SPOILERS FFVII:R Chapter 4 Spoiler Discussion

[Kratos]

I loved this chapter, obviously. I'm working through these threads in reverse here, kind of, so a lot of my takeaways echo what I said in the Chapter 5 thread: the character moments are executed nearly-perfectly, and a lot of that has to do with the delivery of the English voice cast. The parachute scene is one of my favourite individual scenes in the game, just because it all felt so earned.

I didn't even mind the Whisper bit. I knew in advance it was going to happen and what the result of it would be, and just based on the idea behind it, I wasn't really expecting it to feel anything other than contrived (especially after the whole rest of the chapter; surely they could have used all that to justify an increased trust in Cloud and thus his inclusion in the mission?). To be honest, though, I thought it worked fine to build the mystery around the Whispers, and it didn't at all deflate my high from the previous bits of the chapter.

And yes, like Roche. He's so perfectly FFVII. I can picture a little lego figure of him appearing in the original and all.

I do think it was a bit funny that the Avalanche crew rocked up to Jessie's place in full work clothes, including literal packs of ammo in Biggs' harness. And did anybody catch why Tifa decided to go along on the mission? Seemed a little odd, considering the drama established at the end of the previous chapter.

 

[Theozilla]

Presumably Tifa had still agreed to go along with the mission herself despite her reservations, hence her “trapped” feelings.

Also I guess the trio being decked out can be justified both by the Biggs and Wedge being part of the Watch and it’s known existence, which likely is why Barret can go on trains with relatively little scrutiny. As for Jessie it could be justified by that traveling between continents isn’t an easy task, so protection is standard?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I know they gave a bogus reason for why Jessie couldn't do it herself, but I found it totally unconvincing. This woman blows up reactors with bombs and gave up her acting career to fight Shinra after what they did to her Dad. And yet she can't "bring herself" to go in and see him? I don't believe it. Jessie does what Jessie wants. The way they characterised her, she could very easily have simply told her mum she wanted time alone with Dad. Even if she'd helped herself to the keycard in front of her mum's eyes, Mrs Rasberry probably wouldn't have made any trouble. Edited to add: because, as Kratos pointed out, mum doesn't blink an eye when Jessie and her pals rock up chez Rasberry dressed like terrorists and armed to the teeth.

It just really bugs me when they don't take the time to set these mini-quests up properly. Jessie's dad could have been in an ICU in a Shinra hospital being studied by sinister Shinra medics, thus necesitating Cloud's particular set of elite skills. That would have been a better set up.

 

[Keveh Kins]

Completely unrelated to the ongoing conversation, but I love that they kept the conversation between the two guards about going to see Loveless <3

 

[Fangu]

Spoiler: Incoming complaining and trash talk. If you liked this chapter, don't read this.

This is the chapter when I started to feel like things were going a bit off rails. Aside from the Promise flashback, this chapter could have been skipped altogether and the story wouldn't have suffered. It's padding, purely there as fanservice plus to flesh out the trio. IMO this should have been a DLC, I don't know (yes I do, it's about to be 'LSD' my friends) why they decided to shoehorn an entire chapter with just one of the main cast in there.

Roche is poor man's Goro Majima and feels out of place in VII. Not in the compilation, but for VII. He didn't have time to annoy me because to me he was just boring. Please don't show up again.

Jessie needs to calm down. I'd be afraid of her if I was Cloud without the Mako and the sword. Think kidnapping Misery style. She scares the shit out of me and she's getting all the bad answers. Get off me.

The good thing about this chapter was Wedge. And his cats. That gave me something. (And of course Promise scene.) The parachute scene was also kinda neat.

 

[Rydeen]

I know they gave a bogus reason for why Jessie couldn't do it herself, but I found it totally unconvincing. This woman blows up reactors with bombs and gave up her acting career to fight Shinra after what they did to her Dad. And yet she can't "bring herself" to go in and see him? I don't believe it. Jessie does what Jessie wants. The way they characterised her, she could very easily have simply told her mum she wanted time alone with Dad. Even if she'd helped herself to the keycard in front of her mum's eyes, Mrs Rasberry probably wouldn't have made any trouble. Edited to add: because, as Kratos pointed out, mum doesn't blink an eye when Jessie and her pals rock up chez Rasberry dressed like terrorists and armed to the teeth.

It just really bugs me when they don't take the time to set these mini-quests up properly. Jessie's dad could have been in an ICU in a Shinra hospital being studied by sinister Shinra medics, thus necesitating Cloud's particular set of elite skills. That would have been a better set up.

I'm getting the vibe that a part of her rebellion (in line with the OG's theme of characters having some selfish reasons behind their actions) is her trying to run away from her emotions through thrill seeking behavior. If this is the case, it would make sense for her to not be able to see her dad. She also seems pretty secretive and rebuffs with humor/chatter.

