Final Fantasy VII Remake Devs Talk About Scrapped Ideas, Concepts, and Working on Part 2

This week’s issue of Famitsu magazine has a big feature on Final Fantasy VII Remake with an interview with key developers.  [Thanks, Ryokutya2089.]

Below are the highlights from the interview with Final Fantasy VII Remake developers:

Tetsuya Nomura (Director)

• Tetsuya Nomura: “We’re very aware that we need to hurry up with the next part. We, too, want to release it as soon.”
• Tetsuya Nomura: “We plan to release the next one as soon as possible, and it’ll be more enjoyable and higher quality than the first. Please wait a little while longer.”
• Tetsuya Nomura: “I believe that by the time we announce the next title, we’ll be able to clarify more on our plans moving forward.”
• Tetsuya Nomura: “The Whispers became visible after coming in contact with Aerith. As for when has Aerith been able to see them? I still can’t say.”
• Tetsuya Nomura: “As for the massage part, if we were to do something risky in that town, it would’ve gotten flagged by the ratings, so that was the only way we could do it.”

Yoshinori Kitase (Producer)

• Yoshinori Kitase: “The story of the new Final Fantasy VII has just begun.”

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director)

• Naoki Hamaguchi: “For the next part, I’d like to refer to those who asked for normal difficulty for Classic Mode.”
• Naoki Hamaguchi: “Development has already begun. We’re currently working diligently on it. we might keep you all waiting a little while, but please look forward to it.”

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director)

• Motomu Toriyama: “We originally planned on including Roche in the last fight. However, we scrapped the idea since he would have ruined the serious mood. We also planned on having a battle [with Roche] in the slums in Chapter 14. We gave up on the idea since there aren’t any roads in the slum to ride a bike on.”
• Motomu Toriyama: “The chances of the laughable character appearing in the next game have increased a lot [laughs].”
• Motomu Toriyama: “As for the Avalanche hideout, we removed it because it created a sense of distance between Cloud and Avalanche.”

Nobuo Uematsu (Composer)

• Nobuo Uematsu: “Hollow was the very first song that I made by playing the guitar.”

Kazushige Nojima (Story and Scenario)

• Kazushige Nojima: “I think of Final Fantasy as a series that continues to change and face challenges. Final Fantasy VII Remake is no exception.”

Makoto Ise (Sound Director)

• Makoto Ise: (On the worldwide simultaneous release) It was hell concurrently working on multiple languages for the voices (Japanese, English, French, and German) during the final stage of development. Just between you and me, we were barely able to make it on time.”

Keiji Kawamori (Music Supervisor)

• Keiji Kawamori: (On ideas about having long silence and no background music to make it more realistic) Since the original Final Fantasy VII always had music playing, we decided to work in that direction.”

Final Fantasy VII Remake is currently available for the PlayStation 4. Producer Yoshinori Kitase recently talked about the staff working remotely on Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2.