Gaming Memories: Final Fantasy VII

Welcome to “Gaming Memories,” a blog series where I reminisce about my favorite video games. I will slowly but surely get to every game on the list, and speak to why each holds a special place in my heart. That not only means I’ll talk about why I think each is a great game that speaks to my tastes, but also where and how it affected me in a larger context. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading.

SPOILER WARNING: This blog contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VII.

Midgar seemed huge. I spent hours in this city, becoming familiar with its inhabitants, its politics, its neon signs, its grungy back-alley streets. We went on bombing missions, evaded the Turks, and infiltrated the Shinra headquarters. Important people died, and shocking revelations occurred. And yet, after all those hours in Midgar, and all those twists and turns already, it felt like I had only scratched the surface of this massive city. There was a lot left to see, and a lot of questions left to answer. But while this was just the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, the rest of it would not take place in Midgar.

One of my most distinct memories from Final Fantasy VII is that very moment when I left Midgar for the first time. I was, perhaps naively, convinced that the entire game took place there. It seemed so impossibly large, and I had already spent close to the length of some entire games there, that I couldn’t imagine a larger world outside. So when I finally stepped foot into that larger world, and realized just how small Midgar was in the grand scheme of things, I knew I was in for something special. Final Fantasy VII’s opening act remains one of my favorites I’ve experienced in a game. It set up the world, let you explore a contained space, experiment with the mechanics, learn the characters and what the story is about. And then, once you had settled in and had a firm grasp of the basics, it took off the training wheels, both mechanically and narratively. It revealed that the area you’d been free to roam in thus far was but a small piece of a much larger game, one that only continued to become more impressive and daring as it expanded its scope.

What followed Midgar’s opening act was a globe-trotting adventure punctuated by some of the most brazen and powerful moments of any game I’ve played. When I think back to Final Fantasy VII, I primarily think of it as a series of bombastic set pieces and insane story revelations, dramatic moments that landed hard time and again. Every time I thought it couldn’t possibly up the ante any more, it did. When Shinra was murdered by Sephiroth, a legendary soldier everyone thought was dead. The emotional death of Aerith, and the unexpected loss of a beloved party member. Learning about Jenova, an alien life form whose cells were used to create Sephiroth. When Cloud discovered that all his memories in SOLDIER were fake, and had to piece together his past. We traveled into outer space, fought giant robots that rose out of the ocean, and conjured ancient magic to stop meteors from crashing into the earth. It was a pretty weird tale about politics, the environment, science, the concept of self, and all sorts of other ideas jumbled together in ways that didn’t always make coherent sense; not to mention the spotty translation of the original US PlayStation version. But it was exciting. Final Fantasy VII’s story was a ride, and while it could be too grandiose for its own good sometimes, it was an incredibly memorable one with numerous moments that stick with me to this day.

Almost as critically, that story and its pivotal moments were drastically more cinematic in their presentation than anything I had seen at that time. For as dated as Final Fantasy VII looks now, it had a bold, striking look in 1997 that was impressive. No such concessions need to be made for its music, however. The Final Fantasy series has a legacy of amazing music, and this one’s score ranks among my clear favorites. Final Fantasy VII was a tight, well-playing JRPG too, a fact that is often overlooked in favor of everything else it did. Its “active time battle” system was en vogue during the 1990s, and this one executed it as well as any. I particularly liked the simple customization of the materia system. It was intuitive and easy to grasp, but allowed for all sorts of creativity; you could build some pretty awesome combos with it. The encounter design was solid, and the game was paced extremely well and full of fun side content. I did essentially everything there was to do in Final Fantasy VII, and it never dragged or overstayed its welcome, despite being a sizable game. And then, when I finally finished, it gave me one final moment. I remember sitting there with my brother, who more or less played through it with me, staring at the post-credits screen for a good long while. We had just completed one of the most bizarre and impactful journeys we had ever been on, and I let it wash over me. Where would, or could, games go from here? I had no idea, so I did the only thing I could. I started up a new game all over again.

In a way, it can be hard to have a measured conversation about Final Fantasy VII anymore. It was such a cultural phenomenon that it garners extreme reactions in every possible direction. But I prefer to look back on Final Fantasy VII much more simply: it was a very well-made game that came at the right time and place for a lot of people, myself included. It was one of the first RPGs I played, one of the first 3D games I played, and easily the most ambitious one I had played from a narrative and cinematic standpoint at that time. But the thing I always think about most when it comes to Final Fantasy VII is its countless hard-hitting and unforgettable moments. Most games would give anything to have a single moment so powerful, but Final Fantasy VII pulled them off like it was nothing. Few games have wowed me quite like this.

