Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge's Roles in the Remake Thread

[Makoeyes987]

Well then umm...

Okay, all those examples save for Dyne are main character SOLDIERs so we know that they'd survive. Heh, as for Dyne, I always imagined he survived on hatred for Shinra and life alone lol

 

[Odysseus]

but Rosso is basically a SOLDIER too, so I'm saying it's kind of funny she dies from the same fall Cloud was perfectly fine from in the original game.

 

[Ite]

You mean, the one time with Rufus? lol




Because Wedge's death scene is right after the explanation with Aerith and Red XIII of what the Arbiters of Fate really are, and as a demonstration of their dedication to protecting "destiny," they off the dude who seemingly survived against his "fate." That's the point. Fate caught up with him and he is one of the "corrections" (which the Arbiters of Fate even call it in their fight against them) they perform to make Destiny stay in line.

And this is a game that apparently went through great pains to keep its rating low, so. Him dying off screen is not that unusual or unheard of (especially in a FF title), they've done it before.

In the end, Wedge got to do far more than he ever did in the OG which is why I don't see how it's less impactful or relevant. He got to make a difference saving people's lives, helping Barret and the others and just being a more fleshed out character. But he still ends up dying. That's just the reality. And I would assume AU Zack will eventually die (again) given that there's definitely a cost to splitting a reality inadvertently.

I can see that. For some reason, they failed to properly communicate to me that’s what was happening, but on the other hand it also happened around the time I fully checked out of the story, so that could be on me.

 

[Makoeyes987]

but Rosso is basically a SOLDIER too, so I'm saying it's kind of funny she dies from the same fall Cloud was perfectly fine from in the original game.

And see that's what always blew my mind and annoyed me.

How they did that. That exact thing.

She just.... falls.

I mean, I sorta get it? She basically rage quits on life because she can't stand losing to a nerd like Vincent, when she's an elite killing machine who's bathed in the blood of a thousand soldiers.

 

[Odysseus]

The best part of that scene is how she's screaming about nobody being above her while actively lowering herself below Vincent.

 

[Eerie]

I didn’t even consider the idea that Wedge could have died.

He says the same thing in both the OG and Remake when he dies, I don't even know why Wedge dying is such a subject tbh. I can understand Jessie because the message is unclear with her, but Wedge? He ded. The fact that he worries about the same thing (did he help, did he make a difference) is soooooo telling.

 

[KindOfBlue]

To be honest, I had little to no investment in Jessie, Biggs, Wedge and the dropping of the plate when I played the OG because the way the game plays out, it’s like we hardly had any time to get to know the team or Sector 7 anyways and after it’s all taken away, the OG story kind of just...moves on? So it was weird to me when people said the platefall was less impactful than the OG because pretty much all of my investment in Avalanche and Sector 7 came from the remake itself in the first place, while the OG just kills a few people you barely know and then hardly addresses it for the rest of the game.

 

[Odysseus]

People more don't like that Avalanche actually evacuated the town before the plate fell, so all the random NPCs survived. I still think the remake handles it better on the whole, because less actual casualties is a fair trade for a more serious look at how such an even would effect our cast and the world around them. In the same vein, I doubt the loss of 2/3 of the trio will be so quickly forgotten in the sequels either, especially with Big man still around. These things carry more weight now.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Did anybody actually care about the NPCs in the original though lol?

 

[Makoeyes987]

All random NPCs didn't even survive. You clearly can observe several Sector Seven NPCs with names and shit straight up gone from the game. Weimer, the shop owners, and Merle survive, with half of the other blokes from the Neighborhood Watch KIA and 2/3rds of all civilians who lived in the town are presumed died. Hell, you see a bunch of them getting killed fighting Shinra.

To be honest, I had little to no investment in Jessie, Biggs, Wedge and the dropping of the plate when I played the OG because the way the game plays out, it’s like we hardly had any time to get to know the team or Sector 7 anyways and after it’s all taken away, the OG story kind of just...moves on?

