(Tagged Remake Spoilers) OG Frustration Thread/Double Standards

[Torrie]

I like being able to miss things, it makes me feel like the world is more real, that stuff is happening beyond your characters.

I get your idea. Different players, different preferences. Still, quite a lot of people choose to play video games in order to get submerged into less realistic scenarios. I guess, games like FF7 appeared when the fear of missed opportunities wasn't as big a thing as it is in the world of today. Such gaming experience might be therapeutic for the young FOMO-driven generation of players, but it would definitely frustrate them like hell.

Sure, Great Gospel is a bad secret. It leaves no bread crumbs, no NPC rumours, nothing outside of a guidebook to even let you know there’s something to be found at all.

This is exactly my problem with quests like Great Gospel and alike. I wouldn't mind choosing whether I want to complete a quest if I were somehow hinted at its existence. No FOMO though

 

[ForceStealer]

I feel like a lot of people missed a lot of things in this Remake, as Mako alluded to. I thought the game did a really good job of making optional or variable things fit so well that you'd never know that they could happen differently (such as

Spoiler

the affection resolution scenes and the Wall Market quests).

The untoggle-able onscreen quest markers is a fair complaint, (and I played without the minimap or compass), but I do like when a game has some kind of a quest log to at least let me know/remember of a request's existence. So much of XII's design screamed "buy the guide" and it drove me up the wall.

It seems like only half of the people realized there was

Spoiler

a second Elemental materia

 

[Clement Rage]

While everyone games differently, there's no developer with a gun to your head saying that you must be a completionist. If Great Gospel isn't worth it, then don't get it. If you don't want excalibur, don't get it.

If it's not part of the mandatory storyline, you don't have to do it. You don't have to go on the convoluted annoying questline if you don't want to. If you do the super annoying sidequest, you chose to do it, it's not on the devs.

But then, I'm an old fashioned soul. I miss bossfights, they've gone out of fashion.

 

[Ite]

Wow... you guys didn't stop the genophage?

But then, I'm an old fashioned soul. I miss bossfights, they've gone out of fashion.

Eh? I agree with most of this, but what? FF7R isn’t an RPG, it’s an action game with some hella boss fights. I might even say that the game’s top priority is boss fights.

 

[Clement Rage]

That's about gaming in general.

 

[crazyrabbits23]

While everyone games differently, there's no developer with a gun to your head saying that you must be a completionist. If Great Gospel isn't worth it, then don't get it. If you don't want excalibur, don't get it.

If it's not part of the mandatory storyline, you don't have to do it. You don't have to go on the convoluted annoying questline if you don't want to. If you do the super annoying sidequest, you chose to do it, it's not on the devs.

Most gamers I know (mostly on sites I've posted on in the past) are generally the type that will go for side content if they know about it, with some going for 100% completion because they're big fans of the genre - saw it a lot with Dark Souls fans on another board (which will not be named).

I'm of the opinion that metagaming is the best way to experience a game. If I want to get the most out of it, and that means looking up information beforehand/reading walkthroughs, especially in a title that can last 100+ hours, I'm absolutely going to do it so I can maximize my time. It's generally the best way to wring the most value of a title early on -- you get better weapons/items earlier, you can set up certain scenarios the way you want, condition your strategies to work towards future goals, etc.

I mean, I didn't have to go for Great Gospel, but if I found out about it after the fact and went through the sidequest, all I'd end up with is a metal box/item that can't be used on anyone (or a middling piece of armor) for my trouble.

 

[kathy202]

I thought the remake had a couple of miss-able things, just not in terms of story/world-building content. I missed a bunch of materia the first time around, didn't get Leviathan, lv2 limit breaks and manuscripts till my second play through. In a way, new game+ works nicely in that I get to keep everything else I've gotten so far.

As for world-building content, I think a part of it was because the remake's sidequests just weren't very good. Going along the lines of what Odysseus was saying about the amount of resources invested into some of these things, imagine if they made Yuffie and Vincent optional in subsequent remake titles I suppose some scenes could remain optional, but probably not characters themselves.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I really want to know what recent Final Fantasy game people use as a reference to say FFVII-R's side quests weren't good.

