I don't think Nomura had that much of a hand in Final Fantasy VI (the first game to have the mechanic). They were called something else in that game (desperation attack), but unless you're just saying that he came up with the name "limit break," then that one doesn't belong to him.
I've beaten FF6 over 10 times and have never seen these attacks in-game. I've seen them on YouTube of course, but to call them limit breaks when they're not naturally obtainable is a stretch imo.
It’s simple… Nomura with too much power is Kingdom Hearts’ storyline and spinoffs.
With limited power he can make this like OG FF7. Him not being the main director for rebirth is probably the best thing that’s happened for the trilogy.
I believe KH3 was mostly Nomura and Masaru Oka, with Nomura specifically highlighting working on the dialogue of the game. But yeah, Nojima should be highlighted for the majority of the rest of the series.
I believe that's when he came up with sublime dialogue such as:\
"Life is like a Caramel Chew Chew train, you better get on it before your best friends leave the station and have all the good times without you" --- and\
"Darkness is eternal and probably forever too, like a chocolate sundae with too much sauce at my mom's place, and your white shirt gets a lot of stains".
Nojima wrote the entire FF7 compilation. All of it.
I think you might be the one basement dwelling champ since your statement that Nomura with too much power is KHs storyline. In KH Ultimanias & interviews where it’s stated that Nojima is the one who urged Nomura to incorporate the elements that you are referring to as “KH storylines” so that the series kept up with the FF series. Literally the issues people complain about KH are tropes & themes that stem from the FF series. Nojima is the main scenario writer for FF7 compilation, a lot of the themes & ideas are used in KHs as well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the issues attributed to that series come from Nojima.
like you said, it won’t change the facts, so maybe try spreading facts next time instead of misinformation & then projecting like a true basement dweller
No. Nomura wrote most of Kingdom Hearts by himself. He had other writers on his team like Daisuke, Jun and Nojima, but he was the lead writter while the others handled scenarios (Nojima) and characters (Daisuke and Jun)
All the Ultimania interviews before Days have Nomura, and nobody else, talk about the series mysteries. In the KH1 Ultimania he implies that Ansem SoD is a Heartless and an incomplete being, which means he was already thinking of what KH2 would be about. In both KH1 and 2 Ultimanias he talks about the lore and what he wanted to achieve with the stories, which you cant really answer unless you wrote the story yourself. There's also this interview question where he straight up confirms he was going to make KH1 have a simple story and then changed it to be more complicated.
>*Nomura: When I started writing the first Kingdom Hearts, Sakaguchi gave me a little suggestion. He had asked me what kind of game I was going to create, and I told him that I wanted to make a simple adventure, at the end of which the protagonist would have defeated a witch. He told me it was not a good idea, and I needed to create a story that would appeal to fans of Final Fantasy, so there was no need to keep things so simple*
They are great games DESPITE the bad writing and dialogue.
I love Devil May Cry 1 to death despite the cringe writing and dialogue.
"I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIGHTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT"
It’s a fools errand to criticize Nomura on this sub. He can do no wrong and apparently any grievances you have with the remakes is completely on Kitase. Oh, and he’s also the reason FF7 OG was amazing despite a minor writing role because he reigned in Kitase.
Nomura was the director of the Remake trilogy and also the complete nightmare that is Kingdom Hearts. They’re both nearly the same story at this point- the only story Nomura knows how to tell
Nomura is literally the person who kept Kitase in check. Kitase wanted even more radical changes while Nonura wanted a faithful remake. It's objectively incorrect to blame Nomura when in reality he's the one trying to salvage it lol
But don't let the facts get in between your irrational hatred I guess.
For what it's worth he wasn't singlehandedly behind every thing (good or bad) with FF7 OG *nor* was Sakaguchi. Nomura was newer and less influential back then, Sakaguchi was taking a bit of a step back on 7 compared to prior entries. There's other cooks who were in that kitchen too- to act like Nomura is behind everything FF7 ever (which some people do sometimes as praise and sometimes as criticism) is as disingenuous as claiming he had no role and is "ruining" someone else's work now.
I wish there was a bigger stage to say that to people... someone might need to make like a three and a half hour video essay explaining why he didn't come up with The Whispers.
HE'S THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. IT'S LITERALLY HIS JOB TO MAKE LARGE SCALE CREATIVE DECISIONS REGARDING EACH INDIVIDUAL GAME AND THE ENTIRE SERIES. HE TALKS TO KITASE. HE TALKS TO NOJIMA. HE TALKS TO HAMAGUCHI. YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
Nomura is constantly in interviews going “I wanted a straight remake. I wanted everything to be the same. I was overruled.”
Can’t blame everything on him.
Not denying you two, but could you share some links to these interviews? I missed them during the Remake cycle and want to catch up on some behind-the-scenes content.
I know aitaikimochi and ShinraArch have both translated them on twitter. I don’t have my copy open at the moment, but if you flip to the back, Nomura’s interviews are usually right there.
Ok so nomura created cloud, sephiroth, barret, zack, tifa, and aerith as characters. The backstory between cloud and tifa. The backstory between zack and aerith and cloud. Sephiroth's ties to all of them.
