The Rise and Fall of Ivalice

[Music] the creation of a vast and intriguing world is often central to the success of any fantasy-based property and if it's done in the correct manner said world can enrich the entire experience empowering audiences to kickstart their imaginations one of the fundamental elements is the establishment of rules and regulations that help audiences to understand the kind of world they've been invited to and on top are layered the various regions the kingdoms that reside within them and perhaps most importantly who the power players are to evidence this if you think about some of the most popular fantasy based entertainment properties such as lord of the rings game of thrones warcraft and the elder scrolls the worlds with their various races kingdoms and factions and power players have played an important role in establishing what readers watchers and players might expect to see as the story evolves in the early days of the final fantasy franchise due to hardware limitations and the infancy of the genre this aspect was often difficult to establish effort was made to build each world with numerous towns and dungeons scattered throughout and individuals of importance would also be created but each of these elements were often quite limited in scope relegated to being narrative devices as opposed to crucial parts of an expansive law on top of this unlike the aforementioned fantasy based properties the scenario writers decided to focus on making sure that humanity was often placed at peace with itself conflict would instead be the result of nefarious dark forces that were not a central part of the established world and it would be down to the humans to be the bastions of all that was good tasked with driving away whatever evil monster had sought fit to try and bring harm to its citizens final fantasy 6 was the first game that attempted to challenge these notions in a meaningful way but despite having an overarching evil empire that was acting based on its own greed as opposed to an external manipulation and a cast of characters who had real substance the world itself still felt like a bystander conflicts were sparse and one-sided used to introduce locations that would have fleeting relevance with more focus placed around the characters that would join the party during those moments it meant that even though the world of balance and its successor the world of ruin were a considerable improvement compared to what was seen within previous final fantasy games its lasting impact and relevance has been dwarfed by the various personalities that inhabited it it wouldn't be until 1995 that this process would be challenged in a significant manner as after leaving quest to join square in pursuit of his lofty dreams a promising young video game developer called yasmin matsuno would attempt to tell a news story and it would be set in a fantastical and magical world known as ivelisse over the next decade ivelisse would continue to flourish making its mark to become one of the most well-known worlds to have been created in relation to a video game but following matsuno's departure from square enix it would soon start to flounder and the evil ease brand that was once so strong would struggle to find its place amongst a roster of games that would become ever reliant on nostalgia as opposed to creativity this is the rise and fall of ibelis [Music] by 1995 final fantasy had become installed as one of the most popular and successful video game franchises in japan with everything moving in the right direction hironobu sakaguchi who was now a vice president at square felt the brand was strong enough to start shouldering the burden of creating games that would challenge their status quo and move away from what would have been expected from a typical final fantasy experience not only would this allow them to stay fresh and innovative as creators but it would also allow square to explore emerging genres that had a natural affinity with final fantasy and one such emerging genre was the tactical role-playing game or simulation role-playing game as it was known in japan when working on final fantasy 6 no doubt having seen the success of fledgling franchises like fire emblem and shining force sakaguchi felt that creating a final fantasy themed tactical role-playing game would make perfect sense and to ensure the idea would manifest he wrote up provisional planning documents for a game that was code-named final fantasy tactics even going so far as to request that square trademark the name but with chrono trigger encountering severe development issues there just wasn't enough bandwidth to explore these plans with more care and they would ultimately end up being shelved around the same time yasmine matsuno was beginning to forge quite the reputation having dropped out of university and taken up work as a journalist after a few years matsuno felt his creative itch wasn't being satisfied it led to him applying to a role at quest and after being hired he was appointed as a planner on conquest of the crystal palace which would later be released on the famicom after this matano was given the opportunity to step into the director's chair but he didn't have some grand plan as to what he wanted to make his initial idea was to actually make an action game as they were popular at the time but that route was blocked as the other team at quest were already making an action-based game another option would have been to make a role-playing game but with final fantasy and dragon quest already established and many other companies making inferior clones matsuno knew that in order to stand out amongst the crowd whatever he made would need to be original and innovative for that reason he decided to make a real-time tactical role-playing game fusing elements of the two genres together to make something unique it was a bold move but it played to matt snow's strengths and when the game was shown off at the 1992 version of the nintendo space world trade show after attendees ranked it as one of the most intriguing super famicom games they had seen even comparing it to the upcoming final fantasy and dragon quest games nintendo themselves chose to sit up and take notice as a consequence nintendo reached out to quest and offered support even convincing the company to double their planned shipment allocation when the game launched ogre battle stunned the japanese video game industry and matsuno himself as it recorded the 14th best first week sales of any game released on the super famicom at that point exceeding the performance of games like star fox breath of fire and shimagami tensei these results emboldened matt snow to double down for his next project which would be much grander in scope tactics ogre would serve as the second installment in what became known as the ogre battle saga but unlike its predecessor it would no longer have a focus on real-time combat instead matt snow decided to switch to a full-on turn-based grid system something that allowed the team to create combat sequences that were larger in every sense featuring huge maps and a vast number of units these lofty gameplay goals combined with another intricate and compelling narrative this time matsuno wanted to challenge the typical tired story tropes where everything developed as a single thread it would see many many characters created as well as an entire world and with so much depth afforded to every aspect of the game tactics ogre surpassed ogre battle in every sense when the game was released in 1995 not only did it post a high review score with famitsu it also doubled the first week sales this saw tactics ogre become the 24th best-selling game to have been released on the system and it placed it on the same level as huge games like donkey kong country 2 front mission and final fantasy v this success caused numerous individuals within the industry to sit up and take notice and one of them was sakaguchi he fell in love with the experience that matsuno had crafted and after learning that quest may be