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FFVII 10th Anniversary Discussion: p. 8 to 13 of the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania

by April 5, 2009 0 comments

Well, with our fake April Fool’s interview with Nomura regarding FFVII Advent Children Complete done, we figured it’s only fair we post a real one now. With that, hitoshura has translated the five page interview with the creators from the Final Fantasy VII 10th Anniversary Ultimania, which outlines the creation of FFVII, their thoughts on their favorite parts, and more. Enjoy this new content from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania!


Nomura, Naora, Kitase, and Nojima

Nomura, Naora, Kitase, and Nojima

(Note: Yusuke Naora, Art Director of the original FFVII, is not present in this creators’ commentary.)

FFVII 10th Anniversary Discussion

In 2007 FFVII hit its 10th anniversary. To find out the secret of its appeal, we went to the 3 central members of the development staff behind FFVII and the Compilation. How does FFVII look through their eyes?

Cloud’s Animations determined the image of the scenario

It’s been 10 years since FFVII was released. I think the reason fans have continued to support it for so long is because it left that much of an impression on them, but what scenes stand out most in your memories as the creators?

Nojima: For me, it’s the scene where Cloud first appears at the start of the story. That scene used the cool standing animation Toriyama (Motomu Toriyama: FFVII’s event planner) made. If I remember correctly, it was named “Cloud showing off” (laughs). But when I say that animation I thought to myself objectively, “wow, this is great.” It was when I’d just started writing the scenario, and Cloud’s false persona was kind of determined based on that pose, and after that the image of the scenario started to solidify. Back in those days, a lot of different tasks would be going on simultaneously during production, so there were a lot of cases like that where the other staff would influence each other. All the important stuff was usually decided by talking it over in the smoking room (laughs). Nowadays since you’ve got the voice acting to record the scenario needs to be done first, so it’s turned into quite a lonesome task.

kitase

Kitase: That Cloud ‘showing off’ standing animation appears in the Nibelheim flashback as well. When the Shinra soldier asked about doing “the usual”, he does that pose. The same scene is in CC too, so I instructed the staff to recreate that animation (laughs). You were in charge of the Nibelheim events in FFVII, weren’t you, Nojima?

Nojima: That’s right. Right up till the very end we couldn’t get the bugs out of it, so it was pretty rough. Like when Cloud was waiting outside of the screen for his part in the scene, his hair would be poking out from the edge of the screen (laughs). Story-wise, the scene at the Northern Cave where Cloud talks while upside-down left an impression on me. I worked on the direction for that scene, but getting the characters to run to match with the movie scene was tricky, and I remember having trouble with it. The part where Cloud addresses Tifa as “Mrs.” Tifa, I made that hoping that the people playing it would be taken aback by the change in Cloud and it would really hit the player.

Nomura: The scene that sticks out for me is the scene when Tifa goes into Cloud’s mental realm and he remembers the truth about what happened in the past.

Nojima: It was Katou (Masato Katou: FFVII event planner) who made the events for that part, and the movies were made by Ikumori (Kazuyuki Ikumori: FFVII movie designer). Ikumori was originally graphic designer for the maps, and this was the first time he’d tried his hand at movies. He said, “I’ve never worked on the movies before,” but looking at him now…

Nomura: Now he’s the movie director on DC and CC.

Kitase: Katou also did the event on the airship, the night before the final battle.

Nojima: Oh, the scene with the risqué line of dialogue? It was Katou who wrote that as well, not me.

The line “Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking,” right? That was quite a mature conversation for a FF game.

Kitase: But I remember having to get another version that was too intense toned down.

Nojima: The original idea was more extreme. The plan was to have Cloud walk out of the Chocobo stable on board the Highwind, followed by Tifa leaving while checking around, but Kitase turned it down. But even with the line in question, maybe at that time none of us thought it would be something so important (laughs).

nojima

In the original scenario, Zack didn’t exist

Mr. Kitase, which scene do you find most striking even now?

Kitase: Like Nomura, I’d have to say the climax in the mental realm. The scene where the mysteries regarding Sephiroth and Cloud all become clear. I didn’t know until we were in the latter stages of development that Cloud’s memories were Zack’s. First of all, when I originally checked the scenario, the character of Zack didn’t exist. Zack was a character who came up as Nojima was building up the mysteries. So until that part was complete I was left wondering just how he was planning to solve this, and all the while making the event scenes, still in the dark about the truth.

