Thread 723722402

ITT: Aura loss

>>723722402 (OP)
Im not sure left is any better, hes wearing 3 coats

>>723722402 (OP)
Remake's head is fucking huge, and he's wearing clothes, he must have the twinkiest body.

>>723722402 (OP)
Fucking retard. Zoomer girls cream themselves over Rufus. He looked like THIS in the original during all of his dialogue.

If you think he's LESS cool now.....you're a nostalgia blind faggot.

>>723722402 (OP)
>>723722491
i'm going to unironically wear this fit

>>723722402 (OP)
>Had to post concept art instead of the in-game model
Lol. Lmao.

Rufus is fuckin excellent in VIIR and so are his boss fights. 10x the original

>>723722896
>>723722598
yeah they completely missed the design queue, rufus is supposed to be a jacked spoiled VP of Bullshit, like patrick bateman

Do not, I repeat, do NOT try to draw body outline onto ANY of the original FF7 character art!

>>723722896
Dumbass post

>>723722402 (OP)
Remake has a lot of problems but Rufus isn't one of them. He's one of the few elements I'd say was improved in the transition. The problems that involve Rufus USUALLY (Gold Saucer was still petty bad) isn't his fault. It's the game's narrative overall. One of my favorite moments with him was him and Reeve calling out the retardation of everything involving the Sector 7 Plate

>Reeve
>There's a question I never had the chance to ask your father. Perhaps you can speak on his behalf

>Reeve
>We used Avalanche's activities as a cover to sabotage our own reactors and destroy Sector 7.
>Your father assured us these acts were in service to the Neo Midgar Project.
>However, the fact remains that we have yet to locate the "promised land" of legend, or even confirm if it actually exists.

>Rufus
>Great though he was, my father was old
>And in his dotage, he became rash
>But while we're on the subject, there's something I've been meaning to ask all of you regarding those decisions.
>Why is it that none of you even tried to stop him?

thank god they gave him belts

>>723722402 (OP)
>You know what this needs?
>A few more BELTS

>>723723295
>>723723648
I guess old habits die hard

Back in my day, we called this SOVL vs SOVLESS

>>723723827
It's hit and miss. Rufus and Rude are pretty good. The difference being their suits are better fit to them. The belts are a weird change though. Reno is one I dislike because his sleezy look doesn't really translate into his updated design. Really I don't like modern Reno overall because he's presented more like a lovable goofball rather than a professional but no less asshole that could kill 2 city's worth of people and feel nothing

Hey guys I'm a Turk too!

>>723722402 (OP)
>>723724207
Extremely rare case of SOUL vs. SOUL but people need to complain to have something to do and define themselves by. God Bless Nomura.

>>723724207
>sleezy look doesn't translate
But do you think they even really tried though? Ever since they got the Advent Children update, the entire cast has basically been made to look like a symmetrically perfect Asian supermodel. Even Rude. Even pic rel fucking Hojo. This is not the face of an ugly man. He looks older, sure. And in a lot of shots he's putting on an exaggerated scowl or grimace, but with a nice haircut, outfit, lighting, make up, even this dude is another model. Nobody in a modern Squeenix game looks sleazy.

>>723724695
I think more than anything I'm okay with changes if the spirit of the characters makes it through. Barret has a lot of additions from of FF7 counterpart but I still like him. He looks aggressive and his clothes look functional over fashionable. Meanwhile I fucking hate Cid because you can't see any of his cantankerous, grumpy character in his Rebirth design. I'm genuinely interested/ worried about how Shera is going to be handled in pt 3

>>723724207
>a professional but no less asshole that could kill 2 city's worth of people and feel nothing
How much of that was actually really present in the original un-translated version of the game though? And not just something we inferred due to lack of expressive character emotes, and possible mistranslations, or even lack of context? I'm not saying you are definitely wrong, but I am definitely saying that the Cloud we see in Advent Children and forward is probably closer to what Nomura actually had in his head for the character than what most western fans had cooked up in their heads. I'd sooner believe this was the case for Reno and Rude all along than to assume that Nomura totally overhauled their character in his own mind at least.

