The Making of Final Fantasy VII
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Undoubtedly at the heart of any RPG's success is the plot. No matter how good your battle system or locations, without quality scripting there will be no incentive for the player to play. It is testament to FFVII's story that the game is widely regarded as the acme of the series and still frequently referenced today. While Final Fantasy games have traditionally always drawn upon a huge selection of myths and legends, the seventh game used them as a framework for loftier ethical aspirations and ecologically conscious evangelism. (Sakaguchi had a great vision of the force behind the universe. He wanted to explore the idea that planets and people share the same basic energy and so are, in some way, intrinsically linked. He developed this philosophy from drawing upon other cultures that stated when a planet disappears an invisible energy is released into space. This energy goes to some place and concentrates to give life again when certain conditions are met. The same energy drives people. So no matter who or what this energy comes from, it will concentrate all together to give life to something or someone again.)
These were ideas that the Squaresoft founder had long been toying with and it's unclear as to how much of the philosophy was pure fantastical fabrication and how much was his own dogma. What's certain is that they posed difficulties for Kitase, who says, (Sakaguchi's ideas were incredibly difficult to represent in the game since they concerned an invisible abstract concept. It was something I'd never seen done in a game before. So, I came up with the Life Stream. This was an idea that planets have the same kinds of life systems as people's blood or nerve network. It allowed us to more clearly examine the issues we wanted to. Sakaguchi's main ideas for FFVII and the world he imagined for the game, the creatures and so on, were very closely integrated into the Final Fantasy movie. FFVII and Final Fantasy started at the same time in their development process and they share nearly identical roots. I may have to play/watch both again and compare all their common elements.)
