The Death of Aerith
The creators of Final Fantasy VII reflect on one of gaming’s most emotionally charged moments
In early 1997, Square wrapped its work on the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VII. The team had seen Sakaguchi’s ideas through, producing a expansive game with best-in-class visuals, and affirmed the PlayStation as a formidable new platform. Yet the team had a secret. A spoiler. Toward the end of the game’s first disc, villain Sephiroth stabs one of the main characters, Aerith Gainsborough, through the back, killing her. Looking back, many point out that the scene appears almost comically primitive, with blocky characters and limited animation. But at the time, it stood out as one of the most emotionally charged moments the game industry had produced – a moment that stuck with fans for years. It even made some players cry.
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
Did you know people have been coming up to me for years now and saying, ‘You killed Aerith!’?
Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan
[To Nomura:] Are you trying to blame me for that? [Laughs]
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
OK, so maybe I did kill Aerith. But if I hadn’t stopped you, in the second half of the game, you were planning to kill everyone off but the final three characters the player chooses!
Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan
No way! I wrote that? Where?
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
In the scene where they parachute into Midgar. You wanted everyone to die there!
Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan
Really? Wait, I’m starting to remember …
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
Yeah, remember? You and [writer Kazushige] Nojima-san were all excited about this. I was the one who said ‘No way!’ and stopped you guys. You wanted to kill everyone except the final three characters the player chose for the endgame.
One day, toward the end of development, I visited him to ask [Uematsu-san], ‘Do you think we did the right thing in killing Aerith?’
Kazushige Nojima
Scenario writer, Square Japan
Obviously, I’m a scenario writer so I wrote the script where Aerith dies. But, for that decision, we talked it through with the main staff. We talked a lot about how the story would turn out.
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
The theme of Final Fantasy VII was ‘life,’ and we sacrificed Aerith in order to give weight and depth to that theme. Her death is a tragedy but, if we suddenly just killed off everyone else after that, it would dilute the meaning of her death.
Kazushige Nojima
Scenario writer, Square Japan
Back then it was so much easier to change the scenario on the fly. So every day, we’d go back and forth about how to approach things.
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
Long after we made the decision to kill Aerith and the development had progressed considerably, I used to go visit Uematsu-san in his room. Just to hang out and talk about random things. One day, toward the end of development, I visited him to ask him, ‘Do you think we did the right thing in killing Aerith?’
Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan
Really?
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
He said, sure, he thought so.
Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan
Hah, so casual!
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
I was relieved to hear it.
With ‘life’ as our theme for Final Fantasy VII, I thought we should try depicting a character who really dies for good, who can’t come back. For that death to resonate, it needed to be an important character.
Nobuo Uematsu
Music composer, Square Japan
When I was playing the game, I was really surprised when she died so early on. Everybody probably thought she was going to be one of the main popular characters, but then she just died right away. Maybe that’s the reason why everyone remembers it so much.
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
When a character in a videogame dies, no one thinks it’s that sad. They’re just characters in a game, after all – you can just reset the game and try again, or you can always revive them somehow. I felt that their lives just didn’t have much weight. With ‘life’ as our theme for FFVII, I thought we should try depicting a character who really dies for good, who can’t come back. For that death to resonate, it needed to be an important character. So we thought killing off the heroine would allow players to think more deeply about that theme.
Nobuo Uematsu
Music composer, Square Japan
When I was composing [the music that played when Aerith died], I didn’t really think about her death, but I felt like she wasn’t a very happy character. She was really innocent and pure, but had a tragic kind of life … I did realise it was probably going to be an important track … If I had known that scene would make people cry, I might have made something totally different – something designed to make you cry. But I went with a kind of sad but beautiful tune, and since it’s not the kind of track you typically hear when something tragic happens, maybe that worked out well. When something is missing, people tend to use their imaginations. So since the track doesn’t express 100 percent of the feeling in that moment, people might have filled in the gaps in their heads. Maybe.
Tetsuya Nomura
Character and battle visual director, Square Japan
[It wasn’t my goal to make people cry with that scene.] It was more wanting people to understand what it means to hurt and to feel a sense of loss.
Written by
Matt Leone
