As you acknowledge in , final creative control and actual creative influence are two very different things. We've all had a supervisor who was so focused on other things -- say, for instance, flying around the world meeting with film studio executives, setting up a studio in Honolulu, and writing/directing one of the most expensive animated film failures of all time =P -- that they left other things officially under their purview to technically get done by other people.
Except that the 4 year production cycle of Spirits of Within started the year FFVII was released, not before, meaning that there is no real overlap between those two development cycles.
A lot of FF fans would disagree with you about that assessment, though. I've seen many comments that FFVII was when the series "stopped being my FF" before briefly returning to form with FFIX and then never going back again. FFVII is widely regarded as the line of demarcation in Final Fantasy's departure from classic style and content.
And that's not an argument. FFVII from a game-play perspective, and arguably from a story-perspective as well, literally builds on almost every convention established by FFVI, which is why so many of the people who prefer the SNES games consider it superior to VII.
Those fans are knee-jerking over the fact that FFVII suddenly got accessible and mainstreamed over night, and did a turn-away from the classical high-fantasy settings of earlier games.
Yet, from the aesthetics to the game-play, the story and writing, FFVII retains deformed characters, a battle system that essentially just introduces the mechanics from FFVI, with a character development system that is essentially just an open ended skill-placement system, instead of an open-ended class system (which had already been done several times), and still has the same slap-stick humor and save-the-world plot as always.
From a mechanical perspective for instance, FFIX actually has less in common with the old games - Skills are tied to equipment, and classes are completely restricted (something that had only been done once in FF4, whilst open ended class systems had been done several times at that point).
It's clear here that we're talking past each-other here, because I see Sakaguchi's style as an amalgamation of various aspects, whilst the fans you're speaking of here, and if you're in their camp, are talking about one aspect - namely the classical fantasy VS modern-punk/cyber-punk fantasy which we see later.
If that classic style was Sakaguchi's influence (and of course it was), then you're sort of making my point for me, depending on who you ask. FFVII would be an example of diminished creative involvement on his part given how often it's cited as the shift in style for the series.
Except that wouldn't be a point now would it?
A point worth making is not a point dependent on who you ask, and I'm not asking to begin with.
As far as I'm concerned, a person who thinks Sakaguchi's style can be summed up by aesthetics of the older games are not thinking straight - since they're forgetting that FFVI already started to deviate from that style, and that several of the games Sakaguchi has produced with Mistwalker in the aftermath, has deviated from that style.
To be fair, it was also Sakaguchi who once said "The spirit of the Final Fantasy games has always been to outdo ourselves, to do something that has never been done before" (August 2001 issue of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine).....
.....According to the man himself, change is a cornerstone of what makes Final Fantasy.
And never have I implied that Sakaguchi was not for change, or that the games he has creative control over does not change.
However, there is the degree of change between each of the titles leading up to the merger and him being there, and then there is the degree of change following the merger and him leaving.
There's a distinction. If you can't see it, there is no point in carrying on this discussion, but I really think you do.
And for all the talk of change he does, his products speak for themselves - and they're all fairly conservative. Blue Dragon is not a leap forward in RPG design. Neither is most of his other new games, with the except of The Last Story's battle system.
He gets a "Based on a story by" credit along with Nomura, not credit for writing the story (Nojima is consistently referred to as the writer by Kitase). I don't think we'd venture to call Nomura the co-writer based on this same credit, so why would we extend "story writer" to Sakaguchi over it?
Know this, been there, done that.
Nojima is the writer, Kitase is the director. It does not change the fact that writers for video-games are not like novelists or script-writers for movies.
They write on demand, working from concepts provided to them, and have their materials routinely checked by executives who then decide what gets to be and what has to stay.
The reason Sakaguchi and Nomura gets credited is because they provided the framework for Nojima's writing to begin with, and despite the fact that the person fleshing all that out, and making it into an actual coherent story is Nojima, he's still subject to oversight and creative direction.
And again, we've had Nomura tell us that Sakaguchi's original concept has next to nothing to do with the final product -- not to mention that we know his attention was divided with working on bankrupting Square via The Spirits Within at the time.
