This, I have never had a satisfying explanation for this, why didn't Sephiroth use one of the reunion copies to do this? Or, as it seems bits of Jenova seem to be able to move independently one of these?!
Because he was dicking around with Cloud. He wanted him to get it just so he could force him to hand it over.
Now.
Daniel, what the fuck is going on here? When you first returned to this site you were respectful of different opinions and eager to show that you could be.
Lately -- and coming to a crescendo here in the past couple of days -- you've taken a celebratory stance in trying to offend everyone who disagrees with you, insulting people for even the slightest disagreements of opinion. Why the hell are you doing it?
I've spoken up for you a bit, because -- and I'm sure this is no surprise to you -- there are some folks on staff who would like to give you infractions or even outright ban you. Until lately, you hadn't really done anything that others don't do and get away with, but this constant insult fest that your post history has become? I'm going to tell you straight up that I'm fucking sick of it.
Are you just trying to irritate or something? Or is there really a genuine reason you cannot understand the meld between real physics and FICTION. There is an intertwining of the 2 in FF7. That's why Aerith died when she was stabbed. Many things require a SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF. Do you comprehend in the slightest what this means?
Literally, no. If you made FF7 into a novel are you really telling me you would add in the part about doing a squat contest for a wig.
FFVII isn't a novel, though. You're the one who has mentioned the concept of medium specificity over and over in this thread. Why are you comparing the story structure of a game to the story structure of a novel given the two different mediums?
There's
a lot in FFVII's presentation that wouldn't be doable in a novel -- though, for what it's worth, a squat contest is entirely doable in prose.
Daniel said:
Use common sense. It is easy. It is all interpretation. Game elements are not always story elements. That;s obviously how a game story should be viewed or once again we get into the argument of hell House being real or Rufus firing shot gun rounds into Cloud.
For what it's worth, Rufus could fire at Cloud and miss. The two having a scuffle of some sort doesn't amount to Cloud being hit by necessity, nor does it require Rufus being struck by Cloud's sword before he escaped on the helicopter.
Obviously, neither really hit the other, but -- just as obviously -- a battle of some kind happened as Cloud references it only a moment later. And he obviously didn't stay behind just to
talk to Rufus.
Daniel said:
Actually a shit load of it did, but not squats for wigs and Rufus blowing Cloud away with shot gun or collecting balloons on a great mountain.
AVALANCHE snowboarding to the Great Glacier is included in the FFVII Ultimania Omega's story-only Story Playback section -- a summary of FFVII's story. That happened. Probably without the balloons.
Daniel said:
Cait is a fiction breaker for anyone who wants a higher standard of storytelling LIKE ME.
A higher standard or a different tone? You're conflating the two.
Daniel said:
I am afraid a human being with real power in Shin-Ra would not rely on a robot cat and stuffed toy. That's absurd.
It happened.
Daniel said:
The reason FFX is a different argument is again because Blitz Ball and Underwater breathing are GAMEPLAY elements and they are not something which damages the main story arc.
Blitzball is very much part of the story. Where are you coming from with this?
And, as has been repeated around here over and over of late, they don't breathe underwater -- they train in holding their breath for long periods of time, and the high concentration of pyreflies that occurs naturally in Spira assists them in maintaining stamina underater.
Daniel said:
This is again Suspension of disbelief. I can suspend it in FFX, the whole world of Spira is different to FF7's world. The rules and laws are different and the tone is completely different.
This is verifiably untrue, man -- FFVII and FFX have the same metaphysics!:
http://thelifestream.net/final-fant...anniversary-ultimania-sources-of-power-in-ff/
Materia=spheres, mako=spirit energy=pyreflies, etc.
As for the tone, if anything, FFX's overall tone is more of a downer than VII's by a mile.
Daniel said:
I expect to see crazy illogical creatures in FF9, it is almost pure fantasy. FF7 is not. It has established rules from the very beginning based on OUR REAL PLANET. Not ALL rules, but the main ones, like normal human stabbed =dead/severely injured.
But FFVII has Red. How is he not a "crazy, illogical creature." Can't even seem to make up his mind if he wants to be more canine than feline.
If you have problems with all this stuff, a silly, fun show like "Spongebob Squarepants" must be utterly impossible for you to enjoy. And that makes me sad.
oh and btw I don't consider anything which is not the original game as canon. Canon doesn't exist. They have changed so many things, made so many retcons that the fiction fails the minute you try to incorporate the Preq/seq into the main story.
