Honestly making the Midgar slums stuck in never ending night time with only a few glimmers of daylight getting through the cracks or at the edges of the plate. Hell when I played the original I imagined the whole city was stuck in night time because because of an absurd amount of black smoke from the reactors covering and polluting the air. I feel like either option here would fit the oppressive/environmental themes far better than what we got in Remake.
Exactly this. This is also strongly implied to be the case since in the original, the world map literally tints to dark brown when you get within range of the Midgar wasteland, which to me indicates strongly that smog is so heavy that it literally blots out sunlight.
Pretty sure that in all the above-the-plate sequences in the original game, the sky is shown as either a black night-sky (When you've climbed up to Shinra HQ) or a murky brown. (During the raid on Midgar) I think the world map tint is black, like Treno in FFIX. (With Treno it's more overt, as even the random encounters on the world map take place with a night sky) I think it's mostly a black night-sky purely Because Cyberpunk, but that's less relevant than it very clearly not being a clear sky as a design choice, and for a good reason.
@@blacksunapocalypse Tbh at the start I felt like they were intentionally making Midgar (and specifically sector 7) way more warm and welcoming so that the player would become attached and when the plate collapses and everything goes wrong it would hit harder, kinda similar to how the Nier games handle their hub areas. That would have been a different but still valid approach imo, but unfortunately I was very wrong because the platefall also has no impact and literally no one dies, there were just zero consequences.
You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear someone say "WHERE IS THE DYSTOPIAN GRIT OF MIDGAR!!" it was such a let down to see no danger in the slums, no desperation. No fear. Ppl were just okay with their circumstances. It felt so corperate. Like they forgot how to make a gritty, hopeless setting. They even give ppl who work at shinra a good side, which to me, screams corperate apologensia. What bugged me the most was wall market. Some reason they turned it into a festival setting with children running round instead of what it is. A seedy Underworld where the msot corrupt ppl deal in human trafficking, prostitution & debauchery
Oh, you're not alone. I also detest the "Haha, I'm humming my own theme music" thing. I could maybe give it a pass for a goofy character like Yuffie when she's on her own. But it feels really weird for Barret. Particularly the scene where he's annoyed by Chocobos pecking and him and vents his displeasure by... humming the Chocobo music?
The point about Weiss and Nero undermining Sephiroth's impact is absolutely spot on (same for Angeal and Genesis), and it's always been one of my main contentions with the compilation. Great video as always, man!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way. If we consider who they are and when they’re at their power, they should have either helped us or been an additional antagonist in the original game. Sephiroth is terrifying because he’s so powerful and defeating him, let alone stopping a meteor, is such a huge feat. But to have those two active in the narrative just makes Sephiroth a “villain of the week” - same for Genesis in Crisis Core.
I do feel like this series is an example of a corporation trying to milk a popular story to the extent that it becomes a slicker but ultimately emptier shell of itself. Everything is way too Disney. I don't actually think the emotional impact of what Yuffie went through in this DLC will be explored satisfactorily in Rebirth. She seemed pretty much fine and back to her usual peppy self at the end of the DLC, almost as if they just hit the reset button. I don't think the writers are doing enough to really explore the depth of the implications of these conflicts...and in fact, I don't think they want to, because making the game too dark might lose them customers. Instead it's cutesy characters and scenes, fan favorites coming back for no reason. No real consequences that would make us too sad for too long. The design of Midgar is proof of that. A bright and sunny Midgar where despite crushing poverty everyone is well clothed and fit and everyone seems to be doing alright after a city crashed into theirs from overhead. Look, the old lady is passing out soup! I mean look at the intermission video where the crew are going to Kalm. They just defeated destiny, Sephiroth wants to destroy the world, they experienced some crazy shit. It hasn't been more than a few hours and Aerith is asking Barret like a child what 1 full day means. The woman we're led to believe is some sassy street smart city girl is looking up at Barret with these wide eyes saying, "My mommy says, 1 full day is the time you wake up to the time you go to beddy bye! What do you think, Barret?" It's so jarring and weird. I think we all just need to realize that what's coming is likely not what we'll want. Even for someone like me who doesn't really care about the story remaining 'faithful' to the original. I just want it to be good. But the writers have a very different take now on the world and characters. Everything feels like bad anime fanservice and Disney marketing. Which is fine in Kingdom Hearts. They forgot, this isn't that game. Anyway, keep working hard and being honest about your feelings with this game. Despite its complaints I am curious to see where it goes so will likely watch playthroughs on RUclips when it eventually comes out. But I won't buy it. I would love to hear your in-depth thoughts on some other golden age FF games though.
Thanks for the comment! Excellent points. I do cringe at that scene with Aerith and Barrett. I think you're absolutely right. Nothing about that feels real. SE are obsessed with delivering cuteness. And I think they're bouncing off fan reactions way too much - writing scenes that they think will make fans giddy (a strategy which is working on a certain level), instead of the scenes being true to the moment and true to what that character would really be feeling. That scene in particular feels like they've just left a theme park and now they're walking back to their car with the kid.
@@orion8550 To be fair, that scene is exactly what I wanted for the characters on their downtime, but not after having defeated the planet's heartless tyrant that is supposed to represent the larger than life concept of destiny and ultra mega God King Sephiroth who tells Cloud in no subtle way that shit is about to hit the fan on a scale larger than reality itself. I found myself thinking that the developers do have what it takes being down to earth in this magical world, but then I had to shove the keyboard away when they continued into the Zack scene, without Cloud copy but reversed cross colors etc and acting like Aerith died, as I was about to reflex vomit. My heart sank back to the bottom as I was watching a rather well depicted Zack (well, CC Zack). Now hear me out. That hitchhiking scene is exactly the kind of banter that I think highlights the characters emotional strength in the goofier time of FF VII (as an example, even if FF VII is rather dark, I still want Red to dress up as a sailor...). Cloud trying to be badass, Barret wanting to be the leader, Tifa being timid and well-mannered, Red being totally silent fits more with his AC character than OG character but works. However, Aerith goes from super serious to goofy dumb (acting but also being) to mystery exposition box like a kid told by parent to get every type of candy in a candy store through all of the game. I hate her as a narrative device, even if I like her as a character, goofy, dumb or serious. I want her gone from the series now as I think that might reduce the stupidity of using the lifestream as some sort of temporal information pool/computer to spoil the future constantly like an impatient 4-year-old and hearing her statement in FF VII rebirth trailer only enforces my belief that she will be used as a 4th wall breaking one-way walkie-talkie for the developers to tell us to darn well like the changes over and over, but she will likely continue even when/if she is dead. Hell, her knot in her stomach has people thinking it is a premonition for her demise, like sensing her future impalement, although jokingly. Nothing about this character is being a character anymore. But instead of this scene and with what remake has given they should question their very existence and creation, dreading the impact of going against the planet's will who earlier toyed with them as puppets being dragged around like plastic bags in the wind to do its bidding as well as sitting down and discuss every vision they saw and try to reach a conclusion of if they themselves are the bad guys now.
Agreed with all of this. Everything about the 'remake' content just seems like the developers are threading the needle between an audience that's completely infantile/immature/illiterate and people who care way too much about graphics/gameplay/spectacle/fan-service and will viciously defend any game that delivers on those fronts. I feel like all this is colossally missing the mark with gamers who aren't (a.) children or (b.) cringy man-children.
Sonon is definitely coming back, one way or another (either as a re-animated lab monster, or he'll escape alive and well). My default assumption with VII's world now is "no one's ever really gone." Even if the developers come out and explicitly say in an interview: "We aren't bringing any more characters back from the dead, nor will we ever again use time-travel to retcon anything ever again," I won't believe them. That's what happens when you cry wolf too many times. My plan moving forward is to wait until this series is finished and then read up on all the story changes before I decide whether to get invested again or not. It won't be until the story is concluded and the writers have finally put their pencils down FOREVER that I will at last be able to determine whether these games are worth playing or not, because FF sequels are practically infamous for invalidating the stories of their predecessors: - FFX-2 undermines the emotional impact of X's ending by resurrecting Tidus. - Then the audio drama, FFX - Will - invalidates literally everything that happened in the last two games (Tidus and Yuna break up, Sin is revived again, etc.). - Advent Children undoes Sephiroth's defeat at the end of the original game just for the sake of prolonging the story and having a sword fight between him and Cloud at the end. - FFXIII-2 retconned FFXIII's ending such that Etro's intervention wound up breaking the spacetime continuum and banishing Lightning to Valhalla, thus rendering the heroes' victory at the end of XIII pyrrhic at best. - The ending of XIII-2 rendered literally EVERYTHING that happened throughout that entire game pointless, and it in turn was then invalidated by Lightning Returns. - Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance rendered everything that the heroes fought for throughout THE ENTIRE SERIES pointless by revealing that it was ALL pre-ordained by the villain as part of his long-term plan. - FF7R, from what we can tell, seems to be using resurrection and time-travel to undo everything tragic that happened in the OG, thus eliminating all dramatic weight and trivializing its message about coping with pain/loss/adversity. (It could also be set in some knock-off alternate universe where nothing matters). Experience has taught me that there is no point in getting invested in anything written/directed by Nomura, Toriyama, Nojima or Kitase, because they'll almost certainly just invalidate it later. For me, the mere act of Square Enix writing an FF (or Kingdom Hearts) sequel has become synonymous with: "We are going to retcon the plot, world and characters of the previous game SO much that whatever happened in it now seems pointless in retrospect." - If FF7 Rebirth doesn't continue Remake's themes of defiance; if it instead doubles down on the original's themes of death and acceptance (e.g., by revealing that fate is unavoidable and Aerith is doomed to die anyway), it will render the last chapter of Remake pointless. UPDATE: And that seems to be what's happening, in fact, since we recently got confirmation that the whispers will be returning in Rebirth. - And even if Rebirth does reaffirm the tragic tone/themes of the original game, there's a very good chance that Part 3 will, in turn, just go back on THAT and have Aerith be resurrected for the sake of a "golden" ending anyway. - Honestly, if Square were to publicly announce FFX-3 tomorrow, my immediate takeaway would be: "Greeeeeeaaaaaat, everything the heroes went through in X and X-2 was actually pointless the whole time..." Thus, I will never play another CBU1 game again without first reading ALL the spoilers and story details, just to verify whether any of it MATTERS in the end; if what the characters are fighting for is actually WORTH getting invested in. I don’t want to risk wasting anymore time and money on a story which doesn't even matter.
@@vincentgraymore Probably not. I honestly despise Toriyama's writing and directing even more than Nomura's. To write a good sequel, you need to have a good understanding of worldbuilding (since you need to keep the rules for the world consistent between installments). Toriyama has absolutely no clue how worldbuilding works, and thus he has no idea how to tell stories in completely fictitious worlds. He's somehow even worse at telling new stories in pre-existing worlds. If a person is genuinely stupid enough as to think that "if you change the future, you change the past" is an acceptable line of dialogue, there's little hope for them. In a perfect world, such a person would be pilloried in the public square.
