E3 2019 Footage Analysis

[Vyzzuvazzadth]

Hello fellow Lifestreamers!

Some of you might have seen my channel content update video where I talk about my plans regarding the analysis of the E3 2019 footage but for those who have not, I currently have plans for 10 (11 now, because I split the first video into 2 separate ones) individual videos covering all E3 2019 material.

I also included a poll in said update video to gauge interest in the analysis categories to help me prioritize those planned videos.
Scenes & locations come first, then follows the combat, character analyses come next closely followed by the Keepers/Guardians of Fate with enemies trailing far behind with only 1 vote.

I might switch number 3 and 4, but for now, I think interlacing the categories a bit might spice things up a bit. For myself and the viewers.

Anyway, I started this thread to bundle all those analysis videos in one place. I'll update the OP as more come out down the line.
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1. Scenes & Locations: Introduction Cinematic

2. Scenes & Locations: Bombing Mission

3. Combat & Gameplay

4. Scenes & Locations: Sector 8 & Sephiroth

5. Scenes & Locations: Keepers of Fate & Train Ride

6. Scenes & Locations: 7th Heaven & Bike Chase

TGS 2019 footage analysis moved to a new thread.
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Enjoy!

 

[pxp]

Yay! I love you!

 

[ChipNoir]

Catch me on discord. I have some theories about the city lay-out in terms of the highway stystem I'd like to poke you about Vyzz.

 

[OdaDaimyO]

*Vyzz oploads his new analysis video*

Your specs are incredible! Great vid!

 

[Mayo Master]

Thanks a lot for this video, Vyzzuvazzadth. Impressive sleuthing!

 

[Rydeen]

Thanks for this! I watched the tech demo and remake footage side by side a few weeks ago and laughed at how I somehow thought the PS3 tech demo looked exactly like real life. It's bizarre to think that these PS4 graphics may be viewed the same way one day. It's good to have a formal comparison. Either way, I couldn't be happier that they forced us to wait. Also, I never noticed what the highway signs said. The OG never appeared to have a highway system outside of Midgar, and given that this is a modern setting I am glad to see some real infrastructure. It also gives a sense of distance -

Spoiler: Nerd Tangent Triggered

I have always known that this planet was probably intended to be smaller than earth, but based on the posted distance between Junon and Midgar (assuming the units are in km), you can create a rough scale.

Based on a figure of 133km from Midgar to Junon, the circumference of the planet appears to be about 1100km. If you were to travel the circumference of the world at 60mph, it wouldn't take more than a day. I'm not giving exact figures because I can't verify the canonocity of that map (the numbers turn out different depending on the map I use - one map gave me double, which is still tiny), but I think it's fair to conclude the world is probably smaller than the United States. I kind of like this, because it accentuates the grandiosity of Midgar and also illustrates the relative ease of implementing a world government compared to our world.

 

[Mayo Master]

^ Remember that the way each edge of the map is connected to another would imply that FF7's Planet would actually be a doughnut
I think that distances and the sense of scale is an element that can be strongly revised in the remake. One possible trick could be to increase the surface occupied by oceans and have the "Continents" located further away from each other. In the scale that you have outlined, the whole world could be viewed as an archipelago rather than separate continents
Besides, I'd like to add that distances do not at all give the same sense of scale depending on what place on Earth you're from - 100 km would seem quite far away for a European, while a North American would think it's next door.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Yeah, when the Europeans on the board exclaim that something is three whole hours away, and thus constitutes an undertaking that's too great even for a vacation, much less a concert or weekend getaway, I'm just over here like "... Alright, I guess. "

 

[Rydeen]

Gaia is a lot smaller than Earth, but it doesn't feel small to me, because I view my country (Murica) as massive and haven't seen most of it. I don't travel out of town often. I am a pretty simple person and am usually happy with the events and outings available in my town, and I don't like driving on the Interstates. I am also originally from the New York Metro area which has a more European attitude. When I moved out west I thought it was absurd how two hours going over 60mph was considered a fairly short distance. So I can see it from both perspectives. It's tiny compared to Earth, but Earth is a huge place.

Another thing I like about 'tiny' Gaia is that it makes the few week timespan of the game more realistic.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Ridiculously awesome work as always!

