Part 3 Structure for Story and Locations

[Golden Ear]

Some assume that Part 3 will start heading towards the North to Icicle Inn, following the trajectory up to the Whirlwind Maze where we all know what goes down and who gets lost.

Although some have speculated that Part 3 starts at Rocket Town, because if we immediately head to Icicle Inn it quickly locks the story into the chain of events where we lose Cloud too soon from a story perspective in context of a single game.





Here's some more reasons why there could be new arrangements to location order at the beginning (or 1st Act) of the game:

• Getting the Airship is something that should be reserved for later in an RPG game. If we go directly to the North at the start of the game we get the Highwind too soon. Argument being that once we get the Airship, that is when the game opens up but it shouldn't open up till later.

• When should be the moment in the story when we get Cloud back from the lifestream?
  In the OG game that is the moment where it feels like you've been through all of the ups and downs of the journey and we are finally ready to go kick ass so to speak, finish off the villain in the finale.

It seems like it would feel natural for that to happen as the transition from Act 2-3. All of this depends on when we lose Cloud and how long he's absent. Should Cloud be absent for the entirety of the 2nd Act? How long should that act be and what would be included in it?


In the OG we basically:

-Lose Cloud, escape Junon on the Highwind
-Find him washed up in MIdeel, Tifa stays we play as Cid
-Go on some huge Materia Mission
-Come back back to MIdeel, lifestream erupts they fall in, come out and we have the real Cloud back ready to rock.

If all of these events get expanded upon in the OG then that would probably cover a significant amount of time without having Cloud in our party. I'm just considering how long they would want us to go without Cloud in the game?

Then you start to think about where they'll fit in Wutai? It's hard to see going to Wutai without Cloud (although possible) so they either put it in after we get him back or maybe even (along with Rocket Town) before we go to Icicle Inn. That way they would provide more time before we lose Cloud and acquire the Airship. Plus what kind of story beats will be for Wutai, how will that effect the story structure and trajectory?




If it's true the 3rd Act is when we get Cloud back, I feel like that would put a ton of things to be placed into that last Act if we aren't going to move more things (ex. RT, Wutai, Bone Village) to the 1st Act. There's the Return to Midgar, fighting all the Weapons around the World, going back to Cosmo Canyon + the Forgotten City with Bugenhagen, going underwater in the Sub and sunken Gelnika, potentially other places like the Ancient Forest, exploring Islands finding Knights of the Round etc.

However, all things considered, Cloud is in a much different mental space at the end of Rebirth compared to the OG at this point, would it make sense to do stuff in Rocket Town and Wutai rather than head directly to the events of the Whirlwind Maze illusion with Cloud not even believing that reality is the same as Barret and Tifa? Do the devs want Part 3 to be "The Airship Game" and have it earlier than much later when the game "opens up"?


Anyway, I could bring up more points of interest for this topic but I'm really curious what everyone else thinks here.


How are they going to structure this game?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

First of all, excellent topic!

I think that one of the important things about Part 3 is that it exists as a standalone game, so you need a section for that introductory part of the narrative to get a sense of what's going on with the party the way that Kalm serves in the original game for Disc 2, as well as for Rebirth. There also needs to be a way to catalyze the introduction of various tools for the players, and Rocket Town is perfect for this.

Rocket Town kicks off some low-level Shinra conflict with Palmer, we get some deeper backstory with Cid & Shera which has a thematic focus around dysfunctional relationship that stems from someone giving up their own life for the dream of others (the failed rocket launch). This not only gets us the backstory that we need, but it immediately has parallels that will hit all of the party in a very different way emotionally that will highlight that Cloud is very much not ok, and is not experiencing the same perspective on his current reality as everyone else is with regard to what's happened with Aerith.

This sets up everything for re-introducing the antagonistic relationship with Shinra BEFORE they get all buddy-buddy with you at the North Crater, and that allows you to kick that back off in heading towards Icicle Inn and processing everything that has to do with Aerith's past with Shinra, moving into Cloud's trip into the Lifestream & Meteor – HOWEVER, I'm fairly certain we won't jump there yet.

I think that it's important for getting some exploration in the Tiny Bronco, so that there's a juxtaposition of the upgrade to the Highwind, but ALSO because you want to be able to get context on what the various parts of the world are like BEFORE Meteor is in the sky since that is a drastic tonal shift in the doomsday & fear that will be a component of that.

This is where I think that it makes the most sense for Yuffie to still be focused on saving Wutai and screwing Shinra, because it's not making her motives come into conflict with saving the world. Luckily, Tifa's experience in the Lifestream in Rebirth and the Weapons offer an important re-introduction that aligns to Yuffie's INTERmission quest for the materia that Scarlet's been attempting to synthesize that also revisits her own troubled experiences with loss around Sonon, and complicates the relationship that she has with her father. Additionally, we also need time to develop the backstory with Vincent and his connection to Sephiroth BEFORE Cloud goes MIA, so that they're his companions even while he's all broken and don't just become close afterwards.

