Posted in: Final Fantasy, Games, Square Enix, Video Games | Tagged: Final Fantasy, final fantasy xi, Square Enix

Square Enix Publishes Part 2 Interview With Final Fantasy Devs

Published Sun, 30 Jan 2022 20:12:09 -0600

Last week, Square Enix published Part 1 of an interview with a pair of original developers from Final Fantasy, and this week they released Part 2. This is a special long-form interview with the original director of FFXI Koichi Ishii, and the illustrator behind several logos, illustrations, and characters for the Final Fantasy series, Yoshitaka Amano. We have a snippet below of the second part of the "We Discuss Vana'Diel" for Final Fantasy XI, as you can check out Part 2 in its entirety here.

Square Enix Published Interview With Original Final Fantasy XI Devs — Credit: Square Enix

Not only was FFXI a brand-new title in the [Final Fantasy] series, it was also an MMORPG for home consoles, something that was unprecedented in Japan. Did that cause any additional difficulties?

Ishii: As you know, the MMORPG genre was still mostly unrecognized in Japan at the time. Evaluating the situation not only as a director, but also from a producer's point of view, I felt that a major hurdle would be getting people who were unfamiliar with MMORPGs to understand the world within the game. So I decided to meet with Mr. Amano, whom I hadn't seen in a long time, for counsel about my vision for FFXI.

Mr. Amano, what were your thoughts when Mr. Ishii told you about FFXI?

Amano: I was impressed that online games allowed players from around the globe to play together. But at the same time, I was unsure how to convey that kind of world through an illustration.

Ishii: My initial idea was to convey the vastness of the in-game world, using something that could be recognized by audiences that were unfamiliar with MMORPGs or had yet to play FFXI, and I believed a world map would do the trick. I shared this idea with Mr. Amano and it seemed like he thought of something, so I ended our first meeting with a sense of relief for the time being. When I later visited Mr. Amano for our next meeting, I found four enormous sheets of paper laid out in his studio, each one the size of a tatami mat*. I thought, "Man, he must be working on a huge commission." So out of curiosity, I asked, "What are you going to draw on these?" When he replied, "That's going to be the world map for FFXI," I couldn't help but go, "Huh??" (laughs)