FFVII from a newcomers perspective

[Stiggie]

I played the Remake before I played the original and I absolutely love this game. The characters are all very well written and designed and they are the best part of the game, because the story itself while it is good and well written for the most part, is pretty cookie cutter for the genre once you know the plot twists. The characters drive this game because they are all so well written and designed and their interactions with each other are great.

The original is a great game, but I can see how flawed it was as well and I won't hold it against them I know there were technological limitations and time constraints because I have read interviews where they have said they had to cut a lot of content out the game. A lot of fans of the original complain about the pacing of the remake and that is one of my two big issues with the OG is the pacing, the OG game moves waaaay too fast it almost feels too rushed at times. I like the fact the remake is taking it's time because the story is presented in a much better fashion and I am able to sink myself into it much more. Like playing the remake first and going back to the original I see why nobody ever talks about Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge or Midgar for that matter, you basically run through Midgar at a full sprint in the original and never spend enough time there to care about the city or the other minor characters. I actually felt something when Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie died in the remake, in the original game it kind of felt like who cares because they had so little screen time and interactions with Cloud.

Barrett is awesome and he reminds me of me and the men in my family(we're all over 6ft tall and big also we love to fight cause we all used to box and we talk a lot of shit so Barrett in many ways is my spirit animal, not to mention I love they included a black character in a JRPG I can relate to that doesn't come off like a circus act). He isn't my favorite character though(that would be Tifa, followed by Aerith and Barrett).

Cloud is actually my least favorite character in the game, even if I can admit he is the best written and most fully developed and fleshed out character(Tifa is the most well rounded which is probably why I like her so much she reminds me a lot of the women in my family). His personality comes off like he is a waste of a man, and I still maintain I feel like both of these girls can do much better than him, hell Aerith already did have better. Going from Zack to Cloud is like going from playing a PS5 to a PS3, there are similarities(mainly out of Cloud's mental control) but overall Cloud is a massive downgrade from Zach. Cloud is a textbook example of someone who doesn't know how to socialize and make friends properly and wants to blame everyone else for him coming off like a borderline sociopath.

As far as the love triangle is concerned playing the remake first I have to agree with OPs friend in that I don't really see anything romantic between Cloud and Aerith, Cloud comes off visibly annoyed in a lot of his interactions with her, hell if he liked her so much why did she have to remind him who she was when he fell through the roof of the church? Also Cloud only ever openly flirted with Tifa(giving her the flower and calling her beautiful over a drink at the bar) so as far as I can see as far as the remake is concerned I think it's clearly obvious Tifa is the one being pushed as a potential love interest. Aerith and Jessie flirted with Cloud, not the other way around, and he never reciprocated it. In the original game I can see why it is a love triangle because the game gives you the choice of dialogue between the two women, but in the remake naaaaah I don't see it any other way but Cloud eventually ending up in Tifa's guts if those two dorks would ever stop being sexually repressed losers and just speak the fuck up and admit they love each other since it is clearly obvious to everyone, including Aerith, they love each other.

Overall I can't wait for the rest of this to come out and I am definitely a big fan of this game and I see why it gets so much love.

While I agree that Zack is better than Cloud, since he's basically my favorite FF protagonist, I wouldn't be too hard on him. If you look at crisis core it becomes clear how much what happened impacted Clouds psychology.
He's not perfect no, but his lesser traits are still the clear result of some positive character traits. Cloud wants to be a hero, and he doesn't want to fail Tifa and the others, and right now his broken psyche just doesn't know quite how to act.
In CC, he's a bit goofy, but still a regular, shy guy with a crush. And while I don't think he'll ever go back to that, even after the lifestream scene, I do think he'll be a lot less unlikable.


I agree with the pacing, the pacing of the remake is just fine, and I actually think they did some stuff too quickly, since pacing isn't determined just by time, but by placement within narrative.

Jessie,Biggs, and Wedge are indeed a lot better in the remake, but I still don't like how their fates were changed, I can't really be involved if they survive, and the cruel cold 1-after another way they're disposed off in the original has a shock factor that is missing from the remake in my opinion, only Jessie came out of this ok IMO.

Glad you like Tifa and Barret, I love them as well, with Barret I just hope people don't feel represented by him because of his skin color, that shouldn't matter, people should feel represented by him because he's a loving father to an adopted daughter, because he's passionate, because he wants to do good, etc.

 

[Fiz]

I played the Remake before I played the original and I absolutely love this game. The characters are all very well written and designed and they are the best part of the game, because the story itself while it is good and well written for the most part, is pretty cookie cutter for the genre once you know the plot twists. The characters drive this game because they are all so well written and designed and their interactions with each other are great.

The original is a great game, but I can see how flawed it was as well and I won't hold it against them I know there were technological limitations and time constraints because I have read interviews where they have said they had to cut a lot of content out the game. A lot of fans of the original complain about the pacing of the remake and that is one of my two big issues with the OG is the pacing, the OG game moves waaaay too fast it almost feels too rushed at times. I like the fact the remake is taking it's time because the story is presented in a much better fashion and I am able to sink myself into it much more. Like playing the remake first and going back to the original I see why nobody ever talks about Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge or Midgar for that matter, you basically run through Midgar at a full sprint in the original and never spend enough time there to care about the city or the other minor characters. I actually felt something when Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie died in the remake, in the original game it kind of felt like who cares because they had so little screen time and interactions with Cloud.

