This thread are sick - Let's Play Final Fantasy VII!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > This thread are sick - Let's Play Final Fantasy VII!

«‹›3 »

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Schwartzcough posted:

I never, ever used the weapons without slots because that's wasting precious AP that could be leveling up my materia!

Given that the enemy skill materia increases in strength independently of AP, and that physical beatdowns seem to be a decent strategy positively affected by not equipping materia, just how valuable is that AP, really?

By the time you want to start thinking about mastering some of your materia, you're in a position where AP is abundant and much of your really important materia is brand new anyway.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2012 10:52

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 00:14

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Serifina posted:

Frankly, I find the personalities of the FF9 characters better, and way more endearing, on the whole, than the characters of 7 and 8. They also do a lot better job of growing over the course of the story (instead of, say, suddenly switching from totally cold about someone to eternal love.) In fact, overall, the writing of 9 beats 7 or 8 by a long shot, IMO.

It's not a crazy opinion, but you seem to be lumping 7 and 8 together. 8's character development begins and ends with what you see in the opening cutscene; 7 at least does a bit better than that, judging even from what we've seen so far.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 15:51

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Elentor posted:

If there's one thing that took me years to figure out was what FF7's villains really wanted.

I don't think Sephiroth is the best FF villain by any stretch, but I think what makes him effective isn't him per se (since he has the personality of a lobster) but the amount of bizarre events that surround him from the first dungeon in the game (the Mako Reactor) to the very end.

It's pretty surreal.

It's hard to explain why I kinda agree and kinda disagree with this opinion without spoilertastically loving things up for you, but I think the character of Sephiroth and the nature of his villainry is thematically really neatly tied into the rest of the game, and I don't think Square has matched it since. I also think it's another thing that's ruined by Square retcon.

But we'll get to that. Hopefully.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 01:34

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Why don't we break up this Sephiroth discussion (which's going nowhere until more plot exposition) with some words on the other villains of the piece, the Shinra executives?

Just to remind everyone where we're at so far, barring Rufus (who's just being generally badass), we've got

Palmer, the space sphere, has been hit by a truck he ordered while running away from an out of control biplane he was trying to steal,
Hojo, for great science, has retired to ~~experiment on the ladies in the Costa Del Sol~~ look for Sephiroth,
Reeve, the slumlord, is still pissed and emo about Shinra senior dropping a rock on his pet project city,
Scarlet the weapons researcher (AKA GLaDOS) is mining for huge materia orbs to make a massive gun to shoot out lifestream goodness (no masculine co-opting here, nope), and
~~Martin~~ Heidegger, idiot-in-chief, is fighting for his job and trying not to make the armed forces look completely incompetent (unsuccessfully) in the face of a rag-tag bunch of eco-terrorists, not being helped by the fact that
the Turks only give a poo poo in as much as they're being paid.

Say what you like about your Sephiroths, but given all that the game has given the impression of Shinra as a major ecological threat, and probably quite legitimately so, this is an awesome bunch of villains. They're all so very... human.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 29, 2012

# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 15:33

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Dauntasa posted:

Uh, do we know that yet? I might be wrong but I thought that was a disc two thing.

I assumed that Ultimate Weapon (as she mentions it in Gongaga) and Massive Gun were pretty much understood as synonymous; an assumption maybe not totally rock solid when it comes to be reflected upon, but nonetheless pretty intuitive.

E: Also, shooting out lifestream goodness is what you do with materia. You'd be forgiven for subconsciously blocking that out.

Besides, her plan at this stage isn't exactly the plan you're thinking of that comes up later on, and in any case, there's not actually anything about the Ultimate Weapon she ultimately comes up with that hasn't already been in some way or another previously noticed.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Mar 29, 2012

# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 03:25

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Tifa's lowest possible level is 7, which is the lowest in the game. Cloud comes close with 8 but 8 > 7.

