Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII is the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series, released in 1997 by Square Co., Ltd., and continues to be one of the most popular games in the series. It was directed by Yoshinori Kitase, written by Kitase and Kazushige Nojima, and produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi. It was the first game of the Final Fantasy series to be developed for the PlayStation rather than a Nintendo system, and the first game in the series to be ported to Windows. Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy title with entirely 3D (polygonal) character models, although the majority of environments were two-dimensional pre-rendered maps (except the world map and battle screens, which were rendered in full 3D).

Moving more towards a cyber-punk setting as opposed to the steam-punk setting its predecessor had (as well as slightly more away from high-fantasy elements that were present in previous installments), Final Fantasy VII is the first incarnation of the series to have a modern/futuristic setting, although other games in the series prior to it made sparse uses of advanced technology here and there, such as traveling underground and to the moon in Final Fantasy IV, traveling underwater in Final Fantasy V, or utilizing steampower, coal, gunpowder, and Magitek in Final Fantasy VI.

Final Fantasy VII is one of the best-selling games of all time, with the highest sales (10.5 million copies) of any game in the Final Fantasy series, and the second highest sales for a game on the PlayStation platform. It received GameSpot's Editor's Choice, scoring a 9.5/10 and a 9.6/10 user score. Since its debut on the Sony PlayStation, Final Fantasy VII has been released on the PC and later the PlayStation Network. It is widely considered one of the most influential RPGs to-date.

Unlike Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI, which in North America were renamed II and III (II, III, and V were not yet released internationally at that time), Final Fantasy VII retained the number seven for its westernized release. The game has spawned an entire sub-series of sequels, prequels, and even "midquels" called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

Gameplay
Final Fantasy VII is a largely menu-driven role-playing game. Initially, the player is restricted to the city of Midgar, but as the game progresses, more and more of the world becomes accessible and the scripted adventure sequences gradually give way to greater freedom and opportunities to explore. At several points in the story, the game is interrupted by scripted dramatic sequences, some of which are lengthy.

During its turn-based battle sequences, the game uses the same Active Time Battle (ATB) system utilized in the three Final Fantasy games preceding it. Unlike previous games in the series, which traditionally allowed for a maximum of four to five party members to participate in battle, Final Fantasy VII allows for only three characters at any one time.

Final Fantasy VII's skill system utilizes Materia, magic orbs which can be placed in special slots on weapons and armor. Materia allows characters to access magic spells, special commands, and a variety of other abilities. Materia can be combined in a fixed number of ways, and strategic use of the Materia combinations allow the player to use various tactics suiting their personal style of play.

A feature introduced in Final Fantasy VI, the "desperation attack" reappears in Final Fantasy VII in a new, modified form now known as the Limit Break. Every playable character has a special "limit bar" which fills up proportionally to the damage received by the character in battle. When the limit bar is completely filled, the character has access to his or her Limit Break, a special ability which generally inflicts much more damage on an enemy than normal physical attacks; also, some Limit Breaks target all the enemies instead of just one and other Limit Breaks support the party such as healing HP or providing status buffs.

Final Fantasy VII popularized the inclusion of very difficult optional bosses not required to complete the game, but to offer reward and challenge the player. Later in the game, a series of strong monsters called Weapons appear; the player must confront several of them through the plot, but two of them - Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon - can only be encountered if the player goes out of their way. These two bosses were not included in the game's original Japanese version, but were later added to the European and American ports.

Characters


The main playable characters in Final Fantasy VII are:
 * Cloud Strife is the main protagonist who poses as a former member of SOLDIER now operating as a mercenary caught up in the actions of eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. Uncaring and cold at first, he begins to change, eventually caring about his friends and the fate of the Planet.
 * Barret Wallace, the leader of AVALANCHE, wields a gun on his right arm in place of his injured hand. Despite his brash and loud-mouthed personality he is a caring person and loves his daughter Marlene.
 * Tifa Lockhart, Cloud's childhood friend and member of AVALANCHE, runs the bar 7th Heaven in the Sector 7 slums, which serves as the group's hideout. Her sympathetic exterior hides fearsome fighting skills.
 * Aeris Gainsborough, a flower girl from Sector 5 and the last of the Cetra, was captured by Shinra at a young age but escaped with her mother Ifalna, who died, leaving Aeris orphaned. Aeris was found and raised by Elmyra Gainsborough.
 * Red XIII is a quadrupedal, flame red beast capable of speech. The party rescues him from capture and attempted breeding at Shinra Headquarters. He speaks little, but when he does, his words are often important.
 * Cait Sith, a robotic cat atop a stuffed Mog, operates as a fortune teller when the party meets him at the Gold Saucer. He shouts commands to his Mog in battle using a big megaphone. His friendly attitude belies a deceitful side; but he is eventually used for good.
 * Cid Highwind, the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking pilot of Rocket Town dreams to be the first man in space. He was forced to abort the mission after his assistant, Shera, was running a safety check on the rocket and would have burned to death had it taken off. Despite his bitter attitude, Cid has a good heart and cares about his friends.


