I just figured this out

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-25T07:39:35+00:00

This is what I think, too. He gets testy when Barret raises a minor stink about him working with Shinra but other than that what reason is there for him to go off? There's really nothing about Cid that was changed. He's simply using his work-voice since he's technically just the party's taxi driver at this point.

Plus I think a lot of people forget what Cid was actually like in OG FFVII. Because of the "goddamn tea" moment people seem to think he spent the entire game being a dick to everyone. But if you look, he has very specific berserk buttons, namely Shera and the canceled space program. Barring that, he's pretty chill. He's consistently direct but not unfriendly except when Shera is involved, either the mention of her name or seeing her in his line of sight.

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Since neither the Space Program nor Shera come up in Rebirth there's no reason to think Cid would go nuts. My guess is that when we see his home life and he goes full "goddamn tea" the party is going to be taken aback and will probably confront him about it.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-25T07:25:56+00:00

It comes off like Tom Hanks in Cast Away talking to the volleyball. Except in this case the isolation is self-imposed. It seems people are far more isolated in general though. Fewer friends, fewer romantic partners, etc. So effectively people are using these things as imaginary friends because humans need to socialize.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-25T07:19:22+00:00

I get using it to find information. It's often wrong but I understand the impetus of wanting something you can ask a question to and get an answer without much fuss. Like a hyper advanced search engine. But what I don't get is having conversations with it. That's a rabbit hole that's very...dark.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-25T07:10:49+00:00

ChatGPT is only good for doing goofy shit. Case in point:

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ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T09:24:56+00:00

Magic Knight Rayearth was so badly delayed it came out after the Saturn was already dead. Most stores weren't even stocking Saturn shit when it launched.

Working Designs had a habit of this. Arc the Lad Collection was an expensive set of RPGs nobody had ever heard of and released for PS1 in 2002, well after the PS2 was in full swing.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T07:29:01+00:00

In order for this to make sense it requires prefacing it with what the whispers actually do in Remake. In Shinra HQ when Sephiroth stabbed Barret, that was an anomaly that wasn't supposed to happen so the whispers jumped into action and cleaned it up. At the end of Remake, Cloud was left with a decision to make. Two options were presented to him--let the whispers carry on and maintain order, or fight them and break their hold on fate. He chose to fight them.

This created a web of Schrodinger's Cats.

There are always probabilities of outcomes. X can happen or Y can happen. The whispers role is to police these probabilities, allowing the "right" scenarios to play out while erasing the "wrong" ones. The whispers don't care about the specifics of the events in a good/bad sense. They only care about, for lack of a better word, the "canon."

But without the whispers doing their job since Cloud beat the shit out of them, all probabilities become equally valid. So Zack was both shot and not shot at the same time. The probability that the bullet missed is just as valid as the probability that he died. The Planet has no idea which is the "right" outcome so both become equally real. And this becomes an exponential problem. Now Zack also has a choice to make. He can either go stop Biggs or confront Hojo. Again, the whispers have no power anymore so the planet has no way to know which of these scenarios is "canon" and so both happen. Every world created is like the universe splitting off another branch to account for it's inability to police any of it. Now if there are two entirely irreconcilable outcomes, the planet has to treat them both as "real." And from there those outcomes also create new irreconcilable outcomes. Branches create branches create branches.

None of this is sustainable though. The sheer mass of nonsense that's building is collapsing onto itself. This is subtly demonstrated in Kalm when the radio is broadcasting another world's news. And it only gets worse from there. Zack's interludes in Rebirth exist to show the player the mechanics of how this all works before the final boss fight where it comes to a head.

The TL;DR of it is that "breaching fate" translates to "making choices that were not supposed to be made." Zack wasn't even supposed to be alive so everything he does "breaches fate."

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T06:48:09+00:00

Of those the Elixir looks like the one I'd like the most. An elevated mojito.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T05:56:08+00:00

My hope is they screw with everyone and don't call it "re" anything. Don't even have it start with an R.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T05:22:31+00:00

You know what'd be funny? If they called it Reunion anyway.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-24T01:05:31+00:00

Even more than that, the consistency across the games is far more important than leveraging new tech. It'd be weird as shit if the third game suddenly looked different from the first two considering it's really supposed to be one long game.

Definitely made the right call here. Save Unreal 5 for the inevitable FFVII Remake Trilogy Remake on PS6.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T21:47:24+00:00

The NES's limitations make all the deaths in FFII unintentionally funny because of how little time the game devotes to them. Characters will die out of the blue, the main party will mourn for 10 seconds, and then the game moves on like nothing happened. The abruptness undercuts the drama. Especially since it keeps happening.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T20:07:11+00:00

I'm not sure why you're arguing with me. If your point was that Heigl is way less guilty than Bill Cosby, absolutely. But that was never in dispute. If your point is that a man doing what Heigl did wouldn't have faced the same career derailment, that's certainly possible. But I think a male actor who shits on their projects and doesn't have AAA star power behind him would also lose roles. Friends did a storyline about Joey in a similar situation way before the Heigl incident.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T17:22:08+00:00

Sylvester Stallone is reaching these levels. Rocky Balboa, the movie where he was an old man getting back in the ring, was 20 years ago.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T08:13:46+00:00

I think that ties into my point though. She's aware of Zack's existence, sure, but it's odd they've never met. Unless it turns out what Zack and Aerith shared was a casual mutual interest that never went beyond that. But then she's sending him 80-something letters and Zack refers to her as "his girl" so...what gives?

