Final Fantasy VII - A Literary Analysis

[Music] hello I'm the game professor and welcome to games as litt 101 the Final Fantasy 7 remake is finally almost upon us so it's about time I tackled one of the most influential and beloved games out there usually these videos start with a summary that also sets up noteworthy details and point out the themes the game is going to be tackling but frankly Final Fantasy 7 is an absolutely huge game and a detailed summary would take a long long time so I'm going to try to get through the summary quickly and move straight into the analysis from there and Final Fantasy 7 is pretty much a 50 hour long game so it's still gonna take a bit as always I'm sticking to the text on this one we're just talking about what Final Fantasy 7 the video game says and means so we're not gonna be getting into any of the expanded universe stuff like Crisis Core Advent Children on the way to a smile before crisis dirge of cerberus or last order or I don't know clouds appearances and Kingdom Hearts or anything like that quick warning that the game does include topics of abuse and suicide so if those are subjects that you're kind of sensitive to you can watch at your own discretion also spoilers obviously for the entirety of Final Fantasy 7 if you're coming at this fresh off the remake there's still a lot going on in this story that you don't know about yet so you've been warned so then let's get down to it the game opens in the city of Midgar where cloud is working for Barrett and his eco-terrorism group avalanche to destroy one of the Marko reactors that powers the city by siphoning life from the planet okay I know this immediately sounds super super political but I mean don't worry it's not like it it's not gonna I mean the whole fuel industry killing the planet thing is tough I mean look it's just any way they blow it up and go back to see clouds childhood friend Tifa in her bar in Sector 7c Midgar is a huge city run by a mega corporation called Shinra and divided into eight sectors each with an upper-level where the rich live and a lower-level where the poor wallow in darkness and squalor now seriously it's not political though corporations oppress the poor and destroy the planet for profit all the time Barrett also has a daughter named Marlene and she is super cute anyway next time they go to blow up a reactor president Shinra himself shows up and a giant robot casts cloud down into the sector five slums where he miraculously survives and Abboud's Arif whose name is Arif it's meant to sound similar to earth all following official content has corrected this and I'm not calling her Eris just because the English localization dropped the ball cloud protects her from Shinra agents called the Turks and brings her home where her adoptive mother Amira tells cloud to leave Arif alone but she accompanies him to sector 6 anyway where they see tpho being taken to the mansion of Don Corneille Oh a seedy slumlord who regularly has girls brought to him and takes one to sleep with aerith's dresses cloud up like a woman to get in in one of the funnier and more interestingly aged segments of the game we'll talk about it later but when they get there it turns out tifa's here on a sting mission to find out what Cornejo knows about Shimla's plans after some graphic threats to his genitals Cornejo reveals that shinra is planning to destroy the supports into sector 7 thus killing all members of avalanche and blaming it on them Marlene is safely delivered to Eric's house but the Turks come to take Eric afterward and the party can't stop Shinra from crushing sector 7 along with all the other members of avalanche and the thousands of people living underneath they infiltrate Shandra headquarters to get Aerith back and run into Hojo the head scientist who's trying to breed Aerith with some strange leonine creature turns out Aerith is the last of the cetera an ancient race that had a deep connection with the planet and Shinra is trying to use her to find the promised land a place theoretically rich with mokou energy they could use to make even more money there's also a headless thing in a tuba called Genova which will be important later the party saves Eretz with the help of the leonine creature they come to call red 13 but they're captured and jailed when they wake up there's blood on the floor and everyone is dead including president Shinra with a giant sword in his back cloud identifies it as belonging to Sephiroth who's apparently supposed to be dead jinora's son Rufus immediately appears to take over the company and everyone escapes to the outer edges of Midgard this is where the first entry of the remake is supposed to end by the way they're like 1/4 of the way through the original game so if you're watching this after the remake and have only played that last call for spoilers for the rest of the story the party meets up in a small village where cloud insists that Sephiroth is the real threat to the planet and tells of his and tifa's shared backstory cloud was in soldier shinra's elite military unit and he returned to his and Tevas hometown of nibel hime with Sephiroth fellow soldier and/or hero but at the nipple hime reactor Sephiroth discovered the secret of his past that he's the genetic offspring of a bean called Genova and he kind of lost it he burned down nibble I'm killing clouds and tifa's families in the process and took Genova calling her his mother from the reactor cloud confronted him but doesn't remember what happened only that he's alive and Sephiroth has been reported as dead but he says that Sephiroth is a threat to the planet so they continue after him there's a little meandering to catch a chocobo and get across a swamp to avoid fighting a giant snake thing though it seems sefie didn't have the same difficulties we did the party journeys to the Shinra military base at Junon picking up a young ninja girl named hue feet along the way goofy is technically one of the game's two optional characters but the game doesn't really gain any meaning for her absence so for the purpose of this analysis we're going to assume that she's part of the game and soy anyway Junon is a small town overshadowed by a Shinra military base where a parade is happening in the new president rufus ism honor the team sneaks aboard a ship to the other continent and sefie continues leading a trail of bodies on the other continent the party ends up in what's left of corral which used to be Barrett's hometown before Shinra destroyed it then on to the gold saucer a hyped up casino and the game's worst time sink here we meet ket she whose name is spelled Kate sit but it's a Scottish Gaelic name meaning fairy cat he's a strange cat riding a giant Moo who'll who gives cloud and air at the foreboding fortune and decides to tag along to see what it means but when the party is blamed for a killing spree they end up in the prison area below the saucer where Barret confronts dine his best friend from Carell it's real sad we'll get into it later when they finally get out they end up at Cosmo Canyon red 13s home and stopping point Cosmo Canyon is the Center for the Study of planet life which means its exposition time Bugan hagen the game's old wise man who knows about how the world works explains that the planet contains a spiritual energy called the lifestream and it's basically the blood of the planet living things get their life energy from the life stream and that energy goes back to the planet when they die this seems like a good time to note that the game always capitalizes the word plant similar to how monotheistic religions capitalized the Word of God anyway if all the energy were to be removed from the planet it would literally die and guess what ma Co energy is for that matter guess where the fabled promised land is the life stream is pretty much the key to understanding everything the Final Fantasy 7 has to say so I hope you don't mind talking about it because we're gonna be coming back to it a lot in this video after this Bugan takes the party down through some caves to show red 13 what became of his father Seto who turns out to have been a hero rather than a coward like written 13 thoughts which inspires him to stay with the party and continue trying to save the planet we also find out that his name is actually Nanak II and the game doesn't give us an opportunity to change how the characters refer to him so I'm going to read 13 is NaN aqui next stop nibble hein which is mysteriously not burned down turns out general rebuilt it and paid people to pretend it never burned down and they've lived here for ages this is also where the party meets Vincent Valentine the mysterious gun wielding man who slept in a coffin for five years he's the other optional character but like yuffie will continue assuming he's part of the story pursuing Sephiroth through the mountain just brings us out the other side of the mountain range to rocket town where shinra's ill-fated space program was based before they discovered profitable mokou energy and abandoned the space program after one failed launch this is where he meets into the former head of the space program whose dreams of going to space were dashed when his assistant Shara stayed in the engines too long fixing a problem and forced him to abort the launch of the last second to save her life Shinra shows up and CID is disappointed that they're just trying to take his plane to pursue Sephiroth not resurrecting the space program the party steals the plane instead taking CID with them and he heard Rufus say that he's following Sephiroth to the temple of the agents getting there requires a bit of a run around getting a key stone from the owner of the gold saucer but catch she turns out to be a spy for Shinra a robot controlled by a Shinra executive named Greve and he gives the key stone to the Turks forcing the party to keep him around by threatening Marlene otherwise so they go to the temple of the Ancients turns out this temple has been maintained by the souls of the cetera who are refraining from re-entering the lifestream through sheer will for the specific purpose of guarding the black materia Sephiroth and the Turks are here too both after the materia and we finally find out what Sephiroth's plan is use the black materia to summon a giant meteor to crash into the planet forcing it to use massive amounts of lifestream energy to heal itself and using that opportunity to merge with that life energy and basically become a personification of the lifestream he thinks he'll basically become the planet and rule over it like a gamma the party manages to get the black materia due to the heroic sacrifice of ket she by which I mean he lets his robot body be destroyed and returns with another one mere moments later but Sephiroth shows up and cloud is irresistible compelled to give him the black materia and attack against his will cloud has been having headaches and dissociative episodes throughout the game but this is the first big break from himself cloud drops unconscious and has a dream where Arif tells him she knows what to do so she's going to the city of the Ancients on her own to do it but Sephiroth seems to know this too realizing she's in danger cloud and the party go to the city of the Ancients to find her which they do praying at the base of the city cloud is compelled to raise his sword and strike her down but resists at the last second leaving Sephiroth to come in and finish the job himself [Music] cloud is worried about his difficulty controlling himself but it resolves to find Sephiroth and saved the planet for air the