The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 5

AERIS DIES

By Kirk Hamilton and Leigh Alexander | March 30, 2011 | 1:14pm

Video Games Features Final Fantasy

From: Kirk Hamilton

To: Leigh Alexander

Subject: Re: AERIS DIES

Oh, how cruel this game must have seemed. How cruel!

I am as likely as anyone to poke fun at The Great and Sad Tragedy Known As “Aeris Dies,” but now that I’ve seen it for myself, I do believe I’ve never quite experienced a loss like it in a videogame. Though perhaps not for the reasons some would think.

It wasn’t what happened, nor was it whom it happened to; as I mentioned to you earlier this week, I was surprised by when it happened. To unceremoniously kill off a main character midway through the story, leaving us to carry on for dozens more hours without her… had something like that been done before? How cold, how harsh. Rather than taking Aeris from us immediately before the final credits, FFVII forces us to carry on, to lug our grief through another seventy hours of gameplay, painfully aware of the hole in our party where she used to be.

It’s no wonder so many people were and are obsessed with saving her. If I didn’t know better, I’d still feel all but sure that she’d return before the end of the game. I’m not ruling out some sort of “Spirit of Obi-Wan” situation, but had I played this game back in 1997, I don’t doubt that I would have played the entire remainder of the game while entertaining the vague hope that she would somehow return to my party.

I jokingly played up my agony over her death on Twitter and elsewhere, but in truth I was far more affected by the scene than I had anticipated I’d be. I have both read and edited a plethora of articles about her death, and just about every image search I’ve done for this letter series has turned up at least a couple of screenshots of it. But all the same, I wasn’t quite prepared for the impact that it had on me.

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Part of it was the scene’s strange, bloodless brutality—we are talking about the from-on-high skewering of a 22 year-old girl, after all. But mostly it was the music. We haven’t talked much about Nobuo Uematsu’s musical score, and to a degree I’m glad for that. As easy as it would be to carry on about my favorite pieces, Uematsu’s music is about so much more than any of his individual themes, isn’t it? It’s the way they weave together, the manner in which he cleverly modulates and ornaments his motifs to tell a story all his own. A track from the game has already earned a place among my favorite pieces of videogame music, but a theme-by-theme analysis feels premature without a full understanding of the story those themes tell.

There is a reason that the composers on many JRPGs are listed in the opening credits alongside the directors and producers, and that reason is exemplified by the moment you describe, when Aeris’s sonorous orb first touches the steps. There is a finality to it; by playing her theme, the game is telling us, “Yes, she really is gone.” Years of internet hype and mockery had wrought a wall of cynicism around my heart, but that six-note motif found a way to pierce it.

I’m being a bit melodramatic, of course. I’ve already gone on the record saying that I mostly found Aeris to be annoying, and I’m actually happy now that the game won’t be constantly forcing me to choose between her and my girl Tifa. But Aeris and I bonded during our date at Golden Saucer, and I was truly sad to see her go.

It’s funny that you should mention achievements; I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit as I’ve finally started to rack up the hours, points and experiences that would earn me trophies or gamerpoints in a modern title. Every time I score an obscure enemy skill or round a level milestone, I am reminded of their absence. Half the time I miss them, and half the time I’m happy to be rid of them.

The lack of demonstrable proof of my accomplishments means that it is entirely my responsibility to share my achievements with others, and it promotes a sense of community that feels far different than simply comparing my unlocked achievements with those of my XBLA friends. I’ll admit to being a bit terrified at the prospect of raising a gold chocobo, if only because the demands of my life make the prospect of a multi-week stat-grind more than a little daunting. But in the back of my mind also lies an irrational form of pre-regret: even if I succeed, I won’t have a trophy to show for it!

You ask why I think these characters captured (and capture) so many imaginations around the world. I think, unsurprisingly, that you’re onto something when you suggest that it was because they were so non-literal. I’d even go so far as to say that some of them were barely characters at all. Each party member seems to have been assigned one area or town that gives us some backstory on him or her—in Corel we learn about Barrett and Dyne, and Cosmo Canyon gives us some (surprisingly moving) insight into Red XIII, a.k.a. Nanaki. But even those digressions are splashes of color against an otherwise blank canvas. Aeris, in particular, is a total cipher; I have so little idea of who she is, why she does what she does, and where she’s from. All I can really do is imagine her for myself.

You know, we write about how these characters “capture our imaginations,” and yet I actually suspect that the inverse is also true—they were and are so powerful because our imaginations captured them. With so little to go on, players took it upon themselves to fill in the blanks, and once the blanks were filled they simply kept on writing.

As I noted while writing about last year’s PAX convention, I am enamored of both cosplayers and roleplayers. I think it’s worthy and brave to share one’s fantasies with the world, to take up needle and thread and make real the characters and stories that have moved and inspired us. I see the same spark in your lovely fanart, and only wish I had some of my own to contribute. Maybe I’ll record an instrumental version of the world-map music or something.

I get the sense that due to a unique confluence of events, the internet role-playing community you describe was sui generis. People were discovering an online community that allowed them to re-imagine themselves, and at the same time they happened to be playing a game that provoked their fantasies to an unprecedented degree. In other words, FFVII got people’s imaginations primed just as web forums offered them an endless canvas upon which to draw. Pen met paper, and the wonderfully creative (if frequently bizarre) FFVII roleplaying community was born.

But of course, in the wake of any positive groundswell comes an inevitable backlash. As much as mainstream culture seems to have let go of its disdain for FFVII, I’m still surprised at the animosity that many still harbor for the game. For every five people who tell me they’re happy that we’re writing about it, I hear from one who grumbles about how overrated/dumb/undercooked FFVII is. Usually these folks are fans of other, more hardcore/obscure/non-overrated JRPGs. Some are CRPG players who grew up on Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, hotkey hotshots who simply can’t get with the chunky six-button groove of a game like FFVII. But still I wonder what it is about this game that prompts such a cynical response from so many.

If I were to write fanfic about one character, it would of course be Tifa. At the risk of oversharing, I’ll just say that any mega-babe who fires up a slot machine before beat-rushing the bejeesus out of a fire-breathing dragon probably deserves to be written about. And based on my casual perusal of FanFiction.net, I sense that I am in good company. I hesitate to take the plunge and actually read any of those stories, but what is this letter series if not a celebration of new experiences? I’ll go take a look and get back to you.

Always, there is more to say. I haven’t even touched on all the events that occurred in the wake of Aeris’s death; my journey through the frozen wastes (I fear I may have missed the Alexander summon and I hope you’ll help me figure out if I can still get it), Cloud’s wild snowboarding adventure, the shocking revelations in the Whirlwind Maze… It feels as though I’ve started a second, altogether different game, and I find myself wondering whether Disc 2 will remain as dramatically different from Disc 1 as it’s been so far.

Weapon has been unleashed, Cloud has gone missing, Barrett and Tifa are in shackles, and Sephiroth seems well on his way to destroying the planet and being reborn as some sort of Demigod. Guess I should probably start breeding Chocobos, yes?

Tune in next week for Part 6 as the game gets deeper, stranger, and more sprawling than ever. To weigh in on the conversation, feel free to leave a comment or catch up with Leigh and Kirk on Twitter.