Final Fantasy
Story
Background
Gaia, referred to as the Planet in the story, is the world of Final Fantasy VII. It is technologically advanced, with many of real-world modern inventions, such as cars, television, firearms, and cellphones. Their world is dominated by humans, who are the only major race other than a few nearly extinct species. The world is economically, militarily, and politically dominated by a powerful conglomerate called the Shinra Electric Power Company, which profits from the use of machines known as Mako Reactors.
The reactors siphon a special type of energy - called "Mako" - out of the Planet and convert it into electricity. One of the byproducts of the extraction and refinement of Mako energy is Materia, a concentrated form of Mako which allows the wielder to use its magical properties. President Shinra leads his eponymous organization, and is the world's de facto ruler. Shinra is involved with many horrible genetic experiments, which have created many of the monsters that roam the Planet.
Mako energy is drawn from the Lifestream, a flow of life-force beneath the Planet's surface. All life originates from the Lifestream, and returns to it upon death and the Lifestream is the sum of all the life that has ever and will ever walk upon the Planet. The process of extracting Mako energy drains the life of the Planet to generate electricity. This can be seen in the Shinra's capital city of Midgar, where the eight Mako Reactors have sucked out so much of the Planet's life-force the area is covered in perpetual darkness and no plants can grow.
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 where the land is fertile and where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, or the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. The Cetra were all but driven to extinction by the "Calamity From the Skies", the alien creature Jenova. All are lost except for one, Aeris Gainsborough, whom Shinra has been trying to capture for years.
AVALANCHE
Within the Midgar slums resides the rebel resistance group of eco-terrorists called AVALANCHE led by Barret Wallace, a former denizen of Corel, a town destroyed by Shinra. AVALANCHE hires 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 he shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause; by his own admission, Cloud is interested only in money. Other members include Cloud's childhood friend, Tifa Lockhart, whom Cloud made a promise to protect back before he left their shared hometown of Nibelheim to join SOLDIER, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
AVALANCHE's initial mission is to blow up the eight Mako Reactors that ring the city, without care to the human consequences. Cloud is separated from the rest of the group and meets Aeris Gainsborough. To counter AVALANCHE's attacks, Shinra drops the 'Plate' upon their base in Sector 7, killing Jessie, Biggs and Wedge. Shinra captures Aeris and takes her to their Headquarters.
Cloud and the remains of AVALANCHE storm the building to rescue her and team up with Red XIII during the raid, but end up captured themselves. They are saved by the surprise reappearance of the supposed dead legendary SOLDIER, Sephiroth, following the escape of a headless Jenova from her tank. President Shinra is killed in 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.
Chasing Sephiroth
At the first town the party comes to, Kalm, Cloud tells his tale of what happened five years ago, but his story is filled with gaps. Five years ago Cloud and Sephiroth were sent to Cloud's hometown of Nibelheim to investigate the local Mako Reactor where Sephiroth found Jenova, a creature Shinra mistook as an Ancient and whom had been called Sephiroth's mother.
Sephiroth looks deeper into his past and the Jenova Project from which he was born led by Professor Gast and the deranged Professor Hojo. What he finds drives him insane. Believing himself to be the last Ancient, Sephiroth takes revenge on humanity by burning Nibelheim to the ground. Lost in the fires are also Cloud's mother and Tifa's father. Cloud confronts Sephiroth, but his recollection fails before he can reach the end of the story.
After hearing a rumor that a man in a black cape traversed to the Mythril Mine, the party sets out. When they get to the mines' entrance, they see Sephiroth has impaled a Midgar Zolom on a tree. The party hurries through the mines and to Junon where they save a young girl and her dolphin from a sea monster, which allows the party to stay the night. When they wake up, they are surprised to find Rufus Shinra holding his crowning ceremony in Junon.
They figure they should get to the western continent to continue their search, so they must disguise as Shinra soldiers and board the cargo ship. Sephiroth also stows away onboard the ship and kills almost every member on board. Cloud and his party locate Sephiroth as he materializes out of the floor but strangely enough Sephiroth doesn't seem to recognize Cloud. Cloud attempts to get answers on Sephiroth's goal, but Sephiroth leaves and has Jenova∙BIRTH battle them.
The party chases after Sephiroth across the Planet, traveling to many towns, meeting many characters, and getting into different adventures. They do not search alone, as Rufus Shinra has sent out Shinra's full might to take Sephiroth in, including the Turks, a group of Shinra special operatives. The party fights the Turks several times and in Gold Saucer they meet Cait Sith, a fortune teller robot secretly controlled by Reeve Tuesti, a Shinra Executive actually interested in doing good. At Rocket Town, Cid Highwind, an aeronautical engineer whose dreams of going into space had been dashed by Shinra's lack of funding, joins the party.
