The Planet¹ is dying — Mako² energy, its life blood, is being drained out of it in order to power the industries of Shin-Ra, Inc.³, a megaconglomerate that has grown to be so powerful as to hold all political power in the game's world. Cloud Strife used to be part of the army, but by the start of the game he's a mercenary in the employ of AVALANCHE, a small group of rebels determined to stop Shin-Ra laying waste to the Planet — and quite prepared to blow up a Mako Reactor if they have to. He's not interested in AVALANCHE's high ideals, and he surely doesn't give much thought to his brief encounter with a flower seller; but this isn't going to last. Cloud has a forgotten past that won't stay buried — and it involves something that not even Shin-Ra could properly control.

[The producer, Hironobu] Sakaguchi had a great vision of the force behind the universe. He wanted to explore the idea that planets and people share the same basic energy and so are in some way intrinsically linked. He developed this philosophy from drawing upon other cultures that stated when a planet disappears... invisible energy is released in space. This energy... concentrates to give life again when certain conditions are met. The same energy drives people. No matter whom or what this energy comes from, it will concentrate all together to give life to something or someone again.
— Yoshinoti Kitase, Director of Final Fantasy VII⁴

When Squaresoft first displayed its technical demo running on a Silicon Graphics workstation, and featuring characters from the two-dimensional, 16-bit Final Fantasy VI rendered in full 3D, it was widely assumed that a similar-looking Final Fantasy VII was being developed for the hardware later released as the Nintendo 64. However, when the game's pre-release playable demo was released on the Sampler Disc bundled with Tobal No.1, and when the game itself appeared in 1997, they were for Sony's PlayStation — Square⁵, its creators, having split with Nintendo⁶. A PC conversion was published by Eidos Interactive in 1998⁷, with the original, rather dubious English translation (and its legendary ' "This guy are sick!" ' line) being refined into a more professional form, and overall the game has sold over seven million copies worldwide.

The version released outside Japan was a slightly improved one: in addition to generally tweaking the game, Square added a couple of new battles against large, powerful monsters, with extra FMV to go with them. They also added extra scenes that clarified part of the plot.⁸ This improved version of Final Fantasy VII was then released in Japan as Final Fantasy VII International, packaged with a bonus disc containing maps, design sketches, and various pieces of information about the game.

Since Final Fantasy games before Final Fantasy X-2 have traditionally began each story afresh rather than continuing from their predecessors, the cast of Final Fantasy VII might have been expected to go the way of previous Final Fantasy characters, and live on only in fanfiction, fan art, merchandise and elaborate hoaxes. (There was even an unofficial fan game, Cloud's Quest, created for Texas Instruments programmable calculators by a group called Fryed Software.) This they have steadfastly refused to do. Such is their continuing popularity that various characters from Final Fantasy VII have been placed in the fighting game Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, the partly Disney-themed role-playing game Kingdom Hearts, and the racing game Chocobo Racing, itself a descendant of a sub-game placed within Final Fantasy VII. Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy In Itadaki Street Special, which combines elements of Square's Final Fantasy games and Enix's Dragon Quest (or Dragon Warrior in the West) series, features characters and the city of Midgar⁹ from Final Fantasy VII. A standalone version of the snowboarding minigame in Final Fantasy VII has also been released in Japan as a cellphone game.

The Game

Gameplay

As is usually the case in Japanese role-playing games, the player takes control of a protagonist whose identity and personality are essentially pre-determined, and guides his party around the game's world, engaging people in conversation, exploring in search of useful items, buying and selling at shops, fighting battles, and following the twists and turns of the storyline through conversations and pre-scripted cut scenes. The party can include up to three members at a time; in some circumstances the 'PHS' item can be used to switch party members. In Final Fantasy VII 'PHS' stands for 'Party Hensei System' (hensei meaning 'composition' or 'organisation'); in the real world it refers to the Japanese mobile 'phone standard called the 'Personal Handiphone System'. When battle begins — usually a random event representing an attack by wandering monsters — the 'field' screen is replaced with a battle scene, and party members and their assailants assume their formations. Combat is a partially time-sensitive evolution of a battle system that sees playable characters and their computer-controlled adversaries take it in turns to take action. Success depends partly on strategy and partly on charcters' statistics; victory leads to the improvement of those statistics with experience.

