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guts and bolts
May 16, 2015

Have you heard the Good News?

Sinteres posted:

If I didn't think there were going to be changes, there's no way I would have bought it day one. I always thought remaking FF7 was pointless since the original will always exist, and we can have new things instead of endlessly regurgitating things we used to like. This made it feel like there were actual stakes going in, since there were some pretty solid hints that there would be surprises along the way, and that definitely made it more inviting. What I enjoyed the most was just spending time in the world and with the characters though (I really liked the way the characters were fleshed out more a lot), so I get it if people feel like the former made it harder to enjoy the latter. Still, the changes at this point have been pretty minimal, so just take the parts you like for what they were and make up your mind about whether you want to play the sequels when the time comes.
FF7 has always lived or died by its characters; the original localization was horrifyingly bad and the plot is somehow both pretentious and incredibly, incredibly dumb for large stretches, though I'd argue there are some pretty underrated elements there (Jenova being an alien world-eater serving as a sort of meta-callback to Chrono Trigger made me happy as a kid, and Cloud was the first unreliable narrator I'd ever seen in a video game, plus he was easy for angsty me to identify with and sympathize with).

This game absolutely nailed the characters. As long as the character writing remains strong, I'm not sure I actually give all that much of a gently caress about the particulars of the plot, though obviously with some exceptions. Just don't kill my favorite characters until the end if you have to, so I can experience the whole story with them, and I'm probably good to go.

Avalerion posted:

I consider myself a big FF fan and VII is among my top 3. I would have been very happy with just a faithfull remake, but I'm even more hype for this.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics
  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Final Fantasy V
is my personal list, but FF7R could top all of them. I dunno. I'm holding off on trying to like, rate it precisely, yet.

What's more, my spiciest take is that FF7 is actually somehow both over- and underrated, because you have diehard fanboys who think Cloud and Sephiroth are the greatest characters in fiction to ever exist, but you also have sweaty contrarians who want to insist FF7 sucks and that FF6 and FF9 are the best for men of culture. It's in that supra-mainstream zone of IPs where the popular takes are either that it is the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever, and both sides are probably wrong.

guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Apr 16, 2020

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DeathChicken
Jul 9, 2012

Nonsense. I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Honestly now that it was brought up, Sephiroth going "Dang, I really messed up killing you, Aerith" and then stabbing Tifa *feels* like a Sephiroth thing to do

Asema
Oct 2, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

DeathChicken posted:

Honestly now that it was brought up, Sephiroth going "Dang, I really messed up killing you, Aerith" and then stabbing Tifa *feels* like a Sephiroth thing to do

"I got the wrong one"

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Sinteres posted:

If I didn't think there were going to be changes, there's no way I would have bought it day one. I always thought remaking FF7 was pointless since the original will always exist, and we can have new things instead of endlessly regurgitating things we used to like. This made it feel like there were actual stakes going in, since there were some pretty solid hints that there would be surprises along the way, and that definitely made it more inviting. What I enjoyed the most was just spending time in the world and with the characters though (I really liked the way the characters were fleshed out more a lot), so I get it if people feel like the former made it harder to enjoy the latter. Still, the changes at this point have been pretty minimal, so just take the parts you like for what they were and make up your mind about whether you want to play the sequels when the time comes.

The changes and additions up to this point have been fantastic, yeah, which is what's giving me at least some hope that whatever comes next will still be good. Not enough to completely override my worries--up until now the changes we've seen were relatively small changes that didn't totally derail the plot, because the Whispers stopped anything that would have--but still. Like the redone Wall Market was so loving good, and all of the expanded stuff with Avalanche and the new world details and locations and stuff, it's all excellently done.

Well, okay, maybe except for that second trip to the sewers. I could've done without that. But everything else was great!

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

DeathChicken posted:

Honestly now that it was brought up, Sephiroth going "Dang, I really messed up killing you, Aerith" and then stabbing Tifa *feels* like a Sephiroth thing to do

This is only okay if we get a Tifa side-game where we get to play as Tifa comboing fools the whole time, to make up for the fact we can no longer play her in the main series.

