Final Fantasy 12 Revenant Wings:
The Interviewees: Motomu Toriyama, writer and director of FFXII: Revenant Wings. Eisuke Yokoyama, the producer for the game.
1UP: Is there any feedback that you're receiving from the Japanese gamers that you might take into consideration and tweak for the U.S. market? Because there are some AI issues with the pathfinding -- meaning, your army gets stuck on an environmental object -- and I'm wondering if that'll be fixed for the North American release.
Motomu Toriyama: Yes, the interface is planned to be tweaked a bit, and more importantly since the Japanese market was unfamiliar for RTSs, it was designed more for beginners, but since the North American market is more familiar with the RTS genre, it will be tweaked a bit for more experienced players.
1UP: The original FFXII on PS2 drew a lot of favorable comparisons to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back because of its rebels versus the Empire vibe. If you had to choose, which Star Wars movie would you say Revenant Wings most closely represents?
MT: *Makes a quick joke about Ewoks* [Laughs] The Star Wars story is based on a war, and obviously Revenant Wings takes place after the war of XII, in a time of peace, so it's more human-based. But if I had to choose one, I would say it's closest to Episode III, the third one, mainly in the aspect of how it goes into how Darth Vader came to be. So this story of Revenant Wings also reveals how things came about.
1UP: Does Revenant Wings use the same game engine as Heroes of Mana for DS? It seems similar because they're both RTS games.
Eisuke Yokoyama: It's not at all related.
1UP: What other games have you guys have worked on, and what does that experience bring to Revenant Wings?
MT: This was my first endeavor in the portable arena, so this was all new to me. But I also worked on Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X and X-2, which is how I learned how to bring out that 'FF-ness.'
EY: This is my first Final Fantasy title. All of the games I've worked on before was in the capacity of assistant producer. I coordinate the interaction between [developer] Think & Feel and Square Enix and I'm also involved in balancing schedule and budget in order to achieve the quality goal.
1UP: The Ivalice connection seems to be -- besides the recent trend of expanding the FFVII and FFXIII mythologies -- the only really persistent, established, branching, offline Final Fantasy series. Can you explain what makes the Ivalice universe (Final Fantasy Tactics, FF Tactics Advance, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII) such a compelling world to maintain? And in addition to that, when are you going to make a game featuring 100 percent Viera?
[Laughter]
MT: Well, as you said, Ivalice isn't really the only Final Fantasy world that we've maintained. As you may have noticed that we've built on in recent projects using the same world, and Ivalice was just the one we chose for Revenant Wings due to the story. As for the 100 Percent Viera-only game, as long as Ivalice is still popular in a couple of years something like that will come up. I'd like to see that. [Laughs]
1UP: Most of the previous Ivalice-related games were designed with the former Quest development team under the direction of Yasumi Matsuno while he was still at Square Enix. How much of Revenant Wings still bears the influence of that legacy if at all?
MT: Well, more than Quest, Ivalice has become more of Square Enix's world particularly with Final Fantasy XII. So that development team being a really big team, an original team, really defined the world of Ivalice clearly, so there is influence from the XII team going into the Revenant Wings world, but it's not so much going back to the Quest-developed Ivalice. It's more the XII team-developed Ivalice, obviously it's the same world, but it's more defined by Final Fantasy XII.
Here's a link ot the trailer. www.gamevideos.com/
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FF tactics advance 2:
Square Enix's Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 is, like its predecessor, a tactical role-playing game set in the magical realm of Invalice. Players assemble clans of individual characters, building their skills and setting their jobs while progressing through a rich story. Developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS.
The Interviewees: Yuichi Murasawa, director of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 (and the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for GBA), and Akitoshi Kawazu, executive producer for the Ivalice Alliance series.
1UP: Can you tell us about the primary differences and advances of Tactics Advance 2? Do you still have the Law Card system in the game?
Yuichi Murasawa: The main difference is hardware. It's been four years since we released the previous Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. So sure if we modify some features and regarding the story, it's totally different. We followed the basic system of FFTA and we got of lot of details like mini-games and missions to offer more entertainment more easily than the last title. As for the Law Card system, we kept the Law system as in the previous title, but the features are different.
1UP: One of the things that made FFTA difficult was that the menu system was too deeply layered. If you wanted to find out how your skills were progressing and how your abilities were advancing you'd have to wade through tons and ton of menus. With two screens at your disposal have you addressed this issue at all?
YM: Sure, we tried to make good use of the twin panels, so the usability is considerably better than FFTA. For example, now that we have two screens, one screen is for battle, and the other screen is to check abilities or stages or other things. When you access a part or equipment, in the past game you'd have to examine it on the same screen through many layers, but now you can check this on the second screen, so regarding the usability, it's considerably better than before.
