X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
I have completed my initial playthrough of the FFVII Remake. I logged about 56 hours into the game from Friday to Monday and I have just a seam-bursting amount of thoughts to share that encompass characters, chapters, technology, implementation, story, scope, perspective, and just... so many other things that I know that there's no way in hell I can get them appropriately conveyed in individual threads – and I'll inevitably end up derailing discussions elsewhere, so I wanted to consolidate everything into a single location where I can chat with folks about it.
Because there is so damn much to cover, I'm gonna break down the conversations into sections, and spoiler tag them to make it more manageable. The Chapter-by-Chapter bits are my thoughts at the time, but also have some post-game reflections. I'd offer apologies in advance for all of the tl;dr that this is gonna unleash when you click the things, but it's in the title, so I'm betting that it's more than expected. (They're also a bit shorter near the end, since apparently I've been writing this for like... holy shit over seven hours straight and my brain is well more than a bit tired).
TECHNOLOGY & GAME DEVELOPMENT STUFF (Full Game Spoilers)
THE "REMAKE" TITLE ITSELF (End Game Spoilers)
THOUGHTS ON EVERY CHAPTER IN THE GAME (Post-Game Perspective, so full-game Spoilers for each chapter)
THINGS I HOPE FOR (Some Menu & Endgame Unlockable Content Spoilers)
Thanks to anyone who actually read all of this.
X
Because there is so damn much to cover, I'm gonna break down the conversations into sections, and spoiler tag them to make it more manageable. The Chapter-by-Chapter bits are my thoughts at the time, but also have some post-game reflections. I'd offer apologies in advance for all of the tl;dr that this is gonna unleash when you click the things, but it's in the title, so I'm betting that it's more than expected. (They're also a bit shorter near the end, since apparently I've been writing this for like... holy shit over seven hours straight and my brain is well more than a bit tired).
TECHNOLOGY & GAME DEVELOPMENT STUFF (Full Game Spoilers)
So, first off, the technology in the Remake is really damn impressive. The game looks monumentally spectacular... most of the time. This, as well as some other stuff made me really glad that I had some background in the PS5 from Mark Cerny's GDC-type presentation. On top of that, I've worked in some form of software development for essentially a decade now, and that's helped me to keep a lot of things in mind when I play games, since I know a lot about how the process works and it's easy for me to be forgiving or critical of things depending on circumstances, and there was a lot of that in the Remake.
In the "Inside the FFVII Remake" video series, I started to suspect that a lot of the team's approach to the Remake was being optimized to help the software teams to prioritize improved development for PS5 once they covered information about their custom audio engine. Getting that hunch early on was a welcome one, because as anyone knows playing the Remake at launch, there are some REALLY rough texture bugs in the game. What's odd is that they occur all over the place to things, but one of the first places where I really ran into them is the doors to Tifa, Cloud, and the Sick Man's apartments in the slums, but also punch you in the face in certain cutscenes, like the flowers outside Aerith's house, and can be really inconsistent with posters on walls being highly readable, or pixelated garbage.
One of the things that's super different between PS4 & PS5 involves memory management optimization. Normally how games load and unload assets involves a lot of duplication, and management for how and where assets load in big chunks. Loading screens and elevator transitions and whatnot are a big part of how games have gated that. You could always tell in FFXV when you were heading into big dungeons when you'd hit a "halfway" point where you'd have to shuffle sideways through a narrow gap, so that the game could swap over the assets that it was using from one zone to the next. What's notable here though is that Remake has some places that are really huge and keep a lot of assets loaded, but they have two different types of "Gates" which is pretty interesting.
The first ones are the Triangle presses for doors, ladders, triangle interactions, as well as the regular walkway obstacles. You can sometimes notice a brief moment where that icon before ladders or other locations might take a second to show up or doesn't immediately register when you encounter it, especially if you're running towards them. The second type are the ones where there's triangle hold switch, a Red XIII transition, a PHS phone system, or there's an especially long transition that is also significantly slowing down character movement speed. These can also involve updating a flag that will adjust the areas that can be reached. Sometimes they'll just open an area like in the No 1 Reactor, or other times they'll transition multiple changes to a zone's traversal areas – like in the Sector 0 Drum with the gates opening and closing, or they'll trigger a collapse of rubble or something to make the way back impassible – like when you get to the rooftop with The Valkyrie.
It's clear that there's a shitton of memory processing work being done in all those areas, and that the game is getting some information and processing things while you're crossing them. The second type I actually managed to bug one of them while climbing up to the plate, which is the really long narrow shuffle around the circular bit. I slowed down to let Barret & Tifa pass me (because I was stuck phased into Barret's model), but when I did, after they both got to the other side, the game did a sanity check about what it was doing. Because my two party members were on one side, and I was inside a "loading zone" it did a re-check, and after that happened, Cloud would only go back the direction I came from, rather than moving forward.
You usually don't think about that because the zones are short, and the number of times that you realize that you suddenly need to go back the other direction is very small because of design. If there is a chance of that, most of the time, it's on a ladder because you're made to be able to make those more rapid transitions since you can run Up/Down them – which is why those are designed to have more directional control on them, and also why they often have doors or a second ladder nearby to help stagger loading but not feel slower. From a tech standpoint, you want to avoid trapping the player if something gets mis-triggered (like entering and exiting a zone quickly or something), and not deactivate the active button on the other side. You also don't want to keep a bunch of those loaded for the same reason, in case one gets triggered unnecessarily.
This also happens with every character who offers you something who has a "Goodbye" line of dialogue when their menu closes – Chadley being the most apparent, since you often want to exit his screen and go to your menu to make adjustments to Materia/Weapons – but if you do that while he dialogue is up, it'll pause the game instead. I suspect that the Weapon Upgrade reset is a Gil charged service he offers rather than something you can do from the Menu, specifically because it makes it easier to keep the "Solar System" assets cached in a particular state where it's easy to ensure that nothing is accidentally lost, by placing the controls for that state in another area that can interact with it more safely and avoid something weird accidentally losing progress there.
The odd thing is that there are just a massive number of these all over the place in some areas, but you don't see them in regions with huge numbers of entities like in the Slums. While you do want to implement them for things like hiding treasure chests and whatnot to make them feel more like normal interactions, and not just loading gates, it's still a weirdly large number of those interactions to have. What this means is that there are a lot of puzzle areas in Remake that take waaaay more time to go through than they feel like they need to, and the pacing lags a bit because of it (which I'll cover a bit when I talk about the chapters where that's the case).
What's interesting is that when you're climbing the wreckage of Sector 7, you can look down and see enemies still roaming in the buildings below you, even though you've passed through a easily a dozen or more of these little checkpoint-type transitions since you were down there. Normally those are the kind of entity assets are something that you'd be dropping after you hit loading zones that remove the player from being able to reach them easily. If you're keeping the assets in place, what you're usually doing there is triggering an update to the textures in that area. If you're far away, it's totally fine to have really low-poly textures, so long as you make sure that by the time the players are capable of getting close enough to see them, that the textures in question update.
What's clear is that both with people's clothing who are important to the specific scenes being triggered, as well as static assets in zones that are not only loaded, but in immediately active regions, there are still a LOT of bugs where we're only getting the low quality textures, and they're just not loading in at all, despite what seems like an obscene amount of redundant checkpoints that should prevent that. It's obvious that there are more than enough loading zones have the triggers to load the correct high-res textures. That we're seeing these sorts of issues all over in Remake when you're right next to things makes me think that the team is actually spending a lot of time using memory management techniques that the PS5 uses and doing a bit of hybridization when they're architecting the game, because you don't want to end up with the first title looking WAY worse than the later games, and they clearly want Remake to be one of the most prominent PS4-upgrade launch titles ready to take full use of the PS5's capabilities.
We know that PS4 games are natively going to be able to leverage improvements to loading and memory on PS5 just due to the extensive work around Memory management and the SSD – that applies to over a hundred different titles of top PS4 games. This is something more than just improving the loading and information retrieval times. From a software development standpoint, we know that the team is working on the next part, but also that learning and developing for next-gen titles started easily over a year ago. I'm betting that a lot of things for Remake are being architected in such a way that the game is going to get an utterly massive optimization on PS5 even beyond the basic out-of-the-box-PS4-title-improvements that it would get just by being installed on the PS5's SSD. I'd bet there's a patch specifically dedicated to it, if not a piece of DLC to make those updates. I'd expect that most of those little transitions to feel a lot more smooth when the game is on PS5.
That being said – I'd still expect some patches to sort out the existing bugs for the potato textures, as well as some things in the near future once reviews have some time to let the team know what needs work. make some much needed FFXV-Royale-level quality-of-life updates to the current game (which I'll dive into when talking about things I'm hoping for), as well as some other bugs. While I'll get to these more int he chapter-by-chapter bit, you can REALLY tell that the last 3 chapters of the game have issues that are a result of just not having enough QA time to really polish and refine the experiences of some things in those chapters. Given that I work in QA, that's where I learn to recognize things like that by "feel" and I'll just mention a couple of things:
The moment I hit the vents in the bathroom is when I knew things were gonna get a bit rough. There's a softlock when you're crawling through the vents where once you look in to one of the rooms before the big meeting, the back button just doesn't function at all and you have to restart the game from the last checkpoint. That's the sort of thing that there's no WAY that those would have happened in any of the other chapters given the insane level of polish on everything. Right here is where you can tell that the team was working their asses off just to try and hit release date. The boss fight against Specimen H0512 is beautifully orchestrated – but all of the passive character dialogue doesn't trigger – only attack-specific character lines occur, so the whole fight feels really uncomfortably wrong, like the music's too loud or something. Additionally, the specimens that come out during the fight have three distinct appearances during each phase, and their attacks change accordingly. Assessing will tell you those things in battle, but they don't save any unique data or models to the Enemy Intel.
