What Could Have Been / Final Fantasy

• In early 2001, only a few months after the release of Final Fantasy IX, Squaresoft announced their intentions to remake the entire Final Fantasy series on then-current generation systems. I, II, and III were slated for the WonderSwan Color; IV, V, and VI were being planned for the Game Boy Advance; and VII, VIII, and IX were to be remade for the PlayStation 2, which came out the previous year. The PS2 remakes would be released on DVDs, with updated graphics and sound, and would also include bonus features. However, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was released that summer and bombed at the box office. It resulted in a massive financial loss for Squaresoft of between $50-120 million that not only nearly caused Enix to bow out of their merger talks (though it didn't came to pass; the companies would merge as Square Enix in 2003), but wrecked their plans for the remake project. The handheld FF remakes were delayed for several years (except for the one of III, which was canceled—though it did eventually get a heavily reimagined remake on the Nintendo DS, then a more direct one as part of the Pixel Remaster series), while the PS2 remakes were canceled entirely. VII eventually did get a series of remakes, though it was developed for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
• Final Fantasy II:
  • The NES version would have had an English release, but in the end it was canceled as the 16-bit era drew nearer, IV was brought over instead, and II wouldn't see the light of day in the western hemisphere until Final Fantasy Origins. A prototype of the ROM exists, although with a hilariously awful translation.
  • The Chocobo originally looked like a giant, featherless, wingless pterodactyl.
  • The original concept for the game, as stated in the Ultimania, centered around kingdom suffering from a civil war between supporters of two of the king's sons, a war which a neighboring region and monsters chased out of the kingdom would've looked to take advantage of. While the names of characters that would appear in the final game are introduced here, they were usually of vastly different nature from the characters they would become in later drafts.
  • Later drafts for the game had a few key differences, such as in the order of events. Notably, one draft had a heavy focus on Firion as well as his relationship with Leon while Maria and Guy were simply said to be friends of the duo. Additionally, this draft contains certain elements, such as Borghen being a competent right hand of the Emperor rather than a Small Name, Big Ego and the existence of Airu, the Emperor's mother, that would go on to appear in the Japanese-exclusive novelization, Labyrinth of Nightmares.
• A number of jobs in Final Fantasy III were scrapped according to a design doc shown in the Ultimania, including a proper upgraded Red Mage job. Additionally, Xande was described as a "cold and beautiful woman" and the Cloud of Darkness is said to have been created by Xande using the Dark Crystals.
  • It's stated in interviews such as here that the 3D Video Game Remake was originally considered for the Playstation 2 before settling on the Nintendo DS.
  • According to an interview at the back of the Japanese official strategy guide for the remake, the idea of averting the Featureless Protagonist aspect was considered during development of the original only to get dropped as a response to Final Fantasy II. While the 3D remake would introduce distinct identities for the protagonists, concerns over the new scenes being 'obnoxious' and deviating too far from the original would result in the majority of them - on average, at least one per town/dungeon, - getting axed. While most were simply character interactions or modest character/world development, some point to scenarios that would significantly differ from the final, such as the party getting separated in Castle Hein and Luneth having to work with a man named "Falb" to escape or Arc leaving the party in Saronia after Ingus and Refia inadvertently offend him. The aforementioned interview also mentions a multiplayer versus mode that was considered, complete with abilities exclusive to that mode. However, the developers felt uncomfortable at the idea of Luneth and his friends fighting each other and so the mode was shelved.
• There was originally going to be a game for the Famicom called Final Fantasy IV. Other than the fact that it existed at some point, not much is known about it except that it was canceled and the Super Famicom/SNES game starring a Dark Knight named Cecil Harvey that was planned to be Final Fantasy V was renamed Final Fantasy IV ^note (or Final Fantasy II, in the case of the first English-language version) due to the cancellation of the 8-bit game that was going to have that title. Its cancellation also resulted in every future game having a number lower than it would have had; had the game with Cecil and Kain that ended up as IV stayed as V, we would have ended up with Final Fantasy V being called VI and so on.
