General Gaming Final Fantasy VII Remake OT - Big Trouble in Little Midgar

[SaysWho?]

8 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

 

To be clear, you're talking about the special one that is only available on hard after getting all of the hard-mode weapon SP books, and not 

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Bahamut

Right?

 

Spoiler

Pride and Joy followed by a scene revealing what he is. That's the end, right?

 

[Spork3245]

12 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

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Pride and Joy followed by a scene revealing what he is. That's the end, right?

 

Yup  

[heydude93]

I think I'm on chapter 14 or 15 now.  Is it possible to come back to these side missions post-game?

[SaysWho?]

58 minutes ago, heydude93 said:

I think I'm on chapter 14 or 15 now.  Is it possible to come back to these side missions post-game?

 

Yes. No story spoilers here, just an explanation as to how you do the missions:

 

Spoiler

Although you're not roaming around the world after the events at the end, you can go to any chapter you want WITH all the upgrades you have and do anything you missed.

 

In addition to that, some things are only accessible post-game.

[SaysWho?]

The soundtrack released today. 150+ tracks for $19 if you want it off Google Play. Apparently it's more expensive on iTunes?

[Nokt]

On 5/27/2020 at 3:26 PM, SaysWho? said:

The soundtrack released today. 150+ tracks for $19 if you want it off Google Play. Apparently it's more expensive on iTunes?

Thats an awesome deal. I paid 77.77 for the physical "special" edition. Though I get 180 instead of 156 tracks. Wonder what the different ones are.

Might pick this up either way just so I don't have to open the CDs and can't just keep it as a collectors thing.

 

EDIT: Its $34 on iTunes.

[SaysWho?]

8 minutes ago, Nokt said:

Thats an awesome deal. I paid 77.77 for the physical "special" edition. Though I get 180 instead of 156 tracks. Wonder what the different ones are.

Might pick this up either way just so I don't have to open the CDs and can't just keep it as a collectors thing.

 

EDIT: Its $34 on iTunes.

 

I'm curious what the tracks are myself! The physical edition looked awesome.

[legend]

After 154 hours I finally finished Persona 5 Royal (basically doing everything and getting the true ending) and now I am starting this  

[SaysWho?]

16 hours ago, legend said:

After 154 hours I finally finished Persona 5 Royal (basically doing everything and getting the true ending) and now I am starting this  

Opposite! I finished all optional fights in ff7 and am 30 hours into Persona.

 

Gotta say: FF7 may have the soundtrack of the generation. There are multiple battle themes, and nearly all are fantastic. The new stuff is actually very good (love the Ghoul piece), and the old music brought to orchestra and remixes of the old stuff are so lovely to listen to.

 

I also never got the true ending in the original. Do you have to ng+ and max all relationships?

[legend]

4 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

Opposite! I finished all optional fights in ff7 and am 30 hours into Persona.

 

Gotta say: FF7 may have the soundtrack of the generation. There are multiple battle themes, and nearly all are fantastic. The new stuff is actually very good (love the Ghoul piece), and the old music brought to orchestra and remixes of the old stuff are so lovely to listen to.

 

I also never got the true ending in the original. Do you have to ng+ and max all relationships?

 

Haha nice.

 

I'm a *huge* fan of both FF7's soundtrack and P5's. Overall I'm really enjoying what I've played so far (I'm on chapter 5 now, I think?).

 

For P5R, in a single playthrough without NG+ I:

• Maxed all confidants before the main game's end (literally on the last fucking day I squeezed it in!)
• Maxed all social stats (that's kind of implied since you need to max all to get all confidants maxed)
• Unlocked all P5R 3rd persona awakenings for the party members
• Reached level 99 (without cheesing the reaper, since you can't do that anymore)
• Completed all mementos requests.
• Maxed out Baton passes for all part members (playing darts)
• Maxed out technicals (playing billiards)

Part of the reason this was possible without NG+ was because in P5R they allow you to do more things at night when you can't leave Leblanc than you could in vanilla P5, which allows you to more easily raise your social stats. I was also very particular in the order that I maximized confidants. E.g., Kawakami is a high priority, as is getting Chihaya's ability to do affinity reading so that you can increase a confidant's relationship without doing those filler hangouts without rank ups. It's also somewhat important to choose when to work on social stats since when you need them higher up matters based on where you are in the game and you don't want dead time where you're blocked from proceeding (any dead day is a bad day).