From this point to the end of the game, there are a TON of things that it's clear that got pushed really hard to make it out on time.
The Drum has a lot of interesting isolation of your party, but you spend more time shuffling materia between them and not knowing who's fighting what, or if it's mostly just puzzles. This also means that depending on how you built your party, those sections might be suddenly massively tough. Tifa was my healer, so the bits with Cloud & Barret were unbearably difficult, while anything Aerith & Tifa fought absolutely melted, and every PHS swap was like 5 minutes of swapping materia between everybody to re-optimize my limited resources. This happens all over the end of the game, and to more and more problematic degrees. There are a couple cutscenes that allow you to press square to get a menu and shuffle materia first, but not all of them do and those are really important when it's not clear which character is going to fight. The Arsenal lets you do this, but when Cloud is approaching the whole party and then still fights Rufus alone and that cutscene doesn't. The boss fights with Rufus & The Arsenal also both have phases, but those aren't completed boss fights. They each rely on a gimmick that is either painstakingly slow to execute, or totally obfuscated from the player, and you have to do them to win, unlike shattering enemy limbs which is normally an advantage, rather than a requirement. Those are the phases of encounters when they're still in development and you want to test the structure for a fight, but haven't nailed down the balance by testing it against a wide type of different teams.
The end transition into Chapter 18 and most of Chapter 18 has character dialogue that stops sounding human, and plays out like weirdly vague anime exposition for the first time in the entire game. That's because what's here is the bare framework of that part. Everything is just cutscenes fed into boss battles, which means that they only had the basic bits done, but there's almost no developed content like we see in other chapters. We don't see a single one of the normal Whispers in this dimension where you'd expect to see them all over the place. The boss Whispers barely even have the one gimmick they do have, and they never tell you who's going to be fighting in your team before it happens, nor do you get a chance to swap out materia loadouts. They also don't ever explain why you're limited to parties of only three people, because that was supposed to have some other mitigating mechanic. It's pretty clear that this was meant to be a fight that you have with Tifa, Aerith, & Cloud, and could then swap over to Barret and Red XIII when the Stagger State triggered an opening against the big one. However, Barret & Red XIII's bit became a cutscene, because there wasn't enough development time to get that part sorted out or do get Red XIII as anything beyond an NPC. Also, the party swapping with locked Materia issue from earlier is all over here as well, which points to those problems of not being able to test a wide number of character loadouts and materia combinations for balance.
This whole section is the type of thing where you would normally pick out a team of your own, and have some more information about the end of the game, and the connections to one another, and there would be sections talking about the Planet and destiny. Additionally, because the Sephiroth fight is right after everything without pause, that means that this fight happened with Barret & without Tifa to mix up which combinations you played with (despite Barret having no connection to that fight and Tifa's connection to Sephiroth being vitally important). This also means that I suddenly didn't have Assess anymore, and couldn't use it to strategize or get data on the final enemy in the game. When looking at the final enemy list, each number is listed as just the number, like "10" but the final entry is listed as "114." which is the kind of little text bug that would never slip past a QA team who's had time to check everything thoroughly. The fact that the endgame increases EXP and AP for just replaying things normally will tell you that the issue happened around how long the endgame sections were, and what kind of balance the materia had at the levels in the game of natural progression. The fact that you can cutscene skip the entire sequence with M.O.T.O.R. after beating the game is really subtle QA & Engineer short hand for, "Holy fuck you guys, we're sorry, we know this is godawful and we won't make you do it again, so please go back and play the other parts that work until we get this sorted."
There are things like the ability to pick team members for the Corneo Coliseum for 3 party battles – but there's literally no time when you're there with all 4 members of your party. It's pretty clear that there's a lot of stuff that was designed to facilitate post-game content that never got made, because the end of the game was just a massive rush to get everything even playable for what existed, let alone have enough time to flesh things out on the level that the rest of the game does so beautifully. Even with the delayed release, it's rough. The biggest thing here is that the FFVII Remake absolutely cannot have an initial launch too close to the PS5 launch date. Missing March meant that they didn't hit that release in Q1 and the PS5 is scheduled to drop in Q4. This isn't like Ghost of Tsushima where it can launch on both pretty easily, because FFVII is a console seller. Launching the longest-awaited game ever on the previous console generation too close to the PS5's marketing build-up is gonna put them at odds with Sony, let alone how impossible it would be for them to launch AFTER the PS5 release happens. Sony isn't gonna have any big bump in PS4 sales happening close to the PS5 and FFVIIR represents that, so I doubt that they ended up having much of a choice. I think that that's why they were vocal about the public announcement with bumping their launch date, and a number of other game devs put out announcements around the same time to help lessen the impact. This is definitely some behind-the-curtain moves by people who all have a lot of respect for each other. It feels pretty clear that they got their team anything they could to help within the incredibly small scope of what they could ever have gotten at all, so we can get an understanding externally that this is what went on. Because of that being what it is – you will literally NEVER be able to have anyone officially confirm that sort of thing, at least not for a few years after the PS5's been around.
However, the good thing is that since the game is out, that hurdle is crossed because the game is out. The early parts of the game are utterly fucking phenomenal, and we know that FFXV had some similar issues with Chapter 13's pacing, and very less-than-ideal endgame chapter content, that it's definitely fixable. This is also why there's so much effort in the game's architecture to be able to do concurrent development for PS5 – all of their work on the game is gonna have to mesh with the improvements for the PS5, and they'll be working on concurrent codebases for this, as well as establishing transitioning all of the assets into PS5 architecture for the sequels. What it won't change immediately is that the ending bits haven't sat super well with everyone, and it kind of sours the experience a bit, especially given the shock reveals. I needed some time to digest everything and look back objectively, which is what brings me to my next point: The title of the game itself.
In the "Inside the FFVII Remake" video series, I started to suspect that a lot of the team's approach to the Remake was being optimized to help the software teams to prioritize improved development for PS5 once they covered information about their custom audio engine. Getting that hunch early on was a welcome one, because as anyone knows playing the Remake at launch, there are some REALLY rough texture bugs in the game. What's odd is that they occur all over the place to things, but one of the first places where I really ran into them is the doors to Tifa, Cloud, and the Sick Man's apartments in the slums, but also punch you in the face in certain cutscenes, like the flowers outside Aerith's house, and can be really inconsistent with posters on walls being highly readable, or pixelated garbage.
One of the things that's super different between PS4 & PS5 involves memory management optimization. Normally how games load and unload assets involves a lot of duplication, and management for how and where assets load in big chunks. Loading screens and elevator transitions and whatnot are a big part of how games have gated that. You could always tell in FFXV when you were heading into big dungeons when you'd hit a "halfway" point where you'd have to shuffle sideways through a narrow gap, so that the game could swap over the assets that it was using from one zone to the next. What's notable here though is that Remake has some places that are really huge and keep a lot of assets loaded, but they have two different types of "Gates" which is pretty interesting.
The first ones are the Triangle presses for doors, ladders, triangle interactions, as well as the regular walkway obstacles. You can sometimes notice a brief moment where that icon before ladders or other locations might take a second to show up or doesn't immediately register when you encounter it, especially if you're running towards them. The second type are the ones where there's triangle hold switch, a Red XIII transition, a PHS phone system, or there's an especially long transition that is also significantly slowing down character movement speed. These can also involve updating a flag that will adjust the areas that can be reached. Sometimes they'll just open an area like in the No 1 Reactor, or other times they'll transition multiple changes to a zone's traversal areas – like in the Sector 0 Drum with the gates opening and closing, or they'll trigger a collapse of rubble or something to make the way back impassible – like when you get to the rooftop with The Valkyrie.
It's clear that there's a shitton of memory processing work being done in all those areas, and that the game is getting some information and processing things while you're crossing them. The second type I actually managed to bug one of them while climbing up to the plate, which is the really long narrow shuffle around the circular bit. I slowed down to let Barret & Tifa pass me (because I was stuck phased into Barret's model), but when I did, after they both got to the other side, the game did a sanity check about what it was doing. Because my two party members were on one side, and I was inside a "loading zone" it did a re-check, and after that happened, Cloud would only go back the direction I came from, rather than moving forward.
You usually don't think about that because the zones are short, and the number of times that you realize that you suddenly need to go back the other direction is very small because of design. If there is a chance of that, most of the time, it's on a ladder because you're made to be able to make those more rapid transitions since you can run Up/Down them – which is why those are designed to have more directional control on them, and also why they often have doors or a second ladder nearby to help stagger loading but not feel slower. From a tech standpoint, you want to avoid trapping the player if something gets mis-triggered (like entering and exiting a zone quickly or something), and not deactivate the active button on the other side. You also don't want to keep a bunch of those loaded for the same reason, in case one gets triggered unnecessarily.
