Rant time again - Crisis Core

[rallamajoop]

A while before we moved out – possibly against her better judgement – my sister picked up a copy of Crisis Core, the latest instalment in the neverending Final Fantasy VII compilation. I would call the below a review of the game, but it’s probably more like me taking the chance to vent a whole lot of frustration I’ve had building up over all the assorted sequels they’ve released in the last few years in one go. Those of you who actually liked the game, or any of the other new material they’ve released since Advent Children may prefer not to read any further, because this bitter former fan is bitter.

The big disclaimer I need to make before starting is to admit I’ve hardly actually played the game myself. Most of these impressions come second-hand from watching over a shoulder while my sister did all the dirty work, and from what I heard from her (and sometimes the greater Internet) about the scenes I’d missed. So I can’t rule out the possibility I’ve gotten the wrong idea about a few of the details I talk about below (and can only welcome corrections if I have), but the basic problem remains that the impressions I did get left me with no inclination to look into the game in any more detail. I would have played it through myself once pinneagig was done if what I’d seen had left me with any desire to touch the thing again with a ten foot pole. It didn’t.

For me, the whole FFVII compilation has been one long disappointment. It’s been a long time since ’97, but how even the original creators could have so completely forget what makes their own characters tick I cannot imagine. I belong to what often feels like a depressingly small minority who finds AC Cloud painful to watch. Cloud may have been on the anti-social side for the first ten minutes or so of FFVII, but whatever happened to the character he developed into after that, the one who rode chocobos, cross-dressed to save a friend, gave advice to airsick ninjas and made big motivational speeches to the giant party of characters he’d inspired into helping him save the world? I can’t even imagine AC’s dull-looking loner emo-boy in any of those scenes. And sadly, most of the rest of the cast have only fared any better because they had less time on screen.

AC also gets a major award for making me giggle my way through all the parts of the fight scenes that didn’t put me to sleep - they just went on and on and the animation did absolutely nothing for me. It's all very well to have cartoony-style characters like the KH cast flying through the air and waving around construction girder sized weaponry as if it doesn't weigh a gram, but when you go to the effort of near-realistic characters like the AC cast you need to at least make a decent pretence that you're applying some kind of basic physics or the effect loses all believability. Bullet deflecting capes and a scene where Cloud’s friends team together to toss him skywards at the monster? Come on.

Next we got Dirge of Cerberus, which, between its complete bastardisation of everything I’d ever found interesting Vincent's backstory and a plot so nonsensical I can no longer even remember who the villains were ever meant to be, stands out most for being even worse. Before Crisis may have been better, though I’ll probably never know since it seems unlikely anyone outside Japan will ever get to play it. The only part of the compilation we actually enjoyed at all was the Last Order OAV covering what happened to Cloud and Zack in Nibelheim (excluding what they did to poor Tifa's characterisation and a few nitpicky changes), which did give us some vague hope for Crisis Core.

Unfortunately, it seems that in recent years, Squeenix have brought themselves to the conclusion that the appeal of FFVII is all down to one feature: lots of pretty boys. How else could it have seemed like a remotely good idea to make such a point of writing Gackt in as a character? Don’t let the new canon fool you – the original game told us what those creepy Sephiroth clones looked like under their black cloaks: they were barely-sane low-lifes like the man with a tattoo on his arm you encounter living in a pipe in the Midgar slums. Only when it came to time to try and dredge up enough unresolved plot for a sequel did anyone think of rewriting any of them as pretty boy Sephiroth rip-offs like the trio from AC – all in the name of gratuitous bishonen eye-candy. There's also the ridiculously costumed female cast of DoC and the lobotomised Lucrecia to cover the female fanservice angle. All this could still have been forgivable if they’d come up with enough new plot to make it all interesting, but not the slightest effort has been put into developing any of these second rate villains - they add very little to the story except a convenient excuse for a final boss battle.

But enough with the general griping. The fact remains that we still had some hope for Crisis Core – we’d seen some more promising reviews and knew we could at least count on Zack not to angst his way through the game the way Cloud and Vincent did, so we figured we’d give it a chance.

The Battle System
I’ll start with the battle system simply because that’ll be the short part. Combat happens in real time, more like the Kingdom Hearts games than the original FFVII. Hit X to attack, hit the L1/R1 buttons to select and use any of the materia you’ve got equipped. Pretty straightforward, and my sister tells me it’s also pretty fun to play.

Things only start to get ugly when you factor in the main defining gimmick of the system: something called the ‘DMW’ (apparently standing for ‘Digital Mind Wave’) which is the system which governs when you get your limit breaks, summon magic attacks, various stat bonuses which turn up in battle, how you and your materia level up and when combat will be randomly interrupted by flashbacks for no obvious reason. That’s an awful lot of unrelated stuff to cram together into one feature, and it’s achieved by linking each outcome to combinations on a series of slot reels – a bit like what you use in limit breaks like Cait Sith’s or Wakka’s, except that all the symbols are the images of other characters from the cast with numbers on them from one to seven. Lining up three Aeris’s gives you an Aeris-themed limit break; lining up three sevens levels you up. Et cetera.

This is already a bit confusing, since it would seem to imply – for example – that levelling up is something that happens to you completely by chance (or based on how good you are at lining up those sevens), which is a pretty dubious concept on which to base a levelling system. Only, the reality is that you never actually get to select when the reels stop reeling – the game does that for you automatically, whether you hit any buttons while it’s rolling or not. Nor do you get to select when the reels appear; that happens at random in the middle of combat with no obvious trigger. Why they even bothered to make this feature look like slot reels is beyond me, since the result is something like watching someone else play part of the game for you.

