Month: December 2008

Final Fantasy VII
North American cover art, featuring the game's protagonist, Cloud Strife
Developer(s)	Square
Publisher(s)	PlayStation JP: Square WW: Sony Computer Entertainment Windows Eidos Interactive Later releases Square Enix
Director(s)	Yoshinori Kitase
Producer(s)	Hironobu Sakaguchi
Programmer(s)	Ken Narita
Artist(s)	Yusuke Naora Tetsuya Nomura
Writer(s)	Yoshinori Kitase Kazushige Nojima
Composer(s)	Nobuo Uematsu
Series	Final Fantasy
Platform(s)	PlayStation Windows iOS PlayStation 4 Android Nintendo Switch Xbox One
Release	January 31, 1997 PlayStation JP: January 31, 1997 NA: September 7, 1997 PAL: November 17, 1997 International JP: October 2, 1997 Windows NA/PAL: June 25, 1998 Remaster NA/PAL: August 14, 2012 JP: May 16, 2013 WW: July 4, 2013 (Steam) WW: August 13, 2020 (Microsoft Store) iOS WW: August 19, 2015 PlayStation 4 WW: December 5, 2015 Android WW: July 7, 2016 Switch, Xbox One WW: March 26, 2019
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

Final Fantasy VII^[a] is a 1997 role-playing video game developed by Square for the PlayStation console and the seventh main installment in the Final Fantasy series. Square published the game in Japan, and it was released in other regions by Sony Computer Entertainment, becoming the first game in the main series to have a PAL release. The game's story follows Cloud Strife, a mercenary who joins an eco-terrorist organization to stop a world-controlling megacorporation from using the planet's life essence as an energy source. Ensuing events send Cloud and his allies in pursuit of Sephiroth, a superhuman who seeks to wound the planet and harness its healing power in order to be reborn as a god. Throughout their journey, Cloud bonds with his party members, including Aerith Gainsborough, who holds the secret to saving their world.

Development began in 1994, originally for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. After delays and technical difficulties from experimenting with several platforms, most notably the Nintendo 64, Square moved production to the PlayStation, largely due to the advantages of the CD-ROM format. Veteran Final Fantasy staff returned, including series creator and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, director Yoshinori Kitase, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. The title was the first in the series to use full motion video and 3D computer graphics, featuring 3D character models superimposed over 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. Although the gameplay remained mostly unchanged from previous entries, Final Fantasy VII introduced more widespread science fiction elements and a more realistic presentation. The combined development and marketing budget amounted to approximately US$80 million.

Final Fantasy VII received widespread commercial and critical success and remains widely regarded as a landmark title, and it is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential video games ever made. The title won numerous Game of the Year awards and was acknowledged for boosting the sales of the PlayStation and popularizing Japanese role-playing games worldwide. Critics praised its graphics, gameplay, music, and story, although some criticism was directed towards the original English localization. Its success has led to enhanced ports on various platforms, a multimedia subseries called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and a high definition remake trilogy currently comprising Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024).

Gameplay[edit]

The gameplay of Final Fantasy VII is similar to earlier Final Fantasy titles and Japanese role-playing games.^[1] The game features three modes of play: the world map, the field, and the battle screen.^{[2][3]: 15, 20} At its grandest scale, players explore the world of Final Fantasy VII on a 3D world map.^[4] The world map contains representations of areas for the player to enter, including towns, environments, and ruins.^[5] Natural barriers—such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water—block access by foot to some areas; as the game progresses, the player receives vehicles that help traverse these obstacles.^[3]: 44 Chocobos can be found in certain spots on the map, and if caught, can be ridden to areas inaccessible on foot or by vehicle.^[3]: 46 In field mode, the player navigates fully scaled versions of the areas represented on the world map.^[4] VII marks the first time in the series that the mode is represented in a three-dimensional space. In this mode, the player can explore the environment, talk with characters, advance the story, and initiate event games.^[3]: 15 Event games are short minigames that use special control functions and are often tied to the story.^[3]: 18 While in field mode, the player can also find shops and inns. Shops allow the player to buy and sell items that can aid Cloud and his party, such as weapons, armor, and accessories. Inns restore the hit points and mana points of characters who rest at them and cure abnormalities contracted during battles.^[3]: 17

