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Xaiter posted:100%. If this was just labelled as FF7-2: Cloud Returns it wouldn't be a big deal and I wouldn't have spent any money or time on it. I wouldn't care that it exists, probably never would have even noticed it. It would have just been another direct-to-dumpster FF7 Expanded Universe title for me. This is where people are having issues with, because the game owns.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:01
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guts and bolts posted:
There's sympathy for sympathy for the rank and file and then there's the dudes who led the charge on the attack that destroyed your new home and friends. Like Clouds easing up on the hard rear end merc shtick but that bridge feels a little too far. Plus I feel like they established that while the Turks are hard lads... They'd probably been hosed without time ghost intervention. Elena is gonna have to be a capital B Billy Badass if they're gonna hold the line against the party in the future.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:05
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sharrrk posted:what a weird way to try to experience a story. just play the original game dude When I heard that it might be a sequel I asked if I should play the original and was told in this thread or the non spoiler thread "no it's not a sequel just play Remake" so uh
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Apr 20, 2020 20:07
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Caidin posted:There's sympathy for sympathy for the rank and file and then there's the dudes who led the charge on the attack that destroyed your new home and friends. Like Clouds easing up on the hard rear end merc shtick but that bridge feels a little too far. I think after the whole plate drop business Reno and Rude are kinda going to have the wind taken out of their sails when it comes to work later on. Considering we see them sort of shell shocked and revolted by the party line they've been fed an' all. Elena being enthusiastic, bright eyed and loyal is probably going to make them feel worse about it.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:08
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Xaiter posted:
Okay, so I think I understand where you're coming from. To be clear I don't share your point of view but I understand it, I think. Out of curiosity if you wouldn't mind indulging me, what if part 2 comes out, the arbiters are never brought up again, and the game mostly continues on much as the original ff7 did with similar levels of changes and additions that happened in this games sans ghost appearances and the ending. Would this be a game you would like to play, or has the introduction of the concept of multiple timelines ruled out the rest of this franchise for you? I am genuinely curious and I hope you don't think this as a callout post because it's not, the division caused by this ending is genuinely fascinating to me and I don't think less of anyone simply because they didn't like the ending. Judging by your earlier posts iirc you mostly enjoyed this game but were soured on the ending correct?
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Apr 20, 2020 20:09
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Harrow posted:Hell, for all we know the big difference now is that Jenova isn't just a Thing From Beyond the Stars, but also a Thing From Beyond Time, and the whole reason she and Sephiroth seem to be aware of what the original future had in store for them is that she exists sort of beyond time. Maybe the big difference with Jenova would be that the party has to go to the Edge of Creation/the Singularity/whatever and kill her outside of time itself to prevent anything like this from ever happening again--I'd say that's a pretty reasonable escalation from beating up the Time Cops. There's a lot of room for Jenova to be portrayed as an even bigger, more alien, more Elder God-like threat than she was in the original, y'know? She could be some straight-up Lovecraftian poo poo and go full Bloodborne on us and still be faithful to the idea of Jenova from the original. This, I want to see. A lot of the Lovecraft mythos portrays the Outer Gods as thoroughly incomprehensible and unbound not just from space, but time as well, and in retrospect I always got both Lovecraft and old John Carpenter movie vibes from Jenova. If they play that poo poo up, 
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Apr 20, 2020 20:10
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guts and bolts posted:I want to take the time to effortpost about an element from the game that accurately sums up my feelings about the entire drat experience of FF7R. That element is the song "J-E-N-O-V-A - Quickening," and it is the best motherfucking song. Exactly my experience
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Apr 20, 2020 20:13
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Xaiter posted:We're not gonna see eye-to-eye on this, so I'll break it off here. We will see with Part 2. If this poo poo goes into FF13 extended universe crap and only superficially tells the FF7 story as a means for telling a grander scope story... I'd say that would be pretty strong evidence my assessment was accurate. To be very fair, if that's what happens, I'll probably hate it. Just so that's clear. I'm not necessarily just going to uncritically lap up whatever comes next. If we can talk about some different speculations: I think what I'm expecting is that Square is sort of self-conscious about the sort of mythical status that FF7 has and wants to retell it in what they feel is a suitably mythic way. They've done a lot to really build up that larger-than-life conflict between Cloud and Sephiroth that they love to treat as this sort of legendary, foundational Final Fantasy myth in things like Kingdom Hearts, and I expect they're going to lean into that hard. I expect Aerith is going to die and it's going to be an even bigger deal because she's going to know that she has to make that sacrifice and will struggle with it. I think Jenova's going to be weirder, scarier, and probably