Since the tutorial section of the game had given us no clue whatsoever as to precisely why there were a set of automated slot reels constantly running through Zack’s head, I looked it up online and discovered that the truth is that levelling isn’t so random after all. You get EXP in battle, and once you’ve been through enough battles that it’s time to level up, the game will call up the DMW and roll the wheel around until it gets three sevens. So, in reality, a standard levelling system is pretending to be a random chance system, which is pretending to be an interactive slot reels minigame, and not even pretending very well. Basically, the entire DMW is an elaborate way of hiding a lot of information we’d be given up front in other FF instalments (like how much EXP you’ve got or how close you are to getting your next limit break) and taking away a lot of your choices (which summon or which limit break you use and when you use them). Not to mention those random flashbacks. I still don’t know what the deal with them is meant to be either.

The entire gimmick behind the CC battle system can be summarised as “random stuff happens at random.” I don’t think there’s any scathing comment I can make at this point to do justice to exactly how inane that is. I’ll grant you that battle systems have been based on crazier ideas, but all other RPGs I’ve played have at least made some token attempt to explain why throwing cards at the enemy does damage or how always leaving half your team behind makes sense. Crisis Core doesn’t even give us that much to work with.

The Plot – I use the term loosely
But hey, I’ve never really played RPGs for the gameplay, the make-or-break part for me is the story, so let’s talk about the Crisis Core plot. The game opens with a flashy battle scene that turns out to be an uber-realistic virtual reality training simulation, and already the game has nailed one of my pet hates: prequels in which the technology is inexplicably more advanced than in the original. Holodeck style VR rooms are such an overused sci-fi trope as it is, and they're completely out of place in a world like FFVII where big, clunky robots are the height of technological achievement and mankind still hasn't even made it to the moon. Soon after that Zack is handed a mobile phone and told how he's going to get all his official Shinra orders in the form of text messages, and once again the compilation sinks to the level of a high budget mobile phone advertisement. We never got a good look at the old PHS from FFVII, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably wasn't advanced enough to handle text messaging. I'm also finding it terribly amusing to imagine that one could cut out the entire Shinra military communications system simply by jamming up the mobile phone network for an hour or two.

Early on, we meet this character called Angeal. Apparently he's some sort of mentor to Zack or something, it's not very well explained. He's the previous owner of the Buster Sword, and has all these ideas about how SOLDIERs need to have 'dreams and honour'. Where honour has something to do with not stealing apples from your friends or something. And where SOLDIER - let's remember - is the private army of an evil, world dominating corporation. Dreams and honour. Suuuure.

Already we're in trouble. Let's get a few things thing straight, Squeenix: the Buster Sword is an oversized hunk of metal that picks up surprise sentimental significance late in the FFVII story because it used to belong to Zack. It doesn't need to be important to Zack because it belonged to someone else before him, let alone someone as incomprehensible as Angeal. Also, no family with a precious heirloom that symbolises their honour is going to name it "The Buster Sword." Nor does it make any sense that Angeal carries something that weighs that much around all the time but refuses to use it in combat more than occasionally for fear it will (I kid you not) pick up scratches. The Buster Sword exists for busting things, that's what Cloud used it for, and that's its entire purpose in life. Alright? Right, let's get back to the plot.

While hanging around the Shinra headquarters and wondering why he's been off duty so long (and doing squats! Aww, okay, they get a point for including that) Zack hears from some random soldier dude that things are all in a mess because some first class SOLDIER called Genesis has turned traitor and is keeping admin unusually distracted. Hardly have we heard that, and Zack's got a new mission anyway - off to fight in the war with Wutai and maybe even get a promotion to First Class out of it if he does a good job. The Wutai section was handled relatively well - the war's an established part of the FFVII backstory so there's plenty of sense in including it, and the enemy troops looked about what I'd expect Wutai soldiers to look like (though I could've done without the gratuitous Yuffie cameo. Don’t get me wrong, I love Yuffie, but seeing the compilation forget every important aspect of her character except that she spins and wobbles in her victory pose has not been worth it).

Zack stuffs up towards the end of the mission and has to be bailed out by Angeal when a giant monster just about lands on him from above, so there's no promotion for him today, but they finish the job in one piece and head for home. On the way out, Zack and Angeal separate briefly - can't remember exactly why. Zack finds himself fighting some unfamiliar soldiers who don't seem to be from Wutai (don't ask me how he could tell) and then Sephiroth shows up for no particularly obvious reason and tells you that the mysterious soldiers you've just fought are Genesis clones and Angeal has betrayed you all and joined the enemy.

Back up there a sec. You may want to reread that last line again.

We've been playing now for maybe half an hour. We've known this Angeal guy existed for about three scenes, we last saw him all of about a minute ago, and already he's pulled a Shocking Betrayal! If you thought Seifer's betrayal in FF8 happened a little early to have much impact, well, you ain't seen nothin' till you've played Crisis Core. What the hell, Squeenix – seriously, what? Let's for a second ignore that he's switched sides in the time it takes to exit stage left and we don’t even know how Sephiroth’s supposed to know that, why are we supposed to care? We don't know bugger all about the enemy, we don't even hardly know anything about Angeal yet except that Zack seems to look up to him and nothing he says ever makes any sense. Random characters doing random shit for no remotely explained reason isn't a clever plot twist, it's a recipe to alienate your audience when they've barely started playing.

But surely this is all early plot development and all will be explained later on, right? WRONG. Angeal spends the rest of the game playing now-I'm-a-good-guy-now-I'm-not. Genesis, who is what you get when Squeenix quite literally decide to write Gackt in as a villain, spends it spouting horrible poetry and... being evil or something. I didn't see a lot of the rest of the game, but as best my sister could fathom the closest they're ever given to a motivation for anything they do is some vague implications that they're taking their anger out on society because Shinra made them into monsters. Y'know, as Shinra do, what with the giant production line of Sephiroth clones they've been turning out since before they even had a Sephiroth to clone. And as anyone who's seen the trailers should know, the way they show us the horrible things that Shinra's done to them is to give them wings. That is, they get wings collectively. They get exactly one wing each.

