SPOILERS FFVII Remake Open Spoiler Discussion Thread

[ForceStealer]

Hey, regardless of everything, I am proud of everyone here because at least we're not The Last of Us fandom

hahahaha

I was just saying to a friend that most of my productive work today was wasted arguing about the remake. He said that describes a lot of his work days. But he posts on GameFAQs *shudder*
I said that well I'm sure mine was a lot less maddening than that would be. People on TLS argue in good faith

I just don't think that was ever realistically going to happen, and (I'm gonna sound way too self important when I say this fuck) I think you need to accept that.

Accept what? What are you talking about? Where am I not accepting of what this game is?
And how could what I want have been unrealistic when ~35 hours of a ~40 hour game were EXACTLY what I wanted? If this game was an acid trip from start to finish, I could maybe see your point. But Square was perfectly content to make exactly what I wanted for the vast majority of their development time and their artistic brains didn't kill themselves under the strain.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

What is funny is that they did go back and give FF8 and FF9 some kind of graphical overhaul to make them not look quite so bad graphically for the PC and Switch versions (as least as far as the models went). Same thing for FFX and FFXII. And... the vast majority of old FF games actually. The one major FF game they haven't overhauled graphicly is FF7. And I think... a lot of people expected FF7R to be that graphical overhaul.

As stupid as it is to say, the graphics of FF7 are a major reason more people don't play it. It doesn't have the cute pixel graphics of the earlier FF games. Or the non-awkward proportions of the later FF games. It's stuck in it's own weird graphics style that doesn't look like anything else. Getting it out of that werid graphics style into something most gamers are more familiar with would do nothing but help it in the long run I think.

I will say that anyone taking the argument of "the Remake is still telling the same story as the OG by the end of the game" isn't paying attention to what the game itself says at the end. The last thing the game leaves the player with is that what happens next will be unknown. The flow of the story will have to be different, otherwise the Remake Part 1's entire main conflict with the Whispers won't make thematic sense. What's the point of killing Destiny if destiny doesn't change?

 

[Wol]

Sadly, after the mess at the ending, I can't take this story seriously as much as I wanted to. It really cheapened the entire thing.

I look forward to Part 2 but the hype and excitement is basically gone.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I truly get the frustration of having a favorite story's direction wildly diverge from what one expected or wanted. Hell, I was in that very same boat with Danganropa V3.

And anyone who knows Danganropa and played V3 knows exactly what I'm talking about.

When those type of situations happen, all you're left with is enjoying what came before the final part that left you blue-balled, confused and soaked in ice cold water. All you can do is dry yourself off and ignore the part where the enjoyment suddenly went weird and left you to finish yourself off, so to speak.

At least with the Remake, you know that the original parts of the story that were iconic and representative of the original FFVII will be there. When it gets weird, it'll more than likely be independent of the setting of the OG. And you can just tune it out. At least it lets you do that more or less.

For part 1, you can go all the way from the beginning of the game to the beginning of Chapter 18 and just call it a day.

They're saving the true madness for the final installment.

 

[Ite]

only the truly fringe nutters on twitter would be telling square to change it

No, the true nutters are learning Unreal Engine so that we can change it

 

[Ite]

Double-post to not co-opt the Likes already given onto my next point:

If nothing else, the true resurrection of a dead character by magic spell (Barret) and the undoing of a death via time travel (Zack) kill FF7 for me. Anything else pales in comparison to that fundamental betrayal of the original story's emotional core. Reveal Cloud's secret plot twist while in Midgar? Ugh what are you doing, but fine. Destiny ghosts interrupting scenes that wouldn't have been changed, then failing to interrupt scenes that are different? That doesn't really sound like they're doing their jobs, and raises so many questions that I think the devs don't have any interest in answering, but whatever. Sephiroth everywhere? Expected.

But making death trivial, impermanent, and cheap? That's fuckin bullshit, man.

And @KindOfBlue asked if I would rather they kept Barret dead. If they'd really decided to kill him? Which they did? You bet. But they didn't really mean to kill him and we all knew it.

