[HN Gopher] Final Fantasy 7: An oral history (2017)
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Final Fantasy 7: An oral history (2017)
Author : rcarmo
Score : 115 points
Date : 2022-02-19 10:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| nvmfst wrote:
| I highly recommend the book 500 Years Later: An Oral History of
| Final Fantasy VII. It's Matt Leone's article, but expanded to
| book length (240 pages). I received it as a Christmas present
| when it came out from my parents. Read the entire book in a day.
| Reading the book was a super nostalgic experience for me since my
| parents purchased the original PSX game for me back in 1998
| around Christmas that year. It was awesome reading all that went
| into one of my favorite games of all time.
|
| https://readonlymemory.vg/shop/book/500-years-later/
| sennight wrote:
| Hmm, no mention of how they lopped off a huge chunk of the story
| to get the game out the door... that is the oral history that
| would be interesting. Actually, there are some recollections
| included that don't seem to make a lot of sense - specifically
| related to how Aerith's death was supposed to be some kind of
| teachable moment for players, a demonstration of how precious
| life is... through permadeath. Well Aerith's death wasn't
| supposed to be permanent, her resurrection was going to be part
| of the later story - you can even see where they cut out a scene
| where she appears at the church, following her death, in a shaft
| of light. Presumably there would have been some back and forth -
| and then a lead to the beginning of the fetch quest that would
| end with her back to life. All that is left is a very brief pop-
| in of her character model, and a useless item that was probably
| part of the cut quest - but developers forgot to remove.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Wow, your comment reads like many of the later 90's blogs I saw
| about this very thing. I saw SOOO many comments about Aeris
| should have been ressurected, or do these stupidly long things
| made up that can do it (it didnt).
|
| Unless you have attestation from the devs or designers, I'll
| have to consign this comment as 1990's level rumormill.
| sennight wrote:
| tsol wrote:
| Aeris revival rumors were my favorite thing to read about.
| There were so many ridiculous, complicated methods to
| supposedly revive aeris. In fact there were a lot of
| different mytha like that.. things like getting the supernova
| materia, killing tifa instead of Aerosmith, fighting secret
| weapons, getting sephiroth to join your team, etc. Even
| though I knew 95% of it was fake, I loved reading about it
| for some reason. They were strangely imaginative, mixing real
| mysteries like aeris' ghost with plausible ideas like that
| there's a way to revive her through that. And let's be
| honest-- everyone wanted to revive aeris. Her death was one
| of the craziest moments in a video game I've ever experienced
| krsrhe wrote:
| TillE wrote:
| It's really common to find unfinished, cut content in game
| data. Even if that possibility was explored, a design decision
| was made in the game that actually shipped, so I don't think it
| makes any sense to talk about different intentions.
| sennight wrote:
| > ... a design decision was made in the game that actually
| shipped, so I don't think it makes any sense to talk about
| different intentions.
|
| >>> Final Fantasy 7: An oral history (2017)
|
| >> An oral history
|
| > history
|
| wut?
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/VQEAFxjqr-E
| donutdan4114 wrote:
| Ah, yes... I remember the first time I ran my submarine into
| Emerald Weapon without knowing what the creature was. Needless to
| say, I was ill-prepared for such a battle.
|
| And who can forget Ruby Weapon? Which some would say is an even
| harder battle than Emerald Weapon... until you discover the
| optimal attack for the battle.... Hades.
|
| *sigh.... So good.
| mywaifuismeta wrote:
| What made these battles so special is that the internet in its
| current form didn't quite exist yet, so you couldn't easily
| look up guides or YouTube videos. You had to buy the big
| expensive FF7 strategy guide book and struggle yourself!
|
| The easy access to information these days has made games a very
| different experience. Struggling for 2 minutes? Look up the
| answer.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I remember AOL message boards/forums were pretty critical to
| me getting through FF7 and other role playing games of the
| time.
