#E3 2015 Trailers

[loafbud]

That was beautiful.

Grand Festival was peak. ABSOLUTE PEAK! 🗣️🔥🔥🔥

As someone who was on Team Future, I would celebrate any team regardless who one. Seeing Team Past winning got me emotional (in a good way)... it's almost like the results were paying homage to Splatoon 1, and the Squid Sisters, to where it all started. The star in the sky. The Calamari Inkantation to this series that I grew up with ever since Splatoon's debut in the E3 2015 trailer.

I'll forever follow and cherish this series... 9 years and forever more. 🥹💕

In terms of the Splatfest results, our team getting zero points feels poetic. I see the number "zero" as the start of everything, the number of nothing, the number that can become something, the infinite, the endless — it resembles the future in a way. Endless, infinite! It's a mentality I need to practice more, to be honest: Zero can be mean many things, but it can also mean the beginning of things; 'nothing' will eventually become 'something'. I've never been more excited to be on a losing team and I'm saying that with my heart on my sleeve.

All of the results for each team feel poetic to me!

But seriously... thank you Splatoon 3! Content updates may have ended, but they did say they'll have special splatfests/past big run/eggstra reruns until then.

All in all, what an absolute blast I had these past few days during Grandfest. The performances, the atmosphere, the new music?? And seeing everyone else posting about their own experiences, it genuinely felt like an event we all went to in-person, we all got to experience that as a community. 🥹

Man, I love Splatoon.

[thefalloutwiki]

Fallout 4: November 10, 2015

8 years ago today, on November 10, 2015, Fallout 4 officially released to the world, bringing us a brand new Fallout experience 5 years since the last!

Happy 8th Anniversary Fallout 4! I remember watching the E3 Presentation for the game, and being so excited for it!

Pre-production on Fallout 4 began shortly after the completion of Fallout 3's final add-on, Mothership Zeta. Art development started in 2009.

Similar to Fallout 3, one of the first things they created was the game's Power Armor, originally designed as a reimagining of the T-45.

The legendary Adam Adamowicz contributed to the game prior to his passing, with sketches of his work on the game being included in The Art of Fallout 4.

According to artist Jonah Lobe, Adam was ultimately responsible for designing the game's Super Mutants!

On June 2, 2015, a countdown timer was added to Bethesda's Fallout website, expiring at 10 AM EDT the following day.

Seconds before the counter ended, the trailer for Fallout 4 was released to the world.

On June 14, 2015, Bethesda showcased the game at E3 2015, with Todd Howard taking the stage to talk about it extensively.

Fallout 4 released on November 10, 2015, giving us more Fallout experiences to cherish! We absolutely love the companions the game gave us, as well as so much more.

Thank you to all of the skilled developers who worked on it. Your contributions all created an awesome game!

[3600frames]

(from a 2015 sound team interview)

(1) this is 100% what "the single no. zero which is unknown to the public" discussed in the the original Splatune booklet's Squid Squad article is alluding to, as it contains several other allusions to the real-life circumstances around the band (GISSAN being a Minegishi analog ala Shy-Ho-Shy/Shiho Fujii, the band debuting in 2014 lining up with the E3 trailer, a live version of Splattack! being what was spread around while the E3 version sounds far more like a live performance)

(2) LMAO ok so. in the JP fandom during the original Splatoon's heyday it was a very popular soramimi/"jokingly mishearing non-JP lyrics as JP lyrics" meme to hear the Splattack! chorus as "nyan nyan nyan nyan nimaigai~♪" (nimaigai = bivalve). clearly it was popular enough for Minegishi to notice and reference it here. maybe it also served as eventual inspiration for a character in another band he composed for down the line...?

[lulu2992]

For those of you who are curious about this, here’s all the data I gathered for the counter I made:

Far Cry was first introduced as a demo at E3 2002, which started on May 22, and was released 671 days later, on March 23, 2004.

Far Cry Instincts was announced only 15 days after the release of Far Cry, on April 7, 2004, and came out 538 days after that, on September 27, 2005.

Far Cry Instincts: Evolution and Far Cry Instincts: Predator were announced and released together, on January 11, 2006, so 106 days after Far Cry Instincts came out, and on March 28, 2006, so 76 days after their announcement.

Far Cry Vengeance was announced 128 days after that, on August 3, 2006, and it took 131 more days for it to come out, on December 12, 2006.

Far Cry 2 was announced on July 19, 2007, 219 days after the release of Vengeance, and came out 460 days later, on October 21, 2008.

Far Cry 3 was announced at E3 2011 during the Ubisoft conference on June 7, so 959 days after the release of its predecessor, which is the longest time so far! Then, it came out 541 days later, on November 29, 2012.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was announced 123 days later, on April 1st, 2013 (genius move), and released only 29 days after that, on April 30, 2013.