 

I did also use a guide for choosing the best confidant answers (and always had the right persona equipped), which I think is essential if you want to do it in one playthrough without NG+.

 

There was some smallish things I didn't finish and there are apparently some bonus things you can only do in NG+, but overall I'm satisfied.

[SaysWho?]

I'm starting to think FF7R's soundtrack is the soundtrack of the generation.

[legend]

I just wanted to say that the whole chapter with the dress is fucking amazing  This was sooo much better in the modern era.

[legend]

Not sure how many people care, but I finished this on Sunday and loved the whole thing.This is a story that benefits so much from the vastly superior visuals and I also think the combat engine they used fits it better than the original ATB system. In this new real-time combat with ATB, you still have a lot of command driven strategy, but everything feels nicely hectic. The game wasn't "hard" in that I lost only a handful of times over the course of 45 hours, but I still felt lots of pressure throughout the fights which made it a lot of fun.

 

I'm also completely okay with the story changes they're making. It keeps the original canonical, but gives us something new to explore.

 

Oh, and the soundtrack is fucking great.

 

This will be a GoTY contender for me for sure. 

[SaysWho?]

1 hour ago, legend said:

Not sure how many people care, but I finished this on Sunday and loved the whole thing.This is a story that benefits so much from the vastly superior visuals and I also think the combat engine they used fits it better than the original ATB system. In this new real-time combat with ATB, you still have a lot of command driven strategy, but everything feels nicely hectic. The game wasn't "hard" in that I lost only a handful of times over the course of 45 hours, but I still felt lots of pressure throughout the fights which made it a lot of fun.

 

I'm also completely okay with the story changes they're making. It keeps the original canonical, but gives us something new to explore.

 

Oh, and the soundtrack is fucking great.

 

This will be a GoTY contender for me for sure. 

 

Uematsu did a great job -- the Airbuster theme is such a wonderful remake of Still More Fighting.

 

But I'm also impressed with the others.  The original themes like Valkyrie:

 

Spoiler

 

 

And Ghoul:

 

 

 

Fantastic.

[Pikachu]

 

[SaysWho?]

A delightful game with one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard.

[Spork3245]

Something that’s been bugging me, and I’ve been hesitant to even make the post because I feel like I’m just going to get attacked for it, but... This is a Remake, not a Remaster. When a movie is a “Remake”, many things change in the story/plot and it’s just accepted. Why? Because it’s a different director/writer/team who (usually) liked the original but, being different people, have a different vision for parts. Why is this different for a video game? Why did people seemingly expect a ground-up remaster when it was called “Remake” from the get-go?  

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

Something that’s been bugging me, and I’ve been hesitant to even make the post because I feel like I’m just going to get attacked for it, but... This is a Remake, not a Remaster. When a movie is a “Remake”, many things change in the story/plot and it’s just accepted. Why? Because it’s a different director/writer/team who (usually) liked the original but, being different people, have a different vision for parts. Why is this different for a video game? Why did people seemingly expect a ground-up remaster when it was called “Remake” from the get-go?  

 

I feel like people were under the impression that it was a remake in the sense that it went beyond a remaster graphically. This game is really the only case of a game getting updated (changed) beyond the graphics.

[Spork3245]

25 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

This game is really the only case of a game getting updated (changed) beyond the graphics.

But those are remasters, like Halo CE Anniversary. I’m not trying to play semantics, the two terms are exclusive of one another in film/TV. Something like Dragon Ball Kai was a remaster of DBZ with the filler removed, video digitally reproduced and/or improved, all dialogue re-recorded. Where as something like Ocean 11 2001 is a remake of the 1960 movie, and follows the same basic plot with the same characters, but has many differences overall.

Just because this may or may not be the first actual “Remake” for video games doesn’t mean we should expect a “Remaster”, does it?  

[Keyser_Soze]

7 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Just because this may or may not be the first actual “Remake” for video games doesn’t mean we should expect a “Remaster”, does it?  

