Artist’s Gallery Shows Off FF7 Main Cast in New Light
Square Enix has made some massive, prolific games in their time. None of them come close to Final Fantasy VII in terms of cultural impact and recognition. Not only did the company work to maximize the game’s impact over a period of decades, but the game’s fans have created a mountainous volume of work in appreciation and tribute. One such fan is comic artist Nikolas Draper-Ivey.
Draper-Ivey recently published these drawings on his Facebook page. They serve as an excellent example of the alternate possibilities in store for any sufficiently diverse and complex narrative out there. Draper-Ivey came under fire for his proclivity towards drawing “heroes of color.” His response, to be succinct, suggested he wasn’t stopping anytime soon. And why should he? These are amazing!
In Draper-Ivey’s own words, “I specifically chose FFVII because it’s already a diverse cast and to Square Enix’s credit, you could literally tell the same story with these designs.” The mark of an excellent story, among many others, is this flexibility. Nothing about Final Fantasy VII’s story is explicitly tied to any character having a particular skin color. In other Final Fantasy news, sometime before the heat death of the universe we’ll see more than a single screenshot from the FFVII remake.