Hello Internet,
Replay Notes
Chapter One/
Remake: New introduction shows the Midgar wastes and the
city, emphasizing the excess of the plate and the poverty of the slums. Gives duality and separates the game and its themes
from those of the original.
-Actually, footage only
shows the plates originally, not the slums.
Does this juxtapose the two disparate situations? New footage shows the plates only before
transitioning to the old, remade footage.
-Dots of light in the new
opening is a flash of mako, not the stars.
Reframes the narrative and the opening, centering it on Midgar and
isolating it from the greater world at large and the meteor to come.
-Aerith’s introduction
changed slightly to hint at/suggest the Whispers.
-How in the world did Josh
think that Aerith is ugly?
-Admittedly, the game does
look good. The motion of the characters
and expressions they are capable of is beyond impressive.
-Combat/Combat is fast and
heavy. Cloud moves well, and his attacks
feel visceral. It requires smooth
timing, precisions, and a fair amount of strategy.
--Cloud/Cloud has two
attack modes: Operator and Punisher, one of which is more controlled and the
other of which does more damage.
Transitioning into Punisher opens with a slashing attack, while Operator
allows for blocking attacks and dodge rolling.
Dodging defaults back to Operator, while Punisher allows for counter
attacks on a guard but has no block feature, making it useless at range.
-Maps/Maps, so far, are
subtly expanded recreations of the previous game’s maps. They look good and have vertical texture, but
the 3D modeling makes them feel narrower and smaller. There are a lot of visual details but very
little to interact with, making it a beautiful but boring world to explore.
-Maps/Some parts of the
environment can be interacted with, but this hardly yields anything of value
and grows stale quickly. Exploration is
on a rail with little room for deviation, and due to the narrow halls, this
makes dungeons feel much smaller than they were in the original game. Items can be acquired through chests or
destructible boxes, and since weapons are fewer in this game, there is also
less variety to the types of items you find while exploring, too.
-Characters/Wedge, Jessie,
and Biggs are expanded upon, but their personalities remain shallow and
simplistic. Jessie is the chick, Wedge
is the fat guy, and Biggs smells?
-Interaction/Since all of
the dialogue in the game is spoken, there are less people and things to
interact with. As a result, there is
ambient dialogue that is easy to walk away from without meaning to and there is
less room for conversation.
-Abilities/Abilities,
magic, and items are accessed in combat using ATB gauges. Your ATB charges throughout combat but gets a
boost whenever you attack or receive damage.
This requires you to be cognizant of how you use your ATB, because even
though it will recharge, you might not have the ATB to do what you like when
you need to do it if you aren’t careful.
Many of the skills you get
are repurposed limit breaks from the original game. More on this later.
-I can cut the blue cones.
-Saving/You can save
anywhere in the game so long as you are not in a story scene or in combat. It is actually pretty nice, to be honest.
-Cloud/Cloud’s new VA gives
a lot more personality to what might otherwise be flat dialogue. Like every other major VA in the game (Cloud,
Sephiroth, and Zack in Reunion), he sounds like they coached him to do a Steve
Burton impersonation. This might be how
he naturally sounds. Either way, he does
it very, very well.
-Combat/Scratch that. Switching from Punisher to Operator has an
attack, not the other way around. Dumb
dumb me.
-Wedge still has a crush on
Cloud, and like everything else in REMAKE, it has only gotten more dramatic in
the transition.
-Exploration/Breaking boxes
sometimes gives you MP or HP restoration.
Access to items like ethers is far more common in this version than in
the original, if my memory serves me.
-Gameplay/You can pretty
much pause at any point in the gameplay.
As a father, that is an insanely rare but beneficial feature. For example, my baby is crying right now, and
I need to take care of him. Brb, word
document.
-Most of these notes so far
have been from the first twenty minutes of gameplay. Clearly, I don’t have bias, right?!
-Exploration/Sometimes,
there parts of the environment you have to interact with to progress. This is a small thing but also a personal
frustration. Maybe they’re hiding a
loading screen behind it, but I hate that I have to hold the Triangle button
down for Cloud to flip a switch. Just
let me press the button and have him do it.
Holding it down does not increase interaction. It’s just weird.
This is not a flaw in the
game design, inherently, just a pet peeve.
-Barret/Barret is yelling
at Cloud. It is nice to know that when
they saw what Barret was and had a change to update him and improve him like
they did with the other main characters, they decided, “Nah,” and leaned full
into Angry Black Man. Like, I know that
some people will say that it is true to the original/is iconic, but it is also
glaring compared to how much nuance and care they took with the other playable
characters in the cast and even the named mooks who existed in the original
just to die.
-“We can do this with you,
or we can do this without you.”
