Final Fantasy VII Trinity: Intergrade, Ever Crisis, First Soldier

 Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. February is a gift that just keeps giving. We began with Endwalker and now we have a whole bunch of other Final Fantasy news. And it also proves that SE considers the Final Fantasy VII compillation its most valuable IP, because all three new games are related.

The first one is called The First Soldier. And odd one out in the series that is not something C. This will be a mobile battle royal where you play, well one of the first SOLDIERs. So according to this game the SOLDIER project was in full swing even before the JENOVA project was launched and lead to Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth. You have regular dudes with no alien DNA but a truckload of Mako infusion who fight it out around Midgar in whatever training Shinra deems necessary. It's less plot than what you would expect from a Final Fantasy game, but this is what it is. An excuse to fight others in Midgar. Also if you are wondering, this is still the old continuity before the remake. We know this because....

We are going to get another mobile game. That one if Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis. This is a weird one. It will go over the entire story of the compillation from TFS (not team four star) and Before Crisis (formerly a Japanese only mobile game) all the way to Dirge of Cerberus (poorly received shooter featuring totally not vampire Vincent Valentine). Supposedly it will be chapter based and you can decide which chapter you want to do regardless of completing the others or not. Even with that it will be hard to follow the chronology as events often overlap. There are two pivotal points in the story. The Nibelheim incident (Sephiroth going crazy) and Meteorfall (the endgame of the original Final Fantasy VII).
Before Crisis is like a B-plot where the Turks do their own thing behind the scenes. It begins before even Crisis Core, but has the Nibelheim incident about halfway in and the endgame is during Meteorfall. Crisis Core is pretty straightforward. It ends a little bit before Final Fantasy VII, although it always bothered me that it suggested that only a few hours pass between the two, but Tifa already arranged from Cloud to have a job with AVALANCHE. Anyway things go on smoothly untill the end of Advent Children. Apparently we will be able to play the events of AC which is amazing. Then you have the arleady mentioned Dirge of Cerberus which begins during Meteorfall. Or at least shows it during the opening, but mostly it is after AC. Ever Crisis will cover it all, and supposedly will even include extra stuff. Like the early years of Sephiroth. Now I must stress that we never got the chance to play as him. In fighting games, yes, but never in single player games. I don't think I want to see him struggle with sahagin and cactuars as a fresh recruit, but this mighth be a good chance to give us a taste of true power and provide extra content.

And now for the largest and most controversial of the reveals: The PS5 version. Now obviously a PS5 version is no surprise. It looks even better on the PS4Pro and runs faster. Okay, it takes advantage of the new hardware. Nothing wrong with that. BUT, because there's always a but. It includes something that made many people upset and rightfully so. A PS5 exclusive DLC. Yes, you can't even by it on the PS4. You have to upgrade to an out of stock console to play the new story confent. Now adding payed DLC is bad enogh when you cut down what used to be a full game into god nows how many parts that each cost as much as a full game yet don't give the same whole story or the open world feel. But making that story DLC platform exclusive is just wrong. Admittedly it is an ever greater incentive than the graphic updates, but I sincerely hope that Square Enix reconsiders this idea and makes the DLC available for PS4 players as well.

But enough about this, I'm not the Money Hungry Corporations Vampire. I am the Lore Vampire. Let us look at the DLC itself. Episode Yuffie.

In the original timeline and game Yuffie was an optional party member that you didn't have to recruit, but if you didn't you missed out on some very cool stuff. Like the cutest and funniest Gold Saucer date, or the whole Wutai questline. In my first playthrough I was worried that she won't be strong enough if her stats are too low, so I only gave her materia that boost stats. This ended up turning her into an unstoppable monster. Good times. She isn't very popular in the west due to her age appropriate behaviour and her initial mistrust of the party that includes several members of the company that turned her homeland into a theme park. But she appears in every installment of the compillation so she probably has a strong fanbase in Japan. Now I already mentioned in a previous blog entry how much I like how her foreignness is portrayed. It is an important plot point and crucial to her character development. Which, in my oppinion, the only way to portray exotic characters. I mention all this because most of what I like about Yuffie seemed to have disappeared in the timeline of the Remake. More on that later. First the good part:

So one thing is for sure. Yuffie looks amazing. And I don't mean it in a pedophilic weeb way. Look at pictures and videos of episode Yuffie and compare her looks to Advent Childen. The hair quality alone improved a lot. She also seemed to have aged up a bit. Not surprisingly her combat style also changed. In the Original she was strictly ranged, but one giant shuriken that works like a boomerang doesn't translate well to fun action combat. So now instead she plays a bit like the TERA online ninja. She jumps, she cuts and mows down everything. The animations look great. Interestingly enough one of her attack aninmations include mapple leaves. A much more original choice than the cliché sakura petals.

Storywise we are looking at a B-plot much like Before Crisis, Yuffie comes to Midgar to steal some kind of special Materia from Shinra with the help of AVALANCHE. But not the AVALANCHE we know. This is a different cell. We do see the main gang from afar, but we don't join them. This by the way is set during Cloud's time in the slums with Aerith. We get to see what went on the plates. Frankly this is a great idea. It expands the world, but it is no big deal if you miss it. We don't know how long the DLC will be, how many chapters it will cover, but I would hazard that at least two. For one, Yuffie starts the game wearing a moogle costume as a disguise, but in several scenes she is seen without it. Plus while the story begins near 7th Heaven there are many scenes inside what is most likely a Shinra base. And what is inside that base is even more interesting. Yuffie will have a run in with Deepground, the main enemy force in Dirge of Cerberus. In the original timeline they were deep underground, hence the name, and only managed to climb out after Midgar was devastated by Meteor. Apparently things will be slightly different here. Then again in DoC it was Vincent and Yuffie who did most of the fight against Deepground, so it makes sense for her to encounter them.

Now on to the bad part. Oh dear. So in the trailer Yuffie introduces herself to us and AVALANCHE as an agent of the Wutai government. This might be a lie, but considering Heidegger mentioned that he needs an excuse to attack Wutai, we can at least infer that they are not a theme park in this continuity. Which is kinda problematic. While there are many different places in Final Fantasy VII it still has a more or less western aesthetic, and Wutai stands out. Of course Don Corneo's mansion also has asian elements, but it was always assumed to be from Wutai as well. Now in the original Wutai wasn't far eastern just to be cool. It was a plot point. Because it was different, Shinra decided to turn it into a tourist attraction which of course angered the population who used various methods to restore them to their former glory. This was the motivation of Yuffie as well. She didn't just steal materia because she was a kleptomaniac. She wanted to use those to arm her homeland. So now Wutai is a completely free state with an active government. Okay. All the heroes of the Wutai war didn't accomplish anything at all, Wutai's difference is no longer a plot point and both Yuffie and her father Godo lost their motivation. So far so good. Speaking of Godo. In the original she was acting on her own and her relationship with her father was strained to say the least. Godo was the Suzaku to Yuffie's Lelouch. But even though he does not openly fight against Shinra he still cares deeply for his home and for his daughter, But Yuffie only learns this when she finds the courage to stand up to his father and the strength to beat him in battle. This shows how much she has grown both as a person and as a warrior. Growth is very important. If you start with a cool character and don't go anywhere, you end up with Rey. And I fear that the new direction Nomura and his team are taking Yuffie and Wutai will deprive her of just that. What made either of them great in the original is changing. Obviously Wutai will look amazing on screen when we get there. But looks without substance won't make another classic. Nomura should understand this as he worked on the original. I'm worried, but I will keep an open mind as we learn more.

The Force Awakens - Spoiler Review

EDIT: It turns out I am stupid and the whole post is visible all the time. So just make sure you scroll down very quickly to the next post.

Sooo here is everything that I didn't include in the No Spoiler Review, for obvious reasons.
Only read this if you have seen the movie or really don't care about spoilers.
Honestly

I will be discussing my fealings regarding all the important plot points, so stay away if you have yet to see The Force Awakens.