 * Yuffie Kisaragi, known first as the Mystery Ninja, can be encountered in any forest after the events at the Mythril Mine. A self-professed Materia hunter, she is sneaky and playful, but later it is revealed she only 'hunts' Materia to restore her home of Wutai to its former glory.
 * Vincent Valentine, discovered sleeping in a coffin by the party at Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim, is a former Turk with a traumatic past. After being subject to numerous experiments, Vincent became able to change into monstrous forms, but sealed himself in the coffin out of shame. Like Red XIII, he speaks little but offers helpful advice when he does.
 * Sephiroth, is an un-controllable temporary party member during a single sequence. After resurfacing years after being deemed dead, pursuing Sephiroth becomes the party's main motivation.

Important characters in Shinra Electric Power Company are Reeve Tuesti (Head of Urban Development), Professor Hojo (Head of the Science Department), Palmer (Head of Space Exploration), Heidegger (Head of the Peace Preservation Department), Scarlet (Head of Weapons Research and Development), President Shinra, his son Rufus Shinra, and the members of a secret police organization called the Turks; Elena, Rude, Reno, and Tseng.

Aeris's name in the original English language release of Final Fantasy VII was transliterated from "Aerith". Later products that include her as a character, such as Kingdom Hearts, Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, and the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children retcon the name to Aerith, although her name remains as Aeris in the latest releases of Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation Network and PC.

Subsequent appearances
Final Fantasy VII proved popular enough for Square to include several characters from the title in other games. Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, Vincent, Yuffie, and Zack are playable characters in the fighting game Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring. Cloud appears as a secret playable character in Chocobo Racing and in Final Fantasy Tactics, where an alternate Aerith makes a cameo as well.

Cloud, Aerith, Yuffie, Cid, and Sephiroth appear in Kingdom Hearts, in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and they all appear in Kingdom Hearts II with the addition of Tifa.

Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and Sephiroth appear in the game Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special, and again in Itadaki Street Portable with the addition of Yuffie.

All playable characters reappear in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and most appear at various times in other Compilation of Final Fantasy VII titles. Cloud and Aerith, who both appear in the game's cinematic introduction, were featured in a remake of this cinematic in a technical demonstration for the PlayStation 3 in 2005.

Several Final Fantasy VII characters have appeared in Sackboy form in an expansion pack of the PlayStation 3 game, Little Big Planet 2, including costumes of Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Vincent and Sephiroth.

Zack appears in Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep due to his status as a Final Fantasy character from the past.

Cloud and Sephiroth feature in Dissidia Final Fantasy, and are joined by Tifa and Aerith, the latter being an assist only character in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.

Background
Gaia, referred to as the Planet in the game, 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 approaches the Planet, a sign of the impending end of the world. Sephiroth has surrounded the North Crater with a barrier. Rufus, trying to show Shinra is still in control, decides to use Tifa and Barret as scapegoats and publicly execute the pair. Just before the execution can go through, a Weapon attacks Junon but 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. Tifa manages to escape from the gas chamber thanks to the weapon who open a hole for her before getting blasted by the cannon, Scarlet chases her toward the end of the cannon where they both slap at each other. The highwind appears in front of them, Barret is on the deck throws a rope at Tifa who runs toward the ship Scarlet orders her soldiers to chase the Highwind. But the Highwind speeds away and she and her soldiers watch the Highwind flying into the distance.

