Every time we bring up the name Final Fantasy in a conversation about games, it's likely that someone will make some reference to the seventh main title in the franchise: they'll talk about Cloud and his gigantic sword, or how they think Sephiroth is one of the best villains of all time, or will talk about how Final Fantasy VII is the best game in the franchise.
So, when I started the project of writing about electronic games and RPGs at Cards Realm, the first title that came to my mind was Final Fantasy VII, since the Remake and its sequels allow a variety of theories and other content regarding what we wait for the second part. Instead, I chose to start with



A strong narrative about Environmentalism and the power of Megacorporations

Visually iconic and well-developed characters





Sephiroth — The most iconic villain in the entire franchise


The famous cutscene in which he turns his back and disappears into the flames of a burning Nibelheim is an image that is etched in the player's mind and added to the low frequency of direct dialogues with Sephiroth during the plot - thus avoiding the overexposure that would make him psychologically less dangerous for each time it appeared on-screen without anything important happening — and always accompanied by its fearful theme song, establishes an imposing mental image to the player.
Another striking point of the villain is how he is surrounded by mysteries: How did he survive? What does he plan? Where is he going? What is the real relationship between him and Cloud? His mere existence raises numerous questions for the player and the other characters, and his intentions are unclear until later in the game, as he isn't actively carrying out atrocities, but rather quietly pursuing his own agenda.
All this, coupled with the fact that he starred in one of the most remarkable scenes in the video game history, make Sephiroth a common figure in the popular imagination and a memorable villain of the franchise.
Aerith and the Five Stages of Grief
The goal in writing articles like this is to bring interesting content both to fans and to those who have never heard of or have never actually played the game. Therefore, care is taken to avoid revealing too many details about the plot and to approach the main themes in a perspective focused on what the title wants to convey to the player.
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One of the messages that Final Fantasy VII seeks to convey concerns life and what happens in it while we exist and when we leave. It was designed to build a message about life in a logical and collective concept, seeking to give a comforting answer about what is beyond material existence with its own interpretation of spiritual topics, such as soul or reincarnation — It's impossible not to address this topic in the article, and there's no way to explain the depth of it without mentioning the most important part of Final Fantasy VII, so I feel it's my duty to warn you that the text from this moment on enters what can be considered the spoilers zone.
Spoiler Zone
As we know, death is a natural part of what we call life. The only certainty we have is that we are born, exist and will eventually leave this world – and working to give meaning to death has been a common element in artistic ends since the early concepts of theater, passing through cinema and, of course, the world of video games.
However, in a universe like the 90s RPGs, where the stories were based on the hero's journeys and narratives that differed from these were still being explored, talking about death in an unconventional way was complicated, to say the least. And even in many games today, portraying the moment where an important character ceases to exist is an arduous task and often falls into clichés, or lacks enough emotional depth for you to care — even some newer titles suffer in depicting the loss of a loved one, like in Noctis' reaction to the death of his father, Regis, at the beginning of Final Fantasy XV.
Typically, a character's demise was due to a heroic sacrifice to save their friends, or was telegraphed before actually happening through dialogue, and had minimal consequences on the game's experience to the point of being irrelevant when it happened with a temporary party member — Previous games like Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V made the character come back later, or made their passing less relevant both in technical and narrative terms by immediately replacing them with another character with the same abilities. Even Chrono Trigger, hailed as the best RPG of all time and which had the audacity to kill the main character, mitigates the consequences of this by giving you an optional quest to bring him back.
FFVII recurrently addresses grief, if not literal, metaphorical: Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Vincent and others have a past involving loss and how it defined who they became and what their goals are. The game treats this theme as a permanent and striking issue in a person's life. So, by making death an irreversible, mechanically punitive, and emotionally impactful act, FFVII expanded the boundaries of how a video game could go by depicting the stages of grief.