| M4v3R wrote:
| Final Fantasy VII was/is such an influential game. It was this
| game that sparkled my interest in programming because of its big,
| very helpful modding community that I stumbled upon. It started
| over 20 years ago and is still very active to this day:
| https://forums.qhimm.com . Inspired by this back then I wrote a
| couple of tools that were used for FF7 translation projects and
| created my first website, learning the craft along the way, and
| that's how I became a web developer.
|
| What's more, new things are discovered almost every month - new
| game glitches, mechanics, new tools are being created to either
| lower the speedrun times or create mods to the game. I recommend
| anyone even remotely interested in this game to check it out.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I was surprised to learn that even earlier titles had an active
| modding community!
|
| Final Fantasy 6, which is an equally awesome game, although for
| very different reasons, had a complete makeover and one can
| download it with new quests, gears, translation, balance, etc.
|
| It's crazy what people will do by passion.
| drchickensalad wrote:
| FFT 1.3 is absolutely incredible too
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Damn, how many gems exist out there?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| There's a FF7 'demake' in the style of FF1 for NES that's
| really kinda cool and amazing they made it run on NES
| hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII
| _(NES_video_g...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Square's library is loaded with gems. Xenogears and
| Vagrant Story are my favorites from the PSX.
|
| I've never played the Secret of Mana type games, or Mario
| RPG, or any of a host of other ones.
|
| I think the PSX was an interesting high point for 3D
| creativity vs graphics. The PS2 started pushing polygon
| counts such that the creative/artist teams started to
| blow out and budgets shot up, but then the PS3 and
| "modern AAA" budgets took over. Large budgets, low risk,
| more priority on splash graphics than depth.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I still have my original PlayStation discs. Is there some
| way to get this?
| toto444 wrote:
| I have been learning Japanese to play this game in its original
| language and am planning to learn the piano to be able to play
| its soundtrack. I know I am not the only one doing this. I
| can't think of any video game / movie that has been so
| inspiring to so many people.
| Falell wrote:
| Nobuo Uematsu's music sounds great when arranged for piano!
| The Piano Collections are fantastic, if you can play them.
|
| Uematsu was a big part of my childhood and it was a bummer
| when he stepped back from composing so much, but Masayoshi
| Soken has done amazing work on FFXIV, he's a worthy
| successor. I really like this piano arrangement of the
| Endwalker soundtrack
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmXuN53ggw
| dSebastien wrote:
| Yes. Uematsu's music is part of my soul forever
| echohack5 wrote:
| Back in 2000 when I was originally learning Japanese, I
| played through Final Fantasy 7 and stopped every time I
| didn't recognize something and looked it up in my Denshi
| Jisho. It was tough but I made it through the whole game!
|
| Good luck from a fellow player who's already walked the path
| you're walking.
| tomhunters wrote:
| There's a lot of FF7 that made my childhood. Reading the
| article seems like a blast from the past.
| willmw101 wrote:
| >I know I am not the only one doing this. I can't think of
| any video game / movie that has been so inspiring to so many
| people.
|
| I think the Zelda franchise has similar if not greater
| cultural impact in some of the ways you're talking about.
| 69Represente wrote:
| my favorite music was red 13's village one
| djtango wrote:
| Aye cosmo canyon is a classic - the game is full of just so
| many bangers. I really haven't resonated with game music
| since that era in the same way. Last game music that really
| caught my attention was Hollow Knight
| wlamartin wrote:
| I find "A Secret Sleeping in the Deep Sea" really takes
| me back to my childhood.
| xamuel wrote:
| >new things are discovered almost every month - new game
| glitches, mechanics
|
| Is there a good place to follow these discoveries? The site you
| linked seems to mainly just be mods, and when I search for
| glitch discussion I mostly just find generic wiki's listing the
| same old glitches known for decades.
