Triple Click - The Music of Final Fantasy VII

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

Support Triple Click: https://maximumfun.org/JoinInformation on Max Fun Drive 2020 tiers, rewards, schedule, and more: https://maximumfun.org/news/maxfundrive-2020-has-begun-and-its-full-of-great-gifts/Music Featured: Multiple tracks from Final Fantasy VII (1997) composed by Nobuo Uematsu, as well as the following Uematsu compositions re-arranged for Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020): "Prelude" arranged by Yoshitaka Suzuki, "Airbuster" arranged by Tadayoshi Makino, "Main Theme from Final Fantasy VII - Sector 7 Undercity" arranged by Shotaro Shima, and "Aerith's Theme - Home Again" arranged by Shotaro Shima.Kirk’s music podcast Strong Songs: https://strongsongspodcast.comGame-deal watchdog Wario64 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Wario64  Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

In Final Fantasy 7, Cloud's theme has five notes and Aariths has six. That means that, according to math, Ayrith is the more important character. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. We've got a special music-focused episode for you this week where we're going deep inside the soundtrack of one of the greatest role-playing games ever made. So take the next stop for Midgar, put on your headphones, and turn up the volume. Let's do this thing.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Maddie Myers. And guess what, you two? What? guessing what. It's Max Fun Drive. Oh my gosh. It is the most wonderful time of the year. And we have a bunch of listeners who probably don't know what that is. And so we're going to try to explain it. I'm going to be one of those listeners. Maddie. Oh, this is exciting. This is good. Well, Jason.

What is Max Fun Drive? It sounds super cool. It is super cool. So we are part of a podcast network called Maximum Fun. And we've talked a little bit on our prior episodes about how you can go to maximum fund.org slash join and if you back us, if you become a member at the lowest supporting level, which is $5 or any other level beyond that, you get access to our bonus episodes. And that's, we pretty much left it at that up to now. But Max Fund Drive is this super cool time of year where if you back at a higher level, if you give us $10 a month, for example, or $20 a month, you get these, super cool rewards that you don't get a few back in any other time of year. And we'll tell you

a little bit more about them later on in the show. But it's just exciting. It's exciting. And I guess we should also note that Max Fund Drive this year was supposed to start on March 13th. But because of COVID-19 and a whole bunch of other considerations, it got delayed a few times. And because they wanted to wait for triple click to really get started. That's the real reason, yes. Of course. They wanted to wait until we were on the network and so that people could join and back us. become max one members who are triple click fans. But if you were a person who joined at the $10 level on March 13th or afterward, you still get access to all of the same cool shit. So that's just another exciting aspect to all of this. It's like the Max 1 drive that never ends. It's

already begun and it will never end, except it does end on August 7th. And yeah, it is nice that people support us making this show and support us doing special things for this show, which speaking of that. That's right. This is a special episode of Triple Click. Yeah. So Maddie and Jason, I have a question for you. Do you two like music? I love music.

I love music. And I love hearing you talk about music, Kirk. Oh, wow. In that case, I have some very exciting news for both of you and for any listeners who are into music and into Final Fantasy music. In particular. Final Fantasy music. I know.

It's still my heart. So this is a special segment. This is a special segment that I've been working on for the past week, and it's going to be pretty cool, and I'm going to just throw it over to myself to take it away with that. But of course, the three of us will be back for one more thing after that.

So, yeah, here comes Hey Listen. Hello, everyone, Kirk Hamilton here, and I am very excited to try out this new segment, Hey Listen, where I spend the first part of the show nerding out about video game music. Of course, there are a lot of video games whose music I could talk about for this segment for the inaugural Hey Listen,

but in the end, I'd gotten a lot of emails about a video game that both came out this year and also came out in 1997 with music that a whole lot of people know, and it is music that I love and would love to talk about, so it seemed like a good place to start. What video game soundtrack could I be talking about? What game was released both this year and in 1997? Well, you really only have to hear one collection of four notes placed end-to-end and played up and down the piano to know what we're going to be talking about. That's right on this inaugural edition of, hey, listen, we're going to be talking about the music from Final Fantasy 7, composed by none other than the great

Nobuo Uematsu. Uwematsu's score for Final Fantasy 7 has been remarkably resilient over the years. It's never really gone away, and so much of it has remained synonymous with the Final Fantasy series, even outside of Final Fantasy 7. But of course, it has returned to the public consciousness in a major way, thanks to the very clever reinterpretations and rearrangements in the Final Fantasy 7 remake that came out for PlayStation 4 earlier this year. Now, as many of you probably know, in addition to Triple Click, I host a music podcast called

Strong Songs, where I do. do musical analysis, sort of similar to what I'm going to do on Hey Listen, though a little bit different in some ways too. I'm actually going to run a little trailer for that at the end of this segment, so if you're interested in strong songs, you can find out more then. Just a little info on me for anyone who doesn't know. I am a jazz musician by training. I went to school for saxophone performance, played saxophone professionally for a lot of years. These days, I write songs, compose music, play a lot of different instruments, and I make strong songs as a way to explain music to as many people as possible, and to help people hear more in the music that they

listen to because I think that one of the greatest gifts you can get as a musician from a musical education is learning how to hear more in the music that you're hearing because there's so much going on if you kind of learn how to tease individual parts out and understand a little bit more of what's going on. So that's what I'm going to be doing here. I think that Final Fantasy 7 remake, which came out earlier this year, offers a really interesting opportunity to re-evaluate the music from the original in a similar way to the way that the remake itself offers an opportunity to reevaluate the original game because as much as it is a remake, it is also kind of, you know, a commentary, a continuation. It's more than just a remake. It is its own thing, and it actually