Can you, Barret? It’s a little
late now to be pulling this on him. I
mean, it’s mid-mission. ALSO, why bring
him to begin with unless you’re desperate for man power or feel he has
something to offer? Narratively, I
understand they have Barret scrutinize him to reveal his past connection with
Shinra, but there are more elegant ways to do that. Admittedly, it didn’t make much sense in the
original either, BUT that game was made in 97.
Not 2020.
-Cloud/”Different reactor,
different layout.” I love the layering
to Cloud here. There is a brief pause,
and then a reasonable answer that is cobbled together from borrowed memories
and his own experiences. His new VA
sells him as cold and aloof while also giving a suggestion of false
bravado. As someone who has played and
beaten the original, he sells what Cloud was supposed to be so much better than
the original ever did. Superb.
-Speaking to characters and
having them repeat the same dialogue over and over gives me big FFX
vibes, and I kind of love it.
-Kangaroo is extra fussy
today.
-Hey! Push that button like
in the original game! Now have a
flashback! Windmill! Child!Tifa! Nibelheim!
-Shinra/Hey, look at these
two characters that do nothing else in the game. President Shinra doesn’t get enough screen
time to considered the real villain of this game, and this game does nothing to
pretend like he is. Heidegger is a nice
reference for long time fans, but for new players he’s just a face in this game
since we won’t be given real time with him until the sequels. It is classic nostalgia-baiting.
-Barret/Barret is a cartoon
character. Even his subordinates think
so.
-Combat/Barret is a ranged
fighter with a gun on his arm. He can
attack from a distance with repeated machine gun or can give a charged shot
which will charge his ATB faster. After
that, you have to recharge his charged shot overtime or you can charge it
manually but sacrifice action economy to do so.
He can block as well, but his movements are slow and cumbersome compared
to Cloud’s. That said, he has higher
base HP and defense than Cloud, making him a slow moving tank.
-Exploration/There is a
laser puzzle, if you can call it a puzzle, within Sector 5 Reactor. Though I call it a puzzle, it is more of a
tutorial on how to sprint. That said, if
memory serves me, this is the closest thing we get to a puzzle within any of
the dungeons of the game (outside of the claw puzzle later in the game), and it
isn’t so much a puzzle as it just requires focus.
-Combat/Combat is always
the highlight of REMAKE, and it is no better than when facing an iconic VII
monster. They put a lot of love into
making the original and unique VII monsters play smarter and smoother and
transitioning them into the new battle system.
The sweeper requires you to abuse it’s elemental weakness to tie it down
and force it into stagger—a state where it is more susceptible to damage—and is
not only fun but is a great tutorial for the Stagger System. I just wish this same sort of care was put
into every aspect of this game.
-Dialogue/”What are you,
twenty-something?” “First…” I love this
scene so much that it hurts. It
showcases how desperate Cloud is to prove to himself and others that not he is
not only a soldier, but that he is worth something. He is so insecure that his first instinct
when asked his age is to give his rank.
That is how empty he is, and how is how shallow his shell goes. Brilliant.
-Dialogue/I know a lot of
people will mock me for this, but I do not like how much explicit language is
used in this game. I know that the
original had explicit language in the form of censored dialogue, and I felt
that was both cartoony while still giving the characters personality. This game feels edgy more than adult, and I
personally don’t feel that having cuss words in a game makes it more
adult. I am not against them perse, but
for me the language in REMAKE is more distracting than anything.
-Exploration/The Mako
Reactor is much shinier and newer than it was presented in the original. This is not a complaint, perse, but it feels
almost like they’ve lost something between titles. I need to play the original to really refine
what I am saying, but I know it’s not a “less than” situation so much as a
“different than.” Like it changes the
intention of the story/scenes by changing the design, but I’m likely reading
too deep into it.
-Gameplay/Being able to use
the Sprint on ladders is a genius move that should be put into ALL VIDEO GAMES
from now on. I’m particularly looking at
you, Final Fantasy XV.
-Combat/I just realized
that Barret’s overcharge gives you three blasts. If timed correctly, it can take out multiple
enemies. Pretty cool, that.
-Mako is apparently green
water, and also my foot is asleep because my son is asleep on it. : /
-Barret/For what it is
worth: I do not dislike John Eric Bentley’s performance as Barret but how
Barret is written and presented in the game.
He just feels like a time capsule, and not a very flattering one.
-Sephiroth/Hey! Look! It’s
a black feather! You know, those things
that Sephiroth didn’t have at all in the original game? More on that later, of course.
-Combat/Bosses in this game
are exceptional (so long as they are bosses from the original), and Guard
Scorpion is no exception. Here follows
what I like and dislike about this boss: it has a number of attacks and high
mobility. Different phases of the boss
fight require different strategies, and more than that it forces you to play as
Barret like the little mini-turrets do.
