How Kazushige Nojima shaped the worlds of Final Fantasy
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- In this episode we take a look back at the career of Kazushige Nojima, a famed Final Fantasy scenario writer and Narrative Designer who has become synonymous with the Square Enix IP Final Fantasy, particularly Final Fantasy VII and its ancillary compilation material like On the Way to a Smile, a Traces of Two Pasts, and The Kids are Alright: A Turk's Side Story. In this episode we chart his career beginning at Data East before making his mark at Squaresoft with Bahamut Lagoon, Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy 8.
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In this episode we'll cover the following topics:
Kazushige Nojima's career path
FF7 story Writing style
FF7 Advent Children
FF7 Novels
Reynatis Final Fantasy VII Remake and later career
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#finalfantasy #kazushigenojima #kingdomhearts
This series you've been putting together has been incredibly timely for me as I replay the FF series in release order for the first time ever. It's starting to become much more clear how each of the biggest voices in FF (Sakaguchi, Kitase, Nomura, Itou, Nojima, etc.) make their mark on each game, when you see how games they DIDN'T work on, turned out as a final project.
Like, when you realize the influence of Sakaguchi compared to Kitase or Nomura it becomes painfully obvious why the series is doing what it's doing now. As someone who loves every era of FF for different reasons, it's just really damn cool to hear more about how these projects came together.
For my own tastes, I'm starting to believe that Kitase is my GOAT and again, I really appreciate you shedding some light on these developers. It's insane how little there is to read about these guys (in English) when they're responsible for some of the most celebrated games in the medium.
He's such a good writer, one of my faves in the videogames industry.
These developer-focused essays are a very nice change of pace and deserve praise!
The real reason the stories in Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are so convoluted yet Tetsuya Nomura gets blamed for everything. Mostly because his name is more widely known and he’s the easier target
The best place to be in the gaming industry is right where he is, not super famous but rich, so you can do your work without a target on your back.
So your saying It's Nojima's fault, even though the videos says he guides the scenarios (and only at the end of KH III), not writes them? They are Nomura's projects that end up this way. Look at FFXIII-Versus. That was him, it restarting three times, cost another studio that ended up closing, then had to bring on cleanup guy Tabata. People can like Nomura as an artist, but it's clear he has ideas but not sure how to execute them. If all your projects have this identifiable mark, yes, that person takes the blame being director over them.
It's ironic that the better Final Fantasy games (1-6) had little to no* Nomura and basically Sakaguchi involvement was bigger. The greater the Sakaguchi factor 😂 the better the FF. So I think talking Nomura has not much consequence in terms of story. FFIX widely considered the best 3d Final Fantasy of the classic era actually has no Nomura involvement! (fresh air)
People have to realize at some point that without Nojima the stories wouldn't evolve the way they did. People have been making fun of him since the 2000s and always fanboyed Nomura for no reason. Nojim is underrated... He literally wrote the Cloud, Soldier, Sephiroth concepts into existence. He wrote the Seed, Gardens, Time Compression. He wrote the Vivi in Alexandria Play Arc, the Tantalus Evil Forest, Brahne, Kuja, Dagger, Zidane... He wrote Yuna and Tidus and the Zanarkand plot. The man is second in real weight in terms of what we got in our FF memories. Nomura just drew and materialized those ideas into sprites, the actual 3d modeling was other people. So it should be Nomura that is overrated for real, and Nojima should be held in higher regard.
@@m4r_art Nomura did work on FFVI, he came up with Shadow. It was because he contributed ideas that panned out that he became more involved then on. He was still the artist all through Sakaguchi's time, so he didn't have any leadership roles beyond the art until Kingdom Hearts. He was famous for his art, which is going to have more immediate effect than the writing in a story unless someone pays attention to the people behind it. There isn't a competition between the two, they worked together.
Yeah, Nojima gets overlooked because of his role, no one ever fans over scenario writers. That's just the nature of things and only when you take on a leadership role do you get noticed. He does now sadly more because of he, Nomura, Kitase and...going to get his name wrong so I'll say other guy are responsible for the bad direction of Final Fantasy. I think the direction Sakaguchi gave was key because he had an idea for what FF should be, allowing people to do their own thing, yet it was still cohesive (at least compared to now). FFVIII was nowhere near as alien as FFXIII on would become.
@@blumiu2426You should Watch some videos on versus development because it's waaay more complicated than "Nomura can't do thing"
I don't know how you have so little views. Amazing videos my friend.
Really appreciate how you've been adding so much depth to the less-well-understood devs!
Just found your channel. I mean just found my new favorite channel, oops. Great stuff man.
I know he’s not a FF guy per se, but it’d be interesting to get your take on the work of Yoko Taro.
