la_belle_laide (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
la_belle_laide) wrote2005-10-01 04:03 pm
la_belle_laide) wrote2005-10-01 04:03 pm
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Final Fantasy VII - the whole, complicated story
When Square-Soft released FFVII back in late 1997, they probably didn't have any idea exactly what they were getting into. They wanted the newest insallment of Final Fantasy to be popular and successful, of course, but I doubt they set out to make a masterpiece. Which, I think, is exactly why it is a masterpiece; a spiritual cyberpunk tragedy told in the medium of an RPG. The first graphics you see in the game--stars and space, some space, a lot of stars, and some space--really don't say much (on the surface) other than, "Hey, lookit! We can do 3D these days!"
Then the "camera" pans down and we see a girl with a pink bow in her hair, surrounded by a green aura. There are white-green sparks flying around her face. It all looks kinds of peaceful and mystical. There's graceful, tinkling music to go with the scene, even: when the girl looks up, we hear three bell-like notes. Then the camera pans out, and as the character stands up, we see that she's standing in an alley, looking at a malfunctioning circuit box that is throwing off green sparks. With a basket of flowers in her hands, she walks out of the alley and onto the street, where she's cut off by a speeding car. The music changes to big, industrial sounding drumbeats. Above the street, a sign advertises a play called "Loveless." The camera pans back further. Finally we see that the flower girl is in a kind of enclosed, covered city, surrounded around the top by seven buildings spewing green smoke. It looks polluted and claustrophobic. Then, a big old logo fills the screen.
Pan back into a different section of the city now, flashing every few seconds to the wheels of a speeding train. When we get into the innards of this part of the city, the train pulls into the station and stops. A crazy, spikey-headed, badly rendered blond guy leaps out of the train towards his first mission. Then you spend a good few minutes figuring out how to make him run.
You may, until seven days from now, download that scene here, at just over 5 MBs. It stops before the crazy blond guy jumps off the train, unfortunately. (I tried to match the music up with the movie. The music goes on after the FMV is over, sorry about that.)
But enough of that crap. Forget the flower girl for now. Start with the crazy, spikey-headed, badly rendered blonde.
Cloud Strife, 21 year old ex SOLDIER, mercenary for hire, joins a rebel group known as Avalanche, who are fighting the evil power company known as ShinRa. ShinRa has monopolized the power industry and uses Mako, a physical form of the "otherworld" called the Lifestream (where people go when they die, or otherwise leave the Planet,) as a power source. There are hypotheses that Mako and Lifestream are made up of human consciousness that has left the Planet, or a "world soul" or things like that. ShinRa uses Mako reactors to suck Mako up from the Planet and feed it into their power supply.
Cloud's first mission with Avalanche is to blow up a Mako reactor. We then find out that the leader of Avalanche, Tifa Lockhart, 21, is Cloud's childhood friend. They grew up together in Nibelheim, and Tifa now lives in Midgar, Sector Seven, and runs a bar ("Tifa's Seventh Heaven.") with Barret Wallace, 35. Barret Wallace has had his arm shot off in a shoot out with ShinRa, and has had a machine gun grafted onto the end of the severed arm.
Cloud's and Tifa's hometown of Nibelheim was torched by the legendary Sephiroth after he went on a mission to check out a malfunctioning Mako reactor, learned something about his past there, and went insane. Sephiroth disappeared after that.
Cloud seems to have amnesia, but we know--for now, anyway--that he was in SOLDIER for a while, ShinRa's elite army. SOLDIERs were usually exposed to Mako, which gave them incredible strength and recovery powers, as well as making their eyes glow blue or green. They fight, not only with weapons, but with Materia orbs - condensed Mako with specific powers. (Healing, defensive, lightning, ice, fire etc.) Materia is hard to come by in most places, but you can find it or buy it.
Cloud remembers very little, and has "episodes" - seizures and flashes of abstract memories.
Midgar, where Tifa is running her bar, is a mess; nothing but slums, all of it underneath a giant metal and concrete plate that was designed by ShinRa. Rich people live on top of the huge plate. Under it, where there's no fresh air or sun, are the slums. This plate was ShinRa's idea, and the final design was made by the Head of Urban Development (and one of the only deep down good guys in ShinRa,) Reeve.
During the second mission, blowing up another Mako reactor, they are trapped by president ShinRa himself, who sends in a machine to kill Avalanche off. Avalanche destroys the machine, but the bridge they are all on breaks, and Cloud is left dangling from the Mako reactor, way above Sector Five. Finally the Mako reactor explodes, and Cloud falls through the metal plate into the darkness.
He wakes up on the floor of a church, and there he meets Aeris Gainsborough, 22, who is tending her flowers. These are the only flowers that grow under the metal plate, and she sells them. Quickly enough, we find out that Aeris is being chased by ShinRa's most elite fighters, a small group known as the Turks. Reno of the Turks comes in with his henchmen to kidnap her, but Cloud saves Aeris from the Turks and she makes him her bodyguard. It's clear right away that Aeris is interested in Cloud as more than just a bodyguard.
We find out that ShinRa is interested in Aeris because she is what's known as an Ancient, or "Cetra," which means that she's descended from a line of people who were supposedly the first to inhabit the Planet. They had all sorts of powers without Materia. ShinRa wants her because they think she can lead them to the Promised Land, to which supposedly only Ancients could lead the way. ShinRa's main interest in the mythical Promised Land, however, is the fact that it's bubbling over with Mako that they can use.
However, the head of ShinRa's Science Department, professor Hojo, has another interest in Aeris. He's been studying Ancients for years, and also kidnapped Aeris' mother Ifalna many years before. Aeris' father and Ifalna's husband, we later find out, was Professor Gast, who had been working on the studies with Hojo, unaware that Hojo would turn against him and try to kidnap his wife and daughter. Hojo killed Gast, but not before Gast hid Aeris. After Ifalna dies, leaving Aeris at the train station, Aeris is found by Elmyra Gainsborough, who then raised her.
There have been attempts to kidnap Aeris since she was little, mostly by the man who would later become the leader of the Turks, Tseng. Tseng, we find out, was actually friendly with Aeris, and seems to never have had the heart to actually go through with the job. As Aeris grew up, Tseng seems to have fallen in love, or at least in fascination with her. (We only know this because Reno and Rude discuss their crushes at one point, and Reno tells Rude that Tseng has a thing for Aeris.)
After Avalanche blows up another reactor, back in Midgar, Aeris is finally captured by Tseng. Cloud and Avalanche go to the top of the plate as Aeris is taken away in a helicopter, and there they meet Reno of the Turks. Reno's orders are to bomb the support pillar over Sector Seven of Midgar in order to A) flush out Avalanche and B) set up Avalanche to take the fall for the mass destruction. Reno carries out President ShinRa's order and Sector Seven is destroyed. (Why did Midgar get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.)
Avalanche goes to ShinRa headquarters to rescue Aeris. While they're there, they find Hojo preparing to do an experiment on her. Also captured with her is a lion-like, sentient, intelligent animal labelled Red 13. (His age is given as 50 something.) His real name is Nanaki. He joins with Avalanche.
They begin to escape with Aeris and Nanaki, and then find that President Shinra has been killed by none other than Sephiroth, who was presumed dead.
Old Man ShinRa's son Rufus takes over the corporation. Unfortunately, he seems even more ruthless than his father.