While the rewrite to Yuffie's backstory seems okay on the surface as a more grounded and dramatic plotline, it minds me of the issue I had with the changing of Shinra's appearance in the second bombing-run ー namely, that it reflects a lack of appreciation for what was actually happening in the original to begin with, and braves the risk of creating actual issues by not meshing with the parts that weren't altered. Yuffie was out hunting for materia because in her young naivety and anger at her father for having "given up on the war and Wutai" she believed that finding a bunch of powerful materia would allow Wutai to fight again. It was expressly against her father's wishes and her arc was grounded in her and her father reaching an understanding between them ー that her father wasn't wrong for preserving Wutai by giving up(an analogy to post WWII Japanese nationalist resentments) and her father coming to respect and accept Yuffie's autonomy and the fact that fighting occasionally is necessary. In the remake, not only is Wutai no longer apparently a defeated nation which completely drops the original symbolism of the entire Wutai plot and Yuffie's arc, but unless Sonon was being decieved by Yuffie, it seems Yuffie's anti-Shinra actions must have been, at least in part, sanctioned by her father. A sixteen year old girl floating around stealing materia in rebellion against her father makes sense. A father sending his 16 year old girl, ninja or not, to one of the most dangerous places in the world to participate in anti-Shinra terrorism, not so much. Basically, like with how the Shinra hologram thing just undid an iconic moment for a perceived plot hole that wasn't even a plot hole, this change gives Yuffie a more "grounded story" without recognizing that there wasn't really anything that needed "fixing" there to begin with. This, in substance, is what I hate the most about the remake as a whole ー all the wasted motions by writers trying to fix what isn't broken and basically making it worse every step along the way.
While Godo does not make a physical appearance, he is mentioned a few times in "Episode INTERmission", by his daughter, Yuffie, and his pupil, Sonon Kusakabe. Godo has been imprisoned after the Wutai War's cease fire, although details of his arresting are not disclosed. Since then, a new government took over the reins of his country. I don't think her father has given his permission. I agree with most of what you say, but I will take any breadcrumb if they move away from whisper type of story telling.
Reminds me of the terrible rewrites to all the characters in RE2 remake. They all become stereotypes and parodies over their original nuanced versions.
I’ve talked about this before, but something that totally threw me out of the story was the moment where the Whispers *physically prevent* Yuffie from entering Seventh Heaven. If the Whispers could physically drive people away this whole time, then why didn’t they prevent Gast from finding Jenova in the first place? And that extends to every other bad thing that happens to the Planet. I hate the Whispers so much
My assumption was that they're only intervening in response to something - presumably Sephiroth. They're a conservative force, after all. Their remit seems to be to keep things the same. I don't think they're interested in dabbling across the entire timeline to actively change things. I think that's consistent with what we know about the planet from the OG, which doesn't seem to be very proactive and has to be coaxed out by Aerith to ultimately lend a hand. The whole concept of fate dementors is something serious writing shouldn't have any truck with to begin with of course, but in terms of how they play out, the biggest issue I have is that given they're clearly the will of the Planet, and given they're clearly benevolent towards the team - they literally bring Barret back from the dead - and given defying them is something Sephiroth is clearly encouraging at the end of the game, then what is the incentive for the team to defy them? I think the impression you're left with - certainly the impression I was left with - in the Remake is that Aerith literally defied the will of the planet purely because she wanted to live. Which, I mean, is an absolutely fascinating setup, Aerith going down a dark path, but I absolutely don't think that's what they're setting up. I think it was just terrible writing.
@@anthroposmetron4475 You are correct. Many fans speculate a lot, but in the OG the planet is shown to be reactive, not proactive. The fact it created the OG weapons was to counter Jenova, but the Cetra managed to step up and defeat and seal her away before they were deployed. The weapons thus lost their purpose, not created for general purpose. The process of creation is unknown (it must have been a parallel production, as none were used but all produced) but it is a clear reactive process and not a proactive one. The compilation however changes a lot of context, like the existence of Omega (which is a contingency plan) and Jade+Zirconiade (so much stupid exist in this IP nowadays). The problem with the whispers is that they contain time properties and show that the planet is not only proactive, it knows the actual future from any given moment in time. The whispers know this master plan the planet has, from inception to oblivion (this is what is referred to as destiny by Red), and they know this because it "has" played out in a way that makes it certain to occur if things aren't altered by even more supernatural powers. There would be little problems if there was some sort of "here Sephiroths creates a problem so here the reaction is needed" but we know that they exist at the time of Zacks last stand, which is presumably earlier and without Sephiroths meddling, and their impact further back in time even affect the designer of Stamp as Stamp is altered upon their "omnitemporal death" (which clearly show their connection through time). The whispers are shown to be a reiterative time process which happens spontaneous to events (capable of knowing when deviation is too severe but also when it is corrected to acceptable levels, which can only be known by doing own changes and then analyze the result to make changes again, this is shown when they attack 7th seemingly not with the plan to hurt Jessie to begin with but suddenly do, they could have cracked her leg in her sleep if the plan was to hurt an avalanche member to force them to recruit Cloud, a change that came from nowhere to begin with, and they leave like they are certain that their correction was enough). Them dying wrecked havoc on the timeline because wherever they influenced (or rather supervised) events, events turned out different and that seemingly happens at several past chronological points (brace yourself as any past event can have changes, or a multiverse...) They are supposedly neutral, even to the planet's own survival, even if created by it and being defined as enforcers for the will of the planet, since they strive for only 1 outcome, the OG. This means that the planet actively let the Cetra die out because of Jenova and Sephiroth burn down Nibelheim etc, they would in fact "save" these events if changes for any reason would occur, time Sephiroth or not the planet would need these events. But if their intervention actions ultimately lead to an unpreventable butterfly effect that leaves them unable to do their job because they die (which does happen), they "should" be able to change what happened in the past to avoid it. If we assume the planet actually just wants to survive, then they should really just form a shield where Jenova crashes and dies on impact (they are physical afterall). Otherwise, we have to assume that the planet is either stupid and want a specific plan for a specific reason that isn't simply its survival or "stuck because of fate (ironically)". Keeping this plan is not only a risk since it can be distorted, it is also stupidly fragile if the power to distort time exist and something can hijack it (presumably Sephiroth). We get to deal with fun things like endlessness and behind the scenes time loops, which leads to paradoxes or bad writing, or simply needing heavy doses of suspension of disbelief since all time altering stories have problems. The whispers are clearly limited to not change their own changes for some reason, but their creation was a necessity because something "in the future" gained the power to distort time, so they themselves interjected themselves in the past at several instances? FF VII remake uses the "aha we trap them in a time and space where there is no time, so we can kill it here and thus affect them everywhere without them able to go back further in time and prevent their own defeat" basically erasing them from existence, which is why we see them die in the past. The problem is that they can drag people away. Aerith explain how they cannot somehow touch Sephiroth, but they can drag the party off the highway. Red actually has an insanely important question that is optional by talking to him on the highway before entering the portal that might be the solution to it all: Is it our destiny to defy destiny? The only way for this kind of power to actually lose is if it wants or needs to, and it needs so many restrictions that it becomes a nightmare to list everything allowed or not in order to not create massive potholes. Or you can jump unto fans weaving "perfect" explanations better than the developers will ever deliver, like the memory theory by Sleepezi.
@@vincentgraymore I really enjoyed reading this, you put into words exactly how insane and nonsensical the Whispers are. Your comment about the Planet being stupid is exactly how I would summarize the Whispers. Remake paints the Planet as an omnipotent creature that for whatever reason doesn’t just use the Whispers to prevent any harm caused by Jenova or the humans. It seems like the writers have either forgotten or disregarded Cid’s speech in the original game, where he describes the Planet as “A little kid that’s sick and alone in a huge universe.” It’s actually sad how they managed to character assassinate the *Planet itself.*
@@vincentgraymore I completely agree with you that the inherent investing of the Planet with temporal omniscience creates utterly enormous problems. It knows what the 'original' timeline is, but it can't predict the dementors' own vanquishing etc. I was just saying that I don't think the planet not 'correcting' the entire timeline from a position of omniscience is really a problem I have with the concept, given in the OG the planet is presented as reactive. Hell, the existence of the black materia in the OG and Aerith having to tell it to get its shoes on and join up with Holy suggests the planet is potentially equivocal about its own survival. Or at least it's not that on-the-ball about what's going on in the mortal realm. That's if anything the angle I'd critique from - the remake Planet is too active vis a vis the OG Planet. But as you point out, if the Planet is going to fight for the integrity of the timeline, it *has* to go all in on that. If it thinks the stake of potentially letting Sephiroth win is too high, it can't just be deflected by getting beaten up by the party. The biggest problem with this aspect of the sequel trilogy I have by far though is that it makes the party a bunch of morons, who literally go up against the planet, which is trying to retain a Sephiroth defeat timeline, and gift Sephiroth a re-run. And, what's worse, Aerith seems fully aware of this. Apparently Aerith, who literally was willing to give up her life in the OG, is no longer OK with that. And she's willing to gamble with the future of humanity and the planet to give a shot at living. Utterly brainless writing which breaks a character entirely out of their established character purely in pursuit of fanservice ends.
For remake, i preordered the delux edition. So certain i was watching maximilliondood and all the advertisements there was no way they could mess this up or stray from the original. Definitely wont be making that same mistake for part 2, I'll wait for the reviews to come out and take my time...
To be honest was Changing yuffies Motivation to a wutai Representative for a new government really Necessary what was wrong with finding materia to Restore your clans honour so glad for the video dude best birthday present ever
16:45. ALL of THIS!!! Let’s take FF13 Lightning Returns. The Game is set in a world that is on the verge of dying! Yet NONE of the residence that live in that game feel or even express terror at the thought of their lives ending! Sure they’ve been alive for hundreds of years, and yet the encroachment of CHAOS swallowing the last remaining landmasses doesn’t even frighten anyone!
Can I just say… I hate how much some of the new characters and NPCs look. They just looked like they were thrown into some random AI generator and accepted them for the final character design.
You definitely have a way with words, I’m sure your writing reflects the same level of skill and talent. I hope you are able to achieve something with it someday.
I choose the final option for how Yuffie will work out... they will never mention anything that happened in this DLC ever again and it will not inform her character in the future.
I agree I’ll never give square another dollar. I never bought remake either. Once I heard about the insane story changes I lost all interest. I don’t care how good it looks. Anyone who hasn’t should play the original, see how they handle Sephiroth there, then tell me the remake didn’t ruin him and the story.
Great video. The point about everything being too bland and polished and uniform really strikes a chord. The slums in the original game always felt really dangerous and depressing and like literally everything was scavanged and taped-together. You had characters who literally just went around looking at the ground to see if they could find anything worth picking up. Definitely doesn't feel like that in the Remakeverse, does it? One of my biggest issues with the original game, and something they absolutely had space to improve on, is that the worldbuilding is honestly pretty shallow. Culture doesn't really exist in the FF7 world and history barely so. We're told that Midgar, like a lot of real-world big cities, used to be a collection of smaller towns, but that's about it. Compared to some of the world-building in FF8 and FF9, it feels very rushed and very 16 bit era. I'm still a little interested in what Wutai looks like in the Remakeverse, given in the original this mighty nation which fought off Shinra for years is apparently just Godo's compound and a few houses outside of it, but I'm not expecting any real depth to it, even though this is a Japanese-developed game. Cait Sith is going to have an American accent, isn't he? When I think of what other character-driven triple A games are doing these days, it just all feels a bit.. not sure what the term is. It just feels kind of like they're expecting the main audience demographic to be ten year-olds. It... actually feels very 'developer expectation about video gaming in the nineties', I have to say.