Otherwise, great work as usual! I really appreciate you taking the time to approach some of these topics and people from a fairly unbiased perspective!
He's a creative guy, but not great on execution, like Nomura. Remember the team they work with matters because we see more of his influence in his earlier games. We do now still, but are more refined and that usually takes place when you have writers or scenario writers keeping things on track. That's typically the case with auteurs or openly eccentric.
I’ve done extensive research into Nojima regarding FF7, so think of FF7’s story like a Bob Ross painting. Sakaguchi had foundational ideas. Nomura made the background art. Kitase made the foreground art. And Nojima helped turn mistakes into the beloved “happy little accidents” (in addition to suggesting Aerith’s death).
Nomura was where he belonged. It was a huge mistake giving him control of FF.
@@jplayer073 I think you’re overestimating how much direction he had over the stories. He did background for FF7, FF8, and FFX. But the olive branch I’m willing to extend is Kingdom Hearts 3, since he’s largely responsible for that franchise’s entire story. He definitely took the gardener writing approach and I certainly suffered for it (they largely abandoned anything FF in that game).
@@wizcatcheslightning stfu oh my god. Nomura sux, you understood his comment, why are you talking about KH?
Kazushige Nojima is underrated. His writing is literally what caused the characters to take life.
If Kazushige Nojima can come up with such good bits of story from Nomura's Flamboyant Maximalist aproach to character Design. He's not an Unsung Hero. He's a Living GOD.
No he's not.
A phenomenal talent. Great job covering the dev history of these guys who shaped our childhoods. Nobuo Uematsu next?
He's only at his best when he's writing with others
he's a terrible writer lmao
I loved Kung Fu!
The only good things Nojima has ever done - FF7 and FF10 - have been ensemble projects. And those ensemble projects owe a lot to existing Japanese templates (Ghibli, Godzilla, Akira, Berserk, Musashi, Evangelion) or pre-existing JRPGs (FF6/CT/XG for FF7, and FF7/FFT/CC for FF10).
When you look at his other projects it becomes a nightmare parade. The convoluted time travel and boring villain of FF8, the tacky and chuuni characters all throughout the Compilation of FF7 and the toyetic approach to war criminals taken within, to the childish gloop monsters of Kingdom Hearts, and the two ridiculous spinoffs of FF10 set after FF10-2 which completely invalidate the first games, and finally the bait and switch fake out of FF7 Remake, followed by the timeline overdose and Schrodinger's Aerith of FF7 Rebirth.
The man needs supervision to write anything coherent. Kazushige Nojima is the Joe Biden of Square Enix.
This is quite a strange take. All art is in someway derived from other art, including literature. Any author is subconsciously shaped by what they've been exposed to in life, so regardless of how original an idea is it will never be free from external influences. Those "pre-existing" templates you listed also draw inspirations from other templates or stories. Godzilla was inspired by the 1953 film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathom, which surely had its own inspirations as well. This applies to all genres, not just fantasy. The skill of any good writer is how they can draw from pre-existing templates to craft an original compelling story - which FF7 and FFX both are. It's where Nojima excels and why Kitase hired him in the first place. They already had a lot of the core elements developed for FF7 prior to his hiring, he was brought on to take what was there, add his own ideas, and write a cohesive story out of it. As for what you've described as a nightmare parade, those are all simply your subjective takes at at the end of the day and don't reflect everyone's opinion. And btw no artist only ever produces masterpieces. Stephen King has also written many mediocre horror books.
Except FF8 is still a great game, so, convoluted or not, it’s still unique, compelling and interesting.
I think the better comparison is he's the David Goyer of video games. His work is good when writing with other collaborators, but solo, he is mediocre at best.
FFX is a great example and contrast to XIII and why the latter game turned out so badly. XIII had the bones of FFXs linear storytelling but it lacked a Tidus to pull the story together and make the nonsense make sense.
X is much better but XIII isn’t bad. Stop exaggerating
Was it a rumor that he didn't want to work on sequels or a fact? There is this conflict within the FF fanbase of picking favorites and blaming this person rather than the guy they like, or that person, so there ends up being conflicting information on who did what or is responsible for it. If he wrote material extending on the remakes that certainly either is a massive contradiction to him being so opposed unlike those that left SE when corporatization took over, but is the one that capitulates. I don't know if they are as bad as the Kitase approved FFX-3 novel, but he is lumped in with blame for the reception of FFVII Remake's direction. It's not as if these people can't fall off, lose inspiration. Nomura is leaving now, so things certainly are going a direction in the future. They've yet to prop anyone up at the company identifiable, which should be alarming considering they seem to mentor someone to take over. Maybe they have and a name lost beneath those in seniority.