Painfully went to level 18 on this screen… Took game back to blockbuster, Bought the game several weeks later then saw the stepping on the beam. That dang crane talked to me too much.
I strangely figured this one out immediately. Then I got lost in Mt. Nibel and didn't make it back out until the party was around Level 50, making the rest of my first run a joke.
I remember noticing that the beam was obviously a 3D model rather than part of the background. In fact I always thought it was a plank rather than a beam, as you never even see the cross section in the game. A shame that they didn't complete the puzzle, but they could still have eliminated the confusion by simply shifting the beam slightly north.
The beam is CLEARLY an object that is meant to move. So I remember thinking I had to do something with it. I dont remember if I got stuck with it. But I would certainly be confused about at least 2 things: 1- Why can I climb in to this crane if I cant use it or move from here? 2- Why does that thing looks like it can move but cant. Rather than getting stuck I can see myself trying to use the crane or hand or something to move the beam to get somewhere else.
@@thechugg4372 Do you even remember when CRTs were common? The PS1 wasn't a high resolution console (well, it did have a rare high-res mode, but it isn't used in FF7), all the detail you see on a modern screen was easily visible on a CRT too. Since 3D models in FF7 are untextured gradients, they stick out like a sore thumb against the highly detailed backgrounds.
I legitimately cannot stress how badly I got punk'd by this thing as a kid. Got FF7 for Christmas in 1998, got to this exact spot and didn't know what to do, restarted several times to try and find new stuff in early game but I was at wit's end and gave up. 9 months or so later my brother's friend comes over and sees FF7 on our game shelf, freaks out and asks me how far I got, then I told him about the spot and he said "oh that's easy let me show you!" So I get to the spot, hand him the controller expecting some absolutely ridiculous convoluted detail I missed about what I should've pressed or an item I was supposed to have. When he walked up the plank and started the next cutscene I was in complete awestruck, sad at myself for not understanding how I couldn't have possibly ever held up long enough at the lower elevation. I never hear people talk about this much and it's so sad and embarrassing that I get to live this down till the end of time. I hardly told a soul cause I wasn't sure if I was just stupid or what, but this VALIDATES the hell out of my feelings I had with this part. I would then proceed to beat the game without knowing about HP Plus materia at all. My first playthrough was PAIN lol.
We were all a lot worse at games as kids. It's amusing to me when I go back to a game like this and make it look incredibly easy because I was CLUELESS as a child lol!
Yes, dude, that was really counterintuitive. The same goes for entering a military base by car in FF8 and figuring out a shadow puzzle in Kuja’s palace in FF9. Although these are later game stuck-points, FF7 wants you to get stuck real soon 😂 I personally gave up my first walkthrough of FF7 after getting stuck on the rail tracks in the mountains. Same thing, couldn’t see the ways I could go.
In these types of JRPGs people generally got to the point where they couldnt figure out where to go and gave up. Hence the reason newer games added all these directional markers. Because gamers gave up in earlier 3D games.
Only 10 minutes?!? I was stuck here for like 2 days. Kept having to run back to the house to heal. I was convinced I was missing something to control the crane with. Then I think my sister asked if I could walk up the beam. 🤦♂️ I felt so dumb.
Fun fact: pressing Select activated and deactivated UI indicators that showed where the exits, chests and climbable objects are in the screen. Even funner fact: Pressing Select didn't help at all in this screen (it only showed there was a chest in the crane's operator seat), because the beam isn't something you climb on; but you just walk on it.
Maybe it's because I played Eidos's original PC port way back in the day, I didn't have much trouble with this segment. Maybe it's because the map is rendered in 320x240, while the 3D models are rendered in "glorious high resolution 640x480!", so that difference in resolution broke the optical illusion on where the beam is placed.
It's the fact that Cloud has a Different Animation when you get the timing right, so if you get it wrong, and watch his jumping arc, you'll be aiming for Entirely the wrong position.
As a speedrunner, it's kinda incredible that, if this was actually implemented as it appears to have been intended, the Guard Skip sequence break would most likely be made completely useless, as it would have required you to traverse down this field without having a chance to interact with the crane from the bottom first, meaning you'd be stuck at the top later in the story.
Interesting thoughts - this then leads to theories that the wall market (or at least the playground) may have been accessible before leaving for the sector 5 reactor via the gate being open, and with the one-way puzzle intact you would not be able to reach the church or aerith's house prematurely. Locking the gate makes the puzzle unnecessary. Maybe there was originally plans for the cloud and tifa memory scene to be at the playground?
