RE: please explain the plot of final fantasy fourteen to me
04-23-2016, 04:09 AM
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SpoilerAVALANCHEEdit
Cloud-FFVIIArt
AVALANCHE is an eco-terrorist organization led by Barret Wallace in the Midgar Slums. Barret is a former denizen of Corel, a town destroyed by the Shinra Corporation. AVALANCHE hired a mercenary named Cloud Strife, who claims to be a former member of Shinra's elite special forces team, SOLDIER.
Cloud is plagued by psychic disturbances, and at first shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause; by his own admission, he is only interested in money. Other members include Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart, whom Cloud made a promise to protect back before he left their hometown of Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
AVALANCHE's mission is to blow up the eight Mako Reactors that ring the city. During a mission Cloud is separated from the others and meets Aeris Gainsborough in the slums. To counter AVALANCHE's attacks, Shinra drops a portion of Midgar's upper plate upon the Sector 7 slums to destroy AVALANCHE's base, killing Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, and most of the people of Sector 7. Shinra captures Aeris and takes her to their headquarters.
Shinra's management is concerned with the limited repositories of Mako energy available for harvesting, and fascinated with the legend of the Promised Land; a place of legend where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, also known as the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. The Cetra were all but driven to extinction by the "Calamity From the Skies" 2000 years ago, and Aeris Gainsborough is their only survivor, whom Shinra has been trying to capture for years.
Cloud and the remains of AVALANCHE storm the building to rescue Aeris from Professor Hojo's lab, where Cloud spots a headless creature called Jenova kept in a tank, and reacts to it, though he cannot explain his experience to the others. They find Hojo has caged Aeris with Red XIII, one of his other test subjects, and free them, but end up captured themselves.
The group is freed from their cells by the surprise reappearance of the supposedly dead legendary SOLDIER, Sephiroth, following the escape of a headless Jenova from her tank. President Shinra is killed during Sephiroth's return, and the young and ruthless Rufus Shinra takes the company's reins. Cloud and his party make a hair-thin escape from Midgar by fighting their way through the ranks of Shinra forces.
Pursuit of SephirothEdit
Cloud decides to hunt down Sephiroth to avenge the destruction of his hometown, and the others follow suit. Tifa shares Cloud's hatred for Sephiroth and wants to keep an eye on Cloud as his unstable behavior troubles her. President Shinra had told Aeris Sephiroth is an Ancient, and she wants to seek him out to discover more of her heritage. Red XIII decides to accompany the others until he can return home in Cosmo Canyon.
Sephiroth
Sephiroth, silhouetted by the flames of Nibelheim.
In the town of Kalm Cloud tells the others his tale of the Nibelheim Incident, or what happened in the town five years ago, but his story is filled with gaps. Cloud tells that five years ago he and Sephiroth had been sent to Cloud's hometown to investigate the local Mako Reactor where Sephiroth had found Jenova, a creature Shinra took to be an Ancient, and who had been called Sephiroth's mother. Troubled by the discovery, Sephiroth had delved into his past and the Jenova Project—from which he was born—led by Professor Gast and the deranged Professor Hojo. His findings had driven him insane and, believing himself to be the last Ancient, Sephiroth had taken revenge on humanity by burning Nibelheim to the ground. Cloud's mother and Tifa's father had perished during the incident, and a furious Cloud had set out to confront Sephiroth, but his recollection fails before he can reach the end of the story.
After hearing of a man in a black cape the group follows the rumors to Junon where they are surprised to find Rufus Shinra holding his crowning ceremony. The party disguises as crew members and stows away on the cargo ship bound for the western continent. Sephiroth appears on the ship and kills almost every crew member. Cloud and his party locate him as he materializes out of the floor, but Sephiroth doesn't recognize Cloud. Cloud attempts to get answers on Sephiroth's goal, but ends up battling Jenova∙BIRTH, a monster made out of parts of Jenova.
The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, but they do not search alone, as Rufus also wants to take Sephiroth in and has dispatched the Turks, a group of Shinra special operatives, to carry out the task. The party runs into the Turks several times, and in Gold Saucer they meet Cait Sith, a fortune teller cat robot, who joins them. Barret must confront his past as they return to the site of his former home town, and in Cosmo Canyon Red XIII intends to leave the party, but changes his mind upon discovering the truth of his father whom he had thought cowardly, resolving to protect the planet by continuing to travel with Cloud and his friends. Cosmo Canyon is a center of study on the planet and its Lifestream, and Aeris speaks with the elders and deduces Sephiroth is not an Ancient, and that she is the only Cetra left.
Black-Cape-Nibelheim-FFVII
A Sephiroth Clone in the restored Nibelheim.
The group keeps pursuing the rumors of a man in a black cape and arrives at Nibelheim, finding it fully rebuilt by Shinra and populated by Shinra employees posing as the villagers to cover up the incident five years ago. The town is infested with people robed in black who rant on about Sephiroth, the numbered Sephiroth Clones Professor Hojo had created after Nibelheim's torching to test his Reunion theory. The party finds Sephiroth at the library of the Shinra Manor who asks for Cloud to join him in the Reunion, but Cloud doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sephiroth flees and the group chases him across the Mt. Nibel to Rocket Town where they meet Cid Highwind, an aeronautical engineer whose dreams of going into space had been dashed by Shinra's lack of funding. Rufus arrives to take Cid's airplane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid refuses, and the party helps stop Palmer, a Shinra executive, from stealing the plane, but end up boarding it themselves along with Cid, who joins the party. The plane crashes into the ocean and becomes the party's boat.
Vincent is a former Turk who was betrayed by his love, Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's biological mother and a Shinra scientist, and turned into a monster. He sleeps beneath the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim in penance for his sins of failing to stop the Jenova Project, but joins the party upon learning they might run into Professor Hojo whom he deems culpable for everything. Yuffie is a girl from Wutai Village, a town that fought Shinra dominance during the Wutai War, but has since capitulated. She dreams of restoring her homeland's pride, and joins the party to achieve that.
The party's pursuit of Sephiroth leads them to discover several things. Sephiroth's plan is to use the Black Materia, a Materia so powerful the Cetra hid it away that contains the spell Meteor, the ultimate Black Magic that summons a meteorite to crash into the Planet. Sephiroth's plan is to create a wound in the Planet so large the Lifestream will be sent en mass to heal it where Sephiroth would intercept it and take control of the world.
Sephiroth is followed by a group of black-robed fanatics, the Sephiroth Clones, all bearing a tattoo somewhere on their bodies placed by Professor Hojo. Despite called "clones" they are not true clones however, but normal people Hojo had injected with Jenova's cells.
AerisDate
Cloud on a date with Aeris.
Cloud's party grabs the Keystone required to open the Temple of the Ancients from Dio, Gold Saucer's owner. During their stay at the amusement park Cloud goes on a date with a fellow party member and Cait Sith steals the Keystone and hands it over to Tseng, the leader of the Turks, revealing himself a Shinra spy sent to infiltrate Cloud's group. Cait Sith refuses to reveal his true identity and blackmails the others to take him along.
Tseng and his fellow Turk Elena use the Keystone to access the Temple of the Ancients, but cannot decipher its murals. As Elena departs to report to Shinra, Sephiroth attacks Tseng. Cloud and his party find a wounded Tseng as they arrive at the temple, and regain the Keystone and use it to get deeper into the maze. It turns out the temple itself is the Black Materia, and to make into a usable form, somebody must be left inside while the temple shrinks. Cait Sith volunteers, his body being a robot, and he is destroyed once the temple turns into a Materia sphere.
Cloud takes the Black Materia, but Sephiroth arrives and bends Cloud under his control. Cloud hands the Materia over to Sephiroth and attacks Aeris, and is knocked out by the other party members. Another Cait Sith appears to replace the first, and Aeris leaves the party to find a way to save the world from Meteor now that Sephiroth has acquired the Black Materia.
Aeris travels to the Forgotten Capital, the lost city of the Cetra. Cloud is troubled Sephiroth was able to control him, but resolves to continue his journey as Tifa and Barret encourage him to go on. The party chases after Aeris and Sephiroth and when they find her praying on an altar at the Forgotten Capital Cloud is almost bought to kill her by Sephiroth's control, only being snapped out of his thrall by the intervention of his comrades.
AerithDeath1
Cloud mourns for Aeris while Sephiroth gloats.
Sephiroth murders Aeris by impaling her with the Masamune. Cloud is enraged, but Sephiroth taunts Cloud, telling him he should not act as though he has feelings. Floating up into the sky, the "Sephiroth" turns out to be Jenova; the person the party hunted and followed since the beginning was Jenova—escaped from the tank in the Shinra Headquarters—taking Sephiroth's form. After a battle with a piece of Jenova, the party pays their respects to the departed Aeris as Cloud lays her deceased body to rest in the waters of the Forgotten Capital. Cloud decides to continue on the journey to complete his revenge against Sephiroth even knowing he may lose control of himself again.
In Icicle Inn the party finds recordings that detail Aeris's birth and Jenova's true nature, as that is where Aeris was born to Gast Faremis and Ifalna. Gast was the scientist who had led Shinra's Jenova Project who had departed the company upon finding a true Cetra, Ifalna, the last survivor. Gast had helped Ifalna escape Shinra and the two had settled in the remote Icicle Inn where Gast had interviewed her on her knowledge on Jenova and the guardians of the planet, Weapons.
Ifalna had told Gast Jenova, which Gast had mistaken as a Cetra, was in fact the "Calamity from the Skies" responsible for the Cetra's dwindled numbers, as Jenova is a shapeshifting extraterrestrial organism that had arrived on a meteorite 2000 years ago, creating the large crater to the Planet's north pole. The creature had been sealed away by the last surviving Cetra, and it was from this geological stratum that Gast and his researchers had excavated its body 2000 years later. When Hojo had discovered Gast and Ifalna's hideout he had killed Gast and taken Ifalna and baby Aeris captive. The two had later escaped into the Midgar slums, but Ifalna had perished during the escape and Aeris had been adopted by a slum dweller named Elmyra Gainsborough.
Sephiroth's Resting Place
North Crater.
The party follows Sephiroth to the North Crater that had been created by Jenova's fall two thousand years ago. They are joined by Rufus and his gang, arriving on the airship Highwind, and a horde of Sephiroth Clones, all of whom Sephiroth slays. After catching up to "Sephiroth" he transforms into Jenova∙DEATH, and after defeating it the party reclaims the Black Materia. Cloud explains to the others that what they had been pursuing was not the true Sephiroth, but can feel he is nearby. Cloud and Tifa go alone, and Cloud hands the Black Materia to a party member remaining behind to prevent himself from being tricked into giving it to Sephiroth again.
