Never Gonna Be Alone part 2
“Oh,
You've gotta live every single day,
Like it's the only one, what if tomorrow never comes?
Don't let it slip away,
Could be our only one, you know it's only just begun
Every single day,
May be our only one, what if tomorrow never comes?
Tomorrow never comes
Time, is going by, so much faster than I,
And I'm starting to regret not telling all of this to you.
You're never gonna be alone!
From this moment on, if you ever feel like letting go,
I won't let you fall,
When all hope is gone
I know that you can carry on
We're gonna take the world on
I'll hold you 'till the hurt is gone ”
~Chad Kroeger & Mutt Lange
---
Part 2 of my Dragon Age Inquisition Trespasser fic snippet below cut for possible spoilers. Takes place during the time skip between cutscenes at the end of the DLC.
Dorian Pavus x Kartaelin Lavellan
@14daysdalovers Prompt: Breathless Kisses
Image setup and Rendered in DAZ Studio 4.15. Postwork in Photoshop Elements 8.0.
Bigger Here
Part 1
From behind the pair, two sets of footfalls rushed toward them, one heavy, the other fleet, and The Iron Bull and Sera soon came around into view.
"Hey, Boss. Looks like you made it in time."
"Hi, Bull, he was here for me, he never needed our help. He tipped us off in order to save the South from the Qunari attacks and to get me here, to save me."
"Shite!" exclaimed Sera as she came around in front of the pair sitting on the ground. "What happened to your arm? Dorian, how can you hold it against you like that!?" Her face scrunched up aghast at the sight of it.
Dorian raised an eyebrow at the crude elf, "That's where you draw the line, is it? You'll hand someone a glass of piss to drink for shits and giggles, but you can't abide the touch of a friend's ghastly wound!?"
"I'll have to remember that one," Sera giggled with a grin on her face, "but no, that's not what I meant, and you know it. Ugh! Frustrating people are... frustrating!"
"It's alright, Sera," interjected Kartaelin, always the calming voice amongst his friends. "You don't have to touch it. Solas removed it to stop the anchor from killing me."
"Double shite," replied Sera. "So... you're okay now, yeah? It still doesn't look like it's good, is all. So, what's next?"
"We need to get him back to Orlais, and to a proper healer," answered Dorian.
"Can you walk, Boss?" Bull asked.
"I think so. The anchor is no longer wracking my body, there's just a throbbing and occasional pain when I move my arm. It's odd, there's a distinct sensation that it's all still there, but then I remember..." Kartaelin moved to get up, but the Tevinter would have none of it.
"You're in shock, I can't have you falling down the stairs and cracking your skull on the pavement on our way out of here. Can you imagine, walking into the Winter Palace, 'Where is the Inquisitor?', 'Oh, we allowed him to lead us back after having his arm amputated, and gee, well, he fell down the stairs and into the abyss. Can you believe it!' Leliana and Josephine will have all of our heads after the effort they've put into saving this organization. So, no, I'll carry you. Bull, can you gather his things?" Dorian sighed, “Sometimes I feel like I should be in the one in charge."
The Iron Bull nodded and gathered the Inquisitor's belongings.
"I like it when you take charge," said Kartaelin huskily, the familiar lopsided grin that had been absent these last few days finally returning to his face.
Knowing where this was headed, Bull ushered Sera toward the stairs amidst loud protests. As much as he'd also like to stick around and enjoy the show, he knew they needed to get back to the Exalted Council and the healers at the palace, and the only way to hurry the two love birds along was to leave them behind.
"Festis bei umo canavarum!" exclaimed the mage, wiping the remaining tears from his eyes. "Is this really the time or place for this? ...You're just lucky that I love you so much."
"I am," Kartaelin replied coyly, wrapping his hand in his lover’s leather collar and pulling him closer to him. He craned his neck until his lips met Dorian's and he peppered him with soft kisses. It was the least he could do after worrying him so terribly. They'd both feared his impending doom on account of the mark, and Dorian took it especially hard. He'd put up a wall around his heart a long time ago to prevent himself from being hurt by anyone, but the Inquisitor had broken right through, and the thought of him being taken from him so soon tore him up inside.
Slowing his ministrations to one final passionate kiss and savoring the moment, Kartaelin pressed his forehead to Dorian's. "I'm sorry I worried you so much, ma vhenan. I never wished to cause you hurt."
"I know, amatus. I just... I couldn't bear to lose you like this," Dorian replied, choking up again. "The thought of the one bright spot in my life being ripped away by ancient elven magic, just..."
