You know, there's a chance they'll have the Zack flashback right after the lifestream sequence as originally planned.
I kinda dealt with that a bit in the below paragraph about what I figured a decent compromise between the two versions would be, explaining that the OG one had more narrative importance relating to the remake than the CC one. I'd actually written up to that point of my post before I added the quotes for context.
I saw your proposed version, but personally, I would still like to have the living legacy final conversation. I think it still meshes fine narratively IMO (I'd also just be surprised if they actually did cut the conversation out 100%).
You know, luck has a huge part in whether or not you die from stuff. Some people manage to survive getting shot in the face or hist by lightning. Other people get aneurysms while taking a shit. The OG models weren't exactly conductive to showing injuries and such. With the unchanging facial expressions, it's impressive they had enough range of movement to convey as much body language as they did. I mean, it's not like Cloud and Sephiroth stabbing each-other showed the injuries all that much.
To add some bits to the conversation: I think that Zack's brief and quickly wrapped-up death scene in the OG was in part related to the development cycle of the OG. As far as I've read, Zack was a very late addition to the OG story (in terms of the editing process of the story), with Nomura mentioning Zack was the last character he designed for the game. By the time of the OG release, Zack hadn't really been fleshed out as a character. Most likely there was no time left in the development of the OG to create a more visually advanced cutscene than what we ended up with.
to me, it makes more sense if the Shinra troops actually made sure Zack was dead before leaving. I chose the brutality of Zack dying before Cloud could do anything over Zack getting to say a few words to Cloud first, as much as that moment was nice. I also think it fits better with the OG's narrative and would rather they didn't change the tone. Maybe the OG death comes off as abrupt to you because we've probably gotten used to overlong dying speeches by any important character that ever dies ever. It's kinda like how I found the deaths in AoT refreshing for their relatively realistic approach of how various people would cope with dying in those situations.
But in the OG they also did the exact opposite with Cloud. So it is not like them leaving before Zack was fully dead is without precedence or out of the blue.
I chose the brutality of Zack dying before Cloud could do anything over Zack getting to say a few words to Cloud first, as much as that moment was nice. I also think it fits better with the OG's narrative and would rather they didn't change the tone. Maybe the OG death comes off as abrupt to you because we've probably gotten used to overlong dying speeches by any important character that ever dies ever. It's kinda like how I found the deaths in AoT refreshing for their relatively realistic approach of how various people would cope with dying in those situations.
No, I seen plenty of works of media (including AoT) where characters get killed off without being able to have any last words. Like I stated before I just think for how pivotal Zack's character is to Cloud and the plot I think his death scene should have had more gravitas to it (like Aerith regardless of whether or not he has final words). I just think the living legacy conversation makes the death more unique (it doesn't need to be completely sudden like Aerith's), adds thematically to the story well, and doesn't really change the tone for the worse IMO.
I really want them to keep the Shinra MPs consciously deciding Cloud's not worth killing after they took the time to make sure Zack was deader than dead. Really, the only way they could've made it harsher for Cloud would've been to literally kick him while he was down.
Maybe I missed or misinterpreted something, but I always thought part of the awesomeness of the Cloud/Zack thing (and this is more in the OG sense) was that, even though they end being huge figures in the other's life (or in Zack's case, 'afterlife'), they hardly knew each other. Cloud ends up stealing Zack's personality for himself, meeting and falling for the same girl in a similar fashion, Cloud is the last person Zack sees before he dies, so he's all but forced to pass the Buster Sword onto him...but the fact that Cloud was just a Shinra grunt he ended up on a mission with, and feeling some sympathy for, who was present for the unraveling of his whole reality and his untimely death, but otherwise just a stranger, remains. I always kind of liked that aspect...it's like this shadow that's always lurking around the blurry edges of perception, of what's going on in the plot, trickling its influence through, but it almost goes unrecognized for a while...and has a lot to do with coincidence. It's the key to everything, but it's also apart from it. I feel like beating us over the head with the ZACK STORY!!! In the 'main game' would take away from that a little bit, like having a Tyler Durden origin story in Fight Club. But I might just be being nostalgic
They were definitely more than strangers, even though we didn't get to see much of them together. Cloud's feelings towards Aerith weren't necessarily romantic (see LTD) but they were definitely profound.
