Andrew Kirby is a PhD candidate in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program at Queen’s University. His research focuses on the representation of urban environments in digital media and how these environments impact their human inhabitants. His research is forthcoming in The Neutral: Graduate Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Contact: andrew.kirby@queensu.ca

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Final Fantasy VII (Square 1997) (hereafter FFVII) – a game in which the player controls a team of characters struggling to save a world damaged, amongst other things, by the over-extraction of precious materials – has inspired a range of sequels and spin-offs, all of which carry forward the initial game’s ecological concerns. The game is currently being reimagined in an ongoing multi-installment remake, beginning with Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix 2020) (hereafter FFVIIR). This game takes the first portion of FFVII and expands upon its content, further developing narrative and thematic elements while reimagining the gameplay for modern technology. FFVIIR also modifies the original story, emphasizing a variety of thematic concerns including identity, personal responsibility, and even meta-textual questions of what a remake means. This essay, however, will focus primarily on how the game interprets the ecological concerns central to FFVII, and how formal differences between the games change our understanding of these ecological concerns and their criticism of rampant consumerism. I will explore the tension between these ecological themes and the ludic interaction the player has with the game, focusing on the way that the game’s design teaches us to rely upon the city it condemns, thereby creating a tension between the stated meaning and the meaning developed by how the game operates. This friction between FFVIIR’s formal and narrative meanings demonstrates how these two types of messaging work in the modern AAA video game market. A closer examination of FFVIIR’s juxtaposed meanings reveals how the focus on bringing in players and competing against other games encourages designers to make products that are structured around assumptions and formal logics regarding the role of ecology in a consumerist world. This contradiction undermines any thematic criticisms provided by the game’s story.

The FFVII franchise centers around the city of Midgar, a city owned and operated by Shinra. Shinra mines Mako, a natural resource referred to as the life-blood of the planet, out of greed, using it to power the weapons and technology they develop, regardless of the destruction this is causing to the planet. This Mako industry powers Midgar and gives Shinra control of the region. It is in Midgar that FFVII begins by following a mercenary, Cloud Strife, and the ecoactivist group AVALANCHE, which hires him to help destroy a series of Mako reactors. In both versions of the game, but particularly the remake, it is stressed repeatedly that Shinra is knowingly damaging the planet to harvest Mako. Shinra’s actions are repeatedly criticized as short-sighted and apathetic to the greater good despite the purported benefits brought by what they are producing. As players move through the game, characters stress that this evil must be stopped at any cost, justifying the damage they do as worthwhile in the name of protecting the planet. The disconnect between FFVIIR’s narrative and its design comes in the way that Shinra’s developments, the tools they have made from Mako, and the city that it has allowed them to build, are conveniences which players are taught to become dependent on. Shinra’s city ensures that players always have access to whatever they need to fight Shinra’s evils. 

This disconnect between narrative and design offers a fascinating insight into the game’s “procedural rhetoric”, Ian Bogost’s term for the logic which defines how the world of a game functions: how “arguments are made not through the construction of words or images, but through the authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of dynamic modes” (29). The ways in which a game allows us to interact with its environment – the use of genre and the physics of the engine in which it is designed – structure how players make meaning as they interact with the game’s world. 

It is the procedural rhetoric of FFVIIR that complicates its ecological themes. As the entirety of the game takes place within the confines of Midgar, how the city is rendered shapes our experience of the game and its world. As Cloud and AVALANCHE move through Midgar, players are repeatedly shown the horrors of what Shinra has done to those outside of the company. Citizens are left to live in slums filled with dirt and debris. There is no sunlight except on the upper plate, where the wealthiest preside. Lingering shots show the devastation that the rampant consumption of Mako has resulted in, and characters describe the horrible damage this has done to the health and well-being of so many. However, all of the city’s evils are undercut by how players learn to interact with it. 

Early in the game, players learn that smashing boxes will provide them with items or Mako, which replenishes the characters’ capacity to use magic. In addition to these breakable objects, chests are scattered throughout Midgar which contain valuable items such as materia (crystalized Mako manufactured by Shinra). Materia increase the characters’ capability in battle and grant them new powers. There are also frequent vending machines and benches scattered throughout the world, at which players can rest to completely heal their party and stock up on any items they are lacking. These opportunities allow players better chances in the combat to come. Midgar is laid out in such a way that it ensures players have not only what they need, but ample time to rest and plan.  Enemies which used to pose a serious challenge become mere inconveniences as Shinra indirectly gives AVALANCHE just the tools they need when they need them. This parallels the real-world issue of personal convenience that comes as a result of rampant consumerism. Though the decision to limit FFVIIR to the Midgar portion of the original game’s story makes Shinra the primary antagonist of this game, the developers decided to also include the ultimate villain of FFVII: Sephiroth, a soldier genetically engineered to serve as a god-like weapon for Shinra, yet who becomes conscious of his exploitation and sets himself on the destruction of the planet. The tools received from the chests that litter Midgar are the only way players can defeat this threat and save the world. In this way, Midgar teaches us that the results of over-extraction so often condemned by the spoken words of the game cannot truly be all bad, as this practice is eventually the only means by which to save the world. 