I could rant about the stupidity of a couple of second rate villains running around sprouting a feature that Sephiroth himself didn’t get to show us until the very last part of the final boss battle (and even then he would have been better named the Seven Winged Angel counting the other six he had coming out of the bottom of his torso and making him look like a giant flying squid). But the real problem I had with them is that one wing may be very pretty and symbolic, but someone needs to remind Squeenix that YOU CANNOT FLY LIKE THAT.

Obviously no-one bothered to tell either Angeal or Genesis this, because they both do it – repeatedly - all throughout the game. It might’ve worked okay if they’d only left the flying off-screen and let the audience assume that magic was going all the work, but oh no, instead we’re treated to endless flying scenes with beautifully rendered shots of a single ridiculous wing flapping all over the screen. By mid way through the game even the weak-ass Genesis clones you run into in random encounters are sprouting a wing and flying around. One of the scenes I saw in full even featured Angeal flying down in front of Zack, picking Zack up and flying away again. With that one lop-sided wing to hold the both of them up. Actually, we quite enjoyed that bit, but only because it made us laugh our heads off.

The whole explanation for all of Genesis’s and Angeal’s weirdness – and here is where I seriously had to start wondering whether I was hearing about an official game or a Mary Sue fic – is that they were created by a Shinra scientist who injected Jenova cells into a pregnant woman. Gosh, now why does that sound so familiar? Logically you could argue that it makes some kind of sense that Shinra could have tried the experiment a couple of times before they got it right, but where does that leave the story? You just can’t add elements like that this far down the line without them feeling like they’ve been crudely tacked on, especially not when so much of what made Sephiroth so genuinely scary was that how he came into being was so terrible and unique. I mean, Hojo convinced the woman who was carrying his child to let him inject cells from a hostile alien into her unborn baby. When Sephiroth was killed it took them dozens of experiments to recreate anything like him. But now it turns out that all the cool Shinra scientists were doing the same thing. It’s the equivalent of telling all the main characters that they’re going to have to go through all that work again because it’s just turned out the big bad had an identical twin.

I managed to miss most of Aeris’ scenes, so I will say only that from what little I did see her English voice actor actually wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting, but considering what I was expecting after KH2, that’s not much of an endorsement. From what I heard of the scenes I missed she was ever bit as OOC and ditzy as the trailers had led us to expect. pinneagig will have more to say about her role than I will here via a series of 4-panel parody comics she’s working on, so I’ll leave that one to the professionals.

The final section of the game post the escape from Nibelheim is dragged out to the point of pain. All we ever saw of it in the original FFVII was crammed into three very brief scenes, so while it’s reasonable to assume that maybe there was a day or two we didn’t know about in there, having Zack drag a comatose Cloud around the country for a week while he deals with some final boss stuff takes all impact out of the sequence. (BTW translation team, the word you were looking for for what Cloud is suffering at this point is probably ‘Mako Poisoning’ or ‘Mako Withdrawal’. ‘Mako Addiction’ makes no kind of sense in this context unless he was secretly waking up at night and sneaking away to find a fix, and that would be a bit crazy even for you.)

The final scene was going to be a hard sell to me whatever they did with it, because damnit, I liked how understated it was in FFVII. I know the same wouldn’t have worked in a fleshed out version like CC, but the way Zack’s little skittle-armed sprite goes jerking around on the ground as the Shinra soldiers continue to pump him full of bullets even after he’s down is something I always found horrible creepy and effective in the sorts of ways you don’t expect from graphics of that quality. By contrast, the new version really is like everything else about the game – drawn out, incomprehensible and generally a bit dull. Perhaps it would have had more impact on me if I’d seen more of the scenes leading up, but given that one of the few I did see was still trying to pack massive symbolic importance into those apples Angeal brought up to explain honour back at the start of the game, I don’t find it very likely.

And in conclusion?
In the end, nothing is properly explained, the story flow is awkward and ugly and constantly made me feel like I must’ve failed to do some kind of vital pre-reading that would have made what I was watching make sense. The plot always seems to be taking second place to things like finding room for cameo appearances for random characters from other compilation instalments which I haven’t played (just exactly who is Cisne meant to be anyway?) or giving you time to play with your phone. Probably the biggest single problem is that FFVII never actually needed any sequels – or prequels either. There were aspects left ambiguous that could have benefited from some better development, but resurrecting characters we knew were dead and dredging up other Shinra experiments as and making the main cast go through fighting them all over again can only cheapen everything the characters went through in the first game, and that seems to be about all the compilation does.

The shame about Crisis Core is that there are just enough redeeming features that you could see how much better it could have been. Zack is as endearing as he’s ever been. Sephiroth in his pre-psychosis days seemed mostly well handled from what I saw, and there were some nice moments between Zack and Cloud, and the escape from Nibelheim and all the rest – just enough to remind you that these are characters the original game made us love so much and there is a story here that could have been worth telling.

It’s not hard to come up with ways the same basic concept could have been re-imagined so that it worked. Lose Genesis and all the tripe that came with him, he was never anything more than a second-rate excuse for a final boss character anyway. With him gone you’ll have plenty of extra story-space to fill in, so let’s start by moving the beginning of the game back a bit so we can cover Zack’s early SOLDIER days properly, rather than throwing us in at the middle when he’s already at Second Class. Show us how – and why – he joined SOLDIER in the first place, how he went through training and worked his way up the ranks. Give his parents at least a cameo – we did meet them in FFVII, and they’d have to have some sort of opinion on what their son was doing with his life. If you need backup characters, how about giving Zack some classmates or some kind of team? The SOLDIERS you fight in the game always have at least one partner, and there’ll be ample chance to write the others out or kill them off along the way if need be. If you still want to give him a mentor like Angeal, go for it, but leave out the one-winged crap and rambling about honour – and this time, take the time to show us how he and Zack met at the start, why they were assigned together and why we’re supposed to care about their relationship. The people playing this game are going to know very little about what it’s like to work for Shinra at the start of the game, and we’re going to have a much better chance of empathising with the main character if he’s in the same position.

