Dissidia Final Fantasy NT

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Balthier: I'm afraid the jury's still out on that one.

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For the PSP game, see Dissidia Final Fantasy

Template:Infobox CVG Dissidia Final Fantasy is an upcoming arcade game developed by Team Ninja of Koei Tecmo and published by Square Enix and Taito. It was announced during the Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) trade show in Chiba, Japan on February 14, 2015. The game is based on Dissidia Final Fantasy and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, released for PlayStation Portable, but will instead be a reboot rather than a continuation of the previous Dissidia games' storyline. Cosmos and Chaos are no longer part of the game, as the arcade version is stripped of story. Because the game is for arcades it is more battle-oriented than RPG-oriented unlike the previous Dissidia games, losing customizability to attacks and gear.

The game is set to be released in fall 2015. Though the PlayStation 4 version is not officially confirmed, Square Enix has published a video on Youtube, showing the comparison between the game when they were using the arcade system as the core for the development, and when they started to use the PlayStation 4 core. They have indicated a PlayStation 4 port of the game is possible, but would be released after the arcade version.

Gameplay

Early screenshot showing the user interfaces.

Compared to its predecessors, the game's battle system is said to be remade from the ground up. New to the game is the three-on-three combat feature, where a single player commands three characters, switching direct control between them while the other two characters are AI controlled. A player can choose to have more than one of the same character on their team, and one-on-one combat will still be available. Another new element is that the playable characters are divided into three combat categories: the power-orientated Heavy (Warrior of Light and Cloud), agility-based Speed (Onion Knight and Lightning), and the magic-based Shoot (Terra and Y'shtola).

The game will retain some core elements from the previous Dissidia games. Characters can perform two kinds of attacks, Brave Attacks and HP Attacks. Doing a Brave Attack will decrease the opponent's Bravery stat and increase the attacking player's Bravery by the damage done. Doing an HP Attack will inflict damage equal to the player's current Bravery. Decreasing an opponent's Bravery to zero will result in a Bravery Break, giving the attacking player a substantial increase to their Bravery. Characters have seven Bravery attacks at a time: three ground attacks, three midair attacks, and one attack that can be performed while dashing. Each character can only equip one HP attack. Some attacks that were HP attacks in previous titles are now Bravery attacks, such as Terra's Tornado. Players cannot customize Brave attacks and can customize only one HP Attack and two EX Skills. It is possible to save "battle sets" for characters: 1 HP Attack, 2 EX Skills and a costume.

Each character has an independent HP bar, and the party has one HP bar and a summon bar. When the player character is KO'd one part of the team HP bar is erased. If the global HP bar depletes the player loses. It is possible to jump twice, and there is a gauge for the dash to represent the character's exhaustion. Side stepping is the most efficient way to dodge.

The shield has an infinite duration and blocks everything, but every time one blocks an attack the shield is starting to break. Shield deterioration is shown as color changes from green to orange to red. When someone is targeting a player, a blue link will appear above them and the enemy's head, and also on the minimap. When the opponent attacks the blue link turns red to show when to dodge.

EX Mode returns, renamed "EX Skill," and encompasses up to three skills that a character can activate in battle. Some of these skills are based on the original Dissidia EX Modes, such as Terra entering Trance and Cloud entering a "Limit Break" state, while others have support effects such as Regenga, which recovers the user's HP. EX Skills boost rely on the utility spells encountered in Final Fantasy games. For example, the ability to shield oneself or one's allies, the ability to heal or to use a break attack to destroy the enemy's defense. EX Skills and EX Bursts are available after some time and after using them, one must wait before they become available again; the cooldown is represented as a white circle around the circles and the biggest circle is the EX Burst. EX Bursts have been made weaker in comparison to the previous Dissidia games where they were often so powerful as to gain an instant win. EX Bursts are also weaker than summons.

Summoned Monsters can be called by filling a Summon Gauge during battle by hitting the opponent or a crystal, but the player must also get the crystal icon by first hitting the crystal, then consuming it to call a summon. Summons are auto-controlled allies that assist the player in battle directly. Summons seem to change the battlefield's appearance; e.g. when summoning Ifrit the arena gets a storm of fire. The effect disappears as the summon is dismissed after 30 seconds. If the player is hit while channeling a summon the summoning will be interrupted.

