Final Fantasy VII Remake Reflections - Part 1

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Players

Squidge

Jay

Lulu

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Content Warning

During our intro skit - which starts at 00:01:39 - Squidge talks anatomy, dropping the name of a part of the body which might either be embarrassing to hear or troublesome if there are little ones around. He uses the phrase:

Squidge:

Shinra building testicle course

This ends in a discussion of the 2005 movie Waiting, which is definitely not safe for little ones.

Check the chapter markers and skipt the intro skit if this will be a problem.

I’ve also been told

I had someone listen to the episode into the spoilery bits

that there’s a use of the word “arse” late into the episode, around the 50+ minute mark.

Please listen responsibly

Show Notes

THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION IF YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED IT YET

We promised it the last time that we talked about FFVII and we’re delivering on it this week. Squidge and Lulu wanted to talk about their thoughts and reflections on the FFVII remake.

As such, I wanted to hand over control of the pod to Squidge and Lulu. But before that, I wanted to talk about our recent games. And speaking of…

Lulu’s Recent Games

• Mobius Final Fantasy

  farewell, old friend

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Final Fantasy XIV

Squidge also tells us about his strange sleeping habits, which sounded a lot like Mike’s Tube sleeping escapade from an episode of classic British comedy series Spaced:

jump to 1 minute for the scene in question

Squidge’s Recent Games

• Final Fantasy VII (2020)
• Lego Jurassic World
• Diablo III

It was at this point that we lament the dreaded 30s pixie and the spell that it casts. And Lulu talks about comfy pants

which was the subject of an earlier episode

which was also one of the first episodes to have art work done by yurricanes

and regales us with a tale of having a PJ party in a hotel room. Which gives me the chance to reference this sketch from Loading Ready Run:

Also blanket forts and being at home are bae!

comments section if you disagree

Jay’s Recent Games

Initially, I thought that I’d only played one game since the last episode. But then I remembered that I had been streaming

twitch.tv/wafflingtaylors for live streams or our YouTube channel for VoD

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
• Resident Evil 2 (N64)
• Hybrid Heaven

Lulu tells us that she always misses our streams because she tends to do FF XIV raids when we stream, and Squidge worries us all about whether he wears pants during his streams.

Bobbing Up & Down and The Movies

Squidge and I started bobbing up and down, and that was because I was sitting on a yoga ball

I sometimes get lots of lower back pain

and Squidge likes to play along. And I start talking about whether I could hack the FF VII remake to get it working on my PS2 - or whether I should buy a copy of the PS4 version and use one of the super early PS4 emulators

apparently, PCSX4 is a scam. That is, according to a lot of folks in the emulation scene

Then I talk everyone through just why Square had to merge with Enix - and yes, it’s down to Final Fantasy The Spirits Within. Which get’s Lulu talking about that movie, perhaps we’ll cover it in our “Waffing Taylors Goes To The Movies” series

nudge-nudge wink-wink

It really is a shame that FF Spirits Within didn’t do so well, because it really was a great Sci-fi movie. Also, Square desperately wanted to make Aki Ross into the first digital actress, which brings me to this monstrosity:

Seriously, they didn’t even try to make Audrey Hepburn look vaguely human in this advert.

Twitter Awesomeness

When both parts of our earlier discussion on the Final Fantasy VII Remake were released, Lulu

being the absolute amazing person that she is

tweeted about them both, and we got some wonderful interactions with the voice cast. Here are the tweets for part one (you’ll need to click through to see the threads):

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

and

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

And here is the tweet from part two

including when Austin Lee Matthews quoted the episode back to Lulu

seriously Austin, you’re amazing. Thank you for listening

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Note: Firefox users will likely just see unformatted text. This is because Firefox wants to keep your privacy safe, and in order to show tweets we need to include a piece of Twitter JavaScript which has tracking embedded in it. In order to see the original tweets, just click on the date that they were published.

We have no control over this. But Jay is looking at building his own Twitter widget so that we don’t need to use Twitter’s tracking script

Some amazing stuff there, and I want to issue a very real and heartfelt thank you to the voice actors who chose to like and comment on these tweets.

We also talk a little about Barret losing his hand, and how Square-Enix might choose to present that - potentially in very gory detail. And Lulu points out that it’ll be strange for a lot of us long-term fans to see Barret with two hands, especially since we’ve grown used to him only having one hand for the past 20+ years.

Inside Baseball Talk

Squidge needed to take a bio-break, and we left the microphones on. Because we believe in not throwing any content away

and because it’s always fun to find out "how the sausage is made"

we decided to leave our inside baseball talk in.

We talked about how Lulu needs to be on the show more, and how I’ve received messages saying that Lulu should be on the show more, how G

aka #dontCallMeAudrey

and how Squidge creates lots of ringtones whenever Lulu is on the show

this is something he has done when editing Tabs & Spaces, too

Squidge & Lulu Take Over

It’s as this point (around 36 minutes in), that I bowed out and left Squidge and Lulu to record the episode. I literally have no idea what they talked about, and will likely not even hear this portion of the episode until next year

when the game comes out for formats other than PS4

so I’ll have to hand over to Squidge & Lulu for the remainder of the show notes.

***

I don’t actually have any notes other than to say:

Squidge:

enjoy

External Links of Interest

• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Final Fantasy The Spirits Within
• Reception of Aki Ross
• Lulu’s Twitter
• Lulu’s Twitch Channel

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

• Intro music is Among The Stars, from the Cosmos Music Pack by Muz Station Productions
• Spoiler Break music is Spectrum (Subdiffusion Mix) by Foniqz (BandCamp)
• Pallet Cleanser music is Breath Deep Breath Clear (Wu Chi) by Siobhan Dakay
• Lulu’s rendition of the Bombing Mission theme from Final Fantasy VII; © Square-Enix & Nobuo Uematsu
• "Fell asleep on the tube" scene from Spaced; ©Channel 4, London Weekend Television & Paramount Comedy
• Outro Music is I N e e d Y o u 私の側て by G.H (removed from BandCamp)