Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY Brings Canon Source Material to Life
by Kalai Chik,
Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix partnered on a collaboration that felt like worlds colliding. Longtime Magic: The Gathering and Final Fantasy fans have a new topic to bond over as MTG, one of the largest tabletop card games in the world, integrates characters from Final Fantasy into stunning cards. Speaking with Zakeel Gordon, an executive producer for Magic: The Gathering and Product Architect of Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY, he explained how mutual fandom on both sides made this partnership possible.
Trying to boil down nearly four decades of a franchise is a feat to behold, but luckily, the development team is full of Final Fantasy fans who went to bat to have fan-favorite characters represented. Although some non-mainline games, like Final Fantasy Tactics, didn't make it into the set, the teams made sure to include important plot points and even minor, but beloved, characters.
ANN: How did this collaboration come about?
Zakeel Gordon: This collaboration started towards the end of 2020. We've been working on this for almost five years, and this was very early on in our Universes Beyond program. At the time, we had done some of the early Secret Lair drops that brought the concept to life and announced the existence of Lord of the Rings. One of the IPs that was on our internal list that many of our design team and the studio as a whole were excited about was Final Fantasy. Our team reached out to Square Enix and asked if they were interested in a collaboration. They were excited about the idea.
ANN: Who were some of the people that you worked with from Square Enix? Obviously, Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshitaka Amano with their contributions to the art for the cards, but what about Hiroshi Minagawa and other big Final Fantasy names?
Zakeel Gordon: Amano did two new pieces of art for our set. We worked with Tetsuya Nomura very regularly. Our day-to-day was helmed by producer Shoichi Ichikawa, who also runs the Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis mobile game. He's on the Final Fantasy 7 extended team and also a lifelong Magic fan. One of the cool things throughout the development was discovering how many Final Fantasy fans are on the Magic side and Magic fans over on the Final Fantasy side.
We had the opportunity to travel to Japan five times and worked on everything from world-building to early play tests with our prototype designs. We had artist interviews and sessions for people like Yoshitaka Amano, which was a blast. Square Enix reviewed every single piece of art in the entire set. One of the reviewers was Tetsuya Nomura, and he's an absolute blast to work with. He also did a unique art of Sephiroth for us in the main set.
ANN: Are all of these cards considered canon—their descriptions, their abilities—to the Final Fantasy series?
Zakeel Gordon: From the Magic side, we were very strict with the source material. All of the flavor text that you see at the bottom of each card is something that was taken from the game. It may have been a dialog box or a reference that was made within the game. It's all made with canon source material to bring it to life. The entire collaboration spans from the first Final Fantasy games to Final Fantasy 16, taking 37 years of history and sixteen AAA games.
As a whole, we could have conveyed a set just around Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy 14, but we took the approach to celebrate the entire franchise, which is what Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY turned into.
ANN: Were there any limitations when it came to this collaboration? Was there anything that you guys wanted to do that didn't quite make it in?
Zakeel Gordon: There were no limitations from the Square Enix side. The limitation we set for ourselves was limiting ourselves to those 16 mainline games. We collectively made about 1000 cards, and the scope of the project—trying to hit all 16 games and make sure all of the characters were exciting, all the monsters, and the story moments were brought to life—was already a gargantuan task. We ended up leaving out many of the spin-off games, and we know people love Final Fantasy Tactics, but it was a design limitation.
ANN: I saw several Sephiroth cards.
Zakeel Gordon: He has three different feature cards and three or four different spells as well.
ANN: Why so much focus on Sephiroth? Does he have the most cards out of all the other characters?
Zakeel Gordon: I would assume Sephiroth is towards the top of the representation.
ANN: He has both Fabled Soldier and One-Winged Angel, correct?
Zakeel Gordon: He's also on things like Nibelheim Aflame and Sephiroth's Intervention. These moments, speaking for myself, are significant to gaming culture. Sephiroth's Intervention is the most iconic and pivotal moment in video game history. We also wanted to ensure Final Fantasy 3 and Final Fantasy 2 were represented, as a lot of modern players may not have had any exposure to them because they originally weren't released in the West until recently.
It was to do deep dives where there were fun moments. There's a card called Commune with Beavers, and the flavor text is “Guy speak beaver” from Final Fantasy 2. It's a very small, niche moment, but it's for those two super fans because every Final Fantasy is someone's favorite.
ANN: Turning to Sephiroth and Cloud, their cards are evenly balanced. How did the team incorporate their relationship and story progression in the cards and the decks?
Zakeel Gordon: In the starter kit itself, it is mechanically balanced, so one deck is supposed to be equal when you're playing them against each other. But because there are several different cards, there are snapshots of each character throughout the progression in those games. Sephiroth, Planet's Heir in the starter kit, has an ability where he comes down and gives everything minus two. You can imagine that as a big swipe across the battlefield. His other card is him turning into the One-Winged Angel, which is a very iconic moment for him.
Every character appears multiple times, even in things like the Final Fantasy 6 Commander Deck. This deck is based around the World of Ruin, which is the second half of Final Fantasy 6. Not to go too much into the lore, but Terra is gathering the party to take on the greater plot story. Whereas another representation of Terra in the main set is turning into Esper Terra. We want to show off their different forms and show off a lot of the deep lore that we know people are excited to see.
ANN: How do you balance showing the story spoilers in the cards?
Zakeel Gordon: It's a difficult balance, because we didn't want to show exact plot point spoilers. If you look at Sephiroth's Intervention, it's a scene of him coming down, but we're not going to tell you what happens below him. You can put two and two together. For Final Fantasy 10, the Commander deck for Tidus, there's the artwork of him and Yuna holding each other during a very pivotal plot moment.
Some smaller plot points exist. In the case of Final Fantasy 14, Emet-Selch's reveal as Hades, but the details around why that happened may be up to your imagination or your experience playing the game.
ANN: Speaking of Final Fantasy 14, that was probably hard to narrow down into a deck or a given amount of cards.
Zakeel Gordon: The number one thing about FF14 that's awesome for us is that within the studio, there's an employee Discord of like 20 employees that just regularly play FF14. The execution of covering an MMO, especially one that is ongoing, is going to be different than a definitive or encapsulated console game experience. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail came out after we were done developing the entire set. FF14 representation runs from the beginning up until right before Dawntrail. It covers Endwalker, Shadowbringers, etc.
There are infinite stories that we could tell within FF14, and there are fan favorite characters that people fought for internally to show up, like Hildibrand. He's not a part of the main story, but he's a fan favorite character. It's a real deep cut that we know FF14 fans are going to enjoy. As you continue to go down that path, Zodiac is in the set as well as a handful of other boss monsters. FF14 is an infinite well of content where we can't cover everything, but we tried to cover the iconic character progression and fan favorite moments.
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