At PAX West this weekend, we had the chance to interview Natsuko Ishikawa and Takeo Suzuki, the Main Scenario Writer and Art Team Lead for Final Fantasy XIV respectively. We got to talk about what it’s like to write for such an enormous game, and how these two talented industry veterans manage to keep the widely-successful MMORPG so fresh as time goes on.
The world of Final Fantasy XIV is always expanding. What are some of the challenges that come with adding onto a game that’s always growing?
Natsuko Ishikawa: So looking at it from the story or scenario perspective, I don’t find it to be difficult or too challenging to write for something that is ongoing.
So with any story, and with Final Fantasy XIV because there is so much story being added so often, it’s very rare that a creator can stay in this one universe or one lore, and continue writing stories for it. So it’s actually something that I see as a positive for Final Fantasy XIV.
Are there any characters that you most enjoy writing for?
Ishikawa-san: That’s a tough question because it’s not just a single character. What makes the story so unique is that we have several different players within the game, and different characters that appear and they build an environment in this world, and then the story is created through that. So it’s difficult to pinpoint just one single character.
Final Fantasy stories often have a theme of some kind. With Final Fantasy XIV and its expansions, what would you say are the main themes or messages of the game?
Ishikawa-san: So first and foremost, when we first relaunched as A Realm Reborn, we didn’t really think that far into the future. We weren’t sure if we were even going to be able to expand beyond A Realm Reborn for Final Fantasy XIV, so we didn’t specifically have a theme of sorts, and there were no specific plans like “oh, we’re going to do five different expansions with this kind of overarching theme.
That being said, we do have a sort of theme for each expansion that we release. For Shadowbringers, it was about connecting and making the connection too. That was sort of our foundation. I feel that it’s very characteristic and unique for Final Fantasy XIV to have that sort of theme, where we are connecting and we’re continuing on with that process because the game itself is also updating constantly as well. Plus, the developers themselves take it as their own motivation to continue and to connect to the next thing.
Are there any specific events or expansions that were particularly difficult to write for? If so, what made them that way?
Ishikawa-san: I don’t struggle with creating the scene itself, but I do put a lot of thought into creating individual themes. I think the biggest challenge or difficulty is meeting deadlines.
But you may be aware that Final Fantasy XIV is available not only in Japanese, but in English, German, and French. Considering all the localization that has to go into it, while still meeting the deadlines and making sure that we’re on time for release, it’s definitely something that is difficult and challenging [laughs].
Takeo Suzuki: What’s unique about Shadowbringers is the cutscenes that are involved within the story. We’ve tried really hard to make it continuous. There isn’t a pause where you wait for the player to click the button to advance the dialogue. So I think it was very challenging for Ishikawa-san and the scenario writers to make sure that we’re doing this seamlessly, and that we’re able to depict your standard sort of cutscene that just plays.
As the writers, which storyline/expansion is your personal favorite and why?
Ishikawa-san: This will be a spoiler, but towards the very end of Shadowbringers and the very final quest, not the quest itself but when you are accepting that quest, that scene, I really like. What makes this unique is that there is no spoken dialogue. It’s not a text bubble, but you see a system message describing what the state of the characters are at that moment, so it’s very unique that it’s not dialogue, but we’re expressing what the characters are feeling in that moment. We’re pretty confident that we were able to dig deep enough to know what kind of moment to describe this, so that’s one of my favorite parts.
What is each of your favorite Final Fantasy games? Have they impacted or influenced your work on Final Fantasy XIV?
Suzuki-san: I actually worked on `Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII, so I definitely have a personal attachment to both of those titles. In terms of some of the lore and settings that relate to the universe of Final Fantasy XII, I’m very familiar with that realm, so I kind of injected my personal preferences in there.
Ishikawa-san: My favorite Final Fantasy title is Final Fantasy VI, but that being said, I also have a favorite scene, which is from Final Fantasy VIII. Part of the ending from Final Fantasy VIII would be my favorite scene. The reason why I pick that scene is that you see Seifer seeing the Guardians fly by, and there’s no dialogue or words, but you can tell how he’s feeling in that scene, and I really like that.
Do you take any inspiration from classic art or pop culture when you make art?
