Cutting to the core

Two of the Square Enix team behind Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII talk about the game and its development.

Yoshinori Kitase, Executive Producer, and Hideki Imaizumi, Producer, talk about some of the challenges they faced and the decisions they made.

How does the storyline of Crisis Core on PSP relate to the much loved FFVII on PlayStation 2?

Hideki Imaizumi: Crisis Core starts seven years before the events of the original Final Fantasy VII. This time, the story revolves around Zack, the main character of this title. It depicts how his wishes are inherited by Cloud, the main character of the original Final Fantasy VII.

What was your experience of developing Crisis Core, given the strong history and fan following of FFVII?

Yoshinori Kitase: The original VII was released ten years ago. That means the fans have had a decade to nurture this work. Although we felt that we couldn't betray this, emphasizing existing aspects and putting together a compilation would mean a game that only covers what's already been imagined. The result would be a title that's disappointing to users.

How have you achieved a balance between consistency for existing fans and accessibility for newcomers?

YK: To do a story based on the characters from the previous Final Fantasy VII would assume that everybody knows the original story. Zack is the lead character here, but in the original VII, very little was mentioned about this character. In that respect, he's a character that most people will get to know for the first time. And then there's the appearance of new characters such as Genesis and Angeal...

The story woven from these new characters is intended to attract new users. And of course there are returning characters like Cloud and Aerith, not to mention Cloud's mystery being revealed. Given all that, we've balanced everything out so the game would satisfy fans of Final Fantasy VII.

Can you explain the battle system used in Crisis Core and the thinking behind it?

YK: Crisis Core features a command based battle system that incorporates action aspects such as moving and dodging. A particularly major element is the DMW, a system in which matching slot numbers changes the situation of a battle. It's quite a concept wherein the battle situation could drastically change depending on the matching numbers. In a way, it's a system dominated by luck.

As to why we did this, in the original game, you had three characters such as a warrior or mage with different attacks that allowed for tactical variations. This time, there's only a single character, Zack, and one character on their own will not produce much variation in a battle. It's a difficult point to address when designing a battle system. That's where the DMW comes in to suddenly change the battle situation. How the player responds to the change, I believe, is one of the interesting factors in this game.

What sort of emotions did you want to evoke with the Takeharu Ishimoto's soundtrack?

HI: The music was handled by Ishimoto who created several compositions. Of course, since it's the core story of the original Final Fantasy VII, there are several unique and familiar scenes. For those scenes, Ishimoto arranged the music written by Mr. Uematsu at the time. He used those compositions in events and in several of the backdrops. I think fans of the original will enjoy that nostalgic aspect.