There are plenty of things that go into developing a video game that most people, especially gamers who aren’t fully savvy about game development, don’t understand. For example, you might look at all the remasters and remakes that have come out over the last decade or so and think that they’re simply a “cash grab” because it’s “not hard to remaster or remake those titles.” Except, in most cases, that’s not true at all. The upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics The Ivalice Chronicles title from Square Enix is a great example of that. Recently, director Kazutoyo Maehiro went on the PlayStation Blog and revealed a stunning detail about the original game: its code was gone.
More specifically, at the time of its creation, Japanese companies like Japan didn’t have the proper “preservation tools” to keep it, and so, they just slowly overwrote it while doing certain other projects:
“This was simply the norm at the time. We didn’t have the kinds of effective resource management tools available today, and we developed games by essentially overwriting the previous code each time we fixed a bug or added a new language.”
That might surprise you in another way, as the game has already been touted as having not only the upgraded remaster form, but the “classic mode” that you can play to enjoy things “as they once were.” The director talked about making that happen, noting:
“Since the classic version was intended to recreate the original game, we did have the option to implement using an emulator. However, this method wouldn’t have allowed us to make granular refinements even if the objective was to recreate the original game. After our analysis, we felt the best way to ensure the game met modern playability standards while staying true to the original was to rebuild it.”
As we talked about yesterday, Final Fantasy Tactics The Ivalice Chronicles will have some new elements, while also maintaining the story and gameplay of the original. There will be small dialogue additions to characters to help flesh out the story and connect certain dots without leaving them “silent,” as the original game did.
Regardless, this is a fascinating insight into the nature of game development and how things have drastically changed over the years. It also highlights the ever-growing “Stop Killing Games” movement, where many are trying to ensure that many old-school games get the proper preservation so that they aren’t lost to the “wheels of time.”