That isn't how the concept of canon works. While I think I've proven at length that I am more pissed about all the changes to continuity than anyone else in the fandom (see the "Compilation of FFVII inconsistencies" article in
this document), neither I nor the copious continuity prolapses have any bearing on the meaning of the term.
Daniel said:
FF7 was designed to be 1 story. It was. It ended. Rufus is dead. Sephiroth is dead. Jenova is dead. Genesis never existed. Nor did Jango Fett. That's it. The end
That's not reality, dude.
It is obviously a game in a movie when you see things like Clouds Limit Break in action on Sephiroth at the end.
Limit Breaks -- identical to the Trance concept of FFIX, being a surge in an individual's spirit energy during a moment of desperation, allowing them to do really cool shit -- is a story-based element of FFVII's setting, as well as that of at least one other title that shares FFVII's metaphysics (FFIX), and was incorporated into gameplay the same way that Cloud's story-based use of a sword was.
AC/C doesn't ignore established laws of gravity in FFVII -- spirit energy had been established in the original FFVII as something that could allow one to defy gravity.
How do you think Seph flies in the first place or calls down giant meteors? Why don't you have a problem with that? All of it works within the established metaphysics of the setting, and all of it by virtue of the same explanation -- spirit energy.
Daniel said:
In AC Cloud and Sephiroth are fighting forever being flung into walls and floating about.
It is fucking SHITE. SHITE. SHIT SHITE FUCKIN SHITTY SHITE.
It lessens the entire feel of the drama. It makes Sephiroth appear too weak and Cloud appear too strong.
And that's why you remember that Sephiroth was playing with Cloud the entire fight.
Just like in the original game, when he could have killed everyone at any time the way he killed Aerith.
In that AC/C fight, he even passed up the biggest opening he ever got just to gloat. Cloud was desperate to win that fight. Sephiroth was not.
Daniel said:
At the end of that scene, Sephiroth impales Cloud with his sword. Imagine if that had happened within the first 10 seconds of their confrontation. Yes. That's right.. it establishes Sephiroth is awesome and not to be messed with and it makes us genuinely fear for Cloud's safety. IT WORKS.
No, it makes the fight really short and is a disappointment to those who want to watch Sephiroth and Cloud engage in one of the stylized battles that are so common in fiction from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Daniel said:
The light saber was cool in SW because it was seldom used and used realistically.
I would wager most people thought it was cool because it was a sword that had a laser for a blade.
If you're speaking to why you believe it was effective, I wouldn't venture to disagree with the comment you made. However, it's been nearly 30 years since even the original Star Wars trilogy finished. It had its time to be effective. It succeeded.
Doesn't mean that every depiction of lightsabers thereafter must concern themselves with how much screentime they got in the original films.
For what it's worth, by the way, I think Mace Windu fought Jango Fett exactly in the manner that you say Seph and Cloud should have fought/the manner you say lightsabers should be used in battle. It was a short fight, and Windu went straight for the kill.
The fact that fights involving multiple lightsaber users last longer in the prequel trilogy is supposed to be indicative of the skill of the combatants.
As for Cait, I think I supplied enough evidence of why the character does not work well in FF7.
You provided your opinion, man. Obsidian Fire provided several reasons why Cait works extremely well in FFVII's story:
The part of me that likes analyzing plots and writing fan fiction likes him a lot. He represents a point of view that is not often explored in games/movies, the pov of the nice guy in a position of moderate power in the bad company. This serves to make Shin-Ra a more realistic company as no company is completely evil in the real world. He also serves as a foil for many events in the game, most notably Aerith's death scene. Other events/concepts he serves as a foil for are Sephiroth controlling Cloud and Cloud "betraying" the trust of the rest of the group when he give Sephiroth the Black Materia. He's the type of character that while he can be annoying, the group can't do without.
For those very reasons, Cait/Reeve has always been one of my favorite characters in the original game, well before the Compilation was a twinkle in anyone's eye.
In fact you will note that I have 1 Scottish person helping me with the retranslation project, so that we get Cait as he was originally intended.
He aint a friend
but I think it is best I consult someone who understands the dialect because I sure as hell don't
Cait was written with a Kansai dialect. You know this, right?
