Back In Reactor 5 (Chapter 7), all Heidegger says is "Don't you see? You fools were never in control. Never anything but pawns in our plans to sell great and glorious war to the people! And your instruments of insurrection will detonate - when we so choose!"
That coupled with the surveillance footage of Avalanche shows that Shinra was always monitoring them. But there is no place so far where Avalanche has learned that the size of the explosion was Shinra's fault. If they knew, Barret would have told Jessie in the time between Ch7 and Ch12.
But they showed them that the bomb was being tampered with, effectively highlighting and admitting their interference. At least that was what I thought.
Interference with the second bomb, sure, but even then all Shinra did was take away Avalanche's ability to control the bomb by remote.
The last time Cloud and Barret saw the first bomb, it was buried under rubble in a collapsing facility and counting down with only minutes to spare. At most, Barret and co. could reasonably conclude Shinra allowed that bomb to go off -- in which case, it would still be Avalanche's bomb that killed those people. What Heidegger admits to wouldn't be enough to clue them in that it wasn't their bomb that destroyed the first reactor.
It was a nice touch to have Rude prevent Reno from shooting Tifa.
The plate drop is probably more realistic in the Remake, but it's way less powerful. Partly, I think, because the focus is on saving people. So many people are saved that it feel as if everybody is saved. Nobody whose name is known to us is lost. Not even Chadley, unfortunately.
Partly it's because of the subtle differences in the President's reaction. A lot of it is down to the comparatively poor use of music to conjure tone and mood.
I think it was a big mistake not to have Tseng show up in the helicopter to gloat and smack Aeris.
Only part of that I would disagree with, @LicoriceAllsorts , is that it may have been a tad ridiculous for the characters to be able to hear one another over the sounds of one of these helicopters as they are depicted in the remake.
Oh, and Chadley. I don't really have anything against him.
Idk about the smacking part either. Doubt the higher ups at square would let it happen as graphical as we imagined it. And if they are gonna make a softer version of it, why bother? Take it all together
Yeah, Tseng can convey being theatrically antagonistic through his melodramatic monologues just as easily.
Also like President Shinra not appearing in person at the Sector 5 reactor, it just makes more logical sense that Tseng wouldn’t risk bringing Aerith and or himself to the potential danger of the support pillar fighting, especially when the plate is about to collapse.
I was actually pleasantly surprised that they allowed Jessie to die believing herself to have murdered hundreds of people. I think the choice to make the explosion not ACTUALLY Avalanche's fault, but force them all to live and die believing it to be, is really interesting. .....and also heartbreaking of course
All in all, this chapter didn't really land for me, but I'm not sure if it was because of a technical issue or what. For me, there was basically no music going up the pillar, and what was there was pretty quiet and atmospheric instead of tense or even sad. Does anyone know what tracks were used or have a link? I'm curious to hear it when not trying to fight off helitroopers.
I did really like playing as Aerith though. I liked her scenes with Marlene too.
I was still pissed from chapter 11 when starting this chapter (even though I had a night's sleep in between), so I wasn't in the best of moods when starting the stair climb. The climb and battles were fine, but that part where you play Aerith just felt tedious and slow - I put down the controller and browsed the Internet while her cutscenes were playing This game has pace problems at times - you're supposed to feel a sense of urgency, and still they take time for a lot of stuff that shouldn't be there, imo. When I got to Jessie's death I was just kinda bored and that scene didn't do anything for me.
The good thing was the battle at the end. (And Tseng, of course, even though I think he looks at least 5 years too young.) It was hilarious how Rude wouldn't hurt Tifa but instead just grab her arm and knock her slightly unconscious, lol. I killed Reno first, and of course I had to let Tifa finish Rude - with her Limit Break
Oh and pyramid! Pyramiiiid!!
(RIP Wedge though, I'll actually miss him.)
I'm just feeling the sllooooowwness right now, not sure I'm up for chapter 13 because it feels like a chore atm. If I get some mini games and quests and a chance to level now it'll be fine.
The time with Aerith was my favorite part of Ch12, interestingly enough. I felt the panic of the situation most vividly when seeing the chaos of the slums from her perspective. That moment when she picked up Betty became one of those super-rare moments where I did NOT attempt to stray from the path because I was emotionally invested in getting this poor girl to safety as quickly as possible. Having Betty and her dad actually make an appearance in Ch12 after they had been mentioned in Ch11 was a neat surprise.
Marle is still badass and I loved the evacuation scenario and how both Wedge and Aerith got involved in it. Wedge's moment of heroism, spurred on by Aerith, and the way that "New Recruit" disobeyed "Senior Officer" were the most powerful human moments of the chapter for me. Ch12 feels in many ways like a good disaster movie (in short form).
In the original game, Tifa says to all the NPCs...
“It's dangerous here!”
“Everyone get away from the pillar, quickly!”
“Everyone get out of Sector 7!”
...and while we see NPCs acknowledging that there is something dangerous going on, they stay around like numbskulls.
