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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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Omicron said:
Also, as a side note: It's taken me some time to catch up to what it was doing, but this, here, the Highwind, is the first time the games are truly doing the modern style of 'hub where all your characters hang out and you can talk to them and their dialogue updates based on which plot beat you hit recently." FFVI nodded in that direction, but as I think I commented on it at the time, it doesn't really do it to a meaningful extent, most of the characters were stuck with one or two lines for the whole game. Here, dialogue updates frequently, like now. I won't transcribe it all, but it's a nice touch - although the fact that this feature appears with the Highwind, essentially in the third act of the game, and not earlier, kinda points to how novel that was at the time - a modern game would place it much earlier; you unlock the Normandy a couple of hours into Mass Effect 1, for instance. Baldur's Gate 1 came out in 1998 and didn't, as far as I know, have that system fully formed in it, KOTOR 1 was 2003, so… I think FF7 might actually have been the game to originate this approach to party dialogue and introduce it to Western devs, while I had always thought it was the opposite.

That's neat!
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Fun fact, once upon a time (BG1 era) Bioware writers were on record looking at FF7 and sweating because they felt their character writing didn't measure up at all. The idea that hubs like the Ebon Hawk, the Normandy and Interdimensional Camp Space were born of the Highwind entirely tracks.

Unfortunately then Bioware became Bioware...

Kuja said:
Yes. Exit Rufus. Because he's dead. He's dead. He's fucking dead. He was standing on the top floor of a skyscraper that got hit with a barrage of fucking javelins in a climactic battle with a giant mecha kaiju. He's dead. Dead.

...yeah Advent Children's undoing of this moment was one of the things I found most irritating about that movie, and if you've seen AC you know that was a race to the bottom.
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First of all; it's better than you could possibly imagine.

On The Way To A Smile said:
After asking his father how he would escape in the event of an attack on Shinra HQ, President Shinra builds a panic room to be used by Rufus when he becomes president in case of such an attack. The room is emblazoned with giant "L"s everywhere, which he says stand for "Loser", because he believes that none of Shinra's enemies are powerful enough to attack them directly, so building a panic room is cowardly.
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Rufus survived in the Shame Cube. The L Dimension. The "Only Stupid Fucking Idiot Babies Get In This Box" box.

Secondly; it was actually fantastic because the fact Rufus spends an entire extended conversation alone in a room with Kadaj, seemingly wheelchair-bound and helpless, only for him to stand up, throw off his bedsheet, reveal he was holding the macguffin on his lap the entire time, and neg him by saying "a good son would've known :3" before casually tossing it out a window is like in the top percentile of absolute sigma moves and something that lives on in Remake Rufus' mega fuckton of swag.
 
FallsSideways said:
This is where the 'Bugenhagen is Gast' theory really shines, because all I can think of is is this line continuing with "...He must have been an extremely handsome scientist, despite his age. Must have mastered the art of floating."
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Wait, you're saying that the writing on the floor here is a result of Gast, after getting gunned down by a Shinra goon squad in his house in the frozen northern wastes, getting up, making his way across the landscape to this secret Cetra city which requires a vanishingly rare magic item to access, and scribbling down a partial translation of the activation mechanism on the ground?
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
First of all; it's better than you could possibly imagine.



Rufus survived in the Shame Cube. The L Dimension. The "Only Stupid Fucking Idiot Babies Get In This Box" box.

Secondly; it was actually fantastic because the fact Rufus spends an entire extended conversation alone in a room with Kadaj, seemingly wheelchair-bound and helpless, only for him to stand up, throw off his bedsheet, reveal he was holding the macguffin on his lap the entire time, and neg him by saying "a good son would've known :3" before casually tossing it out a window is like in the top percentile of absolute sigma moves and something that lives on in Remake Rufus' mega fuckton of swag.
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This. Advent Children is bad for a lot of reasons, but that scene, hell just that line, lives rent free in my head and excuses the rest of the movie for existing.
 
For those who want to see the Advent Children stuff for themselves:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDa-bem2nIg
^ Included for context, so you can understand just how hilarious Rufus having the macguffin in his lap the entire time was.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABMfhZ8X9Xs

Also oh man, watching these clips with the context of how Sephiroth and the Sephiroth copies act in FF7 makes me realize just how hard the people who made this movie missed the entire point of FF7. Kadaj is way too animated and coherent for a successful Sephiroth copy. There's too much "mmmmmmmuther" and not enough horror elements. Kadaj and co needed to be way less whiny prettyboy manchild, and way more like those really disturbing twins from Black Lagoon.
 
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The objectively funny fact about Advent Children and connected novels is that
Aerith also could have come back as three random ladies, and was tempted to do so to meet Cloud again, but decided against it.
 
One thing that's weird to me about Rufus is that the boss fight we get with him early on is his only boss fight. Seems like he would've at least have gotten a second given his role in the story. Not that I'm sure where a rematch with him would even go, possibly right after Jenova-DEATH is the only place I can think of
 
Omicron said:
This is literally the plot of an Evangelion episode, by the way.
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Omicron said:
Okay so we are literally just doing Evangelion mashup plots, alright.
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Which is why I keep thinking the FF7 crew watched Evangelion while working on the game. The only way they could have come up with this during production was either they had sneak peeks of the anime before it aired, or changed their plot halfway through production after the show appeared.

That, or someone was a buddy of Hideaki Anno and got him drunk to ply the story idea out of him.

Of course, the idea of monstrous kaiju being a punishment of nature for the hubris of mankind isn't exactly new, and didn't start with Evangelion. The Gamera and Gozilla franchises are all about hubristic humans facing the raw unbridled wrath of nature, personified in the form of giant monsters.
 
ArlequineLunaire said:
One thing that's weird to me about Rufus is that the boss fight we get with him early on is his only boss fight. Seems like he would've at least have gotten a second given his role in the story. Not that I'm sure where a rematch with him would even go, possibly right after Jenova-DEATH is the only place I can think of
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Rocket Town and Junon are the other two places the party encounters Rufus and you could probably scrounge together a boss fight with him if you tried. But really it's as mentioned, he falls into the same pit the Turks and Shinra do as something that's super hyped up in the first act in Midgar... and then kind of fall to the wayside as the plot goes on. Not nearly to the level of the Turks being demoted to "quirky miniboss squad", mind you, Shinra is still shown as a legitimately dangerous entity and enemy even now, but Rufus really does get this big flashy intro with his talk of ruling through fear and a 1v1 (plus 1) boss fight with Cloud... and then you never fight him again. It really does feel like a lot of buildup only for him to be completely overtaken by "WE GOTTA BEAT SEPHIROTH".
 
Saint_007 said:
Of course, the idea of monstrous kaiju being a punishment of nature for the hubris of mankind isn't exactly new, and didn't start with Evangelion. The Gamera and Gozilla franchises are all about hubristic humans facing the raw unbridled wrath of nature, personified in the form of giant monsters.
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Yes, but a gigantic beam cannon murdering a kaiju like that feels real specific to how Ramiel went down :V

The screenshots in this thread don't really do the cutscene justice.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBNCSRwq1yw
 
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Why all the hate on Advent Children? The ending of FFVII was kinda rushed and the movie is a really fun watch that cleans up a lot of little dangling threads.

I mean, yeah it has a lot to answer for re: lionization of sephiroth but I feel that flatly dismissing it as 'lol so terrible' is doing it a disservice.
 
wetodet said:
Wait, you're saying that the writing on the floor here is a result of Gast, after getting gunned down by a Shinra goon squad in his house in the frozen northern wastes, getting up, making his way across the landscape to this secret Cetra city which requires a vanishingly rare magic item to access, and scribbling down a partial translation of the activation mechanism on the ground?
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Well, no. Obviously he built a hoversphere to allow him to move despite his injuries from the bullets, first.

Spectral Waltz said:
Why all the hate on Advent Children? The ending of FFVII was kinda rushed and the movie is a really fun watch that cleans up a lot of little dangling threads.
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I honestly can't think of many dangling threads that are made more clean by Advent Children existing and I'm one of the people who enjoyed watching the movie. In many cases it seemingly does the opposite.

Just take Rufus. They took him from dead (clean) to somehow alive and active (messy). Anyway, if you want to discuss other plot points we'd probably have to take this to the spoiler thread since what is clean and messy at the end of FFVII isn't known to the threadstarter.

Saint_007 said:
Which is why I keep thinking the FF7 crew watched Evangelion while working on the game. The only way they could have come up with this during production was either they had sneak peeks of the anime before it aired, or changed their plot halfway through production after the show appeared.
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Alternately, they didn't change the plot much, just massaged the appearance of some of the scenes to homage it more. Like, maybe they already thought of "giant canon shoots Kaijuu in the face" but they specifically made it look more like Evangelion.
 
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Omicron said:
there is a 'W-Summon' Materia as a reward
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So, because the name is a bit obtuse, I'll just say that this is effectively dualcast summon. Basically it lets you fire off two summons in a single action.

Apropos of nothing, this combos with Mime, in that a character who uses Mime after the W-Summon will fire off both summons for free.

Side note: if you get the W-Summon (and do something else) you'll unlock something extra for the Battle Square that becomes available which offers a very powerful support materia as a reward.
Omicron said:
I swear to god if the game keeps putting me in front of giant kaiju-mechs and then SNATCHING THEM AWAY BEFORE I CAN GET A COOL FIGHT OUT OF IT I AM GOING TO GO FERAL
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*smiles knowingly*

Side note: you missed a chance to steal a very good weapon from Diamond WEAPON. Rising Sun is a Yuffie weapon with four materia slots (two pairs of linked slots) which is fairly strong as a weapon. It's main value though comes in the fact that it has double AP growth, making it an option for grinding materia growth.
Omicron said:
BWAHAHAHAHA! YES! AT LAST!
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Oh, next update is going to be fun.

(EDIT: You'll want Enemy Skill equipped.)
 
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MiskWisk said:
So, because the name is a bit obtuse, I'll just say that this is effectively dualcast summon. Basically it lets you fire off two summons in a single action.