sink so they continue up to the northern continent where a bunch of robed figures are walking to the crater at the North Pole and Sephiroth is killing the ones that don't die on their own on the way so here's where things get complicated because this is a fantasy JRPG after all so it's got to be at least a little convoluted Genova is not an ancient as Shinra thought but a being who fell from the sky thousands of years before and destroyed the ancients with a virus of sorts that turned them into monsters and severely wounded the planet what's happening here with all the robed figures coming to die is called the reunion Jenova regenerates by returning all of its parts and genetic material to itself and Sephiroth is compelling all Hojo's experiments everyone who's been injected with Sephiroth's Genova infected cells to come to him and die so their energy and Jenova cells return to the lifestream Sephiroth's real body is encased in maka with the northern crater and he awoke the Genova remains from Midgar which took his form and has been the Sephiroth we've seen throughout the game but here's the kicker ever wonder why cloud was so intent on pursuing Sephiroth this whole time turns out he's been injected with Sephiroth cells too Sephiroth tells cloud that he was created by Hojo after nibble Heim five years ago which is why his memory has so many blanks and glitches and only took on the identity of tifa's friend cloud because she had filled his head with the idea which isn't entirely accurate but Tifa doesn't know how to refute it his fragile sense of self shattered cloud gives in to Genova influence and a lot of things happen Sephiroth has the black materia needed to summon medial Genova 'he's genetic material was gathered at the northern crater ready for Sephiroth's plan to merge with the planet the planet's defenses awaken to referred to simply as weapon and clouds days behind while the entire place crumbles everyone only manages to escape because rufus takes Tifa and bear it with them so yeah that's a lot most Final Fantasy games have a major development about halfway through that dramatically changes the tone and direction of the story and between aerith's death the plot twist about clouds origins and the complete elimination of the main character from the story for a time this one's a doozy when Tifa wakes up the world has changed dramatically there's an impenetrable force field over the northern crater where Sephiroth is and meteor hangs ominously on the horizon painting the world of her voting red Shinra plans to execute Tifa and Barrett of Jinan but the rest of the game comes in and saves them during the chaos of weapon attempt which also gives us this moment when martial artist master Tifa Lockheart fights Shinra executive scarlet and okay game that's cloud is still missing but CID hijacked shinra's airship the high wind so they search the world and eventually find a cloud being cared for by a doctor in a small village called Medea where he's confined to a wheelchair and completely unresponsive Tifa stays with him while the rest of the party continues fighting against Shinra catch she is spying on Shinra now and their latest plan is to load up SIDS old rocket with huge powerful materia and blasted into meteor this is a bad plan for a lot of reasons so the party tries to get the huge materia first but partway through the process Medea is attacked by weapon and sinks into the lifestream taking cloud and Tifa with it and we finally find out what clouds deal is as Tifa leads him through his own memories and lovingly helps him put the pieces together and while things are about to get complicated again remember all the stuff that happened at nipple hime that did indeed happen but cloud wasn't who he thought he was that member a soldier was another young man named Zack favored cloud was one of the random Shinra guards he never actually made it into soldier and he was so ashamed of this he never revealed who he was when he returned home Zack was the one who did all the things the cloud had said he had done and his cloud knew couldn't happen Zack did not defeat Sephiroth cloud did sort of by throwing him into the life stream after Sephiroth impaled him Zack and cloud were both injected with Jenova cells and experimented on during their recovery and when Zack escaped he took a mock Oh sick unresponsive cloud with him but Shinra chased them down and killed Zack leaving a mind addled cloud with his sword and two mixed-up memories Tifa helped put them back together when he showed up at Midgar but she knew something was wrong and didn't know what or how to tell him so she continued supporting him and kept him around in hopes she could figure out what happened to her childhood friend this entire sequence is beautiful and emotional and complicated enough that I don't have time to get into it right here I just wanted to give it its due we will be looking into it and more detail later on just it doesn't get talked about enough how good this part is what's cloud and Tifa emerged from the livestream they keep trying to stop shinra's rocket plan which culminates in cid briefly getting to go to space then abandoning ship before it's dashed uselessly on to meteors surface oh also there's an awful bit with a submarine it's seriously just the worst with shinra's shenanigans halted the team takes Bugan hagen to the city of the Ancients to see if there's anything they can do about meteor when it comes down to is that there's a counterpart to the black materia called holy the ultimate white magic which along with a plea to the planet will enable it to defend itself against this kind of extreme crisis by removing everything that's bad for it exactly what qualifies is up to the planet to decide but they don't need to find and activate wholly because that's already been taken care of that's what Aerith was doing when Sephiroth killed she always had a white material that belonged to her biological mother if alna and she didn't understand what it did until the Temple of the Ancients problem is Sephiroth is blocking access to the planet through the lifestream so aerith's life energy along with her prayer for holy haven't reached it which means they have to get to the north crater and defeat Sephiroth to let Aerith spirit do the thing but before they can things go south Shinra has moved the jinan cannon to Midgard it may very well destroy the city and weapon is heading straight for it the party can't stop weapon so they parachute into Midgar and kill Hojo who's causing the energy buildup in the end the maka cannon fires straight through weapon and destroys the barrier at the northern crater but not before weapon fires off a barrage that peppers Midgar and destroys Shangri tower killing Rufus I know I know but we're not talking about Advent Children right now we're talking about Final Fantasy 7 so Rufus is dead with shinra's remaining leadership scarlet and Heidegger also dead Shinra is pretty much out of the game all that's left is killing Sephiroth but before they can do that cloud tells everyone to take a night to go wherever they need to go see whoever they need to see and think about what they're fighting for everyone does except him and Tifa who share an intimate night underneath the high wind the next day they all head to the northern crater and confront Sephiroth but after his defeat his consciousness still exists in the life stream and he unleashes a final assault on clouds mind which he soundly rejects this allows aerith's prayer to reach the lifestream and his meteor ravages Midgar on its approach the planet coalesce is the life stream to protect itself and with a final shot of Erath the game ends after the credits we see an image of Midgar overtaken with plant growth 500 years later and hear the laughter of children indicating that both the planet and humanity survived okay poof say what you will about Final Fantasy 7 it's pretty dense it's a long game and not much of that time is wasted so many games and if anything JRPGs are pretty common offender on this front use narrative tricks to avoid writing stories with meaningful consistent plot progression Final Fantasy itself is guilty of this on a number of instances with the collect the four crystals story structure it means that they can avoid writing complex stories because they only really need to write the beginning go get the four crystals and the end you got the four crystals now go beat the bad guy Final Fantasy seven is significantly better paced than most of its contemporaries or honestly even a lot of modern examples of the genre the story especially for the first half never really feels like you're spinning your wheels or wasting time on filler it continues moving forward in tangible meaningful ways and that's fantastic but it also means that that summary was very very long and we still have so much to talk about so let's dive right in [Music] this video is about the game's story and what it means not about its technology gameplay or cultural impact so I'm gonna keep this segment short but it would be a mistake to talk about Final Fantasy 7 in any real depth without at least acknowledging its accomplishments in these areas everyone likes to make fun of the blocky character models but Final Fantasy 7 he's really technically impressive pretty much the entire visual format was new territory RPGs had previously looked more like this with the pixel art in the isometric viewing angle and many games on the PlayStation used to the same format just with significantly more detailed but Final Fantasy 7 took Policano models and put them on pre-rendered backgrounds so the environments could look rich in detail despite the Playstations limited ability to process graphics in real time that's why it all looks the way it does and what allows for the creative camera angles and beautiful environments pixel art is gorgeous too obviously Final Fantasy 7 just pretty much invented an entire new format for the genre but that's not all it also did something that legitimately even to this day blows my mind before graphics were good enough to make good looking cutscenes and engine games would use pre-rendered videos that looked better than real-time renders ever could in principle the sands of time for instance there are some cutscenes that use the in-game models moving and processing in real-time and other cutscenes that are clearly CG videos created outside of the game and set to play at certain points the in-engine cutscenes can cut seamlessly between gameplay and cutscene but the pre-rendered ones have to play separately and load between segments that's still how it is generally games cut seamlessly between gameplay and cutscene now not because they found a way to blend them but because they don't use pre-rendered cutscenes at all they process everything in engine because games just look that good but doing that on the ps1 looked like this which Metal Gear Solid is a great game but I don't blame Squaresoft for wanting some more detailed visuals to go with some of the major story beats point is pre-rendered cutscenes and gameplay are separate and cannot blend together so Final Fantasy 7 found a way around that take a look at this bit from the opening scene did you see that that was lower quality and with a filter that makes the game look a bit more like it might have on the original system let's watch it again in HD with the benefit of higher resolutions we can more easily see the moment of transition but still look at straight from pre-rendered cutscene into gameplay without missing a beat and this isn't the only time