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ImpAtom posted:I am absolutely looking forward to Cloud saving Aerith and it accidentally destroying the world. The internet seems obsessed with the notion that this timeline is gonna have Cloud kill Aerith at her bequest which, you know what, if they have the balls to make the player do that, I'm down
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May 30, 2020 21:30
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I feel like Aerith is going to survive purely because her goals when she ran off to the ancient city aligned with the party at large as soon as Meteor was summoned. So while it was a shocking moment at the time, it didn't really change the arc of the narrative all that much.
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May 30, 2020 21:37
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RatHat posted:They better keep Cloud getting bonked with the materia. The remake will feature a baseball mini game in this segment.
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May 30, 2020 21:38
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:I feel like Aerith is going to survive purely because her goals when she ran off to the ancient city aligned with the party at large as soon as Meteor was summoned. So while it was a shocking moment at the time, it didn't really change the arc of the narrative all that much. And if we assume Sephiroth does have foreknowledge of the plot he also knows that killing Aerith isn't actually going to accomplish anything for him, so he has no motivation to do it. In other words, Aerith dying in the same way as in the original makes no sense.
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May 30, 2020 22:11
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Cerebral Bore posted:And if we assume Sephiroth does have foreknowledge of the plot he also knows that killing Aerith isn't actually going to accomplish anything for him, so he has no motivation to do it. In other words, Aerith dying in the same way as in the original makes no sense. He could always do it just to be an rear end in a top hat, never discount spite as a motivation.
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May 30, 2020 22:16
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Everything that happens in the remake happens, the old game is an echo of a future that now won't play out exactly the same as before, and ultimately it was an incredibly convoluted way of saying that they aren't beholden to the events of the original, and everyone is arguing about whether it's a genius narrative device or a bizarrely clunky move that needlessly complicates everything. Well yes that all makes sense but still leaves things quite confusing. I’m talking about it as an in universe split time, not a metaphor for the remake itself. I dig the metaphor part well enough. What is the event that splits the timeline? I’ve seen “Zach survives” thrown out but what does that have to do with differences like the president being alive and shooting Barret when they get to the top. What even are the ghosts doing when they attack Aeries at the beginning or the Seventh Heaven later on? For that matter why are they trying to stop the party from leaving Midgar at the end and that’s what requires killing them, isn’t that exactly what they did in the original timeline? It just seems like there is little to no correlation between the ghosts sand divergence from the original events, besides the Barret thing. It’s entirely the dialog that asserts what they are.
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May 30, 2020 22:23
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Eggnogium posted:Well yes that all makes sense but still leaves things quite confusing. I’m talking about it as an in universe split time, not a metaphor for the remake itself. I dig the metaphor part well enough. The thing you have to get is that the timeline is already broken when the game starts. The President is alive when the gang gets to the top because they're never caught and imprisoned and so they get to his office much earlier than they should have. Sephiroth isn't supposed to show up and gently caress around this early but he does and Cloud goes into a PTSD hallucination, so the plot ghosts have to keep Aerith where she needs to be so she can meet Cloud. And unlike in the original the gang aren't able to convince Barrett to hire Cloud for the Reactor 5 bombing, so the ghosts have to intervene and hurt Jessie's leg so that Barrett is left with no choice and Cloud is where he needs to be so he can fall down and meet Aerith again. So the ghosts are basically forced to do more and more overt poo poo to keep the plot on rails while Sephiroth is trying to make as much of a mess as possible which eventually culminates in the ghosts just going berserk trying to steer a radically altered timeline back to where it should be. Why it's necessary to kill the ghosts is unknown so far, but my personal theory is that both Sephiroth and Aerith have some kind of foreknowledge of how the plot of FF7 is supposed to go and they both find the outcome unacceptable, so here we are.
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May 30, 2020 22:39
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Unless something can prove this wrong, my thinking is that you fight and kill the Harbinger at the end because Sephiroth Omega, at that point, has control of them. I think that he did something at the end (coinciding with them swarming the tower as the party leaves) to control them (or just somehow convince them to fight you). Omega needs them dead to change fate, and I guess couldn't do it himself? Maybe only Aerith can make inherently defy fate, so she had to be part of the group to kill them? Doesn't explain why he then fights you, but nothing explains that, it's almost certainly him fighting you for the lulz
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May 30, 2020 22:42
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Okay that does help, hadn’t considered the Cloud PTSD thing and for some reason I thought that Jessie not being able to join at the next reactor was in the original too but it’s been like 5 years since I last played it. I still think it is weird that the killing of fate doesn’t itself coincide with some major split in the plot. They do it, and then they do the exact same thing they would have done anyways. What is actually different now that the ghosts are gone and can’t keep things on the rails? You could say, “we’ll find out in FF7R2” but that still leaves the ending of this game pretty unsatisfying.
