A Year in Final Fantasy: VII

The clamorings of fanboys for a Final Fantasy VII remake have always struck me as a little bit misguided, but after this latest playthrough it's clear to me that Square Enix would have to be an entirely different company with an entirely different modus operandi for something like that to even begin to work. The company that was Squaresoft is a very different beast these days, and what is evident to me is that Final Fantasy VII's successes hinge (almost) entirely on it being a product of its time. This is, in no way, what one would consider a "modern adventure."

The storyline of Final Fantasy VII is about as well known as a video game storyline can be, but it's easy to forget just how convoluted the whole thing is. The game essentially starts out as an environmental devastation parable, with Barret and his crew of saboteurs attempting to take down the evil power company Shinra. Had the game followed along this trajectory for the entire game, it certainly could have worked (and would have had a much more standard plot as well), but the game gets increasingly mystic and inscrutable as the game goes on. The Lifestream, the origins of magic crystals called materia, a man-beast-thing named Jenova, and sequences that would seem downright bizarre if the game didn't keep its popcorn aesthetic wits about it; all of this is jammed into Final Fantasy VII and much more.

In fact, in purely objective terms, there might be a little too much going on in FFVII. In terms of pacing and cohesion, this is as shaggy a dog as they come, with bizarre sequences thrown into the middle of what should be the forward progression of the plot. Essentially, the second half of the game is framed as a chase narrative and a psychological thriller, as Cloud attempts to learn who he really is and to kill the man who has been fucking with his brain and who has megalomaniacal aspirations of world domination (don't they all?), but the game sees fit to throw in a kind-of sweet, kind-of offputting love triangle into the mix (inspiring far too much fan fiction for my tastes), an extended sequence where you have to ride chocobos in order to be able to kill the final boss, and attempts at "touching" moments with characters you've forgotten about long ago. This might be a case where a game is simply too long.

But here's the thing: I don't know what it is about this game, and I know that there are other Final Fantasy games that are pretty objectively better, but no other game in the series that I've played thus far has the "heart" of this game. It is one of only a very few games, or any media really, that taps into that part of your brain that was once reserved for those awkward passions that one has as an early teen (the real market and demographic that would get the most out of this game, I'd say). I could look at the game as a gaming critic and call out this or that element for not really working or not being of good game design, but I'd be lying if I told you I haven't been obsessing over this game for the last two weeks.

Part of this is simply due to how frighteningly deep into its gameplay systems one can get, and while they're actually quite tedious and poorly designed when you think about it, the ability to find and customize your characters to the degree that you can is quite entertaining. Sure, I actually prefer the Final Fantasy VI mold, where characters are more pre-defined, as any character in VII can be just like any other character, making them essentially blank personalities in combat (outside of their outlandish "limit breaks," which I could explain but can't really be bothered to), but damned if, just like every other aspect of this game, it just works.

There's this magical quality to the game that I can't quite wrap my head around just yet. I think it's a combination of factors. The game is quite obviously dated, but the look of the game seems to scream out "this is new! this is exciting!" at every turn. I can fully understand why people would go nuts for this game after the Super Nintendo offerings, because even though this game hasn't aged quite as gracefully as, say, Final Fantasy VI, it still manages to pull off several incredible tricks while retaining the core of the Final Fantasy look. This might be the first installment to borrow liberally from science-fiction, but the game still understands that having weird looking sprites (superdeformed polygons in this installment, though they essentially perform the same function) engaging in over-the-top dramatic episodes is something that will inherently impress people.

The game certainly does not win its points for the quality of its script, which, while significantly more extensive than its forebears, is on the whole much more poorly translated (though there aren't any "spoony bard" incidents in this one). This isn't a great thing, as on first playthrough the game is actually quite hard to follow. I often found myself forgetting who certain people were (like the Turks) or why I was doing what I was doing because of this. Where the game shines, though, is in creating its own mythos. There's a reason why there's such a cultish attitude towards this game, and that's because the game creates such a mysterious air about it. Partially, I think, this is due to FFVII being the most heavily marketed, overtly Japanese salvo into the North American gaming market up to that point, and it's no stretch to say that FFVII created millions of Japanophiles and anime lovers. The game is just so drastically different from many games that came before it – it's intentionally inscrutable and frighteningly large, creating a world that begs to be discovered and mastered. This is the aspect of the game that brings me to consider it one of my favourites over and over again. Never has a game created these kinds of emotions within me, and that's with me fully understanding that it's really not that great, objectively speaking.

