[SPOILERS] Final Fantasy VII Remake Discussion

[Skye]

Here's the difference though, this game is showing a bunch of things that happen way later on in the game much earlier, and being a "remake" they had even avenue to be able to actually explain those things now if they were going to shove them into the 1st part and make story changes, I mean they already changed so many other things so why not just properly explain the things actually shown here? This isn't a 1:1 story with the OG so the flaws of how unexplained nearly everything is in 7R do it no favours because those things will never be explained in FF7Remake, the game that released and that we've now played, while those things I mentioned earlier are explained in FF7 as a whole the game that released. If I have to wait for it to be explained in a future game then how is that not an inherent flaw in the storytelling of the game?

I mean how could I know they are even someone important to her? I could surmise it sure, but for all I know it was just some random guy that got killed and she felt sad because she found a dead body? What's even the point of showing that with no context when it doesn't even add anything to the actual narrative at this point? And that goes for so many other things from later points in FF7 that are now added here.

There is inherently a flaw since a game is supposed to stand on its own merits and not have to rely on being setup by other things, I mean is this not the very same "criticism" people levied against XV because of Kingsglaive content being before the game and people saying nothing "makes sense" without knowing the context of those things from the game which came later?

There being a single scene of Cait Sith at all makes no sense to anyone who just played it without knowing the OG, having to rely on "it'll be explained in a separate game I promise!" is not a good argument to fall back on and it's not a good story telling device either, it's hack shit, again 7R's story should be something that can stand on its own yet it cannot even muster that. If it was just put there to get OG fans to go "I CLAPPED I CLAPPED I RECOGNIZED THAT" then it's just a hollow addition.

When the party are confronting Sephiroth she explicitly states "you're wrong, everything about you is wrong", as if to imply she knows he's not from this time, in OG Aerith may have known her death was coming, but here she is aware that the Sephiroth they see does not belong in their world, because he quite literally isn't.

The Whispers of Fate when you fight them state they come from a future timeline, implying again alternate timeline, the scene with Zack at the end shows him living again indicating alternate timeline because the party had defeated the Whispers and are thus not "bound" by the original flow of fate, even the packet of chips with Stamp on it is explicitly shown in that Zack scene to show it's a different dog than the Stamp we see during the game, and it's shown in the scene where Zack has lived. Throughout the last encounter the party keep talking about how the future is a blank page and that the flashes in their heads they're seeing are a future that happens if they fail, which is the OG timeline and events, which they are actively fighting against, I don't see how it couldn't be any more apparent that it's no longer going to follow the events of OG 7, especially when many things from it now have no reason to even happen because of these new changes. Like what reason would they have to go to Kalm now? They've already seen "Sephiroth" so now the "mystery" surrounding him is completely lost too, seeing the Midgar Zolom wouldn't even mean anything anymore since we've literally seen Sephiroth throwing buildings at Cloud, the final confrontation with Cloud and Sephiroth in Cloud's head was already now done in Part 1, are they just going to do it AGAIN at the end of however many parts there are?

Also Cloud literally see's flashes of Aerith's from Advent Children from the clips of moments before her death and her Materia falling in the water, why would Cloud be having flashes of future events? Unexplained and that's even before Sephiroth shows the party flashes of events in the OG future, like Meteor or Nanaki with his cubs or Cloud laying Aerith in the water. Nanaki's words about the OG stuff they were shown being a future where they fail pretty explicitly means that the OG FF7 is now relegated to the "bad end" of FF7, and that 7R is now going to be the "true" end.

Making these pointless changes inherently undermines the entire story of FF7 and I don't know how anyone who calls themselves a fan of FF7 could defend such trash story writing, everyone calling it a bad KH fanfic is right.

As a fan of FF7, I really liked the ending. Nomura has said that the game is more of a reboot than a remake. Before you say "Then why you call it a remake than a reboot?" it's because of the marketing of the name of "Remake", ever since 2005 tech demo people have been talking about Remake for more than a decade with word of mouth. As a marketing student, I think this is a good decision to keep it that way. I did expect changes for the remake for years, and I did expect that there's something beyond Midgar after the escape. Cait Sith is more of a surprise scene of the remake.

