Revising the Midgar Zolom

[X-SOLDIER]

It's not that unusual for people to refer to a species as singular because they find it easier to explain that way so the wording can still be considered ambiguous.

Oh, good point.

In this case it actually looks all comes down to this line's use of "the" vs. "a" rather than it/them.

(OG - Singular)
"Hmm, then it'll probably be safer for you to get a Chocobo. That way you can zip through the marshes with the Chocobo. It's the only way to avoid being attacked by the Midgar Zolom."

(Plural)
"Hmm, then it'll probably be safer for you to get a Chocobo. That way you can zip through the marshes with the Chocobo. It's the only way to avoid being attacked by a Midgar Zolom."




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[Flare]

I love the Midgar Zolom too, and the scene of it being impaled really left an eerie impression on me when I first played the game. It didn't help that the room was dark either, but the effect was awesome.

I have an idea that could work, on the sense of their only being one at a time. What if it has an egg inside of it (or something) and whenever it dies, the egg inside of it hatches and a new one is born, and that's how it comes back after being impaled or killed?

As far as the odd point of it being in the swamp, and then suddenly impaled as soon as you exit the swamp, they could tidy that part up in the remake by making it something like this:
You make your way through the swamp, trying to avoid/run past the Zolom, and then shortly before you reach the other side it suddenly swims off/vanishes, and stops chasing you. Then let there be no music, and for the last minute of you being in the swamp it's fairly quiet except for other natural swamp noises (frogs and such) and the distant sound of a thunderstorm. When you reach the other side of the marsh, you see some blood, turn a corner, and BAM, there's the Zolom impaled on the tree.
I think the Zolom disappearing just before you reach the other side, and the music fading away, would make any player freak out/tense up.
Now I hope it turns out that way.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

You make your way through the swamp, trying to avoid/run past the Zolom, and then shortly before you reach the other side it suddenly swims off/vanishes, and stops chasing you. Then let there be no music, and for the last minute of you being in the swamp it's fairly quiet except for other natural swamp noises (frogs and such) and the distant sound of a thunderstorm. When you reach the other side of the marsh, you see some blood, turn a corner, and BAM, there's the Zolom impaled on the tree.
I think the Zolom disappearing just before you reach the other side, and the music fading away, would make any player freak out/tense up.
Now I hope it turns out that way.

I think that the main issue there is that it means that the Zolom is behind you, but then manages to get ahead of you? Plus, that'd mean that Sephiroth is still close enough to have just killed it, but didn't wait around the extra 5 seconds to ice you, too.



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[Flare]

I think that the main issue there is that it means that the Zolom is behind you, but then manages to get ahead of you? Plus, that'd mean that Sephiroth is still close enough to have just killed it, but didn't wait around the extra 5 seconds to ice you, too.



X

Well, I more meant that the Zolomn would be swimming around you as you traverse the swamp, but shortly before you reach the end it swims ahead of you or something, not necessarily being behind you and vanishing from behind you.
Though I thought of Sephiroth stabbing it so close to Cloud's group a good question too. I dunno, maybe Sephiroth just wanted to mess with them? It's just more odd in the original, since you can literally just squeeeze past the Midgar Zolom, and suddenly there's a cutscene of it impaled. And then it's back again in the swamp.

Of course, if there's more than one, you wouldn't need to worry about that stuff. In which case I like your idea about there being a mate of the one you see, and that's the one that gets impaled.

And quick question, is there any music that plays during that impaling scene? I forget. I was thinking maybe it was that creepy song that plays when Jenova escapes.

 

[Channy]

I think it's the creepy Jenova music..

 

[NikolaiBroketheZoom]

"Trail of Blood" plays, I think. That song instilled so much terror in me as a wee one.

Maybe Choco Billy can say "It's the only way to avoid being attacked by the Midgar Zolom." And then you see evidence of a giant serpent having passed through the marshes, and you have a couple near-sightings and encounters but you never fight it. And then when you get to the impaled Zolom, after the initial shock and awe, you see its mate rear up from where it was hiding, hiss, and slither away. From then on, you can challenge it.

This does, however, lessen the impact of seeing how easily Sephiroth decimated it if the player isn't able to be wrecked by it first.

Later if you talk to Choco Billy again, he expresses shock at there being more than one Zolom.

 

[Flare]

That song always freaked me out, and I played the game first as a teenager.
I hope they do a 'remix' of it or something, just to make it a bit more updated but still just as freaky.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

One of the things that helps to make Trail Of Blood as creepy as it is is the fact that it plays without interruption through all the battles in the ShinRa HQ after Sephiroth murders everyone. It's already scary, but eliminating the battle music to keep it playing just embeds it as being utterly terrifying.




