Bel. 30s. Video game nerd. final fantasy / trails/kiseki / clair obscur / ivalice / fire emblem / chainsaw man / hellsing / dragon age / odin sphere / persona / rune factory / sundry others
I do want to shout out Rebirth for one clear improvement it made over OG and that is in what they did with Elena.
Reno's Japanese VA dying is the best thing that ever happened to this character because they suddenly needed a new Turk to pair up with Rude. They could have made her a clumsy and cute rookie, or they could have played up her crush on Tseng as it was in OG, and I am sooooo happy that they did neither of those things. She is mean, ambitious, and because of both of those things, hilarious. I really and truly get the sense that she graduated from a top corporate assassin college and shows up bright and early every day hoping to get an A+ in kidnapping and murder. They even showed an uncharacteristic amount of restraint by giving her a pink bedazzled howitzer and letting it be a sight gag rather than a full minute of calling attention to it.
It doesn't get said enough: it's absolutely crazy how bad so many games, especially games with character customisation, are at 'doing' black skin. yeah I don't think we need to be this bad at this. I think it's probably not too hard to do better here. I'm not even talking about black hair (another failing) like it's skin tone mate it cannot possibly be such an impossibility.
There is a really frustrating thing where some kinds of speculative story are hard to write because they will be assumed to be bad (clumsy, harmful, regressive) metaphors for real-world events or people, rather than exploring completely speculative ideas. Like:
"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.
"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.
It almost feels like death of the author, like "Death of the most obvious metaphor" - If you couldn't reach for the (tormented) parallel between being an alien species and being stateless, what stories could someone tell? If your changeling-baby was neither disabled nor adopted, what would the story be about? Etc.
I was literally just thinking about this yesterday! It's a trend I've seen a LOT in recent years in lit crit, particularly when discussing fantasy.
I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."
There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you
And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.
Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum
The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.
And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."
Anyway sorry I've rambled here, not sure how coherent I'm being. But yes, I was thinking about this just yesterday! Wild.
An additional point of annoyance is that people who read like this only seem to have a small number of metaphors available to them and will choose from among them rather than consider that they might be reading about something outside of their own experience. You might be writing something deeply intended as an allegory about the experience of being adopted, and reach an audience of people who think any writing about social alienation is de facto queer. It's very incurious.
"Games are art" doesn't just mean "games are good," to me it also means "games have meaning and deserve to be looked at as pieces created by people that actually reflect the circumstances of their creation." This means looking at games critically beyond a lens of "is it good on the scale of gameness?"
The Call of Duty games are actually popular not just in spite of their quality, but they're actually well-crafted games. However, there is merit in critical analysis of them that goes beyond "how many graphics" and "how much gameplay," but also looking at them via their quite real connections to the US military and how they basically mirror the ideology of the US military. This doesn't mean that you should treat the Call of Duty games as infohazards which will turn anyone who interacts with them into drones for the US military, but as reflections of real ideologies that are larger than the players themselves.
And like, there's a lot of art that carries ideologies that when transplanted into the real world would be morally repugnant to me, but as works of art they are worth engaging to me. Old-school D&D doesn't actually describe a real world but the fictional folks and structures used to populate it still say something about the people who made it, their priors, and what concessions they were willing to make in the fiction for the sake of gameplay.
This is something you should keep in mind when someone makes a point like "well the orcs/bandits/cultists deserve it because they did bad things in the fiction." These are in-setting justifications, ultimately come up with to frame the narrative of the game as heroic. There's not a lot of interesting ground to be covered in discussions of "how do we find an enemy in D&D player characters can kill without it morally compromising players" because the game isn't a cursed tome that'll turn you evil for engaging with it. What's more interesting is "what kind of priors went unexamined to uncritically make bandits/cultists/orcs the default enemies instead of, say, the lord's soldiers?"
And an unwillingness to think about these things doesn't make anyone morally deficient; however, in my opinion an unwillingness to entertain these ideas or an aggressive and vitriolic rejection of these lines of thought may be indicative of intellectual incuriosity and ultimately I feel it emerges from a similar place as "D&D must be woke or it'll infect me:" D&D must be protected from evil criticisms because otherwise D&D may seem morally deficient. Which is like so far besides the point.