in some financial trouble and that matsuna was looking for a new place to work the two connected and although he wasn't necessarily headhunted in the traditional sense matsuno was encouraged to apply for a vacant role at square after a successful interview process sakaguchi was quick to establish product development division iv matsuri would be placed at its helm and after sharing the initial design documents that have been created a few years prior they will be assigned to work on making final fantasy tactics a reality as matsuno was a huge fan of final fantasy he showed incredible passion for the project not least because he had always yearned to play such a game himself but despite it being a dream project in theory it would require matsuno to adapt to working in a more structured and democratic environment up until joining square aside from his work on conquest of the crystal palace matsuno had always been in complete charge vulgar battle and tactics ogre were games that reflected his vision to a t and his teams were well oiled machines that were there to facilitate and carry out his requests to the letter tatiksoga for example was created by just 12 people with an additional 13 people assigned as debuggers but working at square that situation would no longer be the case matsuno would still have a core group working underneath him as key individuals such as akihiko yoshida hiroshi minagawa masahiro iwata and hitoshi sakamoto moved over from quest to join square but there would also be numerous producers overseeing his output and layers upon layers of people assigned to each area one of the core areas where matsuno felt this most was with the battle system he had enjoyed crafting the real-time strategy gameplay seen in ogre battle as well as the turn-based grid system seen in tactics ogre and he worked with just a handful of people to make sure they played out exactly the way he wanted results in each instance were clear as both games received considerable praise for how well this specific aspect was crafted but even though matt snow had assumed that he would again be responsible for the battle system on final fantasy tactics sakaguchi assigned hiroyukito to the team it's unclear why this decision was made but perhaps sakaguchi felt it would add an extra layer of security after all matsuno was still an unknown quantity and ito had been involved with the creation of every single battle system featured in a mainline final fantasy game up until that point and had also created the very popular active time battle system this decision meant that matsuno went from his life at quest where he would work with just a handful of people to create intricate battle systems to his new life where he would have only moderate input on a battle system that would be created by an entire team that was so large it even contained subdivisions ito would act as the main battle planner and he would be supported by an additional planner and three programmers they were then supplemented by another team who focused on the maps themselves and this included three further planners an art supervisor 15 artists three assistant artists and another programmer the rest of the project was handled in a similar manner with entire development sections created for the delivery of the various characters the story and its accompanying world as well as visual effects and sound and it meant when including things like debugging and promotion there were well over 100 different people involved throughout production a massive increase in comparison to what matano was used to working with it would serve as a wake up call and it required adaptation matsuno was used to acting as a dictatorial and aggressive director but in this new role he would need to be much more democratic and passive not least because he'll be working alongside hiroyukito a very respected director in his own right who had just completed work on final fantasy vi one of the most successful games ever released in japan due to being involved with such a large group of people matsune was forced to spend a lot of time observing and this was made all the more interesting due to his own unique position as it was rare that an outsider would be given such a position of authority without earning their stripes first it meant matano had no specific preconceptions about his fellow workmates other than that most of them would be directly or indirectly reporting into him but as he learned more about his surroundings he witnessed individuals who based on either their talent or their social standing were treated like royalty they were afforded unique opportunities and listened to on a more regular basis and it made mats no wonder whether people who didn't outwardly exhibit these gifts would ever be given the chance to succeed at the company irrespective of how hard they worked at their jobs this aspect would then be woven in as a core part of the narrative of tactics with ramza and delita created as literal manifestations of this principle but even though this dynamic would be impactful to players one of the most enduring aspects of what matano oversaw was the creation of a living breathing world named ivelisse as matano had joined square without knowledge of final fantasy tactics existing when the project was assigned he didn't have some grand plan for the type of game he wanted to make or the story he wanted to tell in fact it was quite the opposite matsuno had penned both ogre battle and tatixoga but with final fantasy tactics he wanted to just primarily focus on creating a compelling new battle system and assumed someone else would be responsible for looking after the narrative but after sakaguchi assigned ito to the project matsuno felt it would be irresponsible to have him work on anything other than the battle system given his experience and as they were also short staffed with the project still in its infancy matsuno reluctantly decided that the only person capable of telling or writing the story was himself keen to make a positive impression irrespective of the circumstances that had presented themselves matano decided to manifest something even bigger and better than his previous two works and it led to the creation of a new world that would become known as ivelisse much like zytogenia from ogre battle and the valerian islands from tactics ogre ivelisse would feature numerous regions but as it was a kingdom itself even though neighbouring kingdoms would be created much of the focus was placed around the powerful factions and sub-factions that would have their fates intertwined and this would also be influenced by how matsuno viewed his new work environment if square served as the kingdom then there would also be neighbouring kingdoms such as capcom or konami but within square itself existed numerous divisions or factions such as matano's product development division 4 and subdivisions which would look after the more granular aspects of a game's development or even separate projects if the division was big enough each of these aspects would be intertwined as even though people within their respective divisions and subdivisions would be working on their own project they would still form personal connections with colleagues throughout the company and as the final layer the various divisions would each be indirectly competing against each other for the attention of the power players within the kingdom hoping that their games would receive the best ratings and accumulate the most sales so that they could grow their teams and dominate the playing field this all gave matsuno a compelling framework for what would become known as ivelisse with various factions and sub-factions created each will be given rich backstories with numerous individuals created to represent the values they fought to uphold and to help evaluate feel like a living breathing setting players would be introduced part way through what would be made to feel like a land with an ever ever-evolving history by being thrust into a conflict they knew nothing about