Lurker > wpot

MrMelodramatic posted...

interesting! I expected am upcoming twist to be that Jenova was the real antogonist, and had been controlling seph or Rufus to finish destroying the planet. But that seems unlikely if jenova doesnt have motive. Kinda weird for a reactionary being to be the big bad.

As you get further into it it's kind of hard to separate Seph from Jenova as they both use each other to achieve similar goals. Someone once said that Seph is best thought of as an evolution of Jenova who has taken over control: that might be as good as anything. Still, the Meteor plan appears to be fully Seph (would Jenova survive that?) so he's in control.

MrMelodramatic posted...

Was jenova the one woman-looking thing, or is that just one of the Jenovas?

That is THE Jenova that was terrorizing the Cetra. Everything else (including Seph) is just something that had cells injected into them from that thing. Psychic Seph carries the body of it around (the head is with him in the North Crater) after getting if from Shinra HQ and throws chunks of it at you that shape shift into something you fight.

MrMelodramatic posted...

Why wait to start the reunion to summon meteor?

I think it's generally accepted that it took him time to absorb the knowledge of the lifestream and figure out how to use his psychic powers. Or something like that. :)

MrMelodramatic posted...

Was nibelheim being destroyed a fake memory, or was it rebuilt, or why are there two of them? Cloud did grow up there so why didnt anyone remember him? Surely they remember his mom.

Nibelheim was destroyed and everyone who was originally there was turned into black-cloaked people. The cloaked people in the rebuilt town were the original residents (you can see it most clearly with the two kids that got turned into black-cloaks). Shinra rebuilt the town to cover up the Sephiroth incident and moved in new people (who didn't know Cloud). It's unclear why they let the original people hang around: probably plot convenience.

MrMelodramatic posted...

It seemed like a big plot point that cold thought the massacre was five years ago when it was actually seven. Why the discrepancy? What happened in those 5/7 years?

Cloud worked for Shinra for 3 years and floated in a tube for 4 years. As for 5 vs 7 I think the point is that Cloud's memory is broken...not that there are two missing years in particular.

Judgmenl posted...

This was the key part here.

Yeah, and it's difficult to grasp in-game.

That guy is weird. He looks like the type of bland fat cat who would usually keep that kind of crap at a distance and just profit from Republican deregulation. But he's a true believer.

He needs to go down hard, but I suppose his libel lawsuits will take 5 more years.

It's depressing having him come from my state (MN).

As for the writeup, pretty good! Some corrections (as I understand them):

• Jenova is an evil space bug: it doesn't really seem to have "reasons" so far as it's possible to tell in game. (That said, it was a shape-shifter that talked to the Cetra in the past, so...maybe)
• Jenova didn't hit the planet with a meteor as I understand. It rode in on a spaceship/something and made the crater itself when it landed. Maybe it was a FF5 style meteor. :)
• The Cetra died out rapidly fighting Jenova. Not over centuries.
• Zack grew up in Gongaga, not Nibelheim. He and Cloud didn't meet until the Nibelheim mission.
• Seph didn't kill Zack (or Tifa). Just "defeated" him such that he ended up in a tube. And Tifa got carried away by her martial arts teacher.

The last sentence is the most confusing and debated part. Hojo created a bunch of Sephiroth clones: black-caped guys. Sephiroth can control them remotely and make them do things. He can also make them look like himself. When you see Sephiroth in-game you're either seeing a black-caped man that Seph is controlling or you're seeing a psychic version of himself that he's projecting out from the North Crater. He is conscious and controlling things for the entire duration of the game from the North Crater.

Crisis Core was kind of like FF7R: it didn't change anything in regards to the basic Aeris/gap/etc details, but it tacked on extra stuff...some of which was OK and some of which was awful.

MrMelodramatic posted...

Wow that flashback really shouldnt be optional lol.

Indeed! There's lots of necessary info there. Heck, that scene was the primary background for an entire spinoff game: Crisis Core.

