From Event Planner to Director: Kazutoyo Maehiro Returns to Lead Final Fantasy Tactics Remake Nearly 30 Years Later
Square Enix veteran Kazutoyo Maehiro is directing Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, a top-down remake of the 1997 PlayStation classic he worked on nearly 30 years ago. Maehiro moved from being an event planner on the original to leading the remake, and the team rebuilt the game from the ground up while adding modern conveniences and multiple difficulty options.
Starting from scratch
Maehiro and his team did not rely on emulation or a single preserved source code. Instead, they replayed the PlayStation and PlayStation Portable releases and recreated the game through careful analysis. This approach was more time-consuming, but it allowed the team to make changes that wouldn’t have been possible with simple emulation.
Consequently, the remake adds features aimed at modern players. For example, the team implemented an auto-save feature in Classic mode. They also brought over the State of the Realm codex system and the Final Fantasy XVI-style user interface to make navigation and story recall easier.
Meeting the challenge
To broaden accessibility, the remake includes three difficulty settings: *Squire*, *Knight*, and *Tactician* (from easiest to hardest). The team adjusted early battles to help new players get into the game, and Maehiro says the middle Knight setting is slightly easier than the original 1997 release.
At the same time, the top difficulty — Tactician — is designed for veterans who want a tougher challenge. In short, the remake aims to welcome newcomers while still respecting players who expect punishing tactical fights.
A timeless tale
The remake preserves the original game’s politically charged story about class, power, and war. The original writer and director Yasumi Matsuno has spoken about how real-world social issues influenced the narrative, and Maehiro notes the story still resonates today.
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Mentioning his personal connection, Maehiro said, I was a very, very new game designer at the time. I was really just having to focus on making sure I’m doing each of the tasks at hand. Now that I’m revisiting this game 30 years later as the director, when I think back to myself back then, there is a feeling that I don’t want to lose in terms of the determination that person had. And I also felt that if this project would be a failure, that would be a huge disrespect to the original development team that I was part of. So in that sense, I did feel a large pressure about it. That said, I was very, very blessed and fortunate to be able to work with such a wonderful team for this project as well. I do feel that the final product we’re putting out is very polished and refined. I’m very, very proud of it — almost on the same level of pride that I feel having been involved with the original.
Back to Ivalice
Final Fantasy Tactics shares the Ivalice setting with other Square Enix titles like Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story, and a raid in Final Fantasy XIV’s Stormblood expansion. Maehiro called returning to Ivalice a kind of homecoming and said the world still feels deep and broad.
Looking forward, Maehiro expressed a personal hope to revisit other Ivalice projects. As he put it, So I, myself, definitely do have a hope of wanting to explore expanding the world of Ivalice. But at this time, unfortunately, that’s purely personal.
