FFVII is a really interesting example. Kind of interesting you brought that one up.
I LOVED that game when I was in the 7th grade (when it came out) and it was one of my fav games of all time.
I recently bought it again about 2 months ago and have totally beaten everything in it (including the Weapons and all the side quests).
I was kind of disappointed with some of the philosophy for a while, but then I started really thinking about it.
Here are my conclusions:
1) Shin-Ra was a horrible corporation that exploits a resource stupidly.
Think of loggers in the North West that used to clear cut. It isn't in your rational self-interest to clear cut in the long term because it kills the whole industry and you don't have anything left for long periods of time. Conservation makes MUCH more sense if you really have a mind for profit.
The James Taggarts of the world do that kind of crap to make a temporary profit and then they have nothing to show for it once they have parasitically sucked all of the life out of the industry. It takes a LOT more genius to sustain things like Ellis Wyat and his shale-oil.
Look at these factors of Shin-Ra:
-Hojo did bio-experiments on people just for the fun of it kind of like some of the Nazi scientists.
-President Shin-Ra ordered the destruction of an entire 8th of the city to try and kill people that were rebelling against what they were doing.
- Rufus makes the point in his speech with Cloud (when you fight him at the Shin-Ra building) that he will govern using fear instead of just using wealth to dominate people
- There is a man named HEIDEGGER in Shin-Ra....do you really need anything else? (I'm just joking on this one)
-They have no problem using coercion and force (look at Wutai and Corel as examples of that).
Another thing is the WAY that the fictional planet operated with the life-stream and reincarnation. If that was a metaphysical FACT that was a given (which it IS in that game) it would be morally wrong to intentially destroy the glue that literally holds your planet together.
Remember when Bugenhagen shows what happens when the lifestream is totally sucked away? The planet crumbles and disappears.
That makes Shin-Ra pretty damn anti-life.
2) When Cloud comes back from the lifestream after coming to terms with his pyschological fears and problems, he makes an amazing speech.
He basically says that he is fighting for his OWN reasons and he sends everyone off for a couple of days to find out what their own reasons are.
-Barrett is fighting for Marlene
- Nanaki (Red XIII) is fighting for honor and for his grandfather
-Vincent is fighting to right a wrong (the fact that he couldn't stop Hojo from injecting the woman he loved (Lucrecia) with Jenova cells which ended up creating Sephiroth.
- Yuffie is fighting for materia and for her town's glory.
-Cait Sith is atoning for Shin-Ra's crime and to save the world
-Tifa is fighting for a future with Cloud
3) Cid.
Cid has a dream to go into outter space and has done everything in his power to make that dream happen when Shin-Ra breaks off the space program. He fought for his dream and it finally came true (sort of by accident when they are trying to get the Huge Materia). He is "the captain" and is a science buff who believes in the superiority of science and reason. That is pretty damn cool in my book.
4) Cloud.
This game makes it VERY clear that faking reality is a BIG no-no psychologically speaking. Look what happens to Cloud when he perpetuates the lie that he made SOLDIER. He cannot integrate himself into the reality of what he just couldn't do (achieve his dream of being in SOLDIER like Sephiroth).
When he finally DOES deal with his issues, he is a whole person.
Cloud also has some very good traits.
He ran after Tifa when they were young so he could try and defend her when she went questing to find her mom at Mt. Nibel. He also really came to her defense when he managed to toss Sephiroth into the lifestream and wound him badly after Sephiroth attacked Tifa and Zach.
Cloud fights for his values and for himself and he makes that really clear from the beginning.
As he says in the beginning...he isn't fighting for the planet, Avalance, of anything but himself. That never changes at all. He just develops himself into a true hero and identifies what he really wants to gain from his fight.
5) Sephiroth.
Sephiroth wants to become a god and dominate over everyone. He kills a whole town, awakens the weapons, summons a giant meteor, kills Zack, and attacks Tifa. He is pure evil. The presence of such a villian shows what one should try and fight against. This game isn't done in terms of "shades of gray". This is good versus evil...plain and simple.
6) Barrett realizes that Avalanche's way of doing things (blowing up mako reactors) wasn't the right way of doing things, though he has his reasons (including the fact that Shin-Ra burned down his whole hometown which killed his wife). He redeems himself by helping to save the world.
