Characters of Final Fantasy X and X-2
's 2001 role-playing video game Final Fantasy X is the tenth game of the Final Fantasy series. It features several fictional characters designed by Tetsuya Nomura, who wanted the main characters' designs and names to be connected with their personalities and roles in the plot. The game takes place in Spira, which features multiple tribes. The game's sequel, Final Fantasy X-2, was released in 2003. It takes place two years after the events of Final Fantasy X and features both new and returning characters.
There are seven main playable characters in the game, most prominently protagonist Tidus, a skilled blitzball player from Zanarkand who becomes lost in the world of Spira after an encounter with an enormous creature called [|Sin] and searches for a way home. He joins the summoner Yuna, who travels towards Zanarkand's ruins to defeat Sin alongside her guardians: Kimahri Ronso, a member of the Ronso tribe; [|Wakka], the captain of the blitzball team in Besaid; Lulu, a stoic black mage; [|Auron], a famous warrior and an old acquaintance of Tidus; and Rikku, Yuna's cousin who searches for a way to avoid Yuna's sacrifice in the fight against Sin. The leader of the Guado tribe, Seymour Guado, briefly joins the party for a fight, but is revealed to be an antagonist in his quest to replace Tidus' father, Jecht, to become the new Sin. Final Fantasy X-2 features Yuna, Rikku, and the newly introduced [|Paine] as playable characters in their quest to find spheres across Spira and find clues regarding Tidus' current location. During their journey, they meet Paine's former comrades, who are related to the spirit of an avenger named Shuyin.
The creation of these characters brought the Square staff several challenges, as Final Fantasy X was the first game in the franchise to feature voice acting. They also had to feature multiple tribes from different parts from Spira with distinctive designs. Various types of merchandising based on the characters have been released. The characters from Final Fantasy X and its sequel were praised by video game publications, owing to their personalities and designs. The English voice acting initially received mixed response, but X-2
Cast creation and influences
was the character designer for Final Fantasy X and X-2. Since art director Yusuke Naora convinced the Square staff to make Final Fantasy X an Asian-themed game, Nomura designed the characters to give them an Asian look. Nomura first illustrated the characters' faces and started adding details upon receiving information from the staff. Since the PlayStation 2's capabilities allowed for featuring more detail, Nomura did so with the characters and asked the staff to make them consistent. The hardest part of his work involved making the characters' clothes identical between full motion scenes and in-game.Nomura has expressed that after designing serious and moody main characters for Final Fantasy VII and VIII, he wanted to give Tidus a cheerful attitude and appearance. This is reflected in the name Nojima chose for him, as Tiida is the Okinawan word for "sun". Nomura has also mentioned a contrast between the lead male and female protagonists was established by Yuna's name meaning "night" in Okinawan. Since Tidus did not originate from Spira, his outfit was made to stand out from those of the world's inhabitants. Nomura also placed image colors to each main character to give hints regarding their personalities. Since both the player and the main character find themselves in a new world, Nojima wanted Tidus' understanding of the world to reflect the player's progress, a connection that allowed the player to advance Tidus' first-person narration of most of Final Fantasy X.
Sub-character chief designer Fumi Nakashima's focus was to ensure that characters from different regions and cultures bore distinctive characteristics in their clothing styles, so that they could be quickly and easily identified as members of their respective sub-groups. For example, she has said that the masks and goggles of the Al Bhed give them a "strange and eccentric" appearance, while the Ronso's attire lend to them being able to easily engage in battle.
Final Fantasy X features innovations in the rendering of characters' facial expressions, achieved through motion capture and skeletal animation technology. This technology allowed animators to create realistic lip movements, which were then programmed to match the speech of the game's voice actors. Nojima has revealed that the inclusion of voice acting enabled him to express emotion more powerfully than before, and he was therefore able to keep the storyline simple. He also said that the presence of voice actors led him to make various changes to the script, in order to match the voice actors' personalities with the characters they were portraying. Despite being worried about the inclusion of voice acting, Nomura was satisfied when hearing their clips, as he said that the characters became full of life. The voice acting brought difficulties in the making of the English version of the game, as the localization team had to translate Japanese dialogue into English-oriented lines that would fit the characters' lip movements.
Before starting development of Final Fantasy X-2, Square had planned to make a game following the story of Jecht, Auron and Braska ten years before the events of FFX, but they felt that they would end with a "traditional game". For X-2, while Nomura still remained as character designer, Tetsu Tsukamoto designed the new costumes of the main characters to distance the game from its predecessor. The outfits are meant to represent the changes in the world of Spira after two years of peace. The use of three female characters was inspired by multiple films that depict strong female leads. To reinforce this concept, the staff made sure to make the protagonists still look feminine while changing into multiple type of warriors such as the Samurai form, in which the characters wield large swords.
