Why is Aeris' death so significant?

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Having read the OP (took a long time >:( at least it was intelligent)...

You've convinced me that there was some thought put into her character, the fact that the character dies, with a specific timing and location.  Thinking about it that way, there was a special impact to her being killed in the Forgotten Capitol, in a very... tranquil scene, I want to say.  (No music, quiet sound effects... and then the sick fact that you have Aerith's joyful theme playing throughout the moments that follow.  That, in particular, defined the "pathos" of the scene.)

To me, it would've been more obvious to make Cloud kill her at the Northern Crater after giving Sephiroth the Black Materia, but even that wouldn't have been dramatic enough.  The way they did it was nearly perfect.

However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about.  I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died.  No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed.  Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.

Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
 
However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about.  I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died.  No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed.  Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.

Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
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Yes, this is what they don't understand. You can't judge the villainousness of a deed by just looking at the number of people someone kills; that's childish. If someone kills one person that you care about, you'll hate them more than someone who drops a nuclear bomb on a city half way across the world, and a villain killing one person in a profoundly significant way is more effective than a villain killing a million nobodies.

I think this illustrates the general transition between FF6 and FF7. The latter took much from the former, but everything was so much more refined and mature. Somewhere between 1994 and 1997, Squaresoft's writers grew up. Sadly, more mature storytelling is much easier to misunderstand.
 
Because it was well written story and we actually gave a shit.  because the direction, the story, the music all came together. 

That's why.  Cut out the baloney :)
 
Very succinct :)

From a graphical perspective, it also helps that FF7 was in 3D.  If it were made in a similar style to FF6, Aerith's death would've been much less dramatic.

The significance of the moment wouldn't even be obtainable with 2D sprites.  The more moving moments in earlier Final Fantasy games were due to effective dialogue.  The Aerith Death Scene takes a very different approach.
 
Because it was well written story and we actually gave a sh*t.  because the direction, the story, the music all came together. 

That's why.  Cut out the baloney :)
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Pfft, Northerners ::)

Very succinct :)

From a graphical perspective, it also helps that FF7 was in 3D.  If it were made in a similar style to FF6, Aerith's death would've been much less dramatic.

The significance of the moment wouldn't even be obtainable with 2D sprites.  The more moving moments in earlier Final Fantasy games were due to effective dialogue.  The Aerith Death Scene takes a very different approach.
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You'd be surprised what you can do with meagre resources. I doubt there'd have been a huge difference. Only a small part of what made it dramatic was the visual setup, anyway.
 
However, the stereotypical Sephiroth-haters (the ones that say, "He killed a flower girl, Kefka killed Cyan's family, hurr durr!") would never come to truly appreciate what the scene is about.  I mean, no one really cared when Cyan's family died.  No one really cared about anyone Kefka successfully killed.  Please catch me out if I'm wrong there.

Kefka is just about global disaster - if we really cared about that, we'd actually try to stop global warming :P No, for us to really react, we need an emotional attachment to whatever's destroyed, and the Aerith-killing scene played on that very effectively.
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Yes, this is what they don't understand. You can't judge the villainousness of a deed by just looking at the number of people someone kills; that's childish. If someone kills one person that you care about, you'll hate them more than someone who drops a nuclear bomb on a city half way across the world, and a villain killing one person in a profoundly significant way is more effective than a villain killing a million nobodies.

I think this illustrates the general transition between FF6 and FF7. The latter took much from the former, but everything was so much more refined and mature. Somewhere between 1994 and 1997, Squaresoft's writers grew up. Sadly, more mature storytelling is much easier to misunderstand.
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Especially since nobody Kefka killed was as hot as Aeristh. Seriously.
 
Especially since nobody Kefka killed was as hot as Aeristh. Seriously.
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I see you have found a compromise to the Aeris/Aerith issue haha  ;D  Sounds like a guy pissed up though....
 
come to think of it, the writer(s) play with this emotion a couple of times. i recall Tifa's father being killed and her outrage and subsequently clouds. you gotta wonder (and give very serious appreciation and more mushy stuff i cant bring to mind at the moment) if the producer Hironobu Sakaguchi had not decided to draw on his life at the time and put that into the games development, would we still be in such love with the game that we are (special thank you to the guys behind Qgears for bringing this information to my attention).
 
you gotta wonder (and give very serious appreciation and more mushy stuff i cant bring to mind at the moment) if the producer Hironobu Sakaguchi had not decided to draw on his life at the time and put that into the games development, would we still be in such love with the game that we are
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No.

The answer is that simple. One of the points of Aeris' death was that it was completely meaningless. The player lost something and gained nothing in return. It was just needless cruelty that you couldn't do anything about, just watch. That was how Sakaguchi felt about death after he lost his mother.
 
