00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast for each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss my guests today are longtime friends of the show many time. Ah, returning guests and well we'll just say your friendly neighborhood eco terrorists Ryan Arrington welcome back and returning again is one of my co-hosts on a top 3 podcast Aaron Angle welcome back 00:28.53 Ryan N****s! 00:37.43 Aaron What's up hey real quick are have we been on the show more than anybody else has been on the show. Hell yeah baby I'm telling you we taken the shit over stri. 00:41.45 Dave You definitely have Ryan's getting up there too. Yeah. 00:45.11 Ryan You would run it up. Baby. 00:52.73 Dave Um, for a long time listeners. You may recognize this particular trio. We've all done the rocket league episode together which was episode one of the show we did persona 5 royal and then not too long ago. We did sea of stars. So this is our fourth time together and we've got a wonderful game Today. We're talking about final fantasy 7 remake which is an action rpg developed and published by square enix in 2020 a remake as the title might suggest a remake of the original final fantasy 7 which was first released in 9097 final fantasy 7 remake covers the opening hours of the original game. Ah, 5 to 8 hours of the original game contained in the city of midgar and the upcoming final fantasy 7 rebirth continues that story after the party leaves. Midgar this is the sixth final fantasy game to be featured on the show following the episodes about final fantasy 6 which Aaron was a guest on final fantasy 10169 and the greatest game I've ever played stranger of paradise final fantasy origin. Ah, the game's awesome. Go play. It. Um, if you are listening and you have not played final fantasy 7 remake. We are not going to spoil what happens in the story of this game including changes that happen from the original game. 02:06.37 Aaron I'm sure. 02:22.70 Dave In the non-spoiler section per usual, you can check down in the show notes for when the spoilers begin so you can either tap out at that point or you can you know burst right on through the spoiler wall into the spoiler section I do want to note in this episode we are going to spoil the entire plot of the original final fantasy 7 but we will keep that in that spoiler section as well. So if you don't want to be spoiled on the whole plot of final fantasy 7 the original game get out at the spoiler wall as well with all that being said, let's get started with our elevator pitches for final fantasy 7 remake I say. It is final fantasy 7 remade bigger, longer and very much cut that was for you Aaron what would you guys say for an elevator pitch. 03:08.77 Aaron That was a very good South park movie reference Dave and I. that is exactly right. It is the remake of what is probably my favorite video game of all time. Ah and that. I don't know it's it's really hard for me to be like hey like you should play this game if you've never played the original final fantasy seven. I think if you haven't played the original final fantasy 7 and you want to play this game I would seriously ask you to reconsider and go back and play the first one because I think a lot of the magic from this game comes from. Like my original love of the original final fan 7 game. So yeah, that's exactly what it is, man. It's a really good remake of what I consider to be 1 of the greatest jrpgs ever made so there's my. 03:56.40 Dave All right long elevator ride Ryan how about you. 04:02.52 Ryan Yeah, this game is the greatest game ever fucking made and that is a fact as an absolute fact, um that that's pretty much as simple as that. Honestly, yeah, but if you're going to be trying to play the old one ah might be a little tough because it's a little dated as far as the graphics but God damn it. 04:18.97 Ryan It is just a fantastic story and there will be a little bias on my part here. But as far as RPGs go if if you enjoy an rpg you got to go to 1 of the was that really essentially just kind of ah endorse so many RPGs going forward and it just kind of paves the way for the genre. 04:37.31 Dave Right? on? Um, we will talk about our personal histories in a second real quick. I do want to kind of give people an idea of how long this game took me so I've played it twice. The first time took me 37 hours. I did plenty of side quests and stuff like that. Second time I skipped a lot of side quests and I did the dlc starring Yuffie and that took me 35 hours to do the replay. Do you guys know about how long your playthrough took you? 05:03.75 Aaron I had to have been around the same point. I mean none of the side quests in this game have you, you know, go to a million different places to figure stuff out. It's you know pretty straightforward pretty linear I felt for most of the game. So yeah, but about probably about 35 to 40 05:19.10 Dave Yep. 05:22.40 Ryan Um, I am notorious for just simply finding a way to do too much. I probably put sixty maybe even 7 hours into this game even if there was only 10 hours I found a way to put 70 into it. 05:33.80 Ryan I tried to stay in the universe as long as I possibly could. But yeah I'd probably say around I mean I did absolutely everything I possibly could that game so I'd say probably about 5060 05:38.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, did you like get a platinum trophy in this. 05:43.17 Ryan I Don't want to I don't want to answer that question because no I did but a good bit of play. 05:48.20 Dave All right. 05:48.95 Aaron And I think there are only some things you can get for the platinum trophy from replaying it again which I have not done. 05:57.72 Dave Oh true, true. All right? So let us kick off the episode proper by again talking about our histories with the original final fantasy 7 the final fantasy series because Ryan you haven't been on for a final fantasy game yet. This is your first one. Ah, so what got you into final fantasy How do you feel about the original final fantasy 7 you both have already kind of answered that question and then if there was a special reason for why he wanted to play the remake which I think we already answered that question too but take it away Ryan I'll kick to you first. 06:34.95 Ryan Yeah I would love to answer this question um to keep it simple the reason I got into the game originally was my brother oddly enough 1 time he came over with the guide and he showed me this game that basically was a movie and I was like okay. It looked pretty cool and I tried playing it by myself once prior to this with him I played it by myself. My dad bought it and I was again I had no fuck cool was going on this is terrible i' used to play like Laura Croft seeing some you know getting some pentagon titties and kind of be able to go of my way. 07:06.82 Ryan But this game was far more involved and I wasn't able to at First. So when my brother came over with the guide and showed me essentially the basics of how it went. Yeah I got sucked in more than I've ever been sucked in detail of the game period the lo the being able to just getting drawn into the story. The characters, everything just really just captured me as far as far ever. So. Final fantasy 7 itself goes. Yeah, it's it's my favorite I definitely it's it's quite fair I think it's pride by first rpg as well. So I have some bias for that reason it simply got me into rpgs. Um, but yeah, ah outside that special reason I just I think the game is just fantastic. It really covers ah does a great job as far as battle system goes. Ah, introducing some very interesting things as far as that goes as well and the store itself I just I don't know the characters of the story really captured me. 07:52.88 Dave Right on and Aaron how about you. 07:55.54 Aaron And I talked about it before ah you know how basically everything Ryan just said right there one thing I do want to point out to is I believe this is how ah Ryan and I became friends was in gym class when we both realized that we both like final fantasy 7 and we were like okay so we're going to be best friends forever from here on out. 08:15.25 Aaron Ah, but the 1 thing I've wanted basically my entire life was for final fantasy 7 to be remade in whatever fashion. You know they decided to do. I wanted even if it was just a scene by scene improved graphics you know, better sound files blah blah blah that's all I ever wanted and I didn't have a playstation at this time. but during but covid happened and the final fantasy 7 remake was out and I always just was like well I'll play it eventually someday. But then when covid happened and I didn't know if I was going to die on any given day I was like dude you got to buy a ps 4 play the ff 7 remake. 08:49.79 Dave Um, this will be your only regret. 08:51.43 Aaron Like what if you die three weeks away what are you gonna die? Yeah yes, dude. But you all, you both get that. So yeah, but that's kind of me. I've always loved final fantasy games and this was probably what I mean when I heard it was being made. It was probably like the most I had ever anticipated playing. 08:53.50 Ryan Yeah, if I could. 09:09.59 Dave I was just going to ask like so the reason I asked you 2 to be on this episode is because I know you both love the original final fantasy 7 So. 09:19.31 Ryan So true. 09:23.43 Dave I Imagine when the remake got announced that you guys both just freaked the fuck out. Hell yeah. 09:26.52 Aaron Oh yeah. 09:27.33 Ryan You can? yeah I wept Okay I wept yeah. 09:33.39 Aaron Ah, no, but I mean like I know we're joking here but Dave I also wept I've crying bro. 09:36.53 Ryan No i' but gro as bad I'm dead at I like there are tears for my eyes I was so excited for this title but just like didy said I've been waiting for this remake for so long I mean I honestly didn't think it was ever going to happen and Dave you also did this, you wouldn't saw the actual um, the orchestra did you die my boy. 09:48.26 Aaron Same. 09:52.70 Dave I went to the distant Worlds concert. Yeah. 09:56.40 Ryan Bro and again it just I just love the environment and the lore of FF7 so much the music. Everything about it just I love being involved in the fact that they brought it back and they gave this poor alert they did it again. The fact they'll be able to make the the game as good as the first one in my opinion or at least close to yeah I fuck. 10:17.48 Dave Yeah, um, for me personally as I've said this on like the previous episodes of the show I'm a fan of the final fantasy series. But I'm not a fan of all of the games in the series that I've played. I've probably played like 10 or 12 of them and I like about half of them and ah. Final fantasy 7 s not one of the ones that I like I don't really like the original final fantasy 7 that much I didn't have a playstation back then so I did not play this when it came out I played it for the first time in 2013 just trying to like place what apartment I was living in. You know when I first played it I played it emulated on my laptop. It was just not a great situation and I fell off after a while. Um I finally so I played the remake on the day came out I bought it and I think I'm going to take a little bit of credit for making aaron buy a ps forward to play this like it's not all his own existential crisis I pretty sure I got in the group chat like you know. 2 hours into the game I was like dude this is the best fucking game I've ever played you have to buy this so there was yeah, exactly? Yeah so I played the remake back right? when it was first released. 11:18.29 Aaron And that that tracks I was probably like okay fine if Dave says it's cool I'll spend $400 on the playstation and. 11:30.97 Dave Then I played the original final fantasy 7 right? after it I played it on switch I beat it. I still didn't like it that much but I did beat it and finished it but I was excited to play the remake because I remembered just how I thought I would love the original and I didn't when I first played it. But like a remake is a second chance for whatever reason you didn't like a game if it's getting remade if you're not like 100 % opposed to the idea of it then a remake is a second chance for you to experience that and to kind of get into the quick opening thoughts before we dig in proper. I think this game final fantasy 7 remake is one of the best final fantasy games in the whole series with anything with final fantasy in the title. This is easily one of the best in the top 3. Not only that, this is one of the best remakes I've ever played. 12:14.39 Aaron That is correct for sure. 12:28.12 Dave I did an episode all about game remakes with Dylan and Dave from offshore gamescast and we talked about it in that episode. How final fantasy 7 remake is just an ideal like is the. Platonic ideal of a remake. Basically you take the original game. You keep the heart of the original game and improve all the things that you can while maintaining the heart of the original game and I think they just knocked it out of the park. This is incredible even on the replay I was like. I'm not going to do the side quest because they suck but all the stuff that matters is great in this. This is ah yeah, this is a home run of a game in my opinion. 13:11.25 Aaron And but before we move on I Just want to say it's it's like a good pie. You know the secret ingredient is love. You know you can. You can tell that the people I mean were people that had worked on the original game working on this game. You could say that. 13:29.31 Aaron You know the people that worked on it put as much love into it as they had for the they wanted this game to be awesome and while I'm still on the fence of what I think the rest of the series is going to be. You can tell that the people that were making this game were. As in love with it as the audience they knew they were making it for and. 13:47.35 Ryan Yeah that's true and I'm pretty sure that the creator was quoted saying that he wouldn't do it again. The reason it took so long is that he wouldn't do it again until he thought that he was ready that it was going to be perfect. He said this way he wanted this to be quite literally quoted better than the first. So. Yeah, he was not He was not fucking around and you could tell you could tell for as soon as the game loads up. It's like Jesus Christ this is like oh my god literally like when you experience a game especially or from a remake touching FF7 especially for me I was like Jesus is dangerous. 14:23.52 Ryan But this one was just like as soon as I loaded up I was like oh my god they I think they've done this and it's almost immediate. Um I do have a question Dave just before we get into it tell can you tell me why you didn't like the first one non remade. 14:27.70 Dave Yep. 14:34.70 Dave Oh the original one. Yeah I don't like the combat I think it's simple but also slow like playstation rpgs are I I don't I'm not really going out on a limb here and saying I don't like the way it looks and. 14:44.30 Ryan Yes. 14:53.89 Dave I think that we'll talk about this in the spoiler section. I think the second half of the original game story is a mess. I don't like it at all. I like the first half and then it just veered into territory that I just didn't give a shit about so we will. We will talk about that. 15:09.32 Ryan Ah, could okay, completely understand that. 15:11.50 Dave In the spoiler section for sure as we get into kind of predicting where this final fantasy 7 remake trilogy is going to go. But yeah that's the basics of it. 15:17.00 Ryan Yes, cool I was just curious just go for I think that was a good basis to start off considering how much you like the remake I'm excited to go for cool. 15:24.48 Dave Yeah, yeah, absolutely and you were mentioning the people who made it. This remake was directed by Tetsuya Nomura who worked on the original story of the original final fantasy 7 all the way back then so was it twenty three years later he's at the Helm for the remake. So good stuff. Let us listen to a bit of music and then when we come back, we'll set up the story for final fantasy 7 remake. 15:54.36 Dave In final fantasy 7 remake you play as cloud strife. The protagonist of the original game cloud is a mercenary joining up with the eco terrorist group avalanche they're on a mission to bomb a ah mako reactor mako is like a. An energy source, basically reactors owned by a corporation called shinra ah shinra is going to be your main villain in this game. Mako is an energy source which is refined from the planet's lifestream but drawing that power out of the lifestream is weakening. Life energy of the planet. So you are eco-terrorists trying to save the planet by blowing up these reactors, the bombing mission which is like the first hour or so of the game. It was the demo for Final Fantasy 7 remake. The bombing mission is a success but. There's a lot more collateral damage than you anticipated, kind of leaving everybody in the group wondering if they did the right thing before we talk about anything else. I just want to say that you mentioned I think it was you Ryan when you boot up this game. You get the title sequence. It. Zooms down straight into the bombing mission. There is no, like you know, 15 minute exposition cut scene with the history of the world or something like that you see the title card. You go straight down into the bombing mission. You taught how combat works. You kind of learn the story as you go through this mission. It's. 17:14.46 Ryan No filler. 17:25.72 Dave It was really good in the original game. It's fantastic in the remake. 