 

The less apparent element of the game’s procedural rhetoric comes not in the provision of items, but in the very layout of the world accessible to the player. The Final Fantasy franchise is known for its large worlds with multiple locations that players can navigate at will. FFVII, for instance, provides characters with multiple vehicles that they can use to explore the rich and detailed world. This freedom, however, comes only after the escape from Midgar, which comes at the end of FFVIIR.  This game’s focus on the initial portion of the original results in a level design that resembles a series of hallways which periodically branch off in different directions. When these branches occur, one path will carry players on to a cutscene or boss while the other leads quickly to treasure or a place to rest. In these branching situations, a quick glimpse at the game’s map will reveal that one path leads to further progression, while the other dead-ends shortly around a corner. This act of checking the map provides the options of immediate progress or a slight delay with the promise of greater opportunities upon your return (Figure 1). At times, pieces of the debris left by Shinra will obstruct a hallway; but if it is the direction that Cloud and his friends need to proceed in, the debris will be traversable, whereas debris that cannot be hopped over or crawled under means that you are going the wrong way. In this way, even the destructive repercussions of Shinra’s disregard for the environment prove beneficial to the people working to stop them. This highly linear structure is akin to the environment telling the players what is and is not important – asking players to trust that Midgar will guide them and that other avenues are not worth exploring, thereby procedurally teaching you to trust that the city knows what you need before you do. Shinra has shaped Midgar so that for the players, as for the citizens of the fictional society, there is only one way forward; and that one path leads to seeming prosperity.

 

The extent to which this linear organization differs from the original FFVII is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the inclusion of each game’s greatest weapons. Each playable character in the games has a type of weapon which they alone can use. As players progress through the game, they find incrementally stronger weapons. In FFVII, players can search for each character’s strongest weapon. Cloud’s greatest weapon, for instance, is only accessible by repeatedly hunting down an optional boss that moves around the world, crashing into it in an airship, and defeating it in a series of increasingly challenging battles (Figure 2). In FFVIIR, however, Cloud’s greatest weapon is in a chest that one game guide describes as “in plain sight and impossible to not see” (PowerPyx), demonstrating the extent to which everything in this game is meant to be readily available to the player (Figure 3). Players of the original game had to work and explore for the tools that would help them along their path, but the Midgar of FFVIIR teaches that whatever is needed will be provided, something only possible due to the highly structured nature of the urban environment which allows for no object to ever be hidden in the manner of the original. 

FFVIIR’s Midgar provides everything the player could ever need. The city guides players through its terrain and ensures they can progress through any challenge. The materia which gives characters the powers they need to progress and succeed is powered by the same Mako that the story insists should be unavailable. The only way the game works is through the conveniences afforded by the city which dictates what is or is not available or possible. The game’s procedural rhetoric foregrounds a convenience that is at tension with the thematic emphasis on ecological activism and the evil of overreliance on cities and the resources that power them. This rhetoric develops additional meanings in what is communicated to the player, meanings distinct from the narrative content. Christopher B. Patterson describes dynamical meaning as “meaning that grows out of exploring a game’s rules and boundaries” (16). This type of meaning is what we arrive at based on a game’s procedural rhetoric. What is noteworthy in FFVIIR is how this dynamical meaning runs contrary to what is being put forward by the game’s narrative. The game tells the story of a world where rampant consumerism and corporate disregard for ecology has resulted in an unsustainable world that must be changed at any cost. Yet, simultaneously, the game structures the player’s experience of this world so that the city built on this damaging treatment of the environment provides everything needed to eventually save the world, all while guiding the player through environments which teach them exactly what does and does not warrant their time and attention.

Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni describe the ways in which the messages conveyed on the levels of form and narrative can work in different combinations when it comes to political matters. They assert that many films can take a political critique as their stated theme but fail to be properly political, because even while critiquing the dominant political system, “they unquestionably adopt its language and its imagery” (Comolli and Narboni 691). This category was described as increasingly common at the time of their writing and has only grown over the years as more artists have aimed to make political criticisms while working within industries which require the workings of capital to create a product.

