Great Games: Final Fantasy VII
“If the previous versions of this series were a puppet show, this one was a real film…”
- Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy VII was a gamble. Not only did the series need to follow up Final Fantasy VI, one of the finest products in the series, but it also needed to evolve the games into the era of three dimensions. The transition to 3D became the test for the viability of old video game franchises. Nintendo was very successful in this endeavor, with Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. How would Final Fantasy fare now that it had left Nintendo, a long time partner, for Sony’s PlayStation?
Initially, Square did want to release Final Fantasy VII for the next Nintendo console, and why not? Nintendo had been alongside them since the first installment, making Final Fantasy, in some ways, a Nintendo franchise. Having Final Fantasy depart would be like having Zelda or Mario depart. Yet by the time Square began to develop a Final Fantasy for the next generation, they realized that they would need a system to best realize the capacity of computer animation.
Secret of Mana 2 was originally meant for the Super Famicom’s CD-ROM, but when Nintendo had it shrunk to a cartridge, it suffered from lots of bugs. So when Square heard that Nintendo’s next system, the 64, would again rely on the cartridge, they decided to switch to Sony’s PlayStation, which used CDs instead. The PlayStation itself has an interesting history. Sony had no prior history in the games business and was well known for pioneering the usage of CDs for music, because its then-president, Norio Ohga, wanted to listen to Beethoven’s Ninth without having to turn over the vinyl. Sony, wanting to expand their company into the gaming industry, thought who better to work with than Nintendo? Their joint system was initially going to utilize both CDs and SNES cartridges. Yet Nintendo continued to frustrate Sony’s development of the system, first by announcing that “it was working with Philips, Sony’s longtime rivals, on the SNES CD-ROM drive,” and with any licensing on the games being owned by Nintendo, “with Sony only receiving minimal royalties.” Sony eventually went their own way and created the PlayStation, and staff of Square were among the first they approached for games. So in a way, it was all rather poetic that Final Fantasy VII end up on the PlayStation.
At the time, the best idea of what a next generation Final Fantasy could look like was the Final Fantasy VI tech demo. Rendered completely in 3D, we see Terra, Locke, and Shadow face off against a stone monster. The new style, from the character’s movements to their more blocky designs were reminiscent more of anime than live-action film. Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, said that this wasn’t a common approach at the time, “when you were talking about computer graphics, people wanted to see something very realistic, something that you could throw into a live-action movie and they couldn’t tell the difference. But we used CG to represent anime characters.” So the transition from Yoshitaka Amano to Tetsuya Nomura as character designer, seemed like a proper move, as Nomura’s anime-style designs could better fit the blocky polygons of early 3D. Much of the surreal subtlety in Amano’s art that came out so well in FFVI, would’ve been erased. While FFVI represented the starting point of cinematic aesthetics in the series, FFVII represented its fruition. One unique feature constantly brought up in the game’s advertising are the full-motion video cutscenes, which have since become a staple in Final Fantasy, and plenty of RPGs since. Sure, it’s easy to mock some of the goofy-looking models now, but keep in mind that this was a major breakthrough in blurring the line between game and film.
Cutscenes, of course, weren’t new to video games, but they were often shot in live-action, whereas FFVII created them entirely in CGI. What still makes these scenes impressive, even after the outdated graphics, are the way these scenes are edited and framed. It should be of no surprise that one of the game’s directors, Yoshinori Kitase, was a film major, as so many scenes have become iconic. Sephiroth, looking up from the fires of Nibelheim before turning away. Cloud, busting out of Shinra on his motorbike. Jenova, smoke clouding her eyes as she’s uprooted by her son.
Then there’s the opening, which brilliantly establishes the modern period of this new Final Fantasy, the first to explicitly depart from the “medieval fantasy” aesthetic and advance upon the steampunk built by FFVI. The opening shot is of Aerith, lonely amidst a crowded sea of people, then the camera zooms out to the technological metropolis of Midgar, before speeding back in to a racing train, where stands our hero. This scene could only have been done on a computer, and would be near impossible to do in live-action. Even after the cutscenes, the cinematic style continues through onto the gameplay. Every area you explore is framed like a Fritz Lang film, emphasizing scope and distance. Nobou Uematsu’s music, too, still reigns supreme, from the sentimental “Tifa’s Theme”, the nostalgic “Ahead On Your Way”, the exciting “Those Who Fight Further”, and the moving “Aerith’s Theme”, which may well become something a contemporary classic of classical music.