Final Fantasy VII departs from the standard Final Fantasy combat formula chiefly through its use of Materia: in a system unique in the series (albeit somewhat reminiscent of the Magicite of Final Fantasy VI), these coloured orbs, formed from condensed Mako, can be inserted into slots in various weapons and pieces of armour, and will then affect the characters using these pieces of equipment in various ways, depending on the types of Materia in use. Materia in weapons and armour gain Ability Points when battles are won; once they've gained enough, new effects of equipping them will become available. For example, a Fire Magic Materia will initially grant the weakest Fire spell; when its Ability Points have sufficiently increased more powerful versions will become available. When a Materia reaches its highest level of development a new, first-level Materia is 'born'.

• Magic Materia make various spells available; casting them uses up characters' reserves of Magic Points.

• Summon Materia can be used to call upon powerful creatures in battle, again at the cost of Magic Points.

• Command Materia make new commands available; Steal, for example, confers the abiity to steal items from enemies.

• Independent Materia have various effects; mostly they alter characters' statistics.

• Support Materia alter the effects of other Materia when placed with them into the pairs of linked slots offered by some pieces of equipment. Link All and Fire and you can cast Fire spells that hit every enemy present during a battle.

Another feature that makes battles more interesting is the Limit Break. As each character takes damage, a gauge fills up; when it is full its owner can perform special actions in battle. Each character has unique Limit Breaks, and new ones become available as characters gain experience. Learning the most powerful Limit Breaks involves finding special manuals as well.

In addition to the main game, there are various mini-games that appear at various points: opportunities to swipe at opponents with a sword during a high-speed motorbike pursuit; to command troops during a miniature real-time strategy game; to avoid obstacles while riding a snowboard; to manoeuvre a submarine; and, most famously, to race the ostrich-like birds known as chocobos. These staples of the Final Fantasy series can even be bred later in the game; this is the only way to acquire special varieties that can reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the World Map, and the rare items they contain.

Graphics

As the first Final Fantasy game to employ three-dimensional graphics, Final Fantasy VII looks quite different from its predecessors; in fact, a new artist had to be recruited in order to provide suitable character designs. Previous Final Fantasy games used a 'super-deformed' graphical style in which characters were roughly two heads high. However, this style caused problems with the animation of three-dimensional models, and consequently characters in Final Fantasy VII are, when in the field, super-deformed only to the point of being about four heads high. During battles and some video clips they get even closer to naturalistic proportions, although the game never aspires to realism in the way Final Fantasy VIII would.

Although Square's mastery of the PlayStation hardware was advanced enough by the time Final Fantasy VIII was created to make full texture-mapping on characters possible, in Final Fantasy VII gourad shading is very heavily used. Combat scene backgrounds are fully texture mapped, and there is some texture mapping of characters (mostly for details like eyes), but for the most part characters (and the scenery during some of the sub-games) are composed of coloured polygons without images mapped onto them; gourad shading is a technique used to shade the colours so as to make the models look smoother without placing too much strain on the hardware.

Battles are depicted fully in three dimensions, so the camera angle can sweep around dramatically, making the most of the spectacular nature of some of the more powerful spells. Some of the sub-games are also fully 3D — as is the World Map on which the party travels between locations. Specific locations, however, are pre-rendered — that is, they were created in three dimensions on computers vastly more powerful than the hardware on which the game was designed actually to run, then 2D 'snapshots' of this scenery, cycling through animation frames where appropriate, were put together using 'layers' so that the three-dimensional models in the game could move 'behind' and 'in front of' pieces of scenery, which in reality are completely flat. Combined with viewing angles that sometimes let characters move 'towards' and 'away from' the screen, and lighting effects that affect the characters as though they were lit by the lights drawn in the background, the illusion of a three-dimensional world is created. This technique comes with a price, in that viewing angles have to be static (although they can be dramatic; unlike its predecessors, Final Fantasy VII isn't limited to a single camera angle for the entire game, although a lot of it is still isometric), but it provides detailed, highly realistic scenery which the PlayStation hardware could never produce in any other way.

