The Official "How many parts?" Thread

[Odysseus]

You purchase your copy of Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2: Revengence, and open the disc case, eagerly awaiting the thrill of living your childhood once again. A rancid odor immediately fills your nostrils, your eyes tear up instantly, you recoil instinctively and drop the case on the floor. red matter splatters across your carpet, and once you wipe the tears from your eyes, you finally see the source of the odor. Several maggot-ridden rat corpses have been compressed in such a way as to fit inside the disc case. They leak black ooze, their bones surely powder mixed in with the rot. You had noticed the disc case had been heavier than you were accustomed to in the modern day, but you had supposed they might have included a manual just for old-times sake. No. Rats.

You're on the floor, the smell is so overpowering. Your pet bird isn't moving anymore. You claw your way across the carpet, dragging yourself through the refuse that had splashed out of the case. You have to close it, you can't take it much longer, you're going to pass out. You thrust your arm forward to close the disc case, but it lands right in the filth. You immeditaely retract your hand in disgust, but something clings to your finger. One of the rats is somehow still alive, and it whispers into your ear:

"Cloud tells the party about Sephiroth and how he burned down Cloud's hometown. This happens in a random field because Kalm is too expensive to render. Yuffie steals the party's equipment so they have to do sidequests to get more. The chocobo farm is a big dungeon, and the Zolom is a mandatory boss. The Mithril mine takes 5 chapters to get through. The game ends in Junon, with a battle against the gods of time who is then eaten by Sephoroth who is the real final boss again. He throws the cargo ship at you. Zack helps. Thank you for purchasing the game, please be excited for the next installment."

You blink. The smell is gone, you're on your feet again. You never owned a pet bird. You look down at the disc case you just opened. There's a Gackt CD in the disc slot, and a small pamphlet with the words the rat had just whispered on it. why are you crying?

Game of the year.

 

[LNK]

Pandemonium:

The thing is that the actual work itself (P1) suggests the exact opposite of what that one developer said in that interview. They hit us over the head with 'terrifying freedom', how 'that which lies ahead does not yet exist', a huge shock of a twist with you know who coming back, and the very last words in big letters across the screen being 'the unknown journey will continue'. It's hard for it to be any more blatant. I don't blame people thinking there will be big changes at all.

I interpreted those suggestions being for the characters, not us. I did say I don't blame people for thinking things are gonna drastically change though. I just think they want to keep people guessing, but for the most part, most of the things are gonna stay the same. Just done a little differently. Even with you know who surviving at the end, I don't think it is what other people are thinking.

Spoiler

My guess is Zack is still dead, or will be dead. I think his scenes will be flashbacks to before his final stand. Then by the end, we'll see him fight the shinra grunts again, survive, only to be gunned down by the 3 stragglers. Just like in Crisis Core and the OG.

 

[Odysseus]

They did say it would be familiar but also contain surprises for returning players, so I have to imagine some things will be pretty different.

 

[Shademp]

The amount of salt in here for the proposed possibility of cut content is enough to murder one trillion billion snails.

 

[Odysseus]

Nah I just wanted to write about rats.

 

[cold_spirit]

I could easily be wrong, but I doubt Nomura, Kitase, Hamaguchi or Toriyama are resigned to this project being the swan song of their careers.

Didn't one of them mention something like being okay with making FF7 for the rest of their lives? Or did I make that up?

Is this is the interview you're thinking of?

"Final Fantasy VII is a game which, if it just stayed as the original, would just be remembered as something from the past and people wouldn't be as engaged with it. I think in order to be something that continues to be loved and followed by future generations we have to keep updating it as we're doing now. And in 10 years time, 20 years time, it may need to be done again! So even if this is the only thing that I do in the rest of my career, I won't be disappointed."
-Yoshinori Kitase

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-developer-want-the-saga-to-/1100-6474177/

(Starting with Part 2, I'm going to throw every interview I find into Google Doc so I can easily CTRL+F this stuff)

Interesting that Kitase thinks FFVII may need to be remade in 10-20 years and we're all thinking the current Remake project will take at least 10 years...

 

[Makoeyes987]

Kitase was kidding, obviously.

 

[Odysseus]

Yep that's the one. Thanks!

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

You purchase your copy of Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2: Revengence, and open the disc case, eagerly awaiting the thrill of living your childhood once again. A rancid odor immediately fills your nostrils, your eyes tear up instantly, you recoil instinctively and drop the case on the floor. red matter splatters across your carpet, and once you wipe the tears from your eyes, you finally see the source of the odor. Several maggot-ridden rat corpses have been compressed in such a way as to fit inside the disc case. They leak black ooze, their bones surely powder mixed in with the rot. You had noticed the disc case had been heavier than you were accustomed to in the modern day, but you had supposed they might have included a manual just for old-times sake. No. Rats.

