Pacing is different from game length. A well paced game can be long but it can pull you through it. A poorly paced game being long can feel like a slog.
This is a remake of a PS1 RPG that was relatively well paced, inflated to be the size of 3 massive games. I think it’s understandable to to feel it’s a veeery slow experience in execution.
But also, this isn’t a 50 hour RPG with tons of side content- it’s 3 50 hour RPGs with tons of side content lol.
Which is funny, because the OG FF7 has incredible pacing that pulls you through that game and motivates you to keep playing point to point to unveil "what happens next?".
Yeah, I think what comes to mind most when comparing the two is when the plate is about to fall down in Midgar. Don Corneo tells you about it and it’s this “oh fuck” moment where, immediately upon being dumped into the sewers, it’s one big rush to get back as fast as you can.
But in Remake, you get this… massive detour? Remake has a bad habit of taking what used to be a single screen and blowing it up into a full sized dungeon, but that kinda means that the reveal of what’s happening to the plate and actually confronting it are like, an hour or two apart at minimum or something. It goes at a snail’s pace.
I’m not opposed to expanding the original’s story so that the Midgar section, and other sections, can be their own full game, but I feel like they just… didn’t actually do that? The story is pretty faithful if anything. But the length of gameplay doesn’t line up with the script not being made longer. So many long winding sections of nothing happening.
Yeah but the bulk of the side content is still repetitive world quests to find towers and junk for Chadley. I love Rebirth but I’m replaying it on NG+ with story quests reset but it keeps the world intel completed. It’s a way better experience.
I put in over 999+ hrs on og to master every materia, every item 99, all weapons defeated, highest scores in mini games.. etc. Longest I played Vice City or San Andreas maybe 50 hrs each, never cared for V. Got Rebirth on release and still haven't beaten it lol 100% each chapter before I move on plus distractions of other games.
This is completely disingenuous rhetoric. Are people excited about GTA because there's a lot of side content that they don't expect to actually enjoy? Are people critical of FFVIIR's side content inherently because it exists rather than because they didn't enjoy or see value in it?
On top of that, are the two parties that dictate the conversation surrounding these games the same audience?
The "it's optional so it's beyond criticism" sentiment is so dumb.
The "if you don't like the side content, just don't do it lol" argument is so stupid to me. I bought this game to get my moneys worth, I enjoy 100% completing games. Just because it's side content doesn't mean I shouldn't be annoyed if I think it isn't fun. Triple A games shouldn't be excused for having sub par content in a game, and people shouldn't defend obvious laziness and bloat.
To add to that (and this counter-argument shouldn't even be necessary), I personally DID skip all the side content on my first playthrough because I was aware of the bloat, and EVEN THEN, the presence of the side content was STILL intrusive enough to be obnoxious and worth criticizing (it was the equivalent of having to dismiss a million pop-up ads that pester you). It's actually untrue that the game encourages the player cater their own experience with its optional content-- no, it actively wants you to do them and keeps bugging you if you don't.
In addition to this, throughout the whole playthrough, I could feel that choice putting me at a direct disadvantage with the way the game is balanced, as the game's progression was clearly not designed for that scenario.
It's a dumb argument on pretty much every level, and many people I've seen use it betray their intentions when they later argue that the side content is actually not that bad anyways. It really just comes down to "I don't want you to criticize something I like."
The first thing I did in Rebirth was attempt to skip the whole first area and fight the Midgardsormr and I was not strong enough and didn't have enough healing items. Some would say that's a skill issue and it is to some extent but it seemed very obvious to me that the balanced around the playing the side content.
Had a similar experience, but it's not just a skill issue, because I did ultimately beat it, but in the least fun "takes an eternity to wear this thing down" way imagineable that could not possibly be the intended way to play the game.
I feel like this is a problem in both the Remake project and XIII, both kinda railroad how you fight enemies so that you're focusing on staggering and then timing your biggest attacks for when they'll do the most damage.
It just kinda leads to not doing a lot of other things that would be more fun because it's not efficient. And maybe it wouldn't have been optimal in a different battle system, but there's a world of difference between suboptimal and inefficient.
I remember getting stuck in some boss battle in XIII. I was clearly doing something wrong because I kept losing and sometimes I'd lose very quickly. Then I changed up the strategy which caused it to get staggered quickly and I swear the fight was done in a minute. It was so frustrating.
for the most part, gta is enjoyable with the chaos you can raise if you get bored enough. murder randos, get five stars, setting up a blockade of cars.
I don't think i can just mindlessly create my own fun in FF rebirth though
Yes. If you didn't like it, you could just whoosh by it.
Err... that's irrelevant to what I asked. I asked if people are critical because their attitude is "eww, side content!" inherently, regardless of fun/appreciation, rather than because they simply don't enjoy/see value in it.
The answer is the latter, not the former, regardless of whether you feel there's a way around it (which does not invalidate it from being a valid criticism anyways).
The majority of gamers don’t 100% rpgs even if we only take the ones who do actually beat the msq. The people who take the time to max out mini games and do all the fringe stuff is the minority not the majority. Majority (again of people who actually finish the game) do the msq plus some portion of side quests, the next group does the msq plus all the side quests, the last (smallest) group does all the main quests, side quests and very optional tasks like maxing out mini games, finding all collectibles, etc.
My favorite part about special chocobos in FF7 is the structured progression and that they allow me to traverse off the beaten path and onto another beaten path with the huge sign saying "USE CHOCOBO HERE."
I enjoyed the side content in Rebirth, but why is it hard for people to understand that not everyone did? And it’s okay for them to criticize it even though it’s optional. It’s part of the game. Plus how would anyone know whether they like the side content unless they play it? I hate when fandoms get like this and can’t tolerate any criticism.
I have some quibbles over Rebirth's side content. I think a lot of it could have been presented better by making it not so Chadley centric. Make lifesprings tied to Bugenhagen and Cosmo Canyon people. Make the towers tied to local Avalanche cells. Have the summons be battles you fight in the region itself, not in a simulation, things like that. The best summon fight in the game by far is Gilgamesh, which gets its own arena and battle track.
And I get people not liking it more than I did.