Avalanche goes to a town called Kalm, chasing after Sephiroth. While there, Cloud tells Sephiroth's story to the others:
Five years ago, Cloud, Sephiroth, and two other SOLDIERs (all SOLDIERs under First Class wore masks, so we don't see who they were,) went on the mission to Nibelheim, to inspect a malfunctioning Mako reactor. Their tour guide up the mountain to the reactor is a young girl who's familiar with the path: Tifa Lockhart. Cloud remembers visiting Tifa's house, but we never see him interact with her there. When they got to the Mako reactor, they discovered a bunch of mutants and monsters in Mako pods, all labeled "The Jenova Project." Sephiroth, who has always been told that his mother's name was Jenova, puts this all together and realizes that he has probably come from something like this, and it begins to explain why he's so different. He goes crazy seeing all of these mutants, realizing he is one, and runs out of the reactor. He runs to ShinRa's Nibelheim mansion, where Hojo and Gast used to work together and run a lab, and finds the files on himself. The files tell him that Jenova was an Ancient, and that he was more or less created like Frankenstein, than he was actually born to her. The files also tell about how the Ancients are the rightful owners of the Planet and how all of mankind is destroying the Planet, just as surely as they wiped out the Ancients. He stays up all night and reads his own classified files.
(However, Cloud has since found out that Hojo’s and Gast’s studies were wrong: Jenova was not truly an Ancient. Jenova was actually a mutation virus from outer space, what the Ancients called the "Crisis From The Sky." In fact, Jenova destroyed most of the Ancients.)
The next day Cloud finds Sephiroth completely insane in the basement of ShinRa mansion. Sephiroth goes running out of the mansion saying "I'm going to see my mother." Cloud follows him back to the reactor, where Sephiroth finally goes past the pods of mutants (really just pre-Sephiroth experiments gone wrong,) and finally finds Jenova: the body of what is obviously a female kind of thing, hidden behind a big metal plated facade. Sephiroth rips the facade away, finds the body of Jenova, takes her head and runs out of the reactor, cutting down everything that's in his way. This includes Tifa Lockhart, her father, and another SOLDIER who challenges and injures Sephiroth. He torches the entire town, killing Cloud's mother as well. Tifa is apparently the only survivor.
Sephiroth disappears, is presumed dead, and doesn't come back. (<---noteworthy)
Now, five years later, Sephiroth has come back. (huh?) No one knows how. There are a bunch of black cloaked clones running around Nibelheim, half sentient, raving about a "reunion" and "becoming one with Sephiroth." (For the purposes of this summary, until Sephiroth does come back into the story, just assume that when I say "Sephiroth" I mean one of his clones.)
The group, following rumors of a man in a long black coat with a tremendous sword, go after him. They cross the Mythril Mines, and find that the Turks are one step ahead of them. Tseng is there, and Reno of the Turks is gone (injured by Cloud is the official story.) Taking his place is rookie Elena, who slips up in front of Avalanche as to where they are chasing Sephiroth. Tseng sees Aeris there, and lets her walk. In this scene we see that Elena has an obvious crush on Tseng.
They chase Sephiroth and eventually find him on a ShinRa boat out of Junon Harbor to Costa Del Sol. Sephiroth babbles about taking over the Planet, and the team fights with a form of Jenova and defeats her (it?) and Sephiroth escapes once again.
Chasing the rumors, Avalanche goes through North Corel, Barret's home town. Close to North Corel is a Disneyworld like place called the Gold Saucer. Cloud and company stop there, and there they meet a robotic cat who rides on a stuffed Mog. The cat is called Cait Sith. Cait Sith is a fortune telling machine as well, and he immediately joins Avalanche.
From there they head to Gongaga Village, and there find out that Aeris' first boyfriend was from there. His name was Zack, and he was also SOLDIER, first class. He had spikey black hair and carried a Buster Sword just like Cloud's. Zack disappeared five years ago and no one has heard from him since. Reno and Rude (another Turk and Reno's best friend) are there as well, also chasing Sephiroth. Cloud overhears that Rude has a crush on Tifa. Avalanche fights the Turks, and everyone lives to tell about it.
From there they go to Cosmo canyon, Nanaki's hometown. They meet his grandfather Bugenhagen, who has an observatory and an elaborate "planetarium" sort of thing where you can learn about materia.
After learning about the Planet and Materia, Avalanche finally heads back to Nibelheim. Cloud and Tifa expect to find it in ruins, as it was after Sephiroth torched it, but everything is as it was before the fire five years earlier. (Minus a few key townspeople, most importantly Tifa's father and Cloud's mother.) No one in town seems to remember anything about any fire. There are more Sephiroth clones walking around babbling about this "reunion."
In Nibelheim, they visit the ShinRa mansion. Locked in the basement in a coffin, and having slept for possibly 50 years, is Vincent Valentine (72? He doesn't age.) He used to be a Turk, but he fell in love with the woman he was assigned to protect. Her name was Lucretia, and she was a scientist working with Hojo. Hojo was also "in love" with Lucretia and she was torn between him and Vincent. Hojo became jealous, and shot Vincent, then kept him alive for his experiments. He injected Vincent with Jenova cells and cut off his left hand, where he now has a metal claw. As a result of Hojo's tampering, Vincent can change into all sorts of monsters. Vincent also joins Avalanche and the chase continues.
We also find out that Hojo and Lucretia had a son. While she was pregnant, Lucretia offered herself and her unborn son to Hojo for experiments. Hojo began "creating" this life-form in Lucretia, injecting the unborn child with Mako and Jenova cells. After she gave birth, Lucretia became ill, and Hojo took the boy and used him in more Jenova experiments. He was trying to create the perfect SOLDIER, more god than man, created to be the most powerful person on the Planet. Who could that son have been? O_O
Avalanche heads to Rocket Town, a town that was supposed to be the site of ShinRa's first rocket launch into space. There they meet a man who's now a pilot, but who was supposed to be the first man in space: Cid Highwind, 32. He was ShinRa's astronaut, but because of one of Cid's assistants (Shera, the woman he now lives with,) taking too long to thoroughly check the rocket, he had to cancel the launch. In the time between the failed launch and what was supposed to be the next launch, the ShinRa corporation pulled the funding for the space program. The rocket is still there, hence the name Rocket Town. Now Rufus ShinRa is back in town, thinking about re-investing in his father's aborted plan. Cid Highwind wants that more than anything.
However, Palmer from ShinRa finds out that Avalanche is in town, and ends up fighing with them. To escape ShinRa, Avalanche needs Cid's plane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid Highwind joins with them and they all leave Rocket Town together.
Traveling through the fields outside of a town called Wutai, Cloud and company meet a 16 year old ninja called Yuffie Kisaragi. She's also a Materia thief. She also joins Avalanche, but once they all get to her hometown of Wutai, she ends up stealing their Materia. While chasing Yuffie through Wutai, Avalanche meets up with the Turks again, who are on vacation there. Yuffie and Elena are both kidnapped by Don Corneo, the owner of a brothel. Avalanche and the Turks team up to rescue them, vow to work together and trust each other for this one mission, rescue their party members, then go their separate ways again. Reno lets Corneo fall of a cliff, and Yuffie and Elena are rescued. Yuffie gives back the Materia, and stays with Avalanche.
Cloud has heard of a special Materia called the Black Materia, which has regenerative / restorative (and destructive) powers beyond imagination. This must be what Sephiroth is after. In order to get it, they need something called a Keystone, which is on display at the Gold Saucer, so they head back there.
At the Gold Saucer, they get the keystone, only to be betrayed by Cait Sith. It ends up that Cait Sith has been working for ShinRa all the while. Tseng of the Turks sends a message to Avalanche telling them that he's taken Marlene, Barret's daughter, and Elmyra, Aeris' foster mother, and they won't be hurt as long as they hand over the keystone. They do, and Cait Sith also forces them to keep him in Avalanche as well. We don't know why yet. Everyone in Avalanche knows he's the one who's been leaking secrets to Tseng, but yet he wants to stay with them and asks them to trust him anyway. Like morons, they do.