This also happens with every character who offers you something who has a "Goodbye" line of dialogue when their menu closes – Chadley being the most apparent, since you often want to exit his screen and go to your menu to make adjustments to Materia/Weapons – but if you do that while he dialogue is up, it'll pause the game instead. I suspect that the Weapon Upgrade reset is a Gil charged service he offers rather than something you can do from the Menu, specifically because it makes it easier to keep the "Solar System" assets cached in a particular state where it's easy to ensure that nothing is accidentally lost, by placing the controls for that state in another area that can interact with it more safely and avoid something weird accidentally losing progress there.
The odd thing is that there are just a massive number of these all over the place in some areas, but you don't see them in regions with huge numbers of entities like in the Slums. While you do want to implement them for things like hiding treasure chests and whatnot to make them feel more like normal interactions, and not just loading gates, it's still a weirdly large number of those interactions to have. What this means is that there are a lot of puzzle areas in Remake that take waaaay more time to go through than they feel like they need to, and the pacing lags a bit because of it (which I'll cover a bit when I talk about the chapters where that's the case).
What's interesting is that when you're climbing the wreckage of Sector 7, you can look down and see enemies still roaming in the buildings below you, even though you've passed through a easily a dozen or more of these little checkpoint-type transitions since you were down there. Normally those are the kind of entity assets are something that you'd be dropping after you hit loading zones that remove the player from being able to reach them easily. If you're keeping the assets in place, what you're usually doing there is triggering an update to the textures in that area. If you're far away, it's totally fine to have really low-poly textures, so long as you make sure that by the time the players are capable of getting close enough to see them, that the textures in question update.
What's clear is that both with people's clothing who are important to the specific scenes being triggered, as well as static assets in zones that are not only loaded, but in immediately active regions, there are still a LOT of bugs where we're only getting the low quality textures, and they're just not loading in at all, despite what seems like an obscene amount of redundant checkpoints that should prevent that. It's obvious that there are more than enough loading zones have the triggers to load the correct high-res textures. That we're seeing these sorts of issues all over in Remake when you're right next to things makes me think that the team is actually spending a lot of time using memory management techniques that the PS5 uses and doing a bit of hybridization when they're architecting the game, because you don't want to end up with the first title looking WAY worse than the later games, and they clearly want Remake to be one of the most prominent PS4-upgrade launch titles ready to take full use of the PS5's capabilities.
We know that PS4 games are natively going to be able to leverage improvements to loading and memory on PS5 just due to the extensive work around Memory management and the SSD – that applies to over a hundred different titles of top PS4 games. This is something more than just improving the loading and information retrieval times. From a software development standpoint, we know that the team is working on the next part, but also that learning and developing for next-gen titles started easily over a year ago. I'm betting that a lot of things for Remake are being architected in such a way that the game is going to get an utterly massive optimization on PS5 even beyond the basic out-of-the-box-PS4-title-improvements that it would get just by being installed on the PS5's SSD. I'd bet there's a patch specifically dedicated to it, if not a piece of DLC to make those updates. I'd expect that most of those little transitions to feel a lot more smooth when the game is on PS5.
That being said – I'd still expect some patches to sort out the existing bugs for the potato textures, as well as some things in the near future once reviews have some time to let the team know what needs work. make some much needed FFXV-Royale-level quality-of-life updates to the current game (which I'll dive into when talking about things I'm hoping for), as well as some other bugs. While I'll get to these more int he chapter-by-chapter bit, you can REALLY tell that the last 3 chapters of the game have issues that are a result of just not having enough QA time to really polish and refine the experiences of some things in those chapters. Given that I work in QA, that's where I learn to recognize things like that by "feel" and I'll just mention a couple of things:
The moment I hit the vents in the bathroom is when I knew things were gonna get a bit rough. There's a softlock when you're crawling through the vents where once you look in to one of the rooms before the big meeting, the back button just doesn't function at all and you have to restart the game from the last checkpoint. That's the sort of thing that there's no WAY that those would have happened in any of the other chapters given the insane level of polish on everything. Right here is where you can tell that the team was working their asses off just to try and hit release date. The boss fight against Specimen H0512 is beautifully orchestrated – but all of the passive character dialogue doesn't trigger – only attack-specific character lines occur, so the whole fight feels really uncomfortably wrong, like the music's too loud or something. Additionally, the specimens that come out during the fight have three distinct appearances during each phase, and their attacks change accordingly. Assessing will tell you those things in battle, but they don't save any unique data or models to the Enemy Intel.
From this point to the end of the game, there are a TON of things that it's clear that got pushed really hard to make it out on time.
The Drum has a lot of interesting isolation of your party, but you spend more time shuffling materia between them and not knowing who's fighting what, or if it's mostly just puzzles. This also means that depending on how you built your party, those sections might be suddenly massively tough. Tifa was my healer, so the bits with Cloud & Barret were unbearably difficult, while anything Aerith & Tifa fought absolutely melted, and every PHS swap was like 5 minutes of swapping materia between everybody to re-optimize my limited resources. This happens all over the end of the game, and to more and more problematic degrees. There are a couple cutscenes that allow you to press square to get a menu and shuffle materia first, but not all of them do and those are really important when it's not clear which character is going to fight. The Arsenal lets you do this, but when Cloud is approaching the whole party and then still fights Rufus alone and that cutscene doesn't. The boss fights with Rufus & The Arsenal also both have phases, but those aren't completed boss fights. They each rely on a gimmick that is either painstakingly slow to execute, or totally obfuscated from the player, and you have to do them to win, unlike shattering enemy limbs which is normally an advantage, rather than a requirement. Those are the phases of encounters when they're still in development and you want to test the structure for a fight, but haven't nailed down the balance by testing it against a wide type of different teams.
The end transition into Chapter 18 and most of Chapter 18 has character dialogue that stops sounding human, and plays out like weirdly vague anime exposition for the first time in the entire game. That's because what's here is the bare framework of that part. Everything is just cutscenes fed into boss battles, which means that they only had the basic bits done, but there's almost no developed content like we see in other chapters. We don't see a single one of the normal Whispers in this dimension where you'd expect to see them all over the place. The boss Whispers barely even have the one gimmick they do have, and they never tell you who's going to be fighting in your team before it happens, nor do you get a chance to swap out materia loadouts. They also don't ever explain why you're limited to parties of only three people, because that was supposed to have some other mitigating mechanic. It's pretty clear that this was meant to be a fight that you have with Tifa, Aerith, & Cloud, and could then swap over to Barret and Red XIII when the Stagger State triggered an opening against the big one. However, Barret & Red XIII's bit became a cutscene, because there wasn't enough development time to get that part sorted out or do get Red XIII as anything beyond an NPC. Also, the party swapping with locked Materia issue from earlier is all over here as well, which points to those problems of not being able to test a wide number of character loadouts and materia combinations for balance.
This whole section is the type of thing where you would normally pick out a team of your own, and have some more information about the end of the game, and the connections to one another, and there would be sections talking about the Planet and destiny. Additionally, because the Sephiroth fight is right after everything without pause, that means that this fight happened with Barret & without Tifa to mix up which combinations you played with (despite Barret having no connection to that fight and Tifa's connection to Sephiroth being vitally important). This also means that I suddenly didn't have Assess anymore, and couldn't use it to strategize or get data on the final enemy in the game. When looking at the final enemy list, each number is listed as just the number, like "10" but the final entry is listed as "114." which is the kind of little text bug that would never slip past a QA team who's had time to check everything thoroughly. The fact that the endgame increases EXP and AP for just replaying things normally will tell you that the issue happened around how long the endgame sections were, and what kind of balance the materia had at the levels in the game of natural progression. The fact that you can cutscene skip the entire sequence with M.O.T.O.R. after beating the game is really subtle QA & Engineer short hand for, "Holy fuck you guys, we're sorry, we know this is godawful and we won't make you do it again, so please go back and play the other parts that work until we get this sorted."
There are things like the ability to pick team members for the Corneo Coliseum for 3 party battles – but there's literally no time when you're there with all 4 members of your party. It's pretty clear that there's a lot of stuff that was designed to facilitate post-game content that never got made, because the end of the game was just a massive rush to get everything even playable for what existed, let alone have enough time to flesh things out on the level that the rest of the game does so beautifully. Even with the delayed release, it's rough. The biggest thing here is that the FFVII Remake absolutely cannot have an initial launch too close to the PS5 launch date. Missing March meant that they didn't hit that release in Q1 and the PS5 is scheduled to drop in Q4. This isn't like Ghost of Tsushima where it can launch on both pretty easily, because FFVII is a console seller. Launching the longest-awaited game ever on the previous console generation too close to the PS5's marketing build-up is gonna put them at odds with Sony, let alone how impossible it would be for them to launch AFTER the PS5 release happens. Sony isn't gonna have any big bump in PS4 sales happening close to the PS5 and FFVIIR represents that, so I doubt that they ended up having much of a choice. I think that that's why they were vocal about the public announcement with bumping their launch date, and a number of other game devs put out announcements around the same time to help lessen the impact. This is definitely some behind-the-curtain moves by people who all have a lot of respect for each other. It feels pretty clear that they got their team anything they could to help within the incredibly small scope of what they could ever have gotten at all, so we can get an understanding externally that this is what went on. Because of that being what it is – you will literally NEVER be able to have anyone officially confirm that sort of thing, at least not for a few years after the PS5's been around.
