Alright, so, Aerith dies in FF7. Yes, I'm pretty everyone and their mother knows that by now. However, I'm a little curious as to why her death bothered people so much versus what has happened in other Final Fantasys.

For instance, in Final Fantasy VI, an entire kingdom is killed. AN ENTIRE KINGDOM. Pshh, we don't care about them. We only care about party members!

I'm playing Final Fantasy IV right now. It's my first time, so, no extra spoilers please. Anyhow, three people in my party have died so far. Two of which were fucking children. TWO KIDS SACRIFICE THEMSELVES. Aerith is killed. "OMG NOOOOO" Two children die. "Who cares?"

>__>; Thoughts?

"For instance, in Final Fantasy VI, an entire kingdom is killed. AN ENTIRE KINGDOM. Pshh, we don't care about them. We only care about party members!"

Well, uh, yeah. Now this may sound insensitive, but I think you would be more personally affected if someone close to you that you know died than if a thousand people somewhere far away you've never met die.

That said, I think it's because FF7 is such a popular game that it overshadows other FFs. I've never played FF4, so I don't know about those kids dying, but FF4 is nowhere near as popular as FF7, which is why I think Aerith dying gets more attention.

Also, Aerith was very easy to like. I think that was part of it, it's been ages since I played FF7, so I might remember it wrong, but wasn't Aerith pretty much pure and innocent all-together? Seeing her die was a pretty big blow because of that.

And for my personal reaction, I played FF7 when I was like 6-7 years old and had a crush on Aerith, so naturally I was pouty as hell when she died and didn't want to play anymore.

One of your party members loses his family to that.

In FF5 a player character is killed to.

More people care about FF7... because they played it first. 

Also... the Phantom Train moment is far sadder then anything in 7.

FF7 was amusingly just following a trend of playable characters dieing in FF. (two die in FF6 to.)

It's just people heralded it as the "first" time it happened because nobody knew better.

Okay, it's Aeris, not Aerith. And it was shocking because players spent the first few dozen hours levelling her up and following her relationship with Cloud. For a main character to suddenly die and never come back is unexpected, no?

Yeah, so your party member knows them ... But you don't. Btw, no spoilers as to who or what or anything like that please, I have yet to play FF6 properly but I am fully planning to.

They showed her death in the commercials advertising the game before it came out.

It was about as surprising as going to the theatres during the star wars re-releases and finding out who Luke Skywalker's dad was.

Because I didn't spend any time leveling the characters that died?

And what relationship? xP (Is a huge Cloud x Tifa & Zach x Aerith guy)

More people played (and hype and obsess) over FFVII for long periods of time. Frankly, for about 10-15 years, FFVII was the most popular console RPG and hence, that's why people make such a big deal about it being the biggest 'death' scene.

As another example, Last gen, KOTOR was one of the biggest games on the XBOX. As a result, the big 'turning point' of the story (which has a similar connection in a way to Aeris dying) is constantly referred to as one of the biggest plot 'surprises' ever. Is it really that revolutionary? Not really..its actually a common story theme in movies, books and even been used in other games. But because it was used in a popular game, it gained notoriety and fame.

Aeris dying had the same effect, but it has dragged on for much longer because the scene had little competition. When in all reality, there was many other games that had similar, if not more impacting scenes around it (heck, Suikoden did a year earlier). But FFVII was a much higher profile game and so people just remember that.

One my friends told me when I first started FFVII, so it wasn't shocking to me. But I can see why it was so shocking.