The fact of the matter is, they're merely just tools for Barret's development and emotional growth in the OG. You feel bad for their deaths because of the tragedy of their fate, and their endearing characters, but they mostly serve as an impetus for Barret's character growth and healing. That's how they were played before.

Now that Barret carries far more depth and characterization this early in the game, they get to have more agency and depth as their own individual characters. They're more than just tools to develop Barret. Which is why them getting to do things other than just be casualties on the pillar makes sense. Wedge saving lives, Jessie having more depth, etc.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Did anybody actually care about the NPCs in the original though lol?

Me

Knowing the OG so well, it was hard for me to care any more about Wedge, Jessie and Biggs in the Remake than I did in the original. Chapter 4 is just a big chore to me and I still couldn't care less about Jessie's tragic backstory with the dying father. I used to be indifferent to her as a character, but I actively disliked her in the Remake.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Me

But...why?

 

[Odysseus]

The individual NPCs of the original game had much more personality than the large crowds in the remake do. There's Lic's beloved train man, the gossip lady, the kid with a crush on Marlene, JOHNNY, pipe dude, the guy who's weirdly obsessed with the support pillar, those two guards... some of them made it into the remake, but most didn't. I remember them all, so clearly they were doing something right originally.

 

[KindOfBlue]

Could it be that there was such little going on in the first place that it made it easier for them to stand out? Still though, it’s weird that a few lines of dialogue would garner any significant investment but that’s just me I guess

 

[Makoeyes987]

There's literally just as many NPCs with that much personality in the Remake, if not more, than the OG.

For every train conductor you get a Betty, Choco Sam, Madame M and Andrea. Like, it's not even the same league lol

The Sephiroth Copy in the pipe in Sector 5 has a name and an entire event now. And he was previously a SOLDIER before becoming a Sephiroth Copy. That's 100x better than, "this guy are sick."

Could it be that there was such little going on in the first place that it made it easier for them to stand out? Still though, it’s weird that a few lines of dialogue would garner any significant investment but that’s just me I guess

I mean, you said it. Lol, I just hope the NPCs from later on that I like get the same kinda treatment the Remake gave the faceless/nameless Chocobo Cart driver, we saw for 90 seconds in the OG.

 

[KindOfBlue]

I’ll admit though, I have a soft spot for those Shinra guards we meet in Junon that we teach the victory pose to but we at least got to bond with them even for just a brief time lmao

 

[Odysseus]

For every train conductor you get a Betty, Choco Sam, Madame M and Andrea. Like, it's not even the same league lol

I'd classify them as supporting cast more than just "NPCs."

There's less completely insignificant characters that have little stories, most of those people became more relevant, like Johnny.

The one in the remake that sticks out in my head the most is that creepy little girl in the playground at night toward the end of chapter 4. It feels like something is going on there lol.

 

[ForceStealer]

Chapter 4 is just a big chore to me

No way for me. The experience of getting to see a slice of life up on the plate was easily worth the price of admission. The atmosphere in that neighborhood with the Shinra building looming was incredible.

 

[Makoeyes987]

They're NPCs. They're advanced, well written and integral NPCs. They are non-playable characters who exist to further the world building and story of the game. Which NPCs like the train conductor also do. Except they do it better than just relying on 2 to 3 dialogue boxes. Because they actually involve you.

And honestly there are plenty of minor NPCs that have insignificant stories that are just self contained in the game. There's the sick lonely girl who comes out to see Cloud in Chapter 4 near the daycare, who's sickly and thinks Cloud's lonely too and wants to be his friend. There's the old dude who goes around picking up trash looking for scraps to eat in chapter 3. There's the daycare teacher in Chapter 3 who teaches the kids about Lifestream. There's also the girl with the jealous boyfriend who doesn't like her going to Wall Market and more.

The two Shinra Guards who guarded the gate to Sector Six during the Plate collapse got far more development and character than the OG gave them.

