Finished the game, My complaints (lots of spoilers)

[Cyran]

So I finally finished Rebirth (I know, I know, took way too long).

I won't say all things were bad, there was a lot of things I thought were great, such as the added scenes and characterization for Cait Sith, Yuffie and Barret.

But here was also a lot wrong with the game and I think it might be because of how much 'western consultants' influenced it. The things like censoring certain aspects of the game as well as it just being chock full of campiness wherever it can, seems very unJapanese.

I'll go over some of the problems by chapter after the general things.

The General problems: Summon materia and formula for side quests.
All side quests being delegated to being first involving Chadley, which is its own problem because someone REALLY wanted us to 'love' their faninsert character despite the fact he was one of the most hated characters in remake, now in rebirth he's just effin everywhere. So, he creates all summon materia for you. That makes no sense narratively, considering that materia is the collective knowledge of the Cetra to use magic, thus it should not be created. ESPECIALLY summon magic. None of the summon magic was found through exploration, through side quest, through a secret boss, etc. Instead they were all formulaic and it's too an absurd degree. "First area, one summon. Look for summon shrines. always 3. Strengthens the materia because 'the game says so' but doesn't make any of this make sense how or why this technology is 'empowering' your materia. This is really bad design. Truly, like, it's amazing that whoever came up with this idea was actually on the team as they have no idea what makes collection scouting in JRPGs loved.

Then there's of course the protorelic storyline. Was ridiculous and nonsensical. Sure, fort condor mini game was actually kinda fun but that was only for one area of the game :/

Another issue is the weird ever present 'sephiroth' baiting. Cloud seeing Sephiroth tell him what to do at each point and Cloud knows it's him, and still somehow does it. Yeah, it was one thing when the control Sephiroth had in the OG was SUDDEN so he didn't know it was going to happen, but in this, there's so many things going "hey guys, kill cloud. He's gonna screw this all up, look at him laughing maniacally as he tried to kill Tifa at Gongaga.'

And of course.... All. the. CAMP. I can't express my disappointment in this. remake kept this to... a few scenes like the 'crossdressing Dancing scene' with a nonsensically added in gay character that had to be 'thuper gay'. Yay, gays totally love that /s.

I include the queen's blood trying to turn it into 'yugioh' as part of the camp problem. Just make it a fun card game, stop trying to make a stupid side quest the 'end of the world thuper therial'. It's annoying and furthermore, shows that the writers had no idea what they were doing with it. But kudos to Queen's Blood mechanic design team.


Now, for each area of the game.

Grasslands: There's only three problems in the grasslands; the introduction of Chadley, Beck's Badasses storyline being nothing but nonsensical camp for no payout just to stretch time out and then the whole midgar zolom area. So, it's not that deep, then allova sudden the midgar zolom can pull you under and hey, it's a freaking ocean for Cloud to 'pretty pose and try to be introspective'. uh... no. This is weird, this is stupid, this ruins the feel of the area.

Junon Area: Actually this is one of the few areas of the game that didn't feel too bad. Except the frog jumping mini game being a little weird storyline wise, but... it's optional and doesn't affect the rest of the game.

The cruise ship: Why is 'flamboyant Red XIII' a thing? Oh right, gotta throw in camp just for the sake of it. And that's it, just for the SAKE OF THROWING IN CAMP, does nothing but detract from the story. I get in the original Red XIII was actually ARROGANT and thought that he could pose as a human perfectly and nobody noticed, but the 'flamboyant dance to fool humans' was just over the top.

Costa Del Sol: The doppelganger Johnny quest. It's way too much camp for a side quest that didn't need it. It also is inconsistent because if this is truly what could be done, imagine why Yuffie isn't making 7x clones of Cloud all the time to fight. It was annoying and again, camp for the sake of camp.