I think another thing that really sucks the life out of Midgar in the remake, is the NPC designs. FFVII had a very poppy and colorful 90s anime design both in concept art and in the low-poly models. People with bright hair colors, spikes, and mish-mashed urban fashion. Had the world been better realized in 97, there's no doubt these characters would look like the type of people you find in anime like Slayers, Akira, Cowboy Bepop and Trigun. (In the Polygon produced Oral Tradition of FFVII, developers lay out the fact that the game was an attempt at realizing the anime style of the time in 3D. FFVII was never intended to look or be portrayed with a realistic aesthetic like AC or the Remake) Yet, in the remake the NPCs just look like regular people who shop at GAP and HnM. This is made even more absurd when it's juxtaposed against the designs of the central cast and a couple of other story-relevant NPCs.
Did you mean Scottish? He is voiced by Greg Ellis in English, who voices Cait Sith with a Scottish accent, likely as an allusion to his name origin as a supernatural cat that haunts the Scottish Highlands.
@@vincentgraymore No I mean I'm wondering if they're going to get rid of the Scottish accent from Dirge and Advent Children. They already dropped Red XIII's RP accent from Advent Children which... well, it was only one line and there are probably enough characters with RP accents in fictional media, but OTOH there are also even more characters with American accents in fictional media. They've re-cast literally every character in English so I'm assuming it's going to be a new voice actor.
@@anthroposmetron4475 ah okay. Yea it is very possible they do, especially considering the recasting, but I have a gut feeling this is one of the "details" that is handled with so much "love and care" because if they keep it people will tell other people to shut up about being unfaithful. And people only seem to care about characters in FF VII remake.
You are an addict my friend, same as all of us…we can’t let it go. But I think if you can find some enjoy from the games, then you should see it through to the end. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on rebirth.
Honestly square should've made Midgar dark, something like bloodborne would've worked much better, subtract the bloodborne theme of course. They really failed to give this game that feel of despair the og gives, I get a goofy feel from this game, my honest opinion. I just lost the excitement for this project forgoing, I guess I should've known that you can never duplicate a feel. I'll cherish the og ff7, the way the story should've been told, I'd rather have a remastered version over this remake.
In the og game she was an annoying little shit with a bad laugh. She wasnt to op but what made her valuable was after stealing her 1 weapon you could morph at max damage so she was perfect for farming sources on the downed sub. She was driven by greed to join the party at first but did come around more by the end. ......but if u sent her by herself on any path in the crater she'd keep everything. Showing that geed was still in her charater. It's understandable they'd want a better reason for her to join up. I kinda liked the idea yuffie as just a jerk robbing ppl. But will they meet up the same? Cid was last, is that gonna be part 3? You know you'll get yuffie in part 2, I'm guessing playable red 13? With how long the made midgar .....I have my doubts well get cid, Vincent, or Cait sith in part 2.... unless they change up how they meet up which would be nice. But there's a lot of story where you can pick your party so I'm hoping there's more open world exploring and non linear stuff. I haven't watched much on the yuffie dlc but looks very kingdom hearts-ish. With the darkness... and .Roche... ugh... so far in the main game hands down worst charater. It feels like he's trying to be gilgamesh. He's loud, annoying, over the top, and thinks you want to challenge him. Which is kinda old ff gilgamesh... but the bike ride was a bad time for it. Already annoyed with the bike chase this dude was just to much. Kingdom hearts does gilgamesh and shoehorns it into a chapter. And I know there's new charaters to flesh out the world but ugh... A fake out death that lasts 1 battle... why? We know they won't kill anyone already. I loved aerith and her death was a shock. But it made the story better. It made Sephiroth look terrifying. Then losing ckoud, and Tifa abandons the party to stay with coma cloud (I dislike her charater for that... its like days b4 the world ends and now is when you're like "I don't care about anytjing else only cloud" turns out the game is fine without cloud or Tifa 😅) But playing that game spoiler free it was great you worry if you'll get them back or lose more ppl. But leaving midgar you kick the shit out of Sephiroth like you were lvl 99 already. ....so whats on the line? Is it just fighting him and winning at the end of each part? Kinda takes the dread out of it. He was a serious threat because he permanently kills a party member, manipulates another, you mainly fight incarnations of jenova until the end. And you fight his God form. It felt like they blew their wad on part 1. Like it was the whole og game in just part 1 including fighting sephiroth. I did lik th gam and want to see where t goes but it feels so end game lvl already that I'm not sue they'll do more then fan service rinse and repeat each part.
on point like all your videos, i really wish you more subscribers, i dont get why maximilian dodd gets over a million and your amazing content gets ignored in comparison...
I enjoyed intermission. Some aspects of the game I enjoyed better than remake. But again, my problem boils down to midgar. More specifically, the parts of midgar they chose to show. Why couldn't Yuffies adventure take place in sector 1? Or 4? Or on the upper plate? Especially considering the fact that now Avalanche is a bigger organization with many splinter cells. Or am I to assume the entire Avalanche organization is in sector 7?
I know I'm late to the discussion. I am in the position of being new to the FFVII train, and just thought I'd drop my thoughts. My brother forced me to play the remake and intermission to prep for rebirth (which I haven't played and personally don't really want to). Intermission for me was a mixed bag. I enjoyed the combat, though I kind of fell into the position of repeating the same moves over and over again making the gameplay loop a bit tedious. I have no nostalgia to pull me in, I don't know who Yuffie is and honestly, her bubbly anime style personally, gestures and over the top acrobatics are just not to my tastes. I grew to like her in the second half of the DLC when the darker tone set in and she and her companion, Sonon, went up against a menacing foe. Sonon's death I feel was rather embellished and drawn out for what little time we'd spent with him. Yeah it's sad, but he seemed to get the super forced dramatic death. The DLC was so short I didn't feel like I'd gotten to know him. Would a been nice if he had a bit more to his personality but also didn't have the same back story and personality everyone else had. Sonon was on the revenge path but is also super nice. He allows Yuffie to take the lead. He's always level headed and keeps her in check and then at the end he shields her and pushes the button and she's stuck there doing nothing watching him die. I was left wondering why she wasn't getting hit too. It's not like the tentacles couldn't just go around him. Also, Yuffie is portrayed as overconfident and doesn't think things through. I felt it was a missed opportunity to not have her make a mistake that results in his death. He could still save her, but Yuffie would have and opportunity for growth. To learn to be careful. Maybe over the course of the DLC Sonon could teach her things, tell her to slow down and Yuffie could retort saying, "um, whose the boss here?" Show a little strife and her annoyance could inform her decision to do something without forethought that causes tragedy. It's a bit of an annoying trope to me to have a villain that just won't die no matter how much you beat his face in. I'm a little tired of the battle finishes, you walk off, and then bam, he takes you by surprise. Also, you see Sonon's death coming a mile away, and I would have preferred they don't draw it out. Maybe he only has enough time to throw one of those nuts at the elevator control panel to open it up, tell Yuffie to run right before getting engulfed by the tentacles. It just felt awkward having him standing over her slowly opening the door as he's is apparently dying, he gets his last words in and I'm sitting there saying, "get on with it!" Mostly because I wasn't invested in the situation. He died because they both confirmed the bad guy was dead except, psych! He wasn't. Maybe I'm a sadist, but when main characters are always right and then get punished it doesn't feel earned. Karma is a powerful storytelling tool but so many writers avoid it and I don't know why. I also wasn't a big fan of Remake either which I may have carried some resentment over (I won't deny it). The story was a bit meh, the inclusion of the ghosts that were established to be time-lords or whatever felt dumb and kept intruding on the actual story being told and also detracted from my enthusiasm knowing they could just butt-in whenever they want. I'm a new player, I have no idea what they changed so their presence is just an annoying obstacle. I was like the characters, if these guys don't have bigger implications than just, "you're not supposed to do that," then please, just get out of the way. Anyway, sorry, a bit ranty. Intermission wasn't bad, it just kind of bored me at parts and made me cringe a few times. Like you said, at least there were no time ghosts. Hearing how they changed things in these games actually makes me want to go play the original. It sounds amazing.
Never too late to add to the discussion! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Now looking back over Remake, Intermission and Rebirth, I probably had the most fun with this DLC game, despite its flaws. Maybe it's the one game that is not totally at odds with the OG, as in it's just built around the idea of 'What if Yuffie was in Midgar?'. It's something that doesn't happen in the OG, so the Devs have created a brand new story around the idea. And have tried to tell a more focussed tale due to the length of the DLC. As a result, it's the one game that has a neat story without meta supernatural forces pulling at all angles. I would absolutely recommend the original game. The remake project and the OG are worlds away from each other.
What happened has happened. The things that made us who we are already made us who we are. And there's nothing anybody can do to make it disappear, because it happened. The paths have shifted years ago. We cannot re " live " those moments. But each new step on those paths make those memories alive.
What has happened will always have happened, but we can have wishes for the inevitable new generation and people to experience/learn/go through what we once did. We can wish that they are shaped by something that shaped us, despite the roads being different now. We can wish that they can be scared by the same thing that made us who we are and cherish that experience as we once did. We can wish, even if the times are different, that others remember things the same as we do. Maybe we can bypass our selfishness and share instead of demanding new to force our memories staying alive. Maybe each new step twists and distorts our memories, rendering us unable to relish old things the same.
@@vincentgraymore You can remember that something has changed you, but you cannot experience that change twice from where you are after the change occurs. I think a part of our frustration with remakes, is that it doesn't affect us the way the original did, but that's impossible, because we are not the same anymore. Every path is different, and even if we have been changed by the same thing at some point (ff7 for example), that doesn't mean we have been changed the same way. So we can't really expect the new generation to experience things the same way we did. The world is different, the culture is different, so they will be shaped by this new world. For the better and the worse. Not eveything was perfect in 1997 either.
We can all agree aside the last ch and time ghost This remake plus Dlc are what people want But hey maybe that guy get revive ,this was tant by Nomura so even appear as a zombie or nothink
Changing her motivation was imo a good move. However it could easily been done while subtly introducing her as opposed to this uneeded entry. On that note her entry in the FF7 new threat mod is very well done and much better done than that entire game.
Orion85 Hello again! If you're still active, I would like to see you review Crisis Core: Final Fantasy - Reunion one day. Some few things confuses me about the game, storywise that perhaps you can cover? Some people have defended FFVII R's drastic story changes by getting something new as a justification, while other people seem to pretend that they didn't want the same story from the og FFVII. CC FFVII Reunion's story remains the same from the og CC from PSP, yet the same people says nothing about wanting "something new"? And it still doesn't connect well with FFVII R, especially for newcomers. What a mess.