Okay, okay, so he meets and has an intimate CONNECTION with a girl who loved Zack But it's still one of the ways in which their lives are intertwined...but after the fact. They have become "buds", but the point I was making was that, if they weren't the only person around, it's not exactly the person you would CHOOSE to pass your "living legacy" onto (always found that scene ridiculously heavy-handed). It's more like a dude you work with, or have class with, and maybe smoke a joint with from time to time.
I do believe Zack and Cloud were good buddies, I feel like the OG already implied as much (when, in the "real" story, Zack seems to check up on Cloud regularly), and in CC they seemed the type to catch up around a drink between missions (even if Cloud wasn't of drinking age, but you know what I mean). I even wonder (as sad as it may sound) if Zack was Cloud's only friend after he moved to Midgar.
Cloud was probably Cloud's first real friend, judging by what I get out of what we know about his childhood. If he had any other friends in Shinra, Zack and Cloud's situation doesn't really make keeping those friendships all that viable.
I would agree that he was Cloud's first real friend, for sure. And while the "emo" Cloud they portray in CC etc is still different from the outcast "dick" starting fights in Nibelheim in the OG, it does make sense for him to become somewhat more passive when faced with the shock and awe of a giant metropolis, coming from the bumfuck town that he does
Cloud wasn't emo in CC. He was only feeling down at justified moments, such as having to go back to his hometown despite not making it into SOLDIER. He's only "emo" for about half of ACC and was likely depressed from the terminal illness and not getting to properly deal with his issues. As I've said, it's pretty safe to say he has PTSD and a guilt complex. It's really hard to deal with stuff like that, even with 2 years.
As for Cloud starting fights, that doesn't mean he was a dick as a kid. In my experience, it's pretty common for kids who start fights to do so in retaliation for stuff like getting picked on. Since the whole town apparently blamed him for what happened to Tifa, I wouldn't be surprised if he was. Then you throw in Cloud's frustration and of course he'd end up in a bunch of fights. Part of the problem was likely the people in his hometown, so remove them from the equation and Cloud didn't really have a reason to keep ending up in fights while in Midgar.
Given that Rude has kidnapped Tifa, tried to kill her friends right in front of her and is still unreservedly loyal to Shin-Ra at the end of the day, I do not think that's true.
I think the only specific storyline hope I have is that I hope they do not involve Genesis in this game in any way. Please keep him awf my screen @god.
Besides that, I'm really just hoping they take advantage of this massively updated engine to maximise the tone. Just in general, I think that too few video games do. And by "maximise tone," I just mean that they reinforce what we are told in the narrative with what we are actually shown on the screen. The only instance of a remake I can immediately think of that improved on its predecessor in this regard (or rather, seems like it will) is Mirror's Edge: Catalyst.
In FFVII's case, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that what allows it to hold up after all these years--besides pacing--is its tone. There are a lot of tonal shifts throughout the game, but I'm replaying it right now and I'm actually floored by how many scenes that I previously blew through that have become legitimately horrifying. I mean, psychosis, confusion, a loss of identity, and being generally adrift without direction are very adult fears (especially if you want to scare people in their 20's-30's), but besides that, the scenes where Cloud has his drooling psychotic breaks, and the others where he's suffering from hallucinations, are truly disturbing. Being forced to watch the person you love slip into a vegetative coma is disturbing. The idea of losing your mental faculties to such a degree that you almost murder a loved one is very disturbing. AVALANCHE is disturbing. Midgar is disturbing. The concept of having millions of the dead's memories and emotions rushing through you at once (such that they displace and destroy your own) is just fucking terrifying. The scene where you escape from the Shin-Ra cell to find mangled corpses strewn about like confetti and blood festively splashed all over the walls is something out of a nightmare. And I never fully appreciated how devastating and violent the early deaths are (for real, Wedge is tossed from a height and smashes into smithereens), or just how damn sinister and tragic the casual, even whimsical, massacre of the thousands of people in Sector 7 actually is. It's also one of the reasons that I honestly find it reprehensible that Square's recharacterised Reno as a lovable bumbler who cares about the wellbeing of children when he's no doubt killed hundreds of them.
