I remember when I first played Final Fantasy 7 way back in high school. It wasn’t my first Final Fantasy like it was for so many people, I had vague memories of playing one of the SNES Final Fantasy titles that had been released stateside years before, but 7 still made a major impression on me all the same. There was nothing like it then, and in many ways, nothing since. While the cinematics and battle models looked incredible for the time, the in-game models also had a distinct blocky chibi style that landed somewhere between truly hideous and adorably charming. They contrasted against some of the most gorgeous and realized fixed backgrounds ever seen. The bizarre censored cursed words, the really big swords, the unique characters, and the storytelling that was unlike anything else at the time (and, in retrospect, also some of the most convoluted) created one of the most defining experiences in video game history up to that point.
Like many, I felt a burst of nostalgia when it was announced that Square Enix was going to finally remake the game after teasing it for years. I was less enthused when it was announced it was going to be in multiple parts, and then had to wait five years for part 1 of an as-of-now undefined amount of titles. My interest returned in force when it was revealed the first part would be compromised entirely of Midgar, the starting area for the original Final Fantasy 7, and probably one of the single most interesting settings in the whole series. The game is finally here, and it exceeded all of my expectations, maybe even too much.
Midgar was always such an incredible setting that has hovered over the franchise ever since Final Fantasy 7 released in 1997. A dystopian city with the massive Shinra Electric Power Company headquarters jolting out from the middle, attached to multiple reactors that suck the planet’s essence, referred to as mako, to power this overcrowded massive metropolis. Coming at a time when graphics were evolving past 2D sprites, the city of Midgar was a spectacle, a mix of cyberpunk and steampunk tropes, that was overwhelming in its scope. You could feel the oppression in its griminess, something akin to great science fiction settings from classics like Blade Runner or Gattaca.
In the original release, you don’t spend a lot of time in Midgar. Most people, I imagine, were there 7 to 8 hours before moving on. It’s more the opening sequence in a very long journey filled with many locations, but it leaves the biggest impression. Going back in re-releases of the 1997 classic even now, it still amazes me how well-crafted it is. There’s a lot of great places in FF7 from the lights of the Golden Saucer casino to the dreamy mountain scape of Cosmo Canyon, but Midgar is a standard setter. Square Enix has tried to recreate a similar setting in sequels, but nothing ever captured that magic again.
It was logical for a multi-part retelling to start there, and the remake nails it in every way.
While you spend little time there in the original, Final Fantasy 7 Remake stretches out to a roughly 20-30 hour campaign (though you can easily get double that number between side content and replays). The slums of the various sectors you visit, once cities whose tired and poor citizens have long forgotten the names to, is the classic sci-fi depiction of a lower class that are remnants of a class war long lost. Their homes are beside scrapyards, settlements that were cobbled together from leftover materials. Streets are overcrowded and there’s little more than look up at the propaganda news network Shinra pumps into shining big screens that hang over the districts. In the original release, you really only visited a few sections of the slums as well as Wall Market, a sleazy black market town overseen by the gaudy Don Coreno who lives like something of a king among peasants.
One part the remake expands upon is the city’s middle class citizenship. The cities are cut into layers, which each section being under a massive energy plate attached to the mako reactors, with those a little more well off in an upper layer above the rotted slums.
While the first title talks about this dynamic, we get to examine this in stronger detail in Remake. The main character, Cloud Strife, is a mercenary that works for an eco-terrorist group called Avalanche. While the leader of this cell of the organization becomes one of the key party members, most of the group gets little screen time. This time around they’re more fleshed out and make great additions to the narrative.
One of them is the demolition expert Jessie, who has a very flirty relationship with our hero. During a mission, we get to see her family home in the upper level. It’s here we see how the middle and upper classes of Midgar live. It’s comfortable, put together far nicer than the slums. On the surface, it looks like everyone is leading a pretty good life here in contrast to the overcrowded mess below.
In the end, it’s an illusion.
While I won’t go too deep into spoilers, we see what Jessie’s motivation is for joining Avalanche, involving her father’s job and what it has done to his health. It illustrates that everyone, no matter what they do or where they live, is connected to Shinra Inc. When an incident happens in the upper section, the same Shinra security force comes that would come to the slums, and the same life essence of the planet that is being sucked dry will lead to their demise just like those below them.
They’re screwed, they’ll just be comfortable for a bit longer than those below them.
You do also interact with Shinra employees who have connections to their middle class or slums relatives throughout the plot, if not still actively living there themselves. They’re people who have to put on suits and go to work and are stuck in the wheel that is the megacorp of Shinra. It can be a bit heavy-handed, granted, but it adds more nuance that wasn’t there in the original, where you only saw the slums and Shinra’s upper management.
When you do finally butt heads with President Shinra and his cabinet, it can feel like a bit too much like your stereotypical evil CEO types, but as I write this the COVID-19 pandemic still rages the United States, and we have politicians arguing that there’s more important things than living among the rush to reopen the economy despite medical advice and common sense, so you know, draw your own conclusions at this point. When you do finally get your confrontation with President Shinra, it’s clear he understands his actions are killing the planet, he just doesn’t care. None of those in his boardroom do, and everyone is expendable to the company’s goals.
Like a lot of well-done dystopia, there’s an unsettling reality infused here. In a world where we’re on a collision course with devastating climate change that many political leaders either deny or gleefully ignore, a widening gap between the rich and poor bringing us to a new Gilded Age, and technology once thought to be wonderful now being used for either our oppression or to continue environmental devastation, the story of Final Fantasy 7’s Midgar is stronger than ever.
I didn’t quite appreciate that with the original title released being young, but upon replaying it later it really landed. This is a story of eco-terrorists on a planet on the verge of destruction doing whatever they can to slow down a megacorp that controls everything. It’s not an original story, but one you don’t see often, especially in video games. And it’s rare to see one as realized and well-crafted as Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Then a guy with an impossibly long sword who can alter reality (maybe?) shows up and you are fighting against fate, and there’s aliens or… well, something.
The story of Final Fantasy 7 eventually zooms out from this tale of corporate greed into something a lot more fantastical, borderline nonsensical. While you are still trying to save the world, the concept becomes far more vague and grand in nature than the planet being mined with reckless intent for corporate profits and class supremacy. It’s a shame, because this type of grounded storytelling about this corporate pillaging of the planet and the middle and lower classes is rare, and only feels like it’s getting rarer.
Of course, I say grounded and the first thing you see in this game is a man backflipping out of a train and then wielding a sword literally as big as he is. Maybe grounded is not quite the right word.
I’m also torn because I also loved the crazy twists and turns of Final Fantasy 7 and want to see the many other iconic locations and events be recreated in the parts that will follow. But I also want more of this portrayal of a capitalist society that’s come to its natural conclusion while the world crumbles.
But in the end, it’s all in the name, Final Fantasy. The original game was already the seventh mainline installment in a series filled with monsters, ghosts, evil clowns, reality-eating cosmic beings, and well, you get the idea. This isn’t the series for deep meditations, but escapism at its core. The games don’t need to be Dickens or Blade Runner, nor probably should they be. Even if FF7 could be heavier than you’d expect, and those not familiar with the original story should know you’re in for a wild ride, it will always be a fun adventure about men with big swords, magic, aliens and all the grandness you expect from the franchise.
But that’s part of what makes the best escapism: an echo of reality. Of course, for anyone paying the slightest attention, it can hard to escape the soul crushing reality we currently find ourselves in. Call it the time we live in, or maybe its just being stuck in doors as a global outbreak, but right now, even in the most well-crafted fantasies, of which Final Fantasy 7 Remake belongs, there can be no true escape.