However, the good thing is that since the game is out, that hurdle is crossed because the game is out. The early parts of the game are utterly fucking phenomenal, and we know that FFXV had some similar issues with Chapter 13's pacing, and very less-than-ideal endgame chapter content, that it's definitely fixable. This is also why there's so much effort in the game's architecture to be able to do concurrent development for PS5 – all of their work on the game is gonna have to mesh with the improvements for the PS5, and they'll be working on concurrent codebases for this, as well as establishing transitioning all of the assets into PS5 architecture for the sequels. What it won't change immediately is that the ending bits haven't sat super well with everyone, and it kind of sours the experience a bit, especially given the shock reveals. I needed some time to digest everything and look back objectively, which is what brings me to my next point: The title of the game itself.
THE "REMAKE" TITLE ITSELF (End Game Spoilers)
As a game, the Final Fantasy VII Remake isn't just Final Fantasy VII remade, or even Final Fantasy VII reimagined. The word "Remake" actually exists in the title. The intention here was to deliver a commentary about how "Destiny" in this world are the constraints of the original story. They wanted to give a way to let players do more. They wanted to let them explore Midgar more, and see more of the world, but there's always that part of things surrounding the Aerith rumors that make you really WANT to disrupt the narrative and save her. To find a way to see her or spare her from everything that's coming, and to find a different future. What this is intended to show is that as soon as you exit Midgar, the next pieces of Final Fantasy VII Remake are going to have massively exciting new unknowns for players to face, which are exactly the kinds of opportunities that seem like they would genuinely be fun to explore.
Like it or not, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is a sequel to Advent Children in one way or another. Chapter 18 makes this abundantly clear, but it does so with SO little time to explain things as thoroughly as it needs to in order to work properly. What it actually delivers is a message that the game itself will carry a number of massively exciting unknowns, so that it's not just set in stone. The problem is that the limited delivery of that information meant that the conclusion of the game unfortunately overshadows the game's own story development with the meta commentary about the game's story itself.
The framework here is set up by using Cloud & Sephiroth's final metaphysical battle in the original game as a way to seed the hint that could all be different, as well as introducing the Whispers as the manifestation of the Will of the Planet. These are all really solid Final Fantasy VII themes. It is a bit odd using them as the arbiters of fate, but not entirely without merit, because it's delving into the Lifestream itself as a consciousness of sorts. At first when we see them, the Whisper bosses appear to be mirrors of the three members of AVALANCHE faced up against them – Cloud, Tifa, & Barret but that's a misdirection that hasn't been totally revealed.
The Chapter 18 boss Whisper Harbinger is introduced to show how the defeated Sephiroth is using the Planet to force himself to persist and not just be a memory. This finally gives us the answer about how the Sephiroth Remnants emerged in Advent Children: Whisper Rubrum – Kadaj, Whisper Croceo – Yazoo, Whisper Viridi – Loz. In Advent Children, Sephiroth is taking control of the Whisper Harbinger and its three avatar manifestations trying to defy fate itself by using this mechanism of the Planet to defy death and fate itself. This also explains why Rubrum, Croceo, & Viridi merge to form Whisper Bahamut the same way that as Remnants, Kadaj summons Bahamut SIN. I also suspect that this connection is why we're introduced to a new SOLDIER in the form of Roche – who displays a wildly manic unhinged behaviour & crazy motorcycle riding as a vessel for bringing all of these elements together. This is happening in Chapter 18 which is all at a time where both Aerith & Cloud are fighting with their oddly intertwined connection with their destinies within the start of the game itself. It's right before they set out into the bigger picture, and this time, the developers want that bigger picture to be a way that we see them fight against a fate we've known for years while also following the same path we all know and love to get those answers – confronting the REAL Sephiroth who's still out there somewhere.
The difficulty with doing that well is that you have to be able to justify the existence of a meta commentary of your story alongside the story itself. Some stories are naturally suited to doing that. Terminator & Evangelion both address their narratives within their narrative, and Square's Chrono series is all about this. Sephiroth's refusal to just be a memory is exactly the sort of thing that the original game is doing – it will NEVER just be a memory. It's more than that, and that's why I think that when they looked at remaking Final Fantasy VII, they wanted to make the original game's Sephiroth manifest as the same Sephiroth in Remake. The refusal of his will to die being linked inextricably to the legacy of the game that we all love and want to live on again.
Ultimately, I think that this is something that's going to reveal two things in the sequels: First is incredibly satisfying revelations about our characters learning more about the Planet, the Lifestream, and having a way to actually achieve something new that MEANS something to us as fans. Second is that we learn that avoiding fate either isn't always possible, or that the consequences doesn't always get us something better or something that we want – but it still feels necessary to always try when you have the opportunity, no matter the odds stacked against you. It's why I think that using Zack & Cloud's connection as a way to explore Aerith's fate before it happens as we move towards trying to stop things is monumentally important.
It's why I talked about the tech issues first, because the game right now doesn't nail that execution. Right now, the total change and meta commentary on the game overshadows the story itself, rather than connecting into it in a way that's smooth and natural. I disliked it a lot when I ran into it, because that frustration of the game's later parts not being as fun definitely added to that, but that's why I sat back and thought through everything for a day before thinking through it.
Honestly, as odd as it is, I think that this is 100% the right thing for the game to've done. When it's happening earlier in the game, I loved it. It feels GOOD to do things like saving Wedge – and it actually makes the hurt of losing characters like Biggs & Jessie feel even more poignant because it finally felt like it should have been possible to save them too. This wasn't just a story set in stone, but it was one where with enough effort, we could break destiny – and I want that feeling. Chapter 12 definitely hit me emotionally on a much higher level because of that, and it's the exact sort of mechanism that you need to make Aerith's death have weight again after being one of the biggest moments ever. You can't have it feeling like the inevitable repetition of everything, you have to feel like there's something you can do to stop it – and now we have that.
Given the aforementioned tech reasons, I think that this will clear itself up after time and once they've gotten to make some of the improvements and adjustments that didn't become possible because of their release window, but yeah. Hopefully this gives a good lens to look at things through where the term "Remake" being a part of the title matters. I think it's a way to make it feel like the Compilation and other stuff matters and is worth exploring even after the whole of the Remake is released. While Star Wars Legends stuff can still be very worth reading, it feels like it's worth less for not being a part of the current canon, and I think that this is a way of the developers trying to show their continued respect for those things, even while they're altering and moving beyond them – which the change of fate occurring in the past is allowing them to do in a way that gets us all something that's trying to exceed the bounds and limitations of the original and remake the experiences that we had. It's a monumental task to undertake, especially given that real-world limitations are going to impede that vision at times, but I think that it's definitely going to be the right call in the long run.
Like it or not, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is a sequel to Advent Children in one way or another. Chapter 18 makes this abundantly clear, but it does so with SO little time to explain things as thoroughly as it needs to in order to work properly. What it actually delivers is a message that the game itself will carry a number of massively exciting unknowns, so that it's not just set in stone. The problem is that the limited delivery of that information meant that the conclusion of the game unfortunately overshadows the game's own story development with the meta commentary about the game's story itself.
The framework here is set up by using Cloud & Sephiroth's final metaphysical battle in the original game as a way to seed the hint that could all be different, as well as introducing the Whispers as the manifestation of the Will of the Planet. These are all really solid Final Fantasy VII themes. It is a bit odd using them as the arbiters of fate, but not entirely without merit, because it's delving into the Lifestream itself as a consciousness of sorts. At first when we see them, the Whisper bosses appear to be mirrors of the three members of AVALANCHE faced up against them – Cloud, Tifa, & Barret but that's a misdirection that hasn't been totally revealed.
The Chapter 18 boss Whisper Harbinger is introduced to show how the defeated Sephiroth is using the Planet to force himself to persist and not just be a memory. This finally gives us the answer about how the Sephiroth Remnants emerged in Advent Children: Whisper Rubrum – Kadaj, Whisper Croceo – Yazoo, Whisper Viridi – Loz. In Advent Children, Sephiroth is taking control of the Whisper Harbinger and its three avatar manifestations trying to defy fate itself by using this mechanism of the Planet to defy death and fate itself. This also explains why Rubrum, Croceo, & Viridi merge to form Whisper Bahamut the same way that as Remnants, Kadaj summons Bahamut SIN. I also suspect that this connection is why we're introduced to a new SOLDIER in the form of Roche – who displays a wildly manic unhinged behaviour & crazy motorcycle riding as a vessel for bringing all of these elements together. This is happening in Chapter 18 which is all at a time where both Aerith & Cloud are fighting with their oddly intertwined connection with their destinies within the start of the game itself. It's right before they set out into the bigger picture, and this time, the developers want that bigger picture to be a way that we see them fight against a fate we've known for years while also following the same path we all know and love to get those answers – confronting the REAL Sephiroth who's still out there somewhere.
The difficulty with doing that well is that you have to be able to justify the existence of a meta commentary of your story alongside the story itself. Some stories are naturally suited to doing that. Terminator & Evangelion both address their narratives within their narrative, and Square's Chrono series is all about this. Sephiroth's refusal to just be a memory is exactly the sort of thing that the original game is doing – it will NEVER just be a memory. It's more than that, and that's why I think that when they looked at remaking Final Fantasy VII, they wanted to make the original game's Sephiroth manifest as the same Sephiroth in Remake. The refusal of his will to die being linked inextricably to the legacy of the game that we all love and want to live on again.