As such, Yuffie's experience with Nero and Vincent's connection to Deepground means that there're a lot of ways that we can start digging deeper into all of the messed up science that's a clear concern with Cloud's mental & physical health (which he and Tifa discussed in Gongaga, which was also adjacent to the Weapons & other themes). Whatever new content we end up getting for that also means that we have sections that will be there to build up the gameplay of Cid & Vincent right at the start of the game, which is critically important just from a gameplay perspective that they really have their arcs & time to shine when it comes to digging into them collectively attempting to get all of the understanding of Sephiroth that they can OUTSIDE of Cloud's gut feelings as the unreliable narrator.

This gives breathing room, plenty of time to check in with the whole party and see how they're doing before going to Icicle Inn and needing to face the parts of that tragedy head-on, and fully understanding what the alignment with Shinra means. Cid, Vincent, & Yuffie have narrative arcs that need some sort of before & after to them, and this sets that up since even if she settles everything with her dad in Wutai – her unfinished business with Sonon is still in Midgar, but she can't really come to terms with that until she understands who he was, and he was someone who greatly respected her dad. This also gives Wutai time where it's still got the "the Turks are ignoring their orders because Corneo is a piece of shit" that reshapes the nature of your relationship before the Whirlwind Maze & Meteor which feels important.

Then, it gives plenty of time for when Cloud goes sailing off the deep end before everything absolutely goes to hell, Meteor gets summoned, and the Weapons become an active threat that everything feels like it's being twisted around using elements that even a brand new player would fully understand and have context for, and as returning players, it allows us more time to try to grapple with all of the spinning plates and understand what's up initially before the status quo gets obliterated and the whole Junon Sapphire Weapon assault happens. (Plus, Yuffie's story gives extra motivation to want to see Tifa slap the shit out of her on the Sister Ray).

It sets the stage for all of the follow-up to flow fairly smoothly, and makes visiting & revisiting locations once you've got the Highwind FEEL very different to when you had the Tiny Bronco, and that the scope of the game shifts with that upgrade as well. That sets up for the section of the game around Mideel and without Cloud to have a limited exploration & feeling fractured, then leading to that reconciliation with all of the rest of everything has its time to sink in and feel like it's the real end times to try and you're being pulled in countless directions to do everything you can to win the day, and follow that momentum into the other Huge Materia missions, the other Weapon battles, KotR, Return to Midgar, etc. where you've managed to do everything BUT go back to take down Sephiroth – since those all hold meaning of doing everything you can for those you care about because you can't assume you're all gonna make it out of that fight alive given what happened last time, and you have to know what that means.

Then that holds the weight as a way to emotionally build up towards everyone in the party going their separate ways before eventually reuniting at the Highwind and the ACTUAL endgame kicking in, so that it emotionally & narratively lines up with that all as a more self-contained experience.





X

 

[Mayo Master]

The ideas you've presented here for a potential game structure are sound, and I agree they would provide a good balance between the introduction of main background/story elements as well as new gameplay before switching gears with the journey to the Northern Crater. However, narratively I'm not sure how they want to arrange for it: at the end of Rebirth, Cloud is set like a bloodhound on tracking Sephiroth northwards and there seems to be little motivation for the party to stray from this path. They might have to introduce a new plot point to make them change course... unless they simply decide to relocate Rocket Town to the North of the Forgotten Capital and has the justification of a rest stop (fairly weak point, but it might be sufficient to serve its purpose). Deviating from the path to the Northern Crater to get through the Wutai story arc first, however, seems a bit too much of a twist to me - without the introduction of new narrative elements.

 

[Theozilla]

I don't think Wutai will be visited before the Northern Crater, but I do think there is a decent chance that the Rocket Town region will be visited first. They could easily introduce something like bad weather prevents the Tiny Bronco from progressing any further (perhaps even contrast the Tiny Bronco's capabilities with showing Shinra progressing ahead North first with the Highwind), and forcing the Tiny Bronco to return to Rocket Town so the party can figure out an alternative route to progress through the Northern Continent (i.e. forcing the party to progress on foot).

 

[Roger]

Putting Rocket Town first, under the excuse that they need make further modifications or fueling up for the haul north seems easy enough. I feel putting Wutai before the Northern Continent as well takes a lot of wind out of the sail for the main narrative.

 

[Eerie]

I'm completely against it And I do have a good reason for it: we had SOLDIER Cloud for two FULL games, and we will begin third game with SOLDIER Cloud too. And I think that if you want to give the LS as a pay off towards 2/3rd of the game, we will never spend enough time with real Cloud.

The pay off of the trilogy is to have real Cloud back for the longest time possible, so we can get to know him, which cannot happen if you delay him towards the end of p3!! Imagine then, the SOLDIER persona will be imprinted forever as the real one in fans' minds, that'd be terrible (AC/C is already doing so bad on that front).