YES! FF7R does have some flaws! Messy assets and the 2D background really bothered me, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad game. I really did not bothered with the story.

You have to accept that Tabata's XV has some flaws (BIG flaws), the story sucks let's admit it (Which makes Tabata a HACK director too), does not carry Nomura's vision (IT DOES NOT MEAN IM A NOMURA FANBOY!) If you want me to say something good about Tabata, I LOVED Crisis Core and Type-0, probably the best game ever made. BUT Tabata literally ruined Nomura's story. So stop saying that Nomura is a HACK director, he created really good games, Kingdom Hearts 1,2 and Birth by Sleep is one of the greatest games I ever played. If you say that Nomura ruined FF7R, Nomura is a scenario concept alongside with Sakaguchi, he wanted to tell the story that he wanted.

In my opinion, FF7R is a better game than XV. Reviewers rated VII remake higher than XV. Majority Fans liked the game better. Let's not say that the sales selling lower than XV, we all know the reason why is because of the pandemic which is not surprising. I really looking forward to the future of FF7R

 

[Storm]

I totally disliked the ending, never seen something so tonally dissonant and overdone...

I like the Compilation games and adore the movie, the problem is the type of change here doesnt feel natural within what I envision of FFVII.

This universe already had enough material to delve with, adding more cryptic nonsense wont help (even less considering the director's past record with KH) . If the sequels dont follow OG and alternate realities is really a thing I'm definitely out.

 

[Lulcielid]

The thing that baffles me is if deviating from the OG and not follow same beats of story is their goal, why not just do that? What I mean is, was it really necesary to use a bs in-universe device (Whispers of Fate & Alternate timelines) to do that?

I am totally fine with Remake significantely deviating from OG story but the device used was unnecesary, VII fanfics that deviate from the OG that I've read never resorted to that, they just simply wrote it that way.

 

[Bazztek]

As a fan of FF7, I really liked the ending. Nomura has said that the game is more of a reboot than a remake. Before you say "Then why you call it a remake than a reboot?" it's because of the marketing of the name of "Remake", ever since 2005 tech demo people have been talking about Remake for more than a decade with word of mouth. As a marketing student, I think this is a good decision to keep it that way. I did expect changes for the remake for years, and I did expect that there's something beyond Midgar after the escape. Cait Sith is more of a surprise scene of the remake.

YES! FF7R does have some flaws! Messy assets and the 2D background really bothered me, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad game. I really did not bothered with the story.

You have to accept that Tabata's XV has some flaws (BIG flaws), the story sucks let's admit it (Which makes Tabata a HACK director too), does not carry Nomura's vision (IT DOES NOT MEAN IM A NOMURA FANBOY!) If you want me to say something good about Tabata, I LOVED Crisis Core and Type-0, probably the best game ever made. BUT Tabata literally ruined Nomura's story. So stop saying that Nomura is a HACK director, he created really good games, Kingdom Hearts 1,2 and Birth by Sleep is one of the greatest games I ever played. If you say that Nomura ruined FF7R, Nomura is a scenario concept alongside with Sakaguchi, he wanted to tell the story that he wanted.

In my opinion, FF7R is a better game than XV. Reviewers rated VII remake higher than XV. Majority Fans liked the game better. Let's not say that the sales selling lower than XV, we all know the reason why is because of the pandemic which is not surprising. I really looking forward to the future of FF7R

The ending of 7R is garbage and you are clearly a Nomura fanboy defending his hack shit. I don't even really have any investment in other Tabata games, but it is factually true that Tabata saved XV after Nomura squandered his chance in trying to make it and failing, and Tabata made it a better game than it ever would have been under Nomura, hell he actually made it an ACTUAL GAME, Nomura didn't even know what he was doing with it and there was never a defined story for it even when Nomura was director on it, Ferrari even stated that there was no defined story for it and it was changing every 3 months, that when he designed Gentiana in 2011 she didn't even have any story yet, and only recently Nomura stated that only he knows the full story of what Versus was, aka it only existed in his head.

