Your Childhood (Actually) Sucks

I’m always worried when I say this; but Final Fantasy 7 is the most overrated game of all time. That, however, isn’t the point. How good it is is less important than how good people remember it being. Because the way people remember things is more important than the way things actually are.

  I spend a great deal of time thinking about being thirteen. Probably more than I should, to the point it borders on an addiction. My best friend and his newfound girlfriend decided Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” would be “their song.” I had placed second at the district chess tournament being held at my school. And I had been playing Final Fantasy 10 for the first time. It was not the first game in the series I had played, that goes to 7. What it was, however, was the first game in the series I have ever experienced.

  When I initially set out to write this essay I wanted to merely make an argument as to why Final Fantasy 7 isn’t good (or at least not as good as everyone seems to tell me it is). I had planned out several points as to why other entries in the series trumped it. Namely in the storytelling and gameplay departments. I decided to give 7 another playthrough, however. After spending some time with the game, which I concede holds up better than most Playstation 1 titles, I have come to realize something; maybe Final Fantasy 7 is not just the most overrated game of all time. Maybe, just maybe, the entire series is one of the most overrated gaming franchises ever. For those of you (which I assume is most) that have never played 7, 10, or any Final Fantasy, I am going to do my best to cover the story of those two specific games. I chose 7 and 10 because (a) the original argument was based on 7 and (b) though I wouldn’t say 10 is the best, I would say it is my personal favorite.

  Our story opens up with edgy ex-corporate mercenary Cloud Strife working alongside terrorist movement AVALANCHE to take down a Mako reactor. Mako being the life force of the planet and what is used to run all machinery. It is essentially crude oil that has the latent ability to grant certain people magical powers, like shooting fireballs or summoning ancient gods. But Shinra faces the problem that Mako energy is beginning to run low and their only hope is to find an ancient promised land. A promised land that is rumored to have Mako flowing endlessly beneath it. The dilemma, only an extinct race of people, the Cetra, know how to find this fossil fuel Mecca.

 As the game progresses you assemble a team of unlikely heroes including emo boy Cloud. A revenge-fuelled Barrett who has a gun for a hand and a deep-seated hatred for Shinra’s use of technology. The last remaining Cetra, Aeirith. There’s also a pseudo-vampire, a talking lion wolf, and a marshmallow plush controlled by a cat. Shinra has their eyes set on Aerith, they manage to capture her, and so begins the quest for renewable energy. Cloud and crew go to rescue her and this is when the true villain is introduced. Pretty boy and fan favorite Sephiroth is a one-winged semi-clone of a deity that fell from the sky as a meteor thousands of years prior. Sephiroth is one blatant metaphor for a Christian guilt complex. Sephiroth (who is also the god Jenova) wants to summon another meteor to destroy the planet so he can absorb all the Mako and become one with it. When Cloud and friends try to stop him, he manages to mind control Cloud. Then Convinces Cloud that he’s a clone of Sephiroth with the memories of some guy named Zack planted in him. Cloud has a mental breakdown, becomes catatonic, falls into the planet’s lifestream with his childhood friend, and sorts out his existential crisis like some bad acid trip. After he spends 10 minutes getting his shit together, the gang flies into the crater where Jenova initially crash landed Lord Xenu style. They do battle with Sephiroth, who is also Jenova, who is also the ancient entity known as Meteor. They kill him with the help of a deceased Aerith, and the world returns to its beautiful dystopian self. Minus the evil conglomerate monopoly of Mako Shinra once had. Convoluted enough for you? I didn’t even touch on the movie, four spin-off games (two on cell phone), or the racing of giant chickens to learn to summon King Arthur’s henchmen.

 Let us compare 7’s convoluted mess of a story to 10’s. Final Fantasy 10 follows Tidus, a young man with an Oedipus complex. One night, during a game of underwater space soccer [read: Blitzball], Tidus is interrupted by a colossal parasitic winged slug destroying the city of Zannarkand. Tidus and a friend of his father try to fight the creature but are ultimately defeated and Tidus wakes up in a completely different world. In this new world, a few things overlap. Space Soccer is larger than the super bowl, the city Zannarkand still exists though it is in ruins, and the giant slug unironically named Sin. Sin is the driving force for the game’s narrative. The creature is an evil that reincarnates itself and is allegedly a manifestation of what happens when man uses technology rather than prayer. So I guess Sin is just another Christian guilt complex villain.

 Throughout the story Tidus befriends an unlikely group of heroes including a subpar Blitzball player who has a deep-seated hatred (bordering on racist) for the machine using Al-Bhed. There is a summoner on a pilgrimage to sacrifice herself to stop Sin for another couple dozen years. A biped lion wolf, and a few other JRPG tropes.

