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Development: Yoshitaka Amano

1) Final Fantasy VIII focused on characters over world events and featured military academies where students trained to become mercenaries, diverging from earlier Final Fantasy games. 2) The story contrasted Squall's young, inexperienced party with Laguna's older, more experienced party from 20 years earlier, though much of Laguna's story was cut. 3) Character designer Tetsuya Nomura created more realistically proportioned characters for Final Fantasy VIII compared to earlier games to maintain consistency between models and cutscenes.

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EDUARD COHEN
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40 views

Development: Yoshitaka Amano

1) Final Fantasy VIII focused on characters over world events and featured military academies where students trained to become mercenaries, diverging from earlier Final Fantasy games. 2) The story contrasted Squall's young, inexperienced party with Laguna's older, more experienced party from 20 years earlier, though much of Laguna's story was cut. 3) Character designer Tetsuya Nomura created more realistically proportioned characters for Final Fantasy VIII compared to earlier games to maintain consistency between models and cutscenes.

Uploaded by

EDUARD COHEN
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Development Edit

Yoshitaka Amano's renditions of Squall and


Seifer, though not representative of their in
game appearances, still show their visual
similarities, most noticeably the scars across
both character's faces, each given by the other
in battle.
Final Fantasy VIII follows Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII in displaying a world with
high technology, diverging from the more traditional medieval feel of the original titles. Final
Fantasy VIII diverges further still by focusing the story on the characters over the world
events. Character designer Tetsuya Nomura wanted the game to have a "school days" feel.
Because director Yoshinori Kitase already had a story in mind in which the main characters
were the same age, the idea worked. Thus, they created the concept of military school-like
academies in which the students would train to become mercenaries.
Further on, scenario writer Kazushige Nojima planned for the two playable parties featured
in the game—Squall's present day group and Laguna's group of twenty years in the past—
to contrast with one another. Leading to Laguna's group consisting of characters in their
late twenties and have a lot of combat and teamwork experience, while Squall's party was
young and inexperienced, and Squall himself not initially able to understand the value of
friendship. The fan reception to the story of Final Fantasy VII influenced the way Nojima
wrote Final Fantasy VIII, and thus no main character dies, and the game does not rely so
heavily on flashbacks to deliver information. Laguna's time was intended to comprise the
first half of the game, but a lot of his story ended up being cut.[5]
With Final Fantasy VII, the main protagonist (Cloud Strife) had a reserved nature that led
Nojima to include scenarios in which the player can select Cloud's responses to certain
situations and dialogue. With Final Fantasy VIII, Nojima wanted to give players actual
insight into what the protagonist was thinking and feeling, even while the other characters
remained uninformed. This led to Squall's "internal monologues" that appear in transparent
text boxes throughout the game.
Kitase also expressed desire to give the game a deliberately foreign, largely European
atmosphere. As part of this theme various designs were created using the style of ancient
Egyptian and Greek architecture, as well as styles from the cities of France and idealized
European societies seen in various artworks. Additionally, Kitase explained that the
game's logo—Squall and Rinoa embracing—was inspired by the team's efforts to express
emotion through body language. The team knew that the Rinoa and Squall scene was a big
moment in the game, so they asked Yoshitaka Amano to draw this for the logo. Its red to
yellow gradient reflects the sunset in the background of the moment Rinoa is falling toward
Squall in the opening cinematic.[6]
Squall Leonhart (right) and Laguna Loire.
Using the game models to physically display their emotions and actions alongside the text
boxes, as well as using updated CG full motion videos, which were far more advanced in
detail than any Final Fantasy game that had come previously, to convey a kind of "silent
movie" operatic atmosphere that didn't rely on words to convey their meaning.
Final Fantasy VIII is the first mainline Final Fantasy title to have "millennium silver" as the
color of the menu and dialogue windows, since the color was popular in the late 90's. This
trend was continued in Final Fantasy IX.
In terms of character artwork, Final Fantasy VIII reflected Nomura's preferred technique at
the time, as opposed to Final Fantasy VII, which featured characters that "weren't really his
style". The team had decided to use realistically proportioned characters; the higher level of
full motion video technology would have otherwise created an inconsistency between the
in-game graphics and the higher definition full motion video graphics. After Final Fantasy
VII was finished, the development team thought players would feel something is off with the
difference in proportion between the character models in battle and on the field, and so
in Final Fantasy VIII the character proportions on the field and battle were kept the same.[7]

Nomura ended up altering each of the characters before they rea

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