Metacritic is not a reliable measure of a game’s quality. If you go to that vapid den of aggregation, you might get the impression that Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel Final Fantasy XIII-2 are well loved. They certainly sold well, especially Final Fantasy XIII-2, which Square-Enix credits as one of two retail games released in the past year that returned the publisher to profitability. Actually talk to a human being about these games though, and you’re likely to see peculiar expression cross their mug, some weird cross between wistfulness and nausea. The characters are jerks, the world of Cocoon and Pulse is a garbled mess of sci-fi wankery, and incompetent mythos building obscures the grand melodrama that made the series a staple for years.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 made Square profitable this year, but as of this summer, it’s been 15 years since that game’s most famous ancestor made Final Fantasy a household name the world over.
Final Fantasy VII is 15 years-old now. It can legally work a part time job and get a driver’s permit in most states. To celebrate the milestone, Famitsu sat down with a few of the key minds behind the game that everyone wishes Final Fantasy XIII was. Director Yoshinori Kitase, artist Tetsuya Nomura, and co-writer Kazuhige Nojima reminisced about the game’s development and shed interesting light on what lent that game its particularly memorable flavor.
Just a note for anyone who’s never gotten around to playing it in the last decade and a half: Here be story details.
Believe it or not, marquee characters like Cloud’s mentor Zack and Tifa were never supposed to be a part of the game at all. Aerith, she who caused so many gamers to shed a tear back in the day, was supposed to be the sole female lead, and villain Sephiroth was supposed to be her first love, not Zack. Of course, in a creepy turn, Nomura went on to say that Sephiroth and Aerith were supposed to be brother and sister at another point in development. Gross.
Director Kitase meanwhile noted that horror classic Alone in the Dark was a big influence on the game, which makes a lot of sense really; of all the Final Fantasy games, VII plays the most with horror and suspense.
What of the oft-rumored remake? Nomura put the kibosh once again on fan’s hopes saying that Square’s focus is on making new titles that can best Final Fantasy VII, rather than revisiting old games.
Don’t believe him for a second. That remake will happen, it’s just a matter of when. Nomura’s own team is entering its sixth year of development on Final Fantasy Versus XIII and he’s intimated that their next project is Kingdom Hearts 3. With DLC wrapping up on Final Fantasy XIII-2 though, Kitase’s team is wide open. Square does love money, and its tools for the current generation of hardware are now well in place. They could turn the game around fairly quickly really. Food for thought.
If star ocean 5 comes out my life is complete I loved 4
Star ocean is better we need more scfi rpgs with space travel final fantasy lacks that and your stuck in one world all the time
If people want it bad enough please just do it……..I believe it would go a long way in restoring the faith and anticipation fans once held for Square Enix games. Not to mention profits would probably sky rocket. I’ve talked to people who have said they would buy a PS3 just to play the re-make of Final Fantasy VII. If it is a question of when I wish, as I know others do, that Nomura would just admit that he is going to do a remake and perhaps give out a date.
What a biased article. Final Fantasy VII is a great game, but it is to RPG gaming what The Beatles or Pink Floyd are to modern music, or what comic book superheroes are to the box office. That is, they were a huge influence that if you don’t buy into the sensationalism and hype and admit you don’t like them, or think they are “good, but incredible”, people soil their knickers and flip out saying, HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE THEM? HOW CAN YOU NOT THINK IT IS THE BEST THING EVER?”
Final Fantasy 7 was indeed my second or third venture into the series, but while it was an enjoyable and memorable game, it has been tainted by its godlike status among fans. The slew of side story/prequel games and the movie have only weakened the story with poor writing and horribly cliche and uninteresting characters, while giving almost zero focus to the characters we’ve grown to love (perhaps out of fear of ruining them with crappy writing too?). Meanwhile, fans want to whine that something they practically worship from the past that does not have modern graphics and turn their nose up at every attempt to re-imagine the FF series because they’d rather see it rehashed again and again than actually reinvented.
Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel had some of the most realistic and lifelike characters in the entire series. As with any FF game, it had its degree of cheesy anime cliche, but I find that this was a lot less dominant in the world of 13 than in prior releases, where characters have almost always been painfully tuned to fit stereotypes. In 13, the characters are fallible normal human beings cast into an extraordinary situation. They react with disdain, contempt, and selfish self-interest. They clash with one another and show sides of themselves that are truly not admirable. Still, throughout the course of the story, they progress to something far more complex and we see many sides of these people, even grow to care for and like some we initially hated. I appreciate the realism of these characters. Pick 6 random human beings and make them fugitive enemies of their entire world and force them to cooperate. Show me how well they get along and how admirable and heroic they all are. I guarantee if this were to happen in real life the cast would be far less likable and a thousand times more annoying. Honestly, out of 6 strangers you could meet, how many would you really like? All of them? One of them? What they’ve done in 13 is tempered the story with realism rather than making the characters all admirable heroes, and I think that is what separates a good fantasy story from a poor one, a link to reality.
I’m so tired of all the bitter retro-absorbed fanboys who boo-hoo that each new Final Fantasy game is not a remake of 7. If it’s such a great game, go play it. It still exists. If it truly needs a graphical overhaul to be enjoyed again and again, it isn’t worth the time. A game with good graphics is impressive for a few months. A game with good gameplay and story is impressive for years.
I meant “good, but not incredible” in the first paragraph.
@Jace ‘Lion’ Repshire
All of your comments about FFXIII focus on the story, and they pretty much have to, since the “game” is one long cutscene interrupted by corridors full of battles, most of which can essentially completed on auto-battle (and if there is any strategy required and you screw it up, relax, the “game” will let you retry over and over again until you figure it out, and with no repercussions whatsoever). But even the story pisses me off – pardon me if I’ve missed something, but the first 9 or so chapters have your characters just wandering around trying to figure out what their objective is if there even is one, and the rest of the game has them doing exactly what the “villains” apparently wanted them to do the whole time up until the credits roll.
There was a scene early on where you stomp soldiers in a mech for a pointless reward, and the whole rest of the game had me salivating for more moments like that, as crappy as it was in comparison to what other series games did to mix things up. Sadly, the closest it came was with a very short, simple fetch quest, digging up a very limited amount of useful treasures while running around on a chocobo, and more battling. FFXIII is utter trash.
I’d say the battle mechanics are the best part of FFXIII, at least in the rare moments when they’re not completely mindless, but even there it pales in comparison to the depth of FFV, FFVII, and pretty much any other JRPG, now that I think about it.
How so? I found the characters very one dimentional not to mention the horrid dialogue that produced a lot of almost cool moments that just left you cringing afterwards. FF XIII and XIII-2 was Square Enix’s attempts to out do one of the best games they ever made…….they failed miserably. One of the reasons for this might have been the lack of back story for any of the characters, the crapy dialogue or the female version of Cloud Strife (Lightning)…..or it could have been all three. Anyway you look at it XIII and XIII-2 leave something to be desired.
Stop toying with our hearts. They’ve been teasing us with this ever since the ps3 ff7 demo. I don’t see anything to substantiate this any more than any other rumor i’ve heard of this.
Best game of all time.
In my opinion, games have improved dramatically since FF7. It’s great, but not the best. I personally find CT more appealing, but thats me.
I too hope it’s just a question of when. A remake of this title with all of the original mechanics in place would make an absolute killing in sales. I continue to revisit this game on a yearly basis. There’s a certain gravitas and universality about VII that makes it succeed brilliantly, where the other installments in the FF series just don’t quite measure up.