Final Fantasy VII downloaded 100,000 times in two weeks

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I've always felt that Genesis and Hollander demean Sephiroth and Hojo somewhat; the original villains suddenly become a lot less special now that we see that there's another apocalypse-causing villain and another mad scientist of similar skill. And this is before we talk about Genesis going around in the reactor and completely undermining Sephiroth; suddenly, Sephiroth seems like nothing more than a pawn in Genesis' great plan, and Genesis becomes the real bad guy of the FF7 series.

Personally, I think that the game would have been a lot better off if Genesis had been killed for good in Modeoheim and had no further part in the story; that way there would be no real deviance from the main FF7 story and it would also have shown that Sephiroth was a step up. It would be as if the game were saying "OK, you've dealt with Genesis; now it's time for the real crisis". Not only that, but it would fit in well with the FF tradition of having a small-time bad guy early on in the game who gets replaced by someone much more dangerous later on (like Gestahl and Kefka, Shinra and Sephiroth, Edea/Galbadia and Ultimecia or Brahne and Kuja).
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Actually, I agree. I would have liked it more had Genesis been a big deal and you kill him just before the events at Nibelheim.   But that wouldn't have left an opening for a Dirge of Cerberus sequel where
Genesis is the ultimate good guy!!!! and has to defeat Sephiroth once and for all!!!!!!!

which of course I will also play... because I can't help myself  :-(
 
a Dirge of Cerberus sequel where
Genesis is the ultimate good guy!!!! and has to defeat Sephiroth once and for all!!!!!!!

which of course I will also play... because I can't help myself  :-(
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Bloody hell, don't give Squeenix ideas!  :-D

They aren't very good at sequels (we knew this already; FFX-2), so imagine what a sequel to a bad spin-off would be like? :-o

It would be the worst game evar; worse than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES, even worse than Dark Castle for the Megadrive.  :cry:

And we'd still buy it  :roll:
 
I mentioned this to someone else....how it always irritates me when they think more graphics and more spectacular fight scenes are for the better.  Graphics should never be a substitute for plot or intelligent design.

When you see something which is realistic given the physics of the world, like say sephiroth struggling with tifa before slashing her, that has much more dramatic effect than a 5 minute battle and then a slash.

Sometimes , more is not better and I fear as I said, that this is what a remake would end up being....  which is a pity.
 
Exactly Seifer. KH and KH2 were such stupidly popular successes because they were beautiful *while* you played. I remember at that scene towards the end of KH2 when you team up with all the FF characters to fight off legions of heartless. I was literally *mesmerized* watching Cloud hack and slash 20 heartless per second. I didn't even do anything. I just watched him do all the work in a far cooler manner than Sora could ever perform.

I also fought Sephiroth 5 times in each game (even after beating him) just because his fighting style was so magnificently done in either game and loyal to his original movelist. (although I admit fighting a Lance Bass voiced Sephiroth kind of pissed me off, Sephi is the ultimate villain of all time, not the gay member of NSync)
 
Graphics should never be a substitute for plot or intelligent design.
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Unfortunately, a lot of people take this to mean that a game SHOULDN'T have good graphics. There's no reason why a game can't have both, like Metal Gear Solid 4.
 
MGS4.....I won't even get started on that game....I will just say that I would use that as an absolute example of how graphics got in the way.  Cut scenes lasting over 40 minutes is not intelligent game design and the plot was god awful imho.

But you are right, a game can have both if it is done properly.  But there should never be a subsititute.  The first thing that made me wary about a remake was Advent Children.  It is a decent movie overall but there is WAY too much fighting in place of plot.... and then we have cloud performing feats he could never ever do in the actual game such as near flying and being smacked into walls at 100 mph.  I understand some leniency has to be taken to make it entertaining but AC was a typical example of what not to do.  One doesn't need 1 hour battles and ridiculous far fetched (fantasy or not there are limits in a given world) feats which go against the set out laws to make a film interesting.    I have been watching the old twlight zone episodes recently, and I would take some of that acting and scripting over anything that has been made since.

Most people seem to enjoy all the excess violence....but i don't.  I think it is crummy excuse for proper intelligent writing.
 
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At the risk of sounding immature, i loved Advent children. the fight scenes were amazing imo. but yes i agree there could have been more plot.
 
They were amazing graphically, but they were overdone, totally unrealistic even for the world which was originally set out and they were too long.  It could never rank as anything other than a fan flick and that is because its plot is wafer thin.  They try to please graphic whores at same time as pleasing die hards of the series that they leave out the reason for a film.  The story.

I personally feel a film should be about plot and that fight scenes and the like should remain true to the original vision and at least have a sense of realism.  I don't think being smacked into walls and surviving it like you are Wile E. Coyote is good for any fantasy like VII.   It immediately breaks the most fundamental law of story telling, to be able to suspend disbelief.

On VII, tifa struggles with Sephiroth , she is slashed and wounded severely.  Almost dies.  The action is realistic and is over in a matter of seconds.

