The impact of Final Fantasy Tactics upon the strategy-RPG genre cannot be understated. By blending familiarFinal Fantasyelements with the rich sociopolitical themes and compelling turn-based isometric battles of his previous work onTactics Ogre, theever-outspokenYasumi Matsuno spearheaded the creation of a game that has inspired countless passion projects in the 28 years since it launched.
Now, with the upcoming release ofFinal Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Matsuno and his long-time cohorts have been given the chance to fix the one significant issue which has plagued this timeless classic since its inception. In an interview recorded by the good folks atPlayStation Blog, the director of this hotly-anticipated remaster - Kazutoyo Maehiro, who worked alongside Matsuno on the original PlayStation version - cheerfully recounts the measures which have been taken to remedy the decades-old flaw.
Major Characters Will No Longer Give Us The Silent Treatment
It was something I noticed at age ten. It was something I noticed again when Final Fantasy Tactics came to PlayStation Portable in 2007 via the (excellent) War of the Lions version. And it’s something I’ve kept noticing, in every replay, and it’s never stopped bugging me. In Final Fantasy Tactics, once an important character is recruited, their dialogue drops dramatically.
This is true even of the most pivotal of them all - Agrias Oaks, Mustadio Bunansa, Cidolfus “Thunder God” Orlandeau. War of the Lions tossed a bone to Agrias and Mustadio with a side quest, but by and large, formerly chatty figures vital to the fate of the realm would only have their opinions felt sporadically. (At least Mustadio got to meet Cloud Strife, I guess.) Neither Yasumi Matsuno, nor Kazutoyo Maehiro, were ever happy about this, but time constraints prevented the development team from realizing the full weight of their scriptwriting ambitions - until now.
“When sending them into specific battles, characters like Agrias, Cid, and Mustadio speak considerably more.” -Kazutoyo Maehiro
I breathed a sigh of relief reading this. These are iconic characters in a series that’s bursting at the seams with them, but they’ve never gotten the kind of complete depiction that they’ve deserved. Surely, as the war rages on throughout Ivalice, and as the true villains behind so much tragedy come into view, it wouldn’t be protagonist Ramza Beoulve alone who would have more than a mere handful of spoken reactions.
It’s not just back-and-forth battle banter, either. “Some of these dialogues aren’t just exchanges between characters,” Maehiro explains, “but also complement the narrative, or touch on the heart of the story, such as why war veteran Marquis Elmdore chose the path he did.” While it does sound like the bulk, or even the entirety, of the new script inclusions are set during combat, this is nevertheless shaping up to be the definitive depiction of Matsuno’s most epic narrative.
Elsewhere in the interview, Maehiro mentions the new-to-2025 gameplay feature called State of the Realm, which returns fromFinal Fantasy 16. Maehiro served as Creative Director on that game, and co-wrote its screenplay, so it’s nice to see him bringing in one of the best parts ofClive Rosfield’s fantastic journey. State of the Realm is a consistently-updated source of main story summarization and supplemental plot information. In Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, he describes it as “a high-level summary of information and incidental lore that plays between battles.”
I can’t wait to lose hours of my life with State of the Realm whenFinal Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles launches on August 01, 2025.