If you want to keep some suspect Shinra science practices in there to (quite rightly) foreshadow what’s to come then why not invent an employee or two who’s researching something different to Jenova? The idea that everyone and their lab assistant was injecting alien cells into their girlfriends is pretty far fetched, but I could easily buy that Shinra would have hired other people who were interested in some ‘unorthodox’ research subjects. And for a bit of plausible Jenova involvement, Zack’s a SOLDIER – he and everyone he works with were infused with Mako and Jenova cells when they joined. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we’d found out what the experience was like for them – how much physical change they saw to themselves afterwards, whether any of them got Reunion-inspired nightmares, or whatever else the side effects might have been. Maybe now and then there’s even a big mix up with the Jenova doses and someone mutates into something horrible (it’d sure be interesting seeing the Shinra department heads coming up with the technobabble to explain that one to the SOLDIERS who had to clean up afterwards). Meanwhile, you’ve got Zack’s relationship with a girl Shinra wants to kidnap as a research specimen, the story of how he got to know Sephiroth and plenty of other things like the old Shinra space program and the war with Wutai that could be going on in the background. Balance it all well, and you could spend the whole game dropping references to what’s coming, but still keeping them subtle enough that it’s still plausible that Zack could have made it as far as Nibelheim without any idea what he was in for.

See? You’re halfway to a plot for the game already, and there’s not a single poetry spouting Sephiroth-clone in sight. More importantly, we’re now covering plot points that people who played the first game might genuinely have been left wondering about. Stuff we’d find interesting.

Or at least stuff I’d find interesting, since I obviously can’t speak for the rest of FFVII fandom, and at the end of the day everyone’s still going to be entitled to love or hate any part of the series for whatever reasons work for them. The fandom’s still going strong and the games are still making Squeenix money, so clearly a lot of people are still getting something out of the new material. But I’d challenge even the most determined fans to make a case that the appeal of the new titles goes much beyond shiny graphics, pretty boys and loose excuses to put the words “Final Fantasy VII” before the colon in the title, and compared to the awesome story and characters that sold the original to me, that’s a bit sad. It would've been nice to be pleasantly surprised by Crisis Core; it would've been something even to be unpleasantly surprised by what I thought of it, but I passed that stage of disillusionment with the series a good while back.

I miss the good old days of early PS1 quality graphics and main characters with the detail and movement of lego figures. Say what you like about 'em, FFVII never needed any more than that to be one of the most successful RPGs in history - especially not any of the extras they've added on since.

Comments

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

So much word to all of this. I too have been immensely disappointed by the entire compilation, and the funny thing is, the first time I heard there was going to be a movie and a compilation, where they would, in their own words, "explain everything" (HAH!), I felt very sad. It just takes away from the myth and the charm of the original game.

And what bothers me greatly are people who access the fandom through the movies/sequels/prequels, and then claim how everything said in them makes ZOMG PERFECT SENSE. I don't even want to know how your mind has to work to think that. *eyeroll*

The entire gimmick behind the CC battle system can be summarised as “random stuff happens at random.”
I don't think it's just the battle system that can be summarized under this heading, if you catch my drift.

We never got a good look at the old PHS from FFVII, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably wasn't advanced enough to handle text messaging.
Dude, this was the thing that looked like a 70s military radio and couldn't get wet or it would break! Man, this game should be called Final Sci-Fi, not Final Fantasy.

And I agree so hard with your plot ideas. I find it funny how we've thought of almost exactly the same things that would be interesting to see, and sad at the same time because it proves that if there had been at least ONE person with a head between his/her shoulders on the staff, then we wouldn't have to deal with this utter tripe.

Angeal and Genesis were the sorriest excuses for new characters I've seen in a long time, nevermind the wings. Angsty prettyboys spouting angsty poetry, and nevermind that they were friends with Sephiroth. All that does is make Sephiroth and Zack come off as morons that they would find nothing even remotely suspicious about their "friends" suddenly sprouting extra appendages. I mean, jeez, I can't be the only one who sees it as much more likely for Sephiroth to either a) assemble his most trusted subordinates and start an investigation, or b) investigate on his own and wreak havoc when he finds out. Or Zack. Zack's too curious for his own good, he'd surely snoop around and maybe convince others to join his cause.

Those are just a few of the reasons I left the FFVII fandom and can only be persuaded to read the occasional fic by people who are still sane and haven't bought into the ZOMG PRETTY.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I remember being excited when some of the early promo material started coming out, but I have to admit that was mostly because I wanted there to be a sequel to FFVII that would live up to the original, not because it seemed realistic they could pull it off. It's virtually never a good sign when they suddenly decide to make a sequel so far down the line. Especially to a game like FFVII where - as you say - a lot of the remaining ambiguity didn't need to be explained. (Did they actually promise to explain everything? Well, for better or worse, they sure didn't deliver on that front.)

And what bothers me greatly are people who access the fandom through the movies/sequels/prequels, and then claim how everything said in them makes ZOMG PERFECT SENSE. I don't even want to know how your mind has to work to think that. *eyeroll*

Oh yeah. I don't want to fall into the wanky habit of telling people they have to interpret the whole story the same way as me, but I can hardly even get my head around how the new material could make sense to anyone. And I know there are people who claim the original game was too much work to finish/didn't have shiny enough graphics to enjoy and only got into the series through the newer stuff, which is sad too because I don't think they know what they're missing out on. Poor Cloud's reputation alone is never going to recover. -_-

I don't think it's just the battle system that can be summarized under this heading, if you catch my drift.

