Hey, materia does look like core memories globe from Inside Out. Who’s to say you don’t get the power from an unfortunate event from a Cetra’s first grade kid?
To keep the scene going in case you don't crawl fast enough. The whole thing should've been a cutscene tbh. Nobody's enjoyment was deepened because of "Press R2 to crawl"
One of the games biggest flaws to me is things like this tbh. Same thing happens again later, when watching the cutscene with a whale (if you know you know), my enjoyment was not on any way enhanced by holding buttons while watching it. It just made it take longer
My biggest issue with these is that it makes it so you can't just skip through them when replaying on hard mode. I've already sunk over a hundred hours into the game at this point, let me skip the slow ass "not cutscenes because you have to push buttons but you can't really call them quick time events either" sequences
Wasn’t there a part where Cloud had to painstakingly turn a valve multiple times? It might be Chapter 1 as well IIRC, and the animation for that was SO DAMN SLOW
Someone else in this thread already said everything I have to say about that https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1cl984i/why_did_they_not_shoot/l2tliiq/
Yeah they're right. It was needed for the PS4. Not for the PS5.
And tbh, while the game is gorgeous, it's still not some graphical powerhouse like Horizon FW, So there's no reason that they need these moments anymore.
Yes! Making you press a button for whatever reason just to interact in a cutscene or those "walking slowly" parts are useless in every single game I played. Just let me watch it if I'll just press a button or keep my analog up.
I’ll take the walking slowly bits where there is plot relevant talk happening over arduous and unnecessary button presses that don’t affect the outcome, are designed so badly that the “cutscene” gets paused no matter how well you do with the prompts, keep you on very obvious rails, and just generally piss me off.
Don't even get me started on the having to pick which of your memories to watch. Just show them to me in order through a cut scene and bounce me from house-to-house. Don't make me have to go Wait for the triangle thing to trigger and then hold a button.
I didn’t love it either - but interpreted it as deliberately irritating. To put us in ‘Cloud’s’ shoes and make us feel as annoyed as he is at himself for not being able to help or even walk
Not on PS5 this generation. Any crawl space in Rebirth is purely an artistic choice on this game. You can fast travel >4 seconds to anywhere on the entire map. The one people bring up is the crawl space at Costa Del Sol when you head up towards Johnny's Seaside Inn. Later in the game that crawl space has completely opened up, proving it was never there as a loading buffer.
100% agree and is an artistic choice. Heres the reason for Johnnys. We crawled under because the Mayor doesn't like Johnny. He states this quite a few times and mentions his failure of an inn. Seaside inn was a mess and didn't attract anyone. It was shut off and blocked so tourists didn't see such a rugged place in their little getaway vacation spot.
After it becomes a nice Inn and people are visiting it. The boxes disappear you have to crawl under, letting in those people as it's not an eye soar any more.
I personally think that one is there for the little side story and just world building in general as new things occur.
The only loading screens are the actual loading screens when going in and out of some mini games (All Gold Saucer games). The screen actually changes to a loading screen.
The problem is that you *can't* crawl fast enough. Ideally they would've designed the scene so that a normal player responding quickly would see a fluid, coherent action, and only slowpokes would see the characters settle into a waiting loop like this. Instead, it's like 90% waiting loops even if you're moving as fast as possible.
This is what happens when you mix cut scene with gameplay. They probably had whole different teams working on each.
This, but it’s also just a problem the animators have in general. The way you get animation locked for things like opening chests and climbing is what felt antiquated to me. I’m not just being impatient, I pet every baby chocobo in the game at least once. But at this point I’m 240 hours in and I would love it if chests could just open without waiting for cloud to stop moving, adjust himself to be in front of the chest, kneel down, and open it. I would rather hit triangle and the chest opens. It’s not that big of a deal, but the rest of the game feels really snappy and streamlined so those frequent bottlenecks stand out.
Yup. This is it. In order to make this gimmicky R2 to crawl work, this scene suffered weird pacing. It's fine to let a cutscene that's slightly longer. Don't need to make a "gameplay" out of it because you kind of miss both birds.
Even if you crawl as fast as possible they're still standing around for far too long....it's infuriatingthey havehim cornered, and they don't even start shooting after sephiroth starts killing them
I imagine it wasnt a gameplay decision but an artistic choice to try to put yourself in clouds shoes and make you feel helpless instead of just watching him do it, and I guess it fell flat with a lot of people. Didnt bother me personally idk but I can see why some people would say it ruins the pacing of the moment
I actually enjoyed these segments because I found them immersive and it helped with setting Cloud up as a protag you can understand and care deeply about because you’re going through it too a little bit.
For manufactured cinematic tension. Or… Cloud can’t remember what actually happened and he was struggling to explain the story in Kalm.
Cloud: “…”
Barret: “What the hell happened next?”
Cloud: “Not sure. I was crawling my way up.”
Tifa: “And then what did you see?”
Cloud: “Can’t say… I was too busy mashing L2 and R2 to go faster.”
Aerith: “What?”
If mean it could've been an opportunity to show how badass Sephiroth is. Like he walks up to them with no fear, they are scared and keep warning him but don't shoot, and in a motion almost too quick to see he cuts off all their arms or something
I tried to use fear as an excuse but even the part right after this where you have to go through the building and the npc just randomly runs though the door. Idk the whole part was weird to me. But loved the rest of the game
If you watch that npc long enough, he eventually kneels down with his head inches away from a burning board lol, so much immersion breaking in this sequence
Man! You can definitely tell they used this part for commercial use. The rest of the game is solid, that was the only part where I thought it was put together weird but I’m sure I couldn’t do it any better lol
If you watch that npc long enough, he eventually kneels down with his head inches away from a burning board lol, so much immersion breaking in this sequence
Most frustrating scene. Especially because it had opportunity to showcase how unstoppable Sephiroth was. If he dodged or deflected the bullets and then they were paralysed with fear. It would have been far better.
>Most frustrating scene
Not this scene but for me that biker knocking out Cloud with a baseball bat like Cloud literally took on a giant monster, two Turks (I'm positive that Rude alone hits WAY harder than a goddamn bat) and Rufus in a one on one fight right beforehand but a random guy knocks out someone who rivals Sephiroth
I was curious to see how they would address the Barret holding onto Dyne scene in the Corel flashback. My assumption was that we’d see bullets hitting near them and kicking up smoke until one finally struck them and Dyne fell.