| ismellcomment wrote:
| There is always speedrun.com (https://www.speedrun.com/ff7)
| M4v3R wrote:
| Just recently a Chocobo glitch was found that allows
| speedrunners to skip Kalm flashback sequence:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiO9ixPicHU . There's also
| the materia smuggle glitch found not too long ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hosDrlVF6e4
|
| I recommend this whole channel as it's a great resource for
| FF7 in general and covers the newest developments: https://ww
| w.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyotyCGt7oYAKM1mCwsHT...
| xamuel wrote:
| Thanks, that's amazing! I wish there was more of a central
| forum for this stuff. Do you know of any similar channels
| for FF6, Chrono Trigger, and other golden-age JRPGs?
| flatiron wrote:
| Funny because I'm replaying it now on my Mister with the alpha
| PSX core. Still looks, plays, and sounds amazing!
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I bought a PS1 for this game. It's still my all-time #1. It has a
| great story, lots of content, lots of extras and minigames. Heck,
| in 1997 it was my favourite snowboarding game...
| philliphaydon wrote:
| If anyone is interested, Read Only Memory did a book on FF7.
|
| https://readonlymemory.vg/shop/book/500-years-later/
|
| I have 2 of their books.
|
| Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works
|
| Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works
|
| And waiting for delivery of
|
| Like a Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter II
|
| Their books are amazing.
| d--b wrote:
| Hi, please add (2017) to the title
| Douger wrote:
| Reading this I'm surprised at the parallels of Sakaguchi and
| Job's first stint at Apple.
| kstenerud wrote:
| FF7 was also massively influential for environmentalist causes.
| An entire generation of kids were introduced to tough political
| problems via this game.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Honestly, when I was a kid, I didn't get the scenario. What the
| hell was genova ? Is sephiroth the good guy ? Then why is he
| trying to meteor us to hell ? And who is really cloud ?
|
| But it didn't matter, because it was so incredible to play.
|
| I had to replay the PC version later as a teenager to get it.
| Unfortunately this version was incredibly buggy.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| As much as I love this game some of the story really starts
| to fall apart around those points. I used to think I was just
| overlooking something or some details were lost in
| translation but after playing more of the series it seems
| like convoluted plots are just kind of part of the Final
| Fantasy style.
|
| note: I've only played the original game and the remake on
| PS4 and seen Advent Children.
| willis936 wrote:
| The Cloud identity mystery was wonderful for me as a kid. It
| really had a lot of intrigue and mystique. Even when they
| explicitly explain it, something didn't seem to fit right.
| Something about imposter syndrome. Crisis Core helped
| establish a lot more context but the characters and settings
| really did feel like Kingdom Hearts 1.5.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Not just FF7. Mystic Quest (Final Fantasy Adventure) [1] was my
| first Final Fantasy game (I only played a little bit FFXIV ~30
| years after) back around 1991/1992 on the orig. Gameboy, and it
| also had the tree of life paradigm. Though you can regard it as
| a spinoff, the Mana series, it featured things like moogles,
| chocobo's, tree of life, Excalibur, ...
|
| One of my first RPG games, along with Hero Quest (a simplified
| clone of Warhammer Quest).
|
| One thing it couldn't do though was walk diagonally, which you
| could with Zelda/Link (forgot the exact name) on Gameboy. I got
| stuck on that game (IIRC clueless what to do, where to go). In
| Mystic Quest I only got stuck once, with the palm trees where
| you had to make the 8 to find the dungeon. I didn't get the
| clue to it, but then again my native language wasn't English.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Adventure
| toyg wrote:
| That's probably more true outside Japan than inside it. By
| then, just to mention one factor, Miyazaki and Takahata had
| already smashed the Japanese box office multiple times with
| "militant" environmentalist films like _Nausicaa_ and
| _PomPoko_. In fact, I remember the whole environmental theme
| being a bit of a cliche in my part of the world (Western
| Europe) by the late '90s - for us, those themes had really
| exploded in the '80s as part of the debate over nuclear energy.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Great article surprise I've never seen it before.
|
| Tim Rodgers has dedicated hundreds of hours talking about this
| game. It's so iconic and moved the genre forward in many ways.