have some time traveling/dimension-hopping element to her that explains why Sephiroth seems to know the future (and why Cloud gets flashes of it, possibly due to his Jenova cells). In short I think what we're going to get is the Final Fantasy 7 version of Chrono Cross mixed with, like, the way superhero origin stories are sometimes retold in a really self-aware way, rather than the FF7 version of FF13-2 and Lightning Returns, if that distinction makes sense. Just so I can get this out there, I do still feel very conflicted about the direction we're going and I do still wish, on some level, we could have gotten a more straight-up remake. But I'm also sort of excited to see where this sort of "mythical retelling" can go, and nervous that we'll get something akin to the worst-case scenario you presented where the fate/destiny/time elements take center stage over everything else. Anyway sorry for ranting so much. I have this thing where if someone feels really lovely about a thing I like, I feel really bad that they feel that way and want to try to argue with them. It's more about me than anything so I'm sorry I posted such annoying walls at you.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:16
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I have a lot of not nice things to say about how Chapters 17 and 18 were written and structured, but I'm at work. I might give my spiel later today, because I think people are overlooking some pretty key points of why some are finding the ending distasteful at worst and sloppy at best. So in the meantime, I'll say something uncontroversial: Remake Tifa is the most beautiful character I've ever seen in a video game.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:17
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Caidin posted:There's sympathy for sympathy for the rank and file and then there's the dudes who led the charge on the attack that destroyed your new home and friends. Like Clouds easing up on the hard rear end merc shtick but that bridge feels a little too far. I agree that I think Cloud and Co. are going to be much less forgiving toward the Turks as-they-are-now than they would be toward, say, a rank and file grunt, but there's an opportunity here for them to find common ground. Let's not forget that Cloud is a former Shinra employee his drat self, so let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. Depending upon how much is new canon and how much is supposed to be a divergence from the source material, Cloud has a few lines that indicate he knew what was up with Shinra long before he actually quit, and was disgusted by it. More to the point, Reno is creator-intentionally relieved of the responsibility for dropping the plate, and was not a fan of the plan in the first place; combine that with the meta knowledge that he is an incredibly popular character amongst the fandom and it becomes, to my mind, reasonable to assume that he won't have to worry about Cloud decapitating him any time soon, Whispers or no. Your point about the Turks' relative power level is interesting to me because it doesn't actually seem like they're outmatched when contending with the party, it's that they cannot hope to beat Cloud. If Tifa and Barret went heads up with Reno and Rude, I think that's probably a wash at best or even more likely a clean Turks win. Cloud is so head-and-shoulders above the rest that it really reinforces this idea that SOLDIER is almost mythological in how combat-capable they are, and Cloud's probably interchangeably powerful with Zack at this point and significantly less powerful than Sephiroth was at the peak of his SOLDIER career. There are a few compelling things they could do with this:
guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 20:18
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Pollyanna posted:This, I want to see. A lot of the Lovecraft mythos portrays the Outer Gods as thoroughly incomprehensible and unbound not just from space, but time as well, and in retrospect I always got both Lovecraft and old John Carpenter movie vibes from Jenova. If they play that poo poo up, Yeah, maybe more than anything I want to see Jenova be terrifying. I want her to be this incomprehensible horror with a tenuous relationship to space and time who can really gently caress with people in some mindbending ways. I think this part of the remake did some of that, especially with how much more intense they made Cloud's visions and brief freakouts, so I hope they lean into it. And if they treat her almost like the Time Devourer from Chrono Cross, where the whole point of this "maybe alternate timelines???" thing is leading up to having to kill Jenova outside of time to end her for good or something, honestly I feel like that could kinda be cool and fitting.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:18
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That bit at 1:50 when you hear a few bars of One Winged Angel is tight.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:18
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Beefstew posted:So in the meantime, I'll say something uncontroversial: Remake Tifa is the most beautiful character I've ever seen in a video game. What an odd way to spell Jessie
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Apr 20, 2020 20:19
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AnarkiJ posted:Am I weird for thinking the games biggest letdown wasn't; giving you only one Maginify and two elemental materia, the ending, or any of the changes that were made or new stuff that was added. I was most bummed that not only could you not play pinball, but you couldn't go and hang out in barrets sweet bat cave under the bar. I know it was written around cause cloud wasn't invited on the mission this time around until jessie gets hurt later, but still, that was one thing from the original game that was burned into my memory that was weirdly never expanded on, nearly everything else I could think of that appears in Midgar in the original appears in Remake. Except maybe a couple houses interiors or whatever, like couldn't you go in johnnys house in the original game or am I misremembering?
