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Seriously?
I don't think this post requires much commentary on my part.
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I don't know, it seems like a rational and well reasoned response which furthers the discussion. :P

The best part is that your response was certainly not the most offensive seen here.
 
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I deleted the inappropriate squabble. Everyone is free to defend their own opinions, but let's keep it civil.
 
Thanks for the modding. I'll take this as an opportunity to remind myself to be more civil in the future too.

On topic though - I was just reading an opinion piece about multiplayer in FF games, remembered the option in FF9 to assign characters to specific controllers and thought to myself - shame on SE for not carrying on that tradition when it literally almost costs nothing to implement in turn based RPGs.
Although it would be more work - imagine how much more interesting FF15 could be if you could have the rest of the party be controlled by friends over the internet?

And with that said - that could actually also be a worthwhile mechanic to have in the remake depending on the gameplay. I would love to connect with old friends over rounds of FF7. Not gonna happen in a 100 years I guess - but it would be pretty nice.
 
Such weird questions to be asking - I mean, you'd think game-play changes etc. would be more interesting to ask about rather than whether or not to add more story content for Yuffie.

The fact that the largest portion answered that they wanted an Aerith lives route to the plot tells me all I need to know - the japanese fans are just as ridiculously out of touch with the original game as the western fan bases.
I feel old - As I have this very strong feeling that the average FF7 fan these days isn't actually FF7 fans at all - they're compilation fans who only begrudingly played the original after having been exposed to titles like AC.
 
Exactly.  I think most people are out of touch with good storytelling, full stop.  It's one of the reasons why I am liking Game of Thrones a lot these days (and why I also liked Breaking Bad): They are made believable because characters aren't Hollywood superheroes that cannot die.  Aerith's death was something that made people think and it was a gutsy move for a game, especially at the time.  I liked FFX's ending for the same reason.  It made sense.  Taking a core component of a story and flushing it down the loo completely undermines everything.  I had more faith in the Japanese education system.  8-)

Number 2 and number 4 are spot on, though.  As for voice acting, forget it.  There is a reason books are still read.
 
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Personally I don't mind voice-acting in and of itself.
As a developer and a writer though, I am concerned how it will impact a game that was written much the same way as a book.

If all the central dialogue is voice acted events will feel dragged out and sluggish in my opinion. There is just so much dialogue to cover, and so from a disk-space, money and production perspective it's also pretty tough, which introduces and increases the likelihood of major changes to story sequences. Cut-backs on dialogue is pretty certain to happen I think, and that's pretty sad if it's the case.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the remake should aspire to have more content, not less, if it wants to compete with the original.
 
The fact that the largest portion answered that they wanted an Aerith lives route to the plot tells me all I need to know - the japanese fans are just as ridiculously out of touch with the original game as the western fan bases.
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I would guess they are even moreso. Keep in mind, Final Fantasy XIII was very well received in Japan, by critics and audiences alike. The country has, in general, a focus on more story-driven and less-gameplay driven games than the west, as far as I can tell.
 
Normally I take the stance against reviving Aeris because it conflicts with the main point in the game. Death is permanent. And the fact that nothing you try works, and that people thought there had to be spawned so many rumours. Though the "Aeris dies" is the spoiler everyone knows so the impact won't be the same as it was in 1997, I feel like it's the part they shouldn't compromise on and something important to FFVII.

Though with "route" in quotation marks, I'm thinking more about visual novels. An alternate New Game+ storyline where the events can unfold in a different away depending on decisions made by the player, and Aeris does live doesn't sound bad to me. Different characters could be obtained, Shinra could instead be the main foe. A whole new storyline that isn't canon but allows the world and its characters to be explored in a different way. And a whole new storyline would of course be too much work to put a single game of this scale, but I can dream dammit!
 
