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Final Fantasy VII is one of the best selling games of all time and has been so well-loved
by fans since its original release in 1997 that it is now being remade for modern consoles
with the highly requested Final Fantasy VII Remake.
The game's popularity is undeniable, however, did you know that the version of the game
that we received in the West actually had some big differences compared to the original
Japanese release?
The English release had a whole range of new additions, a bunch of changes to the already
existing content and also various points to do with its translation.
And with that, today we'll be taking a look at how Final Fantasy VII was changed when
it was released in English.
The first thing we'll be taking a look at are the additions.
When originally released in Japan, Final Fantasy VII actually had no super bosses for the player
to take on and test their skills with.
The overseas release seriously revised this by adding not one but two very powerful optional
bosses for the player to fight, dubbed Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon.
To go along with the addition of the new bosses is the inclusion of a new NPC at the village
of Kalm, called the Kalm Traveler.
This NPC is involved in sidequests for locating and defeating the bosses and also collecting
their spoils.
These spoils being a free Gold Chocobo for players strong enough to take down Ruby and
a Master Magic, Master Command and Master Summon materia for taking down Emerald.
It wasn't just optional content either.
Diamond Weapon actually only appeared in cutscenes in the Japanese version but was added as a
main storyline boss overseas.
The developers also added a new weapon for Yuffie during this fight, which can be obtained
by using the steal ability.
One of the game's FMVs was even extended to show these new bosses.
In the original Japanese release, a cutscene during disc 2 would be much shorter than the
English version and would show none of the Weapons or any of the commotion that they
cause.
The English version however, shows all 5 of the game's Weapons, with Sapphire Weapon appearing
first, then Diamond Weapon, followed by Ultimate Weapon and then lastly both Ruby and Emerald.
The English FMV also shows the party narrowly escaping a blow by Ultimate Weapon on their
airship, which causes Tifa to get knocked to the ground.
As for the changes made to the already existing content, there's far too many changes to be
able to talk about every single one here, but these include various balancing tweaks
to things like stats and abilities, UI changes, some parts of the game being made clearer
and also some sections just having a little extra polish put into them.
Random encounters were reduced by varying amounts in most areas of the game, which means
you'll be fighting a lot less battles than over in Japan and some areas even had random
encounters removed completely.
Toggleable indicators were added to the backgrounds to show areas you could enter, with red indicators
representing new places and green indicators showing places you can climb.
The menus were given an overhaul, with the Japanese release having two lines of items
in the item menu, whilst the US release only has one and has the character portraits permanently
affixed to one side instead.
The exchange option was also added to the materia menu, which allows you to exchange
materia with other party members.
Status effects were also displayed differently in Japan, with, as shown here, the character's
max HP no longer being displayed when inflicted with a status.
Artwork was also changed in places, like the battle background at Corel Reactor.
In the Japanese version, the background shows a circular arena whilst the English release
has battles be located at the base of the reactor.
The Temple of the Ancients' clock puzzle was also actually more complicated in the Japanese
version and you would have to fail and fall down the pit 3 times to get the simplified
English version.
Over in Japan, you couldn't control the clock manually and instead had to let the Time Guardian
move the clock for you with various statements.
The challenge here lying in working out what time intervals each statement represents.
The animation for Safer Sephiroth's Super Nova attack was also completely different
over in Japan.
In the English release, this catastrophic attack sees Sephiroth destroy most of the
planets in the solar system one by one through the use of a powerful comet, before then crashing
it into your party.
The attack is presented very elaborately and is over 2 minutes in length, however, in the
Japanese version, the attack was very different.
The damage calculation was also altered, with it being impossible to kill your party in
the English release - instead dealing high percentage based damage, with the inclusion
of inflicting the status effects confuse, silence, and slow on the party.
Safer Sephiroth's abilities and AI were also tweaked in various other ways too.
Alongside these - it was made easier to keep your body temperature up during the Gaea's
Cliff climbing section and a few changes were made to the Speed Square Minigame so that
it's harder to rack up points.
Ultimate Weapon's level was also increased in the English version and its Dexterity was
raised, making the battle more challenging.
A few other enemies also had changes, such as Gi Nattak being made immune to sleep and
poison and chocobos being made immune to paralyze.