I dunno, im not bothered by nero and Weiss tbh. It actually makes sense that scarlet would occasionally use them, consider how deep ground originally just appeared in dirge. Also, we know these 2 will have minor roles at best, because advent children and dirge are still gonna happen, so the remake games must lead to them, meaning weise and nero must live till then and zack and aerith will be dead. I know a lot of people dont loke the direction thing have taken, and honestly i think theu could have done better, but i do see how theu could make things works, so imma wait for the final game before giving an ultimate judgement on story. I will.say charecters, relations, gameplay, combat and side content in rebirth are all great, so as of right now, im happy with things overall.
I completely disagree with the assessment of how the citizens act in the slums. Unless something immediate has happened, after a while, even the worst circumstances become normal. People seek out friends, happiness, entertainment, wherever they can. They aren't forced into slave labor, being hounded by the military all day. They are people in an unsavory place. At some point that is just life, and life goes on. Its like people getting upset at what anime and game protagonists do, when they are literally children half the time. It would be completely unrealistic and unrelatable for a whole society that isn't actively, forcefully pushed down all day to be completely falling over in sadness 24/7. Instead they show people freaking out in the aftermath of specific situations. Like after the reactor explosion. Everyone around is freaking out. Which makes sense. Also, IMO its too late to give Yuffie an accent. There have been too many side stories. The other games, advent children, etc, that already establish that she doesn't. It would be really jarring to suddenly add that when we have had over a decade of her how she is. But that's all my 2 cents. We're all free to disagree.
you are trolling because there is like a TON of daylight in the original game. 2 other things u got wrong. 1. Nothing in original game says Yuffie was not in Midgar before u find her 2. Sector 7 is exact replica of the original game but with added areas so...do the maths on how its somehow worse 3. The fact you are talking about these games still justifies every choice Square Enix made
I don't think Orion said that there wasn't any daylight in the original game. He said there wasn't any in Midgar, and he's right. There are no daylight scenes of Midgar in the original. 1. Nothing says explicitly that Yuffie wasn't in Midgar. That much is true, but that's also a completely moot point because that's not how stories work or how claims are justified. There's nothing saying Super Mario was in Midgar either. Does that therefore mean he was? Yuffie was obviously not in Midgar in the original game because there's no trace of her in the text or the visuals. She can only be recruited, at the earliest, in the Junon area, and there's no way for Yuffie to cross the marshes from that side since there are no chocobo tracks between the Materia cave and the marshes. Putting Yuffie in Midgar is a ret-con. It doesn't mean it was a bad choice, and Orion doesn't even argue that it was. But, it is what it is. 2. Sector 7 is not an exact replica of the one in the original game. It is a rough approximation. Besides, motif and aesthetic are not the same things, and it's completely possible to think that the way something is portrayed(as supposed to what) is worse in the instance of two similar motifs. For example, if Leonardi Da Vinci and Van Gogh painted the same apple, it still wouldn't look the same. The two painters used radically different styles. Are you incapable of appreciating that a person might prefer or think one looks better than the other? 3. That's asinine. If SE had made a remake with a rhythm-based combat system, KH cross-over bullshit and with the art-style of Ghibli movie, people would also talk about it for years, but I very much doubt you'd be making the same argument, revealing it as a red herring and complete copium. It's amazing that you remake apologists manage to type out the stuff that you do...
3. 'The fact that you are still talking about something totally justifies everything the original person did artistically.' Yeah, nah, that's not how reality works mate. You might have noticed that Tommy Wiseau is still an internet meme nearly twenty years after the release of The Room.
Basically all prices, changed Yuffie, added Nero & Wiess + whatever was worth it to not having a story driven by the whispers. But the whispers preventing Yuffie from entering 7th heaven feels like enforcing that her struggles are pointless in the eyes of the planet except for disturbing the overly important to fate VIP main party. I just have to wonder. Are tragedies, gray and morally conflicted stories not okay anymore? What actually was FF VII back in the day, as now it seems it was lightning in a bottle because of negative space rather than the developer's creativity and mindset? Sonon will be back, but does it matter if he just died? What happened to the FF fanbase that removed the impact? The compilation? My answer would be KH fandom merging with FF, but perhaps it is just common classic media story telling and in this case JRPG combined with the Hollywood thinking of everything needs to have a continuation. Sagaguchi leaving sure was a tragedy, but he has given his endorsement of FF VII remake (not that he couldn't). I also keep updating myself on this topic and can't really let go...
In all honesty, I blame Disney and Japan's IDOL industry more than anything else. If you're interested, I wrote a thread and twitlonger post detailing how Remake seems to be betraying the themes of the OG for the sake of fanservice, and why Disney and the IDOL industry are to blame (it's under my twitter profile; same username). Much of it is stuff which I have/had planned for my video essay. Speaking of which, my plan was to split my video project into two parts, with Part 1 focusing on how Remake's story changes are poorly executed and don't leave me with much hope for Rebirth, and Part 2 focusing on the lack of permanence, multiverse problems, the IDOL industry, and how it all contradicts the core theme of the OG. Ultimately though, my personal life has been getting more busy lately (graduate studies), so I'm undecided as to whether I'll even be able to make a part 2 (before Rebirth launches). Thus, right now, I'm solely focused on getting "Part 1" finished (I'm moving some stuff from Part 2 into it so as to create a cohesive point about why the lack of permanence and flawed execution of Remake's story changes leaves me with nothing to root for). Whether I make a "Part 2" in a video format will depend on whether I can fit it into my schedule. If not, then I'll put it into a medium.com article or some other outlet. In either case, much of what I have planned for it is the same as what I've put into the aforementioned thread and twitlonger post (plus a few other things).
@@jonah_da_mann I've now read it. I just hope that people in the end will come to understand that even if remake do its own thing, with its own compilation, it DOES affect the original when it comes to general perception and cultural impact. I try and try to explain that sequels, prequels and additional media do affect the OG work in any franchise because head canon is selfishly false and not "the truth". Additional media changes context and thus the legacy and what is left behind, but hopefully in a better than worse way (something way easier to do when there is a planned continuation). Also, every kind of "what if"/"second chance" changes the perception and creates a "I like this version better" mentality, like comics. Zack died? Just play the remake, bruh. Even if he dies again, his last stand is still undone, even if there are 2 versions in the remakeverse. There shouldn't be a question about if Aerith dies, and even if she does it become a question of wasting/unable to defy fate (even when it is killed), just like Zacks fate now being a story about his actual new fate which is different from the OG. A lot of people, even big people in the FF fandom, say that it can be an evolved theme of loss or as long as "some kind of loss" is there it is still the same, but I would wholeheartedly disagree with the latter. And was "superloss" ever really needed? The only real disagreement I think I have is that Aerith HAS to die to save the planet (outside the themes), if that is the argument. She, Tifa and Cloud comments to some extent about how she probably didn't want to nor meant to die. The compilation does not go further into if Holy required her soul as "payment". At least not to my knowledge, but it does seem that "the voices" lead her to her slaughter, but I see it as a risk, not as a fate. I don't think that Holy was or is a blood magic which require a Cetra sacrifice, only a prayer. Her impact of dying is much greater if she was killed with an outcome where her survival was robbed rather than death necessary. Would she have slit her own throat if Sephiroth was like "nah" or would Aerith and Sephiroth be "destined" to do this (thus not able to avoid it)? Because if so we have to analyze further, her doing a "classic fate/I have to die because I was born to" sacrifice in the OG do seem to fly in the face of the OGs themes because it is the problem with the remake after all. If we accept such in the OG then remake actually becomes perhaps even more true than the OG and everything is just "fate, fate, fate". There is a difference in sacrificing oneself because it is a last resort, giving it all with a risky move but gets killed because of it, and having to sacrifice oneself because of "destiny". If this is the argument. Using time travel as a forced continuation of any kind at all brings disaster to this story, regardless if things end up in a happy ending. This is what people fail to realize, because life is just such a small part in such a story. I think that regardless of who dies later and regardless if Jessie or Sonon are actually dead, damage is done, and you cannot undo damage, just patch and mend it because whispers do not exist in real life (the problem of permanence exist for the franchise as well as in the stories). So it becomes a question of how good medics the developers are. Seeing as they were the ones doing the cuts I don't see a reason to give them credits even if it turns out alright. They did the cuts in the name of subversion and boredom, not retelling or "originality". You speak of growing up, perhaps I cling to the past too much even if I "accept" that remake is going different against my wants, but I don't think my acceptance can make up for others not getting the intention of the OGs legacy. The "accept that loss jumped off the screen and became about getting a retelling" is not a good argument for bad additional media. If acceptance leads to passivity to voice criticism and want, then it is also what breeds bad additional content. The whole point of remake is difference, of deviancy and suppressing deviancy. Something lost on many people that only see the story of the characters and similarities to the OG and not the actual main story of fate for the world in FF VII remake. You cannot come back from that as in ignoring its impact on everything, including what has been done (the compilation and OG) and will be done (Rebirth+). Just the thing that some people now refer to the OGs ending as a bad end severely impact the OGs perspective, as well as giving a scene where Zack survived his last stand, not to mention seeing the whispers as the OG fanbase and as a perhaps odd example TFS is canon prequel with its additional content. The only saving grace for the >new legacy< is to go difference and say that was always the intent, but we all know they will constantly whiplash back to the OGs scenes because they use the OG as a springboard, and they will keep themselves in its "limits" even if they seem to think those limits are limitless/very different from many fans. This new legacy already contains a Biggs that survived because time manipulation (even if it is a mundane explanation of someone just fetching him... and either took the bandana and glove and left Jessies corpse or grabbed her whole corpse) and Zack is a main time manipulation mystery. They need to use a non-malleable timeline and disregard the OG as "the projection that the whispers showed" in order to avoid connecting back to the OG, which I think is impossible, and even so people will still do it. I also think that the idol industry in the way you describe has been detrimental to Japanese culture. Also, I F'K hate twitter, as it constantly bugs me about logging in, and I do not have it. This was supposed to be a quick response. I am still looking forward to your work. We do think much alike, and I could comment even more, but either way, have a great one ;)
Squarenix has become Shinra.
Actually it is the old fans who have become Shinra and are sucking all the joy our of the world
@@Seph3135 k, coomer
Honestly making the Midgar slums stuck in never ending night time with only a few glimmers of daylight getting through the cracks or at the edges of the plate.
Hell when I played the original I imagined the whole city was stuck in night time because because of an absurd amount of black smoke from the reactors covering and polluting the air.
I feel like either option here would fit the oppressive/environmental themes far better than what we got in Remake.
Exactly this. This is also strongly implied to be the case since in the original, the world map literally tints to dark brown when you get within range of the Midgar wasteland, which to me indicates strongly that smog is so heavy that it literally blots out sunlight.
