{"id":148529,"date":"2020-12-18T23:30:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T23:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gamerant.com\/cyberpunk-2077-final-fantasy-7-midgar-night-city\/"},"modified":"2020-12-18T23:30:15","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T23:30:15","slug":"comparing-midgar-to-night-city-game-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2020\/12\/18\/comparing-midgar-to-night-city-game-rant\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Midgar to Night City | Game Rant"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Cyberpunk 2077<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Final Fantasy 7 Remake<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>play host to the two biggest video game cities of 2020: Night City and Midgar respectively. These fictional metropolises each have their own unique charms and horrors, but\u00a0Cyberpunk<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Final Fantasy 7<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>draw on a similar, complex pedigree of influences that are intrinsic to their\u00a0common ethos.<\/p>\n

Both Cyberpunk <\/em>and Remake<\/i>\u00a0begin on\u00a0a similar note<\/a>\u00a0and share a certain rebellious anti-corporate sentiment. Even though one title relies on cybernetics and the other upon magic, both titles can comfortably be considered works of punk fiction. And the key ingredient that enables that genre is their setting. The two games have more in common than Cyberpunk<\/em> has in common with CD Projekt Red’s prior open-world game,\u00a0The Witcher 3.<\/em><\/p>\n

RELATED: Comparing Cyberpunk 2077’s Map to the Witcher 3’s<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Crime is an obvious ingredient in Cyberpunk<\/em>, but it also factors into Final Fantasy 7,\u00a0<\/em>with\u00a0slums that must be\u00a0policed by mercenaries and gangs. The\u00a0gang-ridden megacity is a trope that appears in\u00a0many crime-oriented games,<\/a> and its inspirations stretch all the way back to the early days of the industrial revolution. But\u00a0most modern and futuristic crime-ridden\u00a0cities in fiction, from Blade Runner<\/em>‘s grim\u00a0vision of Los Angeles to Batman’s supervillain-saturated Gotham, share a hugely influential template drawn from a specific time and place in history.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

In the mid-1970s, New York City\u00a0could be a\u00a0genuinely dangerous place to live and visit. Street crime was on the rise, exacerbated by a prolonged police union’s strike. The city was gripped with fear over the Son of Sam serial murders in the summer of 1976. And when the city was hit\u00a0with a catastrophic, day-long power outage one year later, everything came to a head. Riots, looting, and arson erupted across the boroughs. The result was a world that looked more like Batman’s Arkham City<\/a> than the New York of today.\u00a0That single summer provided the basis for 80s films like The Warriors<\/em>,\u00a0Escape from New York,\u00a0<\/em>and their influence, in turn, can be seen in\u00a0early works of cyberpunk.<\/p>\n

Blade Runner<\/em>‘s take on LA, and the megacities described in William Gibson’s Neuromancer<\/em>, were both shaped by NYC in the 1970s yet it still remains a vital touchstone for contemporary games like Cyberpunk, Final Fantasy 7<\/em>, and Microsoft’s newly announced cyberpunk game,\u00a0The Last Night<\/em><\/a>. And those crime-ridden fictional locales played a major role in\u00a0switching the sci-fi paradigm from the\u00a0optimistic futures\u00a0of the 50s and 60s to something grim and dark.<\/p>\n

There’s another crucial ingredient in this cocktail. Gibson’s\u00a0early cyberpunk writings thoroughly explored the idea of the megacorp; multinational companies with unchecked power that are too big for the government to police. Between the gangs and the unchecked capitalist superpowers, one can easily see how other creatives would come up with locales like Midgar, ruled by the tyrannical and at times comically evil Shinra Electric Company, and Night City, under the thrall of the ethically bankrupt Militech and Arasaka.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Both Night City’s vision of\u00a0our future and Midgar’s futuristic world\u00a0have an oddly dated quality to them. For all their musings about urban decay and dystopian corporations, both worlds are technologically optimistic, featuring advanced cybernetic prosthetics, gravity-defying vehicles and robotics, and more metal architecture than\u00a0practicality would ever permit.<\/p>\n

