Square Enix’s Final Fantasy IX recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. While fans are anxiously waiting for any signs of a remake being announced, FFIX’s director Hiroyuki Ito commemorated the anniversary by reminiscing about the original game’s development in an interview with Famitsu. Among other insights, Ito talked about the origin of FFIX’s Trance system.
The Trance system is Final Fantasy IX’s limit break mechanic. Story-wise, it represents a powerful surge of emotions that temporarily enhances an individual’s inner capabilities. Gameplay-wise, it’s a state that grants your characters heightened stats and special character-specific abilities. It’s activated when your character’s Trance gauge fills up, but the workings of the system are a bit unpredictable and hard to control – the gauge increases by random increments with each enemy attack, and it activates automatically without letting you “save it up” for when you think you need it.
The origin of this system is even more mysterious – when asked by Famitsu how the Trance mechanic came to be, Ito unexpectedly brings up Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He comments, “In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the monolith – the black slab – appears, the apes acquire the ability to use tools. Although it depends on interpretation, I felt that this was not a depiction of the apes being given a new ability, but rather a depiction of an ability they had always possessed being awakened. It’s as if a program already planted in their genome was activated by some kind of stimulus.”
As for how this connects to Final Fantasy IX, Ito explains, “In terms of game design, the characters’ Trance may represent a moment of their “evolution,” guided by the time, place, and their destiny. In this sense, from a development standpoint, you could say that the [Trance] system was something that was meant to be born.” Although his words are (likely intentionally) ambiguous, Ito seems to be implying both a conceptual connection between FFIX’s Trance system and 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as a “coincidental” side to it – with the mechanic being something that emerged naturally amidst the time, place and conditions of the game’s development.
Final Fantasy IX is available for PC (Steam), PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android.
