I swear this post at least took me 40 hours of one day.
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Fair enough, but it does seem sometimes you forget to come back to the posts.
Not quite. I am just busy for 50%-75% of the day for the next three weeks and I often come home late because of that. If you are referring to another post you must tell me.
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...spiritual deaths door so to speak, which is why he couldn't reform and had to use the shades instead.
Well, he could not reform because his time in the lifestream made him forget his old shape as, as mentioned or to be mentioned, he willingly threw away some of his memories as well as did not care about some of his, in his eyes, irrelevant memories fading away as he did not hold onto them and only cared about his very being.
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Which brings me to my first point, when did Sephiroth suddenly gain the power to will matter into existence?
Eh~ Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo do not consist of normal bodies that Sephiroth manifested out of thin air. They are remnants/fragments, directly bound to his being and their shell consists of the cell leftovers, which is also why Kadaj can get damaged from Great Gospel.
And I have not even begun telling you that your assumption is wrong. The planet can manifest matter. It did with the Weapons. These are these kinds of things that I mean. Dislike stuff you want, that's totally fine. But if it is based on something you don't understand then that is what makes no sense. And yes, that is what most people do. It is nothing those that argue with them "do not understand". It is that those who say "this and this is bad it did not make sense" just did not understand it in the first place and now are not ready to accept that because they were not ready beforehand and now ignore the entire rest. You cannot ignore that stuff. You have to put all important pieces together.
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Because if it did have such an ability, I kind of feel like it could have dealt with Jenova without the Ancients, not to mention that it's established in the novella that Sephiroth's will and identity are holding on by a thread, so how is he suddenly multitasking staying sentient against the collective will of every living being on the planet, using magic to create thought people to do his bidding, and still have time to use Geostigma to make Cloud a sad panda? You have to admit when it's written out like that, it sounds a little goofy in hindsight.
I have explained it further below how Sephiroth makes use of his will, his powers, his plan and how he starts off as weakened first but does not stay like that all the time. He did so much in the game. Regaining his strength and then being back to business is pretty believable, especially considering he was written as too strong in the first place.
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Not to mention as you said, that if Sephy still has the power to control Jenova, why would he even need his though people when he could have simply hijacked her body and build himself up?
Mentioned below but his heritage is not to be disputed. It is just skills that he has. We see them in the game, we can read him thinking about using them again and the usage of one or the other thing in the movie as well.
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Not to mention, if Jenova is virtually immortal and Sephy's consciousness is stuck in the Lifestream fighting for its independence, couldn't Jenova pottentially regain its own will and just go back to doing its own thing?
What Jenova is is heavily misinterpreted by so many people. Jenova is nothing but a super-intelligent animal but it is not even an actual character. And no, I don't mean it in the "humans are intelligent animals as well" way. There is not much Jenova can do at this point. The id that Jenova personified for itself as well as the id that lives on in Jenova cell bearers will always exist but that does not mean the tick with two tentacles and an abstract female body and a heart behind its shell will come back. Jenova is still doing its thing in a more passive way. But now its time for the better one to do the job - the trademark character next to Cloud. Also Jenova cell fragments and just a few Jenova cells that could be found - there is not much Jenova can do. But I have explained further below that the cells will of course somehow still be a thing.
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This is part of my issue here, Sephy's got some pretty extreme powers and yet it kind of feels to me the plot is ignoring some of his powers, in order to give him new ones
It does not really ignore them, it just gives them another narrative form. The only really new thing is the existence bond. Everything else stands in direct relation to something else of his powers.
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... the game itself has shown that Sephy has the power to make all of this a non-issue.
THAT is an unfair treatment. The game itself should already be a non-issue for the very fact that Sephiroth is too strong. It is like asking "why did Cell not use the Kaiouken against Son Gohan?" when it actually is a fact that he can use it or "why did he not use Shunkan Idou to teleport behind Gohan for his Kamehame-Ha?" when he actually copied it form Goku. Sometimes you just want to write a story the way you want to write it and I will go into further detail in a below paragraph.
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It would have made more sense to have Sephy simply body hop his consciousness to the living remains of Jenova (which technically he kind of does in the film with Geostigma) and use simply wait out the regeneration process to come back and face Cloud.
