The medium of video games is uniquely suited for the adventure genre and over the years has taken me on more daring journeys than I care to recall, but only a select few of them I would describe as genuine odysseys, and FFVII definitely ranks among them. Although, truth be told, I might have never gotten past the opening hours of the original if I hadn't already played the remake and become attached to this charming ragtag gang of characters. What can I say, I sure as hell am glad that I was able to push through and look past this game's outdated (heck, almost antiquated) exterior. It may be tempting to think that FFVII's place in the video game canon can be entirely attributed to influence and nostalgia, a milestone in blockbuster RPG storytelling and game design that blew feeble teenager minds in 1997, albeit one that wouldn't hold up to modern sensibilities and has long since been surpassed by the countless successors that drew from its legacy. Nope, nope, nope, FFVII is still a good ass game in 2021, and that's not even considering its only ever-increasingly relevant political and ecological themes (but more on that in a moment).
Like a good book, FFVII may require some patience before unraveling its true greatness, or maybe some players (like me) just need some time to acclimate to its dated aesthetic, but either way, there is something timeless at the core of this game and the story it tells that elevates it far above the technical constraints of its era. Without going into spoilers I find myself resorting to stock phrases, but to put it simply: this game has a lot of charm, and it has a lot of heart. It also knows how to deliver its key story beats and how to balance tone and mood—when to be goofy, ominous, poignant, triumphant—all of of which the game can pull off as effectively as the best of them. It furthermore offers a well-designed RPG upgrade system that is fun to experiment with and keeps combat engaging, which, incidentally, features moments that are genuinely spectacular, such as the deliciously bonkers summon attacks. Can you believe it: a game from 1997 with goofy character models whose polygon count you can probably enumerate by eye, wowing me with its action set pieces in 2021? You best believe it. Oh, and have I mentioned that all of this is elevated by a fantastic soundtrack with some of the most iconic leitmotifs in this medium?
Having said all that, there's certainly a discussion to be had about the credibility of anti-capitalist messaging in a commercial product that had a total production cost in the range of $100 freaking million (the most expensive game ever at that time), or of anti-colonialist messaging in a game that uses fantasy animals as a metaphor for indigenous people, or of environmentalist messaging in a game that, while mostly steering towards a principled eco-anarchist argument (people should put an end to extractive capitalism and build a better society in reciprocity with nature), occasionally strays dangerously close to eco-fascism as well ("humans are the virus" and hence need to be culled on a global scale to enable a viable future for the surviving few), but given this entire minefield of potential pitfalls, the end result still somehow manages to hold it all together surprisingly well, and it certainly constitutes one of the better examples of radical politics in a blockbuster video game. Not sure how much of all this was just a happy accident or the result of principled if imperfect conviction on the side of the authors, which is why it will be particularly interesting to see where Tetsuya Nomura and co. are taking this new remake series. It must be said that the original kinda dropped the ball with the very ending of the game (it technically hinges on how you interpret the post-credits scene, though director Kitase seems to have (jokingly?) confirmed the "bad" interpretation in an interview), and the remake seems to be aware of this issue and is now hopefully building towards a better conclusion. That said, as an overall experience I would still rank the original game above last year's shiny first installment of the FFVII remake project. I love the remake for its sheer spectacle and bold take on the very concept of a remake, but it's got considerable pacing issues that prevent it from being the GOTY contender that it could have been. The original's pacing is oftentimes rightfully held up as one of the game's strongest points, so I really hope that the upcoming remake installments won't feel the need to drag out the rest of the story as much as the first part (which only covers the Midgar section).
I want to end this with a quote from Nier/Drakengard director Yoko Taro, taken from his GDC 2018 talk on the concept of freedom in video games: "To make people feel a sense of freedom, what's important is not volume—freedom is felt the moment that the perceptions held by the human mind are expanded." You start by giving the player a false impression of the game's limits, only to then expand on those limits. FFVII does this most noticeably in its transition from Midgar to the prototypical open world. You traverse the world of Gaia in the form of a miniature world map with simplified representations of places to enter, and while this surely blew people's minds back in the day, to me the entire thing just seemed hopelessly outdated, pitiful and barren when I stepped outside of Midgar for the first time. Only for my perception of the world to be expanded again and again. By the end of the game I was actually impressed by this game's world design and enjoyed my time traversing it, can you believe it? Though I guess having an overworld theme as sublimely beautiful as FFVII's main theme probably helped as well.
