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bewilderment posted:My real complaint with the Whispers is that I think they look lame. Their models are weirdly low-poly compared to other characters and monsters. Also to be fair I can't really blame people who connect the whole Whisper Harbinger fight at the end with Kingdom Hearts because the music is extremely Kingdom Hearts. Hell, even the Sephiroth/Cloud scene at the Edge of Creation has a melody that reminds me so much of the music that plays whenever you're in the big stained glass heart area in Kingdom Hearts. They're not even close to identical but they were similar enough that I was like, "Is this a tune from Kingdom Hearts or just real similar?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOpB12ow-VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZcZcPxKeuI
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Apr 21, 2020 00:39
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Harrow posted:poo poo like this makes me want to replay FF8 and give it another shot to make me love it but man I just can't love the junction system as it exists. I love the idea of it but the execution is a mess and not in a way I actually find fun to engage with. As someone who replayed FF8 recently (so that you don't have to, hyuk hyuk) I would strongly advise against it. Whatever you have in your head that you remember being cool in FF8 is superior to the actual game. Better to remember it that way than actually play it again and remember, oh poo poo, Triple Triad loving sucks and half the rules don't make any sense and unless I recall exactly how to game the system for spreading rules around, I could wind up with an even more unplayable disaster than normal Like I remember thinking Zell was cool, and then I replayed FF8 and was like "... wait he is cool, right???" and it turns out no, he's annoying, and wheedles endlessly about how disrespected he is when he actually suuuuuucks To your point about the romance: that is sort of funny. FF7 has some of the most iconic love interests ever to appear in videogames with Tifa and Aerith, and Yuna isn't too far behind. Dagger/Garnet and Zidane is maybe less storied but is still a good little yarn. When people talk about FF8 they'll talk about how it was cool to make the romance more explicit (THERE IS KISSING) than in FF7, or whatever, or even that it's cool that it's A Love Story™, but hardly anyone ever brings up liking Rinoa or even Squall all that much?
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Apr 21, 2020 00:40
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KidDynamite posted:Given that Sephiroth first appears to distract Cloud from meeting Aeirth and he seems to have brought back Zack any guesses as to why is he so invested in preventing the relationship between Cloud and Aertih? Is there something I'm forgetting from the original that would give him this motivation? I don't think Sephiroth brought back Zack--I think Zack's survival is just a consequence of the Whispers no longer being able to ensure that he dies. Sephiroth seems to really want Cloud to save Aerith this time. When he appears just as Cloud is first meeting Aerith, he taunts Cloud about being too weak to save anyone, and he keeps needling that point. Like I wonder if he was leading Cloud to her through that alley in Chapter 2, y'know?
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Apr 21, 2020 00:41
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If the next romance in a Final Fantasy game is hetero then I'll agree with Xaiter that Square really doesn't know what the fans want.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:44
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Sephiroth also genuinely hates Cloud so it's also possible that he sees driving a wedge between him and Aerith as a way to give him despair. In fact it really wouldn't surprise me if Sephiroth's plan is 50% actually succeed at becoming a new JENOVA and 50% making Cloud suffer.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:44
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It's also possible that the twist this time is that Sephiroth is super loving dead and this is just Jenova messing with Cloud to use as her new vector to take over the planet. Lots of things are possible, we are wiiiiide open to play and nothing is certain.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:48
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I always liked the interpretation that Sephiroth was barely alive in the original and that Jenova was running the show all the way to the end essentially using Sephiroth as a mask and, later, a puppet, but it seems like we've definitely swung to Sephiroth being the real power in a sort of mythical, archetypal way.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:50
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guts and bolts posted:My man I'm not gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume absurdity some of the time during your arguments; you have used language explicitly stating that you think FF7R belongs in the trash. I do think it belongs in the dumpster. I don't like it. I'm sure there is plenty of stuff I like you think belongs in a dumpster. We'll disagree, we'll not see eye-to-eye. But I'm not going to take personal offense to our difference of opinion. guts and bolts posted:Forget that you think you're being bullied or whatever There do appear to be a couple posters jumping into reply exchanges between other posters and screaming at them for having a conversation that they disapprove of. :hmm: guts and bolts posted:what makes you think that's a good tack to take if you just want to encourage debate and discuss the merits of everyone's opinion? You're right. I should be writing out six page long careful posts rather than using absurdity and hyperbole for shorthand when talking about a topic as serious as the Final Fantasy 7 Remake on a dead comedy forum. guts and bolts posted:My guess is that you don't - you want us to read your posts, forever, re-stated or re-worded until you find the magic combination of the same train of thought that ends in... what? Like, a logical checkmate? I'm pretty sure every single post I've made after the first is a reply to someone replying to me. You can see the quotes inline. guts and bolts posted:You began from a standpoint that FF7R's leads hate their fans and are denying them a "true" remake of FF7 out of spite, and continue to bring up absurdities as arguments while constantly referring to FF7R as garbage. The idea that a creator would deliberately troll their fanbase with stuff they never asked for isn't a stretch. It isn't unreasonable to believe the pressure described by Harrow to create this thing has bled into the project and they're just god-drat sick of trying to appease the fans. guts and bolts posted:Anyone who engaged with you did so despite that and you still came away from the discussion thinking that unless you're going to kneel at the altar of FF7R that you're not welcome, and nothing could be further from the truth. It is intensely frustrating. Uh. No. Only two particular posters in this thread seemed to exhibit that behavior and made it pretty clear they don't want to hear a dissenting opinion. Everyone else seems content to hash through this. Heck, I think we actually figured out what happened at the end. Sephiroth's Ghost at the end of the original went back in time and altered the past to kickstart the events of Remake. Or his Ghost saw the future when he fell into the lifestream and he's trying to prevent the future from the original game from playing out. I still hate the game for not being a retelling of the original, only updated. I'm still annoyed I invested my time and energy playing something that isn't what I thought it was for the first 39 hours. I can still appreciate what they're trying to do even if I don't like the premise. And with that, enough posting about posting. Criminy.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:50
