Reaching Out of the Screen To Tug At Your Heart Strings

The Art of Emotion in Video Games and Debunking Sadness in Final Fantsy VII

I never cried when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII. Supposedly a lot of players did, and I never quite understood why. I was fifteen when I finished the game and after five years of being away from it, I can say in retrospect that I was right to not feel much of a connection to Aerith. Aerith was an extremely flat character in Final Fantasy and experienced little growth. In fact, the only character who experienced any sort of growth would have been Cloud.

More importantly, I believe a big reason people mention they cried or might’ve cried is because of Final Fantasy VII’s position as a video game. Many hail it as one of the greatest, and rightfully it deserves a lot of recognition as it was ground breaking. One of the most shocking moments in the game was when Aerith died, but Final Fantasy VII’s writing and translation just wasn’t that great at the time and I feel only with time has the fictional character’s death been sensationalized.

This is not to harp on Final Fantasy VII as a bad game, but rather to use it as an example of a game thought to form an emotional attachment to the player, but I see this attachment as more of an artificially induced one by the fans of the series. The players barely know Aerith by the time of her death in Final Fantasy VII, ergo I find it hard to understand why anyone would believe they had formed an attachment to her. While it’s true that the game may truly make players cry, it’s just not as deep of a connection as games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Mother 3 actually end up being by the time you finish them.

The last time I did cry whilst playing a game was upon finishing Mother 3. I can’t possibly spoil the game for you, but what you need to know is that Mother 3 did not derive emotion out of me because of how I felt about the characters, but it was how the game treated me as a player. The same goes for Twilight Princess in which I also teared up during the ending. Not for the characters but for the themes and the artful hitting home of those themes to me, the player.

Mother 3 presents a world which is continually becoming despondent and obsessed with being happy through materialism. A game like Final Fantasy VII barely explores themes such as greed, obsession, and questioning existence. Now the existence theme is a pretty important one, however I think it was better explored with the character of Vivi in Final Fantasy IX, instead of Sephiroth of FF VII. Vivi was simply more relatable because he wasn’t a villain like Sephiroth, and regardless of whether or not you’ve played any other Final Fantasy VII games such as Crisis Core, Sephiroth too has not grown as a character and remains rather flat throughout the FF7 series.

Mother 3, makes it a point to involve the player in the game, and even goes as far to turn the player into a character. While this is hard to explain without spoiling anything, the fact that the player is a character as a player instead of a player playing a character is absolutely unprecedented and so far it seems to be the absolute purest link a video game can form with a player.

The Legend of Zelda is also able to establish a link to the player by allowing them to name a non-speaking hero named Link. Link never speaks, and it’s because of this that the player can imprint their own thoughts and feelings as they play the game.

Another fine example of a game forming a deep attachment to the player while using a non-speaking main character is Ico. In fact Ico doesn’t use much dialogue to tell a story at all, and yet, again, it’s a game that really tugs at your heart strings.

This is not to say that all games need to form emotional attachments with the player, but it is to say, what works, and what doesn’t. Creating and killing off flat characters does not form any sort of attachment with me. However, if you’re able to really present tangible ideas, that are easy to grasp, yet deep and provocative, than you can establish a link with the player.

Those are the games that stay on my shelf.