Final Fantasy 7

[The Ragin' South Asian]

so that Final Fantasy 7 type movie is coming out this fall or something, and before then, i'd like to know what happened in the game. playing it isn't an option at this point. i read an online plot summary but it was pretty confusing. so anyway, what's the story of FF7?

[Jedo the Jedi]

I'm not sure which one it is that I knew everything about it, but it might have been FF7. Either that one or FF8. If there truly is a movie coming out, I'd like to see it, if it is well executed.
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Paragon Tally: 19 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Dread Pirate Westley]

OK, obviously this is a spoiler, and keep in mind, I didn't like the game overmuch, so I haven't played it in 5+ years:

Game starts. Relatively cool train graphic. Main character jumps out of train and hacks apart guards with ease. Proceeds to blow up "Mako" reactor (Some weird energy source). When they go blow up another one, Oh, no. It's a trap. Reactor is blown up, but spikey hair dude falls into a pit. Enter flower girl. Flower girl is being hounded by Shinra (evil corporation) types. Spiky hair dude plays "Knight in shining armor" and they escape and re-meet up with the rest of the terrorist group, currently being taken out by Shinra goons. Fight, blah blah, they drop the plate on one sector of the slums, killing lots of people. Good guys don't like this, so they invade Shinra HQ. Oh, no. CEO's been murdered. Some huge sword sticking out of his back. Only Sephiroth uses that big sword. Join with talking dog and escape.

Go to talking dog's home town. Mako energy is planet's life force. Use it up, and poof. No more planet. Oh, yeah. Seph wants "Black Materia," that can summon a meteor to crush the earth, go get it so he can't have it. Annoying big cat thing "Only I can get the black materia and live. Hahaha. I was actually with Shinra all along. Here, Shinra. Have the black materia. Gee are you guys dumb, but you still have to keep me around." Flower girl: "I'm actually an 'Ancient' I can talk to the planet, so I'm going to go to some weird place up north and try to do something." Seph doesn't want this, so he kills her. Boss fight and End of Disc 1

Seph has gone to the North Crater. Good guys have to follow him. Spiky hair guy gets controlled by Seph, then goes vegetable. Weird, surreal sequence when another party member helps him figure out who he really is. OK, we're all happy. But we have to go crush Shinra, so let's parachute into the city. Seph has taken the black materia. He's going to call the meteor to smash into the earth, then all the weird energy will rush to that place, and he'll absorb it or something (Yeah, people actually like this crap), so the good guys have to go kill him. End of Disc 2

Spend 20 hours playing the Chocobo breeding minigame. Go kill Seph. Ending. Meteor may or may not be stopped by flower girl's white materia that turned on when she died. X years later, some of the talking dogs run up to a cliff and see the big city covered with vines.

Fin.

There's some sort of weird crap having to do with Jenova, too, but I don't remember any of that.

[kevinatilusa]

Here's some more detailed spoilers of plot, NOT in the order the game presents it to you.

Setting: The planet in question has a few small towns and villages scattered about, but the largest is Midgar, a city with both extensive wealth and extensive slums. Midgar and most of the rest of the planet's technology is supported by Mako energy, energy taken from the planet itself (with unknown environmental consequences). The sole provider of Mako energy, and therefore the de facto ruler of the planet, is a company known as Shinra.

Characters (in rough order of appearance):

The main character is an ~20 year old man named Cloud. More on him later.

Barrett is a somewhat older man and the leader of Avalanche, an environmental terrorist group bent on shutting down Midgar's mako reactors. As we later learn, Barrett was an early advocate of mako energy until a reactor accident destroyed livelihoods and lives in his home town.

Tifa is a childhood friend of Cloud and another member of Avalanche.

Aeris is a young woman met by Cloud in the slums of Midgar. She also is the last surviving ancient, a member of a race known for its power and close connection to the planet. Because of this connection, Shinra wants to capture her and harness her power in search of greater sources of Mako.

Red XIII is a doglike, but intelligent creature who was being held for scientific research by Shinra. He comes from a noble and brave family, though he does not realize this at first and initially despises his father.

Cait Sith is a fortuneteller at the Gold Saucer (think Las Vegas meets Coney Island) who joins the party after realizing they were accomplishing great things. As it turns out, Cait's body is only a puppet being controlled by a renegade employee of Shinra.

Cid is an engineer, pilot, and would-be astronaut whose schedule trip as the planet's first spaceman was put aside after the rocket was nearly destroyed in an accident for which he blames his wife (it later turns out that his wife's actions hadn't caused the accident, and indeed prevented a much worse accident).

Now for the bad guys:
2,000 years ago a group of cells called Jenova invaded the planet and began turning its creatures into monsters before being captured and subjected to scientific experiments.

