What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Anteros]

Picked up Ghost of Tsushima and gave it about an hour. My impressions so far are that the protagonists are morons to the point of complete unlikability (but maybe they'll grow as the game goes along?) and the camera is an abomination that does not belong in an indie game, much less a AAA one.

The aesthetics are great though. I'm going to give the game another 5 hours or so and see if it grows on me. Maybe once I'm out of the tutorial section it will improve.

[Rynjin]

The camera is baffling, but I got over it quick.

Overall from what I've played so far the gameplay is simplistic, but entertaining. The story seems fairly rote. But man the STYLE of the game is something else. At the risk of ridicule, it really makes you feeeel like a samurai.

[factotum]

I saw Nerdcubed playing it on Youtube and there was one point where the camera insisted on having part of a bamboo fence between the viewer and the combat that was happening--definitely some work needed there!

[Erloas]

I keep thinking about picking up AC: Odyssey and it's cheap on Epic right now (especially with the coupon I still haven't used). But it is very much a style of game that I think looks good but tend to not actually enjoy playing all that much. I haven't played an AC game since... 2 I think?

[Rynjin]

I keep thinking about picking up AC: Odyssey and it's cheap on Epic right now (especially with the coupon I still haven't used). But it is very much a style of game that I think looks good but tend to not actually enjoy playing all that much. I haven't played an AC game since... 2 I think?

I picked it up during the summer sale. What little I've played is solid. I haven't played an AC since Black Flag and it's a far different experience from the older games.

It's, honestly, barely an AC game at all. There's no overarching plot anymore from what I know, and the Animus is barely a factor. The game is essentially just "Greek mercenary simulator".

[Anteros]

I'm pretty sure that AC as an overarching franchise with any kind of interconnected plot has been completely abandoned, and it's just something that Ubisoft throws on their games because they know it sells.

[LibraryOgre]

I think I like Kingmaker, for all its flaws, better than Baldur's Gate.

[warty goblin]

Picked up Ghost of Tsushima.

Whenever I see this title, my mind auto-corrects it to Ghosts of Tsushima, and decides it's a game about a phantom Russian battleship, her revenant captain and crew bent on wrecking revenge on the Japanese fleet. Or at least on the SS Kamchatka.

Alas the truth does not seem to involve pre-dreadnoughts, ghostly or otherwise.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I think I like Kingmaker, for all its flaws, better than Baldur's Gate.

What I've played of it makes me agree with you, but I haven't really played much OF it. There's just so many moving parts to it makes me feel very overwhelmed, especially since it's one of those branching storylines where there's so many mutually exclusive outcomes I feel like I can't get a gameplan prepared to tackle things the way I could with games like the Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age series (I still have yet to play Baldur's Gate proper).

[Rynjin]

Whenever I see this title, my mind auto-corrects it to Ghosts of Tsushima

That's better than mine, which has been autocorrecting it to "Tsukishima" since 2018 and now I can't stop even as I own and am playing the game.

[Narkis]

I think I like Kingmaker, for all its flaws, better than Baldur's Gate.

This might actually qualify as some sort of heresy, but I think I'll allow it. Of all the RPGs that tried to revive BG's "spirit", its undoubtedly the one that came the closest.

[Cespenar]

This might actually qualify as some sort of heresy, but I think I'll allow it. Of all the RPGs that tried to revive BG's "spirit", its undoubtedly the one that came the closest.

It's definitely heresy, but I'm trying to judge if it's "gather the armies" level, or would it just suffice to deploy a few assassins.

Eh. Jokes aside, I'm of the opinion that it's as far inferior from BG2 as humanly possible -- especially in plot, writing, atmosphere, pacing, etc. It's somewhat closer to BG1 or IWD2, though, I can see that. But it of course boils down to taste, so, yeah.

As a likelier spiritual successor to BG2, I'd probably say Pillars 2, as predictable that answer may be.

[Triaxx]

Pathfinder also seemed to be crash happy like a Bethesda game for me.

[factotum]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

[tonberrian]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

Yeah, an average run avoiding the early bad endings is about 100 hours.