The Inquisitor reached up to cup Dorian’s face with his hand, tenderly caressing his cheek with his thumb. "It's alright, Dorian, I'm safe now. Solas has bought us time, but we have more work to do. We should get back to the council. I'll fill you in on the way." He leaned in for one more kiss before the Tevinter could reply, taking his breath away.
Pulling back slowly, his lip caught playfully by the Inquisitor, Dorian gently gathered the elf into his arms. "You are right of course, but what's all this 'bought us time' business?" With a grunt he stood, the Inquisitor held tightly against his chest, "You are heavier than you look. Eating too many of those fancy tea cakes Solas likes so much?"
Kartaelin let out a hearty laugh, "I suppose there's no chance of you changing your mind about letting me walk out of here under my own power then?"
"Not a chance," Dorian smiled, heading back toward the stairs and the exit.
"Well, we could ask Bull to carry me if I'm too heavy for you," Kartaelin smirked.
"Truly? This is how you treat me after the moment we've just shared!? I should drop you right where we stand," Dorian replied in mock irritation.
"And what would the others say?" Kartaelin teased.
"They'd agree with me, you little shit!" countered the mage. "Then they'd come back to get you anyway.... Remind me again, why is it that I love you?"
"This IS why you love me," Kartaelin sassed.
Dorian sighed, "Well, you're not wrong. Tell me, were you always this antagonizing?"
"It's just for you. You bring out the best in me, Dorian," the elf responded. "Or the worst, depends on how you look at it. Either way, you wouldn't want it any other way."
"Maker, what did I do to deserve this!?" Dorian mused in exasperation.
Kartaelin just smiled. Pressing his injured arm against his own chest, the Inquisitor placed his hand over Dorian's heart and rested his head against his shoulder.
"Oh, the things I'm going to do to you tonight," the Tevinter mage muttered under his breath.
"I look forward to it," Kartaelin quipped, nuzzling the jaw of the man he adored.
"Of course, you do," Dorian breathed. He still worried about the ‘bought time’ remark, but he trusted the elf wouldn’t keep him in the dark for long. He had to accept that right here, right now he was holding his amatus in his arms and they were both alive and safe for the moment.
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thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy
I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!
I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.
...Eventually.
Spoiler Warning:
Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15
Content Warning:
Discussion of death
Cussin’
Length warning:
5621 words
13 sections
16 digressions
Let’s dig in.
- - - - -
Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.
FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.
((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.
((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))
This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.
((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))
And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.
And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.
((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))
- - - - -
Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.
Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.
Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.
Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.
((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))
Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.
Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.
- - - - -
Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:
Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.
People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.
((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))
The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?
((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))
The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:
(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])
That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.
Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.
((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.
((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))
The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.
((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))
- - - - -
But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.
Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.
Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.
Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.
Right up until the Leviathan fight.
See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--
((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))
Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.
You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.
Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.
Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?
if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.
((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))
now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!
((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.
((inhale...
((exhale...
((and move on.))
We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.
But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?
Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?
- - - - -
Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.
See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.
((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!
((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.
((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))
But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:
“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”
- - - - -
Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.
The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.
This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!
Boundless, terrifying freedom.
From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.
So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?
Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.
For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.
And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.
And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...
Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.
((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))
So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!
Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!
Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?
- - - - -
Aerith dies.
If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.
Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.
Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.
((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))
And that’s the problem with answering that question.
See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.
Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.
- - - - -
But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.
If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.
And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?
And then on top of that, it’s 2020.
I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.
Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?
- - - - -
So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.
FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.
...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?
Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?
Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?
Hey, how come--
- - - - -
Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:
And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.
Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.
At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.
At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.
Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.
Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.
All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,
The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.
So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?
- - - - -
One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.
and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.
((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.
((but, still.
((Really?))
So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:
- - - - -
At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.
Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.
This is Sephiroth’s plan.
- - - - -
Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.
Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.
Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.
There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.
On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.
And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.
((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))
Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.
thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day
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Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 11: THE MONSTERS OF THE WEEK
There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.
This is a series of mine in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>
Anyhow, for today’s installment, we’ll be cancelling our flight to Tokyo as we look up at the impressive size of a particular recurring brand of foe in Sonic's universe: the Monsters of the Week. (Excluding Chaos, who we've already covered.)
So for reasons that should be obvious, this edition of Sweet or Shite is going to be a little different. Seeing how we’re covering more than one villain - and since you can only say so much about characters who aren’t really characters - this will instead be a series of mini-reviews, one after another, for each monster. I figured this was the best course of action since the alternative would be to go back and forth constantly between the monsters, and that would just be messy.
Also, none of these guys have much in the way of personality aside from “DESTROY FUCKING EVERYTHING GRRRRRRR”, so I’m not even going to bother analysing their “personalities”. Everything else will be the same as usual, of course.
