Final Fantasy VII writer/director details the struggles the dev team faced

Final Fantasy VII is easily one of the most important entries in the entire franchise, if not the most important one. This was the installment in the long-running series that helped it break through outside of Japan, and now the franchise is world-renown.

Final Fantasy VII clicked with gamers all over the world, but it took the dev team quite a bit of time to figure out how to bring the experience together. In a new interview with FFVII writer/director Yoshinori Kitase, we get to hear more about the struggles and challenges the staff faced when conceiving such a different type of Final Fantasy game.

• FFVII’s modern setting was due to the team feeling the limits of what they could do with fantasy
• Kitase says that fans also seemed tired of fantasy settings according to the fan mail they sent
• the team considered an idea based around police organizations, which got them thinking
• this led the team to settle on a city setting an a company for the antagonist
• the team had to figure out why Cloud and the others were fighting against Shinra
• the team also struggled with making the conflict seem justified on the protagonists’ end
• the team also had trouble balancing Shinra employees
• employees had to be evil enough that it doesn’t feel bad emotionally or mentally to beat them
• it would also be unrealistic for a company Shinra’s size to only have evil employees