With Cait Sith tagging along, Avalanche chases the Turks to the Temple of the Ancients, where the Black materia is supposed to be.
Once there, they find that Tseng and the Turks are already in the Temple. Tseng is nearly dead, having been butchered by a Sephiroth clone. He hands the Keystone to Avalanche, tells them how to use it to get into the Temple, and tells them to keep the Black Materia from Sephiroth. Aeris is only vaguely emotional about Tseng's death, even though we find out here that they've actually known each other for a long time.
Inside, they find out what Jenova already knows: that there is a way to summon a giant meteor to all but obliterate the Planet. This is what Sephiroth apparently wants, and also why he wants the Black materia. Then, they find out that the Temple itself IS the Black Materia. The only way to actually take it is to shrink it down by solving a puzzle from the inside.
Cait Sith, being a robot, offers to stay behind and do it. He apologizes for his duplicity, and Avalanche leaves the Temple, leaving Cait Sith to solve the puzzle. The Temple then shrinks and becomes the Black materia, and it is in Cloud's possession.
Cloud begins to freak out. Once Cloud has the Black materia, Sephiroth appears and begins to control him like a puppet. And then, in what is maybe the most disturbing scene in any video game, Cloud throws Aeris to the ground, jumps on her, and beats the crap out of her, pretty graphically. Then he falls into a hallucination, with no idea about why he’s just done what he’s done.
Afterward, Cloud has a dream that Aeris tells him that it's all right, she forgives him, and she's on her way to the City of the Ancients. He wakes up to find that this is true. And in the meantime, Sephiroth has summoned Meteor.
Now Avalanche, with Cait Sith II, is on the trail of Aeris. Aeris understands that as a true Ancient, she can pray for Holy, which is the only thing that can stop Sephiroth's Meteor.
Cloud and the others find Aeris praying at the altar, in a trance. Cloud freaks out again and raises his sword to kill her. He snaps out of it before he does so, and Aeris comes out of her trance and smiles at Cloud.
In what was maybe the most shocking video game moment--at least at its time--Sephiroth flies down from the rafters and skewers her. Every gamer in the world cries when the Materia clangs and the music plays. (To reiterate: The real Sephiroth is still dead, as we will later find out. A clone actually killed Aeris.) Jenova shows up, and they all fight her, except for Aeris, who is dead. They give her a funeral, (well, Cloud lets her sink into the water,) and hope that she has prayed enough to summon Holy to counter Meteor.
You can download that scene, or at least most of it, here. I did my best matching the music to the scene, but the dialogue between Cloud and Sephiroth immediately following Aeris's death, the entire Jenova fight, as well as scenes of the rest of the group mourning her, are sadly missing. (However, once again I matched the scene up with its original music as well as I could. The music and how it is timed pretty much makes the scene. The song goes on long after the scene ends. I should have cut it and faded it, but it slippe dmy mind. Sorry.)
They head north past the Icicle area, trying to get Sephiroth before Meteor comes, and also now for revenge. Sephiroth's plan is that Meteor will make such a big hole in the Planet that he'll be able to take all of the Mako for himself and become a god.
In the mountains, ShinRa is once again one step ahead of Avalanche. Rufus, Hojo, and Scarlet are there. Scarlet is head of ShinRa's weapons department, and they're also still looking for the Promised Land. Instead of Sephiroth or the Promised Land, they find the first WEAPON. WEAPON is something that the Planet creates by itself, to defend itself, mostly from Jenova. Sensing Jenova's revived will, WEAPON begins to awaken, and will destroy everything, people included, if it's not stopped.
Hojo sees Cloud there and tells him that he is nothing more than a failed Sephiroth clone, and that's why Sephiroth can control him so easily. He asks to see Cloud's number tattoo, and Cloud says he doesn't have one. Hojo tells him that's because he is a failed experiment, and too weak to merit a number. Cloud turns his back on his friends and begs Hojo to give him a number.
Afterwards, Cloud disappears in the mountains, still carrying the Black materia. Voices begin to call him again, and he ends up climbing into a huge Mako crystal, doing all sorts of weird upside down walking things, ignoring gravity, and generally going crazy. In the Mako / Materia crystal is the real body of Sephiroth. This is where the real Sephiroth enters the story. Everything they saw before that was nothing but clones.
Unable to control himself, Cloud slips the Black materia into the Mako crystal where Sephiroth's body is. The materia brings the body back to life.
With Sephiroth awake (and the Jenova cells inside him awake,) WEAPON also awakens and begins to rampage. Everyone escapes the first WEAPON, but Tifa is injured as they all fly away in Cid's airship, the Highwind. She awakens seven days later to find that she and Barret are ShinRa's prisoners. ShinRa plans to execute them live on television, in the gas chamber.
Tifa and Scarlet--who seems to have a soft spot for Rufus ShinRa--have a fight outside of the gas chamber as Tifa escapes. Tifa has escaped the gas chamber with the help of Cait Sith, who attacks Scarlet with sleeping gas, saying "I really hate that broad."
After Tifa escapes, WEAPON catches up with them. ShinRa fights WEAPON this time, using Scarlet's creation, a weapon called the Sister Ray. However, during this battle, Cloud falls into the Lifestream and is lost.
Avalanche searches for Cloud, and they finally find him in a hospital in Mideel. Cloud is wheelchair-bound and incoherent. Being in the Lifestream has given him severe Mako poisoning and he can't remember anything and he can't walk or speak. Tifa decides to stay with him.
Another WEAPON attacks, and the remaining members of Avalanche fight it, but Mideel is destroyed and the ground is blown open, revealing the Lifestream underneath. Cloud and Tifa both fall into the Lifestream this time.
In it, they find each other, and Tifa has to help Cloud find out who he really is. Going back over their memories of Nibelheim, Cloud learns that he is not really a clone, however he was experimented on by Hojo. After the destruction of Nibelheim, he abd his friend Zack, who was Aeris's first boyfriend, were captured by ShinRa and brought to Hojo. There they were exposed to (like all SOLDIERS were,) with Mako, and like a few other soldiers, injected with with Jenova cells. Only Cloud was weak and couldn't handle it, and it began to make him crazy. This went on during the entire five years between the torching of Nibelheim and the beginning of the game, when Cloud joins up with Avalanche. Which means that Cloud spent the ages of 16 to 21 as Hojo's experiment.
Tifa finally tells Cloud the truth: that she never actually saw him return to Nibelheim on the ill-fated trip with Sephiroth. All the while, Cloud has believed that he was there with Sephiroth, as his second in command, as SOLDIER First Class. Tifa was too afraid and confused to tell Cloud the truth: the story that Cloud told everyone was actually Zack's story. Tifa wonders, though: if Cloud wasn't really there, then how does he know everything that happened? How does he know every last detail?
Cloud begins to unravel it, and he realizes that he was actually one of the infantrymen, who were both wearing masks. He was on the mission, but had been ashamed to tell Tifa that he never made First Class, so he never showed his face. Tifa thought that Cloud simply hadn't come back.
What really happened at the reactor that day five years ago was this: After Sephiroth torched Nibelheim and ran up to meet his mother, slicing and dicing Tifa on his way, Cloud found Tifa injured helped her, although she doesn't remember it. Then he ran after Sephiroth. Cloud was 16 at this time, untrained and weak, but he was pissed off, and challenged Sephiroth anyway. Cloud managed to stab Sephiroth, who turned around and stabbed Cloud right back, impaling him on the Masamune. Sephiroth then lifted him up in the air with the sword and told him, "Don't push your luck." Somehow, Cloud was able to will himself back down, pull the sword out of himself, and throw Sephiroth off a bridge and into a river of Lifestream below.
