I guess it's kind of fun to guess what they'll do with Tifa's design but the only thing we have to guess based on is what they've done with Cloud, Barret and Aeris' designs, which seems to be "updated version of the classic outfit with advent children body proportions."
As I said, strong likelihood of this:
Her portrayals in Dissidia and other pre-end-of-game materials look pretty similar too. Aside from her actual proportions (including her head), some tweaking went into her gloves and boots, which were always unrealistically large.
I'd take a wager she ends up looking very similar to the above, with added benefits of technology.
I just hope she has her old hairstyle. It's a got a lot more personality than the generic one they stuck her with for AC.
They also changed her hair color from brown to black for some reason. AC Tifa looks too much like Action Rinoa to me.
Actually, yeah, my primary complaint about Tifa from Advent Children (and I say this as one of the unrepentant fans of that film, i.e. a terrible person) is she looks too much like CG FMV Rinoa. Combination of hair, outfit, and complexion.
The black outfit is fine. The "Midgar bartender" outfit is fine too, but I'm not opposed to the miniskirt which is approximately half the outfit. But it's kind of an issue if Tifa starts looking like another pretty well known character form the same franchise. This is why Aerith can't look like Quistis, for example.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Still seeing nothing much outside of the opening segments of the original. I really expect this to still be an episodic project. Guess we'll find out in a month how this is going to play out exactly.
Yea they confirmed it's still episodic. Definitely not something I'll ever be playing.
Due to lack of interest, or due to it not coming out this century?
Personally, I have enormous doubts they'll ever complete it and manage to not screw up the story badly somehow, so I'm going to really struggle to justify buying each episode (especially at 60 bucks a pop, which they're sure to do). The only thing worse than an FF7 remake that is bad would be an FF7 remake that is really really good, but they only release the first two parts and cancel the finish because the first two episodes don't sell twenty million copies each.
In my experience, games with "episodic" content is just code for "cancelled before finishing or hopelessly fucked by the end". I'd had zero positive interactions with that fuck-awful design approach.
I actually don't think they'll necessary charge $60 per part of it--though that depends on how many parts are proposed. If each game is "basically" the size of XIII (and XIII-2 and XIII-3), yeah, they probably will.
I also think they will not finish it. Whether it's a few big parts, or a larger number of smaller parts. The episodic model is as much failures to finish as actual successful conclusions, probably more so.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Still seeing nothing much outside of the opening segments of the original. I really expect this to still be an episodic project. Guess we'll find out in a month how this is going to play out exactly.
Yea they confirmed it's still episodic. Definitely not something I'll ever be playing.
Due to lack of interest, or due to it not coming out this century?
I'll go with a yes.
Not super big on replaying things I've already played so a bit mild on the feelings out the gate.
Split into multiple games just completely kills all interest for me. Firstly, who knows if it will ever finish. Also just not enjoying that kind of design. And then a big one of not wanting to support that kind of design for fear of it being used on future games that I would have enjoyed more. Gotta try to vote with my wallet in one way or the other.
I guess in general I'm worried about FF7 losing it's personality and flavor. The original game was from a time when Square games had a bit of a goofier edge to them, and more distinct visual styles. At some point they adopted a semi-realistic style and all of their major FF games look really sterile and homogenized to me in the way characters look and move. Advent Children just looks boring to me. I would much rather see them attempt to adapt the original art into 3D.
I would love a version of this over "realistic":
And there's just so much goofy fun shit in FF7 that I'm afraid will get tossed aside because it doesn't fit the modern Square aesthetic. Silly stuff like riding dolphins and the imperial parade and Elena's punch of doom. I hope they can retain the tone.
I'd be really disappointed with just Midgard for the first episode, to be honest. Midgard is an excellent background for VERY firmly establishing the stakes of the story and just how bad things can get, while also serving as a good place to give us the motivations of the core heroes and villains. Then just as the player is really used to Midgard, the perpetually-dark city gets out of the way and we get a tragically beautiful world to explore; Midgard doesn't come back as a major story element again for dozens of hours, and even that's only a brief visit.
Midgar is only a brief part of the original game, and yet a HUGE part of the story period. Just as the game opens up to exploration and non-linearity, the frequency of dialogue and party interactions drop off a cliff. After the flashbacks in Kalm (which are all set in Nibelheim and not Kalm) the locations you travel through are mostly plot irrelevant until Corel, and would be pretty easy to skip if you had to make choices for what goes in the next episode.
I always felt like pre and post Midgar were almost two separate games, and I actually liked the first one better, with its constant dialogue and drama, frequent set pieces, mini bosses, and non-combat exploration and puzzle sections. The rest of the game carries forth these elements but they are so spread out between empty screens and piles of random encounters and bullshit with chocobos, even if you do have more freedom about how and when you want to wade through that emptiness.
