SPOILERS FFVII:R Chapter 18 Spoiler Discussion

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Everything after Motorball was a doddle. Seems right, somehow.
Having played through to the ending at last, I thought it was a lot of fun.
I have completely come round to this Remake AU and am looking forward to whatever they do with it.
Absolutely LOATHE the end song. What a dreary and uninspired piece of music.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Everything after Motorball was a doddle. Seems right, somehow.
Having played through to the ending at last, I thought it was a lot of fun.
I have completely come round to this Remake AU and am looking forward to whatever they do with it.
Absolutely LOATHE the end song. What a dreary and uninspired piece of music.

Could have written this post myself (except I've not beaten the game yet). Especially now with the Ultimania removing much of the question of what we're looking at in the ending, just leaving us with the why, I've really come to eagerly anticipate the AU direction.

Also, that song does totally suck.

 

[Odysseus]

You guys talking about Hollow? I thought it was okay but not especially memorable. Funny, considering composer god Uematsu himself created it.

 

[ForceStealer]

That was my assessment too, Odysseus. Fine, but unremarkable. Though everyone seemed to go bonkers for the instrumental version in Sector 5

Good as Uematsu is, I haven't really been crazy about any of his pop songs. And I actively dislike some like Eyes On Me

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Uematsu has been more miss than hit with me with his recent stuff. I did not care for "Choosing Hope" for FFXV either.

 

[Cannon_Fodder]

"Choosing Hope" more like "Choosing Nope" amirite

 

[Rydeen]

I'd like to play the game a second time around sometime. Maybe I'll actually get through the sidequests. And seeing some of the whisper scenes again has me like "yup, I get it now."

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I cannot remember now in which thread Mako explained to me his loop theory, so I'm posting this here, although it follows on from that discussion. These spoiler threads are proliferating like weeds. Anyway, I read this on tumblr (don't switch off)

Sephiroth, in the Lifestream: “You mean to tell me my whole life was pre-determined because you have some convoluted plan to rid yourself of Jenova and reconnect with humanity?”
Minerva: “uwu”
Sephiroth, one foot in a portal that can fuck with all of time and space: “To hell with that nonsense.”
Minerva: “D: !!”

Mako's theory (please correct me if I'm wrong, Mako) was that the activating of Holy caused the Planet to create a time loop in which it could review all the events leading up to the summoning, as a way of evaluating whether humanity should survive or perish. However, Sephiroth screws up this mechanism by entering it. His goal is to alter the outcome. His intrusion into the loop forces the Planet to generate the Whispers as a means of keeping things on their original track. Sephiroth lures Cloud and Co into defeating the Whispers, and now the train of destiny is off its rails: it could go anywhere. This theory is rather convoluted and requires a lot of further explaining as to why the Planet allowed Shinra and Sephiroth to exist in the first place.

Saanphoenix's solution is that it was the will of the Planet all along that Shinra and Sephiroth should exist, as a means of ultimately ridding itself of the source of all infection, Jenova. When Sephiroth figures this out, he feels used and exploited - the way he felt when he first discovered Shinra had made him as a human experiment. So he creates the time loop or whatever you want to call it, and the Planet sends the Whispers to stop him. Once again, the Whispers are defeated, the train of destiny goes off the rails, etc...

The question then is, if Sephiroth has the power to mess with time and space, why doesn't he use it over and over and over again until events finally turn out the way he wants? Sephiroth's powers do seem to be both limitless and inexplicable. But if he isn't the one who created this portal or loop, then who or what is?

Or are our characters trapped in this loop forever, condemned to replay the same events and die the same deaths over and over for all eternity? Gosh how meta.

 

[Arianna]

What does 'meta' mean?!

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

When a work of art includes its own self-commentary.

 

[Lord Noctis]

So, just a random thought I had, but I feel like the duel between Cloud and Sephiroth at The Edge Of Creation was a lot closer to what I thought combat between two first class fighters in the FFVII universe would look like based on how things are depicted in the og, as opposed to the battle we see in Advent Children and other compilation titles.

 

[Makoeyes987]

So, just a random thought I had, but I feel like the duel between Cloud and Sephiroth at The Edge Of Creation was a lot closer to what I thought combat between two first class fighters in the FFVII universe would look like based on how things are depicted in the og, as opposed to the battle we see in Advent Children and other compilation titles.

... So Sephiroth standing there, barely moving and making a clown out of someone?

That's really not a fair fight between two folks at all.

 

[Superespresso]

That was probably the most intense version of supernova I've seen. Pretty alright at the end there. Pour one out for the alt-timeline homie though.

 

[Lord Noctis]

... So Sephiroth standing there, barely moving and making a clown out of someone?

That's really not a fair fight between two folks at all.

I meant in the sense that while they are demonstrating superhuman strength and agility in this scene, they aren't leaping entire buildings or chopping them in half. Sephiroth is knocking Cloud back, but he isn't sending him flying hundreds of feet through the air like a human rocket. The emphasis is less on the over the top superhuman feats, and more on the choreagraphy.

Besides, as far as I'm concerned, aside from the duel at the end of FFVII, any one on one fight between Sephiroth and basically anyone else in the FFVII story should go about the same way, so it fits for me on that sense as well.

 

[Odysseus]

I've wondered if the original VII's lack of super jumping and building cutting was purely down to technical limitations or if Squaresoft just had more integrity than Square Enix does.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I've wondered if the original VII's lack of super jumping and building cutting was purely down to technical limitations or if Squaresoft just had more integrity than Square Enix does.

