This Was Only the Beginner Village?

Once everything was ready, Cloud, Barret, and Tifa set out to rescue Alice.

They learned from Don Corneo how to reach Midgar's upper plate.

Reaching the massive wall at the boundary, they used grappling guns to climb from the fallen plate all the way toward the upper levels.

"Fuck! We have to climb the whole damn way?!"

This section of the story scared Song Ren half to death.

In the original game, this had only been a short climbing segment. On one hand, there was too much content in the game to spend excessive time on something like this.

On the other hand—and more importantly—the technology at the time had made it difficult to convey that kind of breathtaking, adventure-like feeling.

As a VR game, some other areas, such as the Sewer or the Mazes in towns, could be simplified.

But Chen Xu had decided to keep these cool high-altitude scenes. He would simply cut down on the number of minor enemies, keep the combat portions from becoming tiresome, and provide routes that allowed players to skip the enemies entirely.

Song Ren, as a player, knew nothing about any of that. All he felt now was that he was about to piss himself.

As a player with a slight fear of heights, this was exactly the kind of sequence Song Ren dreaded most in games.

Games like Uncharted and Assassin's Creed were fine, since controlling a character through difficult sections helped distract him.

But Final Fantasy was different. Outside of combat, most of its content was presented through cinematic sequences.

And by now, the game had done far more than just play with heights. When he accompanied Jessie's group to infiltrate Shinra at night, they had escaped by jumping from high above and parachuting down.

When Shinra launched its surprise