Ultimately, I think that this is something that's going to reveal two things in the sequels: First is incredibly satisfying revelations about our characters learning more about the Planet, the Lifestream, and having a way to actually achieve something new that MEANS something to us as fans. Second is that we learn that avoiding fate either isn't always possible, or that the consequences doesn't always get us something better or something that we want – but it still feels necessary to always try when you have the opportunity, no matter the odds stacked against you. It's why I think that using Zack & Cloud's connection as a way to explore Aerith's fate before it happens as we move towards trying to stop things is monumentally important.
It's why I talked about the tech issues first, because the game right now doesn't nail that execution. Right now, the total change and meta commentary on the game overshadows the story itself, rather than connecting into it in a way that's smooth and natural. I disliked it a lot when I ran into it, because that frustration of the game's later parts not being as fun definitely added to that, but that's why I sat back and thought through everything for a day before thinking through it.
Honestly, as odd as it is, I think that this is 100% the right thing for the game to've done. When it's happening earlier in the game, I loved it. It feels GOOD to do things like saving Wedge – and it actually makes the hurt of losing characters like Biggs & Jessie feel even more poignant because it finally felt like it should have been possible to save them too. This wasn't just a story set in stone, but it was one where with enough effort, we could break destiny – and I want that feeling. Chapter 12 definitely hit me emotionally on a much higher level because of that, and it's the exact sort of mechanism that you need to make Aerith's death have weight again after being one of the biggest moments ever. You can't have it feeling like the inevitable repetition of everything, you have to feel like there's something you can do to stop it – and now we have that.
Given the aforementioned tech reasons, I think that this will clear itself up after time and once they've gotten to make some of the improvements and adjustments that didn't become possible because of their release window, but yeah. Hopefully this gives a good lens to look at things through where the term "Remake" being a part of the title matters. I think it's a way to make it feel like the Compilation and other stuff matters and is worth exploring even after the whole of the Remake is released. While Star Wars Legends stuff can still be very worth reading, it feels like it's worth less for not being a part of the current canon, and I think that this is a way of the developers trying to show their continued respect for those things, even while they're altering and moving beyond them – which the change of fate occurring in the past is allowing them to do in a way that gets us all something that's trying to exceed the bounds and limitations of the original and remake the experiences that we had. It's a monumental task to undertake, especially given that real-world limitations are going to impede that vision at times, but I think that it's definitely going to be the right call in the long run.
THOUGHTS ON EVERY CHAPTER IN THE GAME (Post-Game Perspective, so full-game Spoilers for each chapter)
The introduction to everything that the Remake has to offer is everything that you could hope for. I played the Demo several times over. It's just full of all of the best bits of polish that there are to offer, and that every chapter aspires towards being. The encounters and everything are just how you remember them, and the enemy updates are fantastic. The Boss fight is phenomenal, and I really don't have enough good things to say about how the game kicks everything off. The way that you get a sense of everyone in AVALANCHE being sort of passionate amateurs juxtaposed against the cold professionalism of Cloud is just so damned good – especially in the ending with Barret in the elevator. The sense of the dialogue being from real people is just spectacular on all levels, and it's tough to think of more to say since I exhausted that discussing the demo. 
This is where I really felt the scope of the Remake settling in. I spent ages wandering the streets incredibly slowly, just listening to the NPCs. The way that they portrayed the effects of the disaster on the surrounding population was exceptional. Hearing Avalanche all being affected by things, and getting a sense of what life on the Plate is like. It's easy to soak in and feel like you are just absorbing all of the things things Shinra has to offer the average citizens, and you understand the conflict in perspective inherently. Seeing the firefighters and emergency responders in Shinra helmets gives that sense of disconnect between what's happening up front and behind the scenes, and the difficult questions and scenarios. You get a thorough sense of the guilt that Jessie feels, while as the player knowing that Shinra is executing narrative control for reasons that you don't understand, but that come at the expense of countless lives. Slowly making your way through as the Military arrives, meeting with Aerith is absolutely wonderful, and the Whispers are super interesting in how they're invisible until you come into contact with them.
What's interesting here, is that the very first place that this little hand of fate attempts to intervene is with Aerith even meeting Cloud. It's telling that everything about the Whispers are popping up connected to her fate as a result of that – but the fact that it's Aerith being attacked by invisible enemies that still causes their meeting to occur, and seemingly spark the whole defiance against these interfering entities even more. The continuing escape sequence growing in scope feels like it also matches the new portrayal of Shinra attempting to re-spark the war with Wutai by treating everything about Reactor 1 as a narrative that they can utilize, and it's a ton of fun wandering around. The Sephiroth hallucination worked brilliantly. Finally making it through the train, and back to ground in the slums is all super satisfying, and the split second MP recognition of Cloud here pays off later in the best of ways, so it's one of the things that I'm SO glad gets seeded in a little subtle way so early on.
The train sequence is spectacular, and the introduction of the dialogue with the misc people is just wonderfully done. I know that Kyrie's on the train, and because of having a role later on, I'm surprised that it isn't really built up more directly. It feels like its connection to things later on might have felt a bit more earned, especially when she's chatting away about Avalanche and Wutai later on before the climb up the Plate.
What's interesting here, is that the very first place that this little hand of fate attempts to intervene is with Aerith even meeting Cloud. It's telling that everything about the Whispers are popping up connected to her fate as a result of that – but the fact that it's Aerith being attacked by invisible enemies that still causes their meeting to occur, and seemingly spark the whole defiance against these interfering entities even more. The continuing escape sequence growing in scope feels like it also matches the new portrayal of Shinra attempting to re-spark the war with Wutai by treating everything about Reactor 1 as a narrative that they can utilize, and it's a ton of fun wandering around. The Sephiroth hallucination worked brilliantly. Finally making it through the train, and back to ground in the slums is all super satisfying, and the split second MP recognition of Cloud here pays off later in the best of ways, so it's one of the things that I'm SO glad gets seeded in a little subtle way so early on.
The train sequence is spectacular, and the introduction of the dialogue with the misc people is just wonderfully done. I know that Kyrie's on the train, and because of having a role later on, I'm surprised that it isn't really built up more directly. It feels like its connection to things later on might have felt a bit more earned, especially when she's chatting away about Avalanche and Wutai later on before the climb up the Plate.
There is SO much to talk about in this one. I love how Tifa's portrayed as being at odds with Avalanche's goals, which makes sense given her background of hating Shinra, but also hating the suffering that fighting Shinra brings as well. I also love how it establishes her knowing something's wrong with Cloud, and the way she keeps eyes on him because of it moving forward. The slums are familiar but different, and just wonderful. Despite doing all of the side quests here, this is somewhere where I definitely want to go spend more time listening to people by wandering slowly and just soaking in the atmosphere. It's definitely designed to make it seem like a home that you'll come back to regularly, so much that I didn't think about it as being as temporary in its state as it is. This is also where the texture issues on the apartment doors really hit my experience hard, and made me start to wonder what was up.
I love the way that the peoples' perception of you changes over time, the weapon store seller especially. The neighborhood watch and other things really sold the way that it all functions as a little community, and that the people down here don't all see the world the same way. It feels real, but you still have the little moments with everyone watching TV outside in a crowd, where you get a sense that things are more poor than they let on, despite the abundance of power elsewhere. Also, the expanded bits with Johnny worked out so damn well. I really enjoyed his character getting some extra attention.
Cloud being left as the odd man out of the next mission was an unexpected expansion that I loved. I like that he's hired for a job and is allowed to be as disconnected from it all as he wants to be, while also using that as a way to show players changes. I am a little sad that I never got to see the secret underground lair though, but I think it's well worth it for the way that they make their adaptations to serve the larger story. This chapter is full of all of the things I wanted. You hear hints of an underground lab and people being selected for things, as well as escaped drugged-up Guard Hounds. All the little odd jobs and things are super satisfying, and the little extras about the sick numbered guy in the apartment connects really well to the mysteries that come up later.
I love the way that the peoples' perception of you changes over time, the weapon store seller especially. The neighborhood watch and other things really sold the way that it all functions as a little community, and that the people down here don't all see the world the same way. It feels real, but you still have the little moments with everyone watching TV outside in a crowd, where you get a sense that things are more poor than they let on, despite the abundance of power elsewhere. Also, the expanded bits with Johnny worked out so damn well. I really enjoyed his character getting some extra attention.
Cloud being left as the odd man out of the next mission was an unexpected expansion that I loved. I like that he's hired for a job and is allowed to be as disconnected from it all as he wants to be, while also using that as a way to show players changes. I am a little sad that I never got to see the secret underground lair though, but I think it's well worth it for the way that they make their adaptations to serve the larger story. This chapter is full of all of the things I wanted. You hear hints of an underground lab and people being selected for things, as well as escaped drugged-up Guard Hounds. All the little odd jobs and things are super satisfying, and the little extras about the sick numbered guy in the apartment connects really well to the mysteries that come up later.
Using Jessie's conscience and connection to Cloud works brilliantly to help fuel a mission elsewhere, and give an excuse to explore things back up on the Plate. Expanding the knowledge of things with Avalance's other three here is fantastic, and you really get a sense of how Cloud starts to feel more connected with everything as the professional, but that the others aren't incapable. Jessie's family still being up on the plate, and her ambitions of becoming an actress out in Gold Saucer, while also learning that her Dad got Mako poisoning from being in the Mako Storage area was an exceptionally unsettling look into the future, and also adding little bits of weight for things that we won't see for a long while yet. Cloud being on the outside the way that he is makes you really WANT to be closer to the odd little crew, and you care about them even more as you go to do the job. That's especially true by having so little control over what goes right and what doesn't.
