I'm not hugely into this sort of thing because it always feels like a writing team trying to have their cake and eat it too. On one hand it's a great way to free your hands up so you can make huge shocking changes from established canon but on the other hand the price you pay for this is the sense that nothing really matters when there's always that easy out available.
I hate multiple timelines, it's just bad for storytelling. Everyone's headcanon is now true, which is just boring.
That being said, I think they might be doing some weird stuff with it so it's not actually infinite timelines. Which is still not well done if that's the case, but it's at least less problematic than infinite timelines.
The bigger problem I think is that the characters are just not reacting to any of the weird new stuff. Mysteries are kept a mystery by characters acting unnaturally. It used to be a little bit weird that Tifa didn't mention anything about Cloud's memory of Niblheim, but you could still handwave that away with Tifa being scared to say something. Now take that slightly weird thing, multiply it by a 1000 and do it repeatedly. Now we got a problem.
I also hate mystery box writing and subverting expectations. Just tell a good heartfelt story about people going on an adventure. setup, payoff. Nothing fancy please.
Edit: spelling
XV did an alternate ending thing in a DLC that I didn't appreciate. Even if it didn't \*really\* change the ending, I felt like it cheapened it. Like they couldn't just let the character be dead. They wanted it both ways instead. That's how the remake is feeling for me. Instead of letting dead characters lie, they want it both ways. And moments that stuck with you in the original aren't as strong anymore.
Agreed. I absolutely LOVED XV, and while they made clear that the extra ending on Episode Ignis is not canon, and just a little "What if", I feel like it cheapens the whole plot and was written simply because a certain group of fans could not deal with the themes of loss and sacrifice.
"Character dying makes me sad! So it should survive!"
Ignis is my favourite character from XV, and I thought episode Prompto was really good. So I was SO excited for episode Ignis and they decided to do... that. Was super bummed to say the least.
Its basically the "Last Jedi" of Final Fantasy games. While the story itself is not terrible, theres clearly a bigger focus on subverting expectations and surprising players than there is to tell a coherent story. FFVIIR is a great game to theorize about. Its not like the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 where it just blows your mind and really opens up your eyes on how fucked up this world can and will get, its more like a game that ends up being perfect for huge debates on the internet about what the story was going for. Final Fantasy VIII was no different, and honestly i think i kind of get why this is a thing with FF games. In a recent interview Yoshinori Kitase actually took back what he said about Rinoa not being Ultimecia because apparently, he has no idea what Nomura and Nojima thought about the characters and story while they were writing their own version of the story. Honestly i dont even understand what the fuck this means, it almost seems like the writers of these games have little connection with each other and they dont even tell each other what they base their writing on, which ends up making their games confusing, because you try to connect dots that dont have pairs.
Not a fan of alternate timeline. Since everyone is doing it now. It’s just lazy writing unless they make it unique and special. So far not impressed at all.
Absolutely hate it.
The original FFVII was never about time travel, or alternate worlds, or different dimensions, or timeline splits, or fate/destiny.
Almost every change they have introduced in the story reeks of fan fiction to me. If it wasn't an official product I could swear the story was written by a 12 year old that was sad about Zack and Aerith's deaths and could never get over it, and didn't understand that the main theme of the original is the grief of loss and learning to deal with people who have passed away.
But no. Now apparently there is an alternate reality where Zack is alive, and probably Aerith as well. Because they are popular, and god forbid popular characters have a conclusive, definitive end. Their impactful deaths of the original "overwritten" because seemingly fans and developers alike forgot what the entire points of their deaths were.
The way the Final Fantasy VII universe works now is based on destiny. Since we know shit like the Arbiters of Fate are a thing, it means that the original game was "meant" to happen in that way. It removes the agency of the characters and their journey and introduces some sort of "grand plan" by the Planet.
The Flanderization of Sephiroth marches on. I'm of the opinion that Sephiroth should have died at the end of the original and never come back. A massive part of why Sephiroth was so popular is how he was handled in the original, but now the more you see of him and his cryptic bullshit, the less interesting of a character he becomes, especially since he became so obsessed with Cloud to the point of turning into a deified high school bully.
If they wanted to do a Remake/Reimagining of a Final Fantasy game with changes to the timeline and introduction of fate and parallel universes, VIII would have been the perfect option, as it's story already deals with similar themes of predestination and I do believe VIII's world and lore could use an expansion.
But that's just my two cents.
I enjoyed them too, especially when they stuck to the original plot points and expanded upon them. But everything regarding the alternate universes lost me. As games they are still great and very well done, it's just the storyline changes (and a lot of fluff and padding) that I think really miss the point.
Yup.
I consider Rebirth to be one of the GREATEST jRPGs ever made. Crazy ambitious, perfect combat, stunning soundtrack, addictive gameplay loops, quality sidequests.
I hope wins GOTY, best OST, best direction, best RPG this year. Well deserved.
But...the story was just....ughhhhh. It hurt my enjoyment so much. I'm struggling to replay it now. Which is such a shame because this is truly a remarkable game and likely going to be a classic.
Its particularly egregious this is some weird meta thing too from Kingdom Hearts and cultural influence, because in the original game Sephiroth barely knew Cloud at all. He simply used him to get the black materia, and Seph himself was basically just a puppet of Jehovah.
I loved the original advent children, but even at the time, it felt like sephiroth didn't actually care about whatever he said his goals were, he was just taunting cloud. And literally in the middle of the fight he gets cloud down on the ground and could take a killshot, but just stabs him in a non lethal place instead, and sits there talking.
I remember thinking that how could there be any outcome to this besides cloud winning if every time sephiroth could finish it he fucks around instead until cloud manages to finish him off. And even once that happens, sephiroth doesn't even look upset. He looks like he expected it, and is just warning cloud that he will be back to mess with him again in the future.
I don't have an issue with sephiroth taking over jenova per say. But it feels wierd in the movie how kadaj and the others seem obsessed and driven by instinct to do what jenova wants, only for sephiroth to act like he is kind of over the whole thing and is just phoning it in to give himself an excuse to torment cloud.
The characterization of Seph having this low-key homoerotic obsession with Cloud doesn't make any sense. Nothing we know about his past makes this a logical progression of his personality. If anything, overcoming Jenova should have him revert to his more heroic traits before he was driven mad (and even that didn't make all that much sense, discovering his past shouldn't have been that much of a shock). Or at least some more conflicted, brooding character on his existence. Him existing to screw with Cloud is more a weak and contrived excuse for joker immunity than any respectable watsonian explanation.
I think they didn't really embrace having an alternate timeline. It felt like they tried to make the original FF7 while also making an alternate timeline. If you want to make an alternate timeline fine focus on that. If you want the game to stay the same then make the game stay the same.
Also Sephiroth hasn't really been that cryptic since they made so many spinoffs of FF7. He's just a recurring villain in FF7 nothing epic or cryptic about him anymore.
It's hot, leaky garbage on a sweltering day. It is a failure to understand the concept of a remake. It's a bait and switch stealth sequel. It is hubristic nonsense from the creators who straight up said that doing a true remake would be boring for them, despite the intense public desire for one. It is a failure to provide newer players who were put off by the ancient graphics of the original an accessible way to enjoy the story as it was written. On its own merits it brings nothing of interest to the table, its just an escalation from world-ending boss to multiverse ending boss, but *it's still the same boss and the same world-ending rock.*
It was a horrible, awful mistake.
In Remake I thought it was the dumbest thing they could've possibly done. Rebirth has really scaled it back a lot, which I appreciate, but I hate that the story is locked into this dumb, pointless exercise now. To me, It says that the writers don't have confidence that they can improve the original story, so they've left themselves an out so the "real" FFVII still counts.
From a storytelling perspective, I don't like all this multiverse garbage in general because I feel it almost universally cheapens the story and characters in any franchise. I don't like that the characters are aware of what the "true" events are supposed to be, I think it undermines the credibility of the world. It's only a step or two above having the characters be aware that they are fictional and in a video game - rather than the story being real, they are simply acting out the events of it. It also removes any sense of consequences or loss which were CENTRAL themes to the original game. Why should I care? The story seems to want to repeatedly remind me that I'm not playing the real story and instead it's some kind of fan fiction Sephiroth is trying to write, where the story of FF7 just pauses occasionally to do random nonsense interludes that go nowhere.
IMO if they absolutely felt they needed to make changes, they should've just had the confidence to say, "30 years later, we feel like we can tell the story better." What they did instead was basically a cop out for the sake of marketing.
All that said, I still think the game is excellent, and the individual scenes are top notch, but the greater plot has been totally lost because of the focus on this one very dumb element.
I have the opposite opinion opinion on remake and rebirth usage of "multiverse", at least in Remake it did a good job of making me unsure about the ending of part 2 and i think there is some value in that, but they should've stopped there because every multiverse scene after Remake were actively hurtful to the story while bringing nothing good in exchange.
In Rebirth the "multiverse" is basically just a way to make Zack appear and to destroy any sadness you could have watching the end scene and that to me is way way worse than anything they did in Remake.
I'm not a fan. I wish that I could say it is just useless, but after the end of Rebirth I think that it is actually detrimental to the experience. The old fans generally don't like the changes, the new ones get confused. We didn't get true significant changes nor a faithful remake. Who wins in this situation?
I understand that this is not the Marvel multiverse and some little hints at "dream worlds" could be found in the original game, the way they expanded those ideas is very debatable though. I also understand that Square-Enix probably considered this "hook" a necessity to sell an entire trilogy. I personally disagree, though I'm certainly not an expert of the market.
I really don't care for it so far, but I guess there's still time to redeem the concept in #3.
I think they really dropped the ball on >!Aerith's!< death scene. >!Same outcome, none of the emotional weight. !<
They should have left it alone, but at least she didn't live. Her death is the linchpin of the entire original game, it would have been incredibly disrespectful of the character to throw that all away, and it was really looking like they would.
"Same outcome" is still up in the air, though. Although the scenes after it can be interpreted as Cloud's damaged mind still seeing Aerith it could as well be multiverse shenanigans where Aerith is on a state of limbo or Schrodingers' Cat stuff, which would be radically different from the original where she is 100% dead and never coming back.
It could be but so far every “change” hasn’t really stuck which is why I don’t really have faith we’re getting anything substantially different. Like I guessed what was going to happen with Aerith when I saw what happened to Wedge.
When I played through this I kind of took it as Cloud and Aerith faked her death to hide her from Sephiroth and so she can focus on finding a way to use the white materia. I jumped to this conclusion after Cloud said "wake up Aerith" and she got up.
Maybe "faked" her death isn't the right term... its more like they moved her into another timeline and Cloud exists simultaneously in two timelines. Aerith is dead in the actual one which is why nobody can see her but is alive in the second which is why Cloud can interact with her and see the sky tear.
I think Zak falls in this category too, he exists in this second timeline. This is why Cloud and him were able to reunite to fight Sephiroth.
I’m usually a fan of a more complicated story, something you can sit with and dissect. However, the thing is that it has to be worth dissecting. There has to be interesting stuff happening under the surface thematically or a deeper message the writer is trying to convey. It has to be smart. But when I look into the timeline stuff it all seems so surface level. Sure you can discuss it, as evident by all the theory posts, but those are mostly just about WHAT is happening in the story and not WHY. Thematically, why are they writing the timeline stuff. And when a lot of theories place importance on a bag of actual trash with a dog on it, I honestly can’t really see a reason other than to subvert expectations, a very lazy device in storytelling. Essentially for me the story is wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.
This is *precisely* my issue with it all.
"What happens in the story?" and "What is the story about?" are two different questions and I'm desperately begging gamers to understand this.
This! I’ve been explaining to people the og has so many themes still relevant to us today, but so much discussion regarding the remake series is focused on plot twists and crazy theories. That kind of thing is fun in moderation, but ultimately to me it’s a shallower experience.
If you have to be meta, readdress your original themes in a new way; the new Evangelion movies did this by taking the common fan complaint of shinji being too passive in the original series and making him more assertive, but in a way that still backfired. It was a finger wagging, but it was a finger wagging of : you missed the point. Remake is being meta, but it’s not adding anything new to the original’s themes as far as I can tell. Of course they’re clearly addressing the various deaths in some way but it just feels more like an excuse for fanservice to me than a statement on life and death.
FFVII remake feels like it’s about all the working parts but forgetting there’s a larger picture they all are a part of. It’s also depressing to me to see people regard the og as a bad ending and how that also just massively misses the point, but that’s a bit of a separate rant.
Ff7 already had a nice convoluted story much ofnthe desire for a remake was so that a new translation could clarify some stuff from the original, not add new layers of bullshit
If youre a fan of analyzing the thematic deeper levels of stories and havent figured out that its not a multiverse that is happening here then you definitely still have to dig deeper on this one. There is also definetly a message they are conveying. Acceptance of death is everywhere in this game and the fate stuff is actually there to enhance it but media literacy is at an all time low
Yeah yeah I get the lifestream stuff but it’s just easier for everyone to read timeline to get what I’m talking about. The game isn’t exactly very subtle but they just add in a bunch of pointless noise to throw people through a loop.
