Yoshinori Kitase Pushed Hard For Cloud To Keep His Smooth Moves In Final Fantasy 7 Remake
For better or worse, "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" diverges in some pretty major ways from 1997's "Final Fantasy 7." It strictly centers upon the initial "Midgar" portion of the original game, changes the combat system to action-based, and, most importantly for some, features some dramatic changes to the "Final Fantasy 7" timeline. In many cases, certain story elements have been altered or expanded, and there are even several sequences that weren't in the original game at all. These revisions have divided fans of the franchise, to say the least.
However, for what the game changes from the source material, there are plenty of other instances where even the wackiest, most out-there elements of the original game have been preserved and even amplified to new heights. Red XIII still talks like he could be a college professor, Barret sings the classic victory fanfare out loud after a battle, and, notably, Cloud still busts some absolutely killer moves on the dance floor at the Honeybee Inn.
The dance sequence in particular had a pretty heavy spotlight in the game's pre-release advertising, serving as a message to fans that the new game would not dial back on the zaniness of the source material. Despite its prominence, game producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed that he actually had to push hard for the scene to get included in the remake.
Kitase pulled rank to keep Cloud's dance scene
As Yoshinori Kitase told Inverse, Cloud's dance sequence in "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" wasn't initially a popular idea among the development team. The producer actually had to put his foot down on including it. "Some people within the team argued that Cloud dancing is 'not him,' but I worked on the Wall Market scenes in both the original and the remake so, as the original creator, I pushed my ideas through to have Cloud bust some cool dance moves," he said.
While Kitase preserved Cloud's Honeybee Inn scenes, they weren't easy to develop. "We collected together references of dance shows and decided on an overall direction, then tentatively edited that footage together while adding music and lyrics, before going even further and setting down the choreography," game co-director Motomu Toriyama told Square Enix. "I think that just that preparatory phase here took up the longest period in the whole development."
With how Kitase had to argue for the dance scene to appear at all, some may be surprised to hear that it was originally planned to be even more extravagant. As Toriyama told Square Enix, an early version included a sequence of Cloud pole dancing. "We decided to take that part out due to the impact on the rating!" he said.
"Final Fantasy 7 Remake" may have caused an uproar among fans, but Cloud's dance scene thankfully turned out to be a respectable update to the original game.