HD DAD
Jan 13, 2010

Generic white guy.

Toilet Rascal
They should go back to one of their original ideas of Aerith and Sephiroth being lovers.

guts and bolts
May 16, 2015

Have you heard the Good News?

CottonWolf posted:

This is only okay if we get a Tifa side-game where we get to play as Tifa comboing fools the whole time, to make up for the fact we can no longer play her in the main series.

DeathChicken posted:

Honestly now that it was brought up, Sephiroth going "Dang, I really messed up killing you, Aerith" and then stabbing Tifa *feels* like a Sephiroth thing to do

Asema posted:

"I got the wrong one"

DELETE THIS

NOMURA LEAVE MY WIFE ALONE

Harrow posted:

The changes and additions up to this point have been fantastic, yeah, which is what's giving me at least some hope that whatever comes next will still be good. Not enough to completely override my worries--up until now the changes we've seen were relatively small changes that didn't totally derail the plot, because the Whispers stopped anything that would have--but still. Like the redone Wall Market was so loving good, and all of the expanded stuff with Avalanche and the new world details and locations and stuff, it's all excellently done.

Well, okay, maybe except for that second trip to the sewers. I could've done without that. But everything else was great!
My man Wall Market was so goddamn good. And honestly I don't really mind the second sewers trip or the Drum all that much, either, though those two parts seem to be hated quite a bit. (The fight with the hounds in the Drum as Aerith/Tifa has also never posed a problem for me on any difficulty, though, so here's my self-aggrandizing GIT GUD part of the post.)

But if I was going to trim anything from the game, sewers 2 and Roche's entire existence would probably be it. I like the chapter and the poignant vignette with Jessie's family, but Roche suuuucks, man.

Roobanguy
May 31, 2011

My only issue with the story in this game is that it does the crime of “we just mowed down hundreds of dudes with guns, but now someone is aiming at me in a cutscene and there’s nothing I can do!!!” Twice in a row and those always suck.

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

One thing they could do that I'd actually dislike would be breaking the fourth wall with this in some way, like to explain the original vs 7R timeline stuff.

Roobanguy posted:

My only issue with the story in this game is that it does the crime of “we just mowed down hundreds of dudes with guns, but now someone is aiming at me in a cutscene and there’s nothing I can do!!!” Twice in a row and those always suck.

That's just being faithful to the original. :cheeky:

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



HD DAD posted:

They should go back to one of their original ideas of Aerith and Sephiroth being lovers.

I would actually like this. It be very daring.

Caidin
Oct 29, 2011

DeathChicken posted:

Well, Tseng might or might not have kicked out of the Stone Cold Masamune, but that whole scene in the original was very confusing

Tseng is a fairly spooky looking dude whose app apparently looked exactly the same for like the last 10 or 15 years so he's probably a ghost anyway.

MyLoathsomeCowboy
May 6, 2007
A fictitious force
Thinking about it I feel like 90% of my problems with the ending would've gone away if they played credits between the end of the bike section and the start of the Destiny Stuff, with some smoothing.

also only unlockable when you find all 101 of Ms. Folio's missing children

Funky Valentine
Feb 26, 2014

Dojyaa~an

Avalerion posted:

One thing they could do that I'd actually dislike would be breaking the fourth wall with this in some way, like to explain the original vs 7R timeline stuff.
The plot parts of Golden Saucer are replaced with the party standing around a chalk board, drawing out the timeline as Aerith explains it.

Half of the board is taken up by chocobo breeding tips.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

One of my favorite character moments in the game was Barret looking out over the city from Shina HQ and ranting about the assholes who enjoy the view of the planet-destroying city and then comments that it actually is beautiful. It's interesting how Aerith, who's the most connected to the planet in a real sense, also seems to have a genuine appreciation for the slums.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Aerith has a low-key terror of being somewhere without a steel curtain above her head.

Appropriate.

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


Barret asks Tifa and Cloud to dance prior to the Airbuster battle and Cloud says he doesn't dance. We find out later that this is clearly a lie.

How can we trust anything Cloud says?

