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[saltoftheplanet]

Why Wouldn't You Compare a Remake/Sequel to the Original?

One of the main responses I see to criticisms of FF7Remake/Rebirth is "it's a new game/a remake/a sequel, stop comparing it to the original or expecting it to be the same." And I don't like that for a few reasons.

For one, this isn't an indie game that not many people played, or a game that got a mixed/bad reception upon it's first release. This is Final Fantasy 7. One of the most praised, successful, and influential games ever. It has a legacy, and incredible emotional weight for both the people who played it and the ones who created it at the time. Unfortunately it is also over 25 years old, with mechanics and graphics that feel dated to a modern audience, and a large population that wasn't around to appreciate its impact. "What, do you want them to do the exact same thing all over again?" Yeah actually that would be great! Use all the fancy modern technology to breathe an old story to life, show a new generation why it was so incredible in the first place! Sure, you could tweak a few things that didn't age as well, flesh out some environments and encounters. But keeping the story the same isn't a bad thing! It can still be fresh and exciting for people who don't know the story, and a wonderful return for people who do!

"It's a remake, don't compare it to the original it should be something new" okay but why does the remake trilogy keep comparing itself to the original? Why does it require it's audience to understand the original story in order to get any of the weird plot twists, random character introductions, and timeline bullshit? It can't be both. You can't both rely on nostalgia and prior knowledge to hook your audience in, yet also expect them to not draw comparisons to that original work.

"But it's not a remake it's a sequel!" Sorry but that's kinda worse actually. A sequel is still part of the same body of work as the original, a direct continuation, not a new thing all on it's own. Hasn't it always been a thing to criticize a sequel to a story if the sequel diverges too much from the spirit of the original, or is overall inferior? If it retcons things, makes weird tonal changes, muddies the motivations of characters, has bad pacing? Isn't it normal to compare the continuation of a story to how it started?

I just really don't get it. Since when have we stopped drawing comparisons between a remake and the original work it's based on? Since when have we stopped criticizing sequels and prequels for retconning things, deviating from the original tone, or just being worse overall? Why is it that for FF7, doing so gets you labeled a stupid toxic purist who hates new things?

Since when is it not okay to be sad and frustrated when something you love is almost unrecognizable to you?

[saltoftheplanet]

so i finished rebirth

surprise surprise, i didn't like it!

honestly.... i could sit here all day nitpicking. i could talk about how they removed random insignificant parts of the original that i personally like (rufus no longer tells heidegger he "hates that stupid horse laugh". sad!), or how they seemingly expect players to be keeping up with the ever-increasing list of compilation media (i don't know who glenn is and i don't care), or even how i think cissnei's new outfit is super fucking ugly (it is.). but i think if you get too bogged down in nitpicking, you can end up missing the larger issues. and also, it becomes very easy for everyone to write you off as someone who hates the remakes just for daring to be a remake. it's probably easy to wave away a lot of remake criticism as Those People Who Are Stupidly Mad That It Isn't An Exact Copy Of Final Fantasy VII (1997).

but here is the thing: i don't actually think the FFVII remakes should be an exact copy of the original. at this point, yes, i would prefer that to what we actually got. so if i'm not trying really hard to articulate why exactly i don't like them, i likely also end up sounding like i hate it just for changing any part of the original. remake itself also encourages this view, by making one of the biggest antagonistic forces in the game, uhhh.....beings who hate any part of ffvii's story being changed. sorry can we all take a moment to appreciate how fucking stupid that still is. alright, moving on.

anyway my point is, i believe it's very possible to adapt FFVII to a modern game that carries the spirit of the original. because yes, remake should be an adaptation; it may not technically be changing the story to a new medium, but so much has changed from the ps1 to the ps5 that it may as well be. so it's actually totally fine if details are changed, if events are moved around, if some things are more fleshed out and other things are cut back, or if they bring in more references to the compilation (within reason). all of this makes perfect sense to do.... so long as it's in service of making a good game, with a good story, that takes FFVII and brings it into the era of modern gaming, while still preserving what made the original great. all of this is to say, i do not hate the remakes purely for being an adaptation. i just think that, as adaptations go, they fucking suck.

