Game story · The Final Fantasy anthology

Final Fantasy VII

Cloud joins Avalanche against Shinra's Mako reactors, then pursues Sephiroth as the conflict expands from Midgar to the future of the Planet.

1997Gaia and the Meteor crisisCanon status: Fixed main story

What happens in the game

Sephiroth's plan to summon Meteor depends on wounding Gaia and absorbing the Lifestream gathered to heal it. Cloud's pursuit is complicated by false memories built from trauma and Zack's experiences.

Aerith acts through her Cetra connection to the Planet, while the party helps Cloud reconstruct his identity and returns to stop Sephiroth at the Northern Crater.

The story, step by step

  1. From reactor sabotage to pursuit

    Cloud joins Avalanche against Shinra's mako extraction, but the fall of Sector 7 and Sephiroth's return push the group beyond Midgar. The pursuit exposes a world materially dependent on draining the Planet.

  2. Memory, loss and Meteor

    At the Temple and Forgotten Capital, Sephiroth manipulates Cloud's unstable identity and kills Aerith. Northern Crater revelations break Cloud's borrowed self-image, while Tifa helps him reconstruct the truth around Nibelheim and Zack.

  3. The Planet answers

    Cloud returns as himself, the party descends into the crater and defeats Sephiroth. Holy appears unable to stop Meteor alone until the Lifestream rises, leaving humanity's future deliberately less certain than the Planet's survival.

What the story is really about

Identity is relational, not fabricated

Cloud's false persona is not corrected by a data dump. Trust with Tifa lets him integrate shame, aspiration and genuine memory.

Ecology versus extractive modernity

Mako powers comfort and empire by consuming the world's life cycle. Shinra's political violence and the cosmic crisis share the same logic of extraction.

How it ends

Sephiroth is defeated; Holy and the Lifestream oppose Meteor. The ending protects Gaia but deliberately leaves the immediate fate of human civilization less explicit than the Planet's survival.

What changes afterward

  • Cloud accepts his real history and chooses his own identity.
  • The Compilation extends the characters' lives; the remake project revisits these events through a developing continuity.

How it connects forward

Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth reframe the journey in a trilogy whose final published answer remains pending.

Places in this game

Characters in this game

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