And we also know that some of Nomura's original concepts were scrapped/changed. Concepts are scrapped all the time.
Non of these interviews should be taken to be extensive lists of work-loads and ideas scrapped or taken into the game. They're curious details off the top of the head of the people being interviewed at the time.
The fact that Mako Energy, Materia and the foundations for Midgar came from Sakaguchi is not emblematic of that being
all that he did - just like Nomura's work is not limited only to the stuff he's said to have done in the interviews.
And as for The Spirits Within - again, as far as I know, seeing as how the movie had a 4 year development cycle and was released in 2001, there is no overlap between the development cycle of that movie and FFVII as far as I know, so if you say otherwise, sources please.
Perhaps he was; perhaps he wasn't. Had he not been off on his personal quest half the time, we could say with more certainty. But he was, so that's that.
Except that he wasn't.
Not that I'm saying he never looked at the story before the game was released. Obviously he approved it. However, when Kitase talked about the keepers of FFVII's lore in
this interview from 2008, Sakaguchi's name didn't come into the equation at all. Nojima's did. Nomura's did. Naora's did. Kitase's own did..
And that's strange how?
FFVII had by that point taken a completely different turn with the compilation titles etc.
Why would Sakaguchi be considered a keeper of FFVII's lore in the context of the franchise at that point in time?
Regardless of whatever he had to do with the original, he has nothing to do with anything else that is now considered the canon of the game.
Where's Hironobu? He's not there. He's not there for a reason. And it can't even be said that the reason is that Sakaguchi is no longer with Square Enix, as, in the same interview, Kitase said, "Anything relating to the stories, Mr Nojima, who is no longer with Square Enix is really still the top authority.".
Because Nojima wrote everything, of course he'd be the primary expert on FFVII lore. That doesn't mean that the overarching style of the game can be attributed to him alone (not saying you imply this - just making a point).
These things are not relevant to one another.
Point in case - Let's say I come to you and say, "Hey, I have an idea for a story - I want to make this modern version of Hercules set in a distant, dystopian cyber-punk future! Can you write something for me?"
After you've written that story, of course you'll be the authority on that story. You wrote it after all - However, you wouldn't have written anything at all, if I hadn't come to you first, and moreover, what you wrote was driven creatively by the concept I gave you.
That makes me a significant factor in creative process whether you like it or not,
because what you would have written without me approaching you with that specific setting would, very probably, be completely different.
Sakaguchi is not relevant when talking about the details of FFVII (and certainly not now, in light of the compilation, which he had no part in what so ever), he is however relevant when talking about the overarching elements that make FFVII into what it is.
Think of it as an egg - Where Sakaguchi (and of course the rest of the higher-ups) are the shell, and the actual content creators are the contents of the egg.
I'm not trying to downplay the role of the rest of the team here - I'm saying that when FFVII is a traditional Japanese role-playing game, with an open ended character development system, has a world-map, a focus on large scale adventure, character-driven plot, deformed character designs, has some elements of romance, some of Lovecraftian horror, and so forth and so forth, these are elements that tend to be drawn up in the early stages of concept design, and they are elements that tend to be closely overseen by the producer and discussed with him or her.
They are also, by the interviews you see dearly cite, things Sakaguchi was involved in.
They are also, in my perspective, what made FF games FF games.
Not the fantasy aesthetic, not whether they are in 2D or 3D, not whether or not Cloud picks Tifa or Aerith, etc.
Sakaguchi basically never comes up when talking about FFVII's story. He never gets interviewed about it. He's barely credited with anything outside what hardware the game was made with. The dude simply didn't have the same degree of involvement in the creative process as he did with the first six FFs. He just didn't.
Don't run in circles. As I've said, the interviews are not relevant here.
He was involved in the first interviews when the original game was first relevant, and he is credited in the actual game. That's all that needs to be said about that.
The reason he never comes up when talking about FFVII's story is because A.) He neither wrote nor directed it and B.) FFVII is now a compilation of titles, everything with the exception of the original, with which Sakaguchi bears no relevance.
