#and sometimes like with Costa Del Sol - that filler is grossly out of character and damning to the actual important themes

[fruitsofhell]

One of my new surfacing gripes with FF7R is how a lot of moments from the original game that rested heavily on player investment seem completely stripped out of the remake in favor of everything being a constant 60 hour long movie experience.

Like every now and then I hear the original game get shit for not taking its political messaging seriously at certain key set-pieces that are too game-y and chill like Costa Del Sol and the Gold Saucer, but that's not the whole picture when you consider how much control the player has over the party in that game. Costa Del Sol was just where you landed on the next continent and there was like a guy or two to talk to to point you in the other direction, a few lighthearted interactions to break up the fucked up shit that happened on the boat ride over, and then you could leave. The idea that the original Costa Del Sol indulged in the tourist trap goes only as far as how you as a player approached the space, if you got to Costa Del Sol and felt "Oh, this is a shitty Shinra colonial project I hate it here" you could book it outta there and maintain some of that disgust, but you fucking can't in the remake and its horrible.

For some fucking reason the boat ride over is on a cruise ship instead of a military vessel like before, so instead of a funny moment of humanizing the soldiers by being miserable with them, you get this fucking card tournament quest where everyone is suddenly SUPER into all this shit and doesn't care about any of the obvious underlying bullshit of the boat? And then its even worse when you get to Costa Del Sol because likefhsjkdhf? Everyone is OK with this glaring parallel to real world colonization and exploitation of island nations? Even Barret who literally had an amusement park built on the ashes of his home village by the people who burnt it down? EVEN YUFFIE WHO'S WHOLE SHTICK IS HOW HER HOME WAS INVADED AND TURNED INTO A TOURIST TRAP????

I cannot speak 100% for the original, because I remember it also missing these opportunities and besides that my memory is hazy, but its the fact that it wasn't flooded with all these ridiculous cutscenes and extra set-pieces that force you into experiencing areas a certain way, and a way that is just really fucking OOC?? And like for as OOC as the original could be, THE REMAKE IS 25 YEARS YOUNGER AND WISER THAN IT, PICK UP THE SLACK? But instead we get a fucking beach episode where you can put the girlies in bikinis or some shit. It's such a waste.

I can't think of like a single moment of subtly that the Remake retained from the originals. And it DOES have them under all the silly tonal whiplash stuff that the Remake cranks up to an unhealthy extent.