In an interview today posted to Square Enix’s official website, the director of the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, Kazutoyo Maehiro, talked about how they quote “made FINAL FANTASY TACTICS even more of a masterpiece”.
In one of the topics discussed however, the interviewer asked the dev team about including the content that was present in the War of the Lions re-release on the PSP. According to the dev team, they decided to not remake that content into this version, and will just repurpose the retranslated text from that instead. This decision was made after the team had considered the most appropriate path to pay respect to the original game’s experience and recreate that in the best form possible.
You can view the full quote of the interview below:
Interviewer: Why did you decide to focus on updating the original FINAL FANTASY TACTICS rather than the War of the Lions version?
Kazutoyo Maehiro: I and other members of this development team were not directly involved in the War of the Lions, but I do believe that the content in that game did fully meet expectations for players at that time. However, as we looked back on everything nearly 30 years later, during the creation of this game, we asked ourselves what our team – those who created the original FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – could do to bring this game to a new generation of players. It was through considering this question that we came to the conclusion that the most appropriate path for us was to pay respect to the original game’s experience and recreate that in the best form possible.
Interviewer: Did you consider adding elements from FINAL FANTASY TACTICS: THE WAR OF THE LIONS like Balthier, Luso and the Onion Knight and Dark Knight jobs?
KM: We did of course consider the addition of new jobs, abilities, and characters – including the jobs featured in War of the Lions. However, the original version of FINAL FANTASY TACTICS is a very complete game both from a game design and story perspective. If we were to make major changes, it would only be a loss for not only fans of the original game, but also those new to the title.
With this in mind, our first step in reviving FINAL FANTASY TACTICS in the present was to adhere to the original and put a spotlight on the original game’s characters and jobs, as well as the original gameplay experience. The development team were passionate when it came to bringing an experience as close to the original as we could, and as a result we have recreated and used the original VFX and SFX – something I hope fans of the original in particular will enjoy as they play.
About Final Fantasy Tactics
Originally released in 1997 for the PlayStation, Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the most beloved titles in the Final Fantasy franchise, known for its rich, character-driven story, exhilarating encounters where strategic positioning and forward planning determine the outcome, and deep character customization featuring numerous jobs and countless combinations of abilities to craft your very own strategies.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles brings the classic strategy RPG to modern consoles with numerous improvements and updates. Players can either enjoy the enhanced version, which adds fully voiced dialogue, an optimized and updated UI, graphical improvements, and a number of other quality of life features, or the classic version, which unites the graphics and gameplay of the original 1997 version with the renowned War of the Lions translation, but with some quality of life improvements such as auto save.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles will be released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on September 30th, 2025.
