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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Posted by Reeve at 11:50 AM EST
Final Fantasy VII Creators on its Development
Andriasang has posted some highlights from Famitsu's feature about Final Fantasy VII and its fifteenth anniversary, which includes interviews with Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima, and Tetsuya Nomura. Among the revelations:
- 2D sprites were considered for the characters after it was decided to use 3D graphics for the game in general. Although this idea was more popular, they ended up going with polygon-based character models since they were more expressive. For a similar reason, this is why the field models are superdeformed as opposed to the normally-proportioned battle models.
- Producer Hironobu Sakaguchi was the creator of the materia system, while Tetsuya Nomura, in addition to being the character designer, was responsible for the game's limit breaks.
- Zack was added later in the game's development, as was Tifa, and both Tifa and Aerith were considered for the dramatic death scene. (These details had been originally revealed in previous interviews, but are still notable.)
- Cloud originally had slicked-back hair. And speaking of hair, the original scenario featured Aerith and Sephiroth as siblings, which explains their similar bangs.
For even more, here's the full article.
Also of interest is another piece on Andriasang about this Famitsu feature, in which it's made clear that Tetsuya Nomura is focused on making new titles rather than an FFVII remake. It also includes a detail about Yuffie: apparently, she was originally going to be featured on a wanted poster in Midgar prior to joining your party.
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
Posted by Reeve at 11:18 AM EST
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is Westward Bound
Square Enix has announced 3DS music game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for both North America and PAL regions (i.e., Europe, Australia, etc.). There's no concrete release date yet—only a broad "Summer 2012".
Source: Nintendolife - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Confirmed for Western Release
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
Posted by CloudANDTidus at 01:29 PM EST
We're Making Some Changes
So 2012 is here. That surprised everyone right?
This year will be the Citadel’s fourteenth birthday, and in Internet years that’s an incredibly long time. Final Fantasy VII is also a very old game. The console it was released on will soon be four generations old. As a site we got a major boost when the Compilation was announced (that was seven years ago now!), but since it ended four years ago things have been on a slow decline. Except for a continued appreciation of the original title, there is little to do except endlessly speculate about a remake that is never likely to happen.
It would be incredibly sad to see this decline continue in the face of the fourteen year lineage the Citadel has, so today’s changes are about refocusing our efforts. As a site we have two key things; the best resource of knowledge on the Internet for Final Fantasy VII and an amazing, endearing community. That incredible resource is outdated, difficult to navigate and impossible to search. In the coming months we hope to launch a completely revamped website for the game’s fifteenth anniversary that will correct all these issues, but today I would like to focus on our community.
We’ve let you guys down. The message board is broken and has been for a long time. The inability to even register an account has killed it. Therefore, today I’m happy to announce the opening of our new forums running on phpBB. In the revised boards there is more space for general Final Fantasy and Square Enix discussion, and I hope you enjoy and use them to the fullest. If anything is not to your liking, please start a discussion in the feedback forum and we will do our best to correct it. And yes, it has open registrations. I would like to give a special shout out to Reeve for providing a lot of the graphic design for the new boards, and for helping make its opening possible.
Along with todays changes we are retiring Reunion Tracks, as the information on it has long since become outdated. In it’s place we are launching a Facebook and Google+ page, as well as a Steam group, to join our Twitter account, so if you use any of those services, please check them out.
In more general house keeping, we are also closing fan fiction submissions to the Citadel. If you have an existing epic on the site we will continue to add additional chapters, but the site will no longer be accepting new entries. With the game so old and so many sites available to post stories yourself, this is a service we don’t have the man power to provide with the level of quality we expect of ourselves. Our deviantART Club accepts fan fiction should you still wish to share your work with the Citadel community.
Thank you so much for sticking with us, and we hope you enjoy the coming year and look forward to more announcements soon.
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Posted by Reeve at 12:57 AM EST
Yoshinori Kitase Discusses Remakes Again
The Official Xbox Magazine recently interviewed Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase, who is currently working on Final Fantasy XIII-2. During the interview, the prospect of remaking some of the earlier Final Fantasies is brought up. About that, Kitase had this to say:
(I)f we were to take one of the past Final Fantasy titles and make a sequel to it, I think that would be a lot more challenging because when they were on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 their actual game volume was a lot bigger, kind of. Graphically they weren't as advanced as they are now, but there were lots of towns and worlds and cities and whatever. So if we were to recreate the same kind of game - sequel or not - with the same volume, but give it a much higher level of graphical quality, it would us take three times, four times, even ten times longer to make such a game.Of course, Final Fantasy VII is brought up by the interviewer in the next section. Kitase says:
(...) (W)e know that the hundreds of fans would like to see a hi-def version of Final Fantasy VII. But if we were to achieve the modern graphical quality at the same time putting in exactly the same world and everything, I think it would take ten times longer as compared to the time we took to produce XIII, for example.Kitase also addresses living up to fan expectations in terms of adding new elements to a remake:
So if we were to pursue the same graphical quality, somehow we would have to make adjustments about game volume in the world, we'd have to cut down certain areas, but if we did that our fans would probably be not very happy, so we have to achieve both goals so that if we ever decide to either remake VII or make a sequel for hi-def consoles, we're going to have to be very, very careful.
If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of VII, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it'd be like a repeat. It'd be an issue of repetition and not as much fun to make such a game. So I'd be really interested in rearranging games or reshaping games into something slightly different even though it's supposed to be the same game. But if we did that, the fans might be disappointed or "this is not what I was expecting" so in that sense maybe some might say that it's better to let memory be memory.Those who've known me for awhile know that I have been against an FFVII remake for years. That said, I'm thankful that Kitase has the same concerns about an FFVII remake that I do: that if something is added or changed, it may sour the experience for the most devoted fans.
When we play the games we made years ago, sometimes we think "oh, that is not really cool" or "that probably should have been a bit better than that" and that sort of thing. But on the other hand, those slightly negative features and bits, some of the fans - really enthusiastic fans of these titles - that gives them an extra flavour or personality or whatever, so maybe they would rather we didn't do anything about it and we just leave it in as it is, so it's very difficult to decide what we should we keep in and what we should take out.
As for his first point about development times, Kitase made this same argument back in February 2010, so it seems to be something he still feels strongly about.
The entire interview is well worth reading for FF fans. Check it out here.
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Posted by Reeve at 01:49 PM EST
Theatrhythm Release Date Announced
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy will come out in Japan on February 16, 2012, for the price of ¥6,090 (tax inclusive). If you're planning on importing, please keep in mind that the 3DS is not region-free.
Source: Andriasang - Release Date Set for Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
Posted by Reeve at 02:07 PM EST
Aerith Unlockable as Playable Character in Theatrhythm
One of the latest details to be revealed about 3DS rhythm game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is the presence of "sub characters". These are additional playable characters that can be unlocked by collecting Crystal Fragments. FFVII's Aerith is making an appearance as one of these sub characters; some others include Faris (FFV), Vivi (FFIX), and Snow (FFXIII).
Another new detail is that summons, including Odin and Bahamut, can be called upon to help during battle.
Source: Andriasang - Aerith, Snow and Summons Appear in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
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