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A Discussion about Toriyama's role in Square Enix and the Final Fantasy franchise
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sublimit
Banned
Because he is a bad writer/director and still has a big influence inside SE.
Obviously XIII didn't do him any favors. He was relatively unproven to take the mantle over from Kitase who directed some of the most successful games in the franchise. I think a lot of the opinions on Toriyama come down to what you think of X. I personally hate it so Toriyama was a no talent hack long before XIII.
Megidolaon
Member
I don't hate Toriyama, I feel he gets a bad rap. XIII and T3B had crap stories, but I actually really enjoyed the stories of X-2 and Revenant Wings. Those games are great imo. Fun, happy, breezy stories. 
Since he did X-2, XII:RW, and XIII-2, I could see him directing a lighthearted sequel to XV. It can be the opposite to X-2's girl power theme haha.
Since he did X-2, XII:RW, and XIII-2, I could see him directing a lighthearted sequel to XV. It can be the opposite to X-2's girl power theme haha.
PlanetSmasher
Banned
I don't hate Toriyama, I feel he gets a bad rap. XIII and T3B had crap stories, but I actually really enjoyed the stories of X-2 and Revenant Wings. Those games are great imo. Fun, happy, breezy stories.
Since he did X-2, XII:RW, and XIII-2, I could see him directing a lighthearted sequel to XV. It can be the opposite to X-2's girl power theme haha.
I think if that happened, I would vomit so much napalm that the entire Midwest would be nothing but ashes.
They should stick Toriyama on mobile game duty for a while until he learns how to write, and particularly learns how to write female characters that aren't absolutely detestable. He has this creepy, borderline sick obsession with female protagonists, but has absolutely no idea how to write women whatsoever.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
I don't hate Toriyama, I feel he gets a bad rap. XIII and T3B had crap stories, but I actually really enjoyed the stories of X-2 and Revenant Wings. Those games are great imo. Fun, happy, breezy stories.
Since he did X-2, XII:RW, and XIII-2, I could see him directing a lighthearted sequel to XV. It can be the opposite to X-2's girl power theme haha.
People don't really hate him so much as they really hate his work. Toriyama's work is kinda "Love it or hate it" for many. You either like his... uh... "unique" ideas or you don't. And those that don't really don't like it.
Though seriously, 3rd Birthday... oh god, that story... just... I...
And that LR reveal with the rose and the role model talk...
lucablight
Member
Does Toriyama realise how much the western fan base hates him? Does the Japanese fan base share similar sentiments?
PlanetSmasher
Banned
Lightning is inexplicably more popular in Japan than she is anywhere else, so I would assume they don't hate him quite as much as we do.
CrimsonCrescendo
Banned
Um, outside of gaming forums, I doubt anyone outside Japan even knows who he is. Let's be real here: The average consumer doesn't give a fresh pickle about who in particular made the game so long as they like it. If they don't, they promptly move on. If they do, well, they still move on.
And even if he did realize that there is a dedicated part of the fanbase that is extremely negative towards him... what exactly is he supposed to do? Step down? Not likely. Apologize? Why? He's proud of his work, as he has every right to be (just like we have every right to not like it).
sublimit
Banned
I love FFX. But i can't attribute the appeal X had on me on Toriyama alone.XIII on the other hand was more of a personal projext to him and i hated almost everything about it (except the OST).
There's a lot of misinformation about what people are doing within the company. I'm not claiming to be the expert on it, but if Toriyama wrote 3rd Birthday, then Watanabe wrote XIII and XIII-2. He can't be blamed for all if it. You either blame him for the XIII games and blame Tabata for 3rd, or you blame Toriyama for 3rd and Watanabe for XIII.
Also, a lot of what people hate about 3rd's story is that it doesn't perfectly follow the terminology and mitochondria focus of the others. But they literally lost the rights to Parasite Eve, which was a book before SQEX made the first game. Toriyama did not have the option of following in that storyline perfectly and had to make something new. Some elements of the story are pretty great, like the
twist of playing as Eve, the use of time travel elements, and the ending in particular
People also blame Toriyama for stuff like Aya's costume, or Aya's voice acting, or Aya's battle cries, or Aya's clothing battle damage even though he has nothing to do with that. Is Tabata obsessed with Aya and wants her to be his girlfriend like everyone always says about Toriyama and Lightning?
No one else seems to give Toriyama a pass when he had the most difficult FF directing job ever probably. He was the first to work on a huge project with the Cell programming architecture, and with the Crystal Tools engine, both things completely out of his control. He was the first to make an HD FF game, something that balloons staff and art demands. At the time that XIII came out, tons of other series made the exact same calculation that he did. They saw the demands of HD development and made more linear games, like Uncharted, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and on and on.
After XIII was released and people criticized several elements of it, Toriyama was able to make several substantial adjustments with limited development resources and limited development time. More open environments, more mini-games, battle system adjustments, much less linearity, backtracking through environments, side quests, dialogue choice options, multiple endings. That was all within 1.5 years. And with Lightning Returns, it looks like he's done it again, possibly with even less development resources - only now there are 100 color-customizable costumes, a new battle system, more open environments, side quests, real time day night cycles, and a majora's mask style gameplay system.
If we ever saw Toriyama on a new project, it would be the first time we got to see him try again since 2008, without having to make a project using existing assets, less budget, and less development time. Nobody knows what his next real game ideas would be, and they would probably be pretty different.
The guy isn't some nobody, no matter how much people want to pretend he is, while glossing over every other sub-par thing Nomura and Tabata have done. Toriyama co-directed FFX, and had a large role in the project. He was one of the key people involved in FFVII, like Nomura. He's worked his way up over 15 years.
I just think that we don't really have a clear idea of what his job actually even is. There is a battle system designer for Type-0, and it's not Tabata I'm sure. There is a battle system designer for Lightning Returns, and it's not Toriyama. There is a writer for Lightning Returns, and it's not Toriyama. He doesn't do the character designs either. These are huge projects. The game director is the one that tries to get these people all working together efficiently so their work can be combined into a real project. And while XIII had issues with that, he was probably in the most challenging director spot in FF history, given the Cell and Crystal Tools issues. The guy still managed to get the game out, and then 2 sequels in record time for the series. Those skills aren't easy for SQEX to come by, and personally, I think it's naive and misinformed to think he's going to vanish within the company.
I'm not saying he'll do a mainline FF game, because he's already done 5 of them now in a directorial capacity. Personally, I'm always fine seeing new people. But he'll still do something I'm sure. I doubt it will be XVI. I'm sure that's already being worked on right now.
PshycoNinja
Member
Toriyama wasn't a key person in the development of FFVII. Kitase just likes to say that to give validity to his choice for choosing Toriyama to direct XIII.
Sakaguchi even said that Toriyama back in the day wasn't cut out to be a director of any sort. Sakaguchi saw the monster and his sub-par output and knew he wasn't cutout to be a good director and you know what... he was right.
Edit:
And he's directed 1 mainline game. Not 5. Kitase was the "Main Director" on X. That leaves Toriyama with 1 mainline entry.
I guess if you think that the whole Aeris death scene wasn't a big deal, then sure he wasn't a key person.
And Sakaguichi is bitter, and kind of full of shit these days. He criticizes the entire company quite a bit. He had not directed a game for a very long time by the time Toriyama was going to try it. Kitase directed FFVI, FFVII, Chrono Trigger, FFVIII, FFX, and he thought Toriyama was pretty skilled, and he still does.
People who hold on to Sakaguichi's opinions like they're sacred kind of illustrate my point. They don't really know what people's jobs actually are within the company, and what they directly are responsible for. Sakaguichi was a producer for most of his career at Squaresoft.
Aeriscloud
Banned
Don't mock a God! Sakaguchi's influence on the games Kitase directed is pretty obvious. I think the producer role is very different at Square Enix compared to other companies. Case in point being Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida.
More than Matsuno.
PshycoNinja
Member
Toriyama had nothing to do with the Aeris Death Scene. Back in 1997 they said that was Nomura and Nojima's idea. They told the development team that's what they were going to do in the game.
Toriyama had zero to do with that death scene. The only thing Toriyama was in that game was a mitigated small role where he and a few other designers designed Midgar.
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I think this is why Mistwalker games are more pleasing to RPG fans. They relate the art and style of the game. Not that the games are the same, but the general ideas they had from working with one another. Not that I was a huge Blue Dragon fan either, but I enjoyed Lost Odyssey and own Last Story (though haven't started it yet).
I do prefer Kitase and Toriyama's work. Nomura's character concept is fascinating to me.
