Plot & Characters

Still a work in progress, esp. regarding the characters, but I'd figure I'd get it out first and add to it.

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Overview
Final Fantasy VII, arguably the finest game ever made, is the first FF game made for Sony as well as the first made for a 5th Generation Console.

FFVII's story revolves around a ragtag group of rebels determined to take down the nefarious Shinra corporation , an ecologically nightmarish organization hellbent on extracting Mako - the Planet's life-force - for personal gain (profit?).

This small insurgency, Avalanche, soon finds a more dangerous foe in Sephiroth, a being neither man nor god, but something in between.

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Plot


Seven begins in media res on a future-train in a smoke-choked dystopian megacity. There’s no expository prelude about crystals and lost harmony. This game throws you right in the action. The player quickly learns that they're playing as two members of a group of rebels (Cloud & Barret) in the process of an terrorist raid on one of Shinra’s Mako reactors.

This is a great opening, which immediately establishes the atmosphere of Midgar - a mix of blade-runnerish cyber-noir & steam punk. Midgar is huge and richly detailed, a city which seems a world unto itself. In fact, on my first play-through, I assumed that the whole game would take place within the metropolis and nearly collapsed in awe when I first realized there was a whole goddamn planet.



Anyway, the first raid goes swimmingly and the crew celebrates at the Avalanche hideout and there’s that intimate sense of camradarie that can only exist among the members of a outgunned resistance force hiding from the enemy.

But there’s more reactors to eff up and on the very next raid Cloud is injured and falls into the city’s slums. He awakens in a bed of flowers in an abandoned Cathedral where he meets Aerith, a flower-girl chastely clad in a long dress. Aerith is on the run from the Turks (a gang of blue-suited, spike-haired cool-as-f*** mercenaries working for shinra) so Cloud decides to help her out.



But after he helps her for a little while, Shinra destroys all of sector 7 because that’s where Avalanche is hiding out. (Midgar is shaped like a circle, divided radially into different districts called ‘sectors’). And despite Cloud’s bodyguard abilities and huge sword Shinra's agents capture Aerith.

(President Shinra wants Aerith because she is a descendant of the Cetra, an ancient race. He believes she can lead him to the promised land, and this detail sort of inaugurates the weird Mystic Jewish undercurrent running throughout the game c.f. the meaning behind the name Sephiroth )

The surviving members of Avalanche (Cloud, Tifa, Barret) sneak into Shinra in an attempt to rescue the saintly flower-seller, an attempt which ultimately succeeds. Here, too, they rescue Red XII. Here, too, they first encounter Sephiroth who is in the act killing Shinra’s president. Shinra's son, Rufus, then takes over the corporation.

Avalanche leaves Midgar and travels the world pursuing Sephiroth, along the way picking up Vincent, Yuffie, and Cait Sith. They learn that Sephiroth has escaped with Jenova, an interstellar hyperintelligent creature that crashed to earth long ago as part of a comet. Turns out that Sep was the result of an attempt to revive the Cetra by mixing the genes of Jenova with a human (Jenova, btw, is an anglicized spelling of the Hebrew name for God, again continuing the weird kabbalistic motif)


Avalance also learn that Sephiroth is planning on effing with the planet big time via a spell called ‘meteor’ which will cause so much damage that the planet (Gaia) will be forced to concentrate its lifestream at the site of the injury. The idea is that Sephiroth will be able to merge with the lifestream and become immortal.

Suffice it to say that this really can’t be allowed.

The members of Avalanche visit an ancient Cetra city where they run into Sephiroth. In what is indisputably the most emotional video game moment of all time, Aerith is killed by Sep.


By this point, Sephiroth has so sufficiently screwed with Cloud’s identity that he - Cloud - is beginning to suspect that he is nothing but the product, like Sep, of genetic experiments conducted by Shinra.

Anyway, they all go to stop Sephiroth from doing his meteor bit at Northern crater, but he does it anyway which causes ancient super-powerful robots called WEAPONS to arise in the planets defense. Plus it knocks Cloud into the lifestream whereupon he begins a DMT-like hallucination of his fragmented past. He learns, with Tifa’s help (Tifa falls into the lifestream a bit later) that he is not really an ex-soldier.

In fact, long ago while defending the quaint hamlet of Niffleheim from an enraged Sephiroth Cloud had also fallen into lifestream.

Following the incident, Shinra captured Zach and Cloud as part of a cover-up and induced comatose states while injecting them with Jenvoa cells and mako. Zach wakes up somehow and wakes up Cloud and the two escape. ‘Cept zach dies in the escape and all the jenova cells mess with Cloud until he builds a false identity-construct & thinks he’s Zach.

& so anyway Cloud knows what’s going on now and by the time he and Tifa have finished repairing his fragile, mako-mashed psyche, Aerith’s ghost has cast Holy to counterattack Sephiroth’s meteor. Holy helped at first but isn’t helping so much now. Avalanche knows they have to stop Sep but first they gotta take down all the WEAPONz. Which they do, learning along the way that Sep's dad, an evil professor named Hojo, is now trying to help him establish dominion over the lifestream. Avalanche heads to the planet's core for the final showdown.

500 years after Avalache's victory Red XIII, runs with his beautiful cat children through a canyon.



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Characters

Cloud

The amnesiac hero of FF7, Cloud is a brooding, taciturn, young man on a mission to save the world and discover who he is. He has piercing blue eyes and a giant buster sword.
Barret Wallace

The leader of Avalanche and a borderline Mr T. doppelganger, Barrett is a strong-willed irascible freedom fighter.However, his rough exterior conceals a secret warmth, for Barret is the adopted father of a young girl named Marlene whom he treats with unparalleled tenderness.

He’s got a gun-hand.


Tifa Lockheart

A bartender with a heart of gold, Tifa is Cloud's childhood friend. Both were present at the burning of Niffelheim and Tifa holds the key to unlocking Cloud's clouded past. She fights with her fists, utilizing brass knuckles and the like.

Aerith Gainsborough

The flower girl that stole the hearts of an entire generation. Aerith is a staff-wielding, pink-bedecked descendant of the Cetra, an extinct and ancient race. Because of her mysterious ancestry she is pursued by Shinra for research purposes.


Red XIII

Red is the member of a quasi-shamanistic-tribal-cat-species. He was captured by Shinra whose research team hoped to breed him with aerith in order to preserve what they believed to be two endangered species. Of course this would actually be equivalent to killing out both the tribal-cats and the cetra for the sake of a monstrous miserable new species, but that's just another paradox linked to the ever-paradoxical Red.


Cait Sith

Named after a mythological creature of Celtic Legend, Cait Sith is first encountered at the Golden Saucer, a Vegas-ish pleasure dome. He's a little cat typea guy that rides a mechanical moogle.


Yuffie Kisaragi

An optional (oriental) character, Yuffie is a materia thief prone to motion sickness. She's from Wutai.


Vincent Valentine

A brooding & mysterious (and optional) fellow who wields a three-barreled revolver.

Cid Highwind

An airplane pilot (naturally) Cid, is a ill-tempered cigarette-smoking, foul-mouthed member of Shinra's space program.[center][left]

BEST POST OF ALL TIME, EDIT AS YOU WILL THIS IS GOOD STUFF SO FAR :-)
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