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S2 Ep143: Final Fantasy VII Remake
81 Plays5 years ago
SPOILERS: FVII and FVII Remake
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Rachel as take a trip down memory lane and then jump to the future of Midgar in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Rachel as take a trip down memory lane and then jump to the future of Midgar in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Side Gigs
00:00:42
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. I'm actually going to speak for Rachel as well. It's probably going good for her, too. That's good. Well, you don't know anything because, well, it's going great because I'm hanging here with two lovely friends.
00:01:06
Speaker
Nice. I'll then moo you after. Thank you. Everybody needs a side gig. You know, it's fair way to make money. I've realized that like now that it's officially a bit, but I don't like acknowledge the guest and Dave does that. He's the one that like passes the ball back over. I've now started to feel bad about it in the middle of the intro. Um, but we'll work through that. I think I believe in you.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah.
Winter Woes and Gaming Dreams
00:01:33
Speaker
How's everybody doing? It's snowed a lot. Yeah. Um, car has been dug out. Um, not today though. I realized that there was like an interview that just showed up, but I had, I have nowhere to be outside. So currently okay. Yeah. What is outside?
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah. Rachel's also not shovel. I haven't either. It's so bad. It's so, it's a block of ice just in case in the, my only form of transportation. It'll be melted by like a few weeks from now. You're fine. Right. They just get, we got to stop having like one major snowfall a week and I'll get there. The problem is it's compacting. It's compacting. Um, yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
Better hope there isn't an avalanche.
00:02:24
Speaker
I honestly like I feel a little bit guilty because usually So I missed a joke I think based on people's expressions. Yeah. Oh avalanche is one of the organization. Yes What was great is like Jake was continuing on with like the podcast and train of thought Rachel's mark of like that was a good one that went over his head I'm here with my arms up like right such a good time So it was too easy keep talking
00:02:49
Speaker
No, that was that's a perfect that's a perfect transition. I'm going to take it. So Final Fantasy seven remake, which is the game I haven't played just on principle, but I did play the original and in the original. I don't remember Avalanche being mentioned that many times. So that's my excuse for not getting that. Well, there's probably a reason for
Final Fantasy 7 Nostalgia and Comparisons
00:03:12
Speaker
that. Something about game pacing, one would think.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. So anyway, this episode, so thank you for coming on talking about Final Fantasy remake. I have not played it, Dave. I don't believe you've played it. You can correct me if I'm wrong. No, I have long held my tradition of not really playing JRPGs, but I do remember explicitly saying I'm going to get the PlayStation 4 so that when the remake comes out, I will pick it up. And I have not. Making me a liar.
00:03:46
Speaker
I mean, it'll look so good on PS5 though, right? So having been the one person to play it, how would you describe Final Fantasy 7? Did you play the original at all? Yeah. So I played the original back in 97. I remember it as if it were not yesterday, COVID time. Nothing makes sense. Right. Yeah, not this way.
00:04:16
Speaker
I played it a handful of times as I've been mentioned on the podcast before as the JRPG friend. So thank you for the shout outs. But I've done the 99 hours and 99 minute playthroughs because I didn't have a job back then.
00:04:37
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I don't want to extrapolate people's age or whatever, but you must have been a teenager back when this game came out initially then, right? I caught it late. Yeah, early 40s. You were in your early 40s. Okay, all right. That doesn't work at all.
00:04:56
Speaker
Um, I was, I was six, but I don't care about my age. Um, Oh my gosh, you were playing, you were playing Final Fantasy six. Because of my brother and he was, he was few years older than me and he thought it was super cool. So that's, that's why I got into it, played it on his PlayStation, might've broken one of his PlayStations, I think it's fine.
00:05:19
Speaker
That's not good. That's bad. I think that is cool, though, because I didn't have that growing up. My only gaming outlet was my cousin. So when I go to visit them over the summers for a week, I'd be like, oh, technology is a thing that exists. Here I was playing with a stick, a lot of mud, and a rock. Yeah. You just found your entertainment in your backyard. Yeah. I think you may have more gamer rep than anybody else here.
00:05:47
Speaker
just because of when you started at the very least and final fantasy. Yeah, went in deep. My secret is I've never
Character Development in the Remake
00:05:55
Speaker
gotten better at games than for when I was six. So that's fair.
00:05:59
Speaker
Don't tell anyone. That's all right. Yeah, I didn't I didn't start playing games like eight or something. It was Sonic the Hedgehog for PC. I don't know. It was weird. But hmm. So you said you played it multiple times. This is like a hundred hour long game. Would you consider yourself something of an expert? Maybe perhaps per chance when it comes to Final Fantasy? Not at all. So, yes, let's call me a Final Fantasy expert. Be sure to add me.
00:06:30
Speaker
I'm just evaluating like how much I should immediately take anything you say as fact. You've already referenced like a fairly, I don't think, again, I don't think they mentioned that many times in the original.
00:06:43
Speaker
organization, so I'm ready to learn. That's what I'm looking for. So let's go. And that's the perfect way to start. And why not remembering? See? Why not remembering it as much in the original would be because mainly, Avalanche is only talked about in Midgar, which is the first six hours of a, I don't know, that's like 50 hour game for normal people, probably. I like the qualifier for normal people. That's very apt.
00:07:11
Speaker
people who don't want achievements or to fully understand all the sub content. You got to you got to grow the material for each member of your party and you know it takes some farming. It's the chocobo racing, that's all it is, which is actual chocobo farming. So how does one farm just a chocobo? For delicious chocobo meat. Kentucky tried chocobo, yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
So I think you mentioned the genre, at least for sure. But for someone who's completely, I don't know, they arrived at Planet Earth and they have no idea what Final Fantasy is about. How would you? And I know literally I already brought up the old one, and so it's going to be impossible to get away from this. But how would you describe Final Fantasy 7?