I think voice acting is a big no-no because everyone had their own idea about what each character sounded like and you could imagine things that weren't shown due to the limitations of the console.  But to show full HD characters, with voice, takes away some of what made the original game great - your own imagination.  It didn't bother me with FFX because we got introduced to it that way, but with FF7 I am not so sure it's a wise move.  And that's before we get on to what Hian mentioned with the cutbacks in other departments to compensate.  Disc storage shouldn't be an issue if they compress the audio properly.  They absolutely did not do that with Metal Gear Solid 4.  Of course, they could allow you to turn the VA off... but will they?

Like Hian, I think cutting content is the absolute worst thing you can do.  The dialogue in FF7 is astronomical.  You only realize it when you have to read it through in text files.
 
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I haven't kept up with this thread as it's become more of a debate than discussion. Personally I don't mind if they update the game and style it to a more FFXIII - XV style. The old turn based battles work and were fun enough, but don't define the game. Hell someone made a mod to remove random battles because they can feel so mundane after awhile, so updating the battle system isn't really an issue. I also see no issues with voice overs for cutscenes and most dialogue. In the end the game is so special because of the interesting storyline and characters, relaying them in a new way doesn't change them.

If you want to play an updated version of the game that's 100% loyal to the original than just mod the Steam version. With the currently completed mods available the original game performs and looks really quite good.
 
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That's the thing - imho it DOES define the game.  The battle system was at least half of what the original game was.  When you remove the ATB and replace it with a modern battle system, you are absolutely NOT remaking the game.  You are restructuring it fundamentally.  Most people I know who wanted a remake of FF7 did not want major things tinkering with. They wanted improvements and enhancements but within the confines of the original style.  When that doesn't happen (as it won't), it will alienate the very people this remake was intended for from the beginning - or at least the people who wanted it the most.  I also happen to believe modern battle systems of FF13 + are totally inferior and brain-dead (i.e., aimed at fast action rather than thought).  That doesn't really help.

I've said it before:  Those who don't want a remake in the style of the original game and want something completely reinvented would be far happier with a totally NEW game.  The remake was for those who wanted a remake.  The argument that we still have the Steam version has 2 issues:  1. FF7r will end up being the one remembered by this generation and for a lot of people to come.  2. The original fans by and large wanted something faithful to the original game and have waited years for this.

This remake isn't even out yet and it's already causing a divide.  I can hardly wait for the atom bomb to land.  I am hoping for something with at least some semblance of soul, but not even their promotion FF7 logo makes me optimistic.

http://ffvii-remake.square-enix.com/images/logo.jpg

Just what is that turd?
 
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I would guess they are even moreso. Keep in mind, Final Fantasy XIII was very well received in Japan, by critics and audiences alike. The country has, in general, a focus on more story-driven and less-gameplay driven games than the west, as far as I can tell.
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Yes and no. The Japanese gaming industry is also what gave us Super Mario, Sonic, Mega-man and the Souls Series.
If anything, there is a strong divide in the industry and the gamers in regards to what games should play like depending on
preferences.

Also, we should be careful about generalizing based on this article though, because the sample selection of the poll is very unlikely to say anything of substance about the fans in general - I've seen plenty of comments on articles about the remake at famitsu that mirrors the general opinion of people like DLPB as well. But, I was guilty of that with my comment in either case, but I was tired when I wrote it, so there's that.

In any case, if it's so that the Japanese fans of FF at this point care more about Aerith revival than anything else, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Japanese fans care more about narrative structure than game-play concerning the remake as a whole - it might simply mean that the range of FF7 fans at this moment, as I said, are actually percentage-wise mostly compilation fans rather than fans of the original game, and because the compilation is dominated by a movie, a novel(s), and a few action games it makes sense that they wouldn't much of an attachment to the set-up or design of the original game.

