Quick Look: Final Fantasy VII Remake

is cloud wearing jinkos

The salt from fans of the original will be glorious. Happy this game is doing well. Never bad to get good games. Also happy they cut it in parts to ensure quality over quantity. The original game is too big to be made with this fidelity in the same amount of time. This isn't a short 6-hour resident evil game with reusable assets from a proprietary engine for resident evil 7 with tons of reused assets. Internet vitriol over this game made me lose hope and Im, not even a fan. FF9 all day.

Braddu, the lock on on the kid! :) This looks like a mixture of Crisis Core & FF XIII, with the realtime combat / timingbased dodging and the stagger mechanic.

Ben was talking about the parry materia that gives you an active parry, and Crisis Core had active materia like that as well, such as the Jump materia or the Gil Toss.

Graphically this looks very pretty at times, but there are also times where you're standing next to this fence and it's the blurriest fence in fenceworld. And what the hell is going on with Housemother's lips contorting around as she speaks? The materia being visible in the buster sword is a nice touch.

The audio seems heavily out of sync , but given the circumstances it's understandable i guess.

i'd prefer just a classic JRPG remake without all the modern FF mechanics, which I think kinda suck, but it looks like they're at least doing it well if they're doing it this way. i probably won't buy it for a long time but i'm also not salty like ... uh, everyone else seems to be

The game is certainly pretty, but there are issues. There are horribly low textures in many places, the secondary characters look a major step down from the main characters (which is fine to be honest). At least that's what I've seen so far. I saw a pipe in one area that literally looked like it was from the PS1 original it was so low res lol

Except this game also has padding and other things that somehow make it seemed rushed despite the seemingly long development time. It doesn't come across as "quality over quanity" - it feels more like what the Sony-paid-us-to-keep-it-off-other-platforms says -> short term thinking and what will always been long term monetary/etc expense.

At any rate, I never played the first one, and I think it will be rather easy to see how it goes over the years and just perhaps get it some time in the future.

Anyway - based on fanboy logic, that 87 meta means it's a failure.

just can't wait to hear that main theme music again

The original FF7 is my favorite game of all time. It was a transformative experience for me back when it came out. I’m not going to watch this until I get the game and am well into it to avoid spoilers. It is a shame no one on the GiantBomb team was ever really into FF7 for the original PlayStation. It sounds like Jason was really into FF6 while Brad and Ben were into FF8, but no one really got into 7. However, it is a relief the remake is garnering so much positive reviews. I genuinely want FF7 to be made accessible to a new generation of players as well as people who missed it the first time around.

This looks great, haters be damned

@robertforster: Brad & Ben were really into FF8? That's news to me!

I think Brad mostly stopped caring about Final Fantasy after they went 3d. I'm not sure if Ben touched a psx final fantasy game given that he was a nintendo kid.

Thar be audio desync in them hills.

@onemanarmyy: I don’t know about heavily, but I think I heard them talk about FF8 in a excited way on at least one occasion.

@onemanarmyy: Brad is a huge fan of FF6. And, i remember him saying something about loving the mechanics of FFXIII if only the game around the mechanics wasn't terrible.

I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since FF8's release, and this has me tickled in a way that I just haven't been in a long time.

So.... PC when?

@wowzerzz: Yeah that sounds more like i remember it. He's right about FFXIII too, the combat in that can be very fun , especially if you throw a staggered enemy in the air and then time your party attacks to keep him up there throughout the duration of the bar :) Hopefully there's some good aerial stuff in this game too, because the stagger mechanic does allow for that in theory.

Everything looks as expected so far both good and bad. Graphic looks good enough although not quite the powerhouse Square is known for, but looking like that Unreal alright.

Love the expansion on areas and the exploring, the characters dialog and story beat.

Early reveal of Sephiroth is expected, but not too welcome really. Will see how that plays out eventually in the grand scheme of things.

Gameplay however looks doubtful. Still not too hot on the stagger mechanics even though they have tried so many times, too much time sink. Knock downs continue to be the bane of the player's existence, and way too cheap and cheesy. The focus on movement and positioning when you only have full control of one character is bound to have a bad roll or two, quick reset to the rescue once again a la 13. Ben mentioned the lack of grinding spots also doesn't sound good. This definitely looks like one of the most action-oriented FF, doesn't even have the auto dodge of 15 it seems.

Will settle with waiting for the PC version I guess.

@benpack The black cape guys are from the original. For Reunion.

Sure, the stagger mechanic from Sekiro. That works as a reference if you have no experience with Final Fantasy XIII. Otherwise I would say that the stagger mechanic is basically that from FF XIII, which was a FInal Fantasy game I actually liked a lot more than most fans seemed to.

From playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo I got the feeling that it's a mix of Final Fantasy XIII, XV and Crisis Core.

Cloud used to be a soldier!

The audio is super off sync that's for sure

Also Ben is Wrong, this is the infamous 'This guy are sick' from sector 5. He's a Sephiroth Clone, a concept from the original game. He has a '2' also tattoo'd to them.

PC port when ... those graphics need to be played at 4k max settings because daaamn

@steveurkel: in a year, thanks to Sony and Square

@rayne117: I'd cut them some slack given the situation.

This needs to be released on pc, those textures are bad.

Oh, they kept the black cape people?

And they mentioned Reunion? Ok, I'm more in now. They're using the more subtle elements of the original at least.

@topcyclist:

7 is my GOAT and I'm excited by this. It's also being received really well from old fans who have played it so not much salt thankfully.

The black cloak guy was in the original. It's characterised differently but there are several of them through the game.

