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Miscellaneous Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kudistos Megistos on 2010-09-01 19:47:57
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Why is Aeris' death so significant?
One of the most common comments one hears from less enlightened critics of FF7 is "all Sephiroth did was kill a flower girl". The critic will usually go on to say that his favourite villain did something far better and that the reaction Aeris' death has received is completely uncalled for. It goes without saying that these people have clearly missed something important, but what, exactly?
Aeris' death is a masterpiece of storytelling. To begin with, let's look at the setup: the timing and location.
Before Aeris dies, she goes missing. Cloud knows where she is and what she is doing. She has gone to the City of the Ancients to pray for Holy, the one thing that can stop Sephiroth. When they get there and see her, the party is naturally relieved. However, a danger immediately presents itself. Cloud is possessed and attacks Aeris with his sword. However, for the first time in the game, he is able to pull himself together and shake off Sephiroth's control. Once this is done, Cloud faces Aeris whilst she prays. The danger is over, it seems. They look into each other's eyes and all is at peace. Then, out of nowhere, disaster strikes. No music is playing at the time, which highlights the sudden violence of the act and the fact that is comes with no warning. The scene changes before the player realises what is going on and the player is left with a sense of helplessness and shock. What just happened? She died so quickly and so unexpectedly? Anyone who has ever lost a person, except maybe when they died after a very long and drawn-out illness, can attest to the stopping power of death. The more quickly and unexpectedly it happens, the greater the stunning effect. The timing is perfect.
It is also no accident that Sephiroth kills Aeris in a holy place whilst she is praying. It many cultures, holy places are places of sanctuary. Killing someone in a place of sanctuary is not only a crime against the murder victim, it is a crime against the gods. There are few crimes worse than killing someone in a sanctuary because it violates the one place in which people should feel safe. This adds to the feeling of helplessness created by the suddenness of her death. If one can not be safe in a place of sanctuary, where can one be safe? If she had been killed in a random town or on the world map, the effect would not have been the same, in much the same way that being attacked in an unfamiliar place tends to have less of an affect on people than being attacked in their homes. Sephiroth shows that he has no respect for any laws and is willing and able to kill anyone at any time and in any place.
In fact, it is even worse than this. She was not only in a sanctuary and praying, but she was praying for the one things that could save the world. The only hope the world has seems to be shattered at that point. Sephiroth has seen her in the middle of the only plan for victory, something Aeris' may have spent year preparing for, and has ruthlessly destroyed that hope with an overwhelming display of shock and awe. This adds even more to the helplessness. There was one plan, one thing that could stop him, and he took seconds to foil it.
We should also look at how this affects Cloud. He has been at the mercy of Sephiroth for years, and mercy is something Sephiroth lacks. It seems to be yet another item in a long line of crimes against Cloud that Sephiroth has committed. Cloud must be wondering why Sephiroth has such a grudge against him. Sephiroth burnt down Cloud's hometown, breaking all his link to the past and killing his mother. Sephiroth had used Cloud as a puppet and was already making him doubt who he was and whether he was in control of his actions. One wonders whether it was simply out of sadism that Sephiroth allowed AVALANCHE to get the black materia instead of sending a flunky to solve the puzzles for him. Perhaps Sephiroth got some joy from letting Cloud think he was saving the world and then forcing him to hand it over, leading him to think instead that he doomed the world.
This must be the greatest crime against Cloud that Sephiroth commits. As we have seen, his timing is brilliant. He lets Cloud think that everything is OK and that he has finally overcome Sephiroth's control. Then, WHAM! In an instant, Cloud's world is torn apart and for the second time, the most important person in his life is killed by Sephiroth.
Let's also look at the significance of Aeris' character. Had any of the characters been murdered in the City of the Ancients, it would have hit the player hard. But Aeris has a special significance.
Firstly, her personality is bright and cheerful, and she is innocent and well-meaning. Although she knows how to defend herself, Aeris is likely to be the character the player feels most protective towards. It is no surprise that in visual novels, the cute, kind and innocent girl who does her best to make everyone happy will nearly always be the perpetrator or the victim of some horrible crime. Usually both. We feel especially violated when these characters are involved in violence because of our image of them. Aeris was not only killed in a sanctuary; she *was* a sanctuary. Aeris is the antithesis of pain, violence and death, so it is all the more shocking when she is killed.
However, that is not the most important thing about her character that one must note. The most important thing is her role in the wider world of FF7.
Firstly, she is the last of her kind. This means that Sephiroth not only commits murder; he commits genocide. He has finished off the last Cetra in existence.
Secondly, Aeris, as a Cetra, has a unique effect on the world of FF7. FF7 has an environmental message, and it is made clear by many characters, both good and bad, that humans are bad for the planet. They suck out its life to use as energy and they were the ones seen by Sephiroth as responsible for the near extermination of the Cetra 2000 years ago.