Pretty sure that in all the above-the-plate sequences in the original game, the sky is shown as either a black night-sky (When you've climbed up to Shinra HQ) or a murky brown. (During the raid on Midgar) I think the world map tint is black, like Treno in FFIX. (With Treno it's more overt, as even the random encounters on the world map take place with a night sky)
I think it's mostly a black night-sky purely Because Cyberpunk, but that's less relevant than it very clearly not being a clear sky as a design choice, and for a good reason.
I just realized I forgot to finish the last sentence in the first paragraph and just moved on lmao
Keeping it this way cause it's funnier.
Totally. It was one of the top things I was disappointed about. Midgar just felt so.... PG. Everything was too upbeat, bright, happy, etc..
@@blacksunapocalypse Tbh at the start I felt like they were intentionally making Midgar (and specifically sector 7) way more warm and welcoming so that the player would become attached and when the plate collapses and everything goes wrong it would hit harder, kinda similar to how the Nier games handle their hub areas.
That would have been a different but still valid approach imo, but unfortunately I was very wrong because the platefall also has no impact and literally no one dies, there were just zero consequences.
You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear someone say "WHERE IS THE DYSTOPIAN GRIT OF MIDGAR!!" it was such a let down to see no danger in the slums, no desperation. No fear. Ppl were just okay with their circumstances. It felt so corperate. Like they forgot how to make a gritty, hopeless setting. They even give ppl who work at shinra a good side, which to me, screams corperate apologensia.
What bugged me the most was wall market. Some reason they turned it into a festival setting with children running round instead of what it is. A seedy Underworld where the msot corrupt ppl deal in human trafficking, prostitution & debauchery
Oh, you're not alone. I also detest the "Haha, I'm humming my own theme music" thing. I could maybe give it a pass for a goofy character like Yuffie when she's on her own. But it feels really weird for Barret. Particularly the scene where he's annoyed by Chocobos pecking and him and vents his displeasure by... humming the Chocobo music?
The point about Weiss and Nero undermining Sephiroth's impact is absolutely spot on (same for Angeal and Genesis), and it's always been one of my main contentions with the compilation. Great video as always, man!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way. If we consider who they are and when they’re at their power, they should have either helped us or been an additional antagonist in the original game. Sephiroth is terrifying because he’s so powerful and defeating him, let alone stopping a meteor, is such a huge feat. But to have those two active in the narrative just makes Sephiroth a “villain of the week” - same for Genesis in Crisis Core.
I do feel like this series is an example of a corporation trying to milk a popular story to the extent that it becomes a slicker but ultimately emptier shell of itself. Everything is way too Disney. I don't actually think the emotional impact of what Yuffie went through in this DLC will be explored satisfactorily in Rebirth. She seemed pretty much fine and back to her usual peppy self at the end of the DLC, almost as if they just hit the reset button. I don't think the writers are doing enough to really explore the depth of the implications of these conflicts...and in fact, I don't think they want to, because making the game too dark might lose them customers. Instead it's cutesy characters and scenes, fan favorites coming back for no reason. No real consequences that would make us too sad for too long. The design of Midgar is proof of that. A bright and sunny Midgar where despite crushing poverty everyone is well clothed and fit and everyone seems to be doing alright after a city crashed into theirs from overhead. Look, the old lady is passing out soup!
I mean look at the intermission video where the crew are going to Kalm. They just defeated destiny, Sephiroth wants to destroy the world, they experienced some crazy shit. It hasn't been more than a few hours and Aerith is asking Barret like a child what 1 full day means. The woman we're led to believe is some sassy street smart city girl is looking up at Barret with these wide eyes saying, "My mommy says, 1 full day is the time you wake up to the time you go to beddy bye! What do you think, Barret?" It's so jarring and weird.
I think we all just need to realize that what's coming is likely not what we'll want. Even for someone like me who doesn't really care about the story remaining 'faithful' to the original. I just want it to be good. But the writers have a very different take now on the world and characters. Everything feels like bad anime fanservice and Disney marketing. Which is fine in Kingdom Hearts. They forgot, this isn't that game.
Anyway, keep working hard and being honest about your feelings with this game. Despite its complaints I am curious to see where it goes so will likely watch playthroughs on RUclips when it eventually comes out. But I won't buy it. I would love to hear your in-depth thoughts on some other golden age FF games though.
Thanks for the comment! Excellent points. I do cringe at that scene with Aerith and Barrett. I think you're absolutely right. Nothing about that feels real. SE are obsessed with delivering cuteness. And I think they're bouncing off fan reactions way too much - writing scenes that they think will make fans giddy (a strategy which is working on a certain level), instead of the scenes being true to the moment and true to what that character would really be feeling. That scene in particular feels like they've just left a theme park and now they're walking back to their car with the kid.
@@orion8550 To be fair, that scene is exactly what I wanted for the characters on their downtime, but not after having defeated the planet's heartless tyrant that is supposed to represent the larger than life concept of destiny and ultra mega God King Sephiroth who tells Cloud in no subtle way that shit is about to hit the fan on a scale larger than reality itself. I found myself thinking that the developers do have what it takes being down to earth in this magical world, but then I had to shove the keyboard away when they continued into the Zack scene, without Cloud copy but reversed cross colors etc and acting like Aerith died, as I was about to reflex vomit. My heart sank back to the bottom as I was watching a rather well depicted Zack (well, CC Zack).
Now hear me out. That hitchhiking scene is exactly the kind of banter that I think highlights the characters emotional strength in the goofier time of FF VII (as an example, even if FF VII is rather dark, I still want Red to dress up as a sailor...). Cloud trying to be badass, Barret wanting to be the leader, Tifa being timid and well-mannered, Red being totally silent fits more with his AC character than OG character but works. However, Aerith goes from super serious to goofy dumb (acting but also being) to mystery exposition box like a kid told by parent to get every type of candy in a candy store through all of the game. I hate her as a narrative device, even if I like her as a character, goofy, dumb or serious. I want her gone from the series now as I think that might reduce the stupidity of using the lifestream as some sort of temporal information pool/computer to spoil the future constantly like an impatient 4-year-old and hearing her statement in FF VII rebirth trailer only enforces my belief that she will be used as a 4th wall breaking one-way walkie-talkie for the developers to tell us to darn well like the changes over and over, but she will likely continue even when/if she is dead. Hell, her knot in her stomach has people thinking it is a premonition for her demise, like sensing her future impalement, although jokingly. Nothing about this character is being a character anymore.
But instead of this scene and with what remake has given they should question their very existence and creation, dreading the impact of going against the planet's will who earlier toyed with them as puppets being dragged around like plastic bags in the wind to do its bidding as well as sitting down and discuss every vision they saw and try to reach a conclusion of if they themselves are the bad guys now.
Spot on
Agreed with all of this. Everything about the 'remake' content just seems like the developers are threading the needle between an audience that's completely infantile/immature/illiterate and people who care way too much about graphics/gameplay/spectacle/fan-service and will viciously defend any game that delivers on those fronts. I feel like all this is colossally missing the mark with gamers who aren't (a.) children or (b.) cringy man-children.
Sonon is definitely coming back, one way or another (either as a re-animated lab monster, or he'll escape alive and well). My default assumption with VII's world now is "no one's ever really gone." Even if the developers come out and explicitly say in an interview: "We aren't bringing any more characters back from the dead, nor will we ever again use time-travel to retcon anything ever again," I won't believe them. That's what happens when you cry wolf too many times.
My plan moving forward is to wait until this series is finished and then read up on all the story changes before I decide whether to get invested again or not. It won't be until the story is concluded and the writers have finally put their pencils down FOREVER that I will at last be able to determine whether these games are worth playing or not, because FF sequels are practically infamous for invalidating the stories of their predecessors:
- FFX-2 undermines the emotional impact of X's ending by resurrecting Tidus.
- Then the audio drama, FFX - Will - invalidates literally everything that happened in the last two games (Tidus and Yuna break up, Sin is revived again, etc.).
- Advent Children undoes Sephiroth's defeat at the end of the original game just for the sake of prolonging the story and having a sword fight between him and Cloud at the end.
- FFXIII-2 retconned FFXIII's ending such that Etro's intervention wound up breaking the spacetime continuum and banishing Lightning to Valhalla, thus rendering the heroes' victory at the end of XIII pyrrhic at best.
- The ending of XIII-2 rendered literally EVERYTHING that happened throughout that entire game pointless, and it in turn was then invalidated by Lightning Returns.
- Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance rendered everything that the heroes fought for throughout THE ENTIRE SERIES pointless by revealing that it was ALL pre-ordained by the villain as part of his long-term plan.
- FF7R, from what we can tell, seems to be using resurrection and time-travel to undo everything tragic that happened in the OG, thus eliminating all dramatic weight and trivializing its message about coping with pain/loss/adversity. (It could also be set in some knock-off alternate universe where nothing matters).
Experience has taught me that there is no point in getting invested in anything written/directed by Nomura, Toriyama, Nojima or Kitase, because they'll almost certainly just invalidate it later. For me, the mere act of Square Enix writing an FF (or Kingdom Hearts) sequel has become synonymous with: "We are going to retcon the plot, world and characters of the previous game SO much that whatever happened in it now seems pointless in retrospect."
- If FF7 Rebirth doesn't continue Remake's themes of defiance; if it instead doubles down on the original's themes of death and acceptance (e.g., by revealing that fate is unavoidable and Aerith is doomed to die anyway), it will render the last chapter of Remake pointless. UPDATE: And that seems to be what's happening, in fact, since we recently got confirmation that the whispers will be returning in Rebirth.
- And even if Rebirth does reaffirm the tragic tone/themes of the original game, there's a very good chance that Part 3 will, in turn, just go back on THAT and have Aerith be resurrected for the sake of a "golden" ending anyway.
- Honestly, if Square were to publicly announce FFX-3 tomorrow, my immediate takeaway would be: "Greeeeeeaaaaaat, everything the heroes went through in X and X-2 was actually pointless the whole time..."
Thus, I will never play another CBU1 game again without first reading ALL the spoilers and story details, just to verify whether any of it MATTERS in the end; if what the characters are fighting for is actually WORTH getting invested in. I don’t want to risk wasting anymore time and money on a story which doesn't even matter.
Motomu Toriyama was the director for each of those examples. Even Remake as a co-director... is this a coincidence?
@@vincentgraymore Probably not. I honestly despise Toriyama's writing and directing even more than Nomura's. To write a good sequel, you need to have a good understanding of worldbuilding (since you need to keep the rules for the world consistent between installments). Toriyama has absolutely no clue how worldbuilding works, and thus he has no idea how to tell stories in completely fictitious worlds. He's somehow even worse at telling new stories in pre-existing worlds.
If a person is genuinely stupid enough as to think that "if you change the future, you change the past" is an acceptable line of dialogue, there's little hope for them. In a perfect world, such a person would be pilloried in the public square.
Square was never the same after Sakaguchi's departure.
While the rewrite to Yuffie's backstory seems okay on the surface as a more grounded and dramatic plotline, it minds me of the issue I had with the changing of Shinra's appearance in the second bombing-run ー namely, that it reflects a lack of appreciation for what was actually happening in the original to begin with, and braves the risk of creating actual issues by not meshing with the parts that weren't altered.
