Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Cloud's Recollections

Although its DLC may not have held up, I have to admit that the remake of Final Fantasy 7 has thus far been far more carefully, intelligently, and accurately done than I had expected.  Unlike every other FF7 spin-off we’ve seen in the last 2 decades and more, it seems like the team behind the remake may, in fact, have actually played the source material at least once in their lives.  That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with it, of course, and some sizable ones at that, but hell, FF7 was far from perfect itself, and honestly, I’m so pleased that most of the remake seems to actually value the spirit, atmosphere, approach, and character integrity of the original that I can forgive a lot more than I thought I would.  Still, there are some unfortunate changes SquareEnix has taken to their most recent approach to FF7 that are worth noting.

1 that stands out to me is the way that Cloud’s recollections are handled.  In the original FF7, Cloud’s faulty mental state is shown through the game’s course in a variety of clever and intuitive methods that combined text, visuals, music, and sound effects...moments of an unknown voice within supplying answers to questions with prompting, unmarked text boxes that Cloud would then mimic, transparent ghost-images of some other self that Cloud would be trying to copy, or be unable to pull into himself as he experienced an episode, the pulsing background music that single-handedly convinced us that Sephiroth wasn’t a pathetic pushover in spite of literally every part of his history and in-game actions, a sudden, sharp sound effect of something breaking or coming undone...considering how new the Playstation 1 was at the time, and the fact that the aesthetics and style of FF7 were equally different in their own right from most of what Squaresoft had done previously, it’s almost humbling to recognize that they managed to effectively use so many different cues to create and maintain the uneasy feeling for 60% of the game that there was something unknown within Cloud’s psyche, something indefinably but inevitably wrong with his mind and self.  In many ways, the storytelling methods of Final Fantasy 7 not only worked with great skill within the limitations of the Playstation 1, they found a way to make those limitations work for them.

Unfortunately, the remake cannot, nor seems to even be trying to, recreate this mastery of showing but not making explicit Cloud’s cerebral dissonance.  Back in FF7, when Cloud has a moment in which his delusions have to prompt his responses with a false recollection, there’d be a brief flash, maybe a momentary prompting text telling him what to say, and that would be all.  You, the audience, KNEW something was wrong, that some other voice within him was feeding him an answer, but that was ALL you knew: that something was wrong.  You didn’t know where that other voice came from, save that only Cloud heard it.  You didn’t know why it was there.  You didn’t know why this was information that Cloud had to coach himself on, or be coached on.  You didn’t know that there was anything wrong with what Cloud remembered.  The ominous ambiguity kept you on your toes about it.

And what made it even more unnerving was that ONLY you could see it happening.  It was fast, and entirely internal; the people that Cloud was speaking to didn’t and wouldn’t know the difference between this disconnected recollection and any other statement Cloud made.*  Cloud clearly didn’t even seem to notice himself that something wasn’t fully correct with his ability to reach into his memory.  You were the only one who could tell that something was out of place in Cloud’s mind, adding tension to the playing experience in the same way that the audience can’t warn a horror film protagonist of an impending danger.

This deftly understated method is replaced by clumsy, obvious straight-shooting in the Remake.  While adding voice acting is in general a good idea if you can get competent actors and more importantly competent directors--which SquareEnix is almost always several steps behind on, but they generally have their shit together in FF7R--but here it’s a bit of a problem, because there’s a hell of a lot of unnerving ambiguity about a silent text box popping up from unknown origins to prompt Cloud on what to say, but barely any such disturbing sense of the unknown behind the same line being said aloud by a highly generic voice.

Meanwhile, the brief flash of Cloud recalling/inventing information in the original is replaced with the guy, to quote good sir Ecclesiastes, holding his head like he’s jacking into the Matrix.  Before, you didn’t know what was happening, only felt that something was wrong, and you didn’t know that you shouldn’t take Cloud at his word at such moments, only that what he was saying was important to keep in mind for later because something strange accompanied it.  The Remake gracelessly raises the question that perhaps Cloud’s words can’t be trusted, calls attention to it.

And it’s also a step back in-story, too.  Before, Cloud’s discordant moments of recollection would leave no in-universe observer any the wiser.  Now, however, everyone just awkwardly stands around watching him grab his head like it’s a stress ball, and just lets it go afterward.  It’s like they’ve all already established an agreement not to say anything about Grandpa stumbling around head-in-hands because he’s sensitive about his episodes, Timmy.  Cloud’s over here stumbling around in agony like someone just showed him the ending to Mass Effect 3 for the first time, and no one’s questioning the information they’re getting from the guy?

