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 http://obstinatemelon.deviantart.com/gallery/25038206?offset=216 This webcomic (by ObstinateMelon) has pretty much my most favorite renditions of Cloud (and Aeris!) ever. It's also an impressive 231 pages and still going strong. Obvious spoiler alerts for anyone who's new to FF7.
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May 30, 2011 05:12
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Psalmanazar posted:It's bizarre that they'd make a film about it, and do spin-offs, and include Cloud in every cross over they can, but they won't remake it. They're too busy remaking FF4 for every single platform in existence to be worried about 7
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May 30, 2011 05:12
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:They're too busy remaking FF4 for every single platform in existence to be worried about 7 Coming next year: FF4 + Interlude + The After Years: Kinect Edition. For the Mt. Ordeals fight, you have to punch yourself in the face and not punch back.
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May 30, 2011 05:17
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Psalmanazar posted:It's bizarre that they'd make a film about it, and do spin-offs, and include Cloud in every cross over they can, but they won't remake it. Especially since everyone and their mother AND father would buy it. It's basically a money print.
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May 30, 2011 05:21
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I believe Square has said that in order to remake it with voice acting, improved graphics and what-have-you, it would cost as much to make as a new FF game (hence why XIII had no towns, since apparently that would be much more difficult to make than the pretty hallways). They do not think it would sell as well as a new FF, so I guess they're not interested.
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May 30, 2011 05:37
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Schwartzcough posted:I believe Square has said that in order to remake it with voice acting, improved graphics and what-have-you, it would cost as much to make as a new FF game (hence why XIII had no towns, since apparently that would be much more difficult to make than the pretty hallways). They do not think it would sell as well as a new FF, so I guess they're not interested. If that's what they think, they're flat wrong. Completely and utterly wrong, in fact. I'm frankly surprised they'd even think such a thing. FF7 may be overrated...but that's the very quality that pretty much ensures a remake would be a runaway success. It's not like it's even gone out of gamer's consciousness because Square has done literally everything it can to remind people that it existed by shoving Cloud everywhere they can.
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May 30, 2011 05:43
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I've never understood why they don't just re-release it for PSP, upgrade the graphics slightly, slap on a couple of sidequests, new translation and there you go. That sure as hell can't cost much. Even there were a lot of new resources made for the new game, they wouldn't necessarily need to use current, high-tier gen graphics. You know, like how they've remade/rerelease every other old Final Fantasy? I suppose the implacable fanbase won't allow anything half-assing okay I can't kid myself. Seriously, as lazy as that is, I'm not sure why don't do that.
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May 30, 2011 05:48
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Schwartzcough posted:I believe Square has said that in order to remake it with voice acting, improved graphics and what-have-you, it would cost as much to make as a new FF game (hence why XIII had no towns, since apparently that would be much more difficult to make than the pretty hallways). They do not think it would sell as well as a new FF, so I guess they're not interested. You ever hear Tim Rogers' favourite anecdote about Final Fantasy XII? The first guy in line to buy it at the (Japanese) midnight launch got to shake the hand of Yoichi Wada (President of Square Enix) on stage in front of the media. Wada said something to the effect of "Thank you for your patronage, honoured customer". The man, still holding a shrink-wrapped copy of Final Fantasy XII, minutes after its launch, still unplayed by a soul outside of testing, responded "Please remake Final Fantasy VII for Playstation 3 thank you". Before anyone had any actual impressions of XII worth noting, this man, who camped to buy a videogame at midnight and who was given the opportunity to directly address a crowd of his peers and the president of Square Enix, had already decided that he would rather be playing VII. People.
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May 30, 2011 05:54
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I always kind of wondered why there was no SA LP of this game, considering how popular it is and how many people own it. It was one of the first PS games I played, and it's still one of my favorites. What can I say, a lot of what's "wrong" with it is what makes it good (or at least funny). Having played it for the first time well, well after the fact (I didn't play it until 2002 or so), I can fairly say that one of the biggest fan-related problems is that what the game and its characters are like tend to be far different from what a lot of fans perceive them to be. I went in with a certain set of expectations, feeling like I kind of already "knew" the game. By the end of the first disc, I was wondering what particular brand of crack people had been doing. It's like somehow the fans' "version" of the game became the standard, even though that version isn't particularly well-grounded in reality. Such a weird phenomenon... Anyway, looking forward to more.