 As the story progress you find out that Tidus’ father helped on the previous summoner’s pilgrimage and became Sin. Tidus finds out he isn’t real, and that if they defeat Sin he will fade into a literal dream. Tidus spends 10 minutes sorting out this existential crisis. There is some whistling. The party goes inside of Sin. Father, son, and not-so-holy ghost all die. The world falls back into its primitive state now liberated and free to use their technology as they please.

 The games are pretty damn similar when reduced to the lowest common denominator. I have time and time again praised 10 while putting down 7. And if you have played both of them you would be quick to see how they are inherently different. But this is how I remember those games. And how I imagine many others remember them to some degree, minus a few scenes left out for brevity.

 I was 13 and sitting in the back of my step-father’s Lincoln Navigator. There was a PS2 set up to the small screen and I was playing Final Fantasy 10; nearing the end. My step-dad just bought a “new car” scented car freshener. To this day I associate that smell with my favorite game of all time. This phenomenon, my addiction, to me is one of the most fascinating tricks the mind plays on us. Nostalgia, coming from the greek words nostos and algos translating to “homecoming pain.” There was a time it was used by the Swiss military where they thought the only treatment for the condition was to send the mercenaries home. Now we see there is something universal about “the better days.”

 After discussing the concept of nostalgia with a handful of people I have noticed people tend to fall into two different camps. Some, myself included, look at nostalgia with joyous sorrow. As though there are memories, emotions, and sensations that can never be duplicated. Think back to a favorite Christmas or birthday present, remember how you felt? Even though I believe that feeling itself can be replicated, the way you remember that feeling is encapsulated in that moment and forever gone. In this first camp, there is a fear that if we don’t cling to those memories we may lose a piece of our identity with them. The second camp tends to view nostalgia pejoratively. Longing being some type of weakness. Even if there were  “good ol’ days” you can’t ever get them back so why waste time trying? Now whether either of these mentalities is objectively more correct than the other, impossible to say. I’m more just fascinated that everybody feels homecoming pain. I did notice, however, that people more invested into games (video or sport) tend to sit in the former camp with myself. I think that is where Final Fantasy, especially 7, begins to fall apart. Am I using Nostalgia to say that Final Fantasy 7 is bad, even subjectively? No, not really. Instead I’m calling into question why it is important. Not important for gaming, but important to the gamers who believe it is the high bar for the series, or even games in general.

 A few hundred words ago I drew attention to the similarities between 10 and 7. And I would like to narrow that down to just the two protagonists; Cloud and Tidus. At face value these characters are different. Tidus is a young, naive, hot-headed sports star trying to live up to a father he resents. Cloud is a battle-hardened soldier whose idol turned out to be a monster. We are supposed to identify as these two. Our perspective is limited to theirs. Both are detached from a larger picture that they inevitably find themselves the center of. So even if Cloud and Tidus are different from one another, their general arcs manage to remain the same. This is why people (myself included) find these games to be important in their lives. Both of their lives are lies. One is a fleeting dream of the gods and the other a blonde husk with a brunette’s memories. Neither character has any reason to exist.

 Usually, if you listen, when people talk about their favorite music, movies, games it often is something from their childhood. You favorite Final Fantasy is most likely the first one you played. If it isn’t, your favorite was probably played around the ages of 13-16.  Even if you have never played these games I want you to take a moment to just stop. Take a nice long hit of that homecoming pain. Go back, try to remember being 9, or 13, or 16. Try to remember who you were as a person. Sorry if you were awkward, but that awkwardness is kind of the point. These transitional points in our lives, they are moments when we are developing responsibilities and learning who we are. Whether it is your first day home without the babysitter, or a first day of high school, those periods are when we can exist outside of our parents and act as yourself. I remember once breaking down in front of my parents proclaiming I did not know who I was. I didn’t belong. I had no reason to exist. I was the same as Cloud or Tidus.

 I suppose when I hate on Cloud as a character, or when others shun Tidus, what we are really doing is collectively hating how annoying and whiny younger versions of ourselves were. But it wasn’t always that way. Sure, we didn’t have to come to terms with being a clone. But maybe, like Tidus, we discover some aspect of our life is a lie. Santa isn’t real. We can’t all be astronauts. These tiresome characters are just us as tiresome teenagers. And it is hard not to look back and cling to that notion, a moment where we didn’t have to feel so alone. At that age it is nice to be understood.

 So do I hate Final Fantasy 7? No, of course not, I’m mostly enjoying my third playthrough. But the story doesn’t speak to me like it did when I was a kid. I’m not sure it is supposed to either. This idea that no Final Fantasy will ever capture the same magic as the old ones is toxic. It is only going to hurt the growth of the series in the future. Nothing revolutionary can come of trying to capture the old while moving on to the new. 7, 10, 13, these games aren’t terrible by any means. But they are the Donald Trump of gaming. Maybe we can’t make Final Fantasy great again. Maybe it never was that great.