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(Note: Tokita’s name only appears in the credits of Parasite Eve 2 as a “special adviser” and not at all in 3rd Birthday.) Also on board were Yoshihiko Maekawa ( Super Mario RPG director) as battle designer, Shinichiro Okaniwa ( Secret of Mana character designer, Chrono Trigger field graphic designer) as battle effects director, and Yoko Shimomura ( Street Fighter II‘s soundtrack) brings a killer soundtrack that’s a little bit operatic and a little bit 1990s electronica.įor the storyline, Tokita adapted the plot of a 1996 Japanese horror novel called Parasite Eve, which later was made into a movie.

It’s an attempt to splice the console RPG with a survival horror game (as popularized by Resident Evil), and also a new phase in SquareSoft’s scheme to make games that behaved more like film – or at least into something commanding more respect than electronic toys.įilling the RPG part of the equation – the hit points, battle mechanics, and storyline/scenario stuff – was director and lead designer Takashi Tokita, who had previously directed Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger. Marketed in the States as SquareSoft’s first post- Final Fantasy VII big-budget title, it was the company’s first game to receive an “M” rating from the ESRB, and possibly the first video game to refer to itself as a “cinematic RPG.” This an amalgamation of amalgamations. Eventually, Sakaguchi had his way and got his NYC detective game, though not in the form of a Final Fantasy title. Sakaguchi obviously had to make a few concessions, and so the first few hours of Final Fantasy VII are set in a squalid metropolitan nightmare from which the player is then ejected to run, ride, and fly around a more familiar RPG world map for the rest of the game.

According to interviews with SquareSoft staffers (referenced extensively across cyberspace, but with apparently without magazine scans/transcriptions), Sakaguchi’s original plan for Final Fantasy VII was a detective story taking place in modern-day New York City.