Final Fantasy Forever
When I was in seventh grade my brother’s Playstation barely functioned. To get it to work, we had to flip it upside down and put a dictionary on top of it. I’m not an engineer, but I don’t this actually helped it work, but we BELIEVED it did… and it mostly did. Every time the screen went to load, you literally held your breath and said a prayer. When I was super desperate I even invoked God himself and piled a Bible on top of the dictionary, because, if one heavy book helped it work, why not two?
The same time we were teaching the Playstation to read, Final Fantasy VII came out. I had been a nerd all my life, so I had played the only other two available in the States (2 and 3, which were really 4 and 6 – if this doesn’t make sense, then you are well-primed for a plotline in the Final Fantasy universe, because they are just as coherent). When VII was coming out and was 4 discs and had cut scenes and this smudged Japanesey art on the cover, I HAD TO HAVE IT.
I literally played the game into oblivion. OBLIVION. Because of the aforementioned Playstation functionality, I would literally play it for 2 hours, the Playstation would die, then I’D REPLAY THE SAME 2 HOURS. It didn’t matter! Now I knew more secrets and I could play it better!
Aeris’s death was spoiled for me, but the awe-inducing final battle was not. Literally, I was sitting shivering as the opening chords of “One-winged Angel” played. When the chorus swelled and I lit into Sephiroth with a limit break, I felt like I was part of the epic. I was no longer a player, but had ascended into the realm of Cloud, Tifa, and Barret.
Even now as a writer(ish), when I think of scenes and plots for future stories, the aesthetic is heavily influenced by FFVII. When heroes confront the final villain, I want the reader to feel dread and ecstasy of when I had to confront Seraph Sephiroth in the middle of a crater.
I think there was something universal about that experience for a lot of people in my generation. The game had state-of-the-art graphics, the storyline (for the FF series) was largely coherent, and the heroes were more than stereotypes – almost every character had some side quest that made them a 3-dimensional member of the party.
Gays also really take to FF. My thinking there is that it’s so campy, we can’t help but love it. On the Super Nintendo, the FF game developers created a 16-bit opera. Every story ends with someone going nuts and destroying the planet. Some of them have summons (cut scenes where a giant ally comes and shoots lasers or something at the enemy) that lasts minutes. EVERYTHING IS OVER THE TOP AND FABULOUS. In the most recent entry, FFXV, the first woman you are introduced to has DD boobs and literally only wears a jacket over them. Gay boys love overdramatic escapes from reality and the FF series WILL TAKE YOU THERE.
Every time a new FF game comes out, I buy it. It’s similar to the Zelda series for me. The franchises, as a whole, helped me escape from the real world when things weren’t wonderful. Did I have a terrible childhood? Not at all. But when you’re thirteen, get made fun of at school, realize you get sexually aroused around boys instead of girls, attend church every Sunday and think you’re going to hell, sometimes escape is needed. And in the grand scheme of a thirteen-year-old's life, those things can be traumatic.
But also, as a thirteen-year-old, you can invest yourself in in the world of books and video games, unlike any other time in your life. A forty-hour video game when you’re thirteen is a monstrous undertaking. You invest in the characters, and you dream about joining them as they help save the world. This catharsis is always necessary in life, but when you’re a child, it’s felt so much more intensely. Sometimes adults will close their eyes and be taken into these worlds through their dreams, when you’re a kid, all you have to do is close your eyes and you can be lifted by your imagination.
When playing the most recent FFXV game, I couldn’t help but feel like the game had grown up, just like I had come into adulthood. It may be my own experience, but the sprites of the 8, 16, and 32 bit eras feel much more infused with the imagination of a child than the more photograph-real versions that exist now. The game itself also tries to make half-hearted allusions to previous games. (So many spoilers coming…)
1. At one point the villain off-handedly says, “I’m immortal.” And…, like, no one is immortal in the FFXV world… so it’s kind of a big deal. But… no one acknowledges it. It’s as if the game itself is bored of its own conceits. “Of course your immortal, this game has dragons sometimes…”
2. They force drama for no reason. The best is when Prompto reveals he’s a bad guy? Or something? In FFIV the hero turns from a dark knight to a paladin and it’s pretty freaking emotionally intense. This game is like “Oh, yeah, emotional conflict! Here ya go! He used to be bad! No one has talked about it before or will again but SEE THE DRAMA!”
3. Some girl dies. Yes, again. And it’s not really clear why? For some reason in this world you have to seek the help of giant guardians that hate you. They like try to kill you every time… but then you get their power? But then one of them gets super pissed and kills your girlfriend. But then chases monsters off a train for you. I’m not really clear how all this correlates, but it ends up in the death of the main woman in the story. In FFVII, this was a horribly tragic, haunting scene. The main villain stabs the woman you love!! NOOOO! Here it’s like, “Well, she helped an old person in one cut scene... but overall she’s boring and I’m still unclear on why that water monster is being such a dick… sooooo… I guess, let’s move on.”
4. The villain is just a dude. He’s charming, wears a cowboy hat, and sometimes looks spooky because his eyes turn red. He does turn almost everyone in the planet into demons, but it’s unclear why? He wants to live forever but he already does. In FFVI a court jester soaks up a bunch of magic and turns into a huge God-king on the top ofa tower. To have this power he has to literally destroy the world – then he gets to rule the disgusting pile of garbage that’s left. That’s evil. And fighting the main bad guy is terrifying. In this one… the villain has a fire monster fight for him. Then you sword fight him and he dies. The end. If a guy can turn people into demons, wouldn’t he like, demonize himself or something? No? Okay.
5. The one beacon of hope in the game is Cindy, who just is having fun. She tunes your car up and has a silly southern accent. She does have DD boobs and wears only a jacket, but, Cindy is just being Cindy. In the whole game, she’s the only one showing any signs of life. The protagonist is so angsty, it’s unclear when he’s going to go into his room and yell at you “You’re not my real dad!” He does have a killer haircut, though.
After all that, you may assume I hated this game, but playing it was a lot of fun. It’s
really pretty epic. The plot is incoherent, but FFVIII has a plot that involved an obelisk that sucked monsters from the moon, which somehow let a witch merge past, present, and future into one moment? I don’t know, but I was fine with whatever was happening with the angry guardians. And Cindy, obvs.
The FF series doesn’t make me feel the way it used to, but having just turned 32, I know that the emotions of youth all are tempered down. I don’t know if we could survive with the emotional intensity of a thirteen-year-old for the duration of life. It’s nice to think back on it, though. And I’ll probably keep playing Final Fantasy games into the foreseeable future. I guess, I’ve aged into a Playstation that needs to be flipped upside down and have a book placed on it to work. The imagination isn’t what it used to be, but when it does load up, things function well. I guess my goal is to someday, in my writing, have an output that can make some kid feel like he is saving the world. Even if he’s just in a cold basement in the Midwest, eating cereal and sitting in his underwear. Those are the heroes that can really be mobilized, who would probably see and feel the plight of characters I write even more clearly than I do.