Barrett is awesome and he reminds me of me and the men in my family(we're all over 6ft tall and big also we love to fight cause we all used to box and we talk a lot of shit so Barrett in many ways is my spirit animal, not to mention I love they included a black character in a JRPG I can relate to that doesn't come off like a circus act). He isn't my favorite character though(that would be Tifa, followed by Aerith and Barrett).

Cloud is actually my least favorite character in the game, even if I can admit he is the best written and most fully developed and fleshed out character(Tifa is the most well rounded which is probably why I like her so much she reminds me a lot of the women in my family). His personality comes off like he is a waste of a man, and I still maintain I feel like both of these girls can do much better than him, hell Aerith already did have better. Going from Zack to Cloud is like going from playing a PS5 to a PS3, there are similarities(mainly out of Cloud's mental control) but overall Cloud is a massive downgrade from Zach. Cloud is a textbook example of someone who doesn't know how to socialize and make friends properly and wants to blame everyone else for him coming off like a borderline sociopath.

As far as the love triangle is concerned playing the remake first I have to agree with OPs friend in that I don't really see anything romantic between Cloud and Aerith, Cloud comes off visibly annoyed in a lot of his interactions with her, hell if he liked her so much why did she have to remind him who she was when he fell through the roof of the church? Also Cloud only ever openly flirted with Tifa(giving her the flower and calling her beautiful over a drink at the bar) so as far as I can see as far as the remake is concerned I think it's clearly obvious Tifa is the one being pushed as a potential love interest. Aerith and Jessie flirted with Cloud, not the other way around, and he never reciprocated it. In the original game I can see why it is a love triangle because the game gives you the choice of dialogue between the two women, but in the remake naaaaah I don't see it any other way but Cloud eventually ending up in Tifa's guts if those two dorks would ever stop being sexually repressed losers and just speak the fuck up and admit they love each other since it is clearly obvious to everyone, including Aerith, they love each other.

Overall I can't wait for the rest of this to come out and I am definitely a big fan of this game and I see why it gets so much love.

I'm glad to see someone pick up on the pacing. When people complain about pacing and "its convoluted" in Remake I struggle to understand where they're coming from. Is it rose tinted glasses, or is it just disingenious? OG's pacing was horrendous, rushing through one section without a second thought, then grinding to a halt for extended periods in the next. The level design was often messy. Random encounters every few steps hammering you from moving forward in a natural way. And the exposition, it had tons of convoluted exposition - half of which few people really understood what the hell was going on (which may or may not be a quality depending on your perspective).

Anyway, back in the day, when people rejected FFVII outright, it was mostly because of pacing and convolution. People talk as though FFVII was the most popular game in the world, and everyone loved it. It wasn't, it was divise then and it's divisive now. It was a common complaint that caused arguments, and probably the main reason people dropped the game. That Kalm scene saw a lot of drop-off, lots of people were just like "neah, not doing this".

I see Remake as a vast improvement on the original across the board, and I see OG as a product of it's time and think it needed change and they've done well with it.

 

[BoxFBall]

I'm glad to see someone pick up on the pacing. When people complain about pacing and "its convoluted" in Remake I struggle to understand where they're coming from. Is it rose tinted glasses, or is it just disingenious? OG's pacing was horrendous, rushing through one section without a second thought, then grinding to a halt for extended periods in the next. The level design was often messy. Random encounters every few steps hammering you from moving forward in a natural way. And the exposition, it had tons of convoluted exposition - half of which few people really understood what the hell was going on (which may or may not be a quality depending on your perspective).

Anyway, back in the day, when people rejected FFVII outright, it was mostly because of pacing and convolution. People talk as though FFVII was the most popular game in the world, and everyone loved it. It wasn't, it was divise then and it's divisive now. It was a common complaint that caused arguments, and probably the main reason people dropped the game. That Kalm scene saw a lot of drop-off, lots of people were just like "neah, not doing this".

I see Remake as a vast improvement on the original across the board, and I see OG as a product of it's time and think it needed change and they've done well with it.

Fully agree with the bolded. I have played and beat the original, I did play games in the 90s so I can see why this game is so loved, but the pacing of the original game is terrible. They rush you through Midgar just to slow you down to a complete halt at Kalm for the flashback. They could have organically revealed the flashbacks to Nibelheim through Cloud's headache episodes(kind of like what they did a little bit in the remake). After you get past Kalm it seems like the game only slows down again at the Lifestream sequence, other than that it feels like you are sprinting. Telling a great story is a marathon, not a race.

I didn't mind the random encounters, that is one complaint about the remake I do have is I felt it could have used more overworld combat, because I love the combat system in this game and hope more games try to use a similar system.