Sephiroth wanted to appear before Cloud as an astral projection but he failed doing so. So he used the next appropriate way that did fit with the new elements of Geostigma established in the story. Final Fantasy VII-1 makes a normal reunion and Sephiroth using the powers of Jenova more convenient because he has the center of the Reunion itself with him and then just after intiation used the rest of his nifty abilities for this stuff. Do you really want a story: "... yeah ... uhm ... there are no leftovers ... but actually the normal cells ... and Sephiroth used his old trick of CD1-CD2, not even written with a new and fance shape ... and then he comes back ..."
I don't. I mean, I do. But a new shape for everything does not bother me.
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but suggesting that Sephiroth is so weak, he has to come up with a resurrection plan to fill up the space where the plot is, but still somehow be omnipotent in comparison to Cloud and the others.
But that is just your claim all the time. "Sephiroth is weak. He was weakened after the final battle so it makes sense he is weak for x time units". YES, Sephiroth was weakened. But he does not stay weakened. He is never treated like he still is half dead. He is treated like he happily enjoys his life in the lifestream once he does his existence link and all and just from time to time it gets referred back as stuff like "oh, crap baskets, I don't even know my own image anymore". And that's it.
The problem with these kinds of posts is that they are not based on actual knowledge. Either people ignore important facts or simply do not understand them. And once you confront them with it they either ignore it again or try to once more act as if you were the problem even if you flat out acknowledge everything needed. It is all in the story.
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Frankly, the idea of Sephiroth's will being strong enough to go toe to toe with the Collective unconscious of all life on the planet always felt a bit far fetched to me. We've shown that Cloud is strong willed enough to beat Sephiroth, you mean to tell me that their isn't a million stubborn consciousness making up the Lifestream that they couldn't squash Sephy's will like a bug? I mean I can get behind him and Cloud surviving a Lifestream bath since their consciousness are still attached to a physical form, but I find it hard to believe that once the body is gone the Lifestream wouldn't have made short work of him, which is ultimately how I interpret his final scene in the game.
Sephiroth works like that though and he always worked like that. How is a fictional story about an alien-human entity less farfetch'd than a specific power that person has. It is exactly the same thing as a Universe Busting attack in Dragon Ball hitting a character and this character just not being fazed from it. They just can do it. Sephiroth is so powerful, he can both use the Meteor and hold back Holy as long as he is not defeated and therefore weakened for the moment of the finale. So yes, I am telling you that he is better than all of them. Because that is just how he is. I don't make him a powerhouse, he IS a powerhouse. Also why are you insisting on him having a physical form? You do realize a body is just a shell and the spiritual parts/psychological parts that "we" truly are? And those are what makes Sephiroth so damn strong. Yes, he has some very cool physical powers. But that's not all. Cloud is shown to be an incredible weak-willed person. Whether he suffers from confabulation or him having his own doubts about his being and all. He is just a broken boy even before being used by Sephiroth. But the final scene simply was there because Cloud a) finally got his crap together and wanted to get the consciousness bond of him and laughing Sephiroth be disconnected as well as b) fight for what's important for him. Cloud is a total "loser turns hero" character. But that does not mean he can make use of his powers all the time and I say that so often. That is also why he only can overwhelm Sephiroth when both actually giving it his all as well as grudging Sephiroth, the man who was defeated by a 16-yeard old blue guard, once more underestimating him - both total shonen trope.
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At no point in VII was it revealed that Jenova has the power of Zenkai and can somehow magically come back stronger from certain death. Kitase and Nojima mention in the Ultimania that Sephiroth is practically a transcended being in AC that was stronger than when Cloud fought him with the party in the game.
But I even hinted his whole power gain. His sheer power representation still does not have the same magnitude than whenever he went all out. Sephiroth gets stronger all the time. That does not mean he goes all out. Did you really think the final battle in AC was all of his power? It wasn't. And Sephiroth very much has an easy written way in the game that allowed for his power gain. All he needed for that he also still had with him in the book. I delve further into that in another paragraph.
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His will is practically a caricature of itself after being eaten away by the Lifestream, and while I won't contest the fact he should still have the power of the Lifestream, he probably shouldn't really be in a state to use it effectively since his will is eroded away.
But it is really not. Which spiritual components highlight the person Sephiroth the most? His consciousness as the existence "Sephiroth" that he never wants to give up and even thinks the Lifestream might to that, should he actually give in and his will power. The will power of Sephiroth CANNOT be harmed in any true way. This is why he lasted such a long time in the Lifestream and had no problem with it. And when he was about to get dragged with the Lifestream a bit he did some safety net stuff. You know, just because Sephiroth gives up memories and all this super-powerful engine that is his will does not automatically belong in the trash bin.