Beside that, Hamaguchi has said it best: the party will now have to carry Aerith's wish to save the Planet, and you cannot do that with Cloud in the state he's in. We need him back for the story to go on. There is a reason why there's a "break" in his sky, it's that the end of his SOLDIER persona is near - we are getting closer to the Northern Crater, which he desperatly seeks to reach for the Reunion (without even realising it). Personally I think we may have one stop before Icicle Inn, but whatever we're going to do, it's not going to be something really long. Rebirth's ending has shown that the story is on its rails towards NC, IMHO. And that is good because the players definitely need to learn who Cloud Strife is.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Putting Rocket Town first, under the excuse that they need make further modifications or fueling up for the haul north seems easy enough. I feel putting Wutai before the Northern Continent as well takes a lot of wind out of the sail for the main narrative.

With the limitations of the Tiny Bronco as a factor bringing them back to the Western Continent, there's also the fact that the Nibelheim cloaked patients are moving north at the end of Rebirth, which also establishes a timeline of things that has to take place. I'd make the argument that Wutai is critical to happen at the same time.

If you just look at the FFVII world map regionally – going north from Nibelheim is Rocket Town, Wutai, & Icicle Village. Rocket Town even has a series of islands that move directly towards Wutai, so if we're still keeping with the knowledge that the cloaked patients are who we're following (because they're all at the Whirlwind Maze by the time Cloud & Co. show up – which Cloud's had constant precognitive flashing visions of ever since Remake), they have to start to get there FIRST, and following them will take the party to all of those locations.

This already aligns with things going on, and gives Vincent more time to bring up his part connection to both Shinra science AND the Turks – not to mention that the Nibelheim Reactor is ALSO where the failed Wutai operation was just carried out that got all of its operatives killed. Everything with that has been stoking the fires of Shinra's aggression, like the firing of the Junon Cannon was an amplification of the tensions between them and in violation of their current peace treaty to try and spark an attack, so that Shinra can justify aggression under the guise of retaliation against terrorist forces, which has been part of their narrative ever since they blamed the first Reactor's destruction on Wutai.

The global circumstances between Wutai & Shinra are a HUGE part of the narrative connected to everything Sephiroth has been actively stoking via the Glenn & Rufus situation as a means of pulling attention. After the party know what they do about Vincent, and when it turns out that the Turks are in Wutai while everyone's in close geographic proximity to her home with everything else going on, it means that Yuffie has the highest motivation to grab everyone's materia during the night and ditch when she's in proximity to be able to accomplish that AND when it looks like her people literally need it before Shinra moves a serious military operation against them which has been constantly building up and EVERYONE she cares about gets killed. ESPECIALLY after both Sonon AND Aerith have gotten killed in front of her as well in just the last couple weeks/days, there's no way she's gonna be able to not do that at this precise moment. (Plus, this makes her actions doing that feel monumentally more justified and in line with the way the story is being told).

That HAS to kick off BEFORE Meteor, because that as a looming, unstoppable extinction event rips the wind out of the sails of the entire arc of, "escalation of national tensions around a false peace back tow open war" WAY more than Wutai possibly slows down the main narrative.

That is all very closely intertwined with all of the things that the start of part 3 is geographically situated to use as its starting region, and it STILL all naturally pushes the action, characters, and narrative directly to Icicle Inn, with Shinra in very close pursuit, so that when everyone's all together in the same space as Cloud turns against the party, the forced alignment of necessity between Avalanche & Shinra carries the full weight of what that means... which feeds directly in to Shinra doing what you know they're going to do, and scapegoating Tifa for a public execution while Cloud's gone, and they need to steal the Highwind to kick everything off... in Junon where Yuffie initially attempted to assassinate Rufus, and all of those themes are gonna loop back around during Sapphire Weapon's attack where the cannon being dusted off is why they survive.

There's a ton of critical narrative that's been established in Remake & Rebirth that's got a lot where it has to re-establish those stakes at the start of part 3, and that's all of the hooks that they need to do it, and also make the Highwind upgrade feel meaningful, while laying the groundwork for the Huge Materia quest to hold a sense of necessary urgency while Cloud is out of the picture.

(Again, it's also important to underscore that especially with Junon & the Underwater Reactor, all of the Huge Materia coming from the Reactors are really big parallels to nuclear arms & the tensions with US military presence in Japan that's central to those Wutai elements, and those stakes really need space to be built out into a few different stages of the parts of that struggle and how those emotions are processed and represented during the various parts of that in the original game, but ESPECIALLY with the updates and additions from the Remake project).




X

 

[Clement Rage]

Be funny if they repair the Tiny Bronco and then crash it again.

One of the key drivers of the war is apparently the Magnus materia, seems like that could link to the Huge materia plot. It's probably the best way to get stakes out of the Wutai plot, where the player is supposed to be going 'agh, we are wasting time with this instead of dealing with Sephiroth'

They also mentioned borders being closed, maybe they're obstructed in some way at first (Glacier impassable at this time of year, Shinra has snowfields locked down, whatever.), and have some Wutai related plot, get free to go to North Cave and and then get caught up in things again for the Huge Materia plot.

Cloud would then have to recover and relapse? He's been very much becoming a 'no nonsense, no distractions' person under Sephiroth's influence. Delaying him from getting to the North Cave also delays Sephiroth's plans, which would defeat the point of him kicking off the Wutai war as a distraction because it would impede him too.

