Final Fantasy (FF) turns 35 this year. 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. In the second part of their stories, we asked Ichiro Hazama, Kei Hirono, and Naoki Yoshida, who are the producers of the FF series.
Drawing people to the series through the power of its music
Ichiro Hazama
My first exposure to FF was as a player. With FFVI especially, I remember how floored I was by that opening credits sequence [in the snow]. I thought, “Wow! Whoever made this forgot about what games ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ do, and just built what they thought was fun within the limits of the technology they had.” Around that time, an older colleague of mine who had taken a job at Square said, “Why don’t you come work for us?” And that’s how I became involved in FF.
PROFILE
Ichiro Hazama | After joining Square (presently Square Enix) in 1998 and working on licensing and business development, Hazama served as associate producer of FFVII: Advent Children and producer of Dissidia Final Fantasy. In 2012, he produced his own project, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.
I was told I’d be doing project management for FFVIII, but my first assignment turned out to be prop-making. FFVIII was the first game in the series to utilize motion capture, and the actors needed weapons. At first, I was like…seriously? But I had a blast. I talked to a set designer and an assistant director friend of mine for advice, and before long I was crafting prop weapons by, for example, attaching a short bamboo sword to the butt of a rifle. It was loads of fun. I was also put in charge of our newly-formed merchandising department. Sure, I had worked at a toy manufacturer, but as a buyer. I’d never actually made toys. [Laughs.] Still, I managed to create the merchandise, did some walkin sales… That was fun too. We even got to make stuff like the bonus freebies people received for preordering the games.
In the iconic opening to FFVI, three Magitek armor units march through the snow toward the mining city of Narshe. The musical accompaniment, “Terra’s Theme,” is just as memorable.
After that, I worked on a bunch of projects including the film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The first time I ever wrote my own proposal and showed it to [Tetsuya] Nomura was for Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. At the time, we didn’t have any music oriented products besides soundtracks, so I thought: Let’s add some visuals and make a game out of it. Easy, right? Nope! Nomura told me flat out, “That’ll never hold up as a game!” [Laughs.] But I do think we producers are in a unique position to voice our instincts. We can say to the team, “This is what we want to deliver to consumers” and trust them to shape our ideas into products. I hope I get to make more products that use FF’s characters and music—two essential elements of the series—to draw more people toward the main numbered entries.
Social games: Forging into the unknown
Kei Hirono
Back when I was considering careers, I remember thinking, “I sure do owe a lot to games.” They were the pastime I’d stuck with the longest. They’d provided me with so many lessons and experiences. By joining the game industry, I thought I could pass some of that on to other people. At my first company, I worked on both social games and console games. Square Enix is my second company. Here, I oversaw an online card-battling RPG called Million Arthur and made a PC browser game, Imperial SaGa. Since 2015, I have been the producer of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
PROFILE
Kei Hirono | An executive officer at Square Enix, Hirono is the deputy vice president of Creative Business Unit IV and director of Division 1. He is also series producer for FFBE, the first installment of which was released in 2015, two years after he joined the company. To date, the game has been downloaded 45 million times worldwide. In 2019, the second installment, War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, was released.
FFBE may be a mobile game, but it’s still FF. Our top priority is making sure it provides the sort of enduring world and story FF is known for. I personally remember how shocked I was when FFX’s ending made me tear up. Me, crying! No game had ever tapped into my emotions like that. We put effort into every element of FFBE, ensuring it honors FF’s core but also attempting things no one had achieved on mobile before: new narrative structures, interesting maps to explore, and revolutionary visuals. But it also incorporates the conventions of mobile games—the intuitive feel, the exhilaration, and the other tricks that keep people playing. With free to-play games, there’s not much incentive to stick with them. If you pay for something, you’re more likely to play it, but you’ll put it down eventually if it isn’t constantly grabbing you. Meshing the needs of mobile gamers with the company’s flagship brand led to a hectic development process. Still, we managed to get FFBE out the door somehow, and I was relieved that players liked it and that it was successful commercially.
My kids are still young, but it makes me a little sad that they don’t mention FF at all. I guess they might play it when they’re older—but FFIV already had me hooked in third grade. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I was so into it that I’d sometimes lose my temper while playing, but I now realize that’s only because it affected me as much as it did. I want the next generation to experience all that. My challenge to myself is to help FF reach a new, much broader audience. To be a producer is to always take on new challenges. The moment you stop—that’s when you lose your edge.
In FFX, one of the series’ most popular entries, the summoner Yuna and the protagonist Tidus arrive at the magical Macalania Woods. Together, they find the courage to face the cruel destiny that awaits them.
Thinking beyond online and offline
Naoki Yoshida
I’m the director of the online game Final Fantasy XIV, but I suspect many younger people don’t know much about FF. They probably think, “There are fourteen? I have to start from the first one?” The thing is, every FF has a standalone story, and you can enjoy FFXIV by itself too. What makes FFXIV unique is that you play online and share the same world of adventure with people across the globe. We’ve strived to make it a place where you can be a hero and save the world, but you also get to live alongside other players. Although eleven years have passed since we launched the service, the game is designed so that it’s never too late to catch up, and our player base has continued to grow. I know from personal experience how big a culture shock it can be to jump in to an online game for the first time, but there’s a free trial version, so I hope newcomers will stop by and see what it’s like to “share a world.”
PROFILE
Naoki Yoshida | A director and corporate executive of development at Square Enix and vice president of Creative Business Unit III, Yoshida joined the company in 2005. Before That, he was involved in the development of Bomberman and other titles at Hudson.In 2010, he became producer and director of FFXIV. He is also currently performing double duty as producer of FFXVI, the latest numbered entry in the series.
While FFXIV has turned out to be a big hit, when the game first launched there was a massive backlash. Some people called it the disaster of the century. And they had a point: the visuals were too elaborate, bringing the game to a crawl; the story was poorly presented. Since FF has such a long history, our company was determined not to give up on the game; and so, I was brought on the team to right the ship. We knew players felt betrayed, and it wouldn’t have been right to shrug off their criticism and keep running the service. We decided we needed to start over; so we thought, “You know what? We should destroy the world!” FF was always about saving the world from doom, so why not put an end to our world so it can be reborn? We could even make the battle to prevent its demise part of the story. When we announced FFXIV’s “rebirth,” we received an overwhelming amount of encouraging feedback. In my mind, that’s why we were able to make a comeback: because players, fans, the media, and everyone on the dev team united to make it happen.
Currently, we’re in the homestretch of developing Final Fantasy XVI, the latest entry in the series. Since FFXVI is a single-player game, we’ve needed to integrate the story and game experience even more tightly than in FFXIV. Unlike an online game, FFXVI puts its focus on just one person—you—and that calls for a stronger sense of immersion. I believe we’ve come up with a profound and engaging story. For folks who stepped away from FF after growing up and realizing life isn’t as forgiving as games, I hope FFXVI will rekindle some of the enthusiasm they used to have.
FFXVI, the latest entry in the series, takes place in Valisthea, a land blessed in the light of the Mothercrystals. It tells the story of Clive Rosfield, the protagonist.
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