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May 30, 2020 22:48
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Eggnogium posted:Okay that does help, hadn’t considered the Cloud PTSD thing and for some reason I thought that Jessie not being able to join at the next reactor was in the original too but it’s been like 5 years since I last played it. I mean, they give you a taste of things branching in the ending, with Zack and Biggs and such. But as of yet, in the "prime" timeline, things haven't had the chance to diverge much. The mystery itself of the implications of beating the Whispers is the "To be continued" hook of this ending.
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May 30, 2020 22:51
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Eggnogium posted:Okay that does help, hadn’t considered the Cloud PTSD thing and for some reason I thought that Jessie not being able to join at the next reactor was in the original too but it’s been like 5 years since I last played it. Well, if you wanna get on the ride to crazytown another theory is that the plot ghosts are timeless which means that defeating them in the singularity means defeating them at every point in time at once, so we don't know whether things at the end of the game actually are as they went down in the game because the ghosts wouldn't have been there to influence the outcome. For example Biggs very clearly died in the original timeline yet he's alive now, and the same is implied for Jessie. So there might be huge splits that we're not seeing right now but will become apparent in the next game.
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May 30, 2020 22:57
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precision posted:Doesn't explain why he then fights you, but nothing explains that, it's almost certainly him fighting you for the lulz It was litcherally his only real hobby in the past, so probably yeah.
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May 30, 2020 22:57
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Cerebral Bore posted:The thing you have to get is that the timeline is already broken when the game starts. The President is alive when the gang gets to the top because they're never caught and imprisoned and so they get to his office much earlier than they should have. Sephiroth isn't supposed to show up and gently caress around this early but he does and Cloud goes into a PTSD hallucination, so the plot ghosts have to keep Aerith where she needs to be so she can meet Cloud. And unlike in the original the gang aren't able to convince Barrett to hire Cloud for the Reactor 5 bombing, so the ghosts have to intervene and hurt Jessie's leg so that Barrett is left with no choice and Cloud is where he needs to be so he can fall down and meet Aerith again. See, this is why I didn't like the ghosts, they just turn up and get in the way of whatever scene they're in. It's this massively convoluted way of saying that they aren't beholden to the original story that could easily be achieved by just... you know, doing something different. No-one cares if a bunch of lovely dorks complain about it. They wrote situations like Cloud not being in the Reactor 5 party, then needed the ghosts to fix it instead of any other solution that doesn't make you go "why are these ghosts here again". Why save Wedge and reduce the emotional hit of the scene only to have him sucked out a window later on? Why does Hojo get dragged into another part of his lab, only for you to immediately run into that room and face him again? Why have the church flooded with ghosts to guide Cloud and Aerith on the path they were going to take anyway? And maybe they'll do more with the idea in future installments, but I thought the ghosts were basically just gone at the end; you kill the head ghost guy and his lieutenants, so there's nowhere to go from there as a narrative device, and they didn't exactly go anywhere as a narrative device in this game until the very end, and only for a cool boss fight so it didn't end on the highway battle. The story is now diverged, Square have made their point, hopefully they can just weave a different story without needing to justify it so hard.
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May 30, 2020 23:15
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Is it just me or is the arrangement on the official downloadable soundtrack kind of .. iffy? It sounds like every track consists of exactly one loop of every phase, irrespective of the buildup and breakdown within said phase.
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May 30, 2020 23:16
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Schwartzcough posted:I mean, they give you a taste of things branching in the ending, with Zack and Biggs and such. But as of yet, in the "prime" timeline, things haven't had the chance to diverge much. The mystery itself of the implications of beating the Whispers is the "To be continued" hook of this ending. Yeah I’m basically saying that ending kinda sucks. If I’m gonna kill Fate to force through a different path show me the decision my characters can make now that they were bound on before. Everything shown, Zach living, Biggs living, Barret almost dying then not, aren’t decisions they are things that just happen differently and it’s not clear why. And a developer title card saying I’ll find out in 5 years is not a substitute. To be clear this is my plot gripe and I also have combat gripes but overall the game wildly exceeded my expectations. Edit: doctor fruitbat pretty much summed up my thoughts better than I could above.
