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[potatohead]

The Gooch really was Squaresoft. Imagine where this company could be today if he hadn't made that one single blunder.

They'd still be making good games if they didn't fire him and would probably be in a better position than they are now.

With the Gooch they are still better off than without

 

[Schopenhauerian]

Still reading this, and everyone else should as well. Outstanding journalism work. It's amazing to read about Nintendo's [hardware choices]...

Yeah, this piece has a lot of interesting material on this subject, some which I mentioned in another post:

http://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7
...one of my responsibilities …was to write performance applications that compared how well the 64 fared against the prototype [PlayStation]. And we’d be running parallel comparisons between the [PlayStation] where you’d have a bunch of 2D sprites bouncing off the screen and see how many polygons you could get within a 60th of a second. And even without any kind of texturing or any kind of lighting, it was less than 50% of what you would be able to get out of the [PlayStation]. Of course, the drawback of the [PlayStation] is it didn’t really have a z-buffer, so you’d have these overlapping polygons that you’d have to work around so that you wouldn’t get the shimmering [look]. But on the other hand, there was no way you’d be able to get anything close to what FF7 was doing [on PlayStation] on the 64 at that time...

There was actually this one trip that [Nintendo] organized for me, [main programmer Ken] Narita-san, a few other lead devs who were working on the battle portion for the Final Fantasy 6 [Siggraph] demo at that point… I think Nintendo had been getting signals from Square saying, you know, “Your hardware isn’t up to snuff. Not only in terms of raw 3D performance, but in terms of storage.” And they said, “We’re gonna fabricate this brand new chip,” which was supposed to have a bunch of hardware improvements to get a little bit more performance. Which, my suspicion is they probably just repeated that verbatim from SGI, and I think there was, in general, a disconnect between SGI and Nintendo in terms of what they were expecting the hardware to do... But Nintendo had certain specific performance metrics that had to be met, but I don’t think those were communicated well to SGI... We spent a few days, I remember, optimizing my code, to try to get a few more polygons out, but it didn’t really make much of a difference...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_programming_characteristics
As the Nintendo 64 reached the end of its lifecycle, hardware development chief Genyo Takeda referred to the programming challenges using the word hansei (Japanese: 反省 "reflective regret"). Looking back, Takeda said "When we made Nintendo 64, we thought it was logical that if you want to make advanced games, it becomes technically more difficult. We were wrong. We now understand it's the cruising speed that matters, not the momentary flash of peak power."

 

[Adamastor]

Only took a couple of days to get through but well worth it. Wish we could get a lot more of these. It's been said before but I'd pay for more stuff like this. Specially if all the interviews were on camera too. A kind of 60 Minutes but for video games.

 

[Duracelllll]

Really interesting read. Can't believe Nintendo didn't talk to them for 10 years after the went to the Playstation platform.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Really interesting read. Can't believe Nintendo didn't talk to them for 10 years after the went to the Playstation platform.

That can't be true considering they were still releasing games for their systems then like Tactics Advance.

 

[Justinh]

I read this yesterday, and commented elsewhere on the internet, but I just wanted to say here that this was a damn great read.

There are a couple of quotes I pulled for my comment that I found fascinating.

I shouldn't be saying this, but hmm, how to put this? It was like Sangokushi [the Chinese literary series ”Romance of the Three Kingdoms"]. You know, where the king dies, and then a civil war erupts and everyone starts fighting each other.

I felt like this was a great tone-setter on just how important "King Gooch" was to Square, and I got the sense that after his departure there was like... some sort of scramble to try and figure out what they were going to do. I might've interpreted that wrong though...

The biggest moment that I remember was — and it may have been a first for Final Fantasy 7 — where they were syncing real-time 3D with FMVs.

This part totally reminded me of the Lost Odyssey intro, remember that? That was amazing. I had no idea Lost Odyssey development was so rocky though, as the article mentioned later on. Made me realize that while I was upset that Cry On was cancelled, I never looked into just why it was cancelled. Was there ever a story about that?