Midgar is a real shithole but its also one of the most iconic, unique and memorable locations of the game, with most of the rest of it being the same real world tropes you can find anywhere. We could use some excursions outside the city to heighten the contrast, but its a key location to explore in depth, and Shinra alone are a compelling enough antagonist that semi-toppling them would provide enough closure while waiting on the next installment. I mean what other game villain tells you to take it up with his secretary if you have a problem with being executed?
rahkeesh2000 on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I actually don't think they'll necessary charge $60 per part of it--though that depends on how many parts are proposed. If each game is "basically" the size of XIII (and XIII-2 and XIII-3), yeah, they probably will.
I also think they will not finish it. Whether it's a few big parts, or a larger number of smaller parts. The episodic model is as much failures to finish as actual successful conclusions, probably more so.
I will be tremendously surprised if they don't bloat out the gameplay with a bunch of grindy shit to try and justify charging $60 bucks for the base version of each episode, on top of a special edition that's 10-20 bucks more and has different costumes or weapons or something. I fully expect for something like half the "content" of each episode to be nothing more than grinding away at collect-this-drop quests and grindy extra enemies with too much HP, as opposed to actually fleshing out the world with characters and stories.
The only thing that I feel gives this project any kind of chance is that they already have a firm blueprint of what to make, the only question being where the stopping points are at. Going by story points and story content I would expect the episodes to be broken into part one ending with the team arriving in Costa del Sol or maybe Kalm (after we get that exposition dump of everybody meeting in town), part two ending at the city of the Ancients (WE ALL KNOW THE SCENE), and part three wrapping up the game.
Or they could dump in a ton of extra material from things like Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, etc., and really flesh out the story more, which would throw off the old convenient stop points.
There's a FFIV Free Enterprise League Forge race happening at RPG Limit Break in around 6 hours. This should be a great place to go see the mod demonstrated. Forge races are different from standard FFIVFE in that you must create the Crystal to reveal Zeromus by doing the Kokkol quest, instead of receiving it as a random key item. It makes a nice race category because players must find the Legend sword, Adamant, and get access to Kokkol and Zeromus prior to being able to finish the run -- slightly more involved than just finding the Crystal and a way to Z.
Here's a brief explanation of what flags they'll be running on:
V1 Jia Kqm Pk Cx -rescue -hobs T3gr S2 B F Nck Gl Etf Xsbk -aa -spoon -fab -huh -z
V1: Forge The Crystal Jia: Japanese items and abilities Kqm: Key items are randomized may be found in the optional summon and moon boss fights Pk: The Pass (which provides instant access to Zeromus) is a Key item Cx: Characters are randomized, and access to Edge and FuSoYa is restricted to character locations requiring a Key item to access -rescue: Dismissed party members can be picked up at Mysidia -hobs: Rydia learns a randomized spell from the Hobs mountain event T3gr: Treasure is randomized in an unbalanced distribution (easier than balanced, less easy than wild). Trapped chest locations are randomized. S2: Shops are randomized in a balanced distribution B: Bosses are randomized F: FuSoYa challenge; reins in Fu's power at the early game Nck: No free key items (eg. Damcyan) or characters (eg. Palom/Porom in Mysidia) Gl: Life glitch allowed Etf: Random encounters are toggleable Xsbk: XP is shared instead of divided, characters 10+ below party average level gain bonus XP; at 10 Key Items XP gain doubles -aa: Agility agnostic mode. This one requires a lot of FF4 mechanical detail to fully explain -- it undoes some assumptions that vanilla FFIV makes about Cecil's presence in the party, though. -spoon: Edward can equip the Spoon -fab: Character palettes are fancy and randomized -huh: Package sprite is randomized -z: Zeromus sprite is randomized
Episodic is such BS. SquareEnix knew what they were getting into when they decided to do the remake. This stinks of a cash grab; split it into 3 or 4 parts and charge $30 a pop. I'm with others, I'll be waiting for the full thing before I buy any of it.
Origin ID\ Steam ID: Warder45
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Episodic is such BS. SquareEnix knew what they were getting into when they decided to do the remake. This stinks of a cash grab; split it into 3 or 4 parts and charge $30 a pop. I'm with others, I'll be waiting for the full thing before I buy any of it.
Nah, I don't think this is a matter of something insidious. Triple-A game development is expensive as shit, and the original FF7 helped introduce that. There's been articles about what it would cost to make FF7 for the first time adjusting for inflation (with whatever graphics capability was available at the time) in the couple decades since the game has been out, and it is dizzying to consider.