Aeris is the opposite of this. I couldn't help but notice just how much of a contrast there was between where Aeris lived and the rest of Midgar. Midgar is the ultimate example of the harm that humans are doing to the planet. There are only two places in Midgar where flowers grow and only two places in the slums where one sees sunlight: Aeris' house and the church in sector 5. If one runs around in the sector 5 slums, one will be conscious of the massive change in atmosphere when one goes from the seedy, dead, brown cityscape of the rest of the slum and into Aeris house. The change is huge. Aeris seems to be the one thing that can make flowers grow in the slums and, as we have seen earlier, offers respite from the gloom of day-to-day life in Midgar. Her job as flower girl is interesting because only she can be a flower girl. Without Aeris, I cannot see the flowers blooming for much longer in Midgar.
Aeris, then represents hope and life within the FF7 world. Where everything else is dangerous, she is safe. Where everywhere else is brown and dead, her places are green and blooming. As long as Aeris is around, flowers can grow in the most depressing place in the world, and hope can not die.
Therefore, Sephiroth not only killed the planet's hope by stopping her from summoning Holy, he killed it by killing its human form. He killed the one thing that made everything better. He put out the one light in a world of darkness.
Let's see Kefka top that.
Questions? Comments? inb4 "hurr, emo"
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Also, she's hot.
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Very well worded, and I agree wholeheartedly.
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her places are green and blooming
Atleast we can all agree on that.
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her places are green and blooming
Atleast we can all agree on that.
Not as much as Tifa's places, unfortunately.
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Still talking places they live, or places on their bodies? Hehe, if the latter, I'd personally go for Tifa, the overly innocent ones just aren't my type.
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We've moved onto the latter.
Also, is it me, or is Aeris the only character whose design improved from FF7 to AC and CC? She was hot in CC and I wanted to do disgusting and disturbing things to her and have her do equally disgusting and disturbing things to me.
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Tiffa looked good in AC too, though they didn't make her quite as "busty" in AC, it made her a bit more proportioned to me. I'd take them both on for some fun, at the same time ;)
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We've moved onto the latter.
Also, is it me, or is Aeris the only character whose design improved from FF7 to AC and CC? She was hot in CC and I wanted to do disgusting and disturbing things to her and have her do equally disgusting and disturbing things to me.
Is the cowgirl Tifa included? I like her design in CC when it looked high res than the original game. :)
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Such a pedo! She was underage! Haha
Edit:
Tifa Lockheart
Job: Bar Hostess, AVALANCE member
Age: 20
Weapon: Glove
Height: 5’4”
Birthdate: May 3
Birthplace: Nibelheim
Blood Type: B
Bright and optimistic, Tifa always cheers up the others when they’re down. But don’t let her looks fool you, she can decimate almost any enemy with her fists. She is one of the main members of AVALANCHE. She and Cloud were childhood friends, and although she has strong feelings for him, she would never admit it.
CC took place five years previous so she would have been 15, just proving my point.
Edit Edit: That was just a joke, I notice from your profile you're 16, so right in your age bracket :P
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Hey, liking 15-year-olds isn't paedophilia, it's ephebophilia! It's an important distinction! ;D
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No, epedophelia is like the animated pixels of 15 year old girls :P
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Does anyone find it ironic that I started a serious thread and someone else turned it into a discussion about paedophilia? Usually it's the other way around ;D
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Anyway... back to the topic... Had Sepiroth not killed Aeris, could she have in fact summoned Holy, or was it Sepiroth's killing of Aeris that was the lynch pin for allowing his own defeat?
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Holy was summoned, but was being blocked by the original Sephiroth, the "Sephiroth" that killed Aeris was one of his lackey puppets. What did him in was underestimating how far Cloud and company would grow in power before the final showdown, if he was truly smart he would have finished them off with the puppet himself on the ship between Junon and Costa Del Sol.
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Holy was summoned, but was being blocked by the original Sephiroth, the "Sephiroth" that killed Aeris was one of his lackey puppets. What did him in was underestimating how far Cloud and company would grow in power before the final showdown, if he was truly smart he would have finished them off with the puppet himself on the ship between Junon and Costa Del Sol.
indeed, but that would make for a lousy game. :P
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After reading it all, concerning topic not pedo-offtop I say you must be a critic of any kind as the story was quite simple, events were simple too, yet you describe it with all hi words. It's like talking a few hours about wine taste after spitting it out, instead of finishing the bottle without wasting a drop. Soo it's considered as all high and civilized, yet it's fairly useless and no fun:P.
