WE DISCUSS VANA’DIEL
#8 Masato Kato Part 3

FFXI begins with a separate series of missions in each of the three nations, but all of them eventually lead into Jeuno and the overarching plot. How did you go about dividing the task of creating these stories?

I personally was focused on coming up with the main plot up to Rise of the Zilart and the general history of Vana’diel. For the three nations, we decided to have individual planners work on each of the nations’ missions, scenarios, and smaller quests. In the end, Mr. Kigoshi was entrusted with San d’Oria, Mr. Komoto with Bastok, and Ms. Sato with Windurst.*

So instead of adding finishing touches to what the planners created, you simply entrusted them with everything?

That's right. I started them off with general guidelines like, "There’s a strained relationship between Galka and Hume, and they’re likely to have a confrontation at some point," or "San d’Oria has been ruled by the d'Oraguille royal family for a long time, but the current first and second princes each have pros and cons, so there's bound to be a conflict over succession.” But I only provided those sorts of details and left the rest up to the planners.

What were some struggles or memorable experiences you had back then?

Of the three nations, we struggled with San d’Oria the most.

During the early stages of development, the Elvaan were even more aristocratic than now and had a noticeably haughty demeanor, as if they had contempt for the other races. I personally wanted to write a story where they seem like jerks at first but would grow to trust you as events unfold. However, my idea wasn’t very well-received by the others around me who said, “This is too harsh!” and so we made drastic changes midway. The Elvaan you see today are far milder compared to how they were like during early development.

Perhaps they didn't want to paint a negative image of Elvaan as domineering since they’re one of the playable races.

I think the current version of San d’Orians strike a good balance between nobility and humanity, which not only goes for members of the royalty like Trion and Pieuje, but supporting characters like Halver too.

Another problem I ran into with San d’Oria was when the veteran planner I’d originally entrusted it to ended up leaving Square before FFXI was officially announced. I had no choice but to hastily write the plot for it, then passed it over to Mr. Kigoshi, who was in charge of Jeuno at the time. He was in tears as he worked on the quests for San d’Oria, which is something I remember well.

It felt like the plan to entrust the development of one nation to an individual planner unexpectedly backfired a bit.

Come to think of it, Bastok was also quite the challenge. Given its setting with mines and Galka, there was always a level of scruffiness to Bastok's story. And stories involving Hume too, tended to take on a relatively serious tone, with politics and other real-world issues.

Although President Karst seems like a jerk at first, we’re given a glimpse into how his position affects his motivations as we progress through the missions, which was quite profound.

In that respect, Windurst was very easy to work on, to the point it was almost unfair. With characters as small and cute as Tarutaru, even the most absurd events were justifiable. Seeing how popular Windurst has been since launch, I do feel like I gave Ms. Sato the best part. (laughs)

It’s impressive how FFXI’s settings and stories are consistent with each other, even though the nations were entrusted to different planners.

That’s no surprise, given that the planners frequently held meetings among themselves. I’d join in from time to time, and it’d be like, “Since we’re changing this lore, let’s adjust this quest,” or “Mithra wouldn't talk like that, we should change it like this,” so their communication was solid. As their supervisor, I didn’t have to interfere in every little thing and could leave them to their own devices without worry.

The FFXI development team frequently saw a lot of staff come and go, but Mr. Kato did a great job of keeping the story-related aspects together.

With the former Mana team that I was part of, as well as the Osaka team, about half of the staff members moved on to other projects midway. However, many members of the former Chrono Cross team led by Mr. Kato stayed on until the very end.

Speaking of the Osaka team, I remember there was a planner named Iwao*, who was a huge lore nerd. I hadn’t really touched the details aside from what was necessary for the scenario, but before I knew it, he’d gone deeper and deeper, adding nations, races, flora, ecosystems, and more. It was truly amazing, to the point where even I went, “I had no idea Vana’diel was this deep!” (laughs)

Mr. Iwao was famous even within the development team. He was so thorough in creating the lore, there were times when we couldn't add certain new monsters to new areas because it would contradict the lore. (laughs)

There certainly were many eccentric members in the FFXI team like him, weren’t there?

I have to agree. FFXI had many team members, and although there were quite a few who moved onto other projects, the ones who stuck around believed in the potential of MMORPGs from the bottom of their hearts and had a strong desire to make Square’s debut a success. And as you might expect, when people like that come together, you end up creating something with a “concentrated essence,” so to speak.

How did you feel after taking on the unprecedented challenge of telling a story through an MMORPG?