Seeing what Roche is like as another SOLDIER helps to showcase the sorts of people that they're up against as being crazy and larger-than-life, while making the Avalanche crew feel even more like they're just human. You can feel little bits of him rubbing off on Cloud especially later on. I think that the Motorcycle section is fun, but I think that the speed that your ranged attack charges at would feel better if it were more on-par with the ATB meters when you're actively doing things. In most of the game's combat, you can always engage with the enemy, and with this section it's a bit hard to get to them, and the attacks all feel like regular attacks. I'm not sure if making the ranged option quicker to charge, or making it easy to accelerate and decelerate to reach enemies would be better, but it is the one thing that felt a bit like you were just on rails waiting for enemies rather than catching and maneuvering to them as much.
Seeing proper Avalanche come in to save the day was also really damn cool. I love the idea of seeing that they're far more than just the little Sector 7 splinter cell, and that it's clear how Shinra got the idea to take the narrative and build sentiment for a war with Wutai out of it. It's even better when you know that Domino is the one who's helping out, because he's trying to disrupt everything about Shinra's presence in his city, but he very much isn't along with the extreme notions of blowing up reactors.
I loved checking in on everybody after the mission. It felt way more impactful to just go visit and talk to them than I was prepared for. I really want to go back and spend more time exploring the slums, and just... experience it all again. Getting the feel for everybody really helps when things go sideways totally differently.
Seeing what Roche is like as another SOLDIER helps to showcase the sorts of people that they're up against as being crazy and larger-than-life, while making the Avalanche crew feel even more like they're just human. You can feel little bits of him rubbing off on Cloud especially later on. I think that the Motorcycle section is fun, but I think that the speed that your ranged attack charges at would feel better if it were more on-par with the ATB meters when you're actively doing things. In most of the game's combat, you can always engage with the enemy, and with this section it's a bit hard to get to them, and the attacks all feel like regular attacks. I'm not sure if making the ranged option quicker to charge, or making it easy to accelerate and decelerate to reach enemies would be better, but it is the one thing that felt a bit like you were just on rails waiting for enemies rather than catching and maneuvering to them as much.
Seeing proper Avalanche come in to save the day was also really damn cool. I love the idea of seeing that they're far more than just the little Sector 7 splinter cell, and that it's clear how Shinra got the idea to take the narrative and build sentiment for a war with Wutai out of it. It's even better when you know that Domino is the one who's helping out, because he's trying to disrupt everything about Shinra's presence in his city, but he very much isn't along with the extreme notions of blowing up reactors.
I loved checking in on everybody after the mission. It felt way more impactful to just go visit and talk to them than I was prepared for. I really want to go back and spend more time exploring the slums, and just... experience it all again. Getting the feel for everybody really helps when things go sideways totally differently.
Whispers attacking Seventh Heaven was really unexpected and the way that it fills in why Tifa & Cloud go on mission by replacing Jessie & Wedge worked out so well. It's one of the places where the new mystery being seeded in the cracks between events to reshape the game worked brilliantly. Having the connection reach the sick guy is even more fantastic, and pays off in deepening the mystery around the Whispers, Sephiroth, and Reunion in the way that they're building it.
Seeing Tifa as someone capable but disconnected brings in a ton of great stuff. All of the train sequence, traveling via Avalanche routes with the graffiti as subtle messaging was excellent. I love that you get a sense of how they pulled off a job like the first Mako Reactor, and that they really did think that they had a system that they'd be able to rely on in order to infiltrate and take them all down. Getting to hear banter between her & Barret as you go through abandoned platforms and areas was so good.
I loved the crab boss, especially when he swapped to the phase of electrocuting the tracks, and being more directly introduced to Heideggar's machinations and obsessions, and how he disregards collateral damage and risk. These bits help keep the tether to Shinra's planning well-seeded into the mindset of everything as you keep going.
Seeing Tifa as someone capable but disconnected brings in a ton of great stuff. All of the train sequence, traveling via Avalanche routes with the graffiti as subtle messaging was excellent. I love that you get a sense of how they pulled off a job like the first Mako Reactor, and that they really did think that they had a system that they'd be able to rely on in order to infiltrate and take them all down. Getting to hear banter between her & Barret as you go through abandoned platforms and areas was so good.
I loved the crab boss, especially when he swapped to the phase of electrocuting the tracks, and being more directly introduced to Heideggar's machinations and obsessions, and how he disregards collateral damage and risk. These bits help keep the tether to Shinra's planning well-seeded into the mindset of everything as you keep going.
This is the first chapter where I felt a little underwhelmed. The area underneath Midgar being a giant image of the slums feels weird, and it doesn't quite work as well as it does later on for the view of collapsed Sector 7, or even when you're parachuting down to safety with the crew. These don't work as well when you're staring down at 3D objects because of perspective, and especially when spending so much time wandering around looking at it, I couldn't tell if it might just be an issue with the texture not being good enough. This combined with how it feels like it takes a while to get everywhere was sort of annoying, and if the transition speed and overall background were better to look at for ages, I'd definitely have felt better about it.
Seeing more nests and creatures infected by Mako exposure was really awesome. I loved talking about the fans keeping the bad air out of the plate and trapped in the slums. I love that Tifa feels horrible about shutting off sun lamps, because the people below don't get real light, but Barret doesn't care because destroying the reactor is gonna shut them all down anyway, and you can feel the tension around doing the right thing for the right reasons, but seeing the cost. It's also why I wish you could see more areas of the city below clearly, so that you can actually see the regions going dark are you power the lights down. The content in this area, and meeting up with Biggs is all really spectacular, but there are little bits about the execution that feel somewhat prolonged.
Seeing more nests and creatures infected by Mako exposure was really awesome. I loved talking about the fans keeping the bad air out of the plate and trapped in the slums. I love that Tifa feels horrible about shutting off sun lamps, because the people below don't get real light, but Barret doesn't care because destroying the reactor is gonna shut them all down anyway, and you can feel the tension around doing the right thing for the right reasons, but seeing the cost. It's also why I wish you could see more areas of the city below clearly, so that you can actually see the regions going dark are you power the lights down. The content in this area, and meeting up with Biggs is all really spectacular, but there are little bits about the execution that feel somewhat prolonged.
This chapter has some of the same repetitive pacing issues when you're disabling Air Buster's weapons. It's a lot of the same hallways and rooms, doing the same things in ways where you don't really get a sense of how it all works when things are normal, the way that you do in Reactor 01. Unlike the last chapter, it's not satisfying exploring as much as it is slightly too much repetition for things where you don't really know the outcome yet. If anything, I think it'd be better to reach the main control room, and then decide if you want to move forward as quick as you can, or if you want to go down another passageway to try and sabotage the Air Buster's weapon supplies – That way you still come back up to the main room, but it doesn't fee like an infinite corridor getting there.
That being said, the escalation with Heideggar and all the fight against Airbuster were a ton of fun. I love the new reveal with Shinra, and how you get a better understanding of how and why they're manipulating things with Avalanche's actions. I do still wonder if the reactor is blue because Mako actually has differentflavors depending on how it's processed. It was really surprising that the lighting felt different, and the reactor definitely felt the same, but new in mostly likable ways.
That being said, the escalation with Heideggar and all the fight against Airbuster were a ton of fun. I love the new reveal with Shinra, and how you get a better understanding of how and why they're manipulating things with Avalanche's actions. I do still wonder if the reactor is blue because Mako actually has different
Jeeze damn, but Aerith is the goddamn best. The Reno fight was rough on me coming from Airbuster with Lightning+Elemental on my sword, but still. Damn good getting to see the Turks in a light that the game kept building on. The escape sequence was marvelous, and I loved wandering around the rooftops and chatting. Aerith's portrayal manages to perfectly walk the line of being adorable and goofy, the capable clutz. It makes her stand out in just being infectiously enjoyable just being in her company. Hearing the random NPCs talk to her, but talk about you really helps the depth of everything sink in.
I loved helping out the kids and other people. Oates is monumentally endearing, and just... I absolutely LOVED this part of the game. I want to re-experience it forever. The little orphanage of kids getting excited about Cloud, and the arrangement of the theme worked so damn well here. Just. All of the stuff was so damn great. By this point, the game had filled back up with enough wonderful things that even the graphics bugs were easier to overlook. I spent goddamn ages here. Taking down Rude, Elmyra not liking Cloud, and all of those bits were just so well executed and gave depth to the things I wanted and just acres of things I didn't know I wanted. The only downside is the "escape sequence" being a sudden inexplicable arrangement of physics objects. It's not really as fun to avoid them when there are than many, but it's not an issue overall.
I loved helping out the kids and other people. Oates is monumentally endearing, and just... I absolutely LOVED this part of the game. I want to re-experience it forever. The little orphanage of kids getting excited about Cloud, and the arrangement of the theme worked so damn well here. Just. All of the stuff was so damn great. By this point, the game had filled back up with enough wonderful things that even the graphics bugs were easier to overlook. I spent goddamn ages here. Taking down Rude, Elmyra not liking Cloud, and all of those bits were just so well executed and gave depth to the things I wanted and just acres of things I didn't know I wanted. The only downside is the "escape sequence" being a sudden inexplicable arrangement of physics objects. It's not really as fun to avoid them when there are than many, but it's not an issue overall.
