The Darkside of FF7

[Rain The Unknown]

Everyone always talks about the good guys but how about we talk about what makes a great ff story the villians with out them there would be no game so lets talk about stuff like who is your fav ff villian and do u think that they should have been stronger on the game

of course i see sephiroth as the greatest bad guy out there he is just and all around bada** and we all know it i think he would be able to beat any of the villians from any ff game and he would look cool doing it come on a guy who can use a move like super nova and just destroy anything that gets in his path but i was very disapointed in ffac i think the ending made sephiroth just look like a coward i would have liked to have changed the ending to more of sephiroth wining and the part where he stabs cloud we all know he could have easily took his life well thats my opinion on the subby tell me what u think

[RedPouch]

Hojo to me was the true villain of FF VII. He was the true mastermind and manipulator behind all the evil of Shinra, even moreso than Rufus. His twisted and corrupt ideas [and their execution] made everything possible, is ultimately responsible for Sephiroth.

Sephiroth was nothing more than a [weak] final boss you had to beat just because he had a bunch of power. What makes Sephiroth different than most FF villains is that he has no personality and virtually no characterization at all [even less than the Emperor from FF II], making his character completely uninteresting. In terms of raw power, he seems weaker in comparison to some of the other FF villains and certainly doesn't demonstrate any motivation. In FFAC he further demonstrates his lack of character and personality, and I'm further convinced he's just another generic woman-haired villain [are the Japanese ever going to get tired of this cliche?] that lacks a true goal ["sailing the cosmos like your mother"? Give me a break]. Sure his goals might sound grand, but they lack ambition and motivation in their own conception.

Of course this is just my opinion, but I personally found Kefka's "let's destroy everything" more interesting because of the character that it's attatched to. Most people here will probably disagree with me though.

[Mirage]

I think you should add punctuation.

[Elly]

yup Khalin i do disagree, in Crisis Core he gets more Character Development, though i also disagree with the original poster as Sephy was not Evil by any means the guy just went mad, and madness and evil are not the same thing but often one is confused for the other... i do have to agree though that Hojo was the true evil behind everything, Hojo was not a mad scientist, he was just straight out evil he cared for no one or anything beyond his work, the man had no morals...
Mirage is right try to use some puncuation, just because it's the internet does not mean you have to forget everything you learned in school, otherwise it just looks like incoherent babbeling, and it annoys others having to read lines multiple times to try and figure out what youre getting at...

[Roogle]

Well, isn't one of the revelations in Final Fantasy VII that the Sephiroth seen throughout the game is actually Jenova? That would mean that you only actually see Sephiroth in flashbacks and at the Northern Crater. Do people respect Sephiroth as a villain while counting all of the appearances of Jenova or do they just mean the person in the flashbacks and his appearance in the final dungeon?

As Elly mentioned, you see more character development for Sephiroth in other games, but Sephiroth has always had a large following for some reason.

[Elly]

technicaly according to the Ultimania Sephiroth was actualy so powerful that he was in control of the JENOVA pieces and not the other way around as many seem to specualte... so, considering Sephiroth was more powerful than a planet destroyer is kinda impressive, but he also had the benefit of absorbing the knowledge from the lifestream which made him that powerful in the first place... as for the fight in AC he was mearly in control of Kadaj, a posession of sorts, and FFVII has shown on multiple occasions that Sephiroths puppets just aren't that strong...

[Zaskull]

In the original game, none of the characters, including Sephiroth, had much development. However, I'm sure if the a remake (not to get off-topic) ever happened, more development and references/flashbacks to the rest of the compilation would be made to make up for the lack of character backgrounds and development.

[champagne supernova]

Sephiroth had quite a bit of character development in the Kalm flashback. He talks about not remembering a hometown, not having a family, how Dr Gast was his only father-figure and how he left. Sephiroth definitely came across as a very very lonely individual, stuck in the shell of a super-warrior. Then he comes across the Jenova project and his mind completely cracks.

Sephiroth's aura of invincibility is quite justified. His name is almost mentioned from the beginning of the game. And always as the greatest SOLDIER who ever lived. Then there comes the Shinra buildng where he (technically Jenova, although you don't know that at that stage) massacres the guards and the President. There's a huge build-up before you even know what he looks like. It kind of reminds me of Voldemort from Harry Potter, in that he is an invisible, malignant presence until much later in the book.

And Sephiroth's music is fairly epic. Definitely not the greatest song in the world (as some fanboys insist), but the entire composition gives an impression of an immensely powerful dark force. His look is also quite intimidating, especially when he walks through a WALL OF FIRE in Nibelheim. And he carries a six-foot long katana. That definitely suggests some serious power.

So I don't think Sephiroth's reputation comes from one single facet of the game, but as a combination of the whole. Kefka cannot compare merely because technology has created such an advantage for Sephiroth that he cannot overcome it. Although I don't understand how a character whose entire reason for wanting to destroy the world is because he is completely mad and therefore he can is deeper than someone who is a human experiment who has been lied to for his entire life. Oh, and who has the genetic make-up of an alien.

[RedPouch]

Sephiroth had quite a bit of character development in the Kalm flashback.