Maybe I'm somewhat simple minded in opposite to being named artist, but from perspective of someone who sometimes create stuff for others I feel like buying a game in which you shoot to pro critics, as they take somebody's work and rip it all from fun trying to make it monumental adding deeper meanings to every part of it. Playing the game after over 10 years from it's release is enough as a quality mark.=]
As far as I like FFVII and characters designed for the story my answer for the topic is short - "it isn't". Aerith death was just a turn point in the story it could be anything else really, a shock in the moment game started to be repetative. Something like that was often used in plays, movies, manga/animes even some games it just happen to be first in a game that widely succeded on western market. Game is good, but trully Aerith death in it is overpriced. It rather show more bad and low things than hi and symbolic. I mean that it clearly shows that (mainly)western teens are soo far from true life, that they can fall in love with highly unrealistic game character and burn with anger through tears when she dies. Also Aerith was clearly shown smiling when she was dying, most likely like somebody wrote already, she knew she must die to summon holy, ancients had different ways of looking at life and the world, surely they weren't soo materialistic in all the meaning of it. Killing Aerith surely made an enemy for life from Cloud and eventually player in love in her, but it had not much to do with actuall thoughts about Seph. Sephiroth despise all life, more to say all human life, somewhat like that asian guy that got shoot today in Discovery studio. Even while living like one of humans for most of his life with the moment he turned his mind against all humanity, all humanity taken him as enemy. Nothing much more about that. Humans slowly destroy everything that's against their ways, kill those that want to stop them completely.
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After reading it all, concerning topic not pedo-offtop I say you must be a critic of any kind as the story was quite simple, events were simple too, yet you describe it with all hi words. It's like talking a few hours about wine taste after spitting it out, instead of finishing the bottle without wasting a drop. Soo it's considered as all high and civilized, yet it's fairly useless and no fun:P.
Maybe I'm somewhat simple minded in opposite to being named artist, but from perspective of someone who sometimes create stuff for others I feel like buying a game in which you shoot to pro critics, as they take somebody's work and rip it all from fun trying to make it monumental adding deeper meanings to every part of it. Playing the game after over 10 years from it's release is enough as a quality mark.=]
As far as I like FFVII and characters designed for the story my answer for the topic is short - "it isn't". Aerith death was just a turn point in the story it could be anything else really, a shock in the moment game started to be repetative. Something like that was often used in plays, movies, manga/animes even some games it just happen to be first in a game that widely succeded on western market. Game is good, but trully Aerith death in it is overpriced. It rather show more bad and low things than hi and symbolic. I mean that it clearly shows that (mainly)western teens are soo far from true life, that they can fall in love with highly unrealistic game character and burn with anger through tears when she dies. Also Aerith was clearly shown smiling when she was dying, most likely like somebody wrote already, she knew she must die to summon holy, ancients had different ways of looking at life and the world, surely they weren't soo materialistic in all the meaning of it. Killing Aerith surely made an enemy for life from Cloud and eventually player in love in her, but it had not much to do with actuall thoughts about Seph. Sephiroth despise all life, more to say all human life, somewhat like that asian guy that got shoot today in Discovery studio. Even while living like one of humans for most of his life with the moment he turned his mind against all humanity, all humanity taken him as enemy. Nothing much more about that. Humans slowly destroy everything that's against their ways, kill those that want to stop them completely.
NO U! 8)
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Oh, I love the game, and what I'm talking about is based on a third person perspective using hind sight as I've beaten the game more times then I can count and have almost memorized everything in the game, but it's still fun to play for me and is a lot like watching a favorite movie again and again when you already have it memorized word for word, scene for scene (I'm guilty of that as well).
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Oh, I love the game, and what I'm talking about is based on a third person perspective using hind sight as I've beaten the game more times then I can count and have almost memorized everything in the game, but it's still fun to play for me and is a lot like watching a favorite movie again and again when you already have it memorized word for word, scene for scene (I'm guilty of that as well).
FF7 would have been better if it'd had several "routes" like a VN.
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Having read the OP (took a long time >:( at least it was intelligent)...
You've convinced me that there was some thought put into her character, the fact that the character dies, with a specific timing and location. Thinking about it that way, there was a special impact to her being killed in the Forgotten Capitol, in a very... tranquil scene, I want to say. (No music, quiet sound effects... and then the sick fact that you have Aerith's joyful theme playing throughout the moments that follow. That, in particular, defined the "pathos" of the scene.)
To me, it would've been more obvious to make Cloud kill her at the Northern Crater after giving Sephiroth the Black Materia, but even that wouldn't have been dramatic enough. The way they did it was nearly perfect.
However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about. I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died. No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed. Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.
Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
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However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about. I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died. No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed. Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.
Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
Yes, this is what they don't understand. You can't judge the villainousness of a deed by just looking at the number of people someone kills; that's childish. If someone kills one person that you care about, you'll hate them more than someone who drops a nuclear bomb on a city half way across the world, and a villain killing one person in a profoundly significant way is more effective than a villain killing a million nobodies.
I think this illustrates the general transition between FF6 and FF7. The latter took much from the former, but everything was so much more refined and mature. Somewhere between 1994 and 1997, Squaresoft's writers grew up. Sadly, more mature storytelling is much easier to misunderstand.
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Because it was well written story and we actually gave a shit. because the direction, the story, the music all came together.
That's why. Cut out the baloney :)
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Very succinct :)
From a graphical perspective, it also helps that FF7 was in 3D. If it were made in a similar style to FF6, Aerith's death would've been much less dramatic.
The significance of the moment wouldn't even be obtainable with 2D sprites. The more moving moments in earlier Final Fantasy games were due to effective dialogue. The Aerith Death Scene takes a very different approach.
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Because it was well written story and we actually gave a sh*t. because the direction, the story, the music all came together.
That's why. Cut out the baloney :)
Pfft, Northerners ::)
Very succinct :)
From a graphical perspective, it also helps that FF7 was in 3D. If it were made in a similar style to FF6, Aerith's death would've been much less dramatic.
The significance of the moment wouldn't even be obtainable with 2D sprites. The more moving moments in earlier Final Fantasy games were due to effective dialogue. The Aerith Death Scene takes a very different approach.
You'd be surprised what you can do with meagre resources. I doubt there'd have been a huge difference. Only a small part of what made it dramatic was the visual setup, anyway.
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However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about. I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died. No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed. Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.
Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
Yes, this is what they don't understand. You can't judge the villainousness of a deed by just looking at the number of people someone kills; that's childish. If someone kills one person that you care about, you'll hate them more than someone who drops a nuclear bomb on a city half way across the world, and a villain killing one person in a profoundly significant way is more effective than a villain killing a million nobodies.
I think this illustrates the general transition between FF6 and FF7. The latter took much from the former, but everything was so much more refined and mature. Somewhere between 1994 and 1997, Squaresoft's writers grew up. Sadly, more mature storytelling is much easier to misunderstand.
Especially since nobody Kefka killed was as hot as Aeristh. Seriously.
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Especially since nobody Kefka killed was as hot as Aeristh. Seriously.
I see you have found a compromise to the Aeris/Aerith issue haha ;D Sounds like a guy pissed up though....
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come to think of it, the writer(s) play with this emotion a couple of times. i recall Tifa's father being killed and her outrage and subsequently clouds. you gotta wonder (and give very serious appreciation and more mushy stuff i cant bring to mind at the moment) if the producer Hironobu Sakaguchi had not decided to draw on his life at the time and put that into the games development, would we still be in such love with the game that we are (special thank you to the guys behind Qgears for bringing this information to my attention).
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you gotta wonder (and give very serious appreciation and more mushy stuff i cant bring to mind at the moment) if the producer Hironobu Sakaguchi had not decided to draw on his life at the time and put that into the games development, would we still be in such love with the game that we are
No.
The answer is that simple. One of the points of Aeris' death was that it was completely meaningless. The player lost something and gained nothing in return. It was just needless cruelty that you couldn't do anything about, just watch. That was how Sakaguchi felt about death after he lost his mother.
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It was also done that way because the writers wanted it to be less like hollywood. That they wanted maximum impact and they wanted it to reflect what can happen in real life... you can just die, that's it.
In a May 2003 issue of Edge Magazine, Kitase had this to say about Aerith's death:
"People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling, but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much, you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming, I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."
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that reminds me of silent hill 3 where you have a confessional scene, where you can choose to forgive or not to the person making a confession about her sins.
neither choice is the right one, and it was also inspired by real life experience of one of the devs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6EWqCscyc#t=22m18s )
i guess many games have events inspired by real life experiences of the developers.
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that reminds me of silent hill 3 where you have a confessional scene, where you can choose to forgive or not to the person making a confession about her sins.
neither choice is the right one, and it was also inspired by real life experience of one of the devs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6EWqCscyc#t=22m18s )
i guess many games have events inspired by real life experiences of the developers.
It isn't that big of a mystery :P
If developers just sat around pulling ideas out of their asses instead of their heads, we'd have a lot of games with no connection to the real world whatsoever, no emotion, just mindless, crazy, nothingness. So be grateful that *most* devs now-days still appreciate what personal experience can bring to the table. Faked emotion is the worst kind in gaming/movies so when I play games that have great play, but no story/emotion, I feel a little disappointed, but when I play a game that has great play, and totally crap-emotions, I get ticked off lol.