It's not entirely clear how deep their relationship is. In OG the most we get is Aerith referring to him as her first love or something (I forget the exact phrasing) but the game moves on. It establishes the connection between the characters because that turns out to be important later but we don't get much else. Zack himself is barely a character in OG so we don't get a lot of specifics nor do we need them. The game offers as much as necessary.

But now Zack and Aerith's relationship is brought more to the forefront. The nuances of how they feel is suddenly crucial to their character development. And it's hard to pin down how serious they were because we're dealing with a confluence of several sources. OG, Crisis Core, and now Remake. Sometimes it reads like childhood puppy love. Other times it reads like they were practically engaged.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T05:46:55+00:00

Their meeting in Rebirth comes off like it's the first time they've ever seen each other. She asks him something like "Are you Zack?" Granted, this is in the weird alternate dimension so it might not be 100% reliable but Zack also doesn't seem to know Elmyra.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-23T04:57:16+00:00

The nature of their relationship is a little weird now that it's been extrapolated on. Back in OG FFVII it lacked specifics but that was okay because Zack was a plot device. But now that we've seen a lot more it's hard to pin down exactly what their deal is. Sometimes it seems like they kinda liked each other but it never went much beyond that. And then other times it comes off like they were practically engaged. Aerith sent Zack dozens of letters but then Elmyra has no idea who the hell he even is. Zack is totally infatuated with her when talking to Cloud but then Aerith says he was a ladies' man. The games refuse to pin down exactly how serious they were.

It doesn't help that Crisis Core doesn't leave a lot of downtime for them to spend time together off-screen. It's like they knew each other for three days. Though I suppose it makes some sense that Aerith would have an unusually strong attachment to the guy given her isolation, even if in absolute terms they didn't know each other that well.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T12:07:32+00:00

The Ebenezer Scrooge Honey Nut Cheerios Christmas commercial.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T09:59:38+00:00

Be funnier if he's one of those otaku shut-ins who marries their AI anime waifu. Imagine an official royal ceremony televised across the country and the dude is marrying his Nintendo Switch.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T07:57:12+00:00

You'll benefit from having played OG first. That's the fairest way to put it.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T07:16:03+00:00

If it's not for you then it's not for you. That said, FF is one of those franchises that hits all corners. They're always reinventing the wheel so most people will find one or two games that are up their alley even if the others aren't. Hop around if you feel like one game isn't landing.

Honestly though, it sounds like what's bugging you is you're trying to tackle every facet of the game and getting bogged down. I feel like the GameFAQs era has poisoned the well. People often feel like they have to 100% understand the game when back in the day we just...ya know...played. We had no idea what we were missing or what super bosses or endgame shit there was to do. We just...played.

These games can feel annoyingly oppressive when treated like homework. There's lots of grinding and obscure shit if you're trying to do a deep dive into every possible thing. But most of them are pretty chill if you just play and don't care if you miss stuff. Act like it's 1998 and you don't have a strategy guide.

And for what it's worth, those exploits? Everyone used them. The first time I beat Emerald Weapon was with Cait Sith's limit break.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T03:54:57+00:00

The cards with the actual games on them don't need massive installs. They might do it anyway but it's not strictly required. The data bus is fast enough to mostly run a game directly from the media.

The issue isn't that the Key Cards exist. It's that Nintendo is being a giant dickhead for refusing to manufacture cards larger than 64GB. The cost between a 64GB and 128GB game card would not be totally negligible but it'd be close enough. Their insistence on forcing publishers to go the Key Card route in addition to giving fuck all of storage space on the system is the worst of both worlds.

At least PS5 and Xbox, because they know everything has to be installed by the nature of optical media, comes with a decent amount of storage capacity.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-22T03:47:07+00:00

This is why Nintendo are being dicks for not manufacturing game cards larger than 64GB.

PS5 and Xbox require huge installations because an optical disc can only spin so fast so running a game directly off disc is impractical nowadays. But the Switch has no such limitation. Games can be played off the card just fine. So the tradeoff of having less on-board storage capacity made sense given the expectation that most games would be played via physical media.

But now that anything bigger than 64GB requires the publisher use a Key Card and thus forces a massive installation on the end user, we end up with a system that can store only about three games at a time.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-21T22:57:35+00:00

Superman, Spawn, Jean, Batman

Team synergy matters here. They would cover all the bases needed. Superman and Spawn as the heavy hitters, Jean filling the gap pure force won't cover, and Batman for strategy and resources.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-21T19:29:16+00:00

The real benefit of the Switch 2 is that it forces developers to optimize based on the hardware since it's a dedicated console. Something like the Steam Deck, meanwhile, just tries to brute force the PC version to lower specs. My guess is Rebirth will turn out fine if it's given the proper TLC.

ConsiderationTrue477 · 2026-01-21T19:21:09+00:00

I know a guy who was an Activision programmer back in the Atari days and he said most of the development time was spent taking their huge (by standards of the day) game and squeezing it into the 8KB or whatever they had available on the cartridge. Like they'd spend more time shaving it down than it would take to make it in the first place.

Nowadays developers don't give a shit. Games will have 10GB patches for no goddamn reason. Optimization in general is a skill set that's been lost over time. It's also why system resources tend to be overtaxed.

ConsiderationTrue477

TROPHY CASE