Apropos of nothing, this combos with Mime, in that a character who uses Mime after the W-Summon will fire off both summons for free.

Side note: if you get the W-Summon (and do something else) you'll unlock something extra for the Battle Square that becomes available which offers a very powerful support materia as a reward.
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Don't need W-Summon. The unlock criterion is Omnislash.
 
foamy said:
Yes, but a gigantic beam cannon murdering a kaiju like that feels real specific to how Ramiel went down :V

The screenshots in this thread don't really do the cutscene justice.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBNCSRwq1yw
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My point was, I was trying to think of a way besides "they clearly ripped off Evangelion while FF7, their biggest production to date, was still halfway through production". Of course, I now realize I was thinking of the Resident Evil series and got it mixed up with Eva. Evangelion came out in 1994, which was about the same time FF7 started production, so yeah, the WEAPONs were clearly influenced by the Angels, they just chose Gundam designs to reduce the similarities.

As for why I thought of RE, was because of the similarities between Shin-Ra's work with the JENOVA virus and Umbrella Corp's work with its own bioweapons series. RE1 was being developed at almost the same time FF7 was.

So yeah, I dun goofed there.
 
MiskWisk said:
No, you do need W-summon, Omnislash, and
Ultima Weapon.

Not entirely sure why I spoilered that since Omi's about to get it anyway.
Source: Battle Square
Also double checked and every other source I can find backs it up.
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I misremembered -- thought it was just Omnislash and the spoiled thing. My mistake!


EDIT:

Oh, but speaking of the Battle Square, @Omicron:

You know the Ghost Ship you ran into as a boss in there?

Just, out of curiousity, what would you think it is weak to?
 
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Saint_007 said:
Which is why I keep thinking the FF7 crew watched Evangelion while working on the game. The only way they could have come up with this during production was either they had sneak peeks of the anime before it aired, or changed their plot halfway through production after the show appeared.

That, or someone was a buddy of Hideaki Anno and got him drunk to ply the story idea out of him.

Of course, the idea of monstrous kaiju being a punishment of nature for the hubris of mankind isn't exactly new, and didn't start with Evangelion. The Gamera and Gozilla franchises are all about hubristic humans facing the raw unbridled wrath of nature, personified in the form of giant monsters.
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Masato Kato is who you're looking for. He was the event planner for 7, and worked at Gainax before working at Square. He also wrote Chrono Trigger (after the initial scenario planning by Sakaguchi, no Kato in Trigger means no Zeal) and Chrono Cross.

Meanwhile, the designs of the WEAPONs probably came from known gunpla nut Tetsuya Takahashi, who we have confirmation designed 6's Magitek armor and went on with his wife to go found Monolith Soft to make games about robot girls with the word Xeno in the title.

Square was working with a stacked deck in the 90s, and if you wonder why their more modern offerings can occasionally feel a little thin, it's because about half the writing team got poached from 99 to 06 and left to form their own studios, sometimes to great acclaim and sometimes falling flat on their faces.
 
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foamy said:
I misremembered -- thought it was just Omnislash and the spoiled thing. My mistake!


EDIT:

Oh, but speaking of the Battle Square, @Omicron:

You know the Ghost Ship you ran into as a boss in there?

Just, out of curiousity, what would you think it is weak to?
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*heavy sigh*

This is gonna be another one of those "Omi takes incredible pains dealing with the enemy at face value only to learn later that it qualifies as undead and so would die instantly to a Phoenix Down," isn't it.
 
Omicron said:
*heavy sigh*

This is gonna be another one of those "Omi takes incredible pains dealing with the enemy at face value only to learn later that it qualifies as undead and so would die instantly to a Phoenix Down," isn't it.
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it does seem a likely guess that a ghost ship might even exactly and specifically be an example of the famous Final Fantasy 'zombie dies to Life' effect. Given it's up front conceptually undead.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
I mean, yeah it has a lot to answer for re: lionization of sephiroth but I feel that flatly dismissing it as 'lol so terrible' is doing it a disservice.
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IMO It's just really mediocre. I feel like nothing about it passes the "did this need to be made/what does it contribute to the original" test that I usually judge direct sequels like this by. Sure, it answers some stuff from 7's ending, but not in a way that's very good. Like, I know we've ragged on Dirge and CC pretty hard, but I honestly regard them better than AC because at least they're attempting to flesh out parts of the base game that were just nebulous backstory (even if I dislike how they did it).

And as purely personal complaint, I really *hate* the redesigned, more "realistic" looks for Cloud, Reno, etc. Remake proved that you can have these characters still look like actual humans while still retaining all of the stylization of the original designs. AC has everyone looking like bland jpop idols in overpriced cosplay.
 
The benefit of watching Advent Children as a teenager who had no idea about FF7 was that I didn't have any opinions on any of that, like sure the plot made absolutely no sense to me but it didn't disappoint me in any way so I was just getting my tiny mind blown away by the CGI and would spend the next several years watching Advent Children AMVs set to Nightwish songs.

Of course today, post-Remake, whenever I see a clip of it it's like... Why are these characters so dripless. Why does Barret look like that.
 
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