500 Years Later: An Oral History of Final Fantasy VII

Editor: Matt Leone
Book Design: Rachel Dalton
Publication Year: 2018
Press: Read-Only Memory
Pages: 240

500 Years Later: An Oral History of Final Fantasy VII is a book-length collection of interviews with the game developers and staff members who worked on the original release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997. These interviews originally appeared on the website Polygon and can be accessed (here). Despite an ingenious bookmarking system, the piece is extraordinarily long, which is one of the many reasons why the book publication project received an enthusiastic level of support on Kickstarter.

Another explanation for the project’s success has to do with the canonical status of Final Fantasy VII, as well as the curiosity of many longtime fans. The insights that 500 Years Later provides concerning the creative process behind the game are indeed interesting. To give an example, I learned that the city of Midgar was originally modeled on New York, not Tokyo. Barret was originally named “Joe,” and he was the first character the development team created. Cloud, who was supposed to be Barret’s sidekick, was the second.

I was especially intrigued by a short interview with Tetsuya Nomura, who says that he gave the protagonist the name Cloud, “as in overcast gray clouds, because he was a slightly depressed, moody character.” Nomura adds that he wanted to make Cloud “a more human, weak character with flaws,” and that he was never intended to be a symbol of heroism. When the creators of Final Fantasy VII talk about their ideas and process, you can almost hear the enthusiasm in their voice.

Unfortunately, the majority of 500 Years Later is corporate gossip. Many of the interviewed staff members hint at issues that they never fully explain. For example, why were there so many errors in the original English translation? Because the circumstances were bad. How were they “bad,” exactly? No one will say. In addition, there are a lot of contradictions, as well as people vaguely suggesting that perhaps someone is misremembering something.

There’s also a lot of discussion concerning why the Honolulu studio that produced the Spirits Within movie failed, but no one will come out and say what they mean. The closest anyone gets is Alexander Smith, who laments that there were significant tax breaks offered by the state of Hawai’i that Square wasn’t interested taking advantage of. Apparently, the studio could have saved millions of dollars by signing an agreement saying that they would employ local Hawai’ians, but they refused to do the paperwork even though they could have easily hired local people as property maintenance staff.

Many of the Japanese staff aren’t willing to step on anyone’s toes, while the members of the American and European staff have moved on during the past twenty years and don’t really remember the specifics of what they were doing in 1997. I wish 500 Years Later were more “tell us about these characters and the world you helped create” and less “tell us how you feel about your bosses and coworkers from twenty years ago.” The small flashes of insight on the creative development of Final Fantasy VII are lovely, but they’re few and far between.

In terms of formatting and layout, the book is very stylish, but there are a distressing number of pages in which magenta text is printed against a slightly lighter magenta background. If you don’t read these pages in direct sunlight, they’re almost illegible. The staff bios at the back of the book are printed in tiny pink font, and I didn’t even try to read them. Hot pink magenta isn’t a color I associate with Final Fantasy VII, so I’m not sure what’s going there.

Aside from this relatively minor issue, the book design, text layout, and illustrations of 500 Years Later are all phenomenal. The interviews are edited and structured in a way that makes them easy to read, as well as surprisingly entertaining. Despite my lack of interest in the oral history of Square Enix as a corporation, I genuinely enjoyed the interviews with its current and former staff, and the physical edition of 500 Years Later is a treasure. If you’re interested, you can order a copy of the book from the publisher’s website (here).