Games

The late 1990s were a transitionary period for Square. Final Fantasy VII's international success left them flush with cash to expand into other forms of entertainment, spearheaded with the production of the computer animated feature film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, directed by series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Meanwhile, the video games themselves were still moving from strength to strengths under a new creative team helmed by Yoshinori Kitase, writer Kazushige Nojima, and character designer Tetsuya Nomura.

Having conquered the realm of high quality, prerendered backdrops on the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2 was set to provide the team with significantly more power to work with; enough to finally push the series completely into the world of realtime 3D graphics. But Final Fantasy X would also introduce the one thing that Kitase had begun wishing the series had ever since the games started encroaching upon realism: voice acting.

Would Final Fantasy X be a continuation of Square's Golden Age? Or would it be the harbinger of its downfall?