Writing Thoughts: The Challenge of Summarizing FFVII (Patreon)

Hello, patrons! I've been wanting to give you more exclucive insight into the process of making these videos, so I'm going to share some of the process of writing these analysis videos.

I’m working right now on a literary analysis of Final Fantasy VII, which as you can imagine is quite an undertaking. This is a dense game in a lot of ways, and aside from that simply has a lot of content. Writing these videos is always a process of figuring out which details and observations are important enough to include and which derail or bog down the video more than they contribute to it, but a game like Final Fantasy VII presents an even tougher challenge than normal.

The first part of my analysis videos is always a summary of the story, primarily for the sake of making the videos accessible to people who are entirely unfamiliar with video games. And while summary writing hardly requires the same work as the thematic analysis and character studies, it’s still a process that greatly affects the pace, tone, and clarity of the video essay as a whole. So sometimes it even manages to be the hardest part for me to write.

With a long, densely-packed game like Final Fantasy VII, the main challenge is the sheer volume of information. I could provide a detailed summary that covers character motivations, arcs, and interesting observations, but it would likely be over an hour in and of itself. I don’t want to do that. The summary is an important part of my formula, but I never want it to be the main focus. It’s a step on the path to understand what the game means, not an end in and of itself.

What that looks like, exactly, differs from video to video, but longer games like this one are a real challenge. If I include too much detail, I elongate the video immensely for the sake of a simple recounting of the game’s events, which is time better spent digging into what those events mean. But not enough detail, and it feels like I’m just reciting a Wikipedia summary with no observations or setup to give it any real substance, and I either need to explain things later anyway or run short of evidence to back up my interpretations. The balance between those two can be tricky, and it changes from game to game.

At time of writing, I’m leaning more toward the skeletal structure; when it comes down to it, Final Fantasy VII is too long for me to stop and pontificate on every interesting thing I noticed.

But you know what’s amazing? Final Fantasy VII holds up to this kind of analysis remarkably well. Its structure, its recurring themes, pretty much all the game’s broad strokes are put together in such a way as to make my job a good deal easier than it might otherwise be.

I had been noting each of Cloud’s invasive thoughts, but since the game has a natural explanation for them later on I have a perfect opportunity to address them once and move on. I had been trying to go into enough detail to effectively communicate each character’s personality and struggles, but the game has such a handle on most of its character arcs that I can fluidly come back to that later. Even things like the crossdressing scene don’t need to take up much summary time because it plays so well into the game’s themes of identity and Cloud’s constant fluidity in regards to it, so I can say it happened and move on because it will get all the attention it needs later down the line.

That’s not to say it’s a breeze; I said before that writing the summary is weirdly difficult for being the least critical and intellectual part of the process, but it feels like Final Fantasy VII is taking it easy on me, in a lot of ways. It’s surprising just how good the game feels the deeper I dive into it.


Now to stop myself from joking about the "keep politics out of the remake" people every time the game gets aggressively political (which is a lot).

You can expect this analysis somewhere around the release of the remake! I’ll try to post more updates about how I’m progressing and what the process is like, so stay tuned!