FFVII REMAKE vs NOSTALGIA

[Ite]

That's fair, but I already do quite a bit of that with the OG. A corporate-run nation blows the hell out of a tall thin island empire with magical weaponry, then treats it like a tourist resort while exploiting the planet's resources until it struggles to sustain life.

I feel like those major allegories aren't going anywhere, so the critique of Y is unavoidable.

 

[Clement Rage]

That's fair, but I already do quite a bit of that with the OG. A corporate-run nation blows the hell out of a tall thin island empire with magical weaponry, then treats it like a tourist resort while exploiting the planet's resources until it struggles to sustain life.

I feel like those major allegories aren't going anywhere, so the critique of Y is unavoidable.

It's a little messier than that, though. On the whole, I prefer 'how would this world actually be' over 'how can this world best make my point' in settings.

 

[ChipNoir]

That's fair, but I already do quite a bit of that with the OG. A corporate-run nation blows the hell out of a tall thin island empire with magical weaponry, then treats it like a tourist resort while exploiting the planet's resources until it struggles to sustain life.

I feel like those major allegories aren't going anywhere, so the critique of Y is unavoidable.

It's a little messier than that, though. On the whole, I prefer 'how would this world actually be' over 'how can this world best make my point' in settings.

Head canon time: I don't the Wutai War was just Midgar/Shinra vs Wutai. The reality is that Wutai is way too damned isolated to be a threat. It's also a mostly...barren continent. In order to be worthy of Mako extraction, my impression is it needs to be a location lush with life. That's why places with isolated geography (Nibelhiem) or in verdant areas (Gongaga) are most attractive for placing reactors.

But Wutai has no reactor, and seems never to ever have had one, but it's mostly barren crags.

I think what the war really was about was Wutaii vehemently rejecting Mako, and trying to keep Midgar Influences out of the Central Continent, which has a number of vivacious eco-systems. I don't think it's any coincidence that Gold Saucer is in the middle of a desert. I think if you drain a location far enough, it all does become a wasteland, and something like Gold Saucer would require a MASSIVE amount of electricity compared to a town.

Last thing is an interesting point I've brought up a few times: Barret wears military dogtags. I suppose one could come up with any number of excuses. Working in a coal mine can mean risking being caught and killed in a collapse, and thus tags would be needed to identify bodies.

But I'm inclined to believe Central Continent had it's own military, and may have been fending off Wutai influences long before ShinRa came and settled in.

 

[Pixel]

CrashOuch and I have been working on this over the last few weeks... when I've had time, which I haven't. Just figured I'd post what I have so far to see if it gets hit by copyright crap. Finished version will be about 13mins long.

EDIT FINISHED

 

[Mother]

Fantastic video, thank you Pixel and CrashOuch. You've helped me finally piece together my thoughts on this matter.

I love the OG with all my heart, but I look forward to playing a wholly different game. I'm trying to separate the remake with my OG nostalgia feels as much as possible. It was wonderful, but it wasn't a perfect game, and I think as writers or as any kind of creator, we tend to look at our own work through a more critical lens than the recipients of our work - so in the eyes of Kitase/Nomura/Sakaguchi, there is probably so much to improve. So rather than wince to try and minimise the disappointment I'm inevitably going to feel, I'm just going to embrace the changes. There will most probably be elements that I don't like, but there may probably be additions that I absolutely love. Though, I do prefer the characterisations in the original Japanese so I am hoping and praying for an accurate localisation at the very least.

 

[leadmyskeptic]

Excellent, excellent video-- a bit repetitious at certain moments, perhaps, but there's really not enough genuinely "ponderous" YT stuff out there, especially when it comes to video games. As far as the comments about localisation and character, though...while I'm familiar with many of the errors, and other things that weren't so much errors as 'liberties', can you guys give me some examples as far as what you find erroneous/undesirable characterizations?? I've seen some breakdowns, but for the most part, to me, the straight-a-head Japanese translation seems the same as what ended up in English, just with no flavor. An example would be the opening "storming the Reactor" dialogue, where in the finished US game Cloud says "I don't care what your names are...once this job's over, I'm outta here" which really gives you that whole Snake Pliskin vibe they were going for, whereas the more 'accurate' translation is something more mild along the lines of "what is the point of pleasantries in this temporary situation" (or something). Is this the type of thing ya'll are talking about?

 

[Mother]

Just off the top of my head, it was less along the lines of wanting literal translations and more along the lines of accurately portraying their personalities as the English-speaking equivalents to their personalities in Japanese. Their personalities in Japanese are pretty well fleshed-out just from their style of dialogue, which doesn't come across that well in English. Barrett is the example I most vividly remember - he's a lot more aggressive in the English translation, mostly because of the lack of nuance in the translation and interpretation of his speech style. In Barrett's case, I find that his hugely aggressive and caricaturised speech style in English isn't really a reflection of his more level-headed hardened tough guy persona in the original.

Other than that, they just missed a lot of the banter between the characters because of bland translations. Anyway I'm not being totally specific here because I'm harking back to the Kotaku FFVII translation videos, which are a great source for all of this information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZefYEaNUJ7w

This can all be solved, though, with a more thorough and properly dedicated localisation team that's allotted an appropriate amount of time to do so.

 

[lvladskillz]

Keep the current game model just Expand on back story and Materia etc.. for instance add a skill tree to the Materia.