Fixing Final Fantasy 7: "This Game Are Sick."

A recent trend in video gaming is the advent of the HD Collection. Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, Ico & Shadow of the Colossus, Sly Cooper, and many others have already gotten the "HD" treatment. Largely this simply means optimizing the graphics and sound, collecting older games in a way that makes it convenient and more palatable for fans old and new. Square-Enix seems eager to hop on the HD train, and have been working on Final Fantasy X HD for some time now. If Versus XIII is any indication of the timetable Square works on, we can expect FFX HD roughly between the heat-death of the Universe and when Time itself is crumbling into a black and empty void.

Pictured: Fans eagerly awaiting Final Fantasy Versus XIII

Of course, while most hardcore Square-Enix fans (read: Otaku) are asking, "When is FFX HD coming out?" I find my self more inclined to ask "Why is Final Fantasy X HD coming out?" Is FFX not already HD enough? The nice thing about most PS2 games is that, graphically and technically speaking they are still very palatable and easy to look at and play. It would be like remaking or remastering a movie that came out five years ago. Now, if Square could find time between re-releasing Final Fantasy 4 and its terrible sequel no one wants to play and making terrible Final Fantasy 13 sequels no one wants to play to do some self-examination, they may realize there is indeed a game in their library that could do with a new coat of paint and some polishing up. Final Fantasy 7.

Final Fantasy 7 is a game that a lot of people are torn between. One the one hand, it revolutionized and popularized the RPG genre to western audiences, and was many players' first introduction to concepts like full-motion video cutscenes. Final Fantasy 7 was more or less the most discussed and popular game on the entire internet for quite a long time. During a simpler time, when we posted on Gamefaqs with handles like _-~SepHiROTH~-_, and still used things like AOL and AIM to share our slash fanfictions, and Final Fantasy 7 consisted of roughly half of the yaoi on the internet in the late 90's to early 00's. Surprisingly enough the fanbase is biggest source of hate that the game gets, for some inexplicable reason.

Unfortunately, all the hype and discussion and popularity has torn the gaming community asunder, and the majority of discussion of the game these days is usually between a sweaty nerd with a Kingdom Hearts shirt on frothing at the mouth about how it's the most amazing game ever and a less-sweaty-but-probably-even-more-nerdy nerd with a beret and $300 glasses scoffing and calling the other nerd a plebeian or something. I consider myself in the "Apologetic fan" camp of Final Fantasy. While I do enjoy the game and acknowledge its importance in the big picture of video games and RPGs, I have no disillusions about the shortcomings of the game. In fact there's a lot of really awful things about the game, though to be fair I consider some of the worst things to be the spin-offs that it would later generate. However, I think for its time it was extremely fresh and engaging, and the pure atmosphere of the game was unmatched. I also think it's composer Nobuo Uematsu's strongest altogether work. Overall I think Final Fantasy 7 is a very good-but-not-great game. And it hasn't aged well at all. If only there was some way to fix this, some sort of a...higher definition HEY WAIT A MINUTE

I've created better looking graphics with Lego (and more coherent plotlines too badum-tish)

Fix A: Graphics

Coming out in 1997, while it wasn't exactly early in the Playstation's lifespan, it was still at a time when developers were still trying to figure out the whole "3D" thing, and largely this meant trying to figure out how to not make it look really awful. Unfortunately, they hadn't quite nailed that yet and Final Fantasy 7 looks really awful. Mainly the characters. You could make better looking models out of papier-mâché. They're ugly, blocky messes and they don't even look like they're a natural part of the world and environments they're pasted over. They look like a better fit for the world of Mario 64. It's possible this is due in part to the somewhat complicated development process of the game. Final Fantasy 7 started out on the Super Nintendo around 1994, and was later changed to the Nintendo 64. After Square decided the N64 lacked the graphical capabilities they wanted to get out of their game, they jumped ship and Final Fantasy 7 began development on the Sony Playstation, which boasted the powerful CD-ROM rather than the cartridges Nintendo would stick with on the N64. The graphics are a pretty big turnoff to new and old players alike. They're extremely dated, existing in the uncanny valley in between 2D and 3D. It's not much fun to look at, and it's extremely jarring for people used to modern graphics. It's hard to look at even compared to say, Super Nintedo graphics.

