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skyppai · 7 years ago

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Mobius FF “It’s been 2 years! Everyone assemble! Mobius Final Fantasy 2nd anniversary live broadcast” 28th edition

Host Sanshi, who's in charge of the international release of the game, producer Kitase and project leader Hamaguchi.

The presentation was broadcast from the Theater Cafe & Dining STORIA before a live audience.

22nd large update: What's new in May

1. Update info

2. About Chapter 8

3. New contents

4. Jobs and spirits

5. Announcement

Update on May 30th

Deck copy paste feature, to easily fill other character slots with cards you prefer to use.

Check other weapons even while all slots have stat upgrades in process. Sort features added. Higher stat cap (each raised by two), lower stamina consumption when shortening the upgrade time.

Notification icon when a new summon gacha has become available

Requirement for card augments are lowered. Having the necessary materials is now enough (like in the Western version). Expand skills will unlock even faster.

New options for auto battle. Choose not use the rental card, choose conditions if and when ultimate should be used.

Retired cards are added to the revival store (similar now to the Western ability card store)

Hamaguchi explains his new role at the FFVII remake team and how it will affect his role in Mobius. He will stay with Mobius but wants to support FFVII Remake with the same effort he put into Mobius for the last three years. Since there is a limit to how hard one can work he will focus his energy on FFVII. He asks for the fans' understanding.

They're showing concept art for chapter 8, due in mid of June.

Also how they adapted it to 3d, paying attention to the details.

And a very early sneak peek of a cutscene that is still work in progress: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=26m51s

For the 2nd anniversary, there will be special cards commemorating scenes from the first two years. They showed 6 cards from the first batch, which mostly show scenes from side stories.

Kitase asks Sanshi which is her favorite. Since she heads the international release the Alien invasion is still fairly recent for her and since it also was the first event that's the one she fondly remembers.

Sexy cards for both Wol and Echo.

On the week end of June 3rd/4th, there will be the chance to draw one free great summon, with a guaranteed 5 star card.

And a campaign with daily login bonuses. Lots of free magicite, 14 summon tickets and 2 grow stars.

And a free one card summon for 30 days all throughout June.

The new job quests for June cover the Dissidia Legend jobs. Job quests are maps where you have to use a certain job to clear dungeons with certain conditions. If you can clear them, you get ability panels that can greatly enhance that job and bring it up to speed with the current jobs, statwise.

Like last year, they will also have gachas for previous legend jobs during the anniversary period, so people that didn't get them the first time can try again.

There will be a collaboration with FFXIV:

Ultima Weapon can be fought in multiplayer.

Its drop items can be exchanged for powerful equipment:

The Ultima Edge for ranger jobs.

Ultima Mace for mages.

Ultima Wing for Meia.

Hamaguchi battles Ultima Weapon: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=48m30s

The new jobs in June are FFXIV themed:

Knight of Eorzea.

Ya Shtra will be the first mage ultimate hero job.

Ultimate hero jobs are different from legend jobs. Legend jobs have Wol and Meia basically cosplay Tidus, Aerith, Squall and so on. Whereas the ultimate hero jobs really give them the appearance of Cloud or Sephiroth (warrior jobs), Lightning (ranger job) and now Ya Shtra (mage job).

This will make a job look and sound like those characters and also change their ultimate. Stats and elements are those of a different job that has to be chosen together with the ultimate hero one.

For Ya Shtra, both Wol mage jobs and Meia can be combined. But since Meia's weapons don't fit Ya Shtra's design, she will use her default weapon in that case.

Hamaguchi demonstrates the new jobs in action, including their ultimates: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=1h23s

New spirits for June:

Hamaguchi shows them in game: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=1h8m39s

Composer Mitsuto Suzuki announces the release of the second OST:

It releases on August 2nd, available on the Squenix eStore and other official shops. 3200 yen plus tax, covers chapters 4 to 8. Pre-orders open on May 27th.

Wol's voice actor Nobunaga Shimazaki is the first special guest.

It's his second time on the broadcast since the very first one 2 years ago. Kitase suggests that they use a more familiar way of addressing each other, maybe using nicknames. He asks Shimazaki if he has any.

Shimazaki says some of his friends used to call him Lord (because of the historical Oda Nobunaga) and when the manga A Chef of Nobunaga became popular, some even called him Chef. But most people call him Nobu, which is short for Nobunaga. So they settle for Nobu. Shimazaki says he's fine with anything, Lord, Chef, or even Devil, whatever the setting requires.

