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Thank you for your kind words everyone.SorataYuy posted:I still love the "Report" on the Gelnika. That was a thing of pure beauty. Thanks, the report chapter was one of my favorites. I had a lot of fun formatting it, putting in hidden links, etc. It was kinda soothing to make too, in contrast with the magazine chapter which was way more work than I originally expected. EvilTaytoMan posted:It's been one hell of an LP Elentor. Looking forward to when you LP the remake. I won't promise anything, but I'd like to do LP the remake, yes. For better or for worse. Comedy option I'm gonna LP League of Legends which I only got into playing because this thread made a lot of Mordekaiser jokes I didn't understand, and I ended up getting Challenger twice. EggsAisle posted:What can I say, Elentor? You've created the definitive Let's Play for one of the most revered works in all of gaming. There aren't a lot of LPers who could even finish such a project, let alone excel at it, but the evidence speaks for itself. Amazing work, and a gold standard for all SSLP's to come. Best of luck on your next project, whether that's a game of your own, another LP, or something else entirely. Obrigado! De nada.  Zeikier posted:Whoa, it's actually finished. Helluva ride and all that, El! I've graduated college, exploded my appendix, removed my appendix, got a job and a whole bunch of introspection and self-discovery in these four years! You have until the Epilogue chapter is done, which should take a while longer. I'm not particularly in a rush right now. I have some very cool things planned for it and now that the LP is done I do intend to take my time to get them right. Carbolic Smokeball posted:Congratulations on finishing Elentor, and thank you for sticking it through until the end. I've been here for the whole ride. I just wanted to say that taking on a game that people feel as strong about, and with as great a legacy as, FF7, is daunting. It's a massive game with a lot to cover do justice. You had to appease long time, nit-picky fans like myself, and at the same time convey to somebody new to the game why it's so highly regarded, what made it so special then and why it's still a great experience now. You absolutely nailed it. A lot of people approached me over the years asking if I was burned on the game or if I was abandoning the LP, it's strange. When I started it was very easy to write new chapters because there was a lot to talk about, lots of bugs to show, lots of stuff to do. I received a lot of very useful criticism over the years that helped improve the direction the LP was going, and after a while I got very self-conscious about the fact that if I rushed the chapters, someone binge-reading the LP in the future would notice a decline in quality and I didn't want that. So I had this idea in my head of what I wanted to do. For example, the report chapter was planned long, long ago, when I was toying with the concept of experimental chapters. My main issue was figuring out how to balance content in the long run, and because of that chapters started to take way longer to write. I'd leave them half written for weeks because they didn't feel right and voila, some day I'd have a good idea on how to fill them. There's also a huge tonal shift in the game from start to finish which is reflected in the writing. I knew it'd happen from the start, and it was a big issue for me to deal. The beginning of the game has a lot of comedy, a lot of drama, it's easy to write diverse chapters. But the game becomes progressively more dramatic and tragic over time so I ended up taking longer until I found out just how exactly I wanted to write each chapter. Other than writing the most tiresome parts of doing the LP was doing each boss card and thinking of a good image to wrap up each chapter. They're very easy to do individually but they add up quickly when you're talking about 50 bosses and over 100 chapters. But overall I'm happy with how things went. Elentor fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jul 24, 2015 |
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Jul 24, 2015 17:27
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Thanks for sticking with this so long, Elentor! This has been fun.
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And then you have FFVII AC which mixes both in a weird way. Everything is played really straight.
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Aug 14, 2015 03:14
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Hell I even think at some point Sega twitted about one of the many Sonic fangames. And After the Sequel even has its own wikipedia page. I think the main problem companies in general have is with "remakes".
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Aug 15, 2015 06:40
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Just a heads up: The epilogue chapter will be up by the end of the month. I've been working on it for a while now. It has some pretty cool stuff about the LP and some extra content that I think you'll guys will enjoy.
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Aug 19, 2015 03:54
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AlphaKretin posted:I am waiting with bated breath There's plenty of content I cut off. Out of the top of my head: 1) Emerald Weapon's first encounter was a really, really long battle that dwarves everything else and it wasn't interesting. Most of the videos take several dozens of attempts until I get the stars aligned to produce something that feels right, and that video was gonna take way more than that. By the end of the day I thought Emerald Weapon was really just "oh ok, you can do that" and there are videos of it already on the Internet, it wasn't worth taking more time off the updates for something wasn't gonna add anything. 2) The Special Fight in Battle Arena. It also seemed one of the events that would take me oh so many hours to record. 3) The alternate Corel ending if the train just crashes into the city. My nearest save to it was kinda far away and I decided to move on instead. 4) There was a special chapter that I decided to skip and instead turn into one of the extras in the epilogue. 5) One of the things I originally planned to do at some point was to comment on the alternate scripts in the game files but I found out (in this thread) there's already a site dedicated to that, so it seemed very superfluous. I think that's it. Stuff I almost cut off: * Early on I pondered if I wanted to post an ending image for every update since the game is pretty long and depending on the amount of chapters finding something thematic for every post could become progressively difficult. I decided to stick with it. I'm particularly happy with Chapter 105. * Same thing with the doodles. This one was something I thought about in the first chapter. "Do I really want to do this? This is gonna get old quickly for me. There are so many bosses in the game." Ultimately I thought the opportunity to draw some of the more horrible monsters with cute faces was too good to pass. second-hand smegma posted:Let's just start FFVII over again, Elentor. You don't really want to leave us...do you? I'll miss the thread because for the most part after the initial dust settled this was my favorite thread to read about FFs/JRPGs in general. Some nice discussions about games I was curious to play. Some talk about games I don't care about but these were cool too. For the most part people shared positive experiences and had constructive talks about their preferences.
