Introduction
Final Fantasy VII is a role-play style video game released by Squaresoft (now Square Enix) in 1997 for the Playstation and the PC. The seventh in the Final Fantasy series, it debuted to incredibly high ratings and holds the position of most popular and best-selling title in the series to date.
The game itself centers around ShinRa, a megacorporation that drains energy from the planet and converts it into a usable power source. Because of the stress this draining puts on the planet, a gang of upstart eco-terrorists called AVALANCHE hires a mercenary to aid them in their attempt to save the world. During their attacks on ShinRa, a rogue former ShinRa general appears and starts causing some serious havoc. This general, Sephiroth, a real badass in serious need of some counseling, is being manipulated by his alien "mother" JENOVA. After much angst, a lot of explosions, and the longest boss battle in the history of time, the heroes defeat Sephiroth and save the day and the planet.
Due to Final Fantasy VII's insane popularity even years after it's original release, Square Enix came back in 2004 and released Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, a game designed exclusively for play on Japanese cell phones. Before Crisis is a prequel to the original game, set six years prior to the first game's events. The plot revolves around ShinRa's elite mercenary force, the Turks, who are out to stop AVALANCHE, who is at this early time a much bigger and more terrorist-y terrorist group than the band of rag-tag heroes we find in the original game. At this point in time, Before Crisis has still not been released in the US, though we've been promised an eventual release date.
On September 14, 2005, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, a computer-animated film was released as a follow-up to the original game. Set two years after the end events of the game, we again follow the mercenary, Cloud, as he and the remaining members of ShinRa (including a very NOT DEAD Rufus) work to discover and remedy the after-effects of Meteor (one of those aforementioned explosions) and a mysterious condition called geostigma that plagues the population, as well as fight the recently appeared clones of Sephiroth who are bent on finding their "mother". All of the old AVALANCHE gang returns to help out, and once again the reincarnated Sephiroth and his clones are defeated and the day is saved thanks to some geostigma-healing magic church water.
Also in 2005, an animated OVA called Final Fantasy VII: Last Order was released as a bonus feature on the Limited Edition version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The short cartoon detailed two important flashbacks that took place in the first game, having to do with the Nibelheim incident, in which Sephiroth went berserk and burned down a town. Last Order features Cloud, Sephiroth, Zack, Tifa, and the Turks, led by Tseng.
Next came Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, a third person shooter/RPG starring Vincent Valentine, a bonus party member in the original game who has a rather strong affinity for teh angst. This game takes place a year after Advent Children and involves a secret group of powerful SOLDIERS known as Deepground who were apparently getting a bit of cabin fever due to being trapped under the Midgar following those explosions, and now wants to destroy the world. Long story short- Vincent shoots stuff, kills the leader of Deepground, and the day is saved yet again. Go figure.
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core hit the shelves in 2007, and is yet another prequel, this time for the Sony PSP. In this game, we follow a 2nd Class SOLDIER named Zack that we previously knew from Cloud's angst-ridden flashbacks. The storyline is set during the Wutai Wars and goes through the Nibelheim events before ending right before the beginning of the original game. We also get to see a lot of early SOLDIER, including Cloud and a pre-psycho Sephiroth, along with a few new characters such as Angeal and GacktGenesis. Really, this game mostly fills in a lot of plot holes left over from Last Order.
As far as future releases go, we've only got rumors. Eternal Crisis has been said to be a remake of the original game, but I highly doubt it'll actually happen, but hey, you never know. Especially if Square Enix decides they still need more money out of us.
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