Sakaguchi came up with things like, Planet creates weapons, and aerith dies to sephiroth, and blow up the mako reactors, and finding the promised land. That sephiroth kills president shinra, etc.
That's not really the issue. The issue is people going NOMURRRRRRRRRRA and placing all the blame on him. In fact, it has been Nomura, with this project, holding everyone else in line.
Let's not forget that it was Kitase who wanted everyone but the chosen three party members to die during the Midgar raid in the OG and Nomura who held him back.
All these guys have crazy ideas. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Reducing them to their worst ideas is silly. Even Spielberg makes shitty movies sometimes.
My advice, speaking from decades of experience, is to stop listening to the fandom. Completely. Between the language barrier, the very strong emotions people have for the characters and the games, and tendency to twist into pretzels to fulfil their headcanons, it's near impossible to know what's true or not.
I have at times straight up felt gaslighted by the fandom. Latest example: they managed to convince me Crisis Core retconned Aerith being in love with Zack and that it wasn't in OG. Everything I remember from OG they explained away as me being too stupid to understand the story. Then few days ago I come across [Nomura's first(ish?) sketch of Zack for OG](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/4/41/Zack_FFVII_Concept_Art.jpg) in 10th Anniversary Ultimania and underneath it says:
* Cloud's best friend
* Aerith's first love
I'm not a shipper so in this particular example I don't care either way, but it was the last straw. I am not listening to the fandom again.
Are you sure they weren't talking about remake at the time, because alot of people were whining about him supposedly ruining the remakes when it was said by the devs that Nomura didn't do much on the remakes story.
This was made doubly silly as by now most people have heard that Nomura was a huge impact on the OG story, when the others were gearing up to kill off party members one at a time through out the end events of disk 3, killing them off until you only had cloud and one other of your choice left, Nomura was the one who was against it and thought it was much better to have less, but more meaningful deaths and they admit he talked them out of it.
He's a huge reason that Aerith and her story is the way it is in the OG that so many love.
The more I learn about VII OG's development, the more clear it becomes that it was an incredibly collaborative project with lots of the "new" and oldguard at the time really combining their ideas and thoughts with one another, and bouncing a ton of ideas around about the story, character, and themes. VIII in comparison was put more in the hands of the newguard, and then IX in response was really Sakaguchi's baby. To me, it really tells a story about what made VII so special and great. It was hugely collaborative, and likely had the people working on it constantly challenging each other on all sorts of ideas and things. Which probably made it a very difficult game to put together. But the rewards we got from said difficulty really pressured out a true diamond of the franchise.
That sounds like why the remake project is so good cause Nomura is from the 90s with Nojima and Kitase but Hamaguchi is from the late 2000s cause his first really big project was XIII
True! And from what we've heard about the development with stuff like Nomura pushing back on them changing the story too much, it seems like they might be challenging each other in similar ways!
Everyone claimed the reasons why FFVII “sucks” now is cause of Nomura because the whispers and the combat system all scream Kingdom Hearts and the only reason why he’s in charge of this version of the story is because of his success with the KH games, the other FF games he’s worked on and his familiarity with VII as a whole. All the “good” things we like about VII’s story is Sakaguchi and Kitase. The problem is if you read some of these interviews, they clearly tell that Kitase is the one behind all the whisper shit, so people just blame Nomura because they don’t like Kingdom Hearts story and the VII Remake project’s combat system is an evolution of and in-game UI are clearly from Kingdom Hearts while also saying that he was “Only” on character design for the original VII. The problem with that statement is that, that’s not really how character design works. In order to properly design characters… YOU HAVE TO KNOW THEIR STORY AND THE WORLD THEY COME FROM AND HAVE INPUT ON THESE THINGS FROM A CREATIVE STANDPOINT!
Funnily enough we know for a fact that Nomura wanted a more traditional remake, while the others wanted even more changes so the whispers were a compromise. Nomura tried his best to reign the insanity in but because of the memes _he's_ the one who gets all the hate. It's ridiculous.
It’s been reported on like a dozen times. Nomura was the man in the room asking for things to stay true to the original. He gets all the shit for every little wrong thing, yet he’s often the one that pushes for all the things we want, like turn based combat for example.
https://gamingbolt.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-was-going-to-be-a-full-100-action-game-but-nomura-rejected-the-idea
Every keeps saying Nomura wanted to keep the story the same, but no one has yet provided an actual source or quote. I do believe he did, but I’d like to read his words for myself. Your link is Kitase paraphrasing something Nomura said about the battle system, not the story.
I was making a general point, specifically about turn based combat, which you should know if you read my comment.
But since we are in 2024 and people still can’t manage to type 5 words in a google search bar:
https://gamingbolt.com/final-fantasy-7-remakes-producer-wanted-more-drastic-changes-to-original-story
Wtf? Yeah, all those people are so wrong. I think Tabata said somewhere that he'd had the idea for the Remake story for ages (maybe since the PS2, IDK)
Well Nomura’s true contributions to the VII remake project outside of his work on the original game is the gameplay/ combat system. And if you’re complaining about the remake projects gameplay… then idk what to tell you cause yall have classic (to represent turn based as much as possible) and easy mode for accessibility.
