The Japanese Final Fantasy III Official Strategy Guide has a few differences compared to its western counterpart. One of those is an interview with the game's developers. In this excerpt, they go over various aspects of the game, discussing certain factors such as the game's difficulty, the large amount of cut text and the scrapped Multiplayer mode.
This interview was translated via Shmuplations, a site that specializes in translating interviews for video games.
Hiromichi Tanaka: That was actually something we'd thought about doing when we made the original Famicom version. The reason they had no personalities then was a reaction to the character-heavy setting of FFII, but ever since FFIV we've always given the characters actual personalities. It always felt weird that the sub-characters like Desch and Sara have names, but the main characters don't... especially considering how much talking there is in the event scenes. It helps bring the story into better focus, I think, when the characters have personalities. That's why we added them for this remake.
--Were there any influences for the story [scenario]?
Tanaka: In the Famicom version, there were a lot of key points in the story that were deliberately left vague. For this remake, given that we were adding personalities to the four heroes and re-structuring the story, we wanted to see if we couldn't re-visit some of those ambiguities and write something that explained things in a satisfying way.
Tomoya Asano: I think "why is the floating contienent floating?" lies at the root of all that vagueness, so I put my effort into that area. However, I took care to make sure the character personalities weren't pushed too far forward, so as not to destroy the atmosphere of the original.
--Were there any scenes like that, were you felt "oh, this is actually too much character development" and they got cut?
Hiroaki Yabuta: At first, we had a lot of character-driven scenes throughout the entire game, all the way through to the ending, but ultimately we decided to go in a different direction. We decided instead to have it be more about leaving a certain impression, and we limited the overt character stuff to the beginning (up to where you get the jobs).
Asano: This time you acquire each party member one-by-one, and the story of each of their individual motivations are wrapped up in the ending, but initially--and in part because we were excited about using polygons--there were a lot more dramatic scenes. But we thought it was a little, hmm, cloying or obnoxious even...
Tanaka: If we were making a brand new game I think it would have been perfectly fine. But it would be jarring to the people who played the original. So we went for a decidedly lighter touch. (laughs)
--What were those more dramatic scenes like, by the way?
Asano: From wat I can remember, it was like, Luneth and Princess Aria and Luness fall in love and Aria dies, and Ingus sets off on a journey after spending the night with Princess Sara.
--Did you replay the original in preparation for the remake?
Asano: Of course. I was in 5th grade when FFIII came out. It was the first RPG I'd ever played, so I have a ton of nostalgia for it. Replaying it now for this development, I was struck by how fun it is to experiment with the different jobs and party combinations. That's why I wanted to make the DS version such that you can use your favorite jobs throughout the whole game.
Tanaka: I didn't replay it, but I watched a lot of video replays. I'm still feeling the trauma from not getting enough sleep during the original FF3 development, you see, so I opted not to touch it this time around. (laughs)
--Sounds like that development was no cakewalk either. (laughs)
Tanaka: When we made FF3, we were kind of flying by the seat of our pants. That's why, when I look at the game now, there's all these puzzling things. Like, why did we call them Onion Knights? And why do Dragoons "jump"? The stat data and calculation formulas we used too, even though we put a lot of effort into them and did our best for the time, if we'd just imported that directly into the DS it would have created weird inconsistencies. So we talked with Matrix about freely re-mixing all that. Thankfully, of all the games in Final Fantasy's long history, FFIII was uniquely well-documented and we had all the planning docs and database material at hand.
Asano: It was super interesting to read through those original planning docs. They were written on graphing paper, and contained pixel art desins by Koichi Ishii, as well as jobs that never came to be, that no one knows about.
Yuichi Yoshida: It was my job in FF3 to analyze the original source code, and I was very impressed by how much they crammed in there: not an ounce of space was wasted.
--What parts of the Famicom version did you want to revise, and what did you want to retain?
Yoshida: We used the experience point table as-is. The other thing I knew I wanted to keep was the flying speed of the Nautilus. (laughs)
Yabuda: I wanted to keep the overall dungeon structure such that they'd feel familiar to people who played the original.
Tanaka: Though there were many things we wanted to change about the dungeons, to be sure.
Yabuda: Especially with the Cave of Darkness. The Famicom version had all these hidden passages, plus the encounter rate was sky-high, and it was really easy, after a battle, to lose track of your position in the dungeon.