Setting

Thus far, three known arenas have been revealed: the plains outside Cornelia, as seen in the ending of the original Dissidia, Midgar from Final Fantasy VII, and Eden Expressway as it appears in one of the game trailers released in April 2015. Also, screenshots have revealed that there are another two arenas, both of which are unknown, however, one is crystalline in nature and the other is a snowfield.

Original Game	Stage(s)
Final Fantasy	Cornelia
Final Fantasy VII	Midgar
Final Fantasy XIII	Eden
Currently Unknown	A crystalline stage A snowfield

Characters

The following is a list of known playable characters set to appear in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Upon the game's initial release, its cast of playable characters will only be 14, however it is the developers goal to get the number of playable characters over 50 with a series of updates to come post release. The developers have even said that once the 50 characters are finished, they would like to include even more as to them "50 feels like a small number". They also wish for all characters playable in the previous Dissidia titles to return.

Takeo Kujiraoka and Yosuke Hayashi of Team Ninja are considering adding Noctis Lucis Caelum after the release of Final Fantasy XV. Tetsuya Nomura has said he'd like to see Minwu in the game, but there has been no statement from the development staff on his inclusion otherwise. Team Ninja has also stated they have no plans to include Dead or Alive characters in the game.

Characters marked with a * are characters released via updates.

Original Game	Returning Characters	New Characters
Final Fantasy	Warrior of Light	None
Final Fantasy II	Firion	None
Final Fantasy III	Onion Knight	None
Final Fantasy IV	Cecil Harvey	None
Final Fantasy V	Bartz Klauser	None
Final Fantasy VI	Terra Branford	None
Final Fantasy VII	Cloud Strife	None
Final Fantasy VIII	Squall Leonhart	None
Final Fantasy IX	Zidane Tribal	None
Final Fantasy X	Tidus	None
Final Fantasy XI	Shantotto	None
Final Fantasy XII	Vaan	None
Final Fantasy XIII	Lightning	None
Final Fantasy XIV	None	Y'shtola
Final Fantasy Tactics	None	Ramza Beoulve*

Development

Hardware

Around the end of 2012 producer Takeo Kujiraoka was talking with Dissidia Final Fantasy director Mitsunori Takahashi about creating the next Dissidia entry. The first thing the two tried to nail down was which hardware platform to go with. At the time it was being planned as a sequel to a PlayStation Portable game, and thus going for the PlayStation Vita was a natural choice, but Taito, a subsidiary of Square Enix, suggested doing an arcade Final Fantasy game.

Character designer Tetsuya Nomura felt that "all that there is was to do" was accomplished by the two PlayStation Portable Dissidia games and took the stance that it was "completed." That's why the direction with the new Dissidia Final Fantasy was decided to be different from the start. Ichiro Hazama, the producer, approached Nomura with the idea for an arcade version, and Nomura gave the go ahead.

Kujiraoka was unfamiliar with the current arcade scene, and started with research. He was shocked how much arcades had changed since his youth with people now using ID cards for save data. Discovering this feature was the catalyst to go with the arcade platform. With a console release that includes the desired characters and features and adds new characters through DLC and rebalances the old ones, the number of players still steadily decreases. With arcades, however, players can go and play and always have the most up to date version of the game, creating a fair online environment for everyone. The user can save their game, and Square can keep adding new characters. Thus the developers figured the arcade platform was workable both for players and creators.

As this was this development team's first foray into arcade gaming, Kujiraoka talked with people who had previously published arcade games with Square Enix, like the Lord of Vermillion producer Takamasa Murasaki. He was told how interesting arcades can be with the short distance between developers and players, and the possibility of going to an arcade and seeing people play the game, gather feedback and respond to it in a timely manner. This was an attractive proposition to Kujiraoka who had witnessed players' excitement at Dissidia Final Fantasy tournaments.

Hayashi's team felt that 60fps was necessary despite members outside of the team expressing doubt over it. Hayashi has explained it makes the game glide along in a simple, stress-free way—something he considers integral to getting people into arcades day after day.