Vincent is a former Turk who was betrayed by his love, Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's biological mother, 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. Yuffie is a girl from Wutai, a town that fought against Shinra dominance during the Wutai War, but has since submitted. 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. The Black Materia contains the spell Meteor, the ultimate Black Magic. It can summon a meteor to crash into the Planet and Sephiroth's plan is to create a wound in the Planet so large the Lifestream will need to be sent in masses to heal it where Sephiroth would intercept it and take complete control of the world. Sephiroth is followed by a group of black-robed fanatics, the Sephiroth Clones.
The Clones gradually die out along their journey; none of them are able to reach Sephiroth. Cloud's party moves to grab the Keystone required to open the Temple of the Ancients held by Dio, the leader of Gold Saucer. During their stay at Gold Saucer, Cloud goes on a date with one of his fellow party members and after the date, Cait Sith steals the Keystone and hands it over to Shinra.
Inside the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth attacks the leader of the Turks, Tseng, seemingly to kill him. Cloud and his party find 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, and he is destroyed once the Temple turns into a Materia sphere. Cloud takes the Materia, but due to Sephiroth's control over him, Cloud hands him the Black Materia, and almost kills Aeris. As Cloud falls unconscious, another Cait Sith appears, exactly the same as the first. Aeris leaves the party to find an independent way to save the world from Meteor.
Aeris travels to the Forgotten Capital, the lost city of the Cetra, where she plans to summon Holy, the ultimate White Magic and a counter to Meteor. Cloud's party makes their way up to the ruin to chase after her and Sephiroth. When they arrive, Cloud is almost brought to kill Aeris by Sephiroth's control, only being snapped out of his thrall by the intervention of his comrades. Sephiroth murders Aeris by impaling her through the torso with the Masamune.
Cloud is enraged but Sephiroth only 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 for so long was actually Jenova under Sephiroth's control and taking his form. After a battle with a piece of Jenova, and the party paying their respects to the departed Aeris, Cloud lays Aeris's deceased body to rest in the waters of the Forgotten Capital. Cloud continues on the journey to complete his revenge against Sephiroth, even knowing that he may lose control of himself again.
The party continues to follow the Sephiroth/Jenova and reach the North Crater created by Jenova's fall two thousand years ago. They are joined by Rufus and his gang, flying on the Highwind. After defeating "Sephiroth", Cloud and Tifa go alone, and Cloud hands the Black Materia to one of the other party members to prevent himself from being tricked into giving it to Sephiroth again.
Cloud and Tifa find an illusion of the events that took place in Nibelheim five years ago. Sephiroth shows Cloud never having been in Nibelheim, his role in the story taken by a man called Zack. Tifa, though telling Cloud not to believe him, cannot refute Sephiroth's claims, and Cloud begins to believe they are true. Sephiroth says Cloud is not Cloud at all, but a facsimile created by Hojo, and a mere puppet. Around the same time, the party member Cloud handed the Black Materia to earlier experiences a mental distress message from Tifa requesting his aid. As soon as the party member departs to the crater to aid Cloud and Tifa, "Tifa" reveals "herself" to be Sephiroth chuckling that he not forget the Black Materia.
As Sephiroth gains full control over Cloud he forces him to hand the Black Materia over, after which Cloud apologizes to Tifa for what he has done and falls into the Lifestream. Sephiroth uses the Black Materia to summon the Meteor, which awakens the Planet's guardians, the Weapons, giant monsters of immense strength and destructive power. The party escapes on the Highwind and Tifa is knocked unconscious. Barret is caught as he tries to escape with the unconscious Tifa, and the both of them are taken to Junon while the rest of AVALANCHE escapes on their own.
Meteor Falls
Tifa awakes in Junon seven days later and finds a world in chaos; Meteor is visible in the sky as it moves towards the Planet, a sign of the impending end of the world. To stop attacks against him, Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier. Rufus, trying to show Shinra still has some control over the situation, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair. Just before the execution can go through, a Weapon attacks and after damaging fort Junon, Shinra kills the weapon 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. Though Cloud is lost, Tifa stays behind and watch over him. Cid Highwind becomes the party leader and leads the party to fight against Shinra's plan to stop Meteor. Shinra schemes to load the Huge Materia onto Cid's rocket and launch it directly at Meteor, but Cid doesn't want Shinra to get their hands on the Huge Materia, and want them for their own use to fight against Sephiroth, but Shinra's plan fails no matter what.
