SPOILERS Predictions for Part 2? (*Open Spoilers for Part 1*)

[Odysseus]

I guess my fundamental disagreement with you lies in the idea that we were "falsely advertised" at. The majority of the game is still just ff7 with a new coat of paint, albeit with a very contentious plot device tacked on. I feel like the issues some people have stem more from a fear of what might be done next than what was actually in this game. Whether this is a remake or a new plot wearing ff7's skin is to be seen imo.

 

[Ite]

I guess my fundamental disagreement with you lies in the idea that we were "falsely advertised" at. The majority of the game is still just ff7 with a new coat of paint, albeit with a very contentious plot device tacked on. I feel like the issues some people have stem more from a fear of what might be done next than what was actually in this game. Whether this is a remake or a new plot wearing ff7's skin is to be seen imo.

I understand where you’re coming from but I just can’t agree, nor can I ever let this argument go without its counter. I feel like the word “sequel” is becoming as taboo around these parts as the word “remake” was the gaslight for the S-E marketing team, but what we played through was fundamentally a story about being the Final Fantasy VII Remake. So instead, I’ll sum up the game’s ending and you can tell me if this is “mostly” the same story as FFVII.

Before leaving Midgar, you reverse a friend’s death, then kill the god of time and his agents (the time travelling remnants of the villains from the sequel movie), altering both the future and the past, forging a new path beyond destiny.

Before leaving Midgar

you reverse a friend’s death,

then kill the god of time

and his agents (the time travelling remnants of the villains from the sequel movie)

altering both the future and the past,

forging a new path beyond destiny.

FUCKING WAT

And here’s the thing, if this were the plot of FF16 I wouldn’t have a problem. It’s kind of an awesome story idea. But that’s exactly what I’m talking about when I say “false advertising.” I bought Reese’s pieces, and there’s sour gum balls inside.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The way the game ends had better change the story of FF7 a lot. Otherwise, what is the point of the plot of the Remake?

From a narrative perspective, the point of FF7R is "changing Fate" where "Fate" is "how the OG turned out". As far as narrative goes, they've really written themselves into a corner. If the plot stays the same, then what was the point of including all that new stuff in the Remake about destiny and sending memories back in time, etc? If the plot changes, then this really isn't a "remake" like how it was advertised; which was "FF7's story in modern graphics/gaming conventions".

You also have a number of statements by the devs (particularly Nomura) that suggest this really isn't a re-hash of the FFVII OG plot. Among other things, Nomura has said that he came up with the idea of what would become the Remake shortly after Crisis Core was finished and that he thought of it as the Culmination of the Compilation. He has also said that no one will actually know what "Remake" really means for quite some time, which suggests "remake" has something signification to do with the story rather than being a description of the type of game we are playing.

As much as I am very leery of the direction FF7R is taking, I'll be more disapointed at this point if the plot doesn't change rather than if it stays the same. The Remake is pretty much a promise for what the rest of the FF7R games will be about, and that promise is "the unknown journey is coming". If the dev team can't fufill that promise, than why did they make it in the first place?

I've got games I like that I know will crash less spectacularly than FF7R2 will if they do indeed crash. If FF7R2 turns out well, then great. But if FF7R2 goes completely off the rails, well, I'll make a bowl of popcorn and grab a six-pack of soda and ask myself what else I thought it would be given who the director is. At the very least, Nomura's stories are entertainingly messy and he writes good characters that are fun to watch interaction on-screen. I'll definetly be turning my brain off for it though, as the less I think about the Nomura/Kitase/Nojima narratives, the more I find myself liking them. They simply don't stand up to close analysis, which is the main way I enjoy interacting with narratives.

 

[Cat on Mars]

If it's about narrative... SE's writers aren't very competent at writing stories with a good payoff. Endings always feel underwhelming for me.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It depends who the writers are. Writers of IX, Tactics, XII, and XIV write good stories with good payoffs. And more importantly, they know how to set stories up right so that the ending fits the themes of the story. And the beleive in foreshadowing so you, the player, can kinda see what is coming before it actually happens.

Nomura, Kitase and Nojima's stories don't fit together quite as well. What they feel more like is a vehicle for character interaction rather than a way to express themes. And they write some of the best character interaction in the series! It's just that the overall story the character interactions are telling tends to be weaker when it comes to motivations and how the plot works out. There's a lot less foreshadowing overall and lot more dues/diablos ex machina involved as a result.

