So I was asked to give a helpful guideline of the movers and shakers of our beloved FF series so people will have a more educated idea of who to vote fir in the 25th Anniversary Ciddies.
Part One: The Big Guns
Hironobu Sakaguchi - Creator of Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi was the director, designer, and producer of the first five Final Fantasy games. He stepped down from this position during FFVI's development but still worked on as a producer and later executive producer for the rest of the series until he left Square in 2002. Sakaguchi was also one of the Big 3 of the creation of Chrono Trigger, he promoted the use of Mode 7 and the jump to Sony's CD based system to better utilize technology for the series. He wrote the original story with Tetsuya Nomura for FFVII, came up with the concept for Parasite Eve, and was the Executive Producer for most of Square's non-FF titles released in the PS1 era. His creation and push for technology made Square into a powerhouse but his foray into the movie industry nearly bankrupt the company with the commercial failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. He currently runs his own game development company Mistwalker. His favorite Final Fantasy game is Final Fantasy IX which he considers to embody the true spirit of what he feels Final Fantasy is.
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Nobuo Uematsu - Main composer of the FF series for almost every entry except FFXII and XIII. Nobuo Uematsu is a self-taught musician and founder of his own music company Smile Please and Dog Ear Records. He helped pioneer for Square the use of MIDI sound to recreate more authentic sounding instruments that helped transform the musical score for games like Final Fantsy V, VI, and Chrono Trigger. He introduced live instruments and choral pieces to the series with the advent of CD technology in FFVII. Later on, after FFX gave him a taste of making some heavy metal tracks, he formed The Black Mages, a heavy metal band that remakes his classic FF themes with a metal style. He left Square-Enix in 2004 to start his own companies and now works freelance. His latest creation for Squenix is the soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIV. His favorite musician is Elton John.
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Yoshinori Kitase - A film student who wanted to make movies after watching Star Wars as a kid, Kitase started in small time animation before joining Square in the early 90s. He was given the task of being an event planner who wrote out the blocking and the cues for the characters and media elements in games. He also worked as a scenario writer for FFV, VI, and VII. When Sakaguchi stepped down from directing in FFVI, Kitase was chosen to co-direct with Hiroyuki Ito. His success made him the de facto director of FFVII and VIII which were both hugely successful. He was promoted into being a producer for FFX and finally chosen as the head of the mainline FF series once Sakaguchi left the company. Kitase's style is heavy on cinematic and storytelling. He wants the FF series to feel like the player is playing a film and he has made or allowed some controversial choices to keep with this philosophy. He chose Motomu Toriyama as his successor in directing the FF series after he was placed in charge of the series. Final Fantasy VII is his favorite game in the series and Cloud Strife is his favorite character. His love for VII eventually led him to developing the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and keeping rumors of a VII remake hopeful for fans.
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Hiroyuki Ito - Joined Square in 1987 as a debugger, his first major contribution to the series was as a sound designer for FFIII where he became fascinated by the job class system. Ito's true claim to fame in the series starts in FFIV where he revolutionized Turn Base gameplay by developing the Active Time Battle System (ATB) which was based on his observations of Forumla One racing. His success led him to be the battle system designer for FFV where he refined ATB and the Job Class System. After Sakaguchi stepped down as Director for FFVI, Ito was chosen to co-direct it with Kitase. He designed not only the games battle systems (relics, espers, Blitz, etc...) but he was also responsible for adding in interactive moments in the story such as the singing element in the Opera, or the whole scenario with the banquet with the Empire. He would do similar work in Chrono Trigger as well, where he also developed that games seamless battle transitions. Ito was then tapped by Sakaguchi to help Yasumi Matsuno in developing Final Fantasy Tactics, where he further developed the job class system and created the games battle system. He also came up with the concept of both the Materia system and Junction system but was pulled from both FF titles to work on other titles, so they were developed by different teams. He was tasked with directing Final Fantasy Gaiden, which Sakaguchi eventually made it into Final Fantasy IX. After IX, he began developing FFXII and it's ADB battle system and License Board. When Matsuno left for health reasons, Ito was tapped to be the director. Ito has a philosophy of gameplay first in his games. In both FFVI and Chrono Trigger, Ito often went over Kitase's scenarios and added interactive elements to the scenes because he feels that it's boring just pressing a single button to watch a scene. His games are often known for their deeper gameplay.
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Tetsuya Nomura - Nomura is a graphic designer who joined Square in the 90s and worked as a debugger for FFIV. He got his real start as the monster designer of FFV and VI, in VI he also was the graphical director transforming Amano's character designs into sprites. The move to 3D made Amano's art too difficult to utilize so Nomura was tapped to work as the character designer for FFVII. In addition he also co-wrote the original script of the game and refined the battle system to place a greater emphasis on the battle animations and cinematic from Limit Breaks and Summons. VII's success had Nomura chosen as the de facto character designer for the series, and he also worked on side games like Parasite Eve and Brave Fencer Musashi. In developing VII, Nomura was annoyed that despite the team's best efforts with FFVI, fans still hearkened back to FFIV, so his goal with VII was to create a cast and story that would be remembered as well as FFIV. In the PS2 era, Nomura began work on the hugely successful Kingdom Hearts series which marks his directing debut. He later helped direct the hugely successful film, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and worked on the Compilation of VII with Kitase and Nojima. Though he still works as character designer for the main series and some spin-offs, Nomura's most anticipated project is highly ambitious but trapped in development hell Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Nomura's style has a heavy emphasis on visuals. he loves flashy animations and so his games like VII and the KH series are known for their over the top wire-fu animations that have become a staple of the series, he also loves ambiguity and intentionally has his games written with no clear answer so fans can talk about it. He cites his greatest influences are Yoshinori Kitase, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Tetsuya Takahashi, and Yoshitaka Amano. VII is his favorite entry in the series though Kain Highwind is his favorite character he didn't create.
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Yoshitaka Amano - An artist who got his start in the late 60s when he worked with Tatsunoka Productions (Speed Racer, Gatchamen) Amano has had a varied career working as a character designer for animation, creating concept art, and working on promotional artwork. He joined Square when Sakaguchi was looking for an artist to create the concept art and character designs for his RPG. A co-worker suggested Amano but Sakaguchi was not interested in his resume, instead saying he wanted the artist who did a certain graphic art he saw in a magazine, it was only later that Sakaguchi learned that Amano was the artist who did the graphic art. Amano was the character/monster designer and concept artist for the first six FF games until the series jumped to 3D and Sakaguchi chose Nomura's cleaner and less complex manga style art for FFVII. Afterwards, Amano did promotional artwork for the FF titles, often re-imagining Normua's style in his own. He also co-created Shadow and Sephiroth with Nomura. He returned as character designer and concept artist for FFIX which was a retro title at the time and as a testament to his influence on the series and Nomura's respect for him, Nomura redesigned Amano's style for the recent FF fighting game series Final Fantasy Dissidia. Amano's other claim to fame is being the logo artist for the FF series meaning he's had a hand in every FF since the beginning. The only logo he didn't do was FFIX surprisingly enough. Amano recently confessed that he's never actually played any of the games he worked on.
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I'll continue later with the next batch of creators.
