To Greener Pastures || Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth {Chapter 2}

[@anxhelovucinaj1576]

I gotta say,your enthusiastic somewhat kiddielike excitement you show at the beginning when you were walking around the field with the bunnies,swimming in the river and all that was so wholesome and endearing😊 Reexperiencing rebirth again through your LP has really helped me see just how much the game undermines a lot of the most impactful story moments in the OG just to pretend that it's"subversive"when it really isn't. (The whole swamp monster section speaks for itself on what I mean),more than that though,thank you SO MUCH for everything you said at the end and just how much the game fails at addressing its topics regarding mental health. The amount of times that I've genuinely felt frustrated with the cast in this game due to their preachings of empty platitudes to Cloud and how despite the fact that the story wants to convince me that these characters do care for him,aside from aerith,almost NONE of them do anything to have a proper conversation with him and help have a better sense of self with him even in spite of everything that they've been forewarned about the future in remake,but now all of a sudden the writers decided to backpaddle on that? (The whole"Aerith having her memories of the future stolen from her"in particular absolutely frustrates me) Maybe part of my frustration might be due to the fact that I've also been in a scenario where despite my depression,the people around me didn't have much of lifeline to offer for me but I could be letting my bias clouding my judgment of the characters here. Regardless thank you so much for that discussion at the end of the video,it really made my day! I'm looking forward to the next part but try not to overexert yourself with the editing. Take your time and take care of yourself!

[@Kabbaway]

Thank you for your comment, I appreciate all your comments and feedback 😄💚 Overall, the parts where I had the most fun were when I was exploring and messing around with props (my personal favourites are the inflatable chocobos which I lovingly call “Chocofloats”) 🐥 The visuals are by far the best part of this game, although even then the attempt to be hyperrealistic with the graphics, textures, items etc can make it overwhelming, sometimes even claustrophobic to navigate (not to mention it makes any visual issues REALLY stick out against everything else). That’s probably why the icons for findable items are so glaringly obvious, but that does nothing to solve the fundamental problem, does it? 😅 I think that’s the inherent problem with this awkward in-between remaster and reimagining they’ve created - based on the events in Remake, there’s not much reason for us to keep retreading OG’s story. So in order to force Rebirth to conform to OG, they’ve actively dumbed down the characters and made arbitrary changes between games. They should’ve either crafted a whole new story or stuck to it being a 1:1 remaster, because falling into the modern storytelling trap of trying to outsmart the theorists has really made Re- project suffer. I don’t think this iteration of the story is going to age well at all - it’s too self-indulgent, self-referential, needlessly convoluted and doesn’t actually innovate anything. The mental health stuff really gets me, especially since Advent Children (as flawed as it is) had more to say about mental illness in its two hour runtime than the entirety of Rebirth and maybe even Remake too. It almost feels like they frontloaded Cloud’s deterioration just to give Sephiroth more screentime. I REALLY hope that’s not the case, but seeing how haphazardly his condition is treated and how his allies being more aware this time around is a plot point that goes nowhere, it wouldn’t be surprising. They’re not even doing anything interesting with Sephiroth, it’s just more of the same mysterious god-like baddie where we don’t get to see how he thinks and plans his schemes (the most fun part of any villain character). Again, more meta writing to “give the fans what they want” without actually considering what made fans enjoy those things in the first place. Getting through editing this playthrough is such a slog, because PLAYING it was a slog. It was extremely disappointing and I hesitate to put out such a negative playthrough, which is why I’ve taken extra time to do all those annotations and mini-essays to frame my complaints more constructively. I wouldn’t have been so disappointed if I didn’t care about FFVII and its characters, themes and lore. I KNOW it has the potential to do better, and even though I think it’s too late for Re- project to turn around and resolve all its plot threads in a satisfying way, I at least hope SE learn that a financially successful game isn’t necessarily a good one 💚

[@anxhelovucinaj1576]

@@Kabbaway couldn't agree more with everything you said. Admittedly while I am disappointed with the direction that Re:project went with,a part of me also feel somewhat glad about it,mainly cuz it stands as an example how,sometimes when you ask for more of an already finished story(basically the whole og ff7 and the ff7 compilation making it's narrative unnecessarily convoluted for the most part)you start to forget what made that story so impactful in the first place and in some cases,even gaslight you in regards to certain storybeats and characters like how crisis core tires to portray Zack as a kindhearted hero who did no wrong(I know I'm beating a deadhorse with this point,but as someone who used to see Zack in the same lens before I came across yout channel it's a bit personal for me to keep reminding myself of that so I don't let other stories gaslight me in the same way) even though ever since the OG we are left to assume the he is more morally ambiguous than that what with him being part of SOLDIER and everything but then crisis core happened and everyone,myself included jumped the"Zack is a hero train"even though that makes no sense with what the story shows us compared to what it tells us. Long story short,while I'm disappointed with how rebirth turned out,it also made for a good learning experience for me for the reasons I mentioned earlier,so gotta take the good with the bad I guess