It was also done that way because the writers wanted it to be less like hollywood.  That they wanted maximum impact and they wanted it to reflect what can happen in real life...  you can just die, that's it.
In a May 2003 issue of Edge Magazine, Kitase had this to say about Aerith's death:

"People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling, but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much, you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming, I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."
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that reminds me of silent hill 3 where you have a confessional scene, where you can choose to forgive or not to the person making a confession about her sins.

neither choice is the right one, and it was also inspired by real life experience of one of the devs (
)

i guess many games have events inspired by real life experiences of the developers.
 
that reminds me of silent hill 3 where you have a confessional scene, where you can choose to forgive or not to the person making a confession about her sins.

neither choice is the right one, and it was also inspired by real life experience of one of the devs (
)

i guess many games have events inspired by real life experiences of the developers.
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It isn't that big of a mystery :P
If developers just sat around pulling ideas out of their asses instead of their heads, we'd have a lot of games with no connection to the real world whatsoever, no emotion, just mindless, crazy, nothingness. So be grateful that *most* devs now-days still appreciate what personal experience can bring to the table. Faked emotion is the worst kind in gaming/movies so when I play games that have great play, but no story/emotion, I feel a little disappointed, but when I play a game that has great play, and totally crap-emotions, I get ticked off lol.
 
Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
 
Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
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I agree with you man. I'll pretty much more prefer a new Warcraft 4 with another great storyline rather than WoW.
 
Amen to that brother, I'm a storyline gamer, if a game has no story to it, yeah I might play it when I'm just that bored, but if it has horrible story to it, I don't touch it at all (WoW in particular, killed the Warcraft storyline).
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I agree with you man. I'll pretty much more prefer a new Warcraft 4 with another great storyline rather than WoW.
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Really doubt that's going to happen anytime soon ever. With how popular it is, they may feel that all they'll ever need now is occasional updates and an expansion once in a blue moon. Tis very sad :(
 
It's been said that after Diablo 3 is released. WC4 will be next.

About 2 or 3 years ago I read that it was in the "Infant Stage" Hoping they're planning to hit us with a shocker.

Warcraft had one of the greatest story-lines ever in my book, and the game was so well put-together.
Not to mention Blizzards CGI crew (even back in the days of WC2) is totally off the charts. Square-Enix can step aside to Blizzard.

Granted FF13 Graphics are good, but they're empty, they feel incomplete. Go watch the Warcraft 3 Cinematics. There's so much personality to those movies.

Word on the street (and at blizzcon in 2006 or 7) is that Legendary is teaming up with Blizzard to create a movie. Live action and CGI. Fingers crossed that one day it actually gets done lol.

If you compare Square's Cinematics from 7 to 10 to 13

You notice that 7 is the most original

in ff10 the characters became more stereotypical, and in 13 they were just people that you had no connection with.

That moment when Aeris dies is probably one of the single most real elements of gaming, and movie business. The fact that she dies and everyone experiences a great loss is only half the show. The fact that FF7's characters are designed to look like cartoons and not real people is the other half. Statistically, it has been proven that people in general, while watching animated movies, like it when things that are noticeably different from humans, go through human situations. See: Toy Story V.S. The Polar Express. Look how much people hate AC (aside from the fact that they messed up their own storyline). Notice how people Liked Avatar so much? Everything that was animated was noticeably separate from life as we know it.

It's a statistically proven thing. The reason I bring it up is because I have a Film-Fiction&History class and that's a topic that comes up a lot. "Why do we enjoy it when inanimate objects like cars have lives in the animated world, but not animated people?"
 
Statistically, it has been proven that people in general, while watching animated movies, like it when things that are noticeably different from humans, go through human situations.
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Does this include animals being smartasses, such as in every Dreamworks CGI film ever?
 
I actually had a theory about why we feels more strongly for FF7's weird-looking characters when I argued that we should go with chibi designs in the game instead of full-size ones.

Most of the non-human things we sympathise with are cute in some way. We sympathise more with cute things because they are paedomorphic: they remind us of children. When we're dealing with children, our protective instincts come out, meaning that we are moved more by FF7's chibi characters than we would be if realistic-looking ones were doing the same thing.
 
Durr, after reading through most of the thread ( I seriously felt like my brain was melting and running out of my ears towards the end of page 1 ) I can safely say that what OP did in his post, I could do for pretty much any pre-ff10 game, maybe except for FF1.  And some dragon quest games as well. You simply described the whole thing in detail from a perspective YOU assume to be the correct one. It all depends on what you are looking for in a game. I for instance, I don't want any emotional impact or drama. I simply want a villain that destroys, destroys and destroys because, honestly, it's FUN to destroy things and kill people. I don't need a villain with some extreme ulterior motive, a plot with forced twists and drama that was only there for the sake of drama.  Sure, drama sells and a lot of people are suckers for that, but there are also people that simply don't care.
What if you don't like cloud and Aerith? what if you laughed at the misery the character went through because you marvel at the sheer genius and trickery of the villain?
I never really 'cared' that Aerith died beside the fact that they took out my best mage that had coincidentally the best limits. Call me cold or dumb, whatever you want ( I won't care either way ), but I much prefer villains like Kefka or Kuja. Or, for instance, Zeromous.
I wont include Ultimecia because, even though her trickery and sheer amount of manipulation is beyond awesome, the story has too many holes to compensate for lack of originality.
Sephiroth is not a bad villain. He's pretty good. But the whole "OMG AERITHS DEATH IS SO GODDAMN IMPORTANT" thing just bores the hell outta me. If they hadn't done that, I would have liked the game more.
 
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