The Besties - Final Fantasy 7 Remake Feat. a Hunkier Cloud

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

This week The Besties are covering the remake of the hit RPG from 1997, Final Fantasy VII. Together they discuss its influential legacy and how the creators have reimagined the original story and evolved its characters. Plus, Plante presents his thesis on why video games as a medium may have entered into a postmodern phase. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I keep going to the store and looking for super, super blonde hair dye and cannot find it. I know it's tough to find a lot of things out there. But after playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, all I want to do is embody my best good pal, Cloud Strife. And that starts with this. God, you guys have so much damn stuff in common, Russ. No. Thank you. Finally somebody's saying it. you guys have so much damn stuff in common russ no thank you finally my origin story it's like back to front the same thing yeah he fell in mako and turned into a super soldier

and he has bad flashbacks about a long-haired demon man who wants to kill him and you demon man who wants to kill him and you eat the same bagel sandwich for breakfast every morning and have for like 15 years it's like the same guy it should be noted we this game does not cover all of final fantasy 7 i'm sure in part two they will go into the fact that he can't digest milk it hasn't happened yet but i think it will people can't see this, but there's some strange liquid in Fresh's hair right now, and it appears that the skin is peeling off of his forehead. There's a bottle behind him that just says bleach. Yeah, we're worried. That's not the bleach anime.

I don't want to get confused. It's a very anime episode. Russ, where are you at vis-a-vis a sword, a blade, a buster sword? What do I use? Yeah, what are you using for a buster sword? I'm worried about sort of your brain and your bones just sort of holding up the sword that big. Right, so weight is a bit of an issue, I will admit.

I tried foam. That was a little too much. I don't know if there's some sort of like like a balloon type material that i could use as sort of a replacement but right now yeah it's been a struggle i just had a realization about myself is that i would pay five thousand dollars to see rush rush take in cloud strife cosplay and that's something i'm discovering now right live here as we record that's weird challenge accepted and i hear you've been referring to your um your allergy medication as your material is that right yes yes it's it's uh i only use green and red allergy medicine it's

very right it combos nicely you can cast Claritin too. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of like a hundred years ago. Boy, it feels like you've been saying that a lot recently, Justin. Oof-a-noof-a, eh? This is... High times, high times. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the Moogles.

Oh, interesting. Welcome to The Besties where we uh explore the latest and greatest in electronic entertainment it's a book club about video games it's a game of the year show that goes all year long and today we are uh taking a step forward in the in the future but also several steps backward into the past with final fantasy remake part one we're also taking us a few like side steps sure into a carnival house of mirrors uh a sort of uh sensation of sights and sounds that is unlike anything i've ever experienced while holding a video game controller in my life. I want to challenge us each in a row to explain what the fuck Final Fantasy VII Remake is

because it's not what it says on the tin. I do not think you can say, I do not think you can safely say, well, they went ahead and remade Final Fantasy VII, the hit role-playing game from 1997. I think what they have done is something kind of else with it. I mean, you do a lot of the same stuff

and there's a lot of the same people. Right? I don't know. Okay. Maybe we should just get into it. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. I mean, this is about as into it as you get. It's a remake of Final Fantasy 7, a PlayStation game. There was, I think, for, okay, real quick about Final Fantasy VII.

Obviously, seminal, landmark, huge moment for the PlayStation itself. I have a very clear memory of walking past a KB Toys, not owning a PlayStation, walking past a KB Toys, seeing the sign for Final Fantasy VII coming to playstation and knowing that i had to obtain a playstation i mean that was like that was a pretty like i we knew like well we're gonna have to get one now because the new final fantasy is coming out on it it was like massive you had an affinity for final fantasy oh yeah oh yeah yeah yeah we we we yeah it was a big big deal griffin learned to read from final fantasy games i mean that, it was a big deal in our house. So like-