>>723724957
Corneo kind of looks sleazy if a bit clean. Hojo should look emaciated, almost like a living zombie. Similarly I don't like how Heidegger was given liposuction either. He's supposed to be a fat, incompetent armchair general who has to lean back when he walks because of his gut. Now he looks like a bara beefcake. I know EVERY CHARACTER MUST BE BEAUTIFUL is kind of a meme and for the record I don't mind attractive characters. But you are right in that it gets weird when every character is a model.

>>723725568
Fair enough. Still in the case of say Advent Children, even teenage me who thought AC was the best movie ever found it strange that Tifa isn't hostile to Reno when he calls her at the beginning of the movie. Reno crushed Sector 7. He mocked the party as they tried to stop it. One of Tifa's characterizations is how much she hates both Shinra and the military. Something she comments on at least twice in FF7, once in the Nibelheim reactor and again while disguised on the ship in Junon. Even if the party decided to squash the beef with Shinra's remnants, I can't fathom that Tifa can have a cordial conversation with Reno under any circumstances even if they need each other for business reasons. All that to say I kind of don't like attempts to make Reno likable. But maybe that's just me.

>>723724957
this nigga actually is calling hojo good looking lmao

>>723726137
Indeed, I also felt like I was missing something when I saw how friendly the Turks were with the main cast. It made me assume that there either was, or would be some side material that would help bridge the gap. Even now looking back, I am genuinely wondering if the translation was the main cause of the confusion. There were definitely times in the game where you meet the Turks on terms that are more rival and less outright enemy (which seemed a bit silly given the context of the setting anyway). I can only assume that the dialogue and banter in Japanese is a bit more friendly and apologetic to and coming from the Turks.

>>723724360
I've got one of those old 10th anniversary potion cans with this art on it sitting on a nearby bookshelf

>>723726526
I will give credit on one thing. In reviewing the script, the party rarely comments on the Turks. And the Turks treats interactions with the party as business arrangements. They don't hate Cloud and friends, they're paid to attack them so they do. In the Wutai side quest, Reno and Rude are there on vacation. The party shows up but since they're on vacation, they can't be bothered. When Elena is kidnapped and rescued, the Turks receive orders to hunt Cloud. But their vacation hasn't ended yet so they ignore it. So I suppose the the Turks in Remake aren't handled too badly. I still think Reno could be presented more like a sleaze ball but overall the Turks made it through pretty decently.

>>723722402 (OP)
Lol blud is wearing a skirt lmao

>>723723648
>>723724695

Remake Rufus wasyn't designed by Nomura. He was designed by Roberto Furari. The same guy who did character designs for Type 0 and XV

>>723727634
>Type 0
Didn't they have somebody make individual panties for each of the girls in that game?

>>723727781

Yes. God bless Japanese women

gee shinra your mom lets you have TWO jackets

Everyone will hate this image.

>>723728993
I don't hate it but the widescreen makes it look weird

>>723722896
you do realize the poly characters in the game arent drawn to be like that right? its a technically limited derivation from the original artwork like op's picrel

>>723729194
The "Artist" used AI upscaling.

>>723724360
Why did he even reveal Jenova's head?

>>723729671
He shouldn't have. But then Kadaj should've known he had it the whole time

>>723729671
>>723729907
A good son would have known.

FF7 OG purists tards be like
>NOOOOO THIS ISN'T LIKE THE HEADCANON I MADE UP WHEN I WAS 11 YEARS OLD THIS IS LE BAD!!!!

>>723725290
NTA but Barret is really the only character I like in Project Remake so far. Shame they ruined the Dyne subplot. They'll probably cut out the dialogue/subplot where he acknowledges that Avalanche was an excuse to take out his frustration and that Shinra wasn't necessarily wrong, just that President Shinra was a greedy asshole.
It'll be funny to see how they handle him becoming an oil tycoon. Shit, they'll probably just create some bullshit plot device called Blue Lifestream that is self-regenerating, unlimited free energy, or just forget the rest of the cast in favor of fujoshit anime swordsmen.

