[Mideel] In this topic I comment on all of the towns of FF7.

One of the many things that I love about FF7 is the various towns and cities. Even though the cities themselves are beat by the likes of say, Dollet from FFVII or Archades from FFXII, there's something about each and every one of them that gives them charm. And I'm not gonna lie, some of this is colored by the glasses of nostalgia, but hey, I'm playing FF7 for the billionth time as we speak, so I thought I'd do this. This will be spread out throughout the topic and I'll update it every once in a while, so keep checking back and feel free to discuss as I go along.

Midgar



Midgar is easily one of my favorite RPG locations of all time. Having FF7 start here and stay here for a few hours is one of the best things that could have happened to it. Some people loathe the fact that so much time is spent here in the beginning, but really? Really? Seriously, I love all of the world of FF7, but compared to Midgar, as soon as I left, it took me a while to actually warm up to the rest of the game world. Midgar just hit me like a brick. I absolutely love it here.

However, you spent very little time at the top of the plate, which is something they tried to address in CC (and they did so-so), and I hope they address that in a potential remake. At the end of FF7, you spend what, like a second or so there? And of course you go to Shinra Tower, which doesn't really count towards what I mean. So that leaves...



The Slums, oh, the slums! Seriously, SE aimed at the 'fantasy world version of the ghetto' target and hit it dead on. Drunks, prostitutes, badasses, poor kids, and gangsters, you have it all, here. What I really liked about it though, is the atmosphere.

I'm sitting here typing this, and there are a lot of 'dangerous place' like towns and cities in RPGs, but FF7 is the only game that to me, has actually nailed the atmosphere of the slums being a dangerous, dirty, and shady place. It could be the music, but I also feel is the dialogue and the attitude of the inhabitants. Unlike a lot of RPGs, they don't go around 'WAH I'M SO HUNGRY AND POOR', no, they act more like actual inhabitants of the slum, and that's angry. Angry at Shinra, angry at their circumstances, and generally just angry at everything. Another personality trait I noticed is also another realistic one, and that's acceptance. It ties into what Cloud said; "I know... no one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train. It can't run anywhere except where its rails take it."

A lot of the slum inhabitants just accept their lot in life and deal with it the best they can. They eat, sleep, play, work, and screw, doing the best with what they got, their own way. In that way, the slums stuck out to me as a real place, and I, playing Cloud, Barret, and Tifa almost felt 'at home' there because well, I guess it's because we're terrorists, but still. In a remake, please don't neglect the slums. Hell, make it more expansive, and dare I say, longer.

Whatever you do though, don't make it like you made the slums in Crisis Core. Because in CC you fucked them up.

-The music did not fit with a slum at all. Could you imagine this beat in your head walking down Watts or a New York slum or something? I want the music to accompany the mood of an undercover drug deal, somebody getting stabbed or a bum sleeping next to a kerosene fire, not dapper doo dan shit.

-You're not supposed to see the sky in the Slums, ever. Not that it's my decision to make, but the fact that you saw the BRIGHT BLUE SKY peeking out in the CC slums really killed the atmosphere. The original game flat out tells you that the Slums are super polluted and never sees daylight, and hell, Aerith also tells you that she's never seen the sky. FF7 circumvented this brilliantly by having every camera angle in every location in the slums give the appearance of a dark, dank visuage. The ONLY think you should see when you look up is industrial pipes and Midgar's asscrack. No sky. Ever.

-The inhabitants are too happy. You can't really tell they're living in a slum. I realize in the above I said the inhabitants deal, but in CC they're downright elated. "I JUST GOT BACK FROM WALL MARKET DOO DAA DEE DOO" fuck that, you should be more worried about tetanus, bitch.

But yeah, nevermind the rant about CC's Slums, but Midgar itself remains close to my heart.

This is the first part of an ongoing topic, guys! Discuss, discuss, discuss and stay tuned for Kalm!

Aerith also tells you that she's never seen the sky.

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Does she? I'm sure she didn't...I mean, she can see the sky from her church. It's right under the gap between the plates. She just said the sky frightens her.

I agree that the CC slums were too happy, but the sky was never bright blue, it was gray and cloudy. =p
They should've chosen a top down camera angle. Gave more of an oppressive vibe in the original game.

Does she? I'm sure she didn't...I mean, she can see the sky from her church. It's right under the gap between the plates. She just said the sky frightens her.

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I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember her saying that, and Zack promising to take her to see it (which really, I don't see why he could have done it in the years that he knew her. Too cheap to buy your girlfriend a train ticket, Zack?).