the game does this it uses this technique all throughout no loading times no cut to black just pre-rendered video with character models over it transitioning seamlessly between cutscene and gameplay it was impressive for the time and it's kind of a lost art since pre-rendered cutscenes are pretty much unnecessary however dated the game looks now it was legitimately and genuinely impressive when it came out on a great number of levels and it pretty much created an entire new format for the Japanese RPG on the PlayStation it's not hard to see why it's as influential as it is the other thing I want to address in this little intermission is the game's use of interactive storytelling for the most part Final Fantasy 7 is a game that you could understand just by watching the cutscenes and conversations which isn't as bad a thing as some like to claim but does imply a degree of separation from the players experience one could assume that there's nothing to be gained on a narrative level from playing Final Fantasy 7 and the full experience could be well enough served by watching the cutscenes but people often underestimate the simple power of minor interactive elements during major narrative moments two of my favorite examples both involved cloud being compelled to do something he doesn't want to do in one instance where he gives the black materia to Sephiroth the player takes control of a ghostly image of clouds child himself and is allowed to wander the small area pressing a button to try and stop cloud from what he's doing they can't obviously but letting the player control the part of cloud that's still connected to who he once was trying feuding to stop him from doing what the Jenova cells are making him do is a great way of allowing the player to feel a degree of the helplessness cloud feels in that same moment similarly before aerith's death Sephiroth actually tries to make cloud do it himself he goes up to her and for a few moments anything the player does just makes cloud raise his sword a little bit higher else struggle uselessly against this thing that must happen cloud stops this of his own free will which is why Sephiroth has to come in and do it himself but for a moment the player is allowed to feel the same sense of panicked desperation and helplessness the cloud feels as he raises his sword to strike down his friend there's also a great bid and clouds backstory sequence where the game lets us fight alongside Sephiroth and his cloud we can do literally no damage but Sephiroth wipes enemies off the map with ease it's a way more effective way to communicate how powerful he is than all the dialogue about how great he was effectively using the classic storytelling adage show don't tell as part of the gameplay letting the player see firsthand through the battle system how powerful he is compared to them these are far from the only moments in the game that do this but I think I've made my point Final Fantasy 7 tells a linear story about characters who have their own stories and struggles and it does so in a wave that connects the player to those stories and struggles in ways unique to this interactive medium that's how you tell a good videogame story so with that out of the way let's get to the meat of this analysis and talk about meaning what is Final Fantasy 7 about [Music] Final Fantasy seven is not subtle it wears its heart on its sleeve and passionately means what it means but that's not to say it's without nuance there are a lot of small details that focus and solidify its messages and themes all throughout the game and its characters and its world Final Fantasy seven is a rather dense game somatically speaking there's honestly way too much content here for me to cover in any reasonable amount of time but thankfully it's also remarkably focused there are a few particular things that this game is trying to say and it's actually really impressive how well it manages to imbue every element of the experience with some kind of significance for that end a running theme we'll be seeing throughout this video is that the creative team in charge of the story of Final Fantasy 7 had a pretty distinct vision and they crafted the entire experience pretty much everything about the game to contribute to that vision one of the strengths of fantasy and science fiction when it comes to commentary on real-life subject matter is its ability to bring existential issues into physical space untethered to the limitations of our reality a story can frame big complicated questions in ways that allow for simpler more direct commentary and ideas Star Trek presupposes a future where human needs and conflicts have been resolved to ask deeper questions about life and ethics beyond the continuing problems our species can't seem to get over in real life 1984 invents a society where authoritarian and fascist ideals are at such an extreme point that it can easily portray and comment on them The Giver shows us a world where both the highs and lows of the human experience have been so evened out that it can effectively make its point about their Worth and necessity none of these explicitly offer practical steps to overcoming their respective problems in our own more complex reality but they're not about practical steps they're about values and the priorities we should keep in mind as we work to better our own or Final Fantasy sevens commentary in nearly all respects is to build a world tailor-made to bring its subject matter out of the abstract and into the practical reality of this fantasy world according to Tetsuya Nomura the theme of Final Fantasy 7 is life and especially as we get into the specifics it's easy to see how that single idea was the game's guiding star and to just as a reminder we are limiting our scope to this specific game rather than getting tangled up in the world of Final Fantasy 7 this is partially to keep things from getting too complicated partially to keep things from getting too long well longer than it already is that ship sailed a while ago but also partially because not all games in this series are necessarily thematically cohesive and we really want to keep focused on what Final Fantasy 7 has to say also for what it's worth there are a number of sources I used to look into various aspects of the game not the least of which is the wonderful and meticulously detailed oral history of Final Fantasy 7 published by polygon there's a link to that and a number of other things in the description in case you want to look more into this game I guess let's start with what's probably the game's most obvious message [Music] for all the fears that the remake will somehow politicize this game Final Fantasy 7 is incredibly political to begin with the first scene of the game puts the player in the shoes of eco-terrorists blowing up a reactor that's killing the planet for energy like really it's not so and this theme of environmentalism only grows in detail and importance over the course of the story obviously the details aren't exact and are affected by both culture and age Baco energy is pretty explicitly modeled after nuclear power rather than any of the leading causes we now understand is contributing to climate change in our world and there are cultural reasons for that anxiety over nuclear technology has been a running theme in Japanese media and has some pretty historically significant motivators but it's also clear that the science hasn't aged very well considering colas presented as the more environmentally friendly alternative and Correll and well maybe this was less clear in 1997 but that's definitely not how that works in real life like I've said Final Fantasy 7 is about bringing abstract concepts into a more tangible reality climate change is a very complex issue and this game isn't trying to detail the exact scientific reality of the situation on earth but it is trying to argue why it matters and why we should care about it when I said Shannara is killing the planet I wasn't exaggerating this is a world in which the planet is a living being the lifestream is its essence an actual scientific even physical reality it's like the blood of the planet and mocker reactors are drawing that blood from the planet and burning it for fuel this is ferngully levels of blatant environmentalist messaging if anything bear it off and approaches Birdemic man that was a good movie An Inconvenient Truth that is it I'm getting myself a car that's environmentally friendly the lifestream is key to don't pretty much everything really it's the heart of everything that Final Fantasy 7 says and means so we'll be coming back to it a lot Bugan Hagen describes the lifestream as the spirits of the Dead roaming converge and dividing into a swell inside the planet new life is blessed with this energy when brought into the world and when it dies that energy returns to the planet there's this constant cycle of the planet essentially lending life energy to every living thing on it and taking it back upon death every living thing on the planet shares this same communal source but that's not all moogan also indicates that when life-forms return to the life stream they bring their experience and wisdom and memories which bears out in a few instances in which the dead both in and out of the life stream retained their memories and sense of self since materia the games items that allow the players to use magic and other special abilities is essentially just hardened life stream Bugan also says that the huge materia is certain to have a special consciousness inside it and when talking about the maka reactors he says all living things are being used up and thrown away Final Fantasy 7 is about the importance of protecting our world so it created a world where the stakes here are a significantly more tangible physical immediate and personal to destroy the planet is not only to destroy potential for future life but to literally and directly destroy all life that ever has been this is what I mean when I say that Final Fantasy 7 is built from the ground up to embody the messages the story is sending the very world of the game is made specifically to tell this story and make this statement we'll get back to the live stream but while we're talking about the game's environmentalist themes I'd be remiss to skip over the reason the planet is being threatened in the first place a mega corporation with unchecked power that controls the government and keeps everyone in the world in a stranglehold by a controlling access to a resource they can't live without not that it's political or anything the Shinra Electric Power Company began in weapons manufacturing but eventually discovered a way to siphon the life stream from the planet to provide electric power this is the macho energy they talk about after that shinra grew in influence until it had pretty much the entire world in a stranglehold controlling everywhere there was to control with its monopoly on electric power Shinra has all the classical elements of an oppressive government active surveillance propaganda dirty politics massacres when things got out of hand but it's not a government it's a corporation and the primary way that it controls the world isn't through government oppression but through a monopoly on the electric power that everyone relies on there are multiple instances where people bolon their dependency on Shangri saying that as long as they need mokou energy they can't get away from them this is also what caused the war the characters often refer back to loot I was the last place Shinra didn't have a presence go dokie sir Agha