But... but what about Aeris? :ohdear:

# ¿ Mar 31, 2012 13:11

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Randalor posted:

Edit: For someone who spent so much time on the collection, why does he seem to hate and loath it with a passion? Half the video was him talking about how "gay" or "stupid" the stuff is.

Seems like bad faith to me. He loves it, as evidenced by the obscene amount of time and money he's thrown into that collection. But he's ashamed of it, and to that end tries to deceive people into thinking this is just a hobby, or maybe "not what he really enjoys".

Alternatively, the collection might belong to the cameraman.

What really got me was the "the only one out of the serious I've chosen to collect, for obvious reasons". Yes, the reasons are obvious - there is so much of this crap out there for FF7.

Which I completely boggle at. FF7 is a game about ecoterrorists against capitalist exploitation and individual abuse of natural resources. How in the holy hell do people psychologically invest themselves enough in this game to want to spend (not insubstantial amounts of) money on icons and trinkets, without engaging enough in it to recognise the patent absurdity in merchandise of anticapitalist activists?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2012 11:09

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

SirPhoebos posted:

It's actually clever, in a way, how the spoiler everyone talks about acts as a decoy to the other spoiler that's probably more plot relevant

The spoilering here is too meta for me to understand what you're not trying to spoil. Are you talking about how the focus on the relations between Zack, Aeris and Cloud are important enough to distract from the link between Red XIII, Hojo and Sephiroth? Or am I missing something?

# ¿ May 22, 2012 14:48

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

NothingToFyr posted:

Nice job making the working man's life harder, hero.

Shinra guards and military police shoulda known what they were getting into when they signed up for the FF7-world equivalent of Blackwater. gently caress 'em.

E: Correction: equivalent of Halliburton. Duh.

E^2: Maybe more like some evil corporate merger of the two? Meh, tired.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jun 1, 2012

# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 00:23

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

NothingToFyr posted:

Ever tried to pay bills when the majority of the population live in slums? Some guy probably just got enough of a raise to move his family above the plate... in sector 7.

Not going to turn this into an ethics thread, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the comfort and safety of your own family is sufficient justification for participating in organised violence against dissenting opinion.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 11:33

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Elentor posted:

And it makes sense. He's the only person in the world that we know that may stand a chance against a very crazy individual with psychic powers. It wouldn't make sense for him to be normal.

Hold on a second, let me get to grips with Sephiroth here. We know he's got Jenova DNA or whatever, and that as a member of Soldier he's probably also basically got Materia Blood. So he's stupid strong. But psychic? Is Sephiroth mind-reading now?

I think a different reading is in order here. The guys aren't following Cloud because they think he's the only one who stands a chance against Sephiroth. All they know about Sephiroth is that he's powerful, is looking for the same Promised Land that Shinra is, and that Cloud has a grudge against him. They're following him because he seems to have a purpose, and has actually been pretty good at hiding/brushing aside his moments of weakness. Most of them are pretty much broken beyond that; Cloud probably inspires them to some extent.

If on the other hand they knew about Cloud's moments of weakness, and thought that Sephiroth might be able to find and exploit those (as this most recent breakdown seems to suggest), I'm not so sure they'd be so comfortable following him around.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2012 14:43

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

penguinmambo posted:

-snip-

Just to clarify, in addition to the flying and noclipping, do we think Sephiroth has mind control powers by this point? It always seemed to me here that Cloud's screwups were more directly caused by Sephiroth than Cloud just losing it himself when Sephiroth was around; especially with the whole white-screen "Wake Up!" command.

Maybe Sephiroth is using a Manipulate Materia. :v:

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jun 26, 2012

# ¿ Jun 26, 2012 20:20

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Isn't it just fine to say "hey, materia does all that crazy stuff anyway, let's just not bother questioning the whole summoned monster thing"? And similarly with Barrett and the other limit breaks - I think he can just summon lightning bolts when he's angry.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 14:51

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

simplefish posted:

Well obviously. Like I said it was meant to be a one-off remark about "BUT SPAAACE?!" but once I went back over the rocket stuff so much more jumped out at me. That's the real meat of my post.