I agree that the CC slums were too happy, but the sky was never bright blue, it was gray and cloudy. =p

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Ah, I was wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0GmqlNW25o

STILL. They could easily 're-retcon' it to where the Plate extends too far out to see the sky. Hell, that's how it worked in the original game.

It's just the locations. The church and the part of Sec 5 you visit are near the edge- not that she's getting direct sunlight- or if she is, it's not much, she's still mostly getting the underplate floodlamp- whereas 7th heaven and Wall Market proper are much closer to the central spire.
That said, Under the Rotting Pizza made the slums for me. It just has this essence of cynicism and pissed offedness to it that fits the slums perfectly.

It's just the locations. The church and the part of Sec 5 you visit are near the edge- not that she's getting direct sunlight- or if she is, it's not much, she's still getting the underplate floodlamp- whereas 7th heaven and Wall Market proper are much closer to the central spire.

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That's true, and good observation. With that said, the fact that near all of the slums missions in CC don't consider that, and damn near all of them just have that sky going on.

Also, and this sounds weird, but the piles of garbage in CC weren't characteristic enough. In the original you had all sorts of different weird messes, from old signposts to Greco-Roman pillars, and every location had a little something different going on. In CC it just looks like they copy pasted ANONYMOUS SCRAP GARBAGE PILES for everything.

I would like a concrete size of Midgar, really. Inconsistencies about which way the Shinra building faces don't bother me too much, but how big is it? I know the early game files pegged it as bigger than Tokyo. This is clearly not the case as you can see the entire city from the cliff and Tokyo's like 50 miles across.

At the same time, if they blew Midgar up by the same scaling they blew Kalm up in Dirge of Cerberus, it would be an absolutely colossal city. And I really liked what they did with Kalm aesthetically in Dirge of Cerberus, by the way, to sneak in on your next topic.

I definitely echo your sentiments on wanting to see more of it, to get that sense of size, really. Junon we kinda have there are those very long streets on several levels. We haven't been to all of them but we have been on enough to know that however many there are, its pretty big.

FFXII was absolutely the first Final Fantasy to nail down a really large city feel. Dollet was close, but we still saw far too little of it. Lindblum's prerendered backgrounds showed the city going on and on, but again, you saw very little. But imagine a Midgar rendered to the detail of cities in games like GTA4 or Assassin's Creed. It would be a drag to travel that far so it doesn't all have to be walkable, per se. But I would love to see Midgar really alive - which, as you said, they did a fantastic job of with the slums.

Even as great as the slums are, you see, what? 3 sectors? And between FF7 and Crisis Core we've seen only a little portion of the Sector 8 plate. And even DC showed us the same slum sectors. The bike chases in FF7 and Advent Children are, so far, the biggest testaments to Midgar's size given their length and the speed they're travelling.

And I'm aware of limitations and everything, just in terms of things I'd love to see.

I will agree to that. Missions in CC are rushed, like there was a lot more game that they wanted in but never got a chance to, so they shoved what they did have into mission mode, like the transport ship.
Because let's admit it, while good, the plot is rather short.
Edit: Kalm wasn't really upscaled that much- though what we saw was upscaled- we just saw much more of it in DoC. We only saw a single section of it in FF7, and didn't even 'leave' to leave the town.
Another interesting way of showing scale is a 'mini worldmap' like the used in Xenosaga. While very little of the city is visitable, you can see various locations and certain landmarks give a sense of scale.

Even in the final scene of FF7 Kalm didn't look any bigger, it was upscaled a good deal, I'd say.

I did forget about that in Xenosaga, like when you're in the Kukai Foundation, that's another thought too.

And while I had no problems with Crisis Core being on PSP (still don't), I don't know why they were so opposed to putting it on 2 discs...

We always saw Kalm from the inside looking out, we never saw the whole thing. It could easily have gotten upscaled from what the full town was, we just never saw the whole thing.
I like its bigness in DoC, though. It's a realistic size for a large town.
I'd also be curious to see the full version of Deepground, come to think of it.

I have to go to bed for work in the morning, but I'll update with Kalm tomorrow as soon as I can, hopefully in the morning. Keep the discussion going!

Back again! Sorry for the later than I would like update. But I'm still goin'.

Kalm



Kalm is nice. Mainly because of the transition; this is the first town you see after BATTLES/GUNFIRE/OHSHITIT'SSEPHIROTH/MOTORCYCLE CHASES, and the atmosphere and the music really calms you down and chills you out if your nerves are frayed. The people are pretty relaxed too, with little worries because they're too busy hanging on Shinra's nuts. A lot of their populace seemed to work at the mines before the monsters appeared, but they don't even seem to give a shit about that, either. Kalm is a textbook example of the perfect little Shinra controlled town.

