“The environment and the way people think has changed a lot between 1997 and 2021, but the idea of the ‘life of the planet’ can be seen as a timeless issue, regardless of the era we find ourselves in,” Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase tells me. Final Fantasy 7 has always been about the underdog – a group of unexpected comrades banding together to save the world from an evil force that towers above them in every conceivable way. It’s a fruitless battle, but a relatable one, which explains why the game has such unparalleled staying power.
I recently had a chance to catch up with three key staff members on Final Fantasy 7 Remake – producer Yoshinori Kitase and co-directors Naoki Hamaguchi and Motomu Toriyama – to talk about the ambitious undertaking of reviving a classic of this calibre. Among other things, we chatted about how it aims to expand upon the original with more diverse storytelling, a broader world, and an experience that will appeal to newcomers and veterans alike.
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“Fans have made passionate calls for a remake for 24 years, and I always had it in mind, but the massive development period needed to realise such a game made me think that such a thing would be impossible,” Kitase-san tells me, having worked on the original game as director. “However, I started to think about it as a real possibility after the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy in 2012. I had to wait a bit longer after that for Mr. Nomura, Mr. Toriyama, Mr. Hamaguchi, and the rest of the development team to be available to start work on it though.”
It seems that Square Enix was acutely aware that Final Fantasy 7 couldn’t be remade for modern hardware in a one-to-one fashion. While its world was easily depicted on older platforms with visual compromises, bringing it to life with realistic fidelity was another matter entirely. The remake’s first chapter takes place entirely within Midgar, expanding upon its narrative and characters with far more detail. Despite so much of the universe and its associated story remaining untouched, Toriyama-san assures me that we’ve got plenty to look forward to.
“I understand that there are lots of fans out there who want to see a world map, and we want to challenge ourselves to leverage the breadth of the world in the next game of the overall project, so you can expect great things to come,” Toriyama-san explains. It remains unclear if this world map will be present in the traditional sense, but it seems we will have a huge region to explore, one that mimics the original’s scale while simultaneously building upon it.
Speaking of building upon what we already have, Yuffie Kisaragi’s debut in Episode Intermission marked the first time a previously optional character became a fully fledged member of your party. Vincent Valentine will follow in her footsteps, but given he’s currently napping underneath Shinra Mansion inside a coffin, his arrival will have to wait. “Yuffie, the heroine of Episode Intermission, was not guaranteed to join your party in the original game, but that actually made her a character that we had more freedom to expand on the backstory for,” Toriyama-san tells us. “Compared to Vincent, who was canonically sleeping in a coffin under the Shinra Mansion and so could not be moved around, Yuffie was journeying around the world as a materia hunter. By inserting the events in Midgar from FF7R Episode Intermission into that journey, we can show the feelings that she had towards that incident that are usually hidden behind her cheery personality, and that will tie into her story further down the line.”
Before the release of Episode Intermission, it was unclear if the likes of Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, and the range of other Final Fantasy 7 material was considered canonical in the remake’s universe. Toriyama-san confirmed that this is definitely the case, describing the remake project as a “coming together” of sorts for over 20 years of adventures. “I want to make it so fans who know the original game and the different Final Fantasy 7 universe titles can look forward to seeing how they all relate and join up with each other, while at the same time communicating how deep and amazing the world and characters of Final Fantasy 7 are to newcomers who will not have seen any of them,” Toriyama-san explains. “Remake is based on the original, but is being made after all of those additions to the universe, so we want to take advantage of that and are planning it out as a kind of ‘coming together’ of all the works set in the Final Fantasy 7 universe to date.”
To many, this is a recipe for convolution, with Remake’s second chapter teasing a fundamental reworking of the original narrative. Zack Fair is back, Aerith could survive, and we’ve already kicked Sephiroth’s ass – so where do we go from here? While the team weren’t able to spill the beans on Final Fantasy’s future, there’s room to read between the lines and decipher what to expect. “I think the content we present using the latest technology and game design should have evolved from what we accomplished using the technology we had at the time of the original Final Fantasy 7,” Toriyama-san says. “What we absolutely should not change though is the same spirit of taking on new challenges on the creative side. It is actually quite tricky maintaining that kind of attitude to create new things. I also think that fans of the original will be able to enjoy the game more if it includes content that goes deeper into the existing story, with scenes that are enhanced and presented, so it doesn’t always follow that we should stick rigidly to how things were in the original version.”