Nojima: But with Zack, I didn’t simply bring him in just because it was needed for solving the mysteries. When I joined the development team, the concept of Aerith seeing her first love again in Cloud was already there, so I brought him in to link that with solving the mysteries.

Nomura: About the concept of her seeing her first love again in Cloud, at first we were thinking of making that man Sephiroth. When I got the request for the illustration of Zack we were already near the end of development, so when you look at it now it’s not even coloured, and I can’t really deny that it feels like quite a sudden request.

– Had you thought about the truth of the mysteries regarding Cloud and Zack from the very beginning?

Nojima: No, I thought of it as I went on with my work. So at the beginning there wasn’t much foreshadowing. The foreshadowing scenes, I asked the staff in charge of the event scenes to add after development reached a point where an outcome for the mysteries came into sight.

Kitase: In those days it was easy to go back and change things around later on. Lately, with the workload involved in making the graphics, it’s hard to ask people to change something once it’s been finished.

Nojima: Well, even back then, there were some people you could easily ask to change an event later on, and people who were difficult to ask, so the locations of the foreshadowing might be biased. I only went to the people who were easy to ask, and the foreshadowing is focused at the scenes they were in charge of (laughs).

Red XIII: Four-Legged Bane of the Event Planners

– I think one of the things that have helped maintain FFVII’s popularity is the uniqueness of its characters. How did you go about creating the characters?

Nomura: At the very start of development the scenario wasn’t complete yet, but I went along like, “I guess first off you need a hero and a heroine,” and from there drew the designs while thinking up details about the characters. After I’d done the hero and heroine, I carried on drawing by thinking what kind of characters would be interesting to have. When I handed over the designs I’d tell people the character details I’d thought up, or write them down on a separate sheet of paper. At that time, I still wrote everything by hand as well.

So in exactly what order did you draw the characters?

Nomura: The first ones I drew was Cloud and Aerith. Next was Barret.

Kitase: And then Nomura said he wanted to have a four-legged character, and drew Red XIII…

Nomura: After that I think things kind of stalled for a while (laughs).

Nojima: Because you said you wanted to have a four-legged character, it was a real struggle to make the cut-scenes. Like, ‘how is he supposed to climb a ladder?’ and ‘when he turns around his tail and his body end up going into the wall’ (laughs).

Nomura: The scene with Red XIII standing on two legs on the transport ship was funny.

Nojima: The scene where he says, “It’s hard standing on two legs” (laughs).

Kitase: You named Red XIII, didn’t you, Tetsu (Nomura)?

Nomura: I thought a name that didn’t sound like a name would be interesting, so I combined a color and a number. The reason I chose 13 was pretty much because it’s an unlucky number. The official details for the character and his real name ‘Nanaki’ was something one of the other staff did.

Kitase: It was probably Akiyama (Jun Akiyama: FFVII event planner) who thought of those.

This is something I noticed before, but to type in ‘Seto’, Nanaki’s father, in Japanese with the keyboard set to kana input, you press the keys ‘PS’. I was wondering if this perhaps was where the name came from…?

Kitase: Did he think that deeply about it?

Nojima: If it was Akiyama who was in charge of that, I wouldn’t put some deep-rooted reason like that past him (laughs).

Yuffie and Vincent, who were almost cut at one point.

– Yuffie and Vincent are secret characters who you don’t have to get in your party, but I was surprised that they had so many cut-scenes prepared for them.

Nomura: There was even a time when some people thought we should cut them because we didn’t have enough time. But we somehow managed to veto cutting them, and as a result they became the secret characters they are today.

Kitase: The main reason for there being so many cut-scenes for Yuffie is down it the strong attachment that Akiyama, who was in charge of them, had. Her appearing in a battle and talking with her afterwards, all those were his ideas, and as development moved along the scope steadily got bigger and bigger.

Nojima: It’s really annoying when you try to save after the Yuffie battle and get tricked (laughs). For the story in Wutai, I made the parts related to the main story, but the events in the Pagoda of the Five Mighty Gods were the work of Tokita (Takashi Tokita: FFVII’s event planner).

Kitase: Those bits do have a Tokita-feel to them.

Nojima: Tokita is involved in the theatre, and the characters who appear there have the names of people involved with the theatre like playwrights.

– Who was in charge of Vincent’s cut-scenes?

