Despite having "Fantasy" in the title, Final Fantasy VII's cyberpunk setting is perhaps the most broadly known and celebrated of such settings because much like the speculative fiction that inspired it, it's prophetic visions and freedom to commit to daring ideas renders it an important cultural arifact.

What initially appears to be the game’s inciting incident—the ecologically motivated bombing of an energy reactor—later comes to be understood as a complex, morally ambiguous statement against a powerful corporation whose rule has left the world in a prolonged, polluted, violent anarchy.

The game depicts the benefactors of this rule as well as its victims, the grandiose city of Midgar echoing the grand metropolises of science fiction films, but what defines is it its monolythic shape, its structure composed of copulating megastructures as a machine engineered for human suffering and oppression, the game slyly nodding to the cold aesthetics of the Soviet Union while at once lambasting an icon of capitalism: the megacorporation.

Only in today's world is the majority of persons aware of the ecological disasters caused by oil slicks because of the ever-presence of video sharing but the game vividly presents a world where this is an everyday occurence. When you exit Midgar the denziens of the opposing, anarchistic world exhibit a reverence for nature, Aerith's sagely race having resided in a town made of coral, a tribe living in a mountain tends to the needs of a giant bird and the game even sees you exploring the ocean floor in all of its mysterious glory. As with previous games in the series, the point was to depict a worldwide struggle, but here the game depicts a struggle that is identifiable and universal, rendering its world and its causes immediate and empathatic.


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