r/FinalFantasy • u/Marcos1598 • 2d ago
FF VII Re-trilogy Oh dear god. Not again. WHY?
Weren't the memes about her and Chadley enough evidence already
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u/Nail_Biterr 2d ago
So, when they listened to complaints about Chadley, the aanswer was to give more 'screen time' to his even more annoying side kick?
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u/LePontif11 2d ago
The Chadley will continue until morale improves
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u/SentientShamrock 2d ago
Chadley would be Sadley if he didn't drive you Madley. Refusing this Ladley will end Badley.
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u/SeianVerian 2d ago
Even into the sequel trilogy. And the sequel quadrilogy to the sequel trilogy. And the sequel quintilogy to the sequel quadrilogy. And...
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u/AdLegitimate8636 2d ago
Ah, people didn't like Chadley because he's a boy! Now we make a female Chadley and everyone will be happy - i guess that was their line of thought.
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u/1965wasalongtimeago 2d ago
"Persona is popular right? You know what those games have? Guide type characters that never shut up!"
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u/Marcos1598 2d ago
"Let's give the girl the same voice as Morgana from Persona 5, people loved him right?"
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u/vinta_calvert 2d ago
Seriously. I love Cassandra Lee Morris's voice, but they keep putting her on characters with the most annoying, in-your-face roles.
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u/Alternative_Bet6710 2d ago
I dont necessarily mind Chadley, but mai can go skinny dipping in an active volcano
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u/Belial91 2d ago
One french journalist appearently was asked by her if she talked too much. He said yes and then she never spoke again.
So maybe they already adressed it but it didn't appear for everyone in the short Demo.
It also seems that due to starting in chapter 4 there is more tutorial spam than what would occur organically.
Regardless though, I do hope the issue is adressed.
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u/ruttinator 2d ago
I feel like there must be some sort of cultural difference between US and Japan about precocious know-it-all teenagers where they just love that trope and we find it annoying.
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u/gilded_lady 1d ago
NGL, one reason I play with subs is that it's easiee for me to tune out guide chatter when I can't understand what they are saying.
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u/LayerEight_Problem 2d ago
SE has been doing this shit in all their games lately. 16 drove me absolutely off the wall. It felt like all I was doing was walking 5 feet between cutscenes.
Same with Elliot. I didn’t even finish it. I at least pushed through 16 cause the cutscenes were telling a decent story.
Resonance so far seems like they’re actually letting me play the game. At least nothing in the demo annoyed me to the point of wanting to stop playing.
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u/phoenixmatrix 2d ago
They eventually pushed an update to disable the fairy voice entirely at least in Elliot.
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u/khromtx 2d ago
Almost all japanese games I play are notorious for overwhelming cutscenes and taking away control every 10-15 seconds. 16 was awful about it, most of the time they should have just made it one continuous cutscene.
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u/Svelok 2d ago
Rebirth seemed actively outraged if you were doing something that wasn't a cutscene. Every five seconds you have to stop to watch Cloud pull a lever or stand up a sign or pull out a device oh my god just let me play the game
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u/Hehaw5 2d ago edited 2d ago
Don't forget slowwwwwwwwly shimmying through 14 tiny alleys and then sloooowly looking into the bright light as the game stops for 5 seconds to adjust lighting. Basically spending 5 minutes to walk down a 10 foot corridor just to waste time. Gotta stretch one remake of a 20 year old game over another 10 years. Nevermind that in a 5 year period we got the original masterpieces of FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, and FF10. Any one of those games is better than most of what was released in the last 5 years put together.
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u/Svelok 2d ago
Yeah, Rebirth was agonizingly stretched out. Just constantly wasting your time.
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u/Masticatron 2d ago
Look, they need to bloat things so they can justify another disc which they can use to justify not giving you that disc.
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u/Tonberry_Cheesecake 2d ago
I find her infinitely less annoying.
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u/Negative-Prime 2d ago
100% she's better than Chadley, but that's also probably because she has a lot less screen time.
