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<b>Tilvitnun:</b><br><hr><i>Final Fantasy XII update


New details surface concerning Square Enix PS2 fantasy RPG.

TOKYO–Additional details about Final Fantasy XII surfaced in a recent Famitsu interview. In it, the game's graphics director Hiroshi Minagawa and character designer Akihiko Yoshida discussed two of the game's recently revealed characters, Fran and Balflear.

Fran is a female Viera weapons and martial-arts master whose age and past are a mystery. Being a sky pirate, she is also mechanically inclined as she has keep to her airship in working order. Balflear is a Hume (human) who appeared in trailers shown by Square Enix during its XII presentation last month. Balflear is also a sky pirate and has a strong relationship with his partner, Fran. A thief who loves alcohol and women, Balflear swears allegiance to no country, but only steals from villains.

Q: What is Fran like?

Yoshida: She's a woman that can be counted on.

Q: Were there any difficulties in creating her?

Yoshida: The character model and motion staff had some hardships. I gave them some hard tasks to create her as I had envisioned her.

Q: Did you design her from her back like you did with Ashe?

Yoshida: I remember creating Fran from her face since we already had designs of the normal Vieras. I don't design all the characters from their back, although I did it with the normal Vieras as well. [Laughs]

Q: Can you comment anything on Balflear's design?

Yoshida: I designed him in my image of a hero. He's not the cool type of character.

Q: Were there any difficulties in creating him?

Yoshida: He's a character that appears a lot, so we had to make sure that he had a simple design and silhouette to make him easy to move.

Q: He's a partner with Fran. Will their first encounter be told in the game's story?

Yoshida: It'll probably be told. [Laughs]

Q: Is there any elements about him that you would like people to pay special attention to?

Yoshida: His gestures and facial expressions. Balflear is the character I like the most.

Q: What part of the game are you working on Mr. Minagawa?

Minagawa: It's probably difficult to understand, but I basically direct all of the game screens that run in real time. Especially things that pertain to the character models. Yoshida drew the parts like the character's facial textures, and I'm more engaged in working on different areas such as the character motions.

Q: The two characters introduced this time seem to have more of the Matsuno taste than the main character Vaan and the heroine Ashe.

Minagawa: We've been looking at them for a while [as developers], so our senses are probably paralyzed. There are a number of developers that have a special feeling towards Balflear. FF XII has a lot of other characters that appear in the game, but the duo is pretty popular among them. The main character Vaan starts out as an adventurer, and these two characters will be supporting him. There was a request by Matsuno to make them into very “cool” adults that are used to going on to adventures.

Q: How were Balflear and Fran created?

Minagawa: These two characters actually were modeled before Vaan and Ashe. We created Balflear like a template in a way. He was developed as a default model for the characters that were to appear in the game. In specific, Balflear is a character without long or fluttering objects on him. On the other hand, Fran was a character that was created to test out how we can create those special parts and still get them looking good, such as her ponytail and her ears. They were designed to test out technical points [in the development].

Q: Were there any issues when modeling the characters?

Minagawa: Their forms. It was an issue to try balancing out their looks between an illustration style and a realistic style. Also, when trying to create the Viera body model, we had to make their forms simplistic since their ears and hair eat up the polygon count when they're created with the same number as the other characters. I've done that kind of design tune-up over and over with Yoshida. Balflear was finished at an early stage, but Fran took a long time. We kept touching her data right up to the game's presentation, and we made some minor adjustments afterwards as well. Once Fran and Balflear's models were created, we created the other characters such as Vaan and Ashe.

Q: Were there any issues in Vaan and Ashe's modelings?

Minagawa: Vaan was the type of character that was difficult because of his textures rather than his modeling. We had to draw the muscles on his body with textures and have it look natural when a light source reflected on it, using a limited number of polygons. But it was more of an issue on how to visualize those parts picture-wise, rather than being a technical challenge. Ashe had a lot of fluttering parts to her model, especially around her waist. We had a hard time since they kept on colliding.

Q: What are the positions of the sky pirates, during the war periods?

Minagawa: They're obviously considered to be outlaws by the empire. He's a pirate of the sky during the game, but he's had a lot of things in the past… I can't talk about it in detail, but he's a character with a past history.

Q: Fran seems to have a lot of mysteries as well.

Minagawa: In the world of FFXII, there are countries where the races aside from Humes are active in the public eye and then there are countries where they are not. The Vieras usually live quietly, away from civilization, but Fran is moving around with Balflear for some kind of a reason.

Q: Does Balflear get involved with Vaan in the early stages of the game?

Minagawa: Yes, he's scheduled to appear in a pretty early point of it.

Q: Is his weapon a gun?

Minagawa: He uses a gun. He might use other weapons as well.

Q: Fran was in the pictures released recently.