FFVII begins with the most morally ambiguous protagonists the series has yet seen, which is fitting, as this was the most mature Final Fantasy released, filled with depictions of swearing, bloodspill, poverty, and sex. Final Fantasy usually starred righteous heroes on a noble quest. The characters of FFI, FFIII, and FFV were all chosen by prophecy to save the world. FFVII flips that on its head with AVALANCHE. They are a group opposed to the Shinra Company, which turns the Planet’s life force into Mako, which gives everyone electricity. So what are the methods of the resistance? They commit acts of terror by blowing up the Mako Reactors, leaving many without needed electricity and probably killing civilians through the blasts (as Jessie later implies). While both FFII’s Wild Rose Army and FFVI’s Returners rebelled against imperial forces, neither were willing to kill civilians to do so. FFIV’s Cecil opens the game by committing a massacre, but he did so only on orders of his king, soon realizes his transgression, and propels the plot forward by going on a path of redemption. Contrast this to FFVII’s protagonist, Cloud, who isn’t even committed to AVALANCHE’s cause. He’s an apathetic mercenary who just wants his money.
Cloud represented a shift from the noble heroes of Final Fantasy past, like Cecil or Bartz. He’s an antihero comparable to Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. A man who says little, exudes mystery, and means business. Cloud’s gone on to be one of the more iconic characters in Final Fantasy, and video games in general, due to his memorable spiky hair and oversized sword. Tetsuya Nomura’s design draws more from shonen manga than Yoshitaka Amano’s art noveau and ukiyo-e inspired fever dreams. What makes Cloud stand out in comparison to some of his successors, such as FFVIII’s Squall Leonhart or FFXIII’s Lightning, is that his sullen demeanor is contextualized within a distraught past. Cloud also has a laconic sense of humor. His banter with Barret early on is a good demonstration of this.
Barret is the leader of AVALANCHE, whose character design was clearly drawn from Mr. T of the A-Team. This makes him the first black character in a Final Fantasy game, and third overall if we add Reddas from FFXII and Sazh from FFXIII. Barret works as a great complement to Cloud. Whereas Cloud is stoic and dismissive, Barret is loud and passionate. While the two spend much of the game at each other’s throats, Barret soon warms to Cloud, occasionally offering encouragement. At first glance, it would be easy to dismiss Barret as a negative stereotype, and in the hands of lesser writers, he would be, but the folks at Square gave him nuance. He’s the father figure of this game in more ways than one. He’s the leader of AVALANCHE who genuinely cares for his comrades, and mourns their deaths. He’s also the adopted father of Marlene, the daughter of his fallen friend, Dyne. For Barret, and others in AVALANCHE, the struggle against Shinra isn’t merely a fight for environmentalist ideals, but a personal riposte for past wrongs. Shinra promised his hometown energy security, but when the Mako Reactor blew up, Shinra covered it up by setting the town alight. Barret’s one on one duel with the equally vengeful Dyne is treated with all the emotional weight it deserves. Barret even matures, as the game goes on, acknowledging that blowing up reactors was the wrong way to combat Shinra. Barret’s most notable feature is his gun arm, which some have interpreted as a tribute to past gun-arm protagonists Samus and Mega Man.
Tifa is the closest to Cloud in AVALANCHE, being his childhood friend. She is his heart, and by the end of the game, her loyalty is what saves him. If Barret is FFVII’s father figure, then Tifa is definitely the mother. She helps in keeping the group together, and never quits in breaking through Cloud’s shell. All that being said, she isn’t dependent on Cloud, acting in AVALANCHE long before he joined, and would probably still do so without him, too. Even brave enough to enter Don Corneo’s den as a captive. This is because her motivations are just as personal as Barret’s, as Sephiroth, Shinra’s greatest soldier, once burned down her village and killed her father.
