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| Final Fantasy X | |
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 North American cover art featuring the protagonist Tidus | |
| Developer(s) | Square Product Development Division 1 |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Director(s) | Yoshinori Kitase |
| Producer(s) | Yoshinori Kitase |
| Designer(s) |
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| Programmer(s) |
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| Artist(s) |
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| Writer(s) | |
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| Series | Final Fantasy |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2 |
| Release | International
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| Genre(s) | Role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Final Fantasy X[a] is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth main entry in the Final Fantasy series. Originally released in 2001 for PlayStation 2, the game was re-released as Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2013, for PlayStation 4 in 2015, Windows in 2016, and for Nintendo Switch and Xbox One in 2019. The game marks the Final Fantasy series transition from entirely pre-rendered backdrops to fully three-dimensional areas (though some areas were still pre-rendered), and is also the first in the series to feature voice acting. Final Fantasy X replaces the Active Time Battle (ATB) system with the "Conditional Turn-Based Battle" (CTB) system, and uses a new leveling system called the "Sphere Grid".
Set in the fantasy world of Spira, a setting influenced by the South Pacific, Thailand and Japan,[2] the game's story revolves around a group of adventurers and their quest to defeat a rampaging monster known as Sin. The player character is Tidus, a star athlete in the fictional sport of blitzball, who finds himself in Spira after Sin attacked his home city of Zanarkand. Shortly after arriving to Spira, Tidus becomes a guardian to summoner Yuna to destroy Sin upon learning its true identity is that of his missing father, Jecht.
Development of Final Fantasy X began in 1999, with a budget of more than $32.3 million ($59.1 million in 2023 dollars) and a team of more than 100 people. The game was the first in the main series not entirely scored by Nobuo Uematsu; Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano were signed as Uematsu's fellow composers. Final Fantasy X was both a critical and commercial success, shipping over 8.5 million units worldwide on PlayStation 2. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. It was followed by Final Fantasy X-2 in March 2003, making it the first Final Fantasy game to have a direct game sequel. As of September 2021, the Final Fantasy X series had sold over 20.8 million units worldwide,[3] and at the end of March 2022 had surpassed 21.1 million.[4]
Gameplay[edit]
Like previous games in the series, Final Fantasy X is presented in a third-person perspective, with players directly navigating the main character, Tidus, around the world to interact with objects and people. Unlike previous games, however, the world and town maps have been fully integrated, with terrain outside of cities rendered to scale. As Tidus explores the world, he randomly encounters enemies. When an enemy is encountered, the environment switches to a turn-based battle area where characters and enemies await their turn to attack.[5]
The gameplay of Final Fantasy X differs from that of previous Final Fantasy games in its lack of a top-down perspective world map. Earlier games featured a miniature representation of the expansive areas between towns and other distinct locations, used for long-distance traveling. In the game, almost all the locations are essentially continuous and never fade out to a world map. Regional connections are mostly linear, forming a single path through the game's locations, though an airship becomes available late in the game, giving the player the ability to navigate Spira faster. Like previous games in the series, Final Fantasy X features numerous minigames, including the underwater sport blitzball.[6]
Combat[edit]
Final Fantasy X introduces the Conditional Turn-Based Battle (CTB) system in place of the series' traditional Active Time Battle (ATB) system first used in Final Fantasy IV. Whereas the ATB concept features real-time elements, the CTB system is a turn-based format that pauses the battle during each of the player's turns. Thus, the CTB design allows the player to select an action without time pressure.[7] A graphical timeline along the upper-right side of the screen details who will be receiving turns next, and how various actions taken will affect the subsequent order of turns. The ordering of turns can be affected by a number of spells, items, and abilities that inflict status effects upon the controlled characters or the enemies.[8] The player can control up to three characters in battle, though a swapping system allows the player to replace them with a character outside the active party at any time. "Limit Breaks", highly damaging special attacks, reappear in Final Fantasy X as "Overdrives". In this incarnation of the feature, most of the techniques are interactive, requiring button inputs to increase their effectiveness. While initially the Overdrives can be used when the character receives a significant amount of damage, the player is able to modify the requirements to unlock them.[9]
