From: Kirk Hamilton
To: Leigh Alexander
Subject: Re: You’ve Got To Keep Your Promise
Leigh,
This game really likes to stick it to the player, doesn’t it? First there’s that whole Aeris thing, then Cloud loses his marbles and goes all Universal Soldier on us. On top of that, a leviathan named Weapon (really? Weapon?) is unleashed just as a meteor called Meteor (really? Meteor?) bears down… By the time I finally obtained an airship, a pall hung over the entire game. Who wants to chase down sidequests to the sound of that ominous, keening world-map music?
Though I will say that dear lord, was that one triumphant way to introduce a new vehicle. That legendary slap-fight atop Sister Ray had me jumping out of my chair; I punched the square button like nobody’s business and sent that horrible Scarlet to the ground before leaping off of the Ray and onto the Highwind. The soaring, driving music kicked into gear and well… there are fist-pumps, and there are fist-pumps. That was some good shit, right there.
Long have I been a fan of the RPG world-map; long ago, I even wrote a whole thing about that magical instant “When The World Changes.” There is no single moment in gaming that I dig more than when the world first opens up, the seemingly infinite possibilities that stretch before me at the start of a grand adventure. That first opening of the galaxy map in Mass Effect, or that now-famous moment of blinding light in Fallout 3, when my character’s eyes adjust to the light and take in the vast stretch of the Capitol Wastes.FFVII’s “world-map moment” felt quite different from those ones, I thought. I had been enjoying Midgar well enough, and had just gotten my head around its geography when I was cast into what at the time felt like a massive, featureless wilderness. It felt hostile and cavernous, and not particularly exciting or eye-widening. Just a huge field loaded with random encounters, and somewhere nearby, the village of Kalm. I certainly count myself among those who bid random encounters good riddance. I have come to appreciate how they function as a sort of representative shorthand, stand-ins for the hazards of travel in a dangerous world. But they set my teeth on edge, and I find gaming’s recent move away from them to be most welcome.
But then, perhaps that is my soft, new-gamer brain talking. Even now, it wasn’t long before I figured out how to navigate the world, and how to maximize FFVII’s fairly brutal save system and relax into the rhythm of its encounters. I have always been able to adapt to these things. Over the past few years I have played through the brutally hard and stringently save-pointed Far Cry 2 multiple times on the Xbox 360, and I have loved every minute of it. I’ve loved it so much, in fact, that after returning to the game on my new PC I was surprised at how jarring I found the quicksave option to be. I felt like I was cheating myself of a richer experience! As with Far Cry 2’s lack of 360 quicksaving, much of FFVII seems difficult and unapproachable. And as with Far Cry 2, I often wonder how much of that was by design.
You suggest that we are given no reason to explore the outskirts of modern-day open-world games, but there I must disagree. After all, a good number of current games hide their most delightfully daft bits in their furthest reaches. For example, I’ll never forget the time in Fallout 3 when I discovered the sexy sleepwear. I followed some scattered diary entries and clues to a lockbox in the corner of a subway antechamber. After entering the code that I had somehow managed to unearth, I opened the safe to find… an article of clothing called “sexy sleepwear.” It was a leopard-print bit of cloth with no armor value and little monetary worth. Laughing ruefully, I put it in my pack, and in short order I was accosted by a scavenger in the tunnel. “Where is the sexy sleepwear!?” he cried. I am not making this up.
It wound up being this entire saga, like, one guy had stolen it from another guy, then hired someone to kill him… I don’t remember the particulars. My point is, there are most definitely some great surprises at the fringes of many of today’s open-world games. If anything, those are the places where the writers and designers are still allowed to get weird!
But one thing that Fallout 3 doesn’t have is the steady drip of mastery that FFVII does. Many games give us a pleasurable sense of player-skill progression, mastery of their worlds and of their mechanical systems. But mastery is its own sort of discovery, and as with any type of authored reveal, pacing is everything. I felt like Fallout 3 was compelling as I first hobbled around the wastes, barely scraping through fights and living off of what sad, irradiated scraps I could scavenge. But too quickly, I transformed into an armed-to-the-teeth badass, sprinting across the map while mowing down every hapless foe in my way.
FFVII, on the other hand, feels much more stringent and compartmentalized in its scaffolding. First I master basic navigation, then the basics of combat. My navigational options open up as I’m given the buggy, then Tiny Bronco (side note: I love Tiny Bronco), then finally the Highwind. Combat has gotten more manageable and I’ve begun to seek out grinding opportunities and enemy skills. The whole experience has an interlocking and deeply satisfying quality that is not present in many open-world games today.