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May 30, 2011 06:12
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Unrelatedly, I never understood the 'this isn't just a reactor!' headvoice Cloud got there. It... it is just a reactor. We blew it up just like you would blow up a reactor and it exploded normally. I guess it might have been a warning about the guard scorpion? But the guard scorpion also just seems like a normal guard enemy. Maybe it's just bad translation again.
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May 30, 2011 06:14
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Amidiri posted:Unrelatedly, I never understood the 'this isn't just a reactor!' headvoice Cloud got there. Actually, it isn't! You find out later in the Nibelheim flashback, I think, that it was where the Jenova experiments were originally carried out. I can't believe I remember that. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 30, 2011 06:25
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Dauntasa posted:Actually, it isn't! You find out later in the Nibelheim flashback, I think, that it was where the Jenova experiments were originally carried out. I can't believe I remember that. But all the stuff in the Nibelheim flashback was in the Mt. Nibel reactor! I mean, I think so. It's been a while since I've played. But it makes sense. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 30, 2011 06:28
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Oh, that webcomic just reminded me that I have a request for the thread: rainbow window colors.
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May 30, 2011 06:30
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Amidiri posted:But all the stuff in the Nibelheim flashback was in the Mt. Nibel reactor! I mean, I think so. It's been a while since I've played. But it makes sense. he was having ptsd flashbacks. in fact, most of the messed up crazy stuff involving cloud is referencing all the events we see inside his head. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 30, 2011 06:36
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Amidiri posted:Unrelatedly, I never understood the 'this isn't just a reactor!' headvoice Cloud got there. I think it was meant to imply that this wasn't, like, a nuclear reactor and instead involved blowing up something that wasn't like an actual real world parallel. Plus the spoiled text above me.
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May 30, 2011 07:07
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Amidiri posted:But all the stuff in the Nibelheim flashback was in the Mt. Nibel reactor! I mean, I think so. It's been a while since I've played. But it makes sense. Yeah, it was, but Seph has a line when you talk to him after his overnight library visit where he talks about how the experiments were started in Midgar Reactor #1
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May 30, 2011 07:16
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I've never played this one, but it's got such a reputation that I've always been curious about it. It always seemed a little too much for me to just decide to play on a whim, so I'm happy to finally see an LP of it.
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May 30, 2011 07:18
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I like the little doodle on the boss card, Elentor 
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May 30, 2011 07:19
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ComposerGuy posted:If that's what they think, they're flat wrong. Completely and utterly wrong, in fact. I'm frankly surprised they'd even think such a thing. I would buy a remake of FFVII so loving hard, it's not even funny. It would very likely convince myself, and all of my friends, to buy PS3s single-handedly. Though really, I've enjoyed having it on PSP so frankly I'd be totally fine with a spruced up remake on PSP that isn't as balls-to-the-wall as that old tech demo for the PS3.
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May 30, 2011 07:46
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Count me in for this LP! I actually just popped my old copy into my PS3 to see if it even works and here I am still playing, two hours later.  Good luck Elentor!
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May 30, 2011 07:48
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This game was the sole reason I wanted to get a PlayStation, though I didn't end up being able to afford one until FFVIII came out, so I just got both games at the same time. I agree with many of the others here, though, that while the game is pretty good, it hasn't aged terribly well and most of the problems with the game aren't from the game but from the fans and the sequels. I probably wouldn't buy a remake, though, just because I've been pretty disappointed in the remakes of the other FF games I've played. Maybe I'm just and old fart, but generally prefer the original versions of games, whatever generation they're from, than updates that don't add anything useful and lose the charm of the original. A lot of what I like about older games is what they did to get around technical limitations. The best games tend to be the ones where the platform just barely prevented the designers from achieving their full vision. Then again, it may just be nostalgia 'cause I still love playing the original Final Fantasy, bugs and all.