Yuki's father refused to capitulate and so the world began this is the war that made Sephiroth a war hero when to the war in which all Mira's husband was killed the war barely factors directly into the story of Final Fantasy 7 but we see the effects all throughout the game this is very much about military adventurism and colonialism but it all comes back to shinra's need to control the world's resources the collective and communal power of the lifestream that everyone shares and needs and sell it back to the people even destroying it in the process once again we see the world of Final Fantasy 7 designed specifically to make a point about the world we live in a company that pays off politicians and does everything that government theoretically exists to do starting wars with foreign countries to gain access to their energy producing resources and actively perpetuating poverty and injustice for the sake of making more money and you know destroying the planet by sucking its resources drive for profit for all the human experiments and the planet full of mystical life energy is pretty much just a one world government run by ExxonMobil the fact that the source of all the stories major conflict is a corporation that's shown to violently exploit both the people and the planet for profit is frankly more than enough anti-capitalist sentiment in the first place but the game also goes out of its way to point out a few specific things it directly addresses class and wealth inequality particularly in the early sections in Midgar it's the headquarters of the largest corporation on planet theoretically there would be plenty of jobs and anyone in the city could just you know pull themselves up by their bootstraps but that's not how it works the rich use their wealth and status to further separate themselves from the poor and the very method of doing so further oppresses them all throughout the game there's a running visual theme of the rich being above the poor towns they co-opted from the Midgar slums to Junon Harbor to the gold saucer and in all but the last case Shinra is at the very top even cloud who tries that hole why don't more people just move argument early on admits immediately afterwards that no one lives in the slums because they want to it's like this train he says it can't run anywhere except where its rails taken and to make it personal all the main characters have had their lives ruined by genre to some degree it's personal for all of them cloud for the death of his family and destruction of his hometown and the experiment that rejected him with Jenova cells and took his memories Tifa for the death of her family and destruction of her hometown bear it for the death of his family and destruction of his hometown okay there's a bit of a running theme here but also CID for ruining his life's work after one failed launch because it wasn't profitable enough Nanaki for harming the planet and trying to experiment on him new fee for subjugating the nation and her people Aerith her using her as an experiment to find and destroy what remains of the Ancients Vincent for using the woman he loved to create a monster even catch she for forcing Reeve to work from the shadows constantly trying to assuage his conscience by playing damage control against the things he's complicit in we see the tyranny of shinra's greed up close through each of the major characters each in ways that directly benefited shinra's bottom line the game also references shinra's control over the government and media there's a comment that shinra owns the newspaper and thus can't be trusted and if cloud talks to the mayor of Midgar a figure who isn't even referenced outside of Shinra tower he says he's more of a figurehead anything else and expresses frustration that he has no actual power because of Shinra honestly it's kind of scary I mean despite how clearly dystopian Midgar isn't clearly fantastical the game as a whole is this idea of a corporation buying out politicians and controlling public perception through its stakes and media and news companies it doesn't sound all that far-fetched on account of pretty much just being the world we live in all of that said though stories like this can be prone to the pitfall of simplifying things down to the point of blaming it all on one person and ignoring larger issues at play like how the movie Anastasia blamed the Bolshevik Revolution on one angry Wizard dude or how call of duty advanced warfare pretended to talk about the military-industrial complex but all it really said was Kevin Spacey sucks which in all fairness I guess does put it a little ahead of its time point is these kinds of stories take the easy way out of discussing complex issues by pointing the finger at people who just happen to be awful ignoring larger contexts cultures and systems that enable and encourage their specific brand of awfulness but are harder to address and improve but Final Fantasy 7 makes an effort to portray these issues as systemic rather than simply the result of one bad apple president Shinra is the closest thing to a villain the game provides throughout the Midgard segment and in most stories his death would mean the death of Shinra the bad evil greedy man who sucks the life out of a planet who destroyed sector 7 is dead so now the problem is fixed but only minutes later he's replaced rufus shows up to take over before his father's body rufus immediately replacing his father is the game illustrating to us that this isn't as simple as just defeating a bad guy if we kill the person seemingly responsible for everything another will simply rise up to take his place because this is bigger than just a few crappy people this is a corrupt system irredeemable as it currently exists all that to say final fantasy 7 not only portrays rufus as an evil person or even Shinra is an evil company but it also portrays both of them as part of a larger system that is itself responsible for manufacturing an abling and sustaining the injustice and environmental destruction that shinra causes a lot of this could be applied to pretty much any totalitarian system but it's not it's applied to a corporation and to a society that values wealth and considers those who have it to be worthy of power and this is actually pretty key to final fantasy sevens environmental themes because it sets it apart from a lot of other common environmentalist messaging this isn't about nature versus technology it highlights this in a number of ways including Vincent's admiration for the way quote science and the planet looped side-by-side and professor ghasts Hart a speech from CID about the good science is done and the fact that Aerith is the offspring of a fauna and ancient and professor gasped a scientist even the game's evil scientist hojo has consistently shown to be a pale imitation of ghast superior and more ethical work but probably the most straightforward demonstration is when Boog and hagen accompanies the party on the high wind the game has revealed by this point that he used to work for Shinra and was on good terms with professor gassed and now on the high wind he notes that he loves the smell of machinery as well as the smell of nature the wise old man who serves as our window into how this world works loves both technology and the planet and doesn't seem to find the two at odds with each other at all the story also isn't nature versus man as we'll get into a bit the game makes a point to establish humankind as not only part of the planet but its own entity whose existence is worthwhile in and of its no Final Fantasy 7 is a story of nature versus greed Shinra exists within and continues to perpetrate a society that is run by people whose priority is profit and inevitably the people with power use it to benefit themselves and consolidate their power outside of the reach of the people who don't have it pretty much everything that goes wrong in this story is the direct result of the pursuit of financial power even Sephiroth himself if we look back to his creation and it clearly presents an economic system that elevates corporate interests and the pursuit of wealth which ultimately creates a wealthy ruling class that destroys both the poor and the planet itself for the sake of short-term profit in other words it's just capitalism run amok ultimately Final Fantasy 7 views the destruction of the planet as a very real and very bad thing and it regards powerful corporations who chase short-term profits by oppressing the poor and damaging the planet to be the primary reason behind that destruction which is why it's a story about exactly that but also far more than that you [Music] in many ways final fantasy seven revolves entirely around Erath it begins with her and it ends with her she's the one who had the connection to the planet necessary to save it she's the one whose prayer enabled it to act against meteor and the entire reason for defeating Sephiroth in the end was to let her spirit reach the lifestream with its holy prayer but even outside of the story itself Aerith dominates the narrative surrounding the game her death traumatized a generation of gamers set a new precedent for the boldness with which RPGs could approach tragic character death and looms over the entire game so much that it's pretty much become the mediums equivalent to Luke I am your father or I see dead people and all of that is very intentional the game went out of its way to break Convention and provide us with a powerful experience of grief but that's not the only place where it shows up this theme of death and the life to be found within it is scattered all throughout the game it's found in a lot of small places like elmyra's loss of her husband which a young heiress sensed as soon as it happened and comforted Elmyra with her husband's final intentions and love for her or for that matter Eretz loss of her mother f all know who she's heard her whole life despite never having met her and knew had returned to Planet at one point era thievin says that she thought she would stop hearing her mother's voice as she grew up but she hasn't as if to say that the grief of her mother's death has stayed with her the people in destroyed villages like Carell and gagaga expressed grief over the loss of loved ones multiple major characters from berried to Aerith to cloud himself are defined largely by the people they've lost yeesh this is getting heavy here have some footage of Palmer getting just completely wrecked in rocket town just so we don't forget that this game isn't all death and despair [Music] there are a number of character arcs and story beats that branch out of the game's commentary on death Barrett is one of the stronger examples he's defined himself by his hatred of Shinra but it goes a bit deeper than that Barrett is from a small coal mining town called Carell or he against the wishes of his lifelong friend Dean made the fateful mistake of allowing Shinra to build a nearby reactor later spin-offs change exactly how this happened but according to the game the reactor exploded and in response Shinra blamed the townspeople and burned down the town and killed everyone inside it to cover it up Barrett and Dynes wives were both killed and died was injured and fell down a ravine but Barrett managed to save Dynes daughter Marlene and raised her as his own Barrett is defined by what he's lost and his grief over those who have died in his care which only makes the scene after sector 7 has destroyed that much more painful even the turning point in his arc involves the death of an old friend dying who was so affected by what he lost that he turned to cynicism and violence as a coping mechanism and even threatened to kill Marlene his own daughter before committing suicide himself while Barrett watched seriously Barrett goes through some stuff in this game this is as good a reason as I can imagine for hating Shinra but it also adds another dimension to bear its character he's doing all of this out of a sense of shame and guilt he sees himself as the one who brought about the ruin of Carell and the death of his best friend and both their families death is also a major element of tifa's backstory as a child she tried crossing nibel mountain after her mother died because she heard a lot of people died trying and she wondered if that meant her mother had gone there that other side of the mountain idea is a better metaphor that young Teva probably understands point is she was dealing with this from a young age and when nibel Heim was destroyed and her father killed as well she was thrust into a world with no attachments until of course cloud showed up at a train station in Midgar with no idea who he was and only the faintest memories of their life together this is also the one area where Vincent is really important because his story is a bit of a different angle on this theme he was one of the Turks and grew close to Lucretia one of Hojo's lab assistants but she ended up with Hojo instead and when the two of them conceived a baby and injected Jenova cells into the embryo to create Sephiroth vincent just kind of let it happen what's worse when he finally decided to a proto Jo about it Hojo shot him and experimented on his corpse because Hojo is an absolute monster Lucretia wanted to die but because of the Jenova cells couldn't damage herself enough to so she retreated to a secret cave and allowed herself to just suffer alone for the rest of her long long existence and Vincent had done very much the same thing and casing himself in a coffin beneath the mansion and nibble Hein in such grief and guilt that the player has to convince him to go with them but he does and he does what he can to atone for his sins rather than punishing himself with an endless sleep of grieving nightmares in a not insignificant way Vincent and Lucretia both chose death I neither of them can technically die but they both chose to live an isolated eternal existence just wallowing in in guilt and grief and both of them described this as an atonement for their sins that's about as close to death and hell as I can imagine but Final Fantasy 7 is about life and Vincent does eventually choose life he chose to take action to atone in an actual active way instead of just wallowing in his grief tragically Lucretia could not make this same decision which brings us to Aerith and even before that famous scene death is a major part of her story as well she's the last survivor of her people but she still has a connection to them through the lifestream she hears them including her mother she never met her entire life she's constantly aware of what she's lost even before she was born and it weighs on her after Aerith learns more about the cetra Cosmo Canyon there's a bit by the fire where she talks about how lonely it is to be last of her kind and when cloud asks if that means they can't help she just doesn't respond underrated sad moment of the game let me tell you not to mention the fact that zach was her first boyfriend and while there's never a clear indication that she recognizes clouds connection to and she is very much aware of the fact that zach is dead and even says the cloud reminds her very much of him but Aerith is also the center of the game in a far more obvious way her death is arguably the most important event of the game but absolutely the most emotionally impacting and widely remembered it must be emphasized that the idea of killing a playable character and permanently removing them from the game halfway through was if not unheard of extremely uncommon and unprecedented previous Final Fantasy games sometimes did something like this but they always survived and could even join your party again later on Final Fantasy 4 did that like three times on a purely mechanical level losing a character in a video game means losing a resource that the player has put a lot of time and effort into cultivating and improving and in Eretz case they even lose all of the equipment they've had equipped on her it took a long time for video games to feel comfortable taking anything from the player permanently and honestly even now most games avoid it if at all possible losing the healer is not the only reason to care about aerith's death obviously though admittedly I have heard some people saying that they didn't care when she died because they didn't really use her in their party very much anyway which I don't really know how to process the fact that apparently some people play Final Fantasy without really caring about the story but the loss of a playable character makes it okay you know what I'm not gonna make you watch this again let's show some happier Aerith footage there we go the loss of a playable character makes aerith's death palpable the game took a pretty big gamble here expecting that the players emotional investment would turn the arbitrary loss of a gameplay resource into an emotional gut punch to accentuate a tragic story turn and it paid off big-time combine this with the fact that it happens out of the blue after cloud manages to resist Sephiroth's attempt to make him do it himself and the brilliant way the game continues playing Aerith steamed through the Genova life boss fight afterwards and you have a seriously effective storm moment all this to say killing Aerith was a very intentional decision as was the way it was done it's something there's simply no way to expect it's going to happen based either on the game itself or the conventions of the time it's also arbitrary Aerith didn't give her life to do something noble or otherwise die to move the story forward in some heroic way her life was taken violently and suddenly for no reason other than that Sephiroth wanted her dead she had activated wholly before dying but it wasn't the heroic final act of sacrifice her death was never part of the plan the game even makes sure we don't mistake its intentions on this point even when Aerith comes to mean everything later in the story it's careful not to portray it as a sacrifice and the one-time cloud tries to do this saying that Aerith wanted to give her life for the planet Tifa shuts him down saying i don't think she wanted to die at all but it was planning on coming back all along she always used to talk about the next time she talked about the future more than any of us this wasn't a noble fulfilling death in fact if anything I would argue Final Fantasy 7 doesn't believe there is such a thing this was an empty senseless act of violence that deprived a woman of her life and deprived all these other characters of an important friend and partner Tifa doesn't allow cloud to explain it away as a positive thing because it's not and the game is intentionally designed to resist this interpretation death is a senseless and tragic thing that deprives us of something good and Final Fantasy 7 wants us to feel the full force of that grief it's worth noting as well that this is also how Zack dies ingloriously and for no other reason than that shinra caught up to him and while I love the ending of Crisis Core it could absolutely be argued that the way it frames his death goes against the spirit of the original which is you know part of why we're not talking about spin-offs in this video but it's not all grief and sadness this is after all a world designed specifically to give the dead ongoing significance through the life stream there's a reason for that we see it in Seto who's petrified body sheds a tear at seeing his sons pride restored we see it in the ancients who stayed active long enough after their deaths to impart wisdom to those who followed we see it in clouds connection to Zack which allowed him to function even in the face of mokou poisoning in a perverted sense of self and most importantly we see it in Aerith she means everything in this story even after death she acts as a motivator but thankfully she's also a lot more than that before she died her prayer to the planet activated holy and the rest of the game after discovering this is spent not trying to save the planet but trying to clear the way for Aerith to do it she is the one saving the planet we're just trying to deal with the pesky super soldier goes to his blocking her path cloud even states this at one point for what it is we have to let go of aerith's memory grief gives way to acceptance and an active role in allowing Aerith to be put to rest as framed not only as good for cloud but necessary for the world because this isn't just about his memory of her it's about Aerith herself without sugarcoating the tragedy of her death or using her as an empty motivator for other characters the game lets Aerith matter her influence doesn't end with her death but neither is a derived from it meaning and purpose don't come from death but from life Aerith is what's important her as a person who she is and there's a reason the story was made this way in an interview with PlayStation underground a year Final Fantasy 7 was released Final Fantasy creator and ff7 producer Hironobu Sakaguchi said when we were creating Final Fantasy 3 my mother passed away and ever since I've been thinking about the theme life life exists in many things and I was curious about what would happen if I attempted to analyze life in a and logical way maybe this was my approach in overcoming the grief I was experiencing remember fantasy brings existential issues into practical terms and this was his way of grappling with his grief Sakaguchi was not the only person working on the story of Final Fantasy 7 so it would be a mistake as often happens to attribute this theme of death entirely to his feelings over the loss of his mother but it does clarify some things keeping in mind that Final Fantasy 7 is a game that constructs its world in order to bring its themes and ideas into a tangible reality the fact that one of its creative leads was struggling with grief over the loss of a loved one just makes a lot of sense I mean is it any wonder a grieving man would create a world where loved ones who have passed on are still part of the world part of all life and in some way still with you in Final Fantasy 7 the dead aren't truly gone they are quite literally a part of us reverberating through our lives and the entire planet this is even part of what adds urgency and meaning to the game's environmental themes the use of mokou energy isn't just killing the planet it's literally burning away the loved ones who have passed on but it also means that there's hope and meaning to be found in the lives of the people you love even after they're gone it amused life with a sense of significance that transcends even its end to build a world that interacts with death in a way that's simultaneously comforting to imagine and instills a sense of urgency in the game's environmentalist messaging is honestly a really beautiful aspect of this game that I think often goes kind of overlooked but it becomes even more impressive when we see the full picture and understand how our lives factored in Final Fantasy seven is also about identity which feels kind of obvious honestly I mean our main character cloud goes through the majority of the game with a completely false image of who he is has that image violently