THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL™

Interview

Nintendo of Europe: First of all, please could you introduce yourself and tell us about your role on THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL?

NoE: Of course, there are other titles in the Final Fantasy series aside from the core games. Is the music taken from all over the series, or just the core titles?

IH: We’ve taken songs from all of the Final Fantasy games in the main series, from the original Final Fantasy right up to Final Fantasy XIV, but in addition to that we’ve also included stuff from all the spin-off titles: titles like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and also from the CG movies as well. It’s all in there!

NoE: This is a sequel to the original THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY. Would a fan want to play THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY first and then move onto this game?

IH: You can start playing from this title; there’d be no problem if you picked this game up and went straight into it. When we started developing the first game in the series, the original THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY, we weren’t really sure how we should go about making a Final Fantasy rhythm game, or what people would want to see from that. So we really had to do a lot of trial and error and experimentation to see what would work and what wouldn’t. In a way, the first game was a bit of a test!

Certainly when it came to making THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL, we had more confidence in what we were doing, and we thought, “Okay, we’ll put in as much as we can!”, and try to make it as big and as broad and as complete an experience as possible. So we’ve added in songs from the spin-off titles. We’ve got 221 tracks in there – in almost any other rhythm game, you’d never see that much music! It really is very packed through and through.

NoE: Can you give us an idea of how much returns from the first title in the series?

IH: If we didn’t include all the well-known songs that all the fans really love – for example, Blinded by Light from Final Fantasy XIII, such an iconic song from that game – we wouldn’t be able to call it a true, complete representation of that Final Fantasy game, or call this a Theatrhythm game. So we’ve taken the really popular songs and the classic, iconic songs from the original game and we’ve included those as well. On top of that, we’ve added loads of new stuff!

NoE: Songs with an atmosphere, that give a sense of place.

IH: Yes, that’s right. And these songs are included too; it’s a slightly more slow-paced way to enjoy the music that, in the original games, would have played during the exploration sections or in the towns.

And the third type of stage are the Event Music Stages. These use the original footage and original video from the games in the series as a special scene or a very iconic event in the background while you’re playing the rhythm game in the foreground. The music used for these stages are rearrangements and remixes of some of the classic songs.

NoE: Very moving moments from the storyline.

IH: Made up entirely of the strong, emotional scenes, yes!

NoE: So these modes were in the previous Theatrhythm title, and return for this title.

IH: That’s correct, the core of the game is still the same.

NoE: How do you control the game?

IH: The original THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY used just the Touch Screen, but this time we’ve introduced button controls as well. The reason we’ve done that is for players who are perhaps travelling on a train, where it might be a bit awkward to use touch controls, or if you want to lie down, or sit back and relax while playing in bed. So it should allow you to play freely and openly, you can play casually anywhere you want. Just pick it up when you’ve got time and play it! That control scheme was designed to allow you to do that.

NoE: This title is a rhythm action game, but it also has RPG elements. Can you explain those and tell us about the ways that THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL differs from other rhythm games?

IH: There are a lot of people who will buy the game because they’re fans of Final Fantasy, and these are people who may not necessarily be skilled at or like rhythm games so much. In one way, the RPG elements are designed to make it a little bit easier for those players to enjoy the game. We really want everyone possible to be able to enjoy the game. For example, when you’re playing a music stage, you have a health bar, like a hit point bar in a regular Final Fantasy game, and every time you fail you lose health. If you lose all your health, it’s game over and you have to start again.

Obviously, the more you build your characters up – you can grow them, level them up – the longer that health bar gets, so you get more of a buffer to play the game. If you’re not so skilled at rhythm games and you can’t get every single thing right, you can level your characters up, and it makes the stage a lot easier to complete. Or for example, if you increase the attack power of your characters, it makes it more likely that the enemy will drop special items. So in that way, you can use the RPG elements to, not lessen the challenge, but to make it easier on people to play the rhythm stages.

