Thread by @Dreamboum

Final Fantasy XII is 15 years old today! Let's take a look into this crowning artistic and technical achievement of the PS2 era!

Its legacy still endures today, inspiring games like Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity, but especially FF14! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

First of all, Final Fantasy XII itself comes from a very different lineage from the FF series!

While FF10 and FF13 were made by the people who worked on FF7 and 8. FF12 was made by the team behind Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story! Two Squaresoft classics by Matsuno!

FFXII itself happened thanks to Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the series. He had played Vagrant Story and was emotionally moved to tears to the point that he assigned the next game in the series to Yasumi Matsuno

You can check out more in my thread!

https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1226610123000467457

With Sakaguchi's blessing, they set out to make a new Final Fantasy inside their own universe, Ivalice.

At first, they had no drive to be overly ambitious. They settled for a game with chibi style characters, coming back to the series' roots.

But 5 years later, well...

This nostalgic, crowd-pleaser JRPG turned into one of the most ambitious games in history.

The game ended up featuring a large open world, removing random encounters entirely & using a never-before-seen gambit system where you can automate commands.

While the FFX team wanted to bring a bigger world, the learning curve of the PS2 forced them to take some steps back.

Not for the FFXII devs, they wanted to push the capabilities of the console to its absolute limits.

As a point of comparison, here's a map of FFX and FFXII:

Just like Vagrant Story was a technical achievement for the PS1, FFXII ended up becoming the same for the PS2. Using what they learned and applying it to this new generation of console.

The result is breathtaking to this day!

Despite the severe limitations of the PS2, the FFXII team still took time to make everything cohesive.

FFXII had no lighting as we are now used to, but simulated it all the same. For example, look how the light from the Save Crystal is diffused on Vaan's model!

Also check out how things like magic would have the light that the spells give reflected on the characters. All of this made to give the entire scene a cohesive look even during combat!

All 3D models in the overworld had to be severely downscaled during gameplay because of its open world nature consuming a lot of resources. But when it was time for cutscenes, it was something else entirely.

One thing in particular that still floors me to this day about FFXII is its intricate facial animations that contributes to its cutscenes.

Look at how they made Judge Ghis subtly displaying his irritation by clenching his jaw!!

The incredible facial animations were done by Takeshi Sadohara while the facial models allowing for this level of expressiveness while still retaining a huge level of detail were done by Takahiro Matsuhira. Both are now working on FF14.

On top of it, the voice acting for these lavishly rendered characters is nothing short of stellar, even considered to surpass the Japanese dub!

They hired stage actors for the voicework, giving justice to the Shakespearean feel of the writing.

The sheer quality of FFXII's voice acting highlighting its incredible writing is especially represented by its tortured villain: Gabranth.

The emotion behind his voice, the weight behind every word. It is some of the best voice acting I have experienced in a video game.

It would also be remiss for me to not mention FFXII's cutscenes, all thanks to Jun Akiyama (also the wizard behind Vagrant Story!). His work managed to effectively highlight the political stage of FFXII, where every piece of dialogue can have multiple meaning.

The visual effects of FFXII are also a thing of beauty, especially seen with its special attacks.

Jiro Mifune was in charge of them, and managed to deliver something you'd hardly think could come out of the PS2. Just look at this! (Mifune, please be working on FF16!)

I would also like to have a special mention for the sound effects in this game. There is something especially pleasing about the sound in this game. Even the act of saving is so satisfying

The SFX goodness also applies to the magic. Here are all the tiers of Cure spells in FFXII. All of this courtesy to Tomohiro Yajima, the same wizard that did Vagrant Story's sound effect by manipulating noise and waveforms.

He also was the sound director of NieR: Automata.

The devs thought that the visual quality of Final Fantasy XII was something that would hold up even as the PS3 was around the corner.

But how well would it stand up over time? With its 2017 remaster, we know the answer: amazingly well.

Final Fantasy XII's painterly quality and strong artistic direction was a team effort.

Isamu Kamikokuryo, art director of FF10 and 12 called it an "all-star team" that would think logically about the structure of the world they were crafting.

The art of Final Fantasy itself shows the huge level of detail put into its world.

It was not just massive, it was not just striking, it had a story to tell.

Alexander O. Smith, one of the translators with Joseph Reeder, even said that he was given "volumes and volumes of backstory" for FFXII that doesn't show up in-game but shines through details. It even has a fully realized artificial language for one (1) race.