Because I can't think of any.

Is anyone seriously going to tell me FFXV's side quests were better than the Remakes?

Is it XIII?

Type-0?

XII? Well, that was literally "Go kill this thing because it's a nuisance." At the very least, the lore of the story and setting was revealed with each clan primer entry you unlocked and the Marks were clever. But the same happens VII-R's. They function almost the same.

So I'm just.. Confused. Like, what's the frame of reference to determine this. Because the side quests here did exactly what they were supposed to, and compared to more popular RPGs, they definitely felt more entertaining. They let you grind, build up AP, while simultaneously building the setting, lore, and giving unique character interactions that impacted Cloud's relationship with other characters and the NPCs that existed in the world.

Aside from a handful of quests that were clearly fetch-y (and one which was clearly a piss-take with Cloud literally going "forget this shit") they did their best to make them interesting and unique for the story. I don't what more could be done other than just scrapping them entirely.

 

[kathy202]

I really want to know what Final Fantasy game people use as a reference to say FFVII-R's side quests weren't good.

I guess I wasn't using the FF series as a frame of reference for side quests. I haven't played that many games, but the more recent ones I've played are AC and Horizon, which aren't exactly in the same genre. But yeah, compared to the other FF titles, it's probably about the same.

Even then, I don't know why, but the side quests in the remake just didn't feel as rewarding. And by side quests I'm referring very specifically to the ones in Chapters 3, 8 and 14, not the optional bosses (those were great). Maybe it's because unlike the endless grind that other FF games put us through, which I usually just give up on, this one's actually finish-able and it feels kinda like... "that's it??"

So, perhaps the problem is that there are too few of them, rather than them being crap. Or that the main quest line is so good that while the FOMO side of me is dying to complete the obviously manageable checklist, another part of me just wants to get over and done with it. I don't know.

 

[Rydeen]

I don't think I've ever played an RPG where I actually enjoyed the sidequests, actually.

Actually, I lied, I liked some of Nier Automata's quests, partially because they were generally easy to find on the maps and were also interesting.

I think the most annoying thing about FFVIIR's was how there were literally entire chapters of nothing but sidequests that you could not return to. Talk about railroading.

 

[looneymoon]

I liked Nier Automata's sidequests because I gain joy from making friends with cute robots.

The first time I played that game, I set 2B's AI to aggressive. He went and killed all the fun friends at the carnival. I was so upset I restarted my game

 

[Rydeen]

I loved the one where you conduct a search and rescue in the desert and you’re given a bow. They really bury into your heart. ;_;

Also the one with the deleted memories.

I enjoyed them a lot more than FFVIIR’s.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Sidequests in games that are linear (and have no backtracking) can be really annoying because they are so easy to miss... and then it can turn out that the thing that was really easy to miss turns out to not be "worth it". Sidequests in true open-world games (often sandbox games) can often work a lot better, because they aren't truly missable usually. If you do want quests to be missable or locked behind plot progression, having sane chapter breaks that the player can jump to later also works. NeiR: Automana does have "missable" quests in that once you get to certain parts of the story, some quests can't be gotten/turned in anymore. However, there's so many chapter breaks to jump to once the game is completed for the first time that nothing really is "missable" and you don't have to play though a whole chapter from the start of it just to pick up a quest.

The other problem side-quests often have is not having characters or world-building details that are memorable that make it more than just "get/kill x number of y object/mob". Doing something like collecting cats for the local cat-lover isn't interesting... because a world so like our own having someone who loves cats that much isn't surprising. The character archetype isn't really interesting nor is their existence... even if it is worth lots of "awe, cute!" points. Doing as something as simple as making it oh... swamp dragons... that the quest giver thinks is cute while everyone else thinks they're not at least makes the character stick out more... and informs your player about what non-earth native creatures are thought of as normal pets in that world.

