I Swear It Used To Be There!

I recently got a PS3, and while it wasn’t the mystical fat 60GB version, it was a new 32OGB slim (well, not that slim, Sony, did you never think someone might want to stack other consumer electronics on top of your beveled edge?). So, no PS2 retro gaming, but the PS3 does play original PlayStation games. After reminiscing about Gold Saucer gaming, massive bastard robot slaying and Costa Del Sol sun bathing, I decided to return to Final Fantasy 7 and the industrial dystopia known as Midgar. I haven’t been there in over a decade and while journeying into reactors and into a Sector 6 market town, I expected a return to the sweet cartoony polygon Cloud, Tifa, Aegis and Barett of my youth. I seem have come across some of the most foul mouthed individuals I have ever met in video games, (except for myself after playing as a mage Dragon Age 2).

After the bland language of Final Fantasy 13 and most Japanese RPGs these days, it came as quite a shock. I don’t think there was one dialogue scene where Barrett didn’t shout the word ‘shit’ at something or someone, while gun arm punching and hell yeah-ing their bad ass to the floor. Cloud even freaks out and has a swear when he’s dangling off a broken bridge and is about to fall. And rightly so; I’d be bloody swearing if I were in his position as well. For swearing more intense than shit, there are also a goodly amount of *%$&!! and #$*&^%!! that crop up throughout the game. And this is one of the reasons Final Fantasy 7 is one of my all time favourite games. Yes, the characters look cool, the story is deep and the amount of things you can do in the game and the freedom you have has still not graced today’s RPGs. But it’s the emotion and the realism that lies within the dialogue that gets me all giddy with delight! I mean, Barrett should say shit, shouldn’t he.  It lends an air of truth and…. big word alert… verisimilitude that is missing from a lot of modern games.

The realism spreads beyond the main characters throughout the entire world of Midgar.  The place is full of lowlife scum, vigilantes and stray dogs; it reminds me of a strange mix between Jersey Shore (and if you don’t know what Jersey Shore is, count yourself lucky and stay far away from it) and Murder She Wrote. They may be strange mutants, but they will always help you politely in your quest, holding back information until the last minute… and Jessica Fletcher is a black man with a gun for an arm.

It’s not just the swearing that gives FF7 character, it’s the maturity of some of the things the characters say, and the unbelievable things they come out with. Just so much more life-like than anything else I have played before. However odd some of the translations in the game are, they did a bloody good job, in my eyes, to capture what the character would be like in the situation they are in. It’s not all shits and giggles after all. They are trying to rescue their planet from a variety of monsters, big-ass dragons and a psychotic mummy’s boy with extra long silver hair which puts my not so long silver hair to shame. The git.

Maybe I like the FF7 characters so much because they speak in a way I can relate to. They talk to each other how I would talk to my friends. Maturity with dry wit and the odd swear word or three (comparable to ten minutes of a Jeremy Kyle show, just without the dry wit and maturity). I actually feel quite distant from other Final Fantasy games. Unwelcome and shunned, like I shouldn’t be there playing the game just in case one of the characters turn around and notice me. And with emo fringe positioned over one eye they give me an evil glare that rips though my soul like an episode of Eastenders, that has come alive as a humanoid mecha Eastender droid. Made up by cast members and the parts of the laundrette and the Arches. With Ian Beale for one of the legs, Dot Cotton as one of the arms wielding a giant cigarette sabre. And as for the head, the Queen Victoria brass bust from the Queen Vic pub sits on top on the depressing, cockney fish ‘n’ chip shop beast! With laser beams that emit from its eyes, it wreaks havoc on the lives of innocent bystanders and destroys everything in its path! Well until Corrie creates there own droid. Who would win? Let’s find out. FIGHT! As you can tell, I feel strongly about it.

So what has happened to all the swearing – and character – in the Final Fantasies? You only seem to get swearing in games filled with large beefy Gears of War style man-men or from the mouths of any 14 years old kids you encounter in a FPS multiplayer game. With their Justin Beiber haircuts, full flawless facial features and whiny voices, the new fangled ‘team emo’ are in today’s Final Fantasy games. Yes the Team Emo trend did start off life in FF8 but then Squaresoft repented their terrible sins by making FF9, (Square Enix have yet to do that with any FF title after that). Now they’re back, and they still manage to have about as much emotion as a brand new dishwasher brush. The emotion in FF13 feels like a bad soap opera mixed with a sci-fi B-movie, and seriously, do we really need the constant stepping sound effect when your character runs? Clank clank clank!

So… what would I ideally like to see in the next Final Fantasy, so that I could stop complaining and reinvigorate my love of the franchise?  I may not have really enjoyed a Final Fantasy game since Steiner and Vivi were involved, but I have bought and played every one since because of the loyalty they engendered with me in Final Fantasy 7.  And I’m not saying they should just bring back the Final Fantasy 7 characters – at least not until I’ve finished Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core on the PSP.