Interview with Nomura, Nozue, Nojima on ACC

[Defade]

http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/1223825_1124.html

Translating parts of it when I get back from breakfast. But from what I read it seems to be almost the same as the interview published in Famitsu a week before. Right now the only change I spotted was that Loz's "Let's play" line came from Nojima's 2-year old son.

Nojima: (omit) This came to me in the process of making FF7, but I've always considered children and old people to be the closest to the 'lifestream=life flowing around the planet'. Children are the ones who were in the lifestream until a while ago, and old people are those soon to be reunited with the lifestream. Because of that, I'd like to write a story centering around the children around FF7AC's time. I didn't get to put something like that into FF7, so it's like I finally got my wish granted this time.

-It seems like that children were most affected by Geostigma. Is it because that they were close to the planet a short time ago?

Nojima: Yeah. Emotions like joy and fear have a more prominent effect on children than they do on adults. For example, I'm sure that seeing the meteor crisis up close during FF7 was quite the shock for them. And before they could even recover, Geostigma somehow slipped in. That's the image I wanted to portray.

-Did you get any specific directions on how to portray Geostigma when writing the scenario?

Nojima: We wanted to portray it as something you just can't seem to heal or get rid of, like a scab. While making FF7AC, we felt that the image was a bit on the extreme side, so the effects were subdued. Thus ACC was closer to the actual portrayal of Geostigma.

Nozue: We were originally told to not make Geostigma too disgusting, but since the production of FF7AC, we've taken a new direction with Geostigma - showing parts that people wouldn't really like to see. After discussing with Nomura, we've decided to go for a more real depiction. During production, we actually wondered if we can really portray something like coughing up blood.

Nomura: The portrayal was a bit extreme compared to what we did until now, but through things like CC, we realized that a real sense of pain comes with depictions closer to reality.

-The scene where Reno gets a nosebleed has quite the comical impact.

Nozuo: That was Nomura's idea.

Nomura: I asked for more blood, but did I really ask for a nosebleed?XD

Nozuo: The staff in charge of character modeling added that to represent the damage Reno has taken. But we took the nosebleed out of later scenes.

Nomura: In the beginning Reno kept his nosebleed all the way through. But then lots of scenes turned into comical relief scenes, so that's why we took it out. Like "How long is his nose gonna be bleeding?". But once we took out the nosebleed, those scenes became normal, so I wondered if we should've kept it in instead.

-Please tell me anything that you took a liking to or memorable in ACC.

Nozue: I was wondering how much blood I should show through my work. So I went to Nomura with this CGI image of a bloodied Cloud standing, and asked "Can I show this much blood?"

Nomura: The part that I really liked was the last scene, so I can't really reveal much about that. But overall, I was quite touched by Denzel hammering the water pipes.

Nojima: I was pretty touched as well. We had him perform a different action in the original scenario, so I was quite surprised that it turned out this way. Something that truly shows Denzel's resolve...seems like my idea of 'trying his hardest' was less fierce than the idea Nozue had.(smile)

Nozue: I made that scene with Nomura's request in mind. He wanted Denzel to utilize something available to him in that situation.

Nojima: Another scene would be the girl with the Moogle doll piggybacking her little brother. It's something we put into the scenario in the early stages, and after a while [the staff] approached me with "This is how far we are." and showed me the scene. I was touched that it took form.

Nozue: We asked "Can we really show that much?". When I read the scenario, an image of the scene suddenly appeared in my head and I was pretty shocked. And I thought, "Woah, Nojima is really going to do this." (smiles)

Nojima: We even asked that question again during the recording.(smiles) The Moogle girl was one of my favorites, but there was no description of her outward appearance in the scenario. So I was actually surprised when I first saw her. "So she looked like this!" Plus, I also wondered why she carried a Moogle doll, and many other things caught my eye as well.(smiles)

Nozue: So why was she holding that Moogle doll?

Nomura: Wasn't it due to staff request? The doll was apparently the same one that Lulu from FFX held, but I do recall someone asking for permission to put that doll in.

Nojima: It was an enjoyable experience to see your own scenarios become actual scenes.

-Are there any secrets concerning ACC that you would like to share?

Nozue: I have a lot of them. The voices of the fans were reflected in a lot of the revamped scenes, so we'd like for you to search for them. If I have to give an example, the fallen Shinra sign during Denzel's flashback was something described in the novel.

Nojima: A secret...I think everyone really loves back-to-back scenes.(smiles) While Aerith's first appearance was marked with her standing back-to-back with Cloud, our initial setting had her sitting on the back of his bike.

Nomura: Due to Aerith's clothing, we can't really have her legs drape over two sides of the bike, and the design of Fenrir made it impossible for her to sit facing one side as well, so we changed the scene. And really, appearing out of nowhere on your bike? That just sounds like a page from a ghost story book.(smiles)

Nojima: And here you got me thinking everyone loved back-to-back scenes.(smiles)

Altogether: (laughs out loud)

[Smooth Criminal]

Oh, interesting! Thank you so much Defade! I'm curious as to what they'll say!

[namakemono]

*woot* Yey. I can't wait. Interviews are always awesome to read. XD

[Emma Pillsbury]

The stuff about the nosebleed makes me lol. These guys sometimes say the funniest things in their interviews. XD

[Jin Kisaragi]

Awesome! The nosebleed is rather epic, and I can imagine it perfectly to Reno. XD

[Sheepy]

The nosebleed part made me LOL. XD It would have been funny if Reno's nose didn't stop bleeding until the end of the movie.

Thanks Defade! =D

[Ravynne]

Just want to point out that "portray" has an R in it. xD Before this goes up on the site itself, that should be fixed.

[Ford Prefect]

also, "children," not "chidren" But yeah, thanks for posting this.

[Defade]

V wrote:

also, "children," not "chidren" But yeah, thanks for posting this.

Oh lol. The potray issue is something I never noticed, but 'chidren'...totally a side-effect from trying to slip in a few translations while being forced to sit through 2 SAT practice tests.XD

Fixed the errors you guys pointed out, will probably do an entire spellcheck once I finish translating all important parts.