Patrons Only: Final Fantasy VII Retrospective Script

Here's a little treat for those who like to read really long scripts. Below is the complete script to my upcoming video, co-written by Downward Thrust . This is a collaboration video currently looking like it's going to have a 30 minute runtime. There are some minor changes and improvisations that will be in the final video, but this is more or less what the final product will say. Enjoy!

-----------------------------

Intro

In 1987, a struggling Japanese game developer released what they thought would be their very last game. This unassuming little title sparked what has come to be known as one of the most successful and influential role-playing video game series ever made, and popularized what is now known as Japanese Role-Playing Games (or JRPGs) for generations to come.

Ten years on, Final Fantasy VII was my first experience of 5th-gen console gaming, jumping from Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger on the SNES to this was a staggering change to put it lightly. Friends and colleagues would praise and speak of the game in hushed whispers, and those who could play it counted themselves not only lucky, but part of a revolution in the sheer grandeur and scope of gaming.

Seamless cinematics, dramatic camera angles, a dark and almost cyberpunk first act, Final Fantasy was the game that launched a million Playstations, and it was a force to reckon with in the gaming industry. I remember the magazine ad campaigns for Jolt Cola and other caffeine products which revolved around the game, and my brothers and I would stay up til the wee hours of the morning just to fight another monster, explore another street corner or ride in another chocobo race.

It was the most beloved game in the series, and perhaps the entire genre. It was a step forward for games of its ilk and raised the bar of the JRPG genre, like the original did years before.

But how exactly did Final Fantasy VII come to be and capture the imagination of a generation? What did it influence and innovate, how does this classic hold up 20 years after the fact, and what can we expect in its future? In my first-ever collaboration video, fellow game analyzer Downward Thrust and I will do our best to uncover these answers… and more.

Section 1 - Background and the Formative Years

Lower Third: The Golden Age of RPGs

The introduction of the Final Fantasy franchise was nothing short of a hallmark moment for contemporary gaming.  Just like many other games of the time the original Final Fantasy was an adaptation of the classic Dungeons and Dragons formula, spruced up with 8-bit visuals and mechanics to accommodate a new direction of interactivity that could be experienced with the Nintendo Entertainment System.  With tabletop games like D&D, story was experienced by the player as they made their own adventures - the game was only as good as the limitations of our imaginations, after all.  Putting a controller in your hand - coupled with digital programming and graphical visualization - it changed everything...especially how we interacted with our ‘games.’  Vintage player-made stories were replaced by visual interactivity...stories were now presented to us, characters were developed and spoke in our stead...we simply had to steer the car that was being driven for us.  It was a huge paradigm shift in entertainment, and with it...the RPGs like the ones on the NES molded the roleplaying genre for years to come.

The first entry to the series sported a purely class-based system in which you got to define each of your four characters completely, with a simple storyline revolving around heroism and a one-dimensional struggle of light over dark.

The games that followed were only partially released in the ‘States under confusingly misnumbered titles. Final Fantasy 4 (known as Final Fantasy II to American gamers) went down a darker, more shades-of-grey storyline where you followed the anti-hero Cecil in his struggle against his own nature as a Dark Knight. Showing off the early Super Nintendo’s smoother, more colorful graphics and deeper combat mechanics, it remains many fans’ favorite of the generation.

But the next entry to come stateside, Final Fantasy 6 (known as “III” to Westerners) was another leap forward. With some of the most exquisitely-drawn pixel art ever made, a soundtrack worthy of (and now played regularly by) a full orchestra, and a touching and energetic storyline which followed the fate of Espers, humans and the industrial empire who sought to take over the world through the vile manipulation of MagiTek. Final Fantasy VI could easily have taken my pick as the outright best of the series… had it’s follow-up not been such stiff competition.

