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sephiroth doesn’t call meteor until cloud gives him the materia at the north crater, that’s all still on track
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Apr 8, 2024 21:09
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CapnAndy posted:Also Cloud currently has the Black and White (Clear?) Materias, when he should have neither. That'll have ramifications. Sephiroth didn't get the Black Materia until Cloud gave it to him at the Northern Crater. One of the Jenova pieces grabbed it from him at the Temple of the Ancients and then is defeated in the Whirlwind Maze. So that much, at least, hasn't changed except that Cloud still has the Black Materia instead of Jenova having it. Potential major canonical changes, off the top of my head: Cloud remembed Zack earlier. Marlene and Elymra were not kidnapped by Reeve. Wutai is directly and openly going to war and Rufus appears to be in some shiiiiiit. (Rufus also was able to see the Whispers in Remake which is likely to play into things) The Holy Materia doesn't appear to be glowing green and there's a 'bonus' Clear Materia hanging about. Sephiroth seemed to be trying really hard to get Tifa killed There is an ongoing war within the Lifestream itself between two different types of Whispers We haven't even visited Rocket Town yet Vincent is presumably going to actually have a plot that is more involved than Head To Cave, See Flashback. DEEPGROUND is active. Zack is around in some form.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:11
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Yeah, I think Cloud still having the Black Materia just cuts out something a little awkward in the original game, where the party gets the Black Materia back at the Northern Crater and then Cloud immediately returns it. This time, Cloud already has it, so you do away with the temporary "we got it back!" part and skip right to delivering it to Sephiroth's physical body. As for the Clear Materia, I think that's going to be extremely important in part 3. I've said it before, but we know from the new Gi lore that the Black Materia was created by the Gi using all their negative emotions and wish for oblivion, and it sounds like it was a Clear Materia before then. So the Clear Materia that Cloud is still carrying around seems certain to be turned into something very powerful in part 3.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:15
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The devs have been on record as saying the events of the remake trilogy will still feed into Advent Children, but little do we know what they actually mean is... ...part 4: Advent Children Remake 
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Apr 8, 2024 21:28
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all of which is to bury the lede to their true goal: Dirge of Cerberus Remake
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Apr 8, 2024 21:29
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Sephiroth trying his level best to kill Tifa dead in the Lifestream was pretty funny. Like presumably that's the real him, not a Jenova puppet or whatever, and the *only* thing Sephiroth Prime absolutely 100% tries to do is murder Tifa
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Apr 8, 2024 21:38
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DeathChicken posted:Sephiroth trying his level best to kill Tifa dead in the Lifestream was pretty funny. Like presumably that's the real him, not a Jenova puppet or whatever, and the *only* thing Sephiroth Prime absolutely 100% tries to do is murder Tifa I mean to be honest if he's trying to break Cloud, fuckin' murdering Tifa after making Cloud think he actually murdered Tifa would be extremely effective. I don't think Cloud comes back from that one.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:44
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Mordiceius posted:imo - Mysteries are good. Confusion is not. this is reductive imo
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Apr 8, 2024 21:47
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I'm sympathetic to the idea that a story can be vague in a way that feels opaque or alienating to the audience, but I disagree with characterizing Rebirth that way, the things I most wanted clarity about felt ripe for discussion and interpretation.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:54
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I'm just upset that Aerith said goodbye at the end. I would be much more excited about part 3 if I knew I was in for invisible Aerith (that only Cloud can see) was giving a running commentary on the plot going forward.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:56
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ZiegeDame posted:I'm just upset that Aerith said goodbye at the end. I would be much more excited about part 3 if I knew I was in for invisible Aerith (that only Cloud can see) was giving a running commentary on the plot going forward. Finally Ghost Trick 2
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Apr 8, 2024 21:58
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Harrow posted:Yeah, I think Cloud still having the Black Materia just cuts out something a little awkward in the original game, where the party gets the Black Materia back at the Northern Crater and then Cloud immediately returns it. This time, Cloud already has it, so you do away with the temporary "we got it back!" part and skip right to delivering it to Sephiroth's physical body. It also means they don't need to start part 3 with a Jenova battle and can save it for either a midpoint or just have Synthesis in the crater as per usual. Not that I would put it past them to have a strangely "easy" Jenova battle as a tutorial capper that ends with Cloud being yoinked out of the party.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:59