Cloud and Tifa stumble upon an illusion of the events that took place in Nibelheim five years ago and Sephiroth shows Cloud was never there, his role taken by a man called Zack. Tifa cannot refute Sephiroth's claims, and Cloud begins to believe they are true. Sephiroth claims Cloud is but a facsimile created by Hojo, a puppet with false memories posing as a boy "Cloud" Tifa knows from her childhood. Sephiroth creates another illusion to trick the party member holding the Black Materia to come to Cloud, who takes the Materia and explains to his friends he is a mere pawn for Sephiroth, yet another Sephiroth Clone. Hojo, who has accompanied Rufus to the crater, is at first interested in Cloud, but upon discovering Cloud doesn't have a numbered tattoo, discards him as a failure, annoyed a "failed experiment" is the only one to have made it to the "Reunion" with the true Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's true body emerges from a Materia cocoon, and Cloud hands him the Black Materia. Sephiroth summons the Meteor, which awakens the planet's guardians, the Weapons, giant monsters of immense destructive power. As the crater floor crumbles Cloud and Sephiroth's cocoon fall into the Lifestream and the party escapes with Shinra on their airship. Tifa is knocked unconscious and Barret is caught as he tries to take her away, both taken to Junon while the rest of AVALANCHE escapes on their own.
MeteorfallEdit
Meteor FFVII
Meteor looms over the Planet.
While unconscious Tifa hallucinates chasing Cloud who disappears into darkness, and recalls how she met him on the Sector 7 slums train station some time before he was hired into AVALANCHE. Cloud had been acting strange and claimed it had been five years since they'd last seen. Although Tifa knew it to be longer than that, she had never confronted him, instead asking him to join AVALANCHE so she would have more time to decide what to do and to keep an eye on him and his strange behavior.
Tifa awakes in Junon seven days later and finds a world in chaos: a meteorite looms over the sky, a sign of the impending end of the world. Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier preventing either Shinra or the Weapons from attacking his true body, and the creatures have taken to attacking Shinra's sites of power instead. Rufus, trying to show Shinra is still in control, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair on live broadcast television. Before the execution can go through, Sapphire Weapon attacks Junon, and Shinra kills it with a direct shot to the face with the Mako Cannon. The other party members, led by Cait Sith, sneak in during the attack to rescue Tifa and Barret, and steal the Highwind.
The party finds Cloud suffering severe Mako poisoning in the town of Mideel, where he had washed in by the currents of the Lifestream, an ethereal substance that streams beneath the surface of the planet that is its life energy. Tifa stays behind to watch over him, as she is adamant Sephiroth's story of Cloud being Hojo's creation with false memories is untrue, and wants to help him regain his true self. Cid leads the party to claim Shinra's Huge Materia, which Shinra schemes to load onto Cid's rocket and launch directly at the meteorite. Cid doesn't want Shinra to get their hands on the Huge Materia, and wants them for their own use to fight Sephiroth.
The Ultimate Weapon crashes in Mideel. The town is destroyed by an earthquake as the Lifestream swallows it and Cloud and Tifa fall in. Being submerged in the Lifestream allows Tifa to travel inside Cloud's Subconscious and sort through his true memories and secret desires, such as joining SOLDIER in part to gain Tifa's attention. She confirms Cloud is the genuine article, although not the person he had made himself believe he was.
Cloud remembers zack
Cloud recalls the true past.
Cloud had never made it into SOLDIER and had become a lowly Shinra infantryman instead. Embarrassed by his failure, he had not told anyone from his hometown. When he had been assigned a mission in Nibelheim to accompany the SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth, Cloud had concealed his identity by always wearing his helmet, and this is why Tifa had not realized Cloud was there at the time. After Sephiroth had learned Shinra had created him from Jenova, he had gone insane and torched the town. Sephiroth had departed for the Mako Reactor to save his "mother", as Jenova was being contained there. Zack had confronted Sephiroth at the reactor, but lost. Cloud had arrived soon after seeking revenge, and a weakened Zack had given Cloud his Buster Sword to kill Sephiroth with. Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Lifestream below the reactor, but had suffered great wounds in the affair and fallen unconscious.
After Hojo had arrived to assess the situation, he had taken Zack and Cloud, as well as the other survivors from the village, to be his test subjects to turn them into Sephiroth Clones by injecting them with Jenova cells. While the villagers had been turned into clones, Zack and Cloud had not reacted as desired, and were deemed failures to be contained in the Shinra Manor. Cloud's mind had been shattered by the trauma of the events and as a result of Hojo's experimentation, and he had merged his ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in his recollections.
After Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Mako pit below the reactor, Sephiroth's body had dissolved into the Lifestream, but his consciousness had been strong enough to remain intact. Sephiroth had thus learned the wisdom of the Cetra from the Lifestream, and begun to construct a new body for himself inside a Materia cocoon at the North Crater. He had mentally taken over the remains of Jenova at the Shinra Headquarters, morphed it into his image, and used it to bring the Black Materia to his true body to summon Meteor.
As Cloud and Tifa are rescued from the Lifestream the restored Cloud returns to lead the party, revealing to the others he is not an ex-SOLDIER, as he had not been mentally strong enough to qualify. If he returns to the Nibelheim Mansion, Cloud recalls how he and Zack had escaped. After being held captive for many years in the Shinra Manor, Zack had broken free, and taken Cloud along as they had escaped the restored Nibelheim, giving Cloud an old SOLDIER First Class uniform to wear.
FFVIIZackLastStand1
Cloud and Zack's body on the precipice overlooking Midgar.
Shinra had caught up with the pair on a precipice overlooking the Midgar Wasteland and Zack had been gunned down, but the soldiers had ignored the catatonic Cloud and left him for dead. Cloud had crawled over to Zack's body and taken his Buster Sword, then made his way to Midgar alone where he had wandered aimlessly before being discovered by Tifa at the Sector 7 slums train station. At the sight of her Cloud had snapped out of his stupor and made up a new persona as a former SOLDIER First Class to gain a sense of identity and to cover up the gaps in his memory.
Upon hearing the party has been hunting the Huge Materia Cloud joins the fray. When they storm the launch of Cid's rocket they end up trapped inside as it takes off. Cid discovers he had been wrong in admonishing his assistant Shera for ruining his dreams of space flight, and the party returns to the planet on an escape pod. The rocket fails to destroy the meteorite, and as the party gazes at their world from outer space they reaffirm their conviction to protect it, deciding to uncover what Aeris's plan to stop the Meteor had been.
With help of the Cosmo Canyon elder Bugenhagen, the party discovers the reason Aeris had gone off alone to the Forgotten Capital. Aeris had planned to summon Holy, the ultimate White Magic and a counter to Meteor, using the White Materia that had been passed down in the Cetra lineage and she, as the last Cetra, had possessed it. Just before her death her prayer had reached the Planet, but Sephiroth is holding back the power of Holy within the Planet Core.
DiamondWeapon-ffvii-fmv-attack
Diamond Weapon fires at Midgar.
Diamond Weapon rises out of the sea and charges towards Midgar. Rufus and the Shinra Executives have moved the Mako Cannon to Midgar and renamed it Sister Ray to prepare for an offensive against Sephiroth. The cannon destroys the Weapon, and the blast reaches North Crater, breaking Sephiroth's shield. Before dying the Weapon fires out energy blasts into the Shinra Building, seemingly killing Rufus and creating a power vacuum at the top of his organization. Midgar falls into chaos. Cait Sith pleads for Cloud and his friends' help, and ends up revealing his true identity as that of Reeve Tuesti, a Shinra executive in charge of Midgar.
Cloud's party infiltrates the city to fight Hojo who has taken command of the Sister Ray and is trying to re-launch it despite it would obliterate Midgar. They fight their way through the remaining forces of Shinra to reach Hojo who reveals he wishes to give his son a boost from the Sister Ray's power; the party learns Hojo is Sephiroth's father and thus directly responsible for the crisis facing the Planet. Despite the power he has gained by injecting himself with Jenova cells, Hojo is defeated.
With only a week until Meteorfall Cloud asks everyone to come up with their own reason and resolve to keep on fighting, beyond the mere reason of fighting for the planet; should they find one, they may return for the last battle. Cloud and Tifa have nowhere to go and spend the night together under the stars. The next morning the others return and Cloud thanks them. Reminded of Aeris's hope and smile even in the face of death, the party is driven to ensure her deeds aren't wasted.
The party ventures to the depths of the Northern Cave, and in the Planet Core finds Sephiroth, blocking Holy from being released. The team triumphs over Bizarro∙Sephiroth, and then Safer∙Sephiroth, a half-human, half-divine form befitting Sephiroth's vision of becoming a god. Despite Sephiroth's immense power, he is defeated.
Meteor-FFVII
The fall of Meteor.
When party begins to depart Cloud collapses, his spirit being torn from him to mentally defeat Sephiroth within the Lifestream, freeing Cloud of the chains to his enemy. The victory comes too late, and when Holy is released Meteor has fallen too far for Holy to unleash its full power. Midgar is destroyed in the struggle between Meteor and Holy, but Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate and push Meteor far enough away from the planet for Holy to destroy it.
Five hundred years later Red XIII and two pups arrive on a precipice over the overgrown ruins of Midgar with children's laughter ringing in the background.
ThemesEdit
The game incorporates allusions to a variety of religious and philosophical systems, reflected in character names like Sephiroth (drawn from the Kabbalah) and Heidegger (likely a reference to German philosopher Martin Heidegger), and place names such as Midgar and Nibelheim (both from Norse mythology), as well as numerous references in monster names, such as the Midgar Zolom, a reference to the Midgardsorm (also from Norse mythology). Additionally, several references are made to previous Final Fantasy titles, including several character names such as Cid and Biggs and Wedge, and the repetition of soundtrack motifs, such as the "Chocobo Theme."
Fort Condor FFVII Concept Art
Juxtaposition of nature vs. technology portrayed at Fort Condor where a condor has made the Mako Reactor its nest.
Environmentalism and crony capitalism are major themes in Final Fantasy VII, with Shinra Electric Power Company having taken over the world after discovering Mako energy and becoming the world's only major electricity provider. Whether humanity is truly an important part of the ecosystem is contemplated when Bugenhagen reveals to the party the planet's Ultimate White Magic spell can wipe out anything the planet deems a danger, putting mankind's future in peril seeing as they have been exploiting the world's nature reserves wantonly.
The party decides to fight for the planet regardless, and in the end humanity's true fate was left ambiguous, with only the non-human member of the party, Red XIII, appearing in the epilogue, although future installments to the Compilation have revealed mankind did survive. The interconnectedness of all life is part of the Lifestream study explored in Cosmo Canyon, and the party realizes this when they gaze down on the planet from space, cognizant for the first time how small their world is in the vastness of the universe, reaffirming their conviction to protect it. The planet itself gains anthropomorphic properties with the Cetra being able to enter in communion with it in a ritual known as "talking to the planet," and in Cosmo Canyon the party can listen to the "cry of the planet" in suffering under exploitation from Mako harvest.
In the end the forces of nature prove greater, as despite all their power Shinra crumbles when faced with the planet's true might when the Meteor is summoned and the Weapons awaken. The collective power of all life is required to save the planet from Meteor, when Aeris, perhaps representing humanity itself, summons the Lifestream to push back the Meteor allowing Holy to destroy it.
