"President Takayuki is here."
The people who were chatting heard the sound of the door opening and quieted down one by one.
Although there were no strict rules against slacking off during normal times, Takayuki was easy to talk to, as long as everyone completed their assigned tasks within the specified time. Occasionally slacking off wasn't a big deal.
But this time, Takayuki had gathered them together with great seriousness.
Before they gathered, they had already learned that they would be working on the development of Final Fantasy. In fact, some members of the teams had been temporarily reassigned to work on related development of this game.
However, those assignments were not official until now when Takayuki had finally gathered them together with such gravity.
Such emphasis was rare.
There was a moment of silence, and Takayuki prepared to break it.
"Don't be too nervous, everyone. This time, it's just like before. Just complete your respective tasks and develop the game."
As he spoke, he gestured for the temporary assistants at the door to come in.
Soon, two young men wheeled in a cart carrying two boxes of bound papers.
"This is the development plan for my new game this time. And my goal this time is not limited to just your three game development teams. The engine development team and special effects production team in the U.S. will also cooperate fully with your work."
Takayuki picked up one of the A4-sized booklets from the cart and instructed the assistants to distribute them.
Some of the more clever employees immediately stepped forward to help distribute these booklets, and within five or six minutes, the booklets had been distributed to everyone present.
The whole meeting room was filled with the sound of pages turning as everyone earnestly examined the new game development plan.
Previously, there was a similar process whenever Takayuki wanted to develop a new game, but this time, the thickness of the plan was noticeably greater than before.
This indicated Takayuki's great emphasis on this new game development. He probably intended to invest even more of his energy into this new game development.
Takayuki, holding the booklet, explained, "This contains the initial framework of the plot. The game's background is set in a steampunk and near-future technological era, which will include familiar Final Fantasy elements such as crystals, chocobos, and adventuring on a large map."
"So far, the construction of the game world in this plan is still at a relatively early stage. What I need from you now is to enrich the story background based on the framework I provide."
These people were carefully examining the contents of the new game development plan. The plan had outlined the general worldview of Final Fantasy 7 in detail, and the additional details to be added were mainly about the culture, social structure, and other minor details, all of which were emphasized as necessary settings in the document.
Everyone was somewhat surprised to see this.
Because before this, most of the Final Fantasy story backgrounds were mostly set in a medieval context, with at most a bit of technological foundation added. Moreover, Takayuki rarely demanded such detailed depictions of the story background.
It seemed that Takayuki really intended to completely construct a fictional worldview and then fill it with various logically consistent fantasy elements.
The plot designers felt a bit of a headache at this requirement, as it was quite different from the work they had done before.
It seemed that they would have to settle these settings first.
"If there are any questions, feel free to ask now, and I'll personally explain more details about these requirements."
Apart from detailed descriptions of the settings, the plan naturally also included information about the gameplay itself.
This time, the entire map would be much larger than before, larger than any other role-playing game ever made.
So, there were more requirements.
The level designers and gameplay designers had to figure out how to expand the game map without making the whole world feel dull.
They couldn't let players feel that the whole world was too empty.
And they couldn't just fill it with a bunch of ubiquitous question marks, like the open-world games that would become popular in the future.
They had to ensure that every area of the large map had its unique content, making the world look more realistic.
The plot designers had a headache just a moment ago, and now the level and gameplay designers were starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.
Filling a large map with countless entertainment options? It was insane. Even if they could actually do it, the capacity of this game would probably skyrocket, wouldn't it?
Now, their game console... Oh, right, the new GS1 console had suddenly jumped from the mere tens of megabytes of capacity of the original SFC to over 2GB.
Moreover, with the future expansion of technology through discs, this capacity could continue to double or even more.
So, it seemed that they really could do a lot now.
In the past, they had always tried to create as much rich content as possible within the limited space of the game.
In the early days, they had to rack their brains to save resources for just a few KB of capacity.
However, this time, the GS1 had directly increased the once very precious capacity content by dozens of times, giving them the feeling of upgrading from a bird gun to a cannon.
"President, I have a question."
At this moment, Uesugi raised his hand.
Takayuki looked at him. "Go ahead."
"President, there's so much content in this game. Won't players feel overwhelmed by it all?"
Hearing this question, others also raised their heads.
In fact, they had similar thoughts just now.
Before this, no matter how frantically they saved resources within the limited space, the overall flow of the game was just so much, and couldn't be further enriched.
Unless you wanted to play several times through, adding more content by yourself. But those people were generally true fans, and they couldn't just cater to true fans.
Upon hearing this question, Takayuki smiled. "How big do you think players' threshold is?"
"Well..."
Uesugi thought carefully for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know. I just subconsciously feel like there's too much content in this game."
Takayuki said, "Actually, it's not enough."
A game truly bursting with content would probably be a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
Like World of Warcraft.
Compared to World of Warcraft, single-player role-playing games like Final Fantasy 7 were still somewhat lacking in content.
But since World of Warcraft players could accept it, Final Fantasy 7 players naturally would as well. It's just that the people in this world didn't know it yet.