Final Fantasy VII: the story on HearLore

Final Fantasy VII

Cloud Strife was never a hero. He was a nobody, a failed infantryman who never made it into the elite SOLDIER program, yet he walked into the world of Final Fantasy VII claiming to be a legendary first-class SOLDIER. This lie, constructed from the shattered memories of a dead friend named Zack Fair, became the foundation of one of the most complex psychological narratives in video game history. The story begins in 1997, when Square released a game that would redefine the medium, but the truth of Cloud's identity was the final twist that turned a standard fantasy adventure into a deconstruction of heroism itself. The game's protagonist, a mercenary with a sword the size of a small tree, was actually a victim of Shinra's experiments, injected with alien cells and Mako energy that warped his mind and memories. This revelation, hidden until the middle of the game, forced players to question the reliability of their own perspective, as the game deliberately betrayed the connection between the player and the protagonist. The narrative structure was so advanced for its time that critics later compared it to films like The Sixth Sense and Fight Club, establishing an unreliable narrator concept that had never been attempted in an interactive medium before. The emotional weight of this twist was amplified by the death of Aerith Gainsborough, a flower girl who held the secret to saving the world, killed in a scene that shocked the gaming community and proved that no character was safe. The game's impact was immediate and seismic, selling over two million copies in Japan within three days of its release on the 31st of January 1997, and eventually becoming the best-selling title in the series with over 15.3 million units sold worldwide by September 2025. The story of Cloud Strife was not just a tale of saving the planet from a megacorporation, but a journey of self-discovery for a man who had to learn who he really was before he could save anyone else.

The Planet's Last Hope

The world of Final Fantasy VII, known as Gaia, was dying, suffocated by the very energy that powered its civilization. The Shinra Electric Power Company, a megacorporation headquartered in the industrial city of Midgar, was draining the Planet's life force, the Lifestream, to create Mako energy. This process weakened the Planet and threatened the existence of all life, creating a desperate need for resistance. AVALANCHE, an eco-terrorist group led by the brazen Barret Wallace, sought to destroy Shinra's Mako reactors to stop the bleeding, but their actions often resulted in collateral damage and tragedy. The main antagonist, Sephiroth, was a superhuman who had been presumed dead five years prior, only to reappear and reveal his true intent: to wound the Planet and harness its healing power to be reborn as a god. Sephiroth's plan involved the Black Materia, a powerful artifact that would cast the spell Meteor, devastating the Planet and allowing him to absorb the Lifestream as it tried to heal the wound. The party, led by Cloud, had to pursue Sephiroth across the globe, facing not only the villain but also the remnants of Shinra's security forces, the Turks, and the alien entity Jenova, which had been imprisoned by the Cetra, a near-extinct human tribe, two thousand years before the game's events. The Cetra, who maintained a strong connection to the Planet, were nearly wiped out by Jenova's virus, and their history was the key to stopping Sephiroth's god-like ambitions. The game's setting was a blend of industrial science fiction and fantasy, with the city of Midgar standing as a symbol of the Planet's suffering, a massive industrial complex built over a slum where the poor lived in the shadow of the rich. The narrative explored themes of environmental destruction, corporate greed, and the cost of progress, making it a cyberpunk masterpiece that resonated with audiences in 1997 and remains relevant today. The story's depth was enhanced by the inclusion of characters like Red XIII, an intelligent feline from a tribe that protected the Planet, and Cait Sith, a fortune-telling robotic cat controlled by a repentant Shinra staff member named Reeve. The party's journey was not just a physical one but a spiritual quest to understand the nature of life and death, with the Lifestream serving as both a physical and metaphysical force that connected all living things. The game's climax involved the party descending to the Planet's core to defeat Jenova and Sephiroth, allowing Holy to be summoned and destroy Meteor, ultimately healing the Planet and showing that even in the ruins of Midgar, life could recover.

When was Final Fantasy VII released?

Final Fantasy VII was released on the 31st of January 1997 in Japan. The game was released in North America on the 7th of September 1997 and in Europe on the 17th of November 1997.

Who is the main character of Final Fantasy VII?

The main character of Final Fantasy VII is Cloud Strife, a mercenary who claims to be a first-class SOLDIER but is actually a failed infantryman. His identity is constructed from the shattered memories of a dead friend named Zack Fair and warped by Shinra's experiments with alien cells and Mako energy.

What platform was Final Fantasy VII released on?

Final Fantasy VII was released on the PlayStation from Sony Computer Entertainment. Square abandoned the Nintendo 64 version due to technical limitations and the excessive strain on the Nintendo 64 hardware caused by the 2000 polygons needed to render the Behemoth monster.

