Ok I will go into why I think the character development has better quality in ff7 than in xenogears.

Though the characters in Xenogears are deep and you find out alot about them the plot sets that trap on them (which many rpg's are guilty of) of creating characters that are put into odd situations and end up doing things that are a bit strange and unusual and out of character .

-18 year olds don't lead a ship and command a group of people in hopes of trying to take back his kingdom.

-16 year old boys are not part of a monestary

-16 year old girls are not part of a convent type atmosphere and are definitely not considered one of its leaders.

-18 year old girls do not command military units within an army

-29 year old men are not considered to be all knowledgeable and wise about the world

-People do not receive the title of Bishop by the age of 34

-29 year old men do not command an entire army for a country.



Now why I feel FF7's development is of better quality because it's characters are much easier for people of our world to relate to because they take on the personalities and have are dealing with the same kind of issues that people in our world deal with.

They pick a very good location to introduce you to the characters-i.e the slums- which is a location that everyone who plays the game can relate to and they can relate to how the people in those slums act because they know how people in the real world act in the slums.

They can understand why the Avalanche members want to get revenge on their government-because they feel that they have been repressed- And Avalanches way of getting that revenge seems very understandable.

Now after the Midgar section of the game all you basically do is just travel around finding things out about Sephiroth (which is not an over the top scenario thought up by the writers). And during that time you learn how each of the characters relate to each other in very good detail and why they want to join eachother in the fight. And also a very intriguing love triangle develops between Cloud, Tifa, and Aeris.

So in my opinion FF7's simplistic storyline made for very realistic characters and allowed you to get to know characters you could relate to.

On the other hand Xenogears complicated storyline tended to put it's cast of characters in rather odd situations. And though it was interesting learning things about them it didn't allow them to develop a cast of characters that the gamers could relate to.


And to top it all off though Xenogears soundtrack was good. FF7's soundtrack was absolutely timeless as far as video game music goes.

Who could ever forget Aeris's theme playing while she died and Sephiroth's theme to boot.