011
“THE MUSIC
CHANGES AS
YOU EXPLORE,
BECOMING MORE
URGENT WHEN
YOU FIGHT.”
T
his is the first Final
Fantasy game to be made
in Unreal Engine 4,
meaning it has more in
common with Kingdom
Hearts III than Final Fantasy XV
(which used Square Enix’s in-house
Luminous Studio engine). But as
always, an engine is just a tool. “By
putting in numerous customisations
in areas such as the lighting, the
shadow processing, the physics
simulations, and also facial
arrangements of that music based on
the action that is actually taking place
at the time.” This means that the
music changes as you explore,
becoming more urgent and loud when
you get into a fight, then reaching an
emotional climax after you win, all
while retaining the same key melodies.
Matching sound to visuals has also
been part of the animation process.
“The game has a system using AI-style
pattern matching to pick out the
emotional content from the voice data
for the language being spoken at any
one time,” says Hamaguchi. “This allows
us to create really high-quality facial
animations and lip-synching based on
the actual voice data being played.”
Even the lighting bolsters the
emotions the devs want to convey.
“We used a network of over 100 PCs
slaved together to do full physical
simulations on the light reflections
and rebounding for every object in the
game,” says Hamaguchi. “It allows us to
do a really realistic rendition of the
atmosphere in Midgar and create that
perfect lighting for the location.”
It’s been important for Square Enix
to push its technology to the limit to
create a Remake that not only
celebrates the past, but takes Square
Enix’s JRPGs into the future. “The
better technology you have behind
your game, the more expressive you
can be, the more you can show, and
that adds the better characters and
more immersion into the game
experience,” says Hamaguchi. Q
EMOTION
ENGINE
BEHIND THE SCENES
animation, we created the perfect
basis to create the high-quality
graphics for Final Fantasy VII
Remake,” says Hamaguchi.
The new technology has enabled the
devs to play with many elements.
“We’ve tried something new with the
music and essentially by using the
same melody line throughout all the
different sections of the game,” says
Hamaguchi, “but having it dynamically
shift and transition to different
As characters speak,
their expressions
alter appropriately.