Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ Vision Design, Part 1

The world lies shrouded in darkness. The winds die. The seas rage. The earth decays. But the people believe in a prophecy, patiently awaiting fulfillment.

Hello! I'm Yoni Skolnik, and it was my immense privilege to lead the initial phase of game design for Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™! I've been a huge fan of both since I was a child, so when I first heard that we might get an opportunity to work with SQUARE ENIX to make a FINAL FANTASY product, I was quick to volunteer my expertise.

I've previously been the game design lead for sets including Core Set 2020, Strixhaven: School of Mages, The Brothers' War, and Aetherdrift. I usually focus on the middle-to-final stages of design after receiving a vision design handoff. For Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY, I played the role of lead vision designer, handing the set off to Gavin Verhey for the main set and Daniel Holt for the Commander decks.

Here is what this article series will cover:

• What Is FINAL FANTASY: A broad overview of the franchise for those who aren't familiar.
• Defining the Space: How our initial preparation went before launching vision design work.
• Initial Approach: I'll introduce the Vision Design team and talk about how we narrowed down which space to use.
• Executing on Elements: Development of specific mechanics to match elements of FINAL FANTASY and how they fit together into a set.
• Challenges: Combining two gargantuan gaming franchises is not always easy, so I'll cover some of the challenges we randomly encountered.
• The Handoff: I'll talk about handing off the reins to Gavin and the major changes that happened shortly after hand-off.

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What Is FINAL FANTASY?

Come, adventurer! Let us find the answer together!

Understanding and correctly expressing the FINAL FANTASY franchise is challenging. There are many viable ways to make this product and enjoy the franchise, so there were many viable decisions to make. I want to underscore this to make it clear that I'm just giving you my perspective as I espoused it to my colleagues in the initial phase of this project and as part of this deeply collaborative effort. The things I say in this section are not the definitive definitions of anything, but they are indicative of the way I communicated about this product in its early phases. What I think people want in Magic: The Gathering design articles is a view into the designer's head and an understanding of what working on the product was like, and I've aimed to provide exactly that. I've included italicized quotes from FINAL FANTASY throughout the article. While the rest of the article focuses on the design process, I included these quotes to show my personal appreciation of the games.

FINAL FANTASY (1987)

The original FINAL FANTASY game released in 1987, establishing the JRPG (Japanese role-playing game) genre. Both Magic: The Gathering and the original FINAL FANTASY are inspired by the fantasy genre. That common ancestor means that FINAL FANTASY and Magic have a similar fantasy atmosphere. Here are the hallmarks of the JRPG genre as I explained them in my vision design handoff presentation.

• Mostly linear narrative, some free exploration and sidequests
• Manage a party of three to five characters
• Random encounters
• Turn-based battles
• Characters gain levels from winning fights
• Find and buy equipment

There are many facets in common between JRPGs and other styles of RPG. Labels are weird. But the specific combination of elements that FINAL FANTASY pioneered was massively influential in the development of the RPG genre.

The Sixteen FINAL FANTASY Games and So Much More

For our set, the FINAL FANTASY franchise consists of sixteen mainline games, aptly titled FINAL FANTASY I through FINAL FANTASY XVI. These sixteen games are fully separate, with their own world(s) and continuity. Any one of these sixteen games can be fully experienced in isolation without knowledge from any of the other games.

However, there are many common recurring elements to be found in FINAL FANTASY. Chocobos are partners in the player's adventures. Powerful summons, such as beings like the icy Shiva or the fiery Ifrit. And much, much more.

Tone

Much of what makes FINAL FANTASY so memorable is how skillfully they combine a variety of tones. Most games start as an epic exploration of a fantasy world, include deep characterization, cute creatures, silly minigames, and endings where the last battle is a fight with an epic boss. This combination of tones is a fantastic match for Magic: The Gathering. Each card has its own tone and creative focus, and each element of the series gets to shine on its own.

Here is how and the amount to which the Worldbuilding team conceptualized this mix of tones:

• Epic and dramatic: 50%
• Optimistic and hopeful: 30%
• Cute and whimsical: 20%

Brief Historical Overview of the Series

Each game's unique vibe and willingness to experiment is a hallmark of the franchise. Here is my attempt to group them by era to help folks understand the evolution of the franchise:

FINAL FANTASY through FINAL FANTASY V: Rooted in fantasy, linear narrative, fixed party.

FINAL FANTASY VI through FINAL FANTASY X: Blend of fantasy with other genre-worldbuilding elements, wider casts of characters, and a customizable party.

