Final Fantasy 7 - Sephiroth would have been better if there was LESS of him

[thejboy88]

Spoilers below.

Final Fantasy VII is widely regarded as one of the best JRPG titles to ever come out, and while its success is based on many things, from its gameplay to its setting and so on, what I want to discuss today is its central antagonist, Sephiroth.

Now, this guy has gone on to appear frequently in top ten villains list for games over the course of the last few decades years, and has become one of the most iconic images of FF7 as a whole. However, while I appreciate a lot of people's liking for him, I want to say that I think he could have been a far more impactful villain if we never actually saw that much of him.

Now, let me clarify that I'm not saying Sephiroth is a bad villain. Quite the opposite. What I am saying, however, is that the effect he had on the audience would have been greatly improved if his actual appearances were limited in the game. Let me explain. For a good chunk of this story, we're told about this guy by way of the experiences other people have of him, such as our central hero, Cloud. However, what works even better than that is just how often we see things AFTER Sephiroth has been there.

Consider, for a moment, the main villains of the early part of the game, the Shinra corporation. You fight these guys for ages, struggling against them, just barely managing to strike a few victories, to the point when your actually captured by them after what was SUPPOSED to be a rescue of one of your friends. Then, when you wake up in your cell, you find that this guy, Sephiroth, has just walked through the building, decorated the walls of the place with what WAS the insides of their soldiers, before killing the head honcho himself and not even bothering to pick up his weapon afterwards. This guy took on the most powerful group in the game's world, single-handedly, and wasn't even slowed down. And all this took place while you were sound asleep

Walking around in that aftermath, seeing the carnage he wrought with so little effort, was the first moment I realised, way back when I played this game for the first time, that this was not a man to be trifled with. And the thing is, that's not even the last such experience the game gives us. A bit further in, there's this giant snake monster that will very likely decimate your party if you try to challenge it directly. And when you finally get around it to the other side of the swamp, you find that not only has Sephiroth already defeated such a beast by HIMSELF, but also took the time to impale the thing on a dead tree like some gruesome trophy.

This, I think, was the real strength of this villain. Not when he was ON-screen, but when he WASN'T. Seeing the things he could do, hearing people talk about him and how terrified he made them feel, it made him seem like this invincible, unnatural THING that you had no hope of ever stopping. When you stepped into an area where he had walked before, in your quest to find him, you find yourself very disturbed, as if simply walking in his footsteps will result in something terrible happening. He was, basically, the Jaws of this game. And much like the fictional shark, his impact was at its greatest when you never saw him.

But, sadly, we DID see him. From Cloud's infamous flashback to his frequent appearances throughout the game, Sephiroth's menace greatly dropped for me whenever I actually caught up with him. His speeches, his motivations, all of it simply made me feel like he was less than what his after-the-fact actions had built up previously. In fact I'd even go so far as to say that, if he'd been kept unseen until the very end of the game, when your finally fighting him in that last battle, I might actually regard him as perhaps the all-time best villain video games have ever given us. or at least the one with the biggest impact on the audience.

So yeah, that's the point I'm making here. Sephiroth, a villain far more effective OFF-screen than ON.

 

[meiam]

You actually see very little of him, Cloud flashback are factually incorrect in many ways so you don't really get to see him, plus I'd argue a large reason he's an interesting character is that you get to meet him before and has he's going insane.

Then you briefly see him on the ship on the way to the other continent(actually can't even remember if its actually him or just another clone, you do end up fighting one of the Jenovah clone). Then I think next you see him at the temple of the ancient, where he just mind control cloud, I don't really see how "can mind control the main character" diminish his impact. Then he backstab Aerith while cloud just watch by, again pretty menacing. And again I think none of these are the real Sephiroth, since he's like in a crystal, so the first time you actually see the real him is in the northern crater, where he actually doesn't do anything except again mind control cloud or something (looking back at it, Cloud wasn't the smartest of guy...) and then I think you don't see him again until the very end. On a 50 hour game, less than 1 hour in total is very little. And I think not seeing Aerith get stabbed would have really diminish the game.

It's been awhile since I've played it, I'm waiting until they remake it (although considering SE track record its probably going to be 2025).

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I get what you're saying. When I first played the game in high school and got to the Shinra building and saw the blood everywhere, I was like, "Oh, something bad happened here..." It gave me chills. I was a little confused when everyone started talking about this powerful person like I was supposed to know who he was, but as time went on, I got it.
And seeing the aftermath of his work--the Midgar snake thing especially--did set him up with amazing power.