 

[Shademp]

One opportunity I took with the training grounds: Letting the Sentry Rays damage Cloud until he could use his limit break on them. Usually battles with Sentry Rays don't last long enough for you to use a limit break on them and thus add that enemy intel "achievement" to the list. With no other party members to end the battle for you and with the Sentry Rays being right on ground-level instead of high up on a platform, this is one of the best places to use a limit break on a Sentry Ray.

 

[Odysseus]

Spoiler: Incoming complaining and trash talk. If you liked this chapter, don't read this.

This is the chapter when I started to feel like things were going a bit off rails. Aside from the Promise flashback, this chapter could have been skipped altogether and the story wouldn't have suffered. It's padding, purely there as fanservice plus to flesh out the trio. IMO this should have been a DLC, I don't know (yes I do, it's about to be 'LSD' my friends) why they decided to shoehorn an entire chapter with just one of the main cast in there.

Roche is poor man's Goro Majima and feels out of place in VII. Not in the compilation, but for VII. He didn't have time to annoy me because to me he was just boring. Please don't show up again.

Jessie needs to calm down. I'd be afraid of her if I was Cloud without the Mako and the sword. Think kidnapping Misery style. She scares the shit out of me and she's getting all the bad answers. Get off me.

The good thing about this chapter was Wedge. And his cats. That gave me something. (And of course Promise scene.) The parachute scene was also kinda neat.

But hearing out the opposition is how you hold healthy conversations! The actual events of this chapter do little to move the story forward, admittedly, but I think you're overlooking all of the development Cloud makes as a character. In the original, it's Aerith that first breaks through Cloud's icy exterior, but in the remake its definitely Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie who do the job. Even Tifa notices how different he is afterwards.

As for whether Jessie came on too strong, well, that's up to personal digression I think. I am obviously biased in this regard.

 

[Fangu]

Yeah but imo that's kind of the 'Vaan argument': Vaan does stuff in XII and he does help drive the story forward, but people still feel like he's the third wheel that could have been left out because there was already other characters there to do the same job (which it was in both cases; with XII, Vaan was a character created late in the process because SE didn't want to take a chance on 'older' Basch as the lead, and in VII OG there was already Aerith.) I guess one could argument it either way, which people also do for XII. (For me, I don't mind Vaan, he's just there, but I can't unsee how much he didn't have to be.)

 

[Philco]

Oh good I was starting to think I was the only one who wasn't so keen on this chapter. There was some fun stuff, but everything got super weird and different.

I don't like Jessie's new back story. It feels forced, like they had to get a mention of the gold saucer in there somehow. They had to introduce the concept of mako poisoning somehow.
And her forcing herself on to Cloud when he's clearly not reciprocating at all genuinely made me uncomfortable.

The promise scene showing up when it did really bugged me as well. Really? We're doing this now?? Because of a wind turbine???

I did get to bump into my new favourite npc though - On your way back out of sector 7 there's an old lady with a broom who's totally ready to kick some butt. She's great.

 

[Kai Schulen]

uuhhghghhh I forgot I wanted to live-post my reactions to the Remake as I was going through them but I completely forgot.

But I spent an embarrassingly long time in chapter 4 -- first because of the motorcyle minigame (and not because I was aware that it was a minigame, it was because I was having too much fun with it and learning how to counter Roche's attacks) and because this was the chapter that I finally kinda sorta got the hang of how to switch from operator mode to punisher mode on the fly. Nothing quite like having a long gauntlet of battles that you're slightly underleveled for to throw yourself into to learn how to fight, right?

Also, Roche. This walking, talking hair disaster chuunibyou punkass bitch. What a delight, I love him.

Also, also, shipping Biggs/Wedge/Jessie OT3

Also, also, also: Wedge is best boy, look at all the kitties he takes care of.

 

[jeronimus]

I did get to bump into my new favourite npc though - On your way back out of sector 7 there's an old lady with a broom who's totally ready to kick some butt. She's great.

I loved her. Visually it was great from afar, but then getting close and hearing her say she was a veteran in the war, with the Shinra grunt not knowing what to say except "uhhh, thank you for your service", that got me.

But yeah, I love a lot of the ideas in this chapter, but I think this is one that would've benefited from a bit more testing or rewriting. I honestly think the summon materia should've maybe been the reward at the end of the mission, because the trigger to use it was so awkward, and using it during the boss fight in the next chapter when there was ACTUALLY time to make it to Ifrit's Hellfire attack felt way better. I think the Promise should've definitely been moved a little earlier or to a different scene - something with a mention of Tifa, or a mention of "being a hero" at the very least.

It just really bugs me when they don't take the time to set these mini-quests up properly. Jessie's dad could have been in an ICU in a Shinra hospital being studied by sinister Shinra medics, thus necesitating Cloud's particular set of elite skills. That would have been a better set up.

