If you have been around for a while, you know how excited I was for FF7 Rebirth and might be wondering now why the lack of posts? The answer is very simple: because I haven't finished yet. I only got the Chapter 4, and I absolutely love the game, it IS my GOTY, even without knowing what is there still to experience in it. The cinematics and visuals are everything I only dared to dream about since seeing the Advent Children movie, and the open world is absolutely breath-taking. I've spent hours "touching grass" in the Grasslands, the first open area, just exploring without a map, taking in all the sights, speaking to every NPC.

But then life got busy, I was trying to enjoy the rare, sunny British days, went for real life and ingame vacation in Final Fantasy XIV. I could have carried on playing Rebirth, but an hour a day just didn't feel like giving it the proper time and attention this masterpiece deserves. And there is no rush, we won't see the next part for a few years (probably will get FFXVII before we get the last part of the FF7 Remake series) so I will get back to it when I can play it at my own pace and enjoy every tiny part.

But that won't be my first experience of the whole game.

If you were following our bounties in the Content Creators space, where we highlight best content and give a shout out to fellow creators, you will be familiar with Prof Noctis' name. He is a university professor in Alabama, and teaches religion, mythology and history through video games. During COVID he had to move his classes to Twitch as Zoom was not capable of handling the FFXV streams for his class... and as they say the rest is history.

This semester he's doing a lecture series on FF7 Rebirth, streaming every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30pm CST time, so if you are like me and love mythology and Final Fantasy, I promise you, this is going to be the absolute best content you can find on the internet.

The first two classes aired this week, and they already started with some banger conversations. This is not a spoiler-free stream, as there is a lot of foreshadowing in the game from the beginning, so discussions of later chapters will happen. (Yes this was your friendly spoiler warning in case you haven't played the OG FF7VII or want to experience the new things Rebirth has to offer on your own)

What I love about these lectures is how engaging it is for the community. How the Professor encourages thinking, discussions, and created a space which is safe and welcoming for everyone. And the discussions carry on after class in his Discord server as well!

As someone who often faced discrimination for belonging to a relatively small religious group, seeing how people of different faith came together to discuss religious and mythological references in our favourite game, restored my faith in humanity, that there are still people out there who want to learn, see things from a different point of view, and instead of looking at our differences, they are looking at what is common in us.

I didn't have the chance to finish university due to my family's financial situation, and in my country 18 years ago something like this was unimaginable to be taught at a university. I know it's never too late to attend higher education, but it's not something I can afford, so to be able to attend these classes for free and get the same experience a student in the actual class would is amazing.

There are so few people who are true leaders, who truly take their profession in education seriously and do it so selflessly. Prof Noctis is definitely one of them.

It is an added bonus, that for this lecture there is a way for members of the community to take part as research assistants and contribute to the lectures by either doing traditional research or providing help with managing the Discord and Twitch moderation, starting discussion topics or helping with technical issues. I'm proud to say that I am one of those assistants, so if you come across short clips from the lecture series and creator interviews in the coming months, they might be my work alongside another very enthusiastic student. Whenever it was asked here who I would love to collaborate with as a creator, Prof Noctis has been on my list ever since I watched the first lecture about FFXVI last year, so to be able to contribute to this amazing project in a small way... I don't have the words to express how grateful I am.

Once the semester is over, I shall let you know how was it to experience a game through a lecture series for the first time, instead of playing through it myself!

After the ingame summer vacation in sunny Tuliyollal in FFXIV I'm off to my real life vacation, so next week it will be TheGreatestBanana12 taking over with Final Fantasy Fridays, please look forward to it!