Fans issues/concerns that need to be heard

Final fantasy 7 fans have waited years for a final fantasy 7 remake, some have lasted the wait and some have not.

Its clear square enix has done a good job with this remake trying to innovate with the battle system,storytelling and reinventing their most acclaimed game. 

The game released was not what fans originally petitioned for, and the quality/polish was not up to par with current late gen 2020 games. Fans were ok with some minor changes that benefitted the overall game but as it was marketed as a Remake akin to other ps1 Remakes like Resident Evil,Crash,Tomb Raider,Spyro,Doom,Ratchet and Clank and as square did state in interviews that they would be faithful and respect the source content as many of the staff team worked on the original and that the staff also consisted of fans itself we trusted square with this project and trusted it would be an actual remake instead of a remix/reimagining or a sequel masquerading as one, which fans are now effectively split and enraged thanks to squares deception. 

The framework was all there and succeeded in so many places like level design comparing this with final fantasy 13's very linear corridors is like night and day. As well as 15’s unfinished state having to pay for character arcs as DLC. Passionate Fans were hoping this would be everything they loved about square in the early days, and saying some felt betrayed would be an understatement given this new game would not exist if it wasn’t for the fans who petitioned for years and others that supported square no matter what. For many this was the make or break moment.

Heres the breakdown of issues fans have on the direction the game was taken.

Major deviance of Canonicity 

Textures/Skyboxes

Summons felt tacked on 

Overuse of particle effects obscuring view

Battle mechanics

Replacement of Blood with glowing purple particle goo

Menu/Game over screen is bland

Too much credits text during the opening cinematic

Replacement of music that had locations set with them with new music that did not fit the tone.

Padding

               Major deviance of Canonicity

Fans loved many aspects of the original game and the thing they loved the most is the story that was gripping from start to finish, mysterious, funny and heartbreaking as it was a deep story about life and death. It was a fantasy game but grounded with real life issues we all face at times. While square has succeeded with capturing most of what made the original captivating it does fall very flat introducing the dementor/heartless esque Whispers of fate. Adding this aspect with alternate dimensions, timetravel Removes all seriousness of the story, consequences and the grounded nature of the original story fans fell in love with. What is the point of the plate fall if nobody died from it. Maybe atleast you could of added the point of view shots from the original of people on the top plate feeling the ground beneath them fall or the view from the inside of a house with the tv on and through the window you see the plate falling on top  of people who actually die, Or why miss the opportunity to show Jessie's house begin to fall as her mother inside is taking care of Jessie's father. The whole new plate fall scene seemed to go by way too fast. Countless times in this new game we see events from the original play out with no consequences. The plate falls characters are assumed dead then magically brought back with no explanation at all. Barret dies and the same happens. There's no real explanation. In a magical game like kingdom hearts with Disney characters,that kind of "who cares it's magical anything can happen" writing is fit for that world and those characters, but it does not fit in the world of final fantasy 7 where in the original things were grounded in a realistic way for example we just know avalanche is dead because they were seriously injured before a city sized plate fell onto them and there's no logical way anyone could survive that in a injured state or not. When someone died you knew they were dead for sure and were not coming back. It did not play with your feelings. It was cut and dry. That's how life is. There's no infinite chances. Enjoy what you have because it won't always be there. Fans petitioned over a decade for a remake and while that might mean different things to people and in different situations like remaking a movie, We all know deep down A remake of a game is improving the structure of what was already layed out and held back from the technology of the time. And we appreciate that and minor changes here and there where it makes sense, but to butcher the core story to make essentially a new game that wouldn't of sold if it wasn't anything to do with final fantasy 7 is not what was promised when the first trailers came out for this. We were told the remake would respect and be faithful to the original and improve where it was needed. And that is essentially what a remake is. Instead we were told one thing got bait and switched for what is final fantasy 7 Remix/Reimagining 2.5/kingdom hearts dream land. Nomura and Nojima has effectively split the fan base creating hate against eachother when we all just use to love final fantasy 7 together. If this game was marketed as a remix or reimagining this part of the issues would not be here as I would of known what I was getting into purchasing this game. Since this game was only 10-15% of the original,and square only tampered with the story peppering in the whisperes here and there,heavier at the plate fall,more at the shinra building then went all out at the last chapter, that means they were about 5-7.5% faithful to the complete final fantasy 7 story and we can hope changes are made so the story is what fans petitioned for to begin with, or we can hope square just makes a new game with their time travel,alternate dimension ideas instead of using the popularity of their most beloved game to make money. Doing what they did makes it seem like they did not want to remake the original story or they did not respect it enough to keep its core themes. Newcomers seem to be confused with the ending not knowing who Zach is. People who appreciated the storytelling of the original don't understand are confused on why this route was taken when the groundwork was already layed out and was fine just being tweaked a little. So I'm not sure who this game was suppose to be for if it's splitting fans and causing confusion and hate against eachother. Convolution is not a good story teller. Please do not continue to turn final fantasy 7 into kingdom hearts or advent children. Cloud and gang needed grapples to climb up the pillar, needed them to get across 10 or 20 ft areas, then a couple chapters later at the end cloud was jumping 100s of feet in the air slicing buildings in half. Was this made just for people who like fan fiction and kingdom hearts games?  The great parts of this new game was when it stuck close to the source material in most aspects like story beats and music.