Cloud and Tifa put this entire story together while they're in the Lifestream, and rememebr that it's the truth, and then they remember their childhood together, disproving Hojo's lie that Cloud was assembled in a laboratory. He was born and raised in Nibelheim--however, he *was* a failed experiment, as he couldn't handle the Mako/Jenova treatments. Cloud has about half his memory, and has been psychotic for most of the time since then, thinking that he was Zack.
The reason thought he was Zack was because Zack was everything Cloud wanted to be. He was SOLDIER first class, and a hero. After Cloud and Zack were captured by Hojo, they were both stuck in the same experiments. After five years, it was Zack who initiated their escape. He had to drag Cloud out of the building, fighting ShinRa soldiers and the Turks all the way. He finally got them a ride in the back of a pickup truck, going to Midgar. During the ride, Zack keeps trying to talk to Cloud about what they're going to do when they get to Midgar. He doesn't seem to realize that Cloud is dying. Before they get to Midgar, they are finally caught by ShinRa again. They shoot the bejeezus out of Zack, then, after he's dead, they shot him some more. ANd then, for good measure, they shoot him some more, still. They figure that Cloud is dead anyway, and they leave him on the side of the road next to Zack.
But Cloud wasn't dead. Once again, he was pissed off. So he took Zack's Buster Sword, and, apparently, his clothes, and made his way into Midgar on foot. He ended up at the train station, where Tifa found him on accident. Cloud didn't remember his name, but by listening to Tifa talk to him, he figured that his name was Cloud. But he still thought that he was this SOLDIER, first class. And he completely forget that there was a Zack.
But, in the Lifestream with Tifa, he finally remembers all of this. Cloud and Tifa both come out of the Lifestream with their memories returned. Cloud still forgets some little things, but now understands who he is and where he's from, and why he can't remember much of his time in SOLDIER. He does know, however, he really WAS the one who threw Sephiroth into the Lifestream five years ago. The rest of the party catches up with Cloud and Tifa, and they go on after Sephiroth again.
Meanwhile, ShinRa has its own plan (really Scarlet's plan,) to counter Meteor. They have found something called Huge Materia, and plan to shoot Meteor down with it. They're using the old ShinRa 27--Cid's rocket--to do so.
Avalanche knows this won't work, and they get on board the rocket to try and stop the launch. However, the rocket launches with them onboard, and Cid, Cloud, and another Avalanche member (depends on who you put in the party,) end up being the first people in space after all.
Cid is able to re-route the rocket, get them back down to the Planet, and take the Huge materia away from ShinRa.
After that, another WEAPON arises, and is going to destroy the rest of Midgar. Avalanche heads back to stop it. They also learn that ShinRa is going to use the Junon Cannon, another or Scarlet's weapons, to destroy it. This will also destroy the entire city. Reeve tries to stop them.
Avalanche goes to fight WEAPON, ShinRa decides to use the canon anyway, and in the fray, amid the destruction of Midgar, Rufus is killed. (OR IS HE?!!1111)
Now it comes down to Avalanche and what's left of the ShinRa corporation each trying to stop Sephiroth, and also trying to stop each other from trying to stop Sephiroth. ShinRa's methods are almost as destructive as Sephiroth's plan. Also, it ends up that Hojo, still ShinRa's main scientist, WANTS Sephiroth to succeed. We find out for certain that Hojo is Sephiroth's father and Lucretia was his mother. Sephiroth however, doesn't know this, and never finds out that he's human.
Reeve tries to stop Hojo from helping Sephiroth, and as Reeve is doing this, Cait Sith begins to act strangely. The execs at ShinRa also notice Reeve beginning to act strangely. In this scene that was butchered by the translators, we find out that Reeve has been controlling Cait Sith all the while. However, it seems that most of ShinRa was in the dark about this. When ShinRa finds that Reeve's been using Cait Sith to actually help Avalanche, Reeve is captured. However, for some reason, Cait Sith is still working with Avalanche and still helping them, and there's nothing that ShinRa can do about that.
As they chase Sephiroth, Avalanche meets up with the Turks one more time. In the game, you have the option of either fighting them or calling a truce with them.
No matter which one you choose, Scarlet and Heidegger, (Heidegger is the guy who hires out the Turks,) are still after Avalanche. Scarlet's new weapon is the Proud Clod, and Avalanche defeats it before moving on.
Also trying to stop them is Hojo, and Avalanche defeats him as well. (We assume he's dead after this.)
Sephiroth has gone to the Northern Crater to await Meteor, which no one's been able to stop yet. It ends up that Sephiroth's presence is countering Holy. As long as Sephiroth lives, Holy won't be able to do its work, and Meteor will still fall and destroy the Planet.
Avalanche finds Sephiroth waiting in the Northern Crater and they fight him there. Sephiroth transforms into a bunch of different forms: Bizarro-Sephiroth, Savior Sephiroth the One Winged Angel etc. This is not the power of Mako, so he must be something completely other than human by now. Since the dialogue does point out that Jenova has the power to change one's physical form (hence Vincent's limit breaks,) we can pretty much only assume that Jenova is in complete control of Sephiroth, and probably always has been.
Avalanche defeats Sephiroth, and waits for Holy to come. But Meteor is already falling, so they might be too late. In the meantime, Cloud collapses again and falls into a weird limbo sort of thing. It ends up that Sephiroth, or whatever he was, has pulled Cloud into his consciousness for one last battle. This is Sephiroth in his human form. Cloud opens up a can of Omnislash and wipes out whatever of Sephiroth's consciousness was left.
Cloud awakens to find that the Northern Crater is collapsing around them. He thinks he's reaching out for Aeris, but he wakes up to find that he's reaching for Tifa, who's about to fall off the cliff. The ground gives out below Cloud just as Tifa falls, and he runs to catch her. As they both hang from the cliff, Cloud babbles something about an answer from the Planet, and says, "I think I can meet her there," meaning Aeris. It's hard to tell what's really going on here, because this scene was also botched by the translators. Tifa agrees with Cloud that they should "go meet her," but she looks heartbroken that he's talking about meeting Aeris. Cloud pulls them both back up, and they see that the rest of Avalanche has also survived. Cid wishes for "Lady Luck" to be on his side, and surely enough, the Highwind comes falling into the crater, stopping just before killing them. They get into the Highwind and fly to safety.
Meanwhile, Meteor is still falling. It ends up hovering right over Midgar, destroying whatever was left of it. However, before Meteor can make its true impact, the Lifestream itself comes flying out from all over the Planet and obliterates it.
I swear this part still makes me cry everytime. Aeris, surrounded by a green aura with green-white sparks flying around her face, looks up and smiles, the exact same scene from the very beginning, only now we know that the green aura is the Lifestream. We hear the same three sweet notes of music we heard the first time we saw this scene when we first put Disk 1 into Playstation and fired it up, hours, days, weeks or months ago. And that's the end.
...Until after the credits, when we shoot to 500 years later, and we see Nanaki running through the fields with his offspring. They crest a rocky cliff and look down from it. In the distance below, we see the grass and moss covered remains of civilization, the ShinRa logo visible through the green: what used to be Midgar. After the logo and the fade to black, we can hear the sounds of children laughing in the distance. Whether they symbolize a new civilization, or voices from the Lifestream, is left up to our interpretation.