FINAL FANTASY XI and FINAL FANTASY XIV: MMORPGs where you create a character and form a party with players from across the world.

FINAL FANTASY XII, FINAL FANTASY XIII, FINAL FANTASY XV, and FINAL FANTASY XVI: These games were more willing to stray from the genre-defining elements of JRPGs originally enshrined by the series. They favored real-time combat, controlling one character at a time, and a more cinematic approach.

Defining the Space

The design process for most sets starts with the Exploratory Design team. This team is responsible for brainstorming wide swaths of potential space and mechanics, marking points of interest within the design space so that the Vision Design team can hit the ground running.

While we didn't have a formal exploratory team, we did have several steps that served a similar design role.

Initial Brainstorms

The first proper exploration of what this set could be consisted of assembling a group of FINAL FANTASY fans from across the company. This occurred during Arc-a-thon 2021, a week-long period where we took breaks from our normally scheduled meetings to talk about potential future Magic sets. While other folks were busy thinking through ideas that would eventually become The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Duskmourn: House of Horror, and Aetherdrift or putting Eldrazi in Modern Horizons 3, I was tasked with leading a discussion about what this set would look like. We gathered into a (virtual) room and started off listing various pieces of the franchise and how we might expect them to be represented in Magic: The Gathering. This exploration yielded a six-page document showing that a FINAL FANTASY set had a lot of promise. Here is just one thing from that document: a creature type grid depicting potential options for monsters we could make as nonlegendary creatures without flying.

We later would identify even more possible concepts and refine this list further, but for an initial list it served to execute how much wiggle room there was in making the set.

Defining the Scope

I showed this to my bosses, and soon, we had a tentative agreement with SQUARE ENIX and were ready to start working on the set!

I came into the initial meetings with SQUARE ENIX to present a straightforward vision. Similar to how Modern Horizons pulls from across the history of Magic, this set would do the same for FINAL FANTASY. We would use a variety of concepts from across the series. We would choose them based on things that fans would be excited to see. We might show individual story moments but wouldn't worry about telling any of the specific narratives within the set. This approach was endorsed by SQUARE ENIX.

Character Selection

Our first deliverable to SQUARE ENIX informed them as to which characters we were interested in using: most of them! Chris Mooney and Ari Zirulnik assembled lists of characters from every game and split them up into tiers of mandatory, suggested, possible, and backup.

Although we ourselves at Wizards had strong perspectives on the series, we didn't want to get too tunnel-visioned and sought out a variety of resources to determine which characters were most popular among a broader array of FINAL FANTASY fans. Chief among these included surveys of which FINAL FANTASY characters were most popular, both among Japanese and international audiences. We also took notes on how SQUARE ENIX themselves utilized these characters in their other releases.

Representing Sixteen Games

We wanted to represent each game with its unique elements while ensuring the repeat elements throughout the franchise were well represented. The Summon: Shiva card may specifically show the version from FINAL FANTASY X, but it should speak to everyone's memory of Shiva as an ice summon from the games. I set a rough target of making 30% of the cards relevant to the greater franchise. One key example of that is the crystals, which were a staple of most of the games' plots in the early era. Regardless with which game you associate the crystals, these cards should seem familiar.

I was excited to flex my encyclopedic knowledge of FINAL FANTASY and utilized it to make sure all the cards had a creative hook and/or concept that would excite a FINAL FANTASY fan. The hope was that every card should represent something that is memorable to someone.

Initial approach

The Vision Design Team

New arrivals, eh? So, who are you?

Zach Francks – Zach is primarily a designer on Duel Masters. They were a valuable addition to the team as an overall FINAL FANTASY lore expert, creative designer, and Japanese speaker who understood the intricacies of different translations of FINAL FANTASY games. Zach's experience with FINAL FANTASY XIV was especially helpful to me throughout the process, as I had minimal experience playing the free trial of the critically acclaimed MMORPG.

Chelsea Santamaria – Chelsea joined Wizards and immediately jumped on board this project. Her love of FINAL FANTASY and retro gaming were vital as she started designing for Magic. I appreciated her tenacity as we worked on mechanics that attempted to distill a sense of FINAL FANTASY's epic narratives into Magic.

Melissa DeTora – Melissa is a huge FINAL FANTASY fan and a representative of many of the fans who grew up in the NES and SNES era. Her combination of competitive experience along with her work on the Casual Play Design team gives her a broad perspective that I always appreciate. In addition to her role on the set's Vision Design team, she led Commander playtesting for this set. Optimizing a set for casual play is often a nebulous task that I personally find very challenging, so I was thrilled to have someone who understood FINAL FANTASY fans leading the process.

