Perfect dream storyline for wish FFVII-2

[Enigma]

Originally posted by hydan
cloud and co survived. why are yu saying the highwind crashed....??
and humans not worthy??...who concocted that garbage??
Red XIII was not the only survivor of the party...that's ridiculous?? lmao...*fell back off chair,woke up girlfriend,she's pissed off*
i'mlaughing yet angry that people come up with trite and make out like it actually happens *need cigarette now* "that's better"

LoL, I think you fear competition.

I'm saying that the Highwind crashed because the last thing you see is a flash of light, which means the Highwind could have been blown out of the air, blown up, and left undamaged. I'm saying that the explosion (flash of light) knocked the Highwind out of the sky.

Humans not worthy...I never said that humans werent worthy. Zack wants to start the "Jenova" race, but first he must get rid of the Humans, his only obsticle. This is the only way that it would leave suppense because you only see Red XIII in the end so you're wondering "do humans live or die off?" Which this game answers.

And to answer questions about how Tifa is found running to the Highwind in the beginning, she was ejected in the crash. I should have added that.

[Maxico]

i was just saying that so you you dont get caught by mods and banned.

and in my opinion your both slagging off each others remarkably similer storys.

1.starts by traveling from midgar to an event at the marshes/ ranch

2.once good character is evil

3. character facing death in the marshes

dont turn this into a flame fight. there both equaly good/bad/exelent/terrible storys (delete as appropriate)

[Enigma]

^^True, I didnt really pay much attention....but the Marshes is a place that was very insignificant in the original that could have been used to the story's advantage.

Blah...this thread is becoming pointless...

[DocFrance]

How about... a potential sequel could take place 500 years after the events of FF7. As in it would start exactly when the last FMV leaves off. That way, you could have entirely new characters, but still have the same plotline. In addition to some new characters, you could also have Red XIII and perhaps Vincent as bonus characters, like Yuffie and Vincent in the original.

Thinks...

Got it!

500 years after the planet was saved from Meteor, the four Huge Materia orbs have been relocated to different regions of the world. The yellow one is in the Corel Desert, the blue one is off the coast of Costa del Sol, the red one is near Mideel, and the green one is deep within the Mythril Mines. After some time, the materia orbs begin to fade. Also at the same time, strange things begin to happen throughout the world: the wind stops, the sea rages, and the earth rots. And your party sets out to save the world. Talking with a particularly informative NPC in town will reveal your quest:
"Light Warriors, revive the ORBS!"

[Auron_Kotetsu]

Doc France, you win the prize for best one yet.

I'm giving myself a headache with very little result... this is harder than it looks.

[one_winged_angel]

you have played ff5 way too much


i think its 5 anyway theres jus too many (too remember not in a bad way)

[stealth_spider]

Hey folks, I've been reading this thread and I must say that they're are a lot of good ideas. Here are some of my own, (or just revisions of other peoples ideas)

I think the Three main characters would be:
1. Marlene- She would be the well rounded character who is fast, strong physically and mentally after her heroes Tifa and Aerith. She can equip both gloves and staves (gloves ideal for making her a fighter, staves for making her a mage)

2. Reve- Ditched his Cait Sith robot, picked up a nice gun! Instead of controlling a robot, he wears a robotic exo-skeleton armour. One of the more physically strong characters with moderate speed and magic.

3. Sephiroth- Now, bare with me here! Still the swordsman. But he is no longer what he once was. He is moderately strong physically and mentally, but very fast.

I like the idea that the flash of light at the end of the game caused meteor to explode, and do a bit of damage to the planet.

The initial plot would be for Marlene to discover what happened to Barret and company. Reve, is now doing damage control, since he feels that he must (formerly working for Shinra, and, having lost contact with his Cait Sith robot after the end of the first game). Reve goes from town to town helping the people and making sure everything is okay. When he reaches Kalm he meets up with Marlene. They talk and he mentions that the name Marlene sounds familiar and recalls that it is Barret's daughter. They talk about the final battle 10 years ago, but Reve just says that he lost control of Cait Sith after meteor exploded and that he has no idea what happened. Some stuff happens (I haven't decided yet what actually happens) and they have to go to the ruins of Midgar.