It was tough. Every player goes through the game at a different pace, so story events like having a character die or a building destroyed is impossible without using very tricky techniques. Also, once an NPC appears somewhere anyone can go to at any time, they can never leave the area, no matter what.

Just from that alone, I can tell there are significant restrictions when it comes to coming up with a story.

Moreover, narrowband* was the norm when FFXI was released, meaning network environments heavily varied from player to player. In a situation like that, when you have multiple people in a party start watching a cutscene at the same time, each of them finishes it at different times. With offline RPGs, we never had to consider those kinds of differences on a fundamental level, so we faced all sorts of obstacles.

When a long cutscene played in a full party of six people, there were times when you had to wait for others to finish watching. Party members had to make sure everyone was ready before they began battle encounters with a cutscene beforehand, which I had to be mindful of as the battle director.

Of all the hardships we faced, I’d say the most notable one was when we had no choice but to split the story during development. (laughs)

That’s a fairly well-known story, isn’t it? As I remember it, the original plan was to release the initial story up to Rise of the Zilart at launch.

In the middle of development, Mr. Tanaka* told us that the areas and monsters we’d planned for wouldn’t be finished in time to release the entire story at launch. He asked me to do something about shortening the storyline, but that certainly was no easy task. (laughs) After much deliberation, we had no choice but to forcefully end the missions at Castle Zvahl and make Shadow Lord the final boss.

I think the ending didn’t feel forced for most of us who were playing at the time. In fact, the Shadow Lord had a presence befitting a final boss, and I remember being really excited to fight him.

If anything, the big problem came after that. Once the expansion was released, players would head to Norg to start the Rise of the Zilart missions, where they would be told the events that transpired at Castle Zvahl were just like a daydream. At the time, I was really nervous that players would be critical of the forcible turn of events.

After the battle with the Shadow Lord in Mission 5-2, it suddenly transitions to the scene of you escaping from the Throne Room, which did feel abrupt. But I felt like it was hinting that there was something going on.

It was a pretty wild turn of events, but with everyone excited for Rise of the Zilart as FFXI’s first expansion, perhaps a lot of players justified it as the beginning of a new story.

Fitting Rise of the Zilart into the official launch would’ve been really hard on the battle team, which I was in charge of, so Mr. Tanaka's decision to split the game was a great help.

After all, it would’ve meant including the overworld areas, dungeons, and monsters of the Zilart areas from the get-go.

I only had my sights on the story, but I imagine other teams were having a rough time. Our team had a system for dividing the work among the younger members as early as possible, but what was it like for the battle team?

A battle system can become inconsistent if too many people work on it, which is why our team was a small group of three people including myself. Until Rise of the Zilart was released, we were up to our ears in work.

By the way, did you play FFXI in your private life after it was released, Mr. Kato?

Yes, I was playing as a Hume and my main job was warrior.

Even though I wrote the scenario myself, the story of Rise of the Zilart made me emotional. Then again, the missions back then were so difficult that I’d already be on the verge of tears while playing. (laughs wryly)

FFXI was really lacking in content around Rise of the Zilart, so there was a heavy emphasis placed on keeping players playing for a long time without boring them, which gave us no choice but to balance the game at that difficulty. The missions back then were really hard, as Mr. Kato mentioned, and we as the developers were aware and felt apologetic about it.

The early stories of FFXI reflected on the flaws of each race, such as apathy, arrogance, cowardice, envy, and rage. Did you have any special intentions in mind for this?

It was over 20 years ago so I don’t remember in great detail... The races in FFXI were born when the Seed Crystal, believed to have existed in the primordial realm, was split into five pieces. In other words, each race has an incompleteness to them because they’re only one aspect of the original whole. I vaguely recall wanting to write a tale of how, through the crystal, they are reunited and the world returns to life.

It reminds me of that line from the game, “It all started with a stone.”

Speaking of which, didn’t you also write the lyrics for FFXI’s opening theme, "Memoro de la S^tono (Memories of Stone)"? It was striking how you chose Esperanto* as the language.

When I write lyrics for songs, I write them in Japanese first, then have them translated into various languages as necessary. It was English for Xenogears and Japanese for Chrono Cross, so I was wondering what to do for FFXI. My original idea was to use Latin, but Mr. Uematsu* who was in charge of the music suggested, “How about Esperanto?”

For those who grew up in our generation, Esperanto was this significant thing that embodied a notion like, “If everyone spoke this language, perhaps there would be no more wars.” Coupled with that kind of imagery, it’s a very beautiful song.