I will try to make my introduction as long as possible to make sure no spoiler will is visible on the front page, but no promises.

Of course this is a good time to talk about spoilers in general.
I think this whole spoiler hysteria went out of hand. I mean look at Final Fantasy VII. The original that came out in 1997. That was 18 years ago. It can now buy alcohol, drive a car and have sex.
It's plot is generally common knowledge. We all know that Aerith dies, Cloud has fake memories, or that Sephiroth was dead all along. I knew all of these and more when I had my first playthrough. And guess what. I loved every minute of it. Well written moments work just as well if you know they are comming. *cough* I am your father *cough*. Plus it is not the same to read: Snape kills Dumbledore in an internet forum as reading or watching that scene in the context of the whole story. If a huge blockbuster in 2015 can't affect its audience as well as a nearly two decades old console game it has failed miserably.

With that out of the way let's look at the movie!













You ready?






Your sure?









Okay. So TFA was awesome. There is no point denying that unless you are obejctively wrong.
Sure there are a few details we can nitpick about - and I totally will - but none these minor things are worse than the plotholes of the Original Trilogy, or Back to the Future II or The Matrix. Or Terminator 2 for that matter. And Jurassic Park.
So yeah, you get the idea. Yet we ignored all of those cause everything else worked. So we shall give The Force Awakens a free pass as well.

Most of the legitimate complaints against TFA can be traced back to two issues.

1. It was predictable. Very predictable. The guy who looks a lot like a young Harrison Ford, plays Han Solo's son. The tech savvy orphan living on a desert planet turns out to be Force sensitive. She's also a very good pilot.
Oh, quick question: If a good guy wants to redeem the villain while standing on a long bridge above a bottomless pit, what will happen?
If you answered: The good guy dies, you win.
And come on. Everyone figured out R2 has the missing map piece as soon as 3PO mentioned that it is impossible.

2. Very little new stuff was in it. Of course when I say new stuff I mean stuff that didn't pay homage to the OT. Granted I loved all those moments, but appart from the Knights of Ren and their 2-3 seconds of screen time, everything had at least a little bit of: "I have seen this before" flavor.
Of course it is understandable why the movie was playing it safe.
If we don't count the special editions, we have gone for 30 years without a star wars movie that wasn't utter garbage. We have also gone for 10 years without any kind of star wars movie. The last time Lucasfilm revived an old IP, it turned out to be a disaster. The last time JJ revived a sci fi frachise, he didn't quite grasp the essence of it, And quite a few people doubted that Disney is the right company to produce new star wars movies.
Considering all this it was probably a smart move by the people involved to create a movie that is essentially a soft reboot that mixes Episode IV and V and leave the experimentation to Episode VIII and IX. Now that the new team has our trust they can steer the story in all sorts of interesting directions.


Han's death and the Luke reveal also passed the FFVII test. It wasn't as shocking the first time because of its predictability, but at least the second viewing didn't take away the effect.

Another thing worth mentioning is the ammount of world building the movie and the visual dictionary does. We got a nice glimpse at what people eat on Jakku and at the entertainment in Maz's bar. We also got several new organizations, planets and events. Rakata Prime is back in canon and the VD also mentions the Scourge of Malachor. I have a feeling SWTOR will soon be completely decanonized by a Kotor remake. Whatever happens, the Lore Vampire is happy with the new details it can chew on.

Final Fantasy VII - Episodes

Surprise!!!

I'm back again. Looks information began to flow regarding the Final Fantasy VII remake and it is not enough for one blog entry.

After the controversy of the not entirely turn based combat (which looks awesome by the way) we got another hype killer. As it turns out, the Remake will be released in multiple parts.

Now this idea has its merits, but I really don't like it.
First, let's look at its merits:

It will enable a bigger game.

• FF VII is already cut into several chapters. It's the parts where you change disks.
• It will enable a really large game as there will be time to do everything properly without cutting stuff out AND even include additional stuff.

Okay, now why it is stupid:

• No matter how good the remake is, one third of the remake won't be as good as the entire original was way back.
• It will inevitably be overpriced.
• It could mean that we won't have the same freedom to go anywhere we  want and do anything we want as we did in the original. ALL episodic games are linear. Even those that incorporate player choice.

I sort of understand the rationale of Nomura, but this is a  dangerous move. One wrong step and it can sink the remake and alienate a huge chunk of the fanbase. No pressure.

Final Fantasy VII - Remake update

Hello boys and girls. Sorry for not writing for such a long long time but I have been busy completing my thesis and hyping over the release of The Force Awakens, which draws closer and closer.

But now I am back with a vengeance as we finally got a gameplay trailer for the Final Fantasy VII remake!!!!!

Behold it in all its glory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMWEjWCwjzM&feature=youtu.be

A few points:

• I was right of course about the new angles we can see the city from. This is not a simple engine update. Gaia is being rebuilt.
• Totally unsurprisingly we are going to get actual cutscenes instead of speech bubbles we click through.
• Barret has a pretty cool sunglasses.
• Jesse, Biggs and Wedge all speak. In english no less.
• The combat system went to full action. Yuffie will need to do something about her combat style.
• We can totally switch between active party members. Hallelujah.
• Cloud jumps off the top of the train. Good.

And you know what the best part is? Beside Barret's sunglasses I anticipated every single one of these changes. On second thought, Barret's sunglasses might be an acessory or a dlc costume.
I love being right. And I love Final Fantasy even more.

Final Fantasy VII remake - No(buo) Uematsu

Hello everyone. Sorry for being silent for so long but several projects needed attending to and I didn't exactly had time to talk. But I can't let it pass that one of my predictions for the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake already came to pass.
Remember when I mentioned that Uematsu might not be willing to work on the remake on account of being a tired old man?
Well as it turns out I was right. In a recent interview he flat out said that he has absolutely nothing to do with the remake.

This might sound scary for some as the maestro is truly one of a kind, but I already gave a few examples of possible replacements.
You know what would be nice? If you, dear reader(s) could post a comment of who you want to replace Uematsu as the new composer.
Thanks in advance.
Love you all.

Alien is the new black

Hello everyone!
This is going to be my last blog before BlizzCon. It is not exactly related, but it might tie in to it somewhat, as the topic is a trend that can be observed

I don't think I will get a nobel prize for pointing out that pop culture always had a favorite creature that gets most of the attention. This is pretty much common knowledge. This became apparent when vampires began monopolizing books, movies and video games. Inevitably the ammount of vampires, especially the sparkly ones, got too much and people began to get bored of them. Nowadays I am in the minority for still being interested in vampires.
When the general consensus became: bloodsuckers suck, the public turned towards another icon. Zombies. We had White Walkers and Walking Dead. Zombie's got their own land and even their own World War. They also found their own arch nemesises in the forms of plants. Unfortunately being an uninteligent slow moving corpse limits your possibilities, so zombies soon became old news. Of course they still get their regular game mode in call of duty releases, but call of duty is a swear word in civilized company.

So who next? For a time it looked like ghosts would take the stage. A new ghost busters movie is in development, Pirates of the Caribbean 5 will feature an evil ghost as a main antagonist, the latest Lego Ninjago season was against a ghost and Kung Fu Panda 3 was intended to have a ghost bad guy back when Mads Mikkelsen was still attached to the project.

But their place was taken by aliens. Our little green (and sometimes grey) friends began their gradual crawl towards the top with the release of Grand Theft Auto V and the beginning of the still unsolved Chiliad Mistery.

Well that's not much......