Yeah, we would take turns essentially playing them. Like whenever we got them, we would, who here hasn't finished Final Fantasy 3 yet? And we would just bang them out. Wow. Yeah, so that was a big deal for us when this came out. And I think it was a massive get for PlayStation. Obviously like the scope of this, I mean, first Final Fantasy with like Red Book Audio, when this came out and I think it was a it was a massive get for for PlayStation obviously like

the scope of this I mean first Final Fantasy with like Red Book Audio and uh as drawn out cut scenes as these are well as well drawn out as is slightly pejorative but you know what I mean Red Book Audio uh like like um instruments like real real like an orchestra real, yeah. I didn't know that was the term for it. You know what? It's funny. I only heard it in conjunction with Metal Gear Solid. I remember that being the first place that I heard the term. It was like a very it was a compression format

for the CDs use, right? So it was like anyway, so Final Fantasy 7 remake obviously this game is like Final Fantasy VII is a landmark that has been still part of the zeitgeist in some sense, some 22, 23 years after its release. And Final Fantasy Remake is a,

yeah, see, it is hard. See? It's a remake in the sense that we don't imagine it's not it's not a remaster which we which we have a lot of it's a remake in the sense that the basic beats of this game are lit are adapted it almost feels like you know what that is probably the best way i can think of it is like it almost feels like an adaptation of final fantasy 7 on uh on modern technology like if denise venue you went in and tried to make it did i get that pronunciation right no i did not no it's probably not no way of knowing it reminds me of superhero uh reboots i think marvel does this and has done this for a very

long time where you have something like spider-man with the core idea of like, here's Peter Parker and Mary Jane is the person he's in a relationship and he fights these very specific villains and it usually happens in this order. of whatever era it was released in while also weirdly kind of commenting on the previous area era that it was like most popular in which sounds weird i'm going to try to unpack that a little with final fantasy 7 remake what's wild to me about this game is it doesn't feel like final fantasy 7 but it feels like a game from when final fantasy 7 was released so you walk around these big dungeons and the hallways are very like they're effectively just a series of rectangles that you move through um and you find you know loot chests that you open and you have boss encounters it doesn't feel like a big open world modern game no really at any point but again like it it doesn't feel specifically like final fantasy 7 it feels like something of of that generation it looks absolutely amazing like it's one of the

most impressive game like visuals of this console generation i think um yeah no sometimes sometimes okay so sometimes sector 7 slums and a fucking door just turns into one big brown polygon and every human being disappears suddenly you're like what the fuck's going on doors and uh doors especially there's a fight that i just had where you go through the door and the texture on the door truly looks like it was from a playstation one game it looks wild yeah and then the rest of the time it's gorgeous that was from a PlayStation 1 game. It looks wild, yeah. And the rest of the time, it's gorgeous. That's a throwback. That's a reference.

It's intentional. Truly. But yeah, that's what it reminds me of. It feels like I have not finished the game, but I don't trust the story. And by that, I mean I don't know if I feel like this game is going to be super loyal to Final Fantasy VII. Everything about this feels like it is barreling towards um making choices can i can i stop you for a second how important to you how important well i should say in general how important is it that it'd be loyal to to final fantasy 7 for you

zero okay because i played sega saturn and i love nights and dreams all right so my my relationship with uh final fantasy 7 is mean so why don't you trust why don't i trust it yeah because i i don't know a way of like saying this other than like it feels like it's setting up i don't i obviously i don't have like a strong connection with final fantasy 7 the original but the characters have a level of depth that I don't think that the game will be as quick to get rid of them as I know the original did. I know, having not played all of the original, the basic story beats, I know which characters die. And I don't think there's a way in hell that this game, to be clear for people who don't know all this, this game to be clear for people who uh don't know all this this game is spread out across many many games and the chunk that uh final fantasy 7 remake that's available now only

covers like what maybe like a sixth of the original final fantasy 7 i i think i think we're a little bit in the weeds right now okay i think i think we should explain can we talk about like store like the setup what it is right because i think i think that the conversation has only been mired in what chris was getting into of like how much of the game is there how much of that because it's this is the midgar section of final fantasy 7 which is i think like the first disc or even the first half of the first disc of four discs and and right four three or four discs in final fantasy 7 the original it is the first five or six hours of final fantasy 7 spread out over a 30 to 40 to 50 hour uh modern remake game right and that was

it was really hard for me to click with this game despite the fact that like the combat is completely different uh it it has the materia system in it which is kind of similar to how materia worked in final fantasy 7 where you got all your abilities and spells are slotted into these little gyms that you could put into your items and and whatever to like build different loadouts for your character that system was so ahead of its time and kicked ass and still kicks ass today the real-time combat feels really good i think and there's a lot of, like, strategy to doing turn-based combat stuff, like, all that was great, and like Chris said, like, they, it looks amazing, like, they bring Midgar to life in, like, a really jaw-dropping way that really just makes you feel this, this

