Final Fantasy 9, factually the best one, is almost 25 years old - and publisher Square Enix seems content to celebrate the classic game's milestone by doing everything but announce a remake. Celebratory websites. New merch. A Vivi picture book. And now, a quest to ask some legendary devs about the meaning of life.
Almost every character in Final Fantasy 9 confronts the same question at some point in the game. What's the meaning of life? So Square Enix sat down with some JRPG icons to ask them about the existential conundrum.
Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida's response? He hasn't found any meaning to it "at all." At least not yet. "Not at all. In my case I'm very much still looking (I'm pretty sure I always will be)," he said in a new anniversary blog.
The MMO maestro also reflected on his life at the time of Final Fantasy 9's release, circa 2000. "I was already working in the games industry but had left my first job at Hudson Soft and just moved to the second company in my career," he explained. My life was pretty much as it is now, spending every hour making games or playing games. I have great memories of bringing my own PC to work and having them set up a personal network cable for me so I could play American MMORPGs late at night while I was working!"
Maybe Yoshida's favorite thing about the heartfelt RPG was "how they had shifted back to a full-on classic fantasy style after the big changes" that FF7 and FF8 introduced to the series. "It reminded me how FF always took on amazing challenges with each game."
"I'd thought that the year 2000 was quite recent," he continued. "It's already been a quarter of a century, eh? My team have to pull out all the stops, so we're not beaten by the great masterpiece that is FFIX."
Final Fantasy 9 translator admits some references to older games "slipped by us completely," and he'd love to see "a new team" tackle the JRPG: "I wish we'd been sharper about the nostalgia"
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