| But I think in opening the series up to the mainstream it took
| steps backwards too. So very linear, very simple bosses, and
| little in the way of customizing your party like you could in VI.
|
| I recently replayed it though and it has aged well. I think about
| the limits they had with CD-ROM and I think this is why the game
| was so linear. It also has tons of side quests if you want to
| spend more time.
|
| The remake is fantastic too.
|
| What a weird time in the mid 1990's and late 90's when JRPG's
| were extremely popular.
| rootsudo wrote:
| >What a weird time in the mid 1990's and late 90's when JRPG's
| were extremely popular.
|
| They still are, though it has become much more blended with
| western audiences and taste.
|
| Back then things moved way slower, even though it was released
| in 1997, it was still popular because of the PS2 and it's low
| price cost $20 via Greatest hits.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Sort of but FF7 was the top selling game when it came out.
| That will never be the case for a JRPG again. In fact I'm
| convinced that it was all just a perfect storm of gaming
| going mainstream and much of the audience had no idea what it
| was.
|
| I think the western RPG genre killed it for good here in
| terms of mainstream success. Oblivion did a number on it.
| alickz wrote:
| the last few years have been a mini golden age for JRPGs
|
| Persona 5: Royal, Dragon Quest 11, Yakuza: Like a Dragon,
| FFVII:R
| nemo44x wrote:
| It has been. Even others too like Bravely Default 2, Last
| Remnant, and Octopath Traveller have done interesting
| things with mechanics.
|
| The Switch is incredible for these new games + all the old
| ones.
| hereforphone wrote:
| One of the few games I can play over every few years. I haven't
| played the remakes. I'm afraid it will spoil it for me.
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| FFVII is so close to my childhood it's almost difficult to play
| it without tearing up.
|
| The soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu is probably the best video game
| OST ever made.
| iEchoic wrote:
| The OST is a masterpiece, and has only gotten better with time.
|
| The Orchestra world tour (https://ffvii-remakeconcerts.com/) is
| incredible. Definitely recommend seeing it live if you get a
| chance.
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| Thanks I've gone twice and it was amazing
| fleabitdev wrote:
| And it's all MIDI, running on a 24-voice synthesiser with a
| 470-kilobyte sample bank.
|
| Whenever I'm composing, and I'm tempted to be perfectionist
| about instrument fidelity or mixing quality, I listen to some
| Uematsu tracks then go back to my piano roll.
| iEchoic wrote:
| Final Fantasy VII is still awe-inspiring for me. The original is
| arguably the greatest game of all time, and the remake is
| probably the best video game remake of all time, too.
|
| If anyone wants to relive FFVII on YouTube, I'd highly recommend
| this[1] speedrun from GDQ. The runner beats it in ~8 hours and
| the commentary takes you through the story as it happens, sharing
| a lot of really cool insights and and highlighting details that I
| never knew from my playthroughs.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/EWgb-Jrk5tQ?t=677
| ksec wrote:
| I remember I was watching my friend playing it on his Playstation
| and I nearly bought Playstation because of it. ( I was still on
| my Saga MegaDrive ). But I waited for the PC version, turns out
| my ATI Graphics card just wasn't good enough. The game if I
| remember correctly was heavily optimised for Glide ( The API from
| 3Dfx ), so bought a Voodoo 2 instead which was crazy expensive
| just to play a game but I couldn't resist. The PC version was
| insanely great. Voodoo 2 Graphics had _30fps_ making everything
| silky smooth LOL. ( I dont think we were 60fps era yet ) The
| software synthesiser from Yamaha was miles ahead of anything else
| on the market. The music was just brilliant ( Nobuo Uematsu is an
| absolute genius ), 25 years later when I see FF7 I could still
| hear the intro music in my head. Those MIDI sound when selecting
| commands. Spending days just to get a Golden Chocobo ( And typing
| that now the Chocobo music is playing in my head ). It is somehow
| all burned into my DNA.
