Don’t expect DeLoreans, hoverboards and sports almanacs. But, according to Wan Hazmer, Final Fantasy XV lead game designer, the title has found inspiration in an unlikely source: Robert Zemeckis’ 1989 sci-fi flick.
In an interview with Travel Garage TV, Hazmer talks about how the game’s developers are striving to create believable environments. “A concept of Final Fantasy XV is actually, ‘Fantasy based on reality’,” says Hazmer. “When we talk about reality here, we want to talk about no matter how far you go to the deep ends of the town, you can actually feel that they are united in design.” While the worlds are not real, they need to feel believable — as though, they are inhabited by actual people.
What inspired Hazmer’s approach to realism? One of his favourite movies of all time, Back to the Future: Part II.
“Near the start of the movie, you actually see Marty McFly walking through this alley. It’s his first time in the future,” he continues. “And then, when the scene opens up, you can actually see flying cars and people wearing weird fashion. There are hoverboards and that stuff. But people are walking normally, right? Why they’re walking normally is that they have seen that culture throughout all those years, so they wouldn’t be surprised. But you would be surprised, right?”
“The idea of the whole creative process is provide that culture shock,” he continues.” But, at the same time, you have to make it realistic.” What the Final Fantasy XV doesn’t want is for players to be taken out of that world. It needs to make sense.
For Hazmer, this approach is what separates the worlds in FFXV from the ones in other Final Fantasy titles. “It all starts at that process first,” he explained. “We think about the culture first.”
Watch the full interview right here.
Comments
4 responses to “How Final Fantasy XV Is Influenced By Back To The Future: Part II”
Didn’t they try that with FF13 with talk of Fal’Cie and L’Cie? Everybody knew what those were but the player was never told.
I think this is a bit different – in Back to the Future Marty represents the audience, and we get exposition through his lack of understanding that we share. In FF13 Lightning and everyone else knew perfectly well what Fal’Cie and such were; the game was just awful at providing the exposition the audience needed. The lack of info on what the hell was going on with the Fal’Cie was very distracting for me, until I slowly worked it out, because the characters were talking about things I had no context for.
I know. That was the problem. We just have to hope they learned this lesson and the main characters are ignorant.
…and no plot dumps.
If you read the game’s datalogs of the story/characters/etc it would’ve been easier for you to follow through. I was initially confused with the whole Fal’Cie and L’Cie naming so I just went to the datalogs, read the stuff I had missed and suddenly the story was crystal clear (hehe). Whenever a new event happened in the story or something I would always refer back to the datalog for dat extra clarity.
Its be a more unlikely source if Resident Evil 2s B scenario wasn’t also based on BTTF2