Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis
on retelling a story, on coherently telling a complex story, on and on
Despite my better judgment, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, a mobile app remake anthology-style retelling of sort of every title in the world of Final Fantasy VII. I was excited when it was announced although it definitely had a certain “who is this for?”–ness about it, particularly since Final Fantasy VII is very notably being remade (sort of!), even Crisis Core just got a remaster – who is this version of the games for? Who is this version of the story for? Is this a somewhat abridged, more accessible, fluff-cut version of the game, a la Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition? Is this just something for Gamers to be mad at because it’s gatcha’d all to hell, which is bad because *googles what gatcha is*
I really should’ve called ReadOnly “Not A Review” instead. I’m not writing one of those. There’s plenty to say about Ever Crisis through the lens of the state of the video game industry best unpacked by people who are on that beat. What I’m interested in here is the storytelling, and if this is a particularly effective way to tell a story. Or in this case, re-tell a story. Or, very particularly, re-tell a story which has branched over 20-odd years and gotten logistically complicated. And if it’s not effective, why, and is there anything interesting about that.
What we’re dealing with here is:
A 25-year-old video game that takes somewhere between 40 and 80 hours to finish. Despite showing its age technologically and translation quality–lly, this is universally beloved and easy to legally play on many, many different platforms. I’ve played this one! It took me a long time to play! I love it.
A prequel game released in 2009 on hardware that was discontinued in 2014. A remaster for modern platforms was only rereleased last year. I’ve never played this – partly because I only ever played the original a few years ago, but also this is quite a logistical hurdle.
Various other spinoffs with similar inaccessibility. A game only released on PlayStation 2. A pre–smart phone cell phone game only released in Japan. A discontinued multiplayer iOS game. And so on.
There’s also a movie no one likes.
A wholly separate remake of the original game that – and I honestly love this – spiralled out of a straight remake into a trilogy of games doing a wild metaanalysis of grappling with the legacy of the game, is possibly actually a sequel to the original game depending on where the alternative timeline stuff goes, makes you feel like someone who knows way too much about Twin Peaks to try to decipher. And here’s the wild part… so far, this seems like it is not at all part of Ever Crisis. Which makes sense but also, once again, who is Ever Crisis for?
So Ever Crisis is re-telling most of a story that – between the unique difficulties of video game preservation and the unique time demands of the medium – has become pretty logistically and narratively inaccessible, part of which is also currently being re-told with a different vision. What an interesting problem and interesting opportunity! But thus far the choices it is making for restructuring the narrative are… odd.
That above-linked piece by Ed Nightingale gives us a good starting point on the possibilities here as well as where it falls short (emphasis mine):
Story Mode is the main attraction, splitting up the original game, the Crisis Core spin-off, and last year's The First Soldier mobile game (RIP) into a series of abridged missions. These are usually a couple of minutes long at maximum, involving some brief dialogue and a battle or two. It's a pleasant enough way to re-play the original story, at least for fans seeking a quick reminder - this is by no means a definitive experience for newcomers.
Frustratingly, though, you're unable to choose which game's story to follow. Instead, it's a fixed path beginning with the original and then a forced swap to Crisis Core for a few missions and so on. It's all too easy, then, to lose the thread of a story as it jumps between games. More annoying still is Ever Crisis has been marketed as offering new story missions for young Sephiroth as part of The First Soldier, but these don't actually exist in the game yet - they're simply teased when you complete the current set of missions. For many fans, this will be the main draw of the game, but it's not yet playable.
The game starts with a tutorial offering an intriguing hint at the alternative timeline stuff the Remake is getting into, but then after that it’s back into more or less the beginning of the original game. It’s fantastic. I love revisiting this first chapter of a game I love. It’s rewritten, but not too polished; it retains enough of the clunky original soul to feel just right?
After a direct-ish adaptation of the beginning, it introduces some expository narration, little “the gang went back to the base” stuff to help abridge the original text, so to speak. It brings in a bit of Remake’s fleshing out of early minor characters who were greatly expanded in Remake (for reasons that aren’t in this game, thematically, so, odd, but they got a Brand To Capitalize On so, fair enough). It’s mostly abridged, but very fillery. Odd, but sure.
We trek on. The mercenary goes on an ecoterrorist mission. He talks with his childhood friend who got him hired. The veteran player who played the original enjoys some foreshadowing at the friend’s confusion over the mercenary’s behavior. This goes over the newcomer’s head, as it should. The veteran was the newcomer once; they can appreciate foreshadowing they only get on second exposure. The mercenary goes on another mission. It goes worse. He gets separated and meets a kind woman selling flowers who is inexplicably hounded by government agents. They run off. The veteran player knows this is the beginning of a tragedy.
The veteran player knows the woman’s past and the mercenary’s past are improbably linked by a key figure, one who is barely even in the original text. The newcomer will not for a long time; he will only be alluded to in the near future.
The game abruptly cuts to that character’s story. Like… a scene too early.
Ever Crisis cuts for the first time to the beginning of another video game: Crisis Core. We cut back in time to a man training in the same military team as the mercenary. He is arrogant. He is in a virtual simulator. A lot. He keeps training; he doesn’t know when to quit. The newcomer asks why are we here. The veteran player asks why we are here. The narrative pacing has run into a wall. We already had a story about a character separated from one cast of characters and their problems to meet a new character, but before we really learn about that character’s problems, the reader is separated again to another new character with other problems who – had we stuck with the first new character for just like one more goddamn scene – would have hinted at who this man is to the story thus far. Why did we break here? How is this scene’s insertion here informing anything about the story? It’s inexplicable to everyone, newcomers who don’t know any of these people and veterans who know some or all of this alike.