It's definitely neat to think about the way the Shinra company must have systematically developed their military-industrial complex, and that how they did things in the pre-commercial era might have been engaged with a general public in a more lofty idealism than we see in the present day Midgar grime.

That said, as far as we've seen, it's difficult to get the feeling that there is any kind of unified culture that isn't Shinra. The various towns and villages are isolated from one another, and it looks like they're mostly mining settlements formed by small groups of close families. Sure, there's probably a bit of the pioneering spirit about them all, but I would probably read this more in a "let's go get whatever's out there" spirit than a "hey! explore strange new worlds!" intellectual curiosity.

The only obvious exception here is Cosmo Canyon, the site of the only working observatory. Everything else seems tied in with more local, materialistic needs in a much smaller world than ours; if you're not living in the city that Shinra built, you're working to mine the resources that Shinra needs.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 23:41

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Regalingualius posted:

Also, if I might recommend just a slight change... Could the video that shows the dirty deed being done be changed to one that starts playing Aeris's theme when the materia starts bouncing? That, to me at least, was what totally clenched the scene the first time I saw it; It didn't quite sink in just how sad the scene was until you hear those opening notes.

It's true that this scene in its natural setting ties the piano in with the way the Materia falls. But I think given Elentor's direction, the "no music" version is perfect.

The tension builds as you explore this stale, abandoned citadel, the pressure rises as you go deeper into the abyss, chasing Aeris to try to understand her purpose, and to face Cloud's demons. Then just as you think you've won... A flash in a moment and it's over, and the silence falls, broken only by the clink of Aeris's materia echoing around the room.

And the scene, too, resonates in a moment of soundless anguish.

As emotional as the music is, it's unnecessary. This scene hit me hard as a 9-year old kid, not just because I'd come to think of Aeris as one of the team (and one of the best, with her really handy limit breaks), but because I'd realised that even with all she'd been through, and all she'd come to understand about her place in the world, she wanted to do her bit to save it. Aeris was amazing. And now she's gone. Not gone in a kind of "It's okay, we can bring her back" kind of way, but really, truly, gone.

... Sephiroth's going to get a buster sword in the neck.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2012 08:58

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Elentor posted:

Woozy, simplefish - You're spoiling stuff that hasn't happened yet. I don't understand what's so hard about a no spoiler rules that I have to repeat every 2-3 pages.

Premature 'spergin is just a thing, it happens to a lot of guys. I sympathise.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2012 22:42

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Oxxidation posted:

Reno kills an entire seventh (eighth?) of Midgar's lower class and treats it like a tiresome chore at worst.

It's still just his job. He's at least partly doing it because he'll probably get fired if he doesn't. And given that the Turks are kinda Shinra's secret police, I imagine the nature of any such firing would be a little more... literal.

You probably need to be pretty blase to get by in that kind of situation.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2012 19:26

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Macaluso posted:

It was lost!

Which reminds me. Didn't Sephiroth leave his unique, one-of-a-kind only-he-can-use-it sword in President Shinra? How did he get it back again?

# ¿ Jul 7, 2012 16:03

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

SirPhoebos posted:

I have a theory why folks seem to be blabbering spoilers despite frequent reminders...

Again, I think "'Spergers gonna 'sperg" is a cleaner answer. (see below) It's probably not at odds with yours though.

Elentor posted:

This is explained in the game, but we're a bit far from it.

They really thought of everything.

General Specific posted:

What I feel FF10 didn't do right was establishing a connection to most of the towns and characters. I feel no FF game has done this better than FF9. Even a single visit to any town is a richer experience than the cities in FF10 I can't really remember, and almost every town is visited multiple times with both significant and subtle changes as a result of events in the story.