For that matter, there's an understated element of horror that is a constant undercurrent built right into the universe. Besides the overt ones like being forced to question your own sanity (in Tifa's case) or actually being psychologically compromised (in Cloud's), or how ominous/malicious building a facsimile town with facsimile people is, the very premise of a single corporation that undisputedly rules an entire planet and controls every aspect of daily life (down to if you die that day) is inherently petrifying. Even just environmentally. People living amongst clouds of toxic pollution and whatever is dropped from above, by necessity re-purposing decrepit buses for homes and creating tools from scrap metal and refuse, is all very significant (and sufficiently depressing).
I'd like to see that significance being reinforced aesthetically. The slums are described as a world without rain and "without night or day," so why not have slum dwellers dressed drastically differently from their plate counterparts. Have them wear lights attached to their clothing--which are themselves patched together from rags--as both a sartorial statement and a practicality. Maybe you can't get past some areas without wearing the equivalent of a hazmat suit, and maybe certain sectors are unnavigable without night vision implements. Perhaps the people themselves should look paler than normal, and vaguely ghastly. Give me scenes where NPCs stress the scarcity of water, or background dialogue about the crime and suicide rates. Let me walk past (or even explore) synthetic sun rooms that the denizens have found necessary for their mental health. Moreover, the game is a cyberpunk dystopia (Midgar in that new trailer honestly recalls Blade Runner), so make it look one. We know and are told that Shin-Ra are manipulators of politics and media (which they control completely), and are actively trying to root out resistance, so why not illustrate how oppressive of an environment the slums are by adding not only the paramilitary occupation, but obvious signs of constant mass surveillance and ubiquitous screens looping nonstop propoganda. Because Shin-Ra certainly has the technology and wherewithal to do so.
Likewise, I'd love it if the protagonists' savagery were rightfully counterpointed with Shin-Ra's. I mean, of all FF games, VII probably has the most adult themes, and when you think of it, like 99% of the named characters in the game are almost wholly unsympathetic. The only reason they have any appeal at all is because your perspective is occluded to theirs alone. It's very likely that both Shin-Ra and AVALANCHE are villains in the eyes of much of the rest of the population at large (which one NPC actually implies). AVALANCHE for their part are not only destroying property, but also murdering innocent people, ending lives and livelihoods, and, by virtue of corporate entanglement, depriving people of food, water, shelter, and medical care. They offer no alternative social organisation, they are never shown providing supplies or aid to the people on whose behalf they claim to be fighting, and their methods and goals are entirely focused on anarchy, violence, and destruction. By any practical analysis, they really are trying to bring about the end of the world or at least civilisation. And when it's weighted this way, it really lends credence to the characters' own assertions that their motivations were selfish and vengeful rather than genuinely moral or ideological.
Beyond that, making Midgar sufficiently awful can further reinforce the narrative beyond world building. Because Cloud starts off the game swearing that he doesn't care about the Planet or saving it, and even if that's just his asshole personality talking, the player themselves is equally uninvested in such heroics because they have no reason not to be. So whether the game is organised into a open/world map or just hubs, I'm hoping that there are major points of contrast between Aerith's house and the slums, and Midgar and its wasteland environs and under the sea/the more verdant/pristine locales in the game. FFVII is almost explicitly environmentalist (until they introduced oil in AC/C lmfao), so if there's an overworld, I hope it's as breathtaking and explorable as feasible and that the game actually shows the characters being suitably awed when escaping Midgar or arriving at Cosmo Canyon, especially if it's one of the ones who've ostensibly never much travelled before. In that way, you could increase immersion because both the protagonists and player can justifiably (and simultaneously) evolve from apathy to truly wanting to "save" something as large and as abstract as a planet.