So true, the battle system is like a metaphor for the whole game. "What's going on? Who cares! Look, shiny thing!"

And I agree so hard with your plot ideas. I find it funny how we've thought of almost exactly the same things that would be interesting to see, and sad at the same time because it proves that if there had been at least ONE person with a head between his/her shoulders on the staff, then we wouldn't have to deal with this utter tripe.

It's funny to find myself going 'they didn't need to make a prequel' and 'if they did have to they should have done it like this!' at the same time (probably goes to show the game could have been massively better and still not been worth the cover price). But there was so much more they could have done with it, and yeah - most of it really was obvious stuff. It's almost tempting to try and rewrite the whole game in fanfic, but it wouldn't be worth the effort. Or the drama. And even I'd find my own motivations a bit suspect. ^^;

I could sort of buy the idea of Sephiroth having had friends at some point back in his past, or Zack just being too good natured and clueless to put the pieces together, but the way they handled it was a mess. I missed most of the new CC Nibelhiem scenes, but how can you possibly tell us Sephiroth's gone through all that crazy stuff from his 'best friends' and is still so shaken by what he finds out about himself at the end of it? And I mean - Christ - some of those scenes in Nibelheim in the original FFVII still give me the shivers no matter how many times I see them, they're just so creepy and so effective. Dear Square: YOU DO NOT GET TO RUIN THAT FOR ME, KTHX.

Those are just a few of the reasons I left the FFVII fandom and can only be persuaded to read the occasional fic by people who are still sane and haven't bought into the ZOMG PRETTY.

I was never very involved in the fandom to begin with - I think maybe because it was one of those stories that I found so satisfying as it was wrapped up in the game that very little fic could live up to the same standard. And I took great pleasure in the one FFVII fic I ever wrote myself in imagining all the events being acted out by the skittle-armed character models of the original. >D Otherwise, I'm just avoiding it all as hard as I can these days too.

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

My first reaction, oddly enough, was to feel mildly disturbed, before I warmed up to the idea and thought, "Hey, maybe it won't be so bad!" It's amazing how two men can influence an entire gaming company (aka Kitase and Sakaguchi).

And well, I can't give you the exact quote, as the site is not around anymore, but a German gaming site quoted Nomura's drug-induced ramblings back in the day, where he, amongst other things, said that the compilation would "uncover the last mysteries of the FF7 world and explain everything". I remember that pretty well.

I don't want to fall into the wanky habit of telling people they have to interpret the whole story the same way as me, but I can hardly even get my head around how the new material could make sense to anyone.
Oh, me neither. And I hope I didn't come across that way. I mean, the sane people on my f-list and I, we have vastly differing opinions on some of the things that happened in the original game, and that's perfectly alright. I just find it really, really sad when people, as you said, only look for shiny graphics and pretty boys and care about nothing else. And I find it pretty hard to deal with their "awsum theoriez" which they use to justify all those new characters' appearances and ret-cons.

Poor Cloud's reputation alone is never going to recover. -_-
Well, one thing that's positive about AC is that the doujinshi circles finally seem to be stopping drawing him like a malnourished twelve-year-old. He never had much of a reputation to begin with, I'd say. Because he's blond.

So true, the battle system is like a metaphor for the whole game. "What's going on? Who cares! Look, shiny thing!"
Just out of curiousity... I don't mean to harp on Crisis Core more than is already justified, but... am I the only one who thought Zack was acting, I dunno, almost forcibly spazzy at times? Like during the summoning sequences, where he was just bouncing around and acting like a monkey. I mean, I get that Zack's to be a friendly, likeable, positive character who's on the wild side, but... I felt it was very much overdone.

It's almost tempting to try and rewrite the whole game in fanfic, but it wouldn't be worth the effort. Or the drama. And even I'd find my own motivations a bit suspect. ^^;
I hear you on that. Heck, we can always plot, right?

but how can you possibly tell us Sephiroth's gone through all that crazy stuff from his 'best friends' and is still so shaken by what he finds out about himself at the end of it?
That's exactly what bothered me so greatly. I can, with a LOT of explanatory work, buy that Sephiroth had friends he hung out with (and if he had, they certainly wouldn't be such utter SUES), but please. Sitting together in a virtual reality quoting poetry at each other until one of them randomly goes crazy and shouts about being a hero (or whatever that bitchfit was)?

The whole of Nibelheim - and that's another thing those fanbrats try to prove made "perfect sense" - is completely ruined by the premise, nevermind Mr. Gary Stu showing up talking about the seed and apples and whatnot while everything is being toasted. WAY to ruin a dramatic moment.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I was up and down about the idea a fair bit as different information came out - and kept coming out, and kept dragging out as it got delayed for so long. But nothing prepared me for quite how bad AC was going to be.

Well, one thing that's positive about AC is that the doujinshi circles finally seem to be stopping drawing him like a malnourished twelve-year-old. He never had much of a reputation to begin with, I'd say. Because he's blond.

I'm just glad I never bothered looking at any FFVII doujinshi. It's pretty sad when 'doesn't look like a 12 year old anymore' is a step up in the world.

Just out of curiousity... I don't mean to harp on Crisis Core more than is already justified, but... am I the only one who thought Zack was acting, I dunno, almost forcibly spazzy at times? Like during the summoning sequences, where he was just bouncing around and acting like a monkey. I mean, I get that Zack's to be a friendly, likeable, positive character who's on the wild side, but... I felt it was very much overdone.

I haven't seen much of the summons on account of how I was only seeing the game in snippets while my sister played it and how they're one of those random parts that she couldn't call up on command to show me. But I'm pretty sure that overdoing Zack's hyperactivity would have been one of the minor nitpicks I'd only get to once they'd fixed everything else - and there was a whole lot of 'everything else' I didn't even get to in 4000 words of rant up there.

