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The Week in Geek: Final Fantasy VII astounds and Apple Arcade looks... good?
It's the end of another week. Congratulations, you made it. It was quiet. It was weirdly warm for the first full week in September, but we're at the end of it. Shall we talk about all the casting rumors and trailers? Sure, why not?
It's a week of Apples and eels. Here they are: the five biggest stories from ... The Week in Geek!
CLOUD STRIFE CONTINUES TO TEASE IN NEW FFVII TRAILER
Tokyo Game Show began this week. Lots of stories have slowly been coming out of and around TGS: a new Nintendo Switch work-out peripheral, an online Resident Evil game, we're finally learning what the heck Death Stranding is actually going to play like ...
But the most exciting bit of gaming news (other than the 20th-anniversary of the release of the Sega Dreamcast) was the release of the new Final Fantasy VII remake trailer.
"Square Enix should remake FFVII" has been nearly every RPG enthusiast's refrain since, well, since Square Enix was still just Square.
But we know now that March 3, 2020, is the worldwide launch date for the Final Fantasy remake. And we also know the game is going to look real good. But, also, in the paraphrased immortal words of Mad Max: "That's queer bait." Or at least the trailer is.
Is it the part where a man says suggestively "those eyes" about Cloud? Sure, we all know there's an in-story reason for that that isn't romantic, but, also? It sounds a little like someone's into Cloud Strife. And who wouldn't be?
No, no. We all know we're talking about that scene from the trailer where Don Corneo is reintroduced. Everyone remembers him. Or, more importantly, we all remember what his appearance brought into our lives: Cloudette. Yes, Cloud Strife in drag is the best part of FFVII, don't @ me. It's heavily implied from the trailer we'll see Cloud don that sweet dress again and fight for the Don's affections. Maybe Cloudette will finally win them this time. Is it just me who wants that story? Pretty sure non-binary femme Cloud is what we all want deep down.
Regardless, the trailer looks gorgeous, exciting, and, like the last FFVII, completely bonkers.
APPLE ARCADE ACTUALLY LOOKS PRETTY GOOD
Obviously TGS was not the only tech story out this week. Apple also had a big event where it announced the iPhone 11 — which, sure. But, as the gaming industry continues to evolve with new streaming services like Google's Stadia, it's probably good to remember that Apple has some skin in the game, too.
Apple Arcade, which begins launch on September 19 and makes its way to Apple TV by September 30, released its early line-up of games. They are not bad. Just $5 a month nets you games with Steven Universe, Pac-Man, Rayman, and Shantae. There's a game coming from the creators of Bravely Default. There's a Chu Chu Rocket game. There's a bunch of other stuff, but the real cultural conversation is over the notion that games we primarily think of as mobile ones are going to have a subscription price tag that starts to push us away from the much-loathed microtransaction.
Whether Apple Arcade's library will grow in meaningful ways is something we'll have to wait and see about, but, for now, $5 a month is not bad. It might even be pretty good.
SEE THE TRAILER WHERE NO ONE CAN SEE, WHICH IS CALLED SEE
The other non-phone thing Apple got up to this week was the release of a trailer for its new series See. The show is about a post-apocalyptic society that is post-apocalyptic, at least in part, because all of humanity is now blind. The series, which stars Alfre Woodard and Jason Momoa, begins with the birth of two children who, le gasp, can see!
Stories of this type have existed for a while. Jose Saramago's novel 1995 was adapted to a movie called Blindness back in 2008. There's the always-classic Day of the Triffids. And, in a weird way, there's also stuff like Bird Box, which requires forced blindness throughout most of its run time.
Even still, See feels different, not least of all because it's a big-budget odyssey in which everyone save two kids can't see anything. The trailer promises epic battles between the people who see these sighted children as humanity's salvation and those who see sight as the curse that brought humanity to its knees in the first place. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure sight is helpful, especially if you've got to fight a big ol' war.
Guess we'll all "see" for ourselves when the series drops November 1.
LOOK WHO'S HAWKEYE NOW
Early in the week, we found out that Mad Men veteran Jonathan Igla will write and executive-produce the new Hawkeye series for Disney+. Slated for a fall 2021 release, the series will supposedly star another Hawkeye, Kate Bishop. And this week gave us a pretty major rumor that Kate Bishop will be played by none other than Hailee Steinfeld.
Steinfeld is no stranger to the world of science fiction or even of superheroes. She voiced Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Steinfeld also quite famously convinced us of the deep love between a girl and her robot car in the best Transformers movie, Bumblebee.
Hailee Steinfeld seems like solid casting for Kate Bishop, and, knowing Disney, if the rumor is out there that she's got the part, good money says she's taking it. But we'll see.
SORRY, MISS JACKSON, NESSIE'S FOUR EELS
The legend of the Loch Ness monster is fun, it's scary, it's wondrous, and it has invited the imaginations of countless generations of people to wonder just what lies lurking in Scotland's most famous loch. Plesiosaur? Shark? Catfish? Your drunk uncle who fell in? Lots of possibilities.
However, this week we heard news from a study looking into the environmental DNA (eDNA) of the loch to see just what exactly is down in the murky depths of Loch Ness. It ain't dinosaurs, which, bummer, but: It is ... eels?
That's right. There's no eDNA suggesting sharks or catfish, but the loch is full up on eels. This isn't unknown information. Much like the rumors of Nessie herself, there has also been many a tale about eels as big and thick as your leg. There's no official documentation of that, but the eDNA suggests that, sure, why not? And, in fact, it's possible that mutation might have led to eels even larger than Nessie herself.
“Further investigation is needed to confirm or refute the theory, so based on our data, giant eels remain a plausible idea,” says geneticist Neil Gemmel, a professor at the University of Otago. “While an eel that big would be well outside the normal range, it seems not impossible that something could grow to such unusual size.”
So there you go, Miss Jackson. Nessie is eels. Maybe.
And that's it. Your week in geek is over. Let us know what you think of these stories and what stories captured your eye.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors', and do not necessarily reflect those of SYFY WIRE, SYFY, or NBC Universal.