Gold Saucer: Okay, the corel reactor area is actually very well done, but this is mostly about the gold Saucer. Why? Well, what's a going theme here? Camp. Unnecessary camp. Everyone arrives and then break out into a high school musical dance battle? just stop it -_- it's extremely jarring and has no business being here. Cait's introduction is also a little underwhelming as before it was still half-assed explanation for him joining "because I need to see what this fortune means" here it's "I have information that I just told you and now I'm going to see you use this information in Corel Prison". Good thing they did a lot better with him outside this scene, but they really should have thought better of it. Now... I know this is for later in the game, but then there's the other big campy problem: everything to do with the Loveless play. Trying to use VR to justify why cloud is in it with your party, but then you make it at the end seem like everyone who was watching that VR was seeing your friends as the actors, it makes no coherent sense and there was no reason to do it and was just bad. "Oh, you just have to go with how pretty it was" Well if it wasn't a QTE I might have, but it was still a stupid narrative decision. Oh, and how do you ruin the Gondola ride? The whole point of it was to see the park, now it's the sky wheel where they see 3d projected images in lieu of actually seeing the park. This is weird cause I know you guys were like "We need to change this sooooomehooooow" and you did everything to make this one worse. Also, what the hell was up with changing Joe to being a jockey for Chocobo Sam and to make him a Saturday morning antagonist? In the OG, Joe was nice to Cloud. This change was unnecessary and shows the juvenility of the rebirth writers. Oh yeah, that adds to the... *cough* CAMPINESS of the game. I guess the one thing to add to this, I do like the change in how Cait betrays the team, they gave him a better reason for doing it as well as layered up just enough moments of Cait asking Cloud if he's sure he wants to do X and Y and enough foreshadowing of why he's going to do it.

Corel Prison: Mr. Coates or Gus... well, This is one where the western consultants probably had a hand in, make sure he's not black anymore because of his role in the game, but hey, they got Jonah Scott to do the voice anyways. The Aesthetic for Corel Prison was entirely too wrong in my opinion as well. It looked more like Midgar's slums. And then there's the weird Esther change where she's an uncaring...witch. Just dumb character changes for no reason. She was supposed to be weird and bubbly, not an uncaring money hungry... insert chat censors for this. Oh and my god, the Dyne section was completely butchered. A big part of why this scene was so impactful was about the choices Dyne and Barret made and regret. But barret has only the regret of 'trusting shinra' because they took away his ecoterrorist status by making it so "Barret didn't blow up the reactors, it was Shinra who then just blamed avalanche" and not only did they not have a tearful goodbye anymore, it was so stupid having shinra soldiers come and kill Dyne off... and immediately you go through a vehicle chase mini game with happy action music. So cool! Totally not disrespectful to the emotion the scene should have elicited.

Gongaga area: As pretty as the whole area is, I do think they took a lot of time with this one, but again, it's not what it was supposed to be. gongaga doesn't look like a land destroyed by the reactor, only the reactor area is affected by this area. So, why is it the town is completely unaffected by it? No destroyed buildings, no places where plants are struggling to grow, nope, just... it's now a pretty jungle getaway. Though bonus points for the chicken side quest... I legit was not expecting that and it was about the only 'out of pocket' scene that I actually really liked. I also feel like the writers have no idea how to write 'good mysterious characters' as they treated Cissnei as tropey as they come. Then there's of course all the problems with the gongaga reactor, like I mentioned with the Sephiroth baiting, the amount of Cloud losing himself, attacking Tifa, killing other people, and then Tifa going "white whisper/black whisper" was way too much addition to the game that detracted both because we know at this point someone needs to do something about Cloud, there's no subtlety to his insanity and the way the games have handled the whispers was always super fanficy and a bad design.