I mean, just in general, the strongest, most resonant aspects of FFVII are the things that are dealt with in passing or only manifest by implication. Like, Jenova is evil and all, but to me the most convincing argument for fighting it, is that what's most worth saving are the people inhabiting the planet, that regardless of what you have seen, they do deserve the opportunity to live. And the most frightening aspect of Shin-Ra isn't that they spend their free time creating super soldiers and beasts, and dabbling in mutation and genetic experimentation. I feel like, thematically, all of that is fluff, or window dressing. It actually might be the least interesting part of the narrative. I'd much rather have a game that emphasises that Shin-Ra is most horrifying not for constructing some terrible monster, but for constructing a society in which a child can grow up deprived of light.
EDIT: I also hope they make Shin-Ra in general less stupid evil. I mean, mako extraction is obviously detrimental to the planet, there is a bigass death crater around the capital city and miles and miles of wasteland beyond it, every time a mako reactor touches a forest it dies, monsters are sprouting up everywhere, and the earf itself is rising up to murk they ass for more or less ruining everything. Like, why is this a point of contention. I mean, I don't mind kyahaha and gyahaha, but it'd be nice to have a character or two who is unshakably loyal to the company, isn't completely immoral, and truly believes they're actually improving people's lives and has this goal as a primary motivation.
Crisis Core tried, but it really got drowned out by the sound of four idiots shouting "hero" for, like, twenty-five hours. I just really want to see first-hand what kind of propaganda machine it is that's powerful enough to pull people like Zack to the wrong side of an imperialist war of aggression.
This is exactly the kind of design element I'm talking about. I mean, this is rather personal to me since I'm African and well aware that projects like these are out of necessity since corporations use the continent as a dumping ground for everything from e-waste to radioactive materials, but as far as fiction goes, these are the sort of details that frequently pop up in (darker) afrofuturist/African sci-fi media.
I'd imagine the slums of Midgar would be in a similar situation. And actually I do think the OG had shades of this already--not just the re-purposed bus houses and whatnot, but how Cloud's pauldron and bracer, and Tifa's metal elbow, steel toe, and most of her caestuses appear to be a load of scrapheap rubbish that they sort of just cobbled together.
Cloud wasn't emo in CC. He was only feeling down at justified moments, such as having to go back to his hometown despite not making it into SOLDIER. He's only "emo" for about half of ACC and was likely depressed from the terminal illness and not getting to properly deal with his issues. As I've said, it's pretty safe to say he has PTSD and a guilt complex. It's really hard to deal with stuff like that, even with 2 years.
As for Cloud starting fights, that doesn't mean he was a dick as a kid. In my experience, it's pretty common for kids who start fights to do so in retaliation for stuff like getting picked on. Since the whole town apparently blamed him for what happened to Tifa, I wouldn't be surprised if he was. Then you throw in Cloud's frustration and of course he'd end up in a bunch of fights. Part of the problem was likely the people in his hometown, so remove them from the equation and Cloud didn't really have a reason to keep ending up in fights while in Midgar.
Personally, I think you're abosulately right. Poor Cloud did have a pretty tough life, even when he was a child. I'm still puzzled on why he wasn't allowed to play with any other kids, and he did try and save Tifa when they both fell off the cliff(or bridge).
It wasn't until the end of AC that he finally forgived himself and has many friends(Tifa, Barret, Yuffie, Nanaki, Cid, Vincent, Reeve/Cait Sith), and two kids to love-Marlene and Denzell, and that he realised that Aerith and Zack never blamed him and always supported him, even in spirit from the Lifestream.
