![]() I can enjoy fan service while also internally recoiling from it, and something about this has sat wrong with me since I played it. Like Hell House, it is jarringly ostentatious.īut really, how else could it go? Introducing a character is one thing, but performing a celebration of the memory of that introduction, swollen and crystallised beyond all reasonable proportions over two decades? Woof! Whatever criticisms I can make, I’d be dishonest not to make it clear that I am in awe of how well the team handle such an impossible task, and I was starry-eyed and smitten the first time I played through Red’s reintroduction. The instruments know what they’re playing, and they know who they’re playing it for. It’s a much more intense rendition, with rhythmic alterations and note changes. Hours later, Red XIII shows up, accompanied by those opening strains of Cosmo Canyon, truncated into ‘Red XIII’s theme’. Multi-layered and operatic and balls-hard to boot. It is such an egregious, almost totemic example of pandering, in a game that makes such generally smart choices with its other alterations to iconic moments from the original, that I have to believe it is entirely deliberate an ironic recognition that the remake cannot possibly outrun its own legacy. The remake capitalises on this fan attachment the only way it knows how: with a big flashing neon sign. Let me bathe in your mystique, mechanical murder domicile.Īllowed to ferment over a couple of decades, that mystique has only grown more potent. It is either an evil robot shaped like a house or a house with the abilities of an evil robot. ![]() It’s a random encounter, so you might not fight it at all. Maybe once more if you end up stuck trying to find a path because those pre-rendered backgrounds play havoc with depth perception. One for each pass over the one map in the slums it appears on. I’d say you might, on average, fight the Hell House four times in your 25-40 hour runthrough of OG Final Fantasy VII. It made me grin and groan in such equal measure that I now find myself considerably lamenting the fact that those two words are effectively un-portmanteau-able. It is stupid and pandering and spectacular, in both the complimentary and traditional sense of the world. Out of all the ways to introduce a fan favorite enemy in a big budget remake of a videogame, I can think of none more knowingly ostentatious than having a literal announcer hype that enemy up like a wrestler over a loudspeaker before having it and the central cast do battle in a literal arena surrounded by a cheering audience. ![]() The others performed in awe of what it became. ![]() One was composed in hope for what FF7 would become. While that original sprung from Nobuo Uematsu trying to evoke the feeling of a scene, the subsequent versions are nostalgic celebrations of a legacy. None are necessarily inauthentic, but none are necessarily more authentic than the others. But each is a shared conversation with personal and cultural memory. Or the clean, crisp depth of the Remake’s update. ![]() The tiny, amateur rendition of this track I’ve been slappa-slapping away at in my room cannot hold a candle to, for example, the orchestral Distant Worlds version, with its playful, reverent luxuriation over every phrase and motif. I’m not sure if I can adequately put into words how the original composition of the track makes me feel, but I am certain I’m not the only one.It is sonic nostalgia for a simpler time, where following a talking dog’s weeble uncle to the projection of the cosmos he kept in his loft did nothing to shatter my emotional investment in a story. In the meantime, I’ve taught myself the riff for Valley Of The Fallen Star, better known as the Cosmo Canyon theme from Final Fantasy VII. The guitar arrived as promised I am still waiting on the funk. Over the holidays, I decided to treat myself to the gift of funk, and bought myself a neat little acoustic bass. ![]()
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