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What is it about FFVII in particular that made people crave a remake so badly?

It was a masterpiece and its graphics aged terribly...the polygon graphics anyway.

The backgrounds are still fantastic.
Provided you don't play it on an HD monitor or HDTV because they'll look blurry and awful as shit.

Hell, even on my CRT 1998 monitor when I played FFVII on PC the backgrounds already looked blurry at 480i.
 

Pilgrimzero

Member
Music, Killing Aeris, Long hair, actual backstory, that's more than most FF villains.

Actual backstory? Gen enhanced soldier wants to become a god goes rogue to do it. That's his backstory.

I'm not trying to shit on a fan favorite but lets be real, people (including me) liked him cause he had a cool theme song and looked awesome.
 
It was a great game that came out at the time where we are most nostalgic to reflect upon. FF7 has also aged like ass and out of all the entries looks the worst. Easily You look at the ones that came before and after..it looks like doo doo
 

Majmun

Member
Midgar part alone would make an awesome game. But once you leave it....I was overwhelmed.

It's a very special game to me. Iconic characters, interesting story, amazing soundtrack. Can't wait for the remake.
 
Actual backstory? Gen enhanced soldier wants to become a god goes rogue to do it. That's his backstory.

That's an oversimplification. His relation to the Ancients, his role as a legend of the Midgar military, and ultimately their betrayal of him leading to his casting aside of his former identity.

Personally I think one of the reasons he is so popular is that he is actually menacing. In addition to his excellent design, he routinely defeats the main characters at more or less every turn. He does so with little bravado or speeches, he shows up, calls you a worm and kicks your ass sideways. He is also responsible for a lot of mindfuckery with Cloud (and by extension, the player), and of course he directly murders a main character on screen with no hope of stopping it.
 

Real Hero

Member
Unlike other classics like OOT it's extremely hard to back to and play. Especially for those who never originally played it.
 

Sephzilla

Member
Why is Sephiroth great?

He had a really cool look, delivered one of the most shocking/memorable moments in gaming history at the time, has a fairly interesting backstory (plus he was a villain who had a backstory, which still wasn't very common then in games), and he wasn't a pure-evil mustache twirler villain but more a fallen hero who developed a really screwed up perception of right and wrong.
 

Box

Member
I actually think the Ocarina of Time is a good comparison. Both OOT and FF7 were a huge deal when they were released. They were formative games for a lot of people. They kind of threw off the game-y feel that most games have and felt like more of an 'experience' if you know what I'm talking about. And for a lot of people, these were the first games that did that.

The difference in hype for the remake is that OOT's hype was cashed in when Twilight Princess was announced. And that was a pretty big announcement. FF7 was never really followed up on. A remake was teased and the sequels were disappointing.

There's also the fact that an FF7 remake seemed imminent for a very long time. Square remakes a lot of their games and after the tease in 2005, it seemed like a weird omission. So it had the Half-Life 3 effect where it seemed like it had to be being worked on. Add last year's reminder of the fact that it never happened after a decade and you have a meme game.
 

Par Score

Member
FF7 is pretty low down the list of Great Final Fantasies, but it's right at the top of the list of Great Final Fantasies That Look Like Ass.

It sits in a perfect sweet spot of jank-ass graphics, jank-ass translation and jank-ass gameplay, that makes nostalgia goggles completely incompatible with the experience of actually going back and replaying it.

FF6 and earlier are probably going to be exactly as you remember them if those are your jam. FF8 and later are also not as far down the jank curve, on top of generally being not as well loved.

FF7 is a perfect storm of jank-nostalgia.
 
I think the main reason is it's most people's first RPG.

This.

The PlayStation took a huge bite out of the mainstream and as such, invited many people into the world of gaming for the first time. Therefore, Final Fantasy VII is likely to have been many people's first RPG.

A lot of them are still trying to work out what the "VII" was for and are entirely unaware that there were Final Fantasy games before that one.
 

Chao

Member
I remember it looking like shit back in the day, because I had a N64 at the time and when my friend tried to show me how awesome it was I was like "uuuh... yeah sure" . I have no emotional attachment to it since I didn't own a Psone and never had the chance to play it.

