1990s In 1991, Nomura was hired by Square and at first worked as a debugger for
Final Fantasy IV. Some time later, the company's staff was divided and he was placed in the team in charge of
Final Fantasy. At that time, each
Final Fantasy developer had their own plan book as a compilation of ideas to present to the director of a game. While the others typed their plan books at the computer and then printed them out, Nomura wrote his by hand and attached many drawings which impressed director
Hironobu Sakaguchi and event planner
Yoshinori Kitase. Their designs were reused from some of Nomura's abandoned concepts for
Final Fantasy V. Nomura drew the game's characters in a stylized and
chibi way and came up with the idea for the "
Limit Break" attacks. Additionally, he wrote the character's background stories and was the battle visual director in charge of designing fight sequences. Nomura first heard of the game during a discussion between
Shinji Hashimoto and
Hironobu Sakaguchi regarding the use of the character of
Mickey Mouse in a video game. He was inspired to work on
Kingdom Hearts by
Nintendo's platforming game
Super Mario 64. After discussing with the Disney staff, Nomura convinced them to use original characters with him as the character designer. The game's protagonist,
Sora, became his favorite character he had designed so far. Following
Kingdom Hearts, Nomura worked once again on the
Final Fantasy series with
Final Fantasy XI and
Final Fantasy X-2. For the
Compilation of Final Fantasy VII metaseries which featured new titles based on
Final Fantasy VII, Nomura was once again the character designer. A sequel to
Kingdom Hearts started development around the completion of
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, an international version which added more foreshadowing elements regarding the series' plot. Nomura continued his work on the series with
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Game Boy Advance in 2004. He had originally planned to work directly on the PlayStation 2 sequel
Kingdom Hearts II. However, desire from fans to play the original game on a portable console resulted in the creation of
Chain of Memories which would bridge the gap between
Kingdom Hearts and
Kingdom Hearts II. Afterwards, Nomura was the director and lyricist for the CGI animated film
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which was released in 2005 in Japan. This marked his film debut, and he redesigned the characters as well. Nomura joined the film's crew after producer Yoshinori Kitase called him and eventually became the director because of his attachment to the character of
Cloud Strife. He split the role of directing with Takeshi Nozue.
Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2005, resolving the elements foreshadowed in the first game's secret ending. As a result of being set a year after previous titles, Nomura was careful to make the plot accessible to newcomers. After Square Enix had finished development of the updated version
Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Nomura was approached by Disney which expressed interest in a sequel. He said "We have various ideas, but we're not at the point where we can say that." Wishing to stop using the character of Sora temporarily, Nomura instead wanted to continue the series with games that explained different subplots. This resulted in the creation of
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the Nintendo DS in 2008 which explored events that set up the story of
Kingdom Hearts II. In mid-2007, Nomura mentioned a desire to create a spin-off
Kingdom Hearts game on a mobile platform and wanted it to play slightly differently from other titles in the series. The result was
Kingdom Hearts Coded, a game set after the events of
Kingdom Hearts II, which was later remade for the Nintendo DS in 2010. In the meantime, Nomura was also responsible for the main character designs and orchestration of
The World Ends with You for the Nintendo DS. In 2009, he was also the main character designer of
Final Fantasy XIII. The graphics capabilities of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 compared to previous consoles allowed Nomura to use more complex elements in the character designs than before, such as Lightning's cape and detailed facial features. This in turn meant that the art team had to do much more work for each character or area than in previous games. Nomura did not take an involved role in the creation of the
non-playable characters. In 2008, he was the character designer of
Dissidia Final Fantasy. The game was originally envisioned by Nomura as a
Kingdom Hearts spin-off featuring a cast of Disney characters. He later felt uncomfortable with the Disney characters fighting each other and instead opted to use
Final Fantasy characters. Nomura was responsible for the character designs, which changed much of the look and style of Amano's illustrations.
2010s In 2010, Square released
Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, a prequel of the first
Kingdom Hearts that explained scenes shown in
Kingdom Hearts II and its updated version. For 2011's
Final Fantasy XIII-2, Nomura only created the new characters' faces as other staff members designed their clothes. Once the
Kingdom Hearts coded remake was released, Nomura and his companions had already thought about creating
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, a game that would set up the events of
Kingdom Hearts III. The game was released for the Nintendo 3DS owing to the team's positive reaction to the console's quality. Nomura confirmed that he would be considering what he called an "HD Technical Test" in order to commemorate the series' tenth anniversary and to entice players new to the series. This occurred on March 3, 2012 in the form of a premiere event where footage from the game, including its full CGI introduction sequence, was showcased to celebrate the game's release. In May 2012, Nomura revealed he was working as the director of a new
Kingdom Hearts game that had yet to be announced by Square Enix. He was directing
Final Fantasy XV which originally entered production as
Final Fantasy Versus XIII shortly before its announcement in May 2006. Nomura left his position of director on
Final Fantasy XV following "changes in development structure" by Square Enix in December 2013. After his departure from
Final Fantasy XV, development of
Final Fantasy VII Remake began, with Nomura directing the project and other key members of the original
Final Fantasy VII development team, Kitase and
Kazushige Nojima returning as producer and scenario writer. At
E3 2015,
Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced with Nomura confirmed to be the director of the game. Nomura designed the characters in the "Torna" organization for
Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Nomura also designed bosses for the Eden raid in
Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers expansion.
2020s In April 2020, Nomura and Square Enix launched the critically acclaimed
Final Fantasy VII Remake. He worked as the director of the project, character designer, and concept designer. After a successful launch, Nomura would go on to work on downloadable content for the game called
INTERmission, which released in 2021. The follow-up
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released in 2024. He worked as the creative director, concept designer, and character designer. Work for that project began in 2019.
Kingdom Hearts IV was announced in April 2022, with Nomura again in charge of character design, story, and concept design. , no release date has been confirmed. Nomura also created art pieces for his characters on post cards which could be purchased in October 2022. He also created artwork which was used to introduce
Kingdom Hearts IV, which displayed many of the characters he has created through the games long timespan.
Style and influences Nomura considers
Yoshitaka Amano one of his biggest inspirations when doing artwork. When designing characters, Nomura wants their names and outfits to be related with their personalities. An example occurs in
Final Fantasy X where the protagonist
Tidus was given a colorful uniform in order to reflect his cheerful personality and to contrast with the previous moody
Final Fantasy characters. His name as well as
Yuna's, another character appearing in the game, also have a common theme, the former being Okinawan for "Sun" and the latter Okinawan for "night". ==Works==