 

What did you expect?

[SaysWho?]

I thought RE2 and 3 had changes beyond the graphics as well, though?

[Spork3245]

30 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

What did you expect?

I expected a Remake. Not a 1:1 (minus graphics/gameplay) with the original.  

Thinking about it, Twin Snakes on GCN is probably the best comparison... and, iirc, people were up in arms about the changes there as well. Though, tbf, Twin Snakes wasn’t (FF7:R spoilers)

Spoiler

Potentially a sequel/continuation 

 

[Spork3245]

15 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I thought RE2 and 3 had changes beyond the graphics as well, though?

Beyond the gameplay style, like what? I’m honestly asking as I haven’t played them. Things like the Super Mario 64 remaster on the DS added additional characters, and the ChronoTrigger remaster added a new area, but they were ultimately the same games with updated elements otherwise, no?

[Nokt]

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

Something that’s been bugging me, and I’ve been hesitant to even make the post because I feel like I’m just going to get attacked for it, but... This is a Remake, not a Remaster. When a movie is a “Remake”, many things change in the story/plot and it’s just accepted. Why? Because it’s a different director/writer/team who (usually) liked the original but, being different people, have a different vision for parts. Why is this different for a video game? Why did people seemingly expect a ground-up remaster when it was called “Remake” from the get-go?

My issue was with how often the development team was quoted saying how faithful this game would be to the original game. You'll still hit all the same story beats as the original.

Nomura did mention that they wouldn't do a 1:1 remake, but his examples were doing side missions for people or exploring more behind avalanche like Jesse.

 

I get that they don't want to drop the bomb of we are totally reinventing why events are happening because of fate or whatever you want to call it, but the cause of every story beat is now changed, substantially in some cases. It feels like a cheap gotcha moment when you get to the end of the game.

[SaysWho?]

16 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Beyond the gameplay style, like what? I’m honestly asking as I haven’t played them. Things like the Super Mario 64 remaster on the DS added additional characters, and the ChronoTrigger remaster added a new area, but they were ultimately the same games with updated elements otherwise, no?

 

I can't really be specific since I didn't play the originals and thus had to gather the plot from watching parts of longplays, but the ending to the remake, for example, and the story at the end of the original seemed wayyyyyy different, especially since the original had multiple endings and this had one. The 3 Remake is interesting because it didn't really "add" things since a common complaint was the cut content.

 

But as you said, none of it bothered me because if I wanted the original with better graphics, I'd just use a mod on the original.

[Spork3245]

5 minutes ago, Nokt said:

My issue was with how often the development team was quoted saying how faithful this game would be to the original game. You'll still hit all the same story beats as the original.

Nomura did mention that they wouldn't do a 1:1 remake, but his examples were doing side missions for people or exploring more behind avalanche like Jesse.

Perhaps that’s the piece I’m missing then as I don’t read/watch or pay attention to dev interviews pre-game release ever since Peter Molyneux and OG Fable  

 

It’s still odd that “Remake” seemingly has two different meanings/expectations between games and movies.

[Keyser_Soze]

20 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

I expected a Remake. Not a 1:1 (minus graphics/gameplay) with the original.

 

A couple of things

1. Your example with movies, Oceans 11 (I've never seen either of them) but I'm sure people expected it to be different because the trailer made it look like a different movie

 

Final Fantasy Remake is like if (this is a bad example because people are pissed with the minor changes they make anyway) Star Wars A New Hope was remade, and the trailers made it look like the old movie "hey look it's Tattooine!" but the remake was basically all on Tattooine and it focused on Luke working on the moisture farm and hanging out with his aunt and uncle, and it built those two characters up to be very important and they never get killed by sand people and then the end of the movie they finally meet Obi-Wan but he's just hanging out and a portal opens and then they step into Episode 1 Phantom Menace universe and fight 3 sith ninjas and then the movie ended and said "Hey come back for part 2!"

 

34 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I thought RE2 and 3 had changes beyond the graphics as well, though?

 

RE2 had minor differences but was mostly the same. This was a remake that was more of a director's cut since it expanded on other characters

 

RE3 had changes changes that people didn't like and environments that were missing and yeah, a lot of people weren't digging 3.

