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Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Framing characters as important isn't the same as being expected to already know their deal.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I bought the Aerith/Tifa book, but I can't bring myself to buy a book about the Turks. Has anyone ever really cared about the Turks? Am I missing something?
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
The Turks collectively and individually have always been fan favourites, which is why they keep showing up in increasing focus in subsequent material... so yeah, I think you've overlooked that fandom.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I sure have, then, wow. I am very late to liking Final Fantasy VII - the first time I played through it entirely was like 2012 or something like that, I didn't have a Sony console until the PS2, so I missed the fan discourse across several generations lol. In fact, iirc, the first FF7 related thing I ever beat was Crisis Core, if you can believe it.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
If you've played FF7 and Crisis Core (or looked up a decent synopsis or Let's Play), you should be 98% good. The stuff from the more obscure things will hit a little like "who is this character and why do they keep showing up like they matter" but... that's still kind of the feeling even if you look them up and find out what the deal with them is, imo.

Lotta Glup Shittos in the FF7 Remakes.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Well, that's good, in case I bounce off the other stuff pretty hard. I've never played Dirge of Cerberus outside a brief test yesterday on my OPL using FreeMcBoot PS2, and noticed it had autoaim, which is a great crutch for me, since I am terrible at FPSs and 3rd person shooters. Dunno if it'll be able to carry me all the way through, but I can try, since for whatever reason I'm in the mood to try all this old crap haha
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
It's easy to forget now (or simply never know) because the game is lost media thanks to the impermanence of mobile platforms, but regardless of what served as the impetus for the creation of the whole Compilation publishing umbrella, Before Crisis was the first project to materialize out of it... so the early to mid-2000s hunger for more FFVII was answered by a full-blown Turks side story, likely indicating what the developers were interested in exploring and what they thought would fly with the audience. All the spinoff material varies highly in what people think of them, but the creatives involved have never once backed down in embracing everything that the original game spawned afterward, which is an integral context for why the remakes are how they are.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
Dirge mostly showed up in the first game in Yuffie's segment, with a couple bosses there, so far. But Dirge takes place after all this anyway so it's more of a "hey remember Nomura's weird bondage guys" easter egg than anything else.
 
I'm currently in my second ever playthrough of Crisis Core on PSP, and I 100%ed the remake last year, so I'm at least doing that. I genuinely had no idea there were novels, maybe I'll grab those if they're in English...
The three ones I've got are all in English:
  • Traces of Two Pasts
  • On the Way to a Smile
  • The Kids Are Alright: A Turks Side Story
I've read the first two; gonna start the third one soon. Traces of Two Pasts is ok, and the only one I'd even consider recommending. It serves as a prequel to Remake, giving the backstories of what Tifa, Aerith, and to a lesser extent what Barrett and other important characters were up to before the game, and how they got to where they're at. That said, I don't think the book is remotely necessary reading. While you'll pick up on several references in the game, none of it is remotely necessary to understanding what's going on. It's all more like flavor text than anything else. If you really liked Remake/Rebirth and just wanna spend even more time with the characters and getting into their headspace though, it's not a bad way to spend time.

On the Way to a Smile essentially serves as a prologue to Advent Children, and actually includes a LOT of information regarding what the various characters were all up to in between games, why they're doing what they're doing in Advent Children, where their current headspace is, etc. Some of it is pretty interesting and honestly serves as quintessential reading, giving important context to even understanding the under-explained nonsense going on in Advent Children and why we should even care as viewers. But some of it is a lot less interesting (like what Red XIII was up to in between games) and "essential reading" for an entirely unessential film like Advent Children is very ymmv territory to begin with.

Dirge mostly showed up in the first game in Yuffie's segment, with a couple bosses there, so far. But Dirge takes place after all this anyway so it's more of a "hey remember Nomura's weird bondage guys" easter egg than anything else.
Dirge has actually been referenced a lot more than that. There have been situations in both games where you're dealing with Hojo that he keeps throwing monsters at you that allude to what he's doing beneath Shinra Tower w/ Deepstate. But the player honestly doesn't need to know any of it beyond being vaguely aware of the fact that Hojo is doing crazy experiments underground. There's a scene in Remake where the Plot Ghosts literally whisk you up and out of the underground because you're getting too close to seeing stuff you shouldn't yet because it would get in the way of Dirge happening. But ya, it's mostly easter egg status.