has something to say about the original 1997 game. I think that the score to Final Fantasy 7 remake actually works similarly. So what you're hearing here is the prelude from Final Fantasy 7 remake, which is a reinterpretation of the prelude that you already heard, which Nubuohue who wrote actually well before Final Fantasy 7, but which famously accompanies the Final Fantasy 7 opening menu. The rearrangements for the remake were handled by a whole bunch of different musicians working for Square Enix. This prelude was rearranged by Yoshitaka Suzuki, and each rearrangement is more complex, often in ways that are pretty interesting. So if you haven't played Final Fantasy 7 remake, don't worry, I'm not going to spill any major beans on the story,

just very little things. I do think that this episode will hopefully help you appreciate some of the cool musical stuff that's going on in the remake a little bit more. And I think it'll also help anyone who finished FF7 remake and wants to go back and play Final Fantasy 7 again, which is something that I'm actually planning on doing, hear that original music in a new way too, because the Final Fantasy 7 remake is in constant conversation with the original Final Fantasy 7, and similarly the composers are constantly in conversation with Uimatsu. They're taking his themes, his motifs, his musical ideas in many of the same way as the Final Fantasy 7 remake rearranges and reinterprets the original game.

So just take this prelude. This is the music that plays on the menu of the original Final Fantasy 7, and it's beautiful sounding and pretty different from the version of it that plays in Final Fantasy 7 remake. While the original version was just a single synthesizer with some delay on it, the remake takes a synthesizer and adds harps with a bunch of reverb and actually kind of removes the delay and creates a much more spacious, just very different sounding vibe. So then of course, once that full orchestra comes in, or at least the sound of a full orchestra, it is a significantly different sound than how the original game sounded.

This is the original game, and this is the remake. So now we're back to the original, and the original is using synthesized instruments that create a very different sound from the remake, which uses samples and a much bigger, more modern sound. But where the remake relies on modern technology and production techniques, the original game relies on something maybe more powerful. The listener's imagination. So just like you can't really say,

that Final Fantasy 7 is better than Final Fantasy 7 remake or do some kind of really, you know, boring comparison like that. I'm not going to do something like that with the music. I mean, the Final Fantasy 7 remake music could not exist without the original score to Final Fantasy 7. And I think they're in conversation in a really interesting way. And I hope to tease some of that out for you here and also just give you a better appreciation for just how good Uwimatsu's original music from Final Fantasy 7 was. I do think that concept, though, the concept of the listener's imagination is crucial for understanding just why the original music is so magic and has stuck with us for so long, and it's also central to my understanding of why the original game resonated like it did and stuck in the public consciousness for so long

after, you know, graphics technology and modern video game production techniques greatly outpaced it in a lot of ways, at least in terms of the production. So I want to start with that prelude because the prelude is kind of emblematic of Uwimatsu's style of composition. He'll write these very simple ideas and turn them into something iconic just with kind of a flick of his wrist. It's pretty cool. And the prelude contains a lot of musical information that actually turns up later in the main theme for Final Fantasy 7, which I also want to talk about. So what I love about this music is how exceptionally simple it is and how it takes a very simple framework and then stretches

it out in a beautiful way that turns it into something that sounds iconic, even though it's actually built of very basic ingredients. Okay, so we're in the key of C here, which is the most basic key there is. It has no sharps or flats. It's all white keys on the piano. In the key of C. And this entire entire piece of music is built out of one shape. And I would call this a shape because it's just four notes put in a kind of a certain order that feels like a shape when you look at it on the piano. And that shape is this. So that shape, that very simple shape, is actually the entirety of the Final Fantasy prelude motif,

which is something that I've always appreciated about it. You play those four notes, and then you just play them again up the octave, and then you do that two more times, and then you just play it in a verse back down. Could not be more simple, and yet somehow, just because of the way that Ui Matsu made it sound and the way that he arranged the notes, it sounds pretty distinct. When you hear those four notes put in octaves like that, you think Final Fantasy. So, of course, when I say that it's those four notes over and over again, I am slightly oversimplifying things. The chords do change, the harmony changes, but the shape remains the same.

So I mentioned this is in C major. That first figure plays on a C major chord. The next chord is A minor, which is the relative minor, very common chord in the key of C. and the shape stays the same, it just moves down and instead of starting on C, it starts a little bit lower in the key of A minor. Same shape, some of the same notes, and it creates a sense of motion through the tune as we go from C major to A minor. Not an unusual chord progression on its own, but the way that Uwimatsu threads those notes

through it creates something that sounds distinct. Like a lot of pop songwriters before him, Uwimatsu spends some time going back and forth between C and A minor before going to two new chords, he goes to an F, which he He plays like this, it's pretty cool. And then he plays that same version of the shape over a G chord, which is the 5. He starts on a B, and it sounds like this. So basically he's been doing these little collections of four notes that he then stacks on top of one another in these big ascending and descending scales. And so far they're going through a very traditional chord progression.

He starts on C major, then he goes to A minor, goes back and forth between those two chords for a minute, then he goes to F major the four, and then he goes to G major the five. to G major the 5. Now if you don't know a lot of music theory, I'm using some numbers here, and I don't want to freak you out, but I am using these for a reason because they turn up later. They'll be important later. But basically, 1, 6, 4, and 5, they all refer to different chords in the song, and 1, 6 minor, 4, 5. Those are like the four most common chords ever. They're like parodied at this point. Playing that chord progression is so standard. But because of

the way that he's arranged it and the way that he's built that pattern over. the chord progression, it sounds pretty distinct, like it doesn't sound like he's just playing through, you know, one of the million pop songs that uses this chord progression on the chorus. Of course, there are two more chords in this piece of music, and they are the magic chords. They're the less usual ones, and they're played in a shape that doesn't match with the shape that he's been playing over those four normal chords, and I think that these two chords are the key to this entire piece. They come at the very end, and I'll call it out when you hear them. Here's what they sound like. So this is that four chord, and five.