So the two main reasons for including RPG elements are because it’s a Final Fantasy game – to make it feel like Final Fantasy, you need the RPG elements. And also to make it a bit more forgiving for players who aren’t so skilled at rhythm games.

NoE: And maybe also so RPG fans who like grinding for experience and building characters can get the most out of the game?

IH: That’s right, exactly! There’s one other thing that we’ve done for this new game that we think those players will appreciate. We’ve made it so that when one of your characters reaches the top level, level 99, they keep all their stats and abilities and then return back to level one. Then they can continue to grow them again from there.

For example, if you take Terra from Final Fantasy VI, originally she’s the kind of character who’s really skilled at magic and summoning monsters, but she’s quite physically weak. But using this ability, you can take her back and keep levelling her up and maybe turn her into a powerful fighting character as well. So that really adds to the breadth of the game I think; not only have you got 221 songs to choose from, but also within the RPG elements you’ve got a lot more breadth of gameplay there.

NoE: THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL is aimed at a wide variety of people: some people might like the rhythm game parts, others might prefer the RPG parts. There are people who might not know the music; how appealing do you think this game will be to people who are not familiar with Final Fantasy music?

IH: You have to look at the main reason that people buy rhythm games in the first place. With most rhythm games, you’re not going to find anybody that knows absolutely every single track, or loves every single piece of music, in the game. Final Fantasy is such a long series, and there are so many memorable, famous pieces of music from it, that everyone’s going to have their favourites and bits of the Final Fantasy series that they remember. Myself personally, my favourite game is Final Fantasy VI. I really like the music from around that time: Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, moving on into Final Fantasy VII.

You go to play the music that you really like and remember, but while you’re playing through the game you’ll go, “Oh, hang on, I really like this piece from here,” and see something from another Final Fantasy game that you really like. You can learn about the music from there. So I think for people who haven’t encountered Final Fantasy music before, that are quite new to the series in that way, there are so many things that they can encounter – there are a lot of things there that I think will appeal to them too.

NoE: To bring it back to the modes and the core of the game, what’s new in this particular title?

IH: Of course, the original three modes are still very much there, as the core of the content, but the new main game mode we have this time is the Quest Medley mode. In that, you form a party of your favourite Final Fantasy characters and take them on a little quest, going through Field Music Stages, Battle Music Stages and up to a final boss character that they must defeat. There’s a whole continuous story.

NoE: Do you use StreetPass or Miiverse functions in the game?

IH: Exactly the same as with the first Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, you can use StreetPass to swap around your profile cards and maps and things like that. But what we thought when we made the game is that obviously not everybody has the opportunity to always be in a place where they can StreetPass lots of other players. So that’s why we introduced the online exchange function as well, so that people can enjoy that, and for people who didn’t have the opportunity to directly StreetPass others, they can enjoy the swapping gameplay as well.

NoE: The first THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY featured co-operative play. What multiplayer modes are featured in the sequel?

IH: This time we just have the versus mode. When we looked at the co-operative play that we had in the original game, we didn’t find that it was very popular with people. We never really heard about people playing it that much. We decided that people would rather have a Versus Mode, and that’s what we’ve concentrated on for the multiplayer for this title.

NoE: So the game has 221 songs and 60 characters to unlock. On top of that, add-on content is an integral part of the game. Can you give us any more information about how much of that we’ll see, or any interesting songs you might have chosen for that?

IH: The first thing to say about the downloadable content is that there are a certain number of downloadable content songs and characters that have already been released in Japan. Everything that gets released in Japan, we will try to release in Europe and North America as well. So don’t worry about that!

In addition to the ones that we’ve got planned at the moment, within Square Enix we are looking at what we can do next as additional content, discussing what songs and what to do with that. We’ve included four songs from the SaGa* series as additional content, from outside of the Final Fantasy series. So I think it’d be interesting if we added a few other guest songs from other Square Enix franchises as well. I think that would be a very interesting thing. Look out for further updates on that, because we’ll certainly be announcing some new stuff!

