Why Square Enix Will Not Get The FFVII Remake Right (2/2)

"Our hero's in trouble now!"

UPDATE: Part 4 is now up as well
UPDATE UPDATE: Part 5 is up too! One part left! (at this rate, it'll be up tomorrow) 
UPDATE cubed: I've picked a day to finish this monster: When I've finished all of the Character Analyses in Fire Emblem Fates. Gotta keep my priorities straight.

Part 3: The Story & Characters

If you’ve played the game before, I want you to see if you can answer this simple question: why are these the main characters? I know that the story says Cloud has a grudge against Sephiroth, AVALANCHE wants to take down ShinRa and all that jazz, but I mean what specifically gives this collection of characters the burning hands required to grasp victory? What makes them strong enough to saaaaaaaaave the world? I’ll give youuuu 1 second to answer [bing] time’s up! Trick question: the answer is nothing; nothing qualifies these characters to do anything amazing.

The best way to illustrate this is with a direct comparison between the protagonists and the forces that stand in their way. FFVII has three main antagonists:

ShinRa - the most powerful corporation/military organization/government agency in the entire world.

Sephiroth - the most powerful swordsman who has ever lived, who possesses extraordinarily powerful genetic enhancements from the third antagonist:

Jenova – an undying planet destroying alien from outer space.

Needless to say, saaaaaaaaaaving the wooorld is gonna take a little more than some WD40 and a can-do attitude. But unfortunately for us, less than 10 people are willing to take the job, and as far as we know, none of them have any talents that would help them do this.

Cloud is a special character whose backstory has more direct relation to the plot, so we’ll come back to him in a minute. As for everyone else though:

Barret is a single father trying to raise a daughter with one arm, and a terrorist trying to take down the evil Shinra power company. He lost his arm doing something with a guy named Dyne (I shit you not) and has a machine gun/chainsaw/whatever the fuck metal extremity he has equipped at the time attached to it, but that’s the end of his feats list. He doesn’t have any special training or augments that make him more than just a man.

Tifa is a bouncer at her own bar, meaning she at least has some martial arts ability. But, based on what little we’re told about it in-game, we have no reason to believe that her fighting skill is anything more than “above average.” Her parents weren’t secret kung-fu masters and the only formal training she received was slightly before the Nibelheim massacre, during which her trainer was murdered; meaning she likely hasn’t earned too many belts. This fact again coupled with the lack of biological or cybernetic enhancements, makes Tifa a normal girl.

Aeris is the last Cetra, an ancient race of…totally normal people who were more in-touch with the (planet & by extension materia) than modern people; essentially the Native American stereotype. We’re told in-game that she spent her whole life avoiding Shinra, but not only does this not make sense given that she has a fixed home and Shinra knows where it is, she never spent any time learning how to fight to help deal with them. So aside from her fancy origins she’s nothing special: no superpowers or combat experience whatsoever. She’s a totally normal horny teenager.

Red XIII is a red…lion…thing from Cosmo Canyon that’s supposed to be super intelligent, but nothing about his relatively sparse dialogue corroborates this.

Cait Sith is an automaton riding another automaton, which are both being controlled remotely by Reeve, the head of Shinra’s public safety division (check specific agency) in Midgar. Like everyone else, he doesn’t have any special talents, and the robots he’s controlling aren’t outfitted with any advanced weaponry.

Cid is a mechanic…That’s about it. He builds stuff. Nothing about his backstory suggests that he has any fighting ability, or that he could leap 2 stories into the air. He, like everyone else in this game is just a person.

Annnnd Yuffie & Vincent don’t count since they’re optional.

In sum, these characters aren’t part of a super powerful ancient race of gods, they don’t have unique magic or cyborg enhancements augmenting their abilities, they’re definitely not the smartest or most charismatic bunch around; and they aren’t any more physically skilled than anyone else in the world, bringing us back to my original question: why are these the main characters?

Each of the 16bit FF games, gave you a pretty clear answer:

In FFVI your characters were the only ones with Espers (and Terra was an Esper). In FFV your characters were the only people with magicite. And in FFIV your characters had a crrazy assortment of unique talents and skills. But in FFVII, the only things your characters have is materia, something that is collected, manufactured, and sold all over the world for anyone to use. These guys just aren’t saaaaaaaave the wooorld material. And that’s actually okay. Heroes nowadays are rarely the most qualified or skilled people out there. Rather they’re usually somewhat ordinary people who, through extraordinary circumstances and strength of character, become heroes. Or in less dramatic terms, the characters’ personalities or specific knowledge bases are required to push the plot along.

(FN#1 Why it’s a terrible idea for a game packed with fighting, to NOT have characters with fighting skills.)

Which finally takes us to Cloud and the plot of FFVII. Upfront, I’m not going to go through every single moment of this game or even everything wrong with its story. There is such an incalculable amount of bullshit in this game that I would literally be here for several days, and probably throw out my voice screaming at all of the inanity. So, for the sake of “brevity” (and my own sanity) we’ll only look at what I think are 3 of the most important sequences in this game’s story.

The first sequence is when the party leaves Midgar and Cloud tells everyone his relation to Sephiroth.

Okay so, to set this up, the party was captured by Shinra and trapped in their headquarters’ prison cells (don’t question it, just…yeah) and didn’t have a way out. Sephiroth shows up for god knows what reason and murders nearly everyone in the building so that “Shinra cannot have the Promised Land,” unlocking the doors (again, best not to think about this too much). The party then exits the cell block and follows the trail of blood to the roof, where Cloud tells them that this is the work of Sephiroth. One fat guy lives and confirms this, before buggering off.

Oh and FYI, this is the first time that Sephiroth is really discussed in the story and, as you can see, is the first that any of the party members other than Tifa have heard of him. Keep that in mind.

Anyway, there’s then a boss fight, a dumb motorcycle chase, and then another boss fight that leaves off with the characters atop an unfinished highway, contemplating what they’re going to do now.

Scene 1 (longplay pt.2):

Barret asks the all-important question, “what do we do now?”, and Cloud’s response tells us that he’s going to seek revenge for something we haven’t heard about yet. No one is going to ask him why he wants to fight Sephiroth for another 20 minutes or so, but hey at least we know that this story is going to be about revenge or something. It’s simple, but it works...Until they say:

Barret: “and that’ll save the Planet?”

Cloud: “...Seems like it.”

Barret: “Awright I’m going!”

