Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (story/content)

[Pizzachu]

If Marlene was a bartender there, she would definitely get a bunch of tips. Cutest bartender in Midgar.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

^This! And for the Remake, Tifa could still be saying the same to Marlene as in the OG, but in reality, Johnny will be the one who's taking over business. This could be something that's already routine for them.

Johnny was leaving home during this part of the original game. It's why he ends up surviving the plate fall.

 

[OdaDaimyO]

In case they are holding up how the OG's order of events transpire, than yes, you're right! But especially when it comes to the plate fall scenario, I think it'll play out differently... lets say it's a hunch (this isn't meant to be come off as half assed, or disrespectful).

 

[FFShinra]

Maybe in the remake, since she is doing this in the morning, she's actually a mini barista. *shrugs*

 

[Ite]

The issue is competence rather than impropriety. What’s the difference between alcohol and caffeine? Kids can’t make highballs nor lattes. Naw, they locked up the doors and she was playing make believe with the shaker.

 

[Clean Cut Chaos]

Ya, when I was her age I couldn't do the mixers. Had to stick to snifters of Brandy and a good brew on occasion.

 

[Kain424]

It's also very probably the culture of this society doesn't have all of the same norms and faux pas of ours. Their nervous system may even operate in a different manner to ours, making it so drunks are incredibly rare.

 

[Ite]

Pretty sure there were lots of drunk ppl in the OG. Also, it’s bad form to change the nature/habits/physiology of humans in a fantasy setting unless it‘s directly related to the main story. It’s kind of like, why?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Pretty sure there were lots of drunk ppl in the OG.

Yeah, there are several references to/depictions of drunkenness in the original game and "On the Way to A Smile."

Also, it’s bad form to change the nature/habits/physiology of humans in a fantasy setting unless it‘s directly related to the main story. It’s kind of like, why?

Even as someone who loves FFX, I have to concede that game just barely gets away with this.

 

[Ite]

FFX’s waterbreathing is super imaginative, and it plays into both the theme, characters, and gameplay. And it’s still a little like wtf at first lol.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The thing that bugs me much more is when people assume that Shinra-land has all the laws and customs of a western liberal democracy. Why do we assume they have child labour laws? Drinking laws? Age of of consent laws? Health and safety regulations? What evidence in the game suggests that they have any of these things?

 

[ForceStealer]

Also that the idea that the hidden base of a terrorist cell in the middle of the slums MIGHT not be the greatest environment for a child to be raised in as being surprising is something that I find odd.

But the bar was still closed.

 

[Mayo Master]

The thing that bugs me much more is when people assume that Shinra-land has all the laws and customs of a western liberal democracy. Why do we assume they have child labour laws? Drinking laws? Age of of consent laws? Health and safety regulations? What evidence in the game suggests that they have any of these things?

I really hope that the Remake will provide more insight into the laws and societal norms of this world.
To be honest, I was personally more bothered by Cloud recruited by the Shinra infantry at14 years old and allegedly joining the ranks of the most elite group at 16 than I was by Marlene having to look after the 7th Heaven when Tifa & co leave the place (in many poor settings, children tend to start taking care of stuff - of themselves, to begin with - at a very young age).

 

[Kain424]

This stuff is kind of what I am talking about in terms of different cultures. Heck, if you look back at your grandparent's generation, you will find people joining the military before the age of 18. And that's just in the West. In a lot of places it's more or less the norm for people to be raised up in the military, either through forced child-soldierdom or other means.

As far as biology goes, there is plenty of evidence in the old canon the people of Gaia aren't what we would refer to as homo sapiens. They get shot, cut, slashed, burned, blown up, and dropped off impossible heights and survive. Often times, more or less unharmed. There's no long scene of decompression after visiting the depths of the ocean, and characters can apparently spend an inhuman amount of time underwater anyway.

Point is, I've always had a problem with people complaining about stuff occurring in a fantasy realm being "not realistic." You don't think that guy could carry that sword? What's it made out of? What is the gravity on Gaia compared to earth? What sort of muscle strength do the people of that world have, let alone enhanced super soldiers on that world?

They may look like us in a vague sense, but they ain't us. It's fantasy. A heightened reality at best.

 

[Ite]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for post-hoc justifications for video game logic, and I loathe to use the term “just a video game.”

....but it is just a video game.

 

[Saven]

Point is, I've always had a problem with people complaining about stuff occurring in a fantasy realm being "not realistic." You don't think that guy could carry that sword? What's it made out of? What is the gravity on Gaia compared to earth? What sort of muscle strength do the people of that world have, let alone enhanced super soldiers on that world?

They may look like us in a vague sense, but they ain't us. It's fantasy. A heightened reality at best.

All of my, this. I tend to write science-fiction stuff and I used to get roasted in one of my writing classes for some of my characters doing things that no human could ever do or endure. But who's to say that the humans in any fictional piece has to live by real life rules until the creator says so?

 

[Ite]

Establishing a setting as an M-Class planet with bipedal primates with opposable thumbs, hair on their heads and teeth in their mouths lead the reader/viewer/player to assume that unless the author says otherwise, it functions identically to earth. The burden is on you as an author to explain when and why things aren’t so. Stylistic choice is a perfectly valid reason, but it requires buy-in, that’s where film/tv/games have an advantage on prose: they can set your expectations with music, costuming, animation, and other things.

FF lacks internal consistency. They simply don’t care about world building that much.