Now that I think about it, doesn't their town get their power from feeds from the Reactors at Midgar? Is that what that thing in the middle of the town is, a mini reactor or whatever? What I don't get however, is how this town was apparently accidentally bombed by the Turks way back when. How long ago did this happen? How do you ACCIDENTALLY BOMB a town? How does this happen? I don't get it. That's something they're definitely going to have to fix or at least mention in a remake, because I don't get it.



But yeah, besides that, one thing I have to say sort of muddies the town up is that this is where the Nibelhiem Flashback occurs. Up to this point this is the single biggest plot point revealed in the game so far, and one of the most important in the entire Compilation. The problem with this? Well, if you've played the game a lot like us, this can be incredibly grating. It's not a bad cutscene by any means objectively, but for someone who already knows the deal, it's like hearing your grandpa tell you the same goddamn Vietnam story 18,000 times. Yes Grandpa, we know about the time your commanding officer shot himself in the head out of anxiety because your platoon was surrounded by the Viet Cong. YOU TOLD US A THOUSAND FUCKING TIMES! NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR STUPID VIETNAM STORIES

But yeah, other than that, I wish you spent more time in this town. Given that FF7 has a large focus on traveling the world, I like those little times where your party kicks back their feet and relaxes. You have to wonder though why there's no sign of Shinra looking for them though, because it's an easy guess that they would stop here after their getaway. Shinra is fuckin' up.

NEXT UP...FORT CONDOR!

Wow, thanks for this, Bartender Ted!

Midgar is one of my favorite places in FFVII. I'm glad we got to run around Midgar in CC for a good long while. It was one of my favorite parts of FFVII. I loved cross dressing in Wall Street and treking around the ShinRa building with a flame-tailed dog-cat and a homicidal headless alien. Really great. I never wanted to leave.

I don't like that scene in Kalm...it takes like a whole freaking hour to get through it even when you continuously mash through the dialogue. And it kind of throws up half of the plot all over your face right after you take your first step into the world. =\

Ted Lange As Your Bartender said:

Kalm is nice...

What I don't get however, is how this town was apparently accidentally bombed by the Turks way back when. How long ago did this happen? How do you ACCIDENTALLY BOMB a town? How does this happen? I don't get it. That's something they're definitely going to have to fix or at least mention in a remake, because I don't get it.

You have to wonder though why there's no sign of Shinra looking for them though, because it's an easy guess that they would stop here after their getaway. Shinra is fuckin' up.

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Kalm IS nice. Like a town along the Rhine.

The story of the bombing, such as it is, from BC is that Veld/Verdot accidentally gave the wrong coordinates when ordering the bombing of a black market weapons cache, and ending up bombing his own town, his own house, and his own family (karma can be so cruel sometimes), and since Shinra never makes mistakes this gruesome disaster had to be covered up in the usual way by rebuilding the town, populating it with Shinra employees, and taking the survivors to Nibelheim to be experimented on. This happened before BC begins, so at least ten years before FFVII, if not more, is my guess.

One thing Xcomp's translation of Case of Shinra made clear to me was just how close Kalm is to Midgar - the Turks seem able to walk from one to the other in a couple of hours. I always thought they were much further apart.

The story of the bombing, such as it is, from BC is that Veld/Verdot accidentally gave the wrong coordinates when ordering the bombing of a black market weapons cache, and ending up bombing his own town, his own house, and his own family (karma can be so cruel sometimes), and since Shinra never makes mistakes this gruesome disaster had to be covered up in the usual way by rebuilding the town, populating it with Shinra employees, and taking the survivors to Nibelheim to be experimented on. This happened before BC begins, so at least ten years before FFVII, if not more, is my guess.

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My issue with this are three things

-Nobody thought to double check the coordinates? I mean you would think that professionals who work with coordinates all the time would say "This location coincides with the city of Kalm. Confirm?" before they started bombing the shit out of it. Even hand me down third world tin can militaries confirm their targets before engaging them. I know "but that's why it was a mistake", but it seems like stupid as shit writing for the sake of making a plot point.

-All of the FF7 era inhabitants of Kalm do not even give off the vibe of being Shinra employees. With Nibelhiem, even without the context of Cloud being from there, the player notices something strange going on. With Kalm, the place being full of older people, younger people, kids, and even local mine workers run against the grain of 'LOL THEY'RE SHINRA ACTORS'

-Nibelhiem is much more believable to accept that it was once wiped off the map entirely and rebuilt without notice. Kalm? Not all all. I'm even willing to compromise and say that a part of it was heavily damaged, but not that it was completely destroyed and emptied out and then rebuilt and repopulated by Shinra actors all within walking distance of Midgar.

