Losing Final Fantasy Tactics' source code meant The Ivalice Chronicles devs had to use any available resources to rebuild the remaster, "whether that be the retail copy of the game or the smartphone version"

The developers of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles had even more work ahead of them than you might expect from a typical remaster project. The original game lost its source code sometime in the years following its launch on PS1, which means Square Enix had to make use of every available resource to get the new version right.

"When we first decided that we were going to start this process, and we were going to start development, we came to the realization that we didn't have the original source code for the game," director Kazutoyo Maehiro tells GamesRadar+. "So the project actually started from us using what resources we did have available to us, whether that be the retail copy of the game, or the smartphone version, and analyzing that code, and then from that analysis, rebuilding The Ivalice Chronicles."

"It was a little bit of a different struggle than what you might expect if you're creating a game from absolutely nothing," co-director Ayako Yokoyama adds. "We were of course using the original as a base, and we needed to use the data from that, and there was some data that we could make use of, but there were also certain things that we couldn't find through the analysis, or there were certain things that we were adding into that original data, and then we would come up with unexpected errors or things like that. So I think things like that were kind of where challenges arose."

Of course, many of the original game's developers – including Maehiro himself – are also working on The Ivalice Chronicles, so even if the source code itself has been lost, there's at least a bit of institutional knowledge carrying forward. The devs also recently noted that they "had to go to different websites made by fans and look for data there" on top of their own research, so they're clearly leaving no stone unturned in their quest for authenticity.