Final Fantasy VII is widely considered to be one of the greatest videogames of all time. Despite being released in 1997, fans of the game still find themselves greatly attached to it. It seems like with every new generation of consoles comes a cry for Final Fantasy VII to be remade.
What was it that has made this game so popular? In my opinion there are two reasons. The first being the complexity of the storyline which contained eco terrorism, global corporatocracy, an alien threat, a love triangle and perhaps the most memorable villain in videogame history - Sephiroth. This brings me to the second reason, Final Fantasy VII had a fantastic cast of villains which helped the player get behind the good guys.
Along with Sephiroth there were five other main villainous forces in FFVII as well a host of other lackeys and antagonists.
At the very beginning of FFVII the main enemy of your party is President Shinra. President Shinra is head of Shinra Corp, a company who began life as a weapons manufacturer and later became energy providers through their Mako energy project. President Shinra is an incredibly greedy man: not content by the corporatocracy he has created he also wishes the find The Promised Land, a land brimming over with Mako energy. Mako energy, while much more convenient, is produced through the converting the Lifestream which is the blood of the planet. This means that Shinra's business is literally killing the planet. President Shinra dies relatively early in the game - killed by the sword of Sephiroth.
President Shinra is succeeded by his son Rufus who runs the company in a slightly different way, using fear rather than money to control the people. He still maintained the same goal as his father however.
At the head of the Mako research is Professor Hojo. Hojo runs a series of what most people would consider immoral scientific projects and very much enjoys "playing God". He is directly responsible for the birth of Sephiroth the games main villain and also to blame for Cloud's identity crisis.
Like more governments, Shinra had an intelligence agency called The Turks. The Turks are a shady organization who attempt and succeed in kidnapping Aerith from your party. While you are able to recover Aerith The Turks seem to appear around every corner to offer resistance against your team of fighters.
The main villain though is most definitely Sephiroth. Sephiroth worked as a SOLDIER for Shinra before learning that he was the result of a scientific experiment. He mistakenly believes himself to be a demigod as he is born of Jenova's cells (more on that later). The most villainous act Sephiroth commits is the killing of Aerith one of the games main characters. This was a revolutionary plot twists as far as videogames were concerned at that time and is part of the reason FFVII is so memorable. Sephiroth also uses his immense powers to summon a comet that will destroy the earth.
In many ways the truly evil force in the game is Jenova. Jenova is an alien entity that came to earth thousands of years prior to the game and tricked the Cetra people and infected them with a disease which nearly wiped them all out. While its motives for doing this aren't entirely clear it is most likely that Jenova wished to destroy all living beings so that it could leech off the Lifestream of the planet. However Jenova was sealed off (it is not mentioned by whom but perhaps the last surviving Cetra managed it) where it was trapped for two thousand years.
It was later dug up by Shinra who believed Jenova to be one of the Cetras with the potential power to lead them to The Promised Land. Professor Hojo used cells from Jenova in many of experiments one of which was the creation of Sephiroth.
After Sephiroth had killed President Shinra he began a question to reunite all the parts of Jenova which had separated. At this point Jenova was in total control of Sephiroth who was merely doing his "mother's" bidding.
Of course at the end of the game good was able to triumph over evil and Sephiroth and Jenova were defeated, but were they killed? Judging on Advent Children, a movie follow-up to FFVII, Jenova is still very much alive and has the capability to bring Sephiroth back to life.
An ending such as this leaves game makers Square Enix in the position to make a true Final Fantasy VII sequel - a sequel that would be widely welcomed by fans of FFVII. Will we see one? I suspect that, sooner or later, we certainly will.
Jake likes to spend his free time relaxing playing video games.
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