I don't recall getting stuck here, but I can see how people would. In fact, I think a friend of mine who played for the first time recently did. Maybe I did too, but it was so long ago heh.. I really like these videos, I never knew about these things and it's fun to learn these obscure facts!
I was 11 when this game came out and I think I got stuck here for a couple of days until my friend came over and showed me how to climb the beam. I had been convinced that it was a plank spanning the upper areas and never even tried walking up it from the lower level.
Wow. This is absolutely fascinating to hear, thank you. The crane always seemed like it could be operated with the arrow and all. I just always thought that I had arrived too late to this scene so the machine had already been destroyed...
First time on that, dude, lost all potions trying to survive, couldnt get anywhere, those random encounters were so often, so unforgivable.... Worst than that was the frequent save files being corrupted. Dude, at that time I learned a serious gaming rule: always have at least 3 save files on every game. Old days were way difficult, no mercy. Nowadays I dont give a crap about putting on easy mode. Im an old man, I just wanna have fun now. Turn on my console and have a good time, cant waste it griding, stressing anymore. 43 years old with 2 kids. Im done.
I had no idea people would get stuck on this. I can see now a little shading would have done wonders for that beam. But if I did ever try walking from the upper level, I must’ve immediately course corrected. The only thing I think about this place is how cool the background and music is.
Actually no, this never confused me but there is a screen in FFVII which did, it was during the attack of the second reactor when you were in the construction area before you got inside the reactor.
I feel like another big reason why it doesn't read as being on the lower elevation is because we see it head on with the camera's perspective. If the beam were more to the side then it would be easier to see whether it was horizontal or slanted. When the beam is in line with the camera especially from above the beam then it's much harder to tell the difference in its vertical angle. Even if the beam were shorter and we could see the bottom of it on the lower layer I'd still wager that a lot of people would think it's floating above them and they were supposed to jump onto it from the high elevation area.
The map always brings up a core memory for me, of renting out FF7 when I was being babysat for a few days, but getting completely stuck not knowing where I was to go to progress the story, so I spent ages grinding here for no reason trying to upgrade my materia. So naive!
Oh wow! I never really noticed the hand in OG before. This is so cool! I hope you continue to make these videos, they are incredible! Your sub count is gonna explode
For me it was always clear the beam was at an upwards angle. If it had been on the upper platform, it would have stood over parts of the platform, just like the holey piece of metal does at the bottom of the screen. What was most puzzling for me was Bone Village later in the game. I played FF8 before I played 7, so I edited the controls to have X as "acknowledge" and O as "cancel", just like it was in 8. The only problem with this is a tiny little bug in the mini game in Bone Village: The controls change back to the defaults, so O is "acknowledge" and X is "cancel". Imagine running around trying to place diggers by repeatedly hitting cancel...
Looking at the visuals, It feels like a big culprit is that the bottom of the plank covers the shadow, which it shouldn't if the bottom of the plank is down on ground level. Having the shadow if the ridge cover the bottom of the beam might have made it clearer, though that would likely have been difficult to spot on the crt tvs of the time.
i was 15 in 1997 and a guy in school told me about ff7. i didnt know what a rpg is but i bought it. actually with money from a friend who gave it to my spontaniously in front of the video game store because it was my birthday. I didnt know how to get past this screen. i thought i have to go somewhere esle and was stuck for days. The guy from school had to come to my place and he showed me the solution :D thanks for the insight, i always thought the excavator was the key...
I don't recall this map ever giving me any trouble. However I did play through the entirety of the game without ever equipping a single piece of materia because I didn't understand it. I just used melee attacks and whatever materia was pre-equipped on characters when they joined the party, and healed myself with potions and elixirs. In my defence, I was 9. Imagine my shock when like a year later my friend's older brother borrowed it and later began talking about how cool it was that you could pick what kind of magic to give to your characters and I'm like "...wat?"
Oh my gosh, I struggled so much when I first got here! It’s reassuring to know I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t figure it out. The funny thing is, once you know the way, this area takes just seconds to get through.
This clearly shows the problems with solving puzzles with a distant isometric perspective. Even back in the 80s and NES era, games like Marble Madness used simple colors and dark shading to make things very clear where you could and couldn't go. Once you start adding complicated art with realistic coloring and concrete environments, everything starts getting mushed together. Some people even struggled with brighter games like Sonic 3D blast because depth perception of the pseudo 3D effect can be difficult to gauge at an angle without clear shading and shadows. Isometric views have never really been popular outside of the claim of making 3D "graphics" on 2D graphical technology.