We are 5 lines into this scene and already have relatively large plot holes emerging. The first issue here is that everyone should be asking Cloud the question “how?” How in the hell will killing one person save the planet? I mean, I’ve read the script, and I know that Cloud’s right, but he cannot possibly know that yet, and neither does a player seeing this scene for the first time. The ellipses in the conversation could suggest that Cloud is just telling Barret what he wants to hear, or withholding information, but the fact that no one else in the party will raise the question just makes everyone seem stupid.

[roll the rest of the clip]

The second big issue with this exchange is that no one displays any reservations about leaving Midgar, when everyone except Red and Aeris should probably stay behind. Barret has a daughter to take care of who has no idea where he is, what he’s doing, or how long he’ll be away. On top of this, Sephiroth just destabilized Shinra’s leadership. They’re likely going to be disorganized for a little while, which would make it comparatively easy for Barret to pick up where he left off and continue blowing up Mako reactors to help save the planet. Tifa and Cloud on the other hand, both have reason to want to kill Sephiroth, but neither knows where Sephiroth went, where he’s going, or what he ultimately plans to do. All they know is that he was in Midgar, and that he’s strong enough to single-handedly murder his way through a 68+ floor building staffed by the most powerful military organization in the world, a feat which neither of them could even come close to duplicating. They should be investigating where he was last seen first, and THEN try tracking him down, all the while devising a concrete way of putting him down. Red and Aeris are the only two characters justified in immediately leaving as Aeris is supposedly being hunted by Shinra, and Red’s home is in Cosmo Canyon. And speaking of Red, he doesn’t say anything at all during this entire 40-minute sequence. This is emblematic of a much larger problem with the dialogue in this game and a lot of Final Fantasies,

(FN#2 – Final Fantasy Dialogue – Party members don’t interact with each other)

 but for this scene in particular, it highlights the biggest problem with this whole sequence: It is bar none the most logical place in the game to discuss the characters’ motivations…and Square glosses over it entirely. As a result of their negligence, Tifa and Red feel extraneous, Cloud and Barret come across as particularly thick 8 year-olds, and Aeris…actually comes out smelling like a rose, since she has both a reason for leaving and a reason for travelling, though Square doesn’t feel like telling us what that is.

Trouble is, Square doesn’t even begin to make up for this missed opportunity until much, much later in the game, so everyone other than Aeris and, to a lesser extent, Barret are going to feel like appendixes until the second disc.

Scene 2 & 3: (PSX longplay pt. 2&7)

A hop, skip, and a jump later, your party arrives at Kalm town (man, the names in this game are stupid), where Cloud finally explains his relation to Sephiroth. And yes, it does really start right there, nothing prompts this scene other than you needing to know who the fuck this Sephiroth character is. Anyway, in this scene, Cloud says that Sephiroth was his motivation for joining SOLDIER, Barret says nonsense (how the hell would he know what Sephiroth is like?), Cloud says there was a war 5 years ago, but this is never discussed again.

(FN#3 – No concept of history=no world)

Then he says that the two of them used to be friends, until…Flashbaaaaack. Okay pause – If you haven’t played FFVII, this is the part where I spoil the twist. If you have…well this is the part where I jog your memory.

Cloud was not actually a First-Class SOLDIER, in fact, this game states he never even made it as a SOLDIER at all. He’s not a talented swordsman, army guys only get guns, but he does have vaguely defined super soldier abilities due to having Jenova cells implanted in him, like Sephiroth; Oh and he wasn’t actually friends with Sephiroth, he just rode around with him. Ya see, Cloud has a fictional version of Dissociative Identity Disorder,[beat] basically he thinks the accomplishments of his best friend Zack, a first-class SOLDIER who died protecting him, are his. Both Cloud and Zack were at Nibelheim when Sephiroth torched it with extreme prejudice, which is why Cloud can recall it somewhat accurately from another person’s perspective. Consequently, the importance of this flashback sequence is to:

1) finally explain what Cloud thinks his backstory is, 

2) give you the player reason to hate/fear Sephiroth, 

3) set up the twist for the latter two acts of the game, 

and 4) give you some direction for the game’s second act. (it has more jobs, but those are why it’s so damn important).

Now, before I start highlighting all of the holes in this scene, I need to emphasize that the game’s twist only makes sense if everything that happens chronologically after this flashback is consistent with Cloud’s warped perspective. More specifically, the writers have to make sure that Cloud does not display knowledge that he doesn’t actually have, AND that the other characters are incapable of recognizing any incongruities in his actions or recollections. Two very important things which would both lead to gaping plot holes. So let’s continue.

In the reveal, we learn that Cloud put on his helmet, because he saw Tifa at the front gate. During the flashback however, Cloud doesn’t even mention that Tifa was there. We’ll come back to this in a moment. You then have the option to wander around Nibelheim, talk to people, and steal Tifa’s underwear, before being accompanied by a mountain guide who is, none other than Tifa herself. Why they would need a guide when Cloud is from Nibelheim makes no sense, but it’s a relatively minor infraction. Anyway, as they’re leaving, Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth all take a picture together, before heading off to Mt. Nibel. So, as we can see within the first few minutes of the flashback, Square doesn’t even think about any of the stuff I just said in the last paragraph, and immediately creates a number of plot holes, that never get appropriately fixed.

Tifa being in this scene at the same time as Cloud, suggests that she should be able to recall everything Cloud is recounting, which would theoretically enable her to recognize every hole in his story, like Cloud not stating that she was at the front gate waiting for him. The game half-heartedly attempts to answer this during the reveal by stating that Cloud wore a helmet the entire time, so that Tifa wouldn’t know he was there, however, this doesn’t change the fact that Cloud is the one telling this story to Tifa. If she thinks that Cloud wasn’t at Nibelheim during the massacre, she should be interrupting this story saying something like “wait! I don’t remember you being there?” or at the very least asking how he knows this story.

Even if they didn’t want to address any of the inconsistencies brought about by Tifa’s presence during the scene, the flashback should at the very least be followed by a face to face conversation between Cloud and Tifa about the unreliability of Cloud’s narration. This could seed some doubts about Cloud’s memory in the player’s mind, as well as help setup the fact that Cloud and Tifa are this game’s actual OTP. More immediately though, it would create a mystery to hold the player’s interest in the story, so that this portion of the game wouldn’t feel as mind-numbingly boring as it currently does.