In a press conference on April 10, 2015, Sony Computer Entertainment president Atsushi Morita revealed that the game is being developed with the core technology of the PlayStation 4. Square Enix said that they want to release it for arcades first and the console version will not be available until at least a year after the launch. Producer Ichiro Hazama contacted Sony (SCEJA) about getting PS4-based arcade hardware. What he got was literally an arcade machine with a PS4 inside it, albeit one that had been customized for arcade use. The game will use a controller akin to a divided DualShock 4 in lieu of traditional arcade buttons and stick to help traditional Final Fantasy players get into the game.

Cooperation with Team Ninja

The work started on the game at the beginning of 2013, and full development by the end of the year. Team Ninja put Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Arcade out in 2013 under Sega Interactive, and the team was in talks with Taito to work with them. Acting director from Tecmo Koei, Yosuke Hayashi, told he would create something on the condition he could use Final Fantasy characters, but at the time he was not thinking specifically of doing a Dissidia game. The producers Ichiro Hazama and Takeo Kujiraoka introduced Hayashi to the Dissidia development team. Kujiraoka stands in as director from Square Enix's side, but other than that, Team Ninja handles everything internally with Yosuke Hayashi at the helm. The team does get indirect cooperation from Square Enix, such as overseeing the CG work. Tetsuya Nomura is one of the people on the Square Enix side overseeing the graphics.

Battle System

It was decided early on to go with a 3 vs 3 concept. The developers wanted to give the game the "FF party feeling" by including multiple characters to a player's side. A 1 vs 1 concept was ruled out as Team Ninja already had a 1 vs 1 fighting game IP (Dead or Alive), so even if the team was to create a new one it would inevitably be the same fundamental gameplay and the team felt it would be difficult to alter that into something distinct. 3 vs 3 allowed the developers to think of something new, and a chance for players to co-operate with friends, play against others, and create a team they could call a "party."

Although design briefs did not change much there was a time Kujiraoka's feelings on the 3 vs 3 player count would change daily. He considered exploring 1 vs 1, or having the computer take over for two of the characters, or even having teams of four. At one point he even considered 10 vs 10. During the development of Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy Takahashi said that creating a party was an expected part of a numbered Final Fantasy–something he wanted to replicate. He felt convinced they could create Final Fantasy-like battles if they used something like the party battle system in the previous Dissidia, where the player controlled one character at a time.

Conceptually the new Dissidia Final Fantasy game was to be fun to play socially, but also fun to play seriously. When releasing an arcade game it's not enough to just be fun socially, as players need to understand why they lost. Hayashi explained to Kujiraoka why it was necessary for the game to be fun on the basis of pure action and that's why the RPG elements of the previous Dissidia games needed to be mostly stripped. Kujiraoka in turn had Hayashi play Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy to showcase the feel of the game he was looking for.

Although the team is trying to replicate the visual and sound effects from the previous Dissidia games, there will be some changes as before the animation would freeze during Bravery Breaks; this was deemed unacceptable in a tense match. At one point there were talks about scrapping the Brave system, but ultimately it was kept in, as it was conceived as a way for those who struggle with fighting games to have a chance of turning the tables, and it had been received well previously.

There will be only few arenas available for the game's initial phase because level design has changed a lot from the previous games, and the team wants to see how people play and the kind of strategies they come up with so that the developers can add new arenas accordingly.

Production Credits

Staff

Executive Producer	Shinji Hashimoto
Producer	Ichiro Hazama Yosuke Haysashi
Director	Takeo Kujiraoka
Character Designer	Tetsuya Nomura
Composer	Takeharu Ishimoto

Gallery

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Etymology

The game shares the same title as the original Dissidia game because the developers wanted to show their earnestness in doing an arcade version and so felt that not adding any numbers or subtitles and simply rebooting was the best choice.

External Links

• Official Japanese site
• Announcement trailer
• Official Japanese Twitter Account
• Dissidia Arcade LiveStream April 2015 Event
• Dissidia Arcade LiveStream May 2015 Event
• Arcade-PS4 comparison trailer

References

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