Why would anyone interview him about FFVII's story in light of that?
Furthermore, what has that got to do with anything pertaining to creative direction of the game?
How often do you find producers being interviews in-depth about stories of their games, that they did not write?
Again,
I am not saying Sakaguchi made up FFVII, or came up with all the ideas. I'm saying he provided context and creative censure for those ideas, which is what a producer does.
And again, when you consider the rather obvious difference in direction of FF, and indeed the compilation itself, with the only real tangible difference being a change in executive power, and a merger, it's just naive to the extreme to say "Nah, Sakaguchi has nothing to do with that".
He's literally the only factor meaningful that's different.
I started this discussion because you're intellectual, you live in Japan, and I was hoping you had access to resources that I don't. But you've not been able to cite a single interview that would indicate a different conclusion from what I'd previously arrived at through my research -- even as I cite interview after interview..
This is silly.
First, the reason I don't cite resources, is because
A.) my argument is not dependent on resources in that sense, and
B.) what resources they are dependent on, which would be a decade of interactions with Japanese developers (some of which worked on the original FFVII I might add) cannot be provided in either case without becoming an empty appeal to authority which I really don't wish to make.
I don't consider the interviews to be of any value in this context. They simply aren't relevant. Especially if they're not read in context of the times, and Japanese culture/customs and the Japanese gaming scene.
Interviews are framed by politics of companies and individual perspectives. I've already provided examples of errors in speech concerning the newest interviews on the remake, and I've pointed out how Nomura taking credit for the limit break system in and of itself is
completely silly, even though it's stated in black and white in an interview.
People need to stop treating this stuff like Biblical literalists.
It has to be read in context. I'm reading this interviews in context of my knowledge about the company at the time, and about the industry in Japan. That's my insight, and it's based on personal experience.
You can dismiss that if you want, but to dismiss it based on those interviews is to fail to grasp the very essence of the argument here. I am not arguing from a different set of sources, I'm arguing from a different perspective as a source in my own right.
Whether you accept that or not, is entirely up to you, but to expect me to supply you with sources for speculation based on personal experience, versus your speculation based on interviews is a moot exercise. It is to assume that these interviews give a clear distinction of what you think has been said (which I have argued they don't) on top of which you have to assume that your speculation has more value in light of that than mine (which again, I have argued isn't the case).
Only -- yet again -- Sakaguchi himself has indicated he wasn't around much while FFVII and VIII were being made because, starting in 1996, he was making his movie. "I am mainly working on the movie" he said in one response I showed you. "I left Kitase in charge of the main aspect [of FFVII]" he said in another.
Where is the interview saying he was mainly working on the movie?
I can't find it.
You're also repeating yourself and bordering close to straw-manning my position now. My post deals with the latter quote, and the one in your next paragraph - and as I've said over and over again, Sakaguchi's role in regards creative censure, and setting the framwork for FFVII's development, does not have any relevance to the majority of the work-load relating to FFVII's production, which is what is "the main aspect" of making a game, which Kitase would have been in charge of.
From
yet another interview: "I’ve been working with Kitase for a long time, since FF5. He did most of the event scenes in FF6: the opera house, Celes’ suicide scene, the scene where Setzer climbs the stairs and reminisces, and more. I’m not exactly turning things over to the next generation just yet, but for FF7 almost all the story was done by Kitase. His original ambition was to be a film director, so he’s well-disposed towards this work–I’ve left all the in-game event scripting in his hands."
"Almost all the story was done by Kitase." "I've left all the in-game event scripting in his hands."
Full stop.
He could have been more involved with FFVII's story had he wanted to be. He didn't.
I really struggle to see how you fail to see the distinction I am making here.
Again, If I tell you to write a story for you and provide you 4 plot themes I want you to incorporate, provide you a setting and style I wish you to adhere to, and then leave you to it - I am not involved in writing that story. I'm not the authority, or the person to go to and talk about the details of that story once it's finished.
I am however, still the person who set out the path for that story turning into what it was.
In the context of a video-game like FFVII, there's bucket-loads more than just writing though. It's visual style, it's music, it's game-play, and a little bit of everything would have been selected for by the executive seats of the development.
