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[thismeinteil]

Several years in the making, tsunamods has just released the ultimate mod for the original version of FF7. Titled Echo-S, it does various things to upgrade the aging game, most notably adding full voice acting and a day/night cycle. There are other various changes available, as well, including upgraded character models and backgrounds. Even a mod that ups the frame rate to 30 or 60 FPS, including cinematics.

So, if you ever wanted to play and upgraded version of FF7 with no story changes, like those found in the "remake," check it out.

 

[Spukc]

Wow so cool!
Can i run this on steam donk?

 

[Boneless]

Ehhh, I really want a remaster of FFVII, but voice acting? No thank you. A day/night cycle? Who cares.

 

[thismeinteil]

Wow so cool!
Can i run this on steam donk?

Guessing you mean Deck. Not sure. Have to check and see if their mod manager, 7th Heaven, runs on it.

Ehhh, I really want a remaster of FFVII, but voice acting? No thank you. A day/night cycle? Who cares.

Always gotta be one.

You can still download the mod/s and disable voices. Still improves the graphics and sounds.

 

[mortal]

That's pretty neat.

The realistic models with those textures make it resemble FF8 in a way.
Can't say the voice acting is bringing anything interesting to the experience. Came off a bit cheesy with some of those line deliveries tbh.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Where's the mod?

 

[Jack Package]

It’s like they worked super hard to suck he soul out of it, good God.

 

[JimboJones]

Wow, those new model are so bizarre looking on the old backgrounds

 

[GametimeUK]

So much hard work went into this mod and it comes out stinking of absolute garbage. I feel for those that created this mod.

 

[begotten]

The fact there's options to change the in-game avatars already makes this soulless. Why would you pick shitty cropped renders over the original artwork?

 

[lh032]

theres a better version, we call it the ff7 remake.

 

[AREYOUOKAY?]

No thanks.

 

[Danjin44]

Good, people can play this one if they want 1:1 remade of the game so badly, while FFVIIR can do its own thing without people getting triggered by it.

 

[Rykan]

I was watching it and while I was watching I kept thinking: "This is nice, but when are you going to show us the part where you replace the original models with terrible ones that completely clash with the original games aesthetic? Wait for it...waaiiitt for it....and there it is!"

Every single attempt to improve the models of FF7 ends in failure and looks terrible. Either create new models that fit the style of the old ones or just leave them be. Every single "Graphic improvement" mod to replace the character models with new ones looks worse. Every. Single. One.

 

[64bitmodels]

Every single attempt to improve the models of FF7 ends in failure and looks terrible.

nope... the blocky avatars in the original game honestly prevent me from being able to take the story seriously not when you've got a bunch of lego people running around

How do they even clash with the aesthetic anyways? they almost always look better and fit the environments better
When you've got pretty, fully rendered 3d backgrounds it makes 0 sense to have polygonal weirdos walking around with primitive animations. FF8, 9, and 10 don't do that shit and they're infinitely better looking games for that alone.

I'm more concerned about the UI, it looks terrible. The older UI worked fine. And that voice acting is just eugh...

 

[jshackles]

I might be interested in the voice acting mod. Otherwise... eeeeeh.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Man… I appreciate the effort that went into this, but voiced dialog is almost always a net negative in JRPGs.

A. The writing is so bad that even talented professional voice actors can’t make it sound convincing

B. There’s an awkward pause at the end of every line so it doesn’t flow anything like a real conversation

C. They display a whole block of text on the screen and you can read it in a fraction of the time it takes them to voice it, so most of the time you’re just waiting for them to annoyingly say the thing you already know they’re going to say


It’s so awful, I seriously don’t get why JRPGs do this.

Also gotta give props to 13 sentinels for being one of the few games that does it right. You can set the delay between lines to 0 (no idea why this had to be a user-adjustable setting but it’s a start) and set it to auto-advance, and it actually sounds like a legit anime instead of people reading shit off a screen for you.

 

[Arsic]

The ultimate mod ? I shudder to think what garbage hit before this .

 

[BryceNobody]

I was watching it and while I was watching I kept thinking: "This is nice, but when are you going to show us the part where you replace the original models with terrible ones that completely clash with the original games aesthetic? Wait for it...waaiiitt for it....and there it is!"

Every single attempt to improve the models of FF7 ends in failure and looks terrible. Either create new models that fit the style of the old ones or just leave them be. Every single "Graphic improvement" mod to replace the character models with new ones looks worse. Every. Single. One.

These were the only updated models from the Remako Mod that didn’t completely suck.