While I agree that Zack is better than Cloud, since he's basically my favorite FF protagonist, I wouldn't be too hard on him. If you look at crisis core it becomes clear how much what happened impacted Clouds psychology.
He's not perfect no, but his lesser traits are still the clear result of some positive character traits. Cloud wants to be a hero, and he doesn't want to fail Tifa and the others, and right now his broken psyche just doesn't know quite how to act.
In CC, he's a bit goofy, but still a regular, shy guy with a crush. And while I don't think he'll ever go back to that, even after the lifestream scene, I do think he'll be a lot less unlikable.


I agree with the pacing, the pacing of the remake is just fine, and I actually think they did some stuff too quickly, since pacing isn't determined just by time, but by placement within narrative.

Jessie,Biggs, and Wedge are indeed a lot better in the remake, but I still don't like how their fates were changed, I can't really be involved if they survive, and the cruel cold 1-after another way they're disposed off in the original has a shock factor that is missing from the remake in my opinion, only Jessie came out of this ok IMO.

Glad you like Tifa and Barret, I love them as well, with Barret I just hope people don't feel represented by him because of his skin color, that shouldn't matter, people should feel represented by him because he's a loving father to an adopted daughter, because he's passionate, because he wants to do good, etc.

I actually don't mind Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge potentially being alive, it was implied that they died but never explicitly stated so bringing them back I have no problems with, especially since I hope they expand on the battle between Shinra and Avalance/Wutai because the world and characters are so good I literally want them to expand on EVERYTHING, I may make a thread about it explaining why as well.

 

[BoxFBall]

One more thing I will add, I somewhat agree with longtime fans who don't like the idea of the whispers. I have ZERO problems with them changing the story up a little bit or expanding on it. Let me be very frank here, as great as this game was for it's time, playing the original FF7 in 2020 feels like I am playing a game that is leaving A LOT of meat on the bone. Every single area of this game could and should be expanded on, every single character could and should be expanded on. I do agree that using the whispers as a way to do it is cheap and it kind of feels tacked on. They should have just came out and said 'we had to cut a lot of stuff from the original game and we are going to add it back in now.' and I think most fans would have accepted that because who is gonna complain about more FF7? Lol

Ft. Condor should get it's own story arc and a huge battle with Shinra. In the remake Tifa and Aerith joke about going shopping and making Cloud hold their bags, why can't that happen in Costa Del Sol I hope it does. Gongaga and speaking with Zack's parents can be a whole chapter on Zack's childhood and who he really is and where he comes from. Wutai takes like two hours max in the original when you probably should be there closer to 20, hell Don Corneo needed his own story arc as well. How about actually making the love triangle feel like a love triangle if you are going to add it in there, give Cloud intimate scenes with both heroines to actually show he was torn between the two(this is my other big complaint with the original, the love triangle and dialogue options are just a distraction they don't mean anything in the long run because you had no choice in the end).

I kind of feel like a lot of fans of the original don't see the amount of untapped potential this game has, I mean look what they did with Midgar in the remake, the original's midgar is laughable in comparison. There is a lot of meat on the bone in this game waiting to get ate and I think people need to keep an open mind and enjoy the ride.

 

[cold_spirit]

I'm interested if anyone has an interview or source stating the OG was rushed, resulting in cut content. There certainly is cut content, but I think that content was abandoned because maybe the information was told elsewhere or it no longer fit the scenario (see: Unused Text Series and Red XIII's clones), not due to time restraints.

I remember one discussion I saw elsewhere where people stated Remake story elements like Leslie and Kyrie were planned for the OG, but were left out, and that raised an eyebrow. Were there discussions on the OG feeling rushed before Remake? Or is it a byproduct of the expanded world?

 

[Odysseus]

I remember one discussion I saw elsewhere where people stated story elements like Leslie and Kyrie were planned for the OG, but were left out, and that raised an eyebrow. Were there discussions on the OG feeling rushed before Remake? Or is it a byproduct of the expanded world?

Given the vastly expanded scope of the scenario in the remake, the original can feel a little truncated by comparison. That said, the pacing of the original Midgar was fine for what the original game was trying to do, you were only supposed to be there for like 6 to 8 hours maximum, so it's not like that quick pacing is much of an issue. I'm pretty certain the people saying Leslie and Kyrie were supposed to be in the original are misinformed or making it up.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

You can see a lot of the original ideas that were and were not cut and were and were not changed in the Early Material Files (scroll half-way down the page). And just... so much was cut and changed in the OG that what it started out as would have been a very different story than what we got.

You've got stuff like Jenova just being a state of mind that lets people do magic and both Sephrioth and Aerith having "Jenova" that lets them do magic. Sephrioth has it artificially; Aerith has it naturally. Sephiroth was going to be Aerith's unrequited love interest. Tifa's scar is something Cloud gave her. Yuffie was originally going to be raised by the temple and her birth family didn't want anything to do with her. Vincent was a reporter about stuff like UFO sightings and monsters... the list of changes goes on and on.

Notably missing is Jenova being an alien and the Cetra having a relationship with the Lifestream. Zack is also nowhere to be found and we do know he was one of the very last things added in. To the point some of his cutscenes weren't even in the first launch of the OG!