Only took a couple of days to get through but well worth it. Wish we could get a lot more of these. It's been said before but I'd pay for more stuff like this. Specially if all the interviews were on camera too. A kind of 60 Minutes but for video games.

I bet 2PlayerProductions could find a way to make it work...

 

[wmlk]

This is the dopest shit btw to anyone who hasn't read it. That said, I was massively disappointed to barely find any mention of Naora here. If the guy is heading up the Art division, then I think it's important to talk more about it. There's always this worship of Nomura and Kitase when there's barely a focus on the guy who plays the most important role in making these worlds feel so unique and vivid. His resume speaks for itself.

 

[sonicmj1]

I felt like this was a great tone-setter on just how important "King Gooch" was to Square, and I got the sense that after his departure there was like... some sort of scramble to try and figure out what they were going to do. I might've interpreted that wrong though...

It sounds like Sakaguchi had always been a decisive decisionmaker that everyone in the company respected, someone who could quickly resolve roadblocks and disagreements. After he left, it sounds like no one else was able to fill that role, so different factions wind up jockeying for control without a clear victor.

Given the state of Square's development of its large projects, this is still a problem. Every Final Fantasy game since he left seems to contain two or more warring visions which are only partially resolved in the final product. Square discussed this very issue (failing to create a shared vision until very late in development) in their post-mortem of FFXIII, and FFXV demonstrates similar symptoms.

Here's a really illustrative quote:

It's one of those [things] where, when somebody like Sakaguchi-san, who had such authority in the company, kind of just disappears, there's this vacuum that exists where nobody can really arbitrate between your devs and your artists and your game designers. And in that environment, most people — especially in Square — tended to avoid conflict and try to resolve things as best as possible. And unfortunately, the way each individual tried to resolve it wasn't necessarily in the end user's interests.

 

[Justinh]

It sounds like Sakaguchi had always been a decisive decisionmaker that everyone in the company respected, someone who could quickly resolve roadblocks and disagreements. After he left, it sounds like no one else was able to fill that role, so different factions wind up jockeying for control without a clear victor.

Given the state of Square's development of its large projects, this is still a problem. Every Final Fantasy game since he left seems to contain two or more warring visions which are only partially resolved in the final product. Square discussed this very issue (failing to create a shared vision until very late in development) in their post-mortem of FFXIII, and FFXV demonstrates similar symptoms.

I think that's probably accurate, and that Gamasutra excerpt you linked (thanks btw, I had not seen that) mentions a number of times a "lack of shared vision/cohesion/communication" which backs that up.

 

[transience]

Whatever happened to Takechi? he resigned with Sakguchi after the movie and... I don't think he ever resurfaced? seems like the CEO of Square during the glory years should be a bigger deal than he is. What's up with that?

 

[Muffdraul]

Surprised they glossed over this aspect of FFVII's development- It was originally slated to be released at the end of 1996 in Japan, but the game simply wasn't finished. The suits were extremely displeased and were only willing to give the team one single additional month. Whatever state the game was in, they were releasing it on 31 Jan 1997, period. They still didn't quite finish the game, but it was released anyway. They kept working after the JP release, which is why the NA version had extra content. It wasn't really "extra" per se... it was originally planned to be in the JP version. This is what lead to the whole "International Version" thing Square did with FFX and KH. FFVII was the only time it was "organic."

 

[TheJollyCorner]

This is the dopest shit btw to anyone who hasn't read it. That said, I was massively disappointed to barely find any mention of Naora here. If the guy is heading up the Art division, then I think it's important to talk more about it. There's always this worship of Nomura and Kitase when there's barely a focus on the guy who plays the most important role in making these worlds feel so unique and vivid. His resume speaks for itself.

*raises hand*
I'm one of the biggest Naora supporters on this forum, wmlk!

I've been begging for him to do main character designs for a mainline FF for years now. The guy is a tremendous artist.