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His physical ability should really be no stronger than Jenova since he's basically just hijacking her body again and using its regenerative powers, but in no way should he somehow be stronger than he was in the game when he had time and Jenova's full body to resurrect and pull off his master plan. Where did all this power come from since we've established he's been spending all his time simply surviving and coming up with a means to gain anew body?
You know that Sephiroth is an energy consuming entity or do you not? He can live from the planetary energy and strengthen himself the same way Jenova does. How does he do that? He confronts planetary energy/life energy/knowledge -> Is the will of the reader strong enough to withstand? Yes? He can make use of it and get stronger from that. No? -> He is pretty much wrecked. And Sephiroth even more strengthened his own power in a way because he instead of just going with his ordinary life reading and converting it to his own power thing he even creates his own part of the lifestream that he can even easier use because of this whole tainting and using the mentality of the dead thing, et cetera. Anyway, whether he starts off as a bit weakened or not does not matter. His concept of a self-feeding reactor makes him too strong. He gets stronger because his will allows for his capacity to not be overloaded. This makes him strong enough to become stronger again, blablabla.
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Not to mention that in the game, even with the power of the Lifestream, it took him seven years to fully regenerate and yet he somehow gains instant regeneration within the film? This is kind of what I'm talking about with Nojima. He tends to be very inconsistent with how powers work in his stories.
That is wrong. And I even explained it already. This "Reunion" of Sephiroth in AC as well as this "regeneration" has nothing to do with what we normally see of him. His AC "Reunion" is a direct use of the shapeshifting ability that he used with Jenova's headless cells and yes, he did that instantly and not in 7 years. They just wrote the story different now because of new circumstances.
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Good for you, it didn't stop half my anime club coming up to me asking me who this kid was and why he was important. I still stand by the fact the film should have addressed it better for the audience.
You know you are using the term "fact" wrong here and you are intelligent enough that I should not even need to point that out.
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You kind off missed my point here, and frankly I feel Denzel is the worst offender compared to the Terrible Trio. I even mentioned that most fans would figure them out, but to introduce a character who is meant to be both important for the plot and the emotional crutch for one of the characters and not bother to really go into detail within the film itself despite the fact you did write out an eloboarate backstory for them anyway is kind of just a bad idea all around. Films have a bad enough wrap with masses as it is, they don't need to add skimming the Wiki articles before going in to understand the story.
I am not really missing the point. I know what you mean. It is just that I feel you expect too much from Denzel just because he was the "main child" together with Marlene.
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"Bob fought the dragon to save his wife" makes sense, but isn't very compelling.
"Bob undertook a journey to save Sarah, the girl he grew up with and used to play in the grassy meadows behind the farm. This same meadow is where he proposed to her with a ring made from lily petals that were her favorite flowers. She was taken away by an evil dragon who lived in the mountains nearby and thus he had to save the love of his life. " Not only makes sense but places you in the context of how Bob is thinking. We understand that Sarah is more than just a wife, but a childhood friend he's known his whole life and likely the most important person in the world to them.
You must be a massive fan of Tolkien who even describes the every colour on every piece of leaf. Whenever I write my stories I so much want to be consistent with what I establish. I want the world to feel rich. And I want it to be detailed. But very often I find myself just neurotically following this pattern and that for something that often is not even the point of things. And if we are absolutely honest, is forgotten, ignored or misunderstood by 99% anyway. It can take away your own entertainment or make you drift away from what you actually want to do. I very often add my details and explanations. But, for example, whenever I write an action scene I make use of several abilities of a character or in a conversation between characters I delve more in their psyche, making things cohesive with that pattern and do throwbacks to old moments. BUT sometimes the situation simply makes it feel awkward because it is not the place and time for it. You might say now "but you could rewrite it to make it fit". But that's exactly the point. Why should I rewrite something that is more important for me just to make something fit in that has no relevance in that situation? It ruins the motivation and your drive to do what you want. Whenever you want it and feel like it, great. But don't force yourself to add something that you feel has no place here.
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Denzel deserved better man, and the viewers would have come away from the film with a richer experience if they had at least done more to make him feel like more than MacGuffin.
I see Americans always using the word "McGuffin". I should google one day what that means. We don't use it here.
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Even if the film was solely about Cloud, its made obvious that Denzel is important to him and had he been better developed and established in the story, could have helped to tell Cloud's story better..