Now Nobu wants to know everyone else's nickname. Hamaguchi is an obvious case, his should revolve around the Hama part of his name. Hamaguchi confirms that's what his nicknames usually come from. Nobu comes up with an alternative: Animal. He can be like the mascot character.

Sanshi says that's her real name when read in Japanese (she's from Taiwan). But she'd like a nickname. To suit her radiant personality Nobu suggests Sunshine. She says she'll try to live up to the name.

Nobu heard stories about Kitase, being a Warunori rather than his actual name Yoshinori (yoshi can mean good, waru means bad). Apparently Kitase is a bit of a prankster in office. So today Kitase will be a character of darkness, like Voice (Vox in English).

Now that everyone has a nickname, Sunshine moves on to the next topic. The STORIA cafe prepared some Mobius themed meals and beverages just for this occasion:

Echo's fickle blueberry frozen yoghurt

Meia's azure tonic water

Mog's kupo kupo strawberry milk (the only hot beverage of the menu)

The meal comes as a set and is "really something like an onion".

The drinks have nice details like the wings for the Echo's yoghurt and the cherry on the spoon of the strawbery milk. Sunshine guesses the cherry is supposed to be the crystal over Mog's head. She assures everyone that no moogle was killed to prepare the drink.

Kitase has Nobu read a piece of paper out loud, in his Wol voice. He announces the next TVCM campaign:

They show one of the new commercials: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=1h30m6s

In the commercial the Ultima Weapon (FFXIV collaboration) is mentioned, as well as the Warrior of Light part of the story nearing its climax.

Hamaguchi reads a letter from Mogy-Announce* to Shimazaki out loud (*Mogy-Announce is a handle used on the Mobius twitter to tweet news in Mogy's moogle speech pattern):

"Dear Master*, kupo! Your performance at the commercial recording was flawless and left no room for criticism. We recorded a few more takes just to be sure but they were all high quality and demonstrated your skills as a professional, kupo. The staff from the recording studio also said that Shimazaki-san is so amazing. The recording didn't even take 20 minutes and was over much sooner than anticipated. Thanks to that I could take some free time at a cafe before returning to office. The Caramel Latte Macchiato I had that day was the most delicious thing ever. All thanks to you, kupo. Yours, Mogy-Announce." (*onjin-san/life-savior in Japanese, as the moogles call Wol)

Nobu is amused and says it's not part of his job to enable Mogy-Announce to drink Latte Macchiato. But he had a good time himself recording the commercial.

Kitase asks Shimazaki about the two years he has been acting Wol. Shimazaki explains that contrary to the work for anime he usually does, which only requires around three months per project, he has had steady recordings for Mobius almost on a monthly basis. So that makes it rare among his work.

When he started out, he didn't want to give Wol too much individuality, him being the protagonist of a social game. He kept him neutral so anyone could identify. But over time Wol became more defined and Shimazaki very attached to the character, even developing a liking for Echo. He also identified more and more with Wol, reacting to characters in the story, like getting angry when Vox would make an appearance. The relationship with Echo is somewhat nasty but without being spiteful. He didn't trust Meia at all at first, then getting closer only to be shocked sometimes but understanding it was Palamicia that must have made her like that.

He had a lot of fun developing Wol's character. Now he hasn't read the script for the final chapter yet, he says, correcting himself, for the next chapter. So he's hanging on the cliff with which chapter 7 ended. But the recording for the next chapter should be soon.

Kitase asks him about what scenes impressed him the most. Shimazaki reiterates how much he likes Echo and raises a scene in chapter 5, when Echo gets scared. He felt Wol was very kind to her in that. A major plot point is that Palamicia as a system cannot be trusted. He mentions a spoiler for chapter 7. Echo seems to be also of this very system but Shimazaki really wants to believe that the Echo that traveled with Wol, his very own Echo among the many that exist, is better than that. But he suspects the next chapter will prove him wrong.

Of course he also mentions Mog. He constantly made him aware of the whole prophecy business and he still doesn't know what the purpose of Mog's part in the prophecy was. But same as Echo, even though there might be many Mogs, the time they spent together, both the warmth and the suffering, made Mog the one Mog for him. That might have been the salvation offered by Mog's fate. Also when he gets angry at Vox, Mog is like an anchor that enables Wol to calm himself.

Kitase and Hamaguchi suggest that the scenario writer might change the story according to what Shimazaki might want. Shimazaki says it's probably already written. But he really doesn't want Echo to turn out bad.

Sanshi asks about the process of the recordings. Do the actors get to record the scenes together? Shimazaki confirms what Mao told them at TGS 2016, as opposed to anime recordings they do their takes separately. But he listened to their lines so it almost feels like he had spoken to them.