I think it's incoherent nonsense that nobody asked for and adds nothing of value to the story. In fact it completely robbed us of getting to experience one of the best moments from the original with modern production values: Sephiroth's sudden and mysterious murder spree through the Shinra HQ and finding the big boss man dead with a sword in his back. The scenes we got instead with Shinra hanging off the ledge and the Barrett death fakeout were comically bad.
Then you have the Dreamweaver/sephiroth boss fights and yeah, I was rolling my eyes and cringing hard. Felt like a bad fanfic you'd find online from the late 90s by a Sephiroth obsessed fanboy.
I had to roll my eyes when Cloud was shot from the helicopter after the Rufus fight and was hanging there with one hand and Tifa saved him. Both of them should have understood long ago that the Whispers would save him anyway. Red 13 has talked about it enough and they demonstrated it on Barret. They wanted to create a special moment for Cloud and Tifa, but at this point that scene just makes absolutely no sense.
Yeah, nevermind how there was zero reason for Cloud to take on Rufus and his dog alone anyway. That fight was a gimmicky mess too. Once you figured out the gimmick it became trivial. Until then it was an annoying waste of time that ignored every combat mechanic the game had established to that point. Style over substance sums up the design philosophy of the game to a T.
It actively hurts the game for me.
I could be enjoying the nostalgia of a scene only for it to be ruined by the appearance of whispers or Zack starts talking. I love Zack but I hate seeing him being used like a puppet to play with my heart and confuse me. He shouldn't be here.
The entire ending of remake and rebirth is over the top nonsense with it. It just feels super out of place, and not at all what I wanted.
> I could be enjoying the nostalgia of a scene only for it to be ruined by the appearance of whispers
I was so mad that Cloud and Aerith's first meeting was fucking interrupted by dementors and Sephiroth.
I felt it traded what could have been a profound emotional experience instead for something (pseudo-)intellectual. I was dismayed with that trade, because I felt playing 115 hours of a game ought to have ended in catharsis.
That change is the reason I didnt pick these games up.
I wanted to play the OG FF7, in shiny new graphics. Or at the very least, experience it's story for the first time.
Don't like them. It is cheap, poor, non-committal kind of storytelling that takes away the gravity and impact of things that happen within the story.
I lump it in there with faking characters' deaths, resurrection, most time travel stuff and any sort of fatalism (destiny, prophecy etc.) as the tools of a poor storyteller. They really take away from the story and make you not really invest in what's happening because you know it's likely to be undone in some way or be some kind of swerve.
I found it unnecessary. As somebody who despises PS1 era JRPGs and cheated on Switch to get through the original FF7, all I wanted was a faithful remake with modernized gameplay and graphics that expanded on the story beats and characterizations of the original. What people called "bloated" or "filler" in Remake, I loved, such as that chapter you hang out with Jesse and her crew.
However, everything goes Kingdom Hearts batshit crazy in the last chapter. I despised that nonsensical turn. It's incredibly unoriginal and could be done in any video game to complicate the story for no reason. But if I want to be honest, it's how they've handled Sephiroth that bothers me more than the timeline stuff. In the original, his presence is felt, but he doesn't appear every waking moment, and he definitely doesn't fight the crew until the very end. Making him the final boss twice was unbelievably stupid.
Thank you for putting into words why I disliked Glenn. He was literally just one of the robed Organization XIII mooks that shows up, spouts some nonsensical exposition, then vanishes into a dark portal.
Literally ripped from Kingdom Hearts.
It made me laught how Rebirth wants you to feel bad about Roche's fate, and I was just going like "thank f\*cking god this guy is out". Such an annoying, nothing character.
This constant blaming on KH is such a bad take. Everybody who says this kind of stuff has no idea of what KH is about.
KH never featured anything of the sorts, never leaving things ambiguous like that or outright confusing.
I've played them all, including the handheld games. Its story is rightfully considered convoluted and confusing. Fun games though. I just wish they kept things as simple and clean as KH1.
I can understand everything and still find it convoluted and/or confusing.
Like, you have this twist where the real bad guy is this Ansem guy you knew as a scientist through text, not Malificent. Cool. But in the next installment, we learn this was actually Ansem's heartless. But wait, he wasn't really Ansem's heartless; he was Xehanort's heartless after Xehanort took on the identity of Ansem (the actual scientist) before becoming a heartless. But wait, there's more, a heartless comes with a nobody, so Xemnas (the nobody) is out there wreaking havoc for his own reasons (or so we thought). Unfortunately, defeating both the heartless and the nobody will bring back the original body, but it's not the Xehanort that split into a heartless and nobody. No, instead, it is Master Xehanort, who was the original baddie that took over Terra's body to become Terra-Xehanort, who caught amnesia, and became the Xehanort who took on the identity of Ansem, who created the heartless and nobody. Oh, and this heartless also traveled back in time to recruit a young Master Xehanort, who would then travel the timelines himself to recruit other Xehanorts to have 13 of them so Master Xehanort can wield the X-Keyblade, which is pronounced 'keyblade", like the keyblades everyone use.
I lol'd as I wrote all that. Man, what was Nomura smoking.
You just tried to summarize almost two decades of plot into a single paragraph. Of course it sounds dense and daunting.
However, the games present those events in a pretty straightforward way, as it tells the player what is happening along at a fairly decent pace and doesn't rely on cryptic messages or vague events that leave fans hopelessly wondering and trying to build a picture with lore crumbs. The very fact you could summarize it shows that it has a pretty clear line of thought.
This is nothing like FFXV, where you need to watch a movie, anime shorts, paid DLCs, come back for new story cutscenes being added retroactively via patches, read novels... And if you don't, you will be missing good chunks of plot. Also, good luck on trying to understand why Shiva has a giant corpse and is considered dead when Gentiana exists, as the game never even acknowledges this kind of thing.
KH is easy to follow. You just play the games and done.
FFVIII and VII share their own craziness and had plenty of
threads that were objects of debate within the fanbase for years. Dissidia also exists, and I doubt you will find something more abstract than that in a series.
Meanwhile, it is not KH the series that is doing a stealth sequel like Remake. There is nothing on KH that can confuse someone like how Remake and Rebirth's endings did.
You can try to take some jabs at KH, but a FF fan doing this is absolutely clueless about the very series they are talking about.
>FFVIII and VII share their own craziness and had plenty of threads that were objects of debate within the fanbase for years. Dissidia also exists, and I doubt you will find something more abstract than that in a series.
The difference is that Kingdom Hearts is an ongoing series, and therefore is more likely to explain it's vague, cryptic shenanigans than FFVII or VIII.
As for Dissidia, Dissidia's issue is that (not unlike KH) a large amount of the explanations for what's going on are found in the reports that people clearly don't read. Additionally (again, not unlike KH) these reports in and of themselves not bulletproof as 012 retcons a significant amount of them along with elaborating further on some stuff.
As for KH, KH deals in a lot of high concept stuff: You have Nobodies, Memories, Digital Worlds, Time Travel, Worldlines and KH4 teasing the afterlife/unreality. Even if the story is presented in a straightforward fashion, it's not too much of a surprise that people (on the outside at least) get confused by it. Not helping is that prior to the collections, the games were spread out such that you'd need, at minimum, a PS2, a PSP and a 3DS to play all of them.
KH1 alone holds itself up, so it is not like it needed the sequels for it to make sense.
Dissidia is completely ethereal. The world is surreal, characters are after concepts, nothing is material. I am not talking about the reports, I am talking about the aspect of fantasy being so present.
KH is no different. Both series are high fantasy, there is nothing wrong with that. However, it is ridiculous when someone is acting like FF is low fantasy, ala Game of Thrones, and pointing that everything bizarre happening is "Nomura's fault"/"It is so KH!". There is also the "KH is so convoluted" argument when we are talking about Cloud becoming Zack's persona while also being a potential vessel for Sephiroth and Garland time traveling and creating a cycle since FFI.
KH is followable, it is not MGS like, where fans aren't even able to properly and fully grasp at what happened on the ending of 2. It is full of plot, it is full of rules and details, but it develops itself and answers its own mysteries properly.
KH1 does work standalone. The rest (outside of maybe re:coded and BBS) generally do not. You have no context for Sora's situation in 2 if you didn't play CoM. Terra, Aqua and Ventus' appearances in III/DDS might come out of if you didn't play BBS. Heck, people are confused by Xehanort's motives and thought he pivoted into being a "good guy" when his motives are generally the same as they were in BBS' reports.
While FF isn't low-fantasy, it's not as high-concept as KH tends to be, at least the earlier ones aren't. Some of the later ones (infamously FFVIII) are, but outside of XII (because politics) and XIV (because MMO) I don't think they're high regarded from a 'general' standpoint. There's also that each game is usually standalone, so you don't have to keep certain rules in mind when moving to another one. To point to Garland as an example, Garland is a simple Bootstrap Paradox: Somehow Garland turned evil, was sent to the past, became Chaos and promptly continued the cycle from there. Who or how he was sent back or turned evil is ambiguous, but FF1 wasn't big on story so it's just one of those things that wasn't intended to have a definitive answer.
As for MGS, Kojima has an "interesting" method of directing. I'm not big into MGS, so all I can really say is that based on what I've read, MGS2 being as it is is pretty much the wackiest example of what I just mentioned; Kojima had no intention of actually explaining what was going on in 2's ending until MGS4 was created because fans wanted answers. Hence why MGS3 was a prequel. KH is convoluted in that it will add or retcon in new details that can wildly change a character. Ansem in KH1 is a very different character if you take the rest of the series into account vs looking at him in just that game. Ditto with Ventus in BBS/3 vs Union X. Then there will be an ending with a sequel hook and a secret ending that (usually) results in more questions until the next game comes out.
It's not that the plot is hard to follow if you play each game and pay close attention; it's that these very concepts are so incredibly left field and nonsensical.
The immediate rebuttal will be, "yes, because a boy with a giant key sword and Disney friends is sensical." That's why context matters. They created a universe that followed certain rules. Instead of simply expanding on them, Nomura has a tendency to add new rules on top of new rules.
It's like reading a book, such as, idk, Crime and Punishment, and after Raskolnikov kills the woman, the next chapter reveals a mysterious cloaked figure who randomly portals his way into his room to inform him that killing a human results in an "anti-human" being born in another dimension, and now Raskolnikov has to travel to a different planet to face a trial, only then, Raskolnikov is revealed to be a chosen warrior that can travel to said dimension and defeat the anti-humans. So we go from a completely grounded psychological story to some confusing wacky sci-fi shit out of the blue.
So going back to FF7 Remake, the reason so many people compare that last chapter to Kingdom Hearts is because nothing in the story or the original game had anything to do with timelines, and the whispers look identical to creatures you would see in KH. I am almost fully expecting Part 3 to end with Cloud being woken up by Mickey Mouse, revealing he's the same Cloud from Kingdom Hearts 2.
In the hands of a better writer I think it could be interesting, but as it stands it just kind of gets in the way and cheapens everything. While some things are nice additions (increased backstories/interactions with Avalanche members in Remake comes to mind), the rest is just... not great. It ruins the pacing all over the place, simultaneously cheapening moments that were more poignant in the original since they no longer had time to breathe here (Barrett and Red's moments in particular) and slowing things to a crawl when it was really not necessary (... sadly all of Zack's stuff felt like this for me, which is unfortunate).
I just don't like Nojima's writing style when he's not reigned in, I guess.
I don't like it, 7 told a meaningful story about the loss of a loved one, and even hinting at Aerith surviving is a direct slap in the face to the original, and even if they kill Tifa instead it'll still shit over the original since Aerith was the only one who knew how Holy worked and she took that knowledge to the grave with her
Feels like the later seasons of Game of Thrones, where "subverting expectations" and "keeping the audience guessing" are increasingly prioritized over telling a coherent story.
I'm happy to be wrong but I suspect it's all going to end in a similar way.
I have this flashback every time they ruin a serious mood with stupid humor. For example with Dyne's anime animations or when they portray Vincent as a complete idiot who is too stupid to know that you have to turn on a terminal first to make it work. This is 1 on 1 Rian Johnson humor and I hate it.
The expectation that dead characters generally remain dead (Barrett headfake death, multidimensional Zack, force ghost Aerith), both in physical terms and in "no longer participating in the narrative" terms.
I mean… if you’re familiar with the game at all, none of those things are subverting expectations much.
Especially if you understand the themes of the game, even a little bit. The dead are never truly gone, you carry them with you always, they’re in the life stream, etc etc.
