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I've been considering starting this WikiProject for a while now, but it took Cuahl and ZeWrestler to finally convince me there was enough interest to make it worthwhile. I should thank the kind folks at various other WikiProjects, especially WikiProject Pokedex and WikiProject Doctor Who, as I've basically just cribbed their pages and modified liberally where necessary. It should go without saying that this is all very much in flux: make whatever changes you'd like to the main project page, and (especially) the to-do list above. – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 03:37 (UTC)

I definitely think that this is a great idea, and I'm looking forward to participating in this project. However, I do have a few questions to clarify some things for it.

First, what qualifies something as a Final Fantasy game? While games like the SaGa series, the Kingdom Hearts series, and the Seiken Densetsu series are closely related to the Final Fantasy series and worth including in this project, they're generally not considered part of the series itself, while spin-offs like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy Tactics usually are considered part of the series. I think it's helpful to make the distinction.

Second, the project page states that new localizations supersede older localizations. Is it proper to assume that the latest localization of a game is the one that should be the primary basis for information in articles? For example, would information from Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls take precendence over information from Final Fantasy Origins since the former was the last one released? If so, it may be helpful to put a list of the canonical version of each game on the project page. Also, are only North American localizations being included, or are we also going to use information from European localizations?

Finally, should information from unofficial ROM translations be included? I would say no since these are unofficial localizations that are not approved by Square Enix. However, in the case of Final Fantasy V, some of the unofficial names (such as Butz) are fairly well-known. It also presents a problem for Final Fantasy III since it has not yet seen an official release in North America (although that is supposed to change soon). --Cswrye July 6, 2005 14:24 (UTC)

I don't really know enough about pre-FFVI games to comment, but I think we should go with official names, rather than unofficial. Plus, it's important to remember that the official Wikipedia policy is that the main naming should be of what people will be most familiar with. — Cuahl 6 July 2005 15:06 (UTC)

Final Fantasy V in the PSX version has changed the characters name like Butz becomes Bartz and Lenna becomes Reina, I think maybe we should mention them like this Reina (Lenna). It's only a suggestion but if we don't include both names, we should mention the PSX one, I think. --DarkEvil July 6, 2005 15:43 (UTC)

The question of what information takes priority is probably the biggest one we face, IMO. In general, I think it's something we'll kind of need to make up as we go along, keeping in mind whatever the highest percentage of readers are likely to be familar with. That said, I think it would be a good idea to disambiguate as often as possible: specify, for instance, the Aeris/Aerith name controversy in, at minimum, the Final Fantasy VII article and the Aerith Gainsbourg article. For major concepts, it would probably help to determine a standard (i.e. Aerith over Aeris, Bartz over Butz, or whatever) for reference in passing (there's no reason to go into the whole FF7 name controversy in the Ancients article, for instance). But such a list should ideally be kept as small as possible: major characters, locations, and items. Beyond that, I think it's going to have to be a bit improvisational, if only because few editors are going to consult a huge list so they can be sure what the up-to-date terminology for "ZAP!" in Final Fantasy is.... The same goes for fan translations: disambiguate the term where appropriate, and otherwise just try to go with what seems likely to be better recognized. – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 17:34 (UTC)

Oh, and regarding the gray areas surrounding related titles like SaGa or Kingdom Hearts, I don't see any reason why we can't include them in some fashion. For the most part, they're clearly relevant to the franchise. Back when I was organizing the Final Fantasy categories, I treated the concept of spin-off rather liberally (see Category:Final Fantasy spin-offs). As there's a good deal of overlapping information, I think we really should take an active interest in these peripheral titles, provided we don't overemphasize the FF-relatedness or deemphasize the uniqueness of said title in the process. – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 17:39 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I do think that these games should be included in this project, but I think that they should be distinguished from the actual Final Fantasy "canon". --Cswrye July 6, 2005 20:32 (UTC)

What about the PC versions of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, should they have an article for themselves or maybe a mention, because there are some differences like midis being used even in the One-Winged Angel song in the PC version of Final Fantasy VII. --DarkEvil July 7, 2005 02:47 (UTC)

I don't think that they merit their own articles. They're not different games; they're just different versions of the same game, and there aren't enough differences between them to have an entirely new article for them. I think it's just necessary to mention that the PC versions exists (and maybe list some of the differences) on the main articles for those two games. --Cswrye July 7, 2005 04:56 (UTC)