 

[ForceStealer]

Destiny ghosts interrupting scenes that wouldn't have been changed, then failing to interrupt scenes that are different? That doesn't really sound like they're doing their jobs, and raises so many questions that I think the devs don't have any interest in answering, but whatever.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I think it's far too premature to state Zack is fully being resurrected. Yes, we may be witnessing an alternate paradoxical Zack but how it is handled or utilized is not mutually exclusive to the fundamental moment or experience of Zack being dead within the full context of the story. For one, Cloud has that sword on his back still and is walking around maintaining his illusory past. That alone shows the impact and scope of that death still exists. Plenty of stories have juxtaposed the inevitable fate of a character with the paradox of seeing said character within a "what-if" scenario, which exists isolated from the larger work or "fate" that awaits them.

If Zack is somehow sharing beers and snacks with Cloud and Aerith in Seventh Heaven post FFVII, I'll agree with you on it's horrible cheapening, but the fact that in a fantastical way we're seeing a glimpse of Zack that defies logic, doesn't mean he's for sure alive and well. If anything, that shows he can't be alive, not for real. It flies in the face of the story and is a paradox that will have to be confronted and corrected. They're toying with the idea, however the pay off has yet to be revealed.

 

[ForceStealer]

If it just leads to occasional "what if" scenarios where we play Zack through sections and see how things might have gone differently had he made it back to Midgar, I'd be fine with that. But, A, I don't think that's all it will amount to and B, even if it did, it had no place in the ending scene of THIS game. It should have come at the beginning of whatever form those what-if scenarios took.

 

[Odysseus]

Accept what? What are you talking about? Where am I not accepting of what this game is?
And how could what I want have been unrealistic when ~35 hours of a ~40 hour game were EXACTLY what I wanted? If this game was an acid trip from start to finish, I could maybe see your point. But Square was perfectly content to make exactly what I wanted for the vast majority of their development time and their artistic br

The whispers permeate the game from start to finish, it would be a fundamentally different experience without them, and altering the ending to not go off the rails would not fix your issue. They're integral to the new story square's telling, and they definitely want you to find them strange and out of place in a story you already knew. The fact they're weird and contrast the rest of the game is the point. You act like they can just shift a few things around and you'd get exactly what you wanted, but it's not so simple. There wouldn't be an FF7 remake without them, because square didn't want to make an ff7 remake without them. That's my point, that's what I'm saying. They made the game they made, and they never would have done it any other way. You don't have to like it, I encourage you to voice your displeasure even, but you gotta live with what you got.

Look, I'm not gonna change anybody's mind here, so I'll just now out if it's all the same. I like you guys, so I don't want to argue in circles like this.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I'll just say that I don't think the intention of Zack's appearance at the end of part 1 was to fully resurrect him for good and leave it with, "Hey guys, h's alive!!! Yay, aren't we all happy now?!"

No.

It's never that simple, or that Hallmark and happy. For one, they've never been that transparent, or simple. And I simply don't think they're ignorant of what made CC memorable and are trying to just tear that moment out of the overall universe/canon of the series. They're playing with the expectation and knowledge of it's importance, but I'm pretty positive they're not trying to undo it.

 

[Ite]

Sparing Zack from his original death, only to throw us some T3 elastic time theory to kill him off somewhere else down the line.... is that what people want? Is that the story the devs are interested in telling? Just get on with FF7 already ffs.

As I said before, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. The options at this point are: Zack does a pointless Donnie Darko loop and dies a different death, or Zack's surviving/dimension hopping becomes vital to saving the world and the finale of FF7R is all fanart family smiles, or they just drop the whole thing.

@Odysseus I'm aware that what I got is what they made. Saying that the whispers are intrinsically linked to the very concept of an FF7 Remake is a post hoc argument, though. Obviously I'm stuck with them now, but I didn't have to be, and I think they suck.

 

[ForceStealer]

But if they're undoing just to redo it, that's gonna be pretty eyeroll-inducing.

The whispers permeate the game from start to finish, it would be a fundamentally different experience without them, and altering the ending to not go off the rails would not fix your issue.

Yes. Yes it would. I already said that they didn't really bother me for most of the game. Their resolution was stupid. A resolution that wasn't stupid would absolutely improve the game and bring it closer to my desires.
Also, what Ite said. Saying it's unrealistic to get a certain thing because it isn't what we got is tautological.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

And @KindOfBlue asked if I would rather they kept Barret dead. If they'd really decided to kill him? Which they did? You bet. But they didn't really mean to kill him and we all knew it.

Exactly. When I saw that, I didn't think, "OMG they killed Barret!". I thought, "OMG they're trying to make me think Barret is dead but I know they'll resurrect him shortly!"

