It's been almost a month since we were able to get our hands on the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake. A top-down reimagining of the original game (or the Midgar part, at least) that has taken its good years of development. It was announced in 2015, but actually Square Enix I was planning it for a long time.
The official Japanese book of the game, which has the name, has already been released Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania. With him comes an extensive interview with Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase and Kazushige Nojima, main responsible for the title (who were also involved in the original). Although it is in Japanese, we have been able to read it in full thanks to the translation by Aitaikimochi, and among other things it is revealed that this Remake is the fifth part of the Compilation of FFVII.
You know, that string of games and a movie that were launched between 2004 and 2007 to expand the universe of the original work. Final Fantasy VII Remake It was conceived as the fifth and last part of this compilation (strangely, the Last Order anime does not count, because then it would be the sixth) but given the lack of resources back then for such a project, they left it on pause. This is how Nomura explains it.
When we developed the Compilation of FFVII, the releases included Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, and Dirge of Cerberus, so we wanted to make a fifth. However, we were somewhat short on resources and I was the only one at the head of the project, and since we were also busy with other things, we put it on pause.
It wasn't until the franchise's 25th anniversary date, which was celebrated in 2012, was approaching when the theme of Final Fantasy VII Remake it re-emerged within Square Enix. Nomura wanted to start working on the project as soon as possible to have it ready in the event, something that obviously did not happen, but it was enough for the team to meet with the company management and start gestare.
It was back then when it was also decided that the remake would be divided into several parts, and that the first would only take place in Midgar.
We made that decision at the beginning of the project. Midgar is a very recognizable symbol of the FFVII world, and for the remake project we wanted to delve deeper into it. The first part would establish the roots of the combat system, as well as the basic structure, assets, and more things that we needed to prepare, so we knew it would take us a long time.
The arguments that they put forward in favor of this decision are the same as always: that being a 3D game required so much work that they could not stay in a part of seven hours as in the original, so that we can see more details of their world, etc. . Nojima, who is in charge of writing the story, explains that thanks to this decision much more background and context could be added. Kitase agrees:
The remake was not something we could finish at once, so when we agreed that this first part would take place in Midgar the project began to come true.
When the project went from one studio to another
The interview covers many other topics, such as changing hands during development. Although Kitase does not directly mention the study (he talks about "external division"), it's been known for a long time that Final Fantasy VII Remake It was originally being developed by CyberConnect 2.
However, as they wanted to maintain the highest quality, they ended up going to an internal team of Square Enix veterans. To tell the truth, it sounds more like they were not very happy with what the previous study did.
Of course, Square Enix staff were still involved in development, but most of the team that had worked on the Final Fantasy saga were assigned to other projects, so we started the remake with developers from an external division. However, since we wanted to maintain the level of quality of the saga, we decided that members with experience in Final Fantasy were needed. Because of this, we had to make a big change in positions to accommodate the project.
You can read the entire interview right here, in case you want to know more details about the development. Yes, there are very explicit spoilers at the end of the game, so be careful.