it would be an action game similar to the Devil May Cry series. In 2004, however, character designer Tetsuya Nomura denied this, and stated that the genre would surprise gamers. Producer Yoshinori Kitase decided the title to be a shooting game based on his love for first-person shooters and the challenge provided for the developers that would eventually improve their skills. He said that role-playing elements were added as the design work on pure action games was less appealing to developers. Monolith Soft assisted on development. Vincent was chosen as the game's protagonist due to the scope for expanding his backstory, which was left very vague in Final Fantasy VII. The fact that his main weapon was a gun also worked into the team's desire to create a more action-oriented game. Prior to the solidification of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the development team originally considered using other gunfighter characters from the Final Fantasy series, such as Final Fantasy VIIs Barret Wallace, Final Fantasy VIIIs Irvine Kinneas or Final Fantasy X-2s Yuna. However, after the release of Before Crisis and Advent Children, and with the expansion of the Final Fantasy VII mythos, they settled on Vincent. The main character designer for the game, Tetsuya Nomura, had also worked on both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The Tsviets were designed with the idea of creating a sense of balance for the warriors with which players would already be familiar; primarily Vincent, Cloud Strife and Sephiroth. Nomura initially had doubts when designing Shelke's ordinary clothes for the end of the game, but he felt it was important for her to appear out of uniform so as to indicate she was truly free from Deepground. The character of G was based on the Japanese singer and actor Gackt, who wrote and performed the two theme songs of the game, and voiced G in the Japanese-language version of the game. Hideki Imaizumi, the producer of Crisis Core, liked the mysterious role of G so much, he decided to expand his character in that game. The character of Lucrecia Crescent, who features briefly in an optional quest in the original game, was redesigned so as to give her a similar appearance to her son, Sephiroth, based on portraits from guidebooks and in fan-art. Reeve Tuesti was also redesigned, as he only appears briefly in the original game as himself rather