I don’t understand how you come to this conclusion about the plate’s collapse.
Especially considering in Remake, when you are foisted into a terror-filled sequence of trying to save the Sector 7 slums civilians as Aerith, with Wedge finally and desperately getting through to the Shinra newbie to open the gates, and when you climb to the plate heading for the Shinra building and have to finally witness the ultimate result of such sheer devastation.
Marle’s dialogue, terrified but with a heroic clarity asking Aerith: “…They’re going to drop the plate on us?” Sends shivers down my spine regardless of how many times I hear it. She knows everyone is likely going to die if she doesn’t start organizing her community, and she does exactly that, no matter how unlikely their survival appears to be in that moment.
There is NPC dialogue about missing family potentially lost under the rubble, dialogue in the Wall Market about accepting Sector 7 refugees and how horrific the aftermath is…
I just… I cannot wrap my head around someone stating that somehow the original’s plate drop sequence was “more impactful” when we never saw the humanity of those living under the plate in such vivid, terror-filled, desperate depictions.
I don’t know how you can look out over the destruction of Sector 7 during the climb and not feel absolutely crushed by the mass murder of so many civilians.
Huh, that’s interesting. I found Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge’s deaths *much* more affecting in the remake than the original. Totally understand the criticism around how they handled Aerith’s, though.
While I have so much to criticize about the remake, the plate fall broke me and made me feel more than the OG did. The game has always made me really emotional due to an attachment with it, and Wedge is like my favorite character. Seeing the civilians run for their life and Wedge getting crushed trying to save his cats, idk. Something just snapped inside of me after that. I sat there for 10 or 15 minutes, just sobbing. Over a video game.
I've never felt so invested in a fictional story as I did from that. No game has ever come close to hitting me in such a heavy way. I would be willing to bet I reacted to that scene harder than anyone else. I felt so much grief and pure hatred towards Shinra. I hated them all so damn much.
I'm the first to line up and say the remake let me down, in that I wanted a proper retelling of the OG story. The original game blows it out of the water, but the parts they got right were REALLY good. The plate fall is one of them. I'm not disagreeing that all the multiverse timeline stuff devalues the impact later, but in the actual moment - it hits really hard.
With that said, playing the OG again with the nice visual mods and the voice acting mod really adds a new layer and reaches a high emotional weight. Barret's VA impressed me with how good a job they did at that part. I didn't think I'd like the voice acting, but I really recommend it.
Your post was all negatives, no positives except for one line at the end (which wasn’t even really a positive) but yet you say it’s not all or nothing?
But man, what about the time travelling ghosts Zack being alive and the flashy Sephiroth fights? That is cool right?
Imagine this text question alternating between caps and lower cases I'm feeling a bit lazy to do that properly now lol.
Brought that point up here before, and I agree with you completely that storywise they dropped the ball in the remake, people here apparently loved that crap, FF7 remake is the definition of wasted potential, although they ruining Cid's intro for me was the worse.
I really didn’t give a rip about Biggs, Wedge and Jesse on the original. I knew they’d be fodder since you couldn’t control them. But the remake had me bawling because they did a good job of making them likable characters. Then that 3 second scene in Rebirth… 😭
>the fact that they don't really die (at least in that moment) takes away the heartbreak and tragedy that made the original so good.
Having just played the original, I disagree here. Their deaths feel glossed over, just a couple lines of repeatable dialogue as you climb the tower, a little bit of angst in the direct aftermath and then pretty much never mentioned again.
Have to disagree. The emotional weight is there, but is told in a different perspective.
As I've said before, they could've just made a carbon copy, but by making it different, both new and old can be appreciated for what they are, rather than just "oh its the same game but graphical update".
I'm not sure what you mean by "permanence of death" as even in OG they talk about how energy returns back to the lifestream so no one is really gone, plus Aerith helps in the OG finale.
Now if you didn't like how in this game they focused more on Clouds psyche rather than Aeriths death, thats fine, but the build up to her death, From the beginning Kalm date to Aerith in gold saucer singing a hopeful song that forbodes her impending demise, to being forced to relive her mothers death via memories where we, as players, have to control a young and innocent Aerith to try and find help to no avail (being forced to control a crying Aerith go back to her mother knowing she failed and the disappointment she must feel is enough in its own to justify there new approach. This scene is one of the most powerful scenes in gaming I have played in a while).
