The concept art for Final Fantasy VII originally featured a gas chamber that looked as if it were designed by H.R. Giger. The world of FF7 doesn't make much sense, as it combines the Blade Runner-style city of Midgar with rustic fantasy villages, the kind of which were commonplace in the older entries in the series when it was firmly entrenched in the fantasy genre.
The character and world designs in the Final Fantasy series don't have to make sense, as they're video game settings, and it's the job of the designers to make everything look as interesting as possible. Designer Tetsuya Nomura has taken this to some extremes in the past, with the people of Spira from Final Fantasy 10 wearing some truly outlandish outfits that must take all day to put on.
In FF7, the Shinra Corporation kept a consistent aesthetic theme throughout, with its soldiers and the Turks wearing uniforms, and their buildings representing the excesses of capitalism. The only characters in the Shinra Corporation who had free will to dress how they wanted were the top members of SOLDIER in Crisis Core, and it's not like anyone could force Sephiroth to wear a uniform. There was almost an area in FF7 that would have bucked the trend for Shinra's overall style, however.
In the original FF7, the members of Avalanche are to be publicly executed, as the Shinra Corporation wants to pin the descending Meteor on them. They are all meant to be killed in a gas chamber, but Tifa is the first to go, and she manages to escape. The gas chamber in the final version of the game is a room filled with pipes, lights, and a chair that is meant to lock someone in place. The concept art for FF7 (as seen on the Final Fantasy Wiki) shows a drastically different design for the gas chamber.
Final Fantasy 7's gas chamber was originally meant to be composed of bones, with the chair having its own spinal column connecting to the wall. There were also meant to be a lot more pipes for the gas - or maybe they are meant to be cameras. The overall design is reminiscent of the artwork of H.R. Giger, especially his work on the Alien franchise. Giger loved using packed lines of bone and flesh in his work, which is likely what the gas chamber was meant to evoke.
The reason the design was changed is unknown, but it's likely that it was a bit on the nose. A Final Fantasy villain like Kefka or Ultimecia might have owned a gas chamber made of bones, but that wasn't the Shinra Corporation's style. The cold and mechanical design used in the final game is much better suited for a public execution than the Necromancer's lounge seen in the concept art, and it's a much better fit for Final Fantasy VII.
Source: Final Fantasy Wiki
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