Vino
Aug 11, 2010

Harrow posted:

I figured his reason for killing Barret was that he knew it wouldn't stick. He knew the Whispers would undo it and the characters would see and understand just how on-rails their fates really are. It was a demonstration--he never intended Barret to stay dead because he knew he wouldn't.

That's also true on the meta level. That scene is there to remove all doubt about the role of the Whispers for us, the players, not to make us hate Sephiroth or believe the characters' motivations to stop Sephiroth.

He kills people because it causes them to join the lifestream, and he wants to slurp the lifestream. Killing someone he knows won't actually die doesn't help him.

guts and bolts posted:

I... don't get what you're saying here. In the original FF7, the party essentially agrees to chase Sephiroth because that's what they're supposed to do for the plot to move forward. In this one he, uh, loving killed Barret, he absolutely did, and the Whispers explicitly bring him back to life/prevent him from staying dead. In terms of WWE-style protected finishers, getting stabbed by the Masamune has only been kicked out of once, and that's by John Cena Cloud. Impaled by Masamune = dead. And Barret and Red XIII never all say they hate Sephiroth before that? They mostly seem interested in murdering Hojo or blowing up the entire building they're in.

Sorry I started to lose the thread. The original point was "Cloud and party don't have a good reason to fight Sephiroth here." In the original Sephiroth shows up and kills President Shinra and the party initially says "oh is Sephiroth our friend?" and Cloud says "trust me no." That's about all you get about Sephiroth until the Kalm sequence. They had no reason to fight Sephiroth at that point. You agree that Barret and Red never say they hate Sephiroth. You also said in this and an earlier post that they fight Sephiroth because it makes for a good story setup, no mention of what the characters want.

guts and bolts posted:

Come on what? "GOOD LUCK GETTING DIE-HARDS TO BUY THIS GAME AFTER SUCH BETRAYAL" is your verbatim take. It is an asinine take. I'm not trying to go after you ad hominem, but my argument isn't that it's okay to release trash, it's that you can do that and still make money. FF7R as a sub-series failing financially is a near impossibility, my man. I'm sorry if you don't like that.

OK I think we can agree that some people will like the remake and there are a lot of great things about it and that FF7R will sell a lot. That was basically my take and I still back it. There are three groups of fans. 1. Fans of the original who will like the new direction. 2. Fans of the original who will not like the new direction. 3. New fans.

If you make a game that doesn't go in this new direction, you get all three of those fans. The story is still super good, it's not going anywhere, so you get #3 fans that missed the original or couldn't get past the graphics. You'll of course keep #2. You'll get #1 because those people will never know what they would have missed, and they were fans of the original so these two groups are the same. You get everybody.

If you make a game that goes in the new direction you lose 2 and 3. Why would they do this? They're taking a huge risk that #2 is a large group. They don't get #3 because those people have no idea what's going on. They've limited 2 and 3. They're betting that their new storytelling will be so much better that they'll win #2's. (So far I'm not impressed.) I'm glad there are people in group 1 who don't feel the way I do.

Why would they do that? Why not just build a game for all groups? They're entertainers, why didn't they just give the people what they want?

Professor Beetus
Apr 12, 2007

They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

Barret asks Tifa and Cloud to dance prior to the Airbuster battle and Cloud says he doesn't dance. We find out later that this is clearly a lie.

How can we trust anything Cloud says?

:hmmyes:

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Vino posted:

He kills people because it causes them to join the lifestream, and he wants to slurp the lifestream. Killing someone he knows won't actually die doesn't help him.

You're not following what I'm saying there. What I'm saying is that this Sephiroth has a secondary goal: he wants the Whispers gone so that he can defy his fate from the original game, which, as we remember, is to fail to slurp the lifestream. He wants the party to defeat the Whispers so that he's unshackled from that fate. He kills Barret there not as part of the "put souls in the lifestream" thing or anything--he kills Barret to force the heroes to come face-to-face with just how powerful the Whispers are and just how much they lack freedom.

Remember, this isn't the Sephiroth you think you know. He very clearly knows something of the future, probably a lot, and everything he's doing over the course of this game is in the service of getting rid of the Whispers' influence over him so that he can define his own fate and potentially avoid being defeated this time.