AVALANCHEEdit
Cloud-FFVIIArt
AVALANCHE is an eco-terrorist organization led by Barret Wallace in the Midgar Slums. Barret is a former denizen of Corel, a town destroyed by the Shinra Corporation. AVALANCHE hired a mercenary named Cloud Strife, who claims to be a former member of Shinra's elite special forces team, SOLDIER.
Cloud is plagued by psychic disturbances, and at first shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause; by his own admission, he is only interested in money. Other members include Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart, whom Cloud made a promise to protect back before he left their hometown of Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
AVALANCHE's mission is to blow up the eight Mako Reactors that ring the city. During a mission Cloud is separated from the others and meets Aeris Gainsborough in the slums. To counter AVALANCHE's attacks, Shinra drops a portion of Midgar's upper plate upon the Sector 7 slums to destroy AVALANCHE's base, killing Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, and most of the people of Sector 7. Shinra captures Aeris and takes her to their headquarters.
Shinra's management is concerned with the limited repositories of Mako energy available for harvesting, and fascinated with the legend of the Promised Land; a place of legend where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, also known as the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. The Cetra were all but driven to extinction by the "Calamity From the Skies" 2000 years ago, and Aeris Gainsborough is their only survivor, whom Shinra has been trying to capture for years.
Cloud and the remains of AVALANCHE storm the building to rescue Aeris from Professor Hojo's lab, where Cloud spots a headless creature called Jenova kept in a tank, and reacts to it, though he cannot explain his experience to the others. They find Hojo has caged Aeris with Red XIII, one of his other test subjects, and free them, but end up captured themselves.
The group is freed from their cells by the surprise reappearance of the supposedly dead legendary SOLDIER, Sephiroth, following the escape of a headless Jenova from her tank. President Shinra is killed during Sephiroth's return, and the young and ruthless Rufus Shinra takes the company's reins. Cloud and his party make a hair-thin escape from Midgar by fighting their way through the ranks of Shinra forces.
Pursuit of SephirothEdit
Cloud decides to hunt down Sephiroth to avenge the destruction of his hometown, and the others follow suit. Tifa shares Cloud's hatred for Sephiroth and wants to keep an eye on Cloud as his unstable behavior troubles her. President Shinra had told Aeris Sephiroth is an Ancient, and she wants to seek him out to discover more of her heritage. Red XIII decides to accompany the others until he can return home in Cosmo Canyon.
Sephiroth
Sephiroth, silhouetted by the flames of Nibelheim.
In the town of Kalm Cloud tells the others his tale of the Nibelheim Incident, or what happened in the town five years ago, but his story is filled with gaps. Cloud tells that five years ago he and Sephiroth had been sent to Cloud's hometown to investigate the local Mako Reactor where Sephiroth had found Jenova, a creature Shinra took to be an Ancient, and who had been called Sephiroth's mother. Troubled by the discovery, Sephiroth had delved into his past and the Jenova Project—from which he was born—led by Professor Gast and the deranged Professor Hojo. His findings had driven him insane and, believing himself to be the last Ancient, Sephiroth had taken revenge on humanity by burning Nibelheim to the ground. Cloud's mother and Tifa's father had perished during the incident, and a furious Cloud had set out to confront Sephiroth, but his recollection fails before he can reach the end of the story.
After hearing of a man in a black cape the group follows the rumors to Junon where they are surprised to find Rufus Shinra holding his crowning ceremony. The party disguises as crew members and stows away on the cargo ship bound for the western continent. Sephiroth appears on the ship and kills almost every crew member. Cloud and his party locate him as he materializes out of the floor, but Sephiroth doesn't recognize Cloud. Cloud attempts to get answers on Sephiroth's goal, but ends up battling Jenova∙BIRTH, a monster made out of parts of Jenova.
The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, but they do not search alone, as Rufus also wants to take Sephiroth in and has dispatched the Turks, a group of Shinra special operatives, to carry out the task. The party runs into the Turks several times, and in Gold Saucer they meet Cait Sith, a fortune teller cat robot, who joins them. Barret must confront his past as they return to the site of his former home town, and in Cosmo Canyon Red XIII intends to leave the party, but changes his mind upon discovering the truth of his father whom he had thought cowardly, resolving to protect the planet by continuing to travel with Cloud and his friends. Cosmo Canyon is a center of study on the planet and its Lifestream, and Aeris speaks with the elders and deduces Sephiroth is not an Ancient, and that she is the only Cetra left.
Black-Cape-Nibelheim-FFVII
A Sephiroth Clone in the restored Nibelheim.
The group keeps pursuing the rumors of a man in a black cape and arrives at Nibelheim, finding it fully rebuilt by Shinra and populated by Shinra employees posing as the villagers to cover up the incident five years ago. The town is infested with people robed in black who rant on about Sephiroth, the numbered Sephiroth Clones Professor Hojo had created after Nibelheim's torching to test his Reunion theory. The party finds Sephiroth at the library of the Shinra Manor who asks for Cloud to join him in the Reunion, but Cloud doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sephiroth flees and the group chases him across the Mt. Nibel to Rocket Town where they meet Cid Highwind, an aeronautical engineer whose dreams of going into space had been dashed by Shinra's lack of funding. Rufus arrives to take Cid's airplane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid refuses, and the party helps stop Palmer, a Shinra executive, from stealing the plane, but end up boarding it themselves along with Cid, who joins the party. The plane crashes into the ocean and becomes the party's boat.
Vincent is a former Turk who was betrayed by his love, Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's biological mother and a Shinra scientist, and turned into a monster. He sleeps beneath the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim in penance for his sins of failing to stop the Jenova Project, but joins the party upon learning they might run into Professor Hojo whom he deems culpable for everything. Yuffie is a girl from Wutai Village, a town that fought Shinra dominance during the Wutai War, but has since capitulated. She dreams of restoring her homeland's pride, and joins the party to achieve that.
The party's pursuit of Sephiroth leads them to discover several things. Sephiroth's plan is to use the Black Materia, a Materia so powerful the Cetra hid it away that contains the spell Meteor, the ultimate Black Magic that summons a meteorite to crash into the Planet. Sephiroth's plan is to create a wound in the Planet so large the Lifestream will be sent en mass to heal it where Sephiroth would intercept it and take control of the world.
Sephiroth is followed by a group of black-robed fanatics, the Sephiroth Clones, all bearing a tattoo somewhere on their bodies placed by Professor Hojo. Despite called "clones" they are not true clones however, but normal people Hojo had injected with Jenova's cells.
AerisDate
Cloud on a date with Aeris.
Cloud's party grabs the Keystone required to open the Temple of the Ancients from Dio, Gold Saucer's owner. During their stay at the amusement park Cloud goes on a date with a fellow party member and Cait Sith steals the Keystone and hands it over to Tseng, the leader of the Turks, revealing himself a Shinra spy sent to infiltrate Cloud's group. Cait Sith refuses to reveal his true identity and blackmails the others to take him along.
Tseng and his fellow Turk Elena use the Keystone to access the Temple of the Ancients, but cannot decipher its murals. As Elena departs to report to Shinra, Sephiroth attacks Tseng. Cloud and his party find a wounded Tseng as they arrive at the temple, and regain the Keystone and use it to get deeper into the maze. It turns out the temple itself is the Black Materia, and to make into a usable form, somebody must be left inside while the temple shrinks. Cait Sith volunteers, his body being a robot, and he is destroyed once the temple turns into a Materia sphere.
Cloud takes the Black Materia, but Sephiroth arrives and bends Cloud under his control. Cloud hands the Materia over to Sephiroth and attacks Aeris, and is knocked out by the other party members. Another Cait Sith appears to replace the first, and Aeris leaves the party to find a way to save the world from Meteor now that Sephiroth has acquired the Black Materia.
Aeris travels to the Forgotten Capital, the lost city of the Cetra. Cloud is troubled Sephiroth was able to control him, but resolves to continue his journey as Tifa and Barret encourage him to go on. The party chases after Aeris and Sephiroth and when they find her praying on an altar at the Forgotten Capital Cloud is almost bought to kill her by Sephiroth's control, only being snapped out of his thrall by the intervention of his comrades.
AerithDeath1
Cloud mourns for Aeris while Sephiroth gloats.
Sephiroth murders Aeris by impaling her with the Masamune. Cloud is enraged, but Sephiroth taunts Cloud, telling him he should not act as though he has feelings. Floating up into the sky, the "Sephiroth" turns out to be Jenova; the person the party hunted and followed since the beginning was Jenova—escaped from the tank in the Shinra Headquarters—taking Sephiroth's form. After a battle with a piece of Jenova, the party pays their respects to the departed Aeris as Cloud lays her deceased body to rest in the waters of the Forgotten Capital. Cloud decides to continue on the journey to complete his revenge against Sephiroth even knowing he may lose control of himself again.
In Icicle Inn the party finds recordings that detail Aeris's birth and Jenova's true nature, as that is where Aeris was born to Gast Faremis and Ifalna. Gast was the scientist who had led Shinra's Jenova Project who had departed the company upon finding a true Cetra, Ifalna, the last survivor. Gast had helped Ifalna escape Shinra and the two had settled in the remote Icicle Inn where Gast had interviewed her on her knowledge on Jenova and the guardians of the planet, Weapons.
Ifalna had told Gast Jenova, which Gast had mistaken as a Cetra, was in fact the "Calamity from the Skies" responsible for the Cetra's dwindled numbers, as Jenova is a shapeshifting extraterrestrial organism that had arrived on a meteorite 2000 years ago, creating the large crater to the Planet's north pole. The creature had been sealed away by the last surviving Cetra, and it was from this geological stratum that Gast and his researchers had excavated its body 2000 years later. When Hojo had discovered Gast and Ifalna's hideout he had killed Gast and taken Ifalna and baby Aeris captive. The two had later escaped into the Midgar slums, but Ifalna had perished during the escape and Aeris had been adopted by a slum dweller named Elmyra Gainsborough.
Sephiroth's Resting Place
North Crater.
The party follows Sephiroth to the North Crater that had been created by Jenova's fall two thousand years ago. They are joined by Rufus and his gang, arriving on the airship Highwind, and a horde of Sephiroth Clones, all of whom Sephiroth slays. After catching up to "Sephiroth" he transforms into Jenova∙DEATH, and after defeating it the party reclaims the Black Materia. Cloud explains to the others that what they had been pursuing was not the true Sephiroth, but can feel he is nearby. Cloud and Tifa go alone, and Cloud hands the Black Materia to a party member remaining behind to prevent himself from being tricked into giving it to Sephiroth again.