On AC the fight lasts all year (hyperbole) and has cloud being smacked into walls and flying here and there defying the Gravity, the same gravity which appears identical on Gaia in VII to our planet Earth.  It has boulders flying it at him.....  it is a giant mess imho.  Although a small edit job would do a lot to change that and I may do :)
 
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MGS4.....I won't even get started on that game....I will just say that I would use that as an absolute example of how graphics got in the way.  Cut scenes lasting over 40 minutes is not intelligent game design and the plot was god awful imho.
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While I agree that the cutscenes were too long, that wasn't graphics getting in the way, that was Kojima's storytelling getting in the way. Looking at the actual gameplay segments, they played well AND had remarkable graphics.

Advent Children Complete didn't shrink any of the overly long battles that I noticed, but it did fix the plot to make more sense and be much more engaging. I'm impressed that they managed to do the opposite of a George Lucas, by fixing the movie instead of just adding a bunch of robots in the background or changing characters' motivations and the sequence of events to break things.
 
I bought my PS3 for MGS4, guess where my PS3 is now?


No longer in my possession anyway, I was very disappointed in MGS4, the controls didn't feel like an MGS game any more, the Octocamo made the game too easy in all honesty.

They spent too much time on making it cinematic and instead could have refined gameplay a bit more, did we really need the huge weapon list, and the weapon buying system was a bit silly.

Even MGO was dull, full of campers, buggy, laggy and had a couple of exploits here and there.
 
I wrote a huge review on MGS4 but it is very....aggressive.  I would have to tone down my anger of the time to show it to you.

Controls:  Not MGS. and very awkward
3D: Ended up shoot em up rather than clever game play
Graphics:  Took over story and over game play.  Cut scenes were ridiculous and the fight scenes went on forever in Matrix style.
Plot:  Out of the window.  Total retcon City and other fanciful elements and deus ex machina.  Totally an dutterly ruined the series imho
Gameplay: Sub standard.  100 guns to get and yet they all do the same.   Shoot em up rather than clever.  AI was poor.
Side quests:  As dull as "get 20 game overs and win a medal"  wow.

All in all, I can't find anything aside from graphics that I could praise about MGS4 (not even its music)....and that is the point.  They blew a 50 GB blu-ray disc so much that they couldn't even have many codec people.  And 40 minute cut scenes is a joke.

MGS1 was a masterpiece and imho MGS4 isn't fit to clean its arse.

Maybe I will dig out a link to my review on it sometime.

Getting back ontopic, MGS4 is pretty much the example I would use for what not to do.  That and advent children are examples of what I would avoid.
 
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Is this available on the UK PSN for PSP or has to be done via a PS3.
 
MGS4.....I won't even get started on that game....I will just say that I would use that as an absolute example of how graphics got in the way.  Cut scenes lasting over 40 minutes is not intelligent game design and the plot was god awful imho.
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That's how MGS games are. Since the beginning it's been 50% gameplay, 50% cutscenes/codec conversations. If you don't wanna watch cutscenes and listen to people talk, why would you play MGS to begin with?

I personally think all four mgs games are marvelous games, and that Hideo Kojima and his Konami team are the cream of the crop when it comes to video game design and development. None of them were perfect, but they were all great games as in they all had their strongpoints (MGS1:Story, MGS2: Controls, MGS3: Fight Sequences, MGS4: Originality).

I personally think it would be impossible to REMAKE ff7 and sacrifice plot for graphics...since the plot's *already there*. All you need to renovate is the graphics. Although I wouldn't hold it past Square-Enix to do something really stupid like make a battle system that emphasizes appearance rather than technique/enjoyability.

EDIT: and it just occurred to me, sometimes over the top flashiness is a good thing. Look at attacks like Omnislash and Supernova. Now don't even try to tell me that Supernova is less over the top than cutting a boulder in half or jumping super high in the air. Hell it even said in the original FF7 manual that cloud's sword "can cut almost anything in two" so I don't see where that's deviating.
 
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Now, if they ever do remake FF7, one thing that must be done imo is to shorten the Supernova sequence.  That Safer Sephiroth battle can get so frustratingly boring if you don't kill him quickly enough.  Though I realize that to many people, that would be low priority.

When it comes to a remake, I would not imagine that the dialogue, or at least the style of the dialogue, will be very faithful to the original.  It seems a little out of Sephiroth's character to laugh evilly, which he did a little too much in the original FF7.  What I imagine they'll do is simply have him smile instead or alternatively change his attitude to make him appear more contemptuous and loathing.  They're also likely to tone down Barret's and Cid's dialogue, as although you can easily censor swear words when they're written down, it's not the same when there's voice acting.