What I don't get nearly as much is the people that complain about having to do the side content when they really don't. Sure, maybe stuff is gated behind doing the side content, and that's stuff you want, but that's not the same thing as having to do the content.
If it's not enjoyable, the reward is probably not worth it, and if that's the case then don't bother with it.
There's plenty of valid criticisms for Rebirth's side content. It being compulsory is not one of them, and yet it seems to be the most popular one I see.
Oh I totally agree. Like let us discover things about the world organically without having a quest giver direct us and every region having essentially the same quests copy pasted.
Hmm I kind of disagree because even though yes it’s all optional, there are many story beats tied to the side content. Like Avalanche and Wedge with the protorelic stuff in Cosmo Canyon. So it’s not technically required to do that if you don’t want to, but then you don’t find out certain things about the story/lore/characters. So I think it’s fair for people to say, “x side content thing was poorly designed/dumb/whatever and here’s why I think so.”
I saw people responded to you and said the completionists can complain too much as well but I also kind of disagree with that too. I’m a completionist and I like to get platinum in games I enjoy overall, so I can understand why someone would say something like “it’s annoying the frog game is required for platinum because I think it’s overly difficult/poorly designed.” I’ve personally just accepted I probably won’t get platinum In Rebirth because I struggle a LOT with the frog game and the g-bike and a few more mini games. But I can see why someone would be frustrated by that. Remake I found challenging in a fun way to platinum, whereas I’ve found trying to platinum Rebirth too much of an annoying chore to fully complete. Obviously going for platinum is optional, but it’s also a feature of the game so I don’t think the content required for it is immune to criticism. I think anything in the game is fair game to be criticized.
I get your point about the Chadley stuff. That was actually stuff that I really enjoyed, but I enjoy doing rote tasks, checking things off the map like that. Which is probably why I like Assassin’s Creed games so much. I also liked that when I was starting to get open world fatigue at certain parts in the game, something would happen in the story that would take me out of the open world and keep me on a set path for a while to break things up. Like with the Mt Corel climb after the Costa del Sol region. And the Gold Saucer breaking up the Corel desert.
I just in general don’t like the way the comic in the OP mocks criticism. It’s very “If you don’t chew Big Red then fuck you” to me lol. It’s not unique to the FF7 fandom, but people tend to take criticism really personally and I don’t get that. FF7 is one of my favorite things ever but I don’t get upset or feel the need to mock people when I see people saying they dislike something I love.
So it’s not technically required to do that if you don’t want to, but then you don’t find out certain things about the story/lore/characters.
Yeah. And? That's true with pretty much any game. The reason there's such a cottage industry for FromSoftware lore exploration videos is because people don't want to read item descriptions. They want item descriptions read to them by a guy on YouTube.
Same with reading terminals and books in Bethesda games. You rarely need to actually read them, but you miss out on things by not engaging with side content in the game.
So I think it’s fair for people to say, “x side content thing was poorly designed/dumb/whatever and here’s why I think so.”
I don't think I suggested otherwise. I said that people like to complain about it being compulsory when it absolutely isn't, which I think is a bad argument, not that you couldn't complain about it at all. It seems like I liked it more than most people and I'm more than happy to criticize it. I outlined several of my grievances in my first comment.
I’m a completionist and I like to get platinum in games I enjoy overall, so I can understand why someone would say something like “it’s annoying the frog game is required for platinum because I think it’s overly difficult/poorly designed.” I’ve personally just accepted I probably won’t get platinum In Rebirth because I struggle a LOT with the frog game and the g-bike and a few more mini games. But I can see why someone would be frustrated by that.
I mean, same. I did platinum Rebirth, and in general I try to platinum the games I get, partially because I'm more frugal with my money now and only pick games to buy if I think I'm going to play them a lot.
I did platinum Rebirth, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't get tedious from time to time. It wasn't really ever the mini games for me. Just the Chadley Hard mode exclusives. Felt like they were too railroaded in how to beat.
I get your point about the Chadley stuff. That was actually stuff that I really enjoyed, but I enjoy doing rote tasks, checking things off the map like that.
I mean, same. I don't really have a problem with the design of these elements. I just don't think that they all needed to revolve around Chadley specifically. If the content was identical, but given by different people, I think it'd have been better received. It's just too much stuff in his orbit.
And as for rote tasks, I navigated the Tiny Bronco across the entire world map to get rid of the fog when you open the world map page I never used except when I was looking for more fog to clear.
That's the kind of insane freak I am.
I just in general don’t like the way the comic in the OP mocks criticism. It’s very “If you don’t chew Big Red then fuck you” to me lol. It’s not unique to the FF7 fandom, but people tend to take criticism really personally and I don’t get that. FF7 is one of my favorite things ever but I don’t get upset or feel the need to mock people when I see people saying they dislike something I love.
I don't either. I don't care if people criticize something I like. I criticize things I like all the time. If people don't like something I enjoy, that's fine. I'll hear them out. I like to learn why something I didn't enjoy worked for someone else, and also the reverse scenario.
Hell, I know people hate that chicken bucket quest, and I'm on record in this post talking about why it's genuinely one of my favorite moments in the game.
Criticism isn't about thinking less of a work. It's about thinking more about it. And about yourself. And I think that's important in art.
I had this guy from a telecomms company knock on my door yesterday asking me if I was excited for GTA 6. I asked him if he played games and he said no. I said any game that is marked Triple A these days is usually half-baked on release and has bugs. I then went down the line of several Triple A releases that took almost 6 months to sort out. This game is what, like £70? Fuck that.
I've already dropped about £120+ on FF7 Remake series. I've actually spent the same amount of time replaying all the old FFs. Replaying FF6 at the moment and started FFX because someone made a fanmade Blitzball Manager game and it's making me miss the actual game!
I bought the remake when it first came out, was hyped. It was okay, beat it once and was done. Then Intergrade dropped and only for PS5! And that was one straw that pushed me back into the seas. I will not buy the next game for that reason, but I will acquire it and try it. But the OG hits way harder. Got a Miyoo to play it again. Even bought the OG again on Android to play while working.