Kitase: I remember making the event where he joins you in the Shinra Mansion, but his episodes themselves was Nojima, wasn’t it?

Nojima: I did write his episodes. The back story for Vincent and Lucrecia was around from the start, and I remember linking that with Shinra. In the end, Chiba (Hiroki Chiba: FFVII’s event planner) crammed the Vincent-related events in right at the last minute.

Kitase: Chiba is in charge of DC’s scenario, but thinking about it now maybe it turned out that way because he worked on the events with Vincent in FFVII.

Nojima: However, despite Vincent not having many scenes due to him appearing in the latter half of the story, he has a fair amount of dialogue, and when he does show up he talks a lot. Even though really he’s meant to be a quiet person (laughs). Even now I have a problem when creating scenarios, where even though the character is a cool and silent type, I end up making scenes where they just keep on talking and talking. Roles like Barret, who appear from the start and have a lot of lines, most of the time, basically don’t know anything. But characters like Vincent, or Auron in FFX, it tends to be the case that the quieter they are the more they know about things, and they just end up with more expositional dialogue. I still haven’t found a solution to this problem.

The reason FFVII’s characters have continued to be loved

– When thinking of the character’s stories or working on their designs, do you have any kind of tried and tested methods, Mr. Nomura?

Nomura: Maybe not a method in particular. For FFVII’s characters, they’re the result of wanting to make varied, and in a sense going for an orthodox balance. In the recent FF games, I now receive the profiles of the characters before handling the designs, so I don’t worry about the character building much now. I think FFVII was it as far as me thinking of the character’s stories first goes.

– The characters of FFVII seem to be especially popular even out of the entire series, but where do you think the reason for that lies?

tetsuya-nomura

Nomura: Hmmm, I wonder? Nothing really hits me. Well, I guess that each character has their own individual episodes which are well told. You might say their personalities are too strong (laughs).

Nojima: Yeah, they were made nearly excessively individual. For example, once you’ve decided Aerith speaks like this, it starts to escalate in that direction. And like Cloud’s cool standing animation we mentioned before, all the staff in charge of the events took in anything that seemed interesting. Even Cloud’s “not interested” catch phrase comes up so much you start to think, you won’t normally say it that much (laughs).

Kitase: Everyone used it, didn’t they?

Nojima: In that sense, their characters were definitely strong. In FFVIII onwards, the height of the characters increased, and we starting to be conscious of realism. And when that happens, there are times when you start comparing them to real life people. But with FFVII’s height, even in 3D, you still don’t really get that sense of reality. Maybe in that aspect they were like cartoon characters, which was a plus. I think, maybe they had a kind of easy to remember quality as symbols.

Kitase: When I first read Nojima’s scenario, I felt strongly that his image of a heroine was fresh. The hero didn’t have a typical personality, single-minded or righteous, and Aerith lived in the slums. Those things were really fresh. And having 2 heroines, Aerith and Tifa, and having the hero waver between them, at the time that was something new. And Sephiroth too, who appears from the start and is the final enemy, and is sort of a rival. For me personally, I think those things which weren’t in past FFs might be the secret to its popularity.

Nomura: In regards to Sephiroth, I wanted to avoid having the kind of plot development where you get to the end of the story and suddenly this boss you’ve never heard of yet just appears. With FFVII, I wanted to do a story where you’re chasing someone you’ve known was the enemy from the get-go. As for the heroines, during development some people were of the opinion that compared to Tifa, Aerith has fewer scenes and didn’t really stand out, so we also increased her appearances.

Nojima: As a motif for them, Tifa is “the childhood friend who’s been with you since nursery school”, and Aerith is “the girl who transfers school mid-term and quickly leaves for another school.” Since she doesn’t have many scenes, you’ve got to make it so that the transfer student has a big impact. That was what I thought.

Feelings about Aerith, the tragic heroine

– You can’t talk about FFVII’s heroines without talking about the tragedy that befalls Aerith at the Forgotten City. That event was a very memorable scene not only for the FF series, but all RPGs.

Kitase: In the past FFs as well, important characters died and went away. Like Galuf in FFV for example, they followed a pattern where the character would go down after giving it his all in a fight. In this case, often it went that the characters think something like, they’ve tired so hard, and just accept the death and overcome it. When creating stories I think that is an option, but in FFVII we were thinking, could we take this a step further? Bring out a sense of loss somehow? What I didn’t want to have was the kind of story development where even when a character dies there’s no sense of loss, on the contrary it just raises motivation and pushes you forward.

