174 - Final Fantasy VII (feat. Joe Kassabian)
Added 2025-01-29 08:45:01 +0000 UTCJoe Kassabian (Lions Led by Donkeys) and the lads grab their buster swords and hit the streets or Midgar as they do battle with the nefarious Shinra Corporation in Square’s monumental 1997 RPG: Final Fantasy VII. Topics include Square’s dramatic split with Nintendo, the eclectic nature of the many, many minigames, and what it means to kill off a major character before the end of the first disc.
Joe Kassabian: Twitter
Lions Led by Donkeys: The Lions Led By Donkeys podcast is a military history podcast for laughing at the worst military failures, inept commanders, and crazy stories from throughout the history of human conflict.
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Media Referenced in this Episode:
Final Fantasy VII. Square. 1997.
“Final Fantasy 7: An Oral History” by Matt Leone. Polygon. January 9th, 2017.
TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Interstitial: “Pazino Pagliacci’s Pizza Parlor” // Written by A.J. Ditty // Featuring A.J. Ditty as “Pazino Pagliacci” // Music by A M 4 N “[PlayStation] Final Fantasy VII | Pizza Mission”
Comments
Nowadays I rename Tifa to "Anne"
Anghellik9
2025-02-25 01:20:04 +0000 UTCOh man this was great
Radio Free Tote Bag
2025-02-07 23:58:28 +0000 UTCcan't wait for more joe library-of-failure kassabian this week
Robert Heilman
2025-02-03 23:58:33 +0000 UTCI used to watch my older brother (2 year age gap) play games and I think FF7 was the first one with a narrative that really rocked our worlds (even tho i didnt know almost all of it went over my head until i was in my late 20s?). We played the PC port where they didnt bother adapting the controls, so the instructions still said “press the square button to coordinate your movements in perfect timing”, even though my brother was playing it on the numpad (in retrospect, i have no idea why he did that). We’re both annoying game completionists so we leveled and maxed out every character even though he clearly hated Yuffie and Cait Sith. He was also SO deep into chocobo breeding that I would just do homework instead of paying attention. The Golden Saucer cutscene was the most incredble shit, we made our dad come watch it so he could see the **AMAZING GRAPHICS**!!!!!! I definitely cried over Aeris and I think my brother felt bad so he told me there was a rumored secret route where you could save her, but maybe he was just fucking with me lol. I’ve never tried going back to replay FF7 but I will always love it so fucken much. Anyway i was obsessed with the crossdressing part and had a crush on Cloud, and then i moved on to Sephiroth/Cloud yaoi doujins and now im queer and trans, so the pipeline is there
Higu Rose
2025-02-03 17:07:42 +0000 UTCMan, hearing the music from the opening scene gave me some flashbacks.
Ijon Tichy
2025-02-03 08:29:17 +0000 UTCI love getting taken along for the insane stories and hilarious line readings in all of these gamesI’ve never heard of. I don’t even understand the conventions, so it’s always a ride. I love the chocobo (?) version of the horse corner theme music!
Elizabeth Power
2025-02-02 22:25:54 +0000 UTCThe original is Hamlet; the remakes are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Kyle Cassidy
2025-02-01 01:29:38 +0000 UTCWas geuinely astonished no one said "Magic is stored in the balls".
Kyle Cassidy
2025-02-01 01:27:51 +0000 UTCI can't believe Brian dies at the end of disk 1! Great episode, looking forward to next week's.
Teagan
2025-01-30 20:36:07 +0000 UTCThe remakes are very different games overall. The first one is just the Midgar section expanded to 4 or 5 times the original length. Another thing the new games do is alter the story in a very self conscious way, commenting on or subverting things that happened in the PlayStation game's story
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2025-01-30 17:57:05 +0000 UTCI escaped childhood an FF7 virgin (my parents would not let me have a Playstation). Do I need to play the original or i are the remakes an equivalent experience?
Morgan Byrd
2025-01-30 16:34:01 +0000 UTCThanks for taking the time to cover the rest of the game properly. I was getting worried y'all were gonna have to really rush through everything.
Dergon
2025-01-30 15:44:26 +0000 UTCI'm sorry, AJ just fucking killed me with that Chocobo Corner
Peter Larkin
2025-01-30 13:48:12 +0000 UTCDo so enjoy how Joe's energy just merges seamlessly with y'all's. Like it was the same as when you were on Lion's Led by Donkeys, just fantastic vibes.
Peter Larkin
2025-01-30 10:15:21 +0000 UTCYeah the crossdressing bit definitely helped crack my egg when I played it during COVID.