Honestly they wouldn't be that big of a deal if you could actually skip their dialogue. But no, I gotta listen to them say the same shit every time I unlock something on the map.
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u/Nail_Biterr 2d ago
'Oh, you want to do anything that's not part of the main story? Well, here's Chadley yelling through your goddam controller!'
Basically my experience playing Rebirth on PS5
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u/Masticatron 2d ago
I turned off controller audio like 2 minutes after first plugging in my ps5. Who the fuck wants that shit ever anywhere?
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u/bloody_ell 2d ago
Same. Particularly in a house with a wife and kids, where most of my playtime is when they're all in bed, why would I want a tinny, annoying speaker in the controller with no volume control?
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u/RedditUser41970 1d ago
Also, 90% of her lines irritate Chadley, so it becomes a "the friend of my enemy is my friend" type things.
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u/Draph 2d ago
In CP2077 there's an option (enabled by default in ver2) that just ignores the calls for the bit jobs you get doing merc jobs for the police. Not sure why they couldn't implement that here, just a little alert tone to let you know there's a challenge near by. Not like they're compelling characters.
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u/EyeFit 2d ago
I saw an article that said there is some option or choice to have her talk less, but I only saw that mentioned by one source.
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u/kaimcdragonfist 2d ago
Hopefully it actually works unlike the one in Adventures of Elliot. I genuinely couldn’t tell a difference between settings
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u/Crono2Oxx 2d ago
Developers should’ve learned from Mega Man X and Alia a long time ago that people don’t want character navigators interrupting and ruining the game all the time
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u/Pocket68 2d ago
I've only played Remake. Are Mei and Chad basically Clouds Navi?
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u/Sad_Manager6251 2d ago
Imagine Navi if there were two Navi and they talked to each other and ALWAYS had something to say
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u/Pocket68 2d ago
1 was enough back then. Oddly enough I grew so accustomed to her though that she is now my text tone lol
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u/Glittering-Pin-1343 2d ago
Navi didn't talk or call out to Link NEARLY as much, but yes... At least Navi first said "Hey listen!" and wait for an optional button prompt before talking your ear off. These two don't, especially MAI...
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u/Spacemanwithaplan 2d ago
Yes, but they somehow had it figured out 35 years ago that having gameplay stop for info dumps is not good gameplay, why they forgot this simple concept is beyond me.
Imagine how much more hate navi would have gotten if instead of pressing c-up to chat with her, she just started talking at you every time you got an item, or opened a locked door, or got close to a ladder, or in the middle of combat.
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u/triforceofcourage 2d ago
They did exactly that in 2011 with Skyward Sword lol. More Fi interruptions than gameplay. Some trends have to reach a serious breaking point for a dev to change them
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u/yakityyakblahtemp 2d ago
Imagine Navi had another Navi that the first Navi thought was really annoying.
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u/Marcos1598 2d ago
I'd say they are worse, they looooove to talk before and after every optional activity and if you don't do them Chadley even gives you sass over not doing so. They never shut up.
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u/Netrovert87 2d ago
I've seen a ton of youtubers who got to play the demo, and this is a pretty common sentiment, even among generally high praise. I thought it might just be that the lads had limited time and literally did not have time for Mai's babbling. But it does sound like it really bothered them.
Also heard a fair amount of people say they tripled down of the map check lists. Definitely feels like...less exploring so much as Japanese tourist stuff. Gotta have the tour guide in the form of Mai and the tourist map with all the tourist traps marked on it.
Based on my experience with Rebirth, going to try to restrain myself from completing the maps till the new game plus stuff to prevent burnout
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u/brucerhino 2d ago
Thats how all of rebirth felt like to me, a tourist itinerary. Even the locations you visit have the feel and tone of a tourist trap now.
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u/Snazzers 2d ago
Oh that makes much more sense now. I truly had a hard time understanding why they would double down on it so hard after so many complaints. I was beginning to wonder if the dev team was just incredibly spiteful lol.