Would have been cool but then the movie would have to be longer, more expensive and once more drift away from the main points a bit.
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See its not just Nojima who does this.
I cannot help but point out that Nojima-san also worked on the basic script of FFXV itself.
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While I agree that adding Kingsglaive wouldn't help the larger problems in XV's story, I still feel it would have been a large improvement for the earlier sections and potentially address other issues, like dropping the Kingsglaive themselves since they are largely unimportant to VX as a whole, and simply focus the story on Regis and Lunafreya, who are crimninally underultilzed in the main game proper. I'm not suggesting just adding the story in, I'm talking about integrating it as a gaming component as well. I would have loved to play through the Fall of Insomnia with a party of Regis, Lunafreya, and Gladios dad.
I knew what you mean but that is still just not enough for me. And in a way I think adding Kingsglaive would have given it a very weird tension this early. The tension was already there because of just that affecting the world but this for real being there for the player - if it were in the game I would have placed it later. FF has the tradition to start with moment with tension and action, yes. But this seems like an extreme overkill.
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Bottom line here is that I'm a fan of the FF games, why is Squenix cutting out content from these games and making me pay for it separately so I I can enjoy the thing I like that they make which are games? Its a business yes, but some business practices are just bad and shouldn't be encouraged.
Purely subjective. You know what should not be encouraged? Cigarettes and alcohol. They cause real problems and people still consume them.
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Watching Cloud be a jerk back to blustering blowhard but charmingly ineffective Barret is kind of amusing, watching Lightning do the same thing to obviously fish out of water, but wise cracking civilian Sahz just kind of makes her look mean.
Cloud and Lightning are both supposed to be absolutely "inappropriate" simply because their shell made them socially awkward. Whether they talk with the one that gives off some cartoony feeling with his talking against asshole wall Cloud or wise Sazh, as you call him, does not really make to much of a difference. As a matter of fact Lightning is even easier to talk with because while she is grumpy queen #1 she at least does not reflect absolute disinterest. You could see that from the very first chapter in the game already. I can point out some scenes to be more clear but only if that conversation continues. The post will be massive anyway.
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I'm also going to skip over the more personal stuff, so bear with me.
Which personal stuff? There was not a single attack in my last post. If you mean the "that must be something personal", well, it has to be if it is about you. It is equivalent to saying "this must be subjective".
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... , but I blame this one Nojima introducing elements and tropes from other mediums that I don't particulary care for as well as the fact that while Kojima has always left his game more open ended with sequels in mind, VII to me was a fairly self-contained story and didn't leave itself open to as much expansion as I felt the Compilation gave it.
I am an absolute sucker for sequels. For me there normally has to be at least one sequel to a story all the time so I can feel "okay, now it was solidly finished". It is not about me not being satisfied with what happens in the stories. I just do not want to leave them. They are created and alive in their own way. And I do not like it that you write something down and then lay away the pencil and never bother with the story ever again. The whole "self-contained thing" seems like an incredibly forced thing to me as well. If it works I say "okay" but I barely ever have the feeling that I do not want more of what I love.
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I mean truth be told, I like the Last Order because I felt it was a story that should have been told and the retcons it made I felt actually fixed some issues I had with VII's original narrative.
You know Last Order is just a re-interpretation to promote Crisis Core and was not there to actually tell or fix anything?
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With all that said, I feel its fine to actually disregard the canon presented by the writer if its awful enough. Even writers make bad calls from time to time and so I feel that as a fan, its fine to take it as word of god from a case by case scenario. Nojima says VII and X are indirect sequels to each other, but I'm honestly going to choose to ignore that truth because I feel its kind of stupid.
It is fine if you call it "just ignoring it" but that's exactly the point. You cannot do more than that. A car that you ignore will still drive and hit you because you ignoring it will not affect its existential state. Let me give you an example: I am a great Pokémon fan. But at one point in life I did not bother watching all the anime episodes again. I just did not bother. But I did not treat them like "they didn't happen". Because it does not have any effect. It is like me writing a letter to you, you choosing to ignore page 2 or simply acting as if it never was there and then claiming I did not write it and what was there did not matter for the expression of my inner world. You cannot decide that. That is the entire point. So why even bother using words like "disregarding"? When they want it to be canonical, it is canonical. If you want the power to change that, you have to buy the brand. Just because you disregard something does not mean they have to consider that in their next step. Actually it is the other way around. Or well, you just look away. As long as you know it will not stop it from existing and actually mattering.
