Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

• 1. Introduction

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  Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2006 as something nobody expected from Square Enix: a third-person shooter set inside one of gaming's most beloved fantasy universes. Vincent Valentine, a brooding gunslinger who had spent most of the original 1997 game as an optional character locked in a coffin, suddenly became the sole protagonist of a standalone action title for the PlayStation 2. The premise was striking enough on its own. Three years after the apocalyptic events of Final Fantasy VII, a secret military organization called Deepground has emerged from the shadows, hunting Vincent specifically because of something hidden inside him without his knowledge.

  What made this project remarkable was its origin. When Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children began development, the Square Enix staff concluded that a single entry in what they called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII could not adequately expand the world they had built. Three separate games were conceived in parallel: Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus, and Crisis Core. Each would explore a different corner of the Final Fantasy VII universe. The shooting game fell to producer Yoshinori Kitase, a man who had never shipped a shooter before. What followed was a development process full of delays, overhauls, and a release that divided critics almost perfectly down the middle.

• 2. A Shooter Inside Final Fantasy

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  Producer Yoshinori Kitase made the genre choice himself. He loved first-person shooters and believed the challenge of making one would push the development team's skills in new directions. The decision surprised the public. With no official word from Square on what kind of game it would be, gaming publications spent months speculating it would follow the Devil May Cry model of fast melee combat. In 2004, character designer Tetsuya Nomura dismissed those rumors and told the press the genre would genuinely surprise people.

  Kitase and the team quickly realized that a pure action game created less compelling design work for their developers. Role-playing elements were grafted onto the shooter framework specifically to retain the interest of longtime Final Fantasy fans. The result was a system where defeating enemies yielded experience points, and players could either spend those points leveling up Vincent's stats or convert them into Gil, the series' standard currency. Monolith Soft assisted on development, helping the team navigate unfamiliar ground.

  Vincent's weapon loadout reflected the shooter ambitions directly. Three base gun frames carried names drawn from mythology: the three-barrel handgun Cerberus, the rifle Hydra, and the machine gun Griffon. Barrel length became a tactical consideration, with longer barrels improving long-range accuracy at the cost of movement speed. Accessories including sniper scopes and Materia slots could be attached, with Materia enabling magic shots that consumed Vincent's magic points. The system was distinct from Final Fantasy VII's equipment model, where a character could equip a weapon, armor, and accessory separately; here, the weapon was the single piece of equipment and did the work of all three.

• 3. Vincent Valentine's Backstory

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  Vincent was chosen as the game's protagonist for a specific reason: his past had deliberately been left vague in the original game. He was an optional character; players who never found his hidden coffin in Nibelheim never encountered him at all. That ambiguity gave the Dirge of Cerberus team room to build.

  The development team had originally considered other gun-wielding characters from the broader Final Fantasy series. Barret Wallace from Final Fantasy VII, Irvine Kinneas from Final Fantasy VIII, and Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2 were all discussed before the expansion of the Final Fantasy VII universe made Vincent the clear choice. His weapon was already a gun, and the team wanted an action-oriented game; the fit was exact.

  Character designer Tetsuya Nomura, who had worked on both the original Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children, designed the Tsviets with a specific goal: creating a sense of balance against the warriors players already knew, primarily Vincent, Cloud Strife, and Sephiroth. The character called G, glimpsed only briefly in the game's secret ending, was modeled directly on Japanese singer and actor Gackt, who both voiced the character in Japanese and wrote the game's two theme songs. Nomura also redesigned Lucrecia Crescent, who had appeared only in an optional quest in the original game. He gave her a visual resemblance to her son, Sephiroth, drawing on portraits from guidebooks and fan-art. Crisis Core producer Hideki Imaizumi was so taken with G's mysterious role that he chose to expand the character in that subsequent game.

• 4. Development Delays and Overhaul

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  Dirge of Cerberus was announced in September 2004 and was originally scheduled for Japanese release in 2005. The game's official site went live in April 2005. By May, Nomura had stated that gameplay material would be shown at that year's E3, but no playable demo appeared at the event. The team was still resolving control problems. By September 2005, the beta test program had been postponed indefinitely; with the game listed as 60 percent complete, Square acknowledged that launching a beta in its current state would not allow testers to give useful feedback.

  When the North American and European versions were prepared, the developers were not satisfied with the Japanese release and undertook a significant overhaul. Online multiplayer, which had been a major component of the Japanese version, was stripped out entirely. The primary reasons were the limited popularity of Square's PlayOnline service outside Japan and the absence of PlayStation 2 hard drive support in the United States. The story missions from multiplayer mode were reworked into unlockable secret missions for the English-language releases, though none of the additional narrative content from the Japanese multiplayer carried over. Easy Mode, present in the Japanese version to accommodate players unfamiliar with shooters, was also removed. The English-language version was later released in Japan on the 4th of September 2008, as part of Square's Ultimate Hits budget lineup.

• 5. Gackt and the Soundtrack

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  Masashi Hamauzu composed the game's score, and the soundtrack album, Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack, was released on the 15th of February 2006 in Japan across two CDs totaling 53 tracks. A limited edition version came packaged in a "Cerberus Complete Case" deluxe box designed to hold the soundtrack, the PlayStation 2 game, and the limited edition of Gackt's single.

  Gackt's involvement extended well beyond his role as the model for the character G. He wrote and performed the game's two theme songs, "Longing" and "Redemption". The ending theme had originally been planned as a ballad by the game's staff, but Gackt chose to make it a rock song instead. The team heard his direction and approved it without resistance. His single "Redemption" was released on the 25th of January 2006, with a limited edition version including both Gackt's promotional music video and an alternate cut using footage from the game.

  A supplemental soundtrack covering the multiplayer mode was released through the Japanese iTunes service and the Square Enix Music Download page on the 22nd of August 2006. Titled Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Multiplayer Mode Original Sound Collections, it comprised 27 tracks. Two of those tracks were new songs composed by Ryo Yamazaki specifically for the North American release of the game.

• 6. Mixed Reception and Sales

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  Critics received Dirge of Cerberus cautiously. At GameRankings the game held a score of 60 percent, and its Metacritic score stood at 57 out of 100 based on 51 reviews. GameSpot acknowledged "a few interesting and even entertaining moments" but said the game would ultimately leave both action fans and Final Fantasy fans unsatisfied. IGN called it "a decent game with a strong story and occasionally-engaging rifle blasting", while conceding it was not "the best use of the Final Fantasy VII universe". X-Play gave a negative assessment, citing poor level design, weak gameplay, excessive cutscenes, and inadequate artificial intelligence. Eurogamer framed it as a "risky gamble" for Square Enix, noting it was their first shooter and criticizing the use of characters who had been minor or optional in Final Fantasy VII.

  GameTrailers took a more favorable view of the story, calling it "convoluted, but incredibly impressive in its scope", and praised the changes made for Western releases. The CGI cutscenes and character designs drew positive comments across multiple outlets, while the limited variety in enemy types was a consistent criticism.

  Sales told a different story from the reviews. The game shipped 392,000 units in its first week. By August 2008, 460,000 units had been sold in North America and 270,000 in Europe. Japan alone had accounted for over 513,000 copies sold within three months of release. By July 2006, Dirge of Cerberus had entered Sony's Gold category for top-selling games, a tier reserved for titles that had sold between 500,000 and 1 million units. The game's storyline was later planned for recreation in the mobile title Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis.