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I've been posting on this dumb forum for 13 goddamn years, and if anyone asked me about my one favorite thread of all time I'd probably say Elentor's original FFVII LP. I still have it bookmarked.  I'm glad I found this thread early on and not when it was a month from the final update like last time. Looking forward to this! 
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Jun 8, 2020 19:43
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You are all forgetting the most important minigame of all. Mog House. That aside, I am mostly curious for Junon events. I still want to jump up on an electric tower from the back a dolphin friend of a young child we saved with mouth-to-mouth minigame that went on a bit uncomfortably long even with full lung charges.
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Jun 8, 2020 21:18
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Schwartzcough posted:There's basically 0 chance they're just going to copy + paste anyone's animations. Cid is not going to move anything like Aerith, and Vincent's single-shot rifles/pistols are not going to animate anything like Barret's arm-mounted machine gun. This game is generally going for high-quality production value, and nothing says Lazy like having your main characters being literal palette-swaps of each other when it comes to animations.
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Jun 8, 2020 23:36
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he uses a spear and is terrible with magic, why would he share animations with Aerith
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Jun 9, 2020 00:42
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Update 7 - Cult of Personality Previous Next  Oh, we got to Chapter 2. Finally. I wonder how many chapters this game has. Betting on 10. What with the chapter name going all out.  Y'know, it's a weird thing that this thing exists. The game.  I mean, I haven't looked any more thoroughly than "I followed the news along with you folks", but I had the weird feeling that this game was either gonna be super short, or incomplete and rushed.  Then the Demo is out and, well, it's still just the beginning of the game but things look promising.  So I said that despite my reservations, I'd judge the game for what it is, and I kinda liked the demo.  Yes, even with the changes. If you're reading this LP odds are you know some of my opinions - I'd like to have a faithful but prettier remaster, but let's be realistic here.  I know some of you didn't like it, but you can color me surprised with the demo. It just feels so complete and polished that for a moment I actually got positively curious for this thing. And reading/hearing these characters come to live in this way was so fresh.  I don't envy the people who had the task of working in this project. Maybe a little bit. Still, that must have been some crazy pressure. This hallway goes for a while - I'm skipping some of the bantering. In the original LP I started with a lot of skipping and then as it went on I became more thorough. I have the feeling I'll have to do the opposite here, because everything has so much dialogue.    We all die here. The end.  I like the characters pondering on why the reactor explosion was so powerful. Anyway.  So, other than the complete lack of security and the fact these bozos decide to have a pep talk right here right now -    I really, really, really like this upcoming sequence.  While I enjoyed the original's subtlety, this entire sequence just showing their visceral reaction stuck with me.   This is something that I missed in the original. For some reason these three never struck me as people who'd be in this position.  And Barret was mostly a joke character until now. But here we see a bunch of really nice and interesting dialogue.   First he calls to Cloud being right, flattering him.  The mission was successful and he didn't betray us. Barret sounds like a reasonable and welcoming father figure who will take even the renegade SOLDIER.  And then he just goes all out on the motivational speech.    I don't know, but this change struck me as really good. This is one of those things I really wanted and it was surprising to get it. I love this.  He just sounds and acts like a cult leader.   This AVALANCHE kinda makes sense to me.  Also, I keep wanting to switch to little avatars and text because these dialogues are long, but hot drat -  This game is so gorgeous.  So good job, we done gently caress up this place good. Previous Next Elentor fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 02:59
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I also really enjoyed how the game did nothing to hide or brush off the emotional impact these characters suffer at their own actions.
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Jun 16, 2020 03:16
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Elentor posted:
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Jun 16, 2020 03:50
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AradoBalanga posted:I'm assuming that's a typo on your part, and you didn't mean to put the same sentence twice. It's more subtle that way.
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Jun 16, 2020 03:52
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AradoBalanga posted:I'm assuming that's a typo on your part, and you didn't mean to put the same sentence twice. I always read every update three times and for 10 years now I somehow manage to gently caress up most of them, it's beautiful. More than one person has pointed out that most of my posts are edited and I try really hard for that not to be the case but alas.