Applying what we know at this point in the original story and saying "this doesn't make sense because of <x thing from the original>" doesn't really work when this is a new story. We need to look at what the characters want and do now, in this story, independent of what they did in the original.

slev
Apr 6, 2009

Can't believe everyone is alive except Wedge who was erased from existence by ghosts.

Vino
Aug 11, 2010

Harrow posted:

You're not following what I'm saying there. What I'm saying is that this Sephiroth has a secondary goal: he wants the Whispers gone so that he can defy his fate from the original game, which, as we remember, is to fail to slurp the lifestream. He wants the party to defeat the Whispers so that he's unshackled from that fate. He kills Barret there not as part of the "put souls in the lifestream" thing or anything--he kills Barret to force the heroes to come face-to-face with just how powerful the Whispers are and just how much they lack freedom.

Remember, this isn't the Sephiroth you think you know. He very clearly knows something of the future, probably a lot, and everything he's doing over the course of this game is in the service of getting rid of the Whispers' influence over him so that he can define his own fate and potentially avoid being defeated this time.

Why does he want the Whispers gone? Does he know he dies in the original? If so how does he know? How does he know that there's a "this time" that he can change? If Sephiroth can see the future then why did he lose in the original? If he can't where did he get this information? I dunno, the whole "Sephiroth knows he dies so he wants the party to break fate" line seems flimsy to me.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

Vino posted:

Why would they do that? Why not just build a game for all groups? They're entertainers, why didn't they just give the people what they want?

Telling artists they should do the safest and most bland crowd pleasing thing they can do or else they're not real entertainers is a pretty hot take. Yeah, changing things in one of the most popular games ever is a big risk, but maybe the thought of just straight up copying what came before was boring as gently caress to everyone involved and they wanted to bring something new to the table too. It may not be up your alley, and maybe other people will agree with you (though early reactions might suggest it's not turning as many people off as you seem to expect), but viewing it as a fuckup instead of just a decision you don't like is pretty condescending.

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

The fuckin' up and down with the Avalanche crew is something else. First it looks like Wedge might make it, then they show him getting probably squashed while trying to save his cats. Then we find out he's alive and it's like, hell yeah, my buddy Wedge pulled through! And then he gets Whispered into oblivion because he's not supposed to be alive and it's like, gently caress, man, I was hoping Wedge would make it. And then Biggs (and possibly even Jessie) is alive in the ending!

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

Vino posted:

Why does he want the Whispers gone? Does he know he dies in the original? If so how does he know? How does he know that there's a "this time" that he can change? If Sephiroth can see the future then why did he lose in the original? If he can't where did he get this information? I dunno, the whole "Sephiroth knows he dies so he wants the party to break fate" line seems flimsy to me.

He couldn't see the future in the original, but now he seems to know things and we don't know why. Aerith does too (and probably more than she's letting on so far), so it's not just him. Maybe we'll find out the reason for that in the next game. :shrug: My guess is this Sephiroth already experienced the events in the original game though.

homeless snail
Mar 14, 2007

I think this big fan theory showing up itt and elsewhere that the whispers are obviously some big own on dumb nerds that you feel better than, loving sucks tbh. Its the kind of bad faith reading that only belongs in hour long youtube videos.

If you want to make an argument that 'destiny' represents the expectations that have built up over 20 years and killing the arbiters marks Square's intention to not be a 100% faithful remake of the original sure that's reasonable. IDK why people feel the need to project their own weird hangups by convincing themselves that its actually Tetsuya Nomura delivering a personal own to the people you don't like, that's some condescending bullshit.

Especially when the game literally tells you nearly outright who the arbiters are. And spoilers, they aint nerds

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Vino posted:

Why does he want the Whispers gone? Does he know he dies in the original?

It would seem so, or at the very least he knows he doesn't want to go down whatever path the Whispers are taking him.

Vino posted:

If so how does he know? How does he know that there's a "this time" that he can change? If Sephiroth can see the future then why did he lose in the original? If he can't where did he get this information?