When thinking about travel times it's also interesting to think about Japan which actually has the sort of super-city transportation that Midgar does within the city, but the "across the middle of nowhere" travel around the world feels fairly different. FFVII definitely manages to inflate how big the world feels in really clever ways by slowly increasing the scope of how you travel and where those allow you to get. Midgar helps establish with that by letting you feel like you can get so far into these vastly different areas that're all actually in close proximity, and I'm betting that with the first game being all in Midgar, we'll see the utilization of similar tactics to really let you immerse yourself in the massive scope of the city itself.

While it will pretty significantly shift the distortion around the poles depending on how much open space you leave at the edges of the map image, you can get some interesting looks at what the world of FFVII looks like wrapped around a globe, and make some guesses about proximity and relative sizes to one another: https://www.maptoglobe.com/ That's also interesting because US travel feels really simple because it's usually road trips or flights, and FFVII makes things fee bigger with the mountain passes, ocean, and tiny-bronco giving you ways to get places, but requiring meandering to reach places rather than going as-the-crow-flies you can take something that's geographically not too large, but make it FEEL absolutely ridiculously massive.

I still think that the best place to get an idea of what the world in FFVII will have to be like at a global travel level would be from Bugenhagen's Observatory, the Rocket FMV where it's returning to the surface, and the Bahamut Fury attack in Crisis Core, since in addition to just the scale models, you get a few brief partial glimpses of the planet from well above the surface.

Minor Tangent: I really love that Bahamut Fury uses its soon-to-be-destructive energy to go into a warp flight from a completely different green and blue world (which unfortunately doesn't appear to be Spira) that's pocked with some surface impact scarring from meteorites. Once it actually sets up its attack though, it makes it pretty clear the place it came from had experienced the fallout of its attack that weaponizes a lunar satellite into a plasma beam, which is why there is just a belt of shattered asteroids instead of a proper moon on that world.

It'll be really neat to see the things put in like this in more detail in the Remake – especially when it comes to matching the real world bits for Sephiroth's Supernova & any of Gast's research being visualized vis-a-vis Jenova's extraterrestrial origins. Even if they're only included in tiny little subtleties like they are in this FMV, I feel like the team working on the game is definitely putting that level of thought and detail in to the little things, there's a lot of really cool depth at a slightly bigger scale that I feel like we'll get to obsess over for the next game. It'll be cool to get a sense of what FFVII's world looks like on a cosmic scale, and provide some more context not just from a gameplay travel perspective. Like how much bigger FFXV's world of Eos is than you actually get to explore in that game).




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[OdaDaimyO]

I'm curious how traversing through Sector 0 wil be visualized. In the novel "Turks - The Kids are Alright", protagonist Evan talked about an existing path through the center of the city. Will there be traffic under Shinra HQ, or through the building itself?

Could it be that the industrial sectors from 1-3 are isolated from the public rail system? This could be the reason why departure times are so different, because they're more aligned with the factory employees and security staff's working hours. At first I thought they're not accessible through the highways, because there is no vivsible path from sector 8 to 1, but roads from sector 3 to 4 do exist . Maybe these precautions are necessary, because the security level is much higher than the rest of the plate? It's much easier to guard only one possible entrance than two, but why not isolating it from the public roads entirely, when there is only authorized personell allowed to enter these sectors?

Besides an in depth explanation how Materia in the Remake works, I hope we see a lot more gameplay on the city and how much is actually explorable!

 

[Rydeen]

That's also interesting because US travel feels really simple because it's usually road trips or flights, and FFVII makes things fee bigger with the mountain passes, ocean, and tiny-bronco giving you ways to get places, but requiring meandering to reach places rather than going as-the-crow-flies you can take something that's geographically not too large, but make it FEEL absolutely ridiculously massive.

That's a good point. Another reason it feels big is because our Earth also has a lot of "dead," uninhabitable space. If we were to cram Earth's continents together like Gaia by reducing the size of the ocean, and reduced the size of "dead space" like the Great Plains, the Sahara desert, and the tundras, the Earth would be a lot smaller. If Gaia were the size of Earth, you'd spend days traversing the oceans, arctics, and deserts of the game. That would be "dead time," so to speak, so the planet still feels big if we don't have that dead time. In fact, if it was as big as the Earth it would probably be a boring game. In other words, the world of FFVII is jam packed full of fun.

 

[FFShinra]

In my head, I always assumed the scale was a lot more stark. Like the distance from Midgar to Kalm took hours in my head (getting to the Mythril Mines taking days, not including the chocobo capturing time).

 

[Rydeen]

In my head, I always assumed the scale was a lot more stark. Like the distance from Midgar to Kalm took hours in my head (getting to the Mythril Mines taking days, not including the chocobo capturing time).