17:30.54 Ryan Yeah I couldn't agree more. Um, the 1 thing I think they do well and essentially one of the reasons you love the game is the characters the way that it starts off is it immediately starts off with the characters and their engagement with each other and you're immediately curious so who is this enormous black dude with this machine gun arm. 17:47.57 Ryan Talking hella shit and you're just like okay I mean you're immediately engaged within the the dynamic of the characters and I think they do a great job of just essentially applying the pedal to the meow with that and they never let off even to the very awkward second half of the gate which I could understand I agree with you to it extend. But yeah I think they do a great job of that and um. That's what really draws you to the game and that's one of the big reasons I Love it. 18:09.32 Aaron I just remember there was this part at the very beginning where they introduced like the hurdle physics or the slide under physics or something dub where you had to like jump over a wall or something and I just like could not grasp that they had built those physics. To a game that I've used to play where you just walked into something you're like well guess I'll go around ah but and I think this is a theme throughout the game and is how close they are to matching the tone with the same scene from the original like ah it's it's like Gary did said they throw you in hostile. The original scene was better. But. 18:46.39 Aaron That's how I knew this game was gonna be great. After I had played through that first three hours of the game I was like holy shit they took everything from the original and made it 50 times better. I am pumped. 18:54.28 Dave During that bombing mission at the beginning. You're introduced to a lot of your main characters including Barret who is the giant black guy with the gun for an arm immediately striking character. You'll never forget Barrett once you see him and hear him talk tifa. Who is your cloud's childhood friend, martial artist type and some supporting members on the avalanche team Jesse Wedge and biggs. Um, you meet your main characters again. Remember you are actual terrorists. You're on a bombing mission at the beginning. Some of your characters are left to kind of grapple with what you've done and question whether they're doing things the right way. Some of your characters are still all for it. Barrett is about that action. Jesse is all about it. Tifa is a little bit kind of you know, troubled by how everything is gone. It's ah it's a really interesting setup for a story and a group of characters. Why your characters are all working together, etc. 19:57.16 Aaron Yeah, and the coolest thing to me is is the scope they put onto midgar in this game versus what it was in the original as well and I hate to keep jumping back and forth between the 2 but like you you see the ramifications of the actions and under a closer lens in the original like you can. Go around and you can talk to these people and hear the pain in their voices and hear them being scared and and like I said the the 1 thing that they really really did well at least throughout this game for me was really humanizing midgar and humanizing the people that live in the slums and that do not work for shinra like. All of your ramifications. You can see every time you do something crazy in this game. Just go back and talk to the people they're talking about and it really makes you think a lot more than it did when I was playing through the original. I mean I was also 11 but you know still. 20:48.26 Ryan Yeah, same I think that's my fair part of this game is it's basically the same game except definitely amplified as far as the character interactions. You can't you made mention of like the graphics you click Clearly if you played it when it first came out those were those graphics were hot boy I'm telling you said I but. 21:05.23 Dave Yeah I've heard. Yeah. 21:05.90 Aaron Yep Hot hot. 21:07.14 Ryan It's hard to see it now they like that were us but ah, but even then like it's hard to see those. It read the subtle. You know little things and and and when you play the remake you see those things even Tifa makes little um little remarks here and there and it's just like Jesus the game is just it's. You missed all of these things you had to basically just imagine them essentially the interactions when it came to that detail and ah being able to see the like firsthand is oh no, it brings a whole new aspect to the game which I already loved which was the fact that the story was fantastic and I already loved the interactions and it makes them even grander which I didn't think was possible but. Yeah I love that aspect of the game just like b was saying. 21:49.39 Dave Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um the I guess the final couple characters that you will meet play a big role in the story you meet the local flower peddler named Aerith you meet her early on. Eventually you'll meet another party member from the original game red 13 red thirteen is kind of an escaped research subject dog wolf type animal but it can talk and shit it's ah it's a very final fantasy type of character. Ah, you also meet the game's primary antagonist. Sephiroth most famous I think for skewering Mario in a super smash brothers trailer that was very funny. Yeah and the dlc for the game I already mentioned I played it the dlc focuses on Yuffie who is a materia thief. 22:27.61 Aaron That's correct that is exactly what I remember him for. 22:42.10 Dave From a neighboring nation called Wutai. Yuffie was a part of the original game. One of my least favorite characters in the original game and that is a nice tie to what I think this game's biggest strength is and you guys already mentioned this you're both correct in my opinion. The biggest strength of final fantasy 7 remake is fleshing out every single character to a point where I feel like I know them and care about them that was one of my issues with the original game is they this this remake just gives so much more time. For everyone to develop and talk to each other and show who they really are and in the original game. There were characters that I was meant to really care about and I just didn't I didn't care about them. So you know I think the the biggest winners for this are number 1 cloud is a big winner. Not a fan of the original cloud cloud just gets a lot more time to show more than just being you know a little edge lord like he was in the original game eri gets a bunch of time for me to you know care about her and ah bear it is not just mrt anymore which is great. Great for him as a character and you can go down the list like I like Yuffie in this game. The characterization of her is really fun whereas in the original. She's super annoying in my opinion. Your side character is Jesse Wedge and biggs and Don Corneo and all of them. They're incredible. They're fleshed out real people. 24:17.91 Dave And this again this is the biggest win for a game that has a bunch of big wins in it I think. 24:22.94 Aaron Well and like yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say is like I once I had played through the game a little bit I had like certain expectation that they were going to do those things with the main characters but it was like the the side characters that they that they delved into a little bit more that really impressed me. Ah, you get to see a lot more of rufus and president shinra in this game you get to see way more heidegger and scarlet than you really ever got from FF7 I mean they even delve into just something that was a hint in the original game and that's Rude having a crush on tifa. 24:57.49 Aaron And like that actually has some important storyline aspects down the road without spoiling anything at all. Um, and I would even say you could take it to like Avalanche has a logo. It's like a puppy dog with a helmet. They have logos and you see their shit everywhere. They didn't have those things. 25:12.52 Aaron So not only is the character building and the character fleshing out a big thing. The things they do with midgar specifically like those little nuances that they have you go into the seventh. Heaven Tifa's bar has a painting above one of the doors. That's the original bar from FF 7 in like the original FF 7 graphics like they do a. Really really huge service to fans of the original game by 1 staying completely true to like you know what its essence is and then 2 giving you way more which is was my biggest fear going into this game is like are are they going to be able to handle that sort of balance and they did and it's awesome and they. 25:51.20 Aaron You can notice that through the characters like the fact that they are better than they were in the original to me made me question whether or not I actually you know Arrington said he liked it more I still don't know to this day I'm going to need to play the whole thing before I say that but you know. These little things right here the character development. These are the things where I'm like oh shit I might actually be playing a better video game than what I once thought was my favorite video game. 26:16.10 Ryan Yeah, yeah, couple things like hold up, I don't I don't remember saying that it was better but but I I don't remember I don't remember that I don't remember that but I will say that um I'll be a I'll play double advocate. This is that just to touch what Dave saying again? ah at the time. 26:21.55 Aaron So you literally said at the beginning. 26:35.44 Ryan But this game first released what it was capable of doing. It pushed the boundaries I feel like of everything even of storytelling and everything so again, approaching it later on. You're not going to really be able to capture all that now because I mean yeah, you got people just look at basically real. Yeah, say it just of being able to in the of the fuck itt of oceans everything they are conveyed now are just insane compared to to that time but that's ah, again, that's one of the reasons I do love the second one is that all everything you get everything there for the first one and then essentially more which I can't I can't I believe that they they managed to do honestly just going into a game and just. With just being scared I'm honestly, that's best great way to put it. That's how much I care really I mean because I that's how much I cared about this title it had I mean it but they they managed to do it and then some and I can't ah. 27:10.57 Aaron Yeah, straight up? Yeah nervous nervous like you're on a roller coaster for sure. That's how much it means to. 27:27.69 Ryan I Mean honestly being really kind of kind of said everything realistically outside of that um play the game. 27:32.00 Aaron The play of the game. Honestly, this is cool that the vibe is so much different than it was when we did our sea of stars episode like we're all happy and I cry and Striden's cried 6 times already here. Yeah ay de big cried. 27:38.50 Dave Um, oh yeah, um. 27:45.10 Ryan Ah, big cry. Yeah. 27:50.23 Aaron Ah I Love this game so much I'm so glad we actually do get an episode about it. 27:51.62 Dave Yeah, hundred percent me too and like I'm glad because like I said like I played I've played the section of the original final fantasy 7 that this remake you know expands out I've played that original section 2 times. And I just didn't care that much about cloud tifa and Aerith and a bunch of I cared about Barret because Barret's funny but I didn't really care about any of the main cast that much. Um. Later on when you start to learn like some of Barret's backstory and stuff like that I thought that was cool but like I didn't really care and like when bad things happened to some characters like I didn't really care in the original game I wasn't emotionally invested I I don't know where this remake story is going um, but I am. Going to be devastated by whatever happens to whoever something devastating happens because they made me care so much about everybody in the main cast There's some side characters that like 1 of the um, unfortunate. Side effects of taking this small piece of game and blowing it up and giving so much attention to every character even the side characters is there are a bunch of side characters that I think are really annoying and they just get more screen time now because there's more screen time to be had so characters like reno and that piece of shit Johnny and that. 29:21.76 Dave Fucking piece of shit chadley I hope dies. Um, now he's a piece of shit he knows he's a piece of shit his name's chadley and he's forty five years old 29:25.90 Ryan Yeah, not to get behind that. Yeah, his name is chadley. His name is chadley. 29:26.96 Aaron Ah, he's a child and. 29:34.47 Aaron Okay, maybe we're not thinking about the same person I don't think okay house like I was like Dave I've been hating not the wrong dude that's what he. 29:36.96 Ryan Ah, you know, no, his name is chadley. His name is chadley. 29:37.63 Dave No, it's definitely He's definitely a child but he's a piece of shit he knows he's a piece of shit. no no no Chadley's terrible but like the unfortunate site is those characters that I don't like get more time in the spotlight too. But that's worth it because of all the characters that i. Either did like or was indifferent to in the original game. Getting so much more time and again like cloud is better Aerith is way better. Barret is way better. There's way more depth to bear it in this game tifa' is better. Yuffie is 1000000 times better. So i'm. Thinking forward to other characters that we're going to meet in the future games I'm like am I going to care about vincent this time am I going to care about Cid is sid going to be cool in this game they are dude Cid was an asshole how how could you like Cid in the first game. 30:22.20 Aaron Shit. Are they gonna even put Vincent in the game you I love said I love saying there are limitations to what you can do with character development on the playstation one like instead of having fleshed out scenes. 30:24.50 Ryan Are you saying Cid wasn't cool in the first one like god damn it hold on that bra. 30:34.86 Dave You could make him not be a piece of shit to his wife. That's it. That's a real easy way to make him likable. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay his part sorry sorry sorry Ryan Ryan 30:36.17 Ryan It was a fucking boss and I that was that was not his wife that was not his wife hold up that was his fucking partner. Okay, he did blow it. He did blow that though that I do want to say that I want to say. 30:40.30 Aaron I I don't know man I feel like he kind of redeems himself, but that's either here or there. 30:51.53 Aaron He did yell at her a whole bunch and I. 30:54.73 Dave I'm sorry but um, be Vincent is going to be in the next game they did confirm that he's you can't play as him but he's going to be there kind of like red 13 in this game. 30:55.69 Ryan Ah, okay, God Damn it. 31:00.74 Aaron It's cool. 31:07.41 Ryan Yeah, that'll probably end up being my rant towards the end. My dragon rant not being able to fly rant towards the end is of that red 13 and I do want to address that very quickly is that going forward. He will be referred to as the goat I'm guessing is red 13 because he is he he he may be the best character of the game but definitely top. 31:08.50 Aaron That's fair I Guess that. 31:17.54 31:26.68 Ryan Top 2 he's the he is the boy all right. 31:27.84 Aaron I almost shit my pants when I saw him and I did the opposite when I saw Cait Sith I was like oh they're bringing Cait Sith back. Great. 31:28.91 Dave Ah. 31:33.60 Ryan I Forgot my people. Yeah, he's still the game. 31:35.14 Dave Ah, they ah apparently Cait Sith is not the way you're supposed to pronounce that it's and I can't remember how it's actually pronounced like cat she or something like that and they they. 31:46.75 Ryan Wow. 31:47.60 Aaron That sucks for those American Translators I guess because it complicates it forever. 31:52.56 Ryan Forever. 31:53.63 Dave Well they switched it for the remake. They were like no one could fucking save this anyway, we're just calling it Cait Sith from now on. Yeah, they did yeah ah which yeah was kind of fucked up because they didn't make up the name. 31:58.78 Ryan Oh they did actually make that canon. Oh let's go now that feels good. 31:59.75 Aaron And hell yeah, we finally got 1 guys. We finally won one. It feels real good. 32:10.34 Dave It's like a thing from mythology I free what country it's from but like they it would be like if someone took fucking Paul Bunyan into another game and just deliberately mispronounced it and we're like that's not how you say it. They're like not fuck you. We're not changing it so and. 32:21.66 Aaron I Yeah Posh Posh Boggle I'd be bad. 32:23.77 Ryan Yeah, ah if they start coming under dig a posh boggle for sure. It was just just had to eat that. 32:30.60 Dave But anyway, um, yeah characters big win in this game. Another thing you guys mentioned before was kind of building out the city of Midgar. The original game took place with these, you know, fixed camera angles pre rendered backgrounds. Um I thought those places looked. Pretty good like way better than the character models and stuff obviously but in this remake the city of midgar gets blown Up. You can move the camera around and you can look up like for people who've never played midgar is this giant City. That has this multi-level Structure. So The ground level is the slums and then the ground level is covered by these giant metal plates that are suspended like hundreds of meters above the surface. That's where like the business and upper class districts are so like the slums they don't see the sun in shit. Like down there. They just have artificial light. Everyone's living good up on the upper plate that this game mostly takes place down in the slums and the way that all of this is built out the way that you can see the scale of the city is another thing that just really helps the story. It helps you feel like. You know this place where the game is taking place in because they really put a ton of effort into like we said with the characters fleshing this out. 33:51.42 Aaron Yeah, and it's the anticipation of what's to come that makes me so excited I could sit here. We could talk for 2 hours just about midgar and what it looks like and how they made it look from the original game and how great that all is. But what that really makes me think is are things like so like what the fuck is the golden saucer going to look like like I can't even like imagine you know what they're going to do when they have like the city of the ancients which I thought was very very plain in the original final fantasy 7 like you know what are they going to do with that like. When I see what they do with the which you know midgar's awesome and everything like that don't get me wrong but I feel like a very you know it's it's so far in the beginning of the game that you kind of forget about it by the time you go on through like but just seeing how much they put into that specific city like I'm I'm I'm literally just thinking like well they did this so perfectly. What's. But yeah, what's calm gonna look like you know what's Nibelheim going to look like like they they do such a good job of it that all it makes me want to do is see all of the other big play like Wutai is gonna be so fucking cool when they bring it into the game. It's gonna be awesome. You know but I know that because of how good it. You know how much depth there was to midgar as well. And. 35:04.91 Ryan Yeah I mean I'm and as you can priority tell I'm an emotional guy and ah when I go toCosmo Canyon for the first time which is good to feel like the first time again because that's how good the game is. It's like being able to experience the first one again which is just fucking. 