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May 30, 2020 23:17
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Eggnogium posted:Yeah I’m basically saying that ending kinda sucks. If I’m gonna kill Fate to force through a different path show me the decision my characters can make now that they were bound on before. Everything shown, Zach living, Biggs living, Barret almost dying then not, aren’t decisions they are things that just happen differently and it’s not clear why. And a developer title card saying I’ll find out in 5 years is not a substitute. I'm not really sure what you're looking for. Aerith seems to have incomplete future knowledge, and nobody else on the team knows crap all about the future, so it's not like they were sitting around trying to make a decision or perform an action to "change fate" that the ghosts were "holding them back" from. Basically the characters know that the ghosts were forcing them down some path, which as far as they know was a bad path. The ghosts are gone now and therefore what they do going forward should not be interrupted by fate ghosts, but I don't know what "big decision" you're looking to see at the end. They weren't trying to "force through" any particular path, they just didn't want to be bound by destiny.
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May 30, 2020 23:24
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To be honest I think that is by far the most interesting thing about this. Usually 'fighting destiny' stories are the heroes trying to prevent a bad ending. In this case, knowing or not, they worked to prevent a good ending and that is genuinely a pretty neat idea.
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May 30, 2020 23:31
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As for "why have the ghosts at all", I think it's pretty clear that the writers specifically wanted to include commentary on the constraints of remaking a work like FFVII, rather than just changing it. If they just wanted it to be different, sure, they could've just made it different without the Whispers and moved on. The Whispers represent the expectations and obligations that weigh down an artist when trying to remake a seminal work like FFVII. When you pick up such a project, there's a huge amount of expectation to "do it right", and include the elements that fans loved, and to "stay true" to the story that was told. At the same time, simply recreating a work that you've already made can feel frustrating, limiting, and intrusive (like the ghosts!). So the team took this opportunity to do something different, something a bit creative. It's not just a rote recreation. It's not even a tweaked "alternate version" of the original. It's honestly a sequel to FFVII, where the characters (or at least Aerith) have determined they can do it better than last time (or at least that's their hope). But killing fate removed the "safety" of an already decided outcome, which is why Aerith talks about "boundless, terrifying freedom" if they win, and how she "misses the steel sky" after they win. Will this whole plan backfire and go terribly worse? That's a concern not only for the characters, but for the designers. Point is, the Whispers are there because the writers wanted to tell a story with a particular message that wouldn't have been there if they had simply remade FFVII, but different.
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May 30, 2020 23:32
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:See, this is why I didn't like the ghosts, they just turn up and get in the way of whatever scene they're in. It's this massively convoluted way of saying that they aren't beholden to the original story that could easily be achieved by just... you know, doing something different. No-one cares if a bunch of lovely dorks complain about it. They wrote situations like Cloud not being in the Reactor 5 party, then needed the ghosts to fix it instead of any other solution that doesn't make you go "why are these ghosts here again". Why save Wedge and reduce the emotional hit of the scene only to have him sucked out a window later on? Why does Hojo get dragged into another part of his lab, only for you to immediately run into that room and face him again? Why have the church flooded with ghosts to guide Cloud and Aerith on the path they were going to take anyway? I mean, it really isn't that convoluted. "Is something significantly different from the OG? Yes. Ghosts show up to fix it." That's it. The devs just doing something different would've thrown the OG fans under the bus, which they clearly didn't want to do as they represented a good portion of the consumer base for this game since it's a remake ffs. I found Wedge being sucked out the window the most meaningful story moment of his whole arc honestly, due to the pure desperation of his attitude. It broadened the players understanding of the ethical nature of the whispers. The ghosts flooded the church to 1) prevent Cloud from killing Reno and 2) prevent Aerith from falling off the balcony. Their initial meeting is arguably the most substantial for the future course of their relationship, so it's not surprising ghosts were there. As for Hojo/lab, I don't really remember those scenes so I couldn't say. I won't deny that it would've been better had the ghosts only been explicitly used when Seph attempted to gently caress with stuff. The action-reaction dynamic would've sharpened our understanding of both the ghosts and Seph's interventions in the game. But it's still fine how it is. Also the ghost guy's lieutenants were three aspects of Seph from AC trying to save their future existence. I mean, I get it, you don't give a poo poo about any of the nuances in this part of the story. But a lot of other people find it worthwhile and interesting.
