Starling
Pro Adventurer
The art style staying as shown in the trailer would be staying consistent. It's not as big a leap from the artwork as you make it out to be, and the backgrounds were designed in a way that seems to lend itself better to a semi-realistic style than an animesque cel-shaded style.I'm fine with change. All this on my part is simply a fantasy of what I would like to see, essentially if I had creative control of the product.
That being said, an HD fully 3D FF7 in cell-shaded graphics would, by most standards, also be a huge change. I simply want the art-style to be consistent, because I consider it by far to be FF7 strongest point separating it from earlier and later titles.
Without that, stylistically speaking, it's just an FF8/FF10/FF15 playing FF7 dress-up.
You make it sound like they're completely unrecognizable. Cloud's hair is still recognizably spiky, Tifa, Yuffie etc still look relatively the same. Really, you're making a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be, as the differences in appearance are largely superficial.Are we looking at the same footage? The artwork of the original and the actual graphical presentation of people in the trailer are, I repeat, completely different.
Comparing the two is like comparing the art-direction of Gears of War with Trigun, Dragonball, or Ah My Goddess.
I think you'd get more mileage out of your anallogy if you used another case of showing the same character in different styles, such as comparing different LoZ games.
As shown with the various depictions of Vincent throughout the years, they all seem to be relatively consistent. While the various examples of Link aren't the same individual, they're all still recognizable as Link regardless of the art style used. I'd also like to take the time to point out that it's perfectly fine for there to be differences between the appearance of characters in the artowrk and what they look like in the game. A minor example would be that SS Link look a lot more fierce in the artwork than he does in-game.
I was mostly referring to Cloud's hair, actually. As I've said above, even large stylistic changes should be able to keep the character recognizable, and the style that's been used previously does a good job translating the artwork into the character designs. I'm not really interested in most anime spin-off games so I haven't really paid much attention to the Naruto games. The thing is, you have to account for the locations and the characters. Cel-shading is best suited for stuff that's stylized in the way you'd see in comic books or 2D animation. Last Order gives us an example of FF7 characters in a straight up anime style and quite frankly, that's not the way to go. So far, it's the semi-realistic style FF games have been going towards that seems to work best, when taking both the characters and the locations into consideration.What you're referring to is, I get the impression of, is the presentation - the set-pieces. Yeah, Cloud is wearing his standard outfit, yes Midgard (at least the night-time shots) is true to the original. That's not the substance of the style though - that's the actn paint the exact same landscape and it will look different stylistically speaking even if the set-piece, the image, is the same.
As for the engine and textures - That's just wrong from a development stand-point. Have you played, or seen, any of the lastest Naruto games released the last few years? There is absolutely no reason what so ever why SE couldn't make a extremely high-fidelity, smoothly animated Cell-shaded version of FF7 for PS4. Non what so ever - They didn't opt out of such a style because of tehnical concerns, that I can tell you for certain.
They most likely didn't consider it at all to begin with, because FF7's style evolved with the release of the compilation, and now it is what it is. I'm just saying I don't like it.
It's still relevant in pointing out the problems in them attempting to make those changes. Understanding why it can't or is unlikely to happen helps better evaluate what expectations are reasonable and which ones aren't.Yeah, but that's irrelevant because I was not making an argument about what I would do if I wanted to make the game successful - but what they would have to do in order to truly please me as fan.
There is a big difference. I recognize that I won't get my way ever. I wasn't saying I should or that it would be clever of them to do so - simply that it's the way, in my perfect world, that it would end up being.
You made it sound like cel-shading is objectively superior for the purpose of representing the OG, making the current style out to be a bigger departure than it actually is, treating the current style as if it hardly has any relation to the way the characters are supposed to look.
I think you underestimate the importance of pre-existing fans. The fans are the ones who give feedback so of course it's a good idea to pay attention to what the fans think and why, while being mindful of the reasons in order to evaluate whether or not it's a good idea to take things in that direction.As for ignoring their old fans - I am not saying they will entirely - however, if this game is going to cost anywhere close to the same as other western AAA titles, they're also going to have to sell as much.
The original crowd alone does not cover that large of a population, meaning that whenever they hit a design snag in the development, where a fan-base preference butts heads with general consumer preferences, the original fan-base will lose out.
Add that to the fact that the "original" fan-base is divided as well, between original purists like myself, and those who came in with the compilation who has much less of a relationship with original material, there really isn't all that much incentive left for the producers to think too much about keeping it true to the original except in the most basic of ways in order to keep it recognizable.
You're the one who responded to my relatively short post with a wall of text, which makes it look like you did want to make a bigger argument out of it.Well it is - because I don't like the compilation.
The thing though, is that I pretty clearly made a point of the fact that most of my preferences are not likely to see the day of light, nor that I expect them to. I reserve the right to dislike the compilation and the direction of the remake, and you're free to disagree.
However, I did not make those statements to have an argument about whether they would work or not, which I think I made pretty clear as I have acknowledged over and over again that I don't think they would - which is why I don't understand why you'd bother to attempt to make it into an argument.