The game is being broken up into episodes because it's the only way to make it at all, financially speaking. Multi-millions of dollars per episode to make. It's exasperating a problem with triple-A development. It's not that it can't exist, but it sure as shit shouldn't be striven for as a 'norm' by the big publishers.
why are you surprised that square-enix co., ltd., a publically traded corporation beholden to its shareholders, is participating in capitalistic market practices
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I actually don't think they'll necessary charge $60 per part of it--though that depends on how many parts are proposed. If each game is "basically" the size of XIII (and XIII-2 and XIII-3), yeah, they probably will.
I also think they will not finish it. Whether it's a few big parts, or a larger number of smaller parts. The episodic model is as much failures to finish as actual successful conclusions, probably more so.
I will be tremendously surprised if they don't bloat out the gameplay with a bunch of grindy shit to try and justify charging $60 bucks for the base version of each episode, on top of a special edition that's 10-20 bucks more and has different costumes or weapons or something. I fully expect for something like half the "content" of each episode to be nothing more than grinding away at collect-this-drop quests and grindy extra enemies with too much HP, as opposed to actually fleshing out the world with characters and stories.
The only thing that I feel gives this project any kind of chance is that they already have a firm blueprint of what to make, the only question being where the stopping points are at. Going by story points and story content I would expect the episodes to be broken into part one ending with the team arriving in Costa del Sol or maybe Kalm (after we get that exposition dump of everybody meeting in town), part two ending at the city of the Ancients (WE ALL KNOW THE SCENE), and part three wrapping up the game.
Or they could dump in a ton of extra material from things like Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, etc., and really flesh out the story more, which would throw off the old convenient stop points.
Episodic is such BS. SquareEnix knew what they were getting into when they decided to do the remake. This stinks of a cash grab; split it into 3 or 4 parts and charge $30 a pop. I'm with others, I'll be waiting for the full thing before I buy any of it.
Episodic releases can be such bullshit, but this doesn't seem like a case of it.
If Square-Enix wanted to cashgrab FFVII more, this would not be how they'd do it. They would've put out a FFVII remake back when 1) a company, almost certainly Sony, would have paid them much, much more money for exclusivity--say, back when Sony was struggling to move Playstation 3s for a few years and 2) when they could've gotten away a straightforward 3D adaptation in the style of the the Final Fantasy franchise entries 10 to 20 years ago, while preserving as much of the original game's mechanics as they could reasonable manage (like ATB).
Or it'd look more like Dirge of Cerberus or the other spin-off games, which one could argue are cash-grabs (though admittedly, I don't think those games were enormously profitable, considering their own cost).
Except Square-Enix already came out and said, years ago, that they weren't aiming to create FFVII in a modern engine (though plenty of people would probably prefer that). Instead, they wanted to re-imagine it as a modern game--so we're looking at a transformation like Resident Evil 2, except even more radical, not Resident Evil or the original Halo remake.
On top of that, as already noted, FFVII is one of the games that introduced the concept of ruinously expensive AAA development cycles. Even a "lazy" remake would've been expensive, by virtue of the sheer size of the game and its environments (and the total inability to reuse any actual assets, even back when SE was dropping hints of it as a PS3 title). You can guarantee it would be extremely expensive. You couldn't guarantee it would actually sell well, much less "as good as S-E would need to justify the whole endeavor". This is why Valve hates making games: you know what's guaranteed to cost money? A Half-Life or Left for Dead sequel that people might not actually like, or just respond "pretty well" to. You know what's guaranteed to make more money than Half-Life 3 ever would? Squeezing every dime out of their existing near-monopoly on PC gaming while cutting costs wherever they get away with.
FFVII Remake is almost a prestige project at this point. A dumb prestige project, but a prestige project nonetheless, hearkening back to a time where Squaresoft shocked the entire world with a game that changed everything and people still like and will still pay money for. Too bad it had primitive 3D assets and was largely 2D in a manner that doesn't really translate well to modern engines. A remake wouldn't have these issues (unless something like VR becomes an almost mandatory standard of gaming development in the future the way 3D graphics did, which doesn't seem very likely), and they could sell it, with gradual modification, for decades. Maybe.
Square-Enix had a good idea of what they were getting themselves into, and that was "Pouring huge amounts of money onto the fire while not seeing much, or any, in return." They've already scrapped the whole thing and gone back to the drawing board once, apparently. They could still walk away with nothing--that happens in game development, AAA-development included. I imagine their accountants were vomiting in anger.
I'm ok with episodic as long as the episodes are released at a reasonable pace.
The last thing I want is to be GRRM'd by this. Get 4 episodes deep, with a promise of two more to come, and then never get them or have an 8 year wait in between them.
I'm ok with episodic as long as the episodes are released at a reasonable pace.
The last thing I want is to be GRRM'd by this. Get 4 episodes deep, with a promise of two more to come, and then never get them or have an 8 year wait in between them.
And then the Bravely Default team steps in and finishes the story, but in HD2D with some of the characters mysteriously gone and a lot of the remaining characters have their character development stripped entirely.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I don't mind episodic cause FF7 did always feel a bit weirdly paced at times and the story getting fleshed out a bit could be interesting.
