Quote Originally Posted by Dignified Pauper View Post
just so everyone knows, hirinobu sakiguchi was a HUGE starwars fan.

however, now that he's gone, most of his staff remained, who are also big star wars fans. Therefor, it is natural that there are going to be sweet star-wars similarities. References pop up all over the games.
Then again, George Lucas has always admitted being influenced by LOTR and mythology, and Tolkien's works and mythology are at the origins of pretty much everything that falls under the Heroic Fantasy genre, including the rp game. So that there are similarities between the FF series and Star Wars is pretty much a given.

That being said, the direct influence of Star Wars is more obvious in FF XII than in prior installments, especially visually; there are also LOTR "visual quotes" as well (the camera move above the army in the opening, for instance)