Best Girl – Aerith Gainsborough, Final Fantasy VII

When Aerith Gainsborough is asked by Shinra to identify herself, her response is ‘local florist!’. It’s one of many lines in the Final Fantasy VII that showcase the personality of the characters, but it also highlights how important flowers are to Aerith.

I tackled the what the flowers mean generally to Aerith & Final Fantasy VII’s mythos for Rock Paper Shotgun, but playing through the Final Fantasy VII Remake, it became increasingly apparent that Aerith was a character swirling with an almost literary symbolism, with so many subtle images defining her and her role in the story.

As a former English teacher, I know that sometimes blue curtains are just blue curtains, but with Aerith the weight of the symbolism is impossible to ignore. First off, inevitability, there are the flowers. To avoid repeating the RPS article, I’ll simply say that the flower Aerith gives to Cloud is a lily; hit up RPS for a 1,000 word write up as to why that’s an important choice.

That’s not the only flower of importance to Aerith in the Final Fantasy VII Remake though. Her Tempest attack sees her surrounded by cherry blossoms, a flower key to the Final Fantasy aesthetic. In Japanese culture, cherry blossoms are symbols of beauty, grace, innocence and youth; all qualities which could easily be used to describe one Aerith Gainsborough. Of course, on their own, such a list is a bit moot, despite the similarities. Aerith’s characterisation goes far deeper than just the flowers, however. After reuniting with Aerith and defeating Reno in Chapter 8, you must make your way from the church to the slums via rooftops.

Every step of the way, pigeons fly off from your footsteps. Given that most of the game takes place under the plate or inside cold, capitalist buildings, it’s no surprise that there aren’t many animals to be found in Final Fantasy VII. The pigeons are a rare exception, and they draw a strong parallel to Aerith; the fact that they appear just as she enters the story in a meaningful way is no coincidence.

Pigeons are city birds; much like Aerith, they’re a slice of nature inside of a concrete world. They represent the power of nature to thrive everywhere, as well as how out of place Aerith is, both in the slums and in Midgar itself. Her house is a pigeon of itself too, a burst of natural beauty inside the dirty, colourless slums.

Much has been said about Aerith’s house, and how her gorgeous, picturesque house with a bountiful garden undermines the idea that she ‘lived in the slums’, but this is very much by design. Aerith, for all she’s a kind hearted soul who helps out everyone in town from the doctor to the orphanage, is not a child of the slums.

She’s from elsewhere, she belongs elsewhere. No matter how much she tries to fit in, Aerith’s special connection with nature outs her.

Mass Effect 3 Gave Us The Most Realistic Depiction Of Refugees; By Ignoring Them

Prior to the coronavirus, the amount of immigrants, refugees and displaced people around the world was one of the most discussed issues of our time. While games have tackled the issue head on – Papers, Please being an obvious one – none have quite captured the feelings of helplessness in the face of disaster the way Mass Effect 3 does.

The finale to the Mass Effect trilogy gained heavy criticism at the time, especially for its ending, but most of the game is filled with resolution, sharp characterization, personal moments and a strong theme of reactive chaos. It strips you of whatever being ‘Commander Shepard’ means, and makes you simply ‘Shepard’; a person. A person who can’t save everyone, no matter how hard they try.

Kai Leng was an ineffective villain, Thane, Jacob and Tali-mancers were left out in the cold and Diana Allers had no business being there. Mass Effect 3 is far from perfect, but its weaknesses have been disproportionately highlighted.

The problem is that Mass Effect’s failures were eye catching and gaudy, even if they lacked substance. The game felt like a three course meal served on plastic Spider-Man plates; the good parts mattered so much more, but they were overshadowed.

Part of that substance was the Citadel, where you spend a good chunk of your downtime throughout the game. In the previous two instalments, the Citadel had been the apex of life in the galaxy.

It was a highly polished, soulless but mighty pinnacle of corporate achievement and effective legislation. In the third game, it’s cast in shadows, drenched in red and black and serves to typify the weakness and lack of preparation in the fight against the reapers. Where previously ambassadors had strolled their boardwalks in their suits, refugees now cowered in fear. You can hear their hushed whispers, their desperate cries every time you venture down to the Holding Area.

Shepard is a hero. Surely it’s just a matter of shooting a bad guy, finding a maguffin or selecting the correct dialogue option, right? Well, no. There is no way to save these people. Like many refugees, there is nothing we can do to help them. How do we restore order to a war ravaged world? How do we reunite families ripped apart by conflict? How do we bring children back to life?

Certainly, there are better games – and with a wider lens, far better pieces of media in general – which highlight the plight of the refugee. But these parts of Mass Effect 3 are not about the refugees, they’re about the bystanders. The people who would do anything to help, if only they could. The people who ignored the problem, out of sight and out of mind, until it was screeching in their face and forced them to confront the problems they had allowed to fester for other people.

It’s not Shepard’s fault the Reapers are invading, but could they have used their influence within the Citadel to lobby for change instead of throwing pithy burns the Council’s way? Could they have solved problems with words more often than bullets? Shepard is a heroic soldier, but like all heroic soldiers, their victories are zero sum. Some one else has lost. Their greater good victories plunged cities, planets and systems into chaos, and now the Citadel is stuffed with the Human (and Asari and Turian and…) face of collateral damage.

Mass Effect 3 highlights the pain of refugees through the eyes most personal to the player; the eyes of the bystander.

Putting us in the shoes of the refugees themselves forges a connection between us and their suffering, but also makes it too easy for us to wash our hands of the responsibility. It passes the blame onto dictators, famine, military invasion. As Shepard, we see this suffering face to face, and despite being the hero, we can’t save them. Because it’s not enough to simply want to save the day; we have to build a better world so the day won’t need saving.