Square Enix has confirmed that the source code for Final Fantasy Tactics was overwritten, forcing the developer to rebuild the upcoming remake, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, from scratch.
In a PlayStation blog post published on July 21 (via VGC), Kazutoyo Maehiro, who was an events planner on Tactics and is now director on the remake, revealed that the source code for Final Fantasy Tactics no longer exists due to the common practice of overwriting at the time and a lack of overall game preservation tools.
“This was simply the norm at the time,” Maehiro explained in the post. ”We didn’t have the kinds of effective resource management tools available today, and we developed games by essentially overwriting the previous code each time we fixed a bug or added a new language.”
Square Enix wants The Ivalice Chronicles to be a faithful recreation of 1997’s Final Fantasy Tactics – with both a Classic and Enhanced version available at launch.
The Classic version aims to recreate the original game, and Maehiro explained in the blog post that Square Enix did consider using an emulator for this experience. However, this method wouldn’t have allowed the team “to make granular refinements.”
“After our analysis, we felt the best way to ensure the game met modern playability standards while staying true to the original was to rebuild it,” Maehiro continued.
This rebuilt version of Final Fantasy Tactics is now the Classic version, which was then updated for the Enhanced version, and allowed for the granular refinements Maehiro spoke of alongside other improvements and changes.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles releases on September 30, 2025.