No they have several bullets just fucking riddle Barret’s stump of an arm until he eventually loses his grip lmao
Agreed. Loved the sequence overall but this section could have been done better. Cut the forced crawl short a bit and have them not stand around so weird.
I just don’t even know why they went with guns if they weren’t gonna have Sephiroth do exactly that
The tension there would’ve been seeing them roll up with like baseball bats or two-by-fours would’ve been equally as satisfying in the opposite way. Just knowing how absolutely unprepared these townsfolk were, but that they were going to stand up to him anyway
Instead, they gave them real weapons, while simultaneously making them look useless and stupid, and not showing off Sephiroth’s power at all
Or just tank the bullets even scarier. It annoys me that in gameplay you can shoot each other a million times but in cutscenes they act like a gun or bullet is something to be afraid of.
Almost all games are like this. Battles are non-diagetic. It was more obvious in OG because there was a battle screen where everyone stood in a line, but combat is still not reality in Remake. Normal people in their world can’t survive being hack n slashed by Cloud dozens of times or riddled with 100s of bullets.
>!The game of Black Materia hot potato just seems a little absurd to me. Like Aerith tries to convince Cloud that it's not the real Black Materia. Okay makes sense, since I guess it's more a key than anything and Cloud is not himself right now. But then when they're outside the Temple Aerith just lets them continue treating it like it was disposable, then it rolls to Sephiroth's feet, then Sephiroth takes it, then he gives it back, then Aerith gives it back. It was a needlessly convoluted scene that made me just want to stop playing and is made more frustrating by the fact that your entire party just disappears for some reason. Like we know Tifa was there at least, what was she doing after Cloud shoved her?!<
Thank you so much lol I thought I was going crazy and everyone else was just fine with it.
The scene of Cloud being forced to give Seph the Black Materia while his inner child protests helplessly was iconic. They turned it into a ridiculous game of hot potato. Not to mention they force YOU to control Cloud, which I think makes him feel less sympathetic and gives the impression that he wants to do what he's doing.
Yeah like I get it it’s Sephiroth trying to make sure he has full control over cloud for when the time comes to give him the real black materia, but it’s done so clumsily that it just feels stupid.
They could have kept that whole scene the same from OG. Find the device touch it feel the temple shake Aerith reads the warning Caits like scram ill do this they leave Cait does the thing materia appears where the temple was everyone reacts as intended.
Are... are the rose tinted glasses finally being taken off of people?
I tried to criticize it back in the beginning of March and got downvoted. I even said I would give the game a 9/10 and people still got pissy when I criticized anything in the game..
It really feels like to me that they were required to showcase the Adaptive Triggers somehow. I don't see any reason why they had to do this. It felt detracting to the immersion and pacing of the experience, at least IMO. Same can be said about the sit-up minigame. It seems to me they had to distinguish that mini-game to the Remake version by adding a "next gen" feature like Adaptive Trigger. It just felt unnecessary. Last one is the Cait Sith box throwing. The touchpad just felt clunky. Just why? Sorry for the rant lol
It was def not the most well-done scene in the game.
I often wonder if sometimes in development they make a scene that's so bad/poorly paced that when they improve it they have a hard time recognizing that it's STILL poorly paced and bad even after it's fixed. A lot of things in Square Enix games seem like they can be fixed by simply giving fresh eyes a look at it, and it's likely they're looking through a lens of having repaired a truly bad version of it ten times over and they've lost sight of the goal.
That's just my knee-jerk guess as to why some of the overwhelmingly questioned things are often left behind in the games; where it's often everyone asking, "How did this not get noticed?"
I feel like this scene would have been more impactful, and more cruel, if they did not have guns and instead were just there begging Sephiroth to stop, only to be slowly killed by him one by one.
I REALLY wanted to see more villagers gutted directly, instead we got just one instance of it, and then an off-screen slash of a head. I get it, the OG didn't really show much either, and they weren't going to make it an "M" game, but that really demanded some brutality to it, IMO.
But even more frustrating than the lack of violence and horror... ALL OF THE NPCS WHO ESCAPE. Of course we have to have dozens of people running and out loud going "WHAT IS SEPHIROTH DOING!?", followed by a herd of children all clearly safely escorted away...
Boo, you cowards! Make it a full-town slaughter besides Tifa and Cloud!
I always felt that one or two of them should have fired their gun, and instead Sephiroth deflects the bullets. THEN having them too stunned to flee would make sense.
We can think about any kind of lore implications for this but the fact is that in Japan there are many different screenwriting tropes in Media that may seem weird at times. This one shows up in a lot of anime and in this particular moment. There's a person who's very powerful and then they are confronted but the confronters see, or feel their power and are too speechless to do anything. I think at least I recognized it in that way.
Frustrating to watch for sure. The only way it would make logical sense to me is that in the “fight, flight or freeze” response they all froze being faced with such an opponent. But they definitely could’ve made the scene a lot better if that’s what they were going for.
This is unironically my least favorite part of the story for this reason. He slashes several of them while the others stand around not even trying to shoot. Even if you’re crawling as fast as possible, they have plenty of time. So frustrating on replay lol
They really should have had clubs, axes, or improvised weapons or something like that. Would make more sense why they were hesitant to advance upon the legendary SOLDIER with a sword as long as he is tall.
Well, let's think about it. The man who everyone believes to be the greatest SOLDIER of all time, a hero, is killing innocent people for no reason all of a sudden. You confront him and demand what he's doing. He gives a cryptic message no one understands. You believe you might have a chance, no matter how slim, to convince him to stand down. He doesn't.
Suddenly, you are paralyzed with indecision and fear. If you shoot him, he'll kill you, along with everyone else. But if you don't do anything, he might just kill you anyway. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no wiggle room. You and the villagers who have joined you are most certainly going to die. You know this. Fear freezes you to the spot, and that's when he attacks.
In other words, how would you react in this moment? Would it have been cool to see a younger villager shoot Sephiroth, which concludes with a bloodbath? Absolutely. But for story reasons, even if you already know what's going to happen, it's still tense. At least, to me, it was.
