here is the guest piece i got to write about ff7r…
https://www.rebind.io/because-the-night-deephelldotcoms-ff7-remake-analysis-4522/
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im really excited to see some of the wilder locations like the glacier and the city of the ancients
god I love this game so much it just keeps putting a big dumb grin on my face
it also made me cry again
so much actually good writing I just can’t
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Watch them develop the Fort Condor location into a full on tactics game that’s only available on phones.
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Gold Saucer transformed into a fully realized and diegetically accurate microtransaction nightmare
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Gold Saucer dates expanded to include all party members plus Sephiroth and Jessie’s Ghost.
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I have previously gone on record as saying that they should really have changed Rydia to Lydia when they re-localized final fantasy 4 but LENO is something else entirely, I love it
incidentally, if the idea of a writer not being able to resist this name change to the extent that they then give a villain a bunch of jokes about his car collection does not appeal to you, you may not want to play my FFT patch
actually I also like the ethnic implications of jay leno being an agent of a pogrom, gonna think about this one real hard
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rydia is such a cooler sounding name tho
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A hot boy takes a gap year in Midgar and all the popular girls immediately try to introduce him to their moms.
What a good game.
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That reminds me of the imprisoned guy in Demons Souls 3-1 who went by names that were spelled and pronounced differently depending on who you were talking to (Rid-dell or Rid-yell). Oh no that was just the Asian version.
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Having finished the game these are the four points that stay with me as the things I did not care for:
Music during long cutscenes that is not scored to the cutscene even remotely. Guessing that was one concession from the troubled development that they let go to keep the rest of the production at a high level of quality
The two Star Wars Special Edition additions to the Sector 7 Plate destruction event. I can only guess that along with Hell House there are elements of the FF7 fan community who have not shut up for the past 20 years about “Why didn’t Reeve try to help you? Isn’t he in charge of community development? Did they forget to revise the script after writing the rest of the game? Ding!”
The whole deal with the Phantoms makes sense with how they end the game, but I still don’t like how it was told in the game. I feel like there should be a word for this: for something that makes sense based on the author’s goals, but not on the story the author is writing. The convenience and pace of FF7 makes sense as a pulpy action movie, but is just bizarre if this is somehow part of a fated destiny laid out by the gods.
Which then goes into the overall theme of 7R that there was something about the tragedies of FF7 that was a mistake which needed to be corrected. The character and voicework of Aeris in this game finally made me like the character enough that I want to see her stick around more, but taking “People who played FF7 wanted to bring Aeris back” and turning that into “You’ll be able to save Aeris” comes from the same place that gave us the last Star Wars movie.
So, ultimately, I expect the “back of the box” narrative through-line of the rest of this project to be a wash, but expect it to be filled with a bunch of great moments along the way.
The post-game experience is entertaining, though I do feel like I might end up bouncing off of it. It is in line with how I came to feel like FF7’s materia system was intended to be used: extreme specialization that can be situationally adjusted, and the need for that was toned down in the game so it could be played by normal people.
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one change I am very happy with is the more consistent use of the full “shinra electric power company” title because it sounds like a 19th century industrialist founded their own nation state
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SquareEnix Product Command
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The more I recall the Shinra Building, everything they managed to keep around and convey detail wise up to ~Floor 65 was…pretty strong! But from the lab until, I guess facing Rufus there’s just a lot of compressed or altogether omitted stuff.
They have a huge Hojo lab, Jenova system and Sephiroth dripping purple…these work to their padding and narrative in the moment, functionally, but felt kinda hollow. Then leading to Sephiroth stabbing Prez (on screen!) and Barrett 
. The Jenova and Rufus fights themselves were cool though.
I sorely missed the og’s combination of much heavier atmosphere and pacing, really paid off as these ominous or dread-filled story beats: being in the prison cells, escaping to find a trail of blood and dead workers/guards, the party meeting earlier with Pres/ Shinra and his speech (even better later, in front of Rufus and his).
Just about everything after the roof was amazing, though. Until SoMuchSephiroth, Cloud Tifa and Barrett Future Nobodies
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I get that heavy bloodletting has not been the style for these (usually or I dunno maybe this careful product/market angle), but if you’re gonna have occasional thick language and adult themes, assorted grounds of realism then shy away from even very obvious trickle cases for it, some basic immersion jilted
My personal read on the Shinra execs is that they’re all former mobsters, and Reeve is the failson of deceased criminal parentage, who fell into the most profitable venture in the universe by accident.
A quick check on the final fantasy wiki seems to indicate that none of the FF7 supplementary material has gone into how Shinra actually discovered how to build a soul-burning engine or how the company started beyond getting super rich all at once, and for that I’m glad. Asking that question of Resident Evil was a monkey’s paw wish.
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Need FF7 Prologue Re:Energy PetroCore starring Daniel Plainview
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I’m a mako man
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