It’s always interesting to hear from creators of legendary games what they think about their own work. Today’s comment comes from Nobuo Uematsu, longtime composer of the Final Fantasy games who worked on the first 11 games in the series before going freelance. In the recently published “Nobuo Uematsu: On the Record” by James Mielke, Uematsu admits that he feels the soundtrack from Final Fantasy VII is “boring” compared to earlier works in the series.
Shared on Twitter by fan account FF7 Music, a transcript from the book has Uematsu saying, “Apart from the fan favorites, like “One-Winged Angel,” most of Final Fantasy VII’s songs are boring compared to the music in prior games.” He explains that due to the increased visual fidelity, he didn’t want his compositions to distract from the story, which in turn inspired more downbeat songs. “The for Famicom and Super Famicom games, the music played a role in advancing the story,” he continues, “but by FFVII the visuals are convincing enough to tell the story, so it was better for the music to take a step back.”
I can understand that somewhat, though I think it’s a very ’90s kind of thought. It’s funny to look back at comments from around that era which decried games sticking with 2D visuals over going into 3D, but gaming wasn’t a mature medium at the time. Many people were dazzled by the generational leap consoles took, so everything started to focus on exploiting that visual upgrade. In turn, this led to developers wanting games to be “taken seriously,” so they started designing after films. The idea that music would distract from low-poly 3D visuals is funny now, but makes sense in the context of the 90s.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
