Final Fantasy VII Remake: The genesis of the project told by Square Enix – News

After more than five years of development, the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake debuted on PlayStation 4 on April 10, 2020. A production very well received by the press and players, like the 88% currently displayed on Metacritic .

This is only the first part, Final Fantasy VII Remake being thought of as an “episodic” experience. While the Square Enix teams are currently working on the rest of the adventure, the team leaders shared their vision of the project in a work called Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania Book. Currently only available in Japanese, this allows us to learn more about the genesis of this production. The first question addressed to Tetsuya Nomura, director, Yoshinori Kitase, director, and Kazushige Nojima, screenwriter, is as follows: when did this project start?

Kitase : In fact, the project had been around for a very long time.

Nomura : When we developed the FFVII Compilation, it included Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus. We knew we wanted to create a fifth element. However, we were a bit limited in resources. Since I was the only one running the project and I was busy with other things, the project was put on hold.

The desire was there for many years, but the executives of the Japanese studio had to wait for an opportune moment to be able to fully embark on the adventure. Finally, it is the question of the 25th anniversary which made it possible to resolve the problem of staffing and to enter into preproduction. So that lets us understand that it was shortly before 2012 that the machine started up.

Kitase : When the Final Fantasy series started to approach its 25th anniversary, I thought about what we should do to commemorate this milestone. That’s when I thought that if we wanted to be able to complete the FFVII remake project for the 25th anniversary of the Final Fantasy series, we should start as early as possible. This is what started the business. After that, we had a meeting with producer Shinji Hashimoto, but also with Nomura, to discuss the details of this remake. Hashimoto wanted to correct certain graphic aspects of Advent Children and it was at this point that the three of us decided that we should officially start this project.

Surprisingly, despite the importance of this project, Kitase first entrusted the development to external teams. This allowed him to start working without waiting for the regulars of the franchise already busy, but who ended up joining the workforce a little later.

Kitase : Of course, the staff of the company was involved, but most of the team that had worked on the Final Fantasy series was assigned to other projects, so we started the remake with external divisions. However, since we wanted to keep the quality standards of Final Fantasy, we decided that we still needed members who had experience on the series. For that, we had to make big changes within the staff in order to serve this project.

If the programmers, artists and screenwriters took turns during the development, the management team also experienced some changes between 2015 and 2020. Motomu Toriyama, screenwriter, joined the project at the time when all the work was still outsourced. It was he who made it possible to standardize production a little more.

Nomura : I am the one who wrote the main axes of the scenario at the origin, the external teams were responsible for writing the secondary scenarios. However, when we transferred the project internally, Toriyama-san (the co-director) joined us and took a look at what we had written so far. He gathered all the scenes we had and rewrote them, after which I watched it myself again. We then decided that the project would take this form.

Kitase : After Toriyama joined us, we were able to formulate the scenarios and integrate them within the play areas. In order to preserve the integrity of the story, we let him rewrite certain aspects of the history.

Question scenario again. In order to learn more about the writing process, the question of script development was asked to Nojima. How does he manage his writing and how many people pass behind him? As he makes it clear, the first versions go from hand to hand, constantly evolving.

Nojima : I get lost a lot in my writing. I always want to keep the character of the characters, so I make corrections constantly. Once the scenarios are finished, Toriyama-san and his dedicated team make corrections which then go to the dubbing managers, who also make adjustments to the dialogue. So from the moment the scenario is considered complete, I’m not even sure what is left of my original drafts.

Kitase : Of course, the main lines of development of the story are generally intact.

Finally, let’s finish on the meaning of the word “remake”. Contrary to what one might think, it is not only a practical term, Nomura wanted to add it to the title of the game for another reason. Unfortunately, he cannot tell us more at the moment, which implies that we will have to wait for future episodes to better understand. Is there a direct link with the scenario?

Nomura : I am the one who decided on the title “Remake”, but there are two meanings to this choice. First, I wanted to silence the doubts that started to mount when we announced the remake for the first time. After the release of the first trailer, there were people who didn’t really know if it was a remaster or a real remake, which worried them. When we released the trailer for E3 2015, the reactions were what I expected, some asked if it was going to be a movie. This is why I decided to answer these people that there was talk of a complete remake of the original, hence the title “Remake”. About the second meaning of the word “Remake”, I can’t really answer it now. Ask me again in a few years (laughs).

thanks to Aitaikimochi for the translation.