7 Most Interesting Final Fantasy 7 Production Stories

The year 1997 was something quite special for the original PlayStation. It sold over seventeen million units, becoming the best-selling console of the year, easily dispatching all its competitors.

A key reason for its massive success that year was its software. Sony had already been building a massive library of amazing exclusive games, but 1997 saw the launches of Gran Turismo, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and of course, Final Fantasy 7.

During the course of its development, which lasted from 1994 to 1997, Final Fantasy 7 went through quite a lengthy journey. It was one built on ambition and pride, as the team led by franchise creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was on the verge of something revolutionary. Final Fantasy was changing in a big way, and the stories that its development created became legends in their own right.

7

Real-World Impact

Art Imitates Life

In the 1990s, words like terrorism were becoming more commonplace. The geopolitical shifts happening in the real world were starting to influence the fantasy worlds of video games and other forms of media, as the transition towards more realistic worlds was starting to become the norm.

With Final Fantasy 7, the team was heavily impacted by both the real world and their own native country of Japan. In 1995, a horrific attack was carried out in Japan where a group of eco-terrorists released a nerve gas known as sarin into a subway in Tokyo. 14 people were killed, and the event was one of the worst incidents of terrorism in Japan’s history.

Final Fantasy 7’s story was initially set in a more realistic world than the shipped version, focusing heavily on a group of eco-terrorists. After the Tokyo subway attack, Sakaguchi opted to alter the game so as not to glorify violence, as well as change the setting to more of a cyberpunk-influenced world.

6

Final Fantasy’s Red Wedding

No Survivors

The tragic death of Aerith Gainsborough during the final hours of Final Fantasy 7’s first disc is one of the game’s most poignant moments. Due to the scope of Final Fantasy 7, it had multiple writers, a common tactic that Square used on previous FF games that utilized the individual strengths of their creative teams.

Kazuhige Nojima wrote Aerith’s death, an event that was nearly overshadowed by a creative decision that the entire team was considering for quite a while. During certain points of development, the team considered first killing off the entire party, before deciding to leave three alive, and then ultimately to leave everyone alive outside Aerith.

Character designer Tetsuya Nomura rightfully suggested that killing multiple characters would make Aerith’s death feel less meaningful, and that her death was part of the game’s narrative in ways far beyond shock value. Thankfully, the team took Nomura’s words to heart, and opted to keep the remaining party members alive.

5

Hot-Blooded Detective Joe

I Heart New York

The earliest stages of Final Fantasy 7’s development are truly fascinating. It was a time when Square had no expectations for Final Fantasy 7 beyond it being the next FF game, which meant that Sakaguchi really just let his imagination run wild for some time.

During his early drafts of the script, Final Fantasy 7 followed the adventures of what Sakguchi described as a “hot-blooded” detective named Joe in New York. The characters of AVALANCHE and the anti-Shinra resistance took something of a backseat, but as time went on, the Joe character became pushed further into the background before being shelved completely.

Other elements of Sakaguchi’s script, including a sorceress and a detective in New York, were later repurposed for other Square projects. The sorceress would become Edea Kramer, an antagonist for Final Fantasy 8, while the New York detective story laid the foundation for Parasite Eve.

4

A Family Affair

Evolving Characters

Early on in the three-year development period of Final Fantasy 7, the story was constantly in flux. One thing that any good story needs, however, is a great cast of characters. As much as Final Fantasy 7’s story was changing, the characters were no different.

Cloud and Aerith were the first characters that Nomura drafted for Final Fantasy 7, and both of them were instrumental in how the development of the game’s story would change over the next few years. With Cloud, he was originally designed with black, slicked-back hair, a trait that was later given to Zack Fair, the last character that Nomura designed for the game.

For Aerith, she was initially conceived as Sephiroth’s sister, which feels like a no-brainer when you look at them side-by-side. They have remarkably similar faces, as well as luxurious manes of hair. The decision to change their familial relationship resulted in them being lovers, which was also scrapped, as Aerith’s ex-boyfriend became Zack. Cloud’s black hair was given to Zack, forming the basis of many of the game’s most complex, fascinating relationships.

3

The End Result of Sony vs. Nintendo

The Enemy of My Enemy

In the aftermath of the very bitter and public clash between Sony and Nintendo, the industry started to change in some big ways. The conflict led Sony to create the PlayStation, and in their quest to exact some revenge on Nintendo, they courted an obscene amount of third-party developers to create exclusives.

Square was another company who had a falling out with Nintendo. Early prototypes of Final Fantasy 7 were created on Super Nintendo hardware, but following a dispute over the size of cartridges for the Nintendo 64, the relationship. Square had wanted to create games on CD-rom due to their storage capacity, but Nintendo wouldn’t budge.

Sony’s use of CD-rom technology was incredibly appealing to Square, so they opted to release Final Fantasy 7 on the PS1. The actual falling out itself was the subject of various interpretations, as Sakaguchi recalled it as being amicable, but Square staff members have stated Nintendo told them to never come back. No matter what version is true, Nintendo ultimately lost out on what would become one of the biggest games of the decade.

2

The Most Expensive Game of Its Time

Big-Budget Expenses

As the 1990s rolled on, video games started to find new and innovative ways to tell their stories. The gap between movies and video games was getting a lot smaller, and it came to a point where the two started to overlap in some pretty fascinating ways.

High-end CG cutscenes were becoming the norm, and the tools needed to create that level of fidelity existed only in the hands of feature filmmakers at the time. Software packages like PowerAnimator and Softimage 3D were used in the creation of films like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, but had become adopted by the video game industry as the decade wore on.

Sensing that these could bring their vision to life, Square started to use them during production of Final Fantasy 7. With a team of over 100 people, Final Fantasy 7 became the most expensive game of its time. The budget reached its peak at roughly 80 million dollars, a figure that wouldn’t be broken for quite a while.

1

How Sakaguchi’s Mother Dying Influenced the Game

The Myth Surrounding Sakaguchi’s Mother Continues

The long-running rumor about Final Fantasy 7’s development was that the passing of Sakaguchi’s mother changed the direction of the story, and that it also influenced the death of Aerith. In reality, Sakaguchi’s mother died in 1988, during the production of Final Fantasy 3. The death of a parent isn’t one you forget easily, however.

Much of Final Fantasy 7’s story about how the death of a loved one isn’t the end feels like it was directly inspired by Sakaguchi’s loss. Losing a parent in any way has a long-lasting, profound impact on a person, and it’s hard to imagine that Sakaguchi wasn’t thinking of his mother when he created the Lifestream.

Aerith’s death was posited by Nomura, but Sakaguchi is almost entirely responsible for the Lifestream, as well as most of the sequences written around it. The core concepts of death and returning to the Earth, as well as how keeping the memory of a person alive will help keep them around, were either directly or indirectly influenced by Sakaguchi’s monumental loss.

Final Fantasy 7

8.2/10

Released

January 31, 1997

ESRB

T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes

Developer(s)

Square Enix

Publisher(s)

Square Enix