WE DISCUSS VANA’DIEL
#5 Yoshinori Kitase Part 1

Before we talk about FFXI, please tell us how the two of you were acquainted back in the Square era. From what I’ve heard, you both joined the company at a very similar timing.

I joined in May of 1990.

I joined in March of the same year.

Wait, was I the one who joined first? I feel like by the time I joined, you were already working as a part-timer...

No, I never worked here part-time. I think you said the same thing about me before, did I stand out in some way and leave an impression? (laughs)

I feel like I would’ve been introverted back then, considering it was still during the three-month probation period...

Weren’t you immediately assigned to the FF team when you were hired*, Mr. Matsui?
I was assigned to the team working on Seiken Densetsu* for the Game Boy, and from my outside perspective, the FF team looked like a gathering of elites. (laughs) So I figured you were one of the elites too.

Elite? No way. (laughs)

The way I see it, the company had to release Final Fantasy Adventure first. They probably couldn’t assign a clueless newcomer to a project already in motion, which might’ve been why I was assigned to the FF team where they had more freedom.

Oh come on, that couldn’t be true. (laughs)

But now that I think about it, May was a strange time for you to join*. Why did you join the company at that timing?

Sometime after my second full playthrough of FFIII, I thought to myself, “Man, I better get a job.” (laughs wryly)

So I aimlessly went to the bookstore and was browsing game magazines when I happened to find a job listing for Square. The listing wasn’t quite “We want YOU, youngsters!” but maybe more like, “Inexperienced help is more than welcome.”

Did you choose to work at Square because you enjoyed FFIII?

It wasn’t like that. It was because Square was the only game company I could find that was hiring inexperienced game planners. With that said, Mr. Kawazu (Akitoshi Kawazu, founder of the SaGa series) had told me, “Please don’t come to Square.” (laughs)

Mr. Kawazu was your upperclassman in university*, right?

That’s right.

If I remember correctly, didn’t he say that because he’d be uncomfortable working with someone he knew? (laughs)

I understood what he meant by that, so I did try my best to find another company.

But everywhere I tried, they all replied back, “We aren’t hiring inexperienced game planners.” In the end, I had no choice and submitted my resume to Square while thinking, “Sorry Mr. Kawazu!”

Looking back now, my work at Square ended up being similar to a programmer, so I should’ve just applied to programmer job listings. Back when I was looking for a job, however, I didn’t have the confidence to keep up with a programmer’s line of work.

I was reminded by your story, but I also went through a similar phase. I’d quit my previous job after working there for less than a year, and I was just playing games all day. One day, I couldn’t get any further in the game I was playing, so I went to the bookstore hoping to find a walkthrough guide in the game magazines.

As I flipped through the magazines, I found a job listing by Square and went, “Oh, I better find a job soon…” (laughs) So my experience was a lot like yours.

From the way you said “I better find a job soon,” I could tell that you’d really played games to your heart’s content. (laughs) Out of curiosity, what did you do at your previous job?

I was an animator in a small animation studio.

A renowned animator was teaching at my university, and I was able to join their studio through taking their classes. There were only four of us in the studio which included my teacher, two upperclassmen who were a year above me, and myself.

The duties I handled ranged from actual animation production to menial tasks, including drawing animation frames for my teacher’s key drawings, bringing the cels to the photography studio, and fetching the film from the photo lab.

Most animations back then were done with cel animation, weren’t they?

I did the cel painting too.

Our work wasn’t for animated television shows and were mostly short animations for commercials or a single segment in kids’ TV shows.

Did you leave the studio because of the overwhelming workload?

Well... that was part of it. But looking back on it now, the amount of work may not have been too different from game development. (laughs)

Were you specifically looking for a game-related job when you quit your job as an animator?

No, I didn’t have anything in mind when I quit, and I did nothing but play games for about a year after that.

So if you hadn’t gotten stuck in the game you were playing, you may have found another career path and FFVI may have been a completely different game. (laughs)

The era we were in was a contributing factor too.

Nowadays, if you want a walkthrough of a game, the internet would be the first place to look. So the fact that I found Square’s job listing at that particular timing feels like fate.

Did you have any other reasons as to why you picked Square?

When I started looking for another job, I wanted to do something related to storytelling or entertainment, partially due to my previous experience in animation. So when I chose the game industry, I thought it’d be nice to work at Square, where they made story-focused games like the FF series.

