The platefall mod is viewable again, so some thoughts:
1. In the unmodded scene, you can already hear the people screaming while running so they should’ve at least left that in. I’d say the lack of action music is the best thing about the mod but my attitude towards stuff like this will generally lean more in the direction of “I can always, like, just play the OG if that’s what I want…”
2. To add on that, for me the advanced technology and the resulting aftermath of the platefall more than makes up for whatever misgivings there may be about the execution of that scene. Would it be nice to have it all? Sure. It’d also be nice if I could shit gold too. ?
3. On the other hand, Cait Sith’s cameo should’ve been somewhere else and it’s weird to me to think the remake version of the scene is inferior to the OG
except for Cait Sith’s appearance.
4. Even though it’s obvious that the shot of President Shinra was slowed down to match the length of the OG scene, I think the opera music bit was pretty well handled given the tools available. It would be nice if somebody could add the shot from inside the house but again, shitting gold and whatnot.
5. That final shot of the Shinra building feels awkwardly-placed to me, I know it’s trying to be like the OG cutscene but to me it’s an example of how trying to go beat-for-beat like the OG cutscene may just have the opposite effect of making it
more apparent that it wasn’t originally made that way. I feel like edits shouldn’t be so obvious or else they end up being even more distracting and immersion-breaking and at that point, you might as well not even bother. Which brings me to…
6. As much as I know some people would love a version of this game without the Whispers, I don’t imagine it’ll be easy to simply cut around all the bits where they show up without it being obvious that a key aspect of the plot that this story was framed around is now missing
especially if further games double down on the alternate universe stuff. So…good luck to anybody who tries this, I guess?