A Gamer Looks At 40
An exploration of the history of video games told through the stories of the every day people who lived it. Join me along with a rotating cast of friends, family, gaming journalists, and industry types as we share personal recollections from the last thirty years of gaming, one story at a time.
A Gamer Looks At 40
Ep 122: Final Fantasy 7 (Part 4) - Cloud and Sephiroth: A Tale of Two Giants
The two headed monster of Final Fantasy 7, Cloud and Sephiroth may be the ultimate one/two punch in the entire franchise. Two towering examples of style, power and intrigue, this dynamic duo takes control - and often overpowers - the balance of the cast. Is this for good, bad, or indifferent? Give this episode a listen to find out!
STARRING (all handles from Twitter)
Carson Clark (@DesireeKorrupt)
Diana McQueen (@stormvexed on TikTok)
Eddie Varnell (@thatretrocode) of the Boss Rush Network (@BossRushNetwork)
Ian (@teacherbloke
James and JJ of RetroFits on YouTube (@FitsRetro)
Julian Titus (@julian_titus) of The Stage Select Podcast (@StageSelectPod)
Matt (@dj_stormageddon) and Geoff (@geoffmakesnoise) of the "Fun" & Games Podcast (@funandgamespod)
Michael K Hughes (@KaidanXain) of the Capes and Junk Podcast (@GamesAndJunk)
Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel (@MadMonarch_DI)
The Lets Play Princess (@TheLPPrincess)
Ryan aka @GameswCoffee
SONG COVERS
On the Other Side of the Mountain (Final Fantasy VII) | Classical Guitar Cover by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwEdLHq-mc
Cid's Theme (Final Fantasy VII) | Classical Guitar Cover by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm6ARq6Ep_k
One-Winged Angel (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children) - METAL COVER [RichaadEB] by RichaadEB - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyq99F9iYYw
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you Hello and welcome to episode 122 of A Gamer Looks at 40. I'm Bill Tucker. And on this week's entry into the Final Fantasy 7 series, I attempted to apply some science to our conversation. A few days ago, I asked a small sampling of my friends a simple question. When you hear the following game title, who's the first character that springs to mind? Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy 10. Now, rather than doing this as a social media poll that could be influenced by others or filled with people trying to be too cool for the room, I didn't need anybody to say Seymour when asked about Final Fantasy 10, instead of doing that, I sent these as direct messages to a random sampling of friends. And I just wanted to get as close as possible to that honest initial reaction. Who is that first character you think of when a certain Final Fantasy game is mentioned? The results were interesting. For Final Fantasy IV, more than half of my friends said Cecil, which makes sense. He's the de facto central protagonist. The game is written that way. Makes total sense. For Final Fantasy VI, the results were more varied. Terra led the way with 35 % of the vote, followed by Kefka with 28%, and then there was a sprinkling of Sabin, Locke, and a lone Cellus vote thrown in for good measure. With a cast as large as Final Fantasy VI, this, again, isn't terribly surprising. And for Final Fantasy X, the results were all over the map, scattered to the wind, there was no clear winner. But for Final Fantasy VII, every person polled with the exception of two said the exact same thing. Cloud. and given what we've learned over the last couple of weeks, that's not terribly surprising either. Cloud dominated and continues to dominate the marketing he's considered by many to be a top 10 character in games, and even grandparents who know nothing of the franchise vaguely remember that lanky video game kid with the giant sword on his back. So it makes sense we dedicate an entire episode to our favorite spiky haired protagonist. But in my conversations, another figure emerged, usually in the same breath as the former member of SOLDIER. Cloud's equally dour nemesis, Sephiroth. Over arcing Big Bad and Big Good, Cloud and Sephiroth are Final Fantasy VII's killer one-two punch that enveloped the video game land state back in the day and continues to do so today. On this episode of A Gamer Looks At 40 we're going to talk about the good, the bad, and the baffling about Cloud and Sephiroth and try to tease out why these characters captured our imaginations. Time to spike out our hair, if you have it, sharpen our ridiculously oversized swords, and mine the depths of our own personal tragedies as we embark upon episode 122, Final Fantasy VII, part 4, Cloud and Sephiroth. A Tale of Two Giants. sucking the life force from the planet. Destroying all that's in its path. It's up to one soldier of fortune to save the world. If he succeeds, you survive. If he fails, you can always hit the reset button. Final Fantasy VII. But before we get into the characters themselves, let's get the initial thesis out of the way. In conducting my interviews, a recurring theme emerged, which is the whole reason why I decided to cram both Cloud and Sephiroth into one episode. So if it makes no sense why I would tackle both of these giants at once, here's why. Joining me for this introductory segment is Julian of the Stage Select Podcast, and Michael K Hughes of the Capes and Junk podcast. This is a Gamer Looks at 40 exclusive, Bill. I've had this take for a while that I've been saving for this conversation. Yes, let's go. Because I feel that the Cloud and Sephiroth thing is a problem. And the way that I got to this is I have been reading all of Chris Claremont's X-Men run. Now for people out there who aren't comic book nerds, Chris Claremont didn't invent the X-Men, but he wrote X-Men for 16 years from 75 to 91, and basically is behind every major thing that you probably think of when you think of X-Men. Okay? And his big claim to fame is the Dark Phoenix saga, which was a story that had really never been done in comics before. It was a story that took five years to build up to. And then it popped off with this amazing... you know, heel turn of one of the most beloved X-Men characters. And reading the comics in the years after that, I've realized that he kept trying to recreate the magic of the Phoenix saga and failed to do so. And then Marvel, after him, continued to try to recapture the magic of the Phoenix saga and they kept trying to go back to Dark Phoenix and even when Ultimate X-Men, which was like a totally new retelling of the X-Men story, came out, they couldn't wait to get to Dark Phoenix. There's two movies about Dark Phoenix and there's rumors that now that Disney has X-Men again, that they're gonna do it a third time and try to do it right this time, right? Cloud and Sephiroth, four square, Enix, is kind of the Dark Phoenix saga for them. They're always trying to go back to Cloud and Sephiroth. They made that whole compilation of Final Fantasy VII, They did a whole CG movie where the entire reason for the movie existing is, yo, what if you got to see Cloud and Sephiroth fight in CG this time? The remake trilogy, in the first 45 minutes of Final Fantasy VII remake, it is trying to set up the big Cloud and Sephiroth thing, even though by that point in the original story, Sephiroth doesn't... know or care who Cloud is. But they're always trying to go back to Cloud and Sephiroth, Cloud and Sephiroth. And I get it, they're cool. They got really neat designs. But I think that the story of Seven is bigger than those characters. And I also think every time that they go back to try to revisit that dynamic, it dilutes Final Fantasy Seven's impact in a really big way. That's a really interesting thought, because I'm thinking about to the earlier Final Fantasies, where the focus was always on the stories and the characters were part of the story. You're right. Final Fantasy 7 is really all about Cloud and Sephiroth. And again, you can make some art again, but it feels that way. It feels that way. And it's not meant to be that way. It's really supposed to be this very arc-ing story about environmentalism and capitalism and all this other stuff. But when you think Final Fantasy 7, you think Cloud and Sephiroth. That's the first images that pop into your brain. Not necessarily so with the earlier ones. Absolutely, yeah. And I think everybody, you know, is like, they always go back to that CG of Sephiroth in the fire and then turning his back on Cloud, right? And the fact that, yes, he got like his own like battle theme, right? At the end of the game. it's really cool and it says his name and that's really neat, right? I used to go to video games live all the time and they would always end with one winged angel, right? Because it's one winged friggin angel. Same thing at distant worlds, right? Like they cannot, they can't not do it. for someone like me who's like, yeah, seven was good, but I think there's a lot of games that are far better than it. It's got a