idiotically i am now playing the original PSX #FF7 and oh my GOD it's not my imagination how much more fun Cloud is in this version? his fourth or fifth line is doing a backflip, striking a pose and then hitting on Barret
Barret comes off a lot harder here, with Wedge asking about the money and him thumping the crate to shut him up. In OG, I get the impression the reason AVALANCHE are in awe of Cloud is because he stands up to people they don't have the guts to #FF7
(god, I'll accept the darker Cloud from Remake so long as they don't walk back all his character development for Part 2. One of the biggest pangs of nostalgia I got from it was the part in The Drum where he's suddenly talking earnestly about 'Hojo's twisted creations')
but yeah, I'm not so sure the other AVALANCHE members in OG are true believers. Wedge, at minimum, is there as a mercenary too #ff7
the tramp on the train is cut in Remake, which is a shame because I always felt very sad about him in this game. Especially when he gives you the Phoenix Down and says 'if I die in the gutter, use this to revive me' #ff7
Wedge: "Some day, AVALANCHE is gonna be famous! And me, too!" Really get the sense he's some naive, insecure kid Barret is stringing along, which explains again why he feels kinship with Cloud (also naive and insecure, but able to fake coolness) #ff7
OG Wedge only talks about his weight once (and it's less that He Likes Food and more that he loves Tifa's cooking specifically, which is what he says made him fat). god i'm trying not to be a grognard but. GOD #ff7
Biggs literally dreams of being able to stand up to Barret, sleeptalking about calling him out on his ego #ff7
Cloud in the original is a rude cocky asshole but ultrasincere at the flip of a switch, which throws everyone... 'a floating city. Pretty unsettling scenery.' God they really did Advent Children up Remake but add some jokes #ff7
fucking rules for you to really bond with a particular character and then every single one of their later appearances is the creators going 'uh, no, we didn't mean to do that, that was wrong. this is much better (block of wood is presented)' #ff7
fortunately i bonded with FF7 as a fandom early enough in my life it became my defining attitude to what 'canon' is, which is - I literally don't care, none of this happened anyway, my Cloud is a spontaneous, posey asshole who doesn't brood enough
some day i am going to make a hit JRPG game with the original Cloud, change enough to make it legally distinct, and finally i will be avenged
i mean, this is not to say that changing the way characters are in adaptations is bad. The Remake Cloud is the best Cloud since the original, and the story goes out of its way to explain the changes in his character at least
it's just, like... seriously you could have let him emote just a little. flip his hair once. like come on
Biggs complains about Cloud's personality and then begs Cloud not to tell Barret what he just said about him, which suggests that in the PSX version, Barret was the one pushing for Cloud's involvement against the wishes of the juniors. In Remake it's the other way around #ff7
also just other little choices, like Marlene's quietness around Cloud is because she's 'a little shy' when in Remake it's because he's SCARY #ff7
Remake never lets Cloud into the basement, which I think is to reinforce his detachment from the group... but I always liked the basement hall a lot as a set. Barret's whiteboard is funny #ff7
But at the same time seeing Barret abusing his men the way he does in this in HD would be absolutely impossible to imagine a sympathetic character doing. And the general cartoonish "poor villainy" of the slums is uhh Problematic after Remake made it into a community #ff7
why does this
seem like it fucks and not this
seem like it fucks and not this
Remake Cloud has a silent panic attack at the idea of talking to a pretty girl but OG Cloud would barge in through the doors, do a neg that's just straight up insulting the girl, and somehow still end up in bed with her (where he would have a panic attack and a mental breakdown)
I think I enjoy more the idea of Cloud seeming assured and breaking - but i think the brooding Cloud works better for Remake in itself, with the more realistic treatment of his trauma
Because in Remake you're missing the back end of the story - the original doesn't really give him a full arc in Midgar. He definitely goes from not caring to caring a bit, but since it's so linked to his chivalry towards Aerith it's not a huge change #ff7
Meanwhile in Remake it sort of gets him up to speed almost with where he is by the beginning of the original. When you see Remake Cloud finally mounted on the Hardy Daytona, spooking goons, smirking while hitting on Rufus, that's basically where PSX Cloud starts #ff7
The other thing is that Cloud's attitude in PSX is very much an allegory for his youthfulness, the trauma something he's holding back, while the Remake Cloud is someone who is internally paralysed with trauma trying just to get back to the stage of being functional #ff7
i definitely don't want to make this into a Remake vs OG thread because they're both very good games and both are also very flawed! but if you're playing Remake and love it you owe yourself to check out the OG and view it in the context of its era!