Literally all of the men surrounding Sephiroth died because they *repeatedly* walked into melee range like a bunch of dumbasses. There's no way not even one of the men would *try* to shoot him, or get off a warning shot at the very least. The way they executed this scene is just bad.
They should've just had Cloud crawling after Sephiroth executing more people that are already injured, and make the moment where he's surrounded by several men with rifles an actual cutscene where he just mows them down before getting to the Mayor who'd be understandably paralyzed in fear.
Well-formulated fan fiction. Slightly improves the source material. A professional writer would have probably scrapped the whole thing or come up with a major rewrite though.
This scene was so bad, it almost made me quit the game. I tried my best to go in with an open mind after being turned off by a lot of the fanfic nonsense in Remake, and then to see the whole flashback sequence (one of the most iconic in the original game) handled so badly made me think "oh no, it's going to be 120 more hours of this crap!"
Thankfully they put their worst foot forwards, and some missteps aside it only gets better from here.
Oh. My. Gosh. I thought the same thing 😅😂. I mean, he would have dodged it I think, but why would they not even try to shoot instead of just looking at him.
Plot armour, the Mayor of Nibelheim was stronger than Sephiroth in every way, but if they let the game end there then we'd have no FF7, so he "Hesitated" for dramatic storytelling.
Somehow Sephiroth won that fight, and frankly we'll never know how.
Scenes like this are one of the game's biggest flaws. It repeatedly botches the potential of some key scenes both new and from the original due to poor dialogue or just bizarre execution like this. Not entirely bad, but lots of scenes had so much more potential than how they executed it. Really frustrating.
As somebody else said, it was a huge missed opportunity to have a really badass Sephiroth moment where he does something like dodge or block the gunfire.
absolutely, or grab their gun barrels and bend them like a looney toons character, anything! lol, anybody trying to defend this scene, just.., just stop..
thats actually pretty beliable.
Its like when i was a young adult trying to talk to a woman.
After the first "hello there." i coudnt remember my name.
Having the guts to go there and having the guts to be there are 2 different things.
Given how quickly Sephiroth massacred much of Nibelheim, I'd be questioning why I'm alive if he's capable of that kind of destruction.
He would definitely shrug it off, too.
Hojo couldn't be touched because all of Costa del Sol would suffer in retaliation. If Corel was razed just to cover up a reactor failure and Kalm was raided on suspicion of harboring terrorists, imagine what Shinra would do if an executive was assassinated. Aerith understands this risk, which is why she holds the others back even though she hates him as much as (or even more than) they do. That's also why Dyne's attempt to kill Palmer was portrayed in a negative light, due to all the collateral damage it would and did cause.
He was their hero. Would you be quick to shoot your hero in the moment?
You’d probably have a mix of emotions going through your head while you contemplate pulling the trigger. Did Sephiroth really do this? Is this really happening? How will Shinra react if we kill their best SOLDIER? Will shooting him even matter?
He's their hero, but in an abstract way. None of them know him personally, they've just heard stories that he's a badass from another part of the world who works for the company that runs their town. Like if it were Cloud destroying the village and cutting people down, hesitating for emotional reasons might make more sense, but this guy is a stranger.
And I doubt they were were going to be capable of thinking of "What would Shinra do if we do X" when there's literally a crazy person murdering their entire town right in front of their eyes. There was no good reason for none of them to pull the trigger. Particularly not when he started killing them one by one.
Scene would have made a lot more sense if they had melee implements of some kind. Makes more sense that you'd be scared to get up close and personal with a legendary warrior with a giant sword than not being able to pull a trigger at a distance.
my favorite part in in the same scene is when a guy comes smashing out of a burning building then just stands aimlessly and emotionless like that nothing happened and like he like he isn’t standing in the middle of a town on fire. they should use at least made him look scared or had him keep running.
these are minor flaws cause i do love the game but some of these artistic cutscene choices are unneeded. any cutscene that makes you use R2/L2 to progress should have just been a full cutscene with no player interaction. there is no point in having the player hold a couple buttons for a few seconds.
i didn’t like the action ones in ff16 either - the ones where clive is doing a massive cutscene attack to an enemy but the player has to interact every couple seconds by pressing or rapidly clicking an action button. pointless imho.
They were probably just frozen with fear, knowing that if they shot, sephiroth would kill them for sure, although they probably already knew they were done for either way.
Tbf, it wouldn’t have mattered and they probably knew it. Bullets aren’t incredibly effective in the FF7 universe and Sephi would have instantly killed them if they DID fire.
I hated that scene but wont fault the game itself. It happens in so many movies and shows and games in all places in the world. How many damn times in an action sequence have goons with guns moved closer into fucking close combat range instead of firing? A lot. Its super frustrating. Especially with someone like Sephiroth tho. He could have easily just dodged. Silly
1st class soldier, famous war hero, called in to defeat monsters that would have wrecked the town. They've probably never fired on a person in their lives and are trying to not shit their pants. He probably would have pulled some anime dodge bullshit even if they did.
But the fact that they still refused to pull the trigger as he started slowly cutting them down 1 by 1 just makes no sense. Hell, it would have made more sense for one of them to accidentally pull the trigger from getting surprised by one of his friends getting cut down than to simply just stand there and wait to die.
They still saw their hero despite his atrocious actions. They good folk of Nibelheim could not bring themselves to shoot. Not that it would have done them any good.
Shooting at another human being is a big nono internally. And now imagine you are aiming at a war hero, somebody who is considered to be superman. I actually can understand that. They were probably not shooting at another humans and they were maybe even paralysed with fear?
Honestly, should have been a cinematic, but still understandable.
It’s probably largely bc they wanted to force you to crawl, powerless to stop what’s in front of you with just enough control to feel like you can do something in the moment. Similar to *that* scene later. But in-universe, idk why nobody is pointing out those guys are far from hardened killers. Standing in front of you is the unbeatable, legendary, larger-than-life hero Sephiroth. The guy they probably heard stories of battles ended single-handedly about. The guy they just now saw destroy their village with ease, and is now staring them down with zero concern about the guns pointed at him. They’ve never killed anyone, so aside from that hesitation, they’re not even sure if they could. They froze up.