The "problem" with FF (and arguably what made it so popular across countries and cultures to begin with) is that it's always been standing in the middle of that divide delivering strong character and story driven experiences with a lot of game-play to boot.
Lately though, it's been shifting more and more towards the "cinematic" game approach - which is, unfortunately, I believe largely due to the fact that the Japanese market is moving more and more away from games that demand a lot of engagement and time from the players (because the average Japanese person above elementary school simply don't have all that much time to game, except on the go), and because the technology (and I would argue humans - because even if the game supported AC style combat, how would you control that stuff and keep up with the enemy A.I?) still doesn't allow games to play like what Advent Children look like, which is essentially the type of action a lot of FF fans have come to expect from the franchise after the release of that movie.

FF as a franchise has shot itself in the foot in many ways.
It's lost to the times, social pressures and economical pressures, and what we're left with is products that are to JRPGs what Call of Duty is to the FPS genre.
They're not horrible games by any account. Plenty of people buy and enjoy them - but they're not groundbreaking or top of the line either, which is problematic for most old-school fans of the series who've fallen pray to the inevitable rule of diminishing returns.

Sure, if I hadn't played every single FF title ever released, and pretty much every JRPG ever made for SNES, PS1 and PS2 era (not an overstatement - I mean really.), then FF13 might have been a really good experience.
As it is, keep subtracting the things the made the older games great, whilst not adding enough new to compensate - making them bland and uninteresting experiences of rehashed material in a shiny wrapping with one or two original game-play elements that aren't particularly good, or even needed, to begin with.


I think voice acting is a big no-no because everyone had their own idea about what each character sounded like and you could imagine things that weren't shown due to the limitations of the console.  But to show full HD characters, with voice, takes away some of what made the original game great - your own imagination.
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I would agree with this if the rest of the compilation hadn't been using voice acting since the release of Advent Children way back when.
For most people, Cloud and Co already had their voices defined at that point - and as the saying goes "what has been seen (or in this case, heard) cannot be unseen."
Thankfully, my first viewing of AC was in Japanese, and those voice actors fit pretty decently with my conception of the character voices (with the exception of Barret of course, because his voice was always definitely African-American sounding in my head).

Another point I think that people don't realize, from a scientific point of view, is that the mind doesn't actually (as is physically incapable of) conceptualizing voices in your head that aren't ambiguous. You don't actually hear voices in your head when you read - you conceptualize and abstraction based on experiences and memories, that manifest much the same way as a memory of a long-since passed event etc. I.E it's fundamentally ambiguous and abstract.

Whatever you or others think Cloud sounds like in your head does not actually translate into actual sound. It's just like a foggy/false memory and it cannot actually be accurately replicated. There is a whole range of Cloud voices that probably fits your conception of Cloud's voice, but you won't be able to actually peg that down until it's right there in front of you, although you might think to yourself right now that you can.

That being said, a voice can still end up being outside of that range, and as such, end up being a disappointment. But, the fact of the matter is that voices are largely products of physical traits that are, to a certain degree, fairly predictable - and it's the experiences you've had with speech that determines your expectations to what a person will sound like when they speak, which furthermore is pretty uniform among humans in general.
So, the range of voices that fit Barrets, for instance, is pretty given and not very hard to realize in a way that will fit with most people's conceptions of what a large, muscular black person raised in a ghetto would sound like.

I would actually say it takes a special kind of person to get Barret's voice wrong, or to imagine Barret's voice in such a way that it conflicts with what most other people would conceive of it as.
 
It didn't bother me with FFX because we got introduced to it that way, but with FF7 I am not so sure it's a wise move.  And that's before we get on to what Hian mentioned with the cutbacks in other departments to compensate.  Disc storage shouldn't be an issue if they compress the audio properly.  They absolutely did not do that with Metal Gear Solid 4.  off course, they could allow you to turn the VA off... but will they?
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Compression can only do so much if you want to keep the quality of your audio intact though, and it's going to go into the disk with all the graphical resources etc. Looking at the whole of it - will they have space to squander on NPC voices?

There is another point to be made though, from a stylistic perspective - How would non voice-acted scenes look with the current graphical quality? I'd imagine it would look kind of absurd to see a bunch of semi-photo-realistic people standing in a circle, moving their lips (or worse - not moving them and just staring at each other silently) with no sound, and the dialogue appearing in text-boxes.

