 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 among the developers.Comparing the non-human races in "Final Fantasy IX" with those of "XII", the developers have stated that the former were modeled after humans, while the latter were fundamentally different in terms of biological characteristics.