#all they need to bring to the table is the third party enjoyment of destroying an asshole's whole life deservedly. not honesty

[djevelbl]

Kill the cringe cop in your head, do what makes you happy.

[saltoftheplanet]

Why I’m skeptical about the Final Fantasy VII Remake

I’m skeptical that the remake will be good because there will be a lot of changes that will impact the direction, tone and narrative of the game, and Square Enix’s track record suggests to me that those inevitable changes will destroy and undercut what was special about the original game.

An essay breaking that down piece by piece is under the cut.

There will be a lot of changes

The remake will represent a huge and doubtlessly beautiful graphical update. With these updates, however, comes the need for a variety of new directorial decisions. For example, how should the camera behave during cutscenes? Who should they frame, and how? What will their body language and facial expressions show? Now that all the cutscenes will be voice acted, what tone will characters speak familiar lines with?

Likewise, the game is switching to a third-person, over-the-shoulder view. The original FFVII used a fixed camera and prerendered backgrounds to create a world that felt rich, full, and often cluttered. Every level will require redesign to account for the new way of moving about the world, and the amount of assets required to create the same feeling and to direct your attention in a same way will be exponentially higher. Likewise, there will need to be changes to account for the new combat system, as stages will need to be designed for both exploration and combat in many cases.

The episodic format of the game will necessitate changes to the pacing. Successful episodic games excel at creating self-contained rising and falling action and narrative arcs within each episode. Conversely, Final Fantasy VII was plotted and paced as a single complete narrative. Either the pace and order of events will need to be changed to make each episode stand strongly on its own, or the episodes on their own will be gawky and suffer pacing issues as they are pulled out of context from the greater whole.

Finally, the narrative itself will change. We have yet to see a verbatim line in each of the trailers, so the script itself is being rewritten, and with it many nuances will change. Square has stated point-blank that story changes are on the table. Finally, the compilation of Final Fantasy VII and the various Ultimanias released over the years have added a variety of changes to the narrative and to the lore. The teaser trailers we’ve seen so far have been in-line with the Midgar we see in Advent Children, itself a massive change to the famously ambiguous ending of the original game.

Direction and tone will be affected

All of these changes will not be neutral. In just about every decision of how this story is retold, some things are necessarily going to be emphasized and de-emphasized. Each of these decisions will carry and shift meaning in subtle ways. In that sense, the remake should more truly be considered an adaptation.

Examine the opening of FFVII; a meandering view of the stars fades into Aeris’ face. A single long shot pulls back to the city of Midgar. The tone here is mysterious, and the amount of time dedicated to the environment equals or surpasses the time spent on a character. This direction in cinematography echoes the game’s focus, as it is very much a story about the interplay between the characters as they exist inside of larger, overwhelming forces and environments.

The remake does have the opportunity to give us more meaningful cinematography in its cutscenes, but it may also make directorial decisions that change the meaning or impact of scenes. Especially likely is an increased focus on the characters and the action, and implicitly, the “cool” factor of both of those things, seeing as how the Remake and Square Enix as a company largely foreground great visuals and cool sequences. There’s absolutely room for that, of course, considering the bike scene in the original - but the broader point here is that no intervention can be neutral, and the Remake will inevitably have a different focus from the original.

One influential decision the writers have made is in their audience. All promotional material thus far has been aimed squarely at “returning” players, with no explanations offered for newcomers. What we’ve seen so far is in line with the marketing material - they are not simply trying to recreate FFVII as it was, but also tap into our collective sense of familiarity about it. The direct engagement with an expected audience means they will likely try to recreate the feeling of the experience rather than the experience itself, which would then necessitate certain story changes to keep things surprising or mysterious. This approach will inevitably widen the gulf between the remake and the original game.

SquareEnix’s Track Record

SquareEnix has been behind many beloved games, but they are not the company they were when they released FFVII. Their track record over the past decade, maybe even closer to the past 15 years, has been one of spotty quality, half-baked ideas, poor execution, and a narrative flexibility that suggests a lack of commitment to telling a story with singular vision and protecting the integrity of that story. Whatever your opinion or personal enjoyment of more recent Final Fantasy entries, they objectively lack the clarity and direction that made older entries of this series so beloved. To be completely clear, it is not that I believe these stories could never get there; it is that I’m keenly aware of the fact that they came short.