Okay, so before I explain what those chords are, just to kind of sum up, we've kind of got four notes on each chord in this piece of music. The whole thing is just groupings of four notes. And we go from the one to the six minor, eventually to the four, to the five. So those are those four chords as really common chords. The last two chords are flat six major seven and flat seven major seven. Just remember those numbers. they're going to be important later, and they sound so cool. It's so tasty, it's so magic sounding, it's beautiful,

because he's in this really inside kind of normal chord progression, and then he steps outside of it in a very beautiful way. And it kind of just captures something about Final Fantasy, and specifically Final Fantasy 7, the way that it's this in some ways mundane setting, you know, like just a city with industry and all the kind of things you would see in a city. But then there's also magic,

and I think those last two chords feel to me at least like an introductory, of the magic right before the full ensemble comes in. So basically that walk-up is an A-flat major seventh to a B-flat major seventh to a C, which is actually a fairly common walk-up like in pop and rock music. I actually just did a strong songs episode about the Super Mario Brothers World One-1 music. And there is, that's also in C, and there is actually an A-flat to B-flat to C that happens very quickly in that tune as well. It's this dude right here.

It's not an unheard of chord progression, but when you're in a more vanilla zone, like C-major to A-minor to F to G, when you go to that A flat major seventh, suddenly it just adds an amount of dissonance and kind of lushness to the sound that really opens things up. And I love the way that it works in this prelude in particular. So much great music involves taking familiar elements, common chords, and common chord progressions and knitting them together in a way that sounds distinct. And Ubi Matsu is very, very good at that. As much as he draws on classical music and orchestral traditions, he incorporates a lot of rock and pop and funk and jazz into his soundtracks, and he's not always doing things that haven't been done before harmonically,

it's just that he combines them in a way that captures a certain magic that then fits so perfectly with the game that the music is accompanying. I really love this prelude because I think that it sets the whole thing off on a perfect note, so to speak. So let's keep on moving. I really want to talk about the main theme from Final Fantasy 7, which is a crucial piece of music and a very important melody in both Final Fantasy 7 and in Final Fantasy 7 remake. And I want you to remember those chord numbers,

1, 6, 4, and 5, and then also flat 6 and flat 7, because believe it or not, they're all going to be relevant when talking about the main theme from Final Fantasy 7. It'd be tough to make an argument for any of the main themes and character motifs from Final Fantasy 7 as the definitive melody of Final Fantasy 7, but there is definitely a strong argument to be made for this melody, which I've always thought of as Cloud's theme, but is also sometimes described as the theme from Final Fantasy 7.

It is a beautiful melody that relies on some very tasty no choices. So I'm going to break down that melody for you, and I actually am also going to draw some interesting connections to the prelude that we already talked about, because Final Fantasy 7 is definitely one unified collection of music, and Uwematsu was very fond of tying his motifs and chord progressions back to earlier pieces from the game. And there is actually a lot happening in that main theme, in Cloud's theme, that was already happening in the prelude. But we'll get to that in a moment. For starters, I want to talk about one concept that you should understand, and that is a major seventh. So a major seventh is what's called an interval. It's a space between two notes.

So if you play an E, which is the key this song is in, play an E, that is the one. If you play a major seventh above that, you're going to play a D sharp. And that space between those two notes is a major seventh. The reason that it's a seventh is it is the seventh note of the E major scale. So an interval can really be anything. It can be a second, it can be a fourth, it can be a sixth, and it's just the distance between one note and the other note, in this case an E and another note from an E major scale.

So I don't want to get too much more into the theory of it all because you don't really need to know that to appreciate why this music is good. But basically, the major seventh is a really nice sounding interval, but it's also a pretty dissonant interval, and that dissonance, it just kind of has this rub to it. It sounds a little bit, you know, uneven and kind of rough like it wants to resolve. If you resolve it up to the octave, you can just be playing an octave, that sounds nice and open. That's kind of like if you play a perfect fifth, which is E to B.

That's just a nice open sounding interval. Compared to that, the major seventh, much more like kind of sharp sounding, right? Much more dissonant. So Final Fantasy 7 has a lot of major sevenths. Uwimatsu is definitely fond of that interval, and he uses it to add this richness and lushness to his melodies in a few really choice places in particular in this piece of music. So like I said, we're in the key of E, and let's just look at this melody. So I'm going to play the melody totally divorced from the chords, just the melody on its own,

in the key of E. This is what it sounds like. It's a nice and somehow classic sounding melody. I really dig this melody, and it's totally in the key of E major. This is just notes from an E major scale played back to back, but the way that they fit over the harmony, the chords that move underneath the melody, is kind of what makes them really shine. So if you look at the first phrase of this melody, it's these four notes. And that's actually not that far off from those first four notes that play in the figure during the prelude. There's actually only one note difference.

The prelude sounds like this. And the main Final Fantasy 7 theme sounds like this. Obviously, the rhythm is totally different, which gives it a very different sound, but it's kind of built around the same notes, which I don't actually think is an accident. So that different note, that fourth note, that's the major seventh in the key of E, and it has that kind of dissonance that adds a lushness to the sound of this melody that wouldn't be there if it was the exact same four notes as the prelude if it went up to the fifth, which is just like a much more neutral sounding note.

Or at least it would be if that melody was played just over an E major chord. That would sound like this. Of course, that is not how this piece of music sounds, and that's because the chords changed. There isn't just an E major, and it actually goes through a sequence of chords that we already heard in the prelude. So if you remember, the first two chords of the prelude kind of went back and forth between 1 and 6 minor, and the first two chords of Cloud's theme are also 1 and 6 minor.

