Final Fantasy VII Remake came out Friday and I did the thing I said I wasn't going to do, which was stay up past 1am on a work night playing it. In my defense there's not exactly anywhere to be at 8am these days except the same desk I sat at yesterday, three feet from the couch, in the same sweatpants.
Quick logistics note for anyone who grabbed the physical copy like I did: it ships on two Blu-ray discs and yes, you have to swap them partway through, which felt almost quaint. Then there's a day-one patch on top of that. Between the disc install and the patch I was looking at something like 45-50GB before I ever saw the Shinra logo. My PS4 Pro fan sounded like it was preparing for takeoff. If you're on a base PS4 with a mechanical drive, budget yourself a full evening just for install and go make dinner or something.
Once it actually loads though, I'll say this much: Midgar looks incredible. The opening bombing mission at the Mako reactor is basically a shot-for-shot rebuild of the original 1997 intro, except now the plate over the slums actually looks like it's blocking out the sun instead of being an idea you had to imagine from a blocky PS1 render. Aerith's flower selling scene, the neon of the Wall Market streets, all of it. Square Enix clearly threw real money at this.
My actual complaint, and I've been sitting on this one since the release date got announced last year, is the scope. This is not Final Fantasy VII. This is Final Fantasy VII: Midgar, stretched out to a 30-plus hour game, with more sequels planned to cover the rest of the story. The original Midgar section took maybe five or six hours if you were dawdling. They've padded it with side quests, a much deeper combat system (which is genuinely good, the real-time-with-a-tactical-pause ATB hybrid works better than I expected), and a bunch of new scenes with characters like Jessie and Biggs who were basically furniture in 1997.
I get why they did it commercially. I don't love it as a fan who's been waiting since the PS3-era tech demo teased this thing back in 2005 or whenever it was. Fifteen years of waiting and what we got is act one. There's no announced date for part two. Knowing Square Enix's track record with these things, I'm not holding my breath for 2021.
Anyway. Between this and everyone I know suddenly needing to be on a Zoom call four times a day, my laptop's fan situation has not improved much this month either way. I've started just muting myself and leaving my camera off unless someone specifically asks, which I recognize is probably annoying but I refuse to sit through another all-hands with my kitchen visible behind me.
A few numbers if you care about that kind of thing: the game's $59.99, PS4 exclusive for now (there's presumably a PC version coming eventually, there always is), and Square Enix apparently sold something like 3.5 million copies in the first three days worldwide, though take that figure with the usual publisher-press-release grain of salt since it counts pre-orders that were locked in months ago.
If you played the original as a kid, the emotional stuff still lands. The Aerith and Tifa dynamic, the whole eco-terrorism-against-a-megacorp premise that honestly reads more relevant in 2020 than it probably did to twelve-year-old me in 1997. I just wish I wasn't going to be waiting years to find out what happens after they leave the city.
Also, small unrelated gripe: my building's internet has been noticeably worse the last two weeks, presumably because everyone on my floor is streaming something or on a call at the same time, all day, every day now. I called the ISP and got a hold time estimate of 47 minutes. I hung up.