The party finds Cloud suffering severe Mako poisoning in the town of Mideel and Tifa stays behind and watch over him. Cid Highwind becomes the party leader and leads the party to fight against Shinra's plan to use Huge Materia 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 in the middle of the town. Mideel is destroyed by an earthquake and Cloud and Tifa 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 ideal self with Zack and Tifa's memories, and replaced Zack with himself in his recollections.

Cloud reveals he never was in SOLDIER, as he was not 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 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 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 destroys the Weapon, and the blast reaches 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 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 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 a place to call home or anything else to fight for, Cloud and Tifa share the night 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 attempt 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 between Meteor and Holy, but Aeris's spirit commands the Lifestream to congregate, which pushes 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.

Music
The soundtrack was Nobuo Uematsu's 22nd work for Square. Music from the game has been commercially released on an original four-disc soundtrack, a single disc album of selected arranged tracks titled Final Fantasy VII: Reunion Tracks, and piano-only arrangement of selected tracks, the Piano Collections: Final Fantasy VII.

Popular pieces from the production include "Aerith's Theme", a subdued and melodic character anthem, and "One-Winged Angel", the first composition for the series to utilize recorded voices. The "Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII", heard on the world map in disc 1, is over six minutes long. Several tracks from the game have resurfaced in subsequent Square (and Square Enix) productions, including Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

At the time, the soundtrack for Final Fantasy VII was considered Uematsu's most ambitious. As a result of time constraints and the limited storage space afforded to him, Uematsu opted to utilize a high-quality Midi format. This was at a time when digital and Redbook audio were coming into their own, and some worried the game's soundtrack would suffer as a consequence. These fears proved to be unrealized, as Final Fantasy VII's score is often ranked among the most popular and memorable in the series.

Development
Planning sessions for Final Fantasy VII began in 1994 after the release of Final Fantasy VI. At the time, Final Fantasy VII was planned to be another 2D project for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi intended the story to take place in modern New York City in the year 1999. Several of the staff members were working in parallel on Chrono Trigger, and development for Final Fantasy VII was interrupted when the other project became significant enough to require the help of Yoshinori Kitase and other designers. Some of the ideas originally considered for Final Fantasy VII ended up in Chrono Trigger and other ideas, such as the New York setting and the sorceress character Edea, were kept unused until the later projects Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy VIII respectively.

Development of Final Fantasy VII resumed in late 1995, and required the efforts of approximately 120 artists and programmers, using PowerAnimator and Softimage|3D software and a budget of more than US$30 million. Final Fantasy VI's co-director and scenario writer, Yoshinori Kitase, returned to direct and co-write Final Fantasy VII and was concerned the franchise might be left behind if it did not catch up to the 3D computer graphics used in other games at the time. Production began after the making of a short, experimental tech demo called "Final Fantasy SGI" for Silicon Graphics, Inc. Onyx workstations. The demo featured polygon-based 3D renderings of characters from Final Fantasy VI in a real time battle. This experiment led the development team to integrate these design mechanics into Final Fantasy VII.

As a result of the high quantity of memory storage required to implement the motion data for characters, only the CD-ROM format would be able to suit the project's needs. Nintendo, for which Square had developed all previous titles in the Final Fantasy series, had decided to continue to use cartridges for its upcoming Nintendo 64 console, which led to a dispute that resulted in Square ending its long relationship with Nintendo. Square announced on January 12, 1996, it would be developing Final Fantasy VII for Sony's PlayStation platform.

A number of demo versions of Final Fantasy VII were released both for the PlayStation and the PC.

Characters
Tetsuya Nomura was chosen to draw the character designs for Final Fantasy VII by Hironobu Sakaguchi. The company used a system where everyone would put out plans regardless of their section and while everyone handed in text documents they made on a PC, Nomura's were hand-written and illustrated. Sakaguchi thought those illustrated proposals were amusing and chose Nomura to draw the characters. The first characters Tetsuya Nomura created for Final Fantasy VII were Cloud and Aeris, followed by Barret.

Zack did not exist in the story until rather late and was the last character Tetsuya Nomura drew for the game; it was thought that Cloud would remind Aeris of her first love, but who this person would be wasn't decided on before Zack was made and it was decided Cloud's self-made persona would be based on Zack's. Nomura also wanted a four-legged character in the game and thus Red XIII was born. Nomura was the one to come up with the name; he wanted a name that would be "interesting" and combined a number with a color. Yuffie and Vincent were almost cut from the game due to lack of time, and they became optional characters.

