Just out of curiosity, did you all even want a remake?
Yes. I'm not as salty as Ite, and I'm also not coming from his exact position, we just overlap. No part of what I was after had to do with definitive versions or ease in getting other people to play it. I wanted this for me, I don't give a shit about about other people playing it, lol. Most of my friends that play video games have played the original, and those that don't won't play a remake any more readily than they would the old one.
Graphics aside the original holds up just fine, all I would want is a new English localization so the plot is more comprehensible. That's all the new FFVII that was ever necessary, but so many people wanted so much more.
For old fans who don't like the remake, I'm not just going to say "why do you even care if the remake is weird when the original still exists." Ultimately more FFVII discourse than not is going to surround the remake from now on, so that'll unavoidably impact you regardless. I guess I'm wondering, is that really all that concerns you though? That the conversation will be inevitably altered the more the Remake drifts from the original? Is there some fear of getting left behind in a sea of new discussion? I dunno, maybe I'm small-minded, but that's the only reason I can think of.
The way I see it, if it was just going to be the same story with prettier visuals they should have done an OOT 3D and just updated the graphics while mostly leaving everything else alone. That'd be cheap, I think most people would be happy with it, and that's the treatment other FF games have gotten. However, that wouldn't live up to the expectations people have had for the past decade+ about what a "Final Fantasy VII" remake would be like.
Really, you've all been fucked from the day that that scummy PS3 demo got shown off. That put the image of AAA fully realized FFVII in peoples heads. If it was gonna be the same plot Square would have just done a remaster like I mentioned above, but if they're gonna go all out things have to be different. There's no way they could justify it otherwise. Not for how many games it's gonna take, not for how much money they're dumping into it. You should know that, you're all familiar with these people at this point, you know they're a bunch of weirdos with weird ideas who would definitely be unsatisfied with just retreading old ground just because you all don't want change. The "not specifically you guys in this thread but a more generalized 'you' refering to the larger FFVII community" dug this hole for yourselves inch by inch with every FFVII REMAKE rumor and wishlist, every time you asked the developers if they'd do it, every time you showed how much interest there was for it, every time square enix couldn't escape the shadow of a decades old PS1 game.
So I'll say again, did you all even want a remake? Because you got a fucking "REMAKE," built from the ground up as if it were a new game with a new plot and a whole load of new things to worry about, and you should have know it wouldn't be any other way.
"The promise has been made" mother fuckers.
*mic drop*
POTATO OUT!
This is what I don't understand. What's wrong with the game how it was that you even wanted a "replacement?"
I don't understand your rigid adherence to this idea that the only reason a remake could exist is because there's something wrong with the original. Stuff is remade all the time without a statement on the original. This is a weird position to insist on.
This is my favorite fictional world and I relish any opportunity to spend more time in it. This is why I want a remake, I wanted to be able experience being
in Midgar, rather than just looking down at it. Feeling excited when I came to a sequence that I had forgotten would be there (such as Elmyra's flashback) because I was engrossed in the story and hte new perspective. This is why I spent so much of my time with the Remake looking up (like that lady in Sector 5)! That was incredible for me. To be enveloped by the world and the story of my favorite work of fiction. The meta narrative shit is at total opposition to this, I'm back outside of it again.
looney and Ite have covered the strawman that says people that didn't like it were just afraid of change, or I guess this permutation: that we fundamentally don't understand what a remake is. Like, how could you not see the difference between the first 90% of the game and the ending? Are you seriously suggesting that the additions made to that point - the Jessie chapter, the alterations to the Wall Market sequence, the world-building in the sidequests and the expanded Sectors 5 and 7 - WOULDN'T have constituted a remake, and would have just been them going through the motions to do something they've already done? That the remake sans time ghosts would have been on par with Ocarina of Time 3D on 3DS? I find that
completely absurd. As Ite said, I was 1000% down with all of those changes. They bolstered my feeling of being in the world, of being able to see it from a new perspective and, yes, in fantastic graphical fidelity.
But again, the time ghost metanarrative is different. It works to actively push you
out of the story,
out of the world. "REMEMBER HOW THIS WENT BEFORE?!" they scream.
I’m really interested to know how you would have handled the Whispers (and not just getting rid of them altogether).
After the ending, yes I want to get rid of them altogether. While I was actually playing through the game, I actually thought they were a fun a little nod to the fact that this is a remake. That the game was playfully, and winkingly acknowledging that you've done this before, and even that interpretation that the ghosts were us. So I didn't mind them for most of it. The more they materially interfered in events, the less I liked the idea. And by the end, any semblance of playful winking was gone. They're not a
nod to this being a remake, they're saboteurs to the whole project.
Heh
I guess what I’m trying to ask is if there’s really any other way to achieve the same effect that the Remake ending has without doing something this drastic. How else would we be able to feel this much uncertainty about the future if they just retold the OG without major deviations?
Why is this amount of "uncertainty" necessary, though? What advantage does this afford the game? With the way most of the Remake went, I would have been out-of-my-mind excited for part 2. The splitting into parts feeling wholly justified. Given the degree to which they nailed so many scenes in Midgar, and the substantive additions they made, I'd be beside myself with eagerness to see how they would represent other events. What elements might they add to Junon or the originally afterthought Fort Condor? Being inside Midgar was nearly a religious experience, imagine being inside the Temple of the Ancients, or the Cave of the Gi, or looking up in Junon to see all the terraced levels above you.
Now? Smeh, I guess I'll see it when it comes out. Most of that stuff will probably still be there, but who knows what other bullshit is coming with it. Who knows how many party members we'll pointlessly kill and bring back. Who knows how many times we'll have to fight a damn Sephiroth boss. And now the ending of every part is going to have to have some "What the fuck?" moment just so that we"re ~
uncertain~ about the next part.
As I say I'm not as salty (or hostile, as he says) as Ite. Too much of the Remake was too good for that, I enjoyed the hell out of it. But without all that nonsense at the end, I would have been unspeakably excited and hyped. Now I'm only worried. So, thanks for that.
Don’t you think Barret actually being dead would anger the fans though?
So why pretend to kill him at all? This is a remake. Surprise me in the ways most of hte game already surprised me! By seeing how events are represented in this new perspective and engine. Don't just change shit at random to surprise me for it's own sake. That's lazy and dumb.
Seeing the way they utilized Hell House was a
surprise. The whole fighting ring was a surprise that nonetheless fit PERFECTLY in the context of the Wall Market. I never would have come up with it and yet it was perfect. THAT is an enjoyable surprise. Stabbing Barret was just, "Okay. Well he's coming back." The former adds to the fabric of the world. The latter is purely the devs looking over their shoulder at you and desperately saying "Eh? Eh?! Bet you didn't see
that coming did you, asshole!"
