Mog’s Fantastic Journey: All of the Towns and Cities of FFVII And What I Think of Them

Hey guys, Notorious M.O.G. here. I don’t usually write for the front page, but hey, people seem to like what I have to say about the towns and cities of FFVII, so I thought I’d take all of the suggestions to make it a front page article and turn it into reality. Thanks for your support, guys!

As for the nature of this article, it’s an editorial, as in, just my subjective opinions. After the awesome and delightfully controversial Tier List, some people were all like, “WAH THIS IS SOMEONE’S OPINIONS THIS SHOULDN’T BE FRONTPAGE STUFF”. Hey guess what boners; professional newspapers have editorials too. There ain’t news to report all the time. It keeps things fresh and interesting, so keep your eyes open, this won’t be the last one on here. Viva La Lifestream!

By the way, this whole thing started as a forum post, so if you want to take part of that and see where the magic began, check it out here. With that said, let’s get started.

Midgar

Midgar is easily one of my favorite RPG locations of all time. Having FF7 start here and stay here for a few hours is one of the best things that could have happened to it. Some people loathe the fact that so much time is spent here in the beginning, but really? Really? Seriously, I love all of the world of FF7, but compared to Midgar, as soon as I left, it took me a while to actually warm up to the rest of the game world. Midgar just hit me like a brick. I absolutely love it here.

However, you spent very little time at the top of the plate, which is something they tried to address in CC (and they did so-so), and I hope they address that in a potential remake. At the end of FF7, you spend what, like a second or so there? And of course you go to Shinra Tower, which doesn’t really count towards what I mean. So that leaves…

The Slums, oh, the slums! Seriously, SE aimed at the ‘fantasy world version of the ghetto’ target and hit it dead on. Drunks, prostitutes, badasses, poor kids, and gangsters, you have it all, here. What I really liked about it though, is the atmosphere.

I’m sitting here typing this, and there are a lot of ‘dangerous place’ like towns and cities in RPGs, but FF7 is the only game that to me, has actually nailed the atmosphere of the slums being a dangerous, dirty, and shady place. It could be the music, Under the Rotting Pizza, which remains one of my favorite songs in the entire OST, but I also feel is the dialogue and the attitude of the inhabitants. Unlike a lot of RPGs, they don’t go around ‘WAH I’M SO HUNGRY AND POOR’, no, they act more like actual inhabitants of the slum, and that’s angry. Angry at Shinra, angry at their circumstances, and generally just angry at everything. Another personality trait I noticed is also another realistic one, and that’s acceptance. It ties into what Cloud said; “I know… no one lives in the slums because they want to. It’s like this train. It can’t run anywhere except where its rails take it.”

A lot of the slum inhabitants just accept their lot in life and deal with it the best they can. They eat, sleep, play, work, and screw, doing the best with what they got, their own way. In that way, the slums stuck out to me as a real place, and I, playing Cloud, Barret, and Tifa almost felt ‘at home’ there because well, I guess it’s because we’re terrorists, but still. In a remake, please don’t neglect the slums. Hell, make it more expansive, and dare I say, longer.

Whatever you do though, don’t make it like you made the slums in Crisis Core. Because in CC you fucked them up.

-The music did not fit with a slum at all. Could you imagine this beat in your head walking down Watts or a New York slum or something? I want the music to accompany the mood of an undercover drug deal, somebody getting stabbed or a bum sleeping next to a kerosene fire, not dapper doo dan shit.

-You’re not supposed to see the sky in the Slums, ever. Not that it’s my decision to make, but the fact that you saw the BRIGHT BLUE SKY peeking out in the CC slums really killed the atmosphere. The original game flat out tells you that the Slums are super polluted and never sees daylight, and hell, Aerith also tells you that she’s never seen the sky. FF7 circumvented this brilliantly by having every camera angle in every location in the slums give the appearance of a dark, dank visuage. The ONLY think you should see when you look up is industrial pipes and Midgar’s asscrack. No sky. Ever.

-The inhabitants are too happy. You can’t really tell they’re living in a slum. I realize in the above I said the inhabitants deal, but in CC they’re downright elated. “I JUST GOT BACK FROM WALL MARKET DOO DAA DEE DOO” fuck that, you should be more worried about tetanus, bitch.

But yeah, nevermind the rant about CC’s Slums, but Midgar itself remains close to my heart.

This is the first part of an ongoing topic, guys! Discuss, discuss, discuss and stay tuned for Kalm! Since this is a frontpage article, I’ll update every two days or so, and follow behind the continuous forum posts (since that’s where it started) to keep discussion fresh on here.