FF7 Rebirth Impressions
This game's a lot of things all at once and I think it's fairest to take a look at each facet separately.
As an adaptation, it's poor. It has lost track of the meaning and intent of FF7, which is the most important thing for an adaptation to capture. You cannot play this game alone and have a different but equivalent experience. In fact, you probably shouldn't play this game at all if you haven't played OG.
As a narrative-driven game, it's mediocre, poor by my standards. Most individual scenes are competent, but the whole does not hang together. New plotlines don't connect, and old plotlines are adapted in such a way that they don't really work anymore*. The tone is all over the place, and the best moments feel rushed. The pacing is abysmal, even if you rush the story and ignore the side content. Some folks have said they like this game for the camaraderie among the cast, but even that's pretty thin for me, especially in comparison to other character-driven JRPGs like Tales or Persona. Excepting perhaps Red, the characters don't really develop past where they began at the start of the story, and a lot of the writing is fluff. Remake did better on just about every front here - despite my dim view of it, it's a lot more coherent and careful.
As its own piece of art, it's empty. It's flashy, maximalist, and obviously afraid of getting too real. It refuses to let its most meaningful moments breathe lest they become bummers and it doesn't really have anything in particular to say - again, even less than Remake. It's entirely a piece of FF7 fanfiction/metafiction. The implications of the ideas that it does bring to the table are extremely tone-deaf, particularly the Shinra apologism.
As a sequel it's a worse story, but a better game. The battle system is much improved. Bosses and trash are a lot less spongy. The environment design is way more impressive (not to mention exhaustive) and there is a lot more of it to explore. It's clearly a lot more ambitious and it tried out many different things and stretched quite a lot. It is just more fun to play... as long as no one is talking.
As an open world game, it's so-so. On the positive side, I found the objectives well spaced out, so that if I was just running around the area I moved pretty freely from one to the next to the next. The rewards for your exploration points are always good and substantial, so it does feel rewarding. On the other hand, it's extremely repetitive and bloated. The maps are not very fulfilling to explore in terms of landmarks and interesting things of note outside of your map markers. Many of the areas are extremely difficult and frustrating to navigate. I was constantly in and out of my map trying to figure out where I had to go.
As a collection of minigames it's exceptional. There are so many minigames. I lost track. I think you'd need to play an MMO to find more variety in minigames really. There is so much Content here, I have never seen a game more ambitious about minigames. There is a part of me that feels bad for leaving it on the table when so much has gone into it.
As a piece of fanservice for compilation fans it's probably pretty good! All the locations are there and rendered in stunning detail for at least one good shot, the music is there and very hummable, unexpected fan favourites return, references are many. If all you really care about is seeing your blorbos you probably like this game.
As a compilation of FF7 entry it's about where Remake was, a little lesser. Better than most of the slop, nowhere near the original, different in very meaningful ways, and marching bravely forward towards a world state where the only person who has ever done anything wrong is Hojo.
And overall, this game felt like it was Cocomeloning me. It was long and bloated and over the top and afraid to give me any space to think about any of what was happening. It is also so long, and so bloated. I would say it is functionally a marvel movie. Good if you're in the mood for that, bad if you happen to really care about story or games or the source material.
I gave each segment grade ranks as I played through, they're under the cut if you're curious.
As someone with a much rosier opinion of Rebirth, I do still think it has some fairly fundamental flaws. Part of the reason I like it more is I think I liked the character interactions and portrayals more (though I'd also agree Barret's the best of them), but the other part of my more charitable outlook on it, I think, is that I'm seeing it as part of a trilogy, rather than as one third of a single game.
But that doesn't really help with the part I'm about to discuss: I think Rebirth's biggest mistake was the part of the game they chose to adapt.
I agree that this game was hurt a lot by being the middle of the trilogy, and I think the odds of the remake being successful and interesting were dimmed from the start by the decision to split the game into three (but of course, you make more money that way). Adapting it more would have helped probably, but the thing is, they DID adapt it. Just not very competently.
