Quick Look: Final Fantasy VII [Switch]

@jjweatherman: No dumbass, just the one that used a slur in 1997 in an attempt to be edgy.

@jjweatherman: The word shouldn't be there, and none of what you're talking about is applicable in this case. Debate is hard though, I get it.

FF7 is one of the better 3D FFs, but worse than most of the 2D ones.

@vinny You may have been thinking of "Fabula Nova Crystallis" which was the collection of FF13 bullshit.

The collection of FF7 bullshit was more boringly called "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII".

@dastardry said:

No, I don't. And even if I did, I'd still say that treating a group of human beings with respect is more important than being nice to a Pokemon. I get that you're making a joke and don't mean any harm, but this is an important issue for a lot of folks.

Sorry to get all serious there, everyone.

While I appreciate the higher rendering resolution on the polygonal assets, it's absolute madness to me that Square Enix hasn't looked into machine learning for upscaling for the FFVII and FFIX ports, instead of throwing a (really) blurry bilinear filter on everything and calling it a day.

Granted, the technology is fairly new (and certainly only became viable after the FFVII PS4 port was already completed), but I'd be patching this ASAP on Switch, PS4 and PC as some sort of "Super HD Update".

Here's a comparison video from the in-progress Final Fantasy VII Remako Mod showing what the technology can do (be sure to view it at 1080p full screen for the full effect):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaEgc46FNWE

(Embed wasn't working)

There's also the already-playable Moguri Mod for the Final Fantasy IX PC port, with pretty stunning results (bear in mind the .gif compression here!):

(Now, it could be argued that the machine learning upscaling makes the backgrounds lose a little bit of their personality, but it's a darn sight better than pouring Vaseline on everything!)

Finally, as low resolution as the original background renders are, there should at least be an option on these ports to use some form of a point or integer upscale (i.e. a pixely zoom) rather than a blurry bilinear mess.

@Young_Scott: Don't the original high res non compressed versions of the FFIX backgrounds still exist? Couldn't someone just use those instead of machine learning upres the compressed PS1 versions?

@thejke: If they all exist somewhere, Square Enix certainly hasn't used them on any ports so far! From what I've heard, Square Enix (as with many devs of the day) was notoriously bad at archiving their original assets, so all we have left is manually re-creating the art or machine learning...

... except, it is apparently true that FFIX's backgrounds were rendered at a much higher resolution at the time, before being compressed for PS1 discs. Several of these renders still exist, but not enough for a complete mod.

@young_scott: That makes sense if only some of them are available. Maybe they could make a version of the mod that uses the ones that they can find, and uses machine learning to upres the rest.

Give me Final Fantasy VIII, or give me death!

@thejke: The Moguri Mod page actually has a flipbook detailing the process so far (it's pretty dang impressive), and yeah, it sounds like any recovered assets weren't complete enough.

VINNY DON'T GOOF ...about his FF7 hate

@young_scott: And they put that bilinear filter on about 20 years ago when they first ported it, so I’m guessing a machine learning redo wasn’t in the budget/calendar. Besides, if they released something as “FFVII Super HD Update” before releasing “FFVII Remake”, the marketing department probably would have murdered the executives in their sleep.

Oh man, remember emachines?

I've maybe played the beginning 2 hours of this game four times. This feels like a good time to finally give it a good go. And as an upside, not expecting anything out of this version, it looks great!

@bloody_skirmish: I was super surprised to hear Dan's voice at the start of this. I thought he hated Final Fantasy and FF7 in particular. Was surprised at his knowledge of it and even saying he liked FF9

Played the original game...and that was about all it needed from me. Hey, more power to them for releasing ist yet again...might have been nice if ist cma eout less buggy...but what'evs.

There was a time and a place where this game mattered. But I think we can all agree that a game like Chrono Trigger and other RPGs hold up better in terms of story, art, and mechanics.

Like the first comment said, I'm also REALLY happy it wasn't Jeff and Brad doing this quick look. Jeff would nag like an old man saying anything past Phantasy Star 2 is bad, and Brad would just nod along. Fact of the matter is, this game is extremely important. It brought JRPG's to a much wider audience. It was my first Final Fantasy and to me the best, though I understand that is very much up for debate. I'm still hopeful for the remake.

@meierthered@beartaco@bbalpert: You have taken on the task of being perpetually offended on everyone's behalf. I'm sure you have good intentions, but you don't seem to realize how easily these authoritarian calls for denoting acceptable language, even with morally just intentions, can backfire.

