Many people loved the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, both those who played the classic PlayStation 1 version back in the day, and younger gamers who only had the chance to experience it now. But regarding the classic version, the game was initially planned for the Super Nintendo, and it had collaboration from people who worked in Hollywood, including on Star Wars and Terminator.
These are just a couple of the many fascinating behind-the-scenes facts about the development of this game, so stay tuned to because I’ll show you everything!
Guys Final Fantasy VII was a hugely influential RPG that introduced the genre to many gamers. Although the series had been released in America before, Final Fantasy VII was a massive hit, selling over 10 million copies and, get this, marking the first time a Final Fantasy game was released in Europe.
The way it utilized CD-ROM technology helped sell loads of PlayStations and made the release of each new Final Fantasy installment a real event.
Originally planned for the Super Nintendo
The planning for Final Fantasy VII started in 1994, right after the release of Final Fantasy VI.
At the time, the game was planned as another 2D project for the Super Nintendo. Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy series creator, intended for the story to be set in New York City in the year 1999. With several team members working concurrently with Chrono Trigger, the game had a set release date, but the development of Final Fantasy VII was halted so that the entire team could focus on finishing Chrono Trigger, which resulted in several concepts prepared for Final Fantasy VII being used in Chrono Trigger.
A rumor from GameFan Vol. 3, back in March 1995, suggested that the Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy VII would use SGI graphics, like Donkey Kong Country, and the game was supposed to be on a 64-megabit, or 8-megabyte, cartridge, imagine that. Other ideas, such as the New York setting and a sorceress character named, get this, Edea, were shelved until later projects for Final Fantasy VIII.
The original script for Final Fantasy VII, written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, was completely different from the final product. Its development resumed at the end of 1995 and required the efforts of approximately 120 artists and programmers on a budget of over 30 million dollars.
Final Fantasy VI’s co-director and scenario writer, Yoshinori Kitase, returned to direct and co-write Final Fantasy VII and was very concerned that the franchise could be left behind if it didn’t match the 3D computer graphics used in other games at the time. The production then began assembling an experimental technical demo called Final Fantasy SGI for Silicon Graphics’ graphic workstations.
The demo featured 3D polygon-based renderings of Final Fantasy VI characters up to a real-time battle. By then, they hadn’t decided on the console for the game’s release, considering Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn, and even Windows.
They faced challenges, as Square was new to the 3D graphics industry, so Silicon Graphics didn’t pay much attention to them.
After that demo, they wanted to show it at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles but couldn’t bring a machine from Japan because it was too big, so they had to borrow one from SGI’s headquarters to do the demo.
Although playable, the demo didn’t attract much attention at the event.
Most people there were interested in cutting-edge military technology and related things, and they were demonstrating a game just for fun. People would look and say, “Ah, interesting,” and not pay much attention to the Square guys.
On the other hand, the specialized press went crazy with hype. Many published the demos, most incorrectly saying it was a Final Fantasy for Nintendo 64, and as I said earlier, even Square wasn’t sure which platform they would use, despite the machine being more similar to the style of Nintendo’s console hardware.
But with that demo, they began to realize that new games would need a large amount of memory. The CG demo of Final Fantasy VI they made was over 20MB in total, so they realized that if they wanted to fulfill the promise of the demo they showed at SIGGRAPH, nothing but the CD-ROM format would be sufficient at that time. Another reason for choosing CD-ROM was related to prices; with CDs, they could sell something with much more quantity and quality for a price that would be less than half if they had used cartridges.
The promotional art, as well as the logo art, was created by Yoshitaka Amano, an artist involved with the series from the beginning. Amano created variations of the Meteor logo and asked the team to choose which one they preferred.
Another standout at that time was Tetsuya Nomura.
Square used a system where all collaborators could contribute ideas, regardless of their department.
