Final Fantasy VIII director looks back on the dev team's goals, critical response, and more

Game Informer recently featured an interview with Final Fantasy VIII director Yoshinori Kitase in order to look back on the game alongside the Remastered version's release. Check out a summary of the interview below.

- inspiration for VIII came from VII in an effort to contrast VII's dark tones, but also from the team's "days as students"
- the team thought a story about kids in school would be a nice, cheerful story to go with
- the team didn't really worry about the junction (new magic) system
- the team was more worried about the reaction to the whole "school-drama story"
- Kitase says that they really wanted to try something beyond "defeat the monster, you get some money, you get XP"
- "Final Fantasy VIII sold very well, and in that sense, it was successful. But as far as reviews at the time went, they were kind of all over the place."
- Kitase says the salary mechanic (in which students get paid periodically) as a chief reason why some people didn't like it
- he also believes the slow burn of the junction system annoyed people
- Kitase was inspired by Magic: The Gathering to create the Triple Triad minigame