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Final Fantasy Scenarist Kazushige Nojima Explains How FFVIII Was Influenced by FFVII's Success

Final Fantasy series scenarist Kazushige Nojima shared details on Final Fantasy VIII's development for its 20th anniversary.

www.dualshockers.com

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy VIII, Weekly Famitsu October 24 2019 issue (released on October 10) included a long feature on Square Enix’s JRPG. The feature included a long interview with Kazushige Nojima, who worked as a scenarist on multiple Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games. He’s also one of the scenarists on Final Fantasy VII Remake. We already covered part of this interview, where Kazushige Nojima shared if he’d do a new FFVIII game, it’d focus on Laguna.

Here’s an extensive summary of the interview, with all the points Kazushige Nojima brought up.

Note that this article contains spoilers regarding Final Fantasy VIII.

Kazushige Nojima started the interview by sharing how unlike Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII didn’t have a multitude of projects related to it since its original release, so he didn’t have any occasion to look back on the game. Thinking about it now, a part of himself believes he could’ve done more with the game’s scenario.

Kazushige Nojima: In order to make the scenario work as a game, many changes happened to it during development. There are big differences compared to what we initially thought about, and what we ended up doing.

The fact that Final Fantasy VIII followed the worldwide successful Final Fantasy VII also greatly influenced him:

Kazushige Nojima: Final Fantasy VII was a huge success outside Japan. So right from the start of Final Fantasy VIII’s development, one of our main objectives was making something that would be popular overseas. We didn’t have this in mind at all when making FFVII. So I changed my way of writing. For example, in Japanese, you can make a character speak without revealing their gender. You can use that, and make a reveal later about how that character was actually a woman. This isn’t possible in English as the translation will always use either “He” or “She”. Another example would be jokes. Until then, I only thought about Japanese players, so puns were not a problem. But I heard the translators had a lot of trouble with that when translating FFVII. So we tried our best to write FFVIII‘s scenario in a way that would be easier to translate.

Check the link for more.

 

[caffeware]

Just make a Japanese game. Let translators deal with it eventually.

We like japanese games for that Japanese flavor.

 

[KàIRóS]

This man along with Yasumi Matsuno, Masato Kato and Tetsuya Takahashi wrote the best videogame stories for Square Enix, nothing they have released in the last 20 years compares to the brilliance in their 90s JRPGs.

Too bad not many have had the chance to enjoy Kazushige Nojima's games in the last 10 years, Sol Trigger in particular.

 

[D.Final]

It was already very noticeable at the time.
It was already quite evident without any kind of "confirmation".

The type of technology, and the realization of something so modern for those years, certainly gave birth to this creation.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Just make a Japanese game. Let translators deal with it eventually.

We like japanese games for that Japanese flavor.

Yeah, I think this point is really missed when thinking about sequels and franchises.

FFVII was designed for Japan, but was popular in the west, therefore FFVIII should be designed for west. This logic makes absolutely no sense, because if VII was designed for Japan but the west loved it, maybe there is something about the inherent Japanness that the west actually liked? Why would designing a game in a completely different way than the popular game in any way make sense? Shouldn't you want to replicate the success???

Same goes when people are like "women/black people/whatever really love X game series, so we should start changing the series to suit their interests." WHY? Something about the games obviously resonated with them, despite not being catered to them, so why would you feel the need to change anything?

Look how many women say Tomb Raider inspired them and they identified with Lara - despite the fact that she was a walking pair of problematic tits. Doesn't that suggest that she DOESN'T need to be a woke yas kween and instead should just be the same character? Women should have never liked Lara in the first place according to woke turds, yet there see countless examples of them doing so.

Anyway rant over.

 

[sublimit]

That was very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing.

The difference back then going from VII to VIII was huge and for me not in a good way. I still consider VIII as one of my least favorite FFs. As Nojima also confirms in this interview VIII was one of the first concious efforts of a Japanese developer to try to appeal to Western audiences and (as is it's often the case with these type of efforts) something from the authenticity and uniqueness of the previous titles was lost. Even if i didn't knew why i felt that back then now it's more easier to understand since i know myself as someone who prefers more Japanese games that try to appeal first to Japanese gamers and secondly to Western ones (with a few exceptions.)

 

[Teslerum]

This man along with Yasumi Matsuno, Masato Kato and Tetsuya Takahashi wrote the best videogame stories for Square Enix, nothing they have released in the last 20 years compares to the brilliance in their 90s JRPGs.

Too bad not many have had the chance to enjoy Kazushige Nojima's games in the last 10 years, Sol Trigger in particular.

Can't say I agree. Not a fan of Nojima's writing.