At 51km away, getting from Midgar to Kalm on foot would take hours, so you're not really wrong.

 

[rimavelle]

Yeah, when the Europeans on the board exclaim that something is three whole hours away, and thus constitutes an undertaking that's too great even for a vacation, much less a concert or weekend getaway, I'm just over here like "... Alright, I guess. "

That's because in 3hrs I can drive through 3 different countries ; p

FFVII is super weird with scaling, so I'm expecting a lot of places to be much bigger than you would think. I just hope, whatever they will do for world map, that it won't consist of huge empty spaces like FFXV did. I'm tired of this trend in games.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

That's because in 3hrs I can drive through 3 different countries ; p

FFVII is super weird with scaling, so I'm expecting a lot of places to be much bigger than you would think. I just hope, whatever they will do for world map, that it won't consist of huge empty spaces like FFXV did. I'm tired of this trend in games.

I'm curious what you mean by this, in light of the point @Ryvius made. Unless there are some "empty" spaces, then you don't have any sense that you're out exploring the wilderness – which is really all the world map ever is. It's literally just the empty space between towns that have dedicated map screens in older games. Most games do this because it makes it easy to manage a camera and set up lots of battles, but also provide visibility over distance to give a sense of scale.

In FFXV, Eos was meant to be near abandoned in many places because of the Daemons, with the majority of the population clustered in places like Insomnia, because the night time itself was essentially a death sentence unless you had ways to reliably maintain power for lights to hold them back. That was because it was really about nailing the sense of taking a road trip, and having done a number of those across fairly large sections of the US – most of what you're doing is driving through empty space, and stopping off at tiny little rest stops along the way.

By contrast, FFVII is about exploring whole towns and cities across the globe to give you a sense of the stark contrast of Midgar to the rest of the world that's being threatened by Shinra's actions with mako, and later Sephiroth's threat of Meteor. A lot of that is going to be involved in not just seeing the towns being left overshadowed by their presence like Junon, but also getting a sense of the way that nature itself is being destroyed by the reactors. While you can convey this heavily in places like Aerith's church, or even looking at the little family of birds on your way to North Corel, there's something to be said for just looking at the way the very earth itself is sucked dry in the area around anywhere with the reactors, and I think that a lot of that really NEEDS things that are just huge empty spaces with wandering monsters and nothing to look at.

I still remember looking at these simple landscapes when playing the original game, and getting the sense of how destroyed everything was, even despite it just being simple map textures.

This is why FFVII's map wouldn't work the same way if it were just a series of waypoints that you can fast travel between with stuff in them. The empty spaces have story to tell just by being present, and the landscape and health of the Planet itself is something that you should be able to identify with as a player and not always just be told. For all the empty spaces, I remember the first time I saw almost every place in FFXV, and little things about the views, or tiny little pockets of flowers and butterflies or other simple things. Those are the kinds of memories that are important to just let the player make on their own, so that they're aware when there are just vast stretches of desiccation around the Reactors, and you actually FEEL the life of the Planet even before you start literally hearing its cries of pain in Cosmo Canyon.



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[rimavelle]

Ok, you got me there.

 

[pxp]

Problem with XV is that travelling between locations is often stated to be 4 miles here, 5 miles there, meaning that the whole of the main continent feels like it’s only like 30miles2 (squared) at most. Which is hideously underwhelming if you’re trying to sell an “epic.” It’s like me dropping off a friend in north London before returning home to the suburbs in the South. So what? It’s the ultimately irony and paradox of these vast landscapes of nothingness, when really it’s an absolutely tiny world. Even for just a continent.

How they circumvent this in VIIR has me stumped.

 

[ForceStealer]

I would think the easiest way would be to bring back a version of the 'world map'. Even if you couldn't walk RIGHT up to a town and enter but had regions around a town, you still either go to a disproportionate map or at least cross a zone that somehow implies "then a lot of nothing, and then..."

I don't think they'll do that, but they could. AND it would allow for a controllable airship again.

 

[pxp]

I would think the easiest way would be to bring back a version of the 'world map'. Even if you couldn't walk RIGHT up to a town and enter but had regions around a town, you still either go to a disproportionate map or at least cross a zone that somehow implies "then a lot of nothing, and then..."

I don't think they'll do that, but they could. AND it would allow for a controllable airship again.

I wouldn’t mind that but don’t see it happening either unfortunately...