I think the Nomura/Kitase/Nojima story that works itself out the best with the least ammount of "WTF is going on here?" is FFX, and even that has to be only the original game and not X-2 or the short-story that comes after it. FFVIII is probably the most crazy FF game plot they did, but that game doesn't take itself as seriously overall as FFVII or FFX did, so I feel like cutting the plot some slack.

 

[Odysseus]

Okay I made the fool's error of starting an internet argument when I'm busy at work. I'll get back to this later, but I just want to say that I feel like people's issues with the ending at least kinda stem from the fact they're still viewing it in the context of being "the first 6 hours of ff7" and not as the ending of a 40 hour game. The crazy stuff makes more sense when you look at it that way. And yes SE has never been great about endings anyway lol.

 

[Ite]

I'll definetly be turning my brain off for it though, as the less I think about the Nomura/Kitase/Nojima narratives, the more I find myself liking them. They simply don't stand up to close analysis, which is the main way I enjoy interacting with narratives.

This so much. That’s another thing fuelling my rage, because FF7-X really set the standard for me in terms of “stories you can chew on.” And that WAS largely Nomura, Kitase, and Nojima, albeit under the utilitarian stewardship of Sakaguchi. But starting with the Compilation (and Sakaguchi’s departure), then entering the mainline series with XIII, FF story analysis has turned more to “theory-craft” as the story clues gets more vague and frail, with more true loose ends to helplessly try to connect. “Who cares, it’s a mood” is the thesis statement of Kingdom Hearts and that’s why watching KH3 made me understand so much more of what I wasn’t getting about 7R, which starts out as an adaptation of a complex but cohesive story and then gets T-Boned by all this f-in mood.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

If the ending of FFVIIR happened 6 hours into a 40 game, then it would be fine, because we'd probably get at least some answers and or context about what happened. That it happens at the end of a 40 hour game with the next game coming who knows when only makes it worse.

It is going to be literal years before we find out anything that might be definitive about what happened. And even that isn't guarentied because we know there's going to be at least two more games in this series if not three more. We aren't going to really know what happened at the end of FF7R until the series is over. Only then will we (hopefully) have the full context. And even that isn't guarantied given how much info about FF games is always given outside of the actual game. The stuff in the FF7R Ultimania makes that seem that isn't changing anytime soon with this game either.

 

[Odysseus]

Multi part stories tend to have cliffhangers and open mysteries?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

You’re saying I should hope it completely crashes and burns?

Good Lord, man, no. I just meant that the more the narrative departs from the original, the less "Final Fantasy VII REMAKE" is suitable as a replacement for "Final Fantasy VII."

 

[looneymoon]

Unless nerds like us coerce ppl into it, or they’re some kind of classic fan the way my sister loves Golden Age movies, the OG has already been replaced, we’re just coming to terms with it.

I was about to write a post about how I, on a whim, decided to watch the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. I did so not really realizing that the 2013 movie was more or less a remake of the '75 film, as well as its own adaptation of the novel. It was an interesting surprise

The point I was gonna get at is that the question of archiving, updating, and accessibility with regards to old games. I think a lot of gamers tend to be very precious with their hardware and physical copies. I definitely fall into that hole myself. I have FF7 on Steam, but if I were to boot it up, I feel like there's a lot of hoops and tutorials I have to go through in order to get it to mimic the way the original disc runs on the PS/PS2. FF7 is lucky because of the amount of ports it has. But with every port, it seems as there's a list of things that make it depart from the canvas for which it was designed for (each console generation being a new type of canvas, so to speak).

Which is... I guess it's comparable to finding a stream of an old movie vs seeing it in the cinema with a projector. But idk, certain bugs/controller differences/lost assets/audiovisual changes in a port somehow feel like a more drastic change to the presentation of a game than say... 70mm in a theater vs digital at home. I think what I'm trying to say, is that it's difficult to curate a "pure" experience of FF7 as it was for the PS. Remake is going to have an easier time in that regard, what with how games are optimized today vs 20 years ago.

For the record I greatly preferred the 2013 Gatsby to the 1975 one, but obviously the original novel will forever be more relevant than either film, but I don't think this conversation really applies to novels anyway

...Don't mind me, this is kinda off topic. I'm just kinda brain spewing tangential nonsense because I'm a little salty that Nintendo supposedly censored out "So long, gay Bowser!" in the Mario 64 port

 

[Ite]

I feel like people's issues with the ending at least kinda stem from the fact they're still viewing it in the context of being "the first 6 hours of ff7" and not as the ending of a 40 hour game. The crazy stuff makes more sense when you look at it that way.