shattered when he finds out that pretty much everything he thought he knew about his life was a lie and then has to rebuild his entire concept of self from the ground up with the help of his childhood friend but not only is it worth looking into the details to see exactly what the game is saying about identity it's actually pretty remarkable how thoroughly the game is infused with varied yet consistent takes on this theme Barrett has essentially undertaken the role to Dyna once played he's not dissimilar to cloud in this sense though he obviously has a better grasp of her dying begins and he ends compared to clouds memory of Zack Barrett is raising Dynes child fighting Dynes fight shouldering Dynes guilt he even goes so far as to equate the two of them after Dynes suicide saying that they're the same and dines hands may not be clean enough to hold Marlene but Barrett's aren't either Barrett identifies himself entirely by his failure to protect Carell and it's only once he faces down this part of his past that he's able to ask why he himself is doing any of this who bear it even is outside of Dynes shadow and the thing is we see who Barrett is all throughout the game but it has to come up from under the surface of his tough persona and unfortunately the poor localization doesn't help on this front it made him kind of a stereotype and emphasized his abrasive aggressive persona when really Barrett is sensitive and caring he's just also very passionate and raw as evidenced by the fact that most of the games early exposition is Barrett ranting a cloud about mokou reactors even though cloud has worked for Shinra and already knows how they work seriously i relate to bear it a lot and those of you who follow me on twitter can probably see why and he cares a lot about Marlene about his friends and about the planet he talks to Elmyra about how he wishes he could just stay with Marlene but the planet will die he doesn't fight and he even acknowledges however but grudgingly that the deaths in his mockery actor attacks are something he'll have to live with he spent so long being something he isn't a terrorist soldier a tough guy that it's not until he frees himself from these expectations and looks forward to a future with Marleen that he truly knows who he is and why he's fighting Nanaki also doesn't have a solid concept of who he is he literally doesn't even give his name when he first meets the party allowing them to call him by his experiment number read thirteen the solace identification Hojo gave him for the purpose of inhumane experiments he's not lacking a sense of self or agency he even establishes his ability to consent after Hojo tries to breed him with eros saying he has a right to choose and doesn't like two legged things and when Barrett asks him what he is since he is strangely the only non-human sapien being in the game he simply says I am what you see interestingly enough this explanation means we legit have absolutely no idea what species he is or what it's called so that's one na McKee knows who and what he is but he chooses not to assert that identity because as we find out later he's ashamed of it he says around the fire in Cosmo Canyon that when he speaks of his mother he's filled with pride and joy but thoughts of his father filled his heart with anger na McKee believes his father Seto to have been a cowardly traitor who abandoned the Cosmo Canyon to the G tribes assault years ago G Anderson but Seto had actually gone into the caves to stop them from sneaking in from behind and fought to protect the Canyon until their poisonous arrows turned him to stone nanak e's father wasn't a traitor at all but a hero but there's more here than just nanaki's sense of shame which is good because i love this scene but it would only speak so much to nanak ease character growth if it was all just based on this understanding rather we see here that nanaki's conception of himself and his father's legacy have been holding him back from establishing his own identity it's easy to forget that despite his calm demeanor and mature manner of speech Nanaki is only about sixteen years old I mean technically he's 48 but it's established that his species lives a long time and he's developmentally equivalent to a teenager he hasn't yet had much of a chance to really establish himself as his own unique person so his father's shame stands out as the thing that most defines him he too lives in someone else's shadow and getting out was the most important step for him to define who he is on his own terms it's after this that he joins the party in their ongoing quest to save the planet despite Bugan Hagen saying that well worthwhile it was probably a futile effort it's at this point that Nanak he proudly declares himself to be Nanak II of Cosmo Canyon son of the warrior Seto when he goes back to cloud to continue on the journey cloud asks what happened to change his mind and his responses are rather giddy I think I grew up a little that's what happened this shift in tone is even more pronounced in the original Japanese since the language has a wider selection of pronouns that indicate maturity identity and formality but even so this change is palpable and it's because Nanak II is now free to decide who he is he's more than just the son of a traitor he is himself he is Nanami which for the record is why it's even more ridiculous that the game doesn't allow the player to rename Nanaki after this his name is an important part of his arc this is the point where he goes from not caring who he is even allowing people to refer to him by a dehumanizing experimentation designation to actually using his real name he takes ownership of who he is at this point and it's a shame that the game's naming conventions don't reflect that Sid struggles with knowing who he is as well he had defined his entire life by his pursuit of space travel and when it didn't pan out he lost that sense of self but while Barret could direct his frustration toward Shinra and naina he could mistakenly direct his frustration toward his father Sid directs it at Shara and this is a little rough to talk about because SIDS treatment of Shara is legitimately abusive and her dedication to caring for him despite that hey it's just not a good look on a number of levels I don't think the game is trying to portray Sarah as an abuse victim who's been gas-lit into thinking she's obligated to take care of him and put up with his mistreatment but between how he treats her and the implications that they were in love and Syd will marry her after the game it does kind of come across that way which makes this complicated a lot of my goal of these videos is to get to the heart of what the game is trying to say but that doesn't mean that I could ignore it when it ends up saying something else I'd love to talk about how Syd genuinely loves Shera but is still kind of resentful because of her role in the failed rocket launch and doesn't treat her as well as he should but I feel like that would kind of minimize how badly this can come across the idea is that Syd has long resented the loss of his life goal and blamed Shara for it but between realizing that Shara had been right about the error that stopped the launch actually accomplishing his dream of going to space however briefly and gaining the perspective to realise that there was still more to his life than that single goal he corrected that and committed to the person who had always been there through the darkest parts of his life it's a good character arc in theory but in execution it suffers from SIDS abusiveness and the fact that he never really forgave Shara so much as he got what he wanted and realised he made a mistake and there's no redemptive work on his part so much as a simple change in perspective what works a bit better is his shift from an alcoholic angry loner back to a confident caring leader as he leads a small rebellion against Shinra by convincing the crew of the high wind to defect this is the clearest moment of sids retaking his identity when he finds purpose in his new mission and steps up to it providing a leader and expert where it was needed Syd's arc fits very neatly into the game's themes of loss and identity it's just shadowed a bit by some poor execution that's the kind of thing that could be significantly improved by I don't know maybe a from the ground-up remake that gives it a proper adaptation treatment so we'll see how that goes catch she also plays into this theme of identity the obvious thing we could look to is the fact that he's not who he says he is there were he's a Shinra spy is a play on identity in a sense but it's not a very meaningful one end of itself the more interesting and relevant path is to look at the man behind the cat reve reve is the head of urban development at Shinra and is shown on a few occasions to be the only one there with a moral compass he's upset at both president shinra's decision to destroy sector 7 and his following decision to leave it that way without even trying to rebuild he expresses hatred of scarlet and Heidegger multiple times and it's speculated at one point that he stays in the company for the sake of damage control so it's clear that he's not fully committed to his role as a Shinra employee from the start but his experience journey with the party is catch she is what helps him form a sense of self outside of that he is ostensibly here to betray the party and even goes through with that betrayal but after seeing the way they act selflessly for the sake of the planet and those they love contrasted with shinra's constant bids for power and wealth at the expense of the people they're supposed to be providing for he comes to reverse his allegiances rejecting his role in Shinra and using his position to help the party instead this is essentially Reeve bringing his actual role in the world in line with his sense of self Shinra doesn't fit a person like him and he was betraying his own values by working with them kept cheese is a story about a man realigning his life to better fit his values and identity and that's pretty great actually I'm into that the problem here is kind of like with Sid a matter of execution catch she joins the party under false and flimsy pretenses to spy on them eventually betrays them even further by giving the Keystone to the Turks and kidnapping Barrett's daughter to force the party to continue on with him around then he sacrifices himself to give them the black materia despite the only sacrifice being a robot body that's immediately and unceremoniously replaced and while ket she does become more helpful and explicitly betrays Shinra later on ok look kidnapping Marlene and threatening to hurt her for blackmail was really messed it's the kind of thing the very lease requires some Redemption and a lot of stories would at least just take the easy way out having sacrifices life with a party or something since that's frankly easier to write than actually working to make things right but somehow the game doesn't even manage to pull that off that whole sequence at the temple of the Ancients is really weird this is supposed to be a major turning point for Ari where he realizes and acts on his convictions but since it's framed as a redemptive sacrifice it plays more like the full and complete end of his character arc when it's really not he didn't lose anything and dis immediately replaced with another robot so this isn't really an act of heroism the only sacrifice happening here is the funds necessary for Shangri to replace the robot and and you'll have to forgive me if I don't shed