And next week we will see the release of Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.1 with a very UFO looking location: The Void Ark. Hey, does FFVII have aliens? Yep. For starters, Jenova is one. And technically so is Shinra.
And of course Fallout 4 which might have aliens in it (the last two games had). Team Fortress 2 also received some alien stuff with its latest update. Overwatch also has hints of beings that "came from beyond the moon". Speaking of Blizzard, the final installment of the StarCraft 2 trilogy will come on November 10. Also Blizzcon will give details about the warcraft movie (aliens use a dimensional portal to invade humans) and of course the latest WoW expansion, Legion which is about how orcs, draenei (both aliens) use artifacts left behind by the Titans (also aliens) to defeat the invading forces of the Burning Legion (all of them aliens). Makes you wonder wether we will get to explore a crashed alien ship in Diablo 3. Would be a nice adventure mode dungeon if we dont get an expansion after all.

But that's just vid....

Oh and there is a movie comming out called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Might have heared of it. After that disney will make another five star wars movies. Totally unrelated to the recent SWTOR expansion though. Well maybe. Star Trek also gets another movie next year.

Yeah but...

Along with a new TV series. Oh and X-files also returns to TV as a mini series. Next year we will also get our hands on Deus Ex Mankind Divided, which might have grey aliens, and Mass Effect Andromeda, which definitely will. Don't know if it counts, but Dragon Ball  Super, one of the surprise anime releases of 2015, will end its run on November 8. And next year will also give us the long awaited movie about Bruce Wayne fighting a destructive alien messiah wannabe.

I'd call this more than enough. All we need now is NASA giving us a news and we can accept our new alien overlords. After that? Well let's ask Kanye West:
Tell me what's next? Alien sex.

hmmmmmmm

Final Fantasy VII remake - Epilogue

Hi everyone and happy halloween. Sorry for running off without a world last time, but I figured saying goodbye, giving a preview to me saying goodbye and me saying goodbye in this epilogue would have been redundant. And maybe a bit redundant.

Anyroad thanks for sticking with me till the end. And if you did, you read through a lot of text. Well done. As I mentioned now, this discussion was the reason I started my blog, which almost became a youtube channel. But I think this is better as I don't wake the others and you won't have to listen to my irregular breathing.

I had a lot of fun writing this, so even if I am wrong on all points and the final remake is completely different, it was worth it.

In fact I would rather be wrong. As fond as I am of all the ideas I outlined here what I really want is being surprised and blown away by this new, fresh Final Fantasy VII. I want something outrageous and totally left field crazy straight out of Bravely Default.

To tell you the truth I would much rather hate it and slowly grow to appreciate it than love it at first and slowly realise that that they made the wrong decisions.

And for the love of good please don't fuck up the PC port! Pretty please. Just this once, Square Enix. Just this once do it right.

Anyway thanks again for reading my novella sized essay on the changes I anticipate and/or wish for the remake of Final Fantasy VII. I will be sure to write a review when it comes out. Untill then check my other articles if you want and have a nice day. And tomorrow. And every day after.

Bye

Chapter 9 – The gamechanger

Hello there everybody. We finally arrived at the grand finale. As you are all very perceptive people I am sure you noticed that the title doesn't reveal what we will be discussing this time. In fact this is the only time I didn't give any hint of what will be the topic. I wanted to increase the anticipation.

What could this moron be thinking? 

What is the biggest change that is comming to Final Fantasy VII. 

Well it is very popular nowadays. 

Three letters, begins with a D.

DRM

Hahahahaha, no. Just joking. I had you worried there for a moment, huh? No, DRM are the results of the misconception that players have to be punished for not having enough money to buy new videogames or being cautious when spending money on Ubisoft products. Smart companies like Blizzard are able to get lots of money out of games that people can play for free. The actual topic is.

DLC.

A much more friendly idea. According to Hajime Tabata not only will XV have DLC but they will be free DLC. And we already have plenty of precedent for DLC in other games, like Type-0 and XIII-2.

So why are DLC such a big deal?

Well because the current game is not desinged for them. Let's look at new character skins. That's about as simple as DLC can get. It would also work well. Even if we only pick canon outfits Cloud has the shinra trooper uniform, his regular outfit, his cowgirl outfit and his advent children outfit. Tifa has the regular, the advent children, the cowgirl and the wall market outfit. Yuffie has one for Crisis Core, one for Kingdom Hearts, one for Advent Children, one for Dirge of Cerberus and the regular. Oh yeah and one more for Before Crisis. Even Vincent has the Turk suit to change into.

So how do you put them on? You can't even equip armor in VII. You might think adding a new option in the menu is no big deal, but for me it kinda is. Also, remember how I mentioned that Gilgamesh might show up on the Battle Square? Currently there is no option to challenge single opponents. It simply doesn't work that way.

How about new scenarios? Keep in mind that at this point I am only proposing things that have precedent in the series, so all of this will likely totally happen. In XIII-2 you could play side stories starring characters otherwise not playable in the game by going to specific places. VII could either incorporate this system and have you go to Costa Del Sol to relive Zack in swimwear fighting off monsters with a freakin parasol.

Or, it could include a question to the main menu when you pick new game. Do you want to play the campaing or maybe What if Zack surived? - The untold adventures or Aerith lives – The Wishful thinking or maybe Clouds journey home – Across the multiverse.

I am especially proud of my last idea. So Cloud goes crazy and falls into the Lifestream. He is summoned to Ivalice for a few adventures and sent back. But was he sent back? Maybe he missed the exit and ended up in the future setting of Final Fantasy XVI. Or Spira where he meets with Shinra and realises that he is in the past. A whole campaing can be based on Cloud's dimension hopping adventures. And he doesn't have to do it alone. He could party up with Gilgamesh and make him playable for the first time. You know what? Let's throw in my favorite sociopath Shantotto. She is super fun and also likes to jump between different universes.

Okay now I really want this game to happen. Damit.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 8 – Multiplayer

Hello everyone. I'm back with another chapter of this hopefully popular series. To tell you the truth it never occured to me that Final Fantasy VII could have a multiplayer mode, but it popped up time and time again in other articles concerning the subject so I figured I will do this one for the community.

Let's ge the obvious out of the way. If there is a multiplayer mode it will be completely separate from the single player campaing. Like in Dirge of Cerberus where you play one of the bad guys in what is pretty much a prequel to the main story.

The same formula could work here as well. The Wutai war could be an excelent setting for a counter strike clone. Or the Turks fighting AVALANCHE and the Ravens (mutant soldiers created by the apprentice of Bugenhagen). With the Mako reactors we can even have bombsites. Now that I think about it, it could be loads of fun. And it would be a way to learn more about the backstory of the game. A win-win situation.

And that's about it. Sorry I don't have more thoughts on the matter but like I said, this is an option I didn't consider much because it never occured to me. Still I had to acknowledge that the wish for a multiplayer mode is quite popular.

The next one will be the last actual chapter before I put an end to this series.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 7- Gilgamesh

You know him, you love him and you kinda expect him to be in every Final Fantasy game. Gilgamesh. Or Gilgamesh Ashur for Type-0 players and Greg for XIV fans. Without doubt he is the protagonist of the Final Fantasy series. He debuted in Final Fantasy V, reappeared in VIII and the rest is history. He was put in the re-release of VI, he was there in IX and even Final Fantasy IV: The after Years. So VII is the odd one out from IV to IX as Gilgamesh is absent from the compilation. But that might change.

The devs know how much the fans adore Gilgamesh and his inclusion would be a change that would please everyone. It would be suicide to miss this chance. I even know where to put him in. Gilgamesh is based partially on the historical Gilgamesh and partially on Benkei, a warrior monk who once decided to camp a bridge on Kyoto fight anyone who wanted to cross and take their swords when they lost. Kinda familiar. Benkei's shenanigans continued untill he met his match at a hand of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who was taught by the tengu in the ancient arts of beating the everloving crap out of people with a fan.