PS: If you're wondering about my username, it's actually a reference to the Aria manga by Kozue Amano. I've always been aware that there was also a character with the same name in FFVII, and while I can't say I actually ended up spending a lot of time with this game's Cait Sith (who was actually my least used party member), I did find it interesting what they did with this character in the story.
Like a good book, FFVII may require some patience before unraveling its true greatness, or maybe some players (like me) just need some time to acclimate to its dated aesthetic, but either way, there is something timeless at the core of this game and the story it tells that elevates it far above the technical constraints of its era. Without going into spoilers I find myself resorting to stock phrases, but to put it simply: this game has a lot of charm, and it has a lot of heart. It also knows how to deliver its key story beats and how to balance tone and mood—when to be goofy, ominous, poignant, triumphant—all of of which the game can pull off as effectively as the best of them. It furthermore offers a well-designed RPG upgrade system that is fun to experiment with and keeps combat engaging, which, incidentally, features moments that are genuinely spectacular, such as the deliciously bonkers summon attacks. Can you believe it: a game from 1997 with goofy character models whose polygon count you can probably enumerate by eye, wowing me with its action set pieces in 2021? You best believe it. Oh, and have I mentioned that all of this is elevated by a fantastic soundtrack with some of the most iconic leitmotifs in this medium?
Having said all that, there's certainly a discussion to be had about the credibility of anti-capitalist messaging in a commercial product that had a total production cost in the range of $100 freaking million (the most expensive game ever at that time), or of anti-colonialist messaging in a game that uses fantasy animals as a metaphor for indigenous people, or of environmentalist messaging in a game that, while mostly steering towards a principled eco-anarchist argument (people should put an end to extractive capitalism and build a better society in reciprocity with nature), occasionally strays dangerously close to eco-fascism as well ("humans are the virus" and hence need to be culled on a global scale to enable a viable future for the surviving few), but given this entire minefield of potential pitfalls, the end result still somehow manages to hold it all together surprisingly well, and it certainly constitutes one of the better examples of radical politics in a blockbuster video game. Not sure how much of all this was just a happy accident or the result of principled if imperfect conviction on the side of the authors, which is why it will be particularly interesting to see where Tetsuya Nomura and co. are taking this new remake series. It must be said that the original kinda dropped the ball with the very ending of the game (it technically hinges on how you interpret the post-credits scene, though director Kitase seems to have (jokingly?) confirmed the "bad" interpretation in an interview), and the remake seems to be aware of this issue and is now hopefully building towards a better conclusion. That said, as an overall experience I would still rank the original game above last year's shiny first installment of the FFVII remake project. I love the remake for its sheer spectacle and bold take on the very concept of a remake, but it's got considerable pacing issues that prevent it from being the GOTY contender that it could have been. The original's pacing is oftentimes rightfully held up as one of the game's strongest points, so I really hope that the upcoming remake installments won't feel the need to drag out the rest of the story as much as the first part (which only covers the Midgar section).
I want to end this with a quote from Nier/Drakengard director Yoko Taro, taken from his GDC 2018 talk on the concept of freedom in video games: "To make people feel a sense of freedom, what's important is not volume—freedom is felt the moment that the perceptions held by the human mind are expanded." You start by giving the player a false impression of the game's limits, only to then expand on those limits. FFVII does this most noticeably in its transition from Midgar to the prototypical open world. You traverse the world of Gaia in the form of a miniature world map with simplified representations of places to enter, and while this surely blew people's minds back in the day, to me the entire thing just seemed hopelessly outdated, pitiful and barren when I stepped outside of Midgar for the first time. Only for my perception of the world to be expanded again and again. By the end of the game I was actually impressed by this game's world design and enjoyed my time traversing it, can you believe it? Though I guess having an overworld theme as sublimely beautiful as FFVII's main theme probably helped as well.
PS: If you're wondering about my username, it's actually a reference to the Aria manga by Kozue Amano. I've always been aware that there was also a character with the same name in FFVII, and while I can't say I actually ended up spending a lot of time with this game's Cait Sith (who was actually my least used party member), I did find it interesting what they did with this character in the story.