Art Direction
The game follows in the footsteps of Final Fantasy VI in presenting a world with more advanced technology than previous installments. The gamut of the game's technology covers space flight, robotics, highly advanced genetic engineering, automatic firearms, directed energy weapons, automobiles, helicopters, limited anti-gravity technology, and major global corporations; the level of technology in the world of Final Fantasy VII could be said to approximate that of near-future science fiction.

Kitase has described the process of making the in-game environments as detailed as possible to be "a daunting task". The series' long-time character designer, Yoshitaka Amano, was busy opening art workshops and exhibitions in France and New York, which limited his involvement. This issue was addressed by bringing Nomura on board as the project's main artist, while Amano aided in the design of the game's world map.

There were two directions the development of Final Fantasy VII could have taken; either use pixel characters on 3D maps (like Xenogears) or render the characters using polygons. The pixel characters used in previous Final Fantasy games were popular, so at first the development team were considering the former, but decided it wouldn't be possible to make a realistic drama that way whereas with polygon characters the movement of their entire bodies could be used for expression. Kitase has mentioned the game Alone in the Dark was his inspiration for this style.

Sakaguchi wanted to follow the tradition of the pixel graphics, and to show the characters' expressions on the field screens, so attention was paid to the size of the characters' heads. In battles it is possible to zoom in, but since the field screens are a single background image, it is not possible to do that there. As a result, the characters' proportions are different in battle and on the field. Afterward the team thought players will feel something is off with the difference in proportion, and so in Final Fantasy VIII the character proportions on the field and battle were kept the same.

The transition from 2D computer graphics to 3D environments overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds was accompanied by a focus on a more realistic presentation. While the extra storage capacity and computer graphics gave the team the means to implement more than 40 minutes of full motion video, this innovation brought the added difficulty of ensuring the inferiority of the in-game graphics in comparison to the full motion video sequences would not be too obvious. The aim was to seamlessly join the movies and the game parts and this approach is seen in the game's opening where the camera zooms in from a shot of the entire Midgar to Cloud jumping off the train. This was Square's first time implementing FMV movies to a game and they used an outside CG company for making the scenes. When the trial version was completed, Square would want to change some of the movie scenes greatly to match the changes made to the story, without knowing such big changes are unusual and costly, as it is not possible to get retakes as easily as one can do with games. In the end the team made do with a few revisions.

Story
The original script of Final Fantasy VII, written by Sakaguchi, was rather different from the finished product. Tetsuya Nomura recalled how Sakaguchi "wanted to do something like a detective story". The first part of the story involved a "hot blooded" character named "Detective Joe" in pursuit of the main characters who blew up the city of Midgar, which had already been developed for the story. Despite having written the original plot, Sakaguchi focused with developing the battle system rather than the final version of the story.

Yoshinori Kitase and Kazushige Nojima came up with the sections on AVALANCHE and Shinra, Cloud's backstory, and the relationship between Cloud and Sephiroth. Sakaguchi came up with the specifics on the Lifestream in his original plot, but this saw some work by Kitase and crew before being placed in the game.

During the development of Final Fantasy VII, Hironobu Sakaguchi's mother died. At the time, Sakaguchi wanted to craft a story that told of how just because someone has passed away, does not mean they are gone, and to show a realistic death rather than a "Hollywood" sacrificial death that previous games in the series had done. These desires developed into the Lifestream, and Aeris's iconic death scene and subsequent continuing role in the lives of the cast.

It was Tetsuya Nomura's idea to have a story in Final Fantasy VII where the player would chase Sephiroth. Following a moving enemy hadn't been done before in the Final Fantasy series, and Nomura thought chasing something would help pull the story along.

Themes
The game incorporates references 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".

Translation
Ted Woolsey, who had done the translation of Final Fantasy VI, was invited to do Final Fantasy VII and he travelled to LA where Square had invited him to the new headquarters, but ultimately Woolsey turned down the opportunity due to personal reasons.

Sakaguchi insisted the game's English translation be conducted in-house by the original Japanese development team, as had been done with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IV.

