Wow, it's the first game I ever worked on professionally! I'm marking this game as "mastered" considering I spent 2 years of my life working on it.

Look, there are other former Volition coworkers of mine that have guested on podcasts and talked about some of the issues this game's development went through. This game was supposed to be doing a lot more, originally. The ideas were too lofty to be pulled off by a team of Volition's size, poor management and meddling from the publisher damaged team morale, and a whole host of other things contributed to the poor final product.

The game was originally more of a loot-based, co-op action RPG with three open world cities that would update over time. The map updates were kind of like Fortnite's, but smaller and on a more frequent basis. New events would happen every so often that featured community goals, the kind you currently see happening in Helldivers 2. The ideas were neat, but it all felt very pie-in-the-sky.

The newly updated engine and tools Volition was using at the time were designed with this original game in mind... which means the tools needed to make a single player open world game with linear missions did not really exist. There were no cinematics tools and no tools for linear, checkpointed missions. So that's why the game launched with a shitload of bugs that would break mission progression.

Also here's a nitpick I have with the game that no one has ever pointed out. There are multiple areas in the game where way more scientist NPCs spawn than any other type and it's really jarring. Also all of the civilian NPCs look like they were built on a slightly different scale than the player characters. All of the civilians are kind of tiny looking, even when put next to the playable characters that are also on the small side.

My immediate thoughts after finishing it: this game is insane. And I mean that positively. This game is what I'd point to as an argument that making the FF7 Remake project more than one game is a good choice. The size of the game, the variety, and the huge world map with tons of distinct, extremely detailed towns and locales is not something that could have been accomplished if they adapted all of FF7 in a single title. FF7 Remake adapting only Midgar built an extremely solid foundation for the future Remake titles. Like this game was made in about 4 years. 4 years!

The changes to the combat are great, the soundtrack is killer, sidequests have been massively improved, and a lot of the writing is really good. There are lots of additions and tweaks to the OG's story that just make more sense, are more interesting, and make the world feel more alive. The biggest hits when it comes to writing are all of the character moments and interactions between the main party. Also this game is extremely funny. Like the hit ratio for humor in this game is extremely high with only one or two jokes being grating or not landing.

This game also embraces the spirit of the OG FF7: it feels like every single idea, no matter how insane, made it into the final game. And just like the OG, Rebirth frequently switches tones on a dime.

I still need to think a lot more about the ending. I like a lot of it, but I need to mull over a lot of scenes to come to a better conclusion. I am very interested how they wrap this series up in the final game.

I have no super major complaints, but there are a decent amount of small issues that add up. I'm curious if any of these will ever get patched or smoothed out in an updated version of the game that comes out on PC or PS6 or whatever.

The most glaring issue is traversal. The button you hold down to automatically climb and jump is functional, but it doesn't feel good. The animations are very weak and really stick out like a sore thumb when so much of this game has really great animations.

Other than that, I think there are a handful of scenes with slow walking that go on too long. The distance you need to cover is too much for how slow you walk and it breaks the pacing at some points. Especially near the end of the Nibelheim flashback. There are also some graphical issues. Just like in Remake the devs are using texture atlases here to save on draw calls and increase performance. That means, however, that a lot of random objects with very low resolution textures can be found sitting next to assets that have razor sharp textures. Lighting also took a hit since they don't seem to be using baked lighting due to the world being so much larger. I hope a few of these things can be ironed out a little bit over time.

Anyway, that's FF7 Rebirth. It's pretty incredible how well they pulled off most things in this, and I'm looking forward to my eventual hard mode playthrough.

I really love this game even in spite of the snow yetis. This is the game that introduced the now standard feature of weapons that evolve with use. The game's just bigger in scope compared to the first and the shooting is improved with some much needed features like the ability to strafe while shooting. This game also starts the tradition of a hidden museum that features developer commentary and content that was cut from the game. It's a lot of work, but I wish more games would do something like this.

I'm both annoyed that it took me so long to get into this franchise, but also glad that this is the game that I started with. Yakuza 0 is a perfect starting point, especially with how the remakes of 1 and 2 incorporated new elements from 0 into them to make the prequel game feel more natural.

Yakuza is what the later Saints Row games wish they could be. It nails the delicate balance of a mostly serious crime story with over-the-top action and extremely wacky side stuff.

Kiryu is one of the greatest game protagonists of all time. He's up there with Solid Snake.