Magic: Party Team Reveals Final Fantasy Characters They Regret

Five years after development, it took two years to build expectations and months Teasing and revealMagic: The Final Fantasy Cooperation for the Party is finally on the shelves. Even before it was officially released, the set made history a Magic: The best-selling set of gatherings everthe following weeks only further consolidated one of the most important launches in MTG history.

During this summer competition festival, Gamespot had the opportunity to talk about collaboration with Daniel Holt, a leading designer who worked with, and how it feels like to see people finally play a new card. We also talked about how the team manages its regrets if he thought “Power Creep” was a common problem in the new series.

GamesPot: You've been working on this set for five years at this point. What is it like to see all this in the wild – people who see people playing these cards?

Holt: It's wild. It's been so long. I hear people across the street and they'll say, “Sephiroth.” I'm like, “Wait, did we show that card? Oh, yes, it's all over.”

Now that everything is coming, it's crazy, it's exciting to see the passion that fans bring. We were surprised that every character or story moment was someone’s favorite. Each of these next-sided stories characters is not a major party member and we see someone saying, “I can't believe they include it. This is my favorite character.” We're so happy to see this excitement.

It’s really impressive how the team managed to fit so many characters and moments into the scene. What is the biggest struggle to spend more than 30 years of content in 16 games and condense it into a magic set?

We have to take (know) the way we won't put everything into action. We then used the layer system created by (main designers) Dillon (Deveney) and Gavin (Verhey). Level 1 is those main characters and moments, and if you think of that game, you'll say, “Okay, that character, that moment, has to be here.” Level 1 is where the main suite stays because they (cover) through XVI (cover) Final Fantasy I, so they need to stay in the highest level of stuff. But for me, on the Commander's deck, each deck is a complete game of cards one by one (specially for a single game) and I had to go deep into the 2nd or even the 3rd level moment. I have to include the characters and story moments next to me, maybe you only see them after you put in 200 hours.

How do you balance the most iconic moments of Final Fantasy that completely captures the most iconic moments in Final Fantasy without spoiling anything?

We have to be a little cheeky about it. We don't want to ruin things, and Square (Enix) doesn't want us to ruin things. So you have cards here like Sephiroth's interventions and you'll see Sephiroth wearing a sword. If you've never played Final Fantasy VII, it's just a cool moment, but knowing about the ones we know…we know exactly what story moment is going to happen. Again, Aerith has a death trigger on her abilities, so we tie it together. One of my favorite cards on Commander’s deck is saying goodbye in Final Fantasy X cards. This is Yuna and Tidus hug, unless you play the game, what happens if you literally look at it for 10 seconds.

How did you ultimately determine the four games you want to use for Commander Deck? There must be a lively debate on this.

Oh, yes. Just at the kickoff, Final Fantasy VII was the first one we put there. The remake and rebirth are new, it's in everyone's mind, and it's a classic. You know the cloud, you know Sephiroth. Then, XIV is the next one that comes to mind. It has such an active player base and behind it is such a big community, we are like, “It makes a lot of sense.” In that interesting fact, I didn’t play XIV until this product. I invested 200 hours in my first month. I had to work hard just to get this authenticity.

As for the other two, Final Fantasy X is my personal favorite, which is also the favorite of our main product architect Zakeel (Gordon). I might have had a hard time making that one of the decks. Then wrapping it up is Final Fantasy VI, a favorite of (main game designer) Yoni Skolnik. He promotes Ruin and our world, focusing on the second half of the deck. I'm very fascinated by this. Plus, VI marks the end of the pixel era, so we actually split one of the Pixel games into four. I think this is very important.

Now that we have seen all the cards, we know there are certain characters, such as Eiko for IX, without the cards. How do you deal with certain characters that don't have a card, that's what it is?

I think you touched it there. I think Eiko is a…we thought, “Well, if we were going to do it again, we might try to get her to join.” We put her into the sleep of the set (magic) and we tried to show the characters on similar cards.

