As the Final Fantasy brawler game gets ready for release later this month, and an open beta on January 12, the PlayStation Blog sat down with Producer Ichiro Hazama to get the scoop on seven things that you may not have known about Final Fantasy Dissidia NT.
Built for PS4
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT was built from the ground up for the PS4, so don’t think this is some kind of port or lesser game. The arcade cabinets in Japan actually have customized PS4 hardware built into them, because the team knew they wanted to design the game specifically with the PS4 in mind. Hazama says that the biggest different between the arcade version and home version is the story.
Since the game was already created for PS4, we’ve focused on different things for the home version. One of the things we really felt was important was the story. Having a roster of characters drawn from all titles of the Final Fantasy series is such a good opportunity for a great story and this is what we have put the most effort into.
Not Just for the Final Fantasy Fans
Hazama says that even if you don’t know Final Fantasy, the systems in the game make for quick and fun matches that newcomers can still enjoy.
If you put aside Final Fantasy, you have this three-vs-three battle system and fun-filled matches taking quite a short amount of time — games comes to a conclusion in about 3 and a half minutes — and I don’t think there’s ever been a game before that worked on that kind of system. So, even without the Final Fantasy bits, I think that system alone will be a lot of fun for new players.
Fans of the series don’t need to worry though. “We do believe that Final Fantasy is what makes Dissidia NT so great,” he says.
Characters From Every Era
One of the most important things the team worked on was making sure that each and every character feels true to who they are from their original games. The difficulty here came from the early FFI to FFIII characters, where the team had limited information to go on. They used everything that they could, from the sprites to original art concepts, to bring these characters to life.
But of course there’s more than their appearance. For example, on one of the characters there was a little line that said “he is the master of using different weapons” which led us to a lot of internal discussion along the lines of: ‘if this guy can use all the weapons, what kind of attacks would he have?’ So we imagined it and created a character setting from there.
This is something that Hazama says they’ve been working on balancing since the PSP games.
Cloud Strife is the Easiest Character to Play
Each and every character is different in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, even among the specific classes. Hazama says that Cloud Strife is the most popular and easiest to learn, because his techniques are straightforward. Many of his moves and attacks come straight from the original Final Fantasy VII.
Then you’ve got Squall Leonheart and Sephiroth which, in the hands of very skilled players, can be absolute monsters to take down. If you’ve got a really good player with one of these two characters, they can overwhelm you in no time at all! Of course, one-on-one, some characters can be stronger than others but because it’s a 3-vs-3 game, we look at the balancing from a team-fight perspective.
Arenas Will Change With Time
Each of the arenas represents an iconic landscape from across the Final Fantasy series, and they will change and evolve over time as the battle progresses.
My personal favorite arena is probably Besaid Island from Final Fantasy X. It’s a beautiful stage with the island and the sea but what I really love is how this stage recreates the scene from its original game. You can see the little inlets in the ocean, remember that specific treasure chest located right there, or simply reminisce on the ambiance of the game. As the battle progresses there are a lot of things and effects that will slowly transform the stage and the scenery. In Besaid Island you’ll be able to see the fireflies floating across the horizon around the middle of the battle, for example.
It will be interesting to see what other Easter eggs and secrets there will be for the longtime fans to discover.
That Final Fantasy Music
Dissidia has both untouched original tracks from throughout Final Fantasy’s life, and radically rearranged tracks that will be familiar, yet wholly unique to Dissidia.
The music of Final Fantasy has always been a huge part of the series success, and because of this, we’ve actually got a lot of the original tracks from the games, untouched, in Dissidia. But we’ve also asked Takeharu Ishimoto, Dissidia’s original composer, to rearrange some other Final Fantasy tracks.
A lot of times, when you ask people to rearrange music from Final Fantasy, they respect it so much that they only change a little bit of it and it’s not very different from the original, but I made sure that he made very radical rearrangements of them so he could create something new and interesting for Dissidia.
The Music Isn’t Always the Battle Themes
Hazama says that sometimes you’ll be fighting to tracks like the Gold Saucer theme from Final Fantasy VII.
Obviously Dissidia is all about battles, so most of the tracks we have chosen from Final Fantasy are battle themes or battle-related tracks. But we have also played around a little bit! We have added quite a few tracks that are absolutely not battle-related, just to see how they’d work during fights. We’ve got “Pa-paya theme” from Final Fantasy XIV, for example, as well as “Gold Saucer Theme” from Final Fantasy VII.
Imagine the surprise: you have the two teams presented in this very epic way and they’re about to fight each other… Cloud is there with his massive sword… and suddenly you hear the Gold Saucer theme tune! It helps alleviate the tension right away!
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT releases on January 30, with an open beta starting on January 12. The trophy list for the game was recently revealed, and will require quite a bit of dedication to get the Platinum on.
[Source: PlayStation Blog]
