Towns have lost their magic in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy. They used to be ♈sprawling hubs filled with side quests and NPCs designed to enrich the world and help it feel truly lived in. You were also a part of it, not just an♔ all-powerful protagonist who walks through before taking on a vital goal.
Alexandria in Final Fantasy 9, Wall Market in 7, and Rabanastre in 12 all establish the tone of their respective worlds, giving us ample streets to explore and individuals to talk to who have called this place home long before you p✤icked up a controller. It never broaches artificiality, which is something the corridors of games like 10 and 13 frequently betray. We used to count on Final Fantasy to pull us in and never let go, but so often the series wants us to remember that it’s little more than a video game.
Nibelheim was a melancholic place in the original Final Fantasy 7, a town you knew was on the precipice of its own destruc🎀tion. Rebirth, by all accounts, is much warmer.
While gamified in a number of ways, Rebirth is keenly aware of these past criticisms, and is more than willing to address them. The second you step into 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nibelheim it feels steeped in its own history, a place its inhabitants have called home for decades as people com🦄e and go. It saw Cloud leave and Tiღfa stay behind, a promise to keep their friendship intact after years of mysterious hardship.
When Cloud returns with Sephiroth to investigate a reactor located on Mount Nibel, he is given an opportunity to unearth a past he left behind, or perhaps never his to begin wi🙈th. Much of the playable demo is spent exploring Nibelheim with a surprising level of freedom, and one we’ve already seen come to life on social media as ♈fans make cute yet meaningful discoveries across its small selection of houses and citizens.
Nibelheim isn’t a big place, with Square Enix smartly showing restraint so we don’t spend an entire hour perusing through Tifa’s wardrobe. Aside from the inn that houses Sephiroth and a well which sits in the centre of the village, there are only two buildings in the town square you can explore. Tifa’s house is the most expansive, featuring several rooms and splintered shadows of the past that narration from the present day helps contextualise. Cloud’s memori𝓡es flicker in and out of believability depending on the decisions you make, while playable pianos and a glimpse at Tifa’s childhood bedroom provide snapshots of the past our hero has left behind.
As for Cloud’s house, we aren’t even allowed to explore its confines, because it would surely shatter the illusion our protagonist has built up inside his own head. A picturesque family life he is desperate to have experienced, as his mother talks about settling down with a girl and to stop pursuing a working life defined by danger. You close the door and never look back, and when the town burns down, there isn't a chance to save her. Away from all the tragedy though, Nibelheim still bursts with life.
Its inhabitants react in 🍎excitement as Cloud stumbles into storefronts and alleyways, eager to catch up with an upstart mercenary who left his country bumpkin roots behind. Some can be seen exercising in the square, and if you move close enough, Cloud will join in to the chagrin of his present company. There are small nuggets of dialogue wherever you are in Nibelheim, until silence dominates as you slowly make your way up the mounta꧋in. Decades of industrial decay are plain to see in abandoned construction projects and neglected reactors. The banter with the town’s inhabitants distracts from the harsh truth: a corporation has doomed this once prosperous town to ruin, only for a tool of destruction they themselves created, preparing to burn it all down.
Nibelheim is tightly constructed and filled with intrigue, and bodes well for Rebirth and how it handles similar towns like Junon and Gongaga. Squar🃏e Enix has been talking up its massive open world and several minigames, but what really matters in 𒆙a game like this is how it feels in the smaller places, towns and cities where you can lose yourself for a fleeting moment.