of course, there's a lot of reasons it sucks that have been obvious since remake, and which continue to suck in rebirth. remake's nonsensical obsession with trying to both-sides-are-bad the avalanche/shinra conflict, while also removing any actual nuance from the original by having shinra be the ones responsible for the blowing up the reactor continues in rebirth, along with their equally nonsensical obsession for making tifa the one most concerned about avalanche's morals and her own motivations. i say equally nonsensical because while tifa's character never heavily focused on avalanche's morals, learning to stop being motivated solely by anger was barret's original character arc.

barret was actually probably the only character who i felt that, in some ways, had genuinely better writing in remake. but the major changes rebirth made to his confrontation with dyne (aka his character spotlight moment) just leave me wondering, what purpose did those changes serve? in the original game, dyne is barret's foil. so angry at the world and at himself, that he thinks the only answer is to destroy things - including his own (and now also barret's) daughter. this is a horrifying moment: for the audience, for barret, and for dyne, who once he realizes what he's become, kills himself. he jumps off a cliff. he dies pointlessly and without fanfare. the thing the story is getting at here, obviously, is that dyne is what barret could become, if he let himself be solely driven by anger and despair. the point is also that dyne is what barret won't become, because he deeply loves and cares for marlene....and his friends...and the planet. in rebirth, dyne goes out in a blaze of glory, shooting down an entire squad of shinra troopers before being overwhelmed. if this sounds familiar, yes, it basically plays out the same as zack's death. and, unless i literally blinked and missed it, his overwhelmingly nihilistic desire to kill even his own daughter has also been entirely removed. what, then, does this scene add to barret's character? what purpose do these changes serve the greater narrative?

if you can come up with any kind of answer to that, actually let me know, because i can't. i think barret and dyne is probably one of the more striking examples of remake/rebirth changing the story or characters for no apparent gain, but these questions should be asked for all changes. because again, adaptation itself isn't bad. but it has to be for a purpose. what does the story gain from these changes? what does it lose? is that tradeoff worth it? does it feel like square enix is making any of these choices with more intention than "here's how we can squeeze in another compilation character for marketing purposes"?

and yeah of course the whole "defying destiny" thing, the alternate timelines, etc, is also still shit. the original game is so clearly not about destiny. making aerith's death some kind of preordained event is just so vastly missing the original point. i feel like this part has probably been talked about enough that i don't have to get into it for the 3747539th time, but it bears repeating. zack didn't even feel like he added much to the game, beyond serving as a reminder of the fact that there are multiple alternate timelines/universes. which is crazy; they shoehorned this guy in only to use him as a plot device? he was already a plot device! who is this supposed to be for?! i don't really have much more to say on aerith maybe-sorta surviving and the whispers and sephiroth's attempt at time compression besides the fact that i find it all deeply uncompelling. now, maybe that's a me problem. but if you think so, then: what is this plotline adding, besides making me incapable of taking anything seriously in this game at all? and also i wish they had remade FF8 instead. so badly. you have no idea. let's move on again...

now that that's all out of the way, i can finally talk about the main thing i REALLY dislike about this game, which is the fact that it thinks everyone playing it has the object permanence of an infant. the original final fantasy vii is built on suspense. sephiroth is always one step ahead: you chase after rumors of black-cloaked men and bloodstains but you can never quite catch up to him. tifa and aerith both keep you at arms length, despite clearly feeling conflicted about it. and there is something very, very wrong with cloud. something is off. things don't add up. but nobody talks about it. nobody knows how to talk to cloud, and cloud doesn't know how to talk about himself, doesn't even realize something is wrong for the longest time. you, the player, know something is wrong long before cloud does. but because cloud doesn't (can't, really) realize anything is wrong, and nobody else knows how to broach the subject, you sit there and you play the game, and you know something is wrong. but, like cloud, you can't acknowledge it. and it's one of the greatest games of all time.

final fantasy vii (1997) delivers it's plot and character arcs with an impressive degree of subtlety, and this is what makes the eventual payoff (finally seeing sephiroth's true body, the lifestream scene, aerith's death, etc etc etc) feel so satisfying. the game builds up to them without shoving them in your face. like, there are scenes where cloud is dissociating so badly you see him split into multiple copies of himself...and then he gets up and the game goes on like nothing happened, so you can almost forget anything did happen. but it builds and builds over the course of the game until the inevitable breaking point. and it's so, so good. and like! i actually think this could've hit even harder in a remake. it's kind of hard to tell what's happening in the 1997 game, because of limitations. and i love this, in it's own way, but i feel like the remakes have so many more possibilities for expressing cloud's mental breakdowns etc now. unfortunately, the remake games seem to have decided the way to go is to hit you over the head with the plot like a blunt object. and to put sephiroth onscreen every five minutes.

