Final Fantasy 7 Remake Critique

Sometimes I feel like we live in an era of

remake

s; where everything that was once good and popular is destined to be resurrected so that someone somewhere can extract whatever monetary value they can from their name, legacy, or fan base. Nostalgia is a commodity and I guess it makes sense that no one who has something valuable would want to waste it, so they don't. This is true for movies, cartoons, TV shows, and damn, it's true for video games. The number of re-releases, remasters and reboots has increased over the past decade, and in recent years big-budget

remake

s have taken on an increasingly important role in the gaming market.

So it's no surprise at all that Final Fantasy 7, one of the most popular and influential games ever made... is being remade. It was always going to happen, ever since the PlayStation 3 tech demo showed the recreated opening scene at E3 2005 and put the idea in fans' minds. People loved it, and over time, their desire for a remake grew along with their nostalgia for the original. And sales were practically guaranteed - after all, Final Fantasy 7 was a game that broke sales records for its time and its reputation and brand recognition have only increased since then. So it almost had to happen, the only thing left were the questions of when… and how.

So fast forward to 2015, where it became official, and this is how people reacted… “audio of screams and cheers.” It's 27 seconds of a 7 hour video, but I feel like those 27 seconds might be all you need. So what's the point of a remake? Well, I guess to give the fans what they want. But when it comes to Final Fantasy 7, I'm a fan. This is a game I have completed many times. I have played it as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. I played the spin-off games and watched the spin-off movies and anime. Around 2006 to 2008 I spent many hours discussing this game, and others, on an online Final Fantasy message board, and looking back it's not exactly the best thing I've ever done, but I'm really not sure I did it. .

In fact, I'll be here, making YouTube videos, otherwise it still stands out as something important that was heavily focused on Final Fantasy 7. And I don't want to go into too much detail about my backstory, but the point is: I'm a fan. I don't have a list of my favorite or best games of all time, but if I did, Final Fantasy 7 would easily find a place at the top. I'm a fan and I didn't want this. I didn't want it in 2005, I didn't want it in 2010, and I didn't want it in 2015. And don't get me wrong, I wasn't radically opposed to the idea.

I understood why so many people wanted a remake of Final Fantasy 7 and I accepted it. But I wasn't one of them, because I loved Final Fantasy 7. This Final Fantasy 7, my Final Fantasy 7, and I didn't feel the need to remake it because I loved it the way it was. It's not perfect, it was never perfect, not in 1997 and certainly not today, but I didn't care because when people love something they don't need it to be perfect. It was a classic, an era-defining epic, that despite its graphics still retained a timeless sense of charm and adventure that resonates to this day.

So why would you want more than that? Waiting more is greedy, how much can a game give? And it's silly to think it's as simple as updating the graphics. As if a game could be transcribed one by one from this to that, without losing something in the process, something that matters, a part of what makes it what it is. Final Fantasy 7 was too good to simply remake, the time span was too long, the process too complex, and the track record of those responsible too shaky. To think otherwise was arrogance. But people thought otherwise. I mean simply listening to those “audio applause”.

So I didn't want a remake because I loved this game, but these guys also loved Final Fantasy 7. So what sets us apart? Well, I like to use the never controversial example of religion. You see, I've often seen people compare fandoms to religions, and that makes a lot of sense to me, but people usually make this comparison to draw attention to the exaggerated nature of fan reactions and how fandoms seem to worship their fans. franchises with a level of zeal and fanaticism. But I've always liked this comparison for a different reason, which has to do with faith.

That's the difference between someone who is religious and someone who isn't in my opinion, and you can try to bring facts, science, morality and whatever else into the equation, but it's unlikely to make a difference because deep down It all comes down to faith. And either you have it or you don't. And I think fandoms are the same way. Either you have faith, like all these guys do, or, like me, you don't. That's where I was going to come into the Final Fantasy 7 remake. I was a fan who lacked faith and went into the experience with modest expectations, which might give me a different perspective than a lot of other people, but I want you to understand what perspective he had and where he came from.

And the question of faith and the purpose of a remake, and the era we're in, are things I'll come back to, but for now, what about the game itself? Well, welcome to 2020, where the new version is

final

ly here... the moment when people's dreams come true and people realize that dreams are complex and elusive things that are always outside of our control. control. But before we continue, I want to make it clear that this video will contain some spoilers for both Final Fantasy 7 and its remake, and I think it's fair to point out to people that just because you're familiar with one of these games doesn't mean there are spoilers. of the other does not matter.

