Final Fantasy VII Remake

Quaid_sl said:

Never played it. I'll check out some footage and get back to you.

Update: hmmm skimmed through Let's Plays of the first 2 hours or so. Doesn't look like you're ever traversing any geography to get from static POI A to POI B. Doesn't look like you can go back to where you've been in the past. Looks like a bunch of levels connected together from what I can tell.

Part of an open world game is that you can go back to where you've already been, or often to places where the narrative hasn't explicitly directed you yet. And it's not all or nothing. Is Fallout 4 not an open world because the game gates your access to The Institute before certain conditions are met? Similarly, does having to breed a chocobo to pass the swamp snake exclude FF7 from being an open world game?

Once I got the appropriate travel means, I was absolutely free to go to towns that the narrative hadn't yet sent me to. Sure, there may not be much directed triggered content for me to complete there, but I could go. The game didn't FORCE me to go from Level 1 to Level 2. I could go grind cactuars instead of progressing the story just fine. I'd even consider games like The Legend of Zelda an open world game.

Check outthis very well made videoon the subject. Mentions Final Fantasy series @ 9:54

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Final Fantasy games (well, I should say prior to I guess, 10) always had the "open world", but we're really only using that term based on how much they took away starting with 10 and into 13 part 1 (12 is a whole different type of game). Your choices for where you could go would vary, depending on the part of the game, but there were usually some "mode of travel" block, or plot block, that would only allow you to explore so much. Whether it was the Tiny Bronco in 7, or the hovercraft in 4 (seriously, 4 had literally the most amount of travel shit it felt like: fucking hovercraft, original airship, red wing airship, red wing airship with drill installed to get out of the Underworld, original airship with fucking hook to pick up hovercraft to access random story plot advance point, fucking Big Whale airship to go to the moon), or even just Nibelhelm blocking the only pass to open up more of the world map...there was always a hard cap on how much you could access until you were in total side quest/endgame mode.

Now, 7 did have quite a bit of back tracking and exploring you could do, with optional characters/content, and certain events you could do if you back tracked after certain story points. I'd say 7 and 6 did this the best. Certain parts of 4 let you explore a good bit of "new" area, but it was mainly only after you just got the original airship and were able to check out some island areas that weren't accessible before. 7 seemed to reuse old key areas as main story points that you would travel back to quite a bit, either to advance the main story even more, or for mini games.

If they actually are going to flesh out some more of the side areas in addition to Midgard, it would be pretty cool. I'd expect them to show off a lot more flashback scenes, and not just the ones from the original game. You could do a lot more story and content in places like Wutai or City of the Ancients with flashbacks showing the war in Wutai and fallout, actual shit from the past in the City of the Ancients. Shit the original game had a lot of backstory if you looked for it on the Ancients, but the details only went so far. More areas of theirs to explore or more backstory when you're with Aeris and have her as a part of your group would make sense for them to do.

I do wonder about them saving progression too between "episodes". If they come up with a different way of advancement than levels, I could see it being not too bad, but if it's just straight levels, both character ones and materia levels, going to be a bitch for those grinders who like to out level the shit out of everything, only to possibly have a reset back to whatever new starting point they set you at for the next episode.

I'll still buy the shit out of it, but there better be a lot more meat to the old game or a continuation of the old story's end point if we're talking 3+ episodes.

Seananigans_sl said:

Episodic sucks complete ass. Admittedly there are certain types/genres that it sucks less for, Telltale type story games being one example. But FF7 is definitely not of the type/genre that is good for it, and in fact the exact opposite, for the aforementioned reasons.

Terrible decision. And don't let their PR bullshit fool you, there's no reason it couldn't have been one entire game. Multiple discs is still a valid method, and if it's digital only, multi-part downloads would surely be possible (framework and beginning assets first download, mid-late game assets in subsequent downloads, if sheer size would be an issue).

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Pretty sure they're talking about size in man hours/production costs, not physical size. Ie it would cost too much to do the entire thing to the degree they want to update it in one go and break "even" without going piecemeal.

