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I'd like to thank you Elentor for this LP. I've played through the this game several times, back when it first came out on the PS1. The the plot confused the gently caress out of me back then, so I essentially ignored it on subsequent playthroughs. I would occasionally give it a spin for nostalgia's sake. So I've seen all these plot points before, and I know what happens after this, but only now after reading this LP do I actually understand what's going on. I have a new found appreciation for this game, and I owe it to you.
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May 18, 2013 15:35
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KataraniSword posted:CPR and let's march and do rifle twirls This is literally the one thing keeping me from playing FF7 again. Every time I come to this thread I think "I should play this game again" and then I remember CPR and the dolphin and marching in the parade and my motivation completely vanishes. I just really hate the Junon part of the game. I think the fact that that one parade march theme plays constantly throughout the entire place is a big reason why too in addition to the minigames.
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May 18, 2013 16:48
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Twelve by Pies posted:This is literally the one thing keeping me from playing FF7 again. Every time I come to this thread I think "I should play this game again" and then I remember CPR and the dolphin and marching in the parade and my motivation completely vanishes. I just really hate the Junon part of the game. I think the fact that that one parade march theme plays constantly throughout the entire place is a big reason why too in addition to the minigames. KataraniSword posted:There's also the chocobo race. Elentor & Others posted:Cloud told her that he failed to get into SOLDIER and her response to that was she always loved him. Also the reason Cloud was late to the meeting with Sephiroth and Tifa early in the morning was because he had stayed at his mom's house that night and not the inn. Also explains the whole deal with the inn having only 3 beds as well. simplefish posted:Now, the question about "But why doesn't JENOVA split into a hundred little Sehpiroths and fly all over the place?" is a much more interesting one. I need to look back at the chapters just before the JENOVA fights, but it seems to me as if JENOVA is reluctant to fight. Possibly not wanting to weaken itself before fighting WEAPONs? Shinra is trying to stop the Reunion too. Also the Reunion must be necessary, it's a pretty big plot point. Personally I believe there's more about it than "Hah let's gently caress with Cloud". But that's more of an issue about who is in control: Sephiroth or JENOVA. Sephiroth might just want revenge, JENOVA might want to destroy the world. Somewhere in the middle they might meet and give the result we get? -Removed due to heavy spoilers, I thought Elentor had properly discussed Jenova at the Northern Crater- FrancisYorkMorgan fucked around with this message at 18:44 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 17:46
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Yeah. Final Fantasy 7 does seem to have minigames overload. They should have had a lot less minigames and refined the ones they already had. Or just calmed down with them. Though, I also feel the same way with some of the cutscenes.
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May 18, 2013 19:49
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I don't understand why you'd be some scared/mad about the small poo poo like the CPR and Dolphin events to not play the whole game? It's a huge long rear end game, you know? Both of those scenes take maybe a minute of your time tops.
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May 18, 2013 20:41
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And it's not like you can fail either of them. Hell, the dolphin bit can get annoying just because you have to start over if you hit the power lines, but CPR? You can seriously just sit there and mess up forever until you get it right.
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May 18, 2013 21:05
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The figure in my head is 54 hrs. I'm sure others can do it faster without rushing, but hey, I was just a kid
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May 18, 2013 21:21
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If I can play Star Ocean 3 over the sound of Haulers you can play FF7 despite the dolphin and CPR. 
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May 18, 2013 21:25
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pigglesthepup posted:
Actually I've beaten 7 a few of times, probably more than I'd like to put a number on, and I still can't think of the reason why the events unfold from when in time they do. Maybe there's spoilers ahead that I've forgotten that will answer things properly but for the life of me I can't even guess what they might be, assuming it's something I ever even noticed in the first place. Some of it I feel like I know. Up until the events of the Shinra HQ the direction of the story and the goal of the party seemed fairly clear cut, save the planet from Shinra. Inside the HQ Cloud interacts with the headless Jenova and freaks out, a little later the president is slaughtered and all signs point to Sephiroth, faced with this Cloud declares Sephiroth to be the real threat and begins chasing him which brought us to where we are. So, we can infer that Cloud's interaction with Jenova had some effect on him that awakened the Reunion instinct in him driving him to the chase. That's Cloud, and the party's, trigger for the events of the narrative. But what triggers Sephiroth/Jenova's actions? Was Cloud's encounter with headless Jenova a two way street, starting things for both sides? A yes or a no here spawns it's own subset of questions that don't bare raising without having this answered. A slight side question I'm wondering about though, is to do with Reunion. Sephiroth had the head (assuming it survived the fall with him) and Shinra the body, does Reunion centre around one or the other? Why did Reunion begin? Who started it? Too much I don't remember, too much that is yet to be seen in the LP. I don't think there's any way to answer any of this until the end of the LP, assuming concrete answers can be found at all.