Far Cry 4 was officially revealed on social media on May 15, 2014, 380 days after Blood Dragon became available, and came out on November 18, 2014, 187 days later.

Far Cry Primal was announced 322 days after that with a trailer on October 6, 2015, and it took 140 more days for it to come out, on February 23, 2016.

Far Cry 5 was first introduced with a series of teaser trailers posted on May 22, 2017, so 454 days after Primal, and finally came out 309 days later, on March 27, 2018.

Far Cry New Dawn was revealed via a short video posted on social media on December 5, 2018, 253 days after the release of its predecessor, and was available only 72 days later, on February 15, 2019.

Far Cry 6 was officially introduced on July 10, 2020, shortly before the Ubisoft Forward livestream and 511 days after New Dawn came out. The game was initially scheduled to come out in February but had to be delayed, partly because of the pandemic, and was eventually released on October 7, 2021, 454 days after its announcement.

The last Far Cry 6 expansion, Lost Between World, was made available on December 6, 2022, 425 days after the release of the main game. Since that day, there hasn’t been any official announcement regarding the next Far Cry game.

I was also wondering how many days there were between the release dates of all the main games in the franchise. The answer is:

1,673 days between Far Cry and Far Cry 2

1,502 days between Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3

719 days between Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4

1,225 days between Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5

1,290 days between Far Cry 5 and Far Cry 6

[focusontheheart]

Meet the Team - Sorbet

You can also find @sorbetowl on: Twitter @ sorbetowl Instagram @ sorbetowl

Heya all, Sorbet here! I’m a fan-artist from Germany and discovered Horizon with the iconic e3 gameplay trailer from 2015 where Aloy fights the Thunderjaw and it was all over for me. I got the Collector’s Edition on Day 1 and have been in love with the series (and Ereloy) ever since, although I didn’t join the fandom until Forbidden West came around. It’s my first fandom to be a part of in well over a decade, and easily the one I’ve created the most for. Shaking off that art rust, one drawing of the blorbos at a time.

See the Q&A with Sorbet below the cut!

Q: What is a favorite piece of work you've done (completed, working on, in concept)?

The companion art that I did for the fanfic "Love Games" is near and dear to my heart, and my Burning Shores artwork because I felt that my art was heading in a direction that I liked.

(Below Left: "Bear Hugs", Below Right: "Two Minutes")

Q: What are some of your favorite tropes to write, draw, or read?

In reading, I’m a sucker for Friends To Lovers, Hurt/Comfort and Opposites Attract. In art, I’m inspired the most by the comics and animation of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s that I grew up with.

Q: What is an unexpected thing or fun fact about you?

I work as a galvanizer in the aircraft industry, which means that I make metal more metal by submerging it in acid and electrocuting it so it doesn’t corrode for cabin pressure systems. Which is pretty metal, if I do say so myself.

Q: What has been your favorite thing about working on this project so far?

Seeing so many creators and fans of Horizon find common ground to make this visual novel a reality, fueled by the shared love for the franchise has been incredibly uplifting and inspiring. 

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 19/10/2023

Take Me Home, Country Snow

Season 4 Episode 1 Featured on: E3 2019 Press Kit

Ripped by Smoky

For as many memes as SiIva creates or helps popularize, be it Grand Dad, We Are Number One, Totino's Mania, and so on - there's just as many, if not more jokes that wholly eclipse SiIva in terms of popularity. A meme legend in the gaming community, shitposts of Todd Howard have been around long before SiIva's creation, yet only truly took off in 2015 thanks to his presence at Bethesda's E3 show. E3 in general is a holiday of sorts for the gaming community, not just because its home to a bevvy of announcements and trailers for upcoming games, but also for its unavoidable memetic quality - there's just so much SILLY shit that happens at E3, be it awkward live speeches, technical mishaps, ill-timed reveals, or the inevitable barrage of Phil Spence saying the word "gamer". The SiIvaGunner team are not ones to leave such fresh meme produce out to rot, and are always immensely quick on the draw when it comes to each year's E3 highlights.

But lets be real - out of all memes and jokes that spawn out of E3, I don't think there are any that even come close to being as timeless and eternally funny as Toddposting. Year after year, Bethesda show after Bethesda show, Todd is always there, always pushing and promising that THIS time will be different, THIS time the game will truly let you do all of those things that were promised last time. Coupled with the company's insistence on having you purchase Skyrim over and over, and its no wonder his name is so well known. And though Todd took over the entire channel for a brief bit in Season 3, it would take yet one more year for the magnum opus to be released.