It's when side-quests point out the things that make a setting that setting in particular that they tend to do better I find. Part of what makes NeiR: Automana's side-quests so good is that they point out how different the NeiR: Automana world is from our own. Everyone has editable memory, so there's a bunch of quests that explore how deleting and rewriting memory could play out. The machines used to be all networked to each other so they could know exactly how they think/feel, but now they aren't networked anymore, so there's a bunch of quests about the communication problems they are now having. All of those things are things that only really exist in the world of NeiR: Automana, so finding out about them is interesting (and it helps that a lot of them subvert expectations for how those kinds of quests end).

The other thing that really helps side-quests is when they give tangible rewards that aren't just exp or money. The best rewards are things that effect the world of the game in some way, weather that's more shops, new items, cosmetics, slight plot variations, etc. It makes the player feel like their choices matter... which also means indicating to the player in some way that they did effect something by doing that quest. When all a quest gives is exp or money... it's a lot more forgettable, since the reward doesn't stand out. Of course... guess which route is easier to program?

The last thing any player wants side-quests to be is a bunch of quests where the person giving the quest could be interchanged with any other quest giver as is the items/mobs they want back or dead. If it feels like quest could be shuffled around in such a way that the exact details wouldn't make a big difference to the quest structure, it's an issue.

TLDR: Tell good stories with side-quests and give meaningful rewards and players tend not to complain about them as much.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Or that the main quest line is so good that while the FOMO side of me is dying to complete the obviously manageable checklist, another part of me just wants to get over and done with it. I don't know.

...I can actually relate to that feeling, because while on one hand I was enjoying the sidequest, a part of me was also chomping at the bit to see what was next past the side quests. But I also knew that I wanted to pace myself and not get to the end cause I'd regret it ending

I liked Nier Automata's sidequests because I gain joy from making friends with cute robots.

The first time I played that game, I set 2B's AI to aggressive. He went and killed all the fun friends at the carnival. I was so upset I restarted my game

I actually just ordered Nier Automata for the PS4 a few days ago. Should be here tomorrow so I'll know this frame of reference soon

I've heard good things, and I'm curious so.. It'll be interesting.

 

[Clement Rage]

FF7-R's quests were overall pretty good, especially in Episode 3, and 8, because we had good reasons to wander around helping people. 9's ran a bit over long, and 14s could have focused more on

Spoiler

helping victims of S7

I got tired of Nier: Automata's sidequests quickly.

Spoiler

After the third time I completed a quest only for the questgiver to immediately kill themselves, I stopped caring

I'm of the opinion that metagaming is the best way to experience a game.

Hard disagree, but different strokes and all that.

 

[crazyrabbits23]

Sidequests in games that are linear (and have no backtracking) can be really annoying because they are so easy to miss... and then it can turn out that the thing that was really easy to miss turns out to not be "worth it". Sidequests in true open-world games (often sandbox games) can often work a lot better, because they aren't truly missable usually. If you do want quests to be missable or locked behind plot progression, having sane chapter breaks that the player can jump to later also works. NeiR: Automana does have "missable" quests in that once you get to certain parts of the story, some quests can't be gotten/turned in anymore. However, there's so many chapter breaks to jump to once the game is completed for the first time that nothing really is "missable" and you don't have to play though a whole chapter from the start of it just to pick up a quest.

Yeah, I like having sidequests that influence tangible changes on the world. One of my favorite moments in a (modded) game was in KOTOR2, with the M4-78 mod that adds the droid planet. If you complete the whole thing and choose to direct resources to a certain place, it results in a bunch of troopers giving you backup during the second to last mission in the game. I had such a thrill when I see these guys came along as backup and realized they had come along because I'd completed that mission and made that decision. Same goes for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where if you complete the glitching terminal side mission in the second act, a key character from the first game aids your infiltration into the Dvali Theater by blowing up a handful of terminals to distract the cops.

The tradeoff is that if you miss those opportunities, you can end up robbing yourself of pretty significant chunks of content. The aforementioned Mankind Divided is bad with this stuff. If you miss one of several sidequests, like Samizdat or the Calibrator sidequest, you lose out on huge chunks of world-building, interactions and side content that run through all three chapters, and you don't get a chance to do it after the first act ends.