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[Novus]

You can defeat it by farming/ grinding(is this the correct lingo?) enough points but as soon as you see the scene where the creature is skewered it should vanish. And if you defeat it early you never get the scene. (< how I think the remake should approach it, if this wasn't clear.)

I never liked the idea there was more than one snake. I always thought it was kinda lame the shadow still existed after that scene. By the time you return to the swamp (which is normally with the highwind because I doubt anyone after Junon returns all the way back there) the monster can be taken out in one shot.

 

[Flare]

Yeah, when a song interrupts the normal battle tune, you know things are serious. Whether epic-serious, or creepy as hell serious.

 

[Shademp]

Many neat thoughts in here.

What I'd like to see is a Midgar Zolom Version 2. Maybe on the remake equivalent of disc 3 you can meet an unusually tall and strong Midgar Zolom, complete with a frightening cutscene preceding the battle.

 

[NikolaiBroketheZoom]

Another approach: the party attempts to cross the marsh on foot. Naturally, the Zolom attacks and no matter how strong your party is, the Zolom is far too powerful to defeat and the party barely escapes with their lives. THEN you have to find an alternate way of crossing the marsh and Choco Billy tells you to catch some chocobos. You can't re-enter the marsh until you catch some ("There's no way we're making it through there without any chocobos!" or something to that effect). The party doesn't see the Zolom at all their second time through, however, and that's when they see the impaled Zolom. This way, the player understands how powerful the Zolom is and is able to recognize the significance of Sephiroth easily overpowering it, AND it leaves enough time between the party encountering it and Sephiroth killing it so that it doesn't seem like Sephiroth was a step behind the party and didn't kill the them for some reason. Also, at some point later, you can return and fight a new, stronger Zolom in order to maintain the satisfaction of killing it.

I like the Midgar Zolom Version 2 idea! Like, you thought the first one was scary? Here's a scarier one!

 

[Flare]

^I like both ideas, those would work too.
Maybe a Midgar Zolom ver. 2 would pop up after the Weapons come up? Like it was sleeping in the swamp and all that ruckus woke it up, and it's much more ancient and terrifying than the first one.

 

[Novus]

I prefer that it is the player's choice to face the Midgar Zolom after being informed about it if they choose to visit the farm first, which is usually the case, rather than an unavoidable encounter being determined by the narrative.
I believe the game was setup knowing the player will go try it which is more fun to me knowing that.

 

[Flare]

I do like that it's the player's choice too. I always like player's choice in FF games; like in FFIX, you can get to that one area where the Grand Dragons are early in the game, and at that point in time you're way underleved compared to them and they'll annihilate you, but you can still go in that area and check it out. It's fun to have those optional enemies early on.
My last playthrough of VII this year, I accidentally sold my chocobo lure materia before I crossed the swamp, and I ended up building up my party and finally managing to run across the swamp before the Midgar Zolom got me.

 

[Novus]

The huge dinosaur at the beginning of FFXII too.

 

[ForceStealer]

The pursuit of the behemoth in the FFXV demo was legitimately frightening. I was thinking about how something similar with the Zolom could be incredible.

 

[Flare]

^I never got to play the FFXV demo, but I;m glad that the behemoth was frightening. It looks super badass, like that's how a behemoth should look.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Also, because I saw Gods of Egypt last night, they have the best Midgar Zolom creatures ever, and if I could literally C&P it into the FFVII Remake, I would. They even breathe fire like "Beta" &#8211; it's just too perfect.

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[DynamixDJ]

^^ I genuinely want to watch Gods of Egypt now! Did she pull the spike out, and did they become friends, or what??

Additionally, are you the same X-SOLDIER that i've been conversing with on GFaq? (the one who found the hidden Potion in sector 7)

That song always freaked me out, and I played the game first as a teenager.
I hope they do a 'remix' of it or something, just to make it a bit more updated but still just as freaky.

Yes, Trail of Blood also gave me the willies as a kid (I was 11 when I played FFVII), particularly in the Cave of The Gi.

Those chosen by the planet, however probably got to me more; it represents pure Sephiroth bad-assery!

-EDIT- WOW!!!! After typing my post, decided to play Those Chosen By The Planet, which then went on to play One Winged Angel...... I NEVER REALISED HOW AMAZING ONE PARTICULAR BIT IS!!!! (right towards the end) Listen for yourself and skip to 6:29...
Screw Gods of Egypt, I now have a genuine desire to load up a program I haven't used in years - Reason (music editing), and sample the hell out of that 16 second snippet, putting some dirty bassline underneath it, with some crisp kicks & snares....
Yeah man, screw copy rights lol. Sorry for going off topic slightly....