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Aug 19, 2015 12:14
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Xlyfindel posted:This is only tangentially related to the lp, but since it's over I figured this is probably the best place to get a reasonably apt response. This might be a super long shot but have you tried the Yamaha Synth they liked to install coupled with the PC version of the game? Otherwise you might be out of luck.
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Aug 23, 2015 07:01
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What the actual gently caress
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Aug 24, 2015 11:16
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Just popping to say I'm still working on the final update. It's just a crazy amount of work, way more than any individual chapter by far.AlphaKretin posted:Will anyone even be here when Elentor wraps up? Seems like everyone's said thanks and left. Even if very few people read it "live" it'll still be on the archive, so I think it's worth the effort in the long run.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:53
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Waffleman_ posted:Yeah, if you want RPGs that cribbed off of FFX, check out Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Oh wow, I had to double check the screenshot. It really is identical.
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Sep 11, 2015 18:18
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FFX was definitely my favorite Battle System too. I also felt that at the time the bosses were much more challenging than the other FFs. I always felt FF7/8/9 had a wasted potential and I remember when I played FFX for the first time I sucked at it and it was a wonderful feeling.
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Sep 12, 2015 01:35
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Yeah, don't do that. FFV and FFX are both great for a similar reason. That's all there is to it.
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Sep 12, 2015 03:51
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We all know it's Aerieth.
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Sep 13, 2015 02:56
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VagueRant posted:I legit don't know how anyone plays any FF game without grinding. See, I'm the opposite. I have the most fun when I'm dying because that means there's a puzzle to be solved. Hence why I tried to show during the normal run the solution to most "puzzles", how the early bosses all had weaknesses to be exploited. Most people who played WoW got super mad at raiding because they only wanted to get items. Once I got into the proper mindset circa WotlK I thoroughly enjoyed wiping multiple times to bosses . Once you defeat the boss, the fun is gone. But during progression there's that excitement of figuring something new out. To me, dying is the fun part.And yes I do enjoy Dark Souls.
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Sep 14, 2015 01:36
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Seriously? Do it.
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Sep 14, 2015 06:56
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The beginning of this game is so cool it kinda makes me want to LP it.
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Oct 3, 2015 12:07
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Attitude Indicator posted:you should consider how much effort and how long it would take to make an lp like that I wonder if I can make to Aeris' death with at least one person unspoiled.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:55
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He looks appropriate then. That Proud Clod sprite looks really cool.
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Oct 4, 2015 09:07
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I thought it'd be done sooner but then I got into a procedural generation contest and that took the time I set aside for projects that are not (work/spare time for leisure). I'm still working on it.
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Nov 2, 2015 05:25
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I remember getting to Sephiroth, listening to the midi OWA music and wondering what the hell the fuss was all about.
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Nov 5, 2015 11:35
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Silegna posted:To be fair, they patched in the PS1 music after a few months. Yet people still think it's midi, which in my opinion, sound no different, even in the ff8 PC version. I'm talking about the original PC version released many, many years ago. The problem with OWA is that there's no singing in the midi version, which is what confused me until I finally got to beat the game on a PSX.
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Nov 5, 2015 13:08
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That was around the time soundfonts were popular so you could get some good results with some soundfont collections.
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Nov 6, 2015 07:13
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I'm rushing the stuff so you guys can stop talking about those horrible videos.
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Nov 8, 2015 14:38
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These sprites look so good.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:02
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zenintrude posted:I finally got around to watching my Blu-ray copy of Advent Children this weekend and was disappointed to learn that it only contains the "Complete" cut of the film, which shoehorns in a bunch of extra garbage including a bunch of stuff about Denzel's backstory (who cares?) AC was pretty much textbook cinematic render, nothing about it had anything remotely close to do with game engines. From Square-Enix papers it wasn't even anything special when it comes down to pre-rendered movies either. It just looks bad, yes.
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Nov 16, 2015 20:36
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Oh yeah, I'm not criticizing them. I think the quality of the movie looks decent enough and appropriate.
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Nov 16, 2015 22:25
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OFS you're a loving nerd. And I love it.
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Nov 18, 2015 01:35
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I want to voice someone.
