How much did Final Fantasy VII revolutionise the series?

[Wolf Kanno]

You should play it again and finish it. It's far deeper than you think it is. It's just not as preachy as VII . Once again I find something we will probably never agree upon I'm afraid. You speak of VII story as "deep and profound" yet you fail to see that I as well as many other people, don't feel this way. Due to technology, VII could tell more elaborate and complex stories. That does not necessarily mean they were good.

I love VII's world and it's central theme of Life (which is the only thing I feel is actually "deep" about this game) but I feel it's cast of characters are shallow and cliched ridden and it's plot is written in a confusing way to make people believe that's it's actually profound when in reality it's just superflous fluff created to make the game seem intellectually stimulating and to serve as ameans to keep the player mentally enthralled. To me, VII is no more deeper than any of the previous six installments of the franchise. But to be fair, I don;t feel any of the main line FF games are actually deep or profound, they are just fun and entertaining.

I like the way you debate. You do it in a very kind manner.

There is only one point I have to solely disagree with, and that is the characters.

I thought all the characters were very shallow at the beginning, but as the plot drove on, you could surely see some human-like traits sprouting up in the characters. By the end, you were so attached to all the people in the game because you knew who they were and what they were all about because you've been with them for the whole time. Heck, you get pretty damn attached to Aeris by the end of disk one because they did a pretty nice job of delving into her character before she died. But they didn't over do it because it left you wondering:

I wanted to know more about her!

So, you keep playing the game, in hopes Aeris might somehow magically be resurrected. But instead you find that you are really weaving through the characters, especially Cloud and Tifa. The end of the game really showed true emotions.

I'm afraid I'm not nearly as eloquent in real life but thank you for the compliment, as well as you Avarice.

As for your points, it comes down to personal opinion and taste at this point. Though I am afraid I can't emphasize specifically to your feelings concerning VII, I can at least do it from someone who has played many games and agree that it's these elements that keep us playing this wonderful genre.

VII's cast did little for me, though I still love Cid and the Turks very much

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.

I agree. And I do feel that many people (and I'm guilty of this too sometimes) that we mistake this debate and turn it into a debate of whether VII was actually a good game.

I don't feel VII is a revolution to the genre or series, but I do believe it's a solid game with excellent quality that holds up to this day.

Now I highly doubt you will stay quiet now...

haha, well I hope I don't dissapoint you, but I feel like I said everything I have to say. I just wanted to say I think this has been a top knotch debate, and I'm amazed that it hasn't devolved to us calling eachother fanboys (except for Avarice ). I have to admit, it's hard to challenge your counter-arguments, i think we're more on a misunderstanding than a disagreement. But yeah, i'm interested in where other people will take this, Dagger and Zora have both brought up good points, its been really interesting so far.

I'm a bit surprised, but I can see your point. I too will probably bow out as I've stated my main points. It seems continuing would only result in me repeating myself which is a clear indicator that the debate is mostly over. It all comes down to personal opinion but at least we may have all learned a bit more about each other.

This is truly one of the better debates I've been in outside of the XII forums. I hope this thread continues and who knows, maybe someone will find some new element we missed originally.