sense of place, but it was really hard for me to not feel like if this isn't even the whole game then does it make sense for me to even play it should i wait until like the whole game is but after spinning i'm about 10 11 hours into it and it is already pretty apparent that they are like chris said making some choices yeah where it is so not a retelling of the final fantasy 7 story there are certainly the beats and the characters and the setting that it has in it but they are for sure doing some other stuff yeah let me ask do we want to sort of give an example is there a way to give an example of something that's like i mean for people that aren't super familiar, like how differing these stories are going to be. The first, the second chapter maybe,

involves these invisible ghosts that are everywhere and they are just running wild and you encounter them in a very iconic section of Final Fantasy VII where there weren't no ghosts back in the original PlayStation version. And these ghosts are, I would say, probably the main diver... I keep calling them ghosts.

They may not be that. I haven't figured out what they are, but I'm starting to get some pretty wild hints about what they are. They are a thing that was just straight up... This story beat and the things that they are teasing out was not in Final Fantasy VII at all. We are talking about a completely different sort of like fractal of this world that they are emphasizing in a way that if it's going where I think it's going, it's fucking bizarre and wild and cool.

I mean, there's other stuff that I feel like is a little bit more endemic to Final Fantasy VII. There's Biggs and Jesse and Wedge, these avalanche eco-terrorists with a heart of gold, and you really get to know them a lot more. They really flesh them out more as characters, and they do a great job with that. But that feels more like they are expanding Final Fantasy VII. They are also doing stuff that feels like, oh, y'all are also on some whole nother shit that doesn't make me feel like I'm just getting a slice of this thing that already exists. Yeah, to get into the thing that Gripen's referencing

with Jesse Biggs and Wedge, Jesus. There's entire side sections that feel like bottle episodes of TV. A comparison I've seen a few people make on twitter is like if final fantasy 7 vanilla was a movie then this is the like netflix series that you're going to get these episodes it's like okay this episode is dedicated to this character you're going to really learn what makes them tick so that if some twist uh that happened in the original i

think they'll land a lot harder but again like sure i also just i don't know the amount they're investing into the characters in this game it's hard to believe that they don't have bigger plans for them it's a weird i don't know that feels like a weird criticism because i i fully think they are going to continue i don't think that they are going to divert from a lot of the key things that made final fantasy 7 so like um you know astonishing when it first came out I'm curious to hear this because I've noticed that the conversation about characters is kind of important about Final Fantasy VII Remake because that is the the two things that I would say they are really really focusing on and your enjoyment of these two things

will determine your enjoyment of of Final Fantasy VII Remake, because the narrative and pacing is, like, pretty rough at times, is how you feel about Midgar as a setting, and how willing you are to, like, really, really embed yourself in that setting, and really, like, luxuriate in how much detail is everywhere, and how much you enjoy the characters, because, again, they've done way more character work, and I think the characters are great, and it's really smart how they have fleshed these characters out but I also think that the dialogue at times gets like Kingdom Hearts 3 level clunky in a way that wow it turns me off so bad yeah there's a variety I think there's a range so there are certain I think dialogue sequences that play off totally fine you know I think Cloud and Barret have like a lot of good back and forth and then they'll have like a scene as you said griffin that's like a total clunk fest

i think it's i think part of the reason why final fantasy 7 is so enduring and why people love it is not because of the story because gun to your head even though you may be able to name some like major moments could you explain this like overarching story of final fantasy 7 in a simple way no it's the most convoluted kojima-esque mishigas going on but you remember hey i remember valentine like me personally i love he's not in this game but cat sith the like giant white guy with a like cat on his back was awesome so those are the things that I remember. And I actually think, despite, again, Griffin's mention of a few clunky moments, I think by and large,

they do justice to these characters in ways that make me care. So I really like that part. I would also add, even if the environment isn't necessarily clicking with you, I think the combat clicked with me instantly in ways that haven't for any JRPG like in the last 10 years. time but uh your other ability you're filling up a bar that with these attacks and with blocking

