Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII (ファイナルファンタジーVII Fainaru Fantajī VII) is the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series and was released in 1997. 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 produced for the Sony PlayStation instead of a Nintendo system, and the first game in the series to be ported to Windows. Additionally, it was the first Final Fantasy title with 3D graphics. Since VII, all the main Final Fantasy titles have been 3D and on the PlayStation or PlayStation 2 platform.

The English release for the PlayStation was criticized for its translation, which was viewed by some as awkward and contained numerous grammatical errors. The Windows port uses the same localization script, but several of the more egregious errors were corrected.

The game 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 3 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.

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). Additionally, several references are made to previous Final Fantasy titles, including several character names (such as Cid, Biggs and Wedge, originally from Star Wars), and the repetition of soundtrack motifs, such as the chocobo theme.

The game followed in the footsteps of Final Fantasy VI for presenting a world with considerably 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 antigravity 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.

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 fantasy 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 entirely scripted dramatic sequences, some of which are quite long.

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 4-5 friendly characters to participate in battle, Final Fantasy VII allows for only three characters to be present in the party (and therefore, to take part in battle) 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 you to use various tactics suiting your own personal style of play.

A feature introduced in Final Fantasy VI, the "desperation attack," re-appeared in this game in a new, modified form, now known as the Limit Break. Every playable character has a special "limit bar" which fills up slightly every time the character suffers damage in battle. When the limit bar is completely filled, that character has access to his or her limit break, a special attack which generally inflicts much more damage on an enemy than normal physical attacks.

Final Fantasy VII also popularized the inclusion of extremely difficult optional bosses which are not required to complete the game but rather offer reward and player satisfaction. Later in the game, a series of extremely strong monsters called WEAPONS appear; the player must confront several of them through the plot, but two, "Ruby" WEAPON and "Emerald" WEAPON, can only be encountered if the player goes out of their way, and are very hard to defeat; Ruby WEAPON, for instance, can instantly and unpreventably remove one character from play without the option to revive them and has over ten times as many hit points as the final boss, while Emerald WEAPON can kill all three characters with one attack "Aire Tam" (Materia spelled backwards) which deals damage directionally proportionate to the number of Materia Orbs each character possesses, has one million HP, and, if the player does not possess the Underwater materia, has a twenty minute battle time limit. These 2 bosses were not included in the original Japanese port of the game but instead were later added to the European and American ports after the game was fully completed.

Story
The world of Final Fantasy VII is economically, militarily, and politically dominated by a powerful conglomerate called the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, which profits from the use of machines known as "Mako Reactors". These reactors syphon a special type of energy - called "Mako" - out of the planet and convert it into electricity. One of the by-products of the extraction and refinement of Mako energy is materia, a concentrated form of Mako which allows the owner to use its magical properties.

In actuality, Mako energy is drawn from the Lifestream, a flow of life-force beneath the surface of the planet. All life originates from the Lifestream, and returns to it upon death. In short, 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 literally drains the life of the planet in order to generate electricity.

Shin-Ra's management is concerned with the limited repositories of Mako energy available for harvesting, and fascinated with the idea of a "Promised Land"&mdash;a place where the land is incredibly fertile and where Mako flows abundantly. Only a race called the Cetra, or the Ancients, are, according to legend, able to find it. However, the Cetra have been driven to extinction, except for one Cetra, Aeris Gainsborough, whom Shin-Ra has been trying to capture for years.

The city of Midgar is a municipality created and operated by Shin-Ra. It is also the location of Shin-Ra headquarters and serves as the home to their nemesis, a rebel resistance group of eco-terrorists called AVALANCHE. The game opens as AVALANCHE hires a mercenary named Cloud Strife, who claims to be a former member of Shin-Ra's elite special forces team, SOLDIER, to aid in the destruction of eight Mako reactors situated in a ring surrounding Midgar.

Cloud shows little interest in AVALANCHE's cause at first. By his own admission, he is interested only in the money. Eventually, however, Cloud discovers the connection between Shin-Ra's ecologically destructive actions and a shadowy figure from his own past, a man named Sephiroth, a legendary SOLDIER, whom Cloud had long believed dead. As Cloud is drawn deeper and deeper into the three-way conflict between Shin-Ra, AVALANCHE, and Sephiroth, Cloud's identity and his past come into question.

At the end of the first disc of the game occurs a famous scene in which Aeris is killed by Sephiroth. The scene shocked many fans, and has frequently been called one of the most memorable scenes in all video games.

Characters


The main playable characters in Final Fantasy VII are Cloud Strife, Aeris Gainsborough, Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, Red XIII, Cait Sith, Cid Highwind, and two secret characters: Vincent Valentine and Yuffie Kisaragi. Sephiroth joins the party in a series of flashbacks, but he cannot be controlled or equipped. However, his status, inventory and equipment, can be checked during Cloud's flashback.