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 but I'm sure people expected it to be different because the trailer made it look like a different movie

 

 

It made it look about as different as the FF7 : R trailers compared to the original. That’s my point, anyway: the term “remake” has two different expectations between game remakes and movie remakes.

 

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Final Fantasy Remake is like if (this is a bad example because people are pissed with the minor changes they make anyway) Star Wars a new hope was remade, and the trailers made it look like the old game "hey look it's Tattooine!" but the remake was basically all on Tattooine and it focused on Luke working on the moisture farm and hanging out with his aunt and uncle, and it built those two characters up to be very important and they never get killed by sand people and then the end of the movie they finally meet Obi-Wan but he's just hanging out and a portal opens and then they step into Episode 1 Phantom Menace universe and fight 3 sith ninjas and then the movie ended and said "Hey come back for part 2!"

 

 

You are very right on that being a bad example, but not only because of SW fans getting angry about minor changes.  

FF7:R changes that I’m referencing was not the multi-part element, that was known forever.

 

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

RE2 had minor differences but was mostly the same. This was a remake that was more of a director's cut since it expanded on other characters

 

RE3 had changes changes that people didn't like and environments that were missing and yeah, a lot of people weren't digging 3.

 

This goes back to my point about remake vs remaster having different meanings in video games vs film. It’s mostly just an observation.

[Nokt]

17 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Perhaps that’s the piece I’m missing then as I don’t read/watch or pay attention to dev interviews pre-game release ever since Peter Molyneux and OG Fable  

 

It’s still odd that “Remake” seemingly has two different meanings/expectations between games and movies.

I think its a fuzzy line that doesn't really have a firm definition I guess?

Like Spyro was rebuilt from the ground up, I would probably technically consider that a remake, but its the exact same game. Same thing with the original Kingdom Hearts, the lost most of the source code and had to just redo a lot of it.

[legend]

I don't take any issue at all with the changes: I loved this game. However, some of the criticism may be attributed to the fact that this isn't really a remake or a remaster.

 

It's more of a

Spoiler

sequel.

 

[Keyser_Soze]

11 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

This goes back to my point about remake vs remaster having different meanings in video games vs film. It’s mostly just an observation.

 

The thing is there are few video game remakes and there are a lot of movie remakes, and the remake is implied for movies and not in the title.

 

I said this a while ago but the title Final Fantasy VII Remake was a double entendre of sorts but at the same time they couldn't communicate to people the game was different because they would have ruined the surprise. So in the end some people liked the surprise some didn't.

[Spork3245]

16 minutes ago, Nokt said:

I think its a fuzzy line that doesn't really have a firm definition I guess?

Yea, that’s more-or-less the observation I’m making in regards to the two terms for video games vs other mediums

 

15 minutes ago, legend said:

I don't take any issue at all with the changes: I loved this game. However, some of the criticism may be attributed to the fact that this isn't really a remake or a remaster.

 

It's more of a

  Reveal hidden contents

sequel.

 

I acknowledged and made that exact point in one of my replies

 

17 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

The thing is there are few video game remakes and there are a lot of movie remakes, and the remake is implied for movies and not in the title.

Yea, I mean, that’s kinda my point - the definition of the term seems to be very different for the two different entertainment mediums. 

[Greatoneshere]

5 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

Something that’s been bugging me, and I’ve been hesitant to even make the post because I feel like I’m just going to get attacked for it, but... This is a Remake, not a Remaster. When a movie is a “Remake”, many things change in the story/plot and it’s just accepted. Why? Because it’s a different director/writer/team who (usually) liked the original but, being different people, have a different vision for parts. Why is this different for a video game? Why did people seemingly expect a ground-up remaster when it was called “Remake” from the get-go?

 

2 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

I expected a Remake. Not a 1:1 (minus graphics/gameplay) with the original.  

