A Conversation with 6 Creators on the 35th Anniversary of the Final Fantasy series. PART1

Final Fantasy (FF) turns 35 this year. From 2D pixel art to 3D computer graphics, from home consoles to mobile and online experiences, this landmark role-playing game series has survived the test of time by continually evolving. In this feature, FF’s current creators speak passionately about the series’ past, present, and future. This week we have interviews with Kazuko Shibuya, Yoshinori Kitase, and Tetsuya Nomura who gave us special comments.

Pixel art: FF’s earliest mode of expression

Kazuko Shibuya

I love drawing pictures, so by elementary school I already knew that’s what I wanted to do for a living. After high school, since there was no internet and no easy way to plot out a career path, I started out by attending a technical school for animation. When I confided in my teachers that being an animator wasn’t my thing, they said, “Well, how about this game company that’s hiring?” I hadn’t played any games, but I went to the interview anyway since it was a chance to work as an artist. The company, Den-Yu-Sha Square [presently Square Enix], was full of young people; my interviewer, Mr. Sakaguchi1, was still a part-timer attending college, and almost everyone else on staff was in their 20s.

The first pixel art I created after joining the company was the town map for King’s Knight. I struggled at first since it was so different from the traditional drawing I had studied at school. I had to fit my pictures in a 16 x 16 grid! [Laughs.] And using only three colors! I had no idea where to begin, so I did my best to figure it out. Instead of doing rough sketches, I jumped right in and started creating pixel art through trial and error. This was right after the Famicom [the Japanese Nintendo Entertainment System] was released, so my generation didn’t have any teachers. We had to come up with the methods on our own.

About a year after I joined the company, Mr. Sakaguchi announced he was making an RPG along the lines of Dragon Quest. Nobody else seemed to be on board, though [Laughs.] So I said, “I’ll do the art.” And that was the beginning of the “A Team,” as the Final Fantasy (FFI) development team called itself. I was the one who drew the landscape that is displayed during FFI’s prologue when the player crosses the bridge. I pushed back at first when Mr. Sakaguchi asked for a fullscreen image. Where were we going to find the memory for that? We were already cutting like crazy to squeeze in the characters and backgrounds! I was up against a wall, so I changed the drawings into silhouettes and somehow managed to make the picture work. I had no idea that picture would go on to be loved around the world.

FFI’s opening screen appears during the prologue when the player crosses the bridge north of Cornelia.The original data was no longer available when it came time to work on the Pixel Remaster, so Shibuya manually recreated the image using a printout she had kept as reference.

When you design characters with pixel art, you need to think semiotically. Players have to tell the characters apart, so I look at the design and include only the most distinctive features. It’s a subtractive process where I discard details and consider what absolutely has to remain for the image to be discernible. With monsters, on the other hand—especially last bosses—it’s all about impact. When I did the Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III, I realized that the upright pose from Mr. [Yoshitaka] Amano’s design would look too small on screen, so I put my own spin on it and drew the boss arched forward instead. I don’t remember exactly how I landed on that idea, though. [Laughs.]

The rough sketch that Shibuya drew for the FFIII package was provided as reference to Yoshitaka Amano, who drew the final illustration for the package shown at the bottom.

Over the past few years, I’ve been working on the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for mobile phones. My art looks completely different on LCD smartphone screens than it did on CRT televisions. On a CRT monitor, pixels smear and expand and get crushed. The colors and shapes and brightness you end up with are totally different from what’s in the data. We used to leverage those peculiarities to achieve a certain look. If you study the data, you might wonder why some pixels are placed the way they are, but on a CRT monitor it all makes sense. The CRT monitor is the truth, and my art is the illusion. Compare that to an LCD screen, where every pixel is perfectly reproduced with no color-blending. It’s so precise that it becomes a challenge to give the art any character.

A printout of the original pixel data. The game font is yet another of Shibuya’s creations.

Back when I was working on FFI, everyone was still in their 20s and bursting with passion and ambition. I think that’s why we were able to create a game that’s still so beloved today. I've always wanted my pixel art to reach through the TV screen and bring smiles to people around the world. So all these years later, when people tell me FF inspired them or convinced them to join the game industry, it fills me with joy because it means, “Hey, it actually worked!”

1. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the FF series. After leaving Square in 2001, he founded the game production company Mistwalker. In Sakaguchi’s most recent game, Fantasian for Apple Arcade, the player explores a world created from photographs of real-life dioramas.

Blazing the way from pixel art to 3D computer graphics

Yoshinori Kitase

FFIII came out during my first year after university, while I was working at an animation studio. Up until that point, I had intended to go into film or animation, but playing FFIII made me realize that games have narrative potential as well—as a medium, they’re just as expressive as film. So, I changed jobs and joined Square. I started out on the Mana team, then moved on to Romancing SaGa—and then, in 1992, I joined the production of Final Fantasy V as what’s called an “event planner.” Basically, it meant that I decided how the game’s scenes were staged. I was assigned parts of the story that are normally reserved for the director, and that’s how I became involved in the series.

