|
Elephant Ambush posted:OK so I finished the game last night and I did not kill any whispers. I saw no indication that the whispers had all been defeated and were never coming back and everyone itt keeps insisting that we killed them all off. When and where did this take place? The 3 main party stand-in demon things and the huge demon behind them were not whispers. What am I missing here? ImpAtom posted:... The bosses are literally called "Whispers." That is their name. They are Whispers. If you assess them it tells you they come from the future to protect the timeline that gave rise to them, lol
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 22:18 |
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:OK so I finished the game last night and I did not kill any whispers. I saw no indication that the whispers had all been defeated and were never coming back and everyone itt keeps insisting that we killed them all off. When and where did this take place? The 3 main party stand-in demon things and the huge demon behind them were not whispers. What am I missing here? They explicitly were. You might've tuned out or not paid attention to the cutscene, but they were absolutely described and portrayed as that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:27
|
|
|
Harrow posted:Okay cool, then we're in agreement. I've been getting kind of frustrated with the framing that people who don't like the ending must necessarily be inflexible purists (to put it more kindly than I think some have) rather than just, y'know, having other reasons for not liking a thing. Maybe it's because I'm still feeling conflicted between liking and disliking it and working it out but I'm sensitive to being dismissive of either take. Here's the thing: if the "FF7R's ending is so bad it invalidates or almost invalidates the preceding 95% of the game" take is to be read at face value, there are scant few conclusions you can draw from that statement, and some of those conclusions create cognitive dissonance. I'm taking care to not present a strawman, here - this has been explicitly stated by more than one poster. It is virtually impossible to engage a take of this caliber without pointing out some of that dissonance, which inevitably leads to more talking-past-one-another. I feel for you in particular because you seem to try playing devil's advocate, or at least attempt to establish like a middle ground, that frankly neither arguing side seems to cotton to with any enthusiasm.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:28
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:If you assess them it tells you they come from the future to protect the timeline that gave rise to them, lol I did assess them. I was up late so I don't remember all the words there and I will probably go back and replay that section. Even still, those were only 3 whispers and not all zillion of them. Am I supposed to infer that the huge whisper was all the rest of them put together or something?
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:29
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:OK so I finished the game last night and I did not kill any whispers. I saw no indication that the whispers had all been defeated and were never coming back and everyone itt keeps insisting that we killed them all off. When and where did this take place? The 3 main party stand-in demon things and the huge demon behind them were not whispers. What am I missing here?  also the sparkles you see in the final montage are also seen earlier in the game when you kill whispers, implying that they've dissipated everywhere
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:30
|
|
|
homeless snail posted:The culture war stuff to me though are the people that barge in every couple pages with their big brained reading of how the ghosts actually represent the unwashed masses of horrible gamers. That's a very explicitly antagonistic and self serving reading. I think that's what most people are referring to when they say CULTURE WAR itt Except the people reading the Whispers as an antagonistic gently caress-you to the fanbase tend to be the people who feel antagonized by that reading, not people trying to feel superior to purists or whatever, which makes this incredibly frustrating. Elephant Ambush posted:OK so I finished the game last night and I did not kill any whispers. I saw no indication that the whispers had all been defeated and were never coming back and everyone itt keeps insisting that we killed them all off. When and where did this take place? The 3 main party stand-in demon things and the huge demon behind them were not whispers. What am I missing here? Seriously? Elephant Ambush posted:I did assess them. I was up late so I don't remember all the words there and I will probably go back and replay that section. Seriously?