Cosmo Canyon Area: Okay, this is the area I hate the most. The high rise and difficulty in going to everywhere without finding the highest places for the chocobo gliding, as well as how unintuitive on controller it is (you have to hold the R2... why wouldn't you just make that inherent. You also have to move the cursor to the left to move right. It's completely backwards) then there's the numerous story problems with this area. I know by now there's going to be people with opinions on Red XIII's 'true voice' though you know, the argument for it isn't actually true, otherwise you'd have people in all the other FF7 compilation media making mention about Red XIII's voice being too deep and that discourse has never existed, until the rebirth team decided to make his voice more childish than Yuffie's. It's a bad decision that defies the logic of his experience even if he has a long lifespan, he's been alive for 48 years. BUT this should go into the next point: Cosmo canyon is one of the worst designed places. I did not get the same feel of the 'building into the canyon walls' of nature loving religious hippies, but instead they turned it into a spiritual resort for rich people. the look of this place is completely wrong, and the whole Aerith having her own AA meeting was counterintuitive. These are strangers to her, and she's admitting to them the same reason she's being hunted? Yeah, ya ain't smart girl. Then there's the whole Cave of the Gi... and the reveals. Well, making the Gi 'aliens' as well who can't return to the earth isn't that bothersome, but the fact they made them the reason the black materia exists is ... weird? but not awful? But what did ruin this is the reveal of Seto was handled so so poorly compared to the OG, not only was it not emotional anymore, they still made Seto an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who ended up betraying the Gi. Which actually means whatever the war that Cosmo Canyon, the Cetra, and the Gi have now become a huge plothole because if Seto hadn't betrayed the gi now, there would no no fighting right? Oh, shoot, the game writers didn't think of thaaaa~t.

Nibelheim: The change of having the place being intentionally made for mako poisoning instead of a huge coverup for Shinra crimes and every townsperson being paid to pretend it never happened... eh, it is a change? Can't say I like it. At least the nibel area still held the same feel that it should have. The one bad thing they did was Roche here. How stupid it was for him to all of a sudden go from 'his bike riding gear' to one second later 'donning the tattered black robes going 'reunion'. Oh, so people just automatically evolve into black robes? wtf. Such a bad choice. Actually let me get this part over here. The change in the black robed men also irked me something fierce. these were supposed to be the victims of Nibelheim and others that Hojo injected JENOVA cells into and because of that, they're all desperate for the reunion. They're wearing the robes because HOJO made them wear it and kept them hidden until the Reunion's urge got so strong they started moving. They didn't just go "hmm, reunion, let me put on some black robes. Yeah, then we'll go rave under a bridge" Now these just seemingly are 'mako poisoning dudes at anywhere in the world' and just automatically get robes as a sign of conversion or something. This was extremely dumb and handled way too poorly for a game that definitely had the ability to hire quality writers and ignore consultants that actually hate video games.

[Cyran]

Continued
Cid: cid gets a section all to himself. his character change is extremely bad. I get they were motivated to do so because of censorship, they didn't want a guy who yelled at everyone, especially 'poor women'. But even then, him being a courier and taking away his actually VERY IMPORTANT ROLE in the original game of being part of the space program just did not pay off... and then his weird "Hey, I knew Ifalna, this is how I'm going to be tied to this new story". Do we forget Cid's supposed to only be 32? which means if Aerith was like... a baby... and she's 22... Cid was flying Ifalna when he was 10??? Gawdangit the writers here are frickin trash at writing consistency and checking themselves with formerly established lore that THEY themselves changed!

Now to Cait: the game acknowledges he's not alive from the moment you meet him. They constantly talk about it, rather than the reveal that he's actually a robot (there's some interesting fantheories of it being a cyborg body rather than just a robot, but let's not go here for this) This ruins a lot of the game when it comes to cait being a character. Everyone's already treating him as not alive. But also why do they know he's a robot? With all these weird magic creatures was the talking cat "obviously a robot"?? Make this make sense. I do like the personality he has in here, how he info dumps when necessary and tries to cheer people up, but it just feels weird because in return nobody treats him well because again, he's not alive to them (Barret, Yuffie and Red XIII I remember bringing this up a few times in party banters)

Now. Tempoo of the 8-cents: Okay, so it's now north instead of south. Okay. No problem I guess. So now it's a maze that reminds me of Summoner 2's final stage (I do recommend the game, it is a weird fever dream in parts) The temple itself just dragged on and on and way too on. that's definitely subjective so maybe people liked that it took an incredibly long time to do. But, I'll give the resurrection section it's due. It handled everyone well here. Yuffie's Guilt with Sonon, Tifa seeing her dad killed, Red XIII's actual Capture, Barret seeing Myrna for the last time. Handled so so well. And then.... the black materia. There's so much whiplash going on here. First it's a fake, but then that's a fakeout and it's not fake, but then it's real, then it's in Cloud's hands and he's been acting REALLY weird since the beginning of the temple, just like in Gongaga reactor but NOBODY does anything about it until he hands it off to Sephiroth and sephiroth spends 10 minutes monologuing and making weird metaphors that sound like an angsty 10th grader trying to write their next emo fanfic and then boom, temples covered in vines, and what happens? Apparently, Cloud and Aerith fall down after a creepy chase scene, Aerith is immediately telling him not to blame himself and taking him on that telepathic date and they're introducing the 'dimensional tear' concept out of nowhere and somehow Sephiroth is trying to find her in this telepathic date game, but why would this scene need to happen, because Sephiroth already had the black materia. This happened before DURING cloud struggling to not give him the materia, not a whole weird bs after sephiroth already has the materia. The pacing of this scene was incredibly off and out of order.

