Do they consider what's already happened not to be a radical deviation?
If they allow the players to CHOOSE to deviate at certain junctures or if certain character interactions or choices add up to a change in the story (like the rumors about the original game, like getting Aerith to live or getting Sephiroth by collecting garbage items and doing who knows what with them smh) then that would actually be pretty cool. But these things need equal consequences to be believable. There's a lot they could do going forward, but if the next games are anything like the first remake(reboot fanfic), then...; fort condor
will be padding,
Yuffie will be padding, Wutai
will be padding, Nibbilheim
will be padding, and... The Golden Saucer
will just have three reskinned minigames from wall market/and Dyne will be a racist cunt.
I haven't beaten FFVIIR yet, but my impressions are this:
1) Dunkey did nuffin' wrong- he is the guy you need reviewing this game, because notice how he didn't critique the battle system really, and that's because they went in a fairly smart direction with it. The problems are mostly with the game design, and how the acting/story ends up being total anime tier. Few examples: Remember Heidegger from the first game, and how he was a looney toons bombastic fool who barrelled through headquarters and slugged underlings? Well now he's a stiff regent-like cackling piece of soggy cardboard, taking up TOO FUCKING MUCH screen time (and while I respect Dimaggio this wasn't the right call for him) and he just opines on how the cockroaches beneath him are worth nothing blah blah blah. If
anything, Scarlet was over the top bitch and took up that role, and tits; I'm sorry to all the losers who wanted tits in this game, because YOU GOT'EM (I don't see where an accountant rolled over
much equity in terms of cleavage in this game). But I digress (much like Heidegger)...
2) PICK a direction; the first game was driven by it's triumphs and limitations, in that it had to get the detail from diorama type worlds, which added to its mood and appeal. I see a lot of limitations of the PS4 in this game (framerate, load times) and the direction they went in visually was pretty spot on, but it doesn't allow for bombastic characters like in the first game (although Roche was pretty fucking looney toons and while being kind of over the top Nomura, I kind of like him and his psycho attitude). Like, either dial it down or amp it up to 11, because in the original you had these loony psycho people living without any law except for the soldiers patrolling in places, and you had weird black markets filled with human scum and you could tell a Korean barbecue chef that his meal tasted like shit! Most characters in remake were stiff, stiff, stiff, and while I like Aerith's voice, she's too saccharin and informative sounding (and yes the story element may just have her being overly optimistic because she has a 'bad feeling' all the time and she's a strong chosen one, but many characters are unnecessary and their voices are inconsequential). In the original there were serious moments in the midst of all of the pantomime and slapstick humor, and the serious moments possibly land as well as they do by
not having voices. I think it could be as simple as that, because the characters aren't real looking and neither is the world they're in. But when we think about what a developed character
is and what having character is, we're certainly not going to find all of them to be perfect or our favorite in any game. The original game wasn't like an a bad anime to me, where the character spews out whatever will drive the plot forward, but the new game is all about wasting your time with people you do not give a shit about (and it's not because you never saw them before). They show up, and you do a light quest chain and then they go away.
fucking danny devito, every time!
I never really cared who these lackey sycophantic simps were, who all gravitated towards me like meteors to a fucking planet (see what I did there? wow), just to gimme a few paint by numbers activities (which are sometimes not optional) and waste my time.
3) Can't explore everything I feel since that would take forever, but the good things about this game are the battles, materia, some choices/twists, and visual identity of the world (that perpetual subsurface scattering or w/e that they use on all the pipes etc is very cool but reduces this game to 30 fps, and I can usually see that it's indeed 30 fps). They HAVE the look down, its just that this padded hallway simulator was confused with the type of quality that it wanted to deliver. Less is more, people will pay for it (just look at RE3 remake), and they spent all this time and money doing all the wrong things to expand this section of the game. Jesse and a few other things were alright, I think they wanted to add a ton of flavors to the meal when they should've made a decidedly poignant and curated meal with less ingredients. In terms of the amount you get, it's worth 60 dollars, but it's not a groundbreaking game. The original was though, because they went beyond prior standards and told a complete fleshed out story in an epic way for the time, with so much variety and freedom in battles and the world. This game is just souped up modern rpg with great graphics (at 30 fps) with fairly faithful recreation of much of the original and souped up to 11. If they really wanted it to be the same level of 'groundbreaking' that the original had, they would've had to do A LOT more, and probably wait for the ps5 to release it, and they would've had to go literal Uncharted 4 levels on the story and characters. hallways, rat quests and characters that waste my time on this planet can't be part of groundbreaking content.
tl semicolon dr -- Chadley can go fuck himself.