The other problem side-quests often have is not having characters or world-building details that are memorable that make it more than just "get/kill x number of y object/mob". Doing something like collecting cats for the local cat-lover isn't interesting... because a world so like our own having someone who loves cats that much isn't surprising. The character archetype isn't really interesting nor is their existence... even if it is worth lots of "awe, cute!" points. Doing as something as simple as making it oh... swamp dragons... that the quest giver thinks is cute while everyone else thinks they're not at least makes the character stick out more... and informs your player about what non-earth native creatures are thought of as normal pets in that world.

Interestingly, Bethesda used to be much better about giving content that actually felt like off-the-beaten-path secrets and side content that wasn't "collect ten bear pelts to complete job x". Radiant quests were the worst thing to happen to them. In Oblivion, you had stuff like unique variations on events and quests if you did them early (or late) enough or out of the way unmarked quests that harkened back to previous titles (the snowy cliffs in the northern edge of the map with the journal from the first NPC you meet in Morrowind).

 

[Ite]

Yeah, I like having sidequests that influence tangible changes on the world. One of my favorite moments in a (modded) game was in KOTOR2, with the M4-78 mod that adds the droid planet. If you complete the whole thing and choose to direct resources to a certain place, it results in a bunch of troopers giving you backup during the second to last mission in the game. I had such a thrill when I see these guys came along as backup and realized they had come along because I'd completed that mission and made that decision. Same goes for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where if you complete the glitching terminal side mission in the second act, a key character from the first game aids your infiltration into the Dvali Theater by blowing up a handful of terminals to distract the cops.

The tradeoff is that if you miss those opportunities, you can end up robbing yourself of pretty significant chunks of content. The aforementioned Mankind Divided is bad with this stuff. If you miss one of several sidequests, like Samizdat or the Calibrator sidequest, you lose out on huge chunks of world-building, interactions and side content that run through all three chapters, and you don't get a chance to do it after the first act ends.



Interestingly, Bethesda used to be much better about giving content that actually felt like off-the-beaten-path secrets and side content that wasn't "collect ten bear pelts to complete job x". Radiant quests were the worst thing to happen to them. In Oblivion, you had stuff like unique variations on events and quests if you did them early (or late) enough or out of the way unmarked quests that harkened back to previous titles (the snowy cliffs in the northern edge of the map with the journal from the first NPC you meet in Morrowind).

I worry about what this new trend of data-based game design is going to do to the Elder Scrolls series. There’s a reason 4 out of 5 of the mainline series are still being played regularly. The dungeons in Daggerfall may suck dusty oats, but as a fantasy life simulator it remains top tier even after 25 years. I suppose “hours played” is data, but me getting high and walking around Sadrith Mora isn’t really telling the data collectors anything... except that my computer is running...

 

[ExampleZ]

My biggest issue with this game is Shera, the worst written character in the game by a mile. In Cid's flashback she says she doesn't mind being roasted alive if he can go to space, so she's forcing him to choose between fulfilling his dream with her blood on his hands, or to watch his dream go up in smoke, and for the rest of the game she's the typical obedient housewife who wouldn't dare to stand up to her verbally abusive partner(yes I know they're not actually married). Square was never very good at writing women and Shera is arguably their most problematic example.

Like others in this thread have pointed out, the huge materia side quest was dumb and unnecessary, with flimsy rationalization, and only served to artificially increase the game's length.

The slap fight was also dumb and unnecessary, and wasn't even a fun minigame, literally just hammer the O button until you win.

And of course the translation was objectively terrible and is by far the biggest reason everyone was confused by the plot, myself included. It's like it was done by a single person with a Japanese->English dictionary, with no proofreading, editing or checking to see if what was being said corresponded with what was happening on screen, and they turned in the first draft and Sony/Square decided to roll with that for the final release.

I never understood why Rufus needed to travel all the way to Rocket Town just for the Tiny Bronco when surely the richest megacorp on the planet should have more than a few other aeroplanes available.

Biggest complaint: the combat aged very poorly. Although the materia system is still interesting, very little strategizing is required, and classing your characters is unnecessary. Random encounters and high rates thereof are intolerable to me now, to the point where I actually can't play these kinds of games anymore. The gameplay is simultaneously annoying and too easy. From this era, gameplay like that of Chrono Trigger and even FFVI have stood the test of time better. FFVII was not groundbreaking in this arena. FFVIIR's battle system is very unique, strategic, and quite challenging at times, and I expect it to stand tall as the years go by.

