If you like lots of introspection and pop culture discussion from me in particular, check out The BPRDcast, a Hellboy podcast I co-host with the wonderful Seth McCombs.
This post will contain as few spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and its remake as possible.
As of this writing, we're either two months or fifty years into the COVID-19 lockdown, meaning I've had a lot of time for two things: 1) Introspection, and 2) Playing Final Fantasy VII Remake (Part 1, or whatever).
I love Final Fantasy VII. It's a game I've held close to my heart for well over a decade. I love it in a similar way to how I love Star Wars: every character feels iconic, every piece of music is burned into my brain, and every piece of merchandise related to it is tempting as hell. I'm not even a huge Final Fantasy fan in general. I've tried a bunch, and none of them really land as well as VII for me.
I'm well aware that there are plenty of naysayers out there, people who say stuff like "Actually the materia system makes all the characters interchangeable and there's no real strategy to putting together your party blah blah blah" or "The story is confusing and everyone's sad and the localization is terrible blah blah blah" and "VI is better yadda yadda yadda." I've had years where I begrudgingly accepted their view, but I've come to the realization that the internet is full of grumps who will dump on anything remotely more popular than the thing THEY love. So I won't stoop to that level; I won't say, "No, you're wrong, VI is a load of poo" but I will say:
(Yes, this is an overused meme and sometimes it is used in situations where people just don't want to hear criticism, but when it comes to vociferously dumping on a harmless piece of pop culture people love...enh, let people enjoy things.)
So let's talk about the remake a little bit. I adore it. I've teared up a whole lot, and not just out of nostalgia; sometimes because of entire story elements that have been added that have nothing at all to do with my history with the game. Not to spoil anything, but holy moley did the big mid-game sequence have me on the edge of my seat even though I know what's going to happen.
The remake has a lot of advantages over the original, better graphics being the obvious one, but better localization being a much bigger one. (If you don't know what localization is, read the hyperlinked article but also basically it's translation.) Now, despite my love for the original, playing it now, the localization is pretty clearly not as good as it could be (even in the rerelease). The plot is a bit loopy and hard to follow in a way that feels like something got missed in translation. Some of the tutorial text is flat-out wrong. Barrett's a preeeeeetty rough stereotype.
And there's stuff like this, too.
The remake not only smooths over rough spots like this, but also highlights strengths in the original that were harder to fully articulate. And that brings me to the subject of this post:
Cloud is a good character
For a long while, even FFVII enthusiasts might reluctantly admit that Cloud Strife, the main guy, the guy you spend all of your time puppeteering, is what the cool kids might call an "emo dork."
Here's the thing. Yes, he is. That's why he's GREAT.
Cloud, in merchandising, fan art, and even in the original game's instruction booklet, is always posed as a cool badass, never smiling, always holding his sword in a give-no-eff attitude, always wearing stuff with lots of buckles and shoulder guards and other anime stuff. The marketing for this game tells you something about Cloud that you really, really shouldn't take seriously. The marketing department's job is to show you this guy and say "Hey, see this cool dude? DON'T YOU WANT TO BE THIS COOL DUDE? WITH A HUGE SWORD? ISN'T HE SO COOL?"
But that's not who Cloud is. That's how Cloud sees himself. Cloud thinks he's a cool merc with an attitude. But the truth is -- and honestly, the whole point of the game -- is that Cloud's a dork trying to be super cool. Cloud is massively insecure and lacking in social skills. And nobody really seems to give a crap that he can do cool flips and slash stuff up. Sure, he'll get the occasional ovation from a random passerby, but he's never going to be able to develop that into real popularity or friendship or any kind of social capital. Because he's a dork. Hoo boy, as a fellow socially awkward dork who occasionally gets some applause for being funny onstage, do I relate to this.
If I didn't know better, I'd almost say the art style of the original game highlights this theme of how we see ourselves versus how the world sees us. Like, this is how Cloud sees himself:
And this is how the rest of the world sees him:
Yeah, I know this probably isn't what they were going for, but it WORKS.
I love Remake because it completely gets this about Cloud, and it 100% gets how his relationships with the various women in the game highlight this. For example, let's look at his relationship with Aerith.