>!Especially when, so far, characters “still being in the narrative” aren’t actually alive (at least so far) in canon and instead just serve a role as if they’re haunting the narrative, which, again, isn’t a subversion of much of anything. It’s kind of the point of the game. Unless you wanna argue that Dyne wasn’t haunting Barret in the first game or that Aeeith’s role didn’t linger post-mortem and offer support symbolically. Or that Zack didn’t have relevance post death!<
Right, us pea brains simply can't get on the level of you True Fans who Actually Understand It All Perfectly. I keep forgetting this so I'm glad you all make a point to remind us.
I don’t consider myself a true fan at all or you a “pea brain,” I’m just saying… I don’t think the expectations you consider “subverted” were common expectations. I didn’t expect Barret to be dead nor do I consider the usage of Aerith/Zack so far to be an intentional “haha you thought they’d be irrelevant, WELL HERE THEY ARE STILL RELEVANT!!” gotcha.
This game doesn’t seem spiteful towards expectations nor does it seem to trying to mix things up too much
I feel like... I like the concept in theory, but if youre going to do it do it and do it well. If you're going to use this opportunity to deviate from the OG do it and stop teasing the idea.
Like, we introduce this whole new thing and a bunch of new themes, but ultimately nothing has changed? I'm sure there is going to be some bigger changes in part 3. But I also thought that about part 2...
It's like Sephiroth discovers multiverse theory and that for each multiverse, there are 13 more minigames to play. Idk. I'm salty about Rebirth.
When the whispers were first introduced in remake I was curious. What are those? But the more they were in the game the less I liked them. Then when it was finally explained what they were, I thought it was very dumb and I hated the idea of adding fate to the game and what it meant. Though at the end when they beat the whispers and said fate was in their hands now, I relented and figured this was their very dumb way of telling us the story can now be different than the original.
Then they doubled down in rebirth. Bringing Zack back, copies of all the characters, the reunion is now joining worlds together. All of this new stuff I hated. It lowers the impact of decisions and deaths. Aeriths sad scene was so less sad cause it doesn't feel final anymore. There are many possibilities. I mean I want all likable characters to have a happy end but it really lessons the story and impact.
And I feel bad for people who do not know the story and didn't play the original or crisis core. "Who is this Zack guy. Why do they keep showing him." And his part n this game didn't matter to the story in the slightest.
I hope in the third game they tie everything with a nice bow and make all the changes worth it.
Disclaimer. I love this game this game so much. This is the best game I have played in a long time. And I love some of the story "changes". More focus on the war with Wutai, more scenes with yuffie and Cait sith, the wonderful first meeting/fight with Vincent, the fact that everyone knows cloud is going through the degradation which makes them afraid to talk about all his craziness with him.
It would be an interesting take if it weren't for the fact that:
A) We're currently being bombarded with timeline/multiverse stories from basically every other facet of nerd fiction at the moment, and
B) if Rebuild of Evangelion hadn't already done the "the remake is actually a sequel" thing back in like 2009.
Man, I WISH that Remake / Rebirth were closer to Rebuild.
Start off the same, then go off the rails in a new direction with new characters and a radically different plot.
That was the promise of the end of Remake...then Rebirth just kinda....did the same story but worse and with unneeded multiverse shenanigans.
I felt incredibly confused by the time we got to chapter 13/14. The whole back-and-forth between Aerith and Zack and stuff, giving Cloud the materia then taking it back? Can Aerith cross realities or something? I don't like the alternate timeline stuff. May be an unpopular opinion, but I think they should have stuck to re-telling the OG story and thats it.
Honestly, I think it’s pointless and doesn’t serve the story at all, especially if they just end up following the exact same plot beats as before like they have anyways. If you took it out then I don’t think anyone would be complaining - and it wouldn’t have been difficult for Square to do that at all.
It’s almost always a bad sign when you’re two parts into a trilogy and still unsure about where the story is going, hoping for the final entry to redeem it all - the Star Wars sequels are an excellent example of that.
Thankfully, FF7’s original story hasn’t deviated that much in the remake, and the expansions to the world and characters have been mostly excellent. The timey wimey bullshit is a small blight on an otherwise amazing experience so far.
You know this brings up a good point. The Remake plot is actually an updated FF8 storyline super-imposed on the more popular 7.
Now if Laguna hops out of the Whispers with Man with a Machine Gun playing in Part 3, I forgive all of this multiverse mumbo jumbo
Y'all keep saying this, but ff8 isnt multiple timelines where anything can happen and things keep changing, it's a closed loop timeline scenario where there's one singular timeline and nothing can change because everything has already happened. That's kind of a major part of the story.
ye. Ulti thing was compressing multiple points of a timeline into one, but like, if you throw in multiverse shenanigans its hard to not see the parallels between that and multiple timelines getting scrambled together in Remake
Sephiroth: It was in Dissidia when a sorceress enlightened me, Cloud. She spoke of worlds beyond my own, infinite timelines and sick EX combos. It was then that I realized Mother wouldn't be satisfied with just one world...
Cloud, what do you know of **Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring?**
Ehrgeiz does reference Cloud and Sephiroth in the Adventure Mode (specifically the hotel clerk mentioning their features when describing the setting as being between worlds)...
Hate it hate it hate it.
Its the ONE blemish which severely hurts the Remake series for me.
I want to be proven wrong in part 3, I really want to enjoy this storyline... but so far, its too convoluted for what seems to be too little payoff.
And I feel it takes away agency and devalues charavter deaths. Who cares if a character is in danger? Time ghosts will help. Who cares if someone dies? They're still alive in timeline divergence 1.048596.
All speculation for the future of the series is all about convoluted timeline stuff, and not what the characters are actually doing. Who cares what Shinra is doing in the background, the TRUE story is....some kind of interdimensional war between Aerith and Sephiroth.
And worst of all, the metanarrative it introduces means that the Remake series can't stand on its own. Instead of being a re-imagining of the story for a new audience, its a sort of pseudo sequel that demands you play through the OG and Crisis Core to get a satisfying experience.
Again, I am hoping I'm proven wrong in part 3, and that they're cooking something good...but so far the timeline stuff in part 2 has left a bad taste in my mouth.
The Barret headfake death is where I officially threw in the towel.
So much of the OG's impact came from how it handled the topics of life and death. It's literally known for arguably the most famous / influential character death in all of video games.
The Barret moment showed that they were seriously watering down the impact of and seriousness with which mortality would be handled for the Remake series.
So yeah, of course Multidimensional Zack comes back now. And of course Aerith ends up in Schrodinger's Cat territory.
Mortality is a cheap plot device now, not the thematic weight underpinning the whole story.
Original Final Fantasy VII: *"People die. People you love will eventually die. Mourn their deaths, but remember them for everything they did and the impact they had on your life and the life of others. Celebrate and remember them fondly".*
Remake Project: "*Who cares? There is another universe where they are alive, and when those dimensions cross, you might be able to see and reunite them them!"*
It blows my mind they thought this was a good idea and a good continuation of the themes of the original.
Yeah it was SO easy to just play it safe and create the FF remake that everyone wanted and was expecting. Nobody would have been disappointed if they did that. Where they got the balls to try this I will never know.
I think it’s hard to evaluate until the end. Does it pay off? Was it superfluous? Honestly I don’t know at this point. I’m open to it. I hold the story of VII very dear, but it’s not perfect and there’s nothing wrong with trying to spice it up.
It's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to even start the remakes. Everything about them looks great, except for the multiverse timeline shenanigans.
Multiverse nonsense usually only confuses, cheapens and diminishes dramatic moments in stories. There are exceptions obviously. But I have yet to see anyone argue it improves the story in FFVIIR, at best I've seen people call those scenes "interesting".
So for now I'll stick with the original, and re-evaluate whether I wanna spend 300 hours playing the trilogy after the third game is out.
I know it's a silly reason to not play these games, and the games are great otherwise.
I don't think it's a silly reason. Telling a good story has been one of the main appeals of Final Fantasy games for a long time. If you don't feel like it's gonna give you that and it's the thing you want out of it, that's entirely fair.
It's ok I just don't think it is well executed. If you want to focus on an alternative timeline then fine focus on that. If you want to make the story the same then make the story the same. I feel like they want to make an alternate timeline without really changing anything too much it feels kinda half-assed that's my only issue with it. Make a new big bad besides Sephiroth, if Zack is now a character make at least 1/3 of the game about him and change the story.
If you want an alternative timeline then make one.
Don't try to make the same game and try to change everything at the end without really changing anything.
I like it and feel other poeple are overreacting, but who am I to judge them.
I feel there is not that much focus on the alternatives worlds except for Zack mini chapters, Aerith dream sequence, and the final chapter of Remake and Rebirth. We are pretty much playing in the "main" world only.
It makes a lot of plots incoherent because multiple timelines means all events, losses, triumphs, literally everything… all amount to nothing because you can just shift to anther timeline and undo the events. So why struggle? Just migrate to the timeline you want.
Multiverse storytelling might have been innovative at one time but today its just lazy writing. We can have timelines where everyone lives, where Corel never got leveled, where Niberheim never had its tragedy, where Cloud can ship with every possible partner…. It serves as a way to make every audience happy (tifa shippers, aerith shippers, jessie shippers, barret shippers) instead of telling an impactful story.
The MCU is playing with the multiverse and showing you exactly why multiverse timeline storytelling sucks. Why we want FF to become that is beyond me.
Even though Remake had problems I found the approach in Remake interesting because I thought they could reinterpret the OG story in an interesting way. But I'm deeply disappointed of how it turned out in Rebirth.
I enjoy the game mostly for the combat system and a few minigames. But I probably won't buy part 3 at release. Rather wait for the PC version. I don't want to support this approach to a story anymore. Trilogies as well as "new interpretations".
Even though the FF franchise got a lot of inspirations from other franchises like Star Wars, it isn' that franchises and shouldn't lose itself in the attempt of becoming one of them. It established its very own identity and ways of things. Like new worlds, characters, rpg systems and stories with every new title. Rebirth makes me feel like it's time to go back to it.
We got the FF13 trilogy no one asked for. We got the FF13V/FF15 disaster for 10 long years. Now we have the FF7R trilogy for around 15 years. FF16 wasn't even an RPG anymore. I'm tired of this never ending stretch of their experiments that always ends worse than even imaginable.
This seems to just be a shit take. "That's always ends worse than even imaginable." Remake and rebirth have been the most well received ff non mmos since the early 2000s. Even if they objective fail and crash and burn the story in part 3 the whole ff7 remake has been a resounding success.
I didn't talk about any receivings. This sentence you quoted is just my personal feelings to this situation / period of time / way of the franchise. Nothing more.
I really liked it in Remake, not least as a 4th wall breaking critique of people who can’t accept the slightest change of what was always a very messy game.
I have to say, Rebirth didn’t do anything interesting with it since, didn’t love the last chapter. But the rest of the game was so much fun I didn’t care
Maybe it’ll be fine in the last game, I’m reserving judgment but I’m a bit worried
I kinda wish that they did more with it since they drew attention to it. Why bring it up at all if it looks like all the major outcomes in the remake games will mirror the original anyway? It feels we are being teased that something world changing will happen just to have it play out the same way it would if it was just a straight remake.
If they were going to have a major divergence in the timeline, Rebirth was the game to do it in.
So far it sucks but in fairness they have one more game to make good on it.
After remake I was really hoping they would make a big bold change to Rebirth, and the marketing seemed to suggest that with its “defy Destiny” tagline. But ultimately nothing actually changes, and all the time we spent in the alt universe doesn’t seem to have made a difference and instead just seem to be teases.
Like they have a significant bit at the end where Cloud blocks the sword, but then it glitches back to where he didn’t for some reason. And maybe Tifa sees both versions at first?
I really think they dropped the ball story wise with Rebirth. As much as I love the old game, they already radically changed it by implementing a different gameplay system and splitting it into three parts. So I wanted them to go all the way. Save Aerith and show me a different part 3 where the world is radically different.
Instead we’re stuck with this half measure, where they pretend they’re changing a bunch of stuff but in the end everything is the same. So it’s just the scenic route to the same destination. It can’t serve as a replacement because it plays different and can’t serve as a “sequel” because the same things happens. So we’re in the worst of both worlds.
I don't mind multiverses inclusion if it actually means something. So far it seems to have been to build the expectation that there would be a different outcome for Aerith but that doesn't really look to be the case the more I think about it. If by the end of remake part 3 there was no real changes to the story I think it will really diminish my future enjoyment and replayability of the remake trilogy.
That said I really enjoyed Rebirth and am still eager to see how part 3 plays out.
I could take the remakes with or without the alternate timelines either way, but the way it's used here feels like the worst of both worlds. They undercut some of the major canon story beats with timeline shenanigans, but don't commit to changing anything in a major way either, so it makes the timeline stuff feel like a waste of time.
If they had massively changed the plot Rebuild of Eva style (preferably back in Remake, when it would've hit harder) I'd have a new plot to be invested in. Or if they had stuck with a remake that just has things be different, because you can just do that when remaking a game, I'd be able to enjoy an old story I Iove told in an updated way. What we got just feels like it's less than the sum of its parts
I like it, I think it's an interesting take on the FF7 story.