Thinking about it, Twin Snakes on GCN is probably the best comparison... and, iirc, people were up in arms about the changes there as well. Though, tbf, Twin Snakes wasn’t (FF7:R spoilers)

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Potentially a sequel/continuation 

 

 

I think you point out an interesting part of this that I've also been thinking about. You're absolutely right there's a difference in understanding when it comes to "remakes" in the video game world and "remakes" when it comes to the TV/film world. Obviously, in both worlds direct comparisons are made, fans of the original or older work get butthurt, etc. For instance, the good example raised is Ocean's 11. The original was actually just an okay movie, so when Ocean's 11 remake came out everyone but serious Rat Pack fans (Sinatra and the gang starred in the original) felt the remake was better than the original (the remake is better). But movies also get the same conversation games get: "the original was better". They "changed too much" with the remake. The remake "didn't honor the original". The remake "was a remake in name only", etc. But the difference you call out is that in film and TV, changes and such are expected from the audience if they know it's a remake/reboot, and that's true. Remasters do exist in film (a shot-for-shot remake of a film) but it's rare and critics usually wonder why the director bothered (Gus Van Sant's remake of Pyscho and Michael Haneke's remake of his own Funny Games so it could be in English are two famous examples). 

 

In video games, we usually get remasters, not remakes. Remasters do change things, especially if code has to be rewritten as opposed to updated, but remasters usually need to be exactly like the old game, physics code and all, or fans will cry sweet death (and I get that, perfect coding within a game is everything). Remakes are a relatively rare and newer thing in video games, so people still just want the old game, but with amazing graphics and sound and cutscenes. So to change a lot is just something that isn't done, since remasters have to be like the original game they emulate and remakes were borne out of the idea of remasters in the gaming space to make more money off of older games and IP's and get them to new fans, not to re-tell the story (though that will happen regardless of remake, even Resident Evil 2 Remake and RE3R changed story stuff, though minimally). 

 

If you think about it, most video game remakes are remasters, just beautifully redone, and that's what audiences mostly want from games vs. movies. RE2R, RE3R, Black Mesa, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Halo 1 and Halo 2 Anniversary, Yakuza Kiwami, Shadow of the Colossus (PS4) etc. are all remakes, not remasters, but in terms of story and characters, they are all essentially the same as the originals. Even Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a game I really enjoyed, while a remake, was lambasted on release for it's over the top cutscenes, done by cult indie action Japanese film director Ryuhei Kitamura (whose films I enjoy a lot, and whose action panache I enjoyed in the cutscenes of Twin Snakes). But even with those over the top cutscenes, the story played out essentially the same. 

 

TL;DR - FF7R is one of the very first times, and definitely at the triple AAA blockbuster video game level, where a remake changed a lot, all at the end, as a twist, to an original game that was, unlike many video games, very story, plot, and character heavy to begin with. There's definitely a difference between movies and games, so it's an apt observation. I don't know the history, but I'm sure film went through this growing pain as well at some point I imagine with a film that did what FF7R did. I imagine if they remade the LOTR movies (which I'm sure they'll do someday) and at the end of Fellowship they changed a lot to indicate some crazy ass different shit ala FF7R, I imagine that'd be controversial, even as an understood remake, in the film space (to be clear, I liked FF7R's ending).

[BloodyHell]

12 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

But those are remasters, like Halo CE Anniversary. I’m not trying to play semantics, the two terms are exclusive of one another in film/TV. Something like Dragon Ball Kai was a remaster of DBZ with the filler removed, video digitally reproduced and/or improved, all dialogue re-recorded. Where as something like Ocean 11 2001 is a remake of the 1960 movie, and follows the same basic plot with the same characters, but has many differences overall.

Just because this may or may not be the first actual “Remake” for video games doesn’t mean we should expect a “Remaster”, does it?  

I agree.  Its Remake with. A capital R. I don’t think they’ll stray too far, but the game will change. I love it so far.

[Nokt]

I guess this kind of correlates to the last thing said in here, but one of my buddies linked me a video/podcast with Max. I guess it’s not much of a theory anymore, but basically the game isn’t a remake at all, it’s a sequel. It’s Sephiroth trying to “remake” the games events in a way that favors him. Not a remake in a sense that they are remaking the original game. Thought it was interesting to think about it that way.

 

Doesn’t really make me feel any better about the ending or the fact that we aren’t/won’t get a faithful remaster/remake of the original game. It does make the future for the series seem slightly better I guess?