00:07:59
Speaker
Oh, gosh. I would describe it. It's all about world building and character development as the base layer. For the remake, spending most of the time in sort of a dreary town, it almost feels like
00:08:20
Speaker
Like one of the like the steampunk kind of genre. It's like, oh, there's a there's a pipe. Oh, there's another pipe. Oh, I'm in a sewer. Like it's it's very much sort of dark and dreary to start in this game. But Final Fantasy seven, you know, it branches out, it becomes a large open world in the original, because this is going to be a multiple release. There may be a large open world. I'll have to find out again in a couple of years.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah. So initially when you saw these trailers, I assume you thought it was going to be the full game like everyone else? No. No, you thought it was going to be the segmented?
00:09:00
Speaker
I thought it was going to be segmented possibly in a different way. I didn't think that they would be able to stretch six hours into 35, I think is the average playtime of this. So they really expanded. The town is called Midgar and it feels very alive. The attention to detail is very immersive.
00:09:21
Speaker
but what i sort of thought was going to happen was okay lots of midgar and then you go out and about and you do some stuff in the world you see some grass at some point would have been nice you know so do you think they added a lot with it in like a meaningful way or do you feel like it was kind of stretched
Combat System Critique
00:09:41
Speaker
thin
00:09:43
Speaker
Um, I, I think that there is, there is certainly a lot that was added in a meaningful way for sure. Um, in the original game clouds, you know, he's sort of a jackass. I think feeling that gets across in a smash even, um, yeah, Jake, I love playing the character. I don't know what you want me to say.
00:10:05
Speaker
Sword boys. But in this, it takes him much less time to sort of become a likable protagonist. Okay, that's good. Yeah, so that is meaningful.
00:10:19
Speaker
That's something I kind of remember about like the old one is cloud. Like, like you mentioned, not very likable and kind of like a shoe in protagonist. You're like, the reason we know this guy's a protagonist is cause he has a mysterious backstory. And like, because all of these people gravitate towards him, not for any other reason, right? Like you could just pick him up and like drop him in another universe and he'd make a perfectly viable, like antagonist. Even you're just like, that guy's not likable.
00:10:49
Speaker
And to be fair, like the the arrow keys do move him. So that was my my clue in. Yeah, if not for like the cross chassis and segment, I think it would have been completely unlikable and early game original. But yeah, I think that might be fair. Even that, I feel like he kind of does begrudgingly. Right. Like he's just a very begrudging person throughout most of the game. No.
00:11:17
Speaker
through most of the game. Yeah, he has to go through a lot of the things that they don't even touch on really in here, but he still has character growth. Um, a lot of his deal with Sephiroth, which some, are you familiar? Have you guys heard of him vaguely? Like Dave's heard of him a lot though, like on the victory screen when his name is called.
00:11:41
Speaker
Speaking got him. Snap, snap, snap, snap. I don't know if that's going to pick up. It picked up. OK. But yeah, there's a character development is completely different for Cloud, which will be interesting to see how they do the next set of games. Because OK, how are we going to keep developing him? Is he going to be like a Sanrio character in the end? Like, Hello Kitty Cloud.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's a fair point. I do want to dig into their decision to... In a world of all these remasters, they went for a full remake and then large story expansion. Final Fantasy 7 is one of their...
00:12:29
Speaker
I feel like it's the cliched, in quotes, best Final Fantasy game. I think that was the one that was big in the US, whereas a lot of them were just like, Japan plays RPGs. Yeah. I think Final Fantasy was the first one in the US where they actually used the international number even. Until that game, they just pretended that the previous releases that didn't come to the US weren't part of the sequence. So the Final Fantasy numbers were on. It was kind of funny.
00:12:58
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, they take all of that and they're like, all right, mess with it. Which I give them props for, I guess. They're very much with in a very obvious way. This is our IP and we're going to do whatever the hell we want with it and you're going to play it. And right. OK, OK. All right. Jesus. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but nobody actually played King Marissa.
00:13:27
Speaker
It seems like overall, this has been more well received than, um, I forget who owns it now, but what they did with the Hobbit and the movies. Yeah, actually I was thinking about that desolation of smog, like, yeah. Cause they stretched what was initially a book and an animated movie into three feature length films, right? I budget, et cetera, et cetera.
New Plot Elements: A Blessing or a Curse?
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:52
Speaker
I mean, like, I think that's probably a negative comparison in some ways. Cause I don't think, like you said, I don't know anyone who was like, this needed to be three movies, right? Like I really love all of the dwarf sequences that never end. Like, um, it seems like they've, their attempt at least was to inject enough unique content and personality into.
00:14:17
Speaker
this first chapter of the remake to justify it for people. I think it's just going to be a little bit of a jarring sell on people, though. It's like, okay, we sort of need to know how many iterations this is going to be. Yeah. Because is the next 35-hour game going to be six more hours from the original? Like, are we going to wrap this up 2035? What are we looking at?
00:14:43
Speaker
Is there a game per disc that the original had? Like, what are we dealing with? I would be okay with that. Yeah. I think it was, I think it was three. Um, hardly remember now, but I think they could pace it that way.
00:14:58
Speaker
And I definitely like I think the reason they managed to pull this off is because they like they took a world people loved and they're like, we're just going to like turn up the saturation on so many of these elements and characters and, you know, increase the personability of a lot of these people. Like I was I was thinking about like the original in preparation for this. I was like, I remember Tifa is kind of just like a happy go lucky
00:15:27
Speaker
version of like lower Croft. They just swapped the model in and they're basically good. Um, and it seems like a lot of these characters and I, again, I haven't played the remake, but like you said, they've expanded their personality a lot. So clouds got development and stuff like that.
