March 1998 Famitsu PS interview

From Famitsu PS March 20, 1998 Issue No. 37. Translated by Will Bill in October 2024.

Thanks to Linnaea for finding this previously unknown interview, to Siris for buying the magazine and scanning the pages, and to Will Bill for translating it.

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Xenogears                 Development Staff

The development of Xenogears was a battle against the schedule and hardware limitations

Xenogears is an unconventional RPG that differs from the Final Fantasy and Mana series in many ways. The developers who created this new setting talked about a number of secrets and stories from the game's development.

Interviewer: Xenogears has finally been released. How did the development process go? Tanaka: Around the time we finished developing Final Fantasy VI and Seiken Densetsu 3 [Trials of Mana], Takahashi told me about a concept he had and asked for my help with development. So, a team was put together... that's how things started. Interviewer: Could that be why the commercial was made with Final Fantasy and Mana in mind? Takahashi: As a developer, I didn't pay much attention to that side of production. Tanaka: Takahashi originally came up with the idea as a Final Fantasy entry, which may have contributed to the Final Fantasy esque atmosphere. Interviewer: By the way, how long did development take? Tanaka: Two years and three months. The development team was assembled around the same time as Final Fantasy VII's. We started out experimenting with 3D maps, then decided to go with that.

Tetsuya Takahashi Takahashi worked on the graphics of games such as Final Fantasy V and VI. He was the director in all aspects for Xenogears, including both story and gameplay. He's a big fan of mecha anime.

Takahashi: Final Fantasy VII uses a CG prerendering for the backgrounds. Each one takes about two to three days to create. On the otherhand, with the full, interactive backgrounds for Xenogears, each one ended up taking around two to three weeks to make. On top of that, we had to keep cutting and scrapping ideas to fit the game within the hardware specs and capacity. It was a very time consuming process.

Tanaka: Unlike traditional maps, we had to put time into the backs of buildings and other structures. We weren't able to cut any corners. The staff members in charge of the maps had a very difficult time.

Arai: There were more than thirty people working on the maps alone. The work involved the process of meeting with the planning team, modeling the maps, then applying textures to them. It was non-stop for over two years.

Interviewer: You worked non-stop for more than two years?

Tanaka: In the early stages of development, I was able to take weekends off, but last summer, I barely took any days off. I worked on it through New Year's Eve all the way through to New Year's Day. Towards the end, there were times when we would sleep in chairs in the office.

Interviewer: I see. Our editorial department is the same way.

Everyone: (Laughs)

We wanted to explore characters more Even with two discs of content, Takahashi says he was unable to fully tell the story. He wanted to go into greater detail on the thoughts of the game's villains, such as Ramsus and Karellen, and how they shifted over time. Takahashi said he wanted to delve more into the transformation of Ramsus, and the slow degredation of his spirit.

"I wanted to make a game that was more like a delinquent than an honor student"


Interviewer: Xenogears' story was quite different from Square's other titles, wasn't it?

Takahashi: Square's games often have simpler stories for a younger audience. They're designed for anyone to be able to understand and enjoy. Even knowing it could potentially hurt sales, that isn't something I wanted to do.

Interviewer: I heard that everything from the story to the gameplay were all based on Mr. Takahashi's ideas.

Takahashi: That's right, though it did make conveying my ideas to the rest of the team a bit difficult. I'm pretty sure there are still a few people who don't fully understand what I was envisioning (laughs). For example, if you're making a Final Fantasy or Mana game, you can usually imagine how it should look. We wanted to deviate from the norm, and often found it difficult to fully communicate what we were working on. It was very difficult to understand. I had the vision mapped out in my head, but many times the people working on the project didn't fully grasp the concepts. There were times when I just said, "don't worry too much about the big picture, just work on this for now." It wasn't that I wanted Xenogears not to be popular with the general public, I just didn't want to lie to myself when creating this story. I didn't want a disconnect between the ideas I had envisioned and the product we produced. In this case, it was impossible to fully realize everything.

The graphics have a thorough craftsmanship, with textures applied to all visable areas, even the backs of buildings. I hope people will take the time check each and every corner (Tanaka).

