Originally Posted by
Bolivar
Favourite cutscene: VII intro. (This is my favorite because I think it's the best directed. It starts off with space and what you later find out to be the cries of the planet, which fades into one person's face, and from that one face, the camera slowly pulls back to reveal an alley, a street, a block, a district, and an entire amazing city, the likes of which (again) you've never really seen before. The title logo comes up with the killer soundtrack accompanying it, as flashes of a moving train are interspersed. The cutscene closing with a seamless transition into the gameplay is the cherry on top for me.We've debated FFVII's merits and innovations to death, but the seamless transition between cutscene and gameplay is the one original contribution that critics can't deny. It's something that western developers on the cutting edge of high definition gaming today still struggle to achieve. The use of this technique as soon as the game begins made it very clear what kind of experience you were getting yourself into; you're never really sure where a cutscene ends or gameplay begins, because the action is happening across all of it. It was the birth of the cinematic RPG and the advent of the video game set piece. Other games at the time may have told a better story, while others perfected gameplay, but in 1997, Final Fantasy VII showed us where gaming was headed, 10 years and two generations before we really got there. It was a watershed moment and my favorite cutscene in the series.)
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