Characters with character
There are four main characters who appear throughout the story (see the profiles), but they are by no means the only personalities in the game. In addition to the other characters that join your party, the Final Fantasy world is swarming with unique NPCs, some clowns, some villains, some obvious references to other figures (two of the rebels early in the game are named Biggs and Wedge; the military leader of Shinra is Heidegger). One of the main characters, Barret, seems to be an homage to Mr. T: a muscular black man with a clipped haircut and an "I-pity-the-fool" attitude. Accusations of racism have been leveled at Squaresoft in their portrayal of Barret's double negatives and clipped speech (he says "nothin" instead of "nothing", "gonna" instead of "going to," and "shu up" instead of "shut up"). "We've gotten maybe ten letters complaining about it out of thousands of letters praising the game," says Fujimoto, who attributes much of the criticism to the magazine Next Generation.
The gameplay system
Final Fantasy VII is built out of what the developers call "systems." "There are a number of different systems within the whole game," explains Fujimoto, "There's the world map system. You see towns and villages on the world map. When you go there, you enter what we call the field system. Spread out through both is the battle system when you encounter monsters. We also have the menu system, the movie system, and the mini-games. It's very modular in that way."
Most of the gameplay is on the rendered backgrounds of the field system, which are drawn using different perspectives to represent factories, villages, bars, mountain paths, harbors, ships, hideouts, and numerous other sites. This is where most of the story is told, although occasional movies will pop up. "There's about an hour's worth of movies in the game. One of the key technologies is the ability to have a movie playing in the background while your characters are moving on top of that. We go straight from the movie playing right into the gameplay without having a black screen or any load time. Once the movie stops, you take over the character from there and have them walking on top of the movie." On a few pivotal occasions, hi-resolution artwork of the characters is substituted for the polygonal models, to thrilling effect. These suddenly vivid cut-scenes have the same startling effect as a full-color sequence in a black-and-white movie.
The menu system is the interface for checking inventories, saving games, and managing your party. At any given time, your party will consist of your choice of three of the characters you've met so far. There are a few exceptions, such as when Cloud goes undercover alone to infiltrate a Shinra army base or when a character battles his arch-nemesis mano-a-mano. The mini-games are brief arcade sequences that come up at various times during the game. They're actually pretty simple, played more as entertaining diversions than obstacles. One of the locations is a city called Gold Saucer, a glittering, gaudy combination of Las Vegas and Disney World where you can replay each of the mini-games. A snowboarding mini-game has proven particularly popular, with players posting their best times on the Internet. Some sections can become entire games unto themselves: Chocobos, ostrich-like birds that have long been a fixture in the series, can be bred to produce a golden Chocobo, which is the only means to reach certain remote locations. There are also "mini-mini-games" with their own interfaces that pop up sometimes. At one point, the player has to follow a military drill; how well he does this determines the prize he wins afterwards. These types of activities crop up with situations as diverse as exercise competitions or administering CPR to a drowned girl.
All this variety illustrates how Final Fantasy VII is able to sustain a gamer's interest for a full 80 hours of play. By constantly throwing unexpected twists into the proceedings, whether it's a new plot twist, a mini-game, a new character, or a dramatically different spell, the game stays fresh. These carefully paced and managed surprises effectively disguise what is in fact a very linear game in which you have to progress through certain events to reach the end. As you progress you can choose whether to press on with the storyline or wander about spending time with things like winning prizes at Gold Saucer or breeding Chocobos.
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