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Final Fantasy VIII Director Yoshinori Kitase Talks About The Remaster And Original Development - Siliconera

Square Enix finally announced a remaster for Final Fantasy VIII at E3 2019 last week. To commemorate the occasion, the game’s original director Yoshinori Kitase shared some info and other tidbits in this week’s Famitsu.

www.siliconera.com

Here are highlights from the interview:

• "The remaster has the original version’s battle programmer Hiroshi Harada, Tomohiro Kayano who did character model, and Tetsuya Nomura working on it.”
• "The character refinement quality is the result of having the original staff work on it.”
• “Battle Assistance will be implemented.”
• “Chocobo World will not be included. The items you could only get from it will be available through Rinoa’s special ability.”
• “Final Fantasy VIII was the first work that we’ve used motion capture on. At the time we didn’t know how things worked, so we made the actor use a heavy gun. Looking back now, I get the cold sweats thinking about any worst case scenario accidents that could’ve happened.”
• “Final Fantasy VIII has had its share of influence in Hollywood entertainment, be it a game screen shown in a Hollywood movie or an offer we got last year from a major video game-related film that wanted to use the Gunblade.”

 

[TeamGizzyy]

Excuse me......no choco world?

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Gunblade is by far the most iconic weapon of the franchise. It's unusual and distinct.

 

[RokkanStoned]

No Chocobo World? Damn...

Back then I wanted the Pocketstation so much, especially for FFVIII.

Reminds me of the Dreamcast VMU. I remember freaking out by how awesome the Dreamcast seemed and how modern it felt. Seeing the VMU for the Dreamcast just made a young me go crazy in regards to all the possibilities.

I mean, what kid wouldn't freak out about mind blowing console tech like this?

 

[NeededSleep]

Can they include a GF boost ability cheat. I do not look forward to killing my thumb again during summons.

 

[Pallas]

Well as long as they make those items available elsewhere. I wonder why they decide not to port Chocobo World over, it’s available on the PC version.

 

[greyshark]

Wtf - they had an actor use a REAL gun during motion capture scenes?

 

[jshackles]

Wtf - they had an actor use a REAL gun during motion capture scenes?

It seems that way!

 

[angelic]

I cant go back to wasting my life drawing 99 of every magic, I'm not 22 any more.

 

[Tiamat2san]

I just want a release date.
Bring it!

 

[Falcs]

What.. they used a LOADED gun to do mocap?? Unless they were that stupid, what was the problem?

 

[The Shepard]

I'm just hoping for a speed boost, will help with drawing magic.

 

[Virex]

Battle assistance? The junction system and all mechanics are fine as they are. You don't need assistance when you can become a god in a very short amount of time. Why does everything need dumbing down these days.

 

[CaptainSuperFish]

Shame about chocobo world, surely they could have found a way with a mobile app

 

[Deft Beck]

Battle assistance? The junction system and all mechanics are fine as they are. You don't need assistance when you can become a god in a very short amount of time. Why does everything need dumbing down these days.

People just want to play the story for nostalgia.

 

[Gavin Stevens]

I started reading this as the final fantasy SEVEN remaster and started piecing together shit on my head ready to outrage at, until I saw I was being a dumb ass...

 

[stranno]

Chocobo World has been perfectly playable in Dr. Hell's Xebra emulator for a decade already. It's a great minigame, the only decent Pocketstation game I have played so far.

It was also included in Steam release as a separated executable iirc.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Does anyone know if they will at least have an orchestrated soundtrack?

 

[Spukc]

no choco no kokoro

 

[Northeastmonk]

People just want to play the story for nostalgia.

I get the addition of no random encounters. As much as I love the franchise, I always wanted to explore just the world without running into a battle.

 

[darkangel-212559]

No Chocobo World? Damn...

Back then I wanted the Pocketstation so much, especially for FFVIII.

Reminds me of the Dreamcast VMU. I remember freaking out by how awesome the Dreamcast seemed and how modern it felt. Seeing the VMU for the Dreamcast just made a young me go crazy in regards to all the possibilities.

I mean, what kid wouldn't freak out about mind blowing console tech like this?

Bro, I had that feeling the first time I hooked up my NGPC to the DC. Holy shit that was awesome!

 

[The Snake]

I get the addition of no random encounters. As much as I love the franchise, I always wanted to explore just the world without running into a battle.

To be fair, the original game has a No Encounters ability you can Junction.

 

[Vawn]

All I really need is to ditch the horrible enemy scaling where leveling up only makes the game more difficult.

 

[Northeastmonk]

To be fair, the original game has a No Encounters ability you can Junction.

Right. Its handing you the ability and everything else right at the start. I see how the max level cheat is a bit discouraging. I could cram 60-80 hours years ago and reaching level 70 or even 80 was something to be proud of. Its fun to go back to a traditional game with traditional rules. Break those rules, understand them, and play the game the way the developers made it. I also see the point where you want to cut the grind in half. I turned on the max level cheat to see how it was and it literally broke the game. I felt like I was using a GameShark. I could advance at every battle. I didn't even get to see the special attacks of the monsters because battles ended so quickly. There was one thing I did notice. I was literally following along with the story longer than say if I had to grind to get past a certain part. That's probably obvious to understand. I got to the next area faster and everything advanced in such a short period of time. It was a supreme form of hand holding we haven't exactly experienced since the GameShark was being sold.

Things like GF boost have an ability to skip having to press a button for more damage. All of it could be done, but should it? IMO they're marketing these classic games on a pretty popular mobile market (even though they haven't said a word about FF8 on mobile (which might not happen)). One could argue that infinite lives in an arcade game is cheating. lol Considering how we spent a lot of quarters playing the game years ago. I'm against them cutting content. Especially since technology has advanced so much since Final Fantasy VIII came out. There shouldn't be any excuses. This port of Final Fantasy VIII should be perfect.

 

[Revolutionary]

It was also included in Steam release as a separated executable iirc.

It sure is! Thanks for the heads up, I never realized it was right there all along.

 

[Nymphae]

Does anyone know if they will at least have an orchestrated soundtrack?

I heard somewhere that it will be using the original sound files, which is a plus for me. The steam version used some knock off versions of all the tunes and was horrific.

 

[The Snake]

I heard somewhere that it will be using the original sound files, which is a plus for me. The steam version used some knock off versions of all the tunes and was horrific.

Probably the MIDI soundtrack from the original PC release, I'd imagine. Easy to mod, however.

 

[Nymphae]

Probably the MIDI soundtrack from the original PC release, I'd imagine. Easy to mod, however.

I didn't bother, just played it on Vita instead. It was an impulse buy on steam lol.