The next problem with this scene is that Cloud oversteps his knowledgebase, within this recollection. The real reveal shows us that Cloud is one of the two Shinra army members deployed to Nibelheim, which is why he can recall it. However, this scene shows us that those very army guys don’t get to follow Sephiroth or Zack everywhere they go. So, while Cloud says “he saw everything,” in this scene we can clearly see that he actually didn’t, once again raising questions as to how the hell he knows so much about Sephiroth. Questions that the game will never answer. Maybe his narration in this flashback is wholly unreliable, and he actually saw all of Sephiroth’s monologues, but if that’s the case, then they should have shown this during the real reveal, when we finally see Cloud’s actual memory.

Lastly, the scene ends without giving you any semblance sense of direction. It manages to outline all of the game’s lingering mysteries, as it rightfully should, but completely glosses over telling you where to go next or what you should be doing.

In sum, the scene succeeds at showing us that Sephiroth is in fact a villain, as well as what Cloud thinks his backstory is. But, by portraying Cloud’s narration as 100% accurate, it doesn’t even remotely set-up the twist, and as we’ve just seen outright skips giving you any short term or long term direction for the rest of the game. These two failures are massive in that they prevent you from foreshadowing the game’s twist, making it feel like an asspull and without giving you any sense of direction, doesn’t give you a reason to continue playing the game from here on out. And while generally it’s not a big deal if a game screws up a couple of scenes, I cannot give these shitty scenes a pass. Not when the entire game’s plot hinges on them getting these fucking flashbacks right.

By not creating any sense of immediacy for most of this game, the characters have to come up with their own personal reasons for doing what they do. But, FFVII refuses to uphold its end of this bargain and instead, for no reason, makes all of the characters put their faith in Cloud, instead of coming up with their own plans. Cloud is a guy that most of the party just met a couple of days ago. And because Cloud doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he’s going, most of what happens to the characters- most of what you do- throughout the middle of this game is the result of random fucking happenstance. This isn’t how plot-driven narration works, and this certainly isn’t how character-driven narration works. And look, I’m not saying that the characters should perfectly plan their actions or that they shouldn’t luck into advantageous situations. Merely that they should at least rationalize to themselves a course of action, even if that rationalization is flawed.

As it stands, what we have is worse than the blind leading the blind, this is the blind and stupid leading the excessively gullible and mentally disabled. When the game finally spills that Cloud didn’t actually know what he was doing in one of the STUPIDEST scenes in this entire game, REAL shame we can’t dig into it here, ((on screen: but, I CAN roll it in the background!) also on screen: As you can see, this scene either directly contradicts the scene immediately following it, or serves as proof that this game has the dumbest villains of any Final Fantasy game…Or both) it doesn’t even remotely come across as a surprise, so much as it does a “NO SHIT SHERLOCK.” These characters are just stupid!

And the villains are no better either! This FUCKING retarded scene you’re watching right now is essentially the most damning evidence of this you will ever see in this game. How could Hojo know when the Reunion would occur? How could Hojo know that a Reunion would occur. Why would creating more Sephiroths be a good idea? Why would destroying the world ever be a good idea? Why is Hojo just telling Rufus everything? Why doesn’t Rufus already know about Hojo’s activities? Why are Shinra’s intelligence agency the most loose-lipped people in the entire fucking game? Why does Sephiroth think an alien is his mother- which she isn’t by the way (show Lucrecia Crescent and say “This whore is”)- why does he think this when it’s basic knowledge that different species can’t reproduce? Why does being a clone somehow equate to having no free will? How can Sephiroth psychokinetically move around a clone of himself? How can Cloud be a Sephiroth clone in the first place when he existed before the massacre?!? NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY GODDAMN SENSE!!

*heave* *heave* *sigh*

Because of the way I’ve covered this game, you could easily conclude that if they just fixed these couple of scenes the entire game’s story would be okay. But, after going through this whole mess again, with more experienced eyes, I am telling you with a blackened heart, it would not. Messing up a single scene or a couple of characters almost never ruins an entire story, and Final Fantasy VII is no different. Messing up almost every scene, every line of dialogue, and every character, though? THAT’ll do it. THAT takes fucking talent and a golden apple from Eris herself.

THAT- that- *sigh* [pause] Look, I’m tired of talking about this game’s stupid story. Doing this is more pointless than rolling a boulder up a hill. There’s no way I can show you just how much is wrong with this story (On screen: In this ONE video, but in a month or two…), and picking out individual examples, significant though they may be, just isn’t going to be enough to convince the die-hard fans that they’re fans of bullshit. So, perhaps you should look at this another way, one that doesn’t require me to analyze anything:

- Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy game to split the fanbase. 

- FFVII is the lowest critically reviewed FF game of its console generation.

(FN#4 Graphical Priority - Irrefutable proof that professional videogame reviews have actually improved)

- FFVII was the first FF game to try to look gritty and “semi-realistic.”  

- This was the Final Fantasy game whose story telling conventions ultimately led to the Final Fantasy XIII games.

Those are facts that you can interpret however, you like. As for me, I see this game as the beginning of the end.


Part 4: Putting it all Together: Why Jenova Ruins Everything

According to the interview I linked in the last video (On screen: and in this vid’s description!), Square went into FFVII with the mission that they were going to make a bigger, shinier, and more complex game than all of the preceding FFs. And that’s something I can respect; they wanted to usher in the new generation with something more impressive than anything anyone had ever seen before. It’s admirable. However, that last point, “complexity”, in particular, is a VERY capricious concept that can ennoble a work just as easily as it can destroy it; It is a dangerous fire that needs to be managed by knowledgeable hands to produce greatness; hands that, despite coming fresh off of FFVI, Squaresoft had not yet acquired. And this overambitiousness manifests itself in every aspect of the game:

Combat:

-          Materia provided more customization & control over individual characters than all previous Final Fantasies, but at the cost of every characters’ individuality, as well as any semblance of difficulty the game might have been able to achieve (i.e. Materia combos are stupidly powerful).

-          Limit breaks added another layer to the combat’s depth, but most of the animations were too damn long, bosses were too easy because they weren’t designed with them in mind. What’s more, less than half of the limit breaks are actually representative of the playable characters’ abilities making them more of visual showcases than anything.

Exploration:

-          Temporary obstacles appear on the world map, but only 4 times throughout the entire game, all of which are just avoidable monster encounters. This is neither a step forwards nor backwards, as this was both preceding and succeeding FFs handle this with a simple yes/no textbox. Here it’s more or less wasted potential that Square won’t capitalize on until 5 games later (FFXII).

The Story:

-          Many of the characters have backstories that take more than a sentence to fully explain, but almost none of them have any plot relevance.