And with that let's return to Midgar. It's a strange feeling to see something so familiar and at the same time so different. The opening scene of the remake contains a nearly shot-for-shot recreation of the PlayStation 1 original, and with twenty-three years of technological improvements, Midgar has never looked better. This scene is also almost three times longer than the original, with a substantial two minutes of new footage added at the beginning, showing a rare glimpse into normal Midgar life, while cleverly using music, lighting and symbolic imagery to punctuate the intensity. . feeling of foreboding. The transition between the glow of the mako reactor and the night sky from the original opening and back to Aerith kneeling in the alley feels particularly impressive.

Say what you want about Square, they sure know how to make a compelling opening, and here in this new and improved cinematic we get to see the true ideal of a remake in all its usually unattainable perfection. This scene features every part of the original, remade to look hundreds of times better, with new footage added that matches and complements what was already there and blends together seamlessly. If every part of every remake lived up to the standards set by Final Fantasy 7's opening scene, well, no one would complain about a remake again. Unfortunately, things aren't always that easy and the gameplay presents very different challenges than a static cinematic.

Like many jrpgs of its time, the original Final Fantasy 7 featured turn-based battles through random encounters amidst pre-rendered backgrounds, but the idea of ​​turn-based battles and random encounters has proven too dated for Square Enix since 2006. In In a way, it makes sense because the

final

fantasy

series built its reputation as an epic cinematic adventure that was at the forefront of technological advancement and a core gameplay system that developed a reputation dating back to the early 2000s, it just crashed. with everything that was promoted in the series. So the old battle system had to go, and since then the entire series has felt like it's in a perpetual identity crisis with its gameplay.

While other jrpgs found success by staying true to their turn-based roots or embracing the modern trend of action role-playing games, Final Fantasy was too proud for either of those options. He wanted to have his cake and eat it. I wanted to have a modern look with the feel of an action game while still retaining its traditional tactical style and strategic sensibility. And so each new big-budget Final Fantasy tried to do this in their own way, and they didn't do a bad job, but none of them found a formula that was popular enough to last. None of them got that combination of old and new right.

None of them found the right foundation for what modern Final Fantasy wanted to be... Until now. I don't think the Final Fantasy 7 remake's combat excels at any of the things it tries to be. As an action game, it can't be compared to a real action game, or even some good action RPGs. Combat can appear visually cluttered and cluttered. Dodging feels a bit ineffective and unsatisfying. Aiming at enemies is sometimes inconsistent, with aerial enemies proving to be particularly annoying. And stopping in the middle of battle to open a menu and give orders kills the flow and feel of the action.

And at the same time, it's tactically simplistic, with only a fraction of the depth of true turn-based gameplay and teammate AI so lacking in customizable behavior or common sense, that being forced to take time out of your busy schedule Telling them to do something is more like being a babysitter than having a chance to flex your tactical muscles. But the original Final Fantasy 7 wasn't tactically complex to begin with; in fact, none of the older final fantasies were. They did enough to achieve a minimum level of engagement while also combining that with, for its time, good graphics and addictive progression systems.

This formula was then rounded out with many memorable boss fights and story moments that more than made up for any mediocrity in moment-to-moment gameplay. And I don't think the remake will be that different. In fact, when it comes to boss fights, I honestly think this might be the best the series has ever had. There are 28 boss fights in the main game and none of them require little effort. These fights are varied; Their visual designs look great, their move sets will force players to interact with the game's systems beyond just pressing the attack button, and they just do a good job of feeling epic.

When the gameplay in boss fights sometimes lags behind, the sheer spectacle of these clashes is still there to slap the player in the face so they don't forget to have a good time. And as strong as the spectacle of these fights may be, they still feel like something you're actively playing. Unlike something like Final Fantasy 15, which also has moments of incredible spectacle, but falls into the trap of creating experiences that feel more like interactive cutscenes than actual boss fights. But the remake does it perfectly and the sheer number of great boss fights in this game is truly impressive.

There are things to complain about, like boss fights resetting your stagger meter when you phase, and I'm sure there are more valid criticisms about the combat itself, but overall I quite like this new combat system. hybrid action. And more than almost any other jrpg I've played, it really feels like a modern take on the traditional turn-based combat that so many people, including me, have fond memories of. The materia system is also well implemented, although there aren't as many cool late-game synergies and combos as the original game and leveling up materia doesn't feel as important as it once did.

It also has to be said that the sheer amount of items you pick up, combined with the generous amount of benches you can rest on to fully heal, is complete overkill. I understand that Hard Mode takes the opposite approach, but I still feel that the base difficulty would have felt a little more satisfying if the number of healing items and benches had been reduced by a few notches. But overall, there's a lot more good than bad in the new combat, and the differences between how each of the main characters play goes a long way toward keeping this solid foundation interesting for the duration of the game.

