A Square Enix veteran talks about creating the mechanics of ATB battles: “Formula 1 helped”

In July, the classic Final fantasy iv celebrated its 30th anniversary. On this occasion, the press service Square enix recorded an interview with Takashi Tokitoi – a game designer who led the RPG development team.

He shared some fun memories of the production of Final Fantasy IV, in particular the creation of the ATB combat mechanic that would later become the gameplay foundation for the combat systems of the next few Final Fantasy releases.

According to Takashi Tokita, early in the development of Final Fantasy IV, the game’s combat system was “completely chaotic” – the characters fought in turn-based mode, where the order of their turns was determined by the internal statistics of each. The game designer explained that in this form the game remained “too thoughtless” – the player simply had to press the attack button instead of somehow thinking about the tactics and the sequence of actions.

But everything changed at the suggestion of the designer Hiroyuki Ito, who, inspired by Formula 1 races, suggested adding more dimension to the fourth Final Fantasy battle system, thereby allowing some units to perform several actions at once in one turn, while others act as “catch-up”.

“[…] To the ATB system he [Хироюки Ито] came after watching a race where cars lagged behind each other for several laps at once. This pushed him towards the idea where one character can be fast enough to attack twice in one turn, and the other character is left with only one action. But what really made the ATB mechanics work properly was, I think, the unique characteristics of each character, like Edge, who can make two attacks at once, which is compensated for by his low damage, “explained Hiroyuki Ito.

Final Fantasy IV debuted on console in 1991 Super nintendo entertainment system… She later received a number of re-releases on a wide variety of platforms, as well as a three-dimensional remake on Nintendo ds… The game is now preparing for release with an updated visual part as part of the collection Final fantasy pixel remaster

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