Important characters in Shin-Ra are Reeve (Head of Urban Development), 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, and members of a secret police organization called the Turks (Elena, Rude, Reno, and Tseng).

It should be noted that Aerith's name in the original English language release of Final Fantasy VII was incorrectly transliterated as Aeris. Later games that included Aeris as a character, such as Kingdom Hearts, included the correct transliteration.

Subsequent appearances
Final Fantasy VII proved to be so popular that several characters from the game have appeared in other Square games. Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, Vincent, Yuffie and Zack are playable characters in the fighting game Ehrgeiz. Tifa appears on a poster in Solaris in the role-playing game Xenogears. Cloud appears as a secret playable character (after a scene with Aeris) in Final Fantasy Tactics. Cloud, Aeris, Yuffie, Cid, and Sephiroth appear in Kingdom Hearts and with the exception of Sephiroth, in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Cloud, Aeris, Tifa and Sephiroth appear in the game Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Special. All playable characters reappear in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and some appear in other Compilation of Final Fantasy VII titles. Cloud and Aeris, who both appear in the game's cinematic introduction, were featured in an official Final Fantasy VII Technical Demo for the PlayStation 3 in 2005. Finally, Tifa made her first cameo appearance in Kingdom Hearts II, alongside Cloud, Aeris, Yuffie, Cid and Sephiroth.

Locations


The presumably round world of Final Fantasy VII, Gaia, is divided into three unnamed continents. The largest of these three land masses, the eastern continent, is the heart of Shin-Ra's power, and is dominated by Midgar, the headquarters of the corporation, and Junon, a major Shin-Ra military base.

The western continent, meanwhile, is notable for its two major vacation resorts, the beach town of Costa del Sol and the Gold Saucer theme park. Several main characters of the game were raised on the western continent, as well. Cloud and Tifa lived in Nibelheim, a ghost town previously razed to the ground by Sephiroth and rebuilt by Shin-Ra to cover up the incident. Barret, meanwhile, lived in the town of Corel until it was destroyed by Shin-Ra in retaliation against a terrorist attack on a nearby Mako reactor. Red XIII hailed from Cosmo Canyon. Finally, Cid lived in Rocket Town, and Yuffie lived in Wutai, the ancient village of the Wutai clan of ninjas.

Finally, the northernmost continent is a heavily glaciated wasteland, and most of the settlements on the land mass are largely concerned with research of the Cetra, whose long abandoned city is situated on the continent. There are, however, a handful of other settlements, notably Icicle Inn, the site of Aeris's birth, and Mideel, a hot springs town. Additionally, in the far north lies the Northern Crater, where the energies of the Lifestream can be seen from the surface, and the site of the Sephiroth's "reunion."

There are also three Materia caves on the planet, and the secret "Round Island", which is hidden on the World Map. It is located to the far North-east of the world map. It can be located by airship, but can only actually be reached by a golden chocobo.

Musical score


The soundtrack for the game 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. 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 game's main theme, heard on the world map in Disc 1, is over 6 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.

Title
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 (aka Final Fantasy I). This fact caused some initial confusion among North American consumers. Japan's Final Fantasy II, III, and V were not released in North America. Instead, Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI were released as America's Final Fantasy II and III respectively. The American series thus effectively jumped from III to VII when Final Fantasy VII was released in North America, although the game was in fact the next sequential release. It caused even more confusion among European consumers, who praised the game like everywhere else but thought there was 6 other games that dealt with Cloud and his friends' adventures.

Official Introduction
An energy manufacturing mega company known as Shinra Inc. is harvesting the sheer life energy of the Planet (known as Lifestream) as a simple fossil fuel. The Lifestream is processed and made into products ranging from electricity and heat to Mako and Materia. The latter two materials can work miracles, granting the wisdom of the Ancients to the user. However, the Lifestream, like most other fuels, is finite in supply, and the Planet's lifeforce is being malevolently drained by the constant exploitation of Mako by Shinra. Though aware of the harmful effects, they function without remorse.

However, the real battle lies not with a corporation, but a force much more competent from the distant past. A long-thought dead warrior bent on becoming a god by draining all of the lifestream from the planet has risen again and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.

Now a small rebel group emanating from the slums must quell the various dangers toward the innocent, and one mercenary for hire must look amidst the lies and deception and find the man he is within.

Final Fantasy VII on PS3?
In 2005 at the Sony E3 annual press conference, Square Enix showed a Technical Demo for the PS3 depicting the opening sequence to the original Final Fantasy VII. Although rumors remained uncorroborated for a time, Square-Enix has made an official statement that there are currently no plans of a remake of Final Fantasy VII for the PS3.

The rumors were sparked a second time recently with Square Enix' exhibition of new FMV artworks during the Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary event in Japan. The artworks depict the characters in their FFVII costumes, sparking rumors that a remake of the game may be in development. These CG artworks were printed on their new canned Potion beverages. Kazuo Hirai, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, has 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".