TheGame
05-15-2003, 01:46 PM
"May 14, 2003 - E3 is certainly a hectic time for videogame journalists, and it's even more difficult to conduct interviews. Despite the known perils, however, IGN trekked on over to the Square Enix booth and sat down for a productive dialogue concerning SE USA's first online RPG, Final Fantasy XI. Assembled by the same team that constructed the excellent Chrono Cross for PlayStation and set to be released simultaneously with PS2 Hard drive, FFXI is certainly among the most awaited titles of the year. We considered it our duty to get the lowdown.
Though the meeting room was packed with several Square Enix representatives (including the director, producer, planner, online service manager, the conversation was mediated and interpreted by one of the best translators in the business and the localization director for Square Enix, Richard Honeywood. Here's what he had to say:
IGN: Final Fantasy games have become world famous, in part, because of its storylines. Can you tell us how the themes or plots of Final Fantasy XI will fit into an online world?
Richard Honeywood: The main crux of the story is an epic Final Fantasy type of story, which is an epic, kind of edgy plot going on in the background. We answer that challenge every month, week after week, chapter-by-chapter, part-by-part, and keep the storyline going all the time, for people all over the world.
IGN: Will those constant changes be consistent across the versions? Or will Japanese gamers see or hear things that American's don't? (And vice versa)
Richard: One of the major things that make this game different is that we planned this to be English and Japanese from the very beginning. When we finished up Chrono Cross, the English version, we went right into Final Fantasy XI -- planning it out. Getting the basic system ready. And so, once we finished Chrono Cross, the team started working on the English and Japanese translation from day one. You've probably noticed that the Japanese version already has English names and English locations. The Japanese players, they're already well trained to expect American users. It's all part of ultimate goal: which is to have English players and Japanese players living together in the same world. We want everyone to communicate together despite race and language that they'll be able to play together
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/ffxi_051403_inline_01.jpg
You can only imagine the restrictions that we had with translation. You have make calls between what's good and what's bad and figure out what's acceptable and what isn't, you have to find the middle ground. Figuring out the naming conventions alone weren't very easy. Wow, I can't believe we've been working on this thing for three years now.
IGN: What are some of the common threads in FFXI that link it to the other games in the series? Chocobos we know, but what about moogles and crystals?
Richard: Yes of course. The common elements of every Final Fantasy game is that you have crystals, you have airships, you have Chocobos, you have summons…
IGN: Moogles?
Richard: Yes. There are moogles. [Laughs] Of course we've changed things this time as we always do in other aspects of the game -- like the skills and how levels and thing work, but it's all FF at its core.
Interestingly enough, we took this opportunity to tie certain things together. Japanese creatures for instance, are known by different names than the American ones. We needed to get rid of those differences and make it whole again. The cactaur, for example, is known as sepultimba in Japan. But since we have different types of cactaurs running around, we can give them both names and tell the player where it's a Japanese creature or an American creature. They have different names, yes. But underneath they're all the same.
IGN: Is there going to be anything in the Japanese version that's not in the English version, or vice versa?
Richard: It's the exact same game world, it's the exact same source code -- Japanese players already have English in the game already anyway, so there's no reason to add or change anything. The only difference is that players in their native countries will see their commands in their native language. In other words, it's the exact same game.
IGN: Theoretically, how many people can play Final Fantasy XI at the same time?
Richard: Well the most we've seen so far is about 100,000, but we can definitely handle more than that. We have over 200,000 users and subscribers in Japan, and over 600,000 registered character names.
IGN: How about the Vision of Ziraat? Are there plans to release it immediately or will it be out in America at some other time? Or will we get lucky and get it right off the bat?
Richard: When we actually go on sale, we plan to have it in there on day one. Since the beta testing we've changed the game a great deal, and if we were to release only Final Fantasy XI by itself, it wouldn't mesh well with the rest of the game world already in use in Japan. What we're going to do is focus on what the bugs and things are that need to be fixed are, and not have to worry about anything else.
IGN: Does that mean that FFXI could see a title change before coming out in America? Will it be known as Final Fantasy XI: The Vision of Ziraat or just FFXI?
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/ffxi_051403_inline_02.jpg
Richard: The game itself is going to be called Final Fantasy XI. That's the official name, and that's what it's going to be called. The packaging will probably say FFXI with "Rise of Ziraat included" written in a little blurb or something.
