Final Fantasy 7 Dialogue Was Reworked To Sound More "Natural"

In a new episode detailing the work that went into the upcoming PS4 title Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix has revealed that the team rewrote the game's dialogue to bring it up-to-date with "modern games."

The latest behind-the-scenes look at Final Fantasy VII Remake's development sees longtime series writer Kazushige Nojima explaining his rationale for rewriting the entirety of Final Fantasy VII in preparation for Remake. According to Nojima, FFVII's text-based dialogue was not the most conducive to effective voice acting.

"When Square Enix told me we were doing Remake, I first asked how much we could alter the dialogue because the dialogue in the original game was designed to be read by the player," Nojima said. "It was not voiced. [Now that we] have these super realistic characters and performance, I have gone back and written in all the bits that were omitted because we didn't feel we needed to go into that depth with the original's simpler characters."

Game director Motomu Toriyama also chimed in, adding: "But in terms of the character dialogue and conversations, naturally we are keeping all the iconic moments from the original script. But because the original was all text-based, with no facial expressions and quite bare camera work, if we left the dialogue unchanged, it would sound very explanatory and not be up to the same quality as modern games. So, we have edited and reworked it to sound more like natural conversation, but very much kept it having the same impression on the player."

The developers, alongside producer Yoshinori Kitase, also discuss various other aspects of FFVII Remake in this second documentary episode, including how faithful the reimagining is to its source material, how "nerve-wracking" undertaking such an iconic project was, and more. You can check out the second episode below, and be sure to read up on the first episode if you missed it.

In other Final Fantasy VII Remake news, Square Enix has disclosed that the forthcoming PS4 game is "comparable in size to other mainline Final Fantasy games." This piece of information falls in line with Square Enix stating that, because the game has been expanded, Final Fantasy VII Remake will span two Blu-ray discs.