25/06/2017

Me and Final Fantasy VII


Every RPG aficionado as well as any gamer born before 1985 has a story to tell about Final Fantasy VII, a.k.a. the game that single-handedly introduced the mainstream gaming scene of two continents to the joys of JRPG. As Square Enix is cooking up a remake of this beloved cult classic and we're about to come full circle twenty years after the original game's release, it's now time for me to unfold my personal story about FFVII. There will be hype, there will be hope, and there will be unrequited love grown cold. Make yourselves comfortable and grab some popcorn, dear fellow gamers: for what you're about to read is the bittersweet story of how I totally and utterly missed on FFVII 

Let's rewind all the way back to 1997. Summer 1997, to be more precise. To say that this was an underwhelming gaming summer for me would definitely be an understatement. At that point, I had milked my Game Gear library dry and squeezed every possible ounce of fun from the system; and since no new games were being released, I had nothing left to hope for on the Sega portable front. My Game Boy was long gone, sold to a second-hand store a couple of years before in order to get the necessary funds to purchase my Game Gear; as for my beloved second-hand Megadrive, it would only come into the picture a couple of months later. In a nutshell, I was stranded with no games to play and immediate gaming prospects looked pretty dire.

In a desperate attempt to stay connected to gaming, I decided to acquire the summer issue of a now long-defunct gaming magazine. This was definitely not an usual move for me at the time: far from being the avid game magazine reader I am nowadays, I carefully shied away from all these colourful tomes bristling with hype-inducing pictures and over-assuming titles that could best be described as the ancestors of today's clickbaits. There were two reasons for this avoidance: the first was that these magazines were quite expensive, and I hardly had enough pocket money to purchase games, let alone magazines about games. The second reason was that at the time, I was still dreaming of acquiring a home console and actively lobbying my parents to let me hook a machine to the home TV; and while the deed was not done, reading enthusiastic articles about the latest home console releases would only have poured salt in the wound. But these two very sound reasons to stay away from gaming magazines virtually evaporated that summer, wiped away by my overwhelming desire to indulge in somethinganythingrelated to gaming.

So I purchased this magazine, whose name I cannot remember for the life of me. Not that I cared at all about that at the time, mind you; the only thing I was craving and caring about were the contents. And boy, did I got more than I bargained for. For lo and behold, dear fellow gamers: somewhere in this holy magazine, between an El-Hazard poster and cheesy readers' letters, was nested a full-fledged feature about the upcoming Final Fantasy VII.

I remember that piece like I read it yesterday, dear fellow gamers. A complete survey of FFVII's storyline and cast of characters, replete with gorgeous full-colour pictures. Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, Rouge 13: they were all displayed there in all their official art glory, and they all looked impossibly cool and edgy. Like, cooler and edgier than any other videogame character created since the dawn of gaming. And gosh, how hard did I want to grab a controller and swing that impossibly huge sword around.

Of course, this wouldn't have been possible at all, since FFVII is a turn-based RPG; but that was not something you could infer from the article's content. The whole piece was solely focused on the narrative, with little to no mention of the type of gameplay involved. Even more revealing, there was not a single gameplay picture to be found in these FFVII-soaked pages: the many pictures that adorned the article were either the official art or screen captures lifted from cutscenes. Over the years, I've learnt to despise that gaming advertising angle that focuses on character fan-service and does away with gameplay footage; but during that summer '97, I was totally unfazed by this lack of gameplay information and lapped up the whole thing, all the more so as my anime obsession was at its peak at the time.

To say that I was enthralled by this article would once again be an jolly understatement. This was the first time ever I was hearing about that game, and what I read pretty much glued me to the magazine. To put it simply, this brand-new RPG looked like the most amazing, mind-blowing, breathtaking game of all times to my younger eyes. I was ferociously hyped up, and my level of hype climber higher with every reread of that FFVII feature that had become akin to a sacred text for the younger, game-starved little me. I wanted to play that game with every fibre of my being, and my body and soul ached at the thought that it would probably never happen.

Because indeed, things were pretty complicated between the Playstation and me at the time. For one thing, I had already grown to dislike Sony's first gaming piece of kit for its ugly blocky 3D and shitty shades of brown by the time I discovered that fateful FFVII feature, and it would take more than one appetizing game to make me change my opinion of the system. But the most damning reason I would not get to play FFVII in the near future was that there was no way I could own a Playstation in said near future. Even if my parents gave me the green light to purchase a home console the very next day, the Playstation was way beyond my financial means. It would have taken months and months of saving my pocket money to garner the funds required to purchase a Playstation and a copy of FFVII; and young little me had already been through that whole process with the Game Boy and was not in the mood to repeat the deed with the Playstation. Especially when there was no guarantee whatsoever that I would find any game to play beyond FFVII.

And so did FFVII pass me by at the time of its release. I could still have played it a couple of years later, mind you; I was a mere couple of years away from adulthood in 1997, and I could perfectly have gotten my paws on a second-hand Playstation and a copy of FFVII when I moved into my first flat. However, I rather choose to dabble in emulation and anime marathons at the time, and FFVII slowly but surely slipped out of my radar as years went by.

