The Great Final Fantasy 7 Replay

[CriticalGaming]

Not that I ever need an excuse to replay these games, I figured a good project to kill the time until Revelations releases would be to replay and reanalyze the FF7 games across the entire board. The original game, Crisis Core, Remake, Rebirth, and finally Revelations, to sort of try to get a picture of what it all was for and how it all turned out. Taking from @bobmaster and his Mass Effect recap I plan to do this in sections where whatever gameplay chunk I get through I will post about and recap and review the story and gameplay elements that appear in that section.

So with that...

FINAL FANTASY 7 (1997):
The game starts with probably the best opening level in gaming history. You are given a grand view of this very cool futuristic city, a symbol of grand technological progress with a towering pillar standing in the center of it. The camera then zooms into a train station in which characters hop out and beat up the guards on the train platform. A man emerges and turns back towards the camera to wave at someone off screen. In flips a spikey hairs blonde wearing blue, this then becomes the player as we are given control as the other characters run off. Immediately we are attacked and questions continue to escalate. We are only called "EX-SOLDIER" in the battle menu, we are using a sword to fight of dudes with guns, why? Who would fight with a sword if technologically this world has guns and grenades?

Through combat we are shown that this sword man is far stronger than the grunts with guns, often beating them in a single hit. So something is clearly special about our character.

We progress a few screens and we are told about the mission. The facility we are breaking into is a reactor, one of the sources of power in the city, however that power is coming at the cost of the planet's resources. It becomes clear that we've been recruited by eco-terrorists to blow up the reactor and make a environmental statement to the company that runs this place. Our character doesn't seem to care about any of these details and he is just here because they've paid him to do whatever. So again the player is left with questions about who we are and why we would even agree to any of this. Are we playing a bad guy who just takes any job that'll pay him even if that job is evil?

The combat is your standard turn-based affair using the active time battle system, in which every one gets a turn inputing actions but turns happen in a semi-real time style where if you take too long to input commands the enemies will continue to take their turns whenever they come up while you mess around. It's turn based, but adds a bit of urgency in your decision making because later fights will destroy you if you dont have a plan and execute commands quickly. However in the first mission of the game nothing is terribly dangerous and potions drop with enough frequency that you can only die by not paying attention. The danger to the player doesn't reflect the intensity of the context really, but it's enough to teach players the basics and also build interest.

I remember playing this level for the first time and being very off-put by the combat because i had never played an RPG before. I didn't understand the fun potential of a "menu" game, or a game in which everything was just done by selecting from menus. Why couldn't I swing my sword with a sword swing button like most other games I'd played? However by the end of the mission the intensity of the music, the timer that counts down your escape after beating the giant robot scorpion, I was captured by the story and wanted more answers. It's a very good set up to a game and one that I think handles the build up of tension better than any first level I've played since. Especially since it doesn't use flashback sequences to pull the player back from excitement to boring regular game life, the way that something like Persona 5 does.

After you escape the reactor the explosion is quite devastating for 1997, and Cloud walking through the screens of city ruins with people panicking is underrated for the time. You are stopped by a girl who just wants to know what's happened because you seem to be dressed in a uniform. Here you are given dialog options that can change things in the story, though a first time player would never know this, and I certainly didn't. But I do remember thinking about how I could portray Cloud, I could keep him being an asshole, or I could sort of adopt this idea of him being serious in the moments that matter but cool and kind when it counted. Here you can tell the girl to get the fuck outta here, or you can distract her by buying a flower off her. Either way she leaves safely.

Then Cloud is ambushed by guards who know something is up with him, but you are cool so you jump off a bridge onto a train and escape.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

So with that...

FINAL FANTASY 7 (1997):
The game starts with probably the best opening level in gaming history.

Just a reminder that in GoW 3 you are riding a fucking sky-scraper sized titan on your way to murder Poseidon.

 

[meiam]

I remember playing it at first and not knowing english and just being new to game in general, I ended up skipping Jessie and being really confused about why I couldn't progress.

This is clearly a game opening that couldn't be made after 9/11 (and probably why they changed it in the remake so Shinra nonsensically destroy their own reactor). But its a really good one, especially at the time. The 3D graphic were genuinely impressive (even without hand) and, with the setting, it helped make the game feel very modern. Jumping from the opening movie to the gameplay "seamlessly" was also pretty crazy at the time.