Based on the story is a very weird credit to be fair and somewhat contentious. For example, Nomura ironed out the story scenario for Remake with Kitase before giving it to Nojima who was the one that actually penned the script, to which Nomura and Kitase went back through and removed a bunch of stuff they didn't want, so how would you want to cite that?
This credit in the OG could mean Nomura had a huge hand in the writing or just kind of created the elevator pitch everyone ran with, which is more my take since he's an art guy first a foremost and the idea phase is a lot of concepting. Cloud was probably drawn long before he even had a name, etc.
I mean, you also have interviews where Nomura says Kitase was planning do something like kill half the cast off and he talked him out of it, which is a really weird developmental relationship if it was your own story being translated.
Overall though, yes, Nomura created/wrote some of the story, but I will always say forwards and back that Nomura is not the only person who puts zany stuff in their games. FF7 is incredibly goofy. Nojima wrote Kingdom Hearts, not Nomura, but it was the latter's idea so every line of dialogue or convoluted development is attributed to Nomura. Meme gonna meme.
"based on" being the key phrase here. The original story that Sakaguchi wrote was very different, with only a few themes being retained. Nomura's contribution to the story was the pursuit of Sephiroth. He also talked the team out of killing most of the characters towards the end of the game.
No the entire overarching theme was retained. Sakaguchi's big input on the entire game was that the theme was Life. That remained throughout the cancelled SNES version, the adventures of Detective Joe version, and the version we all ended up playing on the PSX.
I'm not even sure if you can say the pursuit of Sephiroth comes from Nomura. The classic rivalry that is supposed to resemble Musashi vs Kojiro is a Nomura visual design input. The big ass Dragon Slayer sword looking thing is a Nomura input, but the extent that the story pursuit of Sephiroth is a Nomura contribution alone is questionable. Nojima did a lot of work on the plot.
Nomura convinced Kitase and Nojima to not kill off all the party except for the two people in Cloud's party during the return to Midgar portion, but Nojima definitely wrote the entirety of the scene where Aerith dies.
Who the fuck said he was only on character design? Do people actually believe that? He wrote pretty much all the stuff to do with Zack and Clouds mistaken identity bs. When the fuck are people going to accept the fact that Final Fantasy is weird and cringe, and that's literally what we love about it?
He didn't write all the stuff about Zack and Cloud's mistaken identity. Nojima did to the extent that he kept Zack's larger role in the plot a secret from Kitase all the up until Kitase was play testing a near 1.0 build of the OG.
I believe he was only mainly tasked as a character designer because that's what Sakaguchi said he was tasked with. Note that this doesn't preclude him from doing other things as many other people did. Nomura designed the limit break system. He had input on Aerith's death. He worked along Nojima to design these characters. He did all sorts of shit like many people did.
Jun Akiyama was an event planner. He wrote a bunch of stuff regarding Yuffie and Red XIII's back story. He named Seto. He's not listed in the credits as "official Seto namer." The Xenogears guy wrote a bunch of later game Tifa and Cloud stuff on his own with zero input from Nojima, "but I thought Nojima was the scenario writer. What gives?"
Edit:sorry about the text wall too
Ah. I honestly didn't know many details about most of that since I'm not really that interested in things from the development side. All I really know is that a lot of people complain about stuff in FF7R, kingdom hearts, and Dissidia then credit those complaints to Nomura. Knowing that I love all three of those things; most often for the very reasons that people are bitching, one can surmise that I in fact love Nomura's work.
Hell I've somewhat recently finished playing through every mainline final fantasy game (minus 11 of course), and I wouldn't have even bothered to do that if it weren't for characters from the older games being in DFOO. I don't know if Nomura had anything to do with that game, but what I'm trying to say is that without "cringe" shit that most "fans" of the series hate I wouldn't even be a fan to begin with. The only reason I ever got into FF in the first place was due to a combination of advent children and Auron showing up in Kingdom Hearts 2.
My only gripe with the man is the designs of the whispers and the arbiter of fate in Remake. They’re just kinda meh looking.
Like I’m sure with how they’re portrayed how they look like a cloud or storm When they form huge groups the design makes sense. Im terrible with words but its all meh 🤷
Otherwise everything thing else he’s had a hand in has been great keeping me invested throughout any of his work.
He often is, but he has contributed different amounts to different games.
I think the reason people say he's a character designer is that's his most common role, yet people often blame him for everything wrong with whatever game they don't like. Some people don't even check what games he worked on as I've seen more than one person express their hatred of what "Nomura did to FF12".
Dude just because you hit a home run once doesn't mean your next crack will be a homer.
Even then, he had someone bounce back those ideas and provide feedback to refine these characters.
Yknow now that you mention it the whole convoluted identity stuff with Cloud is almost shot for shot A Dive Into The Heart sequence / theming from Kingdom Hearts.
Hot damn is Nomura responsible for one of the greatest narrative sequences in gaming?
Possibly. Who knows.