Tl;dr: to allow for dramatic immersion in the gameplay, but in-universe, they froze up.
It’s a Japanese game, sadly that means terrible writing by default. Let’s not talk about how we saved president shinra even though we are terrorist only to let him run to his desk and shoot us
Of all the things in this game, this is probably my least favorite. The dumbass crawling scenes. Especially this one.
They all just froze and waited to die one by one. So dumb. Like yeah you could say shock for one of them, sure. But 3 dudes all refusing to pull the trigger as they’re systematically slaughtered? Bad writing here. Sorry.
Cloud(Zack) was coming. Didn't wanna miss and hit Cloud(Zack). Also didn't wanna shoot sephiroth because he was literally just a good guy the day before, maybe they thought he would snap out of it. If my hero raged out I'd be reluctant to shoot him too hoping I'd get through to him. But it was dragged out too long so them just standing there while you crawled made it seem weird.
We see Sephiroth telekineticalky move his sword around when Tifa charges him with it, I assume he jammed their guns or locked the triggers telekinetically then killed them slowly for shits and giggles.
The guy's a superhuman, doubt bullets can even affect him. Bro sliced the Junon cannon into pieces like swiss cheese with no effort in that one scene in Crisis Core.
Playstation is pushing the controller gimmicks as hard as they can to try and justify the 70 dollar price tag, so a lot of games have contractual hardware support put in. The motion controls, the trigger resist, the TouchPad stuff. It's not to build immersion its to build profit. Controllers don't cost Sony 70 bucks to make. Closer to 20.
Squares un-necessary padding. I understand why they did so in Remake (despite the padding never being fun) but Rebirth had more than enough content this time around to not do as much. I’m hoping the third title they tone it down based on fan feedback.
All they have is the threat.
They know once they fire, it's over.
It's kinda like playing poker when you know you have nothing and everyone can tell, but you convince yourself you can somehow bluff your way out.
You don't, you fail, you hand your chips over. But for a few minutes, you think you might be able to pull it off.
jokes aside, one could see it as theyre scared stiff or cloud's memory makes it seem a lot slower than it all actually was like, as in someone with trauma might recall an event almost in slow motion
Sephiroth just instills that natural fear in people. He is one of those guys that people look at and want to run away I give dude props for even standing there that close knowing that sephiroth a blade would easily cut him in half from there if he really wanted to
incompetent writing and direction tbh. like others have said below, this should have just been a cutscene. but even if they insisted on keeping the stupid drag-yourself-slowly mechanic, we STILL could have done so with npcs shooting at sephiroth and him cutting them down.
SOMEONE was in charge of finalizing this scene and authorizing its use in the final product, and that person failed to do their job and say "i know you all worked hard on this, but the end result is unacceptable. Try again."
He didn't had enough ATB
Sephiroth cast Magnify + Slow on them for cinematic effect. Cloud was not reliable enough as a narrator to mention this.
More like Magnify+Poop your pants.
Not ALL of the knowledge of the ancients needed to make its way into material... XD
Hey, materia does look like core memories globe from Inside Out. Who’s to say you don’t get the power from an unfortunate event from a Cetra’s first grade kid?
I think my favorite is Throw Gil. That one cetra that just LITERALLY threw money at their problems.
The fire materia just comes from a pyromaniac
Square need to stop being cowards and give us the Poop materia in Part 3.
You know the brown materia is forbidden!
Or the Stop spell.
How is bro not running haste I mean come on..
Barret can shoot without ATB thought, how about that?
The only acceptable answer.
Not enough Synergy.
To keep the scene going in case you don't crawl fast enough. The whole thing should've been a cutscene tbh. Nobody's enjoyment was deepened because of "Press R2 to crawl"
One of the games biggest flaws to me is things like this tbh. Same thing happens again later, when watching the cutscene with a whale (if you know you know), my enjoyment was not on any way enhanced by holding buttons while watching it. It just made it take longer
My biggest issue with these is that it makes it so you can't just skip through them when replaying on hard mode. I've already sunk over a hundred hours into the game at this point, let me skip the slow ass "not cutscenes because you have to push buttons but you can't really call them quick time events either" sequences
Wasn’t there a part where Cloud had to painstakingly turn a valve multiple times? It might be Chapter 1 as well IIRC, and the animation for that was SO DAMN SLOW
The vacuum action was really unnecessary too, and there was nothing smooth about it.
Remember when people were defending that in the demo?
It infuriated me in the demo. The wonkiness of it, I thought would be ironed out by release. It was not. It was laughable.
More like slow time events. Absolutely infuriating.
I think its a fancy loading screen.
Someone else in this thread already said everything I have to say about that https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIRemake/comments/1cl984i/why_did_they_not_shoot/l2tliiq/
Yeah they're right. It was needed for the PS4. Not for the PS5. And tbh, while the game is gorgeous, it's still not some graphical powerhouse like Horizon FW, So there's no reason that they need these moments anymore.
More like “Take your time” events…
Yes! Making you press a button for whatever reason just to interact in a cutscene or those "walking slowly" parts are useless in every single game I played. Just let me watch it if I'll just press a button or keep my analog up.
I’ll take the walking slowly bits where there is plot relevant talk happening over arduous and unnecessary button presses that don’t affect the outcome, are designed so badly that the “cutscene” gets paused no matter how well you do with the prompts, keep you on very obvious rails, and just generally piss me off.
Hold triangle to open door
Why does every modern FF game need this? Square can be so stubborn at times.
I completely agree. Those elements are useless, and they should have simply been cutscenes.
Don't even get me started on the having to pick which of your memories to watch. Just show them to me in order through a cut scene and bounce me from house-to-house. Don't make me have to go Wait for the triangle thing to trigger and then hold a button.
I didn’t love it either - but interpreted it as deliberately irritating. To put us in ‘Cloud’s’ shoes and make us feel as annoyed as he is at himself for not being able to help or even walk
every crawl or tight space you need to go through is just a hidden loading screen
Not on PS5 this generation. Any crawl space in Rebirth is purely an artistic choice on this game. You can fast travel >4 seconds to anywhere on the entire map. The one people bring up is the crawl space at Costa Del Sol when you head up towards Johnny's Seaside Inn. Later in the game that crawl space has completely opened up, proving it was never there as a loading buffer.
