‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Director Naoki Hamaguchi on Remaking a Classic and Sealing Aerith’s Fate

variety.com:

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains light spoilers for “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.” When it comes to Final Fantasy and Square Enix, Naoki Hamaguchi has seen it all.

Having started as a real-time visual effects renderer back in 2006 with “Final Fantasy XII,” Hamaguchi has since spent the last 18 years at Square Enix, slowly rising through the ranks — promoted installment after installment, working as the lead cutscene programmer, main program, project leader and finally co-director of game design/programming of “Final Fantasy VII Remake,” alongside Tetsuya Nomura and Motomu Toriyama.

Hamaguchi was heavily inspired to make games after playing “Final Fantasy VI,” wanting to create a game of its quality. In 2003, he graduated from HAL Nagoya College of Technology & Design and entered the games industry in the same year, eventually working at Square Enix.

Now, he’s helming the second installment of the FFVII remake series with “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,” which has already been met with rave reviews, plowing ahead with a 92 Metacritic “universal acclaim” score ahead of its release and is being hailed as “so good, it nearly wrecked my life,” by The Washington Post games critic Gene Park.