Nintendo dominated the video game market during the 8-bit era. Super Nintendo, the successor of NES, ruled without much slack, since SEGA Mega Drive planted his face in some territories. The video game industry was preparing for the arrival of a new competitor. A competitor who had been an ally of Nintendo when the Japanese company tried to manufacture a machine with a disk reader. The story is well known, the Kyoto broke the agreement with Sony and separated their paths. That decision triggered other parallel events, such as Final Fantasy VII ending up being a video game for PlayStation instead of Nintendo 64.
Kyoto's decision to opt for the cartridge as a format made it easier for companies that had traditionally worked with Nintendo to opt for PlayStation , since SEGA Saturn, which used CD-ROM as PSX, failed to succeed. Squaresoft conducted some previous experiments that resulted in Final Fantasy VI: The Interactive CG Game. Some Japanese magazines incorrectly published that the video game was intended for Nintendo 64, at that time still known by the code name, Ultra 64.
First experiments
"It was not officially in development for Nintendo 64," reveals the director of the original, Yoshinori Kitase, in an article published by Polygon. "It was a kind of experiment with the hardware." In those first steps of the 3D, Hironobu Sakaguchi, father of the Final Fantasy saga, did not have anyone on the team who was an expert in 3D graphics. “Before Final Fantasy VII, we didn't have people on the team that made three-dimensional graphics. When I met [Kazuyuki Hashimoto], who is my best friend since then, he helped me find a very talented team to lead the visual aspect. It was the first time they worked on a game and it was our first time working with 3D graphics, ”he admits in statements to that same medium.
Before the departure of both consoles, they were already aware of how the new generation was going to be. Sakaguchi asserts that the situation was similar to when NES gave way to SNES. “Our first movement was not to choose between two systems , but to focus on learning to use the Silicon Graphics workstations that we had acquired. They were very expensive machines, and we developed the demo to teach players "what Final Fantasy could look like in three dimensions.
The creative Japanese says that the transition from 2D to 3D was "very large", and that at that time, he could not draw in the imagination "what the battle scenes would be like". In any case, when they showed the demo at the Siggraph Conference in Los Angeles, “the people at the fair did not understand what I was seeing, ” explains Kazuyuki Hashimoto, who served as CG supervisor. "Many of them were interested in cutting-edge engineering technology or things related to the military world, for business reasons, and we showed the game for fun." The people present were interested, but nothing more.
Why didn't the people who attended the fair find the presentation too attractive? Sakaguchi has his own vision of the matter. “At the time, when you were talking about computer graphics, people wanted to see very realistic things , something you could use in a real action movie without realizing the difference. But we use the CG to represent anime characters. Because of that, I think many people in the show were not very interested. But that was what we wanted to do. ”
From Nintendo to Sony, these were the reasons
Yoshihiro Maruyama, former executive vice president of Square USA, was hired at that time. "In September 1995, I was hired by the president of the company, [Tetsuo] Mizuno," he begins. As he says, the company leader told him that "Squaresoft would always be with Nintendo" , so that while he worked for them, it would be "basically like working for Nintendo." A week after his hiring, he began to hear a different melody. "Maybe we should switch to Sony."
“ That PlayStation used CDs was the main factor,” argues Sakaguchi. “If you wanted to develop a 3D action game on a Nintendo 64 cartridge with that limited space, you could do it. But I wanted to develop a 3D role title. I was very clear about what I was going to do, but it would have been difficult on Nintendo's hardware. The main problem was, of course, memory. Based on our calculations, it was not possible to fit it into a cartridge. That way, the PlayStation choice was made exclusively because it was the only console that allowed us to use the CD-ROM. ” As if that weren't enough, the price of optical discs was cheaper than cartridges, another compelling reason to determine the decision that was made in the end.
Squaresoft chose his path, already far from that of Nintendo. At that point, there was an absolutely soaked encounter of Japanese culture, as Sakaguchi narrates: “When we made the decision, the president of Square [Masafumi Miyamoto], our chief programmer [Ken Narita] and I, went to meet with Yamauchi-san " In the 1990s, those in Kyoto were still run by Hiroshi Yamauchi , grandson of the company's founder, who set up Nintendo in the late 19th century. “There is an ancient tradition here, in Kyoto, which is that you are welcomed with a cup of tea, from which you should not drink. It is simple courtesy. And Yamauchi-san welcomed us with a very expensive bento and a beer. ” Later, he told them that he wished them the best, without grudges.
In an interview with the newspaper Nihon Keizai Shinbum, the then president of Squaresoft, Hisashi Suzuki, declared that Nintendo was not so frustrated by the farewell of the company of Final Fantasy, but that they managed to convince or after companies like Enix to work in PlayStation. Thus, another of the colossi of Japanese role-playing games, Dragon Quest, left Nintendo and threw himself into Sony's arms.
The development of Final Fantasy VII
Working on a project like Final Fantasy VII involved profound changes. The teams, previously very small, had to expand to the new needs and challenges ahead. Currently, development times in high-budget games are dilated for years, but once the situation was different. "Final Fantasy VII arrived very fast," recalls Maruyama. “The development period was just over a year. To shorten the cycle, they invested heavily in technology. The team expanded and signed the 150 employees suddenly, ”as previously there had been between 30 and 40 people.