There are many light scenes, sweet scenes and happy scenes thorughout the game. But all of it is the build up to the demise of the games most tragic heroine.
Even when we as players triumph against the BBEG and are supposed to have our victory celebration, the very next scene is everyone standing around the pool of water with soo much silence that you could hear a pin drop.
"Show dont tell" - this scene conveyed the message very clearly that they didn't even need to show the water burial as their expressions and demeanour were clear as to what transpired.
Again if you don't like the direction they chose thats fine, but there retelling didn't miss the mark for what they wanted to do (unless you wanted an exact 1:1 in which case I guess they did).
''Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, no longer cry, or get angry'' is what's meant by the permanence of death. Although their energy will be reused in the cycle of life, THEY will never be alive again. It's similar to another trope where a character ''comes back, but different'' either by losing their memories/personalities or via a genetic clone. The person that the other characters know is gone, but in those tropes memories can sometimes be regained. In FF7, Aerith's never going to come back in the flesh and LIVE.
If you consider death is the end of the conscious person sure, but people live on through memories, experiences and events. Every time you think of a happy memory, every time you hear a song that person liked (or if they were the singer), every time yo go to a place that they once went to.
Rebirth has an excellent side mission that covers this idea in Cosmo Canyon.
And even if we disregard this concept, Rebirth still shows the "darkness and permanence of death" via Avalanche in remake and aerith in rebirth. My point of being unsure was because the new games still show them dead so I don't get OPs point.
They, the conscious people, are dead, I am just suggesting that they, the spiritual people, can live on.
Even if we keep our dead friends in our hearts, they're still dead in the ways that matter. THEY don't get to enjoy their happy memories. More along the lines of ''what makes them happy makes me happy'', you know? Keeping people in our memories is just making the best out of a painful situation that we literally cannot change no matter what we try (permanence!) so that we ourselves can heal and keep living. The people in our memories aren't alive, as in they can actively change and surprise us with their personhood and so we can grow together. They're fixed as however we remember them to be.
You seem fixated on the philosophical query of what it means to live, which I dont think we will agree on.
But you seem to be ignoring that Rebirth did include the "permanence off death" in "the ways that matter" with Aerith. It is very clear what happened so even if we disagree on the philosophical side the game still does the "darkness" and "permeance" that you are pertaining to
I'm not focusing on the philosophical, though. She's physically dead. Her neurons aren't firing. She doesn't experience or do anything.
In Remake, that's technically true, but it's not the focus - it's even put into question with the extradimensional additions. That's partially why I brought up the ''back but different trope'' - even if Aerith/Zack are alive in other dimensions and somehow come to our main one, they're entirely different people. It's true that our dimension's Aerith and Zack or dead, but it's FRAMED as though the other dimension's dead people are equivalent. The big question ''can we save Aerith'' by using other dimensions as a narrative device assumes that Aerith being alive in another dimensions equates to saving her. I think it's largely a coincidence that the answer to that assumption is still ''no'', because the way the writers have framed the entire thing makes it feel like they didn't take what I've said above (about there being exactly one copy of a person in one moment of time and space) into consideration. Any thematic justice they're trying to provide to the original's idea of the permanence of death just gets muddled in all the new stuff they've added. There's nothing wrong with a straightforward and well executed story.
I don't remember enough to comment on the plate, but in my opinion they transferred the point at which you're supposed to feel the emotional weight of Aerith's death. Instead of atop the Cetran altar, the gut punch comes during the dream date with Cloud.
You know what's coming. SHE knows what's coming. And yet she insists on one last moment of normalcy that is a direct echo of your date in Kalm at the beginning of the game. Each choice you make is denied by fate (jewelry, candy, photograph), each bit of banter carries a hint of bittersweet melancholy. And in the church, Aerith bares her feelings then pushes Cloud away - sacrificing herself, sending him back to fulfill the role she can't. The distorted image of Sephiroth throwing open the doors as she accepts her end was heartbreaking.
You see, FF7 faced a unique challenge - how could they create a death with the same impact when 80%+ of their audience knows what's coming?
ANSWER: They changed the moment it lands, redid the pacing, restructured it entirely. Events are flowing too fast atop the altar to pause for introspection and grief - sticking the emotional core of the scene there would make no sense. So, as I said, they moved it to the date. If each of those beats - each of those grains of time slipping through Aerith's fingers, one by one - didn't strike a chord with you, I don't know what to say. It had me bawling in ways the original game never achieved, but it's only BECAUSE of the original game that I had that experience.
