SPOILERS FFVII Remake Frustration Expression Thread (*Open Spoilers*)

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Who, from what we've seen, hasn't said anything about
"all the threads of time and space."

Come on now.

That's what I'm referencing in terms of the new metaphysical and spiritual language for the Spirit Energy concept of "the Planet."
All of the information on the Whispers revealed through the game and it's Bestiary, is simply observational data entwined with what the story's understanding of what these creatures are.

Even, the terms "space and time" is a vaguery of the Bestiary info which could on one end, simply refer to the simplistic Time/Space magic concept of Final Fantasy, or encompass the entirety of space and time travel as exhibited in Sci-Fi.

But the consistency of all these Sense materia entries is the fact that info contained is limited to the perception, awareness and information of the party and Chadley's own data. It's not meta or narrative encompassing. It all simply comports with the perspective and knowledge of the characters.

That's why I find it extremely unlikely these things reference any sort of actual time travel. Unless there's some extremely well hidden plot thread or narrative point that focuses on the whispers being vessels of time travel for Sephiroth or whatever, it doesn't fit with the plot or what's known. It'd be like the bestiary sneaking in a huge, earthshattering plot revelation for the whole story in just a simple box of bestiary info, at this point.
 
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cold_spirit

he/him
AKA
Alex T
Uhhh, what's the spoiler policy for this thread? Because I feel like this discussion should be moved to the spoiler subforum. I enjoy reading this thread to see where people's opinions are at, but I think I saw someone post that
Hell House
is in the remake, which is crossing the line for me lol.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Agreed. I know stuff from the previews isn't on the same level as the leaks, but I'm a little miffed about how much I saw here. I know it says "spoilers" in the thread title but people had still been tagging them up to this point.
 

Elisa Maza

Whomst
Alright, another frustration I have, but I don't know if it fits here, because it's about the attitude of the developers... in the future.

This is the era of reboots/remakes/reimaginings, that's for sure. Some of those beloved properties, being TV series, comics, movies, games, etc have their own creators, older, but still active in the industry, coming back. OK, that's fine. And as someone in their 30s, I've seen this one particular line being repeated again and again and again, when fans do not like additions/changes made in the story of the reboot/remake/whatever else:

"iT wAs AlWaYs MeAnT tO bE tHiS wAy We JuSt DiD nOt HaVe ThE tEcHnOlOgY!!!!!!"

:prefacepalm:

I'd LOVE to be proven false, but as I've seen so many cases, this always happens. And it's a lazy way to deflect criticism. And to gaslight. I'm betting my money it'll be their parroted quote every time/if someone asks a question about retcons and stuff. Betting ALL my money, even the one I keep for my Master's. And it's SO annoying listening to creators doing that. The ATLA live-action series creators are already gearing this way, saying the exact "going deeper into the characters" stuff that FFVIIR creators have said.

Now, to make something clear: I'm not necessarily against these changes/tweaks/retcons/additions/whatever. Some of them I will definitely like, even prefer over the OG. As a consumer and an individual, however, there are two things that are true for me, as they are true for everybody else:

1. I have attached myself to particular characters and plotpoints that others may have not, because in story, every person gets to pick aspects they like and aspects they don't like and that's normal and fine,
2. I don't like being treated like an idiot, being gaslit and being lied to. Nobody does.

So, when I'm posting that Internal Facepalm to that imaginary (but widely repeated in other properties) quote, I express my frustration on the second truth.

Examples:

Oh, Aerith totally got the "One Date" line from Zack!

Oh, Deepground soldiers were always a thing!

FUCKING GENESIS IN NIBELHEIM.


I just wish Kitase and co. will have the decency to just say: "We came up with this stuff later because we thought it was cool and it helped the story we wanted to tell."

Yeah, I know, it's silly to be already salty about a thing that's just a possibility at this point, and again, I'd LOVE to be proven wrong, but experience so far has told me otherwise. I wish creators were more honest about this kind of thing, even if I know they won't;their orders and personal wishes to appear masters of their craft, even when the end product says otherwise is something I despise SO much. It's trying to guide people's feelings by gaslighting them to lose faith in how they feel about the end product and we already have advertisement, fake news, propaganda and the governments for that. :sadpanda: I'm just tired of it and I fear I'll see it again here.
 