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May 30, 2011 08:12
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I thought I'd be cool with a remake of VII, up until someone in the thread mentioned voice-acting and I had to reconsider. I only have the Dissidia games to work with out of recent memory, but Cloud's VA is loving obnoxious. I don't know whether it's him or whoever's directing, but he's just so flat all the time and he pauses randomly mid-sentence for no reason. Like if you've got subtitles on, there's no punctuation or anything to indicate that he might stop talking but he just does, and there's no reason to think Square would deviate from this since they've stuck with it. I'd be fine if they just overhauled the graphics and ported it to either DS or PSP (or hell, both), but implementing voice acting would be a pretty big turn-off. Anyway, looking foward to this. I tried playing it again a couple years ago and couldn't make it to the first boss because it was so ugly and stiff. Hopefully the abridged version will rekindle some fond memories without actually having to slog through myself.
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May 30, 2011 08:45
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Vanrushal posted:I thought I'd be cool with a remake of VII, up until someone in the thread mentioned voice-acting and I had to reconsider. I only have the Dissidia games to work with out of recent memory, but Cloud's VA is loving obnoxious. I don't know whether it's him or whoever's directing, but he's just so flat all the time and he pauses randomly mid-sentence for no reason. Like if you've got subtitles on, there's no punctuation or anything to indicate that he might stop talking but he just does, and there's no reason to think Square would deviate from this since they've stuck with it. I'd be fine if they just overhauled the graphics and ported it to either DS or PSP (or hell, both), but implementing voice acting would be a pretty big turn-off. Pretty sure it's the same guy from AC and KH, and he does okay in both of those. Not that I'm saying you're wrong, you're spot on and it bugs the hell out of me. If I remember right, a few of them do it and it's either lovely direction or the actor not entirely giving a poo poo/them using the first half-assed take.
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May 30, 2011 09:24
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It's time for: You guys have the power to decide on which horrible Window Color Scheme you may want to torture me with  I'll be focusing on writing the updates now so you have about two or three chapters to decide.
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May 30, 2011 09:25
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Rainbow. (This reply is © The White Dragon, 2011) Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at 10:29 on May 30, 2011 |
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May 30, 2011 09:38
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Azure_Horizon posted:Rainbow. I second this. There really is no other option.
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May 30, 2011 09:57
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Azure_Horizon posted:Rainbow. Thirding.
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May 30, 2011 10:03
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I don't know why you would ask us to choose one colour when rainbow is every colour.
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May 30, 2011 10:22
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drat, with all the Silent Hill LPs going on now it feels like a trip through nostalgia lane. How I remember wasting quiet afternoons playing this game and thinking "I am playing the best JRPG in the world right now!" Of course now I can't remember anything about it other than (obvious spoilers aside) the horrible fanbase and the rubbish tie-in film and games. Also voting for Rainbow.
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May 30, 2011 10:38
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Who the hell didn't use rainbow the first time they played this, growing up? So of course my vote is for rainbow. 
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May 30, 2011 10:43
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Rainbow, you know you want it. 
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May 30, 2011 10:51
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I played through this with RAINBOW windows intentionally. If you can't, you not as much of a man as I was when I was twelve.  I still say FF7 is actually a very good game. It's fanbase is terrible and it lead to the spiraling ruination of the Final Fantasy series, but it's still a good game. One of the things it does really well is the main cast, but in a very different way then FFVI did. FFVI had a large party of fairly well fleshed out characters, fighting to save themselves and later their entire world from destruction. They all have little arcs, overcome their mistakes, shortcoming, mind control issues, and get their act together to fight the good fight. They eventually fail, and the world is blown 99% right the gently caress up. But they're still a big happy family(minus one) of successful heroes in the end. In Final Fantasy Seven, your party is the exact opposite. I'm not going to spoil later characters, but everyone in the party is a broken human being who has no business being a hero at all. Our Antagonist, Cloud, has been on screen for less then twenty minutes, he has already proven he is anti-social, totally uncaring, a military deserter, and apparently has psychotic episodes on a regular basis. His weapon of choice is less a sword, or more a sharpened boat oar. As it will later turn outhis background makes him even worse. Barret, on the other hand, is hilarious. After years and years of having every single Final Fantasy cast include nothing but Aryan super models and things that aren't human at all, Square decides to add a little diversity to the cast. They do this by placing as many minority demographics as they can into one character, and call it a day. Keep a little tally of all the minority groups Barret falls into as we learn more about him: it's hysterical. I did a big breakdown of the cast for another site years ago, I'll post the whole thing once we've met everybody if Elentor doesn't mind. The cast of Final Fantasy VII are the worst people you could possibly turn into an adventuring party.