35:21.80 Ryan honestly just a treat as best way for me to put that the fact I feel like I get to experience the game I love more than anything again. But yeah cosmo canyon is going to break me and I know that that's coming ah, but yeah, they've fucking a like thinking about gold saucer I cannot I get I can't say that I cannot believe how good they have done at taking the first game. And I can't believe they done it again. 36:15.34 Ryan Just seeing the interactions again between everything and just seeing how more fleshed out that is I can't wait to fucking see Sephiroth I mean just really do his fucking thing and let me this I feel like this is a proper time just to really talk about the fact that you did not get a chance to to touch red 13 when he showed up and he just showed up like i. 36:32.00 Aaron I Ah know they hung it out in front of us like a cow's head in front of a pool of piranhas Dude yeah. 36:34.67 Ryan Bra I was I was pissed again I was so upset but I'm gonna let it go because again, the game is pretty close the second game. If we talked about this suit I'd be upset. But yeah I cannot wait to just be able to play him and just really get just to see how they've what more they could show us because. 36:52.87 Ryan Ah, feel like it's all going to be damn there Brand new. 36:53.81 Aaron I Yeah and it speaks to how good this game is like you know what? I mean like I you we both had our reservations but there the anticipation is so great because of how good of a job they did with this game and. 37:05.69 Dave Let me ask you guys a question and I think I might already know the answer to it but on the subject of Midgar Midgar is like I said at the top like a five to eight hours section of the original game like 5 hours is an average I guess. You can take your time if you want to, but it's not a long part of the original game and it's the entire game in final fantasy 7 remake this part one of 3 that they've planned so did this feel padded to you all or were you just happy to be there. 37:38.14 Aaron I wanted more . I wish that was an 80 hour game dude I could literally spend a whole trilogy just walking around midgar to be completely honest with you. Dude. 37:48.17 Ryan Yeah I feel similar. That's why I got stretched out to 60 hours because again I would mean the amount of time I spent in the flower garden just listening to the music and the music literally is maybe 1 of the. Greatest scores just ever just as far as gaming history I put that on everything I will fight a n**** you hear with David a lot I would if I could look at you the eyes brow which is I would fight like over the shit. But i' seriously it's just splendid bro. And yeah I could have wanted more than this one thing that being being talked about. 38:22.58 Ryan For sure as far as going forward it and that's the only honestly quite frankly, my thing I can say is my issue about the game is the fact that they split this into a trilogy like it's not gonna be a just a trilogy I don't I don't know what you would call it to be honest with you I think it is gonna turn into their talk about 10 years of this I don't I don't know what to say to that. 38:37.67 Aaron Yeah. 38:42.59 Ryan Far as this game goes. Yeah, the universe is fantastic. I think they did a great job at bar even for as linear as it was. I feel like it was pretty straightforward which is how the first one was as well. Um, fuck everything looked awesome like even consider it was pretty fucking rough to watch I mean everything was pretty poor I mean is pretty slummy. 39:00.15 Ryan I Mean they did a great job of that. But everything is fleshed out as fuck. 39:01.92 Dave Yeah I didn't feel the padding as much. The first time I played it because I was just wowed by how they created the city so it was some of those you know underground or like lab levels. I was like okay I'm kind of tired of you know underground labs. But anytime you're outside and you can really take in like the scope or the scale of how big the city is and how big they've made it that was great and so all of those sections didn't really feel like they dragged for me some parts of the game. Felt like they go on a little bit too long like I said some underground stuff that I was like okay, can we wrap this up I want to go back outside but and the other thing is the side quest which I mentioned before I think are the side quests are like pretty bad overall like a lot of them are real waste of time and they. Try to do that thing where sometimes cloud will kind of talk to another character and be like this is beneath me this is ah this is a waste of my time and the other characters like ha. You're so angry all the time cloud and a lot of games will do that boom. 40:06.38 Aaron I was wasting your life with us. 40:08.54 Ryan You right though you right though. 40:11.45 Dave Yeah, a lot of games will do that they'll be like giving the player a little nudge like how this sucks doesn't it and I'm like yeah it does kind of suck can we make it not suck. Could we just not be doing this so the second time I played it I skipped a bunch of those side quests and the pacing felt a lot better as a result. 40:26.52 Aaron I yeah I don't have a single memorable side quest that I can think of now it has been four years since I have played this game but I should be able to remember something but I I really don't I remember most them just being like fetch quests and if you if you complete it's like oh you get 3 elixirs and. 40:46.20 Aaron I'm just kicking the living shit out of people like without the need of elixirs for the most part. So Yeah I I would say that that is probably my biggest issue with the game. But honestly, it's pretty.. That's that that's pretty much in line with how I feel like every final fantasy game. Side quests. Are you know so it didn't disappoint me and I wanted to do them just in case I was able to see any extra content. But yeah, if I were to replay it again, you know, try to Platinum Hunt or whatever I probably wouldn't do any side Quest which is why I'm excited for Chocobo racing because that I will do a lot of. 41:20.40 Ryan Oh my god. 41:21.83 Dave Ah, the good part about the side quests is you spend more time with your characters. So if it's like Cloud and Tifa go out on some side quest they will talk to each other during the quests and the dialogue between them. Is often Good entertaining. All the characters have good chemistry together so that is more of the reward than you're going and actually doing something interesting or getting a good reward. It's more just like more time spent with the characters I think. 41:55.13 Ryan Yeah I Also agree I would explain that I adore this game in every aspect is my favorite give up with the side. Quest are fairly dookie. There's really no way around that there I mean I even just like they have pretty. They are pretty fucking basic but that's I mean. 42:07.95 Dave Ah. 42:13.77 Ryan I Feel like the cycle was are for somebody like myself who just just drools over the the environment being back at the lore in the universe which I did I don't think for your your your basic your most average person is just going to kind of just you know Traverse do some things here and there but I did absolutely everything and I could I could agree. You could definitely go. 42:31.79 Ryan No problem without doing any of those which I would probably also do in the second game. I think that's a good description. You know there you the first time you play through them most of them. But the second time you'll like now I'm chilling on that. 42:42.30 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's true I guess there aren't a ton of games where I'll go do all the side quests my second time even if they are really good. So yeah, that's true. Um, one final thing to mention about the story in final fantasy 7 remake. And I'm going to keep this as vague as possible but this game is a remake of the original story but there is new stuff added in to the story. There are some changes made. Ah you meet some characters at different times than you did in the original game. For example, If this remake was told 100% faithfully to the original game. You would not meet sephiroth at all which they can't do that unless they were so dedicated to making a faithful remake in this game you see Sephiroth like an hour into the game. And Sephiroth is around. It's not that different from the original story like there's not much that actually does change from the original to this remake. But this game is kind of like in conversation with the original game we will say and the fans in a way. Um, I think there are like 2 main goals that this game had which was to give you more time to love the characters and to kind of set this up and I don't want to say a whole lot more about it. But I found this very interesting. Um, and. 44:11.61 Dave We're going to talk about it in the spoiler section. I have a lot of thoughts about this in particular so like to sum this all up they did not change the story of what happens but this is kind of in conversation with the original game in a kind of Meadow way and I think it's really cool. 44:28.88 Aaron Yeah, that's ah, honestly one of the biggest things about the anticipation of the second title is they and again without delving too far as somebody who has played the original game and is a huge fan of it. They did a very good job with certain ah plot points in the story. To make me question whether or not I actually am playing the same game or not and I feel the game was doing a pretty good job of trying to subvert my expectations as to what I thought the story would be. And that is the most I can talk about without spoiling anything because I also have stuff to say. 45:05.41 Ryan Yeah I agree um all I can say is for someone who I'm talking I know every pixel of this game I mean I worship this it literally took me almost eight years to beat this game and I be. It's wild. I'm not going to go too. But she. It further but the fact is the fact I know everything about this game and I'm still very very very curious about what's coming next I think that's why I'm so excited about it like ah like being said, it doesn't it feels like more than a remake. It feels like I remember if I've not made a mistake it. He said that this is exactly with the technology around now this is going to be the game that he always wanted to make in the first place. Um, I think you did a great job of the first time around considering the technology you had to do with. But now it just feels like okay this is this is final fantasy 7 even though it's not the original. It feels like it is because of the notes from the original and it is being expanded honestly I don't know I didn't expect it to be this fucking. Good. 45:56.11 Dave Let me ask you guys this so as huge fans of the original game I already established I was not a huge fan of the original game. So I'm not married to them being faithful to the original game like. When it came out that this was not a 100 % seen by seeing faithful remake that did not bother me in the slightest. Did you guys feel let down by the fact that this is not a scene by scene. Faithful remake of the original. 46:26.52 Aaron No, no, no, no because all I want is more like if they were to do a scene-by scene remake of this game I would enjoy it but that would be like a surface level enjoyment like okay cool I got to see this game with the. 46:30.88 Dave Okay. 46:44.19 Aaron Upgraded sound files and the new graphics and the fleshed out characters and blah blah blah but I am never going to be upset if they change the story and they do it correctly like right I do I don't think there is something they could change to the actual plot. That would make me upset like no no matter what I don't think there's anything that they can do that would like a major story change that would upset me enough to like you know, be really mad about it I want that extra I want more I want more story I want to be on the edge of my sea and that's the other scary thing about like this whole thing is regardless of how good the game is like. Are they going to change it too much? I don't personally think so ah, but no I I love the fact that there's more content more content that is good. That's what I want. That's what I expected. And after playing through the first game I'm like well they're going to nail the rest of this hell fuck it? Yeah and. 47:40.43 Ryan Yeah, after I Yeah, what really will said there did he? um ah see what diddy said was upgraded graphics and audio that's all I wanted. That's all I prayed for. I was like just just give me the gay same game just remade with up there I thought it would be fantastic and the fact. 47:53.93 Dave Then. 47:57.40 Ryan It has turned into something completely fucking different with it's It's like yeah, my expectation' been blown away and I can only assume it's going to continue to do So I don't know if I've I'm expecting too much now because of how good they've done. But at this point I can only assume it's going to be, you know, better than. 48:10.58 Dave The perfect. 48:15.89 Ryan What the first one did as far as the second disc would have been considered as far as far as overall gameplay. 48:22.93 Dave Yeah I Want to kind of manage expectations for people who haven't played this who did play the original FF 7 like the story again. The story in this remake is not different from the original game. But I think the way that they're going about it is different. They added stuff and they changed some stuff. Things that happen are not that different. So It's kind of hard to describe without spoiling but it is setting up kind of an open-ended future for this remake trilogy. And that's something I can't wait to talk about in the spoiler section and for now I Want to put a pin in this before we say too much and when we come back from this music Break. We will talk about the music and the way the game looks 53:06.23 Dave Starting with how it looks it looks great. That's the best way to start it that I can think of saying I think we already kind of mentioned this before but just want to touch on again. The outdoor spaces in midgar the way the city looks the way that. Especially later parts in the game where you go up high like maybe you're on the upper plate or maybe you're climbing up to the upper plate or something like that and you get like these vistas out and you see what's going on in the city like there's some disasters that happen throughout the game you can kind of see the. Aftermath of those things you can see how big this city really is. Those are unquestioned wins as far as I'm concerned, probably my favorite part of the way the game looks I mean the character models. They look amazing because it's a high budget aaa game. They're going to look good. But. What really struck me again was being outside in Midgar seeing just how big this place is and seeing how things that are happening in the story affect the city and you know these large sections of the population and stuff that are affected by all these things happening. Visually, that's my favorite part. 54:21.83 Aaron And well this is the 1 thing that the 1 thing that final fantasy to me has always been known for and I may have spoken on this a little bit in our ah final fantasy 6 episode is every time a new final fantasy game comes out. It's almost like they set the standard. 4 video game graphics when they do at least that's how it's always been to me like I remember playing the original final fantasy 7 game and seeing some of the cut scenes and that and just being like what the fuck am I looking at I remember final fantasy 10 doing the same thing for me I remember final fantasy 13 doing the same thing for me. 54:52.18 Dave You but I kind of shit on final fantasy 16 in my episode on this podcast but the 1 thing that everyone's in agreement with is final fantasy 16 looks ridiculously good. 55:04.58 Aaron And yeah, and I have not played that game. But if we are following the path of what I'm saying here. It would only make sense that final fantasy sixteen would have the best graphics like you know the final fantasy 7 remake had better graphics than final fantasy fifteen I think and I'm not not the kind of person that's gonna harp on graphics because I play a lot of. 55:24.36 Aaron Ah, video games that I wouldn't say are visually pleasing like a lot of the time but ah, not only do did did they I think set a standard for like video game graphics like at the time everything you said is absolutely true. We've talked about it a little bit. The world feels so much more open even though it's it's it's not I guess it is in the sense that you are in midgar in the original game tune and you can't go anywhere but just opening up that world I remember like 1 of my favorite things doing this game and. Is probably 1 of the reasons why Stry probably put as many hours into it as he did as well is going back to those old locations from the first game just to see what they looked like just ah, the the cat slide the cat slide always stuck out to me in 5 fantasy 7 it's in that little playground in the slums and when I saw it's like right outside the wall market. 