You're reading the article incorrectly. Nowhere there does it say that Toriyama came up with the idea of Aeris dying, and he most certainly didn't.
http://www.ff7citadel.com/press/int_egm.shtml
Sure doesn't sound like something he could have come up with anyways, as it wasn't convoluted nonsense.
I never said he came up with the idea of it. Anyone can write "what if Aeris died?" on a napkin in a restaurant one night and hand it off to the rest of the staff.
My whole point is that these are all huge projects and they have whole teams of people that work on even the smallest parts of it. Toriyama was involved in event scene planning, and creative decisions around executing that idea effectively, and the idea was executed very effectively. He was also involved in character development for Aeris, among many other things I'm sure.
The person above him on that was the actual writer for the game, and it wasn't Sakaguchi. The person above that was Kitase.
And yet people blame Toriyama for "moms are tough," an English translation of a line he never even wrote. It's silly. There are so many people that make decisions below the game director that shape a game. In the interview they even said that Kitase gave them a ton of freedom to come up with whole concepts on their own and pitch it to them, and that it was really just kind of random luck which ones made it in and which didn't.
You created a red herring. You didn't address his initial post at all.
Care to expand on that? I think I addressed it pretty specifically. Quote where I said Toriyama came up with that idea.
That'd be relevant if there was any evidence he had anything to do with Aeris' death at all. My point is that you were taking the wrong thing from the article you posted. Toriyama merely talks about how he devoted himself (in the context of his small overall role, as he was just "one of many employees") to helping make Aeris a character that people would miss, and Nomura and Kitase were indeed the key figures there. You were giving him undue credit. Do you have any other evidence that he played a key role in FF7?
I have mixed Akira Toriyama and Motomu Toriyama for a while because both of them work for S-E
I quite like Akira Toriyama because his works (e.g. Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump) and he is also the artist of DQ series.
And for Motomu Toriyama, I don't I should blame him or Kitase for the mess
I quite like Akira Toriyama because his works (e.g. Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump) and he is also the artist of DQ series.
And for Motomu Toriyama, I don't I should blame him or Kitase for the mess
He was the event scene planner, and Aeris dies in an event scene. I didn't give him any undue credit. It's literally his job.
I never said he came up with the idea. I said he was a key person. Look back at my post, it's still there. That's literally word for word what I said, and I was 100% correct.
Why would you argue about whether or not Toriyama was a key person, only to then claim that Nomura was? He was character designer and battle visual director. He might have pitched a few story ideas too. I think they all collaborate pretty openly and freely when making the game. But his input officially was limited to designing the visuals for characters and battles, and that's it.
Event scene planner. It's literally his job title.
I'm not making this up. Aeris dies in an event scene, and the event is impactful because of her prior scenes and character development. He was involved in both.
PshycoNinja
Member
HE WAS EVENT SCENE PLANNER FOR THE MIDGAR SECTION ONLY!!!! (And the submarine scene)
You are in fact giving him more credit then what he deserves. Back then designers were known as "planners". There dozens of "planners" on the FFVII team. He was not a key figure. He wasn't even mentioned in the opening credits. Only key people were in the opening credits and he was not one of those people.
Care to provide anything to back this up? Anything at all?
Yes, I know what you said. You appealed to this particular interview for evidence that he played a key role in Aeris' death, and therefore in FF7 overall, when he didn't actually say anything that supported your claim. If you were going to pretend that his job description automatically entails a key role in literally every scene in the game, why did you even bother linking to that article?
He was one of several event planners, and had just joined the company. I don't know why it is that you feel so comfortable assuming he played some pivotal role in Aeris' death.
Did all of those event planners who just joined the company get promoted to event scene director of FFX, and then direct all of FFX-2 and FFXIII?
You guys are ignoring what's right in front of your face. No links to anything to back up anything you say either.
Okay, I'm going to claim to be an "expert" on it and clarify some points. My "expertise" here is that I have played most of these games in Japanese, I understand them, and I've also read a bunch of interviews with the creators for these games, and so this is what I gather from it. I think there are some good points in the rest of your post, but at the same time I also feel you have certain things confused which clouds the issue.
- First and foremost, Toriyama is a story director kind of guy. Before he started directing entire game projects in S-E, he was mostly a scenario writer and general story designer on many projects. Tabata on the other hand is a game designer who was previously at Tecmo. When he joined S-E, he was part of the mobile division, and has been leading projects all along, starting with smaller mobile ones, and then being moved to Crisis Core and so on.
- For The 3rd Birthday, Toriyama was the Scenario Director. Less of a script writer (there were a bunch of writers on the project) and more of a team lead for the writing staff. He is responsible for the general story, the outline, and most of the stupid plot twists. When The 3rd Birthday was originally a mobile game, they were planning it like a TV series, with episodes, and Toriyama was like the showrunner for the story side.
- Toriyama is also the story lead for the FFXIII games he directs. Watanabe is the main script writer, but the story direction comes from Toriyama. Unlike The 3rd Birthday and the Dissidia games, where Toriyama is the Scenario Director/Supervisor, FFXIII games have no such credit. So there's no one other than Toriyama doing the overall planning. Watanabe writes the actual dialogue (and he can take a fair share of blame for long-winded and boring conversations which lack the snappiness of Nojima's dialogue) but the structure of the plot and what happens to the characters comes from Toriyama's direction. He has said this himself.
- This is the main difference between how FFXIII is made and how The 3rd Birthday was made. It is why Toriyama does deserve "blame" if someone doesn't like the story in either game, regardless of who was the main director. In the end, it's about who was responsible for the majority of the ideas.
- But having said that, I'm sure that Tabata is as much of a "pervert" as Toriyama is. Both The 3rd Birthday and FF Type-0 have strange pervy stuff which involve fanservice, creepshots, and female characters in various states of undress in scenes which serve only to titillate the presumably male audience who are used to this sort of thing in anime and manga. No point trying to twist a reality where Tabata is some pure noble dude, and Toriyama is secretly sneaking dirty stuff into his games. Toriyama had nothing to do with Type-0.
So yeah, that's my take on it. Hope it's helpful!
PshycoNinja
Member
Can you provide anything in rebuttal? I love how we must provide the "proof" to you but you never provide anything to back up your claims either.
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Motomu_Toriyama
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Perfect reply.
Wiki isn't really a source. Just a compilation of information based off of multiple sources. Not really a good practice to cite an encyclopedia. Having said that, the wiki community for FF is pretty hardcore and super nitpicky about accuracy of information so it's probably correct. Probably.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
He's pretty good at directing death scenes (/Tidus, /Serah, /future Lightning in LR!) anyway.
I provided links to an interview where Toriyama explains it himself, in his own words.
You provided links to a wikipedia article that has zero citations of any kind. If what you're saying is true, I'm open to hearing it. I just want the record to actually be set straight because there is a fucking ton of incorrect opinions and misinformation out there. There are also tons of people who ignore evidence based claims because they want to hate Toriyama more than he deserves and simplify their issues with SQEX into one man so they can act like they have any idea what they're talking about.
What sources did the wiki article use? I see none, and have no idea where they got this definitive information.
What links do you need? You interpreted what he said in an interview as meaning he played a key role in Aeris' death, and therefore in FF7 overall. Your interpretation of what he said was wrong. I provided a link proving that Nomura and Kitase were far more important in the development of that particular scene.
And so here we find ourselves, now without any evidence of this key role Toriyama apparently played. Yes, he was an event planner. I'm sure all the other event planners will love this appreciation you're giving them:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197341-final-fantasy-vii/credit
Actually, I just noticed he's specifically given credit as Submarine Chase Planner. That's sort of weird. I guess SE considered that a more important scene than Aeris' death or something.
(This last point is pure snark. Sorry. 
)You have some good points.
People still aren't very able to separate story concept from story execution in games and make a really accurate judgment of who is doing what, specifically. We can have a vague idea if we try and be very disciplined and accurate, but still people lose site of it and go for simplification in these conversations.
You cited a telephone conversation. Think about that.
You aren't seemingly able to realize that I'm not talking about who came up with the idea. I'm talking about who executed the idea in game design.
You know Nojima is on the list too right? There's only 8 of them, and two are pretty key people just off the top of my head without even looking up the others.
Actually the FFVII event planners who stayed on in the company did all get promoted to very notable positions.
Keisuke Matsuhara moved on to battle planning, and was eventually the battle director of Dirge of Cerberus.
Hiroki Chiba is the scenario writer for Dirge of Cerberus, the director of Sigma Harmonics, and the lead scenario writer for FF Type-0.
Jun Akiyama is the lead event director for Vagrant Story, FFXII, and FFXV. He's considered the best cutscene director within the company.
So an event planner is a key person?
PshycoNinja
Member
The ONLY thing he said in that interview was that he was one of MANY Event Planners. He was a grunt. He wasn't a "Key Person" like you try to keep saying even when the evidence has been piled against you.
You are just interpreting it as him saying he's a more important person on the project then what he actually was. You misread and misinterpreted. Not the other way around.
Considering you don't have any links to back up what you're saying, I don't think you can make the same demands of others.
Where did he imply that? He's noting that event planners who worked on FF7 became prominent developers on other projects at the company.
Toriyama only got to direct because he's good at schmoozing Kitase.
He's gonna say he linked the VG24/7 article. =D
I'll quote directly from the article I linked.
I'll try bullet point form too so that it's not overlooked.
* Great hand in writing and directing their scenes together, including eventual death of Aeris
* Focused on the build up of Aeris' character to maximize impact of the death scene
* Had almost total freedom and license to do what they wanted, granted by Kitase the director
And here's the link again. A link to an interview where Toriyama explains his role in FFVII, personally, to an interviewer and then they went and wrote an article about it.
http://www.vg247.com/2012/10/03/final-fantasy-anniversary-interview-toryiama-speaks/
So is he the submarine director exclusively, or whatever you guys were saying earlier? Seems pretty unlikely.
And if you read the article, he said the idea of Aeris dying had a great impact on the staff. He says right up front he didn't come up with the idea, and I never said he did. That whole thing was a huge derail by you guys. He focused on executing the scene, and maximizing effective character build up for the scene through scene direction, and through the writing.
Okay, this is beginning to get repetitive. Let me try to be totally clear as to what I'm saying.
You aren't talking about who came up with the idea. I understand. There remains a problem, however. When someone pointed out that Toriyama didn't play a key role in FF7, you pulled out a certain interview with him as evidence otherwise. In the way you read the interview, it seemed that Toriyama was claiming some sort of credit for Aeris' death scene, and seeing as that scene is very important in the game, clearly he must have in actuality played a key role. Right? No, since he didn't actually claim any credit for the scene. In fact, he pointed out that he had just joined the company, and so was simply one of many employees. Within that limited role, he tried his best to help make Aeris a memorable, beloved character. That's all he said.
Suddenly, then, you're back to square one. Since that interview didn't support your assertion of a key role, you no longer have any evidence that he played one, at least that you've provided. Now I'm asking you if you can provide some. That's all.
As for Nojima being on the list of event planners...yes, he is. Between he and Toriyama, who would you bet played a bigger role in Aeris' death scene? Or any other scene? (Aside from the submarine chase, apparently.)
You're emphasizing the interviewer's claims over what Toriyama actually said. Read his words for yourself. What do you think he's implying when he mentions he had just joined the company, and was only one of many members of the FF7 team? What does it imply when he says he dedicated his efforts, in that context, to developing Aeris' character before her death?
No, it's actually a huge derail by you. I shouldn't have paraphrased you that way, because now you're latching onto that specific wording as if it actually matters.
Event Planners in Japanese games are the equivalent of Scripters in Western games. They're basically the ones assigned to specific scenes and areas, and they use scripting tools to design the actual scenes. These can vary from scripting scenes which trigger when you walk into a room, or scripting a dialogue box sequence into the game based on the written screenplay for the scene, or full blown cutscene direction with storyboarding and planning the camera angles, cinematography, etc.
Depending on the project it can be a key role if the planners are given lots of responsibility to handle their own scenes, or it can be a less significant role if there's an event director who already does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of storyboarding and deciding on all the visual cues.
The reason why many of the event planners in FFVII eventually got promoted to more significant roles in future games has more to do with the transformation of Squaresoft as a company. Before FFVII they had not made games on this scale before. After FFVII, those who contributed to the game would be the first they turn to when looking for people with experience on this sort of projects. More opportunities in the company + experience from the start when the company began in this direction = promotion time!
In the end though, I would say that for something as large as a RPG, everyone who has a direct influence on the outcome is a key role. They might not be mentioned at all, the credit could be as insignificant as "Assistant Battle Planner" to the general public, but when it's a large project every contribution counts and can either make the game better or worse, and that person probably had a direct contribution to something that someone out there personally liked or disliked about that game.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
He seems to work best when he's under someone direction. Remember that we almost ended with a way more creepy version of the Honey Bee Inn chapter thanks to him then FF7 leads had to cut him loose?. Every project he took the reigns have been incredibly dropping in quality, of both the writing and the gameplay, as time passed.
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