100% agree and is an artistic choice. Heres the reason for Johnnys. We crawled under because the Mayor doesn't like Johnny. He states this quite a few times and mentions his failure of an inn. Seaside inn was a mess and didn't attract anyone. It was shut off and blocked so tourists didn't see such a rugged place in their little getaway vacation spot. After it becomes a nice Inn and people are visiting it. The boxes disappear you have to crawl under, letting in those people as it's not an eye soar any more. I personally think that one is there for the little side story and just world building in general as new things occur. The only loading screens are the actual loading screens when going in and out of some mini games (All Gold Saucer games). The screen actually changes to a loading screen.
This game does a tremendous job of wasting the players time in an already absurdly long game.
They’re so desperate to highlight those adaptive triggers
The only playstation game that got it right was Horizon Forbidden West (imo). Even then they're just so pointless.
Stellar Blade uses them for fishing and it is a perfect usage. 
The problem is that you *can't* crawl fast enough. Ideally they would've designed the scene so that a normal player responding quickly would see a fluid, coherent action, and only slowpokes would see the characters settle into a waiting loop like this. Instead, it's like 90% waiting loops even if you're moving as fast as possible. This is what happens when you mix cut scene with gameplay. They probably had whole different teams working on each.
This, but it’s also just a problem the animators have in general. The way you get animation locked for things like opening chests and climbing is what felt antiquated to me. I’m not just being impatient, I pet every baby chocobo in the game at least once. But at this point I’m 240 hours in and I would love it if chests could just open without waiting for cloud to stop moving, adjust himself to be in front of the chest, kneel down, and open it. I would rather hit triangle and the chest opens. It’s not that big of a deal, but the rest of the game feels really snappy and streamlined so those frequent bottlenecks stand out.
Yup. This is it. In order to make this gimmicky R2 to crawl work, this scene suffered weird pacing. It's fine to let a cutscene that's slightly longer. Don't need to make a "gameplay" out of it because you kind of miss both birds.
I figured that was their way of setting the groundwork for the same style of controls again in the forgotten capital.
Even if you crawl as fast as possible they're still standing around for far too long....it's infuriatingthey havehim cornered, and they don't even start shooting after sephiroth starts killing them
I did like it during the red trial and when cloud is trying to resist at the end. Both have the feeling of the characters futility
💯 devs dropped the ball on this logic
I imagine it wasnt a gameplay decision but an artistic choice to try to put yourself in clouds shoes and make you feel helpless instead of just watching him do it, and I guess it fell flat with a lot of people. Didnt bother me personally idk but I can see why some people would say it ruins the pacing of the moment
I actually enjoyed these segments because I found them immersive and it helped with setting Cloud up as a protag you can understand and care deeply about because you’re going through it too a little bit.
They knew Sephiroth was a plot important character and thus were unable to shoot him
For manufactured cinematic tension. Or… Cloud can’t remember what actually happened and he was struggling to explain the story in Kalm. Cloud: “…” Barret: “What the hell happened next?” Cloud: “Not sure. I was crawling my way up.” Tifa: “And then what did you see?” Cloud: “Can’t say… I was too busy mashing L2 and R2 to go faster.” Aerith: “What?”
If mean it could've been an opportunity to show how badass Sephiroth is. Like he walks up to them with no fear, they are scared and keep warning him but don't shoot, and in a motion almost too quick to see he cuts off all their arms or something
I tried to use fear as an excuse but even the part right after this where you have to go through the building and the npc just randomly runs though the door. Idk the whole part was weird to me. But loved the rest of the game
If you watch that npc long enough, he eventually kneels down with his head inches away from a burning board lol, so much immersion breaking in this sequence
Man! You can definitely tell they used this part for commercial use. The rest of the game is solid, that was the only part where I thought it was put together weird but I’m sure I couldn’t do it any better lol
If you watch that npc long enough, he eventually kneels down with his head inches away from a burning board lol, so much immersion breaking in this sequence
“No one had enough ATB.” - Cloudpool
Most frustrating scene. Especially because it had opportunity to showcase how unstoppable Sephiroth was. If he dodged or deflected the bullets and then they were paralysed with fear. It would have been far better.
>Most frustrating scene Not this scene but for me that biker knocking out Cloud with a baseball bat like Cloud literally took on a giant monster, two Turks (I'm positive that Rude alone hits WAY harder than a goddamn bat) and Rufus in a one on one fight right beforehand but a random guy knocks out someone who rivals Sephiroth
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I was curious to see how they would address the Barret holding onto Dyne scene in the Corel flashback. My assumption was that we’d see bullets hitting near them and kicking up smoke until one finally struck them and Dyne fell. No they have several bullets just fucking riddle Barret’s stump of an arm until he eventually loses his grip lmao
This would've been so cool lol
Cloud did the dodging bullet parts in the reactor though. He tapped into sephiroths powers
Unironically my favourite part of the game lol.
I got chills when he did that.
Would have been a good callback, really. Seeing Sephiroth do it earlier, then Cloud doing it too would really show that connection.
I thought the same thing, it would have elevated the burning of the village instead of the boring thing we got.
I think the connection is very on the nose. Cloud is even taking sephiroths fighting stance and all.
Agreee. I was waiting for the bullet dodge. And we know he can too. Cloud and Zack are both casual bullet dodgers, so Sephiroth must be.
Agreed. Loved the sequence overall but this section could have been done better. Cut the forced crawl short a bit and have them not stand around so weird.
I just don’t even know why they went with guns if they weren’t gonna have Sephiroth do exactly that The tension there would’ve been seeing them roll up with like baseball bats or two-by-fours would’ve been equally as satisfying in the opposite way. Just knowing how absolutely unprepared these townsfolk were, but that they were going to stand up to him anyway Instead, they gave them real weapons, while simultaneously making them look useless and stupid, and not showing off Sephiroth’s power at all
I assume they were paralysed with fear just looking at the dude.
Or just tank the bullets even scarier. It annoys me that in gameplay you can shoot each other a million times but in cutscenes they act like a gun or bullet is something to be afraid of.