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Jun 16, 2020 03:53
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Elentor posted:I don't envy the people who had the task of working in this project. Maybe a little bit. Still, that must have been some crazy pressure. This hallway goes for a while - I'm skipping some of the bantering. In the original LP I started with a lot of skipping and then as it went on I became more thorough. I have the feeling I'll have to do the opposite here, because everything has so much dialogue. Honestly it's pretty good dialogue to boot, though I can't fault skipping some of it on the principle of maintaining your sanity LP'ing it. quote:
Yeah, they'd have to be sociopaths not to be a little sick at the sight, especially when their original plan seems to have had much less intended collateral damage. quote:
"Cult leader" strikes me as a little strong, Barret may be leading them where he wants them to go but I don't really feel like he's manipulating them per se. He definitely fanatically believes enough in his cause to do violence on its behalf of course, and the game definitely doesn't shy away from pointing out the stress and risk being guerillas/terrorists inflicts on them even if it's pretty obvious that yes, Shinra is bad and needs to be stopped. quote:This game is so gorgeous. God, yes, this feels like a real labor of love, and they did a great job keeping the original feel of things while making them seem more lived in. I never have any doubt you're walking around an actual city that people live in with the game. And the character art improvements (plus having actual voiced lines now, of course) has done a great job making the original story pop more too. Elentor posted:I always read every update three times and for 10 years now I somehow manage to gently caress up most of them, it's beautiful. Pfff, most of us don't write any original LP entries to be corrected anyway  .
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Jun 16, 2020 05:08
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MadDogMike posted:
I would go more for like a Preacher.
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Jun 16, 2020 05:31
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MadDogMike posted:"Cult leader" strikes me as a little strong, Barret may be leading them where he wants them to go but I don't really feel like he's manipulating them per se. He definitely fanatically believes enough in his cause to do violence on its behalf of course, and the game definitely doesn't shy away from pointing out the stress and risk being guerillas/terrorists inflicts on them even if it's pretty obvious that yes, Shinra is bad and needs to be stopped. Nah, I think it's a pretty fair comparison. He uses the destruction to get them to commit to the mission, sets up the struggle in abstract terms that indicate that it's much more important than any amount of damage they may have caused, suggests that anything they might do is justified because it's in retaliation against Shinra who hurt the planet first, and sets himself up as the moral center and source of absolution. That's pretty textbook "bind people to the cause" 101. Let's put it this way: if we hadn't seen Shinra blow up the reactor (and if I hadn't played the original), I'd be theorizing that Barrett gave Jesse plans for an overly powerful bomb specifically to create and then exploit this despair to further indocrinate her. "There ain't no getting off this train we on."
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Jun 16, 2020 05:50
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Elentor posted:Oh, we got to Chapter 2. Finally. I wonder how many chapters this game has. Betting on 10. What with the chapter name going all out. quote:This game is so gorgeous.
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Jun 16, 2020 06:18
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I mean, the problem with calling barret a cult leader is that he's kinda actually 100% right within the context of the world, as shinra are literally going to kill every single living thing on the planet through mako overusage if nobody stops them (just look at the giant loving desert around Midgar, that wasn't there before the city came,) they've made it quite clear over the preceding decades that they have zero interest in pursuing alternate methods of power or mitigating the current effects, and every single person who AVALANCHE may kill by bombing reactors is 100% hosed anyway if the reactors continue. Like, we're not talking real life here, we're talking an entirely different metaphysical system that you can literally see in action.
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Jun 16, 2020 07:38
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I mean, the only quantifiable difference between an 'extremist cult leader' and a 'preacher of the faith' is the amount of popularity you have. Christianity was a cult until it became big, Islam was a cult until it became big, Scientology is approaching the point where it may not be considered a 'cult' soon enough. In fact, the modern definition of a 'cult', as copy/pasted from Wikipedia is "a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal." No matter how you look at it, AVALANCHE (or at least, Barret's offshoot of it) fits that definition.