And at the end of the day, I enjoy D&D when it's basically fantasy cops and robbers, or robbers and other robbers: it's a game of accumulating power by killing creatures and stealing their stuff. It's a really fun and I would even dare say good game when played that way. The reason I caution against approaching D&D from the point of view of "we must find the right type of monsters our characters can kill with moral impunity" is because you might accidentally end up from going from one unexamined trope to another but more importantly part of the buy-in of D&D is accepting that D&D the game as it exists thinks certain classes of monsters (and as we know from earlier, more equal opportunity editions, Men are also Monsters) are okay to be kill. It's literally fine, you won't be morally compromised for engaging with the game as is: but also, if you're fucked up like me you might find joy in thinking about "hey isn't it weird how this medieval fantasy world looks more like the American frontier than an actual medieval society?"
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.
Rebirth Report Card
Plot/Location
Nibelheim Flashback: D
Kalm: B
Chocobo Ranch: B
Marshes: F
Mythril Mine: B
Under Junon: C
Upper Junon: F
Ship: D
Costa: B
Corel: C
Gold Saucer: F
Prison: F
Gongaga: D
Lifestream: F
Cosmo Canyon: C
Cave of the Gi: B
Nibelheim 2: C
Shinra Mansion: F. G, if I could put a G.
Gold Saucer 2: C
Temple of the Ancients: A. It's a generous A, but I felt they really stretched here.
City of the Ancients/Ending: F
Characters
Cloud: F
Barret: A
Aeris: B, and I'm probably playing favourites
Tifa: D
Red: God I hate that voice switch. But objectively there's nothing wrong here. C
Yuffie: B, but she has great potential.
Cait Sith: Too soon to call it, so C.
Cid: Who is this? This isn't Cid. He's fine but he isn't Cid.
Vincent: D. Does he take his iPad into the coffin with him?
Sephiroth: F. I've had enough of this guy.
FINAL GRADE: This apparently averages to a C but I'd put my final impression closer to a D. After a certain point, I just gave up on dinging it for the same bullshit repeatedly
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.
The thing is, that part of the original FF7 is an episodic road trip where the structure connecting the episodes is: "a guy in a black robe was seen heading to <place>" -> "he's not there, but we got involved in something" -> "we heard the guy in the black robe went to <next place>" -> repeat several times. That's fine as a few-hour stretch of a single game, but kind of rough when stretched out to be a full game.
(Also: given the rest of the game's focus on the team's interactions, they really should've used that as the frame for the open-world activities rather than Chadley. It would've allowed for a lot more to be done there and also would've meant I didn't have to listen to the annoying robot kid as much. Red XIII should've been sniffing out rare monsters to hunt, not Chadley and his AI chatbot.)
It worked better for me because I enjoyed the moments between more, I think, and because (more on this later) I think I like the direction the trilogy seems to be going. That made what story we got feel like it had some momentum in the big picture, despite some of the wheel-spinning that happened along the way. (It's also helped by the fact that I just really enjoyed the core gameplay--my own enjoyment of open world nonsense is pretty directly tied to "would I just fuck around for a few hours because it's fun to play this game even if I didn't have objectives?", I think.)
This is one of those games where I'm not blind to the flaws, but my personal subjective experience was good enough that the flaws are worth it for me.
In the press they're doing about Revelation right now, they're talking about how they're really remixing things this time. When things happen, the order that places are visited, and how things go down in each area will (apparently) be more substantially different.
I think they should've done that with Rebirth, too, a lot more than they did. They should have, well, adapted it more significantly. They should have compressed it. And then, they should've ended at the Northern Crater instead of the Village of the Ancients.
That would've given them more of, well, a plot arc to follow. It would've given Cloud more of an actual place to end up. It would've encouraged the story to spend a little less time on fluff, maybe even push to cut an episode along the way to make room for that final act at the Northern Crater. It would've been one hell of a cliffhanger heading into part 3.
(But, of course, it would make it harder for them to tease whether Aerith died or not, says the cynical part of my brain.)
As it stands, I liked Rebirth a lot more than OP, but that could all change based on how Revelation turns out as an end to the trilogy. I think Revelation has a lot of potential because it's adapting some of the meatier parts of the game, and will no longer have cliffhangers and teases to hide behind. If I'm right in my interpretations of the "new mysteries," I think those will also weave nicely back into the original game's themes in a way that doesn't overwrite them, but adds new facets to how the game views them.
And if it doesn't? Well, I might be reevaluating the trilogy next year.
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.
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.