In Rebirth they were willing to play around with geography to keep the story moving. We can't rely on the old map.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

To be fair, with the Glenn reveal at the end of Rebirth – the tensions between Shinra & Wutai boiling up towards more direct conflict is still a part of "dealing with Sephiroth" just as much as any of the other things where he's directly shown up somewhere. He's constantly absorbing power from the Lifestream to heal either way, so he's not really on a strict timeline and basically has Cloud in his pocket. Being circumstantially made to go to a few different places where Cloud is feeling compelled to move north also helps to give context for what the call of Reunion is like as an experience for him that's like what the other Nibelheim subjects are experiencing.

Speaking of Glenn, it's also worth mentioning that Ever Crisis has been setting up a boatload of historical content around Wutai & Masamune, so there's a potential to be learning more about how Sephiroth came to be who he is as they're working their way towards confronting him. That also feeds directly into Vincent's backstory which, like Yuffie's is almost certainly going to be expanded upon here since we'll finally be having him as a playable character for the first time and he needs that space to set up similar to what we're likely to get for Cid by starting off in Rocket Town.

Another part that's connected to the Yuffie date in Rebirth is that Zack's involvement around the end of the Wutai War means that she has her own connection to elements of Zack's story that can be used to re-establish those little broken parts of Cloud in Aerith's absence since those are still a core part of his increasingly fractured identity, which circle back to Nibelheim, Shinra science, and the various things connected to Vincent's backstory with Lucrecia, as I can see that along with the Wutai elements in Ever Crisis being some of the ancillary details that are being set up to allow that story to be expanded upon, and even things like the conversation between Lucrecia & Vincent there hold extra weight if they take place before you go to confront Sephiroth. That's also got a geographic proximity to Rocket Town & Nibelheim where I could potentially see them bumping the initial visit there to take place prior to the acquisition of the Submarine or the move north – specifically because Vincent & Cid are the new party members and getting them playable as soon as possible is a fairly big priority, since they're only in 1/3 of the games.

In Rebirth, Cid & Vincent feel very much like the adults of the group and making sure that everyone knows what they're in for both practically with the transportation as well as historically with how things got to this point are the important stakes to set up as early in the game as possible. This all feels like it's got the best coverage of those various elements when considering looking at Part 3 as a standalone game where you need to kick off everything as well as introduce the two new party members officially and let players spend time building up those bonds between everyone before things start to go massively sideways again.


I'm also trying to think forward to things that I expect we may end up seeing a little bit later, like Yuffie & Vincent building up a particularly close bond where we see them together just after Hojo's defeat during the return to Midgar in the opening of Dirge of Cerberus.

Given their interconnected links to Deepground from INTERmission, as well as being the oldest & youngest members of the group respectively, they have the potential to have a very similar balance to what Yuffie & Sonon had, as Vincent is loathe to take initiative (hence his coffin sleeping) but has an over-abundance of contextual life experience, whereas Yuffie is over-motivated to take command but lacks the practical life experience given her age. Setting the two of them up to end up relying on one another early on with the Turks in Wutai, and spending time involved with Sephiroth's backstory gives them a closer connection to the main conflict, as well as setting up ways for them to be mutually bonded for how we see them portrayed later on.

Those sorts of bonds between the party members were a core part of the gameplay mechanics and narrative expansions in Rebirth, and having time to establish those things between everyone at the start of the game will also mean that when we close both Cloud & Tifa, that there's a bit more of a cohesive understanding for how the party ends up focusing their efforts in various directions around those social bonds – which are all in a different place without Aerith. I think it's necessary to establish all of that BEFORE Icicle Inn, at which point the characters will be forced to have a more direct bit of exposure to the way that Aerith's absence impacts all of them despite them trying to collect their emotions together, but that everything with Hojo & Professor Gast will be able to carry more emotional weight if there's time spent to establish more of the backstory around that with Vincent.

I am quite curious how much more we'll be getting with Vincent given that he doesn't have the luxury of an INTERmission-like DLC and as the other optional character, he's already working with the smallest amount of content that takes place during FFVII directly. With how much of a fan favourite he is, I can't imagine that we don't get some extra that's linked to Nibelheim and other other things where he's given more to work with. While I expect a lot of his expanded story will be in the mid-to-later parts, like the Return to Midgar especially, there has to be a decent amount sooner rather than later so that he's got some level of connection to Cloud since he's a fairly important character in moments like in Advent Children rescuing Cloud in the Sleeping Forest, and seeing some of their camaraderie before Cloud goes on his Lifestream vacation feels like it's also an important element because Vincent also has a repressed monstrous side of himself that he has to keep at bay that's massively exacerbated by what Hojo did to him in Nibelheim, so it seems like exploring that first is important – but especially because everyone knows that Cloud's occasionally turned into a liability when they've gotten close to Sephiroth and Vincent is a bit of a lens into establishing the stakes with Cloud early on.




