Who is Hajime Tabata?
A little while back at Paris Games Week we had the opportunity to sit down with Hajime Tabata and have a quick chat with him about Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. To some people, Tabata-san may not be one of the more recognisable names in the history of Final Fantasy developers but he’s certainly earned a favourable reputation after directing games such as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy Type-0. Of course he’s probably leaped up in notoriety now that he’s not only the director of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD but also Final Fantasy XV, so we thought we’d sit down and find out a little bit more about him by asking him some questions from the community.
Everyone has to start somewhere, even the director of Final Fantasy XV. So how did Hajime Tabata begin his career in game development? As it turns out, it all started in middle school. “I really remember getting addicted to this historical simulation game from Koei thinking, this is a really great game, I’d love to make a game like this myself that’s this absorbing and interesting,” Tabata-san reminisces. “This was probably the first time I decided to I really wanted to make games myself.”
After school comes university and it was here where Tabata-san got his break into the video games industry. In Japan, students hunt for jobs before they graduate, so Tabata-san simply applied for jobs the old-fashioned way. But it wasn’t just video games that interested him; “I wanted to make stories so I applied to a lot of media, not just games companies but also TV programme makers, especially documentary makers and the film industry,” Tabata-san explains. “Turns out in the end I was rejected by the film and TV companies but I was accepted by games companies, so I decided I might as well make games then!” Tabata-san jokes about his decision-making process, but assures us that he wasn’t that focused on going into other industries and he was just trying to see what jobs he could get after university.
“It wasn’t just about films, TV or games,” Tabata-san recalls. “I was also quite interested in going into food production; because when I was living on my own in university, I always used to eat a lot of instant noodles, instant ramen noodles and frozen udon noodles and stuff like that.” This is something I’m sure anyone who has been to university can relate to. I’ve personally probably lived off this kind of diet for much longer than any doctor would recommend. “I also remember a Japanese sweets maker – 'Bourbon' and a special frozen udon noodle company – 'Kindai,'” Tabata-san said. Special note - I’m not actually sure about the spelling of Kindai and after extensive research I can’t find any additional info on the company. Sorry!
“I remember I used to love the food they made. I ate so much of it I thought maybe I want to go work for them and make my own brand of instant noodles. So it was either going to be noodles, sweets, films, TV or games and it turned out to be games! I only get inspired by things that are really, really close to me. I can’t seem to see much further!” Tabata-san added, laughing.
Square Enix wasn’t the first video game publisher that Tabata-san worked for. He was employed by a couple of other publishers beforehand, where he gained invaluable experience making all kinds of games - everything from RPGs to action games and also some arcade games. “I still haven’t made a historical simulation game” Tabata-san points out. “That’s one I really wanted to do, so I’m hoping that one day I’ll be able to make one.”
Moving onto the subject of video games, Tabata-san displays a wide knowledge and obvious love for the medium. I never quite know what to expect when asking developers about their favourite games and inspirations. When I asked him about any Square Enix games/franchises that he’d be interested in seeing being revived and introduced to a new generation, he didn’t even hesitate when saying the name - Teguza. “I’m not sure what the English name of the game is or if it was released in Europe,” Tabata-san said, in reaction to my bemused expression (I didn’t recognise the name of the game). “It’s a very old game on the NES and NEC 88 computers, very old PCs. It was basically about a transforming robot. You were a spaceship that transformed into a robot and you went around mazes fighting enemies, that kind of classic shooting game. I’m personally interested in seeing a game that is that old and remade as a modern game, as it would obviously have to be evolved a heck of a lot. Maybe it’d be like Transformers or like Voltron, with lots of robots coming together maybe. That might be interesting…”
After a bit of research later, I found out that Teguza did come out in the West but it was renamed “Thexder." Teguza is what the game was called in Japan. I had never played it though so maybe I should try and play it sometime.
You can see when Tabata-san is remembering something fondly or talking about something he’s really passionate about. He’s a very cheery kind of guy but you can see something in his smile that’s hard to describe – a real sense of sincerity is what I suppose you’d call it. So when I asked him the all-important question – “what is your favourite Final Fantasy game?” He is of course, beaming.
“Previously I would have said FF-I and FF-VII were my favourite to play but while making Final Fantasy XV, some of the ones I’m referring to the most and the ones I’m drawing the most inspiration from and getting a lot out of are FF-III, FF-IV, FF-V and FF-VI.” Tabata-san says with a big grin on his face. “The more I look at them, the more I think – wow! They’re probably some of the lesser-known Final Fantasy games but I think there’s some really great stuff in them and they’re a really good help for making FF-XV.”
Speaking of Final Fantasy XV, I ask Tabata-san if he thinks XV will be remembered as one best Final Fantasy games - will it stand side-by-side with the all-time greats, and how would he like himself and his work to be remembered?
“Of course, everyone has got their own favourite Final Fantasy so I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d certainly like to be remembered as the creator of one of the best Final Fantasy games for one… a number… at least a few people!” Tabata-san says and laughs. “On top of that I’d like to be remembered as someone who made the Final Fantasy mainline series branch out a little bit in a new direction, certainly with the Type series as well. That I took Final Fantasy in a direction that maybe is a little bit more mature and more core gamer-focused, with a more visceral representation of violence. So maybe I can be remembered as someone who made that kind of necessary evolution of the series or took it in an interesting direction. I’d be happy with that.”
The Final Fantasy franchise is well known to have amazing stories and characters, so I asked Tabata-san what his favourite stories were from any kind of medium whether that be film, TV, books or games. After he previously mentioned that he tried to get a job making stories from a wide variety of industries after university I was expecting a long list of deep literary masterpieces - but at first he didn’t seem to think too much about it and it turns out he just really likes documentaries.
“There are a lot of stories I like but many of them are the sort of things based on real life events so docu-dramas or historical films, things like that and the non-fiction type stuff.” Tabata-san explains. “One exception is Lord of the Rings. I don’t normally like those kind of fantastical stories, but that’s amazing, I really love that. I like Star Wars a lot as well.” Tabata-san then starts giggling to himself, the kind of giggle you do when you think of something silly and you try to stop laughing but can’t. He’s quick to regain his composure though and calmly says, “Thinking about it, I like quite a lot of things!” At this point, we’re all laughing and I’m not quite sure why.
This is only the second time I’ve ever met Tabata-san (I was lucky enough to meet him at TGS earlier this year) and I’m still a little surprised by how cheery he is. I barely saw a moment when he wasn’t smiling and he made a lot of fans smile at Paris Games Week as well. Always so approachable and really easy to talk to, it’s easy to forget that this man is in charge of one of the most highly anticipated games in recent memory – Final Fantasy XV. It’s also refreshing to hear that he really enjoys interacting with fans.
“My favourite part of working on Final Fantasy XV is showing new information to the fans,” Tabata-san reveals. “After working hard on the game, getting confident with the team and knowing we’ve done a good job on it. When we show it to fans, see their reaction and seeing them get excited is really the best thing for me. I really love doing that. So for example, showing XV at Tokyo Game Show and Paris Games Week was really exciting and that’s my favourite part of the job.”
I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Tabata-san in 2015 and don’t forget, you can pre-order Final Fantasy Type-0 HD right here.
Special thank you to the following community members for suggesting questions used here in a previous blog post – Roganjosh, GaiaLanzer, Damerman, Ff6789n10 and RKSN128.