  • It was rumored at one point that Final Fantasy IV for the Famicom was a mock-up only, with no coding or beta version in development. According to Sakaguchi, however, it was actually about 80% done. Based on what we know of it, it's likely that a good deal of what there was of it in terms of story/concept was reworked into what we now have as Final Fantasy V, as it was stated the game concept was largely based on job classes, FFV's famous niche. As well, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light has been stated to have been based in part on unrealized concepts from the series' Nintendo era, so there's a decent chance some of what was originally the canceled NES FFIV made it into that game, as well.
• Final Fantasy IV had some portions of its script tossed out before it was finished, not unlike fellow Squaresoft game Secret of Mana. Fortunately, restoring at least part of it was one of the goals of the Nintendo DS remake.
• Final Fantasy V was considered for a North American release on PC, under the name Final Fantasy Extreme, since Squaresoft thought it was too difficult for SNES players. The only remnant of this release is the rather bad translation job that was used as the script for the Final Fantasy Anthology release on the PlayStation.
• In the originally planned ending of Final Fantasy VI, Terra would have been a male character in his twenties and died with the other Espers. In the ending of the final version, she receives instructions on how to specifically avoid this fate and does. Recently, lost official pre-production art from Tetsuya Nomura himself has shown up on the internet, and this mystery character shows up in one of the pieces. He heavily resembles◊ Squall.
• Following the 3D remake of Final Fantasy IV on the DS, 3D remakes of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI were to be on the DS or 3DS. Both remakes were put on hold due to "technical issues" and ultimately never materialized.
• Final Fantasy VII had a ton of these.
  • Before the PlayStation version, the game had tentative plans to be released on the SNES, Sega Saturn, N64 (either the base console or the 64DD add-on drive), and on PC on Windows, before settling on the PS1 and later making a Windows port.
  • In the supplementary material books, you can read up on about a dozen different drafts for almost every plot point and character in the game; naturally, all of these books are Japan only and have no official translation. Here's just some of the plot points that weren't used: Sephiroth was originally going to be Aerith's brother, her lover, or both. Midgar was going to be the real-world New York City, or maybe a giant floating misshapen world in the sky. Vincent Valentine was going to be a traveling Mulder-like detective researching bogus supernatural cases, Yuffie was going to be a bounty hunter, and there would have been Job Classes.
  • It was always intended that one character would be killed off, right from the very start, and there was also a choice to kill off Aerith or Barret, but they ultimately chose Aerith because she would have more impact than if they used Barret. They were also well aware of the Unfortunate Implications that would result from doing so.
  • The majority of the playable party were originally going to be killed off during the raid on Shinra towards the end of disc 2, with only three characters surviving (exactly who survived would be down to the player's choice). Yes, that's right. Apparently, this very nearly made it into the final product. Until one particular member of the development team, Tetsuya Nomura, advised against it, on the grounds that it would've been ridiculous and cheapened Aerith's death.
    • The game has unused dialogue present in the coding that shows Aerith was going to die a lot later than she was supposed to, but the developers decided to move her Plotline Death to the end of the first disc to induce shock and surprise to the player since it would happen so suddenly.
    • In fact, Aerith was going to be the only female party member in the game (and there would only be three members, Barret being third with Red XIII and Cait Sith also being designed). Tifa was added later in development when the writers realized there was no character conflict, and the party would be too flat without something to unify them — in this case, a possible Love Triangle.
  • Additionally, Red XIII was originally intended to be the character who was cloned by Hojo, as opposed to Sephiroth. After defeating the clones, the party would have confronted the mad scientist and killed him earlier than they do in the actual game. This seems to suggest that Hojo wasn't originally as important to the plot as he eventually became. As for the clones, they were originally going to return as minions of Sephiroth. They were originally named Cobalt XIV and Indigo XV, leading to the idea that they may have been re-envisioned into the WEAPON supermonsters who are minions of the Planet rather than Sephiroth.