Main protagonists
Tidus
Tidus is a skilled 17-year-old blitzball player from Zanarkand and the main protagonist of Final Fantasy X. Though Tidus is his official name, the player has the option of renaming him at the beginning of the game. He washes up near Besaid Island after the creature Sin attacks him during a blitzball game. He becomes one of Yuna's guardians to find a way back to Zanarkand during the journey. Throughout the game, he finds himself coming to terms with his father, Jecht, who has become Sin, dealing with his increasing love for Yuna and the implications of her pilgrimage. In the audio drama Final Fantasy X -Will-, which is set a year after X-2, Tidus is a star blitzball player in Bevelle, where he meets Kurgum and Chuami. His outfit was designed to stand out within the people from Spira due to being from another world, while his lively personality is meant to contrast with previous Final Fantasy protagonists. Tidus has also been featured in the Kingdom Hearts series and is the hero representing Final Fantasy X in Dissidia Final Fantasy.Yuna
Yuna is a 17-year-old summoner from Spira. In Final Fantasy X, she is the daughter of the late High Summoner Braska, who defeated Sin ten years ago, and seeks to accomplish the same task with help from her guardians. While often serious and naïve, she gradually becomes more open and falls in love with Tidus during their journey. Two years after the conclusion of Final Fantasy X, she is now 19 years old and is spurred on a journey of self-discovery by the possibility of reuniting with Tidus. She is the main character of Final Fantasy X-2. In Final Fantasy X -Will-, Yuna is a priestess acting as an advisor to the Yevoners organization. Yuna has also been featured in Kingdom Hearts II and Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.Auron
Auron is a 35-year-old warrior known as the Legendary Guardian, who helped Jecht and Braska defeat Sin. Shortly after Sin's defeat, Auron started watching over Tidus from afar at Jecht's request. In the game's present day, he sends Tidus to Spira using the new Sin Jecht. After reuniting with Tidus, they start serving as guardians for Yuna, Braska's daughter, in another journey to defeat Sin. It is eventually revealed that Auron attacked the unsent summoner Yunalesca in a fit of rage after she revealed that Braska and Jecht needlessly gave their lives against Sin, and that she mortally wounded him. Despite his injuries, Auron managed to make it down Mt. Gagazet to just outside Bevelle. As he was dying, he met Kimahri Ronso and asked him to fulfill the promise he had made to Braska: that Yuna be moved from Bevelle to Besaid so she can have a peaceful childhood. Afterward, he became an unsent, and secretly held this status for most of the game. At the end of the game, after Sin's creator, Yu Yevon, is defeated, he is laid to rest. Auron briefly appears in Final Fantasy X-2, where his voice helps Yuna during her battle in the Farplane with Vegnagun. The updated International version added Auron both as a boss and as an optional playable character. In the audio drama Final Fantasy X -Will-, Chuami claims to be Auron's daughter based on stories told to her by her late mother.While the developers originally considered having Final Fantasy X-2 follow the story of Auron and Jecht's generation, they eventually let this idea pass due to the concept making the game "too traditional", deciding instead to go with the trio of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. In initial versions of Auron was a Crusader, an exterminator of monsters from Zanarkand, but as the story involved deceased people, the staff decided to make him an Unsent. Auron was planned to be Jecht in disguise, but this idea was scrapped.
Auron appears in Kingdom Hearts II as a party member in the world of Olympus Coliseum. Hades resurrects him to kill Hercules, but Auron refuses to aid him. He joins Sora's group in escaping from the Underworld, but Hades later brainwashes him into fighting Hercules. During the battle, Sora restores Auron's free will, and he joins them and Hercules to defeat Hades. A super-deformed version of Auron appears in Itadaki Street Special.
In 2008, GamesRadar ranked Auron's glasses tenth in "The top 10 famous glasses". Auron ranked fifth on Electronic Gaming Monthlys Top Ten Badass Undead. In a Famitsu poll done in February 2010, Auron was voted by readers as the thirty-third most popular video game character. In its December 2010 cover feature, Game Informer named Auron one of their "30 characters who defined a decade", describing him as "one of the most complex RPG companions in gaming history". In 2011, GamesRadar used Auron as an example of a badass commenting: "A smooth-talking, shades-wearing, longcoat rocking snarker who can wield a huge sword with his one good arm. He is a badass, and nobody can deny it. With that perfect storm of cool, he has nothing to worry about". In 2013, Complex ranked Auron fourth in "The 20 Greatest Final Fantasy Characters of All Time" and eighteenth in their "25 Dead Video Game Characters We Wish Were Still Here". In 2020, NHK conducted an All-Final Fantasy Grand Poll of Japanese players, featuring over 468,000 votes. Auron was voted as the 15th best character in the series. In 2021, Den of Geek ranked Auron number 6 among the "15 Best Final Fantasy Characters".