MrMelodramatic posted...

Zack dated Aeris, right? Was that before being incubated at the shinra mansion?

Before. Afterwards not much happened other than them trying to return to Midgar and Zack getting killed.

MrMelodramatic posted...

What happened in the two lost years in clouds memory?

He was floating in a tube. Also, IIRC it was 4 years.

Ready to write it up? :)

MrMelodramatic posted...

I still have some bits of plot that arent exactly clear to me yet

There's an optional scene if you go back to the basement in the Shinra mansion that ties up many of the loose ends, FYI. Frankly, it's important enough that it seems like it should have been mandatory...

MrMelodramatic posted...

Is it better to focus on one party and level them up quickly, or to change members every so often and have a more consistent team? I had Aeris at level 46, then she died so <_< now I have Yuffie on my squad and she's 10 levels under the other two. Will other people leave the party, or am I fine now?

You're fine in regards to party members for the long term, although there are some segments on disc 2 where you'll be required to use a certain character and/or not use a different one. It's nothing to worry about too much, though: I'd recommend just picking three who you like (either for their limits, which are really the only thing that's different about them in battle apart from whether they are ranged or not, or their personalities) and going from there.

MrMelodramatic posted...

I've been on level 3 of my limits for a while. Does level 4 just take a lot longer than the others, or is there some story thing I have to do before I can unlock them?

You're progressing quickly. :) The fourth level needs to be learned from an item, most (but not all) of which become available late in the game. Red's fourth limit, for example, came from the chest in the mansion...you should have it.

Note that you learn the second limit in a level by using the first one multiple times, FYI.

Yeah, this one doesn't sit right with me. Ridley wasn't playing in the games he bet on, and he even cooperated and admitted what happened. I see why the league needs to be very paranoid about any appearance of game fixing, but I think they should have found a different punishment.

adjl posted...

Remember: Insider trading is only legal if you're already rich.

I do wonder how often owners bet on NFL games...twould be fascinating to know. Maybe they only do it in person-to-person fat cat ways so it's not officially recorded.

11110111011 posted...

brand new fantasy that is out if you are looking for something current.

To be fair I think I read it a decade ago (were they released in 2008?) but I am retro enough to think of 2008 as 'new' so that works for me. :)

LinkPizza posted...

What youre suppose to do is shred it, and then use the shredded paper to play pranks on people by dumping all of it onto their car via the open sunroof

That would be an improvement, yes. Maybe I should take more receipts...

On the other hand, open sunroofs aren't really a thing here in MN... :)

Seems to me someone should mention Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire. I dunno what it would be like to read if you watched the series, but it was best ever tier until...it didn't finish and ended up with a TV ending.

Among others I've read: Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy is simple fantasy fun. It's somewhat cheesy at points, sure, but it's a trilogy so it actually wraps up and ends in a reasonable amount of time. The premise is pretty good.

The Demon Cycle by Brett is somewhat similar fantasy fun, although it goes five novels and thus has more time to get weird. I haven't read the fifth.

If I have a hard copy I stuff it into a folder, where I keep it until the drawer overflows and I throw most of it away once a decade or so. You know: what you're supposed to do. :)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

My opinion at the time was that it was mostly hugely popular and led to all the "best FF evar!" praise it got mainly because it was a huge nostalgia bait game referencing all the prior FF games, coming on the heels of FFVIII which a lot of people hated at the time. It was also actual fantasy, after the growing steampunk and sci-fi that slowly crept over everything in the prior three games.

As I recall FF9 had a "nice" reception: people liked it but I don't immediately recall best game evar stuff. Which seems about right. Heck, FF8 had just been released a year earlier (and 7 was basically a year before that) so people were still playing those two. It was a unique moment.

I think it grew in popularity during the FF12 era when it became clear that it was the last of the traditional/lighthearted/ATB/etc FFs and it DID pick up some buzziness around then. So basically the same thing you said: just delayed a little.