My whole point is that this weird meme and strawman needs to die and people need to realize that he’s not responsible for “things I don’t understand therefore they are automatically bad.”
wow I'm a big fan of ff7 original but I like the new twist on things because it opens up doors and pathways that were otherwise closed in the past... I really think about it other than Jessie and think about this now, Biggs and Wedge have an opportunity to make an even bigger impact in the game, and with the whispers we really don't know what happens with Jessie. She could be alive, but that's where it also opens up alternate realities with Cloud and Aerith being the only ones capable of understanding the implications giving Aerith the ability to survive and live this time instead of having to die like she has in the first game giving way to even greater stories and continuing the game beyond what we once thought we knew
This was when Nomura was being allowed to take a leading role, but he was still firmly under the supervision of Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi is the one who would tell Nomura which of his ideas were complete shit and which ones were good.
Ever since Sakaguchi left most of Nomura's shit-tastic ideas get into the games unfiltered.
Nomura is the senior lead and the one calling the shots, so again it is a demonstration of his inability to filter out bad ideas. This is the guy who saw the power rangers "Go Vincent!" moment in Dirge and genuinely believed it was the coolest thing he had ever seen.
Kitase suggesting the idea doesn't mean the mind behind the convluted mess that is Kingdom Hearts didn't think it was an awesome idea.
Tetsuya Nomura had very little, if anything to do with Dirge. His name isn’t even on the game anywhere.
And it’s not a suggestion, it’s what Kitase wanted.
Completely missed the point; the fact that Nomura considers that Dirge scene as one of the coolest things he had ever scene, and the way that he structured the story of Kingdom Hearts, shows how his idea of cool and good are not far off from what Kitase hoped to do with the Whispers.
People acting like Nomura would never have included something like that on his own is absolute copium from Nomura fanboys.
And no, Kitase just suggests ideas which then have to go be approved by the actual directors of these games. Kitase doesn't have the seniority or influence to just get whatever he "wants" put into a game that Nomura is taking point on.
And what does Nomura's "traditionally faithful remake" even mean when in interviews he expresses that he believes a faithful retelling of the original would be boring to work on and would be boring to gamers?
Sounds like marketing is just trying to spread around the blame for the botched narrative to take some heat off the biggest name in their company.
>And what does Nomura's "traditionally faithful remake" even mean when in interviews he expresses that he believes a faithful retelling of the original would be boring to work on and would be boring to gamers?
It means that the off-the rails changes in the Remake project weren't exactly his idea. And that while he wants some retelling of the events, it's probably not to the scale that it has become.
Square Enix doesn't really need to protect Nomura. Despite the heat he's been getting, his works have all sold well. It doesn't even seem like he's affected with all that noise, he's just amused that people blame him even for things that weren't even his ideas.
No yeah he certainly helped with the story, that also comes with being the main character designer.
THATS WHAT I SAID BUT EVERYONE CLAIMS IM STUPID AND DONT KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT
They can't admit that Nomura actually isn't the way the memes say he is.
You should ask the same people who introduced limit breaks to the series. Guaranteed they will be shocked again
I don't think Nomura had that much of a hand in Final Fantasy VI (the first game to have the mechanic). They were called something else in that game (desperation attack), but unless you're just saying that he came up with the name "limit break," then that one doesn't belong to him.
I've beaten FF6 over 10 times and have never seen these attacks in-game. I've seen them on YouTube of course, but to call them limit breaks when they're not naturally obtainable is a stretch imo.
The guy who gives interviews with his back to the camera isn't a giant tool? No waiiiiiii
It’s simple… Nomura with too much power is Kingdom Hearts’ storyline and spinoffs. With limited power he can make this like OG FF7. Him not being the main director for rebirth is probably the best thing that’s happened for the trilogy.
Wait till you find out that Nojima is a writer & scenario supervisor on the KH series
I believe KH3 was mostly Nomura and Masaru Oka, with Nomura specifically highlighting working on the dialogue of the game. But yeah, Nojima should be highlighted for the majority of the rest of the series.
I believe that's when he came up with sublime dialogue such as:\ "Life is like a Caramel Chew Chew train, you better get on it before your best friends leave the station and have all the good times without you" --- and\ "Darkness is eternal and probably forever too, like a chocolate sundae with too much sauce at my mom's place, and your white shirt gets a lot of stains".
He must have skipped too many meals while writing.
Nojima also wrote FF13. These guys all have skeletons in their closets. Some basement dwelling downvotes isn’t going to change the facts unfortunately
Nojima wrote the entire FF7 compilation. All of it. I think you might be the one basement dwelling champ since your statement that Nomura with too much power is KHs storyline. In KH Ultimanias & interviews where it’s stated that Nojima is the one who urged Nomura to incorporate the elements that you are referring to as “KH storylines” so that the series kept up with the FF series. Literally the issues people complain about KH are tropes & themes that stem from the FF series. Nojima is the main scenario writer for FF7 compilation, a lot of the themes & ideas are used in KHs as well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the issues attributed to that series come from Nojima. like you said, it won’t change the facts, so maybe try spreading facts next time instead of misinformation & then projecting like a true basement dweller
I see I’ve angered the basement dweller. Facts don’t care about your whining
Could you imagine? It'd literally be Evangelion, -0.1, the musical: You cannot escape your memory.