Where I will disagree though, is with the rest of it. Meeting this guy the first time, and you can tell that your party is in trouble if he decides to attack--even though it's revealed later that it's not really him. I think, ultimately, what you're seeing is a fully possessed clone of him through the entire game. One of those black hooded figures that has a number on their arm, and Sephiroth has used Jenova to just take over that body in order to free his real body. But still, the guy was frightening.
And when you see him in the flashback? That was amazing. Keep in mind the level of your characters (assuming you play the game averagely, not power leveling) when you get to this point. You get Sephiroth in your party, and the guy is a total beast. He's using level three materia left and right, from attack to healing. Most of us had no idea what these animations looked like yet, because we were lucky if a materia was at level 2 at that point.
"Ha, I can cast a bigger flame now! I'm amazing!"
Sephiroth used Fire3. Explosions EVERYWHERE.
"...Holy crap..."
And then his attacks. While they weren't max 9999 damage, they were still far beyond ANYTHING you could do at that point. He was killing dragons in one shot, enemies that your party was most likely struggling against at that point, if not straight running from.

Sephiroth was built up through the whole game as a character that you did not want to tangle with. Granted, toward the end when you finally did approach (and surpass) his power level, he no longer seemed like a big villain, but that's because you were now on his playing field. If anything, I would say that his final appearances, both as the boss and in your mind, were the worst of them. Yeah, he had that attack that could reduce everyone to 1 HP, but a megaelixer fixed that right away, and your character auto-counters him in your mind. While I don't want Ruby Weapon-level of difficulty, I think that he should have been a bit more tough, considering how much of a bad ass the game made him out to be until that point.

P.S.
Did anyone else save all of Aeris' weapons and kill Sephiroth with the "Throw" command as a form of payback, or was that just me?

 

[Fox12]

We already see very little of him, but I mostly agree. The Cloud flashback at the beginning of the game was a stroke of genius, but otherwise I'd be fine with cutting down his appearances even more.

All things considered, though, I think he had the single greatest delivery of any villain I've seen in a game. It was so well done. That's what people don't get. Sure, Sin from FF10 could probably take him in a fight, but that's besides the point. The way his character is portrayed is what makes him interesting. We hear about him in hushed whispers long before we meet him. He's like Keyser Soze from the usual suspects. His legend is what makes him interesting.

 

[Glongpre]

Hmmm, you kind of have a point. However, I believe we aren't actually seeing Sephiroth, merely clones of him. I believe Seph is in the northern crater for the whole game, and every meeting with him is you just seeing a clone.

So that's why the one on the boat turns into Jenova, because it is literally a piece of jenova. And why the one who kills Aeris also becomes a Jenova fight. Although how they each have Masamune...(maybe it is made of jenova too?)

So I agree that those scenes at the start are very powerful, however, at the same time I disagree because I thought getting to know Seph through the flashback, and seeing "him" around was good for pacing and character development.

 

[balladbird]

ehh, I kinda see your point, but I don't personally agree with your premise. the level of reduction you're talking about seems like it would basically reduce him to a slasher villain like Michael Meyers or Jason Vorhees. which could work, I concede, though it would be difficult and require quite a bit of subtlety to pull off... and even at the time FF7 was released, Squaresoft was already not particularly well known for subtlety.

Perhaps it could work if Sephiroth was kept as a concealed, force-of-nature style threat, and someone like Rufus Shinra or Hojo was given extra screentime to be a more formal antagonist... actually, yeah, set up that way I could see this working really well.

 

[FalloutJack]

Hardly spoilers. The game's nearly 20 years old.

Anyway, I think the game handled its pacing well enough. If they kept dangling this guy in front of us without even showing his face, we would be rather irritated. Consider it like this...

We awaken to find out that a literal trail of blood has been left throughout the Shinra Building, things are a mess, and that the President has been murdered by a man that apparently Cloud can identify by the signature sword in the victim's back. It was, admittedly, slightly confusing when I heard Cloud talking about him. The whole thing comes out of left field and right in the middle of their own attack on Shinra. It begs explanation from the guy who knew the sword. If we didn't get one once things calmed down, it was going to be a major disappointment. And how better to explain than the old storyteller's rule, 'Show, don't tell'?

There's enough dialogue in the game, as is. Giving us an actual look did the story justice. The story moves on, afterwards. We see a Midgar Zolom impaled on a tree, we hear sketchy reports of Sephiroth's presence, and then we finally supposedly have him on this boat, except we don't and it's Jenova... Even stranger. We're looking for this man, and he's more than a name and a face. He's a terror that has massacred many, an act that we experienced firsthand. We needed that information, just as Kalm needed to be more than just the nearest town to Midgar.