It goes from E major to C-sharp minor. You may also remember in the prelude, those two magic chords, the ones I told you to remember, the flat 6 and the flat 7th. Well, what should happen in Cloud's theme, but the same chord progression. It goes back to E, and then it goes to the flat 6th, to the flat 7th, and then back to E. It's a great melody and like so many great melodies it works because of where each note is placed in the chord underneath it. It sounds fine on its own when you play it by itself, but when you put the chords underneath it, everything kind of locks in place and the specificity of the melody really is driven home.

So what would have been a regular major seventh in an E chord becomes a ninth in that C sharp minor. What would have been a fifth, just a kind of boring sounding fifth in the key of E, becomes a major seventh when you go down to a C chord. And not only are those chords really really really a chord, bringing out the best attributes of the melody, there are also echoing the chords that were already established in the prelude, tying Final Fantasy 7's soundtrack together in one of very many cool ways. When it came out this year, Final Fantasy 7 remake took a lot of Uwimatsu's original themes and rearranged them, re-orchestrated them, and brought them into the 21st century in ways that are pretty effective a lot of the time and especially work in the context of a remake, even if I actually

think that the original tracks totally stand on their own. I think that's by design and it's kind of true, of Final Fantasy 7 remake and Final Fantasy 7 itself. So I mentioned imagination earlier, and I want to kind of expound on that a little bit now. The magic to me of Final Fantasy 7 has always been the way that the game had this kind of significant gulf between what you were seeing on the screen and what you were imagining in your mind. The character portraits and the high-res parts of the game let you see what this should look like and what the movie version of it would look like. But the game itself never really looked like that, and so as a result, the game kind of lived

in the player's imagination in a way that gave it a level of magic that just could never be captured or recreated on a screen, no matter how talented the artists and the animators, because it's the power of imagination. I mean, it's just the magic of whatever you picture in your mind as what Midgar would really look like. I think that's true of the soundtrack as well. A lot of Uyamatsu's music sounds like an orchestra. You can kind of hear what it would sound like, but it's not an orchestra, it's synthesized instruments, and that's actually also true when it sounds like a rock band, but it isn't a rock band. This is one of my favorite tracks from Final Fantasy 7,

the boss fight music that's typically called Fight On. And it rules so hard, even though it doesn't really sound like a real rock band. I love this track. I love the clarity of the bass. Next time you're listening to that track, just really listen to the bass. Focus on those baselines and what the bass is playing,

because there's some really killer bass lines in there. It doesn't sound like a real rock band, right? Like you imagine Rush, you know, playing a kind of rock out prog rock thing. on stage in your mind's ear when you hear this, but it doesn't actually really sound like rush. It sounds like synthesized instruments. So there's just this great thrill when you're playing Final Fantasy 7 remake and you get to the Air Buster Fight and what music should come on, but a full-throated real instrument ripping version

of Fight On that sounds like everything you ever imagined when you heard that music back in 1997 or whenever you first played Final Fantasy 7. This rearrangement is credited to Tadayoshi Makino, And I mean, if you're going to get hyped up for a boss fight, I don't know of any music that could get you more hyped up than this. So obviously that rules, but I think that that rules for a very specific reason. It rules because it's taking something that we imagined for so long and turning it into this totally bodacious, ridiculous, fully fledged version of it. Like, that recording would rule on its own. I mean, it rocks super hard, but it rules way harder because it's existed in our imaginations for so long. and now we finally get to hear it that way.

And I know there have been like a million bands that have played Fight On in various arrangements, but having it actually play in a Final Fantasy game, I mean, seeing Cloud without his Buster Sword alongside Tifa and Barrett while that guitar riff comes in, that's a very special thing, and that's something that Final Fantasy 7 remake does exceptionally well. I think that all of the composers who worked on this did a fantastic job.

Because, like I said, Final Fantasy 7 remake isn't just a straight-up remake, even though it has remake in the title. It's kind of a reinterpretation in the music is approached very similarly. Sometimes that means taking an existing theme from the original game and rearranging it or even mixing it with other motifs in some pretty cool ways that are very creative and kind of just as creative as other parts of Final Fantasy 7 remake are with the story. But other times it means playing it really straight and just giving people a rich, lush reinterpretation of a tune that they already know. I would say that is certainly true of the first time that you hear Cloud's theme in full. This was rearranged by Shotaro Shima, and it's played in this grandiose way that really sounds like pomp and circumstance or something. I mean, it sounds like this big homecoming because it really is for so many players.

You're walking out as cloud, you're in the undercity, you have like full control for the first time, and you're just kind of marveling at what this looks like. I mean, holy cow, look up there. It's like the saucer of the upper city above me, and I'm just walking around in this fully realized version of Midgar. So what else should be playing on the soundtrack, but as straightforward, word, beautifully realized version of Cloud's theme. And even with the new ritual orchestration, the bigger sounds, the real sounding instruments, and the new counter melodies that they're adding, it's still that fundamental melody and

those fundamental chords that we talked about that make it so strong and then make it land the way that it does. This is it. This musical moment? This is when the game brings you home. In a lot of pretty profound and surprising ways, Final Fantasy 7 remake was actually concerned with reevaluating and rewriting the legacy of Final Fantasy 7, but sometimes you just got to give the people what they want,

and when it comes to the music, the composers knew that at this moment, it was time for something straightforward. Of course, that's not always the case. Cloud's theme, that collection of notes, just that little melodic motif, is everywhere in Final Fantasy 7 remake, more so than in the original game.

If you play through this again, if you've already played it, or if you're going to play it, keep an ear out for it. You'll hear it all over the place. I mean, variations of it, minor key versions, dark versions, bright versions, callbacks. I mean, it's just a constant thing.

And it's really fun to listen for it because it's woven so thoroughly throughout the game. There is, however, another character motif that's arguably even more important for Final Fantasy 7 and for the remake. And it is the most beautiful piece of music, at least to me, it's my favorite piece of music from Final Fantasy 7. And we got to talk about it. So let's get into it. Okay, so that prelude, that was built out of four notes, right? These four notes. And Cloud's theme was built out of five notes, these five notes.