While there, they find Sephiroth and are surprised, and ready to do battle with the infamous monster (although they're aware of his legendary strength and know full well that they would not survive). But something is different, Sephiroth does not want to fight. Somehow he survived the final confrontation, but doesn't understand how. He returnd to Midgar because he believes that everything he and everyone else, thought they knew before, about himself, jenova, the ancients and the lifestream was flat out wrong and he must find out the truth.

Sephiroth's story is that the final battle killed all the Jenova cells in his body which returned his sanity, and left him near death. As before, he fell in the life stream and was revived and preserved until he washed up on land. Without jenova, he lost nearly all of his god-like power, but it returned to him his conscience and sanity. Although he is still tough, and serious, he repents all the of the sins he committed while in Jenova's control. He joins you to find the truth.

Well......what do you think? Were those ideas....good?

[Silence]

First, to reply to the original post - Somewhat interesting ideas, though certainly not worthy of being the ONLY (or the majority of) major ideas used for a decent sequel of FF7, much less a "perfect dream sequel." Why? First, shortness. Even with a lot added to the plot you described to stretch things out, that is an EXTREMELY short, simplistic plot with few - if ANY - twists and turns and interesting surprises and revelations thrown in.

By the way, about your later post, hydan, complaining about people 'making up' plot stuff about humans not being worthy and the FF7 main cast dieing - I have NO idea what you're talking about. Have you not played FF7 in a long time, or something? One of the most important, major, predominant themes in the game FF7 is, near the end of the game, the idea that the Planet might reject all of humanity, killing them as a side-effect of dealing with Meteor, in favor of allowing OTHER races to rule the planet instead. Races more worthy of life. Whether the Planet actually DID decide to destroy all Humans is up to interpretation (although I don't think that finding out the answer so you all can't imagine the ending for yourself is so big a deal that it warrants not making a sequel just to avoid 'giving anything away' >:/ You could just as easily have stopped playing the game, say, having lost the second two disks after finishing disk 1, and then IMAGINED the rest of the game for the next few years. Would you then have complained when you finally did find the other two disks that the rest of the story as Square themselves thought it up is available for you to compare to your own expectations and ideas? Feh. :/ It was a nice place to end the game FF7, yes, but don't be so narrow-minded as to think that it was the ONLY place they coulda possibly ended it...), and, even if humanity WAS spared the wrath of the Planet, it's additionally unknown whether the crew of the Highwind even survived themselves. For writing a sequel to FF7, the Highwind crashing is a perfectly plausible idea. So is all humanity dieing. So is all humanity not dieing. All sortsa things could have happened! Hence the term "open-ended game."

By the way, one last thing (sorta ... You were saying that it's stupid to allow people to play as the same charas that were playable in FF7, because then it'd be unrealistic and annoying that you had to start from scratch with those characters (or horribly unbalanced if all the charas started at level 100 with all equipment, limit breaks, etc.!)? Well, here's a cheesy, but VERY effective solution for you: At the end of FF7, all the main characters DID die! They then entered the Lifestream. There, all their Materia, experience, etc. was drained away from them. HOWEVER, before their very essences and memories could disperse throughout the Planet, the Planet made a conscious decision to resurrect the heroes of FF7 in their old bodies (as opposed to resurrecting them all as babies. Though that would be very funny, and very cute o_O *imagines the babies of destiny... vincent, cloud, tifa, barret, etc...*). In this way, the sequel of FF7 starts! And in this way, we have a perfectly rational explanation which is backed up perfectly well by pre-existing plot points (in this case, the mostly un-explored reincarnation theme of FF7) for having to start off from scratch with the exact same line-up. Assuming you'd want the same line-up in your dream FF7 game, that is. You probably wouldn't. I'm just providing this explanation as one of many possibilities you could use to rationalize doing whatever the hell you want! ^_^

