Editorials

The Potential Of: Jenova & Horror

by X-SOLDIER May 7, 2018 0 comments

The Chilling Trail of Blood in the Shinra HQ

We all know that Nanaki is initially encountered by our group when Hojo is attempting to hybridize him & Aerith (although Nanaki isn’t into two-legged things despite how he pretended to act). From those very early moments, it’s abundantly clear that Hojo’s responsible for a veritable cornucopia of utterly horrifying, but fully Shinra-supported mad science. In addition to his crazy hybrid artificial organism H0512 you have to fight, we see that he’s keeping the decapitated remains of Jenova in his lab. Seeing this triggers a mental episode of Cloud’s as soon as he sees it, along with the musical theme “Who Are You.” That theme gives the sense of disorientation that I’ve covered earlier as a lead-in to the fact that this is the moment that the tone will shift from one of infiltration and stealth into one of abject shock and horror.

Even after the morally disturbing confrontation with Hojo and his experiments, the true horror-show is what the team wakes up to after being apprehended: The containment unit that housed the decapitated Jenova is torn open. All manner of Shinra employees are dead, their blood coats the floor. All manner of Hojo’s twisted experiments are just running amok amidst the gore and death. Not only has this mad scientist’s lab turned into an absolute slaughterhouse, but the departure of Jenova and the trail of gore and destruction is what’s leading the party ever forward. What sets the tone most uniquely here is the theme music, the aptly named, Trail of Blood, which I mentioned before is the game’s theme music for any location of large-scale slaughter. This moment shows the most amount of death that we deal with directly in the game, and this is where it establishes that tone that the Gi Cave will leverage later.

One of the things that stands out the most here is the fact that this music track plays continuously, and goes uninterrupted throughout this entire section. Even the battle theme and victory fanfare are completely eschewed to maintain this ominous tone in every. single. encounter. The sense of dread and horror is oppressive and unrelenting as the bloody floor is even visible on the battlefield. Moreso than almost anywhere else in the game, this scene is absolutely horror-driven.

This sort of pervasive sense of unease was used in Final Fantasy XV’s Chapter 13. While the original version of this Chapter was criticized for being too long & drawn out, it definitely worked to capture a sense of complete isolation and dread. On top of that, the setting of Zegnatus intentionally parallels several elements to that of Midgar. The theme used in that section is titled, An Empire in Ruins and it bears many similarities to FFVII’s Trail of Blood. While this video has the whole of Chapter 13, the embed is linked to a timestamp where you can watch a few minutes to easily get a sense of how the game presented this, since it’s likely they could use it as a point of reference.

There’s been quite a bit learned from Final Fantasy XV’s release that we’re expecting to see the Remake take advantage of, but ever since I first played it, I’ve felt that this Chapter was intentionally designed that way to try and capture a sense of how to deliver that tone effectively. In the Remake I’d expect that we’ll see many similarities.

To start with, the way that enemy encounters work in the Remake will almost certainly mean that we actually see the experiments wandering the lab amongst the carnage. The section may even start out, with Cloud needing to sneak around and re-acquire your weapons (since you’d likely not be imprisoned with them), very similarly to how Noctis doesn’t have his powers in XV’s Chapter 13. On top of that, we’re likely to encounter moments like that, where some things are lying dead but others suddenly reach out or attack. Having those enemy encounters done as a straight-up brawl with no battle theme like the original would help to accentuate the differences between this section and others in the game. It’s more than likely that this is the section that will put the pressure on to give a lasting sense of dread to everything else of Hojo’s that you encounter throughout the rest of the game, and build up to Nibelheim & the Shinra Manor, especially with the enemy types.

Given the unexplored details that were put into the Combatant enemies, there’re plenty of things for the Remake to mine here. One of the Zenene’s front paws seems to have a snake-like mouth of its own, the other looking like clasped hands, and its feet have too many toes. The Brain Pods are some sort of horrifying cybernetic teapots, and the Vargid Police are just plain creepy. All of these things are wandering blood-soaked floors looking to kill you in the Remake, and we’ll see each of them in far more terrifying detail than they’ve ever been shown before, and may even see more kinds of things wandering as well. The enemy types here should showcase the full moral depravity of Hojo’s work in a way that’s lasting and unforgettable in absolutely excruciating detail. This is where we’re given the cold and ruthless horror of what we’re up against for the rest of the game that elevates things outside of acts of terrorism against an evil mega corporation.

Hojo’s Other Terrible Experiments in Nibelheim

Nibelheim starts with the sense of unease that we got from the Train Graveyard, but that takes a shift when it hits the Shinra Manor itself. This building is constantly full of a number of odd & interesting enemy types, and more of the fantastic card artwork from Mobius gives some ways that these may be interpreted to maintain a general creepy tone, showing that even things like the Dorky/Funny Face & Ghirofelgo feel like they belong in a horror game.

Whether these are all Hojo’s doing, or if they’ve come to haunt the mansion after it was mostly abandoned isn’t entirely clear, but the top level of the Manor needs to feel haunted. The tone of this place is a balance between the unease of the Train Graveyard and the haunting in the Gi Caves that translates an equally pervasive sense of wrongness & horror. These things should feel like they dissuade anyone from venturing in, but focus shouldn’t make them overly disturbing, because the real horrors lie below.

Down the stairs is where we’re greeted by the theme, “Those Chosen by the Planet” and it works to give us the sense that the intrinsic nature of the horrors we see here are more closely intertwined into the main thematic elements of the story, so it has to take a different twist on delivering the horror thus far. Unlike the outrage and disgust of Hojo’s experiments in the Shinra HQ, these are ones that we have to understand, and that needs to translate in the designs as well.

Much more harrowing than these creepy inhabitants of the manor above, are the other ones who are definitely the result of more of Hojo’s twisted human experiments that you encounter as you venture into the hidden basement. Down here is where the focal point of amoral scientific atrocities are on display, and the full-blown human body horror is introduced. Yin/Yang is one of these who is shown in a piece of card artwork from Mobius where it seems to imply that they’re the horrifying result of storing two individuals in a single tank like the ones that Zack and Cloud were being kept in, further hinting that we may learn even more about Shinra’s darker side and other human experiments in the Remake.

We’ve encountered ghosts and disturbing experiments, but these are the ones that should feel too-close to human still. This is where the horror needs to start to feel personal, and the tone of the horror starts to combine with the motivation of the characters and not just creeping out or repulsing the player. (Speaking of which, we meet Vincent down here too, but we’ll save the specifics of his portrayal in the Remake for next time). Not only is it where Cloud and Zack were kept, but it’s the source of Sephiroth’s revelation of his divine purpose, so this horror needs to feel like it’s a motivating call to action. This is a place of horror that you should feel oddly compelled to return to, unlike the others. It’s a puzzle to be solved as much as it is an enemy to be overcome, so it’s a moment that lingers and always feels like there’s more there to find.

And the delivery of enemy to be overcome is the one being who stands above the rest in her body-horror, history as a scientific experiment, and raw terror: Jenova