 

[qualitydisc]

Yoshinori Kitase
Director, Square Japan

At the time, it wasn’t clear yet whether Japanese RPGs were going to go 3D or not. Sakaguchi-san was especially fond of pixel art, and we debated a lot about whether we should remain in that 2D style. … After we finished Final Fantasy 6, we began working on Final Fantasy 7 [as a 2D game for Super Famicom], brainstorming and holding initial planning meetings.

Hironobu Sakaguchi
Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan; Chairman and chief executive officer, Square USA

1994? Ah, oh … that … wait, what? Kitase said that? Are you sure he’s not just making it up? No, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t remember that. Maybe he meant that he had the idea in his head.

The Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Ultimania Vol 2 has pictures of an early script treatment dated from 1994, so that backs up Kitase's claim that they started on story ideas that early. (Incidentally, Barret appears to be named "Blow" in those early documents.) I guess Sakaguchi drank away that particular memory.

 

[el87]

Amazing

 

[timetokill]

I guess this confirms that the PS1 was indeed a more capable piece of hardware compared to the N64.

Not really, it just wasn't going to be running tons of FMV and orchestral music. But similarly, the PlayStation would have had no real chance of running Ocarina of Time, let alone games like Majora's Mask which were essentially impossible for the PS1.

The machines has different strengths, and the PS1 catered more to what Square wanted to do at the time, but the N64 tech was far more advanced in most regards.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Its amazing to me how Nintendo blew this opportunity.

And this quote says it all.

Shinichiro Kajitani
Vice president, Square USA
"When we made the decision to go with Sony, for about 10 years we basically weren't allowed into Nintendo's offices. From a consumer's point of view, it was good to have two companies competing with each other because prices wouldn't rise and it would be better for them. But from a business perspective, our main interest was making sure that Sony won and Nintendo lost, basically, because that would be better for us."

He definitely succeeded in that.

 

[Toparaman]

Great read. Got me excited for the remake.

 

[-Ryn]

Well that was a pretty cool insight into FF7's history (though at times it felt more like a history of Sakaguchi lol).

Really helped shed light on what happened to Square over the past couple of decades.

 

[freeofgreed]

Man what an amazing article. Finally got around to reading it. I remmeber when thsi thread was first made I couldn't believe my eyes. a post-mortuem on one of the greatets games of all time with input from all the legends who made it, and with insight into Square form their golden age? Unbelievable but sure enough it exist. AGain great fucking read. Some bits that stood out to me, that others haven't posted yet.

Square was focusing on PlayStation only whereas EA was a multiplatform game company. They kept publishing on Nintendo as well as Sega as well as PC. So there was a bit of a different approach because they could spread out marketing across different platforms, but you know, we only published for the PlayStation. So there was that kind of discussion between us — why were we just doing it? [Laughs] We told them that the Japanese game market was always a ”winner takes all" type of market. It used to be Nintendo. Now it's PlayStation, so we had no intent to make any games for other consoles like Sega or Nintendo. But the U.S. market was twice as big. So they understood it, but they still wanted us to make games for other consoles. Which Square, you know, firmly refused.

So even devs buy into the whole console wars.

The movie ... was an unmitigated disaster. ... I talked to the lawyer, and I just remember at a party, but she was the lawyer from Hawaii who had handled their applications for doing the movie there. And there were so many tax benefits on the table, and they didn't take a single one. Because they went in and they were like, ”We're bringing our team." And they were like, ”You hire 10 percent Hawaiian and you get this huge tax cut." And I don't think it was like Sakaguchi sitting there going, ”No, we're keeping it pure. It's our team." I don't think there was any thought at all. I think it was like, that came in and the whole organization was so dysfunctional that when that kind of news hits the grind, it never gets to the person that needs to hear it.

Square basically turning down free money, and it was even intentional? Jesus, was this movie a disaster.

Personally, I want each game in a series to be treated with a lot of care, so I'm not a big fan of one game having a bunch of spin-offs and sequels. But I understand that from a company, sales, money point of view, it makes sense.

Completely agree with Uematsu here.