Keep in mind, always, that most of FFVII was left up to the player's interpretation. There was a lot of freedom to make minor story-altering choices in this game, so it's likely that other people didn't get the same exact story. ALso, much of the plot is left to personal interpretation, too, most of all the question of, who was the real villain? Sephiroth, Jenova, Hojo? Some combination of all of them? It's up to you to figure that out. This is just the way I saw it all when I played it. And may or may not see it that way again the next time I play it. :D
Then the "camera" pans down and we see a girl with a pink bow in her hair, surrounded by a green aura. There are white-green sparks flying around her face. It all looks kinds of peaceful and mystical. There's graceful, tinkling music to go with the scene, even: when the girl looks up, we hear three bell-like notes. Then the camera pans out, and as the character stands up, we see that she's standing in an alley, looking at a malfunctioning circuit box that is throwing off green sparks. With a basket of flowers in her hands, she walks out of the alley and onto the street, where she's cut off by a speeding car. The music changes to big, industrial sounding drumbeats. Above the street, a sign advertises a play called "Loveless." The camera pans back further. Finally we see that the flower girl is in a kind of enclosed, covered city, surrounded around the top by seven buildings spewing green smoke. It looks polluted and claustrophobic. Then, a big old logo fills the screen.
Pan back into a different section of the city now, flashing every few seconds to the wheels of a speeding train. When we get into the innards of this part of the city, the train pulls into the station and stops. A crazy, spikey-headed, badly rendered blond guy leaps out of the train towards his first mission. Then you spend a good few minutes figuring out how to make him run.
You may, until seven days from now, download that scene here, at just over 5 MBs. It stops before the crazy blond guy jumps off the train, unfortunately. (I tried to match the music up with the movie. The music goes on after the FMV is over, sorry about that.)
But enough of that crap. Forget the flower girl for now. Start with the crazy, spikey-headed, badly rendered blonde.
Cloud Strife, 21 year old ex SOLDIER, mercenary for hire, joins a rebel group known as Avalanche, who are fighting the evil power company known as ShinRa. ShinRa has monopolized the power industry and uses Mako, a physical form of the "otherworld" called the Lifestream (where people go when they die, or otherwise leave the Planet,) as a power source. There are hypotheses that Mako and Lifestream are made up of human consciousness that has left the Planet, or a "world soul" or things like that. ShinRa uses Mako reactors to suck Mako up from the Planet and feed it into their power supply.
Cloud's first mission with Avalanche is to blow up a Mako reactor. We then find out that the leader of Avalanche, Tifa Lockhart, 21, is Cloud's childhood friend. They grew up together in Nibelheim, and Tifa now lives in Midgar, Sector Seven, and runs a bar ("Tifa's Seventh Heaven.") with Barret Wallace, 35. Barret Wallace has had his arm shot off in a shoot out with ShinRa, and has had a machine gun grafted onto the end of the severed arm.
Cloud's and Tifa's hometown of Nibelheim was torched by the legendary Sephiroth after he went on a mission to check out a malfunctioning Mako reactor, learned something about his past there, and went insane. Sephiroth disappeared after that.
Cloud seems to have amnesia, but we know--for now, anyway--that he was in SOLDIER for a while, ShinRa's elite army. SOLDIERs were usually exposed to Mako, which gave them incredible strength and recovery powers, as well as making their eyes glow blue or green. They fight, not only with weapons, but with Materia orbs - condensed Mako with specific powers. (Healing, defensive, lightning, ice, fire etc.) Materia is hard to come by in most places, but you can find it or buy it.
Cloud remembers very little, and has "episodes" - seizures and flashes of abstract memories.
Midgar, where Tifa is running her bar, is a mess; nothing but slums, all of it underneath a giant metal and concrete plate that was designed by ShinRa. Rich people live on top of the huge plate. Under it, where there's no fresh air or sun, are the slums. This plate was ShinRa's idea, and the final design was made by the Head of Urban Development (and one of the only deep down good guys in ShinRa,) Reeve.
During the second mission, blowing up another Mako reactor, they are trapped by president ShinRa himself, who sends in a machine to kill Avalanche off. Avalanche destroys the machine, but the bridge they are all on breaks, and Cloud is left dangling from the Mako reactor, way above Sector Five. Finally the Mako reactor explodes, and Cloud falls through the metal plate into the darkness.
He wakes up on the floor of a church, and there he meets Aeris Gainsborough, 22, who is tending her flowers. These are the only flowers that grow under the metal plate, and she sells them. Quickly enough, we find out that Aeris is being chased by ShinRa's most elite fighters, a small group known as the Turks. Reno of the Turks comes in with his henchmen to kidnap her, but Cloud saves Aeris from the Turks and she makes him her bodyguard. It's clear right away that Aeris is interested in Cloud as more than just a bodyguard.
We find out that ShinRa is interested in Aeris because she is what's known as an Ancient, or "Cetra," which means that she's descended from a line of people who were supposedly the first to inhabit the Planet. They had all sorts of powers without Materia. ShinRa wants her because they think she can lead them to the Promised Land, to which supposedly only Ancients could lead the way. ShinRa's main interest in the mythical Promised Land, however, is the fact that it's bubbling over with Mako that they can use.
However, the head of ShinRa's Science Department, professor Hojo, has another interest in Aeris. He's been studying Ancients for years, and also kidnapped Aeris' mother Ifalna many years before. Aeris' father and Ifalna's husband, we later find out, was Professor Gast, who had been working on the studies with Hojo, unaware that Hojo would turn against him and try to kidnap his wife and daughter. Hojo killed Gast, but not before Gast hid Aeris. After Ifalna dies, leaving Aeris at the train station, Aeris is found by Elmyra Gainsborough, who then raised her.
There have been attempts to kidnap Aeris since she was little, mostly by the man who would later become the leader of the Turks, Tseng. Tseng, we find out, was actually friendly with Aeris, and seems to never have had the heart to actually go through with the job. As Aeris grew up, Tseng seems to have fallen in love, or at least in fascination with her. (We only know this because Reno and Rude discuss their crushes at one point, and Reno tells Rude that Tseng has a thing for Aeris.)
After Avalanche blows up another reactor, back in Midgar, Aeris is finally captured by Tseng. Cloud and Avalanche go to the top of the plate as Aeris is taken away in a helicopter, and there they meet Reno of the Turks. Reno's orders are to bomb the support pillar over Sector Seven of Midgar in order to A) flush out Avalanche and B) set up Avalanche to take the fall for the mass destruction. Reno carries out President ShinRa's order and Sector Seven is destroyed. (Why did Midgar get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.)
Avalanche goes to ShinRa headquarters to rescue Aeris. While they're there, they find Hojo preparing to do an experiment on her. Also captured with her is a lion-like, sentient, intelligent animal labelled Red 13. (His age is given as 50 something.) His real name is Nanaki. He joins with Avalanche.
They begin to escape with Aeris and Nanaki, and then find that President Shinra has been killed by none other than Sephiroth, who was presumed dead.
Old Man ShinRa's son Rufus takes over the corporation. Unfortunately, he seems even more ruthless than his father.
Avalanche goes to a town called Kalm, chasing after Sephiroth. While there, Cloud tells Sephiroth's story to the others:
Five years ago, Cloud, Sephiroth, and two other SOLDIERs (all SOLDIERs under First Class wore masks, so we don't see who they were,) went on the mission to Nibelheim, to inspect a malfunctioning Mako reactor. Their tour guide up the mountain to the reactor is a young girl who's familiar with the path: Tifa Lockhart. Cloud remembers visiting Tifa's house, but we never see him interact with her there. When they got to the Mako reactor, they discovered a bunch of mutants and monsters in Mako pods, all labeled "The Jenova Project." Sephiroth, who has always been told that his mother's name was Jenova, puts this all together and realizes that he has probably come from something like this, and it begins to explain why he's so different. He goes crazy seeing all of these mutants, realizing he is one, and runs out of the reactor. He runs to ShinRa's Nibelheim mansion, where Hojo and Gast used to work together and run a lab, and finds the files on himself. The files tell him that Jenova was an Ancient, and that he was more or less created like Frankenstein, than he was actually born to her. The files also tell about how the Ancients are the rightful owners of the Planet and how all of mankind is destroying the Planet, just as surely as they wiped out the Ancients. He stays up all night and reads his own classified files.