a tear about that there is something here to kep she as a literal and metaphorical facade for Reeve and the part of him that works for Shannara and how the moment he lets himself act on his conscience and realize his true motivations is the moment his Shinra puppet is destroyed and essentially reborn that's not nothing but it's also not really enough it just doesn't ever feel like catch she really puts the effort in or does anything that makes up for what he did before he just kind of continues on and eventually helps a bit much like Sid that element of identity is very much still there it's just weakened by some sloppy execution eupbs identity is very much tied in with her people that's not a common theme for this game really only applying to Sephiroth an heiress and obviously in extremely different ways when Wutai capitulated and let Shinra build a reactor there they didn't even actually build it which you know was good for the planet but bad for the economy of a defeated war-torn nation and eupbs father basically turned the place into a tourist trap out of economic desperation Goofy's identity is based on her culture on her oppressed people in this sense of national identity essentially shapes her entire life her arc is about frustration with Shinran what they did to Atty but even more it's about her frustration with itself and her father's leadership that led to it just becoming a gimmick for outsiders to gawk at this is why she's always looking for materia and steals the party's materia when they land on the would tie continent materia is no longer allowed on route I and she thinks if she collects it she can give power back to her people who tie isn't the only part of the game that touches on colonialism but it's far and away the most detailed starting wars with nations for resources and continuing to hold control over the area without any benefit to its people is turns out not great I could do that it's not political thing again but I'm sure you're tired of it at this point and frankly if I still need to be making that joke this far into the video you haven't been paying attention in any case you of these quests to search the world for materia to revive who ties greatness is her attempt to bring pride back to her people and thus to herself much like Nanaki she defines herself not by her own actions goals and merits but by the looming shadow of a past shame that isn't even really hers to bear but unlike Nanaki it's not just about her father but her culture and it's only once she confronts her father in a one-on-one battle to prove herself that the two of them have a real talk with yuffie getting frustrated and who ties customs and godo explaining that he did what he did because he believed doing otherwise would be dropping to shinra's level but here he recognizes that persisting Shinra is worthwhile and affirms eupbs quest to destroy them and bring materia back to a tie Goofy's identity was mixed between pride in a nation brought low and shame for her father's role in its disgrace this place of limbo between love of her culture and disdain for its traditions left her in a place where she really wasn't able to know who she was let alone figure out who she should be and it wasn't until she left who died and then came back to actually improve its traditions that she was able to get free of this and decide for herself who she wanted to be it's probably hard to miss at this point that most of these characters were letting someone or something else tell them who they were and it was only once they broke free of those misguided ideas about themselves that they were able to decide who they wanted to be and be that person which brings us to cloud [Music] the game plays with clouds identity a lot over the course of its runtime part of this comes from the sheer number of things the game has cloud do he's a snowboarder a chocobo racer a soldier a mercenary a terrorist a bodyguard a gambler the sheer number of different activities the game provides gives cloud a fluid skillset but this is also where the famous cross-dressing scene comes in I was a little worried coming into the segment again but as I played it and read the perspectives of LGBT people since I am NOT one I was happy to find that the segments not only aged pretty well for the most part but it plays with the fluidity of clouds identity and funny and compelling ways the humor in this segment isn't found in the simple fact of clouds dressing up it's found in his discomfort with the idea we're experimenting with who cloud is and how he expresses himself and the fact that everyone around him just kind of accepts his desire to dress as a woman even gets fired up and inspired over it makes it an exercise and clouds own self image rather than a mean-spirited downward punch of people who like cloud in the scene have a fluid relationship with gender identity links in the description for some of the stuff I read on the subject but it's hard to talk about cloud as he relates to this theme of identity without also talking about both Sephiroth and Tifa because they're very tightly woven together Tifa and Sephiroth were both in their own ways telling cloud who he was and forming his identity for him for the majority of the game Sephiroth by using clouds scrambled memories and digenova cells to make him do and be things he didn't want to and Tifa trying to keep him grounded without understanding exactly where he needed to plant his feet in the first place cloud is often lumped in with the stereotype of emo JRPG protagonists but he's really not in fact the thing that characterizes him most in the early game is his apathy honestly he's kind of bland until he slowly begins forming emotional connections and getting serious about Sephiroth cloud is nothing Grilli because he's just letting outside forces guide him through life rather than taking control himself his personality is pretty much limited to doing what other people tell him he good and being who other people tell him he should be the amazing thing is the Tifa for a lot of the game doesn't really have a very compelling reason to even be here doing this she rarely takes the lead on anything and even very often just defers to whatever cloud thinks is best she's here to keep an eye on him to keep him safe to make sure that he doesn't leave her again cloud and Tifa develop a dependency on one another after he shows up in Midgar he is essentially gliding through life because she's filling in his memories and telling him who he is without putting any real responsibility on him to figure that out for himself and she is holding on tight to her childhood friend because while she's lost everything and she wants to help him but she also needs the stability he brings to her but that's not a stable set up and it eventually comes around to bite them both it translates to Tifa holding all the cards carrying this burden entirely on her own and when it comes crashing down on her she doesn't know how to deal with it Sephiroth weaponize --is the holes and clouds memory against him and tifa's approach of distancing herself from the issue hasn't prepared her to deal with this kind of identity crisis this is why that scene in the lifestream as they sort their memories out together is just so freakin beautiful the two of them both have things they don't understand and rather than cloud going through life all apathetic and carefree while Tifa shoulders the responsibility for his sense of self the two of them work together to figure things out if you say something and I remember it too then we'll know that's a memory Tifa constantly reminds cloud to take it slow to think little by little and where his own faulty memories fail to remind him of who he is she guides him to something that will and it really is just that guiding before this Tifa had been telling cloud who he is and what he had done but in the lifestream she just holds his hand and helps him reach his own conclusions pulled the truth from the wise himself letting go of her fear and letting cloud make his own identity was the key here we see how cloud had been ashamed of his identity even before all this how he longed for acceptance from Tifa but never felt like he got it how he was blamed for her excursion into the mountains and didn't stand up for himself how he returned to nibble hime all those years later and hid himself because he wasn't as accomplished as he wanted to be cloud refers to himself in the segment as a weak person and it is indeed unsurprising that someone with such a tenuous sense of identity and self-respect would find himself taking on the identity of someone else in a moment of sickness and confusion Zac also plays a part in this after all cloud reshaped himself as the person he wanted to be to escape from the person he was much like Tifa Zak's memory helped keep cloud grounded but his dependency on this fantasy weakened him which all set the stage for one of the more heartbreaking scenes in the game when Sephiroth's shatters clouds a sense of self he approaches Hojo and finds out that not only is he a Sephiroth clone he's a failed one and Hojo rejects him with Tifa having lied to him and Sephiroth calling him to the reunion cloud is so desperate for any identity anything to hold on to that he begs Hojo to give him a number not even a name a number it's so dehumanizing and sad seeing him beg the awful man who did this to him in the first place to tell him who he is even if that answer is just a failed attempt to be something else it's this refusal that finally breaks cloud entirely and gives Sephiroth what he needs to some immediately speaking of Sephiroth he and cloud are essentially thematic foils to each other as far as this idea of identity goes they're very similar characters with very similar arcs both of them went through life thinking that they were one thing then traumatically found out they were another both of them dissociated at this point becoming something else entirely and both of them came out of the experience with a new identity outlook and goal if that last point though where they diverge and the difference is another theme that's very familiar to the Final Fantasy series friendship it's not one of the main focuses of this game especially compared to some others but when we look at what made the difference between Sephiroth's identity crisis and clouds this is the most prominent Sephiroth had no identity but that which was given to him and no one to hold on to no one to help him stay grounded and so when that fragile sense of self was challenged he latched on to the existential horror of his creation and gave him entirely to the idea that he was nothing and no one but could become so if he identified himself by the eldritch abomination he came from and devoted his existence to essentially proving himself by finishing what Genova could not becoming one with the planet and subjugating it to his will and the irony here is that Sephiroth wasn't even right about who he was even aside from his mistaken belief that Genova was an ancient his father was Hojo and his mother was Lucretia the woman Vincent loved he was injected with Jenova cells but he does have an actual human father and mother he just didn't have a connection with them at all because he was an experiment which makes Hojo somehow both an absentee father and an abusive father seriously he might be the worst person in this game screw that guy thankfully cloud had a much better support system than Sephiroth didn't Zak's memories and tifa's hand-holding were imperfect solutions obviously but they helped they gave