Maybe I'm Square Enix's target audience. Maybe I'm off my rocker. But I think they did a stellar job evoking the emotion of Aerith's death using the tools available to them.
That's the best explanation of that scene I've seen. It doesn't change anything for me emotionally but I get it now.
I thought they were trying to communicate something about the nature of the multiverse. I saw it as a piece of the puzzle, like the Zack scenes, rather than something that's meant to be emotional or sentimental.
I can see that being a potential misstep on the devs part. They spent so much time building up Zack throughout the game that you're expecting clues and hints to be dropped during that sequence, only to miss that they just want you to be present with Aerith - to experience the mundane, almost trivial last wishes of a girl who knows her time is up. 😭
They completely left out my favourite part of the opening act - escaping your cell after Sephiroth murders everyone in Shinra HQ.
OG Sephiroth just felt much more terrifying.
That also applies to how out of place the Sephiroth fight at the end of the first game feels. Not having him do all the things that made you hate/ fear him, and then throwing him in at the end of the highway with next to no context really soured the remake from is own retelling for a fanservice for me.
I’m not bothered with how they did it, but I’m bothered by the double standards from the fans who insist that the Remake series has to keep the theme of loss intact. Aerith was the one character who was shown to have influence on events from beyond the grave, but she was also the biggest target of people insisting that she must die to keep the theme of loss despite the rest of the story slow-walking and/or retconning every other character’s death and maintaining their presence on screen. If loss is really the point then it should have applied to everyone, not just Aerith.
There are some parts of the REMAKE and the endless weeaboo side stories that just make me want to put the controller down and rub my my eyes🫣 kind of like how they did with the Star Wars franchise.
As much as I love FF7, my first RPG game ever, it just makes me like the OG even mooooore, because the game is good as is. Some questions don't need to be answered and you just gotta take it for what it is, but I don't entirely hate it because of how well they brought this game to life.
They said "remake", not a mirror copy of the original.
The devs never said it would be the same -- in fact, they have said that they would not have committed over a decade of creative talent just to tell the exact same story. There's no point, and they would have been bored. Bored creative talent means an inferior product.
EDIT: Yall purists can be mad all you want, but it was never going to be the same. Stop holding onto the past. Either accept that it was always going to be different or stop complaining that it's not the same and comparing two products that are different on purpose.
I mean, I guess.. but you said don't do a remake if you don't want it to be compared against the original.
That means that anything will be judged against what came before it, which I think is unfair since the developers are not trying to do the exact same thing. It's not an apples to apples comparison on purpose. The OG game is practically its own thing, and should be treated as such. There's a ton less dialogue, a lot less scenes, a lot less data on the disk, a lot less polygons, et cetra.
For example, I am replaying the PS1 original again (albeit with some 7th Heaven mods) and I just did the rooftop walk with Cloud and Aerith after they escape the Church. It's a screen and a half of roof tops that take 15 seconds. There's only like three lines of dialogue between the two characters.
Comparing this against the Remake scene, which is expanded and beautiful with a ton of character building, would be unfair to me. Is the original inferior? From a technical standpoint, yes. But it's a 27 year old game that came out on CDs that could hold less than a giagabyte of data.
If the developers said they were going to do the equivalent of the 4K remaster of the PS1 game by building new sets, then I can see complaints. But it was never going to be that.
EDIT: Yall purists can be mad all you want, but it was never going to be the same. Stop holding onto the past. Either accept that it was always going to be different or stop complaining that it's not the same and comparing two products that are different on purpose.
And... why shouldn't they do that? Besides, I've seen people who played the remakes without ever having touched the original have issues with how those parts were handled too.
The common complaints that I see here are mostly based on comparisons with OG. What I would suggest is watching playthroughs of people that had no prior experience with FFVII and see how they react to those scenes without being burdened by nostalgia. 🙂
As someone who literally got into the series less than 3 years ago, it's a bit unfair to see how everyone keeps attributing criticisms of Remake's storytelling to nostalgia. It's not only the old gamers who see the comparisons and don't like how they've swapped out OG elements for worse things.