Unreal, in terms of graphics, it's very capable and very, very impressive. But it was still essentially in alpha stage when they were trying to push it onto us. ... And even the devs [at Epic], their attitude — I'm not saying this with any disrespect, but it was one of those, ”If you don't like it, don't use it" [situations]. Their devs were very clear from the get-go, saying, ”This is what Unreal's made for, and if it fits your needs, great. If it doesn't, you're on your own. If you need documentation, read the source code. If you need help, write us in English."

Wow what fucking dicks? I guess times have changed though since UE4 is so popular in Japan now.

We've talked about doing a Final Fantasy 7 remake for a long time, and, over the years, sometimes it would come up, sometimes it would go away. Depending on my schedule, maybe I was too busy to actually tackle the project, or something else would come up. So it's been around, but it never came to pass. But now that I have a little bit of availability in my schedule, we decided that we wanted to go ahead and kick it off. And we wanted to make sure that we could do it while we still have certain people around that were on the original Final Fantasy 7. Because we didn't want to end up passing it on to a generation that doesn't know the original game. We wanted to make sure to keep the integrity of Final Fantasy 7, that we make sure that Kitase-san is involved and Nojima-san are involved and I am involved. That's one of the reasons why we're doing it now.

Lol I find this funny for 2 reasons. One I guess Nomura is still a little salty at being removed from 15 and two, it's ironic how he says he has time on his hands despite taking forever with KH3.

We had to be efficient in figuring out what character 3D animation data you wanted in a particular level, so that you wouldn't be spending too much time loading stuff. I remember being given this assignment where the metric that I had to meet was that all the Final Fantasy 7 characters for the field maps — the main characters, the party characters — had to be able to be animating at 60 frames per second lined up side by side on a screen. ... I did manage to achieve that with some of the optimizations that Sony reluctantly made available to us. Their original dev tools were designed in a way where — they were hoping to make it so they could have devs work with the support of a [PlayStation] API so that wouldn't break as they made improvements under the hood. But it got to a point where we really needed to get more of the hardware out. And one of our devs actually disassembled their code and figured out what the hardware code instructions were to do certain calculations optimally. ...At first, Sony wasn't too keen on us accessing the hardware directly because it would require any future hardware changes to maintain the functionality we were dependent on. Fortunately, they eventually relented and, in turn, cleaned up our internal API so that it could be made available to all PlayStation developers.

Wow this is insane. They pretty much forced Sony to rewrite their API just for them.

Character and battle visual director, Square Japan I'm a little bit fickle, so I'm not the type of person to work on one thing and focus simply on that. Say, if I'm drawing — I wouldn't work on one single piece at a time. It would be more like four or five and I'd rotate between them. Or if I'm working on a design document for a game and I feel I need a change of pace, I'll start drawing something instead. Or if I need to draw, I might work on different projects to change my mood and get that sort of refresh. So that's how I prioritize those kinds of things. But if there is a deadline, of course I'll prioritize that first.

Yeah this explains so much about you Nomura.

Amazing GOAT Director Kitase retired and shitty Producer Kitase doesn't know how to control his directors.

Yeah Kitase as a director doesn't get enough appreciation. Dude directeed

FF6, FF7, FF8, FFX, and Chrono Trigger. Probably the best track recorded out of any SE director imo. Wish he still made games, because he's pretty bad at being a producer.

It's surprising to hear one of the team be so openly critical of a colleague. If he felt that way about Nomura, there must have been quite a number of people who felt that he had gotten a big head.

Yeah I never knew who Kawai was before this article but I liked reading his sections the most since he seemed to be the most candid.

 

[labaronx]

Can you imagine if this happened.

