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The Final Fantasy 7 Remake is trying harder to make Midgar feel like a real city - both for authenticity's sake, and to make you feel weirder about blowing part of it up.
We got to see much more of the city in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake intro cinematic than we did in the original game's opening scenes. They both lead straight into the same initial gameplay, with Cloud and the members of the eco-terrorist group Avalanche infiltrating one of the city's power plants, as you can play in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake demo right now.
"We wanted that feeling that things were already underway, you were in the middle of the action," producer Yoshinori Kitase explained in a post on the PlayStation Blog. "Yet if you immediately went from there into the panic caused by the bombing mission afterwards, you wouldn’t understand the impact it had on the inhabitants’ everyday lives before that event interrupted them. That’s why we started with this domestic kind of scene.”
We see a few parts of the city in special detail, including Loveless Street, the entertainment district where we first meet Aerith. Loveless Street is very close to Mako Reactor No. 1, which you're about to blow up.
"The player gets to see how the [reactor bombing] impacts the city,” co-director Naoki Hamaguchi added. “We want them to feel conflicted about the effects of their actions. That’s why we depicted this area in such detail.”
Still, the city will go on even after you plant the bomb and get the hell out of there (make sure you check out the FF7 demo secret ending to see a little more of it). Hamaguchi explained that the team drew from Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children and other works to help expand their vision of Midgar and make it feel more like a character unto itself as you explore it throughout the game.
“The core concept we worked on was that the player must be able to experience Midgar for themselves," Hamaguchi said. "Each individual location within has distinctive concepts and personalities. There’s a different style of gameplay experience waiting in each one of them.”
Not feeling the nostalgia? We sent a newcomer to see if the Final Fantasy 7 Remake has appeal for more than just fans of the original.