PoliteMachineGun posted:

It also occurred to me to wonder why Spira's culture is so homogenized. There's no evidence that anyone in any place does anything differently, but population centers that are relatively isolated tend to develop different ways of doing things really fast. I don't remember any town specialties or quirks being mentioned outside of "oh yeah there's a temple there" and "oh yeah that's the place with the lovely blitzball team", but they also don't have all the infrastructure in place for maintaining a truly global culture. It's been mentioned before in terms of town design, but it's there even in the script. After the last game had such memorable towns, why would they go back to the older model of "this is a town, this is where you get your stuff"?

So there's no real question as to why in 10, in-universe and narratively, the culture is homogeneous, the world is basically sterile and the degrees of freedom and sense of exploration and diversity you as a player have are severely restricted. It's institutional deception on the part of a church run by the hypocritical undead, that establishes a global massive threat and a response to that threat that mandates pilgrimage, self-sacrifice and the immediate dismissal of departed souls. The universal, eternal and unchanging sameness is part of the spiral of depression that the whole of Spira suffers from in response to the emergence of Sin. It would be dissonant to present you with this world then basically give you free roam over the plains to query and disassemble.

The question I guess is whether, given the essentially homogeneous nature of such a world, this's a good thing to make a game about. Being thrown into a world like this naturally dissolves the kind of interactivity with our environment we've come to expect from role-playing games. If it's essential to understanding the world that is presented to recognise that everything in it is essentially linear and hierarchical, and that exploration and investigated is restricted as a matter of thematic consistency, then maybe video games aren't the right place for that kind of world.

What you need to make this idea work as a game is to have the kind of linearity in place until the point at which you gain freedom from the oppressive power structures in place, then to let you come back into these cities and do more, see more and create more. And that's exactly what they did do with FFX-2, fleshing out the locales, additional minigame content and character development for all, but they only managed to pull it off by splitting the story into two and changing the tone and mechanics. They also reused far too much, rather than letting you pan around a bit and investigate, though they did do that in places too!

There is enough in FFX and X-2 together to make a great game out of their best elements. The problem is it took two okay games to get there.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jul 9, 2012

# ¿ Jul 9, 2012 15:45

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

General Specific posted:

It's not the lack of a world map, but the lack of detail and characterization of the towns and their people. As far as I can recall, nothing really happens in the towns and there isn't much to do. I can't even remember what the towns look like, other than Besaid. If part of a pilgrimage is visiting towns along the way, the game does a poor job of connecting us to the towns or the people who live there. Countless palette-swapped generic townspeople don't exactly inspire empathy, especially if a major disaster occurs before we even get to know any of them. Compare to the Sector 7 Slums residents and "tutorial crew" who we see frantically evacuating before the plate drops, or countless named, grieving people after disasters in FF9.

I agree, and think this, too, is part of the big picture of the FFX world. The game can't present you with interesting characters, because there aren't many interesting characters in that world to present you with. Everyone's spirit and individuality is crushed by centuries of institutional oppression. They all dress the same and have the same kind of timid acceptance of the way things are, because their world is one of absolute conformity.

This isn't like Shinra where while the company itself has existed for a while, it's still in the process of global expansion, so individual expression is popular among those resisting its influence; Yevon implicitly control everything, dangling the fear of and potential salvation from Sin over peoples' heads. And with a combination of Sin, the ubiquity of the church and the machina prohibition, there isn't much architectural or recognised natural beauty in the world to speak of other than that which you pass through in your pilgrimage or maintained by the church itself.

FFX-2 seems to have much more in the way of incidental characters with little idiosyncracies. This makes sense, since, and exactly since, Yevon is gone (at least, it's not what it was in FFX). Making this contrast clear in the original game would have gone a long way towards emphasising just why there are so few memorable little details.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 9, 2012

# ¿ Jul 9, 2012 18:38

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

I've spoilered the bits that I think are actually spoilers. That Yevon is different in X-2, and that it is a bad organisation for the culture it's established in Spira in response to Sin, is hardly new information.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2012 20:35

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

penguinmambo posted:

IIRC the real line has Barret mentioning he stopped using his artificial arm and had the weapon grafted onto him. I don't know what would stop him from, yknow, just holding a weapon IN that hand.