matano would be able to use subsequent exposition to then establish the importance of known powers and their affiliations the order of the northern sky for example would be led by barbara nathbiold of the influential house biol bobineth would only have a small role to play within the narrative but as a testament to how much depth was placed on character development he would still have a pivotal role to play that could be dissected to create a branching path in a huge tapestry of relationships and backstory and this was because due to the way bob burnett was introduced and how his accomplishments were spoken about in relation to the 50 years war he became someone as opposed to just being a throwaway npc that had no meaning we would learn from only small amounts of screen time how much he cared about his sons how he carried favor over ramza his youngest son despite him being illegitimate and the views he held on the extreme and cruel class system that existed within their world beyond that the noble house bjorg that he helmed due to where they lived in ivelisse and the role they fulfilled within its hierarchy would be positioned as a sub-faction of extreme importance tasked with leading the military organization known as the order of the northern sky they would report into duke log head of the galleon duchy and brother of queen luveria at kasha who after following the deterioration of king hondura at kashu iii health was acting as the interim ruler of ivelisse this would serve as the setup with the council not agreeing who should succeed the king and while the galleon duchy would have their preferred candidate so too with the duchy of zeltenia who were ruled by juke goltana and protected by the order of the southern sky that such a web could be spun out by looking at just barb and ethioph in isolation would serve to highlight the sheer depth of law contained within final fantasy tactics but it also served to highlight that the overarching premise was simple as it focused on who would be aired to the throne a legitimate event that has happened countless times throughout human history and has been the subject of many fictional stories the ensuing war known as the war of the lions will be treated in much the same way and this was crucial as matsuna was adamant that final fantasy tactics should respect its players by giving them a mature story centered around conflicts that were born from raw human emotions such as fear and greed to achieve this the relationships between characters had to be far more advanced than traditional final fantasy games which were often seen as one-dimensional when takaguchi saw what matsunam was creating he was very impressed by not just the sheer scale in terms of the volume of characters that were planned to exist within the game but also the types of relationships that existed between them as these ideas about eveless expanded matt snow worked with ito to flesh everything out and once it had become time to start realizing the concepts he worked with minagawa who after working as art director on oga battle and tatik zoga would reprise that role but would also act as event director jun akiyama and hiroyoshi okazaki would later join the project to help map out all the individual scenes and plan their delivery and they were crucial when it came to focusing on the smaller parts of the narrative as opposed to the bigger picture both were still relatively new employees at square with akiyama having worked as an event planner on final fantasy 7 and okazaki having overseen work done by lightweight on bushido blade but their creativity meshed well with the wider concept of play and their input as well as that of matsuno and minagawa helped final fantasy tactics to contain a succinct script that still housed considerable depth while applying weight to the various actions taken throughout even if they were not witnessed firsthand and what made everything even more fascinating was that matsuno also managed to weave in some of the more classic fantasy elements too as working in parallel with the main story there was also a huge plot relating to the lokavi covert demons that masqueraded under the banner of the church of glabellos who were attempting to revive their leader upon completion of the story matsuno and his team had managed to craft a scenario that contained political intrigue numerous conspiracies betrayals and people just attempting to fight for what they believed in irrespective of the consequences but it would end up being polarizing publications such as game revolution and ign were critical of the narrative due to how complex and convoluted they felt it was game revolution even chided the story as they felt players would need a phd in order to understand what was going on on the other hand publications like interliquid sky and gamespot were full of praise even though they felt the plot was marred by subpar english localization that lost some of the finer nuances but no matter how reviewers felt about the story across the world there was near unanimous praise for everything the game offered as an overall package and this praise as well as square's marketing efforts and positive word of mouth helped final fantasy tactics to become a huge success in japan it sold 641 000 copies in its first week on sale not only was this two and a half times more than tatik zoga had achieved on the super famicom but on the playstation it was a monumental figure by that point in the playstation life cycle only final fantasy vii had sold more copies in its first week on sale and the figure achieved by final fantasy tactics eclipsed the likes of tekken 2 resident evil and arc the lad upon its release in north america seven months later similar performance was seen and it cemented yasumi matsuno as one of japan's premium video game creators after the success of final fantasy tactics matt snow decided to go against the grain adopting a philosophy based around creating fresh original content as opposed to rehashing existing characters to create a quick and easy follow-up with the cost of development rising and design approaches adjusting to match this represented a significant financial risk for square but matano was keen to go back to his roots creating a game that had all the hallmarks you'd expect from a big budget production with a much smaller close-knit team and due to the success of tactics square and more specifically sakaguchi decided to trust matsuno's judgment formal development on product development division four's next project began at the start of 1998 with matt snow helming a small crew that would set out to create what they hoped would become the next evolution in the role-playing genre but unlike tactics matsuno was given free reign to be as hands-on as he wanted and this was because sakaguchi stepped away ceding the role of producer to matsuno and taking up the role of executive producer instead this meant that matano would fulfill the role of overarching director producer lead battle designer and lead writer something that he felt was crucial as when people played the end product he wanted them to think that's a matsuno game to assist matsuna retained his trusty team and just like they had done when working side by side on the ogre battle games each would take on multiple roles minagawa for example would serve as art director who would also be responsible for overseeing character models as well as all the ui and ux and akihiko yoshida would be responsible for character designs would also supervise the creation of background assets alongside this june akayama was promoted to event director and kazutoyo mayohiro was promoted to being planner and director of the background section over the next two years the team toiled away behind the scenes attempting to overcome the many challenges they faced such as transitioning over to making their first ever game using three-dimensional graphics and dealing with issues relating to significant frame rate drops but despite these issues when the game was released matsuno's hands-on and