With Final Fantasy VII Remake less than a month away, Square Enix is offering an extensive look into the game’s creation with a multi-part video series.
Dubbed “Inside FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE,” the first episode serves as an introduction, going over how production got started and how the development team approached recreating such a beloved title with modern day game design and technological advancements in mind.
Interviewed in the episode are producer Yoshinori Kitase, director and concept designer Tetsuya Nomura, story and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima, co-directors Naoki Hamaguchi (game design/programming) and Motomu Toriyama (scenario design), battle director Teruki Endo, environment director Takako Miyake, music supervisor Keiji Kawamori, and composers Mitsuto Suzuki and Masashi Hamuaza, all covering various aspects of the game’s development.
Highlights include…
- Kitase’s decision to attempt a remake around 2012.
- Nomura and Hamaguchi discussing how to balance satisfying new and old fans.
- Expanding the scope of Midgar.
- Reaffirming that the story for part 1 only goes up to the escape from Midgar, but that the game will have just as much content as any numbered Final Fantasy game (Hamaguchi mentioned that the game fills up two Blu-Ray discs).
- The process behind developing Remake’s combat to be real-time action oriented while finding a way to keep the ATB system and retain what made it special.
- Recreating Final Fantasy VII’s iconic music, adding new music, and what it took to properly implement now that characters can talk and video game storytelling has advanced to be much more cinematic in the time since VII originally released.
- Establishing Remake’s art direction. Nomura said he wanted to chase today’s standard for realism, citing like how Advent Children initially did for VII back in 2005, without crossing the line to where the game loses its distinctive character.
You can also see bits of new footage in the episode (Cloud walking around the slums — in daylight even — more shots of the inside of the Honey Bee Inn, and the AVALANCHE crew getting off the train post-bombing mission just to name a few). Tifa and Aerith’s recomposed themes can be heard throughout the video, too, along with Remake’s version of the world map theme at the very end.
It’s been an almost five-year wait, but Final Fantasy VII Remake finally launches on April 10 as a timed exclusive for the PlayStation 4. The demo, which lets you play the opening bombing run is up for download on the PlayStation Store right now, and you’ll be able to grab some pretty cool dynamic themes over the next few weeks, too.
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