The (Near) Dream Team
Too many cooks spoil the broth... how many times has that phrase been used? A perfect adage to symbolize what many in different aspects of any kind of job had to learn the hard way. It was inevitable really, how at times you could have the greatest cooks, the perfect teachers, the perfect engineers even, yet using them all together would only bring about a bad outcome, as the resulting clash of egos between them would bring about the downfall of whatever they might be working.
One only had to look at Atari, as legend told of how the Superman version which started the crash just happened to have all their best talent on hand to bring about one of the more revolutionary games in existence... with the result being one of the worst, buggiest, unplayable messes that nearly doomed the entire industry before it was quickly rescued by both LucasArts and Nintendo.
The point being that on most occasions, companies will recognize the incoming issues that a team may have when putting one together, and will thus structure said teams with one overall leaders, along with a crew that will be willing to work together. Other times, they would just throw the dice and let the chips fall as they may, as the expected team may not even be that important in the grand scheme of things, and whatever may come as a result would at the very least not harm the company overall.
...Oftentimes, in LucasArts however, teams are just formed when the team leader calls for whoever they may want to work for them, and with the flat hierarchical system that the company runs on, the results may be as grand as Final Fantasy and Metal Gear, or as forgettable as Pirate Ship Higemaru. with the results often varying in between the projects.
Then there are teams which on paper do not really seem to be anything shocking or out of the ordinary, yet its only when you look back when one can see what an amazing stroke of luck it was to have such people working on a single project. And how incredible it was that none of them caused the entire thing to fall apart.
...Well, almost none of them at least.
Hironobu Sakaguchi was feeling like all the elements inside his team where finally coalescing into a whole. it had been a journey of a thousand miles, one that had tasked him to his limits, yet one that he could look back on now, and understand how much he'd needed this dose of reality.
When he had been made the new person in charge for "Team Fantasy" he'd felt both proud and ecstatic. His time working at lucasArts had been a challenging one alright, that had certainly pushed him to reconsider his previous knowledge, yet one that he would have never thought to change if he could. Being part of the creation of a genre defining game certainly helped as well, and to be named the new man in charge had done his ego wonders as well. He was sure that he could do the new entry justice, as he'd already spoken with Dawson before and gotten his blessing to move the series into an anthology format which would allow him to explore new worlds, new ideas, with different characters and stories altogether.
And it had all been working just fine at first; they'd had the new world all set up and ready, many of the different characters had been fleshed out, the storyboards and art were promising, with Yoshitaka Amano outdoing himself with the concept art, breathing life into seemingly static drawings, making them look more epic yet tragic at the same time. it was just the right kind of atmosphere that the game needed, and it was working wonders for the rest of the team, each focusing on their tasks.
Then the problems began; it started with small bickering about the weapons system, nothing that anybody would have thought it mattered much, and perhaps it would be something that they could discuss for the next entry in the franchise. it started growing a bit more when more of the engineers and designers started arguing about using said new model rather than just improve the previous model of the first game. It then grew to the characters, and the idea to have individual endings for each and every one of them, which fair sounded very cool, but it was just not something that could be done with the already set story of Final Fantasy II.
Before he knew it, half the team had started a mini-civil war, and the other half was working alongside you to try and keep the entire game from being even more delayed than what it was. Luckily for him, the rest of the group members managed to coalesce around him, and a couple of others who managed to convince them to just continue working rather than just argue for the rest of the day. Seriously, you owed a lot to that pair...
Which made it all the more embarrassing that you can't recall their names at the moment.
Still, it was thanks to their efforts that the game could get back on track, and with some small improvements that they managed to finagle without taking any more extra time or space in the console as well.
Overall, the game was finally nearing its end, he found a couple of diamonds in the rough that could very well turn out to be future director material, and the setback taught him a valuable lesson to plan for the worst, and to keep a better look when selecting his team. Not to mention not letting problems fester as long as this one had, which looking back was perhaps one of the more boneheaded moves that he could have done.
Well, live and learn as they say...
Yuji Hoori would not say that he was jealous of Final Fantasy's success. He truly wasn't. At all. Not even a little bit.
...
Okay, perhaps just a little, but could you blame him!