The final theme that we're going to be talking about on Hey Listen has six notes. Three going up and three coming back down. I mean, I couldn't do a discussion of Final Fantasy 7 music without talking about Arith's theme. Arith's theme is so important to Final Fantasy 7, partly because Arith herself is such an important character, also because the music accompanies some of the most impactful and meaningful moments in the original game, and also because it's just a gorgeous piece of music. So while there's a lot of beautiful stuff going on throughout the entire piece,

for me, Ereth's theme is defined by those first six notes and the two chords that accompany them. I think it's a really beautiful motif. It's so simple, just like a lot of Uwimatsu's music, but it's so instantly iconic. Three notes up, three notes down. Perfect. So those six notes actually perfectly outline the first two chords of the song. The first two chords of the song are D major and A minor, and the first three notes are just a D major arpeggio going up to D, and then the second three notes are just an A minor arpeggio going from C to A to E. Now this piece is in D major, which means that those first

two chords are one major to five minor. Now this is actually a chord progression that I just recently talked about on strong songs. I did an episode on Sufian Stevens' song, Chicago, which also heavily relies on one major to five minor. It's a beautiful evocative sound, and I think it's a huge part of why Ayrith's theme is so enchanting and instantly grabs you. Another really famous example of one to five minor is actually in Coldplay's hit song, Clocks the first two chords of that song, also one to five minor. So one to five minor is a sound that a lot of composers know will get you that ethereal sound

that is very appropriate for Ayrith for a lot of reasons. It's a great theme on its own and definitely one of the greatest video game melodies ever written, but I really like what the composers do with it in the remake. Something that Maddie and I actually talked about back on the Beanscast on various other episodes where we talked about Final Fantasy 7 remake was the fact that neither of us actually loved Aarith as a character in the original Final Fantasy 7. She's just not very fleshed out, and while that's true of a lot of Final Fantasy 7 and your imagination has to do heavy lifting, it really has to do some heavy lifting with

Ayrh to get you to care as much about her as you're supposed to. Fortunately, that music really helps. I mean, the music is basically Ayrh's character to me, at least until I played remake and I met this new version of Ayrh. So Cloud has met Ayrth a few times before he really has his first meaningful interaction with her, and she already just seems like more of a person. It's partly the performance, the animations, the extra writing, how much more fleshed out it all is.

But you just get a sense of her as this playful person with a whole inner life. who exists on her own and has her own challenges that are actually going to go on to be really important parts of the game. And as Cloud gets to know her, he follows her home and you get to see where she lives, and it's this beautiful corner of Midgar, it's greener than anything you've seen in the game, and you know where this is going, you know so much about Ayrrith, because you've already played Final Fantasy 7, and that's when they introduced this version of her theme that's so much more elaborate, it doesn't even really play the main theme. It hints at it, and you'll hear very very very, instruments in the ensemble piping up with different parts of that six-note motif, all carefully rearranged by Yoshinori Nakamura, but it doesn't fully arrive for quite some time.

You see her home and her things, you get this sense of her and this place that she lives, and then the theme finally comes in. It feels so rich and drawn out, with new ideas, for a new take on a beloved character. And listeners, let me tell you, the first time I heard this, as I walked around Areth's house, it kind of wrecked me. There are a lot of amazing moments in Final Fantasy 7 remake, but this moment, going home with Aeth and hearing this version, Nakamura's rearrangement of Uwimatsu's original theme,

this was just an unbelievably beautiful moment for me. I was not expecting it to hit me as hard as it did, and it was entirely because of the music that it had that effect. Final Fantasy 7 remake would have been totally fine if it had just straight up remade the Midgard chapters of Final Fantasy 7, and the music would have been fine if it had just been these fleshed-out orchestral versions of the original music. But by doing more, it's just so much more special. All of these composers that Squyereonix brought in to reimagine and rearrange this music

did more than just flesh it out. They created all these interesting stories, just musical stories, that they're telling through the sounds that play as you're playing the game. Sometimes that's as a more elaborate version of Ayrth's theme that really beautifully reflects how she's a much more elaborate character in the remake. Other times they're cleverly mixing motifs to explain what's going on using music. In a really important scene in the game, Aarith and Cloud are having a conversation, and the music in the background is taking Cloud's theme and Aarith's theme and interweaving them in this gorgeous way. You hear it? I mean, that is pretty cool. Final Fantasy 7 remake is so much more than just a remake, and that makes it so

much more interesting than it would have been otherwise. I know it had faults. I know there are things we can't complain about. I know we don't know when the next one is coming out, but I can't help but love this game, and the music is at the heart of why. I love Final Fantasy 7 remake because I love Final Fantasy 7, and I love Final Fantasy 7 because of the music. Thanks for listening, everyone. I hope you liked this first edition of Hey Listen. I certainly had a good time making it. We're going to take a break, and then I'll be back with Maddie and Jason to tell you some about Max Fun Drive, and of course, each share are one more thing. Hello, triple-click listener, Kirk here, and if you liked that analysis, I think you'll

probably like my music podcast, Strong Songs. Strong Songs. On each episode of Strong Songs, I pick a different famous song and take it apart, then put it back together again, all with the goal of helping you hear your favorite music in a different way. I've covered a ton of songs ranging from The Beach Boys God Only Knows. Chordinversions, contrapuntal vocal arranging. To Radiohead's Paranoid Android.

Through composed songwriting. The Dorian Mode To Abba's Dancing Queen Juxtaposition of Harmony and lyrics Miles Davis's So What Modal Jazz Harmony Satisfied from Hamilton Intermixing Character Motifs

And Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody Strategic Brian May deployment I've been having a ton of fun making the show And you don't have to be a musician to appreciate it It is made for musicians and non-musicians alike You can find the show at strongsongspodcast.com Or wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you give it a listen.