 

[Rykan]

nope... the blocky avatars in the original game honestly prevent me from being able to take the story seriously not when you've got a bunch of lego people running around

How do they even clash with the aesthetic anyways? they almost always look better and fit the environments better
When you've got pretty, fully rendered 3d backgrounds it makes 0 sense to have polygonal weirdos walking around with primitive animations.
I'm more concerned about the UI, it looks terrible. The older UI worked fine

Final Fantasy 7 puts a lot of emphasis on color and lighting in its environments The characters are brightly colored and lid as well, so that they fit into the aesthetic of the scene.

Just look how dull the characters look against the backdrop. Now compare this to the original

The characters look and feel much more part of the scene here. They are far more colorful.

The biggest reason why these characters have to look look the way they do is because of the animations. Final Fantasy 7 uses very simple but overexaggerated animations to show the emotions or intent of the characters. You can see this in the walking animation, speaking animations. When they shrug, or pose. You can't just replace these models with more detailed ones and then expect it to work, and it clearly doesn't work.

 

[Knightime_X]

The art style of the main characters feels like a mismatch with everything else.
Has a jarring unappealing effect.

 

[Lethal01]

I was watching it and while I was watching I kept thinking: "This is nice, but when are you going to show us the part where you replace the original models with terrible ones that completely clash with the original games aesthetic? Wait for it...waaiiitt for it....and there it is!"

Every single attempt to improve the models of FF7 ends in failure and looks terrible. Either create new models that fit the style of the old ones or just leave them be. Every single "Graphic improvement" mod to replace the character models with new ones looks worse. Every. Single. One.

This is why I'm so excited for Ever Crisis

It looks perfect.

 

[thismeinteil]

I was watching it and while I was watching I kept thinking: "This is nice, but when are you going to show us the part where you replace the original models with terrible ones that completely clash with the original games aesthetic? Wait for it...waaiiitt for it....and there it is!"

Every single attempt to improve the models of FF7 ends in failure and looks terrible. Either create new models that fit the style of the old ones or just leave them be. Every single "Graphic improvement" mod to replace the character models with new ones looks worse. Every. Single. One.

You may prefer the Ninostyle ones.

Got the big ones.


Or the Chibi ones.

 

[Kilau]

I appreciate their passion but it's not for me, the AI upscaled backgrounds look awful.

 

[64bitmodels]

Final Fantasy 7 uses very simple but overexaggerated animations to show the emotions or intent of the characters. You can see this in the walking animation, speaking animations. When they shrug, or pose. You can't just replace these models with more detailed ones and then expect it to work, and it clearly doesn't work.

as a guy who plays with these mods enabled... very few animations feel out of place with these models on. Shrugs, poses, walking, talking... it all looks natural and decent to me.
Like even in that scene you showed everything looks ok, there's no janky visuals or animations that look out of place

They work better with the story for one, if a game like this is going to have writing like that you need more realistic appropriate visuals.
They also fit in better for combat scenarios because you aren't switching between low poly lego Cloud and his actual fully rendered version, the game is more consistent as a result

And when the world is that high poly and that well rendered, the characters clash with the backgrounds more than anything else. I don't see how you can say they feel more part of the scene when the rest of the scene is incredibly rendered and well made.... only to have blocky people talking in it. When your backgrounds are that intricately rendered i don't think it makes sense for the main characters to look so.... dated.

There's no other fixed camera game of the era that does this, Resident Evil 2/3 didn't do this, Grim Fandango didn't do this, ffs the later final fantasy games would dump that stuff entirely. I honestly don't see how it looks more out of place for being more contemporary

This is why I'm so excited for Ever Crisis

It looks perfect.

They downgraded the environments to fit the character models, great! Now instead of the game's CGI looking 10 years ahead of its time it looks like it came out 20 years ago!

fuck that.....

 

[Lethal01]

They downgraded the environments to fit the character models, great! Now instead of the game's CGI looking 10 years ahead of its time it looks like it came out 20 years ago!

The environments look nicer than the OG

And yeah putting realistic models in these environments ruins the look of the OG

 

[thismeinteil]

The environments look nicer than the OG

And yeah putting realistic models in these environments ruins the look of the OG

While Ever Crisis does look pretty good graphically, I'm not playing a free to play FF7 reimagining filled with loot boxes.

 

[fart town usa]

Final Fantasy 7 puts a lot of emphasis on color and lighting in its environments The characters are brightly colored and lid as well, so that they fit into the aesthetic of the scene.

Just look how dull the characters look against the backdrop. Now compare this to the original

The characters look and feel much more part of the scene here. They are far more colorful.

The biggest reason why these characters have to look look the way they do is because of the animations. Final Fantasy 7 uses very simple but overexaggerated animations to show the emotions or intent of the characters. You can see this in the walking animation, speaking animations. When they shrug, or pose. You can't just replace these models with more detailed ones and then expect it to work, and it clearly doesn't work.

