Development
The idea of Crisis Core originated when Hajime Tabata was chosen as director for an upcoming Final Fantasy title for the PlayStation Portable. After discussion with Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase, Tabata decided that the game should be another installment in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, feeling that the pressure of producing a game from a popular series would motivate both the staff and himself. The original idea was to make a PlayStation Portable port of Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, as it had been released for mobile-phones and the staff wanted to expand it. However, after deciding Zack was going to be the protagonist of the new game, the idea of a Before Crisis port was cancelled.
Kitase wanted to make sure the game exceeded fans' expectations, so he made sure that rather than making it as a "tribute" to Final Fantasy VII, it shared important links with other titles from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Similarly, Tabata explained that he and the staff were very weary throughout production of not altering the "fans' perception of Final Fantasy VII's iconic characters." For example, one of the main background events from Final Fantasy VII, Nibelheim's destruction, had been changed somewhat in the OVA Last Order: Final Fantasy VII, and due to negative fan reaction to these change, the game staff decided not to make any major changes in Crisis Core. However, they also operated on the principal that this game dealt with those characters' "younger days," so that new elements could be added without changing the characters too much.
One of the primary reasons Zack was chosen as protagonist was because his fate was predetermined. Kitase stated that Zack's story had "been cooking for 10 years" as, despite being a minor character in Final Fantasy VII, Nomura had already developed conceptual artwork, and Kazushige Nojima had already worked out a story. The game was originally meant to have more scenes depicting Zack and Cloud's flight to Midgar, so as to expand on their friendship and unrealized plans, but these scenes were removed due to UMD limitations, and so the staff focused more on Zack's background as a formidable warrior. The addition of the character of Genesis to the story came about after discussions between producer Hideki Imaizumi and the character's Japanese voice actor, Gackt, as Imaizumi had been impressed with the characters' brief appearance in the secret ending to Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, and felt there was great room to expand the character. Sephiroth's role was specifically written to give him a "much more human side." The game's logo represents various main characters; the blue sky symbolizes Zack; the white feather symbolizes Angeal; and the water symbolizes Aerith.
Crisis Core was first envisioned as an action game, but because almost all of the staff had more experience designing RPGs, they decided to modify it, making battles more similar to the ones found in standard RPGs. However, they also added more action orientated elements to the battles, resulting in the game becoming more of an action RPG than a traditional RPG. The Materia system was designed so that players could choose between "RPG-oriented enhancements" and "action-oriented enhancements," as well as to help with the game's balance. Additionally, the Digital Mind Wave system (DMW) was added to give gameplay an element of luck, as well as to prevent combat feeling repetitive. In designing the DMW, Nomura and Kitase were inspired by the pachinko, with the element of luck intentional in order to lead to many different results in battle.
The game was first announced at the 2004 E3, prior to the release of the PlayStation Portable. Its first trailer consisted of clips from Last Order. In an interview for Famitsu, Nomura stated that a playable demo of the game would be ready by the end of 2006. However, there was no mention of whether the demo would be openly available to PSP owners. By May 2005, Nomura announced that he had designed the concept art for the game, with the gameplay set to be "interesting" and "previously unseen." In May 2007, both Nomura and Tabata revealed that the game was 90% complete, and that completing its story mode and all side quests would take about 100 hours of gameplay. A playable demo was made available at Jump Festa '06.
Read more about this topic: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
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