Minagawa: We had a hard time trying not to show her from the front, using special effects and so fourth. [Laughs]

Q: We were surprised at her bunny ears.

Minagawa: It was decided at an early stage that we’d be using the Vieras from FFTA. But we had some worries about how they'd look with a realistic touch, so we developed their models at an early stage.

Q: The ear is covered with tiny hairs like rabbits.

Minagawa: That's right. Her facial structure was also designed to have a more animalistic look in the beginning together with her ear, but that wasn't too cute. We came up with this model after much trial and error.

Q: There are four characters announced so far, but will there be other main characters aside from them?

Minagawa: Yes. There are a few other main characters, and characters that won't join the party but play an important role in the game. It's Matsuno's script, so there will be a lot of characters appearing, just like in his past works.

Q: It was said during the presentation that the polygons used in the characters are less than usual, but you're covering it with the texture to make it as impressive as previous titles.

Minagawa: We've almost halved the polygon count, although the decrease in texture count doesn't go down that much. The event scenes are especially difficult, but we have the FFX and FFXI staff helping us out. With their knowledge and experience, we're tuning the game to appear impressive without using as many polygons. Technically, we're using the same methods from FFX and FFXI.

Q: Why are you cutting down on the polygon count so much? From Mr. Minaba's comment that there's a desire to present “an expression of volume” in the game. We're imagining that there will be a lot of characters appearing in a single screen.

Minagawa: Well, there should be a hint hidden somewhere if you look at the screenshots that we've released. I can't say where, though. [Laughs]

Q: There are three party member characters walking together in the field screen. Are the field movements similar to FFXI?

Minagawa: Although it's our company's own title, director Matsuno really likes FFXI. [Laughs] He wanted us to bring in that same kind of feeling, and our staff has been working hard. [Laughs]

Q: There are two flying vessels in the CG illustration released this time. One looks huge, while the other is small. The smaller ship has a symmetrical design and looks nothing like the flying vessels from the past FF series.

Minagawa: What can it be? [Laughs] This is probably one of the things that I can't comment on.

Q: Is that flying vessel Balflear's ship?

Minagawa: The answer might be obvious, but it's a secret. [Laughs] It's one of the important ships, and it already has a name.

Q: It kind of looks like it can transform.

Minagawa: I'll tell its creator “it might've been discovered”. [Laughs]

Q: Is there going to be text displayed when the characters speak?

Minagawa: We'll probably display text when the characters speak. We want to display distinctive letters when characters aside from when the humes are talking.

Q: Like the Al Bheds in FFX?

Minagawa: Yes, although we're still in discussion as to what to do about it.

Q: From the pictures released thus far, it seems that the characters can walk around in the field with or without holding their weapons.

Minagawa: Matsuno is a FFXI fan, and he's asked us to display the weapons that the characters are equipped with when they're walking in the field.

Q: Are there no boundaries between the field and the dungeons?

Minagawa: Yoshida was saying something like that in the last interview. The field map is created to match the character’s sizes. The camera angle can be rotated freely whether it is the field or the dungeon.

Q: From the screenshot of the desert, it seems like the field map is as large as FFXI.

Minagawa: The map is large, but not enough to get lost. We've kept some control over its size, since it's not a multi-player game like FFXI where people are all over the place.

Q: In the battle scenes, there are three black dots on the right side of each character's status bar. In the new pictures released, some of the character's dots are filled with blue dots. What is this?

Minagawa: All I can say is that, something might be accumulating.

Q: Is it like the TP in FFXI or a new system?

Minagawa: Some people will be very surprised when we reveal the system, and some others won't be surprised at all. In a way, it's a standard form of evolution in the FF series battle system.

Q: In the trailer shown during the game’s announcement, there was a scene where two characters were attacking simultaneously.

Minagawa: Yes. Well, in FFX-2, the characters weren't always facing the enemy straight in a row. As a new release in the FF series, we'd like to add on some more new points.

Q: Balflear is seen in one of the scenes saying, “Feel the Mist.” What exactly is this mist?

Minagawa: To be honest, I haven't heard the details about it myself. The word “mist” is being used differently than what we planned in the beginning of the game's development. And it’s changing again in the current stage of development, so I don't know how it'll be used in the storyline. In the current situation, it's all in director Matsuno's head.

Q: Any message you'd like to give to FF series' fans?

Minagawa: Well, there's still a long period of development remaining. We still have a ton of work to do so we can't really say much, aside from “we're doing our best”. But as it was seen in the presentation meeting, the game is getting completed little by little. The tensions between the staffs are high, and we're giving it a huge amount of our effort that it sometimes seems like a bit too much. Please look forward to it.

By Staff, GameSpot [POSTED: 12/18/03 03:57 PM] </i><br><hr>
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