At random intervals on the world map and in field mode, and at specific moments in the story, the game will enter the battle screen, which places the player characters on one side and the enemies on the other. It employs an "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system, in which the characters exchange moves until one side is defeated.^[1][2] The damage or healing dealt by either side is quantified on screen. Characters have several statistics that determine their effectiveness in battle; for example, hit points determine how much damage they can take, and magic determines how much damage they can inflict with spells. Each character on the screen has a time gauge; when a character's gauge is full, the player can input a command for them. The commands change as the game progresses, and are dependent on the characters in the player's party and their equipment. Commands include attacking with a weapon, casting magic, using items, summoning monsters, and other actions that either damage the enemy or aid the player characters. Final Fantasy VII also features powerful, character-specific commands called Limit Breaks, which can be used only after a special gauge is charged by taking enemy attacks. After being attacked, characters can be afflicted by one or more abnormal "statuses", such as poison or paralysis. These statuses and their adverse effects can be removed by special items or abilities or by resting at an inn. Once all enemies are defeated, the battle ends and the player is rewarded with money, items, and experience points. If the player is defeated, it is game over and the game must be loaded to the last save point.^{[3]: 20–27}

When not in battle, the player can use the menu screen, where they can review each character's status and statistics, use items and abilities, change equipment, save the game when on the world map or at a save point, and manage orbs called Materia. Materia are the main method of customizing characters in Final Fantasy VII, and can be added to equipment to provide characters with new magic spells, monsters to summon, commands, statistical upgrades, and other benefits.^[6] Materia level up through their own experience point system and can be combined to create different effects.^{[3]: 30–42}

Synopsis[edit]

Setting and characters[edit]

Final Fantasy VII takes place on a world referred to in-game as the "Planet" and retroactively named "Gaia".^[7][8] The planet's lifeforce, called the Lifestream, is a flow of spiritual energy that gives life to everything on the Planet; its processed form is known as "Mako".^[9] On a societal and technological level, the game has been defined as an industrial or post-industrial science fiction setting.^[10] During Final Fantasy VII, the Shinra Electric Power Company, a world-dominating megacorporation headquartered in the city of Midgar, is draining the Planet's Lifestream for energy, weakening the Planet and threatening its existence and all life.^[11] Significant factions within the game include AVALANCHE, an eco-terrorist group seeking Shinra's downfall so the Planet can recover;^[8] the Turks, a covert branch of Shinra's security forces;^[12] SOLDIER, an elite Shinra fighting force created by enhancing humans with Mako;^[13] and the Cetra, a near-extinct human tribe which maintains a strong connection to the Planet and the Lifestream.^[14]

The main protagonist is Cloud Strife, an aloof mercenary who claims to be a former 1st Class SOLDIER. Early on, he works with two members of AVALANCHE: Barret Wallace, its brazen but fatherly leader; and Tifa Lockhart, a shy yet nurturing martial artist and his childhood friend. During their journey, they meet Aerith Gainsborough, a carefree flower merchant and one of the last surviving Cetra;^[14][15] Red XIII, an intelligent quadruped from a tribe that protects the planet;^[16] Cait Sith, a fortune-telling robotic cat controlled by repentant Shinra staff member Reeve;^[3][17] and Cid Highwind, a pilot whose dream of being the first human in outer space was unrealized.^[18] The group can also recruit Yuffie Kisaragi, a young ninja and skilled Materia thief; and Vincent Valentine, a former Turk and victim of Shinra's experiments.^[19] The game's main antagonists are Rufus Shinra, the son of President Shinra and the later leader of the Shinra Corporation;^[20] Sephiroth, a former SOLDIER who reappears several years after being presumed dead;^[3] and Jenova, a hostile extraterrestrial life-form who the Cetra imprisoned 2,000 years ago and who Sephiroth was created from.^[21][22][23] A key character in Cloud's backstory is Zack Fair, a member of SOLDIER and Aerith's first love.^[24]

