3) Seto’s Sacrifice
Imagine growing up believing that your father was a disgraced coward who had abandoned your mother and the entire village of which he was supposed to protect when they needed him the most. To top it off, both of those individuals were not just your only relatives but the only other known members of your entire species. In a nutshell, that’s the rather solemn and depressing backstory of Red XIII: one of Final Fantasy VII’s most iconic characters.
Except Red XIII’s disdain for his father, Seto, is misplaced as he later discovers him impaled with dozens of arrows and eternally entombed in a stone cast still guarding the entrance to the cave that leads to Cosmo Canyon. At that moment, it suddenly dawns on him that his father had in fact sacrificed himself to save the entire village all those years ago. Red XIII then turns toward the full moon and howls in sadness to the epic tune of “Great Warrior.” A single tear then rolls down the cheek of the entombed Seto in a scene that truly tugs at the heart strings.
It’s going to be fascinating to see whether these sorts of scenes still resonate with a modern video gaming audience in the same way as they did in the original. The realism of modern graphical fidelity and the extent to which voice acting plays a vital role in our level of immersion will be key factors in whether scenes such as this one impact upon the audience as intended.