Next they have a game of guessing missing lines of famous cutscenes, Hamaguchi versus Shimazaki. Depending on who will win, the players get different prizes:

An elixir if Hamaguchi wins, or 10 Expalights and 3 summon tickets if Shimazaki wins. Both remembering the correct line and interpreting it in the voice of the character factor into scoring.

If you completed the first two chapters and the third ranking tower, it's safe to watch this: https://youtu.be/ZqyXu0SKpcM?t=1h46m33s

Shimazaki wins, so unfortunately no elixir for the players, Kitase jokes.

Next up is drawing contest:

They all have one minute to draw Mog. The drawings will be given as a present to fans afterwards.

Kitase's Mog.

Sanshi's Mog.

Hamaguchi's Mog.

Shimazaki's Mog. He's quite embarrassed by his lack of drawing skills.

When they show what Mog is supposed to look like, Shimazaki says he couldn't draw him even he were looking at this sample.

To have a shot at winning one of the drawings, fans need to tweet one of their favorite memories from Mobius FF, using the hashtag #mebiusFF_2shuunen.

This concludes Shimazaki's segment.

They then take a ten minute break before the last segment featuring the other two guests, director Motomu Toriyama and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima.

The last segment is moderated by Kitase.

Nojima's slide lists that he's from Hokkaido, that he likes Heavy Metal (Iron Maiden etc., dreams of being a guitar hero) and a selection of games he worked on:

Jake Hunter series, script (1988~)

Bahamut Lagoon, director (1996)

FFVII, story, event planner (1997)

FFVIII, scenario (1999)

Kingdom hearts, scenario (2002)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl, part of the scenario (2008)

When Kitase asks Nojima to introduce himself, he comments the slide as follows: During the bubble economy he managed to slip into Data East and wrote the lines for a caddie in a golf game. People liked his work on that game and entrusted him with writing for the Jake Hunter series. And that's basically the pattern that continued throughout his career. Around 10 years later he aplied for a job at Square and then after another 10 years at Square he quit and has since then written for different games among them Smash Bros. He enjoys being free lance now.

Toriyama's slide lists that he's from Shizuoka and a huge fan of the Otoko wa tsurai yo movie series. His selection of games list:

Bahamut Lagoon, story event planner (1996)

FFVII, event planner (1997)

FFX, event director (2001)*

FFX-2, director (2003)

FFXII Revenant Wings, director (2007)

FFXIII, director (2009)*

[*Some years are wrong on the original slide. I corrected them.]

He explains that he first got a job at Square and started out working with Nojima on Bahamut Lagoon. Then he worked with Kitase and Nojima on FF starting with VII. With X, he started doing directing work. On DS he directed Revenant Wings and then FFXIII. He's been directing Mobius alongside Hamaguchi from the start.

Kitase points out that including the year they spent developing and preparing before they launched that is three years they have been working on Mobius. He then asks about Toriyama being a fan of Otoko wa tsurai yo. He says when he applied at Square, he told Sakaguchi that he wants to turn FF into a series that has over 40 installments like that movie series.

Kitase keeps asking about him being a fan of that series. Apparently, during his college days Toriyama participated on a quiz show on TV where fans can win by being knowledgable about their fandom. Toriyama aced the show.

Since the two of them are the core of development of Mobius, Kitase wants to do a Q&A.

Q: How did the story of Mobius FF come into being? (What process and ideas lead to its development?)

Toriyama says that around the time they started working on Mobius, smartphone games were becoming increasingly popular. Toriyama wanted to do a proper FF on smartphones, with the same quality as on consoles. That's when he started consulting Nojima about the story, roughly 3 years ago.

Nojima says it originally was supposed to be a small scale story. But when he wrote a plot of collecting items to become the warrior of light, Toriyama said, are you kidding me? So it gradually went up in scale and Nojima was wondering how far Toriyama would take it. And to his surprise, they really did go through with the project.

Kitase nods saying that at the time it certainly was their goal to go big with a smartphone game, and they communicated it like that to the press but of course it was still up in the air how it would materialize in the end.

Nojima adds that when the project started he and Toriyama hadn't met in like 10 years. Toriyama nods, saying they probably hadn't met since they originally started working on the story for XIII.

Q: What meaning does the term möbius encompass for the game?

Toriyama says it literally refers to the game being endless. The numbered installments he had worked on were establishing a connection to the player each time a new one released but this one should be an ongoing story, with monthly, never ceasing updates. For that reason, they called it Mobius.