Lower Third: Reinventing a Classic

Everything leading up to Final Fantasy VI obviously found it’s home on Nintendo hardware, but that was about to change.  An unlikely set of circumstances clouded over the gaming world when Squaresoft presented an SGI tech demo of Final Fantasy VI, running on no other than Nintendo’s current blockbuster console, the N64.  Watching the footage, it quickly becomes apparent that Square’s next venture with it’s FF series could never find a comfortable home with the N64, a cartridge-based console that lacked the proper memory to be able to house a game of Final Fantasy VII’s size.  Although companies like Rare were able to make beautiful games like Banjo and Donkey Kong using a similar SGI implementation, something gets lost in translation with the character in this demo...the finesse at which Sony’s CD-based console was able to develop in a much more charming way.

While our numbering of the games may be forever confused due to localization and marketing reasons, Final Fantasy VII hit the West like a maelstrom on its release for its “reset” of everything the franchise had been building on up to that point, and putting Japanese and US/European audiences on the same page for once. To reinvent an immensely popular franchise 10 years in the making for a new console generation is a tricky venture. You mustn’t alienate your fanbase, but you do have to try new things, both unexplored and dangerous, if you want to succeed.

And with VII, Square did just that. Blending story with cinematics seamlessly into gameplay, using Hollywood-inspired editing and soundtrack cues. The resounding reception was that this was a genre-defining game for many generations to come that quickly serves as the quintessential Japanese-style role-playing game of the ages.

The drastic change in presentation and overall attitude from the previous installments to VII was poignant. In just three short years, Squaresoft re-imagined the JRPG, and their contemporaries noticed, and followed suit very quickly. From a measly 24 megabyte cartridge to well over a gigabyte of data spanning 3 CDs, VII dropped hand-crafted pixel art for CGI pre-rendered backgrounds and polygonal models, with cinematic cutscenes, high-def music and a colossal scope at which the game was played out. The game at the time was just -- awesome, truly remarkable, and it clearly caught the public’s eye as Final Fantasy VII has to date sold nearly 12 million copies worldwide, a greater tally than any other game in the franchise, and more than any other Japanese role-playing game ever released on any home console.

Section 2 - Story & Character Analysis

Lower Third: Tone and Imagery

Even from a quick glance at the cover artwork of Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife gazing up at a foreboding entity of mechanical mass in the form of the Shinra Power Plant, you can see the prevalent background and imagery the game sets its story against: Nature vs. the synthetic, man vs. machine. This theme is reverberated through various points in the game’s storyline: the clandestine experimentation of the Jenova Project, the unnatural genesis of the antagonist Sephiroth, and Shinra’s literal draining of the earth’s lifeforce simply to keep the lights on in the industrial dystopia of Midgar… It echoes far and wide.

VII brought uniquely dark plot elements to the table -- a first for the series. Though the overarching drive of the story is the inevitable destruction of the world (not at all unique to this game), there were shades of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis on display in the beginning city of Midgar --  to say nothing of the biomechanical horror that is Jenova, which was like something out of an H.R. Giger project -- this was dark sci-fi bordering on the terrifying at times, and is probably the only instance this series has explored these themes before or since.

The stark contrast of the game’s lighter elements like humor, sometimes ridiculous character design, Moogles and Chocobo racing to its darker and more sinister ones only seem to help amplify each of them -- a strange formula few franchises seem to pull off -- and seemingly one of Final Fantasy’s most endearing traits.

Lower Third: Story Themes

Final Fantasy VII is a story about rebirth, a game about a group of people that have outlived the world that once defined them.  Each character in the game lives in the shadows of something they wish to change.  Even the world, the lifestream, and the very city you first step in to, Midgar, has something it is running from or trying to change, yet it can never truly let it go. A massive city built of technology and machine on top of an existing city.  But Midgar can not hide from the slums, the people who want to change, but can’t, and the political, and often personal turmoil that Shrina harbors.

It’s a theme of being a survivor, and the characters in VII embody this to an even greater degree.

Barrett is a man that tries so desperately to disguise his true motives for existence by blinding us with his hatred for Shrina and what the technology has stolen from his home.  He screams, at length, and manically during many cutscenes, calling out for change and revenge. Endlessly he drones on. But it’s all a proxy for his true motivation in life, Marlene.  Marlene represents all the memories Barrett has of Corel, and his hopes for a future in a world free from Shinra.  He simply wants Marlene to live in a better world and is constantly running away from the haunting nightmare of his past but simply is unable to do so until far into the story.

