The main part that worries me is that they haven't even decided this stuff yet.
Kinda feels like they should have. I worry it'll end up as a Disney Star Wars situation where the end product feels like there's no real continuity between any of it.
Whereas I would love something that you can actually marathon all in one go, once the whole thing is done. In the way people marathon watch like the Lord of the Rings movies.
Eh, I don’t think there’s any reason to be worried in that regard. The Disney sequels ended up bad because Disney clearly had them made for purely financial reasons, with director changes happening ad hoc, as well as adjusting the content of the movies to make up for fan backlash, making for an ultimately soulless product that doesn’t really have an identity of its own. It’s not necessarily the idea of pantsing a story is bad. Meanwhile FFVII is helmed by those involved in the original specifically because they wanted to do it. Wherever their road is taking them, they’re still adapting a story rather than making a new one and they’ve clearly doing it out of a place of fashion. So even if the end product ends up stupid, it definitely won’t be as hollow a finale as Star Wars. Or GoT for that matter.
Please no more belts Nomura. NO-MORE-A.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
God damn you autocorrect! :p
I reckon WK will be right, or else it'll end at Nibelheim - the latter just because it would allow them to use what will essentially be a very similar Nibelheim 'map' in both the Kalm flashback and the actual (re)visit. But it would rely on them not expanding too much on what we already have. While Midgar did have a HUGE amount of room for expansion, I'm not so sure the rest of disc one does. Junon was already a pretty long session for a place we end up going back to, and while I'm sure they'll flesh it out a bit for environment sake, I don't see the story being a huge deal longer. Fort Condor will be interesting for sure.
Chocobo stables would be somewhat redundant if we can't catch them in the wild, so I think we should still see some "world map" action on some level... although I can see it being that they just make it so that you ride in maps that exist as FFXII-style corridors between other locations. I'd settle for that, but hope for an FFXV world map combined with enterable cities that don't share the same map, a la original FFVII and Skyrim.
They've also taken some tidbits of the other later game and put them into the remake's part one, so they don't have to go into as much blunt detail later on which might hopefully save some development time. Maybe. Hard to say. But just Kalm, Mines, Fort Condor, Junon feels... too little. At the same time, adding in Costa del Sol, Reactors, North Corel, Gold Saucer, Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon and Nibelheim (re)visit would feel like too much. So in short, I don't have a clue and I can see why they're in this predicament of decision to make. If it's a full priced game again, personally I hope it'll take us further than Junon, but I'm confident no matter what we get, I'll enjoy playing it. I'm excited to see if we get to see Red XIII as a playable character in the future, and how they'll have him move around in a sailor outfit. xD
Yeah it's not the best analogy really. I just couldn't think of a good one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
Disney's main problem was not agreeing on its overall story ahead of time, and then swapping between directors and writers with completely incompatible styles and ideas. I think if JJ Abrams had done the whole trilogy, it might've been quite good. That seemed to be driven by the fact (like you said), the people making the decisions just didn't care that much about the story. They cared about just turning it into a permanent Disney property.
At least that won't happen with FF7. I think there are probably other risks with FF7 though, that come from not having a clear roadmap for the releases. It could end up getting spread out into like 5 or 6 games, which I think would be too many (I'm hoping for a maximum of 4 parts). They could end up completely killing the pacing of the larger story, with all of the new stuff they add, and the fact that they've already overused Sephiroth in my opinion.
The biggest risk is probably just that they lose the audience over time. That does tend to happen with ongoing series quite often. The FF13 trilogy being an obvious example. The first game sold like 7 million. The third game sold under 2 million I think. Lol. And I thought 13-2 was just as good a game as the first one, so it's not just a quality issue.
Part 2 Antagonist: Genesis (constant flashbacks to Crisis Core help us understand why he's a thing).
Part 3 Antagonist: Weiss and the DGS (just because they can and also destiny)
Part 4 Antagonist: Sephiroth again, I guess (if not then his Advent Children)
Oh god I'd rather the damn whispers come back than Genesis, Lol
As I've read yet another article which doubts VII's ability to maintain interest over the years it will take to develop its sequels, I feel the need to reiterate a statement I made earlier. I fail to see how a player-base can continually spend money on an online game monthly for content that does not change but every couple of years and yet would not be willing to shell out between $40-80 every few years for a product they know will add new content. I'm being serious. It is a failure of my imagination to be able to reconcile a world of people to be so gullible and detached from the value of their currency. Socializing online should be a free market and you should only have to pay for new content. That's essentially my world-view. But I guess I'm just naive.
VII Remake is simply too good to put Genesis in lol
I don't play MMOs and I'm sure there's a substantial portion of FF7's player base that either doesn't play MMOs or only subscribes long enough to get through new content and then drops it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercen-X
Well it's because the social aspect of MMOs keeps people invested, even when there's no new content. It's kinda self-generated content between groups of online people. It becomes part of their routine. So when a new bigger piece of content comes along, they don't really need to 'get back into it' in any way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mercen-X
The difference with standalone single player stuff is that people have to 'get back into it', and so you're bound to lose some people, who either didn't like the previous game that much, or just happen to not be in the mood for that type of game. Or maybe they're busy with something else at the time the next game is released. Whatever the reason is, if it's a continuous series where you need to start at the beginning, the number of people who play the 2nd game is nearly always going to be lower than those who play the first. Almost no-one is going to play the 2nd game but not the first. Whereas plenty will play the first but not the second.
Then again we can look to Kingdom Hearts as a counter argument. It’s an ongoing story that’s had pretty infrequent release. Sure a lot of people missed out on the non-numbered games thinking they’re just spinoffs, but it was honestly the multi platform aspect that hurt the player base the most here. Had they all been release on the same console line, I imagine there would be way more people who played all the titles in succession. But even without that, a lot of people have held on to the games and many have jumped on just due to the brand. I imagine FFVII is so embedded in the gaming consciousness that I think it’s pretty unlikely interest will be lost.
Lol Kingdom Hearts just lost most people with it's insane story, so the same rule about continuity no longer applied, and no-one played it for the story.
I remember my brother playing KH3 and complaining that it made no sense. I had to point out that he'd missed 2 handheld spinoffs and tech demo prequel to the game. He didn't even know any of them existed. He just thought it went KH1->KH2->KH3
That said, there was enough interest there for the story to continue.
The argument here isn’t “KH continued so FFVII’s story will be coherent”, the argument is “SE has made a long-running series of games with a continuous story that sells super well, and since FFVII is a big brand it’s very unlikely it’ll get canceled in the meantime”