Also, I didn't say that only people who don't care about the source material could like it - I said this game is bad for people who care deeply about the source material, in the section where I was talking about myself. To get even more precise, I think fans like me who saw in FFVII this story about the world's simultaneous ugliness and beauty, who really indexed on how messy and complicated it could be, have been left in the dust. I feel almost repudiated for liking those things because the turn away from all of that is so thorough and consistent. They've pulled out my place at the table.
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.
Rebirth Report Card
Plot/Location
Nibelheim Flashback: D
Kalm: B
Chocobo Ranch: B
Marshes: F
Mythril Mine: B
Under Junon: C
Upper Junon: F
Ship: D
Costa: B
Corel: C
Gold Saucer: F
Prison: F
Gongaga: D
Lifestream: F
Cosmo Canyon: C
Cave of the Gi: B
Nibelheim 2: C
Shinra Mansion: F. G, if I could put a G.
Gold Saucer 2: C
Temple of the Ancients: A. It's a generous A, but I felt they really stretched here.
City of the Ancients/Ending: F
Characters
Cloud: F
Barret: A
Aeris: B, and I'm probably playing favourites
Tifa: D
Red: God I hate that voice switch. But objectively there's nothing wrong here. C
Yuffie: B, but she has great potential.
Cait Sith: Too soon to call it, so C.
Cid: Who is this? This isn't Cid. He's fine but he isn't Cid.
Vincent: D. Does he take his iPad into the coffin with him?
Sephiroth: F. I've had enough of this guy.
FINAL GRADE: This apparently averages to a C but I'd put my final impression closer to a D. After a certain point, I just gave up on dinging it for the same bullshit repeatedly
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.
The thing is, that part of the original FF7 is an episodic road trip where the structure connecting the episodes is: "a guy in a black robe was seen heading to <place>" -> "he's not there, but we got involved in something" -> "we heard the guy in the black robe went to <next place>" -> repeat several times. That's fine as a few-hour stretch of a single game, but kind of rough when stretched out to be a full game.
(Also: given the rest of the game's focus on the team's interactions, they really should've used that as the frame for the open-world activities rather than Chadley. It would've allowed for a lot more to be done there and also would've meant I didn't have to listen to the annoying robot kid as much. Red XIII should've been sniffing out rare monsters to hunt, not Chadley and his AI chatbot.)
It worked better for me because I enjoyed the moments between more, I think, and because (more on this later) I think I like the direction the trilogy seems to be going. That made what story we got feel like it had some momentum in the big picture, despite some of the wheel-spinning that happened along the way. (It's also helped by the fact that I just really enjoyed the core gameplay--my own enjoyment of open world nonsense is pretty directly tied to "would I just fuck around for a few hours because it's fun to play this game even if I didn't have objectives?", I think.)
This is one of those games where I'm not blind to the flaws, but my personal subjective experience was good enough that the flaws are worth it for me.
In the press they're doing about Revelation right now, they're talking about how they're really remixing things this time. When things happen, the order that places are visited, and how things go down in each area will (apparently) be more substantially different.
I think they should've done that with Rebirth, too, a lot more than they did. They should have, well, adapted it more significantly. They should have compressed it. And then, they should've ended at the Northern Crater instead of the Village of the Ancients.
That would've given them more of, well, a plot arc to follow. It would've given Cloud more of an actual place to end up. It would've encouraged the story to spend a little less time on fluff, maybe even push to cut an episode along the way to make room for that final act at the Northern Crater. It would've been one hell of a cliffhanger heading into part 3.
(But, of course, it would make it harder for them to tease whether Aerith died or not, says the cynical part of my brain.)
As it stands, I liked Rebirth a lot more than OP, but that could all change based on how Revelation turns out as an end to the trilogy. I think Revelation has a lot of potential because it's adapting some of the meatier parts of the game, and will no longer have cliffhangers and teases to hide behind. If I'm right in my interpretations of the "new mysteries," I think those will also weave nicely back into the original game's themes in a way that doesn't overwrite them, but adds new facets to how the game views them.
And if it doesn't? Well, I might be reevaluating the trilogy next year.
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.
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.
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.
Rebirth Report Card
Plot/Location
Nibelheim Flashback: D
Kalm: B
Chocobo Ranch: B
Marshes: F
Mythril Mine: B
Under Junon: C
Upper Junon: F
Ship: D
Costa: B
Corel: C
Gold Saucer: F
Prison: F
Gongaga: D
Lifestream: F
Cosmo Canyon: C
Cave of the Gi: B
Nibelheim 2: C
Shinra Mansion: F. G, if I could put a G.