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May 30, 2020 23:41
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Arkage posted:Also the ghost guy's lieutenants were three aspects of Seph from AC trying to save their future existence. I mean, I get it, you don't give a poo poo about any of the nuances in this part of the story. But a lot of other people find it worthwhile and interesting. Wait, what? The Enigmatics are supposed to be Kadaj/Loz/Yazoo? Where the gently caress did people get that?
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May 30, 2020 23:53
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AlternateNu posted:Wait, what? The Enigmatics are supposed to be Kadaj/Loz/Yazoo? Where the gently caress did people get that? Their weapons and movesets when you analyze them mostly, along with "summoning" Bahamut. It could easily be a reference but Sephiroth is clearly supposed to be from post-Advent Children so that tends to make people connect strings on corkboard.
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May 31, 2020 00:00
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Pretty sure the music track for that section is also called "Advent", and their elemental affinities correspond to the right character's affinities from the Advent Children Ultimania, and I'm pretty sure info from the VIIR Ultimania essentially confirms it. But searching details from the VIIR Ultimania is a pain right now.
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May 31, 2020 00:06
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AlternateNu posted:Wait, what? The Enigmatics are supposed to be Kadaj/Loz/Yazoo? Where the gently caress did people get that? https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1255037127286378497 The ultimania confirms it, too. The gun using one has an attack that has the same name as Yazoo's gun
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May 31, 2020 00:11
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To be clear it's not all the Whispers who are related to/references to the Advent Children Sephiroth fragments, but just the three you fight during the Whisper Harbinger fight.
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May 31, 2020 00:18
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Arkage posted:The ghosts flooded the church to 1) prevent Cloud from killing Reno and 2) prevent Aerith from falling off the balcony. Their initial meeting is arguably the most substantial for the future course of their relationship, so it's not surprising ghosts were there. Or just write the scene slightly differently. When Cloud goes to kill Reno, have some soldiers run in and start shooting at him. Instead of having Aerith almost fall off a balcony, have her not almost fall off a balcony. Or have her almost fall off a balcony, but then she doesn't fall off it. Arkage posted:Also the ghost guy's lieutenants were three aspects of Seph from AC trying to save their future existence. I mean, I get it, you don't give a poo poo about any of the nuances in this part of the story. But a lot of other people find it worthwhile and interesting. That's not nuance, it's an easter egg. It's a vaguely fun reference but doesn't add anything more to the story than the tiaras based on the Weapons. They're a reference to those three, not actually them, otherwise why would they be working against Sephiroth by trying to stop you? Edit: Re: meta commentary, I get it, I just don't think it works, at all. The ghosts mix with the actual story like oil and water. They turn up as an annoyance that massively stands out from everything else without ever adding anything to it. Their story has nothing to do with the actual story and it sticks out even more when it turns out it's all so Square don't have to directly tell a small group of salty pissants that they aren't getting a 1:1 remake. The arbiter of fate is a cool-rear end concept in itself and it was a fun as hell boss fight, but the thing it was attached to I found bizarre and pointless. Ultimately either you like the meta commentary approach or it just doesn't land for you at all, and boy did it not land for me. Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 31, 2020 |
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May 31, 2020 00:31
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I think the dumbest part of this discussion is claiming your theory on a plot point that is completely unproven (and doesn't actually fit the story) as true while arguing people don't get nuance.
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May 31, 2020 00:40
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:I think the dumbest part of this discussion is claiming your theory on a plot point that is completely unproven (and doesn't actually fit the story) as true while arguing people don't get nuance. Beat me to it. Thanks.
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May 31, 2020 00:41
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I don't mean to sound like I'm getting at people, my reaction to the ghosts is just "okay...?" rather than outright hatred. And I don't really have anything else to add about it, so I'll let everyone get back to spitballing about it.
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May 31, 2020 00:43
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I don't think it's to appease mad gamers so much as it is commentary about it being a remake. The whispers function more as stage hands making sure everyything is in its proper place, or like a DM who tries to railroad a story to get things back on track. They're "helping" but the characters don't really get that. Remember that them disappearing means that Sephiroth can do what he wants now, which reintroduces tension into a story where you already know what's going to happen. The whispers are physically present to make it more obvious what's happening and, admittedly, to bring in more encounters in a game that doesn't have random battles anymore.
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May 31, 2020 01:02
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Yeah I get all that and it could be cool but it just doesn’t work on an in-universe level for me which a good meta metaphor should in my opinion.
