Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4/PS5)

Am I the only person who thinks the original plan might have been to remake the whole game at once, but when they realised the scale of it they decided to put it out in sections, and that this in turn led to them adding padding to make the game a sufficient length?

Damian wrote:Am I the only person who thinks the original plan might have been to remake the whole game at once, but when they realised the scale of it they decided to put it out in sections, and that this in turn led to them adding padding to make the game a sufficient length?

Given the way the game ends and the meta voice over of the original trailer, absolutely 100% not. They've never ever mentioned or showed anything from beyond Midgar. Plus it's far far far too polished and even without the filler sections it would be 25+ hours.

They probably just threw in those sections for the more traditional JRPG players who enjoy grinding.

Do you really think they could have had the whole game made up to this standard and afford to sell it for £50? I don't know how they would even ship that. The game would be like 500GB.

Also can I just say, the fact this game runs at a locked 30 100% of the time is actually astounding considering how good it looks. ID and Square Enix are legit optimisation wizards.

I agree with that and think the graphics are fantastic. Although low Res graphics everywhere when you bomb round holding R1. But it's an acceptable compromise that is well optimized as you don't notice unless you looking for it.

I completed this yesterday and honestly loved every moment. FF7 has been one of my favourite games for such a long time so I was definitely skeptical going in, particularly after seeing how other franchises I loved have suffered when being revisited in recent years (Star Wars ). It completely exceeded my expectations though.

The music and presentation almost always nail it, we all know about the lower quality assets used in places but they never bothered me or took me out of the game. The music was something I was worried about going in because the original soundtrack is so iconic but I thought they did brilliantly to freshen it up whilst keeping all the familiar beats.

Another real concern I had, particularly as somebody who hasn't really dabbled much in RPG's in recent years, was the combat system. At first it did feel a bit of a hack and slash but as the game progressed I really got to grips with it and there's definitely a real tactical layer to it. You can't just button mash against any half-decent enemies and you really need to take the time to think about the way you approach combat, especially boss battles. Whenever I died I always felt that it was due to me not dealing with a battle properly, for example a fight late on where I died almost instantly on my first attempt but managed a lot more easily on my second run as I planned it tactically. If I were to have one criticism it was the way that if you were interrupted when using magic, it still used up your MP even though the spell wasn't actually cast - this was quite frustrating if using a high MP spell but I can only think of 2/3 battles where it genuinley annoyed me.

I get the criticism on the padding out, some of the side quests definitely do feel like filler and the quests in these are often very samey. You could knock 10+ hours off the game by getting rid of these and probably not lose a great deal. In saying that, I felt like they helped to give more life to the NPC's in that area and also gave a purpose to battling extra monsters. In the original FF7 there were parts where I ran around in circles to grind random battles and level up, this eradicated the need to do that as I did the extra battles through the side quests. It certainly didn't bother me anymore than generally grinding in RPG's or the tedium of travelling from one end of the map to the other for a new mission like you do in the vast majority of open world games.

For me they managed to get the balance of nostalgia just right whilst also making it feel fresh, the time spent investing in the characters of the slums (particularly Jessie, Wedge and Biggs) made Avalanche's cause seem that much more serious than it ever felt in the original.

On the story side of things

I liked that they deviated from the original and the implication that their fate isn't set in stone. As much as I'd have been happy with a straight-up remake that followed all the same story beats it's also nice to know that it's not going to be totally predictable, it also gives them more opportunity to freshen the story up. That said I do hope they still follow most of the main story beats from the original game like they have in this one. I saw an interesting YouTube video where they referred to Sephiroth telling Cloud 'You have 7 seconds to the end', this is the exact amount of time it takes him to kill Aerith in the original (including his descent). To me the implication is that scene will still play out but this time with the opportunity to stop it.

Fade wrote:

Damian wrote:Am I the only person who thinks the original plan might have been to remake the whole game at once, but when they realised the scale of it they decided to put it out in sections, and that this in turn led to them adding padding to make the game a sufficient length?

Given the way the game ends and the meta voice over of the original trailer, absolutely 100% not. They've never ever mentioned or showed anything from beyond Midgar. Plus it's far far far too polished and even without the filler sections it would be 25+ hours.

They probably just threw in those sections for the more traditional JRPG players who enjoy grinding.

Do you really think they could have had the whole game made up to this standard and afford to sell it for £50? I don't know how they would even ship that. The game would be like 500GB.

Also can I just say, the fact this game runs at a locked 30 100% of the time is actually astounding considering how good it looks. ID and Square Enix are legit optimisation wizards.