Pictured: A modded version of the PC port of FF7. Not perfect, but better.
The characters at least look a bit more like part of the world.

This is a shame, because I think the actual art direction - the backgrounds and environments - are really cool. FF7 has a unique and interesting variety of areas. Ideally, an HD port would fix this and make the game's characters and environments truly stunning and immersive. Imagine scenes like the reactor with Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth at the end of flashback at Kalm, or Bugenhagen's Planetarium. In scenes like those, and many times throughout the game, the camera will zoom in on characters as the react and emote to events around them. But because of the boxy character sprites, it takes away from these moments, and can often times make them laughable. As it stands, the world and thus the game is harder to become absorbed in because of the poor quality of the character sprites. It makes the game areas feel less organic and more like "areas where the player moves around." I know Square has the capacity to do better. In Final Fantasy 13 (which for the most part I think is a bad game, but that's a whole other article) has incredible graphics and art direction. For all its shortcomings, FF13 is a gorgeous looking game. Imagine Midgar or Junon in that same engine, huge cities you could be a part of and interact with. Combined with the stellar soundtrack and art direction, it would create areas that really feel alive.

Are he sick? I am important doctor, please to allow me through

Fix B: Dialogue

This is the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

Final Fantasy suffers the same problem that most if not all Japanese RPGs of its era suffered - the translation is not particularly well done. Typos, grammatical errors, Engrish, oddly constructed sentences, inaccuracies - you name it, we got it. The big issue with mistranslations and confusing sentence structure in a game containing as many twists and turns and half-truths and unreliable narrators as FF7 is it begins to make things (even) harder to understand and follow along with. The technique of having an unreliable narrator is a little hard to pull off when you've got an unreliable translator.

The text in this game is in need of some serious polish and proofreading. However, what it doesn't need is retconning and reworking to fit in with the EU. If Square could resist its insatiable desire to try and make the universe of Final Fantasy as stupid (read: Dirge of Cerberus) as possible and just focus on making sure the dialogue flows naturally and makes a modicum of sense, it would greatly enhance the experience, and give the twist and turns of the story more impact.

Pictured: SNORRRRE

Fix C: Battle System
Final Fantasy 7's battle system is, frankly, a little...dry. Okay, yeah, it's a JRPG and many would argue that all JRPG battles are boring and dry. But even compared to many of the other games in the series, FF7's battles feel lacking. And most of all I felt it lacked innovation. One might say that Materia and Limit Breaks were fresh ideas, but the reality is is that they draw from the previous game in the series, Final Fantasy 6. In FF6, you can equip Magicite in order to give your character access to magic and influence their stats. Additionally, in FF6 you had "Desperation Attacks", special moves which had the chance to trigger upon your character's health dropping to a critical level. To be fair, unlike Limit Breaks which are frequent, Desperation Attacks were rare (I'm sure there are some players who never even saw one), but the concept was still there.

One thing I didn't like about Limit Breaks was that you never had access to all of them at once. Granted, the majority of the time you wouldn't want to, as the level 4 limit breaks outclass all the other ones by far, which in itself is another complaint I have about them.  The way Limits work in FF7 is that every character has four separate levels, where levels 1-3 contained two Limits each, and level 4 was the character's ultimate Limit Break. Thing is, the character can only access one level at a time, so once you gain the character's ultimate Limit Break, you never have a reason to go back to the others. I would have preferred if some of the lower level Limits retained some utility and you had a reason and the ability to use them. As is, you just use Omnislash over and over again. Unfortunately, combat in FF7 largely boils down to using the most powerful ability you have over and over again. Is that a common occurrence in JRPGs? Sure. But again, in FF7 it feels much more obvious.