hm... what else.... ah well, can worry about it later... dunno about Cloud's having a sibling... possible, but seems like an extremely ridiculous, childish way to throw in a new character who looks like Cloud, when you could simply use a revived Zack, or a cleansed Sephiroth, or even Cloud himself with a suitable explanation like the one I provided for you of him losing his EXP in the process of reincarnating via the Lifestream... You seem desperate for characters to use as main characters, but you SHOULDN'T be - you should be able to come up with HUNDREDS of ideas for characters. The only reason you aren't is because you're being so INCREDIBLY SELF-LIMITING by only using characters and concepts which have been used countless times by other FF games!! :/ NEW charas... that have never even been seen before... new plot ideas... etc. Oh yeah, and also, evil Aeris is cool. All warped and twisted and stuff? Kinda like those creepy Rinoas from the last FF8 cutscene... works, works ^^

Auron Kotetsu - Not especially valid points... It's already been mentioned that Marlene COULD canonically have ancient blood in her, since we don't know who her mother was (not to mention that, who knows, maybe Dyne WAS part-Cetra ;D). I also don't see why it should matter if this idea for the sequel mentions moogles and trances a little - trances have very little to do with FFIX. You're thinking of Trance, which seems to have more to do with turning SSJ (except more often with glowing hot-pink auras than golden ones) than entering an altered state of consciousness.

As for Moogles... Why SHOULDN'T there be plenty of Moogles with a central role in the sequel of FF7, should it ever come? This brings me to an important point: the only way the FF7 sequel will do well at all is if it doesn't stick too close to its roots. Yes, it should still adhere to FF7's standards of high quality, to its general tone and themes and certainly to its history, but there also has to be a ton of new stuff thrown in. Numerous new revelations. New mechanics. New areas. New characters. New races. Et cetera (no pun intended). One of the numerous mysteries of Final Fantasy 7 was 'where are the moogles?' The only moogles that ever appeared were summons. Well, the rest of them had to have gone somewhere. Were they extinct? In hiding underground? Living on a distant planet? Evolved long ago into Nanaki's race? What's the deal? But, eh... I'm just using moogles as an example, really... It's fine with me if moogles aren't included at all, either - I never saw what the big deal was about them. I'm just saying that making (plausible) radical changes to the FF7 world for a sequel IS fine. Makes exploration more interesting, at least. Eh.

Enigma - Hmmm. Not so sure about Zack coming back to life. Or him being evil. Ah, what the hell, it's not so farfetched as to cause headaches, at least, and I'm sure everyone here can agree that Zack needs, in any FF7 sequel idea, at least some more backstory info, if not going so far as to actually revive him. :/ On a scale from 1 to 10 of how much I'd be surprised to see someone come back from the dead in an actual FF7-2 game made by Squaresoft (with 1 being "OH MY GOD, THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL HE WAS GONNA COME BACK" and 10 being "Duh. What'd you expect?"), I'd give...

10 - Random monsters like Bomb and Dragon. They're almost sure to return, one way or another.
9 - Sephiroth. He's just too cool to not include in a major way in anything FF7-related.
8 - Jenova. Simply because Jenova was pretty damn cool, and FAR too little about her was ever revealed! If not Jenova herself, then certainly some member of her species or another.
7 - Aeris. Popularity factor, just like Sephiroth. Tho I'm rooting for Sephiroth much more than Aeris...
6 - Rufus... Don't care what anyone says... HE COULD HAVE SURVIVED THAT MISSILE. :OOO Then we could say his doggy too, and stuff.
5 - Zack. Too little face time
4 - Bugenhagen... Nah.
3 - President Shinra. Or whatever his name is. Doubt he'll be back...!
2 - ChocoMog. Not dead, but should be!
1 - Sexiroth!!!