Barret’s lightning and ranged attacks are far more effective for a good
portion of the boss fight, but when the Guardian Scorpion puts its shields up,
Cloud is better due to higher mobility and precision striking. This forces you to interact with the
character switching mechanic to have an easier time with it.
Once staggered, the boss
enters a second/third phase of the fight (the second phase involves it jumping
around and putting up a shield, I suppose) where it unloads missiles and
releases steel beams before doing a big laser blat attack. This, by itself, is not a bad thing and is
actually fun the first time it happens, but the same cutscene is used multiple
times for the same attack, and it gets silly like supernova in the
original. I would have very much
preferred if there were a finite number of steel beams that put pressure on you
to finish the boss quickly as it slowly took them out one by one before you
have to take the attack head-on.
-Music/Typically, I prefer
the original compositions of VII to the remixed soundtrack of REMAKE,
but I have to give credit where credit is due: Hamauzu is very good, and I wish
they had given him more wiggle room within the soundtrack to create more varied
and diverse tracks rather than epic!remixes of the original’s songs.
-Combat/I just realized
that MP recovers slowly, too, though ethers are still plentiful and far more
effective.
-The character model on the
Guardian Scorpion is insanely detailed and good. I cannot overstate how pretty this game is,
and I love it.
-You can also sprint up
ladders. Amazing.
-“Don’t worry, I’ll be
fine. I’ve got SOLDIER boy with me.”
Really? I was wondering what he was doing lately.
-Gameplay/Escape from the
Mako Reactor is fine, but I would have liked a bit more to it. Broken areas of the reactor would have
created more diversity in exploration, or at least having the laser beams still
going would have required you to think calmly during your hectic escape.
-Narrative/I hate, hate, HATE
the destruction of the Mako Reactor. It
took something subtle that was implied in the original (if I remember
correctly), and completely removes the subtext from it. Furthermore, it adds nothing meaningful to
the story and is, frankly, too long of a scene that interrupts the flow of the
narrative of the sequence.
-Cloud can jump eighty-five
feet into the air, but he struggles to lift a slab of cement wall that my
flabby rear could heft up without Mako-muscles?
We’ll attribute it to adrenaline.
VII: No pause function with the opening cinematic. Immediately worse.
-Story opens on numerous
floating dots of light, like a star system, before cutting to Aerith. In this version, Aerith did not look away
from camera but toward the camera. This
not only centers the narrative focus on Aerith, but it also precurses the
threat of the Meteor and emphasizes how small Midgar is in comparison to the
rest of the universe.
-The opening action is not
as flashy as REMAKE, but then, what is?
-Those two Shinra soldiers
just let Barret run by them, didn’t they?
-Narrative &
Gameplay/The first battle is a smooth and simple tutorial with low stakes. You, the player, are given a chance to learn
organically what to do without direction, and while I view that as a good thing,
I also understand that it’s easier since the gameplay is much simpler. Furthermore, the use of Ex-SOLDIER for
Cloud’s name in the battle menu is a great hook to build anticipation and
interest while also exposing us to the lexicon which will be thrown at us
throughout the game. It tells us about
Cloud, even if we don’t fully grasp what it is telling us about him.
-Gameplay/Gameplay is
definitely slower, but we could have had a revamped battle system ala Final
Fantasy IV DS to reinvigorate an older, dated system. Still, it likely wouldn’t have reached as
wide an audience as the action JRPG route did.
-Narrative/Opening scene at
the door is used to set up world building and terminology in place of
characters. This is less a criticism
toward either game and more an example of the changed focus of the
narrative. Midgar is only the prologue
for VII, but for REMAKE it is the entire game.
-Please enter a name. LOUD.
-Instantly, Barret in this
version is a better leader than in REMAKE. In REMAKE, he is too busy giving Cloud
the stink eye. Here, he is warning them
against moving as a group through the reactor.
-ARRET.
-Design/On the one hand,
the reactor in VII is much smaller.
On the other hand, even from a top-down perspective, I feel like it is
more authentic and atmospheric to the sterile hallways and gift shops of REMAKE. Like, I know that vending machines are super
corporate, but I don’t think they’d have them at the front desk of a power
plant is all.
-REMAKE did such a
good job of adapting the classic VII enemies to their new battle
system. It is really astonishing.
-While the dialogue of REMAKE
is clearly better, the interactions between ARRET and LOUD feel more organic in
VII. Part of this is the result
of how the game focuses on introducing the characters and concepts in this
opening section. They have so much more
story to tell that they don’t have to bury the lede. They can just sort of throw information at
you, and so it flows better.
-Biggs: “Think how many of
our people risked their lives, just for this code…” And that right there is more characterization
within the first few minutes of the game than I can honestly remember from
Biggs in all of REMAKE.
