However, Aerith has unique text and animations post death (for example, after the snowboarding ride), and then there's the Sephiroth glove/Aerith's postion controversy...
Long story short, for such a critical scene, it was sloppily animated.
Which is why some people think, it was actually later.
See, there is this background scene in the game's code.
If you access it with a cheating device, there are no character models, no pathways to walk on, no dialogue but there IS Aerith's theme, which plays at her death. (With that being said, a small part of it is used briefly by the game during the Northern Cave sequence, and the Northern Cave sequence uses a similar background)
So, using the deleted dialogue, the death sloppiness, and the scene, some people think her death was actually supposed to happen early in Disk 2 rather than disk one.
It would also explain why Sephiroth kills her by jumping down. If you think about it, there are other ways for him to kill her, this doesn't make as much sense.
However, in this scene, Sephiroth is sleeping/dead in the Materia in the tree root on top of the image. (this is in the official scene too)
((Also, not sure why this is different from the final image, but I didn't pay that much attention to the background))
Sephiroth wakes up after Cloud gives him the materia
and then Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream.
But, if Aerith's death WAS supposed to happen in disk 2 (as her unique dialogue hints) then when Sephiroth woke up, he would have jumped down to kill her. It might fix the gloves/no gloves controversy and would give an explanation for why he chose that method to kill her instead of something a bit more normal... like stabbing her in the chest.
As it stands, this is all mostly speculation, yes talked about in the FF7citadel, but it is something to think about.
Welcome to what is easily one of the most controversial ideas in "Gender Politics in Fridging."
Let's define some terms.
"Fridging" (Short for "Women in Refrigerators") Refers to an act where the villain kills, maims, depowers, or rapes someone close to the hero in order to break the hero's spirit and attempt to make the hero chase him.
It comes from a "Green Lantern" comic (1994) where Hal Jordan comes home to find his girlfriend killed by one of his villains, possibly dismembered, and stuffed into a fridge.
Gail Simone, a well respected writer for DC comics, read it and realized there was a very large pattern here, so she began to pull together a list of women in comics who are killed/maimed, etc by the villains in order to manipulate the male heroes. (While it can happen to male heroes, they tend to come back with stronger powers. Females tend to stay dead)
One of the earliest examples in Comics is...
Gwen Stacy.
And there is really a long list, and it happens in all media, including video games.
Aerith?
Fridged:
Her death serves no purpose in the over game narrative OTHER then to motivate the characters (especially Cloud) in addition, it was not a self sacrifice (even if she did know that she would probably die) and she did not put up a fight. It... happened.
And why is this problematic? It turns a female character (who - as a character- should be fully fleshed out with her own ideas, dreams, skills, and emotional and character arc) into someone who exists solely for the male character's arc. They exist only to propel the main character forward. We don't know if Aerith wanted to be a teacher or a scientist, or a mom. And even if we did find (Like we probably did with Gwen, I haven't read her comics) the simple act that she was killed off to promote Spider-man's arc NEGATES any dreams she may have had because she did not die on her own terms or for her own arc. It was all for Spider-man's.
Start looking over your old games. See who dies and why. Is it to promote their own story? Or someone else's?
(SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT 3, BIOSHOCK, AND FINAL FANTASY 7 ENDINGS AHEAD!)
Still here? Great!
If you have been following gaming sites since Mass Effect 3 was released, you should have noticed something. Namely, people are complaining about how no matter what you choose up to that point, Shephard blindly accepts 3 options and each have stock endings.
Admittedly, there are a few minor differences between the three endings, but all in all, they are the same.
However, I was thinking, if the choices were more limited -or the choices were generally acknowledged to have no effect on the endgame- would there still be the complaints?
Bioshock (and Bioshock 2) had several endings, but these all varied on your choices up to that point.
Unlike Mass Effect, these are your only choices in the game. In Mass Effect, almost every bit of the story depends on your choice and your reputation (Paragon, Renegade, etc) In Bioshock, you can save or harvest Little Sisters. That is the only time you are given a choice. (One exception is granted for if/when you kill Sander Cohen, but that has no effect on the ending and it isn't set up as a choice like the Little Sisters are.)
In Bioshock 2, the Little Sister choice survives, but you are also given a choice on how to deal with many of the "Boss" characters. You can kill or save people like Grace Holloway and Stanley Poole. They are not attacking you, but they have offended you or betrayed you. If you choose to spare them that also has an effect on your ending.
When the ending does come around, Eleanor spells out why she is doing what she is doing, and names your treatment of the Little Sisters and people like Grace as shaping her philosophy on life. While the choices are limited, you do feel like they have some effect on the ending.
(2K has admitted to dropping the ball on the Bioshock1 ending by making it an "All or Nothing" type of ending, but the end result still applies. Killing the Little Sisters gives you a worse ending then saving all of them.)
In Final Fantasy 7, you can make several (non gameplay) choices through out the game, but all of them are minor.
1) Your party when you enter certain areas. The only thing you miss is character reactions. They may give some additional backstory, but no matter what, the story still continues unchanged.
2) If/when you recruit Yuffie. This only effects the availability of one side quest (possibly two. I don't know if the Turk sidequest is triggered if she is not in the party), her weapons, some late game materia (as prizes in the sidequests), character chatter, and she has a Gold Saucer date with Cloud.
3) If/when you recruit Vincent. Except for the Gold Saucer date, his effects are the same as Yuffie's.