0:10 While that post is correct in saying that map is quite unreadable (anyone who played FFVII got stuck in this map because of how poorly designed it is), the point still stands - the issue is that this map is poorly designed, while the rest of the game isn't; meanwhile modern day titles have to drop buckets and buckets of yellow paint because they cannot design smartly anymore. Instead of learning from history and bettering the level design, modern developers are just repeating the errors of the past but using lazy shortcuts to avoid having to learn to learn and better themselves.
It's crazy to think that a simple ladder on this map would have avoided the scandal entirely. Same with the painted ledges in FF7 Rebirth; why not have remnants of climbing gear that's bright yellow or a rope ladder? It's incredibly unthoughtful how it's done these days.
@@guyanesegal3166 In Final Fantasy 7, there is a button that puts a glowing arrow on every exit boundary and every ladder. It's curious that this has never been a problem. Buckets of paint being tossed around isn't a clever solution to some insurmountable problem. It's some weird idea that goes from developer to developer without a thought given to how it looks to the player or within the setting. You could even install a bright yellow ladder because someone painted the thing instead of spilling a bucket of yellow paint around it. Amazing. I am a genius. Or maybe this stuff isn't difficult.
This might've been said already, but that screen was intended to be confusing on purpose. That might even be why they decided to scrap the crane portion in the end. Apparently, one of the developers was so proud of that Hellhouse enemy and wanted to ensure every player had to fight it at least once. The idea was to make that screen confusing to navigate so everyone would inevitably fight Hellhouse and get to see it. That is also why in the Remake they make the Hellhouse a giant spectacle and a mandatory boss fight. Somewhat of a troll to the original developer who originally made that Hellhouse design and was so damn proud of it.
This map stumped me for a long time as a kid. I was convinced I needed to do something with the robot hand or the crane, and spent a couple days just starting the game, getting into a dozen battles on this screen, and then saving and stopping while I wondered what I was meant to do. Then I went over to a friends house who had a save file in Wall Market, and I had him show me how he'd gotten past that screen. He just laughed and walked up and down the beam, I remember getting really embarrassed.
I think the Shinra Archaeology Project has actually restored this puzzle. I'm playing FF7 with this mod (and others), and was shocked to see this puzzle there.
wait-what? you're gonna have to re-edit this comment because it broke my soapy brain. did you say that it took you & your brother a few YEARS to get passed this part of the game or did you mean a few hours??? or am I having a stroke reading bad grammar, again?
It doesn't look like it connects the two top areas to me, but I did get confused by this as well. I didn't realize I could walk on the beam. The trainyard can be confusing as well.
Oh my god! I remember being 7 or 8 playing this with my dad. We never figuring this out the weekend we played it. Then come Monday morning a kid in my class told me how to navigate this map. I was so hyped to advance the story that evening.
That recreation looks nice, but I would expect the green light to be already on when the player first arrives, as it is trying to cue the player in to where they need to go.
I remember quitting this game for 18 months over this. When I returned to the game, I solved it immediately and didn't even remember what was so difficult about it.
I experience a Mandela effect whereby I could swear that I had to use the crane in the first playthrough of FF7 I did back in 1997; very weird. I was so confused when I replayed it a few years ago and the crane did nothing.
I got lost here as a 10 year old playing the PC port when it first released in 1998, this map and for some reason the back door of Cid’s house threw me for a loop and I wasted probably hours trying to figure out what I missed
I guess it makes more sense to be already solved, lore-wise. Aeris knows about the route through Sector 6 and there's no backstory about Sector 5 cutting itself off from the rest of Midgar. Probably would have been something if the devs hadn't been rushed though.
I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one to get stuck here! I was around 11 years old when I first played FF7 and kept restarting at this point because I thought I missed some item needed to use the crane or my game was bugged, and at the time there were no gameplay videos online that you could watch to see the route. Eventually I just ran around until accidentally getting on that beam
Something I think would make it feel more intuitive is if the beam was laying down, either on the bottom or top most layer, and Cloud would pick up one end and move it into place. For example just picking up the top part and leading it against the cliff. Or picking up the bottom part and simply dragging it over before letting it fall to the floor. Both of these I think would do better to signify it was on the bottom layer, since the current animation, while nice, still feels ambiguous. And perhaps a longer animation like what I imagine is why it was cut, such an intricate animation for a single beam would take longer than it takes to move across the entire room.
I had to copy a save from a friend (without telling i was too ashamed ) just outside Midgard to continue the game. I only found my way in this maze years later.
For God's sake, I'm glad I'm not alone with this bullshit. It took me weeks to figure it out. At the time, I played it over and over again to that exact point, just to start a new game. It's been 25 years since then. Still my favorite game of all time.
