Final Fantasy

[dubbs]

4 hours ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

gonna grind some skeletons on the bridge.

Whatever floats your boat i guess

[villa4europe]

Yuffie add on chapter stuff coming to the remake

Looked like completely new content and story for her which is great but weird at the same time, got no problem if they do like annual expansions to plug a gap whilst the next proper installment is being worked on as long as they are working on the next installment of the original game rather than just going off in a huge new direction 

And its June 10th! Damn yanks and their stupid dates 

Edited February 25, 2021 by villa4europe

[CardiffGreens]

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

And its June 10th! Damn yanks and their stupid dates 

Phew, gives me a few months to a) save my pennies for a ps5 and b) actually sit on my arse and get around to getting remake played (just past airbuster this evening >.< fcol)

At this point I'm not sure which of those two is the more likely to happen first...

 

[hogso]

It might may be the impetus for me looking at the PS5 a little sooner than I otherwise would have too...it didn't say it specifically, but it sure looked like Episode Yuffie was PS5 exclusive. 

The dude with big hair at the end was Weiss from Dirge of Cerberus, which means Yuffie getting mixed up with Deepground from DoC, and possibly by extension, Genesis from Crisis Core, which would be a neat way to tie all three games together, and retcon the canon a bit. 

Two other announcements that weren't on the state of play, a battle royale mobile game

And of much more interest, an FFVII remake in an 'old school' visual style

Curiously, it says it features the entire compilation of FFVII, ie. The game itself, Advent Children, Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus, 'and more', which is followed by what appears to be a playable Zack section? Probably more interesting than Episode Yuffie. 

Edited February 26, 2021 by hogso

[CardiffGreens]

11 minutes ago, hogso said:

Before Crisis

Finally, only like 15 years later but we might finally get to play that thing!  I assumed that "Zack section" you saw at the end was the start of Crisis Core.  At least with a year to go before that comes out I've got a little more time to dig the PSP out and get CC finished as well! 

I'll give the intergrade trailer another watch this evening - at the time I wasn't sure if I was just giving myself MASSIVE SPOILERS for the remake, so ended up faffing about and not watching.

 

In other not-new-games-news; I discovered last night that all the additional content I got as part of the deluxe version for remake was sat there available in a stuffed-away menu option this whole time (having assumed I'd need to reach some point in the storyline to unlock it or something).  Bah.

[hogso]

45 minutes ago, CardiffGreens said:

Finally, only like 15 years later but we might finally get to play that thing!  I assumed that "Zack section" you saw at the end was the start of Crisis Core.  At least with a year to go before that comes out I've got a little more time to dig the PSP out and get CC finished as well! 

I'll give the intergrade trailer another watch this evening - at the time I wasn't sure if I was just giving myself MASSIVE SPOILERS for the remake, so ended up faffing about and not watching.

 

In other not-new-games-news; I discovered last night that all the additional content I got as part of the deluxe version for remake was sat there available in a stuffed-away menu option this whole time (having assumed I'd need to reach some point in the storyline to unlock it or something).  Bah.

I can't recall anything specifically Spoiler-y from the state of play yesterday. 

Ah yeah, it's all accessible right from the off, including your summons. 

I have such an urge to replay remake now! 

[Dante_Lockhart]

Awesome. Free upgrade to PS5 means I can play it from scratch all over again and trophy hunt.

Yuffie DLC is something I didn't expect at all so that's a pleasant surprise.

[hogso]

A trailer showing off a little bit more from intergrade

Well, all the textures work now, so that's cool

[GarethRDR]

 

Just finished Remake this week.

I have qualms.

 

Really liked the gameplay and battle system.  Bear in mind I've not played an FF since 13, which was so bad it turned me off the series completely.  But yes, had quite a bit fun once I'd gotten my head around it (and twigged that Tifa is OP as heck once you've unlocked most of her abilities and stuff her with ATB and other support materia.  She hits harder than the back-ache she must have).  Was fun to see all the old settings fully realised, and having braced myself going in for

a lot of story-padding, I actually quite liked all the extra bits and thought they served the story well (save for the return to sewer level, that was a colossal bore and absolutely felt padding for padding's sake).