Plot[edit]

AVALANCHE destroys a Shinra Mako reactor in Midgar, but an attack on another reactor goes wrong and Cloud falls into the city's slums. There, he meets Aerith and protects her from Shinra.^[25][26] Meanwhile, Shinra finds AVALANCHE's base of operations and intentionally collapses part of the upper city level in retaliation for the Mako reactor being destroyed, killing many AVALANCHE members and innocent bystanders as collateral damage.^[27] Aerith is also captured since Shinra believes that as a Cetra, she can potentially reveal the "Promised Land", which they believe is overflowing with Lifestream energy they can exploit.^[28][29] Cloud, Barret, and Tifa rescue Aerith, and during their escape from Midgar, discover that Sephiroth murdered President Shinra despite being presumed dead five years earlier.^[30] The party pursues Sephiroth across the Planet, with now-President Rufus on their trail; they are soon joined by the rest of the playable characters.

At a Cetra temple, Sephiroth reveals he intends to use a powerful magical artifact known as "Black Materia" to cast the spell "Meteor", which would have a devastating impact on the Planet. Sephiroth claims he will absorb the Lifestream as it attempts to heal the wound caused by Meteor, and become a god-like being in the process.^[31] The party retrieves the Black Materia, but Sephiroth manipulates Cloud into surrendering it. Aerith departs alone to stop Sephiroth and follows him to an abandoned Cetra city. While Aerith prays to the Planet for help, Sephiroth attempts to force Cloud to kill her; after this fails, he kills her himself before fleeing, leaving the White Materia behind.^[32] The party then learns of Jenova, a hostile alien lifeform who landed on the Planet two thousand years prior to the game's events. Upon arrival on the Planet, Jenova began infecting the Cetra with a virus, and they were nearly wiped out. However, a small group managed to seal away Jenova in a tomb, which Shinra later unearthed. At Nibelheim, Jenova's cells were used in experiments which led to the creation of Sephiroth.^[21][32] Five years before the game's events, Sephiroth and Cloud visited Nibelheim, where Sephiroth learned of his origins and was driven insane as a result. He murdered the townspeople, and then vanished after Cloud confronted him.

At the Northern Crater, the party learns that the "Sephiroths" they have encountered are Jenova clones who the insane Shinra scientist Hojo created. Cloud confronts the real Sephiroth as he is killing his clones to reunite Jenova's cells, but is again manipulated into giving him the Black Materia. Sephiroth then taunts Cloud by showing another SOLDIER in his place in his memories of Nibelheim, suggesting that Cloud is a failed clone of Sephiroth.^[33] Sephiroth summons Meteor and seals the Crater as Cloud falls into the Lifestream and Rufus captures the party.

After escaping Shinra, the party discovers Cloud at an island hospital in a catatonic state from Mako poisoning, and Tifa decides to stay as his caretaker. When a planetary defense force called Weapon attacks the island, the two fall into the Lifestream,^[34] where Tifa helps Cloud reconstruct his memories. Cloud was a mere infantryman who was never accepted into SOLDIER; the SOLDIER in his memories was his friend Zack. At Nibelheim, Cloud ambushed and wounded Sephiroth after the latter's mental breakdown, but Jenova preserved Sephiroth's life. Hojo experimented on Cloud and Zack for four years, injecting them with Jenova's cells and Mako. They managed to escape, but Zack was killed in the process. The trauma of these events triggered an identity crisis in Cloud, and he constructed a false persona based around Zack's stories and his own fantasies.^[32][35] Cloud accepts his past and reunites with the party, who learn that Aerith's prayer to the Planet had been successful: the Planet had attempted to summon Holy to prevent Meteor's impact, but Sephiroth prevented it from having any effect.

