Then get rid of it altogether or make it part of the cutscene. There are so many better ways to do it than to feel beholden to traditional "big bad final boss" game progression, IMO.
I think ending on the getaway sequence (with Motorball just being part of it rather than built up like an actual boss) would have been fine, though, personally.
Then get rid of it altogether or make it part of the cutscene. There are so many better ways to do it than to feel beholden to traditional "big bad final boss" game progression, IMO.
I think ending on the getaway sequence (with Motorball just being part of it rather than built up like an actual boss) would have been fine, though, personally.
I really do wish it had been woven more forcefully into the arc of the game. I think that's one reason I started defaulting to the guide, because it really is something that those certain parts are missable. In general without the explanation, there were some times where I felt that Cloud's memory fog was a little bit like a black box, and other times where it was just somewhat abrupt to me, in terms of how the story was being told.
I think that abruptness could be a strength, I'm not sure, and if I do have a regret it's mostly that I didn't just make sure to hit the backstory elements while trying to press through the story as quickly as possible. Because like I was saying, my experience of it became pretty fragmented by the end. Is there a particular aspect you are thinking of?
All told I think it's impressive how much they actually covered in the sweep of things, including how intricate Cloud's story ultimately turns out to be. I'm having trouble finding a better way to put it, but I think the overall delivery of it could have been accomplished better, partly with the necessary contextual stuff being in basically two information dumps, and partly with maybe some kind of foreshadowing earlier on in the game (maybe it's there and I forgot/overlooked).
Agree with a lot of this, with some exceptions
* I'm not sure I'd consider Rufus' speech "hard-hitting" but it's very strange to leave out that bit of context. That's probably one area that I would have liked to see fleshed out more by at least showing hints of him before he becomes president.
* I think the way you describe Aerith in the OG is exactly how she is in the remake, and I think the portrayal was an improvement, actually, but I agree that Tifa was a bit too normal, cutesy, and upbeat, which makes her moments of story-required hesitation and self doubt a little less resonant. She should probably a bit more passive and reserved. Advent Children Tifa's voice and demeanor actually makes a bit more sense, even though that movie's awful.
* I feel like Costa Del Sol -> City of the Ancients isn't a meaty enough narrative to make a game out of it, and leaves too much for the first and third games.
* Agree 150% on compellingly built up mystery and subtlety being lost, especially with Sephiroth.
I don't know what it was, but I think that remake Aeris < original Aeris and remake Tifa = original Tifa.
But I also feel like Tifa was a character that even after three discs you still hadn't quite figured out, while even after just one disc Aeris was who she was.
They made Aeris seem like your college girlfriend who was fun and who you loved even if you knew you weren't gonna marry her, and Tifa seem sort of like your slightly younger sister, if that makes sense.
Costa del Sol isn't exactly a cut and dry end point, but also there's not really much between Midgar and it.
End at Kalm? That's basically the same as ending at Midgar.
The Midgar Zolom? That means nothing, with the way they gave away the game on Sephiroth.
Junon? I don't really think there's a good way to end on a high note there.
City of the Ancients is a logical endpoint because of what happens there, but there isn't too much between Costa del Sol and there, but there is enough, especially with the way they just added backfill.
In addition to the relevant story stuff (Golden Saucer, Nibelheim, Cosmo Canyon, Temple of the Ancients), they could actually add good backfill that isn't padding in between.
Things like backstory on Red's species, more Nibelheim stuff, Cid backstory and a ton of Wutai stuff.
I suppose I could understand them nerfing Rufus' speech, since his dad basically ruled by fear (another thing the remake did well was fleshing out Heidegger, Scarlett, Reeve and and Turks) anyways, but it seems like they should have given him more characterization.
It feels like a missed opportunity, but not missed out of incompetence, but missed because they tried to be too fancy.
I just bought this game in physical, wow, I'm impressed. A 100GB+ game that actually has the contents on the multiple discs instead of it being a single disc thats nothing more than a license check.
