“A Legend From Before You Were Born”: Final Fantasy VII, Folklore, and Popular Culture

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the folklore created by the players and communities of the critically acclaimed and popular Japanese role-playing game Final Fantasy VII (Square Enix, 1997). The formation of what we call Final Fantasy VII fan folklore is presented here as a mixture of the game's transmediality (with official walkthroughs and guidebooks) and elements of the game kept secret by the developers (as well as several false rumors), which were carefully discovered and circulated by the players through an oral tradition (offline and later online) that circulate to this day. By conducting a narrative analysis of the official commercial for Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix, 2020), we argue that the creation of Final Fantasy VII fan folklore has become an important contemporary experiential feature of a nostalgic turn in the gaming industry, and we show that remakes and new editions of older popular products rely heavily on the specific new form of folklore that goes beyond one game.