Gold Saucer 2: C
Temple of the Ancients: A. It's a generous A, but I felt they really stretched here.
City of the Ancients/Ending: F
Characters
Cloud: F
Barret: A
Aeris: B, and I'm probably playing favourites
Tifa: D
Red: God I hate that voice switch. But objectively there's nothing wrong here. C
Yuffie: B, but she has great potential.
Cait Sith: Too soon to call it, so C.
Cid: Who is this? This isn't Cid. He's fine but he isn't Cid.
Vincent: D. Does he take his iPad into the coffin with him?
Sephiroth: F. I've had enough of this guy.
FINAL GRADE: This apparently averages to a C but I'd put my final impression closer to a D. After a certain point, I just gave up on dinging it for the same bullshit repeatedly
Couldn't agree more. Truth is, I really wanted to like it. I even gaslit myself into liking it. But I have to come clean: unfortunately, for me, Rebirth broke my heart. And not for the reasons it was supposed to.
Aesthetically, the game looks amazing. The environments are gorgeous. But the music is hit or miss. When it's good, it's really good; the kind of tunes I can't get enough of, and listen to over and over again (example: the Mount Corel hike theme. It's freakin' awesome). However, the music is often bland and generic where it matters the most.
The dramatic moments that are supposed to be heavy and dark are cheapened by melodrama, and the pacing is awful. The game doesn't let those scenes breathe. Its darkest moments are sanitized and interrupted with action immediately after, or by a completely unnecessary lore dump (examples: the Dyne scene and the Seto reveal scene in Cosmo Canyon).
It also can't commit to one thing. Aerith's death? A confusing mess. I wish they would have picked a lane and committed to that. Either have her die, or survive. The most ballsy thing would have been for Aerith to survive - because that's the one thing most people didn't think the devs would dare pull off. When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
The game also forces specific party compositions on you in certain locations - unlike in the OG, where you could always choose your party yourself (except for in certain situations, for example, when Cloud was Mako-poisoned in Mideel). Aerith dies before you even get to have the full party, which was the biggest issue for me. When I first heard about synergy, I got so excited, because I was thinking "Wow, there's sooo many character combinations!" and I imagined how fun that would be. Then the biggest disappointment was announced: Vincent and Cid would not be playable.
So, that "camaraderie between characters" is also flattened when you don't even get to have all of the party members fighting together and interact with each other. How much did Aerith interact with Vincent, for example? Well, he held her at gunpoint in the Shinra Mansion, and Aerith also said "Really?" when he revealed he could track the Turks by radio after they took the keystone. Oh, and Vincent also looked up when she sung "until I met you" in the Gold Saucer - if that even counts. That's it. That's not exactly "expanding on the camaraderie". They expanded the amount of stuff you can do. Minigames and side quests. While that's nice, it takes up so much space that it actually takes away from the characters' interactions and time spent together.
It feels Disney-fied. What was dark and mature in the OG felt dumbed down, so moments that were supposed to be heartbreaking... frankly made me feel nothing. In OG, the Dyne scene is one of my favorites. It's tragic, and masterfully done. Rebirth version changed that, and removed the tragedy in the process. It does that a lot: cheapening the stakes. "Obviously afraid of getting too real", as OP put it, is spot-on.
I could say so much more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I really really wanted to like the Remake trilogy. Unfortunately, it just left me greatly disappointed.
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.
Rebirth Report Card
Plot/Location
Nibelheim Flashback: D
Kalm: B
Chocobo Ranch: B
Marshes: F
Mythril Mine: B
Under Junon: C
Upper Junon: F
Ship: D
Costa: B
Corel: C
Gold Saucer: F
Prison: F
Gongaga: D
Lifestream: F
Cosmo Canyon: C
Cave of the Gi: B
Nibelheim 2: C
Shinra Mansion: F. G, if I could put a G.
Gold Saucer 2: C
Temple of the Ancients: A. It's a generous A, but I felt they really stretched here.
City of the Ancients/Ending: F
Characters
Cloud: F
Barret: A
Aeris: B, and I'm probably playing favourites
Tifa: D
Red: God I hate that voice switch. But objectively there's nothing wrong here. C
Yuffie: B, but she has great potential.
Cait Sith: Too soon to call it, so C.
Cid: Who is this? This isn't Cid. He's fine but he isn't Cid.
Vincent: D. Does he take his iPad into the coffin with him?