Take Me Home, Country Snow is such a perfect instillation of everything SiIvaGunner is capable of doing, and of everything that SiIvaGunner IS. 2018 already solidified Fallout 76 as a complete catastrophy of a game, a symbol for just how many empty promises Todd Howard will do in order to get his game sold. By E3 next year, Todd's infamy was put front and center as he was made to step out on stage and admit the faults of his game. Take Me Home, Country Roads, as the anthem to Fallout 76, became laced in a sort of ironic melancholy, the realization that its idealized game was never going to truly happen...and yet here, its celebrated - mashed up with Snow Halation of all things. I discussed in Snow halocean that much of what makes Snow Halation rips so special is that they feel like a sort of inauguration ceremony for individual memes - a seal of approval that a meme has truly "made it" on the SiIvaGunner channel. The ever-consistent visuals, the insistence of having them only feature one joke at a time, and of course the per-rip "speeches" each joke provides near the last quarter of the runtime - it all gives these rips a sort of celebratory vibe. By this point, Todd Howard's meme status was wholly, unavoidably, cemented as part of SiIvaGunner.

All of this isn't even to mention the quality of the rip itself - the self-titled "Nuclear Winter" mix of American country vocals paired with cheerful, snow-clad idol pop creates a vibe wholly unique to this rip - Take Me Home, Country Snow creates an image of optimism and celebration that otherwise seems so foreign to Bethesda games within the wider gaming sphere. Yet that's just the thing - Todd Howard isn't on this stage for his achievements as a game developer, but for his legendary status within online shitposting. This rip celebrates everything we love about E3, and at this point feels like a farewell to the event as a whole.

Todd's indirectly put smiles on so many faces all over the world, even if it most definitely wasn't in the way he ever intended. Take Me Home, Country Snow.

[teecupangel]

I've just noticed in the Assassin's Creed Syndicate trailer that Jacob doesn't have his shilling necklace. That is a travesty.

Yeah, he doesn't wear it in the E3/Cinematic 4 min trailer:

Strangely enough, he wears it in the Starrick trailer:

If we take into consideration how the cinematic trailer was published on Ubisoft's official YouTube account on Jun 15, 2015 while the Starrick trailer was published on the same YouTube account on Oct 8. 2015, it's highly possible that Jacob's necklace is a late addition.

But that doesn't make sense because Jacob's concept art of the outfit they like to use for him already has the necklace in the first place (unless the concept art was being revised as the game further developed which is possible... I guess?)

My guess is this is a case of the cinematic trailer team forgetting about Jacob's necklace. XD

[moxtoons]

First of all it is a pleasure. To the point, what was your inspiration to start drawing? and… How did you hear about Cuphead?

A pleasure to speak to you too!💛

And as for your question-

I had to dig deep for this information lol my memory isn't what it used to be!

But I remember I heard about the Cuphead game back when they released that awesome trailer at E3 2015! I have always been a fan of rubber hose cartoons and my favorite games growing up were platformers, so when I saw this labor of love video game I couldn't be more excited! I didn't talk about it much on here but HOO BOY my excitement for this game was insane!

When I finally got to play it I was SO excited! I fell in love with it! It was challenging and charming and clearly the product of a passionate and skilled team! It remains one of my favorite games! It took me a while to come around to watch the show. I watched it only a couple months or so before the release of the final couple of episodes on netflix aired. I love both the cartoon and the game with all my heart, they both helped me through some hard times. It's crazy to think I only just now got into the online fandom considering how long I've been a fan! But I've loved all the mutuals and followers I've gained through making art for this and I can't wait to see what else comes out of this wonderful fandom.

Here's hoping they renew the show and also here's to supporting all studio MDHR has to offer!🥂

[smoshgoshbefosh]

june 21 for uploaded videos pls 🥰🥰🥰

I think?? This is the first one I've done in June. Potentially.

But also. Your birthday in 2006? ICONIC BRO. And your birthday in 2023 was one day after the announcement.

What Smosh Videos were Posted on Your Birthday?