By the argument you seem to be making here, we'd also have to conclude that the FFVII team had no meaningful impact on Nobuo Uemtasu's music, despite the fact that Uematsu, like all competent composers doing soundtrack, work off of cues given to them by producers/directors/artists/writers to make their tracks.
Your argument here is the shoddy one. The only one of us talking about "at the time" is yourself. I spoke of "how little he has ever been interviewed" about FFVII -- and that's the truth.
It doesn't matter either way. I brought up time because you'd have to be fairly confused about the period if you think it would be reasonable to expect the producer to be appearing regularly for in-depth interviews on a game like FFVII, like how for instance Tabata is doing now with FFXV.
It's even more confusing however, if you bring it up in a contemporary context where
A.) FFVII is now a compilation that stretches far beyond its original title
B.) Sakaguchi no longer works for SE, and has had no part in the franchise after the original at all
C.) When he is hardly ever relevant in context of conversations one might have on the FFVII franchise that cannot be adequately or better covered by people in SE who have been working with the FFVII far longer than Sakaguchi.
It is not at all odd that people aren't lining up to interview him about FFVII. It's completely ordinary and mundane.
It's ordinary and mundane in light of the period, and it's ordinary and mundane in light of today.
And no, neither of it has any relevance to Sakaguchi's executive role and power as producer during the development of the game.
Also, again, Nojima hasn't been an SE employee for almost ten years, yet he continues being interviewed about FFVII all the time. It's not like Sakaguchi is unavailable or no longer making games -- yet the dude just doesn't get asked questions about the most famous game from the series he's most known for being the father of?
Seriously?
Nomija has been writing and expanding the FFVII universe regularly since its original release.
Nojima has been writing for SE steadily ever since the release of the game (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazushige_Nojima)
To say that he hasn't been an SE employee for almost ten years is such a meaningless statement in the light of the writing he has done for them in that same time period, that it borders on looking like being willfully deceptive to win an argument.
Please don't do that.
Also, on top of which Sakaguchi interviews aren't all that common to begin with. Compare Sakaguchi to a guy like Tabata, or Nomura and see the glaringly obvious difference in media presence.
You're seriously asking why Sakaguchi isn't regularly being interviews about a almost two decades old game, which has been expanded into a franchise he has nothing to do with, that he made for a company that no longer exists, while he's working on new products, when there are already plenty of people working on that franchise for another company, with more media flair that give regular interviews?
No, seriously?
Also, I am not denying that Sakaguchi's role in FFVII was more hands of than say, FFVI, or FFIV, or whatever. But that's irrelevant as well.
The fact that the man is "less involved in A than B" does not mean that "he was not all meaningfully involved in B", or that "B was not meaningfully impacted" by him.
That's fallacious argumentation right there.
There's really only one good reason: He didn't have much to do with it beyond the technical stuff.
No, there are plenty of good reasons, and I've provided them to you. You just don't seem to want to look at them.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on this. Frankly, it's nothing short of ludicrous to suggest the man wouldn't have more to say about the best-selling Final Fantasy -- the game that ripped open mainstream success for RPGs in the west, and is now getting a remake that fans and gaming journalists alike have literally been begging for going on almost 20 years -- if he had more to do with the storytelling vision at the heart of it.
Depends on what you mean by "storytelling vision at the heart of it",
I agree, and if I was making that argument, I'd think so too.
However, that's not the argument I'm making here, and you're incredulity here is based entirely on the inability to see the distinction between content creation, and content direction, or executive powers in terms of game development.
As I've said - It makes no sense to interview Sakaguchi about the nitty gritty details of FFVII - He did not write or direct it.
It does however, when talking about the overall style of the game, recognize that overseeing, coordinating and approving that is the role of the producer, and as such, that the final product came with a Sakaguchi bow tied neatly around it.
I think that matters, when, as I've said 10 times over (and you've yet to make any reasonable response to in any meaningful way) Kitase, Nomura, and Nojima all have drastically different styles
on every other thing they've worked on since, whilst Sakaguchi is fairly consistent.