[oxybe]

I've been watching some Tsushima streams and daaaaang is that game pretty.

Like, streamer is going "brb, toilet" and we're left with with a samurai wistfully looking at the distance as the sun sets and cherry petals dance in the wind, evoking the melancholy in his heart.

sure it's followed by them returning and getting sliced like pepperoni, but it's a super pretty game.

On a happy note, I finally caved in and got an extra 16gb of ram (thank you covid cash). more modern and heavier games were having issues with just 8gb, so the increase will help out on that front.

Looking at games on steam to take advantage of my new hardware i laughed when I saw the upcoming... 2nd i think... reboot of Gunbound in the works. i played a ton of this cutesy artillery game in my college years, at least when i wasn't playing diablo2. Very fun game, but plagued by pay to win.

I also saw a game called MASS builder, which seems to be a beat em up with RPG elements... with customizable not-Gundams. it's still in the beta but it looks promising.

I decided to keeping an eye on these two games while I trawl steam for content.

[Zombimode]

It's definitely heresy, but I'm trying to judge if it's "gather the armies" level, or would it just suffice to deploy a few assassins.

You must gather your army before venturing forth.


Yes, it's heresy, but the kind of heresy that is allowed and secretely endorsed by the Emperor

That is to say I can totally see where you're coming from, Mark Hall. Personally I would still rate Baldurs Gate higher than Kingmaker but it is definitely on the same level

[DeTess]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

If you've got royal then there's even more than that assuming you unlock the extra content.

[Zevox]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

Yep, seven Palaces - and a final dungeon that I guess (somewhat understandably) wasn't counted as a Palace in whatever you looked up, so eight dungeons. And one more Palace that you can unlock if you're playing Royal amd meet the right conditions for the bonus semester*, so nine total possible.

*Non-spoiler version of those: reach rank 5 with Faith Arcana, 9 with Councilor Arcana, and 8 with Justice Arcana by certain dates in November. Mostly not hard if you make sure to spend time with them when you can, though there's a somewhat narrow window for the last two Justice ranks before the deadline compared to the rest.

For a slightly more precise, barely-spoilery idea of the game's length, its end date:

Spoiler: Just in case you really don't want to know.

Show

The original story ends on December 24th, gameplay-wise.

The third semester of Royal extends that to very early February (2nd or 3rd, IIRC).

Yeah, an average run avoiding the early bad endings is about 100 hours.

Personally, I find that an average run of any Persona game is 100 hours or more. I know I only ever finished P3 in under that time once, and while P4 was shorter than P3 I think I similarly usually got close to or above 100. My P5 Royal run recently was like 150 (though some of that was me leaving the game paused while I went to eat some days).

[Cespenar]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

The main mechanic in Persona games (assigning actions to each day) has admittedly quite an addictive quality to it, similar to the "one more turn" trope in 4x games. The fighty bits, less so (in my opinion).

[Cazero]

I've been playing some Monster Train. You pick your two demon tribes then drive a demon train through frozen Hell to ignite it again.
Gamplay wise, it's a deckbuilder particularly egregious about getting a ludicrous combo and exploiting the hell out of it.

I just finished a run where my goal was to kill as many of my own units as possible before boss spawn. Fun.

[LibraryOgre]

You must gather your army before venturing forth.


Yes, it's heresy, but the kind of heresy that is allowed and secretely endorsed by the Emperor

That is to say I can totally see where you're coming from, Mark Hall. Personally I would still rate Baldurs Gate higher than Kingmaker but it is definitely on the same level

Ok, since I'm a medievalist, let me double down on my heresy.

Some of this is mechanics, some of this is story.

Mechanically: While Pathfinder has some really amazing class bloat (I can recall 14 classes off the top of my head, each with 4 variants, plus prestige classes), and bards, of course, remain the best protagonist option (fite me), the mechanics of the game work better for a computer RPG. Skills and feats add a lot of customizability, even if there are some clearly better options (all of might fighting characters wind up with the same feats because they're so useful). AD&D has always been a bit deadly, and Baldur's Gate had computer levels of fights with table-top survival mechanics. Brutal, in a frequently unfun, save-scumming way.