There are, of course, small independent games which could be said to follow in the category Comolli and Narboni favour by attacking “ideological assimilation on two fronts” (690). This is done by using unique procedural rhetoric that challenges players to question their assumptions about what a game should be while dealing with political content tied to these formal challenges. A game such as Disco Elysium, which is all about how choice impacts outcome through its interactive conversation and character-building systems, creates situations where “the player becomes a bystander to impuissant affect” as “potent emotions transcend player control” in one of the key moments of the game in order to remind players of the limitation of choice (Butterworth-Parr). Major studios such as Square Enix are, however, determined to make a profit and provide a pleasurable experience for the player where they feel capable and in command.

Comolli and Narboni’s work focuses on the distinction between narrative and formal content in the medium of film, championing a cinema that undermines ideological assumptions about reality through formal challenges that force viewers to think about how they expect a film to work. These challenges, according to Comolli and Narboni, should tie in with the themes explored in a film’s story. The formal constraints of video games are, however, different from those of film. Whereas a film’s formal content is shaped by tools such as editing, cinematography, and sound, games utilize these tools in addition to controlling the very way we interact with their world through their procedural rhetoric. With the distinction between formal and narrative content that Comolli and Narboni outline, we can see that the dynamical meaning of FFVIIR–the meaning generated by the procedural rhetoric which leads us to rely on and expect to be taken care of by Midgar–runs contrary to the narrative content that insists that the city is an evil, destructive place that has no right to exist as it does. In this sense, the game is very much “caught in the system [it] wish[es] to break down” (Comolli and Narboni 691).   

FFVIIR paints a damning picture of the ideology that insists on the over-extraction of natural resources in the name of profit. Yet, this theme is consistently undercut by the game’s design choices, which argue that as evil as this city is, nothing would be possible without it. This tension mirrors real-world issues regarding the conveniences and comforts made both attractive and necessary to navigate capitalist society. What is notable is that this game takes these same conveniences and makes them necessary to save the world at the same time as it erases the more freeing experience provided in the original game. 

The Final Fantasy VII remake is an ongoing and multi-installment project and this essay was written prior to the release of the second major installment. Released during the editorial process of the essay, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth shows how the procedural rhetoric of its predecessor changes in a less urban environment. The sequel uses an “open zone” approach that is notably less linear than FFVIIR’s Midgar. Items are now missable if players do not put an emphasis on seeking them out, which only reinforces the above observations of how the city provides for players in the first installment. The majority of these items will, however, be available at stores that the characters arrive at in subsequent urban areas, thereby reaffirming the convenience of the city. The exact nature of the franchise will continue to shift with further installments but, for the time being, it is clear that the designers of the remake were not as committed to the issues of ecology and anti-consumerism as the characters depicted in their game.

Works Cited

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. The MIT Press, 2007.

Butterworth-Parr, Francis. “I Learn Through Paradise, or Disco Inferno? A Brief Etymology of Disco Elysium.” First Person Scholar, 12 May 2021,  http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/i-learn-through-paradise-or-disco-inferno/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2023.

Comolli, Jean-Luc, and Jean Narboni. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.” Film Theory & Criticism,  7th ed., edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 686-693.

“Corkscrew Tunnel – Map and Obtainable Items.” Game8, https://game8.co/games/Final-Fantasy-VII-Remake/archives/286008. Accessed 20 Sept. 2023.

Final Fantasy VII. PlayStation, Square, 1997.

Final Fantasy VII Remake. PlayStation, Square Enix, 2020.

Glasser, AJ. “Final Fantasy XII.” GamePro, 5 March  2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20110507233035/http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/2

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Patterson, Christopher B. Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games. NYU Press, 2020.

PowerPyx. “Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Remake All Weapon Locations & Weapon Abilities.” 7 April  2020, https://www.powerpyx.com/final-fantasy-7-vii-remake-all-weapon-locations-weapon-abilities/.

“Twin Stinger Weapon Location for Cloud – Final Fantasy 7 Remake.” YouTube, uploaded by PerfectParadox, 10 April 2020, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUsrrwIg4M&ab_channel=PerfectParadox.

“Ultimate Weapon (Final Fantasy VII).” Final Fantasy Wiki, https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Ultimate_Weapon_(Final_Fantasy_VII). Accessed 20 Sept. 2023.