Much of this techno-optimism was drawn from the neon-lit soaked streets of Tokyo and Osaka. In the 80s and 90s, Japan was fetishized as a bright vision of a global future that never really came to pass, much like Gibson and Ghost in the Shell<\/em>‘s early conceptions of cyberspace<\/a>, and their speculated political trajectories\u00a0shaped by Cold War paranoia. Both Cyberpunk<\/em> and Final Fantasy 7\u00a0<\/em>express nostalgia for this imagined futures that never came to pass. Kanji rendered in neon and video screens\u00a0has become visual shorthand\u00a0for\u00a0future-punk, be it cybernetic or magical.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Comparing Final Fantasy 16’s Valisthea to FF7’s Gaia<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite these commonalities, both cities have their own feel, and tell very different stories. Ultimately, this distinction boils down to presentation more than themes and appearance.<\/p>\n

Night City\u00a0is, from its graphical renderings to its mechanics, the more realistic city. Players are free to take V where they will and make choices that blaze their own personalized narrative, right down to choosing one of three distinct life paths<\/a>. They can buy vehicles, change the radio stations on said vehicles, interact with street vendors and passersby, and flee law enforcement after breaking the city’s laws. That kind of freedom and accountability for choices are absent from\u00a0Final Fantasy 7<\/em>.\u00a0Its pacing\u00a0is more restrictive; its framework more artificial. As a result, Night City is the more immersive playground for protagonist-driven roleplaying.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Final Fantasy 7\u00a0<\/em>gives players\u00a0a guided tour of Midgar. There are points in the story, like\u00a0Remake’<\/em>s\u00a0stellar Wall Market sequence<\/a>,\u00a0when Cloud and his allies are free to roam parts of the\u00a0city to their hearts’ content. There are just as many areas that players can only visit once via linear progression, and while there are radios playing tunes from the world of Gaia, and talking heads on television screens decrying the evils of Avalanche, Midgar lacks the same, ever-present media ecosystem that pervades Night City.<\/p>\n

That is not to say\u00a0Remake\u00a0<\/em>is inherently inferior, however. What Midgar lacks\u00a0in freedom\u00a0and immersion, it makes up for with curation and ensemble characterization. Shinra’s board of directors are less logical and more explicitly evil than the ever-pragmatic Arasaka and Militech, but that seemingly reductive presentation is calculated to ensure players absolutely hate Shinra. Similarly, your party members in\u00a0Final Fantasy 7\u00a0<\/em>are shown in a more authorial fashion; again, fewer choices, but a more focused, calibrated experience to precisely affect the way players\u00a0perceive\u00a0those characters.\u00a0The way hither-to-anonymous fixers contact you in Night City<\/a> feels legit for that game’s framework, but there is less\u00a0time devoted to developing the game’s larger cast.<\/p>\n

Again, there are too many weird and wonderful influences to comprehensively chart what\u00a0makes Midgar and Night City what they are. The now-demolished Kowloon Walled City, the telegraph-savvy street gangs of Victorian London, and countless other works of fiction all come into play. But that heritage of bricolage is what makes both cities such striking destinations for storytelling and gameplay. And the games’ distinct presentations demonstrate just how versatile a similar setting can be.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy 7 Remake<\/strong><\/em> is available now for PlayStation 4.\u00a0Cyberpunk 2077\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X\/S.<\/p>\n

MORE: Top 10 Cyberpunk Video Games<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n

\\\"IT\u96fb\u8166\u88dc\u7fd2
\u7acb\u523b\u8a3b\u518a\u53ca\u5831\u540d\u96fb\u8166\u88dc\u7fd2\u8ab2\u7a0b\u5427!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<\/br>Find A Teacher Form:\r\n<\/br>https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/1vREBnX5n262umf4wU5U2pyTwvk9O-JrAgblA-wH9GFQ\/viewform?edit_requested=true#responses\r\n<\/br><\/br>Email:\r\n<\/br>public1989two@gmail.com






\r\nwww.itsec.hk<\/a>
\r\nwww.itsec.vip<\/a>
\r\nwww.itseceu.uk<\/a>
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s Midgar and Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City tell two very different stories, but share a host of common influences and themes.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Comparing Midgar to Night City | Game Rant - ITTeacherITFreelance.hk","description":"Final Fantasy 7 Remake's Midgar and Cyberpunk 2077's Night City tell two very different stories, but share a host of common influences and themes."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148614,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148529\/revisions\/148614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}