Hazama on FF Versus song in Theatrhythm, music selections, future games, more
Final Fantasy Versus XIII still hasn’t been released, yet one of the game’s songs managed to find its way into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. In a new interview, producer Ichiro Hazama explained how the piece found ended up in the music title as downloadable content.
Head past the break for Hazama’s commentary on this topic as well as why some games in the Final Fantasy series weren’t represented in Theatrhythm, how the title’s concept evolved, and thoughts about other Square Enix IPs that could take the musical route in the future.
Hazama on how the “Somnus” song for Final Fantasy Versus XIII was released as DLC…
“A fan like yourself, who have heard the song before would be pleasantly surprised with a Versus XIII tune in the game. The music was announced earlier [through a trailer] and many people have heard the song already. It wasn’t anything too secretive.
“Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is commemorated as a 25th anniversary title, so we wanted to be a little bit playful by adding this song. When we asked Nomura-san he casually approved it saying, ‘let’s do it’ and that’s how we got it in.
Hazama on how there aren’t any songs from Final Fantasy XIC or spinoff titles like Final Fantasy USA…
“When you look up the collection of music in Theatrhythm, songs were collected from the mainstream Final Fantasy titles. We didn’t use spinoffs or anything like that and because of that USA was not included. Versus XIII is part of Fabula Nova Crystallis, the Final Fantasy XIII family, and we put music from every single game in that series into Theatrhythm.
“In terms of Final Fantasy XIV, I personally thought that they were not ready to be incorporated into it. This was just my opinion, but they are changing the game. Maybe in the future, when they are ready, we may add songs from XIV.”
Hazama on whether or not the DLC will be the same for North America…
“Nothing has been confirmed yet, but we also don’t have a plan to just do all of those DLC songs for Japan only.”
Hazama on how Theatrhythm Final Fantasy was seeing sell-outs in Japan…
“As a producer, I felt sorry for fans who were waiting for the game because it was sold out. Some people had, in a worst case scenario, had to wait two weeks so the only feeling I felt was sorry.”
Hazama on how the concept for Theatrhythm has evolved…
“It didn’t evolve from that time because it wasn’t possible on DS. I had to stop thinking about making it. In my mind, I was always warming up the idea, but we didn’t move forward with development. When 3DS was available and we had a talk with Nintendo, I thought with this we can resume planning and that’s how development resumed.”
Hazama on whether or not using the Kingdom Hearts Mobile art style was always planned…
“From the beginning, we were discussing how to present characters from the entire Final Fantasy franchise. When we saw the designs of the Final Fantasy guest characters in Kingdom Hearts Mobile we thought this is going to work.”
Hazama on whether or noto Chaos and Cosmos are now overarching gods for the entire Final Fantasy universe…
“[Laughs.] I didn’t feel that ambitious when I was planning Theatrhythm! The only titles that cover the Final Fantasy series from the first game to XIII are Dissidia and Theatrhythm. Nomura, the creative director, thought it would be great to use the artwork from Dissidia. Did you notice the logo has the gods on it? I worked on the Dissidia: Final Fantasy games too and because I worked on those titles, Nomura and I wanted to continue using those gods.”
Hazama on what series he would want to work with for another Theatrhythm game…
“[Laughs.] Personally, I hope this will be come a series, but Theatrhythm Hitman will probably be really far off. There are many series that I would want to work on for Theatrhythm. Dragon Quest has a lot of music and Kingdom Hearts would be wonderful to do if it’s possible. I’m not to familiar with the Eidos collection, but Tomb Raider has a long history so it must have a great collection of songs. That might be fun.”
