Did you interpret Zack’s scene along the lines of “he’s actually alive/makes it/or will timeline hop/see Aerith again” over the course of the next game? That seems the general consensus and it’s probably wishful to think otherwise. Could’ve just been a poignant nod across time, but the whole tone’s so much brighter, there’s that alternate Stamp, whispers around then Midgar…
If they’d always wanted to tell “a new story” from 7’s strong (more concise) beginning iconography, then later places/events as a loose blueprint…couldn’t they have better respected pretty much everything/one involved - maybe being bolder next time, or gradually revealing? Less…cowardly bombastic about it? Freedom to change and please differently sounds great, if you end up almost willfully undercutting some major character/world/narrative anchors though, did they really have big aim for “the original/the remake/the legacy” in mind?
After all they had done faithfully coherent, too. It feels misguided and I’m not sure for any reason other than anxiety 20+ years on resulting in, more than playful (or necessary) subversion.
Sorry I’ve been on that bend a couple days now! It just…really threw a wrench in everything else they had going right. Even so, gotta see the next, ain’t no stopping this train, etc.
tbh i dont think zack is alive now. at least what my gut tells me is that if he is - we should be ready for whole new levels of getting darker than the original does.
The level design is inconsistent: you have fantastic bits like both mako reactor assaults and then areas like the sewers where I thought I had run in a circle because two large areas were copied right after the other and the only change was a chest to a crate.
If he doesn’t die immediately or shortly after that, this most likely means either
a)new alternate timeline story that most certainly carries he and Cloud somewhere different as the game proper starts a couple months later
b)they are bringing him (them?) into the current scenario and events. Any way I chop that, it looks extremely silly and resembles huge yes, typical Nomura bs people would’ve griped about going into this
Really hoping it’s all nothing of the sort via timetravel and alludes to something else entirely. The first is less direct but still bizarre pandering, something you could possibly iron wrinkles out of.
Honestly unsure how any of that could be “darker than the original”, when how this shifts and winks toward the future…that it clearly flirts with being less so!
Maybe it’s so much a sequel meta wise as well, that
c) this is all some lifestream-postFF7dream, playing a further tug of war between Jenova and Sons vs Centra/Humanity. Maybe Sephiroth’s plea extends to a scale out in the cosmos? If so really who wanted all this more than a new expanded version of the game? Players old and new, it becomes something else and I don’t see that load-bearing the mess
you spend 20+ hours assuring me that this isn’t some advent children bullshit, and then in the last hour, ha ha fuck you play this better version of a dissidia fight several times also pacing??? narrative themes??? what the fuck are those??? hey here’s the biggest plot twist from the second half of the game totally spoiled before you actually leave midgar! and, why yes, we did completely forget thatsephiroth is not actually literally a one winged angel!!!
fuck dude i am so bummed final fantasy 7 is my favorite game ever, and the ending just fucking nomura’d all over the place
This is a very strong contender for multiple instances of cutscenes showing a hidden POV camera following the characters, and then when the boss finally ambushes the party it comes from the opposite direction as the POV camera, showing that the POV camera was actually nothing at all!
Keep in mind that the only way Japan is taking this prize is if we isolate it to JRPGs, because the states has been the uncontested RPG title holder for 16 years running.
I want to make a post being positive about the ending but I have to keep reminding myself that I didn’t play crisis core or dissidia or any of the other spinoffs. So I appreciate that people are sick of the tinkering. Ultimately I think it’s just good taste to keep things loose going forward though, it would be a bit morbid and cynical to keep everything exactly the same, everyone just waiting for Aeri(th) to get iced again.
having finished it now, I can’t say I mind the ending, I think it’s fine if they want to go further off the rails with the rest of this project. it just depends on where they take it I guess.
is it worth catching up on all the crisis core stuff to make sense of all that? I just kind of don’t care lol
in a weird way it seems like this is a tacit admission that the midgar section of ffvii is the only one worth “preserving” and the more I think about it I’m like ehh I guess so, it definitely has the most iconic scenes, fights, moments, etc., with the obvious exception of aerith’s death or whatever. but like when I think about them changing anything post midgar I just don’t really care that much.
part of me is unsure if this game is so good because it had an incredibly solid foundation to build off of, and if that’s the case then by discarding the script of the original the rest of this project is probably gonna be bad? but on the other hand, the writing is otherwise so consistently smarter than the original that I am maybe a little hopeful that the rest won’t just be a bunch of dumbass advent children style stuff. I don’t know.