But more relevant than Square’s entries in the mainline Final Fantasy franchise are the entries to the Compilation of FFVII. These, two, have come with a variety of directorial changes that the new format and technology demanded. They’ve built their own lexicon that will likely be drawn upon in the creation of the remake, and that bring subtle changes along with them. For instance - Advent Children’s visually spectacular fight scenes introduced us to the idea that the characters were all able to leap vast distances and perform acrobatics mid-fight, and we’ve seen this idea carried forward into all subsequent entries of the series, even though it’s somewhat at odds with the more grounded, cyberpunk tone of the original game that earmarked these kinds of superhuman abilities as specifically unusual.

That may seem like a minor quibble, but I would argue that it’s a series of minor changes that have led to the difference in tone and focus between the compilation and the original game, and it comes down to a variety of directorial decisions that continue to be pertinent. For example, in Advent Children, the writing team made a decision to base Cloud’s character around what people would most remember from the game, and decided that would probably be the Cloud that we see at the beginning of the game. This decision was in play as early as his cameo in Kingdom Hearts, and for as inconsequential as it may have seemed then, it’s carried a rippling effect with it. By choosing to write the character in a way that they felt most fans would recognize, they also chose to downplay the growth and the specific quirks that wound up making that character interesting - a repeated issue with many of the characters.

Likewise, because the compilation prioritizes its returning Final Fantasy VII fans, it also tends to prioritize fanservice and recognizable, digestable moments over the overarching narrative of the world of Final Fantasy VII. One memorable example would be a cute Yuffie cameo in the midst of the Wutai War in Crisis Core, a war we are told repeatedly was extremely brutal and which actually destroyed Yuffie’s home and embittered her for years thereafter. The result is a story that’s at odds with itself due to tonal and character inconsistency. The prioritization of a quick moment of familiar joy robs the character of her impact in the long term, and this pattern is repeated for many other characters throughout.

Of course, the compilation has changed more than tone and framing of characters, and has also contributed several ideas to the world of Final Fantasy VII that are now in play. For example, the idea that upon death, people return to the Lifestream, whereby their spiritual energy is used by the planet to create new life. This is a distinctly animist idea that the Compilation has leaned away from, as they cannot cameo dead characters if those characters have since been reincarnate as trees. The compilation has since introduced the notion that a person’s soul and consciousness not only stays intact, but that they can come into contact with the living - an idea that’s fundamentally at odds with the themes of life, loss, death, existentialism and uncertainty that are extant in the original game.

Finally, though not least significantly, Polygon’s An Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 reveals that the reason Advent Children and subsequently the compilation was created was to save Square Enix from financial ruin, not to continue the story for its own sake. It is important to acknowledge the reality that Final Fantasy VII is bankable, and the reason for the remake to begin with may very well be that bankability rather than a good faith intention to retell a story that touched many. The episodic nature of the release does nothing to help that faith, nor does the fact that initial development was outsourced to a third party.

What was so special about FFVII

“So what?” you might ask. Even if there are a ton of changes, and those change the direction and tone of the game, does that really mean it won’t or can’t be good? To that - the jury is out. But I don’t particularly care if the FFVII remake is a good video game - I care if it’s a good representation of FFVII.

I admit without reservation that FFVII is, to use a technical term, anime trash. It has lots of rule of cool sequences that keep the game light, bits of spotty translation, and narrative stumbles. It is not a perfect work. But there is a reason why it was enduring; there was meaning to it, and that meaning was what made it special and unique.

FFVII was a ponderous game. It seldom presented an idea without later exploring and unpacking it. Its characters are seldom what they appear, the mission they undergo is hardly as noble as it seems, and what you expected to happen simply didn’t. It’s rife with deliberate ambiguity and doesn’t work overly hard to explain itself. Its story is shot through with uncertainty, about identity, faith, morality, justice, and every other waymark we use to navigate our life. Its most memorable moments rest in the loss of that certainty, and its most triumphant in the character’s perseverance regardless.

Though FFVII is primarily remembered and beloved for how it made people feel, it wasn’t written to be deliberately provocative or emotionally manipulative. The story was deeply impacted by a real-world loss, and the mandate of the team at the time was to convey that loss for how it truly felt, without the celluloid gloss and tropes like a dying speech that have since proliferated through the compilation. There was an honesty, an integrity and a complexity to this story that caused people to argue in earnest that it was the first video game that could truly be considered a piece of art.

I think the ephemeral nature of these qualities often leads people to conclude that FFVII is mainly loved due to “nostalgia,” but that’s a dismissive take that fails to acknowledge the deliberateness and consistency of its themes and ideas. The same care has very obviously not been given to any of the subsequent FFVII games.

In other words: this was never going to be an easy game to remake. A remake worthy of standing on the same pedestal as the original would require the same careful dedication to thematic consistency and integrity, to tone and feeling as the original. It would require careful thought to the impact and presentation of each of the monumental changes demanded by the new technology and platform.