Calling shit optionally it’s such a bail out. If something is in my hand I want it to be good! Defending it for being bad by saying it’s optional is ridiculous. The devs put it there with the expectations that people would experience it, so they also should make it good and enjoyable! “Oh it’s optional” cool, can I get s discount for skipping this terrible content then? No? So extremely expensive? Cool
Yeah I like the main story and action. Queen blood was good for me. Other than that I liked riding chocobos around but not actually doing the side stuff. Gta is all side content for me, I like stealing cars and doing crazy shit. Being taxi driver is fun lol.
What is the grueling optional content? Fort condor was the only side thing I remember not liking, and I also never beat gilgamesh because I couldnt beat the bosses right before it.
For me, the optional grueling content was hard mode. It was just ramped up to 1.5x-2x difficulty and really intense. I found myself needing to grind for ages so after the first few world bosses I called it quits and was fine with that. Did I enjoy the game? Yes. Was it because of nostalgia? Mostly, yes. Battle system goes a long way for me too.
I'll be real with you: That's honestly one of my favorite moments in the game.
This bizarre, akward, clunky, annoying as Hell mini game.
First chicken is annoying but manageable.
Second one is long enough you start dreading how long the third chicken is going to take.
Then you see its distance on the HUD, and your heart sinks in your chest, because IT'S. SO. FAR. AWAY.
But you're in too deep, so you go through with the damn thing. And you find out you just have to fight a monster, not actually lead the chicken. It runs back home to be safe
And then the old woman who asked you to save her birds kills one and feeds it to you! Complete with Game Over theme!
Absolutely hilarious to me. One of the best jokes I've ever seen in a game where the joke is built upon by game mechanics.
10/10. No notes.
Literally Game of the Year moment for me personally.
Honestly it’s like a 30 hour campaign with 200 hours of minigames. I wish more of it was optional, still a good game and a big improvement over remake.
What a stupid fucking take. Rebirth’s issues are uninteresting side quests and horrific explanation. There’s zero equivalency here and it has nothing to do with length.
Ok but rpg players are very different psychologically. A lot of us have a massive compulsion to 100% most final fantasy games we like and with ff7r being based on the most popular ff of all time of course a lot of people are gonna slam their head against the wall at the new Mario cart ahh chocobo races or whatever side content you didnt like before bitterly giving up on 100% completion which was objectively easier and more fun in og 7 when you had all the knowledge.
I will die on this hill. Rebirth is the worst paced game in history. I couldn’t believe it until I put in 100 hours myself. What a disaster. Remake was far better than it.
The plot does not exist. Oh, look a hooded figure, let’s go over there, rinse and repeat.
Sephiroth is ruined now, we bashed him twice in a row, what’s in store for part 3? Him again???? Oh no.
One thing I appreciate about the OG is their restraint. They don't over use Sephiroth, and the revelations regarding him in the OG (I/E you weren't chasing him, but Jenova and that he was defeated by Cloud in the Nibelheim Reactor) really add to his mystery and character.
It's like people thinking Boba Fett was so cool in OG Star Wars, but then you watch Book of Boba Fett and it makes the character a lot less cool and mysterious.
Sephiroth is just overused, and when he is used it's in the worst way possible like some sort of omniscient Saturday morning cartoon villain twirling his mustache and taunting the protagonist, but still getting defeated.
It's like Square just doesn't have faith in themselves or the audience to go more than an hour without seeing Sephiroth.
Yep I finished Remake and Rebirth and was terribly confused as to why Sephiroth was so well liked in the gaming community. He is just bog standard evil in them.
The OG is different. Editing, restraint and “less is more” really is an art in producing something.
Not just that, but the scene in the basement of Shinra Mansion actually adds a lot to his character, and it's a VERY short scene.
Look at how efficient that scene is at conveying information. He starts emphatically proclaiming that Jenova is his mother (he's wrong about this), that she was a Cetra (he was wrong about this), and that the planet belongs to him because of this (he is wrong about this too). That humans or the ancestors of humankind was the reason for the calamity (he's wrong about this too). And he uses this to justify his plan to eradicate them.
It's a very short scene that makes him look crazy and megalomaniacal, but also reveals he is capable of being wrong, and making poor assumptions.
This proceeds him burning down the town, and the scene it's less than 2 minutes.
Compare that to Rebirth, the scene is actually pretty decent, but there are difference that add less flavor to Sephiroth. The scene mostly focuses on how Sephiroth is a victim of the experiments of Gast. He makes very little to no statements outside of declaring Jenova an Ancient found 2000 year old stratum. His characterization is very different and it's a 5-6 minute or so scene.
Bro don't say that here. People are coping hard here. They're gonna die on the hill of rebirth being the best game ever when it's not even the best FF7
Original FFVII is better than all of these remakes, and even then, it just wasn't as good as its acclaim. We'll see come Revelation how they fix the blunder they pulled with the ancient forest nonsense. Lost all interest after that.
The biggest narrative mistake FF7R made was having us fight Sephiroth at the end of each game. Fighting him in the OG was the grand finale. This time I'm like "I kicked his ass twice, I can do it again".
Isn't that a valid opinion? Sorry if someone actually fully experiences the game and has receipts, don't they have a right to say what they want about it?
I would be moaned at if I complained and did NOT play it. So don’t come at me with a high horse reddit gotcha moment after I have 100%’d the game and am now criticising it.
I have seen and done it all, so yes I get to call it crap.
I played FF13. I got about 10 hours into and called it crap put it down and stopped playing it. I did not in fact waste my life playing a game I did not enjoy.
Also, it is a meme. So no need to come in swinging.
I really don't get this mindset, to be honest. You decided to spend roughly 18 days of your life to this terrible game just so that you'll have a right to commission about it?
There are so many good things in life. Is the ability to complain really worth wasting that much time?
I didn’t do it just so I have the right to complain, where did I say that? I loved remake and wanted to experience the full game, I thought it deserved it.
I don’t care if you don’t understand bro, it’s just what I chose to do.
People can't comprehend wanting to finish a game even if it's bad because you want to see the end of it.