00:15:44
Speaker
It's a bonus because they expanded on the original characters as well because there have been a lot of spin-offs for Final Fantasy 7. It's, as DICE would call, like a money maker. So they had the Advent Children, which was a film that was awful and made this whatsoever, where they completely changed the character personalities. It was awful. You're attacking the heart of Dave's religion. You're right.
00:16:15
Speaker
All right. I really did enjoy it. But also at the time, that was like the height of animation for a 3D film. Like it looked OK. The only thing we had previously was Final Fantasy Pierce Within, which was dog shit. So this like looks so fucking good. And if somebody like walked in and they didn't know what it was, you'd be like, oh, what's this actual movie? Because it looks realistic at a distance.
00:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, but it's just very I know I know it was just it was very hype and cool and they're like this every off battle at the end. It really got me excited because it's like I enjoyed the original game and the lore with it. So it's cool to see them expound upon it in that way. I see unlimited give up the floor of Final Fantasy.
00:17:01
Speaker
No, that's fair. I think to be less targeted, it was what they did to the characters. They sort of digressed off of the original character development at that point. That's when Cloud sort of became an edgelord. Tifa was sort of just, oh, save me. Like just more generic tropes of characters. So now there's some back and forth depth.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We're talking about like how diverse some of the characters were. I was doing a little bit of research on the original for this. Apparently like the initial setting when they were prepping the game was actually going to be in New York. And then they're like, let's not use that. We'll use that for something else, which became Parasite Eve.
00:17:47
Speaker
And they rewrote all of this for the Midgard setting. Midgar. Not D. No D. Midgar. Well, I'm glad they didn't do it in New York where, you know, later an actual catastrophe would occur with buildings falling upon things. So it would not have aged well.
00:18:08
Speaker
That's awkward. I'm hearing beeps. I don't know what that means. I want to pretend it didn't happen. Sounds good. I assume that came through. There's no not addressing that or cutting it out at this point. Is this what Senua's like? Hearing the beeps in the head. Is that what this is? Just hear something. Yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
I think the fantasy is a stupid word in a series called Final Fantasy, but the fantasy nature of Midgar was probably one of the things that drew me in really early in the series. And to be fair,
00:18:48
Speaker
If I were to go back and play Final Fantasy, there's a lot of stuff in the original. There's a lot of stuff there I actually probably would not want to do. Random Encounters, I'm not actually a fan of Random Encounters anymore. It's like sticking around in areas for long periods of time. Not so much. Cutscenes are cool. And it feels like they realized that a lot of those elements wouldn't adapt themselves well into the remake. And they wanted to just be like,
00:19:18
Speaker
The original sold really well in the US. We're going to sell really well universally beyond planet earth. Let's appeal to everybody. Everyone on Gaia. Do you think that they were successful in those goals with the differences coming off of the original?
00:19:39
Speaker
So this is sort of where it gets a little rough for me, where I was like, yeah, I want to talk about Final Fantasy 7 Remake. That seems fun. Maybe I'll actually beat the game ahead of the podcast, which I did. I originally watched Dice, my husband, play through the whole thing. And
00:20:00
Speaker
I thought that it would make sense if I played through it. It has to be fun. It was not fun. I did not enjoy it. So here, let me talk about how much I love this game. Just kidding. I discovered I hate it. I was curious about this because earlier you were saying that like in retrospect, your opinions had kind of shifted on the game. What were your opinions originally and how did they excuse me? How did they shift here?
00:20:25
Speaker
So I think that I'm a very old school JRPG fan. It's part of the nostalgia, part of the me not getting better at video games since I was six. So I like to be able to opt out and grind my way through a battle.
00:20:45
Speaker
And not necessarily that random encounters are the best way to do it, but I would like respawning enemies or something like that to help practice the mechanics a little bit more for someone like me who doesn't necessarily notice the giant words above the enemy that they're casting a spell. So I think that the gameplay felt the battle system felt a little stilted for me.
00:21:11
Speaker
And there was too much going on where you could, you could do fine and make your way through without knowing what you had to have, like what kind of material you had to equip on, but then it would just be a long, boring slog for me. Right. Right. How did you feel about Final Fantasy 15? Cause I think that's when they had a similar combat style where you kind of controlled one person, but could switch between teammates in a real time fight.
00:21:41
Speaker
I don't fully remember the combat of 15. I did. I was one of the people who enjoyed it.
00:21:49
Speaker
It felt somewhat dynamic with, I guess, you would be able to throw your weapon and go sort of across the battlefield a little bit, and it would slow time. Seven Remake has a little bit of that. It feels similar in that way. I think originally they were going to use the same engine they did in 15, which was like an in-house physics engine, and then realized, oh, crap, this isn't working good enough. Let's switch to Unreal.
00:22:18
Speaker
So that's part of why the game took so long to come out, if I'm remembering correctly, is they had to redo a lot of the work. Yeah. So the long answer is 15 was fine.
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, I got to say visually, it does look fucking gorgeous. I allowed myself to play the playable demo for free on PlayStation 4. Sort of gauge how I would feel about the game. And I like the gameplay of it for that first mission. It's really cool. I sucked at it and lost, which does a lot. But I think for me, the biggest
00:22:56
Speaker
disparity was how much is going to be stretched out. Because I'm very much a not stretched out person. I don't do well with longer games if I'm not heavily invested. Also, don't stretch me out. Anyway, is that kind of like what shifted for you? Or like, what brought you to the you initially liked watching your husband play it, but then when you were getting into it yourself, or was it just the fighting mechanics?
