For me, it’s one of two choices:
Final Fantasy VIII - It’s one of my favourite entries in the series and think they’ve ignored it far too much over the years. There’s a lot they could do with it, not just visually, but with the story and mechanics too.
Final Fantasy Tactics - This game is just fantastic all round, and I can’t say any more than that.
What would you choose?
I did. I really disliked the oh so self aware plot ghosts, I felt a lot of the new characters and situations felt really shoehorned in and disrupted the flow of things. I disliked them dangling Sephiroth in front of the player like keys in front of a baby. The whole thing felt super unsubtle. The whole time I played, I could feel them just trying to squeeze more time out of everything.
I didn’t love the combat either but at least it was better than FFXV, which was somehow more sluggish and predictable than the turn based combat they keep trying and failing to fix.
So what would you change and how would you want a VII Remake to be done?
I’ve had these feelings about FF7 for a loooong time, so I apologize for the length of this in advance.
I think they need to keep things true to the characters and setting they originally created. They need to forget that things like Advent Children existed, in fact they need to abandon most of the extended FF7 Universe stuff because it tears into the mystery and awe of the original game.
The sense of scale in Midgar was awesome, it felt like an actual city on top of another much less decadent city. Filling in the blanks for the ShinRa plot points felt kind of dumb, like we had to be shown just how evil everyone there was. In the original, they were evil because they didn’t care about life or the planet, not because they were actively seeking to kill and destroy. They killed and destroyed to protect their image and bottom lines! And Sephiroth… somehow he keeps morphing into this character who is trying to stop Cloud from existing. In the original he didn’t really care about Cloud. He was using Cloud as his most successful clone but it wasn’t like he was invested in killing him. Cloud was the one showing up and trying to stop him, he was always trying to throw a wrench in Sephiroth’s plans.
I think the OG guys want to make something new and divergent from the original and try not to properly remake the original because they know they will likely fail. Instead they give us an alternate timeline/worldline thing which ends up obscuring the subtlety and finesse the original story actual had. The original was more down to earth and steeped in humanity than anything the extended stuff has given us.
Don’t apologise for that, your reply is a great one and honestly one of the few that addresses some of these issues without descending into “game bad.” So I appreciate that.
I understand a lot of this is subjective and opinion but I’m not sure I agree with that. FFVII OG was 23 year old by the time FFVIIR was released, but I still feel like the mystery and awe of the OG still exists and that the ExpU doesn’t detract from what was built. I’m still able to play that game and love all the aspects that I did in 1997.
I also liked that Remake turned some aspects on their head and gave us this alternate universe where Cloud is much more of a threat to Sephiroth and Shinra from the start of the game. I think where I’ve always came from with Remake is that I treat it as a remake in name only and supplementary to ExpU rather than as a replacement to OG.
I don’t think anyone is wrong for disliking it or finding faults, but I’ve never understood this need for it to replace the OG.
I don’t think it needs to replace the OG at all, I think it should bring the OG into modern day and rather than pad the story with explanation, just expand on what was already in the original. The expanded dynamics between Jessie and Cloud, or Tifa and Cloud, or Aerith and Cloud… (is this a harem anime?) actually felt a bit more inline with what I was hoping from the remake. The extra stuff that adds elements that were never in the original felt a bit like retcons, even though the remake might as well be a sequel if the prevailing theories prove to be correct.
Just to clarify, I was speaking generally and not directly at you with that statement. Sorry if it came across that way.
I completely understand where you’re coming from with the rest. I do like all the extras mind, as it further reinforces that this is different to OG and I fully expect Rebirth to further take those steps laid out by Remake and diverge even further. I guess we’ve still got a while to see how it pans out as we only have a small part of what made up the OG game right now.