While the game still ends if your main character dies (because, apparently, Raise Dead only works on OTHER people), the Death's Door mechanic means your character is a lot more resilient. Furthermore, the availability and variety of healing available to your character means that you can play longer without having to retreat after every second fight. You still have resource management... I've stared at my numbers of potions and wondered if I should keep going, for sure... but you can have a more sustained push, with fewer unfun options.

The inventory system is FAR superior. Rather than having to micromanage everyone's inventory, you assign them personal gear, and the rest is just shared between everyone, behind the scenes. It means things like bags of holding just add to your weight capacity, smoothly. I'd still love a portable hole late game (where weight becomes more or less meaningless). My main complaint with the inventory mechanics is fighter-types, switching between multiple weapons at need... you can't "clone" a shield and put it into several different weapon sets.

On a semi-mechanical, semi-story note: You're actually building something. In BG2, you may become a leader of some group but you don't have a ton of influence on where it goes... quests are presented, that you do well or poorly at, but the stronghold eventually just becomes background... if you even get to keep it. In Kingmaker? You're building a kingdom. You decide how it develops. You talk with advisors, have them deal with (sometimes repetitive) problems, and manage your kingdom's resources along with your own. I feel more involved in my kingdom that I did in my Baldur's Gate stronghold.

As for story? You are not really the chosen one. There's nothing particularly special about your Kingmaker character that couldn't be equally special about another NPC (my character is an aasimar who turns into a half-dragon, so she's all sorts of special, but she's not the divine offspring of a dead deity or something). Heck, the really special backgrounds go to your NPCs, so you get to explore them a bit without them needing to become the central story. Fallen deva cursed to be mortal? Tragic backstory man learning to love again? Person who violently rejected paladinhood? These stories can enhance gameplay without needing to become central. Your character's noble rank is what distinguishes them among the famous authors and runaway slaves and the like. You get a steady increase in responsibility... a solo adventurer, a party leader, a baroness, a queen... while fighting someone whose goal is the destruction of your kingdom. There's betrayal and war and all of that, and your character is central, but not because they were born special... I could be just as much a king or queen with a human fighter as I can with my particular brand of special snowflake (seriously, I'm the bastard descendant of an angel and a dragon, somewhere along the line).

Basically, I'm having more fun and I'm way more invested in Kingmaker than I have been in a lot of other games.

[Anonymouswizard]

Personally, I find that an average run of any Persona game is 100 hours or more. I know I only ever finished P3 in under that time once, and while P4 was shorter than P3 I think I similarly usually got close to or above 100. My P5 Royal run recently was like 150 (though some of that was me leaving the game paused while I went to eat some days).

Not played Persona 5, but base Persona 3 is about 100 hours and 4 is about eighty, just counting time on the file (so missing any time lost from reloading after defeat). Which means yeah, about a hundred hours for the base games is right, longer for FES and Golden, unless you absolutely don't have to grind on the final bosses or don't have them fully healed an hour and a half into a two hour battle (thank you Yukari for healing my slight damage and not Mitsuru's Charm, and that's why I've never seen P3's ending*).

Honestly, my main issue with base 4 is that you basically have to put off confronting the killer until the last day if you don't want to lose out on social link grinding time. Some social link grinding before the epilogue and everything would be nice, because I'm not sure how anybody figured it out without a guide and the game could do with a few more hints.

* Seriously, I don't get why P4 didn't put them under direct commands to begin with, fighting companion AI was the hardest battle of Persona 3.

[tyckspoon]

Not played Persona 5, but base Persona 3 is about 100 hours and 4 is about eighty, just counting time on the file (so missing any time lost from reloading after defeat). Which means yeah, about a hundred hours for the base games is right, longer for FES and Golden, unless you absolutely don't have to grind on the final bosses or don't have them fully healed an hour and a half into a two hour battle (thank you Yukari for healing my slight damage and not Mitsuru's Charm, and that's why I've never seen P3's ending*).

My own first P3 run was mostly extended by taking Main Character into Monad and grinding up to max level (goes pretty quick with Die For Me!! and Samsara to instant kill the right enemy formations.) I think I wound up just Armageddon'ing the final boss.