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Apr 20, 2020 20:19
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Beefstew posted:I have a lot of not nice things to say about how Chapters 17 and 18 were written and structured, but I'm at work. I might give my spiel later today, because I think people are overlooking some pretty key points of why some are finding the ending distasteful at worst and sloppy at best. Oh I definitely think it's sloppy. I might be basically down for the core idea of the ending and where we're going, but I think the execution is real messy.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:19
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I beat the game again. The whispers are 100% still there when you fight Sephy
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Apr 20, 2020 20:21
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:When I heard that it might be a sequel I asked if I should play the original and was told in this thread or the non spoiler thread "no it's not a sequel just play Remake" so uh Seems like going forward a big part of the narrative is going to be about defying fate as defined by the original game. I think you'll need to have knowledge of the original for any of the big shocking twists coming down the pipe to mean anything. Your expectations can't be subverted if you don't have any to begin with, right? AnarkiJ posted:Okay, so I think I understand where you're coming from. To be clear I don't share your point of view but I understand it, I think. Out of curiosity if you wouldn't mind indulging me, what if part 2 comes out, the arbiters are never brought up again, and the game mostly continues on much as the original ff7 did with similar levels of changes and additions that happened in this games sans ghost appearances and the ending. Would this be a game you would like to play, or has the introduction of the concept of multiple timelines ruled out the rest of this franchise for you? I am genuinely curious and I hope you don't think this as a callout post because it's not, the division caused by this ending is genuinely fascinating to me and I don't think less of anyone simply because they didn't like the ending. Judging by your earlier posts iirc you mostly enjoyed this game but were soured on the ending correct? That's really bad thing here IMO. They've written themselves into a corner. You can't just have your characters literally beat up the fabric of reality and alter history then never bring it up again. That's absolute lunacy. If they memory hole the entire Destiny's Crossroads sequence and retcon the timeline garbage, they've got a winner. Keep the ghosts and the will of the planet and original timeline garbage as a nudge and wink at the meta level to the original story, don't make them ACTUALLY cosmic force ala FF13/15. They've essentially got to discard that whole last bit or pretend it never happened. Otherwise... Uh... Why can't I just beat up Fate to save North Corel and prevent the Shinra Reactor from being built the town being burnt down? We've already established that we can physically beat up time to make it do what we want when we disagree with it. Just ignoring it creates a whole bunch of massive nonsensical plot holes, so they've gotta either retcon that garbage out or go full FF13 with the story. I just can't see how you can have a coherent narrative otherwise? Harrow posted:Anyway sorry for ranting so much. I have this thing where if someone feels really lovely about a thing I like, I feel really bad that they feel that way and want to try to argue with them. It's more about me than anything so I'm sorry I posted such annoying walls at you. Naw, we're cool. I think we're on the same page. I'm just grossly pessimistic given the track record of the franchise and that absolute mindfuck of an ending. I wish I could share your optimism, but it feels unfounded. Only time will tell. Xaiter fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Apr 20, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 20:22
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Xaiter posted:They've essentially got to discard that whole last bit or pretend it never happened. Otherwise... Uh... Why can't I just beat up Fate to save North Corel and prevent the Shinra Reactor from being built the town being burnt down? because it already happened?
