It’s fitting that in the year of the 30th anniversary of the original PlayStation, two of the console’s biggest franchises — Tekken and Final Fantasy — are collaborating once more. The two names are nearly synonymous with the PlayStation brand, and more than that share a development history not many know about.
“I guess we can talk about [it] now since so much time has passed. Back around Tekken 3, a lot of our staff left the team and actually went to Square,” Tekken executive producer Katsuhiro Harada reveals in a sit down interview with IGN. Given Tekken 3 was in development during 1995 and released a year later, there were likely several ex-Tekken staff lending their 3D development skills to what would likely have been the only Final Fantasy game in production around then: the seminal PlayStation RPG, Final Fantasy 7.
“We’re both titles that were synonymous with PlayStation and also the kind of high-level 3D graphics [both series had] at the time were similar,” Harada continues. “And although we were making different games at that point, [the ex-Tekken developers] were still our friends and people we worked really closely with. So [at the time I thought] it would be interesting if we could work together again sometime in the future. It just turned out that it took a lot more time than I initially thought.”
So here we are, decades later and the Tekken and Final Fantasy brands are going head-to-head on friendlier terms. Clive Rosfield, the protagonist of Final Fantasy 16, will be the latest guest character joining the Tekken roster. He’s only the second Final Fantasy character to ever join Tekken, following after Final Fantasy 15’s Noctis, who made an appearance in Tekken 7.
You might be surprised to hear that this collaboration between Final Fantasy 16 and Tekken 8 began much earlier than expected. So early, in fact, that Final Fantasy 16 was still in the middle of development when Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada reached out to FF16 producer Naoki Yoshida about a potential collaboration. Yoshida invited Harada and Tekken 8 director Kohei Ikeda to Square Enix to play an in-development build of the game and the foundations were laid for the crossover.
Developed by the team responsible for the massively popular Final Fantasy 14 MMORPG, Final Fantasy 16 is a stark departure for the series as far as gameplay goes, eschewing any kind of turn-based combat in favor of real-time action where Clive can wield his sword and chain combos together. Final Fantasy 16’s more action-forward direction meant that Clive could fit seamlessly into Tekken. His combo-heavy attacks and ability to channel the powers of different “Eikons” — powerful familiars like Ifrit, Phoenix, and Titan — ensures a fairly diverse kit for his Tekken 8 appearance..
“We wanted to make sure that all of the Eikons were available in some way while playing [as Clive in Tekken 8],” says Ikeda. Expect to see Clive use various elemental abilities such as wind, lightning, ice, fire, and more.
While fans of Final Fantasy 16 will find Clive has access to a lot of the same abilities in Tekken as he does in his own game, there were some changes made to the character. Namely, his character model.
“The director of the Final Fantasy team told us that he would like us to adjust Clive’s frame a bit because our characters are quite beefy,” Ikeda recalls. “So we did adjust his legs and lower body to make him more in line with our fighters when they’re both on the same screen at the same time.”
So Clive hit the gym for Tekken, but in payment for those new pecs he did have to make some sacrifices elsewhere. “It’s funny that although he’s gotten more muscular, his sword has shrunk in size because in a fighting game, it would give him way too much of an advantage if the sword was as big as it is in the original game,” Harada adds.
So I guess that means no chance of Cloud and his colossal Buster Sword joining Tekken, then? Well, don’t think so fast. According to Harada, the Tekken team is not limited to just one character from Final Fantasy. He says it “might be cool if we had two,” but for now it’s not something in the cards.
It’s been quite the journey to see games like Tekken and Final Fantasy evolve alongside each other, and now to see them crossover like this. While neither franchises are strictly exclusive to PlayStation anymore, their association with the brand means both Tekken and Final Fantasy feature prominently in our Top 100 PlayStation Games of All Time list.
So of course we had to ask the Tekken developers: “What is your favorite Final Fantasy video game?”
“I actually learned Japanese by playing through the Japanese version of Final Fantasy 7. I think my girlfriend at the time hated me for asking me so many questions about stuff,” joked producer Michael Murray. “But if I had to pick one with memories and everything involved, it’s probably [Final Fantasy] 11 because I think it was around Tekken 4 everyone on the team would wake up early and not go to work yet and we’d meet up online in FF11 and play for a bit.”
For Tekken 8 director Ikeda, he says his favorite is Final Fantasy 4 as he enjoyed feeling the series change to be “more narrative-based. It followed the main character Cecil and his transition from the Dark Knight to a paladin.”
For Harada, Final Fantasy 4 is also a favorite but, from a personal perspective, there’s just no comparison to the iconic entry: Final Fantasy 7.
“There’s so many scenes in the game I can still remember to this day,” Harada says. Perhaps his colleagues working on that title helped make that connection feel even stronger, and being able to return the favor with Clive in Final Fantasy XVI is thanks for those memories.
Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