Cloud and Tifa stumble upon an illusion of the events that took place in Nibelheim five years ago and Sephiroth shows Cloud was never there, his role taken by a man called Zack. Tifa cannot refute Sephiroth's claims, and Cloud begins to believe they are true. Sephiroth claims Cloud is but a facsimile created by Hojo, a puppet with false memories posing as a boy "Cloud" Tifa knows from her childhood. Sephiroth creates another illusion to trick the party member holding the Black Materia to come to Cloud, who takes the Materia and explains to his friends he is a mere pawn for Sephiroth, yet another Sephiroth Clone. Hojo, who has accompanied Rufus to the crater, is at first interested in Cloud, but upon discovering Cloud doesn't have a numbered tattoo, discards him as a failure, annoyed a "failed experiment" is the only one to have made it to the "Reunion" with the true Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's true body emerges from a Materia cocoon, and Cloud hands him the Black Materia. Sephiroth summons the Meteor, which awakens the planet's guardians, the Weapons, giant monsters of immense destructive power. As the crater floor crumbles Cloud and Sephiroth's cocoon fall into the Lifestream and the party escapes with Shinra on their airship. Tifa is knocked unconscious and Barret is caught as he tries to take her away, both taken to Junon while the rest of AVALANCHE escapes on their own.
MeteorfallEdit
Meteor FFVII
Meteor looms over the Planet.
While unconscious Tifa hallucinates chasing Cloud who disappears into darkness, and recalls how she met him on the Sector 7 slums train station some time before he was hired into AVALANCHE. Cloud had been acting strange and claimed it had been five years since they'd last seen. Although Tifa knew it to be longer than that, she had never confronted him, instead asking him to join AVALANCHE so she would have more time to decide what to do and to keep an eye on him and his strange behavior.
Tifa awakes in Junon seven days later and finds a world in chaos: a meteorite looms over the sky, a sign of the impending end of the world. Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier preventing either Shinra or the Weapons from attacking his true body, and the creatures have taken to attacking Shinra's sites of power instead. Rufus, trying to show Shinra is still in control, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair on live broadcast television. Before the execution can go through, Sapphire Weapon attacks Junon, and Shinra kills it with a direct shot to the face with the Mako Cannon. The other party members, led by Cait Sith, sneak in during the attack to rescue Tifa and Barret, and steal the Highwind.
The party finds Cloud suffering severe Mako poisoning in the town of Mideel, where he had washed in by the currents of the Lifestream, an ethereal substance that streams beneath the surface of the planet that is its life energy. Tifa stays behind to watch over him, as she is adamant Sephiroth's story of Cloud being Hojo's creation with false memories is untrue, and wants to help him regain his true self. Cid leads the party to claim Shinra's Huge Materia, which Shinra schemes to load onto Cid's rocket and launch directly at the meteorite. Cid doesn't want Shinra to get their hands on the Huge Materia, and wants them for their own use to fight Sephiroth.
The Ultimate Weapon crashes in Mideel. The town is destroyed by an earthquake as the Lifestream swallows it and Cloud and Tifa fall in. Being submerged in the Lifestream allows Tifa to travel inside Cloud's Subconscious and sort through his true memories and secret desires, such as joining SOLDIER in part to gain Tifa's attention. She confirms Cloud is the genuine article, although not the person he had made himself believe he was.
Cloud remembers zack
Cloud recalls the true past.
Cloud had never made it into SOLDIER and had become a lowly Shinra infantryman instead. Embarrassed by his failure, he had not told anyone from his hometown. When he had been assigned a mission in Nibelheim to accompany the SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth, Cloud had concealed his identity by always wearing his helmet, and this is why Tifa had not realized Cloud was there at the time. After Sephiroth had learned Shinra had created him from Jenova, he had gone insane and torched the town. Sephiroth had departed for the Mako Reactor to save his "mother", as Jenova was being contained there. Zack had confronted Sephiroth at the reactor, but lost. Cloud had arrived soon after seeking revenge, and a weakened Zack had given Cloud his Buster Sword to kill Sephiroth with. Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Lifestream below the reactor, but had suffered great wounds in the affair and fallen unconscious.
After Hojo had arrived to assess the situation, he had taken Zack and Cloud, as well as the other survivors from the village, to be his test subjects to turn them into Sephiroth Clones by injecting them with Jenova cells. While the villagers had been turned into clones, Zack and Cloud had not reacted as desired, and were deemed failures to be contained in the Shinra Manor. Cloud's mind had been shattered by the trauma of the events and as a result of Hojo's experimentation, and he had merged his ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in his recollections.
After Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Mako pit below the reactor, Sephiroth's body had dissolved into the Lifestream, but his consciousness had been strong enough to remain intact. Sephiroth had thus learned the wisdom of the Cetra from the Lifestream, and begun to construct a new body for himself inside a Materia cocoon at the North Crater. He had mentally taken over the remains of Jenova at the Shinra Headquarters, morphed it into his image, and used it to bring the Black Materia to his true body to summon Meteor.
As Cloud and Tifa are rescued from the Lifestream the restored Cloud returns to lead the party, revealing to the others he is not an ex-SOLDIER, as he had not been mentally strong enough to qualify. If he returns to the Nibelheim Mansion, Cloud recalls how he and Zack had escaped. After being held captive for many years in the Shinra Manor, Zack had broken free, and taken Cloud along as they had escaped the restored Nibelheim, giving Cloud an old SOLDIER First Class uniform to wear.
FFVIIZackLastStand1
Cloud and Zack's body on the precipice overlooking Midgar.
Shinra had caught up with the pair on a precipice overlooking the Midgar Wasteland and Zack had been gunned down, but the soldiers had ignored the catatonic Cloud and left him for dead. Cloud had crawled over to Zack's body and taken his Buster Sword, then made his way to Midgar alone where he had wandered aimlessly before being discovered by Tifa at the Sector 7 slums train station. At the sight of her Cloud had snapped out of his stupor and made up a new persona as a former SOLDIER First Class to gain a sense of identity and to cover up the gaps in his memory.
Upon hearing the party has been hunting the Huge Materia Cloud joins the fray. When they storm the launch of Cid's rocket they end up trapped inside as it takes off. Cid discovers he had been wrong in admonishing his assistant Shera for ruining his dreams of space flight, and the party returns to the planet on an escape pod. The rocket fails to destroy the meteorite, and as the party gazes at their world from outer space they reaffirm their conviction to protect it, deciding to uncover what Aeris's plan to stop the Meteor had been.
With help of the Cosmo Canyon elder Bugenhagen, the party discovers the reason Aeris had gone off alone to the Forgotten Capital. Aeris had planned to summon Holy, the ultimate White Magic and a counter to Meteor, using the White Materia that had been passed down in the Cetra lineage and she, as the last Cetra, had possessed it. Just before her death her prayer had reached the Planet, but Sephiroth is holding back the power of Holy within the Planet Core.
DiamondWeapon-ffvii-fmv-attack
Diamond Weapon fires at Midgar.
Diamond Weapon rises out of the sea and charges towards Midgar. Rufus and the Shinra Executives have moved the Mako Cannon to Midgar and renamed it Sister Ray to prepare for an offensive against Sephiroth. The cannon destroys the Weapon, and the blast reaches North Crater, breaking Sephiroth's shield. Before dying the Weapon fires out energy blasts into the Shinra Building, seemingly killing Rufus and creating a power vacuum at the top of his organization. Midgar falls into chaos. Cait Sith pleads for Cloud and his friends' help, and ends up revealing his true identity as that of Reeve Tuesti, a Shinra executive in charge of Midgar.
Cloud's party infiltrates the city to fight Hojo who has taken command of the Sister Ray and is trying to re-launch it despite it would obliterate Midgar. They fight their way through the remaining forces of Shinra to reach Hojo who reveals he wishes to give his son a boost from the Sister Ray's power; the party learns Hojo is Sephiroth's father and thus directly responsible for the crisis facing the Planet. Despite the power he has gained by injecting himself with Jenova cells, Hojo is defeated.
With only a week until Meteorfall Cloud asks everyone to come up with their own reason and resolve to keep on fighting, beyond the mere reason of fighting for the planet; should they find one, they may return for the last battle. Cloud and Tifa have nowhere to go and spend the night together under the stars. The next morning the others return and Cloud thanks them. Reminded of Aeris's hope and smile even in the face of death, the party is driven to ensure her deeds aren't wasted.
The party ventures to the depths of the Northern Cave, and in the Planet Core finds Sephiroth, blocking Holy from being released. The team triumphs over Bizarro∙Sephiroth, and then Safer∙Sephiroth, a half-human, half-divine form befitting Sephiroth's vision of becoming a god. Despite Sephiroth's immense power, he is defeated.
Meteor-FFVII
The fall of Meteor.
When party begins to depart Cloud collapses, his spirit being torn from him to mentally defeat Sephiroth within the Lifestream, freeing Cloud of the chains to his enemy. The victory comes too late, and when Holy is released Meteor has fallen too far for Holy to unleash its full power. Midgar is destroyed in the struggle between Meteor and Holy, but Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate and push Meteor far enough away from the planet for Holy to destroy it.
Five hundred years later Red XIII and two pups arrive on a precipice over the overgrown ruins of Midgar with children's laughter ringing in the background.
ThemesEdit
The game incorporates allusions to a variety of religious and philosophical systems, reflected in character names like Sephiroth (drawn from the Kabbalah) and Heidegger (likely a reference to German philosopher Martin Heidegger), and place names such as Midgar and Nibelheim (both from Norse mythology), as well as numerous references in monster names, such as the Midgar Zolom, a reference to the Midgardsorm (also from Norse mythology). Additionally, several references are made to previous Final Fantasy titles, including several character names such as Cid and Biggs and Wedge, and the repetition of soundtrack motifs, such as the "Chocobo Theme."
Fort Condor FFVII Concept Art
Juxtaposition of nature vs. technology portrayed at Fort Condor where a condor has made the Mako Reactor its nest.
Environmentalism and crony capitalism are major themes in Final Fantasy VII, with Shinra Electric Power Company having taken over the world after discovering Mako energy and becoming the world's only major electricity provider. Whether humanity is truly an important part of the ecosystem is contemplated when Bugenhagen reveals to the party the planet's Ultimate White Magic spell can wipe out anything the planet deems a danger, putting mankind's future in peril seeing as they have been exploiting the world's nature reserves wantonly.
The party decides to fight for the planet regardless, and in the end humanity's true fate was left ambiguous, with only the non-human member of the party, Red XIII, appearing in the epilogue, although future installments to the Compilation have revealed mankind did survive. The interconnectedness of all life is part of the Lifestream study explored in Cosmo Canyon, and the party realizes this when they gaze down on the planet from space, cognizant for the first time how small their world is in the vastness of the universe, reaffirming their conviction to protect it. The planet itself gains anthropomorphic properties with the Cetra being able to enter in communion with it in a ritual known as "talking to the planet," and in Cosmo Canyon the party can listen to the "cry of the planet" in suffering under exploitation from Mako harvest.
In the end the forces of nature prove greater, as despite all their power Shinra crumbles when faced with the planet's true might when the Meteor is summoned and the Weapons awaken. The collective power of all life is required to save the planet from Meteor, when Aeris, perhaps representing humanity itself, summons the Lifestream to push back the Meteor allowing Holy to destroy it.
