GDC 08: Square talks on challenges of FFCC: My Life as a King

It’s hard to disassociate Square Enix with the lush graphics of the Final Fantasy series. Apparently, even Square itself has a hard time doing so since it’s used to leaning on beautiful graphics as its strength and ace. But with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King being released on the Wii, Square Enix had a limited amount  of space to work with. So to cope, Square had to go back to the basics. Read more in the full article.

In some ways, developing a game on the limited resources of the Wii is harder for Square Enix than developing one for the more complex platforms of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. This is mostly because they’re just not used to it.

In terms of graphics, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King on the Wii is much more simple than the high-quality graphics we’re used to seeing in the rest of the Final Fantasy games.

The shift from complex to simple became a challenge for Square, as the game’s producer, Tsuchida, explains during the 2008 GDC:

We are good at creating content with a large amount of high-quality CG. For WiiWare, you can easily download the game, which means that memory is limited. Which means you cannot use high-quality CG as a weapon.

[…] We needed to create a game to create light users on the platform, but we wanted to maintain our strengths. That was a challenge for us. […] We couldn’t use our standard model. So we basically had to go back to the basics.

To compensate for the constriction, they used middleware programs and a lightweight programming script called Squirrel. They also reduced some of the game’s original design. Before, the game was supposed to have an RPG-style of fighting, but this was cut.

Instead of the RPG-style of combat, heroes will be sent out to go fight monsters and will bring back their loot to you, the king. As king, it’s your task to build the town and monitor your adventurer’s progress. You know, king stuff.

However, despite all these restrictions, the game still emanates the style of Square Enix. Lead programmer Shiraishi remarked during the GDC that: “I didn’t plan to make a Square Enix game but we ended up with a game that’s unmistakably Square Enix.”

Via Gamasutra