56:12.49 Dave In yeah. 56:18.22 Aaron I Saw that thing that looked Beautiful. It's exactly what I wanted it to be and I don't know why that specific thing held so much for me, but the little things like that I was excited to go back and see and see how they had done So I'm not going to harp on you know, ah and anymore about this but it's it's It's just like every other thing on here. They took what the original game had. And they made it better and I like to say I'm not gonna be mad that it's not Perfect. You know, but in terms of graphics and stuff like that. Do they literally take everything I love from that game and make it look cooler and. 56:51.52 Ryan Yeah, the graphics say it this way. It made me feel the same way I felt when I played the very first one when I was a fucking just a little ass n**** and loaded up I was blown away. That's the way you feel the first time and if you played the first one then you'll feel the same way that that you did then if you have it. 56:57.87 Dave And then. 57:09.97 Ryan You'll still be hella Impressed. Um I Think even if you're playing it right? This second even though I think it's it's got some age on it I Still think that you're going to play this game and and be impressed by the way it looks and the way it feels they managed to modernize in every single aspect of the game and somehow again I think they've still outdone themselves. Um. And it comes to the genre. I think it's fantastic. I Don't think any other operation. Rpg I'm playing currently would be considered that genre matches it in my opinion. 57:37.49 Dave Yeah, there are some things that show its age like a PS 4 game you know now that we're playing it in 2023 just 2024 when this episode comes out. There are some things that you know. 57:55.90 Dave Give away that it's a Ps 4 game like it has a bunch of those sections where you squeeze through cracks to hide loading screens and stuff like that. It has a bunch of environment textures that don't look great on people. Love to harp on those when the game first came out and I like. Man look at look at Barrett's character model like how are you focusing on like what this fucking metal sheet texture looks like look at Barrett look at Tifa like god damn look at look at how the character look at Don Corneo this fucking squirrely motherfucker like the important things. Yeah. 58:26.20 Aaron So specifically look at Tifa and look at and and look at her close look at her real real close. 58:28.16 Ryan The helps go say she it look it twice. Maybe I was asleep. 58:32.20 Dave But I cannot cannot emphasize enough. Yeah, um, they just brought all of this to life in such an amazing way and this game has a bunch of really goofy costume designs character designs like you've got Garrett ah Barrett with his gun arm. You've got Aerith with her like you know flower girl thing you've got tifa as mentioned before um, everything fits together really cohesively I think like red 13 visually fits into what everything else that's going on in the game and he's a talking wolf thing. Lion I don't. I don't really know what red thirteen is but okay, there you go. That's that's my answer for what he is, um, it all looks really really good so just a big win in my opinion certain sections of the game really stand out as like. 59:10.76 Ryan You to go Dave we talked about here on fourth maybe boy, we just how we here to go you to go. 59:11.82 Aaron He heed the goat Dave and. 59:29.60 Dave You know this was a colorful, um, striking portion of the original game and they're full in this like sections in Wall Market look ridiculously cool. It's all lit up. It's at night it looks like the bustling nightlife area of the slums. Ah, that is the part where Cloud dances is just like ah so fun to Watch. It's really really Great. So Of course we're going to talk about what you come on? man. 59:55.21 Aaron I was wondering if we were gonna talk about that. That's so funny. That's the thing that was the thing that took me out of the game the most but I was like that I'm Nope. Nope Nope I play it Rpg This is what you have to expect. 01:00:07.74 Dave Um, yeah. 01:00:09.42 Aaron And let us not let us not get out of the talking about how the game looks without talking about like the retooling and revisioning of like the ah enemy design. They did a really good job with a couple of different things. I don't remember what the thing was called but it's like the giant bonefish like boss that you fight that's like a caterpillar you know when you fight the ah that house. 01:00:24.68 Dave Um, of yeah, right, the house Dude yeah. 01:00:28.93 Aaron Yeah, when you fight the house again for the first time like that you know not only in terms of what they look. Ah, it's so different with the combat system being what it is in this game versus the last game that it was really really cool seeing not only like these character designs or or these enemy designs. But also how they function within this kind of battle system. But I cannot talk enough about that house. That house was one of the craziest fights I ever played in any video game and it just looked beautiful throughout the whole thing. So I just wanted to give a shout out to like if we're gonna talk about the character designs. Let's talk about the enemy designs to the combat designs. They were the magic. It is awesome. 01:01:03.20 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely and for those who didn't play it and are just kind of listening along. Thank you for listening. You did not hear that wrong. There is a boss fight against a literal house and it's very good. Very good Boss fight. 01:01:22.20 Ryan Yeah, that used to be just ah, just a random encounter in the first one and they made that legit because that's how it felt even in the first one it was it was rough and 1 thing I actually love about the game now you're thinking about it is the fact that I feel like they do a great job in storytelling that the thing about you could tell how much the person made this. Bets you love this game even the first one is like I feel like all 3 discs or parts of the game essentially were essentially broken down into the overall environment which the first 1 feels like everything's very linear and very small. You're doing. You're these people trying to save the world or essentially which is this very small portion of the world at your current point. It is just the slums and ah but bla bla and then as you go from the first one into the sec when it's like becomes this unset and insanely great's like oh shit. Okay, oh we got to we got we're we're actually trying to save this the actual fucking world and I feel like it's represented there very much because the first one feels very small and since just because you know you're in this very confined area. And as you go into the second one everything becomes very open just like the game and the story and everything else suddenly explodes very much so I think the pacing of the game is fantastic. Are really honest, I can't really say that enough and I felt that even more so in the first one of how you know you really feel like things are pretty safe in this little small town. This little small city and then this is like shit. 01:02:34.38 Ryan These ideas that you put on have started to fucking cause a whole lot of so maybe more than you were expected and you feel that in the game and it really carries over and the graphics and everything just really again, just capitalize on really showing that even more so than it did in the first one you feel that the choices. Even more so because you get to see how it affected everybody you see a bunch of ah kids with all but legs all snapped in half it just all bent to back I mean you don't you don't see that in the first one like that I say it even if you did you wouldn't feel it the way that you do in the second because the graphics are so much better at ah, again, conveying emotion and the overall atmosphere of everything. 01:03:10.24 Ryan Um, and again I just feel like they did it. I can only assume that I hope they do that this second when we're on the remake where everything starts to become very grandiose as you become going to like an almost open world kind of ah environment. 01:03:20.46 Aaron So that's the question right , like because when you get out of midgar. The game goes from being contained in this small little city to now you are in an open world and while you don't have access to the whole big world. There is an idea of how big this place is. 01:03:22.35 Dave That's what yeah. 01:03:35.65 Aaron That is one of the things I'm most interested in the next game coming out is like what are they going to do with the open world aspect. Are they going to keep it? You know like final fantasy fifteen was not a game I loved but the open world aspect of it was Amazing. You know they did a really really good job keeping that game going with that big of an open world I'm very excited to see. If they do that same thing or if they keep it more linear in this one. So I think that's a good point to bring up because that is one of the things I'm most curious about going into this next game is okay, what happens when we make this bigger and. 01:04:07.30 Dave Yeah I don't expect them to go full open world with the next one but I kind of expect them to do kind of what final fantasy 16 did which is sixteen is a linear game but there are lots of points in the game where you can. Like basically fast travel to these bigger zones that you can kind of roam around in so instead of having 1 giant open world. It's got like 15 zones that you can go to and run through and that's kind of what I'm expecting. Um. Unless they're just going to shrink down the size of the world because in those old games where you were running around on an overworld. You did get a sense of like this is a really big place and I'm just crossing it quickly because it's a video game. But you did feel like it was a really big place and I don't expect them to make it like a giant open world for the future. But let's ah, get back on track with the stuff here. We'll leave more speculating for the spoiler section later on. The other thing that I think is really great about um, kind of like restarting that ah. 01:05:28.10 Dave Kind of going along with how giving more space for the characters gives them better character models fleshes out their characters. The final piece of the puzzle is that the final fantasy 7 remake of course has voice acting. Which the original game didn't have and I don't. I don't have emotional attachment to the original game. So I want to hear what you guys think about this. They gave voice acting to all the characters. Every single person you talk to in the game basically is voice acted and I think. This goes a long way to kind of fully forming the characters. The voice actors for Aerith voiced by Brianna white and Barret especially Barret was voiced by John Eric Bentley. Those are my favorite voice actors in the cast. Kind of feel like sephiroth is worse with voice acting because he's just very monotone and sleepy and you know very jrpg villain voice acting to me I'm not a huge fan but the other characters big fan, especially it's wedge is voice by the one of the guys from breaking bad played. Badger in breaking bad so that voice immediately was like I know that guy. But yeah voice acting how do you guys feel. 01:06:49.57 Aaron Well, it's always going to add something. You know what? I mean add more depth to the character the more you add to them voices being one of those I don't have really thoughts or opinions on this either way I do think it's very much like a japanese video game I think it's very. Poppy and anime and the voices come out like that especially through the girls I feel like sometimes they're just a bit much personally. Ah but the red 13 voice was very very cool. Ah, yeah I mean but that if like like I said like if it's going to come down to like fleshing out the characters more like yeah 100% does I wasn't blown away by any of them cloud. But okay so here's what I will say is the ah the voices sounded pretty much what I expected them to sound like. 01:07:39.62 Aaron And that's what I'll go with from there. There wasn't anything that made me mad about them but to me personally I just didn't think they added a whole lot but to a whole bunch but to somebody who really didn't like the first game and was looking for those kinds of things I understand why it added so much to them. Ah. Very very excited to hear what Cait Sith sounds like very excited to hear that guy's voice. 01:08:01.71 Ryan Yeah, yeah, I actually actually I agree with Didy I think they sounded exactly I think that's why Diddy feels the way he does is because the fact that they sounded exactly how he expected them to so as you would imagine and back of it I think that's actually just to speaks to more towards towards the game. Fact they managed to pick characters that sounded exactly like you would assume they would in the first one. Outside of I would agree on sephiroth I feel like Seth froth sephiroth is literally a character that where you love it is probably my favorite villain ever. Ah I love the character at till I go talk about ah let me slow it up. But. 01:08:38.88 Ryan I love the boy essentially and he's one of the characters. Oddly oddly enough that you're rooting for up to a certain point and even afterwards just his character design. He has just a suave figure that is just a clean god and let's not talk about the sword. 01:08:58.40 Ryan But yeah I think that they did a great job as far as that goes. 01:09:03.90 Dave It was just interesting to me like I wondered how you guys felt about it because like think about you read a book right? 01:09:15.55 Aaron I shit was but was my bi on the whole time right there? Okay I'm not with you, go back to this reading thing. 01:09:20.24 Dave Um, yeah, right? exactly? Um, So think about like you read a book and you kind of populate these voices for the characters in your head. How you feel like they sound and then like a Tv show comes out and. Some of them might not sound right? but I agree with you all that the voice actors that they picked and the way they were directed was really good for what that character is especially like. I really feel like they could have just continued to make it into a MrT stereotype and they gave him a bunch of MrT sounding lines but they also gave him a bunch of like more reserved lines especially when dealing with his daughter and stuff like that. So. That's just an example. I think a lot of the characters across the board have this working in their favor too. I Think the voice acting is done really really well and it adds a lot to the characterization where the original game just didn't flesh them out as much in that way because it couldn't be right. But it didn't. 01:10:29.39 Aaron Yeah, same thing with their faces man the original game you never got to see their face except on like the menu screen this game they smile and everything you know. But I think Arington made the best point, as you know, coupled with what you said about getting an idea for the character's voice in your head. 01:10:34.37 Dave True. 01:10:46.73 Aaron Like don't get me wrong the actors and everything did a great job in the voice direction. The sound directions are great in this game but I feel like you know that's just kind of what I expected everybody to sound like Cloud sounded exactly like the edge Lord I thought he always did bear it I feel like you still probably. More Mr T than you're giving him credit for in this.? Ah personally I still think he's got a lot of that in him but not to take away from anything that they did but I did feel like it was very much just like okay this is what I expect from this. Okay, they hit it. I'm never going to think about it again. 01:11:07.39 Dave Um. 01:11:17.63 Ryan Yeah I actually think he sounded more MrT than I thought he did in my head playing the original hey can we give a fucking shot this this is why FF 7 is is one of the goat is because the characters are so unique for the time they have a brother just literally running the fucking show talking shit from jump. 01:11:36.00 Ryan I'm talking from I'm talking as soon as the fucking screen loaded by the guy. My boy off the train who are you talking to my boy, you feel me off top and then that never stops and I love that about the game is the fact that they attacked that and and and let's be honest Barret that as far as just the japanese folk go when it comes to. 01:11:54.86 Ryan Displaying a brother. It has gone off the rails a bit shout out to Mr Popo okay so to have a character represented this way by the guy's got a gun arm. He's swolle and he's got a little shit to talk. I guess what the everybody else is listed I'm just saying I'm just. 01:11:55.88 Aaron You? Yes, Yes, yeah, yes shout outs. Yeah, they do. That's what the people, that's what the people would have seen you shout out and shout outs to Mr. Pobo. 01:12:13.39 Ryan Um, shout out to Mr. Popo go to go but also just this again to say it for a brother to be represented this way I thought it was fucking dope again, that's one of the reasons I was drawn it immediately to the game and is one of the 1 reason I was drawn out to the game throughout the rest of the game. 01:12:25.39 Dave Well, that's that's why I'm giving credit to the voice direction and the character writing for Barrett because like like I didn't say there's no Mr T. he's very much like a mr t type character but there's more to him in the remake whereas in the original I don't remember that really being the case. He was 100% Mr.T and in this one he went then when the situation calls. Yeah he pity the fool. 01:12:53.50 Ryan Again for me when I played the game originally I did not hear so much. Mr.T um but I also grew up with a black family. So a guy I saw more of just a no off I was just talking hell shit but now hearing his voice I'm just like god damn there was hell of Mr.T. 01:12:54.97 Aaron That's correct. 