Another thing that appeared in the series for the first time with the creation of Final Fantasy VII, with the introduction of CD storage, was the use of full-motion video. In an age when FMV was regarded by some, not without justification, as a tool used to dress up inadequate gameplay with pretty but non-interactive presentation, Final Fantasy VII used it to showcase its most dramatic events using far more advanced graphics than the PlayStation could otherwise provide (thanks, again, to pre-rendering), and also in brief clips that just helped to develop the atmosphere. There are even scenes in which FMV replaces the usual static backgrounds, with the three-dimensional characters moving on top — in some cases under the player's control. In order to get around the fact that the pre-rendered backdrops can't move much, some scenes were designed so that there would be a near-seamless transition between the usual backgrounds and the FMV clips, which used those backgrounds as their initial frames.

The launch of Final Fantasy VII was followed by a hugely divisive debate, never resolved, as to whether or not the 2D Final Fantasy style was superior to the new approach.

Sound

Final Fantasy VII raised a few eyebrows by using MIDI for its music — leaving more precious space on the discs for video scenes — when many other PlayStation games streamed high-definition, pre-recorded audio tracks from the game CDs. Nonetheless, the game contains an extensive soundtrack of Nobuo Uematsu's music, including the famous song 'One-Winged Angel', which includes lyrics taken from various parts of the Carmina Burana.

Aeris's Theme was later given a set of lyrics after being selected for the treatment in a poll; the lyricised version was released as Pure Heart.

Playable Characters

There are ten characters who can join your party, although a couple of them you may never find. Please note that what is said below reflects what players are initially told — not necessarily coincidental with what turns out to be the truth. The same can't be said of the sites this Entry links to; be careful when visiting them if you wish to avoid spoilers. The name origin theories are, well, speculation. But they're fun.

Cloud Strife

As the protagonist, he's the character the player controls for almost all of the game. He was the boy from the small village of Nibelheim¹⁰ who left home to travel to Midgar, the global capital city and the centre of Shin-Ra's power, and join the company's armed forces; he fights with swords, and his Buster Sword can be seen in some promotional images. By the start of the game, however, he's left the army and become a mercenary — and a self-centred one at that. But as the threat to the Planet grows we witness Cloud's maturation, from uncaring hired sword to sympathetic leader.

Cloud appears in Ehrgeiz, in Kingdom Hearts (with, for some reason, Vincent's cloak and gauntlet), and in the Game Boy Advance's Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. He's a hidden character in Chocobo Racing, and can be acquired as a playable character in Final Fantasy Tactics. He also appears in Itadaki Street Special and Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding.

Barret Wallace

The leader of AVALANCHE, he'd be physically imposing even if he didn't have a gun grafted onto his arm in place of his right hand. Barret isn't one for subtlety, but he cares deeply about the Planet — and about his daughter Marlene, whom he's bringing up alone following the death of his wife in an accident. Having hired Cloud at the start of the game, he's present from the beginning, and he'll be there until the end.

It's widely reckoned that Barret's surname is probably a reference to William Wallace. 'Barret', depending on your preferred source, is: a Middle English surname meaning 'dispute'; a Saxon name meaning 'bear' or 'great strength'; a type of cap; a mangled re-romanisation of 'Bullet' rendered in Japanese; a brand of rifle (with an extra 't'; but that's fine, since the standardised romanisation of the original Japanese script would be 'Baretto', and Square Enix's official Japanese Advent Children Web site actually gives the character's name in romanised form as 'Barett'); or the name of a type of robotic arm.

Tifa Lockheart¹¹

Added to the game at a remarkably late stage in its development, she's a member of AVALANCHE, working at the beginning of the game as a barmaid in the slums of Midgar. An athletic martial artist armed with combat gloves, she knew Cloud during their childhood in Nibelheim, and sometimes, though normally cheerful, she seems anxious about him. Perhaps she's another character with memories — or feelings — she can't express.