>>723729992
The thing is that if you haven't played FF7 then it's just confusing. And if you have played FF7 then it's incomprehensible. The whole idea of the Reunion is that Jenova's cells are attracted to themselves. That's why people with Jenova in them are compelled to a single location. So why did Kadaj need to charter a plane to get a bunch of kids from Midgar to the Northern Continent, to bring them to the Forgotten Capital, to make them drink the evil water, to bring them BACK to Midgar, so they can do something they should be able to do themselves, just for them to get it wrong and make that entire trip pointless?

>>723730234
Well Shinra was unequivocally wrong. At the end of the day, Shinra makes it's bank on the souls of the dead. They know of the Promised Land and the Neo Midgar project is built on it's legend which means they know what Mako is and do not care. There's no evidence to say that Corel had anything to do with the damaged Corel Reactor, so they burned it down and built Gold Saucer on top of it's corpse. Unless you played Remake, then Corel is somewhere else.

So Barret is 100% correct in that Shinra is an evil empire that must die. It's just that his motivation was built on his Shinra screwed him over rather than the damage Shinra was doing to the Planet

>>723723098
I love how his boss fights make people seethe cause you really need to do the mechanics to pressure him

>>723730772
>keep pressing square at Rufus
>he starts punishing you every time

FUCK THIS FUCKING UNFAIR FUCKING SHIT FUCK!!1!

>>723729907
kadaj is literally retarded

>>723723159
made by the same people btw

>>723730442
I think Kadaj is just retarded.

>>723730664
Yeah but at the Northern Crater he ponders Shinra's motivations and admits that if he lived in a shithole like that, he would do anything to escape it.
The whole concept of the Lifestream being the "souls of the dead" is just emotional manipulation on the part of a group of extinct hippies. It's, at best, a hivemind that is ambiguously sentient as a singular whole, when the plot is convenient for it to be.
It's not your grandma, or your dog, or Zack, or your waifu. It's just green goop that comes in a variety of physical and metaphysical states and contributes, ambiguously, to the existence of what is presumably carbon-based life.
Interestingly enough they actually touched on this by expanding President Shinra to have a lengthy, one-sided dialogue with the party whereupon the latter have zero retort beyond "bad man do bad ting" before the multiverse stabbed him, so maybe they do intend to follow through?
>tl;dr
I don't care either, and based on minor lore tidbits and dialogue, I'm not entirely convinced the Lifestream is actually a source of Life itself, or at least not an exclusive source. They should've done a proper sequel with Cid, Rufus and Reeve rebooting the Shinra Space Program. Fuck Gaia and its gay Lifestream.

>>723730442
all true, but in addition, kadaj is LITERALLY retarded, he's a stupid as shit pretty boy

>>723731351
>The three original leads, after 20 years of conceptualizing and public teasing, finally decided to go forward with the project because, to paraphrase, they "felt like they were on their deathbeds and didn't want anybody else to do it"
This shit was doomed from the start

>>723724626
I love blonde Tifa

>>723722896
zoomer girls don't play FF unless it's to cash in on boomers notalgia on youtube.

>>723731592
That kind of goes out the window when you realize that Bugenhagen and President Shinra agree that the Cetra were onto something about the nature of the Lifestream being the lived experiences of everyone who ever has or will exist. Hell the existence of magic is itself explained as the experiences of the dead being transferred to the living. No the Lifestream isn't literally your grandma but your grandma's life is floating in there, that's why Mako Poisoning exists. And in a purely pragmatic level, the loss of the Lifestream spells the apocalypse for the planet as a whole.

At the Great Glacier Barret was saying that he understands why people would choose to ignore the plight of the planet for the short term convenience that Shinra provides. No one thinks vats of pollution is great but no one is willing dumpster their car in the name of the environment.

>>723722491
The outside world is dying, and he's got the ac set to 60.