LNK

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Nate
Don't know if we'll actually fight him, but the last trailer shows him turning (reverting?) into Jenova and you fight that. So depends if you want to count that (or whether it's the "final" boss).
Hopefully Jenova isn't the final boss. If it is, I would've rather them not show it in the trailer
 

MelodicEnigma

Pro Adventurer
@Elisa Maza I'm not sure about the other two examples, but wasn't Aerith getting the "One Date" line from Zack already explained in an interview? The attitude there didn't seem anything conducive of "lying" to the fans, but rather exactly as you say of something they thought of adding after the creation of the OG.
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
I think what Elisa Maza is trying to say is that when creators make a sequel/reboot of something often they’ll justify their retcons by saying it was their intended vision all along.

“Han Shot First” is the most famous example of this, with Lucas’s Star Wars Special Edition being the ur example of creators retconning and gaslighting at the same time, but the Final Fantasy VII Compilation is the insanity I’m more familiar with (remember when Last Order was canon? No? They “never intended it to be canon”? Is that so...)
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
With FFVII, the devs are certainly not lying when they say they were constrained by the technology of 1997 when it came to doing what they wanted with FFVII. That much is apparent from all the cut content of the OG and a lot material found in the concept art and other dev materials from the OG that never made it into the game.

Do I think they made stuff up for the Compilation as they went? Yep. That's the nature of serial media. It's just that the FFVII team isn't quite as concerned with story continuity as people would like them to be (even in the OG, this is the case) and as a result, they went with what looked and sounded cool (in their eyes) more than they went with what worked with the OG's version of events.

But part of what makes FFVIIR fun is that the dev team is paying way more attention to world-building and story continuity this time around. Probably even more attention then they paid it in the OG. They are trying to make things from the Compilation fit and feel more scaled to the world of the OG. And since my biggest problem with the new stuff the Compilation added was (a) sense of scale and (b) the presentation of it, I really want to see what the dev teams come up with. A lot of ideas in the Compilation have promise (at least on paper) and I could see them work pretty well as side/background content into the OG.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
With FFVII, the devs are certainly not lying when they say they were constrained by the technology of 1997 when it came to doing what they wanted with FFVII.

Have they actually said this yet, though? I think @Elisa Maza was just predicting that it will be said.

That much is apparent from all the cut content of the OG and a lot material found in the concept art and other dev materials from the OG that never made it into the game.

Was it cut content or just stuff they changed their minds about? I mean, FFVIII's Edea, Fujin, and Raijin were initially designed for FFVII, then saved for FFVIII for various reasons (e.g. they already had the Turks; did they really need Fujin and Raijin too?).

FFX has a lot of differences from early on as well. For example, Yuna was originally traveling around healing people suffering from a disease, ideas later retooled into Geostigma and the Starscourge (with Lunafreya's associated healing travels).
 

Elisa Maza

Whomst
^ Bingo.

In my experience, this happens as a response to a universal negative reaction from the audience (or at least from a large portion of it. Or, a very vocal one) on a specific changed plotpoint. With the Remake coming out soon and knowing the FFVII... the gaming fandom, I expect this whole dance to be played out during the whole summer. The COVID-19 situation won't make things any easier, people will be on edge on either side... hooray. :closedmonster: Every single time I make predictions about an outcome regarding entertainment and fandom, I'm always proven correct when it's negative stuff...

And yes, I expect the LTD to take stage as well. Whoe is us. Run for the hills.
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
Every single time I make predictions about an outcome regarding entertainment and fandom, I'm always proven correct when it's negative stuff...
This is kinda the nature of negative feedback though. People tend to complain about things they don't like rather then praise what they do like. That also feeds into the nature of the silent majority vs the vocal minority. The majority of people who do like something don't talk about it and most people who don't like something will vocalize that compliant. So it makes the things people don't like about something very obvious.

Combine that with how creators will never please everyone and it will always be easy to find people who have problems with a product. Even when the product is really, really good. And fandoms of created works are even worse about this then usual. You will always be proven correct when you predict someone will not like a certain aspect of a story.

