Danica Davidson
October 5, 2021 
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin won’t be out until next year, but there’s still plenty of buzz going on about it. The game’s director, Daisuke Inoue, initially feared that people would be against it. “I was expecting to get a lot of feedback from Final Fantasy fans saying, ‘This isn’t what the series is about. This isn’t what I want to play. This isn’t Final Fantasy. I prepared myself to receive that, but actually, we received even more feedback from people who were happy with the game, satisfied with the game, and who were interested to see where it was going. That was a big discovery for me, and also something I was very, very pleased with.”
Since the new game looks and feels different, this got Inoue musing about what makes a Final Fantasy, well, a Final Fantasy. “For example, some people might think that Final Fantasy 3 really encapsulates the spirit of Final Fantasy, whereas other people might think that it’s Final Fantasy 6,” he said. “So that’s something that we had a lot of discussion about in the development of lots of past installments of Final Fantasy as well — what makes this a Final Fantasy?”
He explained, “I think one of the things that we always come back to is that Final Fantasy is a series that always challenges new things. It takes on new challenges and ideas. And I think in that sense, this is a particularly Final Fantasy-like Final Fantasy because we’re taking on some really big new challenges for this title.”
And he also talked about the importance of character in Final Fantasy games. “When we originally were thinking about this project, thinking about what kind of game we wanted it to be, we did consider the option of character creation. But one of the things that makes that quite difficult is to build in individuality for those characters and characteristics that then tie into the story.”
He continued, “And that’s something that a lot of Final Fantasy games have. They have that sense of individuality for the characters, that personality that makes them who they are and we just found that difficult to tie in. So although the equipment can be changed so the appearance can be changed in that way, we decided not to have the options to change his face or change gender as the player character.”
Are you looking forward to Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin?
Source: The Gamer
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, and its sequel, Manga Art for Intermediates, with professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
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