One particularly foolish such experiment involved breeding Jenova with an Ancient. The result was Sephiroth, a warrior of great power who coincidentally also wants to destroy the planet for reasons outlined below.

Plot:
The main reason that the story seems so convoluted is that Cloud himself doesn't understand what is going on, or his own past for that matter. As he recalls it, he was once a soldier by Sephiroth's side who accompanied Sephiroth to a mission in Niflheim (his hometown). During that mission, Sephiroth came face to face with his mother and, realizing her true form, promptly went insane and laid waste to the town. However, when Cloud later visits Niflheim he finds that nobody there remembers either him or Sephiroth, and that they recall no such destruction several years back.

This story is, for the most part, correct. However, the years in between are absent from Cloud's memory. During those years he was captured by Shinra and subjected to various laboratory experiements, including the injection of Jenova's cells in a failed attempt to make him into a Sephiroth clone. After escaping the laboratory with a friend (who was killed in the escape), he went to Midgar and joined Avalanche as a mercenary. All this is backstory and flashback...the game begins with the events in the next paragraph.

Cloud blows up a few reactors with Avalanche, but then becomes separated from the group, at which point he meets Aeris and saves her from the Shinra forces attempting to capture her. Soon afterwards Shinra destroys the part of the city in which Avalanche is headquartered (laying the blame on those evil terrorist Avalanche people), an event which leads to the group deciding to invade Shinra headquarters. They reach the President's office, only to find that the President has already been killed by Sephiroth and that Sephiroth had escaped with Jenova.

A merry chase across two continents ensues, with Cait Sith and Cid joining the party along the way. While travelling, they learned that Sephiroth is searching for the "Black Materia", a magical item so powerful it can call a meteor down to cause a great wound in the planet. The planet is self repairing (using its mako energy), and Sephiroth hopes to be at the location of the wound so he can experience submersion in this lifestream of energy.

Cloud and co. get the Black Materia first, but Cloud enters some sort of trance (possibly due to the Jenova cells within him) and gives it to Sephiroth. At this point Aeris leaves the party, saying that only she would be able to stop the summoning of meteor. This is all well and good until Sephiroth kills Aeris and sics part of Jenova on the party. After killing that part and stealing the black materia back, the party goes off in search of Sephiroth to kill him once and for all.

More merry chasing ensues, but eventually they catch up to Sephiroth, who is summoning and killing all the clones of him throughout the world. Cloud, dimly realizing that he is supposed to be at this reunion as well, enters another trance and (oops) gives the Black Materia back to Sephiroth, who promptly summons a meteor to come visit the planet.

The planet doesn't like this much, and the resulting earthquakes send Cloud plummeting into the lifestream and unleash series of powerful "weapons" fighting against all those who in the planet's judgment are against it. After a failed attempt to pin the blame for the ensuing destruction on Avalanche, Shinra and the party reach an uneasy truce, deciding that there are worse foes out there.

More quests and the like ensue, and the party finds Cloud in a hospital at an isolated village. Extreme exposure to Mako energy has left him unable to speak or to walk, as he is locked inside the contradictions of his own memories. Eventually Tifa walks through those memories with him, straightens out his past, and helps him to recover.

In the meantime, the meteor is hovering over the planet, but not yet striking it. As it turns out Aeris's death served as a sacrifice, a prayer to the planet to help it fight against meteor. Essentially the situation is a stalemate, with Aeris' holy prayer fighting Sephiroth's meteor spell to a standstill. After Shinra destroys the shield protecting Sephiroth, the party goes in and kills him, enabling the holy prayer to reach its conclusion.

At this point the game ends in a very open-ended fashion. The planet's response to the prayer is essentially a more powerful form of the weapon: It fights against EVERTHING the planet considers harmful to it. Yes, that includes the meteor, but it is unknown how humanity fared under the planet's judgment. The game ends with the image of a destroyed city (certainly the Mako reactors wouldn't survive the judgment) and an image of Red XIII's descendants, but NOT with any image of humanity surviving.

[Jedo the Jedi]

Didn't Seph kill Aeris with some wicked curved sword? Or is that someone else?
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Paragon Tally: 19 mafia, 3 SKs (1 twice), 1 cultist, numerous chat scum...and counting.

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Indeed, at the end of disk 1. I wasn't happy when that happened, especially since I had made Aeris one of my strongest characters by then.

[The Ragin' South Asian]

I actually remember you talking to someone about that way back when (irl).

[cloud]

Fighting the Weapons was the coolest part of the game.

[cloud]

That's cloud, as in "cloudRunner".

[Beartalon]

Link to movie information?

[RSA]

http://imdb.com/title/tt0385700/