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May 19, 2013 00:31
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CheeseThief posted:Actually I've beaten 7 a few of times, probably more than I'd like to put a number on, and I still can't think of the reason why the events unfold from when in time they do. Maybe there's spoilers ahead that I've forgotten that will answer things properly but for the life of me I can't even guess what they might be, assuming it's something I ever even noticed in the first place. All I can really say is what Robert Jordan used to say to people asking questions he didn't want to answer = Read And Find Out. There's stuff yet to be covered which gives enough information to piece it together.
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May 19, 2013 00:34
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Hey Elentor do you have an email or some means by which I can contact you outside of this thread? Skype/Steam will do as well. I'd like to ask a few questions in regards to spoilers/theories/actual canon.
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May 19, 2013 03:29
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Frocobo posted:Probably a combination of not thinking clearly due to being run through with the buster sword, disbelief at what was just happening, and sheer stubbornness of "There's no way he can pull this off, come on!" Yeah, like the guy with the $5000 sword is going to get flung over the railing into the mako. COME ON!!
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May 19, 2013 04:00
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Fister Roboto posted:Yeah, like the guy with the $5000 sword is going to get flung over the railing into the mako. COME ON!! I'm not sure how the price tag of a weapon is going to make you any less vulnerable to getting thrown off a railing. I don't really read into it too much, people have put way more thought into this than Square ever did and it doesn't break immersion enough for me to be bothered by it.
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May 19, 2013 04:26
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I think people are reading all the praise FFVII is getting in this thread and expecting an ~absolutely perfect and totally rational~ plot. Which is silly because the game literally has Fantasy in the title.
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May 19, 2013 04:57
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FeyerbrandX posted:And the big one: "I will always be your mother" I love you even though you failed. "You should get an older girlfriend. One that will take care of you." Please leave the army and settle down before you are killed.
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May 19, 2013 05:05
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ApplesandOranges posted:I'm not sure how the price tag of a weapon is going to make you any less vulnerable to getting thrown off a railing. Half-hearted reference, I don't blame you for not catching it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siRWRFWLtCs
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May 19, 2013 05:12
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kalonZombie posted:"You should get an older girlfriend. One that will take care of you." Please leave the army and settle down before you are killed. I figured that was more a jab at Tifa. Moms are psychic about when you're pining for a girl who's nothing but trouble, she was trying to get Cloud off that wagon before he got hurt.
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May 19, 2013 08:15
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Fister Roboto posted:Half-hearted reference, I don't blame you for not catching it One more week!!!
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May 19, 2013 15:07
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Hey Elentor, I actually bought an account just to read this thread and comment here. You've done an excellent job covering one of my favorite games ever, but also teaching me a lot about it. I'm planning to do another run soon.Zarfol posted:So, I have never played FF7 (maybe I should try it after the LP is over), but why does everyone think that Sephiroth is such a good villan based on the LP so far? I mean, it looks like now that Cloud is back, we'll just go find Sephiroth, beat the hell out of him, and then with the power of ~love~ or something like that Meteor will blow up and we'll have a happy ending. Because it's not so much the villain as how you use them. Darth Vader is a pretty cliche villain, being a hero who fell to corruption but redeemed by love, but I dare you to say that he isn't one of the most effective villains ever. As for Sephiroth, I've always given credit to the FF7 script-writers for doing such a good job in ramping up his menace despite the player never having fought him. Because every drat time you encounter him in the story something terrible happened. Aeris died. Cloud had a mental breakdown. President Shinra and four floors of people were slaughtered. When I played this game as a wee teenager, just seeing him made me panic because I knew something bad would happen, and it did. The dev team knew how to properly use a villain right, unlike future games (I am staring straight at you, Final Fantasy 10). But the greatest part of his character, and why he's one of my favorite villains, is that he's an expert manipulator. Because it's one thing to have a super-powerful creepy villain. It's another for that villain to utterly break your main character and send the rest scattering to the winds without so much as having to raise a finger. And Cloud's seemingly recovered from that, but so what? How do you know that he doesn't have something else up his sleeve? Honestly, the guy isn't whiny. Cloud bested him, and is therefore a threat, so he has to be taken out just like Aeris and President Shinra. Doesn't mean he can't be a nasty prick about it. I'm not going much further into it because of spoilers, but he considered burning a whole town to the ground justifiable because he considered them traitors to the Ancients. Dude has a lot of issues we've yet to discover.
