Orphaned FF7r thoughts:

At the start I was like “oh, why am I reminded of the Yakuza games”

And at first I thought it was just I had previously been playing them so much, and then thought the aesthetic of Japanese construction sites and weird-shaped undeveloped plots was reminding me of the real estate-focused 0 and 2.

Then Wall Market was conceptualized as a Kamurocho-type separated “entertainment district”, with karaoke bars and ramen shops and masseuses and brothels and criminal powers and giant stone underground fighting coliseums…

The construction zones, though, I think that was on to something… the ugliness, the brute-force landscaping, the lack of coherence – in the zoning-free utopia, “incompatible uses” put next to each other and then walled off by blank concrete slabs, Cloud and Tifa’s apartments the shittiest seen-a-million “1R"s, institutional bath toilet and sink straight off a bare room.

The point that when they’re dramatizing Shinra’s environmental rapacity, or the degradation of the Midgar slums relative to the richer plate, they’re recognizably invoking and critiquing ”the formless, brutal, utilitarian jumble“ of the Japanese postwar boom

Thing the second: you know how for decades we tee-heed about the Bumblebee Inn scene "helping players realize something about their sexuality”?

Well, you know how I said that part of my personality change since choking last summer was I went up like a Kinsey point? Before even getting to the scene, just in contemplating it, I realized that femboys were now… flagged as eligible targets?

Like, it was with anticipation and eventual relief I proceeded on to the scene and realized that drag!Cloud did not trip the same “yeah, I would” flag as Tifa or Aerith, that was an experience.

FF7r got kinda Evangelion movie, in that it started out as a retelling of a familiar tale, dwelled on the cozy familiar in a fanservicey way, started to turn up the divergence from the source, and then got totally abstract and thematic at the end

Part of that was to wedge final boss climaxes into a narrative that’s not through yet, but part of it specifically was to kill the narrative. Up to there mostly delivered a similar experience to the original, with some things remixed, enough that for returning fans they can really tease the fate of Aerith

Well just before the end they come out with a remix of that bit, then the final boss, more than Sephiroth, is like “the force of things necessarily going the way they’re fated to”, and with that defeated it’s not clear where anything stands and it’s like yes, that was definitely Final Fantasy 7 there, no I have no idea where this is going now

A+

FF7r continues to be brilliant

Like, the first game is apparently up through Midgar, expanded to fit and I can’t tell what’s new or just newly done well enough to matter, but it is just full of themes of parents and children and comrades and just the spirit of loss hanging over everything

Aerith in particular is amazing, a new type that later scholars will connect to the MPDG and the yandere, and she’s vocally aware that she’s an impermanent thing and her time is limited

The collapse of the Sector 7 plate is set up as a foreshadowing parallel - if you have previous exposure you know what’s happening, it’s loss and failure, with the built-up Cloud/Jesse ship as a loss, but at this point there’s been just enough divergence from the “real“ timeline you wonder until the end whether it’ll really happen

This time though Wedge survives (meanwhile obviously, in the original this sequence did not expect players to appreciate Aerith’s later fate)

The remake is aware the payload of FF7 is the Cloud/Tifa/Aerith triangle, it’s striking how marginal even Sephiroth is

So as it reaches a peak, this installment is whispering in your ear

Hey Aerith’s so great, she’s really a dream girl, but she’s telling you not to fall in love with her because her time is limited, it’s 2020, you know we’re going to kill her…

…right?

And oh my God, that’s the obvious-in-retrospect angle a compelling multi-game FF7 remake would have to take, and it’s brilliant

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

More FF7r thoughts:

They’re really aware you’re going to be shipping these characters – Cloud/Jesse is built up a lot, and your landlord is shipping Cloud/Tifa

Cloud’s sleeveless turtleneck thing really looks like a virgin-killer sweater, huh?

Just got through the first big section with no clear precedent at all – so far things seem about as remixed as from a 26-episode anime to the movie that covers the same ground

I forgot all about the Turks, as I was not a fangirl who had a sexual awakening about them

Oh jeez, that means I forgot about Vincent, I wonder how/if he’s even in this

Actually, what else do I remember? A seaside resort town, Red XIII and Cosmo Canyon, Cid and the rocket, Yuffie and Wutai, the end of Disc I, a seaside town with retractable seawall armor and the Sister Ray cannon, Sister Ray mounted in Midgar, Cait Sith, the Golden Saucer, that mountainside with the strategy game, a submarine?

I have no clue how any of that fits together.

I’d heard someone saying they reigned in the character design in on Tifa and… not really true! Her huge tits are now depicted flattened and bound by a firm sports bra, which is reasonable gear for a kickboxer with mondo knockers, but it’s stunning how they render the original outfit, suspenders and all, as something a human might actually wear, much more so than Tidus’ FFX half-shorts. If anything, the skirt’s shorter now

The FF7 remake is good! Just a bit in myself, the game and artistic designs both seem to be applying the best of Square’s modern style to evoke the classic feel

The memory’s distant enough that I keep being “oh yeah, that” and then being pleasantly surprised again with what comes next, which might be ideal

The audio, graphic, and animation quality help a ton at giving things weight - as odd as it is to say, Cloud’s blankness is textured now

They can overweight things - a buff black ecoterrorist proclaiming his righteousness to status quo suits that worked in 1997 polygons & text is just absurd here