Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Downloadable Content

So, I’m not exactly sure how this all will work, but what I think I’m gonna do is just put this out here now, and then update it later on when new installments of FF7’s unnecessary-but-surprisingly-not-terrible remake come out with their own add-on packs.

I don’t have much knowledge of what SquareEnix is like as a DLC creator in modern times, but knowing what the company's like just in general, particularly when it comes to creating new stories in the FF7 franchise, I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that this is going to be crap.  But hey, I’m always open to, and desperately hoping for, a pleasant surprise.



INTERmission: Oh, THERE it is!  THERE’S the excessive, out of place, completely unnecessary, tone-deaf self-indulgence of Tetsuya Nomura, a man who’s made a career out of being a 14-year-old Fanfiction.net writer!  I knew it had to be somewhere in FF7 Remake.  I didn’t expect it to take as long as the DLC for him to finally rear his ugly head, but Thinks He’s Being Deep Nomura is back, baby!

Was this really what Yuffie needed?  Shallow, forced melodrama induced by a spontaneous villain whose graceless edginess makes Kingdom Hearts villains look subtle and well-rounded?

So basically, this little side-story is the completely superfluous tale of Yuffie happening to be in Midgar during the events of the game proper, but not actually doing anything that makes any difference whatsoever, teamed up with Sonon, a guy whose first line of dialogue might as well have been “I was specifically designed to die so you could have the feelz.”  Actually, no, the possibility that this DLC will never make any difference to anything in the main story is a best case scenario; the far worse probability is that the villains introduced at the end of this DLC, Nero and Weiss, will actually graduate into main plot relevance at some point.  I mean, Nero already clearly escaped from an adolescent’s moody album art doodles, so there’s no reason to think that this DLC will hold him.

EDIT: I'm told by Ecclesiastes that Nero and Weiss hail from FF7: Dirge of Cerberus, and are not original villains invented for this DLC.  Nothing could possibly be a better confirmation to me that my choice to never play that garbage was the right decision.  It only amplifies the negative impact they have on this DLC, though, as their presence means that INTERmission has committed the greatest sin it possibly could: canonizing FF7's abysmally shitty spinoffs.

Beyond just the overall story, purpose, and approach to INTERmission being an attempt to inject some of the excess Kingdom Hearts melodrama that Nomura’s glands produce instead of sweat into Yuffie, I’m fairly ambivalent about this venture.  I have no idea, for example, how I feel about making Yuffie so much cuter and peppier than she was originally.  I mean, it’s nice to have a more appealing character, but it also makes her seem so much less real a person than she used to be, particularly in terms of being a teen.  In FF7, Yuffie felt like an actual teenager--which could be annoying at times, admittedly--but here, she feels like the generic upbeat anime “teen” that typically gets written by people who must have been born 40 years old for all they can accurately represent adolescents.  It does make her more immediately approachable for the audience, I admit, and I actually find myself liking Yuffie probably more times in this DLC than I did in the entirety of the real FF7...but a hell of a lot of personality and uniqueness is lost in the process.*

Also I’m not sure how much of her appeal, for the first half of the DLC, is more due to her wearing a moogle cape and cowl than to anything she actually does herself.  Look, I can’t help being a sucker for moogles, and I’m not gonna apologize for it, either.

Anyway.  Beyond our protagonist Yuffie, the other members of this story’s cast are pretty weak.  I’ve seen vegetables that I’ve gotten more personal nuance and human authenticity from than Sonon, and the supporting NPCs in AVALANCHE are empty.  And yeah, okay, Sonon DOES have emotional baggage with his dead sister, which the writers drop right the fuck out of nowhere and start laying it on THICK once it’s out there, but frankly, it’s so transparently there for the purpose of having him sacrifice himself for Yuffie later as penance that it completely falls flat.  It almost feels a little insulting, how obvious it is that Sonon’s backstory is just a setup for some cheap, manufactured drama for Yuffie.  For a guy who already was giving off a strong Red Shirt vibe, Sonon’s character backstory does nothing to humanize him.  Finally, the villains suck--I cannot overemphasize just how laughable the try-hard edgelords Weiss and Nero are, from what little we encounter of them, and the rest of the time, Yuffie and Sonon are squaring off against Scarlet, who was not particularly engaging as a villain even in the original FF7 and certainly has had no favors done her by the modern take on her character.