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:30
|
|
|
Caidin posted:Um, well... Red tells you what it is and what it wants, Where are you is a reasonable question but I've become very used to final boss fight dimensions over the years so the fine details there don't especially matter to me. Is it cathartic though? The last major thing the ghosts did in the story was saving Barret's life. The team suddenly turning on a dime from their very well-defined personal ambitions to "we must step through a portal and defeat the concept of destiny" is not good. Barret deciding to step through a portal he's told he may never come back from and potentially abandon Marlene forever is especially poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:31
|
|
|
Necrothatcher posted:Is it cathartic though? The last major thing the ghosts did in the story was saving Barret's life. The team suddenly turning on a dime from their very well-defined personal ambitions to "we must step through a portal and defeat the concept of destiny" is not good. Barret deciding to step through a portal he's told he may never come back from and potentially abandon Marlene forever is especially poo poo. They dropped the plate the plate on Wedge and his cats, so yes it was.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:32
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:I did assess them. I was up late so I don't remember all the words there and I will probably go back and replay that section. Yes. You literally see that onscreen.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
Justice for Biggums, Reggie and Smalls
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:33
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:Except the people reading the Whispers as an antagonistic gently caress-you to the fanbase tend to be the people who feel antagonized by that reading, not people trying to feel superior to purists or whatever, which makes this incredibly frustrating.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:34
|
|
|
I will agree that the ending jump to fight the final bosses was a bit abrupt and didn't make sense for some characters. The reason why I feel like FF7R is becoming Aerith's story is partially because she has the strongest motivation and understanding of what it means to challenge the whispers so she's in the driver's seat at the end. Cloud is pulled in by (his yet-to-be-understood) conflict with Sephiroth. Red XIII got the mind magic or whatever from Aerith. Tifa and Barret make less sense, especially if Barret thinks about the Whispers saving his life and the idea that the Whispers serve the will of the planet... which is what he has been fighting for this whole time
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:36
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:I will agree that the ending jump to fight the final bosses was a bit abrupt and didn't make sense for some characters. The reason why I feel like FF7R is becoming Aerith's story is partially because she has the strongest motivation and understanding of what it means to challenge the whispers so she's in the driver's seat at the end. Cloud is pulled in by (his yet-to-be-understood) conflict with Sephiroth. Red XIII got the mind magic or whatever from Aerith. Tifa and Barret make less sense, especially if Barret thinks about the Whispers saving his life and the idea that the Whispers serve the will of the planet... which is what he has been fighting for this whole time Barret also saw the Whispers literally stopping them from saving Sector 7 which lead (as far as he knows) to the death of most of his closest friends and would have killed his daughter if not for Aerith.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:37
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:Except the people reading the Whispers as an antagonistic gently caress-you to the fanbase tend to be the people who feel antagonized by that reading, not people trying to feel superior to purists or whatever, which makes this incredibly frustrating. Holy gently caress stop being such a condescending shithead. No wonder nobody takes you seriously or reads your walls of text. And yeah clearly I need to go back and replay that part while not super tired. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:38
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:I feel for you in particular because you seem to try playing devil's advocate, or at least attempt to establish like a middle ground, that frankly neither arguing side seems to cotton to with any enthusiasm. Yeah, I don't really like to say "devil's advocate" but I definitely think my instinct with things like this is to find a middle ground, mostly because there are things I like and find interesting about the Whispers/ending but I have very mixed feelings about the execution and where we might go from here. So I end up arguing with both sides and probably not really adding much, ha. Generally I just get frustrated with the idea that the creators did this out of some sort of contempt for fans or FF7 itself, but also with the idea that anyone who didn't like the ending just be some sort of hypernerd purist, too. There are a lot of things there to both like and dislike, and an unknown future is exciting to some and worrying to others. I'm all for speculating about what will come next and even debating the merits of the ending but man I'm just getting worn down by how dismissive some of this discussion gets.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:38