X

 

[Theozilla]

Hmmm, @X-SOLDIER's reasoning has definitely made me me more open to the idea that Wutai might be visited before heading to the Northern Crater (after the Rocket Town region of course). Though if we do, I don't think we'll have access to all of Wutai (especially if it's a single region zone) and instead it might be split in half like the Corel Region was in Rebirth.

I am also wondering, since the remake project is more conscious of the geography of the planet being a sphere (and not a torus/donut), I wonder if the Northern Continent won't just be limited to one longitudinal hemisphere (like how Greenland is) and instead will be situated as encompassing and crossover the geographic pole (like Antartica). If it is like the latter, perhaps instead of entering the Northern Continent fromt the Forgotten Capital hemisphere side (i.e. Shinra controlled hemisphere) the party will be forced to enter from the Wutai controlled hemisphere side?



On a slightly related note, presuming all of Rebirth's regions will be revisitable in at least some manner, how many new regions do you guys think part 3 will introduce and have?
My current guess is something like this:
1 Rocket Town Region
1 Wutai Region (split like Corel was in Rebirth)
2 Northern Continent regions
1 Mideel+Banora+Fort Condor Region
1 Midgar Region

And then a new limited underwater region (basically similar in function to the Meridian Ocean in Rebirth) that will be traversable by submarine.

 

[Tetsujin]

Been wondering when and how they'll handle Wutai and Rocket Town but I cannot see them doing any of that before the northern regions. They were headed north after Sephiroth at the end of Rebirth, would be awkward to start the game with an excuse for another detour. And I just like the idea of starting the story at a low point, right after Aerith's death and everybody being not just miserable but also cold, riding through a snowy wasteland on tauntauns chocobos and shit

I think it would be better for the game to start with a bunch of mostly linear, story driven chapters and then blow it all open once we get the Highwind. I kinda envision part 3 being the X-2 of FFVII, early access to the airship, being able to revisit all those locations from the previous game etc.

Absolutely no idea where they fit Rocket Town though. I do think we'll visit it once before the magnus materia quest. It might be right after they capture the Highwind, maybe Cid suggesting they stop there for a while and discuss what to do next while they drink their goddamn TEA (meaning yeah, first Rocket Town visit would be without Cloud).
Wutai is probably gonna be slotted into the magnus materia quest chain somehow, once Cloud is back.

 

[Eerie]

I also think that while they moved some locations, it was mainly to streamline Rebirth: they closed the passage from Nibelheim to Rocket Town so we wouldn't want to go over there yet, they moved the Temple so it would be nearby the City of the Ancients (it's true that the OG location made no sense). And most of all, they moved places according to the story, that did not change. Getting the Tiny Bronco early made it useless to go to Rocket Town and Wutai - and I think we'll get access to those with the Highwind, not before!

Overall how we moved from one place to another, following the copies, it was the same than in the OG. So that's also why I'm expecting the story to follow the OG, even if they could add the archelogical site in between the end of Rebirth and Icicle Inn - where I expect we'll lose the Bronco for good, so it will make sense to travel on the Highwind.I also expect Vincent and Cid to join only after we lose Cloud - maybe not Vincent, but Cid for sure. And maybe we'll lose Yuffie around there too, when she'll have to go back to Wutai because she'll hear news of the war in Wutai. But in the end, we'll still search for Cloud there, because it's the most important thing to do for Tifa.

In the OG we could do a lot of things as Tifa before finding Cloud, so I wonder if it'll still be a possibility, like chocobo racing like it was hinted at during her date at the GS. Most importantly, I also think that the doctor who saved her will be involved - either by telling them he's received a strange letter from a colleague in Mideel who has found Cloud, and then he'll go with them because he needs that blood sample to tell Cloud and Tifa that he won't deteriorate like a SOLDIER, either when they find Cloud, the doctor in Mideel will ask them to go seek help from Doctor Sheitan and that's how the huge materia quest will also kick off.

At least, that's how I envision the beginning of the game, until we get back real Cloud and we can focus on Wutai and everything.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

On a slightly related note, presuming all of Rebirth's regions will be revisitable in at least some manner, how many new regions do you guys think part 3 will introduce and have?
My current guess is something like this:
1 Rocket Town Region
1 Wutai Region (split like Corel was in Rebirth)
2 Northern Continent regions
1 Mideel+Banora+Fort Condor Region
1 Midgar Region

And then a new limited underwater region (basically similar in function to the Meridian Ocean in Rebirth) that will be traversable by submarine.

Your mention of Banora being in the Mideel Region (which Ever Crisis is covering in more detail now with brand new Crisis Core content) also reminded me that Modeoheim is just south of Icicle Inn, meaning that it may be a stop along the way this time, and a way to trigger some more flashbacks to Cloud's memories about Zack, especially since he's currently convinced that Zack drowned in the river in Nibelheim and that sort of mis-remembering of events has only been exacerbated with Aerith's death, but in a way that it'll be useful to contextually (re)introduce during the story, but especially since that detail is something else Tifa knows is different from what she experienced at the same time as Cloud. I am rather curious how expanded the Cloud's corrected memory about the events of Crisis Core is going to end up being, and how that'll be presented this time around, as well as if that'll loop any follow-up back into Gongaga with Cissnei & Zack's parents since that seems like a really weird thread to be left hanging unresolved given all of the expanded content around it.