In a lot of ways, the Remake is going back to the older ideas and inserting them (or at least the spirit of them) back into the narrative in some way (like giving Reeve back Inspire in DoC; he's always had in the Early Material Files). How seamlessly the older stuff is incorperated back into the narrative is up for debate.

I'm personally think the OG was paced just fine. How fast you go through the OG varies a lot on your chosen play-style and how much you want to back-track and do optional grinds. If you do the maximum amount of back-tracks and optional stuff, the OG's pacing is... rather slow, especially towards the end. There's just.. a lot of optional stuff to do in Gold Saucer and optional bosses with the WEAPONs to face off. And nothing is really pushing you anywhere after a certain point in the game. The OG is more of an open-world game when taken as a whole than the Remake is which is largely linear.

Where the OG did have issues was that too much of the background story was optional and/or hiddne, and we can see the Remake is definetly fixing that issue.

What is important to remember is that Midgar, in the OG, is like... the Prolouge to the entire rest of the game. The pacing of Midgar was always supposed to be fast and gotten over with quick so the player could get to spending time in the rest of the game, which is where the real meat of the story happens.

 

[KindOfBlue]

I do agree that using the whispers as a way to do it is cheap and it kind of feels tacked on. They should have just came out and said 'we had to cut a lot of stuff from the original game and we are going to add it back in now.'

I mean, as sure as some fans are that the remake could’ve made the same kinds of changes without the whispers, these changes deliberately go outside of the OG story. Sure, some details can be changed and expansions can be made but they’re still bound to the confines of the OG. With the remake, they decidedly went outside of that. Personally, I’m all for it as long as they don’t go too far unless if they give me my Cloud x Marle Gold Saucer date and make her a canon romance option. Make it happen SE, lest you face my wrath.

You've got stuff like Jenova just being a state of mind that lets people do magic

Maybe the real J-E-N-O-V-A was the friends we made along the way

 

[AerithLives]

I've loved Final Fantasy for a good 20 years now, FFIX being my favorite game of all time, and FFVII being not far behind. So I talk about it, a lot.
Especially to my best mate whom I've spoken about it, trying to avoid spoilers for the most part in the hopes that he'd play it one day, knowing he probably wouldn't. Still, he knows the big ones, he'd seen AC once years ago, and I'd spoken about the brilliance of CC's ending when that came out as well. So he vaguely knows who Sephiroth is, knows what happens to Aerith, doesn't know what happened in Nibleheim or who Zack is, knows though that Zack

Spoiler: what is Zack?

is dead as fuck.

I especially had been talking a lot about it since remake was announced, and when I finished it and wasn't too pleased with the ending I ranted about it to him.
I think that's important to note because I clearly poisoned the well. But doing so did persuade him to play it.

The experience was rather interesting, especially since my friend both looks, and acts, a lot like Soldier Cloud, he's the same height, extremely blond, and has the exact same "not interested" behavior. His reactions even mirrored Clouds several times during the game. I personally look and act more like Zack so it's a fun dynamic.

So what did I get from that.

1: He will probably be disappointed at real cloud since he probably prefers Soldier Cloud.
2: He got REALLY annoyed at some parts of the combat and trying to orient in front of stairs, but that's his own personality getting in the way.
3: He MUCH prefers Tifa and was visibly annoyed by Aerith at times, like when she's not letting you go home. (he really mirrored Cloud here).
4: He doesn't think there is anything between Cloud and Aerith and thinks Aerith is obviously still in love with Zack, and that the two pairings were pretty clear in game.
5: He didn't like how they did Sephiroth, he felt that he wasn't mysterious enough and that his constant inclusion broke his immersion with the shinra storyline. I've shown him just shots of how it's done in FFVII before and he much preferred that approach.
6: He felt like he understood most of what was going on, or at least, the things he didn't understand, he understood that he WOULD understand them later on, he wasn't lost, except for the ending, of which he just couldn't make heads or tails.
7: He wasn't a fan of Barret until he had to play him, because when he was the one with the attitude it felt a lot more enjoyable I think, this is when we realized he's also a bit like Barret.
8: He was really interested in the world and what the hell is going on, so we just started playing FFVII.

I haven't played that since remake got announced and it now felt really weird how quickly we're going through it, one session and we're already at wallmarket.
Still, he's amazed at how 1 on 1 it is, he knows basically where he is and where he needs to go and what the next events are, and says he's getting a weird sense of nostalgia from the juxtapostion of seeing places and things he knows in high quality now suddenly in 90ties graphics.

His main take-away so far is that the original did an absolutely amazing job at setting atmosphere, with both the music and the way Clouds episodes are handled. He was no idea what's going on with him but thinks the original made it look more creepy and interesting. I also find it interesting that several of the scenes that bothered him, unbeknownst to him, were scenes specifically for the remake, like seeing Sephiroth in chapter 2.

I am going to kinda document how he experiences the rest of the game since I find it pretty fascinating since I can't really remember not knowing the story of FFVII anymore. Anyone else have some experiences with newcomers they'd like to share? (ps, I think that because of this, I've now also convinced him to play FFIX and Nier: automata, which I am really happy about).