Final Fantasy X overhauled the summoning system employed in previous games of the series. Whereas in previous titles a summoned creature would arrive, perform one action, and then depart, the "Aeons" in X arrive and replace the battle party, fighting in their place until either the aeon wins the battle, is defeated itself, or is dismissed by the player. Aeons have their own statistics, commands, special attacks, spells, and Overdrives. The player acquires five aeons over the course of the game through the completion of Cloister of Trials puzzles; three additional aeons can be obtained by completing various side-quests.[6]
Sphere Grid[edit]
As with previous titles in the series, players can develop and improve their characters by defeating enemies and acquiring items, though the traditional experience point system is replaced by a new system called the "Sphere Grid". Instead of characters gaining pre-determined statistic bonuses for their attributes after leveling up, each character gains "Sphere Levels" after collecting enough Ability Points (AP). Sphere Levels allow players to move around the Sphere Grid, a pre-determined grid of interconnected nodes consisting of various statistic and ability bonuses. "Spheres" are applied to these nodes, unlocking its function for the selected character.[7]
The Sphere Grid system allows players to fully customize characters in contrast to their intended battle roles, such as turning the White Mage-roled Yuna into a physical powerhouse and the swordsman Auron into a healer. The International and PAL versions of the game include an optional "Expert" version of the Sphere Grid; in these versions, all of the characters start in the middle of the grid and may follow whichever path the player chooses. As a trade-off, the Expert grid has fewer nodes in total, thus decreasing the total statistic upgrades available during the game.[10]
Blitzball[edit]
Blitzball is a minigame that requires strategy and tactics. The underwater sport is played in a large, hovering sphere of water surrounded by a larger audience of onlookers.[8] The player controls one character at a time as they swim through the sphere performing passes, tackles, and attempts to score. The gameplay is similar to that of the main game in the way that the controlled character moves through the area until they encounter an enemy. In this case, the enemy is a member of the opposing team. Status effects are also implemented in the minigame as each player can learn techniques that are equivalent to abilities in the main game.[11]
Blitzball is introduced in the beginning of the game during one of the early cinematic sequences in which Tidus, the main character who is described as a star blitzball player, is part of an intense game. It is the only minigame that plays a role in the overall plot line as it is a main part of Tidus's character, and is in the first scene where the game's main antagonist, Sin is shown.[8] Unlike with the other minigames, playing blitzball is mandatory near the beginning of the game, but it is later optional.[11]
Plot[edit]
Setting and characters[edit]
Final Fantasy X is set in the fictional world of Spira, consisting of one large landmass divided into three subcontinents, surrounded by small tropical islands. It features diverse climates, ranging from the tropical Besaid and Kilika islands, to the temperate Mi'ihen region, to the frigid Macalania and Mt. Gagazet areas. Spira is very different from the mainly European-style worlds found in previous Final Fantasy games, being much more closely modeled on Southeast Asia, most notably with respect to vegetation, topography, architecture, and names.[2]
Spira features a variety of races, though predominantly populated by humans. Among them are the Al Bhed, a technologically advanced but disenfranchised sub-group of humans with distinctive green eyes and unique language.[12][13] The Guado, which are less human in appearance, with elongated fingers and other arboreal features. Still less human are the lion-like Ronso and the frog-like Hypello. A subset of Spira's sentient races are the "unsent", the strong-willed spirits of the dead that remain in corporeal form. In Spira, the dead who are not sent to the Farplane by a summoner come to envy the living and transform into "fiends", the monsters that are encountered throughout the game;[14] however, unsent with strong attachments to the world of the living may retain their human form. Other fauna in Spira, aside from those drawn from real animals, such as cats, dogs, birds, and butterflies, include the gigantic, amphibious shoopufs (which are similar to elephants); and the emu-like chocobo, which appears in most Final Fantasy games.
