Summary
- Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s combat came from a surprising source of inspiration: Monster Hunter.
- Capcom legend and FF7 Remake battle director Teruki Endo revealed as much in a recent interview, leveraging his work on Monster Hunter: World with Square Enix’s technology to create a “chemical reaction”.
- He avoided looking at other Final Fantasy games, as he believed this would prevent him from pushing the envelope forward.
Final Fantasy 7 used an Active Time Battle (ATB) system that allowed enemies to attack whenever their action bar was full, a spin on the usual turn-based modes of the era. However, the remake — which launched 23 years later — completely reinvigorated combat with real-time action, allowing you to switch between party members on the fly to utilise their abilities in the heat of the moment rather than queuing attacks in a menu.
The new system was designed by Capcom legend Teruki Endo, who revealed in an interview with Inverse that he was inspired by his work on Monster Hunter when it came to reimagining the classic Final Fantasy 7 combat.
I didn’t really look at different Final Fantasy titles, as I felt like if I leaned too much on them, it would prevent me from pushing the envelope.
He was hired early in the game’s development, but by that point, Square Enix had already decided that the remake wouldn’t be turn-based. However, there was no concrete idea as to what the combat would look like, which is where Endo came in. He had just worked as the lead game designer on Monster Hunter: World (and previously a planner on other games in the series), so he leveraged his knowledge of its action elements, combined with Square’s technology, to create a “chemical reaction”.
“I wanted to take the feeling of fun of a command-based battle, that feeling you get, not necessarily the system itself,” Endo explained. “So I built the system from scratch, and it might have been a coincidence that parts of it felt similar to other games [like Final Fantasy 13].”
ATB Elements Did Return In Final Fantasy 7 Remake
While Final Fantasy 7 Remake swapped out the traditional ATB combat for real-time action, it didn’t get rid of the old model completely. Endo found a unique way to reintegrate the old action bars, by having players fill them with regular attacks to unleash special abilities and spells, marrying the two systems and paying homage to the iconic genre-defining ’90s JRPG.
But this wasn’t an easy task, and Endo revealed that it was this aspect of the remake’s combat that he spent the most time on. “You need to look at, for example, how much the ATB gauge accumulates,” he said. “Because you might be taking damage, and still having it accumulate. Or blocking. You need to balance how the gauge fills up, and how the player uses ATB charges. In the trial and error experimentation, at one point, it got too easy to fill the ATB gauge.”
FF7 Remake was a huge success for Square Enix, selling over seven million copies, winning The Game Award and DICE Award for Best Role-Playing Game, while also taking home two BAFTA nominations, and that was in no small part thanks to its fresh, modern approach to combat.