I got stuck on this map for like 2 hours as a kid (or maybe less since I can't remember exactly). I ended up grinding as I tried to find how to progress. I only accidentally solved it when I stepped on it.
never really got stuck, like a whole minute of just running around had me past the unclear how to use beam. i was convinced there was more to this area though, a secret or something and spent some time poking around to no avail. it's nice to see this info now, i feel like my hunch about the area was partially correct
I feel like I remember something else having similar vibes to the "you help me up, and I'll let down the ladder; I swear." But it's been way too long since I've last played the game, I can't see for sure if/when it happen.
Oh! So that’s probably why they added all the mechanical puzzles in that part of Remake. Edit: oops just got to the part of the video where you said that.
That map never really gave me any trouble. After a few minutes I accidentally walked onto the beam lol the part where you had to grab onto the swinging rope/chain… who even thought that was a good idea!?
![KSI - Dirty [Official Visualiser]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VoDh1h1dPUE/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for not turning this into a 2-hour video essay. Short, sweet, clear, and concise.
Right? Worth a like just for the no nonsense
"Final Fantasy VII is an iconic game that released in 1997. It was the first 3D..."
I miss sub 10min content that WASNT brainrot...
I like 2 hour videos
@@nate6045 Before 2009 RUclips videos used to only go up to 15 minutes maximum
I remember I was convinced I had to use the giant hand and wasting a ton of time until I accidentally stepped on the beam
Painfully went to level 18 on this screen… Took game back to blockbuster, Bought the game several weeks later then saw the stepping on the beam. That dang crane talked to me too much.
Blade Beam unlocked!
And now in Remake you DO have to use the giant hand!
I strangely figured this one out immediately. Then I got lost in Mt. Nibel and didn't make it back out until the party was around Level 50, making the rest of my first run a joke.
Pretty sure this what I did first time playing back in 1997 or whatever. Beam just doesn't register as walkable since you can't see the bottom.
I remember noticing that the beam was obviously a 3D model rather than part of the background. In fact I always thought it was a plank rather than a beam, as you never even see the cross section in the game. A shame that they didn't complete the puzzle, but they could still have eliminated the confusion by simply shifting the beam slightly north.
The beam is CLEARLY an object that is meant to move. So I remember thinking I had to do something with it. I dont remember if I got stuck with it. But I would certainly be confused about at least 2 things:
1- Why can I climb in to this crane if I cant use it or move from here?
2- Why does that thing looks like it can move but cant.
Rather than getting stuck I can see myself trying to use the crane or hand or something to move the beam to get somewhere else.
Bro you are NOT seeing it's a 3D object on a CRT on god
@@thechugg4372 Do you even remember when CRTs were common? The PS1 wasn't a high resolution console (well, it did have a rare high-res mode, but it isn't used in FF7), all the detail you see on a modern screen was easily visible on a CRT too. Since 3D models in FF7 are untextured gradients, they stick out like a sore thumb against the highly detailed backgrounds.
But many people were STILL STUCK REGARDLESS. Maybe you werent. But it was common for people to give up on these types of games not knowing where to go
what's the difference between a plank and a beam?
I legitimately cannot stress how badly I got punk'd by this thing as a kid. Got FF7 for Christmas in 1998, got to this exact spot and didn't know what to do, restarted several times to try and find new stuff in early game but I was at wit's end and gave up. 9 months or so later my brother's friend comes over and sees FF7 on our game shelf, freaks out and asks me how far I got, then I told him about the spot and he said "oh that's easy let me show you!"
So I get to the spot, hand him the controller expecting some absolutely ridiculous convoluted detail I missed about what I should've pressed or an item I was supposed to have. When he walked up the plank and started the next cutscene I was in complete awestruck, sad at myself for not understanding how I couldn't have possibly ever held up long enough at the lower elevation. I never hear people talk about this much and it's so sad and embarrassing that I get to live this down till the end of time. I hardly told a soul cause I wasn't sure if I was just stupid or what, but this VALIDATES the hell out of my feelings I had with this part.
I would then proceed to beat the game without knowing about HP Plus materia at all. My first playthrough was PAIN lol.
We were all a lot worse at games as kids. It's amusing to me when I go back to a game like this and make it look incredibly easy because I was CLUELESS as a child lol!
Yes, dude, that was really counterintuitive. The same goes for entering a military base by car in FF8 and figuring out a shadow puzzle in Kuja’s palace in FF9.
Although these are later game stuck-points, FF7 wants you to get stuck real soon 😂
I personally gave up my first walkthrough of FF7 after getting stuck on the rail tracks in the mountains. Same thing, couldn’t see the ways I could go.