Cloud-FFVIIArt
AVALANCHE is an eco-terrorist organization led by Barret Wallace in the Midgar Slums. Barret is a former denizen of Corel, a town destroyed by the Shinra Corporation. AVALANCHE hired a mercenary named Cloud Strife, who claims to be a former member of Shinra's elite special forces team, SOLDIER.
Cloud is plagued by psychic disturbances, and at first shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause; by his own admission, he is only interested in money. Other members include Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart, whom Cloud made a promise to protect back before he left their hometown of Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
AVALANCHE's mission is to blow up the eight Mako Reactors that ring the city. During a mission Cloud is separated from the others and meets Aeris Gainsborough in the slums. To counter AVALANCHE's attacks, Shinra drops a portion of Midgar's upper plate upon the Sector 7 slums to destroy AVALANCHE's base, killing Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, and most of the people of Sector 7. Shinra captures Aeris and takes her to their headquarters.
Shinra's management is concerned with the limited repositories of Mako energy available for harvesting, and fascinated with the legend of the Promised Land; a place of legend where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, also known as the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. The Cetra were all but driven to extinction by the "Calamity From the Skies" 2000 years ago, and Aeris Gainsborough is their only survivor, whom Shinra has been trying to capture for years.
Cloud and the remains of AVALANCHE storm the building to rescue Aeris from Professor Hojo's lab, where Cloud spots a headless creature called Jenova kept in a tank, and reacts to it, though he cannot explain his experience to the others. They find Hojo has caged Aeris with Red XIII, one of his other test subjects, and free them, but end up captured themselves.
The group is freed from their cells by the surprise reappearance of the supposedly dead legendary SOLDIER, Sephiroth, following the escape of a headless Jenova from her tank. President Shinra is killed during Sephiroth's return, and the young and ruthless Rufus Shinra takes the company's reins. Cloud and his party make a hair-thin escape from Midgar by fighting their way through the ranks of Shinra forces.
Pursuit of SephirothEdit
Cloud decides to hunt down Sephiroth to avenge the destruction of his hometown, and the others follow suit. Tifa shares Cloud's hatred for Sephiroth and wants to keep an eye on Cloud as his unstable behavior troubles her. President Shinra had told Aeris Sephiroth is an Ancient, and she wants to seek him out to discover more of her heritage. Red XIII decides to accompany the others until he can return home in Cosmo Canyon.
Sephiroth
Sephiroth, silhouetted by the flames of Nibelheim.
In the town of Kalm Cloud tells the others his tale of the Nibelheim Incident, or what happened in the town five years ago, but his story is filled with gaps. Cloud tells that five years ago he and Sephiroth had been sent to Cloud's hometown to investigate the local Mako Reactor where Sephiroth had found Jenova, a creature Shinra took to be an Ancient, and who had been called Sephiroth's mother. Troubled by the discovery, Sephiroth had delved into his past and the Jenova Project—from which he was born—led by Professor Gast and the deranged Professor Hojo. His findings had driven him insane and, believing himself to be the last Ancient, Sephiroth had taken revenge on humanity by burning Nibelheim to the ground. Cloud's mother and Tifa's father had perished during the incident, and a furious Cloud had set out to confront Sephiroth, but his recollection fails before he can reach the end of the story.
After hearing of a man in a black cape the group follows the rumors to Junon where they are surprised to find Rufus Shinra holding his crowning ceremony. The party disguises as crew members and stows away on the cargo ship bound for the western continent. Sephiroth appears on the ship and kills almost every crew member. Cloud and his party locate him as he materializes out of the floor, but Sephiroth doesn't recognize Cloud. Cloud attempts to get answers on Sephiroth's goal, but ends up battling Jenova∙BIRTH, a monster made out of parts of Jenova.
The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, but they do not search alone, as Rufus also wants to take Sephiroth in and has dispatched the Turks, a group of Shinra special operatives, to carry out the task. The party runs into the Turks several times, and in Gold Saucer they meet Cait Sith, a fortune teller cat robot, who joins them. Barret must confront his past as they return to the site of his former home town, and in Cosmo Canyon Red XIII intends to leave the party, but changes his mind upon discovering the truth of his father whom he had thought cowardly, resolving to protect the planet by continuing to travel with Cloud and his friends. Cosmo Canyon is a center of study on the planet and its Lifestream, and Aeris speaks with the elders and deduces Sephiroth is not an Ancient, and that she is the only Cetra left.
Black-Cape-Nibelheim-FFVII
A Sephiroth Clone in the restored Nibelheim.
The group keeps pursuing the rumors of a man in a black cape and arrives at Nibelheim, finding it fully rebuilt by Shinra and populated by Shinra employees posing as the villagers to cover up the incident five years ago. The town is infested with people robed in black who rant on about Sephiroth, the numbered Sephiroth Clones Professor Hojo had created after Nibelheim's torching to test his Reunion theory. The party finds Sephiroth at the library of the Shinra Manor who asks for Cloud to join him in the Reunion, but Cloud doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sephiroth flees and the group chases him across the Mt. Nibel to Rocket Town where they meet Cid Highwind, an aeronautical engineer whose dreams of going into space had been dashed by Shinra's lack of funding. Rufus arrives to take Cid's airplane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid refuses, and the party helps stop Palmer, a Shinra executive, from stealing the plane, but end up boarding it themselves along with Cid, who joins the party. The plane crashes into the ocean and becomes the party's boat.
Vincent is a former Turk who was betrayed by his love, Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's biological mother and a Shinra scientist, and turned into a monster. He sleeps beneath the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim in penance for his sins of failing to stop the Jenova Project, but joins the party upon learning they might run into Professor Hojo whom he deems culpable for everything. Yuffie is a girl from Wutai Village, a town that fought Shinra dominance during the Wutai War, but has since capitulated. She dreams of restoring her homeland's pride, and joins the party to achieve that.
The party's pursuit of Sephiroth leads them to discover several things. Sephiroth's plan is to use the Black Materia, a Materia so powerful the Cetra hid it away that contains the spell Meteor, the ultimate Black Magic that summons a meteorite to crash into the Planet. Sephiroth's plan is to create a wound in the Planet so large the Lifestream will be sent en mass to heal it where Sephiroth would intercept it and take control of the world.
Sephiroth is followed by a group of black-robed fanatics, the Sephiroth Clones, all bearing a tattoo somewhere on their bodies placed by Professor Hojo. Despite called "clones" they are not true clones however, but normal people Hojo had injected with Jenova's cells.
AerisDate
Cloud on a date with Aeris.
Cloud's party grabs the Keystone required to open the Temple of the Ancients from Dio, Gold Saucer's owner. During their stay at the amusement park Cloud goes on a date with a fellow party member and Cait Sith steals the Keystone and hands it over to Tseng, the leader of the Turks, revealing himself a Shinra spy sent to infiltrate Cloud's group. Cait Sith refuses to reveal his true identity and blackmails the others to take him along.
Tseng and his fellow Turk Elena use the Keystone to access the Temple of the Ancients, but cannot decipher its murals. As Elena departs to report to Shinra, Sephiroth attacks Tseng. Cloud and his party find a wounded Tseng as they arrive at the temple, and regain the Keystone and use it to get deeper into the maze. It turns out the temple itself is the Black Materia, and to make into a usable form, somebody must be left inside while the temple shrinks. Cait Sith volunteers, his body being a robot, and he is destroyed once the temple turns into a Materia sphere.
Cloud takes the Black Materia, but Sephiroth arrives and bends Cloud under his control. Cloud hands the Materia over to Sephiroth and attacks Aeris, and is knocked out by the other party members. Another Cait Sith appears to replace the first, and Aeris leaves the party to find a way to save the world from Meteor now that Sephiroth has acquired the Black Materia.
Aeris travels to the Forgotten Capital, the lost city of the Cetra. Cloud is troubled Sephiroth was able to control him, but resolves to continue his journey as Tifa and Barret encourage him to go on. The party chases after Aeris and Sephiroth and when they find her praying on an altar at the Forgotten Capital Cloud is almost bought to kill her by Sephiroth's control, only being snapped out of his thrall by the intervention of his comrades.
AerithDeath1
Cloud mourns for Aeris while Sephiroth gloats.
Sephiroth murders Aeris by impaling her with the Masamune. Cloud is enraged, but Sephiroth taunts Cloud, telling him he should not act as though he has feelings. Floating up into the sky, the "Sephiroth" turns out to be Jenova; the person the party hunted and followed since the beginning was Jenova—escaped from the tank in the Shinra Headquarters—taking Sephiroth's form. After a battle with a piece of Jenova, the party pays their respects to the departed Aeris as Cloud lays her deceased body to rest in the waters of the Forgotten Capital. Cloud decides to continue on the journey to complete his revenge against Sephiroth even knowing he may lose control of himself again.
In Icicle Inn the party finds recordings that detail Aeris's birth and Jenova's true nature, as that is where Aeris was born to Gast Faremis and Ifalna. Gast was the scientist who had led Shinra's Jenova Project who had departed the company upon finding a true Cetra, Ifalna, the last survivor. Gast had helped Ifalna escape Shinra and the two had settled in the remote Icicle Inn where Gast had interviewed her on her knowledge on Jenova and the guardians of the planet, Weapons.
Ifalna had told Gast Jenova, which Gast had mistaken as a Cetra, was in fact the "Calamity from the Skies" responsible for the Cetra's dwindled numbers, as Jenova is a shapeshifting extraterrestrial organism that had arrived on a meteorite 2000 years ago, creating the large crater to the Planet's north pole. The creature had been sealed away by the last surviving Cetra, and it was from this geological stratum that Gast and his researchers had excavated its body 2000 years later. When Hojo had discovered Gast and Ifalna's hideout he had killed Gast and taken Ifalna and baby Aeris captive. The two had later escaped into the Midgar slums, but Ifalna had perished during the escape and Aeris had been adopted by a slum dweller named Elmyra Gainsborough.
Sephiroth's Resting Place
North Crater.
The party follows Sephiroth to the North Crater that had been created by Jenova's fall two thousand years ago. They are joined by Rufus and his gang, arriving on the airship Highwind, and a horde of Sephiroth Clones, all of whom Sephiroth slays. After catching up to "Sephiroth" he transforms into Jenova∙DEATH, and after defeating it the party reclaims the Black Materia. Cloud explains to the others that what they had been pursuing was not the true Sephiroth, but can feel he is nearby. Cloud and Tifa go alone, and Cloud hands the Black Materia to a party member remaining behind to prevent himself from being tricked into giving it to Sephiroth again.