|
| I just wish I have time to play the Remake. Still waiting for PS5
| to become widely available.
|
| The good old days, they dont make games like that any more.
| slothtrop wrote:
| The remake is more fun, but they took real liberties with the
| story. Some would say they butchered it. Pacing also has that
| modern sluggishness.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| That's interesting! Watching a friend play Final Fantasy 7 was
| the reason I never cared to get a Playstation. The graphics
| were horrible. I mean, sure it was 3D, but everything was so
| _ugly_. I went back to playing games on my SNES and Genesis,
| and didn 't buy any Playstation games until much later.
|
| In retrospect, I missed out, but the way that game looked
| really soured my view of Playstation for years. I should play
| one of the remasters some time to see what the story is all
| about.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| The backdrops and environment were gorgeous. The in-battle 3d
| models were realistic for their time.
|
| The controllable characters in the overworld were strangely
| blocky and angular.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=cloud+ff7+original
|
| When I first saw the game as a kid, I was baffled by how thin
| the character's elbows were. It's almost doll-like, and you
| get the feeling you're a puppet master witnessing an epic and
| sometimes tragic performance.
| destructionator wrote:
| Yeah, I like FF7 a lot, but my view in the 90's was that 3d
| was ugly and the older games had better graphics. The ff7
| backgrounds look a lot better than the characters, and even
| the FMV sequences still pretty meh if you ask me. I'd take
| the art style of Lunar or Phantasy Star or something over it
| any day..... in fact I still prefer that style to the newer
| 3d games anyway.
|
| Thankfully there's more to the game than the appearance. The
| music <3
| dave_sullivan wrote:
| FWIW I remember seeing it at stores when I was a kid and
| thinking the graphics were best I'd ever seen. Like my mind
| was blown and I was sad I didn't have a PS1. The pre-rendered
| backdrops helped a lot here. It was a different time.
| dave_sullivan wrote:
| I was getting into the remake but stopped playing when I
| learned it was only half the game plus a bunch of bullshit
| filler. Instantly killed any interest or goodwill for me.
| Playing the original again on emulator ATM. Was perfect, just
| needed to up the polycount...
| plouffy wrote:
| It really isn't. You should play it and see for yourself.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It's a really strong game if you judge it on its own merits.
| I had played through most of disc 1 of the original just
| before it came out, and I liked all the extra detail that the
| remake added to the gameworld. It's a shame it's not all of
| FF7 but if they eventually remake the whole game with this
| level of detail then its future is very exciting!
| aikinai wrote:
| I also played it on PC, but remember even at the time the low
| resolution backgrounds looking horrendous and taking a lot away
| from the experience. You had insanely low polygon, untextured
| characters rendered at full monitor resolution, composited on
| backgrounds pre-rendered at 320x240 for TVs. So the graphics
| were made up of two drastically different elements each with
| distinct, critical issues.
| jerf wrote:
| The first 3D console that I thought was actually worthy of
| the name was the Dreamcast. Everything before that was just
| atrocious looking, even at the time, in my opinion. I'd had
| some exposure to computer gaming but I was in college and
| always bottom-feeding on hardware, so it's not like I was
| always _cutting edge_ on computer gaming graphics.
|
| I remember watching an ad for some Playstation game that was
| clearly trying to have awesome graphics at all costs, even if
| it meant that their TV ad was playing at something like 5
| fps. Awful. Honestly looked unplayable.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Yeah, man, I was a kid in high school at the time, and saved
| a lot of money to get this game. It was running at 4 FPS, but
| even worse was that the characters went from beautifully-
| drawn sprites in FF6 to hideous sets of cubes and pyramids in
| FF7. I'd heard so many good things about the game that I
| assumed it must just be completely broken on my computer, and
| returned it to the store for a refund
|
| I gave the game another try on the PSX later, and I have to
| admit that it was a lot of fun once I got past the terrible
| graphics
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