Patreon Letter: 30th April 2020

Okay I swear to god this will be the last time I talk about Final Fantasy VII for a while.

Hey everyone, 

Jackson here with another Patreon Letter! It's been a pretty intense month for me, multiple big shows for Abnormal Mapping, and stuff at home is kinda on fire, which means that you know it - I haven't had time to do anything except work, chores and taking care of my mum. It is time to talk about Final Fantasy VII one last time, as I am physically incapable of talking about anything else.

So a short preamble. If you have not played Final Fantasy VII, if you have not played FInal Fantasy VII Remake, then I will be spoiling it. Also if for some reason you read these letters but don't check the podcast feeds, you should go listen to the spoilercast me and Austin Walker did earlier this month. I'm really proud of it. Excellent podcast.

This letter is not going to be a big critique or review of the game, the bulk of my thoughts are in that podcast and there's no need repeating myself. Instead I want to talk specifically about the ending, about some of the discussion about the ending, and what the fuck is going on at Square Enix moving forward.

Helpfully, the Ultimania just dropped when I was about to write this, and so I have been gifted with a true bounty of stuff to react to. One particular interview snippet had me grabbing my head and yelling. My brain is simply not on Square's level. This is going to be a rambly disaster as I go through all my thoughts, I hope that is alright.

Ok. The spoiler break is here. Let's go.

Final Fantasy VII Remake ends in a way that I will charitably describe as interesting. And I mean it, that's not a backhanded charitably. They fuckin went for it. Is it good? It's a massive cliffhanger we're not going to know that for like three years! So being charitable is all I have. But I came out of the ending equal parts confused, excited, and most importantly relieved that I did not simply hate modern Final Fantasy. I still care, they still have me, I love this shit. Please release more than one game every half decade.

The discussion around the ending has been somewhat strange, and more than a little frustrating to me. Most of the discussion has been less to do with the actual substance of the text, and more to do with the tone. That is to say, a lot of people do not like it when Kingdom Hearts shows up in their Final Fantasy. 

To this I can only respond: what?? What are you talking about???

I get disliking Kingdom Hearts. I am currently playing Re:Coded at the moment. I could not even tell you if I like Kingdom Hearts. I think the story of Kingdom Hearts II is a complete and total disaster. I think Birth By Sleep is incredible. Hopefully I can play III before the end of the year and weigh in a complete take. But I have played enough Square Enix RPGs to know this: whether they are good, or whether they are bad, aside from the fact that Winnie the Pooh is there they are basically the same series. They're made by many of the same people, they deal with many of the same ideas, the idea that one is anime bullshit and the other is not is hilarious to me. I dunno how to tell people this but they are definitely all anime bullshit. The good games and the bad games, anime bullshit all.

That isn't to say that you can't do deep reads on the differences between the various sub-series and auteur type directors that make up Square Enix's staple. I am always here to talk about how weird Nomura is as a storyteller. But this discourse hasn't come from actual analysis of the people involved or their work. Let me whip one up. uh: the whispers of fate develop Nomura's fixation on agency by externalising the idea destiny as an arbitrary enforcer on an individual, rather than exploring the tragedy of a character's innate nature (Kadaj, Roxas, etc), thus positioning them as something more similar to co-director Toriyama's Fal'Cie from XIII. Bam you can have that one for free. 

Instead it's come from: the story slides into nonsense about destiny or whatever at the end, what is this Kingdom Hearts bullshit? Which is fine, that's fine as a reaction for a person to have, I'm not here to say I don't understand where it comes from. Instead I want to push back on it as a prevailing narrative, especially as VII Remake is for many people, their first Final Fantasy in decades. To those people I have to unfortunately break the bubble: they are all like this! You just don't like JRPGs, it's fine. 

Okay switching tact. While I'm frustrated by some of the critical framing of FFVIIr's ending, this is by no means to say that the game doesn't bring it upon itself. This game is monumentally "Square Enix" in its hubris. It is incomprehensible if you do not have a working knowledge of Final Fantasy VII and its spin-off media. The ending cutscene has a shot for shot recreation of Crisis Core, a game you can't and will never be able play legally again! There's a subplot about the wider cells of Avalanche that builds off an assassination attempt on Presdent Shinra's life, which is the plot of a japan only mobile game. They are, and will always be, the company that started a film studio in Hawaii and didn't even apply for the tax rebate.

This is, I believe, a failure of communication as much as anything. When it came to Kingdom Hearts III, a game that (i haven't played it yet, but i'm willing to put money down i'm right about this) is also completely incomprehensible if you take the name on the box at its word, Square spent literally a full half a decade before it's release making sure everyone and their dog knew that you had to play the whole series. They released multiple HD collections, a discounted bundle, and made movies of the games they couldn't port. If you were not ready to approach Kingdom Hearts III on its terms by, you had only yourself to blame. 

No such effort has been made with VII Remake. You can play the original on every platform - which is good - but there's an entire compilation of games that if you aren't a turbonerd, or weren't around games in the mid 00s, you will have no idea are important. And even more importantly than strict avaliability, every marketing quote was a weird half-measure of not really saying what the game is. They could have come out the gate and worked on some re-releases to build excitement for the remake, setting down the expectation that players would be at least passingly familiar with these games and stories, and that seeing the changes would be part of the fun. But they didn't, and so here we are, with a game that's a total lie, an audience that doesn't have the context for it, and 3 and a half million copies sold in the first three days. 

