Why I think a FF7 remake would be very akward.

[The_vagabond7]

This has nothing to do with what system it would be on. Also let it be known, that I really like FF7. This is not in anyway a critisism of the game itself.

 

FF7 is hands down the most popular Final Fantasy in the series, it has spawned spin off games, a movie, a ton of merchandise, and lord knows what else. Cloud is immortalized as a quiet loner badass with a past, that deep down cares. Sephiroth is oft considered one of the biggest bad asses in videogames. The story has been immortalized as something complex, and dark in tone. Watch "Advent children" and see the heroes perform bad ass fight routines, deliver stoic lines over orchestral scores. Play Crisis core and watch the bad ass cut scenes and bad asses being so frikkin bad....ass. FF7 just screams dark, complex and bad ass. Now just imagine playing these BAD ASS scenes with these mofos that can't be messed with.

Now go back and play FF7 on your old dusty PSX....eh...not too bad ass. It's actually quite cartoony, and filled with lots of what would almost be considered "kiddy" (by today's standard anyway) characters, dialogue, and scenes. Imagine cloud in glorious HD, looks like he stepped straight out from advent children...now he's cross dressing. Not only that, you actually spend half an hour walking around with this giant sword wielding bad ass collecting perfume and wigs (you have to win a squatting contest to win the wig). Imagine this extremely bad ass gang hanging out at an amusement park riding rollercoasters and playing minigames that involve moogles. Or interacting with any of the large number of characters that might as well have stepped right out of a bugs bunny cartoon (you could replace elmer fud with Heidegger, or Don Cornerio, or any other buffoon villians that just dance around, deliver corny lines, and then fail at whatever they are trying to do)

Now don't get me wrong, the game certainly had it's dark elements, and story points...but it was mixed in with a healthy dose of just flat out wierd cartoony parts as well, alot of that game was goofy as hell. The dialogue often times sounds like it came straight out of a teen novel. But all of that all worked on account of the chibi character models, and at that point in gaming history you could still cross dress, or do other goofy things, with really wierd or lame dialogue and lend yourself to a serious plot. Final Fantasy six was the same way. One of the main enemies is a talking squid that follows you around and makes trouble. But it was still a serious plot.

 

The FF7 mythos has grown into a bunch of dark serious bad asses doing dark serious bad ass things (especially the bad ass part). But the original source material reeks of 90s jrpg incongruency, and tween anime dialogue and characters. When it's not being dark and mysterious, it's being goofy as hell. Trying to translate the cartooniness of the original game into a lifelike serious characters would be incredibly akward. Or listening to them deliver lines that could've been written by a 15 year old making a fan-fiction. Nostalgia has us remember the game fondly, and rightly so. But since then it's taken on a decidely different tone than it originally had, and going back to the original may be a rude wake up call to those that think that cloud and sepiroth are the be all end all bad asses of the videogame world and that the story was a deep dark and complex ride through a steam punk world.