>>723732347
Conversely, Bugenhagen also admits based on his extended lifetime of studies, that the Planet will die regardless of the Lifestream's involvement. This is further supported by the plot of Dirge of Cerberus, which reveals that the Lifestream itself intends to leave Gaia when conditions get bad enough, whether they're caused internally (by the Lifestream itself as it is extended unto humans, animals, monsters, life in general) or externally (the natural course, degredation, implied by Bugenhagen).
Ergo the Lifestream is not explicitly a source or the cause of Life, but an unnatural additive, to the extent of being parasitic. Symbiotic, perhaps. Enhancing, debatable. But still a parasite, and ultimately unnecessary to the existence of life. This is futher brought into question by the existence of entities, sentient ones at that, alien to "the" Lifestream, aka the Gi and Jenova.
So, do they have their own Lifestreams? or did they? Is Jenova itself actually a Lifestream? The overarching implication being that the Lifestream is just an entity higher up on the cosmic food chain, and not actually some creation entity the Cetra try to make everybody believe. It's also convenient that they would create a cult of personality surrounding a concept that "blesses" them alone with supernatural abilities, and create an ideology that ALL, even those not blessed, are required to follow or else be punished. Leaving the Cetra's motivations and general level of intelligence questionable.

>>723722491
trvth nuke
both look fucking stupid

>>723733776
>that the Planet will die regardless of the Lifestream's involvement
Shinra's involvement*
but both are technically true

>>723733776
>It's also convenient that they would create a cult of personality surrounding a concept that "blesses" them alone with supernatural abilities
Materia is crystalised Mako and is the source of any power more extreme than "can hear dead people talking sometimes".

>>723734065
Materia is not what I meant by bless. It's clear that based on legend and Aerith herself that the Cetra were granted different abilities, Materia being an extension of that. FFXVI touches on this subject with its clumsy racism parallels, with certain people being born with innate magical capabilities. That being said, if Materia itself was the blessing or even part of it, then it was specifically safeguarded by the Cetra, and eventually stolen after their extinction, because the dialogue goes to great lengths to establish that the Cetra shunned (cast out) those who denied their gypsy lifestyle, and imply that a biological evolution (de-blessing?) occurred when peoples who might otherwise be Cetra decided to stay and prosper in a singular land, rather than walk the planet in an endless pilgrimage.
Also while it's not totally related, the concept of Materia, specifically the Black Materia, is completely and utterly fucked, especially as of Remake/Rebirth. I can go into more detail but holy shit, they should've never let these dudes with dementia come back and rewrite their own story, especially when their original made little to no sense. Like yeah, just give them 30 years to cook, I'm sure they'll do better this time around... right?

>>723733776
This meaning what? Shinra isn't concerned with whether the Lifestream itself is natural to the planet. They for damn sure aren't concerned about whether Jenova dindu nuffin. Whether the Lifestream was good or not, Shinra still has and does erase entire settlements for profit. Be it through negligence, such as Gongaga and arguably Nibelheim, or malevolence, such as Corel. So yeah Barret did fuck up in his rage and he was motivated by spite, that doesn't mean Shinra are just misunderstood good guys or even ambivalent to the planet. They were out to gut it.

>>723734065
>>723734739
Oh, and "hearing" the Planet or somehow singling out individuals within it isn't really restricted to the Cetra. Bugenhagen hears it, Barret hears it, Nanaki hears it, and so on. So it's pretty questionable if that whole shpiel was the blessing, or if there even was a blessing. Maybe the Cetra just made that shit up. Their history and the way they acted seem like a parallel of Mormons with a hint of Scientology.
I say Scientology because I kind of get the impression that's what being a Cetra is. Like you're not a different species, you're not innately any better or "blessed" with any great power beyond anybody else, BUT if you pay $19.95 and follow OUR guidelines, the Lifestream will bless you with... something.