Although the resulting translation was perhaps more true to the Japanese version than the previous game had been, it was criticized by some as awkward and containing numerous grammatical errors. The Windows port is based on the same localization script, but many lines were rewritten and many of the grammatical errors were corrected. In future games, Square would hire American translators to collaborate with the Japanese development team, instead of having the translation done entirely by one or the other.

PC version development
Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy title to be ported to a Windows system. Shareholders felt Square was limiting their market by not delivering games for multiple platforms; the company thus started to update the old games to modern programming languages and platforms, and to port Final Fantasy VII to the PC. Eidos was chosen as the publisher, as at the time Eidos successfully converted and released Core's Tomb Raider from PlayStation to PC, and thus seemed like a company experienced in marketing and distributing PlayStation to PC conversions. Eidos bought the rights to publish Final Fantasy VII for the PC for a million dollars, and Square contracted out the port team in Honolulu.

The PC port of Final Fantasy VII suffers from many problems. After the PlayStation version was finalized, Square shut down the Final Fantasy VII project and broke apart its development team; the coders, artists, managers, and equipment were either transferred to the Final Fantasy IX project, moved to other parts of the company, released from their contract, or simply deprecated. What more, the programmers working on the port had never made a PC game before, and so it is ridden with architectural mistakes.

The only thing the port team could work with was the pre-compiled PlayStation data on backgrounds and FMV movies, because the computers used to render the originals were gone and the 3D models for the cinematics were no longer available. Many of the original artists and animators were contract workers and no longer with Square, so they couldn't help with the port. The original MIDI music was tweaked by audio engineers after being compiled into the PSX SEQ format; the original MIDIs the PC received were not even the final versions. Square refused to have anything changed for the port, apart from the text input, because the game's original director was not part of the project and could not be consulted.

The PC version was released June of 1998, but it was buggy and initially incompatible with Cyrix and AMD CPUs. The PC version was ridden with problems from movies playing upside down or crashing the system, users' sound cards not being designed for MIDI playback, and the initial keyboard configuration using only the numeric keypad, meaning the game could not be played on many laptops. One of the most notorious flaws was a glitch that crashed the game during the Chocobo racing sequences; like most issues of the PC version, it was addressed with a fan-made patch.

The game featured separate and  MIDI files; a Yamaha S-YXG70  was provided on the install disc, which was, according to the readme, specially made for the game by Yamaha in order to make the XG MIDI files playable on computers without appropriate hardware. Additionally, the game is one of the very few Windows titles with support for Creative Labs' Sound Blaster / ISA sound cards, as it provides a custom soundfont for their EMU8000 synthesizer.

Having learned from the Final Fantasy VII PC version mistakes, Square started a long-term project to "up-port" their core games and standardize all data, so the faults made with the Final Fantasy VII PC port would not happen again. The recent re-releases of old Final Fantasy games use a new 2D engine.

PC version re-release
Rumors of Square re-releasing Final Fantasy VII for PC surfaced in 2012 when Square Enix purchased the domain for finalfantasyviipc.com. Product description for the new release was posted on the page, but was quickly removed; however, a number of news sites had got whiff of the scoop and the product description remained in Google cache.

On the 4th July 2012 the site was officially opened with information about the release, albeit without a release date. The re-released PC version includes new online features, such as cloud saving, achievements and the player can to boost characters' stats and gain more gil via a system known as "Character Booster". The new PC version of Final Fantasy VII is available exclusively from Square Enix Online Store.

Minimum system requirements:
 * Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64-bit)
 * 2Ghz processor or faster
 * 1GB RAM
 * DirectX 9-compatible graphics card

The re-release version of Final Fantasy VII showed up for sale on the website on the night of 5th of August 2012, but was quickly pulled by Square. Those who were fast enough to download the game found their copies not working, as the automatic license activation (through the SecuROM DRM) and manual serial number entry failed. The price attached to these early sales was $12.70. It later turned out the early release was related to testing the product website for the upcoming relaunch, and while the website was being tested a small number of people were able to purchase a pre-release build of the game. For those customers, Square Enix offered a refund and a free version of Final Fantasy VII on PC upon its launch.

The game was released on PC to both Europe and North America on August 14th, 2012. The game is available on the Square Enix website.