Thanks. Popping back into the show here to tell you a little bit more about Max Fun Drive. Max Fun Drive. I love information about Max Fund Drive. Yes, yes. Yes. Okay, so of course you could just go to Maximumfund.org slash join and you would get all of the information that I'm about to tell you.

But before I say that, I just want to emphasize that we know this is a very strange time to be doing a fundraiser of any kind. We're very aware of that. It's part of why Max Funnertime. Fund Drive is super chill this year. Ordinarily in years past, it's two weeks of just mega-hyped Max Fund Drive fundraising. Ordinarily, we threaten your families if you don't know. We've never been on the network.

We don't know what happens. But maybe that was going down. No, it wasn't. Of course not. So this year is four weeks. It's much more chill. And we just want to emphasize that we know some of you aren't in a financial position to support the show right now.

And that's totally fine. you can always share the show or talk about the drive on your social media, whatever you feel comfortable doing. We see you. We appreciate you. Yeah, that, I mean, that's still just as much support is to like share, tell your friends about triple click. Like, that's worth just as much to us. We appreciate anything you can do even if you can't financially support us. Absolutely. And if you are a person who's able to invest in the show, we appreciate it so much. Obviously, we are an independent artist-owned show. That's what Max Fun is a network is all about. That's what you're supporting, you're supporting us directly, and that's really, really important and valuable.

So anyway, maximum fun.org slash join. All those gifts are there. Most of you already know that the $5 level gets you that bonus content. Yeah, bonus beans cast, including the last of us too at the end of this month. That's right. You get the beans cast at every level, but you obviously get it at five. But if you, if you back at 10, y'all, you get to pick a pin and probably you will be choosing the triple click pin. because it freaking owns. It's so cool. It definitely rules and I want one. Yeah.

Yeah. It's black and gold. It has a controller on it. It looks sick as hell. So you're going to click on that. You're going to get your triple click pin. And then every time you gaze upon it, you're going to think to yourself, yes, I am supporting triple click at $10 per month every month.

And you feel great about it. And if you were, for example, to bump it all the way up to $20 a month. Just as a for instance. This is actually like really cool. Like maximum fund's theme this year is games, which is like not normally the theme. You know, I mean, they were waiting for us to do the maximum fund drive. I mean, that's why they needed. Yeah, they were waiting for us to come in.

They were waiting for us for the drive. They were waiting for us to do this theme. Who can say if that's true or not? It's up to you, listener, to decide. So you get the Max Fun Game Pack if you join at $20, which is playing cards that have been illustrated with art that has Easter eggs that are references to the show. And you also get a little bag of dice. and so if you've been chilling out during COVID

and you really want to learn some magic tricks with dice and cards, maybe you want to play some Texas Hold'em like Jason and I like to do. Yeah, all the dice you use in Texas Holden. Yeah, definitely. Well, that's what the playing cards are for. Oh, okay.

So anyway, that's what you get at 20 bucks. So we'll tell you more about the other gifts in the coming weeks, but we just want to emphasize once again. We're grateful for any level of support that you may be able to give to us. Thank you all. You love you all.

It is super cool to be making our own show and to be supported by our listeners. It's the kind of thing that makes us want to do things like extra work on special bonus music episodes and things like that. So, you know, it does make it way cooler to, like, just put a ton of work into the show and make it really great that we own it and that it's just us and all of you supporting us. Like, that is really, really cool. So thank you so much to everybody who already supports the show. We really, really appreciate it. We really do. Big thanks.

And we're back. Enough of that music nonsense. Let's talk about other things, specifically one more thing apiece, the one thing that we each bring in to the show to talk about each week. Maddie, what is your one more thing this week? Okay, so it was my birthday last week. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Maddie. You're a little late, but thank you.

So I wanted RingFit Adventure, which I've talked about on the show before. And now I have my very own copy of RingFit Adventure, courtesy of my mother, noted triple-click listener. her, my mom. She found me at Ringfit. She dropped it off in my house. No contact, COVID style. Was it just like you came out of your house and Ringfit Adventure was just sitting there, like, with no explanation on your front porch? And I had a text from my mother being like, it's on the back porch. And I like went out and there's a wrap present. Yeah, it was great. This is the time in which we I just want to point out that I have been dropping links every single time I've seen it to like online. You have. That's true. You've really been on it. And I appreciate it, Jason, because I have wanted this.

but I should have been sending them to your mother. You should have been texting them to my mom. I don't know what you were even doing. But anyway, she figured it out. Shout out to Maddie's mom. So, Maddie, what do you think of it? Yeah, I really like it. I will quickly say I'm enjoying it a ton,

but I want to also emphasize just a little shout out to Just Dance. I know I'm cheating by mentioning multiple one more things, which is a classic Kirk Hamilton move. Yeah, you can compare them. Cool people do that all the time. I just want to say, I feel like Just Dance is also really good. And it's not to say that I don't. I don't think RingFit deserves being the exercise fad that it has become during COVID.

And I'm, it's only been a few days. I'm already really enjoying it. And it definitely helps with like strength training exercises. There's a lot of strength training stuff in Ringfit that is obviously not a part of Just Dance. Just Dance is purely aerobics. That's what's fun about it. However, I do feel like I get my heart rate up more consistently with Just Dance.

And that is just a huge benefit of that game that in RingFit you don't really get. It's more of a strength training. and then you do sort of intervals of aerobics. Yeah, anaerobic exercise. Yeah, and that's cool too. But if you're somebody who's maybe getting a little tired of ring fit, or perhaps you're somebody who can't find a copy of ring fit, I just want to give a little shout out to just dance.