cloud something to hold on to enough sense of self that he couldn't be completely overtaken by the simple call of the Genova reunion and however imperfect tifa's help was she showed incredible strength and love in supporting him there's a great moment after cloud defeats Sephiroth within his mind when aerith's hand reaches down through the life stream and cloud reaches out to take it but it transitions to tifa's hand reaching down to take cloud out of danger it's almost like a passing of the torch but ultimately it's also an indication that well Aerith did hell cloud discover his emotions and personality its Tifa the cloud ultimately relies on and anchors himself to his friends gave him an identity when he had none and when even that wasn't enough it was the loving guidance of a friend he'd known since childhood that brought him to his own more stable identity and it's notable given the game's environmentalist themes and the concept of the lifestream the clouds attachments are his bonds with the people in his life bonds that are also part of the planet part of that same source of life Sephiroth on the other hand detached entirely and connected himself to something that is both separate from and hostile to other life and once cloud is brought back from the brink and dedicates himself to becoming who he is instead of who others tell him to be there's a pretty immediate change the first step is taking responsibility for himself and his actions whereas before he pushed forward despite his concerns he now admits his wrongdoing and resolves to take control of his life to put it in his words the combination of Jenova cells Sephiroth's strong will and my own weakness are what created me everyone knew that I'm cloud the master of my own illusionary world but I can't remain trapped in an illusion anymore I'm going to live my life without pretending there's also a great moment where he talks to you he whose air sickness has been a running gag but instead of ignoring or making fun of her he teaches her how to alleviate the discomfort with a trick that it turns out he actually learned from Zach cloud learns to find meaning and the people around him without relying on them to define who he is and the night that he and Tifa spend underneath the high wind is the first time in the game that the two of them can really talk open up to each other and to bond as equal whole people so there's a lot here about how we define ourselves and the role that the people in our lives can play positive or negative in that self-actualization which means it's time to return to the core assertion of this analysis how does the world of Final Fantasy 7 portray this theme of identity as part of the larger story before facing Sephiroth cloud tells everyone to leave and think about their personal stake in all this this segment honestly seemed kind of out of place to me when I played it the game had been emphasizing the importance of the planet this whole time from Barrett's impassioned rants at cloud to Bugan Hagen explaining that it's the core of every living thing as if to say that this was bigger than any of them and they should put aside their personal motivations and fight for the whole world but here it's almost like cloud is saying that none of this matters except for their own personal stake in it which is a weirdly self-centered position to take and seems to run counter to a lot of what the game has to say the anti capitalism and anti grieved themes the idea that your life is not simply your own the part of the life of the entire planet the emphasis on legacy and mattering even after death it was kind of jarring but believe it or not the thing that puts this into perspective is a combination of two of the games for me at least more confusing elements at first the vague ending and Bugan Hoggins warning that the planet will decide what to keep and what to cleanse when it uses holy as we discussed earlier games like Final Fantasy 7 have a bit of a fine line to walk in terms of their political and environmental commentary it's easy to fall into traps for easy answers to ignore systemic issues by blaming them on individual bad actors or to excuse away unethical behavior by blaming it on the technology that was used to enact it we've seen how Final Fantasy 7 has thus far avoided this pitfall in regards to both capitalism and technology but there's one more than it's at risk of falling into here a kind of existential nihilism when the world ending catastrophe is caused by humans it's easy for a story - whether intentionally or accidentally blame the simple existence of humankind thing is I don't think nihilism is an interesting or constructive theme for a story it doesn't provide any actionable ideas or even really interesting things to think about when the entire basis is that nothing matters and we should maybe even just not exist in the first place nihilism as a theme is all fittingly I guess kind of pointless Final Fantasy 7 could have gone down that route none of this would have happened in the first place if not for human greed after all and if the life of the planet is paramount then maybe it would make sense for it to choose to wipe everyone out if we're such a strain on the planet the earth just to begin with then maybe the best thing we could do to help it is just die that would be pretty bleak but also just boring Final Fantasy 7 uses death and sorrow is major themes but what a waste it would be to portray them as the necessary end state for all living things I mean I once again nothing actionable nothing interesting it means nothing to the world it's commenting on because it's actively advocating for it to not even exist in the first place so the game gets ahead of the question the fact that the planet will use wholly to decide what does and does not benefit it essentially what does and does not deserve to exist directly addresses this question because if human life really does do nothing but threaten the planet it has the opportunity to rectify that cloud knows this if this entire struggle is framed as humanity which is part of the planets life in the first place versus the life of the planet itself there would be no reason for the planet to spare humanity when it uses wholly we may all be part of the planet but if we're just receptacles for some of its energy diffuse the threat humanity poses and return all that energy to the life stream where it can be more productive and less threatening what do our lives even matter next to it sending everyone out to find their personal reason for doing this is clouds attempt to answer this question it's not about prioritizing selfishness over the planet but establishing that humanity has motivations other than greed that prompt people to fight for the planet instead of profiting off its destruction they're fighting for more than just their continued existence they're fighting for people they love places they cherish dreams they hold and that gives them an identity distinct from the planet itself but infuses their lives with meaning beyond simply being part of this larger life-form identity who they are is the key to mattering beyond the simple fact of their existence and ultimately I think it's what saves them from this point the vagueness of the ending feels a lot more intentional and understandable if it had just shown everyone looking out over Midgar immediately after wholly destroyed meteor I wouldn't have given their survival a second thought and clouds prioritizing personal motivation over planet-saving responsibilities would have probably continued to confuse me but when the game asks us to consider for ourselves whether the planet would have spared humanity it prompts us to also think about why or why not well I still would have liked some more closure I'm not gonna lie because that ending is really abrupt it also made me think about the story for myself and I came to a satisfying conclusion not because the game informed me of it or even because I followed a logical process to determine the inevitable ending but because I thought about what it meant and how the conclusion would play into that I think that's pretty cool I honestly respect the ending a lot more than I did before planning this analysis and with such a strong connection between their identities and the planet and the lifestream the souls of the people they've lost it all comes together [Music] I'm not here to tell you that Final Fantasy seven is a great game I think it is and I think that the inevitable backlash to how overrated it is has pretty severely over corrected but that's not the point of this video I just hope that whatever your opinion of Final Fantasy 7 we can all understand and appreciate that it had something to say and man it put its all into saying it Final Fantasy 7 is an ambitious game and a great number of ways but the sheer scale of its story and message is impressive even by today's standards honestly there's so much more I would have loved to talk about but look how long this stupid video already is I mean seriously major props to any of you who managed to watch this fall video games have the potential to teach and enrich us to help us shape our perspectives and grow as people and they've been doing that well before 1997 that's why I make this video series because I believe that video games can positively impact our lives if we just take the time and responsibility to think about them Final Fantasy 7 was relevant when it released and it's no less so now in an age where corporations are destroying the environment and donating to politicians to ensure they can keep making money off that destruction and in a world where we lose the people we love and struggle to define ourselves in an ever-changing tumultuous Society Final Fantasy 7 presents a story where caring for our planet honoring those who have passed on and refining our own senses of self are not only valuable but all part of the same process all part of life and a life-affirming fantasy epic will always have a place the stories that we can learn from [Music] thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this stupid long deep dive into a game I dearly dearly love I want to thank world of long plays for providing the bulk of the Final Fantasy 7 footage I used in the video and final phantom for the musical remaster I use if he still exists that remaster is old and I can't find any sign of them recently but thanks anyway by this point you're seeing my patrons go by in the credits and I appreciate all of them in their amazing generosity if you want some peeks into the production of games as Liv 101 access to exclusive videos like my Advent Children review that's going up soon and early access to scripts so you can read my videos and even give feedback before I commit them to film you know where the link is this video was a lot of work so I'm gonna kick back and play some freaking video games for the first time in a while but you can count on more review roundups in the near future and I'll be catching up on some old patreon requested analyses after this because I'm shamefully behind on them so make sure to click the little alert Bell so YouTube will actually tell you when those videos happen thanks again so much and I'll see you next time class dismissed [Music]

Channel: Games As Literature

Views: 173,555

Keywords: Literature, Video Games, Games as Lit., Storytelling, Interactive Art, Video Game Education, Final Fantasy VII, FFVII, Final Fantasy, JRPG, Sephiroth, FFVIIR

Id: m6QfkrBgN_s

Length: 92min 33sec (5553 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020