Sort of spoilers but this is literally the demo so I feel like it's okay to talk about this
You know I'm late to the party but I had heard about this controversy that fans of the original had and I have to agree after having played the original, I played the demo of course but not the original at the time
Having shinra themselves blow the reactor in the remake is just idiotic. Jessie even comments how she didn't expect the explosion to be that big, etc, etc. Feels like they want to make Avalanche this pure hearted organization
Edit: man just got out of the sewers, what an awful awful choice, they basically absolve avalanche of any responsibility, at the very least I'm glad Barrett is just as heartless as the original and basically behaves as this was the expected outcome he wanted all along
Sort of spoilers but this is literally the demo so I feel like it's okay to talk about this
You know I'm late to the party but I had heard about this controversy that fans of the original had and I have to agree after having played the original, I played the demo of course but not the original at the time
Having shinra themselves blow the reactor in the remake is just idiotic. Jessie even comments how she didn't expect the explosion to be that big, etc, etc. Feels like they want to make Avalanche this pure hearted organization
Edit: man just got out of the sewers, what an awful awful choice, they basically absolve avalanche of any responsibility, at the very least I'm glad Barrett is just as heartless as the original and basically behaves as this was the expected outcome he wanted all along
Yep. One of the biggest problems with the remake in general is removing a ton of accountability and consequences related to Avalanche, which undermines Barrett's guilt (and
Cait Sith's primary motivation, for that matter
) and eventual character development.
People argue that the same thing is hinted at in the original as well, but I find the evidence for that flimsy at best (you would never play through it and think that). Jessie does say the same thing (didn't expect the explosion to be so big, must be a miscalculation) in the original, but I took it to mean that the group were woefully reckless in what they were doing.
The change doesn't add anything new to the story anyways, as we already know that Shinra is willing to do something like that with what happens afterwards anyways. It only subtracts from the nuance of the conflict.
This game looks amazing but the sector 7 slums has a ton of low res textures, I'm 20 hours in and the rest of the game is relatively polished, so it's kind of strange that the starting area is so sloppy.
Reminds me a bit of nier automata where the main base has a super low-res textured crate right next to the main save spot in the game
This game looks amazing but the sector 7 slums has a ton of low res textures, I'm 20 hours in and the rest of the game is relatively polished, so it's kind of strange that the starting area is so sloppy.
Reminds me a bit of nier automata where the main base has a super low-res textured crate right next to the main save spot in the game
It's been proven that the high resolution textures all exist in the game, but for whatever reason, they don't load in a ton of those areas for whatever reason. Pretty weird.
Also, man this only has a measly 10 save slots. I wanted to save throughout the game and play my favorite parts back, but there's not enough save slots.
Hopefully the pc version will have more (it usually does).
Why is there this limit on save slots on ps4 all the time? My guess is that the ps plus cloud save program make them stingy with the save slots, but save slots can't take up that much space.
Also, man this only has a measly 10 save slots. I wanted to save throughout the game and play my favorite parts back, but there's not enough save slots.
Hopefully the pc version will have more (it usually does).
Why is there this limit on save slots on ps4 all the time? My guess is that the ps plus cloud save program make them stingy with the save slots, but save slots can't take up that much space.
For what it's worth, after you beat the game, you'll be able to replay any chapter (might be with new game+ data though), so you don't really need to save things at the beginning of chapters so that you can revisit them later.
I just beat it. I liked it a lot. The ending does rely a lot on the original. While it might have its own appeal for those that didn't play the original, the second last boss fight is basically one giant fourth wall break and the final two hours is all just references to the late-game of the original.
Still really good imo. Thought it did a decent job of recreating moments from the originals and putting new spins on them.
Maybe those who played it when it came out will disagree though.
Also, maybe is was just me but I found the game to be a bit washed out on the default settings. I had to put my tv brightness/black level several notches below zero to get some proper blacks in the image. There doesn't seem to be any brightness settings in the actual game either.