And that's why it's easy to adapt an opening scene; Anyone can take advantage of years of technological progress and improve kinematics. But the combat system is another story, and this is an excellent attempt to develop and modernize the original game. Of course, there are things even more important than combat in a Final Fantasy game, and one thing I was sure the remake wouldn't do well was the characters. Now before we get into this, I think it might be a good time to flex my Microsoft painting skills a bit and start with an introductory diagram. So here we have an original idea.

It exists inside someone's head and it's perfect. This will then have to get out of someone's head to become a thing, and that will change it slightly. Now it's less perfect, but that's the priceyou pay for creation. A person, like me, will come and consume that thing, creating their own interpretation of it, which again differs slightly. But other people consume that too and have slightly different interpretations. And then if they remake the original, it emerges from their collective interpretations and changes again. And then our consumer arrives, who interprets the new. And maybe you can see the problem, but if not, here's a big arrow to draw your attention.

So the point is this: on each arrow the original idea changes slightly to become something new, so the more arrows, the more it changes, and this can cause a big difference between the way the original looks to us and the way we think. which seems to us to be the original. It looks somewhat redone, which can be a problem. This is, of course, a simplification of what actually happens, but I still think this process plays an important role in remakes, particularly when it comes to characters. In a story like Final Fantasy 7, the characters and the player's attachment to them play a crucial role in our enjoyment of the game.

These characters matter to us, they are the closest any part of the experience becomes sacred, something that cannot be altered, so every time we see these characters again, they have to look like our characters. And this seems particularly relevant in the case of Final Fantasy 7 because this is something that the Final Fantasy 7 compilation already got wrong. I hate the Final Fantasy 7 compilation. Well, maybe hate is a strong word, but I hate the Final Fantasy 7 compilation, and while there are several reasons for that, it's mostly about the characters and how bad they feel about me. . In Advent Children, Cloud is a generic, brooding, moody anime protagonist, and I hate him.

And this is a character you should love. An even worse offender was Aerith in Crisis Core. Aerith, who in the original Final Fantasy 7 is confident and charming, and a bit flirtatious without being Jessie, and really, one of the most likable and seemingly normal characters in the entire game. However, at the center of the crisis, she is just plain weird. Like every line she says has this awkward, unnatural style to it, which I think is meant to highlight how innocent or cute she must be, but that's not Aerith. This thing is like an alien pretending to be human and it's terrible.

I mean, come on, Aerith already had to die once, was it really necessary to do this to her legacy too? She this is not my cloud, this is not my cloud either, this is not my sephiroth, this is certainly not my aerith, and I'm sure if she spent more time with these bastards she would have something to say about them too. . And this not only makes me dislike the Final Fantasy 7 compilation, it's worse; It damages my pure and perfect memories, as if these characters were a body of crystalline water in which someone just threw a pile of mud in the middle and now I can no longer see them in the same way, they are all cloudy and children of the advent, err.

But here's the real m. night shyamalan part of this little story. These characters actually aren't that bad. In reality, they are not that different from the originals, but the problem is that we each have our own subjective interpretation of things. It all comes down to that big blue arrow and the dissonance between our two different interpretations of what the same thing should be. So, in summary, characters are important and characters are fragile. Or maybe the fans are the most fragile, but either way, there's a real risk that a remake will make the characters a little wrong in the eyes of the one who matters most, the player, and even when they're only slightly wrong. , which can still have a substantial negative impact.

So, with all that being said, we return to the Final Fantasy 7 remake... and the characters are perfect. This is my aerith: confident, charming, a bit of a flirt, and a totally fun member of the group. And this is the Tifa I remember: the big-hearted girl-next-door archetype who's afraid to talk directly about her feelings for Cloud or her confusion about Cloud's past. And Barret also seems right. His antagonism with Cloud is there and still prevalent, but the writers make sure not to take it too far to the point where Barret starts to seem unlikable. The light-hearted, comedic side of him is also here, but again the writers don't take it far enough to undermine the credibility of him as a real character.

And the hardline, uncompromising anti-shinra side of him is also here in all its glory, and the writers deliberately pull no punches in trying to sugarcoat the morally questionable extremism of him. He really is great; Barret is presented as a likable and flawed character with real depth, and considering this is a character who has been unfairly criticized for years for simply being a cheap imitation of Mr T, as well as being a character who is a mass terrorist in a publication current. In the world of 9/11, it's even more impressive how strong his characterization is here while remaining completely faithful.

And after seeing Barret, I honestly can't wait to see how the writers handle Cid, because Cid is a character that I thought for sure would change or ruin, until I actually played the remake. But now I think they will do it, I think they will do justice to the Cid, who would have thought. Cloud also seems well done, although it's too early to fully judge his character. But his cool mercenary façade has enough freshness to endear him to the audience, and the evilness of his act also shines throughout without being so harsh that it seems too much.