I have a strong feeling they'll bring up Dirge stuff a lot more in Part III, since they're saving the Wutai stuff for then, and the end of Rebirth kinda blew the doors off of the FF7 scenario. But this Remake trilogy is doing such a good job of providing enough context for newcomers that I doubt playing Dirge will ever be remotely necessary or even recommended for getting the most enjoyment ouf these games.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I dunno, I'm weirdly in the mood for dumb crap (I have yet to be annoyed by Genesis in Crisis Core, which is why I feel like now is the time for me to try Dirge of Cerberus lol), so we'll see how it goes...
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Shinra set up in Nibelheim in 1960 so they could do cutting edge mako research out of the eyes of the "Republic of Junon?" Final Fantasy VIIs world is so strange lol (this is from the "Traces of Two Pasts" book on like, page 3)
 

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
Unless the expanded material explains why the Gi tribe is now closely tied to the Black Materia, I only played Final Fantasy VII before playing Remake and Rebirth, and I didn't feel like I missed any important context.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Tifa was born in 1987, according to the book, so that'd make her about 20 during FF7, so yeah, that sounds about right. FF7 being set in the near-future of 1997 fits, too, I think.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
Unless the expanded material explains why the Gi tribe is now closely tied to the Black Materia, I only played Final Fantasy VII before playing Remake and Rebirth, and I didn't feel like I missed any important context.
pretty sure this is brand-new to the remake.
 

4-So

Spicy
... I only played Final Fantasy VII before playing Remake and Rebirth, and I didn't feel like I missed any important context.

This makes sense.

It would be bizarre and probably unreasonable to expect people to engage with the original text from 25 years and four console generations ago just to fully understand the remake you've poured $150 million+ into creating.

I think oldheads like myself have additional context playing Remake/Rebirth but a lot of folks seem to be unaware that it's not the original game per se that provides those "oh shit!" moments, it's the time we've had to think, dwell on, discuss, and dissect the game over the intervening years. Final Fantasy 7 is Final Fantasy effin' 7 because we've created the mythology of it; a person that does not have that multi-decades long investment is unlikely to find the unique, divergent moments in Remake/Rebirth to be a Big Deal, and you certainly don't need OG FF7 (or the additional related media) to understand the remakes.

I could probably argue - but I won't - that Crisis Core provides more interesting context for understanding certain events in the remakes than FF7; like FF7, I would not call Crisis Core essential re: Remake/Rebirth.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
It's kinda like the MCU, you know? If you're familiar with the comics you catch a lot of references and hints and easter eggs and things, but if you're not it's just like. A movie.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I finished the Tifa half of Tale of Two Pasts last night.

While I enjoyed learning some of the new information we get about what happened between the Nibelheim incident and the beginning of FF7 - I did wonder how the heck Tifa ended up in Midgar running the bar and how she met Barret, etc. - I was absolutely disgusted by how much the book could not stop talking about Tifa's body. To a degree, I understand why some of it would end up in the book - a young woman showing up in a new town full of desperate people probably would face some scary situations and she would definitely notice creeps checking her out, sure. But did we need to be told that the skin grafts the (thankfully female) doctor used to save Tifa's life were experimental, so she took pictures of them during the healing process? I wonder, given that those pictures were of her chest. The book mentions that Tifa's face was always out of frame for her privacy, but she is later forced to show pictures of her naked healing chest to another prospective (thankfully, again, female) patient that needs similar surgery on her back in order to try to convince the new patient to undergo the experimental surgery. Now the doctor has a son who, it turns out, has been lying to Tifa about how much she owes his mom for her treatment in order to keep her in his orbit because he has a crush on her. The book never goes anywhere near the following thought I had, but there is no fucking way that creep hasn't seen those pictures. I hate that I even have to wonder about that, because none of that should have been in the book! You can keep all the weird focus on the showers that Tifa likes to have, even though that's a bit creepy! At least that is a woman, rightfully, trying to make sure she has some privacy! Tifa being creeped out by her "master," the guy who teaches her martial arts, saying to her within like, two seconds of meeting her, "I'd fancy a closer look at those calves of yours, too. Would you mind?" Like, yes, she should run away. She was thirteen at the time! The book cannot stop talking about her in this way. As much as I feel like most of her inner monologue and dialogue reads like the Tifa I know from the games, the book just cannot stop talking about Tifa as a sex object. And I'm a fucking straight dude! God.

I hope the Aerith half is better about this crap, though I somehow doubt it. I wish a woman had written this book.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I hope it's come across that my perspective through this conversation has been "interact with FFVII spinoff material because it's there, not because it's good." If it was the latter, there would be vanishingly little to talk about.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Don't worry, I didn't expect it to be good lol. I just didn't expect this. Although, really, I should have.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Well, the Aerith half of the book was thankfully entirely free of sexual violence. There's a weird, short postscript about some dude who grew up with Aerith, to an extant, told from his point of view. He worked his butt off to track down Aerith to apologize to her about something he did when they were kids, and she barely acknowledged him and he apologized and walked off, and felt better. I don't know what the point of it was, really. Maybe it comes up again in Rebirth, who knows. Very strange.
 