Now I own it on PS3, but stopped playing when I got to what I guess is the first village. It's really ugly and I don't find it fun.
 
I've never played Final Fantasy VII or any other games in the franchise for that matter so this is an outsider's perspective.

It's mainly the PS3 tech demo that made people want it. The tech demo came before the remake craze and subsequent oversaturation of remakes. It seems special because the tech demo was the defining vision of a remake.
 

Pimpbaa

Member
Has to be because it's the first rpg people played. Coming off FF6, FF7 was a disappointment to me and it only went downhill from there. I'd probably be mildly interested in the remake if the characters looked like artwork from the game back then (not the ingame art, the drawn picture of Cloud in this thread) and not completely ruined by Nomura's modern character design where he puts the same fucking face on everyone.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
I think its because it was a game designed between two different eras and even as groundbreaking as it was, it still seems held back by the technology of the time.
 

Fusebox

Banned
Eh, all the people saying it's ugly are crazy. Sure the models are chunky but it has some of the best CG cut-scenes of its generation which still look amazing on a Vita OLED screen. I've replayed it a few times over the last few years and am always impressed by how good the settings and location look. Art > Poly count.
 
Killer music and art design, one of the most explosive (literally) JRPG openings ever, one of the best first "acts" in any JRPG and how it relates to what follows was mindblowing, fantastic side content, some mindfuck plot twists, and more "shit just got real" moments than you can shake a stick at.
 
Imagine if one of the most iconic films off all time was only available to watch on VHS.

Now imagine if the owners of that movie kept reminding you of it by making spin offs of it and putting characters from it in other movies and talking about it whenever they release a new movie.

Eh, all the people saying it's ugly are crazy. Sure the models are chunky but it has some of the best CG cut-scenes of its generation which still look amazing on a Vita OLED screen. I've replayed it a few times over the last few years and am always impressed by how good the settings and location look. Art > Poly count.

Game still works great on PSP or Vita but DO NOT try putting it on a TV. Those 2d backgrounds are real nasty blown up.
 

pantsmith

Member
It looks way better in the fuzziness of memory than it does in screenshots, especially if you played it when it came out. People just want to see a version of VII that does justice to the game they *really* played, deep down under the blocky exterior (which frankly I find charming).
 
People saying it's purely because of nostalgia are all off. I never played the game until just a few years ago, and I've always considered it to be one of the most deserving of a remake. 8 and 9 both had advanced enough graphics for the ps1 that you can see them as attractive games, 7, while charming, has not aged well.

And the 4-6 (especially 6) have all aged pretty dang well due to the use of sprites.

My first Final Fantasy was III on the DS by the way
 

Quazar

Member
Is it the remake people wanted? I remember back then people wanted another game in 7s world. People wanted it to continue. No one wanted it to end! Over the years that transformed into settling for at least a remake.
 
Imagine yourself playing games on the PS1, Final Fantasy was probably a lot of people's first experience with a game of that type, especially if you lived in Europe - we NEVER got Final Fantasy VI until the PS1 release, we never got Chrono Trigger until, I think, the Android release a few years ago, Earthbound? Ha.

Final Fantasy VII was the FIRST JRPG I played. Absolutely it was. There really weren't any others.

My experience with JRPG style of games had been Pokemon to that point, but I still had no idea what to expect.

I played the game and went through this world that just seemed alive, a music score that matched the scenes perfectly, characters who, while blocky, were appealing in their style and a battle system that took me a while to get to grips with.

Then I left Midgar.... then it hit me how expansive the game was. An experience like nothing else. I was on an actual adventure and had no idea what to really do, so I had to explore and loved every moment of it.

No one can ever take that experience away from me and I want to be blown away again, the same way I was when I first played it. I said in another thread about the GT Reveal reactions, it was cynical adults going back to being kids. I want to feel like a kid again playing it for the first time. Leaving Midgar for the first time, Cid's dreams being crushed, how the atmosphere of the game changes with Meteor, the chocobo ranch, the airship, the Gold Saucer, that scene....