These questions are as of yet unanswered so :iiam: Lots of theories going around about either Jenova (or Sephiroth) can see the future, or maybe there's a future Sephiroth who traveled back in time to change things, or any number of things, but as of yet nobody actually knows.

I expect these mysteries will continue to be explored in the future. In fact, if you want to continue to be angry about time and fate shenanigans, did you notice that Aerith seems to know things about the future, too? For example, she knows Cloud's a mercenary before he says anything about it (and hastily tries to explain it away as a lucky guess based on his sword). She knows about Marlene before anyone tells her Marlene's name. If you get the Aerith dream scene in the garden, she warns Cloud not to fall in love with her and talks like she knows she's going to die.

Cloud, too, has flashes forward (or sideways, or whatever). He gets glimpses of Aerith's death and even sheds a tear, even though he doesn't know why.

Things are different this time and characters are getting visions of the future. We don't know why yet, but they're there, and any reading of the characters and their motivations can't ignore that.

Harrow fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Apr 16, 2020

Lastdancer
Apr 21, 2008
It was very gratifying to eat poo poo to Rufus and his dog until I learned how his One Trick™ worked (reload) and then I pulverized them both.

I ate poo poo a few times on the Sephiroth fight, though. There were times where I'd counter his attack with counterstance and then he'd counter my counter and it was visually messy so I'm unsure if that was the right approach with playing as Cloud. I tried to get aerith to get in there but then sephy would instantly warp to her location and she'd eat some poo poo. Then I had Tifa show up which was so drat good and she went to town on him a bit and in the end ifrit got summoned and had the final blow on Sephiroth.

Vino
Aug 11, 2010

Sinteres posted:

Telling artists they should do the safest and most bland crowd pleasing thing they can do or else they're not real entertainers is a pretty hot take. Yeah, changing things in one of the most popular games ever is a big risk, but maybe the thought of just straight up copying what came before was boring as gently caress to everyone involved and they wanted to bring something new to the table too. It may not be up your alley, and maybe other people will agree with you (though early reactions might suggest it's not turning as many people off as you seem to expect), but viewing it as a fuckup instead of just a decision you don't like is pretty condescending.

Artists aren't always entertainers, for one. And yes, entertainers need to please a crowd, they are by definition people who entertain. And anyway the people who made this decision are neither artists nor entertainers, they're businessmen, and this was a business decision.

I respect wanting to bring something new to the table, that's an artistic viewpoint that's perfectly valid. It's not my perspective though, I'm criticizing the business decision. They're not always at odds, but in this case they were.


Harrow posted:

These questions are as of yet unanswered so :iiam: Lots of theories going around about either Jenova (or Sephiroth) can see the future, or maybe there's a future Sephiroth who traveled back in time to change things, or any number of things, but as of yet nobody actually knows.

I expect these mysteries will continue to be explored in the future.

You have a lot more faith in the writers that they've thought about this and plan to resolve it than I do, based on what I saw so far.

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Vino posted:

You have a lot more faith in the writers that they've thought about this and plan to resolve it than I do, based on what I saw so far.

You misunderstand. I didn't say that I have some sort of faith that these mysteries will be answered in a satisfactory or good way. It's just, they are mysteries that have been set up and seem to be major plot points this time. Will they fumble it? I dunno, maybe. Just like I have no idea why Sephiroth, Aerith, and Cloud seem to be able to know the future to varying degrees, I also don't know if the writers are going to pull this off. I'm just saying, this is clearly the path they're taking.

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
even in the unlikely scenario that sephiroth has a non-evil goal now, he's still the dude who murdered cloud and tifa's families. unlike most of his appearances in the original 7, that wasn't jenova or a mind controlled soldier. dude went nuts and burned down a small town for no reason.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

Vino posted:

Artists aren't always entertainers, for one. And yes, entertainers need to please a crowd, they are by definition people who entertain. And anyway the people who made this decision are neither artists nor entertainers, they're businessmen, and this was a business decision.

I respect wanting to bring something new to the table, that's an artistic viewpoint that's perfectly valid. It's not my perspective though, I'm criticizing the business decision. They're not always at odds, but in this case they were.