-While the maps of REMAKE
have a lot more to explore, I think I still prefer VII. REMAKE is bigger, but narrow and
empty. This makes exploration sometimes
feel like a slog. VII’s maps are
comparatively much smaller but can communicate just as much without padding for
time.
-If REMAKE II
doesn’t show LOUD swallowing his other party members before exploration, then I
am boycotting the game.
-Exploration/The attention
to detail in map design when translating the maps between games is actually quite
impressive. Subtle changes were made,
but honestly, I know exactly where I am between the two games right now.
-Gameplay/Honestly, the
lack of variety in action economy in this version is a bit jarring. I appreciate that the game’s complexity will
increase as I get farther in, but comparing the two is a bit jarring.
-No sprint down ladders. :
(
-As an adult seeking
nostalgia, I miss save points. As an
adult with responsibilities, I am glad that we have largely done away with save
points in video games.
-Break it to the Limit! BIG
SHOT!
-Gameplay/So much of the
gameplay is just simply not told to you.
You figure it out intuitively as you play. I got my first limit break, and I used it
after watching every attack I took slowly fill the gauge. I found a restore materia, and now I get to
equip it and learn how that works. This
is neither good nor bad, but it does say something about how games have
changed, I think.
-Never mind. I can’t equip it yet. My bad.
-Narrative/Wow, that quick
flash was much more subtle than the full mind break LOUD has in REMAKE.
-The more I look who has
magic at the start of this game and who doesn’t, it makes much more sense that
LOUD, Ex-SOLDIER, would have both materia rather than ARRET. Mechanically, it makes more sense to give it
to ARRET in REMAKE to give players more reason to switch to him during
the Guard Scorpion boss fight but still.
-Man, maybe I should pay
more attention to the game. I’ve never
had this fight go this poorly before.
Eep!
-No battle music during the
timer? Is that new to the PS4 version of the game or is that in the original,
too?
-So, I have complex
feelings about the escape scene. In the
original Jessie trips, and then LOUD quickly picks her up and runs away with
her as the graphics cut to a CGI of the reactor exploding. The bridge doesn’t fall away, and LOUD
doesn’t get a super cool backflip to show just how awesome he is. While I do not dislike that moment in REMAKE,
it does betray a something which I will have complaints about later on: a
propensity to overdo simple scenes when they remake them.
Sincerely,
RWS
P.S.
-Short Rest-
Books
Tower: Final Fantasy: Fated by tinygaia
0. One Piece 100% New Chapters Every…
1. Sun: Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 1, Ch. 8: “The Road Home”—8 75% (4—4)
2. Mon: One-Punch Man Vol. 11, Punch 65: “Extraordinary”—65 89% (9—9)
3. Tue: My Hero Academia Vol. 11, No. 98: “Moving into the Dorms”—99 78% (8—9)
4. Wed: Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru Vol. 2, Ch. 16: “Star-Breaker”—24 0% (0—9)
5. Thu: My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Vol. 6, Ep. 43: “Casanova”—44 78% (8—9)
6. Fri: Boruto: The Next Generation Vol.5, Ch. 21: “How You Use It”—23 25% (2—4)
7. Sat: Books
-Fiction: Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
-Library: Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender by Stef M. Shuster
-YA: The Giver by Lois Lowry
-Fan Fiction: Final Fantasy: Fated to Ch. 50 by tinygaia Ch. 50—50, 100%
-Nonfiction: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat 8% (34—440)
View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman 26% (130—502)
-DnD5e: Player’s Handbook by Wizards of the Coast 0% (?—??)
-Reread
Games
Tower: .hack//MUTATION
0. Stardew Valley
1. Free Play
2. Backlog/Star Ocean: The First Departure
3. Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World HD
Replay/Persona 5 Royal
Multiples/Fable: Anniversary
Dragon Age: Origins Kallian (F City Elf/Alistair Romance/Dark Spawn Chronicles DLC)
Mass Effect 2 Jean Shepard Replay (F Renegade Infiltrator/Romance Jacob/Replay)
.hack//OUTBREAK
Series/The Walking Dead: Final Season
4. Completion/Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition
Shows
Tower: Exandria: Unlimited
1. Critical Role: Intermission I: “The Nautilus Ark: A Johnson Corp Odyssey” Ashley’s One Shot--7 43% (4—7)
Dimension 20 Unsleeping City Ep. 8: “Subway Skirmish”—17 41%
2. Anime: Digimon: Adventure Myotismon Arc 75% (27—28(7—8))
3. Online/Owned: Archer Season 2 85% (12—13)
4. Netflix: Seven Deadly Sins Season 1 38% (10—24)
5. Disney+: X-Men Season 1 62% (9—13)
6. HBO: Teen Titans Season 1 100% (13—13)
7. Movies: Firefly 29% (5—14)
Moon Knight 50% (4—6)
X-Men
Promare
Castle in the Sky
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Dumbo