>>723722402 (OP)
>Aura
Fucking zoom- gen alphas

cute skirt

>>723734757
All progress is built on the "gutting" of that which preceeds it. It's in the definition. This is where it gets muddy, because something completely foreign to both the Lifestream and Shinra, both as hiveminds, comes in: morality.
Aerith specifically, who is often represented as a poster child for the former, actually spends most of the game as a True Neutral. Seeing things for what they are, calling out bad (and good) shit regardless of who or what was responsible. This is highlighted when she speaks about how beautiful Midgar is and how amazing it is that people could come together and create something so ingenious, all in spite of its flaws and the methods to get there. The poor judgment and the corrupted mentality of a man like President Shinra, the apathy and voluntary ignorance of the body that makes up Shinra as a company. It still produced something that somebody like Aerith finds beautiful.
Conversely, the Lifestream produces monsters, weapons of mass destruction, causes cancer, has self-destructive tendencies, and has itself directly threatened all settlements and life.
Both are not intrinsically good or bad. They are different physiologically, but they both produce amazing feats while walking very similar paths.
Pic related>>723733776, if you haven't seen that episode of Star Trek, you should watch it. It heavily correlates to the morality of survival, and what it means to live in general, that is being discussed.

>>723736251
If that's the case the Barret can't be judged. Because Shinra endangered his survival. They burned down Corel. They killed his wife. The turned his best friend into a deranged lunatic. Barret, by your standard, has the right to avenge what was a relatively stable life. His motivation for agreeing to a partnership with Shinra was for Myrna's sake even in OG. Instead Corel became a desert prison and Myrna became a desert corpse. But we got Disneyland out of it.

>>723722402 (OP)
>known for wearing a jacket, owning a dog and dying like a bitch
rufus never had "aura", zoomzoom

>>723736651
My standard is that of relativity. Something can be good and bad, be right and wrong, at the same time. The motivation and responsibility lies in the individual, which is why I don't hold individual "souls" within the Lifestream responsible for its actions, or Shinra's various employees for the company's. Apathy is what defines both factions, and most civilizations once they exist for too long and become too grandiose, but apathy is not necessarily a crime. It won't buy you any sympathy, but to look upon it negatively is a bit strange considering it's usually not something any individual actively participates in knowingly. Apathy is something you realize later, especially when you've lost the things you were trying to hold on to. Hence, characters like Barret, and his parallel in various unnamed Shinra employees.
What you're describing extends within the established history of the game's lore beyond Barret vs. Shinra.
Shinra exists because men established civilizations. Men established civilizations in order to find their own peace, comfort, and to survive from monsters and starvation. Why do monsters and starvation exist? Don't know, but according to the Cetra the Lifestream created them. Make of that what you will.

>>723737745
The planet seems to have a bullshit meter somewhere. It won't do anything if you burn down a tree. It won't stop you from making the reactors. But it will invent Kaiju if a Jenova happens and will take out the annoying pests along with it

>>723736651
>>723737745
By the way, I'd just like to point something out that's somewhat related to these concepts. I'm not a huge fan of the ending of FFVII, but I do find something interesting in it...
When the Lifestream answers to Holy and works to fight against Sephiroth in order to save itself and the Planet, it fails to do so, but when Aerith intervenes, she introduces a new order to its methodology, and gives it (albeit ambiguously) the knowledge and strength to combat Meteor, which is itself a product of the Lifestream.
So in the ending, the Lifestream, fighting against itself essentially, utilized the threat of its own self-destruction AND the knowledge it gained from one of its subjects, to advance itself, to understand itself better. To evolve, effectively.
Maybe that's really all any of us, on any cosmic level, are attempting to do? To survive, so that we may understand.

So the question becomes: is the Lifestream responsible for all of the destruction it caused, unintentionally or otherwise? Yes. But was it intrinsically bad? Well, that's up to (You).

>>723722491
Left looks like a stylized japanese delinquent gang leader, right looks like blond Gackt at a concert

>>723738741
That question, of course, extends to Shinra. Even the President himself. In the end, he was still just trying to evolve. He saw the means, he played his hand, he won for a long time, and eventually, he lost.
When will The Lifestream lose? Perhaps never, unless it has some natural timer written into its metaphysiological biology that goes unmentioned, and even then. Maybe it simply "returns" or "reunifies" with another of its kin, or something... greater. I wonder where Jenova goes when she dies...