The True Hero

Today is release day for Crisis Core, the prequel game to Final Fantasy VII. So, I thought I'd reminisce a little bit about the first time I played through FFVII. I actually borrowed a PS1 (the original model, not the smaller version they released later) from a friend just to play this game, because I didn't have one yet. The only Final Fantasy game I had played previously was FFVI (FFIII on the SNES) and it made me want to play the first 3D Final Fantasy in the worst way. When I finally did, I was awed and amazed by the graphics and sucked into the story in a way few games since have been able to duplicate.

One of the more memorable scenes for me was the sequence right before our heroes left Midgar. Cloud mounted a motorcycle, Tifa, Aerith and the others all loaded into a truck, and they made their escape from the Shinra building. It really showed off the awesome new capabilities of the PS1 and awed the players, myself included.

Of course, as with just about everyone who's played and loved FFVII, the absolute most memorable scene was the death of Aerith at the hands of one of the greatest video game villains of all time - Sephiroth. No game since has evoked quite the same emotions in me as when I saw that scene for the first time. I really couldn't believe it. Aerith was a main character that I had spent so much time leveling up. She was an integral figure in the plot of the entire story. She was our sweet, innocent flower girl from the Sector Five slums. And Sephiroth killed her right in front of Cloud in cold blood. Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was she always destined to that fate, bound for a higher purpose to help Cloud and his friends in a way that she couldn't if that hadn't happened? We're led to believe the latter.

After that point, gamers continued to play the game with such resolve to avenge her death that finding and bringing Sephiroth to justice became almost an obsession. Finally, when all was said and done and the final cut scenes rolled, we felt a sense of true accomplishment and that justice had been served. Aerith had indeed joined the lifestream and helped fight off the imminent threat to the planet and her face adorned the screen in the final moments of the game, staring at the player as if she knew that was her purpose all along.

Many, many fanboys across the globe hailed Cloud as the ultimate video game hero, but, in reality, Aerith was the force behind all the good that was accomplished during the course of the game - from her humble beginnings as a flower girl on the corruption-filled streets of Midgar to fulfilling her ultimate destiny in helping to protect the planet and everyone she cared about. Her death fueled Cloud to accomplish great things, even though his mind wasn't altogether stable at the time. She was the true hero of the story, whether she wanted that honor or not.

Not long ago, a notable game developer said that he was on a mission to get gamers to cry, to evoke real emotion, to take game play to that next level and make the players really feel for the characters they were controlling. That isn't the future of games, its already been done. All one has to do is look at games such as Final Fantasy VII to see exactly what elements need to be in a game to bring up those emotions in the gamer. But, as much as developers try to bring these emotions about in this generation of gaming and beyond, nothing will compare in the slightest way to when it first happened, and for a good chunk of today's gamers, that first time was Final Fantasy VII.