You’re at work, and so am I, so take your time

What do you mean, “make sense”? Like, do I know why the thing I was looking at was made the way that it was? Of course I did. Does it make sense? Fuck no. I knew what those whispy fuckers were here to do from the moment they steamrolled over Aeris’s introduction. They served the double purpose of providing an exciting final boss gauntlet and to allow the writers to “get creative” with their story, now that they’re forced to tell it again. It still doesn’t make sense that they chose to get creative in that way, when their other expansions: Johnny, the trio, Marle, Roche, had already fulfilled the quota of exciting returning fans.

But if the sense that I’m supposed to make comes from the realization that FF7R is — as you say — not FF7, then I dare say I’ve been falsely advertised to.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Multi part stories tend to have cliffhangers and open mysteries?

I deal with this all the time in FFXIV. However, the longest we go without a story installment is 3 months. We also get several direct hints about what is happening next. Often times by showing the players new characters the MC hasn't met yet while those new characters are talking about what they are planning on doing in the near future! So it's less a cliffhanger or open mystery and more a "meanwhile, back in x location".... The characters the player controls and the player themselves are treated as two different things and what the player knows, the characters often don't. Then again, FFXIV is just way more comfortable with letting the players know a crazy amount of world-building info that they can use to extrapolate and guess about what is happening than FF7 is. And then still manage to put in really good plot twists.

It would be as if FF7R ended with us seeing Sephiroth in the Northern Crater talking to himself about a certain Matera he needs to get his hands on to cast a certain spell and maybe he can use Jenova's body to bait Cloud and Co. to go get it for him. And then letting use see EoCroth and what he's planning on doing to Cloud next time. So we can spend the months of no story angsting about how messed up Cloud will be because we know how much Sephiroth will be trying to mess him up before it happens!

FFXIV makes tension by letting the audience know more than the characters do so we know how screwed the characters are when they do things... or meet up with certain characters. FF7R makes tension by not letting the audience know what is going on so everything is a surprise. It's just different methods of telling a story and concealing/revealing information not everyone in the story knows, but one gives me a lot more confidence in the people telling the story than the other does.

 

[cold_spirit]

Just pretend I posted this a page ago (difficult to engage, also at work ):

I can confidently say I'm going to buy FF16 day 1 despite not knowing anything about it. However, if I had to choose between two rooms, one with a FF16 trailer and the other with a FF7R-2 trailer, I'd probably break my wrist opening the door to the latter lol.

 

[Odysseus]

Ody is back from capitalism, let's play ball.

@Mr. Ite your biggest concern with the remake, at least going by your initial response, is that it will supersede the original game in the eyes of the general public. You don't like that because of how substantially different the remake is, and that those differences are things you generally don't like, am I right? Well here's the thing, the fact it's so different and people like you being afraid of the remake replacing the original is ironically exactly why it won't happen. The stigma of it being different will follow this game forever, it's not like a OOT3D or the RE2 remake which just generally improve on the original. The fact it's different will make it distinct, just like Tres said, and people will inevitably want to check out the original to see what the big deal is, it's already happening. The legacy of the remake will be different from the original, one won't just replace the other.

What do you mean, “make sense”? Like, do I know why the thing I was looking at was made the way that it was? Of course I did. Does it make sense? Fuck no. I knew what those whispy fuckers were here to do from the moment they steamrolled over Aeris’s introduction. They served the double purpose of providing an exciting final boss gauntlet and to allow the writers to “get creative” with their story, now that they’re forced to tell it again. It still doesn’t make sense that they chose to get creative in that way, when their other expansions: Johnny, the trio, Marle, Roche, had already fulfilled the quota of exciting returning fans.

Alright I should have chosen my words better. I'll leave it up to the viewer if the whisper's "make sense" or not, but that isn't what I was talking about. I meant "structurally" the way the remake ends makes more sense from the perspective of it being the final act of a 40 hour RPG, not the first act of one. It's this stuff:

Before leaving Midgar, you reverse a friend’s death, then kill the god of time and his agents (the time travelling remnants of the villains from the sequel movie), altering both the future and the past, forging a new path beyond destiny.

You say "before you leave Midgar," clearly from the vantage point that Midgar is the early part of the story and all the crazy stuff shouldn't be happening yet, but that's not the case in the Remake. The whisper harbinger is to the remake what Safer Sephiroth is to the original, the big fuck-off final boss where you beat up God. Within the structure of the original having that stuff would be nonsense so early, but as they've said in interviews, each part of the remake is essentially going to be the equivalent of a full FF entry. This was the big dumb Square Enix climax of this stand-alone FF entry. I'm not saying you have to like it, I'm just saying that it makes sense when viewing the remake as it's own game.

