Hajime Tabata, director on The 3rd Birthday, started reminiscing about the development process of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

In this week's issue of Jump magazine, Tabata initially talks about The Third Birthday, revealing that the game will feature skippable event sequences. A little something that Crisis Core lacked.Tabata admits that by the time his team realized that the skip button was missing, it was already too late to put it in, thus it was a feature sorely missed in the final version of Crisis Core.

According to Tabata, Crisis Core was originally conceived as a full-on action game, but since the majority of the staff had more experience developing RPGs, the design was changed to reflect that and Tabata believes it was a change for the better.

Tabata also revealed that a sequence in Crisis Core had to be cut out from the final release version because the game would not fit onto a UMD disc otherwise. The sequence in question involved the period when Zack and Cloud escaped from the ShinRa Mansion. Tabata wanted to portray the drama during the escape but instead decided to focus on Zack's "activity as a soldier."

Story tip by RedRose