And yes, I’m treating Iblis and Solaris as individual monsters. Because they barely have anything in common despite being the same beast.
Right then, we’ve got a lot of these king-size bastards to cover. Let’s go.
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MONSTER #1: THE BIOLIZARD
The Gist: In the endgame for Sonic Adventure 2, the late Professor Gerald Robotnik was revealed to have programmed his Space Colony A.R.K. to crash down to the planet and destroy it should the Eclipse Cannon be equipped with all seven Chaos Emeralds. The heroes and villains teamed up to combat this threat (thus completely negating the game's Hero VS Dark selling point), and together, they made their way to the cannon's core.
What they didn't expect however was for their target to be guarded. In order to stop the A.R.K. from falling, they were forced to deal with the Biolizard, Gerald's original attempt at creating the Ultimate Lifeform before he decided to take a page from the Sonic OC booklet with his second attempt, Shadow. Thanks to seeing the error of his ways courtesy of one Amy Rose, Shadow himself confronted his older sibling, and Knuckles used the Master Emerald to cancel out the power of the Chaos Emeralds, thus preventing the A.R.K's collision...
Just kidding. As if to laugh at the very idea of Knuckles actually having a useful role in this game beyond treasure hunting fodder, the Biolizard immediately used Chaos Control to assume direct control of the A.R.K. in order to continue its collision course. Sonic and Shadow had no choice but to go Super, and with their powers combined, the Biolizard was beaten for good, the A.R.K. was stopped once and for all, and Shadow died but not really.
Sonic and Shadow were hailed as heroes. Even though everyone else contributed too. But apparently, only the heroes with super forms are allowed to be on the President's desk.
The Design: The Biolizard is a failed prototype, and it shows.
He's gonna sweep them bitches off their feet with a face like that.
Surprisingly, I actually dig his design. It's a bit messy, sure, but that works to his benefit in this case, since as a failed creation who demands a life support system just to function, it's justified within the context. It's a cool mesh of organic and technology, and it perfectly demonstrates the horrors that can come with trying to play God and creating life.
Unfortunately, his final form is underwhelming. He "fuses" with the A.R.K, but don't get your hopes up. It's the same design as before, only... well...
Yeah. It's just... right up there. All the way through.
The Execution: The Biolizard technically doesn't come out of nowhere, since there's a Dark Story cutscene that foreshadows his existence. But he still feels very WTF in spite of that. This adventure involving G.U.N, Dr. Eggman, and a feud between two hedgehogs, and this thing is the final challenge? It doesn't help that despite the relation, he feels very disconnected to Shadow's story when compared to Gerald, Maria, etc. (And yet ironically, he's the most interesting part IMO.)
So in regards to proper build up for a final boss, he's a bit shit. But since I like his design, and since his theme music is kickass, I'll give him a little step up. Just a little one.
Crusher Gives the Biolizard a: Thumbs Sideways!
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MONSTER #2: IBLIS
The Gist: In the future, everything was a shitehole. This was due to a terrible beast known as Fire Chaos Iblis, who spread his penchant for destruction everywhere he went, leaving behind nothing but ruins in the process. A young hedgehog named Silver, and his friend named Blaze, have fought him for a very long time at the expense of Blaze's actual backstory, but nothing they could do kept Iblis down for long. Desperate to save their world, they followed the advice of comic relief character Mephiles the Dark, which was to find the so-called Iblis Trigger of the past via time travel, and destroy him. That Iblis Trigger was none other than Sonic the Hedgehog himself.
Except not. Turns out the guy with no mouth and snake eyes named after Mephistopheles wasn't all that trustworthy, and was using Silver for his own purposes. Undaunted, Silver continued to do a bunch of things that meant little-to-nothing, before finally defeating Iblis for definite because... he was stronger this time, I guess?
But Zoinks, Scoob! He couldn't seal Iblis away! Luckily and unluckily for him, Blaze was able to do so, and with a few emotional parting words, she vanished from Silver's time to get ready for a better game stop the threat of Iblis. That's not the end of Iblis' story however, because as it turns out, he's only part of something even more destructive... Also, Silver and Blaze didn't achieve anything anyway since Mephiles unleashed Iblis in the present time after killing Sonic.
Lol.
The Design: Get ready for a trilogy of fatigue.
You have Phase 1, which is just a clump of lava with some arms:
Good at mix tapes though.
Phase 2 is a replica of his Iblis Worm minions, but bigger. That's it.
Even he looks tired.
And for Phase 3, he finally realises he should probably try to look more worthy of a main baddie, but it still falls flat due to his ridiculous anchor feet:
"~Lava bone's connected to the fire bone~"
On the whole? Wank.