You're on the floor, the smell is so overpowering. Your pet bird isn't moving anymore. You claw your way across the carpet, dragging yourself through the refuse that had splashed out of the case. You have to close it, you can't take it much longer, you're going to pass out. You thrust your arm forward to close the disc case, but it lands right in the filth. You immeditaely retract your hand in disgust, but something clings to your finger. One of the rats is somehow still alive, and it whispers into your ear:

"Cloud tells the party about Sephiroth and how he burned down Cloud's hometown. This happens in a random field because Kalm is too expensive to render. Yuffie steals the party's equipment so they have to do sidequests to get more. The chocobo farm is a big dungeon, and the Zolom is a mandatory boss. The Mithril mine takes 5 chapters to get through. The game ends in Junon, with a battle against the gods of time who is then eaten by Sephoroth who is the real final boss again. He throws the cargo ship at you. Zack helps. Thank you for purchasing the game, please be excited for the next installment."

You blink. The smell is gone, you're on your feet again. You never owned a pet bird. You look down at the disc case you just opened. There's a Gackt CD in the disc slot, and a small pamphlet with the words the rat had just whispered on it. why are you crying?

Game of the year.

You do paint a picture.

Spoiler

My guess is Zack is still dead, or will be dead. I think his scenes will be flashbacks to before his final stand. Then by the end, we'll see him fight the shinra grunts again, survive, only to be gunned down by the 3 stragglers. Just like in Crisis Core and the OG.

I mean, there's red herrings, but then there's just wastefully sabotaging the original Cloud/Zack reveal for nothing to come out of it either as a narrative device or within the narrative itself. What would that offer either new or returning players?

Also, what about the alternate Stamp design?

 

[ForceStealer]

I mean, there's red herrings, but then there's just wastefully sabotaging the original Cloud/Zack reveal for nothing to come out of it either as a narrative device or within the narrative itself. What would that offer either new or returning players?

A sigh of fucking relief, for one thing

 

[Theozilla]

One significant thing to keep in mind is that with the Remake project Midgar isn't going to have any equivalent location in terms of expanded scale and decompression. Remember Midgar got expanded into an entire game for the first part, cannot likely be feasibly compared to any other single town/city on the FFVII planet. Content-wise Midgar is going to be comparable to a third or half of the globe, thus how subsequent parts represent the scale of the other locations is going to be structured/organized significantly different.
Like a fraction of Midgar's sewers alone got expanded into an entire chapter, while an entire chapter in the future installments will likely be representing at minimum half of a town, if not entire towns/locations.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Pain.

More and more pain. At an existential level.

Naw, they'll do something with it. I just don't think they'll do something that changes the destination of the resolution... But it will certainly divert it in places and directions we would never before have conceived the story to go.

 

[Roundhouse]

Pandemonium:

That sounds like the most appalling anti-climax I've heard in a long time. To throw that big twist in at the end of P1, and then have the character gunned down by the grunts after a few scenes in P2 sounds dreadful. I think people are so desperate for things to stay the same that even concepts like this sound attractive, because it preserves the original direction.

Theozilla:

The Kitase quote seems quite clear and straightforward, so not much room for argument. Maybe they really will include every location, and even add new ones like Banora. I still suspect that the actual specifics in terms of events and character elements may well have significant changes, though, because it kinda has to -- RemakeAerith is not OGAerith, and RemakeSephiroth is definitely not OGRoth, for example. No clue where they are going with those two characters.

 

[ForceStealer]

I think people are so desperate for things to stay the same that even concepts like this sound attractive, because it preserves the original direction.

Although I would argue an aversion to something so fundamentally timeline breaking doesn't quite constitute desperation for everything to stay the same.

 

[Makoeyes987]

None of the characters of the Remake are the same as their OG counterparts, so that doesn't really mean anything.

 

[Theozilla]

Sure the details are likely to differ but the fundamentals are likely going to be the same. Like King Kong from the 1933 film is different from his depictions in the 1976 and 2005 films but they are all recognizably still King Kong no question.

 

[Roundhouse]

So you don't see something like the Evangelion Rebuild being an apt comparison?

 

[Theozilla]

So you don't see something like the Evangelion Rebuild being an apt comparison?

Not really, as those significantly differ in not only in content and plot/continuity-relationship to the original series, but also the fundamental motivations/objective for their creations. The Rebuild Evangelion films are a retelling, not a remake, and Anno wanted to express some significantly different things than the original (in addition to Anno being in a significantly different place creatively/emotionally than he was in the 90s).

