You have a universe where it’s just as lore-appropriate for a character to send emails via cellphone as it is to scorch dragons with concentrated lightning or fire. There’s never a moment where the presence of technology dampens the fantastical elements because they’re so seamlessly interlaced that the story couldn’t function without the other balancing it out. Mako alone bolsters so much of the plot: AVALANCHE’s dangerous advocacy, ShinRa’s motivation and source of power, SOLDIER enhancements, Cloud’s poisoning, thematic dilemmas on how it’s used to power everyday life vs. how it’s leeching the planet, and the general existence of mutation and non-animal creatures in the FF7 world.

Not even Sephiroth’s story could’ve played out without advanced genetic experimenting and an ancient entity who couldn’t be absorbed into the spiritual lifeblood that veined the planet in which it crashed upon. Cloud’s story would never be the same without being trapped in a horrific sci-fi lab and grappling with a spiritual poison that rendered him comatose on the way to Midgar. There’d be no spirit-fueled Reactors for AVALANCHE to bomb, no WEAPONS to defend the planet, and no war for ShinRa to engage in order to spread their influence; Vincent wouldn’t have inner demons, Lucrecia wouldn’t be in a purgatorial crystal, Nanaki wouldn’t be captured by twisted scientists, and Aerith wouldn’t be studied by the Turks for her spiritual connection to a mako-rich Promised Land.

Why Did You Create Me?

An abomination ponders his life as he ends another.

Hojo, Lucrecia, and the Body as a Crime Scene Vincent Valentine’s story is often framed as a tragedy of guilt. He loved Lucrecia. He failed to stop Hojo. He could not prevent Sephiroth’s creation. He was shot, experimented on, transformed, buried, and left to wake decades later inside a body that was no longer fully his own. By the time Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII places him at the…

Posting a bunch of old unfinished/unposted art because why not. final fantasy edition