Change to disk 2

In my last post I talked about developers unable to utilise the game mechanics at their disposal in order to create a truly moving experience. After posting it, I quickly told my friend about my new blog post. She then mentioned FFXIII, and it clicked.

One game, one singular moment, brings together the defining qualities of a genre and mixes it with story telling. In one moment, the gamer bawls tears of sadness because of the actual gaming qualities. In one moment, a game managed to take this emotional depth and turn it up to 11.

I'm talking about Final Fantasy VII and surely by now you all know what I'm talking about. The moment of Aerith's death.

Cloud losing arguably, the love of his life, was pretty hard for gamers. If you were just watching, you could sympathise with Cloud, a stone cold character finally showing some raw emotion. But for gamers, this was a defining moment in time where they could empathise with him. The death of Aerith was as hard for gamers as it was for Cloud. That's the difference. Empathy and Sympathy.

It was due to attachment. Yeah you could be attached to Aerith because of her angelic qualities, but in the end, the attachment wasn't caused purely and simply because of the graphics, or her own theme song. No it's because you levelled her up. Organised her armor, her weapons and her materia. Countless hours spent grinding, getting her to a suitable level. For once, the attachment was based on gaming attributes.

Then she was cruely taken away from you. As I said to my friend "the pain of losing her is 10 times more because you've grown attached to her, not through her qualities as a character for storytelling, but her qualities she's grown as a part of the video game..."

At the end of the first disk, the game asked countless gamers across the world to change disks. But I'm guessing they were all too shaken up to even reach for the gaming case. A singular moment, where gaming had evolved.