The Final Fantasy Thread

[Your Weird Fetish]

So watched the leaked demo thing.

GOOD:
Avalanche implied to not just be five dudes.
Barret looks cool
Jessie a cute
Pretty sure Wedge is played by the dude that played Badger in Breaking Bad
Pretty graphics
Aeris(th) doesn't look all that Asian.
Localization seems to be quite good. The characters aren't stilted robots relaying anime clichés like in the other dumb post Enix tie-in bullshit. Dialogue is mostly natural and fun.
Voice acting actually seems decent quality. Particularly like Barret and Wedge.
Opening and battle theme sound fantastic.

BAD:
Opening cinematic is already Sephiroth wank with strains of One Winged Angel competing with the opening theme.
Cloud looks like a twink. I mean, he as for like 15 years straight but I'm still mad.
They made this real time to speed up the combat but it actually takes longer to kill enemies in this demo than in the original Reactor 1 segment.
It looks like it's gonna be hard to keep track of your party's HP during fights. It's such a tiny section of the HUD. Or maybe I'm just old.
Mako reactor theme is not synthy enough. Not everything needs to be an orchestra.
Playing Cloud's psychotic flashes both too early and too light. But I guess people are spoiled at that already. Hopefully he still almost blacks out before planting the bomb.
Shinra goes even more full retard with self sabotage than in the original game by blowing up their own powerplant, both proving they are retarded and downplaying the fact that Barret is a bloodthirsty eco-terrorist.
Reactor 1 is apparently like an hour of gameplay. Midgar is either gonna be packed to the gills with filler or packed to the gills with new content...meaning new opportunities to fuck up the story.

Overall more good than bad. This left me with a fairly positive impression but I'm still really cautious. I mean, the opening segment is the hardest to fuck up.

Still don't like that a guy younger than most of us is voicing Cloud. What happened to Steve Burton?

The current rumor going around is that since Burton is in a voice actor’s union, he won’t appear in a role unless he’s properly credited. I haven’t been able to find an official source for that so it’s up in the air as to why he got replaced.

Good. Cloud's compilation voice sucked and the anime club VA union is full of over-exposed and under-talented actors easily eclipsed by their non-union counterparts. I mean sure, there were a few good people in there. But does anyone REALLY wanna hear Yuri Lowenthal in this?

Just gotta hope Sephiroth isn't super deadpan and Aeris isn't a Disney Princess this time.

Shit like this is why the only JRPGs I like are the ones without voice acting and americanized translation. The whole 'haha I was the big bad all along' trope is so damn annoying. You don't have to expose your main antagonist in the first act, but you gotta do some build up somewhere.

I feel your pain. It's tough liking FF7 while having a general dislike of JRPG weebshit.

 

[Marissa Moira]

From what I understand they're going to have a ton of side quests in Midgar. There's supposedly a focus on bestiary collecting which would mean a good number of the quests would probably lead to fighting the enhanced versions of standard enemies. If everything leads to some kind of boss fight that's not a bad way to structure things out.

Cold Steel would have a a variety of quests throughout each chapter and it works as far as not making things feel tedious if the quest variety is proactive enough and not just collect 10x of things. Lightning Returns even did quests this way and you needed to do enough of them in order to get the good ending. Unless the quests in Midgar are going to be closer to the bounties in Final Fantasy 12 where you go to a hub and are sent out to kill specifc monsters. Although in 12's case it got a little excessive since there were so many enemies you needed to collect data on.

I don't remember the first act of Final Fantasy 7 having that many enemies, maybe just 4-6 per area with the occasional boss, so it might not be that bad.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Oh good, grinding.

By the way somehow this just occurred to me...is this gonna use save importing or what? Do consoles even do that? Or is Cloud just gonna be level 99 by the end of part 1 and start over in part 2? What about decisions that had consequences later in the game? There weren't many, but the Gold Saucer date thing was actually plot relevant.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Oh good, grinding.

By the way somehow this just occurred to me...is this gonna use save importing or what? Do consoles even do that? Or is Cloud just gonna be level 99 by the end of part 1 and start over in part 2? What about decisions that had consequences later in the game? There weren't many, but the Gold Saucer date thing was actually plot relevant.

