Square’s New Video: The Making Of Final Fantasy VII
Now that Final Fantasy VII has finally gone cross-platform, Square is taking the occasion to reunite the original development staff and reveal the full story on how this landmark game was made. This isn’t your usual quick, three-minute, badly edited promotional puff piece…..this lasts a solid 20 minutes and is full of previously unknown facts and tidbits about Final Fantasy VII!
- Sakaguchi’s initial pitch for the direction of VII’s storyline was “a detective working in a rainy city like New York with giant skyscrapers.” The narrative shifted wildly from that point, but the general vibe of the idea remained, at least for the first few hours of the game.
- The design of Shinra HQ is based on the design of the Tokyo building Square’s main offices were in at the time.
- Art director Yusuke Naora swears Blade Runner had no influence on Final Fantasy VII whatsoever. “I had only seen it once,” he says.
- Despite being the hired art director, Naora had no experience with the expensive workstations and 3D software brought in to create VII. “I decided it was probably best to just leave the 3D rendering to the people who were good at it.”
- Naora’s vision for Midgar as a “rotting pizza” only came about after he took a break from designing the city and….ate a pizza. The Monday after, he threw out all his previous designs and drew the city as we know it.
Well worth a watch. Tell no one to bother you for the next half hour, clear your schedule and enjoy. Final Fantasy VII is out now on Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, XBox One and PC.