Interviewer: You're quite the problem child, aren't you?

Takahashi: Yes, definitely (laughs). There are a number of games on the market, but from an industry standpoint, I think Square's works tend to be the "honor students," like class presidents or student council presidents among them. Logically, I think that's the correct way to go about things. That said, I wanted to create something that went against the those ideas. It was difficult becoming a "delinquent" to properly express myself though.

Interviewer: Do you think the game could have been completed without Square?

Takahashi: In terms of scale and technology, I don't think so. This is probably Square's most impressive game to date, in terms of programming.

Interviewer: Were you able to express all the ideas you had for the game?

Takahashi: No. I'd say we only got to include about 30% of what we had hoped.

Interviewer: Only 30%?

Takahashi: Many ideas needed to be cut due to scheduling constraints. For example, I wanted to write more for the characters. As things stand, they feel a bit shallow.

From Left to Right: Mr. Arai, Mr. Higuchi, Mr. Terada, Mr. Takahashi, Mr. Eto, and Mr. Tanaka. On the day of the interview, even though they were on leave after finishing development, they came back to work just before the game's release date. [Note: the magazine mixed up Terada and Eto so I fixed it here. On the individual profiles further down they mixed up Eto and Arai so I fixed that as well.]

The time has come for both Developers and Players to evolve.


Interviewer: The combat system is quite unique, isn't it?

Takahashi: I didn't want battles to just consist of looking at text displayed on the screen.

Tanaka: It seemed like Takahashi was inspired by Sabin's "Blitz" command in Final Fantasy VI, and after some trial and error, we eventually settled on this system.

Interviewer: So it was created as an evolution of the combat systems in Square's previous works.

Tanaka: Yeah, exactly.

"I wanted to follow the difficult story properly" Takahashi's philosophy was to avoid lying to the player, so a number of complex words and phrases were used. There used to be a system where Citan could explain these words and phrases to you... Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, they didn't have the time to implement this feature.

Interviewer: What about action elements in the dungeons or overworld exploration?

Eto: When thinking about how to make the most of a 3D map, it's essential to have elevation changes and overpasses. If that was the case though, it wouldn't truly be 3D unless you could reach higher points or lower levels by jumping. So we decided to incorporate jumping. The production process consisted of creating an outline of the area, making the models, then applying textures to them. However, to fix parts where you weren't able to jump, you need to go through the process of adjusting the outline and re-modeling. Once the textures have been applied, you can't go back and modify it, even if you realize there's an issue. That was especially difficult with the forests I was in charge of (laughs). For those parts, I used ID Polygons. It was difficult adjusting the invisible sections to make jumping easier.

Higuchi: The range of vision is also quite narrow. When you change the camera angle, the limited processing power of [the Playstation] can't keep up. If the hardware specs were better, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Characters with Special Options for their Gears such as Elly and Billy have much stronger Ether Attack when equipped with E-Circuits. You should try it out (Higuchi).

Arai: It's not too bad when limited to a select number of polygons, though I wanted to put a lot more into the graphical aspects of the game.

Takahashi: I think these sorts of problems are going to become more common as hardware evolves. It'll be important for both developers and players to grow with the hardware advancements.

You can enjoy it as a proper RPG from the Snowfield Hideout onwards.	The battles between both on-foot characters and Gears were very difficult.
Hiromichi Tanaka Tanaka has produced a number of hit works, including entries in the Final Fantasy and Mana series. For Xenogears, he helped with battle planning, as well as serving as the game's producer.	Katsuhisa Higuchi For Xenogears, Higuchi was in charge of programming the battles for both the characters and Gears. He's also worked as a battle programmer for the Final Fantasy Series.

I wanted to have different hair colours in each town.	I'm very happy with the results for the events I created.	You can't cut any corners when making backgrounds.
Tsutomu Terada Terada was in charge of creating the characters an objects that appear in game. Most notably, he worked on Chrono Trigger in the past.	Keita Eto Eto was in charge of planning parts of the game overall, mainly the events. He's well known for working on both Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.	Koh Arai Arai was mainly in charge of graphics such as backgrounds. This was his first time working on game development.

See the original Japanese interview (from Siris) here: