Top 50 Video Game Moments: Number 41

This entry on the totally subjective Top 50 Video Game Moments list comes from Final Fantasy VII. I consider it to be one of the most overrated moments in video games. I probably don't even need to put the page jump in at this point, but if you've somehow managed to avoid gaming's "Rosebud is a sled", then I suppose you should play FFVII, it's overrated as all get out, but it's still a great game.

Oh, God. Here's it is.

Final Fantasy VII is a great game. One of my favorites. However, this moment is heavily overrated. Here are my reasons for this.

1. I didn't play FFVII until I was 19, and the game had been out for a few years, and thus had the scene spoiled for me.
2. The death is foreshadowed for pretty much the entire first disk. The instant you see her standing there in the cutscene, it's obvious what's about to go down.
3. I didn't really use Aeris in my party.
4. I was a Tifa guy, myself (if they would've killed off Tifa, I would have been significantly more upset.)

Really, when it comes down to it, the reason I feel that the scene is a little overrated is because my take on it was different than everyone else's, it would seem. To me, the Aeris death represented the death of innocence in general. To that point, the story was dark, but had an optimistic bent to it. From then on, self-deception wouldn't be an option. It made the story a lot more interesting, just not in the same way for me that it seems to have for everyone else.

So, one more time, let's have a look at the scene that broke thousands of gamers' hearts (or at the very least, made them lament that they had spent a ton of time leveling her up, as my little brother did. She was going to kick ass, and then she was gone).

On a more 'meta' note, was there ever any doubt that when I made the "but I had like 50 phoenix downs" tag, that this was coming? I feel like I sort of spoiled it, but whatever, you had to figure this clip was going to be on the list at some point, anyway.