- Daisuke Watanabe
-
Daisuke Watanabe 
Born March 11, 1974
Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanNationality Japanese Occupation Scenario writer of video games at Square Enix. Daisuke Watanabe (渡辺大祐 Watanabe Daisuke) is a Japanese video game scenario writer that has been an employee of Square Enix since September, 1998. He is mostly known for his work on the role-playing video game series Final Fantasy and the action role-playing video game series Kingdom Hearts.
Contents
Writing style
Watanabe says that he has no fixed writing style. From drama to comedy, romance to politics, his writing style is broad.[1] The way he writes for a specific video game is dependent on how the original story writer wants their story to be portrayed in a script.[1] He believes that his strength is his ability to create a screenplay that portrays the exact vision of the original story writer.[1]
Work on Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X was the first Final Fantasy game that Watanabe worked on. Kazushige Nojima has stated that he was assisted by other staff to create the scenario for the game.[2]
Work on Final Fantasy XII
Watanabe was initially not part of the Final Fantasy XII development team. However, he was brought in to finish the script when the original scenario writer Yasumi Matsuno left Square Enix three quarters into development of the game due to sickness.[3] Watanabe joined the development team in November 2004.[1] He was supervised by Jun Akiyama, who had been working on the game as the event director since January 2002. Akiyama had also worked as the event director for Vagrant Story and Matsuno appointed Akiyama to be in charge of all story related aspects of Final Fantasy XII when he left the project.[1]
When Daisuke Watanabe joined the project to write the script in Yasumi Matsuno's place, Jun Akiyama showed him a draft script already written by Matsuno and told Watanabe to just add more depth to it. At the time Matsuno left, the full story was already finished but Matsuno had only written a rough draft of the script to be used in the final game.[1] Akiyama described the overall finished script Matsuno was aiming for as, "A dignified drama about Ivalice's nobility, viewed through the eyes of a commoner." In other words, the theme of the story was about the aristocratic people of Ivalice and the drama and politics between them, and all this was to be viewed through the eyes of Vaan, a commoner.[1] Due to this theme for the story, Watanabe only gave the aristocratic party members major plot development, such as Ashe. Watanabe also put more effort into writing about the aristocratic non-playable characters in the game, such as the Judges.[1] Both himself and Akiyama also decided to make it so there was no main character out of the party members and instead made them an ensemble cast that functioned as one main character; the group was the main character of the story and not just one person.[1] However, despite this, they still kept Vaan as the player's point of view to the story as Matsuno had intended.[1]
Daisuke Watanabe believes that by Vaan getting barely any story focus and not having a major character arc, he felt more like a "transparent character", and therefore an empty shell for the player to put themselves into and see the world and story first-hand.[1] Jun Akiyama added that the script was written so that, although it was an ensemble cast, Ashe was the main female protagonist and Balthier was the main male protagonist; Vaan was written to be the player.[1] Akiyama clarified this statement by saying that Vaan was added by Yasumi Matsuno to be a character that would be an in-game representation of the player; he would both learn about the world of Ivalice and see it for the first time in sync with the player. He was the player's avatar in the game world.[1] Akiyama says that Matsuno didn't want the player to just be a spectator or passive observer watching the game on a screen; he wanted the player to feel like they were actually inside the game and participating in this grand adventure alongside the main protagonists, Ashe and Balthier.[1] Akiyama and Watanabe believe Vaan is one of the most unique characters in the Final Fantasy series due to this story perspective, and they state that he's more similar to a player's character in Final Fantasy XI than any other Final Fantasy character.[1]
Jun Akiyama concluded that in past 3D offline Final Fantasy games, the main characters mindsets changed tremendously over the course of the game without the players input, this making it hard to actually role-play as them and feel as if you were in their worlds. He states the player experience in these games felt more like watching a film than actually role-playing.[1] With the introduction of Vaan as a player avatar, he encourages players to try to experience what role-playing actually feels like and therefore feel as if they are actually in Ivalice and directly involved with the adventure and story.[1] Daisuke Watanabe added that if players do this correctly, they will feel an even closer connection to the other playable characters; they will feel like they are journeying with real people and helping to solve the issues happening in their world. By the end of the game, instead of feeling an indirect emotional attachment to the characters like in past 3D Final Fantasy games, they will instead feel like they've journeyed and made friends with real people from another world.[1]
