Final Fantasy XII - Development

Development

Development for Final Fantasy XII began in 2001. Final Fantasy Tactics director Yasumi Matsuno, originally announced as producer and co-director (with Hiroyuki Ito), was forced to bow out of both roles midway through due to health concerns. Hiroshi Minagawa took his place as co-director while Akitoshi Kawazu, of SaGa series fame, became the executive producer. Series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was disappointed by Matsuno's departure and declined to play the game beyond its introduction.

The desire to move away from random encounters was present since the beginning of development. This desire fueled the development of the Active Dimension Battle system so players could seamlessly move from battle to exploration. The gambit system was conceived early on as a way to facilitate this change. Battle system designer Hiroshi Tomomatsu states that it gradually moved away from a complex and rigid formula to the more flexible form seen in the final version of the game. Ito drew inspiration for gambits from plays in American football where each team member has a specific job to do based on the conditions and desired outcome. As for the license system, he explained that needing "licenses" to perform certain actions was a natural extension of the rigid structured society of Archadia, as epitomized by its Judges.

At the early stages of development, Minagawa revealed that numerous ideas and features were planned for the game, but were dropped from the final stages due to certain constraints and hardware limitations. Some of these included the ability for a second player to join in the gameplay, enabling a two-player mode. Another idea that was given a considerable amount of thought was the ability to recruit non-player characters to join in the mob hunts. Due to the technical limitations of the console and multiple number of characters joining the fray, the development phase took longer than expected, causing delays.

Design inspiration came from a mix of medieval Mediterranean countries as demonstrated by the architectural styles found throughout Ivalice along with many of the races populating the region. The art team visited Turkey, which influenced the game's Mediterranean-style setting. The developers also used styles and deco from other sources including areas in India and New York City. Of note is the use of Sanskrit in the city of Bhujerba. Phrases such as "svagatam" (welcome) and titles like "parijanah" (guide) are lifted directly from Sanskrit. Hideo Minaba, developer and co-art director with Isamu Kamikokuryō, mentions that the team tried to bring out Arabic culture in the design of the game. War is a prominent theme of the game and the developers confirmed that the cutscene battles are influenced by Ancient Rome. When asked to comment on the fan observation of a Star Wars influence, Minaba replied that although he was a fan of the Star Wars series, it was not necessarily an influence to the game's designs.

Basch was initially meant to be the main character of the story, but the focus was eventually shifted to Vaan and Penelo when the two characters were created later in development. The development team explained that their previous game, Vagrant Story, which featured a "strong man in his prime" as the protagonist had been unsuccessful and unpopular; the change regarding Final Fantasy XII from a "big and tough" protagonist to a younger, youthful one was thus decided after targeting demographics were considered. With the casting of dorama actor Kouhei Takeda for the voice acting and motion capture, Vaan became less feminine and more "active, upbeat bright and positive". Comments were made about the similarity between main character designer and background design supervisor Akihiko Yoshida's creations and those of Tetsuya Nomura, another Square Enix character designer. Yoshida feels this connection is sparked by the style of color used by both artists, which involves a color consistency between the characters and the environments. The designers stated that non-human characters and races feature a prominent role in the game, which was influenced by an interest in history among the developers.

During the English localization process, Alexander O. Smith, who had previously worked on Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy X, acted as producer and translator. While still preserving the meaning behind the Japanese script written by Daisuke Watanabe and Miwa Shoda, Smith made the decision to use different dialects of English to reproduce the regional differences in pronunciation found in the Japanese version. He also tried to distance the game from the "flat reads" found in other dubbed work by casting voice actors who had experience in theatre work. In terms of general changes, the localization team introduced widescreen 16:9 ratio support and reinserted scenes that were left out of the original Japanese version for political reasons and to preserve an "All Ages" CERO rating.

On November 15, 2005, a playable demo of the game was shipped with the North American release of Dragon Quest VIII. To commemorate the release of Final Fantasy XII, playable demos of the English version were available at DigitalLife's Gaming Pavilion in New York on October 11, 2006, a day dubbed "Final Fantasy XII Gamer's Day". Additionally, Square Enix gave fans the chance to cosplay as characters from Final Fantasy XII. Each person was asked to show Square Enix three photos of his or her costume for a chance to win a trip to New York and participate in the Final Fantasy XII Gamer's Day event.

As of July 30, 2008, Final Fantasy XII holds the Guinness World Record for longest development period in a video game production. The record states it took a total of five years, spanning from 2001 until its release in 2006. At a Final Fantasy XII "postmortem" at MIT in March 2009, Hiroshi Minagawa mentioned that a large portion of the development time of Final Fantasy XII was devoted to the creation of custom tools used for the development of the game.