Tanaka: That was a regret of ours from the original development, so it was something we wanted to fix here.
--Did Tanaka have any detailed requests or instructions about the dungeons, like what you mentioned about the Cave of Darkness?
Tanaka: No, I don't think I was too specific. Mostly I just gave them guidance about the overall feel of each dungeon, how the secret paths were laid out, things like that.
Asano: We wanted to retain the overall playfeel from the original, so I think the dungeons probably are a little harder than what'd you find in newer RPGs. We did make it a little easier overall though, since we want to bring in new players too. Allowing you to leave Eureka with teleport, restoring HP/MP after boss fights, that kind of thing. The Crystal Tower is probably the most emblematic of those changes, though.
--I bet opinions were divided among the team on whether to allow saving there or not.
Asano: A lot of people who were fans of the original were staunchly against adding save points.
Tanaka: Those would be the truly hardcore players. (laughs) I think more people out there had the experience of throwing their controller down in frustration. We didn't collect any data on this so I don't know for sure, but I think very few people actually beat FFIII and saw the ending. When you consider that, adding save points is one solution, but it does run the risk of making the dungeons less satisfying in some way. We were very careful about that balance.
--Next, I'd like to ask about the heart of FFIII, the job system. What was your goal in removing Capacity Points and introducing the "Job Adjustment Period" system?
Yusuke Suzuki: In the Famicom version, if you earned enough CP from battles, there was no penalty for changing jobs, but it was easy to end up with too much excess CP by the end of the game. So at first, we removed the CP entirely and had it so you could change jobs whenever you wanted, but we realized there should be a penalty, or limitation of some sort, on changing jobs like that. So we decided to lower your stats while you "adjusted" to your new job.
Kazuhiko Aoki: Almost everyone who played the Famicom version ended up with two Ninjas and two Sages, so you just had all this extra CP piled up. That was something we all decided on early in the development though: no more Sage or Ninja.
Suzuki: We've adjusted things so you should be able to reach the ending with any job.
Yabuda: One of the reason people didn't use certain jobs in the Famicom version was the dearth of available weapons for those jobs. When I played it I remember feeling like the latter half of the game only had weapons for certain jobs, so we adjusted the contents of several treasure chests. However, I do worry that doing so might have had the reverse effect of making players uncertain about what the really powerful items were. I'd like to hear from players on this point.
--Please tell us about your overall concept for the battle system of FF3DS.
Aoki: The thing we were always aiming for, throughout the development, was making sure that the battle system would be easy to pick up and enjoy, even if you knew nothing about it or hadn't played the Famicom version. That's why we decided to change some of the finer details from the original. It should still give players that overall "Ah, it's FFIII" feeling, though. I hope older players will enjoy comparing their old memories of how the game progressed, which jobs were good, and so forth with the new game.
Yabuta: For me, I didn't want this to be one of those RPGs where you just spam Fight and breeze your way through it. That's why we changed many enemies' attributes and attacks. During the development, we actually made the enemies TOO strong, and after a single normal battle your party would be practically dead. (laughs)
Aoki: There's no thrill to the battles if you're just mindlessly pressing the A button the whole time. We instead wanted a system that forced characters to make tense choices, one where your characters could easily die if you aren't paying attention.
--It sounds like balancing that system was a big challenge. Compared to the Famicom, there's fewer monsters in each battle... was this also part of that balancing?
Yabuta: When you go 3D, the battles always get a little bit longer. We calculated how often we wanted players in a given dungeon to get close to death, and adjusted the number of enemies, their strength, and the encounter rate accordingly.
Aoki: Speaking of balancing, Aoki kept adjusting the strength of the final form of the Cloud of Darkness all the way to the very end of the development, moments before the deadline.
--Now I'd like to ask you about the job system. Let's start with Suppin [Freelancer].
Yabuta: Since we've added personalities for the four characters, it felt odd to suddenly start the game and see that everyone already had the "Onion Knight" class. So we brainstormed some new names, but it was surprising how quickly everyone settled on "suppin." (laughs) Suppin first appeared in FFV, as the most powerful class that could equip anything, but we've made them a little weaker for FFIII. With everyone in their basic default state like this, players would be able to better enjoy the prologue... that was our concept.
--Did you know from the beginning that you would split the Onion Knight and Suppin in this way?