Tifa is also an obvious sex symbol, perhaps the first we ever really received in a Final Fantasy game. In addition to having a skirt that’s cut so short, she probably flashes her panties walking up the stairs, she’s endowed with a bust that would make Jayne Mansfield jealous. I’m not against sex appeal in games, but I wouldn’t attribute Tifa’s sexiness purely to the male gaze. I always saw Tifa’s sex appeal as a part of her athleticism, being of the monk class, and also as a means to contrast her against the modest Aerith.
In fact, when one gets right down to it, Aerith and Tifa’s characters aren’t as different as their outward appearances may betray. Despite her waif appearance, Aerith (or Aeris if you like) is quick to fight alongside her friends against Shinra. Tifa, on the other hand, is more openly kind-hearted, always trying to break through Cloud’s shell. Aerith is more open and playful with Cloud, whereas Tifa, while having some of these qualities, is more shy and reserved around him. So the flower girl, you could say, is a bit more forward with her feelings than the trained monk.
Red XIII’s introduction is among the strangest. He’s the last of his race, a red lion species, which was captured by Shinra’s own Doctor Mengele, Professor Hojo, to forcibly mate with Aerith, the last of the Cetra. Who knows if such a hair-brained scheme would’ve worked, but regardless, he rebels and joins the party. Red XIII is the intellect of your party, with his domain in Cosmo Canyon drawing much from Native American cultures. Red XIII has an interesting subplot with his father figures, Seto and Bugenhagen, which can parallel in some ways with Sephiroth’s Oedipal obsessions. The difference being that Red XIII had the maturity to leave his parents and become a father himself.
Cait Sith certainly stands out the most in your party. He’s a robot cat that fights with a megaphone atop a giant Moogle. Sith’s introduction is rather awkward, and feels kind of forced. After failing to give a proper fortune, he latches himself into your journey. That said, he proves himself more complex than believed. Sith is controlled by one of Shinra’s Turks, Reeve Tuesti, who uses the cat to spy on AVALANCHE. Tuesti believes that Shinra can do good, and wants to reform things from the inside. He doesn’t hide his disgust of AVALANCHE’s terror tactics, directly confronting Barret over the civilian casualties he’s caused. Tuesti reminds the player that AVALANCHE’s tactics have come with a human cost, and that even highest staffers of the “evil corporation” can be well-meaning.
This Final Fantasy’s Cid is once more an airship expert, and is by far the crankiest, with a mouth far fouler than Barret’s. He starts off a very unlikable, berating his girlfriend, Shera, for having kept him from his dreams of getting into space. Cid’s mood towards her changes when he sees her concerns were warranted. Cid becomes more passionate about saving the planet once he rockets into space, and sees how vulnerable it is in the wide sea of darkness. Cid is also the oldest of the group, and humorously sees his friends, particularly Cloud, as kids in need of advice.
Despite being an optional character of few lines, Vincent Valentine is one of the more popular characters in the game, even receiving the lackluster spin-off Dirge Of Cerberus. Vincent’s so popular, in fact, that during Cloud’s first cameo appearance in Kingdom Hearts, he wore none other than Vincent’s crimson clothes. Vincent is the classic handsome and mysterious fellow with a chip on his shoulder that you read of in romance novels with Fabio on the cover. Formerly a Turk, he’s slept for years in a coffin out of guilt for not having prevented the birth of Sephiroth. While not the deepest character, Vincent’s appeal is in his mystery, and even after finding Lucretia’s Cave, you still can’t help but feel in the dark about everything he hides.
