#i kinda want to do one on majora's mask and themes of grief. that's an option

[autumnoakes]

trying to figure out how to say 'i think i'm depressed' without sounding like i'm trying to make a meme (i'm not. this is genuine. i don't know how to fix it)

[amiharana]

A very loose prompt: a while ago I found a bunch of Stone tower temple theme covers (especially NostalgiCore's and TheNamelessBard's covers), and that got me in a Revalink mood: first, a pretty straightforward idea of Revali and BotW!Link somehow walking around Stone Tower ruins and wondering just what those ruins were in its prime, and second: the tunes living on, and Revali or Link dancing to one of them while the other is watching (also, the fact that one of the catchiest fan lyrics go "danger lurks around every bend, you cannot succed alone; sing the song, let go of your grief, solider comes whose heart is stone" could be pretty easily made to fit revalink: both Link and Revali have reasons to craft an image of themselves as an unsheakeble warrior (Link literally stopped talking out of fear of saying the wrong thing, and Revali tries to look like the most arrogant Rito to ever walk Hyrule, despite evidence to the countrary) as someone who may as well have a heart of stone, and both of them have things they grieve about, so them going together through Ikana valley - a place that requires putting ghosts to rest - would sound a lot like fulfilling the lyrics. Bonus points if they actually need to solve the Stone Tower puzzles together to go back to BotW and key Ikana characters are still around to help them(not really ship relevant, I just thought it would be lowkey funny when BotW boys would bump into Ikana undead and learn that one of the Hero incarnations had shown up here already).

anon i first want to sincerely apologize it took me so long to answer this ask because (1) i never finished playing majora's mask so i can't write a good enough fic to do justice to mm lore and (2) it was sent during a time when i was probably prepping for an exam. i'm still prepping for exams, i have another one next wednesday 😭

but i still took the time to go find and listen the covers you were mentioned! i hope these were the right ones, because they went kinda hard ☝️😩 they both made me think about a tangled au like flynn rider!revali x rapunzel!link, like that one scene where everyone is dancing together in the town center or whatever lol. i couldn't find the one you mentioned with fan lyrics though but if you'd like to send them, or if anyone else knows where it's from, please do!

iirc, termina is a completely different world from hyrule and oot!link somehow gets in after an altercation with skull kid who has the majora's mask. spoilers for people who haven't played mm? but i just read that termina was a creation of skull kid's own mind so it's not even a real world 😳 so i'm interested to know how link and revali got into the stone tower temple in the first place, or if another temple of the same name perhaps exists in hyrule analogous to the one in termina. like would they run into skull kid somewhere in botw's hyrule? or find the mask on their own (since majora's mask is available in botw as dlc) and somehow termina still exists within the mask? link why the fuck would you put on the mask what da hell?

i would assume that termina's existence relies on skull kid's active envisionment of it and link's constant resetting with the ocarina that causes the perpetual three-day time loop and prevents the moon from falling. and in addition, that termina was created with the purpose of being skull kid's plaything to . hurt and kill people out of his frustration? like i said, i never got to finish mm so i'm kind of iffy on the details of the story sawrryy ✋😭 but it's like. does termina go against the conventions of time? if we assume that termina is a creation of skull kid's imagination, will it be able to continue existing as its own world? will it always be in a three-day loop or after oot!link saves termina, does it continue in a regular continuous flow of time, therefore resulting in the ruins of the stone tower temple? would places like clock town still be thriving thousands of years later? like what if link and revali met skull kid somehow in botw, pissed him off, got dragged in termina, and had to go exactly through what oot!link did in order to escape LMAOOO

i could imagine revali and link bickering about how the other was the reason why they got into this mess, and then they step into clock town from within the clock tower and are completely shocked because they were just in the lost woods and now they're in the middle of a town??? you mentioned wanting to see them meet key mm characters specifically from ikana, but since i don't know any of them (i'm sorry again 😭), imagine link and revali meeting anju at the stockpot inn just trying to get a room to sleep and anju being like. huh. your name is link, too? and having to explain to revali n link that a child in green with the same name and disposition as botw!link had come to termina years ago and saved their town from the moon falling and destroying it. and revali and link are just like. The moon was WHAT? and a CHILD saved you????

link and revali joining in during the carnival of time, and maybe the carnival of time now has a segment where they retell the story of the child in green who saved termina through song and dance, and link gets roped into dancing with the townspeople during the stone temple tower piece. he doesn't know the dance at all, but one thing about link is that he picks up very quickly on everything 😙 so revali is off to the sides of the town center with everyone else crossing his arms, watching link as he begins to catch onto the choreography and keeping in step with the rest of the dancers. he spins and twirls and claps with the other dancers, a smile growing on his face as the song continues, and revali is completely enamored. link had always been beautiful to him, but he was constantly surprisingly revali. this might become one of revali's favorite aspects of link's beauty now.

