Final Fantasy X HD Remaster Original Soundtrack
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Album Title: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster Original Soundtrack |
| Record Label: Square Enix |
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| Catalog No.: SQEX-20015 |
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| Release Date: December 25, 2013 |
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| Purchase: Buy From CDJapan |
Commentary
Nobuo Uematsu
It happened back in 1999. I was looking at the piercing blue skies of Hawaii while wondering when the Great King of Angolmois would descend upon us. I had been called to Oahu Island, where the development of Final Fantasy IX was taking place, along with Masashi Hamauzu-kun and Junya Nakano-kun. The meeting that we held there was also the first meeting we had to discuss the music we would make for Final Fantasy X.
Due to Ben Goto’s translations, Nostradamus’ prophecies had become pretty known among the many middle-aged people from Japan, including me. We were scared because the following year, 2000, would be the time where we wouldn’t be able to continue escaping from reality. The “Prophecies of Terror” I had heard about ever since I was a child would become completely inescapable for us all.
When the spring of 2000 came to an end and I returned to Japan, I began working on Final Fantasy X right away without having even a spare second to rest. I had several busy days in which the only thing I could do was work and work, similarly to how it happened when I worked in previous titles of the Final Fantasy series. However, they still were very happy times filled with activity and enrichment.
That I decided to appoint RIKKI-san as the singer for the main theme song was because of my “intuition”. There were many voices among the company staff that protested, saying that “we should use a more famous singer for this game”, but I wanted to treat the Final Fantasy games more like a “work of art” than as a “mere product”. Of course, it’s a possibility we could have gotten a wider recognition if we had used a much more popular singer instead, and that we could have increased the sales for the game even further by doing so. But why did I decided to appoint RIKKI-san regardless? Because if we’re going to making a product of exceptional quality, we should be appointing for its songs a person that has similarly excellent singing abilities, regardless of the lack of popularity or fame they might have. So in order for this to happen, I partly had to push on regardless of others’ opinions for this, resulting in “Suteki da ne” having the form it now has. (I’ll leave to you all to judge me on if it was a good or bad decision in the end.)
“Suteki da ne” is also one of the most popular songs on the game: so much so that it has even been sung with English lyrics on the Distant Worlds concerts that have been held overseas. And there are still many live performances that make use of pieces taken from Final Fantasy X aside of this song, like for example “Song of Prayer”, “At Zanarkand”, “Brass de Chocobo”, “Otherworld”, and “Seymour Battle”. We didn’t think”We’re going to use a larger number of FFX songs in the concerts because it is a title that has a worldwide popularity”. Instead, it’s because I personally like many of the songs from it, and because working on this title gave me the chance to think about many aspects of my life as a musician, which in turn makes it a work filled with many deep memories.
Of course, this work also served as the chance Hamauzu-kun and Nakano-kun had to show off their talents to the world, which also left a deep impression on me. I also hope they both can continue flying on their own from now on, following the road they each believe in.
Final Fantasy X was finally released in Japan during July, 2001. And two months later, the 9/11 incident happened at New York. That was the beginning of an era in which we would be forced to face reality, no matter how much we wanted to continue relying on wild dreams to escape from it.
October 16th, 2013
Masashi Hamauzu – Composer / Arranger
It’s been over ten years since I first worked on Final Fantasy X, and now I finished working on it once again. The first thing I noticed when we began working on this remake, and which greatly made me happy, was that a large part of the original staff for the game had reassembled to work on the project: Uematsu-san, at whose side I’ve been appearing in live performances in recent years; Nakano-san, who first introduced me to the world of game music; Kawamori-san, the trustworthy sound leader and manipulator; and Yamazaki-san, the war buddy whom I made the very roots of my songs alongside.
Working together so closely with Yamazaki-san that we often stayed, slept, and ate alongside each other… Staying up late every single night in the booth with Kawamori-san and Nakano-san during the final stages of developing the game… Arguing back and forth about all sorts of things while debutting, gathering together for break times when we said “Should we rest a bit?”, and challenging each other with LCD games when we were tired… All of these are truly happy memories of my time with them.
While these times came to an end a looong time ago, when the game’s development was finished, I’d never thought that all these old comrades of mine would come back to enrich that same project once again…! I really enjoyed having worked with them again for the development of this version. All the members of this wonderful team are already over their forties. If you want to know how much we have enriched Final Fantasy X this time around, please give our work a listen and feel it by yourself.
Junya Nakano – Composer / Arranger
A long time ago, I told Hamauzu-kun that “it’d be great if we could make music in the places we liked the most according to the season”. Something like “work at Hokkaido during summer, at Okinawa during winter, and at Tokyo during spring and autumn. After all, we have to work at Tokyo during the most important parts of the project”. In order to concentrate in the music, we should have a mindset of being in constant movement and not being shackled to any single place, so it’d be better if we could stay for a long time in a place that brought out the best results in us. That certainly reflected my mindset at the time. However, during the development of Final Fantasy X, I ended up having an uneventful trip to Tokyo and continued carrying out discussions through the Internet and e-mails until the project ended. It was through such circumstances that I completed my pieces.
I still haven’t reached the level of freedom I’d need to move around, and allow me to settle down in a place depending on the seasons like I said so long ago. But I fortunately could feel this time that I was able to bring out the best work I could muster in the shortest span of time possible.
All the work on the HD Remaster project were done in Tokyo, and its development time was between March 2013 and May 2013. The music of Final Fantasy X was mainly composed in the early hours of the morning; in other words, we had to grow accustomed to being so busy working on our songs to the point we even had to pull all-nighters to complete them. In contrast, it was decided when the Final Fantasy X HD Remaster began that we would work on all the arrangements three days a week, and we’d do so from the start of the afternoon to the late evening. I thought that, in comparison to the workflow we had so long ago, I wouldn’t have enough time to give these sounds the forms I wanted, but that amount of time ended being more than enough for me. Back when I worked on the original version, I had many limits when it came t0 making the arrangements, so there were many things I couldn’t do with the music. However, I was able to do everything I wanted this time.
While I had to confront my past works, I finally ended up making peace with them and managed to give these songs their complete form. This was done by using all the skills I’ve been cultivating all this time to their fullest, all in an attempt to create music that would fit a complete version of Final Fantasy X. If you can listen and accept all these songs, I’ll be extremely happy.
Posted on October 21, 2014 by Gerardo Iuliani. Last modified on October 21, 2014.
About the Author
Gerardo Iuliani A Venezuelan that spends his days studying languages, translating as a hobby and playing videogames. Is also a frequent listener of video game music, particularly that composed by the Gust Inc. composers and related artists.
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