Well, after several years they realized that simple listboxes are not enough to promote games and gaming in general. Really a step forward in the right direction, but still a perfectable implementation of a console-based community portal.
Sadly, today I was informed that Jeff Freeman died of suicide. He was one of the most unpopular guys at SOE due to his own New Game Enhanchements addition to Star Wars Galaxies, one of the most controversial (but effective) SWG redesign decision in the game history. The game is still online today only for the courage and determination of Jeff, that confronted with an elitist crowd of Star Wars fans just to keep the ball rolling.
Speaking of elitist fans, despite what many (evil) people said, he didn’t committed suicide because of the unpopularity of NGE (it was true that he was target of menaces, ire and other stupid actions for years, though), so the selfish squatters that left the game without ever coming back and are still publicly criticising it after all these years can continue to ridicule themselves without any remorse.
Sorry for the flame but I can’t stand people that use the Internet only to state that they are unfit for sociality.
Well, it is known that I have a very slow playthrough rate when it comes to RPGs (mostly because I play even five of them in parallel), and my replay of Final Fantasy VII is no exception. In the end, despite my last intentions, I bowed down to the almighty PSP (as an emulation device, at last) and started using it instead of pSX 1.13, mostly for convenience purpose.
So what, you may ask? Sephiroth went mad (for no believable reason, to a more careful analisys) after Cloud and his charming carnival were involved in a slightly homoerotic rescue mission for Aeris, an indefinite amount of flashbacks and a long chase against Sephiroth itself.
To be honest, the recall of the love triangle between Cloud, Tifa and Aeris was better than the real thing. I mean, the guy is blond, muscled and has blue eyes, but all the girls literally fights for him even if they don’t know him at all… Even if the motivation of Cloud resembling the lost Aeris lover is rational, it is the acting that doesn’t fit: too aggressive and in the same time, submissive. I guess it’s the teenager’s view of love in Japan, but it’s still sassy.
Sephiroth. Where to start with this guy? It’s surely one of the most cool looking villain ever conceived, he also leaves the stage among the flames, but his motivation are really confused or, at least, badly presented. I mean: since the game feed you a long flashback with highly Lovercraftian influences about the Sephiroth’s discovery of his own supposed heritage, why to deliver a such superficial fall from grace to create a fearsome villain? By being the SOLDIER spearhead, Sephiroth is supposed to be cold, detached and self-controlled type of guy, just like the algid Cloud (who seems a complete sissy, in the flashbacks). Given the length of the game, maybe Sephiroth should have been detailed a bit more before becoming a villain.
It hurts to say, but as a regular Final Fantasy-esque villain (with lots of Kefka’s influences), Rufus is better presented, despite being your classic villain stereotype of which not much is known aside he’s evil for his own good.
I guess the problem with Sephiroth is that we know too much of him but too few informations adds up to create a believable villain psychology.
Other aspects are magisterially presented and laid out. The Red XIII side-story, while pretty brief is a nice touch, especially for such a secondary character. The set-up for the Reunion and the spooky Niebehlm village recreation is as scary as I remembered it. I was amazed how combat scaled well for a Final Fantasy game, the last play-through I had with Final Fantasy titles was from the classic ones (1, 2 and 3) and the early, more mature, ones (4, 5 and 6) that aren’t exactly game design masterpieces, when it comes to difficulty scaling and progression.
Well, I plan to finish Disk 1 ASAP (don’t hold your breath, though), so I guess I will recap all my considerations in a final wrap-up before moving further.