(However, Cloud has since found out that Hojo’s and Gast’s studies were wrong: Jenova was not truly an Ancient. Jenova was actually a mutation virus from outer space, what the Ancients called the "Crisis From The Sky." In fact, Jenova destroyed most of the Ancients.)
The next day Cloud finds Sephiroth completely insane in the basement of ShinRa mansion. Sephiroth goes running out of the mansion saying "I'm going to see my mother." Cloud follows him back to the reactor, where Sephiroth finally goes past the pods of mutants (really just pre-Sephiroth experiments gone wrong,) and finally finds Jenova: the body of what is obviously a female kind of thing, hidden behind a big metal plated facade. Sephiroth rips the facade away, finds the body of Jenova, takes her head and runs out of the reactor, cutting down everything that's in his way. This includes Tifa Lockhart, her father, and another SOLDIER who challenges and injures Sephiroth. He torches the entire town, killing Cloud's mother as well. Tifa is apparently the only survivor.
Sephiroth disappears, is presumed dead, and doesn't come back. (<---noteworthy)
Now, five years later, Sephiroth has come back. (huh?) No one knows how. There are a bunch of black cloaked clones running around Nibelheim, half sentient, raving about a "reunion" and "becoming one with Sephiroth." (For the purposes of this summary, until Sephiroth does come back into the story, just assume that when I say "Sephiroth" I mean one of his clones.)
The group, following rumors of a man in a long black coat with a tremendous sword, go after him. They cross the Mythril Mines, and find that the Turks are one step ahead of them. Tseng is there, and Reno of the Turks is gone (injured by Cloud is the official story.) Taking his place is rookie Elena, who slips up in front of Avalanche as to where they are chasing Sephiroth. Tseng sees Aeris there, and lets her walk. In this scene we see that Elena has an obvious crush on Tseng.
They chase Sephiroth and eventually find him on a ShinRa boat out of Junon Harbor to Costa Del Sol. Sephiroth babbles about taking over the Planet, and the team fights with a form of Jenova and defeats her (it?) and Sephiroth escapes once again.
Chasing the rumors, Avalanche goes through North Corel, Barret's home town. Close to North Corel is a Disneyworld like place called the Gold Saucer. Cloud and company stop there, and there they meet a robotic cat who rides on a stuffed Mog. The cat is called Cait Sith. Cait Sith is a fortune telling machine as well, and he immediately joins Avalanche.
From there they head to Gongaga Village, and there find out that Aeris' first boyfriend was from there. His name was Zack, and he was also SOLDIER, first class. He had spikey black hair and carried a Buster Sword just like Cloud's. Zack disappeared five years ago and no one has heard from him since. Reno and Rude (another Turk and Reno's best friend) are there as well, also chasing Sephiroth. Cloud overhears that Rude has a crush on Tifa. Avalanche fights the Turks, and everyone lives to tell about it.
From there they go to Cosmo canyon, Nanaki's hometown. They meet his grandfather Bugenhagen, who has an observatory and an elaborate "planetarium" sort of thing where you can learn about materia.
After learning about the Planet and Materia, Avalanche finally heads back to Nibelheim. Cloud and Tifa expect to find it in ruins, as it was after Sephiroth torched it, but everything is as it was before the fire five years earlier. (Minus a few key townspeople, most importantly Tifa's father and Cloud's mother.) No one in town seems to remember anything about any fire. There are more Sephiroth clones walking around babbling about this "reunion."
In Nibelheim, they visit the ShinRa mansion. Locked in the basement in a coffin, and having slept for possibly 50 years, is Vincent Valentine (72? He doesn't age.) He used to be a Turk, but he fell in love with the woman he was assigned to protect. Her name was Lucretia, and she was a scientist working with Hojo. Hojo was also "in love" with Lucretia and she was torn between him and Vincent. Hojo became jealous, and shot Vincent, then kept him alive for his experiments. He injected Vincent with Jenova cells and cut off his left hand, where he now has a metal claw. As a result of Hojo's tampering, Vincent can change into all sorts of monsters. Vincent also joins Avalanche and the chase continues.
We also find out that Hojo and Lucretia had a son. While she was pregnant, Lucretia offered herself and her unborn son to Hojo for experiments. Hojo began "creating" this life-form in Lucretia, injecting the unborn child with Mako and Jenova cells. After she gave birth, Lucretia became ill, and Hojo took the boy and used him in more Jenova experiments. He was trying to create the perfect SOLDIER, more god than man, created to be the most powerful person on the Planet. Who could that son have been? O_O
Avalanche heads to Rocket Town, a town that was supposed to be the site of ShinRa's first rocket launch into space. There they meet a man who's now a pilot, but who was supposed to be the first man in space: Cid Highwind, 32. He was ShinRa's astronaut, but because of one of Cid's assistants (Shera, the woman he now lives with,) taking too long to thoroughly check the rocket, he had to cancel the launch. In the time between the failed launch and what was supposed to be the next launch, the ShinRa corporation pulled the funding for the space program. The rocket is still there, hence the name Rocket Town. Now Rufus ShinRa is back in town, thinking about re-investing in his father's aborted plan. Cid Highwind wants that more than anything.
However, Palmer from ShinRa finds out that Avalanche is in town, and ends up fighing with them. To escape ShinRa, Avalanche needs Cid's plane, the Tiny Bronco. Cid Highwind joins with them and they all leave Rocket Town together.
Traveling through the fields outside of a town called Wutai, Cloud and company meet a 16 year old ninja called Yuffie Kisaragi. She's also a Materia thief. She also joins Avalanche, but once they all get to her hometown of Wutai, she ends up stealing their Materia. While chasing Yuffie through Wutai, Avalanche meets up with the Turks again, who are on vacation there. Yuffie and Elena are both kidnapped by Don Corneo, the owner of a brothel. Avalanche and the Turks team up to rescue them, vow to work together and trust each other for this one mission, rescue their party members, then go their separate ways again. Reno lets Corneo fall of a cliff, and Yuffie and Elena are rescued. Yuffie gives back the Materia, and stays with Avalanche.
Cloud has heard of a special Materia called the Black Materia, which has regenerative / restorative (and destructive) powers beyond imagination. This must be what Sephiroth is after. In order to get it, they need something called a Keystone, which is on display at the Gold Saucer, so they head back there.
At the Gold Saucer, they get the keystone, only to be betrayed by Cait Sith. It ends up that Cait Sith has been working for ShinRa all the while. Tseng of the Turks sends a message to Avalanche telling them that he's taken Marlene, Barret's daughter, and Elmyra, Aeris' foster mother, and they won't be hurt as long as they hand over the keystone. They do, and Cait Sith also forces them to keep him in Avalanche as well. We don't know why yet. Everyone in Avalanche knows he's the one who's been leaking secrets to Tseng, but yet he wants to stay with them and asks them to trust him anyway. Like morons, they do.
With Cait Sith tagging along, Avalanche chases the Turks to the Temple of the Ancients, where the Black materia is supposed to be.
