Arguing about the best Final Fantasy is a risky, often fiery business – they’re a nebulous group of games, each offshoot and strand having devotees and detractors in equal number – so let’s argue about something a bit more straightforward instead. Where can you find the best cuisine in the world? There’s only one real answer: . It’s not even up for debate.
You’d know that if you’ve ever sampled the food, of course. Achat! Assam pedas! Laksa! Nasi lemak! Rendang! Or that perennial favourite, roti canai; a dish that consists of a flatbread whose dough is rolled and re-rolled so that when it’s fried it’s deliciously flaky and soft, served alongside a curry. It’s an Indian dish that’s been given a flourish in its journey to Malaysia; like so much of the cuisine there, it blends aspects of different nearby cuisines to create something proudly Malaysian.
Still, it was something of a surprise to see roti canai make a cameo as a dish in Final Fantasy 15, appearing as part of its succession of exquisitely-modelled food as it was served up in the in-game city of Lestalum. That cameo came courtesy of one proud Malaysian on the team who found himself heading up the design of Final Fantasy 15’s cities – a key part of the game, given their absence in the last mainline entry, Final Fantasy 13.
“They were virtually non-existent, right!,” Wan Hazmer, who now heads up his own studio, tells me as we talk about how he got Malaysian food into Final Fantasy 15. “At first I didn’t want to put in these things – Lestalum was supposed to be a city that seems poor at first, but is thriving on a certain economy which in this case was an electric generator. We based the architecture on Cuban architecture, the markets were all Middle Eastern – and they wanted to know what’s the most perfect food culture. And I was like, hello! “
It’s a detail I adore in Final Fantasy, and not just because it’s a reminder of such a delicious dish – it speaks to the personality that’s baked into this, one of the most divisive of entries into Square Enix’ long-running series. I think that, no matter where you stand on it – and, personally speaking, I loved it – you can agree it’s a game with an abundance of character, and one of the great achievements of its director, Hajime Tabata, was allowing the personality of his staff’s creators shine through in these incidental touches.