2006:

Boxman- Smosh Main

2007:

No videos uploaded June 21

2008:

No videos uploaded June 21

2009:

No videos uploaded June 21

2010:

MILFs Like Terrorists?!- Smosh Pit

2011:

No videos uploaded June 21

2012:

I Lick Turtles- Smosh Pit

2013:

My Friends Hot Sister- Smosh Main

Top 5 Games That Need to be a Web Series- Smosh Games

Shooting Balls in the Hoops (Game Bang)- Smosh Games

2014:

Bishes Better Werk, Bish- Smosh Pit

Portal (Honest Game Trailers)- Smosh Games (All Honest Game Trailers were recently deleted)

Top 5 Anti Heroes in Games- Smosh Games

2015:

Best E3 Ever (Bonus)- Smosh Games

2016:

Uncharted 4 (Honest Game Trailers)- Smosh Games (All Honest Game Trailers were recently deleted)

2017:

Secret Hitler (Smosh Games Live)- Smosh Games

2018:

The Worst Product Jingles (Squad Vlogs)- Smosh Pit

2019:

Mario Kart Drinking Game w/The Try Guys (Gaming with A Twist)- Smosh Games

Olivia's Bald Spot and How Defy Forced us To Be Friends (Smoshcast #18)- Smoshcast

2020:

No videos uploaded June 21

2021:

Every yearbook ever- Smosh Main

2022:

Try Not to Laugh Challenge #97 (Blind Pairs)- Smosh Pit

Can You Guess the A.I. Generated Image?- Smosh Games

2023:

Smosh Merch is Available at the Youtube Drop Shop @ Vidcon- Smosh Main

The WRONG Way to Play Zelda...- Smosh Games

[literallyneurodivergentandaminor]

ITS BEEN EIGHT WHOLE ASS YEARS FOLKS

do you feel old yet?

funnies and me being emotional under the cut!

i know its not much but in these pics is everything splatoon i accumulated over these 8 years. i remember the e3 trailer in 2014 so vividly. my first time startig the game up in 2015. the final splatfest. the SECOND final splatfest. my first round of salmon run. my firsr splatoon amiibo. my first splatoon drawings! i remember wathcing playthoughs of the story mode whenever i was on vacation and couldnt play myself. i remember puttinf the game on in the background and just listening to the music while doing other thing.

i recently found my old drawings. splatoon art that i was especially proud of at the time. ive come a long way with my art too in these 8 years. heres a closeup of the drawings

on the very left: the squit from 2015. on the back is a drawing of undyne haha. then next to it an inkling girl and an inkling boy from the splatoon 2 era. definitely around the end time of that because i have other drawings from before that (theyre just from before i had found my style) and then on the right: my self made amiibo cards and just som random octoling. from this year. you can see the progression i think.

another thing is the cosplay itself. in 2017 i saw a splatoon cosplayer in a parking lot at my very first convention. since then i planned a splatoon cosplay. i wanted to do agent 3. or just a random inkling if i couldnt do the uniform. that was probably what even got me into cosplay in the first place. and i started planning. and years later i finally did it. i have a complete captain 3 cosplay now. of course updated to fit the same character just years later. i think theres something funny about that, no?

splatoon led me to make friendships unlike any other, either directly through it or indirectly by making me wanna start cosplay and get better at drawing.

i never thought id live this long. but i did. and im glad i did. HAPPY 8 YEARS OF SPLATOON TO ALL OF YOU FISH AND INKFISH!

also heres the promised funnies:

[kokialyrics]

Hello everyone, and thank you for checking out this blog despite the long hiatus. My sincere apologies for the lack of updates.

I have always intended to keep every entry on this blog lyrics-only, but I’m making one exception now to update you on the current status.

I am not abandoning this side blog, however, I am currently not able to translate more lyrics due to various circumstances. I do have a small backlog, but I haven’t gotten back to it, and updating the blog as I have done before is a lot of work. I am still considering to redo this blog completely (of course without deleting previous entries), but I’m unsure what the best course of action is here. Suggestions are very welcome!

I unfortunately got locked out of editing the pages in the menu, so I cannot update the full song list or discography pages right now. So, in order to reply to requests I have gotten so far:

from 16 - I have translated this song before, but I'm not happy with the result. I will redo this once I can.

octopus -secret mission- - I have attempted to translate this, but the amount of lyrics is very short and I am very unsure if I understood them properly. I will give it another try once I'm able to.

a gift - there are no official lyrics for this song, so I cannot translate it. The same goes for multiple other songs. I have included the list below of songs that have no official lyrics, or are already in English and thus won't need a translation.

