SPOILERS FFVII:R Chapter 3 Spoiler Discussion

[Lex]

I enjoyed laughing at Johnny's dad having his fingers in a few pies.

Chapter 3 was pretty huge compared to the first two wasn't it? A lot of exploration etc. I think I spent 5 hours ish in sector 7 just soaking it in. We're here folks! We're standing in the sector 7 slums! I loved everything about it. Walking around with Tifa, extorting money from people for their water filters! I LOVE MARLE!!!!

I liked the quests too, I didn't think they were too "filler" or whatever. I want to know if it's possible to do all the battle intel things you get from Chadley before you leave the slums? I think it might be but I have a lot of trouble staggering some of the enemies that go down too quick for example.

Spoiler: Streaming and remote play woes

Re: my streaming to the Discord, I've been capturing the game using remote play to PC (I play using my actual PS4 and the screen, I'm just using the remote play window to capture the video to both stream to discord and record my playthrough). This was poor quality because the PS4 was connected to my router, but I found a hack-ey way to make it perfect - use my PC as a hotspot, so the PS4 is using internet through my PC, which is connected via ethernet. Since they're right next to each other and PC is not using its WiFi for anything else (because it's wired), it's perfect and pretty lag free.

If that sounds like hassle, wait til you hear about the fucking controller :/. When you use remote play, you do so by logging in to a PSN account on a PC or device which then finds a PS4. This means you use the PC (or a dualshock 4 or other controller connected to the PC) to control through remote play. Which introduces lag, depending on your connection. While this is happening, you CANNOT connect a controller to the actual PS4. You also can't connect your controller wirelessly to the PC unless you have Sony's official wireless thing, even though I use my DS4 wirelessly on PC flawlessly through steam. If you press the PS button to turn on a controller and connect it to the PS4, it'll ask you which account. If you choose the account connected via remote play, it will disconnect remote play lmao.

Anyway, to get around this I used my North American PSN to sign in to remote play, and my main EU account to actually play (that's where I want the trophies etc to go anyway). Meaning I can have a controller on my EU account playing lag free on my actual PS4 while the NA account is just streaming the game via remote play.

The good news is that after all that, there is at least a way for me to 1. Play the game in 4k on my screen with zero lag and 2. provide a decent quality stream to folks who want to watch on Discord.

Randomly remembered something: That sound effect for the pinball machine elevator seems to be the same as the original, which is a nice touch.

I didn't notice this but I just went back and watched my recording and you're right!!

 

[Lex]

Oh oh oh oh

and that whole sequence with Tifa mixing drinks? The entire scene from both before that and after, I thought was fucking perfect. I'm saying this because that's what I just re-watched to hear the pinball machine elevator sound effect haha. P E R F E C T I O N

 

[Claymore]

Was truly incredible seeing the Sector 7 slums brought fully to life! This was the perfect moment for some down time and I'm so glad that they jumped on this opportunity. Being able to leisurely traverse the entire area and engage with people ... it's only ever going to make things hurt even more later on.

I know that some people were concerned about the side-quests when the official screenshot first surfaced, but I really enjoyed them and the chance to connect with more of the slum dwellers. The only really ridiculous one I personally felt was the cat finding quest, but hey, this is FF. And yeah, that was a nice reference to the secret experiments below Midgar!

The atmosphere was on point and Seventh Heaven was perfect. Loved finding tracks for the Jukebox and playing Darts. And Cloud's apartment makes so much sense. Loved all the story touches with Tifa's reluctance and Barret's protectiveness of Marlene.

And boy. Melding Tifa's unique aspects into the combat system is just all kinds of amazing. She is quick, agile and really rocks. Honestly amazed at all the care they have done with combat.

Loving this so much. Really don't want this to go too quickly.

 

[Shademp]

The darts minigame is unreasonably fun. Even though there are no more challenges to complete I just want to continue playing.