01:13:10.92 Dave That was the original intent , yeah yeah you know it was the original intent because they had every opportunity to not do that in the remake now that it has voice acting they're like yeah but they're like Nope this is what we wanted. 01:13:12.99 Ryan That I apparently was missing is apparently correct. Yeah, I missed the original correction. Yeah yeah. 01:13:23.89 Ryan They could have avoided the whole thing correct. No they spearheaded that whole thing. Yeah yeah. 01:13:26.00 Aaron Not as not as much cursing. Yeah. 01:13:30.25 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, the other big thing to talk about with the remake is the music. The music is done in this game. It's an orchestral score by Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuto Suzuki not nobuo uemasu. Score from the original game and the songs that they're reworking were done by nobuo Uematsu. But in this game the arrangements were not done by him. Um, they are his songs. They carry all of the things that made the original soundtrack great and they are just blown up to include. More real instrumentation as opposed to the original game. Um, great action. Songs. Great quiet songs and probably the thing that stands out the most to me and the thing that was my favorite part of the original game. What I didn't like that much was the music. I loved the music even though I did not really connect with the game as a whole. So now they are taking the thing that I really loved and just giving it more of a soundscape to play with like they have. Actual instruments and entire like orchestras and they can you know make the arrangements. However, they want to convey whatever emotion they want and so those emotional attachments that I had to like Aerith’s theme or Tifa’s theme. 01:14:58.70 Dave Or the battle music or the beginning when you see the title card and it zooms down into the bombing Mission Song. All of those are like we've been saying it a lot but brought to life where I thought the original music was good. I enjoyed the music but it's just something different. In the remake and it's just another you know feather in the cap I think this is just fantastic. 01:15:22.87 Aaron Yeah, and you know yeah I'm not much one to talk about music. That's not really like my whole thing but I am on Arington like if I see you in the street and you tell me final fantasy seven does not have the greatest video game soundtrack. It is on sight and it is without question right? But. Ah, so I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna talk I love this soundtrack. The thing is ah as I've kind of listened to orchestrated pieces of this soundtrack for basically since Youtube existed so it wasn't like even so much refreshing to me or anything I thought it was kind of in line with what I expected from it. Um, but I was looking up some easter egg things today and one of the things that I noticed is like or one of the things that I had read was that they take certain characters character themes and use them to elude the future or like ah yeah, or or foreshadow like some of the things that happen to this character without going too much into it bear it has a. 01:16:15.10 Dave I have. 01:16:18.97 Aaron Bigger backstory um, and it involves him in his you know going ons with shinra and in one part of the shinra building. You can hear some people talking about something that directly references a future part of Barret's character. Arc. And in the background they are playing a tone down version of Barret's theme it's like Barret's theme but with a few less instruments in it or whatever to kind of give you that ah, ah, illusion that something is going on with him. So I really like that like when games and movies do these things with character themes and I don't think that there is any. 01:16:52.54 Aaron Video game anyways, where the character themes resonated with me as much as they did. But you know I'm not much one too and I said this talk about the music or anything like that. But the soundtrack to final fantasy 7 is my favorite video game soundtrack and to hear it orchestrated and used way more than it was in the original. Ah, made the game infinitely better. I mean even Dave Somebody who you know could only pull a few things he liked from the original game. The 1 thing that he said he liked the most or one of the things he liked the most is the soundtrack this is and I am not being you know. Overdramatic about this like I am every time I say this but this is the truth this is the best video game music soundtrack. So yeah, like like I said I've been listening to the orchestrated you know versions of them for so long, but ah yeah, the way they use them. Like in different settings how they use them without you knowing that they're using them these little things that the game does I think make it very very cool and. 01:17:52.64 Ryan Yeah, this is this buckle up. Um, but but this is ah I agree that this is one of the greatest of I think the game is a masterpiece because and I think that you can start from as soon as the game loads up. Very very first fucking piece off top is just it's it's so delicate it exactly it does it conveys exactly what it wants to the emotion of the game immediately and that never stops at any point of the game I will literally have I will um literally have if I die first I will have by they is play this music. 01:18:27.46 Aaron Easy. Even. 01:18:28.17 Ryan At my funeral. Do you hear me? Okay I think that again, it's just it's perfect and again I think they did an incredible job to convey ah 8 bit 60 bit at this time. Whatever you would do so consider this a playstation to be able to convey the motion they did at this time it is just. 01:18:46.50 Ryan It's incredible. Some of the points that the music comes in which I cannot wait to talk about later but I don't want to say it now but the music literally just it's their age and it makes the game and it a way for me I cannot imagine this game without it. It has set the bar for me when it comes to just. Appreciating how a musical score can really just elevate anything any any form of entertainment much less, a game. 01:19:12.32 Dave Yeah, that's one of the biggest wins for this soundtrack even in the original game but still here too like in the remake is how the music adds emotion to the story and it adds like it makes me care. About what's going on with characters because I love the music that's associated with the characters and it's something that final fantasies always been really good at especially when matsu's work in the series is these leitmotifs these character themes that they represent a character. And then in different parts of the story in different emotional states they will reuse that theme you know Aaron you? Okay, your leitmotif is sounding a bit minor key like they do that shit they do throughout this game especially like my favorite version of it is the way they do it with es theme. 01:19:55.60 Aaron Are you sad? yeah. 01:20:06.44 Dave Ah, which is one of my favorite pieces in the history of final fantasy music. It's just really great. And yeah, this if I'm thinking about final fantasy soundtracks or video game soundtracks in general this is going to be up near the top and it's building on the bones. That the original game soundtrack laid but it's just brought to life in a way that that really enhances this enhances the story enhances the characters and like the battle music is awesome too like there are so many of the just the main battle songs. The miniboss song. Fucking one-winged angel when that comes up. It's all just excellent, really really great. There's some of this stuff when I went to that final fantasy distant worlds concert and they started playing some of the songs from ff 7 and I immediately got tears in my eyes and I was like i. I guess I do have that much of an emotional connection to this music and by association to this story. 01:21:09.40 Aaron Yeah, and I'm just telling you that when I you get to Cosmo Canyon and I first hear that do doood dod do it's it's all a doo do Dod do is all over for me dude ever since stri talked about Cosmo canyon I be like man it fuck I forgot about all about Cosmo candy. 01:21:15.93 Dave Oh yeah. Say. 01:21:28.40 Aaron And that's the other thing. The anticipation they've done so well in this game like I know when it gets to the moments I wanted to get to later in the game whether I'm talking about the graphics whether I'm talking about the battle system whether I'm talking about the music I know they're going to do it great which makes me so excited. 01:21:40.89 Ryan Yeah I think that in the history of gaming. There's been some games that have always been appreciated. This is similar to the elden ring call of Duty Halo You may not have liked the games but it's just like something that if you appreciate gaming you can just see why they are good. 01:21:41.62 Dave Yep. 01:21:57.92 Ryan And I think when it comes to FF 7 it is just a masterpiece and even if you don't you may think that you may have enjoyed other file fantasies better may other the rpgs better if you were just to literally just look at this game and how it is literally paced and hows developed the music everything about it. You could tell the people involved in this game. Absolutely adored what they were trying to do and they were trying to make something special. 01:23:17.33 Dave Yep, let's move on to the last bit of main meat of this non-spoiler section here. So the music is great. Obviously let's listen to a bit of it and then when we come back, we'll talk about the gameplay in final fantasy 7 remake. So the original final fantasy 7 was turn based combat in the older final fantasy fashion. This one is not this one I'm gonna say this like a hybrid. It's action combat. You still run around, you press the button to swing the sword, you press the button to block or dodge etc. But you can pause it. At any time as long as your atp gauge is filled. You can issue commands to party members to do skills or use skills yourself. So it's like an action with pause combat in the combat you can only control cloud Tifa Barret and Aerith you cannot. Control red 13 Ryan how do you feel about that 1 more time he's throwing you an alleyoop here all right? Yeah so no, ah, no red 13 control in this game only cloud Tifa Barret and Aerith. 01:24:19.33 Aaron He's gonna make him cry twice. 01:24:31.19 Dave 1 thing I like about this is that each character has a role to play in the combat system. Um, and I should say you will never have all 4 of them together. They're always separated so you only have three macs at any time sometimes you only have 2 people throughout the story or even 1 sometimes. Um, each character has a role so cloud is kind of a balanced fighter. Tifa is really good at hammering the opponent's stagger bar which if you fill up the stagger bar they go into a state where they're down. They don't attack. They take a bunch more damage. Tifa is really helpful for hammering that bear. It. Can hit range targets and eri can also hit range targets and use a bunch of different magic skills but on top of that you have the material system to customize the abilities that your characters can use material are these you know. Magic orbs that you carry around you slot into weapons and you can like let's say you put the ice material on cloud cloud can use ice magic now and there's a lot of different material there's some that give you spells there's some that give you special abilities like there's a parry material that I found useful later on in the game. There's a lot of customization. So your characters have these roles to play but within those roles you can customize exactly like okay I want cloud and bear it to be able to heal people. 01:26:05.17 Dave And then I want cloud and tifa to be elemental attackers and then I want Barrett to focus on something else like there's a bunch of ways you can customize this. How do you guys feel about this? 01:26:17.44 Aaron And I originally was not excited about this. I am one of those sickos that likes that old school turn-based battle system. Yeah um I mean you kind of got a little bit of it in final fantasy 15 you got a little bit of it in 13 as well. But I wasn't excited to see this game with this in it and for the first couple of hours of the game. I was still trying to figure out how the system worked and how the switch between characters was . I was frustrated. I really didn't like it at all. It's one of the reasons that I don't want to go play intergrade because I'm like fuck I mean have to relearn this battle system again. 01:26:52.10 Aaron But it's but but it's fucking. Awesome. It's a lot of fun like once you get the hang of it I really like how fast paced the battles become cloud was my healer. My main strategy was just basically to leave bear it in the back and shoot. I didn't even switch over to him. I was just like you do your thing. Oh boy. And then I would absolutely beat the living fuck out of people with tifa to what what you slowly realize is like if you want to win a boss fight or if you want to win a battle. You have to stagger these guys. You have to figure out a way to stagger the different bad guys and so you can unleash all your attacks on them like in persona five. You know do like the everybody jump at him at 1 time and fuck him up kind of thing. So while initially I was kind of put off by the battle system because I was one of those old school. This isn't my final kind of final fantasy kind of dudes. I ended up really really loving it. I had a lot of fun with it and I do feel like it is steep. 01:27:44.90 Aaron Learning curve to it If you're not used to playing those kinds of games coupled with me also being an idiot I felt like there was a little bit. It took me a little while to get into it but I loved it. It looked great. 01:27:56.55 Aaron Summons were great. The limit breaks were great. The skills you get are great. You can kind of switch what you do mid-battle too which can be super useful in terms of how you attack. But yeah I liked I just I love tifa I loved her combos I love beating the shit out of people with her staggering people. I'll stop talking about the battle system but I did end up liking it way way more than I thought I did and if you let me talk about material I'll go on for thirty more minutes I refuse but yeah I love the battle system I like yeah, ya. 01:28:27.16 Ryan It's okay I got you baby. Let me take over here. Yeah, the material system is absolutely fucking phenomenal and I actually think it's insane that because actually one of the things I found about the first one was the material system allowed you to express yourself so much to have characters that were basically healers. Weren't supposed to be. You could have Cloud or if you fucking wanted to if you wanted to deck them out that way you could do those things which didn't necessarily feel like that in a lot of rpgs prior to that but the material system if you really got into it could be so unique and it's one of those games that you could. Ah, easy to play but hard to Master. Essentially when you came to the material system you could do insane things and I think they managed to translate that really well when it came to modernizing it because I hate to admit, but I also was that was a gatekeeper but as Nigger I call what it is like I I was just like don't change shit if you just I was so delicate I was so scared. 01:29:16.20 Ryan I was so scared they could deal understand what I'm saying I was just like if you just speak it What literally just just duplicate what you did just make the graphics better and just keep this sound checking and you're good bra but and they were like nah that we got but and again I should have trusted who best I realized that now I'm saying that's on me baby I'm sorry bets who you realize that. 01:29:32.52 Ryan He took that and he actually expanded only it because the materia system is still there but they still manage to where you could do so many unique things and build your characters so different than I mean literally every playthrough each character could be different than the last one. Um, yeah I did myself my hug a little bit differently than I had ah. Slightly differently Tifa was in them. Guts let me just say that real quick as far as by play style. Um, but the fact that yeah, you could you could do that you could have you could you could have tifa just I feel like go have tifa in them. Guts let's be honest that she has one build regardless of that factor. You just she's one of the first chicks you really had to just fist up. They could just. 01:30:10.17 Ryan Just ready to scrap on anybody it did. But I just got you guys, you got cloud with a sword as big as his body. My boy with a gun arm. Okay and Tifa just literally just squares up. Okay I'm just saying it's a very distinct place style bra. 01:30:16.24 Dave Ah, yep, that's true cloud and Barrethave the 2 most ridiculous weapons in rpg history and Tifa's just yeah, just fisticuffs. 01:30:28.88 Aaron So yeah, the five foot 2 girl is just out here. Scrap it. 01:30:29.65 Ryan To up God damn and she and she grabs and they didn't and they did again. They didn't crumble all with a cup. Her skill says she was doing the most brutal combos, this most savage shit. 01:30:45.60 Ryan And her combos in the first one and I assume they will elaborate that when it comes to the second one. But yeah I Love the fucking a characters. The battle system is great I haven't actually they actually gathered a mode where you could switch to the old style and and again this cover gatekeeper I was like they better not touch shit or they're gonna fuck this up I thought they're gonna fuck this update. Okay. Thought go to fuck it up and I still never switched back to that other mode knowing it existed before even playing it I just was immediately into the challenge of the second one. The the new style and again I I look forward to it I look forward to the second one or I guess whatever the fuck this the iteration is what is this Dave. What is this gonna be considered? 