Maybe the artists were able to convince the businessmen that making a game they were passionate about instead of a lifeless retread would pay off, who knows. I don't know if every entertainment company has as strict a black and white distinction between artistic decisions and business decisions as you're suggesting. I also think this game is very obviously going to sell an unbelievable number of copies either way, and initial reviews have been very positive. Maybe people like you will cost them sales on future installments (are you going to buy them?), but so far that seems to be the minority opinion.

gimme the GOD drat candy posted:

even in the unlikely scenario that sephiroth has a non-evil goal now, he's still the dude who murdered cloud and tifa's families. unlike most of his appearances in the original 7, that wasn't jenova or a mind controlled soldier. dude went nuts and burned down a small town for no reason.

I really don't think Sephiroth is a character whose redemption can ever really feel earned, but I'd be okay with a fakeout where he (maybe even sincerely) tries that path for a bit before falling off again.

MyLoathsomeCowboy
May 6, 2007
A fictitious force

gimme the GOD drat candy posted:

even in the unlikely scenario that sephiroth has a non-evil goal now, he's still the dude who murdered cloud and tifa's families. unlike most of his appearances in the original 7, that wasn't jenova or a mind controlled soldier. dude went nuts and burned down a small town for no reason.

the plate drop was estimated to have a 50k body count before avalanche's evacuation, and probably still on a similar scale if that effort didn't extend topside. yet folks are pretty quick to suggest the turks/rufus get redemption arcs so i wouldn't discount one happening for seph

Asema
Oct 2, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Vino posted:

Artists aren't always entertainers, for one. And yes, entertainers need to please a crowd

look i've given you a lot of poo poo and some of that may have been far greater ribbing than you deserve but I just want you to know this is the most tone deaf thing you've posted

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

As others have pointed out, Square does seem to be a lot more willing to take risks with Final Fantasy than you'd think. Like, take a look at how wildly each installment changes gameplay-wise each time compared to something like, say, Dragon Quest. If Square was really risk-averse with Final Fantasy, they wouldn't change up the gameplay formula once they found one that people seemed to really like and that continued to be successful, but every game from FFX onward has vastly changed the entire core of the combat system. They also go for weird, sometimes even alienating settings (FFXIII is a big one), take crazy structural risks, etc.

Final Fantasy is a profoundly weird series.

And to be clear, taking risks for the sake of it isn't necessarily laudable. People love Dragon Quest precisely because it doesn't try to fix what isn't broken and just executes on its core formula really well over and over. That's just not what Square does with Final Fantasy.

So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Square decided it was acceptable for the FFVII Remake team to really swing for the fences instead of just delivering exactly what fans asked for.

guts and bolts
May 16, 2015

Have you heard the Good News?

Vino posted:

Sorry I started to lose the thread. The original point was "Cloud and party don't have a good reason to fight Sephiroth here." In the original Sephiroth shows up and kills President Shinra and the party initially says "oh is Sephiroth our friend?" and Cloud says "trust me no." That's about all you get about Sephiroth until the Kalm sequence. They had no reason to fight Sephiroth at that point. You agree that Barret and Red never say they hate Sephiroth. You also said in this and an earlier post that they fight Sephiroth because it makes for a good story setup, no mention of what the characters want.
I'm saying that Barret probably has a vested interest in FF7R in fighting Sephiroth considering he got loving killed by him. Red XIII isn't developed enough in this game to know what his deal is, precisely, but the core 4 now all have deeply personal reasons for wanting to oppose him. It is a strictly better set up than, as you describe, "trust me no."

quote:

OK I think we can agree that some people will like the remake and there are a lot of great things about it and that FF7R will sell a lot. That was basically my take and I still back it. There are three groups of fans. 1. Fans of the original who will like the new direction. 2. Fans of the original who will not like the new direction. 3. New fans.