Which brings me nicely to the final thing I wanted to talk about: the actual metatextual themes of the game. There is debate as to who the whispers of fate represent: are they the fans, demanding there be no changes? Are they the developers, using characters as their whims? Are they something else entirely? I don't have a definitive answer to this because mostly I'm not interested in solving a 1:1 allegory puzzle, but I do want to argue that the angry fans last jedi argument does not work here. I've seen that position be argued, most notably in this piece, and it rubs me the wrong way. 

First of all the game is a monument to FInal Fantasy VII, one of the most important and successful games of all time, beloved by millions. The idea that putting some harry potter dementors in you multi-year super budget remake is this brave victory for creativity refusing to bow to the pressure of fans is as ridiculous as the idea that a 250 million dollar Star Wars movie is a brave victory for creativity. Nothing against them both, they're good, but we're dealing with The Biggest Products here so it's important to keep that perspective.

Second of all, harkening back to the last section, the last letter, years and years of converstaions about FFVII: Square Enix is a company that defies both logic and god. And their development of Final Fantasy VII's reputation into something that does not in anyway resemble its truth is absolutely on them. Star Wars fans being mad that anyone dares to question the reified structure of the original trilogy is not in anyway comparable to the fact that everyone thinks that Cloud is a super emo badass. And the whispers interact on such a hilariously literal level, that their potential to truly comment on the metatext of 7 is compeltely neutered. They make sure characters die at the right times. They make sure people are in the right place. They keep some twists under wraps. And that's it.

They could be so much more. They could flip out when Shinra starts doing a false flag reactor bombing. They could try to stop Jessie and Cloud growing close. They could try to stop Cloud getting close to anyone. If they were doing stuff like this I think the metatextual level to FF7r would hit harder, and arguments like how the metatextual allegory breaks down would have more weight. 

As it is. the whispers operate as pure text. They exist to make Final Fantasy VII happen. They are what the game says they are and you are punished for even trying to find more subtext or metatext there. 

Which ultimately makes FF7r a game of pure prologue. It promises bold changes, but I don't get the sense yet of what they are about. It just isn't tipping its hand enough, and the answers it provides are actually more questions. Zack??? And the dog is different??? that's cool but what???? I enjoyed the combat, I enjoyed the characters, and I really enjoyed the experience of going through the ending, but I did not leave it with something concrete. We will see where the unknown journey takes us. I really hope I enjoy the rest of it. 

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Okay so before I finish up I need to talk about the Ultimania stuff. Sorry this was much longer and more of a ramble than I intended but I've been drowning in 7 for so long. After this I am free. There's a lot of details from the Ultimania but this is the only one you need.

This blew my mind. This utterly destroyed me. I am inadequate as a critic, as a thinker, as a human being. I know it seems like a small thing but it is perhaps the perfect example in microcosm of how sometimes, Square are operateing in another universe. Possibly literally in this case.

So you fight this trio of Whispers at the end of the game, and they have fight with their fists, a gun, and a sword. The assess text for one of themsays this: An entity from a future timeline that has manifested in the present day. It fights with guns to protect the future that gave shape to it.

Everyone I know put this together. Barret, Tifa and Cloud have these weapons. That's the main party of the game. They are fighting manifestations of their future selves, thus freeing themselves from the shackles of fate. It is a simple, clean metaphor and it works. It's honestly one of the most well done parts of the ending sequence, it's not in your face about this and realising it brings these fights some genuine emotional heft. Fighting fate does not mean fighting strange ghosts, it means fighting yourself. 

BUT WAIT-- 

The Ultimania reveals that they're not meant to be the party at all, they're in fact manifestations of Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo, the remnants of Sephiroth from Advent Children.

bro what?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!

Okay so sure, why them? I guess because then Advent Children isn't guaranteed to happen so they'll never be born. But how do they exist in the timeline, aren't they merely reflections of Sephiroth's will? Isn't the tragedy of Kadaj that he serves Sephiroth and JENOVA loyally but knows he isn't the favourite, that he isn't the being that is "supposed" to exist. So are these individual entities fighting for their own existence or are these parts of Sephiroth? And if they're meant to be parts of Sephiroth what does it mean that Sephiroth is also trying to kill them? Are they connected to the Sephiroth currently in the Northen Cave and not this weird destiny-destroying Sephiroth? 

None of these questions have answers, and are so ludicrous that it would be stupid to ask them. But the point is that the game invites them!! Or more specifically the dev team invite these questions when the game itself seemed to provide a reading that was infinitely more coherent, rich and nobody was questioning.

I bow my head and admit I simply am not on Square's level. I have no fucking idea why Zack is back but the dog is different but there's still a connection and some people are alive now but possibly in different timelines. I just do not know what game you're playing, and it would be hubris to say that I did. But bringing it back around to the first and major complaint about the game, and to turn it on its head for my own: I know for a fact there's an iron clad explanation to all of this. People may say that Square's games make no sense but if anything they make too much sense, and this is no exception. We might not understand what's happening right now, but I guarantee there are diagrams in an office in Tokyo that have mapped this all out. There is no ambiguity, yet neither is their resolution, there is only a puzzle with missing pieces and two or three more years of posting to try to solve it, before we all put down our money to do this all again.