There are seven main playable characters in Final Fantasy X, starting with Tidus (James Arnold Taylor/Masakazu Morita), a cheerful young teenager and a star blitzball player from Zanarkand, who seeks a way home after an encounter with Sin transported him to Spira.[12] To do so, he joins Yuna (Hedy Burress/Mayuko Aoki), a summoner on a journey to obtain the Final Aeon and defeat the enormous whale-like "Sin".[15] Journeying with them are: Kimahri Ronso (John DiMaggio/Katsumi Chō), a young warrior of the Ronso tribe who watched over Yuna during her childhood;[16] Wakka (also DiMaggio/Kazuya Nakai), a blitzball player whose younger brother was killed by Sin;[17][18] and Lulu (Paula Tiso/Rio Natsuki), a stoic black mage close to Yuna and Wakka.[15] During the journey, they are joined by Auron (Matt McKenzie/Hideo Ishikawa), a former warrior monk, who worked with both Tidus' and Yuna's fathers to defeat Sin 10 years prior;[19] and Rikku (Tara Strong/Marika Matsumoto), Yuna's cousin, a perky Al Bhed girl and the first friendly person Tidus meets upon arriving in Spira.[12]
Story[edit]
Tidus waits with his allies outside the ruins of an ancient city. He narrates the events that led to the present, spanning most of the game's storyline.[20] It begins in his home city, the high-tech metropolis of Zanarkand, where he is a renowned blitzball player and son of the famous blitzball star Jecht, an abusive father who disappeared 10 years prior.[21] During a blitzball tournament, the city is attacked by an immense creature that Auron, a man not originally from Zanarkand, calls "Sin".[22] Sin destroys Zanarkand and takes Tidus and Auron to the world of Spira.[12] Upon arriving in Spira, Tidus is rescued by Al Bhed salvagers, with the young Rikku explaining that Sin destroyed Zanarkand 1,000 years ago.[23] After Sin attacks again, Tidus is separated from the divers and drifts to the tropical island of Besaid, where he meets Wakka, captain of the local blitzball team.[17] Wakka introduces Tidus to Yuna, a young summoner about to go on a pilgrimage to obtain the Final Aeon and defeat Sin[15][24] with her guardians Lulu, a mage of black magic, and Kimahri, a member of the Ronso tribe. The party travels across Spira to gather aeons, defending against attacks by Sin and its "offspring" called Sinspawn.[25] Tidus meets Auron again, who convinces Tidus to become Yuna's guardian upon revealing that Jecht is Sin's true identity.[26] Ten years ago, Auron and Jecht bodyguarded Yuna's late father Braska to defeat Sin but Jecht became a new Sin.[19] As Yuna's party continues their pilgrimage, Tidus reunites with Rikku, who the party learns is Yuna's cousin.[27]
When the party arrives in the city of Guadosalam, the leader of the Guado and major clergy member Seymour Guado, proposes to Yuna, saying that it will ease Spira's sorrow.[28] At Macalania Temple, the group discovers a message from the spirit of Seymour's father, Lord Jyscal; he declares that he was killed by his own son, who now aims to destroy Spira.[29] The group reunites with Yuna and kills Seymour in battle;[30] soon afterward, Sin attacks, separating Yuna and sending the others to the arid Bikanel Island.[31] While searching for Yuna at the island's Al Bhed settlement,[31] Tidus has an emotional breakdown when he learns that summoners die after summoning the Final Aeon, leading to his desire to find a way to defeat Sin while keeping Yuna alive.[32][33] The group finds Yuna in Bevelle, the center of the clergy’s power, where she is being forced to marry the unsent Seymour.[34][35] They crash the wedding, after which Seymour reveals his plan to become Sin with Yuna's help.[34] The party defeats him a second time and escapes with Yuna.[36] The group heads toward the ruins of Zanarkand, seen in the introduction of the game.[20][24][37]
Shortly before arriving, Tidus learns that he, Jecht, and the Zanarkand they hail from are summoned entities akin to aeons based on the original Zanarkand and its people.[38] Long ago, the original Zanarkand battled Bevelle in a machina war, in which the former was defeated.[39] Zanarkand's survivors became "fayth" so that they could use their memories of Zanarkand to create a new city in their image, removed from the reality of Spira.[39][40] Once they reach Zanarkand, Yunalesca—the first summoner to defeat Sin and unsent ever since[41]—tells the group that the Final Aeon is created from the fayth of one close to the summoner. After defeating Sin, the Final Aeon kills the summoner and transforms into a new Sin, which has caused its cycle of rebirth to continue.[42] The group decides against using the Final Aeon, due to the futile sacrifices it carries and the fact that Sin would still be reborn.[43] Yunalesca tries to kill Tidus' group, but she is defeated and vanishes, ending hope of ever attaining the Final Aeon.[44]
After the fight, the group learns that Yu Yevon — the deity of the Yevon religion who was a summoner from Zanarkand before losing his humanity and mind — is behind Sin's cycle of rebirth.[45] This leads the group to infiltrate Sin's body in order to find Yu Yevon. Inside Sin, the party finds the unsent Seymour, who had been absorbed by Sin and intends to control it from within. Yuna defeats him for the final time before sending him to the Farplane.[46] Shortly after, the group reaches the core of Sin and finds Jecht's imprisoned spirit.[47] Tidus and Jecht come to terms with the latter's abuse. Jecht transforms into his Final Aeon form, asking the party to defeat him and end the cycle; they do so. With Sin's host defeated, Yuna summons and the group defeats each aeon after Yu Yevon possesses each one until finally they vanquish Yu Yevon himself.[48]