[Cygnia]

Starting "The Hex" today.

[Razade]

Boy, Persona games sure believe in giving you value for money in terms of time spent playing them...I was on Persona 5 for 12 hours yesterday (got the week off work, and it's been a LONG time since I spent so long in one day on one game), and that was just about sufficient to finish the second Palace and get to the point where I start the third one. I've looked up some minor spoilers which say there are *seven* of these in total...

Persona 5 is about 100 hours. Persona 5 Royal is about 120-130. Absolutely worth 60 bucks.

[Zevox]

So, I've just finished up Final Fantasy 7. Honestly? As Final Fantasy games go, I can see why people consider it one of the best ones. Gameplay-wise I still prefer any one with a true turn-based system instead of the ATB (or 7 Remake, of course), but at least the materia system in this one gives it some cool things you can do with your characters (despite being a double-edged sword that robs them of individual combat styles), and the Limit Breaks are a pretty cool mechanic. I do wish the game were more challenging though - even the final boss died so easily, I hadn't even built up a Limit Break yet. (Yes, I know there's a couple of optional bonus bosses out there stronger than the final boss. I'm not really interested in going after them though, I was playing through to see the story.)

And story-wise, well, it's definitely the most impressive FF I've seen. Mind you, that's not a high bar - from what I've played in the past FF stories have seemed to range from mediocre (such as 4 or 12) to some of the worst I've seen in video games (13) - and there's at least one that gets praise for its story that I've never played (6), but still, this one actually has some strong moments to it. I think Barrett is probably my favorite character, all in all, and certainly has the strongest suplots and emotional beats. Most of the rest of the cast has their moments, too, though - although I think Yuffie is an exception to that. She could really use some re-writing in Remake, I think, as there's a lot about her that doesn't work so great.

That said, it's hardly a perfect story that blew me away or anything. There's a number of parts that remain confusing even after they spend a lot of time trying to explain things, and I'm not sure if that's on the writing, the translation, the presentation, or a combination of the three.

Spoiler: For instance...

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Just what is Cloud, exactly? Obviously, Sephiroth has some control over him (though I guess it only goes so far since he wasn't able to stop him from killing him in the end), and Hojo refers to him as a failed Sephiroth clone. Yet Tifa also clearly knew Cloud, not Zack, from when he was young, and Cloud remembers that time, so he was a person before five years ago, he's not just a Sephiroth clone that somehow got Zack's memories imprinted on him. Is the current Cloud somehow both a clone of the original and Sephiroth? Did Hojo not really clone Sephiroth in the traditional sense of growing a new one, but experimented on Cloud to try and turn him into a new Sephiroth after finding him dead/passed out outside Midgar? That would be extremely weird, but it's the best explanation I can think of. And what about how he wound up thinking he had Zack's life? The way it's told seems to imply he just started telling people the stories of Zack's life as if they were his, and at some point forgot he was lying, but that doesn't make much sense. Did Hojo implant Zack's memories in him for some reason? Did his mind just get jumbled by whatever experimenting Hojo did on him? It's pretty unclear.

Also, I can't help but be surprised that I still don't know why Sephiroth killed Aerith. Okay, I know why she did what she did, she knew that she had to die like that in order to use Holy to counteract Sephiroth, but why did he kill her? Did he know about the threat she posed through Holy but not that killing her wouldn't stop her from doing it? Was he just trying to hurt Cloud by killing someone he cared about in front of him? Did it advance his plans in some unspecified way? It's just a strange thing to not have explained given it's such a major moment of the story, and literally the most famous thing about the entire game.

Also, just in general, as an antagonist, Sephiroth is... okay. He's intimidating, he screws with Cloud's head like there's no tomorrow, and he has a great boss theme... but he's also just kind of nuts, which I feel makes him less interesting than he could have been. I mean, I was hoping he might actually be an interesting character when they started to go into his backstory and he was clearly upset by the things that had happened to him and the Ancients, but that quickly just turned into going full psycho and deciding to destroy the world in order to ascend to godhood. I really hope Remake can manage to do something better with that, because that was a very quick jump from potentially interesting to coo-coo for coco puffs.