Vincent was in the similiar situation, only with his career as a Turk and his love-crisis with Lucrecia(for some stupid reason, Youtube seems to think that Lucrecia is actually spelled Lucrezia and that Lucrecia is spelled wrong.)
I hope they don't get rid of Elena and throw out the entire Compilation into the trash. She made appearences in FFVII, the novellas(OTWTAS), the book(The Kids are Alright) and the AC/C film.
Maybe somewhere in Cloud's memory in the remake, Genesis will be a blur in his fake memories which those memories belong to Zack who witnessed the entire thing of Sephiroth destorying Nibelhiem(I fully 100% blame Hojo and President ShinRa*Rufus's father* for that.)
Or they could make a new secret ending, like they did for FF Type-0 HD(though I have no idea why they did that, since the game should have been left alone as a stand-alone game with no other storylines, because the secret ending of the HD version doesn't make any sense, so that doesn't need the sequel like the stupid upcoming Type-Next).
Cloud himself witnessed Sephiroth destroying Nibelheim. Zack missed nearly the whole thing, he was inside Shinra Manor, only came out just before Sephiroth left for the reactor. And of all things, I find it weird to blame that one 100% on President Shinra and Hojo. There's no reason to think they wanted Sephiroth to snap, nor was there any way to know that he'd decide to take it out on the villagers of Nibelheim of all people. I feel quite justifed with having Sephiroth bare like 1, maybe 2% of the blame for what was entirely his idea and initiative.
Okay, okay, so he meets and has an intimate CONNECTION with a girl who loved Zack But it's still one of the ways in which their lives are intertwined...but after the fact. They have become "buds", but the point I was making was that, if they weren't the only person around, it's not exactly the person you would CHOOSE to pass your "living legacy" onto (always found that scene ridiculously heavy-handed). It's more like a dude you work with, or have class with, and maybe smoke a joint with from time to time.
I got the same impression from both the OG and Crisis Core - that they knew of each other, because they'd been on a couple of missions together, but prior to the Nibelheim incident they weren't close . Also, and I might be wrong here, my understanding is that in the original script, "living legacy" actually means something closer to " the proof that I existed". But we're swimming against the tide of the fandom majority here, who are determined that Zack and Cloud should be best friends, if not lovers (because, you know, Zack would only make that kind of sacrifice for someone he loved more than life itself; anyone else, he'd just run off and leave them to their fate. That's just the kind of guy he is).
If there's one thing I would like the remake to clarify, it is that prior to Nibelheim Zack and Cloud were not best friends, or even "friends" as most people would understand the term.
it's not exactly the person you would CHOOSE to pass your "living legacy" onto (always found that scene ridiculously heavy-handed). It's more like a dude you work with, or have class with, and maybe smoke a joint with from time to time.
Can I ask why not? I mean, I found the scene ridiculously heavy-handed too but having accepted that zack wants a living legacy at all, what's wrong with Cloud? A countryboy, grown up with stories of Sephiroth exploits in the Wutai War, who set out from home to travel to Shinra to become SOLDIER, who fought in missions against Genesis's clones, Angeal and AVALANCHE just like him and witnessed Sephiroth's downfall. By the time they were betrayed by Shinra five years before Zack's death, it already couldn't have been any other then Cloud. Even before **** hit the fan at Nibelheim, Zack merely put on a brave face for Aerith, but actually confided in Cloud concerning his more negative feelings concerning SOLDIER.
I got the same impression from both the OG and Crisis Core - that they knew of each other, because they'd been on a couple of missions together, but prior to the Nibelheim incident they weren't close . Also, and I might be wrong here, my understanding is that in the original script, "living legacy" actually means something closer to " the proof that I existed". But we're swimming against the tide of the fandom majority here, who are determined that Zack and Cloud should be best friends, if not lovers (because, you know, Zack would only make that kind of sacrifice for someone he loved more than life itself; anyone else, he'd just run off and leave them to their fate. That's just the kind of guy he is).