Sin's cycle of rebirth ends when Yuna sends Sin and the Aeons to the farplane, and the spirits of Spira's fayth are freed from their imprisonment. Auron, who had been revealed to be unsent, is sent to the Farplane.[49][50] Dream Zanarkand and Tidus disappear, now that the freed fayth stopped the summoning.[51] Afterward, in a speech to the citizens of Spira, Yuna resolves to help rebuild their world now that it is free of Sin.[52] In a post-credits scene, Tidus awakens under water and swims towards the ocean surface.
Development[edit]
Final Fantasy X's development began in 1999, costing approximately ¥4 billion (approximately $32.3 million, or $59.1 million in 2023 dollars)[53] with a crew of over 100 people, most of whom worked on previous games in the series. Executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated that although he had concerns about the transition from 2D to 3D backgrounds, the voice acting, and the transition to real-time story-telling, the success of the Final Fantasy series can be attributed to constantly challenging the development team to try new things.[2] Producer Yoshinori Kitase was also the chief director of Final Fantasy X, while the direction of events, maps and battles was split up between Motomu Toriyama, Takayoshi Nakazato and Toshiro Tsuchida, respectively.[54][55][56][57] The development of the script for the game took three to four months, with the same amount of time dedicated to the voice recording afterwards.[58] Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima collaborated with Daisuke Watanabe, Toriyama and Kitase on writing the scenario for Final Fantasy X.[56][58] Nojima was particularly concerned with establishing a connection in the relationship between player and main character. Thus, he penned the story such that the player's progress through the world and growing knowledge about it is reflected in Tidus' own understanding and narration.[59]
According to the Square Enix companion book Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume III, 17 SEVEN TEEN was a temporary title early in Final Fantasy X's production.[60] 17 SEVEN TEEN's story differed from the final version: the protagonist, who looked similar to Tidus,[61] traveled the world seeking a cure for a pandemic that killed people when they reached the age of seventeen. This inevitable death motif was later carried over to Yuna's fate as a summoner.
Influences[edit]
Character designer Tetsuya Nomura has identified the South Pacific, Thailand and Japan as major influences on the cultural and geographic design of Spira, particularly concerning the geographic location of the southern Besaid and Kilika islands. He has also said that Spira deviates from the worlds of past Final Fantasy games in the level of detail incorporated, something he has expressed to have made a conscious effort to maintain during the design process.[62] Kitase felt that if the setting went back to a medieval European fantasy, it would not seem to help the development team advance. While he was thinking of different world environments, Nojima suggested a fantasy world that incorporated Asian elements.[2]
Sub-character chief designer Fumi Nakashima's focus was to ensure that characters from different regions and cultures bore distinctive characteristics in their clothing styles, so that they could be quickly and easily identified as members of their respective sub-groups. For example, she has said that the masks and goggles of the Al Bhed give the group a "strange and eccentric" appearance, while the attire of the Ronso lend to them being able to easily engage in battle.[2] Tidus was originally envisioned to be a plumber as to connect to the underwater elements used in the game, according to Nojima, but they later made him into a blitzball athlete, helping to distinguish his character from prior Final Fantasy protagonists; Tidus' final outfit still incorporated elements of the original plumber outfit they had designed for him.[63]
Tidus' relationship with his father Jecht was based on "stories throughout the ages, such as the ancient Greek legends". This would eventually reveal the key of Sin's weakness and eventual defeat.[64] Auron was intended to be silent throughout the game but became a voiced character as they developed out the Guardian storyline between Tidus and Yuna.[63] Although Final Fantasy X was originally centered on the relationship between Tidus and Yuna, the addition of Jecht's character and his feud with his son was added later in the making of the game to provide more focus on how the father and son produce a bigger impact in Spira's history rather than the romantic couple. Kitase found the story between Tidus and Jecht to be more moving than the story between Tidus and Yuna.[65]
Design[edit]
Final Fantasy X features innovations in the rendering of characters' facial expressions, achieved through motion capture and skeletal animation technology.[59][62] This technology allowed animators to create realistic lip movements, which were then programmed to match the speech of the game's voice actors.