|
|
|
homeless snail posted:I've seen it both ways, in fact you were making that reading yourself like 4 days ago. But yes of course people that feel antagonized by that reading are still gonna make it. People felt personally antagonized by a loving Star Wars sequel, its own dumbass culture war Except no I wasn't and that is what I'm talking about - I was absolutely not, ever, and took great pains to point out that I was not, reading the ghosts as some antagonistic tell-off to purist fans! The Whispers represent, almost not even metatextually but in plain text, a pressure to not deviate from Final Fantasy VII, and that pressure is the result of fan expectation, media expectation - expectation. I do not know how I can be more to-the-point or explicit about this! Feeling pressure to live up to the expectations placed on you when recreating a game that is by all accounts inviolable canon in the industry doesn't mean that purist fans are bad or even wrong to want that, or to expect it, but to pretend the pressure isn't there is capital C Crazy pills. There is so much time, attention, and love poured into every aspect of this game, faithfully bringing to life the characters as they were in the original and bringing locales that were once only abstract super-deformed metaphors into 2020, that there is almost no possible way to read this game or any of its metatextual elements as a "gently caress you" to anybody, least of all the consumer base. Like, aaaaaaaaa guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Apr 21, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:40
|
|
|
Harrow posted:Yeah, I don't really like to say "devil's advocate" but I definitely think my instinct with things like this is to find a middle ground, mostly because there are things I like and find interesting about the Whispers/ending but I have very mixed feelings about the execution and where we might go from here. So I end up arguing with both sides and probably not really adding much, ha. Anyone who thinks the creators had contempt for FF7 is actively and openly ignoring the entire rest of the game
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:40
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:I did assess them. I was up late so I don't remember all the words there and I will probably go back and replay that section. IMO this is ambiguous but the characters seem to treat it like they're fully freeing themselves from the Whispers by fighting them here, and it also explains why they disappear from the Zack scene. Something I wonder about is that scene of Sephiroth seemingly absorbing them along with an image of Meteor. My assumption is that he absorbed them like he absorbs power from the lifestream, mostly because the Whispers come from the lifestream in the first place, but I wonder if that means he has more explicit time powers now or that he just ate their strength or something.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:41
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:Holy gently caress stop being such a condescending shithead. No wonder nobody takes you seriously or reads your walls of text. My man you came into this thread to call me "pathetic and sad" half-cocked, you understand practically nothing about a game that you seem REAL interested in having an opinion about, and you're gonna try to trivialize effortposts and keep going for ad hominems? You're embarrassing yourself. Stop.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:41
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:Anyone who thinks the creators had contempt for FF7 is actively and openly ignoring the entire rest of the game Yeah, exactly. So much of this game was an out-and-out celebration of FF7 that even in the worst case scenario that what comes next ends up being dumb, it's still going to be glowing with love for the original.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:42
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:Anyone who thinks the creators had contempt for FF7 is actively and openly ignoring the entire rest of the game In this very thread: quote:It definitely seems like that ending was 100% designed to be the creative director speaking directly to the audience and telling us that's the only part of a faithful FF7 Remake you're going to get.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
CharlieFoxtrot posted:I will agree that the ending jump to fight the final bosses was a bit abrupt and didn't make sense for some characters. The reason why I feel like FF7R is becoming Aerith's story is partially because she has the strongest motivation and understanding of what it means to challenge the whispers so she's in the driver's seat at the end. Cloud is pulled in by (his yet-to-be-understood) conflict with Sephiroth. Red XIII got the mind magic or whatever from Aerith. Tifa and Barret make less sense, especially if Barret thinks about the Whispers saving his life and the idea that the Whispers serve the will of the planet... which is what he has been fighting for this whole time I vaguely remember Aerith making a speech but wasn't the party motivated into going through the portal to follow Sephiroth? and ideally kill him? 3 out 5 party members were empathized that it was critical to do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Caidin posted:I hear tell that subversion Materia to dispel it when it berserks are pretty handy. It berserks? Man, this game really needs to work on not using UI symbols and words as a crutch over visual communication.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:52