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Apr 20, 2020 20:31
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So here's my thing about the pacing. There are times when this game slows things way down to show us something new and I really like those moments. As much as I'll acknowledge the side quests themselves are boring and tedious, the side quest chapters (3, 8, and 14) are great because they're awesome hangout chapters. They let you hang out with your party members and get more banter and see new story scenes, and they give you a concrete reason to spend more time exploring Midgar so it feels more like a real place where real people live than it ever did in the original. That's a worthy reason to slow things the hell down and doesn't really feel like "filler" to me as a result. But then the game has this weird habit of slamming on the breaks at the worst possible time for the story's pacing and not really giving you anything new that makes the detour worth it. The first of these is also the least bad in my view: the Train Graveyard. For one thing, that felt kinda like a weird speed bump in the original already. At the same time, at least it told a new little story that at least had some pathos to it and some interesting imagery. The other two, though, are a lot worse. The second sewers trip with Leslie could be cut entirely without us losing much of anything. Yeah, they took that time to really highlight how much pain Don Corneo has caused to normal people, but, like, we already knew that. We already knew he was a scumbag who ruined people's lives. We didn't need another hour of tedious sewer crawling to really drive it home, and it just made me resent Leslie's inclusion. And then there's the Drum, which does even less of note. It has kind of a visually neat boss fight at the end, but otherwise, what new thing did we get out of any of that? Hojo's bad and annoying and does evil experiments and... yeah, that's about it. It's all stuff we already know, stretched thin over at least an hour of tedious navigation, party-swapping, and fights with intentionally annoying-to-fight enemies like the whack-a-mole arms. It's not just slow pacing that's the problem, though. Sometimes the pacing speeds way up or skips a step or two in a way that isn't great for the story being told. The first of those is Chapter 2. There are good things about Chapter 2 for sure--specifically, I think it's great how it puts you right in the middle of the devastation caused by the destruction of Mako Reactor 1, how afraid people are, just how much damage and ruin that explosion wrought. That part isn't just good, it's fantastic. What drags Chapter 2 down for me is that it seriously jumps the gun on Sephiroth in a way that I think lessens his impact later on. You get a big Sephiroth moment out of nowhere there, a very capital-I Important conversation between him and Cloud, that seems to remove a lot of the mystery of the character. I'm not saying they should've held back on Sephiroth as much as the original game does--in fact I think it's a good thing that he's more of a presence in this remake specifically because this is a standalone 35-hour game and everyone knows Sephiroth by now--but they should've saved more of him for later. It stands out that you barely see anything of Sephiroth between Chapter 2 and like Chapter 8, so they really could've held off more and let Sephiroth kind of creep up on the narrative (and on Cloud) more than he does. Similarly, I think the Whispers kinda hosed up Cloud and Aerith's first meeting, but I discussed that already a couple pages ago. The other big "the pacing started going way too fast and you skipped like ten steps" moment is Chapter 18 and Destiny's Crossroads. All I could think at the end of it was--we spent all that time in the Drum learning nothing, when we could've spent more time in Destiny's Crossroads actually exploring that idea somewhat. They could've made it a final dungeon and included more conversations between the characters about how they feel about what's happening and I think it would've helped the ending a lot, at least for me. Instead, it's a breakneck set-piece from stepping through the portal to the end that glosses over some giant ideas, possibly to the detriment of what that ending is trying to accomplish. Anyway, there's my big pacing post. It is, as it turns out, more poorly-paced than I intended it to be but I'm not about to do revisions and make an essay out of a forums post. Maybe there's something worth discussing in here I dunno 
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Apr 20, 2020 20:33
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Asema posted:because it already happened? ...so did Zach's death? That didn't seem to stop them.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:34
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I really hope people complaining doesn't convince them to not to let us save Aerith. I had zero interest in this remake until I heard they were loving with poo poo and that possibility is the most interesting and important thing they could do. For real killing Destiny and then not letting her live would be infuriating.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:38
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Xaiter posted:...so did Zach's death? That didn't seem to stop them. showing a different timeline that the main cast does not interact with is not the same as "punching fate to time travel back"
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Apr 20, 2020 20:38
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Xaiter posted:Why can't I just beat up Fate to save North Corel and prevent the Shinra Reactor from being built the town being burnt down? We've already established that we can physically beat up time to make it do what we want when we disagree with it. Well, this part's easy: you already did. The Fate Janitors are gone and whatever influence they would've had in North Corel either already happened or is now gone. The characters no longer have the ability to change the past but they do now have more ability to change the future (and so do Sephiroth and Jenova). I think we might disagree on how big of a change happened at the end. The Whispers being defeated didn't really magically undo any tragedies. The Sector 7 plate still fell and killed thousands, or the people wouldn't be rebuilding from the rubble at the end--the big change there is that they're rebuilding, something they never did in the original. Biggs's survival is miraculous, but so was Wedge's lucky fall into the Shinra lab under Sector 7, and that didn't require anyone to change fate to happen. For all we know Biggs just got massively lucky off-screen and we killed the Whispers before they could Final Destination him to the death he was supposed to have like they did to Wedge. The big question mark, for me, is Zach. The way I'm reading it is that Zach only died, at least in this telling of the story, because it was what Had To Happen. We're shown the Whispers flying around the Shinra soldiers who are about to kill him. But with the Whispers gone, Zach is able to pull through because they can't tilt the scales against him. What I'm taking away from this isn't that the characters magically reached back in time to resurrect or save Zach, but more that this was an unintentional (and maybe lucky?) consequence of having defeated the Fate Janitors. They seem to exist outside of linear time, so killing them in the present kills them in the past as well, meaning they couldn't stop Zach from surviving. What's unclear is how far back that ripple effect goes. In other words I don't think it's really targeted. Killing the Whispers undid some of the things that only happened because the Whispers made them happen, but maybe only in the recent past, and that's not something that can be repeated. We can't kill the Whispers again--they're dead already. Whatever happens from now onward, there'll be no more magical hand of fate undoing things (or forcing things to happen), for better or for worse. If Sephiroth stabs Barret again, he's staying dead. (Of course the other reading is that Zach survived in a parallel universe and the past didn't change in our universe at all. Time will tell on that one, I think.)
