009T
he game’s focus might be on one city,
Midgar, but it’s filled with variety and
new things to discover as the story
draws you through its different
sectors. “The city has been rebuilt,
focusing on the same core keywords of the design
that we did for the original, which is it’s a very
dark location. It’s got a modern steampunk vibe
to it, but it’s also very eclectic and very different
in different places,” says Kitase. “The visual style
we’ve gone for isn’t a pure photorealism for
photorealism’s sake. We’ve gone for a slightly
more stylised approach that really respects and
works to the strengths of the original Final
Fantasy VII and its aesthetic decisions.”On PS1 you might have spent a few hours in Midgar
(depending on how quickly you blazed through it),
but they were memorable ones, the visuals pushing
the boundaries of what you’d expect in a JRPG. But
they were from a top-down perspective and, while
cutting-edge for the time, had limitations, so our
imaginations filled a lot in. “The core concept the
development team have worked to is the idea of
experiencing the city of Midgar yourself,” says the
game’s co-director, Naoki Hamaguchi. “We’ve taken a
lot of care in depicting the structure of the city itself
as well as the lives of the people who live in the city
and in the slums around it in really extreme detail.”
The different areas now feel even more distinct,
and properly lived in. “Each individual location
within Midgar also has its own personality and has
been designed to give a completely different
gameplay experience,” says Hamaguchi. At one point
in the game we walk through city streets devastated
by an explosion, turning what was only a few
screens in the original game into a rich world packed
with consequence. Cloud and his friends’ journey
through Midgar might set the stage for the rest of
FFVII, but it’s going to feel like a complete story
in itself. Though, of course, the entire Remake
project is seen by Square Enix as one big
undertaking. “You’ll see the rest of that
story in the future,” says Hamaguchi. “The
development team is now finally reaching
the release of this first game. And that
means that we’re now in a position
where we’re able to concentrate
our full efforts on development
on the second game.”QBEHIND THE SCENESCLOUD CITY
“OUR OBJECTIVE
HERE IS TO DELIVER
THE DEFINITIVE
RPG EXPERIENCE.”