Lots of stuff to get back to it seems.

Quote Originally Posted by Sephiroth View Post
You should know from my other posts that I indeed do use the quote button. I simply used the quotation marks because I was not home when I wrote this and had no time to correct the broken quote that I had. So I used the quotation marks instead.
Fair enough, but it does seem sometimes you forget to come back to the posts.


He saved the villain with the same kind of technique he wrote for the first installment - a skill that is not even the ordinary Reunion but simply the shapeshifting ability he used. Sephiroth resisted the lifestream and travelled through it in FFVII already. Then he made use of Jenova's body after initiating the Reunion he shapeshifted the body into an exact duplicate of his own to run around in it while regenerating inside of a giant crystal. Sephiroth has the power to, let's call it in a funny way, use his consciousness like Wireless Lan. He can exist lose of one specific body and project himself into bodies and control them. Which is one of his greatest powers as it is one of his basic "a highly powerful entity with Jenova cells can willingly control the cells, even when not in his own body" aspects. If anything you can say it was "lazy" that he used it again. As a matter of fact if Nojima-san would have wanted to make it again more overkill he would also have made use of the fact that there was no reason for the Silver Haired Men to search the cells because Sephiroth can use them no matter where they are. But he did not. I think you are blaming Nojima-san way too much just because you dislike him as a writer, not seeing how he indeed did write several things that many would see as both appropriate as well as a good choice instead of something else that many others would rant on about as real "asspulls" as the kids would say.
Part of my issue here is that Sephiroth surviving the dissolution into the Lifestream feels somewhat counter to the vision Cloud sees of him actually doing so in the original game's ending. We witness his consciousness shown as a different colored Lifestream get engulfed and absorbed rather nonchalantly I might add. Even if we disregard that as only being "half the story" as the novella retcon into being, said novella reveals that Sephiroth did indeed take quite the psychological beating from the endeavor as he is described as being on a spiritual deaths door so to speak, which is why he couldn't reform and had to use the shades instead. Which brings me to my first point, when did Sephiroth suddenly gain the power to will matter into existence? He could have used such a power when he was being defeated in the original game, even if it was something gained from the Lifestream, there really isn't such a power shown within VII's original world to suggest the Planet itself is capable of turning thought into matter. 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. 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? 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?

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, in order to create a rather contrived situation that results in the films plot, despite the fact the game itself has shown that Sephy has the power to make all of this a non-issue. 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. Nojima is trying a bit too hard to have his cake and eat it too, 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.

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.

Yes, I don't care for Nojima's writing, but it largely stems from him being kind of sloppy and his insistence on coming up with far fetched plot twists even if he has to kind of break the rules of his worlds to make them happen. At best, he tends to be inconsistent with the rules he established within the worlds he creates, at worst, he tends to create rules that should have logically allowed for the plot to be a non-issue. With that said, he does occasionally come up with some good ideas. Cloud's past was a clever idea and I liked the Zack twist, and I've mentioned before that I feel Squall is one of the best written protagonists in the main series, which is kind of saying something coming from me and my bias love of the older titles.

It makes direct sense with the rules established for Sephiroth's power. First of all, Nojima-san would have never had the obligation to write that Sephiroth became weaker and was about to lose himself to the lifestream. But he did so at least there was some kind of narrative difference and drive for Sephiroth to do what he did instead of simply going all "oh, no I am back" and making him absolutely invincible. So he was not even treated like what he would normally be if you would actually consider all of his powers and using them in the most efficient way possible. And do you see me saying Nojima-san is a bad writer because of that because he did not let Sephiroth, a highly intelligent person, use them like this? No. Because I know it would be absolute overkill.
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.

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. 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? 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 purely subjective. I knew AC before the novella and never had a problem with Denzel.
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.

They are no clones, even the FFVII "replicas" are far from that. And Kadaj even hints that they are "fragments" as well as that they want the Reunion and that Sephiroth will come back. And Vincent also explains what Kadaj is. I will give you THAT one, because semantically spoken Vincent's explanation is highly misleading. The book really only goes into the detail that they "are Sephiroth but also are not" and actually are three dead guys that he found in the lifestream and made use of them.
I meant clones figuratively since they hold a resemblance to him and contain an aspect of his personality.