I've got yet another question, when you upload images, what is preferable, using filters or just uploading the image as it was normally displayed because sometimes I see some images with a 2xSaI filter using an emulator or double scaled images. --DarkEvil July 7, 2005 02:54 (UTC)

It depends a lot on the image, really. When dealing with 2D screenshots, I generally find it best to leave images unfiltered, mainly because it usually looks better, and because filtering tends to really screw up PNG compression: a good PNG screencap of a NES or SNES game is usually well under 10K. Add a filter to that, and it can shoot up to ~100K. When dealing with images that don't compress well losslessly (i.e. JPEG images), it really depends. I think full screenshots should be unfiltered, because that best represents what the actual game looks like. If it's an edited screenshot, or just a picture of a specific object, than filtering might be acceptable. It varies. – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 05:14 (UTC)

Some pages in the Final Fantasy series use the word FMV. The talk page the FMV article recently got a comment by User:Mateusc saying that Final Fantasy didn't use FMVs in it's gameplay. Don't know what to do about it, it's either that the articles are wrong or he's wrong. I tried to contact him and he answered on my talk page :

Hi! I musch apreciated your work on article.

FMV is basically filmed videos, interactive or not. Final Fantasy never had FMVs, only computer graphics, and in the case of PlayStation era, tranferred to game as a video file. A recent example of FMV use is Enter the Matrix game: most of the scenes of this game are filmed videos and others in CG, but both run as video files. In 1993/94 these type of game they had been considered the future of the video games, but was not well received because it does not tranfer realism as well as graphs 3D and CG's.

The confusion with the term and the meaning in my opnion is related with its disuse and abandonment of FMV in video gaming. Since Final Fantasy and CG graphics debuted in PlayStation console this type of game practically was forgotten. An excellent series that it shows what it is FMV and with episode up to 1996 is Gabriel Knight.

I really want to discuss about this subject because it mentions itself directly to the one that the market of games is today: the choice of graphs 3D in detriment of the video.

Grateful for your attention! --Mateusc 6 July 2005 05:06 (UTC)

That is completely contradictory to everything that I've heard about FMV. Pretty much everything I've read about the Final Fantasy games said that they used FMV. I'm not saying he's wrong, but I would want to see some more evidence before changing the article. --Cswrye July 7, 2005 04:56 (UTC)

I personally thought that User:Mateusc was wrong. Professional websites like http://www.gamespot.com, that is if you count Gamespot as professional, use the FMV term in the Final Fantasy series, like [here] on the 4th paragraph. I don't think the articles are wrong, just wanted to mention this to be certain about the FMV aspect of the game.

When we put an image for an article talking about a character, an object, or a location of a game like Final Fantasy I & II which have been remade with better graphics, which game should be the screnshot; the oldest one or the newest one? --DarkEvil July 7, 2005 16:24 (UTC)

I just thought about the Eternal Calm video at the end of Final Fantasy X International which tells why they made a sequel which is because Rikku goes to see Yuna and tells her about the sphere with Tidus. When i searched on the Final Fantasy X page, there was nearly no info on it except a small mention. Maybe we should put images of the video or a script resume, or a link to the video itself on another website, maybe even including a sample of the video if necessary but I'm not sure if it's the case. Anyway, these are only suggestions, I want to know what you think. --DarkEvil July 7, 2005 17:20 (UTC)

I think it might not be a bad idea to add the a goal "Perfect Existing articals to FA status" to the to-do list. --ZeWrestler 6 July 2005 04:00 (UTC)