  • Sephiroth himself was definitely no exception to this. Most notably, one of his earliest character concepts was essentially to make him a clone of Kefka Palazzo from the previous game. He was originally supposed to be a man whose Jenova element was awakened artificially due to exposure to Mako energy. His base personality was already extraordinarily cruel and brutal, and had a morbid fascination with destruction and slaughter. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? He also was supposed to suffer from Mako addiction like everyone else, only he becomes much more insane than before, while still keeping his composure.
  • Jenova is a massive change from its original concept, as explained in "Another Hypothesis". Initially, Jenova was supposed to be a gene that was a part of every person, and that Aerith could use this power naturally because she's a Cetra. Shinra's methods for creating SOLDIER are the same as the final product, but they, along with Sephiroth, were "awakened" beings with the gene. The Turks would be the people who were able to sense the usage of Jenova, and they would bring the subjects back to Shinra for experimentation.
  • One of the earlier plans was to have people infused with Ilfana's (Aerith's mother) cells, rather than Jenova.
  • Apparently an earlier idea for Lucrecia was that she was loyal to Vincent, but was drugged and forced to take part in Hojo's Supersoldier experiment. While the actual game has her being willing, the lack of consent probably would have explained quite a few things (namely why she chose to marry Hojo of all people).
  • And the Honey Bee Inn scene was going to be MUCH more explicit (watch the video with annotations activated).
  • Before the writing for FFVII even really got going, another game was originally planned to be Final Fantasy VII. And that game was Xenogears. However, Square executives felt (possibly rightly) that the game's plot and tone were too dark to be a proper Final Fantasy game, so it was turned into a spin-off. And before developing an identity of its own, Xenogears was allegedly meant to be an entirely different Squaresoft title: Chrono Cross. A negative effect of this was that the team working on the game was unable to finish the project in the allotted two-year development period,^note a leading theory was that Xenogears' funding was cut near the end of production in order for Final Fantasy VIII to meet its own deadlines, but this was later proven false leading to the infamous "talking heads" segments of Disc 2.
  • As stated earlier, one rejected draft had Midgar being envisioned as a real-life city (specifically, New York City circa 1990s), while another had it being a floating world in the sky. The former idea was partly repurposed as Insomnia from Final Fantasy XV (though it was inspired by Tokyo rather than New York), while the latter directly influenced Cocoon from Final Fantasy XIII.
• It's possible that the developers of Final Fantasy Tactics originally planned to have Teta survive the events of Fort Zeakden; if she is hacked to join the party, she doesn't appear with Ramza's sprite (whereas any other NPC simply appears as Ramza when forcibly added to the roster) but with a custom sprite that is otherwise Dummied Out of the game. Concept art also exists, calling this character an "elegant flier", but developer Yasumi Matsuno has since forgotten the context in which the art was drawn.
• Final Fantasy VIII's Edea was originally conceived as a Final Fantasy VII character; most likely a humanoid version of Jenova given her personality in the final game.
  • The story sections that focus on Laguna were originally going to be just as big as the sections that focus on Squall, and would encompass the first half of the whole game. But for various reasons related to time and budget, these sections ended up having to be heavily cut down and inserted around Squall's story as flashbacks.
• Concept art of Final Fantasy IX shows two protagonists named Bahamut Dragoon and Liviathan [sic] Dragoon◊, and a bunch of characters using more traditional job classes from the earlier titles (some examples here◊ and here◊). The art style also resembled that of Final Fantasy Tactics.
  • The concept art for the "Rat Knight" ended up becoming Fratley and Freya, with genders changed and motivations split down the middle.
    • It's also kind of hard to not think of Amarant when looking at the Elementalist guy.
  • The entire game was originally planned as the first in a spinoff series made to appeal to old school fans, a concept that may have been later used for Bravely Default.
  • Concept art shows Queen Brahne having a couch-sized cat and Garland would have beared more of a resemblance towards the Garland from Final Fantasy.
  • Also, Thorn and Zorn were originally going to be just one character, an old man who was the court wizard.
• Final Fantasy X was originally going to offer online elements, but this plan was scrapped early in development.
  • Tidus was originally conceived to be a plumber from Spira and not a Blitzball Ace from Zanarkand. And he had black hair.