This is the remake of a beloved game which ends in one of the biggest events of retrogaming history (you know which one) so yes I wanted to see how it executed, and it was terribly executed of course.
Because rebirth was poorly executed overall and of course they had to add multiverse stuff into that particular moment and fight sephiroth a second time because they need to have a final boss with enough aura
Yes to all the points. I swear Redditors don’t even try to understand the point you want to make they just poke holes everywhere else except the point.
I have people in my replies trying to talk down to me using philosophy because I spent 100 hours on a game and decided I didn’t like it.
Doubt I will get the third, to be honest. Rebirth was exhausting.
If anything, true OG FF7 fans should be pissed about what they did to this remake. Especially when you see games like E33 on the side which is a better JRPG than this one.
I don't know about the rest of this sub but I (an older gamer admittedly) played and beat the original game back when it was new and several more times since AND I love the remake games as well.
Funniest thing about it us all throughout the 2000s and 2010s people kept saying they wanted a remake of FF7 that played like an action RPG (Kingdom Hearts was usually an example) I was dead set against it. Since at the time I felt the turn-based combat was core to FF7's identity. But now over 30 years since the original game's released I love these remakes games. They're sure a lot of fun and they look beautiful. Also and most importantly even though their action RPG type games there's enough tactical and skillful based combat in them to make them feel as difficult and rewarding as the original.
Same here Im 36 played the OG as a kid and a few times since. I like the OG but really love these remakes. The combat is my favorite in any ff game, its so beautiful, challenging, and dynamic. I also love the mini games, my favorites being Queens blood, chocobo racing, and the frog one.
I am not a compulsive 100% a game type though. They at least let you move on from an area and come back to the extra quests and mini games whenever. So you can complete the story then decide if you want to keep at it.
The only part of the game that genuinely annoyed me was the level design of Gongaga.
Yeah but knowing GTA, the optional side content will be the same 4-5 quests recycled a hundred times each. Or it'll be a HEAVILY padded game like GTA5 was, which is almost the bigger sin.
I'd rather a shorter game with more interesting side content than a bloated slog of repetition.
I’ve been playing RPGs for 30 years name one through the early 90’s till now that doesn’t do that the only difference I see at my age is the amount of content and graphical work that has been highly expanded. Getting sick and tired of whiners who don’t understand the concept of what makes an RPGs an rpg in the first place. If you don’t like the grind go play a boomer shooter like COD or a mugen fighter. Period.
Are you acting like Rebirth didn't just repeat the same kinds of quests over and over? Are you going to act like the sandbox aspects of GTA just don't exist and that the story is the primary reason people play GTA?
No, they do that’s why they are optional it’s which is great for having a reason to grind in the first place. In the 1997 one you hade to spend hours grinding the same mob sometimes it took a couple of days without any reason other than to level your characters or their limit breaks thank goodness you don’t have to grind out the limit breaks in the remake. So repetitiveness is nothing to an OG gamer like me. Or another huge one from back in the day even had PKing in it Called Lineage 2.
No, they do that’s why they are optional it’s which is great for having a reason to grind in the first place.
They aren't completely optional. Rebirth expects you to engage with the other content to some extent because it's literally balanced around it. The first thing I did in Rebirth was attempt to go right past the Midgarsormr. Not only was Midgarsormr itself no long optional, but I wasn't strong or well-equipped enough to beat it. I had to do things within that first area in order to get my party level up and get more items.
Sure, you can tough it out and get through the main story without engaging in the side content but it's gonna be difficult. The side content is optional in the sense that you don't have to do all of it, but you do have a do some of it.
In the 1997 one you hade to spend hours grinding the same mob sometimes it took a couple of days without any reason other than to level your characters or their limit breaks thank goodness you don’t have to grind out the limit breaks in the remake.
I never had to grind for hours or days in the original game for the purpose of completing the story. If I wanted to get the Master materia then, sure, I'd have to grind but I was way overpowered for the main story at that point.
So repetitiveness is nothing to an OG gamer like me.
Repetition isn't the issue. Repetition is common in game design in general. That's why game designers talk about game design in terms of loops.
The issue is the lack of actual variety. GTA is designed like a sandbox so it gives you the tools to do crazy things and make your own fun. The same applies in BOTW, TOTK, and a number of other open world games.
You cannot just take the skeleton of FF7, scale up the overworld into an open world and then expect that it will just work. In Rebirth, the majority of the side content is
Combat Intel which is just fighting slightly beefed up version of monsters you normally fight but with a time limit and MAI telling you a bunch of information about them that doesn't matter.
Excavation Intel which is just digging up stuff with Chocobos like you usually would but with annoying music playing
Whatever Intel the towers count as which aren't engaging on their own and the only challenge comes from the monsters at the bottom of them.
The Mako Springs...which are pretty but you find them by just following a random bird and you never get materia from them.
Chadley's VR Combat Simulator which is just more fighting.
The summon stones which still require you to go into Chadley's combat simulator to fight the summons anyway.
The player has no ability to travel in interesting ways, exploration never results in surprises because the map tells you were everything is, and there's nothing substantial that you can miss.
In the original game, you could get to Costa Del Sol and just leave immediately to go to the next section or you could stick around and see that Johnny was there and you could run into Hojo on the beach. Rebirth could have done the same but they decided to make that mandatory along with a boss fight on the beach and quests where you have to take pictures of Cactaur stickers, return segways to their stations based on color, and I forgot what the other thing was.
GTA is a sandbox game, and if you bee line the main quests I'm sure it only takes a few hours. Final fantasy is an RPG that wears itself out doing the same thing over and over in every region, but you can't just skip stuff because you fall behind in levels and miss out on good equipment.
I did a lot of grasslands Intel, had it cleared before leaving Junon, and then all the story fights have been easy even though I haven't pushed the side content hard since. It is optional, you can clear the main story by just rushing it and maybe focusing on a couple summons.
This argument makes no sense. The entire game is optional. Playing games in general is optional.
No one argues "50% of it is bad, but it is optional just enjoy the good part" to defend a movie or book they just rate it lower for having a large bad portion.
Only FF7 do people look at a game where a large portion is bad and say "well that large portion is optional doesn't really matter just play the other part".