If there's one thing I would like the remake to clarify, it is that prior to Nibelheim Zack and Cloud were not best friends, or even "friends" as most people would understand the term.
I agree. Zack and Tifa are arguably Cloud's closest friends but he still doesn't know them all that well, and I think that's a very important aspect of Cloud's character. For much of the story line, he is very, very lonely because, IMO, he gets a little bit obsessed with the few people that seem to be willing to get to know him and then those people are taken away from him in some way.
And do people actually think that Zack only saved Cloud because he was in love with him? That's hilarious, if it had been Sephiroth catatonic in that mako tube, Zack would've dragged him through the village he burned down to save his life.
On another topic, but still on topic:
as I was replaying the game and going through the Temple of the Ancients, I was wondering about an addition for the remake: include a puzzle-style mini-game which the player would have to go through as Cait Sith, in order to shrink the black materia to pocket-size levels.
I disagree about Zack and Cloud not being good friends. What we see of their interactions imply they spent at least some of their time off together doing stuff. Zack repeatedly tries to cheer Cloud up when he's feeling discouraged about stuff, invited him to have lunch at least once and so on. They definitely knew each-other well enough to be friends pre-Nibelheim.
I don't mean to be quarrelsome, but I do enjoy debating this topic. I think the evidence we have for Zack and Cloud's friendship is wide open to interpretation. The OG gives us very little to go on. If we bring in the evidence from the Compilation, we have him and Cloud going on a couple of missions, and him inviting Cloud (and all his messmates) out to dinner once to buck him up. In Before Crisis, Zack risks his life (several times, IIRC) to save a couple of fellow SOLDIERs called Essai and Sebastian, and when the player Turk asks him if he's their friend, Zack replies, "I've been on a couple of missions with them, but that's all it takes to be friends with someone, right?" In other words, Zack is friends with everybody, and particularly with anybody who's been on a mission with him. He even considers Tseng to be a friend.
At the end of Crisis Core and in the OG he does say to Cloud, "We're friends, right?" but he would have said that to anybody whose comatose butt he'd dragged from one end of the planet to the other. Just because they're friends (like Zack and Sephiroth, and Zack and Genesis, and Zack and Lazard) it doesn't mean he confides in Cloud. It doesn't mean they are close. He never tells Cloud about Aerith (I guess we can imagine him doing so, but canonically the closest he gets to it is saying he knows a girl in Midgar who'll take them in, and then changing his mind because her mother won't stand for it).
Obviously when you've been working to save somebody's life as hard as Zack has with Cloud, you have a lot invested in their survival. All the same, Zack's willingness to die to keep Cloud alive makes him, in my eyes, more disinterestedly heroic than if he had died to save Aerith.
Licorice, that's definitely what I can see Zack as. He's totally the kind of guy who can make a friend/consider someone a friend only after meeting them a couple times. He's just that kind of person, and I think it has an impact on Cloud because, as pointed out, Cloud is quite a lonely person in most of his life.
I'm interested in seeing the flashbacks and memories of Cloud's past in the Remake; I wonder if they'll show more of his past even?
He never tells Cloud about Aerith (I guess we can imagine him doing so, but canonically the closest he gets to it is saying he knows a girl in Midgar who'll take them in, and then changing his mind because her mother won't stand for it).
I don't understand why you would see this as a measuring stick. He doesn't tell anyone about Aerith. Kunsel, Sephiroth, Tseng, Cissnei figured things out on their own. That makes them more in the know, but not actually closer friends then Cloud.
But it's still one of the ways in which their lives are intertwined...but after the fact. They have become "buds", but the point I was making was that, if they weren't the only person around, it's not exactly the person you would CHOOSE to pass your "living legacy" onto (always found that scene ridiculously heavy-handed). It's more like a dude you work with, or have class with, and maybe smoke a joint with from time to time.
