Borkachev on 15 February 2008
A truly well put-together story shouldn't need to have people explain it.
Utter nonsense. There's an entire academic field dedicated to analyzing great works of literature and finding the deeper subtext: uncovering connections, meanings, and interpretations of events that aren't apparent on the surface. 400 years later, people are still hotly debating the most basic questions about Hamlet -- was the ghost real? What were Hamlet's real motivations? And so on. Does this mean Hamlet wasn't well put-together? No, obviously it means just the opposite.
Not that everything that obscures a plot is necessarily intentional or helpful. A certain amount of the confusion over FFVII's story is due to the poor translation (for instance, that word "clones" has caused no end of trouble. I imagine that if/when they do a remake, they'll use a different term there or at least explain it better). There could probably also be a few extra scenes to clarify a few basic points, and it wouldn't hurt to make some of the pivotal scenes, like the one I linked above, part of the main story instead of optional.
But most of the ambiguity is deliberate, and I think it only improves the story. The abrupt ending is an example (although Advent Children kind of spoiled it, I don't pay that movie much heed). Another one is the escape from Shinra HQ: the characters assume that Sephiroth broke in, stole Jenova's body, and unlocked their cells. In fact, Jenova's body itself actually came to life during the night (controlled by Sephiroth), smashed out of its pod, slithered around, killed a few Shinra folk, and unlocked the cells. That's such an unbelievably awesome, creepy image, and it's made all the better by the fact that we don't see a single second of it. We only see the aftermath, and it's not clear that the game's characters ever really piece together what happened.
Things like this. This is why FFVII is a masterpiece.
