@yeenbean Oh SO friggin ugly. Imagine all the shit that would just fall down between the plates??

@Nine it *bothered* me as a kid, but at the time I assumed I just lacked the spatial imagination to picture what was going on

As an adult w/a masters in urban planning I'm much more willing to go no....this really just does not make any sense at all

And is perhaps the worst layout imaginable for this kind of city

@yeenbean ff7 had a lot of handwaved stuff like that, and a lot of other problems, but god, I had never even thought that hard about the fuckin' main city that is such a key part of the entire plot even though you basically only spend disc 1 in there, and MAYBE zip back there in Disc 3 optionally, or for a small endgame event.

It's kinda blowing my mind just how damn ridiculous it is and how so much is just "Rule of Cool"ed. lol

@Nine it honestly bothers me a whole lot that more of the game isn't in Midgar

I think the concept of Midgar was more interesting than most of the rest of the world the game is set in :/

@Nine but given there's no weird section dividey things from the lower level (except the one), I think the reality is the upper level folks don't encounter the construction of the Midgar in their day to day unless they commute bn levels

So...the only realistic way of constructing a city this way I can come up with is that giant tower is the main support for every sector, sky rises are only built in bn the tower & pillars, and the edge is for lower buildings/gardens that look over the ring

@Nine also lol, legos take on it (with their kinda notoriously sturdy blocks?) was to just...create enormous sector dividers so it'd be stable

@yeenbean lol if LEGO is going "yo dude your design friggin sucks, look what we had to do just to make it realistic? c'mon, step your goddamn game up." then you KNOW you are getting owned. wtf squeenix lol

@Nine As far as I can tell...remake mighta made it worse

@yeenbean oh dear. lol. I mean... at the very least the upper plate at least looks liek a CITY now, y'know?

@Nine lol ya that's true; and it's fuzzy enough that those supports that cut through the sectors could go *over* the buildings, which is kind of cool re:over-the-top design

There are other pics that kinda suggest there's that outer support you see in the pic above, and then more city heading out to the rim of the plate...which is what I expect of Midgar, but also means the top is 14 sectors

@Nine @yeenbean all i really know from the remake is there's like the giant reactor between each plate which is also a support structure, and then the main pillar in the center of each plate, and then there's a bunch of minor pillars all over the place between them

it's still pretty fantasy about it but it's a lot more like believable at least

@kat @Nine honestly that's kinda reassuring to hear tho, we don't encounter any kinda minor pillar in the old version that I can think of, and we def don't see any of them break when the sector falls

@yeenbean @Nine i thiiiink you see some way in the background maaaybe when the pillar gets detonated but i don't remember haha

the remake gets like super ridiculous with all the industrial stuff so even if it's architecturally goofy, it still feels pretty real and solid, which is neat

@kat @Nine lol I wouldn't mind if the old game just distracted me with cool world-building re:exploring Midgar

It's just...we don't actually get to do that, which underscores how nonsensical the design is

@yeenbean @Nine the remake is like EXTREMELY about exploring midgar and seeing neat worldbuilding stuff, it's honestly one of my favorite parts

@kat @Nine despite how small a portion of the game it is, that's what I liked about the original so I'm kinda excited for the Switch release ^^;

It sounds like it's basically a full game, that kinda ends around the end of the Midgar part of the story, which...might be all I want

@yeenbean @Nine they pretty much turned midgar into an entire full-length JRPG, it's really good haha

@yeenbean @kat Also because of this the Sectors themselves as you explore like... what... 7 and 6? maybe 5? ... they feel SUPER friggin tiny in the original and that always made me like :(

...also wait what the fuck

WHAT THE FUCK

President Shinra dropped an entire fucking massive portion of the city to kill Avalanche.