More of Aerith & Cloud's antics just work brilliantly. The awkward high fives moments were so damn lovely. I cannot overstate how much I love the goofy ass thief crew. They are just phenomenally excellent additions. Little moments like that really make the quirky bits of Remake feel like VII in all the best ways. Then we get more of Johnny (assuming you were broke as hell like I was). I love seeing more sides of everything that make them feel real. Finding the orphanage teacher moonlighting at the Honeybee Inn in the alleyway gave echoes of Jessie's acting ambitions, and it makes this weird seedy little place feel human despite all of the shady shit. Even going to get with the VIP card to get a little extra line of dialogue just felt like attention to detail for the smallest little interactions that all matter. All of the larger than life people all belong here, and they're accepted.
The Coliseum was phenomenal, and I fucking LOVED Hell House being made into a big boss fight. It's weird and just... amazing. Everything here is what a love letter to the original game looks like. It's all new ways of things happening with nods to the original as side-missions. Everything is bigger, and weirder, and better. It makes seeing it during the day later on an even more satisfying experience of seeing how people feel free to let loose there. Plus, even more of Aerith & Cloud's dynamics were just the goddamn best, all building up to the dress reveal, and Cloud getting roped into the cross dressing in a totally new way. Corneo is a creep, and loathsome in a totally new way, and then you get Aerith and Tifa being badasses. Extra dress options for all three of them was super welcome
The Coliseum was phenomenal, and I fucking LOVED Hell House being made into a big boss fight. It's weird and just... amazing. Everything here is what a love letter to the original game looks like. It's all new ways of things happening with nods to the original as side-missions. Everything is bigger, and weirder, and better. It makes seeing it during the day later on an even more satisfying experience of seeing how people feel free to let loose there. Plus, even more of Aerith & Cloud's dynamics were just the goddamn best, all building up to the dress reveal, and Cloud getting roped into the cross dressing in a totally new way. Corneo is a creep, and loathsome in a totally new way, and then you get Aerith and Tifa being badasses. Extra dress options for all three of them was super welcome
The Tifa vs. Aerith choice here was a damn good opportunity. Abzu and all of the Sewer stuff was a ton of fun. Getting to see Tifa & Aerith bonding around Cloud to have their own friendship was really enjoyable, especially when they pull off a totally natural high five. The enemies were all more challenging and difficult, and the explorable areas felt more interesting and didn't have the issues I had with the parts Chapter 6 & 7. I also really loved the moment when you're creeping through the dark, and turn the lights on. It's something where you expect a game to have a whole scripted event around it, but for the most part – it was just dark and one of the rooms had enemies in it. Things like that work really well to make the world seem real, and less like it's a game all the time if that makes sense.
The spooky elements worked really well here. It's also a great way to build the tension to the Plate Pillar being close but also really far away, and having the supernatural work against you. You get more of Aerith and Tifa reacting to things differently, and I just really enjoyed it for the most part\. There are some bits that feel like they take a little long to get to where they're going, but both boss fights here were really REALLY damn good, and make you feel anxious, worried, and worn out. It brings up the thoughts about Mako Reactors trapping the souls of others from passing on, and connects to the supernatural entities in ways that I can't wait to see again when they get to the Gi Caves in another part of the Remake. Transitioning from the ghosts and trapped kids to the Whispers worked really well, and Aerith being trapped and lost makes you really want to help her, and seeds this little sense of it all before you have to go do exactly that.
This chapter totally wrecked me. It has everything, and like Wall Market, is the best that the Remake has to offer for the original game experience made greater. The opportunity to seemingly save Wedge at the start and the suffering of everyone being late, and seeing Cloud's little moments of empathy to his dying comrades were just flawless. Absolutely gutted. Aerith trying to get to Marlene, and helping the kids along the way just worked brilliantly for her. I am super curious still about her connection to Marlene that mirrored Cloud's flashbacks trigger. Also, getting to see Reno & Rude hating what they're doing, while also developing an antagonistic personal bout towards Cloud was really fantastic, along with Rude's "hand slip" to avoid injuring Tifa. Even the timer at the top to force you to escape rather than roam around was great. Even the Reeve-via-Cait-Sith scene was just perfect.
The aftermath of everything was really damn well executed. Again, more dialogue from NPCs being scared of the tremors and noises, and having panic attacks, and other things were just so damn immersive. The drop into the labs was super interesting, as well as the opportunity to try and save Wedge which already felt like it was a failed opportunity. Getting to control Barret was fantastic and made the isolation feel new and different, and show that the game is still doing new things all the time. My only complaint was that the Failed Experiments feel overdesigned. They look weird and they don't have a sense that they connect to anything visually in the game that's come before, or that we know of. They're not really like the Makonoids from the original or Crisis Core, and they're not that much like Jenova or H0512 either. Even the partially transformed Type-0 Behemoth has the same odd feeling. Something about their design feels just feels weirdly inconsistent somehow that I can't quite put my finger on. Starting everything with Elmyra and Aerith and Marlene, and then bringing things back to him worked really damn well.
I got the Aerith scene, and not even knowing there were others in the post-game made me love the way that the game does branching from the original. Both Barret and Tifa's scenes were phenomenal. This is the environment where it felt like you'd be able to come back to later in the post-game (more on that later), and getting to do more extra stuff, and wander before going to ascend the plate. Also, the follow-up on Corneo's story before he escapes to Wutai was a really good way to making him an important thread to follow-up with for Yuffie. The fact that Chocobo transport fast travel exists for an initial cost, but then for no cost, and it's tied to missions makes it feel like there's some post-game content that hasn't quite been realized. Just more excellent stuff of feeling the world being real.
The collapsing building at the start sticks strongly in my mind. Working up managed to be interesting and get more little opportunities for dialogue. Some parts with the background giving Chapter 6 flashbacks up until you're not looking down at it anymore, but other scenes that have real objects in them work way better. New traversal mechanics built off of Barret's shooting walls down was super solid and fun. Also, moving the Heligunner here worked really well. Some parts of the boss fight had camera weirdness that was a bit iffy, but definitely not bothersome.
Holy shit, the opening of this section. The view is everything that the cheap-looking slum backgrounds aren't. It's massive objects, and highways with moving cars, and just... You can tell that they leaned in on this part HARD, and it instantly took my sense that some sections felt padded and made me stop caring. Everything about the infiltration was perfect. The new way to sneak in. The high alert. The Stairs making the music go all woozy as you get tired out. The elevators reminding you that real people work for Shinra. The Turks' conversation to show them as tools to do the things that will happen anyway make their characters exactly what they need to be.
The dialogue between everyone is amazing. The Shinra Museum is fucking phenomenal, especially with the view of the pure white garden of future Midgar. Even the scary hints and foreshadowing during the VR room were excellent. Domino funding Avalanche and helping you break in, the MP recognizing you again and going to get Kunsel. It's all goddamn amazing aside from the softlock bug in the vents & the bug in the H0512 boss fight – speaking of which, making it deliver Mako showering to the little samples, and their eyes starting to glow was some fucking AMAZING storytelling through visuals. The new introduction of everything, and Aerith being an absolute badass holding up against Hojo's fucked up torturing, all leading up to Cloud's flashback and being trapped in her old room. I cannot overstate how great it is.
The dialogue between everyone is amazing. The Shinra Museum is fucking phenomenal, especially with the view of the pure white garden of future Midgar. Even the scary hints and foreshadowing during the VR room were excellent. Domino funding Avalanche and helping you break in, the MP recognizing you again and going to get Kunsel. It's all goddamn amazing aside from the softlock bug in the vents & the bug in the H0512 boss fight – speaking of which, making it deliver Mako showering to the little samples, and their eyes starting to glow was some fucking AMAZING storytelling through visuals. The new introduction of everything, and Aerith being an absolute badass holding up against Hojo's fucked up torturing, all leading up to Cloud's flashback and being trapped in her old room. I cannot overstate how great it is.
This chapter definitely has excellent ideas and everything that I want to see, but with poor execution. I love everything about what it is, and what's happening, but it's WAY too slow in another section where you're supposed to be making an escape during an Avalanche attack. The bits with Red XIII also don't feel as fully developed as it's clear that they wanted. He definitely doesn't have enough time to build out a full character for him yet, since the weapon upgrades and other things wouldn't ever be able to match with the others, but I definitely felt like he's got parts where they want to do more. I wouldn't be too surprised if we get some DLC to flesh him out like they did with the Chocobros in XV. Also, while the Brain Pod fight was amazingly terrifying, a minor complaint that the Zenene aren't half as fucked up or terrifying as they are in the OG with their jutting ribs and malformed front hands. Plus, the Coliseum also lets you fight a Hellhound, which is already a scarier and more mutant version of that same enemy design. I was hoping to see more of the mutant Guard Hounds or something that at least had a closer appearance to the Failed Experiments – which are clearly the replacement for the Makonoids now.
You exit that into the other Bossfights which are all still at the conception level, and just... it's frustrating. The blood trail seems like you'll run into Avalanche and Shinra carnage of the attempted attack, but you get a Jenova fight that's not really clearly explained what it is, and it's not really all that fun, so much as a tentacle bashing time. Then you get the "It's not Sephiroth, it's a tattooed guy Kadaj falling with Jenova's body not her head non-boss fight" that switches to Cloud vs. Rufus in particular which was wholly disappointing because the "he counters everything" is just monumentally un-fun. Then the Arsenal fight is a slog to get through. When the Whispers show up all around HQ, Rufus and Tsung can seemingly see them for reasons that aren't clear.
