This is the 876th original article of the Old Boy Game Box, written by @Overlord Crab
The birth of the legendary game "Final Fantasy 7" is actually inseparable from the N64 functional environment "Final Fantasy 6 CG DEMO" announced in 1995.
At that time, Nintendo's N64 console had the most powerful 3D floating-point computing power in the next generation of game consoles, but the problem was the inferior nature of the old Nintendo's overlord clause and the still insistence on cartridge as the game medium, which was undoubtedly a strong seal on the game capacity.
However, Square Enix's vision of Final Fantasy 7 is very large, both in terms of the world and the 3D environment, and it is impossible to put such a behemoth into the N64's meagre cartridge.
So everyone knows the story later, and the platform on which the work finally landed was Nintendo's "cultivated" opponent - Sony PlayStation (PS1).
Even on CD-ROMs, Final Fantasy 7 is a game that requires a huge capacity of 3 discs, which is certainly a huge improvement in graphics and music.
Although full 3D games were already in place at the time, they were still in a very primitive stage. During the production of the game, @坂口博信发现 had to make the game's huge worlds and regions detailed, all of which would not have been possible in 3D with the technical conditions of the time.
There is also a lot of opposition within the company, advocating that the production of 2D flat images can be matured.
However, the genius mindset is different, and as early as the Super Nintendo SFC era, Square Enix released an experimental game "Treasure Hunter G". The biggest feature of this game is that it is similar to Nintendo's SFC "Donkey Kong 3", which is made with a 2D game mode and a large number of pre-rendered 3D graphics, giving players the illusion that they are playing a 3D game during the game.
Now, all of Final Fantasy 7's detailed scenes feature pre-rendered 3D graphics backgrounds, and a set of "invisible" terrain is built on top of that, allowing truly 3D characters to move around flexibly.
This kind of scene processing not only saves a lot of real-time image processing functions, but also allows players to immerse themselves in beautiful 3D scenes.
Similar image processing "black technology" was also used by the card club "Resident Evil", which was launched a year earlier, and both games became epoch-making classics at the time.
When it comes to leading the trend, I have to say that "Final Fantasy 7" contains many high-quality 3D cutscenes, and I remember that when I was working with Fa Xiao, I left an archive before each cutscene.
And I showed it off to my friends who played arcades and other games, and even to my parents, and it led many friends who felt that "text cards" were annoying and boring to enter the world of RPGs (so I have always believed that the prerequisite for the advancement of the game industry is images)
It's just that since then, the trend of the industry has been "deviated", and almost all the standard equipment of all game masterpieces in the future is 3D animation and drama broadcasts, and there are not a few 3D animations that can be played, and the so-called next-generation games are embarrassed to appear on stage.
While the success of all of this may seem unexpected, no one could predict the future during production, and no one knows if the 3D technology will be successful after the game's release. The ordeal experienced by the production team of Final Fantasy 7 during this period is also little known to outsiders, including how Midgar, the most important city of Magic in the early stages of the game, was born.
Originally, Midgar originated from Nojima Kazunari's conception that the bad guy in this game is not a magical-style "big devil", but a "high-class man" who despises everything in the big business and big chaebol borrowed from the real world.
With this as a starting point, the maze in the RPG world in the past can also exist in another way in this work. In fact, in the original case period of "Final Fantasy 7" mentioned in the article of @oldboygamebox issue 875, @坂口博信就提出过一个概念: based on the classic movie "Blade Runner", a detective named "Joe" was created to operate in a dark, rainy and skyscraper-like city like New York.
From the beginning of this work, @直良有suke, who was in charge of the art director, saw the "Warship Building" opposite the Square Enix Building, which was inspired by the strange shape of the building made of cement ash, and combined with the above elements, he made the "Shinra Building" in the game.
And the many sections in this HRE Building: conference rooms, lounges, career rooms, etc., are all based on the corresponding places in the Square Enix at that time, so the player's early battles in the HRE Mansion are actually Square Enix's huge trouble.
If there is a castle of bad guys, how will the city that can carry this castle be made? Unlike the arrogance expressed by the HRE Building, Midgar has multiple elements: disparity between rich and poor, class antagonism, and the combination of modernity and primitiveness.
These elements abound in anime works such as "Akira" and "Gundamunta" at that time, and it was difficult to organically integrate them and create their own characteristics.
In the early days, everyone gathered together to design a number of plans but failed to achieve satisfactory results, when @直良有祐 was meditating at home alone, suddenly a friend invited him out for pizza, the moment this Italian delicacy was served, @直良 Inspiration flashed through my mind - isn't this exactly the midgar look I needed!
So he hurried back to the company and re-modified Midgar into a huge disc shape divided into many areas, and the original overall design of the Magic City Midgar was finally completed and unanimously approved.
The problem was that it was just over the New Year, and @直良 urgently recalled the 3D production department and asked them to work overtime to produce a 3D animation of the huge city, and said the phrase "I'm sorry, but this is the final decision".
The change in the amount of work to transition from 2D to 3D is huge, 2D is painting, 3D is all-round sculpting, and making such a huge and complex city will be the biggest challenge for the 3D department. Despite a slight complaint, the production team eventually completed the modeling and rendering work, which was immeasurably large.
When Midgar was first presented to the company, everyone was amazed, and the moment it was finally presented to players all over the world shook the entire gaming industry, which was also a big gamble
Due to space limitations, this issue will talk about it here. There are many stories about Final Fantasy 7, if you have the opportunity to continue to talk about it in the future, please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comment area!
Author: King Crab
Editor: Xiao Chen