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Nov 30, 2015 05:13
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I didn't like the voice-acting but I didn't hate it. I think that's my opinion about everything I saw in the last trailer. Except for the Art Direction, it seems spot-on. We don't see enough to have any real idea of how the combat is gonna play out. I know it's not gonna happen but I honestly wish we had an ATB or Turn-based version. berryjon posted:Elentor for Bugenhagen! HO HO HOO. Elentor fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 07:44
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Hi guys. Sorry for the sad note. I had a very bad episode for the past 2 days. I don't want to go into details, that short note was the best I could come up. I'm feeling slightly better today, but I need some hardcore rest. Thank you for your words and your support, it means a lot to me. And thank you very much for xezton and the IRC guys for posting my note. rickiep00h posted:Neurological poo poo is serious business. I hope there's help and treatment out there and you get better. It is, yes. I've been having trouble finding proper treatment, unfortunately, most of the meds I've been taking only work to a certain point. ultrafilter posted:Sounds a lot like myasthenia gravis, which is no loving joke. The condition is often treatable and can improve after the first few years, so here's hoping that that's how it works for our host. I didn't want to name things, but yes, it's no joke. Again, thank you for your support, guys. Like I said, it means a lot. Elentor fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jan 13, 2016 |
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Jan 13, 2016 06:49
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Bonus - A bit more into Japanese Horror and Tokusatsu Villains I do recommend taking a read on Chapter 105 again to keep it fresh in case you forgot about it. Previously I mentioned about the origins of the body horror from classic Japanese Horror Cinema as well as classic Western Horror like The Fly. I'd like to point out some more themes in common with Tokusatsus which also take great inspiration from the classics. While it's clear to us that FFVII takes heavy inspiration from the original The Thing From Another World, it's not alone in that. So let's take a look at some themes, shall we? First: Outer space. Almost every Tokusatsu has an element from the outer space. FFIV is very similar to the kind of productions being done at the time. The moon as a scenario for a final battle is not unusual - Also during the 90's you had Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, which while not a live-action, is still very much an anime tokusatsu. The final villain is battled in outer-space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXKIdyDWJTg A common theme that is used is to have an alien "final boss" that is immobile. There's a great deal of psychological horror to this. The claustrophobia and fear of being in paralysis, from one's own self, as well the perception that someone who needs not to move is the true mastermind. During FFVII we see this twice. Sephiroth himself trapped in the Lifestream, Jenova's body who's never seen moving on her own. Even as a humanoid, we never see Sephiroth at the crater moving, and the very final duel we have with him is very nebulous as to its whereabouts (Cloud's mind? The Lifestream?). And then we see Sephiroth's final forms, which do resemble a lot, well...  Bazoo, from Changeman (1985). It's also important to note that Bazoo himself only appears like that as an illusion - his true form is that of an entire planet (again, the moon theme). Much like Galactus, his intention is to devour the entirety of Earth then move on, consuming the energy of planets as he travels through the universe - which is not that different from Jenova's parasitic instincts, or Sephiroth's own EU quote about using this planet as vessel to sail through space, after consuming its lifestream. Back to Bubblegum Crisis, one of the villain's form is also immobile - an immobile statue after fusing with a physical structure.  Compare with this shot, of an also mostly immobilized (even chained) entity. Also, we'll take a look at more examples of this theme of "one's real limbs imprisoned within a monstrous body, in case Bizarro Sephiroth wasn't enough.  As for the mechanical fusion, FFVI has imagery like this, as does - once again - Tetsuo the Iron Man. It's also worth comparing this shot of both villains from Bubblegum and FFVII, and this notion of disembodied horror:  The villain in question is presented as an AI being built and questioning morality. She has a very interesting (and seemingly well-translated, preserving very debated concepts such as qualia and the philosophy of mind) monologue, which made the anime very boring for teenagers at the time I suppose, but it goes very well with the philosophical themes present in FFV to FFIX. If you listen to it you'll probaby be able to see references in common to other works at the time such as The Matrix and later Caprica, themes such as ethics in robotics and AI which are philosophical debates that are very, very old, as well as others. These horrific monstrosities are like active attempts into tapping into some sort of uncanny valley. Compare also Bizarro Sephiroth with Don Horror, from Space Sheriff Gavan (1982), and you should be able to see some similarities.  Or compare it to Necron, from FFIX:  While we're on the theme of living Planets like the previously mentioned Bazoo and FFVII's overly literal interpretation of the Gaia theory, we have FFVIII with yet another interpretation - a moon whose surface is literally covered with monsters. And since we're talking about FFVIII - another interesting theme is witches. Compare Edea and Ultimecia...   