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Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
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Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
I agree with you man. I'll pretty much more prefer a new Warcraft 4 with another great storyline rather than WoW.
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Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
I agree with you man. I'll pretty much more prefer a new Warcraft 4 with another great storyline rather than WoW.
Really doubt that's going to happen anytime soon ever. With how popular it is, they may feel that all they'll ever need now is occasional updates and an expansion once in a blue moon. Tis very sad :(
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It's been said that after Diablo 3 is released. WC4 will be next.
About 2 or 3 years ago I read that it was in the "Infant Stage" Hoping they're planning to hit us with a shocker.
Warcraft had one of the greatest story-lines ever in my book, and the game was so well put-together.
Not to mention Blizzards CGI crew (even back in the days of WC2) is totally off the charts. Square-Enix can step aside to Blizzard.
Granted FF13 Graphics are good, but they're empty, they feel incomplete. Go watch the Warcraft 3 Cinematics. There's so much personality to those movies.
Word on the street (and at blizzcon in 2006 or 7) is that Legendary is teaming up with Blizzard to create a movie. Live action and CGI. Fingers crossed that one day it actually gets done lol.
If you compare Square's Cinematics from 7 to 10 to 13
You notice that 7 is the most original
in ff10 the characters became more stereotypical, and in 13 they were just people that you had no connection with.
That moment when Aeris dies is probably one of the single most real elements of gaming, and movie business. The fact that she dies and everyone experiences a great loss is only half the show. The fact that FF7's characters are designed to look like cartoons and not real people is the other half. Statistically, it has been proven that people in general, while watching animated movies, like it when things that are noticeably different from humans, go through human situations. See: Toy Story V.S. The Polar Express. Look how much people hate AC (aside from the fact that they messed up their own storyline). Notice how people Liked Avatar so much? Everything that was animated was noticeably separate from life as we know it.
It's a statistically proven thing. The reason I bring it up is because I have a Film-Fiction&History class and that's a topic that comes up a lot. "Why do we enjoy it when inanimate objects like cars have lives in the animated world, but not animated people?"
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Statistically, it has been proven that people in general, while watching animated movies, like it when things that are noticeably different from humans, go through human situations.
Does this include animals being smartasses, such as in every Dreamworks CGI film ever?
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Hahaha, I would assume so :P
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I actually had a theory about why we feels more strongly for FF7's weird-looking characters when I argued that we should go with chibi designs in the game instead of full-size ones.
Most of the non-human things we sympathise with are cute in some way. We sympathise more with cute things because they are paedomorphic: they remind us of children. When we're dealing with children, our protective instincts come out, meaning that we are moved more by FF7's chibi characters than we would be if realistic-looking ones were doing the same thing.
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Durr, after reading through most of the thread ( I seriously felt like my brain was melting and running out of my ears towards the end of page 1 ) I can safely say that what OP did in his post, I could do for pretty much any pre-ff10 game, maybe except for FF1. And some dragon quest games as well. You simply described the whole thing in detail from a perspective YOU assume to be the correct one. It all depends on what you are looking for in a game. I for instance, I don't want any emotional impact or drama. I simply want a villain that destroys, destroys and destroys because, honestly, it's FUN to destroy things and kill people. I don't need a villain with some extreme ulterior motive, a plot with forced twists and drama that was only there for the sake of drama. Sure, drama sells and a lot of people are suckers for that, but there are also people that simply don't care.
What if you don't like cloud and Aerith? what if you laughed at the misery the character went through because you marvel at the sheer genius and trickery of the villain?
I never really 'cared' that Aerith died beside the fact that they took out my best mage that had coincidentally the best limits. Call me cold or dumb, whatever you want ( I won't care either way ), but I much prefer villains like Kefka or Kuja. Or, for instance, Zeromous.
I wont include Ultimecia because, even though her trickery and sheer amount of manipulation is beyond awesome, the story has too many holes to compensate for lack of originality.
Sephiroth is not a bad villain. He's pretty good. But the whole "OMG AERITHS DEATH IS SO GODDAMN IMPORTANT" thing just bores the hell outta me. If they hadn't done that, I would have liked the game more.
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I suppose that if you don't want emotional impact or drama, then you won't get anything out of that scene, but some of us do. Don't downplay the importance of something just because it isn't your cup of tea. It's like saying Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is just some bloke slamming down on some piano keys and then, after hearing someone explain how this creates music, saying "hurr I don't like music, I just like slamming on piano keys".
Ironically, you've done just what you seem to be accusing me of doing; I explain why this scene is important to a lot of people and you shit on it just because it isn't your thing. I didn't say that everyone has to love this scene, but what I do ask is that people at least appreciate what other people see in it instead of saying "durr, he just killed a flower girl; my villain is better because he has a higher kill count. I don't care about story or motive".