There is a pretty clear arc for this part of the game in the OG. Every point on the road trip introduces new doubt or reveals that something wasn't as it seemed. The characters are exploring the world and questioning it, and that's happening on two fronts. They're learning about Shinra's influence on the world and also deepening their understanding of the consequences (KEEP IN MIND no one knows what the lifestream is until Cosmo canyon!), and the game reveals or has characters reflect on their core pain and motivation work an overall air of uncertainty for what to do with it. Just to recap:
Cloud tells the Sephiroth story, but it's undercut over time by Sephiroth not recognizing Cloud and Nibelheim being standing when they arrive, mysteries that can't be resolved.
Aeris wonders what an ancient is actually like and grapples with being truly alone in the world - she sort of clams up and eventually takes it on herself to stop Sephiroth
Barret struggles with his survivors guilt and we learn used to be pro-Shinra and see Dyne illustrate for us where the path of unbridled hatred will lead
We learn Red is nothing like he initially seems and is really quite young and vulnerable, just trying his big world
Tifa gains more and more reasons to distrust Cloud's memories but also her own
Cait Sith joins and betrays the party
This actually works great with what the remake wants to do by introducing doubt into whether or not Aeris dies. But they don't really want to lean into all of that because it's messy. In fact, they don't really want to commit to any of the new elements they put on the table. Anything they add that should come with consequences - like Cloud attacking Tifa, or Yuffie attempting to assassinate Rufus - has no follow through. Once the moment is over, it's over, and nobody alters their behaviour around it. They don't use the things they add to create coherence and momentum in the story. It's just momentary drama.
They also discard what works, and especially the arc Cloud ought to go through in this game. This Cloud is like a cardboard cutout. OG Cloud has a lot of will and initiative - he is actively hunting Sephiroth. Rebirth has to introduce so much new text about how to get the party from one location to the next because this Cloud doesn't really give a shit, to the point they they regularly use Yuffie like a backup protagonist because she both has a clear goal and is willing to actually talk to people. They replace his own internal voices of doubt with Sephiroth literally whispering into his ear, and because he is some kind of a moron, he listens and also never shares anything about his hallucinations. He ends the game where he started - so incurious about everything around him that he's not even noticed everyone else is sad aeris died. Lol.
Some of the character interactions are cute, but they can't make up for this (and many are drawn out and beaten to death - 20 minutes on the chocobo chick???). They can't make up for walking away from this game and feeling like it really didn't accomplish or say anything. Especially when it's just so obvious this part should have been about doubt!
But again, that would be a bummer and they are here to make a fun fanservice road trip game. So Barret hovers over Dyne's corpse while we do a big flashy Palmer boss fight and then smiles and gets up when Cloud gives him a thin line about friendship so that we can hasten onwards to a rail shooter escape section. It's yucky if Tifa doubts Cloud so instead he doubts HER this time (but it's not his fault it's Sephiroth) and she, um, decides she trusts him completely after getting swallowed by a giant whale. And of course there was no chance in hell Cait Sith would have kidnapped Marlene.
I mean I really think where they're going with this is a nice multiverse ending where in one of them everyone lives and is happy including Sephiroth and in the other one AC and Dirge of Cerberus can still be canon and the door is open for more ff7 universe stories and that is, much like what they did with Aeris' death at the end of this game, just a failure to make creative decisions. I don't think they took this opportunity to say the world (and your heart) aren't always as they seem, and I don't think they aimed to say anything at all.
Made the hell out of some minigames though.
This is the part I was getting at about where I think they're going. I won't go too deep into Theorizing (because if there's one thing I actually really don't like about the remake being a trilogy, it's all the theory-baiting they keep doing), but I do have ideas, and I think people have missed some key pieces of information in Rebirth especially.
I mean I really think where they're going with this is a nice multiverse ending where in one of them everyone lives and is happy including Sephiroth and in the other one AC and Dirge of Cerberus can still be canon and the door is open for more ff7 universe stories and that is, much like what they did with Aeris' death at the end of this game, just a failure to make creative decisions.
