I recently played through the Final Fantasy 7 Remake alongside (via text) Mike and Paul, and each of us were struck first and foremost by how decisively the game did not suck shit. Even when it was announced what, five or so years ago, I was very comfortable with holding the equal and opposite opinions that A) I would love the opportunity to play a remake of 7 and B) that it would almost certainly be garbage. Aside from the all-online 14, Square hasn’t put out a solid FF game since 12 - and 15, the most recent, was an abomination, a tedious slog that took a shameful 10 years to make. That the remake of 7 is not only not dogshit, but actually insanely good, like honest to god an improvement over the original in most ways, is genuinely shocking.
The game is directed by Tetsuya Nomura, maestro of the Kingdom Hearts series, which has over the course of nearly 15 years now, become a sprawling, layered opera with a massive cast, multiple universes, and thematically-rich storytelling. Of course its also a where game you have Donald fucking Duck in your party so let’s say there’s a bedrock to the games depth, right?
7 Remake carries some of Nomura’s pet elements, like physical manifestations of intangible concepts such as Fate and Destiny. These elements are new to the text but they actually fit well enough; out of the source material, Nomura honed a focused theme of free will versus predestination. Every character, to one extent or another, is being controlled and directed by forces outside of them: Cloud has his mako-borne link to Sephiroth and the psychic control that exerts; Aerith has her lineage as an ancient and the terrible responsibility that bears; Barrett’s attacks on Shinra are actually being encouraged and used by Shinra themselves; Tifa is in love with Cloud I guess, and Boy Madness is impossible to resist. But by the end of the game, the decision to carry on together and try to confront their destiny is one they make of their own collective free will, discovering a kind of freedom in unity. The importance of friendship is another recurring theme for Nomura.
If it achieved nothing else, 7 would be a dramatic success for simply adding real personality and differentiation between the characters. Localization was essentially an afterthought when 7 originally came out - literally one guy translated the whole script. Naturally, a lot was lost in translation. There are still weak points in the remake - Barrett is still a fairly racist caricature - but the dialog and characterization is done more artfully than most contemporary cinema, let alone games. It is a precise dance, having a brooding, anti-social character, come around to the values of connection and responsibility to others. It is harder still, to portray that process as organic and gradual, as the Remake does with Cloud, rather than taking the easy route and ascribing his evolution to some specific catalyzing event. The character work in Remake isn’t exactly Raymond Carver, but it’s not Marvel tripe either, and it will certainly be better than anything you (would have) seen in a multiplex this summer.
I rag on the Harry Potter cultists in my age group, but if I’m being honest with myself, 1997’s Final Fantasy 7 was my Harry Potter, a text that was foundational and important that came to me during a very malleable period in my development, something I’ve gone back to so many times I could write chapters on certain mini-games alone. I played in the cold, dark basement I discussed in the Scott Anderson post, still very much a kid, insanely moved by a bunch of blocky polygons acting out a messily translated tale of loss and purpose. I didn’t really feel like that kid playing the game, except for once, just as the intro was ending and the title screen came up and the music swelled just as it did when I was 12, and the generators of Midgar lit up, and here I was twenty-two years later, grinning like a maniac, grinning uncontrollably, for once in my stupid little life so happy to have grown up through all this shit.