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I like the fact that when Sakaguchi created the franchise, he made a rule that said no direct sequels and forced the teams to be more creative with each new installment and I love how that concept fits well with the series title itself by each game being the "Final" Fantasy of their respective worlds.
Hironu Sakaguchi is one man who worked on Final Fantasy and he had the idea, yes. But he is not the only one, a whole company who owns it made it and as it stands right now, his position is not even that of an employee anymore. The company has evolved, just as Final Fantasy - though I would still say this whole "Final Fantasy is different" is an incredible exaggeration.
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Nojima on the otherhand just doesn't write the type of stories I like, and while I can agree he comes up with clever ideas, he just can't seem to follow through with them to my satisfaction, so its a little easier for me to blow off his authority cause I often disagree with his ideas.
I dislike a lot but I don't blow off any authority because it is not in my power to do so. I am nothing but a consumer of a product and treat what they create the same way I treat your words: I would never come out and say "NO YOU MEANT THAT!!! I KNOW YOUR INTENTION AND THEREFORE YOUR COGNITIVE COMPOSITION BETTER THAN YOU!!!!1111oneoneone".
That was some obvious hyperbole. You get the point.
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[quote]If it makes you feel better Motomu Toriyama is probably closer to someone I actively dislike that works at SE; but that's largely due to his hissy fit about the Western fans after XIIIs release, along with my general dislike for his storytelling and game design choices.[quote]
This is not about me feeling better and Toriyama-san is not the storyteller of Final Fantasy XIII-XIII-3. Daisuke Watanabe is. I on the other hand am shocked about how this forum thinks of it as funny how he looked when he was approached about many people disliking his work. This shows the very face of the world. Those people really think they have done nothing wrong with his incredibly sign of disrespect and yes, no matter how people try to twist it and try to come up with some excuses about how he deserved ultimately just reflecting the "I don't care" statement, by the end of the day approaching someone publicly and then people laughing about that and these people not giving a crap and don't even see what the problem of this is, THIS is bothersome.
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Its something mentioned off hand in the Ultimania guides for VII. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either as you can tell from me pointing out some logical errors, which is what we're kind of arguing about.
I would like to know what exactly you are referring to because it might just be a misunderstanding.
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Whether its boring is in the eye of the beholder, but frankly I felt the film was a bit too vague and people simply assumed Sephy just redid what he did in the game with the actual clones despite that not really being possible anymore.
Eh, its not like it is absolutely and under no circumstances possible anymore. It just was another take of all of that and so the whole cell leftover thing was done.
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I'm not bothered by Noctis being absent but I strongly feel it would have served XV better had it been implemented as a gaming experience in the early chapters to run counter to the slower and more blissful events of Noctis and his entorouge trying to get to a wedding. It also would have been a great way to expand Lunafreay and Regis' characters within the main game and we could have even had a taste of power section playing as Regis.
For me it would not have made much of a difference. I knew Luna from Kingsglaive and still wanted to see more of her in the main game and I don't mean seeing the movie scenes as well but really more. This is what for me is actually substantial for FFXV other than having a backstory of three marionettes in the movie instead of the novella.
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Sephy will answer this better than I could since my first foray into the film was a bootleg copy a friend acquired the day the film released, but I'm pretty sure the novellas were part of the Japanese boxsets of the films original release.
The novella is a collective of stories released over a certain amount of time. On Square's website Case of Denzel was readable when AC became a thing and the moment it hit theater a short prologue book with Case of Tifa and Case of Denzel came out. The rest was added a bit later then. It does not really matter though because it was always a widely known thing that there was some additional backstory for AC. I mean, it is not even the only backstory book that exists for FFVII.
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Indeed, what did any of those character have to do with anything besides force Cloud (and Tifa) to jump from one extravagant fight after the next, simply so we could follow a story whose entire purpose is really to have that five minute fight with Sephiroth, which is about the only thing people really remember about the movie besides wondering what the hell happened to Reno's personality.
You are hanging out with a great peer of one and the same people oppressed by peer pressure then. And I hope you are not one of them.
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but Cloud's story is kind of redundant
As a computer scientist the term redundancy in such a context hurts me. How is Cloud's story redundant? When was the last time he felt absolutely depressed about a friend dying, blaming himself and almost dying because of it, totally locking himself away from the rest of the world?