that lets you do other abilities and that could be a spell that could be an attack um or it could be something like boost your defense whatever like the abilities vary from character to character so combat is really a lot of times the the sense of like managing a lot of different plates spinning at once you're attacking you're waiting for your big attack to fill up and then you're using your big attack to there's this idea of like staggering enemies which is basically like reducing their stamina so they faint for lack of a better term and you can get huge damage on them different things stagger different enemies to different amounts so you got to kind of keep track of that. Uh, and then you have other things that are sort of like on a longer timer, like there's limit breaks and big attacks like that. And you can also at the same

time, give commands to your cohorts. You can switch to them at any time, or you can give like one-off commands to them to help like synchronize your abilities. So they cast something that will stagger the enemy and you leap in with, with, uh, big attack to do to do bigger damage yeah it felt i remember like doing like that even that first like boss fight uh that you you know you fight this giant robot the boss fights whip ass in this game yeah the boss fights are amazing it reminded me of like bayonetta level like insanity during the boss fight yeah but in that boss fight you really like like there's this give and take that previously it was just like a turn-based thing where you're like okay i'm gonna use barrett to cast the lightning and then cloud is gonna go in and use a special thing but because this is all happening at real time you're whipping back and

forth between these characters so quickly that it seems like chaos like i'm sure if someone walked in and watched me playing this it was like I was playing like a made up, like the video game and hackers that they just like threw up on the projector like a total bullshit game. But for me, it like starts clicking once you like, oh, I'm watching these meters and these meters.

And normally that turns me off because there's so much going on. But there was something about just the combination of it all that like really worked. I think the two things that are cool about it is, one, it doesn't allow you to hang back and just feel confident because you have enough mana to cast your healing spell X number of times. Because there's a lot of situations where, like, man, I love to heal everybody.

I don't have any energy, basically, in my bar. I got to go, like, kick some ass to refill that, hopefully in time, to get a cure off to try to save this thing the other thing that i think is is is cool that i didn't expect was like uh the first few times i have done almost any of the big encounters i get my ass handed to me and i have to take a step and be like okay wait a minute i need to reevaluate the order of operations here because i'm doing something wrong and there is a way through you just have to like really like this is you know in a lot of rbgs you get that

ability or piece of material or whatever that's like scan the enemy for weaknesses like fucking bullshit i'll sell that first opportunity i get i got a weakness swords this game like i'm like hold on let me hold on everyone let me assess his weaknesses because i have to or else they will kill me because the enemies aren't like there's a lot to have like certain specific techniques that there's one i just did one fight where there were these three enemies that uh require before you could do physical damage to them you had to hit them with some spells so it was this constant taking turns of like okay i cast a spell on this guy so somebody else has to get in and get a few

attacks and then i'll re-up my spells once he becomes immune again to physical attacks that's just like a regular enemy that has that level of of depth to the to the encounter i will say this is a little frustrating i wish i had a little bit more macro control over how the companions behave when i'm not in control of them it very much wants you to plant i talked about this a little bit it very much wants you to be jumping back and forth between the two unlike um say something like mass effect where you can kind of set it and forget it a little bit sure um you really do need to like jump in and and help uh those companion characters or a lot of times they're not going to fill up the bar as fast as you need them to or whatever else yeah

how do you all feel about cloud as a character in this game it's so interesting right final fantasy 7 in play up till i would say final fantasy final fantasy 9 had a very likable protagonist. Final Fantasy 8 had Squall, Leonhart, who sucked. Final Fantasy 7 you had Cloud, who was a big edgelord all the way through the first act of the game until he meets Aerith.

Man, she's called Aerith in this one, but she was called Aerith in the stateside release of Final Fantasy 7 and it's been this huge divide that now has, it seems like, come together. Meets Aerith in the church and then finally starts

to like let that facade drop a little bit. In this game, like, you start to see that like they try to make Cloud relatable pretty much after the first chapter. Like they try to make cloud relatable pretty much after the first chapter like they try to they they do a lot to make his constant flashbacks be less sort of soap opera-y and a lot easier to kind of follow what he has been through and what's been going on but also like you get more

interactions with him and jesse and wedge and biggs that there's one whole chapter where they go to jesse's maybe i shouldn't spoil it, but it's the most like, that is where it hit peak like Hideo Kojima, like why are they talking about pizza so much? Wow, they're talking about pizza a lot. But like he starts to relate with these characters and starts to kind of like them, become like defensive of them.