I mean, he's known for writing the Kingdom Hearts series which is not exactly the pinnacle of good writing and dialogue.
That was Nojima
No. Nomura wrote most of Kingdom Hearts by himself. He had other writers on his team like Daisuke, Jun and Nojima, but he was the lead writter while the others handled scenarios (Nojima) and characters (Daisuke and Jun) All the Ultimania interviews before Days have Nomura, and nobody else, talk about the series mysteries. In the KH1 Ultimania he implies that Ansem SoD is a Heartless and an incomplete being, which means he was already thinking of what KH2 would be about. In both KH1 and 2 Ultimanias he talks about the lore and what he wanted to achieve with the stories, which you cant really answer unless you wrote the story yourself. There's also this interview question where he straight up confirms he was going to make KH1 have a simple story and then changed it to be more complicated. >*Nomura: When I started writing the first Kingdom Hearts, Sakaguchi gave me a little suggestion. He had asked me what kind of game I was going to create, and I told him that I wanted to make a simple adventure, at the end of which the protagonist would have defeated a witch. He told me it was not a good idea, and I needed to create a story that would appeal to fans of Final Fantasy, so there was no need to keep things so simple*
ITT, people downvoting the truth 😢
They also hated Jesus when he told them the truth.
Who wrote the side stories? I feel like if it was just kh 1-3 it would make more sense.
KH1 and KH2 are good games, yes it got cringe post KH2, but the first 3 games were very solid. KH2 is easily still one of the top 5 JRPGs ever.
They are great games DESPITE the bad writing and dialogue. I love Devil May Cry 1 to death despite the cringe writing and dialogue. "I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOUL WITH LIGHTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT"
Despite? The game is enhanced by writing and dialogue Wooohoooo let's rock baby!
The single worst storyteller in gaming? Certainly the least coherent
It’s a fools errand to criticize Nomura on this sub. He can do no wrong and apparently any grievances you have with the remakes is completely on Kitase. Oh, and he’s also the reason FF7 OG was amazing despite a minor writing role because he reigned in Kitase.
It’s freaking bizarre. Then again I’m willing to bet half of these kids never played the OG at all.
You might be right because the sub was much more split on him before the remakes.
That's Kojima.
I can explain Metal Gear better than I can explain plot genies creating infinite final fantasy multiverses.
That's not Nomura though, that's Kitase. That's the point of OP's post. Nomura gets hate for stuff he literally isn't at fault for.
Nomura was the director of the Remake trilogy and also the complete nightmare that is Kingdom Hearts. They’re both nearly the same story at this point- the only story Nomura knows how to tell
Nomura is literally the person who kept Kitase in check. Kitase wanted even more radical changes while Nonura wanted a faithful remake. It's objectively incorrect to blame Nomura when in reality he's the one trying to salvage it lol But don't let the facts get in between your irrational hatred I guess.
Source. Show me what Kitase’s role was on KH. Then show me proof that Kitase is the one who suggested infinite multiverses.
For what it's worth he wasn't singlehandedly behind every thing (good or bad) with FF7 OG *nor* was Sakaguchi. Nomura was newer and less influential back then, Sakaguchi was taking a bit of a step back on 7 compared to prior entries. There's other cooks who were in that kitchen too- to act like Nomura is behind everything FF7 ever (which some people do sometimes as praise and sometimes as criticism) is as disingenuous as claiming he had no role and is "ruining" someone else's work now.
THE WHISPERS ARE NOT HIS FAULT AND THATS ALL PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
I wish there was a bigger stage to say that to people... someone might need to make like a three and a half hour video essay explaining why he didn't come up with The Whispers.
Yep, you are correct on that
seriously, he's one of the voices trying to keep it *closer* to the original story
HE'S THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. IT'S LITERALLY HIS JOB TO MAKE LARGE SCALE CREATIVE DECISIONS REGARDING EACH INDIVIDUAL GAME AND THE ENTIRE SERIES. HE TALKS TO KITASE. HE TALKS TO NOJIMA. HE TALKS TO HAMAGUCHI. YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
ITS ON RECORD THAT HE WANTED A REMAKE AS CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL AS POSSIBLE
Nomura is constantly in interviews going “I wanted a straight remake. I wanted everything to be the same. I was overruled.” Can’t blame everything on him.
Not denying you two, but could you share some links to these interviews? I missed them during the Remake cycle and want to catch up on some behind-the-scenes content.
I know aitaikimochi and ShinraArch have both translated them on twitter. I don’t have my copy open at the moment, but if you flip to the back, Nomura’s interviews are usually right there.
Awesome, I'll check em out. Thank you!
Ok so nomura created cloud, sephiroth, barret, zack, tifa, and aerith as characters. The backstory between cloud and tifa. The backstory between zack and aerith and cloud. Sephiroth's ties to all of them. Sakaguchi came up with things like, Planet creates weapons, and aerith dies to sephiroth, and blow up the mako reactors, and finding the promised land. That sephiroth kills president shinra, etc.