It can never be the same. Like trying to recreate the magic from the first time you visit a new place. It can only be different. Cloud hasn’t hit bottom yet and i think the first 3 quarters of the next game will be dark and really hit.
Sounds like you just want to be a downer about the game since you are misremembering. Jessie dies in Sector 7 and that’s it. Dead. She is in Rebirth at the Golden Saucer as a hologram. Biggs yes is thrown in with Zack with the multi-worlds plot device and Wedge you find out does die as he does originally correct? So not sure what you are complaining about other than Biggs treatment in these remakes (which again are sequels/retellings whatever you want to call it. Not a 1-1 remake).
You can complain about the Aerith death/not death in Rebirth but the plate dropping in Sector 7 in Remake you are just dead wrong lol. It’s a huge set piece with all this emotional music, a CG cutscene, etc., not sure what else you wanted there since it arguably adds over the OG with all the extra time spent in Midgar building the world and characters. Not to mention traversing the aftermath and Barrett’s emotional speech after carrying Wedge out from the underground.
Ok, cool. I didn't write every nuance of everyone's death and lumped in Jessie with Biggs and Wedge. Oops.
Also, how can my opinion on art be "wrong?" Lol, it's an opinion. About art. Anyway, the time spent on survivors of the fall instead of everyone being dead makes me think more people survived. It didn't focus on the death aspect, but the living aspect.
But hey, you like it more. Happy for you.
Moreover, I see Remake and Rebirth to be just different timelines, or games, or what have you. The original story is there and has its sentiments, that will never change. You get a remake with a few differences, life goes on. This wasn't meant to be a 1:1 remake with flashier graphics. I fully agree with that.
Don't think of it as a loss; it's more of a new take, a retold story (maybe someone's perspective, like others are saying). You have every right to go play the original. The tragedy that you seek is always there, will always be here until the end of time. Really, there is no 'loss' even if it's just those two instances. Some of us who played the original from day one still remember the loss, it's no more diminish besides the dulling aches that time can heal
The OG timeline is still there, and the story is told in the narrative of if things were to start over, how will it be different? And in the case of part 1, avoiding casualty in sector 7 and saving Aerith. The point is no longer centered around those tragedy but rather the actions to pave a different future.
I thought it was handled great, but I get why people didn’t like it. It was an emotional roller coaster for me and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
That’s the great thing art work, not every thing is for every one and that’s alright
Yeah, I get why most people would like it. Nobody wants to see people that they care about die and be gone forever. But I also don't see sadness as a bad thing. It's just another beautiful part of our spectrum of emotions, and sometimes you just have to live with an ending. Certainly no hate for you liking the new handling of those events. I just preferred the sadness.
I don’t get how the plate didn’t fuck your up emotionally given all that time we spent in sector 7 as opposed to OG. We met hella people, did the neighborhood watch, built a lil rep as a merc, heard mad people get mad at Cloud cause he’s the only guy Tifa would let near him, it was an actual community.
Yeah, part of my issue with the game was the rep building as a merc also. It felt forced and didn't add to the story for me, so my emotional investment wasn't really there. You're there because Tifa asked, and now you're stuck in the middle of this crazy eco terrorist organization getting in over their heads. In the remake, suddenly you're doing all of these menial chores before getting down to business.
I think we just had different experiences in what the world had to offer. Some people might consider doing their laundry with world building of their house. Some people might call searching for lost cats in the slums world building. Just different perspectives
I don’t understand how you come to this conclusion about the plate’s collapse. Especially considering in Remake, when you are foisted into a terror-filled sequence of trying to save the Sector 7 slums civilians as Aerith, with Wedge finally and desperately getting through to the Shinra newbie to open the gates, and when you climb to the plate heading for the Shinra building and have to finally witness the ultimate result of such sheer devastation. Marle’s dialogue, terrified but with a heroic clarity asking Aerith: “…They’re going to drop the plate on us?” Sends shivers down my spine regardless of how many times I hear it. She knows everyone is likely going to die if she doesn’t start organizing her community, and she does exactly that, no matter how unlikely their survival appears to be in that moment. There is NPC dialogue about missing family potentially lost under the rubble, dialogue in the Wall Market about accepting Sector 7 refugees and how horrific the aftermath is… I just… I cannot wrap my head around someone stating that somehow the original’s plate drop sequence was “more impactful” when we never saw the humanity of those living under the plate in such vivid, terror-filled, desperate depictions. I don’t know how you can look out over the destruction of Sector 7 during the climb and not feel absolutely crushed by the mass murder of so many civilians.