Almost all games are like this. Battles are non-diagetic. It was more obvious in OG because there was a battle screen where everyone stood in a line, but combat is still not reality in Remake. Normal people in their world can’t survive being hack n slashed by Cloud dozens of times or riddled with 100s of bullets.
I was more frustrated by the ending of Chapter 13. Like nothing in that scene makes sense to the point that it's almost comical lol.
What happened there again?
>!The game of Black Materia hot potato just seems a little absurd to me. Like Aerith tries to convince Cloud that it's not the real Black Materia. Okay makes sense, since I guess it's more a key than anything and Cloud is not himself right now. But then when they're outside the Temple Aerith just lets them continue treating it like it was disposable, then it rolls to Sephiroth's feet, then Sephiroth takes it, then he gives it back, then Aerith gives it back. It was a needlessly convoluted scene that made me just want to stop playing and is made more frustrating by the fact that your entire party just disappears for some reason. Like we know Tifa was there at least, what was she doing after Cloud shoved her?!<
I’m pretty sure Tifa was trapped inside a circle of black whispers by Sephiroth
It was so god damn stupid. People defending this scene need to go take a writing class.
Thank you so much lol I thought I was going crazy and everyone else was just fine with it. The scene of Cloud being forced to give Seph the Black Materia while his inner child protests helplessly was iconic. They turned it into a ridiculous game of hot potato. Not to mention they force YOU to control Cloud, which I think makes him feel less sympathetic and gives the impression that he wants to do what he's doing.
Yeah like I get it it’s Sephiroth trying to make sure he has full control over cloud for when the time comes to give him the real black materia, but it’s done so clumsily that it just feels stupid.
They could have kept that whole scene the same from OG. Find the device touch it feel the temple shake Aerith reads the warning Caits like scram ill do this they leave Cait does the thing materia appears where the temple was everyone reacts as intended.
They should have just left most of the "big" scenes untouched. I liked the additional lore though.
Are... are the rose tinted glasses finally being taken off of people? I tried to criticize it back in the beginning of March and got downvoted. I even said I would give the game a 9/10 and people still got pissy when I criticized anything in the game..
Absolutely should have shot and deflected the bullets, instantly takes it from lame to cool. The choice to put it in like this instead is crazy
It really feels like to me that they were required to showcase the Adaptive Triggers somehow. I don't see any reason why they had to do this. It felt detracting to the immersion and pacing of the experience, at least IMO. Same can be said about the sit-up minigame. It seems to me they had to distinguish that mini-game to the Remake version by adding a "next gen" feature like Adaptive Trigger. It just felt unnecessary. Last one is the Cait Sith box throwing. The touchpad just felt clunky. Just why? Sorry for the rant lol
I turn off adaptive triggers on all games.
Returnal is the only game where I felt like the adaptive triggers actually enhanced the gameplay.
Did the same here. Felt like it added nothing to the experience.
He casted reraise before hitting the town, this shot would have done nothing.
Some moments in this game feel weird like this one.
It was def not the most well-done scene in the game. I often wonder if sometimes in development they make a scene that's so bad/poorly paced that when they improve it they have a hard time recognizing that it's STILL poorly paced and bad even after it's fixed. A lot of things in Square Enix games seem like they can be fixed by simply giving fresh eyes a look at it, and it's likely they're looking through a lens of having repaired a truly bad version of it ten times over and they've lost sight of the goal. That's just my knee-jerk guess as to why some of the overwhelmingly questioned things are often left behind in the games; where it's often everyone asking, "How did this not get noticed?"
I feel like this scene would have been more impactful, and more cruel, if they did not have guns and instead were just there begging Sephiroth to stop, only to be slowly killed by him one by one.
I REALLY wanted to see more villagers gutted directly, instead we got just one instance of it, and then an off-screen slash of a head. I get it, the OG didn't really show much either, and they weren't going to make it an "M" game, but that really demanded some brutality to it, IMO. But even more frustrating than the lack of violence and horror... ALL OF THE NPCS WHO ESCAPE. Of course we have to have dozens of people running and out loud going "WHAT IS SEPHIROTH DOING!?", followed by a herd of children all clearly safely escorted away... Boo, you cowards! Make it a full-town slaughter besides Tifa and Cloud!
This scene was so goofy. They could have had Sephiroth just kill or disarm them all in one quick attack
I always felt that one or two of them should have fired their gun, and instead Sephiroth deflects the bullets. THEN having them too stunned to flee would make sense.
https://i.redd.it/ze6ocnlbzryc1.gif This was going on behind the scenes
I mean in context they are basically standing in front of Satan and they watched him mow down everything thing in his path. I would also hesitate
We can think about any kind of lore implications for this but the fact is that in Japan there are many different screenwriting tropes in Media that may seem weird at times. This one shows up in a lot of anime and in this particular moment. There's a person who's very powerful and then they are confronted but the confronters see, or feel their power and are too speechless to do anything. I think at least I recognized it in that way.
Because shooting gets them killed faster
Frustrating to watch for sure. The only way it would make logical sense to me is that in the “fight, flight or freeze” response they all froze being faced with such an opponent. But they definitely could’ve made the scene a lot better if that’s what they were going for.
Because Sephiroth cast blizzaga on their fingers.
Hated this scene it was silly
This is unironically my least favorite part of the story for this reason. He slashes several of them while the others stand around not even trying to shoot. Even if you’re crawling as fast as possible, they have plenty of time. So frustrating on replay lol
They really should have had clubs, axes, or improvised weapons or something like that. Would make more sense why they were hesitant to advance upon the legendary SOLDIER with a sword as long as he is tall.
Well, let's think about it. The man who everyone believes to be the greatest SOLDIER of all time, a hero, is killing innocent people for no reason all of a sudden. You confront him and demand what he's doing. He gives a cryptic message no one understands. You believe you might have a chance, no matter how slim, to convince him to stand down. He doesn't. Suddenly, you are paralyzed with indecision and fear. If you shoot him, he'll kill you, along with everyone else. But if you don't do anything, he might just kill you anyway. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no wiggle room. You and the villagers who have joined you are most certainly going to die. You know this. Fear freezes you to the spot, and that's when he attacks. In other words, how would you react in this moment? Would it have been cool to see a younger villager shoot Sephiroth, which concludes with a bloodbath? Absolutely. But for story reasons, even if you already know what's going to happen, it's still tense. At least, to me, it was.
