Resurrection: Final Fantasy VII

Resurrection is a regular feature here at Resolution, in which we get all misty-eyed about a classic release. This week, Greg Giddens explains why FINAL FANTASY VII is still at the top of his list.

I PUT it to you that Final Fantasy VII is the finest RPG of all time.

Don’t argue. I’m right, and in your heart you know it to be true. I’m tempted to end the discussion right there as a one-way statement. I feel no need to justify this with proclamations when I know the majority are right behind me in the righteous standing of truth. But for you naysayers out there who are yet to conform, allow me to sway you.

FFVII was revolutionary due to its 3D visuals, narrative themes, and the timing of its release. Taking any series into the realm of 3D can be a rough transition, but FFVII made it seem effortless. Timeless pre-rendered backgrounds shaped the environment and the only real 3D elements were the interactive objects and cast. The blocky characters are starting to show their age now, certainly, but thanks to a lack of unnecessary detail, they have stood the test of time, with only minor pixelation.

The story is just as timeless. The fundamental theme is one of a crisis of identity, an issue many of us deal with at some point in our lives. This makes FFVII’s narrative universally appealing: you can actually relate to the main character on a level far deeper than what many other games – and, in fact, other forms of media – can achieve. That in itself is astonishing, and supremely clever. Square created the perfect protagonist, a deeply human character with doubts and weakness, determination and strength. And the now almost ubiquitous additional option to rename the character cements your bond to him completely.

Through your attachment to protagonist Cloud, you’re drawn to the other characters. Tifa’s strength and independence, as well as her deep sense of loyalty to a friend in need, breeds respect. Barret’s physical presence and well-hidden softness of heart are inspiring. But next to Cloud, the other character who really demands your attention is Aeris, Cloud’s love interest. Aeris carries a heavy burden of knowledge and untapped power, and as you progress through the story you come to appreciate her importance more and more.

Then – and here be spoilers, but heck, it’s a 13-year-old game – the most shocking event occurs. Aeris is killed by the villain of the piece, Sephiroth.

Life after death

Killing off a main character mid-game shocked players to their core. But instead of feeling detached anger at the game for losing an asset you’ve spent 15 plus hours building up, you feel anger and sadness side-by-side with Cloud, fuelling revenge and justice. Aeris’ death was unconventional and achieved a powerful sense of compulsion to continue playing: the compulsion to understand why she died, and punish the one responsible.

Death was certainly not the end for Aeris. As you progressed further, you came to understand her burden, and how she had touched the lives of others. FFVII grieves with you, helping you remember her and miss her, appreciate her and respect her. The bonds FFVII forms between you and the characters is comparable to those formed in life. Each has meaning and scope.

And, of course, the timing of FFVII’s release was hugely significant to its success. JRPGs were a small band of underappreciated titles back in the 1990s, and the Final Fantasy series was known mainly by the older generation of Nintendo gamers. The Playstation format granted FFVII a huge stage on which to perform to the world, and with its aforementioned qualities it put on the show of a lifetime. It introduced several generations to both JRPGs as a genre and the Final Fantasy series. To so many people, FFVII is the game that fuelled weeks of constant joy, and years of replaying.

FFVII is still bold, brilliant, beautiful and flawed. I come back to it time and time again because it represents life in a completely fantasy setting, but in one of the purest and most tangible ways possible.

A game I loved…

Lewis Anderson once loved to powerslide. Now he can’t bear the thought…

I remember the first time I played 1999 Naughty Dog racer CTR: Crash Team Racing. It was only a demo from a CD off the front of a magazine, and it felt like a poor man’s Mario Kart: it was slow to play and slow to captivate. I skimmed through the demo and swiftly rejected it.

But after reading a little more about it, I grew curious. I heard tales of high speeds and frantic mechanics that sounded totally unlike the game I had played. Although it was only a demo that I’d tried, the game couldn’t have changed that much, could it? So I went back. And just like that, I was hooked.

Reborn in speed

Instantly, the game had transformed from a dull, plodding racer to petrol-fuelled insanity. Getting a good powerslide and some decent airtime gave you a boost, and boosts could be chained together, meaning breakneck speeds were of the essence. Even the hardest difficulty settings became trivial as I madly played hour after hour in some twisted mission to master the game.

I later bought the full version and played it to extinction, before one day putting it on The Good Shelf: an area of furniture solely dedicated to what has transcended being a mere object. There it proudly sat, smack between B-Movie and Commandos 2 – games never to be sold, always to be treasured.

And so I went on, living my life, occasionally meeting others who’d played it but not truly mastered it like I thought I had. They would frantically battle with the AI racers while I raced as though there was a gun to my head, almost disappointed that I could win so easily.