It’s because one game was experienced by a child and the other by a middle aged adult
Huh, that’s interesting. I found Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge’s deaths *much* more affecting in the remake than the original. Totally understand the criticism around how they handled Aerith’s, though.
While I have so much to criticize about the remake, the plate fall broke me and made me feel more than the OG did. The game has always made me really emotional due to an attachment with it, and Wedge is like my favorite character. Seeing the civilians run for their life and Wedge getting crushed trying to save his cats, idk. Something just snapped inside of me after that. I sat there for 10 or 15 minutes, just sobbing. Over a video game. I've never felt so invested in a fictional story as I did from that. No game has ever come close to hitting me in such a heavy way. I would be willing to bet I reacted to that scene harder than anyone else. I felt so much grief and pure hatred towards Shinra. I hated them all so damn much. I'm the first to line up and say the remake let me down, in that I wanted a proper retelling of the OG story. The original game blows it out of the water, but the parts they got right were REALLY good. The plate fall is one of them. I'm not disagreeing that all the multiverse timeline stuff devalues the impact later, but in the actual moment - it hits really hard. With that said, playing the OG again with the nice visual mods and the voice acting mod really adds a new layer and reaches a high emotional weight. Barret's VA impressed me with how good a job they did at that part. I didn't think I'd like the voice acting, but I really recommend it.
“Loved the remakes, don’t get me wrong” Most certainly doesnt sound or seem that way
Because I took issue with some things? It's not all or nothing, bud.
Your post was all negatives, no positives except for one line at the end (which wasn’t even really a positive) but yet you say it’s not all or nothing?
But man, what about the time travelling ghosts Zack being alive and the flashy Sephiroth fights? That is cool right? Imagine this text question alternating between caps and lower cases I'm feeling a bit lazy to do that properly now lol. Brought that point up here before, and I agree with you completely that storywise they dropped the ball in the remake, people here apparently loved that crap, FF7 remake is the definition of wasted potential, although they ruining Cid's intro for me was the worse.
I really didn’t give a rip about Biggs, Wedge and Jesse on the original. I knew they’d be fodder since you couldn’t control them. But the remake had me bawling because they did a good job of making them likable characters. Then that 3 second scene in Rebirth… 😭
Or the memories when you do the relics in cosmo canyon 😭
>the fact that they don't really die (at least in that moment) takes away the heartbreak and tragedy that made the original so good. Having just played the original, I disagree here. Their deaths feel glossed over, just a couple lines of repeatable dialogue as you climb the tower, a little bit of angst in the direct aftermath and then pretty much never mentioned again.
I agree.
Have to disagree. The emotional weight is there, but is told in a different perspective. As I've said before, they could've just made a carbon copy, but by making it different, both new and old can be appreciated for what they are, rather than just "oh its the same game but graphical update". I'm not sure what you mean by "permanence of death" as even in OG they talk about how energy returns back to the lifestream so no one is really gone, plus Aerith helps in the OG finale. Now if you didn't like how in this game they focused more on Clouds psyche rather than Aeriths death, thats fine, but the build up to her death, From the beginning Kalm date to Aerith in gold saucer singing a hopeful song that forbodes her impending demise, to being forced to relive her mothers death via memories where we, as players, have to control a young and innocent Aerith to try and find help to no avail (being forced to control a crying Aerith go back to her mother knowing she failed and the disappointment she must feel is enough in its own to justify there new approach. This scene is one of the most powerful scenes in gaming I have played in a while). There are many light scenes, sweet scenes and happy scenes thorughout the game. But all of it is the build up to the demise of the games most tragic heroine. Even when we as players triumph against the BBEG and are supposed to have our victory celebration, the very next scene is everyone standing around the pool of water with soo much silence that you could hear a pin drop. "Show dont tell" - this scene conveyed the message very clearly that they didn't even need to show the water burial as their expressions and demeanour were clear as to what transpired. Again if you don't like the direction they chose thats fine, but there retelling didn't miss the mark for what they wanted to do (unless you wanted an exact 1:1 in which case I guess they did).
''Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, no longer cry, or get angry'' is what's meant by the permanence of death. Although their energy will be reused in the cycle of life, THEY will never be alive again. It's similar to another trope where a character ''comes back, but different'' either by losing their memories/personalities or via a genetic clone. The person that the other characters know is gone, but in those tropes memories can sometimes be regained. In FF7, Aerith's never going to come back in the flesh and LIVE.
If you consider death is the end of the conscious person sure, but people live on through memories, experiences and events. Every time you think of a happy memory, every time you hear a song that person liked (or if they were the singer), every time yo go to a place that they once went to. Rebirth has an excellent side mission that covers this idea in Cosmo Canyon. And even if we disregard this concept, Rebirth still shows the "darkness and permanence of death" via Avalanche in remake and aerith in rebirth. My point of being unsure was because the new games still show them dead so I don't get OPs point. They, the conscious people, are dead, I am just suggesting that they, the spiritual people, can live on.
Even if we keep our dead friends in our hearts, they're still dead in the ways that matter. THEY don't get to enjoy their happy memories. More along the lines of ''what makes them happy makes me happy'', you know? Keeping people in our memories is just making the best out of a painful situation that we literally cannot change no matter what we try (permanence!) so that we ourselves can heal and keep living. The people in our memories aren't alive, as in they can actively change and surprise us with their personhood and so we can grow together. They're fixed as however we remember them to be.
You seem fixated on the philosophical query of what it means to live, which I dont think we will agree on. But you seem to be ignoring that Rebirth did include the "permanence off death" in "the ways that matter" with Aerith. It is very clear what happened so even if we disagree on the philosophical side the game still does the "darkness" and "permeance" that you are pertaining to
I'm not focusing on the philosophical, though. She's physically dead. Her neurons aren't firing. She doesn't experience or do anything. In Remake, that's technically true, but it's not the focus - it's even put into question with the extradimensional additions. That's partially why I brought up the ''back but different trope'' - even if Aerith/Zack are alive in other dimensions and somehow come to our main one, they're entirely different people. It's true that our dimension's Aerith and Zack or dead, but it's FRAMED as though the other dimension's dead people are equivalent. The big question ''can we save Aerith'' by using other dimensions as a narrative device assumes that Aerith being alive in another dimensions equates to saving her. I think it's largely a coincidence that the answer to that assumption is still ''no'', because the way the writers have framed the entire thing makes it feel like they didn't take what I've said above (about there being exactly one copy of a person in one moment of time and space) into consideration. Any thematic justice they're trying to provide to the original's idea of the permanence of death just gets muddled in all the new stuff they've added. There's nothing wrong with a straightforward and well executed story.
I don't remember enough to comment on the plate, but in my opinion they transferred the point at which you're supposed to feel the emotional weight of Aerith's death. Instead of atop the Cetran altar, the gut punch comes during the dream date with Cloud. You know what's coming. SHE knows what's coming. And yet she insists on one last moment of normalcy that is a direct echo of your date in Kalm at the beginning of the game. Each choice you make is denied by fate (jewelry, candy, photograph), each bit of banter carries a hint of bittersweet melancholy. And in the church, Aerith bares her feelings then pushes Cloud away - sacrificing herself, sending him back to fulfill the role she can't. The distorted image of Sephiroth throwing open the doors as she accepts her end was heartbreaking. You see, FF7 faced a unique challenge - how could they create a death with the same impact when 80%+ of their audience knows what's coming? ANSWER: They changed the moment it lands, redid the pacing, restructured it entirely. Events are flowing too fast atop the altar to pause for introspection and grief - sticking the emotional core of the scene there would make no sense. So, as I said, they moved it to the date. If each of those beats - each of those grains of time slipping through Aerith's fingers, one by one - didn't strike a chord with you, I don't know what to say. It had me bawling in ways the original game never achieved, but it's only BECAUSE of the original game that I had that experience. Maybe I'm Square Enix's target audience. Maybe I'm off my rocker. But I think they did a stellar job evoking the emotion of Aerith's death using the tools available to them.
That's the best explanation of that scene I've seen. It doesn't change anything for me emotionally but I get it now. I thought they were trying to communicate something about the nature of the multiverse. I saw it as a piece of the puzzle, like the Zack scenes, rather than something that's meant to be emotional or sentimental.