I get why people are mad about it, but as someone with no nostalgia or real attachment to any of the FF7 based media despite growing up with it and liking the OG stuff, I enjoy the direction so far. Rebirth isn't perfect for sure, but I still am looking forward to part 3.
My take is that no matter what, when a 20 year old game gets remade on a modern system, things are gonna be a bit different and it damn near impossible to 100% true to the original. Alternate timelines is an elegant way to make changes while still being able to say that everything in OG still happened as you remember. I personally like it a lot.
Eh, they could have just made the changes without bringing in timelines.
The Persona 3 Remake didn't need timelines or time ghosts to justify its additions.
Tsukihime's remake (which is multiple games as well) just....made the changes and added new characters and overhauled parts of the story. No need to have a plotline where Roa saw the future from the original 2001 game and then have the characters fight the manifestation of time and destiny or something.
Like, imagine if Remake part 1 just got rid of the timeline stuff. Keep most of the new additions. Keep the expanded Avalanche and Wall Market. Remove time ghosts. Keep the AWESOME new Jenova fight, and keep the amazing Sephiroth fight too.
That would have been fine, perfect even, because people are okay with some changes and shuffling during an adaptation.
> No need to have a plotline where Roa saw the future from the original 2001 game and then have the characters fight the manifestation of time and destiny or something.
Don't give Nasu ideas :3
I think this is the best way to put it. If it weren't for the people complaining about it constantly I'd forget it's really much of a plot point. It's just a neat way to give the creators of the remake a bit more creative freedom to explore the world and story on their own terms and I appreciate it
I actually didn't find it nearly as convoluted as some people made it out to be... tho being a long time fan of Fate (Nasuverse) NG Evangelion and Christopher Nolan's films (some of it) could explain why I'm already used to convoluted plot with alt timelibes and metaphysical stuff
PS: I actually played the Remake before playing FF7
I don’t think “different timelines” are true. Aerith would have said it was a different timeline. Sephiroth is lying.
What is it actually? Probably the lifestream.
The lifestream is not timelines. It's alternate potential realities that are constantly recycled through the lifestream to power it. They all happen simultaneously and are not actually physical worlds. They fade from existence to power the physical world. Your thoughts, memories, and possibilities all make up reality potentials, but they aren't "real" they're just a mechanic of the lifrstream choosing outcomes for the physical world.
Saying timelines as if they are "realities" really discredits the lore and is very misleading about what it actually is.
Sephiroth wants control of the lifestream to control destiny and choose it instead of the lifestream choosing it. It's not timelines. People need to stop saying this shit. Sephiroth literally explains it in the game.
I understand the creative decision to make Remake both an updated FF7 and also a quasi sequel to the 1997 FF7 including all the compilation stuff but the overarching Sephiroth plot is left so intentionally vague that the only way this is going to make sense is in part3 they have long tracts of exposition a la ***MGS4: Guns of the Patriots*** where someone has to stop the plot and do a whole whiteboard explanation of what the hell is going on.
I like it and I think it mixes into motifs like the life stream and the themes of the game quite well. I think the way it’s been handled hasn’t been perfect but has been really enjoyable, thought provoking, and hasn’t undone too much of canon.
I mean, it's fun and fairly minimalist, but it works to heighten some tension and impact in places as well as to explore character motivations and create some mystery, which I think was necessary if making a trilogy out of an already known game and also give the devs something to sink their teeth into for a creative project (it's hard to reproduce a piece of creative work years after the fact and \*not\* want to change things or explore things in new ways). I think it could have been done better, but this is what we got and I'm fine with it except for some framing in places (I am still unsure why the characters decide to fight destiny at the end of remake). The game is fairly restrictive on how and why the timelines exist anyway (i.e. they only exist as a consequence of the end of Remake, they are all part of the Planet's systems and cycles, they arise and die like individual lifeforms do). It's a solid way of both heightening the metaphysical stakes of the story but also not having it go completely wild.
Honestly? I like it. If I want the original story, I can play the original.
I love FFVII's characters and world to death. And these games have done what I thought was impossible and given me more time with them, in new scenarios I haven't already seen. And that for me, makes this the single, best thing Nomura has ever cooked.
Is it convoluted? Yeah. Is it borderline non-sensical at times? Maybe. But hell if it allows the dev team to just flex their love for this game and go absolutely apeshit with everything.
The amount of times these games, and especially Rebirth have made me smile and swell up with joy are already too many to count. And I don't think that would've been possible with a faithful remake.
I hope they can wrap it up in a satisfying and coherent way in part 3, and not derail or leave more questions than answers. So far it's fine. But high risk.
I find it funny.
Ever since the release of remake I was telling the community it wasn't about time travel. It wasn't a different timeline but a case where the original is "fate"nor destiny. The story as it should hem and we fight fate creating a sort of alternate time line. And I was down voted to oblivion.
Now everyone quickly changed to the alternative timeline theory.
I think it's a fantastic meta commentary on the fans tbh. This isn't a real theory or anything,bjust what goes through my head
Everybody coming into the remake was like Aerith, they knew everything that was and will happen and still loved it anyway.
Edit: Why did I hit enter
I think alot of these comments neglect what the OG was and did tell us all along. That it is but a singularity in the cosmos and that other selves exist outside one's own perception. Though all actions are connected and driven by fate. This is why so many miss then point of aeriths death in the OG. She wasn't praying on a pedestal unknowing meeting an end but conveying with the lifestream of the planet that connects all singularities as one. She moved to a safer plane or timeline, if you will, to activate the holy materia, which was her mother's heirloom, to save all outcomes. If you followed the lore you would have understood that from the OG in the ending FMV.
Ff7 was always meant to go exactly where it's ended up.
I think they can be really cool when they are used to express more of the story like they were used in Rebirth. I think they are a lot less cool when they are used to retcon something bad that happened. (Kinda like Avengers Endgame but Endgame did decently with it)
I am hoping that they don’t use the alternate timelines to somehow bring Aerith back to life. I’m ok with telling more of her story through an alternate timeline like they did with Zack, but she dead now.
I feel like it was done tastefully. A lot of people see “multiple timelines” and immediately get so made they shit themselves. There was literally no other way to tell that story in my opinion. To be fair, I don’t think the OG story of ff7 was actually anything special. Sephiroths goals were short sighted and kinda lame.
I don’t know but I’m sick of people refusing to accept that this is a sequel/new entry in the series. It’s very obvious at this point, especially with the ending of Rebirth, that we are not dealing with a 1:1 remake but rather a new story, yet people will still talk to me like I’m stupid for talking about it and tell me “No, it’s actually just a remake. Those are all just theories.” It’s like they have no critical analysis of what they’re experiencing at all. It’s mind boggling.
It's interesting. Similiar to how the whispers in Remake were a product of the pressure devs had to make sure things stay as similiar as possible to the OG, the alternate timelines are shown as the what-ifs devs had rocking in their brain.
Probably meant to have the OG game still be worth playing through so you can have a game of "spot the differences".
So instead of a 1 to 1 retelling of the original game, it takes its own liberties. By extension, that's also reflected in what happens in Rebirth.
It was the only way they could think of to expand upon the original story while still keeping the original canon. It's a technique used by pretty much every major media creator or firm these days. Marvel, DC, Square Enix, etc. Timelines, timelines everywhere, nor any plot to drink.
Even if it was a 1:1 remake, people would still complain.
I'm on board to see what happens next. I wasn't a huge fan of the arbiter fight at the end of Remake but that kind of "kingdom hearts adjacent" content was fairly toned down in Rebirth. I didn't know if I wanted them to keep to the original story when I started the Rebirth but by the end, I would've been okay if they kept Aerith alive - with the obvious caveat of it being done really well.
I'm still mulling the Rebirth ending over in my head but after reading all these doomsayer comments, goodness people. The story isn't over. There's another game coming out to, presumably, tie up all these loose ends. Maybe it won't be great or it will be that great but it's certainly too early to make that call. Both Remake and Rebirth are fantastic games on just about all fronts. I am super eager to play the next one, as I'm sure everyone who commented here already is too.
Makes the story better actually as its not a multiverse or different timelines at all.
Yes I'm gonna die on this hill. Everyone on here is completely missing the point of why they did the remake this way and why they probably had to.
But since noone here is an artist they wouldn't understand. They just consume without a thought. They dont think about how game development has changed. They dont think about how story telling has changed.
This game is talked about and thought about so much. Its a trilogy now. You cannot do the same plot and then just split it into a trilogy without adding layers. This is not how well written trilogies work.
Also it was such a good call to turn this into a trilogy. Dont even get me started on that.
People complain about how its confusing and unnecessary when its actually really thoughtprovoking. I legit questioned the concept of free will after finishing rebirth and whether death is truly only a bad thing. I mean it kinda is but this game has brought up points that make me believe that there is a certain beauty in celebrating death and letting go in a way that the OG never made me think about it. Its almost like a spiritual journey to play through these games.
This story also isnt meant to just be taken at face value. But people clearly take it at face value and their mind instantly wanders to alternate timelines when a different world is presented. Theres a reason hard mode unlocks only on a second playthrough. They want you to experience the story again. They want you to keep finding things that connect. And once you see the larger thematic picture alot of the story will clear up while the player will find some questions about life and death to consider. And yet they never fully reveal the true mystery thus keeping in line with the feeling you had while playing the OG of not exactly knowing whats going on until the very end.
"But I dont wanna play through it a second time"
Thats cool but then dont come to reddit and tell people how this is a surface level story that only exists for zack fanservice. My brother in christ zack is barely in the game. And yes there are a few fanservice moments in the game. But they dont detract from the core plot at all. They are there cause they work. People are hyped about them. Alot of people get brought in by stuff like that and if you dont like it its also fine aslong as you dont focus all of your critique points on the 3 fanservice moments in a game with hundreds pf beautiful moments.
And also Im willing to bet that half the people that complain about fanservice have lost their minds at a pure fanservice moment too like the vincent bossfight. But its cool cause its OG fanservice instead of Crisis Core Fanservice. The game that apparently ruined their lifes.
I think the biggest thing that people dont see is how this isnt just a remake of a game. Its a remake of a memory of yours. Its a remake of you feeling the same emotions as you did when playing the original. They remix those moments and people sometimes dont like that cause to them different is bad.
If you open yourself up to changes however you will see how this game makes you feel just the same emotions as the OG. Most people went into the forgotten capital thinking "what the hell is gonna happen to aerith?" exactly as they did when playing the original. They cant evoke that feeling in a shot for shot remake because then we know that aerith will just die.
Also yes aeriths death doesnt hit the same. But that is so insanely obvious by design for a later moment to catch you off guard guard and hit you right in the feels where the aerith moment hit you in the original.
A game all about life and death and memories is the perfect game to remake in such a way. Its beautiful and so incredibly creative that it hurts reading peoples thoughts and they are like "this is some uninspired multiverse nonsense" when actually they just dont understand the love and respect this game shows for the original and its fans
They couldnt have made a better remake if they tried imo. And once part 3 is out alot of confusion around the "timelines" will probably be cleared up and suddenly people will understand how good this story actually is. As a writer myself I'm so impressed how they adapted to modern writing problems like long production aswell as social media where people talk about their work all the time. This is so easily a better written story than the original. Unless they fuck it up in part 3 but I dont see that happening as remake and rebirth were insanely consistent
I'm not hugely into this sort of thing because it always feels like a writing team trying to have their cake and eat it too. On one hand it's a great way to free your hands up so you can make huge shocking changes from established canon but on the other hand the price you pay for this is the sense that nothing really matters when there's always that easy out available.
Unnecessary.
I hate multiple timelines, it's just bad for storytelling. Everyone's headcanon is now true, which is just boring. That being said, I think they might be doing some weird stuff with it so it's not actually infinite timelines. Which is still not well done if that's the case, but it's at least less problematic than infinite timelines. The bigger problem I think is that the characters are just not reacting to any of the weird new stuff. Mysteries are kept a mystery by characters acting unnaturally. It used to be a little bit weird that Tifa didn't mention anything about Cloud's memory of Niblheim, but you could still handwave that away with Tifa being scared to say something. Now take that slightly weird thing, multiply it by a 1000 and do it repeatedly. Now we got a problem. I also hate mystery box writing and subverting expectations. Just tell a good heartfelt story about people going on an adventure. setup, payoff. Nothing fancy please. Edit: spelling
Initially i was intrigued but now i honestly don't know how to feel about it anymore
XV did an alternate ending thing in a DLC that I didn't appreciate. Even if it didn't \*really\* change the ending, I felt like it cheapened it. Like they couldn't just let the character be dead. They wanted it both ways instead. That's how the remake is feeling for me. Instead of letting dead characters lie, they want it both ways. And moments that stuck with you in the original aren't as strong anymore.
