Yoshida. It was his first involvement in a main-series Final Fantasy game, though he worked as the character designer for Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story, both of which were set in the same game world as XII, Ivalice. Comments have been made about the similarity between Yoshida's creations and those of Tetsuya Nomura, the character designer for Final Fantasy VII, VIII, X, and XIII. Yoshida feels this connection is sparked by the style of color used by both artists, which involves a color consistency between the characters and the environments. In an interview included in a bonus disc of the collector's edition of the game, he states that he created the design of the characters after reading all of the design documents on their history and beliefs. He tried to create designs and clothing that did not exist anywhere in real life and had never been seen before, designing for example the armor for the Judges on a combination of historical armor, mountain bike gear, and futuristic ideas. The story of the characters was created by scenario writer Daisuke Watanabe. In the bonus disc interview, he states that he endeavored to create characters that were neither fully good nor evil, adding flaws such as selfishness to the heroes and virtues such as kindness to the villains, in an attempt to make them more realistic. He also said he tried to create a scenario in which neither side was truly right or wrong, but instead just had different interpretations of the events in the game. He tried to convey the emotions of the characters through their lines, the acting of the voice actors, and in the facial expressions of the in-game models. Alexander O. Smith, the English translator for the game, included accents to the characters for the English version of the game to add a layer of depth to the game by having characters from different areas of Ivalice sound different. He based these accents off the extensive notes made by game designer Yasumi Matsuno on the backgrounds of the characters. Smith chose voice actors for the project who had stage and film acting experience, in an attempt to avoid the common problem of "flat" reading he felt was prevalent in video game voice acting. The designers have stated that non-human characters and races feature a prominent role in the game, which was influenced by an interest in history