It's gotten to the point that I don't care people in a fandom don't like what a creator does with their work (or how or why they inserted something new into it). Someone will always hate it. To say that the fandom not liking the changes the devs will make to the Remake is a sign those changes are bad doesn't really mean anything at this stage... especially when we won't see the full fruit of those changes for many years yet.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
But there are also ideas that are just inherently bad, like all that FFX-2.5 stuff. No matter how well a follow-up to that may be done, if it ever happens, it won't be able to justify the venture artistically.
 

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
I feel like 'is this a retcon' isn't a useful question- if it is, so what? That's not a bad thing? Creators sometimes are restricted in what they can do, sometimes they're not, but the fandom doesn't know which.

I think creators are quite likely to have plans for more works that don't get solidified unless they know for certain they will have a chance to
make a sequel or prequel, and this comes from a miscommunication where the fans interpret that as 'our ideas are fully formed' and the creators mean 'we know the gist, but will develop things more in the creative process, because that's how this works'.

If something isn't fully explored, and then later gets explored, that's not a retcon. If something is implied, but the implication turns out to be wrong or mean something else, that's not a retcon.

It's more than possible that that particular edit was made by the studio or one of the other editors, and George would have preferred something different.

'Gaslight' is a very strong term for 'retconned something in fiction I like'

Oh, Aerith totally got the "One Date" line from Zack!

Oh, Deepground soldiers were always a thing!

FUCKING GENESIS IN NIBELHEIM.

Did the devs actually say those things were planned all along somewhere?
 
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Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
I think the FFX audio drama plot issues are from the fact they're all completely atonal and bizarre. The story is dissonant to the point of feeling foreign to the setting. Couple that with a strangely unnecessary character death, subsequent revival, and then the ludicrous rewind of the progression of the whole original plot, and it just feels so weird and absurd in connection to X and X-2.

Like you gotta work hard to make a story that strange and absurd. And I don't think Kitase and Nojima were treating that Will story seriously in the first place. Since they readily admitted it was done to make a memorable and angst-ridden story with elements from the original X.

Considering the amount of effort, planning, and overall balance being made to re-craft FFVII, I don't see this being replicated. Nojima and Kitase wrote Will on the fly. Likewise, VII-R is crafted not just with their input, but other writers' influence on the team as well.

You cant retcon a new continuity anyway, I hope that people understand this isnt a 1:1 remake of the original.

It also promises to tell the main story bits so as long those are there...

This isn't a new continuity though. It's a new adaption. It still is supposed to adhere to the same overall continuity and tell the same gist of the story. So while there will be changes, it's not going to suddenly veer off into another narrative direction, either.

But I do agree that we should probably accept and understand changes will be inevitable. Looking for retcons in a Remake is like looking for needles in a sewing machine factory.
 

Cloud_S

Pro Adventurer
This isn't a frustration with the game, but with the fans. For months we had "release the demo now!!1!11!!11!" and that was finally stopped when they did indeed release the demo. Now TONS of comments on all their social media postings are "release the game now because of the COVID-19 quarantine!".
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I'll admit, I have been wondering how COVID-19 is going to effect sales. The post isn't shutting down, so my online order should be fine, but what if physical game stores shut down? I'm not about to beg Square to release it early, though.

EDIT: Looks like gamestop is being a bunch of scumbags and staying open despite everything. Probably shouldn't go there anyway though.
 
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Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
You cant retcon a new continuity anyway, I hope that people understand this isnt a 1:1 remake of the original.

^This, pretty much. The original isn't being overwritten (and how could it be, unless you literally pull a George Lucas and edit the original :monster: )
Even Word of God says as much: https://twinfinite.net/2020/03/final-fantasy-vii-remake-wont-overwrite-original/

And: "At the preview event Kitase explained to me that the remake is in a different universe, but 'all of the lore from the works created after the original game, the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7, that’s all very much in the base of the canon for the remake, and going forward it will be too.' "
https://www.resetera.com/threads/fi...iginal-ffvii-only-please.117768/post-29674267
 
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