The game does also do some small things that I find interesting that most RPGs don't. I don't think I've ever seen one that gives you a submarine as one of your modes of transportation and lets you explore underwater on the main world map, for instance, so that was kind of cool. Or there that was that item they gave you in the final dungeon that let you set a single save point wherever in the dungeon you wanted - cool idea for the time. Not something we'd ever need to see now, since save points are no longer necessary, but a cool idea for the time, for sure.

All in all, one of the better Final Fantasy games I've played - though personally I'd likely replay 1 or 10 before it for gameplay reasons, and I definitely like 7 Remake a lot better than the original. I am very happy that 7 is the game that's getting this Remake treatment, though, considering its story is genuinely a lot better than the rest of the series that I've played, and they've massively improved on the gameplay in Remake while keeping the interesting part of the original's (the materia system).

Finally, my own guess about how future parts of Remake will break down now that I know the whole story:

Spoiler

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I'm guessing Remake will end up being 3 parts total, maybe 4 if they stretch it. I would wager that Part 2 will cover everything up through at least Aerith's death, possibly up to the confrontation with Sephiroth on the northern continent where we he gets his new body and Cloud gets mind-controlled and thrown into the Lifestream. A lot of the game from leaving Midgar up until those points is very plot-light and just amounts to traversing the world chasing Sephiroth, so those feel like the most logical possible climax points for Part 2 plot-wise. Part 3 would either cover everything thereafter, or maybe (if Part 2 ends at Aerith's death and they're trying to stretch it out) up until the battle with Diamond Weapon. I could maybe see them stretching the events after that point (the return to Midgar and endgame at the crater) into their own game if they pushed it, since the plot does get a lot thicker around there, and they can make previously-optional things like fighting the other "Weapons" into main story events in Remake if they want.

This of course assumes the majority of the plot remains the same, not gets massively altered now that the defeat of the Whispers at the end of Remake has made clear that it can be. I suspect that'll be the case, but it is impossible to be sure.

Not played Persona 5, but base Persona 3 is about 100 hours and 4 is about eighty, just counting time on the file (so missing any time lost from reloading after defeat). Which means yeah, about a hundred hours for the base games is right, longer for FES and Golden, unless you absolutely don't have to grind on the final bosses or don't have them fully healed an hour and a half into a two hour battle (thank you Yukari for healing my slight damage and not Mitsuru's Charm, and that's why I've never seen P3's ending*).

Persona 3 Portable has the party controllable, if you're willing to track down that. I'd say it's worth it just for the alternate female protagonist, too, personally, as they did a very good job with re-writing a lot of small things to account for that change.

As far as time goes, I'd also add that Pre-P4G games also get longer play times thanks to the randomized skill inheritance of Personas, and the fact that to game that system you would just select the fusion you want, see what skills you got, and back out instead of confirming to get a new random set if you hadn't gotten the ones you wanted. Later in the game when you're trying to pass on specific sets of skills that can end up being quite time-consuming. Hell, that's probably a not-insignificant part of why my P3 playthroughs are all so long (my very first time through was around 180 hours IIRC, and as mentioned I've only once finished it in under 100), since there's no version of that game without that mechanic.

[tyckspoon]

Spoiler: For instance...

Show

Just what is Cloud, exactly? Obviously, Sephiroth has some control over him (though I guess it only goes so far since he wasn't able to stop him from killing him in the end), and Hojo refers to him as a failed Sephiroth clone. Yet Tifa also clearly knew Cloud, not Zack, from when he was young, and Cloud remembers that time, so he was a person before five years ago, he's not just a Sephiroth clone that somehow got Zack's memories imprinted on him. Is the current Cloud somehow both a clone of the original and Sephiroth? Did Hojo not really clone Sephiroth in the traditional sense of growing a new one, but experimented on Cloud to try and turn him into a new Sephiroth after finding him dead/passed out outside Midgar? That would be extremely weird, but it's the best explanation I can think of. And what about how he wound up thinking he had Zack's life? The way it's told seems to imply he just started telling people the stories of Zack's life as if they were his, and at some point forgot he was lying, but that doesn't make much sense. Did Hojo implant Zack's memories in him for some reason? Did his mind just get jumbled by whatever experimenting Hojo did on him? It's pretty unclear.