In OG, the teenage Cloud has a similar headstrong personality to the adult - "....I probably won't be able to come back to this town for a while." Remake puts the emphasis on making the teen Cloud feel like a totally different person to the adult version #ff7
the way the teen Cloud gets up and climbs to the top of the water tower to strike a pose, then repeatedly says 'what?' as Tifa gives him the romantic hints... Cloud of the OG wasn't traumatised into his affectations by Nibelheim's destruction, but by what went before that #ff7
if you think about it, the big reveal about who the real Cloud is really focuses on him trying to recall his early childhood, and the reason why he started to feel and think the way he did. Figuring out the mystery of Sephiroth's death follows from that after #ff7
having the ultimate formative thing that happened in Cloud's life be his mother getting murdered and the five years of torture he endured is the more obvious and dramatic choice, though. I am curious to see how Remake adapts it, with its theme of childhood war indoctrination #ff7
marlene tending the bar is a choice I am glad Remake did not make #ff7
Marlene is written much, much better in Remake overall. she actually feels like a realistic child #ff7
Johnny's Dad asks Cloud where he comes from. I told him 'Who cares?' and he gave a speech about how, wherever Cloud is from, his hometown will always be there for him 💀💀💀 #ff7
is there a subplot with Johnny's kid brother trying to work up the courage to talk to Marlene? #ff7
well one of Cloud's lines in the Beginner's Hall is a racially insensitive comment about Barret. #ff7
Remake does do a really good job adapting the tone of the other AVALANCHE members (while tactfully cutting out the subplot about Barret abusing them) - the scene of them stealing civilian clothes on the train is a nice bit of knockabout comedy, like Remake C4 #ff7
mum came in and said 'it didn't look like this when you were playing it before. why are they all pixelly' #ff7
Dad: "THIS was what you used to play all the time? It looked like this? ... I remember it looking, I don't know, more." #ff7
I used to be a sort of 'I don't want a Remake, the original is fine as it is' person but now I'm just very disappointed that Remake is going as far off the rails as it is because I have been so comprehensively Owned by playing this after Remake #ff7
i'm not even saying, like, I don't fully respect the way games in the context of their time can be groundbreaking. but after Remake this comes off almost like a parody. I've already said I much prefer the funnier, more rogueish Cloud, but other than that... #ff7
playing VIIR is like being in molasses, taking an hour and a half to get past a dungeon made of one screen. playing VIIPSX after that becomes like reading a chain of tweets. The rooftop walk with Aerith in Remake is just sighingly gorgeous, you fall for her immediately #FF7
I'm gratified by the little laugh you get here, which you don't get in the Remake... but also it's just so perfunctory. You lose almost all of Aerith's sense of humour and Reno is much nastier, while somehow also more trivial. #FF7
there's a little thing that is a Very 90s JRPG thing that threw me off in VI as well, when human adversaries become monstrous foes. I'd thought VII had got past that, but you still get things like Aerith being attacked by MPs who turn out to be two Bloodhounds #FF7
I've always held the magic of the original VII is that it lives in your head but can it even actually live there any more? Other than some plot logic/momentum issues and some Character Choices I Would Not Have Made, Remake sees what VII is hinting at and goes for it #FF7
Is the reason it has such high stakes for me that, because so many people had such different interpretations of it, I was forced to defend my own? And then it becomes a part of Me that I am defending #FF7
i'm just saying, VI fans, you don't actually want Your One given the treatment My One god. it's a 23 year plan to give everyone quarter-life crises (if not mental breakdowns). do not fucking flinch #ff7
i 100% don't want people to read this like I'm saying VII is old, dated, or that so much of the stuff that makes Remake so great isn't stuff that was lurking under the skin of VII but never expressed as clearly, that all Remake had to do was take seriously and not wreck #ff7
I miss the humour of VIIPSX, but it's not really 'humor', in the same way as if they'd tried to make something that is a purposeful comedy. It's funny because it's easier to do funny with the tools they had at the time. Games of this era all had that faint veneer of humour #ff7
there's a thing that happens with these kinds of games where you kind of get your 'eye in' for them - the point where you stop agreeing to laugh at Locke's cartoony little sprite and instead sympathise with the pain of the loss of his love #ff7
but even when i try and get my 'eye in' for the massive world VII is implying with its gorgeous, pre-rendered backgrounds, it comes across as weirdly empty and sociopathic, all the terrorists being eager and peppy to murder people #ff7
I last played VIIPSX when I was about 20, 21 - roughly Cloud's age. I don't remember having any of these problems with it - I remember enjoying it as a good old game. But now, I keep hitting these walls of embarrassment. The weird pacing and incapable abstractions #ff7
In Remake I can find Cloud leaving me cold by his brooding sadness, and say 'in the original he's much more fun'. but also the Cloud of the original is Clumsily Sexist In The Sense That It's To Teach Him A Lesson About Sexism and Aerith, bless her, is too vague to compete #ff7
I'm not usually interested in whether media is good or not but.................... I feel almost duped. Not in the sense of 'losing nostalgia goggles', but in the sense of just not knowing why it was This. Because it's always been This, never anything else. Why? #ff7
some things about Tifa that bugged me ever since I was a kid was 1) why does she have a slot machine theme considering she doesn't have any gambling themes at all and isn't much of a chaotic person? 2) her being so weak compared to Cloud and Barret in battle #ff7
how to not have a mental breakdown??????????? #ff7
i'm probably going to need a lot of therapy but my best explanation is that FF7 pushed so many people into the sort of crazed online fandom it created because it is INTENDED to do that. It is always fundamentally an adapted work. The real FF7 Remake is In You, All Along #ff7
so yeah it took 3 hours with my favourite video game ever made, that I think of myself as being well aware of the limitations of, for me to wish someone would drop down from the ceiling and shove a nodachi through my praying chest
i guess i'll just post some more thoughts about Brooding Cloud vs Comedy Cloud: Some of the stuff that happens to Cloud is so horrible I hate it, because any attempt to deal with it in an emotionally empathetic way derails him as a character who's meant to be fun #ff7
I'm thinking particularly of his five years in his tank - VIIPSX skips past it (it has to - it was missing from the Japanese version and optional in this!) but once you have that it's like, how is this guy even THAT functional? #ff7