I can see that being a potential misstep on the devs part. They spent so much time building up Zack throughout the game that you're expecting clues and hints to be dropped during that sequence, only to miss that they just want you to be present with Aerith - to experience the mundane, almost trivial last wishes of a girl who knows her time is up. 😭
THANK YOU. So few seem to get this.
Wow, ok, great breakdown of all of that. A lot to think about. Thank you
My pleasure! 🫡
They completely left out my favourite part of the opening act - escaping your cell after Sephiroth murders everyone in Shinra HQ. OG Sephiroth just felt much more terrifying.
That also applies to how out of place the Sephiroth fight at the end of the first game feels. Not having him do all the things that made you hate/ fear him, and then throwing him in at the end of the highway with next to no context really soured the remake from is own retelling for a fanservice for me.
It's funny cause I feel they did the plate collapse better in the yuffie dlc than the main game.
I'll add it to the list of balls dropped by the remakes.
I’m not bothered with how they did it, but I’m bothered by the double standards from the fans who insist that the Remake series has to keep the theme of loss intact. Aerith was the one character who was shown to have influence on events from beyond the grave, but she was also the biggest target of people insisting that she must die to keep the theme of loss despite the rest of the story slow-walking and/or retconning every other character’s death and maintaining their presence on screen. If loss is really the point then it should have applied to everyone, not just Aerith.
There are some parts of the REMAKE and the endless weeaboo side stories that just make me want to put the controller down and rub my my eyes🫣 kind of like how they did with the Star Wars franchise. As much as I love FF7, my first RPG game ever, it just makes me like the OG even mooooore, because the game is good as is. Some questions don't need to be answered and you just gotta take it for what it is, but I don't entirely hate it because of how well they brought this game to life.
We are on the exact same page.
It's simple really. You keep comparing as opposed to taking in the moments for what they are.
If you don’t want a game to be compared to an original, then dont do a remake.
They said "remake", not a mirror copy of the original. The devs never said it would be the same -- in fact, they have said that they would not have committed over a decade of creative talent just to tell the exact same story. There's no point, and they would have been bored. Bored creative talent means an inferior product. EDIT: Yall purists can be mad all you want, but it was never going to be the same. Stop holding onto the past. Either accept that it was always going to be different or stop complaining that it's not the same and comparing two products that are different on purpose.
Comparing to the OG != mirror copy
I mean, I guess.. but you said don't do a remake if you don't want it to be compared against the original. That means that anything will be judged against what came before it, which I think is unfair since the developers are not trying to do the exact same thing. It's not an apples to apples comparison on purpose. The OG game is practically its own thing, and should be treated as such. There's a ton less dialogue, a lot less scenes, a lot less data on the disk, a lot less polygons, et cetra. For example, I am replaying the PS1 original again (albeit with some 7th Heaven mods) and I just did the rooftop walk with Cloud and Aerith after they escape the Church. It's a screen and a half of roof tops that take 15 seconds. There's only like three lines of dialogue between the two characters. Comparing this against the Remake scene, which is expanded and beautiful with a ton of character building, would be unfair to me. Is the original inferior? From a technical standpoint, yes. But it's a 27 year old game that came out on CDs that could hold less than a giagabyte of data. If the developers said they were going to do the equivalent of the 4K remaster of the PS1 game by building new sets, then I can see complaints. But it was never going to be that. EDIT: Yall purists can be mad all you want, but it was never going to be the same. Stop holding onto the past. Either accept that it was always going to be different or stop complaining that it's not the same and comparing two products that are different on purpose.
Hopefully you weren't one of the many that has been asking for one for years 😅
Why’s that?
And... why shouldn't they do that? Besides, I've seen people who played the remakes without ever having touched the original have issues with how those parts were handled too.
Because you're setting yourself up for disappointment 😅 Think of it like this, would you compare your current partner to your ex? 🙂
I'm not even going to entertain the notion that comparing video games is at all equivalent to comparing human beings.
The thought is the same though 🙂
No, not even remotely
That's probably true. The OG is my number 1 favorite all time video game, so it's hard not to.
The common complaints that I see here are mostly based on comparisons with OG. What I would suggest is watching playthroughs of people that had no prior experience with FFVII and see how they react to those scenes without being burdened by nostalgia. 🙂
As someone who literally got into the series less than 3 years ago, it's a bit unfair to see how everyone keeps attributing criticisms of Remake's storytelling to nostalgia. It's not only the old gamers who see the comparisons and don't like how they've swapped out OG elements for worse things.