1UP: The previous Tactics game for GBA, you tended to have a reliance on the same party, because the characters that you didn't use didn't gain experience, so you'd never want to bring them out into battle. Have you addressed this imbalance at all? Also, the last game had this annoying tendency to reward an enemy's low 15% chance to hit you with a successful hit 85% of the time. Meaning, they'd almost always hit you even if your position and terrain lowered their chance of success to something abysmally low. What was all that about? Lastly, I noticed while playing that unlike the last game, in which a defeated enemy would result in a pile of bones on the field, there doesn't seem to be any in FFTA2. Did you intentionally remove that?
YM: The growth system has been modified in FFTA2. They do not level up during the battle. They level up after the party clears the battle, and every single clan member gets experience points, so in that sense we've balanced the growth rate of each of the characters. As for the hit percentage, I think it's purely a matter of coincidence, it's not that you get hit 85%, it's just that you coincidentally got hit that often, or maybe it's a bug [Laughs] so I'll look into it.
Regarding the bones, we intentionally removed the bones, because the stage just looked very messy with the bones everywhere. And because we've removed the bones we've kind of revived the system, although we can't talk about it now in detail. But when the player is KO'ed, now you can revive them from anywhere on the stage. Here's a link to the trailer. www.gamevideos.com/
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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Ring of Fates (and some insight to the Wii version.):
The Interviewees:
Toshiyuki Itahana, director for FF CC: The Crystal Bearers, and character designer for the original Crystal Chronicles, The Crystal Bearers, and Ring of Fates. Mitsuru Kamiyama, director of Ring of Fates.
1UP: Is Crystal Bearers the first game you've directed and what kind of plans do you have for the title?
Toshiyuki Itahana: Actually the first title I directed was Code Age: Commanders, which was not released in the States. In terms of a North American title, this is my first appearance as a director.
1UP: What's the direction you have for the title? It seems more like a real adventure game.
TI: With Crystal Bearers, there's a much more action-oriented take on the Final Fantasy series. The key difference between the original Crystal Chronicles and also Ring of Fates, is that that kind of continues on the tradition of multiplayer cooperation and working together to further the adventure, whereas Crystal Bearers concentrates more on solo play and action.
1UP: The original Crystal Chronicles on GameCube, working your way through the game in a cooperative manner, featured many MMO-style elements of trying to find rare materials to create better armor, better weapons, but once you completed the quest the game was over, and you couldn't really do anything with all this great stuff you created. In Ring of Fates you have a single-player and multi-player mode. I assume you can play multiplayer for as long as you have friends to play with. Does Ring of Fates have a similar armor and item crafting system, in which you can continue to try and get better and better stuff.
Mitsuru Kamiyama: Nice question! [Laughs] Yes, we have learned lessons from the past, and the whole crafting feature is still in the game. Now we've made it an in-depth feature where not only are there many items to craft, but they look very different, you'll visually see the difference in the armor and jewelry in dressing your characters in various armor and such. And there is crossover between single and multiplayer.
1UP: Oh, can you use items in single-player that you unlock in multi-player, or something like that?
MK: We can't really go into detail, but yes, that is possible.
1UP: For Itahana, Crystal Bearers seems almost like Skies of Arcadia meets the Little Prince, thanks to the hero's appearance and the high-flying air battles. And for Kamiyama, I want to know whether you can still abuse your moogle and cover him with graffiti, like you could in the GameCube version.
TI: How do you mean the Little Prince?
1UP: Because of the main character's curly blond hair and youthful appearance.
TI: Ahhhhh, I see. In terms of the hair [Laughs], what we discussed before in how I want to portray the hero, I wanted more of a world-weary weather-beaten image, my image was not to design a hero with curly hair, but to make it appear a little disheveled because it's supposed to be a little messy so that it appears that he's been through a lot of stuff and wanted to convey a rugged look for the hero. I want to write an exhilarating tale of this great hero set against sweeping blue skies, who has in his past gone around adventuring, so that's what I had in mind.
MK: Here's an insider story for you. First of all, yes, moogle painting is in the game. But in the original GameCube game, that feature was put in just two weeks before we finalized the data was 'set,' and it was kind of an afterthought at first. So I went to Itahana, and I said "Do something with this," and he drew out the idea on a chopstick wrapper, and gave it to me, and I showed it to Mr. Kawazu (Akitoshi Kawazu, executive producer), who looked at it, and then left without saying anything. [Laughs]
At first we thought he was thinking "What are you doing with this stuff when we're so busy and we need to ship this game?" But then I also thought "Well, if he didn't say anything, we can put it in, right?" [Laughs] So that's what we did and it became kind of popular, so now we decided to put it in again, and because of the Nintendo DS and the stylus and stuff you can do a lot more with it.
Here's a link to the DS version. www.gamevideos.com/
Here's a link to the Wii version. www.gamevideos.com/
Submitted by G-Ramsey
17/08/2007
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Source URL:
http://www.1up.com/do/gameOverview?cId=3155894