Nojima says he still is used to writing stories with a proper ending. The first sequel he wrote was probably X-2 and Mobius is the first time since then he worked on a series. So he was nervous if he could actually turn the story into a proper möbius string.

Kitase takes him up on that saying so it might not turn out like the title. Shimazaki also felt anxious about what might happen to Wol. Toriyama nods, saying that the final chapter of the warrior of light story arc is coming up.

Q: What is the process you create the story for Mobius FF?

Toriyama says he delivers his ideas of what the story should be like to Nojima. He never writes it the way it was originally intended but what he comes up with is always interesting.

Nojima says at the time there were plenty of RPGs for smartphones and when he saw the ads for them on TV, they all said they were grand epics. His reaction was, what are they even talking about? He wanted to do something different.

Toriyama elaborates that they went for something more mature. People in their 30ies or 40ies, if they game they usually do it on smart devices. So they went for that adult audience. But then they wondered, what would be a suitable story for those adult players.

Nojima says, he feels they strayed far from the original question. As Kitase insists, he explains he wanted to pass the ball into other directions. He and Toriyama meet, like once every two weeks. And he made multiple suggestions on those occasions. Toriyama nods saying that he and Daisuke Watanabe, a scenario writer at Squenix, met with Nojima every two weeks.

Kitase wants to know about those changes Nojima suggested. What was something he wanted to get rid of? Nojima contemplates the question, then says he didn't like that their weren't any female characters.

Toriyama admits in the beginning there was only Wol, before they came up with Echo and Meia. About Echo's first appearance, they used the scene as Nojima had written it and it was Kitase who asked, will we be okay with female character like that?

Hamaguchi chimes in and says, they did show the game to target groups before release and those also felt there was a lack of female characters, back when they only had Wol.

Q: Why are Echo's hands always hidden?

Toriyama says there wasn't any special reason for that from their side. It was the character designer Itahana who wanted to give Echo some mysterious feature. Echo tends to wear pretty revealing outfits but her hands, they never show. Itahana insisted on that but Toriyama tends to forget about it. In fact, for one of the anniversary cards they showed earlier on the broadcast, the illustrator did originally draw her hands. When they noticed, they had to ask him to change it.

Q: What kind of life does Wol lead on his journey? (Does he sleep outside? Does he eat with Echo? Does Echo even eat?)

Nojima says, they did consider showing Wol eat. But then there would have been other things they'd need to show as well. They didn't want to open that can of worms.

Toriyama says, although the graphics look so real, there still is a lot left to players' imagination. If you tap a location, Wol automatically starts walking there. So he wanted to come up with interesting location names that would draw up feelings, like "this place sounds scary". He thought the details would be best left to the player's imagination as well.

Kitase interprets that so in between locations at some time Wol is eating. Hamaguchi jokes, he could be gobbling up some food in between battles.

Q: Are there any episodes they ended up not using?

Toriyama says it might be surprising but there actually aren't any. He says that that's due to them having to release new content every month so they couldn't afford not to use some of what they came up with. They really felt the pressure and had to use all ideas they had.

Kitase comments that it's certainly different from their other projects. Even if you stock up on ideas, you run out of that stock quite fast. Hamaguchi nods, saying they spent half a year of preparing content, intending to add more on the way but they ran out of stock much too soon.

Nojima says, once everyone finished their drafts, those all came to his place for rewrites and he had to spend more and more time on Mobius to keep up. For that reason he also didn't have to change any lines that usually would be subject to editing, if he didn't want to change them.

Hamaguchi says, before launch many voices on the team wanted to delay the launch to have more time for preparation.

Q: For collaborations like the FFVII one, characters like Cloud make appearances. When you write stories that are entangled in past work, what do you pay special attention to?

Nojima says that during the collaboration Cloud really overused his signature line "not interested". It was his job to cut down on the number of times of him saying that. He feels such a line should be used just once, for best effect.

Toriyama says that since their team consists of some of the same staff that also worked on VII and XIII, they could write those as side story extensions of their previous work. As for Cloud, they wanted him to be the Cloud from early in the game when they were blowing up Mako reactors, as opposed to the Cloud from after the end of FFVII that appeared in the sequels.

He adds that they wanted to ensure that the new stories would be faithful to the originals as not to betray the expectations of the fans.

Kitase comments that the FFVII collaboration went on for quite a while. Hamaguchi explains that it was because VII is so popular. Toriyama says they had to do ending staff roll for the VII collaboration or it might never have ended.

A: Mushroom Hills or Bamboo Villages, which do you like better?

Kitase explains that they asked Meia's actress Mao this very same question during the TGS2016 special broadcast.

