Final Fantasy 7 Remake Devs Want The Saga To Live On For Generations

Until Final Fantasy VII Remake was formally introduced in 2015, the frenzied followers that had been whipped up by a reimagining of the sport’s opening, proven a decade earlier, had principally misplaced all hope that it was ever going to get off the bottom. But builders at Square Enix had been engaged on all of it alongside. Key members of the unique sport’s improvement crew, together with director/situation author Yoshinori Kitase, character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and Kazushige Nojima, additionally a situation author, have been attempting to get the ball rolling on the mission for a very long time. But different Final Fantasy tasks, in addition to the bounds of console tech, have been at all times a roadblock in ensuring Square Enix had the suitable crew to efficiently revive and reinvent one of the vital iconic video games of all time.Yoshinori Kitase, now a producer on Final Fantasy VII Remake, informed GameSpot that even earlier than the crew began manufacturing on the unique Final Fantasy VII, they strived for the already-popular sequence to each do extra formidable issues and attain a broader viewers than earlier than. “When we finished doing Final Fantasy VI and moved to start work on Final Fantasy VII, there was that idea in our heads that we wanted to go outside of Japan for this game,” Kitase reminisced, by means of a translator. “I don’t think we had the expectation that it was going to be as big as it was in the end (Final Fantasy VII remains the series’ best-performing entry with over 12.3 million units sold) but we did have that passion to make this go out to the world–rather than VI, which was a much more domestic-focused title.”Paramount to creating an impression on a broader viewers was profiting from Sony’s PlayStation, and contemplating what that meant for the sequence’ former, iconic pixel-art look. “There were a lot of debates within the team about the right style to go for when we were making that transition,” Kitase mentioned. “We went around to a lot of international CG events, things like SIGGRAPH, looking at what we could do.””Those debates went right up until the start of production. Lots of different opinions–obviously there were people who were saying, ‘Final Fantasy should still evolve as a 2D type of game.’ There were still games that were being done in that classic style, maybe enhanced a little bit, so it was an obvious option. There were also people who were saying: ‘Maybe we should do a hybrid style. We can have the backgrounds done in 3D, and we’ll keep the characters as billboard-style 2D anime characters’ (SaGa Frontier and Grandia were a couple of notable titles that used this style around the same time). But in the end, the group that won out were the ones who said: ‘No. We should go all-in on the game–the characters, the backgrounds, should all be in full 3D’, and that was when the direction was really decided on.”As a outcome, Final Fantasy VII was on the slicing fringe of console gaming’s tech arms race. At the time, it was one of many video games you needed to play, if solely to marvel on the exceptional FMV cutscenes–at least, that was the case in my schoolyard. Of course, VII hasn’t aged as gracefully as different Final Fantasy titles, and it is maybe serendipitous that the crew needed to maintain off for therefore lengthy. The technological leap is now a lot increased, and the impression of seeing the reimagined sport is extra astonishing.”One common theme between the original and what we’re doing now is that idea of using new technology to make the characters more expressive–that was one of the main reasons why we wanted to move to polygon characters originally. We thought we could make them much more expressive than 2D sprites could be, and that’s pretty much the same now with Final Fantasy VII Remake.” Remake runs on Unreal Engine 4, with the crew at Square Enix working with Epic on customized modifications and enhancements. “A lot of the new technology is all geared towards making the characters, facial expressions, much more dynamic and believable, just to be able to depict more emotions.”Some of the brand new tech revolves closely round the usage of AI systems–one that produces bespoke demise animations for enemies, relying on the situation of their closing blows and their surroundings, in addition to one other that customises the mouth actions of every character to sync up precisely with the efficiency of voice actors whether or not they’re talking in English, Japanese, or any variety of the sport’s language tracks.But Final Fantasy VII Remake is not only a graphical overhaul. If you’ve got been following the mission, that the crew determined to significantly broaden upon the supply materials, to the purpose the place the complete journey can be cut up between separate video games. The launch of the primary half, which takes place solely within the preliminary location of Midgar, is imminent. From what I’ve seen of the primary few hours of the sport, it significantly meditates on the unique beats of the story. Scenes that used to flash by in minutes can take up greater than an hour. More time is spent with characters who’ve turn into beloved since its launch. But as for the opposite 90% of