00:23:25
Speaker
I think it was it was really the the fighting just for not noticing obvious tells on enemies that that was that was a problem for me and also you need to know what material you have to have on it before a fight almost so if you want to optimize it you sort of need to know what the boss's weaknesses are going to be ahead of time so that's either going in and assessing and
00:23:50
Speaker
Just saying oh I need to have this on just dying or looking it up And I feel like that that subtracts from it for me one of the reasons why I can't do 14 It's just it feels like I need to I need to watch a video on how to beat the boss if I'm gonna beat the boss It's I get that yeah, it's not what I wanted
00:24:13
Speaker
I can empathize with that, actually. You mentioned the feeling of being able to kind of play at your own pace or just grind a bit. And I actually get a tangible sense of relief if I realize that enemies repopulate in a game. It's like Dark Souls.
00:24:33
Speaker
is a perfect example of this. You can beat that game real fast if you're just like, I know exactly what to do, zero to 60, let's go. Or you can be like, I'm going to live in this area for a bit. And I'm going to rest at this bonfire a lot of times. And I'm going to figure out an efficient pattern for farming souls and just get super big. And it feels good to do that and have that option.
00:25:02
Speaker
Because you went through with that grinding, you decided that's how you would handle it. You didn't have to handle it that way. It's just that was an option that you could take in Dark Souls. Right.
00:25:13
Speaker
One of the worst instances of needing to be prepared ahead of time or needing this additional information was a boss towards the very end of the game, when you essentially have a boss rush of back to back, a handful of guys coming at you. And it's Rufus and his weird dog thing, Darkstar, looks cool as hell. Looks absolutely cool as hell.
00:25:41
Speaker
It's Final Fantasy character Rufus have belts that does not make sense. The way that they flow during battle looks fantastic. But if you look at the if you assess him it says he's weak to a certain move.
00:25:54
Speaker
What does that mean? Ooh, what does it mean? No one knows. So, you could use all of your moves and see which one works. The answer was a move I hadn't used in 10 hours was what I was weak to. Oh, you're saying the text is actually, he's weak to a certain move. Yes. You weren't obfuscating it. It's just... No, no, no.
00:26:13
Speaker
He's made to a certain move and Darkstar's weakness was cut his tether to Rufus. So it's two very abstract ways that you need to handle this. That's like essentially puzzle solving in the weakness menu and the break the tether was another move that I hadn't used in a long time.
00:26:35
Speaker
So I would not have known either of those if I didn't look it up. And I looked it up because I do remember DICE doing very badly in this fight. That's cool that they use the break tether mechanic again. Obviously, you fight Rufus' dog, but then hours before, you fight a small child and their dog. Do you do this a lot in Final Fantasy VII? Do you just fight?
00:27:02
Speaker
people and their dog. Is this a recurring fight in the game? It's the Pokemon crossover.
00:27:10
Speaker
Ah, okay, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. So, other than seeing some gameplay of the combat system, you both have more familiarity with me than me, I should say. I know, Jacob. Yeah, right. Could you, for the most part, just like stay on one character? Or does the game really necessitate being like slow-mo, swap, cast spells, do whatever?
00:27:36
Speaker
That's that's what I did not realize when I was playing when I originally came out I took a week off work. I was like, oh, I'm gonna tackle this game and So that long story short dice and I were playing together and he was getting so much further than me that I just decided to watch him instead Which was good because I was seeing him switch around to the other characters and like oh your your action bar is recharging a lot quicker Yeah
00:28:04
Speaker
In order to use your actions, it makes more sense to constantly be switching back and forth. And on top of that, the AI doesn't do anything, which I didn't really realize. They pretty much just stand there and defend and maybe go, hiya, hiya, unless you tell them what to do constantly. It's like a project management nightmare. Huh. Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. There's minimum wage. Unless he's actively being watched, he's not doing too much.
00:28:35
Speaker
I don't know how I feel about that, just based off the way it's been described so far. Because in the original, your action bars were still charging. And then as soon, I think there was actually different settings you could set to be like real time, where there was no pause. The action bars would continue to charge. And crazy people pick that option. And same people pick the option so that when one of them fills,
00:28:59
Speaker
you can execute that person's action and then it resumes, right? So you don't just get like grounded to the floor by bosses.
00:29:07
Speaker
Thank you for calling me Sane, it feels so good. Like, it seems, it sounds kind of hectic in this new system, unless they've actually just slowed things down. I don't know how you manage that in real time, or maybe easier. There are two points here, and that's the really interesting battle mechanic is when you open your menu to use your actions, which is an ability, an item, magic, it does slow down time.
00:29:34
Speaker
So there are some really cool videos, screenshots people have gotten of what the characters are doing at that point in time when it slows it down.
00:29:43
Speaker
It's drastically reduced, so you do have time to think about your next action at this point. The second point of note is, yes, I still think that it was very hectic, but they do have something that they call classic mode, which is your characters will still fight. They'll still hit and defend, and all you really have to do is the spells and positioning and things like that.
00:30:05
Speaker
The problem is it's scaled with easy mode. So that's ultimately the way I would have liked to play the whole game But it it was too simple, right? Yeah, this is like baby. There's jrpg at that point. Oh
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not going to say I didn't beat the game like that because I have other things to do. Right. But I think I played, I don't know, like nine tenths of the game on normal. And then I was like, screw it. It's got to just got to beat this on classic. And it felt good besides the besides the easy. It's a little bit too easy. Yeah, that's a little I don't know. It's weird to tie that to the difficulty to make that more trivial.
00:30:49
Speaker
I have so many tangents about this. When you beat the game, you can unlock hard mode. And with hard mode, it's more difficult, sure. But you also can't use items at all. You keep all of your items from your playthrough, and you'll still get drops, and you'll still get them from break a box, and items will drop. You can't use them.
Episodic Release Format: Expectations and Continuity
00:31:14
Speaker
How do you res people? Phoenix Down is like the go-to for Final Fantasy.