Cloud and Tifa stumble upon an illusion of the events that took place in Nibelheim five years ago and Sephiroth shows Cloud was never there, his role taken by a man called Zack. Tifa cannot refute Sephiroth's claims, and Cloud begins to believe they are true. Sephiroth claims Cloud is but a facsimile created by Hojo, a puppet with false memories posing as a boy "Cloud" Tifa knows from her childhood. Sephiroth creates another illusion to trick the party member holding the Black Materia to come to Cloud, who takes the Materia and explains to his friends he is a mere pawn for Sephiroth, yet another Sephiroth Clone. Hojo, who has accompanied Rufus to the crater, is at first interested in Cloud, but upon discovering Cloud doesn't have a numbered tattoo, discards him as a failure, annoyed a "failed experiment" is the only one to have made it to the "Reunion" with the true Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's true body emerges from a Materia cocoon, and Cloud hands him the Black Materia. Sephiroth summons the Meteor, which awakens the planet's guardians, the Weapons, giant monsters of immense destructive power. As the crater floor crumbles Cloud and Sephiroth's cocoon fall into the Lifestream and the party escapes with Shinra on their airship. Tifa is knocked unconscious and Barret is caught as he tries to take her away, both taken to Junon while the rest of AVALANCHE escapes on their own.
MeteorfallEdit
Meteor FFVII
Meteor looms over the Planet.
While unconscious Tifa hallucinates chasing Cloud who disappears into darkness, and recalls how she met him on the Sector 7 slums train station some time before he was hired into AVALANCHE. Cloud had been acting strange and claimed it had been five years since they'd last seen. Although Tifa knew it to be longer than that, she had never confronted him, instead asking him to join AVALANCHE so she would have more time to decide what to do and to keep an eye on him and his strange behavior.
Tifa awakes in Junon seven days later and finds a world in chaos: a meteorite looms over the sky, a sign of the impending end of the world. Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier preventing either Shinra or the Weapons from attacking his true body, and the creatures have taken to attacking Shinra's sites of power instead. Rufus, trying to show Shinra is still in control, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair on live broadcast television. Before the execution can go through, Sapphire Weapon attacks Junon, and Shinra kills it with a direct shot to the face with the Mako Cannon. The other party members, led by Cait Sith, sneak in during the attack to rescue Tifa and Barret, and steal the Highwind.
The party finds Cloud suffering severe Mako poisoning in the town of Mideel, where he had washed in by the currents of the Lifestream, an ethereal substance that streams beneath the surface of the planet that is its life energy. Tifa stays behind to watch over him, as she is adamant Sephiroth's story of Cloud being Hojo's creation with false memories is untrue, and wants to help him regain his true self. Cid leads the party to claim Shinra's Huge Materia, which Shinra schemes to load onto Cid's rocket and launch directly at the meteorite. Cid doesn't want Shinra to get their hands on the Huge Materia, and wants them for their own use to fight Sephiroth.
The Ultimate Weapon crashes in Mideel. The town is destroyed by an earthquake as the Lifestream swallows it and Cloud and Tifa fall in. Being submerged in the Lifestream allows Tifa to travel inside Cloud's Subconscious and sort through his true memories and secret desires, such as joining SOLDIER in part to gain Tifa's attention. She confirms Cloud is the genuine article, although not the person he had made himself believe he was.
Cloud remembers zack
Cloud recalls the true past.
Cloud had never made it into SOLDIER and had become a lowly Shinra infantryman instead. Embarrassed by his failure, he had not told anyone from his hometown. When he had been assigned a mission in Nibelheim to accompany the SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth, Cloud had concealed his identity by always wearing his helmet, and this is why Tifa had not realized Cloud was there at the time. After Sephiroth had learned Shinra had created him from Jenova, he had gone insane and torched the town. Sephiroth had departed for the Mako Reactor to save his "mother", as Jenova was being contained there. Zack had confronted Sephiroth at the reactor, but lost. Cloud had arrived soon after seeking revenge, and a weakened Zack had given Cloud his Buster Sword to kill Sephiroth with. Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Lifestream below the reactor, but had suffered great wounds in the affair and fallen unconscious.
After Hojo had arrived to assess the situation, he had taken Zack and Cloud, as well as the other survivors from the village, to be his test subjects to turn them into Sephiroth Clones by injecting them with Jenova cells. While the villagers had been turned into clones, Zack and Cloud had not reacted as desired, and were deemed failures to be contained in the Shinra Manor. Cloud's mind had been shattered by the trauma of the events and as a result of Hojo's experimentation, and he had merged his ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in his recollections.
After Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Mako pit below the reactor, Sephiroth's body had dissolved into the Lifestream, but his consciousness had been strong enough to remain intact. Sephiroth had thus learned the wisdom of the Cetra from the Lifestream, and begun to construct a new body for himself inside a Materia cocoon at the North Crater. He had mentally taken over the remains of Jenova at the Shinra Headquarters, morphed it into his image, and used it to bring the Black Materia to his true body to summon Meteor.
As Cloud and Tifa are rescued from the Lifestream the restored Cloud returns to lead the party, revealing to the others he is not an ex-SOLDIER, as he had not been mentally strong enough to qualify. If he returns to the Nibelheim Mansion, Cloud recalls how he and Zack had escaped. After being held captive for many years in the Shinra Manor, Zack had broken free, and taken Cloud along as they had escaped the restored Nibelheim, giving Cloud an old SOLDIER First Class uniform to wear.
FFVIIZackLastStand1
Cloud and Zack's body on the precipice overlooking Midgar.
Shinra had caught up with the pair on a precipice overlooking the Midgar Wasteland and Zack had been gunned down, but the soldiers had ignored the catatonic Cloud and left him for dead. Cloud had crawled over to Zack's body and taken his Buster Sword, then made his way to Midgar alone where he had wandered aimlessly before being discovered by Tifa at the Sector 7 slums train station. At the sight of her Cloud had snapped out of his stupor and made up a new persona as a former SOLDIER First Class to gain a sense of identity and to cover up the gaps in his memory.
Upon hearing the party has been hunting the Huge Materia Cloud joins the fray. When they storm the launch of Cid's rocket they end up trapped inside as it takes off. Cid discovers he had been wrong in admonishing his assistant Shera for ruining his dreams of space flight, and the party returns to the planet on an escape pod. The rocket fails to destroy the meteorite, and as the party gazes at their world from outer space they reaffirm their conviction to protect it, deciding to uncover what Aeris's plan to stop the Meteor had been.
With help of the Cosmo Canyon elder Bugenhagen, the party discovers the reason Aeris had gone off alone to the Forgotten Capital. Aeris had planned to summon Holy, the ultimate White Magic and a counter to Meteor, using the White Materia that had been passed down in the Cetra lineage and she, as the last Cetra, had possessed it. Just before her death her prayer had reached the Planet, but Sephiroth is holding back the power of Holy within the Planet Core.
DiamondWeapon-ffvii-fmv-attack
Diamond Weapon fires at Midgar.
Diamond Weapon rises out of the sea and charges towards Midgar. Rufus and the Shinra Executives have moved the Mako Cannon to Midgar and renamed it Sister Ray to prepare for an offensive against Sephiroth. The cannon destroys the Weapon, and the blast reaches North Crater, breaking Sephiroth's shield. Before dying the Weapon fires out energy blasts into the Shinra Building, seemingly killing Rufus and creating a power vacuum at the top of his organization. Midgar falls into chaos. Cait Sith pleads for Cloud and his friends' help, and ends up revealing his true identity as that of Reeve Tuesti, a Shinra executive in charge of Midgar.
Cloud's party infiltrates the city to fight Hojo who has taken command of the Sister Ray and is trying to re-launch it despite it would obliterate Midgar. They fight their way through the remaining forces of Shinra to reach Hojo who reveals he wishes to give his son a boost from the Sister Ray's power; the party learns Hojo is Sephiroth's father and thus directly responsible for the crisis facing the Planet. Despite the power he has gained by injecting himself with Jenova cells, Hojo is defeated.
With only a week until Meteorfall Cloud asks everyone to come up with their own reason and resolve to keep on fighting, beyond the mere reason of fighting for the planet; should they find one, they may return for the last battle. Cloud and Tifa have nowhere to go and spend the night together under the stars. The next morning the others return and Cloud thanks them. Reminded of Aeris's hope and smile even in the face of death, the party is driven to ensure her deeds aren't wasted.
The party ventures to the depths of the Northern Cave, and in the Planet Core finds Sephiroth, blocking Holy from being released. The team triumphs over Bizarro∙Sephiroth, and then Safer∙Sephiroth, a half-human, half-divine form befitting Sephiroth's vision of becoming a god. Despite Sephiroth's immense power, he is defeated.
Meteor-FFVII
The fall of Meteor.
When party begins to depart Cloud collapses, his spirit being torn from him to mentally defeat Sephiroth within the Lifestream, freeing Cloud of the chains to his enemy. The victory comes too late, and when Holy is released Meteor has fallen too far for Holy to unleash its full power. Midgar is destroyed in the struggle between Meteor and Holy, but Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate and push Meteor far enough away from the planet for Holy to destroy it.
Five hundred years later Red XIII and two pups arrive on a precipice over the overgrown ruins of Midgar with children's laughter ringing in the background.
ThemesEdit
The game incorporates allusions to a variety of religious and philosophical systems, reflected in character names like Sephiroth (drawn from the Kabbalah) and Heidegger (likely a reference to German philosopher Martin Heidegger), and place names such as Midgar and Nibelheim (both from Norse mythology), as well as numerous references in monster names, such as the Midgar Zolom, a reference to the Midgardsorm (also from Norse mythology). Additionally, several references are made to previous Final Fantasy titles, including several character names such as Cid and Biggs and Wedge, and the repetition of soundtrack motifs, such as the "Chocobo Theme."
Fort Condor FFVII Concept Art
Juxtaposition of nature vs. technology portrayed at Fort Condor where a condor has made the Mako Reactor its nest.
Environmentalism and crony capitalism are major themes in Final Fantasy VII, with Shinra Electric Power Company having taken over the world after discovering Mako energy and becoming the world's only major electricity provider. Whether humanity is truly an important part of the ecosystem is contemplated when Bugenhagen reveals to the party the planet's Ultimate White Magic spell can wipe out anything the planet deems a danger, putting mankind's future in peril seeing as they have been exploiting the world's nature reserves wantonly.
The party decides to fight for the planet regardless, and in the end humanity's true fate was left ambiguous, with only the non-human member of the party, Red XIII, appearing in the epilogue, although future installments to the Compilation have revealed mankind did survive. The interconnectedness of all life is part of the Lifestream study explored in Cosmo Canyon, and the party realizes this when they gaze down on the planet from space, cognizant for the first time how small their world is in the vastness of the universe, reaffirming their conviction to protect it. The planet itself gains anthropomorphic properties with the Cetra being able to enter in communion with it in a ritual known as "talking to the planet," and in Cosmo Canyon the party can listen to the "cry of the planet" in suffering under exploitation from Mako harvest.
In the end the forces of nature prove greater, as despite all their power Shinra crumbles when faced with the planet's true might when the Meteor is summoned and the Weapons awaken. The collective power of all life is required to save the planet from Meteor, when Aeris, perhaps representing humanity itself, summons the Lifestream to push back the Meteor allowing Holy to destroy it.