little demoralizing for me. Fancy 7's biggest problem, if it has a big problem, is that the cloud and Sephiroth giants mask all the other cool stuff going on there. I completely forgot Hojo is really the main antagonist. He's the main bad guy. He's the big bad of all of this. And I forgot he existed. Rufus, he's an important part of the game and I completely forgot what... he's about because you had these giant monoliths of Cloud and Sephiroth who've been redone in various different games and various different franchises. Movies, the two that are in Smash. Yeah, those two are everywhere. You're absolutely right. So I think the largesse, maybe, of those two characters blot out a lot of the cool stuff that that game was trying to do. And I think the storytelling itself does itself no favors. This the jumbled way in which it tries to tell that story. Because when you watch it chronologically, it's actually kind of cool. This is actually neat fiction. Yeah. Yeah. Like Cloud being imprinted with Zach's memories is totally wild. It's basically like a form of amnesia that they like reverse amnesia. It's like you kind of forget who you are, but you remember someone else. It's pretty wild. It's weird. And it's and it's also makes it it makes a character that you play for a good portion of the game that's not very likeable. He doesn't want to be there. He just wants to be there as a job, which is a very interesting and frankly bold choice for a protagonist you're going to inhabit because you don't have to do this as a job, as a player. The player does not have to do this as a job. Sometimes it feels like a job when I'm doing a show. It's like I don't have to do this for a job. But when your character you're piloting, has no real strong like, yes, let's get this done mentality. It makes it for a bit of a slog narratively, I think, at least. And until you realize why he's like that, it's almost too late. You're almost two thirds of way through the game before you start really digging into the Zack and Zack and the cloud connection. Yeah. And it's hard to like a character that it's like that. Like they're lucky that his design is cool enough to to kind of wrap people in. because you're right, his personality leaves a lot to be desired. Being the poster boy of an entire sub-franchise means high expectations, but back in the late 90s that wasn't the case. Right now it's easy to think of Cloud as this all-encompassing gaming superstar, but back in the day he was just another dude with a big weapon. Luckily for Cloud and the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole, that actually wasn't as common in those days as people would like to believe. Starting our conversation about the star of Final Fantasy 7 is Julian followed by Matt and Jeff from the Fun and Games podcast and then the one and only Games with Coffee. It's interesting, I never, when I remember playing it for the first time again, this was probably in my late 20s, early 30s, I remember finding Cloud to be a very unlikable protagonist or unlikable person to be a part of. As I've been refreshing myself on the story and, because I only played through it once. in its entirety. tried to play it again for this series, but my version on Steam had a bug and it lost progress and I said, it's not, I ran out of time. So I'm like, I have to get these things done. So I've been kind of refreshing myself on the story and just like watching YouTube videos and just making sure I'm conversant on it. And I think that the story of Cloud as a hero, it's a very interesting choice for a protagonist because he's almost as if he's It's almost as if he stole someone's identity but didn't mean to. Against his will, stole someone's identity. And there's some really good fiction around that idea, like namely, I don't to be a spoiler, I guess, but there's some movies recently that have had characters who have taken on someone else's identity, know, to get out of their own situations. And I like that idea, but him, he's very tragic. It's kind of a tragic situation because he feels like he has no... He's really a pawn in this whole thing. And it makes for a very interesting character. So I think from a story perspective, I like it. But at the time, I just remember like, he's just moody and brooding and he's a bit of a jerk. And I'm like, I don't really want to be this person, you know? Yeah. But when I was 17, he was really cool. He was a really cool jerk. And also he had Dragon Ball hair. and his animation for doing spells kind of looked like he was doing a Dragon Ball like fireball. So I was really into that in a big way in 97. But then, like I said, as I got distance from it and I kind of got older and looked back at him, I was like, yeah, no, I really don't like this character all that much. And I think you're right, though, like there is like a interesting tragedy to him. But I had since forgotten that part of the character because like you, I played it once and then. And then years later, I almost finished it. I got to disc three and then didn't finish it. And that that's it. Now I have listened to No One Can Know About This play through it like six times. So I am pretty well up on the story at this point. I still don't quite understand everything that happens with cloud. It doesn't quite make sense. I know I feel that a big part of that is like the translation. But I think another part of it is that a lot of it just doesn't kind of add up in general. Yeah. And so there is that aspect of it. But in the moment, like, yeah, he was a very awesome character and like nothing I'd seen before. I think that was another big thing is that he did have, you know, like, like this harder edge to him than Tara or Locke or Cecil that I really appreciated at the time. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think with when it comes to Cloud, I think he's a interesting character in theory. He's an interesting character in summary. but maybe not over the course of 60 hours. that's, think that's where I'm very, I'm really kind of annoyed I haven't had the chance to actually play through it again for this because again, I've been watching videos with recaps and you know, it's chronological recaps and I'm like, oh, this is actually kind of interesting. But it's funny that you say that he doesn't really become, I would even say likable until the very end when he has his big moment where he says, okay, I now have a purpose. I want to save the planet. which is tropey, but at least your main character isn't just complaining all the time and panicking and screaming. It's a very interesting choice for a protagonist. It's a pretty daring choice, actually, I think. Yeah, it is. And I think that part of him, like the second half of his story, almost gets kind of swept under the rug for the cool... edgy version of him because I think that's what people gravitate towards and continue to gravitate towards. Let's pivot a little bit to those characters, to obviously the main two that everyone remembers are Cloud and Sephiroth. What's your take first off on Cloud as a protagonist? I remember personally, when I was playing it as a 30 year old, not loving playing Cloud. I just wasn't enjoying playing as Cloud until I learned what happened and why he was that way. And then saying, oh. Okay, now this makes all the sense in the world, but it takes a while to get there. What's what was your maybe initial reaction to cloud and how do you feel about him now? It is as a character. I mean, initially I loved him as a character. He was cranky. He was edgy. He was annoyed and annoyed to be there. I can see why people might think he is now because again, he's a trope that he created essentially. But I do think that he. At the time, I really loved him because I loved the complexity of the character. And also, it's funny you said that you didn't like him until you realized who like really who he was and why he was the way he was. I tend to be pretty open minded when I go into stories, not that there's anything wrong with being scrutinizing of a character, but I'm always along for the ride. Like I make a joke about the Yakuza games, the Yakuza franchise, because they always have These ridiculous twists at the end of the game and I'm always bowled over by them I never see them coming and I've never figured them out And it's kind of a similar way with like RPGs and especially this one like I was just along for the ride Okay, clouds a dick. He doesn't really like people. He's warming up to certain people his relationship with there. Oh my god, like I think as a Character now I continue to like him because I liked him back then and I think it's because again as a Personally for me my style as a person who plays games unless the character is truly annoying which there are some I'm along for the ride and I will see where it goes and if they're still annoying me by the end game and the final boss different story, but for the most part I think characters like cloud I always look