A lot of my friends who are middle aged now have spent the past 20 years listening to me going on about Final Fantasy 7. They have all asked whether they should play the remake to see what the fuss is about and I've warned them away from it.
The remake is far too childish and baby-ish with all those Kingdom Hearts fate ghosts and time Daemons. I think Square Enix is trying to force their crap ideas into a new audiences with the popularity of FF7 as a vessels.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yes sir...Someone's discovered us. They know of The Quadratum-inati! ...Understood, sir. We will eliminate all those who know the truth. The Heart of all worlds will be protected.

 

[Fiz]

A lot of my friends who are middle aged now have spent the past 20 years listening to me going on about Final Fantasy 7. They have all asked whether they should play the remake to see what the fuss is about and I've warned them away from it.
The remake is far too childish and baby-ish with all those Kingdom Hearts fate ghosts and time Daemons. I think Square Enix is trying to force their crap ideas into a new audiences with the popularity of FF7 as a vessels.

I think this is part of the problem, OG wasn't anywhere near as mature as people make out, if anything its quite immature and even while it subverts a lot of tropes it also plays into some very immature anime tropes at the same time. Like, a lot of us were really young when we first played it so it felt mature when it wasn't, and compared to most games that were out there it was very different but in the greater scheme of things it wasn't that mature. Plus, its been put on a pedestal and elevated far beyond anything it ever was. A lot of it was operating on a very schoolboy level and a lot of the KH tropes people bang on about are present in OG. It's not that Nomura brings KH stuff into FF, it's that Nomura brough FF stuff into KH and then people are surprised that KH and FF both have those shared themes.

Like for example, I've literally seen people say Remake will have "Kingdom Hearts Power of Friendship Bullshit" except power of friendship is very, very present in OG. It's just not presented quite in the KH way (because KH is a Disney product aimed at literal children). One could easily summarise that FFVII's plot is driven by the power of friendship:

Cloud, a loner with no friends is on a lost path and is struggling emotionally, then he meets his childhood friend and a kind girl who befriends him, he doesnt want these friends but he is struggling on his own so they look out for him. They lead him on a journey, meeting lots of new friends along the way who help him to embrace friends and help him onto a path of light. Together with his friends they defeat the bad guy. Sephiroph learns some disturbing things about his past, without any friends to guide him, he drives himself insane and onto a path of darkness. Shit, it sounds like Nomura KH Bullshit.


If anything, I think Remake might be a little more grown up as a story. Or at least, a grown up version of it itself.

Sorry if that sounds like a harsh takedown of FFVII, it really isn't intended to be. It's just being honest about what Final Fantasy is, and I think there is a tendency for fans to want it to be something it isn't and never was.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Stories themselves are neither mature nor immature. It's how they are told that makes the difference.

 

[Odysseus]

Boy, I don't think I've seen anybody call the Remake "babyish" before, lol. When I was babysitting my niece, I did find it a little odd when Peppa Pig had to do battle with the embodiment of causality in order to change history. Babies are into some crazy stuff these days.

Okay really though. The original game might be my favorite, but it isn't exactly "high art" here. Cloud might be a deconstruction of the usual "edgy protagonist" trope, but FF7 just as easily falls into a lot of other tropes too. Tifa and Aerith are portrayed as jealous and petty towards each other like it's a harem anime or something, Sephiroth has paper thin motivations for what he's doing, basically just being evil for evil's sake... you have Quality moments like the CEO of the largest and most powerful company in the world needing to PERSONALLY go commandeer a on-seater plane to chase after Sephiroth despite having airships and helicopters at his disposal... FF7 is a weird game, and requires you to suspend your disbelief and accept some pretty nonsensical things at some points.

I'll say, the Remake has a level of characterization that the original could never have achieved with the technology of the time. Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Aerith all feel much more three dimensional this time around, since they have facial expressions and tone of voice to work with. The presentation of the story also feels more fleshed out; in the original, the fall out of the reactor bombing and platefall was more implied than shown, but now we have to see the consequences first hand. I don't think the player is going to walk away from the whole ordeal feeling like Avalanche are innocent heroes the way they might have before, as early as chapter two you're already made to face all the civilian casualties and damage your actions led to.

I'm rambling here, but I guess what I'm getting at is that the Remake's presentation is plenty mature and thought provoking, and calling it "babyish" because of one plot device you didn't like is silly. If you really think this game is like kingdom hearts, I don't think you've played kingdom hearts in a while.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

TBH, I think the wackiness and nonsensicality of the OG was part of its greatness.

 

[Odysseus]

Oh don't get me wrong, I love that about FF7 too. It's a big part of why I kind of resent AC and CC for taking themselves sooooo seriously.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Sorry if that sounds like a harsh takedown of FFVII, it really isn't intended to be. It's just being honest about what Final Fantasy is, and I think there is a tendency for fans to want it to be something it isn't and never was.

Okay really though. The original game might be my favorite, but it isn't exactly "high art" here. Cloud might be a deconstruction of the usual "edgy protagonist" trope, but FF7 just as easily falls into a lot of other tropes too.