Tifa, too, is in flight from her own past..the tragedy of Nibelheim. Tifa’s world was destroyed by Sephiroth’s rampage, her loved ones murdered and her life nearly taken.  Cloud represents the only living connection to her previous world, but their relationship is nothing like that of Barret and Marlene. Tifa wants to believe that some part of her past still lives—that she shares her identity and the destruction of it with someone else.  She is so desperate to have this that she will help Cloud maintain an illusion she knows isn’t true just to feel some semblance the world that she once lost.  It’s a demented addiction and the source for her pain in Final Fantasy VII. 

Vincent, the man who lost his humanity when Hojo experimented on him, also follows the memory of death into the present with a connection to the past when players meet Lucrecia, Sephiroth’s human mother. The flashback in Lucrecia’s cavern connects the past of Vincent with the Sephiroth’s parentage and pre-Midgar Shinra.

Aerith as the last Cetra, having outlived her lineage and the White Materia she hides in her hair ribbon, given to her by her mother. Red XIII, victim of a near death experience at the hand of a neighboring tribal war who, is for all intents and purposes to players, the last of his kind.

And of course Cloud, not ironically the most nebulous survivor connection, and the most personally tragic. Cloud’s connection to the past is Sephiroth, but his motives are anything but simple.  Cloud failed to protect those he loved, his home, and shamed from the failure of joining SOLDIER.  Using Zack as a proxy identity to cover up that shame, Cloud goes on to live a life of seclusion and guilt, his only remedy to defeat Sephiroth not for the sake of revenge, but in order to be able to live for himself.  Cloud admits, later on in the game, that he wanted to be like Sephiroth, idolizing the man that came to Nibelheim and destroyed everything he loved.  

All of these legacy stories come together to form a greater story of a group of characters interconnected in the past, bonding together and forced to confront the fate of the present. They share the fate of near-death experiences in their pasts and a frail linkage to each other by that association. Ultimately, it creates a story that had such rich depth.

Lower Third: Shades of Gray

There was a greater focus on interpersonal relationships this time around, as to be expected with higher definition graphics and more established localization from Japanese to English. Morality was portrayed in foggier shades of grey, rather than the stark good and evil of many of its contemporaries. Even subtle character details were hinted at in the game’s dialogue too. One of which was sadly lost in translation.

As you learned from flashbacks midway through the game, your first interactions with Sephiroth were before he lost his mind. At that point, he used pronouns commonly associated with confident men. After his insanity takes hold, he uses a more obscure, unisex pronoun when referring to himself, a subtle but powerful indicator that he has gone through a transformation. Struggling with powers and an identity he doesn’t fully understand, he clearly is in an internal conflict and that is represented in both his dialogue and actions.

In many ways, Sephiroth and Aerith are equal opposites, and you could argue that they are personifications of synthetic, man-made danger and warm, embracing nature, respectively. Sephiroth’s origins are beyond this world, and he was created through a dark experiment, rather than born. Aerith has popular comparisons to God, the creator, or even just a manifestation of the world itself. Even her name is almost a perfect anagram of the word “Earth”.

Though instead of having a typical, one-dimensional desire to do evil, Sephiroth is commonly of two minds and despite his unforgivable deeds is at times almost empathetic. His story is one of abuse, tragedy, longing, sadness and revenge. It’s this interesting dynamic and layered depth to Final Fantasy VII’s legendary antagonist which has secured his immortality as one of the most memorable villains in gaming.

Section 3 - Universe and Inspiration

Lower Third: Scoring a Masterpiece

Though many Square series have had legendary soundtracks -- Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Chrono Cross and Xenogears -- Final Fantasy has stood the test of time for its sheer musical brilliance and inspiration. Even as far back as the primitive 8-bit NES bleeps and bloops of the original, the composition and structure is solid -- and easily translates to beautiful symphony today. Final Fantasy’s various soundtracks were the brainchild of industry legend Nobuo Uematsu, who was the primary composer for over a dozen games in the series. His influence is seen far and wide and is widely regarded as one of the prime pillars of the series’ creation. 

Whereas Hironobu Sakaguchi was the brains behind the game design, Tetsuya Nomura was the creator of much of the artistry and character designs from Final Fantasy VI forward, Nobuo Uematsu was the father of the SOUND of Final Fantasy. Even later titles released many years after he left Square still hint at melodies and themes he created decades earlier.

Final Fantasy VII’s sheer audial inspiration grips you from the second you start the game. From the intrigue and mystery of the ‘Opening Theme’ that taps your mind and doesn’t let go right from the outset.  Following that, you’re immediately reeled in to the urgency of the story with drums, horns and piano arpeggios -- keeping the rhythm and pacing tight and consistent even through battles -- a first for the series. Once you’ve passed the immediate breach of Shinra security, you’re then doused in the industrial groans and wheezes of machinery, steam and bleak dystopia of the Mako Reactor. With music sounding like the breathing of some giant, malignant machine, this song has a permanent home in mine and many others’ heads as an absolute tone-setter that perfectly speaks the story, implied history and feel of the industrial beast you are aiming to slay.

The theme and soundtrack to each location and scene were virtually seared in our minds to stay forever, from Aerith’s Theme’s gentle plucks of the harp, to the dramatic march of ‘One-Winged Angel’. The otherworldly intrigue of ‘You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet’, to the upbeat but unsettling melodies of Jenova. The contrast of tone in moments were vividly displayed when comparing Cid’s Theme, a stirring and hopeful melody with notes of bleakness and tragedy, to the soaring optimism of music when you take flight in the Highwind airship. 

Many would agree that the creeping, eerie and haunting strings of Nibelheim’s soundtrack still gives chills to this day. And who can honestly forget the insanely catchy Chocobo song even after two long decades?

It’s a rarity to come across such a masterful collection of music, that doesn’t offer even a few throwaway tracks or “forgettables” to be heard. Each and every piece perfectly vignetted the emotion, feel and atmosphere it represented, and made for a fantastic and beautiful journey nearly every step of the way.

Sadly, due to hardware limitations which would have made for unwieldy and lengthy load times, Uematsu opted to go for a compressed, MIDI-like method of playing music in the game, rather than have CD-quality recordings.

But the true testament of its timelessness lies in the sheer volume of musical albums, covers both official and fan-created, number in the many hundreds! You can listen to legendary themes like One-Winged Angel in just about any music style you could imagine -- jazz, heavy metal, techno, symphonic -- even a capella! In fact the music of Final Fantasy (of which VII plays no small part) is so beloved and respected that official concerts with a live orchestra have toured ‘round the world for years, even to this very day, all based on Nobuo Uematsu’s legendary work.

Somehow Nobuo managed to score such a wide variety of music ranging all over the emotional scale, that were as diverse as they were cohesive. Ultimately it was likely one of the most striking and memorable soundtracks in gaming history.

Lower Third: Expanding the Universe

The same year VII was released also saw the quiet foundation of Square Pictures, a CG-animation studio dedicated to creating cutting-edge video shorts and feature films. Later known as the visionaries behind the ill-fated Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, as well as the CG-short Final Flight of the Osiris (which was included in The Matrix spinoff collection, The Animatrix).

Caption: Advent Children (2005)

A true follow-up to the events of Final Fantasy VII took the surprising form of a 2005 feature film Advent Children. Directed by long-time Final Fantasy visual and character artist Tetsuya Nomura, Advent Children told an interesting, grim but tonally disparate story that acts as a direct follow-up to the events of VII. Adding new characters but featuring a return of most of the originals’, it offered fan service to what is many gamers’ favorite of the series. This was a big love-letter to VII, bow, ribbon and all -- and many, including myself, loved it. 

Though Advent Children may not be exactly what fans asked for, it did provide a little closure and another spin in the world of Gaia, that we so desperately wanted to take part in.

A more visceral director’s cut of the movie was released in 2009 on Blu-ray, called Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete. This remaster and re-envisioning of the film featured nearly a half-hour of extra scenes and footage, more realistic wounds, and improved editing, storytelling and development.

Caption: Last Order (2005)

The controversial Last Order: Final Fantasy VII anime short was also released in 2005, which was set during the Nibelheim incident and featured scenes in the events that followed. It was an unexpected treat to fans, but gained their ire when certain key events were changed with little reasoning for them, which probably affected its limited release.

