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 I hope you brought your dice for this installment, as we’re going back to the series’ roots in Dungeons & Dragons to see how the world’s premiere tabletop game influenced one of video games’ most iconic franchises.
This week’s newsletter is 2664 words, a 13-minute read.
The Root of Inspiration
Originally, Final Fantasy came about as part of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s desire to make a game like Enix’s Dragon Quest, in the same vein as the early computer RPGs that were beloved by several members of his team at Square. However, another massive influence on their fledgling RPG was Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop sensation that essentially kickstarted the entire concept of the “roleplaying game.” D&D inspired the CRPGs (like Ultima and Wizardry) that in turn inspired DQ and FF.
In interviews with Eurogamer and VG247, Akitoshi Kawazu has related how the tabletop movement contributed to Final Fantasy’s development:
“I remember on the news channels we'd see about games like Dungeons & Dragons being played in America, and these fantastical stories about people dying for playing it too long, or how this game was amazing. That entered our circle. We got our own localised version, and we thought we had to give it a go - so we played it and really enjoyed that experience.”
“I tried to make [the battle system and battle sequences] as close to [D&D] as possible. That was my goal. There are certain precepts when it comes to a [D&D] type of environment, a western role-playing experience. […] If you think about it a little, they all make sense, and these are all things that D&D already sets up. Certain things are weak against certain other things and strong against yet other things. They all have these relationships. Up until that point, Japanese RPGs were ignoring all of that."
So, with this philosophy in mind, let’s delve a little deeper into the source material and see just how successful Final Fantasy was at recreating the Dungeons & Dragons experience.
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