He had been an avid fan of RPG gaming, back when it had been just in Table Top, and then when it made the transition to a new medium; Ultima and Wizardry had been among his favorites, and when joining LucasArts he'd even dared to dream that he could make a game that took all the elements that made RPG's so fun to play, and simplified them enough for a broader audience, teaching them about it and gradually guiding them towards more complex and broader games, ones that he was sure he could design for grander adventures, with heroes and villains that would emulate the passion and enjoyment of brand new worlds.
Then Final Fantasy just has to debut in the middle of his internship, turning all of his dreams to near ash.
Yeah, he had good cause to feel bitter. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy had achieved what he'd hoped to, and mainly because the men in charge had decided to take the initiative rather than just wait like he'd done, hoping to have the right amount of experience and influence to lead his own project.
Not to mention the sheer luck of Sakaguchi to actually be head hunted for the overall project.
Yet, in the end, he also could choose to take it as a challenge. Which he did. His dream to be the pioneer may have been dead, but that did not mean that he would give up on the entire industry. Perhaps he could no longer make his game the first in a new genre of RPG, but he could make it an equal... no, a superior version of what came before. If he played his cards right, he was sure that he could make his future project the one that everyone in LucasArts would be looking forward rather than Final Fantasy.
And the best way to start, was by knowing one's enemy. Which was why he had approached Hironobu to get a spot for the next project in the franchise. As far as anyone was concerned, he was just in to help, not considering how much he would be also learning from them and improving for his own means. And for a while it worked just fine; so much of what made Fina Fantasy special was not something he could reproduce, but he gained invaluable experience when it came to defining and constructing the background and overview worlds, not to mention the different characters as well.
At first he'd thought that he would only need one character for his overall adventure, but seeing how fun it was to have multiple companions, and how this could give different avenues for quests and mini-quests as well, he decided to make amendments to his original vision. Having the hero travel with company would make his future game all the more entertaining.
That the Genesis would be able to make it a reality had nothing to do with it...really!
Though he had to admit the character design and concept art was not to his liking. Yoshitaka-San was a fine artist, yet he could not help but think that there was something missing there. In the end, he just decided to table it, and revise it once more when it came to his project.
What surprised everyone, and even himself, was that his real talent would come to shine not in designing characters or backgrounds like he'd been assigned to, but in the story development and how it would all come to connect as well. It began with small suggestions for the backstory of some characters, which then evolved into taking over writing the main plot as his contributions and ability to connect the different threads (not to mention making truly engaging characters and story) were noticed.
Say what you want about LucasArts, but they recognize talent when they see it.
When the entire debacle (over the battle system of all things) began he was firmly in Sakaguchi's camp, wanting to bring the game into release as badly as him. He had poured his sweat, creativity, and hours of writing and re-writing code for the overall story just to have a small dispute over how to fight in an RPG bring everything to a halt. he may have gotten too attached to this project, but at this point he found that he did not care.
His story would be told, no matter the cost.
Shouzou Kaga was not a newcomer to the videogame industry, having worked in it for at least five years in it before joining LucasArts. he'd seen the rise and fall of the Videogame Market in America, shaking his head at their foolishness, and fully expecting Japan to take the lead in bringing it back to par. Imagine his surprise when he saw that perhaps there was hope yet for the Americans in the form of LucasArts, a company that had embraced just the thing that would have made the collapse an impossibility; innovation and technology.
Well, better late than never, right?
Still, that had been enough to peak his interests. Kaga understood very well what motivated him, how the passion for coding, creating, designing new worlds often tended to dominate his every project, adding complexity upon each new game like puzzles that one had to truly think and plan ahead to solve them. He would not call himself a pioneer in such cases, but he did like to think that he knew better than most when it came to making games that could combine the exhilaration of figuring out the right answer, along with the adrenaline rush of action.
The only thing that constrained him though, was the technology available.
Sure, computers were making an incredible leap forward, and he'd made good use of them for his many different ideas so far what with both his freelance work, and whenever he managed to find work in one of the other companies. Nevertheless, it did not change the fact that for all that Japan was often being hailed as the fastest growing nation, and one of the many places where new technology was coming up, that in the end that seemed to be more propaganda than anything, especially when one compared the results from computer giants like Microsoft and Apple in the United States.
Which is why when he saw how LucasArts console had some of the greatest technological leaps this far of the Pacific, he knew that he had to check it out.
Joining the company was the easy part, his resume and experience alone made him a catch for any company alone. Finding the right opportunity to work on said console and stress test it, not so much. Many of the different projects being worked on at the moment seemed content to just use the console and its settings without truly pushing it to their limits. Heck, the only project that so far seemed to be doing something similar was the next entry into the Final Fantasy franchise, and they were all nearly done as well, meaning that he might have to wait until a new project became available.