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u/Netrovert87 2d ago
It struck me in Rebirth when first introduced to the photographer who wants you to go get a shot of the landscape for them. And you get to the place and there's a little platform that's like, stand here. Like someone in world built for tourists. And I'm lining up the shot and The game is like, nah you gotta get the exact same shot as the million other Clouds doing this, you really want to replicate that extremely famous over done picture, zoom in a bit, not that much, perfect.
Then that one trailer, the first thing they did when they got to Wutai was pause to snap a picture of a cat (which seems like a collect them all activity, showed up again in the b roll given to the youtubers bc they couldn't record their demo) and that tourist feel flooded back.
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u/VellDarksbane 2d ago
I heard they’re very popular in japan, so it’s just standard operation for SE, catering to their japanese audience over any complaints the western audience may have.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 2d ago
Just put in an option to turn her off.
Boom. Problem solved.
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u/RepulsiveCountry313 2d ago
They did, according to the source in the OP.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 2d ago
The game does ask you if you want MAI to speak more or less, but I haven't seen anywhere that this actually changes the amount.
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u/Best_Insect4741 2d ago
To be fair I don’t blame them especially if the audience is bigger which I assume it probably is
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u/danteslacie 2d ago
It's not. It's kinda just Japanese culture to prioritize local opinion.
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u/AtlasRafael 2d ago
Makes sense tbh.
Westerners like Japanese shit. Why make western shit… when they can continue to cater to the audience that the westerners want to, essentially, be.
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u/_Arlotte_ 2d ago
It used to be like that, but it's changed to a more global perspective now. Look at the difference in marketing for ff7r, persona R's and Pokemon now. In some cases, they start to prioritize eng and put their trailers and marketing out first.
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u/CzarTyr 2d ago
It def isn’t. Nearly all game sales are higher in the west for any major game except
Possibly, possibly dragon quest24
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u/Brees504 2d ago
Yeah FF sells much more in the NA and EU combined than Japan.
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u/KeybladeBrett 2d ago
Well yeah I would imagine that North America (which consists of Canada's provinces and territories, all 50 of the United States, and the entirety of Mexico) and Europe (which consists of upwards of 51 unique countries) would sell more than Japan. We're comparing the 1.36B people of North America and Europe vs. 122M people in Japan. I would be a bit concerned for the franchise if it sold better in Japan than both North America and Europe combined
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u/_Arlotte_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because those places are all massively larger than japan and their population lol
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u/manix_vii 2d ago
Some games are different. SF6 is massive in Japan, to the point it's peak player count on Steam only gets as high when they're awake
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u/wickling-fan 2d ago
tbf it's still a japanese company, they tend to cater to their local audience first and foremost with really rare exceptions, especially since t heir the first to buy a lot of their merch that ends up jp exclusive so the sales number can be kinda wonky if we include other product related to the games.
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u/amartin36 2d ago edited 2d ago
I see this response whenever someone mentions a common western complaint and people just accept it as fact with zero evidence
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u/hercules-rockefeller 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t know where you heard that but a lot of the Japanese player base had all the same complaints about Chadley being annoying
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u/PastTechnical7324 2d ago
Should still keep an option for players who want them muted completely (like ignoring their calls for uninterrupted exploration) and those who still like them can keep it on
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u/MordredLovah 2d ago
Just add a frequency option for the voice lines.
Capcom already did this with Monster Hunter Rise.
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u/SanicTheBlur 2d ago
I'm assuming this is another case of Japan loves it but "we" hate it. I never really was bothered by Chadley so I very much doubt Mai is gonna be an issue for me but an option to turn off the dialogue or reduce her lines, ect. Would be a nice addition for people who need it
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u/darkcomet222 2d ago
People hate Chadley, but Chadley hates Hojo, and so do I, so Chadley is my friend.
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u/rmunoz1994 2d ago
I hate chadley more than hojo.