*Editor’s note: the SaGa series of roleplaying games began in 1989 and features ten titles in total, many of which were Japan-only, or were released in Japan and the USA only. Only two titles were released in Europe.

NoE: The first THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY received certain add-on content in response to fan requests. Was it a similar case for THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL?

IH: As the Final Fantasy series has been going for 27 years, there are so many songs out there. When we made the game, we thought, “Okay, we’ve put 221 songs in there, that’s bound to keep people happy, most people will be satisfied with that”. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works! We still get people saying, “Oh, we think you should add more of that!”, “There’s not enough of that kind of song!”, “We want this song in the game!” – just because of the range of music available, in a way it’s something that’ll never ever be complete.

Using downloadable content, we hope that we can release more and more songs, and if people want to have more of a certain thing, they can use the downloadable content to get that, maybe customise their own catalogue of songs to be more what they want. We think that’s the best way of doing it.

NoE: Particularly if you are considering adding music from other Square Enix games, would that be an opportunity for fans to give feedback on what they’d like to see?

IH: Certainly, for finding out what kind of songs people like and the popularity of different songs. Part of our business is publishing our music separately, and we have all the data that they have about what sells, which albums and which songs are selling well. Obviously we can use that as a reference to find out what people actually want. It’s certainly possible that we could use that; we’d be fools not to look at that, moving forward when putting new songs in the game!

NoE: Is there any possibility of anything a little more niche being added to the game, such as orchestral cover albums or other more unusual releases?

IH: I think there will be opportunities to put things like that in in the future. When you start going into the more outlandish, the more obscure albums, you start to realise that maybe 221 songs just isn’t enough for everything! What we tried to do with the main game content is to faithfully recreate the experiences and the moods and the songs from the original series of games, and then move on from there afterwards.

NoE: We’ve established that it’s a far-reaching game that has a lot of replayability, including the add-on content also. We’re talking a lot of hours played! How many hours have you played yourself so far?

IH: About 150 hours. I still lose all the versus matches! (laughs)

NoE: So you were quite hands-on!

IH: For this title, it was something that I really wanted to make myself. I started the process there, it’s something that I wanted to play. Again, I have to mention, I’m still not going to win all these matches! (laughs)

NoE: You mentioned bringing songs from other series into the game with add-on content. As a whole, where do you feel like the series is going? Will you continue to draw from Final Fantasy, or will you go in another direction overall?

IH: I certainly am thinking about moving the series now and going into different titles, looking at the music from them. As far as Final Fantasy is concerned, I think with THEATRHYTHM FINAL FANTASY CURTAIN CALL, it’s as far as we can make a complete Final Fantasy music experience there. Obviously we’ll continue to support it, but to move on the Theatrhythm series now, I think I’d like to look at other titles and their music.

NoE: Can you give us a hint of other series that you’ve thought about?

IH: Ahhh! (laughs) As I mentioned, there are the four songs from the SaGa franchise. When discussing this internally in the team, people wanted us to do the SaGa series. I think that would be a good idea! We were thinking about moving on to do Theatrhythm games based on different titles. I think we’d probably try to change the basic construction of the game a bit more.

For example, if you see the way the screen and the whole game is set up, it’s very much tailored for Final Fantasy. For example, the screen is based on the battle system from the original Final Fantasy games, from the first up until about Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII. So you’ve got your characters standing on the right, and the monsters standing on the left hand side; it looks a lot like the original Final Fantasy games. The way the game works reflects that.

For instance, as we’re talking about the SaGa series, if we changed it for the SaGa series, the main idea and the screen layout would probably be quite similar. But we’d obviously have to change how the gameplay works and visuals to reflect the systems from SaGa. The four SaGa songs right now are really just guest songs at the moment, guests in another franchise’s game. So if we were going to make that into its own game, rather than keep the same thing, we’d have to change a lot more. But we’re looking forward to changing ideas for the series moving forward!

NoE: We’re looking forward to seeing how it evolves also. Thank you very much for talking to us today!