It was March 20 here. I went in to work and, on the way out, told people "I don't think I'll be seeing you for a while" in a goodbye sort of way. They didn't believe me: at the time there was some thought we'd be back in a week or two.

Here it is two years later and I haven't been back to the office for a day of work yet. (Just stopped by twice to pick stuff up)

It's was fun for a good while, but my existential crisis has really been picking up of late.

Well, it's a mini open world segment. If you have an optional character Yuffie you can cross to the long island to the west and do a long kind-of-fun, also kind-of-annoying sidequest. Otherwise to advance the plot you're supposed to look around for clues about Sephiroth/etc. If you go to the north you'll find a small 'village' on the southern part of the northern continent. If you go ALL of the way around the eastern continent you'll work around to the islands in the bottom middle of the map, and that's where the storyline really continues.

Yeah, if I wanted someone to hold my hand and completely walk me through some sequence of events, OK, maybe I want a video. That said, I've almost never found myself in that position (outside of home repair stuff). I want to figure things out on my own, and if I give up and look something up I almost always one to know one specific thing. And videos are terrible ways to learn one specific thing.

September
October
November
December

I've never bothered to look up the history of month naming to figure out when these were the 7-10th months, but they clearly were at one point. I assume it was not long before Julius Caesar and Augustus named July and August after themselves.

And I just got curious and looked it up. According to Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1701c8/why_are_september_october_november_and_december/

adjl posted...

Most of that roughly translates to "it was easier to ignore the world's problems and people that disagree with me."

Kind of, but that's not framed correctly. Are there problems? Absolutely. However, the internet is being used to push the most extremely emotional manifestations of problems. That has the effect (often desired by the poster) of driving people apart into tribes and making compromise impossible. Problems can't be ignored, but it's extremely counterproductive to interact with them in the way we are currently interacting with them. There's no storage of bad actors (i.e. Russia) pulling up and promoting the most extreme stuff on both sides of the political system to take us down.

So: the calm of the 90s absolutely had real value. Some big problems can't be seen as well during a calm, it is true, but society can actually SOLVE problems (even if slowly or impractically) during calm. A tribal society can't solve problems in any lasting way: it can only fight until one tribe wins. A society needs to have some semblance of agreement regarding "who we are and what we value", even if imperfect, to function. In the US it has obviously been a problem that minorities have had less say in that vision and that is 100% wrong. I'm just pointing out the reality that a nation can't succeed without a sense of "us" and, despite good intentions on the part of (in my view) the left...we are getting further from such a sense. Not closer.

So...society is really too complicated to be judged "objectively" by our human brains. ...but if you ask me, I take society in the 90s.

Gaawa_chan posted...

Apparently the change is being implemented November 2023? That's what I heard at least.

Yep - it looks like we've only got a couple changes left!

You can tell your grandkids about the crazy thing we used to do with time...

Gaawa_chan posted...

I didn't hate 2's leveling system as much as others seem to (but it is not good) and I appreciated that it was at least trying to do something new in terms of gameplay and actually tried to do something more than the bare minimum in terms of story.

Agreed, more or less. The storyline was kinda neat for the era and I guess brokenly easy battles are more fun than brokenly frustrating battles. I thought it was OK while playing it. I did prefer FF1 for the jobs, though. I haven't played the remakes, but I can see where the Emperor could come out looking solid.

Gaawa_chan posted...

It's also why I hate FFVIII a bit less in retrospect (my GOD I hated that game as a kid), because they were definitely trying to do some unusual stuff there as well.

Again agreed. I would say FF8 is near my top 10 favorite games at this point, even though I hated everything to do with the characters and storyline the first time through. The gameplay is a lot of fun once you get your head around it (more fun than 7 and 9).

Except...when they say "permanent" they mean that there won't be any change in the spring and fall. We will just stick with the DST definition of time 365 days per year.

