Ten years is a long time. Things change, things stay the same and as humans we like to revisit and reminisce. That’s what we’re doing here.

A decade ago Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) released what was arguably the RPG that would define the genre for a long, long time to come. Final Fantasy VII brought together great storytelling, amazing (for the time) visuals and pretty excellent gameplay to make something that gamers the world over still talk about reverently. I still have conversations with people about where and when they were when they started playing, what was going on when certain key events came about and how many weeks it took them to breed the elusive Gold Chocobo.

My wife is not a gamer. She’s picked up a few since we started dating and then married. Currently she’s taking on Puzzle Quest and My Sims. She listens to us talk about FF VII and apprently was intrigued by the story but didn’t want to play the game. So, we compromised: I’ll play FF VII again (for only the third time, actually), she’ll watch and then we’re going to write this story. Being the 10th anniversary of the release is just a happy coincidence, but it’s great timing. I’m going to focus on things like how well the gameplay has held up over the years, a comparison of the visuals then and now, the similarities and differences in FF VII and modern games and probably a fair amount of nostalgia. My wife will be chiming with the newcomers perspective.

Since the game comes in at around 70 hours to complete we’re going to break this up into separate articles. Consider this your introduction, the next installment will cover the first disc and so on. Hopefully we’ll finish the whole thing sometime in February or March.

Until the next time: Courage!