It wasn’t long ago that BioWare writer Daniel Erickson went out on a limb to insult Final Fantasy XIII, saying it had no right to call itself a RPG. Ironically, another BioWare employee - Mass Effect 3’s art director Derek Watts - has recently admitted that the sci-fi series owes a lot to the 2001 CG film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

In the latest issue of Xbox World 360 magazine Watts is quoted as saying:

“Yeah, you know we actually reference a lot from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. We used a lot of their GUIs [Graphical User Interface] and the way they did their ship - that was kind of like in some of the early designs for the Normandy.

“Our attack helicopters are loosely based off that movie. There’s some great stuff, especially their glowing GUI screens; we used those a lot. I keep a folder of that stuff and I still actually tell the guys ‘just go back and look at that. Change it like that!’”

Watts also worked as an artist on the 2003 Xbox release Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which makes one wonder if he was already referencing The Spirits Within for designs by then?

Final Fantasy’s first foray into film ultimately lost millions at the box office, but thankfully the extras-laden DVD faired much better. Watts’ reference to how specific aspects of the movie inspired the Mass Effect series should make re-watching Hironobu Sakaguchi’s brainchild that much more interesting.

Source: Gaming Union