Head in the Cloud.
For those of us who grew up playing video games, their idiosyncrasies have become normalised.
That was especially true in its infancy.
However, people of my fathers generation who had not experienced games before could not easily understand these.
The Final Fantasy series has always been focused on dramatic, perhaps even cinematic, storytelling.
It was all possible at last.
“The Final Fantasy series had always treated dramatic storytelling as important,” says Kitase.
It needed true 3D capabilities.
It needed the PlayStation.
A big part of that was the use of full-motion videos, or FMVs.
Rather than using in-game graphics, the team chose to realise major story beats using pre-rendered graphics.
But these scenes were only possible thanks to the extra storage space of the PS1’s CD ROMs.
One particular example of this is the game’s iconic opening.
The main inspiration was Ridley Scott’s famousBlade Runner.
“However, just doing that would be no more than a simple imitation.
Yet even these shaky ventures into film ultimately benefitted the games in the long run.
In this way, these two separate feedback cycles pushed the evolution of our cinematic expertise.”
Of course, flashy visuals are nothing without strong storytelling and here Final Fantasy 7 succeeds, too.
But those themes were originally fuelled by something more personal: experiencing loss.
Much of that appeal lies with Cloud.
), thanks to the influence of a classic detective novel.
Kitase specifies a certain other scene from Final Fantasy 10 in particular.
Its director, Naoki Hamaguchi, reminisces on that scene in the original game.
It’s these two games that influenced his decision to become a game creator.
you’re free to’t really separate it from the developments in technology at that point in time."
The same, really, could be said for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.
I don’t think they would," he said.
