is a Japanese video game writer employed by

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, video game publisher and entertainment conglomerate. It releases role-playing video game, role-playing game franchises, such as ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', and '' ...

. He is mostly known for his work on the

role-playing video game Role-playing video games, also known as CRPG (computer/console role-playing games), comprise a broad video game genre generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement (often through increasing characters' levels or other skills) ...

series ''

Final Fantasy is a Japanese fantasy Anthology series, anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi which is owned, developed, and published by Square Enix (formerly Square (video game company), Square). The franchise centers on a series of fanta ...

'' and the action RPG series '' Kingdom Hearts''.

Career

Watanabe first became interested in writing in junior high school in 1988, after reading the ''

Wizardry Wizardry may refer to: * ''Wizardry'' (video game series), role-playing video game series, originally published by Sir-Tech ** '' Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord'', the first game of the series, released in 1981 * ''Wizardry'' (The ...

'' novel ''Tonariawase no Hai to Seishun'' by Benny Matsuyama. Before he joined

Square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

, Watanabe wrote

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

novelization A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book, or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent ...

s. '' Final Fantasy X'' was the first ''

'' game that he worked on as scenario writer. Among others, he was responsible for the dialog in the Zanarkand Ruins which he almost wrote in one single night. He joined the '' Final Fantasy XIII'' team in early 2004 but left it again about half a year later. He instead became part of the ''

Final Fantasy XII is a 2006 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. The twelfth main installment of the ''Final Fantasy'' series, it was first released for the PlayStation 2 in March 2006. It introduced several innovations to the series ...

'' development team in November 2004. The original scenario writer

Yasumi Matsuno is a Japanese video game designer and writer. Matsuno was first introduced to video games in arcade game, arcades while waiting for the train, and first played ''Space Invaders'' and ''Xevious'' there. He attended Hosei University for foreign ...

left that project in August 2005 due to sickness. Hiroshi Minagawa, the co-director of ''Final Fantasy XII'', expressed his regrets that many of the story ideas by Watanabe had to be dropped so the game could meet the deadline for the release. In March 2006, Watanabe rejoined the ''Final Fantasy XIII'' team after Kazushige Nojima and

Motomu Toriyama is a Japanese game director and scenario writer who has been working for Square Enix since 1994. He initially worked on cutscenes in ''Bahamut Lagoon'' and ''Final Fantasy VII'' before serving as one of the three directors on ''Final Fantasy X ...

had conceived a mythology and story for the game, respectively. He was shown a rough outline of the plot until chapter eight and was asked by Toriyama to flesh things out and to correct how it would all connect. Watanabe decided how Toriyama's rudimentary cutscene ideas should play out, wrote the script and adjusted the personality of each character to emphasize what the story tried to express. He said that the ''Final Fantasy XIII'' series was an exhausting project with little time to breathe and that his feelings toward it were "complicated". Watanabe not only wrote the scripts for the games but also a three-part novella titled ''Final Fantasy XIII Reminiscence: tracer of memories'' that was published in the Japanese game magazine ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

''.

Works

Notes

References

External links

*
Profile at ffx.sakura.ne.jp
{{DEFAULTSORT:Watanabe, Daisuke Square Enix people Final Fantasy designers Japanese video game designers Japanese video game writers Living people 1974 births