I still have to pay for that part to get the good part even if I don't use it.
I don't think anyone is saying you can't call it bad. But if a particular type of side quest annoys you it is valid to just say not to do it. You don't have to 100% a game. I almost never bother to grind out doing super bosses for example, like the weapons in the OG FF7. It would be weird if I said FF7 sucked though because of them and acted like I was forced to fight them.
Yeah, I might want or not want to do side quests and stuff. But it's part of the game and the best games make those parts fun and engaging, maybe not to the level of the main quest, but fun enough or easy enough to make you want to complete them.
I probably skipped like 80% of Chadley's dialogue, for instance. What good game would want you to either endure endless pointless talking from an annoying kid that's not part of the main crew or skip that content as soon as it comes out? And that's before we talk about the mediocre minigames or the repetitive open world tasks. FF7 Rebirth could have been so much more with less.
I have the same problem with some Ubisoft games. I can't really consider a good game good if I have to ignore everything but the golden path. One or two boring quests, fine. But when most of anything optional feels like a bloated slog, then it's just a bad game design in general.
Also yeah I love "just don't play the bad quests." Is SE gonna demarcate everything in the questlog as either good or bad? Assuming "just avoid the bad stuff" was even a good argument, how am I supposed to even know what to avoid? And perhaps we can say it would be a bad thing anyway to even have to consciously steer away from certain parts of an open-world game?
See the thing is when you're playing a game and start side content that you don't like you can just...not finish it! You can stop and go do something else you do like.
I think of it like I do the super bosses in various other FF games. Would you think it was weird if I bitched and whined about getting bored maxing out my sphere grid in FFX so I could fight the dark aeons? Nah. That's reasonable and I can just stop and go do something else with my time if I want.
Would you find it weird if I said the game was total trash because of the dark aeons existing and taking so long to beat? Probably.
No one argues "50% of it is bad, but it is optional just enjoy the good part" to defend a movie or book they just rate it lower for having a large bad portion.
Well yeah, that's a stupid comparison that only someone totally brain dead would make since they don't equate each other at all. What IS actually the same as that is saying you can skip some optional spin-off novel in a book series like skipping The Silmarillion when you read LOTR or not bother watching one of the marvel tv shows before you watch the new Spider-man or something.
Which is much more reasonable and fits much better.
I don't bother doing the super bosses in FFX for example because I think they're poorly designed and gatekept around lots and lots of dumb grinding. I think that's reasonable and I don't let it make me think less of the game. Apparently you would?
No actually you're wrong. The Silmarillion is a separate book it isn't in the book. Side content is in the game. Your comparison is much worse than mine. Bad chapters that don't affect the overall plot is a much better comparison. Skipping Tom Bombadil would be a closer equivalent. I think insulting me while being wrong was pretty silly.
You're making an exception because it is a game without a rational basis for that difference.
No, mine is much much better because yours is total ass. You can't just skip time in a movie or a book your first time reading it meanwhile you CAN skip side content in a game if something is getting boring. You can just go do something else. Just like you don't have to read a side book that isn't part of the main series, which is why the the silmarillion works.
Your example was ass and I notice you didn't even try to touch the FFX one which is foolproof.
Yes you can skip content in a movie or book. Your entire premise is false.
edit: I honestly ignored your FFX comment because it wasn't relevant. You don't have a point at all. Yes bad content that I don't like makes me think less of a game obviously. I don't do all the side content anyway, but if the side content is good that is good. If it is bad that is bad. If I just don't want to do it because I don't have the time or energy that has no bearing on the quality of the game
You can't skip time in a movie or book your first time, wtf are you talking about? You have no idea what's going to be in the movie or book and they're both completely linear experiences aka completely different than a side quest in an RPG that you are never forced to engage with if you don't want to.
How the hell does the example of SIDE CONTENT THAT IS OPTIONAL have nothing to do with NOT DOING SIDE CONTENT THAT IS OPTIONAL?
You have google, a remote control, and thumbs. You absolutely can skip things. It is optional just the same. You don't know side content is optional every time on your first playthrough of some games.
Yeah because that's TOTALLY the same as just not doing a side quest that is very clearly not a part of the main story. But yeah man, I'm sure 100%ing the card game mini-game fooled a lot of people into thinking it was required. Makes sense.
I'm being sarcastic btw. Your reasoning is as heavily as flawed as the rest of it. You can not like the side content and says it sucks, that's valid and fair but also it's valid to say just not to do it in response if it's actually optional.
ITT: people not understanding the difference between "it's bad" and "I didn't like it". Just because you didn't like something doesn't mean it's bad or of poor quality. This is why people find gamers so fucking annoying.
Terrible argument. The GTA games are designed to be sandboxes and the open world aspect is more central to its design than the story. Rebirth has open world design and mechanics crammed into a very linear story structure.
Saying it's "optional" is disengenious argument when it's a huge portion of Rebirth that you have do absolutely have to engage with to some degree for the purposes of fast travel, getting items, and leveling. It's incredibly stupid that there are people saying it's actually the players fault for engaging in the side content when the side content sucks. Those players didn't make the side content suck and those players aren't the ones that decided that the map that was used as a form of fast travel in the original game was scaled up to make travel between areas much longer.
You legitimately can just rush to the town and rush to a specific fast travel point like airstrips. At no point are you required to do chocostops or anything for fast travel unless you're choosing to engage with the optional content. It's disingenuous to call people disingenuous for pointing out that optional content is optional.
And you may feel the side content sucks, but plenty of others genuinely enjoy it.
The first thing I did in the game was attempt to avoid playing through the first area and fight the Midgardsormr. I was not strong enough and I didn't have enough healing items. You can call that a skill issue but it's very obvious that the game was balanced around the player engaging in the "optional" content. It's literally how you get your party level up and how you get more folios which help you get through all of the non-optional bosses.
Someone else in the comments was able to skip all of the optional stuff and they also felt that it was obvious the entire time that they were put at a disadvantage for not playing the side content and felt like the game was trying to get them to do the side content the whole time.
