Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has taken part in an informative interview during which he was asked how he thinks the beloved Dragon Quest franchise differs from the more popular Final Fantasy series. Horii said in the interview that that he didn't consider them competitors in the early days, though he did say that didn't stop him from keeping an eye on Final Fantasy games to see what they offered consumers.
"Way back then, when Final Fantasy originally came out, I was definitely paying attention to it because it was something we needed to look out for," Horii tells me. "But there's one key difference that I really saw back then: the protagonists in the Final Fantasy titles, they speak a lot. Whereas for Dragon Quest, the key objective for [the games], or the experience it offers for the player, is that the player becomes the protagonist themselves.
"In Final Fantasy, you kind of observe the protagonist, but you're not necessarily becoming the protagonist in the games. So I thought that was a really interesting and stark difference between Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but I didn't necessarily see them as a rival back then."
Horii says in Dragon Quest, protagonists don't "just start talking on their own."
"Final Fantasy, again, [the protagonists] just talk a lot," he continues. "I do like Final Fantasy, though. When I first saw Final Fantasy X, I recall feeling this was the ultimate perfection of Final Fantasy."