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May 19, 2013 16:29
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Yeah, that's really why I consider Sephiroth a very good villain. Not many bad guys can literally *talk the main character into becoming a vegetable*.
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May 19, 2013 17:00
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DeathChicken posted:Yeah, that's really why I consider Sephiroth a very good villain. Not many bad guys can literally *talk the main character into becoming a vegetable*. Oh wait, that's just massively loving dickish but that's why Sephiroth is a fun villain to watch, he turns into such a goddamn rear end in a top hat bullying Cloud all the time. But hey, he DID throw him into the Lifestream in revenge for burning down his entire livelihood, so fair dos I suppose!
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May 19, 2013 17:40
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Aerobot posted:As for Sephiroth, I've always given credit to the FF7 script-writers for doing such a good job in ramping up his menace despite the player never having fought him. Because every drat time you encounter him in the story something terrible happened. Aeris died. Cloud had a mental breakdown. President Shinra and four floors of people were slaughtered. When I played this game as a wee teenager, just seeing him made me panic because I knew something bad would happen, and it did. The dev team knew how to properly use a villain right, unlike future games (I am staring straight at you, Final Fantasy 10). This right here is what way too many video games screw up about their villain and why Seph works so well. Typically the Big Bad of games ends up on one of two extremes: 1.) So omnipresent that he actually loses all sense of effectiveness. The story isn't the tale of a plucky David beating Goliath, it's actually the tale of an emperor who's currently on a 478-battle losing streak but is too stupid/masochistic to stop it. 2.) A small enough presence that he doesn't actually have any credibility. Either because the "real villain" is dropped on you about ten minutes before the final battle or because he's always so distantly far away that you don't really experience him on-screen. Sephiroth, however, is presented very well in the sense that he's clearly the driving force behind your entire adventure, but you catch up with him just enough that you get to see the results of his actions. Frankly, by the time I first started heading down that crater in Disc 2, knowing Sephiroth was waiting at the bottom, I wasn't 100% sure that I actually *wanted* to reach him again, because every time the party had found him, bad poo poo went down.
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May 19, 2013 18:37
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CheeseThief posted:Some of it I feel like I know. Up until the events of the Shinra HQ the direction of the story and the goal of the party seemed fairly clear cut, save the planet from Shinra. Inside the HQ Cloud interacts with the headless Jenova and freaks out, a little later the president is slaughtered and all signs point to Sephiroth, faced with this Cloud declares Sephiroth to be the real threat and begins chasing him which brought us to where we are. You're on the right track with this. We can deduce, from the plot points in the narrative so far, how it happened. And we should start with the how, because the next set of questions, the subset you're asking about, is the why. However, let's wait till next update until we proceed in answering this. quote:A slight side question I'm wondering about though, is to do with Reunion. Sephiroth had the head (assuming it survived the fall with him) and Shinra the body, does Reunion centre around one or the other? Why did Reunion begin? Who started it? The answer for this is already in the LP. The answer is also a key to the previous questions you're asking. From Climax: Elentor posted:
quote:Too much I don't remember, too much that is yet to be seen in the LP. I don't think there's any way to answer any of this until the end of the LP, assuming concrete answers can be found at all. We can answer the basic questions, and we should. As you pointed out, answering them raising another set of questions. Answering what we can with what we have creates a foundation for answering the next set of questions. Next update is probably the best time to do that, while all of this is still fresh.
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May 19, 2013 20:49
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In tradition with every other plot twist so far and what not, next update/s will be more chill. Probably involving side-quests.
