshments performed by businesses, it was done as a Twin Pines Mall/Lone Pine Mall style narrative signifier that poo poo Is Different Now. That being said I don’t think it’s supposed to be a third, separate timeline as much as it is visual shorthand, especially to players who don’t necessarily remember what exactly Zack’s deal was, that defeating the final boss has had consequences in ways that none of the characters planned or expected it to.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:17
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:The thing re: stamp is that yes brands irl change their looks often enough but this isn’t real life, this is fiction, and it wasn’t changed to reflect the actual practices of marketing refreshments performed by businesses, it was done as a Twin Pines Mall/Lone Pine Mall style narrative signifier that poo poo Is Different Now. That being said I don’t think it’s supposed to be a third, separate timeline as much as it is visual shorthand, especially to players who don’t necessarily remember what exactly Zack’s deal was, that defeating the final boss has had consequences in ways that none of the characters planned or expected it to. That's basically how I saw the ending. One timeline, overwritten by Cloud & Co. fateskipping to the endboss, the next few games to preserve the same locations and characters but completely change the context around them being there. Also Cloud's earring is now on the opposite side.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:22
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If all this doesn't result in a world where you go on a Gold Saucer date with Jessie I am going to be very mad
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Apr 16, 2020 17:26
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Veib posted:If all this doesn't result in a world where you go on a Gold Saucer date with Roche I am going to be very mad
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Apr 16, 2020 17:29
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One thing that this remake did and I didn't really expect is... gently caress, I really don't want Aerith to die this time. And at the same time, I do. But I don't. But... It's a really weird, conflicted feeling. Aerith's death is iconic. It's crucial to the themes of FFVII. It's an integral part of the narrative. And undoing it would just feel really wrong and even sort of cowardly. But at the same time, god drat it, she's just such a lovable character, even more so this time, and a big part of me is like, maybe let her survive this time, gently caress the themes and the story. And poo poo, maybe that feeling is the entire point of the whole remake.
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Apr 16, 2020 17:30
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IMO people are overreacting and being really conservative about this. I really didn’t interpret the ending as “haha gently caress you  ” like many others apparently are. Nothing about it suggests that everything is now going to be so completely different as to be unrecognizable.I genuinely think people are projecting their own fears onto the ending. I mean, I get it, I also want to see the original story borne out in a modern AAA game, but nothing says we won’t get that, and I for one am excited to see new and extended parts of the story. Maybe it would have been better as a bonus dungeon and extra/true ending, with hints on how to unlock it in the post-game?
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Apr 16, 2020 17:33
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"Sephiroth decends in slow motion, Masamune poised to a kneeling Areiths back as the party is frozen in horror. Then it just glances off and Sephiroth falls over into a one winged heap as Aerith opens her jacket to reveal katana proof vest."
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Apr 16, 2020 17:38
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