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Jun 16, 2020 10:49
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Some Numbers posted:Do you want an answer to this pondering? Nope!
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Jun 16, 2020 12:28
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:I mean, the problem with calling barret a cult leader is that he's kinda actually 100% right within the context of the world, as shinra are literally going to kill every single living thing on the planet through mako overusage if nobody stops them (just look at the giant loving desert around Midgar, that wasn't there before the city came,) they've made it quite clear over the preceding decades that they have zero interest in pursuing alternate methods of power or mitigating the current effects, and every single person who AVALANCHE may kill by bombing reactors is 100% hosed anyway if the reactors continue. Like, we're not talking real life here, we're talking an entirely different metaphysical system that you can literally see in action. Eh, in as much as everything you described is just a metaphor for climate change, we kinda are talking about real life tbh. The real issue is that the techniques of "manipulative cult leaders" and "legitimate political/military leaders" overlap a lot. In terms of how we feel about them, ethically, one way of drawing the line (and the one you're pointing out) is that cult leaders create urgency to move people to action on entirely fictitious premises, while legitimate leaders create urgency to move people to action on real premises about what's actually happening in the world. Of course "legitimate" leaders can also engage in stretching the truth or making up bullshit too, so it's more of a continuum, but the point is that it's not the technique of motivating people that really is at issue but how justified the use of those techniques is. He is like a cult leader, and would actually be one if he were just lying out the rear end or talking complete nonsense to his people.
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Jun 16, 2020 13:13
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I forget who said it, but the best definition I've seen is that a cult is a religion that lacks political influence.Surprise T Rex posted:Fort Condor would be fine if the fastest setting wasn't still unbearably slow. Dump your dudes and wait for the win to happen, but it takes a good 5+ minutes just because everything moves at a crawl. As I recall you can actually cheese the Fort Condor minigame in like 30 seconds if you just bumrush the enemy backline the moment that the battle starts, as the thing ends immediately if there are no enemies on screen.
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Jun 16, 2020 14:48
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Cerebral Bore posted:I forget who said it, but the best definition I've seen is that a cult is a religion that lacks political influence. Well in modern parlance, especially when it comes to legally defining cults, I think it also has to demand people cut themselves off from non-cult social groups and give money or other property to the cult.
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Jun 16, 2020 16:39
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Red Dead Redemption 2 had a really nice example of a subtle cult with what Dutch was doing. "Look I'm all you've got and to reinforce that point I'm going to keep making the situation we're in worse." Kind of like Barret 
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Jun 16, 2020 20:04
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GunnerJ posted:Eh, in as much as everything you described is just a metaphor for climate change, we kinda are talking about real life tbh. This is a terrifying thought, which also makes this remake incredibly salient at this point in time. FF7R puts us in the shoes of eco-terrorists and they're the heroes. Cult leader or not, how old is Barret supposed to be anyway?
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Jun 16, 2020 21:47
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placid saviour posted:This is a terrifying thought, which also makes this remake incredibly salient at this point in time. FF7R puts us in the shoes of eco-terrorists and they're the heroes. 35, apparently.
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Jun 16, 2020 22:37
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Doobeedoo posted:35, apparently. AKA a rotting skeleton in JRPG years.
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Jun 16, 2020 23:11
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Karia posted:AKA a rotting skeleton in JRPG years. He's older than Cid.
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Jun 17, 2020 14:10
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I would just like to iterate or reiterate how HUGE Barrett is in the remake. I don't know if there's been a good shot of it yet, but his hand is as big as Tifa's head and his arm is as big around as her waist. And Tifa's not tiny. Dude must be 300 pounds of muscle, not counting the machine gun arm. Anyway, I had massive doubts about FF7R, especially since I was never a superfan of FF7 to start with. I ended up buying it in a fit of boredom during the lockdown and am happy to say that they did a wonderful job with it. The best part is that it gives all the characters way more characterization than the original. They have more personality and way more depth, without changing their overall framework from FF7. The writing team needs to be given a raise. I can't wait to see what they do with some of the later characters.