You could say that about every Squaresoft JRPG of that era. While Chrono Trigger lacked random encounters it was still just as easy and simplistic as FF7 outside of some bosses. Haven't played enough of FF6 to form a proper opinion but that game's battle system didn't seem that special either. Personally I think FF10 has the best battle system of the mainline series

Sure, the ending was very jarring, but isn't also the fact that an ultimania was required to explain the convoluted (but still lovable) plot of the OG? When I think about it, this really isn't a "compilation" thing.

Like I said earlier the plot was mangled by the awful localization, but it's not that to figure out by yourself.

OG President Shinra is a cartoonish villain. It's fine and perfectly realistic to have some of those, but almost everyone in Shinra is rather one dimensional. President Shinra, The Turks, and even Hojo are all way more nuanced in the compilation/remake, which makes them more compelling to me.

Yeah I'm not seeing that. They're still every bit as cartoonishly mustache-twirlingly evil in the remake as they were in the original. The obvious exception being Reeve. And I never thought the Turks were one dimensional at all, except for Advent Children where they're just a slapstick comedy routine that got old quickly.

Compared to its characterization in the Remake and the Compilation, the rest of Barret's cell comes across as an unfinished story idea. Wedge is the fat guy. Jessie is the tech girl who has a couple of regrets about her actions and might have a crush on Cloud. Biggs is... just kind of there as the everyman. Avalanche appears to be comprised of a handful of terrorists with no outside support. The Compilation and the remake did a lot of good work fleshing out these characters.

Only Jessie is really fleshed out in the remake, Biggs is still just the everyman who is kinda there and Wedge is still just the hungry fat guy who's always thinking about food, but now he also likes cats.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Considering what materia is, it makes perfect sense for the group protecting the Planet not to allow Shinra to detonate the crystallized spirit energy of the Planet in a futile hope it's going to make a magical Meteor in space disappear.

That's part of the planet's life force. The Huge Materia are the symbolic equivalents of the 4 Elemental Crystals of every Final Fantasy. And they represent a powerful aid in stopping Sephiroth. The mini-quests are of varying quality gameplay wise but they make perfect sense narratively speaking. It'd make no sense for the group that is hoping to save the planet and recognizes Lifestream and materia as souls of the dead, to just let that spirit energy be destroyed.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

And of course the translation was objectively terrible and is by far the biggest reason everyone was confused by the plot, myself included. It's like it was done by a single person with a Japanese->English dictionary, with no proofreading, editing or checking to see if what was being said corresponded with what was happening on screen, it's like they turned in the first draft and Sony/Square decided to roll with that for the final release.

Well, it was done by a single person, and they weren't necessarily able to check how what was being said corresponded with what was happening on screen ... XD

The text files in those days were usually just dumped on them, not even necessarily in the right order, and they had to make sense of it while also making it fit within the pre-existing on-screen text boxes while using fixed-width fonts -- and all with no spell checker.

I think what we got was pretty damn good, all of that considered. All the character personalities conveyed, the speech mannerisms that have stuck in our heads all these years, the iconic phrases, etc.

 

[ExampleZ]

Well, it was done by a single person, and they weren't necessarily able to check how what was being said corresponded with what was happening on screen ... XD

The text files in those days were usually just dumped on them, not even necessarily in the right order, and they had to make sense of it while also making it fit within the pre-existing on-screen text boxes while using fixed-width fonts -- and all with no spell checker.

I think what we got was pretty damn good, all of that considered. All the character personalities conveyed, the speech mannerisms that have stuck in our heads all these years, the iconic phrases, etc.

