Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have a lot in common, but they can often feel like completely different things. Both are genre-defining JRPG series currently under the purview of Square Enix, and key creative forces behind the franchises ended up converging to make the masterpiece Chrono Trigger. The devil is in the details, however, and the creator of Dragon Quest singles out one as the biggest distinction between the games.
Speaking to Game Informer, Yuji Horii explained that Final Fantasy has always taken a different approach to protagonists. Final Fantasy protagonists "speak a lot," while Dragon Quest focuses on the idea "that the player becomes the protagonist themselves." When Final Fantasy debuted, Horii was keeping an eye on the series, but this key difference stood out to him from the start.
Horii notes that "you kind of observe the protagonist" in Final Fantasy games, and he's certainly right that it guides the games in different directions. In Final Fantasy 7, for example, the nature of Cloud's identity and even personality become defining elements of the story. Other games, like FF9, feature significantly more talkative and often goofy protagonists that impose themselves on the narrative in their own ways....
