The Fathers of Final Fantasy Weigh in on GenAI

The Fathers of Final Fantasy Weigh in on GenAI

A little moment of cloud (computing) strife.

Yesterday, a few people who keep an eye on Japan’s game development community on Twitter spotted an interesting exchange between two legendary creators, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Akitoshi Kawazu. Both worked on the original Final Fantasy and helped define console RPGs in the 1980s and ’90s. Sakaguchi directed the first Final Fantasy, and Kawazu stepped in and headed up the sequel... a game so unorthodox that publisher Square decided to create an entirely new series (SaGa) in order to let Kawazu’s wild ideas run free, while Sakaguchi helmed Final Fantasy through its glory days.

Sakaguchi spotted a fan-made trailer that recreated the opening of Final Fantasy VI (considered by some to be Sakaguchi’s magnum opus). Impressed, Sakaguchi shared it with his followers, only for Kawazu to step in and chide his former collaborator for being taken in by a generative AI mock-up. Fans love Final Fantasy VI and it’s ripe for a remake, he noted, but the implied point here was that a remake would be better handled by actual humans.

As humans who make video games, we’re going to side with Kawazu on this one. ANd it seems we’re not alone: the general consensus about this exchange on forums and social media boiled down to “another common Kawazu win.” It makes sense. Humans can barely understand the abstract complexity SaGa; an AI could never manage it.

But seriously, Sakaguchi has always been drawn toward technological innovation—remember how hard Final Fantasy VII hit back in the day? Remember Last Flight of the Osiris? So you can understand his fascination with AI. Kawazu, on the other hand, comes from a tabletop gaming background as a fan of Avalon Hill games, so the human element has always been of essence to his work. His work always has an element of the unpredictable, of the new and surprising. Since GenAI can only copy what’s come before, you can certainly understand what little use Kawazu has for it.

Anyway, everyone who’s played Final Fantasy II will appreciate the symbolic appropriateness of Kawazu clobbering his own party member to level up. And hey—Kawazu is the only team member from the original Final Fantasy development staff still at Square Enix, where he holds a ton of sway. Maybe we’ll see a Final Fantasy VI Rebirth once they finish remaking VII.