If my memory serves me well the way to Wutai is through a nice long bridge. A rope bridge, but that might change. Imagine that at the end of the Wutai storyline Yuffie shows you arround her home, gives some neat background lore and does just about everything to make you forget that she robbed you all because her home is more important to her than a terrorist, a traitor and a deranged maniac (Barret, Cait Sith and Cloud). The tour would include the most famous landmarks. „And this is Kisaragi Castle where father lives, thsz is my house because we don't like each other so I got my own place. This is the Wutai gym where pokemon trainers can get the materia badge, this is the famous Big Bridge and over there is...wait, who is that guy?”

And that concludes the expository banther. Because it is time to fight like men. And ladies. And men who dress like ladies. And dogs who dress like men. Now I really want that line to appear. If not there will be a riot. I can make a pretty big riot all by my self.

Another good place would be in the Battle Square, like in XIII-2. Or on the Higway at the end of the motorcycle ride in place of that weird robot. Or all three places. Once alone and unmorphed, once morphed and once with Enkidu.

This also means a sweet new arrangement of Battle on the Big Bridge. Both Ishimoto and Soken did it once. Time to do it again.

And that's all for now. Only three more chapters to left. Next time we will look at the possibility of a multiplayer mode.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 6 – Sephiroth

Ah yes, good old Sephiroth. We already talked a lot about him but I want to devote a couple of paragraphs to how the remake will affect him. Don't worry he won't change into a woman or cut off his hair, but he will likely won't be the same either.

Simply put: Sephiroth is insanely popular. And it would be bad business not to capitalize on that popularity. So we might see a bit more of Sephiroth in the remake. For example there is that part when Cloud and Sephiroth go to Nibelheim in the flashback and Sephiroth is a party member. You can't control him so you just watch as he automatically kills dragons without lifting a finger. Well as VIII and X showed us: It is totally okay to give us control of the villain and get a taste of power. This would be a perfect opportunity to ride the Sephiroth bandwagon. Also every time we find him, well one of his clones, he throws a materia or a Jenova fragment at you and flies away. We never get to have a decent swordfight with him. We never battle the normal Sephiroth. The final boss battle doesn't count.

Speaking of flying away. Thanks to One Winged Angel Sephiroth is required to show off his single black wing, despite him not having one in the original game. It is everywhere. Crisis Core, Advent Children, Dissidia, Kingdom Hearts. It is pretty safe to assume that the wing will appear in the remake as well.

Aaaand that's pretty much it for our bad guy. We covered most questions concerning him in previous chapters, but I wanted to get these two out of the way. Next stop, the wandering swordsman.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 5 – Story

Hello there readers. Welcome to the most controversial part of our ongoing discussion of the Final Fantasy VII. Most fans get an epileptic seizure at the mention of story changes, but there will inevitably be some as the current spoilers are all common knowledge. I put story changes into one of three categories. Necessary, Useful and Neat.

Let's look at the first group. You may be under the impression that no story change is necessary, but that is not entirely true. When Final Fantasy VII came out it was a standalone game like all the others and had no prequels or sequels. But then everything changed when the fire nation attacked. Okay, nobody attacked but several games, short stories and anime came that placed VII inside a wider canon. This of course left its mark on the story of VII as we now know that several events did not quite occur as we saw them in game.

For example several characters survived that we believed dead. Don Corneo, Rufus Shinra, Tseng. As certain as their deaths was they all live to fight another day. Professor Hojo uploads his consciousness to a machine and both Aerith and Sephiroth become parts of the Lifestream. Hell, the final cutscene didn't show anyone beside Nanaki and his children surviving.

And of course there are the dirty little details like the original AVALANCHE – lead by Bugenhagen's apprentice - intending to wipe out all life on the planet, the Turks being responsible for Yuffie's materia obsession, Genesis being responsible for Sephiroth's downfall, Zack wiping out the entire Shinra army before being killed by the last three, Zack being an energetic and kind hearted kid instead of the jerkass we believed him based on Cloud's alternative persona, Vincent not being the first person Hojo puts dangerous materia in, the existence of Deepground, and the fact that when the Lifestream appears at the end of the game it carries Sephiroth's cells and infects everyone with geostigma.

Speaking of Zack. Where is Cissney? You know she is the young and pretty Turk agent who had a crush on Zack but lost to Aerith. We last saw her searching for Zack as he and Cloud were fleeing the Shinra army. Next time we see the Turks only Tseng, Reno, Rude and Elena are around. What happened to her? And what about Aerith? She spent a lot of time with Zack and probably know that he has a friend called Cloud Strife who is a Shinra grunt. So whn Cloud comes with Zack's sword she should figure out that something is fishy. Yuffie also had several encounters with Zack and may or may not have seen him wield the Buster Sword. So what's going on? Do the girls have an unspoken agreement not to mention the holes in Cloud's story? Or are we looking at a new running gag of Tifa covering their – Yuffie's and Aerith's - mouths and dragging them away every time they try to correct Cloud? Oh and with Crisis Core out we now know what the LOVELESS posters in Midgar meant. Well we sort of know.

And this is just the compilation. We also know that VII is a distant sequel of X. To think that such a ruthless megacorporation would be the result of a single Al Bhed kid's curiosity. There is also the small matter of Cloud falling into the Lifestream for quite some time before surfacing in Mideel as a vegetable. It is quite easy to pinpoint that it was during this time that he was summoned into Ivalice to play a part in the events of Final Fantasy Tactics. We may see that or we may not but we know that he had quite the adventure while the rest of the group escaped Shinra captivity. Kingdom Hearts II is most likely not canon but if you think about it he is in a world filled with talking animals and kids who fight with keys and the Tifa and Sephiroth we encounter there are the representations of Cloud's good and bad side respectively. I would probably hallucinate something similar if I were him. And it was also directed by Nomura. No idea for Dissidia.

So what would be useful? Well this is where we go from a little controversial to downright blasphemous. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: the plot twists in Final Fantasy VII are common knowledge. People still misunderstand some things but we all know that Sephiroth was actually dead for most of the game, Cloud's memories are fake, and Aerith dies. If we want to be as shocked by the remake as much as we were by the original when we first played it, the story must change. Not completely, but small details. In the original version Vincent was a private detective focusing on supernatural cases, Sephiroth was Aerith's brother – later changed to former lover. Eek - , Yuffie was a 25 years old ex-SOLDIER bounty hunter, Barret was Marlene's biological father, SOLDERs were made with real Cetra cells, and the post Nibelheim Cloud really was a fake created by Sephiroth. Also Edea was originally created for VII not VIII. It was also set in New York city at one point.

These changes are hardly salvagable without retconning away most of the compilation but indicate the types of small changes that may be possible. And no, Aerith will not survive. That is kinda her thing. At the very beginning the two basic ideas for the story were: 'You chase Sephiroth around the world' and 'Aerith dies'. She was created for that purpose. Tifa was created much later to give Cloud a love interest that doesn't die. This is probably why Aerith and Cloud have so much chemistry while his relationship with Tifa is more or less: „Hey, Tifa I recovered my memories and remembered that when we were kids I had a huge crush on you because you looked like Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII so maybe we could you know live together and adopt a random kid.” Fun fact: In the original Cloud was not wrongfully blamed for injuring Tifa. He totally gave her a huge scar.

So what about the misunderstood part? Well one of the most persistant arguments about VII is wether Sephiroth controls Jenova or the other way around. On the one hand J has been a corpse since before Sephiroth was even born. On the other hand we regularly fight very much living monsters that are created from her cells. Well as several interviews revealed Sephiroth is the one in control. He is just very good at controling Jenova cells. This is how he controls Cloud and the other clones. Yes, Sephiroth is waaay to fixated on his mother but he is not a puppet or under any sorts of mind control. The worst we can say about him is that he suffers from villain decay as he is less sane every time he comes back to life and he spends less time living. By the time we get to Cloud Returns: Final Fantasy VII he will be a regular mook.