 

[mudobubble]

Just got my game today and have played through most of chapter 3 (right at the end of it now I reckon), and I was wondering if anyone else got a scene with Tifa in her room where she invites Cloud out for a night on the town? I got it after the scene with Johnny, she said we should go rest and we had to change the air filters in the rooms. You then go to Tifa's room and she invites you out after some small talk about Cloud's past. She even asks what she should wear and gives you dialogue options as to what you can say. I haven't gone further than this yet as I'm trying to go for Aerith in my first run of the game and I'm wondering whether to take a chance or skip to the end of the chapter (think I'll sleep on it). I saw no one else mentioned it here and was curious what people thought if they saw it too. Also I really need to try out the darts, I looked around 7th Heaven but somehow missed them!

 

[Lex]

The darts minigame is unreasonably fun. Even though there are no more challenges to complete I just want to continue playing.

Oooo neat, I tend to go for 5x triple 20's and then a 1! This is a good way to do it too.

Just got my game today and have played through most of chapter 3 (right at the end of it now I reckon), and I was wondering if anyone else got a scene with Tifa in her room where she invites Cloud out for a night on the town? I got it after the scene with Johnny, she said we should go rest and we had to change the air filters in the rooms. You then go to Tifa's room and she invites you out after some small talk about Cloud's past. She even asks what she should wear and gives you dialogue options as to what you can say. I haven't gone further than this yet as I'm trying to go for Aerith in my first run of the game and I'm wondering whether to take a chance or skip to the end of the chapter (think I'll sleep on it). I saw no one else mentioned it here and was curious what people thought if they saw it too. Also I really need to try out the darts, I looked around 7th Heaven but somehow missed them!

They're to the left of the front door, next to the pinball machine.

Re: that Tifa scene, yes I got that too. Most people will have, it's a main quest objective (though I think it's skippable). I wouldn't worry much about your choices there, I don't think it would lock you out of stuff with Aerith or anything.

 

[Theozilla]

It’s apparently a bonus scene if you do enough chapter 3 sidequests, the main thing it affects is what type of outfit Tifa is wearing during the Wall Market sequence of the game.

 

[mudobubble]

They're to the left of the front door, next to the pinball machine.

Damn! How the hell did I miss them?

Re: that Tifa scene, yes I got that too. Most people will have, it's a main quest objective (though I think it's skippable). I wouldn't worry much about your choices there, I don't think it would lock you out of stuff with Aerith or anything.

It’s apparently a bonus scene if you do enough chapter 3 sidequests, the main thing it affects is what type of outfit Tifa is wearing during the Wall Market sequence of the game.

Thanks for letting me know! I found the dating mechanics hard to fully grasp I n my first playthrough of the original so I guess I'm wary for this game too, especially as it seems more intuitive. I might just go for it then

 

[Shademp]

Multiple essays could be written about the excellent work done on making the sector 7 slums feel like a complete, coherent community. The fact that monster/fiend areas are also spatially connected to the slums, rather than being separated with loading zones and warps, adds to the feeling of scale and connectedness. The class struggle between slum dwellers and "platies" is excellently explored if you listen to all the NPCs, all of whom have their perspectives on the class division. The same goes for all the reactions we see to the reactor bombing: So many perspectives and so much nuance!

Spoiler: Screams in the year 2020

THERE'S NO GODDAMN ESCAPE!!!

The word "organic" keeps popping up in my head to describe the expansion of both the plot and the world building. It's like the original FFVII was a seed planted in the ground, allowed to grow naturally and the result became FFVIIR. Not all branches grow equal and there are a few tacked on accessories, but few trees would ever grow as well and beautiful.

Among the parts that feel tacked on would be, as has been mentioned, the weapon growth system and the sidequest to look for cats. Indeed, when Biggs introduced the weapon growth system and you were brought to this psychedelic FFXIII/FFX-like grid I kept imagining that Biggs and Cloud had just taken shrooms and that this was the "method" for upgrading weapons. It tries to weave in some lore by establishing that weapons have a "materia core" that can be upgraded and I'm not sure how I feel about this addition. I appreciate the effort to try and make weapon upgrades "make sense" lorewise but I wonder if we'd been better off without it.

This nitpicking is mostly to emphasize how difficult it is to make expansions to gameplay, plot AND worldbuilding feel organic. I definitely prefer FFVIIR *with* the weapon growth system than without it but that doesn't change its initial impression of being artificially tacked on, at least as far as "the aesthetics of lore" goes.

In contrast, the gameplay element of sidequests feels more organic because of how it weaves in together with the neighbourhood watch (and by extension the societal issues, since the neighbourhood watch exists because Shinra doesn't provide enough protection), Avalanche and Cloud's mercenary status. The amount of available sidequests feel well-balanced. I was afraid Square would go the Crisis Core route of dozens and dozens of sidequests/missions being available at any given time, potentially halting the plot by countless hours. Thankfully FFVIIR doesn't do that.

I'd say, so far, the main sin of the sidequests is not how silly the "cat-fetch-quest" was, but how inhuman Chadley comes off as. He's one of the anime scientist/academic stereotypes but his style is so robotic to the point that it feels like he popped in from another universe simply because we needed an NPC to act as that role. In comparison, the item shop NPC or the weapon shop NPCs feel like they actually belong in this world. Chadley, I appreciate your service but in my mind's eye you don't actually exist inside FFVIIR.

 

[Shademp]

- Not pertaining to Ch3 specifically, but it was here I noticed that the "total time played" clock stops counting if you are inactive in the menu for three minutes. The numbers grey out and the counter stops. Love quality-of-life details like these. That way if I leave the game on the menu for extended periods of time I will not run the risk of my "total time played" being a misleading value.

- I felt a great disturbance across the interwebz, as if millions of Clephiroth shippers suddenly cried out in orgasmic pleasure and then turned silent in awe.

- Neat to see that the 7th heaven logo first seen in Compilation material now has its place here in the remake.

- Where is the "oyasumi" jingle? WHERE IS IT?! 0/10, worst game.

- The resting spots with the save point art are a nice touch. 10/10, best game.

- "Hip Hop de Chocobo" make my ears bleed.

- The audacity to have Johnny's mother and father look so similar to how they did in OG is wonderful. Their colorful attires look out of place in these slums but I'm glad the developers decided to keep them so close to their original appearance.

- The choice of music for when the Don's lackeys approached Cloud at the end was just perfect.


- Much of fiction, perhaps especially so in gaming, contain the dissonance that our player characters are technically killers who leave behind a frightening blood trail. The level to which this enters the mind may differ depending on the level of graphical- and dramatic realism portrayed in the title at hand. Like I mentioned over at Discord, FFVIIR would be quite different if it portrayed realistically the effects of being struck by Cloud's Buster Sword. Imagine limbs and heads flying everywhere, blood and guts aplenty. The situation is not much better if you imagine Cloud only using the blunt edge of the sword, since the result would be bones and muscle so shattered that only some skin may still connect an arm to a shoulder. It'd be brutal to the extreme.

Of course, those are not the rules/style of storytelling that FFVII (or Final Fantasy in general) abide by, nor should the game be asked to. What *is* within precedence of FFVII's style is our main characters mourning collateral damage, exhibiting a conscience and admitting that they've done terrible things, that their hands are stained. Therefore it was so exciting to see the scenario where Cloud almost killed Johnny. The scene says so many things. Our main characters do unpleasant things and they are in an unpleasant situation. It makes perfect sense to permanently silence the talkers so that your friends (or your organization, if you are so aligned) may remain untraced by government authority. It's just fortunate that Tifa was there to hold Cloud back from doing the cold-blooded thing. We may enjoy the world of FFVII but most of us would not want to hang around a group like Avalanche, no matter how good their environmentalist intentions were.

I am quite proud of the writers/developers for including this dark scene between Cloud and Tifa. It's a good sign that the game isn't shying away from grittier themes.