Tali Elliott
2025-01-30 08:18:31 +0000 UTCSo I don't think the Cloud crossdressing sequence was the main catalyst of my trans awakening. It was definitely one of the moments that clued me in to not adhering to your birth gender being an actual thing. What FF7 did introduce me to and had a big impact on my current tastes is cosmic horror. JENOVA is an alien monstrosity from outside the solar system that predates humanity. Its true goal or purpose is unclear, but Sephiroth seeks to use it (after having a research based, madness spiraling scene worthy of Lovecraft) to excise the humans that overran and pillaged "his birthright". It's never clear if he's using JENOVA or if JENOVA is using him, and it's interesting how he's both a descendant of the Ancients and infused with JENOVA. So he's claiming ancestry of a people that sacrificed everything to fight the alien horror that lives inside him. Awesome stuff. There's also the ecology angle with a rapacious corporation destroying the planet for the sake of profit, which I'm sure helped make me receptive to socialism.
Amelia Moss
2025-01-30 06:34:52 +0000 UTCAre you going to have a part 2 or was that a joke
Kadoken
2025-01-30 00:39:47 +0000 UTCJoe does a JC Denton voice for Cloud - FFVII confirmed for imm sim
Anne Huston
2025-01-30 00:01:47 +0000 UTCI've gotta say, I'd be more likely to play FFVII if you guys did the voiceovers for the cut scenes!
Jason Young
2025-01-29 23:54:44 +0000 UTCI played FF7 when it was released onto the PS3 online store and it was one of the most formative experiences with a game i've ever had. And the whole crossdressing Cloud sequence got me curious about playing with my gender and crossdressing for fun. Surprisingly it took me another 10 years after playing FF7 for the first time for me to come out as a trans woman
cecilia.blue9716
2025-01-29 23:51:15 +0000 UTCMateria is stored in the orbs.
Alex
2025-01-29 22:11:50 +0000 UTCJust in time for the MTG Final Fantasy booster release happening in June!
Luckie
2025-01-29 21:09:03 +0000 UTCBut at least I didn't say which people die or which earth got destroyed.
Dergon
2025-01-29 20:44:48 +0000 UTCOk spoilers
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2025-01-29 20:37:25 +0000 UTCHoly moly, he's still doing it an hour and 14 minutes in. After this and the Chrono Trigger ep, you guys HAVE to do an episode of FF6 to be fair.
Steve Bunnell
2025-01-29 19:50:39 +0000 UTCObviously if FF7 had been released for the N64 it would have been for the 64DD or, alternately, for the N64 version of the Nintendo Play Station.
Elsie Hupp
2025-01-29 19:43:38 +0000 UTClmao, Joe disparages FF6, acknowledges that it might be a mistake to do so, and then keeps digging. And I keep grinding and GRINDING my teeth! (I forgive you though, love you Joe!)
Steve Bunnell
2025-01-29 17:19:29 +0000 UTCIf yoooouuuu caaaan believe it.... it's time for gaming once again!
Thom Coté
2025-01-29 16:47:51 +0000 UTCBrian mentioning being a fan of Ogre Battle (Tactics Ogre podcast when?) makes up for the ff6 slander (a game where people died and THE EARTH GOT DESTROYED before ff7!!!)
Dergon
2025-01-29 16:30:29 +0000 UTCOh HELL yea
Derek Woods
2025-01-29 16:08:34 +0000 UTCI fucking LOVE these crossovers
Sasha Moore-Hoagland
2025-01-29 15:35:03 +0000 UTCFF6 is rad not because the bad guy is a clown or the other badguy looks like a shitzuh but because it has mog, the greatest and best FF character ever made.
Mulloy
2025-01-29 15:21:56 +0000 UTCJoe is my 2nd favorite armenian. My favorite armenian signs my paychecks, so i gotta give #1 to them
Harles Barkley
2025-01-29 14:18:01 +0000 UTCYelling "magic is stored in the orbs" at my phone every time I thought they were setting up for that joke.
Regular Sized Horse (Small)
2025-01-29 12:28:28 +0000 UTCI had this weird thing for my N64 where if I wanted to play Japanese games, you would put the cartridge in the top, then an English cartridge in the back and it would let you play somehow 🤷🏼♀️
Angel-of-Deadlifts
2025-01-29 11:31:45 +0000 UTCI called him Tits as well! Then I did the same when I played the Android port of it last year for old times sake. Just great game anyway, that and Ni No Kuni have my favourite RPG mana/combat systems (hated the more action oriented bent of newer ones) Also, selling my copy of the original PS1 game + Shadow of the Colossus for PS2 paid for a return flight + connections to Germany to visit family in 2010, cheers FFVII!
Daniel Couper
2025-01-29 11:23:41 +0000 UTCSega Saturn mentioned! There are dozens of us. Fun fact about the Sony Nintendo CD deal. After Nintendo bailed, Sony went to Sega. Sega of America were all in and wanted the deal to happen but Sega of Japan overruled them leading Tom Kalinske to quit saying they made “the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business”
Sam Milne
2025-01-29 10:03:57 +0000 UTCI owe a lot to FFVII. It was not only my introduction to cosmic horror (with JENOVA and Sephiroth's descent to madness, as well as Cloud's extremely unreliable memory) but my introduction to radical left wing politics.
Amelia Moss
2025-01-29 09:26:51 +0000 UTC