Yuffie was out hunting for materia because in her young naivety and anger at her father for having "given up on the war and Wutai" she believed that finding a bunch of powerful materia would allow Wutai to fight again.
It was expressly against her father's wishes and her arc was grounded in her and her father reaching an understanding between them ー that her father wasn't wrong for preserving Wutai by giving up(an analogy to post WWII Japanese nationalist resentments) and her father coming to respect and accept Yuffie's autonomy and the fact that fighting occasionally is necessary.
In the remake, not only is Wutai no longer apparently a defeated nation which completely drops the original symbolism of the entire Wutai plot and Yuffie's arc, but unless Sonon was being decieved by Yuffie, it seems Yuffie's anti-Shinra actions must have been, at least in part, sanctioned by her father.
A sixteen year old girl floating around stealing materia in rebellion against her father makes sense. A father sending his 16 year old girl, ninja or not, to one of the most dangerous places in the world to participate in anti-Shinra terrorism, not so much.
Basically, like with how the Shinra hologram thing just undid an iconic moment for a perceived plot hole that wasn't even a plot hole, this change gives Yuffie a more "grounded story" without recognizing that there wasn't really anything that needed "fixing" there to begin with.
This, in substance, is what I hate the most about the remake as a whole ー all the wasted motions by writers trying to fix what isn't broken and basically making it worse every step along the way.
While Godo does not make a physical appearance, he is mentioned a few times in "Episode INTERmission", by his daughter, Yuffie, and his pupil, Sonon Kusakabe. Godo has been imprisoned after the Wutai War's cease fire, although details of his arresting are not disclosed. Since then, a new government took over the reins of his country.
I don't think her father has given his permission. I agree with most of what you say, but I will take any breadcrumb if they move away from whisper type of story telling.
Reminds me of the terrible rewrites to all the characters in RE2 remake. They all become stereotypes and parodies over their original nuanced versions.
I’ve talked about this before, but something that totally threw me out of the story was the moment where the Whispers *physically prevent* Yuffie from entering Seventh Heaven.
If the Whispers could physically drive people away this whole time, then why didn’t they prevent Gast from finding Jenova in the first place? And that extends to every other bad thing that happens to the Planet.
I hate the Whispers so much
+1
My assumption was that they're only intervening in response to something - presumably Sephiroth. They're a conservative force, after all. Their remit seems to be to keep things the same. I don't think they're interested in dabbling across the entire timeline to actively change things. I think that's consistent with what we know about the planet from the OG, which doesn't seem to be very proactive and has to be coaxed out by Aerith to ultimately lend a hand.
The whole concept of fate dementors is something serious writing shouldn't have any truck with to begin with of course, but in terms of how they play out, the biggest issue I have is that given they're clearly the will of the Planet, and given they're clearly benevolent towards the team - they literally bring Barret back from the dead - and given defying them is something Sephiroth is clearly encouraging at the end of the game, then what is the incentive for the team to defy them?
I think the impression you're left with - certainly the impression I was left with - in the Remake is that Aerith literally defied the will of the planet purely because she wanted to live. Which, I mean, is an absolutely fascinating setup, Aerith going down a dark path, but I absolutely don't think that's what they're setting up. I think it was just terrible writing.
@@anthroposmetron4475 You are correct. Many fans speculate a lot, but in the OG the planet is shown to be reactive, not proactive. The fact it created the OG weapons was to counter Jenova, but the Cetra managed to step up and defeat and seal her away before they were deployed. The weapons thus lost their purpose, not created for general purpose. The process of creation is unknown (it must have been a parallel production, as none were used but all produced) but it is a clear reactive process and not a proactive one. The compilation however changes a lot of context, like the existence of Omega (which is a contingency plan) and Jade+Zirconiade (so much stupid exist in this IP nowadays).
The problem with the whispers is that they contain time properties and show that the planet is not only proactive, it knows the actual future from any given moment in time. The whispers know this master plan the planet has, from inception to oblivion (this is what is referred to as destiny by Red), and they know this because it "has" played out in a way that makes it certain to occur if things aren't altered by even more supernatural powers. There would be little problems if there was some sort of "here Sephiroths creates a problem so here the reaction is needed" but we know that they exist at the time of Zacks last stand, which is presumably earlier and without Sephiroths meddling, and their impact further back in time even affect the designer of Stamp as Stamp is altered upon their "omnitemporal death" (which clearly show their connection through time). The whispers are shown to be a reiterative time process which happens spontaneous to events (capable of knowing when deviation is too severe but also when it is corrected to acceptable levels, which can only be known by doing own changes and then analyze the result to make changes again, this is shown when they attack 7th seemingly not with the plan to hurt Jessie to begin with but suddenly do, they could have cracked her leg in her sleep if the plan was to hurt an avalanche member to force them to recruit Cloud, a change that came from nowhere to begin with, and they leave like they are certain that their correction was enough). Them dying wrecked havoc on the timeline because wherever they influenced (or rather supervised) events, events turned out different and that seemingly happens at several past chronological points (brace yourself as any past event can have changes, or a multiverse...)
They are supposedly neutral, even to the planet's own survival, even if created by it and being defined as enforcers for the will of the planet, since they strive for only 1 outcome, the OG. This means that the planet actively let the Cetra die out because of Jenova and Sephiroth burn down Nibelheim etc, they would in fact "save" these events if changes for any reason would occur, time Sephiroth or not the planet would need these events. But if their intervention actions ultimately lead to an unpreventable butterfly effect that leaves them unable to do their job because they die (which does happen), they "should" be able to change what happened in the past to avoid it. If we assume the planet actually just wants to survive, then they should really just form a shield where Jenova crashes and dies on impact (they are physical afterall). Otherwise, we have to assume that the planet is either stupid and want a specific plan for a specific reason that isn't simply its survival or "stuck because of fate (ironically)". Keeping this plan is not only a risk since it can be distorted, it is also stupidly fragile if the power to distort time exist and something can hijack it (presumably Sephiroth). We get to deal with fun things like endlessness and behind the scenes time loops, which leads to paradoxes or bad writing, or simply needing heavy doses of suspension of disbelief since all time altering stories have problems. The whispers are clearly limited to not change their own changes for some reason, but their creation was a necessity because something "in the future" gained the power to distort time, so they themselves interjected themselves in the past at several instances?
FF VII remake uses the "aha we trap them in a time and space where there is no time, so we can kill it here and thus affect them everywhere without them able to go back further in time and prevent their own defeat" basically erasing them from existence, which is why we see them die in the past. The problem is that they can drag people away. Aerith explain how they cannot somehow touch Sephiroth, but they can drag the party off the highway. Red actually has an insanely important question that is optional by talking to him on the highway before entering the portal that might be the solution to it all: Is it our destiny to defy destiny? The only way for this kind of power to actually lose is if it wants or needs to, and it needs so many restrictions that it becomes a nightmare to list everything allowed or not in order to not create massive potholes. Or you can jump unto fans weaving "perfect" explanations better than the developers will ever deliver, like the memory theory by Sleepezi.
@@vincentgraymore I really enjoyed reading this, you put into words exactly how insane and nonsensical the Whispers are.
Your comment about the Planet being stupid is exactly how I would summarize the Whispers. Remake paints the Planet as an omnipotent creature that for whatever reason doesn’t just use the Whispers to prevent any harm caused by Jenova or the humans.
It seems like the writers have either forgotten or disregarded Cid’s speech in the original game, where he describes the Planet as
“A little kid that’s sick and alone in a huge universe.”
It’s actually sad how they managed to character assassinate the *Planet itself.*
@@vincentgraymore I completely agree with you that the inherent investing of the Planet with temporal omniscience creates utterly enormous problems. It knows what the 'original' timeline is, but it can't predict the dementors' own vanquishing etc. I was just saying that I don't think the planet not 'correcting' the entire timeline from a position of omniscience is really a problem I have with the concept, given in the OG the planet is presented as reactive. Hell, the existence of the black materia in the OG and Aerith having to tell it to get its shoes on and join up with Holy suggests the planet is potentially equivocal about its own survival. Or at least it's not that on-the-ball about what's going on in the mortal realm. That's if anything the angle I'd critique from - the remake Planet is too active vis a vis the OG Planet.
But as you point out, if the Planet is going to fight for the integrity of the timeline, it *has* to go all in on that. If it thinks the stake of potentially letting Sephiroth win is too high, it can't just be deflected by getting beaten up by the party.
The biggest problem with this aspect of the sequel trilogy I have by far though is that it makes the party a bunch of morons, who literally go up against the planet, which is trying to retain a Sephiroth defeat timeline, and gift Sephiroth a re-run. And, what's worse, Aerith seems fully aware of this.
Apparently Aerith, who literally was willing to give up her life in the OG, is no longer OK with that. And she's willing to gamble with the future of humanity and the planet to give a shot at living.
Utterly brainless writing which breaks a character entirely out of their established character purely in pursuit of fanservice ends.
For remake, i preordered the delux edition. So certain i was watching maximilliondood and all the advertisements there was no way they could mess this up or stray from the original. Definitely wont be making that same mistake for part 2, I'll wait for the reviews to come out and take my time...
Remake fan and original fan but never really thought about the daytime in Midgar but its true that something feels off.
To be honest was Changing yuffies Motivation to a wutai Representative for a new government really Necessary what was wrong with finding materia to Restore your clans honour so glad for the video dude best birthday present ever
Happy Birthday, man!! Thanks for the comment.
16:45. ALL of THIS!!!
Let’s take FF13 Lightning Returns.
The Game is set in a world that is on the verge of dying!
Yet NONE of the residence that live in that game feel or even express terror at the thought of their lives ending! Sure they’ve been alive for hundreds of years, and yet the encroachment of CHAOS swallowing the last remaining landmasses doesn’t even frighten anyone!
Can I just say… I hate how much some of the new characters and NPCs look. They just looked like they were thrown into some random AI generator and accepted them for the final character design.
Generic anime side character design. Compare that with even the characters from the compilation series and they are leagues apart.
FINALLY! Welcome back as always!
I'll look forward to more FF contents.
It's kinda funny that you theorized the presence of the Fort Condor board game might mean that they cut Fort Condor from the main game.
You definitely have a way with words, I’m sure your writing reflects the same level of skill and talent. I hope you are able to achieve something with it someday.
Thank you! Very kind of you.
I choose the final option for how Yuffie will work out... they will never mention anything that happened in this DLC ever again and it will not inform her character in the future.
I agree I’ll never give square another dollar. I never bought remake either. Once I heard about the insane story changes I lost all interest. I don’t care how good it looks. Anyone who hasn’t should play the original, see how they handle Sephiroth there, then tell me the remake didn’t ruin him and the story.
Great video. The point about everything being too bland and polished and uniform really strikes a chord. The slums in the original game always felt really dangerous and depressing and like literally everything was scavanged and taped-together. You had characters who literally just went around looking at the ground to see if they could find anything worth picking up. Definitely doesn't feel like that in the Remakeverse, does it?