I think the music also does some crazy heavy lifting, its bombastic when it needs to be, but otherwise really sell the oppressive atmosphere.

Gameplay wise, its decent for this era JRPG, you don't have access to materia right away, but you at least can play with magic and you have limit break too that vary the gameplay a bit.

Its interesting that Tifa isn't in the initial assault, maybe they did so not to overwhelm the player with 3 character right away?

Fun little eastern egg, when you finish your first fight, you level up from 6 to 7.

 

[CriticalGaming]

On the whole the slum areas are rather small, only a few screens all told. Though we ultimately spend most of our Midgar time here, there are remarkably few areas in the slums most of which are sector 7 where you meet Tifa, travel through a junkyard for trains, and a couple transition screens before wall market. Yet despite the small presence, it really showcase the sheer oppressiveness of the city above. Every building is made from scrap and trash, every NPC feels downtrodden and poor, it really does a good job of giving you context for why the group you are with wanted to take the city above down a peg.

While Avalanche is doing it for the planet, there is a part of subtext that really suggests they are also doing it for the people forced to live in the literal gutter of the upper class above. It's kind of ironic how much of the political and environmental issues from 1997 still remain relevant today, maybe even worse than when the game was originally made.

Entering Sector 7 we meet Tifa at her bar, and if we got a flower from the girl earlier we can give it to Tifa or to Barret's daughter. Another RPG choice along with the ability to name Tifa after the girl you have a crush on in school, (we all did this don't lie). Cloud wants his money and wants to bounce, but Tifa being a typical woman brings up the past because these chicks always wanna bring up dumb shit you said 7 years ago as a guilt trip. Though this does add a bit of backstory and we learn that Tifa and Cloud grew up together which not only contextualizes their relationship it also adds a piece of the puzzle as to why Cloud the badass merc joined a terrorist group.

Tifa's guilt trip works and Cloud agrees to join them on another bombing mission. Tifa joins the group this time becoming the next playable party member and off we go.

Unfortunately the train ride doesn't go well and the party is forced to jump from the train rather than catching a ride all the way to the reactor's doorstep like last time. As a kid this is where i figured the whole game was going to be a quest to destroy all of the city's reactor's and then eventually Shinra tower and that would make up the 3 discs of the game. I had no idea what was coming.

So this mission forces us to take a roundabout route to the same reactor style area as the first mission, effectively playing out the same all the way until we plant the bomb. Cloud has a vision of the past which seems to give context to why Tifa is a terrorist, we can assume that Shinra killed her father and possibly ruined her life in other ways so okay that makes sense for motivation. We plant the bomb but this time there is no timer and we are free to escape at our own pace.

However as we leave the reactor we are stopped by Shrina, and things escalate which is great story telling. Why would this all powerful company just let us get away with this again the very next day? They had set up a trap which is very cool. Shrina himself shows up and mentions a legendary figure named Sephiroth before bouncing and summoning another giant robot to fight.

This being the second boss of the game, we are again given all the advantage due to being able to always hit the boss from behind. The game really takes it easy on the player for a while, despite the story being quite serious and intense up till this point. Defeating the Air Buster makes it explode and catch Cloud in the blast. The catwalk is destroyed and Cloud is hanging from the broken mess. Despite being a badass super powerful SOLDIER, Cloud can't do a single pull up and he falls to his death probably. Also if Shrina knew we were coming and set a trap for us, why did they still let the bomb destroy the reactor?

Back in sector 7 you can enter the avalanche base under the 7th heaven bar. If you talk to Jesse she expresses concern that her bomb did way too much damage and shouldn't have gone up like that. But the comment is dismissed and never brought up again. (We will have to talk about this 24 years later in Remake because a story element there really annoyed people).

 

[Worgen]

Just a reminder that in GoW 3 you are riding a fucking sky-scraper sized titan on your way to murder Poseidon.

In Bayonetta 2 you are flying on the back of a jet fighter before you summon your own sky scraper sized titan to fight another one.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The game starts with probably the best opening level in gaming history.

And what's really impressive is they managed to make it even better in the remake.

 

[meiam]

Its weird just how little of Midgard you actually explore, there's 16 sections of the city (8 underground and 8 above ground) and you explore like 2.5. I wonder if in an earlier draft of the game you spend way more time there, but they decided to changed that at some point but never changed Midgard to reflect that.

I dunno about saying Avalanche fight for the underclass, the energy the reactor provide is used by them too, and when the reactor blow up, it cause problem for them too. Assuming they succeed and fully take out all the reactors, its not like the world will really improve for people who live in the slum, Shinra is essentially the economy, so if it collapse, most people will be out of job and forced to leave Midgard.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Assuming they succeed and fully take out all the reactors, its not like the world will really improve for people who live in the slum, Shinra is essentially the economy, so if it collapse, most people will be out of job and forced to leave Midgard.

At least then they won't be trapped forever under that &!%*ing pizza, is probably the idea.

 

[meiam]

At least then they won't be trapped forever under that &!%*ing pizza, is probably the idea.

Been awhile since I played, but I don't remember it being said that people can't leave, is there?

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Been awhile since I played, but I don't remember it being said that people can't leave, is there?

"Nobody lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train, it can't go anywhere except where its rails take it."

 

[meiam]

"Nobody lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train, it can't go anywhere except where its rails take it."

I mean sure, I bet most slum dweller would prefer living in costa del sol, just like most people who live in poor part of town IRL would rather live in the rich neighborhood, but destroying all the reactors and taking out Shinra won't really help with that. If tomorrow someone destroyed all coal/petrol/gas power plant, you could make a pretty convincing case that it would be good for the planet long term (and maybe even human) but out society would collapse and billions would die. There's been plenty of study over what would happen in the case of a complete grid collapse (EMP/solar storm would be the cause) and there's an estimation of something like 90% casualty.

Same things would happen there, and I doubt the slum dweller would do any better than most. Midgar area can't grow food anymore and doesn't really seem to have any easily accessible source of water, without any mode of long range travel, most people would have to leave in a hurry in some massive human wave, plenty dying along the way. And its not like the other area they'd reach would be doing that much better (assuming Shinra collapse and avalanche would keep destroying reactors). I imagine at the end of it, most slum dweller would be dead.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

^ Basically the IRL issue of overpopulation and lack of sustainability is only one catastrophe away from being proven correct. All this progress only to be bitten in the ass by it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

(8 underground and 8 above ground)

Technically only 7, because one section of midgar was never finished. This is never explained in the original game, but it is explained in the remake.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Everyone knows that anime characters are immune from fall damage right? So despite falling 900 meters Cloud's body crashes through the roof of a church and a tiny bed of flowers gently catches him and lays him down. That's apparently how that works, despite the fall knocking us the fuck out, Cloud has a dream with a mysterious voice hinting at a fall he had in the past in which he also escaped unharmed. He is then awakened by the flower girl from the reactor explosion. We've fallen into her church which is a process that Aerith apparently finds all her boyfriends from.

"If I had 1 gil for every guy that's fallen into my church and I've fallen in love with, I would have 2 gil. Which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice." - Aerith.

As Cloud comes to his senses again a man from Shinra shows up with guards. Aerith asks Cloud to be her bodyguard and get her home. To which they flee from the Shinra suit known as a Turk who also seem to have super power but aren't infused with MAKO I guess. So i'm not sure what the point of SOLDIERs even are if you can just train people to be on par with them or better.

Either way Aerith is pretty and we like pretty girls so we run away with her as requested. However she falls and is trapped by Shinra goons, which effectively is the start of another mystery in the game. Shinra could have tracked Cloud's fall and had been there for him, it makes sense considering the bombings and terrorism up to this point. But why Aerith? And the men are clearly there for the girl as once she falls to their level they no longer even shoot or care about Cloud.

The funniest part about this section is that instead of helping Aerith escape you can make her kick everyone's ass which she does easily, so she doesn't need any help really.

You and Aerith escape onto the roof and she talks about how they've been after her before, but she doesn't know why. Or she says she doesn't know, hinting that maybe they want her to become a SOLDIER which Cloud takes seriously but I feel like she means it as a joke to mock him. They have a cute moment and then make it back to Aerith's house in the Sector 5 slums. Along the way you can talk to a man in a pipe who's crazy and has a tattoo of a number on his shoulder. "This guy are sick" Infamously said by aerith.

Aerith's house is crazy nice considering the slums in general. She has a massive flower garden in a city where nothing organic can grow and it feels out of place. Because it is, if nothing else the nice house with a sweet girl and an older lady living alone? How are they not constantly robbed and attacked? It's never addressed in the game, but a novel called "Traces of Two Pasts" that came out between Remake and Rebirth does explain a lot of Aerith's childhood and why she lives where she lives. I'll talk about that more when I get there because I'm trying to keep context to the relevant things.