• Ah, good point. Agreed. AFAIK, no Final Fantasy-related articles have yet achieved FA status. Getting something up there should be one of our highest priorities, I think. It would certainly make choosing sample articles for the main project page easier, anyway :-) – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 04:04 (UTC)
  • Agreed. It would make sample articals a lot easier. My personal vote goes to Final Fantasy VI. One of the most important games in the series that really got the ball rolling with the games populartity. --ZeWrestler 6 July 2005 04:20 (UTC)
    • I'm more than okay with Final Fantasy VI too, this game has really got all the good aspects (story, graphics, music, even a non-linear gameplay in The World of Ruins) and the article is already advanced. Furthermore, a lot of fans agree with this one being the greatest in the series and I kind of agree with that.
    • Added note, this article has numerous sub pages that add on to it. --ZeWrestler 6 July 2005 04:41 (UTC)
• Another thing we may want to look into is consistency in some of the articles. In particular, we want to make sure than information on one article doesn't contradict information on another article. For example, I was just looking over some of the release dates of the games and found that the release dates for some of the compilations are different on the game article than on the compilation article. On the Final Fantasy IV article, the release date of the European version of Final Fantasy Anthology is given as 2002-05-17, but in the Final Fantasy Anthology article, the release date is listed as 2002-02-27. That was the biggest contradiction, but I found a few others as well. (I would have changed them myself, but I don't know what the correct release dates are.) --Cswrye July 6, 2005 22:19 (UTC)
  • Sorry to be annoying, but if you could make a list of the errors, we could fix them :) — Cuahl 6 July 2005 22:25 (UTC)
    • Sorry! I'll get back to that soon. In the meantime, I thought it would be helpful to have a list of the release dates, so I created Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Release dates. There are some gaps in the information there, but it would be a good place to put the correct information for future reference. --Cswrye July 6, 2005 23:38 (UTC)
  • Here are the contradictions I found:

1. North American release of Final Fantasy Anthology: Listed as 1999-10-05 on the Final Fantasy Anthology article and 1999-09-30 on the Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI articles.
2. European release of Final Fantasy Anthology: Listed as 2002-02-27 on the Final Fantasy Anthology article and 2002-05-17 on the Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V articles.
3. North American release of Final Fantasy Chronicles: Listed as 2001-06-28 on the Final Fantasy Chronicles article and 2001-06-29 on the Final Fantasy IV article; no specific date given on Chrono Trigger article.

• • • GameFAQs says 1999-09-30, 2002-05-17, and 2001-06-29, respectively. Other sources welcome. Nifboy 7 July 2005 01:52 (UTC)

As a maintance idea, we have some scattered images, and articles that are unneed, and in some cases duplicates. We should make it a point to clean up the and have this excess stuff deleted. --ZeWrestler 7 July 2005 14:38 (UTC)

So, there's been a couple of us who've been busy adding the numerous soundtrack albums. This, however, creates a slight problem in my eyes: I've been using the standard WikiProject Albums template, but it's somewhat ill-suited to the albums I've been adding. There are various fields I'd like it to have (like catalog number) and various other fields that are kind of worthless (the next/previous album navbar is tricky to implement when dealing with the numerous arranged albums: do we go by composer or arranger?). I was considering creating a Final Fantasy (or at least CVG)-specific album stub to address these concerns. Anyone have any thoughts? – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 17:50 (UTC)

I think that there is an error on the project page. It says that songs should be italicized. According to the Manual of Style, albums should be italicized, but songs should be placed in double quotes. For example, Final Fantasy IV Celtic Moon should be italicized, but "Into the Darkness" should be put in double quotes. I changed the project page to state this. --Cswrye July 6, 2005 18:02 (UTC)

I'm worried about the naming of articles. There's Turks (Final Fantasy VII) but there's Sephiroth (video game character). We should name all articles as either

• their full name (Cloud Strife),
• with (Final Fantasy) if they appear in multiple places across the series (Biggs and Wedge (Final Fantasy))
• or add the specific game title (Marlene (Final Fantasy VII)) - (the last one doesn't matter that she's in other games too, they're still FFVII spin-offs)

What do you guys think?

I changed Sephiroth (video game character) to Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII) — Cuahl 6 July 2005 14:09 (UTC)

I totally agree, the Final Fantasy pages are in need of a standard and this one seems just right to me. --DarkEvil July 6, 2005 15:46 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 17:50 (UTC)

DarkEvil threw a HUGE list of character names and variations here, but I moved it out of the way to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/character names because of its size. Sorry DarkEvil! — Cuahl 6 July 2005 19:26 (UTC)

Well, I kinda sort stepped on Cuahl's toes there, but I've just performed a major overhaul of the Cid (Final Fantasy) page, expanding numerous entries and adding images of pretty much every Cid is there. My big concern, at this stage, is finding an good quality image of Cid Fabool IX from Final Fantasy IX, who for some inexplicable reason doesn't seem to have any kind of character artwork whatsoever (I even pulled the old FF9 artbook off my shelf to check). Anyway have any decent screengrabs of him? And, beyond that, I want to ask if we're happy with the current format. I think it's better than what we had before, but I'm still not sure about it. So many images seem to make the page a little overloaded, but I'm loathe to remove them, as they all really should be there, IMO. Any thoughts? – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 03:17 (UTC)

