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Art director Hideo Minaba, and character designer Akihiko Yoshida discuss Square Enix's upcoming RPG.

TOKYO--The latest issue of Famitsu magazine features an interview with Final Fantasy XII character designer Akihiko Yoshida and art director Hideo Minaba. Yoshida, who worked on Final Fantasy Tactics, and Minaba, a series veteran since 1992's Final Fantasy V, revealed more details about Square Enix's eagerly awaited role-playing game. An English translation of the interview is below:

Q: When did the development on FFXII begin?

Minaba: Quite some time ago. In the beginning, we started out trying to make a game for PlayOnline, since Matsuno [the director] was involved in that project. It was a really small project, where we were thinking of producing one game in about half a year's time. Yoshida was doing the background artwork and I was doing the character designs for the fun of it. Before we realized it, it was a full-time project.

Yoshida: That's kind of how the game began, but it's not really the official beginning of FFXII's development launch.

Q: We previously heard from Matsuno that Ashe was modeled on a Frenchwoman's bone structure.

News source: GameSpot

Changes:

• feature: implemented ringtone manager
  
• feature: implemented 'block user' feature
  
• feature: "delete" key works in address bar dropdown
  
• feature: friends list hints show username and Fullname
  
• feature: improved voice quality and call setup
  
• feature: added check for audio hardware presence on startup
  
• feature: added application-wide hotkeys and keyboard tab under options
  
• feature: "Esc","N" and "H" act like the hangup button on the calltab, "Y" and "A" act like the green button on the calltab if there is an incoming call
  
• feature: "F1" key anywhere in main window opens the help url
  
• feature: autocompletion in send contacts form
  
• feature: users can set global hotkeys for using main features of Skype under options
  
• feature: added view text message history items to Friends List and call-log context (right-click) menus
  
• change: faster online presence updates
  
• change: new Estonian language file
  
• change: new English language file
  
• change: calltab context menu (right-click) has mute/unmute item
  
• change: picking up usbphone focuses Friends List tab now
  
• change: space key is disabled on call tab (some users were inadvertently answering calls)
  
• change: call and search results tabs can be closed with Ctrl-F4
  
• change: some minor changes in Dutch translation
  
• bugfix: echo cancellation is enabled even when little echo is detected (fixes version 0.94 echo problem)
  
• bugfix: confirm dialogs are unicode enabled now
  
• bugfix: usbphone support - several bugfixes, more error handling
  
• bugfix: fixed problem with detection of multi line hyperlinks
  
• bugfix: sound streams are now always correctly closed after they are played
  
• bugfix: friend is now marked as offline when message or call fails with "user not online" message.