Then you're letting your dissatisfaction of a small portion of the game that is specifically designed to get you out of your comfort zone and think about the story disproportionately taint your enjoyment of a story that you already love.
Is not just a small portion, for me it’s the most important portion; I don’t think this is an expansion at all, it’s a retcon, as the first thing I said, I don’t see how any of the new plot elements fit within this universe, that’s where my main problem comes from, it’s not just taking me out my comfort zone, it’s taking me to a completely different place where I have no idea what the rules are, and even if that wasn’t the case, for me the execution ruins any chance of anything new having any value, but I guess you understand my point by your example, imagine if Jon Snow went back in time to plot his scheme from the beginning and Peter Dinklage somehow had knowledge of the future but is being somber and menacing with cryptic philosophical lines, then a portal to a new dimension with the Dragons of Destiny is opened and we now have to fight them to change the course of the story, if you were already disappointed with the current ending, that is how I feel about this remake. Many will argue that FF has always been crazy so giant heartless and parallel timelines are not out of the ordinary, but I would say they are out of the ordinary because the rules stablished in the original story should matter more than any new element being added, if it doesn’t at least respect the original rules then it might as well be a completely new game with new characters and a new story. I do like the characterization, personalities, motivations, etc. I agree with that and it’s pretty good, but to me that doesn’t amount to much when the rest of the story doesn’t come together to support that, the story is so off the rails now that the initial grounded motivation of fighting an evil corporation seems meaningless at this point when we already know we can defeat Destiny itself, and the power scaling is so off the charts next non-omega level boss fights won’t make sense anymore from a narrative stand point. All that to say, if you care about the consistency of the narrative and this universe, it’s a mess, not only consistency of the story but how consistent it is with the characters and they’re place in it. Again, I do understand and like the characters, but to me there’s no narrative or consistency in the universe to support those characters. If this was any other game I would be able to pick and choose what I Iike and ignore the rest, but seeing how this is a remake of a game that was already pretty good in that regard (maybe not better, subjective) I don’t see how I should settle for anything less.
I don’t believe the lifestream is consistent, just because you add a new element doesn’t mean that addition by itself should be justification, you only say they are there to defend the planet, but the mechanics by which they did had a logic to it, not just magic entities, but basically ancient monsters buried on the ground and the sea inactive until they were needed and woken up, I don’t think Dirge of Cerberus is a good example since the compilation also added a bunch of stuff out of nowhere just to have justification for new stories, the compilation was when the inconsistencies and retcons started.
I quote myself again:
you mean to the compilation? the compilation that is regarded as almost all bad? Good job then, you unified it and made FF7 just as terrible.
I kind of agree with the giant heartless being a weapon and the whispers being extension of it, that’s fine, but the mechanics and their reason to exists is what bothers me, if it was called Rubrum Weapon or something I would be more willing to accept it, but I don’t even think the devs thought about it that hard, that seems to be a theory, it makes more sense that way, but even if that’s the case, I still don’t like why it exists or how it works, to me is not consistent with the original idea of the weapons.
but I really think you're missing the forest for the trees.
Maybe, but in this case the trees are the narrative, which yes, it does overshadow the characterization and anything good about it, if you were to take the characters in a vacuum, I agree, it’s pretty good what they did with them, but those characters need to exist in a narrative and a universe, and that’s where it falls apart for me, I cannot take their emotional arc seriously if 5 hours later they’re flipping and flopping in the air and punching destiny in the face, I’m glad you can, but I can’t. I would be able to in another anime game with god as the final boss, but not here.
You disagree? I assume the implication of the first paragraph was that you thought the first 90% was pretty faithful.
I meant, the initial 90% without ghosts, the final 10% includes the ending plus the inclusion of the ghosts throughout the story. I think the pacing and the buildup matters, one of the excuses is that we already know so it wouldn’t be as impactful, I care less if it’s impactful or not and more about if it’s well done and well executed even if I already know where it ends, but I guess we’ll disagree no matter what.
I have also played it several times, I’ve also seen other youtubers who agree and disagree, I’ve watched a lot of videos about it everyone with different points of view, I’ve even watched Max’s 4 levels of whatever theory, I agree with the characterizations and some plot points, Shinra’s comeback to Barret was brilliant, Jesse’s expanded adventures were fun, Roche had potential and might still have, Chadley sucks, Cloud’s interaction with Tifa and Aerith were cute and fun and meaningful, the resolution scenes were great, the ancient propaganda VR room was fantastic, I agree with a lot of that, but ultimately, there’s no narrative to support it IMO, which is a shame, because if those expansions happened but the narrative still followed the og story, it would have been great and imo the best case scenario, not if just followed the original but also if the changes just made more sense; (again IMO) the story has lost its cohesion and all those great moments amounted to nothing.
About the bombing and shinra, it doesn’t matter if the characters feel bad about it, we as the audience know what the truth is, wouldn’t ‘t it be better if we felt as guilty as Jessie and Barret? Or at least we had an indication they might actually be guilty? All emotional tension is gone. That and many other similar instances had no creative meaning, they admitted in the ultimania interview they had to do that because post 9/11 we cannot have a terrorist group as the good guys so gray areas had to go, same with jenova’s purple goop instead of blood was done to get past classification boards, so, no narrative impact there anymore, just avoiding controversy.
It doesn’t matter if the whispers are gone they already did the damage, instead of having them gone now they shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Fixing a problem by getting rid of it in next games doesn’t fix the damage they did to the narrative.
The OG is still very much alive and well. Remake does well to put it on a pedestal and pay lots of homage to it.
Disagree, paying homage and respecting the legacy wouldn’t be changing it with TIME TRAVEL and PARALEL DIMENSIONS, the cheapest plot devices possible, honestly this feel like a slap on the face, we obviously disagree, whatever.
All you said about freedom, is about mostly Aerith and possibly Red, the rest of the characters know nothing about that, and they have no reason to assume they sacrificed the safe ending, Red even says is the bad ending, again, that sounds more like meta knowledge than in-narrative character knowledge, but that’s just a minor gripe, it’s really not that important as opposed to everything else.
TLDR: I also like, good storytelling, good themes, good character development, and honoring source material, that’s why I think introducing
parallel timelines,
fate and
possible time travel in a remake/quasi sequel feels like a retcon more like an expansion.
Ultimately we disagree, for me it’s really more than just subjective though, the word REMAKE brings a lot of implications and expectations, if you’re not going to be faithful to the narrative, at least be faithful to the rules and the themes and change accordingly, but that didn’t happen either, IMO, if you had all the wonderful character enhancements, some new plot developments like Roche and expansions like Avalanche and the Wutai War WITHOUT the need of ghosts, destiny, and without the need to shove Sephiroth in every 20 minutes and no bombastic Heartless battle at the end, again, just move Jenova to the end of the highway, then that would have been fantastic, 9/10 easy, the new plot elements feel unnecessary and badly executed and bring down everything else with it to an honest 4/10. Good graphics and good characters cannot save it. IMO, IMO.