How much did Final Fantasy VII revolutionise the series?

[Zora]

Woo, read the whole thread. That takes determination.


Now for me, FFVII was not revolution. All it did was take older concepts, and expanded on them. Take FMV's for example. Correct me if I am wrong, but in Final Fantasy VI wasn't there a "FMV-esque SNES" cut-scene right after everyone escaped from the floating continent after Kefka abused the Warring Triad (it was in 2-D though, more specifically showing the planet being turned into the WoR)? Now I played the Advance version of FFVI (not the SNES), so it could have FFVIA only, but the point is Square tried to do a scene that was done differently than the typical S/NES cut-scene

What did FFVII do? It merely took the concept of FMV's, and used the PlaySation's power, to produce a high-quality FMV.

Actually, generally speaking, FFVII took CONCEPTS from previous RPG installments, and used the power from the PlayStation and making it better quality. One thing though, THE CONCEPT NEVER CHANGED. Only the quality/power of the concept change, but not the concept itself.

Now part of the term revolution is that it brings something radically new to the series. The only thing that FFVII brought, generally speaking, was power. That isn't something radically new. The concepts all remained the same, they were simply improved. NOT revolutionized.

Also, all the gameplay mechanics were just concepts taken from previous games. For example, Materia was a combination of Espers and Relics from FFVI IMO. The Limit Breaks were already done before. Heck, one could argue the biggest change in gameplay was 3 people instead of 4.

That aside, anything "NEW" about FFVII is merely a vastly improved idea from past RPG games, or something incredibly minor. Now the story I don't see as revolutionary. It was new, I will give you that (but every story is pretty new), but one could argue that Final Fantasy VI was complex, or Final Fantasy IV. Or Chrono Trigger. How complex a story is can't be defined. One could say CT is more complex than FFVII, or vica-versa. But it isn't enough to pass it off as a revolution. If so, every RPG could be argued a revolution.

Also it seems some people (typically those in favor of FFVII being revolutionary) seem to not understand the fact that a game doesn't need to be revolutionary in order to be GOOD. You can say FFVII is your favorite or is the best or whatnot, but it is an opinion through and through, and moreover it has nothing to do with how revolutionary it is. On a somewhat related note, how well a game sells has NOTHING to do with how revolutionary it is.

Movie games sell very well, and 99% of the time they aren't good games NOR revolutionary. Granted their sales are like fads (sell very high, and then fail to sell later).

So basically, sales have nothing to do with good, bad, or revolutionary a game is. It only shows one thing: the game is popular.