I don't see why people don't expect this to be episodic. Simple mental exercise of what you'd expect as a consumer. So the initial city the story takes place is some gigantic mega metropolis. I seem to recall traversing entire quadrants of the city, like the subway or transit area and there was maybe 2-4 objects you could interact with sometimes a person and its like 2-3 screens tops? In 2015 when you load into town if you don't see hundreds of people doing things that you would expect them to be doing with accessible shops or at least shops that appear to be lively and not just flat walls with no doors? I think we forget how much work our imaginations did in old school games. To me a functionally explorable mega metropolis is a shitload of content that isn't in the original if it intends to be a compelling modern experience. For example how much do you expect FF7's main city to represent itself. Like the main city in Witcher 3? How much worse of an ambient explorable experience would be acceptable. If all they did was add hundreds of npcs people would claim the streets were lifeless. So now some quantity of content not in the original has to be given to these new NPCS. And a lot of that must be new content because it doesn't exist in the original.
Keep in mind the vertical nature of the city increases this new content requirement.

I think most of us should be able to quickly grasp why/where all this "new" content has to be coming from. It comes from the fact that while FF7 had a groundbreaking amount of NPC's in 1997, it clearly is approaching 20 years old and will require many times the amount of visual content that then needs life - or it won't be a correct experience at all for players.

I understand the reasoning behind the need for new content as well as their "goal", but it still comes down to whether or not your trust them as a developer in modern gaming development to look out for their product or their bottom line. People are griping and for good reason, but I don't think anyone would turn down 3 strong installments in the end. However with where Square is financially as well with the industry as a whole, what guarantee do you have as a consumer that this was more about the "Vision/Promise" than the possibility to milk the franchise for the next 4-5 years with a 70% solution already in place?

Chances are pretty good this falls short and turns out like SC2 (polished but not justifiable for 3 $40 installments to finish the story), but there's enough to argue it falls further and turns into ME(mixed bag) or (Gabe save us) DA(mostly bad) levels of stretched thin. That's the very real fear.

Meh I'll wait until closer to release to really judge, but as of right now I'm leaning toward wait until it's all out to bother.

kegkilla_sl said:

why the fuck would you want that crap

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The FF14 Collectors Art books were gorgeous, the cover as well.

Color me cautiously optimistic about this. I havent played an FF game since FF12, where they had that shitty gambit mode or whatever where the game could play itself. Ever since they moved away from turn based stuff Ive been pretty turned off. FF series has looked pretty uhhh... "faggy" since then. I didnt like the change in combat direction. Id rather control all of the characters in battle than essentially programming them based on some priority list of shit to do. No thanks. Should I give the newer ones a try since this remake seems to be inheriting that combat style?

Maybe I've just lost interest in JRPGs

Lemmiwinks_sl said:

Color me cautiously optimistic about this. I havent played an FF game since FF12, where they had that shitty gambit mode or whatever where the game could play itself. Ever since they moved away from turn based stuff Ive been pretty turned off. FF series has looked pretty uhhh... "faggy" since then. I didnt like the change in combat direction. Should I give the newer ones a try since this remake seems to be inheriting that combat style?

Maybe I've just lost interest in JRPGs

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I liked Type-0 and the FF13 battle system. You can win the battles lazily, or you could pay attention and get bonuses. But the FF13 story was the biggest piece of shit I have ever seen.

Tanoomba_sl said:

It's worth mentioning that "traditional" JRPGs live on on handhelds. I've heard Bravely Default referred to as the "best Final Fantasy game in years", although I can't confirm it since I haven't actually played it yet (damn my backlog!).

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Mechanically it's the best Final Fantasy game outside of FF7 and 10, it's the best implementation of the job system beating FF5, FFT and FF14. Storywise it lacks some of the epic the main series games have, first half and endgame are great but between those needs a little polish.

I dont mind this at all personally- If the first part is "Midgar" or whatever and its like 10-20hr long because they update it to the degree where you can explore alot more of what it was then thats fine - FF7 prior to entering the open world was pretty linear so if they do it right they could make each episode fairly huge in scope on its own. I imagine its a huge undertaking just to do the first portion of the game alone. I could see it take 3 parts, but ofcourse id much rather it be done in 1 fell swoop.

It's the illusion of non linear on Disc 1 . There's only one way from Midgar to Junon, one way from Costa Del Sol to Nibelheim and one order of locations to visit to get from Rocket Town to City of the Ancients (each of the three sections has 1 sidequest each). Yeah you can backtrack but you can't visit places early.

I think there is literally one section with choice when you get the Huge Materia you never use, other than endgame which has a few sidequests.

This is Square Enix remaking as a multi-parter, it's already a travesty.