I don't know why you are clinging to "reviews" of all things, even though XV also had around the same score of reviews as 7R did back when it first launched too, and it didn't go down lower until months after launch, and in fact a lot of outlets either reviewed XV and 7R the same score or it's a tossup between one or the other being slightly higher, and who is majority of fans? Braindead KH/Nomura fanboys that defend any piece of shit Nomura does? How are they the majority? I see far more people shitting on 7R's ending and changes than I do see them praising it. I saw earlier you even tried acting like Famitsu reviews of all things matter because FF7R got a 39/40 while XV got a 38/40, I mean I guess according to you that means XIII-2 is better than FF7R since it got a 40/40 on Famitsu, and the original FF7 got a 38/40 too from them. No one cares about Famitsu reviews because no one has ever taken them seriously, they've notoriously been known as a joke for years.

You also mention sales, but you ignore that video games sales are at an all time high right now specifically because of the pandemic, so if anything FF7R would have received a boost in sales as a result of it than if there wasn't one, and stores aren't closed in Japan so I expect it to do around the same as FFXV did in Japan, and worldwide I expect 7R to have shipped 5m for its first week.

There's a difference between expecting story changes which we knew was happening, which we were mainly primed to believe it would be fleshing out things that was already in the original FF7 like fleshing out Avalanche with Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, or with Shinra things, not putting time travelling ghosts from the future resulting in alternate timeline bullshit that overwrites the events of the original and retconning Zack's death so he's now alive in the new alternate timeline, as the OG is now being considered the future where they failed and whatever new story changes they made completely undermine the story of FF7 itself. The story in XV is not only more cohesive and fleshed out than what's in FF7R here but it actually explains its MAIN STORY with Noctis and his journey in becoming the True King, anything in the side content are literally side story content, while here in 7R shit for the MAIN STORY is unexplained throughout the game, you literally are shown scenes from Advent Children in 7R with absolutely no context for what you just saw and the only possible way you could know is if you had already seen Advent Children.
It's never even explained why anyone in the party is trying to fight Sephiroth or why they're going after him, they've already changed the entire context of how Sephiroth is to be perceived because in the original he was supposed to be shrouded in mystery and an elusive figure, akin to the shark in Jaws, that's why seeing the Midgar Zolom was supposed to be a show of the threat Sephiroth brings, but now he's just throwing building at Cloud in alternate pocket dimensions and is literally living in his head rent free, as a game 7R fails to set up anything that a new player would need to know.

Who fucking cares about Nomura's vision? Nomura has no vision and wanted to turn FFXV into a musical on a whim after seeing Les Misérables in 2012.

 

[LeonBlade]

Here's the difference though, this game is showing a bunch of things that happen way later on in the game much earlier, and being a "remake" they had even avenue to be able to actually explain those things now if they were going to shove them into the 1st part and make story changes, I mean they already changed so many other things so why not just properly explain the things actually shown here? This isn't a 1:1 story with the OG so the flaws of how unexplained nearly everything is in 7R do it no favours because those things will never be explained in FF7Remake, the game that released and that we've now played, while those things I mentioned earlier are explained in FF7 as a whole the game that released. If I have to wait for it to be explained in a future game then how is that not an inherent flaw in the storytelling of the game?

I mean how could I know they are even someone important to her? I could surmise it sure, but for all I know it was just some random guy that got killed and she felt sad because she found a dead body? What's even the point of showing that with no context when it doesn't even add anything to the actual narrative at this point? And that goes for so many other things from later points in FF7 that are now added here.

There is inherently a flaw since a game is supposed to stand on its own merits and not have to rely on being setup by other things, I mean is this not the very same "criticism" people levied against XV because of Kingsglaive content being before the game and people saying nothing "makes sense" without knowing the context of those things from the game which came later?

There being a single scene of Cait Sith at all makes no sense to anyone who just played it without knowing the OG, having to rely on "it'll be explained in a separate game I promise!" is not a good argument to fall back on and it's not a good story telling device either, it's hack shit, again 7R's story should be something that can stand on its own yet it cannot even muster that. If it was just put there to get OG fans to go "I CLAPPED I CLAPPED I RECOGNIZED THAT" then it's just a hollow addition.