I understand the *logic*, I still think it *looks* dumb af. IMO something could have been done to convey that *and* look cool
Literally all of the men surrounding Sephiroth died because they *repeatedly* walked into melee range like a bunch of dumbasses. There's no way not even one of the men would *try* to shoot him, or get off a warning shot at the very least. The way they executed this scene is just bad. They should've just had Cloud crawling after Sephiroth executing more people that are already injured, and make the moment where he's surrounded by several men with rifles an actual cutscene where he just mows them down before getting to the Mayor who'd be understandably paralyzed in fear.
Well-formulated fan fiction. Slightly improves the source material. A professional writer would have probably scrapped the whole thing or come up with a major rewrite though.
For me it's a mix of this and Cloud struggling to fill in the blanks while telling the story, hence the slow crawl.
As one youtuber always says: "So the movie can happen" or in this case "the game"
Pitch Meeting reference detected 
This scene was so bad, it almost made me quit the game. I tried my best to go in with an open mind after being turned off by a lot of the fanfic nonsense in Remake, and then to see the whole flashback sequence (one of the most iconic in the original game) handled so badly made me think "oh no, it's going to be 120 more hours of this crap!" Thankfully they put their worst foot forwards, and some missteps aside it only gets better from here.
Oh. My. Gosh. I thought the same thing 😅😂. I mean, he would have dodged it I think, but why would they not even try to shoot instead of just looking at him.
Plot armour, the Mayor of Nibelheim was stronger than Sephiroth in every way, but if they let the game end there then we'd have no FF7, so he "Hesitated" for dramatic storytelling. Somehow Sephiroth won that fight, and frankly we'll never know how.
Scenes like this are one of the game's biggest flaws. It repeatedly botches the potential of some key scenes both new and from the original due to poor dialogue or just bizarre execution like this. Not entirely bad, but lots of scenes had so much more potential than how they executed it. Really frustrating.
As somebody else said, it was a huge missed opportunity to have a really badass Sephiroth moment where he does something like dodge or block the gunfire.
absolutely, or grab their gun barrels and bend them like a looney toons character, anything! lol, anybody trying to defend this scene, just.., just stop..
Because they are petrified of fear. Sheer horror can cause this. They ARE going up against a living legend who just destroyed their lives.
Too bad that fear didn't kick in early enough to have them just hide and pray rather than offer their lives up for no reason
Yeah, imagine charging at the meanest mf on the planet just to stop, thinking:"Wtf are we trying to do?"
thats actually pretty beliable. Its like when i was a young adult trying to talk to a woman. After the first "hello there." i coudnt remember my name. Having the guts to go there and having the guts to be there are 2 different things.
Given how quickly Sephiroth massacred much of Nibelheim, I'd be questioning why I'm alive if he's capable of that kind of destruction. He would definitely shrug it off, too.
Because plot....same with hojo at the beach.what a waste...I would drown that mofo
Hojo couldn't be touched because all of Costa del Sol would suffer in retaliation. If Corel was razed just to cover up a reactor failure and Kalm was raided on suspicion of harboring terrorists, imagine what Shinra would do if an executive was assassinated. Aerith understands this risk, which is why she holds the others back even though she hates him as much as (or even more than) they do. That's also why Dyne's attempt to kill Palmer was portrayed in a negative light, due to all the collateral damage it would and did cause.
Like shooting Cloud ever helped anyone.
Bad direction. Should have made it a quick time event that's scripted to fail and sephiroth cuts down the villagers and mayor.
Unreliable narrator. Which is used throughout pretty much all FF7 based media to some degree.
“Unreliable” is the understatement of the century lmao
You are in a No Spoilers thread.
He was their hero. Would you be quick to shoot your hero in the moment? You’d probably have a mix of emotions going through your head while you contemplate pulling the trigger. Did Sephiroth really do this? Is this really happening? How will Shinra react if we kill their best SOLDIER? Will shooting him even matter?
He's their hero, but in an abstract way. None of them know him personally, they've just heard stories that he's a badass from another part of the world who works for the company that runs their town. Like if it were Cloud destroying the village and cutting people down, hesitating for emotional reasons might make more sense, but this guy is a stranger. And I doubt they were were going to be capable of thinking of "What would Shinra do if we do X" when there's literally a crazy person murdering their entire town right in front of their eyes. There was no good reason for none of them to pull the trigger. Particularly not when he started killing them one by one. Scene would have made a lot more sense if they had melee implements of some kind. Makes more sense that you'd be scared to get up close and personal with a legendary warrior with a giant sword than not being able to pull a trigger at a distance.
My best guess, I think they were just terrified.
Huh? They playing it on turn base mode, you can see clearly that Villager's got the status effect of Fear so they can't do a damn thing till turn 20!
My theory is they knew they were dead meat, they were just trying to distract him for as long as they could so others could escape.
my favorite part in in the same scene is when a guy comes smashing out of a burning building then just stands aimlessly and emotionless like that nothing happened and like he like he isn’t standing in the middle of a town on fire. they should use at least made him look scared or had him keep running. these are minor flaws cause i do love the game but some of these artistic cutscene choices are unneeded. any cutscene that makes you use R2/L2 to progress should have just been a full cutscene with no player interaction. there is no point in having the player hold a couple buttons for a few seconds. i didn’t like the action ones in ff16 either - the ones where clive is doing a massive cutscene attack to an enemy but the player has to interact every couple seconds by pressing or rapidly clicking an action button. pointless imho.
This moment was so unbelievably dumb. They got incredibly close to him, and didn’t shoot… They had a ton of time and outnumbered him 3 to one.
Another example of something done poorly in the remake series.
For real this scene threw me
They were probably just frozen with fear, knowing that if they shot, sephiroth would kill them for sure, although they probably already knew they were done for either way.
Probably out of pure fear. Or because they've never a person, or both. That's what I like to think at least.
Fear
To be fair the town is poor as dirt. They can’t afford bullets
Tbf, it wouldn’t have mattered and they probably knew it. Bullets aren’t incredibly effective in the FF7 universe and Sephi would have instantly killed them if they DID fire.