As like a cross-training methodology for a time period when none of us can go to the gym, and this is all we have. And it's been really fun. Maddie, I just want to say that by this time in like two months, I expect your arms to look like abbeys from the last of us. Yeah, like, flomp. God, I freaking hope.

So, Abby's hashtag goals, those arms are great. No kidding. Good Lord. Nice. Well, I'm the only one who doesn't have ring fit. I might have to get it. It seems like it'd be fun. I've been enjoying my sort of...

Just keep an eye on your G-chats then. Right, right. Jason will definitely keep me posted. Well, because I see every time Mario 64 on Twitter is like ring fit adventures now and it's not. That's a good follow, by the way. Yes, yes. If you want to get some hot gaming deals. He is definitely on top of the hot gaming deals.

So speaking of hot gaming. I guess this is a deal. It's a new game anyways. Jason, tell me about your one more thing, which I'm also playing, and I'm excited to talk to you about. It's not actually a new game, but new port of a game. Yeah, yeah, that's the only console that it really was meant to be on this whole time. That exists? Yes. It's the only console that exists.

Long-time Kentucky split-screen listeners will know that I have obsessed for a long time about crosscode, which is a S-NES-style action RPG is the best way to describe it. that has like these great sprighty graphics. And it is, it's very Zelda inspired. It's got like two-dimensional action combat. You kind of shoot bullets and also slash with your sword. And then it's got a ton of puzzles. And that's the real reason that I love it is because it's got so many clever, like,

bullet puzzles where you have to throw projectiles at switches and do all sorts of incredibly clever things. The dungeons, by the way, are amazing. Wait till you get to the first dungeon. Kirk, you will enjoy quite a bit, I think. One thing I like about the puzzles in this game is it looks like an S&S game, but there are like perspective puzzles on those because you have to climb to different heights. And so it takes a minute to get your head around it, at least at the beginning.

I've played, what, probably five hours of the game so far? And there really is this learning curve where it's like, well, it's totally flat and you're moving around in that very S&ES, you know, whatever, Krono Trigger, Secret of Mata kind of way. But then you climb up on a thing and you have to actually think in terms of, oh, I need get up here and get down there, like at the beginning you're chased by those robots, and you have to run to get away, and it's like, oh, God, wait, where can I climb? I'm going to get killed, and it's pretty cool. I like how they play with that.

Yeah, well, so one of the cool things is when I talk about puzzles, I'm not just talking about puzzles and dungeons, because pretty much every map in the game is its own puzzle in that there are chess hidden everywhere and secrets hidden everywhere, and you have to, like, find vertical paths to get there, and there are a lot of really cool things that you can do with the game. But I even mentioned the big concept. like the hook of the game, which is that this world that you are playing in, it's called Cross Worlds, and it's actually a fictional MMORP within the concept of the game.

So everybody around you, or most of, everybody around you is either an NPC or a player inhabiting this body. And the concept is that it's an actual real physical place in the world of this game, but you control like a virtual body that's in it, or not even a virtual body, like an artificial robot body. And so your, the players talk about how they like feel the senses as they're playing. It's like the ultimate ready player one experience, except without all the shitty references.

I love this game to death I have for a long time. I actually played the bulk of it on PC when it came out a couple of years ago. Thanks to Mike Fahey recommendation. Shout out to Mike Fahey, former Kotaku colleague of ours. Still like Kitaku. Now it has just come to consoles, including the Switch, which Kirk, I know you have been waiting for a long time. And Maddie, you have as well.

since both of you I've convinced to play it. The big downside right now is as of this recording, the Switch version is a little bit janky. It's got a lot of frame rate hitching. It's got a lot of venue lag. It's still very much playable, and I've been playing a ton of it. But I would wait for a patch if you don't mind waiting. The caveat being that by the time this episode is live,

there might already be a patch that fixes this stuff. So hopefully that is the case. But, man, this game, So I have, I put in many, many hours on PC, but I am still starting from the beginning and playing it it all over again on Switch. I'm up to the second dungeon now on my switch. I'm planning on playing through the entire thing again, because it is that good. It is an incredible game. It's one of those games that just like, like those of you of listening to the show know that sometimes I just obsess over games like Outer Wilds or Return of the Obertin, all of us do. And sometimes

there's just a special game that you got to obsess over this. This qualifies. So I highly recommend that everybody out there go and play it. Yeah, I like what I've played. I like the vibe a lot. It just has this sort of really pretty shopping mall vibe, sort of at least at first, in a way that I really like. You know, because it's this kind of this island that was just created to have all these avatars, which are made of this stuff called Instant Matter.

I recommend anybody playing this game go and read the Codex, which is both cleverly written and it has funny jokes. There's a lot of clever writing in the game, a lot of grown-worthy puns, lot of like MMO references, a lot of fourth wall breaking, but it's not really fourth wall breaking because it's actually a game. So it's players in the game talking about like... Which can be tricky. There are times where it feels like you're playing an MMO, at least at first, I was like, oh, so it's a bunch of MMO quests. And they're saying to you, well, don't worry about it. This is all part of this bigger story. You know, you're finding out who your character

really is. But you do have to go grind in the MMO for a little while to learn who you are. So just at the beginning. So most of the quests I found, especially playing the game the second time, Most quests you just do kind of organically as you're playing through. And also you definitely don't have to do them all. Like I would recommend not doing all the side quests if you're jumping into this game from the first time. Just like any MMO, like you don't want to do all the side quests when you play an MMO. Yeah, I like it though. I am waiting for the patch now because I played enough in the menu lag was just kind of bugging me

because it's like five or six seconds. You press the quest button. And then I was just like, oh man. Normally that stuff, when it's a good game, I'm like, whatever. I'll get around it. But I was like, this is taking forever and I know they're going to patch it. Or at least it seems very patchable. Well, hopefully. Hopefully that's patchable. The problem in this game is always that it's written in HDML 5 code. So apparently it was really difficult to get it ported on consoles in the first place. So who knows. Bless them for putting it on Switch because that does feel like it's natural habitat. Like it really feels like it belongs on Switch. But yeah, I hope they're able to fix that stuff. But yeah, man, I love this game to death. And I'm looking forward to both of you playing more hopefully once it's patched. One other quick thing is that I am also playing the new Paper Mario game. But I'll talk.