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Okay, since we obviously haven't talked about this enough, I'm going to explain my grievances with the ending. But first, allow me to wear my biases on my sleeve, so that you might find it easier to understand where I'm coming from and what I like: I love Evangelion (Original, End of Eva, and Rebuild), MGS2, The Last Jedi, and all things Yoko Taro. I do not like Final Fantasy XIII, Kingdom Hearts, or Chrono Cross, and I think Nomura is a hack. 1. Parsing meaning is not the same as judging a text as good or bad. People aren't disliking the ending because they don't get it. It has all the subtlety of a freight train. No, people hate the ending because it's sloppy and sets concerning precedents. And unfortunately, each problem with it kinda feeds into the next. 2. The ending feels like a resolution to a conflict that had barely started. Let's ignore the fact that I think that time travel/destiny nonsense needlessly complicates the story of FF7. Even viewing this game as an independent work, the time ghosts are totally ancillary for most of the plot. I feel like the developers wanted some kind of climactic conclusion, since we wouldn't get to kill Sephiroth or defeat Shinra in this installment, so we get time ghosts. The problem is that defying destiny/fate has little or nothing to do with our characters' stories, except in the most tenuous of extrapolations (yes, Cloud remarks on the single destination of railroads early on, but he's not reflecting on any of his actual angst here). As such, the focus to confront the Whispers becomes entirely extra-diegetic. It's no longer about the characters fighting fascism, corporatism, and struggling with their grief - instead, they become sock puppets in the final two chapters, losing their individuality and personal drives for the purpose of authorial navelgazing. It's up for debate how antagonistic the ending was intended to be for players, and contrary to what's been echoes in this thread, artist often do insert antagonistic messaging in their works (think back to End of Evangelion, where Anno showed photos of the death threats and vandalism he had received, as well as shots of cosplaying weebs sitting baffled in a movie theater). However, the intent here is pretty much irrelevant, as we've already got a pretty clear understanding of the metaphor. The problem lies in its execution. It's too fast, it interrupts the current story, and we're told that it's supposed to matter when it really doesn't. Again, it feels like it was inserted to give the game a more proper climax. Speaking of... 3. The stakes get ludicrously high in a span of a few minutes. We go from struggling with Shinra mechs to fighting against time gods. Then we face off against Sephiroth, who most of the crew has no relationship with, and have a climactic Advent Children-style duel with him that stretches the physics and flourish of the universe past the breaking point of what we've seen so far. Everything feels unearned, nothing has the proper impact, and in the end, I have no idea how we're expected to come back from this, considering everyone turned into the Avengers for a few minutes. Look, I prefer having Sephiroth as this unseen presence in Midgar since he's basically a bogeyman of the characters' shared traumas in the original, but I knew drat well that wouldn't happen here, and I'm fine with him showing up. But the duel could've been more grounded. 4. Sephiroth's presence, and his unexplained (or unearned, in some cases) significance to the characters jeopardizes this game as a point of entry to the FF7 story. All of a sudden, you have required reading. Who is Zack? They don't even give his name as "???" like they do with every other new NPC you meet. He's just Zack. You're expected to know him, you're expected to know this is a scene from Crisis Core. Without knowledge of the previous games, the last few scenes are just disconnected images that signify nothing. And if you are familiar with the previous games, you're running a crazy gamble against folks who might be less enthusiastic about such changes. 5. That brings us to the plot divergences in general. I think it's super disingenuous to say that people are afraid of change, as the previous 16 chapters proved that wasn't true. Most people say they like at least 90% of this game. Characters like Madam M and Andrea Rhodea are new, yet they're already becoming favorites. So folks' hostility towards the Whispers isn't because they're "new". It's because the newness that they signify instantly gets off on the wrong foot. We have the narrative promising a new, exciting "unknown journey", but the sequence they used to preface that contains the aforementioned weaknesses, as well as some very... Nomura characteristics. The promise now seems more like a threat. If they bungled their new content this badly out of the gate, then what are we to expect of the next game? 6. If the next game does feature major plot divergences, then it will have to grapple with the clumsy precedent it established, as well as finding a way to resolve character arcs in ways that are actually satisfying - which may prove quite the task, as the character stories in FF7 are so thematically interlinked that you can't change one without changing all of them. This is why people are having anxieties over authenticity. If the divergences are mostly minor, then it calls into question why we needed this ending in the first place (aside from contriving a climax). 7. People seem to say that this ending was necessary to get away from the time ghosts so that we can free things up for new content, but that reasoning is inherently fallacious. You could've just... not had the time ghosts interfering with events. You could've just had events transpire differently in an organic manner, one where causality actually applies. This is where Rebuild of Evangelion succeeds and the end of FF7R falters. Neither the presence of the ghosts nor their destruction was necessary to institute changes, big or small. And I doubt that we'd introduce the Whispers in one game only to abandon them in the sequels. That would makes sense, since we killed them, but I just don't see Square doing that. Therefore, we still have a lot of problems related to stakes and lasting consequences. 8. The fact that we're still debating whether or not we retconned the universe by defeating the Whispers illustrates the levels of needless complexity that's obfuscated the human drama of the story. If we haven't, then we're effectively showing off alternate timelines that have no effect on the narrative. If we have, then we've opened up a can of worms for the story to retcon whatever it wants. Zack and Biggs are back (maybe? Who knows! Probably a Nomura mystery box.) Biggs' return feels particularly cheap, as there's little conceivable way he could've survived unless we retconned him back from the grave, which just seems lazy. Moreover, when a narrative invokes imagery that borders on being reminiscent of 9/11, asks the audience to take it seriously, and executes the drama and emotions therein really well... it's understandable that people feel cheated when the game sames that none of that mattered. The kind of poo poo we saw in Tifa's Chapter 14 scene now feels like filler, and what's more, it gives the notion that the human drama that we'd been building up has been put on hold to battle extra-diegetic time ghosts. Which is a real shame, because these characters were doing so well up until this point. 9. FF7R was the first time since the original game that the characters actually felt like themselves. I don't think I need to get into what the problems with Advent Children and the like are, do I? With AC and their cameos in Kingdom Hearts, FF7 characters have gradually been skewed over the years until they barely resembled their original incarnations. As an anecdote, I have a friend who's pathologically allergic to anime. At one point like a year ago, I explained to him the story of FF7 through my interpretation (it's about loss, trauma, surrogacy, anti-capitalism, etc), and he revealed that it sounded a lot more interesting than the impression he had gotten, which was "bishounen anime swordbois fighting in ridiculous, weightless combat." This is a point of contention, but I absolutely hold Nomura responsible for the Flandersization of the FF7 cast by way of Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts. Even in instances where he wasn't writing, he was directing, and thus gave his directives, if not approval, on everything that was done. I get the notion that he thinks of himself as a self-styled Thomas Pynchon, when he actually writes like the Time Cube guy. His idea of a plot twist is "Guess what? Chicken butt." I felt like he only understood FF7 on the most superficial terms. And for the longest time, I had thought we'd never see the real FF7 cast again. I was positively delighted for 90% of this game, because it felt like they had finally come home. The last two chapters hurt me especially because it seemed like a cruel double-down on everything people have hated about the Compilation and Kingdom Hearts - dour characters, overly