Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (story/content)

[Sorcerologist]

It's a pipe dream of mine that the original members of Team Silent help with the (re)creation of the Nibelheim scene, and with the game in general. I think that horror really suits FFVII.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

The stuff in Chapter 13 of XV was an attempt at exploring horror-type gameplay. Any input from folks with more experience to help dig in on that kind of presentation for the Remake's Nibelheim and the Shinra Manor would be really amazing. I'm hoping that the recent updates around map interactivity might open up those things.




X

 

[Kain424]

Absolutely. When they talked about basically having to start over "from zero" in each each area, I got kind of giddy just imagining such things. I hope they will be adding bits more to the lore you can find if you look. Maybe even little easter eggs. In the original, when you searched the library in the basement it was pretty scant. Something like "object X found in such stratum indicates an age of over 2000 years" could now be much more fleshed out. Possibly even have a book with photographs and notes, like your journal in Tomb Raider or the Uncharted games. I may be getting ahead of myself, but additional depth on such a scale would be amazing.

 

[Gary Caelum]

My big hopes for the remake are just that they don't mess with the core story points, but that they add a lot of new meat to the bones with new side-quests and subplots.
I also want them to recreate the world as faithfully as possible. By that I mean I really want Kalm to look exactly like it did in the original. I don't want it to have been replaced by just a generic medieval town, like they did in Dirge of Cerberus.
I really hope it's full to-scale open world like FFXV was. I love how open world games give you that sense of continuity with the world, in that you can see major landmarks from quite a distance. I'm imagining just chilling at the Chocobo Farm whilst being able to see the Shinra Building at the center of Midgar poking over the hills in the distance.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

"I really hope it's full to-scale open world like FFXV was. I love how open world games give you that sense of continuity with the world, in that you can see major landmarks from quite a distance."

I know what you mean.

 

[Gary Caelum]

The only potential problem with a to-scale open world, as several people have pointed out, is that the original game world would end up being like 50 miles across.

They have the problem of the fact that we have a vague sense of how big Midgar is and we also know it's fairly small compared to the continent as a whole. So they'd have to either make an insanely big open-world, or they'd have to adjust some of the relative sizes quite severely. e.g maybe instead of Midgar being about 1/50th the size of the eastern continent, it's now going to be 1/10th the size of it.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yes, that's a challenge they've created for themselves. I personally feel that unless their world is flat, Midgar would be too far away to be visible from the Chocobo Farm, though it would be visible from Kalm. You can walk from Midgar to Kalm in a couple of hours, so they're maximum about 10-12 k apart.

 

[Ite]

It's all about what you find more immersive or realistic. I for one have a real easy time suspending my disbelief when I look at a "world map" in the style of FF1-9, far more so than a 1/1 scale map where the whole planet is the size of a small city. But I understand that people can feel more connected to the character's experience when they look at things as they would see them in real life. The studio can't have it both ways, and the majority of buyers tend to prefer the latter approach, so I imagine that we will see an open world outside of Midgar.

My hope is that they will do something like FF12, where leaving Rabanastre faded you to black and placed you far afield, with the city as a distant background. That helped immerse me in the scale of FF12's world while still giving me a realistic representation of what the characters would see. In the original FF7, you could run laps around Midgar but I really wouldn't mind if there was an invisible gate half-way between Kalm and Midgar. The trick, then, is figuring out what to do when you get control of the Highwind. Oh! What am I saying, you haven't been able to fly an airship since FF9.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

The Regalia becomes an airship in FFXV. But I prefered driving.

 

[Ite]

The Regalia becomes an airship in FFXV.

!!!!!!!!

 

[Gary Caelum]

The Regalia becomes an airship in FFXV. But I prefered driving.

Lol technically it doesn't. You can only get it after finishing the game, therefore it's not canon and doesn't officially exist.

I'm not even joking. This is how my brain works!

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I take your point... but finishing the game is easy. It has to be if I can do it. For my money the real game comes after the game, when me and my best buds can go back to racketing round the world killing bounties and catching frogs.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Yeah I just have a pedantic thing where I like it to be playable within the main storyline.
Most Final Fantasies allow you to do all of the "end-game" content just before you fight the final boss, rather than after. Wish XV had done the same.

 

[pxp]

Yes, that's a challenge they've created for themselves. I personally feel that unless their world is flat, Midgar would be too far away to be visible from the Chocobo Farm, though it would be visible from Kalm. You can walk from Midgar to Kalm in a couple of hours, so they're maximum about 10-12 k apart.