Just because you're expressing something you want doesn't mean no one can bring up counterpoints about it and discuss the other aspects of it. Too often I see people say things like that because they think the game won't be worth bothering with if it doesn't fit their desires regarding the art style, which I find rather limiting. Why would someone want to give up on a game over just that?I am not arguing that SE should make the game closer to the original style because I think that would be better for the franchise or for profits, or necessarily for some objective standard of what makes a game good - I simply said that's what I would want it to look like to really feel at home with it. There literally is nothing to argue about in such a statement.
Being pessimistic is like having disappointment as the default. It makes you biased against things without giving them a fair chance. On top of that, negativity feels more exhausting than positivity or even just neutrality on the matter.I find the opposite to be true. Be a pessimist about something up front, and you'll never get disappointed, and the thing you engage with will almost certainly exceed expectations and as an extension feel satisfying in direct relation to how much better it is than you expected.
I'm not saying you have to hype yourself up to assume it's the best thing ever, which would obviously set the bar too high for most things. You have to reach a balance where you're neither too positive, nor too negative. Take the limitations into consideration, but also keep in mind the possibilities that remain on the table until otherwise shown. Even if it doesn't turn out quite like yo were hoping, appreciate t for what it is rather than what you wanted it to be.Go in with hopes and dreams, tiny or huge notwithstanding, and when the product inevitably doesn't deliver to that standard, you're left with a sense of disappointment that makes some serious damage to your perception of the product for a very long time.
That's what happened with FF8 for me. FF7 and pre-release hype completely skewed my expectations of it. Got it, was disappointed. Hated on it for 2 years, before I replayed it and finally got to like it for what it is.
I'm not going to submit my experience of the remake with that, especially granted SE's history with the franchise the last decade or so. I'll go into this in a state of minus on my expectation meter, and I'll let the game convince me otherwise. Nothing else matters.
You have to be careful about stuff like that. Considering the length of the post though, I'm not all that surprised you'd want to cut out what you could. Personally, it's easier to keep track of when everything gets quoted.I didn't respond to the rest of your post, because it's pretty much repetition of things I've already disagreed with or covered.
The blandness I referred to was in CC, not AC. The OG makes use of plenty of generic NPC models so it's not something I consider worth getting too upset about in the compilation. CC's blandness was in the lack of detail in the location and some character renders that failed to breath life into them the way they should have. Considering the other games available on PSP, I'm sure they could've done better with that. I understand why they went with less colon for AC and it fits with the tone, even though they could've put more colour into it. The remake trailer is pretty promising about those not being an issue for it and it's not like Midgar doesn't have some impossible/impractical structure as well.To make a short reply to the common sentiment - I think the blandness you see in AC is a direct result of the new art-direction. It was a conscious choice to pick a color-palette that fits with the more realistic look of the world and the characters, and it was a conscious choice to center the plot and action around locations from the game that would work with the original style, rather than places like Cosmo Canyon or Gold Saucer that both are pretty whimsical and have physically impossible/super impractical architecture in them.
Part of what I said in my previous post was about how limiting your thinking as a consumer can limit the thinking of the game makers when they try to figure out what would go well with us. It's hurtful in the long run because it enforces the belief that those things can't happen despite being possible.You say you can envision the quirky scenes of the original in the remake with the style from the teaser and I believe you - I can too - That's not my problem. I am simply saying it's not likely to happen, because it will look jarring and weird with the new style.
This is a game we're talking about here - of course they can realize any scene they want.
I'm pretty sure I covered this earlier in the post.The reason I make this argument is because the compilation games and AC has not contained scenes, enemy models, and characters like in the original. NPCs, or in the case of AC, background characters have been toned down to fit the more somber design, gone are any sign of the locations with oddly shaped and disproportionate buildings among other things.
Artists worry about making their work look consistent and thematically wholesome. That's why the compilation in general has less quirks than the original, because while the quirks could be made, they would look out of place to most people given the overall new tone of those products.
Since the remake seems to be going to realistic route, it's not unreasonable to think that they might cut away content that meshes poorly with the new art-style - again, not because it cannot be done - but because they'll probably think of 100s of things that might work better.
SE still has enough of a sense of humour to keep that kind of thing in there. I mean, Wall Market is fairly important to the plot and can't really be removed without some serious changes and bracing for a riot. I wouldn't be too upset if they changed the CPR thing so you'd either save Pricilla's life without the weird, medically inaccurate depiction of CPR, whether it's by making it more accurate or by skipping the minigame segment. They're probably better off keeping some playable element of it though. If they're as dedicated to remaining faithful to the game as they said, then they would know to keep those parts.And while those new things might be good in their own right - I think the removal of the trippy and vibrantly silly things in FF7 is to take away a large part of what made FF7 so special to begin with.
Remove it, and you're left with a pretty standard, and melodramatic piece of art with very little left to single it out from other titles, especially with FF15 on the horizon.