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Apr 20, 2020 20:40
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Beefstew posted:I have a lot of not nice things to say about how Chapters 17 and 18 were written and structured, but I'm at work. I might give my spiel later today, because I think people are overlooking some pretty key points of why some are finding the ending distasteful at worst and sloppy at best. No you see the SJW police ruined her because her bust is no longer bigger than her head and is instead only very large.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:41
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Tifa has nothing on Cloud In a Dress
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Apr 20, 2020 20:43
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This remake made me love both Tifa and Aerith more than I did before. Then again it also did that with Cloud and Barret.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:45
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Tifa's boobs are absolutely massive in this game. She even has jiggle physics in her mature outfit, which is an insane attention to detail since she's no longer wearing a sports bra.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:46
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Xaiter posted:Seems like going forward a big part of the narrative is going to be about defying fate as defined by the original game. I think you'll need to have knowledge of the original for any of the big shocking twists coming down the pipe to mean anything. I mean, this literally happens all the time in stories about time travel, timelines, or parallel dimensions, I can point you to a bunch of books, comics, tv shows and films where this kind of continuum shattering event happens, but everything outside that event is returned to the normal flow of time, with everything that happens outside the flow of time may as well have not happened at all. Having typed that it does sound like I'm being disparaging which really isn't my intent so sorry if it comes across that way. My point is they literally fought a bunch of time ghosts, and as far as anybody can tell, kill said time ghosts. What actually happens as a consequence to the normal flow of time, or how much of the previous events the characters even remember is completely up in the air because it happened outside the normal flow of time. I happen to like stories involving meta narratives and messing with the 4th dimension, so the ending was all extremely my poo poo, so I can see how they have lots of different ways to write themselves out of that kind of ending based on experiences in other media. Some people see this as bad story telling or simply juvenile, which personally I don't agree with. I also however get the impression that because of a few flying buildings that give people PTSD style flashbacks to advent children, people are not willing to give the benefit of the doubt that this kind of story can be told, which if so, fair enough I guess. I don't think there's any more discussion to be had there. I still think there's been a few knee jerk reactions to certain elements that nobody really knows if they're going to stick the landing on. This game was so good on the whole I have faith that if they're taking a risk this big with a franchise as beloved as FF7 that they wouldn't do it unless they had a very good reason to. There is a good documentary on FFXIV on youtube by Noclip, on how they rebuilt the game after 1.0. In it there is talk from Square employees about how, up until the launch of FF14 the company had an almost 'Too big to fail' attitude to their game development, which arguably explains a LOT of what happened to Final Fantasy post FFIX imo. After the failure of that launch it does seem like the company attitude has shifted somewhat to trying to do better by the fans who have supported them all this time. Everything about remake, outside of the parts that people can't agree on, most agree is a fantastic game that seemed as though it was made by a team with a lot of passion both for the original, and for making remake the best game it could be. As previously stated nothing is ever, nor will ever be perfect, and this is fine. I doubt that future installments won't occasionally get it wrong, but they got so much right this time I'm willing to give them a pass on the things I'm not so sure about. I hope that others will too.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:48
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Beefstew posted:Tifa's boobs are absolutely massive in this game. She even has jiggle physics in her mature outfit, which is an insane attention to detail since she's no longer wearing a sports bra. The shitfits that were initially thrown over her bust size just made me very tired. There's still people going around making edits where her waist is like a twig and her tits are bigger than her head and they're awful.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:49
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Harrow posted:This remake made me love both Tifa and Aerith more than I did before. Then again it also did that with Cloud and Barret. Them knocking out Corneo's goons with "Smash Em' Rip Em'" blasting was awesome
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Apr 20, 2020 20:49