In which way does not knowing more about Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo hurt the movie? By that logic the book is also "bad" because it only gives like 1 more detail about them. The question might be silly because you dislike Final Fantasy VII in general and your answer will be most likely "the book IS bad" but the point is, Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo are, despite being present in the movie not nearly as relevant as people as you might think. And that is exactly what it is about. Because the movie really only wants to present you some tools to "show Sephiroth without actually showing him and in the end really showing him". Do you know how many people in the last 12 years I have ever met or read from that complained about not knowing about the three Silver Haired Men? Not many at all. I only ever read "who were they?" and I answered and they said "ah, okay". They are fragments. (They once were normal guys, not ready to accept death.) Sephiroth uses them to return. They represent Sephiroth. And that's all that is important for the plot. Everything else would lead away from that.
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.

This brings me back to my main point concerning the novella and by extension, any media sidestory with important plot points contained within, which is that if its important to the plot, you leave it in. Again, I'm not saying the novella is some abomination that should never have been made, but I do feel the contents of some of the pieces were too important for the film that they should have been addressed within the film as well. You can't create a character whose meant to be an emotional crutch that helps move the story along and at least not tell us why he's important. It would have been nice to see Cloud and Dezel interact with each other more to not only gain a better understanding of their relationship but to also help the viewers understand why Cloud is so invested in saving this kid.

"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.

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. 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.

I think Kingsglaive is a fantastic example. I watched it before the main game. And therefore I knew what happened. And I had absolutely no problem considering "ah, okay that is what happened between chapter 1 and 2. But what Kingsglaive could not do, no matter if it was included or not was solve problems of the main scenario and focus of the game. Which is exactly why I am so glad that there will be more to give further explanation.
See this is simply an issue of us both having different desires in a project. I watched Kingsglaive before playing as well but even knowing that information didn't really help the slow crawl of the plot at the beginning of XV, and likewise, I feel Kingsglaive was kind of dumb for focusing on a bunch of characters who were never intended to be in the main game anyway, the fact the villains had better representation in it than the main game, and agiain, inconsistant rules concerning the powers of the Ring of Lucis considering the King and Nyx used several powers and abilities with the ring not scene in the game like Protect Spells and Force Lightning. See its not just Nojima who does this.

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.

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.

But half of the novella is in the game as flashbacks? I agree some more flashbacks that made them more human and all like Lightning swearing on her mother's grave to be there for Serah or Serah and Snow buying the knife while laughing about how Lightning would look with a plushie or the power plant thing with Dahj or Cid and Lightning's talk would have been cool. I also understand that you might think it would be better for it to be in the game to make you feel more immersed but I never ever had a problem taking all of that into account. This must be a personal problem.
Probably since I'm genuinely cyncial and not terribly sentimental, so I usually need more reason to care and feel invested in people. I'm not the type to take things at face value and simply go along because I'm told to, so saying that I should care about the cast feeling conflicted about destroying their homeworld when the only part of it I've seen is the sheepl driven death squads doesn't exactly make me sympathize with their conflicting issues when I barely seen any reason to care for the place or understand what it means to them. Simply being their "home" doesn't mean anything to me without context. I wanna know why they care.

I also just feel that introducing a character at their low point (or close to their low point in XIII's case) without a baseline of their personality beforehand is kind of a gamble, writing wise, since most people size up others pretty quickly and it's hard to change a first impression. 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.

We're both aware of the fact that I have a lot of issues with XIII's narrative, but this isn't the place for it so we'll continue this at another time.

I'm also going to skip over the more personal stuff, so bear with me. I don't wish to detract from this thread anymore but I do appreciate the insight it has given me.