I’ll tell you this, one of the many other things I was led to believe about the OG going in was that this story was super mature and deep thematically and groundbreaking in its storytelling. While it may have broken new ground technologically speaking, the OG plot is stupid as hell and I think it’s okay to admit that. I don’t think it’s a bad thing anyways, hell, I enjoyed the plot because it’s just fun. While it wasn’t what I expected, that did not disappoint me in the slightest...if anything, I’d say it enhanced it for me.

It’s just, I didn’t walk away from the OG thinking the handling of the themes was especially deep, nor did I walk away from the remake thinking those themes had been completely thrown out the window. The OG was pretty straightforward and while I think it’s fair to consider that an advantage over the remake, I don’t think it absolves the OG from its own set of plot contrivances, tropiness, and general silliness.

The characters are what really sold it for me. I’ll admit I’m not a particularly difficult person to please with these types of things, just give me solid characters and I’m good. I don’t care about Kingdom Hearts but mainly because I’m not into the characters, everything else I’d have little issue with otherwise.

I do wonder if me not having grown up with FF7 and only experiencing it as an adult colors my attachment to it so I don’t want to come off as pompous but I know what it’s like to hold something to such high regard since childhood and watch it be ruined later on. I just didn’t get that from the remake at all. Maybe I’d respond negatively to the remake if I actually was a longtime fan but I’ll never know, I guess.

I'll say, the Remake has a level of characterization that the original could never have achieved with the technology of the time. Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Aerith all feel much more three dimensional this time around, since they have facial expressions and tone of voice to work with.

The remake nailed my two favorite things about the OG, the characters and the music, so well that at this point I’m just anxious for more

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The thing with the OG that people forget is that at the time it was made, it was one of the most mature games in gaming out there for how it handled topics like character death and the main coat not being exactly good people. The OG really clued in a lot of people to how a game could tell a full and mature story in a way few games have.

On of the reasons the OG can come across as not being "mature" in it's handling of things today is because the OG itself opened up the door for more mature topics to be covered in games at all. But you compare it to the other games avalible to be played in 1997, and... nothing really comes close to it in narrative tone. It's only with games that come after that year that it starts having more competition.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Certainly speaks to a larger conversation about how time and nostalgia color our perceptions of art. I know a lot of what I enjoy from back in the day probably wouldn’t be the same if taken out of it’s context of time. As a teen, I was pretty up my own ass when it came to stuff like music and games that I grew up with or that came before me (yes, I’ll admit, at one point I was one of those “born in the wrong generation” types) and I was constantly looking for reasons to not think whatever I enjoyed was anything less than “objectively” good, to the point where I found it difficult to enjoy anything.

I think what broke me out of this was watching this wave of self proclaimed critics emerge on YouTube, many of whom ride this “angry edgy nerd” trend that I just find really boring and often times groanworthy as an adult, especially when it comes from people older than me. I’d watch all these so-called analysis videos explaining why something is objectively bad when really, I had already decided something was bad and I liked hearing stuff that pandered to my views. It was self indulgent and kind of...masturbatory? Like porn, but with opinions...opinion porn?

At some point I just stopped using timeliness as a metric of art’s quality because I don’t think it’s possible for us to truly divorce ourselves from time. All of creation are bound to it, until the day we’re free to return to the planet that birthed us.

But I...will not end... why do I hear boss music

 

[kathy202]

Personally, I've never found either the OG or the Remake particular mature or childish in their storytelling. In fact, the way both elements are put together is a big part of their appeal.

Specifically for the remake, I love the way its storytelling has kept up with the times, like the Wall Market, the love triangle, and the random Shinra employees. The last one being especially relatable for me because in the time span between the OG and the remake, I went from being a rebellious anti-estsblishment teenager to another random employee of big corporations. The remake highlighted the difference faces of corporate employee life, as well as the progress and gentrification that often comes with the presence of overly successful companies. The OG might have touched on it briefly, but I don't think the technology of its time allowed it to portray it in the same depth that the remake could.

 

[BoxFBall]

The characters made OG FF7 for me, not the plot. The plot itself is fairly cookie cutter and generic after you know all the plot twists and can put 2 and 2 together. I wouldn't call it a mature game either, it was kind of ridiculous at times actually I didn't care because I looked at it like an anime. The remake is slightly more mature, but it still comes off ridiculous at times, but I'm ok with that I think a lot of people are forgetting one thing, the name of the game is Final FANTASY... FANTASY. It isn't necessarily going to come off mature or realistic if it's supposed to be fantasy.

At this point I have played FF7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15 and out of those games the only one I would say has a mostly mature plot and mostly mature characters grounded somewhat in reality is FF12, and a large portion of the fanbase hates that game(I'm not one of them 12 is arguably my favorite FF game).

 

[Clement Rage]

I'm not sure the OG was noticeably more or less mature than anything else.

Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen was 96, Metal Gear Solid was in development before then even though it came out in 98.

The story has nothing particularly that's a step up from FF6. Characters? Eh, they're not some revolutionary trend.

