Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Final Fantasy VII marked a definite shift in the franchise, and video games as a whole. Developer Square had been a significant player in console role-playing games for a decade prior to FF7’s release in 1997, with previous Final Fantasy games helping bolster the popularity of both the Nintendo consoles they appeared on and Japan’s particular brand of RPG, simply nicknamed the JRPG. Final Fantasy was at the forefront of pushing complex narratives with a well-developed cast of characters, and FF7 was no shirker in that respect.
The stalwart presence of Final Fantasy on Nintendo systems began to come into question as the new entry’s production went on. Originally planned for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Square began to reconsider their options as a new generation of home consoles loomed. Proprietary cartridges had been the core method of storage and distribution for console games over the past decade, and while CDs were beginning to catch on with NEC’s PC Engine CD and Sega’s Mega CD add-ons, their potential was limited by their reliance on card and cartridge based systems.
Sony’s PlayStation, debuting in 1994, shook up the status quo to a phenomenal extent. CD-ROM was the primary storage method for PlayStation’s game library, allowing developers in the region of 700MB of storage to play with, whereas the SNES’s largest games capped out at around 6MB. With the capacity for powerful 3D graphics, and much larger (and much cheaper) game storage, many developers were convinced to make the jump to Sony’s new kid on the block.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Square was one of Sony’s major conquests, with much of the developer’s output thereafter appearing on the PlayStation lineage, often exclusively. When Nintendo announced that their next home console would continue to use cartridges, the decision was made to change course to PlayStation for the next big entry in the Final Fantasy series, with cheaper development costs and larger storage capacity the big draws.
Final Fantasy VII took great advantage of PlayStation’s technology. A huge amount of high quality pre-rendered art and full-motion video led to the game being split across no less than three CD-ROMs, something generally impossible on cartridges without great expense. The development team was able to create a much bigger game than any Final Fantasy before, and it was part of a larger school of PlayStation games — ranging from Resident Evil to Metal Gear Solid — that pushed the cinematic potential of video games further than ever.
Yoshinori Kitase, the director of Final Fantasy VII, brought a passion for cinema to the game’s story, with an expressive camera and detailed backgrounds bringing the world to life. 3D polygons allowed for more recognisably human characters than 2D sprites and were an aid to players trying to connect with the little figures they controlled through a screen. As a result, Final Fantasy VII was lent a greater level of realism than its sprite-based predecessors.
No doubt, this was a strong influence on the game’s story — while still adhering to the template established by earlier games, Final Fantasy VII broke new ground, aided by a cinematic approach. Science Fiction was more pervasive, opening with the gloomy cyberpunk-inspired Midgar before the player set out on the grand world tour common in the genre. Lead characters Cloud and Sephiroth have become icons of video game culture, and many others have earnt an honorary place in the halls of fame.
Much of Final Fantasy VII’s success lays here, in the presentation. It heralded new advances in what games could achieve visually, and was able to do so due to a strong mechanical foundation. Square chose to refine its patented Active Time Battle system rather than reinvent what was not broken, and this itself lent to the game’s cinematic quality, as much of the time in combat is spent watching characters play out moves the player chooses from a menu. Audiences were not yet fatigued by turn-based combat, and it proved to work in FF7’s favour.
Final Fantasy VII marked the end of an era for the franchise. Final Fantasy became a brand largely noted for its association with Sony platforms, with appearances on Nintendo systems relegated largely to ports and spin-offs. When the long rumoured Final Fantasy VII Remake made its appearance in 2020, it was a PlayStation 4 exclusive. More to the point, Final Fantasy VII was a huge draw for Sony’s first console, helping propel it and, again, JRPGs as a whole, into the spotlight.
The PlayStation soon become the console to have as a flood of JRPGs hit the system (many of them Square’s own titles), and Final Fantasy VII was directly responsible. Its influence is vast and pervasive. For fans outside of Japan, this is the game that cemented a genre. Overseas markets had never before had a seismic JRPG hit like Dragon Quest had been in Japan, and FF7 paved the way for a whole new generation of games and players. Final Fantasy is, perhaps, the greatest oxymoron in history.