That would've been intense

 

[Schopenhauerian]

The jump in the overall sound (i.e. more realistic instruments) from FFVII and VIII was always interesting to me. I recall liking VII's melodies, but ultimately being disappointed in the sound quality. Uematsu's MIDI 'electric-kazoo' sound was charming during the 8 and 16-bit eras, but I recall going into VII with much higher expectations due to the CD quality. Even as the man himself points out, Suikoden's OST was amazing in both composition and instrument quality. It sounded like a generation jump from the previous gen… His explanation [in the Polygon piece] makes a lot of sense now (i.e. he didn't want the music to add to the loading times)…

...Yeah I agree, the cheesy MIDI soundtrack on FF7 definitely stood out as a bit antiquated compared to the rest of the game. Would've sounded better if they had just done chiptune sounds than that 90's Yamaha keyboard sound he went with...

I can see where you guys are coming from, but when playing through it as a kid, FF7's soundtrack never struck me as anything less than amazing. I'd already played through Suikoden and Wild Arms on the PS1, and of course really liked Shiro Hamaguchi's orchestral arrangements (Final Fantasy VII Reunion Tracks) when they were released in late 1997, but none of that actually did anything to dampen my appreciation for FF7's OST. And while I certainly wouldn't want the instrumentation to stay the same in FF7R, I am actually a bit worried about how they're going to handle Uematsu's compositions. Hopefully it's as good as what Hamaguchi did with the Reunion Tracks.

I did think a few songs worked well... Aerith's theme, the chocobo theme, the Gold Saucer, and Costa del Sol (if I'm being generous). Battle music was alright. It mainly failed when using synthesized instruments other than piano; the low quality made the songs stand out as being "videogamey", especially during scenes that were supposed to be dramatic.

I think using orchestral sounds like the treatment of One Winged Angel on the Reunion tracks could work well. I think if they replaced the cheesy MIDI instruments with real brass instruments and the like, the OST could sound fantastic.

Aside from Hamaguchi’s orchestrations, are there existing FF7 arrangements that you guys feel are exemplary (i.e., more effective than Uematsu’s originals)? I’d be very curious (genuine interest/curiosity, not skepticism!) to hear what you guys have found.

From a quick listen-through of Pontus Hultgren’s YouTube playlist, for example: while I do really like his arrangement of Holding My Thoughts in My Heart, I find that a number of the other tracks lose quite a bit in translation (from Uematsu’s originals), despite the improvement in instrumentation.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Oh yeah, I forgot to finish reading this.

 

[NolbertoS]

I'm pissed off that Enix combined with Square. Square needed Enix moreso than Enjx needed Square. I think Enix produced better titles at that time, but obviously DQ being unpopular in the West and Enix thinking Square can make their franchise popular contributed to Enix approving Square's merger. Now its all FF and DQ is the little brother

 

[LordOfLore]

I'm pissed off that Enix combined with Square. Square needed Enix moreso than Enjx needed Square. I think Enix produced better titles at that time, but obviously DQ being unpopular in the West and Enix thinking Square can make their franchise popular contributed to Enix approving Square's merger. Now its all FF and DQ is the little brother

...DQ has a bunch of spin-offs, remakes and new games coming out.

 

[ponpo]

Started and finished this in the morning. Was a pretty interesting read, though I was hoping for a big section on actual in game stuff like cut content and other things rather than other stuff that surrounded the game. Everything they revealed about in game decision stuff was cool though.

lifesteam.net's unused text series is still the greatest supplement.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

I'm still reading this.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

I've just read this. It's amazing that Kitase wanted to kill off the entire cast except the three characters in the active party in the scene where they parachute into Midgar. I thought Nojima and Kato were the crazy ones, lol.

 

[LordOfLore]

Bumping this up since it's 20 years since the NA release today.

 

[groansey]

Bumping to say this article has been expanded into a published book, 500 Years Later: An Oral History of FFVII by Read Only Memory (who do great high-end videogame books). The Kickstarter is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darrenwall/500-years-later-an-oral-history-of-final-fantasy-v

My only reservation is the lack of any sort of official tie-in with Square, so no behind the scenes art etc which for a 'making of' is a bit of an omission, hence 'oral history' - but clearly the accounts of the team are a draw in of themselves.

 

[Lynchian]

Shamelessly plugging my complete FFVII OST remake collection thread. People here seemed to like it a lot.