....so you're in favor of this, right?

HellSpawn666 posted...

Im thinking about starting either X-2, FF12, or FF15 next. I havent decided yet.

Well, for what it's worth none of those are very similar to 7-9-10.

X2 has combat with job changes and the storyline is, uh...lighthearted. Or cringey.
FF12 is becoming somewhat MMO-like with an openish world and a, uh...political storyline. Or boring.
FF15...well, you travel a nice open world in a car with friends: that kinda works. The plot (largely nonexistent) and battle are messes, though.

Gaawa_chan posted...

I actually (now HERE is a spicy take) liked FF2 more

Hmmm. Well, FF2 has a cute proto-plot: is that was you liked about it?

I would agree with your assessment. I don't think FF9 is bad, but I don't think it quite reaches the heights of the other two.

Any future FF plans?

*Edit*: damn, I tried to be first. :)

Unbridled9 posted...

Here's a question. What will happen when it turns on Belarus? I mean, if their goal is to restore the USSR it's gonna have to take it. At the same time they've basically been acting as Russia's puppet. So are they gonna, like, suddenly go 'we want to join Russia!'? Plus what about the soviet satellite nations? You know, the ones that weren't part of the USSR but were basically controlled by them? Especially since ones like Poland are now part of NATO and/or don't want to rejoin?

Belarus is fineso long as they have a groveling puppet leader. And they do. If they overthrow him (like Ukraine) then theyll get invaded.

Black_Crusher posted...

really out of it.

Isnt that kind of this thing, though?

LinkPizza posted...

Possibly. Its good to try to have a community when you get out. Most people I know either go home and rejoin their old community. How well it works depends on the person. For me, it would work well because of my friends and family back home. But it doesnt work for all. Another good way is to keep the same community where you got out. We actually do that here. Most of the people that got out that are in the area still come to hang out Saw a bunch of former co-workers on Saturday. So, it kind of depends on the person

Yeah, it's certainly still better to have a group to begin with than never have one at all. Like you say, sometimes it can be continued!

LinkPizza posted...

The military one stills exist. Thats how a bunch of friendships are still made Just yesterday, I hung out with a bunch of them

Yes, that one still works.

The only thing is: it seems to be a struggle for those leaving the army. I suspect a fair amount of vet mental issues are caused by the loss of the community they had in the army.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As far as I'm concerned, Square died in 2003.

Anything you think you remember being released post-KHII is just a figment of your imagination. Your terrible, terrible imagination.

I dunno, I kind of feel like KHII should be part of my imagination also: the decline had started IMO.

As for latest "Final Fantasy A1B2C3D4 Origin Crystal Epic Product"...no thanks.

I did like DQ8 and 11, but those are the "E" part of SE.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Oooh Groundhog Day is great. I was expecting something closer to Caddyshack but was pleasantly surprised

Agreed, that's also in my top 10-20 somewhere. It annoys the heck out of my wife, though.

MICHALECOLE posted...

no movie has moved me or been as influential to me as that movie

Moving and influential, yes...I just have trouble watching it. :)

MICHALECOLE posted...

2001 a space odyssey

Tripping or sober? Longest........................warp .................................................................ever.

It was memorable, but man I couldn't call that a favorite.

I think a lot of it is that male friendships were traditionally built around an organization or craft or hobby or something. That's what those old community organizations that seem weird now (Masons, Shriners, VFW) etc were really for. Or churches. Or shared season tickets to sporting events. Or working/volunteering together with someone, especially in something like the army.

A lot of that stuff just doesn't really exist anymore (or, if it does, it's become weird/polarized). Sports are too expensive/commercial. It kind of seems like it's video games or nothing, and video games just don't work the same for friendships...especially if played remotely.

I try to hold a board game night once every 2-3 months and scheduling that is like pulling teeth, even though my group of friends consider each other strong/lifetime friends. It's not as if any of us have anything better to do, but getting together is hard for some reason.