Just a few thoughts.

Still agree that cutting content, dialogue/exposition perhaps most of all, would be damaging to the experience.
You don't walk into a remake expecting less than the original - you walk into it expecting more.
 
If it's voice, you can achieve surprisingly good results at even v low bitrates.  64kbit/s mono is good enough that most people can't hear the difference in their own voice.  I'm not sure what the industry standard is but I'd be surprised if they needed to go as high as 128. I certainly can't tell the difference when I make an mp3 of a voice at 128.  That's why I'm not sure what MGS4 team were playing at (or FF12 which was AWFUL).  A 50GB bluray disc can hold a heck of a lot of sound at that bitrate (868 hours at 128 kbit/s)  , and if they REALLY needed to, they could use 2 discs.
 
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Personally I don't mind if they update the game and style it to a more FFXIII - XV style. The old turn based battles work and were fun enough, but don't define the game. Hell someone made a mod to remove random battles because they can feel so mundane after awhile, so updating the battle system isn't really an issue
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To be honest I can't see how the gameplay is NOT included when defining a game. When Tetris is remade people would scratch their heads if the developers said it's hard to know what kind of gameplay tetris fans wants, and are unsure if the gameplay is important when defining tetris. "Maybe people today like action more so let make TetrisR a RTS type of game."

Yes, RPGs like FFs have more to them then the combat system, but the combat system is always in the front rows when they are judged or "defined". An RPG with a great story, music, etc, will not receive great reviews if the gameplay/battle sytem sucks hard. In cases like this, changing the battle system would actually be a good idea. But if the formula is not broken, they don't need to fix it. To say that FF7R needs a new battle system is just an excuse to appeal to a broader audience. If I didn't know better, I could interpret it as SE admitting that the gameplay in FF7 sucks.
 
If it's voice, you can achieve surprisingly good results at even v low bitrates.  64kbit/s mono is good enough that most people can't hear the difference in their own voice.  I'm not sure what the industry standard is but I'd be surprised if they needed to go as high as 128. I certainly can't tell the difference when I make an mp3 of a voice at 128.  That's why I'm not sure what MGS4 team were playing at (or FF12 which was AWFUL).  A 50GB bluray disc can hold a heck of a lot of sound at that bitrate (868 hours at 128 kbit/s)  , and if they REALLY needed to, they could use 2 discs.
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For what it's worth, MP3 was no good for voice or sound effects last gen. Very high latency is fine for music, but awful for anything being loaded on the fly, as well as eating up CPU that (at least outside of cutscenes) might already be on short supply. That said, MGS4 did mess up, by leaving all the audio completely uncompressed.

I also disagree that 128kbps is good enough. "I certainly can't tell the difference" isn't especially convincing, as many people, myself included, certainly can. Double blind tests (many of which can be found on the hydrogenaudio forums) have even confirmed as much. It'll have particularly obvious artifacting on high end sound systems (and even many midrange sound systems), which can be exacerbated if it's going through any in-engine post-processing, such as to apply position relative to the camera, or realistic reverb for a scene.

That said, 256kb/s OGG/Vorbis should be plenty enough for in-game usage, provided they keep the original uncompressed or lossless compressed around for archival purposes. 224kb/s vorbis is lower latency than MP3 in pretty much all circumstances, lower CPU to decompress, and has generally been shown to be high enough quality as to be considered "transparent" even by audiophiles. This would certainly be more than enough to ensure storage is not an issue under any circumstances
 
I'd take you up on the double blind test because I'd wager most here would fail it.  For sure. (Assuming it was done right.  When I made the files, I couldn't).  When I was talking about MP3 I wasn't meaning that is a good format for games, I meant that's what I used in my own tests.  The game formats would probably get even more out of the 128 kbit (I mean consoles.  I'm not sure how it is anymore, but it used to all be proprietary).