sephiroth showing up every five minutes is of course another issue carried over from remake. any attempt to recreate the shock value of sephiroth appearing in the og game has been a lost cause for years now. but i feel like rebirth really, finally drove home the realization that the issue with this game is the complete lack of subtlety, and the complete disregard for building up to any kind of satisfying payoff. i also think there are two main reasons for this, and neither of them are very good excuses.

excuse number one is the fact that regardless of whatever their marketing may be claiming, players are obviously expected to go into final fantasy seven remake already knowing what happens in the original game (as well as, for some reason, every other compilation game released in the past twenty-odd years). and like, yeah, most people probably already know that aerith dies and cloud has ptsd and sephiroth is going to blow up the planet. like of course it is entirely impossible to create the same level of payoff as in 1997, because half the audience already knows the ending. you could argue that slapping the alternate-timeline plot on top of FFVII's existing story is square enix's attempt to rectify this by introducing a new mystery. i can see the reasoning. that still doesn't make it a good decision or a good story. i do not even see a problem with the remake not quite reaching the same level of impact as the original VII, because that bar is so high it may as well be in space.

similarly, bringing things like cloud's mental issues or aerith's impending death to the forefront might be done under the excuse that everybody already knows about them. FFVII, somewhat paradoxically, seems to have decided that since the audience is already well aware of cloud's Whole Deal, then pursuing further subtlety is pointless. since the audience already knows about it, cloud and tifa should be aware of it as well. i actually don't think i need to explain further why this is not at all how good storytelling works (lmao)

excuse number two is that, since remake has been split into three massive games, it doesn't make sense to leave all the payoff for the third game. this....kind of makes sense. pacing a single game is very different than pacing a trilogy. this is why sephiroth shows up in remake despite not appearing onscreen at all during that section of the original. as much as i love the suspense of the original game, i have to concede it'd be crazy for remake to not show one of final fantasy vii's most iconic characters at all (although him appearing literally within the first hour or two of the game is still pretty egregious).

this is, i think, why so much happens in rebirth that....shouldn't. tifa falls into the lifestream and relives her childhood memories, the weapons appear, cloud remembers zack, tifa tells cloud that their memories differ, and of course sephiroth is there all the fucking time. of course, none of this fully reaches the payoff it's hinting at: cloud doesn't go into the lifestream, and his memories aren't fully fixed. this is rebirth trying to do buildup in, honestly, an extremely sloppy way. this is rebirth being terrified that players will lose interest (in a big budget highly marketed and anticipated remake of one of square enix's most successful and iconic games of all time. but okay) in the remakes if they aren't constantly throwing crumbs to the audience. except instead of crumbs they're more like neon signs that say REMEMBER FINAL FANTASY SEVEN WAS GOOD. but if all of this happens now, it sucks all of the impact out of the actual moment we are presumably building towards. like, i have to assume we will still get some version of the tifa+cloud lifestream scene in the third game. i can't say for sure, but it's probably one of the biggest moments in the original, so i'd be surprised if they cut it entirely. but this version is going to have half the impact sucked out of it, because tifa already has all her memories, she's already admitted to cloud their memories differ, and cloud already knows zack was at nibelheim. so like, what exactly is the payoff? how is that better than the original? what is this trilogy even building towards anymore? the timeline plot, i guess, but like....don't make me laugh.

and again, it's crazy because the remakes have so much potential for telling things to the player without having the characters directly talk about it or putting in a super hd 4k cutscene. like, the original game, on the ps1, with it's little polygons and textboxes, was able to make it pretty clear to the player that tifa was both 1) in love with cloud and 2) hiding something without having her and cloud directly talk about it for most of disc 1. and you're telling me that NOW, with the possibilities of voice acting and side content and motion capture, we can't tell the player that without having to spell it out for them? am i going fucking insane?

before i wrap up, some other notable things that completely lack subtlety in rebirth: the black-cloaked sephiroth clones are everywhere, constantly, and constantly commented on by the party. again, zero regard for suspense. cloud losing control of himself due to sephiroth's influence is pretty consistently displayed as him becoming violently out-of-it and killing people, which, aside from being annoyingly blatant that Something's Wrong With Cloud, i also just find distasteful as someone who really enjoyed how much nuance was in his original portrayal as a mentally ill character. and finally, they absolutely massacred the midgar zolom scene, which, while it's probably not the most major issue, is a scene i like enough, and which so blatantly had all the good parts sucked out of it that i'm going to write about it more. yay.