dictatorial approach was vindicated publications around the world lauded vagrant story for not just its compelling narrative but also its innovative battle system its mature use of graphical elements and sound design and its thorough localization famitsu would end up awarding vagrant story only its third ever perfect score with numerous western publications such as eurogamer game pro gamespot and ign providing similar praise but for all its high scores and accolades vagrant story struggled to sell in japan it only managed to sell 160 000 copies in its first week on sale around only 25 percent of what final fantasy tactics had accomplished not just that it had failed to exceed the initial performance of tatix ogre and only marginally exceeded the initial sales of ogre battle to compound the issue vagrant's story struggled to gain an audience and residual sales did not match the critical praise by the end of its run it saw just over 300 000 copies sold in japan ranking it as the 140th best-selling game on the playstation and the 25th best-selling game released by square on the platform well below even the re-releases of final fantasy 4 5 and 6. with similar results seen overseas despite the game receiving significant critical praise the revenue just wasn't there and it must have been a humbling experience for a creator who up until that point had only known success in the aftermath matsuno was not given another project to lead instead he was assigned to oversee the development of square's play online browser it's unclear whether this was planned however some sources say it was matsuno who chose to remove himself from the spotlight having been embarrassed by the poor performance of vagrant story while others state the active decision was made by square's hierarchy [Music] matsuno's time in the wilderness did not last long at the start of 2001 it was revealed that he had been appointed as the director of final fantasy 12 by sakaguchi and he would be joined once again by hiroyukito who would serve as the main battle planner the following year matt snow then revealed that they were aiming to ship final fantasy 12 at some point during 2003 and that alongside his directorial efforts he will be overseeing the production of a game boy advanced version of final fantasy tactics it will be developed by quest who had since been acquired by square and would act as a remix of the original game as opposed to being a straight port this should have provided the perfect setup for evelies to go mainstream but around the same time there were significant changes happening at square and they would end up having a huge impact on matsuno and the projects he was overseeing following the dismal performance of final fantasy the spirits within at the global box office square was plunged into financial crisis and such was the scale of the crisis that the proposed merger with nx was reportedly postponed as sakaguchi had been the principal architect of this failure despite everything he had accomplished at the company he was deaf demoralized and decided to take full responsibility it would see sakaguchi resigned from his role as vice president and even though he would still appear as the executive producer on numerous upcoming projects such as kingdom hearts and final fantasy 10 2 he would actually have zero involvement with their development having signed an agreement with square that meant they could use his name for promotional purposes with tomoyuki takaichi and matatsuku hiromatsu also resigning from their positions on the board it led to a significant restructure with the new ceo and cfo required long time square veteran hisashi suzuki who had been there since the beginning attempted to fill the void but by the end of 2001 he was replaced by a relatively new board member called yuichi wada who had only joined the company in april 2000 but had already gone through numerous roles including cfo and coo to complete the board shake-up yosuke matsuda and makato naruto were added and they oversaw a significant restructure of the business that led to the number of employees being cut from 1210 to 952 a reduction of over 20 percent due to the situation they had inherited the new management team had much more strict views on how square should make money and spend money creativity will be stamped down upon with focus placed on exploiting audiences as much as they could to maximize revenue and even though some prominent creators such as yoshino kitase tetsuya namla and akitoshi kawazu bought into this new approach even helping to formulate and deliver the new polymorphic content strategy others such as matsuno and ito were ostracized the departure of sakaguchi would have very real consequences for matano as a person and subsequently the development of final fantasy xii and tactics advance we will perhaps never know what kind of game was planned to ship in 2003 but we know that following the departure of sakaguchi the first few years of final fantasy 12 development were plagued with issues and matsuno shared in a candid interview he took part in with shigeru miyamoto that he also struggled with the role of producer not least because he would need to work with yuichi murasawa after matsuno had left quest murasawa joined quest and he started to work on the next wave of ogre battle games on ogre battle 64 this would see murasa serve as a field map planner before he was installed as director on tactics ogre the knight of lotus which was released on the game boy advance given murder sarah's connection to tactics zoga and the tactical role-playing genre in general he had clear views as to the type of game he wanted tactics advance to be but those views differed from what matt snow had envisioned and it led to there being numerous debates and compromises compared to how matt snow is used to working where he would have complete control and everything would be done the way he wanted this would have no doubt being quite draining and it only served to amplify everything that was happening in relation to final fantasy xii in the past mantano had worked on projects without any significant expectations they were spin-offs or new initiatives and success would have been welcomed as opposed to presumed pressure was therefore more self-imposed final fantasy 12 was the antithesis of this acting as the next major installment in one of the biggest entertainment properties in the world success was not negotiable and with sakaguchi gone and matsuno acting as the director while also inheriting the role of producer it meant its success was squarely on his shoulders the scenario was one that matano had been accustomed to he liked being the main focal point of a project but what he wasn't accustomed to was the sheer size of team he would be responsible for as well as now having to deal with a new group of senior executives who were more than happy to provide input if they did not feel the game would deliver in the way they needed it to this impacted development in numerous ways in the initial sense as the team would end up becoming so large massino found it difficult to direct them in the way he was used to the implicit harmony that he had when working on smaller teams was no longer there and he felt it hard to get everyone involved to understand why certain decisions were being made matano also started to become concerned about things that hadn't bothered him before such as whether or not people felt he was being mean-spirited with his requests and he ended up spending time having to handle problems that arose due to nothing more than communication issues to make matters more complicated final fantasy 12 will be worked on by numerous smaller teams that had each finished up their own individual projects and were then brought together to make one big team and it meant that even though some of matano's close colleagues would work on the project there were others in senior positions who he wasn't familiar with and each of the teams had specific ways of working that differed from the ways of their new