“What are you playing?” my wife asks me.
“Final Fantasy VII Remake,” I reply.
“Oh. Is that the crying game?”
She is saying this because once, in 1997, she found me sitting in front of the TV in tears. I was playing the original Final Fantasy VII, and I was crying because of “that” moment. If you played the game, you know what I am talking about. If not, then I won’t spoil it because it’s probably still the most emotional moment in my life as a gamer. I don’t normally cry, because I am Scottish. Our tear ducts are removed at birth. Our parents deep fry them and we have to eat it. It is the weirdest ritual in the world. I didn’t even cry when my kids were born, and they had THEIR tear ducts removed.
“Why have they remade it?” my wife asks.
Good question. Remakes, reboots and reimaginings are simply different words for “cash grab”, relied upon by those lacking imagination to innovate. Occasionally there’s a Battlestar Galactica, but they’re mostly Godzillas. This is why I delayed playing Final Fantasy VII Remake for so long. I didn’t want to feel betrayed.
It started well. The opening scenes are so graphically dazzling I feel like Grandad being shown the internet. Cloud in particular looks beautiful. His hair is the stuff of dreams: dazzling colour, perfect length and crazy sticky-outedness, and we finally have the technology to fully render his epic cargo/ski pants. Padded to protect you from falls, insulated from the cold and with multiple pockets for weapons, cereal bars and Kobo eReaders. Total trouser perfection.
Now I am a 2020s Dad rather than a 1990s lad, I worry about that sword. It’s impractically huge. How can he walk properly? It’s only a matter of time before it tears those magnificent trousers, and I will be crying again.
Because there is a lot of walking in this game. A lot of slow walking. I hate that in games, just as I hate it in supermarkets or high streets. A level where you pick flowers with Aerith took so long I had to shave halfway through it. A duct-crawling section in the third-last level of the game offers no jeopardy whatsoever. Just crawling. Slowly. From A to B. There is a road-based level early in the proceedings that is tedious, but not as tedious as when they repeat it as the penultimate challenge in the whole game.
Sewer levels are chronically repetitive. If I wanted to spend what feels like 40 days and nights in sewers, I’d sell it as some weird reality TV show. The Train Graveyard Ghost Story chapter is so bloated I suspect it’s been force-fed magic bloat sweets by Willy Wonka in an attempt to make the gaming world’s first foie gras. These make the game play like a tortoise weighed down by a lifetime of bad decisions. There’s more filler here than the cheapest dog food.
Some things work. There is a scene about The Ancients that is beautiful. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying they are people who were here before, who did before-type things before the current inhabitants ruined everything. That idea is an old trope, but it is told via rare good writing, and the graphics make it truly poetic.
But otherwise, the dialogue is hackneyed claptrap with guff like the following:
“If we decide to go, we’ll be changing more than fate, we’ll be changing ourselves!”
“It’s our destiny to defeat destiny!”
“That which lies ahead does not yet exist!”
Why did this impress me in 1997? The lip syncing is also pants. And, if we are playing Cliche Bingo, then check off “Game ends with a mad scientist cackling” too.
The new combat system is fun, though, and the Elementals you summon are the most exciting graphics I have seen in a game. They are so effervescent, the screen itself seems to fizz and catch fire, although I was playing during not one but TWO retinal surgeries so perhaps it was that.
I still don’t understand why big baddie Sephiroth is doing what he is doing. That’s not necessarily a problem. I also don’t understand the bad guys in most Marvel movies. But these movies move at such pace I don’t have time to question it before the next flashy thing gets shoved before my formerly healthy eyes.
And then … in the middle of a raging ultimate battle, Square Enix let loose. They tease that moment. The bastards. I know now that I will play the forthcoming second part just to see it, in spite of hateplaying this for 52 hours, 12 minutes and 44 seconds (I did all the side quests).
They could have trimmed one third from this game easily. But then they wouldn’t have their three-part epic. Or that 3x multiplier buff on their cashgrab stat.
I was playing to see if I could make an emotional connection with the remake, just as I did with the original in the 90s. And it did make me feel something – but this time it was a different kind of sadness.