IGN: We've heard a lot of rumors concerning the size of FFXI, so lets put an end to them, how much space will it take up on the PC and PS2 hard drives?
Richard: It's around five gigabytes for the windows version, and with Ziraat added, it's around 6.5. The PS2 version will be probably be similar.
IGN: Can we look forward to regular patches? Or will the game be updated through expansion packs only?
Richard: Every month we do a patch in Japan, and it's usually just us adding more stuff. It's kind of like a tradition. Well, okay, so it's more like every other month. But when it comes to the U.S. version we want the game to be as current as possible, so when there's a need for an update, we'll do it.
As far as expansion packs go, those are reserved for big changes. Ziraat had over 40 new sections added, a couple of summons, new items and weapons, and plenty of new job classes. So the expansion disc is definitely a lot more than just a minor update.
IGN: Are there any plans for future patches or expansions to include some kind of voice chat support?
Richard: We don't have any plans, but we did talk about it. We have a lot of people playing already and it's difficult in voice chat games to figure out whose talking to begin with. Imagine that on a massive scale and you see why it's a problem. Of course, the other big problem is how do you translate it? You're looking at two different languages and it's hard to imagine where we'd begin to figure out what words to keep, discard, et cetera. The whole idea has some issues.
IGN: Take us through the basic character creation feature, what can you do?
Richard: Okay, you start off with your base job and your race; Then you choose certain jobs that are better for certain races or you can choose to choose to take the hard road and choose a job that isn't strong for that race at all. You can pretty much do whatever you want in that respect, so you're not limited.
What's really cool though, is that you can choose what country you start off in. And as everyone may or may not know, countries are constantly at war. It's a separate story mode, and depending on how well you do and what kind of friendships you can form, you can take over other territories. Naturally, the more territory you have, the more shops and traders you have access too, so there's a big advantage in going after another territory. Oh, and your hometown's economy improves too!
IGN: In that regard, why wouldn't a player just create his character in the stronger country to begin with?
Richard: Well, they can try and take the easy road like that, and it may work, but there are certain advantages that smaller less powerful countries have over bigger ones to make it more difficult to lose all their territory. It's balanced that way.
IGN: So is it possible for one country to take over everyone else and conquer the world?
Richard: Technically it's definitely possible, but we haven't seen it yet. Though it would be very difficult because of the balancing, story-based issues, and other such things. Even if that happened though, there are around 20 servers with their own self-contained worlds within them.
IGN: How many characters can a player create?
Richard: You can have up 16, but you can them on whatever server you want. What's really cool though is that you can have a single character change jobs and be whatever he wants. So you can conceivably try every job class with just one character. All of his items and goodies will carry over, but his job level will go back to level 1. It's a trade-off but it changes things up. Also, you're not stuck to your one country either -- for a small fee, you can switch alliances as well.
IGN: And now for the biggest question I think our readers would have: How are you dealing with cheating?
Richard: Well first of all, we house all the character data on our servers; that's a big deal. Usually we're playing catch-up with the hackers but now they're playing catch-up with us. We also have encryption that changes quite often, not only ours, but Sony's too. And so we have several layers of protection. We also have people watching at all times for things like cheat devices, it shouldn't be a problem.
IGN: We know that this is coming out in the States and is already out in Japan, but is it coming out in Europe?
Richard: We're looking into it, but we're not sure. The hard drive hasn't been announced over there and the online community isn't quite as setup as it is in Japan and North America. It's ultimately up to our corporate and marketing department really as to when or if it'll come out in Europe; after careful evaluation.
IGN: I suppose the same applies to the U.S. monthly fee as well?
Richard: That's still pretty much undecided. That's an issue that's yet to come.
IGN: How long does the team plan to support FFXI before going into the next online game?
Richard: [Laughs] As long as people want to play it -- a long, long time.
IGN: And one final question -- what's the next project for your team? Can we expect Chrono Cross 2, Chrono Trigger 3, Chrono Break, or whatever it is that you decide to call it?
Richard: [Laughs] Final Fantasy XI is pretty much it for a while. We still have a lot of possible expansion packs we could do, and plenty of support to give. As far as Chrono is concerned, that's huge; but we can't do two or three things at the same time, and it's tough to do FFXI and another Chrono game at the same time or too close together. We'd love to do one though, but yeah, not yet.
