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Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#31

Post by Cthulhu_ »

alinajaf wrote: post #25
donutdan4114 wrote: post #6

My all-time favorite game. Got it for PC in 1997, and it changed my life.

Yep. I'm perpetually waiting for square to get their shit together and just give us what we want: A frame-by-frame remake with PS4 generation graphics.

But is it really what you want? What you want is to relive that experience; a full-on PS4-style graphics remake will change the whole experience. It'll be a game with the same characters, environments, story and basic gameplay, but the feel of it will be completely different.

I run a FFVII-based fansite (thelifestream.net, [/plug]), and the general consensus of the community there is that while a full FFVII remake would be nice, it would generally be criticized by the original fanbase, no matter how awesome they make it, simply because it's not the same game anymore.

For an example of the only full-on remake Square ever did of one of their older titles, you could look at FFIII on the DS, remaking a 2d, sprite-based game into a 3D one. Of course, FFIII doesn't have nearly the fanbase of VII so there were less tears on the internet over it.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#32

Post by neverm0re »

thezoid wrote: post #21
Torn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music is the same as Enix's old version, i.e. MIDI and not nearly as good as the original PSX music. There's a mod for that though - google Ficedula's music patch

Did Enix do the original PC port? That would be kinda weird since, Square and Enix were competitors at the time. Guess the use of MIDI is what you do when the hardware doesn't for sure come with support for redbook audio.

Actually, the PSX version of FFVII is /sampled and sequenced/ (like a surprising chunk of PSX music) from a Roland SC-88 MIDI module and part of the reason why a lot of video game music enthusiasts found the PC port of it interesting was because of the Yamaha XG support, an extension of General MIDI that was competing against Roland's GS extensions.

It had nothing to do with a 'lack of redbook', especially given the PC port shipped on disc and no one was releasing stuff on floppies anymore. It simply was common for Japanese computer games to support MIDI modules, even into the late 90s. They kept at it longer than Sierra!

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#33

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sergiotapia wrote: post #24

Why are they charging so much for such an old game?

Simple: because people are willing to pay for it. People pay fortunes for vintage toys because their parents got rid of them two+ decades ago and they want to relive their youth and have expendable income. Similarly, people want to relive their youth from 15-20 years ago with video games, and are willing to re-buy a version of the game that runs on modern-day systems.

Re-releases of old / 'vintage' video games are quite popular on Steam, allowing the owners of the rights of said games to sell them again with relatively small investments. This also happens on modern consoles (PSN on the PS3, etc), which no longer have backwards compatibility, so that the game manufacturers port the game to modern systems (at minimal investment) and sell them again. Optionally rendering the game at a higher resolution and calling it a HD re-release.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#34

Post by jMyles »

Torn wrote: post #20
lmm wrote: post #2

I still have my original discs but it's such a pain getting it to run on anything newer than WinME that I'd given up trying to play it. Is the rendering performance OK? Are the movies intact? Do you get the choral music that was only accessible to people who had a creative card with soundfont support? Also, this reminds me of several video gaming magazine jokes: Character Booster – Find yourself stuck on a difficult…

The music is the same as Enix's old version, i.e. MIDI and not nearly as good as the original PSX music. There's a mod for that though - google Ficedula's music patch

Pretty sure you meant Eidos, not Enix.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#35

Post by Sprint »

frankcaron wrote: post #27

FYI: The Steam version of the game still has a phone-home, always-online DRM which requires you to maintain connectivity in order to play. This is not the standard Steam DRM.

I was about to buy Chrono Trigger for my Android the other day but luckily I read through reviews before. It too requires an online authentication at least at every start. I passed.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#36

Post by myko »

Sprint wrote: post #35
frankcaron wrote: post #27

FYI: The Steam version of the game still has a phone-home, always-online DRM which requires you to maintain connectivity in order to play. This is not the standard Steam DRM.

I was about to buy Chrono Trigger for my Android the other day but luckily I read through reviews before. It too requires an online authentication at least at every start. I passed.

Yeah this screwed me. I bought it right when it came out and planned to play it on a long flight.

Mind numbingly stupid DRM for a mobile device.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#37

Post by jscheel »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15
Shish2k wrote: post #12

Still waiting for a proper HD rerelease - fans have already hacked the game to load high-res character models / sprites / menus / etc; but it looks silly with 1080p characters wandering round a 320p world :( How hard can it be to re-render an already-created CG scene with a few more pixels?

> How hard can it be to re-render an already-created CG scene with a few more pixels? Quite tricky, seeing that Square-Enix no longer has the original source files to re-render these. A proper re-release would require artists to remake the environments from scratch (based on concept art or the original game).

They don't have the original sources anymore? Do you have a reference for this? What a terrible loss that would be.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#39

Post by wjoe »

mariusmg wrote: post #14
Shish2k wrote: post #12

Still waiting for a proper HD rerelease - fans have already hacked the game to load high-res character models / sprites / menus / etc; but it looks silly with 1080p characters wandering round a 320p world :( How hard can it be to re-render an already-created CG scene with a few more pixels?

If the FFX/FFX-2 remake will sell, i'm sure they also do VII. The problem with these remakes is that the original assets are in crappy resolutions so they'll basically have to remake everything. And that takes time. And Square is not exactly known as being a efficient company.....

They've said they won't do an FF7 remake until they release a better new Final Fantasy game.

...So I wouldn't count on it.

Re: Final Fantasy VII is available on Steam

#40

Post by KeliNorth »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #6

My all-time favorite game. Got it for PC in 1997, and it changed my life.

Ditto. Ditto. For emphasis. Thank you for liking FF7. It's been a fad for the past 5-10 years for people to say "I don't know why everybody likes it, it wasn't that great." They are not correct.

The only game I've played through more times is Ocarina of Time - I rarely replay games, especially very long ones. Especially more than twice. FF7 has been the only exception.

I didn't have a psx, couldn't afford it back then, but I had a PC and got the PC version shortly after it had come out. It was my first FF game.

Stories like to have heroes, give them flaws, mess with them, and then miraculously help them win. The monomyth/hero's journey being the framework.

I don't know if any FF messed with their main character as much as Cloud. Well, they were on a streak after FF6 (Female protagonist who was definitely different from not just other games, but even her fellow party members... man they had good writing) The guy was messed up. Very bad things happened to him. Many times. People died, and not just for shock value.

Some of it has been overhyped, and so the backlash against overhype has caused too many people to rate it lower than it deserves. Others expect too great of things and are disappointed when FF7 doesn't floor them - after all, they are told the title is one of the best RPGs of all time. It is, but it's impossible to look at it nowadays without already having an expectation in mind.

Back then, when we were still young and living off RPGs after school, some fantastic games were made. Some, like FF7 and Xenogears and Chrono Trigger were life-altering. These are the reasons why I want to work as a creator. They are the reasons why I love good entertainment and good writing.

They established the tropes. They get a pass on having the tropes used against them. Man, I always feel like writing a treatise when FF7 crops up. I loved the game, but I was never a full-on fanatic of it. It just deserves some love for it's age.

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