                       Textures/Skyboxes

Square stated they delayed this game for Polish and The textures/skyboxes of the game world were not up to par with a late gen 2020 ps4 game. Ff15 and ff13 had better textures/skyboxes by far.

As a side note the cinematic face models do not match the in game face models of the characters most noticeably cloud,tifa and sort of aerith.

                    Summons felt tacked on

The summons felt tacked on and lazily implemented like the textures and some battle mechanics were. Summons originally were rewarded to the player for exploring around the world,triggering events,defeating an enemy or solving a puzzle. I'm happy square kept the aspect of finding regular materia on the ground in certain locations. In this new game the only time I got to find a summon for myself was in chapter 6 in the fan and it turned out to be the choco mog summon. I saw the red materia behind the fan,I was so excited as to know what summon that could be and it turned out to be one I've seen multiple times in trailers and let's face it, it was just choco mog. So the experience was there but why was that the only time I was able to experience that treasure hunter feeling. The first summon materia is automatically handed to you and the rest are just apart of chadleys missions. Square recreated so much of Midgar and added sections to it and it would of been great if there was more ways to obtain the summon materia like the original. It would of been nice to find leviathan in dons underground sewer or to find bahamut in shinra tower just by exploring and looking around trying to find out how to get to the spot where you see it. Another small issue with summons is how they all just poof into the battlefield instead of the grand entrances they use to have. We understand the combat is fast pace now. But the time could of been taken to properly animate the ground cracking and then ifrit bursting out of the ground like in the original instead of just magically proofing into the scene out of thin air.

     Overuse of particle effects obscuring view

There's too many particle effects going on on the screen obscuring the view of the character and enemies. Why do regular attacks make particle fireworks go off? Why does chocobo summon have particles coming out of its ass. There’s other effects they could of used rather than giving everything a particle effect and calling it a day. 

                       Battle mechanics

The battle mechanics don't seem to be fully tested or planned out. The enemies will beeline towards whoever you play as, and will swarm you making any kind of tactical plan fail immediately.

Replacement of Blood with glowing purple particle goo

We don't understand why blood was removed from this game and was replaced with something else that seemed would fit a disney game. This all comes back to the tone of the original. While this new game excceded our expectations in the realistic strong language used. We would of liked if you kept the blood.

Menu/Game over screen is bland 

Small thing here. Not the biggest deal. Menu is bland compared to other final fantasy menus. Ability to change the colour of the blue background like the original would of been a  major boost in the customization/look of the menu. Changing the menu's color meant every player can have a different experience,set the unique mood they wanted or just change things up from time to time for fun.The Freedom of choice and ability to have a sharp black menu or a funky multicolour gradiant. Things that might of benefited the menu's appeal could be again less reliance on particle effects for everything,menu including, character models that move in the menu as ff13 did, the ability to shrink and grow the battle command menu, fully 3d models of the weapons and materia that you can rotate while equipping them in the menu,perhaps they can slowly rotate automatically in the menu until you select and manually rotate them. The game over screen in the original was a nice picture of Midgar as a projector film making it seem like we were playing a movie. I always imagined a remade version of this would be you game over and the screen seamlessly transitions to a old timey look, your wounded characters still on screen,the camera pulls out to reveal the projector film with your wounded party members still showing,the film reel comes to a stop and the sprawling picture of Midgar with game over appears on the screen flickering like its an old retro movie playing. Instead we got perhaps the most bland game over screen of all final fantasy games. 

Too much credits text during the opening cinematic

Seeing the opening cinematic the first time in the trailer was an amazing experience seeing this new scope of the game. When starting the game up some of that magic and immersiveness was lost being distracted by ongoing credits that overstayed it's welcome. These credits and text lasted up until the city pan out from aeriths face and then we were ambushed by the main title and quickly brought to the bombing mission. That's quite a lot of text in just over 5 minutes in what should of been a moment where the player should of been fully immersed into this detailed world square built. In comparison, The only text in the original at this moment was the main title of the game and after you saw that main title the camera sits for a good few seconds,taking its time,letting the player fully take in Midgar for those seconds with nothing on the screen except the whole shot of the city before starting to slowly zoom in back to the action. The removal of the credits in the opening would of made the opening scene more immersive and if that was not possible for some reason then less and less noticeable would of been the next best thing for players who like to be immersed in your world right from the start.