@@VormavNJDOnly because you memorize the solutions
In these types of JRPGs people generally got to the point where they couldnt figure out where to go and gave up.
Hence the reason newer games added all these directional markers. Because gamers gave up in earlier 3D games.
I expected to get lost after playing a JRPG. After the 20th random battle when lost I would give up
I remember getting stuck on this map for more than 10 minutes as a kid.
So do I...
Only 10 minutes?!? I was stuck here for like 2 days. Kept having to run back to the house to heal. I was convinced I was missing something to control the crane with. Then I think my sister asked if I could walk up the beam. 🤦♂️ I felt so dumb.
And having to fight hell house over and over again with that ridiculous bum rush attack that takes a good half of your life each hit.
Fake news with that 10 minutes.
That hell-house enemy takes too long to kill.
I still struggle with this even after 4+ runs
Fun fact: pressing Select activated and deactivated UI indicators that showed where the exits, chests and climbable objects are in the screen.
Even funner fact: Pressing Select didn't help at all in this screen (it only showed there was a chest in the crane's operator seat), because the beam isn't something you climb on; but you just walk on it.
Maybe it's because I played Eidos's original PC port way back in the day, I didn't have much trouble with this segment. Maybe it's because the map is rendered in 320x240, while the 3D models are rendered in "glorious high resolution 640x480!", so that difference in resolution broke the optical illusion on where the beam is placed.
oh shit is *that* why I had no difficulty with this? I played the original PC port, not the PS1 version.
@@youmukonpaku3168 Yeah, it was a lot less obvious on my tiny blurry CRT.
I still got stuck on the PC port when it came out 😭 My 10 year old brain just didn’t see
@@youmukonpaku3168 Nah, people just dumb. I had no issue with this area in the original PS1 version. No one I knew had that issue.
*_A channel that uploads short tidbits of FFVII information? Subbed._*
2:42 excellent riff 🎶 too and vids don't have preamble/clickbait.
Straight and to the point with interesting information. I like it.
I do remember getting stuck on that exact beam as a kid and spent ages leveling on the hell houses
The swinging rope it tells you the wrong time to jump on was always a bigger issue for me.
It's the fact that Cloud has a Different Animation when you get the timing right, so if you get it wrong, and watch his jumping arc, you'll be aiming for Entirely the wrong position.
I weirdly nail it 90% of the time solely on the sound
totally. i’d either get this on the first try or the 30th try. no in between 😂
I got stuck here for so long the first time. Kept going back to town thinking I missed something. Eventualy just accidently walked onto the beam.
As a speedrunner, it's kinda incredible that, if this was actually implemented as it appears to have been intended, the Guard Skip sequence break would most likely be made completely useless, as it would have required you to traverse down this field without having a chance to interact with the crane from the bottom first, meaning you'd be stuck at the top later in the story.
Interesting thoughts - this then leads to theories that the wall market (or at least the playground) may have been accessible before leaving for the sector 5 reactor via the gate being open, and with the one-way puzzle intact you would not be able to reach the church or aerith's house prematurely. Locking the gate makes the puzzle unnecessary. Maybe there was originally plans for the cloud and tifa memory scene to be at the playground?
I don't recall getting stuck here, but I can see how people would. In fact, I think a friend of mine who played for the first time recently did. Maybe I did too, but it was so long ago heh.. I really like these videos, I never knew about these things and it's fun to learn these obscure facts!
Top Tier channel incoming. Also making Cloud shrug was a great touch 0:43
So that's why they included the hand minigame to the Remake.
I've always wondered what was with the robot hand.
Probably a Proud Clod prototype part. There's not really anything else that size or shape in FF7.
Great work, can't wait to get more insights into FF stuff!
I remember when I was a kid was stuck with the "beam" situation. Was so happy when I finally solved it.
Keep doing ff7 videos like this please!
your channel is highly underrated. thanks for this finding.
My first instinct as a 7-8 year old was to go into the driver seat and climb the crane up to the next level.
I started playing at 9 or 10 years old, I found it difficult, especially guard scorpion. I can't imagine how hard it would be for a 7 year old!
Young me was pulling my hair out at this bit for a while 😔
God bless you for making this 4 minutes.
And now I know, and knowing is half the battle! And now that I know that I know... The battle is WON!
wow, incredible. I immediately thought of FF7 remake's connection. Very cool
I was 11 when this game came out and I think I got stuck here for a couple of days until my friend came over and showed me how to climb the beam. I had been convinced that it was a plank spanning the upper areas and never even tried walking up it from the lower level.