[@Kabbaway]

Yeah, as much as I love FFVII I can’t help but feel making it into such an extended franchise has diluted and morphed a lot of OG’s original messages. Between SquareSoft merging with Enix and sociopolitical stuff like 9/11 and the resulting War On Terrorism in the 2000s, FFVII has been steered away from OG’s anti-capitalist/anti-military messages for a very long time. The fact that Shinra/SOLDIER/Turk personnel have been largely reduced to comic relief and near-incompetent nuisances rather than legitimate threats to the party exemplifies this unfortunately well. It’s such a shame, since I find the worldbuilding and themes revolving around Shinra as the primary antagonists is way more interesting than the stuff with Sephiroth. I don’t blame you for seeing Zack that way - CC does a good job of making Zack into your classic shōnen protagonist, and back in 2014 when I first got into FFVII I was endeared by it too. It took playing and analysing OG more deeply to realise he was characterised very differently. I don’t think it’s stories gaslighting people (since I strongly believe in reserving such terms for their intended purpose to give abuse victims the terminology to describe their experiences), but a lot of stories do retcon characters, events and even themes… sometimes to the point of becoming unrecognisable over time. Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times not so much. In FFVII’s case, it’s both overcomplicated and diluted a lot of things… I hope against hope that Re- project serves to bookend the story, but it’s not lost on most people that FFVII is SE’s cash cow at the moment, so I guess we’ll see what they do 💚

[@mlwjrpg]

Awesome Kabba is back in action! 🙂

[@Kabbaway]

Indeed, and there’s plenty more to come! 💚 (I finished Rebirth in April, but editing has been slow) 😅

[@McClerith]

Keep up the good work, both of YOU! 😎💅

[@Kabbaway]

Thanks! 💚

[@McClerith]

27:53 It's SOOO perfect that the main story (getting Piko and the chocobo riding tutorial) encourages players towards the Clerith picking flowers together quest where HOLLOW is playing! That's canon treatment right there! 😚💅

[@Kabbaway]

I know right? Plus back in Kalm Aerith was the only mandatory companion to interact with, plus that conversation segues straight into the folios tutorial where you’re directed to unlock Clerith’s Synergy Attack first. That’s without mentioning the unskippable moments in later chapters! They definitely emphasised not wanting players to miss ANYTHING for these two ☺️💚

[@McClerith]

@@Kabbawayperfection 😎💅

[@didinau]

Yay, finally 😊

[@Kabbaway]

Took me a while with writer’s block and mental health issues, but I got there in the end 😅💚

[@kittyblanchard2580]

Another awesome video! Love all the quips and criticisms alike. Keep it up ❤

[@Kabbaway]

Thanks for your support, as always! 💚

[@ndrcalrryx2094]

Lol @ the benches comment - I agree with you! I like how you ended the video with your analysis. I cant wait to see more of your reactions.

[@Kabbaway]

As someone who grew up in rural Australia, almost none of the wooden benches or picnic tables I’ve sat at have ever been painted. As long as all legs are in tact and the wood’s not soaking wet and rotting, it’s good enough to sit on. I really don’t get the point of consumable pillows - if they were gonna do that, they should’ve just brought back tents like in OG and other FFs ⛺️

[@Kabbaway]

About the analysis - these parts of the videos take the longest to make by far. I finished the rest of the video two weeks after the last video was released, but I kept struggling to articulate myself - in the drafts, I kept going on tangents and getting too far ahead of myself in regards to the characters’ action later in the game. I hope I made it clear that the swamp segment falls kinda flat as an inciting incident considering what the character SHOULD know at this point

[@didinau]

I wish they didn't force us to make the exact flower crown as in the picture. There are some other great combinations with different flowers you can do, and fun and cute reactions to it as well.

[@Kabbaway]

I guess technically you don’t HAVE to pick the “correct” flowers. If I didn’t remember the picture from paying attention to the cutscene, I probably would’ve just picked the first three flowers I found 😅

[@didinau]

@@Kabbaway yeah, but the game gives you a photo to pick flowers. I saw one streamer miss the photo jyst like you, and they picked fox tails for the flower crown. The crown was so huge and beautiful but weird looking at the same time. It's like in Remake, the flower arrangement on the wall of Leaf House changes according to what flowers you pick.

[@Kabbaway]

Yeah, see I didn’t even know you COULD pick the foxtails… I guess since no companions were standing by them I didn’t think to check. I can imagine foxtails making the flower crowns look very quirky ☺️🌾

[@georgemitchell1394]

gg! ur right the camerawork in this game is clunky af and the animations feel robotic and lazy

[@Kabbaway]

I know right? For a game with the technological and financial means to make it look smooth and organic, the graphics and expositional dialogue is left to do all the heavy lifting. I wish they’d let there be more natural visual storytelling, and for there to be more actions/gestures in cutscenes (eg actually SEEING them make the flower crowns) 💚

[@georgemitchell1394]

@@Kabbawaytots