The game that sticks with me the most is, of course, Final Fantasy VII. It was the first FF for the PlayStation, a monumental project where we transitioned from pixel art to 3D computer graphics and took the presentation and story to a much more realistic level. It meant discarding the techniques we had mastered for previous FFs, so at first, we struggled to picture the game we were making. What convinced me it would work was when I saw the continuous shot for the opening sequence. It starts with a close-up of Aerith, then the camera pulls back to show all of Midgar, the setting of the game. The player gets to see how big the city is, and then the camera zooms back to Aerith. Without any fades, it transitions seamlessly to the gameplay. That was Mr. Sakaguchi’s idea, and I think it’s so memorable.

We also made some dramatic changes to the setting. Particularly back then, the go-to flavor for RPGs was medieval fantasy: swords and magic and dragons. We wanted to change all that, so we decided to pit the player against the president of a big corporation. The music took a new direction too; the shift to 3D inspired our composer, Mr. Uematsu1, to write dramatic, scene-specific music that was unlike anything else being done at the time. It gave us a huge boost of confidence.

With the character designs, instead of shoehorning illustrations into pixel art, we shifted to creating designs that we knew would work in 3D. Our character designer, [Tetsuya] Nomura, joined Square as a game designer, so he was able to visualize how the characters would look in the game. He also made a lot of suggestions about what weapons the characters would carry. Nomura came up with the idea for the gunblade used by Squall, the main character of Final Fantasy VIII. He wanted it to look like a sword but also fire like a revolver, so we added a “Trigger” button. In other words, the weapon’s function emerged from its design.

I think that’s what defines FF: the ability to think outside the box. Even though FF is a series, we rarely force ourselves to stick to what past titles have done. With each new entry comes a new set of directors in each department, and we leave the creative vision to them. In the battle systems, for example, you can see [Hiroyuki] Ito’s design philosophy and vision in the ATB2 system from Final Fantasy IV and the Gambits3 from Final Fantasy XII. The only element we insist on keeping is a sense of strategy. We don’t want players to just beat on enemies; it’s important to us that they gain mastery of their magic and summons and form strategies to prevail.

These days, one of my responsibilities is managing the FF brand, so naturally I’m concerned with how past entries are perceived by the world. But I’d rather not exert control over the new games in development. A producer once asked me, “Is it okay to add more magic tiers beyond Fire, Fira, Firaga, and Firaja [for the fire spell]?” And I told him: I don’t make that call! [Laughs.] If you want to create something new, go for it. Our staff on the front lines have to be given free rein. I don’t want them to think FF is some rigid concept; I want them to push the boundaries out and blaze a new trail. That’s what brings new value to the series.

FFVII became a smash hit after its release in January 1997. It featured the series’ first 3D polygonal graphics and won over fans with a fresh new story about a resistance group battling a corporation that is exploiting the planet’s energy.Currently, Kitase’s efforts are focused on the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, which involves updating the game for fans both old and new by providing a graphical overhaul and fleshing out the story while remaining faithful to the original. Due to the scale of the project, it has been divided into multiple games, the first of which was released in 2020.

1. Nobuo Uematsu, who joined Square in 1986, has composed music for the FF series, The Final Fantasy Legend, Chrono Trigger, and many other games. After leaving the company in 2004, he founded music production company Smile Please. In recent years, his work on Final Fantasy VII Remake earned him the Soundtrack Album of the Year award at the Japan Gold Disc Awards. In addition to his game composition work, he has also gained international recognition as the executive director of several international orchestra tours.

2. ATB, or the Active Time Battle system, does away with traditional turn-based combat, where the player and enemy alternate entering commands; in ATB, a time gauge determines which character gets to enter a command next. The system was first introduced in FFIV.

3. The Gambit system is an auto-battling system that allows the player to combine actions such as “attack” with a target type such as “the nearest visible foe” to create complex commands known as “gambits” that can be assigned to each character. The player can also control characters manually.

We asked Tetsuya Nomura to share a few words about the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy.

Throughout the series, what have you aimed for when creating new characters?

In a way, I try not to adhere too closely to the latest fads. I want my characters to look unique, and they need to have appealing backstories too. My goal is to make at least some part of their background or personality resonate with players.

What do you think makes FF so appealing?

I’ve been involved in FF for 30 of its 35 years. You could say the series has been with me for more than half of my life. After three decades together, I can’t imagine life without FF —it’s almost like air to me. One reason I’ve been able to stick with it for so long is because each game has its own world and story, its own characters and systems. Everything gets reset, so we can create something new. Since each numbered title has its own little quirks, I can approach them fresh and so can players. I think that’s what draws people back.

Every title from Final Fantasy I to XVI is represented in this T-shirt collection. What do you think? Do you have a favorite?

Since this was a collaboration—and a pretty bold one, considering it covered every numbered title—I ended up overseeing quite a few of the shirts. While I was reviewing the designs, I found myself reminiscing about working on the games. As you can see, the shirt designs haven’t been streamlined. Each design stands on its own, just like the games themselves. In true FF form, they are part of a whole but also rivals. I was personally touched by the T-shirt design for FFVI. It reminds me of when some of my coworkers gathered at my home. We talked through the night, writing up a proposal for how the game’s opening was going to look. I remember that night fondly.

Shinryu from FFV.

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