Did you apply to Square as a game designer?

No, that’s not what I did.

Unlike Mr. Matsui with his programming skills, I only had experience with animations and knew nothing about game development or programming. However, I had an independent film from my student days, which I kind of threw in with my resume. It seems like that caught the eye of Mr. Sakaguchi (Hironobu Sakaguchi, one of the founders of the FINAL FANTASY series).

Sounds like he saw something brilliant in that footage.

It’d be nice if that were the case, but he may have just been thinking, “What a weird guy.” (laughs)

You mentioned you joined the company knowing nothing about game development. How did you familiarize yourself with what you had to do?

During my early days with the company, I handled tasks like helping the Marketing team. On one occasion, Mr. Sakaguchi wanted me to research how well FFIII was selling at game stores in my area, so I went around interviewing game store employees in Hachioji city.

I see, so not only were you involved in game development, but there was a period where you handled those kinds of tasks too.

As for game development, I learned about it from my senior colleagues.

Everyone in the Seiken Densetsu team with me were all newcomers, aside from Director Ishii (Koichi Ishii, original director of FFXI) and Lead Designer Shibuya (Kazuko Shibuya, pixel artist for the FF series and other works).

As such, my peers had no idea how to design a game, and since Mr. Ishii’s strength was in planning rather than programming, I often went to Mr. Kawazu and Mr. Tanaka (Hiromichi Tanaka, original producer of FFXI) for development advice.

By the time I joined the company, you already seemed like a central figure in the development team so I thought you were an experienced veteran.

That was because I had to step up to the task. (laughs) So as I just mentioned, I learned over time as I consulted my senior colleagues.

Even then, it’s amazing how you became a central figure in the development team after only two months in the company.

“Central figure” might sound impressive, but it was in a team of fresh graduates and new hires.

One of our programmers was the brilliant Mr. Yoshieda (Satoru Yoshieda, main programmer of the first entry in the Seiken Densetsu series), and I learned a lot about programming from him. As for planning-related matters, I often went to Mr. Kawazu for advice.

Our offices were very small back then. It was a single floor where the FINAL FANTASY team was on the left side, the Seiken Densetsu team was in the middle near the reception room, and the FINAL FANTASY Legend II team was next to them.

It was smaller than one floor in our current office building. (laughs)

From what you’ve mentioned, it sounds like you could look across the room and see the FINAL FANTASY and FINAL FANTASY Legend II teams working shoulder-to-shoulder.

When I first joined, all I had to do was get up from my chair and I’d see the Seiken Densetsu team right in front of me.

As for the Seiken Densetsu team, our small team of newcomers could glance across the team and see Mr. Sakaguchi and the rest of the FF team. Their meetings would look really professional, and I thought to myself, “Man, those guys are so cool.” (laughs)

Were you hoping to join the FINAL FANTASY team back then?

Not at all.

As I mentioned earlier, I was new to the game industry and didn’t have any skills in game development. In that sense, I had more freedom in the Seiken Densetsu team and I’m glad I was able to learn a lot. I’m sure it would’ve been more hectic if I was thrust into the FINAL FANTASY team.

Mr. Matsui, you had some programming knowledge, so I’m sure you could at least communicate at the same level as the programmers, right?

There were just so many things I didn’t know.

For example, my calculations for “1k” just didn’t seem right, and it turned out I was calculating with 1,000. (laughs wryly)

Ah, because “kilo” often refers to quantities of 1,000, but “kilobyte” is 1,024 because it’s 2 to the 10th power.

Despite my lack of fundamental knowledge like that, I pretended to know what I was doing. I asked various people questions and drew my own conclusions based on what they said, and that was how I managed to get by.

When there was something I just couldn’t understand, I went to beg Mr. Kawazu for help. When I was first told to allocate memory*, his advice was to use a ratio of 1:2:3. 1 for programming, 2 for data, and 3 for graphics, then leaving a little extra for working memory and music, and that was the basis I used to make a rough estimation for allocation.

But things like the world map seemed like they’d have to be compressed a great deal. I repeatedly asked Mr. Sakaguchi, “Is this okay? Is this really going to be okay?” to which he replied, “Oh, no problem! We can totally compress that!”

Like that, I actually knew nothing, but pretended to know what I was doing and barely managed to get things done.

