The Dreamwidth Account

Context: Australian, female, forties, fan since first seeing the game on my brother's Playstation back in 1997, own and have played the original Playstation version of the game (played on my PS2), Dirge of Cerberus (PS2) and Crisis Core (PSP), plus the PC re-vamp of FFVII with the MS-Paint mouths on the characters (on the PC, natch!). I also own both KH1 and KH2, as well as the original Dissidia, and a copy of Advent Children. I write Final Fantasy VII fanfiction (you can find them here on AO3). I don't currently own a PS4, but I'd certainly consider buying one (or a new gaming-quality PC) in order to play this remake if it's any good.

Dear Square Enix,

I have apparently been a very good girl this year, since you're planning to remake Final Fantasy VII with high definition graphics for the PS4. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Just the news alone is enough to make me squee and bounce in my chair making happy noises. As a long-time fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, and also of the Final Fantasy VII franchise itself, I offer the following suggestions. (Consider these a wish-list).

( Details under the fold )

I can't full express how much I'm looking forward to this re-make, but it's currently a re-make I'm looking forward to with somewhat mixed feelings. Please, don't let the prevailing trends of 2015 affect the way you re-make a game which was brilliant in 1997, and which can still hold its own even today. The core of Final Fantasy VII for me was always the stories and the characters - never the visual effects. Please don't lose this core while you're adding in the visuals.

Sincerely,

Megpie71 (aka Meg).

PS: If you put Cloud in a pink wig in the Wall Market drag scene, I shall not be impressed. Please don't cheat and re-use your Lightning skins in that one, okay?

And the kitchen table. And the receipt for the new printer and the expansion drive which didn't work. And a whole heap of paperwork from the past three years.

The thing which triggered all of this was installing a new printer (well, all-in-one device really - it scans and it prints and it photocopies and although it doesn't fax things, it's connected to a computer with an internet connection, so it can perform the equivalent of faxing too) and discovering that the only place I had where the printer would actually fit on my desk was (at that point) covered with an ever-increasing stack of paperwork. So, I got the printer installed (and working very nicely, thank you) and then realised I really had to do something about the piles and piles and piles of stuff which had been occupying the space on my desk where the printer had been. Mostly because it was now occupying the space on the kitchen table where the eating spaces had been, and I really did want to sit down and enjoy a proper dinner at some point in the next couple of days.

So, I decided to get started by clearing a bit of space to put down my little hand-crank shredder (handles 2 pages at a time, and is also capable of chewing through credit cards and CDs) and started shredding all the obvious crap as it all came to hand. End result (before I got bored) was two plastic bags of hamster bedding. Then I pulled out the ring binder/portfolio I'd been using to store all my corro and stuff from a couple of years ago - it was a system which had worked for me right up to the point where I stopped being dilligent about it, at which point the backlog took over and it disappeared under the mess. So, pull out everything for the past couple of years from that, and grab three envelope-style folders from the storage cupboard - one for 2009, one for 2010, and one for 2011. The 2009 and 2010 stuff just got dumped into the folders, and the folders go into the filing cabinet for further action later. The 2011 stuff got put into the appropriate categories in the portfolio binder (and I wrote up a new index for this binder, so I can find what I'm looking for).

Meanwhile, I looked at a couple of file trays I had on top of the filing cabinet, and decided they could be re-used in a more constructive manner. One now has a pile of stuff in it which needs to be shredded - and a label saying "to shred". The other is currently empty, but there's a (smaller) pile of stuff to sort on top of the filing cabinet, and I figure I may as well use the capabilities of my nice new scanner to scan those things which I want to keep, but which I can't figure out a decent "away" for. So it has a label saying "to scan". My eventual aim is to get to and scan all the hundreds of recipe leaflets I've collected over the years, so I'll have a permanent record of them, and then I don't have to bloody well keep the silly things! Yay! More storage space!

I got my birthday money, and bought myself four new tops. Then my family's card came in the mail, and I got another $50. So I wandered down to the local branch of my favourite video game shop, and discovered they had FF13 priced a good $20 lower than most of the other gaming shops ($100 rather than $120). So guess what I snapped up.

I'm now up to disk 2 (which surprised me, since usually in multi-disc games disc 2 isn't reachable until I've played for weeks) and heading into one of the big bastard boss fights. Which I've already been killed by about three times *sigh*. I'm loving the story, particularly the re-use of various tropes and notions from other FF games, as well as a very clear homage or two to Star Wars in there (what else can you call finding a weapon called a "Lifesaber" when you're raiding the flying fortress of the evil overlord?). I get the sense that there's a lot of love and enjoyment went into the creation of the game, which is always a good thing as far as I'm concerned (things people love tend to have a bit more fun in them, by way of in-jokes and similar).

( Spoileriffic stuff under here )

So, in between assignments and lectures and things, I'm going to be chasing about trying to beat this boss, and see where the game takes me. I might also be heading back to my favourite video game shop, and picking up a copy of the game guide for FF13, since I have a strong suspicion I must have missed at least one or two points where I could wander off in disc 1. So, something for the next run through.

This week I received my tax refund cheque. $600 dollars and change, being the sum total of all the income tax installments I paid to the Australian government in the 2008 - 2009 financial year. Yays, moneys. I could be a good girl, and use it to pay for all kinds of things, but I have a long-standing tradition of regarding tax refund cheques as "fairy money", which is reserved for treats.

So I went out and purchased myself an XBox360 Elite (the one with the 120GB hard drive), plus a few games. My rationale is that it appears Square Enix are moving across to this platform now as well as the Sony ones, so having an Xbox means I'll be able to enjoy their plots some more. I now have a new toy to play with, so blog posts may be a little light on the ground for a bit while I try it out.

The games I now have: Lego Batman, Pure (motocross, I think?), Forza 3 racing, Kameo (it was supposed to be a copy of Assassin's Creed, but while they had the box, they didn't have the disk, so I got to pick another to the same value), Last Remnant, Eternal Sonata, and Assassin's Creed. Lego Batman and Pure came with the console. The next two were part of a package deal at the place I bought the console (Target, for my Aussie readers - it was the cheapest there at $429 for the bundle). I got the other three games at EBGames, because I'd seen a copy of Last Remnant in there the day before.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to unpack my new toy, and start playing.

*boing!*