Okay, so the last two don't count, but that's just 'cause no one in FF7 really rates that low :F ANYONE could return- This IS still an anime-based game.

Stealth Spider - Interesting, interesting. Yes, those three characters are a fairly inspiring mix to imagine at least on the sidelines of a lineup on an FF7-2 strategy guide. I certainly don't see any reason why Reeve couldn't play a major role in a sequel! A bit of fleshing out with his character (well, okay, a LOT, but it's not that tough) and he'll be good as new. Likewise Marlene, since this is taking place many years from now so she can have grown up... Sephiroth's the only one I'm not so sure about. He'd lose at least 50% of his coolness if he was around regularly, as a main character and all. And that's just being generous, AND allowing for extremely good, intelligent, diplomatic writing to capture him in his most appealing (in order words, chilling and dramatic and COOL) light.

Anyway... some neatoneat ideas on this thread.... btw, one of the most interesting things about FF7, to me, and somethingwhich opens up a huge number of possible new places and characters, is the idea of the Cetras and Jenova and all. I'd love to see at least a cutscene to show Jenova as she infected the Cetras was back when and transformed them into monsters with the plague and killed them all and such WAY too little was done with Jenova in Final Fantasy 7 - she was nothing more than a recurring obstacle (and someone to kill people since the real Sephiroth couldn't hurt anyone with his little astral sword XD er... or something... n/m...) with only ONE line of dialogue in the game. If I remember correctly o_O But she was important~

Lastly - Sorceress Fujin... Reeve being sexy is a spoiler? LOL.

[stealth_spider]

Silence, you do bring up some very valid points. Most of Sephiroth's awesomeness was in his mystery and sadistic behaviour. But with proper ideas it could work. I would picture him like he was before he went all Jenova insane. Serious, tough, isolated from the rest of the world, but ready to kick ass (kinda like Wolverine, not the movie wolverine, but the comic wolverine). Through the course of the game he learns to be a little more human. Possibly, he wouldn't be available as a playable character at the beginning of the game, but later on.

As for Reeve, I'm not sure if I was clear, but he would play a large role in the sequal. He would technically be the only surviving party memeber from the final battle. And would be in the game's initial party.

I do like the idea of Zach being revived. He's the only person still alive with Jenova cells in his body, and after witnessing the sins of the human race he must purify it. He does so, the same way Jenova did off the cetra, by infecting them. After Zach goes completely bonkers half way through the game, he just decides to cut the middle man and infect the lifestream directly with Jenova cells.

I think a cool idea is to explain the weapons a little more (ie. Ruby, Emerald, Ultimate etc.). I think the back story would be that weapons were not created by the planet but were sacrafices from the cetra. When Jenova first appeared, the cetra believed that there were 2 ways to stop her. One was to ban together and seal Jeova away forever (which is what happened as I recall). The other was to plead with the planet, and in doing so, the cetra made a deal with the planet. They sacraficed their strongest warriors so they would be transformed into the weapons to protect the planet. But before the weapons could be used, Jenova was sealed away, so the weapons were kept hidden until needed again.

That is when ff7 happens and the weapons were released, but Cloud and co. destroyed them good! At the end of the game, when meteor is stopped someone made the suggestion that meteor explodes and destroys the airship (I like it). But instead of Cloud and company dying and returning to the lifestream, the planet recognized their strength (by watching them whip Sephiroth's butt) and chooses them to become the new weapons of the planet.

So.....?

[zacks_clone]

I like the idea of Zack(Zach,Zachs,Zax,what ever) being back.It'd make me buy the game,for I would love to see Zack in a fmv or even as a character with more referance then a memorie!

I still like the idea of having the whole lab blown up.haha,sorry,it'd be a good side note sorta.Like shinra and sephiroth in ff7...this could sorta be either the main villan or one of them...

reeve as a playable character...no,no,i dont think so.

hmmm....Perhaps vincent would be a good main character,if we must have originals.he was abit like zack...denied.