When Kefka is compared to Sephiroth the winning argument by Kefka fans is usually: Sephiroth failed to destroy the world while Kefka did it. Although Kefka did cause a lot of destruction – without killing any of the main characters in the process – there is one tiny problem with this argument. Sephiroth totally didn't want to destroy the planet. He knew that it is not possible. He just wanted to threaten it enough for the Lifestream to appear and merge with it to become a god. In this universe ascendace to godhood is a much more involved process than moving three statues around. It didn't quite go as planned but he did become an unremovable part of the Lifestream and he infected thousands of people with geostigma. Not bad really.

Somehow making this misunderstood parts more obvious would definitely be a useful change. If not outright necessary. So what would be neat now that we have a shocking story that acknowledges the compilation? Time to watch the trailer.

See that part at roughly half a minute? In the Midgar playground is a blond girl and a two boys fighting with toy swords and the blond boy is holding one that looks a lot like the Buster Sword. Sure that might be just a random scene for the fans. But what if they are not. What if the blond girl and boy are Cloud's kids. Maybe He and Tifa finally did it. So what would that mean for the story? Well a narration of course. Imagine the game opening with the playground scene. And then adult Cloud comes to take them home. The kids don't want to leave so he tells them that if they come home he will tell them the story of how he and mom beat Sephiroth. Of course I know of an even better narrator candidate.

Genesis Rhapsodos. Even his name translate to something like the original performer of the epic poem. The last time we saw him was during the end of Dirge of Cerberus when he picked up the unconscious Weiss to go on an adventure. He could be silently observing the Strifes before resolving the go to them and ask for their forgiveness. When Weiss asked him what is ther to forgive, he begins to explain how everything is his fault. Well technically it is because he was behind Sephiroth's downfall. Any story deviations from the original could be explained by A: Him not being present and B: His overly dramatic way of talking. Much how like in A Realm Reborn the Wandering Minstrel gave a different account of the fight against Ultima Weapon. And hey, the Compilation cannot even agree on what happened in Nibelheim. After Cloud, Zack and the Turks, we would get to see a new perspective.

And on that note I think it is time to call it a day. This was probably the last mega chapter as I now only have a few more things to discuss as we steadily march towards the final chapter. Hope you will not miss the next chapter in which we will give a special spotlight to Sephiroth.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 4 – Materia

Welcome back folks. Since we talked a lot about how some materia might become problematic I decided to devote a short chapter to materia. Now I could have named it progression system but the thing is, Final Fantasy doesn't have a real progression system beside leveling materia.

I also revealed that materia weren't always so important at an early part of development. All of this might leave you wondering wether materia will stay at all or be outright removed from the game..

That is something that will never happen. At this point materia are an integral part of the lore. The Sister Ray is powered by materia, Meteor is launched by the Black Materia and Holy by the White Materia. And that is just this game. Before Crisis has the Zirconiade materia and the support materia needed to summon it, Crisis Core has the Goddess Materia, and Dirge of Verberus has the Proto Materia. Materia are also frequently depicted on screen and mentioned in Advent Children.

Taking Materia away from Final Fantasy VII would be like taking away lightsabers or the Force from Star Wars. It's completely out of the question.

What I do believe is that materia will loose some of their significance. If there is some sort of meaningful progress beside materia the whole Wutai sequence will be a lot less painful. In XIV materia are only their to provide passive bonuses to equipment. This also wouldn't work as the plot relevant materia are used for summoning or very strong magic spells so the right use of materia is probably in the middle ground between VII and XIV.

As for the alternative progression system: That depends on wether jobs will return or not. And wether we will be able to change jobs or not. We probably shouldn't expect any major surprise. Progression systems in Final Fantasy are usually not overly complicated and give a lot of freedom. Whatever we get here will be the same.

And now I must bid you all farewell. Next chapter will be the most controversial of them all as we will tackle changes to the story. Oh dear.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 3 – Combat

Hey there everyone. The flow of starwars posts has ended so welcome back to the extra long discussion of the Final Fantasy VII remake's possible changes. We already got passed the sights and sounds so its finally time to tackle a topic more closely related to gameplay: combat.

Now Tetsuya Nomura already revealed that we can expect 'dramatic changes'. Whatever that is supposed to mean is anyone's guess as apparently they are testing what combat system works best.

So let's see what could work.

Now as I mentioned before, I am not a great fan of VII's combat. Mostly because the characters don't feal that different in combat outside of the limit breaks. The game depends too much on materia for abilities. As a result Yuffie doesn't feal like a ninja at all and neither Barret and Cid have any fun tech abilities despite being a gun armed man and a an engineer respectively. IV had a very bad progression system but every character had mutliple exclusive abilities which made the combat super fun. Incidentally there was a time in VII's development when the characters had jobs assigned to them. It was probably during this same time that Yuffie was a 25 years old ex-SOLDIER bounty hunter who is obsessed with money instead of materia. We have no way of knowing but it seems that we could have gotten a better combat system. Of course the definition of 'better' depends on the individual.

If you ask me, and if you are still reading this series of articles you kinda did, the best of the turn based combat systems is the one in Final Fantasy X. The characters feal different, you can costumize how your limit break – well overdrive – gauge is filled up, the overdrives are sort of interactive, summons don't leave after just one attack, and you can switch your party configuration mid battle which gives it a very dynamic feal for a completely turn based combat system. I freakin love it. And to be completely honest I would be totally okay with the remake getting the exact same combat system. Okay, I don't want one character to hoard all the summon materia, but otherwise it's perfectly fine.

However it is quite obvious that combat in Final Fantasy is moving slowly but steadily towards real time action combat. As loath I am to relinquish control over my characters I still think that this move is probably for the best as no series can stay relevant without innovation.

Depending on how real time the combat becomes we might see a few more changes, or perhaps a lot more.

Let's say for example that remake will end up with the combat system of XIII. Not quite turn based, but not fully action either. Now the obvious change is that you can only control the party leader. I will be really upset if this happens. If the uprgaded game has less options than the original it wasn't a sucessful upgrade. Of course everyone would still get the chance to be the party leader at one point or another. At the very least in the Battle Square. The problem is that either yourt party members will use their mana points, summons and limit break automaticly instead of when you want them to, or perhaps not use them at all. This raises the question of wether you should equip them with materia at all. If the summons replace the active party it is guaranteed that only the party leader will get to summon them. Unfortunately summon materia also affect your stats. And usually they affect your physical stats negatively. So giving cloud all the summon materia is like the worst thing ever. Not to mention that it takes the place of several neat support materia.

Okay, let us assume we will have a fully real time combat system. Type-0 has one, Crisis Core had one, and XV will have one. Out of these the one I like the most is the one in Type-0 because you can control a whole party and you can switch your active character without restriction. Of course even this would necessitate several changes.

As I mentioned when talking about animations that we will likely have to say goodbye to the cover materia. A real time fighting system would also spell the doom of double strike. I mean how would that even work? It wouldn't. And then there is Yuffie. Poor girl can't take a break, I'm always bugging her. Problem is, her bigass shuriken is not the most practical of weapons. It may still work in a XIII style combat system, Hope had no difficulty with his boomerang, but in real time combat she wouldn't last a minute. Her combat style consists of throwing away her only weapon and being a sitting duck untill it comes back. Cait Sith smacking people with a megaphone simply looks stupid, but Yuffie's is actually counter productive. Maybe it is time she used the two kunai in her hair. Maybe. I mean dual wielding bladed weapons is kinda what ninjas do in Final Fantasy. And ninjutsu. Miss Kisaragi does neither.

Okay not let's look at the new combat from the perspective of the enemies. A real time combat means that the players can dodge any attack provided they are quick enough. So there really is no reason why enemies have to play fair. Sephiroth has no abilities that are guaranteed one-hit-kills. This might change if we can simply walk away from AoE markers. We will also most likely get to see a larger number of enemies in any given fight. The engine can take it and so can we.

And I think we can also take a break here before we discuss materia a little. 

The Default Fictional Character Test

Hello everyone.
Here I am with another unscheduled post.