 

[X-SOLDIER]

^^ I genuinely want to watch Gods of Egypt now! Did she pull the spike out, and did they become friends, or what??

Additionally, are you the same X-SOLDIER that i've been conversing with on GFaq? (the one who found the hidden Potion in sector 7)

Well...

Spoiler

she's a God, so she does remove the spear and uses her power to make it refuse to attack her, despite its rider commanding it to. She then tells it to burn itself and the rider to a crisp, so it does.

I did genuinely enjoy the movie quite a bit.

Also, there're two of them,

Spoiler: and the white one has a very different sort of encounter with them.

Lastly, I'm not the same person. Anywhere I am it's always "X" not "Ex" before the "-SOLDIER" bit of my handle.




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[X-SOLDIER]

Ok, so you can see both of them from 1:49 on to the end where it shows off little clips one of them breathing fire and whatnot, and it gives a good sense of their movement from the top-down (like what you'd see if the perspective shifted up for your wander through the swamp like it did in the OG world map).

Additionally, I actually found the clip of the film that shows off the more Midgar Zolom-looking one up-close with the whole color, coil, stance, etc. that would be perfect just copied & pasted into the FFVII Remake, since this is almost a perfect perspective shot of how it'd look in battle.

Incidentally, seeing the giant Midgar Zolom-like snakes in the trailer was my primary motivation for seeing this movie, so knowing that they lived up to my full expectations makes me quite happy.




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[hian]

EDIT : I made a major screw-up writing this post - I intended to, and should have, included the possessive ['s], which in Japanese is also written and pronounced with the &#12474; (zu), since "Midgar's [w]Orm" here is not the plural s, but the possessive. I'm sorry for that. Point still stands the same though.

Well, you separate out "Midgar" from the rest, you're left with "&#12474;&#12458;&#12523;&#12512;" which is "Zu-O-Ru-Mu" and pretty much identical to "Zolom" insofar as English pronunciation is concerned. suppose that you could call it the "Midgar Sormr" -- but that looks absolutely shit in English as no one would EVER end something with the unnaturally teeth clenching consonant clusterfuck of "rmr" for a localized rename of something. I'm interested what you'd go with instead.

I think it's just fine as it's a specific change to fit it into the world based on some subtle wordplay in Japanese, and is WAY better than Final Fantasy Tactics' utterly senseless "Midgar Swarm" mistranslation that SHOULD UNQUESTIONABLY be changed to directly to "Midgardsormr" without hesitation.

&#12474; (zu) is the Japanese phonetic used for the English plural denominator and is used consistently for that.
It is also the way Japanese are taught in schools that English plural words ending with "s" should be pronounced (a "z" sound rather than an "s").

So no, the word &#12511;&#12489;&#12460;&#12523;&#12474;&#12458;&#12523;&#12512;&#12288;(midogaruzoorumu) should not be cut before the "zu", and only a person who's not familiar with how English is conventionally written with katakana in Japan would make such a mistake (again, the localizer for FFVII, wtf...)

No word-play either - just Japanese directly writing Midgardsorm with Katakana, and making the mistake of using "zu" instead of "su" due to conventions and not being savvy enough with languages to recognize that Midgarsorm is not an English word, and that the "s" in the case of Norse languages, certainly isn't pronounced with a "z".

Midgar Zolom was definitely intended to be "Midgardsorm" (and should have been translated as such, or to the English equivalent "Midgard's Worm"). The only caveat I see to this, is that it might be reasonable to remove the "d" after the "r" seeing as FFVII's Midgar is spelled without it.

You can defeat it by farming/ grinding(is this the correct lingo?) enough points but as soon as you see the scene where the creature is skewered it should vanish. And if you defeat it early you never get the scene. (< how I think the remake should approach it, if this wasn't clear.)

Actually, you can defeat it fairly easily without grinding at all, as early on as between level 14-16, and even obtain beta at the same time.

Having just run past that section of the game at level 16 and killed the snake twice while crossing, I can also assure you that the scene is still there regardless.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Novus was suggesting for the remake that the impalement scene be removed if the player kills the snake during their crossing. Not sure I agree, but I can see how the value in the impact of the scene is lessened somewhat if the player has betaen one -- but it's still more impressive to have picked up a tree and stabbed the thing than to fight it for several minutes.

 

[Roger]

Only if they make it nigh impossible to kill it at that point in the game.