Nojima: Kitase’s loss talk has been consistent since back then.

Kitase: And with a lot of stories, before they die there’s a lot of dramatic preparations, aren’t there? Like a “pre-prepared excitement”, or “using this as a step to fight evil further”, those are the kinds of developments I wanted to avoid. In reality, death comes without warning, and you’re left feeling dazed at the gravity of the loss… Rather than wanting to fight evil, you’re just overcome by a great sense of loss, like you just want to give up everything. I was in charge of the direction of that scene, and I tried to bring out that sort of sense of realism.

Nomura: It’s related to ‘life’, one of the themes of FFVII, so it’s not portrayed as a “death for excitement’s sake” but expresses a realistic pain. Death comes suddenly, so I think the emotion there wasn’t excitement or anything, but sadness.

Nojima: Speaking from a scenario standpoint, FFVII is ‘a story of life cycling through the planet’, so someone needed to be part of that cycle. In other words, although what happened to Aerith isn’t really based on logic, as far as the story goes, maybe one of the team was destined to lose their life from the very start. But how that one became Aerith wasn’t decided through a notice as is popularly mentioned. It was decided after everyone, including myself, racked our brains about what to do.

Truth hidden in the abbreviations of the Compilation titles

– 7 years after the release of FFVII, the Compilation began, but it was a surprise that Advent Children, the sequel, was a film.

Kitase: Originally the AC project came about when the staff said they wanted to make a film.

Nomura: But having that film work being based on FFVII was decided from the beginning.

Kitase: They’ve made several of the movie scenes for games before, so they have the know-how. But an independent film was a big challenge for us, so we had to be ready for it being considerably difficult. When thinking of what subject material we work with while having that readiness, we came up with FFVII. At first it was only planned to be 20 minutes, but before I knew it there were fight scenes, and finally it grew to 100 minutes… (laughs).

Nomura: After we started the project, there was a period where it was put to one side for a while. At that rate, the project itself seemed like it would just go up in smoke, so I put my hand up and said I’d do it, and started again from there, adding in fight scenes and so on.

– Was the formula for the Compilation’s titles, AC, BC, CC and DC, planned from the start?

Kitase: In order of release BC comes first, Advent Children was the first title we decided on.

Nomura: For BC’s title, Taba (Hajime Tabata: BC’s director) and Itou (Yukimasa Itou: BC’s producer) came to me saying they had a good idea. “How about linking with AC, and Before Christ (B.C.), and going with Before Crisis?” I just gave an nonchalant “sure, why not,” but I never thought it would end up being a formula (laughs). So, next we skipped C and went for DC. Then planning for CC suddenly began. Kitase came to my office one day and told me, “think of something” (laughs).

Kitase: That was how it all began. At then, we were thinking of a PSP port of BC. At the time, you could only play BC on NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so we wanted to let a wider spectrum of players to have a chance to play it. So personally, I was planning releasing it on the PSP with basically the same graphics as the mobile phone version, even if we did fill in the story a bit. However, when I told Tetsu about this, I hadn’t realized at that time that that wouldn’t be enough (laughs).

Nomura: Since at first I was told it’s BC on the PSP, I thought of calling it “Before Crisis Core”. But at that time we’d already decided on having Zack as the main character, so we said, “since it’s going to be different from BC, we don’t need ‘Before’ in the title, do we?” So we took off the “Before”, and by chance it fitted the CC which we had skipped.

Kitase: When I saw the cut-scenes of the completed CC, the quality was good enough to release on the PS2, and I never expected it would be this good. With CC, I had only read part of the scenario when I worked on it, so when played up to the ending myself, as a consumer, I was moved, like “aah, so this is what Zack’s story was like…” (laughs). When I saw the ending, I though to myself, “all the titles have come together nicely. I’m glad we did the Compilation.”

No comments yet

  1. BBM
    #1 BBM 5 April, 2009, 11:10

    Wow, that is awesome!

    “The part where Cloud addresses Tifa as “Mrs.” Tifa, I made that hoping that the people playing it would be taken aback by the change in Cloud and it would really hit the player.”

    “Nomura: The scene that sticks out for me is the scene when Tifa going into Cloud’s mental realm and he remembers the truth about what happened in the past.”
    -From NOMURA himself. :monster:

    “Kitase: But I remember having to get another version that was too intense toned down.”

