(This article is filled with spoilers and the assumption you’re familiar with the basics of the game, so readers beware and please play the game if you have not. All content revolves solely around the original English PS1 release in 1997.)
After 21 years, numerous side projects, and an announced remake in the works, Final Fantasy VII is a game that has been written about plenty of times. But I’m writing my own article, anyway. FFVII shaped the way I view the world. As an encounter that not only cemented gaming and its influence in my life, it also held thematic aspects that carried across my development as an adolescent. The immersive core in video games allows players to view their time spent in these worlds as lived experiences, especially for those of us who begin at a young age. So here are the plot points I deem most critical, covering from when I was twelve and first played the game and then in all the years I came back to it, piecing together what kept pulling me in.
“A floating city… pretty unsettling scenery.”
Floating cities aren’t uncommon in fantasy settings, and FFVII was not the first game in the franchise to include this element. It was the first to condemn the inequality of such infrastructure, however. Final Fantasy VII’s cyberpunk aesthetic, utilized more extensively than in VI, is more than just a departure from the high fantasy setting of earlier installments. This emphasis on gritty technology is at the core of the environmentalist message in the game, and it also establishes the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideas that drive the entire plot. Throughout the game, you play as a rebel, a revolutionary, and a martyr for those who cannot fend for themselves against a corrupt oligarchy that is destroying the entire world. This might not seem as much of a fantasy concept in today’s world, but I’m not overstating this game’s importance in helping me to understand my role.
Starting the game as a mercenary who joins AVALANCHE, an anarchist-collective eco-terrorist group, the game doesn’t pull any punches in establishing where the player and main character’s priorities should lie. During the first missions to bomb reactors in Midgar, Barret, the leader of AVALANCHE, mentions to Cloud that if there were no plates installed above the slums, they’d be able to see the sky. In this same conversation, Cloud asks why everyone doesn’t just move to the top layer. Or in other words, he provides us the game’s equivalent of bootstraps. When Barret mentions they are poor, and that’s why they live in the slums, Cloud kind of redeems himself by stating, “I know… no one lives in the slums because they want to. It’s like this train. It can’t run anywhere except where its rails take it.” It’s a decent analogy, but it only becomes less fatalistic when provided the context of later references to class warfare elements.
“It ain’t us! It’s the damn Shinra! It’s never been nobody but the Shinra! They’re evil and destroyin’ our planet just to… build their power and line their own damn pockets with gold! If we don’t get rid of them, they’re gonna kill this planet! Our fight ain’t never gonna be over until we get rid of them!”
Shinra Inc., the mega-corporation that has a worldwide monopoly on pretty much everything, both figuratively and literally represents capitalism and imperialism on the game’s planet of Gaia. President Shinra is a somewhat humorous, entirely odious Japanese role-playing game version of Gordon Gekko. One of the President’s most memorable lines, “These days, all it takes for your dreams to come true is money and power,” is pretty much this game’s “Greed is good.” Both he and his son Rufus consistently dehumanize anyone they don’t consider their equal, referring to them as vermin, with Rufus stating that their consumers are not worth wasting money on.
One of the first things we hear Rufus say immediately after the death of his father is his explanation of how he plans to run Shinra. “Old man tried to control the world with money. It seems to have been working. The population thought that Shinra would protect them. Work at Shinra, get your pay. If a terrorist attacks, the Shinra army will help you. It looks perfect on the outside. But, I do things differently. I’ll control the world with fear. It takes too much to do it like my old man. A little fear will control the minds of the common people. There’s no reason to waste money on them.” This statement is emblematic of a shift from capitalism to fascism. Rufus plans to exert his influence over the military, privately owned public services, and all other aspects of the government to control the masses through threats, punishment, and death. But little does he know, Sephiroth has other plans to destroy the planet for his own imperialistic and personal gain, mostly just involving death.
“Sephiroth has lots of different flunkies. It’s nothing to him to throw their lives away.”
Death is frequently visited in this game, even reaching to one of the main characters in a fashion that has almost become mythic in its retelling. For anyone who played the game upon release like I did, witnessing Aeris’ death with no forewarning was a poignant, bewildering milestone. I cried when Aeris died. I cried for months, maybe years after. I was an emotional pre-teen who related to Aeris in ways I never had most other fictional characters. While I personally felt myself reflected in her character, other players might have seen her like a loved one or family member. It’s pretty well known that one of the Final Fantasy game creators, Hironobu Sakaguchi, suffered the tragic loss of his mother just prior to developing FFVII and that this is the main reason that all the rumors and GameShark cheats would never truly bring Aeris back.
“The cycle of nature and your stupid plan don’t mean a thing. Aeris is gone.
Aeris will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry… or get angry… What about us… what are WE supposed to do? What is this pain? My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!”
