Hojo is that special kind of evil that seems worse than the actively omnicidal monsters, because he strikes close to home. If you dont personally know a smug greasy amoral asshole convinced he's got the solutions to all problems and anybody who disagrees or thinks his solutions are just him ego massaging himself doesnt understand his brilliance, the kind of guy convinced he's guided purely by logic/science and any disagreement means you're illogical or stupid instead of him not actually being logical, you've watched them with muted horror on the news or blocked a dozen on social media.
Kefka or Sephiroth you can watch from an emotionally remote distance and analyze as a character, but Hojo prompts a visceral "ugh, its that guy" response.
Huh, I'm learning a lot today. I played this back in the day when I didn't even really conceptualize internet fandom as a thing and I took the stairs because 'of course you take the stealthy option' and took the fact there was all this dialogue to mean I made the right choice and the other one was a dead end. I never even heard other people complaining about it.
Same here, I liked taking the stairs. And it's not like you'll completely miss out on the first floor; if you take the stairs up, you can still go down to the first floor via the elevator and go back up, albeit without the whole elevator roulette.
I always thought that Hojo was probably a fraud, a pseudoscientist (not that I knew the word back then). He feeds the Shinra management what they want to hear - it's clear they have strong preconceptions about "the Promised Land" and so on - and they fund his projects which are basically him just screwing around. In other words, the reason his weird "breeding" idea seems to make no scientific sense is because it doesn't make scientific sense, it really is just him indulging his fetish or power trip or something like that.
He also always struck me as the sort of man who is utterly living in his own little world to the point of being effectively a solipsist. Other people are just props to him. The kind of man who can be incredibly cruel without malice because malice would require him to actually consider his victims as sentient beings instead of objects.
I mean, I know it was the 90s, but this is such a weird choice of language for Tifa to use. It's so offensive but also so… childish? It makes her sound like a schoolyard bully, which is the opposite of her entire displayed personality so far. And this is completely made up by the English translator! In Japanese she says something like "Don't say stuff like that," because he had a (genuinely funny for how over the top it is for the circumstances) line about how he wanted to see Marlene again but he's going to die here, on these stairs. It's such a wildly inappropriate line.
I mean, it's not the worst slur she could have decided to call Barret. That's it. Tifa is a gamer now. She is using Gamer Words.
This is your standard Shinra security troops, and they get dealt with accordingly within a few rounds (though those seem to have new, more damaging moves such as throwing a hand grenade).
Indeed, they're technically a new type of enemy called "grenade combatants", although even the retranslation can't resist the fact we have a very easy and evocative word in English for guys using grenades already; "Grenadier", which in an uncommon bit of being on the same wavelength is what the Remake calls them too.
Our opponents this time are "Mighty Grunts." As was pointed out after my first update, "Grunt" is the name of those weird cyber-gimps with claws that look to be in some ways modified or augmented, rather than just weird uniforms; appropriately, the Mighty Grunts themselves appear to be a similar kind of modified combattant, wearing heavy armor and fighting with arm-mounted machine guns; I say "modified" because they have a really neat mechanic where, once you drop them below HP, their armor breaks and releases the soldier inside, who looks like this:
Once you know that there's a tokusatsu influence, then these "mid-season upgrades" for Shinra's costumed mooks suddenly get a lot more evocative.
The only downside, digging into the naming files, is that they're always technically the same enemy name just with a transformation in the middle. The Remake has a neat thing of changing the terminology from "Armored Shock Trooper" to "Enhanced Shock Trooper" when they eject, but without that the adjective to refer to them as a whole is tricky... I think I honestly prefer the original translation's "Mighty" to Reunion's "Reinforced", even if the latter sounds more corporate and technical, because the latter evokes the armor enhancement but not the speed one...
Hovering saw-bots that fold themselves into a spinning disk of death to cut people. I can fault Shinra for many things, but not their sense of aesthetics.
One has to wonder who in the Shinra Weapons Department came up with the "Sword Dance", though. We're leaving the realm of reasonable military doctrine with a fantasy twist and reaching something that seems like more just a pure terror weapon.
Those two guards are walking in the space with these golden statues (tacky, btw; I assume they're statues of President Shinra, which would be somehow even tackier).
They seem differently sized. My inclination is that it could be the six Shinra department heads... but then again, they also look all male, so maybe previous Presidents Shinra? That raises the question of how long Shinra's been around despite Mako being a relatively recent development... it's funny to imagine them being just a normal minor power company in whatever country of 8 towns they eventually turned into Midgar before they stumbled onto the formula to suck the literal life of the planet out for electricity.