Tifa's physical appearance, widely suspected to have been devised with the male section of the game's potential audience in mind, has been the subject of some debate; and, Final Fantasy fandom being what it is, her Advent Children redesign has led to the replacement of debates about whether she is or is not a 'slut' with debates about the debates about whether she is or is not. She isn't, except in some... reinterpretative fanfiction; the view that she is takes no account of her personality. Hence any references to her as 'the de facto sex symbol' of the game are at all valid only insofar as they apply to... certain sections of fandom.

Tifa is a playable character in Ehrgeiz, and appears in Itadaki Street Special. It is widely suspected that her name is derived from 'Tiferet'¹², an aspect of the Tree of Life in the Kabbalah. Please see the section on Sephiroth for related details.

Aeris Gainsborough

Somehow at once a friendly companion and a mysterious enigma, Aeris is a flower seller living with her mother in the Midgar slums. None of which explains why the Shinra are after her. She's the most gentle of the female playable characters, yet still competent at fighting with a rod; often the most serene character, yet at other times the most girlish. She claims to have Materia that serves no purpose — a unique item — and she specialises in curative magic.

Although the romanisation 'Aeris' is used throughout the English translation of Final Fantasy VII, many people use 'Aerith'; indeed, the PC version's installation disc contains an image called 'aerithres.bmp'. Both romanisations are possible, since -is and -ith are both written as -isu in Japanese phonetic scripts. It's widely believed that 'Aerith' is the name the game's creators intended, especially since 'Aerith' is the spelling that appears in Roman characters on the character artwork. Then again, the character's name appears in Japanese phonetic script on the same piece of artwork — and romanises as 'Earisu'. (One source even suggests that this can be read as a way of writing 'Elise' in Japanese.) As for where the name — whatever it is — may have come from, it has been noted that the word aeris appears in Latin, referring to the air. Another suggestion is that 'Aeris' is derived from 'heiress'; a third is that it comes from Aesir, the name of a race of Norse gods; a fourth that it comes from 'Erith' (or 'Eritha'), a Hebrew name meaning 'flower'. A fifth suggestion is that the name comes from 'Eris', the ancient Greek goddess of strife — but this seems inconsistent with Aeris's personality (although it could suggest a connection to Cloud Strife). Another claim is that aerith is 'Old Greek' (whatever stage of the language that is) for 'divine one'. Or it may be derived from 'earth'; react as you like to the observation that 'Aerith' is an anagram of 'I Earth', bearing in mind that it's also an anagram not only of 'the air', but also of 'the I.R.A.' 'Aeris', of course, is an anagram of 'raise'... and of 'I ears'.

To add to the confusion, it is possible — by using a GameShark device with the PlayStation version of the game, or a homebrew save file editor for the PC version — to enter the game's 'Debug Rooms'¹³. In these areas, intended for the eyes of Square's employees only, wandering around on an entirely black background and talking to the character models standing about the place will produce, in place of dialogue, options used during the process of testing the game — options in truncated English, options in romanised Japanese, and in some cases even invisible options. Some choices start up various parts of the game with Aeris having been named 'Aerith' or 'Earith'.

Aeris has a cameo in Final Fantasy Tactics as the Flower Girl. She also appears in Kingdom Hearts — as 'Aerith', confusingly enough — and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Another game in which she appears is Itadaki Street Special.

Red XIII

Shin-Ra's many interests — energy, weaponry, and at one stage even an aborted space programme — require extensive research. Biological research requires specimens, and this particular specimen resembles a cross between a lion and a wolf, with flame-red fur — except that Red XIII is highly intelligent and articulate. Armed with a headdress to complement his claws and fangs, and sporting several tattoos — including the 'XIII' that the Shinra gave him — he's an excellent fighter and a steadfast companion.

It has been noted that Red XIII's real name, Nanaki, is a anagram of 'Anakin' — as in 'Anakin Skywalker'. However, this isn't true in Japanese, in which 'Nanaki' is broken up as Na-na-ki, notN-a-n-a-k-i. The Final Fantasy Compendium suggests a possible link to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.