by the end of the dance, link is panting, sweating, and his cheeks are flushed with a rosy glow. revali's eyes are still on him; they never left link at all. someone nudges revali with their elbow and he glances at them briefly. "that one yours?" they say with a smirk, pointing their chin at link. revali looks back at link, who's smiling brightly thanking and complimenting the other dancers. the little hylian then catches revali's eye, and his bright grin becomes a shy, but warm smile.

revali's gaze softens. "he's not a object to possess," he says to the stranger. he watches as link bows slightly to the other dancers in farewell, then begins to jog back over to revali. "but if there's any possession occuring, it would be his hold on my heart." the stranger says nothing, eyes wide.

once link approaches, his jog falters into a walk. "have fun?" revali says, rather softly.

link nods, smiling. "i didn't think i'd learn it that fast, but it was a really fun dance."

revali hums. "well, it looked like you had fun doing it. ready to turn in for the night?"

"mhm," link replies, and revali can hear the drowsiness beginning to seep into his ever-slumberous songbird's voice. the little hylian then moves forward to cling to revali's wing, and the rito glances at the stranger who's been watching their exchange the entire time.

"enjoy the rest of your evening," revali says primly to him. he tosses his braids over his shoulder as they turn away to walk back to the inn. while he didn't "own" link, it was true, at least, that his heart was for link to own.

i don't want this to get too long and end up misremembering details or something, but imagine some of the lyrics of the stone tower temple song resonating too deeply with revali and link after they think about it later, so they ask anju about it and she tells them about the actual stone tower temple in ikana valley that the song talks about and maybe that's how they end up traveling to the temple, exploring the ruins, somehow getting booby-trapped inside, and having to complete old-school dungeon puzzles to get out 😄

that's all from me for now. if anyone else is interested in writing for this prompt, go for it 🫣

[auspiciousotter]

The M6 as Zelda games

(Moving some stuff over from my Insta and here is the first of my headcanons)

Asra- Majora’s Mask

I was tempted to give this one to Julian because: dark, edgy, fan favorite, but after some thought I liked this one better for Asra.

The game deals with grief and loss, and the different ways people handle it. Asra is someone who has dealt with a lot of loss in his life, and maybe doesn’t have the best way of processing it? (Like glad I’m alive again but bro…)

The game itself starts with Link searching for his dear friend, much like Asra searching for MC.

Julian- Twilight Princess

Of course I still had to give him an edgy game, he’s an edgy boi XD

This game deals with duality as its theme, in particular, the idea of light/dark and how that relates to good/evil. Darkness is shown as not being inherently evil, but like light, having the capacity for both.

This is something that I think Julian struggles with, the idea that he is tainted by darkness, but still a good person who deserves good things, especially when transformed into birblian (cough like wolf link cough)

Nadia- Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity

I was tempted to do Breath of the Wild, because I felt like Nadia had a lot in common with that Zelda, but she’s not really the focus of that game. Thankfully there was a spin off that explored it more!

Let’s see, we have a this princess who is interested in technology, wants to prove herself but feels she isn’t being taken seriously by her family, and is overcome by guilt for not being able to save the world around her.

She also has that sort of commanding presence Urbosa has. (and they're both gorgeous)

Muriel- Breath of the Wild

Okay so, this is kinda the closest we get to just simple living Link. He can just wander the world, maybe build a house, pick up chickens, pet some dogs. And if you use an amiibo, you can even get a wolf companion so...

Also, it’s up to the player how involved they want to be with the story, how much they want to engage and help other people, but connecting with others does ultimately make the final battle easier. It’s not quite the same lesson as it is with Muriel, but it’s sorta close.

Look I just want this poor man to be able to have a nice relaxing life okay, and this one was very set your own pace.

Portia- Wind Waker

Probably the easiest choice.

Adventure? Check. Pirates? Double Check! Cute as can be? ALL OF THE CHECKS!

Also it’s canonical that Portia would go to any lengths to protect her brother so if he had gotten kidnapped by a giant bird, you can bet she’s gonna go kick some fowl butt.

Lucio- Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love

Okay hear me out!

For those who don’t know (because this was not released in NA or Europe) this story is about a middle age man who gets transported to this fairy tale world in which he’s the main character, and the goal is to woo all sorts of maidens and dance with one at the ball. He totally believes that he’s more important than he is, but most people actually find him disgusting. Also he has a troupe of equally incompetent companions (cough courtiers cough)

In all games, Tingle is considered spoiled, immature, and a disappointment to his parent. Also in Wind Waker he basically forces slave labor….

Lucio (but for realsies)- Skyward Sword

Specifically I think he has a lot in common with Groose.

He thinks he’s the main character, the hero who’s gonna save the day and get the girl. Is definitely a bully and gets away with it too.

In the end, he changes character, becoming less full of himself, taking a backseat to the real hero (MC). He helps in the ways he can, and ends up being crucial to beating evil, but not in the lead role he’d imagined for himself.