Who composed the music for Final Fantasy VII?

The musical score of Final Fantasy VII was composed, arranged, and produced by Nobuo Uematsu. The soundtrack includes the track One-Winged Angel, which was inspired by The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky and rock and roll music from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

How many copies of Final Fantasy VII were sold worldwide by September 2025?

As of September 2025, the original version of Final Fantasy VII has sold over 15.3 million units worldwide. The game became the best-selling title in the series with these sales figures.

The Risky Gamble

Development of Final Fantasy VII began in 1994, following the completion of Final Fantasy VI, but the project was nearly derailed by technical limitations and the shifting landscape of the video game industry. The team initially planned to create a 2D game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but the impending shift to 3D gaming forced them to take a radical new approach. Square decided to take the riskier option and make a 3D game on new generation hardware, choosing between the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 and the CD-ROM-based PlayStation from Sony Computer Entertainment. The decision was influenced by a highly successful tech demo based on Final Fantasy VI using the new Softimage 3D software and the escalating price of cartridge-based games, which was limiting Square's audience. Tests were made for a Nintendo 64 version, which would use the planned 64DD peripheral, but the prototype device's changing hardware specifications and the excessive strain on the Nintendo 64 hardware caused by the 2000 polygons needed to render the Behemoth monster led to the version being discarded. It would have required an estimated thirty 64DD discs to run Final Fantasy VII properly with the data compression methods of the day. Faced with both technical and economic issues on Nintendo's current hardware, and impressed by the increased storage capacity of CD-ROM, Square shifted development of Final Fantasy VII, and all other planned projects, onto the PlayStation. The final version of the game took a staff of between 100 and 150 people just over a year to complete, which was described as the largest development team of any game up to that point. The development team was split between both Square's Japanese offices and its new American office in Los Angeles, with the American team working primarily on city backgrounds. The game was at the time one of the most expensive video game projects ever, costing an estimated 40 million, which adjusted for inflation came to 61 million in 2017. The combined development and marketing budget amounted to approximately 80 million, a figure that was unprecedented for the industry. The team had to overcome significant challenges, including the large memory storage gap between the development hardware and the console, with the early 3D tech demo having been developed on a machine with over 400 megabytes of total memory, while the PlayStation only had two megabytes of system memory and 500 kilobytes for texture memory. The team needed to figure out how to shrink the amount of data while preserving the desired effects, which was aided with reluctant help from Sony, who had hoped to keep Square's direct involvement limited to a standard API package, but they eventually relented and allowed the team direct access to the hardware specifications. The game's graphical style was a hybrid of 3D character models superimposed over 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, a technique that allowed for a cinematic experience while maintaining the charm of traditional 2D art. The choice of this highly cinematic style of storytelling, contrasting directly with Square's previous games, was attributed to director Yoshinori Kitase, who was a fan of films and had an interest in the parallels between film and video game narrative. The game's computer-generated imagery (CGI) full motion video cutscenes were produced by Visual Works, a then-new subsidiary of Square that specialized in computer graphics and FMVs creation, and involved talent from the gaming and film industry, including Western contributors who had worked on the Star Wars film series, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and True Lies. The CGI FMV sequences totaled around 40 minutes of footage, something only possible with the PlayStation's extra memory space and graphical power, and the team had to ensure that the inferiority of the in-game graphics in comparison to the FMV sequences was not too obvious.

