The Myth of the Golden Age pt.2: The FFVII Conundrum

*WORK IN PROGRESS, Hang on to your butts.*

Before we transition to the 3D Final Fantasy games, let’s reflect for a moment on the series’ western reputation just prior to the shift. As some of you may be aware, Squaresoft did not localize every Final Fantasy game as they were created. Only three of the six games in their catalogue - FFI, FFIV, and FFVI – were localized during their original console generations. For some (probably stupid) reasons, these games were renamed as Final Fantasy I, II, and III respectively when they left Japan*. Coincidentally, in 1996 those were the three best entries in the series, and - in my opinion – three of the best games of their era. Final Fantasy gave us the 3^rd person camera angle, FFIV ATB, and FFVI character customization free from a job system.  Each improved significantly over its predecessor on multiple significant levels. This would have made Final Fantasy seem like a series that could do no wrong – one that would always define its genre.

*It could also be that Square recognized that Final Fantasy II, III, and V were weak games, but based on the poor treatment of Final Fantasy VI in the future, and the remake of FFIII I doubt it. It likely had more to do with FFIV selling noticeably better than the previous 3 FFs, and VI following suit.

So, with that context, put yourself in 1996: It was just announced that the next game in one of the greatest franchises of all time will be the first 3D Final Fantasy, and the “biggest,” most spectacular entry yet, surpassing even Hollywood movies in scope and extravagance. For the first time, a Final Fantasy game would NOT appear on a Nintendo console, and will instead exclusively be made for Sony’s new, already successful, offering to definitively prove its technological superiority. So, how did the game turn out? Did it live up to its monumental hype and deliver on its promises?

FFVII – 3/10

Yes and no.

Final Fantasy VII is indeed the biggest Final Fantasy (of 1997), the first “3D” FF, and the most visually spectacular game of its day – literally. BUT, it is imperative that we first note exactly how FFVII accomplished those three feats before we begin a discussion of the mechanics, narrative, and contributions. These three half-truths are the basis for most of the misconceptions surrounding this game, and compose the core perpetuating its distorted legacy. So, in order of mentioning:

“The Biggest Final Fantasy”

There are many different definitions of “big,” and most of them get tossed around in citations of the game’s. Fortunately, they’re all false, so the claim is never correct (but unfortunately, that means I have to go over every interpretation of the word, “big”. Fun). In terms of its world map, dungeon size, and game length, FFVII is about the same size as its predecessor FFVI/(FFIII) i.e. small/short (20-30 hours if you don’t waste time faffing about, faster if you know the game well) relative to other JRPGs on the same console (SaGa Frontier, Wild Arms, Suikoden II, Dragon Warrior VII, Xenosaga), and most RPGs on succeeding consoles.

*For reference in case you weren’t aware, average JRPG length today is 30-40 hours.

On the physical side, FFVII is one of the first console games possessing multiple discs, making it appear more monumental than any other game...of 1997. However, most RPGs on the PSX also had multiple discs, and several were well over twice the length (time-wise) of FFVII. As indicated by FFVII’s short completion time, the game’s 3 discs were only required because of its FMVs and high-res backgrounds (i.e. elements irrespective of the gameplay or narrative). To clarify, the storagecapacity of a PSX disc was 660mb. FFVII is approximately 1.5 gbs in size across all three discs with low compression (standard for the time). Its FMV cutscenes alone take up approximately 459mbs while its High-res backgrounds add up to about 200mbs. If you were to remove the cutscenes (which were largely unnecessary), reduce the background resolution (which was proven by FFVIII to be unnecessarily high), and use better compression for the overall package (which SONY did, as seen on the PSN store), you could realistically reduce the game to a single disc [which I actually did back in 2008 when I ported the game to PSP prior to the PSN store release], or at the very least 2 discs like its contemporaries. Anyway, necessity aside, both succeeding PSX Final Fantasies had 4 discs, so the disc argument doesn’t work no matter how you look at it.

Lastly, on the conceptual level - narrative “depth”/the scope of its ideas – FFVII falls in lock-step with the Final Fantasy’s from the preceding console generation. FFIV contains a heavy-handed message decrying imperialism and lionizing rebellion for the sake of justice, ultimately concluding in a trip to the moon to fight a space-monster-wizard-thing. FFV centers on a medieval form of Magic Environmentalism across two worlds, and ends with a journey to the “center of an interdimensional nexus” to fight an evil sentient tree wizard with the power to conjure black holes/The Void at will. FFVI focuses on a more in-depth steam-punk form of magic environmentalism and existentialism that eventually culminates with a battle in the skies of a ruined planet against a megalomaniacal science experiment possessing god-like power. FFVII involves a (shockingly hypocritical) sci-fi variant of magic environmentalism alongside a (completely inaccurate) portrayal of dissociative identity disorder, that leads to a battle in the center of the planet with an alien-human hybrid that cast a spell to destroy the planet with a meteor. All of these games possess smaller explorations of various identity issues, family dynamics/responsibilities, and light existentialism (sans FFVII) explored through their characters. FFVII is not contributing anything new on this front either, and – as you can see – is actually smaller in terms of geographical scope than all three Final Fantasies on the SNES. . So, regardless of which metric you’re using to define the term, nothing about FFVII’s size was noteworthy in its console generation, and certainly not the present one.

