Final Fantasy 7 at 26: Kitase on being inspired by Nintendo, discarded concepts, and Rebirth changes to come

TL;DR

Final Fantasy 7 first hit PlayStation in Japan, a vital release that would prove particularly earth-shattering once localised for the West a handful of months later. You didn't remember this, he reminded you! But let me ask – if the game were like that, and it were you playing, which three characters would you have saved by having them in your party?Yoshinori Kitase: I would pick Cloud because he is the protagonist of the story, Vincent because he was a character that I personally came up with and had a horror vibe that is quite rare in FF games, and Yuffie because she is so annoying but so difficult to hate. On the other hand, when I looked back at that game, the original model for Cloud was only made of 400 polygons and looked a bit like a doll carved out of wood, so the older I got, the more I wanted to update him

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