Looks like something from Dink Smallwood

I really hate to knock the efforts of the homebrew community cause I generally really respect what they do. For me though, I want old games to look old. Granted, I also want to get the best image quality as I can get but I really dislike it when things are smoothed out. Just doesn't agree with me whatsoever.

It's the same reason I'm not interested in the Seamless HD Resident Evil games. They look great but they're too smooth. Makes me feel gross.

To each their own though, download the mod and knock yourself out. Legit hope it's the best experience with FF7 that you've ever had.

 

[Jack Package]

Disagree big time there. They look like a South Park parody version of the original game.

 

[Rat Rage]

This might be the worst "mod" I've ever seen...

 

[Rentahamster]

I applaud the passion and the effort, but I'm not impressed, to be quite honest.

 

[bender]

while FFVIIR can do its own thing

 

[Comandr]

Oof. This ain’t it fam. The voice acting is cringe. The day night cycle is neat but unnecessary. The new models showcase how primitive the animations are to portray emotion. Like watching a play. Everything is exaggerated. And the models look so fucking small in 7th heaven what the hell? This one needs to go back in the oven.

 

[Klosshufvud]

I don't get converting these old games to 16:9. Their maps were purposely designed around 4:3 ratio. The maps lose a ton of cohesion with the display being wider than intended. People need to stop consider wider image to be objectively superior all the time. I'd argue that in video games, 4:3 was fine and even better in some cases.

Besides this, like others mentioned the mod models just clash too hard with the base artistic design.

 

[Efren is G.O.A.T.]

I prefer the original as it is. I'd rather have mods that enhance the gameplay experience.

 

[DavidGzz]

I may buy it on PC now. Looks good to me. The backgrounds are nice, character models don't look dumb as hell, and the voice acting is good imo.

 

[Boneless]

This is why I'm so excited for Ever Crisis

It looks perfect.

I love how ever crisis is looking.

Making this a free to play mobile game is such betrayal, it's going to be terrible.

 

[Teslerum]

First off don't need a voice acting mod and prefer other models than the ones used (wrong artstyle, imo). I'll stick to reunion for the re-translation with SYW's AI upscale mod thanks. But, seesh at the argument for low poly models, especially regarding 7.

Square themselves weren't happy with using them and they were a leftover from earlier development. Extremely visible in how they clash with the models used in battle and in the CGI. Square moved on from that immediately with VIII and IX and went for consistency and detail as far as possible. There's nothing wrong with improving them.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

This looks terrible.

 

[Yoshichan]

I don't think I've ever seen something as disgusting as this.

 

[wvnative]

Wow what a bunch of cynical old farts in this thread. I find this to be an awesome alternative to 7R, as a cool new way to enjoy the original.

For those who don't like the new visuals, that's all optional. The voice mod can be enabled standalone without any other features.

 

[TheContact]

I’m one of the few people not bothered by old graphics. FF7 didn’t even age that well especially if you compare it to XG which has fared better with age. The only thing I’d like to see in FF7 and XG is just a proper localization.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Several years in the making

I hope they had fun doing it at least, because imo it looks like shit.

 

[wvnative]

I’m one of the few people not bothered by old graphics. FF7 didn’t even age that well especially if you compare it to XG which has fared better with age. The only thing I’d like to see in FF7 and XG is just a proper localization.

Obviously not official, but the creators of the mod updated the translation to sound more natural with the voices.

 

[Yumi]

Final Fantasy 8 tease in the end?

 

[wvnative]

Final Fantasy 8 tease in the end?

The creator of this mod is skipping to 9, but someone else has taken over 8, but it will still use the name Echo S.

 

[Neff]

It’s like they worked super hard to suck he soul out of it, good God.

You summed up my thoughts perfectly.

 

[Yumi]

The creator of this mod is skipping to 9, but someone else has taken over 8, but it will still use the name Echo S.

Thanks. I love the art, world, and sound design of 8. Think it would really benefit from an overhaul like this. Especially if they could clean up the real time FMV transition and get a stable 60 FPS.

On topic though, I love FF7 but I’ve played it to death. Incredible work and commitment here though.

 

[wvnative]

Thanks. I love the art, world, and sound design of 8. Think it would really benefit from an overhaul like this. Especially if they could clean up the real time FMV transition and get a stable 60 FPS.

On topic though, I love FF7 but I’ve played it to death. Incredible work and commitment here though.

 

[wvnative]

Thanks. I love the art, world, and sound design of 8. Think it would really benefit from an overhaul like this. Especially if they could clean up the real time FMV transition and get a stable 60 FPS.

On topic though, I love FF7 but I’ve played it to death. Incredible work and commitment here though.

Sorry for double post it glitched out on me