Updated list of songs that are untranslatable, either due to no official lyrics or already being in English (last updated February 26, 2023):

a gift × Alice in Wonderland × Amazing Grace × Ancient A.I (feat. KOKIA) × Ave Maria × Black is the color × Blue skies × Bridge over troubled water × Bye bye blackbird × Chim Chim Cher-ee× Christmas Medley × Close To You × Credits (feat. KOKIA) × CURRENT × Currents × Demon's Souls × DESPERADO × E3 2015 Debut Trailer × Edelweiss × Epilogue × Everytime We Say Goodbye × Fever × Firelink Shrine × Gematria × Hajimaru yo ~ikimono no ongakukai~ × Hallelujah × Hana ni nare × Happy Birthday to You × Hoshikuzu no vocalise × I'l be home for Christmas × Isn't this a lovely day × It came upon the midnight clear × It's Only A Paper Moon × Lost Home × L-O-V-E × Love me tender × Lullaby Birdland × Lydia~Fairy Dance × Make Sense × Moon river × Moonlight in Vermont × MOONLIGHT SHADOW × Noel no theme ~saigo no tabi~ × One note samba × Over the rainbow × Prologue × Prologue "Remember me" × Ready to rock n'roll × Return to Slumber × Scarborough Fair × Secret Betrayal × Seirei no mai ~Dance of the spirit × Smile × Someday My Prince Will Come × Song of pocchong ~shizuku no uta × Strike Suit Zero Main theme (feat. KOKIA) × Teo torriatte (Let us cling together) × The frim fram sauce × The long and winding road × The rule of the universe × The Water is Wide × Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star × Unity (feat. KOKIA) × Waltz for Debby × Watching from Above × We three kings of Orient are × What a wonderful world × Why do I sing? × with music × Yes I know ×

[kanzgamesandtrailers]

Halo Infinite – Multiplayer Reveal E3 2021 Trailer

Halo Infinite is a 2021 first-person shooter game developed by 343 Industries and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is the sixth mainline entry in the Halo series, following Halo 5: Guardians (2015). The campaign follows the human supersoldier Master Chief and his fight against the enemy Banished on the Forerunner ringworld Zeta Halo, also known as Installation 07. Unlike previous installments in the series, the multiplayer portion of the game is free-to-play. The game was intended to release as a launch title for the Xbox Series X/S, but was delayed in August 2020 after Infinite's gameplay reveal in July 2020 drew negative feedback from both critics and Halo fans. Following an open beta release of the multiplayer component on November 15, 2021, coinciding with the franchise's 20th anniversary, the campaign was released for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on December 8, 2021. #HaloInfinite #Halo #multiplayer Multiplayer In late 2552, during the battle for Earth, the Covenant occupy the centre of London. While Covenant patrols scout the city in search for surviving humans, a young woman, named Laurette Agryna, sneaks around the city streets and attempts to evade the patrols. She is spotted by a pack of Brutes, but is saved by a group of Spartans. Agryna later joins the UNSC military and eventually goes on to join the Spartan-IV program. Seven years after the fall of the Covenant, in the wake of Cortana's attack on Laconia Station and the dissapearance of both the Master Chief and the UNSC Infinity, Agryna—now serving as a Spartan Commander—begins training a new generation of Spartans and establishes new training facilities on classified frontier worlds, such as the Avery J. Johnson Academy of Military Science. Some time after the establishment of the Academy, Spartans Sigrid Eklund and Hieu Dinh discover that an old UNSC fleet depot, located on the planet Camber, has been repurposed by the Banished to serve as a shipbreaking yard. After observing their activity for two days, the Spartans learn that the Banished have successfully created their own AI construct. The AI, named Iratus, detects Eklund and Dinh's presence in the yard and alerts the Banished, forcing the duo to hijack a Banished Phantom in order to escape. Iratus, however, follows them and attempts to lock down the Phantom's flight controls. In order to regain access to the flight controls, Dinh allows Iratus to infect his neural interface, leaving him unconscious. After returning to the Academy, Eklund informs Agryna of their encounter with the Banished. Agryna devises a plan to pull Iratus out of Dinh's neural interface and trap him on an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) server. Meanwhile, Iratus continues to torture Dinh's mind, using memories of a failed mission in an attempt to break him. Agryna's plan eventually succeeds and Iratus, along with a complete archive of the Banished's operations on Camber, is secured, saving Dinh's life in the process. After the capture of Iratus, Eklund and Dinh choose to remain at the Academy, while Agryna prepares for a larger conflict with the Banished. While practicing at the Academy's firing range, Eklund expresses her concerns over Dinh's state of mind after the operation on Camber, but Dinh assures her that she and Agryna have nothing to worry about. Eklund introduces Dinh to one of the Academy's newly recruited Spartans, noting their role in the actions that saved Dinh's life. Dinh thanks the Spartan for their efforts and briefly reflects on his military training at the Academy.

[jcmarchi]

The Making Of Final Fantasy VII Remake

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-making-of-final-fantasy-vii-remake/

The Making Of Final Fantasy VII Remake

The ground beneath Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura’s feet trembled. In his time since serving as character designer and visual director on Final Fantasy VII, his legend has grown substantially. In addition to working on nearly every acclaimed Final Fantasy game since Nomura also helped create the Kingdom Hearts series and has become a figurehead and luminary within the stacked ranks of Square Enix’s stable of developers. But this 2015 trip to Los Angeles, California, was different.