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the children being infected really never amounted to anything meaningful
The children were used as cell radar and as another expression of the world's suffering. Also the children are the future life of the planet. How are they useless? It is like saying the True Ending of Zelda Breath of the Wild with its very last moment is useless/random when it is not. Zelda is back. And in a flashback before you see her picking a Princess Flower being sad that it might be the last one, standing for a) the flower's life, b) Hyrule's future, c) Zelda being the last of her kind and then BAM, Ganon is defeated and we see Zelda and a whole damn Princess Flower field with the camera stopping directly in front of one because it is a symbol for Zelda's future, the flower's future and Hyrule's future being saved.
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and Reno and Rude drop any pretense of their cool persona to go full on Gilgamesh for the flick cause we needed some humor.
THAT is wrong. Reno and Rude were never as intense as you remember them. The original installment, so the Japanese one, always gave them a somewhat mixed character. The Western version still got a bit of the whole thing but not enough. Crisis Core did it better. The Western version of Reno in FFVII appeared even though he showed some his funny moments, way too serious what he actually is. It is a shame - the stuff is still there and there are a lot of scenes where it can be seen but in the middle of all the transition something og that was simply lost.
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It was also not surprising that Vincent, one of the fan favorites of the film got more screentime than the rest of the supporting cast. In fact the major characters from the game that feature prominetly in the plot are largely the favorites from the game.
The film largely runs on Rule of Cool and the plot always felt to me like it was there to string it all together. So its hard not to call it like I see it.
I have a problem seeing that as another problem. If it feels forced for you then I can understand that because I feel like that about FFXV.
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I would have preferred finding a new way to explore Cloud's character, especially since we never really got a good grasp of the real Cloud in the game.
THIS is one of the things I hate the most whenever a fan of FFVII says it. "Real Cloud is that". That is psychologically absolutely wrong. You can say that as a metaphor but using the word real is heavily misunderstandable. Cloud suffers from the Final Fantasy VII version of a defensive mechanism called "Confabulation". The brain prevents itself from getting damage by repressing troublesome parts of your very psyche/memories and replaces the surface with convenient bits and pieces to create half-truths. It does not make him any less "real Cloud" in a technical sense than when he is healthy. This is NOT the same as dissociative identity disorder. This is not a case of "Johnny Depp in The Secret Window". Cloud in Final Fantasy VII suffers from a mental sickness that James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2 also suffers from. In Final Fantasy VII they just went with the whole JENOVA stuff. I don't even know if they know what Confabulation is. With a dissociative identity disorder your brain splinters your psyche for the splinter to get its own consciousness/ego. THIS is the essence of a literal other and own individual being, even if it originally came from someone else. But with Cloud that is not the case. The "echo" he hears and he talks with and who we wonders about who that is, is not "an actual second or the normal Cloud", it is no "other consciousness of a second person that lives in that body". It is not a Sora & Roxas case. This talk is nothing but a subconscious echoing. The guy we see all the time IS OUR Cloud, he is just not fully restored and aware of what he normally is like and as a matter of fact a lot of what is his normal character is still very much on the surface. Aerith even noticed what came from him without Confabulation. Maybe you do not mean in in a literal sense but I cannot help but pointing that out because existentially this is a great great great difference. If you just give it a metaphorical meaning, fine.
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So to have him simply reguritate the same drama as before was kind of a letdown and simply felt like the writers were too lazy to come up with anything new, so they simply rehashed the old story. To be fair to AC, Square-Enix does this with most of their sequels, but what's the point of continuing a story if you're not going to really do anything new with the characters. This is why most sequels fail anyway since a majority of them are just more of the same as the first film.
You must hate Star Wars 7.
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I can see where it wouldn't be an issue if you've never played the game, but that brings us back to the plot and lack of developing the rest of the cast leaving the viewer needing to consult a secondary source to really get the full picture. I can't say it's a good standalone film. Great CGI work? Yes, but for me it, lacks any substance to validate it so its really just some flashy visuals and a nice way to kill a few hours before moving onto something more mentally stimulating.
I have the feeling you did not understand the ACTUAL message of the movie. The message was "Final Fantasy VII is back." And the Compilation is far from being over. It was even back in 2008, so AFTER Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core were out when they said "The Compilation's finale will need another form".
There is a reason why Sephiroth says "Watashi wa ... omoide ni wa naranai sa."
Sephiroth is not gone for good. And Genesis has not awoken for some beer in the next tavern. Advent Children was the key to open a door again.