-          The plot is slightly more complex than that of FFVI, but all of the plot’s complexity as well its central twist stems from two characters’ backgrounds, only one of which actually makes cohesive (albeit stupid) sense.

The Presentation:

-          The CG cutscenes were grandiose and impressive to see in 1997, but they could not be replicated by the in-game engine, so the rest of the game looks like shit.

-          And, despite the data capacity of PS1 CDs being over ten times larger than those of SNES cartridges, the cutscenes, flashy animations, and unnecessary Hi-res backgrounds necessitated that the game be on three discs instead of one (and yes, the game is short enough to fit onto a single PSX disc, this ain’t Xenogears folks).

-------

Whether or not you view any of FFVII’s changes as being for the better is entirely your prerogative, but the fact remains that in order to make these changes something was either given up or lost in the transition. In other words, these are all compromises. Nothing about FFVII is a definitive step forward. And some of these things, namely the story and its ties to the combat, are legitimate steps backwards from every game squaresoft released during the previous console generation.

Which raises the question: How could a game this markedly mediocre be so critically successful? Earlier, I speculated about why the game garnered its ridiculous commercial success, but among critics, people who have presumably played one or all of the previous 3 Final Fantasies (Only 1, 4, & 6 had left Japan before 7) those reasoning errors and biases should not have had the same impact. It wasn’t until I looked at the review scores for FFs 8 & 9, as well as a few non-Final Fantasy games, that things started to make sense.

According to the aggregate review scores, every major franchise that made the transition from 2D to 3D without completely changing genres (Sonic Adventure, Super Mario 64, FFVII, Ocarina of Time), fared extraordinarily well with critics. However, given that the actual quality of these games varies dramatically and that they span multiple genres, we can rule out both the gameplay & the story as primary factors. Then when you consider that later Playstation FFs received progressively better review scores than FFVII, we can narrow it down to something that was improved game over game. And, since FFVIII’s gameplay and story both occupy a similar shit-tier bracket as VII, we can narrow this down even further to the only thing that outright improved with each title: the graphics. Yes, that sounds shallow, it IS shallow, but it makes sense when you think about it.

Console generation 6 was the first to utilize polygons in full 3D spaces, revolutionizing pre-existing genres, and enabling the creation of entirely new games. However, because the rule book on how to design three-dimensional games had yet to be written and very few games of the like had been made, critics didn’t have a foundation to ground their assessments. Consequently, those big games I mentioned which simply tried to translate their franchises conventions to a 3D space would naturally have fared very well, since they mostly just moved existing mechanics from one dimension to another, but now with shinier graphics. I’m over simplifying, of course, as most of those games added something new to their franchises (for better or worse) that changed them in some capacity. But, the fact that FFVII did NOT do this [on screen: technically, it added CG cutscenes, but that just further proves my point], yet fared well just the same, lends further credence to the idea that graphics meant a lot more to critics back then. Seriously, if you ever wanted proof that video games criticism has actually improved, it doesn’t get much more clear cut than this. Maybe if VR gaming takes off we’ll see this happen with game reviews again, but I doubt it.

Anyways, for FFVII in particular, the graphical update was accompanied by an aesthetic change. The Ukiyo-e-esque art style of Yoshitaka Amano, was replaced by the…pointy anime art style of Tetsuya Nomura. I assume this was to help the series gain more popularity in Japan, where FF doesn’t do nearly as well, but I’ve never been able to find an answer (bs though it may be) from Square, themselves. But regardless of their intention, here in the west, the change attracted more people than it alienated further expanding the fanbase. Again, this makes perfect sense when you consider that this game came out just as anime had begun to take off here, though I’d venture that this was just a profitable coincidence on Square’s part. Ultimately, FFVII’s graphical and aesthetic changes kept Final Fantasy on the map and made Tetsuya Nomura a much, MUCH, more important person to Squaresoft.

Now, as an anime fan, I don’t have a problem with Tetsuya Nomura’s art-style…or at least, not since he got off PCP [Shalua, Tidus, Yuffie, KH2 Riku]. However, in case it wasn’t obvious enough last video, I fucking hate Tetsuya Nomura. I don’t care that he didn’t personally write the story, Tetsuya Nomura is the root of everything wrong with Final Fantasy VII…and I can prove it. Circumstantially, at least. [On Screen: yes, yes I know this section is subtitled “why Jenova ruins everything,” we’ll get there.]

As I said before, Tetsuya Nomura is a character designer, however, I’m guessing that not everyone knows what that actually entails so let’s unpack that for a second. A character designer’s job is, as the job description name states, to “design” characters. Generally, this means drawing/modelling characters, however in order to do that, the artist needs to know about the character; their history, quirks, aspirations, interests. So, since the designer has to portray this to audience, they carry some degree of authorial control over who their subjects are. They may not have complete control, but at the very least their job necessitates working closely with the project’s writers. However, in the absence of a dedicated character writer, the character designer may end up performing that function, as well. After all, a character’s design is more than their physical appearance. All this to say that Tetsuya Nomura designing the characters for FFVII inherently means that he had some control over the cast’s backstories. With that said though, Square has publicly stated several times that Nomura wrote most of the characters’ backstories, so we know it’s true for FFVII.

Now what you may NOT know is that Tetsuya Nomura did a hell of a lot more on FFVII than just design the characters. According to the wiki, he also worked on the Monster Design, Scenario Concept, Battle Visual Direction, and as I mentioned last time, the Limit breaks. Which basically means he had a hand in damn near every part of the game, save for writing the physical script.

Now, I didn’t work on FFVII, so I can’t specify exactly what Nomura contributed to any area outside of the visuals and character design. However, what I CAN say is that each area mentioned is heavily influenced by a character designer’s priorities, which for the sake of simplicity, we’ll pare down to aesthetics and backstory.

Aesthetically, Square “spared no expense” making battle animations as extrrrravagant as possible with Limit breaks, Summons, and even a lot of the basic spells having pre-rendered animations that last 20 seconds or longer. Limit breaks as we’ve already discussed were not designed to make sense or tell you about the characters, but to look cool. And of course, we can’t forget the pre-rendered CG cutscenes which make their big debut here. Also in case you were wondering if aesthetic priority is just a Final Fantasy thing, it isn’t. The games preceding FFVII all had short animations, and Final Fantasies IX and XII, the only two FFs released after VII that were untouched by Nomura, also have reasonable battle animations. So, aesthetics were clearly a high priority, specifically for FFVII’s combat. The backstory is a whole ‘nother can of worms, so we’ll come back to that in a minute.