in the original game, in case you forgot, the midgar zolom (yes the rebirth name change is probably more accurate to the original japanese but i will continue calling it the zolom and you cannot stop me) is an optional boss that, unless you are very overleveled, will almost certainly instantly beat the shit out of you. it is extremely powerful and scary, and cloud and his party, hot on sephiroth's trail, have essentially no choice but to get a chocobo and run for their lives across the swamp while avoiding it. i say essentially because you can, at any time, choose to go into the swamp on foot and attempt to fight the zolom and get your ass kicked. when you finally do manage to cross the swamp, you find another zolom, this one brutally killed by sephiroth, who at this point is long gone because he didn't have to wait around to catch a chocobo.

this is a fucking fantastic way to blend story and gameplay. any player who attempts to fight the zolom will quickly learn that it can pretty much instantly decimate your party. getting across the swamp while seeing it slithering after you in the mist is genuinely stressful. seeing the dead one strung up in a tree is an extremely impactful way to establish sephiroth as an incredibly powerful and scary guy without ever showing him onscreen. it's an incredible example of how to give information to the player by showing, not telling, and i see no reason why it wouldn't have translated incredibly well, if not better, to rebirth's updated technology without the need for major changes.

...instead, though, rebirth's zolom is a boss you're intended to (and as far as i know, forced to) fight and defeat. only after you've won, there's a cutscene of it dragging cloud into the water. and then sephiroth somehow shows up in the water, kills the zolom, saves cloud, and disappears. this is all cutscene. i genuinely do not understand why this choice was made when the original is right there. like i'm sorry, it's objectively less interesting and worse this way. it is. never forget midgar zolom 1997 we clearly didn't appreciate her enough. i think this is all indicative of some larger rebirth issues such as: the party not being allowed to not look Cool And Right at any point, ever, sephiroth needing to be onscreen 24/7, and the fact that the entirety of square enix has completely forgotten that their players are capable of putting even the most basic pieces of information together themselves.

and this isn't even touching half of my other issues with this game. again, i could nitpick all day. they changed cid's entire character and removed rocket town entirely. tifa and aerith get shoved into the mold of "bubbly girl best friends" so often they stop feeling like actual characters and start getting on my fucking nerves. this game did a great job making me actually enjoy cait sith, which is why it's so perplexing that they felt the need to get rid of his fucked up blackmail moment. (clearly an effort to make him more sympathetic, but like, no! you already did it, i was fully on board with the silly cat guy!!!! we were so close to having a ff7 rebirth party member i didn't have any major complaints about!!!) and while shipping is not something i particularly care about wrt this game, i think the original did an incredibly good job making me equally invested in both of cloud's love interests for different reasons, and rebirth's push for cloud/tifa over cloud/aerith does a huge disservice to all 3 characters lol......but all of this is probably getting too into the weeds, so i'll stop here.

disclaimers for if this post escapes containment: the gameplay is barely mentioned here because i only watched cutscenes. i have not and will not play this game, so i have zero opinions on whether or not x mechanic is good, or fun, or anything. that's not what this post is about. also, yes, there were some things in those cutscenes i liked, but there's so few of them, and i didn't think any of them were that good that i feel they're worth mentioning here. ok.

thanks for reading, and sorry this is so long. it seems like whenever i try to explain something, i end up needlessly dragging it out and going into every little detail, because i guess i'm worried you guys will be too stupid to understand what i mean otherwise. thank god nobody's writing video games that way, right?

[saltoftheplanet]

