You look up, and there’s no sun. Just a giant, rusted metal plate dripping with grease and heavy machinery. That’s Midgar. For anyone who’s ever picked up a controller, Midgar Final Fantasy 7 isn't just a level or a city; it’s a mood. It’s the smell of ozone and the sound of a train screeching against the tracks. Honestly, when Square Enix first dropped us into that opening cinematic back in 1997, gaming changed forever. We weren't in a high-fantasy castle anymore. We were in a dystopian nightmare that felt strangely like our own world, just cranked up to eleven.
Midgar is a circle. Eight sectors. Eight Mako reactors. One massive central pillar holding up the "pizza" where the rich people live, while the rest of us rot in the slums below. It’s a literal class hierarchy made of iron and concrete. Shinra Electric Power Company didn't just build a city; they built a cage. And yet, there's something about those neon lights and the flickering green glow of Mako that keeps us coming back.
✨ Don't miss: Farming and Friends Script: What Most Players Get Wrong About Automation
The Architecture of Oppression in Midgar Final Fantasy 7
Midgar is huge. Like, terrifyingly huge.
The city is roughly 1.5 miles across, which sounds small by modern open-world standards, but the verticality is what gets you. The "Upper Plate" sits about 50 meters above the ground. Below that? Perpetual twilight. The sun never hits the slums. You’ve got people living in shipping containers and scrap metal houses while the Shinra executives sip expensive wine in the clouds. It’s brutal.
Director Yoshinori Kitase and art director Yusuke Naora didn't just pull this out of thin air. They looked at the "cyberpunk" aesthetic of the 80s and 90s—think Blade Runner or Akira—and mixed it with the gritty reality of industrial Tokyo. The result was a city that felt alive because it felt like it was dying. The Mako reactors are basically the city's organs, pumping the lifeblood of the planet out of the ground to power refrigerators and streetlights.
It's a parasitic relationship.
The city thrives by killing the world. Most players don't realize that Midgar was actually built over several existing towns. Those towns lost their names and became Sectors 1 through 8. It’s a total erasure of history. When you’re running through Sector 7, you aren't just in a slum; you're in a graveyard of what used to be a normal neighborhood.
The Mako Problem: Energy or Poison?
Let's talk about Mako. In the world of Midgar Final Fantasy 7, Mako is everything. It’s electricity. It’s Materia. It’s progress. But it’s also the Lifestream—the literal souls of the dead and the unborn.
Imagine if your heater was powered by your ancestors. That’s Midgar.
Shinra sells it as clean, cheap energy. But the side effects are everywhere. Look at the grass. Or rather, the lack of it. Nothing grows in Midgar except in very specific, miraculous spots—like Aerith’s church. The soil is dead. The air is thick. Even the people living there look a bit gray. This wasn't just a plot point; it was a massive environmental statement at a time when most games were still about saving princesses from turtles.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Sectors
A lot of folks think the sectors are identical. They aren't.
Sector 1 is the industrial heart, home to the first reactor we blow up. Sector 5 is where the "nicer" slums are, relatively speaking. It’s where Aerith lives in her flower-filled oasis, which is a total anomaly in this rust-bucket city. Then you have Sector 6, which is basically a lawless construction zone leading into Wall Market.
Wall Market is... a lot. It’s the entertainment district where Shinra’s rules don't quite reach, but Don Corneo’s rules do. It’s loud, garish, and dangerous. It’s also the only place in Midgar that feels like it has any "color" left, even if that color is a bit sleazy.
- Sector 1: Heavy industry, high security.
- Sector 5: Residential, home to the church and Aerith’s house.
- Sector 6/Wall Market: The "pleasure" district, lawless, vibrant.
- Sector 7: Tifa’s bar (Seventh Heaven), the heart of the resistance.
- Sector 8: The upscale theater district on the plate.
The tragedy of Sector 7 is the turning point of the game. When Shinra drops the plate to crush the resistance, they don't just kill terrorists. They kill thousands of their own citizens just to make a point. It’s one of the most cold-blooded moments in RPG history. You spend hours getting to know the people there—the weapon shop owner, the kids playing in the street—and then, in an instant, they’re just gone.
The Remake Effect: Expanding the Steel Sky
When Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out in 2020, it spent the entire first game just in Midgar. People were worried. "How can you spend 40 hours in one city?"
Easily, as it turns out.