colleagues while managing all of these dynamics and attempting to get across the vision for final fantasy xii matano would then have to deal with feedback from non-creative sources who were not directly involved with the development of the game and perhaps one of the most well-known pieces of feedback in this regard related to the main protagonist from the outset matsuno had wanted to tell a mature story about a knight called bashvon rotzenberg who was attempting to reclaim his honor but after developing his idea and then showing it to other parts of the business the feedback was that it wouldn't resonate with a typical final fantasy audience and they would need to change it as they were worried that it would ostracize existing fans all of these issues combined with the new added financial pressures brought about by the subsequent merger between square enix would lead to delay upon delay after limited communication around final fantasy 12 throughout 2001 matt snow stated towards the start of 2002 that the game would still be delivered at some point during 2003 however no reveal happened when the game was spoken about on the 28th of december of that same year it was only because square published a teaser image in a japanese magazine called dolly manga where they also confirmed that akihiko yoshida akayama and hideo minaba will be working on the project alongside matsuno final fantasy tactics advance will be released not too long after and despite the back and forth between matano and miloseva it became a must-have title for the game boy advance winning numerous accolades but while tatic's advance dazzled new audiences something that continued following its release in western territories final fantasy 12 continued to be absent this absence was made even more confusing when the now merged square enix announced during their first post-merger financial report that the game would be releasing within their current fiscal year which meant at the latest it will be released by the 31st of march 2004. based on this expectations around revealed increased but final fantasy 12 was not featured at e3 that year's first major trade show and even though matsuno said it will be shown at the tokyo game show in september when square enix announced their lineup final fantasy 12 was missing it was another misstep but some damage control was performed as the long-awaited reveal was given a date the 19th of november 2003 having a date at long last channeled enthusiasm amongst an expectant fan base and even though it was dampened by square enix informing investors that final fantasy 12 would be delayed until the following fiscal year placing it as releasing at some point between the 1st of april 2004 and the 31st of march 2005 the big reveal did happen as promised by a press conference that took place in japan fans learned that the main character would be called van a 17 year old boy who it would later be revealed was one of the last characters to be designed that the music would be overseen by nabur umatsu something that he had alluded to earlier in the year via his own blog and that the battle system would be reminiscent of the classic atb system with it even including enhancements only just introduced via final fantasy 10 2. beyond that it was also revealed that the world of final fantasy 12 would be evolis connecting the game with final fantasy tactics and tactics ogre and because of this it would inherit numerous elements such as races like the vieira and vanguard and the judges with the game reported to be 70 complete square enix declared that final fantasy 12 would release during the summer of 2004 but less than six months later on the third of may 2004 square enix announced that final fantasy 12 would miss its planned release window and was now scheduled to release at an unspecified time later in their fiscal year which ended on the 31st of march 2005. even with the delay it was expected that final fantasy 12 would appear at the next major trade show to build anticipation but the game was absent from every single one by q1 2005 as the end of the fiscal year loomed questions started to be raised about the status of the game and to ensure this discontent didn't affect their shareholders square next were forced to issue a statement where the company confessed that they had yet to set a date for the introduction of its newest final fantasy game three months later final fantasy 12 was given its first firm release date but at the exact same time one up reported a worrying rumor yasmi matsuno the director and producer was no longer working on the game this was shocking news and it plunged the future of final fantasy xii into further doubt according to one up source everything had come to a head after a chunk of the development team had left square next to join sakaguchi's new studio mistwalker in matsuno's eyes this was just the latest in a long line of things that had gone wrong throughout the development of the game and the impact on his mental health was very real by this point it was reported that after learning about what had happened with miss walker matsuno had just not shown up to work for a month essentially refusing to come in until the issue had been resolved no doubt today stressful everything was at the time of writing one up stated that they did not know if matano had straight up been kicked off the team or had voluntarily removed himself but they did claim that to their knowledge he was still working at square enix the following day square enix updated the official final fantasy 12 website it saw them remove matsuno as director and producer instead listing him as being responsible for the original concept scenario and supervision matsuno would also issue a statement within he revealed that he had not been working on the project for a while due to illness and that ito and minagawa have been sharing directorial duties in his absence matsuno also shared that akitoshi kawazu who had not been associated with a major final fantasy game since final fantasy 2 would join the team as producer it's believed that matsuno was offered the chance to take a sabbatical as a way of resting and recuperating from what's assumed to have been exhaustion and mental illness but he declined choosing to leave square enix instead and in doing so for the second time in his career he handed over one of his creations to someone else final fantasy 12 would end up releasing on the 16th of march 2006 in japan and matsuna would watch from the sidelines as it became only the sixth game to receive a perfect score from famitsu it would also perform well selling more copies in its first week than final fantasy 10. the game's launch wasn't without its issues and sakaguchi even went on record as saying he refused to play the game beyond its introduction due to what had happened regarding matsuno's departure for fans it was also unclear how much of what we got to see within the final version of the game remained true to matsuno's original vision from back in 2001. takashi kateno the main system and event planner on final fantasy 12 who would later be installed as the director of the zodiac cage shared that not much changed after matsuno's departure and while that may be true it doesn't provide any real sight as to how much was changed over time through various concessions after all the game had been in development for four and a half years by the time of matsuno's departure with its shipping just nine months later so it's understandable that not much would have changed fundamentally in such a short space of time following the departure of matsuno square enix decided to take full advantage of the ips they now had ownership over aligning evillies as well as final fantasy tactics and final fantasy xii within its polymorphic content strategy in truth this had already started to happen when matsuna was still there as a final fantasy tactics advanced radio drama was released that according to the credits he had no involvement with but the true expansion would start to be evidenced just six