Now for the qualms; really feels like they're gearing up for swerving the story completely from here out.  All that "fate" stuff was, quite frankly, hot garbage.  Story doesn't need changing (save for maybe Cid beating his missus, we could definitely lose that).  Biggs and Wedge should be dead to further compound the guilt that drives Barrett's narrative, Zack needs to be dead to set up the damn story in the first place (massive whiff of a whole "multiverse" trope cropping up down the road, which would be a big "no thanks" from me) and I think we've been shown way too much of Sephiroth too early (though I get that they would have wanted a big boss fight of some kind at the end, and if you asked me who/what it should have been I'm not sure I'd have an answer for you so... fair enough I guess).

Biggest qualm remains the same from before I played it (and why I wasn't planning to until the whole thing was done); I just don't see how they're going to get the rest of this game done (at least to the extent that they'll do the remaining story as much justice as they have the Midgar part) without a decade+ work over who knows how many more volumes.  Possibly more worrying, I don't see how Knights Of The Round could work in the whole summons-fighting-beside-you part of the battle system, unless they keep it as an old-school, one-shot animation for massive damage.  Though I would love to see them just go balls out and have all 13 knights join the fight for maximum chaos.

Only two other gripes:

1. I didn't get to choose my dress!  I committed soft and shimmers and digestive to memory for nothing!
2. No "This guy are sick"?!  HERESY.

Edited March 24, 2021 by GarethRDR

[Dante_Lockhart]

11 hours ago, GarethRDR said:

 

Just finished Remake this week.

I have qualms.

  Hide contents

Really liked the gameplay and battle system.  Bear in mind I've not played an FF since 13, which was so bad it turned me off the series completely.  But yes, had quite a bit fun once I'd gotten my head around it (and twigged that Tifa is OP as heck once you've unlocked most of her abilities and stuff her with ATB and other support materia.  She hits harder than the back-ache she must have).  Was fun to see all the old settings fully realised, and having braced myself going in for

a lot of story-padding, I actually quite liked all the extra bits and thought they served the story well (save for the return to sewer level, that was a colossal bore and absolutely felt padding for padding's sake).

Now for the qualms; really feels like they're gearing up for swerving the story completely from here out.  All that "fate" stuff was, quite frankly, hot garbage.  Story doesn't need changing (save for maybe Cid beating his missus, we could definitely lose that).  Biggs and Wedge should be dead to further compound the guilt that drives Barrett's narrative, Zack needs to be dead to set up the damn story in the first place (massive whiff of a whole "multiverse" trope cropping up down the road, which would be a big "no thanks" from me) and I think we've been shown way too much of Sephiroth too early (though I get that they would have wanted a big boss fight of some kind at the end, and if you asked me who/what it should have been I'm not sure I'd have an answer for you so... fair enough I guess).

Biggest qualm remains the same from before I played it (and why I wasn't planning to until the whole thing was done); I just don't see how they're going to get the rest of this game done (at least to the extent that they'll do the remaining story as much justice as they have the Midgar part) without a decade+ work over who knows how many more volumes.  Possibly more worrying, I don't see how Knights Of The Round could work in the whole summons-fighting-beside-you part of the battle system, unless they keep it as an old-school, one-shot animation for massive damage.  Though I would love to see them just go balls out and have all 13 knights join the fight for maximum chaos.

Only two other gripes:

1. I didn't get to choose my dress!  I committed soft and shimmers and digestive to memory for nothing!
2. No "This guy are sick"?!  HERESY.

Spoiler

I completely agree. I loved the game up until the final chapter. The Dementor guys were a curveball for sure, and I kind of got behind them 'guiding' you to your destiny, but yeah, final scenes/bosses triggered me.

Zack had better not be alive for sure, same with Biggs and Wedge. I'm all for some creative freedom as it's a ReMAKE, but if they change too much for the worse then they'll lose a lot of the fanboys.