Elmyra is Aerith's mom and she thanks us for bringing her home, but once Aerith is out of ear shot she begs us to leave in the middle of the night without Aerith knowing. She has problems with Shinra and doesn't want Cloud around to wrap Aerith up in anything. This is all bullshit because Elmyra already knows Aerith can't escape Shinra, and her reason for wanting Cloud gone are completely different. We agree and wake up in the middle of the night to sneak out and head back to Sector 7.

Aerith waits for us along the way, how did she know? She and cloud head to the gates of Sector 7 and take a break to talk in the playground to get to know each other a bit. Some more foreshadowing occurs here but it's a minor tidbit about Cloud's rank in SOLDIER, and possibly something related to Aerith. The conversation is cut short as the massive gates to Sector 7 open and Tifa appears in a cart wearing a dress as someone is transporting her to sector 6's Wall Market. Cloud doesn't understand the situation but Aerith encourages him to go after her because dressing like a whore is strange.

So off to Wall Market we go.

 

[meiam]

Aerith is a really great character because they don't do the usual tropes. A lesser work would have just followed the usual script for this type of character, make her really reserved, fully reliant on the main character. But instead she's bodacious, pro active and even a little mischievous.

I dunno if you could really say Aerith fell in love with Cloud, obviously there's the date and all (although I don't think anyone would claim Barret is in love with Cloud, outside deviant art), but once you find out her history with Zack, that kinda changes the perception of it all.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Then we get to the infamous Wall Market, an interesting little slice of the original game in which Aerith and Cloud need to infiltrate the local crime lord's base to save Tifa. The only way to do that, without murdering the entire town at least, is to dress up like a lady and sneak into Don Corneo's next bride audition. The original game really glosses over the implications of this and it's really played up to be a goofy moment with a quest that can either be basic and minimal or rather involved if you want to make Cloud the best girl possible.

All you need is a dress and a wig. The dress comes from the dress shop where the son of the dress makers has you go to a bar to get his drunkass father back to the store in order to make Cloud a dress. You and Aerith go talk to him, and Aerith convinces him that Cloud needs a dress to be his true self and the man agrees. You make a selection of what kind of dress you want and that's it. When you go to try to change into the dress everyone thinks you're too manly still and you need a wig, fortunately the local meathead gym in town is run by a crossdressing muscle baddie. The baddies forces you into a squat competition and depending on how you perform determines the quality of the wig you get.

This is all you need to push the plot forward, however it's not all you can do. You can gather perfume, you can bathe with naked men at the Honey Bee Inn (and also see a Shinra exec getting his bee freak on), you get panties, and all these items have multiple qualities. If you max this stuff out, Corneo will pick Cloud as his chick for the night. Otherwise he'll pick Tifa be default or Aerith if you only got a couple things.

Who Corneo picks doesn't matter whatsoever. I usually do the lazy path because there is a fight with the goons for extra exp and a tent if you don't let Cloud get picked. Some interesting things to note here is that Kosch takes Aerith or Tifa into the sex dungeon and chases her around until you arrive and they end up knocking his ass down the stairs. A detail they will play with in the Remake later.

Anyway you break into Corneo's horny session and quiz him on what the hell Shinra plans to do with Sector 7. After some ball busting threats, he reveals the plan to crush the terrorists by knocking down Sector 7's plate. Shinra is so evil that they're willing to collapse a whole section of their city and kill thousands of people just to further their cause. Here in the original game Shinra doesn't really have any motives, there is no overarching reason for these acts of evil. Ultimately they are searching for the "promised land" but it's never really explained how any of this evil shit does anything to help them do that.

After spilling the beans Corneo activates a trap door and Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith fall into the sewer for a boss fight.

From the sewers the party rushes through the train graveyard, taking the time to steal Aerith a new weapon from an Elcor enemy who is a random encounter here. It's a powerful weapon too and will carry Aerith nearly to the end of disc one.

Upon escaping the graveyard the party comes to the pillar for sector 7 only to find Avalanche is already fighting Shinra and the attack is already underway. Wedge falls from a great height and splats in front of you, making Cloud want to go up to join the fight. Tifa comes with but begs Aerith to go to the bar and get Marlene (Barret's daughter) somewhere safe. Aerith agrees and rushes off while Tifa and Cloud head up. Along the way Biggs and Jessie share remorseful last words with you and then at the top you join Barret in a fight against Reno.