The Art of Memory

The visual design of Final Fantasy VII was a collaborative effort that pushed the boundaries of what was possible on the PlayStation, with character designer Tetsuya Nomura playing a pivotal role in shaping the game's iconic aesthetic. Nomura, who was brought on as main character designer after impressing producer Hironobu Sakaguchi with his proposed ideas, which were handwritten and illustrated rather than simply typed on a PC, designed the main characters while thinking up details about them. When he was brought on, the main scenario had not been completed, but he went along like, I guess first off you need a hero and a heroine, and from there drew the designs while thinking up details about the characters. After he'd done the hero and heroine, he carried on drawing by thinking what kind of characters would be interesting to have. When he handed over the designs he'd tell people the character details he'd thought up, or write them down on a separate sheet of paper. Several of Nomura's designs evolved substantially during development, with Cloud's original design of slicked-back black hair being deemed not very heroic, so developers changed his hair color to bright blond. Vincent's occupation changed from researcher to detective to chemist, and finally to a former Turk with a tragic past. The game's art director, Yusuke Naora, who had previously worked as a designer for Final Fantasy VI, realized that he needed to relearn drawing, as 3D visuals require a very different approach than 2D. With the massive scale and scope of the project, Naora was granted a team devoted entirely to the game's visual design, with duties including illustration, modeling of 3D characters, texturing, the creation of environments, visual effects, and animation. The Shinra logo, which incorporated a kanji symbol, was drawn by Naora personally, and promotional artwork, in addition to the logo artwork, was created by Yoshitaka Amano, an artist whose association with the series went back to its inception. While he had taken a prominent role in earlier entries, Amano was unable to do so for Final Fantasy VII, due to commitments at overseas exhibitions. His logo artwork was based on Meteor: when he saw images of Meteor, he was not sure how to turn it into suitable artwork. In the end, he created multiple variations of the image and asked staff to choose which they preferred. The green coloring represents the predominant lighting in Midgar and the color of the Lifestream, while the blue reflected the ecological themes present in the story. Its coloring directly influenced the general coloring of the game's environments. The team also had to deal with the challenge of creating 3D character models that could express emotion, with the decision to use deformed models for field navigation and real-time event scenes, for better expression of emotion, while realistically proportioned models would be used in battles. The team purchased Silicon Graphics Onyx supercomputers and related workstations, and accompanying software including Softimage 3D, PowerAnimator, and N-World for an estimated total of 21 million, and many team members had never seen the technology before. The transition from 2D graphics to 3D environments overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds was accompanied by a focus on a more realistic presentation, with environments shifting with camera angles, and character model sizes shifting depending on both their place in the environment and their distance from the camera, giving a sense of scale. The choice of this highly cinematic style of storytelling, contrasting directly with Square's previous games, was attributed to Kitase, who was a fan of films and had an interest in the parallels between film and video game narrative. Character movement during in-game events was done by the character designers in the planning group, and while designers normally cooperate with a motion specialist for such animations, the designers taught themselves motion work, resulting in each character's movements differing depending on their creators. Some designers liked exaggerated movements, while others went for subtlety. Much of the time was spent on each character's day-to-day, routine animations, and motion specialists were brought in for the game's battle animations. The first characters the team worked with were Cloud and Barret, and some of the real-time effects, such as an explosion near the opening, were hand-drawn rather than computer-animated. The main creative force behind the overall 3D presentation was Kazuyuki Hashimoto, the general supervisor for these sequences, who was experienced in the new technology the team had brought on board and accepted the post at Square as the team aligned with his own creative spirit.

The Sound of Survival

The musical score of Final Fantasy VII was composed, arranged, and produced by Nobuo Uematsu, who had served as the sole composer for the six previous Final Fantasy games, and the soundtrack was a critical component of the game's emotional impact. Originally, Uematsu had planned to use CD quality music with vocal performances to take advantage of the console's audio capabilities, but found that it resulted in the game having much longer loading times for each area. Uematsu then decided that the higher-quality audio was not worth the trade-off with performance, and opted instead to use MIDI-like sounds produced by the console's internal sound sequencer, similar to how his soundtracks for the previous games in the series on the Super NES were implemented. While the Super NES only had eight sound channels to work with, the PlayStation had twenty-four, with eight reserved for sound effects, leaving sixteen available for the music. Uematsu's approach to composing the game's music was to treat it like a film soundtrack and compose music that reflected the mood of the scenes, rather than trying to make strong melodies to define the game, as he felt that approach would come across too strong when placed alongside the game's new 3D visuals. As an example, he composed the track intended for the scene in the game where Aerith Gainsborough is killed to be sad but beautiful, rather than more overtly emotional, creating what he felt was a more understated feeling. Uematsu additionally said that the soundtrack had a feel of realism, which also prevented him from using exorbitant, crazy music. The first piece that Uematsu composed for the game was the opening theme, and game director Yoshinori Kitase showed him the opening cinematic and asked him to begin the project there. The track was well received in the company, which gave Uematsu a sense that it was going to be a really good project. Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to include a track with high-quality digitized vocals, One-Winged Angel, which accompanies a section of the final battle of the game. The track has been called Uematsu's most recognizable contribution to the music of the Final Fantasy series, which Uematsu agrees with. Inspired by The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky to make a more classical track, and by rock and roll music from the late 1960s and early 1970s to make an orchestral track with a destructive impact, he spent two weeks composing short unconnected musical phrases, and then arranged them together into One-Winged Angel, an approach he had never used before. Music from the game has been released in several albums, with Square releasing the main soundtrack album, Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack, on four Compact Discs through its DigiCube subsidiary in 1997. A limited edition release was also produced, containing illustrated liner notes, and the regular edition of the album reached third on the Japan Oricon charts, while the limited edition reached 19. Overall, the album had sold nearly 150,000 copies by January 2010. A single-disc album of selected tracks from the original soundtrack, along with three arranged pieces, titled Final Fantasy VII Reunion Tracks, was also released by DigiCube in 1997, reaching 20 on the Japan Oricon charts. A third album, Piano Collections Final Fantasy VII, was released by DigiCube in 2003, and contains one disc of piano arrangements of tracks from the game. It was arranged by Shirō Hamaguchi and performed by Seiji Honda, and reached 228 on the Oricon charts. The soundtrack's success was a testament to Uematsu's ability to create music that was both emotionally resonant and technically impressive, and it played a crucial role in the game's critical acclaim and commercial success.

