This Isn't Just a Reactor

Final Fantasy VII Play-through
Playtime: 00:00-00:56

"This city don't have no day or night."
"The upper world... a city on a plate. Its 'cuz of that @#$& pizza that people underneath are sufferin!"

Once upon a time, FF7's opening CG movie looked amazing. Two generations of systems later, it of course looks incredibly primitive now, even compared to graphics now rendered in real time. Part of its probably the nostalgia I get from it, but even now as dated as it looks there's still a certain impact that it has. Were they ever to adapt FF7 into a movie, (I mean based on the original story, Advent Children doesn't count) I can't imagine how it would open any other way. We start out adrift in space, only to suddenly transition to an extreme close-up of Aries, who we don't formally meet for a while, but who is in some ways as much of a protagonist as is Cloud. Aries walks away and we pull back to see the totality of the giant sprawl of the city and the enormity of the Shinra tower in the center. The title appears, and then suddenly we get another quick cut as a train comes barreling into the station down below, the train that later Cloud is going to use as a metaphor for destiny. In just a couple of minutes and with no words, only Nobuo Uematsu's music the game's creators perfectly introduce the game's near-future, super-industrial, dystopian setting while leading right into the opening mission. Few other games contributed more to giving video games a cinematic element, and FF7's opening sequence is one of its best examples.

The bombing run mission which directly follows the opening is mostly about new players getting their bearings about them, and introducing Cloud and Barrett. Cloud is widely mocked, and admittedly deservedly so, as being the first example of the "angsty" phase of Sqaure protagonists, the precursor to Squall in FF8, who was MUCH worse. The first hour of gameplay gives us the first example of the infamous "....." text box, and Cloud literally says about a half a dozen times some variation of "I don't care about the planet, I just want to get my money and go home!!" As Cloud sets the bomb in the Mako reactor, (side note: given that the first hour of the game has you blowing up a reactor for a terrorist organization, do you think this game would've been released in America had it been made after 9/11) he has a minor freakout, and a voice seemingly in his head says "This isn't just a reactor," giving us the first hint of Cloud's insanity that eventually is going to lead to the whole Cloud/Zach dual-life plot. Once that really starts to unravel, Cloud becomes much more interesting than the walking pile of angst that he is here.

A lot of people seem to dislike Barrett as well, complaining that Square basically made him a walking caricature--a black guy, permanently armed, with a gun grafted to his arm who talks a bit like Mister T. I can't really deny that there's a certain inherent ridiculousness to his character, but I also can't deny that I like him as a character in spite of it all. His frantic, overbearing personality is a great equalizer for Cloud's sullen nihilism, and he has some of the most memorable lines early in the game, like the "fuckin' pizza" line at the beginning of this post. Later in the game, once Sephiroth comes into the fold and the story becomes a battle of mythical forces, Barrett gets lost in the shuffle a bit, but in the game's first act he has his own sort of complete story arc. Here, we see him leading a terrorist cell as they complete their most brazen attack. Later, he leads them on another, still bigger attack which fails, leading Shinra to retaliate by eviscerating his entire neighborhood and nearly killing his daughter, after which Barrett is distraught but decides to fight on. I believe its Barrett who comments that the wire you climb up to get from the Wall Market to the Upper Plate "looks like hope," but I'll have to confirm that when I get there.

I mentioned Nobuo Uematsu's music when talking about the opening CG, and it really can't be stressed enough how brilliant his music is throughout the game. I love the background music for the mako reactor, where he combines a melody in the form of an electronic buzzing sort of sound overlayed with big bellowing chime sounds. The music envokes the same sort of feeling that the opening CG does, that this is taking place in a city that often seems less like a real living city and more one giant, cold, sterile, and dark machine. Once you get back to the surface, you hear the track that I think is called "Heart's Anxiety" on the soundtrack, with its haunting string sounds that fade in and out ethereally. Uematsu's music on the NES and SNES was absolutely amazing, given the great limitations of the hardware he was working with, and here in FF7 on a system that can actually approximate the sounds of real-life instruments with some degree of success, Uematsu is absolutely on fire.

I'm currently saved outside of Tifa's bar the morning after the Sector 1 reactor bombing. The whole sequence in the bar is probably a little long. It gives Tifa a chance to be introduced, but the flashback to Tifa and Cloud as kids sitting up on the watertower, or whatever that is, isn't really all that dramatic for the time spent setting it up, and there's a lot more of Cloud's incessant "I don't like people, just give me my money!" attitude than is really necessary throughout the whole scene. Up next, I'm off to try and blow up the Sector 5 reactor. Spoilers: this one doesn't go as smoothly. I'll see if I get around to playing some sort tomorrow.