Also, I can't help but be surprised that I still don't know why Sephiroth killed Aerith. Okay, I know why she did what she did, she knew that she had to die like that in order to use Holy to counteract Sephiroth, but why did he kill her? Did he know about the threat she posed through Holy but not that killing her wouldn't stop her from doing it? Was he just trying to hurt Cloud by killing someone he cared about in front of him? Did it advance his plans in some unspecified way? It's just a strange thing to not have explained given it's such a major moment of the story, and literally the most famous thing about the entire game.

Spoiler

Show

So, this is a combination of 'the translation and scenes presented in the story did a terrible job of laying out what's going on' plus 'a lot of the key scenes that do explain some of it are really easy to miss because they're optional triggers.' There's a ton of stuff that was only really explained in the spinoff games and other ancillary media too. Strap in, even when you know what's going on it's bizarre and kind of complicated.

Basically.. Sephiroth is a kind of memetic virus generated from Jenova, the parasitic space alien thing you see ShinRa experimenting with; a number of SOLDIERS were infused with Jenova cells in a bid to replicate Sephiroth's unusually strong powers. Jenova has some ability to manipulate lifestream, or something very much like it, which means all of the experimentees that received Jenova cells actually got inducted into a sort of colony organism - they're all part of Jenova in the same way all of the regular life on the planet is ultimately part of Gaia, and Sephiroth is the template they're getting turned into/the lead intelligence of the colony (Jenova itself seems to be more a mindless monster, or possibly is thinking on too inhuman a scale to be a direct participant in the plot.) This usually destroys the subject's mind and is not great for their body - this is what happened to all the black-hooded figures you run into in the game, culminating in the Reunion they keep mumbling about. They basically all think they're Sephiroth or are supposed to be - their personalities have been destroyed by Jenova/Sephiroth. This is also how Sephiroth influences Cloud throughout the game; he's calling on the Jenova cells/splinter of Sephiroth in him.

Cloud and Zack were being experimented on in the basement of the Nibelheim ShinRa Mansion, undergoing the Jenova cell treatments. Zack held up to the experiments pretty well; he held on to his sanity by talking to Cloud, which is where Cloud learned Zack's identity. Cloud, on the other hand, seemed like he was going to be a failed wreck; when they made their escape from the lab (or more accurately Zack escaped and couldn't bring himself to leave Cloud behind) his mind was a wreck and he could barely walk. When he got nursed back to health, his mind was still a wreck, so he snagged on to the most recent memories he had - Zack telling his life story in those days they spent in the lab - and assumed that as his own identity (Cloud also had some significant hero worship for SOLDIERS, so being Zack would be a lot more appealing to him than being a failed candidate anyways.) This held him together long enough to eventually remember his own actual past, culminating in the event where he got thrown into the Lifestream physically and had his spirit-journey with his own inner selves.

Hojo refers to Cloud as a 'failed clone' and 'failed experiment' because the last time Hojo dealt with Cloud, Cloud was in that physically and mentally destroyed state in Hojo's lab.

As for killing Aeris.. I think 'Because Sephiroth likes killing things' and 'to screw with Cloud's head some more' are both motivations, especially given the dramatic way he showed up just in time to make Cloud helplessly watch him do it, but he probably was hoping to do it before she figured out how to activate the Holy materia.

[Zevox]

Spoiler

Show

So, this is a combination of 'the translation and scenes presented in the story did a terrible job of laying out what's going on' plus 'a lot of the key scenes that do explain some of it are really easy to miss because they're optional triggers.' There's a ton of stuff that was only really explained in the spinoff games and other ancillary media too. Strap in, even when you know what's going on it's bizarre and kind of complicated.