A 'Neo-Red XIII' character called Django appears in Ehrgeiz.

Cait Sith

This 'toysaurus' is a toy cat riding a large, magically animated stuffed moogle¹⁴. Shouting at enemies through a megaphone during battle, and an enthusiastic but inept fortune teller, Cait Sith's one of the more unorthodox characters in the game.

The name 'Cait Sith' is of Gaelic origin and means 'fairy cat'. The cat appears, moogleless, as a summonable creature in Final Fantasy VI (called 'Stray' in the translated version) and as a weapon in Final Fantasy X; and there is a Cait Sith costume available in Final Fantasy X-2. There are also leopard-like monsters called Cait Sith in Final Fantasy IV.

Cid Highwind

It's traditional for each Final Fantasy game to contain a character called Cid, usually involved with airships somehow, but Final Fantasy VII goes further than most by actually having its Cid join your party. Cid would have gone further than flying in an airship, too; the rusting Shin-Ra rocket near his home was supposed to make him the first person in space. That never happened, and Cid is consequently not the most cheerful of characters. Nevertheless, he and his spear are both reliable. It has been suggested that his spear-wielding jump attacks make him a sort of descendant of the Dragoon/Lancer/Dragon Knight class seen in Final Fantasy IV, V and IX.

Cid Highwind makes an appearance in Kingdom Hearts, running an accessory shop. It's widely believed that the name 'Cid' is taken from the Spanish word for 'lord'; perhaps it refers to Rodrigo Diaz (1043 - 1099), a hero in Castile known as 'El Cid'. The Highwind is an airship in Final Fantasy VII; Highwind is also the surname of Kain in Final Fantasy IV, and the middle name of King Alexander Highwind Tycoon in Final Fantasy V.

Vincent Valentine

You can play through the entire game without ever seeing him — but if you do locate the tragic former Shin-Ra employee, you'll be able to recruit a capable marksman with a dark past of his own. You may feel that there's something, well, odd about him — maybe it's the red eyes, or the way in which his costume always covers the lower part of his face, or his capacity for transforming into horrific monsters during battle...

Vincent is playable in Ehrgeiz, both in his usual form from Final Fantasy VII and as he was when employed by Shin-Ra (a form that appears only in flashbacks in Final Fantasy VII). He is the protagonist of Dirge of Cerberus.

Yuffie Kisaragi

She's another character who may never be your ally, although chances are you'll run into her by chance at least once. She's rather brash, and not necessarily someone you can trust with your Materia while your back's turned, but not entirely without redeeming qualities; at the very least her training in ninjutsu makes her a capable combatant (on land, at least; she suffers from motion sickness), as well as a distant descendant of the ninja in the very first Final Fantasy.

Yuffie is a character in Ehrgeiz, and appears in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. There is a popular theory that the name 'Yuffie' (which directly romanises as 'Yufi', and is pronounced accordingly) is derived from Greek and means 'joy, happiness'. 'Kisaragi' is the second month of the traditional Japanese lunar calendar.

Sephiroth

Techically he's playable when you first meet him, but during battle he'll act autonomously; there aren't many people from whom the most powerful fighter in the Shinra army is going to take orders. He was on a mission with Cloud once, but vanished soon afterwards; at the beginning of the game he's still missing. Cold, even haughty, conscious of a sense of distance from other people, he's the only person capable of wielding the Masamune long sword. The young Cloud wanted to be just like Sephiroth; the older Cloud appears rather less enthusiastic...

In a link that has given rise to extensive theorising, the name comes from the Kabbalah: the Sephiroths, or Sefirots, are said to be emanations, or powers, of God, who is knowable only insofar as they are. They are represented on the Tree of Life. Another reference to them appears in Xenogears, another PlayStation RPG by Square.

The name 'Safer Sephiroth', which those who play the game to its closing stages will encounter, is often said to be a mistransation of 'Seraph Sephiroth', or possibly 'Saviour Sephiroth'. However, an alternative theory holds that the intended name is 'Sepher Sephiroth' ('Book of Numbers') — which is also the name of a Hebrew dictionary by Allen Bennet and Aleister Crowley in which words are ordered according to the numerological principles of Gematria.

