Reflections of Spira

With a few quiet piano notes orchestrating a somber moment among a party we have yet to meet, the first spoken words in Square Enix’s legendary franchise were uttered – “Listen to my story. This may be our last chance.” Those 10 words still resonate all these years later. This July marked the 25th anniversary of Tidus’ impromptu vacation to the land of Spira, Yuna performing the Sending, Lulu’s dress made of belts, and of course, Blitzball. To celebrate this quarter-century milestone, Game Informer spoke with Final Fantasy X (FFX) producer Yoshinori Kitase over email to learn about its development and what he thinks has helped keep this game in players’ hearts for so many years.

New Hardware,  New Possibilities

The world first got a glimpse of FFX in January of 2000 at the Square Millennium Event. This exhibition not only served as the official announcement and release window reveal for Final Fantasy IX releasing later that same year, but it also pulled back the curtain on Final Fantasy XI and X, giving us our first glimpse of charismatic pro-athlete protagonist Tidus and his black hair, which would turn blonde by the time the game finally released. While the world was watching the trailers, for Kitase and the folks at Square (not yet Square Enix at the time as the companies wouldn’t merge until 2003), the future of the series looked vastly different than what it turned out to be.

“There was a general sense at the time that the future would be entirely online, as symbolized by the announcement of FFXI,” Kitase recalls, “For that reason, we were determined to deliver the best possible experience, working under the assumption that FFX could be our last single-player RPG.” While we now know such an exclusively MMO future never came to be, with all but two of the subsequent mainline entries being online multiplayer-focused, it is interesting to think about what could have been.