At the end of my post, I noted that depending on how Revelation ends up, I might be reevaluating my take on the trilogy in a much more negative way, and this is exactly what would make me do it. This would be profoundly cowardly.
But I also don't actually think it's where it's going.
There are some things in Rebirth--some dialogue in Cosmo Canyon, especially, which can admittedly be easy to miss--that make it clear that we're not actually seeing a multiverse. We're seeing the hopes and dreams of the dead, and of the Planet, not actually other timelines.
There's also the fact that the glimpses we get of some of the wish fulfilment-ish scenarios in Rebirth are all kind of wrong and broken, especially Zack's apparent "survival." Or Biggs having "survived," only to be broken down and hopeless--dying again when he seems to have accepted what has actually happened. (That these "alternate worlds" are all dying fits in with this, too: if they're all just memories and dreams in the Lifestream, of course they're drying up as Shinra sucks the literal hope out of the Planet.)
Rebirth, at least, seems to be setting up the opposite of the "everybody lives" ending by strongly suggesting these other worlds, all these characters who seem to have survived in another timeline--they're dead. Zack is dead. Biggs is dead. Aerith, now, is dead. (And of course, the way Aerith fades away after helping Cloud fight Sephiroth at the end is the exact same way she did in Advent Children, when she faded back into the Lifestream. It seems to be pretty strongly suggesting she's not alive in another timeline: she's dead.) And the longer they hold on, the worse it gets, just like Sephiroth's refusal to let anything end.
I could, of course, be very wrong. But Rebirth seems to be setting up an ending about acceptance of loss, not the reversal of it. I think it's probably going to do so in a fanserviced-out way that many will find annoying (calling my shot: they're gonna do the "camera flashes back and forth between Sephiroth and his opponent(s)" shot a third time but this time with Cloud and Zack and Aerith's lifestream ghosts), but I think that's where they're going.
And if I'm wrong, and they really do go for the full wish fulfilment everyone's-happy multiverse thing? Yeah, I'm gonna hate that, too, and I'm gonna be a lot less charitable to Remake and Rebirth in retrospect as well.
But she's not dead. Just like she's not dead in Advent Children. To be dead is to be gone, especially in a story. To be available and present and accessible and someone who can converse with you and help you is to not be dead. If they went through with this story about the lifestream manifesting people's dreams and wishes but it not being real then what would the point be, in a game that in and of itself exists to manifest people's dreams and wishes? It doesn't matter that the alternate timelines are wrong once you've presented the possibility that they exist.
VII was so clear-eyed about loss in a way that none of the compilation has been. Aeris in Cloud's arms comforting him, walking among the cast to touch them and share her presence, and even her speech about how death doesn't mean anyone is really gone, all of these things are antithetical to the thing OG tried to express. The closing note of Rebirth is Aeris saying goodbye - something she was never able to do, because she was murdered abruptly. I'll share the Kitase quote again:
"Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."
We are firmly in Hollywood territory. There isn't really going to be any coming back from it.
I also don't think there's much use in speculating (and I think they are making some of it up as they go) but what I see them putting on the table is largely the opposite. Something optimistic, something about how people'e hopes and wishes and prayers can change reality. Something that is in line with all of the other decisions they've made to tone down absolutely everything in this story that might challenge you.
Brief preface to this one: I kinda skipped over acknowledging the part of the original post that suggested one can only like the Remakes if one doesn't "really care . . . about the source material," mostly because I didn't want to get into some hurt feelings thing or whatever, but I do want to say that I don't think that's true. I think I just read the source material differently. I get told so often that liking the Remakes means I don't actually understand or care about the original that sometimes I just get fed up and play the heel, but that's not actually how I feel. But I'll also acknowledge that my reading of the original seems to be kinda offensive to some fans, and if that's the case here, I apologize in advance and it's probably safe to write me off as unable to be reasoned with.
Also my own ability to do critical analysis has dulled quite a bit over time so please forgive the poorly constructed arguments. Under normal circumstances I'd just accept that I'm probably wrong, but for some reason I think I'm actually right this time, unfortunately for everyone who is able to read.
First, I'd note that it's not that the other worlds aren't "real" so much as they aren't "literal," and I do think there's a difference there. And while Aerith does say the word "goodbye," it's notable that nobody is there to hear her. (If that's actually her in the first place--nothing has really come of the whole "Jenova can appear as those you love" thing yet, so I wouldn't put it past them to have ghost-Aerith be Jenova manipulating Cloud up until the Northern Crater. Like you say, though, not much use in speculating. If she sticks around like some kind of force ghost through Revelation that would suck bad, but I also don't really think that'll be the case.)
I think I disagree with most people on how I read the relationship of the new trilogy to the original. I don't think it's a "sequel," and clearly it's not a fully faithful remake. I think it's a reimagining: telling the story of the same characters and ideas again through a different lens. They have, in fact, even said that this won't connect with Advent Children--viewed one way, that's essentially saying this is its own "canon," separate from the original's story.
That does mean that how the story sees things is different from the original, and it took me a good bit to be okay with that. I really, really hated the ending of Remake (still kind of do, I think it's just poorly executed in general.) But I also don't think it's a complete about-face. This isn't a Rebuild situation, or a Nier Replicant one, I don't think.
Okay, this is the part I think might be offensive, again sorry in advance:
VII was so clear-eyed about loss in a way that none of the compilation has been. Aeris in Cloud's arms comforting him, walking among the cast to touch them and share her presence, and even her speech about how death doesn't mean anyone is really gone, all of these things are antithetical to the thing OG tried to express.
This, I actually don't agree with. I'm aware of that quote from Kitase, but I think even in the original, he tried to have it both ways. Kitase's statement is clear-eyed, but the game itself muddies the waters somewhat. The central idea of the Lifestream is memory, after all. It's not a huge leap, I don't think, to read that as expressing the way that people live on in memory--even once the people who remember them are gone, even when nobody knows their names or faces, the memory of their life still echoes in the world they left behind.
And Aerith does still have an individual presence within the Lifestream, even in the original, most clearly in the ending. Multiple characters directly feel her presence there, most specifically Cloud and Marlene, and Aerith's is the last face we see before the credits. That's a temporary thing before her consciousness fully returns to the planet, if we're to take Advent Children as part of the lore at all, but she is there and acknowledged. (I'm not gonna defend Advent Children except for this specific piece of music, it's just clear that's part of the "mechanics" of the world that they're using here.)
Whether getting glimpses of what it means to still have a presence within the Lifestream in some metaphorical way or not means she's not dead, I guess I can't really answer, but I do feel very confident staking my claim in that nobody's coming back to life and no multiverses are going to continue to exist like wish fulfilment fantasies--it's all returning to the Planet by the end.
There's enough in the text that, unless I actively try to be as cynical as I can, points to this not actually turning out as the feel-good wish-fulfilment that some fans seem to be clamoring for. (They will be incandescently angry if this isn't the case--many already were when Aerith wasn't definitively saved at the end of Rebirth, after all.)
I don't think that's offensive at all, and I think OG ff7 is so open to interpretation that the calcified cultural consensus is a bit of a shame sometimes. I don't really agree with you that OG wasn't effective at this, and I certainly don't agree that Aeris' presence following in her death in OG is in any way comparable to how death is handled in the compilation, but it's fine that you think so.
I also don't think you're wrong about the lifestream, or even your theory that a happy ending will be a "false memory" or a "hollow dream". But I don't think it matters that no one was there to hear Aeris say goodbye, because we were. This game is very conscious of its audience and all of the stuff it's doing with the multiverse is kind of in universe gobbledegook to facilitate some metafiction that seems to want to say something about ff7's cultural legacy, but has thus far not been capable of spitting anything out.
We'll have to wait and see where this goes. I'm open to being wrong but I really doubt it's going to go anywhere, except maybe in a direction that helps leave the series in a spot where they can milk this cash cow forever.