Corporations running the world or 'stick it to the man' freedom fighters are not particularly unique in storyline or setting. It wasn't really groundbreaking except maybe in visuals, very briefly.

Is the storytelling brilliant? Sometimes. It's a good game, it's not the bestest thing ever, and that's okay. It's not special or revolutionary.

None of this is a criticism.

'Fantasy' relates to a type of setting. Whether something is fantasy or not has no bearing on whether it's mature or realistic.

 

[cold_spirit]

OG's pacing was horrendous, rushing through one section without a second thought, then grinding to a halt for extended periods in the next.

I find this statement fascinating. I've said in the past that I think the OG is the most brilliantly paced JRPG ever. And I still argue that! Good pacing, to me, is less of a continuous buildup and more of a push and pull. Sometimes it's good to slow down and iron out the details of an event (e.g. the Nibelheim flashbacks). Sometimes it's good to be swept up in the adventure, towns flying by like landmarks from a car window (e.g. Kalm to Junon). I think each scene in the OG says exactly what it needs to. I like that.

On the topic of maturity, I think when fans claim the OG is mature they're subconsciously recalling specific events. Whether it be Aerith's death with its swiftness and finality, its absence of dying words and afterlife communication. Or smaller moments like the palatable dread when passing through Gongaga. However, FF7 is undoubtedly a byproduct of the the shounen anime genre. It features a fierce rivalry, a childhood promise, dead parents, and an eye callsign that signals power. To say it's mature is laughable, though saying it's immature isn't giving it enough credit, in my opinion.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Specifically for the remake, I love the way its storytelling has kept up with the times, like the Wall Market, the love triangle,

I long for the day when the love triangle debate becomes so outdated that it’s obsolete, I’ve only been in this BS since April of this year and I’m already exhausted by it

out of those games the only one I would say has a mostly mature plot and mostly mature characters grounded somewhat in reality is FF12

Corporations running the world or 'stick it to the man' freedom fighters are not particularly unique in storyline or setting. It wasn't really groundbreaking except maybe in visuals, very briefly.

Is the storytelling brilliant? Sometimes. It's a good game, it's not the bestest thing ever, and that's okay. It's not special or revolutionary.

Evil corporations, love triangles, turn based RPGs, fantasy settings, edgy protagonists and villains...these are all elements that I’m bored of and that I don’t particularly care for, yet FF7 managed to break past those boundaries and hit all of the right emotional notes for me, becoming my favorite game of all time.

Is that a testament to the game’s objective greatness, or did it just happen to resonate with me perfectly? Perhaps a bit of both? I say that because I’m thinking of trying out some other FF games, and I want to make a conscious effort to avoid expecting the other games to resonate with me as much as FF7 does.

Truth is, most works of art will not resonate with me as much as FF7, and I think that’s perfectly fine. I’ve gotten a lot better at appreciating art for what it tries to accomplish versus what I expect from it. Maybe no other FF game comes close to FF7 in my mind, but does that mean they’re all not as good?

As a kid, I’d probably say yes but something about this year especially made me rethink how I appreciate the world around me. Maybe I will never enjoy a piece of art as much as I enjoy FF7 ever again for the rest of my life, but I won’t know unless I keep seeing what else life has to offer. I used to get angry when a video game, film, or album didn’t live up to my expectations, now I’m at a point where “criticism” of something as subjective as art just seems redundant. Call it “turning off your brain” if you want, but I find it more enjoyable to save my finite brain power for things that truly matter these days.

I didn’t mean to get so philosophical, hot damn! Anyways, I’m curious to know from you all, which FF game do you consider the best/your favorite, and was it the first one you ever played?

 

[Fiz]

I’ll tell you this, one of the many other things I was led to believe about the OG going in was that this story was super mature and deep thematically and groundbreaking in its storytelling. While it may have broken new ground technologically speaking, the OG plot is stupid as hell and I think it’s okay to admit that. I don’t think it’s a bad thing anyways, hell, I enjoyed the plot because it’s just fun. While it wasn’t what I expected, that did not disappoint me in the slightest...if anything, I’d say it enhanced it for me.

It’s just, I didn’t walk away from the OG thinking the handling of the themes was especially deep, nor did I walk away from the remake thinking those themes had been completely thrown out the window. The OG was pretty straightforward and while I think it’s fair to consider that an advantage over the remake, I don’t think it absolves the OG from its own set of plot contrivances, tropiness, and general silliness.

The characters are what really sold it for me. I’ll admit I’m not a particularly difficult person to please with these types of things, just give me solid characters and I’m good. I don’t care about Kingdom Hearts but mainly because I’m not into the characters, everything else I’d have little issue with otherwise.

I do wonder if me not having grown up with FF7 and only experiencing it as an adult colors my attachment to it so I don’t want to come off as pompous but I know what it’s like to hold something to such high regard since childhood and watch it be ruined later on. I just didn’t get that from the remake at all. Maybe I’d respond negatively to the remake if I actually was a longtime fan but I’ll never know, I guess.