00:31:20
Speaker
Arise. There's a spell for it. How do you get the mana back after you've cast the spell? There are certain materia that will help you leech your magic bag. It becomes very build specific but very resource cost effective for how you do things because there's a scarcity now. And you don't heal out of battle or anything like that.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's just I feel like I would rather have the combat be more challenging and it's more up to my quick judgment and reflexes versus Hey, you fucked up on that thing and you can't you can't band-aid that you're gonna live with those wounds You're gonna carry that
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, it just, it seems oddly punishing for like a difficulty because usually for like, if you're raising a difficulty, you're making something hit harder and it can absorb more hits. Yeah. But everything else loosely stays the same.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot of their design choices like this, like really, why? I don't see the point of that. Like you said, make it more challenging in other ways rather than, hey, we're going to give you all of these healing items, but you can't use them. Just look at them in your inventory. Aha.
00:32:42
Speaker
I don't know. I think there's a certain group of people who only play JRPGs that way anyways, though. They're like, I technically have consumables. I have the ability to use consumables, but I may need consumables, so I will never use them. I don't know what Elixir is or does, and I refuse to find out.
00:32:59
Speaker
But yeah, there's always that thing of you think you're going to need it later at like the big fight. You're like, is this it? Then the credits roll and you're like, Oh no, what have I done? I guess I'll have to wait for chapter two. Yeah. That's a good question actually. So as this game is coming out in installments, there at some point would be Final Fantasy seven remake part two. I assume that they're going to have your save carry over. Otherwise.
00:33:28
Speaker
Why? Yeah, I think that'll be interesting, because the grinding experience on Materia is quite time consuming. And they don't give you the gill up, which is your money, or the experience up until almost the end of a playthrough, which the level cap's relatively low. I believe it's 50. So DICE had actually maxed his level for the entire game on the second chapter of hard mode.
00:33:55
Speaker
So getting an experience up didn't really make sense. Also, if you don't use items, why would I need to use money? So it would make more sense if you could carry this over into the next game. No one knows. We could find out something this weekend. There's supposed to be information drop. But I have a feeling they don't even quite know. We'll see.
00:34:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird to leave it in that nebulous place. I would love to have a heads up about the plans of it. So there's two realities here, right? They don't know legitimately how some of these things will be integrated as they continue to develop the game or how many games will come out, things like that. That's concerning. You can release that. You can give that information out and not give a release date. And people will be like, great, we now know what to expect, right?
00:34:47
Speaker
Or they know when they're not telling people. This is also a stupid decision. I've played plenty of trilogy games where you can carry progress. Have I played plenty of trilogy games?
00:35:00
Speaker
I played Mass Effect, which is a game where you can carry progress over. And that was always the expectation, right? You knew going into it, you're like, OK, Mass Effect 2, use your same save. Mass Effect 3, use your same save. And knowing that that was going to be the reality made your decisions feel a lot better. There was literally stuff in the third one where it was just like, hey, let's wrap a lot of loose ends real quick for all of the things this person's done.
00:35:29
Speaker
And it's a little cheap, but I appreciate that. And I knew it was coming because they were forward about the release schedule. They don't even have part one in the title of the remake. Yeah, that bothers me a lot. It bothered a lot of people because, again, it is talking about that whole.
00:35:46
Speaker
misleading people. Because when I saw it, I'm like, oh, they've remade seven? That's what I thought. Oh, caveat? Awesome. And they're like, surprise. Back of the box, though. Just a quick heads up. This is the appropriate serving size. The next one has to be re-remake. Re-remake, yeah. No, I have extra bad news about that. And these tie into my Final Fantasy VII conspiracy theories. It's not a remake. This is not a remake. This game is a sequel.
00:36:16
Speaker
um that's oh my god there's an expert i have to hear you out yeah so i i not having part one was stupid i think having the word remake is even worse because it's
00:36:30
Speaker
They, and this is, obviously we're spoiling things, but this is extreme. Yeah, this is extreme for what's going on. But essentially throughout the entire thing, Aerith knows what's happening. Like she has already seen what plays out in the first game. She knows all the information and sort of leads certain characters the way that they need to go. And so,
00:36:59
Speaker
One of one of my favorite things about the game is they obviously changed her name to Aerith over Aeris, which is a big controversy because it was that's how it was spelled in the original one. It was a mistake and they they rejected it. But I was on Camp Aeris. I'm OK with Aerith now because she's a different character completely with weird. She's supposed to have some degree of magical powers, but this level is
00:37:27
Speaker
definitely a plot device magical magical powers. They introduce something called whispers, which are just awful. Okay, I'm not I'm not judgmental at all. It's very smart, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We called them Harry Potter and the Advent Children. They look they just look like dementors that were just like floating around to prevent you from changing how fates going to run. Oh,
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, they just added a completely new plot and feature to the game to make it as Kingdom Hearts-like as possible. That sounds super weird. It was weird. So this is why... Sorry. They're trying to maintain a canonical path and they're using an in-game meta aspect to enforce that. That is part of the world itself.
00:38:22
Speaker
sort of. They're trying to say that some things are enforced, but you can change the outcomes of other things. So like, Wedge and Biggs die in the original one, right? Biggs lives, Wedge might live because of things that happen throughout. And you know, you fought the whispers, you were able to change fate itself. So it's,
00:38:47
Speaker
I think it's supposed to be uplifting because obviously if you know anything about Final Fantasy 7, you know what happens to Aerith. It's sort of known. That was the early attempt at a backscratcher and it didn't pan out quite as expected. So, Barret actually dies in this one.
00:39:09
Speaker
Spoilers. He gets Aerith. Just Sephiroth just stabs him straight through the chest. Don't worry though, magical dementors are like, no, we got you covered. You aren't actually hurt. It's fine. Really? Oh, that's really dumb. All right. I was looking forward to like.
