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Please note: this will include spoilers for Final Fantasy 7: Remake.
I am sick and tired of seriousness in media.
To be clear, “serious” does not mean “no humor and no emotion,” but an eery blandness that scrapes away anything above a certain emotional register. If you want to know what I mean, go and watch Westworld, a show about robotic cowboys where absolutely nobody appears to be able to show any emotion. The colors are bland, the score is moody, the plots are contrived and exhausting, there is no “fun,” only the constant pursuit of whatever vague foreshadowing they intend to make entirely for an audience of people that write episode summaries and listen to podcasts about fictional events.
On the other hand, Final Fantasy 7: Remake feels as if it was made out of spite for prestige TV. It’s big, emotional, colorful, melodramatic and explosive, with enjoyable and satisfying combat and a genuine sense of love for the source material. It’s also one of the single most daring games ever made, not because of the controls, or the combat, or anything systematically it does, but because instead of being a “remake,” FF7: Remake decided to subtly (and then overtly) change the plot of one of the single most beloved videogames of all time, all while fixing almost every issue the original had.
I cannot be explicit enough about how ballsy this is. This remake has been teased since 2005, and the assumption was that the original would be faithfully…
