Much was made of Final Fantasy XV's international, multicultural development team - but the secret is that it wasn't really the first Final Fantasy game developed this way. The impact of a large part of a Final Fantasy title's core development taking place in an American territory was profound. "It was a dream project, jointly undertaken by Japanese and American staff, and so I remember it well." "We were working with a whole new structure – a branch of a Japanese company, but in Honolulu, Hawaii," says Hashimoto. Meanwhile in the Hawaii offices initially created for film studio Square Pictures, Sakaguchi remained more directly involved in a new entry in the series.
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In Tokyo, control of the series shifted to names now synonymous with leadership of the franchise today. Thus, at one point in the late nineties, the Final Fantasy series briefly split in multiple directions. Hashimoto rubbishes this - it was always intended as a numbered entry, developed more directly under Sakaguchi's lead. So different to Final Fantasy VII and VIII was it that the game's throwback nature caused some fans to initially speculate that it began life as 'Final Fantasy Gaiden', a non-numbered spin-off side story. "Final Fantasy IX was led and written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, so I think Sakaguchi’s vision and the world he wanted to create really came through," Final Fantasy IX producer and Square mainstay Shinji Hashimoto tells RPG Site.
All of this change seemingly prompted pause for thought, and an idea was born in the mind of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi: a celebratory throwback. At the same time, Square was in the midst of experimenting with cinema proper, hard at work on the ill-fated Final Fantasy movie.Īfter a little over a decade, Final Fantasy was moving on, morphing into something new, spearheaded by different staff, promoted up into senior positions. The incredible success of Final Fantasy VII had catapulted the company to new heights, defining a new future for the series at the cutting-edge of cinematic video gaming.
When Final Fantasy IX was in development some twenty years ago, Square was in the midst of enormous change. With them, we take a trip down memory lane, learning about the game’s development - and how it was a pioneer of an international Final Fantasy development team long before later games would embrace a multicultural staff. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of this stone-cold classic, we thought we’d go back to the source: to some of the Final Fantasy IX staff still working at Square Enix. Much has changed, but years later, we are still at it - and it's all thanks to this game. A quick self-indulgent history lesson: this website was founded by friends who met through the Final Fantasy community and built the largest Final Fantasy IX fan site online, launched on Jmere weeks before the game's Japanese release. It is also brilliant.įinal Fantasy IX is also quite special to RPG Site. It is the end of an era, the start of something new, and an acknowledgement of the series' new-found success in the West. Every entry in the Final Fantasy series is unique, but even among the eclectic ranks of the numbered FF titles, Final Fantasy IX is special.
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