But best of all, he feels genuinely relatable. Even if you know why he acts the way he does, his gestures and choice of words are as easily explained by run-of-the-mill social awkwardness as anything else. And this makes him feel very human. It's easy for the player to feel invested in his character, and considering the direction his story will take, that's incredibly important. So the writers seem to understand their characters perfectly and that cognitive dissonance that I felt so clearly in all the other Final Fantasy 7 related spin-offs is nowhere to be found. These characters are great. The main characters have been greatly expanded in terms of amount of dialogue, but they always seem to retain their original personality, they are also all likable and the large amount of sexual tension between them is also quite enjoyable, which is somewhat unusual. be able to say about a video game.

The dialogue also feels believable, with solid voice acting, and the supporting characters, both original and recurring, are good as well. So if I was worried that my experience as a fan would somehow get in the way of my enjoyment of a good game, I couldn't have been more wrong. It's a simple pleasure to see characters you've always wanted to faithfully revive in a completely new and expanded role. And that doesn't just apply to the characters, it's true for every memorable moment, every story scene you know and love, and every little quirk you didn't think would make the cut.

Not all Remake is faithful, but the parts that are have been translated very well. Take the entire Wall Market, Midgar's seedy red light district, which is not only visually incredible, but also manages to stay very close to the events of the original game, while adding interesting new characters. And that's not an easy task because the original wall market section... was weird. Really weird, in the “you couldn't do that after the 90s” sense. But here it is and the most important parts are still here. Like Cloud's cross-dressing, which still comes off as absolutely ridiculous in the way it's played completely straight with characters like Tifa seemingly unable to recognize him until he speaks, like, how come people don't recognize that hair? ?

This shouldn't work in modern graphics, but it still works. Then there's Don Corneo, the cartoonish crime lord, who combines rape with comic relief, and that doesn't seem like a winning combination in 2020, but this character still works perfectly. Even down to the individual lines of dialogue, like the gang threatening to castrate Don Corneo, and Corneo's whole thing about why a villain reveals his plan. Some things, of course, are not included, like the satanic ritual you can catch a glimpse of at the bee inn. Also, what I can only assume, is a friendly communal bath between Cloud and the boys.

Hey, we all sweat a little after a good squat, I'm not sure why people would interpret this any other way, it's clearly healthy. But there's also that other room in the bee inn that's a little different. You know, the one where Cloud, the main character, the character controlled by the players, is casually raped by a guy after passing out. Hey, at least it restored your hp and mp, but yeah, if some little things like this were lost or changed, well, it's not a big deal because the things that matter most are still here in all their glory.

I've always hated in YouTube videos when people say: "and then this happened and I was smiling like an idiot" because I find it a very overused and annoying expression. But then the Demon House boss fight happened and I'm not sure how to say this. Then, the Demon House boss fight happened and there I was, smiling like a fool. I have a set of notes from my last playthrough of the original Final Fantasy 7, where one of them mentions Demon House as something that would never work in a modern game and would never be in the remake. Oh, how wrong I was.

You should note here that the Demon House was just a random encounter enemy that you could encounter in Aerith's escort section. It wasn't a major part of the original game; He was just kind of a poorly designed enemy in a game full of crazy enemy designs. But it was so strange that it became important to fans over time, and the remake's developers understood this and not only kept it but also turned it into a glorious boss fight that doesn't even feel out of place. It makes me think of Red 13 dressed as a sailor or Clouds' adventures with the dolphin.

But where before all I felt was a vague curiosity about what remade things would actually get remade, now I feel nothing but excitement, and when playing this game I was always looking forward to the next big moment I knew would come. But even if I was expecting these parts, the amount of time between them wasn't something I expected, and as much as I like some parts of the Final Fantasy 7 remake, the filler in this game is incredible. I haven't read any official reviews of this game, but I guess that's something each one draws attention to. This seems like such an obvious criticism that part of me feels like it's not even worth delving into, but at the same time, it has such a huge impact on the game that I feel like I can hardly not delve into it. detail.

This game is padded, very padded, and that affects it negatively. And it mainly comes down to one simple thing: the decision to make the Midgar game alone was a mistake. In the original game you start in Midgar and then leave after about 6-8 hours, with the total game being 40-50 hours. However, in Remake, leaving Midgar is when the game ends, and this takes between 30 and 40 hours. So in the original, Midgar makes up 15% of the game's total, and yet somehow those responsible decided it was a good idea to extend this 15% for the entire duration of the game.

And while it's true that fitting the entire original story into a modern game might not have been possible, and it's also true that leaving Midgar serves as a sort of ending to Act 1 that makes for a nice climax, the original game also had a great moment that would have been a good ending point, which is the end of the first disc, you know, the most famous part of the entire game. But instead, we only get Midgar, which means all those great story moments and recreated scenes are spread across hours of unsatisfying work. In some parts of the game, the remake adds new content, ranging from good to excellent.