Yuffie Kisaragi once more fulfills the role of cheerful, spunky youth, which we saw with Krile in FFV and Relm in FFVI. I didn’t care much for Yuffie on my first playthrough, but on my second, I found her peppy antics amusing. Yuffie’s a ninja from Wutai, who hides in the forest and steals your Materia. She despises Shinra for having turned her homeland into a cheap tourist attraction. A subplot involves her and Elena being captured at the hands of Don Corneo, presumably to be his sex slaves. While it was nice to see Don Corneo get his comeuppance, this whole scenario stinks of cliche. A ninja and a Turk are suddenly made helpless at the hands of a pervert and his robot? I far more enjoyed the Game of Death style trial Yuffie undergoes in the Pagoda. Yuffie brought a needed ray of sunshine into the grit, and also gives the saddest reaction to Aerith’s death, silently breaking down in Cloud’s arms.
The gameplay builds upon the mechanics of FFVI. In that game, summons equipped to certain members of your party can teach them new spells as they level up. While each character had an essential trait all their own, the ability to teach different spells added a level of personal customization to the game. In FFVII, spells and other abilities are learned through equipping Materia orbs to your weapons or armor. Green Materia are spells, Red Materia are summons, Yellow Materia are commands, Pink Materia help stats, and Blue Materia are support. The greater you level a Materia, the more abilities or stat increases you earn. Many of the best Materia in the game need to be uncovered, not bought in stores, so exploration is rewarded. As you can imagine, this allows the player to craft an endless variety of combinations. My favorite was junctioning Cover and Counter Attack to Cloud, so whenever another Party Member was hit, he’d take the blow and reply.
Another innovation, which has since become a Final Fantasy staple, is the Limit Break. Again, in FFVI, characters could perform Desperation Attacks when their health reached a critical low. In FFVII, these have evolved into Limit Breaks, and can only be used once your Limit Gauge accumulates to full after taking damage. Limits can level up with repeated use, adding more and more attacks to choose from. These attacks are fun to watch and fun to use, from Tifa’s slot machine punches, Vincent’s transmutations, and Cloud’s glorious Omnislash.
Another significant contribution to Final Fantasy are the extensive mini-games. Motorcycle fights, snowboarding, chocobo racing and others can be found at the Golden Saucer, perhaps the closest this game has to Disney World. While the mini-games aren’t terrible, they certainly haven’t aged as well as the combat, but even so, it’s an innovation that brought new mechanics into this JRPG series. FFVII also helped to popularize the tradition of superbosses, or optional bosses that are just as difficult, if not more than the final boss. While Ultima Weapon is no real challenge, Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon are infamous for their difficulty.
In keeping with FFVII’s modern tone, the evil organization at the center of this game is not an empire or a kingdom, but an electric corporation that governs most of the Planet. The idea of corporations gaining enough power to subjugate the world doesn’t seem as far-fetched now as it did when the game came out. The evil at the center of Shinra is their privileging of self-interest over just about everything else. You get a sense that people may not agree with all that Shinra does, but by using Mako Energy, they’re able to provide most with comfortable lives. Of course, these benefits are not to be shared with all in Midgar, as an underclass struggle in the slums beneath a metal plate while the wealthy thrive above. One of their more sinister acts is to stage a terrorist attack over one of the slums and blame on AVALANCHE, right out of the playbook of Bashar Al-Assad. Shinra’s most elite are the Turks, recurring bosses in suits and ties. You get the sense that they aren’t overtly malicious, but just want to get their jobs finished. Reno and Rude make for some particularly comedic rivals. While previous Final Fantasy games dealt with the misuse of magic, it only makes sense that this one deal with the misuse of science. The epitome of this is SOLDIER, a class of super-soldiers infused with the cells of Jenova, and among them the greatest misuse of science of all, the silver-haired Frankenstein’s Monster, Sephiroth.
Sephiroth is probably the greatest antagonist in all of Final Fantasy. Yes, I said it, he’s better than Kefka. Keep in mind that part of the reason Kefka is so well remembered is because many of the villains previous were so bland and cliche by comparison. Take a look at the pre- VI villains selected for Dissidia, and three of them are just deep voices in heavy suits of armor. Kefka, by contrast, treated everything like joke and acted irrationally, he was a wild card. The only problem was that Kefka was a nihilist because he was crazy, which frees the writers of developing any kind of reasoning for his evil. Sephiroth, on the other hand, is a more human figure. This comes right down to his handsome, bishonen appearance, and while his sleek hair of silver and immeasurably long sword seem over the top, they’re rather tame compared to Goblin King Bowie in FFII and Nude Medusa in FFIII.
