Sitting By the Lifestream: Reflections on Final Fantasy VII
With the Final Fantasy VII (FF7) remake on its way, I started to reflect on my experiences with the game. I’m pretty critical of the game, I don’t actually hate FF7. I enjoyed the game when I played it, and considered it worthy of praise. I was more confused, and subsequently hurt, by its universal praise. The love of FF7 is almost cultic, and it took me a while to get over it.
I played the game early in my gaming “career”. I was first exposed to the game around age eight or nine at my brother’s friend’s house, when he let me play his Playstation while I stayed at his house afterschool. Being one of the first role-playing games (RPG), and especially one of my first Japanese-style role-playing games (JRPG), I had no idea what to do and got stuck on the first screen. It wasn’t for a couple of more years later — about age ten or eleven — when I would finish Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo that I would understand how JRPGs worked.
My first JRPG after Super Mario RPG was actually Final Fantasy IX (FF9), which I got, I think for Christmas of 2000. I got a Playstation a year or so prior to that, and primarily played platforming games: Crash Bandicoot, Mario, Megaman, etc. I got FF9 mainly because the gaming magazines heralded the Final Fantasy series to be the greatest video game series ever, and FF7 in particular to be the greatest video game ever made. I read letters after letters about how to bring back “that character” (you know the one), how amazing Sephiroth was, how epic the story was, and so on. At my young age, I was ready to by wowed, especially after being moved by Super Mario RPG. And thus I played FF9.
Needless to say, FF9 delivered. Still one of my favorite games, I found FF9 to have an excellent story filled with relatable characters, great music, and fun game play. As a child I was immediately hooked to Vivi, the childlike mage, and grew to care about Zidane and his companions. I was moved by the losses, the wins, and so on. As the risk of spoiling a plot point, the “You Are Not Alone” scene is still a scene that echoes in my mind to this day, and one that played in during difficult times and served as a key component in my conversion to a Christian. With the help of guides from magazines, I finished FF9 with much challenge and was absolutely moved by the ending. FF9 made me a fan of Final Fantasy, RPGs, and JRPGs, which I still regularly play today (I’m on my second playthrough of Dragon Quest XI on the Nintendo Switch).
Bear in mind that this was in the early 2000s, and game stores were still few and far between. However, you had video rental stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood video. So I played my next couple of JRPGs by renting them from the store. From reading magazines, I played Final Fantasy VIII (FF8) next. Again, I used a guide to play the game. It was a struggle because I didn’t make an effort to understand the game mechanics; FF8’s mechanics are infamously obtuse with its junctioning system, especially compared to the streamlined FF9 system. I actually got up to the Disc 2 final boss using summoned monsters — Guardian Forces (GFs) — alone. Then I messed around with the menus and accidentally learned how to intentionally junction magic to my stats. That is when stat management clicked for me. And thus I played FF8 up to the beginning of Disc 3, whereby I had to take the game back. I still didn’t get wayfinding too well, so I got frustrated with the game.
At some point within those years, is discovered GameFAQs on the internet. GameFAQs is a treasury of game information: walkthroughs, cheats, discussion boards, frequently-asked questions (faqs), etc; a natural next step from the magazines that I grew up reading. I loved reading through walkthroughs and imagining the described game play. Not only did I read walkthroughs from GameFAQs, I also bought player guide books from Toys R’ Us. I loved reading about video games as much as I loved playing them.
On GameFAQs, I noticed that one of the games that constantly topped the charts of most requested FAQs was FF7, which reminded me to go and play the game. And thus I went to find the game at the rental store, which proved much harder than expected. I ended up playing other games before then including Tales of Destiny, Breath of Fire 3, Wild Arms 2, as well as a number of others. Eventually I did get FF7 and play through it with the help of a guide.
I really enjoyed my time with FF7. I enjoyed Midgar, going on a journey with Cloud’s crew through Cosmo Canyon, Niflheim, and seeing -that scene- at the end of disc one. That scene was odd to me. I suppose given the rumors and fanfare about that scene, I was expecting a lot more from it. But I didn’t bond with that characters involved that much — I found them to be boring and confusing. So far also, I found Sephiroth to be a flat villain compared to FF9’s Kuja and FF8’s Seifer and Edea. Nevertheless, I had fun with the game, and pressed forward. The character development was solid, and I liked how Cloud grew. I got to the end of the game until just before the final battle, whereby I had to take the game back. While I found Sephiroth to be an overall nonthreatening villain compared to the others I’ve seen, the end of the game did have a lot of tension, and I looked forward to finishing the game one day and seeing the ending.
I didn’t go back to finish the game for another year or so, when I was in the middle of high school: about 2004. At that time I had more discretionary funds, and Gamestop was more accessible. Thus I purchased used copies of FF8 and FF7.
I had lost, or at least erased, my data for FF7. But it was okay, because I wanted to play the game from the beginning. I was older and more used to video games, and thus I jumped into the pool. I binged on the game as much as I had free time for — and at that age, it was a good amount — and completed many of the major side quests. I was able to appreciate the plot a bit more, although it was still confusing as all get out. Cloud’s relationship with Sephiroth, Jenova, and Zack were still very opaque to me. While I had fun, I still found FF7’s plot to be inferior to FF9 and the numerous other JRPGs I’ve played by that point: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, Wild Arms 2, Tales of Destiny, Lunar: Silver Star Story, and more. I didn’t really understand why these less powerful games had more coherent stories, yet people lauded FF7 as the best game ever. Nevertheless, I persisted.
I got to the final battle of the game. It was anti-climatic. While I did some preparation — got the side quest materia and a number of the ultimate weapons — I skipped out on getting the ultimate summons, the famous omnislash, and generally optimizing my team. I picked my usual team of Cloud, Tifa, and Red XIII, and went for the final boss. I do not remember using a guide at that point, and yet the boss went down really fast. In fact, I was surprised that the final form was actually the final form. It’s not like I was doing crazy damage, but I was just messing around and trying not to die. Yet it wasn’t a challenge. I was really confused.
Then the game ended, and I was even more confused. At the risk of spoiling the game, the ending was predictable — even as a young teen — and then it felt like it invalidated my entire playthrough. I felt rather disappointed. Nevertheless, it was a game. I was Final Fantasy VII. I found it enjoyable, played it two more times, and moved onto other games. I had already had my shortlist of favorite JRPGs, and FF7 was not on the list. I thought that was okay. Until I started talking about video games with people.
Friend: “Hey Jon, what types of games do you like?”
Me: “Oh, I like RPGs, you know, like Final Fantasy.”
Friend: “FINAL FANTASY?! I love Final Fantasy VII! Best game ever! Sephiroth is the best villain ever.”
Me: “Really? I thought the ending was weird, especially compared to stuff like FF9. Sephiroth wasn’t really that interesting either. Kuja did a lot more in that game, as did Kefka and Golbez.”
Friend: “FF9 is trash. What about -that scene-? It was so sad.”
Me: “It was alright. I found Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV to have a lot more punch. Final Fantasy VI as well.”
Friend: -shrug- “FINAL FANTASY VII IS THE BEST”
This is a bit of an exaggerated conversation, but not dissimilar to other conversations since high school. I would mention JRPGs and all I would hear about is FF7. Enjoy FF7 in itself was fine, but then we could never get past it and talk about other JRPG series or even other Final Fantasy games, even other well-liked games like Final Fantasy X (FF10).
As I delved into gamer culture more, FF7 started to get stuffed in my face. Cloud’s goofy character development and relationship with Tifa got sucked out of him, and he was transformed into a broody character that could never get over -that scene- and was obsessed with Sephiroth. While I didn’t care for the ending because it wasted my time, I became embittered that the industry also started to boil away Cloud’s goofiness. He started — in my eyes — to become a shadow of his original character. Sephiroth kept coming up, despite him being a weaker villain than a number of people within the same franchise, his song kept getting treated like that best thing ever even though a number of other final boss themes were at least just as good (such as Dancing Mad), and -that scene- kept getting referenced despite its weakness.
Overall, I got embittered because something that I didn’t like kept getting thrown into my face.
Writing this out, and looking back, it seems really dumb to get bitter about it, but when your relationships hinged on loving FF7, it seems relatively easy to get bitter about it. Nevertheless, it is simply a game and a story: someones’ collective imagination and work. It is okay to enjoy it, and even be moved by it; and it is okay not to enjoy it. Looking back at it, my bitterness towards the game is very much an outworking of my idolatry of video games. Not necessarily idolizing a single game, which many can and have done, but rather idolizing my own preferences of games. Why should my relationships hinge on what games I like or don’t like?
This is why the Gospel is amazing. God’s chosen people transcends interests, social statuses, ethnicities, and abilities. We are knit together under the covenant of grace by the blood of the risen Christ. I can worship the same God under the same preaching of His Word with my brother and sister regardless if they love or have Final Fantasy VII — or don’t play games at all.
Praise the Lord for that.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
- 1 Peter 2:9–10“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
- Galatians 3:25–29