00:39:27
Speaker
Like if he told me that there was going to be a scene in the game where Barrett was lying in a pool, a shallow pool of water and Cloud came up and like held him in his arms, I'd be like, I'm sold. I'd be like, wow, that was really strong. Well, he's got to be pretty strong. That pisses me off because.
00:39:42
Speaker
They want to have this big thing of going back to Final Fantasy 7 canon, which a lot of people have nostalgia for and fond memories of. If you want to deviate from that to expound on certain things, give other characters more backstory, embellish the world.
00:39:59
Speaker
cool, right? But then you throw in some spooky dooky magic shit. Like Rachel said, from Kingdom Hearts, which is known for what the fuck is that plot? Yeah. And it takes away so much because you're like, oh, they died. But did they? That's some that's some cheap ass anime shit. Oh, yeah. That's fine. They didn't die on screen. So who knows? Fuck you. That's lazy.
00:40:25
Speaker
That was the whole deal, right? Like the whole reason there was impact on the original was because Aries died. Yeah. So she still might. I think what I'm getting from the developers are saying we still can kill her and she obviously thinks she's going to die because they're giving strong hints to what happens at that point in time, heavy-handed. But they're also saying they're showing an alternate reality happening at the same time
00:40:54
Speaker
where Zach is still alive, which Zach is- Okay. He died before the start of the original game. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So there's-
00:41:06
Speaker
It's messy. It's Kingdom Hearts level of messy. Aqua got norded. That sounds the reason I'm disappointed in that because it could be a good story. I can't remark on it. I haven't played it. But just immediately the gripe I would have with this is there are
00:41:27
Speaker
the entire generations of people who never played the original and they really never will because it's not easy to play or, you know, like it's not playable by modern. I can't really download it on Steam and they'd be like, what are these keyboard bindings? Right. And it looks so good on Steam too, considering. So that's even worse. Yeah. It's, it's tough to replay that guy.
00:41:49
Speaker
So like now what I thought this was going to be was an extrapolation of the original game where they were just like, we filled in a bunch of content. We're going to make a lot of money off you guys when you buy this game three times for 60 or 70 bucks. But it's going to be great thumbs up. And for the people who never played, you don't have to. You can play it here. Right. And it really sounds like that's not the direction they're going with it, which is disappointing because I liked a lot of the concepts in the original.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like with that, they sort of did Sephiroth 32. Oh no. My boy. I'm so sorry. I feel like he probably got a better representation in Smash. Man, yeah, I'm just griping about this game. It hurts. I definitely have the nostalgia glasses on, but Sephiroth just feels...
00:42:43
Speaker
I don't know. They just show them on screen because it's just like, you know who this is. You know the lore. Look at him. Ooh. We know you're going to fangirl in the background and throw your popcorn up. I mean, I do, personally. That wasn't the word I was thinking of that starts with P. But is he still a brooding sociopath who has lost faith in humanity? Or is he just shows up like Darth Vader? You're like, that's the guy.
00:43:12
Speaker
Well, he didn't start like that in the original though, right? Like for his early scenes. He actually showed up after, after Midgar for the first time. I think it was maybe in calm. Um, but yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't even in this part. He showed up in Hojo's lab, which is, I thought in Midgar.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah, it is in Midgar. See, I 100% may not know all the details, but it wasn't in this degree. He's obviously, spoiler's last boss, of this. But it just doesn't feel, he almost talks in like riddles, is one of those. It feels extra campy. Yeah, yeah. They just took the edge from Cloud and they supplanted it into Sephiroth, so now he's only edge.
00:43:56
Speaker
This is just like V in DMC5. You're just like, oh, in the middle of the fight, he takes out a book and starts spouting poetry. That's pretty spot on. Feels right. It rains, it pours, cloud, meteor. No, something like that. No, OK.
00:44:13
Speaker
We're asking. We don't know. Yeah, I don't know, but I don't know. This sounds really iffy to me. Like I'd still play it, but I, I kind of already was thinking like, yeah, I kind of just want to play it all at once and there will be a lot that comes out and there's plenty of games I can play. So.
00:44:36
Speaker
So here's the thing. I know how you play games, Jake, at least to a degree, to say that you're better at games than I am. You would probably enjoy the combat. I think that the complexity to it is something that when you learn it, it feels very satisfying, or so I'm told. And it is relatively immersive. It's sort of linear, which I'm a SideQuest fan.
00:45:06
Speaker
But for a lot of people that's good. They don't want to they don't want to do the fetch quests and things like that Like there are appealing factors for people to want to play it and I think one of the best things is either you know, you don't have a deep nostalgia for the first for the original game or if you haven't played the original game like this would be I think this would be a great entryway and fun for a lot of people but those people are not Rachel who is extremely chair PG judgmental and
00:45:33
Speaker
Yeah. Jaded RPG. That's good. I actually have not spoken to anyone who's like, yeah, what's Final Fantasy 7? Let me check out this remake game. Because everyone I've talked to grew up gaming. They are gamers, mom. The four.
00:45:51
Speaker
And there's a lot of nostalgia held for as we've seen games progress and which things we have fond memories of and what we expect from future things. So it's always going to be held up in a comparison spectrum to a degree. It's hard to have a sequel without saying, are we not going to talk about Last of Us 1 at all, though? I feel like we should.
00:46:15
Speaker
I don't think that it's I don't think it's like it's an assassination to the franchise or something. I know someone who's like that. I'm like, all right, let's calm down like down there. Yeah. They it's still it's still a good game. It can still be a good story. It's just a different story.
00:46:34
Speaker
Right. Do you think, and this might be controversial, do you think that this was a better decision for them than retelling the same story with extrapolation? Because, and I mean, spoiler, my answer is probably no, because I want that in the modern times.
