168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most legendary video games ever made. As a result, much of its creation is viewed wi💮th appropriate mystery and gravitas. Over the years, through an array of interviews and retrospectives, we’ve seen the curtains lifted somewhat, providing so many details regarding the creation of this timeless classic. 500 Years Later: An Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 takes that a step further with stories from multiple developers and icons of the industry, bespoke illustrations, and a keen understanding of the legacy this game has left behind.
From Polygon’s Matt Leone and publisher Read Only Memory, 500 Years Later delves deep into exploring the companies and individuals that made the birth of Final Fantasy 7 possible. Beginning life as a single article, Leone saw fit to turn this legend into a book worthy of its name, and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree. After a brief foreword from series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, we are immediately thrust into a historic battle between Sony and Nintendo at the dawn of 3D graphics.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Video Game Release Dates 2024
From indies to triple-A g♛iants, TheGamer's release dates calendar covers all games coming out in 2024.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time)ꦍ shopped around to see which console giant could best house what they wanted Final Fantasy to become - a three-dimensional powerhouse that pushed things forward and took risks. In the ensuing drama, Nintendo was left behind. There’s also tale of early Sﷺilicon Graphics technologies and trade show demos that, while impressive, would never cut the mustard on a home console. It was all about a balance being struck between visual spectacle and budgetary realism.
Leone does a fantastic job stringing these dissonant anecdotes together into a compelling story, one w🐷here Tetsuya Nomura details his rise from the bottom of the totem pole to the very top after spearheading much of the character design and narrat▨ive of Final Fantasy 7. To know how far his career has come, and where it continues to go, makes imagining him anxiously asking series producer Yoshinori Kitase for approval quite hilarious, and he seems to think so too. Throughout the book, he swaps development stories with Kitase as they both remember things very differently, but with an unmistakable sense of warmth.
Outside sources from companies like Eidos and Nintendo provide an additional perspective, dealing with backstage politics of hardware and publishing deals as Sony took Final Fantasy and ꧂essentially made it a console exclusive for the better part of a generation. It was an unimaginable shift at the time, but in a modern world where Final Fantasy can be found on every platform under the sun, it almost seems comical.
Nobuo Uematsu talks about the freedom of composing a soundtrack using better hardware, while still bemoaning the presence of load📖ing times and occasionally having to curtail visions in the name of technology we’d yet to advance far enough. The majority of chapters are separated by minimal, cute illustrations of key figures and developers, providing a brief yet lifelike snapshot of how it felt to create a game that would go down in history.
While much of the book is spent delving into technological specifications and corporate bureaucracy, there is never any doubt that Final Fantasy 7 came from the hearts and minds of a relatively small team, and saw the franchise grow from a humble 2D success into a global juggernaut. It isn’t hyperbole to say it changed everything in the realm of video games, showing Western gamers just how much the medium was capable of. It’s a deep✱ly personal and nostalgic tale told in an engaging and surprisingly analytical way, allowing personal feelings to bleed through all the technical jargon that, to be perfectly honest, occasionally went over my head. I don’t know if I’l📖l ever figure out what made these graphics silicon, but they sure look pretty.
What blew my mind is that once all the devel♑opment talent was gathered and its vision for the game was established, Squaresoft developed Final Fantasy 7 in just over a year with 100 - 150 people on the project. This ꦛis unthinkable in today’s landscape, that a classic of this magnitude and influence could be created on new hardware in such a space of time.
It seems primitive today, but each and every developer interviewed by Leone is keenly aware that they were pushing boundaries at the time, often trying techniques that wouldn’t be aced until years later. They learned as they went, but none of these shortcomings prevented Final Fantasy 7 from becoming a masterpiece. The millions spent on CG cu🎐tscenes, R&D, and gathering the best industry talent from around the world was not wasted, even if decades later it seems like a drop in the pond.
It’s an important history lesson, chronicling how RPGs evolved into their current form and continue to change in the shadow of a timeless titan. Matt Leone’s tome explores that history in fascinatingly personal detail, and that alone will make it worth the price of admission 🥃for many.