Is there a decent write up of the FF7 over arching story somewhere? I haven’t played all the related games, and it’s probably been 15 years or more since a ff7 play through.
I'll have a go:
Basically the Shinra Electric Company got so rich off selling Mako Power (electricity generated by the souls of the dead) that they got into other things like Weapons Manufacturing/Scientific Research and ended up controlling the entire world via money and electricity supply. They would do dirty things like burn down Barret's hometown because they knew how to mine coal. Only one nation resisted, Wutai (Yuffie's hometown), so there was a war. During the war, Sephrioth was an elite soldier for Shinra and became a legendary hero.
After the war Sephrioth was on a routine mission to investigate a manfunctioning Mako Reactor at Niebelheim when he discovers a science experiment in the reactor with the same name as his supposed dead mother, Jenova. It's an ancient lifeform discovered during an archeological dig decades before. Tifa is the local guide to help Sephrioth find the reactor, Zack is another elite soldier Sephrioth is mentoring and Cloud is just one of two random grunts on the mission. Coincidentally it's Cloud's hometown and he hides his identiity from Tifa because he is embarassed about only being a glorified security guard and not an elite soldier like Sephrioth.
Sephrioth finds out part of the truth about his origin as a super soldier experiment and goes insane, burning down the town and mortally wounding Tifa, Zack and Cloud when they go after him when he returns to the reactor. He attempts to leave with JENOVA's head but Cloud is able to throw him into the Mako stream the reactor is extracting energy from, killing him. The whole thing is covered up by Shinra. Tifa's monk mentor gets her out of there and helps her recover, but Cloud and Zack are taken by a scientist called Hojo who experiments on them.
What Sephrioth didn't know is that his real parents are Hojo and Lucrecia (Vincent's girlfriend) and he was just injected with JENOVA cells in the womb. Hojo and another scientist called Gast (Aeris' father) did the experiments to try and bring back an ancient race of people called the Cetra and thought that JENOVA was an Cetra, actually JENOVA was an alien shapeshifter that wiped the Cetra out. Based on that flawed research Sephrioth thinks that JENOVA is a Cetra and humans wiped them out, causing him to hate humanity. Gast had later met Ilfana (Aeris' mother) and learned the truth but they are hunted by Shinra who know that Ilfana is an Cetra, so the truth about JENOVA hadn't been passed on to anyone.
After ~4 years Zack manages to escape Shinra and takes Cloud with him, who is catatonic from the experiments. Zack had already been infused with Mako as part of the elite soldier training, so could resist the experiments somewhat as they were similar only this time it was also injecting them with JENOVA cells. They head to Midgar but when they get there they are caught and Zack is killed, Cloud is left for dead because he's already catatonic.
However Cloud wakes up and find Zack's body, he then gets on a train and is found by Tifa at the Sector 7 station (end of the line). He takes on Zack's persona as a way to have him live on, deal with his grief, deal with years of being experimented on and continue to save face with Tifa who thought he was an elite Shinra soldier. He's also wearing one of Zack's uniforms and has his sword so the lie works and he convinces even himself that it's true. Tifa is now a terrorist working with Barret/Biggs/Wedge/Jessie to stop Shinra, they belive in the theories of the people of Cosmo Canyon (Red XIII's hometown), that Shinra is draining the souls of the dead to make electricity and it's killing the planet. Usually souls reincarnate but it's being disrupted by the power plants.
Sephrioth's body meanwhile has floated up into the Northern Crater which is an an incedible source of Mako and his mind has refused to reincarnate, he is able to control JENOVA and anyone with her cells. JENOVA had been moved to the Shinra Building in Midgar, it escapes and shapeshifts into Sephrioth and compells anyone with it's cells to follow it, this includes all of Hojo's experiments and maybe even Cloud.
Tifa and Aeris (Zack's girlfriend) get weirded out by Cloud acting like Zack at various points during the game but don't tell him because they are scared of the consequences for Cloud. Cloud is directly controlled by JENOVA three different times and fucks up the quest. When the party eventually finds Sephrioth at the Northern Crater, he reveals the truth and Cloud breaks.
Most of this information is only found in sidequests lol.
