Despite what people assume from my manly beard, booming baritone voice, sturdy jawline and ripped body, I am not a man who shies away from expressing deep emotion.
Or wearing pink shirts.
I am also man enough, despite my great abs, to openly admit that fine literature has moved me to tears. It's happened a few times in the past.
But only one video game has ever made me cry in my 20+ years of gaming. That game is Final Fantasy VII.
And not for the reasons you're thinking, either, although the end of disc one is admittedly a bit of a tear jerker. More on that when we come to that bridge.
No, the point at which I blubbed over the game was when I last completed it in 2010. You see, I've made a habit of playing through the game in its entirety once a year, every year since its release in 1997. Half-way through my thirteenth outing, I decided enough was enough - I would rather make that the very last time I played it and thereafter treasure FFVII as an adventure which profoundly moved me, rather than a video game which I came to know inside out to the point of tedium. As a result, I really put off the final boss fight and procrastinated with every side-quest going in order to delay the inevitable ending, and when it did arrive, I wept as if I was saying goodbye to a dear friend whom I wouldn't be seeing again.
It was the right decision, and at the same time it didn't feel fair. Nothing was remarkable about my final play through. It wasn't a proper goodbye. But I vowed not to revisit it to until either a really long time had passed, or I had an exceptional reason to play it.
Earlier this year, I started ironmanmode.com.
My friends... my Iron Persons:
I have a proposal.
**Why don't we really put the 'Final' into Final Fantasy VII?
**