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May 19, 2013 21:46
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Elentor posted:In tradition with every other plot twist so far and what not, next update/s will be more chill. Probably involving side-quests.  Aw maaaaaaaan I hope that one part of the game that terrified the poo poo out of me as a kid is coming uuuuuuuup!
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May 19, 2013 23:36
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Elentor posted:Probably involving side-quests. Speaking of... When can the Yuffie's Super Ball be obtained at Fort Condor? I don't want to go there unless it's worth it.
pigglesthepup fucked around with this message at 00:44 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 00:21
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Hojo: "But being a genius that I am" Our resident science expert and breeder folks 
Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 00:38
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MagusofStars posted:This right here is what way too many video games screw up about their villain and why Seph works so well. Typically the Big Bad of games ends up on one of two extremes: Was the official word that Sephiroth controlled Jenova before or after Square merged?
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May 20, 2013 00:42
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Scalding Coffee posted:
Judging by what pigglesthepup referred to from the LP itself I think it's fairly solidly established that Sephiroth controls Jenova now. Reunion occurs at northern crater, not Shinra HQ, and the Jenova body which represents a significant concentration of Jenova cells moves towards the crater rather than being the site of reunion. Maybe Sephiroth was able to direct reunion, maybe reunion centres around the head he took. Either way the fact that he influenced the location of reunion implies his dominance in the relationship. Other than that I don't think I've ever seen an "official" statement on the matter. Edit = small spelling mistakes. CheeseThief fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 00:56
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That and Sephiroth referring to 'Mother' in the Temple of the Ancients, which doesn't make sense if it was Jenova talking.
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May 20, 2013 01:03
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CheeseThief posted:Judging by what pigglesthepup referred to from the LP itself I think it's fairly solidly established that Sephiroth controls Jenova now. Reunion occurs at northern crater, not Shinra HQ, and the Jenova body which represents a significant concentration of Jenova cells moves towards the crater rather than being the site of reunion. Maybe Sephiroth was able to direct reunion, maybe reunion centres around the head he took. Either way the fact that he influenced the location of reunion implies his dominance in the relationship. They're just two bros, trying to destroy the world and control the cosmos.
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May 20, 2013 01:18
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DeathChicken posted:That and Sephiroth referring to 'Mother' in the Temple of the Ancients, which doesn't make sense if it was Jenova talking. Actually I think that's a result of Jenova's "taking on the appearance of people's memories" thing. Cloud remembers Sephiroth from when he was in his mother-mother-mother phase and so when Jenova appears before him that's the form it takes. When we saw Sephiroth in northern crater he seemed more like his initial self, before he entered the Nibelheim reactor. Twiddy posted:They're just two bros, trying to destroy the world and control the cosmos. Yeah I prefer this way of thinking as well. Neither is really subordinate to the other, just two sides of the same coin. Although it could also be the case that Sephiroth really did die and Jenova just finds his form very useful but somehow that feels less dramatically interesting, besides what difference does that make in the end?
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May 20, 2013 01:40
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Since we finally hit this update I really really recommend that everyone go back and reread the update for the end of the Temple of the Ancients, specifically where Sephiroth shows up and Cloud starts going nuts.
ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 03:03 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 03:01
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Twiddy posted:This has been brought up in the thread before, and I still subscribe to the belief that it's kind of impossible to definitively answer this question. Sephiroth certainly seems to be controlling things to a certain extent, like where the Reunion takes place, but it's not like Jenova would want to reunite anywhere else. For much of the story, Jenova and Sephiroth's goals intertwine. There doesn't seem to be any kind of dominance or control to the relationship, it acts more like companionship. It's one of the reasons that the Jenova/Sephiroth villain team is actually kind of cool. You can talk about their overall goals by lumping them together, and you don't lose much. It's not impossible to answer if the game's script is explaining it. Although Sephiroth and Jenova's goals coincide, it's not left up to ambiguity as to which one is doing what. Sephiroth is the mind and the will, using Jenova's body and abilities, including Reunion, shape-shifting and telepathy. From "Upward Slope," just after Sephiroth says "This is the end of this body's usefulness" and the party fights Jenova Death: Elentor posted:
Cloud's been chasing Jenova in a Sephiroth suit. Ifalna tells us about Jenova's powers during "Cold Exposition, Part I": Elentor posted:
Then in "Paradise Lost," the being-known-as-Sephiroth uses Jenova's powers of shape-shifting and telepathy to immerse Cloud and Tifa into a Nibelheim flashback. It confirms the powers of Jenova, and reads Tifa's mind while it's at it: Elentor posted:
Jenova's powers of telepathy are very important. Hojo's had Jenova hanging out in his lab for five years, waiting for Reunion to happen. So why does all this happen when it does? If Jenova could escape on it's own, why does this happen now? There's a scene in the beginning of the game, during a pivotal plot point, with Cloud and Tifa in particular: Elentor posted:
But wait. Why Tifa? Because of this: Elentor posted:
Cloud goes from a vegetable state to having cognitive function, even though his memories are scrambled, when familiar figure from his life shows up. He's able to perform tasks, like blowing up reactors. She's tight-lipped about his memories being off because of the state she found him in. She's a connection to reality and keeping him operational. Cloud's mind is then broken again and Tifa is shut out right when Sephiroth is ready for the Black Materia. This is after the party's gone in the opposite direction of where the Black Materia is, to Nibelheim, then Sephiroth appears and starts giving you directions himself, telling you to head north, where Cloud can pick up a plane, and finally retrieve what Sephiroth needs. So when Cloud peeked into Jenova's tank at the Shinra HQ, Sephiroth's abilities to use Jenova told him he's a got a perfect storm of opportunity before him. Because getting the Black Materia and pulling out the Lifestream by injuring the Planet is a lot faster than slowly absorbing it up at the Northern Crater. Except the party is lead in the most inefficient manner towards the Black Materia. Even though Sephiroth and Jenova may have the same goal, whose plan is this, really? Considering how this all happened, and when it did, who's the one in control? pigglesthepup fucked around with this message at 05:01 on May 20, 2013 |
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May 20, 2013 04:27
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Tifa: "But Sephiroth is..."
Sephiroth: "Hahaha, Tifa..."
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I was always under the impression that it was absurd to consider Sephiroth powerful enough to gain dominance over a super powerful alien life form. My favorite theory was that Jenova was manipulating Sephiroth into believing that his Meteor/God power idea would work, just so the planet would be decimated. Would it even have the opportunity to recover from such a wound? Wasn't Norther Crater created when Jenova crashed into the planet 2000 years ago? I'm sure there would have been Jenova cells all over the place. Similarly, she is manipulating Cloud by not only utilizing his Jenova cells, but loving with his head by using the Sephiroth body to entice him, provoke him, and anger him. I had heard of Sephiroth being the mastermind before, but until it was presented in this thread, I never liked it. The way you guys explain it with their consciousnesses being intertwined in the crater sounds way more interesting, and less "forced control."
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May 20, 2013 05:00
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The synthesis of Jenova and Sephiroth as the game's main villain also meshes with its themes - FFVII was rocking a pretty hearty environmentalism motif, and the primary antagonist(s) is a man-made supersoldier who's presumably hijacked the body of an intergalactic alien parasite that literally sucks planets dry. Even in light of all this, the question is constantly raised (first by Bugenhagen, then indirectly by the behavior of WEAPON) of whether or not humanity is even worse. Since mankind's main faction and spokesman consists of the fine minds at Shinra Inc., it's still honestly hard to say.
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May 20, 2013 05:02
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Does the game ever explain why there is a Black and White materia?
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May 20, 2013 05:43
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MSPaintClock posted:Does the game ever explain why there is a Black and White materia? Someone earlier theorized that the Black materia was the memory the planet had of getting hit by whatever caused the crater in the first place (likely JENOVA) and the White materia...no clue!
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May 20, 2013 05:46
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Galick posted:Someone earlier theorized that the Black materia was the memory the planet had of getting hit by whatever caused the crater in the first place (likely JENOVA) and the White materia...no clue! Also, duality is very fashionable in JRPG writer circles.
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May 20, 2013 06:04
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MSPaintClock posted:Does the game ever explain why there is a Black and White materia? It'd make sense if the Ancients made the Black one to destroy the planet as a last resort thing to keep Jenova from spreading, and then later made the White one as a kind of failsafe to stop the Black one just in case. I don't remember if the game actually says why they made the Black one, though.
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May 20, 2013 06:08
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