with Witch Bandora, arch-nemesis of the Zyurangers (1992). You probably know her better as Rita Repulsa:  The folkloric-looking witch, with very ornamented witch rags is very traditional. Machiko Soga (Rita Repulsa) herself did a number of these characters over the years:   Since you guys miss Brazil talk:   Edea's mind-control is also not exactly novel. Sheema from Changeman (1985) and the closest thing the series had to a "witch" character was herself under a spell and was revealed to be one of the good guys. A lot of the witch characters seem to emphasize curses and mind-control, such as Gilza from Juspion (1985). Last but not least, combine any of these words: True, Life, Ultimate with Form and you have probably the biggest cliché all around. I mean, Flashman (1986) has a villain who... well, travels from planet to planet to gain their powers in order to become the "Ultimate Life Form" through combining genetics of multiple species. Add genetic manipulation as a very present theme overall, and you get the point.  Queen Pandora from Spielban (1986) becomes Pandora Battle Mechanoid, Pandora Lifeform and Pandora Life-Mechanoid. If this made you think of Hojo, you're starting to get the gist of it. FFXIV also has some very Tokusatsu inspired garbs:  I felt like I should point the similarities to Tokusatsus because I think they can be somewhat obscure - everyone knows they exist but they're not particularly popular outside of their western counterparts (like Power Rangers) and while the original 80's and 90's stories have some very interesting sci-fi concepts and philosophical themes that only an adult will get underneath, their presentation tends to be very straightforward as procedural kid shows that don't scale at all with your age, unless you're one of those hardcore fans who elevate them to cult status or something. I am, however, personally a fan of 80's Japanese Horror. It's fun to see how these themes connect together, and the web of references tend to go very deep, intertwined between western and eastern cultures all the way to the 60's and 50's. 
Elentor fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 13:59
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Thank you again for your support, guys. I've been taking a slow recovery, but it makes my heart warm to read all your positive thoughts. I know this isn't exactly what you guys have been expecting, but I decided to write a new bonus chapter extending on my Chapter 105 remarks as I read the thread back. I hope it was somewhat interesting.
Elentor fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 15:45
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Scalding Coffee posted:Can someone host the Galatea video? It is forbidden in Obama's America. quote:A being is a being. A machine is a machine. Most humans would believe these two states to be exclusive separate orders of existence. And yet, they are not. I don't think I need to go in detail as to how some of these themes have been used numerously in the past, like Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner (which is clearly a strong inspiration here). The entirety of FFIX is filled with existentialist themes, so this monologue is a good example of almost all of the ancient philosophical themes that permeate modern Japanese fantasy work. And the preoccupation with the nature of qualia even down to her statement that "I am you" is up to this day a heavy debate about the duality of mind. If one's brain is disintegrated and rebuilt exactly the same - will that still be you? From a materialistic point of view, yes. But what if two copies are made simultaneously? Which one will follow your own subjective stream of consciousness, if any? From an external, purely logical or solipsistic point of view, they're irrelevant questions to the rest of the world, since you will still be you, and two yous will simply diverge into two different people, no problem here. But from a personal point of view, these questions form the continuity problem, and the reason why geeks will ponder the feasibility of teleportation for years to come. On a broader scope this is about the subject of personal identity, and it is divided mainly in dualism (body and mind being separate) and materialism (everything is a physical construct. The sensation of the color red can be written as a logical system, albeit we have no idea how). And while both seem the most obvious choices (with materialism being by far the most likely) they're also filled with many philosophical issues, which arise to often heated debates. These themes are also present in FFVII albeit in a very, very diminished manner. In Gaia, dualism is present since your mind is connected to your "spiritual energy" and not just a logical system in your brain, but since your consciousness is being mixed with the lifestream, the same issues from materialism arise (like when Cloud complains about Aeris never being Aeris again - she'll never smile, or cry). At the same time, your spiritual energy (lifestream) is also physical and can be used as an energy source, which adds a special element of terror. Since we're on the subject of Japanese entertainment, the Lifestream is very similar to the Human Instrumentality in Evangelion, which itself follows many diverse religious and esoteric beliefs that every mind is evolving and converging towards "God", and the ultimate goal of spiritual evolution is for us to go back to the source. This is a common theme in hindu-derived esoterism as well as some more modern esoteric interpretations of the Sephirot - that crossing the Sephirot will lead you to Godhood through the merging of all souls. Which is, well, the plot of this game. This concept of merging with God is more popularly called involution but it's not exactly novel. Hell, you can say the "Omega Point" in sci-fi is the same thing (technological evolution towards Godhood). Some books take some very wild interpretations on the mind issue. If you want a fun, crazy ride on how wild it can go, Permutation City is one of my favorites. Even if a virtual reality is disabled, the mind inside continues because the universe does not distinguish between all mathematical possibilities of existence, and as such you continue living in a reality that is mathematically possible to exist, since you were there in the first place. This is a distant cousin of the concept of quantum immortality - that you yourself can never die under your point of view because you'll always be alive in an alternate reality. There are many other themes in the monologue (such as human empathy being more easily developed towards her because she started looking physically like a human, while the other copies, being adorned as robots, are treated as slaves. This is the famous henchman issue - it's easy for the spectators to see faceless henchmen in helms dying in the movies because you don't have to think about them being real people, having families, etc). Elentor fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 08:21