    “Nojima: The original idea was more extreme. The plan was to have Cloud walk out of the Chocobo stable on board the Highwind, followed by Tifa leaving while checking around, but Kitase turned it down. But even with line in question, maybe at first none of us thought it would be something so important (laughs).”

    “Aerith seeing her first love again in Cloud was already there, so I brought him to link that with solving the mysteries.”

    Wow, this is just so filled with Cloud and Tifa. I like this interview. :monster:

    Reply to this comment
    • Makoeyes987
      Makoeyes987 Author 5 April, 2009, 11:13

      LOL I’m sure you do XD

    • BBM
      BBM 5 April, 2009, 11:20

      Well, I’m betting you like it to. :3

    • shaoran
      shaoran 19 May, 2013, 18:44

      it so rocks~! I loved this too~! Full of Tifa and cloud. Clerith would never get this but even the makers are saying this as well. THey all saying this as a whole concept of the entire FF7 series.

      Not just based on disc 1! HAHA

  2. xinda
    #2 xinda 5 April, 2009, 11:33

    Interesting.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply to this comment
  3. Isabella
    #3 Isabella 5 April, 2009, 11:33

    Some of this is very familiar … old interview?

    Reply to this comment
    • Cthulhu
      Cthulhu 5 April, 2009, 11:47

      I think bits and pieces were known and partially translated before this interview was fully translated and posted on here. Plus, some bits were already known earlier.

    • Isabella
      Isabella 5 April, 2009, 11:59

      Oh wait, this is the 10th anniversary ultimania. I was thinking it was a new magazine interview. That explains it. 🙂

    • BBM
      BBM 5 April, 2009, 12:01

      Ohh, so is this the revised version or somethin’….?

    • Makoeyes987
      Makoeyes987 Author 5 April, 2009, 12:04

      No it’s the original one. The revised one isn’t out yet XD

      It’s just it hasn’t been posted yet or fully done until now.

    • BBM
      BBM 5 April, 2009, 12:06

      Oh, so this is just an interview from a long time ago, huh?

      Well, nevertheless, I still like it. ^^

    • Makoeyes987
      Makoeyes987 Author 5 April, 2009, 12:09

      Well not that long but yes, its from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania. It just never got fully done until now, lol.

    • hitoshura
      hitoshura 5 April, 2009, 16:07

      It’s the original 10th Anniversary Ultimania interview. There have been bits and pieces done before and other might have been mentioned elsewhere, like Cthulhu said. I just don’t think the whole thing was ever done.

      I don’t see why the revised edition of the book will change this interview, really.

  4. Shademp
    #4 Shademp 5 April, 2009, 11:34

    Always interesting to get a glimpse of the work process these titles, especially the original, went through.
    “Nojima: All the important stuff was usually decided by talking it over in the smoking room.” Very amusing.

    I want to know what ideas they have for the next compilation title! Will it be abbreviated EC? Got a feeling that this time it won’t be a coincidence like with CC.

    Reply to this comment
  5. Cthulhu
    #5 Cthulhu 5 April, 2009, 11:49

    Interesting to see that they’ve only included Zack (and thus Cloud’s persona for a large part of the original game) further on in development of the game.

    And it’s good to see that back then, they were still able to be flexible in the game’s story and whatnot, able to change a scene or add stuff. As is stated in the interview, nowadays you have to stick to one story since it takes quite a while to create a new environment, models and animations.

    Reply to this comment
    • Suzaku
      Suzaku 6 April, 2009, 01:59

      Yeah. It had been mentioned before (in another interview) that the Nibelheim flashbacks were some of the last scenarios worked on, as a means to tie together the remaining plot threads.

      That, and the memorable “secret flashbacks” about Zack weren’t even in the original Japanese version, and were added to the International version, along with a few other new scenes and features from the English version.

      It’s probably for those reasons that Nojima had been interested in changing up certain aspects of those flashbacks (such as wanting a battle against Jenova in Nibelheim) while working on the Compilation, though keeping things consistent caused those ideas to be vetoed in the end.

    • hitoshura
      hitoshura 6 April, 2009, 11:13

      That was Kitase, wasn’t it? The one who wanted to have something with Jenova during Nibelheim in CC.

