Final Fantasy Tactics is a game about flawed people struggling against wave after wave of entrenched injustice and evil, hoping that at some point their small contributions might one day ripple outward to create a better world. It’s a message that the PS1 classic’s director says remains all too relevant ahead of a remaster arriving this fall.
“Nearly 30 years ago, the collapse of Japan’s bubble economy engulfed the nation’s financial institutions in mountains of bad debt, triggering a wave of corporate bankruptcies, a sudden and extremes rise in unemployment rates, and stagnation of Japanese society as a whole,” wrote Yasumi Matsuno in his letter to fans about Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles bringing the game to modern platforms later this year. “It was an era when many were robbed of hope, when dreams were measured by their price tag.”
The message went hard. While the enhanced version’s director, Kazutoyo Maehiro, spoke about new features, and art director Hiroshi Minagawa spoke about pixel art sprites and 3D polygons, Matsuno—who is returning to re-edit the script and provide additional dialogue—drew out Final Fantasy Tactics’ political parallels to the modern world. At one end is an entrenched underclass and at the other are those in power who exploit them for their own gain.
“And now, in 2025—a time when inequality and division are still deeply rooted in our society—I offer this story once again,” he wrote. “The will to resist is in your hands.” Resist what, exactly? Matsuno doesn’t say. But it’s not hard to guess: bigotry, demagoguery, authoritarianism. Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredibly complex and fun strategy game to unravel, but it’s also an eye-opening look at ideological capture and how it prevents people from imagining a better world, let alone fighting to bring it about.
This has given rise to all sorts of memes about political radicalization which, as Aftermath previously reported, even led to made-up Final Fantasy Tactics quotes that felt so aligned with the core theses of the game that people just started pretending like they were actually from the game. “If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class,” reads the most famous one, which is exactly the kind of thing a Final Fantasy Tactics character would say before they make a deal with the devil and then beat your ass in one of the most unfair fights in all of gaming.
One of Final Fantasy Tactics’ best tricks, though, is how it avoids the pitfalls of sounding preachy or didactic. It’s about big ideas and weight problems, but they’re always viewed through the prism of authentically realized characters who get swept up by the churn of history just like everyone else. “It was a story of a peculiar destiny, in which friendship and betrayal intertwine,” Matsuno wrote this week. I can’t wait for new players to get to experience that deftly spun tale later this year, and also see what subtle new turns he may have added as part of the remaster.
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