Some Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Final Fantasy VII Remake
I’ve had these thoughts sitting around in the recesses of my mind and in various notes but never put them to print. I thought now, working the graveyard shift, this would be a fitting time to do so.
Final Fantasy VII, released in 1997, was an incredible game. It was a technological jump in graphics, gameplay, storytelling, and nearly any metric you can think of to judge a video game. Looking back, some of the limitations of the game, shared by many games of that time, arguably benefitted storytelling.
How do poor graphics by today’s standards equate to better storytelling? Well, for one, poor graphics require imagination. That’s right; the very progression of technological capability diminishes the player’s need to think for themselves. This is true of modern gameplay as well, where many games are so streamlined compared to their predecessors, with quest markers, hand-holding, and a lack of puzzles or thoughtful interaction, that one feels as though they’re running on rails. One begins to wonder if it’s a video game or an interactive movie.
Instead, Cloud seemed to me to be a punk-ass merc with a cyberpunk and merc aesthetic skillfully meshed together. His wild hair with one large spike shooting off at an angle was punk as hell, and it fit well with a place like Midgar, full of trash and gang rats mixed in with places like Shinra’s upper plate and Wall Market.
We’ve seen it again and again. Adopting this style seems an obvious choice for Japanese game designers, living in a country that is known for being very hygienic, and is keen on fashion and high-quality goods, but it’s a bad look for games with purposely rough land and cityscapes and characters who are themselves rough around the edges. It was quite jarring at times to see these characters I had known for twenty years running through a destroyed sector of Midgar, Barret fitting in while Cloud looks like he’s just had a fresh shower and hair styling.
Barret’s style and personality probably honored the game’s setting the most, and Aerith’s innocent dress look paired with boots was believable. Red XIII was about as great as I could’ve hoped, and I’m hoping that with Rebirth, Cid’s gruffness and Vincent’s vampiric edge lord look will honor the original designs.
It needs to be said, arguably starting with Crisis Core, the remake suffers from Michael Bay syndrome. Spoiler alert! This has been discussed plenty on the interwebs, but there’s no reason that Cloud should be able to cut train cars in half by the end of the remake given that he couldn’t lift himself up after the Airbuster fight. There’s no reason that they needed to have a helicopter peppering Cloud and Co. with machine gun rounds as they climbed up a tower. Don’t get me started on what Square did to the motorcycle portion. All of the shenanigans at the end of the remake were an unnecessary display of special effects fireworks and needless boss battles. Cloud even manages to use a grappling gun at the last moment and this little gun pulls up not only himself but Barret’s big ass and Tifa. Please… stop doing this.
This prettying up of characters to make them fashionable, the fireworks display of special effects that seem to be for flash rather than improving the storytelling, and the superhero-esque theatrics may be visual fluff to wow a new audience, but it diminishes the end product’s legacy. It’s not just toning it down for veterans of the series and this particular title, it’s aiming for story coherency. I get it, at the end of the day, it’s a fantasy game, and there is going to be some level of absurdity, and that’s okay because that’s part of what makes gaming fun. When so much of a game’s production values are wonderful, and when fans are so invested in the series, any blemishes are more apparent.
Midgar ironically suffers from the same treatment. However, some moments left my jaw dropped, like taking a break, after a stressful climb up the plate, to peer at the wreckage of the Sector 7 slums after their collapse. The scale is impressive, as it is when you try to angle the camera up and look at the plate from the slums. The plate eats up the whole sky from your point of view and makes you feel small.
Oddly, though, Midgar still feels pretty clean a good amount of the time. Yes, you’re running through slums, and there are occasional piles of junk taking up corners of streets and old buildings, but I was hoping, again ironically, to see trash blowing around, to see people publicly drinking, lighting up pipes, wandering around drunk or high, street brawls, people passed out in alleys, and yes, as is shown in the game, people just trying to get by with what they have.
It should be said that everything else in the game from an objective technological standpoint is marvelous. Yes, some story additions are nonsense, but the visuals and audio are incredible, and I love the attention to detail on the audible movement of your party. You can hear leather tighten as characters adjust their gloves, clothing swish, and metal weapons jostle and sway as you run… it’s a feast on the ears. The music is incredible as it is with every Final Fantasy title. And, it must be said, but the remake may have the greatest RPG combat system of all time, something that will only be improved with Rebirth.
I wrote this because I grew up with the series and love it, and wish it well so that it can continue to inspire and wow newcomers to the franchise. Now, let’s all go back to excitedly waiting for Rebirth.