One of my biggest issues with the original game, and something they absolutely had space to improve on, is that the worldbuilding is honestly pretty shallow. Culture doesn't really exist in the FF7 world and history barely so. We're told that Midgar, like a lot of real-world big cities, used to be a collection of smaller towns, but that's about it. Compared to some of the world-building in FF8 and FF9, it feels very rushed and very 16 bit era.
I'm still a little interested in what Wutai looks like in the Remakeverse, given in the original this mighty nation which fought off Shinra for years is apparently just Godo's compound and a few houses outside of it, but I'm not expecting any real depth to it, even though this is a Japanese-developed game.
Cait Sith is going to have an American accent, isn't he?
When I think of what other character-driven triple A games are doing these days, it just all feels a bit.. not sure what the term is. It just feels kind of like they're expecting the main audience demographic to be ten year-olds. It... actually feels very 'developer expectation about video gaming in the nineties', I have to say.
I think another thing that really sucks the life out of Midgar in the remake, is the NPC designs.
FFVII had a very poppy and colorful 90s anime design both in concept art and in the low-poly models. People with bright hair colors, spikes, and mish-mashed urban fashion.
Had the world been better realized in 97, there's no doubt these characters would look like the type of people you find in anime like Slayers, Akira, Cowboy Bepop and Trigun.
(In the Polygon produced Oral Tradition of FFVII, developers lay out the fact that the game was an attempt at realizing the anime style of the time in 3D. FFVII was never intended to look or be portrayed with a realistic aesthetic like AC or the Remake)
Yet, in the remake the NPCs just look like regular people who shop at GAP and HnM.
This is made even more absurd when it's juxtaposed against the designs of the central cast and a couple of other story-relevant NPCs.
Did you mean Scottish? He is voiced by Greg Ellis in English, who voices Cait Sith with a Scottish accent, likely as an allusion to his name origin as a supernatural cat that haunts the Scottish Highlands.
@@vincentgraymore No I mean I'm wondering if they're going to get rid of the Scottish accent from Dirge and Advent Children. They already dropped Red XIII's RP accent from Advent Children which... well, it was only one line and there are probably enough characters with RP accents in fictional media, but OTOH there are also even more characters with American accents in fictional media.
They've re-cast literally every character in English so I'm assuming it's going to be a new voice actor.
@@anthroposmetron4475 ah okay. Yea it is very possible they do, especially considering the recasting, but I have a gut feeling this is one of the "details" that is handled with so much "love and care" because if they keep it people will tell other people to shut up about being unfaithful. And people only seem to care about characters in FF VII remake.
You are an addict my friend, same as all of us…we can’t let it go. But I think if you can find some enjoy from the games, then you should see it through to the end. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on rebirth.
Honestly square should've made Midgar dark, something like bloodborne would've worked much better, subtract the bloodborne theme of course. They really failed to give this game that feel of despair the og gives, I get a goofy feel from this game, my honest opinion. I just lost the excitement for this project forgoing, I guess I should've known that you can never duplicate a feel. I'll cherish the og ff7, the way the story should've been told, I'd rather have a remastered version over this remake.
In the og game she was an annoying little shit with a bad laugh. She wasnt to op but what made her valuable was after stealing her 1 weapon you could morph at max damage so she was perfect for farming sources on the downed sub.
She was driven by greed to join the party at first but did come around more by the end. ......but if u sent her by herself on any path in the crater she'd keep everything. Showing that geed was still in her charater.
It's understandable they'd want a better reason for her to join up.
I kinda liked the idea yuffie as just a jerk robbing ppl. But will they meet up the same? Cid was last, is that gonna be part 3? You know you'll get yuffie in part 2, I'm guessing playable red 13? With how long the made midgar .....I have my doubts well get cid, Vincent, or Cait sith in part 2.... unless they change up how they meet up which would be nice. But there's a lot of story where you can pick your party so I'm hoping there's more open world exploring and non linear stuff.
I haven't watched much on the yuffie dlc but looks very kingdom hearts-ish. With the darkness... and .Roche... ugh... so far in the main game hands down worst charater. It feels like he's trying to be gilgamesh. He's loud, annoying, over the top, and thinks you want to challenge him. Which is kinda old ff gilgamesh... but the bike ride was a bad time for it. Already annoyed with the bike chase this dude was just to much. Kingdom hearts does gilgamesh and shoehorns it into a chapter. And I know there's new charaters to flesh out the world but ugh...
A fake out death that lasts 1 battle... why? We know they won't kill anyone already. I loved aerith and her death was a shock. But it made the story better. It made Sephiroth look terrifying. Then losing ckoud, and Tifa abandons the party to stay with coma cloud (I dislike her charater for that... its like days b4 the world ends and now is when you're like "I don't care about anytjing else only cloud" turns out the game is fine without cloud or Tifa 😅)
But playing that game spoiler free it was great you worry if you'll get them back or lose more ppl. But leaving midgar you kick the shit out of Sephiroth like you were lvl 99 already. ....so whats on the line? Is it just fighting him and winning at the end of each part? Kinda takes the dread out of it. He was a serious threat because he permanently kills a party member, manipulates another, you mainly fight incarnations of jenova until the end. And you fight his God form. It felt like they blew their wad on part 1. Like it was the whole og game in just part 1 including fighting sephiroth.
I did lik th gam and want to see where t goes but it feels so end game lvl already that I'm not sue they'll do more then fan service rinse and repeat each part.
on point like all your videos, i really wish you more subscribers, i dont get why maximilian dodd gets over a million and your amazing content gets ignored in comparison...
I enjoyed intermission. Some aspects of the game I enjoyed better than remake. But again, my problem boils down to midgar. More specifically, the parts of midgar they chose to show. Why couldn't Yuffies adventure take place in sector 1? Or 4? Or on the upper plate? Especially considering the fact that now Avalanche is a bigger organization with many splinter cells. Or am I to assume the entire Avalanche organization is in sector 7?
I thing for sure: I won't pay for any of Final fantasy 7 games but I'll play it.
I know I'm late to the discussion. I am in the position of being new to the FFVII train, and just thought I'd drop my thoughts. My brother forced me to play the remake and intermission to prep for rebirth (which I haven't played and personally don't really want to).
Intermission for me was a mixed bag. I enjoyed the combat, though I kind of fell into the position of repeating the same moves over and over again making the gameplay loop a bit tedious.
I have no nostalgia to pull me in, I don't know who Yuffie is and honestly, her bubbly anime style personally, gestures and over the top acrobatics are just not to my tastes. I grew to like her in the second half of the DLC when the darker tone set in and she and her companion, Sonon, went up against a menacing foe.
Sonon's death I feel was rather embellished and drawn out for what little time we'd spent with him. Yeah it's sad, but he seemed to get the super forced dramatic death. The DLC was so short I didn't feel like I'd gotten to know him. Would a been nice if he had a bit more to his personality but also didn't have the same back story and personality everyone else had.
Sonon was on the revenge path but is also super nice. He allows Yuffie to take the lead. He's always level headed and keeps her in check and then at the end he shields her and pushes the button and she's stuck there doing nothing watching him die. I was left wondering why she wasn't getting hit too. It's not like the tentacles couldn't just go around him.
Also, Yuffie is portrayed as overconfident and doesn't think things through. I felt it was a missed opportunity to not have her make a mistake that results in his death. He could still save her, but Yuffie would have and opportunity for growth. To learn to be careful. Maybe over the course of the DLC Sonon could teach her things, tell her to slow down and Yuffie could retort saying, "um, whose the boss here?" Show a little strife and her annoyance could inform her decision to do something without forethought that causes tragedy.
It's a bit of an annoying trope to me to have a villain that just won't die no matter how much you beat his face in. I'm a little tired of the battle finishes, you walk off, and then bam, he takes you by surprise. Also, you see Sonon's death coming a mile away, and I would have preferred they don't draw it out. Maybe he only has enough time to throw one of those nuts at the elevator control panel to open it up, tell Yuffie to run right before getting engulfed by the tentacles.
It just felt awkward having him standing over her slowly opening the door as he's is apparently dying, he gets his last words in and I'm sitting there saying, "get on with it!" Mostly because I wasn't invested in the situation. He died because they both confirmed the bad guy was dead except, psych! He wasn't.
Maybe I'm a sadist, but when main characters are always right and then get punished it doesn't feel earned. Karma is a powerful storytelling tool but so many writers avoid it and I don't know why.
I also wasn't a big fan of Remake either which I may have carried some resentment over (I won't deny it). The story was a bit meh, the inclusion of the ghosts that were established to be time-lords or whatever felt dumb and kept intruding on the actual story being told and also detracted from my enthusiasm knowing they could just butt-in whenever they want. I'm a new player, I have no idea what they changed so their presence is just an annoying obstacle. I was like the characters, if these guys don't have bigger implications than just, "you're not supposed to do that," then please, just get out of the way.
Anyway, sorry, a bit ranty. Intermission wasn't bad, it just kind of bored me at parts and made me cringe a few times. Like you said, at least there were no time ghosts.
Hearing how they changed things in these games actually makes me want to go play the original. It sounds amazing.
Never too late to add to the discussion! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Now looking back over Remake, Intermission and Rebirth, I probably had the most fun with this DLC game, despite its flaws. Maybe it's the one game that is not totally at odds with the OG, as in it's just built around the idea of 'What if Yuffie was in Midgar?'. It's something that doesn't happen in the OG, so the Devs have created a brand new story around the idea. And have tried to tell a more focussed tale due to the length of the DLC. As a result, it's the one game that has a neat story without meta supernatural forces pulling at all angles.
I would absolutely recommend the original game. The remake project and the OG are worlds away from each other.
Excited to hear your thoughts on Rebirth
What happened has happened.
The things that made us who we are already made us who we are.
And there's nothing anybody can do to make it disappear, because it happened.
The paths have shifted years ago.
We cannot re " live " those moments.
But each new step on those paths make those memories alive.
What has happened will always have happened, but we can have wishes for the inevitable new generation and people to experience/learn/go through what we once did.
We can wish that they are shaped by something that shaped us, despite the roads being different now.
We can wish that they can be scared by the same thing that made us who we are and cherish that experience as we once did.
We can wish, even if the times are different, that others remember things the same as we do.
Maybe we can bypass our selfishness and share instead of demanding new to force our memories staying alive.
Maybe each new step twists and distorts our memories, rendering us unable to relish old things the same.
@@vincentgraymore
You can remember that something has changed you, but you cannot experience that change twice from where you are after the change occurs. I think a part of our frustration with remakes, is that it doesn't affect us the way the original did, but that's impossible, because we are not the same anymore.
Every path is different, and even if we have been changed by the same thing at some point (ff7 for example), that doesn't mean we have been changed the same way. So we can't really expect the new generation to experience things the same way we did. The world is different, the culture is different, so they will be shaped by this new world. For the better and the worse. Not eveything was perfect in 1997 either.
We can all agree aside the last ch and time ghost
This remake plus Dlc are what people want
But hey maybe that guy get revive ,this was tant by Nomura so even appear as a zombie or nothink
Edit: ups I replied to wrong comment >_
Changing her motivation was imo a good move. However it could easily been done while subtly introducing her as opposed to this uneeded entry. On that note her entry in the FF7 new threat mod is very well done and much better done than that entire game.