Howl said:

I don't like that scene in Kalm...it takes like a whole freaking hour to get through it even when you continuously mash through the dialogue. And it kind of throws up half of the plot all over your face right after you take your first step into the world. =\

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Are you saying that from a replaying perspective, or in general? Because the first time I played I was pretty damn curious about Cloud's history with Sephiroth myself by this point. And the concept of having him in my party was awesome

For nostalgia's sake I still don't usually mind it much. The only reason I have pause to slog through it is not really because of its length, but the fact that you know the dirty bastard is lying to you the whole time!


Anyway, yes, I do like Kalm and as already stated, I REALLY liked its portrayal in Dirge of Cerberus. It was a perfect adaptation, imo.

Kalm was raided because there were Anti-Shinra elements there and they were trying to escape. The Shinra Army was supposed to raid their base which was outside of Kalm, but the reception was bad and they thought they heard Verdot say to raid ALL of Kalm, not 50 Km north of Kalm.

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That makes more sense. I still think the plot point is a desperate grab for straws, but relatively, that makes more sense.

The survivors were quickly taken away to Nibelheim and experimented upon by Hojo.

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So basically the ENTIRE CITY was bombed and EVERYONE IN IT was taken to Nibelhiem? So basically the FF7 version of Kalm is what, an imitation and everyone in it are what...?

I deleted that post cause LicoriceAllSorts was more precise than me and said the same thing, but yeah.

Illegal weapon smugglers and shit who were helping Anti-Shinra elements were attacked and a mistake was made.

And I don't think it was the entire city. Survivors who weren't injured and all were told it was done by anti-shinra terrorists. But those that were wounded and all or who saw something were taken away. So no, it wasn't completely gone like Nibelheim.

Mako Eyes said:

And I don't think it was the entire city. Survivors who weren't injured and all were told it was done by anti-shinra terrorists. But those that were wounded and all or who saw something were taken away. So no, it wasn't completely gone like Nibelheim.

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This makes sense. Doing a patch-up job on Kalm will have given Shinra the eperience to carry out the complete rebuilding from scratch that took place at Nibelheim. Kalm's also close enough to Midgar to make a nice dormitory town, maybe for middle rank executives? So maybe the reconstrcution involved a lot of company housing? The earth's dead zone doesn't extend as far as Kalm, does it?

This is a great thread. I'm really enjoying reading it, walking down memory lane with you here, Moggy.

In my opinion, should have been done on the front page, though. The front page is already set up like a blog. We don't use it that way enough. Again, in my opinion.

ForceStealer said:

Howl said:

I don't like that scene in Kalm...it takes like a whole freaking hour to get through it even when you continuously mash through the dialogue. And it kind of throws up half of the plot all over your face right after you take your first step into the world. =\

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Are you saying that from a replaying perspective, or in general? Because the first time I played I was pretty damn curious about Cloud's history with Sephiroth myself by this point. And the concept of having him in my party was awesome

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I agree. The first time you see this scene, you don't get that feeling of wading through mud at all. It's actually really damn interesting. Makes sense for the plot that it happens like this as well -- find out Seph is back, run from Shin-Ra, get to safety, talk about it.

Ted Lange As Your Bartender said:

Kalm was raided because there were Anti-Shinra elements there and they were trying to escape. The Shinra Army was supposed to raid their base which was outside of Kalm, but the reception was bad and they thought they heard Verdot say to raid ALL of Kalm, not 50 Km north of Kalm.

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That makes more sense. I still think the plot point is a desperate grab for straws, but relatively, that makes more sense.

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Agreed with the first part of your second sentence. The fact that the reception was bad only bolsters your previous point:

Moggy said:

-Nobody thought to double check the coordinates? I mean you would think that professionals who work with coordinates all the time would say "This location coincides with the city of Kalm. Confirm?" before they started bombing the shit out of it. Even hand me down third world tin can militaries confirm their targets before engaging them.

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"sumbody set us up the bad reception. onlies correct coordinatz can b hurd through bad reception, lawl. ::begins shelling playgrounds::"

Ted Lange As Your Bartender said:

Kalm is nice. Mainly because of the transition; this is the first town you see after BATTLES/GUNFIRE/OHSHITIT'SSEPHIROTH/MOTORCYCLE CHASES, and the atmosphere and the music really calms you down and chills you out if your nerves are frayed.