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DeathChicken posted:Sephiroth trying his level best to kill Tifa dead in the Lifestream was pretty funny. Like presumably that's the real him, not a Jenova puppet or whatever, and the *only* thing Sephiroth Prime absolutely 100% tries to do is murder Tifa I figured Seph was mostly going after the Weapon and Tifa was just collateral.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:00
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Really interested to see how they go about having Cloud spend 1/3 of the last game pretty much comatose. Talking about the game again really just reminds me how much the main cast just get run through the ringer, Cloud and Tifa especially. Things are just so often poo poo for just everyone.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:02
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One thing I'd like an answer to, that I think falls under mystery more than confusion, but I have no basis to really figure out, is what's the deal with Sepiroth's speech about the timelines converging into one. He made it sound like an inevitable thing, not something he was specifically trying to bring about, and that the whole battle at the end was over what timeline would be the cannon one. But it's clear at the end there are at least two similar but distinct timelines with the only difference being whether Aerith is alive or not, and Cloud is existing in both timelines simultaneously. And then there's whatever's going on with Zack, so clearly the timelines didn't collapse at all.Rich Uncle Chet posted:Really interested to see how they go about having Cloud spend 1/3 of the last game pretty much comatose. Betting he'll spend that time hanging out with Aerith.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:13
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What's getting me is a combination of not really being sure exactly what the level at which this thing works on is and not really being convinced that much of this story isn't being driven by its three game format in a way the writers aren't contending with. Second point first: If there's one thing these writers get, fundamentally, primally, absolutely, it is the characters, they understand and comprehend who these people are, what they're about, what they're driven by, and they are at their peak when writing scenes where everyone is hanging out and the dynamic is just, like, brewing, and festering, and even now that they have Tifa laying out her hand far earlier you can still feel the tension escalating, it's loving electrifying. If there is one thing on which these writers - and I make this observation at the directorial level, where the writers also have a hand in scenario design - have not the first semblance of a grasp of, it's pacing. Despite Rebirth's comparatively marathon length I actually think it was still better at beat-to-beat pacing than Remake, but in a way this illustrates the problem. Remake was, of course, an entire feature length game fashioned out of what used to be the first act in its former story. As a result, Remake expands significantly, sometimes by adding lore in places that can accommodate it, and sometimes by turning scenes that were characterised by their brisk and frantic pacing into plodding slogs. Take the run-up to the plate drop. In the OG, there is all of, what, an entire half hour maybe, between Corneo revealing the scheme and the pillar coming down, and most of that is because you have to climb out of the sewers first, but it's max drama the whole way, because, y'know, that is a situation in which urgency is very appropriate. In Remake that same stretch of game is not one but two full length dungeons with gimmick-laden puzzles, stops for cutscenes, involved boss battles, and even new and original characters participating in a self-contained plot with its own lead-in, development, catharsis and conclusion. They have to cut away to a scene with the Turks in a chopper just to remind you that that whole thing is still happening! Rebirth has a lot more source material to work with and consequently has a lot less obvious filler adding space between OG beats than Remake does - it basically only has that stuff when you choose to engage with sidequests, unlike Remake which was constantly dropping it into the critical path. This isn't to say Rebirth didn't have padding on the critical path - and hell, much as Chapter 13 was a slog, it was kinda necessary to put a lot of time after the date scene, in which Cloud is extremely sympathetic, in which he can remind us that he's coming completely unhinged - only to observe that everything seems very constrained and defined by needing to fit into an entire game-length story that comprises an incomplete portion of FFVII's own second act. I harp on this because, now coming to the first point; What is the plot of FFVII Rebirth? Like. We go to some places and engage in some things, and We The Player learn a few things and some of them are metaphysical. But, what has changed? I don't mean relative to the OG, I mean, relative to the beginning of FFVII Rebirth. What is different in the story we actually got in the game compared to a story where the party escapes Midgar and Tetsuya Nomura appears and opens a rift in spacetime and the party steps through and emerges outside the Forgotten Capital but Aerith trips and falls into the void? Because mostly it seems to me like this game is a lot of ruminating on things we already know, with occasional nuggets of information that change the context of what each party member is fighting for somewhat but none of which changes their purpose, their stake. Everyone has their own baggage but fundamentally they're still following Cloud and chasing after Sephiroth, and that's a position that won't change until Meteor happens. Seemingly the only very significant thing is the party's relationship with Cloud, but even there it feels like they moved a couple things forward for the sole purpose of making that the only element in the game that has any kind of payoff in the game and