It’s too bad, really.  I don’t know what the future holds for FF7 Remake in terms of revealing the truth of Cloud’s mind and history--I rather suspect it won’t be nearly as monumental a linchpin to the game’s plot as it was originally, which is a damn pity--but if it does still hold importance to the story that will unfold in the future (maybe**), it’s not being set up nearly as interestingly as it was in the first game.  I don’t know how avoidable this problem was, really, because a lot of the original’s methods were specifically well-suited to the aesthetic and limitations of a Playstation 1 game (no expectation of voice acting for all plot-relevant text, for example), but it doesn’t seem like SquareEnix particularly tried to lessen the Remake’s losses with this, either.











* I mean, Tifa knows, but that’s due to her having already-existing knowledge of some of the past events Cloud speaks of.  She’s not sleuthing it out from any current tells he has.


** Given how long this first chapter took, and SquareEnix’s typical level of competence, I have sincere and, I think, legitimate doubts that FF7 Remake is gonna be completed within my lifetime.

Boyfriend Dungeon's Downloadable Content

Holy shit, is this...is this real?  The RPGenius is making a rant about a game’s DLC while it’s...still actually kind of new?  Insanity.  The world is a madcap maelstrom of chaos and confusion.  These are surely the end times!

Well, it took me the better part of 2 decades, but I've actually managed to come out with an add-on analysis that's both timely, and about a game for which there isn't already a huge amount of media coverage.  Why, the only thing that could keep this rant from being legitimately useful to a prospective customer would be if this DLC were completely free anyway!

...

Goddammit!



Secret Weapons: This add-on’s stated purpose is to add 3 new weapon-people to the game to date (sort of, more on that in a moment), as well as a third dungeon, thereby fulfilling the final responsibilities of Boyfriend Dungeon’s promised rewards on Kickstarter.  And it does, indeed, do this: Jonah the Axe, Leah the Hammer, and Holmes the Whip are all new characters added with this update, as well as the Verona College dungeon.

And Secret Weapons does what it sets out to do just fine.  There is, indeed, a third dungeon to go through, and it...certainly does exist.  Honestly, Verona College is a repetitive, by-the-numbers dungeon that’s more or less indistinguishable from BD’s existing dungeons beyond its college-themed coat of paint.  But on the other hand, really, how much of that isn’t true of most dungeon crawlers’ dungeons, in the end?  Different backgrounds and a few tiny puzzle gimmicks are basically the only thing that separates any given Etrian Odyssey dungeon from the next, for example.  Still, it’s hard not to feel like this one’s an especially noticeable copy-paste of the game’s existing combat arenas.  But hey, it’s there and you can go through it waving an axe around or punching people with a cat or whatever, so promise fulfilled, I guess.

Jonah, Leah, and Holmes are, naturally, the stronger parts of this DLC’s new content.  I like the basis of Jonah’s story, which is his having issues with the fact that he’s a weapon and the inherent implication of violence being a part of his destiny thereof, despite being an extremely peaceful person.  Unfortunately, that story seems to unravel as it proceeds into more vague self-doubts and philosophical musings, enough so that by its end, it feels like Jonah hasn’t really found a conclusion to his story, just to a story.  And why is the dog Mariposa a part of this, anyway?  She comes in out of nowhere, and to me it appears that she’s just a crutch to get Jonah rebounding back to some positivity without the writer(s) having to rely on the narrative tools that were already at hand.  The damn dog comes off as having a greater, more demonstrable influence on Jonah’s story than the actual protagonist does.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess, but I think generally a sequence of conversations meant to show a romance/friendship should have most of the emotional heavy lifting done by the individuals actually engaged in and advancing that relationship.  Still, ultimately Jonah’s a sweetheart and likable enough, so I wouldn’t call him a negative addition to the cast, just neutral.