And that kind of like subverts final fantasy 7's whole thing which is like this guy is a miserable bastard mercenary who's just in it for the money and now he's like kind of he's you know taking pot shots at other people from time to time and like cracking jokes every he's still like a hard ass but he's you know definitely lighter than he is in final fantasy 7 so i'm like i'm i am enjoying him I'm enjoying the direction that they are taking him compared to the original. Yeah, I didn't expect this to be the generation in which Final Fantasy games become almost exclusively a critique of masculinity, specifically toxic masculinity. But you look at Final Fantasy XV, and it was very similar. I mean, that game rules, and it's also about a boy band that drives around in a cool car and like killing enemies and and

fishing together and camping and and snuggling and being best friends who love each other and in this game i i the one time i actually tried final fantasy 7 a few years ago i bounced off because i i just hated cloud as a character and here he is so likable so quickly and like sad the the flashbacks are so sparing and unclear that it reads more like trauma than like you said soap opera that's well that is what they tried to he has a traumatic backstory and final fantasy 7 whether it's by virtue of the writing or the pacing or just the graphics back then didn't really land too well. Yeah, and then there's this famous scene from the game the honeybee end scene

where he cross dresses and in the original one it was not delicate in this version it's like warm and nice. Okay, let's not hand out a lot of medals. There's still some stuff in this

game that i was pretty embarrassed for my wife my wife walked in when tifa dressed like some sort of like very specific like very like this is a specific fetish that she's dressing for for her husband uh very specific is asking me what kind of clothes should she wear something exotic or something and i'm like my wife's like what are you playing and it's like this is a really old game like that came out um a week ago uh but uh gosh and i got this the they're wild sexual is that eric runs like an absolute idiot it's like a bizarre nobody runs good in this game nobody runs good but eric looks like whoever designed it had seen a woman once in a magazine and tried to reverse engineer via bone structure how their form might operate it is wild unnerved

by um whenever you talk to women in this game the camera stops being a two-shot and just goes to clouds pov and the character looking directly in your eyes which is just barreling it's really awkward i have to talk i have to talk about uh talking about walking animations reminded me of uh probably my biggest problem with the game and it's through i love, and I also have a hard time playing it for long sessions, because it exhausts me, uh, because I think the pacing is so bad, uh, there is, I believe it's chapter three, you get to Sector 7 Slums, which is where, I mean, it's, it is an iconic, I, I, I think settling this game in Midgar makes a lot of sense, because it is the most iconic part of Final Fantasy 7, in my mind, outside of, like, Costa del Sol, which is still such a memorable thing, um, and Sector 7 slums is so iconic, you get Seventh Heaven, the bar, uh, that, that Tifa owns, and,

uh, just this, like, dope aesthetic, uh, that they really do nail, being able to look, the skyboxes in this game are out of control, looking up and seeing the artificial sun lamps that are, like, these mile-wide things hanging over the city and like playing at some points in Sector 7 and the light is all bright and artificial and cloying and then sometimes you get like that golden hour sun shining between the plates. Like the detail that they've put in here kicks ass.

But the, like I said, the doors are like uh, snippet of what I think is like a pretty glaring problem of, uh, just like, it feels like they have five pounds of game in the most beautiful 50 pound bag, like ever created. And chapter three for me is like the biggest example of that, where you have all these side quests quests which involve you going to like the same three places three times over and getting 500 gil here and some high potions there and then there was one scene where like these ruffians show up to to rough up barrett they're like looking for barrett and they're like follow me and you follow this group of ruffians to this back alley, and you're like, oh, I'm going to have to fight these ruffians.

And it never comes up. It has not come up again. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm 11 hours in. I've never seen hide nor hair of those dudes again. But walking behind them, it's like five dudes, and they all have the same walking animation in perfect lockstep. Just like, and it's not good. And they like walk upstairs in that like sort of video game-y, just like hopping up it all in lockstep just like and it's it's not good and they like walk upstairs in that like sort of