That said it would have to actually be good additions.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Anyone else get the feeling with that Barrett cloud aerith party that we might get a demo that’s a callback to the original ff7 demo packaged with tobal #1
I'm ok with episodic as long as the episodes are released at a reasonable pace.
The last thing I want is to be GRRM'd by this. Get 4 episodes deep, with a promise of two more to come, and then never get them or have an 8 year wait in between them.
And then the Bravely Default team steps in and finishes the story, but in HD2D with some of the characters mysteriously gone and a lot of the remaining characters have their character development stripped entirely.
Then the endgame would have to change....
The main game would end with killing Heidegger. The battle with weapon wouldn't remove Sephiroth's barrier, to do that you would need to find a black-caped guy that only shows up in the midgar slums after you've completed all the fort condor battles, collected all the master materia, high scored every golden saucer game, opened every single treasure chest including the ones you cant return to, completed the new bestiary, resurrected Aerith...
rahkeesh2000 on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
In terms of labeling the episodic approach a cash-grab, well, all games are a cash-grab in some way or another. Game companies make games to make money, which is fine.
I actually don't inherently mind FF7 getting split into something like 3 parts. If it means each part is getting the care and budget that would typically be reserved for a single game, then it could genuinely take the experience to a whole new level rather than just crapping on a classic game loved by many. As long as they develop real content to justify charging for a whole game, great! It's obvious there's a ton of unfinished and partially-done stuff in FF7, so building all of that up could be pretty great. Fleshing out the characters and locations will get people that much more involved in the game and improve it. But if they just deliver the a third of the core story content and throw in 40-80 hours of tedious grindy shit, well, that's going to suck. It's also been the direction Squareenix has been leaning in since forever, which really worries me.
But I'm wondering if the whole "episodic" thing is not just a misunderstanding or misnomer on the part of the Japanese. The Mass Effect series crapped itself pretty hard, but it was always going to be a multi-part game, not an episodic game; players could rely on the series having an ending (too bad it was just incredibly terrible). "Episodic" definitely carries a lot of negative connotations with it, such as the fact that it indicates a total lack of faith in the series on the part of the publisher; getting a new episode depends on the last episode justifying another installment, which is fuckawful way to present stories since it means the story is perpetually at risk of being cancelled and left unfinished. But it can also just mean one story being told in multiple pieces, and we've got a ton of trilogies or multi-part game which do that and do it well.
So it could very well be that Squareenix is committed to releasing the whole remake, short of a catastrophic failure, and is just choosing their words poorly.
I just have bad experiences with games that come in parts. Both on the part of the company and on myself to go back and finish.
I'd just assume if you are doing FF7 and you are using the FF15 engine, it's not a full new game type of effort. You have the story, the side missions, most of the art and design concepts, the abilities, characters, and on and on. Yes you need to build them all in the new engine and add VA. But it's hardly a new AAA project effort, even if you add new scene's here or there.
Ideas are the easy part. The plan of the story, side missions, concept art, ideas of how systems will work, and so on, that's like 1% of the work involved in bringing a game to completion. An old game dev joke: "I've got this great game idea! You program it and make all the art and sound and we'll split the profits 50/50!"
I don't like episodic games either though. Half-Life 2 episode 3, the Telltale formula, it's never seemed to work out very well to me.
So it could very well be that Squareenix is committed to releasing the whole remake, short of a catastrophic failure, and is just choosing their words poorly.
The problem is that FFVII is already a complete story that people know. Because that basic story is being divided up, they have to call it episodic rather than sequels. Sequels would imply something like an Advent Children game following this one. That's also why bringing up "commitment" is odd, because as mentioned, this is already a set story, they have surely planned out how it will be divided up from the start, and it will be very obvious if something is missing in the end. If it hits "below expectations" I'd expect them to carry on that plan but with some reduced budget. If its a true flop they will abandon it, because AAA is too expensive for public companies to do anything else. But they might also abandon if they lose too much talent, like how FFXV prematurely ended its DLC, because Square gotta Square.
man you know what I hope they do? triple down on elaborate minigames. Build out the crazy motorcycle sequence and snowboarding and the submarine battle into something highly replayable and fun.
So it could very well be that Squareenix is committed to releasing the whole remake, short of a catastrophic failure, and is just choosing their words poorly.
The problem is that FFVII is already a complete story that people know. Because that basic story is being divided up, they have to call it episodic rather than sequels. Sequels would imply something like an Advent Children game following this one. That's also why bringing up "commitment" is odd, because as mentioned, this is already a set story, they have surely planned out how it will be divided up from the start, and it will be very obvious if something is missing in the end. If it hits "below expectations" I'd expect them to carry on that plan but with some reduced budget. If its a true flop they will abandon it, because AAA is too expensive for public companies to do anything else. But they might also abandon if they lose too much talent, like how FFXV prematurely ended its DLC, because Square gotta Square.
