Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles' Classic mode, which will allow players to experience the original game released back in 1997 on the first PlayStation, has been built from scratch, as the original source code has been lost, but this allowed the development team to add content that was cut from the original release.
In a new post shared on the Official PlayStation Blog, the game's director Kazutoyo Maehiro confirmed once again that the Classic mode, which attempts to recreate the original as faithfully as possible, has been created from scratch, as the original master data and source code have been lost. As Maehiro-san highlighted, back in the day, developers didn't have effective resource management tools as they do today, and games were essentially developed by overwriting the previous code every time a bug was fixed or a language option was added.
As the Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Classic mode is meant to provide an experience faithful to the original, the development team also had the option of emulating the original, but doing so would have prevented them from making granular improvements. Eventually, it was decided that the best option would be to rebuild the original game from scratch. This choice paid off in a big way, as recreating the original experience gave the team a solid foundation upon which to create the Enhanced version, and add features that were cut from the original, such as character dialogues playing during battles under certain conditions that will help flesh out story character after they have joined Ramza's party. This is, in my opinion, a great addition, as it was sad to see this characters slide in the background and essentially become like generic units.
Although Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles will include some new features not seen in the original, it may not be the definitive edition some were waiting for, as tt won't feature the additional content seen in the War of the Lions PSP release, upon which the mobile release is based. The decision to not include this extra content was made because the remaster's main goal was to be as faithful to the original as possible.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles launches on September 30th on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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