Replacement of music that had locations set with them with new music that did not fit the tone.

being trained in music for years I can speak about the music of this game honestly. I can't read the minds of the composers but I do know nobuo uematsu's original inspiration for the original game was rock,country,jazz,techno,metal,synth,orchestrated sounds and experimental industrial sounds. I love how in this new game they kept that original synth sound that you hear right before the main title appears over Midgar. I just wish there was more of that. In this new game there are remade songs of the original tunes and there's newly created songs like Jessie's theme and avalanches theme which I thought were amazing and touching. Issues I and some others noted is that some of the music can be overly orchestrated and sound like a generic action movie, some songs even sounds like it uses fake instruments when in the original the tone for Midgar was more rock,synth,techno,metal,experimental and pretty heavy on jazz especially in the slums and the train tunnel. The original tunes played at the right time in the right locations giving you this immersive feeling of Midgar being this depressed city where the rich and poor live very constrasting lives. This leads to the next point, where in this new game, locations that had set remade songs were replaced with newly created music instead of remade music that would of fit the tone of Midgar. The new dance music in wall market is more fit for a gold saucer type location than what is suppose to be a scuzzy part of town.And again hearing dance music moments after the plate falls this time in the collapsed road back to sector 7 does not fit the tone of what was suppose to be a sad moment for the characters. Replacing the jazzy "lurking in the darkness" theme with the new orchestrated theme changed that whole section where in the original I could of spent hours grinding in that area loving the music and now with this new theme i just want to get out of the train tunnel so I don't have to hear that theme anymore because it does not fit the tone. The next theme I'm honestly confused about because I don't know if it was intentionally done or not. In the original when you climb the endless staircase in shinra building you hear the song "infiltrating shinra" in this new game I can't recall what I heard because it seemed to be some kind of distorted noise. I don't know if I was the only one who heard this or if the original theme actually played and it was just my tv or headphones. Because after climbing the staircase and did a few things on the floor you climb to,I went back to the staircase and the remade "infiltrating shinra" theme was playing like it was intended to. It was not there the first time climbing the staircase though in my play through. So I dont know if it was me or the game or if square actually put distorted noise while you climb the stairs which is not faithful or fit the tone of the scene when they already did a masterful job remaking the "infiltrating shinra" song. Why didn't they use it where originally intended? The last music related issue is how the "crazy motorcycle" theme was pushed for the whisper plot point to happen before it. The "crazy motorcycle" theme is suppose to play the second you see cloud on the hardy Daytona bike and for generic orchestrated music to play instead of that hard techno/experimental beat was a huge let down. But like i said before a lot of the new music is amazing, I'm sure I and others would embrace new music themes being played in new locations or new moments like "Jessie's theme" but replacing what worked so well with the new music themes has not worked so far.

                             Padding

This game was suppose to justify being a only Midgar game.As stated to make the full game as one it would of meant things would of had to be cut,streamlined. We understand the scope of the world of the original final fantasy 7 and how many unique locations with unique assets that would of taken a lot of development time to create. That being said since your were not able to create 25% of the game which would of gave us up to the jenova battle on junon ship or 50% of the game ending at aeriths fall then we atleast expected that this first Midgar only game would be polished to a t, quality side missions, and endgame content that was engaging rather than it all being VR battles. I understand that people who love cats will love looking for cats as a side quest. But don't forget what made the original's side quests great. Yuffies side quest in the original,as challenging as it was had great rewards in the end, the whole town of wutai was made as a optional side quest! I was hoping there was more to the underground lab where behemoth type 0 was fought rather than the one path you go to get straight to it. Maybe an optional reactor to blow up would of been a good addition for more avalanche time together. Just thoughts. Some of the locations overstaid their welcome like the train tunnel,sewers,hojo's lab with those unbearable pack of dogs that swarm tifa and aerith and insta kill some players. And a location like that would of greatly benefited with respawnable enemies so you can train if you fail. 

By creating this petition I'm hoping square can consider the fans that supported them since the original 7. Even if it's like what square did with final fantasy 15 where they actually engaged with fans and had votes for how they approached the game and votes on how the early demo was. Even if final fantasy 15 was not great story wise how we had to pay for side character storylines, atleast the director and fans had a strong connection like there was a mutual respect there which was not present here at all. Maybe a possible patch to this game so some or all of these issues could be addressed. An R rated ps4 or ps5 version of this game would be highly appreciated If real blood couldn’t fit the T rating. Here's to hope, and hope for the future parts.

we supported you through what happend to ff13,ff15,kingdom hearts 3 and now this.

please don't turn final fantasy 7 into kingdom hearts.

best regards

Michael Randle    Contact the author of the petition