That's exactly what bothered me so greatly. I can, with a LOT of explanatory work, buy that Sephiroth had friends he hung out with (and if he had, they certainly wouldn't be such utter SUES), but please. Sitting together in a virtual reality quoting poetry at each other until one of them randomly goes crazy and shouts about being a hero (or whatever that bitchfit was)?

Some friends showed me that movie sequence some time before we got hold of the full game, and I swear that was the point I gave up on it. Ridiculous new characters having a huge fight complete with all the ugly animation I hated in AC and at the end all the damage they've caused is explained away by how they were hanging out on the holodeck? No way is the game recovering from a first impression like that.

The whole of Nibelheim - and that's another thing those fanbrats try to prove made "perfect sense" - is completely ruined by the premise, nevermind Mr. Gary Stu showing up talking about the seed and apples and whatnot while everything is being toasted. WAY to ruin a dramatic moment.

I didn't even see the Nibelheim stuff, and I'm faintly glad because I'm sure it would only have made me angry. Don't get me started on those stupid apples. >< It's a pretty good sign of just how confused the whole story was that they ever tried to base much deep meaningful conversation around an imaginary fruit.

[j3ffu.livejournal.com]

Agreed on all aspects I can actually relate to.
I just find it ridiculous how much they're milking it and they really just need to end it now.
People are even calling for an FF7 remake, but dammit, it just wont have its original charm anymore -_-

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm getting the impression that we'll be lucky not to see an FFVII remake at this point - maybe we've got some hope that they won't be able to get together the massive expense of a PS3 game just to rehash old material, but they don't lack the demand for it, or the willingness to squeeze every drop they can get out of the FFVII cow. I don't even know how they could get through the story with their new emo-boy Cloud as the main character, but we'll definitely be kissing all the charm of the original goodbye.

[amei.livejournal.com]

Oh FFVII....

wredwrat and I abandoned that ship a long time ago. :(

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Can't say I blame you. Even I've only been sticking my head back in now and then to boggle at just how bad it's gotten since AC, and now that I've had my little rant I can get on with ignoring whatever they do from here. Complete disillusionment has its advantages.

[amei.livejournal.com]

ATLUS /completely/ own my soul now.

.... I played a lot of squeenix games back in the day though.

[gonsai.livejournal.com]

The Original FF7 and the Compilation FF7 can be summed up pretty nicely in this statement:

FF7 was half (or a larger majority) Hironobu Sakeguchi's creation. Yasinori Kitase was a director, and had creative input, but the game was NOT his baby. Since Sakaguchi left, Kitase has been trying to "reimagine" FF7 the way he wanted it to be, thusly alienating what made the original unique within itself.


It's like the Jobs/Wozniack split at Apple, pretty much.

[cielrose.livejournal.com]

YES! +1 on this statement. It explains everything.

[gonsai.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's pretty much all there is to it. Without Sakaguchi to police it, Kitase's madness runs free.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

That sure does explain a lot. I don't think I'd heard that detail before, but I'm completely unsurprised. Though you could probably sum it up nearly as well by saying that all the FF games were originally meant to be single installments, but five years later they realised how much more money they could still be making out of one of the more popular ones.

[gonsai.livejournal.com]

To be fair, FFX-2 was released while Sakaguchi still had some say in the matter.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

...oh man. XD So it sounds like we were probably screwed either way.

It's so much like the new Star Wars movies - just because the people responsible for the original concept are still involved doesn't mean they won't have completely lost the plot in the meantime. And this was one Star Wars parallel the FF series could really have done without.

[gonsai.livejournal.com]

Nah. Sakaguchi was one of the only old school people left in decision making power before they were bought up by Enix.

[velithya]

...soooo guess I won't be buying crisis core eh

And don't forget, Squeenix are re-releasing FF7:AC on blu-ray as an extended edition with extra scenes! Just for those extra dollars you can give them!

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Please don't, we will only encourage them if we keep sending them money for this crap.

Oh, just what we always wanted, more scenes in Advent Children! Because there totally wasn't enough fighting to draw the first version out long enough as it was! ><

Pst, get around to reading Casualties of War yet?

[velithya]

Well, we saw the add for said extended edition at TGS last year. And then I saw the "Blu-Ray" logo and just laughed.

nooooooo not yet :( Although I did download Civil War: Fallen Son tonight just so I can break my heart into little pieces afterwards! ;_; I still need to finish off my friends' New Avengers v2 (11 through 20 plus annual) before I read anymore digital versions of things

[cheloya.livejournal.com]

Early on, we meet this character called Angeal. Apparently he's some sort of mentor to Zack or something, it's not very well explained. He's the previous owner of the Buster Sword, and has all these ideas about how SOLDIERs need to have 'dreams and honour'. Where honour has something to do with not stealing apples from your friends or something. And where SOLDIER - let's remember - is the private army of an evil, world dominating corporation.

*spat tea everywhere* XDDDDDDDDDDDD

Foolishly, I have preordered the game. It's due out in a week and a half. XD I'm glad to have so many heads-ups about it before I play, because I'm probably just going to start crying, or throw it across the room.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

And the game only got more cracked from there on in. To save as much sanity as possible I recommend playing it with a snarky friend watching so you'll have someone else to laugh with you at all really bad bits. Especially the flying scenes.

Just remember to take the cartridge out of your PSP before throwing anything across the room.

[celadonite.livejournal.com]

Thanks for saving me alot of time and money. I remember FF7 AC giving me facial cramps from all the laughing. Physics has never been my cup of tea, but the stuff in that movie still made me wince. My old physics teacher would have frothed from the mouth. It's sad to see such a classic RPG go down from the cash cow milking.

...and please tell me you were joking about the poetry.