Wow. This is absolutely fascinating to hear, thank you. The crane always seemed like it could be operated with the arrow and all. I just always thought that I had arrived too late to this scene so the machine had already been destroyed...
That was a fantastic video! Great job! I can honestly say I did not get stuck in this area at all back on the PlayStation 1.
First time on that, dude, lost all potions trying to survive, couldnt get anywhere, those random encounters were so often, so unforgivable....
Worst than that was the frequent save files being corrupted.
Dude, at that time I learned a serious gaming rule: always have at least 3 save files on every game.
Old days were way difficult, no mercy. Nowadays I dont give a crap about putting on easy mode.
Im an old man, I just wanna have fun now. Turn on my console and have a good time, cant waste it griding, stressing anymore. 43 years old with 2 kids. Im done.
I had no idea people would get stuck on this. I can see now a little shading would have done wonders for that beam. But if I did ever try walking from the upper level, I must’ve immediately course corrected. The only thing I think about this place is how cool the background and music is.
What an amazing subject! Thanks so much for this video!!! Answers so much
Actually no, this never confused me but there is a screen in FFVII which did, it was during the attack of the second reactor when you were in the construction area before you got inside the reactor.
"I'll hop on and you give me a ride" 😳
This channel is a gift from the sky
This made me go in all other screens of the game, and talk to everyone, hours later i was lucky....
I feel like another big reason why it doesn't read as being on the lower elevation is because we see it head on with the camera's perspective. If the beam were more to the side then it would be easier to see whether it was horizontal or slanted. When the beam is in line with the camera especially from above the beam then it's much harder to tell the difference in its vertical angle. Even if the beam were shorter and we could see the bottom of it on the lower layer I'd still wager that a lot of people would think it's floating above them and they were supposed to jump onto it from the high elevation area.
Giving me crazy near 30 year old flashbacks. 2:50 that demonstration is missing a random encounter or two lol
Bro this absoultely stumped me as a kid the first time I came here. Thankfully I finally found the way, but i will never forget this screen.
The map always brings up a core memory for me, of renting out FF7 when I was being babysat for a few days, but getting completely stuck not knowing where I was to go to progress the story, so I spent ages grinding here for no reason trying to upgrade my materia. So naive!
Oh wow! I never really noticed the hand in OG before. This is so cool! I hope you continue to make these videos, they are incredible! Your sub count is gonna explode
For me it was always clear the beam was at an upwards angle. If it had been on the upper platform, it would have stood over parts of the platform, just like the holey piece of metal does at the bottom of the screen.
What was most puzzling for me was Bone Village later in the game. I played FF8 before I played 7, so I edited the controls to have X as "acknowledge" and O as "cancel", just like it was in 8. The only problem with this is a tiny little bug in the mini game in Bone Village: The controls change back to the defaults, so O is "acknowledge" and X is "cancel". Imagine running around trying to place diggers by repeatedly hitting cancel...
Looking at the visuals, It feels like a big culprit is that the bottom of the plank covers the shadow, which it shouldn't if the bottom of the plank is down on ground level. Having the shadow if the ridge cover the bottom of the beam might have made it clearer, though that would likely have been difficult to spot on the crt tvs of the time.
i was 15 in 1997 and a guy in school told me about ff7. i didnt know what a rpg is but i bought it. actually with money from a friend who gave it to my spontaniously in front of the video game store because it was my birthday. I didnt know how to get past this screen. i thought i have to go somewhere esle and was stuck for days. The guy from school had to come to my place and he showed me the solution :D
thanks for the insight, i always thought the excavator was the key...
I don't recall this map ever giving me any trouble. However I did play through the entirety of the game without ever equipping a single piece of materia because I didn't understand it. I just used melee attacks and whatever materia was pre-equipped on characters when they joined the party, and healed myself with potions and elixirs. In my defence, I was 9.
Imagine my shock when like a year later my friend's older brother borrowed it and later began talking about how cool it was that you could pick what kind of magic to give to your characters and I'm like "...wat?"
Oh my gosh, I struggled so much when I first got here! It’s reassuring to know I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t figure it out. The funny thing is, once you know the way, this area takes just seconds to get through.
This clearly shows the problems with solving puzzles with a distant isometric perspective. Even back in the 80s and NES era, games like Marble Madness used simple colors and dark shading to make things very clear where you could and couldn't go. Once you start adding complicated art with realistic coloring and concrete environments, everything starts getting mushed together. Some people even struggled with brighter games like Sonic 3D blast because depth perception of the pseudo 3D effect can be difficult to gauge at an angle without clear shading and shadows. Isometric views have never really been popular outside of the claim of making 3D "graphics" on 2D graphical technology.