    • The original plan was for Tidus to find out that he had been Dead All Along. However, due to The Sixth Sense coming out earlier and basically having this exact revelation, they decided to scrap the idea because it would be too easy to figure out. Auron ended up being the Unsent of the party.
  • According to supplementary material, X as we know it was originally not going to be a part of the Final Fantasy series at all, but was planned as a separate game called Eighteen. Its plot would have centered around a mysterious disease that kills people on their 18th birthday, and would have had Yuna cast as a doctor/nurse who traveled around the world administering a cure to those who were found to be infected. It would later be revealed that this alleged "cure" was actually the cause of the disease, with the organization Yuna worked for using the "disease" as a means of controlling the world by alleging that they were the only ones capable of providing the cure while simultaneously perpetuating the disease's existence. When the game was later redesigned to be the next Final Fantasy installment, several of these plot points were retooled to fit the new game's story.
• Final Fantasy XII was supposed to originally have Basch as the main character, as well as a more familiar relationship between Vaan and Ashe (like siblings) which would have given him more of a reason for joining the party. Penelo's brothers were supposed to be in the resistance, and there would be interactive airship battles a la Star Wars.
  • Game director Yasumi Matsuno purportedly suffered a nervous breakdown during development of the game, and left both the project as well as Square Enix. The reins of the game were given to Akitoshi Kawazu.
  • Penelo was also supposed to have a bigger role or at least a more fleshed out backstory. When the idea was presented, the rest of the writers didn't agree with it (Penelo was to betray the party at some point, for reasons possibly related to the brothers mentioned above, which lies in contention to her in-game personality) so Penelo was reduced to a Tagalong Kid that made sure Vaan stayed out of trouble.
• Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings was meant to be an original story and completely unrelated to Final Fantasy XII.
• Fortress, by GRIN studios, was going to be an action RPG in a viking setting, when the publisher, Square Enix, decided to make the game tied to the Ivalice setting of Final Fantasy XII, as Final Fantasy: Fortress. The game was cancelled.
• Final Fantasy XIII was planned for the PlayStation 2, the battle system would have been more dynamic and action-based, battles would've taken place on the field map, Lightning would have a much less serious personality and gravity-based powers that influenced gameplay, Serah would have been the seventh party member, and Fang was going to be a male character (explains the Les Yay she and Vanille have, doesn't it?). The entire hoo-hah around XIII and its sequels and spin-offs being categorized into their own subseries stems from the fact that the Fabula Nova Crystallis series was supposed to be a set of Action RPGs, akin to titles that had recently become popular in western markets such as The Elder Scrolls series and Demon's Souls. Lightning Returns supposedly is a resurrection of this original concept.
  • The game had a very tortured development period. Early trailers showing the battle system were more akin to concept art, and there was a retrospective consensus that the team lacked a unified vision for how the game would actually play. You can read more about it here.
  • According to the Final Fantasy XIII Ultimania Omega, the development team at one point considered making Vanille the official main character of the game, but dismissed the idea as they had already released a trailer and art featuring Lightning in that role.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII had a number of concept arts for garbs that went unused, including a maid, a nun, dressed up like a Moogle, wearing Aqua's armor, a costume made up like Cait Sith and a magical girl costume thematically like Cure Happy.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy considered several characters for the lineup, but they were rejected for various reasons. One of these characters was Seifer Almasy, who, in spite of his rivalry with Squall, was replaced with Ultimecia, because he would probably turn out too similar to Squall. Seymour was replaced by Jecht because Tidus and Seymour lacked the kind of personal relationship the other hero/villain combos had. Also included in the list are Kain Highwind, Locke Cole, Yuna, Prishe, Vaan, Balthier, and Lightning, though most of these guys made it into the sequel. And of the two who didn't (Locke and Balthier), the former would eventually make it into the console release of the 2015 entry as DLC.
• The Ivalice-related spin-off Vagrant Story had a sequel planned for the Nintendo GameCube sometime before 2003, but it was scrapped.