And now, The Forgotten Capital, so forgotten, that Red XIII mentions that people remembered it because it's called the forgotten Capital. So really, completely and truly forgotten! (wtf writers...?!). What's there to say, this is the worst segment of the whole game. Bar none. First, it's 'whisper importance info dump galore' and now the white whispers are attacking you now, so they're not 'good whispers' anymore, and then...

The former most well known scene in gaming history. How bad was this, where it looks like in one way, Aerith was saved, but then there's blood out of nowhere, and she's 'dead in his arms' but eyes are moving and smiling as her corpse is talking(?) and once again, Sephiroth monologues and makes the dumbest statements. I really want to get a transcript of everything he says and make fun of him for being a ducking weeb. He's not intimidating, he's a frickin 4chan internet tough guy. But, outside of the 'is she/isn't she' dead bullcrap they're pulling, let's address the other issue. The long series of fighting multiple sephiroths. Each time you're fighting sephiroth with a different group you, the player have no idea if it's the same sephiroth or 'another dimensions' sephiroth, and the idea of even doing THAT is incredibly bad. Fighting with Zack? Kinda cool fanservice but you totally ruin what's supposed to be an emotional scene. with psx technology limitations how did they handle this? Put sad music on during the boss fight, edit the sounds used so they are muted as you fight Jenova Birth. and then you have the funeral and you see all the characters reacting to it. (Just an example, Yuffie's scene she's breaking down sobbing in Cloud's arms. In Rebirth, she's just quiet and tries to crack a joke later. Boo. very boo on you.) But... to top all this fudgery up is the fight. Cloud, Zack, everyone, they're all using their normal fight moves. Aerith just died. Yuffie: This calls for more Yuffie!". Dude, it would have been a simple fix to change the battle quotes for all the characters during this fight. Make everyone sound angry, upset, crying even. But nope, normal happy quippy battle quotes and Aerith is dead! YIPPEE!! What's further worse??? THE DIALOGUE THEY CHOSE TO MAKE FOR THESE FIGHTS. Not the normal battle quotes. But the dialogue between the fights. Barret's making sarcastic jokes about Sephiroth. when you get to the Yuffie/Cloud platform Yuffie says with a giddy voice something like "I'm bet you're glad you had me on your team this whole time, huh?" and cloud says "Yep, hasn't been boring". AERITH JUST DIED YOU JERKS!!!!!!

The quiet scene staring at the lake, we're not supposed to know if she's dead or alive... it is handled awfully considering she is dead. Then the Tiny Bronco fix scene... nope, just nope, you really screwed up the emotion that this needed, but considering the rest of the game, it was clear the writers did not have the talent for serious writing, only campy, quippy fanfics.


And now, I'm going to play Wizardry 8. GAAAAWD

[windsea888]

So what you're saying is that the writing is bad? Like really, really bad? Yep, it is. Did you play "Remake?" Why did you think it would be any different here. They do not care about the quality of this trilogy's writing or story. It is blatant.

My take is that this is so bad, it must be on purpose. They are probably so sick of everyone putting FF7's story on a pedastal, that these three decided to outright ruin its story via a reboot trilogy pretending to be a remake.

New audience who didn't play the original: "wow that story from those remakes made no sense....FF7 is overrated, let's play something else. at least the combat was cool and the waifus were great."

Mission accomplished.