    • Ravynne
      Ravynne 14 April, 2009, 05:34

      I think that’s part of the reason why 7 still outshines later titles, if you ask me. Flexibility is important.

  6. Tetsujin
    #6 Tetsujin 5 April, 2009, 13:33

    Awesome, interesting read.

    Reply to this comment
  7. hitoshura
    #7 hitoshura 5 April, 2009, 16:42

    Some missing/mistaken words are missing/mistaken :monster:

    “And having 2 heroines, Aerith and Tifa, and having the hero *waver* between them, at the time that was something new.”

    “But even with *the* line in question, maybe *at that time* none of us thought it would be something so important (laughs).”

    “Aerith seeing her first love again in Cloud was already there, so I brought him *in* [introduced him] to link that with solving the mysteries.”

    I need to proofread bettah :monster:

    Reply to this comment
    • Nanacloud
      Nanacloud 7 June, 2019, 09:57

      Great Proofread. 😉

  8. OWA-2
    #8 OWA-2 5 April, 2009, 17:39

    Just pointing a small error found, in the “Yuffie and Vincent, who were almost cut at one point.” part of the translation:

    Nomura: There was even a time when some people thought we should cut them because we didn’t have enough time. But we somehow managed to veto cutting them, and as a result they **because** the secret characters they are today.

    Reply to this comment
  9. Tennyo
    #9 Tennyo 5 April, 2009, 17:55

    lol Nomura is so short compared to everyone else. XD

    Reply to this comment
  10. TI
    #10 TI 5 April, 2009, 19:40

    Why did they have Cloud called Tifa “Mrs”. She’s not married; or is that supposed to be a respectful term.

    Reply to this comment
    • Ryushikaze
      Ryushikaze 5 April, 2009, 20:06

      Well, the original line was ‘-san’, so it would be Ms. or Mrs. The choice of Ms. appears to just be Hitobito’s.
      And yes, it’s intended to show his respect for Tifa.

    • hitoshura
      hitoshura 5 April, 2009, 20:51

      It’s kind of a Japanese thing that doesn’t exactly transfer to English. It’s originally ‘san’, like Ryu said, which can be used to show respect in a wider context than English equivalents like Mr/Mrs.

      In this case, it just shows some distance which shouldn’t be there, which highlights the change in Cloud. I thought ‘Mrs’ was what the English version used, but I didn’t research as much as I could/should have :monster:

    • Ravynne
      Ravynne 14 April, 2009, 05:38

      So, would that more accurately be translated as “Ms.” or “miss” rather than “Mrs.”?

      “Mrs.” refers to a married woman, which opens a whole ‘nother can of worms as far as CloTi is concerned.

      “Miss” refers to an unmarried woman.

      “Ms.” (which is not the same as “Miss” and is pronounced “mizz”) shows no indication of marital status, similar to “Mr.” for men.

    • Raquelborn
      Raquelborn 24 May, 2009, 14:57

      Yes, Miss would be better.

  11. Channy
    #11 Channy 5 April, 2009, 20:03

    “When I saw the ending, I though to myself, “all the titles have come together nicely. I’m glad we did the Compilation.”

    I dunno about you guys, but this line to me SCREAMS “end of the compilation”. D=

    Reply to this comment
    • Tetsujin
      Tetsujin 5 April, 2009, 22:50

      No. It was only said it’s come to a stop for a now.
      In the last interview, they said they had an idea for the next title already, so…

    • Channy
      Channy 5 April, 2009, 23:01

      Really? Okay that puts my mind at ease… ish.

    • Raquelborn
      Raquelborn 24 May, 2009, 14:58

      I just hope it isn’t another game like DoC. That was terrible, it lacked the spirit of the original game and the rest of it’s spin-offs.

  12. X-SOLDIER
    #12 X-SOLDIER 5 April, 2009, 23:53

    Brilliant work. It’s interesting to see how the development process of the game allowed a lot of things to happen, and how it’s changed from then to recent games.

    X

    Reply to this comment
  13. Channy
    #13 Channy 6 April, 2009, 00:17

    The development team is so young. O= And Nomura’s kinda hawt. :monster:

    Reply to this comment
    • Tennyo
      Tennyo 6 April, 2009, 02:53

      It depends on his hair really. I’ve seen pics of him with really bad hair and he looks ugly but in pics where he has really good hair he’s actually rather attractive. He seems to change his hair more often than most girls I know. XD

      Of course seeing that group picture I now imagine him only coming up to my shoulder or something (I’m 5’8″). lol

    • Ravynne
      Ravynne 14 April, 2009, 05:42

      Lol, I’ve always had a little crush on Nomura, but that’s more because of who he is.

