| Borkachev said: 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. |
The problem with your analogy is that we're not talking about literature, we're not talking about scholars debating literary meanings, and we're not playing a game of Hamlet.
It's much easier to see the trend in movies so I'll use them as an example. You see all the old movies on TV that have 5 stars however few watch them anymore. Most everyone flips to a different channel and watches a more current movie that may be as low as 2 stars; you see this all the time with 5 star musicals as musicals in many ways have fallen to the way side (except in live production) as well as many black and white movies. The reason is that those types of movies have quite simply gone out of style. No matter how well received they were nor highly rated, their time has passed.
Now let's go to literature for a moment. When you ask someone what their favorite book is, they're unlikely to say "Hamlet" or "Macbeth" rather they are far more likely to give a more current author and book title. Why? Because older novels have in many ways lost much of the greatness they once had. Scholars will argue against it that they are still great and still amazing, but you don't find the general public reading them for fun or pleasure anymore. I'd wager most people who have read many books considered to be great literary classics did so in school because it was required.
To put it bluntly, "peoples' taste in literature has changed since the days of Hamlet." Arguing that an obfuscated story is somehow better than a transparent story because authors 400 years ago created some that were very popular is a silly argument. Would you also like to argue that the world is flat? That concept was popular once upon a time too.
Now, let's move this discussion away from literature and back to games which is its own unique type of media unto itself. It's much harder to give depth to characters in a game because the player controls them and makes decisions. In order to give depth to characters you must take away player involvement. In RPGs, usually the characters all talk amongst themselves and make decisions independently of the player and, in others, the player is allowed to make decisions every once in a while. In some RPGs, the player faces an obstacle and in others a cutscene occurs and the characters face it. Only seeing the character's personalities when not in control limits the characters' development. Also, the player is unable to see the whole story unfold from all angles as in some cases it would provide an in-game advantage to the player which becomes another limitation of games.
As these limitations add up, you need to compensate for them. The result is often stories which might look great on paper can translate into awful games and game that play excellently can translate into awful stories. Final Fantasy VII is in many ways an example of the former. There's too much obfuscation likely intentional and unintentional (translation). And because there are far more limitations in games for storytelling, obfuscation makes a tough situation even worse. As it is, the game spends far too much time simply moving the characters forward and rehashing the past to actually provide a level of depth consistent with the expectations of those who appreciated Final Fantasy VI. It kept trying to give subtle hints by revisiting the past and shoehorning that into the game that is failed to develop the present. Locke of FFVI alone arguably had more character development and personality than practically the entirety of the FFVII cast.
Does any of this mean that FFVII was a bad game? Not really. However, a masterpiece it was not.
