Trivia / Final Fantasy Tactics

• Creator-Driven Successor: Final Fantasy Tactics has been frequently noted as the Final Fantasy successor to Tactics Ogre from Quest's Ogre Battle as Dark Fantasy Turn-Based Strategy RPGs both driven by writer-director Yasumi Matsuno. The creation of FFT was a matter of serendipitous timing: Hironobu Sakaguchi was impressed with Tactics Ogre, learned Matsuno had recently left Quest, and offered him a job at Square. Matsuno saw this as an opportunity to become a Promoted Fanboy and work on Final Fantasy, so he accepted. Matsuno quickly took up Sakaguchi's proposal to make a strategy RPG under the Final Fantasy brand and brought in his Production Posse from Tactics Ogre (event director Hiroshi Minagawa, character designer Akihiko Yoshida, and composers Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata), all of whom would go on to do further work for Square Enix games after FFT.
• Dummied Out:
  • Several entries in the Chronicles (or Brave Story, if you're playing the original PS1 version) are technically used, but unable to be seen in normal gameplay, as these entries are only added after crossing the Point of No Return, after which viewing the Chronicles is impossible.
  • The Japanese release contained the Zodiac Brave Story Sound Novels, a collection of four mini-games in the style of Gamebooks. Because of time and budget constraints, they were never translated and left unused in the non-Japanese versions. This in turn leads to some technically used musical tracks to be Dummied Out of non-Japanese versions as well, though unlike the sound novels, the tracks can at least be listened to in the Sound Test of the PSP version, along with several truly Dummied Out tracks.
  • A good chunk of text is left out of the game, mostly battle classes (and their descriptions) of characters who are normally scarcely, if at all, seen in battle. Notable strange cases include Delita's Sis (Tietra), Bishop (Simon) and Phony Saint (Ajora).
  • Several maps have been dummied out as well. Three of them (Hospital in Slums, Warjilis Trade City, and Gate of Limberry Castle) are entirely complete and playable.
  • In the PSP and Mobile versions, the Japanese version still contains the random incantations and quips used during combat before attacks. This was dummied out in the English version.
  • The game's script contains names for other Lucavi who didn't show up in the game, and Final Fantasy XIV uses some of these dummied names for its Return to Ivalice raid series as Mythology Gags.
• No Dub for You: An inversion of the trope: the new cutscenes in the PSP remake originally had no voice acting in the Japanese release, only subtitles, so the effect was similar to watching a silent movie. This was an intentional decision on Yasumi Matsuno's part, as he didn't want to give concrete voices to the characters. However, the English release of the game added voice acting.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There were originally going to be twelve Knights Templar, and Matsuno even wrote names, genders and ages down for them. Two of them (Gustav and Gragaroth) were recast as different characters. One of them was going to be a woman name Alfred (never officially translated, technically 'Arufuredo').
  • Likewise there were originally going to be a full lineup of thirteen Lucavi, one for each Zodiac Stone. The names of the main twelve (ie excluding Elidibus/Zodiark) are listed in Ivalice script on the Zodiac circle shown in the background of the save screen, though the six who did not make it to the final game had their names Retconned by Final Fantasy XII. The ones who didn't appear get to debut in Final Fantasy XIV.
    • One of those demons was going to be called Rofocale. This name was later used for a zombie enemy in a map where he tries to take the Zodiac Stones from you.
  • It's speculated that Valmafra (Balmafula) was supposed to have a greater role in the game, and was likely to be either a guest or a recruitable character at some stage in the game's production. She even has her own Battle Class^note Witch of the Coven/Arc Witch, it has a description but no assigned abilities, yet never once appears on the battlefield.
  • Originally, Yasumi Matsuno did not plan on writing the game's story. He originally mostly wanted to be in charge of the battle system, but since they had Hiroyuki Itou in charge of that, and otherwise being short-staffed, he was more or less forced into the role out of necessity.
  • Dummied Out sprites and lines of text suggest that a handful of other characters were meant to be recruitable, or at least guest characters. Aside from the aforementioned Valmafra, such sprites and text exist for Oran, Simon, and even Tietra. The latter two have battle classes of their own (Bishop and Delita's Sis respectively), and Simon even has a full set of battle animations despite never even being seen in battle at any point. Tietra has another oddity: when hacked into the roster, a strange sprite left, unused anywhere in the game, is used as her menu sprite.
  • The developers for War of the Lions had ideas for even more jobs to be added in the port like Red Mage and Blue Mage, but ultimately scaled back to just Onion Knight and Dark Knight for being the two jobs that brought new gameplay niches to the original. They also wanted to implement Barbaneth's Knight Devout title as an actual job to be "the ultimate swordsman", which ultimately never got in because they couldn't figure out what weapons and abilities it would have.
  • Hironobu Sakaguchi had trademarked the name Final Fantasy Tactics in 1993 with the intent of directing the strategy RPG himself, writing up a short design document of what he wanted to do. He got too sidelined with work on the main series, so he had to hand the reins to Matsuno and company, who reportedly discarded most of what Sakaguchi had envisioned in favor of doing their own thing.
• Write What You Know: According to Matsuno, much of the games plot was influenced by how he felt some of the more experienced developers within Square were treated by staff, with him seeing them as being elevated to higher positions and given noble like influence. He used this, and his position as basically a "commoner" by comparison as the inspiration for the games use of politics and class struggle.
• Word of God: Although the ending was ambiguous, Yasumi Matsuno states that Ramza, Alma and the party managed to survive and promptly left the country to have other adventures. Likewise, Delita and Ovelia don't actually kill each other at the end of the epilogue. According to Matsuno, they both had a long and prosperous rule together as King and Queen while privately hating and fearing one another with Ovelia later dying of natural causes and then Delita passing on as well some years later.

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