As for the scenario concept, the game’s plot involves a cast of visually diverse characters travelling around a somewhat visually diverse world for vague reasons that only the protagonist thinks he knows. Out of the 10 characters that can make up your party, only Cloud, Aeris, & Cid are essential. And out of the [17, verify later] locations you visit, only 5 (Midgar, Nibelheim, Cosmo Canyon, Rocket Town, The Temple of the Ancients) arguably 6 (the Crater) are integral to the plot. In sum, this game involves you doing a loooootta shit that isn’t important, just to make it look bigger and feel bigger. Nowadays, that shit wouldn’t fly, but it was a different time, and quantity did equate to quality, so I won’t hold this against them (much).

At the same time, however, the main plot threads, central twist, and general majority of the game entails unravelling Cloud & Sephiroth’s past as well as their relation to Jenova & the Planet. Essentially, back story is the focal point of FFVII’s story; What the characters do throughout the game, is not nearly as important as what they did or who they were before it.

Between the broad categories of gameplay & story, it’s pretty clear that aesthetics were given a higher priority than practicality and…logic, I guess. This is basically true of AAA game development as a whole right now, so that’s not all that shocking. The REAL interesting part is that backstory got the same treatment.

Key aspects of the characters’ back stories, such as Aeris being a Cetra, who somehow avoided Shinra in Midgar, and Cloud being a puppet, and a clone, and a guy Tifa grew up with, were set in stone, regardless of whether or not they were self-contradicting. THAT tells you a few things about this game’s development. The most significant of which being that:

One, the backstory & likely the character designs came before the story. I happen to just know that’s true because of the dev interview in the description, but usually when foundational elements of a story do not make sense, it’s because they weren’t conceived to be the story’s foundation.

And two, whoever wrote the backstories likely had more sway or was, at the very least, more forthcoming than whoever wrote the main story, as the script writers should’ve picked up on the discrepancies between the two immediately. I refuse to believe that NO ONE at Squaresoft saw this game’s plot holes, especially when Xenogears is a thing.

Anyway, these inferences, in tandem with everything else we’ve gone over, AND the fact that Nomura went on to direct the movie and now the Remake, alll suggest that eeeeverything about this game revolves around Tetsuya Nomura. FFVII IS his baby. His deformed, bullshit spewing baby. However, the problem with FFVII isn’t that Tetsuya Nomura, stuck his hand in everything, it’s that Tetsuya Nomura is a shitty character designer. Or more specifically, Tetsuya Nomura is terrible at writing backstory.

If I had to summarize in one sentence all of the problems with FFVII, it would be that the characters do not fit the game.

You may have caught this in the last video, but Tetsuya Nomura was officially credited with working on both the character design and the combat design in FFVII. So, the characters not having any unique abilities in battle, in addition to not having any unique combat skills as part of their backstory may be a deliberate design decision. If this is true, and not just a monumental oversight, then the dearth of character specific abilities and flexible materia system, means that the game’s materia-based progression actually reflects the characters’ combat ability; i.e. non-existent. By extension, because a lot of the enemies in this game are immensely powerful beings, this in-turn becomes a story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, a tried and true theme that is a-okay…

However, in order to tell that kind of story, the characters need to acquire some power or demonstrate some intelligence that would enable them to overcome such obstacles. Logically. I mean, you can pull together a team of 8 highly trained soldiers, but they’re not gonna beat Captain America, and definitely not going to beat fucking JEDI Captain America.

But in this game, there are no extraordinary “hero-forging” circumstances or tools, so to answer my initial question from the last section, these characters are supposed to be the heroes “because of their strength of charactepffffthahahaha! ohh man, “because of their strength of”hahahaha god I can’t even, I can’t even say that with a straight face. *Sigh* hoh man, that’s, that’s gonna keep me going for a spell. *clear throat*

Anyway, as we can see from the insane action scenes of the movie, the characters are supposed to be unrealistically powerful, there just isn’t anything validating this in their backstories. So, their backstories, just were not well thought out.

This is the fault of a bad character designer.

(FN#5 Bad Character Design Affects the Music as Well)

And yes, everything I’ve discussed is circumstantial evidence that damned these game, and may not be true…but it REALLY looks plausible, when you note that the games Nomura worked on AFTER FFVII all suffer from the same issues.

Ya see, I chose those three story sequences, not just because I think they’re some of the most important scenes in this game, but because they demonstrate every problem with the writing in games where Tetsuya Nomura has a strong influence (Kingdom Hearts I,II, BBS, CoM, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, FFXIII, FF Type-0, TWEWY). Extremely few characters, are ever active agents in the story. Foreshadowing is handled in the most vague & ham-fisted way possible, such that you can’t actually make any grounded predictions about what’s to come. And most importantly, the characters either do not question each other, or do not give clear answers to said questions. This makes the twists and complexities of these stories feel like cheap asspulls regardless of whether they actually are, and the characters seem incredibly stupid even if they aren’t.

Even FFX, which is a fair game with a decent story, has a noticeable plot hole stemming from a half-baked part of a character’s backstory. Yuna, the leading lady and spiritual figure for the world’s dominant religion, is half Al Bhed - a minority race marked as heathens by the church for creating machina(es). Given that no one close to her knows that she’s half Al Bhed, and the Al Bhed are always kidnapping Yuna for unknown reasons, this WOULD be excellent grounds for one of the game’s twists. BUT, Al Bhed have extremely distinctive green eyes with a swirl in the iris & Yuna has achromatic eyes, one of which is Al Bhed. EVERYONE who looks at her should immediately be able to recognize her lineage, and yet it’s never mentioned until about halfway through the game, when Rikku shows up. Sure, it makes sense that we wouldn’t notice this, because the graphics aren’t great and the only other Al Bhed whose eyes we see are Rikku’s, but the in-game characters should ALL see this.

THIS is the kind of blindingly obvious thing that makes me think Nomura’s just an idiot. ANY half-way decent character designer should account for this kind of stuff in a heartbeat and talked it over with the writer. But no, not Tetsuya Fucking Nomura whose bullshit lore is divine fucking law.

*sigh*

Look, I know I’m being harsh, but I actually enjoy the fact that he comes up with such wild backgrounds for his characters. It makes them all distinct within the context of each game, and easy to remember outside of it. What I can’t stand is the fact that in every Nomura game there has to be some utterly insane contrivance moving the plot that makes little to no sense. And that trend starts right here in FFVII, with Jenova.

