Final Fantasy VII

[APE]

Why don't you have to eat in Final Fantasy VII? Why do you never take a shower? How does Cloud effortlessly carry that huge sword? How does he get his hair to stay like that?

He does it during load times.
Same reason people didn't prior to showers.
Steroids.
Lot's of hair spray.

There is always the possibility the game takes place over the course of a week.

[Lartrak]

Oh yeah, and the relative realism of the 3D characters in battles makes the death of a certain character later on seem ludicrous to me. I think that in a lot of RPGs though. Phoenix Down, anyone?

Yes but maybe the characters are not dead when you use Phoenix Down??, they could just be knocked out and PD wakes them back up...

In most RPGs the characters are described as knocked out (at least in the U.S.). Biggest exception to this I can think of is the Dragon Quest series.

That's why i said it, as a lot of RPG's I've played too it seems to show they a knocked out and not dead..

And i know it's been a long time since i've played FF7 but im pretty sure that did the same thing.

Regardless, if having a 40 foot tall monster stomp on you multiple times doesn't kill you, I don't see why one stab would.

Because it is a fantasy videogame and not bound by the physics of real life?

It isn't about realism. It's about some vague degree of consistency. Deaths in most RPGs don't have much impact because of how totally arbirtrary they feel. It always seems very forced, due to the previously indestructible characters. This is the worst in standard J-RPGs, actually, where you have endless battles against gigantic monsters or people with guns/swords where your characters are beat on forever.

It's a difficult balancing act, having characters who are constantly fighting and still manage to make it so they can believably be killed - FF7 just fails at it.

Genre movies often have the same problem. For example, you'll have a guy easily fighting off tons of zombies or whatever, only to suddenly have one execute what I call a super ninja grab, and easily kill him. Italian zombie movies are the worst for that, though the characters in those usually don't matter at all anyway.

[Covar]

if you really need sollice on how aeris died, while you characters are regularly knocked down to 0hp consider the following. many p&p rpgs don't have your character die when 0hp is reached. rather they are knocked out and must roll each round to prevent their hit points from dropping further. when -10 is reached the character dies.

there, happy? sepiroth stabbed aeris and she failed her saving throws and dropped down to -10.

[Luriden]

......Aeris dies?

[Specially Cork]

Lartrak - It is a fictional fantasy story, you just relax, enjoy the story and take things like that with a pinch of salt. I'd say around 90% of videogames, movies and TV shows all suffer from logical consistancy at some point, but you just let it slide and enjoy the story.

And it is about realism.

In the world of Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth's sword impaling your body kills you, and is more powerful than any other attack.

That isn't consistant with the physics of reality, but neither is 90% of the stuff in videogames. If you can accept all those other things...why not this?

[az_bont]

I have it on good authority that the science presented in Jurassic Park is flawed. Why did Michael Crichton and Stephen Spielberg even bother?

[Nyarlathotep]

I think most of you are missing the point he is making that it is not just logically inconsistent to the extent that most fiction defies over-analysis and relies upon suspension of disbelief; it is internally inconsistent, to the point where the game has established its own 'rules' of how things work, and then breaks them arbitrarily.

FF5 did the whole 'death of a party member' thing better anyway.

[melancholy]

I think most of you are missing the point he is making that it is not just logically inconsistent to the extent that most fiction defies over-analysis and relies upon suspension of disbelief; it is internally inconsistent, to the point where the game has established its own 'rules' of how things work, and then breaks them arbitrarily.

I think Nyar has it right, and I felt the same way as Lartrak about Aries' death. Life-reviving phoenix and Life magic was confusing in comparison to what was actually happening story-wise. It was inconsistent mechanically, not in the terms of realism.

However, to say that her death by a simple stab when she had stood up against all those badass monsters is not so simple. See, Aries had to die. She knew this, prepared for it, and accepted the death. She wasn't just hit by a sneak attack from Sephiroth, she needed him to kill her. That's why it was so easy for him to do so.

[Egotistical EvilN]

The way I see it, party members in FF7 "faint" instead of "die" when they are reduced to 0HP. Sephiroth killed her, not knocked her out.

This is how it is in pokemon diamond and pearl. They faint from the battle, then afterward they are too tired to fight, but can use HMs.

Oh, and the way the whole FF5/Galuff thing worked is that Curaga/Phoenix Down/Life wouldn't work because Galuff knew it was his time to die and submitted to death, and that fate wouldn't let them work.

[Lartrak]

I think most of you are missing the point he is making that it is not just logically inconsistent to the extent that most fiction defies over-analysis and relies upon suspension of disbelief; it is internally inconsistent, to the point where the game has established its own 'rules' of how things work, and then breaks them arbitrarily.

FF5 did the whole 'death of a party member' thing better anyway.

Yeah, thanks for summing it up better than I apparently can.

I haven't found too many deaths to be involving in video games because of this. Most of the time I just kind of roll my eyes.

Of course, usually the storytelling and character development in video games isn't good enough for it to work regardless.