Leah’s got a less interesting basis than Jonah, just a fairly basic story about career doubts and trying to figure out where what she likes to do, what she finds rewarding to do, and what she morally should do all stand in terms of her career and hobbies, but it’s executed a lot better.  Leah’s character arc doesn’t stray into vague, tangential emotional territory the way Jonah’s does; her story stays on target, and each step of its journey feels like it’s building off the last and progressing to the conclusion.  A conclusion that feels right, and like it arrived generally at the time when it should have, for that matter.  I also buy Leah’s romance with the protagonist a little more, because while she does ultimately come to her own conclusions about what she wants to do with her career and passions, it does feel like the protagonist’s support and input was a significant part of the process of her getting there.  It’s not an amazing romance or anything, but it’s decent enough, and probably my second favorite in Boyfriend Dungeon, behind Valeria’s.*

Holmes is both the best and the most disappointing character added to the game.  Not because you don’t actually get to use them as a weapon (she’s just a dateable boss, basically)--their existence is already a bonus since it was only Jonah and Leah promised by the Kickstarter campaign, so it’s unreasonable to complain about such things.  But she’s disappointing in the fact that you don’t actually get to have a romance with them--while the game gives you the dialogue options to have the protagonist fall in love with her, Holmes themself flat-out rejects amorous intent, only wanting a friendship with the protagonist (albeit one which allows for occasional sex).  I’ll grant you that not every character in the main Boyfriend Dungeon roster was romanceable, either, but Pocket is a goddamn cat, so I feel the situation is different.

Still, while it seems like a dating game’s subjects ought to be romantically dateable in a game all about just that, it’s certainly not a big deal, and really, Holmes’s story probably wouldn’t even translate all that well to a romance anyway.  She does, however, have a pretty good character arc that feels genuine and actually interested me a decent bit--I think I might argue, in fact, that Holmes is the best-written character in the game.  I care a hell of a lot more about a well-constructed character narrative that interests and/or speaks to me than I do about whether or not they’re gonna profess undying love to my OC, so I’m definitely pleased by Holmes’s addition to the cast.

And of course, as a whole, the 3 new characters align well with the overall themes and intent of Boyfriend Dungeon.  All of them are based upon explorations of one’s identity, either within the world (Leah and Holmes) or within oneself (Jonah and Holmes).  None of them feel tacked-on the way characters added to a story after its initial publishing often do (Patty from Tales of Vesperia, Maneha from Pillars of Eternity 1, the whole Ashen Wolf bunch in Fire Emblem 16, etc), not even Holmes, in spite of your not being able to wield them in combat.

Beyond the major intent, though, Secret Weapons also adds a few little bonuses for the player.  1 of them is meeting the fiancee of Jesse, the protagonist’s cousin, and experiencing her and Jesse’s wedding.  It’s fine enough, nothing amazing, but a nice little bit of character development/conclusion for Jesse, who otherwise kinda just got stuck in Tutorial Character limbo.  Of more interest to me, Secret Weapons adds several little conversation meet-ups between the cast in groups of 2 and 3, which pop up on the world map here and there, wherein the protagonist can happen across some of his/her friends/lovers hanging out together and doing their own thing.  They’re nice little slice-of-life glimpses into the characters which round out their personalities and social identities, and generally entertaining.  I like the fact that this expands the cast beyond just being emotional and social attachments to the protagonist (as unfortunately tends to happen to characters in dating games, and sometimes even regular RPGs with wide romance options), and this feature provides a nice little bit of character development all around.  Plus, it’s even functionally positive--these also serve as little reminders of who the game’s characters are and what they’re like, which is useful for a DLC that has come out months after much of the game’s audience last played Boyfriend Dungeon.  Good bonus content, this.

So usually, my intent with an add-on rant is to determine whether the new content is worth what it costs to experience.  But Secret Weapons is actually completely free!  Good on Kitfox Games for that; they consistently behave with ethical integrity and a priority for their art over their profit, and I applaud them for it.  So, since the only way Secret Weapons wouldn’t be worth it would be if it were outright terrible, which I think I’ve made clear it isn’t, let’s wrap this rant up with a different determination.  You may recall that a few months ago, I expressed certain regrets about a general theme of shortcomings that Boyfriend Dungeon suffers from.  So rather than talking about whether Secret Weapons is worth the nonexistent price, let’s instead explore a different question: Does this DLC address and correct the problems I complained of last time about Boyfriend Dungeon?

Well, it does add another dungeon, which helps with the fact that it’s a game called Boyfriend Dungeon that only had 2 dungeons in it.  But even last time, I mentioned that a mere 3 dungeons still seems inadequate for a game that proclaims itself a dungeon-crawler, so that’s still falling somewhat short.  Additionally, said new dungeon unfortunately isn’t any better at developing the protagonist’s character than the previous ones.  And on that note, the protagonist has remained largely unexplored as a whole in this DLC, so that’s a problem that’s continued.