Daniel said:
So I would say I am doing a better job already than the original translation team who couldnt care less for the sack of crap they served up.
They had him speak in a silly, informal manner. Cait actually has a strongly presented "voice" in the original English translation.
Daniel said:
I think you need to realise that I understand writing and fiction a whole lot more than you
Okay, I'm tired of reading this without you giving some qualifications. I can't speak for anyone else here (though I'd be surprised if my own qualifications exceed those of everyone else), but beyond my own lifelong interest in studying storytelling across different mediums, I've taken writing classes, film classes, have a degree in journalism, a degree in media communication (communication here referring more to a theoretical concept than a purely technological one), and have some formal education in translating Japanese from a native speaker.
Go.
Daniel said:
and I am definitely more of a fan of FF7. How I debate on forums, or how I respond to you, or the lack of respect I give certain people here, has nothing to do with my ability to retranslate the game or create Skoll Iscarit.
At the end of the day, we are all fans of FF7
=|
Given FF7 is what I would term, the greatest game ever made, I don't think so. However, unlike you, I am not a religious fanatic of FF7. I know its shortcomings and I know it can be better in many ways.
Ignoring the contradiction in those first two sentences, I think it bears pointing out that you are the only one here working on a years-long project to alter someone else's work into what you think would be better rather than focusing that energy into creating your own unique intellectual property that could be an altogether better story -- potentially with greater heuristic value to the more mordern time.
I'm not knocking your project. God knows I've wasted enough time with FFVII. Just look at that document I linked you to. What I'm knocking is all this blatant hypocrisy, man.
People go into a FF game expecting a great story and a balance of action. That did not happen in AC. It failed its own genre of being primarily storybased .
Final Fantasy is a franchise, not a genre. Within that franchise, there are multiple genres.
AC/C's genre is sci-fi -- or action sci-fi if you want to make it even more specific. Since it's a film (you remember all that medium specificity talk you did, I hope) this is the classification system you would go by.
Daniel said:
3. The character itself looks completely out of place with your party.
So do Aerith and Red, but in at least a couple of those cases, I'm sure that occured to the developers and was probably part of the point.
Daniel said:
If cloud was established as a moron with some sort of brain damage, yes.
He ... is. Not even trying to be funny here, but he is exactly that.
I also don't want a remake because I know exactly how it will end up. FF7 is done.
And yet you're changing it.
Didn't you get pissed at its creators for doing that? For inserting what they think
would have been better after what
already did exist had been established?
Huh? No I'm not. There will be differences although the core story of a spy will stay in tact. However, the main story of Skoll, is that he arrives in your party and thinks of you as nothing more than cutthroat terrorists. You are to him, a job.
The actual story is his change from that position to being one of turning against the Shin-Ra and realising his mistake. That is a fundamental change. Reeve has a smaller part of that theme. The dialogue is being altered completely... it is not just a 1:1 model swap.
Obviously there are going to be problems, not least how the hell I am gonna explain the temple of the Ancients. But these are things that I can overcome. Overall, the character will work better imho. But, we will see!
Skoll is part of Shin-Ra in a department which uses spies, basically allied with the Turks. That's the basic outline. I have been so busy with FMV and retranslation and menus that I have neglected work on this, but I think it can work somewhat.
Wait a minute, dude. You've not even finished writing this guy's story -- leaving unaddressed a scene that is sort of a big deal -- and you're already saying it's better than Cait's/Reeve's?
And how can you justify comments like the following when you've been focusing on FMVs and menus instead of finishing that?:
The rest of the time and budget could be spent on DIALOGUE and DECENT storytelling.
You're getting on Nomura's case for focusing on some visual shit instead of some story shit, but you're doing the same thing! You're complaining that FFVII's developers changed their minds about things in the story and only care about visuals, right? Yet you're doing this while modifying their work, calling it an improvement, and then revealing that you've not even finished altering the story elements that you say are so shitty before you start focusing on visuals yourself.
I'm at an utter loss here. Even if all of the insults you've hurled at everyone could have been justified by your endeavor, the fact that you've ignored your own principles defeats it.
This topic was hardly something to get as worked up about as you did in the first place, but if you're going to get as righteous as you have, at least stand by the convictions you claimed to have. I have nothing more to say to you.