Shinra fails to destroy Meteor, but manages to defeat a Weapon and puncture the Northern Crater, seemingly killing Rufus and several other personnel. After killing Hojo, who is revealed to be Sephiroth's biological father,^[21] the party descends to the Planet's core through the opening in the Northern Crater and defeats both Jenova and Sephiroth. The party escapes and Holy is summoned once again, destroying Meteor with help from the Lifestream.^[36] Five hundred years later, Red XIII is seen with two cubs looking out over the ruins of Midgar, which are now covered in greenery, showing that the planet has healed.

Development[edit]

Producer Hironobu Sakaguchi and director Yoshinori Kitase, who together helped create the story and gameplay concepts for Final Fantasy VII.

Initial concept talks for Final Fantasy VII began in 1994 at Square studio, following the completion of Final Fantasy VI. As with the previous installment, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi reduced his role to producer and granted others a more active role in development: these included Yoshinori Kitase, one of the directors of FFVI. The next installment was planned as a 2D game for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super NES). After creating an early 2D prototype of it, the team postponed development to help finish Chrono Trigger.^[37] Once Chrono Trigger was completed, the team resumed discussions for Final Fantasy VII in 1995.^[37][38]

The team discussed continuing the 2D strategy, which would have been the safe and immediate path just prior to the imminent industry shift toward 3D gaming; such a change would require radical new development models.^[37] The team decided to take the riskier option and make a 3D game on new generation hardware but had yet to choose between the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 or the CD-ROM-based PlayStation from Sony Computer Entertainment.^[37] The team also considered the Sega Saturn console and Microsoft Windows.^[39] Their decision was influenced by two factors: a highly successful tech demo based on Final Fantasy VI using the new Softimage 3D software, and the escalating price of cartridge-based games, which was limiting Square's audience.^[37][40][41] Tests were made for a Nintendo 64 version, which would use the planned 64DD peripheral despite the lack of 64DD development kits and the prototype device's changing hardware specifications. This version was discarded during early testing, as the 2000 polygons needed to render the Behemoth monster placed excessive strain on the Nintendo 64 hardware, causing a low frame rate.^[37] It would have required an estimated thirty 64DD discs to run Final Fantasy VII properly with the data compression methods of the day.^[42] Faced with both technical and economic issues on Nintendo's current hardware, and impressed by the increased storage capacity of CD-ROM when compared to the Nintendo 64 cartridge, Square shifted development of Final Fantasy VII, and all other planned projects, onto the PlayStation.^[37]

In contrast to the visuals and audio, the overall gameplay system remained mostly unchanged from Final Fantasy V and VI, but with an emphasis on player control.^[43] The initial decision was for battles to feature shifting camera angles. Battle arenas had a lower polygon count than field areas, which made creating distinctive features more difficult.^[40] The summon sequences benefited strongly from the switch to the cinematic style, as the team had struggled to portray their scale using 2D graphics.^[44] In his role as producer, Sakaguchi placed much of his effort into developing the battle system.^[24] He proposed the Materia system as a way to provide more character customization than previous Final Fantasy games: battles no longer revolved around characters with innate skills and roles in battle, as Materia could be reconfigured between battles.^[40] Artist Tetsuya Nomura also contributed to the gameplay; he designed the Limit Break system as an evolution of the Desperation Attacks used in Final Fantasy VI. The Limit Breaks served a purpose in gameplay while also evoking each character's personality in battle.^[24][40]

