Advent Children ruined the legacy of FF7. It took this story and characters that I connected with due to its deeper themes of identity, courage to be yourself, self acceptance, environmentalism, civil disobedience, etc and just turned the whole thing into a cartoony farce. Man was I conflicted as a teen watching AC and being desperate to spend more time in this world with these characters yet realizing the whole point of the movie was to build up to a lame, anime matrix wuxia flying through the air cutting buildings in half bullshit boss battle of a climax.
I think I’ve said this before on one of your blogs but I can’t stand the anime influence on JRPGs and Japanese games broadly of this era. I mean, maybe that subtext was always there but before voiced dialogue I did not read the game text in my head with all those stereotypical anime voices and inflections. Low res sprites and early 3D graphics did not allow characters to be animated with cartoony body language that doesn’t translate culturally at all. Technology limitations did not allow overly long self indulgent cutscenes with embarrassing dialogue and direction. And of course, Square didn’t have the money or arrogance for these franchise cheapening vanity projects. I agree with you that this was the rot at the core of Square ever since their merger with Enix in the early 2000s and the departure of Sakaguchi up to about...their acquisition of Eidos a few years back?
I really enjoyed FF7 remake but the last couple hours after escaping Shinra HQ when they Nomura gets dialed up to 11 almost ruined the game for me.
@lazyaza: The original English dub used mostly non-professional voice actors who were chosen, by Yu Suzuki for their resemblance to the characters. Not making that up. Looks like they got the same guy back after all these years.l. Honestly it would be more jarring and less “Shenmue-y” at this point if they fixed it. The Japanese voiceovers are actually good though.
Also, a lot of the dialogue follows Japanese speech patterns, that’s why you get a lot of repeated information, ie I’m looking for some thugs. Some thugs? Metal Gear is notorious for that as well.
As a Shenmue fan since 99, I’m so thankful this game finally got made. This is akin to Half-Life ep III coming out after all these years. It’s definitely not for everyone but if you’re a fan of adventure games, Japanese/Chinese culture, martial arts, and light simulators then this is the niche ass series for you. I’m personally looking forward to picking this up along with the re release of the 1-2 and reliving my childhood.
The story of the VC games are basically alt-history WWII. With an off-putting amount of anime mixed in starting with VC2. Yes, the Darcsens are basically the Jewish people of the VC universe, yes they are horribly discriminated against. That’s kind of the point.
@frytup: Agreed, it made him look even worse. Not sure if Cory actually doesn’t understand why it’s problematic because he seems to be a workaholic himself or if he genuinely wants to hear another viewpoint but his asking “why do you care about this issue” and responding (very Kratos-like) to Jason’s arguments with sounds of annoyance/dismissal was weirdly at odds with the learned, mature persona he otherwise presents.
If you haven’t heard already Kotaku’s version of this interviews presses him harder on his crunch comments. Relevant part starts at 45:00 check it out here https://kotaku.com/what-s-next-for-god-of-war-1825694347/amp
Wow, lots of haters up in here. Just finished the game yesterday, outstanding experience. The only thing I want is more. I wanted to kick all the Norse gods' asses a la God of War III, especially with all the foreshadowing for an eventual showdown with Thor. I'm really looking forward to DLC and sequels.
@robo: I spent two hours last night listenting to Atreus say “whatever” all angsty every time I pressed square. Edit: I think having the kid speak like a typical modern day American kid is a lazy aural shorthand for the audience to be like, oh this is a normal kid and he’s cool and I’m supposed to like him and he’s our audience surrogate in this weird fantasy world I can relate to him, even if you didn’t notice (but your brain did).
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