back on fondly because again He's an archetype for things that came after and I remember it fondly if I came to it now I might feel differently, but it's hard to Yeah, yeah I was 11 so I Mean I love how that could just be an explanation for everything no But cloud at the outset is almost like an RPG protagonist is designed by Rob Liefeld and then translated back into Final Fantasy That's a coin the pouches and turned all of his guns into the largest sword they could yes kind of idea again over simplified, but the joke is there but I enjoyed cloud as his whole journey as a preteen and as an adult now, because again, he is a complicated and multifaceted character. The fact that there is so much supplementary material to Final Fantasy VII can also be to its detriment, because so many characters get reduced either to single note beats or to whatever way people first interpret them, in the same way that people often forget Waka's evolution from his sort of xenophobic ways towards the albed at the beginning of Final Fantasy X to the warm and welcoming person that he is at the end, everyone remembers but the teachings. Everyone remembers Mopi Cloud, even though there was never a time where he was exactly that Mopi. Just like Matt was saying, a little bit of a dick and a little bit aloof and also a little bit mentally breaking down. It happens. It happens to all of us sometimes. Absolutely. And it's amazing how... human of a character Cloud is and how fragile he is too. He is not the classic, you know, super strong, uber tough guy character. He has that facade. He wants to be that character. And he still is, but not in the ways he puts forward. He has strengths and weaknesses. Right. And that's very interesting. And that's one of those things that I never realized about Seven and really came through when I was doing my research and rewatching a lot of these compilations like Oh dang, this is like a really, this is a very fragile person we have here who's trying to put forth that. completely forgot until I was doing my research again, the whole Zack, Cloud situation. You alluded to it while you talking about it, about Aerith. And I think that is really scary and good. Cloud, to me, was always insufferable until you realize what's going on and then he's instantly relatable. Yeah. It's very weird and the game holds those cards really close to the chest for a very long time. And then you realize that he's really just Zack and he's got the memories of... Zach, right? Am I right? Yeah, it's the memories of both Zach and Tifa combined. Zach and Tifa combined. So he's not really him. It's like somebody hijacked him, like hijacked his memories, but he didn't ask for that. Yeah. Or he took over somebody's identity, but didn't do it on purpose. Yeah, absolutely. In many ways, like Cloud himself, he was actually in the, he was actually at Nibelheim, but he was more of an observer. Yeah, he was just there. He was an infantryman. Right. And he never even made it into Soldier. No. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He never made it into Soldier. It was one of his biggest disappointments. And here he is going back to his hometown because this is his hometown. He knows it like the back of his hand. Right. But he couldn't afford to have anyone see his failures. So wears a mask all the time and keeps his voice low and doesn't bring too much attention to himself, which I honestly could relate to so hard. It's like going to that high school reunion again. It's like, do I really need to go here? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And just not being confident in what you've done and your abilities. Again, I've always found Cloud insufferable until he gets to the point where you realize the situation and you're like, OK, this is why. And this is why I love Cloud. This is why Cloud is such an important person in my life, because everyone's like, yeah, he's just this. He's just this edgelord kind of guy. like, no, guy? He's just a really messed up individual. He's got lot of his control. Yeah, he's got a lot of flaws. And I think it's interesting that they made that choice to be your main Kiro character. Now, mind you, you play as a lot of all the characters. And I was talking to somebody earlier today and they posited that there's really no central character in Final Fantasy VII. Like, there's no real true protagonist. Yeah, well, yeah, in many ways, yes, that's true. Everyone kind of has their moment in the spotlight. Right. But the main one you see on the cover and you're meant to identify is Cloud. And it's a really tough ask at first because it's like, man, I don't really dig this character. But once you learn, it comes really interesting. It's like, wow, that's fascinating. Continuing the cloud conversation is TikToker Diana McQueen, followed by Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel. Then Eddie Varnell of the Boss Rush Network joins the show. And finally, JJ of Retrofits on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. About, it's a novel. you kind of have, and if you want to get that, that moment of, you know, the reader, the player is like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's happening. What do you mean everything you told me is wrong? Like that kind of insecure, my God, I'm falling, I don't know what's happening kind of feeling. You have to set that up so expertly because we've seen it so many times, first of all. But then people might suspect things if you don't set it up right. So I think it was a perfect choice for how to deal. with Cloud and his traumatic experience and how he suppressed it all. And yes, there's magic and science and, know, yeah, yeah. But it's like, it's mostly this psychological story of this guy who kind of screwed himself over. And, you know, I mean, his brain was trying to protect him. It's not his fault completely, but yeah. Which is the wildest thing. It's like, it's not his fault. That's why we cloud. When I, I didn't play it of its time. I played it when I was like my thirties, just, you I was like, never played Final Fantasy seven. Let me give this a shot. And I was impressed with how much you don't really want to spend a lot of time with cloud. Although he's your main protagonist until you realize what happened. And then you're like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is brutal. You didn't ask for any of this. No. Yeah, and and I know that like the the edge lord your main character whose Emotions don't work and they're so cool. They can't emote properly like that's overdone now and it's right I never got that completely from cloud I think they I mean it's it's a it's a hallmark of Final Fantasy 8 But that's if you ever do a Final Fantasy 8 like there's so much mistranslation that led to thing Yeah, he's not actually totally that bad, but anyway, Cloud was like, I was like, Jesus Cloud, you know, just reading his, and I think, and I actually can't remember, I just replayed it, but do you have dialogue options? Like how to answer people? You do, and there are moments where you do have dialogue options, I was just like, there's very few of them, but I choosing. I kept trying to choose like the nights or what to like balance out, you know? But no, he's just all shut down and at the time, in high school and early college, I was like, that's mysterious. A man who's completely shut down and has no idea what he's feeling, I must find out more about him. Not so much anymore. Not that interesting anymore. Yeah, totally. No, but I love Cloud's design. I love his whole thing. So I wasn't very hard on him when we first played the game. I was like, this is cool. He's cool. Yeah, you know, there's something wrong. They're going to tell us what it is. Yeah. And as any is visually interesting to like, obviously the game looks sensational. And I think the art style is still fantastic to this day. I mean, obviously the 16 bit era has grown up better than the 32 bit because the early 32 bit. But I think you can still look at that art style and say how impressive it is, especially for the time. Yeah. I just random video came up on YouTube this morning, probably because it was listening to me. about Final Fantasy 7 and it replayed part of the video was was the final fight with Sephiroth and his death and I I Just recently replayed it and I'm like, I don't remember it being that gorgeous like there's certain moments where they really they put all they just put all the effort in You know because a lot of the game very very blocky very, you know, very cute interesting trap like trying to be 3d and But no, but that final fight is like, they just opened up. And that's the thing I like about Square Enix, or used to, I don't know about anymore, but Final Fantasy in general, they've always tried, they've been aiming for this like hyper real, like beautiful look. And I don't know why, but I always loved that about them. And it feels like they finally achieved it with remake and rebirth and even