|
|
|
Pollyanna posted:It berserks? Man, this game really needs to work on not using UI symbols and words as a crutch over visual communication. Well, it does start glowing red when it does.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:54
|
|
|
I don't know if anyone linked it before, but this article talks about the whole "pressures of a remake", and touches on VIIR and how the plot was based around these pressures and expectations: https://kotaku.com/what-we-remake-1842868274 And I'd have to find the quote Onmi posted ages ago, but it's directly from the developers saying they wanted to change things specifically to evoke those same feelings in fans that the fans had playing the original. If they made a pure remake, people would say "ah, this is nostalgic, how nice" but would provide no other real emotions. The only way they could provide more, to evoke wonder and mystery and suspense, is by making it so the future is uncertain, so that the stakes aren't fully known. They're trying to give the fans something, not to just masturbate for their own pleasure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:54
|
|
|
anakha posted:In this very thread: But that quote is from Xaiter IIRC, and he's the guy who perceives himself as the target for the antagonism. I've seen at least as many takes that have this reading from people who hated FF7R as those who didn't.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:54
|
|
|
anakha posted:In this very thread: The even more frustrating part about that is that Yoko Taro absolutely does not hate his audience. Creating stories about grief and hard choices and making games a slog to play through because you are literally playing a psychopath personally murdering thousands of people does not amount to hating his audience. There are themes in popular culture he hates, sure; this does not amount to hating the people who look at his games and say "hey I wanna play that, it looks cool." This concept of "making things that are challenging and unpleasant and not the safe route for a story to go" meaning that the person hates their fans is so frustratingly off the mark and missing any amount of subtlety.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:55
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:I think they wanted to have a firm villain who we would defeat in the first act to get a feeling of satisfaction. Sephiroth is out (though Advent Children Seph is still the final boss for extremely unclear reasons), the Shinra president is out because Sephiroth kills him and having the main antagonist get kill stolen would suck, so we got destiny ghosts. I probably would have been happier with a more anthropomorphic villain (or at least one that could talk), but there's definitely reasons they didn't go all in on any of the existing villains. Maybe they could have expanded on Rufus' role and made that rooftop battle the climax? But it'd be weird to have the climax be a solo battle with Cloud. There's just no great options, period. This is one of the reasons why I would have preferred that the Whispers be part of Obsidian WEAPON instead, to both introduce the WEAPONs and give us a more final boss-worthy enemy to fight. That would have been a better note to end on than Jenova (since we beat her before Rufus) or Sephiroth (who's eh). The other part is that I just really want to beat up a WEAPON again. quote:Speaking of villains, it's probably been said to death in the 50 pages I didn't read, but they mishandled Sephiroth pretty severely. Getting to fight a Sephiroth clone in Shinra tower was a great call, but he appears too often and that final boss fight was seriously out of place He's the final boss of the entire story, we gotta learn what his deal is and become familiar or it just seems like "kill this guy because do it".. Also, we don't fight the Sephiroth clone in Shinra tower, we fight it as the end boss (I think?).
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:56
|
|
|
Here it was:Onmi posted:Just to post more to head off the "NOMURA!" Rage train, like... everyone involved is on board with this stuff. I legit believe they were trying to change things to make the game more engaging and evocative, rather than "we want to make our own fanfiction, and TRICK the world into playing it by calling it a 'Remake'", while twirling their mustaches.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 19:58
|
|
|
I just find it weird that people are quick to go 'NOMURA!  ' when it's because of him that we have the definitive emotional moment that's happened in an RPG.I mean, to be honest, that dude really has his 'moments' and Kingdom Hearts is... well, Kingdom Hearts (though one has to wonder how much of that is because of Disney) but the dude has put in work in the games industry. Call him on his bullshit when he's actually doing bullshit is all I'm saying.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
Squidtentacle posted:The even more frustrating part about that is that Yoko Taro absolutely does not hate his audience. Creating stories about grief and hard choices and making games a slog to play through because you are literally playing a psychopath personally murdering thousands of people does not amount to hating his audience. Someone didn't do the delivery sidequests or the flower growing sidequest in Nier Gestalt  i'm being facetious, i know trolling your audience doesn't mean hating them. But you can't deny he wanted people to feel pain when playing
