The original director of 1999’s Final Fantasy VIII, Yoshinori Kitase, was part of an interview with Famitsu magazine, in which he shed some light on several minor details for the upcoming remaster. The remaster was of course, announced at Square Enix’s E3 2019 press conference, recently. Kitase covered info about the game’s characters, some more on the game’s combat, and even a fascinating point about its influence on Hollywood entertainment.
The interview, as transcribed by Ryokutya2089, was broken down into a list of bullet points, as follows:
- The remaster has the original version’s battle programmer Hiroshi Harada, Tomohiro Kayano who did character model, and Tetsuya Nomura working on it.”
- The character refinement quality is the result of having the original staff work on it.
- Battle Assistance will be implemented.
- Chocobo World will not be included. The items you could only get from it will be available through Rinoa’s special ability.
- Final Fantasy VIII was the first work that we’ve used motion capture on. At the time we didn’t know how things worked, so we made the actor use a heavy gun. Looking back now, I get the cold sweats thinking about any worst case scenario accidents that could’ve happened.
- Final Fantasy VIII has had its share of influence in Hollywood entertainment, be it a game screen shown in a Hollywood movie or an offer we got last year from a major video game-related film that wanted to use the Gunblade.
One of the most interesting points from this list of quotes is the inclusion of Battle Assistance. If you’re unfamiliar, Battle Assistance was a booster added to the Steam version of the game that gave perks to the player. These are things like always having a full HP bar, a full ATB bar, and the ability to always use Limit Break. The Final Fantasy VII rerelease had similar assistant modes to speed up the game.
It’s unclear how this feature will be implemented into the remaster, or if it will remain unchanged from its application on the Steam version. But for those who are new to the series, or the old fans just looking to run through the story again, the Battle Assistance feature will definitely come in handy.
The Final Fantasy VIII remaster is expected to hit PS4 this fall, just ahead of Final Fantasy VII Remake next year.
[Source: SiliconEra]