Imagine a future where it's frowned upon to criticize the president because he's the ultimate minority, being only one. As people like you clamp down further constantly narrowing the limits of acceptable speech it doesn't seem so far fetched to think it will be used for nefarious purposes.

and to clarify; your free to criticize, just as I'm free to call out the pitfalls of censorship, and Square Enix is free to ignore us all and make what they want regardless of it offends anyone.

@rubberfactory: ??????????

@chrisflavin: I have FF9 on my Switch and it does have the Fast Forward and stuff.

Genuinely impressed Dan got this far, expected to start with the literal start.

@rubberfactory:

Asking for a better translation from a game that has a notoriously bad (and at this point dated) English translation is hardly censorship. You’re not being noble.

@beartaco@pxbart: Sorry if I was ranting, comments like yours just strike a nerve with me.

I'm a sound designer and it's become depressingly common to have to rerecord dialogue because a studio is afraid someone will be offended and clickbait journalists and twitter mobs will give them bad publicity.

I hate talking to writers and other creators and hearing how they feel increasingly suffocated by this kind of rhetoric. Where instead of just focusing on what they want to create, they have to be continuously vigilant of how any tiny group could misinterpret or take offense over what they're making and self censor themselves, or be forced to redo parts of their work because higher ups want to avoid controversy.

Every post like yours, no matter how well intentioned, is another nail in the coffin of unique and innovative art. Art is supposed to provoke and offend, and yet the people funding the creation of art are growing more and more afraid of internet mobs who find anything vaguely offensive as an attack on their very existence.

@rubberfactory:

the only person who feels an attack on their existence is you, because a bunch of people said "i dont think slurs are good" and you said "actually, slurs are very good and heres a bunch of words why."

The launch 60GB PS3 is still backwards compatible because it basically had PS2 guts physically in it. Later models did more software emulation that got patched out. Think Jeff taught me that.

@spacejordan: If that is what you took away from what i wrote, then your reading comprehension needs work. I don't want to say I feel attacked, but definitely annoyed. The perpetually offended are strangling the life out of the creative fields that I hold very dear, and have also increased me and my colleagues workload as we walk on eggshells to avoid causing offense.

I don't want to clog up the comments with this argument. I feel comfortable in my stance that creators have the right to make whatever they want and use whatever words they want, even slurs.

Vinny's experience is so close to my own with FF7 and the split from Nintendo. I prefered the 2d stuff and I thought the game didn't look better. I eventually did play this game though. I did end up enjoying it, but it doesn't punch me in the nostalgia like FF6 or Chrono Trigger (some of the best games of all time).

I like Final Fantasy VII, but I really would like to see Square give VI some love. And by that I mean marrying the better translation of the PC version with the vastly superior-looking sprites and artwork of the original version and released something that runs much better.

I know that mods and ROM hack fuckery can get you there, but I'd buy the game again if I could get a version with the best translation, that isn't censored at all, that runs well, and that has some of the quality of life improvements that this port of VII has. I don't want an "easy mode" thing where Limit Breaks just completely fill up, but I do like the idea of a "fast mode" option for getting everyone up to snuff in the World of Ruin. Also some kind of journal to keep track of everything you come across in the World of Ruin would be cool, and some way to turn off random encounters for when I just want to explore - that sort of thing.

If VII should have received anything, though, it's a new translation. As in, the old one should be thrown out wholesale and they should get someone decent to do a new translation straight from the original Japanese script. Overall, the major problem with it is that it just needs a little more finesse - sometimes it's confusing, sometimes it's offensive (partially the casual throwaway use of the word "retard", but also Barrett's racist speech patterns), but mostly it just comes across like it was done by amateurs.

So there's art that provokes and offends for the sake of making a point, there's art that provokes and offends for the sake of provoking and offending, and there's art that provokes and offends without really meaning to. Final Fantasy VII is the latter - that doesn't make it OK, but I don't think it's worth raising hell about it. The only one that's actually OK is the former, and whether or not it's OK depends on who you're talking to (see: Spike Lee being offended by Quentin Tarantino's frequent use of the n word while audiences might as well assume that Samuel L Jackson is going to play a major role in whatever Tarantino's next film is). In any case, studios should be asking "why is this here" and the writer in question ought to be able to give a decent answer. If they can't, it's more than likely just bad writing.

@justin258: Do you realize how it sounds to say that this type of art is okay but this other type isn't.