No offense, but one flashback does not a character make. I don't think this little teaspoon of "character history" counts as characterization.

Sephiroth's aura of invincibility is quite justified. His name is almost mentioned from the beginning of the game. And always as the greatest SOLDIER who ever lived.

Yeah... trust me, I remember. Repeating dry japanese cliches without foundation doesn't count as characterization in my opinion though.

There's a huge build-up before you even know what he looks like.

I wouldn't have had any problem if they had kept it this way.

And Sephiroth's music is fairly epic. Definitely not the greatest song in the world (as some fanboys insist), but the entire composition gives an impression of an immensely powerful dark force.

I can't really agree on this one either. I found his theme pretty annoying, unfortunately. I think the synth instruments they chose for it were poor. Granted, this team was very new to the Playstation's capability of music, but I'm just throwing it out there.

His look is also quite intimidating, especially when he walks through a WALL OF FIRE in Nibelheim. And he carries a six-foot long katana. That definitely suggests some serious power.

Again, I don't mean to sound offensive but I just don't find it very intimidating to see a woman-haired freak walk through fire with a six-foot-katana. Maybe I've watched too much anime, but silly Japanese cliches like this are "sprinkled" in animes all the time. There are still many ways to make a character seem intimidating, but I do not find this to be one of them.

yup Khalin i do disagree, in Crisis Core he gets more Character Development

Oh, that's alright Elly. I'll concede this point to you because I actually haven't played Crisis Core, so you're probably right about that one. I'm pretty much just going off of FF VII itself and info related directly to this game without any other outside information. I guess since you bring this up, I'll clarify that as far as FF VII goes [not counting Crisis Core or any of the other FF VII spin-offs that he appeared in], he didn't get much characterization at all, which I just found a bit annoying. I don't think I'll say it was due to technology limitations either, because instead of wasting their time on annoying, ridiculous minigames [and there were an awful lot of them] and unimportant plot twists like Yuffie [sorry, I'm still not a fan], Square could've been using all of that space to sew some more characterization in for characters that are actually important to the story [like Sephiroth!]. They had 3 entire discs for goodness' sake.

i do have to agree though that Hojo was the true evil behind everything, Hojo was not a mad scientist, he was just straight out evil he cared for no one or anything beyond his work, the man had no morals...

Yeah. I actually think it was a good idea for Square to place him as a boss in the end-game time frame, since it certainly elevates some importance with him. It shows that they didn't lose focus on what many would consider to be the true villain here. Although this is off-topic, but they probably should've made him at least somewhat difficult to kill.

Well, isn't one of the revelations in Final Fantasy VII that the Sephiroth seen throughout the game is actually Jenova?

Correct. You technically never see the "real" him until you get to the crater [not counting the flashback].

As Elly mentioned, you see more character development for Sephiroth in other games, but Sephiroth has always had a large following for some reason.

You see so little of Sephiroth's actual character [again, a 10 minute flashback does not a character make], that it's odd to see that so many people like Sephiroth. However, being the forum community person I am, I noticed that generally the audience that enjoys Sephiroth are either young girls that usually tend to have this thing about CloudxSephiroth [but not always], or young boys that seem to have a fascination with woman-haired villains that wield odd-looking katanas and walk through fire. I'm aware that not all Sephiroth fans are in those categories, so no need to remind me!

And in defense of Kefka: At least he managed to do a huge number on the world [creating a post-apocalyptic environment] and kill more than one important character before biting the dust. Also, his personality in the entire game is quite present. However, Kefka still isn't my favourite FF villain, and I was only naming him as an example. There are still better ones than Kefka in my opinion.

[Yar]

Sephiroth = Ultimecia

[Safer_Sephiroth]

If you look at all the end bosses in Final Fantasy then you see that most of them have God like powers and have become something more than they're charcter was originally. Like Ultimecia,Necron or Jecht they are not mere mortals. Also the final bosses might not appear until the very end and only appear in the narrative in flashbacks Sephiroth is a slight exception. The charcter is cool because we see him as a human before the end giving him more depth and i'm sure certain people identufy with his character and his insanity upon finding out who he is. He is the quintessential pin up manga bad guy with a big smurf off sword.

[RedPouch]

I honestly don't perceive any depth with Sephiroth's character. The fact that he started out "normal" doesn't seem to add very much at all. In FF VII alone, he had extremely limited overall characterization and thus struck me as rather dry and uninteresting. Sorry, I don't want to come off as a hateful pross or anything here, I just don't think I really enjoy anything about Sephiroth.

[Yar]

Sephiroth as a character just didn't click very well with me. As I played the game, I was sorta filled with apathy about him.

[Marshall Banana]

I don't know what more you need in order to hate him. He wipes out an entire village of innocent people in a tantrum and kills a beloved member of your party - along with other people at whim. He's completely merciless. I couldn't wait to destroy him!

Super Nova is uncalled for, though.

[Gullick]

I don't care what anyone says, Sephy was bad ass and always will be

I always found ShinRa company as a whole pretty ruthless, the way they destroyed an entire sector to kill one group of terrorists (with about 5 members in it) and the general 'we will control the world with our vast army' dictatorship feel.