Sephiroth: F. I've had enough of this guy.
FINAL GRADE: This apparently averages to a C but I'd put my final impression closer to a D. After a certain point, I just gave up on dinging it for the same bullshit repeatedly
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.
The thing is, that part of the original FF7 is an episodic road trip where the structure connecting the episodes is: "a guy in a black robe was seen heading to <place>" -> "he's not there, but we got involved in something" -> "we heard the guy in the black robe went to <next place>" -> repeat several times. That's fine as a few-hour stretch of a single game, but kind of rough when stretched out to be a full game.
(Also: given the rest of the game's focus on the team's interactions, they really should've used that as the frame for the open-world activities rather than Chadley. It would've allowed for a lot more to be done there and also would've meant I didn't have to listen to the annoying robot kid as much. Red XIII should've been sniffing out rare monsters to hunt, not Chadley and his AI chatbot.)
It worked better for me because I enjoyed the moments between more, I think, and because (more on this later) I think I like the direction the trilogy seems to be going. That made what story we got feel like it had some momentum in the big picture, despite some of the wheel-spinning that happened along the way. (It's also helped by the fact that I just really enjoyed the core gameplay--my own enjoyment of open world nonsense is pretty directly tied to "would I just fuck around for a few hours because it's fun to play this game even if I didn't have objectives?", I think.)
This is one of those games where I'm not blind to the flaws, but my personal subjective experience was good enough that the flaws are worth it for me.
In the press they're doing about Revelation right now, they're talking about how they're really remixing things this time. When things happen, the order that places are visited, and how things go down in each area will (apparently) be more substantially different.
I think they should've done that with Rebirth, too, a lot more than they did. They should have, well, adapted it more significantly. They should have compressed it. And then, they should've ended at the Northern Crater instead of the Village of the Ancients.
That would've given them more of, well, a plot arc to follow. It would've given Cloud more of an actual place to end up. It would've encouraged the story to spend a little less time on fluff, maybe even push to cut an episode along the way to make room for that final act at the Northern Crater. It would've been one hell of a cliffhanger heading into part 3.
(But, of course, it would make it harder for them to tease whether Aerith died or not, says the cynical part of my brain.)
As it stands, I liked Rebirth a lot more than OP, but that could all change based on how Revelation turns out as an end to the trilogy. I think Revelation has a lot of potential because it's adapting some of the meatier parts of the game, and will no longer have cliffhangers and teases to hide behind. If I'm right in my interpretations of the "new mysteries," I think those will also weave nicely back into the original game's themes in a way that doesn't overwrite them, but adds new facets to how the game views them.
And if it doesn't? Well, I might be reevaluating the trilogy next year.
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.
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.
Rebirth Report Card
Plot/Location
Nibelheim Flashback: D
Kalm: B
Chocobo Ranch: B
Marshes: F
Mythril Mine: B
Under Junon: C
Upper Junon: F
Ship: D
Costa: B
Corel: C
Gold Saucer: F
Prison: F
Gongaga: D
Lifestream: F
Cosmo Canyon: C
Cave of the Gi: B
Nibelheim 2: C
Shinra Mansion: F. G, if I could put a G.
Gold Saucer 2: C
Temple of the Ancients: A. It's a generous A, but I felt they really stretched here.
City of the Ancients/Ending: F
Characters
Cloud: F
Barret: A
Aeris: B, and I'm probably playing favourites
Tifa: D
Red: God I hate that voice switch. But objectively there's nothing wrong here. C
Yuffie: B, but she has great potential.
Cait Sith: Too soon to call it, so C.
Cid: Who is this? This isn't Cid. He's fine but he isn't Cid.
Vincent: D. Does he take his iPad into the coffin with him?
Sephiroth: F. I've had enough of this guy.
FINAL GRADE: This apparently averages to a C but I'd put my final impression closer to a D. After a certain point, I just gave up on dinging it for the same bullshit repeatedly
This is actually the point where I just officially gave up. Despite all the changes, despite more Shinra apologism, despite gus and his grills, despite how much they toned down Dyne, when he died I actually felt something for the first time the whole game. I felt they got Barret's half of that as right as they could - that he's got to carry a weight, no matter how difficult.
And then they hard cut to Palmer shaking his ass at me and I was done.
Sephiroth is also a lost cause I agree. He's so much not my boy that whenever they say anything about him that's OG accurate I get jump scared. I never want to hear one winged angel again.
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