like I'm so down for the girls being very tactile with each other but it's weird to have them clinging to each other in fear in one shot and then in the next shot Aerith is fearlessly doing her magic thing
Honestly, it would work better if the ghosts were implied/shown to be able to manipulate emotions or something. That's a pretty classic ability for them to use anyway.
I really would actually have liked it if they'd turned the dial way down on all this poltergeist bullshit and kept the ghosts non-hostile, while the threat comes from other shit that lives here
like I guess the ghosts being punchable shitty monsters and also terrifyingly powerful poltergeists does explain why people haven't stepped this place bare for scrap, but it makes for a weak game section
I can't believe that Barret, at a minimum, would not have ranted angrily about what shinra was pulling there but I 100% believe it wouldn't have mattered to Jessie
minor ludonarrative note: it really is agonizing going up all these levels of pillar and having that objective marker right there on the minimap, mocking me
this is particularly striking, here's a couple talking about supplies they'll need to help the people who escaped... right next to some people talking about looting the rubble and how they can "help" the injured while they're at it
Elmyra: She's not my daughter. Not by blood, I mean. If that's what you were wondering. [camera angle changes to put Barret in the foreground for a contemplative reaction shot]
honestly he might as well be some kind of weird immortal because he does look visibly younger in Crisis Core and what the fuck really. what's a timeline. can you eat it.
Elmyra saying she's sure Aerith is being treated like a guest and she's sure they'll send her home once they have what they need, and clearly not believing a goddamn word of it
she doesn't believe her own words but she has to try and convince herself because she doesn't have the ability to resist Shinra and the grief and hopelessness will overwhelm her if she doesn't convince herself this will be okay
I'm tentatively hype, Deepground felt like a very slipshod addition in Dirge but they've been hinting at this and so far this game has done almost no wrong
Elmyra's hesitation is very understandable - she's deep in the denial stage of grief, and you really have the sense that she's brittle from too much loss and constant fear of loss
asking or even just allowing these people to mount a rescue mission for her daughter means she has to grapple with the fact that her worst fear has finally come to pass
and in the most painfully in-character way possible, no less - Aerith, irrepressible as always, was doing inadvisably dangerous shit and finally got cornered and traded her freedom to assure a child's safety
okay yeah I just looked up the OG game script and Elmyra basically has no input on them storming the Shinra HQ, it's just sort of taken as read that of course they're going to go do that
but going into the impact of all this on Elmyra, as a character instead of just an exposition source, created this situation where she's paradoxically resistant to letting them do that
and the fact that they end up in Deepground because they were trying to find and help Sector 7 survivors makes a lot more sense character-wise for the party, too
I think it was kind of a risky narrative choice to let Cloud witness fucking HUMANS IN CONTAINMENT TUBES this early, and I still don't quite jive with Deepground as a setting element, but you know what, Remake? okay. you have sold me a ticket for this train and I am boarding.
"Get Marlene to safety. Right?"
"Nice catch."
"You're crazy."
"Just like you. So suck it up, because I'm not leaving."
what a good moment
oh they fuckin'Tifa honey
Elmyra: ... So she told you about that?
Cloud: /VERY CAREFULLY DOESN'T SAY SHIT
[camera angle changes to put Barret in the foreground for a contemplative reaction shot]
it's fuckin DEEPGROUNDI bet he had to get good at that"I'm a light sleeper. It's a
traumaSOLDIER thing.""What?"
"Nothing. You should help her."