You say that, but the fact that you could even pretend is impressive to me. (laughs)

I’ve heard before that many programmers back then were very stern and were like, “Shut up if you don’t even know how programming works!”

There weren’t many times I was criticized for not knowing something. People explained things to me if I asked, and some even enthusiastically walked me through the process of how certain things were done.

On the other hand, I was the type of person to speak my mind when I came up with an idea, but people would cut me off saying, “No, that’s not in the specifications,” which I really disliked.

There definitely are people who seem to believe it’s a transgression to stray away from the original design.

I do think it’s one way to go about it.

So after that experience, I started programming things myself in my second project onward, which I don’t think is a great thing to do. You should typically talk things out with the programmers, but I got tired of that and felt that it’d be faster if I just did it myself.

But I do think it’s amazing that you could even do it yourself. At the time, I didn’t even know about the powers of 2, so I really had a hard time.

I believe the two of you have worked together on the same project before.

We both worked on FFV.

With that said, I worked on the events and scenario while Mr. Matsui handled battle-related content, so it was rare for us to work together directly.

However, I do remember we collaborated on some requests, like creating an event for obtaining the Brave Blade*.

Unlike modern games with seamless transitions between overworld and battle menus, games back then used encounter-based battles, so our tasks were independent of each other.

For the longest time, our design method involved assigning a number to each battle scene, which would be used in the scenario script to load a specific encounter.

Once both sides were ready, we would then hook up the scenario and encounters, which was a tedious process that often didn’t go as planned. However, once that part was done, the rest was pretty easy.

That reminds me of an obstacle we were faced with in FFVII Remake, which we released last year (2020).

The original FFVII had encounter-based battles with a screen transition between the overworld and battle encounters, so even if the monsters you fought didn’t quite fit the setting, it didn’t seem all that strange.

With FFVII Remake, however, we decided to have monsters roaming the overworld, and there were some cases where we were like, “Hey, isn’t it weird to have this monster in this area?” (laughs) In that sense, I felt that encounter-based battles were a little easier to work with.

If the monsters were represented by simple icons like in Romancing SaGa, it might’ve been okay to have them roam wherever they pleased. But since the monsters are depicted with today’s graphical standards, I can understand how that might’ve made them stick out even more.

Now that I think about it, FFXI has seamless battle encounters too. Did you struggle with that at all during development?

Oh, absolutely!

In terms of looking out of place, there are Worm enemies that just show up above ground, and on rocky surfaces no less! (laughs) Near rivers and oceans, we have fish (Pugil enemies) that have the mysterious ability to float above the ground which allow them to be fought on dry land.

Additionally, we really agonized over how to pose monsters when they’re on a slope. Since the monster would look like it’s leaning backward if it maintained the same pose they have on even ground, under normal circumstances, their center of gravity should shift to accommodate sloped surfaces. It was especially noticeable with tall monsters, such as the Dhalmels in Tahrongi Canyon.

Due to in-game physics, if we made the monsters always stand perpendicular to the pull of gravity, it would cause one of their legs to not touch the ground when standing on a slope, and we were unable to create a rule that addressed all occurrences. The more you pursue realism, the more you’re faced with those kinds of inconveniences.

One solution might’ve been to keep the terrain flat no matter where you go, but that would make for a boring overworld.

Similarly, when it came to four-legged monsters, we wanted to prevent them from floating above the ground on uneven surfaces. But that meant we had to fold up their legs, which wasn’t possible with the specifications we have in FFXI...

What did you end up doing?

To a certain extent, we swallowed our pride and went forward with implementation. Monsters could be controlled to a certain extent by limiting its movement to a specific radius, preventing them from roaming around on their own into places where they might look strange. If players pulled the monsters to those kinds of places, we essentially considered it outside of our control.

I feel like there weren’t any glaring inconsistencies in FFXI. But as you listed those out, each of them made me think, “Oh, I see what you mean.” Returning to the topic at hand, did the two of you ever work on the same team again, after FFV?

We both worked on Chrono Trigger.

I joined mid-way. What other titles did you work on after Chrono Trigger?

I worked on SaGa Frontier, Legend of Mana, then finally FFXI.

So I guess that makes Chrono Trigger the last title we worked on together. Were you in the team from the start?

I also joined mid-way. I was told the Battle team wasn’t making much progress when I was transferred to the team.

