I still feel like the plot ghost stuff should have been a Snowgrave-style secret route. At the very least, then you'd have the "canon" series of events to inform the new version without needing to play through the original.
That's difficult though, isn't it?
If you cut the Whispers out of the rest of the game and just have them show up in an optional ending, then they come out of nowhere and are baffling. If you introduce them throughout the game but only explain their deal in an optional ending, then the rest of the endings just feel incomplete. You've just created a "true route" in a roundabout way while blunting the effect you were going for.
People do have a funny habit of assuming everybody has played a game that came out 25 years ago.
No matter how revolutionary it was at the time (I was in 7th grade, and it blew my tiny child mind), a lot of people playing video games today were not born then, let alone playing video games.
This is... A very good point that I think deserves to be kept in mind and that I'll touch on more later.
The comparison to Pathologic 2 might have been a bit premature, but now that the Remake's been fully discussed it still holds strong; both works having something that's a vaguely nebulous sequel/retelling which splits the original game into several parts, in which it's implied that this is not the first time going through these events for some, and yet it's still the same sequence of time. Both are in dialogue with the original work itself.
The difference being that Pathologic 2 doesn't have 'canon enforcers' like the whispers; there are metatextual characters with metatextual motives and points to make in it, but the difference here is the sheer weight of expectation. The writers of FFVIIR knew it was going to face a lot of it; from fans, from critics, from shareholders. FFVIIR, as a work, had to put it's foot down hard about what it was about, with no ambiguity.
It's just a guess, but I suspect that Rebirth will be a bit more relaxed on this front; now that the Whispers have been slain in universe, and everyone having made their minds up on how they feel about the idea of diverging from the original outside of it, the game has a lot more breathing room to play around and experiment; I'm hoping that it keeps examining the nature of a remake but lets itself be playful with it. And now that there IS that room to maneuver, I'm excited to see what they do with it. Some of the mystery has returned.
(Honestly though, it is a shame that the old, original game itself doesn't have a QoL version of itself like the pixel remasters. It somewhat undercuts FFVIIR's own point when that niche remains relatively unfulfilled. FFVII's sheer fame and thereby cultural osmosis is both the cause of the remake's whisper move and the major reason it actually works as such.)
Pathologic 2!
There's a game I've had in my library for actual years (thanks hbomberguy) without ever actually playing it owing to the anxiety induced by its infamously legendary difficulty.
Tell me, was it "The Fifth Act"? (That's the best FFVII fanfiction ever written, for the unaware - and a relatively quick read, too). Because if so, well, that one is specifically based off the spin-off Crisis Core, where Sephirot's characterization had experienced enough fanon drift already to have been substantially different from what the original game presents. Hence why he comes across as much less unhinged.
That's because we're not done with the original FFVII yet. The impact will have a ton more sense once you've experienced it in full - with proper understanding, I mean; Omicron is doing an amazing job of shedding light on the more obscure aspects of the game and finding interesting analysis points. I've said it before, but as good as it is, the Midgar section is a very poor showing of what FFVII has to offer; I know it's a tired cliche to say that "the REAL (thing X) starts here", but in FFVII's case, that is actually correct. Midgar is what is most remembered, but the rest of the game is what actually shaped the RPG culture going forwards.
I have already expressed why I think the Remake is not as good as people say it is - and Omicron did an excellent job of outlining why - so I won't elaborate on it too much, but I want to say a few things about it still. Even with all the effort they put into it and the fact the FF7R is still not a bad game, the compression of things into Midgar still feels really forced to me, and doesn't hold up fully. Also, since it was brought up in the thread before, I want to remark, now that the Remake's analysis has been completed, that it in fact DOES NOT provides additional characterization to any of the main characters, with the lone exception of Barret. Everybody else goes through the exact same emotional beats they did in FFVII, except more slowly - Tifa starts a bit behind, but that's not really added characterization, that's just backtracking - and due to the horrible pacing, instead of feeling like things are being explored in greater depth, to me the game ends up feeling repetitive, walking on already trod ground again and again.
So, that's my take on the Final Fantasy 7 Remake - it's a decent game, the whole meta-canon confrontation aspect is interesting but ultimately neutered by how it can only deal with the smallest portion of the tragedies FFVII has to dish off (it'd have had more weight and made more sense if the actual big tragedy was the game's ending climax), and overall I'm not sure it justifies its existence, even while being very visually stunning and presenting a couple of interesting upgrades to the original in places. But, again, that's just my opinion of it.
I would go ahead and say that the original FFVII is superior to the Remake in almost every way, with the following exception:
- the brief spot of additional time spend with Jesse, Biggs and Wedge
- the orphanage section with Aerith
- the whole Wall Market sequence
- the conveyance of extra characterization details allowed by advanced graphics and voice acting for most of the cast
These are the individual instances where the Final Fantasy 7 Remake raises above the original Final Fantasy VII. Everything else varies from good but still inferior to genuinely a serious downgrade, depending on the part of the game in question and the personal preference of people.
The plot is a weird corner case in that, once you can understand it fully, it's fine and interesting enough, but you can only understand it fully after you've finished playing FFVII, which makes the game a sequel, and that'd not really be a problem and might be a positive, except the game is called Remake and pretending NOT to be a sequel. To borrow a phrase, "it's good, but it could have been much better", and "much better" is how Final Fantasy VII would be, in this comparison.