Like with most FF games pre-XII, I'd say, Final Fantasy VII requires a strict adherence to a strategy guide simply for survival (also, thank you so much, Alex, for your fantastic guide). This also plays into the mysterious air, though I could imagine it would be frustrating for someone who was trying to get through the game based on their own wits. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, but I know there's no way I'd make it past the first, oh, six hours without a walkthrough. Once again, this plays into the "scripted" aspect of the game that I last talked about in my review of Final Fantasy VI, as Final Fantasy VII is less about being able to make grand changes to the plot of the game and more about having "microagency" to change small, mostly inconsequential details that make the game feel more personal even when it's not. Personally, I really respond to this approach, even though I can see why it could be eventually considered verboten – games are supposed to be about agency, but Final Fantasy games are generally so successful at bringing me into their world that I can't really fault the designers for playing it this way. As well, the "do it our way or die" mentality created a burgeoning network of players from around the world during the infancy of the internet who had to communicate and work together to figure out this game. That's the kind of ludonarrative that is simply a product of its time and probably could never be replicated again. Final Fantasy VII created an oral history, a bond between all those who played it and were drawn into its strange world, and for that, its linearity is ultimately kind of amazing.

As opposed to the Square Enix of today, though, FFVII is, at least in my partially uninformed opinion (having not played every Final Fantasy game yet), the most successful attempt that the company has had at creating characters to actually care about. They're all broad archetypes (Cloud is the angsty, amnesiac teen hero; Tifa is the busty love interest; Aeris is the mystical healer; Cid is the gruff, no-nonsense type; and Barret, well, the less said about how much of a racial caricature he is, the better, though it must be said that he turns out to be a real human by the end of the game), but they're archetypes that this game basically perfects. It's enjoyable to run through Cloud's neuroses for an entire CD because you care about him. It's enjoyable to try to go on a date with a character you like  at the Gold Saucer because maybe you'll get to find out more about them. This is completely separate from the gameplay, mind you – the game makes you care about the characters for no pragmatic purpose at all, which is actually quite a bit more revelatory than it should be. They're not very deep, but I couldn't help but fill in bits of backstory myself, which really cemented my connection to them. Square has never had such iconic characters as these.

What I think the game's success really comes down to, ultimately, is the quality of its villain. With the expanded capabilities of the CD-ROM, Square was able to flesh out a script that allowed for quite a bit more nuance than the charmingly straight-ahead caricatures of its previous games, and nowhere is this felt more keenly than in the characterization of Sephiroth. In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka was basically crazy because the game called on him to be crazy, but in VII, there's real motivations behind his characters, a kind of twisted logic to his actions. It's even kind of subtle, as the game goes so far as to almost have you identify with his plight in the beginning. But because he's ultimately such a cruel, cruel bastard, the progression of trying to catch him and then having the ultimate showdown with him is pulse-pounding. Quite literally in the case of the final battle, which has all the drama and pageantry of a Wagnerian epic. This kind of drama is sustained exactly where it needs to be during the game, though the pacing also allows for a lot of downtime, which works in this game's case. Normally, not being able to chase the main bad guy would be a death sentence for a game like this (I'm trying to imagine a version of Ocarina of Time that would be similarly lackadaisical, and I just can't see it working), but as with everything in Final Fantasy VII, it all just comes together.

Make no mistake, though: playing Final Fantasy VII absolutely, positively requires you to put your head in 1997, because so many of the game's surprises and accomplishments are of a technical variety which doesn't come across for the modern gamer. Final Fantasy VI certainly had varied gameplay, but none of it was nearly as overtly "cutting edge" as FFVII attempts to be. So while we might scoff at the ludicrous inclusion of a snowboarding sequence as a plot point in a multi-million dollar game, it both reinforces the quaint 1997-ness of the affair as well as the sensation that, "holy shit, did you forget that this Final Fantasy game is in 3D? Because it is." Now, to be fair, this game was a little behind in a lot of ways. Running on a static, 2D background was a somewhat-elegant solution for the problem of the low-fidelity of the PSX, and games like Ocarina of Time would show the gloriousness of full 3D for games such as these. It's tempting to think about what FFVII would have been like on the N64, aesthetically, but it almost certainly would have been an entirely different game, and I quite like what was produced here.

Ultimately, I can't help but love Final Fantasy VII, and this is because of, not in spite of its flaws. How could any modern developer begin to convey the charm that this game has in its current form? How could anyone, especially the mostly broken development mindset at Square Enix, accurately transmute that beautiful combination of mystery, exploration, popcorn action, charmingly constructed characters and straight-up inscrutable plot into a modern aesthetic? I don't think it's possible. This is a game that creates its universe so idiosyncratically that I don't fault anyone for wanting to live in it for a long time, or over and over. It feels tactile, not quite real, but a fascinating construction of the fantasy genre as viewed through a game developer's eyes in the mid-1990s. Final Fantasy VII absolutely is a product of 1997 and it's best enjoyed that way. It's melodramatic and its attempts at poignancy are often a little off the mark, but that's what makes it so endearing. "Endearing" would almost certainly be read as code for "things that need to be 'fixed'" in a modern adaptation, and I certainly couldn't abide by that.