The game isn't that massive.
If it's just the PS1 game with a few extra's I'm unsure how it would be more expensive to make than any large game and I expect Baldur's Gate 3 to have more content overall and that's all original so more expensive to make.
I'm unsure why they went with the multi release approach other than it allowed them to get income early. Lastly considering the current-gen consoles are getting on for 7 years old now developers should be pretty good at optimising code for them by now.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Fade wrote:

Damian wrote:Am I the only person who thinks the original plan might have been to remake the whole game at once, but when they realised the scale of it they decided to put it out in sections, and that this in turn led to them adding padding to make the game a sufficient length?

Given the way the game ends and the meta voice over of the original trailer, absolutely 100% not. They've never ever mentioned or showed anything from beyond Midgar. Plus it's far far far too polished and even without the filler sections it would be 25+ hours.

They probably just threw in those sections for the more traditional JRPG players who enjoy grinding.

Do you really think they could have had the whole game made up to this standard and afford to sell it for £50? I don't know how they would even ship that. The game would be like 500GB.

Also can I just say, the fact this game runs at a locked 30 100% of the time is actually astounding considering how good it looks. ID and Square Enix are legit optimisation wizards.

The game isn't that massive.
If it's just the PS1 game with a few extra's I'm unsure how it would be more expensive to make than any large game and I expect Baldur's Gate 3 to have more content overall and that's all original so more expensive to make.
I'm unsure why they went with the multi release approach other than it allowed them to get income early. Lastly considering the current-gen consoles are getting on for 7 years old now developers should be pretty good at optimising code for them by now.

Pete this game is about 35 hours long and they only remade Midgar. In the original game there are 3 discs and Midgar is only on the first disc, they didn't even do the entirety of the first disc.

Trust me, if you'd have played and finished this as well as the original you'd understand how it would not be feasible.

It'd be like trying to fit all 3 lord of the rings films into one film

Oh wow, just did the Honey Bee Inn section and it made me so happy. I love this game.

Fade wrote:Pete this game is about 35 hours long and they only remade Midgar. In the original game there are 3 discs and Midgar is only on the first disc, they didn't even do the entirety of the first disc.

Trust me, if you'd have played and finished this as well as the original you'd understand how it would not be feasible.

It'd be like trying to fit all 3 lord of the rings films into one film

I completed the PS1 game a couple of times on PS1.
It's a big game but not as big as Baldur's Gate 2 for example.
There are plenty of games bigger than FF7.

I'm not trying to claim it's a small game just not the monster you seem to feel it is.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Fade wrote:Pete this game is about 35 hours long and they only remade Midgar. In the original game there are 3 discs and Midgar is only on the first disc, they didn't even do the entirety of the first disc.

Trust me, if you'd have played and finished this as well as the original you'd understand how it would not be feasible.

It'd be like trying to fit all 3 lord of the rings films into one film

I completed the PS1 game a couple of times on PS1.
It's a big game but not as big as Baldur's Gate 2 for example.
There are plenty of games bigger than FF7.

I'm not trying to claim it's a small game just not the monster you seem to feel it is.

Bigger in terms of length maybe, but not in terms of production value. I think that's an important distinction to make.

I don't want to spoil anything but this game is very meta if you pay attention, it plays on the fact that people think they know what is going to happen. Also, it is a remake, not a remaster, there is lots of additional scenes and world building compared to the original.

Pete I think you really need to play it yourself to understand. Just wack it.on easy and plough through it.

Think I'm going to finish for the day having just reached chapter 10. Absolutely loved everything about chapter 9, it was amazing

Fade wrote:Bigger in terms of length maybe, but not in terms of production value. I think that's an important distinction to make.

I don't want to spoil anything but this game is very meta if you pay attention, it plays on the fact that people think they know what is going to happen. Also, it is a remake, not a remaster, there is lots of additional scenes and world building compared to the original.

Pete I think you really need to play it yourself to understand. Just wack it.on easy and plough through it.

As I said I've completed the game twice and while it's one of the best games I've ever played I have no desire to play it again even if some content is changed and the graphics updated. I'm just finding it really strange that you feel this game is somehow special and that making a full FF7 remake would be somehow impossibly big and the final product cost a small fortune.

Plenty of big games get remade and new content added and a whole lot of effort is put in by extremely talented developers and they manage to release the game at reasonable prices and it doesn't bankrupt them or overwork the developers into an early grave.

Yes, I'm sure it's amazing but it's not the second coming of Rise of the Robots good.

It's mostly a boss rush mode later on in the game, isn't it?