PS Dustloop has been facepalm-enducing lately. Please come back soon.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

You are welcome, anything I can do to discourage people from giving Squeenix money for this stuff is a small victory. I don't know how anyone can take those AC fight scenes seriously, I really don't.

I only wish I was joking about the poetry. Genesis uses most of his dialogue to read out lines from a play called 'Loveless' (and which apparently was supposed to be the basis for the movie we see posters for in the FFVII opening, which could have been a neat little reference if it wasn't so lame).

PS Dustloop has been facepalm-enducing lately. Please come back soon.

What, more so than usual? I think I've been kinda hiding in the mad hope that all that Ky/Dizzy stuff will somehow go away if I ignore it long enough. >< With that + limit Internet connection - yeah, it really has been a while since I was around Dustloop now, hasn't it?

[celadonite.livejournal.com]

Zack being pretty all of the sudden and Cloud 'Let's Mosey' Strife being overly emo should have tipped off a warning for everyone. The fights would have been okay in an anime, but seeing them done in a realistic CG style made them look ridiculous. The relay part took the cake.

What, more so than usual?

I didn't even notice the Ky/Dizzy stuff with the shenanigans going around. Avoid a thread called 'Guilty Gear Stories' in the art forum, and some older pages in the AC+ thread. Blade has done a good job dispelling some plot misunderstandings and has given some useful stuff about AC+, but the overall bashing and fangirling has really brought things down. To quote Zazz: 'We need more responsible fangirls like Rallamajoop'

On the up side, there's a veteran fanartist with a spiffy style going by the name of Incognito who's turned up.

[cielrose.livejournal.com]

Cathy, I'm all for you about Genesis and Angeal. I didn't really like Gackt before..and having to deal with him in close proximity to FF7 makes my blood boil..Go away Gackt and endorse toothpastes or something!

Drew and I are hardcore fans of the original game...(as in we've done everything insane and even know materia locations and what's int he treasure chest before we open it) Sad yes?

Anyway my point is I love your post and agree with a lot of it. Though I adore Last Order..they could have just stuck with Last Order as the extra fan special once off like they originally planned!

I just take the sequels for the lols now, with the few positives making me happy throughout..though I have to say I adored Zack and I really did cry at the end even though I knew what was coming.. I guess to put it one way.. I'm such a hopeless fangirl for the characters I grew up with from the original series, though this does not mean I forgive Squeenix for what they've done. They were real idols for me when I was growing up, and my love for them supercedes the company creating the drivel plots. I'll helplessly follow my babies around and despair at what Squeenix has done to them.

In summary..I'll forever be Squeenix's bitch.
Though what hope I have left for Final Fantasy will end with 12 due to the fact that Tetsuya Nomura decided to leave.
Plus the fact that Nobuo Uematsu left after 10!! *sob*
It was all over when Hironobu Sakaguchi left..It's why the plot of 12 has this great build up then deflates explosively like the Hindenburg.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Drew and I are hardcore fans of the original game...(as in we've done everything insane and even know materia locations and what's int he treasure chest before we open it) Sad yes?

Not much sadder than me, though I don't think I ever learned it in quite that much detail. Chrono Trigger, now... XD

Anyway my point is I love your post and agree with a lot of it.

Awesome. XD I get to get all my snark out and I'm entertaining people. Neat!

Though I adore Last Order..they could have just stuck with Last Order as the extra fan special once off like they originally planned!

Last Order is the one part of the whole compilation that I'm still mostly positive about. Shame it was just a footnote to all the other big-budget travesties they've been turning out.

I just take the sequels for the lols now, with the few positives making me happy throughout..though I have to say I adored Zack and I really did cry at the end even though I knew what was coming.. I guess to put it one way.. I'm such a hopeless fangirl for the characters I grew up with from the original series, though this does not mean I forgive Squeenix for what they've done. They were real idols for me when I was growing up, and my love for them supercedes the company creating the drivel plots. I'll helplessly follow my babies around and despair at what Squeenix has done to them.

Sounds like a good attitude to take. Even the sequels do have the odd good moment here and there, and a lot more LOLs than they could have intended. The existence of the Kingdom Hearts games are a huge relief to me because they seem like the one place left where they're doing anything with the FFVII cast that I like.

Though what hope I have left for Final Fantasy will end with 12 due to the fact that Tetsuya Nomura decided to leave.

You mean 13? Because I'm sure he's still staying to work on those games, even if he was supposed to be more involved with Versus 13. Squeenix seem to be terribly hit and miss these days. I haven't cared about an FF release since 10 came out, but they also gave us KH2 and TWEWY (which I haven't played yet but have on excellent recommendation). I still play way more games by them than any other company, so I'm not completely disillusioned with Squeenix as a whole - just anything they do with FFVII from here I plan to ignore as hard as I can.

Late comment is late! D: Ignore it if you want.

[nazarale.livejournal.com]

Cloud may have been on the anti-social side for the first ten minutes or so of FFVII, but whatever happened to the character he developed into after that, the one who rode chocobos, cross-dressed to save a friend, gave advice to airsick ninjas and made big motivational speeches to the giant party of characters he’d inspired into helping him save the world?

This. This. This. THIS. I cannot emphasize this enough. I still feel a swell of irrational pride when Cloud makes that last speech on the airship, about how he was a fake, how they were going into the Northern Crater, and how there "ain't no gettin' off this train we on" or something like that. I absolutely hate how everyone thinks that he can't be a good leader or how he was completely emo the entire time he was prancing about in the game. No. Just, no.

This whole FFVII topic reminds me of something I read (http://community.livejournal.com/redleather_love/2485.html) the other day. It was some sort of discussion that had to do with Gackt Genesis and that other silver-haired dude in Dirge of Cerberus.