01:31:17.65 Dave Right? The next is the next one like part 2 in the trilogy. You mean? yeah, that's what they're saying. Yeah. 01:31:23.64 Ryan Be honest. Is it a trilogy? So there's this after this part 2 Discs. There's gonna be another part and that's gonna be it. Okay, all right? Well that is true. 01:31:36.47 Dave Yep I think so yeah um yeah I really like this combat system too. This is um, like it feels like the it feels like final fantasy 15 walked so this could run. Like the combat in 15 from what I played was very similar to this but it just wasn't as good and they really just kind of tightened it up for this game. The thing I really like about this combat system is it is full of choices that you have to make moment to moment. Based on the situation in every fight. Um, there's a bit of a criticism. I think that some fights in this game last too long. But if you put them up against a long boss fight in a turn-based fight. They're still. They're either the same or they're shorter so I'm not sure that that's a real problem. But what it does turn into is you're just full of choices to make in combat so you're attacking your fighting in action combat you're punching or swinging the sword or dodging or hanging back with Barrett shooting the gun each character has special skills that they can use like Barrett has a charge shot that he does. Cloud could switch into this they call it I think it's called punisher mode where he swings much slower but does a bunch more damage. He can't really run as fast in that mode. So like there's that layer of strategy like what are you going to do with your skills. Um, you can switch to other characters freely in combat. 01:33:11.83 Dave And when you're not controlling the Ai characters. They will fight but their atb bar or ap bar as they call it in this game. Final fantasy switches the term on me as their like skill bar is recharging if you're not controlling them. It recharges way slower. So you're really incentivized to switch characters often in combat that was what unlocked the combat for me the like probably three quarters of the way through the first playthrough and then for the entire second playthrough was realizing that to get the most out of the combat I need to be switching I need to be using skills based on. Situation and this like as we're recording this my episode about final fantasy 16 came out like a week ago and I really ragged on the combat in final fantasy 16 for pretending like it's deep. But not actually being that deep. I think it's a very shallow and repetitive combat system 7 remake is not as good as an action combat system. It doesn't feel as good as 16 does but the decisions that you're making the strategy is so much better so much better. I couldn't help but think when I was playing 16, like why did they just abandon what they set up four years ago or three years ago in the final fantasy 7 remake there. It is so rewarding to pull yourself out of a tight situation because you made a bunch of good decisions in a row. 01:34:47.63 Dave In this combat system. As in addition to playing the action game. You know, positioning yourself well dodging out of the way, blocking at the right time. All of those things on top of rpg decisions that you would make in a turn-based fight like I'm going off on a tangent here. But I think this is what it's like. really really good, really creative for adapting a turn-based combat system into an action combat system but not losing any of the things that turn-based combat does well you know what? I mean like the decisions that you make it's so fucking. Good. It's really good. I love it so much. This is one of the only games that I wanted to play on a higher difficulty because I heard the hard mode in this is actually really good too and like furthers the need to master everything that you have but I couldn't because my save data didn't transfer over from my Ps 4 to my ps 5 I couldn't and I was like a little bit upset but as it was I played on the normal difficulty had a great time again like I got other than your dodge doesn't feel great and your characters control just a little bit stiff I feel like other than that this isn't. This is a plus combat system. Fantastic. 01:36:04.37 Aaron And well and so I never played hard mode because I I heard that ah they don't let you use healing items and that's basically how I survive any video games so I was like well I'm not doing that another thing before we move on is that? ah. 01:36:15.62 Dave Ah, true. 01:36:20.44 Aaron This final fantasy game uses it. It is essentially what the original one did with safe points. They have these benches and that's where you can save and rest your character. I feel like there weren't enough of them sometimes so sometimes it felt like I would go into a battle kind of damaged. It was like. The game wanted me to adapt to playing a perfect battle. It wanted me to be like hey I'm getting you know I can't just like run into this battle and just like you know Mash X and think I'm going to get out of this thing the game like forces you to figure out how to beat each enemy as effectively as possible. Because like I said I felt the save and rest points were too ah were ah too far away from each other um one one more thing. My last thing is your fan of the original. The summons are awesome in this game. They look really great. They're super fucking powerful if you use them correctly and you also it's. 01:37:10.73 Dave They fight alongside you in this which is new. Yeah, you summon in like you're you're fighting like a boss fight you you summon in Shiva or I was thinking like you summon in the fat chocobo and like. 01:37:15.70 Aaron Awesome! It is so fucking sweet dude and Shiva Yeah. He’s so funny and the limit breaks are also in this game too. There is still a limit break system and the limit breaks were one of the things I was most excited to see and while you didn't get to see all of them because like I said it's just the very beginning of the game. 01:37:27.59 Dave You just turn around and you see him bouncing on someone's head. 01:37:44.50 Aaron Ah, the ones that you did get to see were awesome. They looked great and they were very effective so just 2 Ah other little things. The limits the summons in these battle systems. Still awesome. Still super useful and yeah, Dave's right the summons fight with you. It's very cool. So. 01:37:57.46 Ryan Yeah, again, just to elaborate the fact that he managed to just make everything better a battle system that I was truly behind as far as the old styles just the basic system I was completely ready for. I actually wished for that and then for him if I took it to a new level. Think you spoke on the fact that you could master this system but or you could play this system. Maybe it'll get through it just fine if you played it just a normal level just based on what you knew. But if you really took the time to understand the material and how things worked you could really master the game and things could become even easier. But I think they also did a great job of caging that same tone as they did before like rpgs before at that time were not supposed to be easy. You were supposed to die or you did die especially against certain bosses there's amount of bosses I took so many fucking ls to it found fans of it specifically until I reassess my my material. Looked at my characters properly. I had to regather myself. Maybe even gain a few levels first and I feel like they did a good job of carrying that over with while still maintain that same tone of this and I'm trying to make it too fucking hard nowadays I get I get how gamers are nowadays and I really feel like they fucking captured really did a good job capturing that that old style of challenging you. 01:39:06.35 Ryan Ah, not trying to do too God damn much and obviously with the hard but which I also didn't get a chance to play I would I'll probably fuck with that at some point maybe on the next one but I did get to mess with that. But I still felt like they did a good job of pushing you in this one. 01:39:16.31 Dave Yeah, it's not an easy game. There were definitely lots of fights where I felt like it took the peak of my ability playing the action game but more the peak of my strategy to get through it. You know, timely item use. Making sure to charge up. Maybe this skill takes 2 ap bars instead of 1 but it's actually better if you just wait for the full 2 you know like using skills wisely exploiting elemental weaknesses using buffs and stuff like that. It's all just you know it's really really good. And um I don't know if either of you got a chance to play the Yuffie dlc but Yuffie controls differently than the rest of the party in like the main game. She's way more fluid and her attacks are much more varied. And it. It gives me a lot of anticipation for future games when you get more characters with more diverse move sets and stuff like that. Just the way you feel controlled made me think like oh well, whoever they give you the chance to control and fight with it's going to be fun because. 01:40:26.64 Aaron I cannot wait for red thirteen I cannot wait to fight with red 13 No no, you're taking all the red through tea cate here. Dude I've got my Twitter followers to think about. 01:40:28.51 Dave Basically all of them. 01:40:30.26 Ryan I Was gonna say Didy can I take this one first by Boy. I know this is unusual because because I played I played the Yuffie content to get I've been telling this they get to play I've been telling this they gonna play Yuffie because although I did not finish it. 01:40:41.89 Dave Okay, yeah, yeah. 01:40:48.32 Aaron Ha. 01:40:48.82 Ryan I did play it and I was telling bro this Bitch. It was so dope playing her that but they've managed to make her feel like and considering how dull she kind of felt in the first one Overall as far as character development a and just overall playstyle. Let's be honest I mean she kind of threw a through a shirt and I was it like God Damn. Maybe a girl got an upgrade. She got a glow up. She all a hair like beyonce she glowed up and I love playing her and I can't wait to see exactly my boy hearing about vincent God Damn I mean all he did was shoot a shotgun. That's all I'm saying and he had a whole bunch of shit going on as a character so I can't wait. 01:41:25.19 Dave Yeah, it's this this is something and like the hope is in my expectation is that the combat system in this game 7 remake was really good. So in the future or in the next part 2 and then part 3 in the future. Keep building on top of it giving you more intense abilities or skills and maybe adding some new battle mechanics into it like I have really high hopes for where this goes because it was already so good and they're just going to keep building on it. 01:42:36.51 Dave So I think this is a good time to get into some wrap-up thoughts, recommendations, etc before we get into that spoiler wall for final fantasy 7 remake. So you know we're really just going through the motions here because I know what you guys are going to say but. Aaron, I'll kick to you first. Do you have any wrap up thoughts about final fantasy 7 remake and then who would you recommend this to. 01:43:03.47 Aaron I no no real wrap up thoughts man I'm trying to ah keep myself you know grounded until I see the whole thing fleshed out I was even in a place where I was like I'm not even going to play the second game until the third game comes out but I also said I wasn't going to play the first game until all 3 of them came out so. Am I'm not going to have any wrap- up thoughts because I don't think I have enough information here to really make a real decision. The game is incredible. If you like rpgs you will find it incredible if you played Final Fantasy 7 and you are worried about playing this game. You should not be worried though. Those are my wrap up thoughts. 01:43:38.90 Dave All right and Ryan 01:43:41.97 Ryan Yeah I got plead out a makeup for all of us buckle up again. Ah, but no I think that I'm gonna full Sin I'll give a fuck I'm gonna be playing the guy I think it's the greatest piece of entertainment ever created and it'll go doubt history just alongside the bible as far as just just absolutely big. 01:43:59.17 Ryan And I'm going to double down on that we're going for and having have have have had no idea what's coming in the future. But again I don't know that's that's how that's how they feel at this point based on what I saw before there's no if they just continue that same tone. 01:44:00.71 Aaron Ah I was about to make a terrible joke Woo what I gotta mute myself. 01:44:16.94 Ryan Which it feels like they're going to even amplify it even more because I find it interesting that you said that even if it is going to be a 3 part if they were not to go into the open world in this next game I would kind of feel disappointed because that was the kind of the flow of the first 1 or first going into the second part of the second disc. So I don't know I don't know I don't see if they didn't do that in the second one I would be shocked and very curious of what they did with the entire second one altogether that would be fucking but blow my shit 01:45:22.46 Dave ah I'm ah I'm not I'm not quite as hyperbolic as Ryan there although like I don't I shouldn't criticize I like this more than I like the bible. So I guess I guess I'm with you there. Um. 01:45:31.49 Aaron I Yeah, we guys stop saying the bible I've tried to be cool here. 01:45:34.35 Ryan Dave speak to me brother 01:45:38.38 Dave Ah, um, yeah, this is first of all like I said at the top of the show. This is really great as a game remake if you're interested in it. You know the craft and like the soul of remaking games as they get more and more common. Around especially games from our specific childhood people that are our age the games that we grew up playing are now being remade all the time and so I think the final fantasy 7 remake is a shining example of how to do it. You update the things that can and should be updated and. You maintain the spirit of the original game which I think they absolutely did here on top of that. Even if you're not interested in or like if you don't have that connection to the original final fantasy 7 I would still recommend playing this if you like rpgs because it has a good story. It has likable characters. It has a really good combat system for and and like an action rpg combat system and yeah, great music I mean what? what else are you looking for from an rpg so I think that that's all in this game. It's interesting to look forward to and we're going to do that in the spoiler section. My thoughts on where they're going with the story is a big to be determined because there's a chance that they fuck this all up. They're taking a big risk with the direction. They're taking this There's a chance. It's terrible. But I have faith because the first one is that good. 01:47:08.70 Dave That I think that it is and it is going to end up being good as they go through the rest of this trilogy. But yeah, this is great. This is a game that I'm very happy to spend almost 2 hours talking about and even more in the spoiler section after we do a little bit of housekeeping here. So. Like I said at the beginning Aaron is one of my co-hosts on my other podcast. It's called a top 3 podcast Aaron what? what is ah was that show all about and what kind of knuckleheads. Do we do that show with. 01:47:40.97 Aaron Well, the show is all about top threes. We ah pick a category we each lay out our 3 favorites and we yell and make fun ah of each other um usually a couple beers involved. You know, maybe some meth you know? Maybe if you're real cool. Some of that super sweet alien meth. 01:47:57.78 Dave Yeah, but only do the alien meth when we record on Tuesdays yeah, no, um. 01:47:58.27 Aaron Ah, but when we talk about food. Yeah and and record on Tuesdays we do it with our friends Alan and bloodbath who are in the Discord but are never in the Discord. But yeah, come on over. It's a good old drunken time here. Dave gets mad. He's very, he's conservative on this. He gets mad on top 3 and. 01:48:18.77 Dave It's a different vibe from this show hundred percent for sure. Yeah I was going to say I don't get mad but I do get mad sometimes Alan's just a real piece of work. 01:48:28.91 Aaron And ah, you only get mad at Alan not at me. I'm great all the time and a professional I. 01:48:33.56 Dave Absolutely never. You're the most professional person I ever met which is why I kicked it to you pretending like I don't know what happens on my other podcast that I edit and do everything else for. So yeah, that's a good time. So check that out. 01:48:42.68 Aaron Not love you baby. 01:48:48.94 Dave If you would like to support the show if you've enjoyed this episode and you want to help other people find this episode. You can tell them about it and spread the good word but you can also leave a rating and review if you're listening on Apple Podcasts Spotify or podcast addict. If you would like to join the conversation as Aaron mentioned we have that discord server. It is a lively, friendly, welcoming and fun community. We would love to have you and like you said Allen and bloodbath are legally there but they're not really there. So. It's cool. Don't worry. Trust us, it's cool. Come on in. 01:49:21.45 Aaron And they won't show up. 01:49:24.28 Dave Yeah, they won't show up even if you say their name 3 times in front of a mirror. They won't show up so come on in talk about Final Fantasy 7 with us. Talk about the remake and talk about the future of the series. I think we're gonna have some fun discussions about that as this episode is going to drop just a couple weeks before rebirth comes out. Finally, if you would like to support the show monetarily you can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson. There's a link down in the show notes and at all levels on Patreon you can listen to the show a few days early actually you don't even have to be a patron to do that. That's free for everybody. You can listen to the show a few days early but if you sign up then you get to vote in polls for what games I do you get bonus episodes. I have a bonus retro gaming series called tales from the way backlog. That's a lot of fun and yeah, lots of good stuff once again, that's patreon.com/real Dave Jackson with all of that. We are going to take a little break when we come back full spoiler time for the final fantasy 7 remake and again full spoilers for the entire original final fantasy 7 game. 01:52:51.90 Dave All right? We are back in. It's full spoiler time for final fantasy 7 remake and again we are going to spoil the entire story of the original final fantasy 7 in this discussion as well. So if you don't want to be spoiled on either 1 of those things please kindly get the fuck out. So before we talk about. Things that changed in here before we talk about the whispers and before we kind of look forward to how we think the rest of this series might go. I do want to talk just about our favorite moments throughout the story that we didn't want you to know. Spend time when we're talking about the generalities so I will just get us started with 1 thing that I thought was very funny. The part when you go to shinra h q and you have the choice of taking the elevator or taking the stairs if you take the stairs you climb up 59 flights of real video game stairs. And the banter between your party when you're going up is so fucking. Good. It is very funny like Barrett is wheezing on his way up there Tifa is like 18 floors ahead of everybody else because she's just in the best shape I guess it's just. Ah, a really great character moment. The 3 of them together. But it's also very funny. 