News on Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts 2

GamesIndustry.biz has commentary from Square producer Shinji Hashimoto about the upcoming FFVII movie Advent Children, and the second Kingdom Hearts game. From the interview: "To be honest, all of the staff was burnt out after we made the original Final Fantasy VII! But as you know, Final Fantasy has both a game part and a movie part - and as we made the movie part, we decided to make it longer, because it's so connected to the game part. We don't really think of it as a feature film. It's more like a collection of clips; it's become quite long, but we don't take that too seriously in terms of having a massive concept behind it or anything like that. It's just naturally come about."

Comments

Uh, good PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That comment just sucked all the excitement I had about the movie right away. So we can expect a disjoint, unplanned, random movie? Erk.

Are there any plans to re-release the Final Fantasy VII game on a modern platform to tie in with the release of the movie?

Nothing so far. We have to make Advent Children first!

Rats.

Great visuals != Good Cinema

[MemeSpitter]

The interviewer's focus was just as off as Square's was when they made the last FF movie.

How would you compare the quality of the visuals in this film to something like Final Fantasy: Spirits Within? Has the technology moved on a lot since then?

Great. I was really worried about whether a top-notch game company like SquareEnix can generate good-looking visuals. A better question would have been: "So, did you hire a screenwriter this time? If so, can he/she create a decent plot, or a dramatic structure smoother than something a five-year-old might build out of Duplos?"

Re:Great visuals != Good Cinema

[Harlockjds]

>Actually it was the fantastic story and gameplay that made FF7 the most loved RPG of all time, not the visuals.

No it wasn't. It was the visuals and the fact that it was one of the first CRPGs to get big.

Your first time iss always the best.

Square needs to get back to its roots

[Prien715]

Square hasn't released an original single-player Final Fantasy game since 2001. That's 4 years, the longest state-side gap since FF1 and FF2 (FF4 japan). I'd love to buy an original RPG from Square, but sadly, they don't seem to care about making those anymore. Square's biggest commercial successes (Chronotrigger, FF4,FF6, FF7) featured fairly distinctive storylines and ability systems. After Spirits Within, anything that was not a repeat of some previous ability system or storyline simply got axed.

The real formula square needs to copy is good single player games with original characters and ability systems.

Re:Square needs to get back to its roots

[Neruocomp]

This is so true. So what if they can come out with better looking graphics and such. With no story line to hold it up, its nothing. But I wouldn't call the games that came out afterwards bad. I liked FF9(execept for that ending omg!) and FF Online. Its my first online game and I really like it. Sure its a bit time consuming to get money and find out more of the story, but I'm sticking with it.