When Final Fantasy 7 Remake was first announced, I was overwhelmed with excitement like many were at the time. The mythical remake was finally going to happen, and its announcement trailer couldn't have looked better. Once the game finally came out to generally great critical and commercial success, however, I held off on buying it. You see, Final Fantasy 7 is an unassailable classic of the genre for me, and one that still very much holds up today. All of the footage of the remake that I'd seen by the time of release kind of put me off to wanting to play it because the overall tone of what I was seeing seemed a bit off from how I think of the original. As weird as it sounds, I didn't want to play the remake and allow for its different style and increased fidelity to subconsciously "replace" FF7 in my mind in the same way that a poor film adaptation of one's favorite book can sort of overwrite your conception of characters and events after having seen it.
Well, for whatever reason I decided to pick up the PS5 version of FF7R recently, and while I'm enjoying this newer, more bombastic take on FF7 I can't help but feel that its depiction of Midgar just feels strange to me.
I'm only a few hours in, mind you, but my general impression of Midgar in FF7R is that it feels quite different in terms of atmosphere from how I perceived the city in the original. I think this feeling stems from a few key differences in how the remake presents Midgar in the opening hours:
Aside from those factors many areas of the city look really spot-on, now sporting tons of added detail that brings them to life in a way that the fixed-perspective pre-rendered backgrounds never could have. As I spend time killing rats and doing other busywork that was never a thing in the original, I just couldn't help but want to put this particular thought into writing to see if others felt the same.
This is by no means a thread meant to shit on FF7R. It took balls to even attempt remaking the Midgar portion of such a seminal classic, and there's no way that they could've ever made this thing perfect to everyone. In many ways they absolutely killed it on the remake front. I just need to treat this as a sort of alternate take on a familiar story rather than a new-and-improved, definitive version of one of my favorite JRPG's of all time.
Well, for whatever reason I decided to pick up the PS5 version of FF7R recently, and while I'm enjoying this newer, more bombastic take on FF7 I can't help but feel that its depiction of Midgar just feels strange to me.
I'm only a few hours in, mind you, but my general impression of Midgar in FF7R is that it feels quite different in terms of atmosphere from how I perceived the city in the original. I think this feeling stems from a few key differences in how the remake presents Midgar in the opening hours:
- The NPC's - This is the big one for me. Just what the hell are these Midgar citizens? Whether it be in the slums or up on the plate, everyone looks like a randomly generated Abercrombie & Fitch model. Hell, they sound like one too. The idle chatter that I hear when walking past throngs of people who are supposed to be living in this oppressive cyberpunk world sounds like a bunch of broskies shooting the breeze at a local sports bar. And they all seem to be sporting super clean, preppy attire and precisely styled hair. Even kids kickin' fucking cans in Sector 5 are rocking immaculate undercut fades. I just can't reconcile these Midgar denizens with how my mind filled in the blanks for the blocky, low-poly ones in the original.
- The Music - Don't get me wrong. Some of the newly recorded arrangements of the classic tracks sound great, but I do think that there was a darker, more oppressive atmosphere conveyed by the original's MIDI tracks. The new versions in FF7R all tend to be very orchestral and oftentimes bombastic, which sometimes adds a sense of grandiosity to areas that originally felt sad and mysterious. I don't think this aspect is as easily perceivable as the barista-chic NPC's, but I do think it's contributing to the sense that FF7R's Midgar is just not the same as how I've always seen the original's backdrop in my mind's eye.
Aside from those factors many areas of the city look really spot-on, now sporting tons of added detail that brings them to life in a way that the fixed-perspective pre-rendered backgrounds never could have. As I spend time killing rats and doing other busywork that was never a thing in the original, I just couldn't help but want to put this particular thought into writing to see if others felt the same.
This is by no means a thread meant to shit on FF7R. It took balls to even attempt remaking the Midgar portion of such a seminal classic, and there's no way that they could've ever made this thing perfect to everyone. In many ways they absolutely killed it on the remake front. I just need to treat this as a sort of alternate take on a familiar story rather than a new-and-improved, definitive version of one of my favorite JRPG's of all time.
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