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Or, if you are a suspicious little preteen like I was when I first played the game, convinces you that the town is going to be razed/assaulted/spring a trap because it's too nice to be real.

I remember playing through the game for my first time, and thought I may have finished the game when I escaped Midgar.

Yeah this thread is pretty damn incredible. Great work MOG, this is genuinely interesting.

Perhaps link it up on Twitter and put the entries up on the frontpage?

Fort Condor



I could only find one decent image of Fort Condor. Oh well.

Yeah, so Fort Condor. It's a pretty interesting place, I guess. From a gameplay perspective, the only reason this place exists is for the Fort Condor minigame, which in itself is pretty decent. It costs quite a bit of money, and you have to keep going back and forth to it to get decent prizes, but hey, it's one of the more overlooked minigame experiences of FF7 because of how costly, finite, and out of the way it is. Luckily though, it becomes a crucial plot point for the Huge Materia further in the game, and you get the awesome Phoenix Materia for winning!

I have to wonder though, why does the Shinra Army have trouble (or rather why are they taking so long) to capture this place? They don't have the Wutai Army nor Old AVALANCHE to distract their distribution of power anymore, so by the time FF7 rolls around, there should be nothing stopping Shinra from stomping all those dudes out. Never really thought about it up until now. I'm doing Junon next. As in, right now. Stay tuned.

Junon



Earlier I said Midgar was my favorite town in the game. Junon is very, very close. If Midgar is the rich older businessman with the hot wife that runs shit, Junon is the good looking playboy underwear model that's banging the businessman's wife on the side. Junon is fucking swagger overload. Rufus resided over this city during his tenure as Vice President, and if you ask me, he got the better deal (and he seems to think so too, it seems that throughout FF7, Rufus operates from Junon).

The first thing that stands out about this city is its giant cannon. If any of you remember, Square capitalized this in it's advertising of FF7 by having the above two page rendering of Junon featured invideo game magazines with just the text 'Final Fantasy VII'. I am absolutely positive this alone influenced scores of FFVII sales. The final nail that made me absolutely fall in love with the city is this scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYlxEywO6w&feature=related

Yo seriously what the fuck!? If you don't like this scene you have no soul. It's pretty powerful, because this is one of the only instances of the game where I was actually rooting for Shinra. "GO SHINRA, KICK HIS ASS, DON'T LET WEAPON PUNK YOU OUT". I also got a lot of respect for Rufus as well, who's so badass he just watched the entire fight from his giant ass office window. It's pretty awesome, man.

The whole thing made me think, WTF does Junon need all of that artillery for? Yes, during FF7, one of the townspeople mention the city was built during the Wutai War, so I suppose Wutai, or at least it's navy, must have been absolutely monstrous to necessitate a giant artillery city. I just wish that was more elaborated upon, every time SE gets the chance to elaborate more about the Wutai War and the capabilities of Wutai they always punk out. Bah!

As for Fort Condor, the only thing I can think of is that Shinra doesn't really consider Fort Condor to be THAT important, so they never got after it with concentrated effort. Until they're after the Huge Materia, and yes, why they didn't just kill the condor and airlift the materia out with the Gelnika, I don't know. (I know the old guy actually had the materia, but Shinra didn't know that).

Ah, Junon, if I had money in the FF7 world, I would live there before the Midgar plate. I imagine it's like Philly vs New York, or San Francisco vs LA, or Kyoto vs Tokyo. The huge city's cool and all, but I'll always pick the still-big city that has more personality. The BFG on the front of it doesn't really hurt matters either.

Whether they NEEDED the cannon...it's possible, maybe Wutai's navy was freaking awesome. But I would guess its Shinra wanting to make a statement with it. "You wanna screw with us? Fine, we'll put a giant-ass cannon on our city. So go ahead and make my day, punk." And...its Shinra, they seem to be firm believers in the philosophy of go big or go home.

And yes, that scene is awesome. The entire second disk of FF7 is action-packed gold (after you get past the damn glacier, of course). And as we've kinda touched on what we'd like to see in a remake for each town, I want Weapon to do a bit more damage with that first shot in that scene. I'm not looking for Godzilla-level busting, just all that that buildup to what's pretty minimal damage. All I'm looking for is the exact same charge up but just drag the laser across the face of the town. Take out some of those smaller guns and bazook...ers. Show those massive armor plates protecting some buildings. And of course still have the gash go across Tifa's cell.

Really not a huge deal at all, but making the Weapon a tad more threatening would go a long way to the satisfaction of that point-blank shot. Which is already pretty damn satisfying.