video game you just like like hopping up it all in lock and it's like seeing that like y'all put so much work into this world and made it so realistic and so amazing and i want to be in it but then i see some shit like this and it's like why did somebody had to play this and say like hey it's really weird how they all walk like automaton puppets all attached by strings like in the NSYNC uh bye bye bye music video like what's going on that needs to happen uh fresh you have you have something yeah no I mean I just find it very interesting that like because I bounce off JRPGs so quickly it just kind of amazes me that more games don't follow the way that this game starts um you talk about final fantasy 15 which is if people recall the one with the people with the boys in the car and they drive around and that that game starts with like a i remember a like insanely complicated

actiony cut scene with spaceships flying and shit like that and then the game actually starts and you're in the desert and you're just driving around and I literally I was on a stream and I fell asleep it's the only time it's ever happened I fell asleep playing this game and I feel like most JRPGs follow that same model like

you know you're a small boy in a small village and hey it's your birthday today so I guess you're gonna challenge the birthday gods and and march up the mountain and complete this one challenge you hate selda you hate selda you're done with selda i'm talking about jrpgs now chris but this game starts with like a fucking action pack 30 to 40 minute like heist sequence that like does not happen a lot anymore and i don't understand why it's like in the same way we were talking about resident evil last week we're like why did resident evil 4 hit why did resident evil 2 the remake hit is because it it matched this balance that like drew

people into the game in an interesting way and then and then they sort of forget hey this was something that worked maybe we should just go back to like a really slow, like exposition heavy thing. It feels weird to call this a JRPG because when you do that and it's called Final Fantasy, I think you assume a certain thing. It is,

I think this is framed by the fact that I'm still playing Persona, Persona 5 Royal, which is a JRPG to the fucking max. and I'm still not, I'm not having a problem playing these two simultaneously, because Final Fantasy 7 Remake really does feel like a cinematic character action game, like, I think you could make the argument that it is, somebody mentioned Bayonetta, like, you could make the argument that it is maybe closer in its its dna to something along the the character action line than it is an rpg because it's it's it is chapter based it is fairly linear

it is uh it really focused on characters and story like justin are you okay i think it's that no i don't think it's like bayonetta though i mean it's like you press there's the one button with a sword that does a sword okay if you hold it it doesn't longer sort it i think you are talking about wild stuff where it's like it's kind of like bayonetta i don't know there's a um i don't know yeah i don't think it's like that that's he's a it's more like diner dash if you want to get into it how is it like diner dash justin because you have meters that are filling up and you've got to keep one thing going and then you got to switch back to the other barrett's you know making hamburgers slash recharging his lightning powers

you know same basic principle can i i okay i want to get to i want to just ask one big question before we close out. We've talked a lot about what it is, but why is it? Why does it exist? I don't mean that confrontationally. I don't feel like we answered the initial question. Because for me, the cool thing about remakes it in a large part is that like they're they allow a new audience into a thing by updating how it looks so you're not put off by that looks and sounds and like tweak some of the like smaller issues but keeping the bones there this is really like an overhaul in in a sense that we like we don't see in video

games pretty much ever. Like what is the, what do you all think the goal of this really is? And do you feel like it achieved that goal from what you've seen so far? Yeah, I think we're seeing like a really weird moment for video games in that a lot of the people who were directors when we were kids are now like running studios, right? And then people who are inspired by them who are extremely creative now have director positions. So we're entering, God, please forgive me.

And I know, Freshick, I can already feel your eyes rolling when I say this. I think we're entering this weird postmodern part of video games where video games double as both the game itself and a critique of the game or the medium or whatever its influences were and i think we saw that with forgive me again near automata which is really just a critique of video game history i think final fantasy 7 remake largely is a critique of the final fantasy series um it is really going hard at riffing on characters

both from Final Fantasy VII and ideas from all the games. I think we've seen it with other things. I think Bioshock Infinite is just a re-exploration of Bioshock. It's a really weird moment where we're getting to see games actually be about games. And this is normal. It sounds heady, but film has done this forever. We see this, and Jerry Bruckheimer does stuff like this.

Transformers plays with these ideas. But it's kind of new in games. And I think that's what, from a purely artistic point of view, what do I like about it? Because the answer to why is it'll make more money. That's the answer of why Square Enix made made this but why did these directors get excited about it i think they got excited about it because they realized we can take something that is one of the most influential works of art in this medium like straight up and we can unpack it we can morph

it we can play with it we can find out what makes it exciting we can do it better like i think that there is a certain hubris to it and that shit is wild and like that is i think that is like at my core why when i'm playing this game i'm just i feel like energetic because it is so cool to play with the game i want everyone to play it everyone should play it like i i wouldn't even say i've enjoyed i'm enjoying half of it but everyone should play it. Everyone should play it. Like I, I wouldn't even say I've enjoyed, I'm enjoying half of it, but everyone should play it because I've never played anything. I've never played a game that has attempted to do what this game is doing.

