Sony let the cat out of the bag on Square Enix’s new MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. The press sheet released alongside the announcement later that day (Tuesday, June 2), listed Nobuo Uematsu as the composer.
However, many people we spoke to on the show floor were skeptical. “Oh, he probably just wrote the theme song, or a small portion of the soundtrack.” Nope, nope, nope! For the first time since Final Fantasy IX (which came out nearly a decade ago), Uematsu is writing the entire score of a Final Fantasy.
This information was not revealed at Wednesday’s press conference (June 3rd, noon PST). The information came from a reliable source at Square Enix. In a complete coincidence, Mike Tidwell (of RPGamer) and I met up with a member of the FFXI team (now on the FFXIV team), and we picked his brain for information. We asked about the Uematsu listing on the press release. Apparently, Uematsu was offered the opportunity to score the Final Fantasy XIV soundtrack, and he happily agreed to write the full score. No, Uematsu is not back under Square Enix: he’s still an independent artist under his own “SMILEPLEASE” company. And there’s no guarantee that other composers won’t contribute additional music. But at this point, Uematsu is the sole composer, and the plan is for him to score the entirety of Final Fantasy XIV, at least for time of release (as for expansions, that’s too far in the future for anyone to predict).
The only music you can hear from the game presently can be found on the game’s official site, as well as the trailer. We look forward to hearing more Uematsu music as he makes his glorious return to the series that he helped to define so many years ago.