Beyond Sonon’s listlessly screaming “I’M GONNA DIE SOON” at you and basically every time Scarlet opens her stupid tiresome mouth, the writing’s also just not great in general.  Yuffie’s new quirky little Dachao Bean thing is stupid and weird and cringy as hell.  The dialogue is often weird and stilted to an almost Xenosaga-esque degree--there’s this moment, going into the Advanced Weapons section of Shinra’s HQ,** in which Yuffie just out of nowhere starts talking about how her dad is a lazy jerkwad, with absolutely no provocation whatsoever, like someone on the team realized they’d forgotten 1 of the boxes on their checklist of what this DLC was supposed to introduce for Yuffie’s character and had to jam it in somewhere last-minute.  It gets all the weirder when Sonon responds to the tune of “Hey dude like maybe chill a bit” and Yuffie decides to just drop it because it’s not her favorite subject.  Uh, then why did you bring it up out of nowhere, stupid?

And sometimes things just don’t make sense.  Why the hell doesn’t Yuffie just kill Scarlet while she’s got her tied up and helpless?  Like, okay, interrogation, fine, but once Sonon seems to be in danger and the interrogation’s over anyway, why the hell not just kill Scarlet, real quick, and THEN run to help Sonon?  It’d be the work of a second, and Yuffie knows she’s the head of the Weapons Division.  What’s the point in Yuffie going out of her way to leave Scarlet alive?  Usually it’s the villains pulling the tired old “refuse to kill their enemy when they have the chance,” but apparently heroes can suffer this same brain fart, when the writers have tunnel-vision.

The peripheral stuff of this DLC isn’t all bad, in fairness.  The scene that Yuffie witnesses between Barret and Tifa after losing Cloud during the second reactor mission is quite good...I almost feel like maybe the characters of FF7R are each written by different teams, and the ones in charge of Tifa, Barret, and Aeris are made up of the people at SquareEnix who have actually played Final Fantasy 7 before, while everyone else are the ones who wrote for Yuffie...and also every single sequel, spinoff, and prequel that FF7’s had previously.  Also, the end of the DLC, which returns focus to the main party as they leave Midgar on foot and take their first real steps of this journey together, is quite good, and a nice finish to this first installment.

Overall, though, INTERmission can only generously be called empty and unnecessary.  It’s a story that didn’t need to be told that stars a character who doesn’t have anything to contribute yet, getting hit with tedious drama she didn’t need instigated by villains who aren’t appropriate to the game originating from a spinoff whose existence shouldn't be acknowledged.  What arguably positive changes are made to her character come at a price they may not be worth, and that dumbass Dachao Bean gimmick is so awkward and overplayed that the rest of this DLC could be the second coming of goddamn Mask of the Betrayer and I’d still be forced to question whether it was worth it.  It’s pretty telling that this add-on’s best parts are the ones that focus on the main adventure and don’t actually have anything to do with INTERmission’s own events and story.

Final verdict?  It’s bad, and you shouldn’t bother buying it.  Frankly, INTERmission’s not even worth the time it takes to play it (or watch a Let’s Play of it, as I did), so I can’t even recommend giving it a go if you get it for free.



Well, so far, I’m neither impressed nor surprised.  We’ll see what future DLCs for FF7 Remake shake out to as the story continues to unfold, but I’m not holding my breath, that’s for sure.















* I do, at least, appreciate that they remembered Yuffie’s crippling, hair-trigger motion sickness.  It’s not much, but it’s the little details of characters being remembered that are sometimes the most reassuring.


** Because we certainly didn’t spend NEARLY enough time in the depths of the Shinra building already during the main game, right?  How great to be back again for another extended visit.