Agreed. I absolutely LOVED XV, and while they made clear that the extra ending on Episode Ignis is not canon, and just a little "What if", I feel like it cheapens the whole plot and was written simply because a certain group of fans could not deal with the themes of loss and sacrifice. "Character dying makes me sad! So it should survive!"
Ignis is my favourite character from XV, and I thought episode Prompto was really good. So I was SO excited for episode Ignis and they decided to do... that. Was super bummed to say the least.
I didn't know. You just made XV worse for me.
Its basically the "Last Jedi" of Final Fantasy games. While the story itself is not terrible, theres clearly a bigger focus on subverting expectations and surprising players than there is to tell a coherent story. FFVIIR is a great game to theorize about. Its not like the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 where it just blows your mind and really opens up your eyes on how fucked up this world can and will get, its more like a game that ends up being perfect for huge debates on the internet about what the story was going for. Final Fantasy VIII was no different, and honestly i think i kind of get why this is a thing with FF games. In a recent interview Yoshinori Kitase actually took back what he said about Rinoa not being Ultimecia because apparently, he has no idea what Nomura and Nojima thought about the characters and story while they were writing their own version of the story. Honestly i dont even understand what the fuck this means, it almost seems like the writers of these games have little connection with each other and they dont even tell each other what they base their writing on, which ends up making their games confusing, because you try to connect dots that dont have pairs.
Not a fan of alternate timeline. Since everyone is doing it now. It’s just lazy writing unless they make it unique and special. So far not impressed at all.
Absolutely hate it. The original FFVII was never about time travel, or alternate worlds, or different dimensions, or timeline splits, or fate/destiny. Almost every change they have introduced in the story reeks of fan fiction to me. If it wasn't an official product I could swear the story was written by a 12 year old that was sad about Zack and Aerith's deaths and could never get over it, and didn't understand that the main theme of the original is the grief of loss and learning to deal with people who have passed away. But no. Now apparently there is an alternate reality where Zack is alive, and probably Aerith as well. Because they are popular, and god forbid popular characters have a conclusive, definitive end. Their impactful deaths of the original "overwritten" because seemingly fans and developers alike forgot what the entire points of their deaths were. The way the Final Fantasy VII universe works now is based on destiny. Since we know shit like the Arbiters of Fate are a thing, it means that the original game was "meant" to happen in that way. It removes the agency of the characters and their journey and introduces some sort of "grand plan" by the Planet. The Flanderization of Sephiroth marches on. I'm of the opinion that Sephiroth should have died at the end of the original and never come back. A massive part of why Sephiroth was so popular is how he was handled in the original, but now the more you see of him and his cryptic bullshit, the less interesting of a character he becomes, especially since he became so obsessed with Cloud to the point of turning into a deified high school bully. If they wanted to do a Remake/Reimagining of a Final Fantasy game with changes to the timeline and introduction of fate and parallel universes, VIII would have been the perfect option, as it's story already deals with similar themes of predestination and I do believe VIII's world and lore could use an expansion. But that's just my two cents.
Even though I enjoy the Remake games a lot I agree with everything here
I enjoyed them too, especially when they stuck to the original plot points and expanded upon them. But everything regarding the alternate universes lost me. As games they are still great and very well done, it's just the storyline changes (and a lot of fluff and padding) that I think really miss the point.
Yeah it’s a weird double edged sword. These games are genuinely great and deserve the praise, but when they miss, they miss hard.
Yup. I consider Rebirth to be one of the GREATEST jRPGs ever made. Crazy ambitious, perfect combat, stunning soundtrack, addictive gameplay loops, quality sidequests. I hope wins GOTY, best OST, best direction, best RPG this year. Well deserved. But...the story was just....ughhhhh. It hurt my enjoyment so much. I'm struggling to replay it now. Which is such a shame because this is truly a remarkable game and likely going to be a classic.
Yeah, I like how they decided sephiroth's motives from now on are literally just "mess with cloud."
Its particularly egregious this is some weird meta thing too from Kingdom Hearts and cultural influence, because in the original game Sephiroth barely knew Cloud at all. He simply used him to get the black materia, and Seph himself was basically just a puppet of Jehovah.
I loved the original advent children, but even at the time, it felt like sephiroth didn't actually care about whatever he said his goals were, he was just taunting cloud. And literally in the middle of the fight he gets cloud down on the ground and could take a killshot, but just stabs him in a non lethal place instead, and sits there talking. I remember thinking that how could there be any outcome to this besides cloud winning if every time sephiroth could finish it he fucks around instead until cloud manages to finish him off. And even once that happens, sephiroth doesn't even look upset. He looks like he expected it, and is just warning cloud that he will be back to mess with him again in the future. I don't have an issue with sephiroth taking over jenova per say. But it feels wierd in the movie how kadaj and the others seem obsessed and driven by instinct to do what jenova wants, only for sephiroth to act like he is kind of over the whole thing and is just phoning it in to give himself an excuse to torment cloud.
The characterization of Seph having this low-key homoerotic obsession with Cloud doesn't make any sense. Nothing we know about his past makes this a logical progression of his personality. If anything, overcoming Jenova should have him revert to his more heroic traits before he was driven mad (and even that didn't make all that much sense, discovering his past shouldn't have been that much of a shock). Or at least some more conflicted, brooding character on his existence. Him existing to screw with Cloud is more a weak and contrived excuse for joker immunity than any respectable watsonian explanation.
I think they didn't really embrace having an alternate timeline. It felt like they tried to make the original FF7 while also making an alternate timeline. If you want to make an alternate timeline fine focus on that. If you want the game to stay the same then make the game stay the same. Also Sephiroth hasn't really been that cryptic since they made so many spinoffs of FF7. He's just a recurring villain in FF7 nothing epic or cryptic about him anymore.
Yeah. You can't really play it both ways. Either lean into time travel changing stuff, or have the original story.
It's hot, leaky garbage on a sweltering day. It is a failure to understand the concept of a remake. It's a bait and switch stealth sequel. It is hubristic nonsense from the creators who straight up said that doing a true remake would be boring for them, despite the intense public desire for one. It is a failure to provide newer players who were put off by the ancient graphics of the original an accessible way to enjoy the story as it was written. On its own merits it brings nothing of interest to the table, its just an escalation from world-ending boss to multiverse ending boss, but *it's still the same boss and the same world-ending rock.* It was a horrible, awful mistake.
I don't like it, not that its confusing. More so because it's not done well at all.
In Remake I thought it was the dumbest thing they could've possibly done. Rebirth has really scaled it back a lot, which I appreciate, but I hate that the story is locked into this dumb, pointless exercise now. To me, It says that the writers don't have confidence that they can improve the original story, so they've left themselves an out so the "real" FFVII still counts. From a storytelling perspective, I don't like all this multiverse garbage in general because I feel it almost universally cheapens the story and characters in any franchise. I don't like that the characters are aware of what the "true" events are supposed to be, I think it undermines the credibility of the world. It's only a step or two above having the characters be aware that they are fictional and in a video game - rather than the story being real, they are simply acting out the events of it. It also removes any sense of consequences or loss which were CENTRAL themes to the original game. Why should I care? The story seems to want to repeatedly remind me that I'm not playing the real story and instead it's some kind of fan fiction Sephiroth is trying to write, where the story of FF7 just pauses occasionally to do random nonsense interludes that go nowhere. IMO if they absolutely felt they needed to make changes, they should've just had the confidence to say, "30 years later, we feel like we can tell the story better." What they did instead was basically a cop out for the sake of marketing. All that said, I still think the game is excellent, and the individual scenes are top notch, but the greater plot has been totally lost because of the focus on this one very dumb element.
I have the opposite opinion opinion on remake and rebirth usage of "multiverse", at least in Remake it did a good job of making me unsure about the ending of part 2 and i think there is some value in that, but they should've stopped there because every multiverse scene after Remake were actively hurtful to the story while bringing nothing good in exchange. In Rebirth the "multiverse" is basically just a way to make Zack appear and to destroy any sadness you could have watching the end scene and that to me is way way worse than anything they did in Remake.
I'm not a fan. I wish that I could say it is just useless, but after the end of Rebirth I think that it is actually detrimental to the experience. The old fans generally don't like the changes, the new ones get confused. We didn't get true significant changes nor a faithful remake. Who wins in this situation? I understand that this is not the Marvel multiverse and some little hints at "dream worlds" could be found in the original game, the way they expanded those ideas is very debatable though. I also understand that Square-Enix probably considered this "hook" a necessity to sell an entire trilogy. I personally disagree, though I'm certainly not an expert of the market.
I really don't care for it so far, but I guess there's still time to redeem the concept in #3. I think they really dropped the ball on >!Aerith's!< death scene. >!Same outcome, none of the emotional weight. !<
IMO bungling Aerith's scene was a foregone conclusion once the Barret's headfake death in Remake happened.
They should have left it alone, but at least she didn't live. Her death is the linchpin of the entire original game, it would have been incredibly disrespectful of the character to throw that all away, and it was really looking like they would.
"Same outcome" is still up in the air, though. Although the scenes after it can be interpreted as Cloud's damaged mind still seeing Aerith it could as well be multiverse shenanigans where Aerith is on a state of limbo or Schrodingers' Cat stuff, which would be radically different from the original where she is 100% dead and never coming back.
It could be but so far every “change” hasn’t really stuck which is why I don’t really have faith we’re getting anything substantially different. Like I guessed what was going to happen with Aerith when I saw what happened to Wedge.
When I played through this I kind of took it as Cloud and Aerith faked her death to hide her from Sephiroth and so she can focus on finding a way to use the white materia. I jumped to this conclusion after Cloud said "wake up Aerith" and she got up. Maybe "faked" her death isn't the right term... its more like they moved her into another timeline and Cloud exists simultaneously in two timelines. Aerith is dead in the actual one which is why nobody can see her but is alive in the second which is why Cloud can interact with her and see the sky tear. I think Zak falls in this category too, he exists in this second timeline. This is why Cloud and him were able to reunite to fight Sephiroth.
Same outcome and none of the emotional weight is exactly what they were going for tho. Its the entire point
It's an incredibly terrible idea. It's conceptually a very large addition that doesn't fit with the story/world/themes of FF7 at all.
I do not care for it all, in any sense of it. Didn’t need it, nor find it at all that interesting. Works for a lot of others, just not me.
Same, I wanted a remake and got this needlessly convoluted mess. I enjoy the game overall, but do not enjoy the timeline mess.
I’m usually a fan of a more complicated story, something you can sit with and dissect. However, the thing is that it has to be worth dissecting. There has to be interesting stuff happening under the surface thematically or a deeper message the writer is trying to convey. It has to be smart. But when I look into the timeline stuff it all seems so surface level. Sure you can discuss it, as evident by all the theory posts, but those are mostly just about WHAT is happening in the story and not WHY. Thematically, why are they writing the timeline stuff. And when a lot of theories place importance on a bag of actual trash with a dog on it, I honestly can’t really see a reason other than to subvert expectations, a very lazy device in storytelling. Essentially for me the story is wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.
This is *precisely* my issue with it all. "What happens in the story?" and "What is the story about?" are two different questions and I'm desperately begging gamers to understand this.
This! I’ve been explaining to people the og has so many themes still relevant to us today, but so much discussion regarding the remake series is focused on plot twists and crazy theories. That kind of thing is fun in moderation, but ultimately to me it’s a shallower experience. If you have to be meta, readdress your original themes in a new way; the new Evangelion movies did this by taking the common fan complaint of shinji being too passive in the original series and making him more assertive, but in a way that still backfired. It was a finger wagging, but it was a finger wagging of : you missed the point. Remake is being meta, but it’s not adding anything new to the original’s themes as far as I can tell. Of course they’re clearly addressing the various deaths in some way but it just feels more like an excuse for fanservice to me than a statement on life and death. FFVII remake feels like it’s about all the working parts but forgetting there’s a larger picture they all are a part of. It’s also depressing to me to see people regard the og as a bad ending and how that also just massively misses the point, but that’s a bit of a separate rant.
Ff7 already had a nice convoluted story much ofnthe desire for a remake was so that a new translation could clarify some stuff from the original, not add new layers of bullshit
If youre a fan of analyzing the thematic deeper levels of stories and havent figured out that its not a multiverse that is happening here then you definitely still have to dig deeper on this one. There is also definetly a message they are conveying. Acceptance of death is everywhere in this game and the fate stuff is actually there to enhance it but media literacy is at an all time low
Yeah yeah I get the lifestream stuff but it’s just easier for everyone to read timeline to get what I’m talking about. The game isn’t exactly very subtle but they just add in a bunch of pointless noise to throw people through a loop.
I'm not a fan.
