I missed the Elemental Materia in the Shinra building and it made me realize I have never managed to get Master Materia for any type in any playthrough lol

Like, I think I mastered a couple materia, and I normally get at least some of the huge materia, & I def managed to get gold chocobos

But...Master Materia & the Weapons are just an enormous grind

Like, that kinda grinding has just never interested me

Also like, I think I had a lot more comfort with weird pacing and transitions in games and movies as a kid

It's frustrating now tho. Like, we get taunted w/exploring the rest of the lower ring bc you can go "outside" from Aerith's place, but really we only get to see small parts of 3 sectors

Also that you just...climb the wire and are at Shinra HQ instead of getting to trek through the upper ring is...bad pacing/world building

Also as an adult I'm horrified by the terrible city planning

There's corkscrewing train around their double layer plate city, but there's no...means of following that path otherwise? That's so much wasted real estate, that would also make it easier to repair the plate as needed

Also lower slums used to be villages, but were clearly demolished and rebuilt in abandoned construction materials etc...but a lotta those folks work for Midgar/the upper ring. It's shocking none of that was planned in a way to at least extract wealth and utilities from them?

All of this is of course ignoring that this is a completely planned city (at least the upper level) is a perfect circle, but...the neighborhoods are divvied up like a fucking pizza

I assume this is a result of their TERRIBLE construction design where the ring was built in these town-size pizza-slice shapes, slapped together so they don't support each other at all, and then just...each section rested on top of one (1) fucking pillar

Like, take a sec and imagine this

You're a wealthy Midgardian, who lives on the upper ring. You work in Sector 2, but your friends & favorite restaurants are in Sector 3 so you decide to live walking distance from both

You pay in EXCESS bc you live near the ONE TRAIN & like to RP w/your wife in the lower bars ;)

It turns out, you're on a high rise apartment building kinnnda equidistant from two pillars

...and everytime the train goes by your building fucking WOBBLES as the seams on the fucking plate world are stressed

@yeenbean holy fucking shit I never even thought about this holy balls...

...I wonder if the remake addresses this at all? c_c;;

@Nine I feel like they must have just to make the city impressive in HD right? Cause like, these are images from the old game

The obvious answer is the game designers didn't really think about city layout since it's supposed to be a sprawling city with high rises and shit, but the tower in the center is like...60some stories and towers far above anything else?

Not to mention it'd be just as ugly living bn those giant section dividers as in the slums

@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 @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 @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

@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.

@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