As I mentioned above, Aerith is the best character in the story for being one of the gears that moves it, for her personality and connection she establishes with others, and how she was meticulously designed to make you care about her existence.
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The interactive decisions you make with Cloud directly affect others, and many of these dialogues take place in Aerith's presence. If you go with the natural cycle of things, she is the one you have the Gold Saucer cutscene with, and her Limit Breaks makes Aerith an important and irreplaceable resource. That's why her death is the most shattering moment in the game, and its execution is incredibly orchestrated.
Most deaths in RPGs up to this point were announced through an act, dialogue or even a farewell before the fateful moment and either gave you a feeling of predictability or prepared you for that moment. But FFVII never intrinsically tells you "this character is gonna die", and Aerith doesn't even once hint that she might die later on. So, when her death just happens, it manages to portray the shock and sorrow of grief as realistically as possible for the time.
In real life, when we lose someone, we usually just get the news that that person is gone, and it devastates us like a shock wave that reverberates through our body for several days, months or even years. We don't usually have time to say goodbye, to apologize for times we've hurt them, or to enjoy a last moment together. That person is gone, forever.
Final Fantasy VII portrays death as an unannounced thing that takes the people we love from us, and all we have left in that space of time when we get the news and absorb its information is an expansive feeling of desolation as our minds and hearts try to process the facts. And it does so not only by suddenly taking Aerith from the player, but by greatly executing a sequence that lasts around 10 minutes: while her theme song now plays with a melancholic tone, Cloud holds her body after Sephiroth's fatal blow, and his first words are:
[quote](This can't be real. Aerith is gone. Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry, or get angry. What about us? What are WE supposed to do? My fingers are tingling, my mouth It's dry, my eyes are burning!" alt="Cloud Strife"/>
If you've ever lost someone important at some point, you probably understand how relatable Cloud's words at that moment are — they describe the exact moment of shock to know that person is no longer present in this world — and just like in real life, where we often don't have the time to process everything and need to get on with our lives, the game starts a boss battle while Aerith's theme still plays, reminding us of what just happened while you, perhaps reflecting your anger and anguish in Cloud's attacks, still have the hope that after defeating Jenova, she will be saved, or that it wasn't real and that in the end everything will be fine. The game, at this point, is playing with our perception of the first three stages of grief: denial, anger and bargaining.
However, it's when the battle is over that you - through the party - realize that Aerith is truly dead, with each of them wailing in their own way: Cid's reaction of looking up to the sky, Red XIII howling for her as he did to his father, Barret looking down at the floor as if feeling anger and frustration at losing another loved one, the natural reaction of a teenager like Yuffie to burst into tears, and even the awkward dance Cait Sith does in a futile attempt to liven things up just to realize there is no way to make that moment less bad demonstrate their pain in the face of such calamity, and add a great emotional impact to the moment.
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In the end, just as family and friends carry the coffins of their loved ones, it's up to Cloud to carry Aerith's body and take her to the lake, where we watch her sink and disappear into the depths — and this, like when we bury someone, is the player's last contact with Aerith.
By portraying a moment of loss and grief in such a real and detailed way despite the graphical limitations and without trying to attribute such tragedy as an act of sacrifice or heroism, Aerith's death has become one of the most famous scenes in the video game universe to date.
And when the next scene begins, Final Fantasy VII is no longer the same. You feel something is missing, you feel that everything around you has changed, and you are surrounded by a bitter feeling as the story takes a darker turn, taking us to the stage of depression.
But it's not all about doom and gloom
After all, Final Fantasy VII is designed to give meaning to death and what happens after it, and executes that concept through the idea that everything returns to the Planet as a collective of souls that sustain the origin of life. The game is careful not to turn this concept into a kind of "afterlife" where Aerith's spirit communicates directly with Cloud and the others, since that would remove the importance of the message the story tries to convey in relation to grief.
Instead, the game guides us to the fifth and final stage — the acceptance — and does so by demonstrating that, despite her no longer being present, what she sought to do to save the Planet still matters. Aerith continues to move the story, even though she is no longer a tangible part of it.
There's an intriguing take on this last stage here: Final Fantasy VII doesn't try to simplify grief in terms like "the deeds of the departed and the memories they left are what matter." On the contrary, there is virtually no flashback moment with Aerith precisely to prevent its message that acceptance in grief is about letting go from being misinterpreted.
The last part of Final Fantasy VII is precisely about finishing what Aerith started to let her rest in peace. Even if applied in a metaphorical and fantastic way — after all it is a sci-fi work — the last step of the journey portrays, in a world where many of those who are presented to us are haunted by unresolved questions in relation to those who are gone, the need to not hold on to memories and live in the shadows of your loss to reach the stage of acceptance and thus be able to move on and pave your own path despite the ones you lost.

By helping Aerith join the Lifestream, and saving the planet in the process, Final Fantasy VII wraps up a long, detailed and powerful narrative about life as a collective concept and overcoming grief, and paves the way for Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII and others to find peace of mind over their losses, freeing themselves from the bonds created by their memories and guilt.
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Finding peace of mind over your own grief is a recurring theme in subsequent releases of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus also work with the idea of letting go of the ghosts of your past, and it won't surprise me if the future Final Fantasy VII — Rebirth brings these themes to the center of its reworked universe.
Conclusion
We finally reached the end of this article.
Honestly, it was longer than I initially expected, but it's impossible to talk about Final Fantasy VII and its narrative importance without touching on so many themes from an information-rich world that shaped an entire generation of games and brought for many some of the best memories of their childhoods and awakened in so many people a passion for the RPG genre.
I would like to recommend Polygon's Final Fantasy VII: An Oral Story, published in 2017 and which served as a reference for most topics I tried to work on here.
I also intend to delve into the reworked universe of FFVII in the near future, starting with the Remake and its DLC, Intermission. And from that point on, we'll be able to address theories and expectations for FFVII: Rebirth*, planned to come out in the last quarter of 2023.
Thanks for reading!
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