Final Fantasy VII came out in 1997, the year I turned 11. It was Squaresoft's (not sure if they had merged with Enix yet) first foray into 3D graphics. For those of you too young to remember, the transition from the 16-bit era of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis to the next generation, which brought the N64, the Sega Saturn, and the first PlayStation (the Xbox would come later as a contemporary of the Nintendo Gamecube and PS2, and I guess technically the Sega Dreamcast) was enormous.
Flat, two-dimensional sprites were the norm in the 16-bit (and earlier) era, with only a few games (like Starfox) playing in true 3D. There were, of course, games like Donkey Kong Country, which used 3D modeling to create its characters and environment, but then essentially used those assets as the basis for 2D sprites.
But this 32-bit era (I've never quite been able to figure out if the N64 was actually 64-bit or if that was marketing - by the time the "128-bit" era came about we stopped using bits to name console generations) was the first in which the use of 3D graphics really came to the fore. It's honestly the beginning of the era we're still in, graphically, but over the past 28 years the technology has evolved incredibly, which is how you get the dynamic lighting, extremely detailed worlds and characters you find today.
So, VII, being at the dawn age of that graphical era, is kind of "where we started." Square I think has always been ambitious with its graphics, and as a longtime Nintendo loyalist (though obviously I've now had three of the five extant Playstation consoles) it was always frustrating that they basically abandoned Nintendo - FFVII was originally being developed for the N64, but Square didn't think they could fit their game on the N64's cartridges, and wanted Nintendo to move to discs as a medium (also, kids, there was a time when CD-ROMs were the pinnacle of high-density portable data-storage!), something Nintendo did actually do the following generation, but by that time FFVII's "killer app" status on the original Playstation cemented a partnership that lasts to this day.
VII does something of a hybrid approach between Donkey Kong Country and true 3D - the environments are pre-rendered still images, which forces the camera to remain at a fixed perspective. The exception here is the battle scenes, which are fully rendered, along with the overworld map, both of which allow for the camera angle to sweep around.
Long ago, when I was a sophomore in college in either 2005 or 2006, I played my first Final Fantasy, FFX, and you can see that the overall concept was pretty similar for how battle would work - for certain special moves, the camera cuts in to a close-up of the monster or character doing their thing, creating a more dynamic visual experience than the classic fixed battle screens of previous titles.
Now, let's talk about the surrealness.
Final Fantasy VII Remake took what was a substantial but ultimately pretty quick chunk of the original game and expanded it into a modern days-long game experience. In Remake, for example, the Sector Seven Slums are something of a hub that you return to a couple times, getting side-quests an other side-areas. In the original, you only go to the Seventh Heaven bar once - between the attacks on the two Mako reactors.
Areas like this, and the Sector Five Slums where Aerith lives, are significantly smaller and not actually as similar in overall look and design as I'd assumed they would be. While Remake does make it clear that the buildings are largely constructed from scrap metal, they're still functionally rather sturdy-looking structures, whereas in the original conception it seems that there are a fair number of "buildings" that are little more than heaps of metal.
Likewise, certain sequences and areas in Remake were originally just single map screens - the collapsed freeway, for example, is just a single map where you'll have three or four encounters (mostly, it seems, with Hell Houses) and the Train Graveyard is likewise a quick and small section with no real "plot" to it other than it being a place to pass through.
There are fewer bosses, as well - there's no Jenova fight in the Shinra HQ, and the rough equivalent of the "Arsenal" fight is more like a pair of consecutive minibosses.
Plot-wise, there's clearly more time for subtlety and characterization in Remake, so characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie aren't really given much in the way of dimensionality.
I think it's interesting to see here how the game was, in some ways, still essentially trying to depict a world and tell its story in a manner similar to the 16-bit era. At one point, Barret smacks Biggs for some reason and sends him flying at the screen - a move that feels very much at home in a 16-bit game (like a point in V when Bartz and Krile smack each other at the gates of Tycoon Castle) but playing with new capabilities (the fact that he comes at the screen).
Given that my primary experience with this story and these characters has been a fully modern game with more modern sensibilities (though still a crazy batshit fever dream) it's kind of fascinating to be reminded that this game is only three years removed from FFVI, and to see how similar it was.
One thing I do find kind of interesting is how the game seems poised to have its characters play more similarly to one another than those in VI did. Obviously, in the Remake trilogy, the "live" gameplay is distinct between Barret's Overcharges, Tifa's various martial arts moves, and Cloud's Operator/Punisher modes, but beyond that they also have all their unique skills. Here, it seems that every character is basically just a basic attack and any materia they have access to, the only unique thing being their Limit Breaks, which do feel like a more regular part of gameplay than they do in the Remakes.
Anyway, as of today (after I started writing this post) I've played through the Nibelheim flashback scene in Kalm. So far the beats of the game are pretty similar, though I think it's interesting that you never see Sephiroth in Midgar - the first glimpse we get of him in the game is on the truck to Nibelheim, when he seems like a pretty chill dude.
Rebirth, I think, gives bigger hints that Cloud's story is skewed, and that the unnamed Shinra trooper is actually him. I'm curious to see the full explanation, because I remember my best friend, who had played the game when it was new, having a rather extreme explanation of what Cloud technically was, but I think that was his youthful misunderstanding.
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