The problem with this is you're assuming Barrett would have access to a properly functioning mechanical arm. Given that he was just a miner who'd lost his home and been targetted by Shinra, his artificial arm was probably more like a conventional prosthesis.

It'd be vastly cheaper for him to just graft the gun on there than try to get an artificial arm that could hold the gun there. The real problem is how he manages to change that gun when he finds new equipment. :iiam:

# ¿ Jul 26, 2012 16:33

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Tallgeese posted:

So you know, it's not really very likely that Jenova is a corruption of the name Jehovah.

Oh come on. They named the villain Sephiroth and not only make Jenova his mother, but also give her the ability to take on other forms and change peoples' actions through infecting them. This is so clearly supposed to be a reference to the divine feminine spirit in Kaballah.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Jul 31, 2012

# ¿ Jul 31, 2012 10:58

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

^^^ The naming references are pretty incidental and not an important part of the characters at all, but they're so obviously there that specifically denying it is silly.

Yonic Symbolism posted:

Evil being sealed away by good mystics is a common anime trope but I would say this is a success in being a new compelling take on it that fits with the world being more modern and relatable. Jenova is horrifying.

FF7 was in production around the time the Ghost in the Shell movie and the Evangelion Anime came out; I'm sure it's no coincidence that this take on the "sealed evil" trope worked out like it did.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jul 31, 2012

# ¿ Jul 31, 2012 19:07

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

penguinmambo posted:

Personally I think the idea of Vincent being a *party member* versus a well rounded NPC was a late idea, considering you get both of his best gear in the same place in a rather anti-climatic way.

Maybe Tseng was originally supposed to get Vincent's part? Vincent did say he was in the turks, the whole "Tseng cares about Aeris" thing was left largely unresolved, and a late-dev change would explain why Tseng got killed off so unceremoniously.

E:

Lker posted:

If I'm remembering this right, and 6 and 7 are the only games to have optional characters.

This is true, but Square also pulled the optional character schtick with Chrono Trigger's Magus, and Seiken Densetsu 3 made you choose three characters of 6, both of which were released around the same time as FF6/7. It seems this was a phase they were going through.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Aug 3, 2012

# ¿ Aug 3, 2012 19:44

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Mogambo posted:

Really? I always thought you could recruit them at any point in the game once they became available and they never go away.

I also vaguely remember finding out that if you only get Yuffie or Vincent on the 3rd disk, none of their sidequest stuff is available.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2012 23:23

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

I stole a T/S Bomb somewhere along the line so I throw it and it deals around 2300 damage. If I knew that'd work I would've stole more!

You could also have tried the Laser enemy skill? Insta-kill, as I remember.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2012 20:01

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

The Saurus posted:

Your rectum, maybe. Really though, I'm just amazed that it's the warmest part of the surface of the body. Is that because it's the least exposed part of your body like you said (wouldn't this only matter when wind chill is a factor) or is it down to circulation or is it because of impolite methane related reasons?

I'd assume it's because it's in a sense the most exposed part of your body; your rectum is really an important internal organ (with all of the circulatory complexity that involves) that by practical necessity needs to be on the boundary to the outside world.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2012 12:42

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

stratdax posted:

Oh yeah, a couple times you mentioned a "Let's Break FF6" thread - I couldn't find that in this forum. Do you (or anybody) have a link to that thread? I'm playing FF6 now and I have no idea what I'm doing. I have a feeling I'm doing it all wrong. The floating continent just happened, so I hope I'm not too late to have some fun with the mechanics.

