Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Undercuts Its Most Heartfelt Moments

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is an odd game. You know that going in, especially if you played the original FF7, or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 Remake, or have any cultural knowledge of how odd 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy is in general. There are gods and demons and mystical beings summoned from orbs made of crystalised goo that grows in the ground and is a heavy handed metaphor for fossil fuels. What grounds the game is Barret walking around saying things like "We fighting a ghost? What in the damn hell!", and the earnestness the game possesses. I planned to write about that earnestness today, but after playing a little further, I'm not so sure I believe myself.

We live in an age of snark. If you've followed this year's Oscar circuit, you'll have noticed that everyone hates Bradley Cooper. It's a little bit that they didn't think his performance was all that great, or that he didn't tackle Leonard Bernstein's life as fully as some wanted, but many didn't even watch the movie. Cooper became public enemy number one almost entirely because he had the gall to care. So we sniped at him - of course we did, we're a society of snark.

Not Caring Leads To Not Mattering

Cloud, Barret, and Cait Sith talking about where to head next at the beginning of Chapter 9 in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

This cynical, jaded mindset is the natural endpoint of 'uhhh... that just happened!' humour. A generation raised on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Joss Whedon, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:South Park, and subtweets being told that not caring is so much smarter than caring. It's cooler, edgier, more sophisticated. Sure, we criticise 'uhhh... that just happened!' writing now too (again, we love snark, of course we criticise), but we still struggle with art that cares. We don't want to get rid of the jokes, we just want better jokes. We want things to 'turn our minds off' and tell people 'don't think so deeply' about things.

This leads me to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I'm on Chapter 9 of 14 right now, and thus far it has done a good job of caring. Cloud's trauma and PTSD is not shaken off or joked about, and each new chapter has narrative purpose and is given room to breathe. Sure, there are times to blow off steam, but mostly it balances these well. The vacation on the beach is the breather, and then it's back to the trauma.

The Balance Of Fun And Trauma

Kiryu Starting one of his essence abilities in like a dragon: infinite wealth

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth did this extremely well too. It has utterly ridiculous moments baked all through its runtime, but also 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a deep sadness and longing that it does not undercut. This is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:especially poignant in the substory where you help a man say goodbye to his dying wife. You enlist the help of adult babies in this quesꦑt, and yet the moments where we feel the plight of this man are never undercut for a cheap giggle.

Both of these games struggle with a general issue in the open world that the main story slams to a halt until some side activities are done, and these side quests bring a levity that the central narrative does not have or need. However, for the most part there is 168澳洲幸运5♛开奖网:a good balance both games manage ✅to find. Or at least, they did.

In Chapter 8, Barret is arrested on suspicion of a shooting, which leads you to Barret's best friend (and the true perpetrator), Dyne. Like Barret, he also has a gun arm, with both men having their arms blown off as Barret tried to save Dyne during a Shinra attack five years prior. Dyne has clearly suffered a mental breakdown and feels deep guilt over abandoning his family, a family that Barret has protected in his absence. There's an anime flair to the battle with a huge magnetic arm coming into play as the two pepper each other with bullets, but through Barret's dialogue and Dyne's range of emotions in such a compact scene, we feel how deep these scars run. It's an emotionally resonant moment that underlines the human stories at the heart of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Then an elderly man bends over and tells you he's going to spank you.

Immediately after the fight with Dyne, Shinra drops a huge mech on top of you, piloted by Palmer, a creepy old man who works for Shinra. He was seen a few scenes earlier with two women (likely escorts) pawing over him as he stuffed his face with parfait and bet on the racing. Being repulsive is the point, representing the selfish greed of Shinra itself, and that makes him a good mid-game boss. Even him popping out of the hatch to slap his own rear end and threaten you with a spanking suits his offensively off-putting character. But it's a horrendously timed piece of comic relief, in the very same arena where Dyne was felled moments ago. It is 'uhh... that just happened!' in mech form. A game that is so good at trusting you to feel things deeply can't give Barret, the cornerstone of this game, a moment to grieve before we're thrust into an extremely clownish boss battle.

I feel Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creaking a little. In the first two zones I was happy to scope out every activity, but as the maps get bigger, the minigames get more involved, the pacing slows, and the stakes rise, some of those spinning plates seem to be crashing to the floor. More than one might have been knocked off by Palmer's fat behind, and I feel a little bit less confident in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth carrying the pressure of its legacy now than I did yesterday.