Reno is the first difficulty spike in the game as he has a new mechanic where he will trap one of your team in a pyramid. You must attack the pyramid to break your party member out, or if he traps everyone it's game over. I didn't know this as a kid and the game never suggests doing this, so I remember losing a couple of times to Reno until someone in school told me what to do. Beating Reno is kind of pointless since he has already started the self destruction before the fight. Why would a support pillar that keeps the city floating have this?

Oh well, Reno escapes and the leader of the Turks shows up with Aerith on a helicopter to mock us. Aerith cries out that Marlene is safe, but is slapped by Tseng before the helicopter leaves and we are about to die. Luckly we find a zip line that lets us escape. Unluckily everyone in sector 7 is fucking dead.

Before leaving Tseng mentions that Aerith is an Ancient which prompts Cloud to want to investigate that. They decide to go back to Aerith's house as Tifa thinks Aerith took Marlene there which means Aerith must be able to teleport because goddamn that was fast.

Aerith's mom confirms that Aerith isn't actually her daughter and is some girl she found at the train station cradling her dying mother. The Turks ended up coming around trying to convince Aerith to come back to Shinra but the little girl refused. But Aerith would tell about talking to the dead and do weird shit so Elmyra knew she wasn't a normal kid.

The lore around the Ancients is actually a bit vague, but effectively the party decides they gotta go save Aerith because she's never getting out of there otherwise. So off we go to figure out how to get topside.

 

[meiam]

They're crashing the plate because Avalanche has just destroyed 2/8 of their reactors and they failed to stop them both time, so between risking losing all other reactors or 1/8 of the city, they'd rather lose 1/8 of the city. It doesn't make sense in the remake cause they're the one destroying their own reactor, which they can just stop whenever they want (by not doing that, cause they have no reason to do that).

The pillar drop is one of the section where I have a big problem with the original, and was really hoping the remake would fix it (which they didn't, no surprise, it would have made the story better, can't have that). The Turk effectively kill something like 1-2 million people, and the game just kinda brush over that like its no big deal. From here on, they're borderline slapstick character and never really answer for that. Sure, they were just doing their job, but wait a minute I feel like that phrase has some significance... At the end of the game, they just decide to quit their job, despite having the highest bodycount in the entire game, well ahead of Sephiroth, they just walk out and the party just stand there (you can kick their ass, but its more of an optional thing rather than any sort of finality).

I really think that this is the point where Rufus should have been introduced, and he should have been the one pushing the button, with the Turk being unaware of what they were there to do. It would keep the Turk somewhat in the clear and more importantly, would build up animosity for the player toward Rufus. We'llget there eventually, but the end of the Midgard Tower fight with Rufus is really weird since he's literally just introduced but the game treat it like its a really big deal. Plus, Rufus does almost nothing important in the game.

The Turk seemingly being aware of where Aerith is, but never being able to capture her is also very odd. Seems like it should instead have been that they just discovered where she was right as the game story started.

 

[CriticalGaming]

snip

Since I'm not talking about the Remake yet, I don't want to get super into this. But I will say that I think the Remake does a far better job painting Shinra's motivations and showcasing their manipulation of the public to further their goals. Thanks to the expanded lore of not just the Remake, but the novels, anime, side games, etc...Shinra really has a lot of investment in conflict which makes it a much better villainous presence as well as over-arching governmental entity within the world itself.

With the added context in mind I feel like Shrina's actions in Remake make a lot more sense. However since i am only talking about the original game, I am purposefully not filling or explaining anything with the added lore because we aren't supposed to know about that right now.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Since Shrina is so oppressive and a huge section of the city was destroyed it's probably going to be nearly impossible for Cloud, Barrett and Tifa to get to the upper plates to rescue Aerith huh?

Actually it's going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Oh really?

Yeah so the party returns to wall market and finds some kids looking at a big wire that's hanging from the ruins of the city above. For whatever reason a local weapon's shop has the batteries you'll need to scale the debris and off you go. It's a really fast segment that completely overlooks any Shrina presence possible. Upon climbing the rubble the party emerges at Shrina tower without any sort of mission or level to challenge the party getting there. Square really wanted to hand-wave this part of the story away so things could get moving I guess.

