You can make a pretty compelling argument for Final Fantasy 7 being the exact moment when video games hit puberty. Released in Japan 20 years ago today—with its North American release to follow eight months later, in September of 1997—Final Fantasy 7 was, and remains, unlike anything else in video games. It is profound in its impact on a generation of men and women who grew up with video games and a watershed moment in the culture. It is also clunky, dated, and insular, tremendously important to those who play games and few others. It's a perfect time capsule in the history of video games and video game culture, and a vital piece of popular culture.

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Video game genres don't work the way most genres do. They're mostly used to describe the type of game they're affixed to, and not the contents or tenor of their story. In video game genre parlance, Final Fantasy 7 is a Japanese Role-Playing Game, or JRPG for short. This is notable because JRPGs, by default, are often young adult narratives in a medium that largely lacks them. They're the video game equivalent of The Hunger Games, about young men or women who come from small towns or lack memories and get swept in a grand adventure against a great evil—sometimes a blight of monsters, sometimes a corrupt government—to become A Hero. Like a lot of teen narratives, they're largely concerned with identity, and making one of your own.

Final Fantasy 7 lingers because it starts with this premise, and declares it to be bullshit. You start as Cloud Strife, an affectless soldier of fortune who doesn't care about AVALANCHE, the terrorist-activist cell that's hired him to take on the kleptocracy that's taken over the world, and begins to proceed familiar beats—introducing a villain that's bigger and scarier than the Shinra Coroporation in charge of everything, slowly making Cloud a believer in AVALANCHE's mission. And then it says Cloud—you, the player, the badass with the giant sword—is a lie, a coward implanted with the memories of a soldier braver than you, a failed experiment that probably doesn't even have a soul. As a twist, it is the height of melodrama, and terribly effective for the countless teenagers who played the game, all entirely new to the concept of deconstruction. Never underestimate the power of a cliché being seen for the first time.

There are few games that have been as examined or written about as much as Final Fantasy 7. Almost every scene has been the subject of essays both personal and critical, the story behind its development has been obsessively reported, and, with the election of Donald Trump, its story has taken on a strange relevance.

As a cultural touchpoint, Final Fantasy 7 is both profound and a little embarrassing. On the one hand, you have the game's rich thematic depth—an environmentalist tale about eco-terrorists fighting a corrupt government run entirely by a single corporation that swells into a grander conflict rich with melodrama and questions about identity. On the other, you have the conversation around the game's story—which famously killed one of its lead characters, Aerith, at the end of its first act—a narrative shift that shocked players, because Aerith was one of the characters players could control, and a love interest for the game's protagonist, Cloud Strife. (Another thing that doesn't age so well: You play as a guy named Cloud Strife.) The reaction to this, at the time, was mostly anger—inspiring fans to employ every method they knew how to try and find a loophole in the game that allowed them to circumvent Aerith's death. Google "saving Aerith" now and you'll still find a whole mess of results telling you that the most tragic video game death ever doesn't have to happen, and you can have Aerith make it to the end and undo that trauma.

Final Fantasy 7 connected with a wide audience in a powerful way while also exposing a maturity vacuum in video game storytelling.

It is hard to look at the culture that inspired such a rabid refusal to accept a story that endeavored to portray the suddenness of death in a way that evoked a realistic response, and not see some of what would later calcify into things like Gamergate, or your garden-variety Internet troll. Twenty years ago, Final Fantasy 7 connected with a wide audience in a powerful way while also exposing a maturity vacuum in video game storytelling. In dismantling the archetypal Young Adult narrative common in Japanese Role Playing Games, Final Fantasy 7 opened a door to a void that remained unfilled for far too long.