Its alluded to in FFVI that Kefka’s state of mind is a result of experiments done on him from the Gesthalian Empire. The problem is that we never get an understanding of who Kefka was before he turned. In FFVII, we understand that Sephiroth was a hero, admired by none other than Cloud himself, who was born from experiments with the cells of an ancient creature called Jenova. Sephiroth learns that he’s little different from the monsters created by Hojo’s experiments, and though he has the appearance of a human, he is not one of them. As one who has long sought his origins, Sephiroth desperately clings to his “mother” Jenova, and scorns the humans who he feels have betrayed him. His desire to be one with the Planet as a God, is just a means of both pure reunion with his mother, and pure revenge on the humans who deceived him. I’ll be the first to admit that Sephiroth’s motivations do come off as quite muddled, to say the least, and that his plans are a tad convoluted. It seems quite a leap to seek vengeance against all humans because of some lies about your parentage. It also isn’t clear, why, exactly, he wants to ascend to Godhood. It’s implied that this is due to his entitled sense of importance, but none of this is properly fleshed out. His evil plan is also full of holes, he wants to summon a Meteor that will so injure the Planet as to create an outpouring of Lifestream, which he will then rule as a God. Yet it’s stated many times in the game that the Meteor could well destroy the Planet, and presumably, the Lifestream along with it. Sephiroth is also guilty of quite a bit of tacky, evil laughter. In some ways, Sephiroth wouldn’t have been that different from the bellowing Golbez or the cackling Exdeath, had he not distinguished himself in a way that has been forever impressed in Final Fantasy lore.
He killed Aerith.
Aerith’s death, while shocking at the time, is now so well known and parodied, that it’s about as much a secret as Darth Vader’s lineage. That being said, it’s easy to forget how important her death was to the game. Aerith is not the first character to die in Final Fantasy, but she was the first to stand out. Most others who died before were elderly or mentor types: Minwu, Tellah, Galuf, and General Leo, so their deaths were cliche. Aerith, on the other hand, was the innocent and cheerful flower girl, the one you’d least expect. Cloud also had an intimate connection with Aerith, bordering on romance, not quite like those you had with previously slain mentors. Now there is a real sense of loss, not just for Aerith’s life, but with what could’ve been with her. In further contrast, her death is not presented as a noble sacrifice, as was standard fare in the previous killings. She does not willingly give herself over to save her friends, but is impaled through the back without warning. As Animefringe wrote,
“Additionally, Aerith’s death represents a rejection of the typical immortality and heroic acts of self-sacrifice found among RPG characters. Character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and Yoshinori Kitase, the director and co-scenario writer, both made clear in the May 2002 issue of EDGE magazine that they were frustrated with the cliche of the hero sacrificing himself as an expression of love, that they wanted to show a realistic love where death is sudden and invocative of feelings of loss and emptiness, not of love. Both Nomura and Kitase knew beforehand that players were expecting Aerith to make a miraculous recovery, yet they took the path less traveled and made the game all the more interesting and thought-provoking for players.”
Another thing, probably unintended, that makes the death scene so unsettling, is how bloodless it is. This is obviously due to graphical limitations, but the pure cleanliness of it in the shining sea temple adds a dreamlike surrealism to the whole affair. You also feel terrible because on two previous occasions, Cloud had already tried to kill Aerith under Sephiroth’s influence. You may as well have stabbed her yourself. The somberness of this moment was well understood by the game. Consider that “Aerith’s Theme” plays on for some time, even during the boss battle with Jenova-LIFE. No dying last words pass through her lips, nor does her body neatly vanish away. The characters silently mourn, while Cloud returns her body to the waters of her ancestors. It’s all done with a surprising degree of gravity for a 90’s fantasy game with giant chickens and robot cats. What cements her death in our memory, though, is that fact that she isn’t resurrected. One of the major failings of FFIV was that it undid its most meaningful deaths, such as Palom and Porom, by returning them to life. There is no such return for Aerith, and that stays with us a long time.