To this day, I still have to play FFVII. But you know what? I really don't want to. Not only did I lose every last shred of interest for the game over the years, but I'm pretty sure that I would be sorely disappointed if I tried my hand at Square's most famous RPG ever. For one thing, it didn't exactly age gracefully: I encountered some actual gameplay footage for the first time a couple of years ago and was appaled by the sheer ugliness of what I sawnot that cutscenes are any better, mind you. But most importantly, FFVII has become such a perennial and absolute cult classic over time that even while gradually losing interest in the game, I've absorbed all the praise about it and unconsciously developed expectations. And without nostalgia to make the heart grow fonder, those expectations are bound to not be met and I'm bound to be disappointed by FFVII.

So, I'd rather let gaming legends rest undisturbed. There is a time for everything, and there's no time but the right time; and the right time to play FFVII is over as far as I'm concerned. And since it's also highly unlikely that I'll ever play the remake, FFVII will forever remain my main teenage years gaming fantasy and The Cult Classic RPG That Passed Me By. I've been passionate about that game, desperately greedy for it and bitter not to get to play it; but nowadays, FFVII is nothing more than a bittersweet memory of those years when I was starved of games and a reminder that I have it really freakin' good nowadays when it comes to gaming abundance. And now that I've unrolled my own private FFVII story for you, dear fellow gamers, I fervently encourage you to humour my insatiable gaming curiosity by doing the same in the comments. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

6 comments:

  1. As a big RPG and Final Fantasy fan, I can only say that you should give it a shot one day, even if only to pay homage to the RPG that made RPGs a thing outside of Japan. Much like Pokémon, it was a game that came out at the right time and got lucky, because the game itself is far from being the legend many paint it to be, but at the time of release it was legitimately a thing. The game is really easy, you can break it in half around midway, the exploration is clunky, the Materia system, while seemingly great, is very poorly explored and used and the translation is very poor (but serviceable).

    That said, the whole lore and world of FFVII was pretty nice and admittedly deserved to be revisited trough spin-offs and/or sequels (and movie, and OVA). Too bad the only ones FFVII got were terrible in the story department (but not so bad in the character development though). And the music was overall great too.

    Disclaimer: Like I said, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, but I recommend that you play Final Fantasy VII because it is a decent RPG (and because it is, whether people like it or not, an hallmark in the story of RPGs), not because of blind love for a game. Objectively speaking, it's a solid 7,5/10.

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    1. "The exploration is clunky": It definitely looks clunky when one pores over gameplay footage. In that regard, FFVII reminds me a lot of the two first side -scrolling Zelda games on the CD-i, with their unclear paths and shifting boundaries between mere scenery and explorable areas. Not a popular opinion to have I guess, but this is the first comparison that came to my mind when I finally encountered FFVII gameplay footage a couple of years ago. :p

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    2. It's a PS1 game and that's enough reason. Most 3D games in that era were pretty clunky in the exploration department. On the other hand, 2D games or mainly sprite-based games had no problem in that regard.

      >FFVII reminds me a lot of the two first side -scrolling Zelda games on the CD-i, with their unclear paths and shifting boundaries between mere scenery and explorable areas.
      I'm not sure I follow you. FFVII isn't really that hard to explore. Clunky, sure, but like I said, it's the bane of the first 3D/pre rendered graphics-focused gaming era.

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    3. Like I said, it's the first comparison that came to my mind when watching gameplay footage. On the other hand, I never played the game myself, so I don't know what exploration in FFVII actually feels like. Nor do I know what exploration in the Zelda CDi games felt like, for that matter. :p

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  2. I only got into RPGs in the mid 2000's with the PS2. I played some RPG-like titles before that, like Pokemon, the Harry Potter games on gameboy, Legacy of Goku II, the original Digimon world if that even counts? But I didn't «know those types of games were a genre all on their own, since they all differed from each other.

    I only got into the genre with FFX. So I completely passed by FFVII. I've been meaning to play it for years, but eh, it's been so hyped to hell and back that it makes me not want to play it. The graphics truly look awful and the plot has been spoiled for me so ehhh. Whereas I managed to avoid spoilers for other FF's I still haven't played yet, minus FFVIII (another game I don't want to play). So there's not a lot of motivation for me to play it when I have hundreds of other games and frankly, I'm so sick of hearing about how great it is over and over and over that I want to avoid it out of spite. It's not a great attitude to have, I know that, but I can't help it.

    I was hoping to enjoy the remake instead, but they went ahead and changed the turn-based combat to something similar to FFXV...and I didn't care for FFXV's combat at all, so I guess I won't play that either. Frankly, I truly don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, all the twists have been spoiled for me already.

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    1. I'm with you regarding the extreme spoiling of the storyline. After years spent reading over and over about how Aerith's death traumatized a whole generation of gamers and seeing the very scene a million times in all sorts of Youtube videos, I don't see how the actual in-game event could have any sort of impact on me. And knowing more or less all the main twists and turns in the story apart from that main event certainly doesn't help...

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