It clearly is. One only needs to look at the character's Limit Breaks and the attacks enemies used in battle, and you see where Advent Children drew inspiration from.

Each subsequent Final Fantasy turns up the fantasy action and magic up to match the graphics of the era. Squall literally shoots a colossal beam of energy into the stratosphere from his gunblade and brings it down with enough force to level a building. Zidane fires beams of continuous energy as a Super Saiyan 4 to make someone Swiss cheese. Balthier summons a tidal wave, Fran hurls ice bombs... It's baked into Final Fantasy.

 

[Odysseus]

I've argued with a few people about this. One in particular blamed the Matrix for "ruining everything." I always kinda figured the anime action was just limited by the times. VII's FMVs are painfully stiff at this point.

 

[Lord Noctis]

Limit breaks aren't the most reliable thing though for gauging strength. Iirc one of Tifa's has her run around the entire planet to punch a guy. Even at it's most over the top the compilation has never shown a character do something like that.

I feel like some degree of superhuman stuff is to be expected. Just look at how far Zack was sent flying in the OG. I also think something like Cloud vs Kadaj is fairly in line with the way things seemed in the OG, and so is what we see throughout most of the remake.

But more than that starts to seem silly sometimes from a narrative point of view. Like, if Cloud can cut a building in half, how come he and two other people can't move a piece of debris off of Cid? Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff, it's fun to watch. But it's not always narratively consistent.

I always figured something like the edge of creation duel was a good representation of what Cloud and Sephiroth can do with swords alone. As for how they fight all the bigger monsters and machines and such? Well, that's what things like magic and summons are for.

Again, I enjoy the over the top action, I just think this one cutscene more closely matches my original idea of what characters in FFVII could do.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Funnily enough this aspect of the game/of games generally has never bothered me. I just figured it's part of the spectacle of the genre.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Limit breaks aren't the most reliable thing though for gauging strength. Iirc one of Tifa's has her run around the entire planet to punch a guy. Even at it's most over the top the compilation has never shown a character do something like that.

You're confusing Zell's "Final Heaven" with Tifa's.

That's world running version is from VIII, which of course, turned up the fantasy even higher. Tifa's is one where she delivers just a high-powered explosive punch.

But more than that starts to seem silly sometimes from a narrative point of view. Like, if Cloud can cut a building in half, how come he and two other people can't move a piece of debris off of Cid? Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff, it's fun to watch. But it's not always narratively consistent.

This is the same problem that exists in every video game. Why can't Link chop down a wooden door in a dungeon instead of finding a small key? Why can't Leon reach shoot the lock off a door to escape the Tyrant? Why can't we hop over the fence instead of going around? Why can't we just fly to any location we want with our Pokemon instead of having to visit a location first?

It's a game in the end. That's simply what it is. And Limit Break strength and the power that gets squeezed out from being in a fight to the death is not something they can just call at will, at least at this stage. FFVII AC happens 2 years later. Even now, Cloud and the others aren't quite at that level.

 

[Odysseus]

The abstraction of the original's graphics and battle system made it easier to compartmentalize stuff like the limit breaks as "not counting" towards the character's true abilities, and the cartoonish style made it easier to accept Biggs being punched into the camera, or Zack being sent flying. Now that everything is realistic, and the characters can still use those abilities and perform those feats, the cognitive dissonance takes a step up. Why can Cloud leap high into the air to attack an enemy, but not to cross this gap or over this barrier? Why can he slice buildings in twain but is still blocked by a flimsy chain-link fence? The real answer is "shut up its a videogame don't think about it" but its still fun to think about anyway.

 

[Shademp]

It's laughable in Ch16 how Tifa falls at most about 8 metres and reacts with "I thought I was dead for sure", despite her having fallen from way greater heights in the original game, in the Compilation and in the Remake itself. XD

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I enjoy all that nonsense.

 

[Lord Noctis]

Well yeah, there's obviously gonna be a certain degree of inconsistency between what we can do as players and what the characters are portrayed as being capable of. For example, if Cloud could jump the way he does in cutscenes when we control him, we'd be able to easily skip huge chunks of the game by literally leaping over them, which might be fun for a bit but would not make for a good story.

But looking at the OG in a vacuum, you can look at various things that happen in the game. Like, we can say that Sephiroth's sword swing is strong enough to knock Zack out of the Jenova chamber, but he wasn't cutting those mako pods apart despite swinging in anger. That doesn't match well with a Sephiroth who can cut the Junon canon to shreds, or launch Cloud hundreds of feet through the air before slamming through the side of a building.

When you look at it through that lense, the foundation for the over the top nature of the Compilation, and modern FF as a whole is certainly present, but it's been exagerated over time. Like, in the OG, Zack seems to cut down a couple of guys off screen, run back to Cloud, then get caught off guard and killed by a few more guys. In Crisis Core that same scene features Zack facing down what, fifty troops? More? The foundation is there, but it's been exagerated.

One weird exception to this is oddly in the CC version of Zack vs Sephiroth. In the OG, Zack flies out of the Jenova chamber to the far side of the pod room. In CC he gets knocked to the top of the stairs and just kinda slides down them.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yes, you're right none of that over the top action was present in the OG. However, it wasn't present because the graphical limitations of that time prevented them from doing it. If they could, they would have. Each subsequent FF game past VII dialed that visual thematic action up further, and further. Nothing intrinsic to VII's story, lore or setting aside from the technological limitations of 97 kept it from going balls out like X, XI, XII or XIII.