Didn’t the original teaser show that Kalm was 50 miles from Midgar? Possibly it’s 50km, but either way that’s a lot more than 10-12km, so I’m not even sure if it’d be possible to see Midgar from there (unlike in the OG obviously) unless the terrain is elevated substantially. All subject to change though obviously.

 

[Clement Rage]

I tend to assume post game content is non canon. Otherwise, we get stuff like this:

Snow: Hey guys, you you what will cheer us up after losing half our party to crystal and a random vortex? Let's go kill all the Adamantoises!

Sazh: That's super out of character for all of us, is of no benefit at all and is likely to kill us all, but sure, why not?

Re open world, only if it can be done without coming at the expense of the main story.

 

[Gary Caelum]

All the adamontoise stuff can be done before the final boss though (I think).

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Didn’t the original teaser show that Kalm was 50 miles from Midgar? Possibly it’s 50km, but either way that’s a lot more than 10-12km, so I’m not even sure if it’d be possible to see Midgar from there (unlike in the OG obviously) unless the terrain is elevated substantially. All subject to change though obviously.

With all that's changed in the development since that time, I wouldn't place too much stock in that original announcement trailer -- but even going off that, the sign only tells us Kalm is 51km from the sign. Half that distance or more could still be within Midgar.

 

[ChipNoir]

I kinda feel given how different the architecture is, the highway has to be on the plate edge, or it doesn't exist at all.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Didn’t the original teaser show that Kalm was 50 miles from Midgar? Possibly it’s 50km, but either way that’s a lot more than 10-12km, so I’m not even sure if it’d be possible to see Midgar from there (unlike in the OG obviously) unless the terrain is elevated substantially. All subject to change though obviously.

Damn, I never even noticed that. You're right. It says Kalm 51, Junon 133.

Ok so either they've changed that, or we're definitely not getting to-scale open world.

Half that distance or more could still be within Midgar.

That would violate ever image we've ever seen of Midgar. The radius of the city has always been about twice the height of the central tower. So unless Shinra HQ is 10 miles high, that can't be true.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I kinda feel given how different the architecture is, the highway has to be on the plate edge, or it doesn't exist at all.

But which edge?

Right before that shot of the highway we see a train route board light up at "south edge." If we're on the south side of Midgar, we have the whole diameter of the city to subtract from those 51km.

 

[Kain424]

Doesn't Jesse literally tell us the dimensions? I can't remember.

 

[ChipNoir]

Only that the plate is 50 meters above ground IIRC.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

This highlights where reality and authorial intent don't always jibe. Midgar was conceived as being large enough that Tokyo's 23 special wards would fit within -- but at the same time, Jesse says the plate is only 50 meters from the surface. Which is absurd.

Even a quick glance would tell you the plate is more than 164 feet high.

Coming back around to Midgar's diameter, let's say that it is just twice the height of the Shin-Ra building and go with that for a second. In the real world, our tallest building is the Burj Khalifa at 2,717 feet. Check out pictures of that and you will believe it could be the height of the Shin-Ra building.

Doubling its height, though, would give us just 5,434 feet -- only a tad past one mile. Midgar is, I would argue, obviously meant to be more than one mile across. At less than eight-tenths of a square mile (going by the "area of a circle" formula), not only is that not anywhere close to encompassing the area of the 23 special wards, it's not even halfway sufficient to encompass the downtown area of Charlotte, North Carolina (it would still come up significantly short on this even with a diameter of a mile and a half).

Of course, assuming the Shin-Ra building is equal to half the diameter of Midgar, in order for the area of the city to be able to absorb Tokyo's 23 wards, the diameter of Midgar would need to be 17.5 miles, requiring the Shin-Ra building be 8.75 miles tall.

I do think we can safely rule that out, particularly for a building that's only supposed to have 69 floors, but the only thing that makes "sense" is that the Shin-Ra building is still meant to be ridiculously enormous -- like at-least-a-few-miles-tall enormous.

Which ... isn't altogether out of the question, I guess? The building does need to be big enough that the location of the Turks' secret headquarters went undiscovered for three years while President Shinra had Scarlet searching for it.

I don't know, these game designers weren't civil engineers.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Well whatever happens, if all of Midgar is explorable, it'll be massive. I expect it wont be though. I expect it will be a bit like Altissia in FFXV. Lots of nice background scenery but you can only explore like 1/5th of the whole city.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

Well whatever happens, if all of Midgar is explorable, it'll be massive. I expect it wont be though. I expect it will be a bit like Altissia in FFXV. Lots of nice background scenery but you can only explore like 1/5th of the whole city.

I want to say I believe Square won't make that mistake but at this point who knows. I HOPE the majority of Midgar is explorable.