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May 31, 2020 01:13
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BaDandy posted:Their weapons and movesets when you analyze them mostly, along with "summoning" Bahamut. It could easily be a reference but Sephiroth is clearly supposed to be from post-Advent Children so that tends to make people connect strings on corkboard. "According to the Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania, the three named Whispers fought at the end, Rubrum, Viridi, and Croceo, take their fighting styles from Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.[1] In the Japanese version, Whisper Croceo's Amber Whirl ability is named Velvet Nightmare, after Yazoo's gun." From this https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Whispers_(VII_Remake) Also https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1259852899384991744 As for why they want to stop Seph/the party, both Seph and Aerith/Red are unhappy with how events played out in OG FF7+Advent Children. Future Seph knows he loses in the end regardless, and Aerith/Red know tons of people die via Meteor/Holy/Geostigma. So the only ones who would really want things to stay the way they were are the AC, as they can only exist if events stay the same. And I suppose the planet does too, as all those Mako sucking civilians died off and Seph was defeated, so it's win win, which is why it creates the Fate/Destiny WEAPON to keep things the same. ZenMasterBullshit posted:I think the dumbest part of this discussion is claiming your theory on a plot point that is completely unproven (and doesn't actually fit the story) as true while arguing people don't get nuance. Completely unproven and doesn't fit! Arkage fucked around with this message at 01:40 on May 31, 2020 |
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May 31, 2020 01:24
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Arkage posted:As for why they want to stop Seph/the party, both Seph and Aerith/Red are unhappy with how events played out in OG FF7+Advent Children. Future Seph knows he loses in the end regardless, and Aerith/Red know tons of people die via Meteor/Holy/Geostigma. So the only ones who would really want things to stay the way they were are the AC, as they can only exist if events stay the same. And I suppose the planet does too, as all those Mako sucking civilians died off and Seph was defeated, so it's win win, which is why it creates the Fate/Destiny WEAPON to keep things the same. Ah, so you discovered the true secret. Part 2 will actually be a Sephiroth trying to convince Cloud to summon him back as a servant during the upcoming Holy Grail War.
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May 31, 2020 02:00
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AlternateNu posted:Ah, so you discovered the true secret. Part 2 will actually be a Sephiroth trying to convince Cloud to summon him back as a concubine during the upcoming Holy Grail War.
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May 31, 2020 02:33
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AlternateNu posted:Ah, so you discovered the true secret. Part 2 will actually be a Sephiroth trying to convince Cloud to summon him back as a servant during the upcoming Holy Grail War. A role-reversal with Cloud being the Saberface instead, I see.
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May 31, 2020 02:54
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BaDandy posted:A role-reversal with Cloud being the Saberface instead, I see. Cloud has self-image issues, tries to emulate what he thinks a Soldier (hero)should be, is hosed in the head due to trauma, and in the original game, became the fake that surpassed the original (Sephiroth) ...;Acutally, now that I think about it, FF7 works really well with Nasuverse cosmology.....Oh god. Mako is grain. We are all hosed.
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May 31, 2020 02:59
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I meant that he literally could look like a Saberface, but I also debated about making a Shirou joke, so ur valid
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May 31, 2020 03:06
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BaDandy posted:I meant that he literally could look like a Saberface, but I also debated about making a Shirou joke, so ur valid Cloud to Sephiroth: People die when they are killed. So do us all favor, and stay loving dead this time. Sephiroth: Just because your correct, doesn’t mean your right! ...This post is cursed.
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May 31, 2020 03:21
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Cloud: "I get that this is the only way to replenish your mana, but why does Aerith have to watch?" Aerith: *heavy breathing*
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May 31, 2020 04:17
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The Whispers being huge obtrusive elements in the game that even the most oblivious FF7 fan that hasn't played the game in 18 years and has forgotten everyone's personalities cannot possibly fail to notice existing. Had they simply gone along and just changed things outright without some new wrinkle into the game explaining why poo poo's different, the vitriol and bile would've been horrendous and stupid. This is just with the last 40 minute chapter of the game being extremely blatantly different from the norm. Personally I wish Meteor was the final boss and then Sephiroth swoops in once you get it under half health to really name home that you're not in the real world anymore if having the entire Shinra building thrown at you wasn't enough of a hint.
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May 31, 2020 04:27
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Sindai posted:Cloud: "I get that this is the only way to replenish your mana, but why does Aerith have to watch?" So she can get their proportions for the dresses she's commissioning duh.
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May 31, 2020 04:29
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