- When it was revealed that Cloud wouldn't be allowed on the next bombing misison and that he wasn't welcome to the Avalanche party...I felt such rejection and unwelcome-ness. Normally, I do not roleplay myself as the player character and thus I do not feel emotions as though I were in their shoes. Granted, it is not clear if Cloud feels rejected, but as the story diverged from the OG in this harsh direction I felt profound shame, defeat and embarrassment.
With Cloud's back against Avalanche, I listened in on all their partying dialogue. Had Cloud remain perfectly still on the chair as though he was trying to evade a Jurassic Park T-Rex. "If I don't move, they won't see that I'm still here in this party where I'm not welcome." Was scared shitless that Barret would yell at Cloud/the-player to get out. Once all the background dialogue was over, I quickly marched Cloud out the front door even though the Interact command was available to speak to the Avalanche members. This is THE ONLY SPOT where I have not triggered available dialogue with the Interact button. All because I was so emotionally vulnerable that I didn't want to hear another saddened or rejecting word from Avalanche.

Apart from the game just being good at pulling your heart strings I also think that it felt like a really rough "Game Over" screen. After all, you played the original countless times and every time Cloud was accepted for the next bombing mission. Yet here he wasn't, so...CLEARLY it was all on me.

 

[Tetsujin]

- Not pertaining to Ch3 specifically, but it was here I noticed that the "total time played" clock stops counting if you are inactive in the menu for three minutes.

That is actually very cool.

 

[Cloud_S]

- "Hip Hop de Chocobo" make my ears bleed.

Ditto. I really... really... REALLY don't know what they were thinking with that one.

 

[Wol]

Ditto. I really... really... REALLY don't know what they were thinking with that one.

Its up there with XIII-2s Crazy
Chocobo song.

I love it

 

[Makoeyes987]

That Chocobo theme is on fire. Don't know whatcha y'all are talkin' about

...But are we just gonna ignore that the Wrath Hound is a damn Deepground reject that escaped to the surface?

Wymer goin' "Rumors of a secret Shinra research facility hidden beneath our feet." Yeah, just rumors.

Crazy huh???

 

[Odysseus]

Hooooooly shit its these guys!

 

[Odysseus]

I think I hate Chadley. Don't ask why, I just do. Also, was that a Dirge reference after the Dog sidequest? Nice.

 

[Odysseus]

King of darts. I think this is the most proud of himself I've ever seen Cloud.

 

[ForceStealer]

Damn the Sephiroth hallucinations are pretty terrifying.
And that glimpse of the clones in the Whirlwind Maze was incredible.

And my goodness, the scenery in the slums is beautiful. I can't stop looking at the central pillar and the underside of the plates. Like Tets said, this really solidifies Midgar as the coolest locale in gaming.

 

[Keveh Kins]

I absolutely love how alive the slums feel. I've just been walking around listening to conversations. A cat whisperer! The best!

 

[ForceStealer]

Ahead on our Way!

 

[Keveh Kins]

The music that plays during some side quest missions sounds real familiar but I can't place it

 

[Saven]

The main theme that plays in Sector 7 Slums - Day is truly remarkable. I think it's setting in now that this game is becoming something bigger than I could've imagined.

 

[Glaurung]

Also, Cloud's neighbor is a frickin Sephiroth copy. O.o
When he touched Cloud it seemed like there was a flash-forward? It very much looked like the Copies wandering through the Northern Crater. How the eff are we flashing forward

The clones were gathering in Northern Crater by the time the main story kicks in. Since they all share a hive mind thanks to Jenova, Cloud was able to see what they were doing at that moment.

It's a very, very cool touch. Even the black rags they were supposed to wear have embroidery. WHY EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME HAS TO BE SO PRETTY?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

More importantly, who's the tailor Sephiroth is paying to get these finely emboridered matching rag cloaks to his flunkies?

 

[Glaurung]

More importantly, who's the tailor Sephiroth is paying to get these finely emboridered matching rag cloaks to his flunkies?

Maybe the same one he got to sew his black leather coat with feather-themed embroidery.

Now seriously, they seem to have taken every element and pushed it to the next level, in terms of visuals.