Final Fantasy VII debate: Aerith's........

1) Aries death was greatest….: My opponents first case for Aries death that her death was the greatest moment in gaming history. Treating what qualifies as greatest moment in terms of story plot hopefully for the sake of relevance to this debate. But its hard to tell if that’s the point in ‘greatness’ my opponent wanted to make. I say this because his source game spy was ranking its greatest gaming moments in terms of how visually interesting, and even catchy theme tunes. The intro montage to Kingdom Hearts ranked above Aries death by there standard and though you could call that intro many things you could never call it masterful story. (Talking about just KH intro) And as for fans voting it number one, this can be explained away in that as part of dealing with the shock of losing one of there best characters, they at least wish to think of the death itself as important, in fact the most important event ever (in games) so that maybe they can make others understand there shock and thus make others feel the shock that they did. It’s abrasive to our intellects to accept such shocking event to us in our favorite game as just random crap the game programmers decided to make happen, so we create importance where it is not to better deal with it. But step back from that emotional investment in game we spend hours at a time playing, and take the best objective look you can muster. Her death did not affect any of the rest of the plot. The plot did not even build up to her death either. It was just thrown in there. A) But lets roll with this for a sec… Pro went as far as to defend that bringing Aries back to life, even in a future installation, would undermine the ‘greatness’ of her death. How? Why? Are we afraid that if she where to come back to life at any given time it would undermine the tragic ‘irrevocableness’ of death? If that is what we want for the game and for the story then I have to say the game makers did a horrible job at not undermining death. All through the game, gamers get to use Matera with the spell Life and Life2 and items called phoenix down, a summon called phoenix, and a enemy skill called angle whisper, all of which undermine the idea that death is irrevocable for our heroes of the game. Nothing could undermine the proposed point about ‘death’ the game is supposed have made through Aries death more than that. B) Lets also consider what ‘death’ means for the FF7’s mythos. Every one everywhere across the planet, whether they live in Midgard or Cosmo Canyon knows that when they die, there soul ‘returns to the lifestream’ and they become one with the planet. The Planets ‘mako’ lifestream is like what we would consider the spiritual realm to us. Cloud went into this spiritual realm (with some temporary consequences) and then came back. With Tiffa too. Cloud gets to play around in the spirit world piecing together his forgotten memories with temporarily side effects while Aries is permanently stuck there waiting for her new mako substance to become a tree or power a Midgard generator. 2) Aries death meant to defy… … cliché. Pro makes the case that it was the gamers desire to defy ‘cliché’, specifically the cliché of a brave hero sacrificing themselves for noble cause. Pro argues the gamers makers wanted to be more ‘real’ about death. a) This is insulting to all soldiers who fight over seas for there country and other countries freedom, and all soldiers who have ever fought and died for the same reasons. Death does occur in real life in brave hero’s who sacrifice themselves. For causes even. It does not happen to everyone, but that does not make it any less real. b) Who is to say the desire for it to be more ‘real’ is what’s best for ones video game story at all. Can we not agree that the best games, or books, or even movies that we love the most are the ones where the ‘escapism’ is high? The ones that take us to a ‘long time ago’ and ‘in a far, far away galaxy’. When life is ugly and frustrating, when we feel the most like nobodies we turn on the game consul and obliterate our game enemies troops, where we are the most famous pokemon trainer there is, where we save the woodland critters for Dr robotnic, and we amass more gold than people dream of seeing. Though we haven’t gotten much done in our ‘real’ lives at least we can our favorite game and admire how we have acquired every weapon, unlocked every costume, and gotten our level to its highest. For games, books, and films alike, escapism is a desirable attribute for it to have. Pointedly making death very, very real clashes with the quality of the games escapism. c) To make another case about bringing Aries back to life, even if they needed a death scene in an abnormal character to have die, they can defy that cliché and still bring her back to life at some point, and cliché stays ‘defied’. d) Also, what of the alternative character they considered and rejected? Barrette. Even if they couldn’t have there dying character’s death be one of heroic sacrifice, that only entails mechanism and nature of death, but not character. Barrette could be killed off suddenly like Aries was and it have the same effect as Aries dying for those reasons. The difference though in Barrette and Aries is that Barrettes role was over at that point in the game. The plot involving his past with Dyne had already played out, and he really steps aside as a leading figure after the group leaves Midgard. There is little to no reason to keep him around at the point of Aries death in the game plot wise. Aries on the other hand is the only LIVING ANCEINT (other than Sephoroth of course). Her being alive would have allowed for further exploration of what the Ancients are in future installments in ways that are unavailable now. Mysteries of the Ancients has been pretty closed off. Meanwhile Barrette offers nothing to all the latest installments, just an old buddy to the star heroes, who is raising his daughter Marlene.