Final Fantasy VII - Is Episodic a Good Thing?

Aubrielle

Aubrielle

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Is an episodic remake of the classic Final Fantasy VII a good thing? Is more action what the fans are really looking for? Jordan and Cody of CGMagazine try to answer.



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I was never a fan.
Videogames should not be TV series. Ever. The only genre where episodic approach I find bearable is adventure. It should not happen in anything else. I mean, what if a guy who does voiceover for a character dies after 2-3 episodes and is supposed to appear in all 10?
 
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I'm pro-episodic in this case. Each episode will likely be mind-blowingly awesome, bigger and better than it could have been had it not been split up.

Bring it on. :)
 
Episodic sounds like a stratagem to milk more cash out of the players than they would by just selling a rebaked old glory for the regular $40 it's worth.

In my opinion FF VII isn't even the best Final Fantasy game anyway, just the mainstream title that revealed JRPGs to the world.
 
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!? FF7 is not turn based. There's a timer counting down for every character. When a timer finishes then you can pick something to do but time keeps on ticking as you pick out what you want so moving through menus quickly is a big help. Setting the speed of that countdown timer is one of the ways you can make the game harder!

Bioware pause-on-space combat is a lot more like turn based than FF7.

I'm "cautiously pessimistic" on the episodic thing. Without knowing how big an episode is or how much they are expanding things, it's really hard to judge. Are they going to charge $60 to get out of Midgar? $60 to "Pizza Fall"? (Hehe, got to avoid spoilers again!) It only took about 30 minutes or so to get through the train graveyard in the original game - how long in the new game? Is there more interesting stuff there than a few treasures blinking in hard-to-reach places?
 
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I think this episodic trend won't sit well with FF VII. Splitting such an epic legendary game into chapters doesn't get my blessing.
 
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I don't know how anyone can be supporting this?

What kind of things can they add anyhow? More combat? the combat was never much fun to begin with.

More story? Well, there is a huge risk they would ruin the original story.. don't know what they could add in terms of story.

More exploration / treasure ? Well, this is not the kind of game that would benefit from that either.

Now if they are making some kind of reboot, with a new story, new combat system and a lot of other new things it might make sense. But in that case how is this a FF VII remake? It should be something like FF VII reboot in that case.
 
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My thought is that it's simply a cash grab. >.> Square Enix knows that FFVII was by far the most popular entry in the series (the equivalent of Zelda's Ocarina of Time) and that they can break it up piecemeal and sell each one for the full price of a game because...it's Final Fantasy VII. And they can.

The right thing to do would be to simply remake it as one volume and sell it for full price, but...it's a DLC and multiple-installment kind of world we live in. It's not 1997 anymore. :-/
 
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I'll do as I do with the Telltale games. Wait until all the episodes are out, buy them at a discount and play through all of them.
 
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I hate episodic games with a passion. I don't have good memory, so if I have to wait more than a month to continue playing, chances are I will forget the whole thing.
 
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In a short answer to the question asked in the topic's subject: NO !!! IMHO some games shouldn't be released as "episodes" (I'm also looking at you here, King's Quest).

As Aubrielle said above, it's cash grab, plain and simple. There are 2 big risks involved:

a) Some episodes may not be as good as others;

b) The game's episodic nature may mar the experience. I don't really know if releasing a RPG episode-by-episode is a brilliant idea. Adventure game's (like Telltale's) have a different gameplay, slightly more fit to this kind of release

Just my 2 bucks here! :)

Henrique
 
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I have to agree. The announcement that it was going to be episodic destroyed any anticipation I might have had for this remake.
 
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I don't see the big deal. If you don't like episodic you just wait and buy the whole game when it's all done.

I won't be buying though, I haven't cared about FF since the 2nd or 3rd game.
 
sakichop said:
I don't see the big deal. If you don't like episodic you just wait and buy the whole game when it's all done.
Click to expand...

It's a big deal to people who were really forward to this. It's easy to say "just wait until it's complete", but now you're talking another 2-3 years of waiting. I'd say that's pretty significant for most people.
 
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It's a good thing for the company. It's not a good thing for the consumer.

There are still many of us over 20 that don't like being nickle and dimed to death. We prefer owning to renting. Enjoy a substantial finished product over being drip fed partial sections.

Invariably the sum of the parts will be greater than the whole. If it wasn't then there would be no incentive to release it like this.
 
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JDR- "looking". :)
 
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Best things in life come in episodes... Seinfeld, 24h and mexican soap operas.
Eh, this could be a huge risk as well, considering the crazy amount of hype for this game. Depends how good the entry will be.
 
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JDR13 said:
It's a big deal to people who were really forward to this. It's easy to say "just wait until it's complete", but now you're talking another 2-3 years of waiting. I'd say that's pretty significant for most people.
Click to expand...

But if they didn't release episodes then you would still have to wait 2-3 years to play, right?

This way you can at least play some of it earlier if you want and if you don't then you wait just as you would have to if they made the whole thing at once.
 
sakichop said:
But if they didn't release episodes then you would still have to wait 2-3 years to play, right?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I think there's a good chance that them taking the episodic route probably drags the entire process out longer. I'm assuming there's going to be a planning stage for each episode as opposed to just one.

I'm also assuming they're going to charge $59.99 for each episode, so there's that factor as well.
 
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