Not JUST everyone in the lower sector 7. but everyone in the UPPER sector 7 as well What the SHIT

@Nine @kat yeah!! That's what really bothered me at first; the slums are each like...villages of 5~10 buildings, but the upper ring is supposed to be sprawling & honestly I think the implication is more people live in the slums than on the ring

Sorta like, all the service folks live in the suburbs aka the slums, and the wealthy live above in a re-imagined Metropolis/actual commentary on class

But that's not at all what we see; what we see are like, 100 people that really should move

@Nine @kat it was so bad that in the original game I just assumed they were living in ruins and nobody wanted them to live there, and didn't understand why Tifa would have moved to Midgar to live in...a tent city really

Playing through again, the context is definitely like...they live in one of the nicer slums and her bar is famous across upper and lower plates and it's actually a huge city itself

@yeenbean @kat Honestly if I was Rufus Shinra at this point when I found out my dad was dead I'd be like "HOLY FUCK whoever killed this guy is a goddamn hero" like I'd just set AVALANCHE up as the heroes for it because godDAMN they just took out a monster who straight up murdered a MASSIVE section of the city, not to mention all the businesses and corporations who probably FUND Shinra and pay taxes to them and destroyed most of the city infrastructure! FUCK.

@yeenbean @kat I'd not be like "oh you murdered this wonderful man! CRIMINALS!" I'd be like "YAY EVERYONE LOOK AT THESE HEROES, THANK GOD FOR THEM, I, Rufus Shinra, will turn this company around, and to do that I enlisted THESE brave warriors to do so!" and then basically use that PR to bolster my rep, AND basically put Barrett et al on the back foot and suddenly, BOOM, now they're VERY in the public eye.

@yeenbean @kat SO much easier than framing them for murder and going after them lol. like holy shit, you'd basically have your enemies as WORKING for you now without even having to try for it. You could keep an even closer eye on them.

I mean let's be real, Barrett etc were doin' good, regardless, but I mean, Rufus is supposed to be this really fuckin' smart, calculating, clever dude but he just comes across as a dipshit.

@Nine @kat I kinda like the story/class commentary of everyone in the slums hating Shinra and then also hating AVALANCHE and it's partially bc of that propaganda, but really they already started to hate them bc their actions were killing service workers in the reactors

But also it woulda been SUPER easy for Rufus to co-opt their struggle and put them in a position where they couldn't reallllly keep blowing shit up by thanking them and asking them to rebuild with him :/ Oh well

@yeenbean @Nine i can't say anything because the remake goes into really cool detail about all this stuff and i don't wanna spoil anything haha

@kat @yeenbean ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo i am excite

@kat @Nine aaa fair

@yeenbean @kat I mean if the remake can fix those glaring issues in storywriting, IU'll be happy. I gotta say, if FF15 is anything to go by though, i'm gonna love the gameplay regardless.

@yeenbean Yeah, if nothing else one single pillar would NOT be enough, no matter how big, to support all of that safely. the entire friggin plate would just shear off at the unsupported sides within days probably from the weight of the buildings. You'd need multiple pillars, side supports, suspension cables, the lot. holy christ. ...

...also hold up. Barret, Tifa and Cloud escaped S7 via a suspension cable attached to the upper plate, and down to that weak flimsy tower that blew up... wtf

@Nine right? Even if the center is the main support, you would absolutely need to plan construction on the upper plate around the fact your plate is not made to last and has zero sense of balance

The amount you climb to get to Shinra HQ from the lower levels is also...when I did it I thought it was a short climb to the upper plate, but based on the birdseye of the city Shinra shoulda been higher up

@Nine also it should have been a circular building (like it is inside) and not...kinda squarish like it looks in the cutscene when you get to the top of the wire?

@yeenbean oh god yeah that shit would sway like fuckery in high winds wouldn't it with flat sides

@yeenbean IN GAME even Shinra is way higher up. Remember that Emerald Weapon fires off its missiles or whatever right before the Sister Ray blows its head off, and its weaponry hits Shinra HQ directly, seemingly blowing Rufus to high hell in his penthouse at the VERY TOP Of the shinra building. You see the very top of that central spire in the middle get blown to hell too in the cutscene, so... yeah. what the hell. wow. lol

@Nine oh fuck that's right

Not sure I wanna play that far into it, but if I do I'll pay attention and be ready to laugh lol

@yeenbean lol i just thought of something more that just made me giggle a lot.

Sapphire Weapon gets shot by the Mako Cannon at Junon first doesn't it? And like, it does that thing where it rises up and RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DAMN CANNON, and does that headtilt like "uuuh... oh.. shit that's uh... that's a big gun. You uh. you mind pointing that elsewh-" and then BOOM right in the jaw with the damn thing.

I just... c'mon Sapph, you coulda just... attacked from the side you goober, lol

@Nine lolololol