Certainly, if they do create a voiceover for FF7, I'm praying that they take out Heidegger's "stupid horse laugh" (as Rufus calls it) and Scarlet's signature laugh as well as Palmer getting the hiccups while laughing during battle, because really, what kind of voice actor could imitate that in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous?  Nevertheless, I'd be interested in seeing what kind of voice actors they get.  I'd also be interested in hearing spoken dialogue from Bugenhagen and, more than anyone else, Jenova.

The worst thing they could do with a remake is incorporating a FF7AC-like battle style.  Simply because that just wouldn't look right in many battles (the boss battle against Palmer comes to mind).
 
Now, if they ever do remake FF7, one thing that must be done imo is to shorten the Supernova sequence.  That Safer Sephiroth battle can get so frustratingly boring if you don't kill him quickly enough.  Though I realize that to many people, that would be low priority.
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But the Supernova sequence is legendary! OK, what they could do is shorten it after the first time you see it. They could also give the player the option of watching a shortened versions of the summons, as they do in some other FF games. In the mod I've been meaning to get working on, Supernova is changed slightly, so you'll only see it once in battle  :wink:

When it comes to a remake, I would not imagine that the dialogue, or at least the style of the dialogue, will be very faithful to the original.  It seems a little out of Sephiroth's character to laugh evilly, which he did a little too much in the original FF7.  What I imagine they'll do is simply have him smile instead or alternatively change his attitude to make him appear more contemptuous and loathing.
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He does laugh a little, but I never thought of it as an evil laugh; it always seemed to be a laugh at the craziness/futility of the situation. So yeah, no evil laugh please  :roll:

They're also likely to tone down Barret's and Cid's dialogue, as although you can easily censor swear words when they're written down, it's not the same when there's voice acting.
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Pfft, Americans  :-P

That's a possibility if they want a low age rating, but I hope they don't do it.

Certainly, if they do create a voiceover for FF7, I'm praying that they take out Heidegger's "stupid horse laugh" (as Rufus calls it) and Scarlet's signature laugh as well as Palmer getting the hiccups while laughing during battle, because really, what kind of voice actor could imitate that in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous?  Nevertheless, I'd be interested in seeing what kind of voice actors they get.  I'd also be interested in hearing spoken dialogue from Bugenhagen and, more than anyone else, Jenova.
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But those things that Heidegger, Scarlet and Palmer do are parts of their character! Really, what would they be without Gya-ha-ha and Kya-ha-ha? Well, I suppose they'd be like a clean mouthed Cid or Barret  :|

The worst thing they could do with a remake is incorporating a FF7AC-like battle style.  Simply because that just wouldn't look right in many battles (the boss battle against Palmer comes to mind).
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ZOMG but the less time the fighters spend on the ground the better the fight is!

I'd say the AC style fights wouldn't look right in any of the battles. It's a fantasy game, but the FF7 world seems to have the same physical laws as ours ('cept for the magic and ability to swing huge swords). Higher and crazier isn't always better.
 
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When it comes to a remake, I would not imagine that the dialogue, or at least the style of the dialogue, will be very faithful to the original.  It seems a little out of Sephiroth's character to laugh evilly, which he did a little too much in the original FF7.  What I imagine they'll do is simply have him smile instead or alternatively change his attitude to make him appear more contemptuous and loathing.
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He does laugh a little, but I never thought of it as an evil laugh; it always seemed to be a laugh at the craziness/futility of the situation. So yeah, no evil laugh please  :roll:
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With the character of Kefka still quite fresh in their minds while they were working on the original FFVII, they probably intended Sephiroth to be insane and laughing evilly, though not so much as Kefka.  At least, that's how I see it.  I mean, they pretty much copied the final boss battle of FFVI for reuse in FFVII, with a few alterations.  It just seems to me that they liked Kefka so much that they wanted to take him and make him into something even better, the product being Sephiroth.

Nowadays, Sephiroth actually seems sane, though still ill-intending and dark.  That's the kind of villain I prefer.  It's scarier to see Sephiroth looking at the camera with hatred than with a creepy smile that makes it seem as if he has completely gone off his rocker.  And both of these approaches to his character have been seen through various remakes of that Nibelheim scene where there is fire all around and he slowly looks up at the camera.

What I'm saying is that over time, Sephiroth's evil character seems to have evolved.  I watched AC not long after playing FF7 for the first time and Sephiroth really struck me as being completely different.  In the game, he seems like he is out of control, and merely desiring the destruction of everything just for the sake of becoming more powerful.  In AC, he seems to be perfectly in control of himself, and wanting to create a future of his own while killing the planet in the process since it'll further his plan.  I've noticed it through the differences in his battle quotes between the two KH games as well (though he was abnormally out of character in the first.  "No more games.  Show me what you've got!"  Sephiroth saying that?  Really?), not to mention the change in voice actors dramatically changing his persona (and that was undeniably for the better.  Even Lance Bass knows that, I'm sure).

It's also interesting to note that at the end of FF7, when he fades away, you briefly see an expression of sorrow and devastation on his face, but every time he is defeated from the release of KH onwards, he fades while bearing an expression of anger.
 
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