It was supposed to be an iron BEAM?!?! almost 30 years of my life been trying to figure out what was that scene all about! Thanks!
I'm not joking when I say this got me to quit playing FF7. This video might actually get me to give it a second chance.
0:10 While that post is correct in saying that map is quite unreadable (anyone who played FFVII got stuck in this map because of how poorly designed it is), the point still stands - the issue is that this map is poorly designed, while the rest of the game isn't; meanwhile modern day titles have to drop buckets and buckets of yellow paint because they cannot design smartly anymore. Instead of learning from history and bettering the level design, modern developers are just repeating the errors of the past but using lazy shortcuts to avoid having to learn to learn and better themselves.
It's crazy to think that a simple ladder on this map would have avoided the scandal entirely. Same with the painted ledges in FF7 Rebirth; why not have remnants of climbing gear that's bright yellow or a rope ladder? It's incredibly unthoughtful how it's done these days.
"All music made after 1999 is rap."
I *disagree.* Most of us play games for fun. Yellow paint just means "go that way" and thats as simple as most younger gamers enjoy it
I feel like you are just using boomer logic. Or maybe because in that era, only angry nerds played videogames
@@guyanesegal3166 In Final Fantasy 7, there is a button that puts a glowing arrow on every exit boundary and every ladder. It's curious that this has never been a problem.
Buckets of paint being tossed around isn't a clever solution to some insurmountable problem. It's some weird idea that goes from developer to developer without a thought given to how it looks to the player or within the setting.
You could even install a bright yellow ladder because someone painted the thing instead of spilling a bucket of yellow paint around it. Amazing. I am a genius. Or maybe this stuff isn't difficult.
Never had a problem with it when I played it back in ‘97. Oh, what a good year…
This might've been said already, but that screen was intended to be confusing on purpose. That might even be why they decided to scrap the crane portion in the end. Apparently, one of the developers was so proud of that Hellhouse enemy and wanted to ensure every player had to fight it at least once. The idea was to make that screen confusing to navigate so everyone would inevitably fight Hellhouse and get to see it. That is also why in the Remake they make the Hellhouse a giant spectacle and a mandatory boss fight. Somewhat of a troll to the original developer who originally made that Hellhouse design and was so damn proud of it.
This map stumped me for a long time as a kid. I was convinced I needed to do something with the robot hand or the crane, and spent a couple days just starting the game, getting into a dozen battles on this screen, and then saving and stopping while I wondered what I was meant to do.
Then I went over to a friends house who had a save file in Wall Market, and I had him show me how he'd gotten past that screen. He just laughed and walked up and down the beam, I remember getting really embarrassed.
I think the Shinra Archaeology Project has actually restored this puzzle. I'm playing FF7 with this mod (and others), and was shocked to see this puzzle there.
Yeeees! My very first playthrough! It took me sooooo long to realize I was walking *over* the plank and not under it! So dumb!
Me and My Brother back in 1999 or something....took us a few years do get over this...
wait-what? you're gonna have to re-edit this comment because it broke my soapy brain.
did you say that it took you & your brother a few YEARS to get passed this part of the game or did you mean a few hours???
or am I having a stroke reading bad grammar, again?
It’s almost like the devs were able to fully realize concepts from the original in the remake trilogy
It doesn't look like it connects the two top areas to me, but I did get confused by this as well. I didn't realize I could walk on the beam. The trainyard can be confusing as well.
That explains why that one thing wasn't pre-rendered like the rest of the background and was a textured 3D model like other things that can be moved.
I don't recall ever getting stuck there, but the beam being a 3D model instead of the background always bugged me. Now it finally makes sense!
Oh my god! I remember being 7 or 8 playing this with my dad. We never figuring this out the weekend we played it. Then come Monday morning a kid in my class told me how to navigate this map. I was so hyped to advance the story that evening.
never played this game but it's painfully obvious that the beam is being obstructed by the raised section of road and not resting on it.
it makes totally sense, because the beam is 3D model, it's right up on the face the fact it could have been moved by something.
I don't remember having an issue with this map, though I can perfectly see why people would be confused by it.
That recreation looks nice, but I would expect the green light to be already on when the player first arrives, as it is trying to cue the player in to where they need to go.
I remember quitting this game for 18 months over this. When I returned to the game, I solved it immediately and didn't even remember what was so difficult about it.
