This week’s Famitsu magazine included a long feature onFinal Fantasy VIII, celebrating its 20th anniversary. The feature included a long interview with Kazushige Nojima, who worked as a scenarist on multipleFinal FantasyandKingdom Heartsgames. He’s also one of the scenarists onFinal Fantasy VII Remake.
Throughout the interview, Kazushige Nojima spoke on multiple aspects ofFinal Fantasy VIII, and most notably the Laguna parts. He revealed these were supposed to be much longer:
Kazushige Nojima:At first, Laguna’s parts were much bigger. They were making around half ofFinal Fantasy VIII. But as development went on, they got shorter and shorter. The staff worked really hard to make a map for Laguna’s parts too, but in the end it’s barely used in the final game. I always felt bad about that and couldn’t apologize enough to the staff.
Near the end of the interview, Kazushige Nojima was most notably asked what kind of story would be depicted in a possible newFinal Fantasy VIIIrelated game. Here’s Nojima’s answer:
Kazushige Nojima: It would focus on Laguna’s life. I want to show more of his story.
Famitsu:It’s true Laguna’s story parts are really popular.
Kazushige Nojima: But maybe the segments are so popular because they’re so short… But yes, this game would be about showing Laguna’s bad points. And then at the very end, it would show his cool side. But for it to work well, he’d really need to be depicted as a clown for most of the game.
This is only one of the many points Nojima spoke about in the interview. The interview has many other interesting tidbits, so stay tuned as we’ll publish a full summary soon. Meanwhile, if you’re planning on discoveringFinal Fantasy VIIIwith the remaster, you may check out our guidefor some starting tips.
Both theFinal Fantasy VIIremaster and theFinal Fantasy VIIIremaster are getting aphysical release on Switch as a single package.