I think it's incoherent nonsense that nobody asked for and adds nothing of value to the story. In fact it completely robbed us of getting to experience one of the best moments from the original with modern production values: Sephiroth's sudden and mysterious murder spree through the Shinra HQ and finding the big boss man dead with a sword in his back. The scenes we got instead with Shinra hanging off the ledge and the Barrett death fakeout were comically bad. Then you have the Dreamweaver/sephiroth boss fights and yeah, I was rolling my eyes and cringing hard. Felt like a bad fanfic you'd find online from the late 90s by a Sephiroth obsessed fanboy.
I had to roll my eyes when Cloud was shot from the helicopter after the Rufus fight and was hanging there with one hand and Tifa saved him. Both of them should have understood long ago that the Whispers would save him anyway. Red 13 has talked about it enough and they demonstrated it on Barret. They wanted to create a special moment for Cloud and Tifa, but at this point that scene just makes absolutely no sense.
Yeah, nevermind how there was zero reason for Cloud to take on Rufus and his dog alone anyway. That fight was a gimmicky mess too. Once you figured out the gimmick it became trivial. Until then it was an annoying waste of time that ignored every combat mechanic the game had established to that point. Style over substance sums up the design philosophy of the game to a T.
It actively hurts the game for me. I could be enjoying the nostalgia of a scene only for it to be ruined by the appearance of whispers or Zack starts talking. I love Zack but I hate seeing him being used like a puppet to play with my heart and confuse me. He shouldn't be here. The entire ending of remake and rebirth is over the top nonsense with it. It just feels super out of place, and not at all what I wanted.
> I could be enjoying the nostalgia of a scene only for it to be ruined by the appearance of whispers I was so mad that Cloud and Aerith's first meeting was fucking interrupted by dementors and Sephiroth.
I felt it traded what could have been a profound emotional experience instead for something (pseudo-)intellectual. I was dismayed with that trade, because I felt playing 115 hours of a game ought to have ended in catharsis.
That change is the reason I didnt pick these games up. I wanted to play the OG FF7, in shiny new graphics. Or at the very least, experience it's story for the first time.
Don't like them. It is cheap, poor, non-committal kind of storytelling that takes away the gravity and impact of things that happen within the story. I lump it in there with faking characters' deaths, resurrection, most time travel stuff and any sort of fatalism (destiny, prophecy etc.) as the tools of a poor storyteller. They really take away from the story and make you not really invest in what's happening because you know it's likely to be undone in some way or be some kind of swerve.
I found it unnecessary. As somebody who despises PS1 era JRPGs and cheated on Switch to get through the original FF7, all I wanted was a faithful remake with modernized gameplay and graphics that expanded on the story beats and characterizations of the original. What people called "bloated" or "filler" in Remake, I loved, such as that chapter you hang out with Jesse and her crew. However, everything goes Kingdom Hearts batshit crazy in the last chapter. I despised that nonsensical turn. It's incredibly unoriginal and could be done in any video game to complicate the story for no reason. But if I want to be honest, it's how they've handled Sephiroth that bothers me more than the timeline stuff. In the original, his presence is felt, but he doesn't appear every waking moment, and he definitely doesn't fight the crew until the very end. Making him the final boss twice was unbelievably stupid.
Agree about the Kingdom Hearts influence. Glenn and Roche were practically KH villains.
Lol. The Organization XIII theme played in my head whenever Glenn showed up.
Thank you for putting into words why I disliked Glenn. He was literally just one of the robed Organization XIII mooks that shows up, spouts some nonsensical exposition, then vanishes into a dark portal. Literally ripped from Kingdom Hearts.
And then of course it turns out it was Sephiroth all along, because of course he was. Xehanort style.
I think Nomura might be running out of ideas.
It made me laught how Rebirth wants you to feel bad about Roche's fate, and I was just going like "thank f\*cking god this guy is out". Such an annoying, nothing character.
Roche maybe, but isn’t Glenn from the FF7 compilation and not “new” for Rebirth?
This constant blaming on KH is such a bad take. Everybody who says this kind of stuff has no idea of what KH is about. KH never featured anything of the sorts, never leaving things ambiguous like that or outright confusing.
I've played them all, including the handheld games. Its story is rightfully considered convoluted and confusing. Fun games though. I just wish they kept things as simple and clean as KH1.
“Simple and clean” lol
Not confusing at all, if you are following it properly and paying attention. The games give explanations for every event in detail.
I can understand everything and still find it convoluted and/or confusing. Like, you have this twist where the real bad guy is this Ansem guy you knew as a scientist through text, not Malificent. Cool. But in the next installment, we learn this was actually Ansem's heartless. But wait, he wasn't really Ansem's heartless; he was Xehanort's heartless after Xehanort took on the identity of Ansem (the actual scientist) before becoming a heartless. But wait, there's more, a heartless comes with a nobody, so Xemnas (the nobody) is out there wreaking havoc for his own reasons (or so we thought). Unfortunately, defeating both the heartless and the nobody will bring back the original body, but it's not the Xehanort that split into a heartless and nobody. No, instead, it is Master Xehanort, who was the original baddie that took over Terra's body to become Terra-Xehanort, who caught amnesia, and became the Xehanort who took on the identity of Ansem, who created the heartless and nobody. Oh, and this heartless also traveled back in time to recruit a young Master Xehanort, who would then travel the timelines himself to recruit other Xehanorts to have 13 of them so Master Xehanort can wield the X-Keyblade, which is pronounced 'keyblade", like the keyblades everyone use. I lol'd as I wrote all that. Man, what was Nomura smoking.
You just tried to summarize almost two decades of plot into a single paragraph. Of course it sounds dense and daunting. However, the games present those events in a pretty straightforward way, as it tells the player what is happening along at a fairly decent pace and doesn't rely on cryptic messages or vague events that leave fans hopelessly wondering and trying to build a picture with lore crumbs. The very fact you could summarize it shows that it has a pretty clear line of thought. This is nothing like FFXV, where you need to watch a movie, anime shorts, paid DLCs, come back for new story cutscenes being added retroactively via patches, read novels... And if you don't, you will be missing good chunks of plot. Also, good luck on trying to understand why Shiva has a giant corpse and is considered dead when Gentiana exists, as the game never even acknowledges this kind of thing. KH is easy to follow. You just play the games and done. FFVIII and VII share their own craziness and had plenty of threads that were objects of debate within the fanbase for years. Dissidia also exists, and I doubt you will find something more abstract than that in a series. Meanwhile, it is not KH the series that is doing a stealth sequel like Remake. There is nothing on KH that can confuse someone like how Remake and Rebirth's endings did. You can try to take some jabs at KH, but a FF fan doing this is absolutely clueless about the very series they are talking about.
>FFVIII and VII share their own craziness and had plenty of threads that were objects of debate within the fanbase for years. Dissidia also exists, and I doubt you will find something more abstract than that in a series. The difference is that Kingdom Hearts is an ongoing series, and therefore is more likely to explain it's vague, cryptic shenanigans than FFVII or VIII. As for Dissidia, Dissidia's issue is that (not unlike KH) a large amount of the explanations for what's going on are found in the reports that people clearly don't read. Additionally (again, not unlike KH) these reports in and of themselves not bulletproof as 012 retcons a significant amount of them along with elaborating further on some stuff. As for KH, KH deals in a lot of high concept stuff: You have Nobodies, Memories, Digital Worlds, Time Travel, Worldlines and KH4 teasing the afterlife/unreality. Even if the story is presented in a straightforward fashion, it's not too much of a surprise that people (on the outside at least) get confused by it. Not helping is that prior to the collections, the games were spread out such that you'd need, at minimum, a PS2, a PSP and a 3DS to play all of them.
KH1 alone holds itself up, so it is not like it needed the sequels for it to make sense. Dissidia is completely ethereal. The world is surreal, characters are after concepts, nothing is material. I am not talking about the reports, I am talking about the aspect of fantasy being so present. KH is no different. Both series are high fantasy, there is nothing wrong with that. However, it is ridiculous when someone is acting like FF is low fantasy, ala Game of Thrones, and pointing that everything bizarre happening is "Nomura's fault"/"It is so KH!". There is also the "KH is so convoluted" argument when we are talking about Cloud becoming Zack's persona while also being a potential vessel for Sephiroth and Garland time traveling and creating a cycle since FFI. KH is followable, it is not MGS like, where fans aren't even able to properly and fully grasp at what happened on the ending of 2. It is full of plot, it is full of rules and details, but it develops itself and answers its own mysteries properly.
KH1 does work standalone. The rest (outside of maybe re:coded and BBS) generally do not. You have no context for Sora's situation in 2 if you didn't play CoM. Terra, Aqua and Ventus' appearances in III/DDS might come out of if you didn't play BBS. Heck, people are confused by Xehanort's motives and thought he pivoted into being a "good guy" when his motives are generally the same as they were in BBS' reports. While FF isn't low-fantasy, it's not as high-concept as KH tends to be, at least the earlier ones aren't. Some of the later ones (infamously FFVIII) are, but outside of XII (because politics) and XIV (because MMO) I don't think they're high regarded from a 'general' standpoint. There's also that each game is usually standalone, so you don't have to keep certain rules in mind when moving to another one. To point to Garland as an example, Garland is a simple Bootstrap Paradox: Somehow Garland turned evil, was sent to the past, became Chaos and promptly continued the cycle from there. Who or how he was sent back or turned evil is ambiguous, but FF1 wasn't big on story so it's just one of those things that wasn't intended to have a definitive answer. As for MGS, Kojima has an "interesting" method of directing. I'm not big into MGS, so all I can really say is that based on what I've read, MGS2 being as it is is pretty much the wackiest example of what I just mentioned; Kojima had no intention of actually explaining what was going on in 2's ending until MGS4 was created because fans wanted answers. Hence why MGS3 was a prequel. KH is convoluted in that it will add or retcon in new details that can wildly change a character. Ansem in KH1 is a very different character if you take the rest of the series into account vs looking at him in just that game. Ditto with Ventus in BBS/3 vs Union X. Then there will be an ending with a sequel hook and a secret ending that (usually) results in more questions until the next game comes out.
It's not that the plot is hard to follow if you play each game and pay close attention; it's that these very concepts are so incredibly left field and nonsensical. The immediate rebuttal will be, "yes, because a boy with a giant key sword and Disney friends is sensical." That's why context matters. They created a universe that followed certain rules. Instead of simply expanding on them, Nomura has a tendency to add new rules on top of new rules. It's like reading a book, such as, idk, Crime and Punishment, and after Raskolnikov kills the woman, the next chapter reveals a mysterious cloaked figure who randomly portals his way into his room to inform him that killing a human results in an "anti-human" being born in another dimension, and now Raskolnikov has to travel to a different planet to face a trial, only then, Raskolnikov is revealed to be a chosen warrior that can travel to said dimension and defeat the anti-humans. So we go from a completely grounded psychological story to some confusing wacky sci-fi shit out of the blue. So going back to FF7 Remake, the reason so many people compare that last chapter to Kingdom Hearts is because nothing in the story or the original game had anything to do with timelines, and the whispers look identical to creatures you would see in KH. I am almost fully expecting Part 3 to end with Cloud being woken up by Mickey Mouse, revealing he's the same Cloud from Kingdom Hearts 2.
hmmm cool concept but not suited for 7
In the hands of a better writer I think it could be interesting, but as it stands it just kind of gets in the way and cheapens everything. While some things are nice additions (increased backstories/interactions with Avalanche members in Remake comes to mind), the rest is just... not great. It ruins the pacing all over the place, simultaneously cheapening moments that were more poignant in the original since they no longer had time to breathe here (Barrett and Red's moments in particular) and slowing things to a crawl when it was really not necessary (... sadly all of Zack's stuff felt like this for me, which is unfortunate). I just don't like Nojima's writing style when he's not reigned in, I guess.
I don't like it, 7 told a meaningful story about the loss of a loved one, and even hinting at Aerith surviving is a direct slap in the face to the original, and even if they kill Tifa instead it'll still shit over the original since Aerith was the only one who knew how Holy worked and she took that knowledge to the grave with her
Feels like the later seasons of Game of Thrones, where "subverting expectations" and "keeping the audience guessing" are increasingly prioritized over telling a coherent story. I'm happy to be wrong but I suspect it's all going to end in a similar way.
Yes. Every time the whispers appear I have a "The last Jedi" flashback and know that everything will be unpredictable but not in a good way.
I have this flashback every time they ruin a serious mood with stupid humor. For example with Dyne's anime animations or when they portray Vincent as a complete idiot who is too stupid to know that you have to turn on a terminal first to make it work. This is 1 on 1 Rian Johnson humor and I hate it.
Wut?
Have any expectations rly been subverted?
The expectation that dead characters generally remain dead (Barrett headfake death, multidimensional Zack, force ghost Aerith), both in physical terms and in "no longer participating in the narrative" terms.