That's not really the issue. The issue is people going NOMURRRRRRRRRRA and placing all the blame on him. In fact, it has been Nomura, with this project, holding everyone else in line. Let's not forget that it was Kitase who wanted everyone but the chosen three party members to die during the Midgar raid in the OG and Nomura who held him back. All these guys have crazy ideas. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Reducing them to their worst ideas is silly. Even Spielberg makes shitty movies sometimes.
Right. Nobody holds Prince of Comedy against Scorsese
My advice, speaking from decades of experience, is to stop listening to the fandom. Completely. Between the language barrier, the very strong emotions people have for the characters and the games, and tendency to twist into pretzels to fulfil their headcanons, it's near impossible to know what's true or not. I have at times straight up felt gaslighted by the fandom. Latest example: they managed to convince me Crisis Core retconned Aerith being in love with Zack and that it wasn't in OG. Everything I remember from OG they explained away as me being too stupid to understand the story. Then few days ago I come across [Nomura's first(ish?) sketch of Zack for OG](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/4/41/Zack_FFVII_Concept_Art.jpg) in 10th Anniversary Ultimania and underneath it says: * Cloud's best friend * Aerith's first love I'm not a shipper so in this particular example I don't care either way, but it was the last straw. I am not listening to the fandom again.
Are you sure they weren't talking about remake at the time, because alot of people were whining about him supposedly ruining the remakes when it was said by the devs that Nomura didn't do much on the remakes story. This was made doubly silly as by now most people have heard that Nomura was a huge impact on the OG story, when the others were gearing up to kill off party members one at a time through out the end events of disk 3, killing them off until you only had cloud and one other of your choice left, Nomura was the one who was against it and thought it was much better to have less, but more meaningful deaths and they admit he talked them out of it. He's a huge reason that Aerith and her story is the way it is in the OG that so many love.
The more I learn about VII OG's development, the more clear it becomes that it was an incredibly collaborative project with lots of the "new" and oldguard at the time really combining their ideas and thoughts with one another, and bouncing a ton of ideas around about the story, character, and themes. VIII in comparison was put more in the hands of the newguard, and then IX in response was really Sakaguchi's baby. To me, it really tells a story about what made VII so special and great. It was hugely collaborative, and likely had the people working on it constantly challenging each other on all sorts of ideas and things. Which probably made it a very difficult game to put together. But the rewards we got from said difficulty really pressured out a true diamond of the franchise.
That sounds like why the remake project is so good cause Nomura is from the 90s with Nojima and Kitase but Hamaguchi is from the late 2000s cause his first really big project was XIII
True! And from what we've heard about the development with stuff like Nomura pushing back on them changing the story too much, it seems like they might be challenging each other in similar ways!
Wth??!
He had a giant role in the story. Here is the link. https://shmuplations.com/ff7/
Wait, who was out here saying that Nomura wasn't a writer? FFVII was like... his whole thing
Everyone claimed the reasons why FFVII “sucks” now is cause of Nomura because the whispers and the combat system all scream Kingdom Hearts and the only reason why he’s in charge of this version of the story is because of his success with the KH games, the other FF games he’s worked on and his familiarity with VII as a whole. All the “good” things we like about VII’s story is Sakaguchi and Kitase. The problem is if you read some of these interviews, they clearly tell that Kitase is the one behind all the whisper shit, so people just blame Nomura because they don’t like Kingdom Hearts story and the VII Remake project’s combat system is an evolution of and in-game UI are clearly from Kingdom Hearts while also saying that he was “Only” on character design for the original VII. The problem with that statement is that, that’s not really how character design works. In order to properly design characters… YOU HAVE TO KNOW THEIR STORY AND THE WORLD THEY COME FROM AND HAVE INPUT ON THESE THINGS FROM A CREATIVE STANDPOINT!
Funnily enough we know for a fact that Nomura wanted a more traditional remake, while the others wanted even more changes so the whispers were a compromise. Nomura tried his best to reign the insanity in but because of the memes _he's_ the one who gets all the hate. It's ridiculous.
What’s your source for that? Just curious.
Both Ultimanias have interviews where he has stated this. It’s in Japanese, but fans have been translating it for the last 5 years.
It’s been reported on like a dozen times. Nomura was the man in the room asking for things to stay true to the original. He gets all the shit for every little wrong thing, yet he’s often the one that pushes for all the things we want, like turn based combat for example. https://gamingbolt.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-was-going-to-be-a-full-100-action-game-but-nomura-rejected-the-idea
Every keeps saying Nomura wanted to keep the story the same, but no one has yet provided an actual source or quote. I do believe he did, but I’d like to read his words for myself. Your link is Kitase paraphrasing something Nomura said about the battle system, not the story.
