Vincent Valentine

Three years ago, Vincent fought alongside Cloud Strife and Avalanche to defeat the legendary soldier, Sephiroth. A year ago, he lent his might again to defeat a new threat to the planet. Now, having returned to his solitary life, Vincent has been called to action once more.

The product of illicit human experiments, conducted by Shinra's head of biochemical research, Hojo, Vincent's body is nearly indestructable, and does not age. He still appears, physically, as he did nearly 30 years ago.

Once a member of Shinra's elite special ops force, known as the Turks, Vincent was assigned to protect Shinra scientists in Nibelheim, the site of the now infamous "Jenova Project". During the course of his assignment there, he fell in love with a young research assistant named Lucrecia Crescent.

Formerly an assistant to Vincent's father, Lucrecia had unwittingly been the cause of his death. Because Vincent was so like his father, she began to distance himself from him, even though she did have feelings for him... eventually running straight into the arms of Hojo. When Lucrecia became pregnant with Hojo's child and offered the fetus up as part of an experiment, Vincent did nothing to stop her... a sin for which he continues to punish himself for to this day. That child would later grow up to become Sephiroth.

When Lucrecia began suffering various ill-effects from the experiment, Vincent confronted Hojo about the immorality of his reseach. Hojo shot him in cold blood, and used his body for his own twisted experiments. These experiments resulted in Vincent's unique ability to temporaily transform into powerful beasts, as well as giving him an extremely powerful body that could heal very quickly.

Seeing what Hojo had done, and partly out of guilt for having caused the death of Vincent's father, Lucrecia took Vincent when Hojo was finished with him, and applied some of her own research in an attempt to revive him. Using tainted mako energy from the Fountain of Chaos, a site she discovered with Dr. Valentine during her research into the legend of Chaos and Omega, Lucrecia effectively stopped the decay of Vincent's body, allowing him to survive.

His life, however, came at a high price, for in exposing him to the tainted mako, Vincent became host to Chaos. Overwelmed by Chaos' presence, Vincent lost himself completely for a time. Determined to save him, Lucrecia implanted a form of materia that she discovered with Dr. Valentine in the same grotto as the Fountain of Chaos, called Protomateria. The materia calmed Chaos, and eventually, Vincent regained control... but by then, both Hojo and Lucrecia were long gone from Nibelheim.

Horrified by what had been done to him, and ashamed for not stopping Lucrecia from being part of Hojo's sick experiments, Vincent confined himself to a coffin in the basement crypt of Shinra Manor in Nibelhiem where he remained for nearly 30 years before being awoken by Cloud Strife and joining the fight against Sephiroth.