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It doesn't hold very well, I'm afraid. Unless you're very much into Butt Rock, of which Bubblegum is full. I'm trying to condense the themes I'm familiar with in the Japanese entertainment made for the past 2/3 generations so that you don't have to suffer through it. For example, I only have some understanding of Tokusatsus because they were very popular in Brazil when I was a kid - it's definitely not something I would recommend to anyone, really. They're unwatchable even with heavy nostalgia goggles except for the most hardcore of the fans. Bubblegum is not a particularly good anime either. It has its own niche and some progressive moments, but otherwise I chose to use it as a reference because it's more unknown and everyone has already linked Japanese 90's entertainment to Evangelion so that's not very hot to talk about, I'll leave it to a Xenogears LP. The problem with watching Bubblegum is that it'll take you to a very dark road of looking into J-Pop singers from the 80's and 90's who went from cutesy pop to very hardcore Butt Rock with everything in-between, and they're all mostly gone, some of their albums can only be found in vinyl. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, look for Saori Saitoh/Akira Asakura, they all did cameos on the Shuto Kousoku series of movies that are some precursors for Fast and Furious. I feel like we'd need Docfuture's expertise in the 80's to go any further. Anime was very hot down here in Brazil when I was a kid. A bunch of crap that only we, the French and literally no one else (not even the Japanese) cares like Saint Seiya. And lots of Nintendo. I ran into FFVII almost entirely by accident, no one cared about it here when it was released. Elentor fucked around with this message at 10:57 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 10:49
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Just saying that I'm back to working at the epilogue. I'm not gonna make any promises, might come this weekend, might come in 6 months, but I'm back at it right now. Hope the little bonus chapter helped somewhat, and I'm sorry for all the hiatus.
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Feb 1, 2016 19:49
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As usual, thanks for the support guys. I'm almost done with the Epilogue (again, no promises on a date), so if you guys have any suggestions for content or questions you'd like to ask feel free to PM me.George posted:May your barbarian shove hearts into your mouth until you're well. I missed playing something chill, the past year has been very stressful and I didn't get to play many games at all unfortunately. Diablo 3 is being very therapeutic, I only wish it required a bit less time but then again, it's a game mostly about grinding, so there's that. My friends on vacation are trying to be competitive about it and stay on the top 100 of their classes, but I'm just happy to play doctor and heal them from time to time when I get the chance. We're not doing that great on 3s, but we're having fun and that's what counts. Speaking of 3s, all of this thread's Mordekaiser HUEHUE BR jokes eventually led me to publish this monstrosity. So if you miss my walls of text and you like LoL, enjoy. If you don't, the epilogue chapter is a huge wall of text about three times the size of an average chapter so far, so it should do the job. Elentor fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 20:45
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Tarepanda's Notes These are some notes on the game's original script and translation, written by Tarepanda. ----------------------------------------------------------------- On Wall Market Not to steal the OP's thunder, but long post ahead.  "Food Place" on the sign in the center, the red one in the upper-right says "Materi[a]."  The big one in the center says "Medicine."  The sign above the doorway says something like "Cave" -- it's not an actual word, but a made-up name. Earth-mouth. Cave. The mat the guy is standing on (not visible here) says "ENTRANCE" and in small print below that, something like "all kinds of stuff in here."  The yellow writing on the tank to the left says "Water Reservoir." The green sign with 男男男 says "MEN MEN MEN."  The red-and-blue sign at the top says "Shaved Ice." Cloud is standing next to one that says "bar."  The pink sign is hilarious -- it doesn't really mean anything, but it says "Koruneo," or if you transliterate it, "Corneo." The red-and-white one to the right says "ramen," I love those ramen carts. And now, what you've been waiting for...  In here... the blocky yellow-and-pink sign to the left is so blocky I can't make it out. The sign to the right says "Number 2", so they're implying that there's another one somewhere and this is a successful franchise. The big sign, unsurprisingly, says "Honeybee Inn." Beneath that is a typical Japanese restaurant curtain used to advertise that says "WOMEN WOMEN." The red-and-yellow sign is all crapped up and hard to read, but it seems to say "monthly tab." The sign below that says, again, "Honeybee Inn." It's worth noting that these types of places do kind of look like this, with big billboard signs and little street signs. Obviously the ones on normal streets don't go overboard, but the ones in the red light district or yakuza district go nuts. They usually operate on service levels depending on how much you pay. Hand-holding -> kissing -> touching -> fellatio. The massage places do only massage until you pay for the "king" level or whatever, and most places are staffed by Chinese/Korean girls. The Korean girls usually come over to learn Japanese and make money before they go back to go to college, or so they say. Actual sex for money is illegal in Japan, so it's often disguised as a special additional service, like "King Service" or something. Fellatio is not a problem and there are even shops that specialize in that, where you get three girls for ten minutes each, or something along those lines. It's all pretty boldly stated on their signs on the street. Another way they advertise sex for money is by saying, cleverly enough, that they'll allow anal sex. That isn't illegal, for whatever reason. So the assumption is that if you can do anal, they'll also probably let you do regular sex. (Not that anyone will believe me, but I used to be really, really, really bored and I would walk around talking to the suited yakuza guys and middle-aged Chinese women running these places.) Now you know more than you wanted to, and knowing is half the battle. ----------------------------------------------------------------- On the Wall Market Restaurant I've never seen that kanji used that way. "dirt" and "dirty" aren't interchangeable the same way as they are in English as far as I know.  