Hearts of Stone, the first expansion of Witcher 3 is finally out. You may have noticed that the entire internet is talking about it. Unfortunately I haven't obtained a copy of it yet, so this won't be a review. However it is a good time to talk about the issue as some sites brought it up again.

One of the very few points of criticism against Witcher 3 was the lack of people of color. Some people argued that Sapkowski's universe was based on medieval Poland, so its okay for everyone being a pale skinned redhead. Others claimed that since the Witcher series is set in a fantasy universe, everything goes. I really love asian cultures but with that logic we should have head giant mechas in Lord of the Rings.

Another game comming out in the near future is Assassin's Creed Syndicate and right after the highly anticipated 10 terrabyte day one patch. Syndicate will finally have a playable female character after people at Ubisoft repeatedly told us that animating women is a lot of work. Or something.

Now instead of pointing fingers at racist, sexist and whateverist developers and filmmakers, let's play a game. Everybody loves games, right? So, you probably heard of the bechdel test and the sexy lamp test. Now here is my test. The Default Fictional Character Test.

If you know your history you are aware that when the phrase: "All men are created equal" was coined, men meant white, straight, upper middle class, angol saxon protestant males.
This could make a pretty good template for a default fictional character. Let's throw in undisabled as well.

Now, think of a character that isn't like this. Someone who deviates from one or more points. Got it? Okay, now think of what this adds to the story or how it explains his or her character a bit better.
If you couldn't think of anything, I have bad news for you. It really is a waste of time to change that character from the default.

Representation for representation's sake is just as insulting as leaving someone out.
"Hey there, black guy. We need to fill our quota of black guys. Come here and be just like everyone else." Not good, isn't it?

Let me give you a few examples:

Albus Dumbledore. It is common knowledge that Snape kills him. It is also common knowledge that he is gay. Also, these two points are completely unrelated. But his sexuality isn't just an interesting piece of trivia. It explains why he left himself be influenced so strongly by an evil wizard and caused the event that lead to his sister's death. He was totally in love with Grindelwald. Love makes you stupid. Nothing new with this. It also makes you form pacts with bad guys and vow to gather all the artifacts that play crucial roles in the story. Like the invisibility cloak that was the reason he got in touch with the Potters. And the stone with which he wanted to bring back his dead sister. You know, the one in the ring that cursed him with a terminal ilness that made him accept his death at the end of book six. Wow, the series would have been totally different with a straight Dumbledore.

Tifa Lockhart. She is a woman. A very sexy woman. But could she have been a guy? Not really, cause she was put into the story to give Cloud a love interest after Aerith dies. But more importantly, it is an important aspect of her character arc. When she was a child her dream was for the big brave SOLDIER hero, Cloud, to save her from perill. Yes, she pretty much wanted to be a damsel in distress. Of course when the Nibelheim incident happened she quickly learned from Sephiroth that being a damsel in distress in pretty bad. So she decided she had enough of DiD suffering heroes not saving her and learned kung fu. This wouldn't have worked with Terence Lockhart.

Covetous Shen. The hungry and lusftul jeweler in Diablo III. In an unexpected but much appreciated move he wasn't designed as a jewish caricature. No, he is chinese. Why? Well probably because he is Zei, the trickster god in Xiansai mythology. And you all know what Xiansai is like. This also gives us a good opportunity to learn more about the culture of Xiansai and enrich the setting. It helps the game that he is from a far eastern asia inspired land.

Toph Beifong. I already mentioned my favorite Avatar character when I compared her to Yuffie. So what about her? Well she is a small blind girl on the outside and a really buff guy on the inside. Also, she is the mellon lord, but that's not the point. Her blindness is very important. First, it is because of her disability that her parents don't take her seriously and protected her in extreme ways like hiding her existence from the outside world. She understandably resents them for this. Her condition also explains why she is so good at bending. She cannot with her eyes so she is pretty much forced to see with her bending, much like the original earth benders, the badgermoles. This was she forms a much more intimate connection with the earth. This helps her to defeat all her opponents, who by the way underestimate her for being a blind little girl. Also, the jokes related to her blindness are the best ones in the series. Both series.


Now let's make a witcher character non white. Like Azar Javed. Oh, wait, he is already not. Okay, Shani. Let's make her Xia Ni a chinese (looking) girl. Don't change anything else, just this. Honestly I don't know how this would have satisfied anyone.

Character traits should only be there if the story requires it to be there. Otherwise they are pointless.

There is one exception though. Average looking people, otherwise known  as too ugly for hollywood people. There is no reason to point at people that don't look like Brad Pitt, or draw atteniton to ugly girls that are not Amanda Seyfired with uncombed hair and hipster glasses. However it is pretty insulting to us, non-models how the media portrays both genders. In the original beauty and the beast Ron Perlman had to sit for hours while his makeup was applied. In the new version some random prettyboy is the beast. We know he is the beast cause he has scar on his chin. Oliver Queenn wasn't originally like this either. We need more normal looking people.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 2 – Audio

Welcome back everyone. Last time we discussed urban development, Titan's table manners, Aerith's bodily fluids and tying up Yuffie. If you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it, it was time well spent for both of us. This time we will tackle another topic that needs no explanation. So naturally this chapter will be even longer. Or maybe not. It all depends on how much explanation my points will need or how many weird pop culture references will come to my mind as I talk about sound. I will try to do my best.

You might be wondering what there is to discuss? Of course there will be voice acting and of course everyone will use the Advent Children voices. Duh. Well I have to correct you riiiight there. You see the choice is not that simple for everyone. I have to pick on poor Yuffie again who has one english voice actress for Kingdom Hearts and AC and another for Kingdom Hearts II and Dirge of Cerberus, while the late Aerith has no less than three voice actresses to her name. Mandy Moore for Kingdom Hearts, Andrea Bowen for Crisis Core and Dissidia 012, and the super cute Mena Suvari for Kingdom Hearts II and Advent Children. Which one will it be? Sephiroth also has two english voice actors, but George Newbern voiced him for all but one of his appearance so he is easy. Thankfully this means that Rude will be voiced by Crispin Freeman. I can't wait till he bumps into Vinccent. Last time he met a Valentine was pretty fun. Come to think of it, with the right materia Vincent can do everything Alucard asked of Luke. „Summon up your demons, transform your body, heal your severed legs and stand.” All check out.

But what of those who have no voice. And I'm not even talking about random shopkeepers. I'm talking about people like President Shinra, Don Corneo or Godo Kisaragi (please, Ken Watanabe). Or Kyahaha and Gyahaha AKA Scarlet and Heidegger. They are kinda important. In fact a remarkable number of important people have no voice actors. Including the parents of the protagonists. Cloud's mother, Tifa's father and Aerith's biological and adoptive mother (Ifalna and Elmyra Gainsborough respectively). Oh yeah she also has a father, Professor Gast Faremis. And well, this is only english. Even the first witcher had 8 different languages to chose from both for vice and for subtitle. And that was seven years ago. At this age besides english and japanese the minimum is French, Italian, Spanish and German. Maybe Russian or Chinese. That's a lot of voice actors. I wonder if we will have an option to mix and match the languages. Hopefully yes.

So all the text in the game will be translated into several languages and voiced. Minus the weird stuff like „This guy are sick” and the choice to eat Korean BBQ in Midgar. But is that all?

What about party banther? In XIII your party members talked regularly with each other while you walked around and did your thing. Even those not in the active party. It is also a good place to give up additional background info that appear in the compilation elsewhere. You can't really expect people to play Before Crisis, a japanese only cellphone game.

The more perceptive of you might have noticed that the chapter title is Audio and not Voice acting. And there are lots of audio related stuff in the game. So it is time to bug the summons again. Now I don't want to suggest awkward things, but quite a few summons sound like a goat that is handled ahemm.....illegally. Let's leave it at that.