Jenova is what introduces individual super powers to the Final Fantasy VII universe, and what necessitates that the heroes be super-powered. Jenova is what drives Shinra to embark on their psychopathic side projects and make Sephiroth a super soldier. Jenova is what makes Sephiroth a mindless drone hellbent on destroying the planet. Jenova is what causes the events at Nibelheim, and what prompts all of the major events of Final Fantasy VII.

Jenova. Ruins. EVERYTHING.

If you were to cut Jenova from Final Fantasy VII, everything about the game would get better:

There would be no alien super powers making some people outrageously better than others. So, Hojo’s mad science experiments would have to involve Mako & Materia; concrete things that the player can personally connect with. The combat & character progression revolving around materia, would make perfect sense, as materia dwarfs the abilities of ordinary people. Cloud randomly being mind-controlled never happens, so Sephiroth has to get the Black materia himself. And Sephiroth’s various crimes against humanity would have to be the result of some personal grudge against the world or life itself; He’d be a jaded motherfucker who just wants to watch the world burn, instead of a petulant momma’s boy with way too much power.

Alllllll of which would collectively result in a game that’s I daresay,[beat] decent.

THIS GAME IS LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GOOD MEN DO NOTHING!

THIS is why FFVII game desperately neeeeeds a remake. FFVII was not – is not – some flawed diamond, it’s pile of shit that needs some TL fucking C to (insert joke here) It– Wait[.] that was the point of this video? [show picture of the written video description (you’ll have to edit the last video’s description, screen cap it, then discard the changes)]-fuck.

*sigh*

With as much shit as I’ve been giving this game, you might think that I can’t wait to start swimming in the ocean of tears it’s remake will inevitably create. Well…you’d be wrong (sincere tone shift). No one who analyzes games as much as I do wants to see new games come out that make the same mistakes as older ones. I don’t just want Final Fantasy VII to succeed, [beat] I want its success to be justifiable. I want to be able to say “here’s a GREAT game that tens of millions of people love, and future designers can look to for inspiration.” I want to say, “here’s a game that makes video games better just by existing.” After 15 years of waiting, I WANT to be able to finally say those words about SOMETHING Square develops…But I’m going to have to keep waiting because, based on what Square has already said and shown, we can know with relative certainty that they are going to make a lot of the same mistakes a second time.

So you know what?

Part 5: Let's Fix FFVII (What SHOULD Happen)

Since I try to save my tinfoil hat for the Game of Thrones forums, my theories on how to make games better always involve comparing games that already exist. And with that mindset, I personally, don’t think it’s possible to have a holistic discussion about making a better FFVII without discussing the game that already is one. Yes, such a game currently exists, and no I have never heard anyone else ever make that comparison, which is probably why it’s still relatively unknown among all but the most hardcore JRPG fa- (GET ON WITH IT!!) Alright, alright! The game is the Legend of Heroes 6: Trails in the Sky.

Since I’m guessing that series title means nothing to you, the Legend of Heroes series began at about the same time as Final Fantasy, and has traditionally had long and detailed stories that to this day still put Final Fantasy to shame. These games are the reason why I refuse to accept the excuse that *hippie voice* “it was a different time, man. Games couldn’t handle so much dialogue” or whatever. Bullshit, Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes was a 50-hour RPG and it came out in 1989. To. This. day, the only FFs that have begun to approach that number are XII and XIII, the former of which barely fits into the FF franchise, and the latter is a pile of HD garbage almost no one liked.

So why didn’t the Legend of Heroes games gain the popularity or even review scores one would expect from RPGs with excellent stories? Simple: Falcom was poor. Their games weren’t pretty, they had extremely simplistic battle systems, and to really twist the knife their translations were…sketchy to say the least (yeah thanks Scamco). Which is where Trails in the Sky comes in.

As far as I’m aware (since I haven’t played this whole series), Trails in the Sky was the first Legend of Heroes game to fix every significant issue in its franchise, and it did so by hiringafantasticlocalizationteam AND learning from FFVII’s mistakes.

For starters, the character progression in Legend of Heroes games used to be 100% linear and automatic: characters fought, got experience points, levelled up, and got stronger. Simple, straightforward, and…snooze-inducing. So, Trails in the Sky complicated this by borrowing and improving upon FFVII’s materia system.

Each character can be given new abilities by equipping magic rocks, called Quartz, that are found throughout the country – EXACTLY like materia. However, in FFVII any character could use any materia provided they had the weapons and armor slots for them, whereas in Trails in the Sky there are actual limitations to which Quartz a specific character can use, so that each person actually retains their individuality.

What’s more, they expanded upon the materia slots concept with orbal lines. This part’s a bit harder to explain, so if you haven’t played FFVII before, here’s how the materia system works: Materia grants characters spells AND commands and comes in five forms - Magic (green), Command (yellow), Summon (red), Independent (purple), & Support (blue). Each piece of equipment has materia slots that you can stick materia into. Socketing Green & Red materia will simultaneously improve the character’s magical stats, while lowering phys stats. Independent Materia on the other hand can raise HP, MP, Mag, Initial ATB gauge, and Luck, though nothing boosts physical stats. At the same time, some equipment contains materia slots that are paired together allowing you to create materia combos by pairing a non-blue materia for a base effect, with a blue materia adding a supplementary effect. In general, the more materia slots your equipment has, the more materia you can put into it and, by extension, the more powerful that character will be. Lastly, all endgame equipment has 8 slots, so no character will end up more powerful than anyone else.

*whew*

As was already mentioned, this system gives you a lot of control over the functioning of characters, but at the same time, doesn’t offer any real limitations. So the characters all end up being interchangeable. Additionally, you can’t gear anyone towards physical attacking or defending through materia, further increasing their similarity to each other in combat, and limiting the amount of viable set-ups.

So, since Falcom actually cares about these things, they reworked all of this stuff with their orbal lines in Trails in the Sky. And once again, since this system is complicated and I doubt most of you have played TitS, I’ll just explain the entire quartz system:

Each character has seven quartz slots that are arranged in unique ways and connected through orbal lines of varying lengths, and ALL characters, excluding the protagonist, have at least one quartz slot that requires a quartz of a specific element. Quartz are pretty much the same as materia, except that they can also boost physical stats to help out non-casters. But, unlike materia, quartz do not grant specific spells/orbal arts. Rather, each quartz carries a sephith value, and each spell has a corresponding value (or set of values) that must be reached on a single line before a character can cast it. Consequently, longer orbal lines enable access to a wider pool of spells. Lastly, quartz slots can be upgraded in order to hold stronger quartz with greater or more numerous elemental values, so that even the quartz have their own form of progression. Oh, and in case you were wondering, no there aren’t any overpowered quartz that can automatically propel a character to godhood, shit’s actually balanced.

