People wanted one for decades, but the issue is if you didn’t deliver on it perfectly, a FF7 remake would track mud over everyone’s adolescent nostalgia

This one, luckily, is perfect, exactly evoking the feel of playing the original for the first time. The rich environments matching the wonder of that prerendered background beauty, only now in full rotatable 3D with a more natural and intuitive travelable/not travelable distinction than I’ve ever seen

In Chapter 9 now, I got to Aerith’s house and just explored it for a few minutes with my jaw dropped, that wooden rural cozy with 80s TV and microwave, evoking the interior design of Final Fantasy Six as much as anything…

With decades of pitching the brand, Square realizes what people get from it and a lot is “imagining the characters hooking up”. Like I said, Jesse/Cloud is beefed up and I can see what plot hooks the doujins are meant to take off from

I mentioned Tifa still had huge melons just under a sports bra – I was thinking of some shots in profile where you could see the size and the compression rounding under the armpit

Well now I’ve met Aerith and yeah, she doesn’t need a bra, and a string necklace draws attention to her deep neckline, and I’m like oh this is no accident, and it’s not lewd fanservice, it’s more showing off the modeling, but they are definitely making sure you notice how nice the girls’ tits are

(This leaves me awkwardly wondering how the 16-year-old Yuffie is going to be treated)

Not just physical though, with the texturing available the characters and their relationships are richer. As Colin Spacetwinks pointed out, Cloud now very much vibes as the kind of intense but directionless young man who would leave his small town to join the army and then mask how it fucked him up.

In tone of voice and timing, Aerith’s sweet, cheerful, but not soft or vulnerable – in fact, it’s very charming how she sweetly, cheerfully, constantly gives Cloud shit. To wrap it up I guess what I’m saying is in the year of our lord 2020 and knowing where the story is going, the last thing I expected was to develop a crush on Aerith fucking Gainsborough