Anyway we stand in front of Shrina's literal FRONT DOORS, and there are no guards, no cameras, no employees, nothing. We debate busting in guns blazing, or taking a really weird side entrance that is just stairs that allow anyone to just walk up to almost any floor in the building without ever seeing a security point or check in. Again the stairs also have no cameras whatsoever.

If you chose to take the stairs, you have a long boring climb with funny dialog all the way up to the 59th floor. If you choose to break through the front door, security instantly pounces upon you for a very easy fight. You then move to the elevators at the back of the building to head up to the 59th floor. Along the way the elevator will be under alert and you be forced to stop at random floors to fight guards, rarely you can also get a random employee who gets scared of you and runs away. Either way you chose you emerge on the 59'th floor and witness a cutscene of a guard sleeping at his post so nobody notices you walking through the security cameras.

Nothing really to do here except fight the guards at the next set of stairs. They'll drop a keycard to the next floors allowing you to proceed up.
On the 60th floor there is a patrol puzzle with guards pacing behind some statues and you have two sets of guards moving at different speeds, your goal is to time your movement to escort each character separately past the guards and make your way up to the next floor. However everytime you get caught you fight the guards and if you fail four times the guards are all gone and you can proceed regardless.

On the 61st floor you find an employee lounge cafeteria area, upon talking to one of the people at the tables they will mistake you for a repair crew and they'll give you a keycard to continue upwards because they want you to fix shit on other floors too.

The 62nd floor is the library and the mayor of Midgar who has a puzzle for you to solve. He doesn't seem to care who you are and just wants someone to figure out his cool library puzzle. There are four rooms in the library each with a category like "Urban Planning", the way you solve the puzzle is you examine the bookshelves to find the book that doesn't belong in the room, so in this example if you find a book about weapon making that will be the wrong book. Each book entry has a number so once you find the wrong book, you take that number and find whatever letter is in that number's place. For example, "4 I like big booty Latina's" the forth letter is that key piece of the puzzle which would be the letter K in this example. Gather all four letters and the mayor will give you a list of words, match the four letters you have to the word in his list and ding you're done, new keycard and a materia if you did it right the first time.

Floor 63 is another puzzle, a multi-storage room puzzle with a bunch of doors and an air duct to crawl through. There are three rooms with items and using the keycard will grant you the ability to unlock 3 doors out of the like 12 in the room. The idea is by using the air duct and specific doors you can access the three items in the room. Nothing in this room is worth the effort until returning here in Disc 2, so figure it out if you want, I dont care.

Floor 64 is the recreational room, there is a gym, rest area, and some lockers here. There are some items in the lockers including a weapon for Cait Sith you can't take until Disc 2, and you can sleep and save in the rest area to heal yourself.

The next floor is a tedious "puzzle" on the 65th floor in which you open treasures around the room that give Midgar city pieces which you then insert into the midgar model in the center of the room. Each piece you replace, unlocks a new chest on the floor, the final chest unlocks has the next keycard in it. This whole exciting infiltration is just a bunch of stupid puzzles, and zero consequences to anything the party has done thus far. It really makes no sense.

Finally we reach the first story on floor 66. This is the executive boardroom floor, and it just so happens that a meeting is about to begin. No security on this floor either, I guess we could just bomb this floor and end Shrina entirely in a single boom. But then I guess the game would be over and Sephiroth would win because we don't even know who he is yet. Anyway lets go into the bathroom to jump into the airduct and spy on the meeting. Here we learn there is some substance to Shrina's plans not only for Midgar but also for Aerith. Reeve seems to be the only guy on this panel that gives shit and seems genuinely horrified that they blew up a sector and aren't even going to try to rebuild it. Shrina wants a place called the promised land to build a bigger better midgar with more hookers and beer. To do that Hojo needs to get that information out of the "Ancient", Hojo reveals that they may not get that info in the girl's lifetime and they should give her some Soldiers to fuck so she can give birth to more Ancients.

The party doesn't like this information and scrambles out of the air duct to proceed further up the building. As they get back the to stairs, they spy Hojo who is incredibly careless and leaves the door to floor 67 unlocked for you.

Floor 67 is the start of Hojo's lab and the party finds a tube with a red dog with a fire tail in it looking all sad. Cloud notices a big chamber with the word Jenova written on it, and he peaks inside to see a headless alien. He flips out and Barrett looks in to do a very black "AWW HELL NAW!" And the party proceeds up to the next floor via a service elevator in the back.