cryptic and vague dialogue, fighting against nebulous concepts of fate and darkness and poo poo, overemphasis on some titanic feud with Sephiroth, and ludicrous action. I totally feel for the folks who saw that part as a betrayal, because it seems like such a thoughtless refutation of the previous 30+ hours. That's why I find the argument of the ending being subversive kinda obnoxious. It's not being subversive - it's immediately taking us back to the lovely status quo we've had for 15 years. And speaking of 15 years, that's how long it's been since the possibility of a remake was first teased. Again, I don't mind them going in a different direction as long as it's not stupid and horrible, but after 15 years of waiting and 15 years of garbage Compilation content, is it any wonder why people are upset - or at least, apprehensive, as I am - by this ending? I spent about two days deciding if the ending made me hate the rest of the game. Thankfully, I don't think it has, but I do think Square will have to win me over again for part 2, to prove that they're not gonna go full stupid. Because it's not cool to spend an entire game telling someone that they should take the narrative seriously only to just say "gently caress it, lol," no matter the metatext you use to justify it. Like, Omikron: The Nomad Soul did much of the same poo poo and it's still the worst loving thing ever made by a supposed human. So yeah, honestly, the ending might've worked if it hadn't been so carelessly deployed. But I also think that it's lovely that people are going "Oh, you just wanted a 1:1 remake, loser!" For one thing, nobody's saying that, and even if they were, that's not a loving crime. People have a right to feel that way, even though it's not precisely where I am. I had more fun with the first 16 chapters of this remake than I've had with anything in a while. The last year of my life was filled with a lot of death, and this was a pleasant escape and reminder of why I loved FF7. So yeah, the ending did upset for the aforementioned reasons, though I'm getting over it. The reason I bring this up isn't because I want some E/N sympathy points or whatever, but rather to explain how this could be tying into folks' emotions more than just "you're a mouthbreathing turbonerd". World's fuckin' poo poo right now. Planet's dyin', Cloud. I'm not gonna pretend that such escapism is healthy, but I can hardly blame someone at this juncture. Anyways, whatever. Those are my thoughts. Game good, ending bad, worried for the sequel.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:52
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I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless  Just treat it like cheese and cut the bad bit off Edit: this is not commenting on Beefstew's post which showed up while I was typing
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Apr 21, 2020 00:53
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guts and bolts posted:To your point about the romance: that is sort of funny. FF7 has some of the most iconic love interests ever to appear in videogames with Tifa and Aerith, and Yuna isn't too far behind. Dagger/Garnet and Zidane is maybe less storied but is still a good little yarn. When people talk about FF8 they'll talk about how it was cool to make the romance more explicit (THERE IS KISSING) than in FF7, or whatever, or even that it's cool that it's A Love Story™, but hardly anyone ever brings up liking Rinoa or even Squall all that much? Squall is a good character concept but isn't presented ideally in the game because the pacing is off. He's an orphan who was abandoned by the one person he trusted, and as a response he decided he needed to not rely on anyone ever again and so he trained himself to be hypercompetent and extremely emotionally guarded. The problem with the Rinoa relationship is that she doesn't actually challenge this much. She doesn't provide him with any real emotional support, and instead of easing his burdens she actively makes them harder. The relationship really doesn't come off well since all she does around him is flirt a bit and act cute. It's not great compared to 7, 9 and 10 where all the main 'romances' have some kind of actual chemistry and wanting to be with each other.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:54
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless because gamers, like many movie franchise fandoms, are absolute dogshit black/white "it's perfect or it's not"
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Apr 21, 2020 00:55
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Yeah my man, got me, you're right. I go into threads about stuff I don't like, call that stuff garbage trash for the dumpster, engage in hyperbole that is tiresome and annoying, convince a couple saps to engage me in good faith, and then accuse anyone who sees through this bullshit as "screaming" at people who dare to be ~brave!!~ enough to dislike the stuff. It's especially cool to operate off of pretty baseless assumptions but argue as if they're demonstrated fact. I just want to be understood, you see, but I don't care enough to write "six page long careful posts." Double extra bonus points for trivializing those effortposts so that you can focus on boring line-by-line comebacks.  e: Nobody cares that you don't like FF7R, or thinks that you're a worse person because you don't like fiction that someone else likes. I'm saying your whole shtick is super tiresome and you keep doing it. If you don't like FF7R man, shine on, I don't take it as a personal attack that you dislike it. I could quote myself a couple times saying that I value dissenting opinions because otherwise threads become echo chambers. But that isn't what you're doing, and I think we both know it.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:55
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Harrow posted:I always liked the interpretation that Sephiroth was barely alive in the original and that Jenova was running the show all the way to the end essentially using Sephiroth as a mask and, later, a puppet, but it seems like we've definitely swung to Sephiroth being the real power in a sort of mythical, archetypal way. I've been thinking more and more about OG FF7 lately, and I think Sephiroth is dead or as good as dead. At least physically. His lasting impact has kept him alive in people's hearts and minds though, and some of them literally have him on a cellular structure. He's a monster of their collective unconsciousness that they reconstruct as some mutant abomination. It's actually extremely cool.
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Apr 21, 2020 00:57
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bewilderment posted:Squall is a good character concept but isn't presented ideally in the game because the pacing is off. He's an orphan who was abandoned by the one person he trusted, and as a response he decided he needed to not rely on anyone ever again and so he trained himself to be hypercompetent and extremely emotionally guarded. Yeah, Rinoa and Squall's relationship seems incredibly immature and tacky, I don't know. I just didn't enjoy it, and it's made worse by having Rinoa be constantly infantilized both through the dialogue she gets and her overall demeanor. It's just creepy. I think I do want to respond to Beefstew's post but it's gonna take a moment to consume it, sorry.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:00
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exquisite tea posted:If the next romance in a Final Fantasy game is hetero then I'll agree with Xaiter that Square really doesn't know what the fans want. Why does it matter when everyone just ships whoever they want
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Apr 21, 2020 01:01
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I mean we can assume a lot of Clouds little green tinted episodes are Sephiroth loving with him but I'm not totally sure. The initial hallucination after all came from a PSTD flashback in Sector 8 of the Niebleheim massacre, and the imagery blurs into the surroundings. How much of them are entirely in Clouds head? We do have the surprising lucid Sephiroth in the end game who'd like a partnership to some not quite clear end as opposed to the extremely psychotic one we usually see.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:03