When the party are confronting Sephiroth she explicitly states "you're wrong, everything about you is wrong", as if to imply she knows he's not from this time, in OG Aerith may have known her death was coming, but here she is aware that the Sephiroth they see does not belong in their world, because he quite literally isn't.

The Whispers of Fate when you fight them state they come from a future timeline, implying again alternate timeline, the scene with Zack at the end shows him living again indicating alternate timeline because the party had defeated the Whispers and are thus not "bound" by the original flow of fate, even the packet of chips with Stamp on it is explicitly shown in that Zack scene to show it's a different dog than the Stamp we see during the game, and it's shown in the scene where Zack has lived. Throughout the last encounter the party keep talking about how the future is a blank page and that the flashes in their heads they're seeing are a future that happens if they fail, which is the OG timeline and events, which they are actively fighting against, I don't see how it couldn't be any more apparent that it's no longer going to follow the events of OG 7, especially when many things from it now have no reason to even happen because of these new changes. Like what reason would they have to go to Kalm now? They've already seen "Sephiroth" so now the "mystery" surrounding him is completely lost too, seeing the Midgar Zolom wouldn't even mean anything anymore since we've literally seen Sephiroth throwing buildings at Cloud, the final confrontation with Cloud and Sephiroth in Cloud's head was already now done in Part 1, are they just going to do it AGAIN at the end of however many parts there are?

Also Cloud literally see's flashes of Aerith's from Advent Children from the clips of moments before her death and her Materia falling in the water, why would Cloud be having flashes of future events? Unexplained and that's even before Sephiroth shows the party flashes of events in the OG future, like Meteor or Nanaki with his cubs or Cloud laying Aerith in the water. Nanaki's words about the OG stuff they were shown being a future where they fail pretty explicitly means that the OG FF7 is now relegated to the "bad end" of FF7, and that 7R is now going to be the "true" end.

Making these pointless changes inherently undermines the entire story of FF7 and I don't know how anyone who calls themselves a fan of FF7 could defend such trash story writing, everyone calling it a bad KH fanfic is right.

I don't want to write another long post but I'll try to address most of it without going on too much.

This game is sewing seeds for future parts, there's nothing wrong with that. Writing does it all the time in all sorts of places. There's no reason to explain everything as soon as you see it just because you can.

This game does stand on its own, everything you play the whole time makes sense without additional context. I have one friend of mine who hasn't played the original and really enjoyed the game and never expressed any sort of unknowing or confusion with the main narrative of the story. I'll ask them in detail about certain elements what they thought to get a better idea, but suffice to say newcomers won't have an issue.

Also my talks about fate and destiny are to be taken less literal in their game impact and the future direction of the title and more about what they mean in a meta sense as the fight against destiny was both a literal but also meta fight against destiny. It also doesn't fully dictate what will happen in the game. It's possible that they can't escape their fate in order to stop Sephiroth they need to do what they always were meant to do. The cast thinking that the future is doomed without fully knowing why are trying to stop it here and now which makes sense.

 

[Kagari]

The ending of 7R is garbage and you are clearly a Nomura fanboy defending his hack shit. I don't even really have any investment in other Tabata games, but it is factually true that Tabata saved XV after Nomura squandered his chance in trying to make it and failing, and Tabata made it a better game than it ever would have been under Nomura, hell he actually made it an ACTUAL GAME, Nomura didn't even know what he was doing with it and there was never a defined story for it even when Nomura was director on it, Ferrari even stated that there was no defined story for it and it was changing every 3 months, that when he designed Gentiana in 2011 she didn't even have any story yet, and only recently Nomura stated that only he knows the full story of what Versus was, aka it only existed in his head.

I don't know why you are clinging to "reviews" of all things, even though XV also had around the same score of reviews as 7R did back when it first launched too, and it didn't go down lower until months after launch, and in fact a lot of outlets either reviewed XV and 7R the same score or it's a tossup between one or the other being slightly higher, and who is majority of fans? Braindead KH/Nomura fanboys that defend any piece of shit Nomura does? How are they the majority? I see far more people shitting on 7R's ending and changes than I do see them praising it. I saw earlier you even tried acting like Famitsu reviews of all things matter because FF7R got a 39/40 while XV got a 38/40, I mean I guess according to you that means XIII-2 is better than FF7R since it got a 40/40 on Famitsu, and the original FF7 got a 38/40 too from them. No one cares about Famitsu reviews because no one has ever taken them seriously, they've notoriously been known as a joke for years.