Examples of this are all of chapter 4 where we go to Jessies house, or the expanded wall market section. If the remake had stuck to this approach of simply adding lots of new scenes, showing new aspects of life in Midgar, or expanding on previously minor details, then this wouldn't have been so bad. It still wouldn't have been the right decision, but at least it would have been tolerable. But instead, 90% of the filler simply slows down the main story by extending the sections between the really significant events. Just look at a breakdown of the original Midgar. This is based on my last playthrough and covers the entirety of this part of the game.

You can see that the combat sections are broken up with non-combat sections in between, and that no section lasts more than 40 minutes until you reach the grand finale where you infiltrate Shinra HQ. Important moments of story and character development occur throughout the sections, so no section overstays its welcome andHistory always keeps moving forward. The original Final Fantasy 7 is a highly paced game. In fact, in the entire first album there is not a single section that really drags. The longest combat section is probably Shinra HQ and you're always moving forward into new areas, with plenty of story integrated into the action.

Now here's an attempt to map the same general structure, again based on my game, but this time for a new version. As you can see, everything takes longer, but some parts are affected more than others, particularly the parts where the remake features side quests. And of particular interest is the section between the fall of the Sector 7 plate and the infiltration of Shinra HQ. This section is 22.5 times longer, and that's a huge increase. So what happens in this section? Well, side quests, an uninteresting underground laboratory, going back through the sewers, because the sewers are surely interesting enough to warrant a revisit, and also climbing from the slums to the plate, an event that didn't include combat in the original, but now.

It goes on for over 1 hour, with annoying aerial enemies and unforgettable sights... like this one. This background would look bad in a PlayStation 2 game; In 2020 this is simply embarrassing. I'm not someone who talks much about graphics, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake's frequent low-res textures don't usually bother me in an otherwise great-looking game, but this thing, this pre-rendered abomination, actually offends me in certain level. And the rest of this 7 hour and 30 minute section isn't much better. In the original, you go from the drama of trying to stop the plate from falling to the group's lowest moment, where they reflect on their failure in the face of insurmountable opposition in Shinra, which leads directly to the big assault on Shinra HQ that has taken a toll. feeling of all or nothing, a moment of defiance, a decision made in direct retaliation and opposition to the plate falling.

In the remake you just wander around a lot and then go back to the sewers and learn about Leslie's uninteresting backstory, yeah. And when you arrive at Shinra headquarters, the plate drop feels like a lifetime ago, like a completely disconnected event in a plot that's been completely deflated by all the time wasting. Pacing matters and the remake ruins it. Midgar's 6 hour story could be expanded to 10 or 15 hours of gameplay, and that might be fine, but expanding it to 30-40 hours is simply detrimental to the game's previously well-paced narrative. When so much more was done in the remake, this becomes even more disappointing, and I don't even think this is a situation dictated by the financial realities of triple-A game development.

I'm sure the remake was a very expensive game to make. And no matter how big your budget may have been, no budget is unlimited. But these filler sections still have new areas, new enemies, new cutscenes, decent boss fights, lots of voiced dialogue, some unique animations, etc. Aside from the side quests, which are reused throughout the game's areas, most of the rest of this filler content would have been just as expensive as continuing to tell the actual story. But even though money has been poured into these filler sections, they will always be held back by the fact that nothing very interesting can happen in them because they simply exist to fill out the real story.

When you go to the sewers, the first time, you fight Don Corneo's pet, the group chats about what happened in Wall Market, and then you look for a way out. During this, there are multiple scenes that attempt to add some drama or excitement to a section that the developers now consider more boring. But here's a challenge: there are three scenes in the second part of the sewers. What happens in them? I mean, hopefully, you just completed the remake, so this should be fresh in your mind and should be easy to remember. So anyway, time's up, the answer is: some unimportant dialogue that could have been used to fill the silence while exploring, as well as the exciting moment when the group crosses a bridge that Aerith almost didn't make it to, and then the exciting moment. where you cross another bridge that collapses, causing the clouds to almost fall, and then the big finale where the fish appear, and oh my god, what's going to happen, the tension is too much to bear... oh, the group just leaves .

So, did you even remember all of these events? And if you did, did the drama they tried to add have any effect? Like I said, effort went into these filler sections, and it's a shame that that effort wasn't invested in something more valuable, like telling the actual story of the game. In addition to these entire chapters of filler, it also has a variety of smaller but still notable features that serve to exacerbate the overall pacing problem. Slow walking sections, slow animations when interacting with things, slow menus, cutscenes that could have been normal in-game dialogue, boring side quests where the player tackles such important things as: killing local rats and searching for missing cats.