“The First 3D Final Fantasy”

Misleading size aside, FFVII still managed to be the first “3D” Final Fantasy - as promised - successfully translating the scope of the previous generation’s FF games into a new dimension……but only in the most literal sense. Remember those High-res backgrounds I mentioned? Well, FFVII consists almost entirely of exceedingly basic 3D models moving over (at the time) high-res, pre-rendered 2D backgrounds – you cannot rotate the camera or move into a 3^rd dimension. Consequently, despite being labeled as the first 3D Final Fantasy, very little in the game is actually three-dimensional. It’s more accurate to call FFVII and indeed, every PSX Final Fantasy game, for that matter, 2.5D – games whose gameplay only involves two dimensions, but utilize 3D models or environments instead of sprites/backgrounds – rather than a true 3D game – a game with 3D models and 3D environments – like the Final Fantasies of the PS2 era.* I optimistically assume that the lack of 3D environments was to make the game look better (due to Square’s inexperience with polygons), while saving on processing power – as was common practice in most RPGs of the time.

“Best Graphics”

Unfortunately, despite Square’s efforts, FFVII still has some of the worst out of battle graphics of any 3D game ever released on a game console, with characters bearing a stronger resemblance to a particular deformed one-eyed cartoon sailor than actual human beings – correction: “anime” human beings. The art style Tetsuya Nomura used for FFVII’s characters is distinctly anime-inspired, and mostly proportional, unlike the wispy ukiyo-e-like designs from Yoshitaka Amano. While this development is not inherently noteworthy, it leads to an incongruity exclusive to FFVII – the out of battle character models are completely different from those in combat. 

Unlike the atrocious field models, the combat models look similar to the official 2D art work for the game, and are quite impressive for the time. However, those models’ very existence confirms that Square was capable of modelling the characters accurately, yet deliberately chose not to do so outside of battle. Why would they choose to make their game look worse than it could have? Impossible for me to say for certain, though we can speculate based on one of the comments in this Famitsu interview regarding Final Fantasy VIII, specifically, this exchange:

Nomura: ...I thought that as FMVs are evolving, there is a limit to how far we can show characters as deformed.
Kitase: In VII, the characters in the field were deformed. But we were wondering whether we should use deformed characters. See, as the technique of FMVs improved, there could be better visual presentation. When there was deformed characters in the field but not in FMVs, there was a feeling of inconsistency. So this time, we wanted to make real-sized characters in FMV, field and battle. We used a 8-head body size. (Ed - this refers to the number of heads that would fit stacked on each other in a body)
Famitsu: If you use this size, I am worried that chocobos or moogles will stand out too much.
Kitase: We're not really worried about that. When we'll make it, that size difference will disappear. We thought to ourselves - this is how it always should have been! (laughs) When we first made the 8-sized characters walk on the field, we felt somewhat hesitant. But once you start drawing in this way, you get used to it. We want to change how people think of the field. Sure, a world with deformed characters is still fine, but we believe with realistic size we can expand the FF world.

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In the context of our question, I interpreted their statements to mean that they used chibi field models in FFVII because representative models are what they were used to working with in previous Final Fantasy games. I could be wrong, but I doubt it that seems to be what Nomura is implying with his admittance of the limitations of the chibi style, as well as Yoshinori Kitase's remarks about the team feeling hesitant to change to a more representative field style (it's also kind of neat that Yoshinori Kitase himself acknowledged the same inconsistency I noted earlier. He clearly paid attention to the experience they made with FFVII).

Interesting though this situation is, regardless of why it exists, the incongruity proliferates a multivalent problem with ramifications reaching far beyond graphical disparities. But, since this whole sub-section IS about graphics all we’ll note for the moment is that this change results in a game that looks like ass over half the time. And yet, as bad as that disparity is, it does not in and of itself invalidate the graphical superiority argument, because it’s possible for the in-battle graphics to be so impressive that they dwarf anything else seen in other games of the era. But the keyword there was “possible”; it didn’t actually happen. Empirically, the combat graphics of FFVII were cleanly surpassed by every subsequent game in the series, including the next two games on the PSX.

So, if FFVII at its best looks worse than FFVIII & FFIX, and its worst (again: half the time) compares unfavorably to literally every other 3D PSX game, how the hell is it praised for its graphics, even in hindsight? Three letters: FMV