I finally started the remake the other night, after taking a bit of a break between my original play through to get some other things done. I'm really liking it so far, although I did play the original remake demo and I'm already curious about something. I'll put it in spoilers but it's really only the vaguest detail connected to Cloud's character, so I'm not sure they are necessary:
If I recall correctly, there's no sense of Cloud's flashbacks and headaches so early in the demo? I assume in part it's because they wanted to keep Sephiroth out of the demo, but I can already sort of see that Sephiroth is going to be more firmly central to driving the plot, even in the early going.
In any case, I'm planning to spend a lot of time with it in short order, unless I really get turned off. It definitely has me hooked in.
I finally started the remake the other night, after taking a bit of a break between my original play through to get some other things done. I'm really liking it so far, although I did play the original remake demo and I'm already curious about something. I'll put it in spoilers but it's really only the vaguest detail connected to Cloud's character, so I'm not sure they are necessary:
If I recall correctly, there's no sense of Cloud's flashbacks and headaches so early in the demo? I assume in part it's because they wanted to keep Sephiroth out of the demo, but I can already sort of see that Sephiroth is going to be more firmly central to driving the plot, even in the early going.
In any case, I'm planning to spend a lot of time with it in short order, unless I really get turned off. It definitely has me hooked in.
No, the headaches are pretty much the same in the demo as the released game (you're probably just noticing them more because you're familiar with their significance). The only difference in the demo is that the first half of the opening is missing and the child Tifa flashback was ripped out.
Thing I look most forward to for part 2 is no more plot ghosts. I know they had a decent payoff but they just showed up way too often and worst of all, once it's revealed what they are at the end, it doesn't really add much different perspective to subsequent playthroughs (at least imo) so those scenes are even more unpleasant.
No, the headaches are pretty much the same in the demo as the released game (you're probably just noticing them more because you're familiar with their significance). The only difference in the demo is that the first half of the opening is missing and the child Tifa flashback was ripped out.
Ah, that's right – thanks. Weirdly, my first FF7 experience was the remake demo, so it makes sense that I'd glaze over those parts. I'm eager to see it pick up – spent an hour or two earlier doing the various fetch type quests to get more familiarity with the battle system, etc.
It's going to be super hard for them to get Part 2 right-- much harder than getting the first game right, IMO.
For starters, unless they do this whole thing in three parts and go all the way up to the Northern Cave part (which involves WAAYY more content than the first game), there's pretty much no way to tell a satisfying cohesive narrative from start to finish, so it's inevitably going to feel like some episodic thing with an arbitrary cliffhanger. The first game fully works as its own story. On the bright side, at least there's a perfect opening for the second game.
Second, they're going to have a helluva tough time making the new characters that get introduced likeable and not dated. Cait Sith is like Jar Jar Binks, Cid is like an outdated socially unacceptable 50s sitcom spousal abuse archetype who was meant to be endearing in the 90s, and Yuffie's personality is very one-note and obnoxious. They'll need to heavily repurpose all of them to make it work in an expanded/more realistic script, whereas the first game involved the strongest characters in the original, and had the luxury to pull all of their characterization from it. On the bright side, at least Red and Sephiroth will seem like less hollow characters/mere tropey mascots in this one.
I guess I am going to try and stay spoiler free for the remake even though the original is still fresh and I have vague ideas / intuitions about how the remake will go. I seem to be churning along pretty quickly, just got to chapter 7 before calling it a night. I guess some of the chapters are variable in length.
I didn't like this game at all. I think they did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the main cast. Almost all of the scenes and sequences lifted directly from the original were faithful and well done. But everything else was a pretty standard romp through Nomura land.
Frankly, I just don't think he's a good developer. I'm much more interested in Yoshida's FFXVI project and the next XIV expansion. Let Nomura make VII Remakes until the end of time. I'm happy Square gave the mainline series to a competent developer like Yoshida.