months after the release of final fantasy 12 when a pseudo sequel was announced called final fantasy 12 revenant wings which was being developed for the nintendo ds in early planning stages this project was meant to be a standalone game that had nothing to do with final fantasy xii instead the idea was to create a simplistic game that would serve as an introduction to the final fantasy franchise but as development progressed despite there being no senior creative figures working on the product who had anything to do with previous e-release games kawasu sensed an opportunity to work in with the new company objective and create some polymorphic content as motomo todoyama the director of revenant wings explained following the release of final fantasy xii evelys had become more of a square enix property than one associated with former employees at quest and based on that it was there to be used however they saw fit irrespective of the creative merits it meant that instead of trusting that their new product would be able to stand on its own two feet as an innovative final fantasy spin-off in much the same way that tactics had done a decade before kawasu and toriyama decided to just shoehorn in elements of final fantasy 12 so that they could be rebranded as a connected game as they believed it would make the game sell better and provide fans of that universe with consistent content to further this on the 13th of december it was announced that revenant wings will be just one part of the ivelisse alliance a collection of games that would all take place on the same stage the term and initiative was the brainchild of kawazu as he wanted to try and take advantage of the interest that surrounded eveles and as such revenant wings will be joined by another two games final fantasy tactics war of the lions a remaster of the original game would be released on the playstation portable and final fantasy tactics a2 a sequel to final fantasy tactics advance will be released on the nintendo ds a few months later scroll next time revealed a fourth game that will be part of the collection an enhanced version of final fantasy 12 called the international zodiac job system by the speed of the announcements and how swiftly the games were released it was clear that kawasu had been planning the evolution alliance for some time the first of the four games revenant wings would release in april 2017 and the fourth game tactics a2 will be released just seven months later in japan but it was all just a bit too much too soon and collective performance ended up being less than stellar despite there being over 16 million nintendo ds consoles in japan when revenant wings released and final fantasy 12 having sold almost two and a half million copies just a year before only 290 000 gamers purchased the pseudo sequel in its release week with total sales not surpassing 600 000 in that region this would then be followed up by only four hundred thousand copies being sold in north america and europe subsequent releases within the evil east alliance saw diminishing returns final fantasy tactics war of the lions only saw 170 000 copies during its initial week on sale while the international zodiac job system only managed to sell 50 000 less than 50 percent of what final fantasy 10 international had achieved and less than a third of final fantasy 10 2 international final fantasy tactics a2 perhaps the strongest title within the lineup as it will be overseen by the same team that worked on tactics advance then only sold 158 000 copies in its first week 30 less than its predecessor and almost 10 percent less than the tactics remaster with the evil east alliance not performing to expectations kawasu stepped away from the brand returning to focus on the saga franchise and square enix decided to change their entire approach they would still release evil's games as there was a belief that segments of the fanbase were still interested but they would no longer be positioned as major releases on their respective consoles and as they would also not be overseen by any senior figures of the company as their time was focused on what they deemed to be more important projects each new evolution property will be aligned with emerging trends and developed on a shoestring budget the first project to be produced after this internal shift will be crystal guardians and the brief for the game was simple reuse and repurpose as many existing design elements graphical assets and musical tracks as they could from tactics a2 and latch onto the success of the tower defense genre to create a simple mobile phone game that could draw people in and be as profitable as possible development would be overseen by takahiro ando who had worked as a producer on chaos rings and crystal guardians would be created by a team of just three people tequila akada would be responsible for game design his sanoa suzuki a contractor from mobile software foundation was the sole programmer and rudy alma ito who had provided signs for tactical vans 12 revenant wings and tactics a2 will create the character designs when crystal guardians launched it was sold for the low price of 350 yen with additional revenue generated from subsequent episodes that would each have a similar fee while these were being developed crystal guardians would then be ported to xbox live wewer and the playstation network and rebranded as crystal defenders perhaps to make it seem like a follow-up or a different game it would later be released on ios and android devices but each time the reviews were damning metroid even went so far as to say crystal defenders was not only a poorly disguised mobile game but one of the shallowest tower defense strategy games ever made but despite all of the negative press the initial hunched about players wanting more exposure to evilees proved to be true as it still managed to sell over one million copies across the various iterations generating around three million us dollars due to this financial success irrespective of how much damage it had done to the reputation of e-release square enix commissioned a sequel called crystal defenders vanguard storm it would still sit within the tower defense genre but instead of enemies following a pre-planned route they would adopt a horizontal approach allowing players to position their team on the right hand side of the screen where they would attack enemies coming from the left thank god storm would have a little bit more polish but outside of the usp being that it again reused assets from tactics a2 critics found it difficult to recommend the game as a solid entry into the genre and sail struggled to match its predecessor around the same time square next also released a flash game on myspace that would reference eviles acting as a specific and rather odd extension of final fantasy xii focusing on a minor character from the game called sorbet who is one of the mughals that ran a moogling station in robinasta dive to hunt the adventures of sorbet would be simple in both premise and execution it would again feature artwork from yomoito but instead of being an original property the adventures of sorbet was actually just a simple reskin of a game called dive to hunt that square next had produced a year before that such a game existed with so little care placed around where it was launched and when it launched showed that square enix just did not know what to do with eveles following the departure of matsuno and this would further be emphasized by an interesting arrangement they had struck with a western developer called grin square enix have become concerned about the increasing success and dominance of western developed games in comparison to those developed by japanese studios to try and better understand how they could adapt numerous delegations were sent to visit studios in europe throughout the late 2000s and one such delegation included naoki yoshida hiroshi takai and hiroshima nagawa during one of these trips a team from square enix visited grin who at the time were working on bionic