Game Summary

If I asked some of you what your favorite RPG was, I'm sure one answer would keep coming up. But do you actually know what happened in the story? It's quite complicated and I didn't realize what actually happened until quite recently when I replayed it. I tried to condense my summary as much as possible.

FFVII Summary

The planet contains a lifestream that is magical energy. The Cetra land on the planet and settle amongst the humans already living there. Awhile later, Jenova lands on the planet, creating a huge wound that is now the north crater. The planet creates Weapons to deal with the threat. Jenova pretends to be a Cetra and wipes out most of them, but they manage to destroy Jenova. The weapons created by the planet go into hibernation since there is no threat.

2,000 years pass.

The Shinra Company becomes very powerful after discovering a way to harness the power of the planet’s lifestream to create Mako energy. Mako is what planets crave. Shinra is so big that it runs the government of the city of Midgar. It has its own elite armed forces called SOLDIER.

Professor Gast finds Jenova while excavating in Mount Nibel. He believes she is a Cetra (sometimes called an Ancient in the game) and studies her. Shinra gets involved with funding and send Hojo, Lucrecia, and Vincent Valentine to help with the Jenova Project. The goal is to create humans with the power of the Cetra. Vincent falls in love with Lucrecia and she falls in love with Hojo. Hojo is having no luck in his experiments and believes that testing on fully developed humans is the problem. He does the horizontal polka with her until she’s preggers and injects her with Jenova cells. She mutates and gets special powers after giving birth, then runs away. Vincent gets mad and Hojo pimp slaps him and does some experiments on him. Vincent pretty much becomes a vampire and goes into seclusion. Hojo leaves Jenova in the Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor. He takes his kid to Shinra HQ and names him…..wait for it… Sephiroth.

Professor Gast leaves to search for more info on the ancients and ends up in Cosmo Canyon. He meets Ifalna who is an ancient. Gast gets Ifalna to derelict his balls and then Aeris is born. Hojo, who can track a falcon on a cloudy day, finds them. He kills Gast and takes Ifalna and Aeris prisoner in Midgar. They escape but Ifalna dies. Aeris is left to live with a woman in the slums of Midgar.

Cloud and Tifa grow up in Nibelheim. They are little more than acquaintances.

Meanwhile, Sephiroth is in SOLDIER kicking ass and chewing gum, but he’s all out of gum. Cloud decides to join SOLDIER. Cloud has major mental issues and no confidence. He doesn’t make it into SOLDIER, but enters the Shinra army.

Zack, Cloud, and Sephiroth (these 3 people are important, it’s a major point in the story) are sent to Nibelheim Reactor, cloud’s home town. Cloud hides his identity so Tifa won’t see that he is in the regular army and not in SOLDIER. Tifa leads them to the Mako reactor. Strange experiments are left inside. Sephiroth finds notes of the Jenova Project and starts to realize his origins may be from experiments like these. He decides that Jenova is his mother and that he is an Ancient. He believes all humans are traitors because they allowed the Ancients to be wiped out. Sephiroth sets the whole town of Nibelheim on fire, then grabs Jenova’s body from the reactor. Zack, Cloud and Tifa attack Sephiroth and all 4 are wounded. Sephiroth falls off a bridge into the lifestream of the planet. Tifa is rescued and taken to Midgar. Cloud, Zack and any other surviving residents of Nibelheim are used by Hojo to create clones of Sephiroth, now that the original is believed to be dead. Shinra rebuilds the town and repopulates it so it looks like nothing happened.

While in the lifestream, Sephiroth assimilates the knowledge of the Ancients. He learns about the planet’s ability to heal itself after it is wounded. His plan is to summon meteor and do major damage to the planet. When the planet’s energy rushes there to fix itself, he will absorb it and become all powerful. He also realizes he can control the clones created by Hojo and project himself psychically. He can probably start fires with his thoughts.

Barret and Tifa form AVALANCHE to get revenge on Shinra. Zack and Cloud escape from Nibelheim where they are being experimented on. Cloud is really messed up from the experiments. Zack dresses him in a spare SOLDIER uniform. During their escape, Zack tells Cloud about his days in SOLDIER. Shinra catches Zack and Cloud. Zack is killed but Cloud comes to his senses and manages to escape. However, his mind has taken Zack’s stories to be his own experiences and he now has personality conflicts. He meets Tifa and joins AVALANCHE.

Here is where the game begins. Cloud hears Sephiroths Voice and has flashbacks throughout the game.