“If things get too hairy, we'll escape.
It's not something
you'll see happen too often.”
“L, look… This is my job, so
I have to be here
until the absolute last minute.”
“Umm…
I just LOVE men with a sense of duty.
Let me stay here with you.”
So although the original game never confirms or denies if anybody got evacuated from Sector 7 (apart from Marlene and our playable characters), the inefficient response from the NPCs always gave me the impression that indeed very few or none got out. I assume at least some were left with similar feelings/assumptions when they played the OG back in the day. The idea that almost nobody got out adds to the sense of scale with the tragedy.
But the evacuation scenario, on its own, works for me on multiple levels. After connecting with the slum residents over many hours and seeing their humanity, they would have come across as far too stupid if we didn't see them try to flee. Aerith's perspective also gives us plenty of much needed sense of urgency and panic. Then there's what Reeve said when Ch10 began, "The Sector 7 undercity is home to more than 50,000-", and presumably he meant to say 50000 people or the like. Although this may only help to a small extent since after all it's only a number and you don't create emotional attachment with numbers (typically), there is the added awareness that in the short timespan everything took place you couldn't possibly have evacuated all 50000 residents from the Sector 7 slums.
I think that the sense of scale with the tragedy fails in FFVIIR both because of the underwhelming/disappointing FMV showing the plate's destruction and
because of aspects with the aftermath as shown in Ch13, which I shall go into in the appropriate thread.
Since Ch13 begins when the team wakes up in Sector 6, I won't comment on those scenes here even though most players will clear Ch12 and nigh-instantly transition to the Sector 6 events.
The moments between Aerith and Marlene made me cry. The supernatural connection between them has now been setup for Meteorfall and I'm hoping it has ZERO to do with the Guardians of Fate and all to do with some form of Cetran telepathy. Cetrans can already communicate with the planet and the dead, so it's not a stretch to think that they could perform limited telepathy with each other and with "normal" humans.
Both the game's ending and the prologue to Advent Children wanted to establish a profound connection between Marlene and Aerith, which always felt odd because we all know they spent at the most 15-30 minutes together. While I do hope that later parts of the Remake series somehow manage to include one more scene between the two, this short sequence in Part 1 is enough that I will feel a satisfying callback when Marlene senses Aerith as Meteor is about to fall.
The evacuation thing *does* make more sense as to why Corneo would be in trouble with Shinra. I don't know how Shinra learned or why they cared that Corneo "leaked that secret" in the OG. The rest of Avalanche was already fighting at the pillar before Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith got there. That they evacuated some people actually makes it so that Corneo's spilling the beans made a difference.
Initially, I actually thought that the guy who calls Shinra Infantry "Fascist Pricks" was Wymer. That would be a nice touch, imo. And his role could be filled by Marle easily.
It's such a great liberty they took to actually have an NPC say "fascist pricks". The implications of this are just amazing. Obviously you don't need the word itself for fascism to be a thing but I love it anyway that the word is now a thing in lore.
Adding to the list of real-life things that are now confirmed THINGS in FFVII:
- The term "fascists"
- Chickens
- Turkeys
- Camels (at least in an animated movie)
- Acupuncture
Did anybody else get this sort of thing happening with the NPCs?
I definitely have mixed feelings about this Chapter. I did enjoy it for what it was, for sure... For the pros, the party ziplining to safety was as epic as I always imagined it. I loved seeing Jessie being badass and deflecting with humor til the very end, dying how she lived - I was surprised and sad how she all but disappeared after Chapter 4, but I'm glad that it left a sense of how they barely got to know each other in the air.
However...... I am a huge fan of dramatic silence, so I am disappointed that the music was not halted for the key moment, and am also slightly disappointed that President Shinra was not listening to "The Creation" in his office. That was pretty iconic. Also... who thought of that Cait Sith scene? I think having a few survivors and having the plate break into pieces instead is plenty reasonable in addition to being more realistic, but I also feel that more people that the party knew should have died, especially offscreen, because it's more relatable and painful that way. IRL we don't often get to say goodbye when people die like that. I do kinda wish that they made it more quintessentially FFVII - abrupt and haunting.
@Shademp Reno was more cruel in the original.. Was it the better graphics that got you more angry this time? Reno and Rude definitely crossed a line there. All the more reason for them to repent in CoS/AC. In the words of Reno - "How are we supposed to atone for that?"
About that... I know most people (?) think they got Reno right, but to me there's something off about his face - he looks too much like a teenager, imo. There's something so soft and boyish about his face. Not that you can't be young and nasty at the same time - and I do think they got his manneurism right - but in the OG I always saw him like sort of sunk in and hunched over and maybe scarred or idk, something uneven about him - with these two glaring eyes.
His face looks sort of angled, it was never soft.
Also, those goggles were never that... goggly.
Apparently they went back to concept art for the remake, but in this case I think they kinda failed.