A PC version of Final Fantasy VII International was released in Japan May 16th, 2013, made available on the Japanese Square website. This version of the game features the Character Booster, Cloud Saving, and Achievements that were introduced in the 2012 version to the rest of the world, but also adds ??.

The game was released on Steam on 4th of July 2013. This version is the same as the 2012 release, and any achievements earned in the other version carry over to the Steam version as soon as the game is started.

On 27th September 2013 Square Enix announced to have upgraded the audio in the game, due to various player complaints on the background music quality.

Reception
Final Fantasy VII was a critical and commercial success. It received glowing reviews from most video game magazines and by 1999 the game had sold more than eight million copies worldwide, with about three million in the first 48 hours of its release. It was one of the first console role-playing games to achieve widespread popularity outside of Asia, and the ongoing popularity of the title led Square Enix to produce a series of sequels and prequels under the collective title Compilation of Final Fantasy VII in the mid-2000s.

Not counting spin-off or related titles (such as Final Fantasy Mystic Quest), Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy title to be released in Europe and Australia, and it was the first Final Fantasy game to be released under the same name in both Japan and North America since the original NES Final Fantasy. This fact caused some initial confusion among North American consumers.

Japan's Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and Final Fantasy V were not released in North America; instead, Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI were released as America's Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III respectively. The American series thus effectively jumped from III to VII when Final Fantasy VII was released although the game was the next sequential release. It caused even more confusion among European consumers with misled thoughts of there being six other games dealing with Cloud and his friends' adventures.

The PlayStation Network release of the game was downloaded 100,000 times during its first two weeks of release, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation game on the PlayStation Network.

Final Fantasy VII International
The North American and PAL versions of Final Fantasy VII made substantial changes to the original Japanese version. Several areas of gameplay have been made more difficult by adding in new bosses. Random battle rates were cut down, and Materia swapping between characters was made easier. New flashbacks of Tifa meeting the semi-conscious Cloud on a train station, and a flashback of Cloud and Zack escaping Nibelheim, were also added in.

The North American version of Final Fantasy VII was re-released in Japan, called "Final Fantasy VII International", the very first International Version, a semi-recurring feature of the series. It includes a special fourth disc with maps, character information, design sketches, and other trivia. A later limited version, Final Fantasy VII International Advent Pieces: Limited was released in a collectible metal case that could be assembled into a display stand.

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
After the new millennium began, Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura were approached and asked for a game that could be expanded across multiple platforms and mediums. Final Fantasy VII was chosen, which led to the creation of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. To date, the compilation includes two mobile phone games, one sequel game, one prequel game, one full-length CGI film, an OVA, and several short novellas.

The games within the collection have expanded on the story of Final Fantasy VII both before and after the original game, but have been met with mixed reactions for a number of reasons, including various retcons and liberties taken with the original storyline and characters. According to remarks from Kitase, the Compilation will continue to be expanded upon, and will conclude on the original game's 20th anniversary.

Rumored Remake
In 2005 at the Sony E3 annual press conference, Square Enix showed a technical demo for the PlayStation 3 depicting the opening sequence to the original Final Fantasy VII remade with the PlayStation 3's enhanced graphics. Square Enix later made an official statement of there being no plans of a remake of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 3.

The rumors were sparked a second time with Square Enix's exhibition of new FMV artworks during the Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary event in Japan. The artworks depicted the characters in their Final Fantasy VII costumes, reigniting rumors a remake of the game may be in development. These CG artworks were printed on the new canned Potion beverages. Kazuo Hirai, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, also fueled the rumors by sticking a small note in the exhibition saying "Congratulations for the ten fantastic years! The best is yet to come".

The release of Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- brought new speculation to the possibility of a remake; the ending shows the beginning of Final Fantasy VII in a modern CG style, followed by a title card reading "to be continued in FINAL FANTASY VII", in reference to the original game.

Rumors surfaced again due to photos of a Best Buy ad stating the game was to be released on August 16, 2008.

Despite excitement surrounding the chance of a remake, Square Enix has consistently denied any and all rumors on several occasions. With photos of an ad for CLOUD Vol.2 appearing on the Internet, the excitement rose yet again. The ad was revealed to be for a book.