Once there, they find that Tseng and the Turks are already in the Temple. Tseng is nearly dead, having been butchered by a Sephiroth clone. He hands the Keystone to Avalanche, tells them how to use it to get into the Temple, and tells them to keep the Black Materia from Sephiroth. Aeris is only vaguely emotional about Tseng's death, even though we find out here that they've actually known each other for a long time.
Inside, they find out what Jenova already knows: that there is a way to summon a giant meteor to all but obliterate the Planet. This is what Sephiroth apparently wants, and also why he wants the Black materia. Then, they find out that the Temple itself IS the Black Materia. The only way to actually take it is to shrink it down by solving a puzzle from the inside.
Cait Sith, being a robot, offers to stay behind and do it. He apologizes for his duplicity, and Avalanche leaves the Temple, leaving Cait Sith to solve the puzzle. The Temple then shrinks and becomes the Black materia, and it is in Cloud's possession.
Cloud begins to freak out. Once Cloud has the Black materia, Sephiroth appears and begins to control him like a puppet. And then, in what is maybe the most disturbing scene in any video game, Cloud throws Aeris to the ground, jumps on her, and beats the crap out of her, pretty graphically. Then he falls into a hallucination, with no idea about why he’s just done what he’s done.
Afterward, Cloud has a dream that Aeris tells him that it's all right, she forgives him, and she's on her way to the City of the Ancients. He wakes up to find that this is true. And in the meantime, Sephiroth has summoned Meteor.
Now Avalanche, with Cait Sith II, is on the trail of Aeris. Aeris understands that as a true Ancient, she can pray for Holy, which is the only thing that can stop Sephiroth's Meteor.
Cloud and the others find Aeris praying at the altar, in a trance. Cloud freaks out again and raises his sword to kill her. He snaps out of it before he does so, and Aeris comes out of her trance and smiles at Cloud.
In what was maybe the most shocking video game moment--at least at its time--Sephiroth flies down from the rafters and skewers her. Every gamer in the world cries when the Materia clangs and the music plays. (To reiterate: The real Sephiroth is still dead, as we will later find out. A clone actually killed Aeris.) Jenova shows up, and they all fight her, except for Aeris, who is dead. They give her a funeral, (well, Cloud lets her sink into the water,) and hope that she has prayed enough to summon Holy to counter Meteor.
You can download that scene, or at least most of it, here. I did my best matching the music to the scene, but the dialogue between Cloud and Sephiroth immediately following Aeris's death, the entire Jenova fight, as well as scenes of the rest of the group mourning her, are sadly missing. (However, once again I matched the scene up with its original music as well as I could. The music and how it is timed pretty much makes the scene. The song goes on long after the scene ends. I should have cut it and faded it, but it slippe dmy mind. Sorry.)
They head north past the Icicle area, trying to get Sephiroth before Meteor comes, and also now for revenge. Sephiroth's plan is that Meteor will make such a big hole in the Planet that he'll be able to take all of the Mako for himself and become a god.
In the mountains, ShinRa is once again one step ahead of Avalanche. Rufus, Hojo, and Scarlet are there. Scarlet is head of ShinRa's weapons department, and they're also still looking for the Promised Land. Instead of Sephiroth or the Promised Land, they find the first WEAPON. WEAPON is something that the Planet creates by itself, to defend itself, mostly from Jenova. Sensing Jenova's revived will, WEAPON begins to awaken, and will destroy everything, people included, if it's not stopped.
Hojo sees Cloud there and tells him that he is nothing more than a failed Sephiroth clone, and that's why Sephiroth can control him so easily. He asks to see Cloud's number tattoo, and Cloud says he doesn't have one. Hojo tells him that's because he is a failed experiment, and too weak to merit a number. Cloud turns his back on his friends and begs Hojo to give him a number.
Afterwards, Cloud disappears in the mountains, still carrying the Black materia. Voices begin to call him again, and he ends up climbing into a huge Mako crystal, doing all sorts of weird upside down walking things, ignoring gravity, and generally going crazy. In the Mako / Materia crystal is the real body of Sephiroth. This is where the real Sephiroth enters the story. Everything they saw before that was nothing but clones.
Unable to control himself, Cloud slips the Black materia into the Mako crystal where Sephiroth's body is. The materia brings the body back to life.
With Sephiroth awake (and the Jenova cells inside him awake,) WEAPON also awakens and begins to rampage. Everyone escapes the first WEAPON, but Tifa is injured as they all fly away in Cid's airship, the Highwind. She awakens seven days later to find that she and Barret are ShinRa's prisoners. ShinRa plans to execute them live on television, in the gas chamber.
Tifa and Scarlet--who seems to have a soft spot for Rufus ShinRa--have a fight outside of the gas chamber as Tifa escapes. Tifa has escaped the gas chamber with the help of Cait Sith, who attacks Scarlet with sleeping gas, saying "I really hate that broad."
After Tifa escapes, WEAPON catches up with them. ShinRa fights WEAPON this time, using Scarlet's creation, a weapon called the Sister Ray. However, during this battle, Cloud falls into the Lifestream and is lost.
Avalanche searches for Cloud, and they finally find him in a hospital in Mideel. Cloud is wheelchair-bound and incoherent. Being in the Lifestream has given him severe Mako poisoning and he can't remember anything and he can't walk or speak. Tifa decides to stay with him.
Another WEAPON attacks, and the remaining members of Avalanche fight it, but Mideel is destroyed and the ground is blown open, revealing the Lifestream underneath. Cloud and Tifa both fall into the Lifestream this time.
In it, they find each other, and Tifa has to help Cloud find out who he really is. Going back over their memories of Nibelheim, Cloud learns that he is not really a clone, however he was experimented on by Hojo. After the destruction of Nibelheim, he abd his friend Zack, who was Aeris's first boyfriend, were captured by ShinRa and brought to Hojo. There they were exposed to (like all SOLDIERS were,) with Mako, and like a few other soldiers, injected with with Jenova cells. Only Cloud was weak and couldn't handle it, and it began to make him crazy. This went on during the entire five years between the torching of Nibelheim and the beginning of the game, when Cloud joins up with Avalanche. Which means that Cloud spent the ages of 16 to 21 as Hojo's experiment.
Tifa finally tells Cloud the truth: that she never actually saw him return to Nibelheim on the ill-fated trip with Sephiroth. All the while, Cloud has believed that he was there with Sephiroth, as his second in command, as SOLDIER First Class. Tifa was too afraid and confused to tell Cloud the truth: the story that Cloud told everyone was actually Zack's story. Tifa wonders, though: if Cloud wasn't really there, then how does he know everything that happened? How does he know every last detail?
Cloud begins to unravel it, and he realizes that he was actually one of the infantrymen, who were both wearing masks. He was on the mission, but had been ashamed to tell Tifa that he never made First Class, so he never showed his face. Tifa thought that Cloud simply hadn't come back.
What really happened at the reactor that day five years ago was this: After Sephiroth torched Nibelheim and ran up to meet his mother, slicing and dicing Tifa on his way, Cloud found Tifa injured helped her, although she doesn't remember it. Then he ran after Sephiroth. Cloud was 16 at this time, untrained and weak, but he was pissed off, and challenged Sephiroth anyway. Cloud managed to stab Sephiroth, who turned around and stabbed Cloud right back, impaling him on the Masamune. Sephiroth then lifted him up in the air with the sword and told him, "Don't push your luck." Somehow, Cloud was able to will himself back down, pull the sword out of himself, and throw Sephiroth off a bridge and into a river of Lifestream below.
