2019-06-01_PC_Gamer

ofthegame,aftertheintroFMVas

thetrainpullsintothestationand

oneoftheguysside-kicksa soldier.

QAreportedthisbugaswewere

finalizing,whichhadallthe

programmersscramblingtorepro

anddebugit ASAP.Excitingtimes!”

Greenbergrecalleda crashbug

thathappenedduringthefinalboss

fight,duringSephiroth’ssupernova

summon.“Neartheendofthedev

cycle,manyofusweredonewithour

work,andsimplyhadtohelptestthe

gameasmuchaspossible...If

totalled,I’veprobablyspentatleasta

full 24 hoursplayingthatonebattle.”

Fascinatingstuff,butwhatabout

themouths,right?WhydoesCloud

eternallylooklikeanemoji-before-

emojis?WhydoesSephirothlooklike

hecouldswallowanentirehotdog

whole?DidGreenbergknow?

“Greatquestion.I’mwrackingmy

braintotrytoremember,”hesaid.

Oh,comeon!

“Thisis notsomethingthatwe

addedontheartsidesinceI never

BELOW:The

mouthless

PlayStationvsthe

mouthyPC.

BOTTOM:Thisguy,

asyoucansee,also

hasa mouth.

changed the model files in any way. I

believe I remember that the mouths

were just sitting there in the original

texture files for the characters. I’m

pretty sure the code to drive them

was probably there as well, and we

just enabled it or something. I wish I

could tell you more, but I just don’t

remember it.”

Is this victory? Or defeat?

Greenberg gave me what may well be

the story behind the character

mouths in Final Fantasy VII’s PC

version: they were actually there the

whole time, but had been disabled in

the PlayStation version before it

shipped. Why? My guess is that a

PlayStation plugged into a typical

CRT TV with a composite cable

resulted in such a fuzzy, low

resolution image, you couldn’t really

see them anyway. The eyes were

bigger, and more expressive, and so

the mouths were cut.

But it’s possible there’s more to

the story – maybe the developers

wanted the mouths to animate but

never got around to it, or simply ran

out of time to properly implement

them.They’restillthereinthe 2012

PCre-release,whichfixedupthe

1998 porttorunathigherresolutions

Final Fantasy VII

FEATURE

1998 porttorunathigherresolutions

andplaynicewithmodernversions

of Windows.I tookonemorestabat

findingout,contactingWilliam

Chen,anotherengineeronFinal

FantasyVII. His response? “It