Square-Enix has yet to do anything to suggest that it is up to this task. I have tremendous empathy for the development team that is taking on this task, but that doesn’t mean I have faith in their ability to really, truly, pull it off.

[spicyredpaladin]

Bequeathed - A Birthday Fic for Lance

Bequeathed is the third standalone installment of Blue’s Altean Lance AU. The other installments are not necessary for the enjoyment of this writing, but I would appreciate the views.

Information

Rating: General Audiences Pairings: Alfor/Lance, Blaytz/Lance, Gyrgan/Lance, Lance/Trigel, Lance/Zarkon Word Count: 820 Additional Tags: Altean Lance, Tokes of Affection, Love, Birthday Fluff

AO3 Link

Full fic below the cut.

Alanci grinned excitedly, laughing as a strong hand ushered him along. He fidgeted giddily with the ends of the blindfold that was tight firmly over his eyes. He heard his ‘captor’, who he knew to be Blaytz from the moment the other entered Alanci’s room at bedtime, chuckling to himself as they made their way dow what Alanci assumed was a hallway. He heard a door slide open and was quickly lead through it, the gears whirring and locks clicking as it sealed them away. Unable to help himself, Alanci spoke.

“Blaytz, can I take the blindfold off now, or is this part of the game~?”

A small chorus of laughter met his joke, and Alanci broke into a bright smile. Blaytz kissed the Altean’s cheek and removed the blindfold, wrapping his arms around the young man. Before them stood Alfor, who was standing next to a table that bore 3 holograms, one of Zarkon, one of Trigel, and one of Gyrgan, from left to right, all three smiling lovingly at Alanci as their laughter tapered off. Blaytz guided the young man into a chair set before the holograms, taking up a position on the opposite side from Alfor as the king reached out and ruffled Alanci’s hair. Each of the paladins spoke in turn.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it for you birthday, Alanci. We’ve hit an unexpected snag in our research and I couldn’t leave,” Zarkon began.

“And I had meant to be there as well. But two of the colonies of the Belt are becoming restless and wish to reinstate their long held feud,” Trigel continued.

“Please forgive me as well. Another city has been destroyed by earthquakes, and they needed me to help rebuild,” Grygan finished.

Alanci smiled and shook his head, laughing softly.

“You’re all here now, even if it can’t be in person. This is more than my birthdays before I met the five of you, and it satisfies me just as well as having you here.”

Blaytz and Alfor shared a grin before the latter spoke.

“I told you all that Alanci wouldn’t be disappointed. Now, are you all ready?”

The holograms all nodded, and Blaytz picked up a box from the table, holding it out to Alanci. The Altean took it excitedly, drawing in a breath as he looked it over. The parcel was wrapped in pure white paper and tied off with a blue and gold bow. Alanci wasted no time opening it, tears springing to his eyes as he saw what lay inside.

The others watched quietly as their lover took out the silver chain within, his delicate fingers tracing the stones perfectly set into their fixtures. A Nalquodian sapphire and Rygnirathian topaz sat proudly beside the Altean ruby and Dalterion emerald that flanked a perfect black diamond that Diabazaal was famous for. Alanci held his breath, tears welling in his eyes and spilling down his cheeks. Alfor knelt before him, gently wiping away the tears as they fell.

“None of that, now. This is supposed to be a happy gift, darling. A token of our love for you,” he said softly.

Blaytz set a gentle, warm hand on the young Altean’s back, stroking small circles through his shirt. Alfor gently took the necklace from his love’s hands, fastening it about his neck and giving him a loving kiss.

“A token so that, no matter what the future may bring, you will never forget the love that you have shared with each of the five of us. A love that has made us the luckiest beings in this entire universe. And so that you might think of each of us even when we are apar,.” he murmured, taking care to be loud enough so the others could hear him as well.

Alanci smiled softly, his lips trembling as he spoke, his hands took hold of one Alfor’s and one of Blaytz, his eyes settling on each of them before he looked to the holograms.

“There is nothing in this universe that could make me forget how much I love you all. And nothing that could keep me from thinking of any of you, especially when we can’t be near each other. Please, believe me when I say that this is the best birthday you all have ever given me,” Alanci reassured.

Blaytz gave the young Altean a drink, and the six continued their small party, locked away from the world for those brief moments, laughing and telling one another of their adventures since they’d been apart. When Blaytz finally walked Alanci back to bed, the young man was awash with joy, his hands finding themselves at the new necklace again and again. Alanci knew then that he would never remove it, and that only death could keep him from loving the ones who had gifted it to him, the five paladins that held the key of his heart.