enigmatic_alex44
Whenever a game uses "middleware," I expect mediocrity. Just see how poor TLOU looks.
I need to ask this, based on how you're addressing this: Roughly how old are you?
Your point of reference sounds more like a reflection of a relatively young person who isn't separating their own experience from the trends in a wider field that predates them. I can say plainly that the storytelling and narrative of FF VII doesn't have much novelty compared to earlier works, in terms of influence. Or failing that at least, what specifics were carried from VII to a range of later games as you see it?
I'm old enough to have been there from the beginning of the NES at the very least (Mario 1, Zelda and Final Fantasy 1 were my first games) . FFVII didn't do anything "new" like the way the Wii brought in motion controls (an new way of playing) or set a standard for controls like Mario 64 did. What FFVII did is push storytelling for consoles forwarded by combining a huge plot with (at the time) amazing visuals and music, into a polished package before unseen that blew everybody at the time away. It showed the naysayers that RPGs weren't just those "dorky games" (not my words, I knew people who hated RPGs) and that it was okay and even cool to enjoy an RPG. No need to hide in the basement playing Secret of Mana! It was ok to play FFVII in the living room with your friends around. It legitimized storytelling in games for the general public and was the biggest leap forward in technology graphically (same with Mario 64).
FFVII certainly legitimized RPGs in the West. Going from Sony's ridiculous no-RPG policy they had near the beginning of the PS1 era, and having to torture ourselves with Beyond the Beyond, FFVII opened the floodgates for tons of RPGs to come to the West for years, extending to the PS2 that we never would have received otherwise. You guys can deny but I was there, FFVII is at the very least one of the if not the game most responsible for starting the cinematic trend in games that is so prevalent in games today (TLoU, even FPS like Halo).