00:46:55
Speaker
for anybody who was familiar with the old game like you you brought it up earlier you have fan theories about like what's going to happen and that wouldn't be possible if it was the same story so did they did they kind of succeed in a way
00:47:11
Speaker
I think, well, they definitely succeeded in saying, you know, we're gonna do what we want, which I think was the biggest key because I can imagine not wanting to redo the same exact thing. No matter what, you're not gonna please everyone. If it's completely different, if it's the exact same, there are still people who are going to be upset about it. So they just wanted to take the story how they wanted to take it. I can appreciate that. I just feel like the way they did it wasn't executed
00:47:40
Speaker
very well, specifically like the Whisper plot line. They're just there to say, you can't do this, or you can do this. I feel bullied into making decisions of where I need to go. And if there are no more whispers in future games, that'll be great. I think if you got that all out of the system, we might have beat them all, but who knows? They're just going to have some weird time
00:48:08
Speaker
time differences. Different realities. It would be interesting to see what happens. It sounds like the opposite of the way Bioshock did it. I like Bioshock's approach on choice more where you thought you had choice the whole time and then the surprise is that you actually didn't as opposed to
00:48:34
Speaker
You really are stuck in
Speculations and Future Crossovers
00:48:35
Speaker
this, aren't you? It really sucks how I keep making you do this, doesn't it? And then you're like, okay, finally we can break free of that. Left or right? You decide. Right. Like, I don't know.
00:48:50
Speaker
I guess it'll be interesting. My hope for this would be that someday when the rest of it comes out, the like, Eric does not die becomes the spoiler. They just completely flip it because everybody, everybody expects it. That would be interesting. Yeah, they're like on its head. I don't know which game you're talking about.
00:49:18
Speaker
So fun connection. My niece's middle name is actually Eris, specifically, specifically because they love the character. But for the baby shower, Dice wanted to make her like, you know how you have like the arrow that goes on the head on like, on the head, it looks like a little hat or bandana or something. He wanted to do that, but with a seven foot katana. And it was like,
00:49:44
Speaker
It's probably not smart for my niece. It's on ass. It's a little on the nose. Yeah. I love how his brain works. Wild. That is pretty great. So at this point, would you recommend this to anybody or would you recommend it to people with a condition?
00:50:03
Speaker
Or would you just say like, hey, the condition on the game, not the people, right? Yeah. Would you recommend it to me with my condition? But I can't walk. This is the game for you. I would still recommend this to people. Like I said, I don't think it's a horrible story. It's just a different story.
00:50:26
Speaker
It doesn't feel as dynamic, but it could go in an interesting way. The game is absolutely gorgeous. The battles are interesting. Even if they're not for me, they're interesting. Some people like the system. I think it is still a good game. It's not a good game for Rachel to play. I will watch it.
00:50:51
Speaker
But what will change your mind is at the end, once you beat the complete game, it's all done. And they're just like start new game plus alternate path. And it actually just is the original story. It's actually just the original game because it's every megabytes. We put a floppy disk and we just like melted onto your blue or whatever.
00:51:14
Speaker
Or that's one minigame. It's the original Final Fantasy VII. But it's specifically Condor Mountain. Can you imagine an arcade cabinet with just Final Fantasy VII? You're like, oh yeah, just sit down and press the A button and then play this JRPG in your JRPG. Arcades aren't what they used to be.
00:51:34
Speaker
As far as like the minigames are concerned, because like Final Fantasy 7 was very, we had initial cool idea of plot, and then it just did a whole bunch of random shit. Yeah. Because like back in the day, that was a wild fucking storyline. It still kind of is. But it's also interspersed with like, cool environments. And then you have like little minigames kind of thrown in. Do they still have a lot of that in this? Don't worry, you still do squats. Okay, nice. Yeah. I understand your concerns. It's there.
00:52:05
Speaker
All I want is a wig. There are little things like that in this one so far. I really am hopeful in the series. They bring us chocobo racing. I need it. I need it desperately because Seven's chocobo racing was my all time favorite. That's why I played the game so many times is because I wanted to get to the beginning of raising the chocobo through the whole path.
00:52:30
Speaker
get your gold chocobo, beat chocobo Joe, felt amazing. So if they could make that a dynamic minigame, I don't care about the story. I will fucking buy your games for chocobo racing. That's a true fan's passion right there. I mean, if you want to write that chocobo. No, stop it. 13-2 didn't exist. It's weird that the series went from 13 to 13-3.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yeah. It's not that weird though. Their name means gaming. It's been playing nonsense. The only time that they re-released like 12 or whatever, it's a billion times. I don't even know. Which one did Shane buy like a million copies of? Ten. It's ten, yeah. Only on any system ever. Yeah.
00:53:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's final fantasy. I always can't say I've always enjoyed. I've played seven in 10 and then I also played 15 for some reason. I didn't know that about you. Why?
00:53:30
Speaker
I had a PlayStation, I don't know. I don't remember why I played it. I think I was just curious at the time. We've all had a face. But from what little I've played of the series, air quotes, I've enjoyed the kind of unique storylines and the
00:53:49
Speaker
some of the JRPG things like Final Fantasy 10 was like a really cool storyline. And I still like that you had turn based things. It like the music's good enough. So like the combat loop feels good. Random battle still kind of sucks. You're like, I'm gonna go talk to this NPC. I'm gonna go say it's kind of jarring.
00:54:09
Speaker
But yeah, it's still very fun to do because I like to actually have the time to plan out. All right. I'm going to hit this person because they're a flyer with my soccer ball. And then I'll use magic on these people. And this person was something big. OK, I'm going to use my healer to buff. Cool. I just basically tactics games. That's the spoilers. We're going to just keep covering tactics games. He loves them shining force. Here we go.