4) What you do during the flashback in Kalm. When Cloud's party arrives in Kalm, he starts to narrate the story of how Nibelheim was destroyed. This flashback is not mentioned again until Sephiroth starts to tear apart Cloud's psyche. When he does so, Cloud lists what he did in Kalm. Other then what is necessary for the plot (such as visiting the mansion) everything else is dependent on choice. (So, yes, Cloud can boast of stealing Tifa's bra.) This flashback is only mentioned once again, but the choices in it are not mentioned.
5) The second to last Sephiroth fight. Like Bioshock, this is based on what you did previously. Whether or not you recruited Yuffie and Vincent, what level you are at that point, if you picked up the strongest materia, how quickly you beat the final Jenova, and if everyone knows their final limits all influence which version of Bizarro Sephiroth you face. The general idea is the same, but how you defeat him slightly varies. (If you fulfill most of the requirements, he has more HP and he has a more complicated pattern to beating him.) This choice has the most effect on the ending, but it is still simply one of the final boss fights. This does not effect the story in any way, nor does it effect the ending.
6) The Actual Golden Saucer date. Much like Bioshock, your date is picked based on how you treat the other characters during the game. Unlike Bioshock, this has absolutely no effect on the ending.
As a result. there is only one ending.
No matter what you chose, no matter who is in your party, you get that ending. (Admittedly, this is partly due to the fact that SE could not program the four endings that would be required to deal with Yuffie and Vincent, but the point remains.)
So, getting back to Mass Effect...
One of the main issues is that your choices through out the three games are completely abandoned when it comes to the ending. (Other issues include the copy and paste ending, the lack of dialogue, and plot holes.)
If the game had made it clear your choices would not have effected the ending - such as Final Fantasy 7 - or shown how they effected the ending - such as Bioshock- would Mass Effect 3 still receive the complaints?
I was inspired by this IGN editorial yesterday:Editorial: Shock Without The Awe and it got me thinking about violence in video games. (note: I have not played Modern Warfare 3, so I am taking my information from the editorial)
I'm not going to argue "all violence desensitizes us to real violence" or "It's all fake so it doesn't matter" That is a VERY thorny matter, and one I've bumped heads with alot. I'm going to be looking at something else.
Justified violence.
When do we see violence in games and how does everyone react to it? Is it just there to drum up controversy or does it mean something more.
First: I'm going to look at one of the most famous scenes in video games. (Final Fantasy 7 spoilers)
Yep, Aerith's death. Something that traumatized more then one generation of gamers. You may ask: Why was it put in there? She didn't sacrifice herself heroically to do something, in fact, she may not even had needed to die at all!
That was the point.
Yoshinori Kitase was the director and co writer of Final Fantasy VII. During his work on the story, his mother died. While they had known they were going to kill off one of the characters for a while (It boiled down to either Aerith or Barrett as they were the only other characters besides Cloud created at that time) the circumstances around the death dramatically changed.
They were annoyed with the Hollywood cliche of "sacrifice to save others" and when Yoshinori Kitase's mother died, he realized his own way of coming to grips with his mother's death and how to make the death meaningful in the story.
"In the real world things are very different. You just need to look
around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and
accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It
leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose
someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If
I had known this was coming I would have done things differently. These
are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death
relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."
Tetsuya Nomura also stated:
"Death should be something sudden and unexpected, and Aerith's death seemed more natural and realistic." "When I reflect on Final Fantasy VII,
the fact that fans were so offended by her sudden death probably means
that we were successful with her character. If fans had simply accepted
her death, that would have meant she wasn't an effective character. "
(Quotes taken from the Final Fantasy wiki page on Aerith's death)
This death meant something to the player because it was so random, so unexpected, and so violent. (I do not like Aerith that much(and I knew about her death), but even I was shaken up by her death and I had to take a break when playing it. I'm still very glad that it hasn't yet been made into a HD scene for Advent Children or a PS3 FF7. The closest we've gotten was the seconds before in Advent Children during a brief glance into Cloud's thoughts) and it spurred the characters on. They fought to avenge Aerith and save the world.
Now, bizarre as that may seem, that is a positive portrayal. How about a negative one? (Bioshock 2 spoilers)
Bioshock 1 had set up the expectations of morality but they weren't really fleshed out. (Even the developers admit it) This was fixed for Bioshock 2. This ending is a punch in the gut.
During the game, you see the line "Lamb is watching" all over Rapture. Eventually it is revealed to refer to two characters, the antagonist "Sofia Lamb" and her daughter and your Little Sister, Eleanor.
Eleanor spends the game watching what her "Father" does. But you don't truly grasp that until the end of the game. Your ending is decided upon two factors. How you treated the various non threatening bosses (such as Grace Halloway, Alexander the Great, etc) and how you treated the little sisters. If you had a tendency to forgive and allow the bosses to live, Eleanor saves Sofia. If you both killed or saved, Eleanor lets Sofia drown. If you kill the bosses, she kills her mother. For the little sisters, how you interacted with them deals with if/how Eleanor takes your ADAM. Saving them has Eleanor take your ADAM as her conscious, mixed saving/killing leaves Eleanor confused and waits to see if you will let her take your ADAM. Killing the little sisters has her take your ADAM by force.
Bioshock 2, like Modern Warfare 3, does not dwell on the analysis of these actions. It literally does not have the time. Subject Delta is dying and how his life ends is how it ends. He can not change what Eleanor has become. As a result, some players may not realize what they have done to Eleanor until it is too late. It is very effective because there is little post action analysis. This is different from the Modern Warfare 3 example All the analysis is before. The entire game is about free will. In playing for themselves, players may not realize the little girl they have corrupted.
I'm with the article. More analysis like this can help show what games can actually do for the sake of art. There will be crap, not all art or literature is classic, but if enough gems shine through, our hobby can actually get respect.