Elephantgun absolutely tore FF6 to pieces. And I mean that literally. Not only was it left in shreds, the poor thing, but she teamed up with other guys in the forum to pick apart the bytecode in order to better understand how some game-breaking glitches could be stabilized.

It's probably not the best place to look if you're playing through for the first time.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 09:42

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Wait, what about Yuffie? She hasn't met Marlene, given Marlene is in Midgar and there's no way back in.

Marlene just talks to Cloud instead.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 14:43

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Elentor posted:

Alright, so pay attention. This is one of the most important parts of the game, even more so because, for some ungodly reason, everyone seems to forget about this sequence.

Let the madness begin.

Thanks for clarifying the whole sword thing, though. So none of the swords were Sephiroth's sword; they were just bits of Jenova that she used to impale people with. Ew.

Also, this bit seems like something I never got, and is still kinda confusing:

Elentor posted:

So the idea is that Jenova's main body was what we were chasing all over the show, but that the Strong Will at the centre of the planet's wound was actually the real Sephiroth calling people to the reunion, rather than just some aggregated Jenova sentience like Hojo thought. Sephiroth has been manipulating all the bits of Jenova from a distance to congregate at the crater and bring the Black Materia with them.

Now that the Black materia has been recovered and Jenova's main body defeated, the bulk of the real Sephiroth's plan to become a god has been interrupted. However, the real Sephiroth is still, apparently, alive, and the Jenova reunion might still happen under his control. On the other hand, if Sephiroth were gone, the reunion wouldn't happen, since we've destroyed what was left of Jenova's main body.

So if Cloud and co. head on in to kill the real Sephiroth now, they should end things for good. That sound about right?

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 20:18

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

John Luebke posted:

To be more specific, how the hell did Tifa get her "It wasn't Sephiroth!", epiphany?

Maybe Tifa heard what not-Sephiroth was saying about Sephiroth being its master?

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 20:38

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Serifina posted:

But they didn't really do all that much with it, and why the hell can Sephy control Jenova anyway?

I think the answer to this question will become clearer once we understand how he got to where he is now from where we last saw the real Sephiroth. IE: Spoilers.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 21:53

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

KataraniSword posted:

The writing is twisty as gently caress at this point, and technically, we don't even know if Sephiroth even exists any more - only personal assumption, as well as Cloud's assumption, even suggests that it wasn't Jenova loving with us autonomously the entire time.

That's as may be, but look at who else is involved here. Tifa has been seeing Sephiroth, who she presumably does recognise as the soldier from Nibelheim. We also have confirmation from Palmer (Shinra HQ) and Tseng (Temple of Ancients) that also recognise Sephiroth. Finally, we have the people in Nibelheim in the Black cloaks that specifically mentioned Sephiroth as part of the reunion, and said that Sephiroth was inside the mansion, shortly before we went in and saw him there (he even threw a materia at us, the prick).

Jenova might be loving with Cloud, but he's not the only one. If it really isn't Sephiroth then Jenova is making a really good show of making everyone believe Sephiroth is the one with the plan.

The whole "Number 1 tattoo" thing looks pretty much settled now. I'd assumed like everyone else that the tattoo was Sephiroth's, but really, the chain of events is just circumstantial. See:

Elentor posted:

Having fought a Jenova/Sephiroth combo on a boat, we hear a guy with a black cape was seen coming out of the ocean at Costa del Sol with a Gold Saucer ticket (?), one was seen traversing the mountain path from Costa del Sol, and one was seen with a number 1 tattoo at North Corel on the way to the Gold Saucer.

Also, Dio mentions two things. Firstly, that he'd been asked about the Black Materia by someone in a black cape:

Elentor posted:

And secondly, that he recently met Sephiroth, who he thought must be very popular (?):

Elentor posted:

We all made the reasonable assumption that therefore the Jenova variant we fought was left behind by the same person that we were subsequently following: the guy with the number 1 tattoo, who was Sephiroth. This seemed to have been validated when, having followed Dio's lead, we made it to Nibelheim and found Sephiroth waiting for us and the guys in the black capes apparently hailing him as the real deal.

