Materia are scattered all over the game, both out in the open and hidden. The plot has a firm environmental basis with the revolutionaries against the power and money hungry corporations bent on sucking the life out of the planet, killing off endangered species, such as the condor, and poluting the oceans. The largest corporation also runs the government and has its own private army called Soldier. As a member of the revolutionary group avalance, it is your job to protect the environment by destroying reactors that are designed to convert the life force of the planet, called Mako, into energy. A side product to these Mako Reactors is the transformation of animals and humans into unnaturally powerful monsters that constantly confront Avalance and are the source of many of the fights.
Pure mako flows into the world through the reactors and also naturally occuring mako fountains.
Both the reactors and fountains can form materia gems which have the power to perform magic trapped in their crystalline matrix. Another large part of the game is to search out and find various materia that have been scattered around the planet and develop its powers to assist the group in fighting Shinra, Soldier, and the monsters. Graphics A roving camera moves around the combat scene showing combat from almost any camera angle. Part of the camera positioning logic causes the camera to rotate around the action, as if on a boom to give a moving perspective of the action. The same spell, summoning, limit break, or critical hit, looks new and different when viewed from a moving camera that constantly changes the perspective.