Zakeel Gordon – Zakeel was the product architect for the set and joined our team to keep in contact with how the set was developing. Zakeel helped establish the direction early on and shepherded the project from a top-level perspective the entire way. My appreciation to Zakeel for shepherding this collaboration continues to this very article, as he is tasked with doing an initial edit so that it can be translated for Japanese FINAL FANTASY fans. Thanks, Zakeel!

Glenn Jones – Glenn was the set design lead for The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™, which paved the way for full-size Universes Beyond sets. He came on to help me make the hard decisions and guide my execution as we narrowed things down later in the vision process. I've always marveled at the breadth of perspective Glenn brings to leadership, and it was great to have his counsel when I had to make snap decisions.

Michael Hinderaker – Michael came in as the play design expert, a role which he kept through set design. Michael has excelled at balancing the many needs of play design with the complex demands of Universes Beyond products. It can feel silly to tell the person in charge of balance that "Yes, this number really does need to be 9,999." I get to sit near Michael nowadays, and it's always fun to watch him keep a bemused smile as another set lead asks him to evaluate something as crazy as a Jumbo Cactuar.

Laying the Groundwork

Before starting to think of the set as "a set," I wanted to keep my team open to a variety of approaches. We went ahead and started working on three axes:

• Developing a knowledge base – I tasked various folks with creating a document outlining the plot, mechanics, and key characters of the various games. I used these documents to make sure we weren't omitting any major sources of content and that when the time came, I already knew who to go to for key information about each game.
• Throwing designs at the wall – I asked members of my team to submit designs for things they would be personally excited to see in a FINAL FANTASY set. This ended up as a spreadsheet filled with over 200 designs before we even thought about having an official set file.
• Designing mechanics – We spent the bulk of our early design meetings on crafting mechanics to represent elements that appear in multiple FINAL FANTASY games and fans would expect to see.

Jumpstart as a Playtesting Process

Once we had spent about six weeks laying a lot of groundwork, it was time to start playtesting. We still didn't have anything approaching a "set file," but as someone who is more used to designing for Limited, I wanted to test our mechanics in something that felt like the games of Limited I was used to. Enter Jumpstart.

Jumpstart Boosters contain 20 cards. You shuffle two of them together to form something akin to a 40-card draft or sealed deck. These packs typically consist of eight lands and twelve spells. As a key member of the team that created Jumpstart, I feel it is an excellent playtesting tool. Starting with a mechanic idea, it felt straightforward to create some cards with the mechanic and/or that supported the mechanic, then add some generic cards like removal spells and simple creatures.

Combining two of these Jumpstart-inspired packs was a great way to get a feel Limited play with those mechanics. It's important for mechanics in Limited to be able to function well when they are contested, meaning that you can't make your deck entirely out of one mechanic. Playing this Jumpstart format is a great way to try combinations of mechanics and ensure everything plays nicely together, even if the set isn't ready to draft.

Here are some theme names for those early Jumpstart-inspired packs:

• White: Ally Typal
• Blue: Vanishing
• Black: Foreshadow
• Red: Charge-Up
• Green: Chocobos and Tokens

Ranking Concepts from the Games

I sing it whenever I feel sad or lonely … For some reason, it comforts me and reminds me I'm not alone.

The final piece of creating the groundwork for the set included a long list of concepts that I built the initial set file around and handed off to Gavin's team for future reference.

I pulled together FINAL FANTASY fans from across Wizards and went game by game, shouting out various elements we found memorable. We built this on top of the existing list of major characters and ranked them into five categories. We got something that looked like this.

I can't understate how many concepts we were excited to use. We could have made a memorable card about the silver dragon boss fight or the scene where your entire party must marry each other to pass through a dwarf village. But we only had a few hundred slots for cards, and my "things most important to reference spreadsheet" had over 600 rows, and that was me attempting restraint!

Making the Mechanics

Legendary Creatures

Just then, the legendary hero, Alfred, appears!

We explored having a major mechanic that would appear primarily on heroic creatures. Some obvious directions were mechanics that referenced experience, leveling up, or limit breaks. Limit breaks is a name sometimes used for one-time powerful moves in FINAL FANTASY. My work on limit breaks ended up influencing the exhaust mechanic in Aetherdrift that, despite coming out first, I worked on after handing off the vision design for this set.

