Kingdom Hearts writer says the series "freed me from the despair I felt at the time" as video games pushed for photorealism

Scenario writer for Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Kazushige Nojima, says that he felt "despair" as the video game industry began to push towards realistic designs, but that working on the Disney x Final Fantasy crossover "freed him" from this feeling.

Nojima is a veteran creator in the video game industry, who has worked as the scenario writer on some of the best games of all time, including Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 10. He recently took to Twitter to talk about his recollection of how the video game industry was changing after the release of these games.

Translated by GamesRadar+, Nojima explains, "As video game characters were given personalities, we received internal and external feedback that they were similar to characters from movies and other media. That's all well and good, but I was conflicted, as video game characters need to allow room for the players' imagination.

"Video games also began to turn towards photorealism. Development became more difficult as settings and scripts became more realistic, and there were fewer stylised character models." Nojima didn't like the direction that games were going, wanting to be free of the difficulties of aiming for realism in games.

Fortunately for Nojima, he was asked to work on a new series at Square Enix. "In the middle of this shift, I was allowed to work on Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, and it freed me from the despair I felt at the time," Nojima recalls. "It was just so much fun. It was refreshing and nerve-wracking to be entrusted with someone else's characters."

I think I would feel far more nerve-wracked than refreshed to have the ever-watching eye of the big mouse peering over me.

Final Fantasy 7 writer says Dragon Quest taught him that protagonists should be "self-insert for the player", but realized "I shouldn't be so set on the idea that a silent protagonist is the only way."