We've also got lots of other islands like the Cactuar Island, KotR Island, Goblin Island, etc. where it's possible that we'll end up having some new scattered locations that can be used to fill out gaps geographically. Also in terms of making the global geography of the world map more sphere-friendly, you can actually see some of that in Rebirth during Bugenhagen's presentation and while a lot of the time it's covered by cloud cover, when the part hits where the Lifestream is pulled from the world, you can actually see the Northern Continent's placement (starts at ~7:10 and you can see the dried up continent at around 9:00). It's likely to be used beyond just this cinematic because the dried up moment needed to presents a model of the ocean-less version of the globe, which would be necessary for them to start planning the regions with the Submarine's travel, so it's just convenient to use work they've already done to that end.

As such, I am curious how regionally divided the world will be if at all this time around given that the upgrade to the Highwind will be a bit shift in how to think about global traversal depending on how it works, as well as the fact that you don't want to have to re-Chadley all the regions you've already done, so I think that they might purposefully end up presenting that in a slightly different way that aligns with the new types of things you'll end up doing once you have access to the Highwind, which may be more specific areas of interest all over rather than just encapsulated regions. There's also the Weapons being active on the world map presence to consider, and there's the possibility that we may end up seeing some travel being impeded by Weapon boss battle, rather than having them all as optional encounters (especially since the Whale-like Weapons in Rebirth show that we're not just limited to the original gemstone ones if they want to expand upon that or allow a confrontation with Sapphire Weapon or something similar).

I mention that, because I think that would end up being a more interesting sort of exploration that still matches to how the Submarine travel would best function, as the underwater area is less interesting as a region and FAR more interesting as another transportation tool to go find various unique spots of interest all around the sea & air. I think that this approach might make it easier to implement a larger number of discrete regions that are more focused around the landmarks themselves where the Highwind can land, and you can explore but they're potentially a bit more self-contained. The whole of how they're managing the world map and SO DAMN MANY locations is something that's still got me ultra curious about Part 3, beyond just the order we're going to be visiting them in, and whether they'll be optional or shuffled around.

Been wondering when and how they'll handle Wutai and Rocket Town but I cannot see them doing any of that before the northern regions. They were headed north after Sephiroth at the end of Rebirth, would be awkward to start the game with an excuse for another detour. And I just like the idea of starting the story at a low point, right after Aerith's death and everybody being not just miserable but also cold, riding through a snowy wasteland on tauntauns chocobos and shit

I think it would be better for the game to start with a bunch of mostly linear, story driven chapters and then blow it all open once we get the Highwind. I kinda envision part 3 being the X-2 of FFVII, early access to the airship, being able to revisit all those locations from the previous game etc.

Absolutely no idea where they fit Rocket Town though. I do think we'll visit it once before the magnus materia quest. It might be right after they capture the Highwind, maybe Cid suggesting they stop there for a while and discuss what to do next while they drink their goddamn TEA (meaning yeah, first Rocket Town visit would be without Cloud).
Wutai is probably gonna be slotted into the magnus materia quest chain somehow, once Cloud is back.

This is why I've been approaching the assessment of Rocket Town & Wutai by operating most directly based off of what the layout of the narrative in the Remake project has been so far, and what the limitations of significant shifts in the state of the plot are that would impede those from happening later. All of the alternatives to both have some fairly massive narrative issues with the presence of Meteor, the absence of Cloud, or other changed relationships with Shinra that fundamentally make it so that important moments don't happen. The "Palmer getting hit by a truck" moment doesn't really work tonally with where those relationships have shifted, in much the same way that the Turks being on vacation post-Temple of the Ancients fiasco is something that lines up a lot more closely with everything.

On that note, Rebirth ALSO set up the fact that Cloud & Co. stole Palmer's hotel reservation and absolutely clowned on him all around the Gold Saucer while being directly supported by Rude & Elena BEFORE you met Cid. That follow-up to Palmer being in Rocket Town and Cid being cool with him, and then him losing his shit gets followed by the party being pulled to Wutai only to find the Turks there peacing out and taking a break post-Temple of the Ancients... only to end up having to work together with you to deal with Corneo which changes their relationship with you... except for Elena who's captured by Corneo. Since she wasn't with the others willingly ignoring active orders under the cover of vacation AND she still has a chip on her shoulder about Tseng's injuries at the Temple of the Ancients, she uses that encounter to follow you solo up to Icicle Inn – where she goes tumbling down the hill after a failed punch just before the Snowboarding segment... which was teased as a coming game attraction at the Gold Saucer where all of those intertwined relationships and expanded elements with the Turks & Palmer kicked off in Rebirth.

