I AM A DUCK

Last year, a mashup artist named DJ Psynwav released an album called Musical Transients. It was a follow-up to a prior album, Musical Tangents, and it has the standard meme picks - Shrek music, Live and Learn, a very quality Muppet introduction to the project. But the purpose of the album is that it was an attempt to tell a single, cohesive narrative over the course of a handful of mashup tracks.

We're talking Accidentally in Love, the Rainbow Connection, the Black Parade and I'm A Believer from both Smash Mouth and the Shrek soundtrack, all in one song. We're talking Pink Pony Club, Numb and Pompeii combined into a single, emotionally cathartic crescendo. And it might be easy to write this all off as a meme, but I'm telling you - while you should absolutely go into this with an intent to have a good time, the core theme of this album is 100% serious and it strikes to the heart of an issue that couldn't have been communicated better.

I was very coy about spoiling the surprise when this album was still new, but we're a year out and the audience has found this album. So I'm going to dive into the heart of things.

Musical Transients is DJ Psynwav coming out as transgender.

I've wanted to do a series of posts on this album, dissecting the lyrical choices and putting together the narrative that I see in it, but I feel like it would be too obvious and masturbatory in a way where I'd be coming off like Max Landis "dissecting" Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen. It's not really my story to tell - it's all there in the music for people to find for themselves.

My favorite track is Facts and Longing, which is a combination of Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash, Handlebars by Flobot, Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz and Hotel California by The Eagles. It's an incredible depiction of suicidal wasting away by way of substance abuse that I relate to a whole lot. It really has to be heard to believe. And look, that final song? IMMEDIATE banger. It dawns the message of the album in a very overwhelming way, where the theme of the album cuts through hectic noise and just reiterates and reiterates until the listener understands the core theme of the album.

For me, this is THE pride album. I've linked Acai's video, where he plays along to it on Clone Hero, because it's how I found the album and I really appreciate the warm, funny community reaction to the album as it goes on.

So Final Fantasy 7 is Max's favorite RPG. I don't entirely remember, but it might be his favorite game, period. Dude is easily on board with the prospect of a Final Fantasy 7 remake, even back when that shit was a ludicrous pie in the sky concept.

We get to the E3 showcase where they have a special announcement regarding the game. Dude is locked in - but it was the infamous E3 fakeout where they just announced a port of the Steam remaster for the PS4. In hindsight, Remake was in production; the issue is that it was leaked ahead of time, so Square Enix threw that nugget together to throw people off the trail.

But there were signs in subsequent presentations. Like with Crash Bandicoot before the N.Sane Trilogy, you had Sony execs wearing Final Fantasy 7 shirts. One of these presentations had a green, wavy light pattern across a monitor that looked a lot like the Lifestream. And again - despite the Final Fantasy 7 Remake being about as likely as Half Life 3, Max would go into each of these shows being "that" fanboy. He wanted FF7 Remake to be real so badly.

So - cut to E3 2015.

The trailer drops.

Now - for the uninitiated, this version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake was being developed by CyberConnect2. You have to understand that Square Enix has just been fucking brutalised by the 7th generation of consoles at this point. The only Final Fantasy projects to really come out on PS3 and 360 were the Final Fantasy 13 trilogy; I like the first two of those games, but they were very contentious games and XIII was a massive boondoggle that took up a lot of time, money and resources.

CyberConnect2 were actually involved in developing XIII-2 because it was cheaper to outsource a sequel with a bunch of reused assets than to develop it in-house. Of course, production had gone full swing into Final Fantasy 15 - and THAT was its own shitshow, but the point is that after the HD era of games had really kicked off, Square Enix - like a lot of Japanese devs - hit a real slump. They had a team on the mainline title, they wanted to follow through on FF7 Remake, CyberConnect2 helped a lot with the FF13 trilogy. It makes sense.

The CyberConnect2 version of the game, once again, is a shitshow! The game is in development for like three years - three long, silent years with no news, no announcements, no trailers. Just as quickly as FF7 Remake was announced, it went silent. And this was par for the course for Square Enix up to this point, every single Final Fantasy game of the past decade had gone through the same process. 13 shat the bed, Versus 13/15 shat the bed, and now here was FF7 Remake. Shitting the bed.

E3 2019 happens.

Maximilian Dood is at E3. He's wearing an official Squaresoft staff jacket from the nineties he bought on eBay.

He checks out Square Enix's booth.

Motherfuckers RECOGNIZE him.

They ask if he wants to see a presentation they're showing behind closed doors. Max - of course - says yes.

So these guys start talking into walkie-talkies and running around to see what they can do. And eventually, they find some room for him - so Max gets to go behind closed doors at E3 and see some industry shit about Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

All that CyberConnect2 stuff was relevant for this next part.

After three-odd years of development, Square Enix saw that the 7R project under CyberConnect2 was spinning its wheels. So they made the decision to cut their losses, scrap that version of the game, and move development in-house. The version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake we got was developed in just a couple of years; from the outside it looks like 5 years of development, but internally it's only two years.

What the staff would do, as they crunched the fuck out of FF7 Remake to hopefully meet the lofty expectations of the fans, is they would put on reaction videos from people who loved the Remake reveal trailer.

And one of those videos was Max's reaction. The one I linked before.

So Max is watching the presentation. And he keeps getting distracted, because staff at the event are looking at him - almost trying to gauge a reaction. The event ends, and Max is chit-chatting with the staff, and Max sees Yoshinori Kitase standing around. He directed the original FF7 game, and he's an executive producer who's been connected to the series for decades at this point. Kitase is a BIG fucking deal when it comes to Final Fantasy.

So, seeing him standing around, Max asks if he can get a picture with both Kitase and a designer on the game named Watanabe-san.

So they get the picture, and then Kitase asks Max if THEY can get a picture with HIM. So all three of them get this picture taken, and the bombshell gets dropped on Max. When the team are all fucked up from the long hours they've been working, when they're not sure that the way they're making the right game, they would put on that video to motivate the staff. According to Kitase, it gave the team energy to keep moving forward.

They took the picture with Max to take back to the team and go "yo check it out, we met fuckin Maximilian Dood! He loved the presentation!"

And dude is fucking CRYING as he's telling this story. It's an outstanding story.

So, we cut to the release of the game. And there's a part in this VOD where he opens a door and gets a really nice view of Midgar during the daytime:

where Max just has to stop playing and be like "I can't do it. It's too good. I need to go and kiss my wife".

So he's been a HUGE Remake guy this whole time. Front to back, he's had a uniquely personal experience with this remake series.

Let's fast forward to Revelation's reveal today.

The last reveal of Summer Games Fest 2026 was Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. It's the final Remake game. Max is losing his mind in the reaction, it's too much, it's an awesome video.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE PRESENTATION ENDS, MAX GETS A PHONE CALL.

IT'S NAOKI HAMAGUCHI, THE CO-DIRECTOR OF REMAKE AND THE MAIN DIRECTOR OF REBIRTH AND REVELATION.

AND HE'S CALLING MAX - RIGHT AFTER THE WORLD PREMIERE OF THE GAME, AS IN WITHIN THE HOUR OF IT HAPPENING - TO ASK IF HE CAN COME OVER TO MAX'S PLACE TO TALK ABOUT THE GAME.

They went STRAIGHT FROM SUMMER GAMES FEST to talk about the game with Max, ON STREAM, IN HIS *BASEMENT*.

(phone call is about 3 hours in, Hamaguchi shows up 6 hours in. The time stamps are in the comments)