Related to this, let's talk about the whispers. They set a precedent for the remake, a lot of them really, but the one I'm talking about isn't what you might think. There's all the meta-narrative stuff, but even beyond that the set a precedent for future remake parts. What do they do for this first entry in the remake? "Ruin it-" no shut up. What they do is they give this first part of the story it's own self-contained narrative. They serve as a mystery that drives parts of the plot, they create conflict at multiple points that the party needs to deal with, and then they are ultimately confronted and defeated at the end of the game, probably never to be seen again. They give the first part of the remake its own story removed from the larger story of FF7 as a whole, and I get the feeling all the parts are going to be this way. Each part will have some new plot element that serves to give the games a self-contained conflict that coincides with the plot beats from the original. Will those new plots take the form of SPOOKY GHOSTS? Hopefully not, but they'll be something new at the very least. FF7 past Midgar doesn't have enough story to prop up an entire game when split into chunks. People theorize that the next part will end at the cargo ship, or gongaga, and that seems ridiculous to me because in the events of the original the story barely progresses during that time and it's mostly just the party wandering around aimlessly, but if they made probablan all new story to fill the void it could work. That's why I think it's the "unknown journey" from here on, because the plot beats of the original will be backed up by a whole load of new stuff, with the whispers as a probably unnecesary justification for why all this new stuff is happening. Every single bit of the original will be there, but it will be backed up by loads of new stories too. Which get's us to

But if the sense that I’m supposed to make comes from the realization that FF7R is — as you say — not FF7, then I dare say I’ve been falsely advertised to.

Okay this will sound really fucking stupid but bear with me. It is FF7, but it isn't, but it is. There will be a lot of new stuff, to the point where it might supersede the stuff from the original sometimes, but the original game will still be there. The over all plot and plotpoint from the original will all happen, but a lot of other things will also happen, that's what I'm thinking. Maybe you do feel cheated by that, and I guess that's fair, but I don't think it's unreasonable for them to do.

FF7R makes tension by not letting the audience know what is going on so everything is a surprise. It's just different methods of telling a story and concealing/revealing information not everyone in the story knows, but one gives me a lot more confidence in the people telling the story than the other does.

That's fair, I'm not about to tell anybody to trust the remake team given their track record, but I know that Nomura somehow never forgets things, and I think at least in his mind he knows what he's doing for better or worse. I guess we'll see.

 

[Cat on Mars]

I guess it's a matter of perspective.
Many of you have been playing console games for more than 20 years. Many of you have several generations of Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and others at home. Many of you play videogames regularly.

I don't. My first and last PS was this one:

Old.

So I really don't understand some citicisms about how the whispers are frustrating because what you do as player didn't matter. I don't remember many games for the first PlayStation where that mattered, the best you got was the illusion of choice. And FF7 had this ending when literally all you did, big boss fight included, didn't matter because a character that was out of the story three discs ago altered the outcome.
Not you, the player.

A deus ex machina appeared and that was the end of the story.

So the Whispers aren't exactly something that bothers me, and in fact they are pretty much a logical choice for developing a plot that has always been about ghosts and spirit energy.
Strictly speaking as an outsider, this is what I expected FF7 remade for PS4 to be. I can understand people not liking it, but it is FF7.

 

[looneymoon]

I never really bought the false advertising angle myself. I just think the new lens of the story is really, really stupid.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Honestly, we don't know how the Remake and the OG will reconcile because we don't know the full extent of it's temporal connection to the OG, and what subsequently comes after. We're in the dark. We know it's a separate but parallel timeline that follows the overall continuity of what came before in the Compilation, and we know it carries at the very least implied continuity to what will come after. Whisper effigies of Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo from AC appear here. The Kids Are Alright characters appear here. Numerous call backs to the future appear here. Time shenanigans aside, this is all considered to be part of FFVII's overall series and not meant to replace anything.

Going by reality, more people now than ever are loving and enjoying the Remake and the OG because it's piqued their interest. Nobody is chucking their copies of the OG in the closet because this is better. They are two different works and most fans appreciate them simultaneously. This isn't a zero sum game of the Remake either existing or the OG. They compliment each other.