The Global Phenomenon

Final Fantasy VII was announced in February 1996, and Square president and chief executive officer Tomoyuki Takechi were fairly confident about Japanese players making the game a commercial success despite it being on a new platform. A playable demo was included on a disc giveaway at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show, dubbed Square's Preview Extra: Final Fantasy VII & Siggraph '95 Works, and the disc also included the early test footage Square created using characters from Final Fantasy VI. The initial release date was at some point in 1996, but to properly realize their vision, Square postponed the release date almost a full year. Final Fantasy VII was released on the 31st of January 1997, and it was published in Japan by Square. A re-release of the game based on its Western version, titled Final Fantasy VII International, was released on October 2 the same year, and this improved International version would kickstart the trend for Square to create an updated version for the Japanese release, based on the enhanced Western versions. The International version was re-released as a physical disc as part of the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimate Box Japanese package on the 18th of December 2012. While its success in Japan had been taken for granted by Square executives, North America and Europe were another matter, as up to that time the Japanese role-playing genre was still a niche market in Western territories. Sony, due to the PlayStation's struggles against Nintendo and Sega's home consoles, lobbied for the publishing rights in North America and Europe following Final Fantasy VIIs transfer to PlayStation, and to further persuade Square, Sony offered a lucrative royalties deal with profits potentially equaling those Square would get by self-publishing the game. Square accepted Sony's offer as Square itself lacked Western publishing experience. Square was uncertain about the game's success, as other JRPGs including Final Fantasy VI had met with poor sales outside Japan. To help with promoting the title overseas, Square dissolved their original Washington offices and hired new staff for fresh offices in Costa Mesa. It was first exhibited to the Western public at Electronic Entertainment Expo 1996 (E3). To promote the game overseas, Square and Sony launched a widespread three-month advertising campaign in August 1997, beginning with a television commercial that ran alongside popular shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons by TBWA\Chiat\Day. The campaign included numerous articles in both gaming and general interest magazines, advertisements in comics from publishers such as DC Comics and Marvel Comics, a special collaboration with Pepsi, media events, sample discs, and merchandise. According to estimations by Takechi, the total worldwide marketing budget came to 40 million, with 10 million spent in Japan, 10 million in Europe, and 20 million in North America. Unlike its predecessors, Final Fantasy VII did not have its numeral adjusted to account for the lack of a Western release for Final Fantasy II, III, and V, while only the fourth Final Fantasy released outside Japan, its Japanese title was retained. It was released in North America on the 7th of September 1997, and the game was released in Europe on November 17, becoming the first Final Fantasy game to be released in Europe. The Western version included additional elements and alterations, such as streamlining of the menu and Materia system, reducing the health of enemies, new visual cues to help with navigation across the world map, and additional cutscenes relating to Cloud's past. The game's commercial success was immediate and overwhelming, with over two million copies sold in Japan within three days of its release, and 330,000 copies sold in North America in its debut weekend, reaching 500,000 copies in less than three weeks. The momentum established in the game's opening weeks continued for several months, and Sony announced the game had sold one million copies in North America by early December, prompting business analyst Edward Williams from Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. to comment that Sony redefined the role-playing game (RPG) category and expanded the conventional audience with the launch of Final Fantasy VII. By the end of 2005, the PlayStation version had sold 9.8 million copies, including 4 million sales in Japan, making it the highest-selling game in the Final Fantasy series. By May 2010, it had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, making it the most popular title in the series in terms of units sold. As of June 2020, the game has sold more than 13.3 million units worldwide, and as of September 2025, the original version of the game has sold over 15.3 million units worldwide. The game's success was not just a commercial triumph but a cultural phenomenon, with the title winning numerous Game of the Year awards and being credited for boosting the sales of the PlayStation and popularizing Japanese role-playing games worldwide.