The cutscene of Tidus and Yuna kissing was developed by Visual Works, a subsidiary of Square Enix. Many of the animators were not experienced with romance scenes - Visual Works director Kazuyuki Ikumori said that the animators sought feedback from younger staff at Square Enix, as well as female members of staff. The scene was remade multiple times after receiving responses that earlier drafts were "unnatural" and "not believable".[66]
Nojima has revealed that the inclusion of voice acting enabled him to express emotion more powerfully than before, and he was therefore able to keep the storyline simple. He also said that the presence of voice actors led him to make various changes to the script, in order to match the voice actors' personalities with the characters they were portraying.[67] The inclusion of voice, however, led to difficulties. With the game's cutscenes already programmed around the Japanese voice work, the English localization team faced the difficulty of establishing English-oriented dialogue and the obstacle of incorporating this modified wording with the rhythm and timing of the characters' lip movements. Localization specialist Alexander O. Smith noted that they had to keep the localized sound file within the duration of the original Japanese, as longer files would cause the game to crash.[68] He described the process of fitting natural-sounding English speech into the game as "something akin to writing four or five movies' worth of dialogue entirely in haiku form [and] of course the actors had to act, and act well, within those restraints".[69]
The game was initially going to feature online elements, offered through Square's PlayOnline service. The features were dropped during production, and online gaming would not become part of the series until Final Fantasy XI.[70][71] Map director Nakazato wanted to implement a world map concept with a more realistic approach than that of the traditional Final Fantasy game, in line with the realism of the game's 3D backgrounds, as opposed to pre-rendered backgrounds.[72] Battle art director Shintaro Takai has explained that it was his intention that battles in Final Fantasy X come across as a natural part of the story and not an independent element.[73] Features would have included wandering enemies visible on the field map, seamless transitions into battles, and the option for players to move around the landscape during enemy encounters.[69] However, hardware limitations resulted in these ideas not being used. Instead, a compromise was made, whereby some transitions from the field map to the battle map were made relatively seamless with the implementation of a motion blur effect that would happen at the end of an event scene.[59] The desire for seamless transitions also led to the implementation of the new summoning system seen in the game.[73]
As a player of the games in the Final Fantasy series, battle director Tsuchida wanted to recreate elements he found interesting or entertaining, which eventually led to the removal of the Active Time Battle system, and instead, incorporated the strategy-focused Conditional Turn-Based Battle system.[73] Kitase has explained that the purpose behind the Sphere Grid is to give players an interactive means of increasing their characters' attributes, such that they will be able to observe the development of those attributes firsthand.[74] At the time of the game's development, Nojiima had been reading about cryptography, and thus created the means to decode the Al Bhed language within the game, albeit simpler than initially planned.[63]
Music[edit]
Final Fantasy X marks the first time regular series composer Nobuo Uematsu has had any assistance in composing the score for a game in the main series. His fellow composers for X were Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano.[75] They were chosen for the soundtrack based on their ability to create music that was different from Uematsu's style while still being able to work together.[76] PlayOnline.com first revealed that the game's theme song was completed in November 2000. As Square still had not revealed who would sing the song, GameSpot personally asked Uematsu, who jokingly answered that it was going to be Rod Stewart.[77]
The game features three songs with vocalized elements, including the J-pop ballad "
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