00:54:37
Speaker
Oh, oh, Shining Force. Amazing. But Final Fantasy Tactics is also really good. And Cloud is in it. There you go. He's in a lot of stuff, huh? Yeah. Anything with like a sky. Sky. No. We're terrible people. Right? Yeah. I mean, I guess my takeaway is there's
00:55:02
Speaker
There's parts of this that are compelling enough that I still think I will pick it up. I think I will pick up the remake. But I don't know when. It's not like at the top of my list. We kind of got a game drought, I think, for the first half of this year. There's like a couple of games I'm more interested in that are coming out.
00:55:22
Speaker
There's not that much, so maybe I'll find the time. We gotta get through Dink and Rompa first though. See, that's a good choice. But I think in the time of quarantine, lockdown, if you ever need a climbing 59 flights of stairs simulator, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is your game. Oh my god, they kept that in. Oh yeah, every step, they make sure to keep it, and then you spend a minute at the top of the stairs breathing.
00:55:50
Speaker
Realism is on point. Going back to Mass Effect, it was a massive improvement when they had like three minute long elevator sequences instead of stair sequences. That's the key. Elevator is cheating. It's a better game. So when do you think they're going to come out with the next one?
00:56:13
Speaker
2022, specifically because they announced there's going to be a lot of Kingdom Hearts news in 2022, and this is practically that, so fuck it. Kingdom Hearts Final Fantasy 7 remake. Maybe they'll start putting Final Fantasy characters back in Kingdom Hearts, who knows?
00:56:30
Speaker
Oh, do you have another time for another podcast? I'm passionate about that one. As long as we don't spoil anything for Kingdom Hearts. No, I don't. I have my finger like Lucy on the pulse just because I know a lot of people who play it. But I don't actually follow or care about this series. It's just it's fun to hear about for me. I started Kingdom Hearts 3 and didn't beat it. I stopped playing the game. Same here. That's not a good feel ever.
00:57:01
Speaker
It feels like a lot of investment and trust in like, I thought you were going to make this awesome thing for me to experience. So like our friend Lando is like super into it and like really into it. And he was catching me up like after I had started playing the game and he's like, yeah, all these plotlines you really cared about, like these are basically already solved. Like these are all resolved. These people have met back up. This stuff's like already happened. And I'm like,
00:57:28
Speaker
What is gonna happen in this game then? It sounds like there's no actual journey to follow that matters. And then I played the game and I was like, there is not one. There actually is there. You just make stuff up at this point and call it a day.
00:57:44
Speaker
So I guess takeaway is, yes, you should play Persona 5 Royal and that's it. Yeah. That's what I was trying to say. Is that built off of Persona 5 or is it like, is it DLC for it or? You shouldn't ask questions about Persona 5 Royal.
00:58:02
Speaker
At some point, I'm probably going to check out Persona 5 because, again, I like very few JRPGs, but this is the one that everyone said like, it's the shit and the music I've heard I've liked. Joker's not the best character in Smash, but like, if I could see myself getting into one, it's either going to be that or eventually I'll play Yakuza like a dragon when I open the box.
00:58:27
Speaker
Well, have me back for that one and I promise that there's a chance I might complain less. I think to answer your question though too, Persona 5 Royal is expanded content plus the base game, right? They just added, they threw more stuff in there and they're like, this is now a 200 hour game, I believe. That's just because of who I am as a person. I think it's a 100 hour game that took me 220. I like immersive worlds. It's fine.
00:58:58
Speaker
The first game took me one 10 and I spent a lot of time in momentos. Yeah. All right, Rachel. Uh, kind of a closing question as we're coming up on time. What would you say is the shortest amount of time a JRPG could be, but still be in JRPG? Oh, interesting.
00:59:17
Speaker
For are we going by normal people time or Rachel playing the game time? Because these are two different. This is Rachel playing the game. So if you spent like 30 hours and you're like, it's not a fucking jrpg, that's not whatever your metric is. No. So Final Fantasy seven remake did not feel like a jrpg to me and I spent 50 hours on it. Well, that's some time. Yep. Thanks. But which are three? There's a chance it could be a jrpg Dark Souls jrpg.
00:59:47
Speaker
There you go. Hold on. She's not wrong. Oh, yeah. That's the most JPG of them. Hmm. Well, I still don't think I will personally be checking this out, but I would definitely at some point like to watch a play through or get more feedback from yourself or possibly Jake if he ventures in down that path.
JRPG Preferences and Future Appearances
01:00:11
Speaker
Well, the next one's obviously going to be co-op. So we'll just play that one. So part two.
01:00:16
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Is this where you give me the unplugged controller, like I'm your little bro? You can play as Kate Sif, and I'll play as Cloud. Everyone's favorite. Oh my god. Sounds good. Well, thank you, Rachel, for coming out and for joining. And for joining us. Yeah, for coming out to talk to us about Final Fantasy and a lot of other JRPGs.
01:00:44
Speaker
Sincere apologies that we haven't covered any JRPGs up to I guess not this one still doesn't count Also, we've we broke around Yeah, we did do yakuza. Yeah, that's true. We didn't play it though More JRPGs to come possibly
01:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think you were the first person to put in a request, I believe. I think I was one of the first people to message you guys and that was my request and the answer was lol no.
01:01:20
Speaker
But yeah, thank you for coming out. It's always fun to hear your take on this stuff. And I agree with a lot of your takes on JRPGs in general. So I just like, does Rachel like it? Eh, I could like it, you know. So I value your opinion. You are the resident expert. And we look forward to having you on the show again.
01:01:39
Speaker
This was fun. I look forward to it, too. Thanks for the free therapy session. Well, much needed. Thanks for helping us fill a week of content. It's always great talking to you. You got it. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. As always, if you guys have comments or feedback or ideas for other JRPGs we should cover, you can send those in to sofestonepodcast at gmail.com. Or you can join the discussion on Facebook, where you can talk about things that aren't JRPGs.
01:02:08
Speaker
at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. Rachel, you guys say something too. Something, bye.