11110111011 posted...

The Princess Bride (1987)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Good ones. Edge of Tomorrow can't make top 5 for me, but I just recommended by 12-yr-old watch it yesterday.

And Princess Bridge is just it's own weird, but great, thing.

Spaceballs has some classic lines, but it's too cheeseball overall for me. Airplane is solid, though. And the Naked Gun.

EhhI find it kinda bland and I don't really like their buns. Id rather have DQ.

But its fine.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

people today seem psychologically incapable of comprehending the idea of powerful platonic friendship

It doesn't really exist anymore: relationships (especially platonic) are distant and casual, perhaps for guys in particular.

The part that threw me for a loop was the last march to the Cracks of Doom where Sam was 'comforting Frodo with his body' or some phrase like that. I couldn't decide if that was innuendo or not. It wasn't, but it was strong enough I wasn't sure at the time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

We have a tendency to try and view all past media and history though the lens of our own current culture and mores, but that can lead to a lot of false assumptions. People in the past didn't see the world the way we do, and ignoring their cultural context kind of changes the reality of whatever you're looking at.

Certainly true.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That was my complaint about Gimli, honestly. He's reduced to comic relief in a lot of his scenes, which is very much not what he is in the books.

Yeah, I didn't love what Jackson did there, either. In the books Gimli did a fair amount of 'laughing grimly in the face of death" stuff, but he certainly wasn't comic relief.

If *I* want to say anything meaningful I don't text, because yeah: texting sucks for anything other than simple info. Comedy more complicated that a poop emoji won't work well.

adjl posted...

I think that's mostly just an age thing. Generally speaking, depending on how socially adept one is as a teenager, either high school or college are going to be the high point of many people's lives, since that's a period where they have relatively few responsibilities and can mostly ignore how much the world sucks. Really, the world has always sucked and is always going to suck. The only thing that changes is how it sucks, so if we're fondly remembering a period because we don't remember it sucking, that's purely because that was a time when we had the privilege to ignore the suckitude, but because it actually didn't suck.

I know youth nostalgia is a thing...but really, by more objective measures I think the 80-90s actually hold up pretty darn well. It was pre-toxic internet, the US was at a high point, we were largely pre (open) culture wars, etc. The only good things added post-90s are phones/Amazon/etc technical conveniences. The 80-90s weren't perfect by any means, but if nothing else there were some fairly consistent values and a sense of "us".

Did it exclude some people? Sure, but I will honesty say I believe mainstream culture was reaching out to those who were excluded better in the 90s than all of the hyper partisan crap that's happening today. To point: there need to be accepted mainstream values and a happy sense of "us" to make people want to meet there in the middle. That existed to a degree then. It doesn't now.

I don't want to over-romanticize the 90s, but I don't believe it would be right to dismiss it as nostalgia either. Those who prefer the US of today are largely those who view themselves as part of a small "tribe" within the US that's been empowered by the internet/etc. There's nothing wrong with that at a high level (it's better in some cases than others) but it has killed the mainstream culture of the past. To anyone who would say that's not a bad thing, I would say "do you really think you're going to enjoy what comes next?" It's easy to tear down. Building up is hard (and NEVER perfect).

Not sure why I'm going off on this in a SE topic.

Not just martial arts movies: in more or less all movies the hero isn't supposed to initiate the violence. In Westerns the villain 'draws' first in a standoff before the quicker/better hero kills him. In superhero movies the villain starts something then the hero stops him. Etc.

The formula is well set. Hero goes through lots of effort to reach villain, then stands around or is easily captured until the villain puts someone in imminent danger, then the hero breaks out and gets him.

That rule is broken more often in modern movies, but it's still generally there.

Judgmenl posted...

This is a byproduct of the pandemic and losing all desire to go outside.

For me, never leaving the house has had the opposite effect. How do you lose weight that way?

