SUPER DUPER EDIT TO SURPASS ALL OTHER SUPER EDITS: 200k!! Unimaginable for my first ever work! It hasn't even been six months yet but it feels like we've come so far. Thank you for continuing to discuss and engage with this piece, it comes from a place of love and I'm so happy the spirit of the piece has connected with so many. Please consider watching my recent essay if you want a bit of my critique but a bit more light and brief, and consider subscribing so you can see my thoughts on another Final Fantasy I love soon!

https://youtu.be/htEVcGZFTbE?si=Q0YFW44GJlDSjPay

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SUPER EDIT SO IT GOES AT THE TOP: Thank you for 100k!!! When I uploaded this, I had no idea the journey the next two months would take me on. Now I have a channel, and the start of a community, and so much to be grateful for. I've been going through comments for the first time in a while and I appreciate all the discussions, all the thoughts, all the heart. I'm going to keep making stuff until someone forces me to stop and then I'm going to keep making more to spite them. Please keep the thoughts and shares and discussions going, I genuinely do love reading them. Hope yall are doing well, and genuinely, I hope Revelations is great and makes this video age terribly.

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Thank you so much for joining my first ever video essay! I learned so much while making this, and I can't wait to show you my next essay - about a game I DO love next time - and all the ways I've improved.

Remember: This is not hate, this is a love letter. If you love this game (which I understand!), we both are united in loving this world, its characters, and their stories.

Thank you for watching.

EDIT: This has sailed past the four and a half views I anticipated in a span of only two days, so for someone who usually streams to an audience of like 12, you can imagine this is kind of a lot! As this is my First One Of These I really want to respond to everyone but just want to say again how much I appreciate giving me some of your time and your thoughts, and this is a Lot to process while I'm guesting at PAX East. Also, uh, if you're at PAX East, feel free to say hi!

EDIT #2: 10K! Wow! Geez! Thank you all so much for what Youtube Studio tells me is thousands of hours of people watching thoughts I spent months on, and thank those of you commenting for your thoughts and your time, whether you agree with me or not. (Even the few of you who are being kind of mean, though I do recommend using your time on the internet a little bit better.) Now that I'm past my blitz of conventions I can take some time to respond to comments as they come up but there are literally hundreds so I apologize if I can't, but please know I'm reading all of them - for better or worse! - and I hope for all our sakes that Part 3 makes this video age horribly and it all comes together beautifully.

"He has misused his magic friendship bat and accidentally killed a man with it." Just perfectly captures the nonsense of these games.

I think the biggest underlying issue with this remake (and the industry in general) is that developers/publishers think that the players can't handle silence anymore. Be it narrative silence as in letting a story unfold slowly over the course of the adventure, gameplay silence as in having to discover something of your own volition or by sheer chance because you just stumbled across something or literal silence as in having a somber moment be just that - a quiet scene that leaves you to take it all in and reflect on the impact whatever just happened had on you.

This is also why Dark Souls resonated so deeply with its fanbase - because it allowed for that. No urgency in the objectives constantly pushing you forward or map filled with quest markers and points of interest, you being alone in this world that you have to thoroughly explore and no music, cutscene or dialogue constantly filling the scene.

I yearn for these kinda games nowadays. They are so underappreciated.

"I was ready to get hurt again." This is an idea that a ton of people shared, but the writers fundamentally ignored. You can see it in almost every decision they made with the remakes.

You perfectly explained how they dismissed all of the dark under tones of the original.

"You wanted this!"
Me getting punched in the mouth after asking for punch (juice.)
"I did not want this."

The most I've ever had my immersion broken in a videogame was the burning of Nibelheim scene in Rebirth.
That part where you have to QTE crawl toward Sephriroth as he's surrounded by men with rifles; whom for some reason spend LITERAL MINUTES not reacting to him slowly cutting them down one by one. Not fleeing, not saying anything, none of them fire their weapon, just standing there in slashing range for no reason.
I honestly don't know how that scene got greenlit in it's current state.

You cannot convince me Nomura didn't add that popsicle scene. It's literally seasalt ice cream from KH.

It's so obvious Aerith is gonna come back in Revelation, it baffles me they've tried to confuse people about it. She didn't even get her ultimate weapon nor her ultimate Limit Break. It's obvious yet they didn't have the balls to actually commit to it in the ending of this game.

This game was so exhausting, I had to go back to the original to remind myself how fluid that game felt. Even all of the side content was more streamlined than Rebirth. I wish they just stuck with the original story, flesh a few points out more, and keep it one game at around 40-50 hours and call it a day.

let's remember that Johnny was a throwaway character in the original

Nibelheim was always so melancholy imo when I visited there back in the day.
Singing cat lady makes me literally want to cry.

A good description for the remake project is that it's constantly in-your-face and leaves no room to breathe and no room for subtlety. Where you are questioning things in the original, you are spoonfed answers in the remake. Where Cloud asks if Sephiroth did this in the original, the remake tells you that yes, Sephiroth absolutely did this and he will show you how he did it.

I remember getting to the cosmo canyon section of rebirth and seeing all the new towers and chadley quests and mostly-bad minigames waiting for me and just losing all will to continue

Using the minigame where you have to push the hooded freaks along the path is a perfect summation of what the extra content in this game was. Filler.

Something that tears at me just a little, now that I think about it, is how the Gilgamesh inclusion is done.
I love Gilgamesh, he's probably my favorite recurring factor in Final Fantasy.
When Gilgamesh appears in a Final Fantasy title, he's meant to adapt a little to the title in question. In VIII, he's weird and edgy, in IX he's chibified, in XII he's amusingly understated, etc. In Rebirth, he feels more like he's adapting to specifically Rebirth rather than VII itself. His entire sidequest is this super redundant open world scavenger hunt and everything else he has going on is just the streamlined modern Gilgamesh at its most money. It kinda makes me sad because I would really love to see a version of Gilgamesh more appropriate to the setting of VII.

WE TOOK AWAY LEVEL GRINDING AND MEANINGFUL PROGRESSION BUT NOW YOU CAN HELP A LADY FIND HER EGGS FOR HER CHICKENS IN A MULTI STEP LOOP THAT WILL EVENTUALLY HAVE MINIMALL IF ANY PAYOFF FOR A NOT SO EXCITING ITEM GAINED.

In the original if Yuffie is in your party when Aeris dies she'll first make a somber, respectful prayer over her body, then break down sobbing hysterically in Cloud's arms.  It's an incredible piece of character work and 100% optional and missable on two axes. That's what you get with a non-craven game made by not-cowards.

The point about Cloud's sword being a sleepy-time bat is spot on lol. It's just that kind of game tho, and the original FF7 was just as juvenile to be fair.

27:25 I swear to god if Chadley is still our primary world exploration anchor in Part3, im gonna scream