You also mention sales, but you ignore that video games sales are at an all time high right now specifically because of the pandemic, so if anything FF7R would have received a boost in sales as a result of it than if there wasn't one, and stores aren't closed in Japan so I expect it to do around the same as FFXV did in Japan, and worldwide I expect 7R to have shipped 5m for its first week.

There's a difference between expecting story changes which we knew was happening, which we were mainly primed to believe it would be fleshing out things that was already in the original FF7 like fleshing out Avalanche with Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, or with Shinra things, not putting time travelling ghosts from the future resulting in alternate timeline bullshit that overwrites the events of the original and retconning Zack's death so he's now alive in the new alternate timeline, as the OG is now being considered the future where they failed and whatever new story changes they made completely undermine the story of FF7 itself. The story in XV is not only more cohesive and fleshed out than what's in FF7R here but it actually explains its MAIN STORY with Noctis and his journey in becoming the True King, anything in the side content are literally side story content, while here in 7R shit for the MAIN STORY is unexplained throughout the game, you literally are shown scenes from Advent Children in 7R with absolutely no context for what you just saw and the only possible way you could know is if you had already seen Advent Children.
It's never even explained why anyone in the party is trying to fight Sephiroth or why they're going after him, they've already changed the entire context of how Sephiroth is to be perceived because in the original he was supposed to be shrouded in mystery and an elusive figure, akin to the shark in Jaws, that's why seeing the Midgar Zolom was supposed to be a show of the threat Sephiroth brings, but now he's just throwing building at Cloud in alternate pocket dimensions and is literally living in his head rent free, as a game 7R fails to set up anything that a new player would need to know.

Who fucking cares about Nomura's vision? Nomura has no vision and wanted to turn FFXV into a musical on a whim after seeing Les Misérables in 2012.

Stop this right now. Don't attack other members just because they liked something you did not. This behavior is wholly unacceptable and not welcome here. If you continue to act like this then there will be appropriate consequences.

 

[Jenova]

@Bazztek

I partly agree with your take regarding the dependency of previous FF VII works in order to understand aspects of the Remake story. I think the most egregious scene that really favors your argument is Zack's Last Stand. Unless you have played the original or Crisis Core that scene means nothing to you. You don't understand why it's so significant or being highlighted in favor of other story beats. I compare it to watching Avengers: Endgame and someone who didn't watch the Avengers (2012) understand why the Avengers returning to the Battle of New York is such a big deal within the plot. It's wholly dependent on your having watched previous works within the franchise. The flashforwards of Advent Children in the final battle against the whispers were also quite guilty of this as well. However, I think events like the flashback to Tifa crying over her father or Hojo jogging Cloud's memory are merely minor adjustments to foreshadowing Cloud's true disposition. They're so subtle that new and old players alike can get something out of them. The scenes merely put emphasis on something that the original could not due to its limited hardware back in the 1990s. I think nuanced flourishes such as those really enhanced the Remake experience and brought it closer to potentially surpassing the original game's storytelling.



Regarding what I think how future games will pan out I'm not entirely sure. From what I know from experience with Nomura's games I could see a lot potential avenues going forward. I could see Sephiroth getting a redemption arc. Or at the very least reimagining his original goals. The ending with its time travel/multiverse shenanigans implied a sort of greater enemy of sorts. To parallel to the MCU once again, there's force in the Remake that's the Thanos to Sephiroth's Loki. I say this force is Lifestream itself. Adhering to fate and destiny is something the Lifestream would want since it's literally the nature of life and death cycle within the FF VII universe. People not dying or living at the correct times could affect its general operation I would assume. I think a big hint towards this is Sephiroth's rambling about "never ending" and him also not wanting Cloud to end during their moment together at the Edge of Creation. Moreover, at this point in the story Sephiroth himself is still within the Lifestream and is merely acting through his clones and Jenova. Perhaps he sees the Lifestream's "truer" nature and learns of events that have yet to pass since time within the Lifestream wouldn't really exist. "Time" as it were would be a simultaneous event and non-linear. Meaning Sephiroth could know the events of Advent Children (or even lived through them) without these events actually taking place outside of the Lifestream. Speaking of clones, if we visit these other timelines where Zack survived, would Sephiroth be able to manipulate him since overtime within the Lifestream Sephiroth would've grown in power? I know in the original Zack was a failed clone meaning he couldn't be controlled, but he died in the original yet we are here with him alive and kickin'. Retcons are definitely on the menu for this remake.