      Naora looks like he might be kinda hot in that pic. Why don’t we get to see a larger image of him so we can really tell? :monster:

      Hell, I’d do any of them. ¬.¬ Might have to close my eyes for Kitase, cause he’s, like, someone’s ugly dad, but shit…it’s Kitase.

  14. Raquelborn
    #14 Raquelborn 24 May, 2009, 15:01

    “- The line “Words aren’t the only way to talk someone how you feel,” right? That was quite a mature conversation for a FF game.

    Nojima: The original idea was more extreme. The plan was to have Cloud walk out of the Chocobo stable on board the Highwind, followed by Tifa leaving while checking around.”

    That made me laugh. If that’d been in the original game I would of been shocked as hell. XD

    “But even with the line in question, maybe at that time none of us thought it would be something so important (laughs).”

    I didn’t understand what they were talking about here, difficult translation?

    Reply to this comment
  15. Teresa
    #15 Teresa 24 January, 2010, 19:50

    Ugh, love in a chocobo stable? *ickickick* Hay and feathers and…stuff…everywhere XD

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  16. Somanymysteries
    #16 Somanymysteries 5 April, 2010, 13:49

    @Raquelborn I personally think what they meant about that specific line being so important was because of the Cloti and Cleris fans. It would mean an automatic win for Tifa.

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    • Orah
      Orah 6 September, 2013, 16:26

      honestly thats mah fave quote XDDDDD
      ——————
      (on the regards to reinventing sexuality link)

      i think the whole ideal of it just proves a lot of cloud. he looks like this tough guy, with a huge sword that would kill a thousand elephants in one slice, cool ways of doing things (i must agree, cloud standing upside down and talking is very cool lol and i would love to see it in the remake) and his classic “not interested” phrase almost molested into the game. and here he is, sharing his deep love with the woman of his life.

      now, in most times, “tough” guys have sex and leave it at that. they dont think it means anything else but something that “feels good”, and is repeated with woman after woman of their choice, and is done frequently. you wouldnt be surprised if someone like cid or even barret had done something like this because they seem like the toughies to do something like this.

      cloud, for how cold he looks on the outside,took this very intimate and personal. in other words, he was treasuring it. it meant something very important to him. i think the chocobo stable symbolized something very very private, very secluded and personal. cloud and tifa were the only two on the entire ship yet they chose something such as that (and the stables are most likely at the end of this ship, if you understand how its designed). this almost unfeeling guy just spending the night with her, whether under the stars or in a stable, strikes me as how soft of a person he really is. i think thats what nojima wanted to display for this character. he isnt tough at all lol. and in fact he said out of his mouth he takes cloud as a very weak character and sometimes wonder HOW can he be so weak! there is a wonder of why he chose this idea. what was reason or idea of his version, inside the highwind?

      and it also helps me understand the genius of Kitase taking up the job of declining it and making a different way to display it. he made it so…..suggestive. so much so you would have liked to take a peek to see if your hunches are right. the japanese are popular for doing this, to me. they make such a huge suggestion you’d just want to rip you hair out and scream “JUST DISPLAY IT FOR ALL TO SEE ALREADY!!!” but they dont. it happens sooooo many times in anime i cant even count the regular times they do it. he was going with the ideal, but he had to make it un-obvious, yet obvious at the same time. so he cracked his knuckles, and the (outside) highwind scene is what we get.
      also, since this subject is rather deep and sudden (or “mature”),has never been done before, and maybe even a bit shocking to find cloud had done something as this, Kitase adds the element of comic relief. they both get teased for it, and maybe even carelessly or unthinkingly spent their night alone because it is suggested that one or two of the members happened to see the two in the beginning or midst of their proclamation of love. the woman much more embarrassed than the man, but both are rather flustered. now its safe to laugh and shrug it off and focus on the real matter at hand, then just left with thinking of their grassland party for the rest of the game.

      im not scared to say this is 100% my opinion, because it is. thats just how i take it.

      DISCLAIMER: this is just my views on the ideas of the highwind scene being rejected and redone, NOT to spark up the cloti/clerith fight again.

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