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May 30, 2011 10:52
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It's my belief that Cloud speaks with a southern twang. We've seen a few Cloud-isms that support that, and we'll be seeing a lot more in the future. Keep that in mind as the LP progresses.
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May 30, 2011 11:14
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Cuchulain posted:I played through this with RAINBOW windows intentionally. If you can't, you not as much of a man as I was when I was twelve.
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May 30, 2011 11:27
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Azure_Horizon posted:One of the larger issues of this cast of broken characters is that some of them are way less fleshed out than characters from the previous game, which is kinda sad since you'd expect Square to learn how to create some larger character arcs.  Really? I thought only three of them didn't get good fleshing out, and two of those three were optional characters.Also, let's mosey into a true thread that are sick with rainbow puke windows! EDIT: vvv Now, now, Elentor. To be fair, Ragnarok Online isn't about achieving human perfection, it's about collecting ALL HATS EVER. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 11:57 on May 30, 2011 |
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May 30, 2011 11:44
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Cuchulain posted:I played through this with RAINBOW windows intentionally. If you can't, you not as much of a man as I was when I was twelve. Feel free to talk as much as you want once we meet them but let's try not to get ahead of ourselves. I'm not sure I agree with the concept of "Aryan super models" from previous Final Fantasies. I'm not sure that was the intention. It was just Amano's style... and his style is very, very weird. I think he's a great artist but he does some crazy-rear end things. The Japanese did include some of THEIR minorities in the games, but of course they didn't worry about other countries' "minorities", it's the same reason no one includes pygmys and other ethnic groups everywhere. You just don't think about them. It was nowhere near the influence that came from South-Korean games later on, where everyone is indeed an aryan super-model elf fighting with no clothes and each character is, intentionally, an attempt at reaching human perfection at beauty. They became the norm and soon companies all over the place were wanting to include them. KataraniSword posted:
I think that given its cast the characters are very-well fleshed out. Even one of the optional characters. It's just that the scripts are very volatile - it's easy to miss or to skip a lot of the dialogues.
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May 30, 2011 11:54
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DocFrance posted:It's my belief that Cloud speaks with a southern twang. We've seen a few Cloud-isms that support that, and we'll be seeing a lot more in the future. Keep that in mind as the LP progresses. I never really thought of this...but I like it. It fits his persona. Cid's got a bit of the same thing going. I want to imagine Aeris having a bit of a Brooklyn thing going. On the subject of an FF7 remake: This game, while the realtime CG has aged terribly, still has a great sense of atmosphere with the prerendered backdrops. The most they should do is retouch the polygons and give the environments an HD revamp, nothing more, and maybe put it out on the NGP (PSP's upcoming successor). It's not worth a big-budget console redo, and they should focus their efforts there on something newer. Oh, as for window color: RAINBOW GO
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May 30, 2011 11:57
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Rainbow.Arc 
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May 30, 2011 12:58
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Mazed posted:I never really thought of this...but I like it. It fits his persona. Cid's got a bit of the same thing going. Brooklyn works for Aeris, but I always saw it as more of a My Fair Lady cockney accent.