Sephiroth's lack of presence with evidence of having been around IS creepy and powerful, but a total lack of being would have stolen from it and worked against the story, overall.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Uh, Sephiroth is only occasionally used in the game already. In the narrative he appears to Cloud personally a grand total of SIX TIMES, not counting flashbacks. Furthermore, the Nibelheim sequence is one of the main reasons he's so iconic in the first place. What's interesting about the way they introduce him is that it's not as a villain at first. Up until the Nibelheim sequence we know NOTHING about Sephiroth as a character or that he's even a villain. In the flashback he's shown as reasonable but distant and aloof man, clearly not a bad man and we even bear witness to his strength when he two-shots a dragon while Cloud was swatted aside. Then we delve more into Sephiroth, seeing him lecture on Materia, suffering a breakdown while surveying the Mako reactor, finding out his origins, and then being driven to madness and murder. That takes at least an hour of game time to delve into. And that's why it's brilliant and I've yet to see it really replicated in gaming. We're not hearing about him in exposition or even watching it happen, but playing Cloud's past as his hero becomes a madmen bent on slaughter and delusions of godhood. It's still one of the most striking sequences and one of the best intros to a villain I've ever seen.

 

[Tanis]

You're kidding, right?
The dude is barely in game, I think your memory is getting all funky with the various spin-offs.

Plus, let's face it, you can't put lipstick on a pig and call it Karen O.

FF7 is mediocre all around, with ma-ma's boy Sephy being a nice little rotten cherry on top.

 

[shaun_m]

After the Shinra incident Cloud's goal is to track him down, so it's natural to see him a lot. As others mentioned it's the clones you see throughout the game, which are being drawn to the 'reunion', and as Cloud has Jenova cells in him he is also being pulled towards Sephiroth.

The most disappointing thing about Sephiroth is how easy the final battle is if you have a good Materia set up I.E. Mime.

 

[sXeth]

I'd almost say the other way around. As numerous people have mentioned, he barely has a presence. He's jammed underground in a crystal for the entire game. (The reveal of this which just makes half the rest of his "appearances" make no sense). Contrasted with more consistently involved antagonists in the series like Golbez, Kefka, Seymour, or even Seifer and he comes up as an almost non-character in his own game by having such little screen time.

Golbez and X-Death project more menace by being there to actually win against the heroes consistently, before finally being dethroned. X-Death even gets the distinction of killing a party member years before Sephiroth (or a clone? projection? I really never understood that scene in light of the endgame reveal) does it. In an actual battle in which the party is defeated, rather then just catching a teenage girl wandering off alone for no reason like a cheap slasher movie.

 

[Saltyk]

I disagree. I think he was used perfectly. We barely saw him, but often saw the aftermath of him passing through. The few times you actually caught up to him, he made it perfectly clear that he didn't think you were worth his time, leaving a piece of Jenova to fight you, if anything.

Spoiler: Who doesn't remember this?

This was the moment that the game truly made you fear Sephiroth. We just went through avoiding fighting this monster, but Sephiroth took it down. And he left it on a pike. This is how you hype a villain.

In comparison, Ultimecia in FFVIII was horrible. Does anyone even remember what she looked like solely from the game? I doubt it. You literally only appears a handful of times as a ghostly figure and then at the end. I'd much rather have to deal with a villain and have them be an active part of the story, then effectively show up at the very end. *cough cough* Necron. *cough cough*

 

[Silvanus]

To be fair, Kuja is the villain of FFIX and plays a very active part in the story. I feel Necron could have been worked into the story better, you know, as some sort of cosmic chess-master behind the plot, but kind of just comes and goes.

Well, Necron isn't meant to be the chess-master type. There's no indication that he's been plotting anything; he says that Kuja's actions are what has convinced him that humanity wishes to die, which would be undermined if he himself had been involved.

OT: A number of people are saying we were seeing the clones-- or rather, the other people infected with Jenova cells, heading towards the reunion-- instead of Sephiroth himself. It's true that we weren't seeing Sephiroth, but it's Jenova we're seeing rather than the clones, no? It is Jenova that the game tells us can mimic other forms, and has unimaginable power. It is Jenova who was kept in Shinra tower, where we first see "Sephiroth" plowing through the soldiers, and her pod is later empty, indicating that she has busted out. We never see any of that power from the other infected reunion-goers, who are mown down with ease on the way to the reunion.

