Final Fantasy 7: What makes Rebirth's music so special

Hardly any video game has such unmistakable music as Final Fantasy 7. With the remake and especially recently Rebirth, the Square Enix music team has not only managed to maintain the quality, but also improved it and composed further hits. We were able to take a look behind the scenes of this unforgettable soundtrack with Music Supervisor Keiji Kawamori and composers Mitsuto Suzuki to understand how this was possible and what challenges such a new edition brings with it.

Of course, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the main focus. Once again the works of Nobuo Uematsu given new life. The two musicians tell you in the video above how exactly the Rebirth team started and whether they will continue to work with the legendary composer.

Open worlds, genre diversity and a spirit of optimism

Nevertheless, one thing has changed a lot compared to the remake, at least in terms of gameplay. Of course I mean the open world with its countless possibilities. It seems somewhat logical that such a change in the game world also affects the music. Keiji Kawamori explains why an open world is more difficult to add sound to than a linear one: “The challenge is more on the technical side, because a player now has the option of starting a quest, abandoning it and rejoining it at a random point “We had to think carefully about how to structure a piece in a meaningful way. We didn't have that challenge in the first game.”

However, one of the songs that took the internet by storm after its release wasn't quite so typical of Final Fantasy. The song from Salmon's Quest on the radio quickly became a thing on social media Memes. This piece comes from Suzuki himself, which is a stroke of luck for our interview, but also somehow not surprising, since the composer counts techno, electro, chiptune and everything that goes in that direction among his favorite genres. “I usually get the weird, slightly different pieces that other composers wouldn't do,” says Suzuki.

In the entire interview he tells us more about the creation and special features of “Salmon's Quest”. One piece I was particularly happy about being rearranged in Rebirth was “Migurumi, Migurumi” and we talked about that too. Which of the crazy songs from Rebirth have you noticed so far, positively or negatively?

Kawamori, on the other hand, has his hands full as a supervisor. He has been involved in the franchise's music since Final Fantasy 8 and explains that the sheer volume of songs would not have been possible without years of experience with Final Fantasy. But how likely is it that he will return to his first work next, perhaps right after work on the seventh part has been completed?

“I would love to work on the music for Final Fantasy 8 again, but that goes for all the games I've worked on before. Every hardware has its limitations and within that you always do your best, but when I look back “Some old songs sound a bit 'cheap'. Today we have better sound technology, so we try to rework the older music into a higher quality as often as possible,” answers Kawamori.

Of course, it's hard for both of them to think about new works outside of Final Fantasy 7, because they're probably working on the soundtrack for the third Final Fantasy 7 or touring the world with the re-arrangements of Rebirth. The concert will take place in Germany in September (Olympiahalle, Munich, to be precise).

We would like to thank Square Enix for the opportunity to interview. If you're as fascinated by Rebirth's music as we are, remember: the eight CDs containing most of the soundtrack are also already available.