AVALANCHE blows up one of the Mako reactors in Midgar and it lights up like the 4th of july (naw but there was a large explosion though). They set out to take out another Mako reactor. While they are escaping from setting the bombs cloud is knocked off a platform and lands in a church. He meets Aeris. They meet up with Tifa and discover Shinra is going to destroy the entire slum that AVALANCHE is located in. They try to stop Shinra but are unsuccessful. They raid Shinra HQ and find Red XIII. They escape from Shinra HQ in a high speed chase.

The group arrives in Kalm. Cloud tells them what happened in Nibelheim, but he tells it from Zack’s point of view. He can’t separate his memories from Zack’s. They all go to Junon Port, the one with the giant canon. Cloud disguises himself to sneak into the Shinra parade. He learns that Shinra is also looking for Sephiroth. The group takes a boat to Costa Del Sol. While on the boat they are attacked by Sephiroth (psychic projection – Sephiroth is in the North crater for the entire game).

They go to Corel which leads to the Golden Saucer. Here the manager asks them about Black Materia, saying that another person in a “black cloak” was asking him about it. Cait Sith joins their party. He is actually a robot controlled by Reeve, who is from Shinra. They all go to Cosmo Canyon, Red XIII’s home, and learn about the lifestream. It turns out the planet is dying because the Mako energy is being sucked from it.

They return to Nibelheim and discover that it isn’t destroyed even though they saw it burn down. It's like they're taking crazy pills. Vincent Valentine joins the group. They confront Sephiroth in the laboratory. He was there reading about the Jenova Project. Sephiroth flies out of the laboratory. The group goes to Rocket Town and Cid Highwind joins the group. There is an abandoned rocket in the town that never took off. They take his plane the Tiny Bronco to Temple of the Ancients to acquire the Ultimate Destruction Magic. Tifa realizes that cloud is pretending to be Zack. Cloud’s personality is starting to split in two. They solve some puzzles to get the Black Materia. Cloud holds it. Then Sephiroth appears and makes Cloud hand him the Black Materia. Cloud passes out afterwards.

Aeris leaves for the City of the Ancients. The rest of the group goes to Bone Village, which leads to the City of the Ancients. They find Aeris praying to summon holy. Sephiroth appears and totally stabs her, and she suffers the kind of death that can’t be fixed with a phoenix down.

The group decides they must stop Sephiroth and they make their way to the North crater. Tifa and Cloud separate from the group and they are attacked mentally by Sephiroth. He plays with Cloud's memories, showing them the day in Nibelheim when they attacked Sephiroth. He shows what actually happened, but Cloud is convinced that he was in Zack’s place. Sephiroth lies to him and tells him that he has no past, he only stole all Zack’s memories. Cloud tries to remember how he got into SOLDIER and can’t. Then he collapses when he thinks that Sephiroth may be right.

Sephiroth summons a huge meteor. One of the Weapons created by the planet attacks the North crater and everyone makes it out except Cloud, who falls into the lifestream. The group is told that the lifestream has a hole in the ocean floor by Mideel. They go to Mideel and find Cloud in a coma. Tifa stays with him and the others go to Mako reactors and steal Huge Materia to try and destroy the meteor. One of the Weapons attacks Mideel, knocking Tifa and Cloud into the lifestream. Tifa and Cloud go through his memories while in the lifestream and figure out that he does have a past, he was just confused with Zack’s memories. Everyone gets on board the rocket with the huge materia and they crash it into the meteor, but it’s not enough to stop it. Luckily several of the escape pods weren’t jettisoned, and they were able to escape. They discover that Aeris was trying to summon Holy, which might be the only thing that can stop Meteor, but Sephiroth is blocking it. So basically just kill Sephiroth and everything will be fine. They go to the North Crater and defeat Sephiroth, but he attacks Cloud’s mind. Cloud learns his final limit break Omnislash and kills Sephiroth. The meteor is still coming. It crashes into Midgar, but holy prevents the meteor from landing. Meteor and holy’s energy destroy Midgar. After everything is gone you can see Aeris smiling at you.

500 years later

You see RedXIII running with his kids past Midgar which is now in ruins and tons of flowers growing around it.

Things I didn't include:
Shinra war with Wutai
Aeris Childhood
Red XIII/Nanaki’s past
Cid Highwind
Barret’s past and Corel Prison
Reeve/Cait Sith’s involvement in Shinra
The Reunion
Submarine