 

[Saltyk]

I'd much rather have to deal with a villain and have them be an active part of the story, then effectively show up at the very end. *cough cough* Necron. *cough cough*

To be fair, Kuja is the villain of FFIX and plays a very active part in the story. I feel Necron could have been worked into the story better, you know, as some sort of cosmic chess-master behind the plot, but kind of just comes and goes.

Oh, Kuja is the villain of the game. He's one of the better Final Fantasy villains (despite looking like the love child of Sephiroth and Kekfa). But I was just pointing out how mishandled Necron was. He wasn't even hinted at that I remember. FFIX is among the best Final Fantasy games, but has one of the most mishandled Final Bosses in the history of RPGs. And changing it to Hades wouldn't make much of a difference.

As for Ultimecia, give her some credit, she did technically have possession of Edea through the first 2 discs, due to her ability to act through the bodies of other sorcerers, with her main body appearing at the very end, she still did have a role in the story.

I understand that she's the villain we have truly been fighting the whole time. It's just that she has no real presence in the game. Even when she is revealed to the player, she still doesn't have any real presence. When Kuja and Sephiroth are revealed to the player, we start interacting with them more directly and dealing with them. This may be a limitation of the plot of the game, but it still doesn't change the fact that when I got to the Final Battle, I just didn't care about her as a villain. I was more intimidated by "this is the final boss of the game" than her.

A number of people are saying we were seeing the clones-- or rather, the other people infected with Jenova cells, heading towards the reunion-- instead of Sephiroth himself. It's true that we weren't seeing Sephiroth, but it's Jenova we're seeing rather than the clones, no? It is Jenova that the game tells us can mimic other forms, and has unimaginable power. It is Jenova who was kept in Shinra tower, where we first see "Sephiroth" plowing through the soldiers, and her pod is later empty, indicating that she has busted out. We never see any of that power from the other infected reunion-goers, who are mown down with ease on the way to the reunion.

Well, the thing is that we are still fighting Sephiroth, even when it is the Jenova infected "clones". Sephiroth is controlling them with his will, using the Jenova cells to facilitate this. Hence why he is also able to affect Cloud. Sephiroth himself has Jenova cells. That's part of why he is so strong.

 

[Silvanus]

Well, the thing is that we are still fighting Sephiroth, even when it is the Jenova infected "clones". Sephiroth is controlling them with his will, using the Jenova cells to facilitate this. Hence why he is also able to affect Cloud. Sephiroth himself has Jenova cells. That's part of why he is so strong.

Well, the direct control thing is something I've heard a lot of people say, but I've never seen much substantiation for. IIRC, it comes from a rather ambiguous, throwaway line in one of the Japanese books. The same kind of thing that had people say the Koopalings were Bowser's actual children, or that Ganondorf's surname is Dragmire. There's nothing in the game to suggest it, really-- hell, when Cloud meets "Sephiroth" on the boat, he doesn't even recognise him, which confuses Cloud. It's because it's not really him.

Sephiroth calls the Jenova cells to him, including those in Cloud, and Jenova's body itself from the Shinra tower. I don't see direct control-- he certainly doesn't have it over Cloud, after all, who is essentially tricked rather than directly controlled.

Either way, quite aside from who is in control, the "Sephiroth" we see is not one of the people infected with Jenova cells. It is Jenova herself, having busted out of Shinra tower.

 

[Saltyk]

Well, Necron isn't meant to be the chess-master type. There's no indication that he's been plotting anything; he says that Kuja's actions are what has convinced him that humanity wishes to die, which would be undermined if he himself had been involved.

I was just giving an idea of how he could have been foreshadowed or more involved, I do think the aforementioned Iifa Tree theory was quite interesting. He just sort of shows up, says he is gonna destroy everything, you whack him a bunch and he implodes, all is well and you save the world.

Definitely could have been introduced better, but as is, its still a fun fight with some damn good music.

Honestly, Necron is one of the only missteps in the entirety of FF9. It's a great game, and ending with some space monster from nowhere that was never mentioned is just the worst kind of ending. I only brought him up because I felt so confused when he showed up. I didn't want to fight him. I wanted to fight Kuja. Bring back Kuja!

The idea you mentioned would have some merit, but didn't you already fight and kill some creature that was the Iifa Tree incarnate in the core of the tree on Disc 2 or 3? You could argue that Kuja brought it back to life, which is why the whole world was flooded with Mist, I suppose. Damn, here we're giving a better explanation for Necron than the game had.