It's the exact same thing that Christians used to try and do all the time in the 90s where they would try and get things censored or changed because they thought it was satanic or against their religious views.

I agree this particular instance isn't worth making a fuss about, but I see things like this everyday. I'm pretty fed up with people using morality as a bludgeon to try and force artists to conform to their worldview and getting away with it because the companies funding these artists don't want to have to deal with the shitstorm these people stir up if they don't get their way.

I don't begrudge you for your position I just don't understand it, as I feel very strongly about freedom of expression. If you want to discuss this further send me a message, I don't want to clog up the comments anymore with this off topic discussion.

I had fun playing thru this again on PS4, but I wouldn’t have bothered without the trophies.

Oh boy my thoughts are completely opposite to Vinny and Dan. It's definitely a generational thing. FF7 was the first Final Fantasy I played and it was life changing.

Before FF7, I had absolutely no interest in JRPGs or RPGs in general, mostly I settled on playing Counter-Strike, Diablo and Starcraft.

While FF7 might not be the best Final Fantasy (imo it's FF6), it was groundbreaking for the industry. The graphics were the best in the business at the time, the game was whoppingly large and took over 70 hrs to complete. The music deserves an accolade on it's own, Nobuo Uematsu outdid himself yet again and produced some of the most memorable soundtracks in gaming.

To this day, I still fondly remember this game and I know playing it now would just ruin my nostalgia for it. It sucks that I can't relate with Final Fantasy nowadays. The newer Final Fantasy games just don't appeal to me.

No need to get aggressive. I was under the assumption that you took issue with the social problem as a whole and not just the one line in the one game.

You're actively making the internet worse with this type of dismissive, condescending response. I'd recommend not jumping straight to this kind of tone, but of course you're free to do what you will.

The game was meh on the PlayStation, still seems meh now.

I first played FFVII in 2006. I found it remarkable then, too. Man, watching this makes me want to buy it again on Switch, because I'm a dumbass.

As if Cloud was ever anything but emo

How is it I've never taken that staircase before? I've beaten this game multiple times...

@pfhor: the stairs are the "sneaky" way in. You can also fight your way through.

Ah, yes, Juniper, my favorite FF7 character, who is Cloud's mom and also a science experiment.

Also it's funny that Dan's joking about spoiling Aeris' death, considering that scene is blocked from recording on the PS4 version.

@dave_tacitus: I'm 2 years younger than Vinny, 1980, and even at the time for me the different graphical styles was off-putting and it was pretty obviously just a lack of familiarity with the tech. When 8 came around it was even moreso, and I dreamed of FF7 with consistent character renders ever since.

Still a fantastic game, and a fantastic follow-up to FF6.

I'm excited to see what the remake brings, I'm glad they took the negative feedback to releasing it episodically to heart and are working to, hopefully, release a full version.

GB player can't run this smooth not 60fps

All these years later, FF7 is still my favorite game. Nostalgia plays a part for sure but I love everything about its aesthetics: the character design, world design, and music. But mostly I love how it plays with scale and perspective in a way I feel no other game has. It really feels like a journey in a way that modern epic RPGs like Witcher and Skyrim don't for me. The way Midgar feels like the entire game and becomes a small part, or Shinra is the all-encompassing evil that becomes a bit-player is unique in games. I love how games can play with scale like that but its rarely attempted, for whatever reason. Most games are very straight forward like Witcher/Skyrim: What you see is what you get.

@beartaco: Wow.

@rubberfactory: I think concern over that word is justified, but this might be opening a whole can of worms here [*cough* Barret's dialogue *cough*].

I really wish the Full HP/Limit break booster was something you could toggle off in the menu. It's great for just breezing through the game or if you're just in it for the story or whatever, but it annihilates the very idea of tension in the game (which, again, can be great, but sucks you can't disable it). It's just so seamlessly baked into the experience that simply not using it seems like an anomaly instead of the default.

Did I hear Dan right? He said he likes Cait Sith? Oh boy...

The speed stuff I can understand, but the unlimited limit break stuff I don't really the point of. People keep calling it "quality of life" but it seems to just ruin the game. It's like if there was an "always big mario/invincibility stay" button in Mario.

@beartaco: I got into an Internet Fight™ with someone recently about this. They started saying stuff like, oh we can't say fire retardant? We can talk about progress being retarded by things?

It's amazing how strongly people will cling onto their gross habits.

Just wanted to point out that the boss battle music was rippped off of Motörhead’s “Jailbait”.

Have a nice day.