talk more about that next week because that just came out this week so people might be wondering. My thing is not a, well, it's a video game, but it's not a video game. So my thing is tabletop simulator, which is amazing. And I finally used with my board game group and I'm like totally over the moon over how incredible it is. And I'm sure a lot of listeners who knew about it and knew that I played lots of tabletop games and had a group and had been playing like I had talked about, you know, the digital, like the video game version of Sentinels of the multiverse and the video game version of Lords of Water Deep that we'd played. And I talked about what it's like to kind of play these video game versions that do so many

calculations for you and the pacing is so different and adjusting our tabletop group. And I'm sure there are people out there. This is all for all of you who are sitting there thinking, dude, why doesn't this guy's group play get tabletop simulator and use that instead? Well, we finally did that. Sean, one of the guys in my group was like, let's do tabletop simulator. And we're all kind of like, oh, that looks kind of janky and intimidating. And I don't know.

But it's not actually janky or intimidating. It's just amazing. It is a open-ended game that is basically a framework for you to build any tabletop game within it and then play the game online with your friends. And it's actually very, very simple. We played a game of Root last night, which is a tabletop game that I absolutely love. I've talked about it a lot on split screen. It's the one with the animals. It's this very complicated war game, but it's really, really good.

And there's a, you can get, like, in the workshop, people will make. mods essentially where you download. Oh, like a root alike and then you just download that. Yeah. So this is actually just root. Like it is root. It's all the art and all the cards and everything, which is a whole thing and there's a big complicated thing with tabletop simulator

where like IP is kind of complicated because what people are doing is not clearly just like it's copyright infringement, especially if you're taking like a Star Wars game and recreating it. But a lot of times the creators don't care. Some creators like straight up will just be like it's fine. it's like an ad for the game. Like my group, we own Root. Like, we own all the expansions.

And we would also gladly pay for like... For like a digital version. Or like if it was through tabletop simulator, like, I feel like that's kind of the future of this. Because it was so great. The experience was amazing. It was like the whole game, all the expansions, it auto sets up. But past that, you just have a board in all the cards and you just play. So it's like the game doesn't do anything for you.

You just move the cards around and the pieces around. Like, it's just like you're playing the game, which for some reason to felt revolutionary as we were playing it. It's the way that in VR, when you reload a gun in VR, and you have to like pull back the thing and put the thing in, and you're like, whoa, I have to actually do the thing. Playing a board game on a computer in this way where it's like, well, I got to move the card or your turn ends. And I was like, well, my turn is over. And I just had to say that to everybody. And it was just the next player's turn. Because anyone can just move anything at any time. Right. And if you're like, oh, wait, I messed up. Oh, I forgot to do a thing.

You just do it. Just like, you're playing the game. And it just... That's kind of like a weird mental switch because you're so used to things being automated on a computer. Right, right, but it sounds better, though. Yes, it was fantastic, and, like, we're going to definitely keep using it. Every game exists in this in some capacity. I recommend it so highly... Maybe the three of us should play a board game. I think that would be really, really fun.

I think there's a lot of games we could do that with. That would be cool. And while I don't recommend learning a game as complicated as root in tabletop simulator, only because it's much easier to be sitting there with the rulebook, because that game is very complex. You could, but, um, I think if you have a group and you play together, you probably already know Tabletop Simulator, but if you don't, man, I mean, I can't recommend it more highly. It is absolutely wonderful.

Like, just incredible, incredible. I loved it so much. Oh, that's awesome. And it's free, right? You can, you just get it for free? It's not free. You have to pay for it, but it's like 20 bucks or something. Like the basic thing is, a lot of the downloads are not paid. Some of them are, but you have to buy Tabletop Simulator itself. It's a piece of software. So everybody does need to own it. Each player has own a copy? Yes. Yes. You have to all own and play together. But it's not super expensive, and it's totally worth it considering how many games it contains.

Yeah, if you're into it, yeah, if you're going to get your money's worth out of it. Kirk, did I tell you that I played betrayal at the house and the hill? I don't remember if you liked that game. Oh, I love that game. Did you play the legacy version or just the base game? No, just the regular version. We played it. Base game is fun.

While I was on my trip to Connecticut, we played it. And even my friends who were like not board game people actually got into it. It's very, very fun game. So before we go, let's talk about Max Fun Drive a little more. Yes, one last plug. Maddie, take us away. Sure. So we just want to say, once again, thank you so much to everybody who's already joined and become a member.

And we love you and appreciate you. Yes. But also super double thank you to folks who are hopping over the fence and joining us now and participating in the drive. Because that's really great. And that is how we are able to keep making this show. have it be independent, have it be the show we want it to be, have Kirk spend days and days telling us about Final Fantasy music, just for example.

Et cetera. That's the stuff you love. So just head on over to maximum fun.org slash join and check that stuff out. So, special announcement. Take it away. We will be streaming a video game. You sure will be. The three of us are going to get together and live stream a game

and we will be talking and probably reading your comments and answering your question. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. It's going to be great. We'll be playing live games for all of you in the near future.

And that is it for this week's episode. That's it. Kirk, Maddie, goodbye. He'll see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music.

Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to maximum fun.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so help support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple-click episode each month. Find us online at triple-clickpodcast.com, on Twitter at triple-clickpod, and send email to triple-click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.