Final Fantasy XII Inside Documentary Video Reveals Who the Protagonist is and Creating a Boss With 50 Million HP

Square Enix is continuing their Inside Final Fantasy series with a look at Final Fantasy XII, available now as Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC-via Steam.

The video highlights Final Fantasy XII’s development as told be Director Takashi Katano and Produce Hiroaki Kato. The two developers discuss key points of the game’s development process such as how intimidating it was for them to create a seamless battle system that makes sense.

The video lasts almost 30-minutes long and includes some interesting tidbits about the story such as who the main protagonist really is. While unknowing gamers might assume Vaan, the vest-wearing adventurer, is the protagonist, the developers mention that its actually probably Balthier, but only because he keeps calling himself the protagonist. However, throughout the game, the characters exist in Ivalice even if they aren’t on screen, they are doing something. This brings them to the conclusion the Ivalice is perhaps the main protagonist.

Also, the video highlights how the game’s boss actually has 50 million HP and how that was pretty difficult to program. Kato-san mentions that on PlayStation 2 he had spent over four hours trying to defeat the boss and thought “There’s no way I’m ever going to do this again!” — but then he was asked to do it for work purposes.

To beat the boss, he left the game running on a monitor next to him where he would, little by little, progress through the battle over a long period of time. He returned to the battle during his playthrough of the The Zodiac Age version of the game but found the battle to be easier because he knew the tactics to defeat him and used high-speed mode to make it faster.

Kato-san adds that he doesn’t know why they made Trial Mode in The Zodiac Age so difficult because he can’t get passed some of those battles, but he encourages players to try it all.

As for his best memory, Kato-san mentions that it was receiving the master build of the game, which was made from so many hours of hard work. After they received the build, the team got together and played the final boss on a large projector together to watch the ending.

In case you want to know more, you can check out our review of the recent Switch version of  the game.

You can watch Inside Final Fantasy XII below: