Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles looks like a standard re-release in the eyes of many, as it’s essentially the PS1 game with proper widescreen and voice acting added. What’s shocking is that this version was essentially remade from the ground up, as Square Enix has confirmed that they lost the original source code.
This isn’t exactly a shocking development, as Square Enix has lost the source code for a number of their acclaimed games. If anything, it’s more depressing how normal it is for companies to lose the source code of these beloved titles.
In an extensive interview with The PlayStation Blog, Director Kazutoyo Maehiro says that preserving the code of older games wasn’t a standard practice at the time. Preserving games was much harder back then, with certain tools not being available, and Maehiro says simple actions like removing bugs would result in overwriting the previous game code.
Maehiro also says they considered simply emulating the original game before deciding to reverse-engineer this project and create Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. This method means the game can have additional polish and features that wouldn’t be possible with simple emulation. Fans of Sonic Unleashed Recompiled will agree with this method.
While we can’t blame Square Enix or any other company for this, it’s a shame that this has become so common. Losing the source code is the main reason Bandai Namco hasn’t been able to re-release Tales of Symphonia at 60 FPS, since recent re-releases are based on the PS2 port that ran at half the framerate. It’s also why Konami’s Silent Hill HD Collection on PS3 and Xbox 360 is so poor, as the company had an incomplete source code and asked new devs to try finishing what wasn’t there.
This is also probably why Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles doesn’t have the PSP content, since that would have added additional development time. It’s easy enough to assume that the current version on mobile devices is emulating that older version. Regardless, we now understand why there won’t be any War of the Lions content, though that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.
Now that game preservation has become a hotter topic amongst gamers, it looks like these versions are going to stay relevant for years to come. Even if The Ivalice Chronicles could have been treated better, the fact that it exists is a miracle, and we're sure fans will be happy to play it when the game comes out on September 30th.
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