Final Fantasy VII

So, since I've got a lazy month before all of the traveling starts - enough time to be lazy, but not enough time to get a job - I'm mostly cooking and playing video games. Having finally assembled all the components of my PS2 in the same place at the same time, I've started up Final Fantasy VII. I felt like I owed it to myself to play what many of my friends consider the best game ever. Myself, I've always been partial to FFX... but come to think of it, that's also the only one I've ever finished. Still, I thought I'd gotten a reasonable distance... maybe 1/4 - 1/3 of the way in, through VII, VIII, and IX. I was somewhat embaressed to notice that I've only played 3 hours of 7... leaving me in the sewers after the Don Corneo stuff. So yeah. I just decided to restart.

Playing through again, I think... I'm starting to understand. Grant it, I may never be as in love with 7 as those who came to it as their first RPG, their first 3D game, whatever. As much imagination as I'm pouring into it, as much as I'm trying to put it into perspective, I'm still rather underwhelmed by the graphics. It's not just that they're not amazingly beautiful, they're so bad that to me it actually becomes a gameplay issue. I have a hard time walking around and figuring out where to go oftentimes because I can't tell what's supposed to be on the screen. Still, I'm starting to adapt. I get stuck less often. I can usually tell when one of the characters is laughing or crying. And I think I'm starting to understand.

So far, the main character, Cloud, has recently joined a terrorist group called Avalanche, that is trying to destroy giant power generators in the city of Midgar. Midgar is a nasty, dirty place, of which, to be fair, I've really only seen the slums beneath the plate, shielded from the wind and sky. There is a wicked corporation, Shinra, that runs the generators and is sucking out the lifeforce of the planet, which is why Avalanche is against them. Cloud professes not to care, however. He used to be some sort of elite fighter working for Shinra, but not anymore. Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa, is in Avalanche as well, which is how Cloud got dragged into this. The leader is a guy named Barrett, a huge guy who is always shouting and has a gun for an arm. He looks rough. He has an daughter named Marlene who means a lot to him.

After Avalanche blows up a few of the generators, Shinra traps them and there's an explosion which leads to Cloud falling down into the city while Tifa screams and cries. Cloud hits the roof of a church and falls through onto a bed of flowers - apparently some of the only flowers in all of Midgar. There's a girl there named Aerrith, and some more Shinra people are after her. So you help her escape to her house, which is located in the slums but for some reason has more flowers everywhere, as well as what appear to be waterfalls in the background (again, the graphics make it a bit of a challenge to know for sure).

Cloud and Aerrith then try to get back to the Avalanche group, and find out that Tifa is for some reason on her way to a whorehouse of sorts. Cloud has to crossdress to find out what's going on, so there's an amusing scene where Cloud is actually picked as the most attractive girl, and a big fat mafia guy crouches on a bed (I think... graphics. ;)) and talks dirty to him. Then, Tifa, Aerrith, and Cloud tell him he's been tricked and get information from him - apparently Shinra is after Avalanche, and has found their hideout.

And they're going to crush the entire slum to destroy it. That's right - a neighborhood full of people. Cloud, Tifa, and Aerrith run to the slum just as Shinra is busy destroying the pillar. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie (other Avalanche members, who have been personified just enough that you care about them) are apparently with Barrett, up high on the pillar, fighting. Down below are some random residents, all listening to the gunfire and watching sparks fly (literally) up above. Wedge falls from up high and hits the ground hard. Tifa asks Aerrith to go get Marlene and take her somewhere safe, and then Cloud and Tifa climb up the pillar, passing mortally wounded Biggs and Jessie along the way to the top.

And you know - I'm really caring out this, I'm nervous and excited and thinking "whoa". I can basically only tell the characters apart by the colour of their clothing, there are no real time facial expressions, no voice overs, etc... but I care and somehow I feel what's going on. The music really sets the mood without it ever drawing attention. Maybe it's a cheap shot on the part of the developers that Barret has a giant gun for an arm. Still, the volatility and rawness of his emotional outbursts really comes through, somehow, when he shoots things up and shouts.

Despite winning a battle up on the top, Avalanche can't stop the pillar from crashing down. They find out that Aerrith has been taken by Shinra, and then they grab a wire and swing out of the way of the plate just before it crashes down and destroys the slum. Barrett freaks out. He runs over to the rubble and is screaming and shooting his arm off at the heap of stones and metal. He screams for Marlene and Jessie and Biggs and Wedge.

Yeah, I think I understand. I don't know how it's harder hitting than FFX, for example. There is destruction in FFX - I remember when Sin destroyed a little seaside village, for example, and a bunch of little kids were killed. It was sad as hell. But somehow it was less realistic - the characters were just sort of gloomy about it - they had all lost relatives, friends, etc, but strangely never on camera (except Tidus, sort of, at the very end). Maybe it's because more is left up to the imagination? But somehow I also feel that the characters in FFVII are more human or something. Isn't that weird? That I care more about this voiceless pile of pixels:


Than about, say, Ashe:


Despite having spent roughly 11x as long playing FFXII?