In a climactic scene of the original Final Fantasy VII, hero and amateur snowboarder Cloud Strife stands with his fellow adventurers as they are about to face a final, possibly fatal battle. With the steely glare of a polygonal warrior on the verge of killing god, he turns to them and says: "Let's mosey!" It's an unintentionally comical moment - an easy-going phrase, as if they're all going to the shops and not jumping into a big glowing pit at the end of the world.
It's a result of the RPG's famously rushed translation. But maybe not in the way you think. A fan translation of Final Fantasy VII has now fixed a bunch of mistakes that were present in the original, and "let's mosey" is one of them. The fix? Have Cloud say it way more often.
]]>Over the past seven days, the Final Fantasy VII Twitter account has been tweeting some cryptic developer comments from members of the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth team. The tweets are all in a Q&A style format, and most of the questions have been fairly innocuous things like "Will FF7 Rebirth have original music?" and "Has the battle system changed from FF7 Remake?" But the answers, at least on the English FF7 Twitter account, have been downright baffling, and have been promptly memed into oblivion. Things will happen to characters during the story, you say? No kidding!
But thanks to some clever internet sleuthing, eager Final Fantasy fans are quickly realising that there's a lot more to these comments than meets the eye. Well, at least there is in the original Japanese versions of them. The English translation team clearly didn't get the same memo...
]]>I have no problem believing that PowerWash Simulator is as smart and engrossing as people say. That's why I don't play it, lest my actual home fall into a state of muck-slick neglect.
If you're braver than me, you now have new venues to clean: the free Final Fantasy VII crossover is out now, and it lets you clean up Midgar like Cloud never could.
]]>Dream life sim PowerWash Simulator is heading on another unexpected mission, this time to Final Fantasy 7’s industrial city of Midgar. You’ll need to wait a little longer to help Cloud and friends clean up the city, as we don’t have a release date for the free Midgar Special Request DLC yet. The crossover pack’s announcement (via the Square Enix Extreme Edges Twitter account) did tease a few of the things we can expect to clean up, including the Seventh Heaven bar, and FF7’s first boss the Guard Scorpion. The teaser image also shows off the motorcycles from FF7’s mini-game, so I’ll be expecting to hose that down in time for a quick escape.
]]>I was absolutely elated when Square Enix announced a new Final Fantasy Theatrhythm game during the Tokyo Game Show last year, as there's been a Final Fantasy music game shaped hole in my life for the best part of a decade. I played the pair of Theatrhythm 3DS games to absolute death back in the day, and was hoping that Squeenix's newfound PC love-in would mean I'd be able to write about it non-stop when Theatrhythm Final Bar Line comes out on February 16th. Alas, that joy was immediately curtailed when I saw FBL wasn't, in fact, coming to PC at all, and would remain a Switch and PS4-only game for the foreseeable future. But that's okay, because YouTuber Gloomhonk has created the perfect antidote to my Theatrhythm woes in the form of their brilliant Trombone Champ rendition of FF VII's Those Who Fight Further. Come and have a listen.
]]>A mod for the original Final Fantasy 7 that adds full voice acting to the game is set to release today after seven years of work. Tsunamods’ Echo-S 7 mod has actors from around the world voicing every character in Final Fantasy 7, including the battle barks. You can see a trailer of the mod in action below, but if you’re watching in the office on your lunch break then be aware that there’s a fair few cuss words in it.
]]>Before our Christmas break, I left you with a big winter decision, and I return to see that you have dynamic snow is better than seasonal events. Having hugely enjoyed recent real-world snow but not really done much in terms of seasonal events, yes, this feels correct. Well done. Now our hunt for the best thing resumes, with a choice between rill rill and cold steel. What's better: calling found phone numbers or giant swords?
]]>Earlier today, it was revealed that Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII - Reunion has a piece of artwork in it with a great big Getty Images watermark slapped across it. The eagle-eyed staff over at Kotaku posted an image of the offending painting, found in Nibelheim's ShinRa Mansion where Zack and co find themselves toward the end of the game, and having gone back in to see for myself, I can confirm that, yep, the in-game painting of John Crowther's Ludgate Circus, London, 1881 does indeed still have the watermark on it. Oops! Might want to sort that licence fee, Square Enix, or at least patch it out before Getty starts a'knockin...