Yabuta: We had planned to add some special bonus features as apart of the new Wi-Fi functions. At that point we already had separate designs for Suppin and Onion Knight drawn up, so we decided to make the Onion Knight a hidden job, something you'd have to dig a little past the surface to find. Rather than a brand new job, we thought it might make players happier to add the most popular job from the original FF3 as a hidden job.
--You acquire the Thief job earlier now too, and with their attack power and Steal command upgraded, they're a lot more usable.
Suzuki: There weren't many monsters in the Famicom version you could steal from (or items to steal), and we thought players who are used to modern games wouldn't be comfortable with that. So we gave players the Thief earlier and added more items so players could enjoy using Steal more. Also, the number of attacks you get in FF3DS is based on the weight of your equipment, not your speed stat, so you get to take more actions if you wear light equipment. The Thief excels on both these points so he can play a much more active role in battle.
--In contrast, you get the Karate-ka [Black Belt] later now.
Yabuta: The biggest reason for that was to maintain the balance of the number of jobs you get. The water crystal has a lot of fighter-type jobs. But strategically we couldn't afford to hold back the Dark Knight and Dragoon classes. So it was like, who can we put later... and that was Black Belt. My apologies to fans of this class from the Famicom version.
--The Ranger could use white magic in the original, but you've replaced that with Barrage.
Yabuta: Barrage didn't appear until FFV, but it's now one of the Final Fantasy serie's most well-known, signature abilities. Attacking four times feels great--and my personal love for that ability was a part of it too. (laughs) As for the white magic, we were worried that if there were too many jobs that could use magic, it would make the Ranger's role kind of confusing. We wanted him to be focused on fighting.
--How about the Sage?
Suzuki: Compared to the original we lowered their power a lot, so much so that I was wondering if it's OK. Our image for them was a balance between the Devout, Magus, and Evoker jobs.
--Next, I wanted to ask about the Scholar.
Suzuki: The Scholar works very well with the Thief. The Scholar can use the items the Thief steals 2x as effectively, while being able to discern enemy weakpoints too. He uses healing items like Hi-Potions twice as effectively too, so if you have a Scholar you don't necessarily need a White Mage. That versatility made him very popular with our staff, too.
Yabuta: The problem is whether players will realize these things. We definitely don't advertise the 2x item effectiveness very much in game. But I think once players notice it they will think the Scholar is awesome.
--Next up is the Viking, who I feel has been hugely improved from the original.
Suzuki: In the Famicom version, the Viking was one of those jobs that didn't really stand out. Since they don't get a lot of hits--or rather, they are a low speed character--we decided to compensate for that by making the Viking focused on single, one-shot power attacks. And the biggest change, of course, was adding the Provoke command. If you make use of that, the battles become quite easy.
Yabuta: It's easy for players to get into a habit of just spamming Fight for every battle, so Provoke adds a nice accent to that. It was a great addition for that reason, I think.
--It gives you more of a chance to combo attacks with your allies.
Aoki: Yeah. In the Famicom version he was more of a solo fighter, but this we're hoping players will think of the various combinations they could pull off with the Viking and other characters.
--Moving on, I wanted to ask about Yabuta's favorite job, the Evoker.
Yabuta: This job gave us a lot of trouble. At first, we considered letting the player choose the summoning effect (black or white), but ultimately we reverted to the original way of having it be completely random. We're hoping players will actually enjoy the slight unexpectedness of it.
Shiva, Ramuh, Titan, and Ifrit are about equal strength, and if you can figure out the right one for the right circumstance, then Evoker can be very strong. On bosses, Titan might be best for the consistent damage, while for normal enemies, Shiva is a good choice for the sleep or magic damage... if players realize those distinctions I think they'll have a lot of fun with it.
--Like the abandoned "at-will" Evoker ability you just mentioned, were there any other abilities you dropped during the development?
Yabuta: There were tons. (laughs) There was an ability called "tsuresari jump" [abduction jump] for the Dragoon.
--What was that like?
Yabuta: The Dragoon would grab the enemy, take them into the air with them, and then slam them down on the ground. Another idea we had, actually, was to have PvP battles using the Wi-Fi connection. And for awhile we had a number of abilities related to that feature, but ultimately we felt uncomfortable about it. "Should Luneth and his friends really be fighting and hitting each other...?" So unfortunately, we decided to put that off for another game in the future.