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Every Villain has an ulterior motive, simply because he/she/it has to, the villain must have goal to accomplish and a reason for completing that goal.
A game where a guy/girl/thing gets up one morning and says "You know what? Today, I'm going to do my best to kill everyone on the planet!" would be fun to play for shits and giggles when you're bored. The most similar game I can think of at the moment is Castle Crashers.
In my own personal opinion, the best villain in gaming is probably Arthas Menethil (better known in World of Warcraft as The Lich King) from the Warcraft 3 series. He was the original Hero of the game, turned evil by lust. Yes, he did ultimately want to kill everything, and it was a fun game to play with a great story.
Getting back on-topic, Games without story won't last long. War-game players love Halo and/or Call of Duty because they have a campaign with a decent story (personal opinion) that appeals to the players.
A game has to be able to answer questions like "Why am I killing these people?" or "Why are these people trying to kill me?"
A game also must consist of some drama. Life is drama. People like something that they can relate to or understand. You know that (usually) there is a hero and a villain. You also (usually) know that the hero will overcome the villain's obstacles no matter what. Drama is the way those events are played out. If it was just a game where a guy steals your bagel, and immediately after he does it you kill him and take your bagel back, it would be entertaining once or twice (I mean come on, it would at least be humorous to play a few times) but it will never make it in the industry.
Edit: Also, a game with no emotional impact? That isn't a game, that's a program. I'm not being biased to games with intricate stories, just saying that no matter what the game is it should invoke emotional responses. Whether that response be anger, love, curiosity (if you can call that an emotion), joy, sadness etc., is besides the point because it is an emotional response.
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a game that is fun, has no emotion, and no drama? I find it hard to think of one, but Pong, Space Invaders, and Asteroids come to mind. No story at all, you just play the game. I would include pacman, but the ghosts DID steal Ms Pacman, so i guess that counts as drama. Books are the same way, if no one cared we would all be happy reading See Spot Run and never read another book.
games have drama because most players prefer it, and it makes the experience more real. I love the occasional homicidal lunatic (Dark Knight anyone?) but it is very difficult to pull off a truly evil character, much more so than a sickly sweet good one.
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Without a storyline, I personally wouldn't enjoy a game for very long. Even the under-developed storyline of FFI, which basically existed for the purpose of letting you know where to go and when, did a lot for it because it feels like there is some purpose in playing the game. Even though it's a world of fiction, where nothing exists and nothing matters, it mustn't be allowed to feel meaningless or else many gamers like myself will lose interest.
And I literally just reiterated every other post in this thread :P
Let me use FF6 as an example. I'll admit it - I thought Kefka was pretty awesome while I was playing through that game, in my own little immature way. His personality had no dimension, but that was fine by me. He was the drama and the comic relief at the same time. He put the characters who did have some personality through a lot of pain and grief. Yes, he tore apart the world, but I wouldn't have cared about that if it hadn't affected the mood of the game. In other words, I liked him because he provided a lot of the drama, which was reflected in the other characters. All the while, his attitude (especially while killing Gestahl) cracked me up. The way he can get you to laugh as he is through all the terror is the only level of empathy I ever experienced with him directly, and it was enough to make me appreciate him as a villain. Yet the deeper characters such as Terra and Celes kept me from becoming too emotionally detached from the whole thing.
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Without a storyline, I personally wouldn't enjoy a game for very long.
I simply do not understand this. I've probably invested more hours in Tetris and Panel De Pon than most other games, and they are puzzles with no story whatsoever! Hell, my absolute favorite game, Left 4 Dead 2, has a paper-thin story with shit for character development and zero drama.
For an RPG, a story is a must, and a good story is a plus, but for games like Bad Dudes, the plot adds nothing, and in the case of games like Dr. Mario 64, the plot just gets in the way of the game.
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With an RPG a story is needed but I am not so sure how much it matters. I absolutely love BOF3 but its story is a little on the basic side.
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I've probably invested more hours in Tetris and Panel De Pon than most other games, and they are puzzles with no story whatsoever!
Touché. I had been of the mind of the general consensus. I now must retract my thoughts! I spent an entire year playing nothing but Snood and Super Bounce Out.
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a game that is fun, has no emotion, and no drama? I find it hard to think of one, but Pong, Space Invaders, and Asteroids come to mind. No story at all, you just play the game. I would include pacman, but the ghosts DID steal Ms Pacman, so i guess that counts as drama. Books are the same way, if no one cared we would all be happy reading See Spot Run and never read another book.
um Space Invaders... "aliens attacking? MY PLANET?! DIE YOU SONS OF BITCHES!"
i think something like that is the emotion they were going for in that one. but true.. as for pong it must have been the joy emotion in the PvP aspect of the game. "ha! i beat you!" that kinda thing.