(He also has a lot of that Midna from TP energy in having a selfish agenda, but after receiving kindness learns to care more, but Julian already claimed that game)

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

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But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

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So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

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Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

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One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

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At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

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Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[faelapis]

For the fandom comparison ask, Madoka vs Majora Mask

comparison under the cut! 

Which has the better protagonist: madoka, in light of being an actual character with a personality. she’s not the most interesting girl in the world, but i think she serves the story well. you kinda need someone like madoka to star in juxtaposition to how dark the world is. sorry link, i love you a great deal, but 99% of that is due to the character i’ve built up in my head.

Which has the better villain (spoilers for both): the incubators are a great threat with interesting motivation, but the ending sort of sidelines the idea of them as “villains”. the real problem in madoka is the rules of the game. you change the rules, you change the way the players behave - so in the very last scenes of the last episode, they aren’t… all that threatening anymore, but without a reform arc. it’s not cheap, it makes sense, but it’s not satisfying in terms of their characterization either.

as for majora’s mask: skull kid has some genuinely emotional moments. in the end, he doesn’t get what he wanted (the four giants staying), but he finds a new friend in link, and the fairies forgive him. the latter ends up being one of the messages of the giants, and indeed the game, even if the theme of forgiveness is kinda cheapened with the 11th hour “sentient mask” twist. yes, that twist is foreshadowed by the other bosses and their masks, but still. 

the characters don’t ignore what skullkid did, though. it’s left ambiguous how much of his actions was his own resentment and how much was the mask, which i like. we know some things (like robbing the happy mask salesman) was him. when it comes to the mask itself, it’s an interesting monster, even if they don’t have much character outside of their little speech to link when giving him the fierce deity mask. they do perceive link as the “bad guy”, or maybe they’re just toying with him… but it’s just an interesting little moment. not much more.

so… i’m gonna give majora’s mask the point, but more for skull kid than majora!

Which has the better plot: madoka. i don’t feel like i really need to explain myself here, but i will say this - my pal @gaytog said earlier that it’s “suffering for suffering’s sake”, which… i’m not sure i agree with? 

the individual characters don’t really become better from it, no, but it was never supposed to be the “character building” kind of suffering. the hopelessness and cause of the suffering itself is supposed to be problematic. it’s the rules of the game that pollutes the role of the magical girl. and yet. we’re seeing the world from the pov of a character who is an idealist, who refuses to stop believing in the heroism of it despite all evidence to the contrary. being a magical girl is supposed to be a good thing, and she doesn’t give up until that becomes true. even if it means she has to fight for all eternity.

majora’s mask has a good story and some of the sidequests are connected, but… it still feels like a plethora of stories about grief, not one plot. the deku people don’t care about the goron plight, the gorons don’t care about the zoras, the zoras don’t care what’s going on in ikana. everyone are just dealing with their own shit. that’s fine, but not great, and in a game so heavily about this shared dread and tragedy about to befall everyone, it’s a little weak that the characters are barely aware of what’s going on outside their own bubble. maybe that’s part of ~the point, but still. point stays with madoka.

Which has better cinematography:

…c’mon. i know madoka isn’t like, on the level as something like a ghibli movie, but it’s still pretty to look at. yes, there are some frames that don’t look great, but the same is true for, yknow, steven universe, and i still admire both shows for their use of visual symbolism, art style, color schemes and hand-drawn animation. (+ let’s not forget, even in the polished 3ds version, all the character models in majora’s mask aren’t great either).

Which one is more fun: this one’s pretty much impossible to be fair with, since one is playing a fun video game and the other is just… watching a show. a tragic one at that.  so… point goes to majora’s mask!

Which one makes me think the most: madoka! majora’s mask has some interesting storytelling and is a goldmine for the kind of 2edgy theories i love (and i do have a soft spot for the whole “is link dead?” thing), but watching madoka for the first time is an excellent trip, where you slowly realize plot twists in that great “…i’m starting to have a terrible feeling”-way. it gives you just enough hints to what’s really going on without being obvious about it.

Which do I watch when I want to relax: i mean “watch” isn’t even the right word with majora’s mask, but… it still gets the point? it’s a sad game and the “three days remaining” mechanic is stressful as heck, but it’s still a game i can pick up, play one or two sidequests or a temple, and feel satisfied for the day. i even think it’s fun to tempt fate by waiting until the last millisecond to go back in time. with madoka, it doesn’t feel right unless i watch the whole thing. it’s a show that’s greater than the sum of its parts, and i need to reach that ending to really be satisfied with it.

Which do I watch when I want it to consume me: madoka, because i always feel the need to finish it, unlike majora’s mask. still, MM is certainly consuming when i do take the time to play through all of it. it’s one of those games i will gladly 100% every time, getting all the masks, items and heart pieces. 

Which is my favorite: ahHH this is hard : D i don’t really have a clear favorite, but i’m gonna go say majora’s mask right now. there’s no “gameplay” section of this ask meme, unfortunately, but it’s a better ~overall experience, i think.