Daisuke Watanabe facts for kids

Daisuke Watanabe is a Japanese writer who creates stories for video games. He works for a company called Square Enix, which makes many popular games. He is famous for writing for popular game series like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts.

Daisuke Watanabe's Journey in Game Writing

Daisuke Watanabe first got interested in writing when he was in junior high school, back in 1988. He was inspired after reading a novel called Tonariawase no Hai to Seishun, which was based on the Wizardry game series. Before he joined Square (which later became Square Enix), Watanabe used to write stories for manga comics.

Starting with Final Fantasy

His first big project on a Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy X. He helped write the story for this game. One interesting fact is that he wrote a lot of the dialogue for the Zanarkand Ruins section of the game almost overnight!

Working on Different Projects

In early 2004, Watanabe joined the team working on Final Fantasy XIII. However, he moved to the Final Fantasy XII team later that year, in November 2004. The main story writer for Final Fantasy XII, Yasumi Matsuno, had to leave the project in 2005 because he was sick. The co-director, Hiroshi Minagawa, later said it was a shame that many of Watanabe's story ideas couldn't be used because they had to finish the game on time.

Returning to Final Fantasy XIII

In March 2006, Watanabe went back to the Final Fantasy XIII team. By then, other writers had created a basic story and world for the game. Watanabe was given a rough plan for the first part of the story. His job was to fill in the details and make sure everything connected smoothly. He decided how the scenes would play out and wrote the script. He also made sure each character's personality fit what the story was trying to say.

Watanabe mentioned that working on the Final Fantasy XIII series was very hard work, with not much time to rest. He said his feelings about the project were "complicated." Besides writing the game scripts, he also wrote a three-part novella (a short novel) called Final Fantasy XIII Reminiscence: tracer of memories. This story was published in a Japanese game magazine called Famitsu.

Games Written by Daisuke Watanabe

Daisuke Watanabe has worked on many video games, mostly for Square Enix. Here is a list of some of the games he helped write: