Final Fantasy VII Remake Revisited Chapter 14: In Search of Hope

We’re taking a deep dive into the fourteenth chapter of Final Fantasy VII Remake with the wonderful development team who brought the game to life!

By Sunil Godhania

This year is Final Fantasy VII’s 25th Anniversary - and the celebrations have begun!

As part of the ongoing festivities, the development team behind Final Fantasy VII Remake have graciously agreed to dive deeper into the game than ever before.

We've been revisiting their thoughts, memories, and anecdotes from the creation of the game. Check out the first and most recent chapters here:

If you've yet to play Final Fantasy VII Remake, go and play it now, and if you read on...

...please beware of spoilers.

With that warning out of the way, let’s mosey…

Why did the team decide to include three separate resolution scenes (with Barret, Tifa or Aerith) at the beginning of Chapter 14?

We decided to include this scene showing the characters renewed determination in the second half of Remake to give players the same kind of experience as with the popular date scene from the original FFVII, which branched depending on which of the characters you had the highest affinity level with.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))

The pedometer materia is a nice idea (having to take a certain number of steps while equipped to level it up). How did that make it into the game?

This was done because chapter 14 requires the player to walk around a lot of different areas, so we wanted to make all that walking as exciting as possible, not just with the story and setting, but also having something in the game system that contributed to it.

Teruki Endo (Battle Director)

I was able to spot Kyrie a few times throughout FFVII Remake, but more emphasis is put on her in the early part of this chapter. How was her inclusion in this chapter (and other sections of the game) decided upon? Did she ever have a larger role in the game that was edited down?

Kyrie was originally a character from the novel "The Kids Are Alright". We had her appear innocuously in the early chapters and then as a memorable presence in chapter 14, giving another perspective from a slum dweller. She does appear in other quests as well, so players impressions of the character might change depending on how they play the game.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))

The scene where Barret, Tifa and Aerith make their decision really brought home how the facial animation is one of the most important elements used to increase the drama in the game. Applying these kinds of subtle expressions to the huge volume of cut scenes in the game must be no small task, so how is this handled on the technical side?

For cut scenes we actually do the facial motion capture at the same time as the body motion capture. A team of dedicated facial animators then takes that data and uses it to build up the facial expressions, aligning them for the different characters in FFVII Remake.

The motion actors and voice actors are different people, so we have to rebuild the lip synching almost completely from scratch. This is done using a tool that automatically sets up lip motions and then the animations are further refined to align with the actual voices.

The things that the animators create have not really changed, but we have put a lot of effort into allowing them to focus on the detailed creative work and automating the remaining work needed.

Akira Iwasawa (Facial Director)

How much extra work needed to go into creating the pull-up mini-game after developing the squats mini-game? Or were these created the other way around?

Also, beating Jules at the pull-ups is one of the hardest challenges in FFVII Remake. Did you mean it to be so challenging?

The squats and pull-ups mini games were both planned and developed together, so there were no special extras added later for the pull-ups or anything like that. There was one set of combined specifications that would be suitable for everything in both mini games.

I understand that there were varying opinions about the difficulty of the pull-ups game, and I made the decision to adjust it to be the hardest challenge during the final part of the development period. The contest with Jules is not compulsory for game progression and it is the last mini-game before the finale, so I felt that it would be more impactful to make this the ultimate challenge rather than just having it as something forgettable with a middling difficulty.

I had followed comments on social media about the pull-ups game and they were exactly what I had expected, so personally I am satisfied at how it turned out.

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director(Game Design / Programming))

I was delighted by the inclusion of chocobos in this chapter, I didn't expect to be able to travel around Midgar with them. Did the team ever consider other modes of transportation?

Chocobo Sam's personality was so strong that we had decided from early on in development that we wanted to use chocobos as a fast travel mechanic.

However, we ultimately put chocobo stops in more places than we had originally planned for, in order to make things more convenient for the structure of the side quests that appear in chapter 14.

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director(Game Design / Programming))

There are multiple versions of the chocobo theme used for fast travel here. Why did you include so many

We made it possible to hear lots of different chocobo themes because of Mr. Toriyama's idea that it would be more interesting and fun if they played randomly throughout the game.

Keiji Kawamori (Music Supervisor)

This chapter sees you revisit many locations – how did you ensure these areas still felt fresh and exciting to explore?

We increased the number of fast travel points and took care with where the side quests became available in order to avoid having the player go back and forth between the Sector 5 and 6 slums.

We also added the pedometer materia to make walking around the slums to complete side quests as fun as possible.

The biggest role of having optional side quests in the scene before heading to the Shinra Building was to give the player the feeling that they could make the decision to proceed on to the final part of the story when they wanted to.

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director(Game Design / Programming))

How did you decide which battles to include here - did you consider adding more fights?

In addition to the Coliseum, we also had Chadley's VR battle simulator, so we planned and decided on the different fight cards for them together.

We considered which opponents to offer based on getting an even spread of various different enemy types to fight, as well as which combinations we wanted to see together.

Teruki Endo (Battle Director)

Leslie plays a very important role in the story of this chapter, so how was his character designed and created? He was brought in from the novel, so please could you let us in on the particulars of how he came to feature in the game?

Leslie is also a character from the novel “The Kids Are Alright”, and the novels and other content outside of the game are a part of the FFVII world too, so he was included as another person who lives in Midgar and is involved with Cloud and friends.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this chapter of Final Fantasy VII Remake Revisited and are looking forward to learning more from behind the scenes of the game over the coming months.

Make sure you share this article with your friends on social media and we hope you’re looking forward to Chapter 15 next week!

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is available on PS5, Steam and Epic Games Store while Final Fantasy VII Remake is available on PS4.

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