[one_winged_angel]

maybe you could just play through ff7 as the turks...?? most people here seem to like them

but slight story alterations necessary which is bad but I think you could still make a good game out of it. Half way through they realize cloud aint their enemy so as to not depict the heros as villains

[Ultima Seraph]

I'd like FFVII-2 to be a prequel rather than a sequel... The Story of a Hero... Sephiroth's story... his rise in Soldier to his fall in Nibelhiem, concentraiting mostly on the Wutai war and ShinRa's rise to power.

[Auron_Kotetsu]

Okay... well, i said i would do it, and so now here i am, doing it. All of this is STILL more of a rough sketch than anything else... and a lot of the intricacies will be edited in later, but hey, it's not like any of these is actually going to be made into a game, so who gives a sheet?

You begin with your main character, call him whatever you want. He'd use sword weapons, because that's what main characters do. The opening sequence would be a reiteration of the whole meteor thing, with it somehow being explained in a reasonably short period. The main character, who is a resident of Midgar, would have been there for the whole near-catastrophe with Meteor, and so you would get a ground-up view of that happening. Cut to five years later. Your fella is now 25 years old, and a fighter-slave in the illegal underground gladiatorial fighting that is now a popular sport in the still-poor slums of Midgar. You gain control of your person just as a match is starting. As soon as you kill your opponent (who is no real challenge), soldiers burst in the door and begin making arrests, including your character. You meet President Barret, who, along with AVALANCHE, took control of Midgar after Meteor and began governing. The raid is part of his slums cleanup program, which is already successful. You are sent to prison, maximum security because of your fighting skill. Your cellmate is a strangely quiet man with white hair. Yes, this would be Sephiroth. He tells the main character that he remembers nothing that happened before he was found on the shores of Lake Mideel, which flows with the Lifestream. He was thrown immediately into prison, and knows nothing of who he was or what he did. He has maintained his skill with the blade and his demeanor, but nothing of his sinister personality. As you are sleeping a few days later, the prison is broken into by Weaponets -- small shards of the original WEAPONs that now roam the world and occasionally make trouble. The prison is overrun, and the power dies, leaving the cells open. You and Sephiroth escape and head for Kalm. Outside Kalm, you encounter another pair of escapees, a Materia expert and mage named Kai Willard, and a gun-toting babe named Aria Brightstar. They join your party, and you continue on to Kalm. Kalm is now home to Cloud's Tomb, where Cloud's body was laid to rest after he was killed while rescuing Marlene from Midgar. Marlene and Tifa now live in Kalm, Marlene a teenage girl, and Tifa still as tough and, ahem, buxom, as ever. They tend Cloud's tomb. The companions decide that they must head to the Mideel Mako Research Facility (located on Lake Mideel), from the port city of Danshai. (The gravity exerted by Meteor caused the ocean to swell up and into the Zolom Swamp, which is now the Zolom Sea and home to Danshai.) Their course set, the company makes to leave Kalm. As they go, however, Tifa recognizes Sephiroth and raises an alarm. They flee and escape the AVALANCHE soldiers, but have the feeling that they are being followed the entire way to Danshai.

*WHEW*

It's like 3:30 in the morning, and i really can't keep this going. I'll edit more on when i'm rested and recuperated. Feel free to comment on what's already here, though. I, for one, like the direction it's taking.

Things i'm going for:
-Marlene as a party member.
-Dio as a party member.
-Returns to party by Vincent and Cid.
-Aeris reborn.
-Hojo's survival, and Jenova's rebirth.
-An interesting side to Materia.
-Other things i'm too tired to remember... *yawn*

I'll try and finish off, or at least continue, this later.

Check for edits!!!

[one_winged_angel]

well actually if it was inland it would be zolom lake not sea, but other than that I think your story is pretty kool. I'd like to see a good side to sephiroth that was only really shown before on the way to neibelheim. Aria I think would be a good feature. Don't really know about weaponets, I really hate it when people just carry on and on with the same bad guy eg. majin buu on the final dbz saga. And you make Barret look like a bad guy when he arrests you.