You exit that into the other Bossfights which are all still at the conception level, and just... it's frustrating. The blood trail seems like you'll run into Avalanche and Shinra carnage of the attempted attack, but you get a Jenova fight that's not really clearly explained what it is, and it's not really all that fun, so much as a tentacle bashing time. Then you get the "It's not Sephiroth, it's a tattooed guy Kadaj falling with Jenova's body not her head non-boss fight" that switches to Cloud vs. Rufus in particular which was wholly disappointing because the "he counters everything" is just monumentally un-fun. Then the Arsenal fight is a slog to get through. When the Whispers show up all around HQ, Rufus and Tsung can seemingly see them for reasons that aren't clear.
The M.O.T.O.R. highway scene might be, without hyperbole, the absolute least fun that I have ever had in a video game. Period.
The earlier sections, Red XIII heals you, but despite the party having dialogue of helping you out like they do when they cast cure spells – nothing ever happens. This was literally two solid hours of me getting game over screens and just wanting to not ever see motorcycle content in this game ever again. After all of that, it doesn't even transition into a real boss fight like Roche does. Right now, I cannot in good conscience recommend the game because of this part of the game. It's clearly not QA tested. You can slow all the way down, and only use long-range attacks until he starts throwing mines in the road – and you & the truck won't ever take damage if you do. When I got done with it, I wanted to never play the game again, and was SO utterly frustrated that something managed to be even worse than the previous boss fights that I didn't know what to do.
Then we go from that into full-blown awkward anime dialogue, and Cloud suddenly being all Advent Children-like, and a bunch of weird nonsense in CGI cutscenes all over, and everything about the game changing, and even MORE un-fun boss fights with a party that was constantly shuffling, against nonsense and totally unexplained timeline enemies, followed by suddenly Sephiroth and his fight being another annoying slog. Even Zack being potentially alive felt hollow and meaningless, and I didn't care at all when it happened. When it was happening, I didn't know what the fuck all of that was, let alone how obtuse and tonally inconsistent it would be for anyone who was new to FFVII.
It's why I took a full day to process everything, and write up my thoughts from earlier in the previous sections. There is a shitton of greatness here that I actually want to like in hindsight. I definitely felt way more satisfied with the ending of FFXV's original version, and that game felt like a better entry for new players. I definitely want to wait for some patches and other things before doing my hard mode playthrough. I wanted to add this all in to show how I felt when I played it, and what I genuinely think of it at the moment since that's important and VERY different from how I feel about what it is overall in reflection.
The earlier sections, Red XIII heals you, but despite the party having dialogue of helping you out like they do when they cast cure spells – nothing ever happens. This was literally two solid hours of me getting game over screens and just wanting to not ever see motorcycle content in this game ever again. After all of that, it doesn't even transition into a real boss fight like Roche does. Right now, I cannot in good conscience recommend the game because of this part of the game. It's clearly not QA tested. You can slow all the way down, and only use long-range attacks until he starts throwing mines in the road – and you & the truck won't ever take damage if you do. When I got done with it, I wanted to never play the game again, and was SO utterly frustrated that something managed to be even worse than the previous boss fights that I didn't know what to do.
Then we go from that into full-blown awkward anime dialogue, and Cloud suddenly being all Advent Children-like, and a bunch of weird nonsense in CGI cutscenes all over, and everything about the game changing, and even MORE un-fun boss fights with a party that was constantly shuffling, against nonsense and totally unexplained timeline enemies, followed by suddenly Sephiroth and his fight being another annoying slog. Even Zack being potentially alive felt hollow and meaningless, and I didn't care at all when it happened. When it was happening, I didn't know what the fuck all of that was, let alone how obtuse and tonally inconsistent it would be for anyone who was new to FFVII.
It's why I took a full day to process everything, and write up my thoughts from earlier in the previous sections. There is a shitton of greatness here that I actually want to like in hindsight. I definitely felt way more satisfied with the ending of FFXV's original version, and that game felt like a better entry for new players. I definitely want to wait for some patches and other things before doing my hard mode playthrough. I wanted to add this all in to show how I felt when I played it, and what I genuinely think of it at the moment since that's important and VERY different from how I feel about what it is overall in reflection.
THINGS I HOPE FOR (Some Menu & Endgame Unlockable Content Spoilers)
The texture patches are a necessity first and foremost, along with the bug fixes for the audio and soft lock issues. I'm really hoping that those hit soon.
Motorcycle Improvements: It's clear that they know that part is rough, and they made it pause-skippable. There's no damn way they aren't aware that it's a disaster. I'm betting that everything about the Motorcycle sections are due for a big update and overhaul at some point. I want it to be a mini-game that's enjoyable.
Chapter Boss Improvements: Anything to make the Shinra HQ & Whisper bosses better. Please.
Post-Game Midgar Exploration: There is a whole screen with a Midgar Map wireframe in your Menu when you press R2. It is VERY clearly designed to let you Fast Travel throughout the entirety of the city to see and explore anywhere that you've been in the game. It's got a whole screen dedicated to it – and it literally doesn't do anything right now. This, along with the Chocobo fast travel points feel like an inevitable addition, because right now, the only place you exist in the post-game is within a menu – a menu that cannot do anything with this screen. This menu screen seems like it's specifically to give players something to do even though the characters have actually left Midgar – just like FFXV did after its ending. It's clear that Chapter replay is the only thing that they have working at present, and I can only hope that they get this all hooked up to do things as it ought to be able to. It's in way too prominent a location to do otherwise.
Post-Game Coliseums: You shouldn't have to go back to the Shinra building to do their VR chamber, or to Wall Market to do theirs and only in the chapters with the party you have at the time. Those should all be things that you can do with the whole party of whoever you want, and that becomes possible if you have anywhere to actually BE in the Post-Game that isn't a Menu. I know this was the intention – hence why you still have to individually select a party of three for the Corneo Coliseum – and you can literally never get there with all four party members. It's very clear that these were designed for giving you all the combat you want with the team of your choice, rather than limiting it only to the chance moments you get to have with them in the game's story. I unabashedly love the game's combat. I want to do more of it with Cloud, Aerith, & Tifa – but against different enemies than the story allows. Please let me do this. I will log literally hundreds of hours if I can.
Enemy Intel Improvements: Zoom functions. Animation changes / pauses. Anything that's even close to what we got from XV's Bestiary.
More Materia – Especially Support Materia: You're swimming in linked slots, and at a deficit of things to link them to. Elemental especially and maybe more than one Maximize, too. They're powerful, but they also take up slots that lower your versatility. When I beat the game, I wanted to have more of them and just literally lacked the ability to do so, so I just loaded up on tons of Magic and Independent Materia, they definitely feel like things you could get more of without any issue. I don't want to have to remember where I got them and go hunt them down in the chapter.
Motorcycle Improvements: It's clear that they know that part is rough, and they made it pause-skippable. There's no damn way they aren't aware that it's a disaster. I'm betting that everything about the Motorcycle sections are due for a big update and overhaul at some point. I want it to be a mini-game that's enjoyable.
Chapter Boss Improvements: Anything to make the Shinra HQ & Whisper bosses better. Please.
Post-Game Midgar Exploration: There is a whole screen with a Midgar Map wireframe in your Menu when you press R2. It is VERY clearly designed to let you Fast Travel throughout the entirety of the city to see and explore anywhere that you've been in the game. It's got a whole screen dedicated to it – and it literally doesn't do anything right now. This, along with the Chocobo fast travel points feel like an inevitable addition, because right now, the only place you exist in the post-game is within a menu – a menu that cannot do anything with this screen. This menu screen seems like it's specifically to give players something to do even though the characters have actually left Midgar – just like FFXV did after its ending. It's clear that Chapter replay is the only thing that they have working at present, and I can only hope that they get this all hooked up to do things as it ought to be able to. It's in way too prominent a location to do otherwise.
Post-Game Coliseums: You shouldn't have to go back to the Shinra building to do their VR chamber, or to Wall Market to do theirs and only in the chapters with the party you have at the time. Those should all be things that you can do with the whole party of whoever you want, and that becomes possible if you have anywhere to actually BE in the Post-Game that isn't a Menu. I know this was the intention – hence why you still have to individually select a party of three for the Corneo Coliseum – and you can literally never get there with all four party members. It's very clear that these were designed for giving you all the combat you want with the team of your choice, rather than limiting it only to the chance moments you get to have with them in the game's story. I unabashedly love the game's combat. I want to do more of it with Cloud, Aerith, & Tifa – but against different enemies than the story allows. Please let me do this. I will log literally hundreds of hours if I can.
Enemy Intel Improvements: Zoom functions. Animation changes / pauses. Anything that's even close to what we got from XV's Bestiary.
More Materia – Especially Support Materia: You're swimming in linked slots, and at a deficit of things to link them to. Elemental especially and maybe more than one Maximize, too. They're powerful, but they also take up slots that lower your versatility. When I beat the game, I wanted to have more of them and just literally lacked the ability to do so, so I just loaded up on tons of Magic and Independent Materia, they definitely feel like things you could get more of without any issue. I don't want to have to remember where I got them and go hunt them down in the chapter.
Thanks to anyone who actually read all of this.
X