There's plenty if you take the time to listen to them and find them. Saying the OG is the only game that did that is just plain false.

 

[ForceStealer]

There's the daycare teacher in Chapter 3 who teaches the kids about Lifestream.

And the one who is a Honeybee by night

 

[Makoeyes987]

And the one who is a Honeybee by night

No, not the orphanage caretaker, although she's another awesome character. I meant the nameless NPC in sector 7 who you can hear talking to the kids about the Lifestream and teaching planet throry to children.

She doesn't ever get seen again once the plate falls too. Same with all the preschoolers.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

To answer kindof blue's question, I cared about them because, for me, they provided the right combination of personality + scope for imagination. Nothing in the Remake version of the platefall equalled, for me, the horror of that one screen where the plate can be seen falling outside the window and the man inside his house lets out a silent scream, and you know already that it's too late for him to run. Maybe it's precisely because so much was left to my imagination that the scene had such impact. The Remake was both too realistic to leave much scope for my imagination, and not realistic enough, so that ultimately the horror itself didn't feel so real to me and thus fell flat.

The chapter where Cloud, Barret and Tifa climb through the debris to the plate was, for me, unbelievably disappointing because of the lack of the detritus of human lives destroyed by the atrocity of the plate drop. The ruined buildings looked as if they'd never been occupied, either as homes or as offices.

After 9/11, New York was blanketed in scraps of paper, items of clothing, and other bits and pieces of lives cut short.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/...trade-center-s-past-in-a-sad-paper-trail.html

Here's a description of a bombed neighbourhood in Aleppo c. 2013:
"As a few survivors scavenged Tuesday through the massive heap of rubble, a boy gingerly climbed the ruins past a large, soggy teddy bear, next to a single child’s shoe. Women’s cosmetics, covered in a fine film of concrete dust, were scattered on another pile of broken cinder blocks. A battered front-loading washing machine came to rest at the bottom of a two-storey heap of broken concrete and twisted rebar. It was littered with tattered clothes, splintered furniture and other household objects, a rubble spillway of shattered middle-class lives."
Toronto Star

That's what I was able to imagine in the OG, and what I expected to see in chapter 15.

 

[Odysseus]

falling outside the window and the man inside his house lets out a silent scream, and you know already that it's too late for him to run.

That was a news anchor on a tv screen, actually. The room is in the honey bee inn, it's the unused break room. Still a great moment that the remake lacks though.

 

[KindOfBlue]

the horror of that one screen where the plate can be seen falling outside the window and the man inside his house lets out a silent scream, and you know already that it's too late for him to run.

I don’t remember hearing a scream so I’ll have to rewatch that but I do remember the people getting crushed during the prerendered cutscene of the remake just before the plate falls on Wedge...I dunno, nothing here stood out to me any more or less than the OG, it’s nameless people getting crushed either way

The chapter where Cloud, Barret and Tifa climb through the debris to the plate was, for me, unbelievably disappointing because of the lack of the detritus of human lives destroyed by the atrocity of the plate drop. The ruined buildings looked as if they'd never been occupied, either as homes or as offices.

I was more focused on the action at that point so I certainly didn’t notice, but my whole thing is that I didn’t know enough about Sector 7 and it’s inhabitants to really care when they died in the OG. I guess for me, no amount of artsy framing and set design makes up for being a person I’m actually invested in but in terms of comparing it to the OG, I don’t know if leaving stuff to the imagination is any better than actually seeing the suffering firsthand, especially with how quickly we move on to more important things in the OG.

I don’t mean to derail the thread from the topic but to circle back to Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge, I quite literally did not think about them for the rest of the OG until Barret mentioned them in Cosmo Canyon and then not at all after, so I think my interest in them now especially with the ending of the remake is a pretty big step up right?

 

[Saven]

Did anybody actually care about the NPCs in the original though lol?

Yes, judging by the number of topics made about them.