Let me also re-endorse Final Fantasy VII Remake. Apart from a dodgy climax, it's fun, and the battle system is the first time I've enjoyed one of their 'active battle' systems.
I adore FF7R. I’m not much for nostalgia, but getting to replay a cherished childhood game that looks this good and plays so wonderfully is a treat for me.
And I actually like what they are doing and hit the end sets up
the dramatic tension of not knowing if we can save Aerith from her fated death. I don’t know if you are old enough to remember, but in the halcyon days before the internet as it is, the desire to find a secret to save Aerith was so potent in our young minds. I like that SE is playing on this.
I’ve also always been a big fan of Yuffie and her don’t give no fucks attitude, so that the DLC really did her justice by giving her a stronger story motivation to join the party and her own Sephiroth facsimile is just great for me.
I'm not precious about 'sticking to the script', but I think similar to the most recent Star Wars trilogy, there's a potential for the game, in an effort to subvert the narrative, to fall flat on its face. I'm more baffled by the recent need intellectual properties feel to, in-universe, justify changing their stories. You could have had the climax of the second act be different from the original without having Crisis on Infinite Fantasies. I've just replayed Remake and I really began to resent whenever the Whisper showed up in the story.
The first third of FFVII is really what made that game for me, I'd say everything up to the city of the ancients is great, while everything after is good. A lot of that hinges on Aerith's death, changing that should have me worried, but because they handled everything so well in Remake, I'm still worryingly optimistic about the next one.
Also I'm not invested in the extended Final Fantasy VII universe, so adding all the Zacks and Advent Children stuff won't do much for me.
I can understand that.
Multiverse fatigue in pop culture is understandable.
I’m willing to give SE faith and see where this going. My personal theory is that Zack from the alternate timeline is going to find a way into the main one to try save Aerith for the sake of love and die in the process.
And SE have said the Whispers were just a Remake thing so you won’t need to deal with them anymore at least. 😂
I’m also not invested in the compilation material, but that actually works for me because I don’t know who these characters are. I’m hoping that the Yuffie storyline will be a DLC thing; each part of the trilogy gets a Yuffie and eventually Yuffie and Vincent side story where they handle that content separately from the main story. That would be ideal, I think.