The next shortcoming I noted in the previous rant was that the fact that these characters’ being part person, part weapon seems remarkably unimportant to their personalities and arcs, and I am pleased that Secret Weapons addresses this with Jonah.  His existence as a weapon-person is actually a relevant, explored topic in and founding element of his story, as a guy whose physical nature as an ax is completely at odds with his emotional nature as a man of gentleness.  So that IS good!  But also not enough; we’re still talking about 1 in 10 characters for whom the game’s catch-your-attention premise of being both a person and a weapon actually matters.

Let’s see, what else?  The average romance and story quality as a whole is a bit better with the DLC characters than for the game proper.  They’re not great and certain aspects are subpar, but it’s still a higher positive ratio than before.  And the last point I made last time was that the protagonist’s presence and involvement seemed largely superfluous to most characters’ journeys, coming off like he/she is more just there for the ride than a real participant.  That much is mostly still true of Jonah’s, Holmes’s, and Leah’s stories.

So, then, the final verdict?  Secret Weapons does, indeed, take a few steps further in some of the arenas that Boyfriend Dungeon fell short on.  It provides an additional dungeon, it brings the duality of weapon-humans into question with 1 of the characters it adds, and the quality of the new cast members’ content is better on average than before.  Unfortunately, these few steps are not enough that I feel at all like my established critique of Boyfriend Dungeon doesn’t presently hold up.  Even with Secret Weapons, Boyfriend Dungeon’s major components are all still enjoyable, but noticeably lacking; the game still simply does not go far enough.

But taken on its own merits, as it certainly should be, Secret Weapons is a solid add-on.  If you enjoyed Boyfriend Dungeon--and I’d like to stress again that I did enjoy it and that it is a good RPG, despite the complaints I have raised about it--you’ll almost certainly like Secret Weapons.  It’s definitely worth your time to return to Verona Beach and hit the dating scene again, and as it’ll cost you nothing, there’s no reason not to.  Good work, Kitfox Games!



Alright, another DLC situation that’s really, substantially positive!  And to think, it’s only been a year since I last encountered an add-on that was unequivocally decent.  Why, they’re going to spoil me rotten at this rate.
















* I do have some concern that maybe my own preferences are coloring my opinions on this point, though.  When it was just Valeria I wasn’t worried, but now that my 2 favorite romances in this game are both the women, in a game whose very title makes it clear that it’s men who are the relationship priority, I fear I may not be being as objective as I want and try to be on this.

Tales of Vesperia's Characters

I always enjoy it when I come across a game whose cast is just the right mix of dumb but interesting that they can make 1 of these Characters rants work.  Not as much as I enjoy playing a game whose cast is just actually good, mind you.  But an easy, fun rant is pretty decent compensation, at least.



Yuri: There’s a lot of things that Namco-Bandai wanted Yuri to be memorable for.  The way he represents the darker side of justice, for example.  Or the nuanced character arc of his grappling and coming to terms with the sins he’s committed for the greater good in a world where ideals aren’t enough, all of which Namco-Bandai forgot to actually include in the game, but sure as hell proceeded as though they had.  There’s also the way his flippant and irreverent attitude really wants to be Grandia 2’s Ryudo but can’t even get close, and the way that The Gay just wafts off his body whenever his boy Flynn is around.

Unfortunately, the only thing about Yuri Lowell that will stand the test of time in this player’s mind is the silly-ass way he carries his sword around.  Yes, too “cool” to just keep it hanging at his side or strapped to his back or any other method that would actually guarantee its reliable use, Yuri opts to haul his sword around by hand.  Willy-nilly he runs across the globe for 60 hours of game time, looking like a 5-year-old flaunting the fact that Mommy let him carry 1 of the bags of groceries like a big boy.  Thank heavens every single villain in existence is polite enough to give Yuri time for his little LOOK HOW COOL I AM FELLOW KIDS maneuver of tossing the weapon up, catching it, and throwing the sheathe aside before they attack him.


