So I recently finished the game again, and through these moments I found myself totally affected by the events unfolding (again) before my eyes. These moments (although no.1 is quite obvious) gave the ultimate nostalgic feelings in this playthrough and I just wanted to share them to you guys (and yes, I am overly affected by the story):
11.) The escape from Midgar - how cool was this? Fresh from a complete shocker care of Sephiroth, you get this super fast paced motorcycle chase and series of battles to run away from an army of bad guys.. and the first FMV you ever see in the game, which was, at that time, the most awesome graphics I had ever seen.
10.) Dyne and the monstrosity he had become - you remember Dyne... the other guy who had a gun grafted into his arm. You actually see extremely little of him, and you only hear about him a lot as "the boss". So he kills a bunch of people and then Barret tries to talk some sense into his former best friend, mentioning that his daughter Marlene is still alive, and this insane crackpot goes "I'll bring her to her mother." (take note, this 3 year old girl's mother is dead, and so the implication is he will kill the little girl) Holy crap! How depraved can this guy get? He mentions also that he wants to destroy the world and himself in the process, which, in my opinion, makes him the single most insane person in the game.
Memorable about this scene? After the fight with Barrett, the guy actually comes to his senses.. "Don't ever make Marlene cry," and then jumps off a cliff with Barrett yelling at a bleary sunset in the background.
9.) Sector 7's fall and aftermath - Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie (not the Star Wars pilots), along with thousands of innocent civilians, dead through the action of the evil corporation. If I were Barrett, I would've just marched straight into the Shinra Building and killed everyone. I had grown to like those three comrades, and appreciated especially Jessie's attention to detail with regards to Cloud. The incident brings to mind how corrupt, how devious, and how extreme the Shinra were, in that they were willing to destroy their own city just to kill six people.
No other moment in the game gave me more hatred for the Shinra. I really, really wanted to take them down because of this.
8.) I am Sephiroth, and this is my power - it's early in the game, and we've only heard whispers of this bad guy named Sephy whatever. You're having an insanely tough time trying to get into the Shinra building, with tight security and all, and you end up getting imprisoned for your trouble. All of a sudden, BAM! everyone in the whole place is dead, blood is trailing all over the floor and the walls, this eerie music hits the fan, and you're trying to follow the trail.. and what's at the end of it, a dead President with a massive sword sticking out behind him. This was the first time that you really understand who the real bad guy is (and not the Shinra, as you thought all along), and how strong he is, a strength that you can't seem to fathom.
Later on, in Kalm, you actually get a firsthand look at that power. Here you were, hitting little 100s and 150s with your big ass sword, and there he goes hitting a green dragon for 3500.. and he doesn't take any damage. It's the innocence that gets you.
7.) Cait Sith and his redemption - teat little trick by the ancients there, the user unable to take the Black Materia out of the temple because the temple is the Black Materia itself, and you can't make it smaller unless you're inside. Now I hated this cat's guts. A Shinra spy that I had no more reason to trust forever went in there to get crushed by the walls of the temple in the vain hope of keeping the Black Materia out of Sephiroth's hands (which later became a useless sacrifice because of dumbass Cloud), and changed my opinion of him forever. I know, his body is just a toy and he didn't really 'die', but what he said in the end really got to me:
"There's plenty of stuffed toys like my body around, but there's only one me! Don't forget me even if another Cait Sith comes along. Goodbye, then! I guess I'm off to save the Planet..." quite heroic for a spy eh.
6.) Cid with his "emergency lever" - the entire northern cave is blowing up, Everyone is gonna die, the airship that we've been on for hours and hours is about to go to pieces.. and then this guy pulls an ace out of his ass and turns his once-propeller-driven and once-jet-engine-driven into a damn fighter jet. When I saw that, I was seriously Wtf? Does this guy never run out of coolness? Seeing that for the first time made me go Whoa! This one moment alone made Cid my favorite character in any Final Fantasy I've ever played to this day.
"SHIT!" is perhaps the only curse that is not censored in the game, but I'm sure he says everything else. God I love that airship.
5.) The frustrated space traveller - an extremely overpassionate guy dreaming about space for his entire life gets his aspirations destroyed by a bumbling woman with love in her heart. The first time you meet Cid in the rocket, you get the feeling that this is quite a guy, in the sense that there's this inspirational music that plays in the background, he has this confident tone and stature, and curses violently like an animal. In the flashback of the failed rocket launch, you can really feel Cid's pain, like a whole life's work has just gone up in flames, but you also feel the extreme amount of love from Shera, who was willing to get burned to a crisp just to make sure that the oxygen tanks in the rocket are working properly.
When the guy finally gets to space later on, you get this feeling of extreme accomplishment, brought about by the guy's zealousness alone. I find no other moment in the game that surpasses this one in terms of accomplishment.
4.) Meteor vs. Aeris - you gotta know that Aeris basically saved the planet by herself. So the big hunk of rock is destroying Midgar, then this white flash comes by and stops the thing! But the meteor is too big and the Holy magic isn't enough to stop it. What now!?! Cloud and others watching helplessly from the airship, people crying, dying in the background, and then green wisps beat the crap out of the rock. Then Aeris' face, exactly as you saw her first in the beginning of the game, to remind all of us who did all of that. Of course, if she didn't die, it wouldn't have been so memorable, but the fact that she did made it absolutely awesome. Actually, the fact that she's just some flower selling girl from a city slum makes it even more awesome.
3.) Red XIII's reunion with his true father - first of all, getting through that cave was annoying and laborious. Possibly the highest encounter rate in the game. But when you reach the end, Red XIII, who had been thinking his father to be a coward all his life, finally realized the extent of the bravery and strength his father possessed. One warrior, alone, defended the rear of Cosmo Canyon against an entire batallion of monsters, even after the Gi tribe's poison arrows had turned him to stone.. And up until that moment, he was still watching over them, as exhibited by the tears that fell from the stony visage of Seto as father and son united once again.
"I am Nanaki of Cosmo Canyon! The son of the warrior, Seto! I'll come back a warrior true to that noble name!", a quote that sent shivers down my spine.
2.) Cloud's real persona revealed - first time you reach the northern crater, you probably have this idea in your mind: Cloud, ex-SOLDIER, Tifa's childhood friend, Sephiroth's old war buddy, fought him and survived, etc. etc. Then BOOM!, Cloud is actually a failed Sephiroth clone made by Hojo, designed to acquire and deliver the Black Materia to his master, memories constructed through Tifa's own selective memory. Jesus, my 20 hours believing Cloud's story has been a lie? And when I played through this recently, I finally realized the full extent of the backstory (because when I was 13, I didn't really understand a lot of things), and it made my head spin.
Later on, when the full re-enactment was revealed with Tifa, everything got even more surprising the first time, and extremely nostalgic the last time.. Oh yeahhh....
1.) Cowardly assassination of... a flower girl - quite possibly the only moment in my life that I cried in a video game. Not much to say here, as everyone pretty much knows all about it, but when I played it again recently, I still got tears in my eyes.
Guys like my list? :)