Whoopsie artwork isn't the only thing hiding in Crisis Core's ShinRa Mansion, though, because down in the basement is a rather cute nod a Final Fantasy VII fav. Spoilers within, obvs.
]]>Square Enix’s 25th anniversary livestream for Final Fantasy VII played out in almost textbook fashion for the JRPG giants, starting and ending with the two most important pieces of news for PC players. First up, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade leaves Epic exclusivity to steer its motorbike onto Steam today. Steam Deck compatibility was touted too, you lucky beggars.
Then, after much faffing with mobile games and memorabilia, producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed footage from the second part of Remake, now known as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Kitase also confirmed that the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga might actually be completed in our lifetimes, thanks to Square Enix deciding to draw it to a close with a third, as yet untitled part. Gawp at Sephiroth’s broad shoulders from behind by watching the trailer below.
]]>Square Enix first launched Final Fantasy VII 25 years ago today, introducing a new generation to big-sword bishies. In celebration, both the director of the original JRPG and the creative director of the recent FF7 Remake have posted messages looking back and forward. Along with several FF7 mobile games kicking about, they tease that more new FF7 things we don't know about are coming. Hopefully this means we'll hear more about efforts to complete the remake, but I guess they could also be talking about merch or new movies.
]]>After yonks of leaving us aching for even a mention of a PC release for Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix casually announced at The Game Awards tonight, oh hey, it's coming next week. Just like that. Next Thursday, the 16th of December, FF7 Remake will hit PC in its expanded Intergrade form. Like many other recent Square Enix RPG ports (and as expected), it will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
]]>I know a lot of us are still jealous of the shiny Final Fantasy 7 Remake that landed exclusively on the PS4 last year. Us PC folks have held out hope it would come our way even though Square Enix had nothing to say when FF7R's PS4 exclusivity ended in April this year. The new PS5 upgraded version called Intergrade just launched this month too, also without mention of a snazzy PC port to match. There's still no word. Not officially, anyway. There is a convincing new leak by way of a hidden Epic Games Store listing that specifically mentions the Final Fantasy 7 Remake though. Cloud saves save the day again!
]]>After spending several years making vintage Final Fantasy games look worse with remastered re-releases toting blurry graphics and ugly menus, Square Enix might give people what they actually wanted in the first place. During their E3 showcase today, Squeenix announced a "Pixel Remaster" series of Final Fantasies I through VI. Information is vague right now but they sure do look like ye olde FF games with ye olde pixel art.
]]>Down it, down it, dowwwn it, yeeaahhh! Nice one, you skulled that pint of fizzy water and lemon like an absolute legend, mate, well done. I always knew you were a top enjoyer of a wild night on the tiles, on the rip, on the slosh, on the tear, on the floor, on the bathroom floor, no listen you’re on the bathroom floor mate, for real, get up. I think that San Pelegrino went straight to your head. Maybe just go home, lie down, and play some RPGs. You can always simulate the reckless abandon of a big night in one of these, the 9 best nights out in PC games.
]]>Football. Tennis. Conkers. What do these historic, reputable sports have in common, I ask you. That’s correct, they are not extreme enough. Please, quiet now. I am here to do the talking. Yes, there are sports videogames, your FIFAs and your Mario Tennises. But they do not fulfill the desire within all of us for the extreme, the radical, the pushing of it to the max. I will now demonstrate, through force of listicle, the 9 most extreme sports in PC games, from bone-breaking snowboarders to motorcycle Wipeout. And you, in your turn, shall be thankful to this website for providing such diversion. Now, read.
]]>We know for sure that Final Fantasy VII's remake will be exclusive to the PS4 for a year. After that, maybe Square Enix'll just dust their hands off and never speak of it again, but that seems unlikely. They've still not confirmed a PC version but the repeated emphasis on "exclusive until 2021" sure makes ya think we'll see it this time next year. A new trailer suggests that the PC port could already be in the works.