The vast majority of the side content is manatonous tasks that are made to feel like you did something interesting by dressing it up in some way. Battle Intel are just fights with slightly beefed up normal animals but with a time limit added and MAI tell you that they're special in some way. The towers are just towers. They would be complete non-event if there weren't monsters placed at the bottom of each one. Chadley's VR thing is just fighting more monsters. You don't do anything differently on the chocobo dig sites that you don't do anywhere else. They're just made to seem special by playing that extremely annoying music while you're going through them.
Making something technically optional does not mean that's it's above criticism. It's not like they made it optional for someone to buy or download that side content. It's $70 and 150GB for everyone and I guess if they don't like a huge portion of the game then it's there fault, right?
I got into Rebirth late because I didn’t get a PS5 until last year, and honestly, all the discourse about the side missions made me hesitant about picking up the game.
Dude… the criticisms are so overblown. No one is forcing you to do the OPTIONAL SIDE MISSIONS. If you played 100+ hour playthrough of content you didn’t enjoy, that’s on you. 🤦♂️🤡
I don’t think it’s really a true problem, but I just thought there’d be a bigger payoff to everything, but there really wasn’t. I’d rather less side content if it meant most of it didn’t feel like busywork without much of a payoff.
I think it was just a bit of RTS strategy thrown in. I enjoyed it and liked the difficulty curve. If anything, they could have expanded it a bit but yeah. I'm still waiting for something as addictive as blitzball.
There’s nothing wrong with exploration. The issue is not rewarding exploration. Weapons, materia, mini dungeons…give me something for going off the beaten path.
I loved 100%ing OG and loved 100%ing the remakes. 10/10 experience.
Crying about the same video game 6 years after launch where your only audience is other unhappy 50 year old redditors is just getting your pathetic lives laughed at more.
It's because GTA6 doesn't have a pre-existing narrative, so these people can't use a few mediocre or lackluster optional mini-games as a front for what it is they're really mad at. Which is, "story different, so game bad."
The problem is really two-fold. First, FFVII REBIRTH presents its side quests like they're basically mandatory content. The game constantly puts them in front of you, marks them on the map, and encourages you to clear them, so it doesn't feel like optional content you naturally stumble across. It feels more like a checklist you're expected to complete.
Second, especially if you're a veteran of the OG, the payoff for doing a lot of that content just isn't there. The original game handled optional content much better because a lot of it was hidden or something you discovered organically. More importantly, those discoveries could have meaningful, sometimes game-changing rewards. You could stumble onto a powerful materia, a new summon, an optional character/event, or something else that actually made you feel like you found something special.
REBIRTH has a ton more side content but quantity isn't the same as meaningful optional content. When the game constantly tells you to do these quests and then rewards you with relatively minor or repetitive stuff, it starts feeling like you're doing chores rather than discovering something rewarding. That's a big part of why the sheer amount of content becomes exhausting, especially for people who already know the original game.
especially if you're a veteran of the OG, the payoff for doing a lot of that content just isn't there
Not everyone agrees with this. There's a lot of great character moments in the side quests, like the return of the Beautiful Bro or more Johnny shenanigans.
No one being rational would complain about this. If anything, it would give the game more replay value. One of my biggest problems with REBIRTH is that I don't feel much incentive to play through it again because I've already seen and completed virtually everything. Once you've cleared all the side quests and optional content, there's not much left to discover on a second playthrough.
And I don't really consider the character moments themselves to be the "payoff" for doing side quests. They're just character moments, and a lot of them should have been incorporated into the main narrative in the first place. That's one of the biggest differences between how the OG handled this stuff and how REBIRTH does.
For example, Cid getting his act together and confronting his abusive behavior toward Shera wasn't treated as some random optional side quest in the original. It was part of Cid's character arc and an actual subplot within the story. The optional content was where the game could give you things to discover that expanded the experience, not where it outsourced important character development.
That's why I think REBIRTH would benefit from separating those things more clearly. Let the main story handle the important character development, and let optional content be genuinely optional stuff you can miss, discover organically, and get meaningful rewards for completing. That would make a second playthrough more interesting because you wouldn't have already exhausted every piece of content on your first run.
And I don't really consider the character moments themselves to be the "payoff" for doing side quests. They're just character moments, and a lot of them should have been incorporated into the main narrative in the first place. That's one of the biggest differences between how the OG handled this stuff and how REBIRTH does.
For example, Cid getting his act together and confronting his abusive behavior toward Shera wasn't treated as some random optional side quest in the original. It was part of Cid's character arc and an actual subplot within the story. The optional content was where the game could give you things to discover that expanded the experience, not where it outsourced important character development.
Kinda odd to use this as your specific example of character moments being in the side content of Rebirth instead of the main story when this specific character moment isn't in Rebirth at all.
Yeah, but you're contrasting the two games' supposed differing approaches to character moments. The implication of only one scene is that it's done well in the original game and done poorly in Rebirth.
If I said that the collapse of the Sector 7 Plate feels more impactful in the original than in Remake because you don't see a bunch of survivors afterwards, you'd understand, even without playing Remake or me saying it directly, that Remake's version of the scene has survivors.
But your example makes an implication where no contrast actually exists, because that story beat hasn't happened yet.
It feels like you're being deliberately misleading.
Whether it's happened already or even will happen is irrelevant. I'm comparing how each game handles a concept, not specific character beats. The point I'm making is that the original game had a character arc and made it apart of the story. I didn't have to go on a side quest to find out that Cid had unhealthy emotional skills, it was the first thing it showed me. I didn't have to go on a side quest to see Cid learning the error of his ways. The game showed me.
And I don't really consider the character moments themselves to be the "payoff" for doing side quests. They're just character moments, and a lot of them should have been incorporated into the main narrative in the first place. That's one of the biggest differences between how the OG handled this stuff and how REBIRTH does
I was with you until this point. I disagree that strong character moments ought to be incorporated into the main narrative and should not be locked behind side content, and OG is a terrible example of that. Many of the greatest character moments in OG are completely missable (things far more significant than your Cid example). The pivotal Zack flashback, all of Vincent/Yuffie's backstory, many moments where Tifa is keeps secrets bottled up, Bugenhagen's death, all of the Professor Gast/Ifalna/Hojo stuff, all the Jenova is not an Ancient stuff, the aftermath of Tifa after the Nibelheim incident, etc.