Floor 68 and we reach the main part of Hojo's lab as well as encountering Hojo looking at Aerith in a tube cell thing of her own. The party rushes in to save her only for Hojo to summon the red dog thing from below into Aerith's cell. But we have guns and Barrett just shoots the cell open. Easy day. The Red dog jumps out and attacks Hojo allowing Cloud to run in and get Aerith free. However as they do so a monster shows up I guess, there is no actual model or enemy that shows up, only the sound of something happening here. The dog turns and says "Hey I'll help." And you pick tifa or barrett to flee with Aerith before you, the dog, and whoever else fights the monster boss. Red XIII comes pre-installed with the bosses weakness and you just have to spam fire on it to win fairly quickly. The boss has minions that are useless to kill because they just respawn so it's really just a fight to encourage long range attacking and magic only, which is going to happen again in this very same section later.

So great, Aerith is saved let's get the fuck outta here now. Upon returning to an elevator because fuck running down all them stairs again, a Turk shows up and you are captured finally. Everyone is brought to the president's office on the top floor where he explains his evil plan sort of. He explains that Aerith belongs to an Ancient race of people and Shrina needs her to find some promised land that has so much Mako they could never drain it all. There he wants to build a super city and do the same shit he has already done with Midgar. So....why does he need the promised land? To charge more money for electricity? Yeah okay dude.

We are taken to jail and everyone's sad. Aerith explains a bit about herself, barrett laughs at the Dog, and eventually you go to sleep. Only when you wake up your cell door is wide open and the guard outside is dead as fuck, super dead, so dead his blood leaves a trail so long it goes all the way back to the presidents office. Along thhe way you pass the Jenova creature's holding cell completely ripped open, did the monster escape? Once arriving at the office you find President Shrina dead. Big fucking sword through the spine. A cowardly executive named Palmer tries to flee, he tells you that it was Sephiroth, and escapes.

As if on que the president's son Rufus arrives on the helipad outside. The party rushes out to confront him, and he gives a new villain speech about continuing his father's work for the promised land and Sephiroth, but in his own way. Cloud tells everyone to bounce, things are about to get complicated. Everyone leaves but Tifa stops and says she's going to wait for Cloud. Everyone else heads to the elevators to escape. Except NOT, surprise another boss fight that you can't fight with melee, back to back robots attack you and you have to magic/shoot them with bullets to death. Aerith's limit break heals everyone in the group so it's not nearly as scary as it would seem.

After beating the robots we cut back to Cloud and Rufus for their fight. Rufus has a dog that protects him, so get rid of his dog and then hit Rufus a few times. He quits the fight quick and grabs the bottom of a helicopter to escape. Cloud runs down to meet Tifa, then they rush down to meet the rest of the group in the lobby. We get one of the coolest FMV's of the 90's where Cloud drives a motorcycle through a building and the party flees in a truck. We have to play a shit motorcycle mini game that sucks, before reaching the end of a highway where another robot boss attacks us.

Afterwards the party laments about leaving Midgar. Cloud knows now that Sephiroth is alive and that he has to find him. Something bigger than Shrina is happening and he has to deal with it. Everyone agrees to go with him. Avalanche is destroyed, sector 7 is gone so Tifa and Barrett have no reason not to follow Cloud. There is something about a daughter and familial obligation but that'll never be brought up again so who cares. Red XIII has nothing in Midgar so he's down. And Aerith wants to learn the truth about what she really is, so she has a reason to go.

Hurray we've been the entire first....10% of the first disc of the game, but also the Entire story of Remake.

 

[meiam]

Always figured climbing the rubble was easy cause they were just created when they dropped the plate like 5 hours ago, they don't exactly have a security details for that yet.

Shrina needs her to find some promised land that has so much Mako they could never drain it all. There he wants to build a super city and do the same shit he has already done with Midgar. So....why does he need the promised land? To charge more money for electricity? Yeah okay dude.

The mako around Midgar is almost drained, so they need the promise land cause Midgar won't be able to produce electricity for itself.

I talked about it before, but the whole Rufus section is just weird and make no sense, why does Cloud stay behind to fight against him 1 v 1? First time I played it I thought it would eventually be revealed that the two one of them have a pass together or something, which would explain why Cloud wants to fight him personally. But there's nothing, Cloud just really wanted to fight him alone, its really out of character for him... I thought for sure they would fix that in the remake, but nope, its bizarrely still the same.