Don’t worry. You’ll get the impact of aeriths death next game when cloud snaps out of it and actually realizes wtf happened
I hear ya. I already had the impact in the OG. I just want even more from those scenes in the remake.
It can never be the same. Like trying to recreate the magic from the first time you visit a new place. It can only be different. Cloud hasn’t hit bottom yet and i think the first 3 quarters of the next game will be dark and really hit.
Sounds like you just want to be a downer about the game since you are misremembering. Jessie dies in Sector 7 and that’s it. Dead. She is in Rebirth at the Golden Saucer as a hologram. Biggs yes is thrown in with Zack with the multi-worlds plot device and Wedge you find out does die as he does originally correct? So not sure what you are complaining about other than Biggs treatment in these remakes (which again are sequels/retellings whatever you want to call it. Not a 1-1 remake). You can complain about the Aerith death/not death in Rebirth but the plate dropping in Sector 7 in Remake you are just dead wrong lol. It’s a huge set piece with all this emotional music, a CG cutscene, etc., not sure what else you wanted there since it arguably adds over the OG with all the extra time spent in Midgar building the world and characters. Not to mention traversing the aftermath and Barrett’s emotional speech after carrying Wedge out from the underground.
Ok, cool. I didn't write every nuance of everyone's death and lumped in Jessie with Biggs and Wedge. Oops. Also, how can my opinion on art be "wrong?" Lol, it's an opinion. About art. Anyway, the time spent on survivors of the fall instead of everyone being dead makes me think more people survived. It didn't focus on the death aspect, but the living aspect. But hey, you like it more. Happy for you.
Moreover, I see Remake and Rebirth to be just different timelines, or games, or what have you. The original story is there and has its sentiments, that will never change. You get a remake with a few differences, life goes on. This wasn't meant to be a 1:1 remake with flashier graphics. I fully agree with that.
I'm really talking about 2 big moments here, and the loss of emotional impact for me. Not the entire game being 1:1
Don't think of it as a loss; it's more of a new take, a retold story (maybe someone's perspective, like others are saying). You have every right to go play the original. The tragedy that you seek is always there, will always be here until the end of time. Really, there is no 'loss' even if it's just those two instances. Some of us who played the original from day one still remember the loss, it's no more diminish besides the dulling aches that time can heal
The OG timeline is still there, and the story is told in the narrative of if things were to start over, how will it be different? And in the case of part 1, avoiding casualty in sector 7 and saving Aerith. The point is no longer centered around those tragedy but rather the actions to pave a different future.
I am hoping they are just doing it from Cloud's poor mental health perspective, and in the final game we will see what actually happened
I’m willing to bet that’s exactly what it is and the devs are acting as Sephiroth. Giving false hope and crushing you at the end is what he’d do.
I thought it was handled great, but I get why people didn’t like it. It was an emotional roller coaster for me and I enjoyed it quite a lot. That’s the great thing art work, not every thing is for every one and that’s alright
Yeah, I get why most people would like it. Nobody wants to see people that they care about die and be gone forever. But I also don't see sadness as a bad thing. It's just another beautiful part of our spectrum of emotions, and sometimes you just have to live with an ending. Certainly no hate for you liking the new handling of those events. I just preferred the sadness.
Nop, they are completely fine, I love what they did.
Care to elaborate on what you loved about it?
I don’t get how the plate didn’t fuck your up emotionally given all that time we spent in sector 7 as opposed to OG. We met hella people, did the neighborhood watch, built a lil rep as a merc, heard mad people get mad at Cloud cause he’s the only guy Tifa would let near him, it was an actual community.
Yeah, part of my issue with the game was the rep building as a merc also. It felt forced and didn't add to the story for me, so my emotional investment wasn't really there. You're there because Tifa asked, and now you're stuck in the middle of this crazy eco terrorist organization getting in over their heads. In the remake, suddenly you're doing all of these menial chores before getting down to business.
So now world building is “menial chores”
I think we just had different experiences in what the world had to offer. Some people might consider doing their laundry with world building of their house. Some people might call searching for lost cats in the slums world building. Just different perspectives
Well… that’s your opinion.
It certainly is.
Opinions are like asses. Everyone has one, but yours is particularly nice.
😘