This looks great. Kind of lamenting now that I never upgraded to a PS4 Pro given the news of the 4K support. Oh well. Here's hoping my time with it isn't mired by constant FOMO.

Never played more than the opening 30-40 minutes of the original game. Always wanted to try and get through it, but its look and feel have just aged so poorly that I immediately bounce off every time. Without the nostalgia for it that fans have, it just can't hold my attention. Maybe after I play through this (even if it isn't the whole story) I'll get the inspiration and motivation I've been seeking to power through - will be really fascinating to compare the differences.

always held out hope that Aerith wasn't canon. #teamAeris

Weirdest snowboarding game ever

Look at these friggin HD towns. Square-Enix did the impossible.

@langdon_alger: Yeah, she's not human, but definitely not a cannon. Junon on the other hand, is a cannon.

This looks/sounds great. I had no major expectations. I made it somewhat into disc 2, and don't remember much. I'm definitely interested in this more now. Looks like a nice fantasy getaway.

Between seeing the game at friends' houses back in the day and watching random streams or speedruns of this, I've probably seen all of FF7, but somehow never actually played through the whole thing myself. Though despite the lack of nostalgia (and general preference for the SNES/PS2-on FFs over the PS1 ones), I really enjoyed the demo and am looking forward to playing through this.

Oh man, when people see the ending... Purists' heads are gonna burst.

Yeah, the cloaked guys are absolutely in the original (as well as the heavy-handed suggestion that they're tied to Sephiroth). They don't show up until much later, so it makes sense that they'd cut them in earlier since you won't get much further than Midgar in this game

With what they did to the story of this game, calling it a remake is straight up false advertising. It's like Kojima trying to make people think that Solid Snake was the main character of MGS2 back in the day before the game came out. It's pretty messed up.

Sakaguchi was the reason the original was beloved. Nomura really Nomura'd the hell out of this game, and it is really worse off for it.

Ben saying "DMC it up" is exactly what I think of when I think about the combat of FF7, so much nostalgia for the DMC-style combat of the PS1 classic Final Fantasy 7

I definitely just pre-ordered based on this QL. I wasn't way into FFVII when it first came out (Legend of Dragoon, yes please!), but did play through it during one of the re-releases on PS3(?) and enjoyed it.

This looks awesome, and super glad there's apparently 50-60+ hours of content just in this release.

Oooh only a couple more days... I can't wait to play it, looks like a great accompaniment to the main game.

@theimmortalbum: By all accounts it's really more like 30/40 hours to do everything, still plenty long enough but just fyi.

nah, i'm good

The black cloaked guys were 100% in the original game

I think the crucial element to enjoying the OG FF7 was being 11~, which I was when I first played it. Despite developing slightly better taste since then, I can't resist the nostalgia this is bringing up.

The game audio is really out of sync. there's battle noises still happening when brad pauses time

@topcyclist: Well, a vocal minority of the fans of the original. Nobody comes to the internet to say they like things.

Loved the original, loved the demo and can't wait for friday.

It's insane to me that they still haven't talked about what the plan is for the rest of the game.

I keep thinking of new theories of why...

1. They just don't know yet, they're not far enough into production

2. They know, but they don't want to commit to it publicly -- because they want to see what the reaction is to this first part and be able to adjust the scope of the remaining parts or cancel those altogether if this part does poorly.

3. Maybe they're not talking about subsequent parts because those will be for PS5 -- and in general publishers aren't ready to reveal stuff about games for new consoles.

Any other ideas? :)

Yeah. Internet screams of lack of devs trying to make things they have passion in instead of cash grab generic shooters and military tuff guys doing tuff guy stuff ect. Then we get games like control, outer wilds, etc and people yell that the games are weird or something. We get a passion project (it is a passion project regardless if its popular and a remake) and we tell devs to rush it out and do the bare remake without changing a thing even though they want to take thier time and expand or flesh the story out. In the end no one misses out. Angry internet people can wait till its all out like Hitman others can enjoy it as it comes along. All this anger will cause rushed product after big execs hear the kids dont like it.

That is some outstanding hair tech. Not a backhanded compliment to the rest of the game shown here, mind - it's just really cool to see.

Also really cool? Putting these Quick Looks together under the circumstances. Thank you, Brad, Jan and Ben for keeping us entertained and informed!

Exactly. Seeing the actual combat for the first time now, made me lose any interest in this game. I was kind of sad when they dropped the turn based style, but in the demo it seemed like it was turned into a fun action game, and the rest of the team also actually helped out when you were not in direct control making them feel like actual team mates instead of puppets just waiting to be told what to do. But now it seems they are pretty much useless when you are not telling them what to do or controlling them. And adding to that it's turned in to some hyper fast action game you need fast reflexes for, pattern recognition, stagger systems,.... making things as hard as possible instead of fun. Maybe they should have gone all the way and added complicated combos, air moves and a fucking score system after each battle. And the only other option is to play it in baby-mode without any challenge whatsoever. What's wrong with making a game fun AND challenging?

I like Dark Souls games, I like playing DOOM on Ultra Violence, I don't mind games giving me a hard time, when they are games that revolve around gameplay. FF revolves around story, characters and spectacular combat (with summons you could actually use!). Not about making it hard just for the heck of it. For me this system makes about as much sense as turning it into an FPS.

I usually don't mind if a game is "not my thing", cause there are plenty of other games that I like. But I'll make an exception for this remake. I hope it does poorly so they reevaluate the combat system completely for the next games. Maybe I'll give it a shot when it's out on PC and someone mods the combat to be fun.