Q: Do you ever have ideas that you'd like to implement in FF, but are restricted by the huge success of the series and the expectations of the fans?

A: I entered some ideas this time!

Q: There always seems to be a progression toward more active battles, how do you envisage RPG battles happening in the future?

A: This is a difficult question. If you come up with an interesting idea, please tell me. Thank you.

Q: How does having split development sites in Hawaii and Japan affect the outcome of a game?

A: Many of our FFIX staff members come from overseas. Many of them have worked actively in Hollywood. Square has gained a major advantage from working with these highly skilled individuals. Since it would be somewhat difficult for our overseas members to work in Japan, Hawaii was the ideal place for the team to work together.

Q: Final Fantasy IX was being developed at the end of the development of Final Fantasy VIII. Does this mean you naturally get some thematic crossover?

A: That was not our intention.

If they're so attracted to European culture, why leave our releases until last?!

Q: What is it that inspires you about Norse and Northern European mythology? Odin, the Knights of the Round Table...

A: We're attracted to European history and mythology because of its depth and its drama.

Q: Is there an underlying concept behind combining items like a sword and a gun to create something new? Is it something you see happening now, or in the future, through technology?

A: That's classified.

Q: What would you say to someone who's never played a Final Fantasy game to convince them that they need to get FFIX?

A: Final Fantasy is one of the most entertaining games in the industry, and many years down the road, I'm sure it'll still be celebrated as one of the best series ever.

Q: What have you added this time around that you're particularly proud of?

A: We didn't compromise too much; we included many of the elements that we wanted.

Q: Final Fantasy games have never included spoken dialogue. How do you feel about spoken dialogue now that more and more games make use of it?

A: When we feel that we need it, I'm sure we'll incorporate it.

Q: FFIX's storyline deals with a lot of emotions and even philosophical questions. Did you have a lot of discussions in the team on how to present these topics?

A: We got together a lot to discuss the characters. But as things progressed, we were able to sort of tell what was on each other's mind, and everything came together. I guess that's what you call teamwork.

Q: FFIX is said to be the last completely "off-line" FF. Do you think people will miss the single-player experience if the FF series shifts to completely online play?

A: If you find the online play to be disappointing, please tell us, so that we can think things over. I'm sure we'll discover many things from developing and seeing online games.

Round Table Discussion
Q: With Final Fantasy IX, several of the tracks were already arranged with fully orchestral tracks, with future Final Fantasy games like X and XI do you see yourself going with fully orchestral soundtracks or will they continue the trend of having a mix of orchestral and synthesized stuff?

Uematsu: I've never thought that it was absolutely necessary to have fully orchestrated music for the entire soundtrack, but this trend kind of started when Mr. Sukiyama started to use classical music for Dragon Quest, so I think that it came out around at that time. I'm not really a person who can compose classical music completely so the way that I use the orchestra is kind of rough in some ways, so I don't think it's really important for me to use orchestra for the entire soundtrack. Once it's really possible for us to record live music, we'll likely be able to start using rock bands and other types of music. In fact, I've already been working on that in some other projects right now.

Q: With Final Fantasy IX already a huge success in Japan, do you feel any need for it to be successful in America or any other country outside of Japan? Do you even care how well it does elsewhere?

Despite giving Final Fantasy IX U.S. this front cover, they do actually want it to do well.

Uematsu: Of course we're hoping for our success in the States, of course we care about it. Not just the States, but for Europe and we hope that people in Africa can also enjoy it. I believe that there are common values that we can all share. And hopefully that will be borderless and regardless of different people in different countries, we believe that we can share those values.

Minaba: There's also something that I felt in the States when I was involved in some projects. The game industry is still pretty small in scale and still young. And when we were trying to hire some staff in the States, when I was doing some interviews with the applicants, I felt that the movie industry was number one and the game industry was under it. That is what we wish to change.

Uematsu: Games are still considered to be in the sub-culture category, coming under movies, coming under manga or comics or animation, especially in Japan. So, hopefully we'll be able to establish our own position that can be established as a culture.

Even in Japan, I don't think that the game culture is established. So, probably the users are kids in school, even adults, I'm not sure up to which age they are. For example, my father will watch movies but games don't appear in his life at all, I think that that's sad. Even though we can create something really good, our parents wouldn't be able to understand what we do.

Q: Would you say that the same is true with women? It seems that women in the States play far less games than males, is that the same in Japan and does Final Fantasy attract more women gamers than other videogames?

Uematsu: I receive more fan mail from the females.

Aoki: Maybe you only read the fan mail from the females.

Kurosawa: Probably it's about a 50/50 split. I don't think that the percentage of men is extremely higher and that of all games, I think that there are more female users for Final Fantasy. Q: What are some of the reasons for taking FFIX back to its Nintendo roots? And is that change caused by the fact that many companies have begun copying Final Fantasy?

Kurosawa: Dragon Quest didn't come out as early as expected [group laughter].

In the case of Japan, not many games have been emulating FFVII or VIII, but in this case, the director, Mr. Sakaguchi, wanted to go back to our roots, so we tried that this time.

Q: The character designs in FFIX have returned to more of a cartoony look, what are some of the reasons for doing that?

Minaba: Actually for FFVII and VIII, we did have that comical look and feel. I think that the realistic look came in when the Nintendo came out, but once again, for VII and VIII we did have that comic-like look, but for IX we kept some of that element but also changed some of the characters to give a different balance for it.

Q: But, why?

Uematsu: We wanted it to fit the scenario.

For VII and VIII, the characters are probably more realistic and of course it's easier to get that more realistic feel from realistic characters, but with the technology now, it's still possible to get that realistic sense with comic-like characters.

Quina: About as 'non-realistic' as you can get. ^_^

Q: Do you think that the international audience that is more accustomed to the realistically proportioned characters will have a problem with the change back to more super deformed characters?

Aoki: Going back to the fantasy-like world was probably a bold step by us, but after actually going through the process of creating the game, the characters that are non-realistic actually make you feel more familiar with them after you go through the game. As long as the users can still sympathies with the characters, we believe that this is the case, we feel that it's what's needed.

Minaba: Of course we were very concerned. We were thinking that since the characters in VIII were normal sized, we should make them even taller for FFIX. But, anyway, we did make the change.