The Execution: He's from Sonic '06. What do you think?
Outside of being a lame version of Chaos, what else is there to say?
Crusher Gives Iblis a: Thumbs Down!
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MONSTER #3: SOLARIS
The Gist: Remember Iblis? The guy I just talked about? Well he wasn't brought into existence as Iblis, but rather Solaris, the flame of hope. A time-dwelling entity of sorts, the kingdom of Soleanna had worshipped him for as long as they've lived, for reasons that can best be described as "fuck knows". In particular, Soleanna's ruler, the Duke, was devoted to harnessing the power of Solaris for the sake of being able to control time itself, and thus bring his wife back from the dead.
Sure enough, he joined her once more... by ironically getting himself killed in an accident during one of his experiments on Solaris, which also happened to split the entity into two different beings: the raw power named Iblis, and the subconscious named Mephiles the Dark. Before he died however, the Duke made the brave and heroic sacrifice of sealing Iblis - the fiery demon of death - within his own daughter, with the added deal of her never being able to cry unless that demon gets free, because who cares, she was adopted anyway.
She's guaranteed to be a strong queen if she can withstand a lifetime's worth of severe heartburn.
Anyway, the Duke got a Game Over, Silver the Hedgehog left a Chaos Emerald in his daughter's presence at the expense of the overall Sonic the Hedgehog continuity, and that was that. Ten years later, Sonic and Eggman had a tussle in Soleanna that I'm not even going to bother talking about because it's that unimportant, and eventually the aforementioned Mephiles gives Sonic a Game Over, causing Princess Elise to cry and thus release Iblis. Mephiles, the shadowy hedgehog, then uses the Chaos Emeralds to rejoin with Iblis, the fire lizard, to become Solaris, the bird made of light... Okay then.
Solaris threatens to consume all of time and space, but before he can do that, his decision to throw the Chaos Emeralds away like disused wrappers comes back to bite him in the ass, because through his friends' wise decision to collect them all, Sonic is brought back to life, and in his super form at that. Together, with Super Shadow and Super Silver, they kick Solaris' shit in, until it reverts to its original form of a tiny flame, and after some hesitance born from the sorrow of losing her biggest friendship, Elise ultimately makes the right decision and blows out the flame, thus creating a new future where Solaris - and the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 in general - never happened.
Does that mean the Duke is alive? What does Soleanna worship now that Solaris never existed? Who knows, who cares, I'm already getting bored talking about these guys.
The Design: Unlike with Iblis, I actually like Solaris' forms, since there's an attempt to give them some elegance rather than just making them generically ugly. Even if Phase 1 looks as though he's got a steering wheel on his back...
Literally at the helm.
And Phase 2 looks like it could be desecrated by the Dark Lord Ganondorf at any moment...
"Who wants a hug?"
But overall? I like them.
The Execution: It's still '06, so his chances aren't looking good. I WOULD give Solaris some leeway since like with the Biolizard, I like his designs and his music (though I'm that weird guy who prefers Phase 1's music)...
Buuuuuut he's still the endgame of an absolutely shitty and plothole-infested narrative. And he's technically Mephiles, so...
Crusher Gives Solaris a: Thumbs Down!
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MONSTER #4: IFRIT
The Gist: Iblis got its own ripoff.
That ripoff's name was Ifrit.
It was in Sonic Rivals 2.
Eggman Nega sought to unleash it.
And it liked to feed on Chao, allegedly.
......
So anyway, how's your sex life?
The Design: Despite being the younger sibling, it's design is arguably better than that of Iblis. It's still nothing amazing mind you, but it's got a Firebird thing going on, so that alone makes it more pleasing to look at than any of Iblis' forms. And if it were in a fully 3D game rather than on the PSP, it would probably look a lot better with its visuals too.
Ifrit wants a belly rub!
The Execution: He shows up at the end to get killed.
Next.
Crusher Gives Ifrit a: Thumbs Down!
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MONSTER #5: DARK GAIA
The Gist: One day, Dr. Eggman decided to have yet another go at controlling a giant monster. This resulted in the events of Sonic Unleashed, which started off with a bang when after a spectacle of action and destruction in the far reaches of space, Sonic was lured into a devilish trap by the wicked scientist. Using the negative energies of the Chaos Emeralds, Eggman fired a laser that literally broke the planet apart, in an attempt to unleash (HA!) the being sleeping within the planet's core: Dark Gaia.
Those negative energies also turned Sonic into a bizarre werewolf-hedgehog hybrid, which wasn't intentional on Eggman's part, but he dealt with him easily by letting him fall all the way down to the planet... along with the sapped Chaos Emeralds. Oops.