It does not matter what people say in interviews about this - the evidence is there to see
in the actual products.
FFVIII, the game Sakaguchi had least to do with up to date, saw a completely revamp of visual style, going entirely for realism - which was then revoked in FFIX with the return of Sakaguchi.
FF10, again, came back with the realistic character designs, which has since become a staple of the series (With Sakaguchi, still more often than not, favoring deformed characters in his games), and then going further and further away from RPG mechanics, favoring action systems (with Sakaguchi, still more often than not, favoring RPG menu driven systems).
We'll have to agree to disagree on that as well. Approving an idea that someone else came up with doesn't make you the source of that vision.
Not agreeing suggest a strange way of thinking of causality and a strange use of the English language then.
I guess if I tell you to bake me a cake, and give you money to do it, then I did not have meaningful impact on what happens next, because you might end up baking a chocolate cake, or a strawberry short-cake or whatever takes your fancy, and since I didn't specify that aspect of it, that makes the entire difference?
And when later, you make your own money and instead of making cakes, end up making Ramen instead, it makes no sense to say that me telling you to make a cake had no impact on your creative output, despite the fact that I just severely limited the amount of options on your table...?
Okay.
I'll have to take your word for Nomura not coming up with the Desperation Attacks..
You don't have to. Check the credits for FFVI's battle system.
So what "something else entirely" is Sakaguchi talking about when he says he wasn't involved in the story? =P
Not directing, nor writing it obviously =P
Which would be, what being involved in the story would usually refer to.
"Almost all the story was done by Kitase." "I've left all the in-game event scripting in his hands."
So, no.
Well, Yes.
Event scripting refers specifically to coding of in-game events, and is what you do when you already have the story and direction compiled and on the desk in front of you.
Saying that you leave all the event scripting to one person, says nothing about how those directives got compiled or conceived to begin with.
Try again. This time with an argument.
Yes, Sakaguchi introducing an idea that merged with that other idea (the one Nomura was expecting) to become "Parasite Eve" instead is a clear example of his overriding direction of FFVII's story. =P
I don't even know what you're trying to say here.
Nomura thought FFVII was going to be a game about battling a sorceress, and designed Edea, which was then "ditched" when the idea of a Mako city was conceived by Sakaguchi.
The New York pitch was later used in Parasite Eve.
It is literally Sakaguchi having an impact on the story of FFVII, providing one of the core elements that run throughout the entire story of the game, and one of Nomura's ideas being relocated to another title.
Your reply here is a mess. It it not a rebuttal, nor an argument.
The point here is patently obvious - Sakaguchi sits down with his team, and discusses ideas.
They have an impact on that, and he has an impact on that. It's a concerted effort - but at the end of the day, the ideas pass by Sakaguchi's desk and where discussed with him, and there is good reason to believe that the overall style of FFVII has been impacted by that process to some degree, which I would call "meaningful" since FFVII is largely consistent with other Sakaguchi works, whilst post-merger FF games are largely not except in the most superficial of ways.
Sakaguchi outright said he was responsible for the stories of the games up through VI -- meaning things changed after VI. I even quoted another interview where he outright said his priority with FFVII was game design as opposed to story.
And that's because in the earlier games he actually did get directly involved to a larger degree. He did not for FFVII. How hard is that to understand? And how hard is to understand that this is not related to the point I'm making?
There's really little to no question here of his creative influence on the story. It's not non-existent, but it's minimal -- by his own admission.
No. There's no question that he did not write or direct it. Creative influence is something else entirely, and nothing you quoted or said here speaks anything to that.
hian ... buddy ... it's entirely pertinent to what we're talking about. That is literally what we're talking about: the story.
No, because that's not what "we" are talking about. It's what you're superimposing on the conversation in order to justify a completely different claim - namely that Sakaguchi had little to no creative influence on FFVII as a whole.
Notice that I've never limited my discussion of FFVII here to only its story.
I consistently use words like style, themes, feel etc.
Story obviously being one aspect of it, and I do also believe that whatever the story ended up being would be framed by the executive control of Sakaguchi, this is not an argument about what degree Sakaguchi came up with the various aspects of the story, what direct impact he had on dialogue and cinematography etc.