This is a dumb translation and I hate it. It means a "yakiniku plate," which is a plate of thin-sliced grilled meat. I had Korean BBQ when I went back to America and man, it was a frustrating experience and nothing like yakiniku in size or flavor. They should have just said "Grilled meat plate." I also really don't like it when Japan translates "ramen" as "boiled Chinese egg noodles" or something similar. Food translations are a bit pet peeve for me.  The mat under all of the spotlights says "perform." I don't remember any of this part of the game at all... ----------------------------------------------------------------- On Don Corneo's Mansion  The thing in the background says "puu," or "poo." I guess it's a catchphrase or something, since the girl said it. FF7 is way too early to be mocking Hard Gay, so I'm not sure what it's a reference to, if anything.  The door to the left is labeled "punishment," the big door is labeled "large serving." The wall scroll on the left of the door has kanji put together in a bunch of nonsense saying "shuumai," the one on the right says "gyoza." Food fetish much?  The scroll at the top has his name written upside-down, making it... Oneruco. I don't know. What a putz.  What a putz. The big red lantern in the background, again, has his name on it. The bedspread says "Heaven" and a smaller character on the footboard says "bowl of food." No wonder this guy is fat. The mat has more nonsense kanji that can be read as "pit trap." Gee. What a putz.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:11
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Epilogue, Part I This is the Epilogue chapter, a bit of a post-mortem. I'll give you my thoughts about this crazy ride in which we've been. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Some of the content in the epilogue This Epilogue comes in two parts - this wall of text, and the next chapter which includes a huge infograph. I finished including all of Orange Fluffy Sheep's Low Level run into the index, and last but not least I included Tarepanda's annotations about the game's translation in a separate post, also included in the index, just as you guys requested years ago. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Beginning "Wait, there's no FFVII in the archives. What the hell?" Back when I started it was somewhat popular to do comedy LPs with a more sarcastic tone. At the time I found some of those really good, and this comedy aspect kinda got me here. There were a lot of FF Let's Plays. Around the time TWD finished FFIX I realized no one had done a FFVII LP before and finished. FFVII was a game I knew fairly well, so I thought, why not? I posted a demo Chapter 1 to see the reactions. Most people warned me that nobody wanted to do a FFVII LP because it was a bad idea, because it would probably be very hard to control spoilers, and FF threads tend to be problematic. This is easy to see why - Final Fantasy is a long series, people tend to strongly prefer whichever FF they played first and people like to be very vocal about which FF is better, and FFVII is particularly controversial by being adored by a fanbase that can be pretty bad. So it's a pretty easy to hate game, and I was just told that it'd be hard to make a non-comedy LP about a game that was widely considered to be overrated by the current generation/demographics. Still, I felt like FFVII was a genuinely good game and people both hated and liked it mostly for the wrong reasons. I think these wrong reasons in this case were also the ones that more easily lended themselves to nostalgia and also the ones that made the EU mess possible. And that was the experience I had a few years before the LP, when I played FFVII again: To me, FFVII, the game that I remembered was a cheesy game. The game that I was playing then seemed pretty good. And most of the things that interested me now were things that I didn't remember at all. I disliked Aeris when I was 12 - now I found her character very interesting. I didn't care for the cool designs but I understood how they were part of this mythos and this fantasy to which I belonged to the demographics at the time. It was the way to grab my attention. But the story connected with me and suddenly all of these things seem like the unnecessary fat. I was interested in the characters, and how they reacted to these things. And events that seemed dull to me when I was a kid made a lot more sense now. When I read about Nomura talking about how he wanted Aeris' death to be different from all the other deaths (and FF is infested with them) it made more sense to me, as an adult, why you'd want to express that in a way that is, at least in your mind, more genuine. Because we've lived enough to lose people. So I wanted to make an LP of FFVII not as how we remembered, but as how I interpreted, as an adult. And while I can't say for the developers themselves, I at least wanted to offer my interpretation of what seemed intended. And to remember that these people, working behind the game, were not Cloud or Aeris, but real people who genuinely wanted to tell us something, whether that was a good or bad one. Since I was mostly disappointed at all the generic and procedural stories that games and movies were throwing at us at the time, that in itself seemed more precious than ever. For what is worth, I do not think a good story is necessary or even a requisite in a game. I've always said that "if a game is good or engaging, the player will forgive everything, even a bad story". I also don't think game developers tend to explore the medium properly and while I have enjoyed some of the more cinematic games I think mimicing movies is not really the best way to do it. People like to joke about immersion, but I believe immersion is fairly important, and the game narrative can convey it without text. You understand what Mario and Sonic are from the background images, Tetris is presented as a straightforward puzzle, and Portal uses the game medium very well to convey a simple but effective story. Final Fantasy VII is anything but simple and the translation wasn't exactly helping, but still, I liked what it conveyed, and felt it was worth giving a shot at LPing it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- On The Format After the first 4 or so chapters, I outlined how I wanted to do the LP and wrote ideas. Most of the LP was planned well in advance. There were elements I knew I wanted to keep in the format: 1) The Boss Cards. Some were very boring to do, because there are so many bosses. 