Then there are things like that part in Hojo's lab where you have to keep swapping matter when the game forces you to switch characters, and my goodness, the speed at which this game moves sometimes seems glacial. These things aren't that important on their own, but they combine to slow down your progression, and when combined with a poorly paced story and entire sections that feel unnecessary, it's almost impossible to see the decision to make the game just Midgar. as the correct one. That said, there is one type of filler content that I do think is valuable, which is minigames.

Minigames were a big part of the original and were often quite simple and quite strange. There aren't many games that take a similar approach, particularly games that try to be cinematic and epic, but while these minigames weren't all that great, they had a certain charm to them, and that only becomes more true as time goes on. . There's something so endearing about these sections, precisely because you wouldn't see them in a modern game, and then along comes the remake, once again staying true and proving that they really can work. I'm really glad that things like the squat competition are still here, and gameplay-wise, these mini-games have been greatly improved to the point where they're actually quite fun, but also provide a break from the norm of walking, talking, and fighting. . making them the only type of filler content I actually enjoyed.

As bad as the pacing and filler may be, I guess the Final Fantasy 7 remake is still a huge success, and as a remake of the original game, it works a lot more than I expected. In the introduction of this video I talked about faith; What all those screaming fans have and that I was missing. The belief that Square Enix still has it, that the remake was a good idea, and that something like this can be faithful and fun. So I guess what I'm saying is that I was wrong to be so skeptical and the remake made me a believer.

The original Final Fantasy 7 is a classic, one of the great video games of all time, and seeing this new version in high definition with new scenes is incredible. But this story does not end here. You see, we seem to live in an era of remakes, and that means something. And in the case of Final Fantasy 7, it turns out that means a lot of things. I have no problem with remakes... in principle, because unless something goes very wrong, looking at you Blizzard, a remake should not replace the original. The original will still be there and you will still be able to play and enjoy it, and no matter how bad a remake is, it can't take that away from you.

And remakes also allow us to present good things to new audiences and new generations. When it comes to something like The Lion King, it's hard to understand what the problem is with the original movie, but the games are a little different. Final Fantasy 7 is about the same age as The Lion King, but while The Lion King remains a beautifully animated work of art, games from that era have sometimes aged less gracefully. So the look and feel of Final Fantasy 7 is going to be an issue for a lot of people, and I understand that. A remake makes sense, financially and otherwise.

But a game like the Final Fantasy 7 remake isn't created in a vacuum. It seems we live in an era of remakes and that has consequences. For every thing that's remade or reimagined, brought back from beyond the grave to live on as an immortal pop culture icon, well, something else never gets a chance to live, and part of me will always dislike the ones. remakes because of this. . The Final Fantasy 7 remake is the game we got instead of Final Fantasy 16. And Final Fantasy 16 will probably still be made and released one day, but it's not today and the reason is that Square's A-Team created this game.

And that's an easy thing to reconcile when you think about a single game, particularly one that isn't that bad, but it's not about a single game. It's about society, and we live in a society... of remakes, which means originality is more important than ever. So I guess there's something else we need to talk about here. In case you don't know, the Final Fantasy 7 remake is an incredibly faithful yet padded game... until it isn't. Think of this as a second spoiler warning if you want, because from here on out there are spoilers until the end. Anyway, throughout your adventures in Midgar, returning players will notice something not so similar, which is the presence of these ghostly creatures known as The Whispers.

These appear in a series of scenes in which they seem to intervene to prevent certain actions. Later, red 13 explains them as “arbiters of destiny, entities attracted to those who would alter the course of destiny.” And if you go back and review the times the whispers appear, you'll see that this seems true, they act to keep the events of the remake in line with the original game. This includes stopping Cloud from killing Reno in the church, injuring Jessie before the second reactor bombing mission to make Cloud leave, stopping Hojo from telling Cloud about his past too soon, and even jumping to save his life. of Barret after Sephiroth impales him.

When something goes wrong and an event occurs that contradicts or changes the original story, the Whispers are there to act as janitors, tidying up anything that is out of place, so that the remake remains as it was marketed, a remake of the original. game. However, as the group reaches the end of the game, where you escape Midgar, things get a lot crazier, when Sephiroth shows up, which, by the way, is something that happens way too often in the remake, seriously , all those first deceptions. Scenes quickly lose any dramatic impact when they happen so frequently. But here, Sephiroth appears, as he likes to do, the whispers begin to scream, and then Sephiroth mocks the group and then enters a mysterious portal that will lead him to a confrontation with destiny itself.

