Kupo Chronicle #21 - Balancing the Brave

Looking To Ivalice's History

Welcome to the Kupo Chronicle, the premium edition of the Wark Digest newsletter, where we explore the Final Fantasy universe in long-form and drill down into unique moments of the series’ history. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and in this installment, as we wait with varying degrees of patience to return to Ivalice, we turn to the words of the last people to remaster Final Fantasy Tactics and examine how they handled War of the Lions.

This week’s newsletter is 2817 words, a 13-minute read.

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The True Hero(es) of the Tale

Of all the possible Final Fantasy remakes and remasters we could ask for, one of the mostly hotly-desired is a revival of Final Fantasy Tactics. Many have cried out for a return to Ivalice, while others proclaim a remaster “is real and happening” despite a recent slew of project cancellations at Square Enix. Regardless, there’s a Tactics-sized hole in our modern platforms’ libraries for the time being.

To help fill that gap, and perhaps inspire a little hope for the future, we turned to the Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions Official Complete Guide¹, which sheds a little light on the development of the PSP remaster.

Square Enix published this comprehensive guide almost two months after the game’s release (June/July 2007). The “Official Complete Guide” line was produced in-house by the Square Enix Magazine & Books subsidiary (“SE-Mook”) and functioned more like traditional strategy guides than the Ultimania books Studio BentStuff still produces (though at the time the two were pretty close in terms of design and content).