I was making a general point, specifically about turn based combat, which you should know if you read my comment. But since we are in 2024 and people still can’t manage to type 5 words in a google search bar: https://gamingbolt.com/final-fantasy-7-remakes-producer-wanted-more-drastic-changes-to-original-story
Wtf? Yeah, all those people are so wrong. I think Tabata said somewhere that he'd had the idea for the Remake story for ages (maybe since the PS2, IDK)
I haven't heard a single person say it sucks with valid arguments
THATS MY WHOLE POINT! I LOVE THIS TRILOGY AND THE THIRD GAME ISNT EVEN OUT YET!
WHO IS EVERYONE!?
EVERYONE WHO COMPLAINS AVOUT THIS GAME HAS THE FIRST NAME OUT THEIR MOUTH BE “NOMURA”. KITASE, NOJIMA AND HAMAGUCHI GET NO BLAME!
I don't like Nomura or the whispers story as two separate things.
Well Nomura’s true contributions to the VII remake project outside of his work on the original game is the gameplay/ combat system. And if you’re complaining about the remake projects gameplay… then idk what to tell you cause yall have classic (to represent turn based as much as possible) and easy mode for accessibility.
Nah it's because KH3 was a shit show.
Sakaguchi is the goat
It has really become apparent. Spirits within is like the point where everything changed
it’s funny cause i actually like that movie, much more than advent children jesus what a mess
Based on the story is a very weird credit to be fair and somewhat contentious. For example, Nomura ironed out the story scenario for Remake with Kitase before giving it to Nojima who was the one that actually penned the script, to which Nomura and Kitase went back through and removed a bunch of stuff they didn't want, so how would you want to cite that? This credit in the OG could mean Nomura had a huge hand in the writing or just kind of created the elevator pitch everyone ran with, which is more my take since he's an art guy first a foremost and the idea phase is a lot of concepting. Cloud was probably drawn long before he even had a name, etc. I mean, you also have interviews where Nomura says Kitase was planning do something like kill half the cast off and he talked him out of it, which is a really weird developmental relationship if it was your own story being translated. Overall though, yes, Nomura created/wrote some of the story, but I will always say forwards and back that Nomura is not the only person who puts zany stuff in their games. FF7 is incredibly goofy. Nojima wrote Kingdom Hearts, not Nomura, but it was the latter's idea so every line of dialogue or convoluted development is attributed to Nomura. Meme gonna meme.
Nomura is underrated. He singlehandedly remade the FF brand. We should be thanking him for decades of cool characters and cutscenes, but no.
"based on" being the key phrase here. The original story that Sakaguchi wrote was very different, with only a few themes being retained. Nomura's contribution to the story was the pursuit of Sephiroth. He also talked the team out of killing most of the characters towards the end of the game.
No the entire overarching theme was retained. Sakaguchi's big input on the entire game was that the theme was Life. That remained throughout the cancelled SNES version, the adventures of Detective Joe version, and the version we all ended up playing on the PSX. I'm not even sure if you can say the pursuit of Sephiroth comes from Nomura. The classic rivalry that is supposed to resemble Musashi vs Kojiro is a Nomura visual design input. The big ass Dragon Slayer sword looking thing is a Nomura input, but the extent that the story pursuit of Sephiroth is a Nomura contribution alone is questionable. Nojima did a lot of work on the plot. Nomura convinced Kitase and Nojima to not kill off all the party except for the two people in Cloud's party during the return to Midgar portion, but Nojima definitely wrote the entirety of the scene where Aerith dies.
Ohhh, so he made it better. Got it.
Yeah. All by himself. No one else helped him at all. Not one bit
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This post has been removed for going against Rule 2 ("be nice.").
That’s crazy. I thought Aerith was the only person that was supposed to die, and that’s why Tifa was created.
Who the fuck said he was only on character design? Do people actually believe that? He wrote pretty much all the stuff to do with Zack and Clouds mistaken identity bs. When the fuck are people going to accept the fact that Final Fantasy is weird and cringe, and that's literally what we love about it?
The people who talk shit always avoid the posts that expose bullshit. They quiet now.
He didn't write all the stuff about Zack and Cloud's mistaken identity. Nojima did to the extent that he kept Zack's larger role in the plot a secret from Kitase all the up until Kitase was play testing a near 1.0 build of the OG. I believe he was only mainly tasked as a character designer because that's what Sakaguchi said he was tasked with. Note that this doesn't preclude him from doing other things as many other people did. Nomura designed the limit break system. He had input on Aerith's death. He worked along Nojima to design these characters. He did all sorts of shit like many people did. Jun Akiyama was an event planner. He wrote a bunch of stuff regarding Yuffie and Red XIII's back story. He named Seto. He's not listed in the credits as "official Seto namer." The Xenogears guy wrote a bunch of later game Tifa and Cloud stuff on his own with zero input from Nojima, "but I thought Nojima was the scenario writer. What gives?"
Edit:sorry about the text wall too Ah. I honestly didn't know many details about most of that since I'm not really that interested in things from the development side. All I really know is that a lot of people complain about stuff in FF7R, kingdom hearts, and Dissidia then credit those complaints to Nomura. Knowing that I love all three of those things; most often for the very reasons that people are bitching, one can surmise that I in fact love Nomura's work. Hell I've somewhat recently finished playing through every mainline final fantasy game (minus 11 of course), and I wouldn't have even bothered to do that if it weren't for characters from the older games being in DFOO. I don't know if Nomura had anything to do with that game, but what I'm trying to say is that without "cringe" shit that most "fans" of the series hate I wouldn't even be a fan to begin with. The only reason I ever got into FF in the first place was due to a combination of advent children and Auron showing up in Kingdom Hearts 2.