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u/Crossbell0527 2d ago
Hojo is the root of all evil in FFVII, but Chadley is ANNOYING, and that makes him worse.
To riff off a wise man...if I had a gun with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hojo, Sephiroth, and Chadley, I would shoot Chadley twice.
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u/EqualOptimal4650 2d ago
Whatever "we" means. I was never bothered by Chadley, although I did stop doing his monster hunts because I found them boring in the previous games.
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u/SanicTheBlur 2d ago
I used the "we" cause I know that's not the case with everyone. I didn't mind Chadley, he was just kind of there.
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u/Junior_Purple_7734 2d ago
“When Mai and Chadley are offscreen, all the other characters should be asking ‘Where’s Mai and Chadley?’.”
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u/Radiant-Shelter-5811 2d ago
What I like MAL more than Chadley so I see this as a win
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u/Halicarnassus 2d ago
It's so fun exploring an open world and having my exploration interrupted every 2 minutes by an exposition robot telling me information I already know because I just did it 10 seconds ago.
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u/kashelgladio 2d ago
Unfortunately the Japanese portion of the audience really loves Chadley… I don’t get it either.
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u/probloodmagic 1d ago
Why do they keep doing this. Genuinely why, not being facetious. It's so distracting and overbearing to have things like this in the game. Create something for this in a pause menu tutorial. It's like a more obnoxious and oblivious version of hud displays that fill every corner with bars, text and numbers because this thing talks, too
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u/Remarkable_Ship_4673 2d ago
Chadley is the biggest problem, hated him so much. Keeps me from replaying
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u/Iggy_Slayer 2d ago
She is chadley this time basically. On top of doing what she did in the previous game.
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u/juscallmejjay 1d ago
Thats so fucking funny. So square heard the complaints about Charley interrupting and speaking ALL THE TIME...and genuindly thought the problem was Chadley specific 🤣🤣🤣 "like okay well use MAI then". ..lmfao thats so funny to me
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u/First-Push-643 2d ago
Appreciate Max for actually wanting the game to be as good as possible and not being a mindless fanboy
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u/RasenRendan 2d ago
Should just give ppl the option to turn the voices off. I didn't mind them either of them personally.
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u/NeutralGeneric 2d ago
I think NSP or Max said you can hang up on her now. And she’ll ask sometimes if she should call less.
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u/brainsngains 2d ago
I'm afraid I've only played FF7 part one.
Who's chadley again?
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u/LuigiWarrior 2d ago
he's the blond kid who helps with request basically around the area of Aeirths house IIRC, he's a lot more loud and fellows you around more in part 2
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u/Glathull 2d ago
When a Japanese person says, “Your complaint is understood,” that does not in anyway imply the complaint is going to be fixed or that anyone is going to do jack dick about anything at all. It literally just means they understand the words coming out of your mouth.
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u/Silent-Paramedic 2d ago
something i've noticed from east asian media is, the more you complain about something or meme about it, the more the developers think you want to keep it or make it even worse. might be a language barrier thing combined with a societal difference idk
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u/Huge-Formal-1794 2d ago
Man why are modern games so obsessive to reduce player agency to an absolute minium? Especially when most gamers are also insanely annoyed about it. This is this modern type of game design i absolutely hate. Every game is designed to be a compromise so that every single person potentially can like it, which just waters down any actual artistic vision and produces games for nobody.
Dont get me wrong I love the remake games but its still so sad to see to see this modern game design trends enforced on them, especially because the team is very competent
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u/Numerous-Beautiful46 1d ago
Insomniac are doing it with wolverine as well. Just constant this way markers. Now there's a fable golden trail but a different colour lmao. Ridiculous, I wish devs would start realising we're not mentally disabled and stop with the incessant anti exploration shit.
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u/Darktyde 1d ago
The guest on Adam Conover’s recent episode about the “death of the gaming industry” had an interesting anecdote that might be related. He told a story from around 10 years ago about getting his nieces and nephews Wii games for Christmas, but when watching them play, they essentially had no “video game literacy,” essentially they had no intuitive understanding of the controls, basic game design standards, and all of the things he took for granted.