Much of the story after Aerith’s death becomes an exploration of Cloud’s identity. I feel that a lot of the groundwork for this was built from Terra of FFVI. Terra also had issues of amnesia over her past, had to deal with being not quite human, and was controlled by the game’s main antagonist. While Terra begins with a blank slate, Cloud begins with a false premise. We are told that Cloud was formerly of SOLDIER, but it turns out he only adopted this persona from the memories his dead friend, Zack. From the start, we were fooled into believing that Cloud was a great warrior, but in reality, he’d fallen short of his own expectations. This is what makes Sephiroth the perfect foil to Cloud: he represents everything Cloud wishes he could be. Cloud’s identity is that of failure. Even Hojo presses this point, when he refers to Sephiroth as the perfect experiment with Jenova cells, whereas Cloud is a reject. It is Tifa who helps Cloud pick up the pieces of his broken consciousness and accept that he’s far more ordinary than he pretends to be. Cloud’s major motivation for joining SOLDIER was to get Tifa to notice him, but it appears that what mattered most to her wasn’t his status, but it was that he even cared at all. Cloud’s growth of character over the course of the game is among the most inspiring in any Final Fantasy. He speaks to the failure in all of us that hungers for respect.
The Divine Comedy style ascension through Kefka’s Tower in FFVI remains greatest final boss fight in Final Fantasy, but the follow up in the Planet’s Core has yet to be rivaled. After defeating the final Jenova clone, you face off with Sephiroth in two forms. The first is Bizarro Sephiroth, in which he has freakishly fused with the Planet’s core itself. The fight itself is fairly easy, so long as you attack the main body, and “Birth Of A God” is an underrated piece of music. The icing on the cake, of course, is the climactic battle with Safer Sephiroth. In keeping with the Kefka fight, this form draws from Christian imagery, from heavenly atmosphere to Sephiroth himself, now a seraph, or six winged angel. Above him float dual halos and his arm, now a black wing, hence the theme “One-Winged Angel.” The fight itself is quite the challenge, with Sephiroth launching his ultimate strike, Super Nova, an attack that goes through the many planets before causing the Sun itself to burst. Sephiroth’s original theme was “Those Chosen By The Planet”, a haunting melody which played whenever he appeared, but “One-Winged Angel” was so popular that it eventually took over as his theme music, and it’s hard not to see why.
“One-Winged Angel” is an astute challenge to “Dancing Mad” as Nobuo Uematsu’s magnum opus. Whereas that theme drew more on Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” this piece draws its inspiration from Carl Off’s “O Fortuna”, with the lyrics “Sors inanis” and “Et inanis” being directly lifted. The opening beats borrow from Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, the squealing violins from Bernard Hermann’s Psycho, the bombast from Modest Mussorsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, and the structure from Stravinsky’s Rite Of The Spring. The choir brings a dimension of divine struggle and apocalyptic doom, with a brief respite of elegant whimsy before the ending cries of “Gloriosa.” The orchestra adaptation for the Reunion Tracks became an instant classic, and the rock remix for Advent Children even more so.
What made the ending of FFVII so memorable was that it could only have been done on the PlayStation. Anything less than three-dimensions would’ve taken away from the whole. It is revealed that though Aerith died in the middle of summoning Holy, her prayer was still heard. The spell, in theory, would work as a shield to protect the Planet from Sephiroth’s Meteor. Holy, however, comes too late, intensifying the Meteor’s impact instead of stopping it. When any hope for the Planet seems lost, the Lifestream itself emerges from the ground to defeat the Meteor, with all faces turning to white and a final bookend with Aerith’s smile. This finale is ambiguous by construction. We know not if the individual characters survived, or if even humanity itself, but by that point, the fates of AVALANCHE are irrelevant. What matters is that life has triumphed over death, as we see that Aerith, even though she fell, spoke from beyond the grave. One character we know survives is Red XIII, as we see him and his cubs in an epilogue 500 years later. We see the ruins of Midgar now overrun with grasses, but no people, only geese. The Planet, it seems, was never ours to start, and perhaps, it never will be, but the continuing of life, with or without us, is a miracle in itself. All that being said, I suppose the anthropocentric bias in me would like to believe that the Planet decided to save humanity, in spite of its sins, after seeing all that we had done to make amends. Did that epilogue not end with the laughter of children?