As I mentioned a couple of letters ago, FFVII’s opacity also lends itself to sharing among a broader community. After all, how am I to know about these hidden things without friends like you to tell me where to look? That quality isn’t entirely lost in today’s games, though I daresay it has become rarer. Demon’s Souls was a profoundly daunting experience, and mastery of its systems unfolded in a similarly satisfying, gradual way. What’s more, it absolutely required that I look outside for help; in fact, its brilliant multiplayer design sneakily worked that very type of interaction into the fabric of its gameplay. But still, Demon’s Souls feels like the exception rather than the rule.
I can all but guarantee to you that had I played FFVII in 1997, I would have missed a good percentage of these sidequests and collectables on my first time through. How could I not? I have never really been much of a completist, and find myself only rarely pursuing the hard-to-reach corners of a massive game like this. And yet my desire to explore FFVII remains strong, perhaps heightened by the retrospective, archeological manner in which I have been approaching the game. Perhaps too by your enthusiastic and occasionally stern encouragement.
Sure, I’m interested in raising a gold chocobo (you have inspired me, and I swear it will be done), but part of the reason for that is that I am fascinated that any of this tangential stuff exists at all. I recall that many people responded to the complaints of FFXIII’s extreme linearity by saying “What of it?! Final Fantasy games have always been linear!” To those people, I would recommend revisiting the Los Angelean sprawl of FFVII’s mid-game before quickly booking a return trip to reality.
You talk about how now that you know where to go and when various things will become easier to accomplish, you have a much easier time pacing your current playthrough. I can definitely imagine how that feels, and it’s made me think about FFVII’s “Replayability” (apologies to our friend Ben Abraham, who has no greater wish than to see that word forever stricken from the lexicon).
Many games today encourage multiple playthroughs by offering complex morality systems and branching storylines, but I find that it feels just as compelling for me to play a game a second time simply to master it further. FFVII has such an embarrassment of items, enemy skills, and sidequests, plenty of which are unique and can be missed entirely. As satisfying as I have found my gradual mastery of the game to be this first time through, I can only imagine how much more satisfying it would be to start anew, armed with the knowledge I have already gained.
I feel I should take the opportunity to explain The Great YOU ALMOST LEFT VINCENT BEHIND Debacle of 2011, which isn’t quite as bad as you are imagining. In truth, I reached Nibelheim only to be drawn away by my first “ah-ha!” moment with regard to my Enemy Skill Materia. I took it upon myself to roll out in my buggy and find whatever skills I could, as fast as possible. It was the first time that completism got the better of me, and I don’t regret it for a minute—sure, I had to wait a little while longer to get Broody McPistolero into my party, but I also got both Big Guard and Aqualung up and running. Big Guard alone has served me so well that I don’t know how I’d have made it this far without it.
(Though I will mention that jokes about his broodiness aside, Vincent has been a magnificent addition to my party and has what must surely be my favorite limit break in the game.)
And so here I am, free to explore the map at last… and my lead character is a gibbering mess in a wheelchair. Even worse, after finding him in Mideel my favorite pugilistic mega-babe has taken a powder to stay by his side. So who the hell is this in my party now? Cid? Red XIII? At least Vincent is still hanging around.
I am indeed reminded of Chrono Trigger, of Marle and Lucca lugging that statue of Crono across the reaches of time in order to reanimate him. I found that segment of the game to be singularly moving—a chance take on the role of the friends who carry you when you cannot carry yourself. By contrast, Tifa and Cloud’s interactions so far have occurred off-screen. You’ve got me excited to see this through, to guide her as she brings him out the other side.
But before I do that, I have some “Huge Materia” to track down before I fight “Weapon” in order to stop “Meteor” from killing us all.
What is it with the names in this game, anyway?
~K
PS: Thanks for the tip on the Highwind song; I will be sure not to miss that. I’m at least as good a pianist as Tifa is, what with those huge gloves of hers.
PPS: Thanks too for including this great chocobo drawing you did back in 2000. I will post it along with your letter; I’m sure it will keep your drawing of Vincent good company.
Tune in next week for Part 7 as our authors are swept away by the lifestream. Does this train they’re on make any stops? Tune in to find out.To weigh in on the conversation, feel free to leave a comment or catch up with Leigh and Kirk on Twitter.