Also it's just… Fascinating how disconnected from the world these people are? Here, or in the lounge below, they're all just… Chilling. Talking about needing to get rid of their love handles, flirting with the receptionist, just having normal lives while thousands are dead in the collapse of Sector 7. Completely insulated from the world and any level of care at the top of the world's tallest building. Not even evil, just… Oblivious to the horror going on outside their walls.
The scale is kind of fucked and inconsistent as is typical for an RPG with a world map and sweeping shots of a city that isn't that big relative to real ones... but the fact Shinra HQ is called "Sector 0" and towers in comparison to actual city blocks makes it seem less like an office building and more like an arcology. Those 50-something floors you skipped might just be entirely combined living and working quarters. The floor space in the game doesn't quite live up to that... but again, space is warped for RPG scale so you can imagine more just off screen.
By the way... did the original translation throw in an extra creepy line from Hojo mentioning that Aerith will be a "strong mother" besides "a few frailties"?
Because that's something that hit me as extra fucked up.
…see, this is kind of awkward because, well. I don't want to refer to Red XIII by his experiment number? I'd like to give him something more meaningful, a new name for a new life. But I don't know him enough to actually make any kind of call, and "Red XIII" is his name as referenced in all extra material about the game or in the Remake where characters are voice acted and so names can't be changed, so it would be weird if I went this whole playthrough calling him, I don't know, Mittens. So Red XIII it is, but it feels like a missed opportunity.
I can't spoil too much, but Reunion actually modifies the gameplay in an important way so that there's a chance to fix this uncomfortable fact of just calling Red by his torturous experiment number. It's one of the best small changes a mod like that could make.
So uhhh... have you been trying out the Steal Materia?
There's a nice opportunity while you're in the building and looking at these guys.
And for two enemy types in here you didn't comment on and verifiably can't now because you crossed an event trigger... well, there's a giant gun-armed Warning Board (don't go exploring when you work at Shinra, Christ, your keycard is literally the only thing stopping the wet floor signs from shooting you) and a robot called the "Moth Slasher" in the original translation but in the retranslation is "Moss Slasher" because it has spinning ground-level blades indicating it's probably some kind of evil lawn maintenance unit (to trim that grove in the rest area, I suppose).
Cloud: "Where is Aerith?" President Shinra: "In a safe place. She's the last surviving Ancient…" President Shinra: "Don't you know? They called themselves the Cetra and lived thousands of years ago. Now they are just a forgotten page in history." Red XIII: "Cetra… That girl is a survivor of the Cetra?" President Shinra: "Cetra, or the Ancients, will show us the way to the 'Promised Land.' I'm expecting a lot out of her." Red XIII: "The Promised Land? Isn't that just a legend?" President Shinra: "Even so, it's far too appealing not to pursue. It's been said that the Promised Land is very fertile. If the land is fertile…" Barret: "Then there's gotta be Mako!" President Shinra: "Exactly. This is why our money-making Mako Reactor is necessary. The abundant Mako will flow out on its own. That is where Neo-Midgar will be built. Shinra's new glory…" Barret: "[Censored]! Quit dreamin'!" President Shinra: "Oh, really, don't you know? These days all it takes for your dreams to come true is money and power." President Shinra: "Well, that's all for our meeting." Rude: "Come on! Outta his way!"
[The group are taken away; Barret resists as Rude pulls him away.] Barret: "Hold it! I got a lot to say to you!" President Shinra: "If there's anything else… Talk to my secretary."
Funny thing to add here from the retranslation: President Shinra mentions that they think the Promised is so abundant with Mako that they won't even have to build a reactor... which is why he says the Mako Reactors aren't necessary unlike in this original translation. It's the ultimate capitalist dream: natural resources flowing out so abundantly for you to exploit that you don't even need to invest your capital in "cash craving" reactors or employees: you can just become a rentier and make money off of what is right there on the ground by denying it to others (who will have to live there because you're deliberately demolishing and neglecting the megacity they used to live in).
Not much more to add aside from "Hojo is a greasy evil motherfucker and I hate him even more from being decently further in the game than you and having seen him more".
Tifa answers that Aerith "Seems all right… In many ways." I checked the Retranslated mod, and no, this seems accurate, Tifa there says "She seems to be [okay]. In more ways than one." I think Tifa is just straight up saying "girl lookin' fine?" That is the only way I can make sense of this. Incredible.
What is he even expecting to happen? Is there any reason to believe that's even possible? They're separate species! Is he trying to create catgirls?
Oh my god, that's it. Hojo is literally trying to breed magical catgirls.
This is the worst plot twist in all of Final Fantasy. Why am I being subjected to this!! Why can't I kill this man for forcing me to think about these things!!!
