#lmanswer

Canon wise, it’s Hojo. The game says it’s Hojo, as does all official material as far as I’m aware. I don’t think Square (Enix) is trying to trick us or anything. If it was ever ‘revealed’ that Vincent was Sephiroth’s father I would consider it a retcon/just something they changed to please the fans at this point.

Fanon/headcanon wise, I like to imagine Vincent is Sephiroth’s father. If I had to pick a guy between Hojo or Vincent when choosing Sephiroth’s dad based on appearances alone, he resembles Vincent a lot more. They’re both tall, have similar enough hair (even though Sephiroth’s technically supposed to get that from Lucrecia), and I headcanon Vincent as naturally left handed so that would match up too. (And yes, I know Vincent uses his right hand to shoot. But he has a gauntlet on the left, so it would make more sense to shoot with the right. I could go more into why I have that headcanon, but it’s unimportant for now). 

Plus, Hojo sucks. Lucrecia was certainly close with Vincent for a while, so it’s theoretically possible for them to have gotten together long enough to have a kid. I don’t like the idea of Hojo being Seph’s dad very much. Not that it seems cheap or badly written or anything. I think it’s fitting. It would just be so much more tragic if Vincent was his father. And interesting. It could also drive some motivation for why Hojo didn’t like Vincent, since he’d be pissed his perfect child wasn’t really his own kid, but Vincent’s. He tried so hard to create the perfect specimen, and when it was born he was overjoyed that he’d not only created one, but that it was of his own flesh and blood. Then he’d find out that no, Sephiroth was not of his own flesh and blood. 

I think a fun way for it to exist would be for Sephiroth to just have an incompatible blood type/impossible blood type in the case that Hojo was his dad. Lucrecia has type B blood and Vincent is type A. Which means their kid could have any blood type. But say Hojo had type B or Type O. If Sephiroth had type AB or type A, then that’d mean Hojo wasn’t the father. So Hojo realizes Lucrecia is pregnant one day and is happy that the experiment is progressing and that their child will be his supreme ancient whatever. He does a blood test at some point to make sure things are going well and sees that Sephiroth has type AB/A blood, which would be impossible if Hojo was the dad. He remembers how close Vincent and Lucrecia were and gets utterly pissed. This could be post shooting Vincent or post birth or whatever, but it’d happen at some point in time. And that would either help motivate Hojo to shoot Vincent in the first place, or motivate him to bump up the intensity on whatever he was doing to Vincent after the shooting. Something like that.

Basically in canon I say that Hojo is the father. Fanon wise and headcanon wise I like Vincent being Sephiroth’s dad way more. 

The debate is fine, as people are entitled to their own opinions and I’m really not someone to stop them. I think it’s fun either way, and I don’t see a reason why people shouldn’t be able to debate over it. There’s a lot of evidence that points to both sides, and I have a lot of fun debating with people. This is probably my favorite debated FFVII topic since as far as I’ve been involved, it’s been relatively chill but still pretty active.

For series, Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy! For genre… I don’t have a particular preference that I could pin down with one name. Not shooter games, at least. Mostly games with some sort of fighting in them, whether it’s active fighting or strategy type battles (like in Fire Emblem, where everything comes down to a calculation and planning for the most part). Games that are fun to play and have good stories, rather than just interesting gameplay mechanics. A game could have the greatest gameplay mechanics in the world, but if its story sucks then I wouldn’t want to play it. Part of this probably comes from me loving to grind and beat games by being overleveled. I’ve also loved games where it was impossible/extremely hard or too tedious to be overleveled, so that’s not the sole thing, but it contributes. Games where you can grind are pretty fun too.

looking at my favorite games, a theme is that they all make me cry at some point. Not the entire time, because that’s too depressing, but somewhere. Something that gets me all emotional and really involved. The characters have to be part of it too. Characters usually make or break my enjoyment of a game. 

So does plot. For example, NieR: Automata (no plot spoilers follow, just thoughts). I loved the soundtrack. But the plot was… not well executed, in my opinion. There was no real central goal. At least, not a clear one that I could follow. The game before it, NieR, had a central goal from the beginning, and that I liked. I want to know why the characters are doing what they are doing. What are they working toward? Another one of my favorite games, Yakuza 0, had a central plot that kept getting slammed in other directions, if you ask me. However, even with changes, I could still tell where they were going. Character motivations were clear where they needed to be. And the suspense in that one… I could go on. But basically, I like games with compelling characters and plots that are relatively clear and usually defined for a significant amount of time (Like with VII. Stopping Sephiroth wasn’t the goal from the second the game started, but it was important for a majority of the game).

Bonus points for great soundtracks! NieR (Gestalt) has my favorite video game soundtrack of all time (I’m listening to it right now, actually. The soundtrack is not only good for game music, but listening music. I highly recommend you check it out!) FFVII’s soundtrack was the first thing I ever bought for my iPod. 

As for top individual games, in no particular order:

1) Final Fantasy VII (I run a blog for it. Of course it’s up here)

2) Final Fantasy IV (The complete collections version is my favorite. I really like the characters in it, and the plot is interesting too. It had enough twists to be fun without being excessive, and it tugged at my heartstrings at times.)

3) Yakuza 0 (I beat this a few weeks ago and damn did I love it. The story man… The sidequests were fantastic, definitely, but the story was one of the most amazing ones I’ve ever played. I started sobbing more than once)

4) NieR (Gestalt and Replicant. Mostly Gestalt, since that’s the one that was released in the US as “NieR”) ((The soundtrack was amazing as I said above, and the characters were great. The main character was likeable, but 2 of the sidekicks who were with him were absolutely amazing. Particularly GW, for those of you who’ve played the game.))

5) Fire Emblem: Awakening (This one is complicated. I love the first third. I love the last third or so. The middle I’m not so in love with. But this hits so many of my favorite concepts. The soundtrack, while not as consistently good as NieR, includes several amazing pieces and doesn’t include anything I dislike, so that’s a selling point. I also love the gameplay mechanics of the Fire Emblem series, even if I said that that isn’t the most important part of a game, so that gets it up here too. It was the first Fire Emblem game I ever played myself rather than watching a walkthrough of, so it holds a special place in my heart)

Honestly? Probably Spring 2019 at the absolute earliest. We haven’t heard any real progress on the game in forever, and apparently a job listing for a level planner appeared just a little while ago. That doesn’t sound like something a game near release would need. Then again, I have no idea if that’s a reliable source or not. I found a second source on that so it seems to be true, which I’m not sure if I should take as good or bad news. It’s good that stuff is still being done, but it’s worrisome that they’re only just looking for a level planner now. But unless we hear anything about the remake at E3, I’d push the release date back to late 2019 or even 2020. 

I’m pretty sure at some point the developers said the game would release for the PS4 so I’m hoping that means the game will come out within the next 2 or 3 years as I’m not sure how much longer the PS4 is still going to be the most recent Playstation console. FFXV had a nice 10 years of development, and Kingdom Hearts III has felt like a disaster story in terms of being released so Square Enix doesn’t have the greatest track record for releasing things when they should be.

Long story short, I think we’ll get a post-Spring 2019 release date. Probably Fall/Winter? 2020 is a maybe, and if it’s pushed to 2021 I would be surprised. would actually not be surprised now that I think about it (here’s a post-posting edit thanks to some comments because yeah I was being way too optimistic.) 2022 would be 7 years after the 2015 remake reveal, so I feel like that’s a little too far off. Then again, like I said above, SE is no stranger to really long gaps between announcements and release dates. Most games I’ve waited for had 3 or fewer years between announcement and release, but they were also from different companies.