PlayStation’s E3 2015 livestream had just revealed a teaser trailer featuring the iconic Final Fantasy VII protagonist, Cloud Strife, walking through Midgar in glorious, modern, HD graphics. The dream of so many – a remake of the classic RPG – was finally realized. The fans weren’t the only ones feeling the weight of the moment, though, and it was no longer just the ground that was shaking; it was Nomura’s entire body.

[embedded content]

“There were no staff members around, so I was kind of just off to the side, standing there alone,” Nomura says. “When I heard the cheers from the crowd and the passion, I became overwhelmed and I started shivering. I was walking like a fawn, just overwhelmed by the intensity of the crowd. I thought, ‘This has become such a big deal,’ and I wanted to cry.”

Meanwhile, series producer Yoshinori Kitase was at his home in Tokyo watching it on YouTube. “It still comes up on my ‘Videos You Should Watch,” he says with a laugh. “Someone should have taken a video of you, like a reaction video and uploaded it to YouTube!”

“I don’t think we had that culture of reaction vids back then,” Nomura says. “If I knew, I would have taken it, but I might have been shaking mid-way through!”

The road to this moment was long and arduous but something Nomura had dreamt of for years. Operating as a team of one, Nomura had spent part of the 2000s imagining what a modern remake of Final Fantasy VII could look like. Unfortunately, not much progress was made since the rest of the team members were tied up with other projects.

Around this time, fans started clamoring for a modernized remake of Final Fantasy VII, and the developers began hearing about it from media members. Kitase, who has worked at Square Enix since 1990, serving as director on beloved games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, the original Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy X, was inundated with questions during a series of 2009 interviews.

“We were on the U.S. media tour for Final Fantasy XIII, and we took on a bunch of interviews, and we got a ton of questions from reporters asking, ‘When are we going to make a Final Fantasy VII remake?'” Kitase recalls. “Just hearing that so many times, I did think that we would do it one day, that’s for certain.”

Kitase returned to Tokyo and approached Nomura about making it a reality. As two of the creators of the original Final Fantasy VII, they noticed the writing on the wall; fan and media demand was at a fever pitch, and Square Enix was beginning to embrace the idea of modern remakes for classic games more than ever before. They knew they had to act. 

“Within Square Enix, gradually, remakes were being made, and these ideas for remakes were coming up in other departments,” Nomura says. “If we weren’t going to do Final Fantasy VII, others were going to do it, so we had to rise up and do it! We had the sense that we had to guard Final Fantasy VII and have to be the ones taking this on, or someone else is going to do it. I thought it may be a bit troublesome is other teams without us took on the project.”

Nomura and Kitase are a pair of legends within the Final Fantasy and Square Enix fandom, but they needed help to make it a reality. To create the team, the duo tapped into Square Enix Creative Business Unit I, the group historically responsible for many of the most beloved Final Fantasy titles. Kazushige Nojima, who joined Square Enix in 1994, working on games like Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and X, as well as the Kingdom Hearts series, and Motomu Toriyama, who joined Square Enix in 1995 and worked on the original Final Fantasy VII in addition to Final Fantasy X, XIII, and more, signed on to co-write the remake.

“I had always hoped to be a part of the title if and when a remake was to be made,” Toriyama says. “I was very happy when hearing the news [that we were making one].” 

But the development team behind this project couldn’t just be members of the original dev team; most had left the company or were working on other projects. “I would say the majority of the dev staff and production members are those who were players of the original, not creators,” Toriyama says.

Motomu Toriyama and Teruki Endo

Two of those developers who started as fans of the Final Fantasy series before joining Square Enix are Naoki Hamaguchi and Teruki Endo. Hamaguchi joined Square Enix in 2003, working on titles like Final Fantasy XII and the XIII trilogy. After serving as project manager on the mobile title Mobius Final Fantasy, he joined the Remake team as a co-director. Endo got his start in the late 2000s at Capcom, working primarily on the Monster Hunter series, but when he heard about a remake for Final Fantasy VII, as a fan of the original, he couldn’t resist joining the team as battle director.

“I was working for another gaming company when I heard they were looking for members to be involved on the battle side of creating this game and felt like this was a great opportunity in which I could utilize the skills that I had gained thus far working in the industry,” Endo recalls.

With the core team assembled, Final Fantasy VII Remake was underway.

Naoki Hamaguchi

When a game is as beloved as Final Fantasy VII, modernizing it without alienating fans of the original can be a tricky proposition; if you keep things too close to the original, then you don’t keep up with the latest trends, squandering the opportunity to create something distinct. Conversely, if you put things too far away from the source material, you risk alienating those who made Final Fantasy VII so famous in the first place.