Another reason the game’s creators wanted to take this route is because they had observed children speaking about death in an impermanent way. They wanted to create a game that explored the reality of death being permanent, as well as grief and its impact on both characters and players. The result is a mature, heart-rending ordeal that more than shocking players, aims to take them through the process of grief and show how powerful its influence can be. This means that instead of Aeris being reduced to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or fridged woman solely for the development of other characters, she becomes a fully realized person whose final actions are her choice, but whose martyrdom isn’t entirely. It’s her will to set out to the City of the Ancients alone to protect Cloud and the others, but her last words to Cloud are, “Then, I’ll be going now. I’ll come back when it’s all over.” She knew the inherent dangers, but she expected to be able to return to her friends, just as we expected someone could throw a Phoenix Down or cast Life to bring her back — before Aeris’ Theme began playing, that is.
“I know you got problems… hell, we all do. But you gotta understand that there ain’t no gettin’ offa this train we’re on til we get to the end of the line.”
Each character handles their grief in various ways, just like they all endured other forms of trauma and must work through those, as well. Nearly every main character had experienced the death of their parents or other loved ones. Barret, Cloud, and Tifa all witnessed their hometowns demolished by Shinra or Sephiroth. Yuffie’s home of Wutai was resisting Shinra’s Imperialism in a fruitless battle set up for their loss. Aeris and RedXIII/Nanaki faced their grief in similar ways, quietly processing it and putting on a brave or cheery face to mask their complex thoughts. They also share the similarity of being the sole survivors of their people, and the game shows the gravity of their isolation as they reach out only tentatively, shrouded by constant loneliness. We only get glimpses of how much is going on underneath the surface in a few moments of reflection, like the Gold Saucer date with Aeris or the crew meeting up around the campfire in Cosmo Canyon. Tifa also puts on a brave face, but her style of grieving is closer to that of Barret. They both openly question and condemn those who have hurt them, and they turn their frustration with the system into action through AVALANCHE and other outlets. They both desperately want to protect their surviving loved ones.
Cid turns cranky and cruel toward Shera, but we learn much of this is his poor ability to deal with the loss of his life’s dream. We know the least about the backstories of Yuffie and Cait Sith/Reeve. In general, they are both realizing the trauma of living in a toxic, destructive society the same as everyone else. Reeve, who regrets his direct hand in this by working for Shinra, gives us one of the game’s best descriptions of admiration for resisting a corrupt system, “Something bothers me. I think it’s your way of life. You don’t get paid. You don’t get praised. Yet, you still risk your lives and continue on your journey. Seeing that makes me… it just makes me think about my life.”
Cloud and Vincent had horrific, front row seats to Shinra’s atrocities, both against themselves and their loved ones. Vincent essentially became a Tim Burton character- an especially dark version of the “broody” archetype, but still immensely caring. Cloud understandably suffered memory issues, which establish the unreliable narrator aspect of the game’s storytelling. Through traumatic memory loss and attaching his personality to that of Zack, he created what he felt was a stronger version of himself. Zack was the member of the elite force SOLDIER, the person Cloud always wanted to be when he left Nibelheim. Zack was also kind and caring, but these traits were too similar to Cloud himself, so Cloud axed them and became an almost cartoonish version of a strong, apathetic hero in the beginning of the game.
“I’m… Cloud… the master of my own illusionary world.”
Aeris is initially drawn to the parts of Cloud that are recreations of Zack, but she detects more to Cloud and says she wants to know the real him on their date at Gold Saucer. Tifa repeatedly mentions how different Cloud is and shows confusion when he initially recounts his memories. She is also the one who manages to connect to Cloud subconsciously in the Lifestream. She helps him work through trauma-blocked memories and allows him to reclaim his own identity. It is then that we see he’s a genuine, goofy kid who’s afraid of failure. We see the full depth of the kindness, compassion, and desire to protect others inherent to Cloud and worth more praise than his cool mercenary act. The greatest speech Cloud gives is as himself fully and just before the crew flies to The Northern Crater to battle Sephiroth, “I know why I’m fighting. I’m fighting to save the planet, and that’s that. But besides that, there’s something personal too… A very personal memory that I have. What about you all? I want all of you to find that something within yourselves. If you don’t find it, then that’s okay too. You can’t fight without a reason, right? So, I won’t hold it against you if you don’t come back.”
“All right, everyone, let’s mosey.”
There’s plenty more I could write on these topics, as well as countless other aspects of this game. Final Fantasy VII has a reputation as convoluted and difficult to follow. This is true at first, but it eventually opens to reveal layers of complex reflection upon human nature and our place in the cycle of life and death. The headiest of these examples are spoken plainly by the wise old man archetype of Bugenhagen. Even the more subtle forms of information become clear once the whole story develops into a larger picture. As someone who has dealt with more than their share of grief and trauma, this game still helps me gain perspective without invalidating the human sentimentality of letting go. In terms of striving for revolution and facing the world as it exists today, I’ll always remember this game’s take on facing seemingly insurmountable odds, as stated by Bugenhagen, “’No matter what happens, isn’t it important to try?”