Well, there are a lot of people who know the story, but also a lot more who have never played it. I was 15 when FF7 came out; anyone born in or after 1997 probably missed the PS1 and FF7 entirely and has never played it. So there's a lot of people out there who actually won't know the story for the first time.
The cost/budget situation is genuinely what worries me the most. By every indication, Square is tremendously bad at reigning itself in and putting budget where it will do the most good for a project; I have no faith that anybody in charge there even knows why the older FF games were well-received, so they just ignore them and try to churn out something else with a lot of money spent on it. They'll end up cutting corners on VA work and writing, thinking they can just dump a bunch of money into flashy-looking gameplay and high-res textures because that's a lot easier. We'll end up with an FF7 that has gameplay that's enjoyable for like ten hours, and then does a really shitty job of telling the story with really great-looking character models.
So this whole thing is kind of a catch-22 situation for me. To prove Square knows what they're doing, they'd have to have the entire game released and ready for me to buy. For that to happen, it has to not be a flop. For it to not be a flop, Square is actually going to have to expend some effort here and not just throw money at a project. But they won't be able to prove they can do that until the game is done and complete so I won't be buying the game chunk by chunk, and no telling how many other people will feel the same way (about buying the game in pieces, not the part about trusting Square). And if the first episode or two flops, they won't finish no matter how good a job they've actually done.
Thus coming back to this episodic thing being duuuuuuumb.
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
So it could very well be that Squareenix is committed to releasing the whole remake, short of a catastrophic failure, and is just choosing their words poorly.
The problem is that FFVII is already a complete story that people know. Because that basic story is being divided up, they have to call it episodic rather than sequels. Sequels would imply something like an Advent Children game following this one. That's also why bringing up "commitment" is odd, because as mentioned, this is already a set story, they have surely planned out how it will be divided up from the start, and it will be very obvious if something is missing in the end. If it hits "below expectations" I'd expect them to carry on that plan but with some reduced budget. If its a true flop they will abandon it, because AAA is too expensive for public companies to do anything else. But they might also abandon if they lose too much talent, like how FFXV prematurely ended its DLC, because Square gotta Square.
Well, there are a lot of people who know the story, but also a lot more who have never played it. I was 15 when FF7 came out; anyone born in or after 1997 probably missed the PS1 and FF7 entirely and has never played it. So there's a lot of people out there who actually won't know the story for the first time.
They aren't super relevant here. The comparison is like the number of people that were completely certain that mass effect was planned out as a trilogy after playing the first game, it was only Bioware that had that knowledge. Now a ton of people and media have the knowledge about FF7, and their expectations will impact review scores and social media and word of mouth. If they release something titled simply "Final Fantasy VII remake" and the game ends with escaping Midgar, people are going to be hopping mad, comparing it to the full story of the original. If its subtitled "Episode Midgar" then they know what to expect.
In terms of what we are actually getting yeah, I expect it to be closer to the Mass Effect trilogy, or FFXIII. Full 30-60 hour games that are plenty of game on their own. But they can't call any FF7R part "complete" because they won't contain the full story of FF7, even if in a world where FF7 PSX never existed, they would just stick -2 and -3 after them. Maybe episodic isn't the best term but there's no way they can pretend these are sequels due to expectations around an existing story.
Trying to make each installment a full size game would be the worst option they could take. That's just going to encourage the worst development tendencies and leave us with bloated messes.
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
Or...you might miss a key ability! It's one of the reasons I don't really love FFIX that much when a bunch of abilities are missable if you're not paying attention.
Thrilling stuff in the ff4fe race as Invenerable and SwimmyLionni have discovered the piece that the other needs. Both are on the right path to get the Crystal, but the path each is taking would involve several mathematically incorrect decisions to do as quickly as possible.
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
Or...you might miss a key ability! It's one of the reasons I don't really love FFIX that much when a bunch of abilities are missable if you're not paying attention.
Are there missable abilities that matter? Maybe I'm forgetting...
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
Or...you might miss a key ability! It's one of the reasons I don't really love FFIX that much when a bunch of abilities are missable if you're not paying attention.
There are no key missable anythings. I've been playing and beating that game without a guide since 2000. You can beat the game just fine without one.
I've really slowed down on IX. A little because of NBA playoffs and a crazy work schedule, but a lot because I'm worried about missables. I've been using a guide because not being able to get a late game item as I didn't buy enough X on disc 1 would really bother me but I'd forgotten how using a guide saps the fun out.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
Or...you might miss a key ability! It's one of the reasons I don't really love FFIX that much when a bunch of abilities are missable if you're not paying attention.