I didn't like this game at all. I think they did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the main cast. Almost all of the scenes and sequences lifted directly from the original were faithful and well done. But everything else was a pretty standard romp through Nomura land.
Frankly, I just don't think he's a good developer. I'm much more interested in Yoshida's FFXVI project and the next XIV expansion. Let Nomura make VII Remakes until the end of time. I'm happy Square gave the mainline series to a competent developer like Yoshida.
Also evidenced by Yoshida’s close relationship with and admiration of Matsuno.
I still hold out hope for another Matsuno game at Square. He closely worked on the Ivalice raids in Stormblood, and recently dropped a lot of info about his ideas for Vagrant Story 2. He’s a fantastic developer with a keen mind for worldbuilding and story. It’s a shame his health gave out on him during XII’s development.
It took me a while to finish my playthrough, but now that it is over I wanted to chime in on the ending. I don't fully understand the significance having never played the original, but I have a partial idea.
I honestly think that ending the game at chapter 17 would've been a better spot. There was plenty of intrigue and a certain cliffhanger sense to it, ready for part 2 when it releases. Up until then I thought it was doing pretty great, although I don't know enough about the nuances of the original to comment on some of the more minor changes.
Chapter 18 was a sledgehammer with "WTF" painted on the side slammed into my face. I still don't know who Sephiroth is, but that whole chapter it felt like I was supposed to know. All of the dialogue was geared towards you knowing at least some of what Cloud (and to a lesser extent, Aerith) knows about Sephiroth. None of it made sense to me, and it was a sudden and ridiculous shift from a well told story with fantastic characters to some sort of Kingdom Hearts-esque level deep dive with all the subtlety of the aforementioned sledgehammer.
Knowing the game is a remake, I knew enough to know that they were essentially saying "we're changing it guys", but when all of the significance of that eludes you, you're left with a fever dream ending.
I will say I'm still excited to see where this is going, and part 2 will probably be a rare day one buy for me.
My friend is a big FF fan from the old days, and he really wants me to play the original for context. I will say, in that era of my life I wasn't a JRPG player, and my initial impressions of OG FFVII is that I'm still not....despite liking some more modern ones like Persona.
Also, even with mods, early 3D models are just....puketastic. I'm really interested in this world, but I so very much wish I had played it back in the day.
I will say that the "remake" title makes a LOT more sense now
It took me a while to finish my playthrough, but now that it is over I wanted to chime in on the ending. I don't fully understand the significance having never played the original, but I have a partial idea.
I honestly think that ending the game at chapter 17 would've been a better spot. There was plenty of intrigue and a certain cliffhanger sense to it, ready for part 2 when it releases. Up until then I thought it was doing pretty great, although I don't know enough about the nuances of the original to comment on some of the more minor changes.
Chapter 18 was a sledgehammer with "WTF" painted on the side slammed into my face. I still don't know who Sephiroth is, but that whole chapter it felt like I was supposed to know. All of the dialogue was geared towards you knowing at least some of what Cloud (and to a lesser extent, Aerith) knows about Sephiroth. None of it made sense to me, and it was a sudden and ridiculous shift from a well told story with fantastic characters to some sort of Kingdom Hearts-esque level deep dive with all the subtlety of the aforementioned sledgehammer.
Knowing the game is a remake, I knew enough to know that they were essentially saying "we're changing it guys", but when all of the significance of that eludes you, you're left with a fever dream ending.
I will say I'm still excited to see where this is going, and part 2 will probably be a rare day one buy for me.
My friend is a big FF fan from the old days, and he really wants me to play the original for context. I will say, in that era of my life I wasn't a JRPG player, and my initial impressions of OG FFVII is that I'm still not....despite liking some more modern ones like Persona.
Also, even with mods, early 3D models are just....puketastic. I'm really interested in this world, but I so very much wish I had played it back in the day.