 

[Odysseus]

Saying that the whispers are intrinsically linked to the very concept of an FF7 Remake is a post hoc argument, though

Not "an" ff7 remake, THE ff7 remake. Obviously you could hypothetically do one without any of this nonsense, but square was never going to. That's my point dang it.

 

[ForceStealer]

And your point is nonsense, lol. Square could have made the remake in any possible way. Obviously the way it was made is the way they wanted to because...they made it. I don't understand what you're establishing here.

 

[Ite]

Not "an" ff7 remake, THE ff7 remake. Obviously you could hypothetically do one without any of this nonsense, but square was never going to. That's my point dang it.

Of course I mean The FF7 Remake? Although you reminded me of McDonalds All Beef(TM) Brand Meat Product by mincing words like that. I guess that's why people enjoyed the Remake pun?

 

[Odysseus]

Mooooooom, these old guys are being mean to me!

Okay it's pretty clear you just do not understand what I'm saying, so I'm just gonna leave it.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Ultimately it's all about how it's done which I nor anyone else can predict. Part of what matters most with these stories is simply their execution and details. Zack's use or misuse all depends on the future of the overall Remake, however it's not fixed in stone in either direction. Judging it's future from the lens of simply "value" or "waste" reduces the entire storyline to a series of binary decisions to reach an arbitrary goal. And that sorta divorces what makes a Final Fantasy story work in the first place. Context and execution. Fantasy stories such as these are the last thing in the world that are exercises in optimization. It's all about the minutiae and details. Not the reality and straightforward logical progression.

 

[Ite]

which I nor anyone else can predict

My issue is that it's already been done. I'm not waiting to see what they'll do with it, because they've already given me the definitive answer: death is meaningless. I don't need powers of prediction to understand what I've already been shown. The story holds no stakes for me because death can be fully undone at the whim of magical creatures and if you beat up a heartless badly enough.

Barret should be dead.

 

[ForceStealer]

They mainly should have left Zack out of it because his new voice sucks.

 

[Odysseus]

They mainly should have left Zack out of it because his new voice sucks.

Now this, I agree with lol.

 

[looneymoon]

They mainly should have left Zack out of it because his new voice sucks.

The price of freedom is steep



I actually don't mind the new voice lmfao

 

[Cat on Mars]

Barret should be dead.

(ಥ﹏ಥ)
You are dead to me now.

 

[minami758]

I don't really have much to add, but because I like inserting myself into conversations where I don't belong, I'm going to chime in with my two cents anyway.

I wrote all this and then people started posting about Zack's VA so this might be off-topic now, but yeah I hate his new VA too. Anyway...

I really enjoyed the experience of playing the Remake — that is, I really loved the gameplay and had a lot of fun experiencing the story and character dynamics as updated for 2020. I thought there were some expansions/additions that added so much to the story in a fantastic way (like Chapter 4) and others that kind of dragged a bit (like returning to the sewers in Chapter 14).

I guess I sort of fall in the middle of the discourse over whether or not this is a good "remake" because I genuinely enjoyed the game, even while playing Chapter 18, even though I was thinking, "what the fuck is going on" the entire time. It wasn't until I finished my first playthrough that I sat back and was like, "Huh, this story is kind of funky now and I don't know if I like it."

In some ways, I think SE has sort of written themselves into a corner. Whether that corner is a good corner or not is yet to be seen, but it's a corner nonetheless because in any case a certain faction will be disappointed. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's an issue that's arisen of SE's own design. To generalize a bit, there are people who are happy they're getting a remake-sequel and actively want things to be different vs. people who see "defying fate" as a red herring and think things will stay largely the same even if they occur differently vs. people who aren't happy with the remake-sequel but also won't be happy if things stay largely the same because what was the point of the Whispers in the first place then?

And then there are the people who are just going to play the games because they're fun and not really care about any of this, but I don't think any of us here fall into that category, lol. In whatever direction SE decides to go, some people aren't going to be happy.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I think SE did a phenomenal job with (mostly) everything up until Chapter 18. I hope that they continue to channel that energy into the next installments going forward, because that kind of passion really shone through in their depiction of Midgar. Maybe SE will pull off something amazing and blow all our minds. But, at the same time, SE hasn't had the best track record in recent years in regards to the FF series (barring FFXIV) and they have a tendency to backpedal and ruin perfectly decent stories (i.e. FFXV Dawn of the Future or whatever that's supposed to be). So, I guess the Remake wasn't a dealbreaker for me, but Part 2 very well could be.