Final Fantasy VII was released on the PlayStation network for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable in 2009 with Japan's release in April and the US and Europe following in June. It costs $9.99 in the US and £7.99 in the UK and has remained rated T for Teen by the ESRB.

In December of 2009, Tetsuya Nomura hinted an announcement is to come sometime in 2010 promising a game highly requested by fans - some of which have personally requested it from him, and the reaction he expects from the announcement is downright huge. Again this led to immense speculation of a Final Fantasy VII remake.

In January of 2010, Tetsuya Nomura followed up on his previous statement stating "Fans are looking forward to an often rumored remake of Final Fantasy VII, but I don't believe this will happen for the time being". For some this seemed like the end, but others argue that "for the time being" means a remake could surface in the future.

In February 2010, Yoshinori Kitase stated he would like to take part in a remake of Final Fantasy VII in the future, but it was not in his immediate plan.

At the beginning of March 2010, Square Enix asked the public, on its official Twitter blog, what they would think of a remake.

On March 22, 2010, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada stated the company would "explore the possibility - whether or not we're going to do it, if we're going to do it, and the platform".

On May 31, 2010, Square Enix's CEO Yoichi Wada stated it would take longer than he is prepared to invest in a single project to be able to remake Final Fantasy VII. Since Square Enix receives so many requests for a remake, the prospect for a remake has not been completely ruled out.

In May 2012 Tetsuya Nomura addressed the fans' demand for a Final Fantasy VII remake in a Famitsu interview by saying that newer games (such as Final Fantasy XV) take precedent over such projects, because the developers want to create new Final Fantasy games that can surpass peoples' expectations instead of remaking classics.

While it seems there is little hope for a remake, dedicated fans have gone through great lengths to settle this global unrest. A Final Fantasy VII PC modding community have spent the best part of about 10 years working on a number of different mods, predominantly for the PC version of Final Fantasy VII, but some of the modding community have been working on PS versions. The patches have been known to improve both the Audio/Visual experience as well as the gameplay.

Gametrailers.com listed Final Fantasy VII on their "Top 10 Necessary Remakes" at #2.

Packaging Artwork
Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy game whose Japanese game cover was just the logo on white background, a tradition that has continued ever since. At first, Square were talking about removing the lettering of the logo and just having the image of Meteor Yoshitaka Amano had drawn, but it didn't materialize. The background was chosen to be white was because Hironobu Sakaguchi said that the image of Final Fantasy was white.

Trivia

 * Square had considered a Final Fantasy VII remake for PlayStation 2 in early 2001. The project was either scrapped or never started development at all.
 * Final Fantasy VII was the winner of the 2004 GameFAQs user poll contest "Best. Game. Ever.", beating the fellow Square RPG, Chrono Trigger. However, in GameFAQs second "Best. Game. Ever." poll, the game finished runner-up to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
 * It came 2nd in Empire magazine's 2010 feature "100 Greatest Videogames Ever", beaten only by Super Mario World.
 * Final Fantasy VII is the first Final Fantasy game to show blood in a scene.
 * During the scene where the Sister Ray is about to fire at Diamond Weapon, a voice can be heard over an intercom. This makes Final Fantasy VII the first game in the series with audible voice acting. The voice actor for the sequence is unknown and not named in the credits. This is hardly audible due to the music that continues to play in the background. It can be heard while viewing the cutscene video clip that is on the PC version.
 * In a Famitsu character popularity poll, Final Fantasy VII had six characters (Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, Aerith, Zack, and Yuffie) listed. This is the most amount of characters from any one game listed.
 * Kazushige Nojima, along with Yoshinori Kitase, has stated in the Final Fantasy X-2 Ultimania interview that Final Fantasy X's Spira is the 'ancestor' civilization which colonized the Planet of Final Fantasy VII. This is reinforced by Shinra's mention of potentially harnessing the Farplane as an energy source, which his descendants would go on to do with the Lifestream many centuries later, as the Shinra Electric Power Company.
 * Final Fantasy VII appeared, along with Final Fantasy Tactics, in Smithsonian Art of Video Games exhibit held between March 18 and September 30 2012. The video games in the exhibition were decided by public vote.
 * In 2012, Final Fantasy VII got #33 in G4's "Top 100 Games of All Time" beating Gears of War 3, Fallout 3 and Halo: Combat Evolved.