Honestly though... i think i'd like Remake+Rebirth a bit more if Cloud was less..stoic? I mean, i am a little unfair, he does have his moment of wonder and openness and some "you blink you miss it" smiles (and also he gets annoyed a lot and also he snarls sometimes). And to be more fair, yeah technically at some point you can choose to have him joke around or stay "focus on the mission and also don't talk to me Biggs i don't want friends" in the original. But listen. Og ff7 didn't have much of facial expressions (like...they sure have a face but it's for the sake of it) but still, the characters have a range of body animations. When he escapes the Turks with Aerith on midgar (on the roof of the church) and they joke a little about how "maybe the turks are trying to hire me haha" he visibly laugh with her. Like, you can see his little lego body shaking with laughter. The high five in Remake was kind of funny but idk i liked when he just laughed You won't make me believe that Cloud in Rebirth was not phased at all by the "hanged man" receptionist in the ghost inn in Gold Saucer when in OG ff7 he flinches every single time he rings that bell. I mean, it's up to interpretation since it cuts to Barret and Cloud's reaction is barely visible so like, it's a statement : you won't make me believe he didn't react even if it does not look like he did In OG it's also not uncommon for him to have this "neck scratching" animation when he gets embarassed . Or to look down and shake his head, or even shrugging! Or have an "oh shit!" animation when shit is happening Or when he jumps of joy when he wins a chocobo race You could argue that since their faces don't move they need to exagerate their body animations and it would not be an irrelevant remark actually. But still, you will notice that the various characters have their own animations, they don't all do the same things. Cloud laughing and flinching and being visibly embarassed is part of his personality (and yeah, i know that Cloud has a bit of an issue with exactly that, personality and stuff. Still, whether you think that him doing all of that is a mask (which i don't quite believe because being arrogant as fuck is more of his mask than him being scared by the receptionist) it does not matter much : the point is that it does happen I mean, that's not my only problem with Remake and Rebirth lol buuuut yeah

Remember : this

And this :

....Are not mutually exclusive. (it's also an official artwork, i think) ....Tbh i am not even ranting at Remake+Rebirth personally, i am ranting about how we collectively forgot Cloud was not always "local stoic guy", just look at this smilling Cloud and print it in your mind

[saltoftheplanet]

The "technical limitations" conversation around the remake is kind of broken. People gesture to it a lot but seldom discuss what the remakes actually do with technical limitations surmounted, or get precise about which technical limitations they are talking about in the first place.

Graphical limitations are the obvious ones, but visuals aren't the only technique available to you in storytelling... And there isn't really much discussion at all about whether or not direction and cinematography and visual language of restaged scenes is effective and impactful. The assumption is that anything higher polish is by default better.

But graphics aren't the only factor in storytelling, and the original game paired graphical limitations with good pacing, careful attention to mood, and other script-writing techniques in order to make an impact. All of these things have suffered noticeably in the remake.

So the conclusion is that once the graphical technical limitations have been lifted, good technique elsewhere isn't necessary; a premise I reject.

On top of that, this project is also subject to technical limitations which impact the storytelling, and pretty significant ones. For instance, it's a technical limitation to do with financial viability that forced this project to be broken up into three sold-separately games. That's a pretty huge narrative impact!

Anyway. Technical restraints are an eternal constant of game development. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the remake navigates its restraints better than the original did.

[saltoftheplanet]

ive been playing ff7 rebirth and i have a question, especially to people who don't know this character, cat or dog. no third option.

[saltoftheplanet]

people not realizing the extreme rarity of captive walruses is k i l l i n g me dear god. Just any old zoo does not have them! They are hard to transport, hard to care for, and hardly ever successfully breed in captivity so zoos only get them when an injured or orphaned individual gets picked up by a rescue in the arctic and is deemed unreleasable. That’s not a frequent occurrence! This isn’t a tiger king situation with backyard breeders all over the place!

[saltoftheplanet]

If you don’t think the ff7 remake will be as good as the original and think it will ruin the story……….then..I’ve got a tip..,….grab your original ps1 copy……….,,..put it in the system of your choice..,,,……t.urn it on……..holy shit………..there u go………………..it’s as good as the original

[saltoftheplanet]

Stay strong, all you folks with discernment out there.

The anti-compilation discord server is still available on an invite-only basis. It's a pretty tight knit group, so I only invite folks who I think will get along well with the other personalities in there. You can message me if you're interested in an invite.

[saltoftheplanet]

Phew, alright, off of anon. I'm gonna say something really out there and crazy and I might shock everyone, and I might shout just a little.

Ever Crisis is not good. Sephiroth is one of the most beloved and feared game villains, and the tragedy of his story should have been handled with care. Instead he's locked in gacha hell, with the most bland and unlikeable protagonists (this is coming from someone who doesn't hate Genesis) and laziest writing imaginable.

Did they even TRY? What 13yo talks like that? Why would a child raised to be a Shinra SOLDIER behave anything like that!? I tried soooo hard to keep an open mind like with everything else and hope that maybe, just maybe, I'd get to feel the dichotomy of both pity and fear. That there'd be some sort of nuance regarding Sephiroth being just a kid who didn't stand a chance and deserved better, but is also a fledgeling god DROWNING in the Koolaid the megacorporation that designed him provided. But no. It's exactly as bad as I hoped it wouldn't be.