Moreover, these changes to the story could be done by Sephiroth himself since he's aware of the timeline. Sort of like how Caius changed events throughout time in XIII-2 to trip up Serah and Noel, I could definitely see things like Sephiroth trying to kill (or even save i.e. Zack, Biggs, Wedge and Jessie) certain characters at different points since in the "canon timeline" he's aware of his defeat in two different instances. If he is playing with the timeline(s) then possibilities like Aerith not dying, Cloud never regaining his true memories, characters like Rufus or Reeve dying, Full-Blown war with Wutai, never meeting Vincent (or forcing him into your party), Hojo or Heidegger taking over Shinra and more open up immensely.

How any of these changes will be executed is the real question here. Will each subsequent game within this remake series follow the original classic with gradual alterations here and there or will the sequel go fully off the rails will original content not seen in the original now that the Whispers have been defeated? Moreover, will we even get the original ending? Red XIII's dialogue during the battle with the Harbinger implied the ending in the original game was a bad and undesirable ending. So how much will need to be changed in order to reach this new, "better" ending for our heroes? Maybe the elimination of the Lifestream itself? I know for sure future installments will get a lot of callbacks and fanservice. You can bet your gil that Alt-Zack will cross over into the Remake timeline for some dual Buster Sword action. Nomura and Toriyama would never pass up such an obvious opportunity. Cloud getting a canon pairing with one of his love interests. Nomura's games usually have people paired up with one other. Noctis and Stella/Luna, Sora and Kairi, Neku and Shiki, etc. I know they will up the ante big time on the Hollywood blockbuster bombastic action. Expect Advent Children cranked up to 11 in the following entries. I hope the smaller emotional moments will still be there as that's something that usually falls to the wayside in Nomura's sequels in favor of style. Outside of that, it's really up in the air at this point. I feel pretty confident in my Sephiroth theories however. Despite how flimsy they may be.

 

[LogicalFal'cie]

Bazztek talking about literally anything without bringing up Final Fantasy XV, Tabata and Nomura challenge 2k13 - 2k20

 

[Guitar (pseudo)God]

The thing that baffles me is if deviating from the OG and not follow same beats of story is their goal, why not just do that? What I mean is, was it really necesary to use a bs in-universe device (Whispers of Fate & Alternate timelines) to do that?

I am totally fine with Remake significantely deviating from OG story but the device used was unnecesary, VII fanfics that deviate from the OG that I've read never resorted to that, they just simply wrote it that way.

Yeah, wasn't a fan of the whole "Whispers of Fate." I think it was in the final boss rush where we saw scenes from the original FFVII and Red XIII said something like "this is part of a future we can change." Huh? Did I hear that right? Are they serious?

I get that this is a remake project and that the scenario may be significantly altered. And I'm not one of those purists that insist the dolphin-jumping mini game be left intact. (Seriously, leave that alone, SE!). But there are some story beats that just can't be changed.

 

[CloudBuster]

Sooooo, FFVII Remake is actually FFVII-2 at this point? I'm not gonna say whether I hate it or love it for now as I am honestly curious with what their endgame is for all this. That being said I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing as the Remake doesn't outright disregard the original game. In fact it references it numerous times and to me that acknowledgement of the original canon means this is them building off of it rather than them outright tossing it in the trash. I can see this working if Nomura doesn't go full on crazy and if Kitase keeps him check so they can tell a reasonable story though at the same time I can also see it devolving into a very, very messy shit show. They're at a very delicate place right now imo and they can either soar with this idea or crash and burn. The end result comes down to whether or not someone can take the pen away from Nomura and Nojima before they go way too overboard with a concept that has some potential to it imo.