The atmosphere changed, since the developers felt that the budget was skyrocketing. "I noticed that the budget had grown and that the scale was larger," says Yoshitaka Amano, one of the illustrators of the series. “I no longer felt it as something internal, I saw it as a product that was being globalized and that was becoming something very important . But they didn't pay me more for it, ”he concludes with a point of humor.
Technical problems were not lacking, almost always linked to hardware, as Hashimoto suggests. “Most of the difficulties came from the ingame parties and the lack of memory. The technical demo in Siggraph used 256 megabytes of memory for textures. In 1996 it was a huge machine. Do you know how much memory PlayStation had? Two megabytes. Only 2 megabytes available for system memory and also 500K for textures memory. It was that little. ” The data of the animations, meanwhile, were huge, so they had to think about how to compress them. “I remember watching the main programmer, Narita-san, eating his head as he tried to get the characters to walk on a 3D surface. When he solved the problem, everyone was very happy. I don't forget it, it's unforgettable. ”
Hiroshi Kawai, character programmer, saw them and wanted them to integrate cinematic cut scenes with 3D images in real time. "Do you remember the introductory scene in which the camera approaches the train?" The protagonist, then, jumps out of the vehicle and two guards appear on the platform that approach you, rendered in real time. “In theory, everything was calculated to work, with all the mathematical calculations we had made up to that point. But as you may have heard, PlayStaion did not have the precision of SGI machines. ” Therefore, they had to recalculate the numbers to get closer to what they had done in SGI.
At a time when the practice of crunch is more than questioned, there are few companies that are trying to change the way they do things. At that time, in a country like Japan, overtime was more than usual. In Final Fantasy VII, they were the order of the day, says programmer Tatsuya Yoshinari, also in statements to Polygon. “ Everyone was very motivated . There were many people who worked on the game 24 hours a day, but nobody got burned because we were all very motivated and having a good time. That way, when Square invested money in technology and personnel, motivation became a key factor. ”
The team members were "young" and could resist "for long periods" without stopping. “I spent most of my waking hours thinking about the video game . I woke up in the morning and began to immediately reflect on the work, straight to work, work that lasted well into the night, as it happened with the rest of Square members. Then, at night, I returned on the train with the title in my head, got into the bathtub and kept thinking about it. ”
Art and music
Nobuo Uematsu and Tetsuya Nomura are two of the veteran members of the Final Fantasy saga. The musician was from the beginning, although he left the company to look for new challenges, while Nomura is still in the ranks of Square Enix and is the director of Final Fantasy VII Remake: “Nomura-san has worked in the saga for a long time, but I think his art came alive on PlayStation , because you could teach more on screen. I think it was a success for him that the Final Fantasy series moved to PlayStation, ”says Uematsu.
Something similar says Motonori Sakakibara: “Nomura-san was a great 2D artist, but his characters worked extremely well in 3D . He spent a lot of time making the characters of the game resemble his original designs, which was one of the biggest secrets behind the creation of the protagonists of Final Fantasy VII. ”
Nomura's role in the company began a turn during the development of the seventh installment. “I have been involved in the series since Final Fantasy V. In Final Fantasy V and VII, I always commented on my plans and gave ideas to Kitase-san. But in the VII it was when I began to have a role of more leadership , so I could propose and make clearer what I wanted to do in the game. ”
The soundtrack is one of the most remembered aspects of the game, but that does not mean that Uematsu did not have to make sacrifices. While I was working on Final Fantasy V, rumors about the new hardware pointed out that I could make use of voices in video games. “I tried to do it in Final Fantasy VII, and although I had enough space to include voices, the game took longer to load between scenes. I didn't want that to happen just because of the music. ” Therefore, he decided to leave that idea in the drawer. "The sound quality was not as high as it could have been, and when the title went on sale, I compared the sound quality of Final Fantasy VII with another game released at that time: that of the other video game was quite high." Of course, the game was interrupted with loading times. Anyway, the creative decided to try it in Final Fantasy VIII, but that's another story.
The last touches
Yoshinori Kitase, the director of Final Fantasy VII, opted for a unified style . In an interview with one of the Japanese publications of the moment (via Shmuplations), he sketches the line of sight. I wanted the title to be consistent with everything else, that is, with the cinematic scenes, the map, the battle scenes, etc. “What I really wanted was that the compositions and sequences were impregnated with meaning and showed the intentions of the creators. One of Sakaguchi's goals, on the other hand, was to reduce musical loops and offer the player a soundtrack that would not be repeated so much. Obviously, due to the nature of the product, some repetitions were inevitable.
Final Fantasy VII entered the Olympus of video games on their own merits. Decades later, his legacy remains intact. The premiere of the desired remake, which will go on sale on April 10, 2020, opens the doors to new players who may not have dared to try the classic version so far. Be that as it may, the story of Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Aeris and company remains , because the great works do not disappear altogether if oblivion does not cross their path, which has not happened.