Video Game News and Miscellany

GasBandit

Staff member
The game is years out.
Plenty of time for the hardware to be too old to support "current gen graphics" then.

As a console game, framerate was always going to be an issue, I know, but that one part of the video did more to douse my enthusiasm for the game than anything else I've seen, even the awful team four star abridged series.
 
Yeah, it's got me kind of wary now. I understand that a combat update was going to happen, but I hope they're not going to just turn it into full-on third-person melee combat. I would have liked to have seen some materia use in action so I would know how that is being changed as well.
What I always wanted was for Square to remake Final Fantasy 7. What I got was SquareEnix remaking Final Fantasy 7...
 
I'm fine with the action RPG style combat... my main complaint with Final Fantasy 13 was that I couldn't micromanage my characters in battle (because the roles SUCKED) and at least I'm getting that here.
 
Ok enough about the future disappointment of the Final Fantasy 7 remake, MORE IMPORTANTLY:



REAL ACE COMBAT!!!

Back to Strangereal. YES. YYYYYEEEEESSSSS.

The series with literally the best soundtracks in games.

The real acronym AC.



 
Ok enough about the future disappointment of the Final Fantasy 7 remake, MORE IMPORTANTLY:



REAL ACE COMBAT!!!

Back to Strangereal. YES. YYYYYEEEEESSSSS.

The series with literally the best soundtracks in games.

The real acronym AC.
I was always partial to Zero from Ace Combat Zero. You really got that "duel" vib from the track thanks to the Spanish Guitar, which really sold that final fight at Round Table against your friend and rival.



I will be patiently waiting in my F-18 Superhornet for this to come out.
 
I was always partial to Zero from Ace Combat Zero. You really got that "duel" vib from the track thanks to the Spanish Guitar, which really sold that final fight at Round Table against your friend and rival.



I will be patiently waiting in my F-18 Superhornet for this to come out.
That's another favorite.
 
The FF7 trailer actually piqued my interest. I couldn't help getting a smile on my face. Kind of surprised they're keeping the old dialogue, but then again, it's not one of Square's poorer translations (i.e. Xenogears or Final Fantasy Tactics, though I'll defend FFT's shitty translation over the PSP version on readability alone).

I'm fine with the new combat system ... whatever it might be. Final Fantasy combat in most games wasn't too interesting and I've played better turn-based combat since 1997.
 

fade

Staff member
Aww yes. I love flight sims in general and ace in particular. Will be adding that one to my list.
 
So... they're going to retell the story using a more modern combat system, but presented in such a way as to appeal to the modern sensibilities of the gamers of today who maybe weren't old enough/live to enjoy the game in it's original form? That's not a TERRIBLE idea... it's even one I could get behind... but it's not what they've been selling this as.

I'm still not seeing a deal breaker yet but they need to start throwing in some stuff that -I- want to see, like Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, and Advent Children as DLC campaigns that finally answer some of the questions they raised regarding the actual overall plot.
 
This is likely their way to release content without having to wait for the whole thing to be done. FFVII was a big game for its time; if they want to get into detail for each part of it, that's going to be a lot of work.

That said, the trailer raised my interest and this announcement drops it. I have no plans to bolster Square-Enix's flailing business model by paying for FFVII part 1, part 2, part 3, etc. They're going to milk this engine like they needed to for FFXIII, except this time they know people will buy it. No thanks.
 
This is likely their way to release content without having to wait for the whole thing to be done. FFVII was a big game for its time; if they want to get into detail for each part of it, that's going to be a lot of work.

That said, the trailer raised my interest and this announcement drops it. I have no plans to bolster Square-Enix's flailing business model by paying for FFVII part 1, part 2, part 3, etc. They're going to milk this engine like they needed to for FFXIII, except this time they know people will buy it. No thanks.
To be fair, this engine is being used for FF15, Kingdom Hearts 3, AND Final Fantasy 7 HD. This is pretty sound, because at least one of those is likely to be a monster hit and to pay for the engine in one iteration instead of 3. That's pretty sound business and I could see them using it again for something like a Vagrant Story: The Phantom Pain HD remake or a new Brave Fencer Musashi game or maybe even a remake of The Bouncer. They can really do SO much more with this than they could with the FF13 engine.
 