Nojima says since he doesn't like snacks he doesn't have any preference. He probably hasn't even eaten either of them. If he has he probably didn't pay attention to what shape they had.

Toriyama says he also doesn't have a strong preference for either of those two. But he mentions a different kind of snack called Curl that will be discontinued soon. He quite liked those as they were popular among his generation. He'd like to do a collaboration with them before they're discontinued.

Q: Why did you want to work in the games industry?

Toriyama says he wanted to do a long running series like Otoko wa tsurai yo as a story game format. Square was a big game company specializing in RPGs at the time so he applied for a job there.

Nojima was told by his parents to go find a job. It was the days of the bubble economy and you could easily make 10000 yen a day by doing a part time job. There were a lot of part time jobs for boys at the time. He had a lot of fun doing part time but his parents nagged him to get a job already and a friend of his had just started a job at Data East. So he tried out for a job there.

Kitase asks, and then you just kept with it? Nojima says he's surprised himself that he kept with games so long. Upon question, Nojima says one of the part time jobs he liked was at a Namco arcade.

Kitase also asks Hamaguchi the same question. He says he was really impressed by FFVI back in the day, how you could tell a touching story within the game medium. That made him want to enter the game industry. And he's glad he could work alongside Kitase who directed FFVI.

Then Nojima asks Kitase. Kitase says after he quit the job he had before Square because it was too stressful he hadn't really done anything for half a year until he saw an application ad by Square in Famitsu while browsing it in a book store. His previous work wasn't game related but he did want to work in games for the story telling aspect. When he entered Square Final Fantasy still was at its 3rd installment.

Q: In your years creating FF, what memories and anecdotes of stressful periods come to mind?

Nojima asks if it's okay to not hold back on this one. Kitase says to feel free to criticize him, if he wants to. Nojima says he has no reason to do that. But during the many years working on FF there was really a lot of stress involved. For example, you'd never know when you should come in for work. He worked flextime and would show up at 1 p.m. but no one else would be there yet. Toriyama says it's different now. Nojima says as he comes to think of it, there were too many bad episodes to count. Like when the commercials started airing but the game still wasn't finished yet. The production style was different then, not as properly organized as it is today.

For Toriyama, waiting is the hardest. He had to wait 2~3 hours for this broadcast as well but one time he had to fly to the US for a Microsoft presentation, to show off FFXIII. There was a Beatles themed game so Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney were there as well. The Japanese devs and the Western ones all had to attend from early in the morning and were shut in a small room for hours, like half a day. That was the worst time for him.

Q: As the Warrior of Light story arc of Mobius FF approaches its climax, can you tell us about what will happen after? (Within what you can tell currently.)

Nojima comments it's not easy to judge what can and what cannot be said at this point.

Toriyama says the final chapter was finished at last and they started recording the dialog this week. The chapter will conclude the first section of the overall story, which dealt with the warrior of light. Of course the story will continue and they already started work on the second section.

Kitase notes, so even though te warrior of light part is concluded, that doesn't mean the story ends. He asks what Toriyama can tell them about what will happen in the next section.

Toriyama says that the warrior of light section will be followed by... he pauses and looks at Nojima. He continues: followed by the warrior of ruin, the warrior of destruction? He looks at Nojima for confirmation. Then he says that Nojima and he have worked out the plot for the next section together.

Nojima comments he managed to pass the ball into quite a different direction with this one.

Toriyama continues and says Warrior of Ruin will be the subtitle of this next section. He expresses embarrassment about how to communicate this to players. So far you were the warriors of light (he covers his mouth as if to conceal the following words) but starting next year you will be the warriors of ruin.

Kitase mentions new characters for the new chapter. Toriyama presents artworks for two new characters.

All Nojima can say at this point is that he is strong. Toriyama points out that his name is written on this artwork as well. He's called Graf. The name has a certain meaning but they won't reveal it at this point.

They have one more:

It's the new female protagonist Sofi. Wol will still be in this one but Sofi is another playable character. Kitase comments she looks like an active/lively character. Nojima says she somehow turned out like that. He adds that he suggested this character right when they started with the new section and was very detemermined to include her.

Kitase asks when the new section will start. Toriyama says the 8th chapter will finish in June or July. They will then need some more time to prepare the next section. It should be fall or winter until it releases. There might be more collaboration(s) in the meantime.

Sanshi returns and thanks the guests for their time. They have the usual after broadcast login present:

Former project assistant and host Asuna is back to congratulate them on their 2 year anniversary. She brought a flower arranged Mog made by her older brother:

#mobius ff #mobius final fantasy

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