not presumably saved for the third game. Remake, for all its padding and sometimes weird deviations, had a conclusion, it had its own theory of why it was a complete story in and of itself even though it was obviously also an adaptation of a bigger story's first act, the party got caught up in a thing, and fought against it, and secured a triumph that existentially altered both their stake in the story and ours. That's loving something! What does Rebirth have that compares to that? All this conclusion feels like it has is an invitation to spend 70 more currency units in 2028 or whenever to find out if we've all been jerked around or not. Chasing after Sephiroth may as well be searching for the One Piece at this point; this whole plot is just some stuff that happened on the way and they did what they could to fit in some of the stuff from the OG's actual conclusion to Act 2 in the Northern Crater but aside from Cloud's deteriorating mental state and a few progressing episodes that happen independently of the party there just don't seem to be any plot threads here. Rebirth ends in more or less the same place it starts in - timelines aren't working quite right, Cloud is lying, Tifa knows, Sephiroth is scheming. The only change is Aerith is dead, and even that's open to some interpretation. It seems like the whole game is just waiting for the next game, albeit the whole time simmering in all the masterful character vibing. For all the early handling of certain details we still haven't really gone to any of the places that properly conclude that original second act. Aerith's death was a lot of things but it was not a plot twist and it was not a conclusion of anything other than a disc; that good old Act 2 Downer didn't arrive until Meteor was summoned and the party's failure completed, Cloud's delusion revealed and his self shattered. As best I can interpret as someone who cannot not know how the OG progressed, Rebirth sets up a lot of hints for the reveals that its own foreshadowing is hinting at, Zack's role in Nibelheim, Sephiroth's control of Cloud, etc, but it's all about the next game, here's what the next game will reveal! What did this game reveal? All the revelations are to us. We are the ones who see the jumps between timelines, the apparent ripple of the defeat of the Whispers to Zack's errant wandering to the Power of Hope or whatever to the direct invocation of Aerith's fate on a level seemingly more fundamental than the authorship of fate itself to Cloud's determination to fight fate on a level beyond literally fighting fate to a rupture of time that might actually break out of theoretical space and encompass the main timeline or whatever. That's cool and valid, it's fine to have meaning that the characters themselves aren't aware of, that's literature baybee. It's just, this game's plot is really bugging me, and I think it always will even if the third game actually does take everything that's being set up and knock it out of the park. I'm not satisfied that seeing Barret's resolution with Dyne or Nanaki's with Seto or even what we've seen of Tifa's with Cloud, or even Aerith's death, or even Zack's misadventures through the possibility space, is enough. I guess one stake that definitely changed over the course of the game is that now of course Cloud has the Black Materia and even if we haven't seen him literally hand it to Sephiroth yet it is pretty obvious that that is now inevitable, so that element of tension is added relative to the game's opening. Aside from that, and the existence of the Clear Materia, whose purpose is still unknown, there just doesn't seem to be anything other than excellent character beats. I don't think Rebirth stands alone and I think the reason for that is 100% down to the directors' choice to end the game at the Forgotten Capital and not at the Northern Crater. I think despite their best efforts they are unable to write Rebirth out of the bind they placed it in by having it start and end at the points it does while also being a full price retail JRPG. I also, for what it's worth, don't think the game is particularly vague, at least about things it directly addresses rather than their implications. It's pretty clear we're seeing possible worlds breaking off inside the lifestream, and a battle for control over them, and the threat that this will all spill over into the main world. It's just, that hasn't happened yet, and everything that's currently vague is stuff that would determine what happens when that happens. That said, the ending does throw a lot of stuff at you fairly rapidly, and then dumps you straight into an enormous series of boss fights without any time to process what you've seen, so in that sense it's understandable and perhaps not commendable on the game's part that people might end up confused by it.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:21
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Namnesor posted:The devs have been on record as saying the events of the remake trilogy will still feed into Advent Children, but little do we know what they actually mean is... ZiegeDame posted:But it's clear at the end there are at least two similar but distinct timelines with the only difference being whether Aerith is alive or not, and Cloud is existing in both timelines simultaneously.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:21