]]>Everyone from Taylor Swift to Tyler, The Creator has written a song about flowers. Fancy restaurants scatter them over melting chocolate bombes. Van Gogh even had a crack at painting some once, I believe. And after all, why not? Flowers bloom all around the world, and symbolise so much to so many different cultures. Final Fantasy is far from the only video game series to lean into flower metaphors - but few have done it better.
As with so many of Final Fantasy’s strengths, the best examples can be found in Final Fantasy VII. Already considered by many to be the pinnacle of the series, the upcoming remake (eagerly awaited but a PlayStation exclusive until April 2021) has seen Cloud’s battles against Sephiroth back in the headlines. It’s been talked about so much since its original 1997 release that it’s hard to imagine anything about it remains underrated, yet the flowers are a seldom appreciated piece of Final Fantasy VII’s world building which the high definition makeover really must get right if it's to get anything right at all.
]]>The Final Fantasy VII Remake is still about two months away—now scheduled for April 10th—but the marketing machine is spinning up and there's no stopping it now. We still don't know for sure if it's coming to PC but frankly I'll be shocked if it doesn't wind up in our hands when the year-long PlayStation exclusivity ends in 2021.
Today Square Enix have shared the entire intro movie for the game and it's a whopping five minutes that goes almost shot-for-shot with the original. It does have some new bits of its own added in, you know, to show that time has passed.
]]>Square Enix still have not announced a release for Final Fantasy VII Remake on any system other than PlayStation 4, but they're certainly staying up to date with what they're not saying. They've recently updated the JRPG's box art to echo its recent one-month delay, now saying that it's a PS4 exclusive until April 10th, 2021. What happens then? Ah, who knows. Could be anything. Don't think anything of it. They're just casually refreshing their exclusivity commitment, okay, just because they want to, not because they have any plans.
]]>Today, Crystal Dynamics revealed that Marvel's Avengers will be delayed by four months, while Square Enix announced that the Final Fantasy VII Remake's PS4 release date is delayed by a month (though the game isn't yet confirmed for PC, it seems likely after its year of PS4 exclusivity ends).
The intended release date for Marvel's Avengers was initially set for the 15th of May, but has now been pushed all the way back to the 4th of September.
]]>Over the four years since Square Enix announced their Final Fantasy VII Remake for PlayStations, they've been mighty vague about where else they might release it and when. They still haven't confirmed a PC release but they have now made clear that the PS4 exclusivity is exactly one year long? After that? Oh, who knows. They'll probably just bin it. No strong feelings for anything other than PlayStations, y'know. But if they considering releasing FFVII Remake on other systems? Well, such a thing might be possible from March 3rd, 2021. Hypothetically. If they wanted to. Which they're not saying they do.
]]>Matt: This is it. The final blog down. Square Enix are about to tell us about what they're up to, and we've both reported to our liveblogging stations for the very last time. Both Cheerer and Jeerer have one more opportunity to don their respective masks of love and loathing, but who will take up each mantle?
Actually, forget I asked. Jetlag has snuck up on us both and filled our hearts with jeer, but I'm the one writing this intro so I get to bagsy it. Plus it's my turn anyway. Nuh-nuh.
]]>I say “watch” because this week's podcast takes place in a real room in front of a real audience (don’t worry, there’s an audio version too). At Rezzed in London this month, we thought it’d be fun to re-enact three of the most memorable scenes of PC gaming, exactly as you remember them. So strap on your eye-wideners and prepare for some wonderful acting. Including a 100% faithful adaptation of the most notorious moment in any Final Fantasy game: the death of... Aerosmith?
Alice! Alice, what have you done to these scripts!?
]]>Following the epic boyband road trip of Final Fantasy XV, Square Enix now plan to let us create our own pop trios in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. Today they announced the 3v3 crossover brawler, made with Dead Or Alive developers Team Ninja and released on PlayStation 4 in 2018, is coming to PC as a free-to-play edition. I think my dream pop trio might be Noctis, Kefka, and Sephiroth? Or Yuna, Lightning, and Noctis could be an interesting musical dynamic. Squeenix insist the trios do fight each other, but I assume it's mostly about building and admiring your dream lineup.