Also I like to think that the reason Cloud suddenly starts getting uber strong towards the end is because the characters are getting their memories of the original timeline back. My personal theory for now is that Sephiroth after Advent Children goes back into the lifestream and starts causing some new form of fuckery that involves literally fucking with the planet's history which is why he's got such a hard on for Cloud right from the get-go this time because this Sephiroth has already been beaten by Cloud twice whereas in the OG story Sephiroth is very dismissive of Cloud right up until the end. Kinda feels like he's intentionally guiding Cloud to gain his late game potential much earlier in the new timeline. Anyways time will tell how bad or good this will turn out but I do have to say this is one of the most interesting takes on a sequel that I've seen in quite a while.

 

[Jenova]

The thing that baffles me is if deviating from the OG and not follow same beats of story is their goal, why not just do that? What I mean is, was it really necesary to use a bs in-universe device (Whispers of Fate & Alternate timelines) to do that?

I am totally fine with Remake significantely deviating from OG story but the device used was unnecesary, VII fanfics that deviate from the OG that I've read never resorted to that, they just simply wrote it that way.

The only explainable reason is a marketing ploy. The creative team never intended to solely make a 1:1 HD remake of the original. However, changing an iconic game from the outset would be controversial and harm sales. Knowing this, they marketed the game as being a faithful remake while using plot devices hidden within the backend of the game to give themselves creative freedom on the additional episodes. Meanwhile, they technically gave veterans of Final Fantasy VII what they wanted for the majority of the game. Granted, we still don't know how much creative liberty they will take with the remake. It could just be minor re-imaginings of existing concepts and themes.The next entry will be very telling in that regard. Hopefully it's not too far off. It would be grossly unwise for Square-Enix to allow this momentum they've built to peter out by releasing the 2nd episode 5-7 years from now.

 

[Loganight]

I enjoyed pretty much 40 hours of my 45 hour playthrough of FF7Remake. The Hojo Lab dungeon dragged for me personally, and I had alot of trouble with the Hell House boss fight. If every game in the series is the same, 30-40 hours of faithfully recreated FF7 goodness with additions like chapter 4 which only serve to enhance the original story in a meaningful way followed by a 2 hour clusterfuck of an ending, that still sounds like a win in my book. Despite disliking the ending quite a bit for part 1, I can't say that I didn't thoroughly love this game to bits. Just worried what this means going forward for Aerith and Zack.

 

[Skye]

Stop this right now. Don't attack other members just because they liked something you did not. This behavior is wholly unacceptable and not welcome here. If you continue to act like this then there will be appropriate consequences.

Thank You.

 

[Loganight]

I think the thing that worries me most about the new direction they're taking is that the more meta-physical stakes will kind of diminish the weight of FF7's existential horror which originally came as an extension of its cosmic horror. While Jenova and her genes got kind of convoluted at times with things like the Sephiroth clones, it still was pretty grounded comparatively. Using FF7's brilliant monster designs they were able to create body horror that defined the game's aesthetic and amplified the narrative of this foreign invader coming to infect the planet. I think they nailed this in alot of the monster designs in Remake, and it's the reason why Jenova Dreamweaver was my favorite boss. Knowing that there are beings on the scale of Jenova wandering out in space is crushing enough on its own without needing to resort to time travel and alternate realities. I feel like that divides the focus of one of the strongest parts of the original game's world and story. You kind of lose the impact of how scary discovering each new twisted form of Jenova is (ala watching the Thing transform throughout the movie) when she's no longer the driving force behind Sephiroth. As soon as you introduce alternate timelines and the edge of creation I think Sephiroth's goals are kind of beyond that.

