The Final Fantasy Graveyard

[masterlobo]

THE FINAL FANTASY GRAVEYARD

Final Fantasy VII's Train Graveyard by jordangrimmer

Welcome to the Final Fantasy Graveyard; a place where scrapped ideas or failed projects are buried. A place where we can peek at the could have been.

Feel free to discuss about everything posted here, and more importantly to contribute! The series is massive in content, and there's and endless amount of unused material circulating on the web. I'll start with a few.

1. Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII Ultimania Omega reveals that Gilgamesh was at some point during development planned as a fal'Cie who would have wielded swords in various sizes, some even so large to dwarf large buildings.

2. Fortress, a Final Fantasy XII spinoff

Fortress is the codename of an unannounced video game developed as a spin-off of Square Enix's Final Fantasy series, envisioned as an action game set in the fictional world of Final Fantasy XII, Ivalice, intended for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3and Microsoft Windows platforms.

3. Hades, an optional boss from Final Fantasy IX, was originally planned as the final boss

Hades was originally planned to be the final boss of Final Fantasy IX, but was changed to an optional boss later in development. The concept artwork at right of the final battlefield shows the party fighting Hades instead of Necron.

4. Final Fantasy VII's unused Honey Bee Inn scenes

Honey Bee Inn is known for having a lot of dummied out content, some of which only exists in the original Japanese release, and has since been removed completely.

5. Final Fantasy V's Eggmen

Normally a secret summon related to the Magic Lamp, the Eggman is a dummied enemy exclusive to the Japanese Advance version of Final Fantasy V.

6. Final Fantasy XI was going to feature a lionman race

As evidenced by this early concept artwork.

7. Fang (Final Fantasy XIII) was going to be a male character

Fang was originally written as a male character. Early in development, Lightning was meant to be a flirtatious character with more sex appeal but these traits were transferred to Fang to make Lightning a more serious character.

8. Final Fantasy IV: The Sea of Silence

An unused track featured in the Minimum Album.

9. Chocobos were originally going to be huge pink birds in Final Fantasy II

Yoshitaka Amano's concept art of a Chocobo for Final Fantasy II.

Amano's vision later comes to life, in a way, on the anime Final Fantasy Legends of the Crystal.

10. Tidus was going to be black haired

Early in development Tidus was envisioned having black hair; a black-haired Tidus was shown in a beta video at the Square Millennium Event in 2000 running around in full 3D.

 

[Casval]

Er... a speedy release of Type-0's localization. Does that count? It's in limbo after all... *hides behind flame shield*

 

[masterlobo]

Er... a speedy release of Type-0's localization. Does that count? It's in limbo after all... *hides behind flame shield*

I hate the fact that you are probably right

 

[Casval]

I hate the fact that you are probably right

Well, I did say "speedy," not that the thing would never be released!

 

[yeah_93]

Type-0's lack of localization would make the top of the list.

 

[Chaos]

Is it just me or is the right foot on that Chocobo backwards? Still pretty interesting design, but have to admit I prefer the adorable yellow birds.

Well unless I was some type of crazy evil guy, then a large pink flightless Pterodactyl of doom would be much better.

 

[Keriaku]

That Sea of Silence song is great! I wonder why it didn't make it into the game. I'm not sure if this really counts, as she did still make it into the game with the heavier role of narrator, but wasn't Vanille suppose to be the main character of XIII? I know if you see some of the very earliest trailers, the only two characters shown are Lightning and Vanille, where it feels like the other characters aren't even fully designed yet.

 

[masterlobo]

Ok I have a few more.

11. Chocobo Racing 3D recently got cancelled

"The original Chocobo Racing was made by me," Tokita said to Siliconera. "But the one for the 3DS was a project being handled by someone else, and as far as I know, it has been closed. Now, if I had made it, I would have made sure that it came out. Unfortunately I was not!"

12. Final Fantasy VII was going to be 2D and featured Locke

Concept image early in the development featuring an isometric view and Final Fantasy VI sprites, including Locke.

13. Final Fantasy VI: Town 2

An unused track featured in the Special Tracks Album.

 

[gaiages]

There's the Final Fantasy Tech Demo for the N64--I think people said it was a very early build for FFVII, but I'm not sure about that bit.

 

[Squirrel Emperor]

There's the Final Fantasy Tech Demo for the N64--I think people said it was a very early build for FFVII, but I'm not sure about that bit.

Probably just a tech demo to see what the hardware was capable of.

They ended up using the tech from the demo to render the FMV's you see in FFVII.

 

[masterlobo]

While we're at it then...

Final Fantasy VIII Tech Demo for Ps2

Final Fantasy VII Tech Demo for PS3

Agni's Philosophy (Final Fantasy) Real Time Tech Demo for Current Gen

 

[calliopium]

I think it would've been interesting to see Vanille as the main character of XIII. I mean, I love Lightning and I think she's a great protagonist! But Vanille's pretty different from all the other main FF protagonists, huh? It would've been quite unique. I swear I did see it mentioned somewhere that she was originally intended to be, but Square didn't feel the game would sell as well. (Which is valid, I guess - it probably wouldn't have.) On that note, it would've been great if they'd kept Basch as the main character of XII! Again, they thought he was too "old" (isn't he only like 36?) for the game to be successful with him as the lead, but he does have more plot relevance than poor Vaan. Ideally Ashe would've been the best main character in terms of relevance to the plot, but they were considering Basch originally, so. I guess it's kind of the same as what happened to Nier with the Japanese version.

Oh! And I wish they had released Fortress. That game looked really cool.