EXP Share: Trivia About My Favourite Video Game.

Its that time of the month again, when I get to write my response for this month’s EXP Share topic! For this month’s topic, I get to talk about my favourite video game, Final Fantasy X, so let’s take a look at this month’s EXP Share.

As always, let’s take a look at what DanamesX has set for April’s EXP Share:

If you are like me, I enjoy watching videos about gaming history and trivia. I bet there are somethings that I might not know or you might not know about one of your favorite games. So for this month, I am asking that you share with us some trivia about your favorite game! It could be on one game, or multiple if you like. Don’t worry if it is common trivia that most may already know. 

DanamesX, Tales from the Backlog.

Well, like DanamesX, I love video game history and the history behind a video game’s development. So, what better game to share trivia about, than my favourite game, Final Fantasy X. Before I go into the general trivia, I wanted to share some personal trivia concerning my relationship with Final Fantasy X. It was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played, after picking up a copy of the game, on a whim, from a second hand electronic store. As mentioned previously, it is my favourite game of all time and whilst I have played other Final Fantasy games since first playing FFX, none have managed to take FFX‘s place in my heart. Finally, I own a copy of Final Fantasy X on almost all platforms its available on that I own- PC, PS Vita, PS4 and PS2 (twice!). So, sorry Todd Howard, but I only own Skyrim on three gaming platforms…

OK, enough of the personal stuff, let’s talk Final Fantasy X trivia!

Image source: Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster‘s Steam store page.

Let’s start with an intial story idea for Final Fantasy X. Originally, the plot was going to focus on the idea that the people of Spira only lived until they were seventeen. The journey element of FFX was going to focus on trying to find a cure or solution to people dying at such a young age. It was also planned for Yuna to die at some point in the game. Obviously, this storyline was not used however the fact that both Tidus and Yuna are seventeens years old is a left over element of that discarded plot. There was also a suggestion that Yuna was going to die in battle against Sin. Seriously, Squaresoft, what was your problem with young women?!

It wasn’t just Yuna that underwent some changes in the development process. Tidus also experienced some changes. Originally, he was going to be a teenage plumber who had ties to a gang. There was also idea that he was going to be one of the unsent, however this character arc was ultimately given to another character. In early concept images, Tidus was oringally going to have darker hair, mainly to differentiate from another blonde spikey haired Final Fantasy protagonist. In the end, Tidus got to keep his blonde locks as, in the Ainu language, his name means “sun”. As a side note, Wakka means “water” and Yuna means “moon flower”.

Image source: Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster‘s Steam store page.

OK, let’s talk voice acting and scripts. Naturally, as Final Fantasy X was a japanese developed video game, the script was intially written in japanese. These created some challenges for the english team, as they had to fit the dialogue to the animations that had already been created. To get around this, the speech would be sped up or slowed down to fit the animations. However, in the case of Rikku, the writers finsihed many of her lines with ‘you know’ in order to line the english script up with the mouth animations. Also, no character says Tidus’ name, as players had the option to change Tidus’ name at the start of the game. I also want to give a shout out to a couple of the voice actors who ended voicing a number of the characters: John DiMaggio voiced both Kimahri and Wakka, who do not have any voiced conversation together in the game and Dwight Schultz who voiced Maechen, O’aka XXIII and Grand Maester Mika.

To this day, Final Fantasy X continues to be a popular entry in the Fantasy Fantasy series. It proved its success early on by reaching one million pre-orders in Japan, in just seventeen days. It was well received by critics and would go on to be the first Final Fantasygame to receive a direct sequel. It just goes to show that when developers chose to be ambitious with their game, it can pay and become a classic.

So, that was some Final Fantasy X trivia that I hope you enjoyed reading and possibly learning something new about this classic JRPG. Once again, I want to thank DanamesX for creating a topic that allows me to talk about my favourite game. Please, if you have some spare time, check out Tales from the Backlog. Its a great blog and one I would recommend gamers to read. I would love to read some trivia about your favourite video game, so please share in the comments and I’ll talk to you soon!