In the years since FFVII was released, it has produced a number of spin-offs, few of which have captured the essence of the original game. FFVII’s characters are among the most represented in the Kingdom Hearts series, Square’s tech demo for the PS3 recreated FFVII’s opening, and the first Final Fantasy character to appear in Smash Bros was not the Nintendo-era Terra or Cecil, but PlayStation’s Cloud. The direct sequel, Advent Children, was an innovative visual spectacle, and far superior to The Spirits Within, but it suffered greatly from a convoluted storyline, awkward direction, and misplaced character emphasis. Of course, the Blu-Ray version, Advent Children Complete, improves plot coherence, but the basic story still feels too much like a retread of what we already saw in the game. No one was asking for Cloud to be Tidus, but then, no one was asking him to be Squall, either, so divorced from the companions he had grown to appreciate. The film doesn’t show us how Cloud came to such a low point in his life. Too little time is spent establishing the new relationships between the characters and too much on exposition and fight scenes. The original treatment of this film was as a twenty minute focus on Cloud and Tifa, ending with a message being sent to Cloud from children. An epilogue of sorts that probably would’ve done a smoother job of getting a decent story across. This is why I prefer the Last Order anime as a visual adaptation over Advent Children. It doesn’t attempt to replicate the scope of the original game, instead vying for a humble story of Zack’s final moments expertly interwoven with flashbacks to Nibelheim. There’s fanservice, sure, but it doesn’t overwhelm the narrative.
While on the topic of Zack, the most satisfying FFVII spin-off, by far, is the PSP prequel game, Crisis Core. The gameplay could be underwhelming, but it had a gripping plot that was driven by the characters whose friendships flourish before breaking apart. We get the most sympathetic portrayal of Sephiroth as good man turned crazy, and we watch Zack mature from a naive idealist into a mentor who learns the price of freedom. The tragedy in Crisis Core has more flavor than that in Advent Children, because we understand how good things are before they go bad, instead of presenting itself as one long, brooding tome. FFVII will soon be remade on the PS4, something that fans have long desired, and I hope it follows more in the vein of Crisis Core than that of Advent Children.
Final Fantasy VII is probably more relevant now, with climate change on the rise and plastics filling our oceans, than it ever was in the 1990s. There is much debate over the state of the planet and how best to protect it. The integrity of corporate powers are scrutinized and the tactics of environmentalists are doubted. Some are blind to the problems while others think the problems beyond fixing. The question remains if the planet will accept or reject the human race, but if the game’s finale is to be taken as a guide, then perhaps salvation will arise when least we expect it.
Great Games
Tetris
Super Mario Bros.
Final Fantasy IV
Chrono Trigger
Persona 4
Pac-Man
Metal Gear Solid
Kingdom Hearts
Persona 3
Danganronpa
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
The Last of Us
Final Fantasy VI
The Legend of Zelda
Kingdom Hearts II
Bibliography
“History of the PlayStation.” IGN, August 27, 1998. Web. http://www.ign.com/articles/1998/08/28/history-of-the-playstation
Leone, Matt. “Final Fantasy 7: An oral history.” Polygon, January 9, 2017. Web. https://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7
Low, Gek Siong. “Coming To America:The making of Final Fantasy VII and how Square conquered the RPG market.” Stanford University, Spring 2001. Web. http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Squaresoft%20and%20FF7.htm
Sakaguchi, Hironobu. Interviewed by Computer and Video Games. “The Making of Final Fantasy VII.” Computer and Video Games, Issue 191, 1997. Internet Archive. Web. https://archive.org/stream/Computer_and_Video_Games_Issue_191_1997-10_EMAP_Images_GB#page/n51/mode/2up
Originally published at http://sansuthecat.blogspot.com.
