Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is finally launching tomorrow, which has given producer Yoshinori Kitase some time to catch up on his backlog, namely The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Kitase spoke at some length about his long history as a video game enjoyer in an interview with BAFTA. His passion for games began with the arcade version of Space Invaders, which he first played around the age of 10. However, the title that got Kitase into games more "seriously" was the original Legend of Zelda, and he's still playing the newest game in the series almost four decades later.
"I like the whole series," he said. "I don't think I've played every single one of the spinoffs and everything, but I definitely play most of them, including the latest, Tears of the Kingdom. I actually got right up into the end of it, but unfortunately my work on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth got really busy right at that point, and I've kind of had it on hold since then."
- Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P was unsure about referencing Final Fantasy 9 so heavily because it's a "masterpiece, and everyone has a strong emotional attachment to it"
- During the original Final Fantasy 7's development, the devs considered Tetsuya Nomura "the Demon King of retakes" - "He was always making the designers re-do things"
Presumably, with the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth release time upon us, Kitase can now cross the finish line in the latest Zelda epic.
In terms of modern games, Kitase also said he's been playing Pikmin 4 for the second time. "There are still things I haven't done yet, so I really want to go through and get everything," he said, adding later that his favorite video game characters are indeed the plant-like beings from Pikmin. "I like the way that they just die really quickly when they're on their own, but they can come together as a group and try hard to achieve things."
Kitase also mentioned Alone in the Dark as a game that "left a huge impression" on him, Glory of Heracles 3 as a game whose story he admires, Hearts of Iron 4 as a game with mechanics he enjoys, and more generally, "games where you command massive legions of troops in real time."