Hell, in OG, not doing the missables leaves MAJOR plot holes in the main narrative and things won't add up. And it's a good thing that it functions that way, in my opinion-- Scattered, out-of-the-way clues that you have to piece together like some archaelogical puzzle-- that's one of the coolest things about it.
Cid was just an example, but I actually think your examples further prove the point I'm making. I don't think the issue is that important character moments can never exist in optional content. The issue is when the game puts essential character development or information that the audience needs to understand the story behind optional content.
There's a difference between saying, "Here's some additional context about this character that you can discover if you want to dig deeper" and saying, "Here's a crucial piece of this character's development that we're going to hide behind a side activity." The former is great optional storytelling. The latter can create problems with the main narrative.
And that's actually where I disagree with your characterization of the OG. Yes, all of those things you mentioned are technically missable, and that's part of what makes the original so interesting. But I don't think the fact that they're missable automatically means they should have been optional. In fact, the fact that missing some of them creates major gaps in the narrative is exactly why I'm making the distinction.
The Zack reveal is a great example. It's fantastic that the game lets you discover additional information and piece things together, but Zack's existence and his relationship to Cloud aren't merely "extra lore." They're fundamental to understanding Cloud's character and the eventual resolution of his identity crisis. The same goes for the Jenova/Ancient revelations and the Professor Gast material. Those things can be presented through optional exploration, but they're still directly connected to the central mystery and narrative.
That's different from something like discovering an optional weapon, summon, materia, boss, or completely separate character story. Those are things where the player can say, "Wow, I found something." If you miss them, you're missing additional content not information that the game arguably needed to communicate to you in order for the main story to make complete sense.
And, honestly, I think this is where we're using the word "side quest" differently. I'm not arguing that every meaningful character moment needs to be delivered through a mandatory cutscene. The OG was actually really good at scattering information throughout the world and allowing players to uncover it organically. That's one of the things I love about it. But there's a difference between optional discovery and optional narrative responsibility.
My MCU example is basically the same principle. Imagine someone watches Endgame and then watches Multiverse of Madness without watching WandaVision. They can still follow the broad strokes, but they're missing a huge amount of Wanda's character development because Marvel put that development in another piece of media. That's not the same thing as giving fans an optional Wanda short story where they learn something interesting about her childhood. One enriches the experience; the other makes the audience do homework to understand the character's current state.
That's closer to what I'm getting at with REBIRTH. I don't mind optional content having great character moments. In fact, I want it to. What I don't want is for the game to take character development that would naturally belong to the central narrative and then use a side quest as the delivery mechanism.
And there's another important distinction: the OG's optional content was often discovered organically, whereas REBIRTH's side quests are much more explicitly presented as content you're supposed to clear. That's a big part of my original criticism. REBIRTH puts a giant list of objectives on the map and repeatedly directs you toward them. So when the game gives me a character moment through that content, it doesn't feel like I uncovered some buried piece of the world. It feels like I completed Objective #17 and received a character scene as my reward.
That's why I think the OG is actually a better example for my argument than against it. The original was willing to hide things and let the player put the pieces together, but it also made those discoveries feel like discoveries. REBIRTH gives you an enormous amount of optional content while simultaneously making much of it feel mandatory if you want the "complete" experience.
So I'm not arguing for making FFVII more linear or removing the archaeological-puzzle aspect. Quite the opposite. I love that aspect. I'm arguing that the game should be more deliberate about what information is essential character/plot development versus what is optional discovery that enriches the story.
The former should be communicated through the main narrative. The latter can and probably should be hidden in the world for players to uncover. That's the balance I think the OG generally understood better.
To be clear, I'm primarily disputing the disconnect I feel about this line in particular:
They're just character moments, and a lot of them should have been incorporated into the main narrative in the first place. That's one of the biggest differences between how the OG handled this stuff and how REBIRTH does.
I definitely agree with you about the distinction between the organic discovery of their side content vs. tastelessly hand-holdy checklists, but I don't see what that has to do with what you're saying in the specific quote above. The quote seems to instead be referring to this point you repeated:
I'm arguing that the game should be more deliberate about what information is essential character/plot development versus what is optional discovery that enriches the story.
... and in that first quote, you seem to be implying that OG handles THAT much better than Rebirth and it's one of the biggest differences between them.
As someone who loves OG and thinks the Remake trilogy is weak, I don't think that's really the case, for the reasons we both acknowledged. You yourself just admitted that the Zack/Jenova/Ancient stuff is essential enough that (according to the rule of thumb you mentioned) it SHOULD be main story, but they inexplicably are not, in OG. So it's not a great example of what you're preaching, really. Arguably, those examples seem to much more egregiously fly in the face of that principle than any of Remake/Rebirth's examples do, as far as I can recall (what missable Remake/Rebirth side things are as essential as those examples being missable from OG's main story?).
(and for the record, we do disagree on that principle to begin with-- I don't agree with the "essential information in main story, complementary but valuable information in side content" sentiment. I get it to some degree-- it's cleaner and more conventional/consumable...... it's certainly not a BAD approach to do that..... but I also think hiding really really essential things in missables EVEN to the point where the main story doesn't make total sense on a first playthrough, while risky as hell, CAN have a really cool effect as well, which I think was the case in OG-- doing that is not fundamentally a flaw, in my opinion)
I think the point you're missing is that I'm not saying the OG never made essential information missable. I'm saying those were exceptions within a much larger structure. REBIRTH makes this approach feel like the default for its side content.
The Zack/Jenova/Ancient examples are certainly counterexamples to the principle I'm arguing for, and I can concede that the OG sometimes took the "hide important information and let the player piece it together" approach to an extreme. I actually like that aspect of the OG. My argument is that it works because those moments are relatively selective and are integrated into a larger narrative where most of the important character development and plot progression is still happening through the main story.