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It is very simple, Kefka is better because Sephiroth DOES NOTHING! he has no notable quotables, he gets everything wrong (no you're not an Ancient) and all he really does that pisses you off is kill Aerith. How much more impersonal can you get then hiding in the arctic and summoning a meteor in safety and security? With FF6 they slowly nurtured the player's hatred of Kefka and all of the characters had a reason to fight him. Why does red 13 or Cait Sith care about Sephiroth? Look at vincent. All he says is I don't care about anything and he goes back to his casket until you try and leave and then he has a sudden and unexplained change of heart. FF6 had a WAY better story while FF7s was poorly explained and full of long drawn out portions where nothing happened FF6 had a story that was non-stop and far stronger on character development, for both good guys and bad guys. The idea that FF7 story was more mature is garbage. It was poorly done except for a couple real gems. FF6 story was all gems.
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It is very simple, Kefka is better because Sephiroth DOES NOTHING! he has no notable quotables, he gets everything wrong (no you're not an Ancient) and all he really does that pisses you off is kill Aerith. How much more impersonal can you get then hiding in the arctic and summoning a meteor in safety and security? With FF6 they slowly nurtured the player's hatred of Kefka and all of the characters had a reason to fight him. Why does red 13 or Cait Sith care about Sephiroth? Look at vincent. All he says is I don't care about anything and he goes back to his casket until you try and leave and then he has a sudden and unexplained change of heart. FF6 had a WAY better story while FF7s was poorly explained and full of long drawn out portions where nothing happened FF6 had a story that was non-stop and far stronger on character development, for both good guys and bad guys. The idea that FF7 story was more mature is garbage. It was poorly done except for a couple real gems. FF6 story was all gems.
why is it everywhere i go people with the word "amazing" in there usernames seem to troll like crazy, have you actually played FF7, they give a very good saddening story (a full story i might add) for vincents introverted attitude, as for sephiroth, you really can't blame him for getting things wrong when the other villians of the story (yes, there is more than one villian) go out of there way to make sure Sephiroth didn't know the truths. for instance, imagine a young sephiroth, now imagine if the walking monkey in glasses (Hoji) walked up to sephiroth and said "i'm your father and i'm proud of you" instead of saying "GET IN THE TRAINING ROOM AND KILL A BUNCH OF SUPER MONSTERS WHILE I LAUGH AND TYPE ON COMPUTERS". what if someone had the brains to walk up to sephiroth and explain things to him, rather than him having to find out from a bunch of books in an old mansion and realizing no one cared about him, ever. i dislike borrowing from crisis core, but you also must incorporate the fact that he loses his two only friends, which, to someone who is as introverted as he, CAN lead someone to become relatively weak in the mind, which of course, can lead to a full snap. then he goes about taking his vengeance on the people who he believes are responsible for taking his entire race from him (at this point reason no longer works, simply saying "your not a cetra" won't work). he messes with the main characters mind constantly, not because he had to, but simply because of his hatred, he then takes away an innocent girl who only wanted the world to keep on going, not to mention a serious love interest to the main character, this combined with him making sure cloud knows that if sephiroth hadn't done it, Cloud eventually would have himself. then he prepared to do exactly what kefka did, but instead of doing it over a time, he planned to do it in one fell swoop, meteor hits and BAM! instant vengeance and sephiroth becomes a god, should his plan have succeeded, he also likely would have been completely immortal i might add. and finally, the last thing to note (yes this is important) is how he is defeated. to steal from one of kudistos's arguements, it was Sephiroth's arrogance that defeated him. if he had decided to do so, he could have easily destroyed the entire party many times, but his arrogance wouldn't let him, he enjoyed playing with cloud's mind, enjoyed watching the suffering, all the while cooped up in a nice little ice haven, in the end it wasn't only cloud and friends that stopped him (if he can ever truly be stopped) it was his own foolish arrogance, which leaves him with that weakness, and every good villian should have one good weakness for the stories sake.
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It is very simple, Kefka is better because Sephiroth DOES NOTHING! he has no notable quotables, he gets everything wrong (no you're not an Ancient) and all he really does that pisses you off is kill Aerith. How much more impersonal can you get then hiding in the arctic and summoning a meteor in safety and security? With FF6 they slowly nurtured the player's hatred of Kefka and all of the characters had a reason to fight him. Why does red 13 or Cait Sith care about Sephiroth? Look at vincent. All he says is I don't care about anything and he goes back to his casket until you try and leave and then he has a sudden and unexplained change of heart. FF6 had a WAY better story while FF7s was poorly explained and full of long drawn out portions where nothing happened FF6 had a story that was non-stop and far stronger on character development, for both good guys and bad guys. The idea that FF7 story was more mature is garbage. It was poorly done except for a couple real gems. FF6 story was all gems.
