This week, Square Enix launched a new website to countdown to Final Fantasy 11’s 20th anniversary next year. The website features never-before-seen artwork, a full timeline of the game, and behind-the-scenes facts and commentary. Part of the website also features exclusive interviews with developers and others involved with FF11. The first interview is with former FF11 producer Hiromichi Tanaka who shared some details about the creation of the MMORPG, including the fact that it was almost not a numbered entry in the Final Fantasy series.
In an interview under the website’s “We Discuss Vana’diel” section, Final Fantasy 11 producer Akihiko Matsui and Hiromichi Tanaka delved into the origins of the online RPG and how Tanaka approached new entries into the Final Fantasy series. When asked about returning to the Final Fantasy series after taking a break, Tanaka replied that it wasn’t too difficult of an adjustment as he approaches a new entry into the series with “the mindset that they were brand new titles.” Hiromichi then asked Tanaka if he was ever swayed by implicit rules and game systems associated with a gaming series, to which Tanake replied with, “It just means that the games ended up as part of a particular series in the end. For example, Secret of Mana was originally designed to be the fourth numbered title in the FF series. A lot happened afterward and eventually led to the creation of two separate games, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.”
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All this talk eventually led to the revelation that there was serious debate at Square Enix on whether the open-world Final Fantasy 11 should be a numbered entry in the series or released as something like “FF Online.” Tanaka spoke on how it was Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, who was adamant that it be released as a numbered entry: “He insisted that a game with a name like 'FF World' would be viewed as a spin-off rather than a main entry in the FF series, which led to a debate between him and management.”
Even after Final Fantasy 11 was released into the world as a numbered entry, many of the folks at Square wanted to revoke its place in the series as they feared that Final Fantasy enthusiasts were unable to play the game due to it requiring additional hardware on top of the PlayStation 2 console. With Sakaguchi leaving Square in 2001, there wasn’t anyone left to defend 11’s position as a numbered series, so Tanaka took up the cause: “Although I was approached several times by the company president at the time, Yoichi Wada, to revoke FFXI’s status as a numbered entry in the FF series, I ended up persuading him instead.”
Final Fantasy 11 has proven a popular online game for Square as it reaches its 20th anniversary. However, had the game been sold as "Final Fantasy Online," it may not have had the impact it has had. Luckily, the game had some great people in its corner behind-the-scenes.
