The Art of Dying: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth And The Power of Letting Go

Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII [1997], Remake, and Rebirth.

Even with far more barriers in the way, the desperation began almost as soon as the original game was on shelves and the first person saw Aerith die in Final Fantasy VII. The singular question haunted AOL chat rooms, usenet, and game magazine mailboxes for years: Can we bring her back?

Games have such a strange relationship with the idea of death, so it makes sense that players in 1997--starved of narratives with any real permanent stakes beyond how many quarters you can pump in or whether you really wanted to fight all the way back to the place you died--would have a reaction to Aerith being permanently dead. It’s baked right into the narrative in fact, with Cloud, even with all of his emotional damage, grasping the enormity. “Aerith will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry, or get angry....” Cloud wrestles, in the moment she dies in his arms, with grief for the first time. And Sephiroth does not give a shit. Sephiroth is beyond human concerns. He knows what Cloud is, and flies away with his gentle amusement. Cloud is a puppet. To him, emotions for someone ultimately meaningless in the larger context of time and space are no different than a toddler weeping because it accidentally stepped on a dandelion. But this is the internal struggle that would define the next stretch of FF7. Cloud discovers what he is, and has to come to grips with what it actually means to be human, because just copying Zack Fair’s homework will only get him so far.

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