Tetsuya Nomura On Redesigning Characters For Dissidia Final Fantasy

With the release of the latest Dissidia Final Fantasy trailer, Kingdom Hearts director and zipper enthusiast, Tetsuya Nomura sat down to talk about the newest addition to the character roster.

“With the two PSP games, I felt I’d ‘done all there is to do’ and took the stance that it was ‘completed,’ so that if there were to be a new Dissidia Final Fantasy , it would be going in a new direction.” Nomura said to Weekly Famitsu when asked about the move to the arcade for the series. “Mr. [Ichiro] Hazama, the producer, approached me this time with the idea for an arcade version, so I thought this would allow for a new direction and gave the go ahead.”

With a new game come new characters. One of the new additions to the character roster in the new game is Ramza Beoulve, from Final Fantasy Tactics. As with all the characters in the game, Ramza went through a Nomura redesign for Dissidia — something that proved quite a headache for the character, as traditionally, the character in Final Fanasy Tactics was designed without a nose. “Ramza is a very popular character, and the image from Mr. [Akihiko] Yoshida are very memorable, so I mulled over it for quite a while before I began drawing.” Nomura noted. “I really pondered over that fact, but in order to preserve the uniformity with the other characters, I gave him a nose.”

Nomura would not offer specific details on other new characters joining the game, other than that he has received orders for a few from other spinoff Final Fantasy games. “Personally, I’m pushing for Minwu [from Final Fantasy II] from among the older numbered games.” Nomura said with a laugh. Nomura also revealed that there would be new different gods to take the place of Cosmos and Chaos.

As for the elephant in the room, i.e. new Kingdom Hearts III info, Nomura took the Hideo Kojima tactic and promised that announcements were coming. Specifically at the scheduled fan event at the upcoming D23 Expo Japan 2015.

Dissidia Final Fantasy is scheduled to hit arcades in Japan in late 2015. More more, check out Weekly Famitsu.