But yeah, even then, at less than 320 you still have hundreds of hours to play with.  There's no reason that voice has to take so much, so I don't know why MGS4 had all audio uncompressed.

Edit.

Also, even if you could tell the difference, the difference is small and is not going to impact on the gamer when there are other ambient sounds and background music.  Apart from FF12 (I really don't know what they did there), I have never thought "that voice quality is crap".  It's way down the list of noticeable faults.
 
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To be honest I can't see how the gameplay is NOT included when defining a game. When Tetris is remade people would scratch their heads if the developers said it's hard to know what kind of gameplay tetris fans wants, and are unsure if the gameplay is important when defining tetris. "Maybe people today like action more so let make TetrisR a RTS type of game."

Yes, RPGs like FFs have more to them then the combat system, but the combat system is always in the front rows when they are judged or "defined". An RPG with a great story, music, etc, will not receive great reviews if the gameplay/battle sytem sucks hard. In cases like this, changing the battle system would actually be a good idea. But if the formula is not broken, they don't need to fix it. To say that FF7R needs a new battle system is just an excuse to appeal to a broader audience. If I didn't know better, I could interpret it as SE admitting that the gameplay in FF7 sucks.
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The main draw to the FF7 battle system for me was the deep customization of the materia system, because it was easy to get into but had enough there for people to really dig into if they felt like it. The materia system is not something that could only be used in a ATB or turn based combat system, though it might be utilized to its fullest with classic turn based combat, and for me it is the defining feature of FF7's gameplay. If they can find an alternative way to make it deep, rewarding, and allow me to customize my party and coordinate our attacks in a way that uses the materia system well, it won't seem foreign to me at all.

Besides the materia system, IMHO, the gameplay was boring at times, broken at other times, and rarely was engaging. As far as turned based combat goes, there are far better choices (and many of them as well) than FF7. If I had to guess other reasons why FF7's combat is rarely looked down upon is because it is easy and does not get in the way of the narrative. Other deeper, and more complex turn based combat systems can really bring the game to a halt if you're not clever enough to play through it smoothly. (I suck at the SMT series, but I still love those games nevertheless. FF7 and Persona would probably be considered shallow and casual by comparison to SMT in the minds of some.)

In my opinion, being someone who does not really like any entries in the compilation and was introduced to FF7 in 1999, the defining features were:

+Characters
+Storytelling
+Plot
+Materia System
EDIT: +I almost forgot Exploration and feeling like a captain (with a badass crew) when you fly the ship all over the world.

I was indifferent about the combat system

-I thought the lego-styled placeholder field models looked like trash (obviously graphics don't really matter to me).
-I could spot grammar mistakes and errors in translation that made some conversations unintelligible.

I'm not arguing that anyone should not care about the gameplay, I'm just explaining why I don't, despite the fact that I am a fan of the original and not of the compilation, in order for others to see where the segment of fans with a similar disinterest in wishing to keep the gameplay turn based. That being said, I would be totally fine if at PSX Square Enix showed off gameplay that was Turn Based or ATB, as the combat itself really is not that important to me (I hope that it wouldn't be bad enough to get in the way though).
 
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Personally... I would like to see a turn towards the more realistic and an abandonment of come of the more ridiculous aspects of the original game.

Combat, for example could be more similar to that employed in "Mass Effect", while Materia would be a genuine scientific product as hinted at in the original game with some sort of electro chemically focused energy.

These just happen to take the properties of various elements etc and can be used to upgrade weapons with these properties.

"Summons" are superfluous and unnecessary and detract from the overall game IMO.

Likewise the "Weapons" should have been constructed by the Cetra, and not the planet.

Ultimately what  would like to see is  a story with more depth and credibility. More science, less ridiculousness and real-time combat done correctly. I.e swords are useless unless close up, so cloud should use a gun for the most part unless he employs some sort of shield, i.e mass effect
 
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