There are no key missable anythings. I've been playing and beating that game without a guide since 2000. You can beat the game just fine without one.
I mean, playing that game with the official guide was almost harder than playing without it.
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As I said, strong likelihood of this:
Her portrayals in Dissidia and other pre-end-of-game materials look pretty similar too. Aside from her actual proportions (including her head), some tweaking went into her gloves and boots, which were always unrealistically large.
I'd take a wager she ends up looking very similar to the above, with added benefits of technology.
They also changed her hair color from brown to black for some reason. AC Tifa looks too much like Action Rinoa to me.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Actually, yeah, my primary complaint about Tifa from Advent Children (and I say this as one of the unrepentant fans of that film, i.e. a terrible person) is she looks too much like CG FMV Rinoa. Combination of hair, outfit, and complexion.
The black outfit is fine. The "Midgar bartender" outfit is fine too, but I'm not opposed to the miniskirt which is approximately half the outfit. But it's kind of an issue if Tifa starts looking like another pretty well known character form the same franchise. This is why Aerith can't look like Quistis, for example.
Personally, I have enormous doubts they'll ever complete it and manage to not screw up the story badly somehow, so I'm going to really struggle to justify buying each episode (especially at 60 bucks a pop, which they're sure to do). The only thing worse than an FF7 remake that is bad would be an FF7 remake that is really really good, but they only release the first two parts and cancel the finish because the first two episodes don't sell twenty million copies each.
In my experience, games with "episodic" content is just code for "cancelled before finishing or hopelessly fucked by the end". I'd had zero positive interactions with that fuck-awful design approach.
I also think they will not finish it. Whether it's a few big parts, or a larger number of smaller parts. The episodic model is as much failures to finish as actual successful conclusions, probably more so.
I'll go with a yes.
Not super big on replaying things I've already played so a bit mild on the feelings out the gate.
Split into multiple games just completely kills all interest for me. Firstly, who knows if it will ever finish. Also just not enjoying that kind of design. And then a big one of not wanting to support that kind of design for fear of it being used on future games that I would have enjoyed more. Gotta try to vote with my wallet in one way or the other.
I would love a version of this over "realistic":
And there's just so much goofy fun shit in FF7 that I'm afraid will get tossed aside because it doesn't fit the modern Square aesthetic. Silly stuff like riding dolphins and the imperial parade and Elena's punch of doom. I hope they can retain the tone.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Midgar is only a brief part of the original game, and yet a HUGE part of the story period. Just as the game opens up to exploration and non-linearity, the frequency of dialogue and party interactions drop off a cliff. After the flashbacks in Kalm (which are all set in Nibelheim and not Kalm) the locations you travel through are mostly plot irrelevant until Corel, and would be pretty easy to skip if you had to make choices for what goes in the next episode.
I always felt like pre and post Midgar were almost two separate games, and I actually liked the first one better, with its constant dialogue and drama, frequent set pieces, mini bosses, and non-combat exploration and puzzle sections. The rest of the game carries forth these elements but they are so spread out between empty screens and piles of random encounters and bullshit with chocobos, even if you do have more freedom about how and when you want to wade through that emptiness.
Midgar is a real shithole but its also one of the most iconic, unique and memorable locations of the game, with most of the rest of it being the same real world tropes you can find anywhere. We could use some excursions outside the city to heighten the contrast, but its a key location to explore in depth, and Shinra alone are a compelling enough antagonist that semi-toppling them would provide enough closure while waiting on the next installment. I mean what other game villain tells you to take it up with his secretary if you have a problem with being executed?
I will be tremendously surprised if they don't bloat out the gameplay with a bunch of grindy shit to try and justify charging $60 bucks for the base version of each episode, on top of a special edition that's 10-20 bucks more and has different costumes or weapons or something. I fully expect for something like half the "content" of each episode to be nothing more than grinding away at collect-this-drop quests and grindy extra enemies with too much HP, as opposed to actually fleshing out the world with characters and stories.
The only thing that I feel gives this project any kind of chance is that they already have a firm blueprint of what to make, the only question being where the stopping points are at. Going by story points and story content I would expect the episodes to be broken into part one ending with the team arriving in Costa del Sol or maybe Kalm (after we get that exposition dump of everybody meeting in town), part two ending at the city of the Ancients (WE ALL KNOW THE SCENE), and part three wrapping up the game.
Or they could dump in a ton of extra material from things like Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, etc., and really flesh out the story more, which would throw off the old convenient stop points.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Whatever it ends up being, I'm not gonna touch it until it's all out and collected in the "Mako Collection" or whatever they're going to call it.