Vagrant Story: The Phantom Pain HD remake
Don't you tug at my heartstrings, you fucker!

maybe even a remake of The Bouncer.
I...don't actually know how I feel about that. On the one hand, it was one of the most hilariously over the top beat-em-ups ever and the subject of hours and hours of playthrough among myself and my college friends.

On the other hand, it was terrible.
 
Am I the only one on this earth not filled with fond FF7 nostalgia? I mean, I betrayed Nintendo and bought a PlayStation to play it and all, but I don't get a nerd boner thinking about it. Honestly, I didn't even like a lot of it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
FFVII leaned hard on breakthrough visuals, by which gamers of the time were generally blown away. Previous to 7, final fantasy hadn't really changed its visual style/quality that much since 3 (American 2), or you could even conceivably say since the very first one. Naturally since the PS1 had so much more hardware oomph than the SNES, it could do a lot more in the way of 3D modelling, graphical quality, and of course high quality (for the time) cutscenes. But really, if you get down to brass tacks, I liked the story/combat/characters of 6 better than 7.

That said, it wasn't awful, but it wasn't the best one. At least it wasn't 8. Or 10. Or everything that came after. Egh.
 
FF8 where time is an endless loop of killing your teacher so that your teacher in the past can take on her power, repeat.
 
I found the story in 7 completely nonsensical while I was playing it. It drove me up a wall.
I always felt like the plot of 7 was less important than the consistency of it's theme; Loss. Final Fantasy 7 is the story of a group of people who have all experienced great personal loss being confronted with the very real reality that they could lose everything if they don't learn to give a fuck... and how they come together as friends to essentially get over their issues so they can stop someone who won't/can't. It's very much a nihilism vs optimism story and while some parts of it are REALLY DUMB, other parts of it are memorable to this day for a reason.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Am I the only one on this earth not filled with fond FF7 nostalgia? I mean, I betrayed Nintendo and bought a PlayStation to play it and all, but I don't get a nerd boner thinking about it. Honestly, I didn't even like a lot of it.
FF7 was the last FF game I played, and FF4 was the peak of the series for me. When I was playing FF6 I felt like there was way too much side story that wasn't fully fleshed out, as well as hidden items/events that all but required a game guide to uncover. (I still wonder if there are parts of that game that have never been uncovered). FF7 seemed to me to head even more in that direction, with tons of virtually unconnected events, hidden knowledge, and grinding. Oh, the grinding necessary to find some of this stuff.
 
The 100% biggest turn off in FF7 for me, even more so than the story, was the ridiculous amount of time spent having to watch summons. The amount of times I lost to Sephiroth at the end because I fell asleep while he destroyed the solar system is high.
 
The only redeeming parts of 8 were the sections where you played as Laguna.
FF8 was originally going to be two games, with the Laguna game coming first and what would become FF8 coming second. Then Square Enix hit a serious money crunch and the Laguna game idea was abandoned and shoehorned into the one we got. This is also the same cash issue that reduced the second disk of Xenogears to sitting in a chair: halfway though development they had half their budget taken to finance FF8 instead.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The other thing that was kind of impressive about 8 was it was the first game I remember seeing that managed to use dynamic FMV layering in such a way that made it possible for your 3D rendered character to actively move through a playing FMV sequence with depth, where you'd pass behind some things but not other things (like in the Garden battle).
 
Cut the crap and give me a good looking Chrono Trigger remake that maintains the core gameplay. I'll empty my wallet for that.
 
Cut the crap and give me a good looking Chrono Trigger remake that maintains the core gameplay. I'll empty my wallet for that.
I honestly feel like Ni No Kuni and Dragon Quest 8 have set an impossibly high standard for that kind of game at this point.
 
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