Advent Children was. Stunning sure yeah, I think everybody was like this is how these characters are supposed to look finally Question for you about characters. Did you enjoy using Cloud as your main character for much of the game? Did you enjoy spending time with Cloud or were you lukewarm on him? I'm kind of lukewarm. He had his moments. At end of the day, he wasn't that interesting to me. I can't really think of anything about him that really grabbed me. The scene with him and Tifa towards the end, when she's all on his head and they're piecing the memories together, was great. But that's about it. That's about it, yeah. I think there's something to be said for that, and I think there's something to be said for their relationship as well. Cloud is tough because you don't have enough information to make a good choice on Cloud, so all you can do is make assumptions early on. And the assumptions I make early on are like, well, I don't like this guy. He's a bit of a jerk. He's just kind of moping around. He's not a fun person to embody. when you realize why he is that way, it makes a lot more sense and makes him a lot more interesting, but that's not to like halfway through the game, almost two thirds. He finally starts to kind of turn that arc a bit and you're like, okay, now he's interesting and fun. You've been through 30 hours of mopey bopey cloud and it's not the most fun thing in the world, in my opinion. because a lot of people I talk to have been like, he's going to Cloud because Cloud had the big sword and nothing wrong with that because Cloud, that's pretty awesome. That's not a knock, but it's interesting you found something different in there. That's cool. The thing with Cloud is that, yes, you like his appearance, you like how he's strong and his sword is iconic, but then if you're going to connect yourself to Cloud, you got to do the other half of Final Fantasy VII when he loses his mind, when he falls into all that mana. And he goes crazy and does it and not playing with himself. So that tells me that, okay, if you're going to go over cloud because of his sword, then also the mental health issue of Final Fantasy seven, that's the, does that connect to you? And if it does speak about that, and if you can't speak about it, then definitely cloud his, his customer, not customization, what he looks like and his weapon. It's not a good representation. No doubt, you know, no disrespect to anyone who connects to cloud that way, but you got to take a lot of the stuff that goes within it. Like even with, and we're going to talk about a certain moment when it comes to AirRift. I recognize with that because of loss and we'll get to that moment a little bit later on in But I'm just like, The loss, even though it was a big thing, it was part of her sacrifice and she accepted it. like, just when you have to accept things like everyone does, it makes it easier to relate. So here's a question, if you don't have a good stand now, what about these characters didn't resonate with you? Well, no, I have a good one. This is just one of those conversations that JJ and I just never had. I was more curious than anything else to hear his answer. No, for me, I'm telling you, all the way, I'm the this guy, our sick guy, sitting in his house just bed rotting all day. That's me to a T right there. I, the real answer is, that's me to a T now. no, the real answer when I was a kid, I was big into Cloud's like story arc because it's built around the idea that like, he really just has no idea what's going on at any time. He's somewhat, like autistically coded. in that respect, something that I really, I picked up on as a kid, but I didn't have the words for it because he's essentially, everything that he does up to a certain point of the game is masking. Every single action, every single line, all of it is masking that is brought on by a complete lack of self-identity from like the experiments mixed with like what few, experiences and memories he had left over from childhood and with Zach, know, just trying to build a personality on what little he understood about life. That's something that a lot of like neuro-neurodivergent people like myself go through as kids. until I was like, in my 20s or so. just I really didn't have the words for it, but I knew that that was something that I liked. And that's interesting. That's something you clued into James, for Titha and for Cloud, kind of that that neurodivergent, potentially neurodivergent side, which we didn't have a word for back then. Right. That wasn't something we had a word for. You were just special most of the time. mean, I mean, yeah. No, go ahead. I was fortunate enough. I had a really good pediatrician who identified me early as ADHD before that was a very widely accepted thing. Cool. was like, he was a solid dude. And that's, that's sort of how I survived a lot of being a kid, because I can't imagine trying to do the things that I did. I was barely holding on as it was and I was medicated. So. Wow. Yeah. So it's interesting that you found a lot of that in Cloud the character. That's interesting that you were able to make that connection. That's cool. Do you feel like having that connection helped you through anything during that time? Or was it more just, hey, this feels not feels like me, but I kind of get what this is. Well, in the sense that like among my friend group, I feel like a lot of us had I don't want to use the word issues because it sort of implies like a problem or something being wrong instead of just different. But it did allow us a form of communication where just because we didn't have the technical terms or the correct adult words to use, we could describe to each other when we were going through something. Kind of hard-hitting and big in such a way that like we really didn't know why we couldn't handle it if that makes sense just like it things weren't clicking the way they do for like a neurotypical brain and we were just really trying to to parse things out as best we could and having the the language of the characters I think was a big part of it and I you know That's part of why I'm glad that Final Fantasy VII's hype machine still exists today, because if we didn't have that back then, then even that basic character language would have been missing and there just would have been flailing, essentially. And of course, in today, there's a ton of representative characters in both not just games, but in shows and media, and it's easier. It's easier for kids that grew up like I did to not just explain themselves but express themselves. time once again to say thank you thank you thank you to my amazing patrons starting with philip becker terry canair games with coffee bt gobles julian of the stage select podcast seth surgel of the all n media network tim knoll's formula of the lead us the let's play princess of nerds a broadcast greg suart of the player one podcast and generation 16 series of videos joey coro lindsey harney and the one and only editor extraordinaire Pete Harney. If you would like to join these amazing human beings in supporting the show financially, then tiptoe over to patreon.com forward slash a gamer looks at 4040. Check out the tiers and sign up today. It feels like Sephiroth was always a part of gaming culture. The ultimate sympathetic villain, the silver-haired warrior dominated the dreams and nightmares of many a late 90s gamer. But like we said in the opening thesis, is that actually a good thing? Returning to extol the virtues of Final Fantasy VII's most prominent bad guy is Julian and Sephiroth cosplayer, Diana McQueen. I can see how, like for example, if you were, can transition a little bit into Sephiroth. I don't know if I'm to do a Sephisode, but I probably will do a Sephisode because people have a lot of strong feelings. Well, you called it Sephisode. So now you have to because that's too good. I had a Kefka-soad, now I to a Sephisode. 