And I think that that's like, like plant said, like that is cool. And there's one other thing that I want to hit on because it's something that we talked about last week and I'd like to get your opinions on it. Last week we talked about playing resident evil three, like in this moment this moment right like in a time of pandemic and in a time of i think just like global stress right and i was really worried going into this game about playing a game that was set in apocalypse or dystopia basically um with everything going on i thought it would really

bum me out and it hasn't at all it's actually like made me feel really good. And I've been trying to figure out why that is. And the best guess that I have is, I feel like most dystopian stories are, hey, we don't have blank, but we have each other, right? Like we don't have money or we don't have like basic society or we don't have a place to live. But at the end of the day, like we have each other.

So no matter how bad the world gets like things are good and what's so weird is the crisis that we're living in right now is basically the one crisis that is allergic to that that solution like it's the one scenario in which like it's gorgeous outside right now but the one the one thing we don't have is each other and i think that's why this is clicking for me in a way that resident evil didn't resident evil is not about having other people it's basically just about like survival even go into a dystopian world but spend time with all these level lovable characters it feels like such a huge relief and i like yeah i mean animal crossing i think animal crossing yeah animal crossing is doing the same thing yeah yeah. No, I completely agree. I think it makes a huge difference.

And why, you know, to go back to what I said earlier, why this game is so memorable is because of the characters, like the original FF7, and being able to spend time with them in ways that, like, previously they were just, like, you know, weird polygonal, like, shapes, and then just text written on a screen to have them like the whole thing fully voiced and and just these much more fleshed out well-rounded things is the crowd barks are a little assertive from time to time i would say running down a single hallway to like

pick up an item and then running back and hearing the same guy go look at that big sword i gotta get me a sword like that look at that big sword i gotta get me a sword like that. Look at that big sword. I gotta get me a sword like that. It's a little bit, it's a little much. I mean, he wants that sword. He wants the big sword. This has been great. We gotta move on. We're gonna take a quick break. The huge sword still looks stupid.

And moving on, I'm sorry, it looks ridiculous. It's idiotic. He should be falling over backwards every time he takes a step. And a quick break um honorable mentions is anybody else playing anything that they would like to discuss um i know i just told you that i was going to talk more about persona 5 royal but i changed my mind um it's great i'm really enjoying it a lot actually the more i play it i do want to talk about a little game for x One Connect called Rabbids Invasion, the interactive TV show. Been playing that with my boy, Henry, who's three

and who I've not been able to like really get into a video game. Like he will watch me play Pokemon sometimes, but that's about the extent of it because he's like, he doesn't understand how to use a controller still. But Rabbids Invasion, the interactive TV show is a cartoon with the Rabbids in it. And sometimes a little picture will appear of an item like a traffic cone and then whenever that traffic cone appears in the cartoon you have to point at it and whoever points at it first gets points

and that's like it's like such base level interactions that like little little little kids can understand that it is the first time that like we are really clicking like fruit ninja 2 also on connect is really becoming a hot item in our house it is the first time that the dream of connect has been realized uh and i am like and you know there's no telling what the future holds for it's so funny after riffin did his plug for this game that i never heard of i bought it and then i got my daughter downstairs booted it up and it's like point at this i'm like huh i had explained to my daughter that daddy's box was too late to accept a connect camera daddy's box was too rugged to be able to take it's too good to be able to take a busted down connect camera and plus she said i know you have one it's like i do baby

but daddy's box is too rugged too cool to take this old ass camera uh so sadly we have not yet played it she is still heartbroken but what we did play is my honorable mention which is not what i said it was going to be it is instead the putt- putt franchise available on steam that's right humongous entertainment and broderbund present putt putt and the whole series is on steam these games were made in 1995 they're on they're on the scum engine they are adventure games for kids and honestly you're laughing but as a parent who's been looking for something, anything, to distract my child for a moment, she has now, and this has never happened before, she has now played through Putt-Putt joins the parade, Putt-Putt saves the zoo.