[Zefar]

Cait Sith is controlled by Reeve Tuesti which is on of the people in Shinra. This is shown and we knew this from original FF7.
I think in the original FF7 that guy gets his mind put into Cait Sith to evade being killed at a later point in the game. Which would explain why Cait Sith doesn't ride his Moogle in Advent Children.

For Cids age part. Eh his backstory was made better. Sure the numbers doesn't add up but it's okay.


I don't recall the Black Materia ever being a fake in the game.

Sephiroth mind controlled Cloud in the first game and he does so in this game.
I always enjoyed when Sephiroth got involved as those where some of the best moments in the game. His dialogue is in the same manner as the previous games or as in FF Advent children. So not seeing much different there.
There is also only 1 Sephiroth.

Cloud+Zack Vs Sephiroth did not ruin anything. It is an awesome fight.

While Yuffie is annoying I don't recall her saying extremely disrespectful stuff at the end.

Aerith is dead. She is there spiritually through Life Stream. How is this not obvious? Cloud can see her because he fell into the life stream and has that connection.

[Cyran]

Originally posted by windsea888:

So what you're saying is that the writing is bad? Like really, really bad? Yep, it is. Did you play "Remake?" Why did you think it would be any different here.

Remake had bad writing in parts, but it wasn't THIS bad.

[Cyran]

Originally posted by Zefar:

Cait Sith is controlled by Reeve Tuesti which is on of the people in Shinra. This is shown and we knew this from original FF7.
I think in the original FF7 that guy gets his mind put into Cait Sith to evade being killed at a later point in the game. Which would explain why Cait Sith doesn't ride his Moogle in Advent Children.

For Cids age part. Eh his backstory was made better. Sure the numbers doesn't add up but it's okay.


I don't recall the Black Materia ever being a fake in the game.

Sephiroth mind controlled Cloud in the first game and he does so in this game.
I always enjoyed when Sephiroth got involved as those where some of the best moments in the game. His dialogue is in the same manner as the previous games or as in FF Advent children. So not seeing much different there.
There is also only 1 Sephiroth.

Cloud+Zack Vs Sephiroth did not ruin anything. It is an awesome fight.

While Yuffie is annoying I don't recall her saying extremely disrespectful stuff at the end.

Aerith is dead. She is there spiritually through Life Stream. How is this not obvious? Cloud can see her because he fell into the life stream and has that connection.

Cait wasn't initially known to be a robot by the OG 7 party until he betrayed them and then he said "It wouldn't bother if you killed this. it's just a robotic toy" that's when the party learns Cait isn't alive. But in 7 rebirth, they know it from getgo because...why

Sephiroth mind controls cloud to directly take overh is actions in certain parts, otherwise, the player, and cloud are not sure who's influencing him. But in rebirth it's blatant and Cloud acknowledges it. That's the problem.

Aerith JUST DIED and in the original they're all mourning, not making funny battle quips. They are in rebirth though and it's jarring.

[windsea888]

Originally posted by Cyran:

Remake had bad writing in parts, but it wasn't THIS bad.

That's because the writing of "Remake" up until Shinra HQ was pretty faithful to the original (minus some big issues, like Cloud in the alleyway telling Sephiroth, "But I killed you," implying he actually remembers Nibelheim which ruins the plot arc of FF7 in a single dumb retconned scene). Once you get to Hojo's lab the new writing takes over, and it is just as bad and nonsensical as everything you explained in your "Rebirth" analysis, arguably if not moreso with the final chapters suddenly taking the hasty turn it did.

Again, these guys helped make FF7 with Sakaguchi. You're left with two conclusions: either they have no idea how to make a good story and Sakaguchi was the only reason FF7's overall plot was good, or they actively want to destroy FF7's legacy with this reboot. Since FFX was good and they have made some good stuff before, I tend to favor the second one. Sakaguchi's leadership was crucial, but I have a very hard time believing these guys don't understand or recognize how sloppy and bad the new storytelling and writing is, with all the holes and problems you described and all the exposition dumping and "mystery boxing."

[Eastgrove]

Writing wasn't faithful at any point in Remake. The reactor exploding because of Shinra instead of Avalanche is a major retcon. And it doesn't improve from there.

Avalance were *monsters* in the OG. Remorseless self-righteous mass murderers. They were no better than Shinra. That was how they started out, and it'd take a really long time for them to be some other than that.