[QUOTE]

And how in the world is that "amusing"? A story is something someone composes and yes, this "word of god" that you are calling it can also include so called "retroactive continuity". Whenever Nojima-san writes something that is directly conform, it is fine. He is one of those he decides. Whenever he decides to change something of what he wrote before, fine, he is one of those who decides. Saying retcons (if they actually happen) are not following "the word of god" is like saying "you can never change what you said in your life/correct yourself and everything needs to be the first stance you have had for the rest of your life". I respect Sakaguchi-san a lot. But he is neither an officially employed writer for Final Fantasy VII as it stands right now, nor does his stance about sequels and going on and all mean anything about the "word of god" that affects that fictional universe or how fans should see that. If he was still working for Square and said something about the game the story stuff could be different if he were a writer. But even then stances like what should or should not have further installments are nothing that should affect anyone. No person working for Square can affect me when it comes to that because it is something completely different from me saying "that person said this detail x is like y in the game". It just is not the same thing.
Its not so much that I'm against retcons, I'm a Metal Gear fan for crying out loud and Kojima has retcon the history of the series with every entry since MGS1, but between the retcons made by Kojima and Nojima (this might become a tongue twister after awhile), I feel Kojima's retcons were better ahndled and actually expand the story in a good way. Nojima, not so much, 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 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. Crisis Core ended up doing the opposite for me, and Before Crisis started off promising before jumping into weirds-ville. AC is ultimately just redundant to me since I never felt the story did anything for the mythos that the original game had not already addressed.

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. 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. This doesn't necessarily mean that I feel Sakaguchi hasn't come up with his fair share of bad ideas that I don't support, nor does it mean that everything Nojima has said about his works are ultimately awful and should be disregarded. The issue comes that I tend to agree with Sakaguchi's ways of doing stuff, but his era was my era, so his vision of the franchise coincides with my own interpretation of what I feel the series is.

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. 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. He might be a cool dude in person, but he kind of ticked me off with that news debacle.


It was not "inflammatory" against you. I am simply responding in the same manner you once did by without calling my name and yet blunt enough talk about the posts of people who sleep with the Ultimania Omega (paraphrased by me, definitely not respectful and with some very obvious stance), so it is not like you never "tried" anything. Maybe I am wrong about you having talked about me that time? But I can't help feeling that it was meant to target me for real.
Well, I wasn't exactly singling you out with that statement, so I apologize if I caused any offence and made you feel that way. I've dealt with my fair share of fans who treat the Ultimania's like the Bible, so it was meant to be a generalized statement that you happen to be grouped within, but I was honestly thinking of people like The Crystal, Bolivar and njoran of whom I've had a longer history of debating the merits of VII and its Compilation with. Even then, while I disagree with their opinions on the matters, I have generally no ill will against any of them, and I'm actually "friends" maybe "frenemy" with Bolivar as we eventually came to an understanding and only debate each other to troll each other anymore. I'm simply a very blunt person when it comes to my opinions and that often means. Again I apologize if it hurt your feelings.


Sorry, Shauna.
I'll behave.

Half way done, now to round two.

[QUOTE=silentfuzzle;3670151]

I’m not sure what you guys are arguing about but didn’t Sephiroth appear as several horrible monster-human hybrids in the game? How is appearing in the movie as a normal human that can fly, wield a sword, manipulate children, taint the Lifestream, and die after a single omnislash more powerful than his form in the game where he killed a lot of people, summoned an asteroid, required ~nine people to defeat him, and had all of Jenova or whatever?[quote]

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 agree that I would have liked one more scene of introduction for Denzel. One of the few additions I like in Advent Children Complete is where Cloud decides to take Denzel home from the church. But I disagree that excluding the rest is a bad move.
The Complete version addressed my intial problem with it. I'm not implying his whole backstory had to be in there, but I feel the film should have addressed him in a way that assumes the viewer wouldn't have access to all of the supplement material.

I think this is explanation enough when the details of how Sephiroth came back to life have nothing to do with Cloud’s story, which is what the movie is ultimately about. This isn’t lazy writing. Most authors agree that you shouldn’t info dump stuff that doesn’t matter into your story. The author needs to know all these details to create a cohesive world, but he isn’t obligated to bore his viewers with them. In this case, fans who care about the details can go read the novella in stories where those details advance the plot. What's in the movie is enough for its story… unless you want to sit there and claim that excluding boring, irrelevant explanations is bad writing.
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. Still, there are many ways this could have been addressed without info dumping, and luckily the visual medium offered by film could have come up with a few cool ideas to foreshadow an expalantion better. Letting Cloud have a "dream" about Sephiroth who simply mutters that he can't fade away and simply calls out Cloud's name over and over with more anger each time. Meanwhile he envisions three black shadows taking human form over Sephiroths simple dialogue. That could have been a minute and half sequence that would have done a better job connecting all the pieces and making sense of the part of the expalanation we got in the film.


