Final Fantasy Tactics Remake is a complete rebuild — the original code no longer exists

Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is a full remake developed from the ground up, as the original game’s source code has been lost over time.

The remake is helmed by Kazutoyo Maehiro, who worked as an event planner on the original 1997 PlayStation release. In a recent interview, Maehiro explained that the original development files were lost due to standard practices at the time.

“This was simply the norm back then,” Maehiro said. “We didn’t have modern resource management tools, and we used to overwrite existing code whenever fixing bugs or adding new language support.”

Because of this, the team opted to rebuild the game rather than rely on emulation, even for the classic version included in the upcoming release.

“We considered using an emulator to recreate the original game,” Maehiro added, “but that wouldn’t have allowed for fine-tuned improvements. In the end, we felt a full rebuild was the best way to preserve the original experience while updating it for modern platforms.”

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles will include both a faithfully recreated classic version and an enhanced version. The game is set to release on September 30 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PC.