According to Toriyama, the members of the team who experienced VII as fans, like Hamaguchi and Endo, are more protective of the source material than those who worked on the original title. Kitase worried those younger staff members would be too loyal to the original title, but his concerns eased once the team started working together. “This concern was all for naught because this was clearly not true,” Kitase says. “We were able to work together very well and realize all of our visions and a game that can be accepted and enjoyed by contemporary users, so that was wonderful.”

“The top consideration, I believe, is that for both players who may not know Final Fantasy VII and those who do know or have played it, for both of these types of users to be able to play [Remake] and enjoy it,” Nomura adds.

The team worked together to balance the old with the new, to create something that definitively retells the story of Final Fantasy VII with modern conventions while not going too far in either direction. “For me, it really comes down to considering what it was that the players enjoyed and loved in the original title,” Endo says. “Of course, we expect a variance in each player’s depth and span of what they enjoy and the things that they love, but at the end of the day, I do have to trust my instincts and thoughts on what I loved and enjoyed playing the game.”

Teruki Endo

For Endo’s part – the battle system – he opted to blend action with the more traditional Active Time Battle (ATB) mechanics from the original game, in which characters can act once a meter fills. The result appeals to both new and longtime players. “Seeing that the Final Fantasy series has a strong focus on its characters, I believe the action enhances this and lets the players be further immersed into the characters they play,” Endo says. “Along with the strategic battles that I believe are key to Final Fantasy VII, I wanted to see how best I could mix these two elements of the command and strategy-based battle with the action that allows for instant immersion.” 

Though Endo wanted to introduce action, his desire to balance it with the traditional ATB elements struck a chord with Nomura. “I do have this idea of how Final Fantasy battles should be and should feel,” Nomura says. “We want to still keep this strategy element, in which the player will consider the elemental weaknesses of enemies during battle while using these action moves and being engaged, intact. That was always my core belief in how we should approach Final Fantasy battles. […] I thought this was truly vital to this game; I didn’t want it to be a game where it’s a reflex-type action or reflex-based battle; we wanted to combine all of these elements.”

For Hamaguchi, it was more about removing barriers that exist for players when trying to feel as though they’re a part of the world. “I do believe that, not just for RPGs, but for other fantasy-type titles as well, the trend will be such that it’ll be moving towards incorporating more action elements and that will be the trajectory of games overall,” Hamaguchi says. “It’s very much favored by contemporary players in that it creates a sense of immersion because players are able to receive this immediate response to the input from the controls. There’s this immediacy that brings about further immersion into the gameplay. Instead of viewing this fantasy world from the outside perspective as a player, you’re able to be fully immersed as if you are inside that world.”

“In that sense, I believe the Final Fantasy VII Remake series has this wonderful balance of all these elements,” Nomura adds. “It’s not quite completely action-leaning or action-focused, but it very skillfully combines these elements into a balanced and enjoyable, immersive experience.”

The battle system of Final Fantasy VII Remake garnered acclaim, but it’s not the only piece of the title that changed. The visual leap forward is immediately recognizable, and the story received numerous upgrades. Instead of retelling the entire Final Fantasy VII arc in one game, Square Enix opted to release the remake in the form of three games. The first title, Final Fantasy VII Remake, retold the party’s initial push through Midgar – a section of the original that takes about 6 hours to complete – across a 30 to 40-hour title. 

This decision came from Nomura, who identified early on that fully capturing the events of Final Fantasy VII in a modern way and with enough depth to do the story justice wouldn’t be possible in its original one-game form, not to mention the drastically different format the game takes following the party’s emergence from Midgar. “To recreate the world of Final Fantasy VII as it was in the original today in its full volume, the only way for us to realize this was to divide the titles or else it simply was not possible,” Nomura says. “We had to divide it, or we can’t do it right.”

Final Fantasy VII Remake’s extended stay in Midgar fully fleshed out characters previously relegated to minor roles like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie and further developed the personalities and relationships of the main characters like Cloud, Tifa, Barret, and Aerith. “When the remake project was first decided, at that point, we had already felt that if we are going to take on this series, it’s imperative that we depict the characters much deeper,” Nomura says.

Final Fantasy VII Remake was released on PlayStation 4 on April 10, 2020, earning an 87 out of 100 on reviews aggregator Metacritic, including an 8.75 out of 10 from Game Informer. And now, with the quality bar set high and fan expectations even higher, that same team sets out to push the well-known story forward as Cloud and his friends step out of Midgar and venture into a massive world full of adventure and intrigue in the second act of the Remake series, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth arrives on PlayStation 5 on February 29. To learn more about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, visit our exclusive coverage hub through the banner below.