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Fedule posted:Big post That's a good post, and I largely agree, even though I ended up feeling quite good about the ending (after starting off emotionally drained and fulfilled, then moving into scrutiny and being a little underwhelmed, and now I'm back in and convinced they'll make it work). But for how long you spend in each zone, and the stupid Chadley paradigm all the side content is placed into contributes to this, you don't really dwell anywhere or set out to accomplish a whole lot on anyone's account. Yes there's the Gi haunting you solve (did it need solving or was this just an excuse for the Nanaki story arc?), the voyage to Costa del sol had reasons behind it, other stuff you drop by to do for a brief time in other places, but they're all very mercenary actions that get you paid and then you've moved on. Just like in the OG, the mission you're on is pretty misguided, due to Cloud's wonky brain (even if Fate means all your choices end up with you beating sephiroth), but they probably could have made the journey and all its decision points seem a little more gripping and vitally important. It'd have to be a bit of a makeover of the original story, but they could have done it. And I loving love this game's road trip hangout nature; the FF7 world map deserved all the gloss and humor and kitchiness this game gave it; the characters, like you said, were always on point whether they were saying they meant, or withholding something, or deluded or confused, all that worked so well. But the connective tissue of the journey does feel a little wispy and hollow. The parts that felt like a looming calamity worked like hell for me though, and every time Cloud went haywire and the ghosts started swirling and Tifa started having traumatic flashbacks, I was eating it up. Give me more of that and I don't need to think about why everyone's happy to run around Corel for 4 weeks collecting cactuar poo poo.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:49
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CapnAndy posted:Ooooh! That's not at all clear, but it is a good theory. It'd explain the glitch right after you block the stab, too. I feel like this is fairly strongly supported by what we see on the screen when Aerith is killed/saved. Cloud goes alone through a portal that Barrett explicitly compares to the one on the highway at the end of remake. He blocks the sword and saves Aerith. Things glitch out and the other party members show up. We see alternating shots of Cloud cradling an alive Aerith with no blood and a dead Aerith with blood on her wrist and on the floor. The shots where Aerith is alive have a bright rainbow effect in the background that is used repeatedly in other parts of the ending to indicate a jump between possible worlds (most noticeably when Zack chooses to visit Hojo and save Cloud, the other branch in the road is washed away by a rainbow of light), implying that Cloud has created a new possible world in which Aerith lives. The “confluence of worlds,” however, results in that timeline being shifted back into the main timeline and where Aerith dies. Maybe that’s why that Aerith takes a nap even though she wasn’t injured and Sephiroth is right there. But it’s possible the worlds were not merged, or not totally merged, since Sephiroth was defeated. So there may still be a version of Aerith who’s alive, just like there’s a version of Zack who’s alive. What that means is very unclear, though.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:09
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CapnAndy posted:First off, all the Zach stuff. So there's an alternate world where Zach and Cloud disappeared after their escape and only just re-appeared, and events have happened in their absence, with Avalanche doing a series of reactor bombings culminating in the Sector 7 plate drop, except Avalanche did much worse without a super-soldier in their ranks, resulting in mass casualties and Aerith being greivously injured in the plate drop. Zach rescues that Aerith and takes care of her and his Cloud. Okay. That's straightforward. Except, the Biggs in that world is the Biggs from the Re* games, with memories of those events that include Cloud and do not include Barret and Tifa being dead. And then it turns out that Cloud, who's never been out of Zach's care since the escape, and Aerith, who was living her life until a sector plate fell on her, aren't those people at all, they're the Re* Cloud and Aerith from when they fall into the black materia hole. What are the rules here? How does this possibly make sense? Did Cloud and Aerith travel back in time? Does entering that alternate world cause a replace effect of whatever version of you was there before? it's a minor part of your overall post, but my recollection of certain things of the timeline zack starts rebirth in is a bit different: 1. didn't we hear radio reports about a missing soldier when zack is first running around and initially dumps cloud with kyrie? typing it out now i guess those could just be new reports of zack escaping his last stand, but i definitely looped it in with the ongoing disaster inside midgar when playing and assumed it was referring to cloud. 2. i also was under the impression that said disaster was some sort of bad ending to the highway chase that either appeared to non-whisper folks or shinra was spinning as a freak tornado. given that aerith and red xiii are in the same chopper (the one zack blows up, which i still find a hilariously questionable decision) i assume the rest of the party was all together i could definitely be misinterpreting some of this, but it had me wondering throughout the game if there was some second version of cloud hanging around zack's return to midgar. the idea that cloud has just been absent from this timeline and that's why the party couldn't beat the harbinger/escape does still fit pretty well if you assume shinra is just looking for zack though. stuker fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Apr 8, 2024 |
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Apr 8, 2024 23:16