The Hobbit film trilogy or Peter Jackson King Kong film, or even the It film duology are far more apt comparisons IMO.

 

[Roundhouse]

Hobbit is definitely a solid comparison, at least so far. I get the sense we are heading in the Eva Rebuild direction, but hey, no way to tell until we get part two.

I will say, however, that wanting you know who to get gunned down after a couple of scenes in P2 feels like it would be a very poor idea.

 

[Theozilla]

Hobbit is definitely a solid comparison, at least so far. I get the sense we are heading in the Eva Rebuild direction, but hey, no way to tell until we get part two.

I will say, however, that wanting you know who to get gunned down after a couple of scenes in P2 feels like it would be a very poor idea.

I think going in the direction of the Rebuild of Evangelion films would be a complete contradiction of what Kitase and the other developers have said so far. The Rebuild films are intentionally something completely different from their original, which the FFVII Remake is stated explicitly to not be.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Is this is the interview you're thinking of?

"Final Fantasy VII is a game which, if it just stayed as the original, would just be remembered as something from the past and people wouldn't be as engaged with it. I think in order to be something that continues to be loved and followed by future generations we have to keep updating it as we're doing now. And in 10 years time, 20 years time, it may need to be done again! So even if this is the only thing that I do in the rest of my career, I won't be disappointed."
-Yoshinori Kitase

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-developer-want-the-saga-to-/1100-6474177/

(Starting with Part 2, I'm going to throw every interview I find into Google Doc so I can easily CTRL+F this stuff)

Interesting that Kitase thinks FFVII may need to be remade in 10-20 years and we're all thinking the current Remake project will take at least 10 years...

Well, I definitely stand corrected about him then.

None of the characters of the Remake are the same as their OG counterparts, so that doesn't really mean anything.

Most of them do act like their original counterparts and say/do the things their counterparts would. Sephiroth's more extensive knowledge of events -- plus there being two of him now -- means different things should occur.

Not really, as those significantly differ in not only in content and plot/continuity-relationship to the original series, but also the fundamental motivations/objective for their creations. The Rebuild Evangelion films are a retelling, not a remake, and Anno wanted to express some significantly different things than the original (in addition to Anno being in a significantly different place creatively/emotionally than he was in the 90s).

The Hobbit film trilogy or Peter Jackson King Kong film, or even the It film duology are far more apt comparisons IMO.

Not to spoil anything for you about the finale to the Eva film series, but from what I understand,

Spoiler

it's pretty much exactly what most folks understand FFVIIR to be ...

 

[Theozilla]

Not to spoil anything for you about the finale to the Eva film series, but from what I understand,

Spoiler

it's pretty much exactly what most folks understand FFVIIR to be ...

I've already looked up the spoilers to the final Rebuild of Evangelion film too. And it is in no way similar to what the FFVII Remake has presented itself to be so far, or what the developers have said is planned about it.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Most of them do act like their original counterparts and say/do the things their counterparts would. Sephiroth's more extensive knowledge of events -- plus there being two of him now -- means different things should occur.

They do, but they're also different in the sense they're significantly expanded. And while there are two Sephiroth's, there's also one that is in line with his OG counterpart, who's still in the Northern Crater tormenting and manipulating Cloud from afar as proceeds to hunt for the Black Materia.

I've already looked up the spoilers to the final Rebuild of Evangelion film too. And it is in no way similar to what the FFVII Remake has presented itself to be so far, or what the developers have said is planned about it.

Exactly. We'd be getting a completely different ending to FFVII as a saga if it followed the path and end point of Rebuild of Evangelion.

I mean, completely different.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Exactly. We'd be getting a completely different ending to FFVII as a saga if it followed the path and end point of Rebuild of Evangelion.

I mean, completely different.

But we're not talking about endpoints. I'm not anyway.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Ahh, well okay then.

I think there's some *thematic* similarity to End of Evangelion in regards to what's expressed in the Remake, but I think that's only in the sense of it's parallel plot that expands the conflict between Sephiroth and the others; not in the sense of radically undoing and then redoing what happened in FFVII to reach an entirely new conclusion in and of itself.

It's more like... A pretext to have an "anniversary special reunion" of multiple FFVII concepts, influences and characters in this large scale Remake project, than to completely upheave and rebuild the story from it's foundation. If that makes sense.

Because once it's done, it's done. And the writers here are all going to move onto the next big FF goldmine of nostalgia and popularity waiting to be mined. FFX-3.