If you make a game that doesn't go in this new direction, you get all three of those fans. The story is still super good, it's not going anywhere, so you get #3 fans that missed the original or couldn't get past the graphics. You'll of course keep #2. You'll get #1 because those people will never know what they would have missed, and they were fans of the original so these two groups are the same. You get everybody.
The bet is, precisely, that they can improve the original. You seem to believe sight-almost-unseen that they cannot. That's a take, and I respect it. I just vehemently disagree. You said yourself that creating good product tends to win out, and FF7R is a great product, with obvious sequel setup that could be even better. I don't think you can actually delineate into these, like, camps of fans unless you take garbage like Twitter super seriously. I think you have two groups: people who are interested in FF7, and people who are not. The former is enough to generate income, and if they do enough to make a modern classic, the number of people in the latter will shrink as they become interested in FF7.

homeless snail posted:

I think this big fan theory showing up itt and elsewhere that the whispers are obviously some big own on dumb nerds that you feel better than, loving sucks tbh. Its the kind of bad faith reading that only belongs in hour long youtube videos.

If you want to make an argument that 'destiny' represents the expectations that have built up over 20 years and killing the arbiters marks Square's intention to not be a 100% faithful remake of the original sure that's reasonable. IDK why people feel the need to project their own weird hangups by convincing themselves that its actually Tetsuya Nomura delivering a personal own to the people you don't like, that's some condescending bullshit.

Especially when the game literally tells you nearly outright who the arbiters are. And spoilers, they aint nerds
I'm not sure I've seen the exact take that the Whispers represent even anything bad. I don't think they do. I think it's pretty explicit that Destiny here is an allegory for what fan expectation is for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, and that if the development team wanted to try something different with it then those expectations would be violated; the fans of the original who do not want to see change implicitly push back on this and course-correct for what they want to happen (the same thing that has already happened in '97 FF7). By destroying that influence the party (and the devs) are free to do something new and different, which could be better than what we had for sure, but carries with it the risk that it could be worse. I think this is barely a "theory" at this point and more like explicit text.

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

The thing about the Whispers is that they aren't wrong to do what they do. They represent the will of the Planet to make sure that things turn out okay. If everything goes exactly how the Whispers want, the Planet will be saved and the characters will go on to live their lives, and while they have suffered painful losses and one of them gave her life, the others are more complete, better people than they were before their adventure. If everyone just let the Whispers be, everything would turn out fine.

So even if we go along with the idea that the Whispers represent overzealous fans rather than just representing "Destiny" or even fear of the unknown or anything like that, the message isn't that they're bad or dumb or worthy of contempt. It's that taking a leap into the unknown is worth the risk because maybe, just maybe, things can be even better this time.

morallyobjected
Nov 3, 2012
I don't know why Vino thinks going a new direction would turn off new fans who have no connection to the original story. there are a lot of people alive today who never played the original (a lot of prime gaming age people weren't even alive when it came out), and I don't think group 2 is as large as they think.

also did I miss a Jessie scene in the end? I only saw Biggs

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

morallyobjected posted:

also did I miss a Jessie scene in the end? I only saw Biggs

Her glove is on the table next to Biggs's bandana in the scene where Biggs wakes up, so some people suspect she might be alive, too.

Vino
Aug 11, 2010

Harrow posted:

You misunderstand. I didn't say that I have some sort of faith that these mysteries will be answered in a satisfactory or good way. It's just, they are mysteries that have been set up and seem to be major plot points this time. Will they fumble it? I dunno, maybe. Just like I have no idea why Sephiroth, Aerith, and Cloud seem to be able to know the future to varying degrees, I also don't know if the writers are going to pull this off. I'm just saying, this is clearly the path they're taking.

Yes I agree with this.


Sinteres posted:

Maybe the artists were able to convince the businessmen that making a game they were passionate about instead of a lifeless retread would pay off, who knows.

Then the businesspeople weren't doing their jobs, which is to find a way to make a game that artists are passionate about making without alienating their audience. Totally possible to do both, and they didn't.

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MoaM
Dec 1, 2009

Joyous.

Vino posted:

And anyway the people who made this decision are neither artists nor entertainers, they're businessmen, and this was a business decision.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a focus group poll that spooked some execs, consisting entirely of fans who are overly-attached to FF7's plot/characters.
Maybe even some the dev team themselves just love the original story way too much.

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