Those are narrative alignments that work WAY BETTER if you tackle that thread as a part of beginning the journey to the northern regions. If you try and get any of them after everyone's already experienced a huge Shinra backstabbing post-Meteor, those specific mismatches in their relationships that are necessary for those scenes to play out in a particular way don't really work. The Turks are especially important in that regard given the way the confrontation with them will go down in the Return to Midgar, they have to craft the order of those encounters naturally for all of the different members, and to shape them outside of the context of everyone else at Shinra, in order to amplify the animosity towards Heideggar & Scarlet. That's something that's also necessary for Yuffie to start to see more contextual nuance between that Us vs. Them that she's been living her whole life, and that happening as Barret's got his own bit of self-reflection on his motives in the trip to the north set the stage for helping to lay the foundation for those things when they need to happen, and when those character moments can best be supported by the shared developments with other characters.

Another thing is that it just works practically, as the scenario of Rocket Town works as a way to kick everything off, and Wutai functions as a solid place for making emergency repairs if the Tiny Bronco getting shot at like the original Rocket Town scenario. Mostly it's important, since there's still a passage of time that's needed for a bunch of cloaked, stumbling medical patients to have a significant enough head start from Nibelheim to be all the way in the north there before Cloud & Co. since we see them all just START to have a mass departure right at the end of Rebirth. So outside of narrative purpose, there's logistics that help with incentivizing that as well, but most of all I can't help but really emphasize just how much tension Yuffie is facing in the Nibel Reactor scene:

Wutai Command authorized an operation that she wasn't informed of, she hasn't been contacted about what her mission status is and whether or not it got called off, and she's pretty certain that Wutai & Shinra are actively at war RIGHT NOW despite the public facade of the cease-fire being in place. The way that she feels hurt in this scene here shows that she's still got her loyalty to her own people as her top priority, and you HAVE to move on that while Shinra is still the enemy. Palmer's confrontation in Rocket Town is the pitch perfect way to kick off her being reminded of the immediate urgency of those stakes. If they get shot down, the combination of open conflict, geographic proximity, and the opportunity means that there's no way she's gonna have a better time to grab the materia & run. Additionally, early game means that there's no better time to teach players how to use Synergy mechanics and other gameplay features and let you have some space to try out combinations with new characters like Cid & Vincent before being able to get your Materia back as a part of the introductory gameplay loop to the new features of the game.



We know that they've changed things already and a lot of those changes were to enhance things we haven't seen yet, so following what they've already changed is usually the best way to get a sense of where they're likely going. I'm happy to be surprised & wrong, but it's the way that the games are all designed to work as self-contained narratives, the foundation of themes that they have to establish to do that, the newly playable characters who they need to give players control of as soon as possible, and (thus far) the absence of a more strongly compelling alternative for those two narrative events that makes me feel as confident as I do about that being where things are kicking off.




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[Clement Rage]

Game design very rarely goes into outright war, because that's usually a bad idea, so the party gets the important side mission somewhere else. Rocket Town has to be visited twice with a decent stretch between them ,once in its abandoned state, and once restored (unless they scrap the rocket entirely, which seems unlikely.

Turks vacationing in Wutai makes no sense in the middle of a war, and Corneo going into hiding there doesn't make much sense either. Trying to pull his trick in a 'gearing up for war' town rather than 'sleepy disarmed town' would lead to him being gutted in short order.

Maybe they could do some kind of frontier town full of smuggling and spies, Yuffie goes to meet her boss, and then Shinra attacks because Rufus wants to end the war early by taking out the leadership, which the party can thwart and the get trapped in Wutai until they have an opportunity to go north?

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Game design very rarely goes into outright war, because that's usually a bad idea, so the party gets the important side mission somewhere else. Rocket Town has to be visited twice with a decent stretch between them ,once in its abandoned state, and once restored (unless they scrap the rocket entirely, which seems unlikely.

Well, Rebirth kicked off the theme of building into war intentionally with overt blame of Wutai for the Reactor bombings, followed by Rebirth with Rufus testing the Junon Cannon which was in direct violation of the peace treaty between Shinra & Wutai, so this game design has been going there LITERALLY since the very start. Everything about Sonon & Yuffie in INTERmission is covering the aftermath of surviving war, how different that is to the struggles of those who experience peace, and why you DON'T want things to build up back into all-out war... – whilst simultaneously looking at the ways in which Shinra operates by doing things like collapsing the Sector 7 Plate on its own citizens and blaming Wutai terrorism in ways that aren't all that different from being actively at war, and other means to emphasize that they essentially are all constantly at war still, despite not being openly declared.

Turks vacationing in Wutai makes no sense in the middle of a war, and Corneo going into hiding there doesn't make much sense either. Trying to pull his trick in a 'gearing up for war' town rather than 'sleepy disarmed town' would lead to him being gutted in short order.

The Turks taking advantage of relaxing in Wutai one last time before things go into all-out conflict makes perfect sense, especially when you remember the especially close relationship that Tseng & Rufus have, in addition to the fact that all signs point to Rufus being "Viceroy Sarruf" puppeting both sides of the conflict here just like he did with Avalanche in Before Crisis as a means to build up taking power away from his father for himself being information that Tseng is almost 100% certain to be aware of, so that the Turks' operations can manage that around whatever Heideggar & Scarlet are doing (hence the very different executive relationship between the former president & Rufus and the army at the end of Remake).