And that’s TitS’ quartz system in 30 seconds or less. Do I get candy or something?...no? okay.

The Orbal Line system retains the extensive control over character customization found in FFVII’s Materia system. But by giving each character unique orbal lines and quartz limitations, certain characters are inherently better casters than others. At the same time though, characters who aren’t so good with spells can focus on using quartz to augment their stats and crafts, making them better physical attackers or supporters. Collectively, these result in a balanced game where every character feels distinct. It doesn’t get more ideal than that.

So, how could Square learn from this? Well, we don’t want them to just copy Falcom, as that would be pretty lame. And at the same time, we don’t want them to COMPLETELY change what FFVII is or how it worked, as then you wouldn’t have a remake, but a re…do? Anyway, I think it’d be best to keep materia pretty much as is, just redo the stat changes so that some materia boost Strength & Defense to better support tanking and other physical set-ups.

Also, they should keep materia bound to weapons and armor, instead of copying Sky’s character-centric approach. However, they should come up with more complex ways to link materia together. The binary paired/unpaired dynamic of the original is extremely rudimentary, makes the characters kinda samey, and is way too easy to exploit. Next they should lock certain materia slots to a specific type of materia, to help keep the weapons unique and control the possible materia combos. THEN they should seal the deal and grant different weapons and armor classes unique materia arrangements based on their classes. This forces each character to have a unique materia arrangement and softly imposes character roles. They could go a step further and give each slot effects based on what materia are in them, but that’d just be icing on a nice cake.

Believe it or not, the original game already has the framework for most of this stuff, but requires grinding/buying copies of the same materia to exploit. By formalizing this though, they should be able to prevent materia combos from becoming OP without harming the player’s creativity. I’m imagining that this would look something like the Garment grids from FFX-2, but with shorter lines. And speaking of Garment Grids, I should also point out that square has a history of designing unique grids like this in the FF franchise, so implementing something like this for a VII remake really shouldn’t be much of a chore for them. Whether or not the realize as much though is another matter entirely.

Anyway we’re not done going over the gameplay yet, so up next we haaaave…the battle system.

Well that’s easy, just shorten the battle animations, and or have a skip button. Sky opts for shorter animations, recent Trails of games add a skip button, I’d personally prefer that Square add both. That’s all, the battle system is fine…for 1997. Okay if they keep the ATB, then they should use at least use the ATB system from FFX-2, with unique delays per ability. Again, Sky already does this with stronger abilities having longer delays, but whatever, it’s a simple and effective means of making the combat a little more tactical.

Okay moving on, we have the lack of non-materia based commands.

Again, as I already mentioned, in FFVII materia is the only thing that gives characters combat abilities. And because materia is freely interchangeable, all your characters feel pretty much the same. So, Trails in the Sky gave every character unique crafts in addition to the orbal arts/Magic and S-Crafts/Limit Breaks. These crafts vary from special attacks with different ranges, to AoE heals, buffs, and other stuff. Whatever fits the characters, and always makes sure that each plays noticeably differently. Once again, I don’t expect or want Square to just copy Falcom, though unfortunately they don’t even have a framework to make anything like this, so it’d have to be built from the ground up.

Personally, I recommend leveraging limit breaks. The way limit breaks in FFVII currently work is each character has 4 levels worth of limit breaks and within each level are 2 unique limit breaks, except for the final level which always contains 1. With one exception, characters only have access to the limit breaks of whichever level they set outside of battle, so no one ever has many options at once. Oh and just as a reminder, nearly every limit break only inflicts damage. And, in a game where enemies and player characters line up and stand still, most of these limit breaks are pretty much functionally the same.

SO, for the remake I suggest dividing the limit gauge intoooo let’s say 4 segments, one for each level. Then make all limit breaks available at once for every character. Lastly, change the limit breaks so that they better match the characters, and actually have strategic value (as opposed to the linear damage progression they currently follow). This way you can use limit breaks more regularly and have a reason to use the lower level limit breaks over the high ones. Once again Sky handles its crafts exactly the same way, so if it wasn’t obvious by now, if you like the gameplay of FFVII you should probably be playing that-

Okie dokie we’ve finally made it to the Story & Static Characterization (– Joshua vs. Cloud (Minor spoilers)):

Ideally, Square would just get rid of Jenova entirely and write the game around it not being there. But since that’s not gonna happen, the best we could possibly hope for is them writing a story that better hangs together in spite of it being there. To that end, the biggest things that need fixing are the writing itself and Cloud’s BS backstory. Fixing the former is pretty easy, they just need to make the dialogue more explanative, and preferably include an in-game synopses to help maintain the player’s sense of direction. They did it in XIII, they can do it again in the Remake.

Cloud’s backstory on the other hand is a touch more difficult, though like pretty much everything else we’ve gone over, Trails in the Sky has an answer. As a reminder: Cloud has a faulty memory in that he thinks he has Zack’s backstory. Thinking he’s a first class soldier allows him to perform incredible martial feats and gives him great skill as a swordsman, great enough to keep up with Sephiroth at the end of the game, who is purportedly the strongest swordsman in the world. He is also supposedly a clone of Sephiroth who can be dominated by Sephiroth’s will, and only through Tifa helping him remember that he’s a real person is able to shake this influence.

Yeaaaah, there are a bunch of problems with….aaaaaaallllllllllll of that. First, Cloud having access to incredible skills doesn’t make ANY sense. Thinking you have skills doesn’t actually grant them to you (or else youtube would be a far more boring place). The big twist where Cloud is revealed to be a clone of Sephiroth & a puppet has almost zero genuine foreshadowing (no flashing words on the screen and holding your head doesn’t count), makes no sense, and is just a flat out asspull to get Sephiroth the black materia. Lastly, magically getting over being a puppet by just remembering “oh yeah, I AM a real boy and I DID save the day” is pretty fucking childish and makes it look like Cloud being emo was what put the entire planet in mortal danger. All in all, it’s pretty fucking dumb.

Trails in the Sky on the other hand has a character who has a dodgy memory and gets manipulated as a puppet just like Cloud, except everything about HIM makes perfect sense, and he isn’t an emo bitch. Joshua Astray, is the mysterious male protagonist with a dark and troubled past that you don’t learn much of anything about in Trails in the Sky: First Chapter. Throughout the game, he utilizes his surprisingly expansive pool of knowledge, talents, and experiences to help solve mysteries and protect the party from dangerous black ops tools and tactics.