It's ugly as sin, but I also had nothing else like it to compare it to, so those chibi characters will always be Cloud and Tifa and Sephiroth to me....
 

pantsmith

Member
People saying it's purely because of nostalgia are all off. I never played the game until just a few years ago, and I've always considered it to be one of the most deserving of a remake. 8 and 9 both had advanced enough graphics for the ps1 that you can see them as attractive games, 7, while charming, has not aged well.

And the 4-6 (especially 6) have all aged pretty dang well due to the use of sprites.

My first Final Fantasy was III on the DS by the way

I don't mean to beat the hornets nest or anything, but there is and always will be an unspoken saltiness that Final Fantasy went from Nintendo to Playstation - at the time Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII where the two big games to own each system for, and even then you had people telling other people (who had totally played RPGs before!) they only liked it because it was their first RPG and VI was way better.

Unpopular opinion: if VII had been on the N64 you wouldn't hear that same argument nearly as much. It's a dismissal of a game that was way more to gaming than just the first RPG for normal people (though it was, to be sure). In my eyes its the quintessential JRPG, and at the time there was nothing like it.
 

Carroway

Member
Pointing to an earlier comment. It was the right game at the right time. This game had been marketed to high heavens and it was the first truely large 3D JRPG on the console.

The setting was unique in RPGs for the time. Japanese aesthetics had slowly begun to seep into the american mainstream culture.

Remember a few years earlier (if I remember correctly) Ghost in the Shell had become a sort of cult hit in the states.

Many of trailers and marketing material set up 7 as a very dark and opressive game when in actual fact it was very bright and colorful, when you got out of Midgard. I personally believe that they were trying to evoke some of the same cyberpunk vibes from Ghost in the Shell with the marketing for 7.

Also some the story beats and flawed nature of the protagonists was refreshing to see at the time.

As for a remake. It was the first 3D Final Fantasy and it shows. The different FMV's with different proportions also make it a somewhat of a mess from an aesthetic point of view.
 
1) Great game that has aged poorly (graphics & translation).
2) Advent Children & the PS3 tech demo put the idea in people's minds
3) It sold better than MGS & OoT
4) More time since its release
5) Full fledged remake that's not stuck as an exclusive for a less popular platform
6) It was one of the first RPGs to really explode in sales
 

SkylineRKR

Member
The tech demo was part of it, seemed like S-E would do it on Ps3. Its been on the wishlist ever since.

FFVII introduced me to RPG. It topped the charts and after reading about it in CVG etc, things you could do and places you could visit, I decided to buy it and try it out. I thought 'if its shit then I return it, no loss there'. I was immediately hooked. Midgar was the perfect place to welcome newbies to. It had lots of action, and different gameplay mechanics. The whole Midgar part was, though it was linear (but whats linear? I had no experience with RPG), it was perfect. It was a 6 hour roller coaster and I never put the game down since. I started to understand the laws of JRPG and things that looked too far fetched for me, such as breeding chocobos and beating the weapons, I ultimately managed to do it with a print guide in a magazine. I realized I beat everything I could in my first RPG. I have played every numbered FF since, and expanded to Xenogears, Tales of and loads of others.

But although I wanted a remake back when Ps3 was announced, that sort of faded when Square kept dodging the bullet. I found the original game to be just fine, except for the terrible translation. The remake won't best the original, its impossible because it was my first RPG game and I was in awe. For me the remake is a nice excuse to revisit this world, and see things from a different perspective. Thats why I am not against gameplay changes, I have no problems playing the original. I would've bought the troll port too.
 
It's a dismissal of a game that was way more to gaming than just the first RPG for normal people (though it was, to be sure). In my eyes its the quintessential JRPG, and at the time there was nothing like it.

Yeah it was definitely the most striking in how it did things, in a lot of ways.

I'd played FF1 and 4, along with a smattering of others (Earthbound, CT a bit, Shining Force, Wizardry Gold) and I hold much more fondness for FF7 than I do for those games. I'd attribute it mostly to the 3d graphics and 'cinematic' story telling, along with just the crazy amount of things to do in the game along with its twists and turns with the story. Plus Sephiroth is just a damn good villain. All these parts had been done before, but not so well and doing them together.
 

DeathPeak

Member
What Kefka did in VI is so much more shocking and jaw dropping than Sephiroth killing one main character. Not to mention Kefka's conniving character is much more interesting.
 
