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FINAL FANTASY V celebrates thirty years since its release in Japan on December 6! FFV introduced a number of iconic characters, but to celebrate this momentous anniversary, we’d like to shine a spotlight on the lovable rival of FFV protagonist Bartz: Gilgamesh! He shows his heroic visage in later FINAL FANTASY titles as well.
FFV's 30th anniversary means it's been 30 years since I first got my start in game development. To think it's been that long... I struggle to wrap my head around it. Recalling my memories of the time, I didn't care about being a big character designer or director. I was just a monster designer worrying over how what I was working on compared to the wildly popular monsters of the DQ series. I created things like cactuar and tonberry hoping they'd bring some popularity to FF monsters, and amongst them was Gilgamesh himself.
The development process was entirely different back then, and most monsters had visuals proposed first with their backstories handled after the fact. Personally the monster I most wanted to push for in my FFV sketchbook was this multi-armed magical being of sorts named Gilgamesh who carried a different weapon in each hand. And there was another monster called "Benkei" on a different page of my sketchbook, with many weapons on its back. It was proposed that these two monsters be used as Gilgamesh’s forms pre- and post-transformation. From there he was added to the scenario, and even given exciting extra dialogue and scenes in battle. As a new member of the team, I remember being really impressed by the way my colleagues skillfully integrated my design into the title. With that, Gilgamesh was born, not just as some grunt to hack away at but with his own unique personality.
By the way, in those days implementation of visual designs into the game programming was done first, so it was later on that Gilgamesh's visuals came to be based on Mr. Yoshitaka Amano's art.
A number of years later Gilgamesh appeared again in FFVIII, and since then he's become very popular as he continues to wander the space between dimensions. At first he was simply one of many monsters, but he's now grown to the extraordinary position of being his own fully developed character.
Someday I hope he will come to be valued as a lucky charm of sorts, and eventually be able to find his way back to his own world.
Nomura
FINAL FANTASY V celebrates thirty years since its release in Japan on December 6! FFV introduced a number of iconic characters, but to celebrate this momentous anniversary, we’d like to shine a spotlight on the lovable rival of FFV protagonist Bartz: Gilgamesh! He shows his heroic visage in later FINAL FANTASY titles as well.
FFV's 30th anniversary means it's been 30 years since I first got my start in game development. To think it's been that long... I struggle to wrap my head around it. Recalling my memories of the time, I didn't care about being a big character designer or director. I was just a monster designer worrying over how what I was working on compared to the wildly popular monsters of the DQ series. I created things like cactuar and tonberry hoping they'd bring some popularity to FF monsters, and amongst them was Gilgamesh himself.
The development process was entirely different back then, and most monsters had visuals proposed first with their backstories handled after the fact. Personally the monster I most wanted to push for in my FFV sketchbook was this multi-armed magical being of sorts named Gilgamesh who carried a different weapon in each hand. And there was another monster called "Benkei" on a different page of my sketchbook, with many weapons on its back. It was proposed that these two monsters be used as Gilgamesh’s forms pre- and post-transformation. From there he was added to the scenario, and even given exciting extra dialogue and scenes in battle. As a new member of the team, I remember being really impressed by the way my colleagues skillfully integrated my design into the title. With that, Gilgamesh was born, not just as some grunt to hack away at but with his own unique personality.
By the way, in those days implementation of visual designs into the game programming was done first, so it was later on that Gilgamesh's visuals came to be based on Mr. Yoshitaka Amano's art.
A number of years later Gilgamesh appeared again in FFVIII, and since then he's become very popular as he continues to wander the space between dimensions. At first he was simply one of many monsters, but he's now grown to the extraordinary position of being his own fully developed character.
Someday I hope he will come to be valued as a lucky charm of sorts, and eventually be able to find his way back to his own world.
Nomura
