As part of a Saudi Arabian exhibition on the remake trilogy of Final Fantasy VII There was a panel with producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Naoki Hamaguchi, in which the two philosophized about various topics. Among other things, they also discussed star villain Sephiroth, his motivations and inspirations for his character.
As Kitase explains, it was important to him even back then – in the run-up to the original – to deviate from the “absolutely evil” characters that were prevalent at the time. In this context, he mentions well-known villains such as Star Wars’ Darth Vader or Marvel’s Thanos. His villain for FFVII should be a little different and have a close connection to the game’s protagonist.
For Cloud, Sephiroth should be a heroic figure – an ideal that Cloud aspires to as a young SOLDIER. After all, they both pursue the same profession, but Sephiroth is already considered a legendary SOLDIER with a lot of experience. A fact that brings him general fame and even makes him a hero in people’s eyes.
And this “hero” was supposed to fall into evil, says Kitase. He drew inspiration for this from various manga and anime models, which he does not name specifically. Kitase points out that there was no specific model – rather, he took aspects of various characters from various media to combine them in Sephiroth.
It was important to him that Sephiroth did not see his actions as evil. Rather, Sephiroth saw his journey as a great destiny that he had to pursue. In fact, Sephiroth was striving for a better world – in his eyes. That was the motivation for his actions, which was and will be worked out more clearly in the remake trilogy.
We can look forward to seeing how Sephiroth’s story ends in the third and final part of the remake trilogy. The makers also made the biggest possible promise about this during this panel.
Bildmaterial: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Square Enix