The days of pre-online gaming meant you could only play others in person, and every person I played was worse than me. I thought I was the best in the world, the Usain Bolt of CTR, and I was proud of it. No one was good enough for me. Or so I thought.

A chance meeting with a friend of a friend changed all that. He just happened to have his PlayStation 3 on him (as you do) and after a few hours of casual playing we grew bored and scrolled through the things he had on his hard disk.

What did I spy with my little eye? Lurking in the list was a tiny but instantly recognisable icon. I turned to him slowly. “Is that… Crash Team Racing?” I asked. Perhaps, at last, sitting in front of me was someone worthy of being called a rival. A nemesis! He looked back, eyebrow raised. “Played it much?” he said.

Photo finish

And in the blink of an eye, it was on. Finally I had found someone equal to my ability. He too knew how to powerslide, knew how to boost, knew all the shortcuts. Races were fierce as we ploughed through the tracks, neck and neck all the way with sometimes only luck deciding who won. It was like a dream come true! I finally had my challenge and I relished every minute.

But then, as we came to the final tracks, I realised that there was a chance I could lose. We had a league going behind the races and we were pretty much equal on points. One slip up, one accident, and it could all go his way. I couldn’t let that happen. After all the years of thinking I was the greatest, that would destroy me.

We raced on and came to the final track. Like in a bad film, it had come down to the last race, and a jolt of anxiety ran through me as the light turned green. We boosted away from the startuing line, inches between us as we carved up the circuit with our powerslides. My thumbs hurt and my eyes strained, but through the pain I gradually chiselled out a lead over him. I was winning! I had nothing to fear! I was the greatest!

And then, on the last straight, he got me. A bomb, fired from what seemed like a mile away, caught me on the last corner, sending me over the edge of the course. He had all the time in the world to catch up, overtake me and cross the line. He had won.

He watched his character celebrate atop the podium, then patted me on the back and parted with “Good game, mate.” My world shattered, and to him it was just a game.

CTR: Crash Team Racing no longer sits on The Good Shelf.

Interview: Lorne Lanning on Oddworld

The Oddworld series became a 1990s cult classic. Now, Daniel Lipscombe catches up with creator Lorne Lanning to discuss his aims for the series.

A HIGH-PITCHED and warbled voice speaks only one word: “Hello.” A bizarre and almost spooky looking creature peers through a hole in the menu screen and looks at you  affectionately with wide eyes. Despite his alien appearance, Abe is lovely to look at, not only for being a well-designed lead character but because he genuinely looks inviting. He’s a welcome change from many other successful gaming characters.

That voice was supplied by Lorne Lanning, the creator of Abe and, in fact, the world that surrounds him. The environment of Oddworld is a captivating one; this is a  place full of creatures much stranger than Abe – and, in fact, a lot scarier.

It’s no coincidence that Abe, Munch and even Stranger to an extent look kind and humble: they have to be a polar opposite to their enemy. The Oddworld games have a sense of the fairytale about them, with a downtrodden protagonist who wants nothing more than to be happy, and standing in his way a hideous creature whose nefarious plans would destroy everything sacred and pure. Oddworld heightens that edge by making the sinister characters look unappealing and shrewd.

I had the pleasure to ask creator Lorne Lanning about his characters and the world that surrounded them. As someone who is drawn to Oddworld, I wanted to know what he thought drew gamers in to his creation. “I’ve heard most often that it was their connection to Abe,” Lanning says. “I think the ultra-innocence of his character set against the diabolical backdrop of the corporately dominated world he lived in was something that gave the experience a light heart, but with relevant content that people could relate to. Something they weren’t, and maybe still aren’t, getting a lot of out there.

“Each of the species on Oddworld, at least the sentient ones, is reflecting a certain trait of humanity, a certain behaviour that we can relate to and know from our own world,” Lanning continues. “We wanted to take these human behaviours and break them into unique species. The idea was that the general moral behaviour of say, the banking class, should be represented as a unique species.”

Above and beyond

It’s obvious that those who played Lanning’s creations were experiencing much more than a puzzle platformer or an action game. There was heart and soul in every being and every moment in the franchise. “The character design was a good place to start looking at what we were going to create,” Lanning postulates. “It set some deep thinking into the core make-up of these rather silly characters- giving us a rich soil out of which a lot of creative exploration, both in design and character depth, could grow.”

And so the fairytale comparison moves onwards. We have archetypal characters with big dreams and a rich environment for them to thrive. But just like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, Lanning and his production team wove a wonderful plot into each game, full of morals and humanity. As Cinderella stepped from an oppressive shadow, so too did Abe. And who can forget the moment when Stranger revealed his secret and became the saviour of his people?