Hey, woah, don't worry. I was struggling finding images anyway. I'm starting to realise the image finding and arranging isn't my best talent in the world. — Cuahl 7 July 2005 03:28 (UTC)

Hope this helps... Cid as an Oglop; Cid as a frog; Cid as a man --Warpedmirror 7 July 2005 04:28 (UTC)

Yeah, I found those. I was kind of hoping we could find a better quality image, but I guess that's the best we can do for now. I've had a quick go with Photoshop to remove the background and thrown it up on the page. It'll work for the moment, I guess. – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 05:08 (UTC)

Something just occurred to me: we don't really have much information on airships from the FF series, which is a bit odd, considering how prominently they figure. There's the Ragnarok (Final Fantasy) article, sure, but is there anything else besides? I'm thinking it would probably be a good idea to create a Final Fantasy airships article. I'm gonna add that to the to-do list, but I probably won't be able to get around to it for a while. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, feel free. – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 03:17 (UTC)

• Created a very basic stub for the article. When i get a chance, i'll work on improving it. --ZeWrestler 7 July 2005 03:36 (UTC)

Hey, I'm new here, but I've been editing/creating Final Fantasy-related pages for awhile - specifically Final Fantasy IV characters. I know most of the topics on the discussion are very general and are related to certain standards, but I've got a few questions concerning specific articles.

Final Fantasy IV

• Cecil Harvey and Rydia images - Currently, these pages' sprites/icons depict their original states in the game (Cecil as a Dark Knight and Rydia as a child). Is this how they should be, or should they depict their states at the end of the game (Cecil as a Paladin and Rydia as an adult)?
  • Erm... both? Maybe stack the two of them on top of each other in the infobox? – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 04:53 (UTC)
• Edward Chris von Muir - Usually, (on most FF-related websites) I have seen Edward's name typed this way. However, on the List of Final Fantasy characters page, he is referred to as Edward Damcyan. This is the only place I have seen his name typed this way. Should it stay as it is, or should it be changed to Edward Damcyan or perhaps Gilbert Chris von Muir? Whichever names we decide not to use, I think, should be redirected to the one decided to use.
• Edward Geraldine vs. Edge Geraldine - While the previously mentioned list of Final Fantasy characters depicts Edward Geraldine as the character's Japanese name and Edge Geraldine as his North American name, I believe that in the NA version (at least in the PS1 port) his name is Edward Geraldine, but he goes by "Edge" (as a nickname). I plan on creating an article on him very soon (after the Yang page), and I plan on titling it Edward "Edge" Geraldine (as he is referred to on the Final Fantasy IV main page). Does this sound good?
  • Yeah, "Edge" is his nickname. I believe that's true for both the English and Japanese versions, actually. Honestly, I'd call the article Edge (Final Fantasy IV): articles are supposed to be titled whatever the largest number of people would be familiar with, and, really, given that his in-game name is "Edge," that's probably more familiar than "Edward." – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 04:53 (UTC)

Final Fantasy X-2

• Maevyn Nooj vs. Meyvn Nooj - I started a talk page (Talk:Maevyn Nooj) awhile back proposing that the Maevyn Nooj article should be moved to the Meyvn Nooj article. According to the SquareEnix website, the proper term is "meyvn" - though, due to the pronunciation and awkward spelling, it is often misspelled "maevyn." I would appreciate anyone who agrees to post a comment in on the talk page.