I think the main reason is it's most people's first RPG.

.

A lot of young teenagers got a playstation and FF7 was something new. For us who are a bit older and have played a final fantasy game prior to FF7 it was not as special i would think. My favoruite FF game is FFVI,but sure FF7 was a hell of a game and i am super happy about a remake!
 
The music, characters, story, materia system, etc. are all top notch in my opinion. It's just a perfect synthesis of everything I look for in a game. The nostalgia factor plays into it immensely as well. Seeing how these figures from my childhood transform into the modern age is incredibly exciting.
 

Bulzeeb

Member
I think the main reason is it's most people's first RPG.

I am going to agree with you, my first FF was FF5 followed by FF6, I found FF7 to be good but not as good as those 2 and while I think FF6 is the better of the 3 I will always have a soft spot for FF5 based on nostalgia and the excellent job system.
 

Krabboss

Member
People were young and it was either their first experience with an RPG or they were taken in by the spectacle of Square's production value. It also had a lot of components to its world which you didn't really see in other games, particularly in Midgar.

It didn't age great, though. I don't think that means it should be remade (I'd rather the money be put into something else instead of the safest bet of all time), but I suppose some people think it'll mean the same to them now as it did when they were ~10 years old playing it for the first time.
 

Flakster99

Member
There is so much variety to Final Fantasy VII. The music, characters, story, the materia system, etc., there is so much thrown at you and most of it is top notch.

Also, not only was Final Fantasy VII not my first RPG, I replay the game now and again and it still holds my attention. It is still fun. I am ecstatic the remake is finally getting done and I for one cannot wait for it.

If I were to choose a remake of any Final Fantasy game, undoubtedly, Final Fantasy VI would be my pick, but this is a close second. :)
 

Goddard

Member
It's aged awfully.

final-nail-in-english-accent-vs-fluency-myth-coffin.jpg
 
For me it's that I still really enjoy the idea of the game and its mechanics, but the visuals and world navigation have just aged horribly. I hate the pre rendered backgrounds and the character models.
 
I started playing it a few years ago and never did finish it, I just really hate looking at it except for the backgrounds. FF8 and 9 are fine, the SNES games also aged fine, FF7 is some weird awkward pimply teenager.
 
First RPG, Nostalgia, Best Final Fantasy, Best Game, Memories connected with this game & that time, The World and Characters

Different reasons, hard to explain
 
Imagine yourself playing games on the PS1, Final Fantasy was probably a lot of people's first experience with a game of that type, especially if you lived in Europe - we NEVER got Final Fantasy VI until the PS1 release, we never got Chrono Trigger until, I think, the Android release a few years ago, Earthbound? Ha.

Final Fantasy VII was the FIRST JRPG I played. Absolutely it was. There really weren't any others.

My experience with JRPG style of games had been Pokemon to that point, but I still had no idea what to expect.

I played the game and went through this world that just seemed alive, a music score that matched the scenes perfectly, characters who, while blocky, were appealing in their style and a battle system that took me a while to get to grips with.

Then I left Midgar.... then it hit me how expansive the game was. An experience like nothing else. I was on an actual adventure and had no idea what to really do, so I had to explore and loved every moment of it.

No one can ever take that experience away from me and I want to be blown away again, the same way I was when I first played it. I said in another thread about the GT Reveal reactions, it was cynical adults going back to being kids. I want to feel like a kid again playing it for the first time.
Leaving Midgar for the first time, Cid's dreams being crushed, how the atmosphere of the game changes with Meteor, the chocobo ranch, the airship, the Gold Saucer, that scene....

It's ugly as sin, but I also had nothing else like it to compare it to, so those chibi characters will always be Cloud and Tifa and Sephiroth to me....

You're setting yourself up for failure if you think a remake is going to do that.


that's the one unavoidable hurdle this remake won't be able to overcome, the disappointment from people thinking it'll somehow make them feel the same way they did as a kid.
 

True Fire

Member
Severe hardware limitations prevented Final Fantasy VII's amazing game world from being as fleshed out as it could have been. It also suffered from a bad translation and amazing plot twists that were made extremely confusing because of the PSX hardware (and bad translation).
 
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