As a younger version of myself, I never really saw that moral standing clearly – perhaps the fart jokes got in the way. After revisiting the franchise as an adult, Abe’s story became a beautiful tale that inspired me, and after talking to Lanning it’s clear that the morality of the Oddworld tales was a large part of its creation. “I think these issues, morals and ethics, are a core human challenge, particularly in our modern times,” he says. “It was in the ‘80s that I began to learn just how dirty many things were when looked at from behind the scenes. That’s when Abe’s character development began. I wanted Abe to balance against the extremely morally corrupt that I also wanted to portray in his adversaries.”

Continues…

]]> http://resolution-magazine.co.uk/content/interview-lorne-lanning-on-oddworld/feed/ 4 http://resolution-magazine.co.uk/content/resurrection-star-ocean-the-second-story/ http://resolution-magazine.co.uk/content/resurrection-star-ocean-the-second-story/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:14 +0000 Jennifer Allen http://resolution-magazine.co.uk/content/?p=5024

‘Resurrection‘ is a regular feature in which Resolution dons its rose-tinted specs and heads on down Memory Lane. This week, Jennifer Allen’s been revisiting a Japanese role-playing classic…

I’d known nothing of Japanese RPGs outside of Final Fantasy until, one day, I read about Star Ocean: The Second Story on a now long forgotten website. It sounded amazing. With the promise of multiple different endings, plenty of side quests in which to participate and a new and exciting combat system, it offered everything I could have possibly wanted. It even had a weird but wonderful skill system, which meant that learning to compose music and pickpocketing could have equal advantages in the world of Expel. I had to have this game. I hadn’t anticipated just how hard this was going to be, though.

At the time, I wasn’t particularly experienced at Internet shopping. It was available, of course – it was 2000, not the Dark Ages – but I’d never really used it for much. There was still an air of wariness when it came to handing card details over to websites. Which sites were safe? And how could you check it was real? Naivety, of course – but if you can’t be naive at 16, when can you be?

I’d already searched all my local stores (all three of them) for a copy of The Second Story with no success. I was going to have to face the iInternet if I wanted a summer of obsession with a new JRPG. I eventually found it, on a site I now appreciate is completely legitimate and offers a large number of stores. Back then, though, they were only located up North, which was completely foreign to me and felt liike quite the risk to take. I’m glad I took it, though, as Star Ocean: The Second Story turned out to be one of my favourite JRPGs of all time.

SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE JRPG
You see, it might share many common elements from the JRPG field, but it’s also so much more than that. Right from the start it’s clear that this is an RPG of epic proportions. For one thing, you have the choice of two main characters, with different storylines that eventually overlap but still offer plenty of variety. The main story may be a little predictable, with the usual ‘world ending’ problem, but it’s the journey towards that end that feels more special than the usual fodder. Claude Kenni, one of the two main characters, is a young man who has been thrown out of his element. From Earth, he ends up trapped on the planet Expel, where he goes on to meet Rena Lanford – an impressively strong female lead.

I tend to deliberately avoid female characters in RPGs. I find them to be sickeningly, stereotypically girly and whiney. But Rena is as strong as Claude and the other characters, making her an extremely worthy combatant – even if she does get kidnapped briefly in the early stages. In comparison, Claude always felt quite two-dimensional, but I didn’t care: I had a strong female character to embody at last. Even better, she didn’t have ridiculously oversized breasts! She seemed normal! Or, at least, as normal as a cutesy JRPG character can be. [Continues]

By Daniel Lipscombe

Over the years, there have been many attempts at dethroning Sonic and Mario as the ultimate mascots of gaming.

Crash Bandicoot tried, with little success. Lara Croft has only made it so far, and even the little dragon Spyro had a try. It takes a lot to topple these giants of platforming history. Maybe they will never be bettered, but in my heart there has always been one other champion: the sorely forgotten Robbit the robot rabbit from Jumping Flash!

Nintendo and SEGA’s lovable characters were born in a simple age, and with equally simple design they entered the hearts and minds of gamers for their memorable appearances. They were the champions of the 16-bit era – but those days were fading; it was only a matter of time before the 32-bit era needed a new figurehead. How about a large robot rabbit that shoots lasers and fireworks from his paws, in order to prevent Baron Aloha from taking the planet as his own private holiday resort?

//Jump around
Jumping Flash! burst onto Sony’s PlayStation in 1995, bringing with it a new method of play. A platform game at its roots, the premise of Jumping Flash! was a simple one. You were tasked with exploring a map looking for lettered jet pods that spell the word EXIT. Once these were collected, you could head for the exit jump pad and fly off to the next level. Add in simple controls that were still attached to the 16-bit days, using only a few buttons, and you had a game that was easy to pick up and play.