The remake nailed my two favorite things about the OG, the characters and the music, so well that at this point I’m just anxious for more

Yeah. Many people were about 11 or 12 when they played OG, so I think that might play into how mature it felt. Also, as @Obsidian Fire pointed out, compared to most games out there at the time it was pretty groundbreaking. But in the greater scheme of things, it wasn't. I also don't think it ages so well, by todays standards its very cliche with lots of negative tropes.

I'm very much of the opinion that it's a story driven by its characters. They might not be the most ground breaking and unique characters out there, but they're very sticky and work as a group. Some characters just have that "something, something" and FFVII has a cast of those. I also think they're a bunch of characters that could technically be thrown into any scenario and stick. Well, provided those characters are represented properly (OG and Remake, not Compilation... but even then, they seem to have stuck).

I also agree about the music.

The thing with the OG that people forget is that at the time it was made, it was one of the most mature games in gaming out there for how it handled topics like character death and the main coat not being exactly good people. The OG really clued in a lot of people to how a game could tell a full and mature story in a way few games have.

On of the reasons the OG can come across as not being "mature" in it's handling of things today is because the OG itself opened up the door for more mature topics to be covered in games at all. But you compare it to the other games avalible to be played in 1997, and... nothing really comes close to it in narrative tone. It's only with games that come after that year that it starts having more competition.

I totally agree, but I also think the fandom has talked up its own hype and depth. There are so many head canons, talking up and urban legends about its themes and such, which are used to build it's depth beyond what it really is. It's kind of immortalised itself in that fashion. I think thats a big problem for them going forward, the pressure of fan expectation might be an undeliverable fantasy and probably plays a lot into their decision to "reclaim" ownership of thier own work from the fandom and say "we're prepared to change anything, and have the right to do so if we think it'll make for a better story, or the story we now want to tell".

I think when people get upset about them taking these risks, if authors never took risks & did the unthinkable then we wouldn't have had stories like OG in the first place.

I find this statement fascinating. I've said in the past that I think the OG is the most brilliantly paced JRPG ever. And I still argue that! Good pacing, to me, is less of a continuous buildup and more of a push and pull. Sometimes it's good to slow down and iron out the details of an event (e.g. the Nibelheim flashbacks). Sometimes it's good to be swept up in the adventure, towns flying by like landmarks from a car window (e.g. Kalm to Junon). I think each scene in the OG says exactly what it needs to. I like that.

Maybe its subjective, but I felt that it had a tendency to rush through elements of the story paying a shallow, passing nod to whats going on. Remake really fixed a lot of that. It also had a tendency to grind to a halt, it was up and down.

On the topic of maturity, I think when fans claim the OG is mature they're subconsciously recalling specific events. Whether it be Aerith's death with its swiftness and finality, its absence of dying words and afterlife communication. Or smaller moments like the palatable dread when passing through Gongaga. However, FF7 is undoubtedly a byproduct of the the shounen anime genre. It features a fierce rivalry, a childhood promise, dead parents, and an eye callsign that signals power. To say it's mature is laughable, though saying it's immature isn't giving it enough credit, in my opinion.

BIB: Totally, and also harems. I don't think calling it immature is failing to give it enough credit because the areas it tries to be mature are a bit wonky. When I refer to the OG's failing it isn't to just slag it off but to process a 20 year old title that's very much a product of its own era and how Remake is seeminly modernising and improving the work to be more relevant in 2020.


When people call it mature, I think its death that they refer to. I think its quite mature when dealing with death and loss while addressing character backstories. Their losses in their pasts carried weight. I also think it handled an iconic scene well in the moment, but only in that moment, it becomes extremely immature in the aftermath and then from the ending into the compilation tends towards struggling to keep the dead in a state of being dead and builds cookie-cutter melodrama amongst the living characters.

I think the gravitas of that theme is largely something the fanbase has invented around it rather than something that was really there in the first place. The oft cited quotes, which are often embellished, talk more to surface level creative decisions rather than some deeper, weighty thing.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I don't think it's possible for consumers of a text to simply invent thematic meaning that isn't there. What you find in the text is what is in the text. Many FFVII fans first played the OG at such a young age that Aerith's fictional death had, and retains, a disproportionate impact on them. The fictional deaths of characters we're deeply invested in tend to have that effect on us as children. It's all part of the process of learning about death.

I don't think using the words "mature" and "immature" are really helpful. I prefer "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated". Games made 25+ years ago were unsophisticated in all the sorts of ways. The medium was unsophisticated, and the presumed audience was assumed to be adolescent boys, who also tend to be unsophisticated. The medium has grown up with its users.

That said, as someone who was a mature adult when she played both the OG and the Remake, I may have a slightly different perspective, and I have to say I don't find the Remake to be more "mature" in its handling of the games themes. In some ways, it is less "mature". The baddies are badder, the goodies are nicer and do less harm; the death toll has been reduced; everybody's beautiful (except Palmer); the nuance, the shades, the resonance with ordinary people's real life experienes have been reduced in favour of some complicated and ultimately meaningless twaddle about time loops and fate, which doesn't exist in the real world except as an abstract intellectual game.