Wait, are these golf games? No, it's a car. Putt-Putt's a little car. Oh. And they're basic, I mean, they're very basic adventure games for kids. And it's like basic get the item take the item to the person who needs it kind of stuff fully voiced um they were originally on cd but the downloads are you know minuscule all the games cost like six bucks right um but they actually vary most of the games vary a little bit between

red book audio indeed my friend i'm glad to say you know the terms going in. That's excellent. But the actual mechanics, like the solutions can differ different times. Like the challenges that you have to do can differ on each playthrough. And it takes like an hour to play through each one. They're really cool. I was so happy to find them again because I had such fond memories. I mean, I was a little old for them when they first came out. But I was hoping that, you know,

Charlie would get into it. And she really, really has. So they're just called Putt-Putt. They're on Steam. Check them out. I wanted to mention Good Job, which is on Switch. It is a game that is like a physics-based

puzzle game, essentially, using the graphics kind of look like stick figures that you'd see in like a how to save someone from choking poster. And the idea is you have simple objectives like, hey, bring this projector from this room into another room. But because the physics are so like outrageous, outrageous, and like bonkers, you'll end up like knocking over desks and like, throw it like knocking things through walls and stuff like that so it's this interesting balance of like do i want to be super careful or do i want to like

rush through this thing as quickly as possible the game actually encourages you to rush even though that creates like a comical amount of chaos um and uh i found it like really easy just so i could pick up uh there's drop in drop out drop-out, two-player co-op locally. Kind of in the spirit of trying to remember, like Gang Beasts, like those goofy physics games. Kind of an untitled goose game, I would say, in that the chaos is part of the point. Yes.

Yeah, chaos is definitely part of the point, and it's better that you kind of lean into it. I really liked it. It was great. If you have game pass uh really quick a new game just got added to game pass so you can play it for free if you're a subscriber it's called uh near automata game of the yorha edition and uh i encourage you to give it a try i don't know if it's audible when i hit my head against the mic but yeah that's what uh we we're running long but do we have any salient feedback

from the audience about this remade Final Fantasy game? I have one tweet that I want to share. I know we're running long. This is from Jess. As someone who is a diehard Cloud fan, I really appreciate how much I disliked him to start off with. This is about the remake. His personality and flaws are so much more fleshed out

than it could be in the original, and I love seeing him slowly soften as he builds relationships with the other characters uh just also notes also the honeybee in sequence made me happier than anything i've experienced so far in a video game so there's that which is wow damn it's good i think i'm about i'm just about to the wall market am i am i almost there uh yeah you're probably about like five hours out joke jesus so many hours long time listener from uh john lynch writes to us for the first time says final fantasy 7 was a life-defining game for me i got it with a playstation on christmas morning in 97 but was immediately informed the family was eating out for christmas lunch so i couldn't play it until I returned. I was so desperate to experience it that I snuck the game manual out with me

and secretly read it from cover to cover about 10 times under the tablecloth instead of eating or interacting with anyone. Best Christmas lunch ever. Oh, good. So there's finally somebody that understands the overall plot. That's what it required. That just took me on a trip. I feel like I was always up to shit like that.

Yeah. Man. I miss that. I used to love the drive back from the mall, and I would just be reading a manual back in those 60s. See, kids, manuals were... I'm telling you.

They used to be printed out, and they would have a place that you'd dip it in water to reveal a code. Star Trek was only... That the show right next week we're doing something a little bit different and because there's no games we got so excited about games and then

games left the room but we're going to be doing something different and exciting and fun if you want to be the first to hear about it, follow us on Twitter at TheBestiesPod. And I guess probably join our mailing list. Yeah, you can subscribe to the mailing list. It's the pinned tweet on our Twitter feed.

And you can also, as you have probably discovered at this point, follow and listen for free on Spotify. Please take a moment to share the show with a friend. Besties.fan is the web address you can use to share the show. You can also send us an email if you want. Mail at besties.fan. I hope you are ready for a, in as much the spirit of the besties,

if you're just not joining us, a bit of a shake up format wise we've not done this before we've not done this before this is our like 7th one but I think it's going to be a little contentious and we're going to have some interactive fun I'm hyped for it, it's going to be good

it's going to be really good so join us for that and so much more next week on the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch.

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