Caption: Dirge of Cerberus (2006)

This began a short-lived but welcome revival of the Final Fantasy VII universe, which followed with the 2006 Playstation 2 spinoff Dirge of Cerberus -- an interesting diversion of a game that let players follow their favorite scene-stealer Vincent Valentine in a 3rd-person shooting adventure.

Caption: Crisis Core (2007)

Around the 10th anniversary of the original Final Fantasy VII release in 2007, the Playstation Portable game Crisis Core was released. And stands today as the closest thing to a true canonical RPG addition to the story, which followed Zack Fair, from a young member of SOLDIER all the way up to the beginning events of Final Fantasy VII. Though it was a smaller scale production with a more limited budget, people were desperate to revisit that world, and so Crisis Core became a PSP system seller.

Lower Third: Evolution of a Series

Final Fantasy VII was the last game of the series to see Hironobu Sakaguchi credited as designer, original story creator and producer. For those unfamiliar with Sakaguchi, he was the creator of the very first Final Fantasy game and had a hand in each and every title up to his departure from Square in 2004 which heavily influenced the decision for Square to merge with its long-time rival to form today’s Square-Enix. In short, there is no Final Fantasy without Sakaguchi’s design and inspiration, Nobuo Uematsu's masterful soundscapes and other team members who worked on the core series for the formation years.

Sakaguchi’s increasingly distant influence on the Final Fantasy series and his leaving Square entirely can be seen in the games following VII. Aside from a brief return as producer on IX (which saw a more colorful, pleasant and rounded aesthetic, and concepts from the earlier games in the franchise return). The series got less and less recognizable with each entry, eventually losing all semblance of structure entirely with X and XIII’s multiple canonical releases, and the massively-multiplayer online XI and XIV. Final Fantasy has become a branding mark, rather than a coherent series of unrelated stories married under a banner of quality and gameplay mechanics.

Section 4 - Gameplay Analysis

Lower Third: Classes, Combat and Materia

In the most basic sense, Final Fantasy VII is a traditional JRPG with an active time battle system.  Although VII often feels less about the gameplay, and more about the story, the flexible Materia and limit break combat system supplemented a new take on class system utilization to deliver a more robust gameplay design that focused on player flexibility.  However, at the same junction...it definitely wasn’t perfect.

Final Fantasy VII stood at the crossroads of contemporary roleplaying design, mainly in the way it challenged traditional character class paradigms.  

Prior to VII, early titles such as Final Fantasy IV embraced a structured class system reminiscent of many roleplaying games that came before such as Ultima and the game that defined many norms of future RPGs... Dungeons and Dragons.  Specialization in class structure was practiced in many games, from D&D, through Final Fantasy IV, and all the way up until Final Fantasy VI introduced a more flexible system that allowed players to have slightly more control over how their characters should be defined.  Although it most certainly had defined classes, any of the games’ 14 playable characters could be fashioned into a serviceable mage and made hearty enough to remain practical with FFVI’s flexible and lenient armor system. 

Final Fantasy VII continued the pursuit of breaking down class structures even further by essentially removing classes altogether.  Aside from Aerith, whose low health pool, weak defense and high magic base instantly sanctioned her into the realm of dedicated healer and mage, every other character in Final Fantasy VII was sort of a jack of all trades. Outside of slight weaknesses or strengths, combat and magic stats were quite normalized in VII -- equipping offensive Materia on Cloud, Vincent or Barret played out very similar and standard. Auto-attacking had no sweeping advantages across the character pool, plus or minus Yuffie.  Thus, more control was given to players to customize party members to their own liking knowing that the sterile limitations of past class systems were not hamstringing them from exercising their own creativity.

The result was not just a more personal experience to characters, and the development of combat progression...but a means to create more intimate stories within the greater scope of the game.  It allowed the game to remove key characters from the story at pivotal moments and set up more intimate party structures knowing that each character was more well-rounded in combat.  It was an evolutionary necessity for the Final Fantasy series, and a complete divergence from the class-based game structure that was going on at the time with fellow RPG titles such as Pokémon.

Lower Third: Summoning and Limit Breaks

The character-unique “ultimate” abilities that charged through damage taken known as Limit Breaks became iconic to the series, and though their origins are technically inspired from Desperation Attacks of the previous entry, would become a staple through future games. Though few could argue that other Final Fantasy games recreated the showstoppers that were Final Fantasy VII Limit Breaks. From Cloud’s deadly sword attacks, to Barret’s gun-arm barrages

These special moves provided a satisfying “Awwww-yes!” moment which would show your characters kicking all sorts of tail in a special attack. Limit Breaks had a unique progression system too which would unlock new techniques based not only through combat experience, but also through the repeated use of your Limit Breaks. 

And because of FFVII’s sheer depth of its Materia system, you could even divert Limit-building damage from one character to another to tactically accelerate more useful or powerful Limit Breaks.

The infamous Summons of the game took the 1-2 second animation of prior games into what felt like feature film-length incantations of Bahamut, Ifrit, Shiva and others. These lengthy battle animations were a departure of the more functional runtimes of special abilities in games past, and were a bit contentious even at the time of release. Those who played the game can relate to taking a kitchen break whenever the notoriously long Knights of the Round summoning animation took place, clocking in at a whole 1 minute, 20 seconds each time!

Despite this though, whether it's the massive laser from orbit of Bahamut Zero, to the literal disintegration of the entire solar system every time Supernova was cast, the spells, summons and abilities of Final Fantasy VII were hyperbolic, spectacular and over-the-top. And we loved it.

Lower Third: Side Activities

The beloved Gold Saucer theme park was an revolutionary scene-stealer of a game location at the time, which involved tons of replayable mini-games, such as the now-famous Chocobo races where you could back your winning bird through a neck-and-neck run through bright and memorable tracks.

But it didn’t end there, you could do other cool things like snowboard, arm wrestle. Moogle-matchmake, or shoot hoops like you’re Michael Jordan! Many of these would grant rewards such as battle consumables, equipment and even Materia. Pushing your skill to take out other motorcycle riders on G-Bike, or defeating a gauntlet of enemies at the Battle Square, the sheer volume and diversity of challenges and mini-games was enthralling -- but Cloud was also a ladies’ man too, and there was a hidden dating mechanic buried in the Gold Saucer experience. It measured who you spent the most time with in different activities, and you could unlock a special scene with one of your party members should you show them a good enough time.

Part of the charm and endearing quality was the sheer conviction of each avenue of the park. From the haunted mansion-style hotel with animatronic ghosts and ghoulies, to the over-the-top Sports Center-style extravaganza of the Chocobo racing centre, complete with ticket booths and the like. Each section of the Saucer has its own unique theme and all of the connecting tunnels and exits follow that aesthetic. Trying to beat that high score in the roller coaster shooter minigame is a trial we all struggled to overcome. It really is a Disney Land-esque escape from the main grind of the game, and it’s a treasured memory in the minds of many a gamer.

The Gold Saucer was essentially a revival and recreation of the Millennial Fair in Chrono Trigger. It’s got the points-gathering, the racing, the mini-games and general fun atmosphere, only cranked up to level 11, and with real prizes and many more gear pieces and prizes to unlock this time around.

But in retrospective, the Gold Saucer is also quite a conundrum as it relates to the story, obviously in kind of a funny way -- with the fate of the world in his hands, does Cloud need to be eating cotton candy and going on hot dates with Tifa? What would Sephiroth say if he saw Cloud then?

Outro to Part 2

So that is more or less the history, groundbreaking features, industry influence and the universe of Final Fantasy VII. But how does this monumental piece of entertainment hold up after two decades? What is the climate and state of the industry that will determine the shape, design decisions and style of the announced remake of the game? And what do we have to look forward to in the future of the franchise? Check out part two of this series on Downward Thrust’s channel, link’s in the description and at the end of this video.

What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy VII? Have any experiences, opinions or stories to share? Let me know in the comments. Please like and subscribe to Indigo Gaming and Downward Thrust for more videos like this one. And as always, thanks for watching!