Cloud and Tifa put this entire story together while they're in the Lifestream, and rememebr that it's the truth, and then they remember their childhood together, disproving Hojo's lie that Cloud was assembled in a laboratory. He was born and raised in Nibelheim--however, he *was* a failed experiment, as he couldn't handle the Mako/Jenova treatments. Cloud has about half his memory, and has been psychotic for most of the time since then, thinking that he was Zack.
The reason thought he was Zack was because Zack was everything Cloud wanted to be. He was SOLDIER first class, and a hero. After Cloud and Zack were captured by Hojo, they were both stuck in the same experiments. After five years, it was Zack who initiated their escape. He had to drag Cloud out of the building, fighting ShinRa soldiers and the Turks all the way. He finally got them a ride in the back of a pickup truck, going to Midgar. During the ride, Zack keeps trying to talk to Cloud about what they're going to do when they get to Midgar. He doesn't seem to realize that Cloud is dying. Before they get to Midgar, they are finally caught by ShinRa again. They shoot the bejeezus out of Zack, then, after he's dead, they shot him some more. ANd then, for good measure, they shoot him some more, still. They figure that Cloud is dead anyway, and they leave him on the side of the road next to Zack.
But Cloud wasn't dead. Once again, he was pissed off. So he took Zack's Buster Sword, and, apparently, his clothes, and made his way into Midgar on foot. He ended up at the train station, where Tifa found him on accident. Cloud didn't remember his name, but by listening to Tifa talk to him, he figured that his name was Cloud. But he still thought that he was this SOLDIER, first class. And he completely forget that there was a Zack.
But, in the Lifestream with Tifa, he finally remembers all of this. Cloud and Tifa both come out of the Lifestream with their memories returned. Cloud still forgets some little things, but now understands who he is and where he's from, and why he can't remember much of his time in SOLDIER. He does know, however, he really WAS the one who threw Sephiroth into the Lifestream five years ago. The rest of the party catches up with Cloud and Tifa, and they go on after Sephiroth again.
Meanwhile, ShinRa has its own plan (really Scarlet's plan,) to counter Meteor. They have found something called Huge Materia, and plan to shoot Meteor down with it. They're using the old ShinRa 27--Cid's rocket--to do so.
Avalanche knows this won't work, and they get on board the rocket to try and stop the launch. However, the rocket launches with them onboard, and Cid, Cloud, and another Avalanche member (depends on who you put in the party,) end up being the first people in space after all.
Cid is able to re-route the rocket, get them back down to the Planet, and take the Huge materia away from ShinRa.
After that, another WEAPON arises, and is going to destroy the rest of Midgar. Avalanche heads back to stop it. They also learn that ShinRa is going to use the Junon Cannon, another or Scarlet's weapons, to destroy it. This will also destroy the entire city. Reeve tries to stop them.
Avalanche goes to fight WEAPON, ShinRa decides to use the canon anyway, and in the fray, amid the destruction of Midgar, Rufus is killed. (OR IS HE?!!1111)
Now it comes down to Avalanche and what's left of the ShinRa corporation each trying to stop Sephiroth, and also trying to stop each other from trying to stop Sephiroth. ShinRa's methods are almost as destructive as Sephiroth's plan. Also, it ends up that Hojo, still ShinRa's main scientist, WANTS Sephiroth to succeed. We find out for certain that Hojo is Sephiroth's father and Lucretia was his mother. Sephiroth however, doesn't know this, and never finds out that he's human.
Reeve tries to stop Hojo from helping Sephiroth, and as Reeve is doing this, Cait Sith begins to act strangely. The execs at ShinRa also notice Reeve beginning to act strangely. In this scene that was butchered by the translators, we find out that Reeve has been controlling Cait Sith all the while. However, it seems that most of ShinRa was in the dark about this. When ShinRa finds that Reeve's been using Cait Sith to actually help Avalanche, Reeve is captured. However, for some reason, Cait Sith is still working with Avalanche and still helping them, and there's nothing that ShinRa can do about that.
As they chase Sephiroth, Avalanche meets up with the Turks one more time. In the game, you have the option of either fighting them or calling a truce with them.
No matter which one you choose, Scarlet and Heidegger, (Heidegger is the guy who hires out the Turks,) are still after Avalanche. Scarlet's new weapon is the Proud Clod, and Avalanche defeats it before moving on.
Also trying to stop them is Hojo, and Avalanche defeats him as well. (We assume he's dead after this.)
Sephiroth has gone to the Northern Crater to await Meteor, which no one's been able to stop yet. It ends up that Sephiroth's presence is countering Holy. As long as Sephiroth lives, Holy won't be able to do its work, and Meteor will still fall and destroy the Planet.
Avalanche finds Sephiroth waiting in the Northern Crater and they fight him there. Sephiroth transforms into a bunch of different forms: Bizarro-Sephiroth, Savior Sephiroth the One Winged Angel etc. This is not the power of Mako, so he must be something completely other than human by now. Since the dialogue does point out that Jenova has the power to change one's physical form (hence Vincent's limit breaks,) we can pretty much only assume that Jenova is in complete control of Sephiroth, and probably always has been.
Avalanche defeats Sephiroth, and waits for Holy to come. But Meteor is already falling, so they might be too late. In the meantime, Cloud collapses again and falls into a weird limbo sort of thing. It ends up that Sephiroth, or whatever he was, has pulled Cloud into his consciousness for one last battle. This is Sephiroth in his human form. Cloud opens up a can of Omnislash and wipes out whatever of Sephiroth's consciousness was left.
Cloud awakens to find that the Northern Crater is collapsing around them. He thinks he's reaching out for Aeris, but he wakes up to find that he's reaching for Tifa, who's about to fall off the cliff. The ground gives out below Cloud just as Tifa falls, and he runs to catch her. As they both hang from the cliff, Cloud babbles something about an answer from the Planet, and says, "I think I can meet her there," meaning Aeris. It's hard to tell what's really going on here, because this scene was also botched by the translators. Tifa agrees with Cloud that they should "go meet her," but she looks heartbroken that he's talking about meeting Aeris. Cloud pulls them both back up, and they see that the rest of Avalanche has also survived. Cid wishes for "Lady Luck" to be on his side, and surely enough, the Highwind comes falling into the crater, stopping just before killing them. They get into the Highwind and fly to safety.
Meanwhile, Meteor is still falling. It ends up hovering right over Midgar, destroying whatever was left of it. However, before Meteor can make its true impact, the Lifestream itself comes flying out from all over the Planet and obliterates it.
I swear this part still makes me cry everytime. Aeris, surrounded by a green aura with green-white sparks flying around her face, looks up and smiles, the exact same scene from the very beginning, only now we know that the green aura is the Lifestream. We hear the same three sweet notes of music we heard the first time we saw this scene when we first put Disk 1 into Playstation and fired it up, hours, days, weeks or months ago. And that's the end.
...Until after the credits, when we shoot to 500 years later, and we see Nanaki running through the fields with his offspring. They crest a rocky cliff and look down from it. In the distance below, we see the grass and moss covered remains of civilization, the ShinRa logo visible through the green: what used to be Midgar. After the logo and the fade to black, we can hear the sounds of children laughing in the distance. Whether they symbolize a new civilization, or voices from the Lifestream, is left up to our interpretation.
Keep in mind, always, that most of FFVII was left up to the player's interpretation. There was a lot of freedom to make minor story-altering choices in this game, so it's likely that other people didn't get the same exact story. ALso, much of the plot is left to personal interpretation, too, most of all the question of, who was the real villain? Sephiroth, Jenova, Hojo? Some combination of all of them? It's up to you to figure that out. This is just the way I saw it all when I played it. And may or may not see it that way again the next time I play it. :D