[Silence]

By the way, One Winged Angel, it's FF1, not FF5. Although both had similar ideas. Also, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "eg. majin buu on the final dbz saga" - aren't ALL Dragonball Z villains like that?

Now, Stealth Spider... Well, yeah, that's what I was thinking. But Wolverine IS cool... okay, what the heck. Can't hurt, tho some fans might object to Sephiroth being such a major character. Wolverine is cool, but he's around so much plenty of people get sick of him...

On WEAPONS - VERY interesting. Twists and revelations are certainly necessary for any Final Fantasy game, and this seems like an interesting one. So, some of the Cetra turned into the WEAPONs... but, then, aren't the Cetra the only ones vulnerable to the plague of Jenova? That'd explain why the Cetra, not the humans, were nearly wiped out when Jenova arrived. So it's a bit odd. But cool. And I definetly agree that the WEAPONs should have played more of a major role in FF7. They never really did anything once they were released except float around blowing stuff up Making the FF7 team the 'WEAPONs' is interesting, too, although I assume you don't mean they'd turn into giant rampaging monsters :F Yeah, sure. Why not. WEAPONs are champions of the Planet, so, if we use my ideas for the FF team dieing but being revived (as a mechanism to bring them back to level 1) and being chosen by the Planet as new defenders, WEAPONs are a great title for them, to seperate them from the rest of humanity in some way, even if it might not be obvious visually... Or maybe it will be, maybe the process will change them in some way.

Auron Kotetsu - WOO, FUN!!! I really like most of those ideas. Let's see... of the old cast... Barret is now one of the most important people in the world, eh? I guess that means he's not as much of a fighter anymore, then, so, will his gun-arm be replaced by a normal (robotic) hand, or something along those lines? Anyway, I'm fine with him being tough like that. We all know he's a softy at heart What happened to Reeve, though? He should certainly have been safe, since he was holed up in Kalm with Marlene. Speaking of which, I had no idea what you're talking about with Cloud's death. When did Cloud have to save Marlene from Midgar? It's specifically stated that Reeve took Marlene away from Midgar long before Meteor would have hit. Not to mention that Cloud would have been too busy battling Sephiroth while the Meteor was hitting to enter Midgar and save anyone, no? Confusing. I'm okay with Cloud getting killed, I suppose, tho I'd kinda rather he was still around... He was a cool guy, and we never really got to learn much about him now that he's not so unstable and insane. Oh well. Tifa and Marlene are protecting his tomb now, eh? That works for me, too, though remember that both Tifa and Aeris were very strong-willed in FF7. Don't define them too much as mindless love interests of Cloud with no outside life. :/ Eh. The idea that the geography of the world has been changed a lot due to Meteor's fall is VERY VERY GOOD!!!!! That should make things much more interesting. The changes cuased by Meteor and many other things that have happened since FF7 will make re-exploring the world just as interesting as exploring it the first time around. Though, of course, we'll still need more areas beyond there. Let's see... there's also Sephiroth... he's fine by me, too, although I wonder how he survived. Even if he survived Cloud and co. killing him, wouldn't he have been blasted by Holy? Still, Holy works in mysterious ways, so it's not that unexpected for him to have lived. Also, having him be a good guy now is interesting, because it will mean that a lot of characters who were good guys in FF7 (Tifa, Barret, etc.) will be your biggest enemies! After all, while they're reasonable people, they're not stupid. They're certainly not gonna let a supposedly nice Sephiroth run all over the world, slowly regaining his memories and slowly regaining his old powers. Who knows when he could snap and try his old plan all over again (although when he finally does, the fun will REALLY begin ;D). Now, what other characters are unaccounted for...