Wait, here it is:

"It's made clear in the Ultamania that Genesis would defend the planet rather than destroy it, but he would have to do quite a bit to atone and earn the trust of those who have the same goals. Still, it's hinted that there WILL be a Genesis/Sephiroth showdown and I believe that Genesis will be the one to end the Sephiroth stuff once and for all."

That part? That explanation? Makes me froth a little. (Nothing against the person who said it. I mean, I understand that it's just a theory.) I haven't been into FFVII for a while now, since Dirge of Cerberus and anything after has pretty much made me give up, but it makes me think WHY? You know? If that's true, then why did Cloud and his party go through all that crap with Sephiroth in the first place if a celebrity sue totally different dude was going to end it all? That makes me so down, man. :\

Sorry for the ramble.

Late reply is also late?

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I still feel a swell of irrational pride when Cloud makes that last speech on the airship, about how he was a fake, how they were going into the Northern Crater, and how there "ain't no gettin' off this train we on" or something like that. I absolutely hate how everyone thinks that he can't be a good leader or how he was completely emo the entire time he was prancing about in the game. No. Just, no.

So much word. It makes me wonder whether half those people were playing the same game I was, or if they even played it at all in some cases. I get so sick of hearing the word 'emo' some days.

I think that stuff about Genesis would bother me more if I wasn't so disillusioned with the FFVII series now that I'm going to just ignore anything they do with it from now on. Now I've had my rant I'm pretty much running low on what outrage I had left.

Hah, like I can complain about anyone else rambling after all the rambling I did up there.

[ghost-autonomy.livejournal.com]

Honestly speaking, I never liked any of the pre/sequels to FFVII. I wanted to play FFVII, with all honesty. But the graphics made me... lazy. (sorry fans. I'm rather young and I require some eye candy too. X_x)

Honestly, I've never played the main game. I haven't really played Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core. (I stopped a minute or two after the first combat sequence) All I wanted square to do was to make an FFVII for the PS2 (Hell, even if it was for the PS3, I'd buy a PS3 for that) with EVERYTHING intact, from the plot to the story to the camera angles but overhaul the graphics to even just FF8-quality. Thats all Square really had to do to sell BILLIONS of copies, in my opinion.

Plus, it would actually give FFVII a chance to reach out to the audience that it actually hasn't touched yet and attempt to make THEM fans, instead of LEECHING off the people who already were fans.

Square just made their fans angry... :|
They also just give us people who haven't played FFVII yet more reasons not to. D:

[(Anonymous)]

ON a lot of things, I completely agree with you. The branches have made me forget all that I loved about the original and I played the first disc at least 3 times before beating the game!

Am I the only one who wishes this was like X-men or Batman right now and we could just do some ret-con? Erase all branches from existence except maybe some of their old Japan only stuff and create a game that caters to the legitimate fandom and NOT the J-Rock/anime/etc fans who don't even know the original story. Reading through your idea of what the plot should have been was more enthralling than the half hour of the game a played.

Thank you than you thank you for finding AC to be such an OOC mess! If Cloud can still tell everyone they need to mosey(actually uses the word) up to the North Crater after the girl he loved dies a horrible death, why are we expected to believe his emo festivities? And his relationship with Tifa being so bad/loveless after his whole lifestream incident is frustrating. Maarlene could have been much better utilized.

I was too busy thinking of how they summoned a monster with green materia, how Rufus was pretending to be chair ridden but in reality is in pristine condition(anyone remember when grotesque was a good thing rather than omg no a way to ruin a bishi? I remember Jenova!) and of course Clouds abandoning the sword that was such a big deal or even Ultimate Weapon. And if the flying through the air for an aerial fight in a game where I don't even remember using float wasn't bad enough, they decide omnislash wasn't a cool enough attack it has to be that disaster I don't even want to think about.

CC game play might have been more interactive, irrelevant and confusing slots aside, but why could they not sacrifice something for the ability to jump? He's a bloody soldier, come on! You want fun PSP playing with that free range fighting, try God of War. Jumping, interesting to watch, chains. But w/e. Did you find the Wutai environment irritating? I mean it was repetitive and they didn't utilize the cool and varied environment with water and mountains they could have IMO.

Still hoping XIII will be better. Desperately hoping.

You make this game sound really sad

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly what I said. You make it sound like a franchise-milking game with no sense when linked to the original game. I mean, this is the first RPG I really played until the end! I personally thought Last Order was perfect for what it was supposed to be. My excuses for the Sephiroth clones on AC was that they were ones from the game that were able to become partially sane after Sephiroth's defeat, and the lack of physics was because of either Jenova's influence or Materia-based (it is a Final FANTASY game, after all) - couldn't get an excuse for how they survived the massacre Sephy made at the Reunion, when he supposedly killed all the clones, though, and I thought at first Cloud's behaviour was because he was just visiting Zack's grave and because... well, Reno destroyed the whole Sector 7 and blamed them, so he had all the right to be bitter to Shinra after the saving-the-world and everyone calming down... but when he started acting like that to Tifa and Aeris started showing up from nowhere and Cloud started spouting nonsense about wanting to be forgiven... so I threw my hands to the air and kept watching only for the cool fights (that ended sadly anticlimatically, by the way).
But I'm rambling, ain't I?

Really, you make it sound like I could have made a better version of this on RPG Maker 2k3. A much better one. Which is just sad.
Actually, I am REALLY tempted in using your plot and doing just that. At least it would notcompletelly rape the original game's plot, which you make it sound CC did. And since it would be a fangame, not an official one, no one would have their memories raped by it.

You know what? I think I'm going to do it, if only for the chance of maybe showing SquareEnix how we wanted CC to be. The SHOULD feel humiliated if the fans like my game more than they did their official prequel.
Of course, I would need your permission, since I'd be doing so because of your idea and following your plot idea (doubt I would be able to create one like yours on my own, it has been years since I played it).
My e-mail is yoraerasante@gmail.com, if you'd allow me to do it.