2) The End Images. At some point I realized I'd be doing them for every chapter. I planned some in advance, but they were also hard to do overall. 3) Every Boss would have a video. Other than that some things were a bit more loose. I wanted chapters to have around 50 screenshots but that went up a bit over time. The idea was to stay between 50 and 100 but some chapters went overboard. As to how I cut the chapters, I tried to cut them near the closest thing I could find to a cliffhanger or before a major chance in arc/scenery. That wasn't always possible, but sometimes I did an extra-long chapter just not to make the next one awkward. Since this wasn't a video LP itself and the gameplay isn't exactly exciting I tried to be creative with the videos and find original and unusual ways to kill the bosses with the resources available at the time. This wasn't very consistent overall and I think I could have done a better job with the video production (which has always been messy for me, some of the volumes are uneven too) so I apologize for that. But yes, one of the things that was hard for me to figure out is - to whom I was showing the bosses? I realized they wouldn't be that interesting to new players so I instead tried to do creative things with them. Some of the earlier bosses were very fun to do and some involved way more trouble than their videos might suggest. In particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1UU3GXTkBg I had this in mind that Carry Armor was very annoying to kill and a boss a lot of players (me included) hated, so I wanted to kill it in one turn for the sake of catharsis, without resorting to KOTR and stuff like that. Let's say it involved a lot of Excel and at some time I thought it wasn't possible, so I was super happy when it happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doTfZoKy0LU I think this was my favorite boss fight because everything just worked so well, and you don't get to use Confuse (or Loco Weeds, for that matter) on bosses every day. Most of the bosses involved a lot of trial and error and being screwed by RNG. Even though the end result might not have been that great, I had fun in the process, and I hope some of you had fun watching them getting blasted too. ----------------------------------------------------------------- On the Content As for the overall LP, I had some things in mind beforehand: 1) I would try to match the theme of my writing to the theme of the game. That means there would be a thematic shift because this game gets very depressive. 2) I'd try to be a bit completionist and show as much as I could. I failed at some parts (like the Corel Train) and I apologize for that. I'll be entirely honest: Most of the things I didn't show was because I hosed up the Save States. We're only human. 3) I wanted to do some bizarre chapters eventually. I didn't know exactly what at first. At around Chapter 40 I realized I had no idea how I was going to do the Temple of the Ancients which is both a maze and it bores me to death, so that was my first idea. I could make it shorter and more interesting by doing a homage to 90's magazines. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but that chapter took so long. I have a newfound appreciation for magazine editors. That poo poo was much more painful than I imagined it would be. The other one was the Gelnika chapter. This one I had planned way beforehand. It was also very painful to do (felt like doing school homework again, working with all the paper, cutting stuff, etc) but I liked it. And it's filled with Easter Eggs, which I suppose fit the chapter thematically too. There are plenty of Easter Eggs all over the LP. There are some Highwind pictures hidden in the Rio de Janeiro pics I posted. There's that hidden video early on where I talk over killing Aps. I don't remember all of them, but I had fun hiding stuff all over. Like I said, most of the chapters were outlined very early on, so I knew the LP would last around 100 Chapters. I planned the route and what I would talk about. Sometimes when I had an idea I wrote it down to talk about it around Chapter __. I also had fun with the chapter titles so sometimes I'd go like "Oh yeah that's definitely gonna be the title for when they get to _____". They ended up mostly being music references anyway. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Things I would have changed I tried to emphasize the soundtrack in the first chapters, but I would have definitely made links to the soundtrack something part of the format. Not that I don't love the soundtrack (I do) but I didn't expect such a reaction to the lack of it being something more regular. My bad. In retrospective I think some guest writers could have been cool. I didn't think about that during the LP. I do not regret the decision to write a SS LP as I think that was the best medium both for the game and for what I wanted to convey, so I would not have changed that if I had the chance to go back. But part of me wish I had instead made a VLP. I wish I had made some more special chapters. They were a pain to make but very satisfactory at the end. Also uh, I'm sorry for my Engrish. I know my English is far from perfect, but it's easy to forget a language if you're not practicing it constantly, which I'm not. I've never studied English formally so I know my wording can get messy from time to time. I apologize. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Cut-out content Off the top of my head, the special battles at Gold Saucer and the aftermath of Corel if you let the train destroy the city. And beating Emerald Weapon as soon as you saw him. It was just long, boring and I'd be mostly copying other people's strategies, it just wasn't fun. There were also things that I did not show because seriously - The Gold Saucer Fortune-Telling machine changes every now and then, and we skipped most of Fort Condor battles, I believe. They're not very interesting backtrackings most of the time. I probably skipped some of the items you get at the excavation site, and maybe a few Summons and Limits. Otherwise, I think we got everything in, minus the Debug Room. ----------------------------------------------------------------- My Experience I'll be honest, I was afraid I'd mess it up at first, and it wasn't a perfect LP, but I'm happy with the result. I had a lot of fun writing the Let's Play, though it did become a bit harder over time as we approached the end, once the meat of the story was done. I'm glad you all stayed with me, over the years. I apologize for all the hiatuses. Some of it were me taking my time thinking of something to write next, some were me being a bit burned and needing a pause, and some were health issues, unfortunately. I'm happy we got through and finished it. And I guess with this one final post, it is 100% done at last. Hard to believe, right? But overall, my experience was a blast. I had plenty of fun, and it fills me with joy that the thread was able to provide the same to some of you. Over the course of the Let's Play a lot of things happened. We got a FFVII remake announced. Can you believe it? The thread went on long enough that a remake was announced. I mean, holy poo poo, how crazy is that? Seriously guys. I'll tell you how crazy that is. Good or bad, we'll have to play it. And who knows of the future? I might end up LPing it .----------------------------------------------------------------- The Thread The start was a bit rough, but that wasn't exactly unexpected. We all knew there'd be a lot of spoilers and things wouldn't exactly start smooth in a FFVII LP thread. But after that things got progressively smoother - a little bumps here and there - but smoother. At the end of the day, I think this was a most marvelous thread, and I'm really, really happy, to have been part of it. At times I was just happy to be able to read it, and a lot of interesting discussion happened in these hundreds of pages. I learned a lot about this game and other games overall, J-RPG or not, about Japanese culture, and about things in general. People were impressed that we did manage to get to Aeris' death without spoiling to two people. I'm honestly more impressed that you guys managed to turn this into a Final Fantasy thread that was good to read. I actually had a lot of fun with the discussions you guys had over the past few years, and I thank you for it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Final Words I'd like to thank AbsoluteSteve for his incredibly complete guide. While I knew a lot of FFVII from memory, his guide was a great reference and it would be dishonest not to credit and thank him for his extensive work documenting the game. His site also contained all the item artwork that I used from time to time. On a similar vein, I'd like to thank Terence Fergusson for the incredibly thorough data he gathered over this game. He pretty much exposed every game mechanic to such a high degree that his guides should be a reference to anyone learning this game. I cannot even imagine the work involved in doing so. I'd like to credit a lot of my Let's Play to the LPers who inspired and influenced me. Protonjon was the original LPer that got me into it. Cybershell with his Sonic LPs was a huge influence with his very well produced boss intros and his production value overall. I think all screenshot FF LPers ended up influencing the next ones somewhat (and even The Tipping Forties' FFX Video LP seemed to be influencial in that aspect), so The White Dragon was definitely one of the more direct and recent influences now that I think in retrospective. My favorite Let's Player is definitely DocFuture with his very bizarre and deadpan humor and if there has ever been a single one LP that made me go "holy poo poo I hope I write a LP someday" it was Sonic 2 Special Edition. And a lot of the Let's Play also belongs to you. A lot of the things that will be read later on in the archives by people finding it years from now that would be attributed to me, I'm dedicating this space to make sure that you all get your due credit. The hilarity of Screaming Idiot's drawings, small but great details like that part when Yuffie is upside down and then George suggested to invert the portrait, and the big overarching stuff like all the small critiques and suggestions you guys offered me over the years that helped me improve the Let's Play for all y'all. I'd like to thank all the readers and mods from this forum who helped making this LP possible, and everyone who stuck with me over the course of this long Let's Play. Thank you.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:58
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Epilogue, Part II  1280x720 1920x1080 2560x1440 Elentor fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Sep 3, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 22:59
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Hey guys, I rendered the final image in some higher resolutions and widescreen, in case anyone wants: 1280x720 1920x1080 2560x1440
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Mar 13, 2016 09:19
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Thank you for the kind words guys.Zenostein posted:I wasn't one of the people who somehow didn't know Aeris dies, but I was unaware of whatever the second major spoiler was (it's been so long I've forgotten), and I made it all the way to there, so kudos for that, too. Also, that infographic is pretty wonderful. Did you include it in the twenty-three gigabytes of photoshop documents? I did, yes. I did not include the 6.21 Gb of production files for the final image though.
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Mar 13, 2016 23:26
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