commando riyan for capcom impressed by what they had seen square enix subsequently invited grin to come over to japan and pitch their vision for how they could create a game based on the obscure lord of vermilion franchise however after arriving in japan ulf anderson who was one of the co-founders of the studio found that square enix didn't actually want grin to work on lords of vermilion they instead wanted to see how a western studio would handle creating a triple a game based in the world of ivelisse anderson was well aware of the significance of eveles and final fantasy xii he was also aware that square enix were testing the waters to see how a western studio would handle an ip that was quintessentially japanese but it was such a huge and unheard of opportunity that the excitement must have been unreal developed under the code name of fortress with the final name intended to be valiant saga final fantasy rin started work on creating a new interpretation of evillies as in their minds if square enix just wanted to see something similar to their previous works they would have just made it themselves the ambition was to create a game that would take place 10 years after the events of final fantasy xii it would center around the fortress of faram a stronghold in nebradia which had been overrun by an evil cult leader and queen ash desperate to quell this uprising would enlist the help of bash von roentzenberg to eradicate the threat due to the nature of the scenario which would see bash thrust into the spotlight as matsuno had originally planned the team at grin wanted to create a new visual style that would be inspired by scandinavian aesthetics and they were incredibly excited by what they had pulled together and how they had blended it with the existing law of evilees but senior executives at square enix were less than impressed based on their understanding of evillies they felt that fortress was too different from what players would expect to see and were critical that not enough noticeable final fantasy elements were present to try and accommodate for these changes grin took on more and more staff and there was an assumption that since square enix were requesting these changes they will be happy to foot the bill what followed was plenty of communication as grin looked to fine tune their product and make sure development was heading in the right direction but around the same time square nx purchased idos this should not have impacted anything but square enix insisted that communication should no longer be direct instead it should be funneled through their new uk office and not only did this mean that everything took longer it also led to miscommunication as employees at the uk office would provide their own feedback that often contradicted or incorrectly interpreted the feedback from japan the death knell then came not too long after in august 2009 as grin received word that square enix would no longer be funding the project and as the studio had no other products in the pipeline having put all their eggs in one basket they were forced to file for bankruptcy according to anderson although he never received an official reason as to why square enix port funding he believed it was because they looked at how much the project was costing and how much it was subsequently cost to ship and market simply deciding they would not be able to recoup the level of investment needed with fortress cancelled ivelisse would revert back to being used as a supplemental property attached to small and experimental initiatives the next project of this ilk would be knights of the crystal it would again be overseen by takahiro undo but instead of being created as a traditional mobile game knights of the crystal would be created for gree a japanese-centric social networking program just as with crystal guardians knights of the crystal would not be a formal final fantasy title in name but its art was a game provided by ryoma ito and it would feature numerous jobs with many being lifted straight from tactics a2 as square next look to expand the game's reach knights of the crystal would end up being ported to facebook and relaunched as knights of the crystal ultimate job system this would see the volume of jobs swirled to ridiculous levels but despite all of the effort it would be discontinued less than two years after its initial japanese launch the next evil east-based property final fantasy tactics s would suffer a similar fate prior to striking gold with recordkeeper dna had worked on a couple of games in conjunction with square enix including final fantasy airborne brigade having been infused with the result square next decided to give dna access to the venerable tactics brand as they hoped an experience could be crafted that would bring fans of the original game back as well as those who were introduced to the more modern entries ryoma ito would again provide designs and just like in knights of the crystal tatixs will feature a huge array of jobs even introducing some new ones but as there was no real depth of the gameplay and the association with evilly syntactics only existed on a superficial level the game lasted just one year on the market in lieu of any solid experiences being created by square enix fans started to yearn for something related to evil's that contained substance and after the successful release of the final fantasy 10 and 10 to hd remasters this manifested in calls for final fantasy 12 to receive similar treatment in response during e3 2016 square enix announced final fantasy 12 the zodiac cage an hd remaster of the original game it would be released exclusively on the playstation 4 but instead of being a straight remaster it would instead be based around final fantasy 12 international zodiac job system which had never before been released outside of japan the original re-release had been directed by hiroyuki ito and even though it would contain an identical story its gameplay and character progression would see significant changes as the person responsible for that aspect within the original game ito was said to be quite disappointed with how the license board had been utilized by players the initial vision much like it had been for final fantasy 2 had been to provide players with a blank canvas hoping it would spark their imaginations and lead to the development of characters that would fulfill different roles within the traditional party but what happened instead was that players often ended up making six identical characters as it presented the most optimum route to success to counter this when developing the international zodiac job system ito would make players assign a job to each character and this would restrict the abilities they could learn as well as how their stats grew but to compound the mechanic and to have it truly juxtapose the original game the job selection would be locked in for the entire playthrough something that had not happened since the original final fantasy final fantasy 12 the zodiac cage which would be overseen by takashi katano and hirokokato would retain many of these changes but the harshness was softened at launch it would see players able to select a second job for each character and the ability to change jobs was patched in post-launch numerous other tweaks would be overseen by katana and kato with gameplay rebalanced and new items added and they also introduced a whole host of quality of life adjustments such as auto save and the ability to increase the speed of the game upon release the zodiac cage was well received in japan it outsold the international zodiac job system managing to exceed 1 million sales worldwide and such was the interest surrounding the game that the producers mentioned numerous times they were considering creating more content related to evelys and speaking with the international business times uk division kato said that there was definitely a chance that ivelisse would return if the response to the zodiac cage was very positive further adding that if there was demand within the