If the FFVII Planet was an actual planet...

Dionysos

Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ
Staff member
Administrator
Social Media Team
Veteran
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
9,413
Location
Νεφελοκοκκυγία
Gil
3,746
Shiva Snowflake
Carlos el Cactuar
Chocobo Egg
Accessory (Arms)
Build-A-Member
Accessory (Head)
FFXIV
Polyphemos Bromios
FFXIV Server
Moogle
Free Company
KupoCon
The Planet in FFVII is awesome, but it doesn't behave like an actual planet while in its world map form during the game. Heading north in the Highwind, you'll find yourself teleporting Pac-Man style to the south of the world. It doesn't work as a globe.

But have you ever wondered what it would look like as a globe?

Well now you can! I encountered this visualisation by Osirois Music and thought it worth sharing.

The accompanying music is rather perfect for it. This is the sight Cid would have enjoyed if he’d spent longer in space.

I think this is really, really cool.

Thoughts? Have you ever tried to think about how the Planet might have looked from space? Something had to attract Jenova's attention, and I think it looks quite inviting.
 
Beautiful visualisation, thank you for sharing !

This could look like a huge candy for (Canon)Jenova :)

I wonder what kind of method they used to wrap this world map on a globe, because as you point out the implementation of the planet in game is definetly flat based. Did they distort parts of the world? The Wutai area (which is close to an edge and therefore candidate for a potential deformation ) was smaller in my memories but after checking it is in fact quite big, so they probably did it the right way. Maybe the texture file looks something like that.

I studied the FF7 world map model/system to try to design a hex based strategy game that would be displayed on a globe. It was definitely not the right reference ;)
 
Beautiful visualisation, thank you for sharing !

This could look like a huge candy for (Canon)Jenova :)

I wonder what kind of method they used to wrap this world map on a globe, because as you point out the implementation of the planet in game is definetly flat based. Did they distort parts of the world? The Wutai area (which is close to an edge and therefore candidate for a potential deformation ) was smaller in my memories but after checking it is in fact quite big, so they probably did it the right way. Maybe the texture file looks something like that.

I studied the FF7 world map model/system to try to design a hex based strategy game that would be displayed on a globe. It was definitely not the right reference ;)

I can imagine so. Many of the popular flat maps we use for our own planet are distorted and make some landmasses appear too large or too small than they are in reality (for example, real Africa is huge compared to some landmasses which appear similar in size on maps).

This isn't the best video on this concept (the Mercator projection), but it is one of the first results which Google threw at me:

I guess the same distortions could apply to the FFVII Planet (or rather the animator here has imagined that the original world map had distortions and has imaginatively 'corrected' them so that the Planet can be presented more accurately as a globe). I'd love to know what they used as a reference, or if they just guessed as best as they could.

Wutai does appear to be very big in this visualisation.
The Wutai continent is a strange one for us in the original game too. Other than a tiny cave, the only visitable location in this landmass is Wutai town itself, and that makes the whole place seem smaller in our minds. In reality the journey to get there on the world map (via bridges over canyons, etc) is a fairly long trek when you are forced to do it for the first time. It can resemble a journey through a dungeon and so it doesn't even feel like being on the world map in some ways.

I would suspect that the Remake could expand on Wutai and introduce other towns in the region, with Wutai itself as the capital. That would have to be in the second game though.
 
FinalFanTV have provided their calculations on the scale of the FFVII Planet based on some of the details offered in the Remake. It is quite interesting to contemplate. While very small compared to our planet, naturally, it would still be far too big to realistically render in open world format for a video game.



See also this follow-up:


I'm now convinced that a full open world which keeps the level of detail seen in part one of the Remake would be quite impossible. We'll likely be visiting particular areas only, and we might have to travel to other places in vehicles with the screen fading to black and time passing, etc.
 
well, thats rather disapponting that it wont be an open world. i think ff15 was an open world gaming.
so why not ff7 remake part 2? i would want to play ff7 remake on my 10inch android tablet
 
well, thats rather disapponting that it wont be an open world. i think ff15 was an open world gaming.
so why not ff7 remake part 2? i would want to play ff7 remake on my 10inch android tablet

I love the freedom that comes with having an open world, but there are problems.

To have an open world you need to trade off quite a bit. The scale of the planet would need to be reduced significantly, and this would impact the believability of the planet. If we want to believe that this planet is real, then we really need to see enough to get a sense of the wider planet, without seeing every single blade of grass and pebble that the planet has to offer.

I think it would be good to have some open area zones, but the technology or time simply isn't there for SE to be consistent with the scale of the planet and render the entire planet in one go.

Instead, smaller zones might be better. For example, FFXV's world map wasn't ever the full extent of the planet Eos, but just a small traversable part of it. FFXII likewise only showed us part of the world of Ivalice, and never its full extent.

In FFVII's Remake, we could plausibly explore the Cosmo Area combined with the Gold Saucer, Corel, and so on, in a similar open world fashion. These areas could be made to feel realistic without being shrunk to fit a 'complete' world map which by showing us a whole is limited to being only a representation of the planet rather than what it actually is.
 
the complete worlds of ff7 og, ff8 and ff9 were fascinating though. to say their greatest plus maybe. i luvved to traverse and explore land, sea and air and even underwater. i am an explorer anyway, always being fascinated by the New World explorers in history in my younger days
 
Back
Top