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless I think it's the same reason why some folks have negative opinions of ex-partners that they once loved even after the most amicable of breakups. Falling out of love is painful, regardless of who or what is responsible, and it hurts to think about what you once felt. It's not a rational feeling, but we're not rational creatures.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:03
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Mulva posted:It's also possible that the twist this time is that Sephiroth is super loving dead and this is just Jenova messing with Cloud to use as her new vector to take over the planet. Sephiroth dies before the start of the original game wth. That's literally one of the big twists. He's been dead this whole time and the Sephiroth you chase through the whole game is just a projection created by a Jenova/Sephiroth merger.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:06
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Elephant Ambush posted:Sephiroth dies before the start of the original game wth. That's literally one of the big twists. He's been dead this whole time and the Sephiroth you chase through the whole game is just a projection created by a Jenova/Sephiroth merger. I think the game makes it clear that Sephiroth managed to survive when Cloud fights the shirtless manifestation of Sephiroth that is still stopping Holy in the Crater. And also all the final bosses are named Sephiroth, except for the one named Jenova. I don't disagree that the Sephiroth you chase is just Jenova illusions, though. The real Sephiroth is the one in crystallized stasis in the crater.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:09
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Elephant Ambush posted:Sephiroth dies before the start of the original game wth. That's literally one of the big twists. He's been dead this whole time and the Sephiroth you chase through the whole game is just a projection created by a Jenova/Sephiroth merger. He's ghost alive and loving with Cloud in the early game, and the increasing trend of the side material is that he's in control of Jenova, not the other way around. An actual twist would be no, this has nothing at all to do with Sephiroth and it's 100% Jenova. Because that would be sidelining Sephiroth, which would actually be a shocker from this crew. But it's totally possible.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:10
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless It's the last impression. When you've finished it, and are thinking about it, the last thing that happened is the freshest thing in your mind. It's not really logical to write the whole thing off because of the ending, but it's a very normal human reaction because people aren't always logical and they especially aren't logical about their personal preferences. Them hating the last hour may not have made the previous 30ish hours retroactively not fun for them, but it makes them feel worse about it. The debate over whether a bad ending makes an entire work bad has been raging for eons and will likely never be settled. Also, this is part 1. We haven't seen 100% of it, we've seen 20 to 30 percent of it. And while the first 29% may have been good, the last 1% was, well, controversial. Some people liked it, and those people are very excited about the remaining 70%. Some people didn't like it, and are very concerned as to what the remaining 70% will look like. And if that 70% turns out to be bad, which there is no way of knowing at this point, then that means that most of FF7R is bad.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:11
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless That's kinda where it sits. Chop off the ending and pretend it never happened. The FF7R is like the Matrix franchise which sadly produced two sequels that were lost in a horrible woodchipper accident. I still wish I hadn't invested the time into it and gotten my hopes up. I'd prefer to have known up front "This isn't what you want, you're not gonna like what comes after it" and just watch someone else play it or read about it. I didn't want to give my money to support this kinda stuff. Which is my own fault for letting the hype get me and making a day 1 purchase. Buyer beware, indeed.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:12
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Just Andi Now posted:I think the game makes it clear that Sephiroth managed to survive when Cloud fights the shirtless manifestation of Sephiroth that is still stopping Holy in the Crater. And also all the final bosses are named Sephiroth, except for the one named Jenova. Nah, I interpret that as the Sephiroth-in-Cloud, now. He's not physically present, just exerting his influence. There's a few ways you can interpret this (is it a metaphor for Cloud getting over his darker side, or is Cloud defeating his Jenova cells)?
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Apr 21, 2020 01:12
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Sephiroth killing Aerith was his biggest bungle in the OG story. He ostensibly thought he was doing it to prevent her from casting Holy, and it turns out shunting her off to the Lifestream was actually necessary to even make Holy work. Best guess is he's trying to get Cloud to save her this time, and as a consequence, Meteor can't be disintegrated quite so easily.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:13
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Harrow posted:I don't think Sephiroth brought back Zack--I think Zack's survival is just a consequence of the Whispers no longer being able to ensure that he dies. If he were leading him to Aerith why would the Whispers have interfered to keep her in place? It seems like Cloud was going to run into her Sephy pops in for a quick chat and then the ghosts have to harrass Aerith so she's still there when Cloud comes back.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:14
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Beefstew posted:Nah, I interpret that as the Sephiroth-in-Cloud, now. He's not physically present, just exerting his influence. There's a few ways you can interpret this (is it a metaphor for Cloud getting over his darker side, or is Cloud defeating his Jenova cells)? I'm pretty sure this analysis is spot-on, it's a metaphor for breaking free of a lot of stuff being taken literally. Like his childhood fixation on Sephiroth as a hero and also the Jenova mind control fuckery are being cast-off. Now Cloud has completed his journey of self-discovery that was kickstarted by the Mideel lifestream sequence, where he owns up to the failure he has perceived himself to be most of his life.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:23
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Beefstew posted:3. The stakes get ludicrously high in a span of a few minutes. We go from struggling with Shinra mechs to fighting against time gods. Then we face off against Sephiroth, who most of the crew has no relationship with, and have a climactic Advent Children-style duel with him that stretches the physics and flourish of the universe past the breaking point of what we've seen so far. Everything feels unearned, nothing has the proper impact, and in the end, I have no idea how we're expected to come back from this, considering everyone turned into the Avengers for a few minutes. Look, I prefer having Sephiroth as this unseen presence in Midgar since he's basically a bogeyman of the characters' shared traumas in the original, but I knew drat well that wouldn't happen here, and I'm fine with him showing up. But the duel could've been more grounded. I'm fine with Sephiroth being a presence in this part of the remake, especially because it's much longer than it is in the original and there's the metatextual knowledge that the vast majority of the audience, even if they never played the original, knows who Sephiroth is and would be confused if they never saw him. That part's fine with me. But yeah, one of my issues with the ending, even if I'm not willing to totally dismiss the rest of the remake, is just how wild the escalation of stakes gets right away. Like it's just utterly bonkers in a way that makes me disconnect from the story, and like maybe they were going for that Brechtian distancing effect but, eh, I kinda doubt it. I've said it a bunch but regardless of how I feel about the plot diverging from here, the execution of the ending is pretty awful. Beefstew posted:4. Sephiroth's presence, and his unexplained (or unearned, in some cases) significance to the characters jeopardizes this game as a point of entry to the FF7 story. All of a sudden, you have required reading. Who is Zack? They