Nomura does FFVI’s dark flashbacks, Battle Statue of the Gods
IN Square Enix Final Fantasy VI In a 30th anniversary interview, Tetsuya Nomura reviewed his contributions to Shadow’s flashbacks and FFVI Boss fighting god statue. He also contributed to Setzer’s background and Kefka’s boss fight design, as he was a character and monster designer for the Super Nintendo JRPG.
First, Nomura discusses his contributions to FFVI The boss battle of the gods and Kefka’s final battle. These include concept art images of both along with final images of the game. In the case of the concept art, he explained that the Kefka was less complicated because, he said, “I drew it right at the end of the project and I used all my energy on the Statue of the Gods.” He also noted that the Gods boss statue was designed in such a way that it came from the desire to make it larger than Exdeath in FFV. He also said that the implementation of the boss battle division was done to fit its design. He noted, “To be honest, there wasn’t really a plan for that at all — I asked them to adjust the combat to fit the enemy design.”
This was Tetsuya Nomura’s statement when discussing FFVI Gods boss statue and sprite design:
I decided to draw my designs before moving on to creating textures, but not many people were doing it that way at the time. I drew the boss in each sketchbook.
Normally, I would have my sketch ready and then create sprites based on that, but for the Statue of the Gods, I actually scanned the sketch and created sprites using the to scan. Back then, there was a limit to how many colors you could use, so I scanned it in monochrome. It looked a bit rough but I was able to improve it by manually editing and adjusting the colors. I honestly thought it would be a huge breakthrough in the way I create textures, but then FFVII appears, everything turns into polygons and I never have to use this method again.
And here are examples of the concept art that Square Enix and Nomura shared. Although the artwork for the Statue of the Gods here is just one image, the interview text notes that these are three separate drawings in real life.
After the interview, Tetsuya Nomura discussed FFVI Dark flashbacks can appear in the game if someone chooses to stay at the inn when he is around. He explains how he came up with the idea.
…The whole inn scene with Shadow was my idea. Then there is Kitase (Yoshinori Kitase, director of FFVI), who decided that you would lose him forever if you did not wait for him when the Floating Continent was destroyed. Kitase has a bit of a dark side to him. (laugh)
Final Fantasy VI launched on the Super Nintendo, and most recently Pixel Remaster its version is out for PS4, Switch, PC and mobile.