Yes, consoles have this capability. They'll probably need to do a small bit of nonsense when going from PS4->PS5 or XB1->XBX but it should be pretty manageable.

Unless Part 2/3 never come out.

Although, I wonder how they would handle someone starting at Part 2/3 - they'd clearly have a set of default stats and such, but would they do a story recap like the Yakuza games do or just "fuck it, you're in it now"?

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Probably have transfer bonuses and the game probably gimps the characters and materia abilities until the later releases to keep you at the power levels you'd be at the end of Midgar.

Unless no one thought that through and you can just grind nonstop in part 1 to max everyone out and have a smooth ride for the remaining episodes.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Oh good, grinding.

By the way somehow this just occurred to me...is this gonna use save importing or what? Do consoles even do that? Or is Cloud just gonna be level 99 by the end of part 1 and start over in part 2? What about decisions that had consequences later in the game? There weren't many, but the Gold Saucer date thing was actually plot relevant.

More than likely transfer bonus, I've seen many series do this. Part 2 won't start you out at level 99, the older Monster Hunter games wouldn't even let you keep your BIS weapons when you brought over your data into the sequels. Iceborne is the only one that has let you keep your older weapons and armor from the start.

As far as what they'll do for people starting on part 2, they'll either offer the first game as a free download or give a recap movie that you can play at the start screen.

If final fantasy 7 is going to have far more side quests you shouldn't expect grinding, the quests are going to make up the bulk of the exp.

 

[Shield Breaker]

A part of me hopes that the only reason they're showing off Midgar so much is because it has more marketability but that's just wishful thinking/me being optimistic because this is modern Squenix.

I'm thinking part covers until you get to Costa del Sol. It would leave off with Jenova as the final boss, and it would leave the Midgar continent out of the second game. Second one probably ends with Aeris death or the Northern Continent.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Unless no one thought that through and you can just grind nonstop in part 1 to max everyone out and have a smooth ride for the remaining episodes.

Anyone autistic enough to do that to themselves deserves what they get.

I'm thinking part covers until you get to Costa del Sol. It would leave off with Jenova as the final boss, and it would leave the Midgar continent out of the second game. Second one probably ends with Aeris death or the Northern Continent.

Too optimistic. The game's original act 1 ends when you leave Midgar. I'd bet any amount of money that's where this ends. What with no footage at all of anything outside of Midgar two months out and all.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Anyone autistic enough to do that to themselves deserves what they get.


Too optimistic. The game's original act 1 ends when you leave Midgar. I'd bet any amount of money that's where this ends. What with no footage at all of anything outside of Midgar two months out and all.

That is true. However, I think that it will be divided into four games at most. The game really isn't that large, and the third disc was only used for the CGI ending.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

That is true. However, I think that it will be divided into four games at most. The game really isn't that large, and the third disc was only used for the CGI ending.

We'll have a better idea once this comes out and we see just how much new content there is in Midgar. If you chose, you could skip a lot of disc 1 I suppose, though the slow build up of scattered hints as to what really happened at Nibelheim would suffer from it. All that I've seen implies if anything they're expanding the scope of the story a lot. There's lines in some footage for instance that indicates the Wutai War is still ongoing in this version and will be a factor in the plot.

Disc 1 is weirdly paced for video game reasons. Act 2 is extremely long as a result. Honestly the only parts vital to the story here are the yuge flashback, the encounter on the ship, Corel and Dyne, two scenes from Gongaga,and then exposition dumps at Cosmo Canyon , the mystery at Nibelheim, and the Temple + City of the Ancients. Much of it could be shuffled around to happen in a more concentrated area. But damn it, FF7 should have a world map.

What would it be with 4 then?

Game 2: Kalm to uh....Cosmo Canyon? Nibelheim?

Game 3: Wherever that left off to Aeris' death?

Game 4: All the rest?

 

[Burned Man]

I'm making the assumption that each episode isn't its own game but a digital expansion more akin to dlc like Iceborne was to Monster Hunter. That's why the game is just called FF7 Remake and not FF7 episode 1 Midgar. I could see them putting a level cap in place around something like 40 to keep you from being too op and the cap gets raised each new episode. FFXV let you level to 99 but then kept going to 120 with each level taking huge amounts of XP to keep going so who knows what the cap could be.