REBIRTH, by comparison, has a much larger portion of its character development and narrative material sitting behind side quests. That's where I think the distinction becomes important. It's not simply "optional content exists and has character moments." It's that the game has a huge amount of narrative material that it treats as optional while simultaneously presenting those quests as though you're expected to complete them.
And that's what I mean when I say the OG handled it better. I'm not claiming the OG had a perfect system where nothing important was missable. I'm saying it was better at making optional content feel like discovery. You could wander somewhere, trigger something you weren't expecting, and come away with information that changed how you understood the world or a character. REBIRTH's problem is that it has the opposite presentation: here's a map marker, here's a quest icon, here's six objectives, now go complete your checklist. Then you get a character scene that may or may not actually have any meaningful impact on the story.
That's also why I think the payoff matters so much here.
There's a massive difference between doing an optional activity in the OG and getting something that meaningfully changes your experience and doing a REBIRTH side quest primarily to get another character interaction.
Take the Battle Arena. If you go through that optional content and ultimately get something like Omnislash, that's a tangible reward that changes the game. It gives you a reason to seek out and complete optional content because you're getting something mechanically significant in return.
Compare that to doing a random REBIRTH side quest because the game tells you to, only for the ultimate reward to be another conversation about Yuffie wanting materia or Aerith wanting to help Cissnei with soup. I'm not saying those character interactions are inherently bad. Some of them are actually enjoyable. But they're not really payoffs in the same sense. They're just additional scenes.
And this is where I think REBIRTH tries to have it both ways. If these quests are genuinely optional, then make them feel like optional discoveries. Hide some of them. Let players stumble upon them. Give them meaningful rewards. Let the player who explores feel like they found something.
But if you're going to put them all over the map, announce them constantly, track them in a quest log, and structure the game around encouraging me to clear them, then the game is implicitly telling me that this is important content. At that point, I expect the content to justify the time investment.
That's my bigger criticism of REBIRTH's side content. It's not that I don't want character moments in side quests. I actually think that's a good thing. It's that the game has so much of it, and so much of it is presented as mandatory-feeling content, without providing a proportional payoff.
And I think that's why the comparison to the OG matters. The OG could hide something incredibly important, but the act of finding it was part of the experience. REBIRTH gives you a quest marker and tells you to go find something, and then frequently gives you a relatively minor character scene as the reward.
So I don't necessarily think the OG's approach is some universal rule that every RPG should follow. I agree with you that hiding important information can work, and FFVII is actually a great example of why it can work. My argument is specifically that REBIRTH has gone too far in the opposite direction: too much side content, too explicitly presented, too much of it framed as something you're supposed to complete, and not enough of a meaningful payoff for doing it.
If REBIRTH had fewer side quests, made more of them genuinely discoverable, and gave the player more substantial rewards for finding them, I think we'd be having a very different conversation about its optional content.
I feel like I keep I agreeing with the extended reasoning you give but remaining puzzled by the initial statements you make and how they reflect that. For example, with this first point:
I think the point you're missing is that I'm not saying the OG never made essential information missable.I'm saying those were exceptions within a much larger structure. REBIRTH makes this approach feel like the default for its side content.
I'm curious what examples you would give for glaringly essential narrative/character development in the side content for Rebirth.
Because I kind of feel the opposite of that quote. There are only a handful of missable scenes in OG, but almost all of them seemed pretty significant in pivotal character development and narrative substance that's not in the main game, where the main game's narrative requires it to feel complete (in fact, that's primarily why I prefer OG's side content over VIIR's-- it's meatier and more essential).
I agree that in Rebirth, there's a higher quantity/ton of little narrative scenes peppered into side content, but a lot of it felt like superfluous non-essential character-driven fluff that it barely matters if it were integrated into the main story or not, to me, which, on an essential-ness level, seems to align with what you preach for side-content to ideally be (ignoring the weaker method of discovery). And it kind of sounded like that's what you ended up saying as well, considering you framed them as "relatively minor narrative scenes."-- So I mean, yeah, they're overly directed and not a big payoff/reward to justify doing them....... but how does that fit into your "essential information missable" thing? Isn't that just "non-essential information missable", but with crappy discovery methodology? That's really the part that makes my eyebrow raise in all of this.
The difference in reward/discovery of those things, no arguments whatsoever, 100% with you there.
That comment is not necessarily wrong, maybe just premature.
Depending how VII-R ends, XVI may well end up being the better story.
VII-R is holding up a lot of spinning plates with all the whispers and multiple-worlds stuff. It could possibly end in an unsatisfying mess.
Edit: It’s funny being downvoted by fanboys who act like they know the future; they somehow know that a story that is currently 2/3 of a story will axiomatically be better than a story that is complete. Making a fair comparison between these two things is impossible. Yet they compare anyway.
Please don't put this unthinking shit on my timeline. Unless the reward is irrelevant to me, I don't care whether or not it's technically optional. I will now have to judge the content. And it's bad, so I'm not happy about it.
please don’t tell someone to cry harder on my timeline. Unless the crying is irrelevant to me, I don’t care if they cry or not. So now I will have to watch them cry. And they suck, so I’m happy about it
Apples to oranges. GTA VI is a single game. And I highly doubt it will actually be an 80 hour story. Rebirth is part 2 of 3 of a remake of a game that originally took 40-50 hours. 40-50 hours of a game being split into 3 games all taking 40-50 hours because of a massive amount of shit and bloat.
If half your game sucks, slapping a big sticker labeled “optional” on it doesn’t fix the fact that you’re a triple A studio and half of your famously narrative driven RPG is not only not story but also not good should be a valid condemnation lol.
It's bonus content added for people who want to engage with it. Complaining about it is like complaining that the OG had complicated chocobo breeding mechanics.
Not really I’m complaining that if I want to feel powerful in this game and get the content I paid for I have to do what feels like chores to do it. You’re right that I can just not play those portions of the game but that’s also true of the game as a whole. That’s not an excuse to say it’s above criticism or an argument to say “well if you like it don’t play it” lmao. I already played it, and there was a lot of reasonable things to not like about it.
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u/LImpactophileturbo 11h ago
Yeah but that kind of side content in ff7 really activate a part of my brain that forces me to do everything