I think I played through FF7 around 2010 and while I don't quite have the memory you have of it, I still really liked it. One of the things that I still found impressive was it's use of prerendered background with the real-time stuff in the foreground. Several times, they would transition from gameplay to cinematics seamlessly and while it looks a bit weird because of how low poly characters are, it's a neat trick that still has a wow-factor to this day. I played FF8 several years after and that game also used the same technique but did it even better.

@liquiddragon: I've always wondered how this game would fare for anyone who played it for the first time within, say, the past decade. I would never expect it to have the same impact now as it did in 1997, but I'm glad you still liked it! Totally agree on the backgrounds, it worked well in that era of technology. Both FF7 and FF8 stood out visually at the time, that wow factor was pretty huge. Thanks for reading!

They should bring back ATBs. n.n;

A good read and not too long, thanks duder. FF7 will always be the game that sparked a life long love of JRPG melodrama for me, still replay it once in a while for the materia / combat system and that sweet sweet music.

I don't have a lot to contribute other than I was 11 years old when FF VII, and could not imagine anything cooler at the time. Still has a infectious moxie to it, though I do find the translation rough nowadays.

It was fun to read about your experiences with FF VII. As a Nintendo kid, I never played it when it was relevant. Other than some messing around with the PC version during my youthful piracy days (I think I got past that initial lower Midgar section, but don't remember more than that) I've never really dived into it. I have a pretty good idea of why it's so important, influential, and popular, but there's definitely a part of me that wouldn't mind witnessing the whole thing for myself.

To be perfectly honest, I wonder if that window has closed for me. Part of that is thanks to the trials and tribulations of a certain Giant Bomb moderator giving me a pretty good picture of the entire experience from a fresh perspective. The other half is simply that I don't know if I have the patience or backlog space to shove in another 50+ hour JRPG into my life when I just got into Tales and already have a vague inclination of going down different, equally dangerous franchise holes. Final Fantasy, by comparison, is something I feel like I've already seen the best of.

This is the part where I'd say I'm looking forward to seeing if the remake will fill that need better, but given the state of modern Square-Enix, I'm not exactly convinced it'll come out in my lifetime.

Man, I remember the year or so wait between the Japanese and American releases took forever with my only solace being rereading import reviews of it in mags like Gamefan. I was 18, in my freshman year at college, and drove over two hours away to the town where stores would have it on launch day.

Back then (Jesus) department stores were always bad with game releases, sometimes getting them in stock days/weeks later or never, depending on the game. This meant that if you lived in a rural area, you had wait and hope for dept stores like Walmart to eventually get it in, order it from a mail order store like Chips and Bits (a godsend for getting non-mainstream games), or drive.

So I get to the town, go to the mall, and picked it up at Sears. Remember when Sears stores had dedicated video game sections?! Anyway, I picked it up there because they were giving out FF7 T-shirt’s with a purchase.

I spent the next week playing it constantly. It was the first game that I played almost nonstop aside from sleeping and eating. I even recorded the ending and rewatched it a bunch.

I never went back to it after beating it and only a few years later various parts of the game already seemed outdated but for a brief period of time it had an effect on me like few other games have.

@arbitrarywater: Yeah, I think there's a decent chance this window has closed for you by this point. Especially if you're already familiar with a lot of its major plot points. And that's totally fine. Something I've struggled with lately is digging through the longer old games in my backlog. Even when I can recognize them as good games, and even if they hold up fine enough, it can just be hard to get into them for more than a couple hours today. It is difficult to fit in a 50+ hour long older game, like you said, when there's more than enough good modern stuff out there.

@shorap: I also played this game as much as I could after I got it. My parents divorced when I was little, and the PlayStation was at our dad's house, so I only had access to it when I was with him. But I remember being so eager to play it every second I was there. I wasn't old enough to follow games that closely, or be aware of the delay between Japan and US releases. But if I had, I probably would have been right there with you. It certainly had a big effect on me!

The first 2 paragraphs were 100% my experience from that game when I first played it for the first time 20 years ago. Going outside of Midgar just blew my mind and seeing goblins in random battles just made it feel more vast cuz if the stereotypical lowest leveled enemy is coming out now, after all these hours, what does this game have in store for me?

Great read, and I hope to get that feeling in a game again one of these days.