This situation began to change slowly with the emergence of remake (remastered) games in recent years. In Resident Evil 2&; Inspired by "3", we found that the original remastered version can also reach such a height, which can not only maintain the original flavor of "ingredients", but also completely transform them into new foods suitable for current tastes. This also gives us a new understanding and new requirements for the practice of "fried cold rice".
The same is true of the remastered version of Final Fantasy 7.
In terms of volume, the first chapter of the remake of Final Fantasy 7 is only a small part of the whole huge FF7 universe, and the plot is only about a quarter of that of Escape from Mega. But through this game, we not only feel the visual impact brought by the evolution from polygons to 3D, but also greatly enrich the whole world outlook and characters, and the gameplay is more in line with the requirements of modern games. Whether it is used to awaken Lao Fen's feelings, or it is used to bring the newcomer into the pit, it is completely qualified.
More importantly, I saw the rare integrity and dedication of SE in the remake of Final Fantasy 7, which made me look forward to the future direction of this old IP after more than 20 years.
Take the remake of Final Fantasy 7 as an example. Now we can finally talk about what elements a "fried cold rice" (remastered version) game that meets the needs of today's players needs to be successful.
* Thanks to Sony SIE (Shanghai) and SQUARE ENIX for giving us the opportunity to enter the game in advance. The content created in this evaluation comes from the evaluation version provided by the government.
* The following content will be slightly spoiled, but it basically only involves the known plot in the original plot. For the newly added elements in the remake, the plot will not be involved. Please help yourself.
According to the content of the official version we played, the game has chapters 1 you 18, and the plot basically revolves around the huge city of Mega, and the normal customs clearance time is about 40 hours. Although there are many chapters in the game, the length of these chapters is not consistent. A short story with a plot and a normal battle. In order to expand the content of the game, the newly added chapters similar to free exploration are generally longer, which is a bit of a semi-open world online game.
Generally speaking, compared with the original, this part of the content is actually quite small, only about a quarter of the original. However, if we only look at this work, the content of the game is still relatively rich, especially a large number of exploration elements, and the new CG animation has greatly expanded the capacity of the game. This is also true for the game itself with a capacity of 8 1G+.
The fly in the ointment is that for players who are new to FF7 (perhaps most players have only been exposed to the rumored FF7CC, but have never played this biography), the game lacks a complete narrative of the background and the whole story, and this remake of Final Fantasy 7 has dug many new holes, which may make it difficult for newcomers to understand the main characters and story trends in the game. It seems that Claude, like the Great Escape, has paranoid amnesia. I believe this will drive many newcomers to finish the story online after playing the game, or they can only wait for the second chapter to fill the hole in the future.
Before playing the game, like many people, my biggest worry about the game comes from the plot-of course, I am not worried that Nomura will gild the lily in what I am best at, but worried about the content. Can a short Midga really support a game by itself?
Facts have proved that this kind of worry is basically unnecessary. As a nearly perfect remastered game, the key to success lies in the filling of the original content of the game.
The "filling" I want to say is mainly manifested in two aspects, one is the expansion of the game plot, and the other is the visual evolution.
About the plot of the game, all the contents of chapter 18 can be roughly divided into three categories. One is the original, the main plot, which has been completely preserved in the remastered version. For example, try to blow up the 1 magic oven, which is the opening part of the game, followed by the battle to blow up the 5 th magic oven, as well as Claude's women's story in the bee house and so on. , all restored with modern pictures. When the old players play here, there should be a sigh, "Look clearly, it turns out to be like this." Of course, this also benefits from the evolution of engines and modeling.
The second category is new plots, which play a connecting role in the original key plots. In particular, several walk-on characters in the original works have increased significantly in these plots, which allows us to look at the development of the plot from more angles. Very distinctive, such as the new motorcycle fight, is integrated in the plot of Claude and Jesse going home for dinner and preparing to attack Magic Furnace 5. Both the plot performance and the excitement of the fight are excellent, and the protagonists Jesse and Vicky are also very lively. There are many similar new plots behind, which greatly expand the capacity of the script. In the original book, you can hit the fifth magic furnace in an hour, but now it is completely over in the seventh chapter of the game. Even, the game has dug a lot of new pits by the way, and I won't be surprised if there are any key plot changes in the future.
In-game screenshot
The third category belongs to the open world gameplay. The obvious chapter in the early stage is that when I first arrived in the slum of the seventh district, the gameplay was similar to that of traditional online games. I found NPC all over the map to take on sideline tasks, kill monsters or find materials, build good relations with NPC, strengthen equipment, make money, play small games and so on. And I can also send it by Chocobo.
Three chapters like this are interspersed in the remastered game, which shows that SE is still obsessed with the open-world gameplay after trying FF 15, but in other words, this open gameplay is almost the field that almost all industrialized 3A games will set foot in at present, which does not mean the length of cramming games. The key is whether the design is clever enough. Final Fantasy 7 Remastered Edition is quite satisfactory in this part. The reality of towns and NPCs is good, but the presence of side missions is not strong, but fortunately the number is small, which won't delay you for too long.