But Gavin and I, we were really close to make sure we represented a lot of characters. For example, for Final Fantasy X deck, he doesn't have Lulu or Wakka in the console, so I made sure to put it on the Commander's deck and vice versa. If he put them there, I wouldn't be too stressed to put them on my deck, but I know that if they're not there, there's a responsibility. I think Matoya is one of the favorite characters in Final Fantasy XIV. If Gavin hasn't put her on the host, I'd put her on the Commander's deck 100%.

How does the process work when it comes to designing the Commander’s deck side by side with the host itself?

Most of the time, it boils down to checking which characters may overlap and using mechanisms. For example, both the job choices and the legendary creatures come from the main set, and Final Fantasy X (Commander Deck) is a “counter” deck, as well as a journey about Yuna, collecting the summons that lead her to her fight against sin, so the legendary creatures work on that deck because you can remove the counter with tidus and stay longer. So it's about finding synergies there.

Then use Final Fantasy XIV to select the work cards (works) because they are non-creating spells and trigger all Scion members, but they also create your board members for you by creating heroes to keep you from launching attacks. So, this is indeed a synergy between these.

My real work really works with the creative team when choosing a character and a theme. Dillon Deveney is the main creativity in this matter, and every morning I send him a message, “Hey, I want to put this reprint on the deck. Can it work for the concept?” He would be like “yes” or “no, (but) maybe give it a try.”

Are there any cards that are hard to implement or come up with an idea, or may be just unbalanced at first, you really have to work hard to figure it out?

Yes, Y'Shtola in Final Fantasy XIV deck is actually probably the hardest commander to do, because initially, the commander on the deck is going to go to the Light Warrior of XIV. That's what you will think It will be the commander's face. But when we try this, we're like, “There are jobs in our 20s and everyone is customizing their characters.” (We decided) the player characters won't be the face commander. For this, we cannot make a satisfying card. So we have moved to Y'Shtola, G'Raha Tia and other contacts.

But many cards on the deck will generate hero tokens, so you can still feel it (Light's existence warrior). That's why we have so many hero tokens. My character is the dancer in the game, so I made sure to get the dancer weapon there…and I might push the character to be the blue-haired Miqo'te in the art.

Oh, that's great.

Yes. However, I think Y'Shtola is a bit tricky. When we got to her and the theme of deck, I chose non-creative because in Final Fantasy XIV you were casting spells, managing cooled stocks, etc… so I wanted to use it to capture the gameplay. I think transpose does capture the power of black mages. That rebounding card is “That's your cooling. You have to wait until the next turn and then you're ready.” I did this because I also played a black mage in the game.

Some people say that the power of this set of electrical is very real, but what do you think?

I don't think this is true, of course it's not the commander. You can work with all of Magic's history here. And I really think it's just being true to the character and doing what the ability to do there, and I think it does play a role in a larger magic environment.

In the process, as the game series changes, has your feelings about Final Fantasy changed? Have you ever had a game that you might not appreciate or like and then go up again?

My love for them is a lot of rediscovery. I dug out this ancient photo when I was 17 and was one of my first characters at the time. VII was one of my first people, and then I played older people like IV and II when I was in college.

We all grew up from this series. We've all played for so long. It's really just rediscovering them and passion. And, like xvi? XVI came out during development, so we all clogged this over the weekend. (I remember it was), like, “Oh my god, it would be so cool if we were in trouble here. Gavin was like, “Yeah, it’s so nice to put him in.” ”

Interested in returning to this series and involving Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy X-2- Questions beyond Mainline 16?

We certainly have a lot of fans in the office who like these games. I like the X-2, I like the Dresspheres system. I need to play the tactics and I know I'm not bad yet. But (as for revisiting Final Fantasy: Party in Magic) is too far away now.

The simplicity and readability of this interview have been edited.