But actually, it looks like we have a much more plausible explanation in hindsight: The guys in the cloaks and tattoos are following the main body of Jenova around, including one of whom who (strangely) either was thrown off the boat or was trying to reach Jenova by swimming out to it. Dio thinks Sephiroth is popular among boys Cloud's age, such as the one who asked about the Black Materia, because it looks to all intents and purposes like Sephiroth has a pack of young groupies following him around. Which he does:

Elentor posted:

So there you go. The guy in the number 1 tattoo is just one of the black cape dudes that have all been ritually slaughtered by the bits left of Jenova's body, who herself seems to have been taken out now. So really, we have no idea what is going to happen now. (?)

E: Just to clarify, we still have no idea who these dudes with the numbered tattoos are, or what they have to do with Sephiroth or Jenova other than that they seem to be doing the bidding of whoever is behind all of this, but we do now have enough info to deduce that the guy with the number 1 tattoo is not the real Sephiroth, and probably not even the fake one we've been encountering - something I know I thought at this point in the game the first time I played through.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Sep 5, 2012

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 13:35

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

CzarChasm posted:

Do I have that all about right?

Sounds good to me. And yeah, if this is all Jenova acting autonomously, or even with the influence of Sephiroth acting from a distance, it is a rather interesting coincidence that she happens to have started to move when she has.

Indeterminacy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Sep 5, 2012

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 19:55

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

MythLisp posted:

I think the main reason why most people don't remember this part is because Square didn't do any of those show these scenes in CGI or at all really.

If they had actually had 'Sephiroth' morph into Jenova's form, there'd be no confusion at all and it'd at least be a pretty memorable scene.

Is Jenova dismissing an illusion? Is she just making her own 'Sephiroth' body transform? Is she emerging out of 'Sephiroth' as a separate body, or maybe as the same body but disintegrated first? There are loads of ways you can read what is waved away in the Swirly Battle transition and this ambiguity is actually something you'd want to preserve. You want to keep people guessing, because mindfuck is, as we'll see, the name of the game.

But you wouldn't get away with that today. What you might get away with is glossing it under a screen of terror; maybe have 'Sephiroth' reveal that he's got that freaky Jenova face and let that be the transition point.

Mind you, the Jenova boss character design really sucks, so you'd need to do something bout that anyway.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2012 10:51

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

George posted:

He's not as good as the rest of the main cast, but if you look past the anime there's some really interesting stuff about him. If you're going to try to start a debate about this, though, you should wait until the game's over.

I wouldn't go that far; the closing half and finale of the second disk is probably a good place to discuss the quality of Sephiroth as a villain. But yeah, not right now.

Especially since there is still a certain element of doubt as to whether the true villain is in fact Sephiroth.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2012 11:32

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Elentor posted:

As awesome as Screaming Idiot's Carrotmato is, this is just crying out for exploitation. Because :science:

(all images shamelessly stolen in the name of SCIENCE)

Will it Breed? Conduct your own experiments!

# ¿ Sep 9, 2012 22:55

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Mukip posted:

Though it's difficult to see at a distance they actually have a detailed head...

Oh, so the weird monster-face is actually the head of the steel angel. I did always wonder about that. I mean, after Barrett was saying how it had no head, yet clearly it did have a head, I just got confused as heck.

... Still think it's a crappy battle model though.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2012 23:42

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 00:14

Indeterminacy: Sep 9, 2011; Excuse me, your Rabbit parts are undetached.

Valiantman posted:

The Hojo smiley is way too light-hearthed for THAT.

External circulatory system? Seems pretty

to me.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2012 12:05

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > This thread are sick - Let's Play Final Fantasy VII!

«‹›3 »