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May 30, 2011 13:00
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Chapter 2 - A Tribute to Joss Wheddon And as convenience would have it, our health pool is suddenly restored. Apparently blowing up reactors is a good therapy.  We get a huge close up on this as the camera moves down to the next scene. I think most people don't realize but this is actually product placement. A product placement made by fans on top of that. Basically Loveless is an album from a British band called My Bloody Valentine (you can see the band name on these posters too). The developers enjoyed that band and decided to pay homage to it. In the world of FF7, Loveless is actually a famous play, its Romeo & Juliet. It's referenced multiple times during the actual game and even more in the spin-offs. You can see other alternative rock look-a-like posters in the scene, it's kinda cool. Anyway as we move out of the reactor we get this music. It's really good.  We're approached by a flower seller. They try to sell you things when you're most vulnerable.  On second thought her 10 polygons kinda resemble the girl we saw on the opening cinematic. She's well-dressed and doing something up here in this, uh, nice neighborhood. Plus, she doesn't know I pretend to be badass all the time, so maybe I can chat her up.   Flower Girl: "Oh, these? Do you like them? They're only a gil... ?"  Flower Girl: "Oh, thank you!" Seriously though, what is this poster about? Is this a E Rated for Everyone?  I'm getting a Dark City vibe from this place.    Cloud is really wondering what he's got himself involved into.  We move further down but apparently someone followed us.  Instead of fighting we actually run. You can fight them but more will just come.  Here's something I appreciate - take a look at that house's window. There are silhouettes moving in and out. This attention to detail is lost in today's completely sterile environments.  Oh snap, we're surrounded. Guard: "That's as far as you go."  Cloud: "I don't have time to be messin' around with you guys." Well, gently caress you guys.    That's what she said.  Biggs: "Cloud... wonder if he was killed?" Barret: "No way!!" Jessie: "Cloud..."   When I was a kid I thought these guys were the villains.   Oh snap!  "You drat right, you're late!!" "Come waltzin' in here makin' a big scene!" "It's no bit deal. Just what I always do."  Seriously, what is there NOT to love about Cloud?   Wedge: "Hey, Cloud!! You were great back there!"  Jessie: "Oh, Cloud!! Your face is pitch-black..." Jessie: "There you go!"    You may be wondering why I'm showing this, but I think this sequence is hilarious. The two punk lovebirds just run the hell out when they see you. Somehow I picture this scene as Michael Jackson's Beat It. Biggs is just so '80s.      Jessie: "It's a map of the Midgar Rail System. Let's look at it together. I'll explain it to you." Cloud: Oh... kay.  So this is how Midgar works: The entire city is floating, supported by huge columns and divided in 8 zones. Each zone has a reactor.  In the center is a building so ridiculously out-of-scale that I think each window in it is the size of a normal building. I kinda get the idea though, the whole city is a big 1984 nightmare come true, and the main building is the Big Brother. Underneath the city are the slums. These are also numbered after the plates they're directly underneath so you have Sector 3 Slums, Sector 4 Slums, etc. Because Midgar has such strong and characteristic imagery, the city's been target of multiple remakes and fan models. At any rate, Jessie explains Cloud that at each checkpoint, the system's sensor check for the IDs. They're using fake IDs.     "It's like this train. It can't run anywhere except where its rails take it."Living in a city with 900 slums (Rio), I'll not deny that Midgar felt much closer to my reality than other games from that same time period. People move to the main city filled with dreams but have no place to live, so they go to the slums. The difference is that unlike Midgar, you can see them wherever you are.  The central plate.  And we arrive at our destination! Look at how bright the place is. The light bill from the slums must be enormous given that they have no sunlight.  "Cause the next one's gonna be bigger than that!" Not now, we're gonna explore the place a bit.   That's sad.   This is the same couple that was scared of us in the train. You can see they're still not very comfortable with our presence.  The train graveyard is to the right, but there's really nothing we can do there right now. There are random encounters here with random guards, panthers and sweepers for you to grind, I suppose.  We go to the left. If we try to go south we find these two very nice guards.  To the north we find a Save Point, finally. We save and talk to the guy.  Yeah that would be crazy.  That's what she said.  He invite us to look at his huge thing.  Barret clearly doesn't like that. And with that we're done for this update. NEXT TIME Old-School Friends! NPCs no one cares about! More reactors! More Love Interests! Chapter 2 - Bugs & Bytes  If you were an artist in 1997 you knew that these things were impressive. Doing 3D back then was a major pain - Not only actually modeling was slow and the real time previews were horrible - you need to remember that although these things are pre-rendered, someone was actually placing the models there in real-time. Compare that to what you could ACTUALLY do in real-time in 96-98 and you start to realize the pain. So you had a lot of limitations, but there were ways to work around them. One of them was batching an object in memory - for example, that stair needs only to have one-segment done, so that the others don't fill your memory with the same information over and over. Rendering capabilities were extremely limited. Although Pixar had just came out with a way to do better lighting techniques, they were still not widely known or understood. Radiosity - simulating indirect lighting - was the hot word and everythign was poorly optimized and slow. Slooooooooow. Did I mention slow? Hell yes, slow. A 640*480 render with 10k polygons could take hours and hours to render. Artists were very limited by render times, maybe more so than by memory or polygon limitations. Cool Music we listened to in this Chapter: Anxious Heart - An awesome moody song. One of the best tracks in my opinion. 
Elentor fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jun 3, 2011 |
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May 30, 2011 13:27
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