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I broadly agree that the Forgotten Capital into a four stage Sephiroth boss fight that doesn't seem to matter too much is a fairly anticlimatic ending that unlike defeating the ghosts in Remake doesn't really put a cap on the story. But I enjoyed the 98 hours I put into the game a hell of a lot so I am willing to accept that moreso than Remake, Rebirth is just a game that is happy to be one slice of a larger story and not trying to make itself into a contained plot. Some of that is obviously just the part of FF7 its adapting, Remake turning Midgar into a full game was always something of a strange choice but it does help make them game feel like a fairly contained plot even though it is clearly just Part 1 of a story that was not designed to be split into 3. With Rebirth I don't think there is a particularly good point anywhere after Midgar that would serve as good point to end game 2 of 3 of a FF7 retelling, but y'know they still could have done more to tie the story together for this chunk of FF7 if they really wanted to but I get the feeling that wasn't something they were trying to do. Leads to something of a weak final chapter but the rest of the game is strong enough that I think Rebirth's world jaunting adventure across the world of FF7 with a party of my best pals is still really great.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:20
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stuker posted:it's a minor part of your overall post, but my recollection of certain things of the timeline zack starts rebirth in is a bit different: My interpretation was that the Cloud in that timeline just disappears was replaced by the Cloud that showed up with Zack. Since Zack was obviously displaced in time somehow, Cloud would have been doing all the stuff he originally did, but then just straight up disappeared. Maybe that’s also what lead to the party getting killed during the highway chase.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:24
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Ardryn posted:It also means they don't need to start part 3 with a Jenova battle and can save it for either a midpoint or just have Synthesis in the crater as per usual. Not that I would put it past them to have a strangely "easy" Jenova battle as a tutorial capper that ends with Cloud being yoinked out of the party. I do wonder if the next game will start with us going directly to the Northern Crater or if they do something else first. I don't think the team knows they have to go there at the end of Rebirth, so maybe theygo somewhere else at the start of the next game before heading there. I had this idea that Cid would take the crew to Rocket Town to regroup and plan their next move, maybe have them fight some local Shinra troops giving the town trouble or something to act as an introduction for Cid(and hopefully Vincent) as playable characters, and then they hear reports of the Black Robes heading for the crater. With the war heating up, it's harder for the team to get around, so Yuffie suggests we go Wutai to try and secure a way there. We run around Wutai, meeting some new and old characters, meet Yuffie's dad, meet "Glenn", get an idea of what Wutai is like now before heading off to the Northern Crater and the story goes on as we expect. Also, everyone gets winter outfits when they head up north. My other suggestion is starting the game in Junon after Northern Crater with Meteor summoned, the WEAPONS on a rampage, Tifa and Barret locked up, and Cloud already gone. Make the tutorial the Junon escape with every character in the party getting a big reintroduction as they each play a part and then do a flashback of what happened at the crater after the escape.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:26
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Fedule posted:Words. This is an excellent post. As much as I love Rebirth, and I really love rebirth, it does give me the feeling that the remake series would have worked better as two games than three.
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Apr 8, 2024 23:27
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Fedule posted:Rebirth ends in more or less the same place it starts in - timelines aren't working quite right, Cloud is lying, Tifa knows, Sephiroth is scheming. At the beginning of the game, has a foggy memory and getting occasional headaches. At the end of the game, Cloud can have his will completely hijacked by Sephiroth at a moment's notice and his entire sense of self on the verge of breaking Tifa starts the game by angrily challenging one of Cloud's delusions and getting help from Aerith to try and find out what is happening to him. She ends the game in complete silence as Cloud talks complete nonsense, too exhausted and heartbroken to push back, having lost the only person she was able to confide in. At the beginning of the game, the party is following a trail of crumbs left by Sephiroth. At the end of the game, they have reached the end of the trail of crumbs to a box propped up by a stick with a block of cheese under it, and Cloud is telling everyone that we need to go grab the cheese RIGHT NOW. Are they complete narrative arcs that come together in a satisfying way? No, and they don't have to be because this is the middle chapter of the story. its job is to lay all the pieces for the finale and it's done that job. If anything the climactic final battle that is there is excessive and gets in the way of the narrative. If they had ended at the North Crater it would have caused awkward pacing issues with the third game having to reestablish a bunch of things while the Weapons are already there as an urgent threat pushing the plot to get going. Ending with a foreboding note that the party is heading towards catastrophe is a good way to set up the finale while allowing the third game room to breathe. Augus fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Apr 8, 2024 |
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Apr 8, 2024 23:48
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Unprecedented Crisis of Infinite Stamps
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Apr 8, 2024 23:51
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Ultimately Rebirth is less about plot and more about character. They looked at the part of the game they were adapting and saw that the plot doesn't really do much there in the OG, so in its place they put a ton of focus on character relationships. And honestly that worked great for me.
