The Discussion Thread: The Greatest Games Event 2017 - FINISH YOUR LISTS

[The_Liquid_Laser]

#2 Final Fantasy VII

Why did it make the list?
So many reasons.  The release of Final Fantasy 7 was a watershed moment in gaming, and that is because it was amazing in so many ways: the graphics, the music, the combats, the materia system, the ginormous game world, the story and of course the very memorable characters.  I could really write pages and pages on how each one of these things went above and beyond the video games at the time (and in some ways the video games of today too).  

More importantly, Squaresoft managed to bring all of these elements together in a way that made the game greater than the sum of its parts.  See, what Squaresoft was really doing was giving the player the experience of playing through a movie-like game.  It seems cliché now, but when it was released it was an unreal and unique experience.  Now I feel like tons of games try to do this very same thing, but all of them fall short of FF7.

If I had to pick one part of FF7 that stands out even more than the others, then it would have to be the storytelling.  (Btw, there are spoilers in this paragraph, so skip ahead if you don’t want to read them.)  Many of the Final Fantasy games have very interesting stories, but what makes FF7 unique over every other game is how it managed to tell a story in a way that played on the strengths of gaming as a medium.  The game has you choose who to have in your party, and the game has you make choices along the way that determine who you will go on a date with.  Some people, like me, chose Aerith (or Aeris) to be a regular party member and also to be the one I date.  Since I chose Aerith, her final moments had a particularly strong impact on me.  It wasn’t just a story about Cloud losing the woman he was falling in love with.  I lost the woman that I was falling in love with, because I was the one making these choices.  I am pretty sure the people who made different choices had a very different experience with this game overall.

I hope someday other games will figure out how to tell stories in a way that is unique to the gaming medium, but until that happens Final Fantasy 7 will always stand head-and-shoulders above other storytelling games.


Original Experience:
The 1990’s had a huge revolution in PC gaming.  PC games in that era were so good that I had no desire to ever fool with consoles again.  But then I kept seeing ads for Final Fantasy 7.  They were everywhere, and the graphics just seemed ridiculously impressive.  “How are graphics like this even possible?”  I thought.  I had played FF1 and 4 already, and I knew this was a great series, so I broke down and bought a PS1 just for Final Fantasy 7.

I was not disappointed in the slightest.  On top of this just being a top quality experience from beginning to end, I just was not expecting the game to be so big.  The first two Final Fantasies I played were 20 – 40 hours.  My first playthrough of FF7 took me about 70 hours and I missed a ton of the side content.  I immediately played through it again while going through a walkthrough to get everything I missed the first time.  This time it took me over 100 hours!

Every part of Final Fantasy 7 just seemed like an order of magnitude better than anything that had come before.  Up until last year (2016) I would has said this is my favorite game of all time.  However, last year an even older game came back to reclaim the #1 spot.


How does it hold up today?
Final Fantasy 7 is a game that will last forever.  Ironically, I have a personal pet peeve about games from the PS1/N64 generation (gen 5).  I just think their graphics have aged horribly, worse than even gen 4 or gen 3 games.  I fired up Final Fantasy 7 this year just to try to prove this point to myself.  Well, my daughter was watching me do this, and although she is used to modern graphics, she thought the opening sequence looked really cool.  Then the game just sucked me in.  I wasn’t expecting for this old game that I have played several times to still have it’s original appeal, but it did.  I fell in love with the game all over again.  I couldn’t help myself and I played through the entire first disk.  I just can’t help but love this game.

I also have to make a quick mention of Final Fantasy 7’s music.  Every Final Fantasy game has exceptionally good music.  I could gush over every single soundtrack to a FF game.  Final Fantasy 7’s soundtrack is still the best.  It’s not just the best in the Final Fantasy series.  For me it is the best soundtrack in all of gaming.  Cloud’s Theme, the boss battle music, and One Winged Angel are all exceptionally good pieces.  However, Aerith’s Theme is my absolute favorite video game song.  I could listen to that forever and it would never get old.  (Admittedly, Return to Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X is tied for #1.)

Final Fantasy 7 originally hooked me with the graphics that were cutting edge at the time.  Since then the graphics have aged, but I’ve come to see that the core game underneath is golden.  This is a game people will still be playing generations from now, and it is a game that I will keep coming back to my whole life.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 31 December 2017