Del RPG al juego musical

– English version follows –

RG: It has been 25 years of gorgeos music. Was it hard to select the songs? How did you do it?

Ichiro Hazama: Obviously with 25 years of the history of Final Fantasy music it is very, very difficult to choose what tracks to include in the game. It is very difficult to know which stuff from the Final Fantasy series or which tracks suits better because a lot of people likes it and all of them have different opinions. First, we ask ourselves, but we can not decide by choosing from the staff point of view, so we kind of did a research. So we asked the fans, what is your favourite Final Fantasy music and that is how it sound in the end.

RG: Is there any Final Fantasy title more relevant to the game or are all of them balanced?

Ichiro Hazama: We didn't particulary take some elements from one Final Fantasy game. It is more like a mix. If you go through the game and try the level up, the menu system and everything, we just try to make sure that everybody feels that this is a Final Fantasy title and it has been 25 years of Final Fantasy history. So that is how we created the game.

When you choose in wicht track you play you even feel like your own memory of Final Fantasy.

RG: Is this Final Fantasy a game for the fans that have been following the series for 25 years. Is it also for everybody?

Ichiro Hazama: Of course it is for these people who know the Final Fantasy series, for them it is a must have game. But for those people who have never played Final Fantasy this a rhythm game, even though for those people that don't know the language, is a rhythm game, so you can find the way how to play, how to enjoy it. Final Fantasy music is very well done, even in Europe is very popular, so anyone can enjoy it.

RG: Turn it around. This game has a few RPG elements similar to Final Fantasy series. Do you expect 'casual gamers' to jump from this game to the main games.

Ichiro Hazama: Of course it would be great if someone who has never played RPG games before likes it and after playing this Final Fantasy they want to play the classical RPG games. That would be great. In this game, during the event music stage you can see the footage from the original Final Fantasy games, so all those people probably have played only Final Fantasy VII and VIII, they haven't played any other games, and if they see the footage they probably got interested they could say 'maybe, maybe I could try Final Fantasy III' or something like that. If that happens it would be great for us.

RG: Was it hard to put togheter all this art styles and all this generations of visuals?

Ichiro Hazama: Obviously from Final Fantasy I to XIII, each one with different art style, all these different characters, it was difficult from the start to choose what kind of art style we shoud use for this game. In Final Fantasy I we had sprites and then in Final Fantasy XIII we have completely georgous graphics. It is totally different. So when we were thinking about how to do this, I thougth about a movil Kingdom Hearts game that we have in Japan. In this game we use little deformed characters, and when I saw this I thought that it would be perfect. This is a rhythm game so little characters definitivelly belong to it. That is why we decided to use this kind of art style and was aproved, so we have it.

RG: Thank you very much.

Ichiro Hazama: Thanks you.

Interview by Sergio Figueroa and José Manuel Bringas