AVALANCHEEdit
Cloud-FFVIIArt
AVALANCHE is an eco-terrorist organization led by Barret Wallace in the Midgar Slums. Barret is a former denizen of Corel, a town destroyed by the Shinra Corporation. AVALANCHE hired a mercenary named Cloud Strife, who claims to be a former member of Shinra's elite special forces team, SOLDIER.
Cloud is plagued by psychic disturbances, and at first shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause; by his own admission, he is only interested in money. Other members include Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart, whom Cloud made a promise to protect back before he left their hometown of Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
AVALANCHE's mission is to blow up the eight Mako Reactors that ring the city. During a mission Cloud is separated from the others and meets Aeris Gainsborough in the slums. To counter AVALANCHE's attacks, Shinra drops a portion of Midgar's upper plate upon the Sector 7 slums to destroy AVALANCHE's base, killing Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, and most of the people of Sector 7. Shinra captures Aeris and takes her to their headquarters.
Shinra's management is concerned with the limited repositories of Mako energy available for harvesting, and fascinated with the legend of the Promised Land; a place of legend where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, also known as the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. The Cetra were all but driven to extinction by the "Calamity From the Skies" 2000 years ago, and Aeris Gainsborough is their only survivor, whom Shinra has been trying to capture for years.
Cloud and the remains of AVALANCHE storm the building to rescue Aeris from Professor Hojo's lab, where Cloud spots a headless creature called Jenova kept in a tank, and reacts to it, though he cannot explain his experience to the others. They find Hojo has caged Aeris with Red XIII, one of his other test subjects, and free them, but end up captured themselves.
The group is freed from their cells by the surprise reappearance of the supposedly dead legendary SOLDIER, Sephiroth, following the escape of a headless Jenova from her tank. President Shinra is killed during Sephiroth's return, and the young and ruthless Rufus Shinra takes the company's reins. Cloud and his party make a hair-thin escape from Midgar by fighting their way through the ranks of Shinra forces.
Pursuit of SephirothEdit
Cloud decides to hunt down Sephiroth to avenge the destruction of his hometown, and the others follow suit. Tifa shares Cloud's hatred for Sephiroth and wants to keep an eye on Cloud as his unstable behavior troubles her. President Shinra had told Aeris Sephiroth is an Ancient, and she wants to seek him out to discover more of her heritage. Red XIII decides to accompany the others until he can return home in Cosmo Canyon.
Sephiroth
Sephiroth, silhouetted by the flames of Nibelheim.
In the town of Kalm Cloud tells the others his tale of the Nibelheim Incident, or what happened in the town five years ago, but his story is filled with gaps. Cloud tells that five years ago he and Sephiroth had been sent to Cloud's hometown to investigate the local Mako Reactor where Sephiroth had found Jenova, a creature Shinra took to be an Ancient, and who had been called Sephiroth's mother. Troubled by the discovery, Sephiroth had delved into his past and the Jenova Project—from which he was born—led by Professor Gast and the deranged Professor Hojo. His findings had driven him insane and, believing himself to be the last Ancient, Sephiroth had taken revenge on humanity by burning Nibelheim to the ground. Cloud's mother and Tifa's father had perished during the incident, and a furious Cloud had set out to confront Sephiroth, but his recollection fails before he can reach the end of the story.
After hearing of a man in a black cape the group follows the rumors to Junon where they are surprised to find Rufus Shinra holding his crowning ceremony. The party disguises as crew members and stows away on the cargo ship bound for the western continent. Sephiroth appears on the ship and kills almost every crew member. Cloud and his party locate him as he materializes out of the floor, but Sephiroth doesn't recognize Cloud. Cloud attempts to get answers on Sephiroth's goal, but ends up battling Jenova∙BIRTH, a monster made out of parts of Jenova.
The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, but they do not search alone, as Rufus also wants to take Sephiroth in and has dispatched the Turks, a group of Shinra special operatives, to carry out the task. The party runs into the Turks several times, and in Gold Saucer they meet Cait Sith, a fortune teller cat robot, who joins them. Barret must confront his past as they return to the site of his former home town, and in Cosmo Canyon Red XIII intends to leave the party, but changes his mind upon discovering the truth of his father whom he had thought cowardly, resolving to protect the planet by continuing to travel with Cloud and his friends. Cosmo Canyon is a center of study on the planet and its Lifestream, and Aeris speaks with the elders and deduces Sephiroth is not an Ancient, and that she is the only Cetra left.
Black-Cape-Nibelheim-FFVII
A Sephiroth Clone in the restored Nibelheim.
The group keeps pursuing the rumors of a man in a black cape and arrives at Nibelheim, finding it fully rebuilt by Shinra and populated by Shinra employees posing as the villagers to cover up the incident five years ago. The town is infested with people robed in black who rant on about Sephiroth, the numbered Sephiroth Clones Professor Hojo had created after Nibelheim's torching to test his Reunion theory. The party finds Sephiroth at the library of the Shinra Manor who asks for Cloud to join him in the Reunion, but Cloud doesn't know what he is talking about.
Sephiroth flees and the group chases him across the Mt. Nibel to Rocket Town where they meet Cid Highwind, an aeronautical engineer whose dreams of going into space had been dashed by Shinra's lack of funding. Rufus arrives to take Cid's airplane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid refuses, and the party helps stop Palmer, a Shinra executive, from stealing the plane, but end up boarding it themselves along with Cid, who joins the party. The plane crashes into the ocean and becomes the party's boat.
Vincent is a former Turk who was betrayed by his love, Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's biological mother and a Shinra scientist, and turned into a monster. He sleeps beneath the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim in penance for his sins of failing to stop the Jenova Project, but joins the party upon learning they might run into Professor Hojo whom he deems culpable for everything. Yuffie is a girl from Wutai Village, a town that fought Shinra dominance during the Wutai War, but has since capitulated. She dreams of restoring her homeland's pride, and joins the party to achieve that.
The party's pursuit of Sephiroth leads them to discover several things. Sephiroth's plan is to use the Black Materia, a Materia so powerful the Cetra hid it away that contains the spell Meteor, the ultimate Black Magic that summons a meteorite to crash into the Planet. Sephiroth's plan is to create a wound in the Planet so large the Lifestream will be sent en mass to heal it where Sephiroth would intercept it and take control of the world.
Sephiroth is followed by a group of black-robed fanatics, the Sephiroth Clones, all bearing a tattoo somewhere on their bodies placed by Professor Hojo. Despite called "clones" they are not true clones however, but normal people Hojo had injected with Jenova's cells.
AerisDate
Cloud on a date with Aeris.
Cloud's party grabs the Keystone required to open the Temple of the Ancients from Dio, Gold Saucer's owner. During their stay at the amusement park Cloud goes on a date with a fellow party member and Cait Sith steals the Keystone and hands it over to Tseng, the leader of the Turks, revealing himself a Shinra spy sent to infiltrate Cloud's group. Cait Sith refuses to reveal his true identity and blackmails the others to take him along.
Tseng and his fellow Turk Elena use the Keystone to access the Temple of the Ancients, but cannot decipher its murals. As Elena departs to report to Shinra, Sephiroth attacks Tseng. Cloud and his party find a wounded Tseng as they arrive at the temple, and regain the Keystone and use it to get deeper into the maze. It turns out the temple itself is the Black Materia, and to make into a usable form, somebody must be left inside while the temple shrinks. Cait Sith volunteers, his body being a robot, and he is destroyed once the temple turns into a Materia sphere.
Cloud takes the Black Materia, but Sephiroth arrives and bends Cloud under his control. Cloud hands the Materia over to Sephiroth and attacks Aeris, and is knocked out by the other party members. Another Cait Sith appears to replace the first, and Aeris leaves the party to find a way to save the world from Meteor now that Sephiroth has acquired the Black Materia.
Aeris travels to the Forgotten Capital, the lost city of the Cetra. Cloud is troubled Sephiroth was able to control him, but resolves to continue his journey as Tifa and Barret encourage him to go on. The party chases after Aeris and Sephiroth and when they find her praying on an altar at the Forgotten Capital Cloud is almost bought to kill her by Sephiroth's control, only being snapped out of his thrall by the intervention of his comrades.
AerithDeath1
Cloud mourns for Aeris while Sephiroth gloats.
Sephiroth murders Aeris by impaling her with the Masamune. Cloud is enraged, but Sephiroth taunts Cloud, telling him he should not act as though he has feelings. Floating up into the sky, the "Sephiroth" turns out to be Jenova; the person the party hunted and followed since the beginning was Jenova—escaped from the tank in the Shinra Headquarters—taking Sephiroth's form. After a battle with a piece of Jenova, the party pays their respects to the departed Aeris as Cloud lays her deceased body to rest in the waters of the Forgotten Capital. Cloud decides to continue on the journey to complete his revenge against Sephiroth even knowing he may lose control of himself again.
In Icicle Inn the party finds recordings that detail Aeris's birth and Jenova's true nature, as that is where Aeris was born to Gast Faremis and Ifalna. Gast was the scientist who had led Shinra's Jenova Project who had departed the company upon finding a true Cetra, Ifalna, the last survivor. Gast had helped Ifalna escape Shinra and the two had settled in the remote Icicle Inn where Gast had interviewed her on her knowledge on Jenova and the guardians of the planet, Weapons.
Ifalna had told Gast Jenova, which Gast had mistaken as a Cetra, was in fact the "Calamity from the Skies" responsible for the Cetra's dwindled numbers, as Jenova is a shapeshifting extraterrestrial organism that had arrived on a meteorite 2000 years ago, creating the large crater to the Planet's north pole. The creature had been sealed away by the last surviving Cetra, and it was from this geological stratum that Gast and his researchers had excavated its body 2000 years later. When Hojo had discovered Gast and Ifalna's hideout he had killed Gast and taken Ifalna and baby Aeris captive. The two had later escaped into the Midgar slums, but Ifalna had perished during the escape and Aeris had been adopted by a slum dweller named Elmyra Gainsborough.
Sephiroth's Resting Place
North Crater.
The party follows Sephiroth to the North Crater that had been created by Jenova's fall two thousand years ago. They are joined by Rufus and his gang, arriving on the airship Highwind, and a horde of Sephiroth Clones, all of whom Sephiroth slays. After catching up to "Sephiroth" he transforms into Jenova∙DEATH, and after defeating it the party reclaims the Black Materia. Cloud explains to the others that what they had been pursuing was not the true Sephiroth, but can feel he is nearby. Cloud and Tifa go alone, and Cloud hands the Black Materia to a party member remaining behind to prevent himself from being tricked into giving it to Sephiroth again.