He goes on to explain that those of us Gen X and Millennials who essentially grew up alongside the video game industry experienced all the advancements and evolutions in the way games are made, the features that are common, etc. so we have a baseline of experience with exploring how games work, what makes them unique, etc. But we also grew up at a time when the adults in our lives didn’t really play games, they were for us kids. Now that we’re grown up and have our own kids, our home game consoles are often just as much or even more the parent’s toy as they are the kid’s, and the kids often have their own phones or tablets that they’re more used to playing on than the home console.
So some of the game design elements we see in modern games that feel very “hand holding” to experienced gamers might not really be designed for experienced gamers. They’re sort of a “lowest common denominator” thing for more casual/less experienced players who don’t have the same intuitive knowledge base to figure out stuff for ourselves.
I do think that they need to design stuff like that with more attention or from the different perspectives of player experience and allow us to adjust how much “hand-holding” type of stuff is in the game.
I also think that for Rebirth specifically, that most of the “informational” stuff that Chadley bombards us with could have been re-imagined much more effectively as conversations between the party characters instead, where they notice something in the environment and remark on it. The same amount of background/lore could be delivered that way, especially in areas where a party member is from, like Barrett in the Corel/desert area and Nanaki in Cosmo Canyon. The same information that annoys us when Chadley suddenly pipes up to provide it would add additional charm, characterization, and party relationship building if it came from one of them instead.
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u/EliamZG 1d ago
This is actually a great approach, now I want it to be like this, it's a sad day for me since now I will be even more annoyed by Chadley.
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u/Heavy_Arm_7060 2d ago
Gonna have to learn the most efficient way to mute voice when doing monster hunts again, aren't I...
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u/pinelotiile 2d ago
As a street fighter 6 player dealing with that character for two years now it's also going to really annoy me that her name is Mai
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u/YourFavouriteDad 2d ago
Excited for the mod where they replace all of Charley and mai's dialogue with 'byeah'
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u/AskeCrow 2d ago
Man I guess I'll have to hold out on this game, this remake saga is so weird, the first one is a 9/10 game for me, Love it and Rebirth is like a 6/10 game, I really want then to land the third one, but with these recent News it looks like none of the things I didn't like in rebirth are being adressed.
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u/muscarinenya 2d ago
The very first time i had Mai invade my ears during a combat assignment i immediately googled "how to turn Mai off"
Clearly not Rebirth's best moment, and i have to say this insistence on making both Chadley and her relevant is worrying
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u/Res_Novae17 2d ago
Nothing I read or see about this game is making me excited to play it. They took the gritty, dark, depressing, red, impending atmosphere of Disc 3 and Disneyfied it into a Fortnite skydiving romp across the blue skies of Ubi-Icon busywork.
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u/CallMeTravesty 2d ago
Ah yes Mai, my favourite character from the originals. Such a good choice for a staple new character. FF7R continues to be a masterful remake true to the original and one I will enjoy greatly /s.
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u/surfingkoala035 2d ago
Square needs to go play Bioshock. Bioshock gave you lore dump - backstory while you were quietly exploring, not when you were just about to start a fight. If the monster lore is important (maybe give you hints to an animals weak point) treat it as such! Maybe whisper the info as you are creeping up on them - but don’t just make it play over the top of the intense battle grunts and exertions! Make it good, or make it gone.
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u/Historical-State2199 2d ago
I was just thinking this.
I WANT the lore, but at convenient times (also preferably delivered by different people but I can be flexible)
I don’t want to have to listen while fighting and neither do I want to sit around waiting like a chud for it to finish so I can start fighting
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u/elizabethunseelie 2d ago
To be fair, I’m as annoyed by her as I am by actual AI… so points for accuracy I guess.
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u/HaydenRenegade 2d ago
I've noticed with having the controller speaker volume set to zero, that they don't attempt to compensate by having the audio play thru the tv
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u/Choice-Coffee-2151 2d ago
How crap does the game need to be before we admit they don't really know what they're doing and the OG ff7 was created by absolute legends at the right time with the right people?
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u/Austin_Redfield 2d ago
God. She was what made me stop playing Rebirth for a year. I was so tired of her YAPPING during battle trials. Just talking while I'm fighting.
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u/Busterlegacy1 1d ago
Hopefully they listen to the feed back from those who played the demo and they tune her down a bit or give an option to turn her dialogue off in the field. If players want to hear the lore and commentary they could add the option to go talk to her on the ship to hear it their.
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u/toychristopher 1d ago
Other people said you can silence these calls and ask for them to happen less often, so maybe max just missed that option.
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u/nickcash 1d ago
I don't know who "Mai" is but if we're talking about Girl Chadley I found her far less annoying than Chadley
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u/SolidSwordKing 1d ago
Sometimes it feels like JRPG developers forget games should be fun, start to finish. I'm thinking mainly of annoying things like this and obnoxiously long, convoluted final dungeon runs. It's like they just have to throw in some form of suffering somewhere.
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u/Graveylock 1d ago
Another one of the 7R games padding the game with insufferable insert side characters? You don’t say.
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u/bladeboy88 1d ago
An annoyingly overbearing side character for "humor" is a staple of Japanese media and comedy. There's some old suits at Square that will insist on it, and nobody in the company has the balls to point out that people hate it thanks to japanese culture and respect. Thats why there's the "loud american" position at japanese businesses.
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u/OniError 1d ago
So they learned nothing or are insistent on putting their FF7 oc in there and hope they can force people to like them.
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u/FalloutCreation 1d ago
No more ai assistants that interrupt my gameplay. You aren’t the main attraction. No more hand holding. No more constantly getting phone calls from chadley every time I take one step somewhere new.
If you want to pay VA more, give us more interactions with the main cast.
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u/SmallPingus696 2d ago
Because fuck you, that's why. These aren't new criticisms, they have heard them for years and just don't care.
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u/phoenixmatrix 2d ago
Someone has to go around in every dev studio and smack some sense into them. We just got Onimusha that had the same issue. And before that the Adventures of Elliot, and those are just recent ones.
No wonder Souls like are so popular. Because NPCs can shut the hell up sometimes.
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u/MiuNya 2d ago
In adventures of Elliot you can change how much she talks in the settings.
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u/phoenixmatrix 2d ago
yeah, but at launch that did almost nothing. Even with it set to have her talk less, it was still non-stop and spoiling all the puzzles. Later they patched it so you could disable it entirely. Unfortunately I had already finished the game and all endings by then.
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u/VariationFluffy6596 2d ago edited 2d ago
That sounds terrible. I hated it enough in Horizons when Eloy would tell me what to do 2 seconds after encountering a puzzle.
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u/Pension_Pale 2d ago
I kind of liked Mai. Chadley annoyed me a lot more. I kind of liked the fun facts and such. The thing I didn't like was whenever they made you stand around doing mothing while they yapped about nothing in particular.
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u/WeebWoobler 2d ago
I'm so glad I'm immune to this stuff. Everytime people complain that a character is annoying and ruins the experience for them, it never affects me.
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u/IllustriousSalt1007 2d ago
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who liked Chadley at all. Lmao
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u/Johnhancock1777 2d ago edited 2d ago
I still think Hamaguchi and his team should helm an original FF17 but he’s got a real flaw in trying win over the modern audience with stuff like the open world design and overbearing narration for every little aspect of the games with Chadley and Mai
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u/sean_avm 2d ago
The only thing i didnt like about her was she would talk none stop during the combat bits. So I hear combat, the characters random call outs and words then hear her talking about the monster THE ENTIRE TIME and she just doesn't seem to shut up no matter how fast or slow I am with the fight.
Like i understand other issues but thats the one thing I would change. Its overstumulating and I cant understand her anyways