 

[Vyzzuvazzadth]

What I could see happening is a zones concept, similar to FFXII, just bigger and fewer zones. For the airship, they could create the known overworld, but instead of landing on the same map, it will land, fade out and we'll emerge within the zone mapped to that segment on the overworld in the nearest landing spot, with the Highwind existing right there in the zone (landing everywhere would be too restrictive for level design).

Entering the Highwind would then automatically initiate take-off, ideally with a simple fade-out in the zone and fade-in on the overworld as to not lose too much time with an unnecessary take-off animation.

Entering the Highwind's interior could work the same as in the original, by simply pressing a button while flying. There, they could also introduce a fast-travel system if you don't feel like manually flying to the same destinations over and over again. Interacting with the pilot would then allow for either taking over (manual flight) or letting the pilot fly (fast-travel).

 

[pxp]

What I could see happening is a zones concept, similar to FFXII, just bigger and fewer zones. For the airship, they could create the known overworld, but instead of landing on the same map, it will land, fade out and we'll emerge within the zone mapped to that segment on the overworld in the nearest landing spot, with the Highwind existing right there in the zone (landing everywhere would be too restrictive for level design).

Entering the Highwind would then automatically initiate take-off, ideally with a simple fade-out in the zone and fade-in on the overworld as to not lose too much time with an unnecessary take-off animation.

Entering the Highwind's interior could work the same as in the original, by simply pressing a button while flying. There, they could also introduce a fast-travel system if you don't feel like manually flying to the same destinations over and over again. Interacting with the pilot would then allow for either taking over (manual flight) or letting the pilot fly (fast-travel).

Seems like the only feasible way to do it really. In which case I hope there’d be a lot of landing spots within zones to choose from, and that the “known overworld” is made to look even more extensive than the OG’s, though obviously based on the same topography.

For me to really buy the zone concept, said zones really will have to be impressive in scale to give the illusion of this massive real world (or planet) living and breathing in real time. Given what I said earlier about Eos seeming to be only c. 30 miles squared, and that Kalm is about 35-40 miles distant from Midgar, this should give an indication of what I’m talking about here.

Another point. Meteor cannot be everywhere on the overworld as in the OG, given that it’s presumably moving in a straight line towards a fixed point, namely Midgar. So I wonder how they bring that up to modern standards too. Although I SUPPOSE we don’t have enough info on Gaia’s rotational axis nor on whether Meteor is or isn’t circling the planet either ... I guess ...

 

[FFShinra]

The meteor thing is clearly a limitation of the time. I'm sure if they redid the sky, Meteor would not be visible everywhere.

Also, I think just making a new world map with emphasis on it not being to scale would work fine. My only concern with this approach is how they would do combat while traversing on foot....

 

[Vyzzuvazzadth]

I don't think an over-sized Cloud walking on the overworld would work with their current visual direction. That's why the zones concept would be a better fit.

I hope there’d be a lot of landing spots within zones to choose from

You wouldn't really need to choose from any landing spots. Just land wherever you want (and can) and the game chooses the closest landing spot on the zone map to the coordinates matching those on the overworld. That wouldn't be much of an issue in open areas such as the badlands and grass lands between Midgar and the Midgar Zolom marsh. However, trying to land around Cosmo Canyon, for example, would probably lead to longer walking distances from the few feasible landing spots due to its topography.

I hope you get what I mean. Wasn't easy to explain ^^°

 

[pxp]

I don't think an over-sized Cloud walking on the overworld would work with their current visual direction. That's why the zones concept would be a better fit.


You wouldn't really need to choose from any landing spots. Just land wherever you want (and can) and the game chooses the closest landing spot on the zone map to the coordinates matching those on the overworld. That wouldn't be much of an issue in open areas such as the badlands and grass lands between Midgar and the Midgar Zolom marsh. However, trying to land around Cosmo Canyon, for example, would probably lead to longer walking distances from the few feasible landing spots due to its topography.

I hope you get what I mean. Wasn't easy to explain ^^°

I get what you mean dude, I wasn’t really saying that though, I was just saying I hope that there are good deal of landing spots (whether to choose from or automatically be redirected towards ) - my bad, I probably could’ve made that clearer.

Btw how’s the next video coming along?! ?

@FFShinra - you’re probably right re: Meteor. Can’t see an overworld map while traversing in foot in the same way as the OG though, like @Vyzzuvazzadth says it just doesn’t fit with modern FF SQE.