Toriyama-san stresses that they aren’t making a “completely different game,” and when it comes to major characters and plot revelations the team will “draw the line” to ensure core elements and iconic moments are accurately recreated. That being said, you can probably expect a healthy amount of surprises given how the first chapter goes down.
Moving away from the visual and narrative development of Final Fantasy 7 after decades of progress, Remake is also keen to double down on its political ideas, whether it be through environmental messaging or the inclusion of LGBTQ voices across Midgar. While a number of additional bells and whistles have been thrown in, this remains a tale of bringing corrupt corporations to justice, and giving power back to a people who have long been trapped beneath the boot of tyranny. Final Fantasy 7 was relevant back in 1997 – in 2021, it’s almost laughably blatant in how it paints a message of hope amidst a bleak dystopia.
Kitase-san was surprisingly honest when I asked him about the game’s political messaging: “We created a story based in a fantasy world, with fantastical concepts like Shinra and Mako, but these are deliberately made abstract enough that they can be superimposed and compared to things in the real world,” he explains. “The environment and the way people think has changed a lot between 1997 and 2021, but the idea of the ‘life of the planet’ can be seen as a timeless issue, regardless of the era we find ourselves in. I hope that each player can face and come to terms with the issues facing them through the story of Final Fantasy 7.”
LGBTQ identities are also brought into the fold with Remake, through the likes of Honey Bee Inn and a more evident chemistry between certain characters. It’s all in service of how far we’ve come as a society, steps forward that Toriyama-san wants the game to proudly represent. “I think that expressing diversity with LGBTQ inclusion is an important issue for everyone involved in making content, not just people making games,” Toriyama-san explains. “In Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we rebuilt the original game using the latest technology, but we felt that it should not stop at the technical side and we needed to update the story content being shown in line with modern sensibilities.”
The team points to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2 as a benchmark for diversity in the medium right now, both in terms of queer storytelling and how its accessibility shines above almost everything else out there. “The Last of Us Part 2 really delivered on its consideration for diversity,” Toriyama-san tells us. “Right down to the UI, and I would imagine that the cost of debugging on that game was massive. However, having achieved that makes it a great game that sets a benchmark for the industry.”
While my Aerith x Tifa ship will likely never become a reality, my queer little heart had to ask about Two Pasts, an upcoming novel which will focus on the two heroines and unveil never-before-seen details about them. “[Two Pasts] includes several elements that will form a backbone to the ongoing story, so you will be able to enjoy the world of Final Fantasy 7 Remake even more by reading the novel,” Toriyama-san explains. “It also contains many episodes relating to Tifa and Aerith’s past that will be revealed there for the first time, so it is especially recommended for fans of those two characters. In terms of the relationship between them in Final
Fantasy 7 Remake, it only takes place over the short time before the team leave Midgar, but we have tweaked it so that they come to get on with each other in a more natural way than in the original. That is not something limited to just Tifa and Aerith though, and we reworked conversations and added in new scenes to dig deeper into the background and personalities of all the characters in the game, making the relationships between them even more dramatic.”
24 years is a long time, so it made sense to touch on memories of the original game, and how it feels returning to this universe with familiar colleagues and newcomers who potentially pursued a career in game development because of games like Final Fantasy 7. It’s rare things are remade on this scale, and such an occasion likely won’t come around again, so in a way, it’s worth admiring.
“I personally find that the big draw of a large-scale development like Final Fantasy is being able to work with lots of highly skilled creators in a process of trial and error, taking on and perfecting new creative challenges,” Hamaguchi-san says. “Ideas emerge that I would never have come up with myself and you are aided and supported by all these other creators in realising those ideas and bringing them to life. There is a satisfaction in the joy and excitement of building something like that together that you don’t get anywhere else.”
As for Toriyama-san, he was a “newly minted game designer” when working on Final Fantasy 7, so he saw helming the remake as co-director as an opportunity to prove himself and build something to be proud of. “This time around we had the chance to completely remake the world of Final Fantasy 7, taking on the challenge of adding loads of things that were not possible on the original,” Toriyama-san says. “We approached the development and depicting the same Final Fantasy 7 world anew with the same passion that we did on the original. 24 long years have passed since then, and it is not a recent game anymore, so I think that actually allowed us to approach some things in a new and fresh way.
“The staff who worked on the original game are now in senior directing positions, so they are using the wealth of experience they have accrued to direct the younger development staff in making everything in the game even better for the remake, while leading the project in the same spirit as the original all that time ago. Personally, I am very much looking forward to seeing how all the veteran staff and the current key staff members combine their efforts in their continued depiction of the world of Final Fantasy 7, now for the latest technology.”
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