Jun Akiyama gave Daisuke Watanabe creative freedom when writing the script and would only tell Watanabe to make changes if he felt he didn't match the writing style of Yasumi Matsuno.[1] During this process, Akiyama and Watanabe also came up with many ideas for additional story scenes, but ultimately most of these never made it into the final game.[1] Hiroshi Minagawa, the director, says the creation of these story scenes had to be dropped so the game could be meet the deadline for the Japanese release. Minagawa expressed his regrets about this and wished he could have included all of their story scenes as he felt it would have made the story even more exciting for the player.[4] Watanabe has said that Penelo is his favorite character due to her having the most amount of story scenes he wrote that never got created for the game.[1]
Work on Final Fantasy XIII
Watanabe was given very precise direction from Motomu Toriyama, the scenario designer, when writing the scenario for Final Fantasy XIII. Toriyama was very specific on what he wanted the script to be like and Watanabe recalls that there were numerous times that parts of the script had to be redone as Toriyama was not happy with it.[5] The theme for the story of Final Fantasy XIII was, "A dramatic story focused on the emotions of the characters." Toriyama wanted some scenes to show more emotion, and other scenes to show a more contrasting difference between the personalities of the party members involved.[5] Watanabe feels that creating the scenario for Final Fantasy XIII was the most challenging project he has worked on at Square Enix to date. However, he feels that the experience he gained working under the specific demands of Motomu Toriyama has planted seeds for future growth in his work as a scenario writer.[5]
Work on the Kingdom Hearts series
Watanabe has worked on every single Kingdom Hearts game released to date. Tetsuya Nomura, the creator of the series, personally finds Watanabe creating the scenario for the games very natural. Nomura believes that Watanabe's outlook on the overall story of the Kingdom Hearts series is in line with his own.[6] Nomura recalls that when he first showed Watanabe an image of Ventus from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Watanabe instantly knew that the story would involve the heart of Ventus going into Sora and lead to the physical image of Ventus becoming Roxas. When Nomura realized that Watanabe already knew how it would all work out without him needing to explain it, he felt that there was another staff member that completely understood his logic behind the Kingdom Hearts mythology.[6]
Works
Game Released System(s) Credit(s) Threads of Fate 1999 PlayStation Scenario writer Final Fantasy X 2001 PlayStation 2 Scenario planner Kingdom Hearts 2002 PlayStation 2 Scenario writer Final Fantasy X-2 2003 PlayStation 2 Scenario Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories 2004 Game Boy Advance Scenario writer Kingdom Hearts II 2005 PlayStation 2 Scenario text planner Final Fantasy XII 2006 PlayStation 2 Scenario Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories 2007 PlayStation 2 Scenario Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings 2007 Nintendo DS Special thanks Dissidia: Final Fantasy 2008 PlayStation Portable Scenario Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days 2009 Nintendo DS Scenario supervisor Final Fantasy XIII 2009 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Lead scenario writer Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep 2010 PlayStation Portable Plot scenario Kingdom Hearts coded 2009–2010 Mobile phone Scenario writer Kingdom Hearts Re:coded 2010 Nintendo DS Scenario supervisor Front Mission Evolved 2010 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows Scenario writer Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy 2011 PlayStation Portable Scenario supervisor Final Fantasy XIII-2 2011 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Scenario References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Studio BentStuff (24 November 2006). "Scenario Staff Interview: Jun Akiyama & Daisuke Watanabe". Final Fantasy XII Ultimania Omega (Square Enix).
- ^ "Interview: Square invades London". Computer and Video Games. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/27968/interviews/interview-square-invades-london/. Retrieved 4 August 2011. "Kazushige Nojima: Including myself, there are another three scenario writers on the team. We get together scenarios and ideas and ask the team what they think of them. It's a lengthy process."
- ^ Niizumi, Hirohiko (1 August 2005). "FFXII producer steps down". GameSpot. http://uk.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/01/news_6130121.html. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
- ^ "Video interview with FINAL FANTASY XII Directors". FINAL FANTASY XII Collector's Edition Bonus DVD. Square Enix Co., Ltd. 31 October 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYIzjBbO2FQ. Retrieved 8 April 2011. "Hiroshi Minagawa: In the course of development, Jun Akiyama and Daisuke Watanabe came up with many ideas but ultimately we had to abandon many of them. I'd heard their original ideas and I wish we could have included them all. Once we began development and many of the systems were in place, the team had many progressive ideas. It was the most enjoyable part of the project. But as we approached the project's end, I had to point out features we had to drop in order for the game to be finished. Which is unfortunate, since I'm sure people would have enjoyed the game that much more if we could have left all our original ideas in."
- ^ a b c Studio BentStuff (28 January 2010). "Scenario Section". Final Fantasy XIII Scenario Ultimania (Square Enix).
- ^ a b Studio BentStuff (25 March 2010). "Series Director Interview: Tetsuya Nomura". Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Ultimania (Square Enix).
Categories:- Square Enix
- Final Fantasy designers
- Video game designers
- Living people
- 1974 births
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