That little girl tells us that all her friends climbed up that wire, but she's scared to try it, and she tells us that it leads to the "upper world." Looks like we got our new destination. Cloud tells Barret there's no way they can manage to climb that high, and Barret points to the wire, referring to it as a "golden shiny wire of hope." Pffft. Barret, you're terrible at metaphors.
So sad, Omicron. This was a clear reference to 'The Spider's Thread', the means by which sinners can escape hell and reach heaven, a short story that has enjoyed some popularity in the Japanese modern zeitgeist.
I guess that mythology just isn't your thing, if it's not written in Sumerian and doesn't concern your bae Ereshkigal.
These guys have stumbled on the possibility that fucking Atlantis may be real and they're planning to strip-mine it for more oil. Their big world-changing era-defining plan is build a bigger power plant. They've been exhausting the Mako supply of the planet, and their plan is to find a new place with more Mako and just move their industry there and do it all over again.
Absolutely zero self-reflection. No sense of irony whatsoever. Just Make Money. Absolutely perfect capitalist bad guys.
Not only have they done the thing of assuming Atlantis is real, based on no evidence. They've also heard some mythological story about a land flowing with milk and honey, in which the people knew peace, and gone '...milk and honey...that must mean oil! And they must know peace because of all the underpaid servants they have!'
True geniuses. They do have that particular piece of capitalist brain rot of, 'I'm rich, so people conform to whatever I want...so reality will do the same thing as well.' They want Atlantis to be real, it would be convenient for them, so they're going full bore on the mere assumption that it is, and that they don't need to think about consequences or plan for if they're wrong.
I always thought he was a hyena, personally, but I never looked it up, so I could be wrong. As has been said, he's a fantasy creature that talks, so he may not correspond to any real world classification.
EDIT: The reason I thought that is that Red does seem to have that weird mohawk- mane hyenas have which isn't found on most animals.
There are no random encounters during the ascent, notably. The entire sequence is spent just slowly, laboriously climbing the path of ruin, until we finally reach the end. And when we do…
So I actually don't mind this, the big issue is there are items on the stairway ascent, so I would always pick the lobby entrance first for the exp and gil, then run back down the stairs to pick up the items anyway.
You're getting your cardio exercise Barret, one way or the other.
Also the only permanently missable one. There's one more chance after you finish the Shinra Building section but after that the side quest remains permanently incompletable.
So, in case you didn't find it, there's a shop you can access if you went up the stairs and then into a door on your right. Says a lot when not even a terrorist attack on the headquarters is grounds for shutting the store down.
If we fail, we first fight the guards, and then we're sent back to the start, so it's impossible to power through with violence. Once we've gone halfway, the group gathers up again, and we have to do it a second time with guards that are moving faster.
I don't think I've ever had it not be MAKO before! The mayor gives a little speech about how if he just had a little bit of mako production he could be a real power again.
You didn't mention it @Omicron, so I can only assume you didn't spot it, but if you look in this picture you can see a sphere to the left of Cloud. That's the Enemy Skill materia, this games Blue Magic item. There's only four of them in the game but this is the first one.
You didn't mention it @Omicron, so I can only assume you didn't spot it, but if you look in this picture you can see a sphere to the left of Cloud. That's the Enemy Skill materia, this games Blue Magic item. There's only four of them in the game but this is the first one.
Hojo didn't ACCIDENTALLY or SCIENTIFICALLY end up producing a #feral #anthro #impregnation doujin scenario. Dude here was looking for an excuse. My guy had a weird orange magical cat-dog from an extinct species just waiting for the opportunity to put it into an insane contrived scenario as to why we have, we HAVE to have the cat fuck a person President Shinra, it is IMPERATIVE to locating the Promised Land.
What is he even expecting to happen? Is there any reason to believe that's even possible? They're separate species! Is he trying to create catgirls?
Oh my god, that's it. Hojo is literally trying to breed magical catgirls.
This is the worst plot twist in all of Final Fantasy. Why am I being subjected to this!! Why can't I kill this man for forcing me to think about these things!!!
Corneo's henchman Kotch is tied to the torture table. When we agree to free him, he explains what happened - not long after we left, Shinra troops broke into the estate to punish the Don for leaking information, grabbed him, and left; most other henchmen are probably either dead in the shoot-out, or scattered after their boss was gone.
An obvious question: Don Corneo was arrested by Shinra troopers and taken away. Anyone who resisted or in the wrong place were killed, and the survivors scattered.
So why is Kotch tied up to the torture table? Who tied him there?
The only explanation I can think of is that the Shinra intrusion happened very quickly, and it was all over just as quickly, and so Kotch had actually been tied up on the torture table for completely unrelated purposes, and was left there while his captor wandered off to investigate the commotion.
