From an interview with Tabata, Nomura, and Kitase in the Final Fantasy Type-0 Ultimania, p.839โฆ
Were you the one who came up with the charactersโ names this time, Nomura-san?
Nomura: Chiba (the lead scenario writer) was the one who came up with Machina and Remโs names, but I was the one who came up with the names for the rest of Class Zero. I wanted to make them sound like codenames, and when I was looking for a cohesive set of 13, I came upon the names of playing cards. Because โJokerโ sounded so enigmatic to me, I thought โThisโll be good.โ I had already drawn the illustrations of the characters, so I applied the names of the cards while looking at each of their faces.
Tabata: The names of King and Nine really fit their image perfectly.
Did you come up with their weapons while you were drawing the first group illustration?
Tabata: About half of them were strange things at Nomuraโs request. Typically, you wouldnโt think of choosing things like a flute and cards as weapons, right? (laughs)
Nomura: I caused the staff a lot of problems. They were like, โSoโฆ How do you fight with this?โ I thought of it as an extension of โBC -FFVII-โ where each characterโs weapon displayed their individuality, so I was just concerned about creating too much overlap.
Tabata: I thought โHeโs going to come up with something really interestingโ, but the staff on hand werenโt familiar with Nomuraโs personality, so they took everything very seriously and were like, โShe plays the flute? Really?โ
Nomura: I was very relieved by the fact that Deuceโs fighting style makes an impression. I was surprised when I first saw her in motion.
Tabata: Your strange requests became the important hurdle that helped us avoid making the content too conventional.
Outside of Class Zero, Emina is a character who made a strong impression.
Tabata: It was actually Kitase who was in charge of Eminaโs event.
Kitase: No, it was actually an idea the female staff members came up with, and then I just set up the camerawork. The staff who were involved had their hands full with other work, so they asked for my help. It seems the camera control was complicated in that scene, so it came around to me because I was used to itโฆ
Tabata: The idea behind Eminaโs event was to โprovide content that meets a wide range of tastes.โ (laughs) We wanted to give players a variety of camera angles so they could choose the one they liked most, but Kitaseโs first camera was particular to his own specific interests (laughs), so it had to be reworked.
Emina and Kazusa are connected, arenโt they?
Tabata: Yes. I didnโt say anything about Kazusa and let a few female staff members do what they wanted with him. I just told them to make sure that the content would โstick with players.โ Because of that, I feel like Emina and Kazusa became sub-characters who stayed in playersโ hearts.
Even the moogles were memorable this time.
Tabata: Theyโre cute, arenโt they? To tell you the truth, I actually prepared a scene to introduce the group of moogles known as the Cranberry Knights, but Chiba forgot to put it into the game, so now itโs just a memory.
Nomura: Thatโs a shame. As soon as I saw the mooglesโ designs, I even said, โWe should make merch of them right away.โ (laughs) At the moment, Iโm thinking about designing moogles for โFF Versus XIIIโ that are similar to the ones from โFF Type-0.โ
Tabata: I was shocked when I found out that Moglinโs official name is a long, foreign name. I heard that it was Nomuraโs idea, butโฆ
Nomura: The scenario staff were the ones who came up with it. I was also surprised when I heard it for the first time during voice recording. If you look at โKingdom Heartsโ where Iโve chosen all the names myself, you can tell that I have a preference for simpler names. (laughs)