 

[Jairus]

Well I think it's a basic assumption that most people tend to make. When you see humans in a story, it's natural to assume that for the most part, they're not so different in their basic nature from you. And I think that some of the things we see characters do in the game that, for us, are not natural or are beyond natural can be partially ascribed to simply being part of a game and not necessarily meant to be taken so literally all the time.

 

[Ite]

Well I think it's a basic assumption that most people tend to make. When you see humans in a story, it's natural to assume that for the most part, they're not so different in their basic nature from you. And I think that some of the things we see characters do in the game that, for us, are not natural or are beyond natural can be partially ascribed to simply being part of a game and not necessarily meant to be taken so literally all the time.

Agreed. The stuff that happens in battles for instance (let’s cut straight to Supernova for the sake of argument) is stylistic, not literal.

Edit: same with Marvel movies, if I’m honest. One stab is dramatic when it needs to be, but then people are throwing moons at each other. It makes no sense, and it personally takes me out of it, but it‘s doing a great job of expressing the emotions and the stake of the conflict, rather than expressing realism. That’s kind of Marvel’s style.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Agreed. People much wiser than me have a spent a lot of time studying exactly what it is in stories that we relate to, but I'm sure it's essential that the main characters at least feel like real human beings, and that means living by real-life rules unless the author has presented us with a believable reason for them to have been freed from these rules. Even stories which feature animals in main roles usually anthropomorphise the animals to a greater or lesser extent, to help the reader or viewer empathise with that character.

There's also the thing about the plot being believable, which means each step forward in the plot is firmly based on the previous step, and all of it follows the rules of real life. Readers and viewers can usually see where a plot is going, and one of the great pleasures of fiction is to make those predictions and be proved right. Readers don't necessarily enjoy being surprised by an authorial ass-pull at the last minute. So if the author has established herself as someone who just does whatever looks or sounds cool regardless of any established rules, the reader can't trust them, basically. And if you feel you can't trust an author, you are not going to investt your time and imagination in their story.

That said, South American magic realism (e.g. Mario Vargas Llhosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez) managed to inject these wierd elements into their fic without sacrificing the realism. But that's the thing. You can't sacrifice realism. There has to be consistency with real life. Video games have certain established conventions which are not meant to be taken literally, but these don't always translate well into written fiction.

 

[Erotic Materia]

Establishing a setting as an M-Class planet with bipedal primates with opposable thumbs, hair on their heads and teeth in their mouths lead the reader/viewer/player to assume that unless the author says otherwise, it functions identically to earth. The burden is on you as an author to explain when and why things aren’t so. Stylistic choice is a perfectly valid reason, but it requires buy-in, that’s where film/tv/games have an advantage on prose: they can set your expectations with music, costuming, animation, and other things.

FF lacks internal consistency. They simply don’t care about world building that much.

I have nothing of value to add, except to say that I really like the way you write. Eloquent without being overly verbose.

I wanna be like you when I grow up.

 

[pxp]

^^^ As I’m sure we’re all aware of, it’s what Coleridge termed the “suspension of disbelief.”

Edit: Or, alternatively, as Aristotle put it in Poetics:

“Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts. Everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded; or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play…The plea that otherwise the plot would have been ruined, is ridiculous; such a plot should not in the first instance be constructed. But once the irrational has been introduced and an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the absurdity…

…The poet being an imitator, like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects — things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language — either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors…Within the art of poetry itself there are two kinds of faults — those which touch its essence, and those which are accidental...if the failure is due to a wrong choice — if he has represented a horse as throwing out both his off legs at once, or introduced technical inaccuracies in medicine, for example, or in any other art — the error is not essential to the poetry. These are the points of view from which we should consider and answer the objections raised by the critics.

First as to matters which concern the poet's own art. If he describes the impossible, he is guilty of an error; but the error may be justified, if the end of the art be thereby attained — if, that is, the effect of this or any other part of the poem is thus rendered more striking…if, however, the end might have been as well, or better, attained without violating the special rules of the poetic art, the error is not justified: for every kind of error should, if possible, be avoided.

…Again, does the error touch the essentials of the poetic art, or some accident of it? For example, not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically.…in examining whether what has been said or done by some one is poetically right or not, we must not look merely to the particular act or saying, and ask whether it is poetically good or bad. We must also consider by whom it is said or done, to whom, when, by what means, or for what end; whether, for instance, it be to secure a greater good, or avert a greater evil.

...The audience is supposed to be too dull to comprehend unless something of their own is thrown by the performers, who therefore indulge in restless movements… all action is not to be condemned — any more than all dancing — but only that of bad performers…Tragedy like Epic poetry produces its effect even without action; it reveals its power by mere reading… it has all the epic elements — it may even use the epic meter — with the music and spectacular effects as important accessories; and these produce the most vivid of pleasures. Further, it has vividness of impression in reading as well as in representation.”

 

[Kain424]

"we must accept it in spite of the absurdity"

I agree with this in princible. It's when people question it that it becomes irksome, and I must reply as I did above.

 

[pxp]

I think there’re grounds to question some things at times - after all, the quote you cite isn’t uttered in a vacuum but has a number of caveats attached to it (particularly if an “absurdity” is to the detriment of the art form on display). Otherwise “anything goes,” which doesn’t seem quite right to me.

 

[Kain424]

That's fair. Especially when considering everyone's threshold for fantasy nonsense is different.