The best comparison I have for this is the tension and mystery that exists between each release of ReBuild of Evangelion. It's obvious a remake but also something else, and it's agonizing to continuously wait on just how exactly this new movie series will play out. We are in uncharted territory that inexplicably manifested in what was thought to be a relatively predictable retelling. That's not necessarily false advertising, because we don't know where we're going yet. It's sort of like hailing an Uber to take us home after a party and we get our favorite and familiar driver. And on the way, the driver says, "Hey, I know a killer shortcut that's really cool, hang on!" And then they lock the door, swerve off the road, drive through the sidewalk, get on the highway, jump off the highway, and now are driving completely off road. You check the GPS but the signal is lost. Now at this point, you're either cheering in excitement or screaming in fear, but regardless, you have to trust your driver to get you home! You recognize some of where you're going but... If you want out, you're either gonna have to bust out the window, jump and roll into the middle of nowhere, with no idea what's coming next... Or stay in the seat until the end. If you wanna know if the destination is your home or just some backwoods nightmare cabin in the woods... You gotta sit back and enjoy the ride!

There's a very interesting and potentially engaging story to be told through examining the narrative of FFVII through a post-OG-release lens aimed squarely at it's narrative. A story that looks at how much the characters develop, interact and change if aware of the fact they are potentially in a "remake" of predetermined events that are unbeknownst to them. What impact will it have on them all? What impact on the story? Will the world fall apart or will the future refuse to change? We are witnessing subtle and not-so-subtle changes that reveal curious insights into characters and elements of the world we'd have never seen before, all while engaging in very entertaining gameplay. Yet, this all could end up very confusing and unsatisfying as well. These are very weird, messy and ambiguous questions the Remake is intentionally driving head first into, and if nothing else, it's ballsy to be willing to smash open the insides of their work so forcefully when they could easily do something simpler and safer. Because there's a huge amount of risk to this direction and they're aware of it. If nothing else, I respect the courage to attempt this, and I think it'll be entertaining nonetheless. It could pay off or pay far less. I think they realize there's an expectation to express some very core themes in their text while protecting certain key pillars that are intrinsic to FFVII's identity (Wall Market, Bombing Mission, etc). And they're going to do this all while juxtaposing the fact that despite this familiarity, something's different. It's trippy as hell, like a massive lucid dream. And even the best dreams can become nightmares, but you'll never know which it is, until it happens. Like now.

 

[looneymoon]

It's sort of like hailing an Uber to take us home after a party and we get our favorite and familiar driver. And on the way, the driver says, "Hey, I know a killer shortcut that's really cool, hang on!" And then they lock the door, swerve off the road, drive through the sidewalk, get on the highway, jump off the highway, and now are driving completely off road. You check the GPS but the signal is lost. Now at this point, you're either cheering in excitement or screaming in fear, but regardless, you have to trust your driver to get you home! You recognize some of where you're going but... If you want out, you're either gonna have to bust out the window, jump and roll into the middle of nowhere, with no idea what's coming next... Or stay in the seat until the end. If you wanna know if the destination is your home or just some backwoods nightmare cabin in the woods... You gotta sit back and enjoy the ride!

ಠ_ಠ

Mako what the fuck

 

[Makoeyes987]

I mean, it's exciting, right??

Just trust the driver! They'll take you somewhere cool, they're telling you it's gonna be okay!

.... Or not. But you'll never know until you get there!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

ಠ_ಠ

Mako what the fuck

Yeah ... That's like you and your partner are watching TV after dinner, then see your neighbor walk up to the living room window and chuck a brick with a note taped to it through -- and then as you yell "What the fuck!" and go to call 911, your partner asks "Well, aren't you going to read the note first?" without a hint of irony.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Yeah ... That's like you and your partner are watching TV after dinner, then see your neighbor walk up to the living room window and chuck a brick with a note taped to it through -- and then as you yell "What the fuck!" and go to call 911, your partner asks "Well, aren't you going to read the note first?" without a hint of irony.

... I would totally read the note first.

I mean, it could be a warning. A message. The start of an adventure. You gotta analyze all sides here first!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It's definitely a message.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It's more like you got an address from somewhere else and while you know the event being hosted at the address, you've never been to the exact address before even though you know what part of town it is in. So you call up an Uber driver to take you to the address, only it turns out you recognize the Uber driver as someone whose driving you really can't trust due to all the "short-cuts" he took last time that made no sense to get you to your destination... And now he's going in the opposite direction of the area of town the address you are trying to get to is in.

At some point, some people are going to tell that driver to pull over and start looking for a different (and hopefully saner) Uber driver who they think has a better sense of direction.

 

[Odysseus]

What the fuck are you people talking about