While Advent Children is a sequel, it also functions very well at introducing newcomers to Final Fantasy. This movie was my introduction to the games, and I don’t think it would attract new people as well if it hit them with more complex details and terms from the game.
Agreed, and I felt the opening did a good job of recapping the important bits of VII's story without the details. Though I feel it can be a double edged sword in some ways as well as I've met plenty of people who watched it as their intro to the series and promptly chose to ignore the franchise after wards because too much backstory and information wasn't addressed and the person wasn't intrigued enough to bother learning all of the gritty details. It can be a great gateway story, but it can also deter people who simply wanted a cool action flick.

For me personally, I prefer my films (and games) to stand on their own, so I can't help but feel that AC has some problems within the story for not really addressing important aspects from the game. Yet I feel that's a third issue behind the action to story ratio and the issues regarding Denzel.


Just throwing this out there because it’s my goal to say it as much as possible. Kingslgaive is garbage in almost every way, and the game is lesser because Noctis was excluded from the events that take place within it.
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.

I wouldn’t describe Advent Children as ultra-realistic and the creators didn’t either. In The Making Of featurette, Takeshi Nozue says, “If it looked too real, then we might as well shoot it live.” Do the characters look like real people? Have they ever looked like real people? This film is often classified as photorealistic, but it definitely has a lot of anime influence, at least in its character designs. Ridiculous, physics-defying action still exists in a lot of anime (e.g. Attack on Titan). It’s far from a tired concept.
In comparison to the original art style, which had a distinct and unapologetic anime aesthetic, AC feels like Nomurra redesigning the cast as if they were real people.

With that said, I still feel the defiance of the laws of physics were a little more over-the-top than they should be and while its still prevalent in anime, it's an aspect I don't like in the medium either. I just dislike Rule of Cool, because it often feels like the product is trying too hard to impress me, and that kind of just takes me out of the experience because I become aware that the film is trying to manipulate me with visual wonders.


Wait, was Advent Children always intended to be released alongside a novel? As I understand it, the novel came out with Advent Children Complete when the creators decided they needed to make the story more “complete.” I think they did this to appease fans who wanted more details and characters they knew from the game. But in my opinion, Advent Children Complete only adds fan service and irrelevant filler that isn’t required to understand the original film. I haven’t read the novel, but I assume it’s the same, considering that I like the story in the original movie just fine.
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.

What did Denzel, the children, Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo have to do with fanservice? Why didn’t we see more of Cid, Barrett, Yuffie, Red XIII, etc? Why did Cloud’s fight with Sephiroth only last five minutes? Isn’t that what fans want to see? The Tekken: Blood Vengence movie has a ridiculous plot featuring mostly characters from the game and ends with a twenty-five-minute-long battle between characters who combined had less than five minutes of screen time in the rest of the film. I fail to see how Advent Children classifies as pure fanservice.
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.

I'm not saying its the worst fanservice movie (that would be the second Mortal Kombat movie), but Cloud's story is kind of redundant, the children being infected really never amounted to anything meaningful, most of the returning cast show up for one fight and then stand by watching Cloud get his ass handed to him for four and half minutes with the fate of the world at stake, and Reno and Rude drop any pretense of their cool persona to go full on Gilgamesh for the flick cause we needed some humor. 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.

Yeah, the story is about some guy struggling to accept his past and find his place in the present. I can see where some fans of the game would be frustrated by this in that it somewhat rehashes what happened in the game. But when you think of it as just a movie, it’s a compelling and relatable story (even with all the weird Jenova-Sephiroth-geostigma stuff in the background). The fact that this personal drama is told in an action movie makes it even more interesting.


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. 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.

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.

With all that said, writing these long responses is kind of exhausting for me, and not how I like to spend my evenings anymore. So I'm going to have to courtesly bow out of the discussion for the time being.