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Apr 9, 2024 00:10
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stuker posted:given that aerith and red xiii are in the same chopper (the one zack blows up, which i still find a hilariously questionable decision) i assume the rest of the party was all together I think Red causes the helicopter with him and Aerith to crash, Zack uses a pole to take out a different one coming to clean up the mess.
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Apr 9, 2024 00:55
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My admittedly weak theory is this: All of this is a sequel, not to FF7 itself, but to Advent Children. What I took away from the big conflict in Advent Children is that Aerith and Sephiroth are both resident in the Lifestream as conscious entities and waging war indirectly on each other from within it; Sephiroth tries to kill everyone, Aerith tries to prevent him. Geostigma is their first big clash but there's absolutely no reason to believe it'll be the last -- Sephiroth, quite famously, refuses to ever be "just a memory". The planet's going to have a permanent Sephiroth problem, going forward. It'll be protected, if not by Cloud and company, then others will step up, and Nanaki is thankfully a long-lived species and he has children. So Aerith will always have help, but she's always going to need help, because Sephiroth won't ever stop trying. And she needs to maintain a perfect record, while he only needs to fluke out a win once. It's an untenable position. It's been clear from Remake that Sephiroth was from the future and reaching back somehow, probably from the Lifestream where time might not be such a linear concept. And it was pretty heavily hinted that Aerith knew the future too. What if it was for the same reason? What if she went along with Project: Kill Fate Itself because Sephiroth's fate is to lose, sure... but to also keep coming back to try again and again forever, and she wants a permanent win? My theory is that we did exactly what we thought we did in Remake; we killed Fate, we broke the story off its rails. Now, without fate in control, both Sephiroth and Aerith are making plays to control the story. That's why the whispers are still around, but they've split into black and white factions that are at war with each other. We do see that the white whispers are doing Aerith's bidding; they accompany her when she makes her appearance in the final fight and counter Sephiroth's black whispers. And in this theory, every Aerith is exactly as real as every Sephiroth -- just a projection controlled by the main being, residing in the Lifestream. That'd explain why, for instance, Cloud needs to be bodily transported back from Wherever World but Aerith can stay behind there, yet suffer no loss of conciousness in Re* world and also remain aware of what happened in Wherever. They're both projections of True Aerith, who's been dead ever since Sephiroth stabbed her in OG FF7, just like True Sephiroth has been dead since OG Nibelheim. And for part 3 I would guess Aerith's plan involves destroying True Sephiroth for good this time rather than leaving him as a lingering stain in the Lifestream, finally ending his threat, and also we get to bring her back to life somehow and Zach is alive in the merged world too because gently caress you Nomura it's already been 160 hours, I deserve a happy ending.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:36
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nomura didn't write this
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Apr 9, 2024 02:46
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Aeris will be playable in the next game, but ONLY in VR Missions and if Cloud is in the party he has a permanent Sadness effect on himself
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Apr 9, 2024 03:52
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Rhonne posted:I do wonder if the next game will start with us going directly to the Northern Crater or if they do something else first. I don't think the team knows they have to go there at the end of Rebirth, so maybe theygo somewhere else at the start of the next game before heading there. Well, Cloud does know where he's going, to Sephiroth's body/Jenova for Reunion, he doesn't know why he's going there, but he knows it's north. His tough guy persona and being effectively a mind shattered, meat puppet at the end of Rebirth means he's not going to alert anyone as to what's going on though. Someone else mentioned it, but I also think the ice plains will be a sort of tutorial zone, the cliff and caves will be a more dangerous tutorial with a temperature gimmick, and then the whirlwind maze will be a sort of final test, hope you learned whatever party you're going in with, sort of thing. It'll probably be stretched out to several hours all told with snowboarding and whatnot. And the Tiny Bronco will break down just outside the Icicle Inn to explain why the crew doesn't just keep flying.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:14
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But when are we gonna go to Rocket Town?