There are many reasons as to why Robbit should have been a great icon, mainly stemming from the mechanics of the game itself. Yes, Jumping Flash! is a standard platform game, but it’s all played from first-person perspective. One of the first games to attempt such a hybrid, it really was ahead of its time. Looking through the eyes of this cyber rabbit and seeing the quirky enemies that inhabit the gaming world was a joy to me as a youngster. The creatures that guard the levels’ secrets still have a charm today – albeit a rather pixelated and jagged one.

It’s not just the first-person perspective that gave so much to this title. Previous platform games had geared towards your standard left-to-right affair, but Exact Co. gave us more. They gave us verticality. Levels would sprawl upwards as well as outwards, and Robbit could soar through the air with his triple jump. Using the unique viewpoint, he would even look downwards so you could judge your landing. This was the first time in my life that a videogame gave me a sense of freedom.

This freedom was amplified by the feeling that I was playing something unique, something new. With quintessential Japanese flavours sprinkled throughout, Jumping Flash! featured great character designs. It’s unlikely I’ll ever forget the MuuMuus – the white, asexual creatures with five limbs and palm trees on their heads. They’re the henchmen for Baron Aloha and control the bosses in each of the six worlds. At the time, this style of design seemed fresh to me. But while such an aesthetic should have been what shot Robbit to stardom, it could, in fact, have been his downfall.

//Hedge(hog)ing its bets
The jump from 2D to 3D was a big step for many gamers, and while Jumping Flash! was critically well-received it was sadly overlooked commercially. Perhaps it was too adventurous; perhaps people saw it as a desperate plea to become a pillar in the gaming world. And while the designs were different, there was a definite sense of déjà vu. A an evil scientist as a villain, who surrounded himself with weird creatures to do his bidding, jumping from one clichéd world to the next – was it all a bit too… Sonic?

Not only were you exploring worlds similar to our blue hedgehog friend – a volcano world, an Aztec world and a metropolis world – but the bonus stages were even accessed by jumping into a floating ring. Add to this that each enemy that was killed spewed coins to boost your score, and perhaps people felt they were being duped.

But beyond all the design points and the comparisons to others, Robbit was a hero. Each moment in Jumping Flash! felt like a Saturday morning cartoon. With colourful images, expansive worlds and characters that felt like predecessors to Pokémon, controlling Robbit felt like I was reaching into my TV and playing with the cartoons I loved.  Even the soundtrack, supplied by the late Takeo Miratsu, added to the hyperactive, early-morning adventure style that was so well known on television in the early nineties.

Robbit will always be dear to me for these many reasons. I recently ventured back to Jumping Flash! after downloading it on PSN. Fearful of what I might find, it was with trepidation that I picked up the controller and jumped into the TV again. It still felt as joyous as ever before. Yes, the graphics had aged, but it felt like playing with an old Thundercats toy that was covered in dust and grime from the chocolate bars of an easier time. I still felt the freedom, and it was still great fun. Robbit will always be my hero.

You always run a hefty risk with film-to-game conversions (or, in this case, book-to-film-to-game conversions), especially when you’re bouncing off a work as influential as The Godfather. Even disregarding its literary beginnings, it’s a franchise that totally epitomises a generation of filmmaking ideals, a release that paved the way for Hollywood’s previously crumbling studio system to climb back to global domination. So there’s a pretty high bar to vault over. You’re also always, without exception, going to piss off a lot of people. People who herald the original version as a universe-defining, soul-enlightening masterpiece that should never, ever be touched by anyone. When you’re making a direct sequel to something within the same medium, it’s already problematic. When you’re porting it over to a different form entirely, you’d better be ready for reactionary dynamite.

The cynic in me would say that for every stick of TNT you’ll get a big wad of cash, so it’s not exactly likely to be at the top of Electronic Arts’ list of worries. It’s also, in the scheme of things, not that important for any reason other than this one. A slow, creeping, character-led drama was never going to lend itself to a straight conversion. That’s not a big-budget, mass-audience videogame release, and I’d wager that the thousands of people who complain that they wanted something closer to the films would be lying to themselves a bit. People want explosions, fights, and the ability to drive really fast and charge down civilians. I remember someone, somewhere on the internet in the run-up to Far Cry 2’s release, asking if you could “run over zebras and chop its legs off.” That’s what we want in our games, surely. Bloodbaths of cathartic violence.