Basically.. Sephiroth is a kind of memetic virus generated from Jenova, the parasitic space alien thing you see ShinRa experimenting with; a number of SOLDIERS were infused with Jenova cells in a bid to replicate Sephiroth's unusually strong powers. Jenova has some ability to manipulate lifestream, or something very much like it, which means all of the experimentees that received Jenova cells actually got inducted into a sort of colony organism - they're all part of Jenova in the same way all of the regular life on the planet is ultimately part of Gaia, and Sephiroth is the template they're getting turned into/the lead intelligence of the colony (Jenova itself seems to be more a mindless monster, or possibly is thinking on too inhuman a scale to be a direct participant in the plot.) This usually destroys the subject's mind and is not great for their body - this is what happened to all the black-hooded figures you run into in the game, culminating in the Reunion they keep mumbling about. They basically all think they're Sephiroth or are supposed to be - their personalities have been destroyed by Jenova/Sephiroth. This is also how Sephiroth influences Cloud throughout the game; he's calling on the Jenova cells/splinter of Sephiroth in him.

Cloud and Zack were being experimented on in the basement of the Nibelheim ShinRa Mansion, undergoing the Jenova cell treatments. Zack held up to the experiments pretty well; he held on to his sanity by talking to Cloud, which is where Cloud learned Zack's identity. Cloud, on the other hand, seemed like he was going to be a failed wreck; when they made their escape from the lab (or more accurately Zack escaped and couldn't bring himself to leave Cloud behind) his mind was a wreck and he could barely walk. When he got nursed back to health, his mind was still a wreck, so he snagged on to the most recent memories he had - Zack telling his life story in those days they spent in the lab - and assumed that as his own identity (Cloud also had some significant hero worship for SOLDIERS, so being Zack would be a lot more appealing to him than being a failed candidate anyways.) This held him together long enough to eventually remember his own actual past, culminating in the event where he got thrown into the Lifestream physically and had his spirit-journey with his own inner selves.

Hojo refers to Cloud as a 'failed clone' and 'failed experiment' because the last time Hojo dealt with Cloud, Cloud was in that physically and mentally destroyed state in Hojo's lab.

As for killing Aeris.. I think 'Because Sephiroth likes killing things' and 'to screw with Cloud's head some more' are both motivations, especially given the dramatic way he showed up just in time to make Cloud helplessly watch him do it, but he probably was hoping to do it before she figured out how to activate the Holy materia.

Spoiler: FF7, big spoilers.

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Ah, I see. Yeah, I'd already more or less figured that out about Sephiroth, Jenova, and the hooded men, between how things go in the original and how they're presented in Remake. It definitely wasn't clear that when Zack and Cloud woke up in and escaped from the mansion they'd been being experimented on there, much less with Jenova cells specifically, so that could've been communicated better. It was clear that Cloud was in bad shape at that point, but it wasn't clear that he was in such bad shape that his mind basically had to rebuild itself using Zack's stories as his memories afterward. That I think was them trying to get across too much with Cloud's silences (which aren't unusual for the character anyway) and body language.

Which is kind of an issue I noticed the game also had - it tries to communicate a fair amount with body language sometimes, despite how bad its character models are (even for the time, honestly - there's early N64 games with better 3D character models) and how limited what it can really do with them is. Admirable to be trying to do that, but the game's visuals just were not equal to the task. At least, not outside the CG cutscenes, which actually do hold up surprisingly well considering when the game is from, but it uses those pretty infrequently.

[NeoVid]

I decided to get a single game during this summer sale, due to my revelation a couple years back that I shouldn't buy more games until I've finished the ones I already own. (I'll get caught up sometime this century.)

The game I decided on was Night in the Woods, and I made an unexpected discovery: The characters and their situation were so relatable the game was kind of stressful for me. I could easily picture my old circle of friends, with our crumbling lives, having most of the conversations that came up in the early game. Then there was the big reveal about why Mae moved back in with her parents...

Spoiler

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Her chance to attend college was ruined by her severe, untreated psychological disorder setting off a breakdown that left her barely able to leave her room for months.

That was so easy for me to identify with that I had to stop playing for a while. A game hasn't gotten to me like that in a long time, but it's not like there are many other games about ordinary weird people trying to live our lives...