With the recent announcement of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2′s HD Remaster treatment, Square Enix will be bringing both games to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Though the games will be on one Blu-ray for PS3, the company commented that the Vita’s cartridge size was a contributing factor in the decision to split them up for the Sony handheld. This comes via a new interview in Famitsu with producer Yoshinori Kitase and associate producer Hideki Imaizumi, out today.
Why is this? Well, the games themselves have remastered assets like character models (which include enemies) and environments, though those are usually less of a space hog than other elements. The cinematic sequences have been updated for an HD format, and as you can imagine, take up a considerably bigger file size since they are likely uncompressed. While not confirmed by Famitsu, remastered audio (lossless and uncompressed), also takes up a considerable amount of space.
If you’ve ever wondered why Final Fantasy XIII is three discs on Xbox 360, it’s largely due to the uncompressed cinematics and audio quality being a a bit too hefty for one DVD. (Blu-ray discs having more storage capacity.) Final Fantasy XIII-2 had cinematics that bookended the game as opposed to being liberally peppered throughout it’s length, so it comfortably fit on one disc.
Mr. Nomura, who is participating in the project, was quoted as saying: “Ok, let’s do it!” In regards to save data being shared between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, the team is currently researching the possibility of its inclusion.
Square Enix also confirmed that progress on Final Fantasy X HD has reached 70%.
Update: Final Fantasy World further translated that Tetsuya Nomura was talking with Final Fantasy Type-0 voice actors during the time of recording about their memories of Final Fantasy X as two games shared some voice actors like Mayuko Aoki (Yuna). It’s here, Famitsu says, that Square Enix got the ambition to do a HD remastering of the games.
This was all around 2011 when production on Final Fantasy XIII-2 was in full swing, so it took some extra time to shift the manpower to this project. Final Fantasy X producer Yoshinori Kitase said that since they’ve missed the 10th Anniversary of Final Fantasy X with this project, they’ll try to honor the 10th Anniversary of Final Fantasy X-2 by getting the game out this year.
Kitase also divulged that the team had difficulty taking the assets from the original game for the re-release, stating that one programmer was responsible for salvaging most of the data — but an outsourced team was called in to help on the project. The Visual Works team, specifically Kazuyuki Ikomori, was also called in to give the game’s cinematics a proper facelift for the HD generation.
Closing the interview, Kitase said he hopes that younger Final Fantasy and video game fans will be able to enjoy Final Fantasy X.
Thanks: FFWorld