I’d say he looks pretty similar to his OG art. In the same way other characters in the Remake art at least. I don’t think Reno was every meant to look ugly, Nomura’s art was just rougher back in the 90s in general.
I don't think he's particularly good looking in the Remake, he looks like a college brat I don't really think that's what Nomura was going for. Edit: Or maybe it was, I have no idea
Alright, what is up with Aerith? (That's a rhetorical question.) How she talked to Marlene about moving on sounded so definitive. I can't decide if Aerith spoke that way to gain Marlene's trust or because, as I've speculated before, she's foreseen the destruction of Sector 7. Then they hug, the audiovisual crackles, Marlene realizes something, but Aerith hushes her. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? I was getting some weird vibes. Something was shared between those two and I'm determined to get to the bottom of it
Best guess is that Marlene is now capable of seeing the Whispers too. Aerith demonstrates several times that she has far more awareness of the game and goings-on that characters initially believe -- the quip about Cloud being a mercenary before he even mentions it when they first meet, her gaze shifting when Cloud mentions Sephiroth for the first time, and her "Seer" ability to convey awareness of the Whispers to Cloud/apparent knowledge of them to Red implies that she has awareness of her role in the timeline.
IIRC, in the OG game, she's one of the first (if not the first) to realize that Aerith is using Holy during the ending. $20 says that whenever the game finishes, she'll play a role in praying for/supporting Holy during the Meteor fight.
In my entire run through Chapter 12 I felt immense trepidation and dread. The gravity of what was about to happen acted as a force on my facial muscles and, indeed, most of my face was strongly pointing downwards. That sort of frowning expression you might have after hearing of somebody's death and you feel your face getting locked into an expression of sorrow.
All these strong emotions make it difficult to honestly discern why it was then that the death scenes for Biggs and Jessie did not move me nearly as much as I was expecting. (Wedge is a different story and we'll see if I get to that in a later post)
There is of course such a thing as having too high expectations. We've all been waiting for these moments for years. In the same way that I find myself underwhelmed by almost every hyped-up movie that I watch in the cinema, it could be that I had been "hyped up for sadness" too much for that expectation to ever be met.
The second possibility is that I was entering into a defensive mode. When I am already emotionally overwhelmed my brain may refuse additional baggage, be it because my nerves can't mentally overheat any further or because I want to prevent my cup from running over. FFVIIR is a profoundly intense experience because of the sheer fidelity of this faux-reality: Graphics (often) better than Advent Children, voice acting- and script better than anything else I've seen Square Enix put out, and the sheer expressiveness of facial- and body animations make everything feel almost grounded in reality. It's reasonable to think that I blocked out additional emotions during the death scenes of Biggs and Jessie because I was, simply put, too tired already.
But the third scenario that keeps repeating in my head, and which reflects what I was constantly thinking during the aforementioned scenes, is this: "The game isn't making me believe that these characters are wounded enough to be dying in front of me right now."
"Where is the blood?"
"Look at these characters pretend-dying."
Repeating ad nauseam through my head was the fact that these are just fake video game characters, with some dirt and a few bruises added on. Why isn't there a single speck of blood? Where are the bullet wounds that Biggs supposedly may have sustained? Where are the shraphnels that could conceivably have hit Jessie after the explosion and have caused her death?
In the original FFVII and in the Compilation, blood is reserved for special occasions. The trail of blood in Shinra HQ, Sephiroth's defeat in the Lifestream, Zack's death in Crisis Core and Cloud becoming a shish-kebab in Advent Children Complete (there is only a tiny bit of blood in the original version of Advent Children). It deviates from the norm for extra impact. I maintain my previously worded stance that FFVIIR should not aim to be a gore-fest and that it would go against the style of FFVII if, in FFVIIR, it suddenly showed Mortal Kombat-levels of gore whenever Cloud's Buster Sword cut down an enemy, be it in gameplay or in cutscenes.
I would argue thusly that my request to have Biggs and Jessie actually be stained red with their own blood is not a contradiction, but an insistence that the rule of the exceptions could have been applied here in Ch12 for extra impact.
Immersion is a complicated matter. All the many wonderful scenes with Biggs and Jessie, both in script and in the animations, made me emotionally invested and they felt so real and fleshed out. But when a game sells you on how "real" it feels, your brain may start to scan all the more for examples of uncanny valleys. On one hand I may just have been too tired to absorb their deaths, but both during- and after the experience my brain keeps telling me that the lack of blood was the primary immersion-breaker.
This game has pace problems at times - you're supposed to feel a sense of urgency, and still they take time for a lot of stuff that shouldn't be there, imo. When I got to Jessie's death I was just kinda bored and that scene didn't do anything for me.
I think having a few survivors and having the plate break into pieces instead is plenty reasonable in addition to being more realistic, but I also feel that more people that the party knew should have died, especially offscreen, because it's more relatable and painful that way. IRL we don't often get to say goodbye when people die like that. I do kinda wish that they made it more quintessentially FFVII - 