Someone's butt is hurt. And someone doesn't know what makes a good story. I also suspect that someone didn't play FF7 and is piecing together what he knows of the story from arguments he's seen on internet forums.
Also,
>FF6
>character development
(http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/9168/kagaminexasperated.jpg)
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Wall of Text
Wall of Text
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tl;dr
I would post my own wall of text, but it doesn't look like this is going to progress all that much. It'd be great if the arguments could be condensed a bit and the "Enter" and "Shift" buttons on the keyboard could be used less sparingly.
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FF7 is the only Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk Final Fantasy.. infact I did not enjoy any of the other ones. Tried I to XII and yes.. some were decent but FF7 was different.. people who did not even like RPG games like it. My Dad even played it for years. But as for the real topic.. why is Aeris death so significant.. well there are a few reasons.. Cloud's love triangle between Tifa and Aeris is over, you're losing a valuable party member and her death changes Cloud for years. He doesn't really come to peace with it until the end of Advent Children. I would say her death is pretty $#%%ing significant.
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Wall of Text
Wall of Text
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tl;dr
I would post my own wall of text, but it doesn't look like this is going to progress all that much. It'd be great if the arguments could be condensed a bit and the "Enter" and "Shift" buttons on the keyboard could be used less sparingly.
I apologize, i feel so ashamed
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Video games, more so than any other form of media, allows a person to feel a connection to the characters in the story. Sephiroth may not be the greatest villain ever created, but he was "real." All his life he was raised a SOLDIER and taught to life his life in a specific was, some could say he was brainwashed, until he finally found out the truth, causing him to finally snap. As for his "2-Dness," as confirmed by the FF7 Ultimania Omega, there is very little actual screen time with the real Sephiroth, he may be controlling Jenova, who took on his form, but Jenova IS a 2-D character, meant to be nothing more than a pure animal that only exists to kill(much like Kefka).
In my opinion, the fact that Kefka was able to kill so many people is not a testament to how great Kefka is, but rather the to the shortcomings of the heroes who couldn't stop him. If Sephiroth were given the same chance, he would not have left the world in a state in which it could recover.
Finally, character deaths do amazing things for a story. It gives the player the same sense of desperation and hopelessness that the character must be feeling; that you are not an invincible team that has no possible way of loosing. As it has been said to death, the death of a million strangers could never feel the same as the death of a friend. Aeris' death was so significant because she was the first true video game friend to die.
*looks at his wall of text*
ehh, might as well stop here 8-)
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"blah blah blah"
That's what I read.
You know what the pathetic thing is? You posting this on a forum where it's 99% consisted of FF7.
/facepalm
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"blah blah blah"
That's what I read.
You know what the pathetic thing is? You posting this on a forum where it's 99% consisted of FF7.
/facepalm
Easy there Chuck Norris
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@athleticbear
Sorry if I went a lil far there, but seeing people posting that "FF7 sucks" and this and that, yes, I know everyone's entitled to their opinion, but come on, does it have to be on a forum where it's FF7 based?
It's like going to a church and bashing on about religion. *sigh*
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@athleticbear
Sorry if I went a lil far there, but seeing people posting that "FF7 sucks" and this and that, yes, I know everyone's entitled to their opinion, but come on, does it have to be on a forum where it's FF7 based?
It's like going to a church and bashing on about religion. *sigh*
or going to sqeenix and bashing long haired villians :P
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@athleticbear
Sorry if I went a lil far there, but seeing people posting that "FF7 sucks" and this and that, yes, I know everyone's entitled to their opinion, but come on, does it have to be on a forum where it's FF7 based?
It's like going to a church and bashing on about religion. *sigh*
or going to sqeenix and bashing long haired villians :P
Yesterday I went right into Squeenix's HQ and complained about belts!
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I live in Asia and I complain about rice :P
Sometimes, I also complain about going off topic. But not this time 8-)
(Mr. Amazing was off-topic from the beginning. This topic isn't about Kefka. This topic isn't about Sephiroth. It's about the significance of Aerith's death. Sheesh >:()
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Let's see Kefka top that.
As much as I agree with you on everything...
You asked for it; it was bound to happen at some point...
Jus' sayin'.
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Meh. It was just a passing comment. It should be allowed to pass without someone derailing the thread. He wasn't literally asking for someone to post in defense of Kefka. He was showing that he looks down on Kefka, something he's allowed to do.
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I don't disagree... but with the way blind fans are, it was to be(or should have been) expected.
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It was expected. Everything went just according to keikaku
(Translator's note: keikaku means plan)