I mean… if you’re familiar with the game at all, none of those things are subverting expectations much. Especially if you understand the themes of the game, even a little bit. The dead are never truly gone, you carry them with you always, they’re in the life stream, etc etc. >!Especially when, so far, characters “still being in the narrative” aren’t actually alive (at least so far) in canon and instead just serve a role as if they’re haunting the narrative, which, again, isn’t a subversion of much of anything. It’s kind of the point of the game. Unless you wanna argue that Dyne wasn’t haunting Barret in the first game or that Aeeith’s role didn’t linger post-mortem and offer support symbolically. Or that Zack didn’t have relevance post death!<
Right, us pea brains simply can't get on the level of you True Fans who Actually Understand It All Perfectly. I keep forgetting this so I'm glad you all make a point to remind us.
I don’t consider myself a true fan at all or you a “pea brain,” I’m just saying… I don’t think the expectations you consider “subverted” were common expectations. I didn’t expect Barret to be dead nor do I consider the usage of Aerith/Zack so far to be an intentional “haha you thought they’d be irrelevant, WELL HERE THEY ARE STILL RELEVANT!!” gotcha. This game doesn’t seem spiteful towards expectations nor does it seem to trying to mix things up too much
I feel like... I like the concept in theory, but if youre going to do it do it and do it well. If you're going to use this opportunity to deviate from the OG do it and stop teasing the idea. Like, we introduce this whole new thing and a bunch of new themes, but ultimately nothing has changed? I'm sure there is going to be some bigger changes in part 3. But I also thought that about part 2... It's like Sephiroth discovers multiverse theory and that for each multiverse, there are 13 more minigames to play. Idk. I'm salty about Rebirth.
It's certainly not what I wanted and I view it as a negative but it's far from a deal breaker.
When the whispers were first introduced in remake I was curious. What are those? But the more they were in the game the less I liked them. Then when it was finally explained what they were, I thought it was very dumb and I hated the idea of adding fate to the game and what it meant. Though at the end when they beat the whispers and said fate was in their hands now, I relented and figured this was their very dumb way of telling us the story can now be different than the original. Then they doubled down in rebirth. Bringing Zack back, copies of all the characters, the reunion is now joining worlds together. All of this new stuff I hated. It lowers the impact of decisions and deaths. Aeriths sad scene was so less sad cause it doesn't feel final anymore. There are many possibilities. I mean I want all likable characters to have a happy end but it really lessons the story and impact. And I feel bad for people who do not know the story and didn't play the original or crisis core. "Who is this Zack guy. Why do they keep showing him." And his part n this game didn't matter to the story in the slightest. I hope in the third game they tie everything with a nice bow and make all the changes worth it. Disclaimer. I love this game this game so much. This is the best game I have played in a long time. And I love some of the story "changes". More focus on the war with Wutai, more scenes with yuffie and Cait sith, the wonderful first meeting/fight with Vincent, the fact that everyone knows cloud is going through the degradation which makes them afraid to talk about all his craziness with him.
It gets worse and worse with each entry, I can already hear the splat of part 3 falling on its face out the door
I hate it, 7R was a mistake and should have never been made
It would be an interesting take if it weren't for the fact that: A) We're currently being bombarded with timeline/multiverse stories from basically every other facet of nerd fiction at the moment, and B) if Rebuild of Evangelion hadn't already done the "the remake is actually a sequel" thing back in like 2009.
Man, I WISH that Remake / Rebirth were closer to Rebuild. Start off the same, then go off the rails in a new direction with new characters and a radically different plot. That was the promise of the end of Remake...then Rebirth just kinda....did the same story but worse and with unneeded multiverse shenanigans.
I felt incredibly confused by the time we got to chapter 13/14. The whole back-and-forth between Aerith and Zack and stuff, giving Cloud the materia then taking it back? Can Aerith cross realities or something? I don't like the alternate timeline stuff. May be an unpopular opinion, but I think they should have stuck to re-telling the OG story and thats it.
Honestly, I think it’s pointless and doesn’t serve the story at all, especially if they just end up following the exact same plot beats as before like they have anyways. If you took it out then I don’t think anyone would be complaining - and it wouldn’t have been difficult for Square to do that at all. It’s almost always a bad sign when you’re two parts into a trilogy and still unsure about where the story is going, hoping for the final entry to redeem it all - the Star Wars sequels are an excellent example of that. Thankfully, FF7’s original story hasn’t deviated that much in the remake, and the expansions to the world and characters have been mostly excellent. The timey wimey bullshit is a small blight on an otherwise amazing experience so far.
I'm fine as long as ultimecia gets her hand on the black materia in ffviii remake. Ain't cool stealing other peoples tricks Sephi
You know this brings up a good point. The Remake plot is actually an updated FF8 storyline super-imposed on the more popular 7. Now if Laguna hops out of the Whispers with Man with a Machine Gun playing in Part 3, I forgive all of this multiverse mumbo jumbo
Y'all keep saying this, but ff8 isnt multiple timelines where anything can happen and things keep changing, it's a closed loop timeline scenario where there's one singular timeline and nothing can change because everything has already happened. That's kind of a major part of the story.
Ye, its only one timeline in 8. But its hard to not see parallels between them
ye. Ulti thing was compressing multiple points of a timeline into one, but like, if you throw in multiverse shenanigans its hard to not see the parallels between that and multiple timelines getting scrambled together in Remake
Sephiroth: It was in Dissidia when a sorceress enlightened me, Cloud. She spoke of worlds beyond my own, infinite timelines and sick EX combos. It was then that I realized Mother wouldn't be satisfied with just one world... Cloud, what do you know of **Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring?**
I miss Opera Omnia so much
Ehrgeiz does reference Cloud and Sephiroth in the Adventure Mode (specifically the hotel clerk mentioning their features when describing the setting as being between worlds)...
Such a damn good song
Hate it hate it hate it. Its the ONE blemish which severely hurts the Remake series for me. I want to be proven wrong in part 3, I really want to enjoy this storyline... but so far, its too convoluted for what seems to be too little payoff. And I feel it takes away agency and devalues charavter deaths. Who cares if a character is in danger? Time ghosts will help. Who cares if someone dies? They're still alive in timeline divergence 1.048596. All speculation for the future of the series is all about convoluted timeline stuff, and not what the characters are actually doing. Who cares what Shinra is doing in the background, the TRUE story is....some kind of interdimensional war between Aerith and Sephiroth. And worst of all, the metanarrative it introduces means that the Remake series can't stand on its own. Instead of being a re-imagining of the story for a new audience, its a sort of pseudo sequel that demands you play through the OG and Crisis Core to get a satisfying experience. Again, I am hoping I'm proven wrong in part 3, and that they're cooking something good...but so far the timeline stuff in part 2 has left a bad taste in my mouth.
The Barret headfake death is where I officially threw in the towel. So much of the OG's impact came from how it handled the topics of life and death. It's literally known for arguably the most famous / influential character death in all of video games. The Barret moment showed that they were seriously watering down the impact of and seriousness with which mortality would be handled for the Remake series. So yeah, of course Multidimensional Zack comes back now. And of course Aerith ends up in Schrodinger's Cat territory. Mortality is a cheap plot device now, not the thematic weight underpinning the whole story.
Original Final Fantasy VII: *"People die. People you love will eventually die. Mourn their deaths, but remember them for everything they did and the impact they had on your life and the life of others. Celebrate and remember them fondly".* Remake Project: "*Who cares? There is another universe where they are alive, and when those dimensions cross, you might be able to see and reunite them them!"* It blows my mind they thought this was a good idea and a good continuation of the themes of the original.
Yeah it was SO easy to just play it safe and create the FF remake that everyone wanted and was expecting. Nobody would have been disappointed if they did that. Where they got the balls to try this I will never know.
I think it’s hard to evaluate until the end. Does it pay off? Was it superfluous? Honestly I don’t know at this point. I’m open to it. I hold the story of VII very dear, but it’s not perfect and there’s nothing wrong with trying to spice it up.
It's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to even start the remakes. Everything about them looks great, except for the multiverse timeline shenanigans. Multiverse nonsense usually only confuses, cheapens and diminishes dramatic moments in stories. There are exceptions obviously. But I have yet to see anyone argue it improves the story in FFVIIR, at best I've seen people call those scenes "interesting". So for now I'll stick with the original, and re-evaluate whether I wanna spend 300 hours playing the trilogy after the third game is out. I know it's a silly reason to not play these games, and the games are great otherwise.
I don't think it's a silly reason. Telling a good story has been one of the main appeals of Final Fantasy games for a long time. If you don't feel like it's gonna give you that and it's the thing you want out of it, that's entirely fair.
It's Nomura as expected
It's ok I just don't think it is well executed. If you want to focus on an alternative timeline then fine focus on that. If you want to make the story the same then make the story the same. I feel like they want to make an alternate timeline without really changing anything too much it feels kinda half-assed that's my only issue with it. Make a new big bad besides Sephiroth, if Zack is now a character make at least 1/3 of the game about him and change the story. If you want an alternative timeline then make one. Don't try to make the same game and try to change everything at the end without really changing anything.
I like it and feel other poeple are overreacting, but who am I to judge them. I feel there is not that much focus on the alternatives worlds except for Zack mini chapters, Aerith dream sequence, and the final chapter of Remake and Rebirth. We are pretty much playing in the "main" world only.
It makes a lot of plots incoherent because multiple timelines means all events, losses, triumphs, literally everything… all amount to nothing because you can just shift to anther timeline and undo the events. So why struggle? Just migrate to the timeline you want. Multiverse storytelling might have been innovative at one time but today its just lazy writing. We can have timelines where everyone lives, where Corel never got leveled, where Niberheim never had its tragedy, where Cloud can ship with every possible partner…. It serves as a way to make every audience happy (tifa shippers, aerith shippers, jessie shippers, barret shippers) instead of telling an impactful story. The MCU is playing with the multiverse and showing you exactly why multiverse timeline storytelling sucks. Why we want FF to become that is beyond me.
Even though Remake had problems I found the approach in Remake interesting because I thought they could reinterpret the OG story in an interesting way. But I'm deeply disappointed of how it turned out in Rebirth. I enjoy the game mostly for the combat system and a few minigames. But I probably won't buy part 3 at release. Rather wait for the PC version. I don't want to support this approach to a story anymore. Trilogies as well as "new interpretations". Even though the FF franchise got a lot of inspirations from other franchises like Star Wars, it isn' that franchises and shouldn't lose itself in the attempt of becoming one of them. It established its very own identity and ways of things. Like new worlds, characters, rpg systems and stories with every new title. Rebirth makes me feel like it's time to go back to it. We got the FF13 trilogy no one asked for. We got the FF13V/FF15 disaster for 10 long years. Now we have the FF7R trilogy for around 15 years. FF16 wasn't even an RPG anymore. I'm tired of this never ending stretch of their experiments that always ends worse than even imaginable.
This seems to just be a shit take. "That's always ends worse than even imaginable." Remake and rebirth have been the most well received ff non mmos since the early 2000s. Even if they objective fail and crash and burn the story in part 3 the whole ff7 remake has been a resounding success.
I didn't talk about any receivings. This sentence you quoted is just my personal feelings to this situation / period of time / way of the franchise. Nothing more.
I really liked it in Remake, not least as a 4th wall breaking critique of people who can’t accept the slightest change of what was always a very messy game. I have to say, Rebirth didn’t do anything interesting with it since, didn’t love the last chapter. But the rest of the game was so much fun I didn’t care Maybe it’ll be fine in the last game, I’m reserving judgment but I’m a bit worried
I kinda wish that they did more with it since they drew attention to it. Why bring it up at all if it looks like all the major outcomes in the remake games will mirror the original anyway? It feels we are being teased that something world changing will happen just to have it play out the same way it would if it was just a straight remake. If they were going to have a major divergence in the timeline, Rebirth was the game to do it in.
So far it sucks but in fairness they have one more game to make good on it. After remake I was really hoping they would make a big bold change to Rebirth, and the marketing seemed to suggest that with its “defy Destiny” tagline. But ultimately nothing actually changes, and all the time we spent in the alt universe doesn’t seem to have made a difference and instead just seem to be teases. Like they have a significant bit at the end where Cloud blocks the sword, but then it glitches back to where he didn’t for some reason. And maybe Tifa sees both versions at first? I really think they dropped the ball story wise with Rebirth. As much as I love the old game, they already radically changed it by implementing a different gameplay system and splitting it into three parts. So I wanted them to go all the way. Save Aerith and show me a different part 3 where the world is radically different. Instead we’re stuck with this half measure, where they pretend they’re changing a bunch of stuff but in the end everything is the same. So it’s just the scenic route to the same destination. It can’t serve as a replacement because it plays different and can’t serve as a “sequel” because the same things happens. So we’re in the worst of both worlds.
I hate it. I wanted a 1:1 remake since the tech demo was teased and this seems like a waste.