8 and 9 cannot be this long. 8 and 9 cannot be 8 episodes. No, they won't be. is the one. Honestly, is the one. And X is going to be the one because I have a lot of history with X personally. I think that one will definitely, you'll get a lot of really good stuff for that. I think, again, like I said before we start recording, this is the most important one. Yeah, and once I hit X, it's going to be all streamlined from there. It's going to be one-hitters all the way through. I can't imagine doing 8 episodes on Final Fantasy XIII. Right. You know, I can't imagine doing three episodes on each one. I'm thinking one to cover all of them would probably be fine. Moving a little bit into Sephiroth as a character and as an antagonist for a potential Sephisode. I never realized until my research recently, Hojo is really the big bad in this game. He is actually the main driver of everything. And with Sephiroth, of course, being the cool guy with the spiky hair and the big sword. I don't know how you feel about that, it struck me how I don't even remember Hojo. You know, I remember Sephiroth when Hojo is so important in the story and all the other machinations and Rufus is super important. I only remember Sephiroth. What about Sephiroth you think makes him that memorable other than the design and everything else? Like, why do you think that's the case? I think I can't say like. This is how I felt in the moment and I feel that other people are like feel similarly, but I could, I'll be curious to see what other people say. I was 100 % behind Sephiroth. I felt bad for Sephiroth for the first bit of the game. Like once you go to the Nibelheim flashback and Sephiroth learns of his origin and everything and starts to crack, I actually felt bad for him. Even, know, setting aside the fact that like he annihilates the town and everything. Like I could see that like there was like this, kind of like pain in him and, this what, what even am I and, and who am I and, where do I belong type of thing. And, and so as much as I knew that we had to fight Sephiroth and defeat Sephiroth, because like, obviously he was a bad guy. He, he was a much more layered character where, where Kefka, right? Like, as much as I prefer Kefka as a villain, that dude was just bad. And as soon as he poisons the entire population of a kingdom, you're like, no, this guy is just absolute garbage. Where Sephiroth had more nuance in his motivations initially, and there was kind of a reason to kind of feel for him. And also because you had seen him in the flashback, like kind of being buddies with Cloud. And then when he, know, like, mean, there's no, there's no talking around it. The moment that he descended, you know, from on high with Katana in hand and drove it through Aerith, the gloves were off and it was like, no, you gotta die. I think it was one, and I feel that that was by design. I feel that when they were writing it, they were like, we've made him kind of sympathetic. You know, we need to do something that really hits home. No, you need to take this guy down. And that was a sure fire way to do it. Yeah. But to the detriment of the story, because again, playing, I remember Sephiroth and going after Sephiroth. I don't remember Hojo and Rufus and Shinra and all the machinations of the corporation. don't I that never stuck in my brain as a 30 year old playing it right. Like, you know, 15, 14 years ago. So. And I hadn't thought of it that way, but now I'm thinking maybe that's by design. Maybe. Because, you know, it's almost like they get to hide behind Sephiroth, right? And again, that's, you know, Hojo kind of manipulating everything leads it or ties into that kind of sympathetic part of Sephiroth's story where it's like he never had a chance, right? He was engineered for evil. Yeah, he was not necessarily evil. Like he was engineered to be like a super soldier basically. know, engineered by an evil man, a fundamentally evil man who kind of just wanted to see, you know, I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to mix up this concoction and see what comes out. Like, you know, this is fun. And I think there is an element of that where, where, yeah, Sephiroth kind of becomes the tank of, you know, the villains in the story. And he's like, he takes all the, all the attention and all of the, all of the attacks. while the others just kind of get to slink off into the shadows and do their stuff. Totally. Totally. It's a big overriding factor and I think to the game's detriment because when I watch it as a chronological narrative on a YouTube video, I'm like, this is actually pretty cool fiction. Like, this is actually pretty, all right, I kind of dig a lot of this, but a lot of that gets thrown under the rug. in service to these two big characters. in the sense that I actually started watching anime on cable access television in Austin. Wow. Where they would, it was an hour long show that would air every week. Half an hour of it, they would play half an hour of a movie until the movie was finished. And then the second half hour was, they would air this anime called Legend of the Heavenly Sphere Shirato. Completely untranslated. It was just in Japanese and you just kind of had to figure out they did have like kind of like a Last episode on in English that would kind of tell you what was going on before the episode would start But otherwise you just had to kind of like figure things out through context clues and the main villain guy Ga I in that anime Go look him up. It's Sephiroth. And you know now I've since learned that is a very like well-worn design trope in Japanese media. The very live, long, gray or white haired character with the massive katana. Like that is a thing, capital A, capital T. But as far as video games, especially for in the West, that was the first time that most people had seen that. So was like, this is doing things to my brain. And yeah, it is a very cool design. this is probably one of the only times that you'll ever hear me compliment Tetsuya Nomura. In the course of this interview. Oh wow. Wow, okay, fair. I hate Tetsuya Nomura. Wow. And this is why. I knew that if people aren't already in these episodes, it's like, it's this guy again. God, just sit through this. This is not gonna win me any brownie points because, hoo boy. We'll get into it as the series goes on. But man, Nomura. Nomura. All those belts. So. to, and what anime was that? Is it Sword? Is it called- Legend of the Heavenly Sphere, Shirato. Legend of the Heavenly- I looked up a guy that's from a something called Guilty Crown or Sword from Guilty Crown or Sword Guy. But he also kind of has Sephiroth style, but he's much younger. Yeah. would say if you just type in guy, G-A-I from Shirato. S-H-U-R-A-T-O, like he should pop right up. Okay, there we go. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's Sephiroth. Like... Very much so. Yeah, like his relationship to his mother and to go back to the segue thing really quick is that one of the aspects that I loved about it was that there was absolutely no reason he like... got a job, disappeared on the job, showed up in a library, know, like locked himself in a library for like a month or something. And all the, all his boardinets are just like word Sephiroth go. And then, you know, cloud like, like, or, you know, they're like, Hey buddy, you doing okay? And he's just like, whack-a-doo and like burns the whole place down. And it was hilarious to me at the time because it seemed so, but it's like, you know, in a video game, you gotta keep moving. And it was so iconic. was like, insert madness spiral here. But because it's not from his point of view, that made it even better. Cause you don't know what's going on with him. You don't know what drove him over the edge. Like, was it Jenova? Was it her influence? Was it radiation poisoning? Was it just the shock of learning that every person in his entire life had lied to him? Like. It was all, and the segue part was rebirth. I haven't finished it. But when I first started playing, and you know, just the beginning part, seeing that part like almost in realistic hyper definition, and then they actually spent time. you know, they spent a little bit longer and now that you could see the facial features of Sephiroth slowly losing his mind and just deciding like, no, this is who I am. Because he gets a lot of misinformation, but also he just kind of like this is fine. I'm this is what I do I also reinvent myself completely at the slightest inconvenience. So I just I related I relate to that That's cool. Yeah, but yeah, he's just like fire solves everything end of story disappears, you know, and then I think There's so many things I like about him but related to that the madness aspect The insistence of how sane he is and how powerful he is sure and his willpower the willpower is that my favorite thing but also the fact that And I said, you know the way they tell the story in the game That Sephiroth's dead. He's been dead for five years. He's essentially just a ghost and and if you know anything about You know Japanese mythology or you know how they visualize that stuff they use a lot of green and blue light, especially blue light on ghosts. it was very like, every time he showed up, there was always fire, but the green glow, like Genova, the Mako energy, it was also the lifestream, but he was also kind of cool color. And so it was just like, yeah, he's dead. And that is also the struggle I have in my head. of whether or not Sephiroth's actually dead. Cause I know there's a lot of, like for real, like he didn't fall into the life stream and merge with Jenova and his willpower was so great that he forced his personality back into, know, absorb the life stream using, know, did he win or did Jenova just use him? So is she like sweet? This is an awesome puppet that I can mess with everyone with while I like. Recharge I guess I can I can use him and all of this devastation that he causes You know it like and I that would break my heart that I feel like I feel like that would