]]>The hot new way to create high-resolution texture pack to fancy up old games is 'deep learning', feeding the original textures into a computer so algorithms can draw more-detailed versions of what they imagine the images look like. It has... varied results. I'm a hoary purist who still plays Quake pixellated without texture filtering so I'm not mad keen on these hallucinated manglings, but I do like the technique as an act of creation rather than replication. Which leads me to coo over Everest Pipkin's Mushy, a new free tileset for isometric games generated by machine learning with the intention of creating a glitched-out look that's just not right.
]]>You’d think we could agree on four simple letters. But nothing is ever straightforward on RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week the gang are talking JRPGs, or Japanese role-playing games to use some real words for human people. Does a game have to be made in Japan to be defined as an JRPG? Or does it just need some bright colours and lots of turn-based battles? Maybe it only needs a boss behind a boss (and then another boss behind that one)? Come with us into the petty world of the genre bouncer, as we examine the shoes of dozens of games and decide whether or not they’re allowed into the JRPG nightclub.
]]>Welcome back to Spawn Point, where we take an element from the world of gaming and explain what it is, why it's worth your time and how you can dip your toes in and get involved. Last time, Brendan gave you a 101 course in Final Fantasy XII, a JRPG that recently got spruced up for PC twelve years after its original launch on PlayStation 2. This time, however, I'm going to be looking at JRPGs as a whole, discussing what they are and which ones you should try your hand at first if you've never played one before.
]]>It’s the 30th birthday of Final Fantasy, says Square Enix. The first in the series was released in Japan on this day in 1987 and an old story goes that the name was chosen because Square was in financial trouble at the time – almost bankrupt – and it was likely to be their last game. But that’s rubbish, the creator later said in an interview. It turns out any old F-word would have done.
It’s nevertheless a series worth celebrating. A tropey, dopey JRPG series that somehow manages to be comforting and friendly. At least, some of the time. Here’s the highs and lows of the series.
]]>Who's your worst nemesis? This week the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is talking about our most reviled enemies, against whom we hold deep, lasting grudges. Matt harbours a lasting bitterness for Silencer, the magic-cancelling war jerk of Dota 2. Adam is fuelled by a dark hatred for the final boss of Ancient Domains of Mystery, a giant '@' symbol called Andor Drakon. And I still maintain a grievance against an entire electricity company in Final Fantasy VII. They killed my friends.
And speaking of nemeses, we've had plenty of time to play Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the icon-hoovering game of anti-establishment orcs, which has us divided. The Evil Within 2 also gets some attention, as Adam runs from spectres and fails to stealth-kill hideous monsters, and I am publicly shamed in Tekken 7 by a robot who takes off her head and throws it at me.
]]>Not only does a great hero need a great villain, villains are usually just so much more fun. Whether it's the tortured lost soul who can only find peace by destroying the universe or the cheery psychopath looking to see the world burn, it's no wonder that many of the greatest films of all time have been defined at least as much by the baddie as any individual scene. Darth Vader, the Terminator, Norman Bates, Dracula... villains get people excited. A great villain lives forever, death be damned.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Naturally, I'm one of those awful snooty elitists about it these days. Doesn't mean I didn't play it. Doesn't mean I didn't obsess about it at the time.
]]>Since we've got a little bit of a gap in big RPG releases at the moment, I've spent the last couple of weeks playing catch-up. A couple of games I missed when they came out recently. One... quite a bit older. Final Fantasy IX was one of those games that slipped past me at the time, not because I wasn't aware of it, but because I didn't have a Playstation at the time, and by the time I bought a cheap PS2, a double-whammy of Final Fantasy X and X-2 made it tough to go back to the previous generation. Square's recent rush of re-releases finally offered a good chance to catch-up. But I'm not really planning to talk about that specifically. Instead, I was pondering the sad fate of that most cursed of Final Fantasy fans... those of us who came to them on PC. Brrr.