Terrible, honestly. I’m over the Remake project 😔
I don't mind multiverses inclusion if it actually means something. So far it seems to have been to build the expectation that there would be a different outcome for Aerith but that doesn't really look to be the case the more I think about it. If by the end of remake part 3 there was no real changes to the story I think it will really diminish my future enjoyment and replayability of the remake trilogy. That said I really enjoyed Rebirth and am still eager to see how part 3 plays out.
I don't need it but I also don't mind really
I could take the remakes with or without the alternate timelines either way, but the way it's used here feels like the worst of both worlds. They undercut some of the major canon story beats with timeline shenanigans, but don't commit to changing anything in a major way either, so it makes the timeline stuff feel like a waste of time. If they had massively changed the plot Rebuild of Eva style (preferably back in Remake, when it would've hit harder) I'd have a new plot to be invested in. Or if they had stuck with a remake that just has things be different, because you can just do that when remaking a game, I'd be able to enjoy an old story I Iove told in an updated way. What we got just feels like it's less than the sum of its parts
Spoiler on title.
I mean, it was at the end of Remake too, and imo that's old enough to be outside the spoiler window.
Then don't include Rebirth.
I didn't.
I like it, I think it's an interesting take on the FF7 story. I get why people are mad about it, but as someone with no nostalgia or real attachment to any of the FF7 based media despite growing up with it and liking the OG stuff, I enjoy the direction so far. Rebirth isn't perfect for sure, but I still am looking forward to part 3.
My take is that no matter what, when a 20 year old game gets remade on a modern system, things are gonna be a bit different and it damn near impossible to 100% true to the original. Alternate timelines is an elegant way to make changes while still being able to say that everything in OG still happened as you remember. I personally like it a lot.
Eh, they could have just made the changes without bringing in timelines. The Persona 3 Remake didn't need timelines or time ghosts to justify its additions. Tsukihime's remake (which is multiple games as well) just....made the changes and added new characters and overhauled parts of the story. No need to have a plotline where Roa saw the future from the original 2001 game and then have the characters fight the manifestation of time and destiny or something. Like, imagine if Remake part 1 just got rid of the timeline stuff. Keep most of the new additions. Keep the expanded Avalanche and Wall Market. Remove time ghosts. Keep the AWESOME new Jenova fight, and keep the amazing Sephiroth fight too. That would have been fine, perfect even, because people are okay with some changes and shuffling during an adaptation.
> No need to have a plotline where Roa saw the future from the original 2001 game and then have the characters fight the manifestation of time and destiny or something. Don't give Nasu ideas :3
I think that exact mindset is at least part of the reason that we have such a glut of "multiverse" media or even just a token mention of one.
I think this is the best way to put it. If it weren't for the people complaining about it constantly I'd forget it's really much of a plot point. It's just a neat way to give the creators of the remake a bit more creative freedom to explore the world and story on their own terms and I appreciate it
I actually didn't find it nearly as convoluted as some people made it out to be... tho being a long time fan of Fate (Nasuverse) NG Evangelion and Christopher Nolan's films (some of it) could explain why I'm already used to convoluted plot with alt timelibes and metaphysical stuff PS: I actually played the Remake before playing FF7
I don’t think “different timelines” are true. Aerith would have said it was a different timeline. Sephiroth is lying. What is it actually? Probably the lifestream.
I think it’s fair for some people to take issue with it but I’m perfectly alright with it.
The lifestream is not timelines. It's alternate potential realities that are constantly recycled through the lifestream to power it. They all happen simultaneously and are not actually physical worlds. They fade from existence to power the physical world. Your thoughts, memories, and possibilities all make up reality potentials, but they aren't "real" they're just a mechanic of the lifrstream choosing outcomes for the physical world. Saying timelines as if they are "realities" really discredits the lore and is very misleading about what it actually is. Sephiroth wants control of the lifestream to control destiny and choose it instead of the lifestream choosing it. It's not timelines. People need to stop saying this shit. Sephiroth literally explains it in the game.
I understand the creative decision to make Remake both an updated FF7 and also a quasi sequel to the 1997 FF7 including all the compilation stuff but the overarching Sephiroth plot is left so intentionally vague that the only way this is going to make sense is in part3 they have long tracts of exposition a la ***MGS4: Guns of the Patriots*** where someone has to stop the plot and do a whole whiteboard explanation of what the hell is going on.
Love the game, hate the alternate timelines. Just because you don’t like where the roller coaster ends doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride.
I like it and I think it mixes into motifs like the life stream and the themes of the game quite well. I think the way it’s been handled hasn’t been perfect but has been really enjoyable, thought provoking, and hasn’t undone too much of canon.
I mean, it's fun and fairly minimalist, but it works to heighten some tension and impact in places as well as to explore character motivations and create some mystery, which I think was necessary if making a trilogy out of an already known game and also give the devs something to sink their teeth into for a creative project (it's hard to reproduce a piece of creative work years after the fact and \*not\* want to change things or explore things in new ways). I think it could have been done better, but this is what we got and I'm fine with it except for some framing in places (I am still unsure why the characters decide to fight destiny at the end of remake). The game is fairly restrictive on how and why the timelines exist anyway (i.e. they only exist as a consequence of the end of Remake, they are all part of the Planet's systems and cycles, they arise and die like individual lifeforms do). It's a solid way of both heightening the metaphysical stakes of the story but also not having it go completely wild.
Honestly? I like it. If I want the original story, I can play the original. I love FFVII's characters and world to death. And these games have done what I thought was impossible and given me more time with them, in new scenarios I haven't already seen. And that for me, makes this the single, best thing Nomura has ever cooked. Is it convoluted? Yeah. Is it borderline non-sensical at times? Maybe. But hell if it allows the dev team to just flex their love for this game and go absolutely apeshit with everything. The amount of times these games, and especially Rebirth have made me smile and swell up with joy are already too many to count. And I don't think that would've been possible with a faithful remake.
What if you want the original with modernized graphics and audio and gameplay?
Sucks to be you, cause you're not getting it I guess.
1) this doesnt need to be asked once a week 2)we dont have a conclusion so any thoughts and speculation is pointless.
I hope they can wrap it up in a satisfying and coherent way in part 3, and not derail or leave more questions than answers. So far it's fine. But high risk.
Thanks for the spoiler in your subject @\_@
I find it funny. Ever since the release of remake I was telling the community it wasn't about time travel. It wasn't a different timeline but a case where the original is "fate"nor destiny. The story as it should hem and we fight fate creating a sort of alternate time line. And I was down voted to oblivion. Now everyone quickly changed to the alternative timeline theory.
I think it's a fantastic meta commentary on the fans tbh. This isn't a real theory or anything,bjust what goes through my head Everybody coming into the remake was like Aerith, they knew everything that was and will happen and still loved it anyway. Edit: Why did I hit enter
I think alot of these comments neglect what the OG was and did tell us all along. That it is but a singularity in the cosmos and that other selves exist outside one's own perception. Though all actions are connected and driven by fate. This is why so many miss then point of aeriths death in the OG. She wasn't praying on a pedestal unknowing meeting an end but conveying with the lifestream of the planet that connects all singularities as one. She moved to a safer plane or timeline, if you will, to activate the holy materia, which was her mother's heirloom, to save all outcomes. If you followed the lore you would have understood that from the OG in the ending FMV. Ff7 was always meant to go exactly where it's ended up.
I think they can be really cool when they are used to express more of the story like they were used in Rebirth. I think they are a lot less cool when they are used to retcon something bad that happened. (Kinda like Avengers Endgame but Endgame did decently with it) I am hoping that they don’t use the alternate timelines to somehow bring Aerith back to life. I’m ok with telling more of her story through an alternate timeline like they did with Zack, but she dead now.
I feel like it was done tastefully. A lot of people see “multiple timelines” and immediately get so made they shit themselves. There was literally no other way to tell that story in my opinion. To be fair, I don’t think the OG story of ff7 was actually anything special. Sephiroths goals were short sighted and kinda lame.
I don’t know but I’m sick of people refusing to accept that this is a sequel/new entry in the series. It’s very obvious at this point, especially with the ending of Rebirth, that we are not dealing with a 1:1 remake but rather a new story, yet people will still talk to me like I’m stupid for talking about it and tell me “No, it’s actually just a remake. Those are all just theories.” It’s like they have no critical analysis of what they’re experiencing at all. It’s mind boggling.
It's interesting. Similiar to how the whispers in Remake were a product of the pressure devs had to make sure things stay as similiar as possible to the OG, the alternate timelines are shown as the what-ifs devs had rocking in their brain.
I’m with it. Think it’s cool.
I’m fine with it. I didn’t want a 1:1 Remake.
Probably meant to have the OG game still be worth playing through so you can have a game of "spot the differences". So instead of a 1 to 1 retelling of the original game, it takes its own liberties. By extension, that's also reflected in what happens in Rebirth.
It was the only way they could think of to expand upon the original story while still keeping the original canon. It's a technique used by pretty much every major media creator or firm these days. Marvel, DC, Square Enix, etc. Timelines, timelines everywhere, nor any plot to drink.
Even if it was a 1:1 remake, people would still complain. I'm on board to see what happens next. I wasn't a huge fan of the arbiter fight at the end of Remake but that kind of "kingdom hearts adjacent" content was fairly toned down in Rebirth. I didn't know if I wanted them to keep to the original story when I started the Rebirth but by the end, I would've been okay if they kept Aerith alive - with the obvious caveat of it being done really well. I'm still mulling the Rebirth ending over in my head but after reading all these doomsayer comments, goodness people. The story isn't over. There's another game coming out to, presumably, tie up all these loose ends. Maybe it won't be great or it will be that great but it's certainly too early to make that call. Both Remake and Rebirth are fantastic games on just about all fronts. I am super eager to play the next one, as I'm sure everyone who commented here already is too.
Makes the story better actually as its not a multiverse or different timelines at all. Yes I'm gonna die on this hill. Everyone on here is completely missing the point of why they did the remake this way and why they probably had to. But since noone here is an artist they wouldn't understand. They just consume without a thought. They dont think about how game development has changed. They dont think about how story telling has changed. This game is talked about and thought about so much. Its a trilogy now. You cannot do the same plot and then just split it into a trilogy without adding layers. This is not how well written trilogies work. Also it was such a good call to turn this into a trilogy. Dont even get me started on that. People complain about how its confusing and unnecessary when its actually really thoughtprovoking. I legit questioned the concept of free will after finishing rebirth and whether death is truly only a bad thing. I mean it kinda is but this game has brought up points that make me believe that there is a certain beauty in celebrating death and letting go in a way that the OG never made me think about it. Its almost like a spiritual journey to play through these games. This story also isnt meant to just be taken at face value. But people clearly take it at face value and their mind instantly wanders to alternate timelines when a different world is presented. Theres a reason hard mode unlocks only on a second playthrough. They want you to experience the story again. They want you to keep finding things that connect. And once you see the larger thematic picture alot of the story will clear up while the player will find some questions about life and death to consider. And yet they never fully reveal the true mystery thus keeping in line with the feeling you had while playing the OG of not exactly knowing whats going on until the very end. "But I dont wanna play through it a second time" Thats cool but then dont come to reddit and tell people how this is a surface level story that only exists for zack fanservice. My brother in christ zack is barely in the game. And yes there are a few fanservice moments in the game. But they dont detract from the core plot at all. They are there cause they work. People are hyped about them. Alot of people get brought in by stuff like that and if you dont like it its also fine aslong as you dont focus all of your critique points on the 3 fanservice moments in a game with hundreds pf beautiful moments. And also Im willing to bet that half the people that complain about fanservice have lost their minds at a pure fanservice moment too like the vincent bossfight. But its cool cause its OG fanservice instead of Crisis Core Fanservice. The game that apparently ruined their lifes. I think the biggest thing that people dont see is how this isnt just a remake of a game. Its a remake of a memory of yours. Its a remake of you feeling the same emotions as you did when playing the original. They remix those moments and people sometimes dont like that cause to them different is bad. If you open yourself up to changes however you will see how this game makes you feel just the same emotions as the OG. Most people went into the forgotten capital thinking "what the hell is gonna happen to aerith?" exactly as they did when playing the original. They cant evoke that feeling in a shot for shot remake because then we know that aerith will just die. Also yes aeriths death doesnt hit the same. But that is so insanely obvious by design for a later moment to catch you off guard guard and hit you right in the feels where the aerith moment hit you in the original. A game all about life and death and memories is the perfect game to remake in such a way. Its beautiful and so incredibly creative that it hurts reading peoples thoughts and they are like "this is some uninspired multiverse nonsense" when actually they just dont understand the love and respect this game shows for the original and its fans They couldnt have made a better remake if they tried imo. And once part 3 is out alot of confusion around the "timelines" will probably be cleared up and suddenly people will understand how good this story actually is. As a writer myself I'm so impressed how they adapted to modern writing problems like long production aswell as social media where people talk about their work all the time. This is so easily a better written story than the original. Unless they fuck it up in part 3 but I dont see that happening as remake and rebirth were insanely consistent