[windsea888]

It was faithful within reason. I agree those retcons were bad, but you could excuse them as long as the overall plot remained the same and they didn't keep doubling down on the retcons (which they did). THe real issue was the last few chapters. Some of the retcons could be to try to make it for a younger audience and to appease ratings boards. Not that that excuses retconning stuff, but the whispers are the main issue, not the other changes, for Remake.

[Eastgrove]

Originally posted by windsea888:

It was faithful within reason. I agree those retcons were bad, but you could excuse them as long as the overall plot remained the same and they didn't keep doubling down on the retcons (which they did). THe real issue was the last few chapters. Some of the retcons could be to try to make it for a younger audience and to appease ratings boards. Not that that excuses retconning stuff, but the whispers are the main issue, not the other changes, for Remake.

What do you think is important? That Sephiroth wants to destroy the world and has to be stopped? As long as that's intact, it doesn't matter what is done with the characters or how they're portrayed? Do their personal journeys, their goals and motivations, not matter?

Because those were practically erased with Remake.

[james01]

@Cyran On the last part, you were right, they could have changed the dialog to those related to the event. There is no such thing as burial and teams' reaction seems a bit challant with sadness. I think these are missed opportunity to be impactfull.

[windsea888]

Originally posted by Eastgrove:

What do you think is important? That Sephiroth wants to destroy the world and has to be stopped? As long as that's intact, it doesn't matter what is done with the characters or how they're portrayed? Do their personal journeys, their goals and motivations, not matter?

Because those were practically erased with Remake.

Don't really love your tone but that's okay. I think you misunderstood me. I agree with you looking at "Remake" as a whole that all thoe things are basically destroyed by the narrative as a whole in "Remake." But before you get to about Hojo's lab, it is still possible for much of the personal journeys and themes to be told faithfully, even with some of the retcons, considering you don't really know what these Harry Potter dementors are doing (are they part of the lifestream?) and they have absolutely no exposition until the end. It is the whisper multiverse narrative plus the retcons that really takes this series far away from FF7.

[Cyran]

Originally posted by Eastgrove:

Avalance were *monsters* in the OG. Remorseless self-righteous mass murderers. They were no better than Shinra. That was how they started out, and it'd take a really long time for them to be some other than that.

Yeah, I mentioned that part in my Dyne section about why the Dyne section fell so flat. But we can assume that was because we had Western Consultants involved and seeing a black man be an actual ecoterrorist is not something those consultants want (check other games those consultation companies do, and they follow the same lifeless trends, especially in Sweet Baby Inc narratives.)

with some small disagreement, they weren't "as bad as shinra". Barret in the OG later says he knew he had to take some lives to save the planet and stop shinra from taking a lot MORE lives and he had to live with that. Part of that living was to be able to do that and still be able to live with himself for Marlene's sake. Heck, this is one of the best lines of OG cait sith where he mentions all the people Barret Killed who were INNOCENT and Barret even cracks and says he knows that now, he knows it was the wrong way to have approached it, but 'what else could we have done at the time'.

[Cyran]

Originally posted by windsea888:

Originally posted by Cyran:

Remake had bad writing in parts, but it wasn't THIS bad.

Again, these guys helped make FF7 with Sakaguchi. You're left with two conclusions: either they have no idea how to make a good story and Sakaguchi was the only reason FF7's overall plot was good, or they actively want to destroy FF7's legacy with this reboot. Since FFX was good and they have made some good stuff before, I tend to favor the second one. Sakaguchi's leadership was crucial, but I have a very hard time believing these guys don't understand or recognize how sloppy and bad the new storytelling and writing is, with all the holes and problems you described and all the exposition dumping and "mystery boxing."

from the credits for storywriting it is not the same team. It has SOME members that are the same, but not all of them. I'd post them side by side here, but it'd be messy to look at.

What's strange there is that Nojima (the lead writer for both) is somehow happy with it, but other people have noticed him becoming more marvel-ized in his writing and thus with western consultants behind him saying "don't do this, it might offend 'insert demographic' so let's be safe and do this' he may have been ready to go ahead and make those changes.