Does that mean we joined around the same time?

I think you joined a bit afterward. I believe it was when the team was struggling to make headway, and you were moved over after finishing development on FFVI.

You might be right, I think it was after FFVI was done. Chrono Trigger seemed like it was quite troublesome... I remember it was a long-term struggle for those involved.

I was involved with Romancing SaGa 2 before I was transferred, but I think the team for Chrono Trigger would’ve already been put together by then. Right after Romancing SaGa 2 was done, I was immediately put into the Battle team for Chrono Trigger.

You didn’t work on the first Romancing SaGa, did you? I was working on the first one.

I only worked on the second one, though I was working right next to the team working on the first game and often stopped by to take a peek.

It’s interesting how the two of you were involved in very different titles despite being hired around the same time. What did you think of each other back then?

I’d heard that Mr. Kitase was the heart of the Seiken Densetsu team, so I was impressed that a newcomer like him could take on a leadership role. The Game Boy’s limited memory made it a very difficult platform to work with, and I believe Mr. Kitase’s abilities played a significant part in the game’s completion.

Working under the memory limitations of the Game Boy was really rough…

Even so, the game you created under those circumstances eventually grew into a key IP (intellectual property) for the company.

Mr. Kitase, how did you view Mr. Matsui?

I thought he was a talented person who was part of the elite and could program too.

But I also noticed Mr. Matsui was often the target of playful teasing. I remember it was mostly from Mr. Tokita (Takashi Tokita, FFIV game designer), but our other senior colleagues too.

Is that so? (laughs)

It was like that for a while after I was hired. (laughs wryly)

You and Mr. Tokita were both in the FFIV team, so I thought you were more like equals.

Mr. Tokita has been with the company longer, and even before that, he used to make games for the MSX* and had firsthand experience with some really troublesome development workplaces.

Even though I felt like a nobody compared to him, he still listened to what I had to say. Well, he did have me return the favor about threefold. (laughs)

In FFIV, there was the Developer’s Office* with characters named after staff members. Were those the core members of the FFIV team?

I think pretty much the entire team appears in the Developer’s Office. I don’t remember how many of the staff members outside of the team were included, but I’m sure teams back then didn’t have very many members.

Wasn’t it like something like 40-50 members?

I don’t think there were that many.

We had five or six designers, and maybe about five or six planners too, I think? There were about three programmers, and I remember there no more than 20 members in total.

Looking back, it’s amazing that even a numbered title in the FINAL FANTASY series was created by only a handful of team members.

I believe Mr. Kitase’s team had even fewer.

We had no more than ten members.

Sounds like each staff member would’ve had a lot of responsibilities.

Mr. Tokita had experience with stage productions, so he treated the game screen like a stage and specified timings for characters to go onstage and offstage. On the other hand, I remember Mr. Kitase treated the screen like a camera, with directions like you might see in a film.

Ah, so that’s where your previous job experience came into play.

Yes.

It was really cool, to the point where “Kitase direction” became a common phrase around our office.

I remember Mr. Sakaguchi once said he was inspired by Mr. Kitase’s direction as well.

Mr. Sakaguchi was quite meticulous himself.

The opening scene in FFV shows the rooftops of a castle as the sky transitions from night to day, then pans over to a wyvern as it bellows and eventually flies away; that was Mr. Sakaguchi handiwork. He had an eye for what we refer to as “lighting” nowadays, and he was able to create a dramatic effect by depicting that sequence from the daylight coming in until the wyvern takes flight.

I was impressed by his meticulous attention to detail and didn’t want to be outdone. And as Mr. Matsui mentioned, I was definitely aware of a “camera-like perspective.” In contrast with the bird’s eye-view maps of the overworld used up until FFV, I changed the composition in FFVI and created a landscape that looked as though the camera was slightly tilted, in order to mimic a 3D look.

Later on, you became more focused on your role as a producer and gradually distanced yourself from the development workplace. However, many of the directions that weren’t possible at the time due to technical limitations are probably possible now. So personally, I think it’s a bit of a shame you’ve moved on.

Things like direction in filming are influenced by the time period and ongoing trends, so I believe the tastes of the current generation are important.

There certainly are few technical limitations nowadays when it comes to CG and other media, which allows for a lot of freedom. But when I look at footage created by the Image Studio Division, I feel like they have a unique touch that can’t be replicated by anyone else.