The mechanics of the Chocobuckle attack were also much more overpowered in the Japanese
version, with the damage dealt being the number of times you had escaped during battle multiplied
by the level of the user.
This was changed in English so that the damage dealt was just the total number of escapes
and nothing more.
The English release also added two new flashback cutscenes that give further info on Cloud's
past.
One of these occurs shortly after the weapon encounter during disc 2 and tells things from
Tifa's perspective, as she remembers encountering him semi-conscious at the train station.
The other is optional and can be triggered in the Shinra Mansion on Disc 2, after restoring
Cloud's memories.
This flashback shows Cloud and Zack escaping Nibelheim from Shinra and also how Zack would
ultimately be killed.
Japanese players would not be able to see any of these new scenes until the later Final
Fantasy VII: International release.
This release added these scenes, as well as all of the other changes made to the English
version of the game.
It also included a 4th bonus disc called Final Fantasy VII: Perfect Guide.
This disc has never been released in English and contains a wealth of background information,
trivia, behind the scenes content and other material for fans to enjoy and learn more
about the world of Final Fantasy VII.
That's not all though for the differences between the Japanese and English versions
of the game.
There is actually also a lot of points to discuss regarding the game's English translation.
When Final Fantasy VII was brought to the English speaking world in 1997, Square were
still in their infancy when it came to localization for other parts of the world.
1Up.com reports on this in an interview with Richard Honeywood, who applied to Square for
a programmer position and found himself as the sole localization producer instead.
To quote: "As Honeywood explained to me in the interview
that forms the backbone of this article, Final Fantasy VII was the game that opened Square's
eyes to the kind of money there was to be made outside of Japan.
"FFVII sold one million in the U.S., then later succeeded in the rest of the world,"
he said.
"Up till then, we were preaching the benefits of localization to the dev teams.
But suddenly they realized it was no longer the 'pocket money' level of the SNES era."
"Final Fantasy VII sold like gangbusters worldwide, but not on the strength of its English script.
The translation was rough, full of grammatical errors and weird turns of phrase that have
become an integral part of the game's legacy.
But considering how the game was localized, it's surprising there weren't more errors
-- Michael Baskett was the lone translator on the project at Square's North American
headquarters.
"He had some external help from Japanese speakers whose text he also had to edit," said Honeywood,
but "the QA team was just finding its feet then too.
We didn't have editors and the full review and checking processes we have now.
The dev teams were not accustomed to localization either, so there was a serious lack of communication
and best practices back then."
Fans of the game will already be aware of how rough the translation can sometimes be
in places and with conditions like these, this shouldn't be seen as surprising.
There wasn't just spelling and grammar issues though, but also some subtle and some not
so subtle differences in things like characterization and plot points.
There are too many differences to be able to really report on these fully, but Tim Rogers
has a great series of videos on YouTube called "Found In Translation", which you'll be able
find linked in the description and goes through the game comparing the English and Japanese
scripts.
One interesting point that's brought up in these videos revolves around Aerith or Aeris,
as her name was mistakenly translated to in the English version.
Aerith's character was more fleshed out and given more personality over in Japan and she
is much more humorous and spirited - something that isn't carried over very well into the
English version.
She also actually has a nickname for Cloud that she uses all throughout the game, whereas
the English version doesn't really have one.
Over in Japan, Aerith calls Cloud "Mister Jack Of All Trades", with this being a reference
to something Cloud says to her when they first met, about how he does a little bit of everything.
Aerith also doesn't say that Zack was her first boyfriend in the Japanese script, but
rather that he was the first guy she every liked.
There's much more than that so make sure to check out the aforementioned video series
if you can.
For another example, the videos also mention how sometimes the dialogue would be toned
down overseas or made less explicit.
For instance, the whole Wall Market section was quite a bit more explicit with its crude
nature in the Japanese script than in English.
There are also things like when the lights turn off on the train ride early on in the
game and how Jessie says "When the lights go off, you never know what kind of creeps'll
come out".
Over in Japan though, this was much more direct, with her saying "When the lights go out there
are a lot of train gropers."
Later versions of the game would update the script in places and fix some of the typos
and grammar issues.
A full retranslation has never been done though, for any of the game's re-releases over the
past 21 years.
But that's all we have time for today.
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