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Jun 17, 2020 14:24
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Doobeedoo posted:He's older than Cid. Smoking (and maybe drinking) is terrible for your... everything.
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Jun 18, 2020 03:24
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I think it's good characterization that Barrett is willing to use manipulative tactics to recruit people into his group and keep them there, because if you truly, passionately, believed the fate of the world was at stake, you'd probably do whatever it took to get people to fight it! It shows that he understands how hard it's going to be to get and keep people in the fight, and that he thinks it's more important to save the world than to be 100% ethical with recruitment. You can probably argue how calculated it is, and how well intentioned he is about it, but I think the manipulative tactics IDed by OP are 100% present, and a good story choice. : )
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Jun 18, 2020 03:53
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Oh yay! I didn't realize this was even here. Can't wait for the next update. I watched the stairs portion of the remake, it's everything I hoped for. Too bad I'm gonna have to wait for this to come out on PC to play it myself. e: Also, at some point I'm gonna have to start linking to FFVII Blazed - because that was an extremely dumb & fun twitter thread. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 13:40
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habeasdorkus posted:e: Also, at some point I'm gonna have to start linking to FFVII Blazed - because that was an extremely dumb & fun twitter thread. I googled it and I swear the Don Corneo stuff makes more sense there than in the actual game.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:05
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https://twitter.com/ffvii_blazed/status/485195927607451648
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Jun 22, 2020 14:11
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Every time people post that twitter, it just reinforce my opinion that you have to be stoned yourself to find it funny.
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Jun 22, 2020 14:56
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yeah it's prolly not as enjoyable if you're square
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Jun 22, 2020 15:55
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Dredging up stuff that came up in the original thread there's this thing still (sorta) going on. https://www.deviantart.com/obstinatemelon/gallery/25038206/ff7-comic
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Jun 22, 2020 16:00
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Peanut Butler posted:yeah it's prolly not as enjoyable if you're square drat.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:18
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How does Mako energy work? Is it a grid system that you just plug copper wire into a wall, or more of an energy field that devices draw power from the air? The explosion shutting down the highway cars implies the latter, but it may have just been people stopping their car because holy poo poo the energy plant exploded.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:24
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There are pretty clearly power lines going all over which presumably are there for a reason, so I'd assume that Mako is just converted to regular old electricity and that travels though wire.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:47
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The actual process of turning mako into electricity always seemed so vague that I figured they were straight up burning ghosts to boil water and turn a stream turbine.
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Jun 22, 2020 16:55
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Yeah I don't think there's ever any more detail than: mako gets sucked up from the planet into a reactor -> the reactor does a thing with the mako -> electricity happens Then the electricity travels through power lines and powers stuff like you'd expect as long as you pay your bill to the Shinra Electric Power Company
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Jun 22, 2020 17:27
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Karanas posted:Every time people post that twitter, it just reinforce my opinion that you have to be stoned yourself to find it funny. I personally disagree, I've never imbibed weed in any form and I thought the majority of it was hilarious.
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Jun 22, 2020 17:44
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Harrow posted:Yeah I don't think there's ever any more detail than: mako gets sucked up from the planet into a reactor -> the reactor does a thing with the mako -> electricity happens But if that's the case, then what's going on with the leaking pipe that Aeris is staring at in the intro? I mean, that is Mako leaking out of the pipe? But if the electricity is being generated in the reactor, then why is Mako getting pumped around the city? My assumption was that it was kinda equivalent to natural gas. Yeah, you can burn it in a power plant to make electricity, but you'll also be pumping it into homes so it can be burned for heating or whatever, since that's more efficient than using the electricity directly.
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Jun 22, 2020 17:53
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