]]>I'm on the road at the moment - not literally, that would make typing very dangerous - so unsurprisingly I've been pondering travel. Also regretting taking too long to see The Martian, and again being stunned by what Americans consider chocolate. But I can't think of even a tenuous connection between those and RPGs, so travel it is - and in particular, the rare joy that comes of not simply going somewhere new, but feeling that sense of distance behind you and a whole new horizon lying ahead.
]]>I’ve playing MGSV obsessively at the moment. You might have noticed. This is a statement which would make 2005 me punch 2015 me in the nose. A decade ago I was so much more forceful and intolerant in my opinions about videogames, and one of the recipients of that unyielding ire was Metal Gear Solid. I played some of 2, felt as though it was simply wasting my time, and that was it, the entire series was irredeemable. Everything I read now suggests I’d still feel that way about MGS2 particularly, but in the wake of Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, I do realise that in decrying the entire series, I did myself out of some particularly excellent stealth gaming, and a playful streak a mile wide. Which leaves me thinking – what else did I dismiss - or praise - out of hand and now regret?
]]>These are my personal Edwin Droods. Stories that I've failed to finish, for one reason or another, and that are left suspended. In the manner of somebody reversing out of a relationship like a heavy goods vehicle, trundling slowly and beeping nonchalantly, I'd like to say to the games included: “It's not you, it's me.”
]]>Playing with fire is dangerous, but the worst the fire does is consume you. Fire won't then kick your charcoal corpse yelling "That's what you get!" while holding back firefighters and medics because you're "a pigging idiot who deserves this and worse". No, only playing with fan nostalgia is that dangerous. Speaking of, Square Enix announced a remake of Final Fantasy VII [official site].
They haven't confirmed a PC release yet, but they've been quite good with PC lately. The trailer says "Play it first on PlayStation 4", which is of course E3 code for "Someone gave us money to pretend for a while that we won't release it elsewhere". So I'll tentatively post about the JRPG here.
]]>The PC is not entirely bereft of Big Hair And Superfluous Zippers: The Neverending (Candy) Saga, which is sometimes colloquially referred to as "Final Fantasy." The series' MMO entries, FFXI and FFXIV, got their starts here, and PlayStation One classics FFVII and FFVIII recently received refurbished Steam ports. That majority of numbered Final Fantasy games, however, have stuck to the realm of buttons, thumbsticks, and cameras that have yet to change gaming in any meaningful way. But that might be changing sooner rather than later. Very late to the party but nonetheless welcome, Square Enix has finally realized that maybe people kinda like playing games on their PCs after all.
]]>As I browsed through the list of new releases on Steam this morning, a blaring midi tune began to belch its way into my brain. The screen flashed - a random encounter! Final Fantasy VII had unexpectedly appeared, a comically large sword thrusting from the screen and carrying with it promises of a seemingly endless slog through a bloated story with precisely one memorable scene. Yes, you know the one, when Aerith reveals that she's actually a robot the gang of heroes clamber up what seems like a hundred identical stairwells, quipping in blocks of blue text that do not appreciate the value of comic timing.
It already happened once, but that didn't stop Square Enix from doing it again and releasing Final Fantasy VII on the PC. Unlike the majority off re-releases, there's not even a hint of HD about this return to the most beloved game JRPG of the PlayStation 1 generation. So what gives?
]]>N.B. - please feel free to interchange the words 'bad' and 'good' in the next two sentences as you see fit.
Bad news: the deathless 90s JRPG that inspired a hundred million DeviantArt pages, Final Fantasy VII, is to be re-released for PC, in a shinier form with new bits. Good news: its launch over the weekend was pulled due to technical problems.
]]>(Yeah, okay, it was released on PC in 1998.)
That's a delay of fifteen years for the PC version. Could be a record. Anyway, the newsbeasts of VG247 caught the scent of Square's announcement and we could hear their howls from far across the internet. They soon brought home what appears to be a trailer, too, which you can see below. No release date, though.
Man, it would be really easy to spoiler this one for someone who had never played it, eh readers?
]]>
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