Cloud and Tifa stumble upon an illusion of the events that took place in Nibelheim five years ago and Sephiroth shows Cloud was never there, his role taken by a man called Zack. Tifa cannot refute Sephiroth's claims, and Cloud begins to believe they are true. Sephiroth claims Cloud is but a facsimile created by Hojo, a puppet with false memories posing as a boy "Cloud" Tifa knows from her childhood. Sephiroth creates another illusion to trick the party member holding the Black Materia to come to Cloud, who takes the Materia and explains to his friends he is a mere pawn for Sephiroth, yet another Sephiroth Clone. Hojo, who has accompanied Rufus to the crater, is at first interested in Cloud, but upon discovering Cloud doesn't have a numbered tattoo, discards him as a failure, annoyed a "failed experiment" is the only one to have made it to the "Reunion" with the true Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's true body emerges from a Materia cocoon, and Cloud hands him the Black Materia. Sephiroth summons the Meteor, which awakens the planet's guardians, the Weapons, giant monsters of immense destructive power. As the crater floor crumbles Cloud and Sephiroth's cocoon fall into the Lifestream and the party escapes with Shinra on their airship. Tifa is knocked unconscious and Barret is caught as he tries to take her away, both taken to Junon while the rest of AVALANCHE escapes on their own.
MeteorfallEdit
Meteor FFVII
Meteor looms over the Planet.
While unconscious Tifa hallucinates chasing Cloud who disappears into darkness, and recalls how she met him on the Sector 7 slums train station some time before he was hired into AVALANCHE. Cloud had been acting strange and claimed it had been five years since they'd last seen. Although Tifa knew it to be longer than that, she had never confronted him, instead asking him to join AVALANCHE so she would have more time to decide what to do and to keep an eye on him and his strange behavior.
Tifa awakes in Junon seven days later and finds a world in chaos: a meteorite looms over the sky, a sign of the impending end of the world. Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier preventing either Shinra or the Weapons from attacking his true body, and the creatures have taken to attacking Shinra's sites of power instead. Rufus, trying to show Shinra is still in control, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair on live broadcast television. Before the execution can go through, Sapphire Weapon attacks Junon, and Shinra kills it with a direct shot to the face with the Mako Cannon. The other party members, led by Cait Sith, sneak in during the attack to rescue Tifa and Barret, and steal the Highwind.
The party finds Cloud suffering severe Mako poisoning in the town of Mideel, where he had washed in by the currents of the Lifestream, an ethereal substance that streams beneath the surface of the planet that is its life energy. Tifa stays behind to watch over him, as she is adamant Sephiroth's story of Cloud being Hojo's creation with false memories is untrue, and wants to help him regain his true self. Cid leads the party to claim Shinra's Huge Materia, which Shinra schemes to load onto Cid's rocket and launch directly at the meteorite. Cid doesn't want Shinra to get their hands on the Huge Materia, and wants them for their own use to fight Sephiroth.
The Ultimate Weapon crashes in Mideel. The town is destroyed by an earthquake as the Lifestream swallows it and Cloud and Tifa fall in. Being submerged in the Lifestream allows Tifa to travel inside Cloud's Subconscious and sort through his true memories and secret desires, such as joining SOLDIER in part to gain Tifa's attention. She confirms Cloud is the genuine article, although not the person he had made himself believe he was.
Cloud remembers zack
Cloud recalls the true past.
Cloud had never made it into SOLDIER and had become a lowly Shinra infantryman instead. Embarrassed by his failure, he had not told anyone from his hometown. When he had been assigned a mission in Nibelheim to accompany the SOLDIER members Zack and Sephiroth, Cloud had concealed his identity by always wearing his helmet, and this is why Tifa had not realized Cloud was there at the time. After Sephiroth had learned Shinra had created him from Jenova, he had gone insane and torched the town. Sephiroth had departed for the Mako Reactor to save his "mother", as Jenova was being contained there. Zack had confronted Sephiroth at the reactor, but lost. Cloud had arrived soon after seeking revenge, and a weakened Zack had given Cloud his Buster Sword to kill Sephiroth with. Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Lifestream below the reactor, but had suffered great wounds in the affair and fallen unconscious.
After Hojo had arrived to assess the situation, he had taken Zack and Cloud, as well as the other survivors from the village, to be his test subjects to turn them into Sephiroth Clones by injecting them with Jenova cells. While the villagers had been turned into clones, Zack and Cloud had not reacted as desired, and were deemed failures to be contained in the Shinra Manor. Cloud's mind had been shattered by the trauma of the events and as a result of Hojo's experimentation, and he had merged his ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in his recollections.
After Cloud had hurled Sephiroth into the Mako pit below the reactor, Sephiroth's body had dissolved into the Lifestream, but his consciousness had been strong enough to remain intact. Sephiroth had thus learned the wisdom of the Cetra from the Lifestream, and begun to construct a new body for himself inside a Materia cocoon at the North Crater. He had mentally taken over the remains of Jenova at the Shinra Headquarters, morphed it into his image, and used it to bring the Black Materia to his true body to summon Meteor.
As Cloud and Tifa are rescued from the Lifestream the restored Cloud returns to lead the party, revealing to the others he is not an ex-SOLDIER, as he had not been mentally strong enough to qualify. If he returns to the Nibelheim Mansion, Cloud recalls how he and Zack had escaped. After being held captive for many years in the Shinra Manor, Zack had broken free, and taken Cloud along as they had escaped the restored Nibelheim, giving Cloud an old SOLDIER First Class uniform to wear.
FFVIIZackLastStand1
Cloud and Zack's body on the precipice overlooking Midgar.
Shinra had caught up with the pair on a precipice overlooking the Midgar Wasteland and Zack had been gunned down, but the soldiers had ignored the catatonic Cloud and left him for dead. Cloud had crawled over to Zack's body and taken his Buster Sword, then made his way to Midgar alone where he had wandered aimlessly before being discovered by Tifa at the Sector 7 slums train station. At the sight of her Cloud had snapped out of his stupor and made up a new persona as a former SOLDIER First Class to gain a sense of identity and to cover up the gaps in his memory.
Upon hearing the party has been hunting the Huge Materia Cloud joins the fray. When they storm the launch of Cid's rocket they end up trapped inside as it takes off. Cid discovers he had been wrong in admonishing his assistant Shera for ruining his dreams of space flight, and the party returns to the planet on an escape pod. The rocket fails to destroy the meteorite, and as the party gazes at their world from outer space they reaffirm their conviction to protect it, deciding to uncover what Aeris's plan to stop the Meteor had been.
With help of the Cosmo Canyon elder Bugenhagen, the party discovers the reason Aeris had gone off alone to the Forgotten Capital. Aeris had planned to summon Holy, the ultimate White Magic and a counter to Meteor, using the White Materia that had been passed down in the Cetra lineage and she, as the last Cetra, had possessed it. Just before her death her prayer had reached the Planet, but Sephiroth is holding back the power of Holy within the Planet Core.
DiamondWeapon-ffvii-fmv-attack
Diamond Weapon fires at Midgar.
Diamond Weapon rises out of the sea and charges towards Midgar. Rufus and the Shinra Executives have moved the Mako Cannon to Midgar and renamed it Sister Ray to prepare for an offensive against Sephiroth. The cannon destroys the Weapon, and the blast reaches North Crater, breaking Sephiroth's shield. Before dying the Weapon fires out energy blasts into the Shinra Building, seemingly killing Rufus and creating a power vacuum at the top of his organization. Midgar falls into chaos. Cait Sith pleads for Cloud and his friends' help, and ends up revealing his true identity as that of Reeve Tuesti, a Shinra executive in charge of Midgar.
Cloud's party infiltrates the city to fight Hojo who has taken command of the Sister Ray and is trying to re-launch it despite it would obliterate Midgar. They fight their way through the remaining forces of Shinra to reach Hojo who reveals he wishes to give his son a boost from the Sister Ray's power; the party learns Hojo is Sephiroth's father and thus directly responsible for the crisis facing the Planet. Despite the power he has gained by injecting himself with Jenova cells, Hojo is defeated.
With only a week until Meteorfall Cloud asks everyone to come up with their own reason and resolve to keep on fighting, beyond the mere reason of fighting for the planet; should they find one, they may return for the last battle. Cloud and Tifa have nowhere to go and spend the night together under the stars. The next morning the others return and Cloud thanks them. Reminded of Aeris's hope and smile even in the face of death, the party is driven to ensure her deeds aren't wasted.
The party ventures to the depths of the Northern Cave, and in the Planet Core finds Sephiroth, blocking Holy from being released. The team triumphs over Bizarro∙Sephiroth, and then Safer∙Sephiroth, a half-human, half-divine form befitting Sephiroth's vision of becoming a god. Despite Sephiroth's immense power, he is defeated.
Meteor-FFVII
The fall of Meteor.
When party begins to depart Cloud collapses, his spirit being torn from him to mentally defeat Sephiroth within the Lifestream, freeing Cloud of the chains to his enemy. The victory comes too late, and when Holy is released Meteor has fallen too far for Holy to unleash its full power. Midgar is destroyed in the struggle between Meteor and Holy, but Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate and push Meteor far enough away from the planet for Holy to destroy it.
Five hundred years later Red XIII and two pups arrive on a precipice over the overgrown ruins of Midgar with children's laughter ringing in the background.
ThemesEdit
The game incorporates allusions to a variety of religious and philosophical systems, reflected in character names like Sephiroth (drawn from the Kabbalah) and Heidegger (likely a reference to German philosopher Martin Heidegger), and place names such as Midgar and Nibelheim (both from Norse mythology), as well as numerous references in monster names, such as the Midgar Zolom, a reference to the Midgardsorm (also from Norse mythology). Additionally, several references are made to previous Final Fantasy titles, including several character names such as Cid and Biggs and Wedge, and the repetition of soundtrack motifs, such as the "Chocobo Theme."
Fort Condor FFVII Concept Art
Juxtaposition of nature vs. technology portrayed at Fort Condor where a condor has made the Mako Reactor its nest.
Environmentalism and crony capitalism are major themes in Final Fantasy VII, with Shinra Electric Power Company having taken over the world after discovering Mako energy and becoming the world's only major electricity provider. Whether humanity is truly an important part of the ecosystem is contemplated when Bugenhagen reveals to the party the planet's Ultimate White Magic spell can wipe out anything the planet deems a danger, putting mankind's future in peril seeing as they have been exploiting the world's nature reserves wantonly.
The party decides to fight for the planet regardless, and in the end humanity's true fate was left ambiguous, with only the non-human member of the party, Red XIII, appearing in the epilogue, although future installments to the Compilation have revealed mankind did survive. The interconnectedness of all life is part of the Lifestream study explored in Cosmo Canyon, and the party realizes this when they gaze down on the planet from space, cognizant for the first time how small their world is in the vastness of the universe, reaffirming their conviction to protect it. The planet itself gains anthropomorphic properties with the Cetra being able to enter in communion with it in a ritual known as "talking to the planet," and in Cosmo Canyon the party can listen to the "cry of the planet" in suffering under exploitation from Mako harvest.
In the end the forces of nature prove greater, as despite all their power Shinra crumbles when faced with the planet's true might when the Meteor is summoned and the Weapons awaken. The collective power of all life is required to save the planet from Meteor, when Aeris, perhaps representing humanity itself, summons the Lifestream to push back the Meteor allowing Holy to destroy it.