be that's the tragic Because the especially in rebirth the way they set him up as this kind It was just so it was so like jarring to see him, you know Because he's really good at his job and he's he's really serious and he's it but he's like and a hero and and that's like one of the main themes is that you know cloud always wanted to be a hero and he looked up to him and I feel like that's not said a lot you know yeah I mean people obsess about the connection between them but it's like you know they didn't I mean they didn't really know each other that well but it was like this idol worship a little bit yeah and yeah so if he was gone forever especially the madness is much more tragic if you set him up as this beautiful, kind soul who doesn't really, who just, you know, didn't have a hard life because he repressed it all. And that just gets destroyed. But if he's actually dead and it's just a Nova, I think I might quit. I think it's very interesting. And all the theories are always interesting too, is that Sephiroth for me, After again, I only played the game once. played and I've been doing a lot of research for this series, just kind of refreshing myself on it. And what strikes me about the Sephiroth story is that it's all, both the hero and the main antagonist of Final Fantasy VII are extremely flawed and there are reasons for why they are who they are. Now I'm a big Kefka fan, I'm a big Final Fantasy VI fan, I'm old. That's just how I roll. It's a lot of nostalgia glasses and all of it is just genuine love. But Kefka I love as a villain because he's this unbridled evil that doesn't need to have a backstory. He just needs just, and there's no real need for it. We don't need Afor Kefka. I thought that I finally played Six. I really thought that he was gonna like, oh, he was betrayed or he was, no, he's a batshit crazy clown who doesn't, he's a psycho. I'm like, oh, respect. He's a very good crazy person. He's a lot of fun to be around. With Sephiroth, especially Cloud, especially those two relationships, it's, I feel like he's, there's a good reason for why he is and why he became that way, where he's not sympathetic, right? It's like good villain writing. He has good reasons for the bad that he does. He just goes about things the wrong way. Exactly, yeah. And, yeah. mean, is, like Sephiroth, it's extraordinarily tragic. Super tragic, like the loss, I've never felt a loss deeper than when I was playing the first part of research. Yeah. Because I was I was devastated and I didn't think that I was going to get read. I mean, other than Aerith, because I think that was ruined for me. But I was like, you know, I was kind of hoping that they would stick with the theme of we can change everything. You know, no, not that apparently. But it's OK. It's OK. I'm past it. But yeah, I didn't think that the, you know, the flashback scene with with Cloudzak was going to. was gonna hit that hard and I was like, great job. Because I honestly, I had forgotten about hero Sephiroth. Like I had just been so immersed like for years in just God's Sephiroth one wing, you know, like, you know, what does he really want to, why does he want this? you know, and I'm like, he's, I hate to say that I related to that, but it's like, you know, he's not obsessed with control. because I don't think he's thinking at all anymore. And that's when I get scared that I'm like, all the signs are pointing to he's just a puppet and either he's just like a dress up doll for Jenova. And I think Jenova is really cool. I think she's an amazing villain and she also doesn't need a backstab. She's just an existing, like an alien, a calamity that happens to us. Yeah, she's just a cosmic terror. Right. She's a Cthulhu cosmic terrorist type. Been around forever. Yeah, it's fine. Exactly. Bye. Keeping the Sephiroth segment rolling is Ian of the Nerds of Broadcast podcast, followed by JJ of Retrofits, then Matt and Jeff return to speak some sugar, and then finally the Let's Play Princess joins the fray to talk about this world-class adversary. Would you, where would you rank Sephiroth in the pantheon of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy baddies? Now, bear in mind, I haven't finished. most of the Final Fantasies. As I say, I've seen enough of Final Fantasy VI to know that Kefka is absolutely brilliant as a villain. don't remember the villain from VIII. Was it Ultimesia? I don't. So VIII and IX, I've not played yet. I need to at least get a number of hours in before this episode. I'm picking these series and I don't know why I picked I know why I did because I haven't there's a bunch of big holes like 89 I haven't played at all 12 I got through a bit but I didn't really like it I'm gonna play through that 13 yeah there's a bunch of holes in this in this Swiss cheese of mine and I don't know why I put myself through this but I'm the opposite way on that I've played and beaten 1 4 7 8 10 12 and 13. Okay, there you go. And that's a sizable chunk actually, it's more than I thought I had. But then there are ones like nine that everybody tells me, oh you need to play nine. It's my girlfriend's favourite. Okay. I still haven't finished it so I really need to hurry up and do that. Get on that. Yeah. But yeah, as far as the pantheon of baddies goes, Sephiroth is definitely up there. intimidating he's got an enormous sword you know what's what's not to love about this guy but to me you've got to go a long way to beat kefka yeah i mean no you do there's a there's a there's a long road to defeat kefka yeah i agree with that this is a guy who planned to destroy the world and did it and did it succeeded Usually they don't succeed. He succeeded and he won. He got everything he wanted. That's pretty it's a very very good point Sephiroth is one of the best villains and one of my absolute favorite lines is from the movie Advent Children and where he's fighting Cloud and he lying if I remember right is like tell me what you cherish most give me the pleasure of taking it away from you. Yeah. Yeah that one's yikes because that's sort of all he has left at that point really his I feel And I credit Crisis Corps for really fleshing out Sephiroth as the tragic character rather than as the big bad evil guy. Because you get to see Sephiroth as he's described only in lore and hearsay in Final Fantasy VII because people are like, he was this great hero. he was a magnificent soldier. in Crisis Corps going back as like a compilation piece, he actually saves people, not just like, you know, trivial people. Like he's saving main characters. He's like actively throwing himself in front of fire blasts just to take the hit, like to save Zack. You know, it clearly explores like the fact that he had really close friends that he like played with, you know, like as an adult, just like in the simulation room, just playing around with their swords. Like that's that is what grown ass men would do all the time. You know, it it it made him less of like the monster that the core game was sort of like depending on him being on in a way. He actively rejected the mission to go after and Geo and Genesis because They were his best friends. So he's not going to hunt them down. yeah, I loved the explanation for that. The reason that he passed the mission off on Zack is because he thought Zack was the most likely candidate to bring them both in alive. That guy that hearing that part of this where I was like, somebody's somebody went to Juilliard for writing. I like this. Hahaha! Yeah, so we have cloud on one side and then of course we have sephiroth on the other What's your take on sephiroth as a an antagonist? So, uh, I mean I love sephiroth. I still think he's a great villain. I think So I came out as bi I'm now pan but it took me a while to get there But I came out as bi after this game came out, but I look back at it now and go Oh sephiroth was the prototype I see Not just him. We'll get to my favorite character later, but he was one of them and like Real pretty guy, very dominating, says a lot about me. But I think as a character also I always like, a lot of people like to rag on him because everyone's like, Kefka's the best villain. And I get it, I've still never finished six, so like, I don't have that. In fact, to me, Kefka's laugh was the clown's laugh in Chrono Trigger, because I played that one first. So like, I have that flip. But I always like Sephiroth because I like a large looming villain. He's scary, especially later in the game. Plus, he's got probably one of the best theme songs, I think, of any villain in anything. Like, clearly inspired by Star Wars a little bit. You can hear it, kind of the march of it, but it's got a life of its own, and it's just like, hear his theme in my head, and the Genova theme in my head, like just talking about this, and I think that he's a... Like, I also like a villain who wants to destroy the world and like, yes, Kefka did that first, not having that frame of reference and still only barely just through