You pursue, defeat destiny and alter its course forever. This is where the game ends, and the future is left as something no longer tied to the events of the first game. Now anything can happen. To prove this, a flashback shows Zack surviving his previously iconic death, with a dog sign that has now changed, suggesting this is a different alternate timeline/universe. It's deliberately unclear if this means that Zack has retroactively come back to life in the match's timeline, or that the match has now changed the timeline, or something else entirely. The point is this: the future has changed, this is no longer a remake and nothing is ruled out in the next game.

And I have to say, I didn't see it coming. I like the interpretation that sees the whisperers as the fans, those who want the remake to be as faithful as possible, who oppose all changes and who will scream and maybe even act out when something changes. Following this point of view to its logical conclusion, this would turn the group's actions at the end of the game into a kind of meta-commentary where the writers defy fan expectations and take back control, freeing themselves from previous constraints to tell this story exactly as the way. They want. And I like this interpretation not because I agree with all the 'fuck the fans' style debates that seem to happen on the internet every few months, but because if we live in an era of remakes, then originality has inherent value and a game that uses its remake status to break free and become something of its own is a great idea, it's an original idea, and this was also one of the biggest surprises for me personally that I've ever experienced in a video game.

So I love this idea...as an idea, the execution is pretty bad. I think some people might try to defend whispers on the grounds that they don't need to make sense, that that's not the point, and that if you don't like them then you just don't understand it, but I don't think that's true. Final Fantasy 7 Remake tells its own story, and as meta as the whispers may be, that doesn't change the fact that they play a role in the Remakes story. And the role thatperform is inconsistent, contradictory and overly confusing, making them feel cheap and, as a narrative device, unsatisfying.

This was already a story with the will of the planet, the ancients, the aliens, scientific experiments, magic, matter, mako, mega weapons, etc. So this was already a story that was reaching its limit in how complicated things can be before adding physical manifestations of fate that are apparently also the will of the planet, let alone entering the realms of time travel. and alternate universes, and everything This isn't even a very original concept for a jrpg. I mean, just a few years ago we had an entire final

fantasy

trilogy with the exact same theme. But even ignoring all this, there are still clear problems.

First of all, if whispers are destiny and keep game development going, what's causing things to go off track? There is no consistency in the times the whispers appear. They stop Cloud from killing Reno in the church, but why is Cloud trying to kill Reno? They stop Hojo from telling Cloud about his past, but what made Hojo recognize Cloud now when he didn't in the original game? If whispers are a force of fate that keeps things in order, then what force is at work to cause things to go awry in the first place? It would make more sense if there were some variable or factor that caused a divergence from destiny.

This could be Aerith, who as an ancient is able to glimpse the future, although I have a problem with that which I will mention later. Or it could be Sephiroth whose connection to Jenova or her position within the lifestream makes him immune to whispers, meaning it is possible for him to change fate. Or they could take a more meta approach and make the player the variable, where whispers appear to prevent the player from going off script, like if you're trying to save Biggs or Jessie, or just going in a direction you're not going. intended. to. This would be harder to achieve with any amount of subtlety, but would potentially make the parties' decision to defy fate that much more impactful to the player, if the player were the one the whisperers had opposed all along.

Instead, these off-script events that trigger the whispers just happen randomly, and this feels cheap. Whispers also seem inconsistent in their behavior. Do the Whispers act before someone goes off script, to keep them on script, or do they put things in order after someone makes a mistake, because we see them doing both? For example, Barret gets stabbed by Sephiroth, which doesn't happen in the original game, so the whispers shouldn't act to prevent him from being stabbed in the first place, instead of just bringing him back from the dead immediately afterwards. And then what about Wedge? Wedge is supposed to die when he drops the plate, but he doesn't.

But then the Whispers try to kill him while the group escapes Shinra HQ anyway, so why do they wait until then to intervene? Did the Whispers just forget about Wedge and just remember that he was destined to die later or do they just think that Wedge is so unimportant that it's okay to let him live another day because he's too useless to change anything anyway? Really the whispers seem a bit incompetent, which hardly matches their supposed role as manifestations of fate, and for something like this to work in a story, it has to seem carefully thought out and consistent, which it doesn't.

And on the topic of not thinking things through, why does the party decide to fight against destiny? At the end of the game, it is Sephiroth who convinces the group to jump into a portal to another dimension to face fate. Sephiroth taunts the group into following him here, so it's clear that this is what Sephiroth wants, and what reason does the group have to do what Sephiroth wants? At what point does the party decide that fate is bad? I mean, think about the last important thing the Whispers do, which is literally save Barrets' life. That doesn't make them look like the bad guys.

