Note to self: Don't shut down the PS4 before gameplay has stopped recording. Lost my recording mid-Air-Buster battle and onwards to Ch8 because of this.
- Remixing the battle music into a slow, creepy, uneasy tune (for when you are not in battle) in mako reactor #5 was a neat choice.
- Tried to equip a Fire materia to Tifa, then the game told me that Cloud had it equipped. "Alright, that's cool, he can use Fire in the next battle instead of Tifa" I thought to myself, only to enter the next battle and find the Fire magic missing.
And that's how I learned that the Fire materia was equipped to the Iron Blade, not to the Buster Sword which Cloud was currently using. That's so counter-intuitive when you are used to the original FFVII. Now I gotta keep track of not leaving behind materia in currently non-equipped weapons. On the plus-side though, this will be good for when you have lots of materia to spare. Since Tifa's Sonic Knuckles (or whatever they were called) could be upgraded to have increased elemental damage output (for particular elements), it'd make sense to have Elemental materia combos setup AND convenient to not have to switch materia every time you switch to the Sonic Knuckles.
- Was reminded in this chapter that the slums are euphemistically referred to as the "undercities" on occasion. Just one of many examples where FFVIIR expands the world that we've become so familiar with.
- If you've listened in on all the NPC dialogue in sector 7 (in FFVIIR, that is), you know that plenty of people are aware that sucking up mako is bad for the planet. The daycare teacher telling the children about the lifestream also shows that this part of planetology is fairly common knowledge. In the original game I got the impression that more people didn't know or really didn't want to know. An NPC in Gongaga even says the following if you visit there on disc 2:
“Life Stream?
Never heard of it.”
“The Planet's structure?
…Who cares about that?”
“Why don't you go ask
Bugenhagen of Cosmo Canyon
hard questions like that?”
You will also know in FFVIIR that plenty of NPCs would prefer continuing to use mako, despite the consequences, because of how much easier it makes their lives. So President Shinra's lines about the people willingly turning a blind eye resonates really well with the rest of the game's script. The game just keeps reminding me how consistent its writing is.
- On the same topic of consistency, people throughout chapters 2-4 just keep on talking about the Wutai war, some wondering if war could break out again. I hope all this talk of tensions (not to mention the deal Avalanche has made with Wutai, as mentioned by Biggs in Chapter 4) will have consequences all the way into later installments of the Remake series, even after Rufus Shinra comes into power. I'm expecting this will make a visit to Wutai in part 2 being either mandatory or postponed to part 3, depending on the butterfly effect these changes/additions to the FFVII script will have.
If I were to speculate, I'd say the other Avalanche cells WANT a war between Wutai and Shinra, ironically enough. Since Wutai didn't want a mako reactor built on their soil, you could assume that Wutai are against mako reactors in general. But they would not mind profiteering on the spoils already created with mako reactors, like materia. Indeed, acquiring huge amounts of materia may be the only way for Wutai to reasonably win a war against Shinra and doing so AWAY from their homeland, to boot. Ergo why Avalanche allegedly promised Wutai "all the materia in Midgar". And if Wutai wins that war, mako reactors may be dismantled and Avalanche will get what they want.
There are multiple ways this could affect how Yuffie is written into Remake Part 2 as well. Once again, I'm enjoying all this setup and I hope it won't all just be forgotten in the next game.
Finally, on this tangent, I hope that we'll meet the high leaders of Avalanche in part 2 and that they will turn out to be Elfe and Veld.