In the end, we decided against having a unifying "hero" mechanic. Ultimately, we wanted legendary creatures to be individual designs that were as appealing as possible without needing to accommodate linear mechanics. Here are two examples of potential mechanics we considered for heroes.

SeeD Instructors {3}{W}
Creature — Human Mercenary
3/4
2: Form your group. Activate only as a sorcery. (Choose up to three creatures you control to be in your group until you form a new one.)
Whenever you attack or block, if CARDNAME is in your group, creatures in your group get +1/+0 until end of turn.

Ashe of Dalmasca {3}{W}{W}
Legendary Creature — Human Noble
3/4
Story (When you first control a story permanent, choose a story path.)
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, create two 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens.
If you've completed the story, other creatures you control get +1/+1.

Jobs

You've completed your task with flying colors. You are ready to become a knight, I believe.

Jobs are FINAL FANTASY's equivalent to D&D classes. They are a core element of many FINAL FANTASY games, and even in games where jobs aren't explicit, they are present in characters' designs. For example, Aerith from FINAL FANTASY VII doesn't have an official "job" as that's not in the game. But I interpreted her design and combat role as similar to the white mage, FINAL FANTASY's designated support job.

Here is one of my favorite variants on the mechanic that we explored before landing on our final version. It's a variant on the level up mechanic that uses triggered abilities instead of mana payment to level up.

Thief {1}{U}
Creature — Human Rogue
1/3
Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to an opponent, put a level counter on it.
Levels 1–2
2/3
Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to an opponent, draw a card.
Levels 3+
4/4
CARDNAME can't be blocked.
Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to an opponent, draw a card.

I thought it was important to represent jobs as common creatures. We needed common creatures that felt connected to the heroes but weren't legendary. The idea we went with was based on the living weapon mechanic, where an Equipment enters, creates a creature token, then attaches itself to that token. This approach represented jobs, in-game items, and character advancement. Representing three different crucial FINAL FANTASY concepts at once was very efficient, and job select was declared a slam dunk.

We considered a version that created a 1/1 unnamed legendary creature token and the Equipment could then be attached to a legendary creature you control. That implementation failed because attaching to any legendary creature made it too easy to put all your Equipment on one creature and led to games that were overly aggressive. With that in mind, we removed the ability to attach the Equipment to any legendary creature. That effect was why we made the tokens legendary in the first place, so we made them nonlegendary for simplicity.

I was very charmed by the possibility of printing "unnamed legendary creature tokens" with a blank name field, inviting players to name their tokens the same way they would name their characters in many of the games. I still might pull out my pen when I create a 1/1 Hero token, giving it a name within the six-character limit of the original FINAL FANTASY.

Summons

Kings of Lucis … Come to me!

Summons in FINAL FANTASY are powerful beings that you call upon in battle. Sometimes they appear for a single attack and are like the damage-focused black magic. In other games, you can summon them and have them stick around for a bit before they leave with an impressive final attack.

We considered things like legendary sorceries to parallel the single-effect summons, but none of those versions had the resonance of showing them as a creature. It was clear to me that we did not want to represent summons as legendary creatures, as that space was already very crowded from all the awesome party members and villains.

The first version of Summon cards that I was happy with were creatures with vanishing and an ability that triggered when you sacrificed them. It worked moderately well, especially since we were toying with the emerge mechanic in tandem.

This execution resembled Saga creatures, which inspired exploring those. That version was a lot splashier and quickly cemented itself as the favorite approach. I also really appreciated the vertical art, which worked for many of the Summons we wanted to depict.

Magic Spells

The bread and butter of FINAL FANTASY's magic is white magic and black magic. White magic is everything you'd expect from a healer, while black magic consists of spells that deal elemental damage and sometimes inflict status effects.

An important element of the franchise's magic is how spells can be improved. The games almost always feature base spells that deal elemental damage, and those have upgraded versions. We tried many fancy versions of leveling up your spells, but in the end, we went with a version I originally named "modal kicker" before it went on to become tiered.

Although the number of cards featuring this mechanic is small, we thought it was crucial to do this element justice, and the modal kicker execution was by far the cleanest. We developed it at the same time Outlaws of Thunder Junction developed spree, so there were discussions about which approach was best. In the end, we decided they could coexist as separate mechanics that are cool in their own ways. Spree allows you to get multiple effects, while tiered spells can scale in exciting ways.

We also ended up making a couple tiered spells that represent limit breaks. We kept the number of cards depicting magic spells and limit breaks low, as we wanted many of our instants and sorceries to depict memorable story moments from games, and those noncreature slots were in direct competition.