With the help of a strange little guy with amnesia named Chip, Sonic and his new alter-ego - the Werehog - went on a grand day out to find the Gaia Temples around the world, with the idea being to restore the Emeralds' energy one by one. All the while, Dark Gaia kept... existing, and Eggman tried to stop them. Eventually, it's revealed that Chip, bog standard comic relief that he is, was in fact Light Gaia all along, the fated nemesis of Dark Gaia. After all, you can't have dark without light, just as you can't have light without dark.
"I wish I knew how to quit you... and this boss fight."
Same song and dance from then on. Dark Gaia pops up, Sonic and Chip beat it, Gaia gets angry and transforms, then they beat it again with Super Sonic. Chip says goodbye as he prepares to sleep for nearly an eternity to keep Dark Gaia at bay, which could be seen as a metaphor for how I'm close to falling asleep for eternity due to how genuinely exhausting it is to talk about these non-characters.
The Design: I really do not like Dark Gaia's design. Outside of the purple tentacles, which are admittedly pretty cool, he's just a stick with eyes and teeth. That's all he is.
Nice nail polish, prick.
And when he becomes Perfect Ultra Mega Dark Gaia 2: The Return of Jafar, what does he transform into? ...A stick with MORE eyes and teeth.
"I'm never drinking Chaos Cola again, Chip."
So yeah. His design is boring. And he could do with eating more.
The Execution: Dark Gaia is at least set up from the beginning rather than showing up haphazardly towards the end, but that's about all the praise I can give it. Despite everything to do with Chip, the Gaia Temples, and the Gaia Manuscripts, there's still not nearly enough to make Dark Gaia truly stand out. It's the personification of the world's darkness, and it's involved in a cycle with Light Gaia... what else? What else is there for me to care about?
Also, its boss fight was the worst, and coming after the Egg Dragoon, it was like a slap in the face. Say what you will about the guy below, at least you can deal with him quickly.
Crusher Gives Dark Gaia a: Thumbs Down!
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MONSTER #6: TIME EATER
The Gist: Young Sonic was on his merry way, then a time monster showed up to cause trouble... in time. Young Sonic was thus forced to team up with Older Sonic to combat this threat.
So they did.
......
At least Eggman was in control this time. Or Eggmen, rather.
"Did I ever tell you the time I wrote about how Sonic the Hedgehog had it pretty rough lately...?"
The Design: Not too bad, actually. Sure, it looks like a stereotypical ghost at first...
"WHAZAAAAAAAAPPPP"
...But once it's revealed to be mechanized by the Eggmen, we see its true, clockwork-esque form:
Might want to get those boils checked, buddy.
As a robotic Frankenstein abomination, I really like its time aesthetic, and its twitching and whirring, as if it's trying in vain to fight back against the Eggmen's control. Like the Biolizard, the context allows it to be a bit hideous, and it still looks cool despite that.
The Execution: Am I going to give the Time Eater a complete free pass just because it's the one that Eggman successfully controlled? No. I will freely admit that there was not enough to establish it in a way that felt satisfying, and some would say to a worse extent than Solaris or Dark Gaia.
But here's the thing: I'm more willing to let these things slide if the game isn't forcing me to try and care about it. Or to put it in another way, the plot of Sonic Generations may very much be an excuse plot in its purest form, and that will always be a shame, but that's actually why I don't mind this as much. Generations isn't pretending that the Time Eater is anything more than what it is. It's not hyping it up without being able to back its "lore" up. It's nothing more than the justification for why we're having this adventure. And since Eggman is the real baddie pulling the strings anyway, I look at Time Eater as a plot device used by Eggman, than as an actual entity of its own.
Note that I'm not saying this is ideal. I'd have loved it if Generations had more of a story, and I'd have loved it if Time Eater had more lore behind it to back it up. But I'm explaining why I'm not so harsh on it as I am with Dark Gaia or Iblis, who their respective plots tried so hard to make me care about as big bad threats, only for it to fail miserably due to how mind-numbingly boring they are. It's a lesser of two evils situation, and I'm just giving my stance on it.
Plus, again, I actually like Time Eater's design. And Eggman did succeed with it...
Crusher Gives Time Eater a: Thumbs Sideways!
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So that’s it then. That’s your lot for today. Some of them are okay, most of them are crap, none of them are as good as Chaos. I apologise if this edition of Sweet or Shite felt a bit rushed or shoddy, but in my defense, it's hard to say much for these guys, and I try not to be too repetitive.
......
Here’s a Shadow for you.
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