The first of the Final Fantasy installments to debut on the Sony Playstation (PSX), and the first to utilize 3D graphics with full motion video and pre-rendered backgrounds. Final Fantasy VII enjoyed great sales, with worldwide sales exceeding 9.72 million copies, making it the best-selling game in the series. With the efforts of over a hundred programmers and designers and the extensive 3D and polygon-based renderings, the creators knew that Final Fantasy VII would need a medium suitable for their project. With the advent of newer computer graphics being implemented in games, the creators decided to move Final Fantasy to Sony, since Nintendo decided to continue the use of cartridges.

The lifestream. The life of the planet itself and the very essence from which all organism perpetuate from. The game opens with the player assuming control over Cloud Strife, who is on route to sabotage a mako reactor of Shinra, inc.. Employed as a mercenary by AVALANCHE, and its leader Barret Wallace, the group succeeds and returns to base. On his way to Sector 7 of Midgar, the base of operations for AVALANCHE, Cloud meets Aeris Gainsborough, a young girl selling flowers in the slums of Midgar. He later meets her again when an attempt to sabotage another reactor goes awry and Cloud crashes though a ruined church building in Sector 5 that also happens to be a retreat for Aeris. She informs him that Shinra’s elite assassination and espionage division is trying to abduct her. Cloud agrees to act as her bodyguard. Escaping capture, Aeris agrees to lead Cloud back to Sector 7 when they spot Cloud’s childhood friend and a member of AVALANCHE, Tifa, entering a dangerous part of the slums. Events perpetuate and the group learns that Shinra knows the location of AVALANCHES’s base of operation. From here, players must guide the characters through a great story; wrought with plot twists and many tales of greed, love, and sacrifice.