So the roots aren’t important. Suffice it to say, like the original game, The Godfather II’s similarities to the source material end with the name and a few snippets of script where relevant. That’s not a problem. This is a game, not a film, and I’d argue that trying to incessantly borrow from movie-making conventions is only going to hold this interactive medium back from potential innovation. What is a problem, though, is where EA have deemed necessary to take the fiction. In a way, I’d like to give The Godfather II the benefit of the doubt and say it’s a postmodern pastiche on ASBO culture. I don’t think that’ll stick. So we’d better look at it like this.

In The Godfather II, you’re often encouraged to beat up women.

Now, going back on everything I’ve just said and referencing the source material for a minute, wasn’t there a rather large thread in the first part of the Godfather saga involving a guy we were supposed to hate for doing just that? Yes, Carlo, his name was: a despicable character who takes joy in abusing his pregnant wife. So imagine my surprise when an early compulsory mission took me to a small bar run by an attractive young lady, and the game told me her main weakness was being punched in the face.

That’s the problem with The Godfather II. It’s not that it betrays the source material something rotten, or that there’s anything particularly broken about it. It’s just so horribly judged, through and through. In this case, the judgement seems to have been that taking Grand Theft Auto IV, adding a sprinkling of the ever-popular RPG and strategic elements, and penning a new, “mature” storyline would work. And, in a sense, it kind of does. The plot remains somewhat engrossing, even if it does occasionally take an extended cigarette break while you idly blast through a series of repetitive, loosely-connected missions. The action, though uninspired, is solid enough, and zooming around in period cars isn’t completely horrible. The strategic elements, mainly involving monitoring your finances and employing new henchmen, are perfectly functional and a pleasant enough idea. Everything works well enough in isolation – which makes it even more impressive that the experience as a whole feels like a clumsy and mildly offensive attempt to ride on the back of other people’s success. It just doesn’t quite work.

Nothing melds together to create a cohesive experience. Even the premise is maddening. You play as a mafia don… who regularly goes around behaving like an imbecilic little shit, smashing everything in his wake and generally presenting himself more like a troublesome youth than a calculated proprietor of organised crime. You’ll view myriad cut-scenes that suggest otherwise, but as far as the actual game part of the game goes, it’s all about mindless thuggery. It makes no sense.

It could have been fun. It might be, for you. Like its influences, there’s still the opportunity to ignore the main plot entirely and go on a rampage around town, stealing cars and ploughing into innocent bystanders like you’ve just graduated from some sort of vehicular crime indoctrination facility. Grand Theft Auto, even within the hard-hitting maturity of the fourth iteration, presents these segments as a respite from the rest, a chance to flex your muscles in high-powered sports cars and giggle along to the radio as citizens shout perplexingly hilarious remarks at each other before you turn them into a big blob of red gloop. In The Godfather II, when you kill an innocent bloke who just happened to amble out in front of you, people scream and cower in absolute, tangible terror. Doctors rush to their aid and attempt to resuscitate them. Onlookers cry, “what have you done?” Christ. There I was thinking mindless highway tomfoolery was a laugh.

If you get past the gut-wrenching guilt, you’ll find a series of sprawling city maps to explore. Which is a nice idea on paper, until you realise there’s no soul or character to any of the environments. I couldn’t tell you about a single location in the game, except the admittedly exciting opening sequence in Cuba. It’s all a blur. You’ll regularly find yourself driving round in circles or missing your destination completely, since everywhere looks the bloody same. It’s all brown, lifeless and disengaging. There’s not a single speck of enchantment in it.

On a more obvious gameplay note, the real issue is that, despite the added strategic “depth”, it’s not always that important to fully utilise it. You’ll have to keep one aye on your money, but the whole game is remarkably easy, meaning the tactical planning and “levelling up” seem largely irrelevant. You can send your henchmen in to do the dirty work for you, and they’ll usually come out unscathed. That’s no fun. You can go in with them, raiding every business in town, and rarely perish – and even if you do get “hospitalised” during these missions, all the game does is spring you back to the last checkpoint. Everything’s such a stroll, and it doesn’t really matter what you do in the run-up to each task. It’s completely pedestrian, and horribly monotonous.

Still, there’s an odd sense of satisfaction when you’re dangling a member of a rival family off the roof of a hotel, waiting for him to get scared enough to submit to your demands. There’s something strangely invigorating about methodically kicking in every television set in an electrical shop before the owner agrees to cough up for protection. There’s still a nagging sense of competition between the immature, comedic violence and grown-up family tragedy, one that leaves a sour and decidedly uncomfortable taste in the mouth – but hey. Not bothered about that? Sure, buy the game. You might quite like it.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

5/10