Ghosts!
Fun fact, when following a guide on "permanently missable items", these ghosts are one of the first because you can steal a limited item called Ghost Hand from them and this is the only place to get it.
It's not an actually useful item, since it's a one-use Osmose effectively, but it certainly told me "oh this guide is covering literally everything missable isn't it".
Damn, now that's dedication. "Yeah so I realized everyone here including me is going to be crushed by ten million tons of metal in a few minutes, but I really don't wanna lose my job at the station, you know? They fire you if you leave mid-shift."
Guess that's one more credit towards FF7 humans being Just Built Different, at least a little bit. Because boy howdy, that was one hell of a fall Wedge made, possibly with multiple impacts if I'm remembering properly, and here he is able to still cough out sentences.
Enemy design in FF7 has a tendency to get very, very goofy. And while part of that is just the transition from static sprites to moving models, part of it is also just... that they apparently had a lot of fun designing extremely goofy models in the first place.It looks like Shinra bypassed local slum security by using airborne troops, including, huh, these goofy motherfuckers:
They're soldiers with helicopter hands who fight using propeller blades as swords. Ridiculous.
The way I felt watching that scene was that Reno effectively hop skipped and jumped through Barret's fire to go activate the tower self-destruct, but yeah it could have been conveyed better.
Oh hey, it's one of those places kid me game overed on. I don't know if it was a lack of healing, or just not dealing with the pyramids, but I distinctly recall getting my ass kicked here. On the other hand, this playthrough it was a lot easier because I already had three restore materia because obviously if you have the option to give every party member easy healing access, you do it even if only one has All to go with it.
Whoa, whoa now Omi.
It's one eighth of the city, we got eight districts. Not much worse than a little pinch of decimation, you know?
Yeah I'm still not far enough ahead to remember if this will change as the game goes on and the party gets larger, but so far the game's done a good job of actually characterizing everyone and having interactions and things. Of course, FF6 also didn't start to fall off in that regard until you got party select around Narshe, so... we'll see, we'll see.
I think one thing that makes this scene particularly strong is the absolute lack of music, barring one bit. They could have easily had some distress-filled track going "oh no look everyone is dying", but all you have is the explosions in the distance, the sound of groaning metal as the plate begins to fall, the TV going to static (and the man on the television turning with a "what the fuck" expression as the plate falls, nice touch)... and then the only music in the entire scene.
You can faintly hear what sounds like some nice, soothing classical music playing and getting louder as the camera approaches the Shinra tower, as President Shinra watches the plate fall from the complete comfort of his office. Quite a way to set the mood, that little snippet of music.
I also like this, and what it says about both Barret and Tifa. Like, Barret's absolutely right, this is entirely on Shinra's head and proves just how evil they are that they would murder so many people just to take care of a tiny terrorist cell, but Tifa's reaction strikes me as... particularly realistic? It's that reaction of having it kick in of just what scale of things she's gotten herself involved in, even more than the reactor bombing.Tifa asks aloud if this is their fault, if all these innocents lost their lives because Avalanche was there, and Barret dismisses the very thought - nobody is responsible for Shinra's sins but Shinra. And honestly, he's right. The cost and consequences of Avalanche's terrorism is to be found in the impact of the destroyed reactors on people's lives, not on a wildly unpredictable and out-of-scope counterterrorist response of 'nuke the damn city.' Governments threatened by terrorism typically crack down in ways that hurt bystanders as collateral, and that's something you have to be prepared for, but this is an insane escalation.
Barret launches into a heated, passionate speech about Shinra's greed and evil and the need to destroy them once and for all. Tifa is… unsure how she feels about that.
Random aside, Ethers feel a lot more effective in FF7 compared to FF6? I mean part of that is they restore 100 MP instead of 50 MP, but also so far MP isn't scaling up nearly as fast as it did in FF6, and that's not even mentioning the Osmose problem I've brought up time and time again.
Oh good, that's also where I stopped, so I still have time to stay ahead.
And this here is probably one of the biggest problems I have with the Remake (other than... being called Remake). Midgar is a fairly dense part of the original game, and there's certainly room for a bit more meat... but the Remake takes it well beyond "a bit more" and into shoving several dozen thanksgiving dinners down your gullet, dragging out Midgar with oodles of sidequests that just don't feel necessary. To some degree, I wonder if that's an overarching problem with the Final Fantasy games as a while right now because having been following a streamer playing FFXVI... the same issue has jumped out there, where hours at a time become "oh boy time to ignore the plot and go sidequest for three hours".
Not to say you can't have sidequests in a JRPG, but usually the hours at a time part comes about when the game opens up more, like hitting the world map or getting an airship.
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