For people who have seen the trailers.

[AerithLives]

Do you think having Sephiroth in FF7R Part 1 too much is going to spoil the game?

The first part of the game appears to have him in it often from what we can tell. Part of the brilliance of Sephiroth is the mystery and build up to him.

What do you think?

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I haven't seen the trailer but here's what I think.

There are two things about this game which will be no secret to even the most casual of gamers. The first is that Aerith dies. The second is that Sephiroth - not Shinra, not Rufus, not Jenova, but Sephiroth - is the real villain, and not just any villain, but one of the most iconic villains in gaming history. There is just no way they could replicate the mystery and the build-up that the original game provided. In the OG, when it came out, we didn't know any more about what was going on in the plot than the characters did. Now we do. We simply know too much. It would be like making a movie about Hitler and trying to persuade the audience that he's a warm-hearted vegetarian who loves children and dogs, and then suddenly - surprise! - mass murder.

So IMHO Square Enix have accepted this fact about their villain and decided to roll with it. They haven't just re-made this game for new players who refuse to play the OG because its graphics are too old. They have remade this game for its fans.

 

[Odysseus]

While I agree with everything Lic said, I think there's an even simpler reason for it beyond general familiarity with the character. In this multi part series they're making, it just doesn't make logistical sense to keep sephiroth hidden the way he originally was. It would be well into part 2 before he would appear in person. I was thinking, if this remake is as long as a normal FF, it will still take even longer in Remake to see Sephiroth in person than it did in the OG anyway. Cargo ship is like 18 hours into the game at best, you might not get to the end of remake until 40+ hours in.

 

[AerithLives]

I'm not sure.

Don't you think having Sephiroth revealed at the end of the first game as an excellent cliff hanger?
The entire game you are fighting against a huge mega totalitarion corporation which seems like impossible odds, only to have someone...something revealed towards the end of the game which is even more impossible. I think it would unfold excellently.

As you get towards the end of the game you have a few of clouds flashes, Jenova, and the murder of President Shinra to lead to something even bigger.

Apparently (though I've not heard much of this) there has been data mining and there is going to be a small amount of the game outside Midgar. They could even do the story at Kalm to wrap up the gravity of his power and the important of his history.

I think it could work well.

 

[Cannon_Fodder]

I don't think you can frame a Sephiroth reveal as a cliff hanger, for the reasons that Lic stated. He's so well known that a reveal like that would be less, "So that's who's behind all of this!" and more, "Well of course it's Sephiroth. Why are we supposed to be surprised?"

I think part of this ties into the remake in its entirety: I don't see how the developers can create the same emotional response as the OG did--I'd even say it's impossible. Especially for elements that worked in the OG because the player didn't know the truth, like the Sephiroth reveal or Cloud's past. I think the only thing the devs can do is to create a different but familiar emotional response, that in theory affects both returning players and first timers.

 

[Jairus]

While we've seen Cloud having visions of Sephiroth in the trailers, there's no indication of how frequent they will be or how many he'll have before the encounter with him and Jenova in Shina HQ. So it's possible Cloud will only have a few such incidents through the whole game before the confrontation in Jenova's tank, providing mystery but not overwhelming the Shinra side of the story.

 

[Suzaku]

No, I think this being a remake of a 23-year-old game is going to spoil the game.

Changes like this are going to keep it interesting by delivering the story in new and unexpected ways.

There is no way to replicate the experience of playing this game for the first time in 1997, and even then it's not like Sephiroth wasn't all over the promotional materials and in the instruction manual, where his profile was mixed in with the rest of the playable characters.

Besides, the real twists are the ones involving the true nature of the Sephiroth and Cloud you see throughout the game, and those are things that I think probably aren't general knowledge, even amongst many who have played the game, and those are aspects of the story that can be deepened and improved by elaborating and better explaining their relationship, in my opinion.

 

[AerithLives]

While we've seen Cloud having visions of Sephiroth in the trailers, there's no indication of how frequent they will be or how many he'll have before the encounter with him and Jenova in Shina HQ. So it's possible Cloud will only have a few such incidents through the whole game before the confrontation in Jenova's tank, providing mystery but not overwhelming the Shinra side of the story.

That's what I'm hoping for. It's certainly giving the opposite impression though.