IGN would like to thank Richard Honeywood, Jun Iwasaki, Yasu Kurosawa, Nobuaki Komoto, Yasuhiro Yamamoto, Keiki Usui, Hiromichi Tanaka, Sonia Im, and the staff at Square Enix for their help and cooperation in this interview. You guys rock!
-- Interview by Jeremy Dunham"
Though the meeting room was packed with several Square Enix representatives (including the director, producer, planner, online service manager, the conversation was mediated and interpreted by one of the best translators in the business and the localization director for Square Enix, Richard Honeywood. Here's what he had to say:
IGN: Final Fantasy games have become world famous, in part, because of its storylines. Can you tell us how the themes or plots of Final Fantasy XI will fit into an online world?
Richard Honeywood: The main crux of the story is an epic Final Fantasy type of story, which is an epic, kind of edgy plot going on in the background. We answer that challenge every month, week after week, chapter-by-chapter, part-by-part, and keep the storyline going all the time, for people all over the world.
IGN: Will those constant changes be consistent across the versions? Or will Japanese gamers see or hear things that American's don't? (And vice versa)
Richard: One of the major things that make this game different is that we planned this to be English and Japanese from the very beginning. When we finished up Chrono Cross, the English version, we went right into Final Fantasy XI -- planning it out. Getting the basic system ready. And so, once we finished Chrono Cross, the team started working on the English and Japanese translation from day one. You've probably noticed that the Japanese version already has English names and English locations. The Japanese players, they're already well trained to expect American users. It's all part of ultimate goal: which is to have English players and Japanese players living together in the same world. We want everyone to communicate together despite race and language that they'll be able to play together
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/ffxi_051403_inline_01.jpg
You can only imagine the restrictions that we had with translation. You have make calls between what's good and what's bad and figure out what's acceptable and what isn't, you have to find the middle ground. Figuring out the naming conventions alone weren't very easy. Wow, I can't believe we've been working on this thing for three years now.
IGN: What are some of the common threads in FFXI that link it to the other games in the series? Chocobos we know, but what about moogles and crystals?
Richard: Yes of course. The common elements of every Final Fantasy game is that you have crystals, you have airships, you have Chocobos, you have summons…
IGN: Moogles?
Richard: Yes. There are moogles. [Laughs] Of course we've changed things this time as we always do in other aspects of the game -- like the skills and how levels and thing work, but it's all FF at its core.
Interestingly enough, we took this opportunity to tie certain things together. Japanese creatures for instance, are known by different names than the American ones. We needed to get rid of those differences and make it whole again. The cactaur, for example, is known as sepultimba in Japan. But since we have different types of cactaurs running around, we can give them both names and tell the player where it's a Japanese creature or an American creature. They have different names, yes. But underneath they're all the same.
IGN: Is there going to be anything in the Japanese version that's not in the English version, or vice versa?
Richard: It's the exact same game world, it's the exact same source code -- Japanese players already have English in the game already anyway, so there's no reason to add or change anything. The only difference is that players in their native countries will see their commands in their native language. In other words, it's the exact same game.
IGN: Theoretically, how many people can play Final Fantasy XI at the same time?
Richard: Well the most we've seen so far is about 100,000, but we can definitely handle more than that. We have over 200,000 users and subscribers in Japan, and over 600,000 registered character names.
IGN: How about the Vision of Ziraat? Are there plans to release it immediately or will it be out in America at some other time? Or will we get lucky and get it right off the bat?
Richard: When we actually go on sale, we plan to have it in there on day one. Since the beta testing we've changed the game a great deal, and if we were to release only Final Fantasy XI by itself, it wouldn't mesh well with the rest of the game world already in use in Japan. What we're going to do is focus on what the bugs and things are that need to be fixed are, and not have to worry about anything else.
IGN: Does that mean that FFXI could see a title change before coming out in America? Will it be known as Final Fantasy XI: The Vision of Ziraat or just FFXI?
http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/ffxi_051403_inline_02.jpg
Richard: The game itself is going to be called Final Fantasy XI. That's the official name, and that's what it's going to be called. The packaging will probably say FFXI with "Rise of Ziraat included" written in a little blurb or something.
IGN: We've heard a lot of rumors concerning the size of FFXI, so lets put an end to them, how much space will it take up on the PC and PS2 hard drives?
Richard: It's around five gigabytes for the windows version, and with Ziraat added, it's around 6.5. The PS2 version will be probably be similar.