While almost everyone created tedious, bureaucratic documentation, Tetsuya Nomura came to Hironobu Sakaguchi’s desk with his ideas written and drawn by hand. And of course, he impressed Sakaguchi and became the main designer from then on. And indeed, the guy had a lot of creativity.
For instance, in designing Cloud and Sephiroth, Nomura was influenced by his vision of rivalry, drawing inspiration from the legendary battle between the samurais Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro, with Cloud and Sephiroth representing them respectively.
The Most Iconic Scene in Video Game History
In the story, however, there’s a sad part.
Hironobu Sakaguchi’s mother passed away during the production of Final Fantasy VI, and choosing life as a theme helped him deal with the loss in a way that was, “mathematical and rational.” For instance, the Lifestream in the game is the literal embodiment of the planet’s energy, where all life is created and to where it returns after death. Hironobu Sakaguchi said that it wasn’t enough to make life the theme; he needed to describe life and death.
He wanted to add to the story a demonstration that someone’s death didn’t mean they were gone forever and to give players a sense of death that wasn’t Hollywood-style, but rather as a sudden loss. With this, Tetsuya Nomura proposed killing the heroine.
In Tetsuya Nomura’s words, “I thought we should try to show a character who dies for good, who can’t come back, so that this death would have an impact. It had to be an important character, so I thought that killing the heroine would make the players think more deeply about the theme.”
Well, there they were defining not only one of the most iconic scenes in the history of the Final Fantasy saga but also in the history of video games.
I doubt there’s anyone out there who didn’t get a lump in their throat from that scene. You didn’t? Then comment here because I want to know.
Final Fantasy VII has two types of scenes that define its graphics: real-time, which are the polygonal models and pre-rendered backgrounds, and FMV, also known as Full Motion Video.
The FMVs were produced by Visual Works, a new subsidiary of Square specializing in computer graphics. They brought in professionals who, astonishingly, had worked on movies like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, and were truly top-of-the-line special effects troops who had worked at Digital Domain and LucasArts‘ Industrial Light and Magic, so they knew what they were doing.
Even after the decision for 3D graphics, there was also a discussion about using sprite characters, as seen in Xenogears, or polygonal models.
Eventually, the polygonal models won the debate, as it was believed they would better express emotions. And the game Alone in the Dark, from 1992 for PC, heavily influenced this decision.
The soundtrack of Final Fantasy VII was composed by veteran series composer Nobuo Uematsu.
It was completed in eight months, but he would have liked to have had at least a year to finish. His plan was to use CD-quality music and vocals, but that would have resulted in much longer load times for each area of the game, and to alleviate performance issues, he opted to use midi-like sounds generated by the PlayStation’s sound sequencer. But he used it well and decided to treat the game’s soundtrack as a movie score. The result, as we know, was very successful.
After all this long journey, Final Fantasy VII was finally released in 1997, and it was a smash hit. It was critically acclaimed, received numerous game of the year awards in ’97, and is always on various lists of the best or most influential games of all time.
The legacy that Final Fantasy VII left us is vast. The world of Final Fantasy VII is explored in Compilations of Final Fantasy VII, a series that includes games, anime, CG movies, and even books. Even the Universal Studios theme park in Japan developed a virtual reality attraction themed after Final Fantasy VII.
It also has several references in pop culture, showing us the extent of the game’s reach over the years. Besides all this, Final Fantasy VII was the RPG game that popularized the genre in the West, opening the doors for others to be successful here too.
Final Fantasy VII was also the first game on the PlayStation to reach the milestone of 1 million copies sold, helping Sony to consolidate its console and delivering the final blow to Square’s relationship with Nintendo, which was strained for many years.
Guys, I want your comments here about all these curiosities about Final Fantasy VII. I want to know if you liked them, what more you want to share, because it was really cool to make this Analysis. Yes, it brings back memories of my childhood, and when I see the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, what it managed to do carried the weight of this legacy very well.
We created a mini-series explaining key points at the end of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I’ll drop the links in case you’re interested!
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