The attention to worldbuilding in FFXII is staggering. One of the highlights is its bestiary, giving you pages and pages of details and lore about every aspect of its world, its people and its monsters.

Here's one such page, which tells a story I still regularly think about.

Every piece of dialogue says more in five words than it could with 200. Every stone tells a story but it is not more interested in telling than it is making you understand that it is there, and asking what you make of it.

It is the relationship between the player and its world that FFXII is focused on delivering. The more you engage with it and the more you slowly understand the workings of this world.

It doesn't feed you worldbuilding, it makes you want to discover more of it.

The game is above all a story focused on its people, finding a way to liberate them and end the suffering and oppression. But what is a story about people if it isn't focused on them, giving them the space to speak up?

FFXII gives them that space, in order for us to understand.

For example, Final Fantasy X had 250 NPCs populating its world. Final Fantasy XII had over a thousand.

93% of its script alone is dedicated to NPC dialogue, always having something new to say after every event in the story. It was *that* focused on telling THEIR story.

I could speak about this game for hours. It is a magnificent game to me that brought to the mainline series the concise, mature writing and characters that FF Tactics and Vagrant Story also had.

But I want to talk about the enduring legacy of FFXII.

Its systems have not gone unnoticed. Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity pointed Final Fantasy XII as an inspiration for their micro-management mechanics.

While RPGs are now often forcing you to control one character, FFXII paved a way to still offer player control in real-time.

But most importantly, Final Fantasy XII was a tremendous inspiration in the making of Final Fantasy XIV, which is now the highest rated & critically acclaimed Final Fantasy since FF12 itself, 15 years ago.

For this inspiration, look no further than the director and producer of FF14, Naoki Yoshida himself, who is probably the biggest fan of Matsuno and Ivalice in the world.

The very reason he even joined Square Enix in the first place to be able to work with Matsuno!

Naoki Yoshida has spoken many times about the respect he has for Yasumi Matsuno and his games and how it is driving him even today to create something better.

He even fulfilled his dream to work with him, with the Return to Ivalice raid in 14.

A lot of the staff that worked on Final Fantasy XII found its way in FFXIV. Even more than that, they were at the forefront of its rebuilding from its disastrous first launch!

Hiroshi Minagawa, co-director and visual director of FFXII, became the UI and Art Director of FF14. He is the man that allowed FF14 to be fully playable with a controller, and gave us its amazing art design & environment.

If FF14 had an Ivalice feel to you, that's why!

Kazutoyo Maehiro, lore writer and game designer on FFXII, became the writer of FF14, tasked to salvage the story into what is now considered a hallmark of the franchise today.

He is especially known for writing Heavensward, and is now the writer for Final Fantasy XVI.

(By the way, FFXVI already has Ivalice references, the protagonist comes from Rosalia, the same name as the FFXII empire, and his little brother Joshua has the same name and appearance as Joshua from Vagrant Story!)

Akihiko Yoshida, the character designer of all Ivalice games, also worked on FFXIV as art director, character designer, and illustrator.

Ayumi Namae, character designer in FFXII, is also a character designer in FFXIV, giving us designs like Ysayle and Yotsuyu! Takeo Suzuki, the lead motion designer, is also an art team lead for FFXIV!

Hell, even recently, the trust system allowing us to take NPCs into dungeons adapted the gambit system of FFXII as a base for its implementation!

Today, we even have an entire raid and relic based on Ivalice. The Viera is now a playable race, tribes like the Nu Mou exist. Even the target lines originally came from FFXII.

Final Fantasy XII's achievements are often swept under the rug, but you only have to look at FFXIV's massive success and critical acclaim and follow the link of inspirations to know that it showed a path forward for Final Fantasy. A path that FFXIV seized.

In contrast, FF13 (still a great game!) stuck to the conventions of FF10 without much regard for 12. It was only natural, as it was almost the same dev team between the two games, but it felt like a step backward considering what FFXII had done to push the franchise forward.

So, even 15 years later, Final Fantasy XII remains as a forward-thinking game in the franchise. A game that took the first step towards a future where the franchise could thrive even further.

With FF14, and soon FF16 (same team!) sharing its DNA, Final Fantasy XII is more than just validated, it is an undeniable hallmark of the franchise. Some of the best that the series has ever produced.

Happy anniversary to FFXII! Also, Balthier & Fran can call me anytime.

I forgot to also link this interview of Koji Fox, lead localizer on FFXIV, also talking about the various influences of FFXII on XIV, saying they wanted "to borrow from it", just to show that this level of influence is not even lost on the team.