IGN: Can we look forward to regular patches? Or will the game be updated through expansion packs only?
Richard: Every month we do a patch in Japan, and it's usually just us adding more stuff. It's kind of like a tradition. Well, okay, so it's more like every other month. But when it comes to the U.S. version we want the game to be as current as possible, so when there's a need for an update, we'll do it.
As far as expansion packs go, those are reserved for big changes. Ziraat had over 40 new sections added, a couple of summons, new items and weapons, and plenty of new job classes. So the expansion disc is definitely a lot more than just a minor update.
IGN: Are there any plans for future patches or expansions to include some kind of voice chat support?
Richard: We don't have any plans, but we did talk about it. We have a lot of people playing already and it's difficult in voice chat games to figure out whose talking to begin with. Imagine that on a massive scale and you see why it's a problem. Of course, the other big problem is how do you translate it? You're looking at two different languages and it's hard to imagine where we'd begin to figure out what words to keep, discard, et cetera. The whole idea has some issues.
IGN: Take us through the basic character creation feature, what can you do?
Richard: Okay, you start off with your base job and your race; Then you choose certain jobs that are better for certain races or you can choose to choose to take the hard road and choose a job that isn't strong for that race at all. You can pretty much do whatever you want in that respect, so you're not limited.
What's really cool though, is that you can choose what country you start off in. And as everyone may or may not know, countries are constantly at war. It's a separate story mode, and depending on how well you do and what kind of friendships you can form, you can take over other territories. Naturally, the more territory you have, the more shops and traders you have access too, so there's a big advantage in going after another territory. Oh, and your hometown's economy improves too!
IGN: In that regard, why wouldn't a player just create his character in the stronger country to begin with?
Richard: Well, they can try and take the easy road like that, and it may work, but there are certain advantages that smaller less powerful countries have over bigger ones to make it more difficult to lose all their territory. It's balanced that way.
IGN: So is it possible for one country to take over everyone else and conquer the world?
Richard: Technically it's definitely possible, but we haven't seen it yet. Though it would be very difficult because of the balancing, story-based issues, and other such things. Even if that happened though, there are around 20 servers with their own self-contained worlds within them.
IGN: How many characters can a player create?
Richard: You can have up 16, but you can them on whatever server you want. What's really cool though is that you can have a single character change jobs and be whatever he wants. So you can conceivably try every job class with just one character. All of his items and goodies will carry over, but his job level will go back to level 1. It's a trade-off but it changes things up. Also, you're not stuck to your one country either -- for a small fee, you can switch alliances as well.
IGN: And now for the biggest question I think our readers would have: How are you dealing with cheating?
Richard: Well first of all, we house all the character data on our servers; that's a big deal. Usually we're playing catch-up with the hackers but now they're playing catch-up with us. We also have encryption that changes quite often, not only ours, but Sony's too. And so we have several layers of protection. We also have people watching at all times for things like cheat devices, it shouldn't be a problem.
IGN: We know that this is coming out in the States and is already out in Japan, but is it coming out in Europe?
Richard: We're looking into it, but we're not sure. The hard drive hasn't been announced over there and the online community isn't quite as setup as it is in Japan and North America. It's ultimately up to our corporate and marketing department really as to when or if it'll come out in Europe; after careful evaluation.
IGN: I suppose the same applies to the U.S. monthly fee as well?
Richard: That's still pretty much undecided. That's an issue that's yet to come.
IGN: How long does the team plan to support FFXI before going into the next online game?
Richard: [Laughs] As long as people want to play it -- a long, long time.
IGN: And one final question -- what's the next project for your team? Can we expect Chrono Cross 2, Chrono Trigger 3, Chrono Break, or whatever it is that you decide to call it?
Richard: [Laughs] Final Fantasy XI is pretty much it for a while. We still have a lot of possible expansion packs we could do, and plenty of support to give. As far as Chrono is concerned, that's huge; but we can't do two or three things at the same time, and it's tough to do FFXI and another Chrono game at the same time or too close together. We'd love to do one though, but yeah, not yet.
IGN would like to thank Richard Honeywood, Jun Iwasaki, Yasu Kurosawa, Nobuaki Komoto, Yasuhiro Yamamoto, Keiki Usui, Hiromichi Tanaka, Sonia Im, and the staff at Square Enix for their help and cooperation in this interview. You guys rock!
-- Interview by Jeremy Dunham"