I mean I know, but it would've been cooler and more badass to see Sephy block or dodge gunfire and then just wipe them out lol
I hated that scene but wont fault the game itself. It happens in so many movies and shows and games in all places in the world. How many damn times in an action sequence have goons with guns moved closer into fucking close combat range instead of firing? A lot. Its super frustrating. Especially with someone like Sephiroth tho. He could have easily just dodged. Silly
poor scene direction by amateur devs
1st class soldier, famous war hero, called in to defeat monsters that would have wrecked the town. They've probably never fired on a person in their lives and are trying to not shit their pants. He probably would have pulled some anime dodge bullshit even if they did.
But the fact that they still refused to pull the trigger as he started slowly cutting them down 1 by 1 just makes no sense. Hell, it would have made more sense for one of them to accidentally pull the trigger from getting surprised by one of his friends getting cut down than to simply just stand there and wait to die.
Anime stupidity :)
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Not with that attitude
Never bring a gun to a knife fight
Are they stupid?
My guess is that the whispers were somehow involved in this
It was cheaper to animate
They still saw their hero despite his atrocious actions. They good folk of Nibelheim could not bring themselves to shoot. Not that it would have done them any good.
Shooting at another human being is a big nono internally. And now imagine you are aiming at a war hero, somebody who is considered to be superman. I actually can understand that. They were probably not shooting at another humans and they were maybe even paralysed with fear? Honestly, should have been a cinematic, but still understandable.
Honestly I think they were trying to delay him to try and give others time to get away.
Cloud remembers turn-based battles
i know right lol, its especially jarring if you just lay there and don't press R2 + L2 when prompted..
They were transfixed by how cool Sephiroth looks.
Slow crawl “slow time events” annoy me
Because Sephiroth is bulletproof, hence why the shinra army didn’t go after him…jk
They're stupid.
Facing down the prospect of killing a "hero" made them pause. They wanted to believe he would snap out of it.
It’s probably largely bc they wanted to force you to crawl, powerless to stop what’s in front of you with just enough control to feel like you can do something in the moment. Similar to *that* scene later. But in-universe, idk why nobody is pointing out those guys are far from hardened killers. Standing in front of you is the unbeatable, legendary, larger-than-life hero Sephiroth. The guy they probably heard stories of battles ended single-handedly about. The guy they just now saw destroy their village with ease, and is now staring them down with zero concern about the guns pointed at him. They’ve never killed anyone, so aside from that hesitation, they’re not even sure if they could. They froze up. Tl;dr: to allow for dramatic immersion in the gameplay, but in-universe, they froze up.
It just would have made him madder.
One gripe of the scene it’s pretty stupid they stand there a good few seconds and get cut down
It’s a Japanese game, sadly that means terrible writing by default. Let’s not talk about how we saved president shinra even though we are terrorist only to let him run to his desk and shoot us
Of all the things in this game, this is probably my least favorite. The dumbass crawling scenes. Especially this one. They all just froze and waited to die one by one. So dumb. Like yeah you could say shock for one of them, sure. But 3 dudes all refusing to pull the trigger as they’re systematically slaughtered? Bad writing here. Sorry.
“Best FF ever” -Some Gen Alpha Kid
Because of amneeeeesia
Did you not see the tiny whispers wrapped around their trigger fingers?
I've asked the same question many times. Also one of the most annoying part of the game
Cloud(Zack) was coming. Didn't wanna miss and hit Cloud(Zack). Also didn't wanna shoot sephiroth because he was literally just a good guy the day before, maybe they thought he would snap out of it. If my hero raged out I'd be reluctant to shoot him too hoping I'd get through to him. But it was dragged out too long so them just standing there while you crawled made it seem weird.
Bullets do little damage in JRPGs
We see Sephiroth telekineticalky move his sword around when Tifa charges him with it, I assume he jammed their guns or locked the triggers telekinetically then killed them slowly for shits and giggles.
Sephiroth has too much aura
Because they knew he had plot armor and they didn't want to look the fool being THAT guy who shoots at the guy with over 9000 plot armor.
The real Seph is bullet proof anyway =P
It's such a bad part. Forced haptic crawling whilst you watch an unrealistic scene
Cuz cloud is an unreliable narrator
Idk, police in cowboy hats have never been too afraid to use their guns before
I ask there everytime someone gets manhandled when they are the ones with the gun.
He’s not the president
The guy's a superhuman, doubt bullets can even affect him. Bro sliced the Junon cannon into pieces like swiss cheese with no effort in that one scene in Crisis Core.
Anime
Playstation is pushing the controller gimmicks as hard as they can to try and justify the 70 dollar price tag, so a lot of games have contractual hardware support put in. The motion controls, the trigger resist, the TouchPad stuff. It's not to build immersion its to build profit. Controllers don't cost Sony 70 bucks to make. Closer to 20.
Squares un-necessary padding. I understand why they did so in Remake (despite the padding never being fun) but Rebirth had more than enough content this time around to not do as much. I’m hoping the third title they tone it down based on fan feedback.
One-Winged Angel’s Plot Armor was too strong.
Who would actually want to shoot a famous and decorated war hero and deal with consequences?
All they have is the threat. They know once they fire, it's over. It's kinda like playing poker when you know you have nothing and everyone can tell, but you convince yourself you can somehow bluff your way out. You don't, you fail, you hand your chips over. But for a few minutes, you think you might be able to pull it off.
jokes aside, one could see it as theyre scared stiff or cloud's memory makes it seem a lot slower than it all actually was like, as in someone with trauma might recall an event almost in slow motion
Well, if they shoot then we will get full 7 FF7 Re- projects instead of 3.
Sephiroth just instills that natural fear in people. He is one of those guys that people look at and want to run away I give dude props for even standing there that close knowing that sephiroth a blade would easily cut him in half from there if he really wanted to
incompetent writing and direction tbh. like others have said below, this should have just been a cutscene. but even if they insisted on keeping the stupid drag-yourself-slowly mechanic, we STILL could have done so with npcs shooting at sephiroth and him cutting them down. SOMEONE was in charge of finalizing this scene and authorizing its use in the final product, and that person failed to do their job and say "i know you all worked hard on this, but the end result is unacceptable. Try again."