Development
Dissidia Final Fantasy was originally envisioned by producer Tetsuya Nomura as a Kingdom Hearts spin-off featuring a cast of Disney characters while the Square Enix staff was developing Kingdom Hearts II. Nomura later felt uncomfortable with the Disney characters fighting each other and instead opted to use Final Fantasy characters, although the original idea eventually gave rise to the development of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, with the game's multiplayer mode inspired by Dissidia's gameplay. The game was made in conmemoration of the franchise's 20th anniversary and despite being handled by young employees, Nomura noticed there was no pressure, having assisted them in the designing various areas from the gameplay. The game was directed by Takeshi Arakawa whom Nomura noted that his experience in a previous Square Enix game, The World Ends With You, had a good effect in the game. In order to have their desired way of fighting, the team chose the PlayStation Portable console. There were plans for online play but the console's capacities made them unable to add such feature. Developing the game took three years due with the battle system requiring two years and the RPG mode one.
Deciding the Final Fantasy heroes was easy for the staff with the exception of Terra Branford. While her game, Final Fantasy VI, features multiple characters with that fit the role of main character, Terra was chosen in the end so that there would a female fighter in Cosmos' side. For villains, they decided to include warriors who had a strong rivalry with the heroes rather than the games' final bosses. This resulted in the inclusion of non-final bosses such as Final Fantasy IV's Golbez, Final Fantasy IX's Kuja and Final Fantasy X's Jecht who were connected with their games' leads, Cecil Harvey, Zidane Tribal and Tidus, respectively. Shantotto from Final Fantasy XI was used based on her popularity, while Gabranth was used to represent Final Fantasy XII in Balthier's place as the latter had already been featured in Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions and Square wanted his inclusion to surprise gamers. Other characters meant to have been featured were Final Fantasy IV's Kain Highwind and Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning. Following the game's positive reception by gamers in Japan that surpassed Nomura's expectations, he already had in mind several new ideas for a sequel, and wished to feature Kain in it.
Nomura was responsible for the character designs, which changed much of the look and style of Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations. Working in the Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IX designs brought no difficulties since in for the former game, Nomura based his designs on Amano's illustrations while he had already been involved in handling his illustrations in the latter. On the other hand, Nomura had difficulties making Onion Knight as it ended being too cartoony and requested advice from Amano. Nomura's own original illustrations were also redesigned for Dissidia; Nomura commented to the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu that Tidus was designed to look younger than he was in Final Fantasy X to "match the design touch of the rest of the Dissidia" cast.
On April 6, 2007, Square Enix filed for United States trademark registration of "DISSIDIA"; the mark's relation to Final Fantasy was omitted. The title was connected with Final Fantasy when Square Enix introduced Dissidia Final Fantasy on May 8, 2007 with an official Japanese website.
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