It's a question of how many ideas and what kind of ideas were passed around the office at the time, and how the team came to decide what to go with and what not to go with.
And here I believe Sakaguchi made an impact, because, as I've said a 1000 times, there is a clear distinction between the games he is involved with in some capacity, and those where people like Kitase are in full creative control over.
In fact, although I was dumb enough to close the god damn tab, I was just reading an interview with Sakaguchi where he comments on the distinction between his style and vision for games, and Kitase's.
On the one hand we have someone who at least made illustrations of those characters (as well as made the original design that became Vincent), and so at least had the vaguest ideas of who the characters were. Then we've got a guy who has never uttered a peep about any of them, nor been credited in any meaningful way with anything about their creation or the directions they were taken in the story of their game.
Yes, the comment was hyperbolic -- and the paragraph I just wrote needs to be hung on a lampshade as well -- but that was also the point: To emphasize just how little Sakaguchi can be credited for the most important things about FFVII. If the man has ever even said Cloud's name, it would be news to me..
Oh, I agree completely that Sakaguchi had no direct hand in the creation of the characters (although it's unclear to what degree characters like Cloud and Barret differ or are similar to their prototypes), however, we don't know anything about this, which is why the statement was silly.
We also don't know how often, if ever, he was consulted during the process of writing and designing them, and we don't know how often, if ever, people like Nomura presented other ideas to him and the team that was subsequently scrapped or redone.
For all we know, Sakaguchi played through the game before release, and loved the story and the characters. It's an assumption either way.
That's all I was saying. It doesn't belong in an otherwise informative article.
Sadly, Kitase has demonstrated a propensity for being every bit the idiot Nomura can be, just in his own special ways. He also seems to more or less greet Nomura's suggestions with a rubber stamp and a look of awe.
That I agree with. If anything, I'm getting the distinct feeling that in the case of the remake, it definitely is Nomura's brain-child more so than Kitase's and that Kitase's probably willing to defer to Nomura on most issues.
Before closing, I want to say, by the way, that I hope it doesn't seem like I'm talking shit about Sakaguchi. The dude is obviously brilliant and I have mad respect for him. Even The Spirits Within is an amazing work of art -- it wasn't terribly insightful as to what would be a successful movie, nor what FF fans would be expecting, but it's still fucking amazing.
I'm just utterly, utterly baffled that you would ignore his own admissions about FFVII's development and overlook that his name is also on FFVIII and FFX -- which you cite as examples of what happens without him at the helm post-FFVII -- as executive producer when his role with those games was much the same as it had been with FFVII.
I'm not overlook or ignoring anything.
I love FFVIII and FFX, and they still retain in large part what I consider to be the original FF feel and style.
I simply made one comment, and that is that I believe them to be the beginning of the change, more so than what many fan's erroneously assert is the fault of VII.
We also know that his role with those two games was not much the same as with FFVII.
During FFVIII, The Spirits Within had entered its development cycle, and was in its most busy stage.
Sakaguchi bumping up to executive producer is a very large corporate change from producer in either case.
The difference in style from FFVIII and FFX, and Sakaguchi's role as executive producer as opposed to producer, overlap.
Furthermore, in FFX Kitase is both producer and director, clearly showing the overlap that often exist between those two roles in the Japanese corporations at the time.
The creation of a post of executive producer is literally done because the size of a production is now so bloated that the producer cannot be asked to do his or her job anymore, which traditionally involves both the corporate ladder and structural work, as well as game-design, story-development and over-sight.
So, again - No, I'm not overlooking or ignoring anything.
In fact, I'd make the argument that it's the other way around - you're overlooking the patently obvious and factual differences between the style of Sakaguchi-era/Post Sakaguchi-era FF games, and the overlap between the games that marked that transition and his change in roles which have been clearly outlined and credited in each title.
That, in the context of this debate, is as factual as it gets.
No wishy-washy interviews clouded by various factors we cannot account for. Just the data in the games themselves, and the facts of the industry.
art 1 ends at leaving Midgar.