01:54:09.51 Aaron I dude there were I mean there were a couple like because I was always looking forward to like the big moments and stuff you know, ah, one of the things so it always kind of caught me off guard when something different happened 1 of the my favorite moments of the game are when you go to. 01:54:26.51 Aaron Jesse's parents house to steal her dad's like id card they do. They do a lot better job with Jesse Wedge and biggs in this game and without going into the whispers too much I'm pretty sure wedge is still alive which he very much is not ah in final fantasy 7 01:54:34.38 Dave Yeah. 01:54:43.96 Aaron Ah, so I'm excited to see like where that goes with it but it was really cool to get another perspective of them because you know they're they're really really important in 5 fancy 7 but you go 65 hours in that game without ever thinking about the so it was really cool how they made them such a big part of the story in this game. I love that you go to Jesse's house because you need to steal her dad's key card to get into shinra headquarters or at least I believe that's what happened but that was really really cool to me. Um, the fight at the top of the shinra building like 2 of the things I was looking forward to is sephiroth like coming in and killing president shinra. And it was really cool that in this game you get to see it happen. You just don't walk into his office and see him dead with like sephiroth's sword in his back and then one other big big moment to me that I was literally like oh shit is when Sephiroth killed Barrett I was like what. 01:55:27.33 Dave Yeah. 01:55:36.23 Dave Yeah. 01:55:39.64 Aaron In the fuck. No way is is is that what they're doing is is is Aris Cool is fucking better. The guy in this one because now I care about it after this game like so I the things I really liked about the game like I had a lot of fun playing through all the different. 01:55:56.96 Aaron Like things that I had already gone through but it was those little things that I didn't expect where they changed the story which again when we get to the end and you know talk about you know where we think the storyline is going to go I'll be like you know I'll be more ready to talk about that. But I love doing those little things that were not a part of the first game at all like I said. 01:56:13.62 Dave Even it. 01:56:16.42 Aaron To Jesse's parents house. 1 of my favorite parts of the game even though it's really stupid just a lot of exposition into Jesse and wedge and biggs and some of the minor characters. I got the most enjoyment out of little things like that. 01:56:35.56 Ryan I for me since we're referring mainly to the spoilers I'm gonna refer to the first game as ah, the first second was gonna be more in the expectation. But yeah for me just seeing that that first fucking fight when you're fighting over the plate falling is fucking nuts the drama around that is fucking so so fucking high it's where things really start to like holy shit. Okay. 01:56:45.89 Aaron Even. 01:56:52.86 Ryan This is getting fucking real the game really starts to develop. 01:59:09.91 Dave Yeah I thought they did that section where you're in Hojo's lab really well like remember if I remember right in the original game like either it takes you prisoner or you like willingly go in like there's a scene in the original game where they're all like. 01:59:18.15 Aaron Very cool. 01:59:29.84 Dave In these different bedrooms or prison cells I don't quite remember and then you have to fight your way out. You fight those like mechanical centipede monsters and shit like that. Am I remembering that right. 01:59:39.24 Aaron Yeah, you wake up in the middle of the night and there's all those like blood marks all over the floor from where it was either sephiroth or he had like let out Jenova or something like that. But yeah, you just wake up until the night and your doors are open and shit that was eerie as fuck. 01:59:45.43 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:59:51.51 Ryan That's very fucking true I forgot about that. Yeah, that was probably 1 of my favorite parts. Well. 01:59:51.61 Dave Right? Yeah, but like in this game. Um, they change that up a bit. It's. The Hojo's lab section in this game is not one of my favorites. It's one of the parts that goes on way too long. It is too long and and when I replayed it I was like this part this takes like five fucking hours to get through this but at the end you fight that mechanical flying centipede monster again and. It's a nice little callback but at least Brian at least you get to tell red 13 to go like wall run over and and jump and pull a switch for you. That's not not good enough for you. 02:00:33.33 Ryan Don't do this dave do this bro. 02:00:33.95 Aaron No no, you know that's not so one one of the things that I thought was ah, really really cool is and I was I'm I'm kind of like where Stridden was earlier like Seth Roth is one of my favorite video game villains of all time. And in the first game you I mean I bet you see and talk to him more in this game than he had total screen time in the original final fan 7 I mean you said you see him like like pretty I mean I mean you you have to see him like pretty quickly early on in the game and you know that? Okay, you don't want to talk about whispers and stuff like that yet. But 1 of those things that I really liked about sephiroth in the original final fantasy game was that he was almost like the white walkers in a game of thrones were like it was more so his presence or like what he could possibly be doing or where he could possibly be that was kind of the scariest thing about him is that you didn't know much about him and you didn't see a lot about him I think. Him. There's so much I want to talk about without talking about like the whispers and stuff like that. But I just think he was in this game too much. I think it kind of takes away from him being as scary of a villain as he was in the first game. But I think there is a good explanation as to why that could be. Which if we talk about it here in a little bit I'll bring up but that was that but I did think it was really cool like you know they want you to know if you never played this game before this is sephiroth he is the bad guy. He. 02:01:43.42 Dave Yeah. 02:01:50.46 Dave Yeah, that. That's the thing and like I think I said this in the non-spoiler part like there was no way that they were not going to have sephiroth in this entire game. There's just no, he's too popular. There's no way they're going to do that. So and I don't think. That for an entire game if you're looking at a game and like the narrative steps that a self-contained story has to take I don't think that the fuck what are they called the rude and and reno what are the turks I don't think I don't think the turks are. 02:02:24.55 Aaron The turks. 02:02:28.95 Dave Strong enough villains to carry it by themselves and I don't think Heidegger is a strong enough villain to carry that by himself either so sephiroth had to be like that climactic point but it is different. He's like he basically just shows up to taunt cloud throughout this story. 02:02:44.75 Aaron Ya biggity bitch I know something you don't know. 02:02:47.53 Dave Just kind of he shows up. He's like what's up cloud you punk bitch and then he just disappears from. Yeah yeah, for like disappears for 5 hours exactly yeah, but which is which is really different. 02:03:04.58 Dave I didn't say this in the non-spoiler part because I wanted to keep the conversation moving I don't really think sephiroth is that cool I think it missed me I was you know when I played this I was already like now Kefka is the shit kefka is the final fantasy villain. Um, but you know. Sephiroth never did it for me in the original game and I'm not sure what they're setting up here. We'll talk about it in a bit but Sephiroth is definitely more of a presence and it's still to be determined whether I think it's good because I think it's just kind of incomplete. Sephiroth's role in this I don't know what's gonna happen now. So one other thing I wanted to kind of highlight one other memorable thing about this is something that happened in the original game 2 things number 1 just seeing eriff's house is just beautiful. Beautiful place. 02:03:57.70 Aaron It's mind blowing. It's gorgeous. Yeah. 02:04:00.26 Dave Yeah, gorgeous, the music's incredible. Yeah, her house is so great. That's the 1 place in the game where I would just be like I'm just gonna like to set it here and just kind of chill. Yeah I'm just you know what I'm I'm hanging up the buster sword no more bombings for me I'm just gonna go fucking chilling this flower patch. 02:04:02.27 Ryan It's the fucking. Best. 02:04:10.35 Aaron Retire here? yeah. 02:04:18.90 Aaron You're just you're just like it's still like ah never but never that do not entertain by thoughts. 02:04:24.83 Dave Ah, the other thing. The other thing is when the plate falls it feels like it has like the gravity that it should the the moment it's a big moment. It's a devastating thing and 1 cool thing in the Yuffie DLC you get to see the plate fall from the upper level so you get that top down view on the plate falling. You're just like oh shit, that's. Way worse than they showed you in the main game. That's pretty cool. 02:04:57.45 Aaron And they'd tag you with that Cait Sith fucking promo right there when the plate falls. You're just like the complete devastation and then for like 4 seconds it just cuts to Cait Sith up like what the fuck is Cait Sith doing this you die he I know what it is I know what it is. 02:05:15.43 Aaron He's he's information guy. Dude I'm excited to see what they do with him in the next game if they're even going to like it like I don't personally think he should be like a playable character or whatever. But or that he won't be anyways. But then they showed his face I was like fuck fuck they're gonna have Kates in this game are aren't they. 02:05:33.52 Aaron Ah, 1 other thing I wanted to say about. Ah you know some of the things they do in this game that they did in the original one but in different ways. Ah so in the ah so they have these like group events where you have to do like button compost and all do like the same stuff together to like pull levers or do whatever the fuck. 02:05:47.45 Dave Oh yeah. 02:05:52.62 Aaron Those were like some different golden saucer games in the original where you had to just exactly match up with another but like you were arm wrestling or something and 1 thing that I thought was really cool was there's that moment in both games were so or where Aeris's mom comes to you and she's like hey dude. You're too dangerous for her you got to sneak out in the middle of the night and in the first game you had to sneak out in the middle of the night without doing something and then in this game you had to sneak out without knocking stuff over or something like that. So it was cool that they gave you the same minigame just playing it in 2 different ways I always thought was neat. 02:06:20.10 Dave Yeah. 02:06:27.16 Aaron Though there were a couple things in this game that were like that. Um, but yeah, no I Really really enjoyed it like ah I don't know seeing scenes from the original game in this one. They. 02:06:39.18 Dave Oh dude. 02:06:41.77 Aaron There's almost none that I can think of that I was like oh I like the original one better and. 02:06:43.93 Dave Do the the scene where they're interrogating Don Corneo and Aerith and Tifa are basically like I'm gonna rip your fucking penis off if you don't tell me what you need what I need to know that. So so good. 02:06:53.89 Aaron There was so much entendre there. 02:09:02.98 Ryan Ah, blew my expectations complete the fuck out the water I can't fuck it wait. 02:09:07.46 Dave It's the other one not not just with Tifa Jesse also Jesse is Jesse is the she is the thirstiest final fantasy character in the history of final fantasy and cloud cloud is just like. 02:09:10.77 Aaron Bad bad. 02:10:19.86 Ryan But yeah, but although that said though, the way I wanted to bring this up the music that transitioned for Aerith when she died is still to this day is probably some of the best ever done just the way that they narrated that scene when and because they narrative where Aerith died and then you see the white material drop out of her like whatever out of her hair. And the music starts just as the white material hits the very first like whatever fucking step that she dies off over the first one and this is and the music is still the her normal theme song but it's different and it's like it's empty in a bit. It's missing certain instruments and everything and it's like holy fuck and then right as you go into the boss fight. The music doesn't stop. It doesn't break. It's still you still have that just very empty fucking sombering music knowing that she did and that's naked this nia we were cool bro. I to drop her off in the water just literally just it was crazy and it. Again, the music though that played right? as you fought gennova again. He's like noh I'm a kill bitch it I ain really gonna let you do nothing. You got to fight this now and the music played right into that it was perfect literally I think like 1 of the most well orchestrated and nuanced parts of ah of a game ever. I fucking love that part of of that game and that's one of my life I wanted to wait till the spoiler part to bring it up though. 02:11:36.40 Aaron This is where we are because we're talking around the important thing right here with the whispers and and and what and what the theories are here because this because what? What do you think things are going to change and why? 02:11:40.30 Dave Yeah, yeah, we're getting yeah this the time to get into the whispers. Yeah, all right? yeah. 02:11:53.21 Dave Yeah, let me let me set this up. What the whispers are for people who are listening and don't care about spoilers. I know they're there and kind of we'll get our thoughts about the whispers and then we'll talk about how much of anything we think is actually going to change. So um. 02:11:54.52 Aaron You know. 02:12:10.11 Dave 1 ah, there's 2 key things about them. The first thing is characters in final fantasy 7 remake seem like they either know or they have like repressed memories about the original game. The events of the original game. So like Aerith knows about sephiroth cloud gets visions about stuff that happens way later in the original game. Cloud. There's a vision actually of cloud laying aerith down in the water after she dies like the camera shows it so you can't see that it's aerith. But if you played the original game. You know that. That's the scene and cloud is having a vision of this so that is happening like characters seem like they know things that they shouldn't know or like they're at least having like ah ah an emergence of memories going on. The other thing that's happening is you have these these whispers then they they look. They're ghosts basically that pop up when things happen that would push the story off of the track of the original game so to give some examples when you first meet Aerith in the church. And you fight against Reno the whispers like reno is winning the fight reno's about to take eri away and the whispers come in and help you save Aerith because that's not what happened in the original game. They didn't kidnap Aerith during that scene. Um, there are lots of parts early in the game where the whispers come. 02:13:45.32 Dave To like push you away and keep you on the track and you have to fight them a bunch of times when you first meet Aerith you have to fight them because they I don't know they thought like Cloud and Aerith were getting too familiar or some shit I don't know but like they they want to keep that on the track. Um. 02:14:04.40 Dave Another scene later when the plate gets separated and they're going to drop the plate on the slums you're going to go try and stop it and the whispers stop you from stopping the plate separation process. So the whispers are there in the game's story as just like these. Arbiters of fate. Basically they want to keep the destiny going. But I think this is a clear meta sign from the developers. Um that these whispers represent all the fans who are really loud about. Not wanting to change anything about the story that that like track with you guys is that the impression you got to I don't did they div it just like straight up say that they're just like this these Motherfu people telling us not to change anything in this story these fucking. Yeah. 02:14:45.72 Aaron And yes, because that's what it is. That's one hundred percent what it is no no, but it's like it. I think it's more like a way of telling us like. Hey, like you can know there's only so close we can stay to the original story. Something has to change and the introduction of these things tell me or the introductions of the whispers tell me that. They are letting. You know that there is a possibility for change in this story and if there is a possibility for change then there is 100% going to be change. So. 02:15:25.36 Dave Right? Well the thing is like they're introducing the whispers. The whispers are the thing that's keeping the story on track with the original. So like you said earlier Sephiroth kills Barret but then the whispers come in and they bring Barret back to life. 02:15:42.19 Dave So now Barret's not dead. It's just president shinra killed by sephiroth just like it happened in the original. This is what I meant when I said they go about things differently. But overall the plot is still the same in this game as it was in the original but at the end of this game. You kill the whispers. Basically signaling now anything is possible. 