As usual, just expressing my opinion and everybody is free to disagree - I wouldn't care so much about stating the superiority of the original over the remake (Final Fantasy VII is neither my favorite nor the best title in the series) if there weren't so many people saying that it's a good idea to disregard playing the original over the remake. It's really not, the original is better and even makes the remake better by giving it context.
I've been ruminating on your replies because, fundamentally I disagree, but also, I respect where you're coming from and I don't want to come across as dismissive?
But I fundamentally just dn't
agree.
Like, to take one example - you talk about how the game doesn't provide any extra characterization aside from Barret. That's only possible under a reading of 'characterization' that's strictly 'we learned a Fact about this character we didn't know before, like they like football.' But that's not what characterization
is, is it? Characterization is in all the hints and nuances of how a character express themselves, their feelings, their attachments, their emotions. Even something as simple as 'I like children' is enhanced and expanded if in one work it's just something that's said once and in another work is something that we spend an hour seeing the character engage with through their interactions with children.
Like, just the
rooftop scene. It's longer, it's more in-depth, the dialogue is cleaner, the choice of tone in the voice acting create new emphasis on the character's displayed feelings - Cloud alternates between his persona of 'just about the job' and showing that, despite not looking it, he's constantly actively making sure Aerith is safe. Aerith reveals that she's never been on the rooftops and she finds it exciting, Cloud half-acknowledges and half-plays it off like he's too cool for it... "I'm not a princess who needs to be coddled -
shit!" is a single moment with more personality than Biggs and Wedge have in the entire original game? Aerith pretending to be terrified of walking a tightrope on piping only to make fun of Cloud for worrying about her and immediately going down a slide is dripping with insane amounts of fun.
That's
one interaction. Literally just one.
Like, what are the named characters in the Midgar sequence of the original? Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, Red XIII, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, Johnny, Don Corneo, Kotch and Skotch, Reno, Rude, Tseng, President Shinra, Palmer, Reeve, Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, Mayor Domino, Rufus.
All of these characters have more depth or just more fun traits, even the ones that have bit parts; I remember Remake!Johnny
at all, which isn't something I could say of the original character. Heidegger gets full-blown villainous speeches, Mayor Domino is a secret Avalanche infiltrator, Reno and Rude have actual character conflict...
I dunno, man. Maybe you're just going to say "oh, but all that
is in the original, it's just in the parts that are later," but as an exploration of how the game expands and builds upon the characterization presented in the Midgar Sequence I don't care? It's a massively more developed treatment of every character involved. Just - everything about how Aerith interacts with Sector 5, fuck. All the little bit of talking to normal people in each of the slums adds so much depth to the world and their lives and how it feels like to live in Midgar. Like, just the mere fact that
Sector 5 has
flowers. And people Aerith has relationships and interactions with!
Even just saying "the brief spot of additional time with Jessie, Biggs and Wedge" feels wildly off the mark. These characters are with us for pretty much 3/4th of the game; they have massively expanded lines and characterizations, including a bunch of optional ambient dialogue, as well as a full dedicated chapter that's just spent with them. Wedge has his own tragic arc after the tower collapse, Jessie has all of Mad Dash...
Like, I can't emphasize this enough - in the original's intro sequence,
we never visit the top plates. We pass briskly through after blowing up a reactor, but we never actually see what life is like for the middle class, the normal Shinra employees, the ones who've been suckered into genuine loyalty to a system that tells them they are valued but secretly sees them as expandable cogs. It's such a massively missed opportunity.
The Remake makes Midgar
itself a character in a way the original - and I have praised the original repeatedly and effusively on the part of making feel Midgar feel vibrant and alive - just doesn't quite do.
...
That's the big thing, I think.
OG Midgar is a tremendous step up in video game world design, a city that feels so much deeper and bigger and more alive and more unique than anything in any previous Final Fantasy game. And the Remake
expands on this in ways the original game never could have, stretches that city out into its streets and houses and people in a way 1997 could have scarcely imagined. It's just
more, and it's just
stronger.
A lot of my criticisms of the game-qua-game have been about 'pacing.' And the thing about pacing is, it doesn't indict the
individual components. The individual touches of life added by the extra content are valuable
even though they break the pacing taken as a whole. The ghosts of the train graveyard are a legitimately great beat! The problem is they're happening on the way to try and save Sector 7 and make it feel like if we hadn't had to deal with their bullshit we might have saved more people.
Good additions in a vacuum, break the pacing overall. This doesn't make it so simple as 'should have just cut them.'
Like, okay, here's the thing.
I might not even be playing FFVII right now if it wasn't for the Remake.
I first played the Remake early after its release thanks to a very kind gift from the person who motivated this whole Let's Play project in the first place, back in 2020. I ended up not finishing it. A year later, I went back to it and finished it and was confused but also liked it. A couple months later, I thought 'alright, I stopped playing FFXIV a while back, let's get back on track,' got back into FFXIV, and that itself took several months and then had me fully hooked into the Hype Feed for Endwalker, which I played on release.
The idea for this Let's Play came not that long afterwards. In a way, I might not be playing FF7 right now
at all were it not for the Remake rekindling my general FF interest, getting me back into FFXIV, and then it starting me on this whole LP.
And that's as someone who barely remembered anything about the original game past the Midgar sequence.
So... Whatever objective defects it may or may not have... It kind of did the job in the end, didn't it?