I'm almost done with it, but the idea of going back to the beginning during that boss battle if you all get KO'd is a pain in the arse after two times. Also I can't seem to get the last two Summon Materia in the Shrina HQ from that kid despite having done 17 Intels. Oh well, on go I go forward.

strawberry float that Rufus. strawberry float him.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Fade wrote:Bigger in terms of length maybe, but not in terms of production value. I think that's an important distinction to make.

I don't want to spoil anything but this game is very meta if you pay attention, it plays on the fact that people think they know what is going to happen. Also, it is a remake, not a remaster, there is lots of additional scenes and world building compared to the original.

Pete I think you really need to play it yourself to understand. Just wack it.on easy and plough through it.

As I said I've completed the game twice and while it's one of the best games I've ever played I have no desire to play it again even if some content is changed and the graphics updated. I'm just finding it really strange that you feel this game is somehow special and that making a full FF7 remake would be somehow impossibly big and the final product cost a small fortune.

Plenty of big games get remade and new content added and a whole lot of effort is put in by extremely talented developers and they manage to release the game at reasonable prices and it doesn't bankrupt them or overwork the developers into an early grave.

Yes, I'm sure it's amazing but it's not the second coming of Rise of the Robots good.

Pete, while it keeps a lot of story elements the same it is a very different game in many many ways.

I'm not suggesting it would have been impossibly big if they'd had done a 1:1 remake, but that isn't what this is. At the scale they have planned to make this world it would be impossible for them to release without developing it for 15 years. There's a reason this game took so long to come out.

I agree with Fade.

If they are going to remake the entire game, it’ll take them over a decade now. I’m certain that they’ve done the base work and they can carry them over to the next game, but there’s a lot of stuff they need to create!

Although I’m a bit disappointed that Red XIII isn’t fully controllable. He’s one of my favourites but I can see why as they would have create a shitload of battle animations for him and that could take them ages.

I can’t wait for the next part.

Wedgie wrote:It's mostly a boss rush mode later on in the game, isn't it?

I'm almost done with it, but the idea of going back to the beginning during that boss battle if you all get KO'd is a pain in the arse after two times. Also I can't seem to get the last two Summon Materia in the Shrina HQ from that kid despite having done 17 Intels. Oh well, on go I go forward.

strawberry float that Rufus. strawberry float him.

One of them is for 20 intel
You still have to beat them in VR

And Rufus is super easy?

Hexx wrote:

Wedgie wrote:It's mostly a boss rush mode later on in the game, isn't it?

I'm almost done with it, but the idea of going back to the beginning during that boss battle if you all get KO'd is a pain in the arse after two times. Also I can't seem to get the last two Summon Materia in the Shrina HQ from that kid despite having done 17 Intels. Oh well, on go I go forward.

strawberry float that Rufus. strawberry float him.

One of them is for 20 intel
You still have to beat them in VR

And Rufus is super easy?

The amount of people that didn't figure out that you literally just have to hit him with braver is a lot higher than I thought

Fade wrote:

Hexx wrote:

Wedgie wrote:It's mostly a boss rush mode later on in the game, isn't it?

I'm almost done with it, but the idea of going back to the beginning during that boss battle if you all get KO'd is a pain in the arse after two times. Also I can't seem to get the last two Summon Materia in the Shrina HQ from that kid despite having done 17 Intels. Oh well, on go I go forward.

strawberry float that Rufus. strawberry float him.

One of them is for 20 intel
You still have to beat them in VR

And Rufus is super easy?

The amount of people that didn't figure out that you literally just have to hit him with braver is a lot higher than I thought

On the first attempt I had a hard time and Rufus killed me pretty quickly. Second time around I used sleep magic on Rufus which made it really easy to kill Darkstar, then used Braver to stop Rufus' attacks which made it really quite easy. That was what I liked with the battle system though, even against some basic enemy types you could have a tough fight if you didn't use the right tactics.

I tried to use that, but I kept get interrupted or he get out of the way.

Hexx wrote:

Wedgie wrote:It's mostly a boss rush mode later on in the game, isn't it?

I'm almost done with it, but the idea of going back to the beginning during that boss battle if you all get KO'd is a pain in the arse after two times. Also I can't seem to get the last two Summon Materia in the Shrina HQ from that kid despite having done 17 Intels. Oh well, on go I go forward.

strawberry float that Rufus. strawberry float him.

One of them is for 20 intel
You still have to beat them in VR

And Rufus is super easy?

I completed 17 Intels. There's no new Intels displayed.

So guys, who are we saying is the better waifu? Tifa or Aerith? No spoilers obviously.