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Apr 9, 2024 05:38
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Ardryn posted:Well, Cloud does know where he's going, to Sephiroth's body/Jenova for Reunion, he doesn't know why he's going there, but he knows it's north. His tough guy persona and being effectively a mind shattered, meat puppet at the end of Rebirth means he's not going to alert anyone as to what's going on though. Someone else mentioned it, but I also think the ice plains will be a sort of tutorial zone, the cliff and caves will be a more dangerous tutorial with a temperature gimmick, and then the whirlwind maze will be a sort of final test, hope you learned whatever party you're going in with, sort of thing. It'll probably be stretched out to several hours all told with snowboarding and whatnot. And the Tiny Bronco will break down just outside the Icicle Inn to explain why the crew doesn't just keep flying. I don't think you need the plane to break down, you just need to reasonably point out that there's nowhere to land on the glacier. And then by the time you might need to fly again you've already stolen the Highwind. Edit: I do think that for pacing reasons it would be odd if the glacier was as large and labyrinthine as it was in the original. It'd basically be the first dungeon. Well, I guess treating it like the Mythril Mines wouldn't be wrong. Clarste fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 05:45
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The next game needs to start in media res with snowboarding
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Apr 9, 2024 05:49
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It'll probably start in Icicle Inn the same way the previous game started with Kalm. Although I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that that implies starting with Aerith's childhood videos.
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Apr 9, 2024 05:50
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I'm at the Date on my hard mode playthrough and obviously Loveless is foreshadowing parts of Cloud's story, but one thing I noticed the first time I saw it was that the ballet at the start has a strange duality to it, where you see Jesse and Alphreid dancing joyfully together and in anguish kept apart, with the scene cutting between shots of both. It feels like that relates to what we're seeing at the end, with Cloud and Aerith...but I'm not sure how to interpret what it might mean for the final ending. It could line up with Cloud wandering, looking for Aerith and leaving Tifa behind before eventually returning to her, which would line up with Advent Children, I suppose. Also, the way the voice actors managed to be very slightly stiff in their stage acting really shows how amazing they are the rest of the time.
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Apr 9, 2024 11:24
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I enjoyed Barret's turn as Varvados. I gotta wonder if anyone can play the role of Garm if there happens to not be a dog in the audience.
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Apr 9, 2024 12:06
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CapnAndy posted:My admittedly weak theory is this: I love Aerith’s entry in that fight. White light spreads from her footsteps to overtake Sephiroth’s dark void. It definitely gives the feeling this is a transcendent lifestream Aerith showing up to ruin Sephiroth’s day. Her line at the start, something like, “I saw what you did back there, thank you,” also implies she’s some kind of cross-dimensional Aerith. The only thing I think she could be referring to would be Cloud saving her, but that would be a really weird way to thank him if she was the Aerith who actually got saved. The one thing I don’t like about it is that it implies Aerith needs to be in the lifestream for Sephiroth to lose, whereas a strength of the original game’s plot was that her death was a pointless tragedy.
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Apr 9, 2024 12:12
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A few days out from the ending and I've got to echo the majority here that it's bad. I'd have been cool with Aerith either living or dying, but doing neither and sitting on the fence just left me confused. I mean, up until I came into this thread I genuinely didn't know what I'd just seen. If they'd actually made a choice it would at least have been a relatable moment for players - if she dies we get a similar sense of loss and grief as the original and if she lives we get to feel like we've beaten back fate. Going with some weird multiversal ghost overlapping realities thing is barely comprehensible bullshit that nobody can possibly relate to on an emotional level. Also, after like 200 hours across two games I have absolutely no idea wtf Sephiroth wants to do. Him turning up, smugly saying cryptic bullshit and peacing out doesn't really add up to a villain. Like, he may as well just say "I am evil, and I want bad stuff to happen. Bye". Then again I kinda saw all this coming and have made peace with the fact that the next game will inevitably be 150 hours of the most fun I've ever had in my life followed by a nonsensical ending that doesn't answer jack poo poo.
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Apr 9, 2024 12:27
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