(Spoilers in this paragraph) Veterans who’ve played the original game know who this man is. The flower seller loved him – this is hinted at early on in Remake, this is slowly teased out over the first act of the original game. The mercenary thinks he is him – this is a huge, complicated twist in the third act of the original game. He’s barely in the original game – a shadow who set in motion many events that have long outlived him. We’ve cut to his game now to learn more about him, despite… none of this having even remotely been introduced yet.
(No more spoilers) And it’s so slow. The solider trains in a simulator. He trains in a simulator. He trains in a simulator. He thinks about going on a date but instead decides to train in a simulator. What is this telling us about the original text?
The soldier meets the head of the program that, in the future, we know the mercenary will defect from for yet-unknown reasons. He gets an assignment regarding a sudden mass desertion from the program. Maybe these stories do have something to do with each other. It’s pretty frustrating because this simply was not a coherent place to cut and combine these plots. It’s the same problem countless streaming-era tv shows have, where breadth is confused for depth: a story drowns in too many characters with too many plot lines that all get juggled and brush up against each other awkwardly more often than they complement each other. No one, at the point where Cloud meets Aerith while trying to make his way back to Avalanche wonders hey what about Zack? Best case scenario, this retelling thinks the reader is deeply interested in how Cloud got his last job. (It is not the most interesting part of the story.)
It continues in this vein, unfortunately. The soldier goes on a black ops–style mission. He encounters a child who will become a teenager who helps the mercenary in the future. It’s mostly a comic relief cameo, as well as an unlikely scenario of Star Wars Prequel proportions. The newcomer has no idea who this child is. Maybe this will offer slightly more context for the teenager’s motives this time the mercenary meets her for the first time. Maybe it won’t. The solider is informed his mentor has deserted the program too. The person informing him is a hero. A public figure. Everyone knows his achievements. In the future, the mercenary also idolizes him before having to kill him. Twice. The newcomer is not entirely sure at what point the hero becomes the villain. Maybe this will offer more context for his motives. Maybe it won’t.
The subtext from the original text wasn’t exactly insufficient to get these points across. A teenager from a nation losing a war wants to fight. Meeting her as a child, we learn that the child from a nation losing a war wants to fight. It’s not exactly fleshing it out.
Before we can learn more and get any indication if meeting the hero so much earlier than when he becomes the villain will add anything to the story, it changes again. We cut to the first chapter of yet another narrative (a mobile game you can’t play anymore lol). The hero is looking for someone, uncharacteristically distressed for what the veteran knows about him, or just there for what the newcomer knows. He is confronted by yet another soldier. They begin to fight. It cuts to a train with three soldiers. The yet another solider was just lost in fantasy, telling a story about what he would do to the hero if he ever met him. I have no idea when in the story we are now – every other clue is that this is way, way before the hero’s villain turn, save for this scene that, although funnier than I was truthfully expecting, does not reveal the new solider to be a substantially different character than the previous soldier. He is headstrong. He doesn’t seem to take things seriously enough. I have even less idea who he is than the last protagonist. We will still not before we shift over to a different story.
The new soldier and his soldier friends have crash-landed on an island. There are hostile native animals. They encounter another human. A boy. It is unclear if he will prove to be hostile, although he is just a boy. The boy reveals he doesn’t buy their lie about why they’re there. The story breaks again, offering us for the first time a branching path: return to the mercenary and the flower seller, or continue with these people doing something that thus far is completely unrelated to everything else. It is at this point (assuming you do return to the first story) that the flower seller remarks that the mercenary is from the same program and is the same rank as her first boyfriend. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to get this – like 5 minutes of game after we return to these characters – before shifting gears to the stories of these other characters who that person could potentially be? Instead of the version we have here, where the new player is left to think, oh, maybe that’s why we had to meet those other characters over the last few hours of my life.
Why are we putting these scenes in these places? Why are we getting more characters before we get to know the ones we already met? There is no indication how any of these three main protagonists – every one of them at some point a soldier in the same semi–black ops program – are related to each other. The way these initial chapters are arranged, it’s not a deeper story, it’s just more story. Thus far, nothing’s convinced me I’ve missed out on much by only engaging with the original text and none of the prequels, and thus far this is a wasted opportunity to structure these parts in a way that suggests the larger story is going to be a good story.
And furthermore *googles why gatcha is bad*
Standard plugs zone
Did you know I’m a copy editor for The NYC Thorn, the NYC-DSA’s weekly roundup newsletter of local political news? If you live in NYC, essential reading imo; I’d been reading it for years before I joined!
I have a review up at Kissing Dynamite of Ashley Cline’s two new chapbooks of 2023: electric infinities and cowabungaly yours at the end of the world.
Speaking of Kissing Dynamite, did you know I am Book Reviews Editor there? I write reviews of small press/self-published poetry books, but I also will edit your reviews of small press poetry books. So: hit me up if 1) you’re a poet with a book coming out, or 2) you’ve got a review of a poetry book you want to write! Surely everyone’s dream is writing poetry reviews under the mentorship of one half of the team behind Bad Books, Good Times. Who could ask for more
Over on Trash Garbage, a playlists and vibes blog thing I’m part of, we posted a jazz covers playlist, operating under the thesis that jazz covers playlists are bad but nonetheless