--Warpedmirror 7 July 2005 04:11 (UTC)

Should we keep these articles in the same format they're in now, or should they be more like the FFVII character profiles? ~ Hibana

• We haven't really decided on a standard yet, but I like the look of Cecil Harvey - it just needs expanding. Maybe we could have a standard infobox for each character page. If you have any suggestions Hibana? — Cuahl 6 July 2005 15:20 (UTC)
  • Well, I actually like both types, so I'm wondering if there's some way to use both. Cloud's article has good literary detail of the game's storyline while Cecil's article involves gameplay, such as the infobox you mentioned, with the sprite, profile image, and statistics. ~ Hibana
  • Personally, I'd like to see a standard character infobox for the entire series. As it is now, both Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI have their own infoboxes, which look very similar, save for one or two minor details. I think it would be easier to just devise a standard infobox (with an added field for games in which each character has appeared) for every single game of the series. And I agree with Hibana: we should really try to find balance between story and gameplay details and try to stick to it for all character-related articles. – Seancdaug July 6, 2005 17:50 (UTC)
    • I've been thinking a standard infobox for the character pages would be a good idea, but FFVII doesn't need "character classes" for example. However, if the basics are in a template and the extras are.. well.. extra, I really think that could work. — Cuahl 6 July 2005 17:59 (UTC)
      • I figure if the CVG infobox can have optional fields, then we can probably figure something out, as well. I'll take a look in the next day or so. – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 03:07 (UTC)
      • Since given information on characters varies from game to game (last name, weight, blood type), I don't know if an series-wide, uniform infobox template should/can be used. I think a very similar infobox template should be used at all times, but not necessarily the same one. Just to see how it would look, I kind of changed the Final Fantasy IV around a bit to make a similar Final Fantasy VII template. Here is the result. I chose to make the official art the main picture, as the menu pic just looked extremely grainy and blurry. I then replaced the area for a sprite with the menu pic. --Warpedmirror 7 July 2005 05:12 (UTC)

I've created Template:FFVII character (how to) and I'll go about using it now. This is all thanks to the work Warpedmirror did too. — Cuahl 7 July 2005 11:20 (UTC)

• I've fixed all the character articles (an gave Cait Sith his own article - it just seemed right) and used Infoboxes in all of them. I've been tweaking about the templates and learning how they work (so sorry if anyone saw the mess that I was making) but it's all fixed now and looks good. I got 'aka' to work, so Aerith Gainsbourg has one, and Vincent Valentine doesn't. Muahaha. — Cuahl 7 July 2005 12:58 (UTC)
  • I've also done a Final Fantasy VIII character template and put them all in the articles. I'll work on a Final Fantasy IX one now. — Cuahl 7 July 2005 14:17 (UTC)
    • Now, FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX, and FFX have character templates. All character articles have the infoboxes now. *phew* — Cuahl 7 July 2005 16:33 (UTC)
      • Great job. your work has given me an idea. *starts working on it, while boss is not looking* --ZeWrestler 7 July 2005 16:47 (UTC)

I just created character templates, that are similar to the ones in the Final Fantasy VI article. The templates are template:FFVII, template:FFVIII, template:FFX.--ZeWrestler 7 July 2005 18:12 (UTC)

Hi. I just got done writing the List of Final Fantasy IV Locations article. I tried to match the format(s) of the FFVI and VII locations articles. I also added a See Also heading in the main FFIV article for now. We can probably standardize it in no time. Edit away! ~ Hibana

I created a page - Wikipedia:WikiProject Final Fantasy/index - where I thought we could list all the Final Fantasy-related articles in existance, then it could be used as an at-a-glance directory of things to fix, and eventually possibly move the page to a fixed article where it could be accessed and used by anyone. Just looking at it now makes me see that "Mako (Final Fantasy)" could be specified as "Mako (Final Fantasy VII)" etc. Please help! — Cuahl 6 July 2005 15:56 (UTC)

• Should articles like Nobuo Uematsu be placed in the Final Fantasy sections?
  • I thought this, and then I thought against it. Although they contribute to the series, they're not a part of the game itself.
    • I'd like to draw everyone's attention to oft-neglected Category:Final Fantasy, which provides a naturally hierarchical way of looking at essentially the same thing, and does include a subcategory for designers. – Seancdaug July 7, 2005 05:35 (UTC)

I completed the directory. *Phew*. Not as big as a job as what DarkEvil has done with the character names though. Right, so now I'm going to use the list I just made to highlight possible improvements. — Cuahl 6 July 2005 19:59 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Things — Cuahl 6 July 2005 23:48 (UTC)

Can someone please proof-read Tetra Master? I would, but I have to rush out and I don't want to leave my work unchecked until this time tomorrow. Thanks to whoever the poor soul is — Cuahl 21:45, 9 July 2005 (UTC) Done — Cuahl 16:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]