Yeah I don't know the full story behind the translation, and how many issues there were regarding time and budget, but it still doesn't change the fact that the FF7 translation is riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies, and every FF from 8 onwards had a translation which, while not perfect, is FAR more competent than what FF7 received. Memeworthy phrases aside ("This guy are sick", "Attack while it's tail's up!", "Beacause..." "Off course!"), there's no consistency at all; at one point Cait Sith suddenly starts speaking in a southern drawl and it's never brought up again, and there are some lines which give a completely different meaning from what was intended i.e Aeris saying "I've known [Tseng] since we were little", Johnny saying he knew Cloud and Tifa since childhood, and so on. Not to mention much of the plot was lost in translation, to this day people still think Cloud is a clone, Jenova was controlling Sephiroth, and Cloud thinking he can meet Aeris in the lifestream means he's not over her death.

 

[Makoeyes987]

The second Cait Sith started speaking in a Southern drawl because he had a Kansai dialect in the Japanese version. Which is due to being an entirely different Cait Sith from the one that sacrificed itself to release the Temple of the Ancients.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Yeah, I don't know the full story behind the translation, and how many issues there were regarding time and budget, but it still doesn't change the fact that the FF7 translation is riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies, and every FF from 8 onwards had a translation which, while not perfect, is FAR more competent than what FF7 received.

Well, yes. The success VII saw outside Japan allowed the meager localization department that existed at Square at that time (it was like four people) to convince their bosses that taking localization seriously was a worthwhile endeavor. So it was after that (or more accurately: the batch of games being worked on at the time, which includes FFTactics) we see proper time given to the process, the opportunity for proper context to be established between text and screen, etc.

I think they were still stuck dealing with pre-set text box sizes until FFIX, though. =/

 

[crazyrabbits23]

Only Jessie is really fleshed out in the remake, Biggs is still just the everyman who is kinda there and Wedge is still just the hungry fat guy who's always thinking about food, but now he also likes cats.

They did give Biggs and Wedge far more characterization than the OG, though. I liked Wedge in the OG, but he was literally a cypher. His biggest contribution is getting thrown against the "fourth wall" by Barret in the HQ. In the remake, he has a whole set of principles (good with kids, was an orphan, feels he needs to protect the people in the slums via his work in the neighbourhood watch, acts as a pseudo-weaponmaster/tutorial stage for Cloud, is your ally during the upper plate infiltration and bonds with Cloud) and Wedge not only lasts longer versus the OG, he has far more comic relief/endearing moments. I can't undercut what the dev team did in the remake, because it was far beyond my expectations.

Were there things I would have changed with their remake's portrayal? Absolutely.

Spoiler: Remake Story Spoilers

Having the fakeout on Biggs' death, bizarre circumstance about his survival (spoiled by the menus - apparently someone ran up and rescued him from the tower?) and Wedge being relegated to an off-screen "death" in Shinra HQ) irked me the wrong way.

That said, they went above and beyond on the whole Avalanche team. If anything, I wish that the remake did more with the secondary Avalanche forces/their history. Those were the real red-shirts.

 

[ExampleZ]

They did give Biggs and Wedge far more characterization than the OG, though. I liked Wedge in the OG, but he was literally a cypher. His biggest contribution is getting thrown against the "fourth wall" by Barret in the HQ. In the remake, he has a whole set of principles (good with kids, was an orphan, feels he needs to protect the people in the slums via his work in the neighbourhood watch, acts as a pseudo-weaponmaster/tutorial stage for Cloud, is your ally during the upper plate infiltration and bonds with Cloud) and Wedge not only lasts longer versus the OG, he has far more comic relief/endearing moments. I can't undercut what the dev team did in the remake, because it was far beyond my expectations.

Were there things I would have changed with their remake's portrayal? Absolutely.

Spoiler: Remake Story Spoilers

Having the fakeout on Biggs' death, bizarre circumstance about his survival (spoiled by the menus - apparently someone ran up and rescued him from the tower?) and Wedge being relegated to an off-screen "death" in Shinra HQ) irked me the wrong way.

That said, they went above and beyond on the whole Avalanche team. If anything, I wish that the remake did more with the secondary Avalanche forces/their history. Those were the real red-shirts.

Oh right, I forgot about that orphan stuff with Biggs. They didn't really do much for Wedge besides more funny moments though. And yeah that spoiler made no sense to me either.