LicoriceAllsorts
Donator
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!"
SPOILERS FFVII Remake Open Spoiler Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Lex
- Start date
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
Ninja Potato
- AKA
- Ody
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
Double Growth
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
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
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?
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
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
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
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.
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ForceStealer
Double Growth
They mainly should have left Zack out of it because his new voice sucks.
Odysseus
Ninja Potato
- AKA
- Ody
Now this, I agree with lol.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
Cat on Mars
Actually not a cat
(ಥ﹏ಥ)
You are dead to me now.
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.
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.
ForceStealer
Double Growth
But clearly it was unrealistic to expect anything better from his voice because they only ever would have given him this voice since this is the voice they wanted to give him, right? 
But really it was the exact scene verbatim from Crisis Core. Why not just lift the audio from there? If you have to recast him later, fine, but at least it wouldn't have been yet another distraction on the ending scene of this game.
That about sums it up, lol. Put me solidly in the camp that the more the Whispers feel like a useless diversion, the better. But that would of course continue to make the point ever stronger that the end of part 1 never needed to be there.
Odysseus
Ninja Potato
- AKA
- Ody
Boy oh boy, you did not get what I was saying at allll. In this case it was probably some contract issue though, which is why they couldn't reuse audio and why everyone else got recast. New Zack will probably be better when he has more to work with (I hope.)
Cat on Mars
Actually not a cat
ForceStealer
Double Growth
It sounds like they just recast everyone because they wanted to. Obviously that could just be dressing up a contract dispute as "what we intended all along," but it seems unlikely that they would have had a dispute with EVERYONE. Rather they didn't want to just keep one person the same. But while everyone else was either equal or an improvement, the very last new voice we hear is by far the worst one, lol. And it's exacerbated by being a scene that's already been voice acted so everyone had the exact same voice in our heads for it.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
I think there was some speculation that the recording for this game coincided with some sort of voice-actor strike? Dunno if that's been debunked though.
Ite
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
I mean this as writing advice and a real life protip: if you’re gonna stab someone, you better mean it.
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ForceStealer
Double Growth
There was one a bit ago, I know it's why Life Is Strange voices changed. But are all the new people in the Remake not part of the guild? I know there are a lot of newbies, but surely Gideon Emery is part of it. And he and Lindbeck were there from the beginning. So I dunno.
Personally I got the feeling that someone at Square just felt the way about the voice cast that a lot of people here do and got them to overhaul it, lol. As someone who generally liked the old voices, I think they mostly succeeded very well here. Sephiroth I'm still unsure about, and Zack is definitely a downgrade. Everyone else gets two thumbs up or that I clearly didn't feel strongly enough about to notice.
https://comb.io/QAm11C
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
The amount of damage to the story that would be done by killing Barret off would make the inclusion of fantastical ghosts of the future seem nonexistent in comparison.
I don't think that's even a controversial assessment, lol
"Death is meaningless" versus a Barret-less story I don't feel is an apt comparison or fair one. By that implication, we should just reduce FFVII to a another realistic gritty story in world with no magic, and simply sacrifice one of the most improved and interesting characters we've gotten out of this Remake. Why? Because death? The death isn't the issue here, it's what the story meant to tell with why those Arbiters exist. Death can easily still hold meaning because not every moment in the world of FFVII is going to play out under the watchful eye of their interference/influence. Especially now that they've seemingly have been removed from the world altogether.
I mean, that's what we'll inevitably be facing when we go to the Forgotten Capital and beyond. They're not there to protect anyone anymore.
I don't think that's even a controversial assessment, lol
"Death is meaningless" versus a Barret-less story I don't feel is an apt comparison or fair one. By that implication, we should just reduce FFVII to a another realistic gritty story in world with no magic, and simply sacrifice one of the most improved and interesting characters we've gotten out of this Remake. Why? Because death? The death isn't the issue here, it's what the story meant to tell with why those Arbiters exist. Death can easily still hold meaning because not every moment in the world of FFVII is going to play out under the watchful eye of their interference/influence. Especially now that they've seemingly have been removed from the world altogether.
I mean, that's what we'll inevitably be facing when we go to the Forgotten Capital and beyond. They're not there to protect anyone anymore.
ForceStealer
Double Growth
I think Ite's point is more that they shouldn't have stabbed Barret at all for all those reasons you just stated.
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
But that's what I mean when I cite the scene as a showcase of what those Arbiters exist to do, and what they won't be around to do, when they're gone.
Death being "cheated" in FFVII has always been possible if one has the right power behind them. We've seen it done by Sephiroth and Cloud before in FFVII proper. It's extremely rare but not impossible, like say, real life. I don't think Barret's immediate healing from impalement from Sephiroth somehow destroys the credibility of fatal wounds in FFVII. No more than Cloud getting stabbed in the chest by Sephiroth before he yeeted him into a mako pit did before. The only difference here is instead of being immediately healed by Shinra scientists with magic, Barret was healed by planetary ghosts with magic.
No one would ever be able to survive impalement through the chest period due to bloodloss, but we've gone past that point long, long ago.
Death being "cheated" in FFVII has always been possible if one has the right power behind them. We've seen it done by Sephiroth and Cloud before in FFVII proper. It's extremely rare but not impossible, like say, real life. I don't think Barret's immediate healing from impalement from Sephiroth somehow destroys the credibility of fatal wounds in FFVII. No more than Cloud getting stabbed in the chest by Sephiroth before he yeeted him into a mako pit did before. The only difference here is instead of being immediately healed by Shinra scientists with magic, Barret was healed by planetary ghosts with magic.
No one would ever be able to survive impalement through the chest period due to bloodloss, but we've gone past that point long, long ago.
ForceStealer
Double Growth
I agree, and I'm not quite as hung up on the Barret thing as Ite is, but I do agree that it weakened an element of your story/world for not much reason. There are plenty of other ways to definitively show what the whispers are there to do without something that at best feels like a cheap scare and at worst weakens the whole game world. Maybe have Sephiroth go for Barret first and a whisper makes it so that he hits President Shinra instead, ensuring that the "right" person dies.
Ite
Save your valediction (she/her)
- AKA
- Ite
I think Ite's point is more that they shouldn't have stabbed Barret at all for all those reasons you just stated.
Yep.
It’s the same catch 22 with the whispers: they shouldnt’a done it, but now that they have, what’s the best version of damage control? Should they follow through on the stab and let him die to preserve the theme of life in the way the OG expressed it, or throw theme out the window because we don’t want to lose a beloved character? I would have preferred if they hadn’t stabbed him to begin with, but since they did, I think they took the wrong road.
Funnily, I think they should do the opposite with the whispers. Should they follow through on the “Unknown Journey” because they’ve made the decision to have the characters rough up time and space, or should they ease onto the gas pedal and deliver on the promise of the classic story presented in a modern medium? I’m firmly in the “Oops just kidding, ignore all that” camp because while they’ve already killed 7R for me at least I can get some gifs out of it if they stop fucking around.
Tetsujin
he/they
- AKA
- Tets
Especially seeing as how Compilation voice actors are actually still involved, just in minor roles.