the saga, that is one thing Square Enix is not eager on discussing. At this level, it feels prefer it may even be one other couple of a long time.Is this what long-awaiting followers need? Does that even matter? “The fans may be more familiar with the franchise than we are in some ways. They’ve played the game and have been returning to it ever since,” Kitase mentioned. The crew “looked on the internet for people’s comments and opinions to find out which particular scenes in the original game were memorable, which ones are the ones that people wanted to see, or which stayed with them.””But if we were just to make it a 100%, one-for-one remake of the original game, just follow the story exactly as it was, and not change anything… I think people would like it but it would just be ‘Oh yeah, I remember this. This was great, how nostalgic,’ and that’s all you get.””We have to meet people’s expectations, give them what they want to see… But we have to go beyond that and really exceed their expectations and give them new surprises as well. So it was something we had to pay a lot of attention to and we were very careful… it didn’t just stop at ‘Yeah, that was a great game, I remember this.’ We had to go further and provide a new experience.”Part of the brand new expertise, and a part of having Final Fantasy VII as soon as once more attain for a good broader viewers, got here within the radical modernisation of its fight system. And as a lot as RPG followers nonetheless love a fantastic turn-based battle system, it was by no means actually on the playing cards for Remake. Kitase explains that it is to do with “the changing tastes of the fanbase of the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole. We’ve got lots of younger gamers now and they like that very instinctive action-game style of control.” There is an entire new technology who has possible by no means performed Final Fantasy VII, and the deal with refining the heavy motion is to cater to that new, youthful viewers who “are familiar with that and expect that.”But that is all within the service of having the ability to verify Final Fantasy VII’s memorable characters and highly effective themes–environmentalism, terrorism, life and demise, amongst others–can dwell on. Thinking about VII’s themes on the earth that Remake is releasing in definitely makes them appear extra related than ever. Climate change and radicalism may instantly come to thoughts for some, however Kitase was hesitant to attract any correlations or talk about elevated emphases in Remake.”Obviously, it’s still a fantasy world. It’s a fantasy game and the concepts of Mako Energy and the Lifestream are very much fantasy concepts. We aren’t specifically trying to make it a comment on one specific thing or say anything specific about a real-world issue through that, we’re trying to make more timeless and universal themes.”But all of that is not to say that he does not hope audiences do not interact with it intellectually. “I really want to see people look at the way that those issues are tackled in Final Fantasy VII, and maybe see how they resonate with some of the issues that are important to them. But we can only do that by keeping it as a kind of universal presentation rather than specifically pointing out one thing. The realism of what we’re showing now is much higher and the way that we’re depicting things is very different now. So I really want to see how the messages may be received differently by people these days in this new depiction.”It certainly is a protracted highway till we get to see the top of the Final Fantasy VII Remake mission, and Kitase informed me that he and the crew possible will not even take a break as soon as the primary half is released–“I think we’ll probably get straight into it.” But personally, he is not fearful about the potential of having to work on Remake for the remainder of his profession: “I think it is a very important thing.”Of all of the video games Kitase has labored on, Final Fantasy VII nonetheless stays his private favorite, although his very first Squaresoft mission, Seiken Densetsu (often called Final Fantasy Adventure within the West), holds a particular place too. Despite engaged on a variety of different very highly-regarded titles, like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, he would not give me a touch about what different remakes he’d like to think about (“Even if I made a joke about it, it would still go around the world in seconds–it’s too dangerous to say something about that”), and would not even open up about whether or not individuals within the Final Fantasy universe eat chocobos or not (“I think that’s a secret for now”). FFVII is all he’ll be centered on for the foreseeable future.”Final Fantasy VII is a game which, if it just stayed as the original, would just be remembered as something from the past and people wouldn’t be as engaged with it. I think in order to be something that continues to be loved and followed by future generations we have to keep updating it as we’re doing now. And in 10 years time, 20 years time, it may need to be done again! So even if this is the only thing that I do in the rest of my career, I won’t be disappointed.”For extra Final Fantasy VII Remake protection, learn our preview of the primary few hours of the sport.