New Masaharu Iwata Interview!

[Fatigue]

CocoeBiz and I would like to present to you a new interview of the famous composer, Masaharu Iwata! The interview contains 7 questions about various recent works (including Final Fantasy XII, Seiken Densetsu DS, Fantasy Earth and Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner). Interview can be found here.

I would like to thank Kago and Kahori Ezaki for their wonderful help in making this interview possible. Mr. Iwata too for his wonderful music and his interesting answers. Please enjoy it!

[Lierre]

Good work.
It's also so interesting.

BTW, do SE and the record company force them not to refer to the composition of FFXII so much?
SE can wanna give the wrong idea all of tracks are composed by only Sakimoto, and hide less famous composers, Matsuo and Iwata, to promote OST.

Well, it's just a wicked conjecture.

[Fatigue]

I’m glad everyone is enjoying the interview.

Lierre, hiding composers who worked on the soundtrack is unfair but quite common. Square Enix did it with such projects as Front Mission 5, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Falcom has done it with every single soundtrack release (similar with Taito’s Zuntata, Capcom’s Alph Lyla, Data East’s Gamadelic and more, in the early days of VGM). This, however, is entirely legal and is within the company’s right to do such an action (as they do hold the rights to the compositions). It is only declared illegal if the composer’s name is not mentioned anywhere for his/her contribution (in FFXII’s case, Matsuo and Iwata’s names were mentioned in the credits and will be named in the linear notes of FFXII). Square Enix loves to hide composer names on the outside, but usually people who buy the products will find other faces too. (It's almost a certainty that more composers will work on Final Fantasy XIII). So, to answer your question, although the outside of the FFXII OST box will say 'Composed, Arranged and Produced by Hitoshi Sakimoto', the full composer credentials will be mentioned inside.

(I don’t know about Matsuo being less famous. He’s definitely a more recognized face around the anime world though).

[Lierre]

Yep, you're right. At least SE has revealed the name of comporser in note While as for Tales of...series, it's not mentioned what tracks are composed by Sakuraba or Tamura or others.
But as a not only fan of Sakimoto but Iwata, I'm a bit sorry.

[KujaFFman]

I guess they don't talk about it before the game/soundtrack release because they know many people don't care about it at all. 'So, Iwata did two tracks on FFXII, and then? Who cares after all? No need to tell about it.'

Sad... really sad.

[Carl]

I liked this phrase, haha:
"I aimed to make music that had the atmosphere of good ol' (but not too old) game music."

[Jormungand]

I guess they don't talk about it before the game/soundtrack release because they know many people don't care about it at all. 'So, Iwata did two tracks on FFXII, and then? Who cares after all? No need to tell about it.'

Sad... really sad.

Yeah, it is sad, but we should be happy that they are even crediting Sakimoto... who cares about these little guys when Uematsu is on the credits? :\

[Fatigue]

who cares about these little guys when Uematsu is on the credits? :\

Matsuno?

[KujaFFman]

I read that there was a clash (another one) between Matsuno and Square Enix when he said he wanted Sakimoto to work on Final Fantasy XII... I'm not sure if this is true, but surely Matsuno knows what he wants when it comes to music. And I can understand why.

But here the subject is Masaharu Iwata. I'm really happy this interview was made. It cleared up many things.

[RinoaDestiny]

Just glad that Sakimoto and the Ogre Battle trio got together on the FFXII OST. I can't imagine Uematsu's score being any good alongside a Matsuno game.