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Asema posted:showing a different timeline that the main cast does not interact with is not the same as "punching fate to time travel back" I'm trying not to be snarky here, but uh... That doesn't really address it. I'm gonna use some snark to say in a couple sentences what might take twenty paragraphs to express, it isn't intended to be a dig. So... The whole alternative timeline being created is just for show? It's not gonna be an important part of the central conflict? Zach's timeline isn't real? We're never gonna alter Fate again and none of this stuff matters to the main narrative? So why have it exist at all? And yes, when punching Fate creates an alternative history it's pretty drat fair to say time travel is involved. You're literally altering history and creating a new timeline. How is that NOT time travel? Harrow posted:Well, this part's easy: you already did. The Fate Janitors are gone and whatever influence they would've had in North Corel either already happened or is now gone. The characters no longer have the ability to change the past but they do now have more ability to change the future (and so do Sephiroth and Jenova). This is actually fuckin' rad and cool and would be a good way to carry forward that insanity. The whole thing still isn't my cup of tea, it's not something I would want to play. But I can appreciate it as "cool extended universe material", even if it's not something I would enjoy.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:49
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Fan arbitration of what's real or not and what should officially be demoted to some other tier of legitimacy is really tiring
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Apr 20, 2020 20:51
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The idea of "canon" vs. "extended universe" has really poisoned people's brains. They're all just stories.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:52
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Xaiter posted:Naw, we're cool. I think we're on the same page. I'm just grossly pessimistic given the track record of the franchise and that absolute mindfuck of an ending. If it helps, I think my optimism comes from just how insanely good 95% of this remake was, and how faithful to the characters and the world of FF7 it was even when it was doing new things. This team showed us they can do an incredible job writing Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, and Red XIII bouncing off each other and going through their emotional journeys, and they showed us that when they want to explore new facets of the world, they can do it in a way that feels right and faithful (like with Roche, the Chapter 4 adventure up to the plate, new details about the slums, the totally rewritten Wall Market, etc.). Basically I see that as them showing us that even when they're writing totally new events that never happened in the original story, they're at least faithful to the characters and what the original story feels like. Maybe I'm not fully optimistic, per se, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for part 2 just because of how crazy good they've been at writing the core characters. I want more of that and I think even if they take the plot in directions I don't really enjoy, if the character writing stays this good, I'll probably still be glad I played it.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:55
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AnarkiJ posted:I happen to like stories involving meta narratives and messing with the 4th dimension, so the ending was all extremely my poo poo, so I can see how they have lots of different ways to write themselves out of that kind of ending based on experiences in other media. Hey, I LOVE meta-narratives too. Remedy's Control is high on my to-play list because of that poo poo. Seriously, it's a type of storytelling that gets a lot of crap for being too pretentious and up its own rear end, but it's a rad as hell vehicle for discussing stuff like identity and the nature of free will. That said... Uh. Not every story should be one. And FF7 was never such a story. Trying to make FF7 into one of those stories is a real stretch, IMO, and that's what firmly drags it out of "Remake" and into sequel territory. Also, we've seen how Square handles meta-narratives with FF13/15... Namely, they can't.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:56
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Mechafunkzilla posted:The idea of "canon" vs. "extended universe" has really poisoned people's brains. They're all just stories. Yeah if you don't like something you can just not give a poo poo about it, who cares about canon
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Apr 20, 2020 20:58
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I mostly do overly optimistic readings of vague ending bits but I have a feeling Zach is alive like Biggs and Jessie (and probably Wedge, not the first drop he'd have survived that day, his butt is plot armor). He and Cloud made it to Midgar together and got split up on a way Cloud had the sword. Dementors probably can be to blamed, but he avoids enough trouble he's still alive. Sometime in the sequels Zach and not-dead Avalanche are going to be there for something shocking and new.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:59
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The earlier comparison to MGS2 was apt. MGS2 being what it was isn't really such an out-there evolution of Metal Gear and it was also really well done. Final Fantasy has never shown any interest in this kind of meta narrative and I can understand why it annoys people who just wanted a good, straight story like the original game.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:59
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Man I really wish FF15 was better. It has so many cool aspects, potentially interesting characters, just an utterly wild setting that goes mostly unexplored (both in where you travel to and what you learn about the influence of the gods and just how crazy all of that goes), and a real good soundtrack, too. If they'd been able to tell the story more fully instead of in the very weirdly chopped-up form we actually got I bet I would've loved it.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:59
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Necrothatcher posted:That bit at 1:50 when you hear a few bars of One Winged Angel is tight. It's such a good pull.
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Apr 20, 2020 21:00
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