Final Fantasy VII and the Kübler-Ross Model

For many gamers Final Fantasy VII marked an introduction into the JRPG genre, and it is widely stated to be one of the best (if not the best) JRPG of all time. While it wasn’t my first JRPG nor did it turn out to be my #1 favorite this game holds a very special place in my heart for one very specific reason.

Spoiler Warning

If you are one of the 3 gamers on the planet who has neither played nor heard spoilers about FFVII then I recommend you stop reading now, go buy the game, and get to playing it. For the rest of us, let’s get to it.

Gameplay Reinforcing Narrative

Not long ago I was challenged to come up with an instance where the actual gameplay of a JRPG significantly contributed to the narrative being told to an extent where the game couldn’t be converted straight into a book or movie without losing something. JRPGs are somewhat renowned for having mechanics that are largely irrelevant to the story being told, and many people question if the model is fundamentally flawed. While I do agree that there are many games where this is the case it isn’t universally true, and FFVII is the perfect counter example.

Aeris is introduced to us early in the game and quickly becomes a romantic interest for Cloud. She is clearly given a very special place in the explicit narrative, however she is also given a corresponding special place in the gameplay mechanics. Most of the characters in FFVII are extremely similar in actual fighting ability (doubly so this early in the game) and the only major differences between them ends up being what materia you equip them with.

Aeris however is different - she is clearly weaker with physical attacks and stronger with magic, while also having unique limit breaks in that they are supportive rather than offensive. In a character roster filled with fighters she is the single supportive magic user. As a result, most people include her in their party despite the game almost never forcing you to take her along. This is extremely important as the game subtly encourages you to take her while still making it your own choice to do so.

You then continue playing through the game for quite some time (15-30 hours depending on how many sidequests you did). During this time most people would stick with a single core party due to the fact that you only gained experience while in the party, thus your core group was always strongest after a few hours of play. You also became accustomed to one set of characters, making switching out to new ones progressively more difficult.

Then, the unthinkable happens. A single event with such deliberate finality that most of you can still to this day perfectly envision the cutscene without me saying anything further. 

Aeris is killed. 

There will never come a time when I won’t be able to call this exact image to mind in perfect detail. 

This cutscene is perfectly crafted. It has to be the quickest and most final end to a character I’ve ever experienced. In the blink of an eye the second most important character in the game (up to that point) came to an end. As memorable and impactful the cutscene is, the dialogue that immediately follows is so much more important (emphasis is mine). 

...Aeris. This can’t be real!

Do not worry. Soon the girl will become part of the Planet’s energy. All that is left is to go North. The ‘Promised Land’ waits for me over the snowy fields. There I will become a new-

(Interrupting) ...Shut up. The cycle of nature and your stupid plan don’t mean a thing. Aeris is gone. Aeris will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry... or get angry... What about us... what are WE supposed to do? What about my pain? My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!

What are you saying? Are you trying to tell me you have feelings too?

Of course! Who do you think I am!

Ha, ha, ha... stop acting as if you were sad. There’s no need to act as though you’re angry either. Because, Cloud. You are... a puppet.

Look closely at the emphasized lines. Cloud doesn’t say “What am I supposed to do?”, he specifically uses “we”. Who is he referring to? Possibly the other members of his party, but that doesn’t match up - the attachment between Aeris and Cloud is far stronger than the attachment between Aeris and any other member of the party, so lumping them together wouldn’t make sense. So who is Cloud referring to? Who else has developed an attachment specifically to Aeris?

He is referring to you, the player.

From here, there are two distinct interpretations for the emphasized dialogue.

The first is that all of the emphasized lines are either being directed at the player or said on the player’s behalf. Through Sephiroth’s dialogue the game itself seems to be challenging the notion that a player could have developed an attachment to Aeris, going as far to specifically tell the player to stop pretending that they are sad or angry about the turn of events. Sephiroth even goes as far as to call out Cloud by name in the only instance that he is speaking directly to Cloud rather than the player.

The second interpretation is that for the first time Sephiroth is actually talking directly to Cloud the avatar rather than the player. After grouping himself with the player Cloud then goes on to express his own personal feelings of pain using the first person singular rather than plural. In this reading Sephiroth instead begins talking directly to Cloud bypassing the player, challenging the idea that an avatar inside a game could develop an emotional attachment. The wording is very important here - he doesn’t ask if Cloud has feelings, but if he has feelings too. This implicitly asserts that the player is going through the same feelings by questioning if the avatar even has the ability to share in those feelings due to being merely a puppet for the player.

In either interpretation the developers seem to be acutely aware of what they have created - circumstances to try and force the player to not only empathize with the protagonist but legitimately share in some of the feelings of loss in a personal way through the gameplay mechanics.

After this, something very interesting happened for many people. Almost everyone I knew that went into the game without spoilers went through a form of the stages in the Kübler-Ross model, more commonly referred to as the 5 stages of grief.

• Denial - Many people were simply so shocked that such an event would happen that for the next bit of the game they kept expecting a plot twist - a hallucination/dream sequence, Ancient magic, divine intervention from the planet, anything that would bring her back from the dead. As the game progressed it became more and more obvious that this wasn’t going to happen. 

• Anger - While there was of course Cloud’s anger toward Sephiroth that the player largely empathized with there was also often anger toward other entities, including Squaresoft itself. I heard (and made) many arguments about how it wasn’t fair to the player to remove a character that we had clearly worked so hard to level up. Squaresoft was to blame because they had erased so much work and progress that the player had put in. 

• Bargaining - I don’t know a single person that didn’t look to gaming magazines or rumors on the internet about how to get Aeris back. There were dozens of complicated rumors about specific ways to revive her, and I (like many) spent more time than I’d care to admit in front of my TV with vague and complicated instructions. Some even went as far as to data mine the discs themselves searching for hints (hence how everyone knows that all the data on the 3 CDs except for the cutscenes was identical). Many people even turned to gamesharks and other hacks in order to force her back into the game. 

• Depression - Sooner or later (usually after the third or so bunk rumor of how to revive Aeris) people began to accept that they couldn’t get her back. While this didn’t prevent anyone I knew from finishing the game I have heard stories of this happening (from far more reliable sources than those rumors to revive Aeris, I swear!). Most players however did feel a real sense of disappointment once they gave up clinging onto rumors. 

• Acceptance - Most players eventually came to terms with the event and accepted it for what it was - one of the most memorable and moving moments in gaming. 

Some people even went on to write long-winded articles about their experience more than a decade later.

Regardless of what you think about FFVII as a whole you must concede that the developers took a huge risk in their decision to kill Aeris, and to their credit I believe it was a resounding success. Despite the gameplay not being directly related to the story I can say without a doubt that (for me at least) the narrative would not have been the same in any other medium.