Annnnd that is actually all I can say without spoilers, so if you’d rather not be spoiled on the plot of Trails in the Sky click here to skip to how FFVII can learn from it. Otherwise, strap-in.

Unlike Cloud, Joshua’s missing memories only “cloud” the context for his skills as a black ops specialist. He doesn’t think he’s someone else and it doesn’t pose much of an issue for the plot of FC. However, because the game seeds this mystery within its opening moments, and continually drop hints about it for its entire duration, you don’t feel like the twist is coming out of someone’s nether regions. What’s more, other characters, most notably Estelle, actually talk to Joshua about it, allowing the mystery to create tension among the case, and act as a major tentpole for the romantic drama that spans the second chapter. Finally, in the second chapter Joshua has an expert help him break the puppetmaster’s control, legitimizing his situation as something beyond his control.

Wow, I can’t believe I got through that without major spoilers.

So, there are a lot of things Square can learn from Falcom’s handling of Joshua, but they all center around the same point: close the plot holes and give the characters more active roles in the story. DO NOT MAKE CLOUD A PUPPET OR A CLONE! Instead give him a subconscious compulsion to attend the Reunion. This way his having an individual backstory still makes sense but the major events can stay the same. Drop the bullshit about Sephiroth being dead, but not really, and make him take the black materia by force (preferably through an unwinnable battle). And most importantly, make the other party members question Cloud’s motives. This provides room for the characters to express themselves throughout the story, and for the game to draw attention to the fact that Cloud is actually pretty pathetic, and in need of assistance.

And with that we're pretty much done! There are other things that could be reworked like the world map, loot acquisition, and mini-games, but they're all pretty tangential. Changing those would be more a matter of preference rather than necessity. 

Hopefully, this section has demonstrated that FFVII is not some unsalvageable calamity. It’s just broken in such a way that requires going back to the drawing board and reworking a lot of what’s already there. The ideal thing to do in a remake. Unfortunately, from what Square has shown us and stated, in addition to their recent track record, we can say with relative certainty that a lot of these fixes aren’t going to happen.

Part 6: Why Square Will Not Get The FFVII Remake Right (What WILL Happen)

Just based on the way I’ve talked about this game, it should be abundantly clear that videogames are an iterative medium. Damn near every major gameplay innovation is inspired by some preexisting convention or mechanic. So, whenever something new comes along, you can always trace its origins back to something else. Hopefully your brains are still intact as that wasn’t exactly mindblowing, or even brain…wrinkling.

What’s actually interesting about this is the way that different regions apply iteration. Generally speaking, western devs will look to other Western developers, and adopt mechanics that others have proven to work. It makes sense financially, but leads to homogenization in the AAA industry. Japanese devs on the other hand will ONLY learn from themselves, and shut out any and all other innovations from other developers. I’ve briefly touched on how Square did this with the FF franchise, but Namco Bandai, Atlus, Koei Tecmo, Compile Hearts, From Software, NIS, Nintendo, all do this with their own flagship franchises as well. It’s kind of amazing, really, just how much cultural differences can affect game development.

But, I digress. What this trend tells us is that the FFVII remake will likely share many similarities with recent existing Square Enix games. And thanks to Square’s little show & tell with the remake, we can start to guess what those similarities are, based on what they have presented us with, and what the original game looked like.

That said, I have zero interest in regurgitating the contents of every interview Square’s put out, or scrutinizing every second of the two trailers floating around. So, for this final section I’m just gonna talk about 3 of the most important things we can determine right now. And since, my well of creativity has been completely drained, we’ll just take them in the same order I covered FFVII classic.


So [beat] THE GAMEPLAAAAAYYY [use echo].

In this trailer, we can catch a couple of glimpses of the battle system, but without the UI or the full context for how the fight started, the only thing it tells us is that the fighting is flashy. Fortunately, in this here developer interview, Kitase tells us that, “rather than a command-based battle ensuing when you encounter an enemy, we’re aiming for a seamless active battle, as you can see in the trailer.” Okay that’s a good thing, since it means you can avoid fighting just by walking past enemies. Cool.

Nomura: “Regarding the battle speed and tempo, for the sake of a stress-free battle, we want to do something on the level of Dissidia Final Fantasy.“ 

Wait WHAT, THIS Dissidia? [show some of YOUR dissidia footage!]. 1-frame inputs and sudden death PVP mindgames…Stress free. [stock joke] Do Japanese people have a different definition of stress or something?

“As far as the degree of action goes, it’s Dissidia Final Fantasy, then Kingdom Hearts, then Final Fantasy VII Remake. There won’t be any actions that require a technique.”

By “a technique” I’m assuming he means skill, so there won’t be any actions that require QCFs or anything. Of course, Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts both require a modicum of skill, so why even mention them in the same breath as a game that’s nothing like them- you know what? I'm done questioning Nomura about anything, let’s move on.

“By using the new system, we want to do action battles while also being able to fight thinking strategically.”

Got it, FFXIII was actually the game he was looking for. But I’m guessing he just didn’t feel like saying its name, perhaps out of a perfectly justified fear of being smited by God. Alright, that I can get my head around.

Nomura then concludes with, “it’s based on Final Fantasy VII, so elements like the ATB gauge and Limit Breaks will appear with new ways to be used.” [gematsu.com]

It’s kinda hard to buy this based on what they chose to show us in the trailer, but if everything about the gameplay is actually like Nomura said it is, then the gameplay will basically be FFXII by means of FFXIII. You can freely roam around, enemies will be visible at all times without requiring a screen transition, it’s turn-based, but takes place in real-time, and has multiple uses for the limit gauge. The only real change is that now it’s faster like FFXIII. I’m not sure a higher speed is really the way to go, since XII was already pretty fast, but whatever, gotta keep up with the ADD building trends amirite?

*sigh*

On the bright side, the FFXII’s gameplay is pretty good, so there shouldn’t be any issues there. My only concern is that we still don’t know anything about the back end. How the hell is materia going to work? Crisis Core was the last FFVII game we got and it’s application of materia was…questionable to say the least. And shallow. I really hope they’re not doing anything like that. Anyway, that’s all we can say about the gameplay. It’ll definitely work, and won’t be alienating to any people who enjoyed the original, though the change they’re making is pretty damn unnecessary. Okay next we hav-

NUMBER 2: THE GAME…STRUCTURE

[From here on I use bullet points, so there won't be a transcript available until the video is done.]