• Final Fantasy XIV, when it was being reworked into 2.0/A Realm Reborn, was supposed to have the Rogue and Ninja classes at launch, but due to a tight schedule, the developers had to scrap them. The classes did eventually make a return in patch 2.4 a year later.
  • The game was also planned to be released on the Xbox 360, but the idea was put on the backburner after Microsoft refused to budge with their online polices; Square Enix wanted Microsoft to allow the game to be able to connect to the same servers, regardless of what platform/client they used, but Microsoft wouldn't allow it since they would be forced to deal with connections towards Sony for their PlayStation 3 platform, and Square also wanted the game to be able to go online without requiring an Xbox Live membership, since it would be unfair for Xbox players to have to pay for both going online with the console in general and have a separate subscription for FFXIV on top of it. The troubles continue into the next generations, which is why the game is not on the Xbox One or its successor(s) either, ironically for the opposite reason - now that Microsoft is more willing to allow cross-platform play, Sony is suddenly deciding they don't like the idea.
  • The most major and visible case is probably the 1.0/pre-YoshiP story. There's comparatively very little of it we actually got to see before the game was scrapped and relaunched, though it is known that what we got with 2.0 onwards isn't much anything like the original plan. Most of this, befitting the finale of 1.0 and how heavily they hang over the events of A Realm Reborn, centers around Dalamud getting dropped and Bahamut being revealed to be within it - evidence suggests that these were planned from the beginning, but the reveal was meant for much later in the game's life-cycle, likely during an expansion that would have been the equivalent of Endwalker for the version we have now.
  • Labyrinth of the Ancients, one of three series of raids in the Crystal Tower series, was supposed to have been available at the launch of 2.0, but due to time constraints, the raid was shelved and was released in patch 2.1 several months later. The raid was also supposed to have been as difficult as the Binding Coil of Bahamut, but the developers realized that having a very difficult raid for 24 players that probably don't know each other or how everyone plays wasn't a good idea, thus the difficulty was toned down.
  • 1.0 was supposed to have players face down Titan instead of Garuda. An intro and ending cutscene was created and is all that is remained when it was decided not to push through due to the Sendai Earthquake of 2011.
  • Yugiri Mistwalker was supposed to have a major presence in the Heavensward expansion, but she ends up appearing briefly in Patch 3.0 helping to rescue Raubahn before disappearing until near the end of Patch 3.5. This was because Yugiri's second English actress had been murdered, and Square Enix decided to put her on a bus until the court cases surrounding the actress's murder were fully settled.
  • The Machinist class originally started life as Chemist, which would have been a gun-using healer class, which it stayed as long enough during development that it was hinted at in some reveals, but ultimately the release would have Machinist as a DPS class and an entirely separate class, Astrologian, as a new healer. Heavensward's new playable race was also at one point possibly going to be the Viera from Final Fantasy XII, in both a version appearing identical to that game and a more Little Bit Beastly version that was sized somewhere between Miqo'te and Lalafell; ultimately, the race we now know as Au Ra was picked for the expansion instead, and Viera would only become playable in Shadowbringers, appearing identical to the FFXII ones and female-only until the release of Endwalker. Even then, there was a chance that they still wouldn't have made it in, since Hrothgar was the first choice for a new race added with Shadowbringers, and the options the dev team were considering were either male and female versions of Hrothgar right away, or male-only Hrothgar and female-only Viera with the other genders added later, the latter of which we got.
  • In an odd example, the 2020 Valentione's Day event had an in-game vote for one of three characters to be the "Emissary of Love" for the event's festivities for that year, with the results tallied per-server and all three potential emissaries having special cutscenes for if they were voted in. However, due in part to the game heavily implying her as the "correct" answer, Astrid ended up winning the vote in every server, so the victory cutscenes for the other two options were never seen in-game, and the only details we have on them are text from a developer's blog post.
  • In the 2018 North American Fan Fest, it was revealed that the Ivalice raid series in Stormblood was supposed to have an appearance by Balthier from FFXII, but by the time the first of the raids was released, the story had been changed around so much that he was removed in favor of letting players simply unlock his gear. Fran would ultimately appear in his place, also helping to foreshadow the appearance of Viera as a playable race a year later.
• Final Fantasy Agito was planned to be released at the same time as Final Fantasy Type-0, as a companion game. A planned Windows 10 and Vita port were cancelled. The game's localization was cancelled on all platforms in favor of releasing Final Fantasy Type-0 Online, relaunched as Final Fantasy Awakening. Neither version ended up localized to North America and Europe.
• Final Fantasy Type-0 was planned to be a Mobile Phone Game, but was moved to the PSP, and was to be titled Final Fantasy Agito XIII, but the title was changed when the game bore no connection to Final Fantasy XIII. Planned localizations for PSP and Vita were cancelled after the servers in Japan were shut down. After the world wide release of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, there were tentative plans to continue the series with Type-1, Type-2 and Type-3.
  • A Fan Translation of Final Fantasy Type-0 on the PSP was around 75% complete before being issued a cease and desist.
• Final Fantasy XV — Where to begin? It is well-known that the game began development in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, an action-based spin-off meant to be a dark reimagining of the franchise and, while sharing a world lore but unrelated in continuity (as part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series), the antithesis in terms of theme to FFXIII. Over the course of its decade long conception-to-release, so much was changed. Some details include Lucis being perpetually at nighttime, the Lucis Caelum royal line acting more like a mafia family than a typical monarchy, Noctis and his love interest (who was a different woman named Stella) being able to see "the light of expiring souls", had the same powers as him and also being unwilling combatants, a villain named Safay Roth being heavily involved in the plot. While the finished product still somewhat fulfills the goal of being the opposite thematically to FFXIII, it's safe to say that little, if anything, of the original story ideas for Versus remain recognizably intact since the game was previewed in 2006.
  • Adding onto this, a large number of gameplay elements were planned that never made the finished product. There would be controllable mounts like mechs or tanks, and a command called "EX Arts" that never saw more than a promotional screenshot. With smaller details, like visible blood upon attacking enemies and generally more realistic combat, Versus XIII might well have been on the way to an M rating.
  • The Omen trailer teased a dark story of Noctis chasing after Luna and seemingly being guided by her dog Pryna to find her. Only for it to be revealed as some kind of demonic entity taking the form of Pryna to lead him astray. This eventually led to a possessed Noctis fighting Luna (similar to his dynamic with her predecessor Stella) that would have ended with him killing her with her trident, waking up from his possession horrifed by what he did. It was then revealed this was a vision given to Regis that he was hoping to avoid. However, this plotline was never alluded to in the game itself and even when parts of the trailer did get added to the game, there was no hint of such an entity nor any suggestion that Noctis would kill Luna within the story.
  • XV wouldn't be free of "what could have been"s after its release, either. Three of its Season Two DLC Episodes (Aranea, Luna, and Noctis) were cancelled in November of 2018, possibly as a result of Tabata quitting Square Enix.
  • In 2017, Square Enix tried running the game's engine (Luminous Engine, which was developed internally) on the Nintendo Switch, but the system couldn't handle the game's engine. They instead settled for porting the Pocket Edition to the Switch a year later.
  • The game's lifecycle being cut short denied it a final alternate ending over the aforementioned canned DLC that ended up being shown in a book of concept art that released once it became clear that the DLC cycle was done with. Over the course of the three episodes (which, together with Ardyn's episode, would form a tetralogy) it would reveal that Ardyn finally broke free of his Then Let Me Be Evil, forcing Bahamut to revive Lunafreya as a new Starscourge carrier, only for her to break free, reveal Bahamut as the Greater-Scope Villain, and have the Noctis, Luna, Aranea, and Ardyn team up to kill him, creating a Golden Ending where Everyone Lives except for Ardyn, who gets a Redemption Equals Death and has Noctis acknowledge the honors he was denied that led to his villainy. That being said, the development team still wanted to tell the story, so they opted to release the three episodes in the form of a novel, Final Fantasy XV -The Dawn of the Future- (named after the planned title of the full tetralogy).

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