Additionally, Corneo being explicitly involved with human trafficking per the Leslie mission almost always means that it's involving the exploitation of oppressed minority communities who have few opportunities aside from illicit work. That's why Corneo operating in the slums as well as Wutai make perfect sense – as they also echo the real world circumstances under which those things happen as well (which Final Fantasy VII was already pretty overt about but the Remake Project has been even moreso). On top of that, the concept art notes mention that everything about Corneo's setup in the slums in Remake was designed so that it looked faux Asian, like the sort of knockoff merch that you'd find from a street seller, rather than legitimate artifacts, which emphasizes a bigger point.

Corneo's brand is taking all of the cultural elements of Wutai and mashing them together improperly because that's what happens when it's reduced to a tourism trap in order to economically survive. It's an entire culture being externally boiled down into a marketable style for an exotic getaway... and for selling the services of its women, because that's the type of human exploitation that's happening there in multiple forms outside of what's being done as a direct result of the military conflict. Those are the insidious industries that spring up around that facade of a "peaceful stability" and ravage the place it was before that's unable to heal because of that (again this is all real post-war Japan stuff that happened around the American occupation and peace time tensions, and are a lot more commonly seen connected to Yakuza, Triads, and other Asian mafias).

Corneo's going to be at his most incentivized to escape with as much merchandise as possible before Wutai's situation turns into an active warzone, and he's got all the connections in Shinra to know when he's got a countdown to destruction EXACTLY like what happened with the Sector 7 pillar – which is a deeply critical parallel and is why Yuffie seeing that at the end of INTERmission is such a big deal, because those are the stakes of what's happening. I'd also assume that Cait Sith's cameo to the destruction in Remake is so that Reeve's position as a Shinra Spy can work both ways, because we know how much he doesn't want to see that sort of thing happen again either. If they hear that the Turks are there as well, it's basically an all-hands full alarm situation where, Shinra is about to attempt to commit mass genocide again that demands that everyone has to intervene somehow. If there's any hesitation, Yuffie's gonna grab all the materia she can & book it.

As people are more desperate in those sorts of impending conflict conditions (see all of the mass fleeing of Russia surrounding the Ukraine War recently), and with the local infrastructure about to fall to pieces amidst open conflict, it's impossible to track who's gone missing and under what circumstances. So... I'd argue it's actually the perfect time & motive to expect to find the exact sort of scum-sucking piece of trash that is Corneo aggressively grabbing as many inanimate goods & vulnerable young girls as possible in an attempt to build up his stockpiles of everything he can before it's too late – 'cause we know how he operates, and that THIS is the moment where he got away both in the sewers AND at Gold Saucer, and it needs to be made clear that he's not getting away again at a point where the Turks & Avalanche are all in alignment.

Maybe they could do some kind of frontier town full of smuggling and spies, Yuffie goes to meet her boss, and then Shinra attacks because Rufus wants to end the war early by taking out the leadership, which the party can thwart and the get trapped in Wutai until they have an opportunity to go north?

This is why it's important to remember that "Viceroy Sarruf" is just Rufus. That's why Sephiroth's messing with him via Glenn, because Rufus is currently stuck operating both sides such that if that information comes out he'll lose credibility to the people he's controlling in Wutai AND to the narrative he's been crafting to maintain command through fear over Shinra & the people of Midgar.

The second piece is that the whole reason that the post-Meteor public execution is set to take place is because he needs to secure that narrative as something that's under his control. That's why this seems like it needs to be a pre-Northern Continent mission, so that the stakes have a way of escalating into global disaster where Rufus expects that he can coerce collective alignment from both sides by publicly executing Tifa as a member of Avalanche (yet another terrorist group HE established), and then re-focus all of the efforts to be against Sephiroth, as this was HIS primary character conflict at the end of Rebirth.

That setup has to be something that justifies Sephiroth feeling threatened enough to point Diamond Weapon at Midgar, which also connects to why the International version of the original Final Fantasy VII, that fight is one where you steal Yuffie's weapon Rising Sun, which is overtly themed after something that directly represents Japan as a nation. Lots & lots of historical and cultural themes that exist in the OG help to emphasize reasons that they were added where they were and allow those to be components of the storytelling that need to stitch together into the larger narrative that's written for the Remake Project, and are all fundamental elements to how Yuffie's been portrayed.

While Yuffie disagrees with her father because of his inaction, but the whole point is that he sees the post-war options being to sell out and turn everything into a caricaturization of what it was before, or get everyone killed in more open conflict and she never gets to have a longer discussion with Sonon attempting to appraise her of that more complicated situation he's trapped in as the leader with everyone else's lives being his responsibility. These are all tensions from post-war Japan that only really work when they're being examined where those sides of the conflict are the most important, and they don't really need any more setup for that than we've already had for them between both INTERmission & Rebirth.



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