Orion85 Hello again!
If you're still active, I would like to see you review Crisis Core: Final Fantasy - Reunion one day. Some few things confuses me about the game, storywise that perhaps you can cover?
Some people have defended FFVII R's drastic story changes by getting something new as a justification, while other people seem to pretend that they didn't want the same story from the og FFVII.
CC FFVII Reunion's story remains the same from the og CC from PSP, yet the same people says nothing about wanting "something new"? And it still doesn't connect well with FFVII R, especially for newcomers. What a mess.
I dunno, im not bothered by nero and Weiss tbh. It actually makes sense that scarlet would occasionally use them, consider how deep ground originally just appeared in dirge.
Also, we know these 2 will have minor roles at best, because advent children and dirge are still gonna happen, so the remake games must lead to them, meaning weise and nero must live till then and zack and aerith will be dead.
I know a lot of people dont loke the direction thing have taken, and honestly i think theu could have done better, but i do see how theu could make things works, so imma wait for the final game before giving an ultimate judgement on story.
I will.say charecters, relations, gameplay, combat and side content in rebirth are all great, so as of right now, im happy with things overall.
Personally I'm done with Square, not a penny from me after the betrayal that was FFR7.
I completely disagree with the assessment of how the citizens act in the slums. Unless something immediate has happened, after a while, even the worst circumstances become normal. People seek out friends, happiness, entertainment, wherever they can. They aren't forced into slave labor, being hounded by the military all day. They are people in an unsavory place. At some point that is just life, and life goes on. Its like people getting upset at what anime and game protagonists do, when they are literally children half the time. It would be completely unrealistic and unrelatable for a whole society that isn't actively, forcefully pushed down all day to be completely falling over in sadness 24/7. Instead they show people freaking out in the aftermath of specific situations. Like after the reactor explosion. Everyone around is freaking out. Which makes sense. Also, IMO its too late to give Yuffie an accent. There have been too many side stories. The other games, advent children, etc, that already establish that she doesn't. It would be really jarring to suddenly add that when we have had over a decade of her how she is. But that's all my 2 cents. We're all free to disagree.
you are trolling because there is like a TON of daylight in the original game.
2 other things u got wrong.
1. Nothing in original game says Yuffie was not in Midgar before u find her
2. Sector 7 is exact replica of the original game but with added areas so...do the maths on how its somehow worse
3. The fact you are talking about these games still justifies every choice Square Enix made
'2 other things' and then you give me 3. Was that extra one some bonus DLC?
I don't think Orion said that there wasn't any daylight in the original game. He said there wasn't any in Midgar, and he's right.
There are no daylight scenes of Midgar in the original.
1. Nothing says explicitly that Yuffie wasn't in Midgar. That much is true, but that's also a completely moot point because that's not how stories work or how claims are justified.
There's nothing saying Super Mario was in Midgar either. Does that therefore mean he was?
Yuffie was obviously not in Midgar in the original game because there's no trace of her in the text or the visuals. She can only be recruited, at the earliest, in the Junon area, and there's no way for Yuffie to cross the marshes from that side since there are no chocobo tracks between the Materia cave and the marshes.
Putting Yuffie in Midgar is a ret-con. It doesn't mean it was a bad choice, and Orion doesn't even argue that it was. But, it is what it is.
2. Sector 7 is not an exact replica of the one in the original game. It is a rough approximation. Besides, motif and aesthetic are not the same things, and it's completely possible to think that the way something is portrayed(as supposed to what) is worse in the instance of two similar motifs.
For example, if Leonardi Da Vinci and Van Gogh painted the same apple, it still wouldn't look the same. The two painters used radically different styles.
Are you incapable of appreciating that a person might prefer or think one looks better than the other?
3. That's asinine. If SE had made a remake with a rhythm-based combat system, KH cross-over bullshit and with the art-style of Ghibli movie, people would also talk about it for years, but I very much doubt you'd be making the same argument, revealing it as a red herring and complete copium.
It's amazing that you remake apologists manage to type out the stuff that you do...
@@hian 👏👏That's a Hall of Fame response right there.
3. 'The fact that you are still talking about something totally justifies everything the original person did artistically.'
Yeah, nah, that's not how reality works mate. You might have noticed that Tommy Wiseau is still an internet meme nearly twenty years after the release of The Room.
All I can say is bring on Rebirth.😁
Basically all prices, changed Yuffie, added Nero & Wiess + whatever was worth it to not having a story driven by the whispers. But the whispers preventing Yuffie from entering 7th heaven feels like enforcing that her struggles are pointless in the eyes of the planet except for disturbing the overly important to fate VIP main party.
I just have to wonder. Are tragedies, gray and morally conflicted stories not okay anymore? What actually was FF VII back in the day, as now it seems it was lightning in a bottle because of negative space rather than the developer's creativity and mindset? Sonon will be back, but does it matter if he just died?
What happened to the FF fanbase that removed the impact? The compilation? My answer would be KH fandom merging with FF, but perhaps it is just common classic media story telling and in this case JRPG combined with the Hollywood thinking of everything needs to have a continuation. Sagaguchi leaving sure was a tragedy, but he has given his endorsement of FF VII remake (not that he couldn't).
I also keep updating myself on this topic and can't really let go...
In all honesty, I blame Disney and Japan's IDOL industry more than anything else. If you're interested, I wrote a thread and twitlonger post detailing how Remake seems to be betraying the themes of the OG for the sake of fanservice, and why Disney and the IDOL industry are to blame (it's under my twitter profile; same username). Much of it is stuff which I have/had planned for my video essay.
Speaking of which, my plan was to split my video project into two parts, with Part 1 focusing on how Remake's story changes are poorly executed and don't leave me with much hope for Rebirth, and Part 2 focusing on the lack of permanence, multiverse problems, the IDOL industry, and how it all contradicts the core theme of the OG.
Ultimately though, my personal life has been getting more busy lately (graduate studies), so I'm undecided as to whether I'll even be able to make a part 2 (before Rebirth launches).
Thus, right now, I'm solely focused on getting "Part 1" finished (I'm moving some stuff from Part 2 into it so as to create a cohesive point about why the lack of permanence and flawed execution of Remake's story changes leaves me with nothing to root for). Whether I make a "Part 2" in a video format will depend on whether I can fit it into my schedule. If not, then I'll put it into a medium.com article or some other outlet.
In either case, much of what I have planned for it is the same as what I've put into the aforementioned thread and twitlonger post (plus a few other things).
@@jonah_da_mann I've now read it. I just hope that people in the end will come to understand that even if remake do its own thing, with its own compilation, it DOES affect the original when it comes to general perception and cultural impact. I try and try to explain that sequels, prequels and additional media do affect the OG work in any franchise because head canon is selfishly false and not "the truth". Additional media changes context and thus the legacy and what is left behind, but hopefully in a better than worse way (something way easier to do when there is a planned continuation). Also, every kind of "what if"/"second chance" changes the perception and creates a "I like this version better" mentality, like comics. Zack died? Just play the remake, bruh. Even if he dies again, his last stand is still undone, even if there are 2 versions in the remakeverse.
There shouldn't be a question about if Aerith dies, and even if she does it become a question of wasting/unable to defy fate (even when it is killed), just like Zacks fate now being a story about his actual new fate which is different from the OG. A lot of people, even big people in the FF fandom, say that it can be an evolved theme of loss or as long as "some kind of loss" is there it is still the same, but I would wholeheartedly disagree with the latter. And was "superloss" ever really needed?
The only real disagreement I think I have is that Aerith HAS to die to save the planet (outside the themes), if that is the argument. She, Tifa and Cloud comments to some extent about how she probably didn't want to nor meant to die. The compilation does not go further into if Holy required her soul as "payment". At least not to my knowledge, but it does seem that "the voices" lead her to her slaughter, but I see it as a risk, not as a fate. I don't think that Holy was or is a blood magic which require a Cetra sacrifice, only a prayer. Her impact of dying is much greater if she was killed with an outcome where her survival was robbed rather than death necessary. Would she have slit her own throat if Sephiroth was like "nah" or would Aerith and Sephiroth be "destined" to do this (thus not able to avoid it)? Because if so we have to analyze further, her doing a "classic fate/I have to die because I was born to" sacrifice in the OG do seem to fly in the face of the OGs themes because it is the problem with the remake after all. If we accept such in the OG then remake actually becomes perhaps even more true than the OG and everything is just "fate, fate, fate". There is a difference in sacrificing oneself because it is a last resort, giving it all with a risky move but gets killed because of it, and having to sacrifice oneself because of "destiny". If this is the argument.
Using time travel as a forced continuation of any kind at all brings disaster to this story, regardless if things end up in a happy ending. This is what people fail to realize, because life is just such a small part in such a story. I think that regardless of who dies later and regardless if Jessie or Sonon are actually dead, damage is done, and you cannot undo damage, just patch and mend it because whispers do not exist in real life (the problem of permanence exist for the franchise as well as in the stories). So it becomes a question of how good medics the developers are. Seeing as they were the ones doing the cuts I don't see a reason to give them credits even if it turns out alright. They did the cuts in the name of subversion and boredom, not retelling or "originality". You speak of growing up, perhaps I cling to the past too much even if I "accept" that remake is going different against my wants, but I don't think my acceptance can make up for others not getting the intention of the OGs legacy. The "accept that loss jumped off the screen and became about getting a retelling" is not a good argument for bad additional media. If acceptance leads to passivity to voice criticism and want, then it is also what breeds bad additional content.
The whole point of remake is difference, of deviancy and suppressing deviancy. Something lost on many people that only see the story of the characters and similarities to the OG and not the actual main story of fate for the world in FF VII remake. You cannot come back from that as in ignoring its impact on everything, including what has been done (the compilation and OG) and will be done (Rebirth+). Just the thing that some people now refer to the OGs ending as a bad end severely impact the OGs perspective, as well as giving a scene where Zack survived his last stand, not to mention seeing the whispers as the OG fanbase and as a perhaps odd example TFS is canon prequel with its additional content.
The only saving grace for the >new legacy< is to go difference and say that was always the intent, but we all know they will constantly whiplash back to the OGs scenes because they use the OG as a springboard, and they will keep themselves in its "limits" even if they seem to think those limits are limitless/very different from many fans. This new legacy already contains a Biggs that survived because time manipulation (even if it is a mundane explanation of someone just fetching him... and either took the bandana and glove and left Jessies corpse or grabbed her whole corpse) and Zack is a main time manipulation mystery. They need to use a non-malleable timeline and disregard the OG as "the projection that the whispers showed" in order to avoid connecting back to the OG, which I think is impossible, and even so people will still do it.
I also think that the idol industry in the way you describe has been detrimental to Japanese culture.
Also, I F'K hate twitter, as it constantly bugs me about logging in, and I do not have it. This was supposed to be a quick response. I am still looking forward to your work. We do think much alike, and I could comment even more, but either way, have a great one ;)