Ensuing events send Cloud and his allies in pursuit of Sephiroth, a superhuman who seeks to wound the planet and harness its healing power in order to be reborn as a god.

Veteran Final Fantasy staff returned, including series creator and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, director Yoshinori Kitase, and composer Nobuo Uematsu.

[5] Natural barriers—such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water—block access by foot to some areas; as the story progresses, the player receives vehicles that help traverse these obstacles, thus opening more of the game world for exploration.

[3]: 17 At random intervals on the world map and in field mode, and at specific moments in the story, the game will enter the battle screen, which places the player characters on one side and the enemies on the other.

Final Fantasy VII also features powerful, character-specific commands called Limit Breaks, which can be used only after a special gauge is charged by taking enemy attacks.

Early on, he works with two members of AVALANCHE: Barret Wallace, its brazen but fatherly leader; and Tifa Lockhart, a shy yet nurturing martial artist and his childhood friend.

During their journey, they meet Aerith Gainsborough, a carefree flower merchant and one of the last surviving Cetra;[14][15] Red XIII, an intelligent canine from a tribe that protects the planet;[16] Cait Sith, a fortune-telling robotic cat controlled by repentant Shinra staff member Reeve;[3][17] and Cid Highwind, a pilot whose dream of being the first human in outer space was unrealized.

[37] The team decided to take the riskier option and make a 3D game on new generation hardware but had yet to choose between the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 or the CD-ROM-based PlayStation from Sony Computer Entertainment.

[39] Their decision was influenced by two factors: 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.

This version was discarded during early testing, as the 2000 polygons needed to render the Behemoth monster placed excessive strain on the Nintendo 64 hardware, causing a low frame rate.

[37][41][52] According to Sakaguchi, his mother had died while Final Fantasy III was being developed, and choosing life as a theme helped him cope with her passing in a rational and analytical manner.

[24] While Final Fantasy VI featured an ensemble cast of numerous playable characters that were equally important, the team soon decided to develop a central protagonist for FFVII.

[52] Among Nojima's biggest contributions to the plot were Cloud's memories and split personality; this included the eventual conclusion involving his newly created character of Zack.

Kitase and Nojima then planned that most of the main cast would die shortly before the final battle; Nomura vetoed the idea because he felt it would undermine the impact of Aerith's death.

[59] 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.

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.

[77] 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.

[37] 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.

[83] 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.

[37] The PC version came with a license for Yamaha Corporation's software synthesizer S-YXG70, allowing high-quality sequenced music despite varying sound hardware setups on different user computers.

[96] The team also faced several technical issues due to programming practices which took little account of subsequent localization, such as dealing with a fixed-width font and having to insert kanji through language input keys to add special characters (for example, vowels with diacritics) to keep the code working.

Swear words were used frequently in the localization to help convey the original Japanese meaning, though most profanities were censored in a manner described by Square employee Richard Honeywood as the "old comic book '@#$%!

[82] Some months prior to the game's North American release, Sony publicly stated that it was considering cutting the scene at the Honey Bee Inn due to the salacious content, prompting numerous online petitions and letters of protest from RPG fans.

[97] In addition to translating the text, the North American localization team made tweaks to the gameplay, including reducing the enemy encounter rate, simplifying the Materia menu, and adding new boss fights.

[120] GamePro gave it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and fun factor), calling the storytelling "dramatic, sentimental, and touching in a way that draws you into the characters", who "come alive thanks to sweetly subtle body movements".

[117] In addition to calling the graphics "bar none the best the PlayStation has ever seen", Next Generation said of the story that "while FFVII may take a bit to get going, as in every entry in the series, moments of high melodrama are blended with scenes of sheer poetry and vision".

[131] Edge noted that Final Fantasy VII had come close to being an interactive movie in playable form, praising its combination of a complex story that went against Western graphic adventures trends and "excellently orchestrated chip music".

[54][55][56] In addition, Final Fantasy VII is also noted for its use of the unreliable narrator literary concept, drawing comparisons to films such as Fight Club (1999), The Sixth Sense (1999), American Psycho (2000) and Memento (2000).

[226] Several characters from Final Fantasy VII have made cameo appearances in other Square Enix titles, most notably the fighting game Ehrgeiz and the popular Final-Fantasy-to-Disney crossover series Kingdom Hearts.

[236] Releases not under the Compilation label include Maiden Who Travels the Planet, which follows Aerith's journey in the Lifestream after her death, taking place concurrently with the second half of the original game.