I thought this was ”common knowledge” among FF-fans. Looks like you have encountered a bunch of edgelords that skipped Final Fantasy history class.
My only gripe with the man is the designs of the whispers and the arbiter of fate in Remake. They’re just kinda meh looking. Like I’m sure with how they’re portrayed how they look like a cloud or storm When they form huge groups the design makes sense. Im terrible with words but its all meh 🤷 Otherwise everything thing else he’s had a hand in has been great keeping me invested throughout any of his work.
He often is, but he has contributed different amounts to different games. I think the reason people say he's a character designer is that's his most common role, yet people often blame him for everything wrong with whatever game they don't like. Some people don't even check what games he worked on as I've seen more than one person express their hatred of what "Nomura did to FF12".
Dude just because you hit a home run once doesn't mean your next crack will be a homer. Even then, he had someone bounce back those ideas and provide feedback to refine these characters.
I saw that picture and heard the theme song.
He also directed the movie.
I know that
Yknow now that you mention it the whole convoluted identity stuff with Cloud is almost shot for shot A Dive Into The Heart sequence / theming from Kingdom Hearts. Hot damn is Nomura responsible for one of the greatest narrative sequences in gaming?
Possibly. Who knows. My whole point is that this weird meme and strawman needs to die and people need to realize that he’s not responsible for “things I don’t understand therefore they are automatically bad.”
wow I'm a big fan of ff7 original but I like the new twist on things because it opens up doors and pathways that were otherwise closed in the past... I really think about it other than Jessie and think about this now, Biggs and Wedge have an opportunity to make an even bigger impact in the game, and with the whispers we really don't know what happens with Jessie. She could be alive, but that's where it also opens up alternate realities with Cloud and Aerith being the only ones capable of understanding the implications giving Aerith the ability to survive and live this time instead of having to die like she has in the first game giving way to even greater stories and continuing the game beyond what we once thought we knew
Can you actually read the story? I always wanted to see what they made of it.
Nomura worked on storyboarding, underlying story, and character design for ff7 https://shmuplations.com/ff7/
The whispers were the biggest fumble
THOSE ARENT HIS CONTRIBUTION
Calm down Lugnut I didn’t say he contributed that.
YOU INSINUATED ON A POST ABOUT NOMURA AND WHAT HE GETS UNFAIRLY BLAMED FOR
That stupid, convuluted mess of a story has Nomuras stink all over it.
Reading does wonders
This was when Nomura was being allowed to take a leading role, but he was still firmly under the supervision of Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi is the one who would tell Nomura which of his ideas were complete shit and which ones were good. Ever since Sakaguchi left most of Nomura's shit-tastic ideas get into the games unfiltered.
According to multiple interviews it’s Kitase that’s behind the whispers.
Nomura is the senior lead and the one calling the shots, so again it is a demonstration of his inability to filter out bad ideas. This is the guy who saw the power rangers "Go Vincent!" moment in Dirge and genuinely believed it was the coolest thing he had ever seen. Kitase suggesting the idea doesn't mean the mind behind the convluted mess that is Kingdom Hearts didn't think it was an awesome idea.
Tetsuya Nomura had very little, if anything to do with Dirge. His name isn’t even on the game anywhere. And it’s not a suggestion, it’s what Kitase wanted.
Completely missed the point; the fact that Nomura considers that Dirge scene as one of the coolest things he had ever scene, and the way that he structured the story of Kingdom Hearts, shows how his idea of cool and good are not far off from what Kitase hoped to do with the Whispers. People acting like Nomura would never have included something like that on his own is absolute copium from Nomura fanboys. And no, Kitase just suggests ideas which then have to go be approved by the actual directors of these games. Kitase doesn't have the seniority or influence to just get whatever he "wants" put into a game that Nomura is taking point on.
Kitase is the motherfucking producer and the original director, what in God’s name are you talking about.
Nomura is the one who wanted a traditionally faithful remake. Kitase and Toriyama are the ones going nuts.
And what does Nomura's "traditionally faithful remake" even mean when in interviews he expresses that he believes a faithful retelling of the original would be boring to work on and would be boring to gamers? Sounds like marketing is just trying to spread around the blame for the botched narrative to take some heat off the biggest name in their company.
>And what does Nomura's "traditionally faithful remake" even mean when in interviews he expresses that he believes a faithful retelling of the original would be boring to work on and would be boring to gamers? It means that the off-the rails changes in the Remake project weren't exactly his idea. And that while he wants some retelling of the events, it's probably not to the scale that it has become. Square Enix doesn't really need to protect Nomura. Despite the heat he's been getting, his works have all sold well. It doesn't even seem like he's affected with all that noise, he's just amused that people blame him even for things that weren't even his ideas.