The start of the game yeah, the train mission and the first boss, and some of the characters (e.g. Sazh has a young child and his wife is dead, same with barret in ffvii although it was adopted daughter). But it is really not very like VII overall. Cocoon isnt really like midgar or anything in VII. It's a lot more like X with the fantasy land and gods.
I thought the opposite about lightning and cloud. Cloud has a lot of story, we know a lot about his life in soldier, his childhood, etc. What do we know about lightning? She was a security guard and has a sister. Her parents are dead because they're too lazy to design more than 1 set of parents in XIII. We dont see her hometown, we dont see her history or any of that which builds character. Yes she has loads more dialogue but it's generic and there's only a couple of plot points involving her that I remember (punching snow & being a mother to hope). Cloud is more silent etc. because he's meant to represent the player a bit with the dialogue and you only control him on maps, but he has more depth because of the story we go through with him.
@Psytek: FFVII had very little character development aside from the flashback for cloud and for sephiroth. You barely find out anything about any of the other characters except for vincent. In FFXIII, most of the characters have fully realised back stories, and there are some very convincing emotional situations, like Sazh with his kid, the dynamic between Fang and Vanille, the development of the relationship between Snow and Lightning and Hope's maturation (although Hope's is the least convincing for me).
I cant believe you have ever actually played VII. Are you just thinking of advent children instead of the actual original game? There is FAAAAAAAR more development to the backstories of characters in VII. Every character except maybe caith sith has a hometown, family and backstory. You mention vincent and yet he's the one I can least remember as being developed, maybe it was in dirge of cerberus? XIII characters have the opposite of realised backstories. Take vanille and fang for example, what do we learn when we go through oerba? Barely anything, there's no other characters there. We know that they are like 500 years old and some other forgettable stuff about them going ragnarok whatever that means. VII doesn't have fully realised backgrounds as no game does, but it has pretty deep interesting ones:
Cid is an extremely ill tempered smoker and pilot. We dont know why he's so angry all the time until we go to rocket town where he lives with shera, he treats her badly because she messed up his dreams of space flight but despite this he loves her. We take Cid into space and realise his dreams.
Nanaki is from cosmo canyon an ancient town built into cliffs, his father Seto died heroically saving the town unbeknownst to nanaki who thought he deserted him and his mother and he hates him. He was kidnapped and experimented on by Hojo and the party finds him in the laboratory where they initially think he's a dangerous animal but he is an ancient sagacious and articulate friend. We meet his grandfather bugenhagen who used to work for shinra and shares his deep knowledge of the world with us.
Barett is the leader of an environmental terrorist group fighting against Shinra, he is a funny character with colourful language. His friends die in the opening mission and he feels bad. He seeks revenge on Shinra. He has a backstory with Dyne both from the town of Corel, they fought over a woman and it explains how he lost his hand where afterwards he adopted Dyne's daughter. Barret is forced to kill his old friend in the story and reveals his true selfish motives for wanting to destroy shinra not for environmentalism but because they destroyed his town and killed his wife.
Tifa is a childhood friend of cloud and doesnt have much backstory of her own. It's still more than any character of XIII including sazh and his kid. Unless you're counting episode zero, there's basically no backstory to sazh and his kid in the game.
Yuffie wants to be an ancient warrior and is ashamed that her town has become a tourist attraction. She's a thief and steals your characters stuff, then you rescue her from the crime lord who earlier you had dressed up as a prostitute for with tifa aeris and cloud.
I cba going on, but honestly it is truly ridiculous to argue that there is more depth to the characters in XIII, at least from a backstory and plot perspective. Yes they have more realistic portrayal and more dialogue, but they have far far far far less history. These plot points I've mentioned arent just forgettable backstories, we get to play them out. We go find seto and nanaki realises the sacrifice his father made and it is extremely moving. We go into space. We go to Corel the mining town and fight with Dyne. We bomb Midgar, we rescue yuffie, we get put in prison, we escape from prison by winning a chocobo race, we dont watch these things in cutscenes or read a few lines in a datalog, we PLAY them out. We chase after aerith only to watch as she gets killed. We play out clouds trip through the lifestream and as he regains his memories. We explore the enormous shinra building where we solve puzzles, sleep, find the president murdered, fight with his son, etc. Compare that with the plot in XIII, it's run to the end of the map and then watch your characters talking, we dont get to play out the story mixed in with parts of the history.
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