I am looking forward to playing through it again once the PS5 version drops.

[Chindie]

Nomura loves his complex convoluted narratives. As a result

Spoiler

He's not going to just do a straight, expanded VII remake. It's going to take whacky curves into it's own thing. Which is going to piss people off that just want that game but modernised and with the graphical power now available utilised.

But it's what he'll do. It might generally stick to the structure of the original but it's going to look at it from a different angle, or take odd turns, just like this game increasingly did.

 

[GarethRDR]

Ah well, I definitely enjoyed it enough to pique my curiosity for volume II regardless (whenever that will be).

If we're re-framing the game from different angles going forward, I'd love a segment from the POV of the Weapon that attacks Junon harbor, specifically whatever motivates it to stare right down that long, suspiciously-barrel-shaped part.  I like to think it was having a similar though process to the whale in Hitchhiker's Guide.

[hogso]

The continuation of the remake will definitely re-work the story massively as it progresses, it certainly won't be putting me off playing the rest of the game though, I'm really keen to see where it goes next. 

If you want to jump down the rabbit hole (a Nomura shaped rabbit hole as @Chindie refers to), the FFVIIR Ultimania is worth looking in to. The Ultimania's have been a fixture of main line FF games for quite a long time, which began with the original FFVII I believe. They're pretty popular over in Japan, are in short, a mixture of art book and guide, but the real draw for fans is the trivia and secrets that are presented as canon. For some games like X and XII the ultimania's actually filled in some pretty significant blanks in the story. 

A Japanese Blogger who goes by the name Aitai Kimochi gained some popularity with English speaking fans when the FFVIIR ultimania was released in Japan, as she translated bits and pieces and shared screen shots. I'll post the most significant of these, taken from the 'Secrets Revealed', in a spoiler below;

Spoiler

 

I don't mind some of this stuff. Adding in Deepground from Dirge of Cerberus (as well as characters from Crisis Core) is the sort of thing I had hoped would be included. And although pretty fleeting for the most part, I think it works pretty well. I also like the idea the the three 'boss' Whispers are the three antagonists from Advent Children, which you are defeating, and by going against fate they will now no longer exist. The multiple versions of Sephiroth, and apparently a separate timeline, though...not such much. We'll have to see if it goes full Kingdom Hearts.

Still, even if it does, Ever Crisis is the remake which will be for people that didn't want all this stuff, so it's not like they aren't just doing a remake too, cos they are - albeit apparently mobile only.

Edited March 26, 2021 by hogso

[villa4europe]

The time it takes to do it all will be my biggest pet peeve not the changes that they make

That said they definitley need to improve the side quests, the majority of them were shit, the "Billy is trapped down the mine" stuff can get in the bin, and they need to find a way of getting away from obvious battle arenas, there were chunks of the game that felt too unnatural for the targeted real lived in world stuff to work 

[hogso]

Agreed, considering there was an element of emulating Western open world RPGs, but still giving it a JRPG identity, FFXV in particular failed massively with regards to side content. FF7R definitely wasn't great either. 

It's not to say, though, that it's an easy thing to do. Lots of open world games get side content wrong, or at least, the majority of it isn't great. It would take SE some years, and more experience with producing such games to nail it I would think. At least with FF7R they could conceivably do so with more varied environments - side quest scenarios worth doing write themselves for such places as Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon, and Golden Saucer, surely? 

On a completely separate note, I just wanted to mention the Resonant Arc YouTube channel, where, amongst retrospective reviews over the years, they've just finished uploading a deep dive podcast into FF8. And I do mean deep - 5 episodes over something like 13 hours. 

If you're into that sort of thing and have the time / want some relatively entertaining background noise, give it a listen. The guys know what they're talking about, there's a huge amount of research gone in to it, and they say far more elequently than I could (and actually made me consider real reasons I feel) why FF8 is comfortably one of the worst in the series. 

