Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII - Development

Development

When Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children began development, the Square Enix staff agreed that one title from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII was not enough to cover the entire world, and so Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII were conceived so as to embrace more aspects. With no official word from Square on the genre of the game, many publications and gamers speculated that it would be an action game similar to the Devil May Cry series. In 2004, however, character designer Tetsuya Nomura denied this, and stated that the genre would surprise gamers. Producer Yoshinori Kitase had originally planned to make an action game, but he ultimately decided on a shooter with role playing elements as he found the design work on action games less appealing.

Vincent was chosen as the game's protagonist due to the scope for expanding his backstory, which was left very vague in Final Fantasy VII. The fact that his main weapon was a gun also worked into the team's desire to create a more action orientated game. Prior to the solidifcation of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the development team originally considered using other gunfighter characters from the Final Fantasy series, such as Final Fantasy VII's Barret Wallace, Final Fantasy VIII's Irvine Kinneas or Final Fantasy X-2's Yuna. However, after the release of Before Crisis and Advent Children, and with the expansion of the Final Fantasy VII mythos, they settled on Vincent.

The main character designer for the game, Tetsuya Nomura, had also worked on both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The Tsviets were designed with the idea of creating a sense of balance for the warriors with which players would already be familiar; primarily Vincent, Cloud Strife and Sephiroth. Nomura initially had doubts when designing Shelke's ordinary clothes for the end of the game, but he felt it was important for her to appear out of uniform so as to indicate she was truly free from Deepground. The character of G was based on the Japanese singer and actor Gackt, who wrote and performed the two theme songs of the game, and voiced G in the Japanese language version of the game. Hideki Imaizumi, the producer of Crisis Core, liked the mysterious role of G so much, he decided to expand his character in that game. The character of Lucrecia Crescent, who features briefly in an optional quest in the original game, was redesigned so as to give her a similar appearance to her son, Sephiroth, based on portraits from guidebooks and in fan-art. Reeve Tuesti was also redesigned, as he only appears briefly in the original game in his own persona (most of the time, he is controlling Cait Sith behind the scenes).

Dirge of Cerberus was first announced in September 2004, and was scheduled for release in Japan in 2005. The game's official site went online in April 2005. In May, Nomura stated that several snippets from the game would be revealed during that year's E3. However, no demo was shown at E3, as the staff were still trying to fix some issues with the controls in the game. In September, the beta test program was postponed indefinitely. Listed as 60% complete, the company stated if the beta test started with the game's current state, they would not be able to fully utilize the beta testers.

The North American and European releases of Dirge of Cerberus received a major overhaul as the developers were not completely satisfied with the final Japanese version of the game. They also wanted to make the game more single-player oriented, and as such, they removed Online Multiplayer support, primarily due to the lack of popularity of PlayOnline outside Japan, and lack of PS2 HDD support in the U.S. Missions from the Multiplayer Mode were reworked into unlockable secret missions in the English language versions of the game, although none of the additional storyline presented in the Japanese Multiplayer Mode featured in the English versions. The Easy Mode, which was originally featured in the Japanese version to assist gamers not overly familiar with shooter games, was also removed. On September 4, 2008, the English language version was released in Japan as Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII International (ダージュ オブ ケルベロス -ファイナルファンタジーVII- インターナショナル, Dāju obu Keruberosu -Fainaru Fantajī Sebun- Intānashonaru?), as part of Square's Ultimate Hits lineup.