Final Fantasy VII Remake was told by Square Enix’s ethics department to keep Tifa’s chest at a reasonable size.
We’re learning a lot about Final Fantasy VII Remake following the madness of E3. While the annual gaming convention provided us a bunch of great screenshots and a new trailer that showcased everyone’s favorite punchy-gal Tifa, it’s the interviews with the developers that followed which are really dishing on the dirt.
For example, did you know that Square Enix has an ethics department? And they can apparently order their staff to “restrict” the size of a character’s anatomy? We certainly didn’t.
In an interview with Famitsu (and translated with the help of Eurogamer), Final Fantasy VII Remake game director Tetsuya Nomura said that he was told by the ethics department to keep Tifa’s chest at a reasonable size, given how athletic she’ll be in the real game.
"It was necessary to restrict her chest," admits Nomura, noting that Remake is going for an extremely realistic vibe and having something even approaching the size of the original character art would make the many backflips Tifa performs problematic. Obviously, that’s not a problem for a game like Dead or Alive where each character seems to have invisible rockets attached to their hands and feet (along with even more interesting items attached to other parts), but that’s not what Square is going for.
In the same interview, Nomura also told us that the infamous Honey Bee Inn scene will be included in Remake, but it won’t be quite the same as you remember.
"The Honey Bee Inn cross-dressing event is still in. We’ve made it more modern. If we made the facility like we did in the original game, the physical unease would be staggering, so that was no good…"
What it means to make this a more “modern” scene is still an open question, but Square seems to be a lot more culturally sensitive these days so we’re going to stay optimistic. There’s no doubt that the original Honey Bee Inn scene wouldn’t go over well to today’s modern gamer, so there’s likely some fundamental changes in store.
Final Fantasy VII Remake releases on PlayStation 4 on March 20, 2020.