The spinoff novels are all very interested in getting into the headspaces of the characters they're focusing on, and hearing their inner thoughts in ways that games or other media don't ever allow for. So the way I read it, the whole point of all the leering at Tifa is to show how she thinks about and reacts to it. Which makes a certain level of sense, since she's a teenage kid on her own in a future dystopian hellscape. And that's also a thing women have to deal with all the time and certain readers could use a reminder that women are people with feelings too, but it's definitely grody and unpleasant to read about. The culmination of her story is about how she starts out as this kinda weak, honestly pathetic individual with no agency, who has to seize that agency for herself and gains grit through pure determination. Which sounds great in theory, but that's just really the conclusion -- of which you're supposed to go on and play the games to get to see Evolved Tifa be a badass. And in practice, it's again just a lot of unpleasant stuff in between. I think more than the discussion of the objectification of Tifa that the book has with the reader, the thing that bothered me the most about her story is how much she thinks about Cloud. Which doesn't ever feel earned and is just like, cmon girl, you're better than this. The book, and then the subsequent Remake games actually comment on how their relationship/knowledge of each other isn't actually all that deep as well, which makes her pining even more confusing and honestly kinda bad. A few pages of Tifa finally seizing the day and saving Barrett and Avalanche by herself doesn't offset chapter after chapter of her being a passive observer to her own life/story.

Aerith's chapter has a lot less weird leering and stuff, but she goes through a very similar situation in spirit - where she lacks agency as a person and has to kinda seize it for herself.

The On the Way to a Smile book isn't really any different. Sometimes it's amusing and interesting, personally it was even harder to read than the Tifa/Aerith book on account of its nature as a sequel. Since it essentially tears down/backtracks a lot of the original game's character developments in order to explain how the characters got to where they were at in Advent Children. All of which makes sense while reading it, but it's also kinda not fun to watch beloved characters like Barrett go through an existential crisis, or for Red XIII to hide in the woods for two years because he has PTSD. It's just kinda not fun to read sometimes.

I don't know what the point of it was, really. Maybe it comes up again in Rebirth, who knows. Very strange.
It's kinda bad and disposable for sure. But it explains a lot of background/environmental things in FF7's lore. Like, in Remake when we see Aerith's quarters at the top of Shinra Tower, there's vibrant illustrations all over the walls. When first playing the game, I assumed it was Ifalna who drew them to brighten up Aerith's life, but it was actually Aerith who drew them because those were the interpretations of the whispers from the Ancients. And it also explains how Shinra was using Aerith's visions as the basis for its Mako Reactor expeditions (which btw gets touched on in the FF7 mobile game "Ever Crisis" -- which is bad/boring) to find locations for new reactors, as well as how Aerith's visions were also behind Shinra's entire obsession with finding the Promised Land as well. None of this is essential to the core story of FF7 and its world, but it's nifty flavor text.
 
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Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
The remake series has always had the difficult task of reconciling the aspects of Tifa, the character within the narrative of Final Fantasy VII--a figure entirely dependent on her context and relationship to a leading man to an extent that she's as nonexistent without Cloud as his sense of self is starting out--and Tifa, the genre icon that people adore for reasons that mix together sexualization and flashy brawler semiotics and design cues. The deliberate shuffling of the deck in her and Aerith's personalities in context of their visual designs and "jobs" in genre terms has always been present from the start, but it's new that upon this revision of the story they seem to acknowledge how thinly stretched any sort of interiority a character like her has, when she was only ever written to prop up a man's narrative arc. They can massage around that treatment, but the fundamentals do not budge.
 
The PC Port of Rebirth comes out in a week or two. I just upgraded my gaming rig, so getting it on PC would actually make a marked difference over the PS5 version. I'm playing through Remake right now on the PC just because.

I'm more or less at peace with the JP -> ENG translation, if only because it's made a more entertaining and natural sounding product for a lot of fans. But some of the translation choices are still... choices. For example:
In Remake, the first time Cloud hallucinates Sephiroth after the first bombing run, Sephiroth departs and tells Cloud ominously, "Very good, Cloud. Hold onto that hatred."

In the original script though, Sephiroth says something more along the lines of "Don't forget" rather than anything explicitly about hate.

Which is another one of those little moments with somewhat significant meaning lost in translation. Lemme explain.

Right after this scene, the music track that kicks in is the Advent Children song that plays during Marlene's recap narration. That's a very purposeful choice.

The whole thing is our first, direct foreshadowing that we're playing what amounts to a sequel. Sephiroth's entire M.O. in Advent Children is that even in death and his return to the Lifestream, he's able to hold onto his consciousness and eventually reconstitute himself because others still remember him. And it's Cloud specifically who he latches onto as his personal savior. Because Cloud's personal feelings and connection to him are so strong.

Sephiroth smugly remarking that it's good Cloud remembers him, while the Advent Children music plays is a big tell. One that's obfuscated by changing the focus to remarking on Cloud's hatred. Because it directly hints at this Sephiroth having a memory of the original timeline.

Edit: On a side note, Remake looks pretty incredible max settings 4k 120hz. Doubt I'll be able to do the same with Rebirth but we'll see.
 
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PC port is, to no one's surprise, beautiful and buggy as all get out. Better than the Remake PC at launch as I understand, but I've still had both a black screen freeze and a hard crash during the first chapter.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Been running fine on default Steam Deck settings so far, but I just got to the "open world" area so who knows if it'll start crashing.
 
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