Sephiroth is a playable character in Ehrgeiz, and appears in Itadaki Street Special and (except in the original Japanese version) Kingdom Hearts

Other Major Characters

A large portion of the game's supporting cast is provided by Shin-Ra, Inc. President Shinra is every inch the businessman, and while he's ruthless when it comes to retaining his wealth and power, he is more impassive than actually malevolent or sadistic. His son Rufus adds a colder edge to the family ruthlessness, and seems a more active character than his father; he's more inclined to travel, and has at least some stomach for a fight. Other high-ranking members of Shin-Ra appear throughout the game: Heidegger¹⁵ is the unsubtle commander of the army; Scarlet is the possibly unstable woman in charge of weaponry; Palmer¹⁶ is in charge of the largely defunct space programme; and Reeve¹⁷ is the comparatively uninfluential head of Urban Development. The most significant Shinra lieutenant is Hojo, head of scientific research; described by another character as 'a walking mass of complexes', he's perhaps one of the most inscrutable characters in the game.

Players will also have several encounters with 'Shinra Manufacturing in Administrative Research' — better known as 'the Turks'. These men — and a woman — in dark suits carry out various unsavoury activities, although they're not without their own sense of something akin to honour. Tseng ('Zeng' before the translators got to him) is the leader, almost always unruffled and generally unwilling to get his hands dirty; Reno is often ready to fight, but far from being muscleheaded is probably the most intelligent after Tseng; Rude is a gunman who positively defines 'taciturn'; and Elena (originally ''Ylena) is the raw recruit, enthusiastic but still a little inept. Different Turks from those of Final Fantasy VII are the focus of Before Crisis.

Early on in the game, Cloud sees a lot of the AVALANCHE members Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. Biggs and Wedge, named after Star Wars pilots, have cameo roles in several Final Fantasy games (and Chrono Trigger), albeit far from unchanged. Jessie appears with them in Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon 2, in which all three are would-be mages.

Another important non-playable character is Bugenhagen¹⁸: a curious combination of scientist and shaman, Red XIII's human 'grandfather' knows a great deal about the Planet. Some other characters are important more because of their influences on the main characters than because of their presence: examples include Barret's daughter Marlene, Cid's mechanic Shera¹⁹, Hojo's predecessor Professor Gast, and Zack — missing soldier, former boyfriend of Aeris, and someone of whom Cloud apparently reminds her. (Zack makes an appearance in Ehrgeiz.) Players will also meet an old acquaintance of Barret, and those who search hard may see Vincent's lost love, the woman named Lucretia.

Then there's Jenova²⁰ — but at the beginning of the game you're not supposed to know anything about Jenova...

Related Web Pages

The Internet is full of pages involving Final Fantasy VII, ranging from the barely comprehensible to the stunningly exhaustive. The following, therefore, do not represent a complete list of worthwhile sites. Nonetheless...

• Square Enix USA's official Final Fantasy VII site.

• The Final Fantasy VII Citadel contains various pieces of information, including accounts of some of the rumours surrounding the game. The Links section is also well worth a look. Other Final Fantasy VII fan sites include Final Fantasy VII Universe, Final Fantasy VII Revival and Megalixir.net.

• RPG Classics has a Final Fantasy VII shrine.

• The 'Coming to America' article contains a great deal of interesting contextual information.

• Vast amounts of information are buried at GameFAQs.

• Have some rumours; there are loads...

• Tuulisti's Final Fantasy VII Collectables Website covers the game's merchandise.

• This site seeks to provide a commentary on the theories that have developed about the game's plot.

• This essay, an attempt to unravel the meaning of the plot, may prove interesting whether one agrees with it or not. (Few do.)

• WarMECH.net has some screenshots of the game early in its development in the Final Fantasy VII section, and in the Bonus section some rare magazine scans from the 16-it era depicting someone's idea of what a 16-bit seventh Final Fantasy might look like.

• Extensive information about the Final Fantasy series in general can be found at 'The Final Fantasy Compendium'. There is also a Final Fantasy Wiki.