Seeing the Blueprint: Appreciating Older Games

Earlier this year I finally played the original Final Fantasy VII. I had played the first of the remake games before, but had never really engaged with the original game in any meaningful way, other than having a vague knowledge of Cloud Strife, Sephiroth, and Aerith’s death. I ended up playing through the entire game in a week when I was back home on the East Coast for the holidays. It was…fascinating to play.

 For years I had heard and seen Final Fantasy VII identified as one of the greatest games of all time, a hallmark of game story telling, and an inspiration for games in the years that followed. Naturally, I was intrigued to see if it would hold up to these accolades. The answer? It…kind of did. The story was of course excellent, and I had a great time with it, even if it did occasionally have a slight bit of “wait, I don’t think that ever got properly explained” to it (To this day I don’t know that I could point out where specifically we learn what exactly Jenova is, where she came from, or about her bringing a virus to destroy life.) While I do think it suffered from a bit of the classic game problem of relying heavily on a few expository bits to explain 85% of the story, it was still quite a fun story to play through.

Where I felt some level of issue was instead in actually playing the game. I don’t quite know what I expected, but it was one of the times in my life where in playing a game I immediately felt: Oh this game was absolutely made in 1997. And it wasn’t just the early 3d animation style graphics that made it feel that way, it was the sheer clunkiness with which the game operated. The ATB system, to me, was just…not very fun? So often I ended up putting in an attack or spell and by the time that character’s turn to activate actually came, that was no longer what I wanted them to do. With no way of knowing the enemy’s ATB timer, it seemed disadvantageous to play solely by reacting, yet it was also difficult to plan ahead properly when I couldn’t adapt to situations quickly. Meanwhile, actually getting around the map, while interesting at times, was also a pain in the ass full of random encounters. Exploring complex areas became a chore where every 3 steps I had to do another fight, as opposed to actually getting to engage with the maps that they had built. 

To be completely straightforward, I made liberal use of the cheats that the switch adaption of the game provided. If I had to really dig in and explore an area, you could be damn sure I was turning random encounters off. Grinding to unlock limit breaks? We were absolutely playing at 3x speed. I didn’t try to use the infinite health or limit cheats to get through bossfights or anything like that, but I was happy to have some quality of life helpers throughout the game. 

Now, this all begs the question, if I felt this strongly about the gameplay, how could I possibly say it even kind of held up to all the praise of it I had seen? To that I say: I can see how this game is the blueprint. One of the things that defines a great game is not just how fun it is to play, it is the impact that it has on all of the games that follow. I may not have enjoyed the ATB system while playing Final Fantasy VII, but I love Expedition 33’s style of combat, with its endless parrying and counter attacks mixed with turn based planning. Without the innovation of the ATB, would I ever get the joy of executing a perfect 4 turn Baton Pass in Persona 5 Royal or plotting out a beautifully ordered turn in Star Renegades? I don’t think I would. There’s something beautiful about being able to see the bones of the systems you know and love today in these games from the past, even if you feel their datedness all the more potently because of it.

Anytime you are dealing with any older piece of art, it is important to take into account the context in which it was made, but this is especially true for video games. The leaps and bounds that we have seen in technology in the past thirty years make it pretty much necessary. If I went and played Final Fantasy VII or Mega Man 2 and expected them to perfectly keep pace with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Hollow Knight: Silksong I’d be inevitably disappointed. But if I go in knowing I’m going to get to see the foundations that modern day gaming was laid upon, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that come with that, I’m going to have a much better time. Taking on this mindset has made my interaction with older games so much nicer than if I spent the entire time thinking “well it doesn’t have x, y, and z and therefore it sucks.”

In a sense, it’s just like reading the classics of literature. Yes, on some level, Shakespeare will not feel perfectly relevant to the modern day and the language will feel especially archaic if you are not used to it. But in order to understand the evolution of literature and theatre, and to see how where are we now relates to where we used to be, you should probably at least peruse a copy of Macbeth. Plus, there’s a reason this shit sticks around! For all my gripes about Final Fantasy VII I don’t regret playing it. It was a lot of fun, even if the menus were a bit unwieldy. The whole original Mega Man set from 1 to 8 are key parts of my childhood and I still enjoy playing them to this day! They’re genuinely good games, and become even more enjoyable when you don’t just look at the games on the surface, but the blueprint that they built for the games that have come after.

I’m not going to say that every older game, even the classics, are all perfect or even that I’d necessarily enjoy playing all of them. There will always be things about them that annoy me, whether it’s having to literally switch out my gun to use a grenade in the original Gears of War, or the repetitiveness of mission design in the first Assassin’s Creed (I get that these aren’t like, 80s and 90s classics but just go with me here, I’m a 2000s kid). But even amidst that kind of jank, there’s something incredible about being able to touch gaming history in such a real way. It lets you see the building blocks the games you love nowadays are built upon, and brings you so much closer to the grand tapestry that is Game Design and Gaming as artforms. It is vital that we preserve these older games, digitally and physically, so that years from now, people can view and interact with that timeline from beginning to end. It is one thing to see just the end product and hear about the process; It is something far more beautiful and sublime to be able to experience the entire process yourself.