Story Design Map: Anima For Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
This exercise asked me to create a new background story for a level or quest line in one of my favorite games, then map it across all design disciplines. I chose Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and pulled on a unique thread that connects its lore with Final Fantasy X. By exploring the idea of dreams and their materialization and the cost of salavation. I built a concept where Anima is the precursor to the Gi’s dream world of nothingness and the prototype for the Black Materia. The process challenged me to condense complex ideas into a three paragraph brief, expand them into discpline specialties planning, and refine through peer feedback.
Sections Below:
Challenges & Inspiration: Defining constraints and finding a fresh narrative hook in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth lore.
First Iteration: Summarizing the link between Anima’s origin and the Gi’s pursuit of death, then mapping it across design teams.
Feedback #1: Peer questions on narrative hooks, rewards, combat mechanics, and player takeaways.
Second Iteration: Rewriting for clarity, emphasizing death as salvation, adding narrative hooks, and expanding combat and quest details.
Condensing Story & Design: Organizing tasks into team roles and development impact, with added depth for quest designers.
Final Thoughts: Reflection on structured practice, cross-discipline mapping, and why this piece stands out as one of my stronger narrative exercises.
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Challenges & Inspiration
This exercise asked me to develop a background story for a new level, encounter or quest line to any video game that I love. Once decided what game that is, map the story elements to various design disciplines. I must also consider a game that has multiple design specialties so I could map out all the design specialists I would need to accomplish the development of this new content. The exercise prompt instantly brought me to one of my favorite games released this decade, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I always challenge myself to find a unique thread to pull on or unseen connections yet to be woven. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth covers so much of its compilation stories in main quests and side quests it felt like I was looking for something that did not exist. I spent hours watching cut-scenes and reading random wiki articles until I remembered a community discussion about Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X being connected. This was the lightbulb moment as I had also remembered some fresh additions within the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth lore added that I could spin into that beautiful thread. The idea of how powerful dreams and their materialization into reality can be.
First Iteration
The exercise puts a limit of three paragraphs on my initial summary. I did my best to highlight the new lore added by Final Fantasy VII Rebirth characters named the “Gi” and their dream world of nothingness. Then I talk about the origin of Anima, a summon from Final Fantasy X that is the manifestation of a mother’s dream to defend her son from an evil entity that brings death and darkness by becoming that exact thing to the entity, death and darkness. The way I tried to tie these two concepts together is through the Gi’s want for a Materia that could grant them death. The Black Materia is not the first Materia that spawned but Anima, thus being the precursor to the Gi’s dream world.
In my follow-up section “Mapping the Story to Design,” I spent time identifying each speciality I would have to call upon to make this boss level work on a basic level. Covering everything at the moment that came to mind, from there I made a table for the “Condensing Story & Design”. I broke this table up into two sections, team affected to create the content and team impact, which list the work that will most likely be necessary in the development pipeline. I did my best to hyperlink and provide art references, music references from legacy materials and self-references from the content of this game itself.
My last section, the “Reflection,” was required to see after all my work if I believed I provided useful information for the team. In this section, I wrote about how I believed I provided useful information for the team and incorporated many elements that would prove useful to a team.
Feedback #1
The peer for this assignment provided excellent feedback on this exercise write-up. They had many kind words to share about my comprehensive approach. One useful tactic my peer used to help me improve with this exercise was asking questions to find gaps in the exercise's consistency. Such as, what are the narrative hooks between Anima, the mother and this world coming together? How are the unique rewards for the player identified after this side content? What are the unique combat mechanics that could inform narrative aspects of this content? What should the player take away from this encounter with Anima?
They posed a bunch of brilliant questions that I did not properly identify and that could cause confusion if given to a development team. So I took some time and let the gears inside of my head turn and grind out answers for these questions.
Second Iteration
My first change was to the core idea of the narrative connection. The dream worlds did not come off clear in the feedback, so I highlighted the focus of death as salvation for the characters. I tackled altering and rewriting the paragraphs, making sure each paragraph was more cohesive and restructured the order. Paragraph one is about Anima and the origin of herself, paragraph two is about the Gi’s and the Ancients. The last paragraph combines the two ideas of the previous paragraphs and injects the narrative hook that should get the player and the team excited. In the last paragraph, I really tried to make sure we know what the player should learn, feel and think as they engage with this new quest line and how it relates to the overall story without detracting from it.
To follow up on these changes, I added small suggestion details within the “Mapping the Story to Design” about combat mechanics that could inform the narrative aspect into Anima’s battle gimmick. This should give more texture to what the team would read and help spawn more ideas. From that section I moved to the “Condensing Story & Design” and added more details for the quest designers by adding the process to collect the dark fragments. Which did not exist before and the reward for the player after they completed the first successful battle attempt with Anima.
I removed the reflection section from the PDF as I wanted to use this as a portfolio piece as I believe my work here was well done and this writing expands on the reflection more than that paragraph I had written prior.
Final Thoughts
This exercise stands out as one of my stronger first attempts for a narrative department exercise. It reminded me why structured practice matters and working with things you love makes the iterations, feedback and cross-discipline mapping more natural. This process sharpened my ability to find interesting narrative hooks that could bring each design specialty into the fold.