Here's a brief explanation of what flags they'll be running on:
V1: Forge The Crystal
Jia: Japanese items and abilities
Kqm: Key items are randomized may be found in the optional summon and moon boss fights
Pk: The Pass (which provides instant access to Zeromus) is a Key item
Cx: Characters are randomized, and access to Edge and FuSoYa is restricted to character locations requiring a Key item to access
-rescue: Dismissed party members can be picked up at Mysidia
-hobs: Rydia learns a randomized spell from the Hobs mountain event
T3gr: Treasure is randomized in an unbalanced distribution (easier than balanced, less easy than wild). Trapped chest locations are randomized.
S2: Shops are randomized in a balanced distribution
B: Bosses are randomized
F: FuSoYa challenge; reins in Fu's power at the early game
Nck: No free key items (eg. Damcyan) or characters (eg. Palom/Porom in Mysidia)
Gl: Life glitch allowed
Etf: Random encounters are toggleable
Xsbk: XP is shared instead of divided, characters 10+ below party average level gain bonus XP; at 10 Key Items XP gain doubles
-aa: Agility agnostic mode. This one requires a lot of FF4 mechanical detail to fully explain -- it undoes some assumptions that vanilla FFIV makes about Cecil's presence in the party, though.
-spoon: Edward can equip the Spoon
-fab: Character palettes are fancy and randomized
-huh: Package sprite is randomized
-z: Zeromus sprite is randomized
The game is being broken up into episodes because it's the only way to make it at all, financially speaking. Multi-millions of dollars per episode to make. It's exasperating a problem with triple-A development. It's not that it can't exist, but it sure as shit shouldn't be striven for as a 'norm' by the big publishers.
I am guessing that is the beginning of ep 2.
Episodic releases can be such bullshit, but this doesn't seem like a case of it.
If Square-Enix wanted to cashgrab FFVII more, this would not be how they'd do it. They would've put out a FFVII remake back when 1) a company, almost certainly Sony, would have paid them much, much more money for exclusivity--say, back when Sony was struggling to move Playstation 3s for a few years and 2) when they could've gotten away a straightforward 3D adaptation in the style of the the Final Fantasy franchise entries 10 to 20 years ago, while preserving as much of the original game's mechanics as they could reasonable manage (like ATB).
Or it'd look more like Dirge of Cerberus or the other spin-off games, which one could argue are cash-grabs (though admittedly, I don't think those games were enormously profitable, considering their own cost).
Except Square-Enix already came out and said, years ago, that they weren't aiming to create FFVII in a modern engine (though plenty of people would probably prefer that). Instead, they wanted to re-imagine it as a modern game--so we're looking at a transformation like Resident Evil 2, except even more radical, not Resident Evil or the original Halo remake.
On top of that, as already noted, FFVII is one of the games that introduced the concept of ruinously expensive AAA development cycles. Even a "lazy" remake would've been expensive, by virtue of the sheer size of the game and its environments (and the total inability to reuse any actual assets, even back when SE was dropping hints of it as a PS3 title). You can guarantee it would be extremely expensive. You couldn't guarantee it would actually sell well, much less "as good as S-E would need to justify the whole endeavor". This is why Valve hates making games: you know what's guaranteed to cost money? A Half-Life or Left for Dead sequel that people might not actually like, or just respond "pretty well" to. You know what's guaranteed to make more money than Half-Life 3 ever would? Squeezing every dime out of their existing near-monopoly on PC gaming while cutting costs wherever they get away with.
FFVII Remake is almost a prestige project at this point. A dumb prestige project, but a prestige project nonetheless, hearkening back to a time where Squaresoft shocked the entire world with a game that changed everything and people still like and will still pay money for. Too bad it had primitive 3D assets and was largely 2D in a manner that doesn't really translate well to modern engines. A remake wouldn't have these issues (unless something like VR becomes an almost mandatory standard of gaming development in the future the way 3D graphics did, which doesn't seem very likely), and they could sell it, with gradual modification, for decades. Maybe.
Square-Enix had a good idea of what they were getting themselves into, and that was "Pouring huge amounts of money onto the fire while not seeing much, or any, in return." They've already scrapped the whole thing and gone back to the drawing board once, apparently. They could still walk away with nothing--that happens in game development, AAA-development included. I imagine their accountants were vomiting in anger.
The last thing I want is to be GRRM'd by this. Get 4 episodes deep, with a promise of two more to come, and then never get them or have an 8 year wait in between them.
And then the Bravely Default team steps in and finishes the story, but in HD2D with some of the characters mysteriously gone and a lot of the remaining characters have their character development stripped entirely.
That said it would have to actually be good additions.
Then the endgame would have to change....
I actually don't inherently mind FF7 getting split into something like 3 parts. If it means each part is getting the care and budget that would typically be reserved for a single game, then it could genuinely take the experience to a whole new level rather than just crapping on a classic game loved by many. As long as they develop real content to justify charging for a whole game, great! It's obvious there's a ton of unfinished and partially-done stuff in FF7, so building all of that up could be pretty great. Fleshing out the characters and locations will get people that much more involved in the game and improve it. But if they just deliver the a third of the core story content and throw in 40-80 hours of tedious grindy shit, well, that's going to suck. It's also been the direction Squareenix has been leaning in since forever, which really worries me.
But I'm wondering if the whole "episodic" thing is not just a misunderstanding or misnomer on the part of the Japanese. The Mass Effect series crapped itself pretty hard, but it was always going to be a multi-part game, not an episodic game; players could rely on the series having an ending (too bad it was just incredibly terrible). "Episodic" definitely carries a lot of negative connotations with it, such as the fact that it indicates a total lack of faith in the series on the part of the publisher; getting a new episode depends on the last episode justifying another installment, which is fuckawful way to present stories since it means the story is perpetually at risk of being cancelled and left unfinished. But it can also just mean one story being told in multiple pieces, and we've got a ton of trilogies or multi-part game which do that and do it well.
So it could very well be that Squareenix is committed to releasing the whole remake, short of a catastrophic failure, and is just choosing their words poorly.
I'd just assume if you are doing FF7 and you are using the FF15 engine, it's not a full new game type of effort. You have the story, the side missions, most of the art and design concepts, the abilities, characters, and on and on. Yes you need to build them all in the new engine and add VA. But it's hardly a new AAA project effort, even if you add new scene's here or there.
I don't like episodic games either though. Half-Life 2 episode 3, the Telltale formula, it's never seemed to work out very well to me.
The problem is that FFVII is already a complete story that people know. Because that basic story is being divided up, they have to call it episodic rather than sequels. Sequels would imply something like an Advent Children game following this one. That's also why bringing up "commitment" is odd, because as mentioned, this is already a set story, they have surely planned out how it will be divided up from the start, and it will be very obvious if something is missing in the end. If it hits "below expectations" I'd expect them to carry on that plan but with some reduced budget. If its a true flop they will abandon it, because AAA is too expensive for public companies to do anything else. But they might also abandon if they lose too much talent, like how FFXV prematurely ended its DLC, because Square gotta Square.
Well, there are a lot of people who know the story, but also a lot more who have never played it. I was 15 when FF7 came out; anyone born in or after 1997 probably missed the PS1 and FF7 entirely and has never played it. So there's a lot of people out there who actually won't know the story for the first time.
The cost/budget situation is genuinely what worries me the most. By every indication, Square is tremendously bad at reigning itself in and putting budget where it will do the most good for a project; I have no faith that anybody in charge there even knows why the older FF games were well-received, so they just ignore them and try to churn out something else with a lot of money spent on it. They'll end up cutting corners on VA work and writing, thinking they can just dump a bunch of money into flashy-looking gameplay and high-res textures because that's a lot easier. We'll end up with an FF7 that has gameplay that's enjoyable for like ten hours, and then does a really shitty job of telling the story with really great-looking character models.
So this whole thing is kind of a catch-22 situation for me. To prove Square knows what they're doing, they'd have to have the entire game released and ready for me to buy. For that to happen, it has to not be a flop. For it to not be a flop, Square is actually going to have to expend some effort here and not just throw money at a project. But they won't be able to prove they can do that until the game is done and complete so I won't be buying the game chunk by chunk, and no telling how many other people will feel the same way (about buying the game in pieces, not the part about trusting Square). And if the first episode or two flops, they won't finish no matter how good a job they've actually done.
Thus coming back to this episodic thing being duuuuuuumb.
They aren't super relevant here. The comparison is like the number of people that were completely certain that mass effect was planned out as a trilogy after playing the first game, it was only Bioware that had that knowledge. Now a ton of people and media have the knowledge about FF7, and their expectations will impact review scores and social media and word of mouth. If they release something titled simply "Final Fantasy VII remake" and the game ends with escaping Midgar, people are going to be hopping mad, comparing it to the full story of the original. If its subtitled "Episode Midgar" then they know what to expect.
In terms of what we are actually getting yeah, I expect it to be closer to the Mass Effect trilogy, or FFXIII. Full 30-60 hour games that are plenty of game on their own. But they can't call any FF7R part "complete" because they won't contain the full story of FF7, even if in a world where FF7 PSX never existed, they would just stick -2 and -3 after them. Maybe episodic isn't the best term but there's no way they can pretend these are sequels due to expectations around an existing story.
I wouldn't worry about missables unless it'll really bother you, you don't need anything
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Or...you might miss a key ability! It's one of the reasons I don't really love FFIX that much when a bunch of abilities are missable if you're not paying attention.
Are there missable abilities that matter? Maybe I'm forgetting...
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There are no key missable anythings. I've been playing and beating that game without a guide since 2000. You can beat the game just fine without one.
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I mean, playing that game with the official guide was almost harder than playing without it.