don't even give his name as "???" like they do with every other new NPC you meet. He's just Zack. You're expected to know him, you're expected to know this is a scene from Crisis Core. Without knowledge of the previous games, the last few scenes are just disconnected images that signify nothing. And if you are familiar with the previous games, you're running a crazy gamble against folks who might be less enthusiastic about such changes. I don't think Sephiroth's inclusion makes this a bad entry point if only because of what I noted above about Sephiroth's ubiquity. That said, I do think he's used too heavily too early and I wish there'd been more build-up to fully revealing Sephiroth. Zack, though, comes way the gently caress out of nowhere. I'm basing this on my girlfriend's reactions to the whole thing, as someone who didn't know anything about FF7's story. She was invested in all the Cloud/Sephiroth scenes, but when Zack showed up it was just, "Wait, who the gently caress is that guy? Are we supposed to know?" And not like in that fun "let's speculate!" way, but in an alienating way. It's one of those "this definitely means something if you know the original I bet, but it means nothing to me" moments. Beefstew posted:5. That brings us to the plot divergences in general. I think it's super disingenuous to say that people are afraid of change, as the previous 16 chapters proved that wasn't true. Most people say they like at least 90% of this game. Characters like Madam M and Andrea Rhodea are new, yet they're already becoming favorites. So folks' hostility towards the Whispers isn't because they're "new". It's because the newness that they signify instantly gets off on the wrong foot. We have the narrative promising a new, exciting "unknown journey", but the sequence they used to preface that contains the aforementioned weaknesses, as well as some very... Nomura characteristics. The promise now seems more like a threat. If they bungled their new content this badly out of the gate, then what are we to expect of the next game? I can quibble a bit about this. I think it comes down to the magnitude of the things the Whispers interfere with. The Whispers stay away and let new inclusions like the new Wall Market characters and events, or the new Chapter 4 adventure up to the plate with Jessie and Roche, just go right on ahead and happen. They only interfere when events would significantly diverge from the actual plot of the game. So while people have welcomed the new non-Whisper additions with open arms, would they continue to do so if those additions significantly changed the plot instead of just adding some new color to it? Legitimate question, I really don't know. This ties into the next thing: Beefstew posted:6. If the next game does feature major plot divergences, then it will have to grapple with the clumsy precedent it established, as well as finding a way to resolve character arcs in ways that are actually satisfying - which may prove quite the task, as the character stories in FF7 are so thematically interlinked that you can't change one without changing all of them. This is why people are having anxieties over authenticity. If the divergences are mostly minor, then it calls into question why we needed this ending in the first place (aside from contriving a climax). If the divergences are as significant as I'm expecting, I really, truly wonder if people would accept them even if they were included in a "seamless" way. A lot of this game teases that things are going to go very differently (right up to Barret briefly dying) and the Whispers put things back on course; now they can't do that, which tells us just how far off-course they at least want the option for the story to go. If they did this without Whispers, would people be any more accepting of divergences? I honestly think that if part 2 ended up with significant plot divergences (again, on a scale larger than story detours/extra color like in part 1) that made sense in the narrative but wasn't sort of set up with the Whispers, we'd just be having this argument over whether this is now bad because it's not a faithful remake--just a few years later and with less, uh, weird meta ghosts. So maybe that's an improvement on its own, I dunno. Beefstew posted:It's not being subversive - it's immediately taking us back to the lovely status quo we've had for 15 years. And speaking of 15 years, that's how long it's been since the possibility of a remake was first teased. Again, I don't mind them going in a different direction as long as it's not stupid and horrible, but after 15 years of waiting and 15 years of garbage Compilation content, is it any wonder why people are upset - or at least, apprehensive, as I am - by this ending? I think this is where we might disagree about where we expect this to go. I don't think we're necessarily going back to the lovely status quo, if only because they went to the effort of writing these characters correctly for this long. The plot might not be what we expect, but if they were just going to suddenly shift these characters into Advent Children mode, well... yeah, that would suck and I'd hate it, but also it just doesn't make sense as a thing for them to do after the remake we just got. Beefstew posted:Anyways, whatever. Those are my thoughts. Game good, ending bad, worried for the sequel. This is sort of where I am, though with the addition of giving them the benefit of the doubt because of how faithful and adoring of FF7 the first 30 hours of this remake were. That said, and maybe this will confuse some people after what I've been arguing all day... if someone sat me down at Destiny's Crossroads or whatever and gave me the choice between having the rest of the remake be executed like 95% of part 1 was (faithful to the overall events but with a lot of new color, new characters, plot changes where they can improve things but not veering off into a wildly new direction), or a new story that has a chance of being better and would keep me guessing, I think I'd still pick the faithful remake right now. I wish that's what they'd done. As much as I try to just embrace the unknown future with open arms, I'm still a little bit sad and disappointed. But, well, clearly that ship has sailed, so I'm at least willing to try to meet the FF7R crew where they're trying to go and hope for the best. Mostly I got frustrated today at arguing about whether or not Nomura's mocking fans who want a faithful remake or whatever, but, like... the ending is poorly executed and the door is wide open for the rest of the story to be complete nonsense. Or it could be really good, and maybe the better story Nojima & co. think they can tell really will be. I hope it is.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:27
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Flopsy posted: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. It's not like Shinra told them they need to get to the pillar and push this button. They knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyways. gently caress em both.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:33
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I guess I don't understand the logic of loving 99% of something and then hating the last 1% of it so much it makes you retroactively think the 99% was worthless Really, you've never experienced a piece of fiction with an ending that soured the rest of the experience? I can think of a few pieces of media which a lot of people would say fit in that category. Things like Mass Effect 3, Zero Time Dilemma, and that new Dragon Quest film. Not saying that FF7R's ending necessarily ruins the previous 30 hours of the game. Just that it can ruin it for some people and it's not some incomprehensible feeling.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:35
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guts and bolts posted:Yeah, Rinoa and Squall's relationship seems incredibly immature and tacky, I don't know. I just didn't enjoy it, and it's made worse by having Rinoa be constantly infantilized both through the dialogue she gets and her overall demeanor. It's just creepy. I heard somewhere that the love story in FF8 was heavily influenced by shoujo manga which was a flourishing genre at the time and you know what? It shows. Thank loving God they didn't take their cues from Hot Gimmick though. I have to say though Squall/Rinoa is one of the least compelling romances in video game history if only because they have no loving chemistry. Also the moon is made of monsters and fires them at the planet every now and again--FF8 EVERYBODY!
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Apr 21, 2020 01:36
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Flopsy posted:Also the moon is made of monsters and fires them at the planet every now and again--FF8 EVERYBODY! i mean when you put it like that it sounds like it whips rear end
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Apr 21, 2020 01:36
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DemoneeHo posted:Really, you've never experienced a piece of fiction with an ending that soured the rest of the experience? I can think of a few pieces of media which a lot of people would say fit in that category. Things like Mass Effect 3, Zero Time Dilemma, and that new Dragon Quest film. Oh God...Mass Effect....my heart hurts  ....I want my happy ending with Garrus god loving dammit! Not which flavor of laser would you prefer to gently caress you and the entire galaxy in the collective rear end.CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:It's not like Shinra told them they need to get to the pillar and push this button. They knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyways. gently caress em both. ...uhhh...yes, yes they did actually. Rude gets the order in the helicopter. Reno immediately calls it bullshit afterward and Rude says this is what they've always done. Later on you see both of them feeling sort of sick over it and Tseng tries to give them excuses they can tell themselves to feel better and offers Reno a vacation to boot. They decline both and seem a little repulsed he's actually saying these things as if that makes it better. I feel like they tried to convince themselves this is business as usual and in the aftermath it sunk in no, no it loving wasn't. Flopsy fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 21, 2020 |
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Apr 21, 2020 01:38
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Flopsy posted:Oh God...Mass Effect....my heart hurts Same dude, I wanted to build that house with Tali Though the implications of the ending to this game has me excited for the rest of the story, if they're really going for some golden ending where Aerith lives and Midgard is ecologically thriving after 500 years
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Apr 21, 2020 01:49
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Beefstew posted:Okay, since we obviously haven't talked about this enough, I'm going to explain my grievances with the ending. But first, allow me to wear my biases on my sleeve, so that you might find it easier to understand where I'm coming from and what I like: I think Evangelion is pretentious and Hideaki Anno is stuffed up his own rear end; Metal Gear Solid 2 is a fun exercise in political fantasy and has a shocking amount of foresight in terms of how the public gets its information (warped as it may be), and I'm generally a big fan of Hideo Kojima, but I think 2 is sorta the black sheep of the core 4 games; The Last Jedi had good ideas and executed them in perhaps the absolute worst possible way, and also had some pretty lovely ideas it executed on top of that; Yoko Taro makes some pretty excellent scenarios that can sometimes lose their way in navelgazing nonsense and are often let down by subpar mechanics, but NieR:Automata is one of the best games I've ever played. FF13 is my least favorite Final Fantasy title, Kingdom Hearts 3 made me almost swear off purchasing Square-Enix products ever again, Chrono Cross was a haphazard mess, and Nomura is emphatically a hack something like 80% or more of the time. quote:1. Parsing meaning is not the same as judging a text as good or bad. People aren't disliking the ending because they don't get it. It has all the subtlety of a freight train. No, people hate the ending because it's sloppy and sets concerning precedents. And unfortunately, each problem with it kinda feeds into the next. This is probably both true and not. I don't think everyone who dislikes FF7R "just doesn't get it", but I do think that readings involving the devs enacting a deliberate and malicious attempt to piss off the existing fanbase of Final Fantasy VII are woefully misguided at best and outright lunacy at worst. Not every loving creator hates their own fanbase. I do not know why this is the default stance whenever creatives put out product that deviates from exactly what fan expectation may be/have been. That is a really bad way to engage with media that you purportedly enjoy. quote:2. The ending feels like a resolution to a conflict that had barely started. Let's ignore the fact that I think that time travel/destiny nonsense needlessly complicates the story of FF7. Even viewing this game as an independent work, the time ghosts are totally ancillary for most of the plot. I feel like the developers wanted some kind of climactic conclusion, since we wouldn't get to kill Sephiroth or defeat Shinra in this installment, so we get time ghosts. The problem is that defying destiny/fate has little or nothing to do with our characters' stories, except in the most tenuous of extrapolations (yes, Cloud remarks on the single destination of railroads early on, but he's not reflecting on any of his actual angst here). As such, the focus to confront the Whispers becomes entirely extra-diegetic. It's no longer about the characters fighting fascism, corporatism, and struggling with their grief - instead, they become sock puppets in the final two chapters, losing their individuality and personal drives for the purpose of authorial navelgazing. It's up for debate how antagonistic the ending was intended to be for players, and contrary to what's been echoes in this thread, artist often do insert antagonistic messaging in their works (think back to End of Evangelion, where Anno showed photos of the death threats and vandalism he had received, as well as shots of cosplaying weebs sitting baffled in a movie theater). However, the intent here is pretty much irrelevant, as we've already got a pretty clear understanding of the metaphor. The problem lies in its execution. It's too fast, it interrupts the current story, and we're told that it's supposed to matter when it really doesn't. Again, it feels like it was inserted to give the game a more proper climax. Some of this rings a little bit true, but as a truth born of necessity rather than some sort of nefariousness on behalf of the producers and moneyed interests that made the game possible. They did need to come up with a suitably satisfying conclusion and that is almost certainly why Sephiroth shows up as a boss you can fight. Where I think we might disagree is a) on how antagonistic toward the fans that this twist was intended to be, and b) on the validity of metanarrative influences on the text itself. Very few satisfying stories are strictly about what they say they are about. I'm not trying to be literary criticism 101 here or talk down to anybody, and sometimes a sailboat is just a sailboat, but even the original Final Fantasy VII is not strictly about a spiky-haired blonde superhero killing Sesshomaru from Inuyasha so that he can stop a meteor from doing an extinction. It's about loss, grief, and overcoming trauma to become a self-actualized person, in addition to being about corporate interests running roughshod over the environment and the populace is too convenienced by what that corporation offers in exchange to tender even a token resistance, in addition to being about the often invisible nature of mental illness, in addition to being about the loss of cultural dignity and identity in post-WW2 Japan -- like, there is an awful lot of subtext going on, and nearly all of it is just straight up more engaging than "teenagers have to do the plot to Jerry Bruckheimer's Armageddon or whatever." The sticking point of the ending seems to be that it is diegetically rushed and communicates a message that really only functions on a meta level, especially given the final line of the game being "The unknown journey will continue." I concede that I believe that that is true, while adding that I think the point of the ending was always going to be the metafictional message - hey, guys, it's new poo poo from here on in! That was the powerful statement they were aiming at. The alternative in a more faithful retelling would have been to end the game on Motor Ball, which is less a whimper and more of a fart to conclude the epic first chapter in a generationally beloved classic. In going for the meta statement - things are different, old fans! ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE kevin_garnett.gif - they sacrificed some actual narrative cohesion, and you could argue that that's a poor choice. I might even agree? Probably? But given how lavish and loving the depiction of the original FF7 is in this game, I highly doubt it was all in service of a "drumroll please, aaaaaand gently caress YOU FANS" gotcha moment. quote:3. The stakes get ludicrously high in a span of a few minutes. We go from struggling with Shinra mechs to fighting against time gods. Then we face off against Sephiroth, who most of the crew has no relationship with, and have a climactic Advent Children-style duel with him that stretches the physics and flourish of the universe past the breaking point of what we've seen so far. Everything feels unearned, nothing has the proper impact, and in the end, I have no idea how we're expected to come back from this, considering everyone turned into the Avengers for a few minutes. Look, I prefer having Sephiroth as this unseen presence in Midgar since he's basically a bogeyman of the characters' shared traumas in the original, but I knew drat well that wouldn't happen here, and I'm fine with him showing up. But the duel could've been more grounded. In fairness, Cloud (and indeed the whole party's) relative "strength" is wildly uneven just in general, and the ending is not unique in this aspect. Aerith is rescued by the Whispers from maybe falling from the upstairs of the church, and Cloud has to help her (and kinda struggles!) with the epic task of moving a dresser out of the way. What Cloud does to fight Sephiroth and the Whisper Harbinger is also not really all that out of place with some of the insane poo poo we've already seen him do. The characters are exactly as strong as required by the plot in any given moment and no stronger/weaker, as exemplified when Barret gets stuck up by an old man with a gold-plated Luger or when Cloud, who recently sliced and diced a prototype Shinra Gundam, has to also struggle to defeat a literal house. These are largely acceptable breaks from reality and are not unique to even the ending of FF7R, let alone to FF7R as a work. I'm not saying that some of these breaks from reality may stick in your craw, but this is not a problem with the ending, I think, it's fair to say. I myself probably would've preferred an ending in which the duel is more grounded and in which Cloud and the rest lose to Sephiroth, so he can keep up that level of heat rolling into the sequel. Assuming we get it before everyone dies of old age or worse. quote:4. Sephiroth's presence, and his unexplained (or unearned, in some cases) significance to the characters jeopardizes this game as a point of entry to the FF7 story. All of a sudden, you have required reading. Who is Zack? They don't even give his name as "???" like they do with every other new NPC you meet. He's just Zack. You're expected to know him, you're expected to know this is a scene from Crisis Core. Without knowledge of the previous games, the last few scenes are just disconnected images that signify nothing. And if you are familiar with the previous games, you're running a crazy gamble against folks who might be less enthusiastic about such changes. Knowing who Zack is strikes me as a fanservicey benefit and not required reading; it isn't like knowing who Zack is has afforded any of us special knowledge into what the gently caress is happening or what they're going to do with him, which puts us cool kids like a hair above new players in terms of the advanced knowledge department. Even with awareness of who the characters are and what games they're referencing, the last few scenes are evocative of what may come but not exactly clear cut in terms of their meaning. Sephiroth, on the other hand, by hook or by crook, has had his influence on the early narrative significantly boosted, so I don't buy that he doesn't earn his importance or that he's totally unexplained. Even if you were brand-new to the game, we know Sephiroth killed Cloud's family, burned down his hometown, and wants to manipulate our protagonist onto his side. He keeps showing up and he keeps being creepy and adversarial. Newbies may not know what his end game is, but neither do we, the old heads. quote:5. That brings us to the plot divergences in general. I think it's super disingenuous to say that people are afraid of change, as the previous 16 chapters proved that wasn't true. Most people say they like at least 90% of this game. Characters like Madam M and Andrea Rhodea are new, yet they're already becoming favorites. So folks' hostility towards the Whispers isn't because they're "new". It's because the newness that they signify instantly gets off on the wrong foot. We have the narrative promising a new, exciting "unknown journey", but the sequence they used to preface that contains the aforementioned weaknesses, as well as some very... Nomura characteristics. The promise now seems more like a threat. If they bungled their new content this badly out of the gate, then what are we to expect of the next game? Madam M, Andrea Rhodea, Chocobo Sam, Leslie, Kyrie, Oates -- in addition to innumerable small changes or even larger ones like the battle mechanics -- are not really impactful narrative change, and to argue otherwise is disingenuous. The metafictional device of the Whispers demonstrate this themselves by not loving with any of that. They don't cut short your first motorcycle chase or hurry you along while you're sidequesting, because let's be real: everyone knows these changes are of relatively minor import. They flesh out existing material and nothing more, and have virtually zero plot significance outside of maintaining the status quo. If Andrea Rhodea fought Don Corneo on behalf of the party pre-Abzu and then joined as a guest character for the sewers, yes, the same group of people currently lamenting the ending would have hated that, too. What some people wanted, whether they cop to it or not, was a Final Fantasy VII that changed a rusty old turn-based battle system and gave voice acting to characters they liked, and that's about it. Fleshing out the world is barely change, if we're being honest. The argument being made here, essentially, is that "change is good as long as it doesn't matter." Which, yeah, okay. I'm not actually trying to trivialize this perspective. It's perfectly okay to have wished for a Final Fantasy VII that is just updated according to advances in technology, and it's okay to be disappointed that FF7R isn't that. But I don't think that side gets to have its cake and eat it, too, where there's this claim of being TOTES okay with changes when they really, emphatically, are not. quote:6. If the next game does feature major plot divergences, then it will have to grapple with the clumsy precedent it established, as well as finding a way to resolve character arcs in ways that are actually satisfying - which may prove quite the task, as the character stories in FF7 are so thematically interlinked that you can't change one without changing all of them. This is why people are having anxieties over authenticity. If the divergences are mostly minor, then it calls into question why we needed this ending in the first place (aside from contriving a climax). The anxieties over whether this team can produce character-authentic divergences that still feature satisfying arcs are valid, but that's why so many have touted how excellent the character writing is in this game. This script, even if no future FF7R title does, gets these characters, and that gives me at least a little confidence that we can have new experiences that still feel meaningful and powerful with this same cast. quote:7. People seem to say that this ending was necessary to get away from the time ghosts so that we can free things up for new content, but that reasoning is inherently fallacious. You could've just... not had the time ghosts interfering with events. You could've just had events transpire differently in an organic manner, one where causality actually applies. This is where Rebuild of Evangelion succeeds and the end of FF7R falters. Neither the presence of the ghosts nor their destruction was necessary to institute changes, big or small. And I doubt that we'd introduce the Whispers in one game only to abandon them in the sequels. That would makes sense, since we killed them, but I just don't see Square doing that. Therefore, we still have a lot of problems related to stakes and lasting consequences. We may still have a lot of problems related to stakes and lasting consequences based on the assumption that the Whispers will stick around to needle the party. I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of what FF7R did versus Rebuild of Eva, and you could make the argument that they tried to make this metafictional stuff too accessible by literally anthropomorphizing it and having the party loving kill it, but that was the choice that was made. I think that given the rest of the tone of the game, the ending fits with what they were trying to do. It's okay to not agree or even to dislike that, and I respect your take. quote:8. The fact that we're still debating whether or not we retconned the universe by defeating the Whispers illustrates the levels of needless complexity that's obfuscated the human drama of the story. If we haven't, then we're effectively showing off alternate timelines that have no effect on the narrative. If we have, then we've opened up a can of worms for the story to retcon whatever it wants. Zack and Biggs are back (maybe? Who knows! Probably a Nomura mystery box.) Biggs' return feels particularly cheap, as there's little conceivable way he could've survived unless we retconned him back from the grave, which just seems lazy. Moreover, when a narrative invokes imagery that borders on being reminiscent of 9/11, asks the audience to take it seriously, and executes the drama and emotions therein really well... it's understandable that people feel cheated when the game sames that none of that mattered. The kind of poo poo we saw in Tifa's Chapter 14 scene now feels like filler, and what's more, it gives the notion that the human drama that we'd been building up has been put on hold to battle extra-diegetic time ghosts. Which is a real shame, because these characters were doing so well up until this point. I think points like these are borne of worry that "nothing matters anymore" when... I cannot stress enough how the-opposite-of-that I feel. Everything matters more. Tifa's heartache over her shared loss with Cloud isn't invalidated by anything we've seen, people are just