Red 13 describes the whispers and fixed nature of destiny, as “the will of the planet itself.” But the planet is, more or less, the force for good in this story. I mean, we're fighting Shinra because Shinra is killing the planet, but is it okay that we're going to kill the will of the planet? How does it work? Really, aside from Aerith, who is more complicated, there's no solid motivation for anyone else to think that fighting fate is a good idea, especially when it's established that it's what Sephiroth wants. And on the topic of Aerith, if she wants to alter fate, then that's a major retconning of the original game, in which it's later revealed that Aerith had some understanding of the future and deliberately goes to the forgotten city knowing that she will die. all for the good of the planet, you know, the same planet that the party is now basically opposed to.

So I like the idea of ​​whispers. I like that the remake goes in a different direction. I like things that are meta. And I like the concept of a remake being deliberately misleading into being something else. I've seen others complain that this is misleading and false marketing, and while I understand this perspective, it's not something I have any problem with. If anything, I love stuff like this and I actually wish more things used deceptive marketing to create more genuine surprises. But I don't think whispers are a well-executed idea. And when the whispers are the original part of this story, and future games will now go in an original direction, the fact that they're handled poorly here seems like a bad sign.

And I don't want to speculate too much about what this means for the future, because I prefer not to judge something until I've experienced it. But there are other reasons to worry here. For example, how several characters have seemingly come back to life, which completely removes much of the emotional and thematic importance of the game. It's one thing to change fate, meaning that a certain character's death is no longer set in stone. It's another thing to say "no one really dies" and resurrect previously dead characters. And what about the challenge of managing future events now? The next 20 hours or so of the original game are spent slowly traveling the world in search of Sephiroth, whose legend and presence slowly builds.

In the original game we haven't seen Sephiroth yet and we won't for quite some time. Instead, we get these 'Sephiroth was here' moments, the first being possibly the best moment in the entire Midgar portion of the game. That's where the group finally reaches the top of the Shinra building, only to be quickly captured and imprisoned by President Shinra. Then the group stagnates, until you wake up with your cell unlocked and find every Shinra member dead or missing, and this big trail of blood leading from where you previously saw a mysterious entity in Hojos' lab, to the top. floor, President, where the guy who easily captured and defeated you, sits impaled on a long sword that Cloud recognizes as Sephiroth's.

And suddenly, the game's main antagonist, the president of the most powerful company in the world, dies just a few hours into the experience. And this is where you realize, “well shit, I guess things are about to go crazy” and they do, without arbiters of fate or epic sword fights in other dimensions. The original Final Fantasy 7 goes crazy, but it waits until the right moment, with careful preparation meaning that when those big moments finally arrive, they actually mean something. But now this cannot happen. The stakes were effectively already shattered when we defeated fate itself and had an epic showdown with Sephiroth in an alternate dimension, so being faithful and using the same set-up of a slow chase with a gradual build-up can't work anymore.

So where does this reinvention go from now on? The thing is, this is a good game, but the best parts were when it recreated moments from the original. There's a certain irony here, in that before playing this game I didn't want a faithful remake, but actually the faithful remake was what I ended up enjoying so much. Final Fantasy 7 Remake proved that a remade Final Fantasy 7 can work; that this team can do it, that there is a way to do it justice. But now that's not what we'll actually get and who knows what will happen. There's a voice in my head telling me this will end badly, and I think that voice is called logic, evidence, and years of experience.

There's a voice in my head telling me this is a mistake, this is exactly the kind of thing I was worried about, and this is how you ruin the legacy of an all-time classic. But at the same time, I can't deny that I'm excited and I honestly can't wait to see what happens next. And in an era of remakes, this kind of risky move is something I can't help but respect. So I guess there's nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the ride. It's like Barret always says. There is no way to get off this train.

And I have to admit it feels pretty good, the wind in my hair, the not knowing, the endless possibilities. But between you and me, I'm not so sure about the driver. Tetsuya No-mura is like a mad genius, without the genius part. There are reasons to have doubts here, many reasons, many sensible and respectable reasons. In fact, if you have no doubts you are a fool. But that's how it is, that's how it has to be; that is the price of originality, the price of freedom. There is no way to get off this train and I guess we are all destined to be passengers on Mr.

Nomura-san's wild ride. And honestly, I don't think breaks work. And you know, sooner or later that means we're all going to crash, and there'll probably be a big explosion, and screaming fans, and new things like Genesis and these three, *shudder noise*. We're all going to crash and it'll probably be horrible. So why do I feel like it's 2005, before the Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy 13 compilation smashed the plump, meaty head of my expectations into the motionless brick wall of reality? This is not going to end well, so why am I excited? I guess that's the difference faith can make;

It can make you a believer, even when reason and logic want you to think otherwise. There's no way to get off this train, so I guess we'll meet at the crash site. Choo Choo motherfuckers. *music playing* *I hope you can hear the music* *because I bet the ending feels weird without it* *you're really missing out a little* *but at least you get these unique subtitles to make up for it* *wow, subtitles, very good* *see you next time friend*