Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line – Our Interview with the developers of the rhythm game Interview

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line is the third Theatrhythm game from Square Enix to be released here. We had the chance to talk to game producer Ichiro Hazama and series director Masanobu Suzui from indiezero. We were able to learn some interesting facts, which you can read here.

ntower: Please introduce yourselves to our readers.

Ichiro Hazama: I'm Ichiro Hazama and I'm the producer working at Square Enix. I think we’ve created something great here.

Masanobu Suzui: I'm Masanobu Suzui and I'm the director for the Theatrhythm series for 12 years. We hope your readers enjoy playing our new game.

Ichiro Hazama (Game Producer) from Square Enix

© Square Enix

ntower: How difficult was it to choose the songs to include in the latest Theatrhythm?

Masanobu Suzui: It was very difficult as you’d expect. There are over 1000 songs in the Final Fantasy series alone. We put all the songs in a list and starting to narrow them down based on various criteria, such as fan surveys, setlists from Final Fantasy concerts and music from player’s favourite scenes in the Final Fantasy games. Next we considered the different types of gameplay available in the game and which tracks would work for each of our different modes. Hopefully players can find all the songs they are looking for from the past 35 years of Final Fantasy. We wanted to make sure that this game has all the tracks that players want to see.

ntower: What are the advantages of working with the Nintendo Switch compared to the Nintendo 3DS? Were there any challenges in development?

Ichiro Hazama: By having the more powerful hardware, we’ve been able to improve both the visual resolution and the quality of the audio. The name Theatrhythm really sums it up – theatre represents the visuals and rhythm represents the sound. Both of these have been greatly improved.

Masanobu Suzui: One challenge we faced was the memory limitations – it was a challenge for us to fit all of the music at a high quality.

ntower: Are there any plans to add touch controls back to the game, as they were available on Nintendo 3DS?

Ichiro Hazama: There are a few reasons we moved away from touch controls towards button controls. During our work on Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, we learned a lot using the button controls and we felt this was the best way for our players to experience Final Bar Line.

Masanobu Suzui: We also wanted to add gameplay mechanics such as pressing two buttons at once that you can’t do with touch controls, it also allowed us to expand our difficulty settings options. The Nintendo Switch does not allow touch controls when docked which was also a limitation.

ntower: Will there be cross-play between Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation 4? What other improvements have you brought to the game in terms of balancing multiplayer matches?

Ichiro Hazama: We’re very sorry but we don’t have cross-play available for this game. One of the reasons for this is because we are using platform side servers rather than our own. The benefit of this is that the online services for the game will be available indefinitely.

Masanobu Suzui: There is no need to be worried about being matched against a much more experienced player – I’m used to playing against the younger guys in the team who always beat me, but I’m the director and I want to be able to still have fun so we’ve taken steps to ensure the game is enjoyable regardless of skill level. In the 4-player modes, we have “burst techniques” that assist players that are at a disadvantage to level the playing field.

Masanobu Suzui (Series Director) from indiezero

© Square Enix

ntower: Theatrhythm Dragon Quest was only released in Japan, are there plans to release Dragon Quest songs via DLC for Final Bar Line?

Ichiro Hazama: At the moment we don’t have any plans to add Dragon Quest songs to Final Bar Line – we have already made dedicated games for Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts so we wanted to focus on Final Fantasy for this game. However as you say there are lots more Dragon Quest fans in the West so we’ll take that feedback on board and see if there is anything else we can do.

ntower: The Theatrhythm series has only used Square Enix music so far – have there been any plans to feature music from other franchises, such as the Xenoblade series, or even Disney and Studio Ghibli?

Ichiro Hazama: There are no plans for this at the moment, but we’re pleased you said this as it shows you find Theatrhythm fun and think it should be expanded. So if there’s any companies out there reading this that would be interested then please get in touch!

ntower: Which song from Final Fantasy is your favourite and why?

Ichiro Hazama: That’s a really difficult question as there are so many I love, whenever I answer this question I always give a different answer as it always changes! It’s a song from Final Fantasy Type 0 – “The Beginning of the End”. It’s a really cool song as it starts off quiet and low-key and ramps up. I actually use it to wake me up in the morning!

Masanobu Suzui: For me, the Final Fantasy 1 main theme is something I really like. This is one of the classic songs that everyone will remember – if you’ve seen the demo its used in that as well. Square Enix has actually done some new arrangements of classic songs to use during the menu screens.

ntower: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers about Final Bar Line?

Masanobu Suzui: We talked about multiplayer but there’s also lots to do by yourself, there is so much content in the game. We’ve also got a new mode called the Series Quests mode, which has some really cool and detailed RPG mechanics that allow you to level up your character and fight monsters.

Ichiro Hazama: Something we’ve taken a lot of care with is using the original music sources to include in the game. When you hear that same music in the original style as when you first played the FF game, it’s an amazing feeling. What this means for how we design the game, is that we look at the scenes from the original games and find the most important and emotive moments and the music that comes with that. On the other hand, it can go the other way so that people may discover the music for the first time in our game, and then go ahead and discover that scene from the source material for the first time. We would be thrilled if more people discover Final Fantasy games through Theatrhythm.

Thank you to all involved for the interview!