 

[Storm]

I think the thing that worries me most about the new direction they're taking is that the more meta-physical stakes will kind of diminish the weight of FF7's existential horror which originally came as an extension of its cosmic horror. While Jenova and her genes got kind of convoluted at times with things like the Sephiroth clones, it still was pretty grounded comparatively. Using FF7's brilliant monster designs they were able to create body horror that defined the game's aesthetic and amplified the narrative of this foreign invader coming to infect the planet. I think they nailed this in alot of the monster designs in Remake, and it's the reason why Jenova Dreamweaver was my favorite boss. Knowing that there are beings on the scale of Jenova wandering out in space is crushing enough on its own without needing to resort to time travel and alternate realities. I feel like that divides the focus of one of the strongest parts of the original game's world and story. You kind of lose the impact of how scary discovering each new twisted form of Jenova is (ala watching the Thing transform throughout the movie) when she's no longer the driving force behind Sephiroth. As soon as you introduce alternate timelines and the edge of creation I think Sephiroth's goals are kind of beyond that.

That's what I think as well.

The more crazy stuff you have, more the stakes will be all over the place.

Original already dealt with complex plot elements, adding alt-timelines and time travel might dillute the importance of the other themes.

The fact the ending throws at you those new elements without a proper build-up or even a vague witty tie-up with pre-existing lore made it feel random as fuck, the writing in that part was pure animu exposition (stark constrast with the natural flowing dialogue in the rest of the game).

even if the new ideas prove to be solid along the way, it was such a poor extravaganza ending.

 

[SerjAngelo]

Finally beat the game. What an experience.
After the disappointing vanila releases of FFXV and KHIII, I feared SE would somehow drop the ball again. But this was their first in-house game in a long time which lived up (and in some areas surpassed) my expectations. Aside from the ending which really was fanfic-tier like most people mentioned here.

And it's not even that it's conceptually bad or contradicts FFVII's universe rules (quite the opposite), it's the setup and implementation which were poor. It screamed FFX-3 Nojima to me and Nomura's obvious love to leave enigmatic hints to his future installments.
And that was a big contrast to the game's overall good writing.

But at least now we're on even grounds with those who didn't know much about VII's story, because who knows where it will lead now.

But man, the cutscenes, boss battles, music and set pieces were all so good, I can't help but forgive the strange ending and some gameplay and presentation issues. Also gotta give them props for including and making the hard mode interesting - it is actually pretty fun so far.
My preliminary score of 8.5/10 remains the same.

Really hope that in part 2 they step it up with exploration, more interesting materia combos and proper aerial combat.

 

[Storm]

Finally beat the game. What an experience.
After the disappointing vanila releases of FFXV and KHIII, I feared SE would somehow drop the ball again. But this was their first in-house game in a long time which lived up (and in some areas surpassed) my expectations. Aside from the ending which really was fanfic-tier like most people mentioned here.

And it's not even that it's conceptually bad or contradicts FFVII's universe rules (quite the opposite), it's the setup and implementation which were poor. It screamed FFX-3 Nojima to me and Nomura's obvious love to leave enigmatic hints to his future installments.
And that was a big contrast to the game's overall good writing.

But at least now we're on even grounds with those who didn't know much about VII's story, because who knows where it will lead now.

But man, the cutscenes, boss battles, music and set pieces were all so good, I can't help but forgive the strange ending and some gameplay and presentation issues. Also gotta give them props for including and making the hard mode interesting - it is actually pretty fun so far.
My preliminary score of 8.5/10 remains the same.

Really hope that in part 2 they step it up with exploration, more interesting materia combos and proper aerial combat.

yeah, exploration was kinda barebones here, not many options, limited back-tracking... I dreamed of taking the train whenever I wanted to go to the upper plate areas.. even interactivity left to be desired, automatic jump, not many houses to enter...

 

[Ikkin]

Man oh man oh man

Anyone with the mindset that this game can’t be spoiled are in for a real treat lmao. It goes full Nomura

More like full Toriyama. =/ That ending basically retroactively turned the game into FFXIII in FFVII clothing (which it... already kind of was, in terms of structure =P).

Imagine if they had done such a move on the LoTR movie adaptation, countless fans excited to see the classic story they love on screen and then BAM fighting fate, characters jumping through dimensions every minute and seeing the future, past being changed because reasons, possible time-travelling and alt-realities.

BULLSHIT even fans can come up with better stories than that.

LOL, the Tolkien estate would practically murder them for suggesting that sort of thing.

 

[SerjAngelo]

Okay, this is pretty sic

 

[CloudBuster]

Okay, this is pretty sic

And thus began a new breed of challenge runs. The all toad runs.