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

[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.

 

[Odysseus]

I never thought about the buildings being empty during the plate climb, but there really should have been scattered furniture at least. I didn't expect dead bodies, it's a T rated game, but still. I don't think it's a huge disappointment though.

 

[KindOfBlue]

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

The unnamed ones killed by the plate?

 

[FFShinra]

On the subject of Wedge, I do not think he is dead. I think he's been turned into an experiment of Hojo's. It'll be a horrific baleful monster plot line. That's my bet anyway.

 

[Odysseus]

He is fused with his cats, and becomes a horrible beast-man abomination that seeks cuddles only slightly more than he seeks death.

 

[looneymoon]

Hey, no resident evil spoilers in other threads pls!

 

[Ite]

Ed....ward....

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

But, like, half of the game is main characters randomly falling to fade-outs, without a scratch on them, including twice in the very dungeon where they rescue Wedge from himself falling, after Sector 7 falls on him in a fake-out death sequence. Why would they go through all that trouble just to have him do literally nothing and die in a way less impactful and relevant way? Wedge’s post-pillar arc is baffling enough, but I figure it has to be going somewhere, right? Otherwise, why defang the impact of the Pillar collapse?

Not that I'm saying it would justify defanging the plate collapse (I'm still not pleased with it), but I could maybe see them using that whole idea with Wedge as foreshadowing/an analogy of what we're going to get with Aerith's death.

I think we all kind of expect that the events in the City of the Ancients will proceed a little differently this time, whether that be Aerith surviving for the rest of the story or simply a short while longer. Assuming the latter will be the case, might Wedge's slightly prolonged arc be indicative of what we'll see with Aerith? It was, after all, with her inspiration that his most significant new moment came to be, as her encouragement gave him the resolve to effect change that saved people who weren't saved in the original game.

Wedge got to do a bit more good and save those people before the outcome of his efforts to influence things began amounting to nothing -- i.e. the Avalanche HQ helicopter he had sent in met an unceremonious firey end, and then his attempt to catch up with Barret and the others was prevented. Maybe this is what sort of post-fate avoidance arc we may see play out with Aerith?

Along these same lines, I've been wondering since VIIR came out if Wedge surviving his fall from the pillar maintenance tower without fatal injury in the first place this go round was meant to be a result of Cloud utilizing that grapple gun back at Reactor 5 when he fell there.

Divergence from the original events -- and consequent course correction by the Whispers -- had already occurred by then, and then occurred again as Cloud fell, with the Whispers making sure Cloud landed where he was meant to (i.e. in the church).

Did Wedge hear about Cloud's grapple gun exploit and, thus, thought to equip himself with one when heading to the pillar -- thus, making his subsequent moment with Aerith and the result of her encouragement possible?

 

[ForceStealer]

Maybe someone slipped the Whispers a few gil with a promise to have Wedge solve the Temple of the Ancients puzzles so that he still ultimately ends up being crushed.