I'm also assuming that the game ends right as you leave Midgar with some flashy shots of the horizon basically saying this is only the beginning or something cheesy like that. Depending on how many episodes they make I could see them cutting ending episodes at points like Aerith's death, Cloud falling into the lifestream, and Cloud getting out of his coma.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Cloud falling into the lifestream, and Cloud getting out of his coma.

Just make that a game. Final Fantasy 7: Psychonauts might be cool.

 

[The Littlest Shitlord]

Shinra blowing up their own reactor is some "Greedo shot first" levels of bullshit. I suspect though that 9/11 and subsequent attacks are to blame. Remember, this is the same company that scrapped fully completed and ready primal fights in FFXIV 1.0 because there was an earthquake in Japan (which is a not exactly rare occurrence). Fuck "sensitivity" and self-censorship.

 

[Burned Man]

Shinra blowing up their own reactor is some "Greedo shot first" levels of bullshit. I suspect though that 9/11 and subsequent attacks are to blame. Remember, this is the same company that scrapped fully completed and ready primal fights in FFXIV 1.0 because there was an earthquake in Japan (which is a not exactly rare occurrence). Fuck "sensitivity" and self-censorship.

I think remake Reeve might have an even shittier job then he did in original FF7 now the president is just blowing up and destroying pieces of Midgar constantly to spite a small band of basically eco protesters at this point. Remember when Rufus takes over and says he wants to rule the world through fear rather through money like his old man? That line is gonna ring extra hollow with all the character building the are gonna do to the president.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I think remake Reeve might have an even shittier job then he did in original FF7 now the president is just blowing up and destroying pieces of Midgar constantly to spite a small band of basically eco protesters at this point. Remember when Rufus takes over and says he wants to rule the world through fear rather through money like his old man? That line is gonna ring extra hollow with all the character building the are gonna do to the president.

To be fair while it started promising, the original didn't really live up to that line either.

Now I just have to wonder how they're going to rewrite that whole disc 2 questline that was about stopping Shinra from saving the world. For...some reason.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

To be fair while it started promising, the original didn't really live up to that line either.

Now I just have to wonder how they're going to rewrite that whole disc 2 questline that was about stopping Shinra from saving the world. For...some reason.

Are you talking about them using the huge materia? AVALANCHE knows that plan won't work. For all you know at the time it might even make the problem worse.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

AVALANCHE knows that plan won't work.

How?

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

How?

Didn't they already know that Holy was what they needed to beat Meteor by the time they got Cloud back? Either way they knew that Aeris was up to something in that regard.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Didn't they already know that Holy was what they needed to beat Meteor by the time they got Cloud back? Either way they knew that Aeris was up to something in that regard.

I think when they first decide to stop Shinra they hadn't gotten up to speed on the fact that Aeris' plan was still possible to enact but maybe I'm misremembering.

But even if Holy stops Meteor, does that really mean ONLY Holy can stop Meteor? And what if Holy doesn't work? I'd like more than one plan to stop the annihilation of all humanity. It just never really set right with me. I'd have liked more justification.

 

[Marissa Moira]

My one concern is that they might jong up the whole game with minigames. Kingdom hearts 3 was their last big game and the minigames were not as intrusive or annoying but they were still fairly prominent (BBS was the worst). I'm hoping that the requirements for completing them 100% don't involve bullshit that only 1% of the population can pull it off requirements. I know they showed stuff from Tifa's training and I'm just concerned that there will be far more minigames than before that will be entirely different genres unrelated to RPGs.

I mean the 100% requirements for KH3 were rather foriving as were Final Fantays 15's, but then you had past bullshit like Final Fantasy 10's chocobo racing which needed a time of Zero Minutes and Zero Seconds in order to win and get the trophy.

Then again The Final Fantasy 8 Remaster's trophy list for 100%ing the game was not bad at all. But then again FF9's trophy list was complete fucking murder.

Supposedly they will be trimming down most of the bullshit in the story to get a more cohesive narrative. Cloud's Wheelchair escapades may be reduced to a minor event while Ninja village and Tifa's flashbacks gets more prominence.