This is a really interesting idea. Even though I do like how they did it here, that would've been an interesting way of showing more about Shinra than just the military side of things. That said, it wouldn't have been quite as light-hearted, and the surprise of finding a comatose father wouldn't have been there.

One more thing is I did like Jessie's flashback voice-over telling us the plan they'd agreed on beforehand. I just wish there was bit more of an involved plan. But so be it.

 

[Maidenofwar]

Alright I've now seen two of the Jessie scenes, the one where you fail and the one where you barely pass. I think setting it to easy did help so thanks as well as the tips JaIrus gave. I just have to stop taking heavy damage from Rosch

Update - Biker Boy trophy achieved! Jessie

Spoiler

kiss

get! I did it! Thank you so much everyone for inspiring me to keep going at this!

 

[Mayo Master]

Shower thoughts:

After serving a pizza, Jessie's Mom should have given them a pie for dessert.
... that would have been a Rasberry pie

 

[oty]

Shinra doesnt care about their workers, right? The Aerith novel that Nojima wrote is pretty much "shinra gives no shits" and Biggs even said that he collapsed from overwork, thats how he got mako poisoning.

I think this chapter divides people due to different viewpoints. To me, it was absolutely amazing, even with some flaws (notoriously, the flashback scene that doesnt make sense and imo, the guards being taken out at the beggining and the Avalanche higher ups showing outta nowhere). It doesnt necessarily needs to move the story forward. It's fun, it develops Cloud and the trio, and most importantly, we dont another Luna scenario, right? If we have to feel bad for whatever happens, we need to have emotional attachment. This is how emotional attachment is made.

 

[Jairus]

And then the story just rips you away from them after all that. I'd have loved to see a lot more of those four together, and I honestly believe that if they'd been able to have more time together, Jessie would've eventually won Cloud over. If she was able to soften his hard edges in just one night, just think of what she could have done over the course of days or weeks. The possibility is clearly there, if you want to see it. But if you don't, that's fine. It's been left open enough that it could go either way.

 

[Shademp]

I completely forget... Who was it that took out those guards at the gate to the warehouse? If it had been Roche, then why wouldn't he have been waiting inside the warehouse? It definitely wasn't Jessie who took out the guards. Drawing a blank here.

I've accepted Avalanche appearing out of nowhere later because of the cool factor but the more I think about it the less elegance it has.

 

[ForceStealer]

I thought it was the other Avalanche cell that did it

 

[Shademp]

I wonder if this- or later games will ever explain why Avalanche HQ was there in the first place. It's such a huge coincidence and nobody in the trio seems to have known about it. I've ignored this up until now because of the cool factor with Avalanche HQ showing up to save the day, but now I feel my vision of this chapter crumbling

 

[Odysseus]

I wonder if this- or later games will ever explain why Avalanche HQ was there in the first place. It's such a huge coincidence and nobody in the trio seems to have known about it. I've ignored this up until now because of the cool factor with Avalanche HQ showing up to save the day, but now I feel my vision of this chapter crumbling

I'm almost certain their appearance here was set up for something in the future. That's way too big of a plot point to just drop.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'm almost certain their appearance here was set up for something in the future. That's way too big of a plot point to just drop.

I don't know, plates are bigger.

 

[ForceStealer]

Stories, especially FF stories, have coincidences all the time.
But still there's a good chance it comes up again

 

[Shademp]

I'm almost certain their appearance here was set up for something in the future. That's way too big of a plot point to just drop.

I don't know, plates are bigger.

You absolutely WRECKED IT with that joke

 

[Strangelove]

at 0:38, am i hearing it right? "ow, my beautiful butt"?

 

[LNK]

I know they gave a bogus reason for why Jessie couldn't do it herself, but I found it totally unconvincing. This woman blows up reactors with bombs and gave up her acting career to fight Shinra after what they did to her Dad. And yet she can't "bring herself" to go in and see him? I don't believe it. Jessie does what Jessie wants. The way they characterised her, she could very easily have simply told her mum she wanted time alone with Dad. Even if she'd helped herself to the keycard in front of her mum's eyes, Mrs Rasberry probably wouldn't have made any trouble. Edited to add: because, as Kratos pointed out, mum doesn't blink an eye when Jessie and her pals rock up chez Rasberry dressed like terrorists and armed to the teeth.

It just really bugs me when they don't take the time to set these mini-quests up properly. Jessie's dad could have been in an ICU in a Shinra hospital being studied by sinister Shinra medics, thus necesitating Cloud's particular set of elite skills. That would have been a better set up.

I see where you're coming from, but I can believe that Jessie couldn't bring herself to do it. I actually went through something like that with my Grandma when she was sick. I couldn't handle visiting her while she was in the ICU before dying.