Square retained the passion-based game development approach from their earlier projects, but now had the resources and ambition to create the game they wanted. This was because they had extensive capital from their earlier commercial successes, which meant they could focus on quality and scale rather than obsessing over and working around their budget.^[37] Final Fantasy VII was at the time one of the most expensive video game projects ever, costing an estimated US$40 million, which adjusted for inflation came to $61 million in 2017.^[37][45][46] Development of the final version took a staff of between 100 and 150 people just over a year to complete. As video game development teams were usually only 20 people, the game had what was described as the largest development team of any game up to that point.^[37][44] The development team was split between both Square's Japanese offices and its new American office in Los Angeles; the American team worked primarily on city backgrounds.^[42]

Art design[edit]

The game's art director was Yusuke Naora, who had previously worked as a designer for Final Fantasy VI. With the switch into 3D, Naora realized that he needed to relearn drawing, as 3D visuals require a very different approach than 2D. With the massive scale and scope of the project, Naora was granted a team devoted entirely to the game's visual design. The department's duties included illustration, modeling of 3D characters, texturing, the creation of environments, visual effects, and animation.^[47] The Shinra logo, which incorporated a kanji symbol, was drawn by Naora personally.^[48] Promotional artwork, in addition to the logo artwork, was created by Yoshitaka Amano, an artist whose association with the series went back to its inception.^[49] While he had taken a prominent role in earlier entries, Amano was unable to do so for Final Fantasy VII, due to commitments at overseas exhibitions.^[8][49] His logo artwork was based on Meteor: when he saw images of Meteor, he was not sure how to turn it into suitable artwork. In the end, he created multiple variations of the image and asked staff to choose which they preferred.^[50] The green coloring represents the predominant lighting in Midgar and the color of the Lifestream, while the blue reflected the ecological themes present in the story. Its coloring directly influenced the general coloring of the game's environments.^[47]

Another prominent artist was Nomura. Having impressed Sakaguchi with his proposed ideas, which were handwritten and illustrated rather than simply typed on a PC, Nomura was brought on as main character designer.^[24] Nomura stated that when he was brought on, the main scenario had not been completed, but he "went along like, 'I guess first off you need a hero and a heroine', and from there drew the designs while thinking up details about the characters. After [he'd] done the hero and heroine, [he] carried on drawing by thinking what kind of characters would be interesting to have. When [he] handed over the designs [he'd] tell people the character details [he'd] thought up, or write them down on a separate sheet of paper".^[51] Something that could not be carried over from earlier titles was the chibi sprite art, as that would not fit with the new graphical direction. Naora, in his role as an assistant character designer and art director, helped adjust each character's appearance so the actions they performed were believable. When designing Cloud and Sephiroth, Nomura was influenced by his view of their rivalry mirroring the legendary animosity between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō, with Cloud and Sephiroth being Musashi and Kojirō respectively. Sephiroth's look was defined as "kakkoii", a Japanese term combining good looks with coolness.^[40] Several of Nomura's designs evolved substantially during development. Cloud's original design of slicked-back black hair with no spikes was intended to save polygons and contrast with Sephiroth's long, flowing silver hair. However, Nomura feared that such masculinity could prove unpopular with fans, so he redesigned Cloud to feature a shock of spiky, bright blond hair. Vincent's occupation changed from researcher to detective to chemist, and finally to a former Turk with a tragic past.^[8][24]

Scenario[edit]

Sakaguchi was responsible for writing the initial plot, which was quite different from the final version.^[52] In this draft for the planned SNES version, the game's setting was envisioned as New York City in 1999. Similar to the final story, the main characters were part of an organization trying to destroy Mako reactors, but they were pursued by a hot-blooded detective named Joe. The main characters would eventually blow up the city. An early version of the Lifestream concept was present at this stage.^[37][41][52] According to Sakaguchi, his mother had died while Final Fantasy III was being developed, and choosing life as a theme helped him cope with her passing in a rational and analytical manner.^[44] Square eventually used the New York setting in Parasite Eve (1998).^[41] While the planned concept was dropped, Final Fantasy VII still marked a drastic shift in setting from previous entries, dropping the Medieval fantasy elements in favor of a world that was "ambiguously futuristic".^[53]