osmosis, Sephiroth was the first one to really do that for me to see that in that way. And I do like that there's like I also like the evolution of his character in this game. We get to see it really in some really cool ways in Rebirth also, like they really get down to the nitty gritty with it. But like in the original game. all of the stuff at the Shinra Mansion when he's starting to lose himself. Like, he has personality in the beginning and is this kind of lovable, kind of grumpy mentor figure and then evolves into this psychopath, essentially. And I think it's done really well. I've always taken aback by how tragic of a character Sephiroth is when you look into it. think one of the biggest, and again, this is not a knock against Final Fantasy VII. think Final Fantasy VII, like you had said earlier, Matt, was the first almost kind of blockbuster game. That was like the big event game. And I think the largesse of Cloud and Sephiroth kind of mask all the other really cool stuff that happens in Final Fantasy 7. Like I forgot Hojo is the thing. Hojo is arguably like the main antagonist. he's Hojo is actually yes. Hojo is the Queen Shala. Yes. Fantasy 7. Excellent as an amazing analogy. Yes. He is the Queen Shala and I completely forgot like Rufus is super important and but you have these two giant very cool characters. Let's be honest like really cool badass characters with the giant swords. and they feel like they almost overshadowed rest of the really cool stuff that's happening in Final Fantasy VII. So it's very interesting thinking back on it, like the largesse of those characters. But Sephiroth itself, he's a very tragic figure. It's a really sad story, what he goes through. So... He never had a chance, honestly. He is also a nepo baby on two horrible lines, a cosmic horror nepo baby and a corporate structure nepo baby. So... The expectations for him were too high. He had too high of expectations on himself. And then when he found out what he had to meet, he was so focused on one branch of things, he didn't even look at the other one. And that was just too much. And again, like Cloud, he cracked under the pressure. And look who rose above their mental breakdown by having friends and not leaning into the corporate structure of the military industrial complex. But that's its own thing here. The Vidal Vansies have an eco-terrorism angle, just always. That's always been a roller coaster for me. no, Sephiroth is somebody who from birth, in utero, had genova cells implanted into him, had his destiny, had the ideas about him. He was an experiment above all else. What else could he become? And he struggled mightily to be who he could be. And honestly, we saw so little of the real Sephiroth. Most of what we saw was genova. whether it was the cells enacting with him or Jenova taking the form of Sephiroth, the form that we are following this whole time. And the influence that it has on Cloud, I love that the remake trilogy is getting to explore that relationship still living within Cloud's head and that being a piece of his psyche. But even without that, I remember Final Fantasy VII, getting the game, reading the instruction manual all the time because... Games had instruction manuals. Yes. You would read them to learn about the control. You could learn the blood types of your party members. And if you cared enough, you could clean aspects of the personality from it. And their birthdays. That's just fun trivia. You could celebrate fictional characters' birthdays. I won't judge you. But anyway, you've got your party all there. And amongst them is Sephiroth as well. But like a dossier file and he's been missing and it's like, oh, that's cool. Also, I can read that word. I feel cool about that. I'm 11. But when the first sign of Sephiroth shows up at the end of Midgar, he leaves an impression. I love his presence in the remake trilogy. But they, again, nowadays, decades on, Sephiroth is Sephiroth. We know who Sephiroth is. One of the members of NSYNC voiced him in Kingdom Hearts, whatever kind of thing. But how much they did. in the first third of the game with scant appearances and only his trail of destruction behind him. Whether it was the trail of blood, the literal trail of blood in the Shinra building, or what he did to the Midgar Zolam near the Mithril Mines, or any number of other things that I can't think of off the top of my head, you are chasing him and you are falling behind. Kefka won at the end. Sephiroth had a hell of a lead and all you could do was chase. Yeah, I mean that that moment in the Shinra building I still consider to be a small horror game like when it's just terrifying and the same thing when you see the Midgar Zolam what happened to it it's like it gives me chills it made it freaked me out. Your party goes Sephiroth did that by himself we have to catch chocobos for the last 45 minutes. And Genova is a cosmic horror you said it I think Jeff. Like, Genoa is a legitimately cosmic horror, which makes me smile all the time, so. I do want to say, it's a goofy little thing that happened. So, a fun thing of the time, you know, we didn't have YouTube then. There was no movie player for FMVs. So, in the Shinra building, when you look in through the little door and see the form of Genova, that, you know, is what breaks itself out and becomes Sephiroth that you're chasing for the rest of the game, you get that brief little moment of seeing it. I had no idea what I was supposed to be seeing, and that way that you kind of have a Rorschach test, I did not see a headless woman's body. I saw a weird cow. Amazing. The chest was the top of the snout and there was enough of a shadow at the sternum area that it looked like just sort of a weird surprise. Wild. Like an alien bovine form. And again, I couldn't go back and restart it and I didn't have a save file that was near enough that, or I didn't care enough. I was too enraptured to be like, no, I need to go back and see what that is. Well, bare it out too, so I guess it's just weird. Let's move on. Weird count. Listen, I thought... I thought Emperor Gestalt in six was a dog for the longest time. For the longest time. The hair moves like Basset hound ears. What were you supposed to think? am I supposed to think? There's wolf people. There's gotta be dog people too. He's a dog face man. I'm just gonna go with it. And he's taking it out on the world and the espers. Leave those espers alone, you weird, mean dog man. Stop throwing those kids in the Hunger Games. And now with the magic of technology, now know what Jenova's supposed to look like in there. And now it's like I go back and I try to recapture the youthful confusion of, does it look like a cow? I don't know. It does. I still see dog. I still see dog when I see a dog. It never fully leaves you. It never fully leaves you. And I know I'm wrong, but I'm just gonna keep that headcanon forever. Those two things can coexist. Yes, there's not a dissonance there. They can live together in my brain. What's your take on Sephiroth? I don't know if I'm gonna do a Sephisode. Sephisode? I don't know. We'll see. I mean, I do have games with coffee coming on later today, so who knows? But yeah, what's your take on Sephiroth as an antagonist? He's a really good antagonist. He's very against... There are three separate people at the very least that he is personally against when it comes to the party system. He's against Cloud because he just sees Cloud as another one of his puppets because you know, Genova sells. He's against Aerith because he sees himself as the prime candidate of ruling over this planet and making it a vessel of the cosmos and ahhh. But he's also very much kind of a personal antagonist for Barret because Barret's whole thing is the eco-terrorism bit. And here's somebody who is actively trying to take over a planet that Barrett is personally trying to save. That's an interesting point. That's interesting. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think Sephiroth looked on the outside, can't seem very one-noted, because at the end of the day, it's just, want power, right? Like, just want to be the ultimate power in the universe. I want to become a god, basically. But there's a lot more to his backstory. Yeah, he thinks that he should be doing what Jenova did. And as far as we know, Jenova went... throughout the cosmos going from planet to planet. And now he's just gonna turn Gaia into another vessel. And it really makes you wonder, how many times has this happened before? Because Jenova must've come from somewhere. Yes, it's a, Jenova is kinda sorta a cosmic horror in that, that, in that kind of idea. Jenova's just a Shoggoth? I guess, maybe, possibly. But yeah, cause Jenova, right though, where did Jenova come from? Yeah, that's that's a big question, right? So you're right that this could be one of many situations. But alas, not everyone I interviewed was enamored with the son of Jenova. So in the interest of covering these characters from every possible angle, let's be honest, maybe get some spirited conversation going in the comments. Let's join Eddie, then Carson Clark, and finally some final words from Mike of Distorted Illumination. sure. So moving a little bit, moving from Aerith to the one who did the stabbing. What's your take on Sephiroth as an antagonist in Final Fantasy 7? Are you a fan? Not a fan? Where is he? Not necessarily he ranks, that's a little loose, but what's your take on Sephiroth? Seferoth is threatening now in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Then he was in the original game. That's interesting. He really wasn't a threat. He has a long sword. Him and Cloud just, you know, they had their battle. Like, it didn't, you barely really see him in the game. from points to times. Like he's here and everything here and there, but you barely see him a lot in the game. So it really didn't play off. So I really don't, I really, I don't think he was threatening. I don't think he was like really, I mean, he was challenging and stuff. Definitely like you play, you fight him in Kingdom Hearts, yeah, he's challenging. But I think he was more threatening now with the remakes and with the movie. for Final Fantasy VII. I feel like the voice acting that he gives, the way that he moves, his demeanor and everything, it has more of a fearful impact than Final Fantasy, the regular game did. Cause you're just reading what he says and everything. And you see him laughing, doing a little muches and stuff. And definitely when you know when he came down and everything and killed era like he had that motorcycle I won't say grudge, but he had like that sexy motorcycle Look at everything like it was very It was very punkish. yeah, very very cyberpunk very yes Yeah, so I'm just like you made him more cool. Thank you made him as a off rank for you as far as as antagonists in Final Fantasy games go I gotta be honest maybe three or four currently because of cuz cuz Final Fantasy 14 right now some of its big bads are really are up there in my top three almost and the and And and Kafka from six is pretty high up there too among others. But yeah, Sephiroth is to be honest, he's he's cool. He has a look. has a tragic quote unquote backstory, but other than meeting him a couple of times, I never really connected or knew his whole story. From the back and the couldn't really, couldn't really relate with him. He is a hard character to relate to. think Sephiroth really leans on the cool factor. Like, it's just a cool looking model. It's a cool looking design. There's a power and an aura about Sephiroth. But you're right. You really don't get much into the nitty gritty of him as a character, as a person. You get motivation, but not... Yeah, and throughout the story, throughout the game, most of what you hear about Sephiroth are rumors. rumors, speculation, and third-hand stories and hearsay and nothing but a couple of anecdotes from himself or whatnot that are maybe true, maybe not, I don't know liable narrators and all that. yeah. No, totally understand that. That makes sense too. There's a lot of mystique around Sephiroth, you know, and And there's a lot more to him than I think the game presents. So it's interesting you put him like around the third or fourth. I think that's accurate, actually. I think that's probably where I'd put him as well. What's your take on the story of Final Fantasy VII? I thought it was more interesting when you were dealing with Shinra. Okay. Like, you know, that's kind of the impetus for all of your actions. And then it just kind of shifts over to Jenova and I'm like, that's not really as interesting. Why did you think Shinra was more interesting? There's like actual layers and motivation to this corporation. You had different levels that may not necessarily have agreed with each other, a la Kate Sith helping you out. Right, right, right. Spoilers. All spoilers, the whole thing is spoilers, that's fine. You could also see why people would rely on Shinra and why people detested Shinra. It's very much so like a necessary evil at this point in this civilization. Like we just, you need a Shinra around, but we literally don't want them around, but you kind of need them. I think Amazon, like we don't really need Amazon, but we need Amazon. We're at that point now. Yeah, then at some point when Sephiroth becomes the focus, Shinra almost feels like it just drops off. Like we had all this interesting stuff going on, let's just push that to the side for now and never really get back to it. That's interesting. I think that makes a lot of sense. I like the Jenova stuff because it almost has a cosmic horror to it, which I like. I like this idea of these old ancient things that have been around for centuries and awakening. I dig all that kind of stuff, but I also respect the idea of that evil corporation because Final Fantasy really didn't do that yet. It was all empires and kingdoms, and now you have more of a more modern story. I think as time went on with Final Fantasy VII and they realized how popular Sephiroth was, I think they almost kind of retconned it in later games. Like, no, was Sephiroth who was doing it all. It was his will that overpowered the mentally crippled alien that crashed into the planet. Totally Sephiroth was a bad guy, guys. Do you feel like Sephiroth as a character complements or overshadows the game of Final Fantasy VII? That's hard to say, because as I mentioned, I don't think it was Sephiroth the whole time. So his character, I don't know if it was ever that relevant outside of the Cloud's personal story. Well, the reason I asked that is because when most people talk about Final Fantasy VII, the first thing they think is Cloud and Sephiroth. And when you look at the story of Final Fantasy VII, it's not all about Cloud and Sephiroth. There's a lot more going on that some of it's more interesting than just that dynamic. But Sephiroth is such a cool of its time character such a overpowering force, I think it drowns out a lot of the other things Final Fantasy VII tries to do personally. And that's just kind of, I'm just curious if you had a similar experience, if you feel like it's more balanced, then I'm seeing it. Like when I played the game, I didn't get that impression. But when you see the reaction a lot of people have, you would think Sephiroth was this all-encompassing thing in the game. I think that might be because he had a really cool design. Yeah, Sephiroth design is indebidably iconic. It's very cool. That's why I always wonder because Seven was the first event Final Fantasy Seven, Final Fantasy game. Like it was the first one that was, everyone knew it was coming out. You couldn't avoid the advertisements and the ads and the cardboard cutouts. The ads that showed Aerith getting her dying. Yeah, I know, right? Spoilers. Look, spoiled that one themselves. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, not saying you spoilers, I'm just saying in general, in general. But no, no, it's a, so I always wonder if that game would have been better served by an antagonist and a protagonist that wasn't so front and center. know, like Final Fantasy VI, you can still make arguments on who the main protagonist is, and it probably changes depending on what type of part of the game you're playing. Seven, it's very clear those are the two biggies and then everyone else kind of takes a backseat when I don't think they should because it's interesting. I don't think that's necessarily an issue. mean, that was the case with even Final Fantasy IV. I mean, everyone took the backseat this season. I was like half trying to say seasonal and half says soul. But yes, so I don't think that was the issue. I think if they just try to... downplay Sephiroth himself a little more and keep the focus on Jenova or vice versa, I think it would have worked. Either focus on one or the other and I think it would have worked better for me at least. Obviously a lot of people disagree because people think it's one of the greatest Final Fantasy so what do I know? just about does it for this edition of a gamer looks at 40 hope you've enjoyed the episode hope you're enjoying this final fantasy 7 series and I do hope you check out the balance of the episodes if you haven't already next week we'll be talking about the balance of the cast please come back for that conversation lots of good stuff in there and we're just gonna keep on trucking through final fantasy 7 until everybody is sick of final fantasy 7 including me Thanks again for checking out the show. Thanks to my editors Kev and Pete Harney for helping me cut up these interviews. They are crucial to the success of this show. This does not exist without their help. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you once again. Thanks to my patrons for financially supporting the show. Thank you for giving it a listen and until next time, please, please, please, especially in these trying times. Just be kind to yourselves and each other.