Villains

This is sickening … You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet! Prepare yourselves!

It was clear from the start that double-faced cards representing villains was the most exciting thing to do. Final bosses in these games almost always have multiple forms. In my opinion, the most exciting part of any boss fight is when you defeat their second form and get to find out whether there is a third form. I also really appreciated that these legendary cards make you a threat in Commander.

Threat assessment in multiplayer Magic is always challenging, but when one player is getting ready to transform their commander into a god, it becomes pretty clear they might be the archenemy. I considered this telegraphed villainy to be a major win for ludonarrative resonance.

My favorite double-faced villain is Ultimecia, Time Sorceress, which has an ability we'd normally never put at uncommon, especially on a creature: an extra-turn effect. But making it the reward of a difficult transform condition makes it hard to recur, which is crucial for balancing extra-turn effects. We've been very wary of pushing the power level on extra-turns effects, which makes us hesitant to put them on rares that we want to be exciting. All that combined to make—against all odds—a reasonable uncommon extra-turn effect.

Villainy

You must bring balance back to light and dark! Now, go! To the Dark World!

Transforming versions of villains was a great option for rares and mythic rares, but it was important to have something to feel villainous at lower rarities.

We tried a punisher mechanic like the Torment cycle from Hour of Devastation. As a huge fan of villainy, I take great delight in watching my opponent making hard decisions, but we decided to drop that direction. Putting all the burden of dealing with your evilness on the opponent wasn't as inviting as we wanted our set to be.

Sector 7 Plate Pillar {2}{B}
Battle
3
Evacuate — When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, each opponent discards two cards.
Collapse — 7B, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Each opponent loses 7 life.

Battle cards that you defend had similar benefits and challenges. I was excited for them to represent "dungeons," being things you (the villain) play that your opponent (the hero) must deal with.

Nibelheim on Fire {2}{R}
Sorcery
CARDNAME deals 2 damage to each creature.
Monologue {R} (As a sorcery, you may pay {R} and exile this card from your hand. You may cast it on your next turn without paying its mana cost.)

Another favorite rejected mechanic of mine was called "monologue." This mechanic was like plot from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Functionally, it's the same as suspend 1. I loved this mechanic because it captured the trope of a villain telegraphing their evil plan. You would get very powerful effects at an efficient mana cost in exchange for giving your opponent a fair warning and the chance to play around the telegraphed effect. I also appreciated that monologue cards could have more disruptive effects than we were comfortable putting on plot cards.

But as it turned out, everyone loved plot way more. Unlike the overlap of spree and tiered, where we decided the two mechanics were different enough to both be cool, we felt monologue was far less compelling, ludonarrative resonance of villainous monologues be damned.

In set design, this role of "villain mechanic" was filled by black mage tokens and flashback. I'll cover that later.

Exploration

While searching for a green mechanic, we decided we wanted to portray the massive worlds of FINAL FANTASY. The answer ended up being Town lands and landfall. We also needed something for chocobos to do, and the saddle mechanic didn't exist yet due to the development timelines of Outlaws of Thunder Junction and Aetherdrift.

I'm happy that it turned out that way since it meant we decided to try putting the landfall mechanic on all the chocobos. The first version we tried used 2/2 Bird tokens with a landfall ability that gave +1/+0 until end of turn. These aggressive tokens felt distinct from the usual grindy ramp strategies.

I'm a big fan of drafting lands, and showcasing towns was a crucial part of depicting the worlds of the FINAL FANTASY franchise. I wanted to make it a draftable theme. We tried many versions of Town lands with novel mechanics or abilities that rewarded you directly for playing them. Those ended up too difficult to track or too rewarding for only drafting lands. We handed off a version of Towns that we knew wasn't quite working, and Set Design took a more straightforward approach, like with Ravnica's Gates. That approach was especially helpful since it kept the Towns themselves simple while letting us put the synergistic text on green and blue cards that made for a fun draft archetype.

Here is my favorite Town design that didn't work out as it added yet another source of tracking complexity:

Besaid, Place You Can Visit
Land — Town
CARDNAME enters the battlefield tapped.
{T}: Add {W} or {U}.
When CARDNAME is visited, put a +1/+1 counter on the visitor.
Visit (Your legendary creatures have "{T}: Visit one of your Towns that hasn't been visited this game. Visit as a sorcery.")

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I had too much to say for one article, so come back tomorrow to hear about how we incorporated more beloved FINAL FANTASY elements, dealt with various challenges, and made everything work together in the set's Limited environment.

Please insert disc 2

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