A close-up of Cloud Strife standing in a house in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
By
Ben Brosofsky
Published 23 minutes ago
Ben Brosofsky has been writing for Screen Rant since 2022 and editing since 2024. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor's in Cinema & Media Arts. Writing serves as a much-needed distraction from tackling a backlog of Steam games that will never be surmounted.
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Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have a lot in common, but they can often feel like completely different things. Both are genre-defining JRPG series currently under the purview of Square Enix, and key creative forces behind the franchises ended up converging to make the masterpiece Chrono Trigger. The devil is in the details, however, and the creator of Dragon Quest singles out one as the biggest distinction between the games.
Speaking to Game Informer, Yuji Horii explained that Final Fantasy has always taken a different approach to protagonists. Final Fantasy protagonists "speak a lot," while Dragon Quest focuses on the idea "that the player becomes the protagonist themselves." When Final Fantasy debuted, Horii was keeping an eye on the series, but this key difference stood out to him from the start.
Yuji Horii Says FF's Protagonists Talk A Lot More
Protagonists With Set Personalities
Horii notes that "you kind of observe the protagonist" in Final Fantasy games, and he's certainly right that it guides the games in different directions. In Final Fantasy 7, for example, the nature of Cloud's identity and even personality become defining elements of the story. Other games, like FF9, feature significantly more talkative and often goofy protagonists that impose themselves on the narrative in their own ways.
A Dragon Quest protagonist, meanwhile, wouldn't "just start talking on their own." Both approaches have their merits. Dragon Quest is definitely successful at making the player feel like part of the experience, but FF7 is a good example of how a distinct protagonist can open up some new storytelling opportunities.
Which Final Fantasy Game Is Yuji Horii's Favorite
Tidus Wins The Cup
Final Fantasy 10 Tidus and Yuna, in the game's water love scene.
Horii doesn't look down upon Final Fantasy's technique, even if it's not aligned with his personal method. He calls Final Fantasy 10 "the ultimate perfection of Final Fantasy," and if you've played FF10, you'll know that the protagonist Tidus is rarely successful at keeping his mouth closed.
Decades later, both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy remain as titans of the industry. Dragon Quest 11 proved that the classic Dragon Quest formula still works wonderfully, while Final Fantasy has encountered both successes and failures in its quest to shake things up with each installment.
There's certainly room for debate about which approach to protagonists is better, but it's ultimately a bit of a moot point. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are pursuing very different goals, and even Yuji Horii is capable of acknowledging the potential for fantastic games to come out of either approach. Now, if he could just release Dragon Quest 12 to spark the debates back up, that would be great.
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