Now that we are warmed up time to jump into the question of music. This is one of the best things to discuss about Final Fantasy since, much like Star Wars, there is no installment without at least one eargasmic song. A new release of course requires a remastered soundtrack. However it might not be Uematsu who does it. *gasp* We are doomed! No, not really. Okay, listen up. Nobuo Uematsu is God. Obviously. At the very least the god of music. Nobodyully replace him. And I would absolutely love if he remxied the soundtrack for the remake. Along with creating new songs need be. However he already did enough and he wants to relax and let the new generation take his place he has every right to do that. There are two people I can think of who might replace him.

Number one is Masayoshi Soken. A relatively new rising star ammong Final Fantasy composers. In some ways he is like a young Uematsu. He is very talented, very vestaile and has his own metal band. He already reworked several iconic Uematsu pieces for the Relm Reborn soundtrack. Most notable for us in this case is his rework of Gold Saucer. He has everyhing necessary for the job. Only problem is, he has his hands full with XIV. Even Yoshie-P made a joke once about how little time Soken has. And if your boss, your japanese boss, makes jokes about how overworked you are, it is a sign that you probably can't take up more projects.

Option number two is Takeharu Ishimoto. You could hear his work in the recently released Type-0 HD where he mixed orchestral pieces with heavy rock songs. His style is very much final fantasy but has a unique flavour to is. He also did the soundtrack to every Dissidia installment and, most importantly, half the VII compilation. Crisis Core, Before Crisis and Last Order to be exact. If this doesn't qualify someone to do the remake's soundtrack, nothing will.

Of course Square Enix might surpise us and do something totally unexpected like dragging away Kumi Tanioka from Crystal Chronicles and give her the job.

Okay let's concentrate on one particular song for now. One Winged Angel. Oppinions are divided wether it is better than Dancing Mad or not, but it is definitely one of the most beloved and influential songs Uematsu created. It has to be played at every Final Fantasy concert and some songs are written with the exact purpose of surpassing it. Caius's theme for example. However its fame is sort of the problem. As any TV Tropes reader can tell you Seinfeld is Unfunny. What this means is that no matter how revolutionary a tv show, or video game is when it comes out it will look like a cliché storm years later. One of the biggest selling points of One Winged Angel is the latin chanting. Except in the PC port of course which excludes that part. Grrrrrrr. Unfortunately, said chanting has been copied over and over and over and over again. Even inside the series. Hell latin chanting is so cliché now that Soken even has a software that randomly generates latin lyrics for him. Really. Now OWA had plently of reworks so far but this time the composer should go beyond what Uematsu did for Advent Children and change the language of the lyrics. Yes, yes I know what I am suggesting is blasphemy, madness and sparta. Still it is the only way to make it as effective as it was when the original came out. But what language? A good choice in this case is to use a made up language like in Skyrim or for Ramuh's theme in A Realm Reborn. Naturally VII has no such luck. Sanskrit also works for epic boss fights and Gavin Dunne the absolute genius behind Miracle of Sound can even make french sound badass if the need arises. Apologies for french readers. As sexy as your language is, it isn't badass at all. The only problem is that a song about a freakin angel can't be in just any language that can sound badass. It needs to be in a language that makes sense thematically. So what if not latin?

Well I am happy to tell you that there is one that fits even better than latin. And that my friends is Hebrew. You might have heared of it in basically any class or course that deals with western religion. Not only is our idea of angels based on a set of Hebrew texts, but the world Sephiroth (well Sephirot) itself is Hebrew. I am most definitely not an expert on Kabbalah but the gist of it is something like this. There are ten Sephirah (plural form: Sephirot) and they are they ways in which God can interact with the world before physically manifesting in it. This is a pretty accurate description of what Sephiroth did in VII with his clones and in Advent Children with his remnants.

So yes I think the best way to keep One Winged Angel fresh and ensure it has the same effect the original had is to give it completely new lyrics in Hebrew.

That leaves us with the question of where in the orchestral – metal axis the new OWA will be placed. The one in Crisis Core leaned more towards orchestral while the Advent Children version was pure heavy metal. In fact the entire Advent Children soundtrack was a huge leap towards heavy metal. Okay not the entire one, but it is still very metal. It will be interesting to see wether the new soundtrack will follow the same direction. If the tone is not right it can and will divide the fandom. Metal works well for boss fights but not for places like the Temple of the Ancients or Wutai.

Yes I'm bringing up Wutai a lot. I freakin love the place. In fact I started playing Final Fantasy VII, my first FF game, because I wanted a game that is either set in or features a place influenced by medieval japan. And well Wutai was and still is the most famous example..

Although I will talk about this a bit more in a later chapter I can't stop without mentioning that I wouldn't mind if the new soundtrack included Battle on the Big Bridge, as Final Fantasy VII is sticking out as a sore thumb from the other installments for not featuring a certain fan favorite swordsman.

And on that note I will call end to this part of the discussion. In the next part we will finally talk about gameplay. Combat and progression to be specific. Well they may get their own chapters but you get the idea. Anyway combat will definitely appear next time. And we will try to figure out what 'dramatic change' actually means.

Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 1 – Visuals

Welcome back everyone to our dissection of the yet untitled Final Fantasy VII remake. In the first actual chapter we are going to look at the visuals. You might think there is no point discussing it because of course the visuals will be updated.

Well that's kinda not true. You see the visuals of VII can't be updated. You could do that with X and call it a day, but not with the ones before it. You see Final Fantasy VII is not a 3D game. Well not entirely. Sure the characters are in 3D, but most of the scenery is not. Not to mention the camera is fixed. It always follows you from one angle as you go from one end of the screen to the other. And yes, most areas are exactly as big as the the screen. And they don't get much bigger either. Obviously all of this will change in the remake. The environment will be viewed from angles that just plain didn't exist in the original game. So the devs will have to make sure there is stuff there to see. Pretty much every environment will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.Anda naturally everything will have to be larger. It is hard to guess the size of towns and cities when they are divided into several screens, but no such luck this time. Remember Kalm? The first town you stop at after escaping Midgar? It is there that Cloud gives his account of the Nibelheim Incident. It also serves as the first area of Dirge of Cerberus and well it is kinda at the very least ten times as big. If we apply the same size increase to all the areas the end result will mean that Nomura and co will have a crapton of work ahead of them. Also can't wait for HD Wutai.

Although I think there will be more stuff added to the game than removed there is one thing we must add to the removed part right now. And that is the overworld. Like it or not it is a relic of a bygone era. The current trends call for an open fully explorable world map like in Skyrim. Or I should say like in Final Fantasy XV. And you know what that means? That's right. Lots and lots of work on thee environment. Huge patches of empty grass, carbon copy forests and miles of sea without small islands are not fun. Appart from a few exceptions you find anything interesting on the world map is when the story requires you to do. Like when you fight Toph. Err...sorry, Yuffie. Still you can't deny that she and Miss Beifong share lots of smilarities. Anyroad as diverse as the gameplay is, the story itself is pretty linear. You go here, you do this go somewhere else and do that. As such there aren't many areas that are not relevant to the plot or areas that are only there to give side quests. Actually only Wutai comes to my mind. Now if you have a wide open world map this has to change. Now if moogles were real they could have a cave somewhere. Or the sylphs maybe. And we just slipped into gameplay and lore changes that are necessary solely because the visuals got an update. See? And this is just scratching the surface. Speaking of scratching.

Combat. Now the combat system will be discussed separately, but the combat animations are also parts of the visuals. And they need a huge overhaul. Now most of it is dependant on the combat system. For example the cover animation is pretty weird. It needs a rework. But if the game gets anything more modern than a fully turn based combat system and it might be removed completely. You know, like how you don't see party members teleporting in front of you in XIII. We will also most likely see a much wider variety of sword strikes from good old Cloud. Watching him repeat the same vertical slash can get tiresome.

And then there are the summons. Dear god, the summons. First there is the..ehmm...weird fade out at the beginning. I'm pretty sure characters won't change into their outlines in the remake. But that is nothing compared to what the summons themselves do. Sure some make a reasonable ammount of sense, like Ifrit, Ramuh or Odin. Leviathan is pushing it a bit with his (her?) tidal wave that should realisctically rearrange towns, but I'll let that pass. Titan however is charged guilty. There is probably a reason why he is getting less and less screen time as the graphic engines improve. His 'table flip' should leave a permanent scar on thegame world. And if you are in an elevator...well good luck. I'm not sure how XV will solve this problem. Titan might get an entirely new attack both there and here. Exhibit number two is Neo Bahamut. A good indication that a summon in VII is messed up is its absence from crisis core. Neo B falls into this camp along with Titan and Kujata. Table flips and making solid ground wave is trippy enough, but this particular Bahamut has probably the most messed up attack. And yes that includes Bahamut Fury weaponizing the moon.

To refresh your memories in case playing VII was a long time ago: Neo Bahamut levitates a huge chunk of the ground – without leaving a hole naturally – up into the sky. This happens even if you happen to be inside a cave or a building. Next he destroys the levitated piece of ground with a huge beam. Naturally the laser that causes solid rock blast into splinters does not immediately kill the enemies even if they happen to be a bunch of insects that you can one-shot kill with your default attack. No, what kills them is the fall from the stratosphere back to the second floor of a 50 storey building or whatever. Funnily enough this can happen to enemies that can totally fly. Sure a simple little bird might forget that it can fly after this spectacle, but definitely not Sephiroth.

So yeah. TL;DR version: The summons will most likely undergo a lot of change as in their current form some would break our suspension of disbelief, the graphic engine, the fourth wall and all sorts of physics rules.

Of course we cannot talk about the visuals of combat without mentioning blood. In the old games combat was very much bloodless even though slashing someone with the buster sword should have made every battle look like it's from Kill Bill. Type-0 has a sort of realistic take on how combat should look like. Question is: how realistic do we want Aerith's death to be? It already broke our hearts. But still, getting stabbed by a sword that size is bound to draw blood. With all the pools of water around we could get lots of stunning images. Hey Aerith, look at these pretty red flowers in the water..... Aerith?.......Aerith!!!!

One last thing before we wrap up this chapter. If you are a Final Fantasy fan chances are you have heared of HC Bailly. He is a pretty awesome guy who has let's play videos for most of the final fantasy entries. We disagree on some points (6 vs 7, how to pronounce Yuffie) but I still love his videos and watch them regularly. Sometimes because I get stuck and a lot of times just to have fun. Well me Bailly noticed something fishy when doing the Wutai quest line. As you no doubt remember Elena and Yuffie are kidnapped by Don Corneo and tied to a statue. So far this sounds like pretty standard fair for Final Fantasy girls. Most of them get tied up or chained to a wall at least once by the villains. And the villains always forget about gagging them for reasons I cannot fathom. Anyway there are several problems with this particular one. I'll let the gag issue pass as Yuffie has some pretty funny lines here( as well). The first thing Bailly noticed is that the girls have no visible restrains on them. Yuffie mentions something about rope work, but as far as we can see she and Elana are superglued to the statue. Expect it cant be superglue as after Corneo presses a button on a remote, that I don't quite remember seeing, the captives turn upside down in a way that doesn't make sense no matter how ropes - that by the way can't be operated remotely – are applied to them. As a final point Bailly draws attention to the fact that the girls are tied to an area of the statue that can't be reached no matter where you stand. This is probably a reason why their release wasn't shown on screen. This naturally needs some reworks. Although I'm pretty sure all SE has to do is organize a deviant art contest to draw 'Elena and Yuffie tied to a statue'. Problem solved. Unfortunately for Yuffie I'm not off her case yet. The whole Wutai story beings with her memorable theft of all our materia. Including those on other characters. And yes, including those you have equipped on your weapons. She does all of this by...well I'm not sure how because we never see. She never really touches the player party before fleeing the Shinra troops and by that time you are already robbed.

A nice way to solve this problem is for Yuffie convincing the party to call it a day and make camp. During the night she will have plenty of time to take all the materia and flee. Of course we would see her leave and follow her only to be bumped into the Shinra soldiers. Actually camping might be a permanent feature if it works well in XV. An existing party camp would definitely answer the question of where the rest of the gang is while are off fighting before you get the Highwind. It would also be a good place to get additional influence points for the Gold Saucer date. And whoops we are back to affecting gameplay again.

Okay, that's it for visuals. Hope you guys enjoyed it and will return for the audio discussion.

Changes we might see in the Final Fantasy VII remake - Prologue

Finally, the very reason I started this blog. No I am not using internet explorer by the way. It just took long to pick the right platform for this discussion.

Just a quick recap. If you have been living under a rock for the past four months: Final Fantasy VII is finally officially totally being remade for PS4 (and probably for every single gaming platform later, but it is a timed exclusive for the time being).

Why is this such a big news? Well in case you have been living under a rock for the past eighteen years: Final Fantasy VII is one of the top competitors for the title of best videogame of all time. Wikipedia actually has a ranking of video games based on how many best videogame ever lists they topped. On that list, FFVII is number 3 with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Chrono Trigger as first and secon respectively. GTA V and all the Call of Duty titles are veeery far away.

Anyway, it is a pretty awesome game. Some say it is overrated. It is actually true. Both VI and IX have an overall better soundtrack, it has the second worst romance of the series, there isn't much difference between the otherwise diverse characters in terms of combat, and I have other similar small gripes with it. The game is by no means perfect, despite what other Final Fantasy VII fans would have you believe. But it is also not utter garbage, as most Final Fantasy VI (III for those from the US) fans claim.

I could go on for ages about the pros and cons of Final Fantasy VII but that is not the purpose of this series of articles. Short answer is, I think VII really is the best entry in the series. But like every other time the same rules apply. This is not the gospel. This is just my oppinion. To tell the truth, neither installment is objectively better than the other, even if parts of it are. Let me explain. I hundred percent believe that the gameplay is much more diverse than in every other entry in the series. Maybe not XIV, but even there it is a close call. You see in VII you can travel by foot, chocobo, buggy, a downed airplane or an airship. You can play basketball, a weird claw game, a robot fighting game or adventure game starring a moogle. At different points of the story you can take part in excavations, ride around with a motorcycle and killing enemies while mounted, chase down enemies in a submarine and......alright this is getting way too long. Bottom line is, it had so many side activities that the GTA series looks linear in comparison. In this regard it is objectively better than the other entries. But it is subjective how important this is for you. Maybe you only care about combat, and frankly VI had a lot more satisfying combat. Especially with Sabin in it.

But regardless of how far you rank it the fact remains that Final Fantasy VII was an immensly popular game at its relies, way ahead of its time, that defined how the western world looked at JRPGs.

And now it is being remade. Not converted into HD, but remade. Director Tetsuysa Nomura already revealed that we can expect dramatic changes, at the very least in terms of combat. The fandom is divided about wether this is a good thing. The trailer said it best: „The renuion at hand may bring joy, it may bring fear, but let us embrace whatever it brings.” Most fans regard FF VII as a precious jewel and think of even the smallest change as blasphemy. This is one of the many reasons why people didn't think Square Enix would actually do a remake despite it being rumored ever since the PS2 was released. Now I have my favorite moments and if those change I will be very mad. But a lot of things won't be the same. And that is for the best.

I am a translator and interpreter by profession and one of the most important things we are taught is that our goal is not to translate the text given to us, but the meaing, the intention. We need the translation to have the same effect as the original.

And that is the objective of this remake as well. The original game had cutting edge graphics, a diverse gamemplay, a hidden influence system and it was the first example of cloud based gaming(ba dum tss). The remake won't be the revolutionary gamechanger the original was by simply copying all this and making it shinier. There will be a lot of change. Let us see what these will be.