 

[hogso]

A little Final Fantasy Ever Crisis update. It'll have 10 chapters, with the first three covering Midgar. They'll all be free. The game still needs to make money of course, and how will it do that? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly (although I'd free to pay for a version without this, if there's the option) there will be gatcha mechanics. Use tickets to draw new weapons, characters, skins or whatever. SE have a long and quite successful history with mobile gatcha games, so although not a surprise, it is disappointing. 

There will be additional chapters telling new stories too, such as Shinra execs when they were younger, and a boss mode where you can use any party member. 

[hogso]

FFVIIR Intergrade has an extending ending. I'll spoiler this in case anyone is going to play through and does not want to know about it;

Spoiler

• It confirms that Cloud, Tifa, Aerith and Red XIII are on their way to Kalm (most of the cutscene involves a few gags whilst they're walking there)
• The existence of the Chocobo Farm also appears to be confirmed, as Chocobo Bill picks them up to give them a lift before a fork the road, presumably one way is Kalm, and one way is his Farm
• And the real kicker, it ends with Zack entering the Sector 6 Church, hoping to reunite with Aerith 

 

[Dante_Lockhart]

1 hour ago, hogso said:

FFVIIR Intergrade has an extending ending. I'll spoiler this in case anyone is going to play through and does not want to know about it;

  Hide contents

• It confirms that Cloud, Tifa, Aerith and Red XIII are on their way to Kalm (most of the cutscene involves a few gags whilst they're walking there)
• The existence of the Chocobo Farm also appears to be confirmed, as Chocobo Bill picks them up to give them a lift before a fork the road, presumably one way is Kalm, and one way is his Farm
• And the real kicker, it ends with Zack entering the Sector 6 Church, hoping to reunite with Aerith 

 

Spoiler

Who wants to bet that we have to fight Zack at some point?

 

[hogso]

Hmm...not sure

Spoiler

If you try and apply some logic to Zack being alive in this version of the story, and his motivation appears to be to reunite with Aerith, it actually sets up a pretty interesting potential dynamic. it stands to reason on that basis that he will would pursue the group. 

Zack knows the truth about Cloud, so when he does catch up to them, one of two things could happen - Cloud will see him as a threat and try and put him down, or, it will trigger Cloud's mental breakdown.

I don't like either of these things, so what I'd prefer is an alternative.

Perhaps we travel with the group through similar locations and follow a breadcrumb trail from place to place in the same way as the original story. At the same time, we see Zack passing through the same places, picking up clues about the groups location and such.

He eventually catches up to them at the Forgotten City.

I've wondered how they'll deal with Aerith's death following the ending of FFVIIR from pretty much as soon as I finished it for the first time. At this point, it would almost be as big a shock if Aerith still died, regardless of the attempts to change 'fate'. But, what if it is Cloud who is killed instead? That would be a tremendous shock.

And with Zack alive in this scenario, he can replace Cloud's place in the group, and from a game design POV, you don't need to introduce a new character and how to use him, cos he'll play the same as Cloud.

Now, I don't like any of the above, but there has to be a reason for Zack being there, something the Devs want to do with him, and to me the most obvious reasons would be, yes, a battle with him, or he replaces Cloud.

Oh, and that Stranger of Paradise 'Final Fantasy Origin' spin off just looks horrible. I get there might be an audience for it, but it really does look like a cheap Dark Souls knock off. 

As for the 1-6 releases on mobile devices, what the hell does 'pixel remaster' even mean? They've re-done the games graphically already for mobile devices, so what on earth is the point (besides cashing in again, I know...).

I watched the 25th Anniversary Dragon Quest stream not too long ago, and although some of the spin off games and remasters there weren't my cup of tea, I didn't feel anything like the cynicism I do for the FF stuff...

[Chindie]

That FFO game was genuinely one of the worst things I've seen recently. It looked appallingly bad - early PS3 standard graphics and the character design and animation was dreadful. The shot were the villain jumps towards the camera with absolutely no weight and totally flat movement had me genuinely laugh out loud at how crap it was.

FFS one of the main characters is 'man in T-Shirt'.