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JWeinCom on 04 May 2020
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Scoobes said:
JWeinCom said:

The thing is that even with no knowledge of where it's going, the sequence was very Kingdom Heartsy.

You shift suddenly from a relatively grounded sci-fi environment to suddenly going to a very abstract "edge of creation" place.  Cloud is suddenly hopping across bits of land and slashing through large chunks of rock, very much like Sora.  Then, you're facing a massive shadowy entity that is completely unlike anything else in the game, but is very much like the kind of enemies you fight in Kingdom Hearts.  Instead of facing a concrete threat (we have to get away from Shinra!) you're suddenly facing an abstract one (we have to fight against destiny)!  It's all very Kingdom Heartsy.

So, yeah, I think Kingdom Hearts bullshit is a very apt description.  Without any discussion of alternate timelines (which are pretty heavily hinted at but I digress) the ending of the game was a massive and jarring tonal shift from both the original FF7, and even from everything proceeding it in the remake.

You see, I never got this "grounded sci-fi environment". The Cetra can "talk" to the planet, Jenova is an alien that can somehow infect the native species of the planet, Sephiroth's consciousness travels across a circulatory system of the planet and is able to take control of "clones", one of the bosses is a giant house... it's all pure fantasy.

The final fight I felt was in keeping with some of the Jenova fights from the original game. It's actually conceivable that the whole ending segment can be explained as Sephiroth and Jenova screwing with the party. It has elements of Kingdom Hearts but they're mostly superficial and I got a more Advent Children vibe overall, especially given the 3 characters you fight seem to be influenced by the character designs in Advent Children.

You'll note that I said relatively.  And also we're talking about just the remake here, so most of that stuff hasn't happened yet.

The Midgar portion of FF7 itself is relatively grounded.  Aeris communicating with the planet (and the whispers in the remake) are really the only place where the game is going into that more abstract fantasy zone.

In the end of course you fight Sephiroth within the consciousness of the planet.  The difference is that by that point they've slowly built in these elements.  They introduce the lifestream in Cosmo Canyon, you learn more about Jenova and the Cetra in Nibelheim, Cloud gets lifestream poison, etc.  They build up these elements and ease you into the more mystical side of the story.  You get from A to Z, but you go through B, C, D, etc on the way there. 

In the Remake, you are one second fleeing from an evil corporation on a motorcycle and fighting a giant robot, and then a gateway to a strange abstract dimension opens up and you're fighting weird shadow monsters, then you're at the edge of creation and being told to join the villain to change history.  Here you're going from like, maybe D or E straight to Z, and it feels off.