The Remake added layers to Midgar Final Fantasy 7 that we only imagined in 1997. We got to see the day-to-day life of a Shinra employee. We saw the propaganda on the TV screens. We felt the sheer scale of the plate hanging over our heads. The developers used lighting to tell the story—the way the Mako light reflects off the wet asphalt creates this sickly green tint that makes the whole city feel diseased.
The nuance increased. We saw that not everyone in Shinra is evil; some are just trying to pay rent. We saw that AVALANCHE’S actions had consequences—real people got hurt in those explosions. It made the city feel less like a level and more like a character. A dying, beautiful, terrifying character.
The Shinra Building: A Vertical Dungeon
If Midgar is the body, the Shinra Building is the brain. It’s a 70-story skyscraper that dominates the skyline.
Climbing it is a rite of passage. You have two choices: take the stairs or bust in through the front door. The stairs are a slog—59 floors of characters panting and complaining—but it’s one of the best bits of environmental storytelling in the series. You feel the weight of the climb. You feel the exhaustion.
Inside, it’s all corporate sleekness. Lab coats, boardroom meetings about profit margins, and dark secrets in the basement. It’s here that we meet Jenova and Sephiroth for the first time in the flesh. The shift from a gritty urban rebellion story to a cosmic horror story happens right here, in the heart of the city.
Why Midgar Still Matters in 2026
We’re still talking about Midgar because it’s the ultimate "used future."
It’s not the shiny, clean future of Star Trek. It’s messy. It’s held together by duct tape and greed. In a world where we’re increasingly worried about climate change and corporate overreach, Midgar feels more relevant than ever. Shinra isn't just a fantasy villain; they’re a conglomerate that owns the air you breathe and the light you see by.
The game forces you to ask: what is progress worth? Is the convenience of Mako worth the death of the planet? Cloud Strife starts the game not caring. "Not my problem," he says. But by the time he leaves Midgar, he realizes that you can't live on a dead world, no matter how bright the neon lights are.
How to Experience Midgar Today
If you’re looking to dive back into Midgar Final Fantasy 7, you’ve got options.
- The OG (1997): Still the best for atmosphere and pacing. The pre-rendered backgrounds are works of art. Use the "Seventh Heaven" mod on PC if you want upscaled textures that stay true to the original vibe.
- The Remake (2020/2021): Specifically Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. The "INTERmission" DLC with Yuffie gives you a whole different perspective on the city.
- Crisis Core Reunion: This prequel lets you see Midgar through the eyes of Zack Fair. It’s a bit more optimistic, which makes the eventual downfall even more tragic.
Pro Tip: Pay attention to the NPCs in the Sector 5 slums. Their dialogue changes after every major plot point. It’s the best way to see how the "regular people" are reacting to the chaos you're causing.
Practical Insights for the Midgar Obsessed
If you want to truly "get" Midgar, stop sprinting.
Walk through the slums. Listen to the background music—Nobuo Uematsu’s "Under the Rotting Pizza" is a masterclass in setting a tone. Look at the way the sunlight (or lack thereof) hits the debris. The environmental storytelling in the Remake is top-tier; you can find discarded Shinra products, posters for plays in Sector 8, and graffiti that tells the story of the underground resistance.
Midgar is a warning wrapped in a masterpiece. It’s a city that consumes its own children to keep the lights on. Leaving Midgar at the end of the first act is one of the most "breathtaking" moments in gaming because you finally see the horizon. You realize how small and cramped that steel sky really was.
But even when you’re out in the wide-open world of Gaia, you’ll find yourself looking back at the horizon, searching for those eight pillars of smoke. You never really leave Midgar. It stays with you, a rusted, glowing reminder of what happens when we stop looking at the stars and start looking at the bottom line.
Next Steps for Players:
- Explore Wall Market thoroughly: Don't just rush the main quest. There are side stories in the gym, the restaurants, and the back alleys that flesh out the local culture.
- Compare the versions: If you've only played the Remake, go back and play the first 5-6 hours of the 1997 original. The difference in tone—grittier, faster, more surreal—is fascinating.
- Check the Lore: Read the On the Way to a Smile novellas, specifically the "Case of Shinra," to understand how the city functioned after the meteor threat.
- Photo Mode: In the Remake, use Photo Mode to look up from the slums. The scale of the plate is actually modeled to scale, and it’s dizzying to see how much weight is hanging over the NPCs' heads.
The legacy of Midgar isn't just in the polygons or the pixels. It's in the way it made us feel like we were part of something bigger, scarier, and more important than just a game. It's the ultimate urban legend of the gaming world.