Even if it was just that they took it in a direction I didn't like, I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't so LAZY!

GOD the more I replay the OG and try to enjoy parts of the Compilation the more I notice the pattern of laziness! Not just big things, little things too! They all just add up and I want to rip my hair out, because it almost makes me doubt whether some of the brilliant moments in the OG were intentional!

"sEPhiRoTh's GEnEs aRe peRFecT sO tHeY cAn'T bE cOPiEd!" Shut up what does that even mean Square I'm not asking you to get a degree in biology but at least do SOME sort of research so the whole conflict driving your prequel doesn't fall apart under the tiniest scruteny!

"Achtually it was Hojo this whooooole time he uploaded his mind to a computer and was trying to end the world so—" STOP IT! *sprays Nomura with a water bottle* BAD!

"Achtually Cloud's hair so spiky because he uses hairgel." *sobbing* that's not how hairgel wooooorks.

I'm trying to keep an open mind I'm TRYING to continue liking the Compilation and the Remake but the more I think about them the stronger the impulse to write FOEfiction becomes. Do not let them cook get them out of the kitchen and scrape the burnt cheese off of the burner.

...that felt great. It ended up way more of a rant than I intended but MAN that felt good. Thank you for your patience

Let it out friend. Ever Crisis is gacha garbage and falling the writing into question should be uncontroversial

[saltoftheplanet]

Love when I want to vocalize genuine criticism and concerns with the direction a story I love is being taken, and the creative(?) choices being made (especially in regards to the very poor handling of a certain character's backstory in a shitty cash-grab gacha), but doing so would mean being blocked by 85% of the fandom and labeled as a "nostalgia-blind purist" (despite not even being born when the fandom started and only playing the original during the pandemic)

Like I don't want to be mean or make people feel bad for liking it all, and I like some parts beyond the original. But the toxic positivity is draining. The complete aversion to anything other than blind praise and dick-sucking of a million-dollar corporation is draining. And the lack of any genuine discussion and debate just makes it worse.

I'm sure you can figure out what fandom I'm referring to, and why I would want to stay anon for this

Direct these to @saltoftheplanet and also come off anon, you'll be supporting the rest of us and pushing back against the narrative.

[saltoftheplanet]

Why isn’t anybody on Tumblr laughing derisively at talking about SE using a stolen picture from Getty Images as a painting on the wall of the Shinra mansion not once but multiple times?

[saltoftheplanet]

No eye nipple, no trail of blood and now no severed head?!

censoring the story for a more marketable T rating, I will never respect it

[saltoftheplanet]

thank you terribly named discord user for summing it up

[saltoftheplanet]

remake's wall market sequence isn't that funny I'm sorry

[saltoftheplanet]

every single piece of franchise media released nowadays is so disrespectful to its audience i feel insane watching these things. they know they don’t have to put any effort in at all. everything is just a collection of tropes on a shitty video game looking background and there are innumerable people who go yeah that was cool. it’s literally treating you like a child with no object permanence and banking on the fact that you can point at the fancy trick or the cameo instead of recognizing the deeply stupid and insulting things playing out in front of you

[saltoftheplanet]

barret's fake death scene (sorry spoilers i guess) its so goddamn stupid i cannot believe they left it in, equivalent of goofy's kh2 fake out death, the cheapest meta-narrative decision in the remake bar NONE

god its so dumb on multiple levels, when square first decided on killing someone off for good (initially just cloud, aeris, and barret) barret specifically wasn't picked because it would be too obvious (x) which was always the right decision! But then remake is in development and there's the problem of the original game being too iconic to do anything meaningfully different and everyone wants it to be exactly the same and also not the same at all, and the devs don't want the new version to be completely devoid of any tension or risk (fair enough) but then what they decide on is something that was too stereotypical and dated by 1997 standards

and worse still is they can't even commit! Not that I wanted barret to die for real, but if the intention was to keep the audience on their toes a bit, then following it up by pressing backspace on the script real quick and deflating whatever tension was achieved is so cheap it makes my head spin. His death at that point means absolutely nothing in-universe. Its pointless shock. It likely will never be brought up again because its meaning is solely meta and its inconvenient for characters to properly discuss it in-universe. Its not there for barret's character or his story its only there to briefly scare its complacent audience! Its signifies nothing!

[saltoftheplanet]