I experience a Mandela effect whereby I could swear that I had to use the crane in the first playthrough of FF7 I did back in 1997; very weird. I was so confused when I replayed it a few years ago and the crane did nothing.
There’s a similar switch to move the trains around, right? Maybe that’s the part you’re remembering.
Same. I swear I remember doing this in the 90's. A mandela effect indeed.
I got lost here as a 10 year old playing the PC port when it first released in 1998, this map and for some reason the back door of Cid’s house threw me for a loop and I wasted probably hours trying to figure out what I missed
I will gladly accept the award for being a genius as this map never stumped me, not even once. 🥇
I look down on the rest of you.
I guess it makes more sense to be already solved, lore-wise. Aeris knows about the route through Sector 6 and there's no backstory about Sector 5 cutting itself off from the rest of Midgar. Probably would have been something if the devs hadn't been rushed though.
I am playing through FFVII for the first time and just went through this part yesterday, I too was initially stumped by this weird looking beam
The beam twarted me for a month when i first played VII, since figuring it out I've never bothered going near the crane or hand thing again
I remember running around in this area for hours leveling and game overing sometimes to a giant house until I figured out the beam
I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one to get stuck here! I was around 11 years old when I first played FF7 and kept restarting at this point because I thought I missed some item needed to use the crane or my game was bugged, and at the time there were no gameplay videos online that you could watch to see the route. Eventually I just ran around until accidentally getting on that beam
I played when come out in 97/98 and still playing ..my whole time favourite game ..cloud the longest friend I got
I remember noticing that the beam is out of place. I think the reason was there was no shadow being casted on it.
Memory unlocked! As a kid I was stuck there for hours!
I have vague memories of being VERY familiar with this screen, and the Hell House enemy in my first playthrough many years ago.
Something I think would make it feel more intuitive is if the beam was laying down, either on the bottom or top most layer, and Cloud would pick up one end and move it into place.
For example just picking up the top part and leading it against the cliff.
Or picking up the bottom part and simply dragging it over before letting it fall to the floor.
Both of these I think would do better to signify it was on the bottom layer, since the current animation, while nice, still feels ambiguous.
And perhaps a longer animation like what I imagine is why it was cut, such an intricate animation for a single beam would take longer than it takes to move across the entire room.
I had to copy a save from a friend (without telling i was too ashamed ) just outside Midgard to continue the game. I only found my way in this maze years later.
That beam is the first "final boss" of the game.
I never even knew it was an I-beam. Always assumed it was a round copper pipe until someone on the internet said it was a piece of wood.
For God's sake, I'm glad I'm not alone with this bullshit. It took me weeks to figure it out. At the time, I played it over and over again to that exact point, just to start a new game. It's been 25 years since then. Still my favorite game of all time.
I never knew that was a problem when I cannot find a way, I hug the walls in till I find the way
I got stuck on this map for like 2 hours as a kid (or maybe less since I can't remember exactly). I ended up grinding as I tried to find how to progress. I only accidentally solved it when I stepped on it.
never really got stuck, like a whole minute of just running around had me past the unclear how to use beam. i was convinced there was more to this area though, a secret or something and spent some time poking around to no avail. it's nice to see this info now, i feel like my hunch about the area was partially correct
Still looks weird how Cloud moves up that beam. The angle somehow makes me feel he should've crossed it from the edge of the upper level.
Wait. People saw that the ledge was above the beam and thought that meant the beam was on the ledge?
I'm glad I grew up playing Wild Arms...
I feel like I remember something else having similar vibes to the "you help me up, and I'll let down the ladder; I swear."
But it's been way too long since I've last played the game, I can't see for sure if/when it happen.
Wow I remember that screen. Never knew anyone else had trouble with it too.
Today I figured out I'm not the only one who got messed up by this.
Yes, I was confused there at first playthrough.
Even with the animation,, the beam still looks like it should land on top of the raised section and make a bridge instead of being a ramp
First time through, I thought the beam was a column or pillar. Had no idea it was even lying across anything at all.
That's the reason I loved the little map icons. Looked awful but I needed it
Yea that beam got me the first time I played when I was kid, just kept missing the beam.
IT TOOK ME SO LONG! I think I gained 5 extra levels trying to figure it out
Oh! So that’s probably why they added all the mechanical puzzles in that part of Remake. Edit: oops just got to the part of the video where you said that.
I remember spending about half an hour trying to get through this map :D
That map never really gave me any trouble. After a few minutes I accidentally walked onto the beam lol the part where you had to grab onto the swinging rope/chain… who even thought that was a good idea!?
That would have saved me a ton of time, and stopped me from getting stuck on the first 2 play throughs.