Who’s on first?
But if I’m here…and you’re here…who’s driving the boat?!
Tetsuya Nomura is directing the Final Fantasy VII remake, and he’s already talked about ways in which it will differ from the 1997 original aside from just the visuals. Nomura is also hard at work on Kingdom Hearts III. If you were surprised to find him taking point on this project, you’re not alone.
Talking to Famitsu, via Kotaku, “Actually, quite a while ago, [Nomura] tried to start up the project [to remake FFVII], but at the time it didn’t come to fruition.” More recently, Square exec Shinji Hashimoto approached Nomura and original Final Fantasy VII director Yoshinori Kitase about rebooting the thing. Makes sense so far.
“As preproduction went along and I offered my opinions on what I thought should be done, Mr. Kitase would ask me how the individual elements should be adjusted in fine detail,” Nomura said. “It was very perplexing. Then one day, as I was checking the internal company presentation video it said ‘Director Tetsuya Nomura’ at the end.”
Go on…
“So I called up Mr. Kitase and said, ‘It says that I’m the director for some reason.’ To which he replied, ‘Of course it does.'”
Ahahaha, I love it.
This was apparently much earlier on, in the initial stage of production, but it’s still pretty great. Nomura, understandably, assumed Kitase would be directing the remake to his own game, and I guess no one told him otherwise. Bless.