Repede: Remember that little feature in Dragon Age 1 where you could have your dog pee on a landmark in each map to mark his territory?  Remember how it was a slightly funny and enjoyable little feature?  Well, ToV’s developers don’t know jack shit about the concept of subtlety, because they decided that if a light touch of the doggy piddle joke was mildly funny, then hitting the player with the force of a fucking train with it would surely therefor be hilarious.  Thank you, Tales of Vesperia, for making the 1 and only sidequest that revolves around the already-desperate-for-character-development Repede a long, frustrating trek to fucking drown the globe in urine.


Flynn: This character was basically created with the sole purpose of making Yuri look good.  That, and yaoi-baiting...which is arguably just part of the first duty anyway.


Estelle: Estelle has a role and matching personality of Extremely Stereotypical Plot-Crucial Magical Girl, and a “Who am I and what do I want for my life?” character arc so halfhearted and uncompelling that I now realize that what I thought was a crappy version of it in Alisha’s DLC from the later Tales of Zestiria actually represents a huge improvement for Namco-Bandai’s writers.  It doesn’t add up to a very interesting or memorable character, and unlike Yuri, she can’t fall back on a try-hard failure to be cool by carrying her weapon around in a little sling like she’s trying to rock it to sleep.  As a result, probably the most interesting thing about Estelle is that, as a princess who approaches a rogue running amok in her castle and requests that he kidnap her so that she can obtain the freedom she needs to meet with and assist an important political figure on the side of good, she was the first of many indications to me that the creators of Tales of Vesperia were prone to softly plagiarizing Final Fantasy 9 here and there.


Rita: You know those Star Trek engineers whose primary role in the story is to spout a bunch of vague, entirely made-up techno-babble vocabulary as a way of explaining what’s going on without actually explaining anything at all?  Rita’s basically what would happen if you made 1 of them a violent tsundere.


Raven: The fact that Raven isn’t the worst case I’ve seen of a spontaneous betrayal with transparently inadequate rationale for the sole purpose of artificially stirring drama because the writers had no idea what else to do at that point means that the writers of Tales of Vesperia owe a deep debt to The Last Story.


Karol: Real talk?  Karol should’ve been the protagonist of this game.  He gets more in-depth AND more varied character development than anyone else in the cast, said development actually is fairly sensibly paced and explored in general, part of his character arc is his coming to terms with his worth as a leader and how to enact his ideals of justice, and while his character arcs certainly are influenced by his interactions with his companions (as they should be), the writers didn’t have to invent an entire other-side-of-the-coin character like Flynn to make any part of Karol’s personal journey work.  Karol absolutely has a multi-faceted character arc more suited to being protagonist than anything Yuri can present.  All that, and he doesn’t carry his weapon like some stupid dork hauling his suitcase as he hurries to make a train that’s about to leave.


Judy: Oh, NO!  We created an appealing character that engages the player and interacts with the rest of the cast in a way which both draws out their better traits and highlights how likable this person is...but we accidentally made this person a woman!  Quick!  Undercut every single thing about her by putting her in a bikini and having the lecherous old guy hit on her all the time!  This is Tales of Vesperia; we can’t have a female with a personality!


Patty: Good LORD do I wish this kid would blink more often.


Alexei: Oh goody, a villain who’s evil for the sake of being evil because the plot said he was evil.  Don’t have enough of them in RPGs already.  Don’t have enough of them in the Tales of series already.  Don’t have enough of them in this game already.


Duke: As bad as the franchise’s original villain Dhaos was, Alexei and Duke are even worse because they’re basically just Dhaos split in half.  Alexei is the part of Dhaos which was generic diabolical grandstanding and roundabout, inefficient world-conquest schemes, while Duke is the half of Dhaos that’s a completely inadequate, tacked-on-right-at-the-end, undeveloped sob-story motivation for his villainous deeds.  Yeah yeah, humanity isn’t fucking perfect, boo hoo hoo, an entire planet’s worth of human beings don’t all change their minds and habits overnight, I had a bad meal in a Taco Bell once so now I’m gonna nuke Mexico, blah blah blah get fucking over it you whiny prick.  Jesus Christ RPG villains suck.

But I still give Duke a partial pass.  Because as shitty as his lost-faith-in-humanity schtick is, it’s still possible that it was, in some small way, a progenitor for Artorius of the later Tales of Berseria’s extremely skillful and successful use of the same villain basis.  Yes, I know that’s a bit of a stretch, but I gotta be honest with you: most Tales of games are a hell of a lot more tolerable for me when I view them through the lens of being nothing more than fumbling practice runs for the eventual excellence of Tales of Berseria.