In-game screenshot
It is worth mentioning that the game has designed a brand-new reward for completing sideline. When you finish all the sideline tasks for a whole day, it will trigger EXTRA tasks, usually going out to play with Tiffany or other NPCs, which is a great benefit. This makes those strange feeder lines with little nutrition somewhat meaningful.
In-game screenshot
In addition to the simple plot increase, the remastered version of Final Fantasy 7 also adds a lot of color to the depiction of NPC. With the blessing of unreal engine, the NPCs in the game got the epic Buff, which is almost perfect in dress, expression and action. With the new plot performance and a large number of CG animations, each character seems to really come alive and have a more complete personality. You know, for a long time in the past, FF fans could only make up stories by watching polygons and fan designs, such as considerate and delicate Tiffany, gentle and mysterious Alice, talkative and conceited Barrett, lovely girl technical house Jesse ... not to mention the story of women's house, which was definitely impossible before. This is also a very important reason why I want to blow up the remake of Final Fantasy 7.
From this perspective, the evolution of the remastered screen of Final Fantasy 7 is the most intuitive progress of the whole game.
Final Fantasy 7 remastered version does not follow the luminous engine used by FF 15, but uses Fantasy 4 engine. The overall picture of the game is dark, the light and shadow are very obvious, and the characters are greasy, which basically conforms to the basic worldview of FF7 steampunk. On the whole, the game scene and character modeling are almost the top level in the world, but there is still room for further polishing in some details, such as Claude's shoulder armor, arm metal machinery and the layering of cloth and so on. Similar problems will be more obvious in the second part of the game.
In fact, these image quality problems are more obvious in Demo, especially when the game switches between close shot and foreground, there is often a sense of focus confusion, which is personally speculated to be caused by unstable dynamic fuzzy loading. In fact, the demo we played was a fairly early version of the game. If you compare the game demo released on 20 15 with the current real machine, you will find that it has not shrunk, but has continued to improve, which also shows that SE itself has made great efforts in this respect. That's why I said at the beginning, "I haven't seen such great ambition in SE's works for a long time". Coupled with the news I got from some friends close to se, SE has been working hard to develop a new light engine, which makes me full of hope for the remake of the second chapter of Final Fantasy 7 and other games in the future.
The last thing to say is the game's new combat system.
After the trial test, many action game enthusiasts are not very interested in the instant +ATB combat system remastered from Final Fantasy 7. I personally don't agree. Admittedly, this system is not rigorous in sense of attack and judgment. Even compared with last year's kingdom hearts 3, there is still a big gap. However, you should know that the remastered version of Final Fantasy 7 is an RPG game after all, and its predecessor, even a turn-based ATB game, is more like an improvement to the mainstream RPG gameplay than a complete change in style.
From the actual experience, the remastered version of Final Fantasy 7 retains the traditional gameplay of magic spar, but not the attributes and skills. Skills are graded according to proficiency. Each player has six kinds of weapons, and different weapons have inherent skills. It's good that you can become your own skills after your proficiency is full. When fighting, players can switch team members at any time, accumulate ATB scale release skills and use props.
Generally speaking, the fluency of the whole battle is very high, even a little hectic. In the Boss war, you need to observe the enemy's skills, control the position, and pay attention to everyone's ATB scale, and release the skills, sense of action and sense of strategy according to the professional characteristics and weak attributes. Usually, turn-based games will have a lot of daze time, which will make the whole battle less exciting, but the instant +ATB combat system remastered in Final Fantasy 7 will not have much gap. If you stand still, it will be difficult to accumulate ATB, resulting in no skills to put aside. Therefore, it is very encouraging to continue to move like an action game and keep the general attack output.
In-game screenshot
If we want to talk about shortcomings, the perspective and locking problems of Final Fantasy 7 remake will be quite frequent. The locking of the game is similar to soft locking. You have to keep the locked target in your sight before you can lock it, and the right joystick has to control the viewing angle and change the locked target. So it will be hard to meet a stranger who moves frequently and often loses his goal.
In addition, because the game does not jump, once you encounter a flying monster, the perspective and attack distance will be even more uncomfortable. The original idea of the game was to automatically jump up and attack by locking the distance and target, but to be honest, it did not bring the expected convenience and increased the difficulty of air attack. I'd rather defend with all my strength and attack with Barrett machine guns, which is much more convenient than Claude and Tiffany jumping around.
To sum up, Final Fantasy 7 Remastered Edition shows us a typical example of how to add it. It relies on the plot and characters to make the whole story more complete and vivid, and also makes an old game more fashionable and full of modernity more than 20 years ago. After all, in 1997, the original Final Fantasy 7 is the most fashionable. Although there are still some flaws in this process, it does not affect our expectations for the future chapter 2, or even the universe of Final Fantasy 7. After playing the game, I was as tearful and full of expectation as the netizens heard the crystal overture at the 2065 438+05 E3 press conference-even if the ending of this story was not what I once knew.
I believe that after the official version is released, there will be a wave of "Who is your wife" choices on the Internet. I won't tolerate Alice or Tiffany this time. I vaguely remember writing a love letter to a girl I secretly loved in high school. Finally, I want to be Claude. Would you like to be my Tiffany?
This time, I will choose Jesse.