KJ StErOiDs posted...

In no particular order:

Terminator 2 (1991)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Training Day (2001)
The Matrix (1999)
Crimson Tide (1995)

Good list. I would probably add Saving Private Ryan instead of Training Day, and maybe something like Monty Python & Holy Grail instead of Crimson Tide so I have a comedy.

Kill Bill V1 and Good, Bad, and Ugly want to make the list, also, but I don't know what I'd kick out.

Yeah, upon further review he has to be #3. Doesn't give a rat's ass about anything other than ratings and his conservative 'tribe'.

I really can't decide if he believes his BS or not. Does he accept things on the surface without looking into them at all so he can think "well, my one source said it was true: who am I to disagree"? Or is it more "this is so good that it must be true"? Or is it simply "I don't give a rat's ass about truth"?

At this point I'm pretty sure Trump is #2. It seems he has the ability to convince himself that anything he wants to be true is true. (Not that he has any interest in the truth to begin with, but it seems he takes it further than that) It seems he really believes the election was stolen, for example. The self-delusion would be awe-inspiring...if it weren't so destructive. It also unfortunately makes him difficult to prosecute: it's hard to stick (certain) crimes on him if he believes his crap.

Tucker, though...I can't decide. Probably some combo of all of them.

hungrymike posted...

Given the shady stuff the gov has done in the past I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility they funded biological weapons in Ukraine.

...and this is why people can get tricked into believing anything. If they did something bad in the past (and there are examples, yes) ANYthing could be true, no matter how ridiculous! Facts still matter. There is still good reporting. (Although there's no perfect reporting)

It doesn't appeal to me, but I've seen enough people enjoy it I kinda get it. It's (clearly) not about statistical logic. It's about the thrill of 'victory' and the remote hope of a big score (which is why slots appeal to people even though the odds suck). It's kind of like how it's fun to run around a map and find stuff in an RPG rather than just fight a couple times and buy the same stuff in a store. Winning/earning it is fun. And you might find a sword of awesomeness, who knows?

But yeah, I think I've wagered about $40 in my life and lost maybe $20.

As for the edit...hmmm.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

the live-action films also tend to make Aragon seem much more sympathetic and awesome than the books do

Sympathetic and "awesome", maybe, but I rather liked stoic Aragorn the best.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And make the Merry/Pippin interactions feel more like friendship than merely kinship.

Aragorn and Gandalf were a little different in the movies, but still solid. I really didn't like what Jackson did with Merry/Pippin, though: they got the full comic relief sidekick treatment whereas they were more or less equals to Frodo in the book.

But I'm stoic and old fashioned, so none of that is unexpected.

^Oh, I know. It makes perfect sense given where it came from, but it doesn't always hit the right chords alongside my modern values.

As for "or more"...

Actually I had a rather strong "are they gay?" reaction the first couple times I read the books in the 90s as a teenager. As I grew up that faded as I read more books featuring olde English servants/friendships, though: a truly devoted old world servant had some characteristics we would associate with lovers today.

How has nobody linked this yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chGlsNax_vc

ParanoidObsessive posted...

it seems like Rowling doesn't have a very good grasp of a lot of things.

That too.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Hell, I'd pick Samwell Tarly over Ron as well.

Any day of the week.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Sam's generally awesome (and doubly so when played by Sean Astin), so he's the no-brainer choice regardless.

The only quibble I have with Sam is the persistent loyal servant (as opposed to true "friend") thing. But he's still a greatest ever tier character.

My wife did a year or so after getting Lyme's disease. She had to go to some Dizzy and Balance center. Fortunately it seems to have worked: it's 15 years later and it hasn't come back.

It was annoying as heck for her, though.

Ron was just about the least likeable major protagonist buddy I can think of. To be completely honest I don't think Rowling had a very good grasp of how male friendships work. (OK, OK, "traditional" male friendships)