The guitar arrived as promised; I am still waiting on the funk.
Or the clean, crisp depth of theRemakes update.
But each is a shared conversation with personal and cultural memory.
Each an appeal to history.
None are necessarily inauthentic, but none are necessarily more authentic than the others.
One was composed in hope for what FF7 would become.
The others performed in awe of what it became.
Glorious, beautiful callbacks.
So lets talk about Hell House.
It is stupid and pandering and spectacular, in both the complimentary and traditional sense of the world.
One for each pass over the one map in the slums it appears on.
Its a random encounter, so you might not fight it at all.
It has no relevance to the story.
I neither know or wish to.
Let me bathe in your mystique, mechanical murder domicile.
Allowed to ferment over a couple of decades, that mystique has only grown more potent.
So I cant hate it.
Plus, Its a great fight.
Multi-layered and operatic and balls-hard to boot.
Its a much more intense rendition, with rhythmic alterations and note changes.
The instruments know what theyre playing, and they know who theyre playing it for.
Like Hell House, its stirring.
Like Hell House, it is jarringly ostentatious.
But really, how else could it go?
We cherish things for their authenticity, so they become famous.
And how can something famous ever be authentic again?
Im not going to discuss the remakes ending here.
The worms, which once dwelt inside the can the ending tore asunder, sprawl too ungainly to quantify.
Each is a squirming, soil-encrusted thread leading to infinite other worm cans.
Its still too cold outside, and my nose hurts.
And, if Im right, itll mean that some otherwise baffling choices make total sense.
Because of all the legacy albatrosses (albatri?)
the remake has to grapple with, Aeriths death is surely the beefiest.
But I think its exactly the opposite.
Answer: you introduce hope that maybe, just maybe, it wont happen this time.
Then, you twist the Masamune in deeper.
Just like Hell House, this would be an example of the team making fan expectations work for them.
Katharine called the ending anaudacious rug pull in her review.
With hindsight, Im inclined much more towards Katharines take.
Does it only happen to certain types of moments, in certain stories?
Or can anything beloved, left alone long enough, become totemic?
I remember first learning the phrase double-edged sword from FF7.
Its what Barret calls Materia in the games introduction.
When I reviewed FF7R, I called it an entire armory of double-edged blades.
This one, I stand by.
So, bless Nomura and co for daring to get their hands bloody.
No one said you had to kill your darlings quietly, and without fanfare.
For old times sake.