community to see more gains produced within that setting then they would take action that demand would then be seen with the volume of copies shipped and it wouldn't take long for square enix to hold up their end of the bargain as it was announced that a new alliance raid called returned eveles would feature as part of final fantasy 14 storm blood and that matsuno will be returning to work on it the inclusion of ivelisse within final fantasy xiv came as a huge surprise but it had been a long time in the making naoki yoshida the director and producer of final fantasy xiv have been a firm admirer of yasui matzo for decades have been being blown away by tactics oga when it released he even had dreams of joining square with the ambition of having the chance to one day work on a project with matano after yoshida then ended up at square it must have felt like the dream would become a reality but with matsuno leaving the company not too long after the dream had to be put on hold and there must have been a feeling that it would never happen fast forward to a decade later and after overseeing not just the successful relaunch of final fantasy xiv but also heaven's ward which at the time was believed to be one of the best expansions to an mmo ever released yoshida's stock had increased considerably and he used his newfound influence to connect with matsuno and proposed that they worked together on some story-driven content for final fantasy xiv's next major expansion stormblood not only would this fulfill a long-held dream but it was also fantastic for the wider final fantasy 14 leadership team as many of them were mats no disciples having either worked under him many years prior or having been influenced by his work what became known as return to evillies would launch alongside patch 4.1 with the first alliance ray dubbed the royal city of rabanasta this will be followed by the ridderana lighthouse as part of patch 4.3 and the auburn monastery which launched as part of patch 4.5 and would act as the conclusion of this series each stage would feature numerous illusions back to final fantasy tactics final fantasy xii and vagrant story with famous locations serving as the battleground characters such as ramsar and alma taking center stage of the story and enemies such as mestadio agrius the thunder god sid yismat and ultima standing in the way of success for those who were familiar with the aforementioned evilly properties the narrative itself was like a love letter and due to how well it was received matt snow would be brought back to work on a scenario for shadowbringers called save the queen it would again feature numerous references to final fantasy xii but its story was more standalone [Music] following the success of matsuno's collaboration with joshua there were numerous rumors that he would be contributing to final fantasy 16. this was based on of course their reverence for each other as creators but also because based on what had been seen final fantasy 16 felt like it would feature numerous allusions to evalision law however matsuno shot down those rumors and categorically denied having any involvement with the project that's not to say that ivelisse is dead though in the build-up to the zodiac cage kato reiterated his desire to create more evil east-based content but only under the right circumstances he noted the reason evely sort of faded away was that the original development team that made final fantasy 12 all separated into different projects which made it difficult to make another game set in evil ease and it would be this quote that would emphasize why eveles went the way it did square enix were desperate to capitalize on the popularity of evillies but mishandled it assigning non-evilly staff members to work on projects that would often be doomed to obscurity in the initial sense this would see kawasu and toriyama attempt to recreate the magic of evillies but after the expected results were not delivered evelys was pushed into the periphery often alluded to instead of being referenced by name it would stay that way for many years but following the success of the zodiac cage and the returned evil east raids series it seems to have sparked something within square enix and there's every chance that we could be on the cusp of seeing a proper resurgence for ivelisse and the wider works of matano assuming things continue to go in a positive direction at the moment there are two rumoured projects that would work towards this objective final fantasy tactics remastered and tactic soga reborn both were mentioned as part of the big nvidia league and as almost every product on that list has since been announced or released there's a good chance both will end up happening the former could end up being a straight port of the original brought up to date in a similar fashion to the recent chrono cross remaster and if that's the case we genuinely hope that square enix will not repeat the mistakes of the final fantasy 8 remaster and the chrono crush project by actually taking the time to improve aspects and modernize them in a proper manner as opposed to the half-baked efforts we've seen in recent times tactics reborn is also quite intriguing square enix registered a trademark for this towards the start of april and the logo has since leaked this could again end up being a remaster probably of the psp version that was released in 2010 but square next could be taking it further and doing a much more thorough job based on it being called reborn as opposed to remastered either way due to what's happened over the past five years it feels as though the dark shadow that shrouded the brand for so long has been somewhat lifted and even if matt snow isn't involved if one of his disciples has an interest in carrying the torch and ushering in a new era we'd be all for it [Music] thank you all so much for watching this is a video that's been in the making for a number of years now and the objective was to take you all on a journey that detailed the highs and lows of what is ultimately a rich and meaningful world and franchise after all there's a reason why evelys and even the ogre battle saga even now mean so much to gamers all around the world but it would have felt wrong to skip over the negatives as with all due respect levels went through a pretty extended period of mismanagement where it felt like the only objective was to try and milk it dry as opposed to making something of meaning here's hoping those days are long since gone and that evillies can return to its former glory we'd like to take this time to again thank you for watching and if you enjoyed the video that you consider liking and commenting if you'd also like to see more of this kind of long-form content we'd ask that you genuinely consider supporting the channel on patreon as you can imagine it takes a considerable amount of time to pull together content of this nature and to be blunt more funding we have on patreon the more risks we can afford to take and the more experimental we can afford to be it's on that note that i would like to give a heartfelt thanks to all of our current patreon and youtube membership supporters especially benjamin snow the livestream gregory and z dawn who are super special onion night supporters and of course a big thank you to everyone for watching this video i'll see you all again soon for more final fantasy goodness [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Final Fantasy Union

Views: 242,361

Keywords: the rise and fall of ivalice, the rise and fall of final fantasy, final fantasy xii, final fantasy tactics, ogre battle, tactics ogre, final fantasy tactics s, final fantasy xii revenant wings, final fantasy tactics advance, final fantasy tactics a2, dive ii hunt, crystal guardians, crystal defenders, final fantasy xii the zodiac age, final fantasy tactics remastered, tactics ogre reborn, final fantasy, video game documentary, documentary, video games

Id: KreCsxi-nwc

Length: 61min 14sec (3674 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2022