I will say that the "remake" title makes a LOT more sense now
The ending is pure trash. The Chapter 17 ending + the final final scene of Chapter 18 is actually pretty close to how it originally ended.
The conclusion of Midgar is really tasteful and sensible in the original (even though the Remake improves on the first half of Shinra HQ by forgoing all the insufferable puzzles and using that time to add context/lore instead). The big climactic focus of that part of the game (Chapter 17 onward) is supposed to be a shift from Shinra to Jenova, a creepy specimen that should have similar unsettling build-up to a Xenomorph in Ridley Scott's Alien.
(expand if you don't mind reading how the original handled it)
Shinra is in full control and then suddenly you see the aftermath of what looks to be the specimen escaping off-screen and committing a bloody massacre, creating a trail of destruction/bodies that leads to a dead President Shinra, who for some reason is impaled by Sephiroth's sword. Sephiroth's only role in this part of the game should be to have this unspoken and hidden but undeniable presence that makes everyone go "What the hell is going on, who's this Sephiroth we keep hearing about, and what does he have to do with all of this?" If the game needs a more imposing final boss than Rufus (which is more like a playful greeting than a finale), it should just be Jenova as it escapes from the building. That should be climactic enough and doesn't ruin the character. If they needed a greater sense of finality still, they should have just killed off Heideggar after a big spectacle with him.
After that, they break out the same way they do in Chapter 17, with the motorcycle/Motorball sequence, and after reaching the edge of Midgar, it cuts straight to the final final scene of the remake where they prepare to leave the city and wonder what's to come (that part is a good sequence and end note, IMO). It shouldn't be until the start of the next game that they truly explore who Sephiroth is from the perspective of the characters, before you ever even come close to actually engaging with him.
It works so much better that way, storytelling-wise. They traded in tasteful artistic restraint for convoluted spectacle and fan-service.
The ending is pure trash. The Chapter 17 ending + the final final scene of Chapter 18 is actually pretty close to how it originally ended.
The conclusion of Midgar is really tasteful and sensible in the original (even though the Remake improves on the first half of Shinra HQ by forgoing all the insufferable puzzles and using that time to add context/lore instead). The big climactic focus of that part of the game (Chapter 17 onward) is supposed to be a shift from Shinra to Jenova, a creepy specimen that should have similar unsettling build-up to a Xenomorph in Ridley Scott's Alien.
(expand if you don't mind reading how the original handled it)
Shinra is in full control and then suddenly you see the aftermath of what looks to be the specimen escaping off-screen and committing a bloody massacre, creating a trail of destruction/bodies that leads to a dead President Shinra, who for some reason is impaled by Sephiroth's sword. Sephiroth's only role in this part of the game should be to have this unspoken and hidden but undeniable presence that makes everyone go "What the hell is going on, who's this Sephiroth we keep hearing about, and what does he have to do with all of this?" If the game needs a more imposing final boss than Rufus (which is more like a playful greeting than a finale), it should just be Jenova as it escapes from the building. That should be climactic enough and doesn't ruin the character. If they needed a greater sense of finality still, they should have just killed off Heideggar after a big spectacle with him.
After that, they break out the same way they do in Chapter 17, with the motorcycle/Motorball sequence, and after reaching the edge of Midgar, it cuts straight to the final final scene of the remake where they prepare to leave the city and wonder what's to come (that part is a good sequence and end note, IMO). It shouldn't be until the start of the next game that they truly explore who Sephiroth is from the perspective of the characters, before you ever even come close to actually engaging with him.
It works so much better that way, storytelling-wise. They traded in tasteful artistic restraint for convoluted spectacle and fan-service.
I did think that's sort of where it was going, until the battle with
Space-time god Sephiroth and kaiju manifestation of....fate I guess?
Either way, I'm very interested to see where it goes. I really do wish I had played it back in....I guess 1998 since I think that was the PC release. I didn't have a PlayStation back then.
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