Or at least it would have, had the project not entered into crisis at the last second, and they suddenly needed any and all programmers to make do and finish on time. His entry into the project was seamless, his accomplishments irreproachable, and his speed at coding just what they needed to make do in time. He even managed to get close to the head of the team, Hironobu Sakaguchi, as well as the Head for the story, Yuji Horii to suggest an addition to the game; an additional storyline that could be unlocked after the players managed to beat the Dark Emperor. It was not an easy sell, though he could see Horii was interested in it, and Hironobu was heavily tempted.
He continued talking about how it would not take as much time as the original, being just a smaller take on it. not to mention that adding it would certainly erase the any bad feelings that the company may have over their current delay. Just the right words it seemed, as Hironobu was determined to make sure no black spots appeared in the records. Whatever he may desire, in the end the result was just as he expected; the storyline was approved, and he got to delve deeper into the Genesis capabilities for his future projects.
Sometimes, life just works the way one wants it to.
Akitoshi Kawazu had the distinct pleasure of being both, a good friend of Hironobu Sakaguchi who wished to aid him in the sequel to the Final Fantasy Franchise, but also the man who inadvertedly may have contributed to it being delayed for nearly an entire year, and perhaps more had it not been for the sudden appearance of some hidden talents within the company.
He did not even had nay malicious intent, he'd worked in the previous entry and was as committed to it as Hironobu was, but he also felt that it could be improved when it came to the development of the combat system, making it a more central aspect of the game, and perhaps make it a bit more realistic when it came to improving one's skills. He'd even spoken to Hironobu about it, how each weapon and ability would improve the more one used it, and though he had been refused after Hironobu had tried it on some beta testers, concluding that it would take away from the experience, he'd nonetheless still felt that the program could work if the bugs were fixed and the system optimized for it.
Time was the excuse that was given to him, and at the time it had felt like a copout, a platitude to just keep his head down and keep on working without making any fuss. Perhaps that's the reason he complained about it with his team about it, expounding the benefits of the new system and how it might help revolutionize gameplay for the RPG genre once more. He thought that he was just venting out, that those he spoke would understand that as well.
He did not expect to create a crisis which caused the game to nearly flounder just as it was reaching the finish line.
He was lucky that all it took was a talk with Hironobu for him to understand that he had not expected for this to happen and to avoid blaming him to the higher ups. For all that the was a member of Team Fantasy, and for all that LucasArts had more relaxed guidelines than any other company, he was sure that they would crack just as hard on anyone that tried 'sabotaging' one of their games. Even harder for the one game that put the Genesis on the map.
The worst part though, was that despite it all, despite the near disaster that it had all turned into, despite the near danger that this put his friendship with Hironobu, and despite realizing that the way he handled this was completely out of line... he still felt he was right with his ideas. That alone was enough to convince him that continuing in Team Fantasy was just not the right path for him. Once the game was done, he would be speaking with Hironobu about a transfer, hopefully they could both leave in good terms with each other.
Perhaps he could try and make his own game. He'd had some ideas about a non-linear game that would emphasize more on the storytelling and freedom of the player characters, instead of the more linear story that Final Fantasy had been focusing on. Perhaps something with more romance in it as well.
Something to think about in the meantime.
"(...) No one at the time understood the true impact of Final Fantasy II. The gameplay and story were an improvement of course, and it was the first game where Hironobu Sakaguchi truly took center stage for the franchise (and would continue for the next years as well). But the true effects would be felt by those who worked on the game behind the scenes; Yuji Hoori, Shouzou Kaga, Akitoshi Kawazu, all of them would go on to hone their talents during the development, each taking brand new experiences, the influence of Final Fantasy inspiring them for their own games in the future, giving births to exciting new franchises that to this day, entertain and challenge players all around the globe."
-Extracted from 'Final Fantasy II: The Game Which Birthed Three Franchises', YouTube Channel 'Game Historian'
A.N.: All right, this came to me when thinking about the different designers that would come to work for our company, as well as what would move them and what could influence them. At this moment, Final Fantasy is "The" go to game when it comes to RPGs, but I feel that as such, there would be many that nonetheless would try to make something unique, even if taking their own experience from said game as well.