worried that it somehow will be? Why would the horrible poo poo that's happened so far have somehow not happened? I get that it's concerned because nobody knows, but it's just that - nobody knows! Nobody has any idea what Zack or Biggs or any of that will have to do with the changes moving forward. You can speculate all you want about how Nomura is almost sure to gently caress this up, and maybe it is all on him and maybe he will! But that's all it is, speculation, and I think it's time for people to acknowledge that. quote:9. FF7R was the first time since the original game that the characters actually felt like themselves. I don't think I need to get into what the problems with Advent Children and the like are, do I? With AC and their cameos in Kingdom Hearts, FF7 characters have gradually been skewed over the years until they barely resembled their original incarnations. I think this is the crux of the argument - that nobody trusts Nomura to not do a Kingdom Hearts III and ruin all of this poo poo. But Nomura is the director of this game. The same character writing that you just got finished lauding also proceeded apace under his direction. I'm not saying you have no right to be worried, but to only bring up the bad and completely ignore the good seems like pointless doom-and-gloomery that will only amplify your existing anxieties about how this all turns out. Many people hold Nomura accountable for stuff they don't enjoy, and are now holding FF7R accountable for those same dislikes despite the fact that it hasn't yet even become the type of poo poo they're so concerned about, it just maybe threatens to, and therefore this ending is a betrayal, or something. Again, if you are apprehensive, I can both appreciate that and tell you that hell, same, my man. But to write off FF7R as garbage because you hate Nomura and this COULD so easily become Nomura-style poo poo is doing a disservice to what this game actually accomplishes. It has faults, and the ending does make some sacrifices for the sake of trying to make a point that isn't as clever as the developers seem to think it is, but this: quote:I spent about two days deciding if the ending made me hate the rest of the game. Thankfully, I don't think it has, but I do think Square will have to win me over again for part 2, to prove that they're not gonna go full stupid. Give it a chance I guess is the main thrust of all my points. Yeah, we don't know what could happen, and the original was good, but that's the point. Maybe it's fuckin' cool! guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Apr 21, 2020 |
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Apr 21, 2020 01:51
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Flopsy posted:I heard somewhere that the love story in FF8 was heavily influenced by shoujo manga which was a flourishing genre at the time and you know what? It shows. Thank loving God they didn't take their cues from Hot Gimmick though. Shojo manga is as diverse as any other demographic-based manga. You got Hot Gimmicks but then you also get Fushigi Yuugi. FY had its issues but it's nothing like HG. Tamahome was very warm and loving. Some girls are into the cold, aloof jerk boyfriend but many others aren't.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:53
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So how did Rebuild of Evangelion go? It comes up a lot but having never watched it I'm not sure how it compares in subtlety, effectiveness, magnitude of changes, etc. How far from the original does it diverge and does it just present that as the new events or what? Side note: how protective of the original narrative are Evangelion fans? I know a lot of FF7 fans are pretty insistent that many of the major plot points need to remain unchanged or the remake just won't be right--do hardcore Eva fans have similar feelings or are they more open to things veering off wildly because, y'know, it's Eva? I legit don't know but this conversation has me intensely curious.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:56
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Beefstew posted:Incredibly good assessment of the ending I agree with literally every word written here. Goddamn. Bravo.  This exactly sums up my feelings on the whole thing, but I doubt I could have expressed that well. Thank you writing it! I was starting to think I was alone on this island, it's a bit of a relief to hear that someone else understands where I'm coming from. Harrow posted:I'm fine with Sephiroth being a presence in this part of the remake, especially because it's much longer than it is in the original and there's the metatextual knowledge that the vast majority of the audience, even if they never played the original, knows who Sephiroth is and would be confused if they never saw him. That part's fine with me. (Bold emphasis is mine) Yeah, this the thing I was taking about in terms of writing themselves into a corner. How the hell do we ramp back down from this? We went from relatively grounded in a sci-fi hippie spirit planet setting that feels partially ripped by DBZ to something from the ending of Lightning Returns. It's hard to suspend disbelief that our heroes are going to have problems with boats or planes or Shinra after the story escalates to fighting the planet/fate of the universe/altering history. That's way, way above evil company does bad stuff or bad guy wants to take over the world in terms of scale of conflict. Harrow posted:I don't think Sephiroth's inclusion makes this a bad entry point if only because of what I noted above about Sephiroth's ubiquity. That said, I do think he's used too heavily too early and I wish there'd been more build-up to fully revealing Sephiroth. More Sephiroth sooner is definitely one of the better changes they brought to the table. In the original, Cloud tells everyone to run away before his fight with Rufus because he understands Sephiroth is a bigger threat to the planet. But the player sure as gently caress doesn't know this. We don't know this until after the Motorball fight. And even then, it's just Cloud saying he's alive and they need to chase him because he's bad and we don't know what he's up to while they stand on a highway overlooking the city outskirts. More Sephiroth early REALLY helps smooth out this extremely flimsy part of the original narrative. The entire Kalm flashback seems to happen right after Midgar for the purpose of telling us who Sephiroth is and why Cloud is so insistent upon chasing him. The FF7R set itself up pretty good such that the Kalm flashback doesn't need to happen all at once or right away. The characters have a clear target who is blatantly egging them on. They could dole out the flashback information piece by piece as needed and more smoothly integrate it into the experience. Harrow posted:Zack, though, comes way the gently caress out of nowhere. I'm basing this on my girlfriend's reactions to the whole thing, as someone who didn't know anything about FF7's story. She was invested in all the Cloud/Sephiroth scenes, but when Zack showed up it was just, "Wait, who the gently caress is that guy? Are we supposed to know?" And not like in that fun "let's speculate!" way, but in an alienating way. It's one of those "this definitely means something if you know the original I bet, but it means nothing to me" moments. There was a similar reaction over here. That's part of what makes me believe folks should really play the original if they want to follow the Remake, because it looks like some major plot points are literally going to be the fact that things ARE different. If you don't know what the original events were, having them not happen or happen differently has no impact at all, the narrative significance of the change is lost. That's where my belief that isn't really a remake is rooted in. If you need to have played the original for the new plot to make sense because the act of changing the original story is in and of itself a story event... Is this really a remake? Is this made for newcomers to experience FF7 for the first time or is this a sequel intended for fans of the original that won't make a whole lot of sense without that context? Long post already, sheesh. Gonna give my thumbs a break and stare at the sky for a while. But the rest of this post is really good, too.
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Apr 21, 2020 01:57
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Since FF8 there have been more FFs with time travel/timeline fuckery than not lol The very first game has you closing a time loop where the Fiends sent Garland back in time, he becomes Chaos, and sends the Fiends forward in time to send him back in time. Doing this also erases the need for you to have even gone back in the first place, and the paradox you create by fixing the previous paradox is only avoided by long-lived species like elves and dragons having ripple proof memory to remember what you did. FF has been doing time travel fuckery since day one.
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Apr 21, 2020 02:00
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Harrow posted:So how did Rebuild of Evangelion go? It comes up a lot but having never watched it I'm not sure how it compares in subtlety, effectiveness, magnitude of changes, etc. How far from the original does it diverge and does it just present that as the new events or what? It is less of a remake than this game though.
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Apr 21, 2020 02:01
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