I recall one of the interactable billboards or consoles in that area played a pre-rendered cinematic advertisement for Shinra's vehicles. It stuck in my mind because in the limited hardware of the Switch, there is a very noticeable lag as the game has to fire up whatever video replay engine is needed.
It's a fiddly, irritating bit of gameplay that doesn't feel good to win. At this point, it's growing apparent that FF7 has a thing for minigames - I can kind of see where it's coming from; they're trying to take advantage of the PSX's newfound power and their 3D abilities and models to flex a million new possible ways to engage with gameplay.
The problem is that it's irritating every time. The game is good when it sticks to its core mechanics, not when it's doing… Shit like this.
Yeah, honestly my personal definition of how to divide "old Final Fantasy" with "modern Final Fantasy" is "when they decided to put in all the minigames".
…see, this is kind of awkward because, well. I don't want to refer to Red XIII by his experiment number? I'd like to give him something more meaningful, a new name for a new life. But I don't know him enough to actually make any kind of call, and "Red XIII" is his name as referenced in all extra material about the game or in the Remake where characters are voice acted and so names can't be changed, so it would be weird if I went this whole playthrough calling him, I don't know, Mittens. So Red XIII it is, but it feels like a missed opportunity.
I don't think I've ever had it not be MAKO before! The mayor gives a little speech about how if he just had a little bit of mako production he could be a real power again.
Throughout all my playthroughs of FFVII, from the original PC port to the Steam PC port to the Switch port, and through multiple playthroughs of at least the original PC port, I have never had the password be anything other than "KING".
Which was both amusing and confusing, because the only way I learned it was supposed to change is how so many walkthroughs at the time (even a few years after FFVII's original release) claimed that the password is always "MAKO", and this was clearly incorrect for my playthrough. I thought it was because I was playing the PC port instead of the original Playstation, but upon further research and forum comments, I learned that it was supposed to change.
So I actually don't mind this, the big issue is there are items on the stairway ascent, so I would always pick the lobby entrance first for the exp and gil, then run back down the stairs to pick up the items anyway.
You're getting your cardio exercise Barret, one way or the other.
I just read Omicron's sig and remembered binging Now You Feel Like Number None during the long waiting times in the hospital when we had our first baby, and now I'm reading this thread when we're about to have our second.
I missed some of FF6, might have to go back and reread that if I have extra time.
I recall one of the interactable billboards or consoles in that area played a pre-rendered cinematic advertisement for Shinra's vehicles. It stuck in my mind because in the limited hardware of the Switch, there is a very noticeable lag as the game has to fire up whatever video replay engine is needed.
That's in an area I think Omicron missed on the way up or just didn't mention: The employee convenience store located on like the second or third floor up the stairs in the lobby. You miss it if you go straight through the lobby to the elevator but you can find it later on the way out too.
Gotta say, it's really notable just how much denser this game is than its predecessors. Like, FFVI was also fairly frontloaded with cutscenes and setpieces, but by the equivalent playtime there already were sections of pure dungeon exploration and open-ish world. Here, we go from setpiece to setpiece, with a lot of information being delivered to us each time.
…okay, so they've fully lost touch with reality. Like, they didn't save Sector 7, they allowed it to be fully destroyed and simply sent in rescue workers afterwards while trying to pin it on Avalanche. And now they're deciding not to even bother rebuilding it and increase energy costs?
If this was a situation where President Shinra is jettisoning Midgar because having the Ancients and access to whatever the "Promised Land" and "Neo-Midgar" are means they can afford to squeeze the population for a quick resource boost before flying off in a golden parachute-clad helicopter, that would make sense, and it's partly implied to be what's going on? But more than that they just don't care. The Shinra executives are fully confident in their own invincibility, absolutely certain that nothing can happen to them and that they can afford to let a chunk of their city be destroyed and then squeeze everyone for more profit on their basic life necessities and it will all be fine because Avalanche will take all the blame.
What's funny is that this scene was probably intended to be somewhat over the top, to make it obvious how and why Shinra are the bad guys to the presumed teenaged audience, but no, that's literally how people like that think and act, completely insulated from the consequences of their actions and drinking their own Kool-Aid.
Count Zero said:
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
FFVII Disc 1 really is just peak gaming all the way through.
Anyways, I love JENOVA being held in the Great Value version of Akira's Cryogenic Containment Unit. I know I had mentioned Sci-Fi anime of the 80's and 90's as an example of 7's aesthetic, but after rewatching them both this weekend, the vast supermodern arcologies butting up against the crumbling slums of the old world really give me huge Patlabor: The Movie 1 & 2 vibes, and that's not even counting the robots. What I'm saying is, Advent Children should have been directed by Mamoru Oshii and featured many more scenes of middle aged men monologuing about postmodern society with soaring shots of dystopian cityscapes and surreal discordant chanting.
