{"id":23112,"date":"2020-05-20T21:19:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T11:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23112"},"modified":"2020-06-25T23:36:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T13:36:39","slug":"final-fantasy-vii-remake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23112","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy VII Remake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Developer:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Square Enix
\nPublisher:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Square Enix
\nPlatform:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Playstation 4<\/p>\n

\u00a0I<\/span>\u00a0still can’t believe this game is finally<\/em> out.<\/p>\n

Although it didn’t officially enter into development until years later, the first time we got any sort of notion of a Final Fantasy VII<\/em> remade with modern graphics was when Square made a\u00a0Final Fantasy VII\u00a0<\/em>tech demo for the Playstation 3 in 2005.\u00a0 FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.\u00a0 Now its finally released\u00a0on the Playstation 4 in 2020.<\/p>\n

Of course, its not quite as simple as that.\u00a0 Prior to the game’s release, Square dropped the\u00a0news that\u00a0Final Fantasy VII Remake<\/em>\u00a0would only cover Midgar City – a tiny fraction of the original story.\u00a0 Remember when Peter Jackson made\u00a0The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies<\/em> and converted two pages out of a childrens book into a\u00a0three hour long film?\u00a0 This is the video game equivalent.\u00a0 Square has taken a 23 year old\u00a0RPG and stretched the\u00a0first township\u00a0into a 30+ hour modern action adventure game.<\/p>\n

It’s an insane project.\u00a0 Square themselves can’t even say how many parts the overall product will be.\u00a0 Or how long it will take to make.<\/p>\n

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So what is there to say about this first chapter?\u00a0 Initial impressions\u00a0are very positive.\u00a0 It’s hard not to talk about anything over than the\u00a0graphics first and foremost.\u00a0 They look absolutely stunning and anyone with even the faintest bit of nostalgia for the original Playstation One version of\u00a0Final Fantasy VII<\/em> will be delighted when the game recreates that memorable intro cutscene on the train line as the Avalanche freedom fighters storm the Shinra corporation to blow up one of their reactors.\u00a0 The art design, the soundtrack and the stunning fidelity of the visuals make for a jaw-dropping spectacle.\u00a0 We get that same terrific camera swoop over the bustling Midgar metropolis, only this time the detail is increased a hundred-fold.<\/p>\n

Everything about this opening sequence hit the right notes for me.\u00a0 Almost instantly, the cast of characters stand head and shoulders above their contemporaries in\u00a0Final Fantasy XIII<\/em> and\u00a0XV<\/em>.\u00a0 They’re much more interesting and well rounded.\u00a0 The game has a playful sense of humour that has been largely absent in recent mainline\u00a0Final Fantasy\u00a0<\/em>games and mercifully, the story line is also much more straightforward and easy to follow.\u00a0 Cloud Strife, the stoic mercenary-for-hire, is reluctantly drawn into the struggle between the Avalanche organisation and its battle with Shinra Corp, an evil corporation that is rapidly killing the planet as it plunders the Earth of mako energy.\u00a0 There’s a menacing dark villain named Sephiroth lurking in the shadows and a seemingly innocuous flower girl named Aerith ends up being crucial to the fate of the planet.<\/p>\n

The original game released in 1997 and thematically, it’s stunning that its ideas\u00a0are more relevant today than they were over two decades ago.\u00a0 Most big budget modern games tend to stay away from politically charged subject matter but in\u00a0Final Fantasy VII<\/em>, the heroes are unashamedly eco-terrorists fighting a mega-corporation that is polluting the Earth and ignoring all signs that they are mining natural resources to the point of oblivion.\u00a0 One of the game’s biggest villains is a billionaire CEO who despises the working class.\u00a0 During a firefight between the Avalanche freedom fighters and the private security firm that defends Shinra, one of the allies calls the corporation a “bunch of fascist pricks”.\u00a0 Topically, its the most relevant and interesting that\u00a0Final Fantasy<\/em> has ever been.<\/p>\n

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The gameplay in\u00a0Final Fantasy VII Remake<\/em> is a substantial overhaul of the original.\u00a0 The quasi-turn based Active Time Battle system is replaced with a modern real time action RPG combat system that draws inspiration from\u00a0Final Fantasy XIII<\/em> and\u00a0Kingdom Hearts 3<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a little fiddly and complicated at first but over time it becomes second nature.<\/p>\n

The story line initially follows the original game quite closely but does an excellent job adding depth and colour to the motivations of the main cast (Aerith in particular benefits from this) and the supporting cast of Avalanche characters – Biggs, Wedge and Jessie – are suddenly given so much more charm and detail that they threaten to steal the show at times.<\/p>\n

Fans of\u00a0Final Fantasy VII<\/em> will enjoy revisiting key locations from the original game – the church, Don Comeo’s den etc – only to see them rebuilt and redesigned with modern graphical flourishes.\u00a0 Gradually as the story expands in scope, you’ll also get to see other sections of Midgar (the sewers, the slums etc) that were only hinted at in the original title but are now fleshed out into full blown accessible areas.<\/p>\n

The final act of the game goes ‘full anime’ and is bigger, crazier and wilder than anything we saw in the original game.\u00a0 It finishes on a high note that will leave fans desperate for the next chapter to arrive, whenever that may be.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VII Remake<\/em> does have a few noticeable shortcomings.\u00a0 Although the graphics make a strong first impression, over the course of the game they can be wildly uneven with some NPCs and environmental details looking pretty shabby and rough around the edges.\u00a0 The pacing is also pretty wonky and feels like a 20 hour game told over 30 hours.\u00a0 The side quests are blatant padding and mind-numbingly derivative fetch quests of the “kill these rats”\/”find three missing cats” variety.\u00a0 These blemishes occasionally threaten to sour what is still overall an excellent and unexpectedly great remake.<\/p>\n

Who knows when I’ll get to write about the next chapter.\u00a0 Hopefully it won’t be too long.\u00a0\u00a0With some minor improvements, the finished project could turn out to be one for the ages.\u00a0\u00a0Against all odds,\u00a0Final Fantasy VII Remake<\/em> is pretty great.<\/p>\n

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A mercenary-for-hire joins a group of eco warriors to bring down the evil Shinra corporation which is polluting the Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[500,2893,2894,1702,1202,1932],"class_list":["post-23112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-final-fantasy","tag-final-fantasy-7","tag-final-fantasy-7-remake","tag-playstation-4","tag-square","tag-square-enix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23112"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23191,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112\/revisions\/23191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}