In both versions, Aerith is always having fun with Cloud. She flirts with him. She teases him. Cloud's reaction -- as highlighted by the remake, but it's there in the original -- is more or less confusion. You'll get a lot of "..."'s from Cloud, lot's of, "...Okay,"'s from Cloud, lots of weird little insults. Much like Calvin and Susie Derkins, it's like Cloud enjoys the flirting and teasing but doesn't really know how to react to anything other than with hostility and cool guy posing. So he's either mean in a childish way or just quiet and confused.
So here's where I admit that, yeah, I was a pre-teen once too. And this character is basically me as a pre-teen. I grew up in a pretty socially isolated environment, being homeschooled in rural New Hampshire (it had its perks, but learning social skills was not one of them). So if I was in a situation where a girl was talking to me, while I was never hostile, I certainly would do the thing that Cloud does where I would just say nothing, realize I was saying nothing, be anxious because I was saying nothing, and then continue to say nothing out of anxiety.
And I would get teased. A lot. Because I was kind of a strange but nice kid who was pretty fun to tease. I think this is why as a kid, I hated Aerith. (I now love her, and I really love the wonderfully goofy version of her that's in the remake.) I basically saw in her all those people who teased me and called me "cute" and thought I was funny. I didn't want to be seen that way! I wanted to be seen as the cool, skilled loner who was way better than everyone else and was just quiet about it!
With all this introspection, I kind of realize now what was so great about Final Fantasy VII. The human relationships, while buried under weird translations and bizzare sci-fi tropes, hit some fundamental truths. Cloud is me and a lot of kids from my generation when we were around the ages of 12 and 13: wanting everyone to think they're cool, but being kind of dorky and awkward. We cling so much to our visions of ourselves as badasses that when people like us for who we really are (as weird, funny dorks), we almost take it as a sign of aggression.
I love that in FF7 Remake, due to the truncated nature of the story, we get to see Cloud grow out of this a lot faster. Again, I won't spoil anything, but it's so much fun to see Cloud slowly open up and accept that people value things about him other than his swordfightin' skills and his cool, spiky hair.
And again without spoiling anything, there's a scene where Cloud returns a hug that made me cry. And it's because the game treats it as the momentous occasion that it is.
To get more personal, my social anxiety goes well beyond not knowing how to respond to teasing, flirting, or positivity. I'm really, really anxious about physical contact. When somebody touches me, even accidentally, sirens go off in my head. Haircuts are nightmares. Going to the dentist is like going to hell, but like, a worse hell than it already is for everyone else. Collecting myself enough to return a hug? Sometimes that feels like a climactic victory on par with slaying a sewer beast. And this game gets that, and it gets that Cloud is, like me, somebody for whom returning physical affection is a much larger challenge than saving the world from supervillains.
And I love that the game doesn't force Cloud's relationships to develop into something romantic. Sure, there's talk of dates, and there's talk of relationships, but the focus is always, "Can Cloud be friends with anybody?" As somebody with pretty bad social anxiety, there's something about romance that almost makes it easier for the socially stunted than friendship. Romance, you know what to do. You treat the other person really, really well. You make them the most important thing in the world. You return their affection with affection. Friendship, though? What do you do with that?
All I can say is, thank god I figured out how to make friendship work before I got married, because romance alone doesn't sustain a meaningful relationship. To bring it back to FF7, Cloud's relationships with Tifa, Aerith, and Jesse feel almost more meaningful because they don't have to be seen as romantic. Cloud's character arc is about learning to be a good friend. It's not about the reward of romance.
This is not all stuff that I realized as I was playing FF7 as a dumb, socially stunted 13-year-old, but I think I recognized all of this on an unconscious level, and I think that's a big part of why the game has stuck with me for so many years. It's not just about people coming together, like every other team-based RPG or comic book or blockbuster. It's about a big ol' dork realizing he's a big ol' dork and that's okay because people like that about him and want to be his friend. And that's the reason I've managed to make friends: realizing that they like me for the big ol' dork that I am, not as the cool, motorcycle-riding badass I sometimes wish I was.
Anyway, all this to say, Final Fantasy VII, thank you for being so good and for reminding us that it's cool to be a big ol' socially anxious dork.
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