In Mideel, the Ultimate Weapon crashes out of the Lifestream right in the middle of the town. Mideel is destroyed while Cloud and Tifa are still in there and they fall into the Lifestream where Tifa travels inside Cloud's Subconscious and sorts through Cloud's true memories and secret desires, such as joining SOLDIER in part to gain Tifa's attention. She confirms Cloud is the genuine article, though his mind had been damaged due to a variety of reasons. Cloud's mind had shattered as a result of Hojo's experimentation and Zack's death, and he merged his own ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in all his recollections.
Cloud reveals he never was in SOLDIER, failing to be mentally strong enough to enter the organization, and instead became an ordinary Shinra guard. Due to Cloud's fear of seeming a failure to Tifa and his hometown, he hid under his helmet during his mission in Nibelheim with Zack and Sephiroth. Cloud defeated Sephiroth during the Nibelheim incident, overpowering and flinging him into the Lifestream, after which he collapsed on the floor and was later found by Professor Hojo and taken in for experiments. After these revelations, Cloud's psyche is restored and he returns as the leader of the party.
With help of the Cosmo Canyon elder Bugenhagen, the party uncovers the mystery behind Aeris's death. She summoned Holy, but Sephiroth is holding back the spell deep within the Planet. The Diamond Weapon rises out of the sea and begins its charge towards Midgar. Rufus and the Shinra Executives moved the Mako Cannon to Midgar and renamed it Sister Ray before the attack to prepare for an offensive against Sephiroth. The cannon is used to destroy the Weapon, and the blast continues to reach North Crater, breaking the shield. Just before the Weapon is killed, it fires out its energy blasts into the Shinra Building, seemingly killing Rufus and creating a power vacuum at the top of his organization. Midgar falls into chaos.
Cloud's party moves into the city to fight Hojo who has taken command of the Sister Ray. They fight their way through the Turks and the remaining forces of Shinra to reach Hojo who reveals he wishes to give his son a boost by giving the Sister Ray's power; the party is horrified to learn Hojo is Sephiroth's father, a fact even Sephiroth does not know, and thus Hojo is directly responsible for the crisis facing the Planet. Despite the power he has gained by injecting himself with Jenova cells, Hojo is defeated.
Following the attack, with only a week until Meteorfall, Cloud and his party rest and return home before the final battle against Sephiroth. Without any place to call home or anything else to fight for, Cloud and Tifa share the night alone together below the stars. The next morning everyone has returned and several of them poke fun at Cloud and Tifa's expense, much to Tifa's embarrassment.
The final battle against Sephiroth is fought deep inside the Northern Cave. Sephiroth transforms into Bizarro∙Sephiroth and then Safer∙Sephiroth, a half-human, half-divine form that shows Sephiroth's attempts to become a god. Despite Sephiroth's immense power, he is defeated. Cloud defeats a mental version of Sephiroth within the Lifestream, which frees Cloud of the mental 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 without drastic collateral damage. Midgar is destroyed by the struggle of Meteor and Holy, but before the Planet is lost Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate and forces Holy and Meteor far enough away from the Planet for Holy to destroy Meteor.
An epilogue 500 years later shows Red XIII and two pups over the overgrown ruins of Midgar with children's laughter ringing in the background.
Warrior (Fighter) — A specialist in heavy weapons and armor who can withstand tremendous amounts of punishment. Can become the Knight later in the game, who is able to use the most powerful weapons and some White Magic spells.
Monk (Black Belt) — A martial arts expert who is best left fighting empty-handed, but may also wield nunchaku, and the most basic of staves. Does tremendous amounts of damage in combat, but cannot wear heavy armor. Can become the Master later in the game. In the original Famicom/NES version a high level, barehanded Master who is unencumbered by armor, can do more damage in a single attack than any other character type; a party of four Masters can defeat the final boss monster in less than two full rounds. A rather weak class in the beginning, but you never have to buy much weapons/armor for him.
Thief — A high evasion/accuracy finesse fighter with very limited weapon and armor selection, but greater agility and luck (ability to escape from combat). However, the ability to flee is bugged in versions before the Origins release. Later in the game, the Thief can be upgraded to the Ninja class. Ninja can use almost every weapon and most armor, and can use many Black Magic spells.
White Mage — A specialist in White Magic. Not a good fighter, but can use hammers for physical attacks. Can be upgraded into a White Wizard, which allows the character to use the most powerful White Magic spells in the game.
Black Mage — A specialist in Black Magic and a very weak fighter. Becomes the Black Wizard later on. Black Wizard is the only character who can cast Flare (NUKE in the original North American localization), one of the two damaging spells that retain full effectiveness against Chaos (the White Wizard can cast Holy, the other spell, but it is less powerful than Flare).
Red Mage — A jack-of-all-trades character, able to use most but not all of both White and Black Magic, and possessing fighting abilities similar to but not quite as good as the Fighter. Becomes the Red Wizard later in the game.
Become a Fan