Parts of this article originally appeared in Issue 362 of Game Informer.

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread's Game Of The Year Honorable Mention #2: Dead Island 2

I don't like to say things "shouldn't work" because I find it to be overtly cynical and an assumption that somehow things will always be bad until you decide, actually, it's good. Dead Island 2 probably shouldn't work this well, though. I vividly remember Dead Island 2 being revealed with that flashy CG trailer in the....I want to say, Sony E3 Press conference in the year 2015 (RIP to ever creating new memories in that framework, by the way). I didn't expect much at the time. I know a lot of people enjoyed it, but I had personally felt a bit burned from the original Dead Island. It just wasn't the game I wanted it to be, so while a second one could maybe improve on the formula, what if I just didn't like the formula? After ten years of constant delays, reshuffling, and restarting of development, what chance did Dead Island 2 even have left of being good? Turns out, a very good chance, actually. Dead Island 2 is a phenomenal video game, a very basic video game, but a phenomenal one regardless. When I say Dead Island 2 is "Basic" I mean no disrespect in that statement. Dead Island 2 feels like a video game that hammered home the fundamentals of game design to such a wild degree that even something as simple as thwacking a zombie with a piece of rebar in a fairly standard first person melee combat system looks and feels incredible. The simple, little things that we have all long since taken for granted are demonstrated here as tenants of video games, that, put in the right scenario, really are always a fun time. No part of me will ever get sick of an on demand drop kick move. Dead Island 2's plot is exceedingly simple, but it has a lot of fun with it. Zombies have completely overrun Los Angeles, turning it into a more metaphorical island (no giant Tsunami's like in escape from L.A here) known to the people as "Hell.A", but it doesn't seem to have dulled their spirits. Influencers, celebrities, actors, scumbags, normal people, etc. are all treating the fall of L.A as some kind of bizarre zombie killing party. It sounds like a tone that either wouldn't work, or would just be obnoxious, but it approaches it all with such an earnestly fun energy that it all comes together in a way I feel few had expected.

What that tone and energy lead to, is an always fun series of quests. Whether it's making your way through a Hollywood studio full of elaborate sets that all look like levels in wildly different video games, or scrounging through the exceedingly nice homes of Beverly Hills. There's always something new to find, and some new enemy to hit with whatever weird thing you happen to be carrying around for said purpose. Want to throw a bottle of water at a zombie, followed by a shrunken that somehow has lightning powers? Please do. Dead Island 2 may be a basic video game, but nobody ever said that going back to basics has to be an inherently bad thing. I talked to quite a few people who internalized those basics and assigned Dead Island 2 as "The Best 7/10 Game Of The Year" and frankly, I also thought along those lines. The further I get away from It though, the more fondly I remember my time with it. Dead Island 2 may not have been the hit that I expected it to be on a personal level, but at the time I played it, I think it was the hit I needed. It's a fantastic game that defied a lot of odds to be as good as it was, and it was one of my favorites of an already packed year.

[gal-vanized]

ive never played any of the hitman games nor do i really plan to but the 2015 e3 trailer always stuck out in my mind, mainly the music

[scithemodestmermaid]

i wanted to like recore because adorable robots that need lots of hugs because they are sad.  the e3 trailer from 2015 still stands out in my mind today.  i waited and waited for a chance to play it and bought it almost as soon as it came to steam.

but much like mighty no 9, keiji inafune had to take a perfectly cute robot game concept and JUST ABSOLUTELY RUIN IT

i mean, the general visual and sound design of the game is great.  and like i mentioned, the robot friends are charming and cute.  the exploration part is pretty nice, the desert actually makes for a nice setting to explore with robot friends.  but there is no level curve, its more of a sheer drop.  the story is disappointingly short.  story turns out trash, none of the emotional impact from the announcement trailer (which, keep in mind, wasnt even five minutes long).  the final section and DLC are astoundingly bad: the first final boss filtered many because the game rushed them through the story and they were woefully unprepared, but then those who managed to get past are greeted with FIVE LEVELS of the WORST PLATFORMING IN THE GAME while the boss you JUST KILLED talks about how much you suck whenever you die, and anyone who didn’t quit there are greeted with the SAME BOSS BUT DUMBER at the end, followed by a rushed AF ending.  and the DLC has the WORST PLATFORMING IN THE GAME BUT IN PITCH BLACK, as well as terrible car racing sections.  

for every nugget of goodness, there are piles of trash and i’m so sad i cannot recommend it.  watch that E3 trailer and call it a day.