Final Fantasy Xs development began in 1999, costing approximately
¥4 billion (approximately , or in dollars) with a crew of over 100 people, most of whom worked on previous games in the series. Executive producer
Hironobu Sakaguchi has stated that although he had concerns about the transition from 2D to 3D backgrounds, the voice acting, and the transition to real-time story-telling, the success of the
Final Fantasy series can be attributed to constantly challenging the development team to try new things. Producer
Yoshinori Kitase was also the chief director of
Final Fantasy X, while the direction of events, maps and battles was split up between
Motomu Toriyama, Takayoshi Nakazato and
Toshiro Tsuchida, respectively. The development of the script for the game took three to four months, with the same amount of time dedicated to the voice recording afterwards. According to the
Square Enix companion book Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume III,
17 SEVEN TEEN was a temporary title early in
Final Fantasy Xs production.
17 SEVEN TEENs story differed from the final version: the protagonist, who looked similar to Tidus, traveled the world seeking a cure for a pandemic that killed people when they reached the age of seventeen. This inevitable death motif was later carried over to Yuna's fate as a summoner.
Influences in southern Japan. Character designer Tetsuya Nomura identified the
South Pacific,
Thailand and
Okinawa as major influences on the cultural and geographic design of Spira, particularly concerning the geographic location of the southern Besaid and Kilika islands. The protagonists' namesakes are derived from
Okinawan language, with "tiida" meaning "sun" and "yuna" meaning "moon". He has also said that Spira deviates from the worlds of past
Final Fantasy games in the level of detail incorporated, something he has expressed to have made a conscious effort to maintain during the design process. Kitase felt that if the setting went back to a medieval European fantasy, it would not seem to help the development team advance. While he was thinking of different world environments, Nojima suggested a fantasy world that incorporated Asian elements. Tidus' relationship with his father Jecht was based on "stories throughout the ages, such as the ancient Greek legends". This would eventually reveal the key of Sin's weakness and eventual defeat. Auron was intended to be silent throughout the game but became a voiced character as they developed out the Guardian storyline between Tidus and Yuna.
Design Final Fantasy X features innovations in the rendering of characters' facial expressions, achieved through
motion capture and
skeletal animation technology. Nojima has revealed that the inclusion of voice acting enabled him to express emotion more powerfully than before, and he was therefore able to keep the storyline simple. He also said that the presence of voice actors led him to make various changes to the script to match the voice actors' personalities with the characters they were portraying. The inclusion of voice, however, led to difficulties. With the game's cutscenes already programmed around the Japanese voice work, the English
localization team faced the difficulty of establishing English-oriented dialogue and the obstacle of incorporating this modified wording with the rhythm and timing of the characters' lip movements. Localization specialist
Alexander O. Smith noted that the team had to keep the localized sound file within the duration of the original Japanese, as longer files would cause the game to crash. He described the process of fitting natural-sounding English speech into the game as "something akin to writing four or five movies' worth of dialogue entirely in
haiku form [and] of course the actors had to act, and act well, within those restraints". The game was initially going to feature online elements, offered through Square's
PlayOnline service. The features were dropped during production, and online gaming would not become part of the series until
Final Fantasy XI. Map director Nakazato wanted to implement a world map concept with a more realistic approach than that of the traditional
Final Fantasy game, in line with the realism of the game's 3D backgrounds, as opposed to pre-rendered backgrounds. Battle art director Shintaro Takai has explained that it was his intention that battles in
Final Fantasy X come across as a natural part of the story and not an independent element. Features would have included wandering enemies visible on the field map, seamless transitions into battles, and the option for players to move around the landscape during enemy encounters. At the time of the game's development, Nojiima had been reading about
cryptography, and thus created the means to decode the Al Bhed language within the game, albeit simpler than initially planned. PlayOnline.com first revealed that the game's theme song was completed in November 2000. As Square still had not revealed who would sing the song,
GameSpot personally asked Uematsu, who jokingly answered that it was going to be
Rod Stewart. The game features three songs with vocalized elements, including the
J-pop ballad "
Suteki da ne", which translates to "Isn't it Wonderful?". The lyrics were written by Kazushige Nojima, and the music was written by Uematsu. The song is performed by Japanese folk singer
Rikki, whom the music team contacted while searching for a singer whose music reflected an
Okinawan atmosphere. "Suteki da ne" is also sung in Japanese in the English version of
Final Fantasy X. Like "
Eyes on Me" from
VIII and "
Melodies of Life" from
IX, an orchestrated version of "Suteki da ne" is used as part of the ending theme. The other songs with lyrics are the heavy metal opening theme, "
Otherworld", sung in English by Bill Muir; and "Hymn of the Fayth", a recurring piece sung using Japanese syllabary. In 2002, Tokyopop released a version of
Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack in North America entitled
Final Fantasy X Official Soundtrack, which contained 17 tracks from the original album on a single disc. Other related CDs include
feel/Go dream: Yuna & Tidus which, released in Japan by DigiCube on October 11, 2001, featured tracks based on Tidus' and Yuna's characters.
Piano Collections Final Fantasy X, another collection of music from the game, and
Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection, a compilations of exclusive character dialogues and songs were both released in Japan in 2002.
The Black Mages, a band led by Uematsu that arranges music from
Final Fantasy video games into a
rock music style, have arranged three pieces from
Final Fantasy X. These are "Fight With Seymour" from their
self-titled album, published in 2003, and "Otherworld" and "The Skies Above", both of which can be found on the album
The Skies Above, published in 2004. Uematsu continues to perform certain pieces in his
Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy concert series. The music of
Final Fantasy X has also appeared in various official concerts and live albums, such as
20020220 Music from Final Fantasy, a live recording of an orchestra performing music from the series including several pieces from the game. An odd note is that the unreleased/promo CD-R (Instrumental) version of Madonna's "What It Feels Like For A Girl" done by Tracy Young was used in the blitzball sequences. Additionally, "Swing de Chocobo" was performed by the
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra for the
Distant Worlds – Music from Final Fantasy concert tour, while "Zanarkand" was performed by the
New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in the
Tour de Japon: Music from Final Fantasy concert series. Independent but officially licensed releases of
Final Fantasy X music have been composed by such groups as Project Majestic Mix, which focuses on arranging video game music. Selections also appear on Japanese remix albums, called
dojin music, and on English remixing websites. ==Versions and merchandise==