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
Pollyanna posted:This is one of the reasons why I would have preferred that the Whispers be part of Obsidian WEAPON instead, to both introduce the WEAPONs and give us a more final boss-worthy enemy to fight. That would have been a better note to end on than Jenova (since we beat her before Rufus) or Sephiroth (who's eh). There's at least two Sephiroth clones active in Midgar, one in sector 7 and another in sector 5. We fight two clones--the one at the top of the tower, and one as the final boss. Theres probably at least one more in Midgar who escaped with jenova. Plus however many others, in Midgar or elsewhere
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:But that quote is from Xaiter IIRC, and he's the guy who perceives himself as the target for the antagonism. I've seen at least as many takes that have this reading from people who hated FF7R as those who didn't. ImpAtom's original point still stands, though. It's illogical to take the position that the ending was done out of spite given how much obvious care was put into the game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
Zaa Boogie posted:I just find it weird that people are quick to go 'NOMURA! p sure that was nojima and kitase, nomura was strictly a character designer on the original game's team
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:Anyone who thinks the creators had contempt for FF7 is actively and openly ignoring the entire rest of the game Yeah, everything else that has been done in this game has been nothing else but a love-letter to the original final fantasy 7, and improved the game in many areas that the original needed improving. Introducing and subsequently killing the whispers was a great way to reinvigorate the stakes of the original game. We don't know if the group is going to succeed, and we don't know for sure if Aerith is going to die (and for that matter, if anyone else in the party is going to live.) By that virtue alone i'm actually going to use Aerith as a party member instead of benching her when given the chance because she might be useful later on. imo I read the ghosts as people who maintain canon for canon's sake- not necessarily "fans of the original" but people who maintain that everything must occur in a specific way and sequence otherwise the remake isn't being "true" to the source material. Zaa Boogie posted:I just find it weird that people are quick to go 'NOMURA! tbh I think it's weird that people latch on to individual devs as a signifier of game/story quality when there's a lot more involved than just one person at the helm.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:02
|
|
|
Pollyanna posted:This is one of the reasons why I would have preferred that the Whispers be part of Obsidian WEAPON instead, to both introduce the WEAPONs and give us a more final boss-worthy enemy to fight. That would have been a better note to end on than Jenova (since we beat her before Rufus) or Sephiroth (who's eh). Swapping around boss order at the end is something I think has merit. Jenova Dreamweaver feels very much like the climactic boss fight, and then you actually have to do Rufus, Motor Ball, and then Sephiroth after that. Seems weird. With regard to the WEAPON angle, that'd be a pretty big leap imo. The WEAPONs are basically a Planetary immune-system defense, and when they wake up it's like seeing some Pacific Rim poo poo on a truly grand scale. To work that into this game would've taken even more substantial changes from the route of the original. Might could have been pretty neat, but the diegetic changes would be pretty severe. anakha posted:ImpAtom's original point still stands, though. It's illogical to take the position that the ending was done out of spite given how much obvious care was put into the game. Oh definitely. I think that's been a point made by various people for like a dozen pages now. The common talking point is just that it's the SMUG SUPERIORS who keep insisting that the game is telling the UNWASHED PURIST MASSES to gently caress off because this is OUR STORY NOW or whatever, when in reality it's just as if not more common coming from people who feel, like, personally attacked by this game's ending. guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Apr 21, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:03
|
|
|
dios mio, i just realized that if/when gold saucer is introduced we are absolutely going to encounter Roche at the chocobo track
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:05
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:p sure that was nojima and kitase, nomura was strictly a character designer on the original game's team Nope, Nomura was the one who pitched either Aerith or Tifa dying to Nojima and Kitase. An original plan before that was to kill off the entire cast except for three characters as well but Nomura argued that that'd cheapen Aerith's death. Zaa Boogie fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Apr 21, 2020 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:06
|
|
|
chocobo with motorcycle handlebars and an exhaust pipe
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 22:18 |
|
|
Yeah the Weapons are activated after Meteor is summoned right
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2020 20:07
|
|