You haven't mentioned the Turks. What're they up to? They always were really cool, which is why I didn't object to all the ideas flying around about making them the main charas of the sequel. Likewise, I wonder where Cid's at. Still pursuing his dreams of exploring space? And Vincent should DEFINETLY be an EXTREMELY important character in the sequel - major hero, or major villain. He's an immortal, that makes him special :/ Plus a gun-toting shapeshifting cyborg with a damn good fashion sense. Yuffie, of course, should also return. Yuffie ruled! Seeing her older should be quite fun. And what about Wutai? With Shin-Ra gone, Wutai could begin to regain its power, returning to its former glory at last!! Now THAT could be cool. Wutai playing a major role. Not to mention the WEAPONs returning - those WEAPONets sound like they could work out veeeery well, and we can eventually reveal more stuff about them, like that there are some fully-formed WEAPONs that are still dormant and waiting to explode forth from the ground Ultima WEAPON, Omega WEAPON, Atma WEAPON, whatever... Now, to get back to characters! The only other main ones are Aeris, who you say will be reappearing, and Red XIII... And Hojo and Jenova will return, eh? I suppose it's fine for Hojo to come back, although you're really starting to bring back TOO MANY characters, aren't you? You've revived almost EVERYONE who died in Final Fantasy 7!! That trivializes death, I'm afraid. Jenova, though, is no problem - Jenova DEFINETLY needs much more facetime. So does the rest of her race. I wanna find out about the plague and such! :O Never getting to see it in action was like never getting to see Sin's toxin in battle or nothin'

What else to discuss... Well, your new characters seem interesting. I'd like to know more about them. Let's see, for main characters, we right now have... A swordsman (since we have Sephiroth, why not make him something different? Just about EVERY Final Fantasy game has starred some troubled youth wielding a huge sword, right? You won't be punished for being inventive, y'know. Think of some other powers for him, mayhaps? then again, two sword-wielders worked in FFX. Do what ye think proper.)... A Materia expert and mage... a gun-user... a very powerful swordsman/psychic mage offspring of an evil alien force... Marlene, who'll probably be a summoner or something (Hey, I know there aren't summoners in FF7, but that could be a new feature :/ Lack of classes always took something away from the characters, anyway. Uniqueness... other than Limit Breaks, they're almost interchangeable!)... And a few more, probably. Oh yeah, and I dunno about Dio being a party member. I certainly agree that he should play an important role in this game, but he just seems kinda... boring, to me. What, would he be some sort of wrestling Setzer? Oi. Oh, yeah, and Vincent and Cid will come back too? Neato.

Now, here's an idea. Red XIII remains mysteriously absent for much of the game. It takes a long time to learn where he vanished to. It turns out that, after exploring the entire world, all of this has actually been fake. Sorta. All of humanity (but no other species, except evil crap like monsters - one of the clues that this is what's happened is that Red XIII and all other non-human creatures like Moogles and Chocobos are conspicuously absent from the gameworld as you explore) was transported to this pocket dimension by Holy. Remember that whole plot in FF7 about humans possibly being judged unworthy by the Planet? This is the fruition of that plot. It will be an enormous revelation after you've been playing the game for quite a long time. Eventually (perhaps with Cid's help, an invention can be created to pierce through the outer edge of the pocket dimension and escape to the 'real world'), more places can be explored, more characters met, etc. The game has to be really long and complex to be even close to being worthy of sharing the name of FF7 One thing I'm thinking about is the true nature of Materia - perhaps you have to meet the God-King of the Cetra, who commands (or simply is) Holy, and is served by an army of angels (the ghosts of the Cetra... including their leader, Aeris), and... *shrug* Just a thought. That angel symbolism was mysterious, in FF7.

As for why humanity was seperated from the Planet by Holy in the first place... I'm still working on that. Why didn't Holy simply kill all of humanity, and then have them be resurrected as assorted non-humans (that's how karma works! :O)? Well, it'll be explained in the game, whatever we decide on. Assuming anyone even agrees with all this stuff as a cool twist to throw in.