Materia is also another aspect that could use improvement. Like Magicite in FF6, it's integral to both the plot and mechanics of the game, and also like Magicite it can at times make the characters feel interchangeable. In the story, Materia is a by-product of Mako that can, in a nutshell, use the energy from the planet to manipulate nature - or to speak in mechanical terms, use magic and abilities. This is fine for casting a Fire spell or summoning Odin, but one thing I think is out of place is the yellow Command Materia. These allow the characters to use certain abilities like Steal, Throw, Mimic, Enemy Skill, and so on and so forth. But how exactly is the ability to Steal from an enemy related to the planet or nature manipulation?  An easy way to fix this while also addressing the interchangeability of characters is to simply give characters unique commands that replace these Materia. Why not give Yuffie, the ninja-thief character, the Steal and Throw command? And if you wanted a character to use an ability they normally couldn't? Make an Enemy Skill out of it. Then, say, Cloud could just as easily learn Steal from having an enemy (or perhaps even Yuffie) use it on him.

Addendum: I spoke with someone over messenger who had a pretty good rebuttal to this that I hadn't really considered, and I thought it was worth sharing here. While it doesn't necessarily fix the problem I have with the Command Materia mechanically, it does explain decently it as it pertains to the game world.

"But how is drawing upon the magic of the earth to copy a skill, IE Mime, or using it to infuse yourself with skills you shouldn't possess, like preternatural reflexes to steal from a horrifying monster, or throw a broadsword fast enough to hurt an enemy, with that level of accuracy, not sensible? It's like magical steroids."

Materia also affects your stats, but not in a way that you'd ever really notice much. For example, the basic curative Materia reduces your character's maximum HP by two percent and Strength by one, and raises maximum MP by two percent and Magic by one. When you get down to it, even when stacking that with the effects of other Materia, who really cares about 2 extra percent of hit-points? Having the effect be a bit more significant or tangible in the actual gameplay would go a long way to actually making you think about your set up (at least in the early-to-mid-game before you get all the super broken stuff.) Wanna make Barret a tank who acts as the team nurse (I always made Barret my healer when I was a kid for some reason and was stupid and never used Aeris)? Load him up with the right Materia and make it happen. If the Restore Materia actually made you feel like you were taking significantly less damage or restoring a lot more HP with your spells, it would be a lot more enjoyable.

More like Ultimate Coffee Break Jesus CHRIST

Also, an option for skipping or at the very least shortening Summon animations is mandatory. Knights of the Round, the game's most powerful summon Materia, takes literally a minute and a half to complete its attack. You could win the WWE US Championship belt five times over before that attack finishes for crying out loud. Don't get me wrong, the animations for the Summons are really neat and flashy and exciting and all that jazz...the first time. I mean sure it's cool to be able to have a space dragon fire a nuke down at the planet or to have the entire round table slaughter your enemy, but why bother when hitting X a few times ends the battle in about a third of the time? It disinclines you from ever using them, and considering Summons that aren't KOTR aren't really that useful in FF7 to begin with, it doesn't help things.

Conclusion:
So, with Final Fantasy 7 being at the very least one of the most important games Square ever made, and indeed one of the most important games in its genre, why not give it the ol' HD treatment? Because as it is, while I think FF7 was a fun game for its time, it's not particularly fun to actually play anymore. It could do with a bit of a reworking. Not a complete overhaul, mind, but simply what I stated before. A new coat of paint, some optimization, maybe rework the battle system to be a little less "Press X to Win", a better translation, and viola. Final Fantasy 7 is at least twice as good as it was before.  Of course, Square-Enix being Square-Enix, I wouldn't actually trust them with such a task, because I'm sure they'd try to "fix it in post" so to speak and retroactively try to make things like Advent Children, Crisis Core, or God-forbid Dirge of Cerberus make sense and tie in better with the original game. This is literally impossible to do and would just make the original Final Fantasy 7 make even less sense than it already does. Not to mention they thought the recent Windows port of FF7 was of acceptable quality (It wasn't. It was somehow worse than the original in every way.)

So, FF7 HD. Will it happen? Probably not. Ever since the tech-demo Square presented for the PS3 in which they used the introduction of Final Fantasy 7 to show off the capabilities of the PS3, rumors have swirled around the internet, and Square's attitude towards it has been disinterested at best. Even if it was to happen, we'll probably just end up with Advent Children: The Game, and the original charm and atmosphere of the game will be lost in favor of ~~~anime~~~.

Still not Anime enough! Get the fuck out of my office and don't come back 'til he's at least twice as badass and beautiful~~~!