02:16:04.11 Aaron Yeah Sephiroth makes you fight what is essentially destiny and I watch a little video today and sephiroth basically is someone like these 3 creatures that are supposed to represent destiny. One of them uses their fist one has a sword, one has a gun kind of just like Barret and a cloud and tifa. And it's kind of like their way of so or at least what the video had said to me was like this is a way to show that like they are destroying their future selves that there is no guarantee that the things that happened in the original game are going to happen now. What's the wild card in all of this? It's sephiroth right? Why is sephiroth here? Why is he here? Why is he fucking with things so much and the 1 conclusion that I can come to is that he knows that at the end cloud's gonna kill him. He knows that so he has to interfere as much as possible to make sure that that doesn't happen again. This is the. 02:16:59.56 Aaron The big thing that it came to be is Sephiroth. Anyways, you know I said earlier how I was okay so sephiroth does this for this. The reason is he knows he's going to lose and he knows the only way that he doesn't lose is to so much discord and chaos as humanly possible and that's why he's so prevalent in this game especially with cloud especially with Aerith right at the beginning you know. So I don't want to do the multiverse theory the multiple timeline theory like because it just seems too. You know on the nose but it is right like like that's what it is and. 02:17:31.85 Dave I think so because one of the biggest differences, the biggest difference other than you killing the whispers, is that there's a scene at the very end of the game where Zack is alive and Zack um was dead in the original game. Um, I died at the end of crisis core. I think like they explain this to you in the original game but Zach is dead. Yeah, um, and so there's a scene at the very end of this game where Zach survives the fight and picks up cloud. 02:17:51.95 Ryan Yeah, it's hard to watch. 02:18:06.23 Dave And he carries cloud and Zach and cloud pass through our party of cloud Tifa Aerith Barret and red 13 walking down the road. So like there are multiple there at least multiple dimensions multiple timelines going on. So. I think that's definitely happening because you see 2 realities basically at the end one where Zach is dead or 1 where Zach is alive and carrying cloud and then one where he's presumably dead because cloud is with the rest of the group. 02:18:41.96 Aaron It Yeah and it's not something I love but ah, but like and I've said this multiple times and so have you and so as strident you have to hope that the game did a good enough job in the beginning to let you know like that this game did a good enough job for me to trust they know what they're doing going forward I Thought the end was kind of. 02:18:54.98 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:18:58.21 Aaron I thought that it was a bit much. It was a lot all at once. Um, but the the main person in all of this I think is sephiroth and he is the one who I don't think he's . Well what was his purpose being the original game to bring the meteor to release all of the energy on the planet to make himself a god basically. I I don't know if that's still like his his end game here I'm not really sure what his endgame is but he is in every single facet of fucking up the timelines or at least fucking up the timeline that he knows to be true which is the original final fantasy game and it it's it's it's all very losty. Right? This whole game just reminds me of lost to a degree with like the flashbacks and the flash forwards and the weird meta-ness about the whole thing but I love lost. So I'm excited to figure this shit out. 02:19:47.71 Dave Yeah. 02:19:47.87 Ryan Yeah, you guys are all both smarter way smarter than me. I was just like there's a bunch just wispy ass ghosts. We just be busing asked by people. I'm going to just be busting ass right? over with this tifa. That's really kind of all it came down to I didn't think about not it that so that's tight though. 02:19:54.56 Aaron I Had to watch a video. 02:20:04.62 Dave Yeah, like I played the game twice. You know I'm taking notes for a podcast so it helps me with stuff that is too interesting like other stuff that happens. There is a part where Hojo is going to tell. Cloud the truth about who he is which is like way later in the story than he actually you know learns or you learn what's going on with cloud and his real identity but the whispers come and take Hojo away before he can say something and then there was 1 other thing which I thought was really interesting. There's a mandatory like shinra museum section of shinra h q and they're doing like a presentation talking about the ancients and like you just learned that eri is one of the ancients and you know what Mako is etc and you get a vision of Sephiroth calling the meteor and he kills Tifa in this scene. So I think that this kind of sets up a really interesting future for the series where you have like broken free of. Destiny basically by killing the whispers. But you've also removed the protections that everyone who survives the original game would have the plot armor. Basically they can't die because they didn't die in the original. Well you just killed destiny. 02:21:36.21 Dave Very jrpg ass thing to do but you just killed destiny. So now anyone could die so you see a vision of tifa dying in the future and Zach is alive in 1 timeline or whatever. So like how is this going to work. How is this all going to play out? 02:21:55.98 Aaron I know it's so fucking cool dude I am so excited to play. Ah the rest of this shit because the only thing that could be better than final fantasy 7 is a different version of final fantasy 7 that is completely upgraded in every other way. Like I said I don't think this game could really disappoint me I think if they went Throughout and tifa did end up dying or Cait Sith becomes the main character or whatever like if they do it properly I'm not going to be upset I think that's one of the greatest things about looking forward to this next game is okay, you really don't know and the people who created this game. 02:22:29.80 Aaron Really don't want you to know what's coming next now is that to you know trick us and then kind of do a lot of the same things I don't think so I think the locations are going to be the same. But I think the overall story and what happens to these characters is going to be a lot different at least that's what. The end of this game led me to believe that. 02:22:48.17 Dave Okay, so just got to ask since we're on this train now. Um I think that it's like if you take the rest of the game from the original stuff after midgar cut it in half. Does aerith die at the end of part 2 of 3 is that is that basic. That's basically where this is leading right? It's the perfect time right? that that part in the story I mean is part at the end of part 2 so the question is. 02:23:05.86 Aaron Yes, yeah I think so if she dies at all. 02:23:10.60 Ryan The first one with. 02:23:22.38 Dave Are they really going to commit to this? Are they going to change this is Aerith going to survive is someone else going to die in her place? How is this going to go? 02:23:34.70 Ryan I mean I'd be surprised if she doesn't get her shit beat. But I mean everything to me and me as a child. Always always hoped that she wouldn't but I think it would also be low key almost oddly enough disappointing if she didn't just because it really fueled the whole like. 02:23:45.20 Dave Right. 02:23:54.40 Ryan Third part of the game. But if she doesn't I would be very curious to see what they did after that honestly. 02:23:59.92 Aaron It's yeah, it's it's. It's a lot of speculation Even at this point you know it's just the fact that we're asking questions about it is good. I think it's good for the series and is good for the game like you know I don't want to know exactly what's coming. But the fact that I'm like oh shit could get real backwards. 02:24:11.21 Dave Yeah. 02:24:19.76 Aaron It's pretty exciting to me like I'm not scared of it like I was to play the first game I'm excited to play it and. 02:24:26.26 Dave There's all right? So there's 1 reason why I think she'll survive and this is just kind of putting puzzle pieces together that might not actually fit but there's a quote from Aerith kind of late in the game. Where she says every time the whispers touch me I lose a part of myself and to me that signifies that the whispers are you know they're going. They're the ones that are keeping her on this track towards eventually dying. Um, but now you just killed the whispers. Is gone now. Um, I think it's possible that someone else dies in the era's place. I think it's possible that she doesn't die at all that they just, you know, change that it would be odd for them to not have something like that in the next game. Um. And we also have a multiple reality thing going on I think so Eric in the timeline with our party might die but they might learn about this other timeline somehow and I don't know Zach and Eric come out of the other timeline to join the party or something like because i. I think in the next game you get to play is Zach I don't know if it's going to be alongside the other characters or like in his own timeline or something but that is something that happens so I don't know man it might be it. There might be some real lost shit lost as you should. 02:25:56.83 Aaron And yeah, dude this sounds like we're talking about lost after an episode of lost. Ah. 02:25:57.98 Dave So this the the thing the last thing like I guess the thing I want to say like just to wrap up that thought is we're talking about this like we used to talk about lost and lost the show. Wrote a bunch of checks that they ultimately could not cache entirely. I mean I Still love it. But they did not really cash all the checks they wrote. I think this story is the way we've been talking about The Endless possibility. The things that they have introduced into it on top of the fact that I think they are still going to continue the story with sephiroth and Jenova and the meteor and all of that shit I think that's all still going to happen. Um this. Ah this could suck like it could end in just a really bad and unsatisfying way. It's a possibility. 02:26:54.69 Aaron Yeah I think it's I think I've been disappointed way more by movies and Tv shows and the way they decide to end things I think video games. Do usually do a pretty good job of wrapping things up. But yeah I mean dude like it's hard to end stuff and. 99% of all endings are terrible. So like if it ends badly. Well it's just like ah you know two rpgs I played this year already so I don't I don't think it'll destroy my I don't think it'll destroy my view of the original game if if they don't end it the way I want them to cause the original game didn't have the best ending either. 02:27:23.92 Dave Um I. 02:27:29.58 Dave No no I agree like I said at the beginning I think pretty much everything involves. 02:27:33.75 Aaron Yeah. 02:27:42.50 Dave Sephiroth and jenova and cloud falling in the lifestream and all of that like I don't really like any of that as a story. It's not interesting to me like 1 of the things that I kind of dislike about the original game and I dislike this about final fantasy sixteen is they set up this interesting world and this. Interesting motivation for the characters in final fantasy 7 it's that you know, save the planet from the evil capitalist corporation and all of that and in final fantasy sixteen. It's the plight of these bearers, the slaves and this class warfare and this. Political drama and in both games 16 and 7 they totally abandon that for just we have a villain that's out of we have a jrpg villain that's out of control and is going to try and become a god and end the world and all of that I still think they're going to abandon that. Later on like I don't think part 3 of final fantasy 7 remake or final fantasy 7 retribution. That's my guess for what the last one's going to be called like a die hard trilogy die hard title. Yeah. 02:28:46.51 Aaron I Oh love it? Yeah yeah. 02:28:52.30 Dave Um, final fantasy 7 retribution is still not going to be about saving the planet from shinra or whatever. It's going to be about stopping Sephiroth and maybe some other weird spacey washit. But I don't know, it'll interesting at least. 02:29:04.30 Ryan My guess is gonna be off 7 Tifa stroke because she saved a whole my fucking clique by the fact that she did she bring that n**** back from the brink, but that is fact I am I was gonna say I am very curious about they're gonna go into. 02:29:23.88 Ryan But brother you could because that it's ah I didn't notice a single part of what you had mentioned earlier as far as this the the overlapping possible worlds and and possible ah dimensions and shit that's crazy that's crazy I was blown away I was almost like see the game. The first time you were talking about that. So I don't know what to expect. From not at all now the whispers were always very fucking goddamn random though and I again did not think about the fact that that it all had the real real real depth I remember being bringing it up is wonder what the fuck it was I was. 02:29:58.98 Aaron Ah, took took me a while to figure it out too. So what? if sephiroth's the good guy. You know this is something I've been floating around in my head like like what if he's what if he's pulling the strings in like the right ways. What if he's trying to do something righteous. 02:30:04.65 Dave Oh dude. 02:30:10.35 Ryan I do think this is supposed to be his original 02:30:38.28 Dave What all right? So that's interesting So sephiroth's backstory from like the original game is that he was like this war hero right? and then got disillusioned or or whatever because of what they did to Jenova I think um. 02:30:55.32 Dave So yeah, there is a possibility that Sephiroth is is fighting for good and the reason I think that that's not ridiculous is there is promo art or a trailer or something for part 2 rebirth where cloud and sephiroth are fighting together. On the same team. It might be just that flashback scene when cloud and and Sephiroth are yeah fighting in was that Kalm? Nibelheim dammit second time where they're fighting or they're fighting in there but it could be something in our timeline where they're fighting together. 02:31:16.87 Aaron I think I think it probably is. 02:31:25.30 Aaron Nibelheim. 02:31:34.21 Aaron I yeah I really don't think that's the case and I really do think based on you know what? Aeris and what sephiroth did in the're like they're they're going to have to meet at some point too I think Aeris is probably going to die again. But like I said it's all speculative at this point I don't know and I think the game ended the way and the game ended itself. Not wanting you to know and not wanting you to be sure and not having you have expectations for the second game like you did for the first game. 02:31:58.34 Dave Good. 02:32:03.60 Dave Um, my prediction is that sephiroth still does kill Aerith and then after that he gives some sleepy voice acted line where he's like Cloud There are some destinies you cannot change or something like that. 02:32:18.88 Aaron Sometimes the clouds only come out in May I don't know I'm not good at I'm not good at lines. 02:32:25.30 Dave Um, time to take out the trash cloud. 02:32:53.80 Dave Ah, ah, all right? Well that seems like a good place to end the conversation. So Ryan Aaron thank you guys for coming on talking about another rpg looking forward to part two. I feel like I'm gonna have to jump on this like the day comes out so I don't get like. 02:33:04.93 Aaron You're. 02:33:11.31 Dave Horribly spoiled on everything that happens. But I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, all right? Awesome! So for everybody listening. Thank you all for listening as always I really appreciate that. 02:33:13.49 Ryan Yeah I can't fucking wait. Thank you So fucking much for having me here brother I Love you'll but. 02:33:15.21 Aaron So day one Yeah brother always has a fun time in. Yeah. 02:33:28.53 Dave Um, if you want to jump in the Discord server and share thoughts about what you think is going to happen in rebirth and then we're going to have a special channel set up kind of like we do in the Discord server now for for the new games and stuff I imagine by this by the time this game comes out. We'll have the yakuza channel as. Infinite wealth has come out recently. We will have maybe the baldur's gate channel still going as that's like the longest game ever. But we'll definitely have one set up for this game. So if you want to come in and talk about it as you play join the discussion with everyone. There's an invite link down in the show notes to join the discord server. So with all that being said, thank you everybody again for listening to the tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.