Though I don't know how involved Sakaguchi was, I know that people claimed he was the mediator who went between everyone's writing ideas and fixed them so they all would work together, but even still. I'm really thinking a lot of this fluffery is due to the consultants, the same consultants that have been ruining other games (dragon Age Veilguard comes to mind)

of course I could be wrong as I haven't done an intimate deep dive on all the writing staff, how they felt about the changes or why they made the changes. But this is just the feel I got from it.

[Eastgrove]

Originally posted by Cyran:

with some small disagreement, they weren't "as bad as shinra".

Yeah, arguably they're worse. Barret didn't care about the Planet. He wanted revenge, and he had what he thought sounded like a pretty good pretext handed to him. There's a point where Barret is presented with the choice between paying Cloud (to kill people) or paying for Marlene's education. He chooses Cloud.

When confronted with a low-tier Shinra employee on the train, Barret comes to within a hairs breathe of struggling the man. Tifa has to intervene, literally pulling Barret away, and bowing an apology to his victim. That's the kind of man Barret truly was.

Shinra at least gives people a way to live, makes their livelihoods possible. Barret only kills.

It'd take a really long time for him to get better. And alot of things would have to happen to make him question himself. Most of them not being good.

That's how it is for most of the characters in FF7. Their mistakes lead to disasters. Barret's mistakes leads to hundreds of people being killed, the sector 7 plate being dropped, his hometown being destroyed. Tifa's mistake leads to Cloud surrendering to Sephiroth.

And Cloud's mistake...leads to all of that. Because in order to protect Tifa, he gave into Sephiroth. Let him create the Puppet. Gave over control. Not total control, but it was enough and it almost destroyed the world. He made a deal with the devil and everyone almost paid for it.

And now we have the Remake trilogy where the only character who makes mistakes is Cloud.

[Mid9Mascarade]

Originally posted by Cyran:

Originally posted by windsea888:

Again, these guys helped make FF7 with Sakaguchi. You're left with two conclusions: either they have no idea how to make a good story and Sakaguchi was the only reason FF7's overall plot was good, or they actively want to destroy FF7's legacy with this reboot. Since FFX was good and they have made some good stuff before, I tend to favor the second one. Sakaguchi's leadership was crucial, but I have a very hard time believing these guys don't understand or recognize how sloppy and bad the new storytelling and writing is, with all the holes and problems you described and all the exposition dumping and "mystery boxing."

from the credits for storywriting it is not the same team. It has SOME members that are the same, but not all of them. I'd post them side by side here, but it'd be messy to look at.

What's strange there is that Nojima (the lead writer for both) is somehow happy with it, but other people have noticed him becoming more marvel-ized in his writing and thus with western consultants behind him saying "don't do this, it might offend 'insert demographic' so let's be safe and do this' he may have been ready to go ahead and make those changes.

Though I don't know how involved Sakaguchi was, I know that people claimed he was the mediator who went between everyone's writing ideas and fixed them so they all would work together, but even still. I'm really thinking a lot of this fluffery is due to the consultants, the same consultants that have been ruining other games (dragon Age Veilguard comes to mind)

of course I could be wrong as I haven't done an intimate deep dive on all the writing staff, how they felt about the changes or why they made the changes. But this is just the feel I got from it.

Barret is not perfect, he is angry. hateful. Even though he's not like Aerith and RedXIII, he subconsciously hears the cry of the planet. To say that Barret caused deaths is also to say that Biggs and Wedge and Jessie also caused deaths. Shinra killed Barret's wife, yes they have kill his best friend, they have devastated his village, they are pushing people into poverty, into disease, he wants revenge, but the spirit of vengeance pushes him to fight not only for himself but for the whole world. This is what avalanche is all about. So yes behind the wait of the first sector, there were a lot of deaths, but they surely saved some too at the end Final fantasy 7 takes place just before the apocalypse so if avalanche hadn't done something, it would have been worse..... And the hutai has surely caused a lot of death too, youffie is a shinobie, a thief, a liar, a traitor despite her young age. Vincent caused deaths, the Turks caused deaths, Shinra caused deaths....

so when you say that Barret is only fighting for revenge, I think you missed a lot of things in the story