Suzuki-san: In terms of a 3D lighting perspective, I feel that my team takes inspiration from how paintings are being presented, and how the lighting would affect how a painting would appear to the viewer, and how it affects the presentation of it.
Are there any challenges unique to creating art for an always-expanding MMORPG? How do you keep new designs interesting for yourself and players?
Suzuki-san: That’s definitely something that is challenging. Not just with environments, but also with armor design, different dungeon layouts, and things like that. It is definitely something that we want to keep enjoying and make sure that people don’t get tired of similar aesthetics.
Unfortunately, there isn’t one simple answer that we can provide in terms of how we keep things fresh. But we try our best to either come up with ideas that would make things fresh and new, maybe delve more into the ideas that are being pitched to us and explore different options that we may have, or maybe some of the creators within the design team will come up with new ideas, and we would collaborate on how we can keep things fresh.
Of everything you’ve made for Final Fantasy XIV, what is your favorite design?
Suzuki-san: Since I’ve been with Final Fantasy XIV since the very beginning, there’s just such an immense amount of graphical assets that we’ve produced over the years that it’s very hard to pinpoint one [laughs].
That being said, I can narrow it down to something more recent. For Shadowbringers, we introduced two new races, and out of the two, I really like the Hrothgar, as they’re very beast-like.
So with Shadowbringers out, what has the general response from the community been? How have you felt about it?
Ishikawa-san: I think this will apply to both of us, but we’ve felt that the response has been overwhelmingly good. Of course, we’d never release a game we aren’t 100% satisfied with, but it’s the positive reaction to Shadowbringers exceeded our expectations of how people would react to it.
With specific feedback, it’s very interesting to see when players observe something or speculate something out of the storyline, and they’d come report on it. They’d let me know about elements that they found within the story that maybe only that person noticed. Having reactions from these people really enjoying the game and digging deep into the expansion itself felt like they were amplifying how much fun the game is, and sharing that sort of sentiment with everybody.
Collaborations have always had a presence in Final Fantasy XIV, from Monster Hunter content to Yo-Kai Watch. Is there a collaboration that you personally want to do with a company or series out there? From either within or outside of Square Enix.
Ishikawa-san: It might be weird to mention this since Suzuki-san previously worked on Chrono Cross, but I would definitely love to do something with the Chrono series. But that is totally personal [laughs].
Any collaboration leaves some form of impact, but I’m very curious to see how a collaboration would work with 16-bit or 32-bit pixel art, and how it would look in 3D rendering, and how it would translate to a more modern graphical depiction. From that perspective, it would be cool to do Chrono Trigger as well, but Chrono Cross will be celebrating its twentieth anniversary, so perhaps we can have Suzuki-san go in to try to convince the relevant parties [laughs].
Suzuki-san: I mean, Chrono Cross has so many playable characters, that would be a challenge in and of itself. It sounds interesting, for sure. It might actually be a nice fit. I’m not in a position to come up with pitches for collaborative work, so this is definitely from a personal perspective. It would be really cool to work with universes that I enjoy, like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Universes like that may be a really fun collaboration.
To close out, what would you like to say to fans and players of Final Fantasy XIV?
Ishikawa-san: As mentioned earlier, we’ve received so many positive reactions from players and seen the community for Final Fantasy XIV grow to such a massive scale. We had this great opportunity in being able to share this world with so many different people, and we’d love to continue growing and for more people to join Final Fantasy XIV to share in the excitement and passion for the game, and we want to continue this momentum and not lose our passion along the way. So continued support for Final Fantasy XIV would be very much appreciated!
Suzuki-san: I agree with Ishikawa-san. The number of people who have enjoyed the content and come to join Final Fantasy XIV goes beyond our expectations. It’s wonderful, and it makes us happy to see such good reactions. It’s wonderful to see a lot of players sharing their own experiences, and letting others know how much they enjoy the game. That, in turn, brings new players in, so we want to take this opportunity to thank everybody. Having this great community that we’ve built throughout these players sharing their experiences, I also want to take care of the player community, so I’d like to continue to put in my best efforts as well as ask for people to continue to support the game.
We want to thank Ishikawa-san and Suzuki-san for taking the time to talk to us about Final Fantasy XIV.
